Y2/D326 - Sunny but Cold
Feb. 5th, 2022 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatMother: Do you have ice?
Me: No. It's cold but no ice.
Mother : Your brother said he had a sheet of ice over everything.
Me: He's upstate. It stopped raining here when it was still in the upper thirties, and went upstate.
Well, I've finished S4 of The Expanse - or "Cibola Burn" - the second book of the Expanse novels. It's mainly about a bunch of Belters (people who were born and raised on the asteroid belt in space) attempting to colonize a planet beyond the Gate (created during S3) which allowed the Earth and Mars galaxy to expand into other galaxies.
The Belters jump through the gate ahead of a corporate science team to colonize the planet Inus, which is habitable, but mainly dead - no alien life forms. What had previously been on the planet was killed. The Builders who created the Gates and the Phoebe Prototype which created the Gates to the rest of the Universe, were killed by something on the planet, but no one is sure what. Most of the season is Holden trying to figure that out with a resurrected ghost of Miller, while the rest of the team manages a fight between the corporate science team and the Belter colonists, also various problems set off by the ancient technology on the planet. The other part of the season focuses on the UN Secretary Christianne running against Nancy Gao for re-election, Bobbie Draper uncovering a black market conspiracy on Mars that is sending weapons to Belter terrorists, and OPAC, the Belter Government, hunting down the Belter Terrorists run by Naomi's ex-husband and son (this is actually all set up for S5).
For the most part, it's rather compelling. Does drag a bit in the middle.
And we have the annoying corporate asshole sociopath - that I kind wished they'd have killed off when he first popped up, but no, we have to tolerate him as the bad guy throughout the season. He's portrayed by an actor I rather like - the guy who played Owen in Torchwood, and was in the Hours, among other things. Lately that actor plays asshole sociopathic villains.
And no, they don't kill him off. They do, however, kill off David Straighthorn's Dawes at the end of the season - he's killed by Naomi's ex and her son, which is neatly ironic - considering Dawes was Naomi's former friend and mentor, and nemesis in S3.
I could attempt to explain the rest, but it's all rather convoluted. I'm enjoying the heck out of it - though - for a couple of reasons: 1) diverse casting, 2) strong and diverse female roles (rarity in science fiction), none of which are male eye candy, 3) problem solving with science, 4) realistic.
Now, I'm on to S5. There's six seasons in total. All are adapted from a series of books.
Also watched more episodes of New Amsterdam - I'm now 12 episodes behind. So progress. Also All Creatures Great & Small and This is Us.
I liked the Expanse better.
**
We've now passed 900,000 deaths by COVID-19 in the US. Not that anyone cares, but I figured I'd mention it. Read up on the Beijing Olympic Protocols and oh my god.
o I got off the plane and was met by a horde of Olympic medical staffers wearing head-to-toe hazmat suits. And I got what was, for me, one of the most excruciatingly painful nasal swabs I’ve had during the entire pandemic. And then I got my bag and was shuttled on to one of these special private Olympic buses, which are part of this private network of transportation that they’ve created for these Games. And we drove in a special Olympic highway lane to our hotel, in the heart of Beijing.
In general, everything is super restricted and very locked down. It was a little bit deflating, for instance, to pull up to the hotel in the bus and see like a 10-foot-tall fence around the perimeter of it and guards standing everywhere.
How are these Games different from Tokyo last year?
In Japan, even though a lot of the protocols on paper sounded the same, it was very different. We had the freedom to walk outside of our hotels and were moving between the venues and could go to convenience stores, things like that. None of that’s on the table here.
Something else that sticks out is just the sheer number of tests that they’re doing. In Tokyo, we were testing every four days, and here, they are testing every single person, every single day. The last number I saw was close to 70,000 people tested every day. That’s like giving the entire population of Santa Fe, N.M., a swab every single day. Just the sheer logistical challenge of doing that is stunning.
What are the similarities you’ve noticed with other Games?
Robots are like, weirdly, always a thing at recent Olympics. I think it’s a way for the country to sort of show off whatever new technology that country is producing. In Japan, there was a 3-point-shooting robot at the basketball games. But here there have been robots rolling around, cleaning, or purifying the air. We’ve also seen robots deployed in the media cafeteria — they’re making a lot of the food. I think they might have something to do with minimizing human contact. So I had dumplings made by a robot the other day, and fried rice served to me by another. I’ve tasted a lot of the robot food, and I think humans make food taste better.
In terms of virus safety, how does it feel at the Games?
Just the sheer amount of rules and testing that are being placed on us I guess gives us a level of comfort that most likely you’re not going to get sick. In a weird way, this is probably one of the safest places you can be at this point, but at considerable expense and sacrifice.
What do you mean?
As far as we’ve been told, the entire Olympic work force is bubbling with us. And we’ve seen reports that these local workers are going to have to quarantine on the way out, too. There’s going to be some people here who will be separated from their families for, like, two months.
So in a way, you’re seeing “zero Covid” in action. How does it feel?
Let me tell you a story from here that I think is relates to your question. There was a Belgian Olympian who had a positive test upon arriving here. So she was placed in an isolation facility and was kind of confused about what was going on. Then she had medical staff pull her out of that facility, and she thought she was going back to the athletes’ village. But it turned out she was going to another isolation facility. She was very confused. She posted a video on her social media in tears. You can just tell she was just utterly disoriented, confused about what was going on and basically seemed on the verge of breaking.
We’ve been talking about all the personal sacrifice and the mental health stakes that’s gone into doing this. And then to sort of see, in a very vivid way, what it can do to an individual person was a very tactile representation of what this is doing to people. Seeing someone pour their heart out that way felt like seeing one side of this whole policy in action.
And..
* A study in California found that people who consistently wore high-quality masks indoors were significantly less likely to test positive than people who said they never wore masks in such places. [ Yep, I've been wearing KN95 and KF94's for a while now and am virus free.]
*A Pennsylvania doctor accused of prescribing ivermectin for Covid-19 was fired.
* Conservative state legislators in Missouri obstructed the confirmation of a top health official — a Republican who opposes mask and vaccine mandates but spoke approvingly of the Covid vaccine. [ I've decided anyone who is a Republican definitely failed logic in school, and doesn't have the common sense god gave a blind bat.)
*After thousands of truckers arrived in Ottawa last weekend to protest vaccine mandates, the amount of virus in the city’s wastewater jumped, following weeks of a steady decline, The Ottawa Citizen reports.[that's become a problem - the Canadians on Twitter have been discussing it for weeks now. Midnight Jane luckily is staying home and not going in to work - since her hospital is under lockdown - the protests are in front of it.]
*The U.S. economy added 467,000 jobs in January despite a Covid surge. [Interesting side effect of 900,000 folks dying of COVID - jobs open up and we have a labor shortage as opposed to unemployment.]
* The C.D.C. added wastewater data to its Covid-19 tracker. [Apparently the virus is shed in feces. Which is why people were afraid of flushing toilets early on - now you can't get it from flushing the toilet.]
* Pandemic-era tests could help efforts to eliminate hepatitis C. [ So, we won't get rid of COVID, but, we could get rid of hepatitis C.]
* Greece will ease its travel restrictions for vaccinated European citizens on Monday.
**
Didn't too to much today. Straightened a few things up. Cleaned tub. Made corn bread. Watched television. Talked to mother. Played on Twitter. Played Wordl. Went grocery shopping in frigid temperatures.
Social media/fandom pet peeve of the day:
"What about ism". In response to a critique of a character, politician, idea, etc - answering "what about such and such or so and so" - effectively derailing or hijacking the discussion to make it about what you want to talk about and not the original topic at hand. I've 0 tolerance for this tactic. It annoys me to no end.
Dreading the work week that lies ahead ..
Here's a picture.
Me: No. It's cold but no ice.
Mother : Your brother said he had a sheet of ice over everything.
Me: He's upstate. It stopped raining here when it was still in the upper thirties, and went upstate.
Well, I've finished S4 of The Expanse - or "Cibola Burn" - the second book of the Expanse novels. It's mainly about a bunch of Belters (people who were born and raised on the asteroid belt in space) attempting to colonize a planet beyond the Gate (created during S3) which allowed the Earth and Mars galaxy to expand into other galaxies.
The Belters jump through the gate ahead of a corporate science team to colonize the planet Inus, which is habitable, but mainly dead - no alien life forms. What had previously been on the planet was killed. The Builders who created the Gates and the Phoebe Prototype which created the Gates to the rest of the Universe, were killed by something on the planet, but no one is sure what. Most of the season is Holden trying to figure that out with a resurrected ghost of Miller, while the rest of the team manages a fight between the corporate science team and the Belter colonists, also various problems set off by the ancient technology on the planet. The other part of the season focuses on the UN Secretary Christianne running against Nancy Gao for re-election, Bobbie Draper uncovering a black market conspiracy on Mars that is sending weapons to Belter terrorists, and OPAC, the Belter Government, hunting down the Belter Terrorists run by Naomi's ex-husband and son (this is actually all set up for S5).
For the most part, it's rather compelling. Does drag a bit in the middle.
And we have the annoying corporate asshole sociopath - that I kind wished they'd have killed off when he first popped up, but no, we have to tolerate him as the bad guy throughout the season. He's portrayed by an actor I rather like - the guy who played Owen in Torchwood, and was in the Hours, among other things. Lately that actor plays asshole sociopathic villains.
And no, they don't kill him off. They do, however, kill off David Straighthorn's Dawes at the end of the season - he's killed by Naomi's ex and her son, which is neatly ironic - considering Dawes was Naomi's former friend and mentor, and nemesis in S3.
I could attempt to explain the rest, but it's all rather convoluted. I'm enjoying the heck out of it - though - for a couple of reasons: 1) diverse casting, 2) strong and diverse female roles (rarity in science fiction), none of which are male eye candy, 3) problem solving with science, 4) realistic.
Now, I'm on to S5. There's six seasons in total. All are adapted from a series of books.
Also watched more episodes of New Amsterdam - I'm now 12 episodes behind. So progress. Also All Creatures Great & Small and This is Us.
I liked the Expanse better.
**
We've now passed 900,000 deaths by COVID-19 in the US. Not that anyone cares, but I figured I'd mention it. Read up on the Beijing Olympic Protocols and oh my god.
o I got off the plane and was met by a horde of Olympic medical staffers wearing head-to-toe hazmat suits. And I got what was, for me, one of the most excruciatingly painful nasal swabs I’ve had during the entire pandemic. And then I got my bag and was shuttled on to one of these special private Olympic buses, which are part of this private network of transportation that they’ve created for these Games. And we drove in a special Olympic highway lane to our hotel, in the heart of Beijing.
In general, everything is super restricted and very locked down. It was a little bit deflating, for instance, to pull up to the hotel in the bus and see like a 10-foot-tall fence around the perimeter of it and guards standing everywhere.
How are these Games different from Tokyo last year?
In Japan, even though a lot of the protocols on paper sounded the same, it was very different. We had the freedom to walk outside of our hotels and were moving between the venues and could go to convenience stores, things like that. None of that’s on the table here.
Something else that sticks out is just the sheer number of tests that they’re doing. In Tokyo, we were testing every four days, and here, they are testing every single person, every single day. The last number I saw was close to 70,000 people tested every day. That’s like giving the entire population of Santa Fe, N.M., a swab every single day. Just the sheer logistical challenge of doing that is stunning.
What are the similarities you’ve noticed with other Games?
Robots are like, weirdly, always a thing at recent Olympics. I think it’s a way for the country to sort of show off whatever new technology that country is producing. In Japan, there was a 3-point-shooting robot at the basketball games. But here there have been robots rolling around, cleaning, or purifying the air. We’ve also seen robots deployed in the media cafeteria — they’re making a lot of the food. I think they might have something to do with minimizing human contact. So I had dumplings made by a robot the other day, and fried rice served to me by another. I’ve tasted a lot of the robot food, and I think humans make food taste better.
In terms of virus safety, how does it feel at the Games?
Just the sheer amount of rules and testing that are being placed on us I guess gives us a level of comfort that most likely you’re not going to get sick. In a weird way, this is probably one of the safest places you can be at this point, but at considerable expense and sacrifice.
What do you mean?
As far as we’ve been told, the entire Olympic work force is bubbling with us. And we’ve seen reports that these local workers are going to have to quarantine on the way out, too. There’s going to be some people here who will be separated from their families for, like, two months.
So in a way, you’re seeing “zero Covid” in action. How does it feel?
Let me tell you a story from here that I think is relates to your question. There was a Belgian Olympian who had a positive test upon arriving here. So she was placed in an isolation facility and was kind of confused about what was going on. Then she had medical staff pull her out of that facility, and she thought she was going back to the athletes’ village. But it turned out she was going to another isolation facility. She was very confused. She posted a video on her social media in tears. You can just tell she was just utterly disoriented, confused about what was going on and basically seemed on the verge of breaking.
We’ve been talking about all the personal sacrifice and the mental health stakes that’s gone into doing this. And then to sort of see, in a very vivid way, what it can do to an individual person was a very tactile representation of what this is doing to people. Seeing someone pour their heart out that way felt like seeing one side of this whole policy in action.
And..
* A study in California found that people who consistently wore high-quality masks indoors were significantly less likely to test positive than people who said they never wore masks in such places. [ Yep, I've been wearing KN95 and KF94's for a while now and am virus free.]
*A Pennsylvania doctor accused of prescribing ivermectin for Covid-19 was fired.
* Conservative state legislators in Missouri obstructed the confirmation of a top health official — a Republican who opposes mask and vaccine mandates but spoke approvingly of the Covid vaccine. [ I've decided anyone who is a Republican definitely failed logic in school, and doesn't have the common sense god gave a blind bat.)
*After thousands of truckers arrived in Ottawa last weekend to protest vaccine mandates, the amount of virus in the city’s wastewater jumped, following weeks of a steady decline, The Ottawa Citizen reports.[that's become a problem - the Canadians on Twitter have been discussing it for weeks now. Midnight Jane luckily is staying home and not going in to work - since her hospital is under lockdown - the protests are in front of it.]
*The U.S. economy added 467,000 jobs in January despite a Covid surge. [Interesting side effect of 900,000 folks dying of COVID - jobs open up and we have a labor shortage as opposed to unemployment.]
* The C.D.C. added wastewater data to its Covid-19 tracker. [Apparently the virus is shed in feces. Which is why people were afraid of flushing toilets early on - now you can't get it from flushing the toilet.]
* Pandemic-era tests could help efforts to eliminate hepatitis C. [ So, we won't get rid of COVID, but, we could get rid of hepatitis C.]
* Greece will ease its travel restrictions for vaccinated European citizens on Monday.
**
Didn't too to much today. Straightened a few things up. Cleaned tub. Made corn bread. Watched television. Talked to mother. Played on Twitter. Played Wordl. Went grocery shopping in frigid temperatures.
Social media/fandom pet peeve of the day:
"What about ism". In response to a critique of a character, politician, idea, etc - answering "what about such and such or so and so" - effectively derailing or hijacking the discussion to make it about what you want to talk about and not the original topic at hand. I've 0 tolerance for this tactic. It annoys me to no end.
Dreading the work week that lies ahead ..
Here's a picture.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 01:30 pm (UTC)I suspect that much Republican leadership knows the truth but is too spineless to stand up to the primary voters.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 03:28 pm (UTC)If you are a science geek - The Expanse is a must.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 03:27 pm (UTC)I like the KF94's the best - covers more of the face, and easiest to breath in. KN95 also is good.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-06 06:45 pm (UTC)But I'll bet he still has his medical license.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 11:21 pm (UTC)Also, OPAC is a common acronym for library catalogues (Online Public Access Catalogue) so that will amuse me if I ever watch that series.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-10 12:08 am (UTC)Hee, on the acronym. Although I've gotten used to acronyms meaning more than one thing. ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival also Edited to Add. RFP - Request for Proposals, also Red Frigging Print. Just a few.
I'm learning with the English language - meaning depends on context.