This is how you cover up a pandemic

So weirdly when I do a web search for "covid saliva test cost" I get a lot of articles saying "the new saliva test will cost only $5" but if I actually try to shop for it, all the results are in the price range stated in this video.

@milf-adjacent nailed it: this is how you cover up a pandemic. The Powers That Be don't want to find COVID any more. They want the narrative to be that COVID is gone. That's why they're shutting down various kinds of monitoring, reporting, etc. as fast as they can. And it's why reliable tests are so unavailable.

Not so fun fact: my mother died with COVID last month. We'll probably never know for sure if she died from COVID (its presence was discovered post mortem) but also no other explanation presents itself. No sign of infection, or any other issue except for the ones she has been successfully living with for years. If not COVID, then what?

Contrary to what all the deniers say, it is not true that every death with COVID is counted as a death from COVID to inflate the seriousness of the pandemic. It was never true. The exact opposite happened for my mother. There's no mention of COVID on her death certificate, even though it's medically the most likely cause by far, because hospitals and nursing homes and rehab centers get politically motivated pushback from the agencies that are supposed to collect such statistics. "When in doubt, throw it out" has become their mantra. The funeral director, bless her heart, did mention it on her part of the paperwork because she felt it was important, but then they're not subject to the same pressure.

And don't even get me started on this "comorbidity" bullshit. So what if COVID was merely "the last straw" for someone whose health was already poor? It would still be the proximate cause. It still caused a death that would not have occurred, as surely as if a stray bullet killed somebody who already had heart problems. People who didn't even know the word before 2020 - and still don't really know what it means - just use that as a dogwhistle for "if they're not like me their lives don't matter".

So yeah, they are twisting the narrative. I really feel for this young woman, whose anguish is so apparent in her voice as she tells her story. There is no reason for her or anyone else to be living with this kind of uncertainty, except that continuing to acknowledge COVID might hurt "the economy" - by which rich folks and politicians mean the world's largest casinostock market and not the actual economy that most people live in.

Reblog to put one of these in your mutuals’ pocket when they’re not looking

This is terrible but today when I was playing volleyball outside with some friends one of their children (18 months) was sort of ambling around on his stumpy little toddler legs and so we were all trying to be careful and like not spike the ball onto the baby but then he wandered over to his father, who picked him up bc dad reflexes, and then the ball got passed over to the dad and he sort of had a no thoughts moment and instinctively used his child to smack the volleyball over to the next person. Like he just swung the kid and used his legs like a baseball bat. I'm never going to forget his face of premature regret mid baby-manuever right when he realized what he was doing AND the instant he realized his wife saw it happen. Anyway the baby was fine he didn't make contact with the ball all that hard and he was just mad his dad wouldn't use him as a club again but I had to sit down because I laughed so hard I cried.

children outside screaming: annoying but ultimately for the greater good. children need Going Outside and Screaming Time for proper emotional development. an auditory burden I am willing to bear

neighbor with his car he made louder on purpose: jail for neighbor. jail for ten thousand years

if i tell yall what i did on the tram today yall would call it a fake tumblr story i think

oh?

so it helps to know that my mindset at the time was influenced by having been transphobically sealioned at a temping agency earlier, as well as spontaneously turning up to a different temping agency without an appointment & actually landing with them after THOSE guys turned out to be cool.

I was on the tram (crowded tram) (just after 11 AM) on my way home full of adrenaline still, and saw my dad eating a banana on the platform. I could get out of the tram to say hi, but then i'd miss the tram, or worse, hold it up. What i COULD do, however, is sprint out of the tram as soon as the door opens, take a bite from the banana my dad is holding, and SPRINT back into the tram before the doors close. So That Is What I Did.

unfortunately now roughly half of the passengers of the tram were looking at me like I was suddenly some sort of feral spirit of hunger or perhaps a strange insect of some sort.* Fortunately, the truth was also the ONE sequence of words that could make what they had just witnessed okay. I went "das ist mein papa!!!" which is german for "thats my dad!!!!!"

My dad seemed genuinely delighted by this btw. the look on his face was fucking PRICELESS

i would like to beat the little german boy accusations based on my behavior before they arise. i am in fact a tall german trans girl.

however in everything except body i AM calvin from calvin & hobbes

Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of me saying "sure, no problem" several weeks ago and forgetting about it in the intervening time.

I apparently volunteered to dogsit a husky for a week.

She has commandeered Tiny Bastard's desk nook and bed.

Normal images to text your cousin.

Guess who got her face stuck in the baby gate.

hi guys. woke up to this on my phone today. zero fucking recollection of writing this down

I always get a little annoyed at posts saying “btw did you know conservatives don’t know what they’re talking about? did you know that they’re incorrect about x?”. And it’s not because that’s wrong per se (conservatives don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re almost always factually incorrect, which is a significant part of why their politics are awful), but focusing on the factual substance of their claims tends to obscure the reason why they’re being incorrect in the first place. like yes they sound ridiculous when they say “I don’t believe in pronouns” but its not because they don’t understand how grammar works. The purpose of that statement is to argue that gender should not be negotiable through language, that to use “pronouns” is to attempt to alter someone’s god-given ontological gender and is therefore morally wrong. And because this discussion is dominated by English-speakers (gendered pronouns are not universal) living in imperial countries, a deeper claim is being made, that trans people are perverting the most enlightened language, the language of the West, the language that dominates all others. This also very neatly fits into right wing antisemitic conspiracies about the oncoming death of western civilisation, which is not an accident!

So conservatives are latching onto a word that has been recently infused with fresh political meaning in public discourse and using it as a rhetorical platform to be disgusting. They know how language works - language is contestable, it is both subject to constant change and a medium through which that change is negotiated. Trans people are making a claim (gender is partially mediated through language and therefore gender is reinforced and expressed linguistically) and conservatives are making a counter claim (no it isn’t). “I don’t believe in pronouns” is not an argument about the technical structure of language, it is an argument that trans people are so perverse that we infect and degrade the base components of language itself.

So yes, point out that they’re incorrect, but they aren’t incorrect because they’re stupid or ignorant, and being incorrect is not the primary problem with their rhetoric. That is a strategic statement which is deliberately inflammatory, can fit neatly inside both tweets and headlines, and makes a very grand conspiratorial claim about reality (any mention of pronouns is evidence of a transgender plot to destroy western civilisation and indoctrinate children), and this is all accomplished with a 5-word sentence that can be repeated ad nauseum. So the issue at hand isn’t a failure to observe the basic components of language, it’s a violent call to action to remove trans people from public discourse, and eventually public life entirely.

Conservatives are incorrect for a reason. They are incorrect on purpose because they don’t care what the truth is. They are politically savvy and incredibly successful at gaining and maintaining power. They know what they’re doing, and if your only critique of them is that they don’t have their facts straight, I think that’s just a really weak position to hold. What happens when they saying something factually correct? What happens when they know more than you? What happens when they’re well-spoken, well-read, and reasonable? What will you object to then?

all around the world there are cats sleeping so happily with their owners

all around the world cats are being pet so gently. did you know?

Inspired by this Comic:

ok, let's talk about this one utterly Tugger mannerism: the mane-pop.

The Munkustance is a Munkustrap mannerism, and it's scripted and deliberate and passed on in staging tradition. The Tugger mane-pop is not, or not exactly: it originates not in 'ok, your character stands like this at these moments' but in a practical necessity of the costume.

Alex Snova, Vienna revival, March 2022.

Look at this great big heavy thing (which nevertheless moves so lightly and freely, thank you yak hair)! But when he spins around like that to talk to Jemima, it rides up and back a bit. When he hears Bomba's voice and turns around, he pops the mane to get it back into position and tugs at the bottom centre of the vest it's attached to, re-settling it into position.

But it's not just a practical 'oh, gotta fix a costume malfunction' (like an actor discreetly re-adjusting a legwarmer that's falling down). For Tugger it's a mannerism, it's part of his swagger—or he can use it for aggression if it's combined with a hiss. Here, it's "oh, you wanna go? ok, challenge accepted, let me get my sexy saunter on!"

It comes out of the practicalities of an awkward but highly iconic costume piece and evolves into a very Tugger-specific set of gestures and expressions which can be used to characterise him in a lot of different moments and moods, and I think that's wonderful. 😌

Blind people must save a lot on electricity.

They do actually!

I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.

Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.” 

She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”

And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”

She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea!  The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn.  I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did.  So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”

My moms a sign language interpreter, and she’s signed with people from all over the US. According to her, when she signs with people from the south they sign with a “drawl.” They have slower hand movements and exaggerate certain parts of the sign. People from the Midwest sign very fast and people from the south sign very slow.

So we were at a restaurant once and my mom started interpreting for someone who was trying to order and she was like “oh you’re from the south!”

And they were like “how did you know that?”

And she said “you sign with a drawl.” And they were really surprised that it came through that much.

It’s really interesting that even when not speaking verbally accents and heritage come through.

Humans are so fucking fascinating

We would be in a significantly better place as a people if “old” and “fat” could be neutral descriptions of fact and not seen as insults by default.

Just in case I need to say it, thin/young people can and should feel free to reblog this. That’s kinda my point.

The fact that this post got 10k+ notes before someone vomited a bunch of “there’s a weight limit on who I will afford basic respect toward” and “blah blah UNHEALTHY” bullshit, is a win. I mean it’s annoying as hell to have to suffer that at all, but if this was like 2015, it would have happened at 100 notes and I would have lost a crap ton of followers for defending myself and daring to suggest fatness is OK actually. So I’m taking the chance to be grateful for a little evolution.

Know your puppies!

Sharks and owls are cats, as well.

Thank you for this insight, you’re right!