Comment and Link Roundup: December 23, 2020

[brin_bellway]

Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[arguably cw: poverty, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by marcusseldon; partly in response to eightyonekilograms and bambamramfan) If you're concerned your job will get automated out from under you one day, try to factor the eventual layoff into your finances now.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sizvideos) Omeo hands-free wheelchairs (steered by leaning) are very cool and very expensive.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by voxette-vk) Are dishes put *up*, or put *away*?

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Links:

[mailbox.org; Wayback] My email provider is running a Christmas promotion offering new customers €6 of credit if they sign up by January 10th, enough for six months of the basic plan (which is plenty in my experience). I've been happy with them, and I would definitely recommend them over Google or an ISP email. (It's even better if you use a custom email domain so that you can easily switch to a new provider if you ever change your mind.)

[CellSol; Wayback] (h/t Hackaday): I'm not sure how practical this system is (maybe?), but if nothing else I love that a disaster-tolerant comms network has the motto--according to Wikipedia's translation--"get results, whether God likes it or not".

[Kiwix; Wayback] If you ever find yourself on one of those data plans with zero-rated WhatsApp and expensive everything-else, exploit some loopholes with the help of the iHarare WhatsApp bot!

Laugh rule: [Wikipedia; Wayback]

Iqaluit Public Transit used to offer bus service in the city, but the service was cancelled due to low ridership. Motor cars are increasing in number, to the extent of causing occasional traffic jams known locally as "the rush minute".

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.


Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by gxrlreadingthis) The many benefits of 3+ member communal households, and how difficult it is to get them if you don't happen to have a pair of parents who are *both* decent *and* alive.

[mild cw: death] [Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael Mock) The importance of stories that are *shaped by* their setting without being *about* their setting.

[mild cw: Christmas, food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name) Bunker down, folks: Christmas is gonna be rough.

(Update: starting Boxing Day for two weeks, Ontario is going back to spring-level restrictions (which has no *direct* effect on my life because they continue to insist that takeout is essential in the face of all evidence, but I guess at least the people around me will have had fewer opportunities for reckless bullshit). I went for groceries on December 22nd because caseloads have been holding pretty steady (albeit at ~80 cases/day, vastly higher levels than the steadiness we *used* to have), but I kind of regret it: I heard the self-checkout supervisory cashier call it a "double whammy" of pre-lockdown and pre-Christmas shopping, and I have to say that sounds right. It was crowded and few people seemed to even be *trying* to distance. We will probably have to resort to a mix of curbside pickups and eating down supplies come January: if this is how people shop for their Christmas parties, I don't want to know what they'll be like *after* attending them.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) Inter-country variation in COVID-19 screening and quarantine rules. [two comments]

[mild cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by femmenietzsche; in response to comparativelysuperlative) The fabled dedicated-to-2020 version of "We Didn't Start the Fire" was once real, but was lost. May it be rebuilt stronger.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by disabledprincesses) More on the practical implications of overlapping symptom sets between COVID-19 and pollen attacks.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by crnahg_yhor) How to clean out an icky garage. [two comments]

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Links:

[cw: food] [The Guardian; Wayback] (by Damian Carrington) Super psyched for a world where meat is grown to the sanitation standards of laboratories, not the sanitation standards of chickens. I really do not want to buy...*Danish mink furs*, if you catch my drift.

[XKCD; Wayback] (by Randall Munroe) I keep having the same conversation with Mom over and over, where she expresses doubts about getting vaccinated straight off and I point out that the question isn't whether getting vaccinated is perfectly safe, it's whether getting vaccinated is *safer* than *not* getting vaccinated. (She hates being an early adopter of stuff even more than I do, but we're all going to have to be early adopters of *something*, and I'd far rather adopt the vaccine than the plague. Besides, it's not like we're in the clinical trials, or even the first wave of the rollout: that's reserved for healthcare workers, nursing-home workers, and people aged 80+. "Whether to get vaccinated straight off" is not actually a meaningful question because we *can't* get vaccinated straight off.)

((if I catch COVID-19 when *the vaccine exists* but they just haven't had a chance to manufacture enough *doses* for me yet, I'm going to be so fucking pissed at the world))

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (by DanHeifermanMD) Pro tip: augment your mask's loose or nonexistent nosepiece by taping over it with a band-aid, for a better seal.