This thread of comments of how Covid is affecting younger people encapsulates many of the attitudes affecting the people most affected – and general ableism. I used pseudonyms, and I’m not linking because it might not be the thing they want to be known for. It was Elsie’s thread, so
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: Covid’s Effects on Lymphocytes
A bit more on Cov-AIDS from Daniel Brittain Dugger because people need to be aware of the similarities between these diseases to, just maybe, provoke them to do everything they can to reduce transmission: mask, vax, and ventilate and clean the air. Long story short, Covid affects your immune system,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Science as a Way of Thinking
Some Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose: “We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Darwin on our Capacity for Love
Linda McQuaig wrote about the Ontario Place debacle: “Ford plans to “spend $400 million building a parking garage for the convenience of well-to-do spa users, while scrimping on the most basic educational materials in Ontario’s schools. That scrimping–education funding has dropped by $1,200 per student under Ford–explains why classroom shelves
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Not So Different from the US
Crutches_and_Spice, an American, has some hard truths for Canadians. She responded to this comment: “23 years old and I’ve never lived through a school shooting in my country, I get surgery for free, as a queer person I’m a protected class. Here’s her response (link): “For now! I would estimate
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Deadly Destruction of the Innocents
This is courtesy of Maarten De Cock (and G.B. Morrison). People have been lamenting the air quality in schools and knew how to prevent transmission of viruses since at least 1887. “Why is it regarded by the public with such indifference? . . . Why does the intelligent parent send his
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Depending on One Another
A.H. Reaume, disabled from a brain injury, wrote about how dramatically her life changed with some help once in a relationship. Her partner does the household chores and makes sure she eats well and regularly. “Being in my disabled body feels different with him than without him in my life.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Mixing Church and State
The religious far right is growing and getting more powerful and unnerving, and we know the fights happening in schools board meetings. This 25 min. BBC video from earlier this year is instructive. It’s telling that Patriot Mobile put millions of dollars behind school board elections, taking over politics from the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Role of Public Health under Neoliberalism
The air quality is bad again today, but public health hasn’t issued any warnings, and it’s not on the Weather Network website. A few people were commenting on their eyes burning and asthma being triggered. Sure enough, the air particulate numbers are up. So, it looks like we’re on our
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: ASD Assessments
Assessments for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are sometimes a piece of work. I’ll look at two of them here. As a reminder, everyone with ASD is really different from one another. If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. The diagnostic categories are general and
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Changing the Atmosphere
A.R. Moxon wrote about an interaction with an old friend, he calls Stove Minivan, who became a MAGA guy. At first Moxon tried to explain reality to him, but soon became frustrated: “Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Dream Logic of Parenthood
Storyteller, writer, and podcaster, Jay Acunzo, has a great thread up on parenting. “I just spent 3 days with dear friends, all of whom have kids ages 8 month to 4 years. Something I need to get off my chest about being a parent of young kids and the culture
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Charter’s not a Buffet
Trudeau spoke to parents concerned with their right to decide what their children are taught in schools. The group of Muslim parents were very worried about the “gender ideology” being forced on their children. The reporter called his answer evasive. Listen for yourself; here’s what he said in full, “I’ve heard
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: How the Media Works
A new study just out that followed 548 people with Long Covid in Spain and found that only 7.6% of them recovered in the two years of the study. People think Long Covid means you’re sicker a little longer, but this study suggests that most people possibly don’t recover. Yet you can
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What Do We Tell the Kids?
A couple weeks ago, Obama, interviewed by Hasan Minaj, explained his thoughts on climate change (at 5:37 and 10:25, and 15:29): “If you’re not stressed about climate change at a time when we’re seeing record forest fires and haze floating right here in DC coming from the north and flooding
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Intersecting Crises: The Winning Mindset
An article from a year ago came my way, about how the super-rich ‘preppers’ are planning to save themselves from the apocalypse. Douglas Rushkoff was hired by some über rich men to field questions about, basically, what they need to do to survive in a bunker. One of their biggest
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Training Children
I have some nuanced or maybe fence-sitting views about Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) that I’ll try to sort out below. As a trustee, I went to a PD session in part about the WRDSB’s use of ABA, which I questioned, and I’m currently taking a course with some material about Autism
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Emperor’s New Clothes 2.0
Paul Krugman wrote about how someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes such “a crank”: “One sad but true fact of life is that most of the time conventional wisdom and expert opinion are right; yet there can be big personal and social payoffs to finding the places where they’re
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Could This Be You?
So, you’re at the grocery store on Saturday morning, in the check-out line, and perusing the gossipy mags and debating a chocolate bar, and the air you exhale is quietly raining down on a little boy standing in line a foot in front of you. But you’re fine, so what’s
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Cognitive Decline in Children
Tern highlighted a few key points from a new study in Nature about the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2. This is all from them, so I just put the parts from the study in quotation marks: “The incidence of dementia and psychiatric disorders in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection was significantly higher than
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