A New York Times piece discusses, again, learning loss from the lockdowns of 2020, but a new study shows the lockdowns actually improved some skills. The Editorial Board of the NY Times wrote about the “Startling Evidence on Learning Loss” insisting that school closures “may prove to be the most
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: The Moonshot to End the Pandemic
A recent paper explains how easily we could stop the pandemic even with current highly transmissible, immune evasive variants. Barry Hunt explained the paper’s findings: Rt [the replication rate of the virus] typically hovers just around 1, just enough to sustain transmission endlessly. Rt typically peaks at less than 1.50.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Compassion as the Antidote for Capitalism
A Taylor Swift fan took the brave position of calling out the beloved superstar, and everyone else involved, for the death of Ana Clara and many in need of medical attention at her concert Friday night in Rio: “First of all, Taylor made sure fans had water during the show.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Party Like It’s 1699
It feels like there are three realities out there. It’s not just three separate groups of people, because lots of people straddle a couple or even all these realities. One reality is full of facts and figures. Climate change is being exacerbated by continued fossil fuel use and beef farming. The pandemic
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Putting the Brakes on Car Culture
I’m sure I’ve used that title before!. It’s a funny time of year for this, but lots has been reported recently on the trouble with cars. Part of it may have started from this video put out by the RCMP, depicting the car fatality issue as if it’s equally a problem caused
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Frustrating Run-Around on Filtration Units in Schools
This is a long but very informative video about what happened when people tried to improve air quality in schools. This is a very loose collection of things said that resonated with me in this meeting between Robert Bean and Adam Muggleton of Edifice Complex Podcast and Amanda Hu, a
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Legislating Kindness
If kind, other-centred behaviour isn’t entirely natural to us, then should it be legislated (more than it already is)? Many old timey philosophers agree that happiness is predicated on an increase in pleasure and decrease in pain, and that just seem like common sense. Yet all too often the choices
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: From Childcare to Prisons
There’s a growing and obvious labour shortage in certain fields that all connect to one culprit. But we don’t want be explicit about it. And N95s help as well! As mentioned by 1GoodTern, a Guardian article came so close to saying it in this editorial: “These days, staff shortages are causing
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: We Need to Backtrack and Explain the Disease
Kaveri Roy is an Assistant Professor of Nursing, and she explained how Covid works to her first year students last year in very simple terms, like this: “I teach patho to nursing students. Every semester since spring of 2020, I have taught about Covid. And every semester to have to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: How It Began
When it all started, I immediately started reading news from China and Italy, figuring that what was happening there could easily happen here, and we should be prepared. Esther Hopkins did the same thing. She wrote an excellent thread about it, which I’m saving here. She’s in the UK, where
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Culture of Uncare or Pandemic of Inhumanity
Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe coined the term “culture of uncare” to explain intentional efforts to sever links from one another and from the environment. She calls it “severing links,” but the word that comes to mind is alienation. We’ve been alienated from our environment, from our work, from others, and from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Consumption is Back in Vogue
Tuberculosis is making a comeback! (Mass-consumerism never left.) About 2 million people die worldwide from TB, but not here, right!?! Now there’s a case in the University of Victoria and an outbreak at Boston University of over 30 cases. The immune deficiency created by Covid’s attack on T cells is urging TB out of hibernation.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Newsflash: Covid Should Be Avoided
Studies make if very clear that Covid is really bad for us, yet we’re going to do nothing to prevent the spread. In case you didn’t know, if you have almost $20,000 to spend each year, per kid, on a private school, that many of them have excellent pandemic plans still in place.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Permission to Learn from Home
An Australian case determined that it’s discriminatory to force kids to attend school if doing so could be harmful to the student or family members. From CovidSafeEdAus, “Victory! Our appeal to make schools safe and against disability discrimination by the NSW Department of Education has been successful! It’s the first
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Kearl Lake Outbreak
I’m sometimes spurred on by the idea that it’s possible for average people to put things together in a way that might have an effect. I read Michelle McNamara’s excellent true crime book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark a few years ago, and I keep thinking about it. Significant useful theories about
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, was originally published in 1995 but more recently updated in a 25th anniversary edition in 2020. Well, he added a new introduction, but no study or concept in the book was updated despite huge changes in our lives since
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Central Error of the Pandemic
Dr. Satoshi Akima, who does internal medicine in Australia, has a great post up about the economic reasons for ignoring the pandemic. First, a bit of context to consider from Dr. Lisa Iannattone, “Disability rates haven’t stabilized since the great mass infection event of early 2022 [masks dropped in March
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Supporting Atrocities
This is an excellent 7 minute video explaining WHY the U.S. and U.K. and other wealthy nations so strongly support Israel’s current atrocities. No spoilers. Just watch it! (h/t Adlie)
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Warming in the Pipeline
There are brutal fires across Austrailia right now and horrible flooding in many places including Italy, and winds clocked over 200 mph in Acapulco, one of the strongest winds ever recorded. We can’t ignore the effects of climate change happening right now. A paper just out, “Global Warming in the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Nothing New
Studies coming out now keep repeating what we already know. Covid was at first thought to be a respiratory illness, but we know it makes its home in the bloodstream giving it access to affect “cardiovascular, respiratory, neuropsychiatric, gastrointestinal, reproductive, and musculoskeletal systems,” with persistent manifestations that can impact all
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