Post AT4PGXNWJCiWANDKrI by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
(DIR) More posts by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
(DIR) Post #AT4PGUS1C1X55SINxA by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-26T09:29:32Z
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Lateral flow tests being prepared for outbreaks of avian flu"After a girl in Cambodia died from H5N1, the UK Health Security Agency is on alert but says human-to-human transmission is rare"DON'T PANIC! DON'T PANIC! (we're all doomed) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/26/lateral-flow-tests-being-prepared-for-outbreaks-of-avian-flu?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
(DIR) Post #AT4PGV3ExdJ4wti6yG by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
2023-02-26T09:31:06Z
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@cstross The last time there was a panic about avian flu, I was in Vietnam, and suddenly all the duck's blood pudding restaurants closed down. To be entirely honest, it was no great loss to me. It's creepy stuff.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGVdOnCEKl2czKa by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-26T09:34:44Z
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@Remittancegirl This one is potentially horrific if it acquires human to human transmissibility. (So far it hasn't.) Very high lethality, is massacring bird populations and sea mammals, kills 30-40% of humans who get it (but seems to be mostly via bird-to-human transmission in wet markets and intensive farms … so far).
(DIR) Post #AT4PGWBmjLjgTgiRvc by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
2023-02-26T09:39:32Z
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@cstross The people who caught it when last it plagued Vietnam were people who literally lived with birds in their yard. But as you say, there's no reason not to suspect it might evolve to jump from human to human better. However, that has been and is the case for quite a few nasty illnesses. What is more frightening now is that we KNOW exactly how badly humanity will (not) handle it if it does.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGWhgojFy4ddveq by CyclingJourno@toot.bike
2023-02-26T09:46:13Z
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@Remittancegirl @cstross After the warning Covid provided, we deserve to get wiped out by the next one if we're not properly prepared.Hell, Laurie Garrett warned us in great detail in The Coming Plague in bloody 1994. Those responsible for the clusterfuck response to Covid should be taken out and shot.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGXNWJCiWANDKrI by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
2023-02-26T09:49:14Z
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@CyclingJourno @cstross While I enjoy pouring my ire down onto governments and organizations as much as the next person, the grim reality is that a fair proportion of regular folks were blithely unconcerned for the welfare of their fellow human. And that's where spread happens.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGXreVAotfpJOpE by CyclingJourno@toot.bike
2023-02-26T09:53:06Z
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@Remittancegirl @cstross Enabled by lots of people with massive platforms playing down the danger, including national leaders. Countries where the leadership took Covid seriously had far fewer excess deaths.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGYfzU15OBwrbHs by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T10:15:56Z
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@CyclingJourno @Remittancegirl @cstross Yeah, and now those same clowns are the ones pushing the #Nuremberg 2.0 nonsense.It's the mystery of our age - how people that would have been street mumblers outside fast food restaurants twenty years ago ended up in charge of defining reality.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGZFRMDRTxtRuXg by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-26T10:20:29Z
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@nealr @CyclingJourno @Remittancegirl I misread that THREE TIMES as "street numbers outside fast food restaurants" and the what now—
(DIR) Post #AT4PGZrj3s4DsdMUDY by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T10:28:39Z
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@cstross @CyclingJourno @Remittancegirl Having lived in D.C., I'm fond of that particular genre of performance art. You will get the weirdest policy prescriptions from those guys.It's like ... they have lucid periods, they read the newspaper, and then they get excitable and you get this sort of General Accounting Office tinged word salad diatribe.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGaOL6c9fVmcX3I by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
2023-02-26T10:31:17Z
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@nealr @cstross @CyclingJourno Ironically, it's their lucid periods that are most dangerous for them. Once a psychotic manages to pin down a really all-encompassing delusion that helps explain the world they are experiencing in totality, they're much happier and less frightened.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGb0GpaUpPQMpAu by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T10:32:40Z
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@Remittancegirl @cstross @CyclingJourno Given that earlier reference to Simulacra & Simulation's Five Stages ... I'm not even sure how we're gonna be able to define psychotic between now and the eventual grid collapse that will truly free us ... at least the ones who survive.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGbVowHjWzH81Ls by Remittancegirl@mstdn.social
2023-02-26T10:33:57Z
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@nealr @cstross @CyclingJourno It's weird... I've never wanted to survive that.I've had a good life. I'm grateful.
(DIR) Post #AT4PGbytCCzARQjEf2 by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T10:37:07Z
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@Remittancegirl @cstross @CyclingJourno There's this thing called Olduvai Theory - the notion that technological societies with 24x7 grid electricity are a single event transient pulse.This ... it troubles me. I'm at the age where people with my genes start dying, but even so I'm ... attached to the idea that our species is going to progress.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory
(DIR) Post #AT4PGcSfPUnxvmf14i by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-26T10:44:28Z
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@nealr @Remittancegirl @CyclingJourno There's a modified Olduvai theory that predicts we can maintain, or return to (after repeated collapses) a maybe-18th-century level of tech indefinitely: age of sail, windmills, and water wheels. (Forests being renewable resources.)I think that's a little pessimistic. If Blue Alchemist tech can be adapted to work using terrestrial inputs it might let us build a long-term-stable, decentralized energy supply.https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-alchemist-powers-our-lunar-future/
(DIR) Post #AT4PGd2TGNRdipPbsm by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T11:01:00Z
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@cstross @Remittancegirl @CyclingJourno We could have climbed back down to 1942, if we'd been willing to see things as they are. I suspect Mother Nature is going to knock us straight back to 1492.The energy inputs are one thing, the mineral inputs bug me. This foolishness with battery powered cars, for example. Count existing gas cars ... total up lithium reserves ... and you get a big fat NOPE.We will eventually start making longer term plans, but what will be left to use for them?
(DIR) Post #AT4PGdZ5J7X5LyfeiW by cstross@wandering.shop
2023-02-26T11:29:11Z
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@nealr @Remittancegirl @CyclingJourno You're assuming LiIon batteries and automobiles are the only viable form for EVs. There's plenty of lithium for LiIon or LiPoly powered e-bikes. And there are non-lithium battery technologies that are workable for cars—just, shorter range or other trade-offs. (I'd like to see trains, or even planes, replace cars entirely for journeys over 500km, light rail for up to 50km, e-bikes everywhere, and e-trikes/quadricycles for urban use. 15 minute cities!)
(DIR) Post #AT4PGe9b7MjvBDkod6 by nealr@mastodon.social
2023-02-26T11:33:50Z
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@cstross @Remittancegirl @CyclingJourno Years ago the peak oil guys donated conference proceeds to the Millennium Institute for a Threshold 21 model of trains/bikes in the U.S.Oil use would drop 38%, economy would grow by 25% ... but it bankrupts Social Security in its current form - walkers/bikers live longer 🙂 I'm digging for the link to it, this was back in 2007 I think ...