@edsuom@hachyderm.io
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

edsuom

@edsuom@hachyderm.io

Engineer, inventor, retired patent agent, ex-fundamentalist, amateur evolutionist, Covid-19 virgin. Old enough to remember Republicans believing in Democracy.

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onepict, to random
@onepict@chaos.social avatar

You may not have the spoons to attend an event.

You may not realise there's something you can do right now to help your community be more accessible to others.

You may want to spread word of a cool event to your followers. Which is awesome.

I'm always going to check out what you're interested in, mutuals.

Although I'd like a small favour if you can. Please can you check if they have a public health policy?

If they don't could you ask them? Please?

Because I want to boost.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

@onepict @phpledge And you as well! Nobody is exempt. PyCon this year was exemplary for still requiring masks. I could hardly believe it when I read that!

NaturaArtisMagistra, to random
@NaturaArtisMagistra@mastodon.world avatar

All because of one man, hate gained a lung full of oxygen.

Racism exploded in America and antisemitism exploded in the ME.

"Hate never goes away... All it does is go underground. It hides until it is given a little oxygen." - Joe Biden October 11, 2023

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

@NaturaArtisMagistra I think it’s a bit too easy to pin this on one man. My uncle was not shot by Adolf Hitler, but by a firing squad of young men like him who were willing to follow orders and shove Jews into concentration camps.

And in our case, the millions of our fellow citizens who will be voting for the one man no matter what he says or does. They are members of the future firing squads.

edsuom, to python
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

To those who follow this account for rants and politely tolerate my posts about the wonderful and elegant programming language I’ve used almost daily for over a decade: The conference required masks because they apparently haven’t stopped caring about the people behind the keyboards.

Yes, masks. In 2024. At a tech conference. It’s a beautiful thing.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

This post on Reddit will warm the bitter, jaded, exhausted hearts of my fellow people who know and etc etc.

Judge me if you want, but after five years of being tossed aside by most of the people we thought of as friends, of being forgotten and limited and thought of as the crazy ones about , we are entitled to some Schadenfreude. I have not a single fuck left to give for people who won’t mask.

https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19positive/comments/1cvt03m/i_miss_masks/

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Dear old friend, trusted confidant, colleague (take your pick) of many years before this thing called came for almost everyone—

—almost everyone but me and my fellow rebellious information- and situation-privileged weirdos and outcasts who still wear an or at least around anyone outside their household, that is, plus some tiny unstudied group of people who seem to have true sterilizing immunity—

I’m having a hard time lately with this damn and you’ve always… 🧵

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Yesterday I had not much to say. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have much to feel. And it all feels bad out there lately. (“Waves hand generally,” younger folks would say on Reddit.)

Today it has hit me in the stomach real hard that irreparable damage has been done to the lives of millions of people by this destructive and insidious virus that causes . And that’s not just from people with but also those of who still know and and all that shit.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

2/ I am really, really tired of this. The masking, the avoiding everyone because of the masking, the being a weirdo and best forgotten because of the fucking masking. I haven’t breathed air around people outside my household without an for years. Years! It take a toll. And you know what’s worse?

All of you who gave up. Who gave in. Who knelt before the great god of Back to Normal even If It Most Definitely Isn’t.

It’s hard to come out and say this, but you’ve done real harm.

edsuom, to python
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Anyone else use ASCII art in their docstrings? I probably have hundreds of chunky little block diagrams scattered around my code. They really help my thought process sometimes. It's nice to have the visual explanation RIGHT THERE above the class or method I'm working on, for my sake and anyone else who will wind up trying to figure it out.

On an unrelated note, my kids grew up playing Minecraft. :-)

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Anyone else part of the cultural memory of that classic understatement? How many know what the idiom means but not what’s behind it? There are so many examples, e.g., “the die is cast” refers not to forging of something out of metal but Caesar’s version of “it is what it is” after crossing the Rubicon. He was a soldier among soldiers, and they played dice.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

We appear to be having the best break from the in a year, with levels in my region lower than they’ve been for probably 95% of the past two years.

But I’m having a hard time feeling great about it. The damage to my social life has been done. I don’t trust or respect most people anymore, and I’m not sure when I’ll ever again walk around breathing unfiltered indoor lung exhaust.

And we all know it’s just a matter of weeks before that line goes back up,

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

To those few types who know regardless of short-term oscillations in this chaotic system of variant waves ebbing and flowing, I’d appreciate any thoughts you care to offer about your own mindset during this lull we seem to be having. Any reasonable reductions in vigilance you personally are allowing yourself right now, while that seems a bit less dangerous than usual?

Or are you, like me, just sticking with the precautionary principle and doing what’s worked?

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

I don’t get out much anymore in this infested society, but have observed terrible driving every time I do. Yesterday there were two examples, someone driving way too slow and weaving all over their lane, and the guy who didn’t seem to notice my vehicle heading for the exact spot in the roundabout he drove straight into without yielding.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, though the horrible reality is almost too much: A brain-damaging virus has infected almost everyone, repeatedly.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

This tweet was in a thread about school absenteeism. What this society has done to its children is unforgivable.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Time did tell. AJ was scorned by a cadre of elitists and minimizers, but he was right. We’re now seeing the effects of what he warned us about over three years ago.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

The effects of being hit by a bus are not altered by the fact that everyone is pretending the buses are not there, walking in front of them, and getting run over.

but my respect for most people is.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Despite what the vast majority of people apparently believe, or at least would like to believe, it’s a terrible idea to walk around exposing yourself to an airborne brain virus that shaves a couple of points off your IQ every time it infects you and has about a 10% chance of making you miserable for months—very possibly for life.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

A quote from the pre-infection Dr. Michael Osterholm: “And I, very proudly and without any question, gave the presentation in my N95. And I was actually asked by a physician in the group, should they all be wearing N95s. ‘Well, I wear mine.’”

Post-infection Osterholm: Smiling maskless selfies at a conference, defends policies saying you can just go back to work if you don’t have a fever and feel OK.

And he was basically the last decent public health expert we had left.

The virus won.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Transcript in case anyone is remotely interested anymore: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/episode_115_a_new_phase.docx

Meanwhile, studies continue to document the brain damage that does. All I see are the headlines now. My own research phase on wrapped up over a year ago. I may never breathe unfiltered in a public indoor space again.

Unless I get infected, that is. Then my whole attitude might change, because my brain will be a little different than it is now.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

Near the end of my forty years in a fundamentalist cult, I pointed out some absurdities and inconsistencies in what we were expected to believe, at first in conversations and then in a book I’d spent a year researching and writing. http://examinationofthepearl.org

It did have an impact. My guess is that it helped 40+ people leave the cult. Thousands of people knew about it, and most vaguely understood that there were issues if they cared to look.

But there’s a high cost for rejecting cherished faith. 🧵

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

2/ Everyone in your entire social network has invested their lives in what a bunch of men have to say about things they don’t have any real knowledge of, or worse, secretly disbelieve but say anyways. Your children are damaged and limited from the directions you’ve led them in.

The way forward is either the same as usual—the comforting rituals and friends and laughter over the coffee table after church—or a scary lonely world apart from all that, with only your cold truths for company.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

3/ The muscle memory of long-held beliefs keeps you coming back, doing the old things, mouthing the expected words, perpetuating the damage to the next generation. You know better, deep down, but can’t help yourself. This is your life, come what may. You Believe.

I’ve deeply felt the similarities between this experience with fundamentalism and society’s behavior about the . Some of us have read the science refuting the words being spoken by the smiling preachers of normalcy.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

4/ We cannot unlearn what we know. The sermons about a virus meek and mild, the promises of a vaccine savior that will prevent all harm and danger, the mocking of the “other” who refuses to join in with the church service of viral spread. The half-truths that are no more than a conveniently muffled echo of what actually is.

But I was able to leave the cult for another social life. There’s no such option this time. Just the quiet Alone with these sad truths, watching a world sicken itself. //

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

I heard the honking from inside my office,
and I went for my walk in the woods
to see them.

They took their time flying above the tree line,
and then there they were, big beautiful birds,
a hoarse happy chorus of them, wings flapping slowly,
in harmony with the dozens of others nearby, and

I walked into my woods they flew over, and then
they doubled back and flew some more, seemingly
aimless in their noisy sweep of sky overhead.

And tears came to my tired old eyes. Let this one
thing remain.

edsuom,
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

I’m not really that old yet.

But I remember the spring of 2020,
when I watched these geese, or their parents,
making these same noisy flights overhead,
so low I could hear the swish of their wings,
when the people behind my screens back inside
at least seemed to care about me, and each other,
when had not yet erased all that,
and there was a hopeful metaphor
in how they traveled together,
supporting each other,
joyously alive.

Those four years were about twenty years ago.

edsuom, to random
@edsuom@hachyderm.io avatar

The kind and thoughtful replies to my last “tired of talking about this shit” post inspired me to recount a dream I had the other night. It was a variation of the “caught indoors without a mask and feeling naked” dream that’s so common to us types.

This dream was scarier. I was unmasked, and knew it. I’d given up, and was wondering how bad my first infection would be, any day now.

No fucking way that’s gonna happen. Might get it, but it will be despite an respirator.

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