Covid worriers on Twitter like “what, do they expect us to just catch this twice a year forever, even as it makes our Long Covid worse?”

Like… yeah, basically? I’ve been doing it since 2020 when it first went “long” in my brain, I believe I’m on my 7th case (none have been tested, but all so reliably feature the same particular symptoms I feel confident calling them), new stuff shows up each time but both it and the returning stuff is weaker each time.

Well, generally. Actual strength order was something like 1, 2, 6, 7, 3, 4, 5. And based on progressions, I expect from case 11 on it’d be nothing, maybe feel a little funk for a week.

• 1st was brain and nerves, messed up my ability to conceive of motion, to implement it with my muscles, and to conceive of myself as a person, that lasted over 2 years though it was reinforced partway through by…
• The 2nd was the first fatigue, that seems to be an issue with aerobic energy generation from blood sugar but I found I can compensate by boosting anaerobic generation from fat with creatine.
• The 3rd case, in retrospect (the 2nd was the last one to announce itself with any initial “acute” respiratory symptoms), introduced blood pressure issues, I collapsed twice while standing
• The 4th and 5th infections, I felt sudden simultaneous strengthening of all the other symptoms but noticed nothing new, but new effects might be something unnoticeable. I’m pretty sure my testosterone levels shot up somewhere between the first and fifth cases.
• The 6th infection debuted the second major fatigue, which is an anemia-like iron deficiency controlled with supplements.
• The 7th infection, the most recent about a month ago, added an effect that muscles pushed to their limits experience bonus fatigue and weariness, which makes it good that earlier yard work already expanded my limits so much.

Now, it bears pointing out that one factor behind my equanimity here is when the first case got into my brain it wiped out the part that handles anxiety and thus I am physically unable to worry about things, I imagine without this the entire experience (I was stuck delirious in a body I could hardly control for over a year!) would have been significantly more distressing

Opening the window for him again

Oh hey they swapped the blog view and shop buttons back

retrocgads:

USA 1990

Garbage – Alien Sex Fiend (2015 Remaster)

brucebocchi:

kontextmaschine:

Yard Task Update

Task: Days Spent/Days Budgeted

tasks done this update in bold

(Completed tasks in parentheses)

3/21/23

• (Polesawing: 7.5/3.5)
• Wood rack: 0/3
• Raise retaining wall: 1/3
• (Sandbox 1.25/2)
• (Uphill bamboo: 2.875/3)
• Downhill bamboo 2/4
• (Post-fall polesawing 1/1)
• (Trimming 2022 growth: 2.75/3)

Okay, Blueberry Hill has settled enough it doesn’t really need another flight of stones, so it’s not so much raising as shoring up the retaining wall, the unmortared stones placed two years ago are starting to bulge out, the original mud around them washed away.

So I dug up a bunch of dirt from the back yard where a ramp got filled in with decades of leaves, added water and mixed it with sand and dry dead grass, and applied it in the joints between the stones.

It was iffy getting the viscosity right but I found I could pour light mud fractions out into a pile of pine needles to solidify it and leave me with thicker stuff. Gotta get some more in between stones down the line then I drape a nylon net over it weighed down by the branches I got there, anchor it into the dirt between the stones with pairs of disposable chopsticks, cover the whole thing smooth over in more mud, and then plant Alpine strawberries in it so they send out runners across strands of the net.

And then stones being pushed out of place will be held in by the net that’ll be held in place by the network of runners that’ll be held in place by where they touch down and set new roots.

Love how Trader Joe’s readymade food is like twice as good as mainstream microwave stuff and only takes 12 more minutes and then somehow 2 in the microwave on 50% anyway

Love how Trader Joe’s readymade food is like twice as good as mainstream microwave stuff and only takes 12 more minutes and then somehow 2 in the microwave on 50% anyway

eightyonekilograms:

balioc:

kontextmaschine:

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

…the Iraq War – the (cultivated) reaction to it, and then the backlash to that reaction, and then the fallout from the actual war being such a huge debacle – ended the decade-and-a-half End of History.

Even if it had no lasting geopolitical impact whatsoever (which seems like a stretch), its impact on the American psyche was quite enough to be a History-Defining Big Deal all by itself.

Which seems like it would be your jam.

Yeah this post is just nuts to me. Even if you set aside the immense suffering of the Iraqis themselves, which you absolutely should not do, off the top of my head I can name three colossal impacts of the Iraq War plus a fourth probably-colossal one.

1. It killed neoconservatism stone dead. The neocons had steadily built their prestige and influence over the 80s and 90s, and with the second Bush Administration they had finally graduated to being the official ideology of the Republican Party, to the point where even plenty of liberals at the time were at least flirting with it. Then Iraq completely shattered their credibility, the GOP has pivoted hard to Burnhamist paleoconservatism, and now the seven or eight remaining neocons in Washington are at their sad little #NeverTrump parties, the most marginal of the marginal.
2. Related to this, since OP is not exactly a young Democrat I don’t think he understands just how deeply disillusioned and cynical a lot of young American leftists became towards the Democratic party specifically because of Iraq. In a couple swing states, Hillary Clinton only lost by a few tenths of a percent, where Democratic turned plummeted compared to Obama in 2012. Could Hillary have won in 2016, completely discrediting Trumpism and vindicating all the predictions that it would be the suicide of the GOP, if not for her support of the Iraq War? We will never know, but it is crazy to not even consider the possibility.
3. It was directly responsible for the Ukraine war. Prior to Iraq, Russia was not exactly a friendly state but at least somewhat tried to participate in the legitimacy of the international order. Iraq firmly convinced them that the international order was bullshit, which is why South Ossetia was annexed in 2008 as warmup to Ukraine in 2014 and the war today.
4. See “the decade of concern” by the Scholar’s Stage. tl;dr, armed forces have to do a complete overhaul every 10-15 years, the Iraq War hit pause on the overhaul of that process for the US military and so now they’re scrambling to complete this overhaul in the 2020s, during which time we are extremely not ready for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. If that invasion does happen this decade, Iraq will be a major part of why.

Okay,

First I mean, I’m starting from the premise that American unipolar dominance would end in some way in a similar timeframe, maybe if you were savescumming you could get 20 more years out of it. And 2000s-era neoconservatism, as an ideology premised on that dominance, would have necessarily been discredited with it. That cancels out on both sides of the counterfactual.

Similarly for 3, “national rivals come to realize that America is overextended and cannot maintain international hegemony” was baked in already with the expiration of the post-Cold War honeymoon.

“It had significant shaping effects on the composition and balance of domestic factions.” ok I’ll give you that. But so did Vietnam!

Antiwar activity was hugely important to party realignment! This was how primary-based presidential nomination came into being! The weapons spending-earned loyalty of labor vs. the ferment of campus activism introduced an education gap within the Democratic Party that is hugely important to this day!

But like… okay? You can learn that in college, but it’s not part of the central narrative of America.

Yeah, we strained the post-Vietnam “all-volunteer force” and the slimmed-down post-Cold War capital structure, remember “stop-loss orders”? And school friends who enlisted all reported encountering some guys who musta got in by lowered standards. But we made it through, and you could honestly put “and this operation strained existing systems and traded off against preparation vs. other enemies” in the histories of any war, but you don’t. (Unless you know in advance those vulnerabilities get exploited in the next chapter)

baconmancr:

kontextmaschine:

balioc:

kontextmaschine:

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

…the Iraq War – the (cultivated) reaction to it, and then the backlash to that reaction, and then the fallout from the actual war being such a huge debacle – ended the decade-and-a-half End of History.

Even if it had no lasting geopolitical impact whatsoever (which seems like a stretch), its impact on the American psyche was quite enough to be a History-Defining Big Deal all by itself.

Which seems like it would be your jam.

I mean that was the way it happened, but if not for that then…?

Like, if it didn’t have military commitments at the time the US might’ve engaged harder in the Crimea crisis, and the Syrian civil war would have been obviated and the big refugee flow to the EU preempted. That’s the two things I can see going differently.

If the Iraq and Vietnam wars aren’t major events, what qualifies? I assume you’d say that the world wars were more important globally, and the civil war was more important nationally, but are there any non-war events that make the cut?

The World Wars were, the Civil War was, the Cold War as a whole was, Iraq’ll get put with Afghanistan and Granada, the old Desert Storm/Shield, Yugoslavia and the “R2P” era as “miscellaneous post-Cold War search for purpose”

just like the Gilded Age is “miscellaneous post-Civil War search for purpose”

kontextmaschine:

balioc:

kontextmaschine:

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

…the Iraq War – the (cultivated) reaction to it, and then the backlash to that reaction, and then the fallout from the actual war being such a huge debacle – ended the decade-and-a-half End of History.

Even if it had no lasting geopolitical impact whatsoever (which seems like a stretch), its impact on the American psyche was quite enough to be a History-Defining Big Deal all by itself.

Which seems like it would be your jam.

I mean that was the way it happened, but if not for that then…?

Like, if it didn’t have military commitments at the time the US might’ve engaged harder in the Crimea crisis, and the Syrian civil war would have been obviated and the big refugee flow to the EU preempted. That’s the two things I can see going differently.

When you follow all the subplots through the real winner of the Iraq War might’ve been Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

youngestdaughtersyndrome-deacti:

sad! god made you in his image and thats why youve never been able to return a call

balioc:

kontextmaschine:

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

…the Iraq War – the (cultivated) reaction to it, and then the backlash to that reaction, and then the fallout from the actual war being such a huge debacle – ended the decade-and-a-half End of History.

Even if it had no lasting geopolitical impact whatsoever (which seems like a stretch), its impact on the American psyche was quite enough to be a History-Defining Big Deal all by itself.

Which seems like it would be your jam.

I mean that was the way it happened, but if not for that then…?

Like, if it didn’t have military commitments at the time the US might’ve engaged harder in the Crimea crisis, and the Syrian civil war would have been obviated and the big refugee flow to the EU preempted. That’s the two things I can see going differently.

kontextmaschine:

Suddenly struck that I’ve never seen the “plot alternates between post-plane crash survival and those same characters out in the mundane world such that the characterization revealed in each informs our understanding of the other timeline” show Yellowjackets compared to Lost (2004-2010)

The “VANISHED! Into Thin Air: 101 Aviation Mysteries” cinematic universe

Suddenly struck that I’ve never seen the “plot alternates between post-plane crash survival and those same characters out in the mundane world such that the characterization revealed in each informs our understanding of the other timeline” show Yellowjackets compared to Lost (2004-2010)

dyke-terra:

kontextmaschine:

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the east victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

I mean, I’m pretty sure it was a big deal for Iraqis.

Yeah, I imagine the American War will stay on Vietnamese school curricula longer than the Vietnam War does on American.

So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as a colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.

Man, I’m sore all over. I’d like to say this is about muscle development and it won’t be a thing in years when I’m built, but I fear that (maybe due to flatfootedness influencing developing body structures?) I just have shit lymphatic drainage. Oh well, good thing I’m having a hot tub put in right outside my bedroom.