Ed Suominen / is on Nostr

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

Last Notes

2024-09-18 03:18:08

I tried watching the movie contagion again, but I don’t think Kate Winslet meant to provoke bitter laughter when her character the #CDC doctor warns somebody, “It’s possible you’ve contracted an infectious disease and you’re highly contagious.”
With #Covid on the loose damaging brains and bodies by the millions every week, that whole organization and public health in general has become—pardon the unintended pun—a sick joke.

2024-09-10 01:13:38

I’m not feeling a lot of love for people who want to make protecting your health illegal.
#Covid #CovidIsNotOver and yes, dumbass, #CovidIsAirborne
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/110/600/779/361/212/original/7a8003da17a04ac6.jpeg

2024-08-20 00:59:38

Hey corporate managers, you know what would be a really excellent #teambuilding activity? Pass out some #N95 respirators and encourage their use while #Covid is running rampant so members of your “team” who are trying to avoid being infected with a dangerous airborne pathogen don’t feel so ostracized and threatened.
You can even give some bullshit inspirational speech while wearing one.

2024-06-28 22:41:55

People, wake the fuck up about #Covid already, if you still can.
#NoToBrainInfections
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/696/654/519/114/566/original/829e2fbe6b5c89c7.jpeg

2024-06-28 19:29:02

“What’s on your mind?,” the Mastodon text box asks. Quite a lot, but I wonder if anyone wants to hear it.
The #collapse of democratic civilization everywhere, not least in the country in which I was born half a century ago.
The mass delusion about #Covid I see in family, (mostly former) friends, and all levels of government all the way up to a brain-damaged minimizer President and former President.
#ClimateChange closing in.
And more you’re not even thinking about. You might not want to.

2024-06-27 21:10:23

This will be the first presidential debate I refuse to watch after witnessing ten of them.
It’s a convicted felon deranged narcissist who wants to be Hitler vs a hypocritical corporate Democrat who completely abandoned his fellow citizens to a brain-damaging virus and the people of Gaza to genocide.
I’ll still be voting for the second guy—with the same enthusiasm as someone making a hostage video with a gun pointed at his head.

2024-06-26 00:52:20

There is a term from the field of #AI and #machinelearning that I think would be useful for those of us trying to make sense of how people are behaving about #Covid which unfortunately is still very much a thing. It’s called “catastrophic forgetting.”
When a neural network is trained on new examples, the earliest ones submitted to it tend to lose their impact, disproportionately. It’s basically the silicon equivalent of recency bias. Numerous strategies are being employed to overcome it. 🧵

2024-06-20 22:30:46

Based on the level of daily activity on the r/COVID19positive subreddit, I believe we are in the thick of yet another wave. “We” being the distribution of places where people use Reddit.
I haven’t seen much about wastewater numbers lately. To borrow the old expression about revolutions, the pandemic will not be televised.
No, #CovidIsNotOver and at this rate it never will be.

2024-05-24 03:34:07

To those who follow this account for #Covid rants and politely tolerate my posts about the wonderful and elegant #Python programming language I’ve used almost daily for over a decade: The #pycon2024 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.

2024-03-13 15:32:36

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.
#CovidIsNotOver but my respect for most people is.

2023-09-11 18:43:04

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@npub178r…qekt I’m in my fifties and am too busy grieving the loss of society being sensible about protecting itself from a brain-damaging airborne virus called SARS-CoV-2. You know, the one that has disabled tens of millions of our fellow citizens now, and is still killing a 9/11 worth of people every month.
Just curious, do you wear an #N95 at public events? If so, thanks for not being part of this particular tragedy or the massive hypocrisy of the thinking class.

2023-08-19 02:39:42

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@npub189n…satx I’m really tired of performative centrism. From him and Murcowski and of course the loathsome Susan Collins.
But also from pretty much every Democrat now, too, when it comes to dealing with what sadly is still very much the worst #pandemic in a hundred years. I hate thinking about what will happen in the months ahead with this latest surge and crop of #SARSCov2 variants.

2023-08-19 02:03:13

When people get older, they’ve tended to talk about how hard things were for them back in the day, how these spoiled youngsters have it so easy.
I’m not doing that. I grew up in a green and vibrant world alive with possibilities, where nature was not lashing out at us and withering before jaded traumatized eyes trying their best to look away. Where we breathed each other’s air without a second thought.
Where companies were places to build careers and products people needed.
Things are not OK.

2023-08-18 20:11:41

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@npub178r…qekt You surely know this, but it probably won’t hurt to hear it: After four days, your probability of having been infected is way down from the prior. Tomorrow when you wake up feeling fine you can relax and thank yourself for having worn that Flo-mask.
Four days is usually when I quit doing the #Covid countdown after being out among the unmasked mob.

2023-08-10 20:23:29

I sure miss #web sites that would load HTML of what you actually wanted to see and not get bogged down with somebody's privacy-invading bandwidth-hogging memory-bloated full-stack bullshit loading stuff from a dozen different places just to render a fucking table of numbers.
#enshittification