background noise

I'm ready for this Wuhan Bat Flu pandemic to fade a little.  The stock market has dropped the Dow from near 30 thousand to just under 20 thousand, a loss of about one third.  My IRA is shot and unless it recovers, so are my longer term plans for retirement.

The news stories are all of the increasing number of cases, but never of the deaths, which is the real number.  Cases don't mean a thing because the sampling, the testing, is not being done randomly out of the entire population, but selectively only from those who present themselves with symptoms.  Deaths will be low.

Toilet paper shortages?  Really?  Hoarding, social distancing, businesses by the hundreds of thousands closing, layoffs, canceled presidential primaries, worry - all are becoming common.  The news media is beginning to be repetitious, which is a good sign.  Soon the novelty will wear off and we'll notice we need more in our lives than news about the virus.

This is the new normal for a while, so the virus and its news will become background noise for whatever else we're doing in our daily lives.  It's about damned time we wake up from this fever dream and realize most of us should be ashamed of how we've been acting.

Wuhan Bat Flu

Here's an interesting thing to think about.  Would the collective freakout have occurred if the outbreak had a different name with the word "flu" in it?  We'll never know, but I believe part of the problem is that the name sounds like something out of control already, whereas if it were the "Blank Blank Flu" it wouldn't sound so bad.

Thus, for me it's now the Wuhan Bat Flu.

 

At this point, it appears we are in the midst of mass hysteria with everything from schools to the NBA season closed down.  We have elevated a problem into a crisis, causing damage where none should have occurred and trashing our economy in the name of stopping the spread of something we can't control but could mitigate.

 

The focus should be on mitigating the highest risks, not stopping the spread, which is impossible.

#cannotimpeachmyvote

This impeachment is a badge of honor and Trump, instead of getting mad about it, should glory in it, much like people adopting Hillary's "deplorables" label and proudly proclaiming themselves members of that group.  I'd like to see a new hat or shirt with a new Trump slogan along the lines of "They can't impeach my vote."  

In fact, maybe that should be a new hashtag.  Hmm...

#theycan'timpeachmyvote

#theycannotimpeachmyvote

MTN 1.3 wide for a lightweight hammock

This bit is cross-posted from my review over at Ripstop by the Roll's website

My order of 4 yards of MTN 1.3 wide arrived in a timely manner. This is a light, slick fabric with just the right amount of stretch to be comfortable for my 155 pounds. To sew it, I used a teflon foot on the Singer Heavy Duty and that made the job much, much easier.

The finished product was exactly what I was aiming for. I wanted a hammock just a smidge under 11 feet, and it came out 10 feet 10 inches on the dot, which was perfect. Generous hemming gave me a width of 62.75 inches, within a quarter inch of the 63 I was aiming for. More skilled sewers could certainly use a smaller hem and make a wider hammock with this fabric if needed.

The finished product weighs exactly 10 ounces, including the two amsteel end loops and the zingit ridgeline. I'll make a stuff sack out of the left over material, so I expect the weight with stuff sack will be a few tenths over 10 ounces, which is outstanding for such a wide fabric.

notes on a possible topic

Just some notes to remind myself to write this out later

Practice Failure

When my wife had foot surgery and was forced to perambulate on one good leg using either a walker or a knee scooter for the injured one it suddenly struck me how scared she was of falling over while moving around.  My dad and I built a temporary ramp onto the back porch of my house to ease access for my wife while she was mobility challenged for the several months it took her to recover.  We had it completed some days before her initial surgery, and she practiced with the knee scooter prior to surgery, rolling up and down the ramp.  Her trips were slow, unsteady and trepidatious.  In contrast, I tried it a few times and it seemed like no big deal. 

Having thought about it, I think the difference in our approaches was partly because I wasn't too worried about falling while she was terrified of doing so.  I didn't much care about falling off the scooter because falling isn't a new experience for me.  I've practiced falling many times over the years as part of everything from learning to slide in little league baseball to performing breakfalls in various martial arts classes.  Having the ground suddenly tilt up and smack me, while it's not pleasant, is not a new sensation.  If me falling is a failure, then it's a practiced failure.

My wife looked at me like I was nuts when I told her she should practice falling.  To practice falling is to practice failure.  If you practice falling you no longer fear it.  Same goes for failures of other sorts.  Practice failing and you won't fear it as much.  Thomas Edison knew it.  Good cooks know it too.  Your first cake may come out flat or burned.  That's fine.  You took a risk and the outcome wasn't optimal, so try it again.  Edison failed to invent the lightbulb more than a hundred times.

Daily life is often unsatisfactory, I believe, because of the lack of identifiable risks.  That's what's so fun about backpacking.  It's not a completely comfortable and safe activity; there are some risks.  Maybe I'll be cold at night.  Maybe I'll get lost for a while, or at least be unsure that I'm still heading where I think I'm heading. That's okay.

[REM - need to think more about this risk versus danger stuff]

from USG survey responses

Those of us who have weathered cancer will never take the health of our bodies and minds for granted again.  Cancer forced its own suffering on me in its own terms.  In response, the self-sought suffering of backpacking on the trail is by my own conscious choice. Blistered feet, aching knees, cold-numbed fingers on a frosty morning are not hardships but proof that I'm alive and well after cancer. When backpacking I'm choosing my suffering, rubbing up against the callous, uncaring, indifferent attitude of the natural world and making a contest on my terms in my time. Every struggling mile uphill, all the camps by rivers or on mountain sides, and each night that I spend alone in the woods listening to the coyotes in the distance is my way of howling back at the disease that I hope I've left behind me forever.  Backpacking has deep meaning beyond simply an being an enjoyable leisure activity.  It's a defiant celebration of the joy of fitness and health.

Delete FaceBook

I'm fully aware of the irony of making this announcement on FaceBook itself, but there are one or two people here who may want to read this.

After a good bit of thought about it, I've decided to abandon FaceBook. That means about 48 hours from now I will delete my account here and never come back. I won't miss it. Not that I have ever been a particularly active participant, but for the few people with whom I interact here, you guys may want to note the following particulars:

You will not be able to reach me here. I won't see your photos and messages. You won't see my likes or thumbs up on your posts, not because I don't like you anymore, but because I'm not here to see them.

Why take this step?

More and more I've become disenchanted with FaceBook. Part of this is personal. Rather than bringing us closer, I now believe that FaceBook segregates and separates us, using its algorithms to create a competitive us versus them echo chamber in which we all try to one-up one another, either seeking to prove how happy we are, how beautiful are our surroundings or how accomplished we all are as compared to our friends.

Worse, our "friends" have value to us mainly as data points, to be collected and interacted with only in the most superficial on-line manner. We see each other in cyber space while avoiding one another out here in meat-space. While some online social activity is enjoyable, FaceBook encourages time wasting and deleterious boasting inside our circles while simultaneously bashing those outside our chosen groups, activities most of us would never do in person.

More to the point, though, I'm deeply distrustful of FaceBook as a corporate entity. I don't care about Mark Zuckerberg's politics. I do care about the business model of his main company. Facebook's business model seems designed to encourage the unexamined, careless sharing of personal data for which we receive no compensation. That personal data has great value to FaceBook and should have similar value to us. Yet FaceBook exists by taking our data and selling it, often without our knowledge, certainly without an equitable compensation, to entities unknown and unknowable. FaceBook seeks to take from us as much as possible while giving back to us next to nothing of real and lasting value. We have value to FaceBook; FaceBook has no comparable value to us. At its core this is an asymetric relationship. We are the product, not the customer.

But the incident that has crystalized my decision to leave this platform is the news that FaceBook has recently lost an appeal over their allegedly illegal use of facial recognition technology. The class action lawsuit alleges Facebook illegally collected and stored biometric data on millions of users without their consent, in violation of the rule of law. FaceBook, rather than comply with the laws, is fighting the suit in court.

Recently a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 3-0 against FaceBook. The law is clear about the obligations surrounding facial recognition, especially implementing it without notification. Yet FaceBook allegedly did so and has fought all attempts to force them to comply with their legal obligations. Despite losing this appeal, a FaceBook representative said the company will appeal again. They apparently have no intention of ever following the law.

This is not the behavior of a benign corporate citizen. This is the arrogant and abusive behavior of a secretive and malicious organization, one which just last month paid a FIVE BILLION DOLLAR fine to the FTC over privacy violations and which now faces billions if not trillions more in this lawsuit over similar violations.

Consequently, I will no longer participate on their namesake platform. You may do what you want.