Death! Death! Death!

if you cannot protest or donate, and you’ve been retweeting and reblogging your ass off, here’s another thing you can do from home to help out later on down the line.

we are dealing with a fascist police state. fascists love nothing more than controlling the media and taking away primary sources of their evildoing, so lets take some steps toward taking that power away from them.

the wayback machine is a tool from the internet archive, a nonprofit website that seeks to capture websites as they change over time. the wayback machine is free to use and will be able to help protect all of the first-person accounts of the crimes being committed by the state during these protests for human rights.

this is what the homescreen of the wayback machine looks like:

that blue circle is where you put a permalink to a tweet you want to add to the wayback machine

that red circle is how you find the permalink to a tweet. click “copy link to tweet” and put it in the blue circle above, and there you have it! save what you see. don’t let anyone take away all of the documentation of these crimes the state has committed and declare it fake news.

fuck the cops. fuck orange mussolini. fuck racists, and fuck fascist government regimes.

i also get that its hard to let go of a series you love, like, a few years ago a youtuber who co-created several series i enjoyed was outed as a predator. and it sucked bc the stuff he made meant a lot to me but his personality and persona was so integral to the media itself that i couldnt in good conscience continue watching/supporting it. 

as soon as the cameras were off, the same guy i was laughing along with was hurting people. he wasnt playing a character, he was playing himself, and he used that to his advantage TO harm people. and ultimately, even though it upset me, i wasnt one of the people he hurt. the victims always matter more than your own mourning of some youtube video. you cant really separate “art” from “artist” when the “art” IS that person 

VENOM 2 HYPE LETS GOOOO 👏👏👏

Story of my life people. You know what’s real ? The struggle.

There’s a topic I’ve realized I haven’t discussed here, so I figure it’s time to write something about it. As usual, due to the length of this essay, the bulk of it is under the cut.

I’ve seen a lot of posts going around by people exploring nonhuman past lives, especially those which aren’t possible here/now (i.e., angels, dragons, etc.), and describing any memories they have in very human terms. Things like walking down streets, gathering in gardens or libraries, standing before a judge in court during a trial. I think this is the result of a lack of awareness of a phenomenon we all deal with, but which is rarely (if ever) discussed directly.

Every memory you have, from the broadest strokes to the finest detail, is filtered through the perception and understanding we have here/now. We’re experiencing three-dimensional space, with a (relatively) constant and linear flow of time, seeing the world by way of reflected light and hearing things by way of vibrations in the air around us. Unfortunately, because those things are the only way we’ve experienced reality in this lifetime, we are literally incapable of properly modeling other forms of reality in our minds. It’s a limitation of being here/now, and having the kinds of experiences we do.

A (slightly extended) example: It’s pretty common to be taught about nets of polyhedra in school these days. As a refresher for those who haven’t dealt with the concept in a while: Polyhedra (singular “polyhedron”) is a three-dimensional figure made up of flat planes joined at some angle. One of the most common polyhedra is the cube. Six flat faces, joined at right angles. A net of a polyhedron is a way of “unfolding” the faces of a polyhedron into a two-dimensional shape. That two-dimensional shape can then be folded through the third dimension to recreate the original polyhedron.

Nets aren’t limited to unfolding three-dimensional objects, however. Theoretically, you can create a one dimensional net of a two dimensional polygon (it’ll just be a line, but it counts). More significantly for this discussion, though, you can create three-dimensional nets of four-dimensional shapes. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of a hypercube (sometimes called a tesseract). In the same way that a cube can be thought of as being made of squares arranged in three dimensions, a hypercube can be thought of as being made of three-dimensional cubes arranged in four dimensions. (There are multiple ways of representing a hypercube in three dimensions, but all of them are by necessity inaccurate.) Now, I’d like you to take a moment, and try to imagine a proper four-dimensional hypercube, and how it unfolds into a three-dimensional net. Then try to imagine that three-dimensional net folding back into a four-dimensional hypercube.

It is, quite simply, impossible to do accurately. Our brains are simply incapable of truly visualizing four-dimensional space, and the way objects behave in four dimensions, because we’re limited to experiencing only three of them. Similarly, it is impossible to truly comprehend how reality functions outside of here/now, because we’re limited to experiencing only here/now. Brains are amazing things, however, and will try their hardest to fill in the gaps with something, even if that something is inaccurate.

When it comes to remembering nonhuman incarnations, this means that our brains will grab whatever feels closest to what you’re unable to understand, and use that to fill in the gap, regardless of if it actually fits or not. As a result, those kinds of memories are inherently unreliable, since they’re (in many ways) just our brain’s best guess about what actually happened.

I’ve taken to referring to this problem as “the lens of human perception”, since it occurs due to filtering things through the understanding we can have by perceiving the world the way humans do. Like any imperfect lens, it leads to our view of things being distorted, and because of the way brains work, we generally aren’t even aware that the distortion has occurred. And so we redefine things in terms of here/now without even realizing we’re redefining our own experiences.

Being aware of the lens of human perception can be helpful, however. It lets you consider the context of your memories, and figure out where the gaps in your understanding are getting filled in. You can then make an effort to explore those gaps, and refine your understanding to get a clearer picture of how things actually were. It’s difficult sometimes, and takes some work to do effectively, but it can be worlds better than getting caught up in misunderstandings about your own experiences.

Throughout the early pandemic, the CDC and WHO insisted that COVID was spread through droplets, not through aerosols, insisting that to be considered 'airborne' it had to travel on particles 5 microns or smaller. Anything larger was a 'droplet', which would fall quickly and stick to surfaces, explaining the emphasis on social distancing and surface sanitation.

Aerosol scientist and infectious disease researcher Lindsey Marr, along with others such as atmospheric physicist Lidia Morawska, argued that made no sense. Depending on temperature, humidity, ventilation, etc much larger could easily travel large distances through the air. They presented evidence like choir practice superspreader events, which droplets couldn't explain. The WHO shut them down, insisting on the 5-micron fulcrum.

Marr wanted to find out where everyone was getting the 5 micron number, because everything quoted it like fact. She communicated with Hong Kong indoor-air researcher Yuguo Li who had come to similar conclusions. With the help of grad student Katie Randall's forensic approach to research, they eventually tracked down where the number came from:

Tuberculosis.

In experiments from the 40's and 50's, only guinea pigs who had been exposed to aerosolized TB particles 5 microns or smaller contracted the disease. The problem is, tuberculosis is SUPER PICKY. If It doesn't get all the way through your respiratory system into your lungs, it doesn't cause an infection.

The 5-micron limit has been applied to every disease since, but no other respiratory infection is that picky. If enough viral particles of COVID, or the flu, or the common cold lands anywhere in your respiratory system it can get a foothold.

So here’s what we know about what ACTUALLY protects people from COVID. Basic definition of terms: an aerosol is a gas/vapor. It’s the air from your lungs. Physically it acts like steam or smoke.

Not significantly helpful:

I’m not telling you this to say, like, “don’t do these things”, but so you know that doing these things does not make you safe. You need to do the things in the second list.

1) 6 feet. I’m sorry. I know this has been your guiding life principle for the last year. The WHO and CDC lied to you. This is not a conspiracy anti-mask dumbass thing. They actually did. That’s the biggest thing about aerosols vs droplets: droplets stop at six feet. Aerosols DO NOT. You can be all the way on the other side of a church service or a wedding or a whatever and get COVID. That’s how superspreader events happen. (You know how everyone’s het up about the CDC saying vaccinated people don’t have to be six feet apart? It’s... not actually about the vaccination. They just know now that 6 feet didn’t help significantly in the first place.)

2) Sanitizing objects. It’s not very specifically mentioned in this particular article, but was part of what they said back in July: “fomites” - contaminated objects - are just... not a factor in COVID at all. All that Lysoling of chairs and shit is pointless. Probably don’t shake the hand of someone who’s coughing into their hand and then immediately suck on your fingers, but we’ve known for more than a year that tables, chairs, railings, etc cannot pass COVID.

3) Handwashing. Please... please do wash your hands, there are many other things you transmit/get from your hands. COVID is however not one of them. Hands fall under the category of “fomites”. Again, don’t put your hand right into your mouth seconds after someone coughs on it, but since COVID is actually passing through air there’s like... not much air that sticks on your hand??? The amount of virus that sticks to your hand is not enough to give you COVID. Also COVID infects you through your lungs not your skin.

4) Bad masks. While wearing a mask is good, many (most!) sorts of masks actually make the problem worse. Your goal isn’t to block droplets from shooting forward, it’s to stop aerosol - gas - from getting, well, anywhere. An ill-fitting mask that has a gap between the mask and your cheeks will cause aerosol to blow backwards at people behind you. A mask that doesn’t have wire at the top will blow the aerosol upwards where it can settle back down all over the room. A bandana, or a mask not covering your nose, or a face shield, or a mask with a valve or a hole, will do absolutely fuck-all.

Things that do help:

In summary, the NUMBER ONE THING - the factor that controls like 95% of risk - that we now know matters (as of a year ago, fuck you, WHO) is air flow/ventilation.

1) Being outdoors. This the single best way to avoid COVID. Being in an outdoor area with free airflow is the best thing you can do by miles, I cannot emphasize this enough. This is why protests weren’t superspreader events. An outdoor area with restricted airflow (like between buildings) is not as good but is still infinitely safer than being six feet away from someone with masks indoors.

2) Proper air circulation. If you have to be inside and have any control over the building, open the doors and windows. Put fans blowing air outside. Turn on the bathroom and stove exhaust fans. If nothing else stand near the door.

3) Air filtration. Get. a. HEPA. cleaner. These filter virus out of the air. A properly used HEPA cleaner cuts indoor virus risk to almost as low as being outdoors.

4) Air filtration part 2. If you have full control over a building, revamp the HVAC system. You need a system that recirculates large amounts of air continuously and filters it to medical standards. If it’s just your home, make sure your HVAC system has a good filter on it. Pressure businesses and airlines to update their air filtration.

5) Good masks. Remember: the mask has to stop air. Not droplets. If air can get in or out anywhere around your mask, the mask is NOT HELPING. Your mask needs to have a wire at the top to stop gaps around your nose and to fit smoothly against your cheeks. If the mask isn’t layered enough to filter air it is also not helping.

6) Get. Fucking. Vaccinated. We didn’t know at first but we do know now that the COVID vaccine is incredibly effective. Like, way more than most vaccines. (Get all your vaccines. But they all do leave some risk of both getting and transmitting the disease, which is one of the reasons we need herd immunity. The COVID vaccine has a way lower lingering risk.) It keeps you safe and it keeps everyone else safe.

That is a trash pile of a human being

From his blog himself (not available now, but source from the wayback machine): 

(Not sure how to tag but warning for gross sexualizing of teenagers)

and from his ex-girlfriend’s blog (source)