Pancakes and String

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The Pages

— “Laziness Does Not Exist” by E Price on Medium

(And a footnote I didn’t see explicitly covered in the article: laziness still doesn’t exist when it is you yourself making no progress and not knowing why. You deserve that respect and consideration, too, even from yourself.)

Starting with DW because it's less confusing.

Okay, like, anyone here remember Livejournal? Blogging site where people would write fanfic and essays and stuff? Got bought out by Russian oligarchs because it was the main Russian-language blogging site? Site of the Strikethru crisis that led to the creation of Archive Of Our Own? So, like, Dreamwidth is one of the Livejournal clones, I think made by fannish folks, that sprang up while the English-language Livejournal community was disintegrating, and it has a lot of the strengths that LJ had: the site design is lightweight and pretty static, it has nice fine-grained privacy tools (I can make as many groups as I want among my followers and restrict any given post to any number of given subsets), and it has good comment sections formatting with, like, threading and stuff. It's also pretty underpopulated right now - I think I saw someone saying, "look, people start communities for their fandoms and then they die from lack of activity - let's just have a community for all fandoms and we'll split off from there when it makes sense to".

(I think that one might be fandom-on-dw? It sounds like that's what that is.)

Also, Dreamwidth doesn't have reblogs. At all. You can make your own blog post linking to other peoples' blog posts, but you can't boost their content to your followers directly. And it also doesn't have likes at all, so ... the only feedback you get is comments and you probably don't get a lot of those. And it doesn't offer much hosting space for, like, images and such.

Anyway.

Mastodon/the fediverse, by contrast, isn't actually a social network: it's ten thousand Twitters that have just agreed to share posts with each other. So, for example, if you're on weirder.earth and you want to follow someone on lgbt.io or vulpine.club or wherever, you just follow @[whoever]@[whatever instance] and their server will bounce their posts over to your server so your server can show them to you. A lot of instances have restrictions on who can join, all of them have their own moderators and moderation policies (read the about/more and look at the staff's accounts), and there's probably even a little more intercommunity drama than you'd expect from that structure. It has privacy features, although not as sophisticated as Dreamwidth has, and it has a content-warning feature which is very nice for both an email-style subject line and also content warnings that hide the content until people click through.

Actually, you could argue there's also Neocities, but they're not a social network, they're just a free web host with an option to upgrade to a paid version. (I think the big limit on free users is the file type restriction, if you want to read through that; the page about supporting the site has a list of distinctions.) I guess they do have an option to follow other sites and watch for updates? But mostly it's a place where you make a site to upload, like, Twine games and image galleries and stuff.

But now I finally made contact with at least one  instituiton of my university, and they asked me, if I would like to meet with them to work on an inclusive language for mails and documents they send out. For this meeting I would love to collect as many ideas as possible, and “represent” as many (nonbinary) people as possible. For that I made this google survey to collect some ideas and thoughts on the versions that I know.

So if you live in Germany or speak German, I would love it and be very grateful if you could find the time to take part in that survey! https://forms.gle/JiaSp3WbN6XfpMmd7

But you know what really, really scares me about the anti-vax movement? As a future Public Health Professional, the thing that scares me most about this is the fact that our cultural mindset has become so CHILL about vaccine-preventable/”childhood” diseases that there is even room for such a movement. Let me explain.

Do y’all know what an R0 is? The R-naught, as it is called, is the basic reproduction rate of a disease. It tells you how many new infections can come from one existing infection. For example, an R-naught of 3 (R3) means that, on average, one sick person will infect three other people. Every disease has an R-naught, some greater and some lesser.

Do you remember when everyone was freaking out about Ebola? Everyone was terrified of catching it, because it’s SOOOOO contagious and deadly, right? Ebola has an R-naught of 2. That’s it. R2. One person with Ebola, on average, will get 2 more people sick. And we were freaking out about that.

Well guess what? Measles is the most contagious disease known to mankind, and it has an R-naught of 18. 18. One person with measles will give it to 18 new people, and those people will give it to 18 new people EACH, and so on. That’s what happened with the Disneyland outbreak; it’s so ridiculously contagious that just ONE sick child was enough to start an epidemic.

And yet very few people are as scared of measles as they are of Ebola. Why is that? One reason could be the nature of the disease, sure; Ebola is terrifying in its progression and symptoms. But I would suggest that a major reason is that measles has been so well-contained by vaccination that people no longer fear it. It’s not a part of every-day life anymore; this disease is no big deal because nobody gets it, because so many people are vaccinated against it. Let’s put this another way.

What are the diseases that scare everyone the most: Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and SARS are pretty high on the list of terror diseases. But let’s look at the R0s, shall we: Ebola-R2. HIV/AIDS-R5. SARS-R5. 

Now let’s look at diseases that people are voluntarily rejecting vaccinations against: Measles, Pertussis, and Diphtheria are the major ones. Their R0s? Measles-R18. Pertussis-R17. Diptheria-R7.

Everyone focuses on the former set of diseases– rightly so, I suppose– because they’re more dangerous at the present time. What makes them more dangerous? Not their R0; it’s the fact that there is no viable treatment, and NO VACCINE. Seriously, that’s why the medical community is worried about them. There’s no way to treat or PREVENT their spread biologically. Well guess what? There’s no viable treatment for Measles or Pertussis, and only limited treatment options for Diphtheria. That’s why the medical community doesn’t focus on them as much, because we can prevent them at the biological level, safely and effectively.

But now that the Anti-Vax movement has taken hold so firmly, the medical community is now being forced to once more worry about diseases it had almost eradicated. And not only that, it’s endangering herd immunity for the people who can’t receive their own vaccines due to compromised immune systems. I’m allergic to eggs, so I can’t receive the flu shot, but I’m also asthmatic so I can’t get the inhaled vaccine. I rely entirely on the people I associate with to keep me safe from the flu by getting their yearly shot. This made public school a living nightmare, because almost NOBODY got their shot. They caught it, and while it didn’t affect them TOO terribly because they were generally healthy, when I caught it, it was very dangerous because of my asthma. And then there’s that time when I caught the flu, and then right after because of my weakened immune system, I caught Whooping Cough from someone who hadn’t been vaccinated. I HAD been vaccinated, but my body was so fatigued from the flu that it couldn’t keep up with immune demands. And so I caught it.

Have you ever had Pertussis (whooping cough)? It’s hard enough on someone with full lung capacity; it can break ribs, it makes you cough so hard. You cough until there is literally no air in your lungs, and you have to inhale so forcefully it makes the “whooping” sound that gives it the name. It’s painful beyond belief, and it can last for weeks. Some people will survive it. But add that to asthma, or to a young child, or to an elderly person, and you are looking at either permanent damage or death, no exceptions. When I had it, I was about 6 years old, and asthmatic; I spent 81 hours awake because the coughing was so violent I physically couldn’t sleep. I tore abdominal muscles. I vomited during coughing fits and aspirated the vomit. I was actively dying. The doctors could barely suppress the cough enough for me to breathe at all. My inhaler wasn’t helping, none of the cough syrups or breathing treatments were helping; I was getting pneumonia on top of the virus. It was Hell. I was LUCKY that I didn’t die.

Who would wish that on their child? Nobody, I hope. And if you KNEW you could keep your child from ever experiencing that, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to ensure their safety?

Or would you look at the safeguard and say, “Nah. I’ll take my chances with my child’s life.”?

That is what the anti-vax movement is doing. Perhaps not purposefully, but that’s the end result. These aren’t just names on syringes designed to make a child cry; the diseases are real, and real threats to health and life, and the vaccines are how you prevent them. Yet we are so far removed from the impact and effects of these diseases BECAUSE of the peace brought to us BY vaccines that people now feel no qualm about refusing vaccines.

That’s what scares me about the anti-vax movement; people have become so complacent that they no longer worry about these very real, very deadly diseases. They’d rather risk their child’s life than get a shot? The side effects of vaccines are unproven (nonexistent), but the efficacy of vaccines are very much proven.

When the pertussis vaccine first came out, people jumped on it right away. They were so grateful to have it, and for a while everything was smooth sailing, and whooping cough was on the decline. Then, in the 70s, some groups started claiming the pertussis vaccine was causing brain injury in young children. Less than 50 in 15 million cases were reported, but it was enough to scare people away from the vaccine. And children began dying again. It was later discovered that it was NOT the vaccine, but the result of infantile epilepsy, that caused the brain damage. People began once more vaccinating their children, but not before hundreds if not thousands had died.

And that’s what’s happening now. A falsified claim scared just enough people that time-tested, lab-tested, fully-proven, totally safe vaccines are being rejected, and we’re already starting to pay with lives. And I’m scared it’s going to get worse. People don’t really grasp the full import of these diseases and the necessity of the vaccines until they have experienced the disease. I’m scared that it’s going to come down to new epidemics before people will realize the mistake of not vaccinating.

Right now we’re still in the semi-safe zone. Enough of the population is immunized that we could probably keep most pandemics of these diseases at bay. But if this movement keeps gaining momentum, there might come a day when measles and pertussis could once again destroy thousands of people yearly. Imagine if some terrorist group weaponized Ebola and used it against this country; so many people would die, because we have no vaccine for it, no way to prevent it. That is what could happen with diseases like mumps, rubella, measles, pertussis, Diphtheria, and polio. Except it wouldn’t be terrorists using a disease as a weapon; it would be some kid in your child’s class, or your neighbor across the street, or the guy who delivers the mail to your office. That’s how life used to be, and if someone from the pre-vaccine era could see us now, they’d weep for joy at the idea that we can prevent these horrific diseases; and then they’d weep in sorrow at the idea that people are voluntarily turning down that safeguard.

It’s true, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective; I was immunized, but still got Whooping Cough (lowered immune function, if you recall). But you know who didn’t get it? My baby sister. My big sister. My cousins. My mother and father. My classmates, the other kids at my doctor’s office. The nurses at the hospital. The pharmacy workers. Their children. The kids my mom taught at school. All those people were safe because of vaccines. And you know what else? When I was in India, I was exposed to polio. Didn’t get it. Know why? I was vaccinated. I was exposed to chicken pox in 5th grade. One unvaccinated kid got it, and the other 4 kids in our class who weren’t vaccinated got it. But you know who didn’t? The rest of us who WERE vaccinated.

We hit 200k subscribers! Holy heck! Here’s a small, celebratory video collecting my favorite bits and pieces that got cut from other videos.

If you like this, or the videos these bits were removed from, consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

The Artist is Absent #1

This was scrapped from the section on language. When I started talking about semiotics, and the idea of language as a shared code for communicating our lived experiences, I thought I'd mention that memory and imagination are basically the same thing. Because it's interesting! But it wasn't actually relevant to the thesis and it was already clear the video was going to be at least 30 minutes, so it got the axe.

The Artist is Absent #2

In the segment where I talk about "the meaning of a work," I put all the theory we'd be discussing into practice by doing a quick reading of The Avengers, discussing its various subtexts, both intended and unintended. (That's why the finished video has footage of The Battle of New York under this bit, if you were wondering.) But it got a little bloated as I vented some of my opinions on the MCU, and I realized I didn't need to demonstrate how to do a reading since the video itself was a reading of The Beginner's Guide, so I cut this bit on revision.

Bringing Back What's Stolen #1

I read a lot of feminist film theory in preparation for this video - Laura Mulvey, Claudia Herbst, and especially Carol Clover - and I felt duty-bound to comment on the fixation with phallic imagery. Freudianism doesn't leave a lot of room for symbols to mean different things in different contexts, or for the idea of a feminine penis (nobody even mentions the mouthfeel), so I wanted to acknowledge the sexual symbolism of slasher movies but also assert a Third Wave perspective. Also, I was going to hand-animate a woman doing a can-can with penises for legs, but I ended up cutting the whole thing to a brief aside for time.

I highly recommend Elizabeth Hills and Barbara Creed for some gender analysis that discusses the flexibility of symbolism.

Bringing Back What's Stolen #2

This got cut because it felt too much like I was trying to reassure men in the audience. Like, "don't worry, you can still like these movies." "Hey, it's not just about doing what's right, don't you want the movie to respect you?" I think the comment about feeling condescended to is interesting, but, ultimately, those weren't the people I wanted to make the video for, and this was going to go in Part 8, which no one that sensitive was going to stick around until anyway.

WSGT: Genre & the Adventure Game

I spent so much of the video talking about how the adventure game is defined by the essential experience it creates that it seemed important to at least gesture at that experience with a metaphor. Clara Fernandez-Vara links interactive fiction with theater in her writing, so that seemed like a good way to approach it. But I couldn't figure out how to visualize it, and it seemed like a lot of effort only to follow it with "just play an adventure game and you'll understand." And I really wanted to get the video online, so out it went.

Untitled _DOOM_ Video

I worked on this script for months. It started as a quick rant about the branding of the new DOOM, which was still a year from release. Then I revised it to talk more explicitly about what the original DOOM had meant when it was new, and how new DOOM seemed to be nostalgic not just for the gameplay but for the controversies of 1993. Then I expanded it more to talk about the different things violence means in media, and what it's meant to sell, and to whom. But then new DOOM came out, so I had to also address the ways the game's marketing differed from the final product.

I could never get the threads to cohere, and I eventually gave up. It's the only completed script I've ever abandoned. Which sucks, because, in many ways, I felt it was my best writing. I'll probably cannibalize a lot of it into a video about violence someday, but that video won't be about DOOM, so here's some of the bits on DOOM.

Indivisible Talk

There’s probably more but these are the ones I can think of at the moment! Please be considerate and don’t play pranks at other people’s expenses!

Hello! Now that April’s Fool is around the corner, here’s 5 things I ask of you NOT TO DO [image of owl with serious face]

1. Don’t send screamers srsly dont [image of bird flinching back as another bird leans out through the screen to yell]

2. Don’t play with people’s feelings examples: - dont fake ask someone out - dont fake hate/be angry at them - dont lie that something bad has happened to someone/something important to them [image of two birds talking, with hearts and blushing]

3. Don’t fake an illness especially terminal and/or incurable ones [bird with IV, bandaged head]

4. Don’t pretend to leave[,] break up[,] or fake suicide [empty outline of bird with ? in place]

5. Don’t spread malicious fake information - fake virus threats - fake tragic events - fake celeb deaths [bird looking at paper with news]

But it is also a time full of emotionally manipulative, body shaming bullcrap.

So here is a reminder to all the wonderful women out there: Your value is not determined by your weight or your looks. Other people’s perception of your attractiveness is not a metric of your worth. 

You don’t owe anyone your beauty. Not your spouse or your friends. Not in public or in private. Not in the grocery store or the movie theater. No one is entitled to seeing you look slim and pretty. And not doing so is no failure on your part.