🐉 🎵 La-la la-la la-la laaa @Verdigris@cybre.space

Alright. Temperatures are hazardous in a significant chunk of the U.S.A. right now, and the rest of the country will get worse in that respect as summer moves in.

Heat exhaustion is what happens when your bodies’ ability to cool itself is pushed to the edge of failure. Learn how to spot it, because this is the last chance to stop a life-threatening emergency.

Untreated heat exhaustion progresses to heat stroke. When your core body temperature reaches 104°F (40°C), it starts to cook. Since your brain is baking in the least fun way, you’re not likely to recognize what’s wrong, or be able to help yourself. The last person to know when somebody gets heatstroke is the one who has it.

With immediate cooling and prompt medical attention, heat stroke has a mortality rate of ~10%. If you can’t escape the heat, your odds of dying rise to 80% in less than 2 hours.

To sum up? Please keep an eye out for one another. Heat doesn’t look like other dangerous weather, but it is.

Once more for the evening crowd. I’m not trying to convince anyone, nor am I open to being convinced. But since I apparently have a choice between forcing the subject into view now, so others can decide whether my stance is a deal-breaker for them, or getting blindsided when it comes up later? I’m getting it over with.

So! Please see the first post in this thread for a subject absolutely no one wants to talk about. :D

We now have enough data to do some statistics on what gives working-age adults a higher risk of being hospitalized for COVID-19, and once admitted, a higher risk of needing a ventilator. Turns out, the number one risk factor is *smoking* [1].
The authors included e-cigarette use under that header since it was a known health risk before the pandemic. So, we can generalize that one to *having crap in your lungs*.

If having foreign materials in your lungs is the biggest risk factor for most of the population, that means secondhand smoke is also dangerous, and so is air pollution [2].

It's also a somewhat controllable risk. People can swap cigarettes for nicotine gum. Cannabis? Edibles. If you can afford HEPA filters, they're worth their weight in gold. (If you can only get one, put it in your bedroom. You spend at least a third of your time there.)

Oh, and the second-largest risk factor? Asthma, as expected [1].

I think I've figured out my use-case for social media, and why my activity is so sporadic. It's something I engage with only when I'm unable to do immersive activities. That generally means I'm one or another stripe of brain-fried.

Be aware that that's the slice of my life you're observing here, I guess.

Made the mistake of glancing at the news before going to bed, this evening. I got an eyeful of how the incoming prime minister is on track to cause thousands of excess deaths this winter, as *two thirds* of the UK population is predicted to have trouble making ends meet due to the cost of heating their homes this winter. People will be forced to choose between paying for basic necessities (e.g. food) and keeping their living space warm enough to avoid the respiratory & cardiovascular problems caused by a chronically cold environment.

And why? Because tax cuts.

Seriously.

Eat The Rich.

Happy suffrage day!

On August 26th, 1920, the U.S. Secretary of State certified ratification of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote in all elections. (A number of states, predominantly west of the Mississippi River, had already granted womens’ suffrage within their own jurisdictions.)

Tisha b’Av is today, delayed from its calendar date in order to avoid conflict with Shabbat.

If you’re observing, may you have a meaningful fast.

I keep coming back to how China Miéville described so much of what's wrong with the present-day U.S. in an aside from _Perdido Street Station_.

One of the major characters, Yagharek, is a gerudo who translates his un-title as "too-abstract individualist"—someone unwilling or unable to accept restriction of their own liberties in order for others to have an equal degree of liberty. Applicability to the reactionary side of the political spectrum is obvious, but the attitude and stances of excessively-abstract individualism also seem to have poisoned our progressive and (various) leftist movements.

Damn if I know what to do about it. I'm just in awe of an author tossing that kind of observation-from-uncommon-perspective into a story as almost a throwaway line.

Oh, and one of the three asymptomatic cases described in the above paper was sampled *before* the first known symptomatic case in Belgium.

From p.10 of the PDF:
"Even though the existence of asymptomatic MPXV infection has been suggested by a number of immunological studies in MPXV-exposed individuals, [13–19] this was, to our knowledge, never substantiated by direct detection of the virus. Interestingly, one of the asymptomatic men in our study predates the first detected symptomatic case in Belgium by several days, [20] and could not be epidemiologically linked to any other monkeypox case, nor did he report international travel or participation in mass gatherings. This may indicate that MPXV circulated among asymptomatic individuals in Belgium before the outbreak was detected."

I'm keeping an eye on this and will update when it goes to press.

A preprint article submitted to the Lancet, "Asymptomatic Monkeypox Virus Infections Among Male Sexual Health Clinic Attendees in Belgium" describes retroactive testing of samples from men who went to a large sexual health clinic for STI screening during the month of May, 2022. Of samples submitted by 224 patients, 4 tested positive for monkeypox DNA, but only 1 developed symptoms. None of the other 3 peoples' close contacts tested positive for monkeypox, but given delay between sample collection & follow-up, that isn't necessarily proof that asymptomatic = non-contagious. Especially since monkeypox is known to be an airborne infection, spread via respiratory droplets as well as skin contact and contaminated objects.

Keep in mind that this is a *pre-print* version of the article. Peer review is in progress, and the current version may be amended before publication.

Sources
Lancet pre-prints: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4142074
MedRXiv: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.04.22277226v1

Been busy since my last posts here, much of which is with having my partner, @jacel, visit from the UK. <3

It's finally not a million degrees outside. Found and patched some ridiculous air infiltration gaps during the heat wave—with tape, because I'm not going to improve my landlords' property. One of them was at the top of the balcony door, only discovered due to Jacels' magic powers of tallness. At this point, I'm just waiting for peak pollen hours to subside before I open the apartment.

Some of my succulents got sunburned during the heat wave. Might consider pulling them behind the curtains fort the next one.

This is my first day of a brief run of prednisolone for a reactive arthritis flare-up. Most joints are doing a bit better, already. Tomorrow I expect side effects to appear in force. Historically, extra corticosteroids in my system causes insomnia from the first night through to almost the end of the taper period.

Heat wave this weekend, which makes it a perfect time to try out a recipe for okroshka. It’s a cold soup from Eastern Europe, which some kind folks pointed me to when I asked for recommendations last year.

Got waxy potatoes (red), cucumber, dill weed, chives, hard-boiled eggs, and cultured sour cream + lemon juice to substitute for kvass.

(Vegans could probably get away with seltzer + lemon juice, and a very mild-flavored small legume to replace the egg. Kvass is a functionally non-alcoholic beverage (0.5% ABV) made from fermented rye bread, if you can get it.)

Instructions: Dice and boil potatoes in a generous amount of water; strain, reserving liquid. Dice all other dry ingredients. Toss room-temperature or chilled dry ingredients into final container. Mix sour cream into water that the potatoes cooked in until it’s translucent like skim milk, maybe 1Tbsp per cup. Add lemon juice until liquid is pleasantly tangy. Pour wet ingredients over dry. Season with salt & pepper. Serve.