1,802 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2021
    1. Deepti Gurdasani. (2021, December 23). Some brief thoughts on the concerning relativism I’ve seen creeping into media, and scientific rhetoric over the past 20 months or so—The idea that things are ok because they’re better relative to a point where things got really really bad. 🧵 [Tweet]. @dgurdasani1. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1474042179110772736

    1. Note also that testators left cloth as bequests during the epidemic. Apparently they were not as concerned with clothes retaining miasma as were anti-plague ordinances of the government.

      I did not know what the word miasma meant, after searching it up I learned that it was a "highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell". I wanted to learn more about what personal hygiene was like and how it changed during the time of the plague. I learned that it was a very unsanitary time and this helped to spread the plague. The doctors were unsure where the plague could spread from some, the community continued on with their everyday routine in little sense of where the disease came from which made the plague spread more.

  2. Nov 2021
    1. The Ouroboros is a Greek word meaning “tail devourer,” and is one of the oldest mystical symbols in the world. It can be perceived as enveloping itself, where the past (the tail) appears to disappear but really moves into an inner domain or reality, vanishing from view but still existing.

      Mark Smith asked me if I was familiar with the term ouroboros. I replied, “No.” So he sent me this link.

      This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death.

    1. Dr. Lewis Akenji, the lead author of the report says: “Talking about lifestyle changes is a hot-potato issue to policymakers who are afraid to threaten the lifestyles of voters. This report brings a science based approach and shows that without addressing lifestyles we will not be able to address climate change.”

      This underscores the critical nature of dealing with the cultural shift of luxury lifestyle. It is recognized as a "hot potato" issue, which implies policy change may be slow and difficult.

      Policy changes and new legal tools are ways to force an unwilling individual or group into a behavior change.

      A more difficult but potentially more effective way to achieve this cultural shift is based on Donella Meadows' leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ which identifies the top leverage point as: The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

      The Stop Reset Go (SRG) open collective project applies the Deep Humanity (DH) Human Inner Transformation (HIT) process to effect impactful Social Outer Transformation (SOT). This is based on the inner-to-outer flow: The heart feels, the mind thinks, the body acts and a social impact manifests in our shared, public collective human reality.

      Meadows top leverage point identifies narratives, stories and value systems that are inner maps to our outer behavior as critical causal agents to transform.

      We need to take a much deeper look at the pysche of the luxury lifestyle. Philospher David Loy has done extensive research on this already. https://www.davidloy.org/media.html

      Loy is a Buddhist scholar, but Buddhist philosophy can be understood secularly and across all religions.

      Loy cites the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, especially his groundbreaking Pulitzer-prize-winning book: The Denial of Death. Becker wrote:

      "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else."

      But Loy goes beyond mortality salience and strikes to the heart of our psychological construction of the Self that is the root of our consumption and materialism exasperated crisis.

      To reach the wealthy in a compassionate manner, we must recognize that the degree of wealth and materialist accumulation may be in many cases proportional to the anxiety of dying, the anxiety of the groundlessness of the Self construction itself.

      Helping all humans to liberate from this anxiety is monumental, and also applies to the wealthy. The release of this anxiety will naturally result in breaking through the illusion of materialism, seeing its false promises.

      Those of the greatest material wealth are often also of the greatest spiritual poverty. As we near the end of our lives, materialism's promise may begin to lose its luster and our deepest unanswered questions begin to regain prominence.

      At the end of the day, policy change may only effect so much change. What is really required is a reeducation campaign that results in voluntary behavior change that significantly reduces high impact luxury lifestyles. An exchange for something even more valued is a potential answer to this dilemma.

    1. McNamara, L. A., Wiegand, R. E., Burke, R. M., Sharma, A. J., Sheppard, M., Adjemian, J., Ahmad, F. B., Anderson, R. N., Barbour, K. E., Binder, A. M., Dasgupta, S., Dee, D. L., Jones, E. S., Kriss, J. L., Lyons, B. C., McMorrow, M., Payne, D. C., Reses, H. E., Rodgers, L. E., … Schrag, S. J. (2021). Estimating the early impact of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme on COVID-19 cases, emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and deaths among adults aged 65 years and older: An ecological analysis of national surveillance data. The Lancet, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02226-1

  3. Oct 2021
    1. The movement against public shaming had gained momentum in 1787, when Benjamin Rush, a physician in Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a paper calling for its demise — the stocks, the pillory, the whipping post, the lot. “Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death,” he wrote.
    1. Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 396 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through October 4, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 8,390 reports of death (0.0021%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths pdf icon[1.4 MB, 40 pages].
    1. Coronavirus Pandemic Data Explorer. (n.d.). Our World in Data. Retrieved March 3, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer

      is:webpage lang:en COVID-19 graph case death Germany Sweden UK Afghanistan Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua Barbuda Argentina Armenia Asia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Costa Rica Cote d'ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia Democratic Republic of Congo Denmark Djobouti Dominica Dominician Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Europe Europian Union Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Mashall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North America North Macedonia Northern Cyprus Norway Oceania Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philipines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South America South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor Togo Trinidad Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turks and Caicos Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates USA Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican Venezuela Vietnam World Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe test vaccine chart map table data case fatality rate mortality

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  4. Sep 2021
    1. Hippisley-Cox, J., Coupland, C. A., Mehta, N., Keogh, R. H., Diaz-Ordaz, K., Khunti, K., Lyons, R. A., Kee, F., Sheikh, A., Rahman, S., Valabhji, J., Harrison, E. M., Sellen, P., Haq, N., Semple, M. G., Johnson, P. W. M., Hayward, A., & Nguyen-Van-Tam, J. S. (2021). Risk prediction of covid-19 related death and hospital admission in adults after covid-19 vaccination: National prospective cohort study. BMJ, 374, n2244. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2244

    1. Mike Baker. (2021, August 28). Today, Mississippi surpassed New York in total coronavirus deaths per capita. For a long time, I didn’t think we’d ever see any state end up worse than New York or New Jersey. One year ago today, Mississippi’s death rate was less than half of New York’s. Https://nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html https://t.co/sEgUDFOMWz [Tweet]. @bymikebaker. https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1431460167237783555