![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 17 of 17. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 18:39:26
I protest!
Adding exponential levels of insult to Covid-19 injury, Trump announced on April 2, 2020, that his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, would assist in the federal governments distribution of its abysmally low supply of medical equipment to states and hospitals (Clown Prince Crashes Corona Presser, Huffington Post, April 3, 2020). Following Trumps announcement vis-à-vis Kushner, many wait with bated breath for the appointment of a duckbill platypus as first violinist in a world-class philharmonic orchestra.
Posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 19:14:15
In reply to On behalf of the platypus, posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 18:39:26
"Masque of the Red Death"
Anyone read it?
Some opium would be nice.
Posted by beckett2 on April 11, 2020, at 14:54:56
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 19:14:15
> "Masque of the Red Death"
>
> Anyone read it?
>Yes, my thoughts, too. But we do what we can here. My mother in law is in her 80's w asthma. The death is terrible; here you die alone, unable to have visitors.
My thoughts as well regarding the homeless and refugees. Prisons as well. I haven't heard plans for prisons during an outbreak.
I found Poe very early, so no question regarding my pessimism and anxiety :)
I'll check out your video link later. Hope you are well.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 11, 2020, at 17:29:30
In reply to On behalf of the platypus, posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 18:39:26
> Trump announced on April 2, 2020, that his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, would assist in the federal governments distribution of its abysmally low supply of medical equipment to states and hospitals
Would you want to be 'that guy'?
Nobody. Not a single body. Not a single person on earth is going to be happy or pleased with whatever it is that you choose to do.
A lot of people will blame him and hold him personally accountable for deaths that occurred that they feel could have been prevented if only he distributed the PPE gear differently.
Who in their right mind would want that job?
Maybe, when he's done, he could come be our Minister of Health?
He'd have to wrestle the last guy to get his pay-check, though, I'm sure.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 11, 2020, at 17:48:26
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by alexandra_k on April 11, 2020, at 17:29:30
Much as I hate to say it... What I have seen of that guy (which is not over-much) he actually seems competent.
I am not used to thinking of rich people (or the kids of rich people) as competent. As having individual merit.
I see rather a lot more of the entitled and ill-motivated... The harms and dangers of nepotism...
But you have to look at the things people do with the money they have...
The Warehouse (the money cow) for one of our richest people... Announced it would be open during the lockdown because it sold 'essential goods' (heaters, some cleaning products). Then the Government announced it would not be open. Then... It opened. To mail orders. Of essential items? To essential services? It is unclear.
I guess Health and Safety gets to have a gander of the working conditions of the workers and decide.
That's what's going on the world over... Yeah???
The level of surveillance we will allow in the name of health and safety.
Traceability of contacts. Is what they want.
For everyone?
How will the politicians get up to no good?
Prostitution? Drug parties? Private meetings taking bribes? How will all these things occur?
It's hard to imagine that these things will be prevented all the way up...
Is it just another thing of 'once we discover you are really an axe murderer by night then you get to be head of surgery because that's something we can use against you any time we like...' How will they hold it over you for all the surveillance of them...
So meta...
It makes my head spin.
Posted by beckett2 on April 12, 2020, at 2:40:52
In reply to On behalf of the platypus, posted by sigismund on April 9, 2020, at 18:39:26
From today's New Yorker:
"The American Exception
By Zadie Smith
April 10, 2020
[Photo of trump at top.]
He speaks truth so rarely that when you hear it from his own mouthMarch 29, 2020it has the force of revelation: I wish we could have our old life back. We had the greatest economy that weve ever had, and we didnt have death.Well, maybe not the whole, unvarnished truth. The first clause was neither true nor false: it described only a desire. A desire which, when I heard itand found its bleating echo in myselfIll admit I weighed in my hand, for a moment, like a shiny apple. It sounded like a decent wartime wish, war being the analogy hes chosen to use. But no one in 1945 wished to return to the old life, to return to 1939except to resurrect the dead. Disaster demanded a new dawn. Only new thinking can lead to a new dawn. We know that. Yet as he said itI wish we could have our old life backhe caught his audience in a moment of weakness: in their dressing gowns, weeping, or on a work call, or with a baby on their hip and a work call, or putting on a homemade hazmat suit to brave the subway, on the way to work that cannot be done at home, while millions of bored children climbed the walls from coast to coast. And, yes, in that brittle context, the old life had a comforting sound, if only rhetorically, like once upon a time or but I love him! The second clause brought me back to my senses. Snake oil, snake oil, snake oil. The devil is consistent, if nothing else. I dropped that apple, and, lo, it was putrid and full of worms.
Then he spoke the truth: we didnt have death.
We had dead people. We had casualties and we had victims. We had more or less innocent bystanders. We had body counts and sometimes even photos in the newspapers of body bags, though many felt it was wrong to show them. We had unequal health outcomes. But, in America, all of these involved some culpability on the part of the dead. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong skin color. Wrong side of the tracks. Wrong Zip Code, wrong beliefs, wrong city. Wrong position of hands when asked to exit the vehicle. Wrong health insuranceor none. Wrong attitude to the police officer. What we were completely missing, however, was the concept of death itself, death absolute. The kind of death that comes to us all, irrespective of position. Death absolute is the truth of our existence as a whole, of course, but America has rarely been philosophically inclined to consider existence as a whole, preferring instead to attack death as a series of discrete problems. Wars on drugs, cancer, poverty, and so on. Not that there is anything ridiculous about trying to lengthen the distance between the dates on our birth certificates and the ones on our tombstones: ethical life depends on the meaningfulness of that effort. But perhaps nowhere in the world has this effortand its relative successbeen linked so emphatically to money as it is in America. Maybe this is why plaguesbeing considered insufficiently hierarchical in nature, too inattentive to income disparitywere long ago relegated to history in the American imagination, or to other continents. In fact, as he made clear early on in his Presidency, entire shithole countries were to be considered culpable for their own high death ratesthey were by definition in the wrong place (over there) at the wrong time (an earlier stage of development). Such places were plagued in the permanent sense, by not having the foresight to be America. Even global mass extinctionin the form of environmental collapsewas not going to reach America, or would reach it only ultimately, at the very last minute. Relatively secure, in its high-walled haven, America would feast on whatever was left of its resources, still great by comparison with the suffering out there, beyond its borders.
But now, as he so rightly points out, we are great with deathwe are mighty with it. There is a fear, when all of this is said and done, that America will lead the world in it. And yet, perversely, the supposed democratic nature of plaguethe way in which it can strike all registered voters equallyturns out to be somewhat overstated. A plague it is, but American hierarchies, hundreds of years in the making, are not so easily overturned. Amid the great swath of indiscriminate death, some old American distinctions persist. Black and Latino people are now dying at twice the rate of white and Asian people. More poor people are dying than rich. More in urban centers than in the country. The virus map of the New York boroughs turns redder along precisely the same lines as it would if the relative shade of crimson counted not infection and death but income brackets and middle-school ratings. Untimely death has rarely been random in these United States. It has usually had a precise physiognomy, location, and bottom line. For millions of Americans, its always been a war.
But now, apparently for the first time, he sees it. And, in a hurry for glory, he calls himself a wartime President. Let him take that title, as the British Prime Minister, across the ocean, likewise attempts to place himself in the Churchillian role. Churchill (who actually fulfilled his wartime role) learned the hard way that even when the people follow you into war, and even when they agree youve had a good war, this does not necessarily mean they want to return to the old life, or be led by you into the new one. War transforms its participants. What was once necessary appears inessential; what was taken for granted, unappreciated, and abused reveals itself to be central to our existence. Strange inversions proliferate. People find themselves applauding a national health service that their own government criminally underfunded and neglected these past ten years. People thank God for essential workers they once considered lowly, who not so long ago they despised for wanting fifteen bucks an hour.
Death has come to America. It was always here, albeit obscured and denied, but now everybody can see it. The war that America is waging against it has no choice but to go above, around, and beyond an empty figurehead. This is a collective effort; there are millions of people involved in it, and they wont easily forget what they have seen. They wont forget the abject, exceptionally American predicament of watching individual states, as the New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, memorably put it, bidding as if on eBay for life-saving equipment. Death comes to allbut in America it has long been considered reasonable to offer the best chance of delay to the highest bidder.
One potential hope for the new American life is that, within it, such an idea will finally become inconceivable, and that the next generation of American leaders might find inspiration not in Winston Churchills bellicose rhetoric but in the peacetime words spoken by Clement Attlee, his opposite number in the House of Commons, the leader of the Labor Party, who beat Churchill in a postwar landslide: The war has been won by the efforts of all our people, who, with very few exceptions, put the nation first and their private and sectional interests a long way second. . . . Why should we suppose that we can attain our aims in peacefood, clothing, homes, education, leisure, social security and full employment for allby putting private interests first?
As Americans never tire of arguing, there may be many areas of our lives in which private interest plays the central role. But, as postwar Europe, exhausted by absolute death, collectively decided, health care shouldnt be one of them.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 17:57:31
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by beckett2 on April 12, 2020, at 2:40:52
Bathesda taught us that 'war, war never changes':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vGpXPGFZY
And that Americans will survive - because the very best of them have have vaults (safe houses).
I have been trying to understand why Trump is pretending to want all the anti-malarials.
During the Ebola epidemic they reckon that people were more likely dying of maleria than Ebola - but their deaths were being attributed to Ebola. The resources that would usually have gone into anti-malarials were going into Ebola relief, instead. They weren't autopsying people once they were dead because they didn't have resources to treat the living.
It is coming up to the malaria season for malaria endemic countries.
They are worried that many many many people will die because they don't have access to anti-malarial medication because the world's health resources have been hijacked / biased towards CoronaVirus relief.
If Trump can get people producing anti-malarials for a wealthy US market...
The drugs will be produced.
Then it is `just' about distribution.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 18:13:41
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 17:57:31
India was a major manufacturer, of course. Manufacturing anti-malerials from raw-er chemicals it was importing from China. Only, it wasn't going to import the chemicals to make the anti-malerials because it was going to focus on making money off the CoronaVirus thing, instead...
It is hard doing business with corrupt people.
You have to think like their psychopathic selves and out-wit them at their own game (for good).
People in India, with means, are buying up stocks of anti-malarials. If they think they can sell it (by prescription) to a bunch of dumb Americans then they will likely invest in producing it en masse...
Then, once it's made...
I guess it will have an expiry date.
Sigh.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 21:30:35
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 17:57:31
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4hI8A3hdAw
But vaults brings vault hunters...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 22:57:21
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 21:30:35
i wish i managed to hunt out the latest iterations. the main problem people had with fallout 74 (i believe) was that the game did not provide npc story living characters. only dead audiotapes -- and not in a compelling way as bioshock managed to pull off. instead, the massive online multiplayer component was supposed to carry everything. a post-apocalyptic world, indeed.
i don't suppose anybody would go to war if they were leaving that behind / back home.
the people who go to war are more likely to be the vault hunters who don't have anything to lose.
that's the trouble with inequality.
the american dream (as i understand it from images or pictures like this and that)... is one of 'little boxes just the same'. equality.
i understand people look (e.g., compared to the slums in india) and see opulant wealth... but that is becoming more and more available to people all over. personal computers.
but the american dream was largely of people living in boxes, roughly the same. equality.
not this ideal of lording over your slums from your palace.
that's the difference, i do believe.
Trump... Went to Queens... Where he grew up.
Amongst the inequlity that is very very real (Pacific Islanders are hardest hit, here, and also those most likely to be without face masks in supermarkets)...
Slumdog millionare was a gameshow...
You don't hear of people working really hard and excelling in the school system. You hear of people bribing officials. Of busloads of kids being taken to their examinations. Of en masse cheating. Of corruption. Of caste system. Of horribly incompenent and indept professionals grubbing up the professional educational opportunitites and jobs and titles and wages.
Posted by beckett2 on April 18, 2020, at 17:05:53
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2020, at 17:57:31
> Bathesda taught us that 'war, war never changes':
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vGpXPGFZY
>
> And that Americans will survive - because the very best of them have have vaults (safe houses).
>
> I have been trying to understand why Trump is pretending to want all the anti-malarials.
>
> During the Ebola epidemic they reckon that people were more likely dying of maleria than Ebola - but their deaths were being attributed to Ebola. The resources that would usually have gone into anti-malarials were going into Ebola relief, instead. They weren't autopsying people once they were dead because they didn't have resources to treat the living.
>
> It is coming up to the malaria season for malaria endemic countries.
>
> They are worried that many many many people will die because they don't have access to anti-malarial medication because the world's health resources have been hijacked / biased towards CoronaVirus relief.
>
> If Trump can get people producing anti-malarials for a wealthy US market...
>
> The drugs will be produced.
>
> Then it is `just' about distribution.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Do you play fallout? (I don't game, but the references are everywhere.)
I didn't know that about the Ebola crisis (was that around 2012?). My understanding of the anti malaria drug is that it is more risky a treatment than the rump is acknowledging. Some people here have experience cardiac arrest with hydroxychloroquine. There is another drug, developed for Ebola, Remdesivir that showing to be better. Will the orange rump order that to be made? Idk.
Is Khan Academy free? You probably know more about US history than I :) A fair bit of the south is 30° and below. We've has some zika scares.
No swamp in NZ?
Posted by beckett2 on April 18, 2020, at 17:08:18
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by beckett2 on April 18, 2020, at 17:05:53
PS, Audible has offered some free streaming during our lockdown. I don't know if NZ can access it. The Great Courses Plus series is very good although hit or miss. Some (I think) can be found on youtube (pirated).
Posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 5:46:26
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by beckett2 on April 18, 2020, at 17:05:53
> Do you play fallout?
No.
I have played computer games since forever. I remember story games on friends parents home-work computers on floppy disk. Then my own Atari-St with a 100 games pack of arcade-type games. Black Lamp. Nebulous. Bomb Jack. Then windows 95 on a... Packard Bell, from memory. I was really really really really really really good at minesweep for the hundreds if not thousands of hours I sunk into that one... Then a friend loaned me Heroes of Might and Magic 7 and I was totally hooked on RPGs. Temple of Elemental Evil. D&D. Took to that after Pick a Path adventure stories, Choose your own adventure stories, Fighting Fantasy adventure stories. Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Scorpion Swamp...
I am not particularly good at computer games. I never finished or completed any of the RPG ones, from memory. I don't know if the game bugged out or if I couldn't figure what to do to complete a necessary quest or quite what would happen or go on or go wrong...
Nowdays I only really play Civilisation 5 and Rimworld. Mostly I enjoy watching CohhCarnage and a few other streamers playing games for me. I like him for his playstyle where he is basically showing off the game at it's best. Everything to see and do. All the loot. He plays games that I don't think I would enjoy -- real time combat with differnet characters isn't my thing. Pathfinder or one of those... And I don't pay attention to all the hundreds of hours I ''watch'' him play those long RPG's for... But I enjoy having them on in the background (the way I used to with the Cricket 3 or 5 day test matches) while I potter about with reading or writing or even playing a little rimworld or something myself.
So... I do not know the vast bulk of the plotline of Fallout (or of Borderlands) -- only some of the general gist. And I have only played Fallout 2 a little before realising that playing computer games isn't my thing. I enjoy watching Cohh play them, but playing them isn't really my thing.
He uploads most of his videos on Youtube if you wanted to check him out. For many many years (early Cohh is pretty funny with the beard and so on)... He plays 8 hours a day for most days and sometimes he has off days. Grumpy days. Ranty days. But generally he's a good sort with a good play-style.
> My understanding of the anti malaria drug is that it is more risky a treatment than the rump is acknowledging. Some people here have experience cardiac arrest with hydroxychloroquine. There is another drug, developed for Ebola, Remdesivir that showing to be better. Will the orange rump order that to be made? Idk.
I see. I don't know. I don't know if he mentioned it only to provide hope (no matter how slim) or to try and distract people from stockpiling more likely candidates (anti-virals always were more likely candidates for stockpiling). I don't know.
> Is Khan Academy free?It is. I have given them a small donation once. But it is free. Yes.
> You probably know more about US history than I :)
I doubt that very much. The Khan Academy AP course is pretty good. I am not 'studying' it, just watching the video portions in a FYI sort of a way. She tells an interesting story of it.
I was surprised after that in playing Civilisation and going 'oh, that's Portugal -- I didn't know that' on the map. And 'Oh, well, that will be Spain'. And then 'Oh yeah, and the Conquisators (special unit from Spain) were going across there and the Techniti.... I don't remember how she pronounced it... They were there... The Aztecs...'
Huh.
There are various earth maps on Civilisation, you see, with various degrees of accuracy (deserts where they are supposed to be, or whatever).
And the different civilisations, of course. With their special units or buildings or whatever.
I'm becoming slightly obsessed with Russia at the moment. Because of this guy:
https://torokhtiy.com/products/training-camp
He won a medal in the London Olympics... But it was rescinded a bit after when they re-tested the Russian athletes for designer testosterone drugs... Anyhoo...
He was poor. He competed in the Olympics (a performance sport, to be sure) in a (american designer) 'ideal' weight class with the best physique and a medal... And anyway, he clearly knows what he is doing actually with training and so on. And now he seems financially comfortable. Making a living.
And I was watching the videos and he seems like a decent / genuine guy. And watching the 'tourism' aspect on the training camps. About how they are taking tourists through Chernobyl now. And about the explosion. And about how big Russia is. How big and how alien to me...
Perhaps even more alien than China because we trade a lot with China, in NZ. Australia and China are our 2 greatest trading partners and apparently Chinese International Students are 1/2 our Education income or something from the Edu-tourism thing that we do... Teaching English. Etc. Granting Degrees possibly maybe even.
And I am slightly obsessed with Russia, at the moment.
> No swamp in NZ?
Oh yes. I was born in Cambridge (race horse and even Eventing horse country). I patted Charisma that was Mark Todd's horse for a couple Olypmpics when I was a kid. That was a very very very big deal for me.
Then we moved to Hamilton when I was maybe 3 or 4. 20 minutes drive, not far, larger township that we like to call city. A couple hundred-thousand. On the Waikato river. So low lying and mostly used to be swamp. Drained the swamp into a lake. Created a lot of low-lying farming land. Good for growing grass. Good for feeding cows that make the milk. Dairy cow country. Swamp. I think not warm enough for mosquitos, though. I don't remember problems with mosquitos... Not costal. Inland. A way aways from the inlet.
Where are you again? California - right? Some bay or other...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 6:03:17
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus » beckett2, posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 5:46:26
Ah...
Apprently there is a major patch or update or something coming out for Fallout.
I started watching Cohh play it, again, because I was trying to understand why he ended up hating on it. Because he was a major fan. I think because it was streaming one of the earlier releases, maybe Fallout 4 that really blew up the number of viewers / subscribers for his Twitch livestream.
The first thing wrong with it was that it was multi-player rather than single-player.
You get idiots wanting to do 'speed-run' playthroughs of finishing the game as quickly as possible. Not listening to / reading the character dialoge. Not following the plot etc. Just rushing the whole thing to level up their character first so they can go back and be all over-powered around lower level characters doing slower / more methodical play-throughs. So multi-player was annoying as hell for Cohh.
Then there was this 'push to talk' issue. It surprised everyone for having everyones microphone automatically on. So when you were walking around in game you could hear people talking through their microphones. Yelling at their cat, or whatever. That was annoying for people like Cohh because he's talking to chat and narrating what he's doing and thinking aloud and ranting about life while he's playing... They eventually did patch in 'push to talk' so you had to activate your microphone if you wanted to speak into it. But...
Since Fallout came out... A Russian game called Escape From Tarkov came out. Escape from Tarkov was a multi-player game. It used push to talk.
Cohh did not like it to start with because he likes to go slow and take his time learning everything... But they let him do that... Then, when he was comfortable he played with a couple people... He found some people he liked playing with (who were really good and who taught him to play better in the group / team). It was pretty funny. It's a super-realistic war game. You can't tell who is on your team very well. That means your reflexed get a bit messed up as you accidentally shoot your mates in the back sometimes and get your head blown off for not reacting quick enough to the enemy at other times. Anyway.. Cohh was pissing people off, no end, for not wanting to push to talk. For wanting to leave his mike on and talk to his chat...
It was interesting / funny strange. It was a game I would not like to play, myself. It was fun watching him play. It was not a game he excelled in, but he did better at it than I would. I think it has potential for e-sports. The reaction time on some of the players...
But apparently they were (when they were being honest about it) exploiting the up to 2 second delay on the server connection. That's why people would be dead so quickly after spotting an enemy. Server lag.
It got me thinking about Russia, though. About what there is to see in that part of the world. I mean... They have developed science and technology... Haven't had a novel or whatever in translation for a while but there must be... So much stuff...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 6:08:31
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 6:03:17
And some of the Japanese games are pretty amazing.
Just really creative and bizarre...
Like... Far and Away. Did you ever watch that??
Persona 5.
Danganrompa.
Fire Emblem.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 7:32:34
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by alexandra_k on April 19, 2020, at 6:08:31
I mean, the plot is beyond me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcSNHa7MB4
It could just be about the soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeitvjG-dgI&list=PLU4ktq2pWONtJ7o5pLZyWJc88nttIzMKx
Ah, atari.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-f0W9HJOWg
Posted by sigismund on April 19, 2020, at 21:20:22
In reply to Re: On behalf of the platypus, posted by beckett2 on April 12, 2020, at 2:40:52
That was so good, the Zadie Smith thing from the New Yorker
Thanks
This is the end of the thread.
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