Monday, January 31, 2022

January Is The Cruelest Month


Maybe it's just me but I don't care what T.S. Eliot says - January of 2022 seems like the cruelest month. Or at least the most fatal.  Here's a very partial list of some of those we have lost this month, listed in order of their departure:
  • Football player and coach (Denver Broncos, Atlanta Falcons) Dan Reeves (age 77)
  • Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician Richard Leakey (77)
  • Bahamian-American actor Sidney Poitier (94)
  • Film director and actor Peter Bogdanovich (82)
  • Civil rights theorist Lani Guinier (71)
  • Woodstock co-creator and promoter Michael Lang (77)
  • Comedian and television presenter Bob Saget (65)
  • Dobie Gillis actor Dwayne Hickman (87)
  • Real-estate executive and convicted murderer Robert Durst (78)
  • Ronettes singer Ronnie Spector (78)
  • Zoo Atlanta western lowland gorilla Choomba (59), the fourth-oldest gorilla in the world
  • Former Kentucky basketball coach Joe B. Hall (93)
  • Country music disk jockey and television host Ralph Emery (88)
  • Hollywood actress Yvette Mimieux (80)
  • Tabla player Badal Roy (77)
  • English "Babes in the Woods" murderer and child molester Russell Bishop (55)
  • Singer and actor Meat Loaf (74)
  • Comedian, actor, and game-show host Louie Anderson (68)
  • Zen Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh (95) 
  • Charlie Brown voice actor Peter Robbins (65)
  • Zoo Atlanta western lowland gorilla Ozzie (60), the oldest male gorilla in captivity
  • "Johnny Fever" actor (WKRP in Cincinnati) Howard Hesseman (81)
  • Television host and beauty queen Cheslie Kryst (30) 
Obviously, many people are left off of this list, not the least of which are the 224,500 people around the world who died from the covids in January 2022.  Impermanence is swift.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

This Is Disgusting


Photo of Wyndham Prison in the Kimberly Region of Western Australia, 1901. 

On this date in 1888, the first European settlers landed in Australia. The British Crown claimed the land as Terra Nullius, meaning “nobody’s land,” as the original inhabitants, the First Nation people, the aborigines who had lived on the land for thousands of years, were considered as merely part of the local flora and fauna; nothing more than animals like kangaroos freely roaming the land.

To this day, no treaty has been signed with the aboriginal descendants and there is no mention of them in the Australian constitution.  Many aboriginals were poisoned or pushed from mountain cliffs.  Many had their children taken away to be raised by white families, destroying aboriginal languages, their culture, their identity, and any sense of community bonding and even humanity. 

January 26 should not be a celebration of nationalism but as Invasion Day, a day of shameful mourning.

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Doom


Doomed.  We're all doomed, I tell you. If the next variant of the covids isn’t fatal on contact, if the wing-nut insurrectionists don’t overthrow our democracy, if climate change doesn’t flood our coastal cities and dry up our croplands, and if the industrial chemicals in our air, food, and water don’t poison us all, then we’re still all going to die agonizing and lonely deaths anyway. 

We were doomed from the start - this world is a sucker’s bet. Might as well just sit quietly and follow the breath. 

ALSO, life is splendid and lovely, the best we’ll ever get, so we might as well live, laugh, and love, and if we get the chance to befriend a dog somewhere along the way, all the better.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Democracy Weeps


Last night, Democrats failed to change the Senate filibuster rules in order to pass protections for voting rights.  The effort was doomed from the start, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wanted to put senators on the record as either for or against voting rights.  Who's for democracy and who isn't?

Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democratic holdout who tanked the legislation along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, argued that it was more important to preserve the Senate filibuster rules than to preserve the great American experiment in democracy.  During his speech, he displayed a placard that read, "The United States Senate has NEVER been able to end debate with a simple majority."  This is simply untrue.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar has pointed out that there are 160 individual exceptions to the filibuster rule. Things have been changed whenever it benefited the interests of Republicans. Somehow it only took 51 votes to put the Trump tax cuts into place.  And the Bush tax cuts for that matter. Somehow it only took 51 votes to appoint Amy Boney Carrot to the Supreme Court. Somehow it only took 51 votes to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or to pass the National Gas Policy Act of 1977, the Endangered Species Act of 1995, and a change to the reconciliation process in 1996. 

But when it comes to voting rights, suddenly everyone on the Republican side of the aisle is hugging the filibuster tight, despite knowing that so many times in history, including just last month with the debt ceiling, changes have been made to allow passage with less than 60 votes. 

Manchin seems to taking a cue from the Trump playbook and perpetuating his own version of The Big Lie.  Say "never" enough times, capitalizing it when you do, and eventually people will come to believe your revisionist version and forget not only history but current events.

Joe Manchin - don't believe his lies.

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Has Omicron Peaked In Georgia?


While the Omicron variant is still pushing the country’s daily case reports to record levels, with more than 800,000 new infections being reported nationwide each day, infection levels seem to have peaked in some of the places that were hit first. Puerto Rico, Cleveland, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. are among the places beginning to see improvement.

Here in Georgia, the average number of new cases per day began to skyrocket in late December, reaching over 20,000 new cases per day by January 13, twice the previous record.  But the rate of increase had already started to slow about a week prior to the January 13 peak and is now fluctuating around 18,000 cases per day, suggesting that this latest wave of infections may have peaked.  It remains to be seen if the average number of new cases starts to fall or not.  

With many people testing themselves with at-home tests and other infections going undetected, reported cases are an undercount of actual infections, but still are a general indicator of how the virus is spreading. 

Since the start of the year, I've had a phlegmy kind of cough.  It wasn't persistent, but when it hit I felt like I was clearing out my windpipe. It didn't seemed to have settled into my lungs. Since I hadn't experienced a fever or any other flu-like symptoms, and since I've been pretty much self-isolating anyway and wearing a KN-95 when I did go out, I didn't pay it much mind.

Then today, I noticed I couldn't smell my morning coffee.  I put my nose right over the mug and inhaled deeply.  I could feel the warm, moist air up in my nose and sinuses, but no coffee aroma.  Concerned, I went to the cupboard and opened the ground coffee package and that I could smell, but only faintly.  I was relieved when I opened a jar of salsa in the fridge and was able to smell that.

This afternoon I changed out the kitty litter per my usual routine, normally a fairly stinky job.  It's not that I wanted to smell the acrid stench of cat urine, but I couldn't help but notice that today I smelled nothing.  While not smelling the litter may be more of a blessing than a curse, it got me concerned again about potential covid-like symptoms.

I had a home test kit sent to me by the Fulton County (Georgia) Department of Health, so I went ahead and self-tested.  I swabbed out the nostrils as instructed and followed the directions on soaking the swab in the reagent and preparing the test strip.  I braced myself for the results.

Negative.  No evidence of covid-19 antibodies in my test sample.  Apparently, I'm healthy (or the victim of a false-positive test).

I understand that loss of smell can last weeks or even months after an infection.  I wonder if I didn't indeed have the Omicrons in the beginning of the month, when I was coughing that phlegmy cough, but have since recovered except for the loss of smell.

Public Service Announcement: As you probably know, the federal government is now distributing free at-home covid tests.  If you haven't already, go to covidtests.com and order your free kits - it's quick and easy, and will give you peace of mind if you can't smell your coffee or the cat's pee.

Sunday, January 16, 2022

Annals of Climate Change


First snow today in Atlanta in 1,094 days (by my count).  It didn't stick and melted almost as soon as it fell, but with sub-freezing temperatures expected overnight, the roads are expected to be icy and slick for Monday morning's commute (for those who still commute).

Winds knocked the occasional tree down across the city and Georgia Power had to hustle to restore power before people froze their asses off in their own homes, but amazingly, for once the trees stood in my neighborhood and I didn't lose power (at least not yet).

A winter weather advisory continues until 7:00 tomorrow.

Saturday, January 15, 2022

From the Gaming Desk


Back on December 7, the Game Desk announced that it had started playing the game Far Cry 6.  I finally "beat" (completed) the game on January 6.  It's a huge game and it took me some 159 hours to wrap up, putting it right between Borderlands 2 (two playthroughs) and Death Stranding (one playthrough) in terms of total hours played.  

The very next day (January 7), I started playing Mass EffectMass Effect is a "classic" game, originally released in 2007 as the first installment in a beloved science-fiction trilogy.  But I wasn't gaming back in 2007 (I wasn't gaming between about 2001 and 2016) and I missed out, so it's "new" to me.  Besides, the game was just remastered and rereleased as a part of the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in May 2021 with upgraded graphics and gameplay adjustments.  

I liked the game. A lot. I beat the game within a week, completing it last night after a total of 47 hours of gameplay.  I could have played longer and I'm sure I missed a lot of side missions and left some planets unexplored, but the main story line was so compelling and interesting that I wound up pretty much just following the central plot.  In true role-playing game style, a lot of decisions and choices made early in the game affect the later storyline, and the game therefore has high replay potential. But I probably won't replay Mass Effect until I first complete Mass Effect 2 and 3, the other two games in the trilogy and the Legendary Edition anthology.

Mass Effect contains probably the best scripted dialog and documentary writing of any game I can recall. Instead of the usual, comic-book-style "Let's go kick some ass!" and "That's what she said," the dialog felt like something from a high-quality sci-fi novel, and embedded texts and descriptions of the game world displayed some actual intelligent thought.  The game contains it's own backstory and mythology, and the story involves a baroque plot of byzantine political ambitions among galactic powers.  The backstory is every bit as rich and complex as the Star Wars franchise or The Elder Scrolls games.  

While playing, I also realized how much the 2007 game influenced later games.  For example, the game The Outer Worlds involves a crew on a spaceship exploring various planets as they complete the main plot.  In Outer Worlds, you play as the captain, and at each planet, you can choose any two of the crewmates to join you on the mission.  That's exactly the premise of Mass Effect.  In both Outer Worlds and Borderlands 2, in addition to a variety of weapons which can be fired for various lengths of time before they overheat and need a cooling off period before they can be fired again, you have protective shields that absorb enemy fire for variable durations before your character's health is damaged. When your shield is depleted, your best move is to take cover for several seconds until the shield recharges.  Mass Effect has the exact same weapon and shield mechanics. I guess what I'm saying is that Mass Effect apparently pioneered a lot of the gameplay mechanics of later games that I've enjoyed.

Suffice it to say that I expect to be playing Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 in the very near future, possibly even this very evening (but after the New England Patriots' playoff game, of course).

Update:  Well, the Patriots played like shit and lost their Wild Card game to the Buffalo Bills, 47-17.  Season's over for this year, but at least we get to say we made it to the playoffs.  Truth be told, the game was so one-sided I started on Mass Effect 2 during the Third Quarter, and found more similarities to other games that turn up as Easter eggs in those other games.  In the underrated and much maligned Cyberpunk 2077, there's a bar called The Afterlife where thieves, mercenaries, and cyber-villains go to blow off steam.  There's also a bar in Mass Effect 2 called The Afterlife that's much the same.  In both games, The Afterlife is run by an older matriarch who's built up a formidable reputation as someone to respect and to never fuck over. In both games, The Afterlife matriarchs discuss business in their own private booths while seated on long cushioned benches, never directly facing the person they're talking to but instead watching the other side-eyed. 

To make it even more interesting, I understand that The Afterlife and its matriarch first appeared  in the 1990 table-top game Cyberpunk, the source material for much of Cyberpunk 2077's lore.  It could be that The Afterlife of Cyberpunk 2077 was paying homage to Mass Effect 2 paying homage to the 1990 Cyberpunk table-top game.

Friday, January 14, 2022

In A Body Bag But Not Necessarily Dead

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan dealt a blow to the effort to create a Buckhead City by assigning the legislation to a Senate committee controlled by Democrats critical of the push to split Atlanta into two municipalities, effectively bottling up legislation sponsored by state Republicans.

Still, the movement is far from scuttled. A similar House measure is pending, and the provision that allows for a cityhood referendum could be tacked onto other legislation.  None the less, the move was applauded by critics of the secession initiative from both sides of the aisle. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who has pleaded with legislators for time to implement his plan to fight crime, cheered the development at an event heralding the opening of a new police precinct in Buckhead.

The fate of the legislation will now be up to the Senate Urban Affairs Committee, which is composed entirely of Democrats, including several who are outspoken critics of the cityhood effort. State Sen. Sally Harrell (D-Dunwoody) predicted the measure would “die” in committee and that the overall effort is in “a body bag but not necessarily dead.”

Duncan’s decision is not unexpected. He’s expressed skepticism about the cityhood movement, saying he’s yet to hear a “compelling argument” from Buckhead cityhood supporters about how they would curb crime or fund city services. “The details matter here. The financing issues. The education issues. The governance issues. These are all issues that must be fixed before — and not after — a referendum is passed,” Duncan said in a recent interview. “My hope is that we’re able to figure out a way to help all of Atlanta significantly cut crime.” It's almost like the adults in the room, those who are accountable for governance and policy, have finally stepped forward.

Gov. Brian Kemp has declined to endorse the legislation, but hasn’t shut the door on the idea. But the forces pushing for the split, led by the Buckhead City Committee, have picked up other powerful Republican allies from outside Atlanta’s city limits who are egging on the rift. They include former U.S. Senator and current gubernatorial candidate David Purdue, who backed the proposed legislation shortly after entering the race against Kemp.

The initiative’s critics expressed hope that the cityhood effort was on its last breath.  “Buckhead City will cause more problems than it solves,” said Democratic state Rep. Shea Roberts, who represents a slice of Buckhead. “I’m hopeful his decision signals an end to this divisive legislation so we can focus on working with Mayor Dickens to address crime and services issues.”