Thoughts on Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery

This post is a full spoiler zone for Star Trek: Discovery, although I'm not talking very much about specific plot points.

I just finished Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. I generally enjoyed it, as I do most Star Trek, but there were a couple of aspects that didn't fully work for me.

1. 930 years into the future

Star Trek: Discovery ended season 2 by jumping 930 years into the future, and season 3 covers their adventures there. 

However, I had trouble suspending disbelief that the crew of the Discovery could function in a way that's even remotely useful 930 years in the future, even taking into account that their ship has a spore drive in a universe where warp travel is severely limited.

Think about 930 years. 930 years ago was 1090. Think about the world in 1090. (I'm most immediately familiar with the history of England from that era, so most of my references here are English.) William the Conqueror had died just a few years earlier. The Domesday book had just been completed. Old English was still spoken - the Norman influence in England hadn't yet been around long enough for even Middle English to have evolved. In other words, the English language was completely devoid of French or Latin influences - such as the words "language" and "completely" and "devoid" and "French" and "Latin" and "influences"!

The internet tells me clocks hadn't yet been invented 930 years ago. Imagine a person who had never co-existed with clocks! It wouldn't just be a question of how to use a clock to tell time, but all the ways society is affected by the degree of time-telling precision they afford. The train leaves at 9:13. Your speech should be between 2 and 3 minutes long. Edit this video down to 30 seconds. It would be unfathomable!

Not to mention that their technology is sufficiently compatible. The charger for my eight-year-old ipod is no longer manufactured. There's a whole side market of CRT televisions because game consoles from my childhood won't work properly with modern TVs. The external hard drives I use for my computer backups occasionally just stop working. And I'm supposed to believe that they could just . . . update Discovery's computer database after nearly a thousand years??

There are fandom rumours that the creative team originally wanted to set Star Trek: Discovery in the distant future and were forced to set it 10 years pre-TOS for marketing reasons, so IRL this is likely the creative team shifting towards doing what they actually want to do now that they have the capital to do so. But I'm finding it hard to suspend disbelief, and that's a negative.

2. Adira and Gray and representation

Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery included a milestone for the franchise: Star Trek's first transgender and non-binary characters!

However, I think the decision to make both Adira and Gray Trill was a strategic error. (Pedants will point out that Adira is human, but what's relevant here is that they are hosting a Trill symbiont.)

One audience who could have benefited particularly from Adira and Gray are people who are ignorant about or even completely unaware of transgender and/or non-binary - especially those who are or may one day become parents of trans or non-binary children. 

People who, like me, are old enough to be parents of trans or non-binary children didn't learn much about transgender or non-binary growing up. We only know what has reached us through general cultural in adulthood. This means that some parents of trans and non-binary kids aren't going to have heard of transgender and/or non-binary. Trans and non-binary Star Trek characters can help with this - a kid who has to say "Mom, I'm non-binary" can add the useful cultural reference of "Like Adira on Star Trek."

With Adira especially, I'm concerned that people who are unfamiliar with non-binary might think Adira's perception of themself as non-binary is the result of hosting a Trill symbiont (and therefore having memories and personality traits of all the symbiont's previous hosts), rather than being an actual real-life gender identity that occurs in actual real-life people.

I myself am familiar with they/them pronouns, knew from media coverage that Adira's pronouns are they/them, and knew from media coverage that after Adira was initially misgendered as "she", they'd be coming out as "they". But, even going in with this knowledge, when I heard Adira say "They, not she", my first thought was that they were about to say credit was due to their symbiont, or their symbiont's previous hosts.

I'm further concerned that some non-binary kid might see this, identify with Adira, explain it to their parents as "Like Adira on Star Trek!" and have their parents respond with "That's not a real thing, that's just Star Trek aliens!" Ignorant parents might even think their kid is delusional, like they would if their kid insisted they're a Vulcan.

I think having Adira and Gray being a couple exacerbates this. Not the romantic aspect specifically, but rather that they are positioned as a unit that includes the two of them and does not include anyone else. I'm thinking that framing might be othering towards trans and non-binary people, rather than positioning them as a regular everyday part of the population as a whole. 

I think a better strategic decision would have been to have our first trans character and our first non-binary character both be human, and be unaffiliated with each other. (For example, if one was Aurellio and the other was Aditya Sahil.) Also, include trans and non-binary actors as part of your diverse casting for minor roles, alien and human alike. So we have our key trans and non-binary characters, and also, like, a trans ensign in Vulcan ears operating the transporter and a non-binary Bajoran seated at the conference table.

Again, I am neither trans nor non-binary myself, so I could be delighted to hear that my concerns here are unfounded. But, until I hear that, I continue to be concerned that the decision to make Adira and Gray both Trills and a couple is detrimental to the good that our first trans and non-binary characters might do.

Bra back pain braindump

 Physically helpful things:

 

- Do something right away. Last time, I tried to power through it. Bad idea. Take the bra off. Stretch. Take a muscle relaxant. Order half a dozen bras on the internet. Do something.

- Stretching my back vertically helps. Obliques, lats, whatever the muscles from my shoulders to my hips are.

- Rolling on a pilates ball helps. Last time rolling on a pilates ball on the floor was too intense but rolling a pilates ball between my back and the wall helped. This time the wall isn't effective, but the floor gloriously grinds up pockets of pain and tightness like a mortar and pestle. Just don't roll the pilates ball directly under your spine - the spine doesn't like that! Roll it just to the left of the spine, then just to the right of the spine.

- Extra sleep helps, by which I mean sleeping until I wake up naturally and then rolling over and seeing if I have more sleep in me. Conversely, insufficient sleep is disproportionately negative. This is super inconvenient.

- Leaning back in my chair helps. I'm not sure if that has something to do with the behaviour of my back muscles or the load-bearing distribution of my bra or just the fact that having my whole back pressed against the backrest eliminates my awareness of the bra elastic. 

- Make the bra straps a bit looser than makes sense. When a tight band has triggered pain, tight straps can trigger additional pain.

 

Psychologically helpful things:

 

- The worst thing is the fear of never being comfortable in a bra at all ever again in the decades of life expectancy I have left. (If you're just tuning in, I'm also not comfortable without a bra.) So it helps psychologically to find opportunities to be comfortable in a) a bra, and b) the particular bra I'm trying to break in. Sometimes this means wearing the bra I'm trying to break in while stretching or while applying a heating pad, so my muscles are physically relaxed in the presence of the triggering band. Sometimes this means wearing my old bra with the dead elastic while sitting perfectly comfortably at my desk working.

- Once I'm confident the bra I'm breaking in isn't actively inducing pain, wearing it out of the house for limited amounts of time helps. When I'm out of the house, the world provides plenty of distractions, so I'm not focusing primarily on my elastics. This also provides cumulative empirical evidence that I can go half an hour or an hour without my back freaking out from the bra. 

Unhelpful things:

- This is one of those problems that leads to a bunch of recommendations for things that I've already tried or that are irrelevant to me. Yes, I do know most women are wearing the wrong bra size! Yes, I have had professional fitting - they can tell me what fits my body but have no expertise in pain issues! Yes, I have tried a bra extender - it just moves the pain to a more sensitive part of my ribs! Yes, I have tried a sports bra - it's worse! Yes, I have tried yoga - I've been doing it for 20 fucking years, and have stretched out every muscle in my back four times already today! I would cheerfully let google stalk me if it meant the algorithm could screen out everything I've already tried!

- The worst part is the dread. This instance of bra pain and my last instance of bra pain came on completely unexpectedly. So, even after I resolve the problem, I never know when it will happen again. I wake up every morning pain-free, but I have no idea what will happen when I get out of bed, when I put on a bra - or make the decision to sit around the apartment without a bra. Even though I spent 6 straight hours perfectly comfortable in a proper bra yesterday and, as I type this, have been perfectly comfortable in a proper bra for 7 hours, I can't imagine what will happen if I go to that wedding next year or go into the office for a full day or take a train out of the city to visit someone. In a world where things can go wrong, I can't imagine them going right, and that taints the anticipation of the next time, post-pandemic, when I get to spend time with loved ones or hold a baby or see Eddie Izzard. (Eddie darling, I love you madly, but just because the rules permit live shows doesn't mean they're advisable!)

- And the thing is, I'm one of the lucky ones. I work from home! I can change my bra four times a day or sit around naked or stop to stretch as much as I want! I have the disposable income to spend on new bras and ointments and back massagers! There are people with similar or worse problems whose lives and livelihoods don't allow them this flexibility - possibly including the warehouse and delivery workers bringing me the pile of new bras I ordered to try on, or the bra fitters and massage therapists I might go to if I decide my bra difficulty outweighs my mask difficulty (which I still haven't become desensitized to), all the health care workers taking care of people who have much worse problems, our unhoused neighbours who don't have any space or privacy or leeway to make the hundreds of tiny adjustments that get me through the day . . . why is this even allowed to happen???

If your bra elastic is too tight, stretch it over the back of a chair

I'm having my bra-induced pain issues again. The resulting product reviews, philosophical ponderings and emotional braindumps are forthcoming.

 

But, for the moment, a practical tip:

 

If the band elastic of a new bra is too tight, stretch the bra band over the back of a chair. 

 

Line up the sides of the chair with the sides of the bra, slip the (closed) bra over the back of the chair like you're pulling a shirt over a person's head, and leave it there until you wear it next.

After just one round of stretching, a bra that induced pain after 10 minute became wearable for an hour. After a couple more rounds of stretching, I could get 4 hours out of it - which is long enough for 90% of times I might need to leave the house in non-pandemic conditions and 100% of times I might need to leave the house during pandemic conditions. I've even been able to get 8 hours without inducing new pain into my back, although the situation was not completely devoid of discomfort. (In other words, any unpleasantness disappeared as soon as I undid the bra, rather than sticking around for days afterwards.)

Stretching the bra does, well, stretch it out, as though accelerating the natural wear and tear that would happen over the course of months. But - especially when you're looking at a three-digit price tag - a stretched-out garment that functions is vastly superior to a like-new garment that induces pain.

Books read in September 2021

New:

 

1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2. Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor

3. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Reread:

1. Creation in Death

My voting by mail experience

Elections Canada posted the final candidates list for each riding on September 1. Based on this information, I figured I don't expect anything to change before election day, so I decided to vote by mail.

To vote by mail, you need to include a picture of your ID. A scan of my Ontario Photo Card worked, even though the card had expired during the pandemic. (Ontario decreed that ID expiring during the pandemic is still valid.) I'm not able to independently assess any better than you are how safe sending a photo of your ID over the Elections Canada website may or may not be. 

(Weirdly, gender is also a required field on the application for a mail-in ballot)

.

I sent in my application late at night on September 1, and by noon September 2 my status on the Elections Canada was "Registration status: Accepted. Voting kit sent".

 

The voting kit was waiting for me in my mailbox on September 7, alongside my voter registration card.

The voting kit doesn't contain a ballot with the names of all the candidates in your riding. Instead, it contains a blank card for you to write the name of the candidate you're voting for, meaning you're responsible for looking up the candidates' names yourself.

(Journalism Wanted: how much leeway do the people counting the ballots have regarding misspellings, etc.?)

You put the card with the name in one of the envelopes provided, then put that in a second envelope bearing identification numbers, which you sign and date. Then you put that in a third envelope bearing the address of the local Elections Canada office and prepaid postage. 

I put my ballot in the mailbox at some point on the weekend of September 11-12, and the status on the Election Canada site changed to "Complete ballot received" on September 15.

 

Then, just minutes after I got that update, one of the candidates on my riding resigned. So much for "I don't expect anything to change before election day"!

Things They Should Invent: "Browsing-Friendly" sign for small businesses

When I have to do in-person shopping for clothes, I prefer to shop in a mall. That's because mall stores are more browsing-friendly - you can drift in and out, getting a sense of what's available, and it's all very low-commitment.

In contrast, I dislike shopping for clothes in small businesses with main street (Yonge St.) storefronts, because it feels like more of a commitment to walk in. I don't know what they stock, I don't know if it will meet my needs, I don't know what the prices will be like, but I still have to walk in (with the door often ringing a bell when I do so), usually walk right past the owner and either take up their time helping me or dissuade them from helping me before I can even see if the contents of the store meet my needs well enough to even try things on. And then, if nothing meets my needs, I have to look the owner dead-ass in the eye and tell them that I'm not going to be helping them with their livelihood today.

It would be so much easier - and I would be so much more likely to shop for clothes at small neighbourhood stores - if I could browse them like mall stores!

But it also occurs to me that there are likely a non-zero number of small business owners who wouldn't mind if I did just that.

If only there was a way to tell who they are!

Solution: a standardized "Browsing-Friendly" sign that small businesses can put in their window, indicating that they have no objection to people wandering in and idly browsing their wares without any commitment to buy.

This would encourage customers to browse small businesses they might otherwise be reluctant to enter, thereby increasing the likelihood of customers finding the products they need in small businesses and of small businesses capturing market share that would otherwise go to mall stores. 

 

Win-win situation!

The mysterious missing verses of The Tottenham Toad

Some snippets of a children's song popped into my head recently, starting with "The Tottingham Toad went hopping down the road..."

So I googled around, and the internet is unanimous about the lyrics:

The Tottenham Toad came trotting down the road 

With his feet all swimming in the sea 

Pretty little squirrel with your tail in curl 

They’ve all got a wife but me.

Here's the weird part: the internet says that this is the whole song, but I clearly remember it has having three verses! I distinctly remember other lines from the song, and there is no record of them on the internet.

I remember the following lines:

- "The Wimbledon Whale he stood upon his tail" 

- "The Canterbury Crow said 'Now I have to go'"

- "As he drank three cups of bread and tea"

- "It's so sad it fills me full of glee" 

- "Lazy little lynx she just sits and winks"

And zero of these lines appear on the googleable (or duckduckgoable or bingable) internet!

I'm particularly confident about the "lynx" line because Child!Me had never heard of a lynx, so I wouldn't have made up or misremembered in the direction of something I'd never heard of. Wimbledon might be wrong, because Child!Me had heard of Wimbledon and therefore might have interpolated it into the lyrics.

 

Has any other human being in the world heard these verses, or are they completely lost to history?

Could an eBay-style bidding system help painlessly cool the real estate market?

EBay uses an automatic bidding system. Every bidder enters their maximum bid, and the system automatically places incremental bids on each bidder's behalf.

 

For example, bidding starts at $1. Alice is the first bidder, and she places a maximum bid of $5. The system displays a current bid of $1.

 

Then Bob comes along and places a maximum bid of $4. The system automatically places incremental bids on Alice's and Bob's behalf (as though they're sitting in an auction house shouting "$1.25!" "$1.50!" at each other) until it hits Bob's maximum of $4. Now it shows Alice in the lead with a bid of $4.25.

 

If there are no other bidders, Alice will pay $4.25 for the item.

This means that the winning bid is one increment higher than the second-highest bid, regardless of the winning bidder's highest bid. In other words, if Alice had set a maximum bid of $1,000 and Bob had set a maximum bid of $4, Alice would still pay $4.25 for the item.

 

I wonder if this kind of system could help cool the housing market?

During the pandemic, housing prices across the country skyrocketed. Conventional wisdom is that this is because city residents with city real estate money were buying exurban real estate and driving up the prices.

Why, I wondered, were they paying city prices for exurban properties? Even if you have city real estate money, why wouldn't you pay the exurban price for the exurban property?

The answer, I was told, is bidding wars.

So I wonder if the problem could be fixed by building a better bidding war?

My idea: inspired by eBay's system, every potential buyer enters their maximum bid, and an automatic system bids them against each other. The end result is that the highest bid is a dollar higher than the second-highest bid.

That way, if the prices are being driven up by outlier buyers, they won't be driven up to higher than the going rate.

The seller wouldn't suffer particularly from this. Any sensible seller would budget and plan for their home going at roughly the current going rate, and a dollar higher than the second-highest bid would fall within the going rate. Like on eBay, they could still have the option to set a reserve price, so if no one bids a high enough amount, they don't sell at all.

Perhaps this kind of system could also be adapted to let buyers bid on multiple homes and then retract their bid once they've bought a home, so you wouldn't have to wait for one bidding war to end before expressing interest in another possibility. One person withdraws, the next highest bid automatically wins, no big deal.

But would this actually help cool the housing market? I'm not sure! If there are multiple above-market bidders, it wouldn't change a thing. But if there's just one above-market bidder, this system would prevent them from driving up the price.

I guess the flip side to that question is: would this kind of bidding system cause any harm? Or would the worst case scenario result in the same housing prices as the current system, but perhaps with less stress, and perhaps sometimes letting buyers get a home without fully leveraging?

I don't know the answer to that question. It would be interesting if someone could study this.

Books read in August 2021

New:

1. Dico des mots qui n'existent pas et qu'on utilise quand même by Olivier Talon and Gilles Vervisch 

Reread:

1. Born in Death

Things They Should Invent: people who left this job went on to work at...

I recently had a new idea, inspired by an Ask A Manager column and my own job-hunting experience:

New rule: if you reject someone because you think they're going to leave for a better job, you have to tell them where to find this better job.

— "Impudent Strumpet!" (@ImpStrump) August 4, 2021

Today, my shower gave me an improvement on this idea: a "people who left this job went to work at..." website, or perhaps a LinkedIn functionality.

Scraping LinkedIn data (and other data if other useful sources are available), track which employers people went to after leaving a previous job, and look for patterns.

For example, if many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries, and a comparable number left Roarke Industries to work for Acme Inc., that tells one story. If many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries but there was no pattern of traffic in the other direction, that tells another story.

People can use this information to find better jobs and find employers who are likely to hire them based on their previous experience. Conversely, they might also be able to use it to plan their career path - for example, if Roarke Industries requires 5 years of experience and a lot of people go from university to Acme Inc. to Roarke Industries, then Acme Inc. might be the place to get the experience you need to be hired by Roarke Industries.

Things They Should Invent: cupboard to dishwasher to resident to dishes algorithm

The cupboard where I keep my cups is precariously full.

And I often run out of cups (or appropriate cups, e.g. I have wineglasses but don't have any coffee mugs) before my dishwasher is full. 

I didn't have this problem in my old apartment!

I feel like someone could make an algorithm to fix this.

You enter your cubic centimetres of dishwasher rack space and cupboard shelf space, the number of people in your household, and perhaps the rate at which you use dishes in a given day (e.g. 2 mugs, 1 wine glass, 1 water glass) and it calculates the optimal number of each item for you to own. Perhaps it could even tell you how to arrange your dishes in the cupboard.

Maybe it could also do the opposite when you're buying a dishwasher: you tell it what you own and the rate at which you use it, and it finds the optimal dishwasher to fit your lifestyle.

Books read in July 2021

New:

 

1. Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World by Sali Hughes

2. Very Rich by Polly Horvath

Reread:

1. Memory in Death

2. Haunted in Death

My second COVID vaccine experience

My first vaccine was AstraZeneca, administered at a local Rexall. At the time, I was told to wait patiently and Rexall would contact me for my second vaccine.

However, the rules changed in the interim, so, when I was 8 weeks after my first dose, the current protocol was to find your own second dose.

I put myself on all the pharmacy waiting lists in my area, and tried the Ontario vaccine booking system (which is how you book Toronto Public Health clinics) several times a day. Unfortunately, the vaccine booking tool initially wasn't able to meet demand - I kept getting the walking man or error messages or no appointments available, and on the rare occasions when there was an appointment somewhere I could plausibly get to, the appointment would disappear by the time I clicked through.

Finally, after a week of vaccine-hunting (i.e. 9 weeks after my first shot), I was able to secure an appointment at the Toronto Public Health clinic in my neighbourhood (North Toronto Memorial Community Centre) for 11 weeks after my first shot.

There was a pop-up clinic for which I was eligible 2 days before my scheduled appointment (I didn't go because I'd rather attend a scheduled appointment just a couple of blocks from home than go all the way out to Dufferin to wait in line in the rain), but none of the pharmacies came through with an appointment before then.

***

I arrived at NTMCC at the appointment time, and was greeted by firefighters (I don't know why either) who offered me hand sanitizer, asked if I had an appointment (although didn't verify it), and instructed me to get out my health card. 

Then I walked into the building, and passed through a series of people who scanned my card and/or asked me screening questions. There was a long line (indoors, masked, social distancing stickers on the floor), but it was moving steadily.

 

They were offering Moderna to age 18+ and Pfizer to age 12-17. They made very clear at every point that I'd be getting Moderna that day. 

 

I passed through about six different checkpoints each doing different screening before I arrived at the table where I was injected with the actual vaccine. The needle went into my arm about 15 minute after my scheduled appointment time.

The nurse who issued a vaccination gave me a card indicating the time I was allowed to leave, then I was then sent to a recovery area to wait out my 15 minutes. It was a separate room with physically-distanced chairs for patients to sit in. There was an optional questionnaire about social determinants of health to fill out while we waited.

 

There was a large clock on the front wall of the room, and when the time indicated on the card the vaccinating nurse gives you has been reached, you can go to the desk at the front and check out. The vaccine receipt is issued when you check out (meaning if you sneak out early, you won't get proof of vaccination). I think they might also validate parking or something - they asked me if I'd parked in the underground garage, but since I'd walked I don't actually know where that line of inquiry was going.

 

I left the clinic 32 minutes after my appointment time, and 17 minutes after the needle went into my arm.

***

Various logistics:

- I had a specific scheduled appointment time, but I don't believe they ever confirmed my identity against the scheduled appointments. I was asked if I had an appointment, but I didn't perceive anything to be checking me against a list of names and appointment times. They did swipe my health card several times so it might have happened stealthily there.

 

- All the screening questions, and the injection itself, took place in open areas where you were visible to others and it was possible to be overheard by others. There was a sign saying that modesty areas are available upon request, but I didn't request one so I have no insight into how they worked.

- The proof of vaccination I received was printed on receipt paper, and doesn't seem very durable.

- Every single person I interacted with or witnessed was actively warm and welcoming and helpful, even though they were literally repeating the exact same interaction with hundreds of people over and over throughout the day. The nurse who gave me my injection was very patient with my enthusiastic chattering about the Euro cup final. (It was my neighbourhood's first collective sports experience since the Raptors won in 2019 and I got caught up in the emotion!) The staff in the recovery room were also very patient with the white lady ranting about how the (optional) questionnaire (where you could check as many boxes as you want and fill out an "other" blank at the end of every question) thought she was white when she Wasn't Really because There Are Different Parts of Europe. (Spoiler alert: she was even whiter than me and her ancestors have not spoken anything but English in living memory.)

***

After-effects and recovery:

About 3 hours after the vaccine, the injection site started hurting, way more than I expected.

I tossed and turned all night, maybe scraping together a total of 6 hours of sleep in 12 hours spent in bed. When I finally got out of bed (16 hours after the vaccine), my arm hurt so much I couldn't lift my arm enough to wash my hair. My temperature was 1 degree above my normal (37.2 on a thermometer that normally gives me a reading of 36.2).

I took a standard Tylenol (my doctor advised me to take Tylenol rather than my usual ibuprofen for vaccine symptoms, but also emphasized that this advice is not appropriate for all patients) and about half an hour later was able to lift my arm enough to shower. My lymph nodes became inflamed shortly afterwards, and I spent the whole day after my vaccine feeling a general malaise. It reminded me of when you have a nasty cold but take Dayquil or something - no specific symptoms, but a general feeling of under the weather.

I slept 12 straight hours the second night after the vaccine, and woke up on Day 3 with my armpit lymph nodes so inflamed that I could see them when I looked in the mirror. There was still some mild but appreciable pain in the injection site, but I had a full range of motion and full use of my arm.

I continued to be moodier than made sense under the circumstances for the next week or so, and my lymph nodes gradually shrank back to their normal size during that time. 

My period started right on schedule, 2 days after the vaccine, and was well within the range of normal.

 

The Rexall that administered my first vaccine contacted me 3 days after I received my second vaccine to book an appointment. I cancelled all the other waitlists as soon as I received the shot, so I don't know how well they did or did not work.

 

***

 

Overall, I preferred the experience of getting vaccinated in a pharmacy. I felt like I had more time and space to ask questions, and more thoughtful and personalized attention. (I likely could have asked questions at the mass vaccination clinic and I would have done so if my questions had been actionable, but I felt like I'd be delaying the whole process if I took the time to ask whether the vaccine would attack the spike proteins of other coronaviruses.) However, I do recognize that pharmacies would not be an efficient enough way to get the kind of vaccine rollout we need, so mass vaccination clinics are a key component of the vaccine strategy.

I found the side-effects of the Moderna less bothersome than the AstraZeneca. Even though the pain of the Moderna injection site temporarily limited my mobility, I found the alternating fever and chills that came with AstraZeneca more disruptive, and the heavy bloating that came in my subsequent PMS week more uncomfortable.

Things They Should Invent: concordance tool with a Boolean NOT function

Many words, terms and phrases have a common go-to translation, but also have scope of meaning that doesn't fall under the common go-to translation.

 

If the common go-to translation is extremely common, it can saturate concordance tool results, completely burying alternative translations. This can lead inexperienced translators to conclude there is no other possible translation (even if the go-to is inappropriate), and can even stymie experienced translators ("I know there's another translation, but I'm completely blanking on it!")

To remedy this, I want to be able to apply a Boolean NOT function to the target-language results, to eliminate the common go-to translations and see what's left.

Examples:

 

- Show me translations of porte-parole that are not "spokesperson".

- Show me translations of intervenant that are not "intervener" or "responder".

- Show me translations of animateur that are not "animator" or "facilitator".

 

With the common translations that I know are not suitable out of the way, the tool can better do its job of giving me options to pinpoint le mot juste for my particular translation needs.

I have no idea how feasible this would be from a programming perspective. I know a Boolean NOT can be used in user input, I know that you can filter output by selecting and unselecting attribute tags from a given list (like you often find in online shopping), but I have no idea about the feasibility of filtering output with user-provided Boolean operators.

If it would in fact be unfeasible, I have an idea for an alternative: sort results in alphabetical order by how the word/term/phrase in question is translated in the target text.

This would group all the translations I know I don't want to use together, making it easier to find other options.

For example, if all the instances of "spokesperson" are together (with variants like "spokesman" nearby), I can start at the beginning of the alphabetically-sorted results and scroll through until I hit "spokesperson", seeing all the available options. Then, when I hit "spokesperson", I can jump to the last result and scroll through in reverse order until I hit "spokesperson" again, thereby quickly getting an overview of all the non-"spokesperson" results.

Concordance tools do tend to provide a sentence or a snippet as output, but they "know" what the matched term is, so it seems like it should be feasible to sort alphabetically by matched term but still show snippets.

Books read in June 2021

 Reread:

1. Origin in Death

Magic Words: "or . . . ?"

A thing that exists in the world: well-intentioned people who have innocent questions that they want to ask for a good reason.

 

Another thing that exists in the world: assholes who are cruel and malicious under the guise of asking innocent questions for a good reason.

If you're a well-intentioned person who has a good reason for asking an innocent question of the sort that cruel, malicious assholes might weaponize, you can often disarm your question with one simple conjunction: "or".

Scenario:

Cousin Dorothy has just announced her engagement! Congratulations, Dorothy!

Traditionally, you've been invited to your cousins' weddings, but you know that event planning isn't exactly Dorothy's thing, so she might have a smaller wedding that doesn't go as far as inviting the cousins. (After all, if you invite one cousin you have to invite them all, and there are just so many cousins!)

 

You happen to own a wedding-appropriate dress, but it has long sleeves. You'd get overheated if you wore it in the summer. 

 

So you want to find out when Dorothy's wedding is going to be, without being seen to presume that you'll be invited.

 

Normally, this could be achieved with a simple small-talk question: "So have you set a date yet?"

 

The problem is your family also includes Auntie Em. Auntie Em is very vocally judgmental about many things, and one of the things she's vocally judgmental about is "you're only engaged if you have a wedding date set."

So if you were to ask "Have you set a date yet?" you could come across as being judgmental like Auntie Em, as though you're setting up to gotcha Dorothy for not having a date set yet.

You can avoid giving this impression with one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Instead of simply asking the question that might come across as judgmental, add at least one alternative, and deliver them verbally with a rising and trailing "or".

"So have you set a date yet? Or are you just enjoying being engaged? Or . . . ?"

 

Presenting a perfectly reasonable alternative that is no less positive creates the impression that you think it's perfectly valid not to have set a date. You're making it clearer that you're not being judgmental like Auntie Em.

The function of the final "Or . . . ?" is, explicitly, to avoid setting up a false binary (assholes like Auntie Em often set up false binaries as gotchas) and, implicitly, to make it clearer that you understand there are a wide range of situations in life and you're open to whatever they might say here in response.

The final "Or . . . ?" also help with tone. Sometimes, the tone and delivery of "A or B?" can come out as judgey. (Imagine the tone that would be used for "Want a cup of tea? Or do you think you're too good for tea?") Ending with a rising and trailing "Or . . . ?" reduces the risk of producing this tone.

Some other examples:

Compare asking your host "Do you want me to make the bed?" vs. "Do you want me to make the bed? Or strip the bed? Or . . . ?" With the second option, you're acknowledging that different options are convenient for different people and you're absolutely open to doing whatever is most convenient.

Compare asking your boss "What do you want me to do if Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting?" vs. "If Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting, do you want me to come get you? Or take care of them myself? Or . . . ?" You recognize that there are nuances, you've taken the initiative of thinking of a couple of ideas yourself rather than making your boss come up with solutions, you're showing that you're open and amenable to doing whatever your boss thinks best.

At this point, some people might be thinking "Instead of all this strategic conjunction use, why not just be direct and ask Dorothy whether you'll need a summer dress for her wedding?"

And sometimes you can do that! In which case, you don't need me! Go forth and say whatever you want!

But sometimes that causes interpersonal problems. And, in these cases, you can often smooth things over with the judicious application of one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Health and labour: a mini-braindump

A weird thing about the way we talk about health in our society is that the notion of "being healthy" has an intrinsic element of labour to it, in that you aren't seen as "healthy" if you don't work at it.

 

Example: imagine someone who eats whatever they want without regard for nutrition, doesn't engage in any intentional physical activity beyond what occurs naturally in the course of their life, and doesn't see a doctor for preventive medical care.

They'd be seen as unhealthy.

 

Even if their body does whatever they need it to. Even if their numbers are good. People who like to opine on such things would look at their (lack of) regime and go on about how they're unhealthy and need to add weight training and kale smoothies to their routine.

 

We just don't have a paradigm for being considered healthy without working at it.

  

***

I just realized as I was writing this that this is what really bugs me about alternative medicine (or, at least, the subset of alternative medicine that reaches me) is that it always calls for more work. You're never done, it's never good enough. 

Even in contexts where I'm not seeking advice. If I mention in passing that, for example, every few years I get strep throat and have to take a course of antibiotics, the alternative medicine aficionados in my vicinity come swooping in recommending additional task (a food to eat, a supplement to take) that they want me to do every single day for the rest of my life to supposedly prevent this horrific fate of having to take a couple of pills a day for a week every few years.

While I don't have any theoretical objection to alternative medicine and do in fact incorporate aspects of it into my life, I simply have less and less room for a paradigm that demands such ceaseless work.

***

 

On a personal level, I'm finding more and more that the labour isn't worth the benefit. Putting in the work that it takes to get optimal health outcomes is like studying 6 hours a day to get an A when, if you didn't study at all, you'd get a B. 

 

It inches my numbers down to just inside the range of what's officially considered healthy, as opposed to their natural state of just outside the range of what's officially considered healthy, but doesn't change a thing about how I feel or function. 

 

Exercise makes me better at exercise, and doesn't change a thing about the activities of daily life. When I started doing yoga 20 years ago, a side plank was torture. Now, it's boring. And it hasn't changed a thing about how I feel or about my ability to do anything other than side planks. It hasn't even improved my physical appearance.

***

 

I've also noticed an awful lot of health labour is kind of . . . consumerist? Buy this, eat this, just a dollar a day to solve a problem you can't even perceive!

And there's also this sense that keeping yourself healthy is some kind of . . . responsibility to society, maybe? I'm not really sure how to articulate this part. But I get this vibe from the way some people talk, that if you aren't seen to be doing the labour, and if you aren't seen to be engaging in the "correct" consumption patterns, it's like you aren't doing your duty as a citizen.

I don't think that's, well, healthy.

 

***

 

It would also be interesting to study how the labour of health has evolved over time (and, probably, varied by society). I can't immediately point to any data, but I feel like the expected labour has increased as my life has gone on. 

In the time before nutrition labels, people couldn't possibly have been expected to monitor their nutrition in such minute detail. In the time before gyms, people couldn't possibly have been expected to engage in weight training.

There was a time when it was socially unacceptable for women to be seen engaging in athletic activities. There was a time when it would have been socially unacceptable for anyone, of any gender, to jog down the street.

(There have also been many other times when many other combinations of activities were socially acceptable or unacceptable in historical cultures I'm unfamiliar with.)

People for whom food is scarce eat what's available. If you've always lived in this kind of context, the idea of deliberately limiting your caloric intake would be laughable.

People for whom life requires constant physical labour would find the idea of doing additional exercise to meet a standard of fitness that never comes up in real life laughable. 

I wonder if there has ever been a time and place in history were people were expected to do more health-related labour (on top of the labour of simply staying alive) than they are now?

Magic Words: "human being"

I've discovered a neat trick: you can intensify any sentence by replacing "person" (and similar synonyms) with "human being".

 

Compare: "I haven't hugged another person since before the pandemic" vs. "I haven't hugged another human being since before the pandemic."

The second one sounds a lot more dire, doesn't it?

Compare: "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no one else is going to notice." vs. "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no other human being is going to notice."

 

The likelihood of being noticed sounds a lot lower in the second one, doesn't it? (Even though, if you're really pedantic about it, "no other human being" is narrower in scope - "no one" could plausibly include dogs and aliens and AI.)

 

I love things like this, where minor changes in wording have clearly discernable changes in connotation, even though no one can explain why no human being can explain why!

Food storage containers with clip lids are extremely difficult to open and close

Latest pandemic malfunction: the container I use to store my cooked pasta broke!

When shopping online for an appropriate-sized replacement, the option I found was a "Clip It" container - a glass container with a plastic lid that has clips along the side, as shown in the image.

Clip It food storage containers

Unfortunately, it turns out they're extremely difficult to use.

It takes a lot of force to push the clips down in a way that will allow them to clip over the lip of the glass containers, and therefore to seal the lid. If I handle it like a normal container with a normal amount of force and strength, I can get a maximum of one (1) clip to clip. If I use my body weight and gravity, I can get a maximum of two (2) clips to clip. I have never, not once, been able to get all four to clip. 

I know I'm not especially strong, but it really shouldn't be at all difficult to operate a food storage container!

If you are considering buying this style of food storage container, I strongly recommend trying it out before you buy it - or, at least, keeping it in returnable condition until you're certain you can make it work - so you don't end up paying for a container that's difficult to operate.  (I made the mistake of removing the labels, throwing out the receipt, running it through the dishwasher, and filling it with food before I discovered that the lid was difficult to close, because, like, it never occurred to me that a food container could be difficult to operate!)

And if, like me, you are stuck with this style of container, I found it's less difficult to put the lid on if I do so on a table rather than on the counter. The table is lower than the counter, so I can press downwards and use my body weight, which gives me enough leverage to get two of the clips to clip and therefore for the lid to be reasonably closed.

However, it shouldn't be this hard! I shouldn't need leverage and body weight and strategy to operate a food container. And, for that reason, I strongly recommend avoiding them.