I got disenchanted with the word origins of raven and ravenous. When I saw raven came from Old German and ravenous came from Old French I lost my enthusiasm.
Dr Roger Seheult in YouTube’s “Medcram” channel includes “Teenage Boy with H5N1 Flu in ICU in Canada” in which the teenage patient had already had a lung removed because of a serious fungal infection, but was classified as DNR when the fungus seemed to have invaded the remaining lung. Long story short, the patient asked to have some time outside and a photobiomodulator treatment, after which he began improving. He has several videos about the value of near-infrared light in respiratory treatment, particularly in advanced COVID-19 patients.
No doubt about it: in the winter of 2019-2020 COVID (the original) was the leading cause of death in the USA for three consecutive months, pushing heart disease out of the #1 spot for the first time in decades. We are very lucky that only the omicron family of variants are making the rounds now.
Sadly, H5N1 made the decisive genetic jump into humans a few weeks ago in Canada, and the human variant is very serious indeed. AFAIK there is no vaccine against this form – too new – and no demonstrated effective treatment except sunlight. We shall see.
Avian flu, now mostly referred to as H5N1 flu, is the Big Thing. COVID is still lurking around – an immune compromised family member was hospitalized last year because of it – but it is not nearly as virulent as the earlier variants. All those extant now are in the “omicron” family and are a shadow of the original or the delta clade. Get some sun every day if practical and life is good.
Politics, at its best, is as you describe. In social media it is almost entirely mindless baiting and ludicrous insults. Oddly, not as many outright lies as we might expect in such a toxic setting but tons of spreading ridiculous rumors. I would not be over-reaching to say DJT relies on that aspect of politics more than any other.
Tower work? As in climbing? Sounds both exciting and terrifying.
It becomes familiar pretty quickly. The first time I was only about 60 feet up, but I got a reality check when I saw a hawk circling below me. After I got used to it, there was no twitch except when I got maybe 15 feet up… since they were almost always mountaintop sites there was a change when the scene changed to the lowlands thousands of feet down.
Safety regulations, at least in the company, required being fastened to the tower on at least one point at all times. One of the hot dogs (bad news in demanding situations) failed to obey that and lost his balance about 20 feet up. He landed on both feet but – being old and a smoker, and hitting hard clay – thoroughly destroyed both ankles. What a price to pay!
One of the features that attracted me to Go Comics comments is that, despite occasional mindless trolls, we have more than a handful of tremendously bright people and countless reasonably bright people. We also have some who can’t see beyond political parroting, but such is life. Some are a bit of both worlds.
Sometimes I miss the old job, finding and fixing communication problems. I don’t miss the snowcatting and tower work, though. The “fixing” part made me feel alive; the other parts… not so much. What really was great was the sort of people I worked with. Educated and brilliant (the first part was desirable; the second part was a job requirement), they were utterly reliable. I often doubt the political parrots we see here are reliable at all.
We are mostly adults here; we learned to live in whatever the world is. Politics has no place in my life. It is full of ignorant crap and sanctimonious arguments by people who are barely able to fill out their own life.
I got disenchanted with the word origins of raven and ravenous. When I saw raven came from Old German and ravenous came from Old French I lost my enthusiasm.