Odd Lots
- My Christmas story “The Camel’s Question” has done pretty well for its first two days on the market, considering how narrow the market for Christmas fiction is and how short the window for selling it into that market. I’m particularly pleased with the cover image, which was inexpensive ($8) and yet startlingly good in context.
- There are currently 47 active volcanoes around the world, and volcanic activity is in fact increasing.
- This is scary as hell: A wheelchair-bound Candian military veteran asked Canada’s national helth service for a wheelchair lift. They offered her euthanasia instead. Canada is performing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) on about 10,000 people per year. In 2023 MAID will become available to people who suffer mental illness.
- The snow extent in the northern hemisphere this past November was trending toward the highest in 56 years. Several weather models suggest that the entire eastern half of the US is looking at blizzards and very cold temps between now and Christmas. I’ve never been gladder that I live in Arizona, heh.
- This article from Issues & Insights pokes a serious hole in this business of “misinformation” and “disinformation,” neither of which are what they claim to be. People who know nothing of medical science tag any suggestion that Ivermectin is effective against COVID-19 as “misinformation” and do whatever they can to silence MDs who argue that it’s cheap, safe, and needs to be studied in more depth–and could well have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Calling something “misinformation” and then deplatforming those who disagree is the way censorship is done these days.
- Elon Musk and Apple have buried the hatchet, and Twitter’s biggest advertiser is returning to the platform. The grownups in the room realize that ad boycotts simply hand customers to your competitors.
- Evidence is piling up (has been for awhile, actually) that even N95 masks have little or no protective power against COVID aerosols. I posted this link on Twitter some time back–and I wasn’t banned. Elon Musk has made a huge difference in freedom of what I will call “polite conversation;” that is, posting informational links and analysis rather than getting in shouting matches.
- Musk, yeah. He still has a lot of work to do, but the data shows that Twitter is by no means dying.
- Everybody blames too much salt for hypertension. In truth, the science is a lot more nuanced than conventional wisdom would suggest. I did the science on myself regarding salt and blood pressure: I gave up salt for three months. My blood pressure did not go down. I went back to my usual level of added salt, and my blood pressure did not go up. My godmother gave up salt when she was 77. She was dead a year later. Something doesn’t add up here.
- It looks like we are finally doing hard research on bacteriophage therapy against antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Why wasn’t this done twenty years ago?
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: fiction · health · twitter · volcanoes · writing
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