Ana told me she got her flu shot at school

[conuly]

Ana lied through her teeth, it turns out, and only admitted it once she found out I'd bribed Eva with $20 to get her shot without freaking out. (And Eva's composure was admirable. I'm holding her to this new standard forever.)

Two weeks, nearly 100 child deaths, and many scheduling mishaps later, Ana's finally getting her shot. She says she wants $20 too. I say she doesn't get shit, because she lied to me, after I asked her repeatedly. I ambushed her twice a day for a week just to ask her this! The fact that she didn't flip out at me for not trusting her should've been my hint, come to think. (And I don't buy her claim that she was mistaken. No, Ana, you're not mistaken about whether or not somebody jabbed a needle into your arm.)

I'm not telling Ana that the shot isn't very effective this year, either. She'll just suck it up like the rest of us did. When she is 18, that's when she can take her life in her hands like this, and not a day before.

**************

Crocodile Mummy Found Packed With Dozens of Smaller Crocodile Mummies (It's like a really bitey, chompy turducken!)

The Mechanics of Pinsetters

Alzheimer's Plaques Erased in Mice—What's Next?

The lesbian pioneers who fooled Spain's Catholic Church

FDA Okays First Concussion Blood Test--but Some Experts Are Wary

How The Last Jedi Outfoxes the Alt-Right (Medieval style!)

The Story Behind JFK's Official White House Portrait (And take a minute to read the linked article about the Obama portraits. You know, some people can laugh at themselves. I respect that. Obama talking about Obama is a delight to read, because the man has a sense of humor. Some other White House residents do not.)

The Mess at Meetup

Autism: Scientists take 'first steps' towards biological test

It's Not Illegal Immigration That Worries Republicans Anymore

How ICE Works to Strip Citizenship from Naturalized Americans

The “Microaggression” Concept

The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus

For Presidents Day, Here’s One Vicious, Ghastly and/or Fascinating Fact About Every U.S. President (To reiterate, this is The Intercept. There are no nationalistic little hagiographies.)

The Unsexy Truth About Millennials: They’re Poor

Behind the minimum wage fight, a sweeping failure to enforce the law

Inside North Korea’s Hacker Army

Trump’s Historic Medicaid Shift Goes Beyond Work Requirements

Trump's Furious Tweetstorm Backfires (The writer of this piece assumes Donald Trump wanted to distance himself from all this and only accidentally (and, I must say, ineptly) made himself the center of attention - again. I'm not sure that's a safe assumption.)

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

Media Cases Show Netanyahu's Bid for Tyranny

Comments

[miss_s_b]

Yeah, lies would mean no £20 from me too

[wpadmirer]

Good for you!

[oracleofdoom]

Is it just me, or has the flu shot been rather underwhelming for the last few years, this one just being the worst in a while?

I still get it, don't get me wrong. I have a niece with heart trouble who could die from something like this, and a mom in the final stage of COPD, whom I don't intend to hasten along.

I just wish they would do better.

[conuly]

It's because the flu is inordinately complex with the way it evolves or something. Bah.

[nodrog]

Influenza is different.  That's what any epidemiologist would tell you.  There's no such thing as a “measles season” or “mumps season,” because those diseases are as they are.  Influenza is like a key that constantly morphs, rolling into new configurations, attempting to match the lock-pins of the human immune system.  It succeeded in 1918, with results that horrified veteran physicians.  Every human being alive today is descended from a survivor of that pandemic; it killed people from the Arctic to the equator.

It's still trying.  The problem we face is that vaccines are produced by a standard, time-consuming technique, and this thing can change overnight.  This year, it did.

[This is the reason for something that is not common knowledge:  Flu vaccines are never 100% effective.  By the time they're available they're already becoming obsolete.  This year was just a worst case:  Your “flu shot” was only about 30% effective.  But at best it's only about 60% to 75% effective.  Have you ever heard anyone say, “The shot made me sick” or “I got sick anyway”?  The shot didn't make them sick, it just didn't work.]

[conuly]

I do not like these facts. To whom can I complain about remedying? Clearly, the "flu" is overpowered and needs to be nerfed.

[nodrog]

I've heard that attempts are being made to devise a nano-bot “flu Terminator” that doesn't worry about niceties like antigen signatures &c., it just destroys whatever flu virus it finds regardless.  It's that ‘regardless’ bit that causes concern:  If its pattern recognition gets a trifle muddled it could decide that Red Blood Cells Must Die!

On the other hand, as Jacques Cousteau pointed out, there are way way way too many people on this planet as it is - as is becoming increasingly evident! - and there may not be a better solution.  Even if Mars were perfectly habitable

https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TerraformedMarsGlobeRealistic.jpg

- we couldn't airlift (spacelift?) that many people there even if humanity united in the effort.  And Mars is not, in fact, habitable.  Unless we wanted to do a “Marching Morons” solution and pretend that it is, packing whole boatloads of people onto rockets and launching them off-world, never to return… (“The rockets weren't very good.  They didn't have to be”)

[nodrog]

This hyperlink thing is infectious - look, now I'm doing it!


Why next year's flu vaccine will be lousy, too

The Flu Shot Is Only 36% Effective. You Should Still Get It _ Fortune

Japan Approves Tamiflu Rival That Kills Flu Virus In One Day _ Fortune

[conuly]

I'm not sure how sarcastic you're being here, so I'm not certain how to respond. I don't even know if I want to attach a winky smiley here or not.

[nodrog]

Not sarcastic at all - sardonic, to use “infectious” in this context.  Do you use a visual editor or do your html by hand?  I'm old-school, and I actually write out

<a href="http://fortune.com/2018/02/23/japan-shionogi-flu-drug-kills-virus-one-day/">Japan Approves Tamiflu Rival That Kills Flu Virus In One Day _ Fortune</a>

- because if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!

[conuly]

Definitely do it by hand. Whenever I use an editor it ends up italicizing what I don't want italicized, or refusing to not link what I don't want linked, etc.

[greghousesgf]

I want to know what actresses are going to be in that movie!

[conuly]

I never remember actor names anyway, so at least I don't have to worry about that one!

[pebblerocker]

I had one of my bedtime knowledge thirsts a few months ago and had to look up the history of pinsetters before I could sleep. My guesses, before looking anything up, were that once pins were stood back up manually by youth labour, and that pinsetting machines were invented in... maybe the fifties? Turns out it was a little earlier than that, and the way all the moving parts work is really interesting and well documented in many Youtube videos. I went to sleep very satisfied.

[conuly]

It's great when that happens.

[jesse_the_k]

Aiiiieieeieiei! Congrats on being a parent--damn it's a hard job.

---

Nathan Robinson's takedown of the neoliberals whingeing on "microaggressions" was very gratifying, thank you.

Also (To reiterate, this is The Intercept. There are no nationalistic little hagiographies.) made me LOL.

Do you also tweet these? I ask because the shortened URLs mean I have to click through to find out the source, and sometimes I'm just too chicken to find out (although I'm learning that you're a kind linker).

[conuly]

Some people in the past have mentioned when the total link - including the HTML! - is long it completely fucks up their browser. And I like being able to go to bitly later and say "Yup, ten gazillion people clicked my links yesterday!"

So this is partially for their convenience and a lot for mine!

But if you're worried about the provenance of any particular link you can always ask me. I'm always willing to just provide the unshortened URL to anybody who wants.

(And noooooooo, I'd never trick people without hinting strongly that I'm tricking them, like that Rickroll image I posted a few weeks ago. If you do things like that, then they stop clicking your links. Entirely counterproductive.)

[jesse_the_k]

Oh, thanks for your kind offer. (I missed the Rickroll, darn.)

And more for the explanation -- didn't know that bit.ly tallied how many folks follow the links. That's a nice up on a gray day.

I'm paranoid about using full links because the web changes so fast and having full links means being able to dig 'em out of the waybackmachine.

[conuly]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTspwl7XkAASU8U.jpg

Enjoy!

Snorfle

[jesse_the_k]

That was delightful.

[kathmandu]

Many links are not as long as they seem.

Usually, when a link goes "blahblah.html/?blah", the ? and everything to the right of it is tracking data, not part of the actual URL.
You can test by copying just the part up to .html and pasting it into a new tab.

[conuly]

Yes, and I automatically strip all that nonsense out anyway before I shorten any URL ever. I think it's ugly, and hate when people don't strip it, though I rarely comment on that.

But some URLs are still longer than others, and sometimes my text is long, and rather than guessing all the time it's easier to just shorten it all.

[conuly]

Aaaaaaalso, point of fact, I'm Ana and Eva's aunt. It's just that for reasons I tend to be the one making the appointments and dragging them to them and all. And doing the homeschooling. And god, I'm going to be doing Eva's high school application process next year and I am so not looking forward to that. But it's the last one and then I'm done (unless I kindly help Eva's best friend with that too).

[jesse_the_k]

Aunt or no aunt, you're parenting in my book!

[larryhammer]

This.

[adafrog]

Well, and having the shot is a benefit whether or not it's particularly good for whatever is circulating. :D

[archangelbeth]

Tell the truth, get $20 and a jab in the arm, or lie and get nothing except the jab. This sounds fair to me!

I need to get my kid the shot now that they're hopefully not sick anymore. *sigh*

“Re:” “Micro” “aggression” “concept”

[nodrog]

Goodness me, we do like us some scare quotes, don't we, precious?

It's interesting that the author actually refers to

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

“The Coddling of the American Mind,” without, apparently, having done more than skim it for out-of-context sound bites.  It's a worthy read, and The Atlantic did what this author dares not do:  They discuss the article and the reactions to it, which were far more positive than this author wants you to know.