Links: finding better paths

Feline Grimace Scale by Université de Montréal, 2019. How to quickly tell if a cat is in pain by looking at the ears, eyes, muzzle, and head position. Links to a one page fact sheet and brief training manual.

Desire paths: the illicit trails that defy the urban planners by Ellie Violet Bramley. This is from Oct 2018, but I had been talking about desire paths with someone recently, and then ran across the link. Desire paths are

described by Robert Macfarlane as “paths & tracks made over time by the wishes & feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning”; he calls them “free-will ways.” [...]

Rather than dismiss or even chastise the naughty pedestrian by placing fences or railings to block off “illicit” wanderings, some planners work to incorporate them into urban environments.

Indigenous American Nations, c.16th Century

This map aims to show the approximate locations of the Indigenous nations of middle North America around the 1500s CE, labeled in each tribe's own language when available. Care was taken to include as many nations as possible, but many are surely missing due to the difficulty of confirming them in multiple sources. Anyone with additions or corrections is encouraged to build upon this copyright-free map, or contact me with sources I can use in future editions.

Contempt Culture by Aurynn Shaw, Dec 2015.

Work to change your community. Ask people who try to pay for their membership in contempt to stop, or to leave. Make it unacceptable to use these behaviours as a means of obtaining social wealth.

The best advice we give programmers is to leave things better than how they started. We do it with code, why don’t we do it with communities? Why don’t we do it with people, colleagues, friends?

Covid is bad for the immune system. And we're in a surge.

Covid is not done with us. It’s just getting started. We really should be paying attention. by WildIrish

The bottom line is that, even if you had a mild case and fully recovered from the initial Covid infection without getting long Covid, your immune system has been compromised. This makes it more difficult for your body to resist other pathogens, like RSV and influenza viruses, which would account for the increased rates and severity of those infections that are now being seen. There is also evidence that Covid causes permanent, long-term changes in the immune system that are similar to AIDS.

Because of the surge we're in, I have put myself on mini-lockdown for this week and next, canceling appointments and lessons and declining group events unless they're outside. It feels sad and harsh and lonely, even with the good fortune to work at home and still attend some zoom events. It's hard for me to remember how isolated and terrifying it was while we were collectively on lockdown. (I know some people object to that term, but I haven't found a better one yet.)

Part of it was the uncertainty, and now we know so much more. But somehow most of society is wantonly ignoring what we know, so that saying "no thank you" to invitations feels awkward and strange and neurodivergent.

I keep reminding myself that we're all treating global warming the same way, so it shouldn't be surprising. But it's still heartbreaking on so many levels. The Buddhists talk about how there's pain, which is necessary, and suffering, which is optional. We are causing ourselves so much suffering.