numb3r_5ev3n

( Cut because the image is huge. )
Image text: Japanese researchers have found a possible explanation for long COVID. They discovered that small fragments of the coronavirus's genetic material can remain deep behind the nose, in an area called the epipharynx, for at least six months after infection. These viral remnants irritate the immune system and may cause fatigue, coughing, dizziness, and "brain fog."

The researchers used an old Japanese treatment called epipharyngeal abrasive therapy (EAT), where the area is swabbed once a week with a cotton swab dipped in 1% zinc chloride solution. After three months, the patients showed:
- significantly fewer viral remnants
- lower levels of inflammatory substances
- noticeably reduced symptoms
The treatment appears to both remove the lingering virus and calm the inflammation. A larger clinical trial is now underway in Japan to confirm the results. This discovery could lead to more targeted treatments that address the root cause of long COVID symptoms instead of merely managing them.

I've started to notice that I'm having a lot more trouble regulating my emotions recently, since things started to get really stressful back in March. All of the red flags are flying (binging Skyrim, difficulty keeping my composure at work, struggling to remember words mid-sentence, impulse buying, interrupted sleep, etc.)

I'm taking some time off from work after this week. I'm going to have to probably fight not to spend the entire time playing Skyrim, because Skyrim is where vacation time goes to die.

However! I am reading books! I am nearly finished with Lewis Spence's Druids, Their Origin And History," after which I am going to finally try to work on his other book The Magic Arts In Celtic Britain. Which Robert Plant claimed was one of his inspirations for the song Stairway to Heaven.

And the reason for so many Druid Books is the result of the fallout from seeing the film Sinners. And the paradigm of colonized people spreading colonialism like a virus - or like vampirism. Can those of us whose ancestral culture was repressed or assimilated into white supremacist Mayo Monoculture still reclaim some aspects of it? Especially when mostly what's left is a bunch of hazy impressions, and occasional intense spikes of longing for something that people struggle to define in words?

Or as Robert Plant wrote it in Stairway To Heaven, "There's a feeling I get when I look to the West, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, and the voices of those who stand looking." Yes, I know those lines are also very evocative of the Lord Of the Rings, which was a huge influence on Led Zeppelin's entire discography. But yeah.

(Maybe if someone could express it in words, it would lead to the paradigm shift I've been waiting for my while life.)

I feel like I should also acknowledge at this point that Led Zeppelin became famous in part by adapting Blues tunes written during The Great Migration, which is important in context with the influence that Sinners has had on me since I watched it, and the themes of cultural appropriation within the film.

Anyway, there have been times when nonfiction books have been incredibly difficult for me to get into. It happens whenever my ADHD flares up really badly, and it's gotten worse since I've been addicted to the internet. Learning to be able to focus on one thing for a long period of time is crucial for any kind of Occult practice, and it's something that I've struggled with as I started to become "extremely online."

So, I deactivated by Bluesky account. Not only to save my brain's ability to focus, but because the brainrot there has been especially bad these past few weeks. It's worse than the last post here where I swore to quit Bluesky.

Listen, Joe Biden was certainly not perfect as President, and he made mistakes. One of those being that he did not step aside and hand the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris the moment he realized he was impaired. And I realize that some of this is happening because some hack has recently published a book about how he apparently had dementia equal to Reagan in his second term, etc. But when I see people who I formerly regarded as "sane and well-adjusted" claiming that Biden is literally the worst President ever, and that his term was, in the words of one, "America's lowest point" - when Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were also people who recently held that office, and Trump is literally shipping people off to concentration camps - it just proves to me that my worst fears about the detrimental and deleterious effects of algorithmic "fast social media" were all justified. Like to the point of asking these people to draw a clock, and post the results on their feed.

Whatever. I'll miss seeing takes from Faine Greenwood, but yeah.

I've been tempted to switch back to Reddit, but that was just as much of a dopamine skinner box. The point is not to switch to a different skinner box or echo chamber, but to abandon skinner boxes and echo chambers entirely. When I find myself going "I need to curate my takes to conform to the consensus of the Group Mind," maybe it's time to sever my connection to the Group Mind entirely.

ETA: And an interaction I had a short time ago on Tumblr kind of clued me into something: the first generation of kids who essentially grew up on Web 2.0 social media were indoctrinated to the black-and-white "You love pancakes? So that means you hate waffles, right?" type of discourse, and that's the only way a lot of them know how to interact.

I keep forgetting that Mastodon even exists. But I don't want that to turn into another skinner box. I guess let's see how long I can keep this up.


"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune

Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn for those who stand long

And the forests will echo with laughter."

Go see this movie. In the theaters while it's still there, if at all possible. This was kind of a religious experience.

There are two feedback loops which reverberate throughout American history. The Positive feedback loop is the one of cultural survival against all odds, and cultural exchange. Of different peoples coming together in solidarity.

The Negative feedback loop is the Oppression/Colonization feedback loop. Of peoples (like the Irish, Welsh, and Scots) who were historically marginalized and colonized and oppressed coming here to colonize and oppress others.

The kicker is: we get to decide which one wins. And if the first one is finally allowed to defeat the second. Because it's the only way it ever will be truly defeated.

And that's all I can really say without spoiling this movie (but if you're following me on Bluesky or Tumblr: sorry, I might have done that already.)

The link to the video, since embedded videos crash screen readers. This goes way deeper than the "dead internet" meme, into a discussion of Active Measures. This is one of the best videos I have seen on this issue yet this year.

(TW for mentions of the concept of unaliving, not actual unaliving.)

Full disclosure: I was assigned female at birth, but I identify as Nonbinary. I spent the 2000s identifying as "Genderqueer." I've always seen Gender Identity as a spectrum. I feel like I fall more on the masculine side, but not enough to identify as a Trans Man, if that makes sense. So, "Trans Masc" it is.

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while might be aware that I am a tad obsessed with The Matrix. (Just a tad, ha ha!) I spend a lot of time on this blog analyzing The Matrix, and how pivotal it was. Maybe the last real cultural touchstone before 9/11 "changed everything." And though its appeal was near-universal, it has turned out to represent very different things to very different groups of people. 25 years after the fact, a film created by two Trans Women has been nearly entirely co-opted by reactionary men, and taken to mean something that is the opposite of what its creators intended. The fact that the so-called "Redpill Movement" exists at all is a massive thorn in the side of anyone who likes this movie and its sequels that isn't a reactionary weirdo.

There is a three-part blog post from The Last Psychiatrist from back in 2009 that I've been referring back to a lot in regards to the "Redpill movement" in a "tap the sign" kind of way. Because it contains analysis of how, by the late 2000s, the symbolism and themes of The Matrix had already been appropriated by men who were living in a state of quiet desperation, who had turned that anxiety into grievance and resentment. Looking back at this document from 2009, it's easy to see in hindsight how this would eventually metastasize into "the manosphere" in the 2010s and 2020s. However, a new post just dropped on the Liberal Currents site, and I feel like it's the best take on where we are 16 years later.

( Taken together, both essays point to this: )

I have been wallowing in personal regret and nostalgia, and working through some things. I redesigned my Dreamwidth blog yet again, because ADHD is a hell of a drug. And while I have been doing that, a constitutional crisis occurred and is still ongoing. (Parkrose Permaculture is awesome, and I recommend her videos.)

And I'm wondering if my brain is throwing regret and nostalgia at me in part to distract me from the horrific shit that I have no direct personal power to stop or prevent.

And I remember how, during the 2000s, as a response to 9/11 and the War In Iraq, and an administration that seemed to just ignore any dissent or protest so much that it was like screaming into the abyss, it seems like a lot of us just retreated into fandom and never looked back. And how we really can't afford to do that now.

I know there are going to be times when we will need to escape. When we'll need to tune out the horror. But we're the main characters now, and it's up to us to clean up this mess.

So we've gotten to the point where ICE is disappearing people. And this was an eventuality that people were talking about back during Trump's first term.

( Cut for politics )

(A skeet from user Jenny Cohn, which reads, "Peter Thiel backs the Hallow prayer app, which is now promoting “The Way,” a book composed by Josemaría Escrivá, the initiator of Opus Dei. Leonard Leo (Federalist Society, Teneo) reportedly belongs to Opus Dei.")

So yeah.