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so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

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Dril Tweet Tournament - Round 4

Food $200

Data $150

Rent $800

Candles $3,600

Utility $150

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

VS.

"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit

#i think about smacks of gender all the time

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sold

she's fierce and beautiful and I am so pleased

the sheer fabric effect was tough, but so worth it

and the rim! 😍

#ceramics

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Grad school is lying to you. You can indulge fixations on obscure topics on your own time. You can sit in a library color-coding notes on articles printed from JSTOR for free. You can argue with dead philosophers in essay format whenever you like. Academia is a state of mind.

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04/23/2024

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Omfg I went to CVS and when I started spelling my last name the pharmacy tech was like, “oh, you’re good, I can always remember queer and Jewish names! If you were John Smith, on the other hand, no way,” which did not offend me at all but is BANANAS as a thing to say in that social context (although less bananas than it could have been; these things are not exactly difficult to discern if you’re looking right at me with my full name and medication history in front of you)

#obviously this was like. also applicable to the pharmacy tech #presumably. #but the chutzpah!

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dappling, Duri Baek 백두리

#2d art

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Recueil ou alphabet de lettres initiales historiques avec bordures et fleurons d'après le 14 et 15 siècles - Jean Midolle - 1846 - via Gallica

#2d art

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#rae

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The amount of walking back and forth on my torso, loudly purring, that I received this morning is making me tremendously glad I have a flat chest.

Yesterday I mostly stayed in ⭐️’s apartment and hung out with the cat, but in the late afternoon I went to Harvard and a little multigenre masked benefit concert for Palestine. Before the concert I wandered around, getting overstimulated. It was at the DC (so, masks required, air filters) and I met up with 🐦‍⬛ and Robin there. For most of it I was sitting between them on a surprisingly comfortable couch in the back of the venue, opting not to be closer to the musicians and stand/sit on the floor. I did like the music, but I liked that even more. We had smoked a joint and I thought with great sentimentality about being there for the very first trans youth summit over 15 years ago(!), an event that is still happening, now at a far bigger venue—and then the mini mosaic class I taught last year—and this year’s leather gear swap with 🦑, where they got a cane for me to try, where I picked up their lovely old silver leather fur-lined cuffs to give to 🐦‍⬛—and then this concert, with people I love on either side of me, arms in mine or holding hands or just shoulders pressed against me. I wonder if the DC really is closing in July like they say.

I think the most memorable song was the one with the lyric “The city doesn’t spend its money on infrastructure / Infrastructure…”

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An incredible find in a little free library. There was no date on it but I have just the smallest suspicion about what decade it is from

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This weekend I am cat-sitting

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is dating a ghost necrophilia?

Please refer to the flowchart.

#was literally watching voyager episode about dating a ghost (reanimated dead person) after this #just coincidentally

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ふてぶてしい顔のサビちゃん。オヤジ顔。でも女の子なのです（苦笑）

A cat that looks like an middle aged man. But she is a young girl.