ソーラーバードーのほん: Life in the Convergence Zone

this is what i've been afraid of

solarbird — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:10:36 GMT

This article on Long Covid is not data yet. Not good data, anyway. But there's some data in it, and that data is bad.

Not on continuing cases. We'll find out shortly if we're going to augur down like so many other places, and I think we will, and big surges will be basically over by March, barring a more substantially new variant that genuinely bypasses vaccine protection against serious acute and long Covid - something which so far has not happened. And here, at least, in Cascadia, where vaccinations rates are high, it'll be a good spring.

But where they aren't. Oh god.

10% of children. And that's a low range. Christ.

I mean, I've talked about this. Repeatedly. I've begged people to come to terms with it and talk about it more and for the love of fuck stop focusing solely on deaths - which are bad! really bad! - and start focusing on long-term effects (like enfeeblement), and it just doesn't stick.

And now it's more or less too late.

I mean, it's not too late. For individuals. Get. Your. Goddamn. Shots. Get your kids their shots. For kids too young to get shots, I don't know what to tell you other than don't send them to school. And get them shot up the instant pediatric doses become available because if these numbers are real, then just fuck me this is what I was afraid of.

This is what I kept warning about.

People have already forgot - and even written off - a million US deaths. Yeah, the official number is less than that, we know from excess deaths that it's much worse than that.

But 10-20% systemic/major organ damage in children.

Fuck.

Vaccines stop Long Covid.

We know this. Symptom rates return to baseline.

And the GOP have turned into an anti-vaccination/pro-disease party that is going to absolutely fuck this country for a generation, even if they all vanished tomorrow.

And if these numbers are right, there's gonna be hell to pay. Once people figure it out, there's gonna be absolute hell, and nothing about it will be rational.

For the love of fuck, get your shots, because this... the aftereffects of this will last decades.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

The Arc of Dominion, Saga 22: The Undying Spirits

solarbird — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 01:16:14 GMT

The war is won. Oasis and the Concordat are at peace. Overwatch has been folded up again, this time made into an intelligence arm for Helix, under new - and the UN hopes better - leadership. The Gods are free - largely - to do as they will.

But the Great Game never ends, not even with victorious Gods - it merely changes. And as the dust settles, old players begin feeling out their new positions - and questioning their old relationships.

Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Dominion
Saga 22: The Undying Spirits
solarbird and bzarcher

Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Dominion is a continuance of The Arc of Conflict, The Arc of Ascension, The Arc of Creation, and In the Beginning, There Was an Armourer and a Living Weapon. To follow the story as it appears, please subscribe to the series.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

new paper in the lancet

solarbird — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 06:52:03 GMT

New paper in The Lancet. Read it.

My takeaway of interest: detection rate is down to 5% of cases worldwide. That's an absolutely dramatic decline. You get slightly higher with semi-aggressive testing, but to get legitimately higher, you really have to work at it. A few places are, most places aren't, but let's put speculation to the side as one should and go with numbers we actually know.

Now let's go back to the path to r0 << 1, remind yourself of that if you like.

1,049,560 12-and-over cases remaining/anticipated in Washington State remains a valid number from its date. I'd aimed at 80% resistance from boosters, that was probably a little optimistic, and 70% or less would've been a little more accurate, but let's not change the number now.

5% of 1,049,560 is 52,478. 10% is 104,956. We're doing a lot of testing, let's say we bump it up real high (and that some UW data that isn't strictly about this but is kind of reflective about this) indicating a 10% detection rate. Much higher detection than typical, but we have some fairly aggressive testing here. For, you know, the US.

Two-week average for cases is 14,085/day. Times eight days (since the route to r0 post) gives us 112,680 detected cases, vs. a detection of 104,956.

That should just about compensate for that overly-optimistic 80%.

Now let's throw in some worse numbers for the under-12 set, which wasn't included in the above at all.

Population data says there are 1,044,827 under-12s in Washington State. No way to know how many have already had COVID before the path to r0, so let's assume none. And let's assume 100% case rate and be really on the high side. 10% is 104,482 detections remaining, without reinfection. Given the testing at schools, that might be low, but... we can't know. We're on the tenuous edge of numbers as it is. But despite that, I'm just going to say it:

If these numbers are right, we should be at peak right now.

If I'm right, we're about to be heading down in case count like the wrong kind of rocket but the absolutely right kind of epidemiology.

And as if on cue, the statewide two-week average looks like it has levelled off, and King County - as you'd expect, given our vaccination + booster rate - is already very well past peak.

If these numbers are right, we're done by March, folks. Not even mid-March. Beginning of March.

We. Are. Done. By. March.

Not to zero. But as an epidemic. Barring, as usual, a new and unpredictable variant that resets resistance. Read the Lancet paper, they talk about that, saying that COVID isn't disappearing, but it's about to become the flu.

Get your shots, be ready for occasional outbreaks, but as a true pandemic, here, in Washington State? Assuming all the assumings?

You do have to keep riding this out, but it's all downhill from here. And everybody else is going to be only a couple of months further along.

Barring a vastly new variant...

...it looks like it actually is gonna be a pretty nice spring in Cascadia.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

Have I finally found the right word?

solarbird — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 23:46:05 GMT

I've been writing on and off for a long time about how we need to start talking less about COVID deaths and talk more about the long-term effects of COVID on survivors. I'm not alone in that, but I was fairly early out the gate.

The reason I've been talking about this is because neither fascists nor fundamentalists give a fuck about theoretical death, particularly not in the 1% range, particularly not amongst the people they see as "old" or "already ill" or - as was particularly obvious in the early parts of this pandemic - of colour. The fascists want to kill all those people, the fundamentalists see death as just going to be with Jesus, and none of them see any of that as applying to them anyway.

It's never caught on, sadly. I've tried.

But I think part of it is that I've never found the right word.

I might've found it now.

Let's talk about enfeeblement.

I surveyed a lot of papers in late 2020 and early 2021 talking about not just Long COVID, but asymptomatic long-term damage from COVID.

I talk a lot about how 20% or more of asymptomatic COVID cases turn up with major organ damage. I use that number because of all the large-population studies I saw, it was the lowest number. And also because, being the smallest number, I decided it was the one least likely to be rejected out of hand.

Those people are starting to die now. None of it's being called COVID, but it's showing up in excess-death numbers, like that 140% excess-deaths rate reported by insurance companies in January 2022.

These are all people whose long-term health has been weakened.

For some, it's becoming fatal.

For a larger number, it's not fatal - yet - but it's symptomatic, in many different ways, all bad. All weakening. All enfeebling.

Some are far more easily tired than before. Some are weaker. Some get short of breath, sometimes at random. Some have a hard time thinking, or concentrating, and some have memory issues. Some can't smell or taste anymore. Some have blood circulation problems.

Some throw clots and have strokes.

Some do all of the above.

They have all been made one degree or another of feeble. It might be showing up now; it might show up later; it might not even show up at all - though there was a study out last month showing symptoms increasing over time, rather than decreasing. Lives getting worse, not better.

Enfeeblement.

COVID makes you feeble.

As I said just above, fascists and fundamentalists don't care about death. The former want to deal it en masse; the latter seek it out. In their own words, death from COVID-19 is good, and not to be feared.

But enfeeblement?

Oh, they hate the feeble. Loathe them. Despise them. And they fear - existentially fear - becoming one of them.

They are terrified of becoming feeble themselves.

And now, assuming today's study holds up, we know something new.

We, the vaccinated... we might get COVID, sure... but we don't get Long COVID.

Symptoms of Long COVID go to zero.

We don't become feeble from getting COVID... and they do.

You want to strike some fear of god in the fundamentalist, in the fascist?

That's how.

It won't happen to all of 'em. Not even most. But let's say one in five.

Ask them. Present it as a hypothetical. As an "okay, you won't get vaccinated against COVID because it doesn't stop you from getting the disease, but what about this other case?" example.

"So there's a new disease, doesn't kill anybody - well, not much of anybody - but it fucks people up pretty bad. Once it's over, one out of five are tired all the time, get weak, they have breathing problems, can't think right - a lot of them can't concentrate, they forget things constantly. Their immunity gets broken, too, so they get sick again a lot. Long term stuff."

"But there's a vaccine. Doesn't stop you from getting it, but it does stop you from getting fucked up for life."

"Would you get a vaccine against that?"

And of course, modulo the omission of death, I just described COVID-19.

I mean it. They don't care about death. They particularly don't care about the deaths of others. They really do not give a single fuck.

But enfeeblement?

And the unstated but omnipresent backdrop, becoming unworthy by becoming ill?

Yeah. About that, they care. And they already fear it, all the time.

And getting vaccinated is the way out.

Put that to them, and let's see what they say.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

don't get to type this much

solarbird — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 21:15:17 GMT

hooooooooly fuck EXTREMELY GOOD COVID NEWS holy fuck

Chise - @sailorrooscout · 11:55 AM · Jan 17, 2022
Does COVID-19 vaccination have a protective effect against Long COVID? Answer: YES.

“Vaccination with at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was associated with a substantial decrease in reporting the most common post-acute COVID-19 symptoms, bringing it back to baseline.” [THREAD]

Keeping in mind that there are always exceptions and that this is speaking statistically across large numbers, a reasonable-population study just out (and linked in the thread) shows extremely clearly that statistically speaking, breakthrough case patients who had previously received the complete initial course of two-dose vaccination DO NOT GET Long COVID.

Not even the booster. Just the initial two doses.

Again, there will be some exceptions because there always are and there will be, for lots of reasons, including pre-existing immunodeficiency which I am not ignoring, but these numbers are so strong that I'm pretty sure the odds for even worst-case patients are going to be dramatically - dramatically - improved.

Seriously these are some "NOPE! [slams book closed] YOU'RE GOOD!" numbers.

For those of us who have been going on about long-term damage from COVID (including not just Long COVID but the extended systemic bodily damage) this is ... holy fuck this is good news.

Look, in the unvaccinated, omicron still causes Long COVID in large numbers. It still trainwrecks immune systems by fucking T cells. Less so, we think, than previous variants, but even less are still some ugly odds.

But it's not too late to get vaccinated. Half-vaccinated isn't enough, the numbers are really clear on that, you need both shots.

But it's not too late.

Get your shots. For fuck's sake, get your shots.

Because if this holds up against new variants we haven't yet seen so can't speculate about, and if you're fully vaccinated, then that light at the end of the tunnel?

It's actually the end of the tunnel.

And it isn't secretly a train.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

the party of sabotage commits sabotage because it works

solarbird — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 05:11:09 GMT

Mehdi Hasan - @mehdirhasan · 1:39 PM · Jan 14, 2022
It begins...

New Virginia Governor Youngkin to Lift School Mask Mandate, Change COVID Policies
Virginia’s next governor, Glenn Youngkin, said he will lift the state’s school mask mandate and change other COVID-19 policies after taking office Jan. 15.

If you vote for the @GOP, you are voting to make the plague worse.

This is what they do.

They are a party literally doing everything in their power to make COVID-19 worse, sabotaging every attempt to control it, at every level.

This is an extension of their general philosophy, that either it's their country to rule, or there'll be no country to rule.

When in power, they loot, funneling money upwards.

When out of power, they sabotage everything in sight.

Even attempts to control a deadly pandemic.

They do this because _it works_. It rewards them with power, because people blame the "ruling party," no matter what the opposition does.

In our system, the opposition can do a lot. When it's acting in good faith, that's fine. Healthy.

When it's acting in _bad_ faith, it's not.

Right now, they're doing everything in their power to sabotage the economy, the right to vote - even working to make COVID worse.

And people ignore all that, blaming those who are at least _trying_ to get this under control.

Exactly as the GOP expect.

That's why they do it.

Because. It. Works.

So every time someone goes, "I'm never voting again!" or "I'm never voting Democratic again," you might hear a little _snap_.

That's another Republican saboteur getting their pitchfork.

"Our Country, or No Country" is why the country is falling apart.

I mean, there are a bunch of other reasons, _obviously_. This shit works because of other reasons, _obviously_, the single biggest one of which is racism, the second biggest one of which is misogyny, and I think they're more neck and neck than a lot of people realise.

It's their out-and-out willingness to go all-in on balls-to-the-wall it's-ours-or-we'll-destroy-it-all bad-faith exploitation of it - to make it worse, not better, and all for power...

_That's_ what's breaking everything apart.

And they know.

And they don't care.

Because if it's not their country, as far as they're concerned, there shouldn't be a country.

See MTG's "national divorce," just for starters.

Most of them don't want to go that far. For one thing, that wouldn't leave them enough "liberals" to "own." But also, it'd hurt the economy in the wrong ways.

They'd rather just destroy democracy, and replace it with a facade where they can't lose power.

Which is, of course, the goal.

So I suppose for the most part it's less "Our Country or No Country," it's more, "Our Democracy, or No Democracy."

Which, really, is about the same thing.

Hungary and Russia are the models. The pretense, but not the reality, of representative government.

And every time you blame the opposition for Republican sabotage, and decide not to vote, or reward them in _any_ way...

...you move it a little further along.

I mean, sure, bitch at Democrats all you want to. Go at 'em. Primary the worst fuckers, absolutely - Manchin, Sinema? Fuck yeah go at. I sure am.

But in the end, put the blame where it most belongs: at the feet of those trying to end the democracy of this republic. The GOP.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

initial followup on a simple prototype

solarbird — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 01:10:01 GMT

So last week we had a fairly complete run of laundry using the simple heat reclamation/humidity gain prototype.

It wasn't a true full week, because one of our housemates wasn't able to use the laundry during that time, but it was still eight typical loads, which is a reasonable number for a first run.

Temperature:

During these runs, we reclaimed about .8°C per load, on average, outside the laundry. This clearly indicates at least partial distribution to other parts of the house. Temperature sensors on the same floor support this. It's not as distributed as it could be, since the dryer itself is exhausting air, but the positive gain shows that this reclamation produces a neat positive in heat, vs. the net loss caused by the dryer taking air in from the house and expelling it outdoors.

Humidity:

The runs show short-term spikes of 4-5 points of humidity per run at the sensor outside the laundry, which again indicates of which about 2 end up sticky and shared across the building. At no point have we exceeded 60% relative humidity, which is relevant because sustained humidity above that point starts becoming conducive to mould and mildew growth.

(This is why showers have exhaust fans.)

Dust/particulate escape:

None observed, including no atypical buildup of dust. Given that the exhaust vent is a HEPA filter, this is unsurprising, but nice to have confirmed. It does the kind of job you'd want it to in this application, while still allowing for substantial heat and humidity reclamation.

Filter clogging:

One of the several complaints about full indoor venting is the fast rate at which dry filters clog - how quickly depends entirely on the lint content of any set of laundry, but it's a problem no matter what type of loads are being washed. Some reviewers of the most popular indoor dry exhaust filter on Amazon report having to clean the filter in as few as every two or three loads.

Water filters are the more typical solution to this problem, but those require that water be added and/or changed out on a regular basis.

So I was pleasantly surprised in that there was no clogging of the filter, and indeed very little buildup even on the very thin charcoal prefilter. The exceptions were a small number of large particles of lint, clearly aggregated beforehand, probably indicating it's time to clean out the vent pathway in the dryer itself again. This supports my hypothesis that in practical application, providing separate escape for the small fragments which make it past the lint filter does in fact direct most of them that way.

It also demonstrates that even weekly filter cleanings are most likely unnecessary in our case. I will continue to watch the prefilter lint accumulation rate in an attempt to determine how quickly buildup occurs. At this point I have reason to suspect that with our normal loads, a monthly cleanout routine is likely to be adequate, and that at very least, weekly cleanout is entirely unnecessary.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

in the context of yesterday's post

solarbird — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 04:19:32 GMT

This is California, not Washington State, but in the context of yesterday's post on r₀<<1, I give you:

California hospitals predict COVID crisis will last until the end of February

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

the path to r0 << 1

solarbird — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 06:45:11 GMT

This is an insurance statistics type of calculation, not an epidemiologist type of calculation. All my original science has been genetics and computer science, not virology or epidemiology, and I'm not a source for either here. This is accounting maths, not biology. But given that... it's still a path to r₀<<1.

All data Washington State. All projections based on Washington State numbers. All data is specifically 12-and-over Washington State residents - including population numbers - because under that age is restricted in funny ways and harder to get. For 11-and-unders, I'm going to pretend that you're going to get a similar path, or worse.

But for the purposes of these calculations, by worse, I mean faster.

All of this assumes bad cases in terms of additional vaccination and mitigation measures, intentionally pessimistic assumptions that will be basically correct for Republicans in particular, due to the party's current status as literally pro-plague, but less so for everyone else.

Finally, none of this should be taken as endorsement of what I'm laying out. This is not how we should be doing this, and I mean it, it's really not. Even with omicron, there was no reason any of this had to be this bad, and no reason we had to get where we are. And this path's downside includes the greatest possibility of generating a new and worse strain of mutations.

But now that we are here, we are here, and this is what I think is reasonably enough likely to happen that I'm willing to put it in a post.

In other words, if I had to put down money, this is how I'd put down the money.

Let's go.

73.9% of 12-and-overs have full doses of vaccine out of a population of a 6,529,327.

That leaves 1,704,154 12-and-overs partially or unvaccinated, 1,253,630 of which have no vaccination resistance at all (80.8% have partial vaccination, leaving 19.2%), 450,524 who have partial vaccination and some resistance.

In very crude terms - who am I kidding, this is brutally crude terms - partial vaccination gets you around 40% resistance. Probably lower now with omicron, certainly lower with time, but some (possibly most) of those are recent and will get their second shots. But let's not assume that, and let's call it 30%.

70% of 450,524 gets you 315,367 cases, given everyone fully exposed again.

Full vaccination plus time still gets you around 70% resistance to omicron. Booster takes that higher to a bit above 90%, and we'll round down. Booster uptake here is pretty good amongst those already vaccinated, and some percentage of people have already had COVID and also been vaccinated, which in the right order improves ongoing resistance further. So let's call it 80% resistance. It's kind of a shot in the dark, but it's probably not too wrong.

20% of 5,275,697 gets you 1,055,139 cases.

Of the unvaccinated, with a 100% infection rate, you get 1,704,154 projectable cases.

That's a total of 3,074,660 bad-scenario/bad-behaviour cases moving forward from now.

But.

That leaves out prior cases in and of themselves - as opposed to resistance gained by them, which we have included. We need to include both.

There have been 1,009,187 total cases (all ages) by positive antigen test or better, many (most?) PCR confirmed. This is most certainly a substantial undercount, given 70% asymptomatic, an old number but the estimates I've had. Omicron really does produce a less severe disease overall, from the data I've seen, so it's possible that percentage goes up, not down - but I'll keep it as per historical.

There are 10,203 deaths, also most likely an undercount, from what I've heard by a factor of 1.4. So it's call it 14,284 deaths, and that's far enough below the really... really two-digit accuracy of this wild guestimation festival that I'll set them aside.

Based on the current numbers, about 86% of COVID cases would be 12-and-up. (I can't get that broken up separately from the state dashboard. I imagine there's a way to get it more exactly, but I haven't dug enough to find it.)

86% of 1,009,187 is 867,900 cases in the 12-and-up population.

867,900/.3 gives you 2,893,000 total cases, or 2,025,100 undetected cases. Maybe.

Some of these cases are definitely re-infections, particularly amongst the unvaccinated, which would reduce the number of people, vs. the number of cases. That would lengthen the timeline I'm about to - finally! - describe. But because I have no solid knowledge of those percentages here, I'm leaving that aside.

(I remind you: I said, this is crude.)

We have a projectable 3,074,660 additional cases moving forward, with previous case resistance already factored in, but assuming no undetected cases to date.

And that's not what we have.

3,074,660 - 2,025,100 (estimated undetected) leaves 1,049,560 cases anticipated.

(Yes, possibly more, depending upon reinfection rate of prior cases. But that's data I don't have, so I can't go with it.)

70% of those would historically go undetected, so don't look for that million more in the dashboards. But not being detected isn't really relevant here - what matters is actual cases to come.

(Besides, there'll be a... bad-case 30% reinfection rate amongst the post-omicron unvaccinated if or when delta manages a resurgence, but we'll leave that aside for now. Watch data over the coming weeks in fading hotspots for signs of that.)

So.

1,049,560 cases/12,000 (cases/day) - roughly the last two weeks averaged and frankly too low - leaves you 87 days on this bullet rail of bullshit. Three months.

Mid-April.

1,049,560 cases/15,000 (cases/day) - a little under the last four days averaged - leaves you 70 days. A bit over two months.

Late March.

1,049,560 cases/20,000 (cases/day) - a number we haven't seen yet, but if we spike up - leaves you 52 days. Seven and a half weeks.

Early March.

And whenever it is we get here, be it early March or mid April, all the anti-vaxxers - and, unfortunately, all those who aren't anti-vaccination but who haven't been able to get vaccinated for various good and unfortunate reasons - will have received the shittiest, most dangerous, least effective de facto vaccination available, 70% and falling resistance in exchange for 10% or more with long-term major organ damage, 2-3% with Long Covid, and let's say half a percent dead if the medical system doesn't collapse.

Assuming half the damage of delta.

(Spoiler: the medical system is already near collapse. A lot more people than that will die.)

Funny part is, the worse the anti-vaxxers act, the sharper the case spike. The shaper the case spike, the sooner the case collapse. Not down to zero, but down to actually controllable even with active ongoing active Republican sabotage.

Barring, of course, some kind of New Pandemic/Covid-22 variant that resets the entire clock to zero.

When I said a few posts ago that the heavy-duty phases of this could be over by May, this is what I meant, and basically how I got there.

When I said in comments "and I could mean March," well... all the anti-vaccination/pro-plague people have to do is just keep doubling down on being the massive dicks they've already been and getting omicron once or twice, the sooner, the better. Given their history, I think the odds of that are pretty good.

But if they change their minds (HA!) and start getting vaccinated, en masse, the timeline actually shortens - with less harm to them, and to their collateral damage.

(The way to extend the timeline is to keep not getting vaccinated but at the same time act better to control the plague, adopting masking, and so on. It's a little ironic, in that if they want to keep the plague going to keep the grift going as they have so far, they have to be much less dickish, but not about everything - about specific things in specific ways. I don't think they have the nuance for that. Let's hope they don't prove me wrong.)

And now, here we are.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a train - but it is also, I think, the end of the tunnel.

It's not too late to get vaccinated, and it's not too late to get your booster, and it's not too late to skate over this. Most people can move themselves from the 100% to the 60% to the 10% or even less with varying degrees of ease here.

Get yourself lucky. Get your shots. Dodge the train.

Because if you can, it's looking like after a nasty, nasty winter...

...it might be a pretty good spring in Cascadia.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

comcast business blows donkeys, leaves no donkey unsatisifed, part... 53?

solarbird — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:59:51 GMT

We got a visit, finally, from a technician bringing a new modem.

He verified everything I'd reported, started pinging our modem from the corporate side, and when it powered off... he kept getting responses.

Another modem had our modem's fixed IP address.

They hadn't reset it before redeploying it last Thursday.

Obviously, this is infuriating. Fourth major outage since October, this one another five day clusterfuck, ALL caused by Comcast Business, but the _most_ infuriating part has been being ignored, lied to, and told over and over again it was our problem and to talk to my "local IT."

Hands up for the on-site tech, who gave me no bullshit or pushback, who agreed the modem was behaving bizarrely and was speculating about possible problems with the modem when he saw that he could still ping an unplugged device and knew what had happened immediately. Good job.

The _only_ "good job" I can hand out here on their side.

This has been yet another disaster.

Five days down because they didn't reset a modem they redeployed.

Five days of insulting, dismissive, infuriating "support" from Comcast Business, blaming it on us.

Again.

I'm not tagging Comcast Business directly on this because I honestly don't know if they'd blame the on-site tech or some other bullshit. I just don't. Who even knows? They're this horrible to their customers, what are they like to their employees?

So anyway, yeah.

We're back up.

Five days later.

Because Comcast Business fucked us again.

Ziply put in a temporary fibre cable for us today, btw. Wasn't expecting that. It's on the ground, which isn't great, but not where anybody will hit it, so... it's fine.

We should get actual installation on Thursday, then they'll come back later and put in the final cable.

Looking forward to that.

A _lot_.

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it's not funny anymore - seriously, don't use comcast business

solarbird — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 21:25:02 GMT

This is long past being funny.

Dear @ComcastBusiness, regarding your latest blowing off our 3 days and counting of complete lack of IPv4 connectivity and your several closed tickets, the latest of which being CR020322088:

"I have verified that all of your Comcast internet services are working correctly."

Your gateway is moving ZERO IPv4 PACKETS. NONE. IPv6 moves fine. IPv4 does not.

I have told you this, repeatedly.

"I am able to login to your Comcast gateway and reach websites from within your gateway."

Yes, I know.

Do you know, @comcastbusiness, who told you that IPv4 could communicate with the gateway?

I DID.

I. TOLD. YOU.

The problem is IPv4 can't _cross_ the modem from the LAN.

"I am getting solid pings/signal from your Gateway Static IP and all signal levels are in the green."

Yes. I know. How do I know? I TOLD YOU ABOUT IT.

When I could log into the gateway.

Which, from the LAN side, I often can't. It refuses all logins.

I told you that, too.

"There is nothing I am finding that would cause the intermittency you are experiencing."

What we are experiencing, @ComcastBusiness, is COMPLETE FAILURE TO PASS IPv4 AT ALL TIMES.

Being able to pass IPv6, while cute, is not "intermittency." We have been down for THREE DAYS.

We have been down, @ComcastBusiness, for THREE DAYS, with ZERO PROGRESS ON YOUR SIDE.

This is the FOURTH MAJOR OUTAGE SINCE OCTOBER and you are STILL not LISTENING TO US.

"The best way to test your services would be to directly connect a single laptop or PC to the back of the Comcast modem... and run a speed test at http://speedtest.xfinity.com."

Hard to run an IPv4 speed test when you pass zero (0) IPv4 packets, don't you think?

"If you direct connect and are getting the correct speeds (100MBPS DOWNLOAD/15 MBPS UPLOAD) this means the issue could lie somewhere in your networking equipment or we have too many devices connected."

OUR SPEED IS ZERO.

YOU ARE PASSING NO IPv4 PACKETS FROM THE LAN SIDE.

NONE.

What's it take, @ComcastBusiness?

In the last three days you've told us our modem is broken but you won't send us a new one, that our modem is fine and that it's our fault (spoiler: it's not) and that we need to do speed test on a modem which passes NO PACKETS from the LAN.

And - and - @ComcastBusiness you have to understand - your side has managed to diagnose NONE OF THIS.

I told _you_ the modem can pass IPv4 from _itself_ to the WAN. I'm fully aware the modem can pass IPv4 from itself to the WAN!

The problem is it can't move them from the LAN.

We got the same runaround the previous 3 major outages since October too, btw, @ComcastBusiness - but this one's even more insulting because it is a _complete_ outage. The last time, we had _some_ service.

Now the only service we have is IPv6 and attacks on my blood pressure.

At this point, @ComcastBusiness, we're three (3) days into a complete outage and you're back to telling us nothing is wrong because some intern managed to get the modem to send an IPv4 ping.

Which I TOLD YOU IT COULD DO.

Here's me telling you, @ComcastBusiness, on Friday, that the modem could pass IPv6 traffic but not IPv4 from WAN to LAN, and that the modem itself could pass IPv4 traffic. Remember this? You confirmed it was added to the ticket!

Of course, you closed that ticket too.

"I would recommend that you start with basic troubleshooting, and restart all of your equipment or contact your IT professional."

I RAN A DIVISION-LEVEL MAIL SERVER ROOM AT THE MICROSOFT CORPORATION.

I AM THE LOCAL IT PROFESSIONAL.

YOU KNOW THIS. My god.

(It was the smallest microsoft division at the time, but nonetheless, it's still true.)

"Alternately we can schedule a technician visit to verify that your services are working properly but if it's beyond the modem the technician can charge a $99.95 service fee due to not being a Comcast issue."

@comcastbusiness why you gotta hurt me like this?

You told us last night @comcastbusiness that you could see the modem was malfunctioning and needed to be replaced.

You also told us you wouldn't send a technician and also wouldn't send us a replacement modem.

Is this @AGOWA time or what?

Are you ever going to move IPv4 packets again?

I need to know, @comcastbusiness. This is our 4th major outage since Oct, all of which you blamed on us but were your fault, & you won't even acknowledge a problem. We are 100% down for 3 full days and counting.

Is it @AGOWA time?

Because at this point, @ComcastBusiness, I kind of have to act on the idea that you're never moving another IPv4 packet again and we're just going to be down for... at least another week. Probably two.

Friends don't let friends do @ComcastBusiness.

Hey, @ZiplyFiber - are your sales offices open on Sundays? Because I got some answers from your business tech people last night without even having a business account and they were the right answers.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

lol okay

solarbird — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 11:09:16 GMT

So I was doing some reading up on in-home COVID isolation protocols and one of the things I found was that a reasonable way to measure air exchange adequacy is to check carbon dioxide PPM counts, and open windows enough keep the CO2 count under 800ppm. So it's a pretty high number really, but - still, that's the number.

And that makes sense if you think about it, right? So I dug out my old greenhouse CO2 meter and set it up to see what we're looking at on the main floor - which is kind of serving as a buffer floor between the ground and upper floors as housemate isolates on the ground floor - and came up with a nice tight reading of... 526ppm... in a room with no open windows.

No nobody's really hanging out in that space so maybe it's gonna be kinda artificially low but that's still a really good number, so I went up to the smallish room where Anna and I have been hanging out all night and which has even more ventilation (one forced air register in, the door to the hallway out) checked that...

...and got a nice tight 620ish. In a small room with two people and no open windows, and one HVAC register.

And it's one thing to be pretty sure I run a nice tight HVAC ship, particularly given all our givens, but it's another thing to have some raw numbers that say yes, in fact, your fresh-air air exchange system is working really well, and this is one goddamn tight HVAC ship.

Arguably, it's too well. Once isolation times are over, I'll be closing it back up for heat efficiency, and now I have an air exchange target I can measure.

Brilliant.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

comcast business blows donkeys, leaves no donkey unsatisifed, part... 48, 49, and 50?

solarbird — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 06:12:00 GMT

So predictably, Comcast Business Internet didn't call us as they'd scheduled, and at that point I was presuming we were fucked for at least the weekend, so I went back to trying to arrange a solution to drive our wired LAN by the shared access point on my phone.

This sounds hilariously doomed, and I described it as such on Twitter, but I'd been inching closer to pulling it off for a couple of days as I experimented with it, and then once I had my best possible shot I pulled the trigger...

...and it works. Holy hell it works. It's shaky, not gonna lie, and it's slower than even Comcast, and the latency is a bit of a mess, but... it works! We can even stream video using it, it's fast enough for that!

It's the fourth major outage since October, btw. All four their fault. But if I can get some percentage of our client machines back online, that's something, right?

Right?

We've shelled out a bunch of money to boost our wireless data quota, which sucks, but hey, if Comcast can't give us packets, we've got to get them somewhere. Our servers are all offline, but by god, we have printers!

(And also gaming and file sharing and shit. You know. Basics.)

Oh, the reason we know this latest one is also Comcast's fault is because Anna called and ripped 'em a new one while I was putting all this stuff together. Normally, I'm the bad cop... okay, I'm still the bad cop. That was Anna being the good cop, which tells you had mad they made her.

Anyway, I was listening to Anna talking to them, and found out that all our trouble tickets get keep getting closed because they've decided our modem is broken - probably correct - but they aren't willing to send us a new one to install ourselves and can't send a tech out here with a new one so we're just screwed.

Literally no one has told us this until now. Apparently the fault was detectable on Friday, so they knew even as they were telling me the modem was fine and it was our equipment's fault.

Being told that, by the way, is what got me to write the SICK OF YOUR SHIT ROLL CALL post because I damned well knew better. And apparently, so did they. But at least now we know why the problem tickets keep getting closed.

Phenomenal work. Absolutely phenomenal.

Anyway, we've been up a few hours now, and I absolutely can't believe my single-point shared-network phone to wired ethernet bullshit is staying up this long. It's like, the hard part is keeping it from exploding, and yet... so far... it's... well...

It's not actually stable?

But it's doing a pretty decent job maintaining the illusion of stability.

And I kind of respect that.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

Another attack on a vaccination site

solarbird — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 22:43:48 GMT

This is the natural result of @GOP pro-plague politics, and why we have the worst COVID-19 numbers in the world.

InMinivanHell - @inminivanhell · 9:08 AM · Jan 8, 2022
Thomas Apollo went to a mobile clinic in Tustin, CA to protest covid vaccines. After calling employees “murderers” he assaulted them. Punching numerous staff members, leaving one requiring emergency care, it took 7 officers and a stun gun to subdue him.

He was cited & released.

[EMBEDDED ABC7 VIDEO OF ATTACK (KABC-TV 7 Los Angeles)]

The @GOP decided a long time ago to operate on the philosophy of “our country or no country,” in that if they don’t get to rule, there’s no functional country _to_ rule, which means unending sabotage when out of power.

Talk all you want about how we could have 100000s fewer dead - millions fewer long-term ill - how we could have this under control with rational steps.

None of it matters when you have a literal party of plague and sabotage - the @GOP - intentionally making everything worse.

This is the reality you HAVE TO face when actually trying to _implement_ COVID response.

You can science all you want - I certainly do - but if you do so ignoring the political reality on the ground, including the fact that @FoxNews and the @GOP will sabotage at every turn...

...then your plans may as well be astrology for all the good they’ll do.

The way out of this is to make pro-plague politicians and pro-sabotage parties to go down hard. To lock them out of power, and make it stick, because that power is the _only_ consequence they care about.

It’s been so obvious - so outright stated - for so long, and yet, people _not_ on Team Plague keep ignoring this basic reality, acting, planning, setting their own expectations as if this defining political axiom doesn’t matter.

Or doesn’t exist.

Like antivaxxers do with COVID.

Things you don’t want to be real are _still real_, no matter how much you wish or pray or demand they weren’t, be it COVID or structural white supremacy or the fact that the gop
actively boost the plague via sabotage.

Until you actually accept that, you can’t fix _anything_.

And that refusal to acknowledge reality… that, maybe more than anything else, is this moment’s actual defining axiom.

Not that we want to change reality. That’s fine.

That we won’t even acknowledge what our current reality even is.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

why are all the photos gone

solarbird — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 01:35:20 GMT

The photos are gone because fucking Comcast Business keeps taking us offline and can't get us online again for days every time they do it.

The photos will be back when Comcast Business takes its boot off our connectivity's neck again.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

comcast business blows donkeys, leaves no donkey unsatisifed, part... 46?

solarbird — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 23:48:28 GMT

After a couple of hours of trying, I finally got Tier 1 support to add the current situation to the current ticket. I did have to change the ticket number because they closed the original one without telling us, so that was great. And then they opened two others, one for tier 1 and tier 2. But in theory, this is on the tier 2 ticket now. Yay!

That's nearly two hours to get this text added to a ticket though. Jesus.

-----

The modem is not passing IPv4 packets across LAN to WAN. It _may_ be able to send IPv4 packets from _itself_ to the WAN, and it _can_ pass IPv4 packets from itself to the LAN, but it DOES NOT pass IPv4 packets _across_ LAN to WAN or (as far as I can tell) vice versa.

A simple test is using my laptop connected by wire directly to the modem, configured by the modem's DHCP. If I attempt to query your nameserver via IPv4 from this laptop, it _always_ fails. If I attempt to query your nameserver via IPv6 from this same laptop, it _always_ succeeds. See attached screencap.

The reason I believe the modem can talk IPv4 over the WAN is because if I use the built-in IPv4 ping functionality via the web interface, it reports success. Since it does so without details, I cannot be sure it's actually succeeding, as the administrative software is unreliable. But I suspect it's working.

However, any otherwise-identical attempt from the LAN side of the modem to use IPv4 pings to the same servers fail, 100% of the time.

The modem is showing other signs of IPv4 routing irregularities. I will describe one now:

If a laptop is connected to the LAN side of the modem with modem-issued DHCP address, pinging our fixed-IP machines on the same (LAN) side of the modem will sometimes work normally, sometimes succeed with great delay in ping issuance but _not_ response time, sometimes succeed with routing error complaints on some but not necessarily all packets, and sometimes (but rarely) fail outright, all within a few minutes of each other with no configuration changes.

The modem is showing other signs of irregular behaviour as well. I will describe the main one now:

The modem is sometimes refusing logins when given valid login credentials. If your support team resets the password to default, the default password will also not work, regardless of the number of resets.

I have discovered today that if one is attempting to login via the fixed IP (173.160.243.46) and it does not work, it will _probably_ work if one does exactly the same login attempt on the DHCP root address (10.1.10.1).

The same is also true in reverse. If login via the DHCP root address (10.1.10.1) is failing, trying exactly the same login via the fixed IP (173.160.243.46) will _probably_ work.

If there is a reasonable explanation for this behaviour other than modem failure, I am not seeing it.

For these and other reasons, I am strongly suspecting that the modem is not taking provisioning properly, regardless of what it is reporting. The only reprovisioning from your side that I have seen have any effect at all is a full factory reset from remote. (My attempt to do a factory reset via the front panel failed - as in, didn't seem to work at all - and as this was when it was refusing all logins, I could not try via the customer administrative access panels.)

At this point we are down for just short of 24 hours and we yet again request escalation to Tier 2. Tier 1 have demonstrated yet again that they are NOT CAPABLE of solving this problem, and this is our fourth major network outage caused by your side since October, all previous lasting between 2 and 5 days, this one so far only 1 day.

The ticket number, again, is [deleted]. Please add all of the above to the ticket. Thank you.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

comcast business blows donkeys, leaves no donkey unsatisifed, part... 43?

solarbird — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 23:43:43 GMT

Yeah. I tagged 'em. At this point, why the hell not?

SICK OF YOUR SHIT ROLL CALL:

1. "This isn't on our side, you should talk to your local IT about this."

A: It's been on your side EVERY TIME. Eventually, Tier 2 fixes it.

B: I AM THE LOCAL IT. I ran the WGA division server room at Microsoft. I HAVE SOME IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

2. "Have you power-cycled your modem?"

Classic.

3. "Are you sure you have the right password?"

You reset it to factory default. Three times. It won't start magically working.

4. "Windows should be restarted."

My fleet of Linux servers glares at you angrily.

5. "I'll re-provision the modem. Wait five minutes and try again."

That didn't work the last four times, why is it going to work now? Oh look, it didn't.

6. "Someone will call you Monday."

[No call]

"Tuesday"

[Calls wrong number]

"Wednesday"

[Tier 2 shows up and fixes it]

(If we're lucky. I think the quickest we've been back up was two and a half days.)

7. Me: "[X] in Tier 2 told us you need to do exactly this, and can do that."

Tier 1: "We can't do that."

[tries again]

Tier 1: "All done!"

[nothing actually done]

8. [support wakes up from idle after hours of silence and apparent inactivity] “Is it fixed yet?”

No. No, as you have apparently done nothing, it is not fixed yet. The problem will not magically go away. It. Is. Not. Fixed. Yet.

Honestly, and I mean this in all sincerity, it has felt _many times_ like we've been being trolled.

Tier 2 is generally good to great and totally know what they're doing. Nice people.

Tier 1 - by phone and online - was not always a nightmare. I remember this. But it is one now.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

the adventures of phone trees and airhorns

solarbird — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 23:37:46 GMT

Just tried to talk to Earthlink, in case they have fibre in our area yet and the evaluation services aren't aware of it.

After working my way through a _particularly_ nasty phone tree - seriously, who thinks fake typing sounds are a good idea - I reached someone.

It sounded like a Russian phishing sweatshop in there, for reals. I suppressed my laughter.

Ivan - or whoever - had to look up whether they offered fixed IP services on their business services, and came back after a reasonable period to confirm they did. So I gave him name and address and general requirements so he could look up our service location.

And he did some, and I was on hold for a couple of minutes, and he came back and said he would have to transfer me to his "Business people."

Except he answered on the "Business service" phone tree himself, and identified as that, so... that's fun. But I say okay.

Then I get a bit of hold music, and then SHARP METALLIC HORN NOISE RIGHT IN MY EAR, then more hold music, then a partial play of an recording that used the phrase "invalid transfer," and then I was abruptly disconnected.

So that went well.

We have all kinds of choices. As long as they all suck.

And again: this is the _sales_ experience.

Their support rating is _terrible_. I bet I can guess why.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

comcast business blows donkeys, leaves no donkey unsatisifed, part... 45?

solarbird — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 22:51:46 GMT

We're down again, it's Comcast's fault again, as usual Tier 1 service bots are presuming we're idiots and it's our fault. So I wrote this on Twitter.

I got into an argument a couple of months ago with a guy who was Damned Well Sure that I had a zillion internet options that could meet our needs other than Comcast, and that he - in Montana, I think? - damned well knew that and I should STFU about infrastructure internet.

As I sit in my fourth major provider-caused outage since October, knowing we can't get an on-site tech from our provider for at least four days, having no idea if or when we might hear from Tier 2 to be sure we actually need one, I think on that, while talking again to providers.

We have Comcast, who we're with now.

We have HughesNet Satellite. 25mbps maximum down - about 15% of what we have - and negligible speeds up.

We have ViaSat Satellite. 100mbps maximum down - a mere 50% cut - and negligible speeds up.

We have Earthlink! It's DSL! But 75mbps. 43% of our current, though I have to say, infinitely more than the 0% we have right now.

But what I know _from experience_ is that the copper in this neighbourhood is nightmarishly bad, as in dropped calls on landlines bad, so hard pass.

We have a variety of cell phone companies, of course. That's how I'm online right now. Bandwidth isn't bad, but hoo boy the latency. I don't know if they offer fixed IP these days, but I guess I should check.

And we have Ziply. They're fibre. The numbers are fine and I go to the website and find that these days they're offering fixed IP services at last! Are we in business?

I look for pricing, and can't find it, so I use their chat to ask, and they can't tell me! Because the business services page links to consumer sales chat, not business sales chat, and they give me a phone number.

It's the wrong phone number.

So I go back to the website and find the right phone number, and I call it, and after some phone tree, I actually get to business sales. Yay!

And they tell me there's a greater than 10 minute wait to talk to BUSINESS SALES and I should use the website or call back later.

Think about that for half a second.

It's a >10 minute wait and I should call back if I want them to... _sell me service_.

And I just think about what that implies for support.

Mind you, I've been trying for an hour to get online @ComcastBusiness support to confirm that they've received the information I provided them and added to the latest outage ticket, so it's hard to imagine it being too much worse.

It's literally a matter of "Please confirm the above DMs describing our current situation have been added to ticket [number]."

It's been an hour. I'm resending the request every 10 minutes.

To be fair, they said they needed the account name and address too about 20 minutes in.

But I gave them that.

No response.

So, yeah. As I sit here trying to get support even to acknowledge the information I've sent, and as I sit contemplating being told to call back to be able to talk to _sales_, I think about how many, many choices we have.

As long as we choose for everything to suck.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

a simple prototype

solarbird — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 06:07:07 GMT

Right then. A very simple prototype air-splitter and filter, with the filter on one output only.

It's as basic as it looks. It's a plastic-lined cardboard box with an intake and two outputs, one of which leads outside, the other of which leads to a small, easily acquired, cheaply available HEPA filter with charcoal prefilter.

I ran a very small test load of two bath towels in the washing machine, then in the dryer, to see whether we'd get much of anything out of it, and we do. Air coming out the filter is at 125F - very warm, but not hot enough to scald. Even on such a small, short test load, it bumped relative humidity at the sensor outside the laundry room by three points, and temperature up by about half a degree C. This all despite the window being open for additional ventilation while we wait out a COVID isolation protocol.

Obviously, this minimalist prototype effort lacks any sort of shutter system, but for the conditions of the test that's fine. This is in no small part about discovering how much this kind of maximalist filter slows exhaust into the room/heat and moisture reclamation, and how often it ends up needing to be cleaned.

I do think HEPA is over the top here, but it was convenient and nicely sized for the application. Also, for those who would have reason for HEPA-type filtration, it'd good to find that it does in fact allow for meaningful airflow, at least so far, with the relatively low pressure of an electric dryer. I will try this with the charcoal pre-filter, then, depending upon outcomes, replace the charcoal with a simpler plastic mesh (much akin to a typical lint screen) and see how that affects things.

There is no extra occlusion to the output vent hose, though that's certainly something which could be done. Basically, I don't want to create out-of-spec backpressure for the dryer, and in particular, I don't want to occlude outbound airflow in the event of complete filter blockage. This approach means that even were the filter to become completely blocked the dryer would behave normally, which means it can be completely blocked come warmer weather without having to resort to disassembly.

At the moment, my anticipated benefit case for this is mostly in very cold and/or dry weather, when inside humidity drops into the low to mid 30s. While it is in no way a constant supply like a humidifier, I think it could help delay the drying out of the building as a whole, via humidity retention in various humidity mass objects like couches, carpets, and so on.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

a quick memory of harry reid

solarbird — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 04:34:28 GMT

Gonna talk about Harry Reid for about half a second, maybe as part of an essay that's bubbling in my head about bad faith and the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party, because holy hell was Harry Reid good at bad faith.

What got me thinking about it was electoral-college shenanigans and thinking about the 2000 election - or rather, having it come to mind, because before that election, the Republicans thought there was a very real chance that they would win the popular vote and lose the electoral, and they were getting ready for that outcome.

They had a lot of plans and strategies, one of which involved trying to get electors to change their votes, complete with a second campaign that would feature sock puppet groups like the one they'd tentatively named "Democrats for Democracy."

A lot of people don't remember that shit, but I do.

But it went the other way, of course, and they immediately flipped on every level over to the sacredness of the electoral college and all that bullshit they do not and have never believed. It's something I think about.

And when Harry Reid died recently, all that made me think of him, but not in the good-memorial way, in the "oh, that fucking bastard" way.

When they say Harry Reid was a master of Senate procedure, what they mean is that he was a master of absolutely shitcanning bills rank-and-file Democrats wanted, sometimes overwhelmingly.

And most of all, he'd arrange it so the bills would actually come up for a Senate vote, but only when they were doomed - so he could vote for them along with the overwhelming majority of Democrats and say hey, I did my best.

One of his favourite tricks was to assign bills to multiple committees at the same time, so you'd get two different versions coming out of the committee process. If he wanted it to go down, he'd pick the one with the poison pill in it. If he wanted it to go up, but gutted or otherwise rigged to his blue dog democrat desires, he'd pick the one which would, in his prerogative as Senate majority leader.

He sank a lot of bills Democrats - particularly net activist Democrats, information freedom Democrats, anti-corporatist Democrats, and queer Democrats - really wanted, using the Republican Party to do it.

He was good at this, and he did it a lot, and he was subtle. Compared to Mitch McConnell's sneering pleasure at ending democracy, he was a master at corporatist horseshit. And seeing all those people sing odes to him last week was... kinda hard.

Because while he wasn't as big a horsefucker as Mitch McConnell, he was still one nasty son of a bitch.

He was just better - a lot better - at obscuring it.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

I think I've figured something out.

solarbird — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 01:57:46 GMT

I've been playing with ideas about how to recapture dryer exhaust heat in the wintertime, and how to do so with controllable humidity.

I realised during this event in particular that sometimes we want that humidity, or at least some of it. And that leads to a very, very simple - and trivial to engineer - solution.

Conveniently, today is laundry day, and I am running experiments.

Also posted to ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん; comments at Dreamwidth. Please comment there.

the get lucky scenario

solarbird — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 09:40:34 GMT

Let's talk about what I have been thinking of as the Goldilocks scenario, but which I've revised recently to the Get Lucky scenario...

...for COVID-19.

A Goldilocks scenario for COVID would be a variant that is both incredibly contagious but functionally harmless. Something that you don't even notice you have, basically all the time. Someone that sends no one not immunocompromised to the doctor and kills no one. And something that makes you mostly immune to both itself and other variants.

I've been watching Omnicron fairly closely since it started showing up in South Africa, both because of the obscene infection rate and the stunning decline in infections after that spike.

It's contagious like measles, which very few people remember, which is a nightmare. You're almost certainly going to get it.

That's either stage one of disaster - particularly given how good it's been at reinfecting people who have already had another COVID variant - or of a Goldilocks.

And it's looking like the improved outcome impact - particularly but not just for the vaccinated - isn't just in the laboratory. It just doesn't replicate as well in the lungs, due to mutations that cause it difficulty in attaching to the update receptors in the lungs that previous variants have been using. It's amazeballs at replicating in the throat - 70 times better than Delta - which gives you the world's worst sore throat ever and is why it's so unbelievably contagious. But it's just not nearly as good as previous variants at working those delicate lung tissues.

So far.

Mind you, if you are unvaccinated, Omicron can and will still fuck you up, but good. It can kill you ugly, it can give you Long Covid, and if it can do that it can also give you long-term major organ damage, which is most certainly a big chunk of what Long Covid actually is.

But if you're vaccinated, even more than six months ago, that's looking... fairly unlikely, compared to previous versions. Something that can still happen, but it's looking, again... fairly unlikely. That's what the curves are showing so far.

And if you're vaccinated and boosted... it's probably not going to happen. Those numbers are damn near flat.

It can still happen. But it's really unlikely. So far.

So if you're vaccinated and boosted...

...that's looking a whole lot like stage two of a Goldilocks scenario.

And the researcher (and vaccine development leader) I refer to as Doctor Furry on Twitter has been doing a lot of research and reporting on resistance to reinfection after Omicron... and it protects against Delta, and all other previous variants as well.

Getting Omicron is not as effective as vaccine plus booster, but it's good enough to matter.

For the vaccinated, and even more certainly for the vaccinated plus boosted...

...this is starting to look like a Goldilocks scenario.

But there's a huge anti-vaccination movement here that the Republican Party - the Party of Plague - has been fostering and boosting and courting and rallying. For them, it's not Goldilocks. It'll still kill and maim a lot of them, but even with that...

...the odds aren't too bad that they might well just get lucky.

And that's why I'm calling this a possible Get Lucky, not a Goldilocks.

Because if you're not vaccinated, that's what it is.

But if you are vaccinated, this is looking like it just might be a Goldilocks.

And if all this holds true, and if the rest of the world including us sees the kind of infection falloff rate in South Africa, and a few other countries which had Omicron early, if if if...

...if all that holds...

...this could be basically over in the US by May.

Not completely over as in gone forever, but over as in but over enough. And this time, for real.

I'm by no means saying this is definitely going to happen. Gods only know what other mutations we could get. (Which isn't necessarily bad, there's some real interesting speculation about what's happening in Japan that I'm not qualified to analyse.)

But I'm saying it could happen, if all these factors we're seeing actually play out the way we're seeing them playing out now.

So for the love of god get vaccinated, if you're not. If you are, get boosted as soon as possible. Be ready to ride out the next six weeks, because it's bad now, and it'll almost certainly get worse before it gets better. January could be even more of a nightmare than right now.

But for the first time in a while, I'm seeing signs of light past this storm. It could be an illusion, a mirage, an overly optimistic reading of early data. It could be lightning, a new, worse mutation - a second Black Swan.

But for once, in this whole miserable mess, maybe it's time. Maybe this time, finally...

...we get lucky.

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related to the snow day

solarbird — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 21:20:14 GMT

watching it on television, the seahawks at home in green bay playing the chicago bears

seriously it looks like a game at green bay it's hilarious

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the doctor who and japan channel, part 4: the snow day

solarbird — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 21:18:39 GMT

So we have serious snowfall here today, and temperatures well below freezing. It's currently -4.5C, with temperatures expected to fall through the day. We have over 13cm of snow and it's still falling.

I was really curious what all this falling snow would do to our antenna performance, right? Because we've known this has been coming for days. And now I know, and... I'm surprised in multiple ways!

All the stations we receive directly are fine. Weirdly, some of them are better - by the numbers, anyway - implying that some tree branches are being bent down out of the way somewhere, or something else like that.

Except for one. There's one that's gone down. It's not the low-power station down at Tiger Mountain - that's fine!

It's KTBC / NHK World. Signal is through the floor. Most of the time, no picture at all.

That's the station that we get by catching a signal bounce off of Tiger Mountain...

...which is currently covered in massive amounts of new snow.

So I think all the snow on the ground has stopped the mountain from reflecting the signal. The snow is either absorbing most of the signal or distorting the reflection so badly it can't be picked up, because the low-70s signal is currently low-20s and I'm not getting a goddamn thing except enough occasional flashes to see it's still on the air.

I'm kinda mad but also this is kind of hilarious because of all the outcomes I was expecting, "everything better except the one that we ended up getting on a bounce" was not one of them.

Goddammit xD

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