Thank you. I am not blaming myself, I am looking for ways and means) and sometimes finding them. But yes, I would like to have to make fewer choices.
Mary Chernyshenko
Karma: 733
Only needs a flying saucer
Thank you, this is great. I still have lots of misgivings, safety-wise, but I guess this is how it is for now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant is on fire. I wasn’t afraid of that. I didn’t believe it possible.
The thing of which I am currently very afraid is any kind of accident happening to a refugee train. People say there will be no more taking prisoners.
I am thinking mostly about the situation in Ukraine (the harvest, the next school year, the next winter). I guess in Europe, the consequences and the timescales to consider will be different—maybe more of the “which college should I choose to study in for the next several years” kind?
As I lack information on Europe it seems more prudent to be more vague. (Huh, that’s a thought—“what kind of information does one need here”.) What areas of life can be affected? Maybe you will end up learning to cook exotic foods just to take your mind off things (in the best possible way) or developing a personal ranking of the news sources. It all depends on what you want.
What timescales are you considering? There are probably consequences further down the line, not just this spring.
Thank you very much for your generosity. I passed it on to others in our local chat.
(Funnily enough, it seems that in Ukraine, most news is now narrowly focused on some very particular issue/geographical object/… and so things don’t appear “more” or “less” historical. I wonder what ends up actually important, and what is simply important-but-unreported, but right now I can’t sort it out. At least celebrity gossip is down.)
I’m ok right now, and thank you a lot for your concern.
I thought about writing something, but I’m thinking much more short-term & not unbiasedly. We’re ~ 15km outside Kyiv, which has been striked, and ~ 10km outside Brovary (also), so we have heard explosions but not seen any yet. Going down to the cellar occasionally (it gets furnished ever cosier), not thinking about work (Because Nerves), checking up with relatives. There’s nothing much to do. Can’t run—the roads are congested & trains are being cancelled, and I don’t feel like I can join a guerilla team because of my family. I know some LW-reading people in Kharkiv who are sure to have it worse.
People are reacting in wildly different ways, of course. We check the news often. In my bubble there is also talk about how this is going to affect sending the next Antarctic research team to the station (to relieve the guys there); street warfare; the situation at the Chernobyl atomic station now that it is taken by the Russians; donations for the Army (blood, money, transport etc.); the position of Nature’s editorial team re:situation in Ukraine (oddly pro-Russian); house pets (many bomb shelters will let you in with one); prayers; mail delivery delays; children’s emotions after watching the news; (often suspended) education; and soon, I expect (edit after autocorrection to “except” :) ), gardening.
The rumor has it this night will be hard, but then again, it’s a rumor.
Break a switch and go counting the carriages until you see it again?
People can say “all of these aren’t good” and “I’d do it” without having to tie themselves in knots.
Please be alright, it’s a horrible thing to be robbed. I don’t think I can help from here, but still.
(that thing about “starting one position later” immediately reminded me of mutations affecting the nucleotide sequence, where starting one position later is also a big deal:) )
One of mine is Athos from ‘Twenty years after’. I admire his dedication, plainness of speech, valor, level-headedness, ability to just not defend things he finds unworthy of defence even when it would be to his advantage, etc. At most, he “says” something like, “Shall we? Yes, we shall.”—and this is enough.
One of mine is a (real actually) gander whose name is Жирний (Fatty). The fictional him is more optimistic / not-depressed than me; a generous, unsophisticated, slightly egotistical, proud of his flock, kinda shy, but of times wordy, magnificent bird. He just never hesitates to be kind to others when my self-image would invent a carload of reasons not to.
And just the good old absolutely trustworthy Roman army guy who does what he has to do, sings as he whittles his arrows, looking up to smile cheekily at his dejected friend and wiggles his sun-bleached eyebrows with an outrageous joke that makes one actually forget the reason they approached him.
Perhaps not the most helpful character, but.
Personalized medicine doesn’t start with knowing your genetic polymorphisms. It doesn’t even get there for a while or maybe ever.
PM starts with admitting you’re a piece of meat with benefits. For example, test your bacteria for resistance to specific antibiotics; your bacteria are a part of “you” and have a say in what “your immune system” ends outputting. And so on. I have my own meat quirks, so I won’t get into other examples. I just wanted to point out that “everybody has some Xs” doesn’t mean “starting with Xs is not-personalized”. It might be not-personalized enough, yes.
(The link to the FB post which made me think about it: https://www.facebook.com/1083787039/posts/10221476648680647/ it’s in Russian. Basically, a girl came to a doctor to ask why is she fat despite there being no genetic polymorphisms pointing that way. The doctor starts to think the fashion to be less harmless than he used to.)
(your first point is not very convincing, it can easily be a dead monkey anyway; “I have not put a monkey in my closet” seems a better choice?)
(Abramovich, not Abromavich. It’s from the name Abram originally.)