ok, yeah - i've picked up a dry cough. good. let's hope it's covid-19 and i get the thing beat nice and quickly over what was a down period in the scheduling so i'm immune for the rest of the summer.

i'm going to need to go to the store this week, but i tend to spend these periods between shows inside anyways, and i actually wanted to get some work done. i can promise to avoid old folks, at least.

to be clear: i don't know whether it's coronavirus or not. but i'm not worried about it enough to get treatment. i'm hoping i just beat it easily and move on.

"it is better to burn out than to fade away"

this, i would propose, is a better way to understand the debate between herd immunity and "flattening the curve".

i hope that ends up big enough.

this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.

but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.

you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.

the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.

don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.

i think boris johnson was (accidentally.) correct. you want to protect the old and weak, yes. but you want to let this thing run it's course quickly and burn out, rather than draw it out and pick people off over months.

so, i made a choice to wait until i got back from the concert on thursday night before i reimaged the machine, because i figured i'd have to do it again anyways.

i have eaten well since i got back, in case i picked anything up. i'm mildly hungover, and have produced some watery bowel movements, but i'm willing to blame it on the alcohol; i don't feel sick.

i did communicate with the divisional court, and they've informed me that the motion has moved to an administrative judge due to my complaint. they didn't send me anything regarding this. but i was instructed to call back on monday.

i don't expect to leave the house at all for the next 6 or 7 days, so let's hope i can get some work done this week.

and, let's get started on the reimage.

my bios looks clean, at least.

i've said this before: if there's anything in this universe worth worshiping, if there's any approximation to a deity, it's the fucking sun.

i don't expect it to react to any sympathetic magic, mind you.

but, the ancients were right on that point, at least.

one of the previous links points out that one of the things that "st patrick" is known for, apocryphally or not, is putting the sun in the celtic cross.

if st patrick's day is essentially a glossed over spring equinox festival, it makes sense that they would have retained the symbolism of the sun.

what they would have been celebrating is the return of the sun for another year - the moment the days get longer again. 

we might not have the narrative, it may have been burned - unless it's hiding deep in one of those hibernian monasteries, waiting to be refound. or maybe buried somewhere deep in an icelandic glacier, waiting to be uncovered as the climate changes. it may even be in some underground tunnel under the vatican, hidden underground to be never found again.

but, i think we can figure this out, can't we?

it's the sun. it's back! hooray!

and, don't tell me that christianity is my history or i should embrace the identity of an irish catholic. that's a bunch of colonial bullshit.

it's not my history, and i will do no such thing.

and, you're an ignorant, colonized fool if you insist upon it - you don't know your own history, it's been stolen from you.

our history has been erased.

i was hoping to find some documentation of the obvious solstice festival that st. patrick's replaced. i'm not going to do the math or look up how close march 17th would have been to the solstice, through whatever gregorian/julian conversions, in the third or fourth century of the common era. it hardly seems worth the effort; the deduction is obvious.

the closest thing i could find was an association with a kind of fertility cult that comes off as something out of a gimbutas text. that kind of makes sense, at least, but if it's true then we've lost the narrative - all we have is some sculptures.

so, it appears that we don't even know what festival st. patrick's day replaced. that's how brutally colonized we are.

so, what's more offensive?

st patrick's day or thanksgiving?

and, do you see the parallel i'm trying to draw, why there's a natural historical alliance between northern europeans and indigenous americans?

https://www.learnreligions.com/st-patrick-and-the-snakes-2562487

https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/17/how-a-pagan-celebrates-st-patricks-day-6513439/

i'm going to start a petition to cancel 3/17 in favour of 3/14.

i suspect that most pi day events will attract at least 3 people.

but, due to the coronavirus, i'd expect there to be much less than 4, on average.

meaning you're looking at roughly 3.1415 people per event.

no, i'm not sorry. but, you're welcome.

and, i don't care about st. patrick's day. at all.