I haven't lost my sense of taste and smell. I have been actually kind of curious, although I'm sure the novelty wears off after ten minutes. My brother-in-law just kept eating cheeseburgers and wings despite not tasting it, but couldn't really say why. (I'm reminded of the scene in A Wrinkle In Time when they're fed sand masquerading as meals, on planet Camazotz.)

Other than that I'm feeling better than yesterday. I like taking TheraFlu because I like the little ritual of drinking hot medicine. When I'm on Tylenol and whatever else, I feel pretty normal.

CharleyCarp writes: Would anyone like to discuss our continuing obligations to the people of Afghanistan? This is worth reading. I'll admit that I'm a little torn here. It's one thing to help rebuild a defeated enemy, but helping a victorious enemy is surely asking us to be better than we are. Particularly an enemy with as few redeeming attributes as the Taliban. Obviously, though, the scale of the impending disaster is huge, and the people who are going to die as a result of our actions/inactions are not the ones we want to punish.

Heebie's take: Here's the opening sentence:

So this is how we "end" Forever Wars: through inflicting by inflicting catastrophic economic damage as an American policy choice. Call it population-centric vengeance.

Afghanistan is due charity and aid for all the reasons Ackerman describes, in order to forestall massive starvation this winter. And also, the track record for US instincts in how to help Afghanistan is so very, very bad. (Another simplistic take on complicated topics from yours truly.)

CThis is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode Kobe twelve.

It's a variation on one of these CRT bans, but with a new spin:

A bill pushed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel "discomfort" when they teach students or train employees about discrimination in the nation's past received its first approval Tuesday.

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that they admitted it's about white discomfort, and not pretending that it's about factual inaccuracies. In a weird way, it's like we're actually living in the same reality. I also think white people may feel discomfort when they take an eensy peak at the racist underpinnings of everything and possibly consider how they benefit.

This is kind of round-a-bout, but I found it interesting. I read this clickbait-y thing from Pocket: The One Unexpected Sign You May Be Gaslighting the People Around You.

First off, the word "gaslighting" has run its course, and then jumped on a shark and ran that course, and then finally jumped off that, too. It is especially meaningless in this article. I'll get back to that word, though, when I get to my point. It turns out the one weird trick is this:

"If your partner, friend, or colleague expresses a desire to talk about what happened, do you brush them off or redefine the fight as 'a little tiff,' refusing to acknowledge that, to the other person at least, it was a significant event which needs to be dealt with?" she says.

"Disregarding someone else's emotional and processing needs in this way, over time, has the effect of silencing them. What point is there in discussing things with you if you deny the significance of what happened before?"

Such a reaction also validates any bad behaviour that may have occurred during the argument (shouting, name-calling etc.) and trivialises the hurt the other person feels as a result.

Here's my take: this article is written for emotionally avoidant people who have spent their life convinced that they can out-rational emotions, and have become insanely difficult people to be in a relationship with. They never, ever seek out articles that discuss emotions or connections or relationships. They think their partner is kind of hysterical and shrill and is constantly harping on them.

So in order to reach this audience, the author had to take this big winding clickbait entry point and almost sneak it onto the radar of the person who would not normally read this kind of thing. Then the author had to be extremely gentle and nonconfrontational and not do anything to make the extremely "rational" person become extremely defensive. The goal of the article is just to open the door the slightest crack, and let some light in on the possible notion that YTA.

I just think this is an unusual thing for an article to do! Usually relationshippy articles are written for people who enjoy that kind of thing, or get stuck ruminating or turning emotions over in their mind, intentionally. I appreciate that this article is trying to get avoidant people to do a wee bit of emotional labor. (If you actually click through and read it, please prepare to roll your eyes a lot at the use of "gaslighting".)

An infuriating thing about Covid minimizers is that eventually we'll all agree that the situation has finally reached some sort of nbd status, and they'll feel like they were right all along. In fact, the longer they've been irresponsibly minimizing the danger, the greater their smug early-adopter feeling will be.

Gradually, one-by-one, we'll all tick over into no-big-deal territory as we reach some sort of equilibrium with the availability of good treatment options and safety for all. And superficially, that will give the appearance that we're all crossing over from our side of the divide to theirs. And that is infuriating.