Christmas Eve in Fujisawa, books, covid article

Thanks to the pandemic, this isn't my first Christmas alone. Or even the first in another country. First in a country that doesn't care much about it, though. Japan does care a bit, so I thought I'd at least take a peek, after two days in for leg recovery and rain-avoidance.

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In non-Japanese news, I've been reading the Books of the Raksura. I think the Murderbot books are more entertaining, also better edited -- bunch of low level grammar errors in these. Still, they've become entertaining. I read "The Falling World" by mistake; going back to the actual first book was much more intelligible.

Watanare 7 is in the queue; I look forward to it with a mix of anticipation and "what drawn-out shenanigans now?" dread.

Watatabe anime continues to be good.

I read the Bovadium Fragments, a recently published Tolkien thing, basically a short satire about cars in Oxford, and political fight over a bypass road. Was interesting both for his writing and the historical context of cars taking over an newly-industrialized Oxford.

And, this should really have its own post, but a review article on whether it's fair to call SARS-Cov-2 "airborne AIDS". Short answer: strictly speaking no, they're pretty different. But there's a lot of evidence of SARS2 messing up your immune system in its own ways, with rising rates of other disease infections and maybe cancers, so in a "should I really try to avoid getting this?" sense, then yes.

covid revisionism

So today I've learned of some books of "covid revisionism", attacking the 'lockdowns' and other restrictions of 2020, saying they did more harm than good. Especially In Covid's Wake, by two political scientists who avoided talking to subject matter experts like epidemiologists. I've also read 3 good responses to the movement; I'll leave you to decide whether the book authors are merely incompetent or actively dishonest.

This Atlantic article is the best; read that if you read just one.

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