A community of support for healthy eating

Please keep wearing your N95 mask out there in the world, when you're around other people.

Because SARS-CoV-2 infection causes blood clots which can damage any organ in the body, and because SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect so many tissues, it therefore produces a wide variety of illness. It causes all sorts of problems that were possible even before this virus showed up, so it's hard to isolate the signal of what this specific virus is doing to humanity when contrasted against other potential factors. It infects the organs with immune privilege: the brain, eyes, and testicles. Even though there is some evidence that people are newly catching COVID less frequently than before, the lower incidence doesn't matter if these infections are permanent because of the immune privilege and other methods of persistence, staying in multiple reservoirs.

Long COVID is real and increasing. It's real in adults, it's real in children, and it maybe affects as many as 6 million children in the USA. SARS-CoV-2 is known to cause a long list of damages like: heart damage, anemia, liver injury, spleen enlargement, kidney and intestine damage, POTS, brain fog, and other autonomic dysfunctions, plus the well known pneumonia, plus the well-known heart attacks and strokes, plus the immune system damage.

It makes me sad to learn the stories of real people whose families are affected by problems that I know to be associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. No matter how many times you've had COVID before, it's worthwhile to not get COVID again. I still wear my mask around other people. Please, be safe out there.

And, if you're noticing symptoms, maybe try one of the locations in this list to see if someone can help you test for specific issues and find reasonable actions to take in response.

I didn't accomplish much during my "weekend", but at least I got some brush burned in the fire pit. I don't know who left the pile of branches in the alley at my house last year, but I cut it up and burned it today, finally getting rid of it. My back was complaining while I cleaned up that mess, and I kept wondering who deliberately put them on my property so they didn't have to do this kind of work themselves.

There's so much work remaining, but I made noticeable progress. The afternoon went well, but I still have a few microscopic thorns from those terrible burdock burrs. It was mildly satisfying, every time I threw another collection of dry stems and burrs into the fire pit. I know the stems and roots are supposed to be edible, but... those burrs. They just need to go live somewhere else besides my yard.

As I warned about yesterday, winter is not yet done with Minneapolis.

Here's the view out of the patio door at the front of my house this morning. We have sub-freezing temperatures forecast for tomorrow morning too.

P.S. I wanted to mention somewhere that while I was digging with a shovel in the front yard yesterday, a lady from next door (public housing unit) stopped to thank me. "For what," I asked, genuinely confused. "For the air conditioner and the whistle," she said. I replied while smiling, "Oh, sure!" Not very eloquent, but I'm not exactly the master of human interactions. When I finally ordered a new smaller air conditioner unit last spring that would fit properly in my bedroom window, I offered the older/bigger unit to them for free, so it wouldn't go unused. Plus, they got one of foeclan's 3d-printed whistles when I delivered notes to my neighbors back in January.

I said last year that I wouldn't go see Project Hail Mary in the theater, even with a mask.

Unfortunately, I lied.

I did go see it with a mask today. It took much of the day. I walked out the front door about 1:35pm and walked back in at 6:45pm. It's a long bus ride to that Roseville theater, but at least there's a single route that goes directly there from near my house. Life without a car just doesn't have the convenience of life with a car, but that's perfectly fine. Maybe the world would be better off if humans couldn't indulge their whims so easily, requiring actual effort to do things, making choices about how to spend precious hours of their lives.

I was very right, at least, about this movie being a great influence for encouraging humans to being open to new experiences. I've been following the subreddit for the story, and it was people waxing poetic about the impact of the movie that made me decide to splurge and go see it on the big Imax screen while it's still here, after most of the crowds had already attended. It is indeed a powerful film for that effect.

Having read the story, however, I was still disappointed about so very much storytelling left out of the film. I've heard that there is footage for more than 4 hours of film, and like others I hope that we'll someday soon get the director's cut that includes everything. Some people are asking for that extended version to be released in theaters too. I'd be happy to watch this movie with an intermission. It was several decades ago that I saw "Gone With The Wind" at a theater in west Texas, with my mother and another relative. I don't even know if another movie has been released since then that included a break to allow people to move around and visit the restroom. I would gladly, though, watch a 4-hour version of Project Hail Mary.

For people who are interested in it beyond the movie, more than a few people have said that the audio book is an excellent experience, something in between the movie and the text book.