175 one flag short of a pride parade

This looks like it was the best year to do BurningMan since about 1996, the first year I went. That was before people died and the rules got really rule-y.

The official event was cancelled this year, or rather moved online. As a result, there were self-organized burns here in the city (where it started) and in the desert (where it's been since the early '90s). And honestly, self-organized is a big part of what the event has been missing for a long while. This year looked fun!

But here in SF, where we are taking the cautious approach, I guess our current mayor isn't a burner.

(Photo courtesy friend of a large friend.)

It was also a pretty good year for a boat parade in Texas...

...To sink themselves. That display of flags is almost ready for a pride parade. We're more similar than not, so why can't we just agree on that and move along?

Mainly posting because we rented one of these Skoda Citigos last year. It's a rebadged VW Up.  Three cylinder, under a hundred horsepower, and ridiculously fun to drive.

Now VW/Skoda had to stop taking orders on the electric version. They've already sold out the next year and a half of production, and after that they want to introduce a new model.

This is why VW is promising to be all electric within a few years, and Musk just became richer than Zuck.

But it still won't fix the climate crisis.

Imagine going camping for the weekend, and ending up a climate crisis refugee. We talked about it when we were in Lassen. Most of our party was in agreement, the thing to do is not pack up, just flee, up the seven mile dirt road to the paved highway.

I was the only one who thought it would be better to drive out onto the cinder cone left over from an eruption a couple hundred years ago. I'm not sure how the car would do on the loose volcanic rock, but I'm pretty sure the fire wouldn't follow us, except sparks. Big clearings can save your life.

With receipts down 85% year over year, lots of these boards are staying up.

What's next? Will we be led out of this with more carrots?

And what happens if you run out of carrots? It sure would be nice if we had a united, local and national strategy for dealing with this pandemic. 

Oh well, guess we're too busy being great.

Or shutting down these places...

It turns out, statewide, doing a home food business is actually legal, since 2018.

But only one county has agreed to the law.

In the meantime, counties have been too busy closing businesses to let any open.

So once again, it's up to the people to lead.

As we move into the fall sick season, there's a trend emerging. When kids get infected with Cov2, especially young, semi-independent adults, lots are not going to get tested voluntarily, or even tell anyone.

Why? Because the hassle of being an official statistic, quarantining and all of that, is worse for a lot of us than a few days of mild symptoms.

Which will, of course, only lead to more spread.

Time for a little science. (Or at least, a vocabulary lesson.)

Biology class: your nose and mouth are connected. To your ears and eyes, as well. 

And the rest of your body, after a few days of viral reproduction.

At which point, Cov2 does a shitty little trick, and turns your body into a turbocharged Cov2 replicator.

And then the bradykinins might take over. I don't know what they are, other than they're not cytokines, which doctors originally suspected.

And they do this.

And then this.

And this.

But getting some sun helps! (Hmm... Where have I heard that before? And why is every ICU/Covid ward indoors at this point? During the 1918 pandemic they at least figured that one out.)

 

Are we going to be hearing a lot more of this? 200,000 people in the city are claiming unemployment, out of a total population of 900,000. That's probably 30-40% of our workforce. 

Sounds like we need some help with the rent.

So what do we do? More services? More shelters?

More camps? 

Less lobbiests?

I don't know what to file this under.

And finally, some housekeeping. Based on this being post number 175, in a few days I'll have been doing this for six months. When I started looking at blogging, I read that if you don't have an audience after six months, you should consider doing something else with your time. 

So what do you think? Are you enjoying this POV? Want me to keep going? Here's my ask, in return: share this post. On social media, or by sending a link to a friend in a message. It would be awesome to have a reader or two I don't know personally.

Thanks for checking in again, and see you tomorrow. Be safe.