Alyssa Schwartz

Boo! I will miss them! New resort, new style, no recaps—so much to get used to this year.

Are you not doing recaps this season?

I would hope, but I’ve seen a lot of studies that are based on self report. Re: this study, I’d be shocked if they were PCRing that many people frequently over a prolonged period. And if testing with RATs, those have limitations (especially in the U.S. where official guidance is still nose only)

Similarly, I think denying the shortcomings of mRNA vaccines and the way their effectiveness was overhyped has made people distrustful. People are still told they’re the best way to prevent infections, and can see people all around them still getting covid.

Also worth considering that public health’s silence re: the long covid and other post covid complications people are seeing all around them created a vacuum anti-vax propagandists have been eager to fill. By failing to educate PH allowed them to seize the narrative.

Not to mention, how are they even tracking infections for a study like that? Self report? I wonder if there’s a correlation between not getting vaccinated and never testing.

Just saw a post on Mastodon (which, honestly, I like very much) that said "if you like Bluesky's starter packs, you can do the same thing here, all you have to do is upload a CSV...", which I think explains some of the comparative popularity of the platforms.

Dr. Phil too

As God is my witness, I will never forgive Oprah Winfrey for foisting Dr. Oz upon all of us. Never.

Flavor Flav balls up on some troll

BEST thing about this site,, I can hide negative replies and unattach my posts from reposts that are rude,,, I ain’t gonna take no negativity or trolling on my page.

You will not build up by tearing others down here.

Pro-tip for journalist colleagues and others who do interviews: After years of tinkering, I've settled on a workflow system using Tape-A-Call Pro on my phone and Rev for AI transcripts and it is...a game changer.

I highly recommend each. The recorder is reliable and the transcripts are accurate.

Stephen King, master of the horror novel, just quit Twitter because it'd become too "dark."

That's how horrifying Twitter is right now.

There may never be a more perfect expression of this fact.

the gradual replacement of “exchanging money for goods” with “exchanging money for a license to use goods as a service” has been one low key one of the worst changes of the 21st century

Also how you create more anti-vaxxers or vax skeptics when vaccines don’t live up to that promise.

Today’s essential read.

Controversial opinion. I stand with @SKGandhiMD who made an honest mistake and BC’s political world is poorer for it.

charliesmithvancouver.substack.com/p/what-dr-sa...

Two things can be true though. This thread on the other site got me thinking about how the right wing has used these tactics before. The part about bot farms felt very familiar. Antisemitism on the left definitely exists but it serves the far right’s purposes to stoke it x.com/jmj/status/1...

To my Western leftist friends, from your leftist Israeli friend The last two weeks (or almost three) have been the worst of many of our lives. I started writing this on October 7th, and I’ve been writing…

It makes me so sad that the people who need to read this probably never will yuval-idan.medium.com/to-my-wester...

A cyber attack is still ongoing at the Toronto Public Library too.

Almost like it's coordinated, turnips.

Part of #NoNewsAtAll

#IDUPlaybook

www.thestar.com/news/gta/tor...

This absolutely works. Recommend.

Opinion | What I saw when I watched videos of the Hamas attack The video record of Hamas’s rampage on Oct. 7 shows how helpless men, women and children died — and how their murderers celebrated.

"the fact that the killers were clearly having so much fun is a special aspect of the massacre that must be reckoned with in any historically and psychologically complete account."

What I saw when I watched videos of the Hamas attack

We've been telling Republicans for years now that "If there's one Nazi at your rally, then it's a Nazi Rally."

We must now have the courage to apply those same principles to ourselves.

Now that you’ve set the foundation, could you please take a closer look at the billions McKinsey has collected from all levels of government in countries around the world pushing mass covid infection and a return to normal?

Some receipts:

x.com/arijitchakra...

x.com/mamatoronto/...

Hopped onto Twitter to see updates on Lewiston, and my feed is basically:

Terminally online person
News organization
Scummy Ad
News org
News org
Scummy Ad
Scummy Ad
Terminally online person

We've talked about how impt Twitter is during breaking news, and it's clear: Elon killed a public service.

Four skills for these times, I think:
1. Updating perceptions of reality to what it currently is, not some remembered "normal."
2. Not lowering you vision of the world you want to see.
3. Holding the tension created by distance between the #1 & #2.
4. Cultivating communities to help with #1-#3

Toronto Public Library is the best. Really. I took it for granted growing up. I thought every library system had this stuff.

As a kid, we’d borrow 16mm movies and a projector from the library and do family movie nights on the wall at home.

The clickety clack of that projector is a fond memory.

seems bad, to me

Signal boost please 🙏🏽

What’s happening with Twitter is like a reverse stone soup parable. As people exit for Threads, Mastodon, BlueSky etc, we each take our small contributions away and the potluck stew gets progressively thinner and less appetizing.

In related news, Doug Ford says new park benches at Ontario Place will each count as a new single-family dwelling.

Even the pharmacies tasked with vaccinating us don’t want to say the c-word