Status:
Heatwave day two. Managing pretty well in the house thanks to fans and water and not moving. Having worked in the bakery during heatwaves I know how lucky I am right now.
Rabbits are doing OK thanks to slabbed areas of their run being fully shaded and staying a few degrees below the human-level air temp. We’re monitoring and can bring them inside if needed but would rather leave them in their space.
In theory rabbits evolved in hot climates but in practice they doze through the hottest part of the day in underground burrows, coming out to feed at dawn and dusk. I’m thinking we need to give them somewhere underground that they can’t dig out of. Hmm…
Many more links today as I’ve been on the sofa. Have been experimenting with the Big Read section as a kind of “if you only click one link…” thing. There’s also Chums Have Posted which is for when people I know personally have put something on the open web. Think of it like retweeting or whatever we’re calling that now.
Big Read:
- The painful truth about Long Covid — Haven’t recently read a big survey of where we’re at with diagnosing and treating Long Covid, so this was really interesting given I’ve been undergoing ‘treatment’ for the last 6-9 months. I put that in quotes as it’s really management of a condition, not attempting to cure me. I’ve been told I probably won’t return to my previous state but I will get a little more functional (based on my assessment I’m likely to regain 30% of my previous capacity)
- The really interesting thing here was finding my treatment featured as somewhat controversial. I believe I’m undergoing what they here call brain retraining, trying to break the feedback loop of fight or flight. Apparently this makes people angry because they see it as dismissing their illness as “all in their head”, which I get.
- I asked Claire Every, a patient who runs Long Covid Advocacy in the UK, what she thought of these approaches. “It’s quite soul-destroying as someone with severe long Covid to be told that it’s either your trauma, or your emotions, or your mental framing,” she said. “I think it’s an awful thing to do to somebody.” She and other advocates also worry that emphasis on psychological therapies will distract from biomedical research that could yield a breakthrough disease-targeting intervention.
- My take, as a victim of this weird thing, is my trauma, emotions and mental framing are a huge part of my Long Covid. I can deal with suddenly getting out of breath. I can’t deal with suddenly not being able think, and the anger and frustration that follows. And it makes perfect sense that the mental anguish feeds back into my physical state, because the mind and the body are in the same meat sack. If we can fix one the other might benefit.
- But I understand the suspicion and fear. Most people with Long Covid / CFS have been dismissed by medical professionals who can’t find a physical problem. We desperately need there to be a biomedical marker that says “this is a disease” so they can take us seriously. I think it’s hugely illustrative that the Chronic Fatigue service is Birmingham is based in the Neuropsychiatry department at the QE hospital. The main building, where they fix you with knives and drugs, is a huge space-age complex. Neuropsychiatry is bundled in with mental health in a completely separate, dull-looking building on the other side of the car park. It’s almost like the physical-symptom doctors are embarrassed about the stuff they can’t fix.
Reading:
- ‘The soul’s been ripped out of it’: Birmingham community housing scheme on brink over costs dispute — Quite surreal to see the housing project I was involved with for half a decade (before stepping away for reasons that should be clear to anyone following this blog!) in the national news. These are my friends and colleagues and I really hope it works out, but beyond the local this is is really good example of how fucked construction is in this country. I’m frankly amazed we got it this far.
- The decade that made Andy Burnham 🪜 — Solid and balanced piece in the FT on what Burnham got up to in Manchester.
- We are in the middle of a “rolling coup” — “The first job of any coup is to make the recognition of it seem premature. That is the trap. By the time recognition is no longer premature, the moment to resist has already passed."
- I fed the people building the Metaverse — Pastry chefs gets a job at Meta and witnesses what these people — who are building the world we really don’t want to live in — are actually like. “Meanwhile I was back in a corner laminating croissant dough by hand while nearby conference rooms discussed artificial intelligence with the confidence of a man who’s never been told no and the caution of a toddler approaching a puddle."
- Are you living without trees? — Pop your postcode in and see how your street ranks nationally. Our street has a score of 92/100 which ranks high, and yet there are no trees directly near our house. (The local park and gardens help.)
- Zoe Williams interviews Cory Doctorow about his new book — Same as the stuff I linked to yesterday but much shorter, if that’s of use.
- John Allison: Review request — If you’ve read a copy of his Great British Bump Off: Kill Or Be Quilt please pop a review on Amazon.
Watching:
- The last neon master in Korea (13:41) — Presumably LEDs have done for the trade.
- Supermountains, the Boring Billion, and their connection to life on Earth (10:51)
Listening:
- You’re Wrong About: The JFK assassination — This was more interesting that I expected. It seems the source of a lot of conspiracy theories was bureaucracy and incompetence by government officials who put decorum over the need for forensics. And Oliver Stone.