Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
24/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Set seven years after the events of Star Trek VI, this does a good job of fleshing out Valeris and exploring the motivations and rationale behind her actions. It also follows up on some of the practical and political fallout for the Klingon empire of the events in the film. Definitely one of the stronger Trek novels I’ve read.
Day 6: Definitely feeling better than yesterday. Getting a full night’s sleep helped. As did not having to file a police incident report. (And I know it’s mean to tease, but that’s as much of the story as you’re getting right now.)
Day 5: Going out last night means a tired day today. Add in some stresses I’d hoped not to revisit, and there have definitely been better days.
Day 4: At the Mercury to celebrate my birthday with a few friends.
Day 3: A long and tiring day of running around making sure captions work and doing impromptu tech support for professional development day at work. The frog shirt is another birthday addition.
For my 50th year, I’m going to try to post an selfie (or image with me in it) a day. Day one: From my birthday trip to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, having fun with their new A Bug’s Eye View exhibit.
23/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fascinating story of colonists struggling to survive on a new planet and working to communicate with the intelligences already on this world. Rather than a single central protagonist, the first few chapters are almost individual standalone stories, jumping a few decades at a time, before events accelerate towards the latter half of the book into a somewhat more traditional narrative. Really neat ideas on how very different species might find ways to communicate with each other. Enjoyed this enough that I just ordered its sequel.
Washington’s COVID-19 exposure notification app to end May 11:
Washington’s COVID-19 exposure notification app is scheduled to conclude May 11 in tandem with the end of the Public Health Emergency.
Sigh.
Admittedly, I have no idea what the backend costs (monetary, time, employee hours, etc.) for this system have been. It’s (theoretically) possible that things have slowed down enough that the cost/benefit ratio has shifted. But it still feels like one more sign that we’ve just…given up.
Since its launch in November 2020, approximately 235,000 participants confirmed a positive test result in WA Notify. This “successful, lifesaving,” app, as the state describes it, has generated more than 2.5 million anonymous exposure notifications, preventing tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases.
Washington was one of the first states to implement exposure notification technology and consistently had one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the country, despite also being host to the earliest known domestic case of the virus.
Boy, all of that sure sounds like something you’d want to keep going, doesn’t it?
After May 11, DOH encourages people who test positive for COVID-19 to tell their close contacts that may have been exposed to the virus.
Which I’d expect most (responsible) people have been doing already, but this takes out a key way of letting me know if I’ve been around someone who tested positive but who isn’t a close contact.
Few, if any, places bother checking or requiring vaccines anymore. Masking exists somewhere between “encouraged” (if you’re lucky) and “tolerated”. And now this. Just one more step.
And the worst part is that if we’d handled all of this better over the past few years, I might be able to look on these shifts as positive signs that things were actually improving. But I just don’t have that level of trust in our public health institutions anymore.
Pre- and post-ceremony background music for the 2023 Student Employee of the Year celebration at Highline College. Much poppier than my usual style, heavily (and welcomely) influenced by suggestions provided to me beforehand by the organizing committee. Thanks to the SEotY committee for inviting me to help with the event!
