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Archivist and recovering web dev. She/her.
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First Came ‘Spam.’ Now, With A.I., We’ve Got ‘Slop’
First the Guardian, now the NYT. I've apparently made a habit of getting quoted by journalists talking about slop!I got the closing quote in this one:
Society needs concise ways to talk about modern A.I. — both the positives and the negatives. ‘Ignore that email, it’s spam,’ and ‘Ignore that article, it’s slop,’ are both useful lessons.
Biographies of great people, interviews with successful entrepreneurs, and podcast episodes with famous creators. The world doesn’t lack celebrations of greatness. It should be inspiring to hear from someone successful, it should motivate you to do more, to work harder, and to strive for greatness. But like many other good things in life, too much of it can be detrimental. You can ingest only so many success stories before starting to feel bad for not being one of them. It’s partly why social media mostly sucks. It’s performative. Everyone is showing the best parts of their lives while the shitty moments are kept private, away from public eyes.
Failure should be shared. Trying and failing at something should be celebrated. Not because of the failure itself but because that’s the only way to achieve something worthwhile. Failing is inevitable. Everyone has to go through it and confront it one way or another. It’s part of the process and it’s something we should be more upfront and open about it. And again, it should be celebrated.
Does anyone make a podcast with interviews with people who didn’t have success? To people who tried hard but ultimately failed? I’d love to listen to those stories.
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A third of the way into our year of letting it rip, COVID has jumped to become our second-biggest killer.
And, no, it’s not killing people “just like the flu used to”. COVID is killing at more than three times the rate of flu and pneumonia combined.
And it’s killing people at a younger age than those who typically die from flu or pneumonia.
No, the plague hasn’t faded away.
It’s continued to spread and have its way with people, from the asymptomatic to the fatal.
We’ve just collectively decided it is what it is and downgraded our attempts to further limit the fatalities, accepting that thousands of Australians will die prematurely from it.
So far this year, just over 5000 people have died from COVID. Multiply by three to annualise that number and allow for February being a short month, and COVID deaths this year will just pip the number of deaths by our second-biggest killer in 2019, dementia.
That’s not allowing for the likelihood that COVID deaths will come at a faster rate as we go into winter, sharing unventilated spaces against the cold, the traditional season for any coronavirus.
Thus COVID will take clear second place behind ischaemic heart diseases as our main cause of death, certainly way more than the 14,575 people who died from dementia in 2020 – a year whose mortality statistics were distorted by COVID prevention measures.
In 2019, the last “normal” year for flu and pneumonia deaths, 4124 of us died that way, a fraction of the 15,000+ we can expect from COVID this year. (COVID prevention measures resulted in only 2287 deaths from flu and pneumonia in 2020.)
And the median age of those flu and pneumonia deaths in 2019 was 89. The median age of COVID deaths is running at 83.
Sure, most of the people dying from COVID are “old” – half of them 83 or older, but that still leaves a lot of people dying earlier than they might otherwise statistically expect.
Statisticians measure premature death in YPLL – years of potential life lost. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, YPLL is “a measure of premature mortality which weights age at death to gain an estimate of how many years a person would have lived had they not died prematurely”.
In round numbers, Australia is looking at maybe 60,000 YPLL from COVID this year. That compares with 10,595 YPLL from flu and pneumonia in 2019.
No, the plague hasn’t faded away.
We’re just at a similar stage with it as we were with road fatalities back in the 1960s. The numbers were dreadful, but, hey, it was what it was – doing anything about it seemed too hard. A percentage of road fatalities was merely part of the price for the wonder of the automobile becoming widely available.
It took decades to take road deaths seriously, to decide they were largely preventable, first with seat belts and subsequently with other safety improvements in road and car design and cracking down on drink-driving.
With COVID and whatever the next viral plague might be, it seems we’re years away from taking ventilation and masks seriously. We’re over all the stuff.
And the plague hasn’t even faded away.
Parenting the Millennial Generation
Guiding Our Children Born between 1982 and 2000
Verhaagen
2005
This one caught my attention in my sweep through the catalog. Since it is a parenting book, I wondered if there was something still relevant to today’s parents. I figure since the kids in question are in their 20s and 30s is it worth hanging on to in a public library collection? In everyday practice I wouldn’t necessarily weed a parenting book just for “age” unless it was woefully out of date. (Check out our Parent/Teacher category for real offenders)
I only skimmed this book, but the majority is standard parenting advice found in a variety of books. I am not quite sure it brings anything new to the table in 2022. In real life, I would weed if the circulation was still decent or if I need the space.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed this book except for the Alien Baby on the cover.
Thoughts?
Mary
The post Alien Baby Millennials appeared first on Awful Library Books.
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