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Wordle has taken the Internet by storm. And it’s just a simple web app. It’s the perfect game for these pandemic times and it’s fun to discuss strategies with friends and family.
Also, it sucks. Today was my first miss.
Wordle 226 X/6
EDIT: And now, it’s been purchased by The New York Times.
Given the current state of a global pandemic that can severely affect your health (and given the fact that we recently tested positive to the pathogen responsible), this book was an especially relevant read.
It’s an easy to read (and often hilarious) look into how our immune systems work. The incredible complexity of our bodies is amazing, but Dettmer uses all sorts of analogies to make things easy to digest.
For example:
“You can imagine the MHC class II receptor as a hot dog bun that can be filled with a tasty wiener. The wiener in this metaphor is the antigen. The MHC hot dog bun molecule is so important because it represents another security mechanism. Another layer of control.”
The book goes into various detail about how our bodies fight off bacterial and viral infections, the response to an allergic reaction, and how things like vaccines work.
In fact, the whole section on vaccines was especially interesting and particularly devastating to those of the crazy anti-vax persuasion. Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic, one of the biggest anti-vaccination campaigns was against the measles vaccine.
I’ll admit to not knowing much about measles and took it for granted that I was immunized from it. After reading this book, all I can think is, holy crap, what a horrible disease to have willingly chosen to get! Measles actively destroys your immune system and makes you lose immunity to other diseases.
“So in the end, being infected with measles erases the capacity of the immune system to protect you from the diseases that you overcame in the past. Even worse, a measles infection can wipe away the protection that you might have gained from other vaccines, since most vaccines create memory cells. Therefore, in the case of measles, what does not kill you makes you weaker, not stronger. Measles causes irreversible, long-term harm and it maims and kills children.”
Overall, this was a quick, easy and enjoyable book. Highly recommended!
I’ve slowly been working my way through presidential biographies and just finished this book about Thomas Jefferson. (Obviously, this is going very slowly, as he was the third president of the United States).
One thing that has struck me as I’ve read through three books is how my impressions and opinions of various founding fathers has evolved:
After reading “Washington by Ron Chernow”:
After reading “John Adams” by David McCullough:
And now, after reading “The Art of Power” by Jon Meacham:
Bottom line: Biographies paint the subject in the most favorable light and throw everyone else under the bus.
—
I really enjoyed digging into his life and his underlying philosophies. I’ll admit to not knowing much more about Jefferson other than he was the third president of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, and his mug and home adorn each side of our five-cent coin.
He was a savvy politician, deep thinker and someone who was completely curious about every facet of life, science and technology.
And man… he really did not like Alexander Hamilton.
Another thing that I didn’t really pick up in previous biographies was the struggle and friction between northern and southern states, 50-some years ahead of the Civil War. There were threats of succession (by Northern states, no less!) in the early 1800’s due to his election and the political power that Southern states held.
Both this book and the John Adams biography went into a lot of detail about their early friendship, the animosity the grew between them while Jefferson served as Adams’ Vice President and the subsequent rekindling of their friendship in the years after Jefferson left office as the third President. They ended up exchanged something like 360 letters with each other until they both died… on the same day:
July 4th, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Bonkers!
Well, this was probably inevitable at this point.
There was an outbreak at our kid’s daycare center a week or so ago, and ended up bringing it home. Now, we’re all positive and hunkered down.
Definitely frustrating, as we’ve really tried to limit our interactions with others and keep the surface area of our bubble as small as possible. Outside of our youngest, we’re all max-vaxed, thankfully.
Here’s to hoping our symptoms are mild and that we’ll be better soon.
Spotify has wrapped (which is fun and cool) and I had some initial opinions on it, via Twitter:
My Spotify Wrapped 2021 is just going to be kids songs all the way down, isn’t it?
Fortunately, it wasn’t! With regards to looking back at musical tastes, I’ve always been partial about Last.FM and it’s also a fun thing to look back on when I remember to grab the data in time — especially since Spotify Wrapped is fully baked around the beginning of December. (Though, that’s probably because a lot of people’s profiles will be overrun with Christmas music.)
My top artists for 2021 are:
1. Bad Religion
2. Bob Dylan
3. Dispatch
4. Fat Freddy’s Drop
5. The Sounds
6. Hot Water Music
7. Joe Strummer
8. Polyphia
9. Bing Crosby
10. The Beatles
Bad Religion tops the list due to reading their biography earlier this year and just really going back through their catalog remembering some of their songs.
It’s kind of interesting comparing it to my musical tastes from 10 years ago. Hot Water Music and Bob Dylan were there. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
