Notices by sport of sacred spherical cows (beadsland@hcommons.social), page 3

FDA vaccine target LP.8.1, dominant since March, plateaued in April. June sees Nimbus NB.1.8.1, scion of "razor-blade throat" XDV, push LP.8.1 out of majority.

#CDC added NB.1.8.1 only in latest, late-published public dataset. Notice of "software error" that heralded data delay… has been removed. Hatching for "less reliable" data reflects "low numbers of sequences being reported".

Raj's dashboard, updated this morning, shows Nimbus diversifying in May. Also, XFJ significant, even if CDC hasn't broken out.

❖ #ThisIsOurPolio #Covid #Covid19 #SARS2 #variants #CovidIsNotOver #CovidIsAirborne #dataviz #datavis

The trials of a passion project where one has no team to help vet one's work and identify when one has gotten shit completely FUBAR with respect to intended goals.

But yeah, compare the above chart to the one immediately prior. The difference may seem subtle (and the newer chart is using a data set from Raj that's a day fresher than the prior chart), but the difference can't be unseen once one recognizes what has changed.

Just corrected major bug by changing one assignment.

Purpose of including inline bubble #datavis of GISAID data was to demonstrate how major subvariants, not broken out by the CDC, were being obscured by CDC bundling those subvariants into ancestor for reporting purposes.

Which is what these #dataviz would have been doing, if only they'd been using the actual share of the given ancestor to set the size of its bubble. Instead, of, well (*clears throat with embarrassment*) the total sum of shares of the root variant and its descendants.

Would say that this was down to my focusing so much attention on dynamic legend and family grouping logic, but that ignores time spent adjusting how bubbles were aligned within tiles.

So, really, it was just that never bothered to consistency check the bubbles as drawn against data as given, assuming without validating that everything was correct.

Anyway, charts going forward now work as intended, reflecting when #CDC data hides more than it reveals.

Per announcement two weeks ago:

https://hcommons.social/@beadsland/114662142357659963

We didn't get a covid variant proportions update from #CDC today.

Anyone wanna give odds on whether they're gonna go to a three week reporting period for a four week reporting period?

FDA vaccine target LP.8.1, dominant since March, plateaued in April. June saw Nimbus NB.1.8.1 / PQ, scion of "razor-blade throat" XDV, push LP.8.1 out of majority.

Due to "low numbers of sequences being reported" (as evidenced by "less reliable" dot hatching on below chart), #CDC did not publish data this week, having advised only of "moving to longer reporting periods":

https://hcommons.social/@beadsland/114662142357659963

Raj's dashboard, updated this morning, shows PQ.2 as standout child of Nimbus NB.1.8.1 / PQ; Stratus XFG in competition with kids XFG.2 and XFG.3; and LP.8.1 long ago overshadowed by LP.8.1.1/ NY.

❖ #ThisIsOurPolio #variants #CovidIsNotOver #dataviz #datavis

So, apparently, #CDC just publishes variants data on Tuesdays now.

(This despite the website still saying data updates on Mondays and Fridays.)

This was a pattern established by the three-day weekend in May, followed by a "software issue", the following fortnight:

https://hcommons.social/@beadsland/114639885219714547

Then we got a notice that they were moving to "longer reporting periods":

https://hcommons.social/@beadsland/114662142357659963

Thus, when there was no data update on Friday, took it to mean we wouldn't see anything for another week at least.

Which is why the update three days ago snuck past me. Running chart update now...

@PhoenixSerenity @GinevraCat @CatDragon

This being what radicalization is.

The gradual realization that the roots (the radices) of all this run much deeper than the world as it is today or we imagine it to be tomorrow.

The recognition that disciplined hope is more about the actions we take now than any promises of better.

So, there's a toot, supposedly from an employee of a company, recommending that folk delete that company's phone apps before going to protest.

First, that company is not the only source of software on your phone that is being used to surveil your participation in civil disobedience. Toot gives impression that by uninstalling that company's products your phone is somehow safe.

Second, that company, in particular, has hooks in the Web pages you visit, and thus tracking you even if you don't have an account (let alone apps) on any of their platforms.

Third, if folk are using apps from that company, they very likely learned of the protest through one of those apps, which means the company already knows they are likely enough "people who want to protest".

You want to avoid being surveilled by your phone at a protest? None of the answers are easy.

But any advice that suggests uninstalling a handful of apps (which may be bloat that can't be removed without tech knowledge) is misleading.

@abolisyonista @hakan_geijer

Which is why one can't just slot in any old subculture and expect the same result.

The representations are those deeply associated with a very culturally specific (in both geography and history, yet also narrow developmental age band) dynamic of power and parochial powerlessness, reified through tropes as a right of passage that culminates in cultural dominance.

The hierarchy has been upended, or so the ludomythological accounting tells us, and even those of subsequent generations, who were not alive when the prior hierarchy was first committed to popular media as normative, even natural, seek to find their own sense of power through their association with the media of the victors of that hierarchical inversion.

@abolisyonista @hakan_geijer

Can't speak from post-situationism, specifically, but me thinks you've hit squarely on the head of the matter here.

Isn't memetic representation, as memetic reference, per se. Nor subculture, in any indefinite article sense.

Rather, this is 1980s Usian high school clique culture, wherein the regulars at a certain table in the lunchroom, who identified as the unpopular kids, the kids that got stuffed into lockers and mistreated by the mean girls, ascended in social status.

Starts with *original* media, movies, about "nerds" and kids playing on their computer modems being the protagonists in power fantasies. Only a shift in the principle sociotechnical imaginary of society subsequently placed those once put-upon smart kids in positions of hierarchical power in the real world.

Today, every time references of once niche interests appears in popular media, it's an affirmation that those bullied kids of two generations ago are now the ones culture caters to.

Political protest against police violence didn't peter out in 2020 because police used violence against political protesters.

Political protest against police violence petered out in 2020 because white liberals got the electoral result they wanted.

White people were never really protesting against police violence. They were protesting against their loathing of a political figure.

They'd tried repeatedly to mobilize such protest themselves, and failed.

So when Black folk (incl. Black trans women) mobilized sustained resistance, white folk leapt aboard, seeing a platform for their own agenda.

Once that agenda was achieved, they showed the same continued disregard for police violence as they had prior to the uprising.

Police violence didn't take the wind out of the sails of political protest against police violence. That wind was only ever fickle and inconstant to begin with.

That wind was white people, blowing hot—until they got what they wanted and went back to cool indifference.

Photos of many unmasked advocates of "SCIENCE!™" on the timeline just now.

What we might call a masks off moment.

Both of those in frame and of those behind the camera.

If you're taking clearly identifiable photos of people at protests, what exactly do you believe you're doing?

If you're forming up together unmasked in tightly packed crowds, as multiple infectious diseases are spiking, what exactly do you believe you're doing?

The private mention spam has taken on a new flavor.

Now they present themselves as an international college student who wants you to find them on friendica, join their discord, and matrix, or "join us" on an open chat room.

The asking for money will no doubt wait until after they've established something passing for an online acquaintance.

Interestingly, rather than come from mastodon.social, this one came from a no-name instance with nothing on the explore tabs of the home page (because of course none of the fewer than a hundred accounts on the server actually participate in public fedi).

Update: Oh wow, two from two different severs all of 50 minutes apart. Same word-for-word boilerplate DM, different avi of what appears to be the same person.

The fundamental tragedy of categorical class analysis is the failure to recognize supremacism for supremacism.

They aren't firing people like nuclear scientists and air traffic controllers to save money. That's a pretty lie that satisfies your unwavering belief that everything is about money.

They're firing people like nuclear scientists and air traffic controllers because chaos serves their interests. Because increasing all our collective vulnerability ratchets up tensegrity.

Because a more vulnerable people will work that much harder to identify who has to suffer for one's own salvation.

A world where everyone is busy figuring out who is more vulnerable than themselves, so to sacrifice those more vulnerable for their own survival, is a supremacist world.

https://mstdn.social/@mothership/114066564448534946

When you boost something about environmental justice being disability justice and community care, and then look to see it's discussing an indoor conference with no apparent infection control policy.

If your strategy for fighting fascism...

Is to spout fascist talking points...

Only with the out loud fascists as targets...

There's no point in arguing with you.

You've already told me who you're in solidarity with.

And it ain't me.

You know who else promotes snake oil?

Give ya a hint:

He just got a new job in government.

They're fucking banning masks, and we got folk promoting snake oil as "logistical" for "solidarity building".

Fuck you.

"Not my president" protests?

That's what ya'll going with?

Disassociation is your gambit?

Sacrosanct electoralism only counts if we win?

Whiteness.

You're Usian. He's president of, where is it again, oh, right, the U. S. of fucking A.

But he's not "your" president.

Because you live in some alternate timeline or something.

Where the political choices of we white people over generations didn't lead to this outcome.

Fucking magical realism white-arse fuckers really can't own our actions.

Either we shut it down.

Or they do.

So far, the consensus opinion seems to be to let them do it.

Usian culture at its finest.