HOW DID TWO MONTHS GO BY LIKE THAT?!?!?

One day I'm getting back into the groove of things, trying to give some more attention to all my "passion projects" but things got in the way and boom it's almost Christmas. Blink and you're dead I suppose. I tried to write this post a few weeks ago and then totally forgot about it. My attention is like shifting sand these days.

A lot happened in the past two months. I went to my friend's doctoral thesis defense in Turku a few weeks back. It was more intense than I thought it would be. It was like almost three hours long. I could imagine the whole thing must have felt like a fucked up dream for my friend. You're in a tuxedo, giving the the lecture of your life to an audience that is pretty much only your closest family and friends. And the whole time there is a guy trying to poke holes in your arguments. The whole thing went well and he got the title I think. The end was a bit unclear to me.

My favorite detail was that there was a random older lady that came there for the free cake and coffee at the end. I admired her dedication to free cake. I have to admit, the cake was amazing. The academy got me vegan cake it was the most amazing vegan cake I have ever had. How they were able to make something so good without employing animal udders is beyond me.

I also went to a small wedding a few months ago. It is likely the last gathering I will be physically appearing at for the foreseeable future. It was a nice small autumn wedding and the food was amazing. They even had pizza. I almost cried. During the ceremony and the pizza. I liked how they played "Still Alive" from Portal during the ceremony.

By Jae C. Hong

Things are getting more serious due to COVID now. My workplace doesn't really take the pandemic all that seriously and has a "if you die, you die" vibe. One guy was just straight up saying he would never wear a mask if it became mandatory. It's messed up. I've tried to stay away from crowded areas now, I wear a mask in public and wash my hands a shitload. Also I've been taking vitamin D supplements now that the sun goes down at like 4PM. I was looking for salmiakki-flavored D vitamin pills called "The Black Sun" but I couldn't find them anywhere. LAME.

I've been using Zoom and other video conferencing to keep in contact with people. It feels like I spend more time seeing people now than before all this started. I've been playing a few Dungeons and Dragons games online now and seeing some people during the evenings. This new normal suits me pretty well.

I've been developing the Pandemic Levyraati site I've been using with friends on Saturdays. I've been developing the tone of the site. I like trying to develop pandemic propaganda slogans.

Most of the time you see messages like "Be Responsible, Think of your Neighbor" etc.. when it comes to handling COVID. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but that kind of messaging is trying to appeal to sympathy that I think is sorely lacking in society today. So why not try to appeal to arguably stronger emotions like HATRED and FEAR?

Instead of going for creating social cohesion and a sense of togetherness ("together we'll beat this!), why not appeal to people's selfishness and desire to remain clean? Why not go for lines like "KEEP YOURSELF STRONG, PROTECT YOURSELF FROM CONTAGION!" or "DO NOT SPREAD DISEASE IN YOUR COMMUNITY!!!!"? It's understandable that this kind of messaging would appeal to a way more right-wing mindset, I mean Johnathan Haidt wrote about disgust aversion as being a good indicator of guessing if a person is right-wing in their political leanings. What if we had more ads that appealed to people's sense of disgust? Would we see more people wanting to use masks?

I can understand why nations are apprehensive about wanting to use this kind of propaganda as it echos a lot of the nastier parts of history, but given how we are seeing a renewed interest in society in the extreme right, it might be worth trying to appeal to people in that sphere as well when talking about containing diseases in the future. The only sort of right wing take I've seen regarding COVID is calling it the "Wuhan flu" or "China flu" but that only appeals to xenophobia and probably wouldn't get anyone interested in doing anything to personally stop the spread.

So in the Pandemic Levyraati website, I like to use a completely different way to keep people inside, exploiting the desire to remain clean to stop the spread. "REMAIN PURE".

That's about it for me. Just another few months in the cyberpunk dystopia we all live in. I've been trying to keep up on the technical stuff and after a lot of hassle got some Twitter API keys that I've been trying to use. Hope I'll get to writing again soon, this really helps focus me.