Addy Joy > Recent Status Updates

so far i’m really loving this book. the introduction seems to be setting up for a conversation on the intersections of war and plagues, and how these relate to how we conceptualize death - something we look at very differently when it’s about someone else and not ourselves!

So far i’ve finished the Metamorphosis and The Penal Colony - the latter I like more, and now onto the Hunger Artist. Overall, I really enjoy Kafka’s writing style and his ability to give attention towards small movements and details that most authors never consider putting into their words. Kafka is a weird guy and I don’t understand all the meanings in each story, but you’re not always supposed to

impressionism = impressions of outer world on the human senses
expressionism = outward expression of internal sensations

Graham Allison’s “Thucydides’ Trap”

covid “seems to be changing how humans think the world should be organized. … A quarter of a century ago, American scholars could claim with storage faces that liberal democracy had demonstrated once and for all that it was superior to all other ways of organizing society. Not anymore.”

so it seems like what the high-income counties do is only allow for vaccine production by the pharmaceutical companies that will sell to them and only them… this happened with the UK and Germany for covid. Strangely, in the early 2000s wealthy nations blocked the production of ARVs for HIV-AIDS …??????? what

“Just as the bottle was the quickest way to get out of Manchester in the early nineteenth century, the fastest way to escape the North American version of Shit Life Syndrome in the early twenty-first century is alcohol, crystal meth, or fentanyl.”

based on previous patterns of public health cuts in the UK by prime minister M. Thatcher, i am sure that the law changes and funding cuts in the United States are going to result in several thousand extra deaths in the coming years

“de-industrialisation” in places like Blackpool, England

First sub-saharan Africa was devastated by the impacts of colonialism, then by having an untested approach to improving public health thrusted upon them - an approach focused on medicine and tech, rather than fixing the roots of the problem - this is a profound example of how low-income countries have been absolutely kicked by the big world leaders time and time again.

WE NEED MORE ACCESIABLE HEALTH CARE OH MY GAWDDDDD. When it begins to cost money to visit the doctor, patients visits are gonna be reduce like 50%….

once Reagan and Thatcher were in charge during the late 70s and early 80s, less of their money was funded to the WHO and more was allocated to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This structural adjustment to the economies had a negative impact on public health, causing governments to cut funding to health programs… sounds like what’s happening rn in the US

* barefoot doctors

pg 199 mentions how Hamburg, one of the largest sea ports in northern Europe, was a prime leaving point for immigrants to the US, and many Russian Jews migrated westward to escape persecution and poverty in the late mien century. I’m wondering about the history of Jewish prosecutions before WW2, which isn’t until the early mid twentieth century

French colonies in now Hati, were focused on maximizing short term profits due to the high chance of yellow fever

“Anopheles quadrimaculatus should be considers one of the ‘founding mothers of the United States.’” -John McNeil

…(cont.) and due to African immunity to malaria, slave owners in the south used this as an amoral justification to use Black African slaves on their southern plantations…

Plasmodium falciparum (deadliest strain of malaria) was carried by Anopheles quadrimaculatus (species of mosquito) in the Americas which had a higher preference for human blood - opposed to A. gambian in West Africa, which spread the virus more effectively though did not have this preference. Quadrimaculatus needs stagnent pools for reproduction, which were more common in the southern N. America (due to El Niño)…