Huh

 So this seems to be a glancing blow of Covid. 

It's been really weird.

Going at warp speed.

Slammed my throat. 

Then onto my lungs for a solid day of wowza sharp hurting.

Then fogging me until I couldn't think straight.

Then into the nerves to burn me like a gender reveal gone wrong.

That was just the first 24 hours.

Now, I can tell I'm sick. I'm chesty. But I'm not super sick at all. Nowhere near as sick as I was with the first infection.

I have not started the Paxolvid yet. I'm going a little off the map here. I have time yet to start it. If the symptoms are going to be this light though, I'm not sure I need it.

That may be a mistake though. We'll see.

But when I started calling around begging for Paxlovid, I had no way of knowing covid would be this low key.

All right, next in geopolitics...

You do realize that global leadership is devolving to have more in common with the leaders of ISIS than it does with democratic principles, right? The media and think tanks don't put it so bluntly, but they've said as much.

But take it a bit further...

Global leadership is devolving to have more in common with the leaders of ISIS but with nukes than it does with democratic principles.

Given that, in the current world situation, at a minimum, I expect Putin to make a huge mess at one of Ukraine's nuclear power plants. That'll fit with Russia's M.O. of maintaining plausible deniability and it'll make building a consensus on the response from the West difficult and fraught...Putin will love the schadenfreude. (If it already happened and you're asking whaaat? I wrote this a while back and didn't get back in time to update it.)

And autocrats and dictators have violent life cycles. It doesn't matter who dies, so long as it's not them, and external conflict is one way they maintain control. Mix in Russia's rhetoric about limited nuclear use eroding the idea of mutual assured destruction. Combine that with aging autocratic brains amplifying any inherent narcissism or sociopathic traits (think of the most obnoxious entitled Boomer you know, now imagine if they had unlimited political power and nukes) and we should all be deeply concerned.

But hey, let's drag our feet on Ukraine...going back years, long before this war started. And Putin. And China. And India. Our own growing corruption doing its best to ISISify our leadership. Just slow roll it. It's no big deal, right?

I mentioned being called into the boardroom and being asked to fix their mess. There was no easy answer then and there isn't one now. There are just some things you can't fuck up and expect to get back. Geopolitics is one of those. Once it spins out of control, physics takes over. We're locked into the ride now, and the only way off may be after the whole thing derails, catches fire, and explodes.

Welp. Sorry. I wish I could be more positive. But the world, collectively, has made an absolute mess. We're not getting out of this without paying our pound of flesh. Each.

We will be very fortunate indeed if I'm wrong. I hope I'm stupid. I really do.