Mosquito resolution

 After many months of living at the end of a narrow internet pipe, my bits finally stopped flowing (the pipe was blocked? ok, metaphor) and I caved and signed up for fiber. Now I have a much bigger pipe! Bits are freely flowing as never before!

Importantly, I am now viewable as many pixels, often even in motion, for my many, many, video calls. My life (and many others) now consists mostly of taking video calls in different parts of my dwelling, and my interlocutors can now see me in smooth motion and continuous audio! What luxury and decadence, etc.

The pixels are in fact so delicate and rich that yesterday during lunch on my porch, my interlocutor was able to see the mosquito that I chased in and out of the frame, as it hovered around me and tormented me with the threat of stealing my blood. This was nice, because I got reassurances that I wasn't completely insane (another person validated the visible insect!) and that I didn't look completely insane (chasing an invisible phantom).

Today I received a belated housewarming gift: a giant citronella candle. Emphasis on the houseWARMing, and also on the acknowledged battle that owning a house is: battle against my house being washed away, battle against incursions of snow and mice, and the personal battle to keep all of my blood --- which, I want to emphasize, I am currently using to support vital life operations --- inside my body. I don't plan to burn it indoors, but hopefully this will resolve my outdoor mosquito deliciousness problem.

This post's theme word is henotheism (n), "belief in or worship of one god without denying the possibility of others." Welcome to my henotheistic house; over there is the citronella shrine.

School planning chicken

Many schools are now announcing that they will be 100% remote in August/September when they begin, replacing their previous hybrid/fancy rotating schedule/other half-measure plans.

The patient impression:

School administrators are trying to make the best decision they can, for safety, education, financial, and legal reasons. The information available to them keeps changing, so they keep updating their plans. This is a challenging task and they are doing the best they can with limited information and no control over many external factors that keep changing.

The skeptic's impression:

Schools initially panicked, followed by a period of prolonged scramble, and are adjusting their plan to balance exactly on the knife's edge of [safe enough that the employees will not riot] and [still normal enough that the students and parents will not riot]. They'll continue to make new announcements to maintain this balance, so the announcements are interesting mostly to (1) to teachers, students, and their households, and (2) as way of tracking which riot has more potentiality.

The pessimist's impression:

Schools are inadequately-adjusted. Why do they keep announcing plans which are wildly optimistic and have dependencies on local/state/federal guidelines or international vaccine development? The institutional lock-in to a rigid schooling system means that even the most clear-eyed administrator is not allowed to make reasonable decisions or announcements, as the Overton Window in March did not really allow (for example) a superintendent to announce that public school was going to be 100% at home for the next two years. Or announce that all school was cancelled. Or any of the other things that I can imagine, in future-retrospect, as having happened (or as being equivalent to what will have happened).

So here's where we are, in a repeated game of chicken. It's asymmetrical, and maybe chicken isn't the right game-theory model to use, since we know which strategy to pick in order to lose, but not which strategy to pick to win. And also it's not mutually-assured destruction. And viruses aren't considered sentient, and have never been observed to drive cars around steep one-lane mountain roads...

This post's theme word is palmary (adj), "of supreme importance; outstanding; praiseworthy." A palmary plan is educationally elusive.