Latest from NHS (official data)

Meanwhile, new research shows that the COVID-19 vaccines have likely weakened people’s immune systems to non-COVID respiratory diseases.

2022:

08-03-2022 212
07-03-2022 139
06-03-2022 not reported
05-03-2022 not reported
04-03-2022 110
03-03-2022 194
02-03-2022 74
01-03-2022 194

2021:

08-03-2021 65
07-03-2021 82
06-03-2021 158
05-03-2021 236
04-03-2021 242
03-03-2021 315
02-03-2021 343
01-03-2021 104

Charted:

The latter is from the official government site. Remember there’s a new surge right now. It will result in an impending rise in casualties.

The pandemic is far from over

K infections and hospitalisations (with COVID-19) are rising again, according to official tallies, which tend to be overly optimistic. We’re meant not to pay attention because the media is busy talking about Russia, the government departments have cut loose many people, and tests too are being curtailed this month. In spite of these cuts, and in spite us gradually approaching spring (it’s getting warmer already), COVID-19 cases in the UK have been up 40% in one week, this past week (322,917). But testing went down sharply (from over 10 million a week to just about 4), so maybe that number of cases (not just confirmed cases) actually doubled this past week or few weeks. The number of people (in the UK) who tested positive for COVID-19 will soon exceed 20 million, out of a total of almost 70 million. We already know the long-term effects of an infection, but that does not alarm Borisnaro, who would rather change the subject, having nearly lost his job because of the COVID scandals (he nearly lost his life, too). The latest England mortality report can be found here and the next one is due tomorrow.

When I visited a clinic yesterday I spoke to one of the nurses about the lack of protection for workers; our government is giving the impression that being maskless, even indoors, is perfectly acceptable. The recent COVID surge across the UK reveals how misguided that is.

Putin will try to murder him. He has not succeeded so far. Let’s hope he never will. It’s no laughing matter, but…

Stigma shapes perception

LL sorts of “Bond” films have long created and then reinforced an image like the one shown above (that’s from a computer game, Street Fighter 2). We’re meant to think that Russians are violent brutes incapable of empathy, i.e. Vladimir Putin. But a lot of Russians openly condemn Putin and some do so in a more closeted fashion. Some don’t know what’s going on because of the propaganda and the censorship.

In these times of war please try to avoid the mainstream media. Both sides are government-connected propaganda. Such media does not strive to inform but to garner sypathy. It is intentionally spreading anti-Russian sentiments as if this is morally acceptable because of Putin et al. Russophobia is defined as “fear or dislike of Russia or Russian policy.” In my experience, this quickly turns into hatred of anyone who merely holds a Russian passport, was born in Russia, or has Russian ethnicity. This is racism. And if we don’t condone racism we’ll not tolerate media that promotes racism, either.

S per this account, about 7 hours ago JoinDiapora was taken offline. To quote: “As announced in our announcement, the server migration is currently underway. Given the size of JoinDiaspora’s filesystem and database, this might take a couple of hours to complete. We’ll post an update when we’re done!”

The data transfer was far faster than I had anticipated. Only a few hours passed before they posted:

And JoinDiaspora is “back”! As we’ve announced, the pod will be available in a limited mode only from now on. As such, all features are disabled, including the ability to post new content. However, you still can:

Export your data and initiate the account migration as soon as it’s done.
Send and receive private messages.
Delete your account.
Manage your profile and account details.

You can try and request an export of your profile data now. However, if the export fails for you, please hesitate the urge to try it over and over again. If it fails once, it will not work on subsequent tries. If you request an export and it looks like it never completes, that’s also fine. We will look into why the exports are failing for some users, and we have to fix those issues on a case-by-case basis. This will take time.

So what’s expected to happen now, based on this page, which I quote in part:

I am currently not able to export my data. What will happen to my profile?

Some of you are currently unable to export your profile data. You might either see an error message, or it might look like nothing is happening at all. We are aware of this.

After the infrastructure migration is completed, we will start investigating the issues with account exports. Everyone who wants a data export will get one.

If you’re currently facing issues, please do not keep retrying the export over and over again. Please don’t use automated tools like scrapers to manually acquire a copy of your data. Doing so will only cause exessive server load, which only makes our work even harder.

As we don’t know what’s actually causing the export issues and how we can best fix them, this work will take some time. For each export, we have to observe its progress and intervene manually if errors arise.

We don’t know how long it will take, but everyone will get their account data exported.

There’s no ETA.

My plan isn’t to make a real comeback to social control media but to just set up bots that link to posts in Techrights and TuxMachines. No extra overhead that way. I very much doubt there’s an intention to configure the JoinDiaspora domain and change the code to preserve existing connections between accounts. This means that even a diaspora (mind the pun) from JoinDiaspora will be very much lossy.

Many thanks go out to the various people involved in this. It’s understandable that technical debt added up to the point where a ‘lifeboat’ approach is required. At least they try to offer us lifeboats.

People of Vinnytsia searching for relatives among the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1937. By Ukrainian American Youth Association – Crime of Moscow in Vynnytsia. Ukrainian Publication of the Ukrainian American Youth Association, Inc. New York. 1951, Public Domain. Via Great Purge.

LONG with rape (of women and children), there are weapons of war that aren’t firearms. Massacres (like the above) are difficult for one’s eyes, but there are even uglier sights than these. Take Terror-Famine for instance. “More than 2,500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor,” Wikipedia notes. There are references there, this one being the most prominent one albeit offline (but in the Wayback Machine).

Ukrainian people still remember (the oldest among them experienced it) what the Soviets did to them. Maybe some of the children shown below are even alive today (they would have to be almost 110 in age, at least for the older generation).

Earlier today I wrote that a resolution, not a war, ought to be sought. Nobody wins in wars. Everyone loses. In the meantime, trafficking weapons to Ukraine is likely to perpetuate wars. Send supplies like food and medicine instead. Try to find a compromise like a ceasefire. Some of the sanctions accomplish nothing as they can further radicalise the Russian population, driven (like in Stockholm Syndrome) to sympathy with the dictator.

This conflict is just over a week old. If it doesn’t stop soon, it could end up killing millions. Stop the war. Stop it now. Don’t inflame it.