Thirsty Thursday evening. Alcohol might not be healthy, but what is these days?

The world is still on fire. My best friend, who had just recently bought a house in Oregon, is about to evacuate with his wife. They’re packing up. All their relatives live even closer to the fire than they do, so the destination is a big question mark. The fires are getting closer to my mom’s place and my little brother in Washington too. I don’t get the sense that this is getting covered on national media.

Today at work, I gave an hour-long video lecture on an important subject. Four people joined. Heh. It’s odd to think who will watch those video recordings later, when 2020 finally ends. Will they just fast-forward past all the parts where I call out the covid-specific planning precautions? Will they care?

I found a local journo on twitter. He was looking for Americans who moved to Toronto. I answered some questions. His publication is more of a booklet, but it’ll still be interesting to see my story – if not in print, then online. I’ll post a link here if and when that happens.

In covid news… Trump spent the day retweeting dozens of posts praising him, then attacked Woodward at the press conference (asking why he didn’t immediately go public if what he’d said was so bad) and, as always, refused to take any responsibility. A few hours ago, Trump flew to Michigan to host another rally. Big crowds, virtually no masks… This will almost certainly end up killing more people. How many?

A bunch of international scientists published an open letter questioning the data behind Russia’s “Sputnik V” covid vaccine. Evidently, the alleged antibodies levels in the study’s participants are almost identical, and that’s not quite how that works. Heh. This reminds me… Back in Russia, one of my classmates was the son of our physics teacher. We were all doing an experiment to see how fast boiling water can cool in room temperature. My classmate faked his numbers: according to him, the temperature didn’t fall at all, and the laws of physics didn’t apply to his test tube. His mom gave him an A. This strikes me as the same sort of uninspired forgery. I’ll be very happy to be wrong, but… The country that got caught cheating in the Olympics, and in foreign affairs, and in human rights, and just about everything else – they probably don’t deserve the usual benefit of the doubt, eh?

Tomorrow is the 19th anniversary of 9/11. Here is hoping that’ll be the only ordinary day of 2020, and not some kind of call to action to yet another sick mind.