Grigory Lukin.com

Saturday night. The first night of the eighth month of the first year of covid.

I slept 10 hours, treated myself to my weekly Tim Hortons drivethrough meal, and spent a few hours playing video games with xgf after driving two hours to her little town and back again. Not a bad day, all things considered.

Two more days off before the slow inevitable return to the work routine. I’m not sure if I’ve written this before… One has only so many stories. Once upon a time, when I was a lowly warehouse grunt doing manual labour, I worked four days a week, 10 hours a day, and unless there was optional overtime, I’d get three-day weekends more often than not. I remember being exhausted from having so much time off. (I was mostly single back then.) Ahh, to be young and stupid, eh? The work wasn’t intellectually challenging in any way whatsoever (which is why I ended up writing a bunch of e-books as an intellectual diversion), but it was simple, and honest, and physically stimulating. Sometimes I miss those days. Now three-day weekends are a rare treat, though not as rare as back in the US.

…this really makes me wonder which aspects of my present life (pandemic notwithstanding) I’ll end up being nostalgic about five, 10, or 200 years down the road. (I aim to live to be 1,729 – so far so good!) I already know there’ll be hardly any salmon in the future: it’s already expensive, and given everything that happens to their habitat… It’ll probably be a rare luxury within a generation. There’ll be other unexpected outages or plain old shifts in personal preferences, I’m sure. The stock Instagram answer is, of course, to enjoy every minute of every day and every bite of every sandwich, but really, who has the attention span for that? Heh.

In covid news, worldwide cases are accelerating. Over the past three days, there were a million new covid cases worldwide – a new record. There are far more that have gone undiagnosed, of course, but even with the imperfect and shoddy methodology the world currently has… That’s still an awful lot. It hasn’t even been a year since the first reported case, and here we are. This winter is gonna be a wild ride, and the social inequities playing out after vaccines become available… Stay safe and stock up on popcorn if you can, folks.

Friday night. When humans make the outside world completely inhospitable (viruses, pollution, ozone layer going bye-bye, horrific climate, etc), in the world where “going out” is literally no longer an option, will our descendants perform the silly weekend rituals of their ancestors and wonder how different our lives were?

One of my favourite things about Canada (aside from adding the fancy “u” to random words) is all the holidays they’ve got here. There are 13 main holidays as opposed to the six or so in the US. Canada’s Thanksgiving is on Monday, so this is yet another awesome three-day weekend. (With another one coming up just a month from now, in honour of the Remembrance Day.) If nothing else I say convinces people to move here, then maybe the overabundance of long weekends will.

Today’s culinary adventure: just completely giving up on trying to scrounge enough carbs and munching on a bunch of almonds instead. Flipped my carb and fat ratios completely, but hey, as long as I get the right amount of calories, enough protein, and all the sleep in addition to the exercise, it’s all good, right?

One upside of my highly visible pullup bar in the hallway, weighing my food, and blending all these protein shakes is that my landlords are starting to slowly (so very, very slowly) warm up to the idea of monitoring their nutrition and eating healthier. They’re both in fine shape and do some cardio, but there’s no such thing as being too healthy during this pandemic.

Somewhat related, one big upside of being a non-crazy, non-violent sort of prepper (as opposed to your typical wannabe-Rambo in the US) is being prepared for multiple contingencies. Had a bit of a throat tickle this morning, but I knew exactly where my oximeter and thermometer were (as well as all the batteries), and everything turned out fine. I can’t imagine I’d have any peace of mind without an objective way to measure my vitals.

…and by the way, folks, if you don’t have an oximeter of your own, I can’t recommend it highly enough. That little $25 gadget will tell you when it’s time to skedaddle to the nearest emergency room, and it just might save your life should you be unlucky enough to catch covid.

In covid news, the US is still doing its weird crazy thing: full seating allowed in Florida’s sports stadiums, more crazy covid tweets from Trump (he made it a full week without relapsing – good for him, I guess), and a white-bread Michigan militia got busted for trying to kidnap the state’s governor. It looks like they were very unhappy with her decision to initiate a lockdown earlier this year. That does not sound like a functioning democracy… Speaking of which, more of my US friends are reaching out for advice on moving to Canada. One of my friends, who lived in Arizona, just found out that she got purged from the voter rolls, even though she’d been in the system just a few weeks prior. Might have been a database glitch, might have been something far more sinister. The very fact that sabotage is a probable explanation means the fundamental element – the faith in the system – is no longer there. I hope at least one of my Canada-curious friends makes it over here.

In more local news, Toronto and two other parts of Ontario are entering a new modified lockdown. It’ll last for 28 days (insert your “28 Days Later” jokes here), during which there’ll be no indoor dining, bars, gyms, theaters, etc. Weddings are still okay, as long as they stick to 10 people indoors or 25 outdoors. I expect a lot of anger from the locals who have already lived through one long lockdown and got a brief taste of freedom – which, of course, fucked everything up. (And that’s why we can’t have nice things.) It’s interesting how fast Doug Ford pivoted from “I can’t let people’s businesses die!” to freezing everything for almost a month. I guess he finally got those numbers he asked for. Too bad he couldn’t see the writing on the wall earlier. I hope this lockdown works, because all indicators show Toronto getting to the same disaster we saw in New York back in March: full ICUs and insufficient hospital space.

Here is to even more indoors time, and to more distracting hobbies. I’ve just started bingewatching “Ozark” on Netflix – it’s fascinating to find a well-made show where the protagonist is a fellow financial analyst. Stay safe out there, folks, and make the most of your weekend.

Thursday night. It’s curious how nights get progressively more exciting from Wednesday to Saturday, isn’t it? (Except for you, Sunday night. Know your damn place.)

Another day of zero social stimulation, aside from exchanging a couple of words with the landlords. They’re good people, but they’re baseline cable news consumers… The landlady thinks that a vaccine will come out before the US election on November 3 (because her beloved Trump said so) and that the covid cases in Canada are getting better. (That’s because it’s much harder to get a test now.) I tried to gently explain to her that that is not the case. I’m not sure she understood me. So it goes.

I heard through the grapevine that my coworkers, back at my warehouse, are worried about the effects the isolation might be having on me. I’d typically put on an extrovert mask when at work, doing some mild chatter among coworkers’ cubicles, and then relax hard after getting back home. It’s nice to know they’re thinking of me, but they completely misjudged me: I’m actually kind of digging all the alone time. The social interaction I miss is random meetups and dating, not being stuck at work.

A coworker of mine seemed to be nonchalant about covid warnings, to the point of meeting people face to face, going to the gym, etc. Now he’s feeling a bit under the weather. If that turns out to be covid (which is really picking up steam around here), that’ll be all the more encouragement for the rest of us to stay put; a harsh proof that the choices the rest us had made were not for naught.

I guess this is an objective proof that I’ve been far too busy with work lately – I missed a couple of major goalposts. Two weeks ago was my 18-month anniversary of moving to Canada. Last week was the two-month anniversary of my application for permanent residency. That second one isn’t quite as exciting, I know, but it’s big nonetheless. It means I have less than four months to go till I get my PR. That is, of course, if the pre-covid six-month timeline stays stable, etc. It’s entirely possible the whole thing will get delayed by six more months. Still, that’s a milestone.

In covid news, something genuinely funny, for once. The University of Notre Dame notoriously tried to enforce draconian measures against the students who broke social distancing rules. However, its own president, Rev. John Jenkins, appeared at the now-infamous Rose Garden party without a mask, and then tested positive for covid. The university had set up a site for students to snitch on one another for breaking covid guidelines. Instead, they all started reporting Jenkins’s blatant disregard of his own rules. Poetic justice, eh?

But wait, there’s more! According to the New York Times, “The decision not to wear a mask… stemmed not from politics but from a desire to politely blend in, as a guest at a cocktail party might remove a tie upon realizing everyone else was dressed in business casual.” That’s Notre Dame’s official position, and ye gods, you have to try hard to come up with something dumber than that. That’s more or less the polar opposite of the acknowledgement/remorse/restitution formula for a good apology. Nice job comparing the pandemic to social awkwardness, too. Kudos for the students, and I hope they finish the job and get their hypocritical overseer to step down. (With a golden parachute, though, I’m sure.) If that happens, that’ll be a much-needed success story in this weird news world.

Stay safe out there, folks – and hey, you have my permission to skip the gym until this whole thing blows over.

Wednesday night. The end of the start of the end of the week.

This whole pandemic is a fascinating social phenomenon – a global experiment none of us signed up for. (Except for those crazy brave folks who volunteered for vaccine testing – kudos to them all.) Aside from all the, you know, death and suffering and unemployment and assorted carnage, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff happening overall: experiments with UBI (universal basic income), online education, large scale work from home, etc. All those things probably never would’ve happened without the pandemic: the world was forced to take those measures, and we get to see firsthand what works and what doesn’t. (That’s science for you – when something fails in the most spectacular fashion, you can at least learn from it.)

At work, there’s now a whole bunch of coworkers who never actually met anyone on their team. We’re all just disembodied voices on weekly calls, or slightly different personalities in text-based chats. (Everyone has mostly stopped using webcam video streaming on business calls on account of it being incredibly creepy.) Things still get done, but it feels a little odd and highly futuristic to work with a remote group of people each of whom logs in from their own little anti-pandemic shelter using computers more powerful than anything they had in the 20th century. Pretty badass, in a very specific and highly geeky sort of way. Of course, then one of my coworkers’ kids screams or laughs in the background, and the whole illusion kind of shatters, but it’s still fun to make-believe.

In today’s culinary adventures, apparently there’s really not that many carbs in a fruit-filled dinner of two bananas and three kiwis. I mean, sure, yay fiber and all that jazz, but I might be the only guy in North America who legitimately has to go out of his way to carb up. Heh.

In covid news, William Foege, possibly the greatest epidemiologist of the 20th century, the man who helped eradicate smallpox, and the former CDC director (who is now 84 years old), sent a letter to the current CDC director, Robert Redfield. The letter was sent two weeks ago and was supposed to be private, but someone leaked it to the media. You can read it here. It’s short and to the point: Foege put in writing what was obvious to everyone, that the CDC became a political puppet and squandered all of its hard-won reputation. He advised Redfield to send a clear and detailed apology letter, point out what’s going on, and lead the good fight until he inevitably gets fired. (He also pointed out that in the future, the CDC’s inaction will be studied as a great example of what not to do.)

The letter was sent two weeks ago. Redfield didn’t stop being a puppet. I guess we know where he stands… He occasionally stops some of the most insane requests coming from the White House, so he’s neither a hero nor a complete sock puppet. In other words, both sides kind of hate his guts at this point. I’m curious if Trump will replace him with Dr Atlas, who is not an epidemiologist at all and who seems to be a big fan of the herd immunity model. (That’s the one where everyone except for the 1% gets sick. They must’ve been so surprised when they got infected at the White House. Heh.) Just like with everything else, we’ll see how that plays out. Pandemic patience is a virtue, eh?

Tuesday night. Taco Tuesday… Maybe that’s what that t.A.T.u. band name meant. (As good a guess as any, eh?)

It’s curious just how absorbed you can get when your entire day is filled with work, reading, eating, and exercising. The time flies by, and it’s almost as if it’s just a baseline indoor day, and not the middle of a second wave of a once-a-century pandemic.

My nutrition adventures continue. Using my sketchy little digital scale (which goes into gram decimals and probably put me on some sort of watch list when I got it) and a calorie-tracking app turns the whole process into a strange game. Fat, carbs, protein – everything is some combination of the three, but balancing them in the right daily ratio while also consuming enough calories… That results in some rather unwise life choices, such as forcing myself to eat 610 grams of plain Greek yogurt at the end of the day to balance out the macros. (That’s a lot of Greek yogurt, y’all.) I wonder how many people would take better care of their health and their diet if the entire process got gamified like this. Weight Watchers was on the right track, back in the day, but that was way before cellphones and not nearly as interactive. That’d make for a very interesting augmented reality app…

In covid news, things are still pretty hilarious at the White House. They’ve refused to let the CDC do their contact-tracing, which is really starting to look like a bit of a cover-up. More than 120 Capitol Hill frontline workers have tested positive for covid. Ditto for Stephen Miller, the ghoul behind the administration’s xenophobic policies. (I guess the virus can infect other species after all!) The guy who carries Trump’s nuclear football has covid as well. (Who would’ve thought the assigned keeper of nukes would be struck down by his own president?) Rudy Giuliani is one of the few people from Trump’s debate prep team who haven’t tested positive yet, but he coughed an awful lot during a recent TV interview… At this point, the White House alone has more cases than several foreign countries put together.

To make things even more interesting (an intersection of epidemiology and politics!), Trump vowed not to sign any economic stimulus bills until after the election. That effectively dooms millions of Americans to at least one more month of poverty. (Compare and contrast to Canada’s CERB model which gave every qualified Canadian $2,000 CAD per month.) At this point, it’s hard to say if it’s Trump’s innate stupidity or the mental side effects from his medication. Could be both, really. Either way, after doing all of his tough-guy posturing on covid to keep the stock market from panicking, that little stunt alone ended up sending it deep into the red in the middle of an otherwise fine day.

Closer to home, covid is really picking up steam in Toronto. About two-thirds of the city are showing test-positivity above 3%. Four areas of the city are showing test-positivity above 10%, which is remarkably bad. After the contact tracing stopped a few days ago, that was a de facto acknowledgement that we’re officially in the run&cover mode, as there are far too many cases. The provincial government, led by Doug Ford (think Trump, only mildly smarter and not as insane), refuses to grant the city’s request to shut down indoor dining, saying he doesn’t want to destroy people’s businesses. He’d probably have a point if they weren’t doomed anyway. (Just a matter of time, unfortunately.) He also keeps saying “show me the evidence,” which is pretty rich, given that the province stopped helping control the spread. I might have missed out on all the summer fun, but at least it’s mildly easier for me now to keep hiding and isolating. Can’t imagine how much that must suck for those who had a fun-filled sunny summer (and avoided getting sick) as they’re about to re-enter the early lockdown mode.

And to wrap this up, some hilarious covid news: a public health agency in the UK used Microsoft Excel, of all things, to track the covid data. They forgot about the row limit and, well, almost 16,000 positive test results didn’t get counted, and thousands of people didn’t get notified. They also didn’t get the guidance to self-isolate, and didn’t help contact tracers. Fun times. All the data geeks who work with Excel for a living (like yours truly) had a collective facepalm when that news story came out. I expect there’ll be more of that sort of stuff later on. The most hilarious part? The agency vowed to never do that again, and said they’ll split the data into multiple spreadsheets instead. It’s not often you see a public official announce they’re creating a timebomb. Heh…