Tuesday night.

I’m loving this Tropico game: it’s ridiculously complicated, especially considering it came out 20 or so years ago. There’s no expanded tutorial, no annoying-but-helpful pop-up boxes – it’s sink or swim. (Spoiler alert: you mostly sink.) My benevolent dictator guy has been overthrown, wiped out by hurricanes, defeated by his economic rivals on other islands, etc. The game’s cynicism is also helping me understand all the corruption references I’d previously only read about in textbooks. And now I can’t help but wonder if Fidel Castro stayed in power all those decades because he was some sort of logistical genius or because he was simply ridiculously lucky. (Or both?) In any case, the game is amazing, I can’t recommend it highly enough, and it’s amazing value for ~$10 it costs to download on Steam. It’s devilishly complex, and I’ve already spent two evenings trying to beat just one mission. (And there are at least 20 missions to choose from!) It also helps that the game has a great soundtrack. Go download Tropico-1 – you’ll enjoy it, eh.

My self-education with the online Red Cross course continues. Some of those things are just reminders of something I learned years ago. Others, though, are entirely new to me. I had no idea the “red crystal” was even a thing. (It was rolled out a few years ago, in addition to the red cross and the red crescent.) Part of the training also covers how to assist in childbirth. That is definitely not something they taught back in Seattle. Heh. Absorbing all those instructions on different scenarios, from poisoning to electrocution to stab wounds, I’m once again utterly floored by the fact that modern medicine is barely 170 years old, if that. Put two 85-year-olds back to back, and there you have it. Beyond that point, there be dragons. I can’t even imagine what advances humanity will come up with later this century, let alone later… I do know, though, that if I ended up trapped in time 500 or so years ago, just this basic first aid and CPR knowledge would probably make me a court wizard. (Germ theory of disease, just to pick one thing, is less than 200 years old. How weird is that?)

Today was the first day of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, at long last. (I’m not sure why Pelosi dragged her feet like that.) The attempted coup was just over a month ago now, and quite a few people in politics and in the media are trying to sweep it under the rug. After a lackluster performance by Trump’s backup lawyer (his original lawyers quit a few days ago), the senate voted and confirmed that it’s constitutional to hold an impeachment trial even after the term is over. Despite the win, 44 Republican senators voted against proceeding with the trial – that’s after their own boss tried to get an angry mob to kill their colleagues. I’m glad I’m in Canada…

In covid news, South Africa will not be using the AstraZeneca vaccine: it was found to be remarkably inefficient against the new and dominant South African strain. (Aka B.1.351.) A vaccine trial conducted in South Africa found the AstraZeneca vaccine to be less than 25% efficient. Other non-mRNA vaccines also tested poorly against the South African variant: 57% for the Johnson&Johnson vaccine and 49% for the Novavax one. No bueno… The two mRNA vaccines are supposed to be better against that variant, but I haven’t found anything concrete.

This will be a very strange year…