Monday night.

I had two pretty funny reactions earlier today when I learned that Yahoo Answers is finally getting put out of its misery:

  1. Oh no, not Yahoo Answers!
  2. Wait, Yahoo Answers is still alive?

It seems like it got surpassed and then completely overshadowed by Reddit’s r/AskReddit many years ago. I think the last time I used Yahoo Answers was around 2012. It’s definitely part of Internet’s history but wow, it’s so old and decrepit. This reminds me of the shutdown of GeoCities (also owned by Yahoo), with all its adorably clunky ancient personal sites and guestbooks. I wonder if Zoomers would believe it if we told them that once upon a time, your site’s visitors could sign a guestbook. Heh.

In a bit of personal news, my low-key efforts to start looking for interesting people online have paid off. A very interesting person who unfortunately lives on the opposite coast will be in Toronto to see her family in the second half of May… It’s interesting that she’s a Canadian-American to my American-Canadian. Yet another thing to look forward to after this whole mess is over. (Over for me, subjectively. Objectively, it’ll go on for quite some time.)

Business idea: post-pandemic physical therapy to get us couch potatoes in some sort of passably fine physical shape. Like one of those yuppie bootcamps, but more user-friendly.

In covid news, the entire province of Ontario will probably get hit with a stay-at-home order – a lot of medical officials, including Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa, publicly called for it earlier today, citing horrific case numbers. This will likely happen: on social media, a wide variety of local doctors are talking about having zero available ICU beds, even for those who don’t have covid. Systems have momentum… The people who will be in those ICUs a week from now are only now getting sick. Even a total lockdown here and now won’t stop the momentum for a solid week or so. Online, people are not taking that well… Everyone used to joke how it’s been a year since we were asked to self-isolate “for just two weeks.” Those jokes are gone now: folks are just angry or sad, or some mixture thereof.

The many, many municipalities that make up the Greater Toronto Area are all doing something different with their vaccine eligibility. Some are opening it up for everyone 50 and over; others are still 55+ or 60+. Some are opening it up for folks with high BMI. Some are allowing people with mental health issues, diagnosed or not. Some are opening it up for those who identify as Indigenous people. You don’t have to be Indigenous, you just have to say that you identify that way. No proof is asked (Canada is, after all, a very polite society), and none is given. It’s a logical outcome of a broken system that didn’t plan the rollout properly, and that routinely has medics standing by with no one to vaccinate because the province is dead-set on luring all the oldest citizens to downtown Toronto (not a very accessible place) before letting anyone else have any vaccines. The system is broken, and as a logical outcome, there’s a real rush as people keep calling the hospitals that might have leftover vaccines, or claim to belong to groups they’re not in (and then gleefully admit as much on social media), etc. In the end, everyone will get vaccinated, but the fact that it’s turned so many of us into liars… Yeesh. And yes, I’m well aware of the irony that I myself had pretended to be from Ohio to get my shot. Same old story: the system is broken. (How can a small and peaceful country like Canada force a country like the US to end the export ban? There’s zero leverage, aside from stopping our maple syrup exports. Heh.)

Good night, y’all.