My new favorite thing: People making their reusable elastomeric respirators beautiful! (Usually the Dentec P100 or the Dentec N95, which are NIOSH-certified and reusable.)
I’ve been collecting as many of these customizations as I can find, and I think they fall into a few categories:
The first is the colorful distraction, where it seems like the aim is to make the mask colorful and cheerful — less scary — which distracts from the apocalyptic / gas mask vibes, while still being simple enough for everyday wear.
2. The second is make it fashion, where the aim is to just make something that looks so incredibly cool that you feel beautiful wearing it, and it feels like a stylish accessory. These use lots of shiny elements and swirling patterns (all of the below by @nickelpin)
3. And the third is punk where the mask customization embraces and enhances its non-conforming / resistance undertones. My favorite in this category is by @andrewshumate, who installed a CO2 monitor and set it up so the filters change color based on the CO2 levels in the space.
I have been daydreaming a lot about designs for a customized Dentec P100 or N95!
(my daily masks are either my Dentec P100 or the comfy 3M Aura N95, and I’d like to have a reusable respirator that looks less intimidating for everyday walks etc.)
First, some cheerful patterns. I actually like the cloud one a lot, I might do it. I think the high-contrast sunflower design is super effective at distracting the eye from the respirator shape.
I’m also really into this night sky version. Feels more beautiful / mysterious / subtle.
These are not my style, but I’m reeeeeally into the idea of bootleg Louis Vuitton designer masks. (This is like, the opposite of punk, lol)
Just thinking about how wearing a respirator (like KN95, N95, or the pictured elastomeric N95s and P100s) is very cool and my personal experience is that everyone thinks you’re cool and attractive when you do it.
Project N95 is a nonprofit that sells these and other respirators for relatively cheap, you can find them here: link .
I got a question about reusable masks that look less apocalyptic but still work.
I’m not a mask nerd (just a normie who wants to stay alive another week + live in solidarity with disabled people), so first I want to recommend The People’s CDC as a resource. Their latest info on masking is here, and they also have a weekly COVID weather report newsletter that I love here.
So: If that’s you, I’d recommend the Flo mask. It’s not NIOSH-certified yet, but it does seem to work like an N95 from what we can see (results here and here). It also has kids’ sizes!
And you can do cool mods like adding spikes or decals. (Artist and designer Nickelpin has an online shop where she sells Flo mask decal stickers like the sparkly star below — that’s here.)
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#I’m not much into decorating things in general #and to the extent that I have an aesthetic‚ ”post-apocalyptic chic” actually fits it very well #but I’m glad this exists #(also‚ while we here at Brinens and Things do *not* endorse passive-aggressively strapping a CO2 monitor to your face) #((except maybe at DefCon: seems like in that social context it actually might not backfire)) #(we have to admit that’s a hell of a thing) #clothing #illness tw #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #((getting an elastomeric is‚ in all sincerity‚ one of the best things that has ever happened to me)) #((warts and all)) #((I said back in the day that I might stop masking in summer‚ or with some vaccines in me)) #((but in the end‚ I thought: why go back? why settle for less?)) #((I’ve had a taste of a better world‚ and I’m not going to turn around and walk away)) #((The Future has open borders: to live there‚ one need only choose)) #tag rambles
In the big list of “terms of art in a specific discipline that suddenly everybody is familiar with”, I think that to go with “coronavirus”, “core inflation”, etc. we’ll shortly be adding “cascading failure.”
There’s a fancy word for this phenomenon, used by scientists who study infectious diseases from an ecological perspective: zoonosis. […] It’s a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-first century.
2014 Oct: Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus, by David Quammen
That’s getting at the same idea, yeah, but I don’t think it’s the exact line I was thinking of. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing I saw was a David Quammen author interview, though.)
[…] the public imagination about climate change has been pretty much exclusively trained to entertain meteorological calamities – storms, mostly – but there are whole other categories.
Such as the epidemiological.
See, even if *this* pandemic wasn’t caused by the Climate Catastrophe, it seems the epidemiologists are expecting the Climate Catastrophe to cause other pandemics and epidemics. There’s a variety of reasons why – I had found a prescient essay from, IIRC, 2015 or so, which I have subsequently lost, which had a sentence to the effect of, “In the future, ‘zoonosis’ is going to be a word everyone knows.” – but we can discuss those later.
Well the actual quote, it turns out, is, as I quoted above, “Zoonosis. […] It’s a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-first century.””
It *feels* like that specific “going to be a word everyone knows” line has been around since the 2010s, but (1) that might not be accurate and (2) 2021 might not be the first time Siderea said it. (She has apparently set her blog to not be indexed by public search engines, and I don’t currently have any plans to ingest it into my personal search engine.)
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#oh look an update #reply via reblog #apocalypse cw #illness tw #amnesia cw? #climate change
living in the suburbs is like mall. Movies. Mall again. Go to target. Go to gamestop. Back to the mall. Barnes and noble. Back to the mall. Chili’s. Back to the mall. Eat hot chip. Lie. And I’m SICK of it!!!!!
I’m sorry god please forgive me I would give anything to go to Barnes and noble and then dinner at Chili’s with a lava mountain cake please lord take me back I’ll never complain again
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#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #juxtaposition #(…when was OP) #(…2020-01-10) #(*hell* of a timing‚ I do feel bad for them) #((second post is 2020-04-23; Poi’s comment is 2023-01-22)) #TBH I’m surprised this thread didn’t contain a *third* regretful post about people going to the mall and spreading Omicron everywhere #(personally I went to the mall last year in a respirator and had a lovely time) #((though I did *not* have dinner at Chili’s: I bought a smoothie and drank it outdoors)) #((lifting up the bottom of my elastomeric and sticking a straw through the gap)) #covid19 #illness tw #embarrassment squick #food
During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.
A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.
Mission fucking accomplished
Okay so I love this but it doesn’t cover the half of why the design is awesome and actually borders on making sense.
It wasn’t just that they didn’t want to smell the infected and dead, they thought it was crucial to protecting themselves. They had no way of knowing about what actually caused the plague, and so one of the other theories was that the smell of the infected all by itself was evil and could transmit the plague. So not only would they fill their masks with aromatic herbs and flowers, they would also burn fires in public areas, so that the smell of the smoke would “clear the air”. This all related to the miasma theory of contagion, which was one of the major theories out there until the 19th century. And it makes sense, in a way. Plague victims smelled awful, and there’s a general correlation between horrible septic smells and getting horribly sick if you’re around what causes them for too long.
You can see now that we’ve got two different theories as to what caused the plague that were worked into the design. That’s because the whole thing was an attempt by the doctors to cover as many bases as they could think of, and we’re still not done.
The glass eyepieces. They were either darkened or red, not something you generally want to have to contend with when examining patients. But the plague might be spread by eye contact via the evil eye, so best to ward that off too.
The illustration shows a doctor holding a stick. This was an examination tool, that helped the doctors keep some distance between themselves and the infected. They already had gloves on, but the extra level of separation was apparently deemed necessary. You could even take a pulse with it. Or keep people the fuck away from you, which was apparently a documented use.
Finally, the robe. It’s not just to look fancy, the cloth was waxed, as were all of the rest of their clothes. What’s one of the properties of wax? Water-based fluids aren’t absorbed by it. This was the closest you could get to a sterile, fully protecting garment back then. Because at least one person along the line was smart enough to think “Gee, I’d really rather not have the stuff coming out of those weeping sores anywhere on my person”.
So between all of these there’s a real sense that a lot of real thought was put into making sure the doctors were protected, even if they couldn’t exactly be sure from what. They worked with what information they had. And frankly, it’s a great design given what was available! You limit exposure to aspirated liquids, limit exposure to contaminated liquids already present, you limit contact with the infected. You also don’t give fleas any really good place to hop onto. That’s actually useful.
Beyond that, there were contracts the doctors would sign before they even got near a patient. They were to be under quarantine themselves, they wouldn’t treat patients without a custodian monitoring them and helping when something had to be physically contacted, and they would not treat non-plague patients for the duration. There was an actual system in place by the time the plague doctors really became a thing to make sure they didn’t infect anyone either.
These guys were the product of the scientific process at work, and the scientific process made a bitchin’ proto-hazmat suit. And containment protocols!
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#I think about this post every time I see someone wearing a bifold N95 #(I know I’ve talked about that before‚ but here is the specific post I had in mind) #history #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #that one post with the thing #illness tw #proud citizen of The Future
The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it – victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done – humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.
It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow. In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).
Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.
For a long time, there was no hope – only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.
In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.
It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it – but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.
An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.
A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.
And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.
At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.
The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.
The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.
They found none.
35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.
This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world – was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.
Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.
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#this post was queued to ensure proper timing #Tumblr traditions #anniversaries #illness tw #history #proud citizen of The Future
In the big list of “terms of art in a specific discipline that suddenly everybody is familiar with”, I think that to go with “coronavirus”, “core inflation”, etc. we’ll shortly be adding “cascading failure.”
There’s a fancy word for this phenomenon, used by scientists who study infectious diseases from an ecological perspective: zoonosis. […] It’s a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the twenty-first century.
2014 Oct: Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus, by David Quammen
That’s getting at the same idea, yeah, but I don’t think it’s the exact line I was thinking of. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing I saw was a David Quammen author interview, though.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #illness tw #amnesia cw? #apocalypse cw?
As of November 9th 2022, the CDC is telling anyone with a weakened immune system, over 65, or who is pregnant to not eat any meat or cheese from deli counters anywhere in the country.
You are at higher risk for severe Listeria illness if you are pregnant, aged 65 or older, or have a weakened immune system due to certain medical conditions or treatments. If you are in any of these groups, do not eat meat or cheese from any deli counter, unless it is reheated to an internal temperature of 165°F or until steaming hot.
There have been 16 illnesses traced so far- 13 hospitalizations, 1 death. Illnesses have been clustered around New York State but have also appeared in California and Illinois. As always the true number of illnesses is certainly much larger.
Note that bit about “unless it is reheated to an internal temperature of 165°F”. Basically, treat deli meat as if it were raw: be careful what it touches until it’s been thoroughly cooked.
And, frankly, that goes for all risk groups: if you’re in a low-risk demographic listeria is unlikely to *kill* you (or even require you to navigate an already overwhelmed hospital system), but food poisoning is still well worth avoiding.
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#PSA #home of the brave #food #poison cw #illness tw #death tw? #reply via reblog #(that’s not even counting the possibility that you might not *be* in a low-risk demographic anymore) #(I suspect there’s a lot of people out there with COVID-sequela immune dysregulation who don’t realise it yet)
#I kept wavering on reblogging this because it feels like tempting fate #but the fact is: #that one post with the thing #(I found out yesterday that a month ago I spent two hours in a room with a maskless COVID-positive person) #(and emerged unharmed) #(God bless P100s) #(best sixty-two dollars I ever spent) #*knocks on wood* #illness tw #covid19 #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #body horror?
the pandemic is at an awkward point right now but we’ve finally hit the sweet spot for an important opportunity, which is that it’s the best possible moment to mask in public using like a darth vader or daft punk or immortan joe kinda mask. you could set it up to also be filtered if you want it to actually work as a mask, but the important thing is the fashion statement
see earlier this wouldn’t have worked bc people wouldn’t have trusted that it was compliant, you had to wait for masking rules to be relaxed to the point where a lot of people weren’t wearing them. and later it won’t work because it relies on the shared knowledge that people do still wear masks a lot for health reasons; the soul of the bit is that people know it’s covid-related rather than just cosplay
so, get out there is what I’m saying. clock is ticking
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#yesterday I had an exchange with a customer: #Him: ”What’s the respirator for?” #Me: ”I have immune problems.” #Him: ”Oh‚ so it has nothing to do with– okay.” #and now I’m so curious what he was planning to finish that sentence with #I feel like it might have been related #(I *know* I’ve had at least one customer who was under the impression that I’d chosen a respirator over a surgical mask for the Aesthetic) #(it’s quite possible that a *lot* of them are under that impression‚ and it just mostly doesn’t come up) #I really don’t know what’s going to happen to the abovementioned shared knowledge #apparently SARS-1 made a lasting impact on the masking cultures of the places it hit #and yet people in the Roaring Twenties forgot the lessons of the Spanish flu quite rapidly #I suspect there’s going to be a lot of geographical variation #for one thing‚ some people live in places where they see me around town‚ which is certainly a reminder #(I saw people’s reaction to seeing me when they walked into the restaurant in the spring and summer of 2020) #(the way I was a living public-health notice) #tag rambles #covid19 #clothing #transhumanism #illness tw #discourse cw? #amnesia cw?
#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)
Brinens and Things 