Interesting Links for 25-03-2025

[andrewducker]

1. "HR said I was only allowed to have 3 seizures a month" (in case you were wondering why disabled people are employed less often)

(tags:disability employment OhForFucksSake )

2. Anyone fancy being our neighbours?

(tags:housing Edinburgh )

3. Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long-term organ damage

(tags:pandemic doom )

4. The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars

(tags:history Italy )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

3. Yes that's just FANTASTIC, given how little we can do about past viruses we have had (shingles vaccine excepted?), and that even with vaccinations, COVID will still likely get us many times. (She says, having had it for sure once only, but suddenly had a cold sore in the last weeks for the first time in probably 30 years).

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've had it at least 3 times. Maybe more. And no way of avoiding it with the kids in school.

[mellowtigger]

"There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,"

Preaching to the choir. I'm so very glad to see this message reaching more eyes. Thank you for that link. We need to somehow pressure governments and corporations to make more effort to clean the indoor air everywhere.

[channelpenguin]

Yeah, there is definitely scope for doing what we can about air quality.

There is also at > 1 pan-corona-virus vaccine in Phase 1 trials, which is cheering.

[cmcmck]

4. We have been in San Gimignano a few times and there are other walled towns in the Siena region which still have some of their towers.

Why do they insist on misspelling Guelf?

[andrewducker]

Seems to be very common spelling throughout history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelphs_and_Ghibellines
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Guelph

Here it is being used in 1821: https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00halluoft/page/n5/mode/2up

[dewline]

1. Bloody Hell. Crap like this has been going on around the working world forever, and the older I get the angrier I get that it's still happening. Exhaustion takes the self-restraints off, right?

3. And yeah. I'm still working to delay/prevent my next infection for this reason among many others.

[armiphlage]

2. The basement has no windows?

[andrewducker]

It doesn't have a basement.
But the back and front half of the building are at half-floor differences in height, because of the slope.

[armiphlage]

4. Bernard Rudofsky wrote that, in addition to the towers being for protection, they would also be deliberately positioned to shade the homes of those that the families didn't like.

[jducoeur]

On point 4: for our honeymoon in Florence, we stayed at the Torre Guelfa, which was a medieval Guelph palace. The bar is at the top of the still-very-high tower, and is just about the best view in the city.

(They gave us what seems to have been the honeymoon suite, on a weird half-floor unto itself, with the most ridiculously enormous balcony I've ever encountered, stretching all the way across the street. I found myself wishing we had 25 friends around, so we could have a party on it.)

[andrewducker]

That sounds amazing!