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Thursday links, miscellanea
Sara Hendren (@ablerism on micro.blog): catechesis by camera. This is the first time I have encountered the case of Jesse and Ashley Ridgway, and Hendren’s article is a wonderful perspective on one aspect of the story. All I could think of, on the other hand, is our grandmothers’ wisdom: do not share pregnancy news with the outside world for the first 90 days. Sure, there may be some superstition there, but more than anything it saves you from a messy round of sharing any unfortunate updates — which happen more often than you would think — and keeping track of who knows what. So yes, it was completely expected that learning things about the baby in real time along with your YouTube followers may turn sour. May younger generations, who have long ago stopped listening to their parents let alone grandmothers, learn from the Ridgways — and there are many lessons to learn.
Vinay Prasad: Shingles vaccine(s) and dementia: the only medical intervention to work faster than Tums. Unsurprisingly, Prasad is more sceptical about the effect of the shingles vaccine on dementia than Eric Topol. Be that as it may, it is not a bad vaccine to get if for nothing else than to prevent shingles. In the meantime, I am sure the four observational studies which all point to the same thing will fuel at least a decade’s worth of translational and basic science research to connect herpes zoster virus to dementia. Better than wasting it on the amyloid hypothesis!
Andy Baio: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows. One good thing about this post is that I now know about the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, containing “made-up words for emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express.” The other is that I have even more reason to avoid obviously AI-slopped websites that look slick, professional, clearly have an agenda, but carry no byline, because they are not only stealing my attention from a more deserving human creator, they are also stealing that creator’s material, without attribution and with an ulterior motive.