[Seth Says] "Just two things of which you must beware..."

"...don't drink the water and don't breathe the air."

Yes, with 3 straight days of air quality warnings here and today's AQI over 150, today's newsletter is brought to you by Tom Lehrer's classic song "Pollution".

This means that once again, Tom Lehrer is more relevant to modern circumstances than the latest NYT newsletter, which suggests a walk in the sunshine to get some fresh air. Maybe if you're in Western NY? But meanwhile if you're in Eastern New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts, (Except for Barnstable, which I presume has infinite quantities of fresh air due to being the most rural city name you can have, outside of Cowpasturesilotractorburg), fresh air is nowhere to be found, even if you listen to NPR.
 

So, after three days of this nonsense, we've ordered a couple of air filters on Amazon (the local Wal-Mart was sold out of the one with decent reviews), because it seems like a necessary thing to have. Arguably it was already a necessary thing to have better air filtration in public/commercial buildings due to Covid, but as you know the pandemic has been declared over, and only about 17 states are still even reporting covid numbers.

Which is a bit inconvenient for me; some time ago I decided that I would re-evaluate my extreme social distancing measures once US daily deaths from Covid fell to 100 or so, which I felt was a reasonable amount since daily auto accident deaths are around there at 110, and flu deaths at around 10-15. But seeing an average of 80 from only 17 states reporting suggests that we're still around 2-3 times that. (and, y'know, usually it's not the states who have been taking covid most seriously who decide to stop all tracking.)

Regardless, the result is that it feels like the air isn't currently super-safe to breathe indoors or outdoors without a mask. And I'm not at all ready to live in a Mad Max world; I can't even drive well in a car that *isn't* covered in spikes, rusty chains, and angry machete-wielding berserkers. And speaking of disasters...
 

Sure, it's been a while since I've done any dating, since that would require interacting with other humans. But thanks to the magic of old TV shows, our researchers have a pretty good idea of how the Dating Game works. And if you're filled with nostalgia, you can even hunt down some original episodes from a half-century on YouTube, at which point after a minute you'll probably be sick of the insipid and stultifying boring conversation. But I recently watched far more than a minute, as research for this column bringing you:
 
An updated The Dating Game -- with a Twist

You may be thinking, "a twist? what twist?"  But a Twist isn't for ThinKing. It's for ChubbyChecker. 

 

There's chess no way I'm topping that Chubby Checker joke, so I may just piece out. 

A friend recently sent me a piece by a content guru saying that a key to getting people to read your content (if for some reason you wanted to have an audience or one day make money) is to always offer actionable advice, ideally about health, wealth, or relationships. And I realize that while I've inadvertently touched on all three topics here, I haven't really offered any actionable advice. So:

Try not to die.

Thanks for reading, and back in two weeks with another column.



Pawn with the Wind,
Seth