From the Mind of Trevor Stone

The past couple months have felt like things were getting back to normal. In March(?) we got to have assigned desks again at work, which meant I could do things like stand on a stress mat, not bike with a laptop every day, leave a box of Altoids on my desk, and see what Chrome tabs I had open on March 11th, 2020. In early April I took a road trip, then met our Canadian coworker in person for a week of team bonding. I'd been reminded that Happy Thursday is a thing I used to do, and made it to three weeks in a row of colorful people riding colorful bikes around town. Eating food in restaurants feels normal. After a chilly spring season, I'm summer season captain for the office softball team, which has been playing pretty well.

On Sunday I climbed around on ladders and garage roofs to help a blind friend get his ham radio antenna re-attached after the big wind storms this winter. I then took my parents out for Mothers' Day dinner. After I got home from dinner I noticed a bit of a scratchy throat, so I took some vitamin C and went to bed at a reasonable hour. I'd been feeling more sore and tired than usual during the previous week, including discomfort lying in bed and being really tired when waking up. This feeling was reminiscent of my state a few years ago before I started taking Humira to tamp down my immune system, so I wondered if the drug wasn't working as well as it used to, or if I'd ended up with a weaker batch. I also reflected that I'd had lots of late nights sitting in a somewhat awkward chair being engrossed in the Internet, so self-induced posture problems were a possible cause.

On Monday I was extra sore and tired when I woke up at about 10:30, so I decided to work (and slack off a bit) at home, given the scratchy throat. I took a fancy Cue home COVID test in the afternoon, which was negative. I worked on some code on the back porch, and finally took the initiative to call the power company about an every-10-second beep that had been annoying for months. I used the last of the light to attempt to get the sprinkler system running again, but didn't have quite the right setup. My arms, particularly the right one, were still sore (I chalked it up to lots of computer mouse use) and my pelvis felt out of shape, but overall not terrible. I took a long bath; it took all my energy to get up and out of the water, but that's usually how I feel when I'm drained enough to need a hot bath. On Tuesday I woke up around 11 with a similar lack of satisfying sleep and lots of sore body parts, so I decided to take another light day from home, including taking part of the afternoon to get the sprinklers working right. Our softball team didn't have any subs available, and I felt good enough to pitch the whole game while wearing a mask. (The tricky bit was positioning my sunglasses so they wouldn't fog up from the mask, but still keep the setting sun at bay.) Wednesday was another day of waking up sore and tired. It took me several hours to get through a bowl of granola, but that sometimes happens if I end up pouring more in, or I hit a patch with a lot of finely-crushed bits. I did some more work-from-porch relaxing and decided that a walk might help me feel better, so I got dressed and headed over to a meeting where we were testing out technology and room arrangement for a hybrid meeting setup. I was wearing a cloth mask, the other participants were wearing N95s, and we were about 10 feet apart. Going in I'd felt pretty confident that I didn't have COVID (see: test from two days before), wasn't contagious (very little coughing), and was probably having an immune overreaction to something. I started questioning the decision during the meeting, though, as I started having some very shallow coughs and was feeling a mild fever. Later on Wednesday night I felt extra drained, requiring a significant fraction of my spoons to empty and load the dishwasher, which I hadn't mustered the energy for in several evenings.

Thursday was the worst day. The week of ache had compounded, I was frustrated that lying in bed hurt and therefore wasn't restful, and I was exhausted. This was clearly not a "short overreaction to a minor virus" experience. I still didn't have much appetite, was coughing more (still shallow), and had approximately no energy. Kelly thought she saw some concerning signs in my mouth, and encouraged me to see a doctor. In 2022 if you feel sick you're not supposed to go physically to the doctor, so I had a telehealth adventure: sticking my tongue out close to the webcam, trying to shine a small ring light on just the right tongue spot, using a butter knife to sample mucus, and grabbing a home thermometer for a quick test. No stethoscope was simulated, and I didn't record my own height and weight to completely virtualize an office visit, though. The doctor hypothesized a bunch of possible illnesses from flu to COVID to strep throat. They had me do a drive-through test at the hospital. COVID testing has progressed to the point that there's now a combined respiratory test where a single nasal swab will produce test results for COVID, influenza, bronchitis, and about a dozen other respiratory illnesses. The strep test gets swabbed in a different hole, but also gets cultured for a whole raft of possibilities.

Late in the evening my email told me to check my medical portal, where I learned I'd tested positive for coronavirus. D'oh. I quickly emailed the folks I'd met with on Wednesday with profuse apologies and warnings. I emailed next week's planned house guests and recommended that they seek other accommodation. I texted my radio friend a warning. I called my parents. I emailed my softball team and texted the other team's captain. I emailed the coworkers who sit near me. I filled out a "Report Covid" form at work which had a bunch of questions like "What are your symptoms" and "Have you been in close contact with someone who has tested positive" which should be unnecessary if I could start the form with "I tested positive for COVID, tell anyone who badged in to my floor about it." Wow is it a lot of work to do your own contract tracing, it's a good thing I didn't have the "can barely get out of bed" flavor of COVID.

While pursuing responsible disclosure, I opened the Colorado Exposure Notifications app on my phone to figure out how to report a positive test there. I was greeted with a big button asking me if I wanted to enable exposure notifications, and that doing so would require Bluetooth. "Um, yes, please, what in the world have you been doing this whole time?" was roughly my reaction. I'm pretty sure I installed this app in 2020, turned it on, and assumed it would quietly do its thing. I took not having received an exposure notification so far as a sign that my mostly-isolated life over the last two years had meant no close contacts with anyone who tested positive. I hadn't considered the alternative theory that the app had quietly turned itself off (maybe when the phone was in Airplane mode, or after an OS upgrade?) who knows how long ago. I don't recall seeing any "Exposure notifications are turned off" system notifications. This felt like a smoke alarm which doesn't beep when the batteries run low. YOU HAD ONE JOB! I also did another Cue home test, which came back positive. It's encouraging that it detects it (the virus hasn't evolved to evade detection), and an important data point that it might take a couple days of feeling lousy before the test is accurate.

On Friday I woke up to a call from a medical assistant at my doctor's office who said the doctor could send a prescription for Paxlovid, an antiviral medication for COVID. (I haven't been closely following the coronavirus news for awhile, so I was unaware that such a treatment was now available.) They said they could send it to CVS Pharmacy inside Target, an establishment I'm familiar because, for reasons of opaque employer insurance pricing, is where I get my "specialty" medication, even though all the rest of my prescriptions go through the pharmacy at my local King Soopers. I've speculated that this arrangement might be because it was such a pain in the ass to get the prescription set up with CVS Speciality that maybe someone saves money from people giving up and not ordering their specialty drugs. I called their phone system in the early afternoon, giving "Prescription status" to the automated voice system. It asked me for the prescription number which of course I didn't have because I am calling to find out whether you received the prescription. When I convinced the AI that I didn't know the prescription number, it attempted to transfer me to the pharmacy, which was closed for lunch. After lunch I called back twice; the first time "Prescription status" got interpreted as "Covid masks" and without asking for confirmation started to explain that the store sold those. I hung up and tried again, this time "Check prescription status" somehow became "Covid vaccinations" and it transferred me to a recording about how to schedule a vaccination. I called my doctor's office instead, which at least has a recording of a human reading numbers you can press. I reached someone who said they only saw the King Soopers entry in my records as a pharmacy. I explained that I didn't care what pharmacy filled this prescription, I just wanted to know if it had been sent and where it had gone. They called me back shortly and said it was sent to CVS. I called CVS back and hoped that pressing 0 would put me in the queue for talking to a human being physically present in the same place as my drugs. After 15 minutes on the same automated message cycle, including a point when the recording drops out for a few seconds, giving you false hope that someone's actually answering the phone, I asked if any of my teammates were at work this afternoon and could they do me a favor. I armed my manager with my date of birth and got him to walk next door to the pharmacy in Target and check if they'd received the prescription. After a couple minutes of confusion they realized that for a freshly-received prescription they needed to check a different computer system, where it had in fact been received. My manager told me it would be filled in about 25 minutes. I was still in hold message limbo, 50 minutes after starting the call. Not sure what I would've done if I didn't have allies within walking distance of the pharmacy. The "You're not allowed to pick up your medication yourself" challenge builds on the "When you're sick you shouldn't go to the doctor's office" wrinkle from the 2020s expansion pack.

Ironically, after spending all afternoon trying to make sure I could get my hands on Paxlovid before the pharmacy closed and the "Start taking within 5 days of symptoms" window expired I was actually feeling fairly good, way better than Thursday when I'd made the doctor's appointment. (Hail to the vaccines that gave my immune system practice last year.) Another coworker dropped off the medication, my dad brought over a grocery delivery of coconut water, soup, ginger beer, orange juice, and grapefruit (you can tell we're in a mindset). I'm celebrating the fact that I haven't lost any sense of taste by eating kim chi and chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. Kelly and I live in a house where we can easily avoid direct contact, each getting a bedroom, living room, and bathroom to ourselves. All in all, things could be a lot worse.

This TED talk by Rodrigo Canales draws parallels between prominent Mexican drug cartels and more ordinary businesses. Brand, markets, and social involvement all play a key role. Canales describes Los Zetas as a franchise business for ex-military members and local gangs. They're credited with many of the most gruesome killings in the drug war, and part of that is their brand. There are parallels here with Al Qaeda, which is also a franchise organization with an interest in tooting their own horn about how destructive they are.

Los Caballeros Templarios Guardia Michoacana (Knights Templar Cartel, successor to La Familia Michoacana) control some very important transit territory. They operate on a very local basis with social programs, and are loved by many in the communities. They portray many of their killings as community defense (petty criminals, local drug dealers, outside organized crime) and have played a significant role in local politics. This sounds to me a lot like Hezbollah, which operates schools, hospitals, and other social capital-building enterprises along side their long-running battles with Israel and arab governments. Other paramilitary organizations have had similar success with social programs and local support including the IRA and loyalists in Ireland and the Basque ETA. It's very hard to destroy an organization like this; they have the benefits of guerrilla warriors plus the financial resources of a major corporation.

The Sinaloa Federation operates a lot like a multinational corporation, including an executive on the Forbes billionaires list. They innovate in product delivery technology, they have executives (aka family members) supervise new ventures, they outsource tasks that would damage their brand, and so forth. In addition to parallels with legal corporations like oil companies I think they also bear a striking resemblance to historic organized crime groups like the Mafia and Yakuza. The salient feature is the organized part moreso than the crime. The latter is only present because the business's products happen to be illegal.

I think it's helpful to think of these groups as companies with violence as one of their business methods rather than a grand version of random street violence. It also suggests that tourist fears about travel in Mexico may be unnecessarily elevated: would killing you further the business interests of the cartels?

A TED blog post about this video links to a few others on similar topics, including a suggestion that the best way to fight these organizations is to devalue their brands.

One interesting twist in the Mexican drug war is that the Americans are funding both sides. The cartels make most of their money by selling drugs to the U.S. distribution network, not to mention side businesses like smuggling migrants for the labor market. Meanwhile, the U.S. government subsidizes the Mexican government's anti-cartel activities, with gun manufacturers from the States profiting from sales to both sides. Not to mention the money spent on border enforcement and anti-drug efforts north of the border, a chunk of which also goes to American arms dealers.

At the P-Funk concert last night, three people asked if I'd "Seen Molly." Since I'd already bumped into a friend of my brother's I didn't recognize, I had to stare at the first girl who asked and think "Do I recognize this person? Why would she be asking about my friend without introducing herself?" I answered "Not here" to see if she would ask a follow-up question.

In case you're keeping track, more people asked me for drugs at George Clinton & Funkadelic than at The Chemical Brothers. I don't remember anyone asking me for drugs at Michael Franti & Spearhead or Kraftwerk (all shows at the Fillmore). I don't think anyone's ever asked me for drugs at the Boulder Theater or the Fox Theater. P-Funk is also the only show I've seen where somebody (two, in fact) tossed a joint to someone on stage who then lit up. Caveat: I've never been to Reggae on the Rocks. And in a reversal of stereotypical roles, a black guy with corn rows secretly reached over and touched my hat. Oh, and Maggot Brain is totally awesome.

One of my favorite Onion articles ever was Clinton to Parliament: It's Time To Drop DA BOMB On Iraq.

I heard on NPR today that the Supreme Court is hearing a case related to an appeal that the drug cocktail used in lethal injection is Cruel and Inhuman Punishment.

Perhaps they should change the substance to an extra large dose of pure heroin. The executees could then enjoy at least the end of their life, the justice system could unload some confiscated contraband, and for convicts involved in drug-related murder the punishment would suit the crime.