Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It
by
It took years for the change to be complete, but the result was a vigorous public health movement that emphasized simple but powerful measures like cleaning up water supplies and teaching people what now seem to be basic lessons of health
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"give your babies milk, not beer" I've got some questions about what the English were up to in the 19th century.


“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Meditations
― Meditations

“The most profound legacy of the dominance of bureaucratic forms of organization over the last two hundred years is that it has made this intuitive division between rational, technical means and the ultimately irrational ends to which they are put seem like common sense.”
― The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
― The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressedâ€� person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessnessâ€� or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!â€� and ‘Hang on!â€�, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
―
―

“You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
― Meditations
― Meditations

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work â€� as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for â€� the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?â€�
So you were born to feel “nice�? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
― Meditations
So you were born to feel “nice�? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
― Meditations
Matt’s 2024 Year in Books
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