Soviet Maps, LGBTQ Dating in China and Aloneliness - Dinner Table Digest № 2 - March 17, 2020
The Dinner Table Digest is a (bi)weekly collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley
I’ve decided to change up the title of the Digest, to keep it more in line with the initial branding. Dinner Table Digest also rolls off the tongue better than Dinner Time Digest, so I figured I’d make the change now.
Today we bookend the two pieces relevant to COVID-19, one on the consequences of social isolation, the other on the question of whether you can get COVID-19 a second time. In between we have pieces on gay dating apps in China, Soviet map makers, and the original targeted advertising, Junk Mail.
Social Detoxing and Solitude: Alone, Lonely, or Aloneliness?
"While loneliness is understood as social dissatisfaction, aloneliness is understood as asocial dissatisfaction – a mirror image of loneliness. It is a mismatch between the intention to spend time alone and the actual time spent alone. High intention and low time alone is high aloneliness. Shy people may experience high aloneliness if their desire to be by themselves is not met and have to socialize against their liking. They found that high aloneliness is moderately linked to depression regardless of how much time they spend alone. On the other hand, low aloneliness and high time spent alone is linked to an increase in depressive symptoms. This finding fits with the general understanding that being forced to be alone, beyond your capacity, is more about being lonely – a clear indicator of poor mental health."
How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet - New York Times
“"Whereas Russia has adopted a position “that L.G.B.T. rights is a Western conspiracy designed to weaken the nation,” says Darius Longarino, a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, “in China, it’s not like that at all.” In fact, state media has even attempted to distinguish the L.G.B.T.Q. movement from its Western counterparts and portray its progress as one with “Chinese characteristics.” Recently, The Global Times, a state-run newspaper, published an article titled “China’s L.G.B.T. activists break away from Western agenda,” arguing that because of China’s unique climate, the path to progress should be less driven by political activism than in the West."“
I have a rather eclectic YouTube viewing History. Here is the last video I watched:
I’m grateful to Travis Lane and the good folks at Inside the Jar for publishing my latest piece, a reflection on cannabis patient advocacy in Canada:
The “Junk Mail” Men: Selling Your Data for over a Century - Saturday Evening Post
“Presciently, Calvin Trillin wrote, in 1966, that “Some people in the trade believe that computerization will eventually result in great master lists of all magazine readers and all gadget buyers.” It’s easy now, in an age when anybody can whip out a smartphone and call up a street map or high-res satellite image of any point on Earth with a few taps, to forget how hard it once was to come by geo-spatial knowledge.”
Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers - Wired.com - July 2015
”In post-war Russia, men died in the pursuit of better maps. After World War II, Stalin ordered a complete survey of the Soviet Union. Though aerial photography had reduced the need for fieldwork by then, it didn’t eliminate it entirely, according to the 2002 paper by Alexey Postnikov, the Russian cartographer. Survey teams endured brutal conditions as they traversed Siberian wilderness and rugged mountains to establish networks of control points ... The maps themselves include copious text with detailed descriptions of the area they depict, everything from the materials and conditions of the roads to the diameter and spacing of the trees in a forest to the typical weather at different times of year. The map for Altan Emel, a remote region of China near the border of Mongolia and Russia, includes these details, according to a translation on Omnimap’s website: The lakes are usually not large; 0.5-2 km2 (maximum up to 7 km2), with the depth up to 1 meter. The banks are low, gentle, and partially swamped. The bottom is slimy and vicious [sic]. Some of lakes have salted or alkaline water.”
Can you get the coronavirus twice?
“Prof Jon Cohen, emeritus professor of infectious diseases at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: “The answer is that we simply don’t know [about reinfection] yet because we don’t have an antibody test for the infection, although we will have soon.
“However, it is very likely, based on other viral infections, that yes, once a person has had the infection they will generally be immune and won’t get it again. There will always be the odd exception, but that is certainly a reasonable expectation.””
Let me know what kind of stories you’d like to see in these Dinner Table Digests - these are as much for you as they are for me!
If you like what you read, PLEASE SHARE WIDELY :)
