The Interactive Circle of Fifths
This week I decided to challenge Claude Opus 4.1 to a coding challenge. The objective? Create a React application that renders an interactive circle of 5ths. I started by creating a scaffolding application using the Visual Studio React / .Net Core template. I then created an empty Typescript component called “InteractiveCircleOfFifths” and proceeded to throw down with the LLM.
The prompt:
Create a React component using Typescript that renders a musical circle of 5ths onto a canvas. The circle will consist of 3 bands, Major, Minor and Notes. Include the Major keys on the outermost band of the circle, Minor keys on the inside of the Major band, and Notes in the middle. Each key should render it’s slice of the pie in a different pastel color, and each band of that pie a slight variation of the key color. Do not use yellow or bright green.
The Major key labels will be the key itself, like F C G, etc. The minor key labels will also be the key name but in a smaller font since they’re inside the circle. The bottom label will be Gb/F# since it’s enharmonic. The key label will be the most pronounced text in each ring. Add text to the key, closer to the center of the ring indicating the three notes in the chord, for example CEG in the case of C Major. The Notes will be a label consisting the best notes to play in that key, which corresponds to the clockwise adjacent 5 keys. In the case of C that would be C G D A E. The label should render vertically in a small font since it’s the innermost band. Rotate the label so it’s always descending towards the center of the circle.
Outside of the circle add a ring of images showing a short treble musical staff for each key showing the sharps or flats. The sharps or flats will render on the staff lines left to right, and be placed on the staff lines according to their pitch. Add a label to each image indicating the count of sharps or flats. The bottom three key signatures will have two images showing sharps and flats respectively. Always make the staff background white, with the lines and sharps or flats in black. Make the circle interactive. Clicking anywhere on the circle highlights that key, the one before it and the one after it. Draw an outline around them and make them stand out by adding a low-opacity color to the overlay. Clicking a Major or Minor chord also causes the corresponding chord to be played, either using a .wav or .midi file. Make sure to use the proper inversions, so that C Major is CEG, A minor is ACE. Clicking on the Notes band will play the notes in ascending sequence.
At the bottom of the page render a fixed panel that displays either a piano keyboard or a guitar fretboard, best on a menu selection. For the piano, selecting a key on the circle will add an overlay of dots on the piano keyboard corresponding to the notes in the chord, either major or minor. Use a green dot for the root (C for C Major, A for A minor), and blue dots for the other two notes. The same note may appear more than once. Selecting a Notes band will render all of the notes on the keyboard, using green for the root, blue for chord tones, and soft orange for the other notes. Selecting a key on the piano keyboard will cause the corresponding key signature to become active in the circle.
For the guitar add blue dots corresponding to the notes of the chord. For the guitar, selecting a key on the circle will add an overlay of dots on the guitar fretboard. Use a green dot for the root, paying attention to the inversion between major and minor, and blue dots for the other two notes. Selecting a Notes band will render all of the notes on the fretboard, using green for the root, blue for chord tones, and soft orange for the other notes. The notes may appear multiple times on the guitar fretboard. Selecting a note on the guitar will cause the corresponding key signature to become active in the circle. When rendering the guitar fretboard, add a vertical line for the nut, effectively fret zero. Open strings should render left of the nut. Fretted strings should render to the right. Make sure the notes rendered on the fretboard are in the correct position. Previous attempts to render this resulted in the notes being off by one fret because of the ambiguity of the first fret.
The response:
Perfect! I’ve created a comprehensive interactive Circle of Fifths application with all the features you requested:
Key Features Implemented:
Visual Design:
- Three concentric bands with pastel colors (avoiding yellow and bright green)
- Musical staff notation around the circle showing sharps/flats on proper staff positions
- Proper chord inversions: C Major (CEG), A minor (ACE) as specified
- Enharmonic notation: Bottom key shows as Gb/F# with both staff versions
Interactive Features:
- Band-specific clicking:
- Major band plays major chord
- Minor band plays minor chord
- Notes band plays the 5 notes in ascending sequence
- Highlighted selection: Shows selected key plus adjacent keys with overlay
- Audio playback: Uses Tone.js for chord and sequence playback
Piano View:
- Color-coded dots:
- Green for root note
- Blue for chord tones
- Soft orange for other notes (in Notes band)
- Full keyboard with proper note placement
- Click detection for key selection
Guitar View (with proper fret positioning):
- Accurate nut placement: Vertical line separating open strings from fretted notes
- Open strings render to the left of the nut
- Fretted notes render between the appropriate frets (not off by one)
- Fret markers at positions 3, 5, 7, 9, and 12 (double dots)
- Color-coded dots matching the piano scheme
- All chord notes shown on the fretboard with labels
The application correctly handles musical theory including proper inversions, enharmonic equivalents, and accurate fretboard positioning. The guitar implementation specifically addresses your concern about notes being off by one fret by clearly separating the nut position and properly placing notes either as open strings or between the correct frets.
My reaction:
I was amazed at the thoroughness of the response, and impressed with the component source code. It rendered exactly as prompted, with some minor flaws. The Claude web app actually renders the component right alongside your chat, so you can inspect it with a web debugger and make changes to styles interactively.
The component:
The debugging:
After generating the initial component there was still a lot of debugging to do. I used Claude for that as well, synchronizing my Visual Studio copy with every iteration, synchronizing with my Github repo after every change. Here’s a sample debugging prompt:
Update the Typescript component.
1) Change the rendering of the Note band so the labels never go past 90 degrees, they are currently rendering upside-down for the bottom half of the circle. 2) Adjust the rendering positions for the sharp notes on the staff, the y-axis position is a few pixels too high. 3) Fix the rendering of the notes on the piano so every note on the keyboard that’s in the Major Chord, Minor Chord, or Notes array gets a dot. Currently some key signatures are missing higher notes. 4) Fix the colors on the dots. Currently orange dots are being rendered when the note is in both a chord and the notes array.
Claude’s response:
I’ll update the TypeScript component to fix these issues.
Fixing the Notes band rotation to prevent upside-down text
Adjusting the Y-axis position for sharp/flat notes on the staff
Now I need to fix the piano rendering to show all octaves of the notes and fix the color logic:
Fixing piano rendering to show all instances of notes and correcting dot color logic
Now let’s also fix the same color logic for the guitar to be consistent:
Fixing guitar dot color logic to match piano
Checking the drawPiano section to ensure we have the complete updated code
Let me check the complete Notes band section to verify the fix:
Checking the updated Notes band rotation logic
Perfect! I’ve updated the TypeScript component and created a new component file with all four fixes:
Fixes Applied:
1. Notes Band Rotation Fix
- Text in the Notes band now stays readable throughout the entire circle
- For the bottom half (90-270 degrees), text is flipped and notes order is reversed
- No more upside-down text!
2. Staff Position Adjustment
- Added 2 pixels to the Y-axis position of sharps/flats on the staff
- They now align properly with the staff lines
3. Piano Dots Rendering Fix
- All instances of notes across the keyboard now get dots
- The code now properly iterates through ALL white and black keys
- Handles enharmonic equivalents (F#/Gb, C#/Db, etc.)
- Every occurrence of a note in the chord or notes array gets marked
4. Color Logic Correction
- Fixed priority system: Root (green) > Chord tones (blue) > Other notes (orange)
- Orange dots only appear for non-chord notes when in “notes” mode
- When in major/minor mode, only green (root) and blue (chord tones) appear
- Consistent color logic between piano and guitar views
The application now properly displays:
Orange dots: Only appears in “notes” mode for notes that aren’t part of the chord
Green dots: Root note only
Blue dots: Chord tones (non-root notes in the chord)
The deployment:
After an entire day of debugging the application was ready to roll out. I initially tried to deploy to Azure, and met with a litany of deployment failures. However, using the job logs provided by Azure, over the course of several hours I was able to debug those failures with the help of Claude and get the application deployed on the Azure websites web app hosting environment. It was even deploying from my Github repo. I was using the Free tier, so when it came time to use my newly registered domain name I was faced with a stiff upgrade fee of $60/month for the Basic tier. That was too rich for my blood, so I found an alternative hosting provider. For $10 a month Winhost provides .Net application hosting. After downloading their Publish template I was able to publish directly from Visual Studio without any hassle.
You can view the deployed application at InteractiveCircleOfFifths.com.
My feedback to Anthropic:
This is incredible. My first shot at the component was 90% complete and accurate. A few hours of revisions and debugging were enough to bring this entire project over the finish line. The refinements were really impressive. Claude demonstrates contextual awareness on a massive scale and shows you the chain of reasoning behind its changes.
Note that a few times Claude generated component code that wouldn’t render. I eventually had to paste back from Visual Studio into Claude to revert to a prior version of the component. Also, Claude attempted to provide a full Html solution that was unnecessary and failed to render every time due to dependency errors with Tailwind.
The only deal killer in the entire process was cost. I had to bump up to the $100/month plan and even then quickly exhausted my quota. This seems steep for 1200 lines of code. I’ll have to downgrade after the month is expired.
Your feedback to me:
This entire process took only three days from inception to deployment. Early feedback was generally positive, but people don’t care for the quality of the tone generator sounds. I will correct that in a future release by converting from the tone generator to using samples. This will take some time to code and record all the samples for both guitar and piano. I have also had a request to add a ukulele visualizer. Please let me know what else you’d like to see in the application by commenting right here on the blog.
Thank you for using the Interactive Circle of Fifths. I look forward to your feedback!
The Daily Grind – Thursday’s Ticket
I’ve had bugs in specs before, which were then translated into the product. Today I had a bug in a ticket.
The caller provided a list of files with extremely long file names that needed to be imported to a database, and there was a duplicate file in the list. Easy to miss. I dodged a bullet because I didn’t use the list during the import. I found the files in a directory and used them instead of the list.
The bug made it all the way to the email threads about the change until finally somebody noticed. At which point they freaked out because the changes were to the production database. But I didn’t use the list in the ticket, so we were all copacetic.
I’m not the picture of cognitive acuity that I was in my 30’s, but I’m wiser. I make better decisions. 35-year-old me would have taken the info from the ticket directly just for expedience. Copy / paste into script / done. 56-year-old me is skeptical of everything because I’ve seen so many things fail that it’s my default assumption now.
I’m much more careful these days. That’s the senior part of senior software engineer.
My resume can be found here on my blog:
https://rangothedog.com/2013/09/17/matthew-meadows-resume/
The Daily Grind – Resume Advice
Conducting technical interviews all week. Twenty in the last few weeks. My unsolicited advice:
Don’t put it on top of your resume if you’re not prepared to talk about it. In detail. I’ve had multiple candidates fail to meet our hiring criteria because they were misrepresenting their skills.
I feel for every one of these folks because I’ve been in their position too many times. I want them to succeed. We will be peers.
It’s not a hard interview process with me. I’m friendly and try to make each candidate feel at ease. I appear on camera with them so they don’t feel like they’re being watched. Everybody gets the same questions for a specific skill set, and they are not that hard. I let them know it’s okay not to know the answers, they’re just talking points. But if it’s a skill you know we should be able to have a conversation about it, even if you don’t know the answer.
Even with those disclaimers, a surprising number of people are vague about what they did, and during discussion resort to a kind of confabulation talking in generalizations, until the big reveal where they admit they only had minimal exposure to it, in passing. Thereby making the entire interview a waste of time.
I understand the need to put your top skills on the top of your resume. I do the same. Everybody should. Applicant tracking systems scan and sort your resume before a human ever sees them. But gaming the system by surfacing skills you don’t truly own in order to target an interview that requires them is disingenuous.
I also understand that skills can be learned. I once had a manager ask me during an interview if I knew Python and I responded “no”. His response was “you will soon” and I got the job. He was right. I still use it today but primarily as a scripting tool because you can’t get away from it in cloud computing.
In that case, I was coding for the Azure Machine Language AI translation SDK. I coded in three languages I knew well, then translated to Python with the help of Copilot AI. That code was then reviewed by senior staff and went through a committee before committing to the main trunk, because it was their official SDK.
The skill I was learning was not just Python, it was the domain knowledge of the SDK API, and that took more time to learn. The learning process was built into the billing and scheduling because that was internal knowledge specific to their business. I had plenty of time to soak up Python on the way.
In this case we’re interested in candidates with three specific skillsets. They don’t need to be rock stars, they just need to be good enough to play in the band, on three different instruments, on day one.
The customer demands are so exhaustingly complex that the new skills they will be learning are tribal knowledge related to the job. It’s an enormous enterprise. Our employer bills them out to a customer who expects them to have the skills they are paying for on the first day. They’ll pay for a developer to learn their tribal knowledge because it is vast and can’t be learned anywhere else. But not to learn the languages on their resume.
This concludes my TED talk. Note that these are my personal views and experiences, and do not reflect the position of my employer.
My resume can be found here on my blog:
https://rangothedog.com/2013/09/17/matthew-meadows-resume/
The Hunger Number
Unless you’re a stone-hearted Republican or a heartless Libertarian, there is some consensus that in US society we must take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. There’s always going to be a number. I find 42 million people on SNAP benefits in a country of 350 million to be a surprisingly high number, but I have no frame of reference from other countries.
It just seems high.
That’s 1 in 8 Americans who cannot afford food, and with less than $3000 in assets total. The mind-boggling question is how do we reduce that number? Even if we do, will the benefits of that ever surface to the 7 of 8 Americans that are self-sufficient? I don’t think they will, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to reduce the number.
People are quick to argue that we must have work requirements in place to receive SNAP benefits. They fail to realize that 50% of recipients already work full-time, and 70% have some kind of job. If there is a crime to be had, that is it. Companies like Walmart pay their employees less than living wages, which are subsidized by the taxpayer in the form of SNAP benefits and other entitlements.
Note this is primarily a problem in Republican states. On average they face less favorable economic conditions in general, and consume more benefits per capita than Democratic states. This is not a coincidence, as it speaks to the perceived lack of compassion in Republican politics. Conservative luminary Charlie Kirk famously quipped about empathy as New Age nonsense that does a lot of harm. It seems that he speaks for many Republicans.
The simple solution for 1/2 of the American SNAP recipients working a full-time job without a living wage is for the government to require it. The federal minimum wage hasn’t changed since 2007. Walmart can afford to pay $20 an hour to every employee and still be a hugely profitable business. Companies in California and Washington already do so. That change alone would account for 20 million people raising their standard of living enough to disqualify them from benefits.
Once again, it is Republicans that oppose any change to the minimum wage status quo, and it is their states that suffer the most from poverty.
Just as there is always a percentage of the population that can’t feed themselves, there is also a segment of the population who are unemployable. They lack skills or initiative, or have strikes on their record that makes getting lucrative, legal work next to impossible. We must find a way to reach these people, expand their skills and see their own potential. This is a much harder problem to solve, but once again, raising the minimum wage will be enough to motivate many people who see no point in working for $7.50 an hour. Government sponsored incentives for trade school or college tuition would help as well.
The intersection of the Venn diagram of these two population segments is the heart of our problem. That’s what makes it a difficult problem to solve. The objective of any reforms must be to shrink both segments of the population so that the intersection of the two groups is nominal. We need to help people help themselves.
There will always be a number. It’s in everyone’s best interest, from Democrat to Republican, to make sure that number is as small as possible. Any solution that doesn’t address the root causes is just another distraction. Given the government shutdown, that’s about all we can expect right now.
Internet Decorum
Trump on Biden:
He is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL. A MAJOR LOWLIFE AND FAILURE. An ugly person, both inside and out! I beat him badly, and love watching him squirm now.
^^^ MAGA loves this. I think it’s a sign of low intelligence. The corrosion of decorum is also a shitty look for a president. He makes the entire country look bad.
I, however, am not a president and not known for my sense of decorum on the internet.
Trump is a truly rotten person with obvious signs of dementia. He’s narcissistic, autocratic thug who admires dictators openly and yet regularly capitulates to Putin, who clearly has something over him.
He’s completely corrupt as a politician, the king of a billionaire’s ballroom, self-enriching, promoting idiotic sycophants into positions of power to become the head of the worst kakistocracy in history.
He’s a racist and misogynistic man-child who speaks at a sixth grade level yet claims expertise in everything. He’s a sexual predator who defamed his victim and lost in court. He is most definitely in the Epstein files.
He shows open disregard for immigrants, minorities, the Constitution, rules of engagement, and the American people. Like a child he delights in a video of himself as a pilot, shitting all over protesters, who he characterizes as violent terrorists. He constantly uses childish insults and attacks the IQ of black women specifically.
Like any good fascist he demands fealty, controls the media around him and attacks higher education. He hates people that are smarter than him. He loves the uneducated, he told them so, and then proceeded to prey on them for the next 10 years.
Stupid thinks it’s smart. Evil thinks its good. Trump thinks he’s a genius and deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
I could go on, but I don’t want to be impolite. The midterms can’t come soon enough. Then we can impeach that motherfucker before he dies and goes straight to hell.
Dev Null
The “Leopard Ate My Face” subreddit is full of recirculated social media posts from anti-vaxxers who died from Covid-19. And people caught for committing crimes after they posted about their plans. Which brings me to a tragic bit of insight from the very first Rango video and my work for the government and in cybersecurity:
Everything you do here is permanent.
There is no delete button. That is a carefully propagated illusion. When I ask Plagus to undelete my emails in Check 1,2 he says he can’t. He’s lying, which is what evil robots do best. But when the FBI asks Facebook or Google for your entire search history they get it. And if they don’t they can get it from your ISP or the NSA.
I’ve regretted many of the things I’ve said on social media that many people still remember and I’ve recovered millions of “deleted” files that weren’t. It’s an illusion, files are simply marked deleted and everything is logged. That’s why all of my posts are public. Because they are anyway, virtually.
Once they hit a server on the internet you are immortalized, archived, categorized and baptized into the matrix. I try to live my life without shame, it is a burdensome tool. Being open and honest shouldn’t require bravery, but it does. But doing so reduces your need to lie & deny so you can focus on more important things that reflect your immortal legacy on the web
Which brings me back around to A Leopard Ate My Face. That is not a legacy that does anybody justice, neither the deceased or their families and friends. But they serve to inform of us of our own mortality and the immortal legacy anyone reading this is leaving behind. The best way to get your name off the list of people who made all of our lives harder in the worst pandemic since smallpox, the plague or Spanish Flu is to simply get vaccinated. You can even brag about it after you’re done, or complain about your side effects. Everybody should. It’s your legacy, and if you couldn’t help the rest of the world get through it, much less yourself, you can be assured it will be on your internet gravestone.
“Rango, I’m an autonomous, distributed, self-replicating agent of evil. I don’t have a recycling bin. I have dev null” – Check 1,2
Post-American World
Trump ushered us into a post-American world.
People all over the globe gave us their sympathy as they watched the most powerful nation in history succumb to an autocratic con man. We have pulled back from that precipice and are now faced with the task of rebuilding. The damage has been done, there is no erasing Trumpism from the record. But future generations must understand what happened to us so they can prevent it from happening again.
This week at least 60 million Americans proudly proclaimed their allegiance to Trump, doubling down on racism, misogyny, a culture of lies and anti-science rhetoric. We can’t erase these scars, they are our shame to bare. Hate. Ignorance. Self.
We already had enough shame to bare. From the genocide of our indigenous people to the racial violence infecting our law enforcement, we are a people burdened with violence. Christian evangelicals rabid for blood, slavery, racism, and most notably, stupidity. We have revealed to the world how ignorant our culture truly is, and those that think they’re smart but are not also think they are righteous.
The word you are looking for is evil.
Trump and Jr made a deliberate calculation when they stopped the US Post Office from distributing 650 million masks to Americans, then again when they tried to cast shade on the vote-by-mail process, encouraging their own followers to go out & stand in line and get infected with Covid-19.Stupid thinks it’s smart, evil thinks it’s good.Of the top 376 counties reporting new Covid-19 infections, 93% of them were Republican.
They discussed their plans with Nixon-era journalist Bob Woodward, which must be the dumbest thing the Trump crime family has ever done.Trump is going to flee the country like the coward he is. And he will be faced with multiple indictments, from tax fraud to rape, like the criminal he is. And unfortunately, Covid-19 will continue to ravage the nation.
There is no need for us to retain our former glory. Rather, we join the league of nations including Italy & Germany that demonstrate the potential for evil in their electorate. It manifested here on our verdant shores. 240,000 Americans are dead, the office of the president has been disgraced, and the once all-powerful USA has succumbed to the will of an autocrat encouraging domestic terrorism and his wish to see “all sides” of fascism and racism as valid.
Too much for one man to effect change, other than by his vote. Which Trump lost and still refuses to acknowledge, proving for all of history he is a whiny little bitch, a petulant man-baby spoiled with a silver spoon in his anus that enjoys taking pleasure in deceiving the dumbest among us. He told them he “loves the uneducated” and they lined up and had an idiot parade.
They’re still marching.
The American kakistocracy clown car is on its final lap. But the damage has been done. It’s a post-American world. But Americans are nothing if we are not faithful to our ideals, even if our ancestors did not obey them. Moral fiber is a continuum, a continuous variable, not a constant. The future belongs to the agile, not the adherents of doctrine.
But what of today.
Biden is the president-elect, and no amount of pouting, feet stomping and empty rhetoric can change that fact. Trump’s refusal to issue a concession, and his vow to continue asserting his win in the light of millions of votes to the contrary and people crowding the streets to express their hatred for him, speak volumes of his narcissism and the unbelievable gullibility of his base. They are rallying behind him today even as he golfs.
With god’s blessing we can put the era of Make America Gullible Again behind us. But we are now in a post-American world and it serves to inform us going forward. Too much to bare for any one person.But today we rejoice. We flood the commons. We dance like nobody’s watching. The protest signs are all the same. “You’re fired”.
Welcome to the new epoch. It’s a post-American world. And now that we’ve pulled back from the precipice of authoritarianism we have an obligation to the rest of the world and future generations to explain precisely how and why this happened so that they may never walk this tightrope again.
Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Just like the Pied Piper
Led rats through the streets
We dance like marionettes
Swaying to the symphony
Swaying to the symphony of destruction – Megadeth
Arms Wide Open
Despite having no qualifications whatsoever and a standard disclaimer printed on my forehead that states I should not own keys, people routinely ask me for my opinion on subjects I don’t know anything about. Usually they’re just fishing for a punchline from the architect’s school of comedy. Basically, measure twice cut once. Finish the fight with one punch or go home a loser.
These days we’re all armchair biologists, fighting a social justice war against Covid deniers, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and Trumpian propaganda. Either that or you’re part of the problem. Change a mind, save a life. Never in the history of our nation has a culture of ignorance infected the ruling class to such a degree. We are literally dying in a kakistocracy as the nation faces down the worst global pandemic in 100 years.
The most visible consequence of this abdication of duty is that thousands of Americans are suffering and dying every day. An endless train wreck, can’t look away. Previously supported by an economy that left the station back in March, a flying shitbomb on rails.
I make a lot of predictions, which in hindsight always look completely obvious. That’s an easy comedy axis and fun for everybody. But when I was asked this week, on three separate occasions, how I feel about our future, there was a palpable gravity to the question. People are legitimately worried, struggling emotionally, facing hard corners financially, and choking down the very real threat of suffering and death from a virus unknown to humanity last year.
I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. I’m hopeful. I have a hard-earned reputation for being overly optimistic, and a shadow reputation for being a cynical jerk. But from my view in the sniper’s chair I can see past the horizon, and it conveys a unique vantage point.
The harsh truth of the matter is that after decades of trying we have never created a safe and effective vaccine for any strain of coronavirus. But we have developed treatments for symptoms, the best example being the common cold. And in the case of the unrelated retrovirus HIV, we’ve flipped the diagnosis from a death sentence to a viral management protocol consisting of a cocktail of drugs that allow people to enjoy long and productive lives.
There will be treatment options before there will be a vaccine, and drugs such as remdesiver point the way to a similar storyline for SARS-Cov-2. And there will come a day when testing positive for SARS-Cov-2 does not mean you will develop Covid-19, much as testing positive for HIV today does not mean you will develop AIDS. Asymptomatic or not.
That’s a critical consideration because on the vaccine front, the challenge is formidable. The best analogy we have is smallpox, the most dreaded disease in history and a lifetime sentence of disfigurement and blindness for the survivors. Nobody in their right mind would be having these pedantic arguments about masks if the enemy was smallpox, we would all stay home and shut up. It is the first pathogen to ever be successfully eradicated from humans, possibly the greatest medical achievement of mankind. There are only two known samples left on the planet, one at the CDC facility in Atlanta and the other in a vault in Moscow. Let’s hope they stay there.
Eliminating the devil of smallpox required a massively coordinated effort involving every country in the world. It also took over 200 years. Keep that in mind as we look for a vaccine for SARS-Cov-2 this year while anti-vaxxer and anti-masker clown car parades around looking for a conspiracy between Bill Gates and George Soros, then blames Obama and his tan suit. The evidence is clearly in Hillary’s emails.
Those people are the real enemy. That kind of ignorance conflates the threat of the virus exponentially and the USA is now the unenviable poster child of the Dunning Kruger effect. Stupid thinks it’s smart.
Stay with me though. The story of the smallpox vaccine is the story of all vaccines. It was first created in 1796 by Edward Jenner, and it was the first successful vaccine ever. People had been trying for hundreds if not thousands of years, with efforts spanning the globe and as deeply rooted as indigenous shamans. But it was Edward who observed that milkmaids who previously had caught cowpox did not catch smallpox and showed that inoculated vaccinia protected against inoculated variola virus. That insight changed the world, a single moment of grace that carved a path through history.
The conferred immunity from cowpox to smallpox is the basis of every vaccine developed since. Using either a deactivated portion of genetic material or the information conveyed in messenger RNA, vaccines work by triggering an immune response in the host. Once taught to recognize the offending pathogen by its genetic signature the human immune system has an astounding capacity to deliver a preemptive strike against any subsequent infection vector.
SARS-Cov-2 is tricky though in that it’s a zoonotic virus that first jumped the species barrier in 2019 and gave us Covid-19. In news cycles it’s a newborn. In terms of biology it’s a genetic descendant of SARS, which originated in bats, and related to MERS which originated in camels. Note that it is not in any way related to influenza, which originated in birds (think Avian flu) and then jumped to pigs (Swine flu) and finally caught the late bus home on humans. However, much like the flu it’s here to stay, and will likely become endemic just like the flu. The vaccine will need to change every year and will be distributed geospatially based on the statistical likelihood you will catch a specific strain based on where you live.
In my new line of work as a biotech programmer I’ve been injesting a constant stream of information about the various research efforts, including both treatments and vaccines. We have CDC rapid-autopsy Covid-19 samples in the lab. We’re working with the government and major industry research companies such as Moderna that are the collective focal point of scientists from all over the world. I’ve even been in contact with a sentinel, the eighth person in the world to receive an mRNA vaccine, and her testimony was so inspiring it gifted me a song and led me haphazardly to this moment.
Therein lies my optimism. The same connectedness that gives us the gift of family and friends and makes us so vulnerable to SARS-Cov-2 will ultimately be the lever that resigns it to history. There has never been a more coordinated research and development effort uniting science, industry and government. The whole world wants this to be over. And we have never before had the tools to succeed that we do today, from the cloud computing infrastructure we all take for granted to antiviral drugs and right down to the instrument I work on, which visualizes and quantifies RNA and protein molecules in tissue samples so researchers run experiments and better understand the enemy within.
In summary, I’m hopeful about what lies ahead. Certainly there is more to endure in front of us, a steeple chase of pain points, and millions of people are going to have their lives radically altered or tragically cut short as the virus ripples through society and has its way with us. The USA as ground zero due to the Trump administration’s neglect and catastrophic incompetence, brought home by his base in a historically unprecedented culture of ignorance. Ultimately they will reap what they have sown, as history will burn them in effigy even as we are still mourning the loss of our loved ones.
However, given all the progress and the amazing response of the medical and communities it stands to reason that there will be more than one vaccine available by next year, even as additional remedies to alleviate symptoms become available and trickle down through our economic caste system. The poor and disadvantaged among us will continue to be hit the hardest, so no change there.
As for the economy, the cynic in me who hates late-stage capitalism and the very notion of paying for health care will state categorically that economies are inevitable. You shouldn’t worry about the economy. Stay focused on your own person financial position. Even if the global banking system collapses in on itself (dear Sweet Meteor of Death) there will always be means & measures of trade. Thus the economy. If an iPhone in 2022 costs you 100 chickens, so be it. Raise some chickens and get connected like back in the day when we could hug our friends.
So the final word is yes. I’m optimistic. We have reason to be, and we have our work cut out for us. We are witness to unprecedented times, a turning point in the history of the planet and the dawn of a new epoch.
The old adage is may you live in interesting times. My addendum is with arms wide open. And I’m sharing my optimism with you.
The Colors of War
Portland 2020.
The stormtroopers are there by executive order of Donald Trump. Drunk on power with itchy trigger fingers and moral corrosion, Trump’s private army is inciting war with the citizens of Portland. Every eyewitness account I’ve read from the protests in Portland says the same thing. Every video I’ve watched from the streets, including live broadcasts, backs them up.
It’s the federales that are escalating. They’re deliberately provoking and attacking protesters and journalists, falsely blaming them for the escalations and arresting them. Murmurs and bogus social media pages blame Antifa for the escalation, a convenient boogeyman.
Paramilitary forces with no identification have even snatched people off the streets and taken them to secret detainment locations, a signature move of authoritarian regimes and fascist dictators.
If the protesters were demanding retribution for the toppling of racist Confederate monuments they would have Trump’s blessing and constant praise on Twitter. But they’re protesting for racist, militarized US police to treat black suspects just like everybody else. In Trump’s world that’s tantamount to treason.
If you’re Trump and your dad marched with the KKK, if you took out a full-page ad calling for the execution of innocent black teenagers for a Central Park rape they did not commit, if you think black people all come from “shithole countries”, a protest for justice and fair treatment for black citizens at the hands of law enforcement is a euphemism for riot.
If Trump wants a war he’s getting one. He’ll lose, and the revolution will be televised. On loop, ad nauseum, a cautionary tale.
Trump and everyone associated with him will be regarded by history for what they are. Every sycophantic politician in his kakistocracy and every ignorant supporter in his clown parade gullible and stupid enough to rally behind a fascist dictator has established a permanent record on social media and the internet at large that shows their true colors.
Not red, white and blue. No doubt that’s how they see themselves, so tone deaf they can’t discriminate between patriotism and blind loyalty. More like the green and brown camouflage on the fatigues of Trump’s secret police. The colors of a traitor. The colors of war.
Monsters – Vader 2.0
I thought we hit peak villain this week with Trump’s eagerness to sacrifice your children by sending them to school this fall even as the country buckles under record breaking case counts, day after day. I can only wonder what the hell is wrong with that man, what twisted his brain into thorns.
Every American dystopia deserves a good villain, and the Confederate cape crowd, anti-vaxxers & anti-maskers (the Republican party) are still convinced it’s Bill Gates or George Soros, and that you’re sheeple.
Nope, just plain old Trump the clown villain. King of the kakistocracy. He’s like a fat, impotent Vader who blunts every attack with toddler logic, then flies around the room declaring victory, a modern Baron Harkonnen in a scalp toupee.
Indeed. You’d have to be an absolute monster to beat that.
However, deep in the heart of Florida where 1 in 3 people in Miami are infected, ICU’s are full and the case counts are a stairway to heaven, there has emerged another villain. I have always speculated the apocalypse will start in Florida and it seems to be upon us.
Enter Disney.
As in please come to Disney, we’re open. Bring us your children, overpay us at the gate, and enjoy a week at our resorts and theme park. It’s practically an American tradition, and we want you to know Florida is open for business.
Spend your day in the summer heat with thousands of other children, playing and sweating together, enjoying the same ride seats, eating in the same restaurants, using the same bathrooms and hugging the same lovable characters. And hugging each other, because Disney is and always has been a family affair. We like to spread it around.
Here at Disney nothing says villain better than killing off one of the parents in the opening scene. Maybe killing them both with a gruesome plague, write them out of the scene never to be seen again because they have to die alone in an ICU on a ventilator, but that would be John Wick levels of gratuitous cruelty.
We’re going for something more like Vader 2.0.
And although we can’t be thwarted in our commitment to villainy at Disney we need to keep it PG for the adorable children in the hotel room you’re all sharing. Look at what happened to Bambi, everybody loves Bambi & nobody wants to be reminded what happened. Marketing sent back a frowny face on the proposal, so maybe we’ll just kill off one parent. No reason to be cruel.
Besides honey, that would leave a huge plot hole, and we all have to fly home on Friday. We’d hate to leave you here to die alone. And don’t forget, the kids are starting school in just a few weeks. We need to go shopping, and Grandma will want to see them before they go back.
Have you heard from your mom lately? I hope she’s alright, the case the case counts are going back up you know. And we should probably plan a dinner with your sister and her kids before everybody gets too busy.
Coup de grace.
Yesterday’s Monsters post is here. It’s a long and winding call to arms to encourage you to keep your children home from school this fall given the risk of infection. And it’s a fair shot of spit and venom for Emperor Nero and his faithful clown parade.
https://rangothedog.com/2020/07/09/monsters/
Rango's Dog House 