Like, that’s not completely impossible! Give it an animal reservoir (an animal unavoidable in everyday life, like squirrels or bugs), and I’d believe it! But yeah, all on its own, it’s a bit too convenient for realism. Yes, I‘ve listened to all of This Podcast Will Kill You, why do you ask?

And as we now know, a bug like that can’t make it all the way through New York in two weeks, much less the whole globe. There were plot reasons (and ~magic) to compress the mass die-off, but we’ve all become a bit more conversant with how these things work today.

Yeah, I feel like it’s the near-universal fatality (and so quick) that’s the problem for me; smallpox only ever killed ~50% and that was a staggering effect on the population over time. Smallpox had a long infectious latency period (and dry scabs could keep it alive for a long time!).

My fave story of this is when a friend From Away noted an invitation she’d received to an event, with directions to the Auditorium T stop (Boston). I am juuuust old enough to guess that that’s what Hynes (formerly Hynes ICA) used to be called. Before 1990.

A coherent plan would rejigger lower Morrissey for more onramps to 93N rather than through traffic. However, a tall fixed bridge would at least make onramps possible in the future. But it would preserve upper Morrissey for through traffic to/from downtown, which is a mistake.

Short version: they have to rebuild the bridge from scratch or let it fall into the sea. They did not seriously consider the latter option. For the former option, they have a low drawbridge like what we have now, or a fixed bridge tall enough to let some boats under it. Plan coherency is lacking.

Yeah, I didn’t know that till I read one of Timothy Snyder’s books (about 10 years back). The Soviets just… picked up Poland and moved it west! Just like that! Bunch of Germany became Poland, bunch of Poland became Belarus, and the people who lived there could just pound sand over it. (Or flee.)

Yeah, one time we had a big storm and coastal flooding right after Christmas, and I went down to the public beach and waded through the parking lot (knee deep in COLD storm surge) because it was there. And interesting! If I had to do it every day, or if I couldn’t go home and make cocoa right after…

It’s been interesting watching medicine try to become more collaborative and less cowboy over the decades. Lateral consults, checklists, team communication, stricter rules on charting quickly and clearly: a very slow/one-at-a-time adoption of Crew Resource Management outside of airplanes.

I have seen photos more delightfully 1987 than this, but they involved much more hairspray and several pairs of jelly shoes.

City of Boston is about 60% marsh by land area, which its citizens routinely forget. My grocery store down the hill was (not-bayfront) marshland as of the 1940 census! It’s just infill and a very shallow water table. When the sea rises up to reclaim her old home, only Stop N Shop will be surprised.

I’ve seen a few homeless people on the benches on the Pru side of the complex, so that’s probably why the absence of seating till recently. It’s just so weird and on the nose, a bleak billionaires’ world through which ordinary office workers are the main traffic. Who don’t stop there, ever.

The long, looong empty corridor is weird and echoey and greige, just hostile minimalism wrought large. There are still a few normal higher-end stores on the upper level (Ann Taylor, Lucky Brand), but on the main floor I‘m not sure you can buy a single thing for under $1000.

15 years ago, the place was tan and pink marble (still visible in the floor of the Huntington St. overpass), and a fountain in the atrium, and plants, and seating. And higher-end stores, but like, Williams Sonoma not Carolina Herrera. And people shopping there in large numbers!

(The shops don’t even open till 10, but they’re still open at 5 on my commute home, and desperately empty except for security guards and staff on their phones.) They must get some customers, rich tourists/healthcare travelers, but if they weren’t zillionaire brands I would think they’re going bust.

The flood of office workers through Copley Place is so weird, because unlike what it was in the middle 2010s, it’s now a white, sterile, hostile extreme-elite space. With very few elites actually present! Just office workers not stopping at the shops.