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An additional article I'm excited about: "Liberal Fatalism, COVID 19, and the politics of impossibilty" by Jana Bacevic, 2024!

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The main source for this week is going to be Agnotology by Richard Proctor, 2008.

Agnotology, the making and unmaking of Ignorance

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lola learning live: fun with ignorance

Here's a link to the event! youtube.com/live/CVLbn7W... This will be a live chat with lots of interaction. I also get distracted real easy, so there will be plenty of time for off-topic discussion and questions. Please consider dropping by if you like thinking critically about the world!

youtube.com

Is ignorance natural or created? How do our public health instituti...

I've learned and continue to learn so much interesting stuff across many fields as I've tried to understand how we've wound up in such a bad state re: airborne transmission. The idea of the Livestreams is that they will be a chill environemnt for me to share what I'm reading with y'all.

Lola Germs @lolagerms.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Hey all- I'll be doing my first semi-regular livestream this Saturday at 11 am LA, 2 pm NYC, 8 pm Berlin time on YouTube! This is gonna be a casual educational hangout on the topic of.... ignorance! Hurrah!

A flier for a Livestream. There is a green background with the words 'livestream' in a funky font at the top. Lola Germs, a young white woman with dark hair, is sitting down, holding a a large book in front of her. She is looking judgmentally over her glasses at the viewer. The book has the cover of "Agnotology" by Richard Proctor superimposed on top of it, but below the Agnotology cover, the text "Hieronymus Bosch" is visible. The bottom of the flyer says "IGNORANCE".

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Thank you so much for sharing!

Lola Germs @lolagerms.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

It's an entertaining crash course in why everyone should be frustrated about the state of indoor air, with nearly a hundred sources in the bibliography. Because ongoing summer education is for learners of all ages!

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Lola Germs @lolagerms.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

If you're tired of your loved ones, colleagues, neighbors, enemies, etc., not understanding why you're so frustrated about the state of indoor air, send them this history that compresses a semester's worth of knowledge into 100 minutes! youtu.be/yuXVu595DBI?...

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Lola Germs @lolagerms.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Did you know that a scientist couple in the 1940s laid the foundations of modern airborne science, but their work was suppressed for 60 years in ways that enabled the ongoing tragedy of the COVID pandemic? Let a puppet explain!

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10 minutes to premiere! Holding one of my fave props here, "the little book of doctor wisdom". it you want to know just how wise it is, you should tune in to the premiere :-)

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Getting smart people who like learning new things and sharing info with others aware of the issue of clean air is critical, because we desperately need far more allies and general awareness. Coming to the watch party helps a lot ❤️‍🩹

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The premiere of my feature-length clean air history extravaganza is today at 2pm NY time! Please tune in to the live watch party for educational fun AND the chance to help convince the YT algo that this is a good video to recommend to curious nerds.

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I might be one of the only people on YT begging you to "think of the health of the children!!" but it's not a right wing dog whistle and I just sincerely think children deserve to be protected from transmissible airborne diseases using existing technology.

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excellent metaphor which is also making me laugh/cry

Anyways, I'm just one isolated person in a small country in central Europe. I did this project in an attempt to embarrass public health institutions as much as any one person could. I hope it can be a start to some conversations about new strategies and new allies.

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And everyone needs to connect across borders and timezones to dream bigger and plan outreach. I think a lot of people are understably frustrated with everyone outside of a pandemic-realist space, but never talking to people who don't already agree with you is a losing strategy.

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Whatever today's effective outside strategy is, I think it will require those with current inside status to recognize that we aren't getting shit with polite asking alone. More privileged people need to connect to and support those with far less to learn from them and strategize.

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I don't know what the contemporary answer to the "outside" strategy of ACT UP is. Street demonstrations or someone running through the New York stock exchange covered in blood don't command monocultural attention in 2026. We live in a massively fragmented society compared to 1990.

When I see highly educated professionals making polite appeals to those in positions of institutional power to please fix the indoor air, with no wider awareness of the issue outside this small group, no threat of embarrassment to the powerful if they ignore, I see wasted energy.

It doesn't matter how compelling the evidence is or how politely one asks or how many people sign a big piece of paper-- there is no incentive for institutions to spend money to make moves for real change when the wider public is still unaware of how massively they've been failed.

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And many of the most marginalized people who would benefit the most from clean indoor air regulation are too sick and overwhelmed to do all they could and would for clean indoor air (although I will say that many of the people doing the most are indeed very sick and poor).

The clean air movement has a lot of inside people who appeal quietly to power without the threat of outside embarrassment to back them up. I do not think the majority of the most educated inside-level professionals have any connection with the sickest, poorest folks.

And a whole lot more! They had a two-pronged "inside/outside" strategy. For expediency I've attached some excerpts to explain. Although the divisions inherent to this strategy were part of ACT UP NY's end, and I do not wish to revive this dynamic, I think there's a lot to learn.

THE BIRTH OF THE INSIDE/OUTSIDE STRATEGY 2
At first the development of the Inside player was natural, a product of activists pursuing personal, face-to-face contact with government officials out of desperation and necessity. Once contact was established, these activists then had to show officials that they understood the issues, could talk as peers, and could offer solutions that would elevate the officials in their own pursuits: both for the common good and in relation to their professional goals. To some extent, the success of the Inside part of this strategic approach did depend on government officials, in certain ways, taking the people in front of them seriously. Relating to them, or identifying with them with some kind of begrudging respect, had to occur for the Inside strategy to be viable.

THE BIRTH OF THE INSIDE/OUTSIDE STRATEGY 1
What Jim is articulating here is the developing strategic dynamic that would drive ACT UP to success, and ultimately be a source of its demise: the strategy of having one arm of the movement in direct, personal relationship to government or corporate officials—working with them, cajoling them, proposing solutions, having intimate interactions, and creating identification. This dynamic later came to be known as Inside. At the same time, a different sector of the organization provided backup and pressure through street actions, civil disobedience, and direct action, playing the role of Outside. Sometimes they were outside the system, and sometimes they were literally outside, doing actions. In 1987, most people in power were white males from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, and this dramatically determined which AIDS activists had the potential to be Inside and which ones would be relegated to Outside. But in addition to demographics, character also played a part. And so did ideology,
as different personalities were attracted to different forms of response.

THE PURPOSE OF A DEMONSTRATION

Ann had the insight that the whole point of demonstrations was about bringing issues to public attention, with the hope of putting public pressure on people in power to make change. It was the movement’s analysis that the reason change didn’t happen was that there was no pressure on people in power to make change. So the strategy was to bring things out into the open so that people would be horrified, and so that the people in power would be embarrassed and would make change out of that embarrassment—“a strategy which, I think, worked, to a great extent. But that was the equation.”

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I was inspired reading about the early years of ACT UP NY in Sarah Schulman's book "Let the Record Show". ACT UP was extremely effective in changing the direction of AIDS research and drug trials to better serve patients, to change the criteria of the disease to include women..

I understand where people are coming from when they appeal to institutions to try to promote clean air, but imo it's informed by a simplistic top-down imaginary of how power works that we learn as kids, which doesn't actually correspond with the messiness of reality.

I don't believe that the push for clean indoor air regulation will ever come from inherently conservative institutions that have been getting it wrong for 100 years. Strategies that primarily focus on getting the attention of institutional leaders will not succeed, imo.

Afterwards they'll be a livestream on YT with a classroom discussion where we'll go over the answers, I'll answer any questions, and we can talk about where we go next.

I made a watch along quiz for the airborne science history premiere on Sunday! It will be available on Sunday for anyone craving the nostalgia of classroom video day 👀

Thanks, Christophe! ❤️‍🩹

Every viewer at the live premiere helps convince the godforsaken YouTube algorithm to recommend the video to more people, which is more chances at potential allies. Please come to the thing. Thank you :'-)

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The Scientific Mistake That Public Health Refuses to Admit

If you would like to help me embarrass the WHO into doing their jobs, please tune in to to the premiere of my feature-length clean air science history extravaganza this Sunday June 21st at 2pm NYC time, to find out what's gone so wrong with public health. youtu.be/yuXVu595DBI?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Lola Germs

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Even though our public health institutions have (very quietly) admitted that the science that guides their recommendations is completely out of date, they're doing essentially nothing to inform the public or even update HCWs.

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We would all be better off if infrastructure was updated to provide cleaner indoor air in public places, using technology that is already well understood and known to be safe-- it's just not happening.

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Thank you so much for sharing!

Thank you friend, your support has been so critical on this project and you've done so much expand my horizons on the production of knowledge in the sciences!!

If you're itching to see more or get some behind-the-scenes access before the premiere, there's a lot more content on my ko-fi. ko-fi.com/lolagerms I'll also be posting more here leading up to the premiere :-)

ko-fi.com

Support Lola Germs

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My film production abilities have improved immensely in the last year and I'm proud of how many skills I could bring together for this project. Here are some stills for your enjoyment.

This project was entirely self-funded and the vast majority of the the labor was me grinding alone (big thanks to everyone whose help was key tho). I don't even want to say how long it took to make, but I can admit I got a little monomaniacal in the pursuit of doing this story justice 😅.

I made this video to spell out exactly how broken our approach to airborne disease has been and continues to be, to start conversations and reach new allies. I believe that broader awareness is desperately needed if we want to achieve the necessary critical mass of people fighting for clean air.

The institutions that have been getting it wrong for 100 years continue to ignore airborne transmission because they don't wanr to acknowledge that they fucked up or remotely challenge our global systems which value profits over human welfare. They will never lead change.

In the video I explore the history of the (mis)understanding of airborne disease transmission from the ancient concept of miasma to the modern myth of the aerosol-generating procedure! Here's a little teaser 👀

The Scientific Mistake That Public Health Refuses to Admit

My first post on bluesky to announce the premiere of my upcoming feature length airborne science history extravaganza! Sunday June 21 8pm CEST 2pm EDT 11am PDT youtu.be/yuXVu595DBI?... There will be a watch party on YT with a live stream afterwards :-)

youtu.be

YouTube video by Lola Germs

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If you are itching to see more previews or behind the scenes before the premiere, there's more content for supporters over on my ko-fi 👀 ko-fi.com/lolagerms