Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

[Suu (parody account)]

Jenn and TGG and I all have covid.

I was more angry I was sick than I was sick, but the chills and aches the first night were hell on wheels. Tylenol was the only thing that worked.

For us, the only thing that stops the horrible chills is theraflu (which may also be Tylenol).  Nothing stops the all over sunburn effect, or the total lack of energy.  There's an antiviral that works on this paxlovid or some shit, we're getting that today.

Definitely get the antiviral. I didn't have a fever so they wouldn't give it to me. Also had the 3 vaccines at that point, but it was over the summer so protection had waned from my November 2021 booster. My sister and BIL dragged me to comic con because they didn't want me home moping over Jeff's diagnosis. So I bought him a bunch of Doctor Who Cybermen things and brought myself home Covid.

I also did Theraflu, my brother swears by that shit, and napped. A lot. I got the bivalent booster as soon as I could.

You will pop positive on the antigen test longer than symptoms and contagiousness will last. I was done and "better" in 5 days, but had some dizziness and breathing issues for another 2 weeks, which I tend to get with other respiratory viruses anyway, and then I fully recovered. My sister gets heart palpitations, she's had it twice post-vaccine, and possibly was one of the first cases in Florida because that's when she was working for the Scientologists (Now THAT's a story).

[Cain]

Mastadon is weird and very prone to groupthink IMO.

That's great if you want a small server to like, chat shit with people like on PD and FB. Something cosy and semi-private or based on specific niche interests works great. If you want to follow a wide variety of weird shitposters and activivists, academics and journalists it is less useful.

[altered]

Mastodon is also very white, vaguely utopian, and extremely averse to anything remotely confrontational or controversial. Example: you have to content-warn photos of food. Selfies with eye contact. Anything to do with protests or activism.

It's unusable for most purposes, there's a barrier to entry, and Tumblr is going to be federating with it in the near future -- so, soon, there won't even be a point. Just make a Tumblr and avoid the limitations and bizarre social requirements.

[Suu (parody account)]

I'm on an archaeology Mastodon, which is great for networking career-wise, but definitely not as chatty as Twitter. My server also doesn't federate with the others well and I think they did it on purpose.

I do have a Post.news account as well, which is more like old Twitter, but still in beta. I got permabanned from Twitter for calling out MAGA bullshit and asking them if they masturbate to photos of dead brown children, but hey, Musk let Nazis back on so I was hoping for a chance.

[Doktor Howl]

I have the antiviral.  Dramatic difference.

I mean, everything tastes like shit now, and I have no sense of balance, but that beats what was happening.

[Cain]

Mastodon is also very white, vaguely utopian, and extremely averse to anything remotely confrontational or controversial. Example: you have to content-warn photos of food. Selfies with eye contact. Anything to do with protests or activism.

It's unusable for most purposes, there's a barrier to entry, and Tumblr is going to be federating with it in the near future -- so, soon, there won't even be a point. Just make a Tumblr and avoid the limitations and bizarre social requirements.

I'm sure that joining up with the people who brought us this will not be a strange and highly toxic brew:

[altered]

I mean, most of Tumblr sucks, absolutely. But it's still going to be an easier entry to the fediverse than Mastodon, since you know exactly what you're getting, exactly how to get it, and you aren't going to be effectively banned for breaking bizarre rules that nowhere else online has that are buried in a rules document that's functionally closer to a ToS in size and impenetrability than a list of rules.

[Suu (parody account)]

I have the antiviral.  Dramatic difference.

I mean, everything tastes like shit now, and I have no sense of balance, but that beats what was happening.

Never lost my senses. Just felt like my bones were trying to leave my body at all times.

[Faust]

tumble is another company that sells its users to advertisets, to benefit its shareholders.
The only reason they partially undid their nudity ban was because people leaving due to that ate their bottom line.
The more people, the more interference and the more chance of it going the way of Facebook and twitter.

[altered]

No argument with that.

But let’s be honest, many people (not accusing anyone here, I know us) are going to go the route that’s easy. You can pick a Mastodon instance pretty much blindly, full of people you don’t know with arcane rules you can’t understand, or you can hop on Tumblr and at least know what you’re dealing with — and you can still say hi to all your weird paranoid friends who talk about surveillance a lot.

It’s less something I’m recommending and more what people will inevitably do if Mastodon really does win, because it makes joining brainless and safe. And then Tumblr kills the fediverse, old Microsoft style: embrace, extend, extinguish. And that’s just business sense on their part, they’d be fools not to.

[Faust]

Maybe, I don't see the tumblr format working for the casual twitter user, its not going to be the lifeboat they jump into. The niche groups might, but most already had a tumblr account or ironically, aren't moving from twitter because "its bigger then Elon", they are seeing the same effect, we did the party had already moved on to Instagram and ticktok and the same way FB/Twitter/Reddit pulled from long form discussion forums, they are now being eaten by an even more attention deficit medium.

In 2011 90% of this sites traffic was desktop with some mobile, as of this year that has completely reversed, mobile first, but that medium does not lend itself to text creation, content consumption, hence video and pictures end up having the gravity for the traffic.

[Cain]

I mean, most of Tumblr sucks, absolutely. But it's still going to be an easier entry to the fediverse than Mastodon, since you know exactly what you're getting, exactly how to get it, and you aren't going to be effectively banned for breaking bizarre rules that nowhere else online has that are buried in a rules document that's functionally closer to a ToS in size and impenetrability than a list of rules.

True.

But imagine how fucking annoying the combination of fandom and Mastadon will be.

[chaotic neutral observer]

I have the antiviral.  Dramatic difference.

I mean, everything tastes like shit now, and I have no sense of balance, but that beats what was happening.

Never lost my senses. Just felt like my bones were trying to leave my body at all times.

I never got tested, but I strongly suspect I had the C a couple months ago.

I had the horrible bone pain, a rather unpleasant cough, and woke up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat.  I also had some oddly specific loss of taste; for a couple days, anything with vinegar in it (kombucha, pickles, mustard) tasted really weird.

All of this was after four shots worth of Pfizer.

[Cain]

I had what felt like flu for 2 weeks - one of absolute hell, one that was manageable when medicated up to the eyeballs.

It then took a month to get my energy levels back to approaching normal. I am fairly certain it was Covid, despite the test coming back negative.

[Nibor the Priest]

It then took a month to get my energy levels back to approaching normal. I am fairly certain it was Covid, despite the test coming back negative.

There are definitely false negatives. I know several people who've recently had a horribly bad cold that totally wasn't covid because an LFT was negative.

My partner and I both got it back in March or April 2020, shortly after it officially came to the UK. There weren't any vaccines or self tests. Masks were in short supply, and it wasn't yet clear if it was a good idea to buy them or to leave them so there'd be enough left for the nurses. I got sent to a hospital and made to wait in a chalk square outside, then someone in head-to-toe PPE asked me some questions and watched my breathing, without any physical contact. It's weird to remember it being taken that seriously. They said I'd probably had it and we should both isolate for a week. I don't remember much from that week except being absolutely fucking knackered. I'm also pretty sure it made me less mentally sharp for months. No fun.

We're both up to three or four jabs now, I've lost count.