3/23/20
If I hear one more person bitch about how "entitled" millenials and Gen Z are and how easy they have it one more time, I am going to have someone's spleen for a tennis ball. So far, they have lived in post-911 America, had the recession shit on them, no recognizable career path, school shootings every 10 fucking minutes, and now the pandemic. I feel perfectly comfortable saying that my generation, gen X, had it far easier than these kids do. The worst we had to deal with was boredom and shitty weed.
Also, the drive to work this morning was spooky as fuck. Normally, interstate 10 is packed at 6:00 AM. Today it was me and half a dozen trucks. That's it. I had a lot of ideas of how the world would end, but I never expected an apocalypse based on the common cold's ugly big brother. On the other hand, I am absolutely unsurprised that attorney general Barr wants to "suspend" constitutional rights in this crisis and in future events. Which means that "crisis" will be redefined as hilariously as "terrorism" was.
We're sending everyone who can work from home to work from home, and I gotta ask: Why not leave it that way? This is the 21st century. We have Skype. Why pay for office space?
More later.
Seriously, the older half of the millenial cohort managed to hit every global crisis pretty much perfectly. I was 14 when the War on Terror started. 17 when Iraq was invaded. 22 when the subprime mortgage crisis tanked the world economy. 24 when the Tories took power. 29 when people decided fascism sounded really fucking cool again. And now 34 and the planet is under a lockdown due to a virus. My best friend, he's having his second kid, and while his wife can't even go out (because of the risk from the virus to pregnant women), his work hours are being reduced. He's in a fairly well compensated profession, but they've gone from a 2-person income household to a 0.75% household, with one kid to look after and another on the way. I'm lucky in that I have a huge amount of savings to fall back on and can work from home, but most people don't have either of those options right now.
And of course, there has been the steadily increasing global warming crisis, which will inevitably hit a tipping point in like...well, probably 5 years ago to be honest. But we probably won't start to see the fallout for another 10, not on a systemic level.
3/24/20
People still aren't taking this seriously. Instead of a common sense approach (by which I mean read the CDC guidelines and accept them as your new religion), people are either "Shut everything down until cannibalism is a thing" or "Don't let the cure be worse than the disease" (ie, do nothing at all.)
Americans have been largely living free of consequences for 75 years. The universe is not allowing that anymore, but people refuse to believe that the rules are now being enforced without regard to privilege. Americans are not used to being told "no", but now reality is saying "no" with Richterian finality. There is no argument, there is no appeal, and this includes your spring break party that you wouldn't cancel because you've been planning it for two whole months OR you continuing to shake hands and slobber all over people just because you're the president OR because you live in Idaho and you will not close your bars down (Idaho has 15% of their population over 60. For now.).
Quote from: Cain on March 23, 2020, 08:19:27 PM
Seriously, the older half of the millenial cohort managed to hit every global crisis pretty much perfectly. I was 14 when the War on Terror started. 17 when Iraq was invaded. 22 when the subprime mortgage crisis tanked the world economy. 24 when the Tories took power. 29 when people decided fascism sounded really fucking cool again. And now 34 and the planet is under a lockdown due to a virus. My best friend, he's having his second kid, and while his wife can't even go out (because of the risk from the virus to pregnant women), his work hours are being reduced. He's in a fairly well compensated profession, but they've gone from a 2-person income household to a 0.75% household, with one kid to look after and another on the way. I'm lucky in that I have a huge amount of savings to fall back on and can work from home, but most people don't have either of those options right now.
And of course, there has been the steadily increasing global warming crisis, which will inevitably hit a tipping point in like...well, probably 5 years ago to be honest. But we probably won't start to see the fallout for another 10, not on a systemic level.
That has once again become a long range problem. Not because it's any better, but because bad shit is here, right now.
By the way, this thread isn't just for me. Anyone who has thoughts to capture is perfectly welcome to add their own stuff.
3/24
The news is painful. And it's not going to get better. The outlook for mortality, mental health and the economy will worsen by waffling. Stay at home. We're at home. My neighbors are at home. We're trying to work from home. But I hear the cars roaring around the roads still. Where are you going? I hope it's because you're an essential worker and you're washing your hands.
The structural biologists online have been going nuts. There's tons of new collaborations. Everyone wants to be a computational biochemist or a bioinformaticist. Most of us can't get back to the lab. My research may be shot. My student's are writing theses or review articles from home. But for those who can get to the lab, precious X-ray beamtime has been opened up for solving SARS-nCov-2 protein structures. I'm stuck at home wondering if I couldn't have holed up in my lab instead. I have a cot and a fridge and a microwave there, right? Or maybe I should've brought the lab home. Would the university freak out if I brought home about $20k of equipment to set up a lab in my garage? We've organized collections of gloves, masks, reagents and PCR kits for donation. It's inspiring to see people help out. Why hasn't the gov't done more? Much of the US gov't is unreliable, mostly at the federal level. Either way, it looks like the way out is to clamp down, stay home, stay safe and slow the spread - not a little slowing but a drastically enforced slowing. Transmission rate below one. I can do without the moccacinofrappelatte or make one at home. Out of rice flour, carob and chickory I guess.
24/3 (note the correct order)
UK essential under lockdown with indication that this will only escalate.
Police given powers to fine. Police seriously understaffed. Army Ill equipped. Strong suspicion that this is where facial recognition tech will start coming along nicely. You have been fined £100 for being outside twice.
Honestly though, it's the best driving I've dealt with, ever.
Quote from: Junkenstein on March 24, 2020, 09:32:01 PM
UK essential under lockdown with indication that this will only escalate.
Well, depending on who you listen to. The Health Secretary is now saying if you can't work from home and your employer says so, you have to come in.
So much for the lockdown.
Arizona's actual cases just blew because we have test kits now, and the governor decided to not implement any measures at all, but rather to give Pence's arse a good licking.
3/24/2020
Bitterness and incalculable grief have been my constant bedfellows for a month and a half now with daily increasing intensity and no respite in sight. That's not me being dramatic, it's just the facts. I'm quite sure at this point that I have gone mad, was so shortly before I even knew of this goddamn virus. But I am walking wounded. I can still function... It's more accurate to say that WE can still function. I am no longer "alone" in my head. He is always there now, right next to me like we're sharing a loveseat while I play a video game He is mostly content to watch and make snarky commentary about... At the moment. I capitalize the h in He the same way I do for I. I have known Him for many years, but He was always an occasional and often unwelcome guest in my reality. Now He's like a radio without a control knob for station or volume, and He's an asshole.
I need psychiatric care, but because of circumstances I am unable to even get state healthcare. I called the assistance line several times and it just told me in English and Spanish that it could not take my call right now and hung up. There isn't going to be a psychiatrist. I won't be getting pillz of any sort. I'm quite sure that pillz wouldn't "fix" us anyway, and everything is in hardcore mode now. We have come to accept our situation. It's no reason to give up on trying to do whatever is necessary in these times, but I do somewhat fear His demonstrated ability to take over "playing the game" if I'm passed out from exhaustion. He doesn't have a morality as we humans think of morality, He's truly alien in some ways, but He does seem to keep His agreements.
We have agreed
That I should lead
And He only
Handle the wheel
If dire need be.
... We shall see.
My life has very often been a surreal exercise in pretending to be ok, but these days I'm far from alone in that. Today my good father had men come to the house to pour concrete. He's spending thousands of dollars on "finishing" his house even as his 401k took a 40% nosedive about a week after I warned him about the virus and an immanent collapse, urging him to pull it all, pay the damn taxes, and reinvest in hard assets, imperishable food, and potential trade goods. He believed Trump over me even though he knows better than anyone that I can often see the future with preternatural seeming clarity. "I told you so" has become more bitter in my mouth than anything eating oranges ever did.
I am fortunate to have a roof, table, and loving family. We are all four of us doing our best to "self isolate", but dear old dad just doesn't seem to get it. I presume at this point that one of us or the other is eventually going to bring 'Rona home one day and infect us all, probably before even being symptomatic. In this realization I have become a bit fatalistic in lieu of allowing paranoia to take hold.
It's about to be dinner time. We're having tacos. Something tells me, flatly, that I had better appreciate the shit out of them. A day will come soon when I will dream of tacos with my family to keep out the pain in my belly, lungs, and heart and count myself fortunate to even have the blessings of such memories.
I've never kept a journal before. It's actually really soothing to see it in writing. Until the next entry, then. Have a fine evening folks.
3/24
Got laid off yesterday, have been talking to other potential employers all day. Old job was in the travel/hospitality industry, so that place is as good as cooked anyway, even if the 50% of workers who got to stay on (with a 25% pay cut) don't realize it. Other places are still hiring, but so far they are "waiting til the situation eases up" so they can continue their preferred face to face interviews. Basically no one seems to have realized the depth of the economic hole we just pitched over into, which is less "find the bottom and start climbing back out" and more "Alice goes to Wonderland," I suspect.
Outside, at least here in northern Virginia, everything is noticeably quieter. It's peaceful. I like it, but it puts a lot of other people on edge. Life is supposed to be busy, loud, bustling, and frantic. It isn't supposed to be peaceful, and it sure the fuck isn't supposed to be quiet. Granted, this maybe the calm before the storm, but what better reason to enjoy the stillness?
Personally, I am riding waves of psychosomatic symptoms. I am too aware of everything about my sinuses. It isn't debilitating, but it's annoying. I am also running out of patience with people who can't handle long term disruptions to their routines, but for now I am treating that as a problem that will sort itself out on its own somehow.
The president and a lot of governors are talking about how we need to hurry up and get back to normal, even though the US hasn't even come close to peak infection rate yet. I hate that so few people can see this for the obvious intention to sacrifice possibly hundreds of thousands of people on the altar of the status quo that it is. I hate how shortsighted the news headlines are, too: today the markets crash, today the markets bounce back, today they crash again, and nobody seems to notice the pattern. I assume the narrative is engineered, because nobody could be dumb enough to miss that, right?
Quote from: Cain on March 24, 2020, 09:49:30 PM
Quote from: Junkenstein on March 24, 2020, 09:32:01 PM
UK essential under lockdown with indication that this will only escalate.
Well, depending on who you listen to. The Health Secretary is now saying if you can't work from home and your employer says so, you have to come in.
So much for the lockdown.
Give it another couple of days. Fully expecting measures to be beyond draconian to mitigate fallout. Huge and excessive fines and sanctions ahoy to pay for all this shit. The fine figure I've heard touted is £30 to unlimited. If someone gets clever it'll be a percentage of income.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on March 24, 2020, 11:48:12 PM
3/24
Got laid off yesterday, have been talking to other potential employers all day.
I may be taking a position with filthy investment capitalists next month. They're coast to coast. I could slide your resume their way if you like.
JOIN US. DON'T BE AFRAID. UNNNNNNG.
Hamish,
Continuing his moral collapse.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 25, 2020, 12:57:10 AM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on March 24, 2020, 11:48:12 PM
3/24
Got laid off yesterday, have been talking to other potential employers all day.
I may be taking a position with filthy investment capitalists next month. They're coast to coast. I could slide your resume their way if you like.
JOIN US. DON'T BE AFRAID. UNNNNNNG.
Hamish,
Continuing his moral collapse.
The thought "Ethical Transition" came to mind. Moral collapse is just too on the nose for Corporate America.
Yesterday evening I caught myself toying with the idea of infiltrating The Man once the jackboots are on and They bring the iron fist down. I didn't even realize what I was doing until the prospect of watching sick people get abused by mercenary guards presiding over a concentration camp posing as a MASH unit hit me as a deal breaker spiritually.
The Chinese straight up used medical and social media technology to abduct people based purely on whether or not they were running a temperature, and then likewise test everyone they may have contacted, and throw them all into 16 makeshift "hospitals". The WHO recently praised China for the effectiveness of its efforts while conspicuously ignoring the details of their methods, which are a matter of public record at this point. I think I started down the rabbit hole when I realized that I couldn't even be mad if it worked, and despite the fact that I know better than to entirely trust their published numbers it seems to have indeed worked to at least mitigate the damage, to flatten the curve as They say.
Questions like "Would you kill one person to potentially save 100?" and "What would you REALLY do to keep your own kids from starvation?" are no longer armchair musings for a self entitled dipshit with pretensions of philosophy. They are a matter of hard numbers and immediate future outcomes.
In light of that, Vex, I suggest that if Dok can in fact hook you up that you take it. Get all Benjamin Sysko about it and live with it for the sake of your personal alpha quadrant.
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway, so why not
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on March 25, 2020, 02:05:31 AM
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway, so why not
There are, however, fat bags of boodle and all the marijuana you can snort.
Before bed musings on 3/24.
I might be one of the only people who stands to actually do better in this than out of it. I'm not sure how to feel.
I've lived a life of non-stop personal crisis, with borderline personality disorder hanging over my head and more trauma than you can set on fire with a truckload of accelerant and a death wish. I default to anxiety and existential dread as a matter of course. I've learned, slowly, with backsliding, how to make them useful.
The apocalypse is my home.
More than that, I'm getting a job that pays a decent living wage in almost all places you can live at all without owning a yacht as of early December, and have a community I plan on living in that costs less than most communities that fit my needs (urban, transit, walking distance to groceries).
And this isn't a job offer that will magically dry up tomorrow when the industry it lives on collapses. I've been told I'm allowed to mention they're working on an app for COVID stuff. Government app with a civilian portal. Not sure how much else I can mention, but the point is clear: I'm about to become indispensable. Handling crises for a company working on crisis management tools during a global crisis.
So I stand to actually come out of this doing okay. Really okay. Finally have my shit together okay.
And I vaguely feel bad.
I don't know if QGPs reminder that I deserve nice things applies when I might do alright while the world burns. I worry about things others don't, because subsistence survival has been my main mode of being for so long that I'm used to it. Is it fair that I finally make it when someone else falls down into a lake of feces, someone who doesn't have a life history of septic swimming?
In the wider world, everything looks scarier and scarier and I've grown numb to it. I recognize the importance of it all, but I have no power to change it, and those who do are fucking morons and keep looking away from the burning building we all are in to hatefuck pure-bred show dogs over and over.
When you cannot change something, when it is enormous and all-consuming, you have to change your attitude toward it. And so I parse it and allow myself to feel nothing, because the magnitude is crushing. And I feel vaguely guilty about this too.
We have had, as Dok noted, an abundance of crises in my lifetime. I don't know how a normal human does anything, but I especially don't know how a normal human is supposed to react to the world ending in a hundred ways constantly for the entire time they've been alive.
I do not remember a time when things were okay. Not in a personal sense, a global sense. I grew up with the Kosovo war and Bosnian genocide. I was just starting to be able to parse that when 9/11 happened, along with everything that kicked off. Years of decreasing freedom and increasing fearmongering from the Bush administration. I was terrified of planes, and still have a deep sense of unease seeing them in motion.
This is glossing over a billion things that seem comparatively tiny, but were world-shattering to me. Gamergate, the war on trans people, anti-vaxxers and the anti-autism angle that they built. I'm leaving out a ton of global things that everyone here remembers clearly, starting with 2008 and going onward from there.
But those are unnecessary to make the point:
Things have never in my life been okay.
I'm inclined to feel bad when, for one singular time, I might be the okay one while everyone else falls down.
And I'm just not sure if that's damage, human response like some sort of pre-survivor's guilt, or the ethical response.
Quote from: altered on March 25, 2020, 07:00:06 AM
Before bed musings on 3/24.
I might be one of the only people who stands to actually do better in this than out of it. I'm not sure how to feel.
I've lived a life of non-stop personal crisis, with borderline personality disorder hanging over my head and more trauma than you can set on fire with a truckload of accelerant and a death wish. I default to anxiety and existential dread as a matter of course. I've learned, slowly, with backsliding, how to make them useful.
The apocalypse is my home.
More than that, I'm getting a job that pays a decent living wage in almost all places you can live at all without owning a yacht as of early December, and have a community I plan on living in that costs less than most communities that fit my needs (urban, transit, walking distance to groceries).
And this isn't a job offer that will magically dry up tomorrow when the industry it lives on collapses. I've been told I'm allowed to mention they're working on an app for COVID stuff. Government app with a civilian portal. Not sure how much else I can mention, but the point is clear: I'm about to become indispensable. Handling crises for a company working on crisis management tools during a global crisis.
So I stand to actually come out of this doing okay. Really okay. Finally have my shit together okay.
And I vaguely feel bad.
I don't know if QGPs reminder that I deserve nice things applies when I might do alright while the world burns. I worry about things others don't, because subsistence survival has been my main mode of being for so long that I'm used to it. Is it fair that I finally make it when someone else falls down into a lake of feces, someone who doesn't have a life history of septic swimming?
In the wider world, everything looks scarier and scarier and I've grown numb to it. I recognize the importance of it all, but I have no power to change it, and those who do are fucking morons and keep looking away from the burning building we all are in to hatefuck pure-bred show dogs over and over.
When you cannot change something, when it is enormous and all-consuming, you have to change your attitude toward it. And so I parse it and allow myself to feel nothing, because the magnitude is crushing. And I feel vaguely guilty about this too.
We have had, as Dok noted, an abundance of crises in my lifetime. I don't know how a normal human does anything, but I especially don't know how a normal human is supposed to react to the world ending in a hundred ways constantly for the entire time they've been alive.
I do not remember a time when things were okay. Not in a personal sense, a global sense. I grew up with the Kosovo war and Bosnian genocide. I was just starting to be able to parse that when 9/11 happened, along with everything that kicked off. Years of decreasing freedom and increasing fearmongering from the Bush administration. I was terrified of planes, and still have a deep sense of unease seeing them in motion.
This is glossing over a billion things that seem comparatively tiny, but were world-shattering to me. Gamergate, the war on trans people, anti-vaxxers and the anti-autism angle that they built. I'm leaving out a ton of global things that everyone here remembers clearly, starting with 2008 and going onward from there.
But those are unnecessary to make the point:
Things have never in my life been okay.
I'm inclined to feel bad when, for one singular time, I might be the okay one while everyone else falls down.
And I'm just not sure if that's damage, human response like some sort of pre-survivor's guilt, or the ethical response.
A few thoughts.
The world is inherently not fair, but that does swing both ways. It is utterly pointless to bemoan the fact in adversity, a total waste of A Good Time, not to mention a bit douchey, to do so in times of good fortune.
You may choose to be fair in an unfair world. To take your resources and seek to alleviate the suffering of others, to promote what you think is just, to have personal integrity even, especially, when it's a burden to do so. In an inherently, demonstrably, unfair world this is the stuff of saints and hopeless fools alikeand so rare and much needed. It is therefore valuable in a way that mere currency cannot ever reflect, treasures laid up in heaven so to speak, but it is by no means required of you, or anyone else for that matter, to pursue such value at all. To me that's kind of the point. It's something that you have to choose, and it's QUITE alright to do so just because it may make you feel better or otherwise result in personal gain. Those who are helped will not quibble about your motives and you probably shouldn't either.
If you are ok while everyone else falls down that's ok. You may walk away, or you may stay. If you want to help others I'm sure some would appreciate it, but you should probably recover a bit first. There's always gonna be ways to help, but you must heal yourself after your own climb out.
Let yourself be your priority and give yourself some credit. That's what years of therapy ultimately taught me. I'm not cured of existential levels of depression or any of my other maladies by this, but it helps my soul in a way I consider akin to yoga helping a bad back. That's my take on it anyway, and I'll take what I can get.
There's a difference between feeling sorry for the poor souls burning in the pits of hell and jumping in beside them to ease your conscience - the former is human, the latter is just fucking retarded. If there's nothing you can do to help them but something you can do to help yourself then there's no moral imperative on you to feel the heat.
Personally our company made out like bandits during the financial collapse, simply because we were offering a saving on a marginal cost which, before the crunch, nobody gave a shit about. After it happened they were knocking our door off the hinges. Did I feel bad for all the poor bastards going under and losing their everything? Yes. Did I feel good about drowning in filthy lucre, while all this was going on? Equally yes.
Quote from: altered on March 25, 2020, 07:00:06 AM
Before bed musings on 3/24.
I might be one of the only people who stands to actually do better in this than out of it. I'm not sure how to feel.
I've lived a life of non-stop personal crisis, with borderline personality disorder hanging over my head and more trauma than you can set on fire with a truckload of accelerant and a death wish. I default to anxiety and existential dread as a matter of course. I've learned, slowly, with backsliding, how to make them useful.
The apocalypse is my home.
Totally understand what you mean. You've been through so much shit that when something good happens, your expectation is that the other shoe will drop any moment now. The current state of reality is difficult to accept whether it's good or bad.
This is (obviously) a strange time for ALL of us. We ALL have to learn new skills in order to cope with the coming weeks. Your challenge, I suspect, is figuring out how to relax into it. To turn off the fight/flight warning lights and set cruise control. Cause this is it for a little while.
2020 Mar. 25
I understand where altered is coming from, sort of.
My anxiety is the worst it's been since they started me on the pills. It's nowhere near redline, but I've dusted off some of my old coping mechanisms. It's kind of refreshing, in a way, to be experiencing anxiety with a legitimate cause; it's easier to understand than the kind of anxiety that has no reason, that happens just because my brain chemistry happens to be off that month.
I'm experiencing a bit of schadenfreude (just a little bit). That general anxiety, that fear of human contact that a lot of people are going through? Welcome to my world. I've spent decades here, and I know the tricks, how to move in pitch darkness without stumbling, how to pretend everything is normal when it really isn't. I should feel more guilty about feeling this way than I actually do. But I hope you don't have to stay in my world long. It's not likely to make you a better person, I'm sorry to say.
I've been working from home the last few days. My hands, once chapped with cold air and aggressive hand-washing, are starting to recover. It's nice to work in a quiet environment, although I wouldn't say my productivity is up.
I'm spending too many of my waking hours in a single room. I should take up meditation again. I need to relax.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/politics/coronavirus-fbi-shooting.html?fbclid=IwAR26dTjQ-g8IJ8nvPa_SMAB1oTxFEh_ghl_-uCFD8j04rwjlm_0opydIhfY
QuoteA man suspected of planning to attack a Missouri hospital was killed during a shootout with F.B.I. agents, the authorities said on Wednesday.
The deadly encounter took place on Tuesday afternoon in suburban Belton, Mo., after agents on a tactical team tried to arrest the man as part of a domestic terrorism investigation.
It was not clear whether the man was killed by F.B.I. agents or died by suicide. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Officials identified the man as Timothy R. Wilson, 36.
According to officials, Mr. Wilson had expressed racist and anti-government sentiments. He had been under F.B.I. scrutiny since September, and the authorities said that at one point he had considered attacking multiple targets, including a school with a large number of black students, as well as a mosque and a synagogue.
"Wilson considered various targets and ultimately settled on an area hospital in an attempt to harm many people, targeting a facility that is providing critical medical care in today's environment," the F.B.I. said in a statement.
Last week, Belton's mayor issued a stay-at-home order for its residents. Authorities said Mr. Wilson said he felt compelled to act because of the mayor's order and intended to use a car bomb to cause mass casualties at the hospital.
I wanted to say that people's replies have helped. Waking up today, I was able to take a deep breath and accept that life isn't a struggle for me and that maybe I do deserve it, even when a lot of people are currently and will soon be struggling in my place. I'll do what I can and try to live life without it being a constant catastrophe. If I have enough to help people without existential dread, which is quite likely, I will.
I am more or less at peace today, 3/25. Things feel normal in an almost movie-like way. It feels fake but I am able to accept it. I'm not upset or depressed. My anxiety is reducing itself. I'm having normal human interactions with people in real life. The news has gone ignored.
I have a black cloak. A gift. I intend to buy MOLLE panels and stitch them to it. If this is going to be an apocalypse, I will be prepared. If not, I will be fashionably functional.
29/03/2020
I've been working from home for two weeks, and apart from anxiety for both of us, the disruption up until now was minimal. We go for a walk for an hour in the field to avoid other people. We are getting food home delivered and clean it down when it gets to the door. It has been harder for herself though, her parents don't live far away but we've made the decision (including them) not to meet except maybe across the garden until at least after the baby is born. Inconvenient but still, a minimal disruption.
My mother lost her Job, at least until the factory reopens, and I am worried about her, but for the most part she has been able to consume her time with gardening.
Found out on Friday though I wont be allowed in to the hospital for the birth or be with herself. I understand why, I'm not grumbling, the less pressure on the health system the better and less unnecessary risk the better, but it sucks, I am worried about herself needing someone to support her through it, but we will have to make do.
I cant apply for my paternity leave either, the welfare website just has a big redirect to the pandemic unemployment section whenever I try to register. But I will phone them on monday.
jeeesus man, I can't imagine giving birth in a time like this -- or not being there when the baby is born! Yes, it's the responsible thing, but good god damn, my heart goes out to you.
3/29/20
It turns out that making horrible tiny robots of DEFF is an essential occupation, so I still go to work. We can't have one apocalypse conflicting with another. Also, these things make the Russian surveillance state that Cramulus mentioned look antiquated. Like having a couple of guys trying to listen in on an entire city's phone system, as opposed to millions of tiny things that recharge by parking on power lines and sucking up induction.
I got made the company's plague czar, and I threw everyone out who could do their job from home, among other things...Such as draconian penalties for coming in sick (and a vastly modified attendance policy that forbids punishment and allows people to go in the hole on PTO), 300 gallons of hand sanitizer made from isopropyl and water, etc.
Yeah, that sucks ass, Faust. Good luck.
Faust I will pray as often as the spirit may move me and I can spare the brain time for your well-being and your family in this struggle. You may wish to study emergency birthing procedure, youtube and other more reliable outlets alike in the event that the possibility of getting to the hospital becomes nil or too risky. That said I apologize for my next entry. It's grim, but must be contemplated.
3/29/2020
Every day I am more and more grateful for what abundance I have available to me in terms of simple necessity being met, and family, and also the residual luxury of having access to information and the internet. Today my father attended his first virtual church service over FB live. By how sluggish FB is being I presume that the same is happening on a huge scale. I believe that this trend will continue and due to sheer utility consider FB and various videoconferencing platforms to be choice picks for investment at this time as well as all technology and logistical Telecom concerns that support it. In addition going forward I expect to see various common goods becoming highly competitive luxury items like cosmetics, sanitizers, and sad to say eventually high quality toilet paper. Medical supply must be held on a level of sacred trust similar to how we may have once viewed gold. Trump is in my estimations INTENTIONALLY seeking to set the states in competition for these goods and I believe that he hopes to spark open, violent conflict sufficient to establish martial law powers for himself and put the military control system, that his office commands, in authority over the governers. Any governor who doesn't capitulate will be considered "rogue" and subject to military action. Any governor who capitulates gets federal aid if they just stick their tongue up his ass and wiggle it with convincing enthusiasm. I suspect that a grand majority will pick option 2, and so geography and isolation alone will eventually cow the remainder after a certain amount of suppression. We will come to a point where violent criminal authority enacted by government and cartels alike will become the norm.
It gets worse. I pray that I am wrong, but the apparent blessing in this virus not provoking a strong, much less fatal, immune response in children under 10 or so may in fact be a horrific, existential threat to the continuation of the species. The children are still human, the virus absolutely does infect them and begin replication. All young children are therefore likely asymptomatic carriers bearing a disease vector with about a 1 in five chance of killing the untreated, and potentially crippling to various degrees the lungs of countless more for life. I consider it like Russian roulette with bullets in chambers 3 and 4 bearing a truly horrible but survivable sickness if you have basic necessities and a caregiver to hand, and a bullet 5 WILL require hospitalization that will largely be unavailable in the coming years. It's a dice roll for your life just to be around others or in an unsanitized environment and if you fail that infection check you play roulette with the best possible outcome being an asymptotic carrier. Regardless if you get infected every person in your quarters with you almost certainly will get infected on their dice roll and then also play roulette for severity. There are things you can do to modify the dice roll like social distance and ppe, but you can only bypass it by remaining in containment. Imagine a world where just speaking face to face with a child provokes an check for infection, and a hug imposes a steep penalty to that roll for you life and everyone else's that is in quarters with you. If this becomes endemic, and I don't have the luxury of presuming otherwise given that it manifed a second strain called S and the original strain is L in a few months. We need 2 vaccines now at best, and they're not telling people. I don't blame them, but it's true. Panic is worth lying or even killing to prevent at this point ethically in my opinion.
I have been trying to sleep, and succeeding in fits, but my meds are running low and I need a doctor I can't access due to lack of insurance and a VERY steep penalty to the infection check just for being in a hospital at this point.
I have ideas slowly gestating in me on how to counter this horrible low blow we have been dealt by nature. They're not ready for full expression yet, but one of them is a new form of public Service that accepts inevitable infection in exchange for being a capable helping hand in dealing with the logistical problems we now face that They are currently ignoring.
Shit, Faust. I'm sorry to hear that.
My company is apparently essential enough to stay open, so at least I'm still getting a check every week. They ask us several questions, and scan our foreheads for temperature before they let us in, but that's right after driving all the way there with the window down, and C19 doesn't always present fever. they tell us to socially distance, but we have two meetings a day where we have to huddle up to hear the supervisor in a noisy environment, and it's fairly half-assed the rest of the shift as well.
I don't go out except to shop, and I try to keep my distance from people when I do. I have some homemade hand sanitizer in a Dr. Pepper bottle in the drink holder of my car that I made from pure grain alcohol and h2o2, and also a bottle of hibiclens, which is technically a soap, not hand sanitizer, but whatever.
I went out and got groceries this week after having them delivered last week. I'm wiping everything down with Lysol before I put it up except I forgot, and put a bunch of stuff in the freezer this week before wiping it down, and a freezer is the worst place to put a virus. The little fuckers could stay viable for decades in there.
I spend a lot of my free time researching things that could boost resistance to coronavirus. Right now I'm taking supplements including a 1-a-day, Zinc, Vitamins D and C, and I have some bottles of echinacea and elderberry extracts that I'll start taking if I have symptoms, and I'm going to start including a lot of leeks in my diet as well as growing some in my garden along with some stinging nettle (it's got something to do with lectins, apparently).
Here's a link to the lectins thing in case anybody's interested:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354207002380?via%3Dihub
Quote...The most potent lectin against the SARS-CoV-induced cytopathicity is the mannose-specific plant lectin isolated from leek (APA)...
... In addition, the N-acetyl glucosamine-specific lectins isolated from the stinging nettle (UDA) and from the tobacco plant (Nictaba) are also markedly active against the SARS-CoV...
2020 Mar. 27
I went grocery shopping on Saturday.
Although I once had anxiety issues regarding grocery stores, the trip was surprisingly stress-free. For me, I mean. People mostly kept their distance, one even avoiding entering an aisle when I was already present. There was a omnipresent air of awkwardness, which I found rather comforting. Everybody is now acting weird, so I fit right in! They're acting out the human-contact avoidance behaviour which I have to work to surpress.
One woman who I met in mid-aisle smiled and said something I didn't quite catch about her shopping cart, which she was pulling, rather than pushing; I smiled back, but made no reply. I guess some people react to stress by reaching out.
The only notable shortages were brown sugar (completely sold out), and orange juice (very low); also, the vitamin shelves in the pharmacy seemed a bit empty. I was slightly amused that people think those things would have any effect. This is a virus, not scurvy. The produce section was quite well stocked, although they were no longer selling pomelos, and the ataulfo mangoes were quite wrinkly.
They had installed plexiglass shields to protect the cashiers, and just after I unloaded my cart, they marked that checkout lane as closed. The cashier wasn't going on break, but was being moved over to the next lane, so hers could be cleaned. During checkout, I overheard an older woman asking an employee if there was somewhere she could sit down; the chairs in the area adjacent the checkout had been removed, presumably to prevent people from socializing there.
The cashier seemed quite upbeat, even cheerful; I couldn't tell if this was innate, put-on, or a reaction because I was inadvertently wearing my friendly face. I hope it was the latter, she's one of the cute ones.
If it wasn't for all the store closures, volatile stock market, and y'know, the risk of death, I think I could get used to this.
3/29/2020
I broke up with my stagnant LDR last night, so that was an interesting few hours of being confusedly not-sad and then hungry and then sleepy. Woke up in the early afternoon to notifications from my best pals, a small handful of internet friends, all in the same large Discord server; horny fuckwads were apparently busy being horny and fuckwad-y, as is typical. It's like the virus is cranking everyone's stupid-dials to 11 though, as if their literal and silicone dicks don't do a fine enough job of that already. I scrolled through the shit (it was the usual shit, just increased in volume), friends and I contemplated why we even still bother with the server, memes were shared at the fuckwads' expense, etc.
That bullhonkey only served to stress out everyone, especially my already-stressed-out friend; poor thing's been without her fiancee for a couple weeks, it'll be a week or two more (because of the fiancee getting quarantined at her folks' place), and all the asshattery pinched a nerve in her that me and the others have been trying to soothe. Needless to say, I was pissed. I grumbled as much to a mutual friend, and I had half a mind to say it to the fuckers' collective smarmy faces, but then, starting dwama would have been looked down upon even by the mod who would have been far less kind than I in delivering the same message. So, I shut my trap. C'est la guerre.
Anyway. I remembered that I had some Holy Nonsense saved to this new phone, so I shared some of the more pertinent pieces with the best pals (You Are Enough, the KippleKipple piece about how "It won't always be like this", and, more importantly, the one about living to piss off your enemies). It put smiles on their faces, which put a smile on mine.
Sometimes, it's the little things that get you through the shit.
apparently my employer failed to predict the impact of laying me off so they rehired me
Welcome to your essential status upgrade.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on April 04, 2020, 06:29:41 PM
apparently my employer failed to predict the impact of laying me off so they rehired me
Oh I LOVE this one.
make sure you get permission to work from your boss' pool
We had a guest over today. It was kind of a big deal. We've all been more or less isolated, and we felt pretty safe about the whole thing.
By which I mean Patience came over and we all sat around in masks trying to have a conversation without being able to see facial expressions.
This week we were told that all non-religious holidays this year will be unpaid. Also, we are required to use half of our PTO by June 30. The reason given was that they apparently expect everything to be getting back to normal by the third or fourth quarter, and we will need to make up lost time.
They wanted us to start sanitizing our work spaces with 75% alcohol 5 times per shift. Predictably, we blew through the entire supply in two days.
Today I made what I expect to be my last run for groceries for at least a few weeks, though I may still get my weekly gallon of milk from the dollar store down the road. I've been hoarding food for a couple of years now, and at this point I've just about run out of room for it. I just realized this week that, if by some miracle of science this thing does blow over in the next couple of months, I have almost all the ingredients to make about 40lbs of no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies. So I guess that's what I'll be bringing to the end-of-quarantine party.
I found an HVAC filter at Kroger that says it filters viruses. I'm going to try to make some kind of mask out of it since it should theoretically be better than a t-shirt, bandanna, etc...
4/5/2020
Last night I took part in a virtual conference arranged by a person I met online some time ago following up on some business for Holy Nonsense. THere were experts there speaking on condition of strict confidentiality as to their identities. The virus absolutely does aerosolize readily. A microbiologist corrected me when I mentioned the three day lifespan on a hard nonpourous surface. Apparently in certain cases it's more like 17 days. I can't even concieve of a virus that durable and posited my water contamination theory. everyone just kind of went quiet and nobody had any contradicting input. The whole affair was pretty grim. The hospitals in NewYork are running out of oxygen and without that and the necessary drugs and expertise the ventilators are just a waste of space. If you go on one you're on it for an average of two weeks and have a 15% chance of survival. This means that it's a profound waste of resources from a triage perspective. many people currently on the ventilators are brain dead and their families reluctant to pull the plug for the next person to get one. THere's a lot of fuckery going on with the testing too. there's just not enough of it and some of the tests can have up to a 30% false negative rate.
I have had trouble motivating myself to write for here. I want to write to altered in PM. I have things to write for Vex's organizational idea. I have stories to tell. I can barely keep myself going right now, but will get to these things.
My father just don't get it. My brother grows more paranoid by the day. His wife has anxiety so bad she's got an ulcer or something keepig her up at night with stomach pain. I am isolating in my room for the moment and only emerging to eat, shit, do necessary chores around the house, and smoke the occasional cigarette. I absolutely must quit smoking soon. I was practically begged to stop by some folks at the conference. I'm not buying another pack. when I run out of the two packs I have I'm done.
In the meantime I'm going to find ways to capitalize on my new computer set up. I will probably open a thread eventually to ask technical questions and get recommendations for software and how to access the so called darkweb securely. I understand the concept of a VPN and tor browsers. I also am interested in getting into IRC and FTP, but do not know what software would be best.
yesterday there were a million+ cases. in a week that will double, then double again, and again.
Just about every common virus is aerosol. That's the whole point. Every cold, every flu, whatever.
Airborne is a different and altogether more dangerous category, doesn't require spit.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 06, 2020, 04:55:15 AM
Just about every common virus is aerosol. That's the whole point. Every cold, every flu, whatever.
Airborne is a different and altogether more dangerous category, doesn't require spit.
I must have those mixed up in my head. I'm concerned about the potential for the latter, but not too bad. still hoping to be wrong there.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 06, 2020, 05:03:26 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 06, 2020, 04:55:15 AM
Just about every common virus is aerosol. That's the whole point. Every cold, every flu, whatever.
Airborne is a different and altogether more dangerous category, doesn't require spit.
I must have those mixed up in my head. I'm concerned about the potential for the latter, but not too bad. still hoping to be wrong there.
You are wrong, so be reassured by that. If it was airborn, the hospitals would all be closed now. We have healthcare staff on the ward with the patients for 12+ hours at a time. There is significant infection, but looking around its in the low 10-20% of staff, as opposed to the overwhelming majority which is what it would be.
If they are coughed on, or touch a surface the person coughed on and then touch their face it transmits. That is virile enough to be the massive problem we are seeing, but don't exaggerate it because it is important to be accurate about what is happening
Quote from: Faust on April 06, 2020, 10:23:46 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 06, 2020, 05:03:26 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 06, 2020, 04:55:15 AM
Just about every common virus is aerosol. That's the whole point. Every cold, every flu, whatever.
Airborne is a different and altogether more dangerous category, doesn't require spit.
I must have those mixed up in my head. I'm concerned about the potential for the latter, but not too bad. still hoping to be wrong there.
You are wrong, so be reassured by that. If it was airborn, the hospitals would all be closed now. We have healthcare staff on the ward with the patients for 12+ hours at a time. There is significant infection, but looking around its in the low 10-20% of staff, as opposed to the overwhelming majority which is what it would be.
If they are coughed on, or touch a surface the person coughed on and then touch their face it transmits. That is virile enough to be the massive problem we are seeing, but don't exaggerate it because it is important to be accurate about what is happening
Yeah I'm trying to rein in my paranoia and speculation and stick to the facts as I get them. Even if something turns out to be correct, like perhaps my current guess of persistent water contamination, it's doing me and everyone else no good in terms of anxiety and conflict. I'm still going to voice some of that here in the diary to vent it, but on the data thread I'm going to try very hard to stick to factual observation.
I am leaving this thread, since the Covid19 thread in the tech section is supposed to be for technical discussions and this is supposed to be for personal experiences and not whether the fucking thing is airborne. I will do something offline and post it later, I guess. Or just do it offline. Goddammit.
I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF IT IS AIRBORNE FOR THIS CONVERSATION. SON OF A BITCH.
Hamish,
Not handling isolation well.
Pardon my frustration, TWJ. Please keep the airborne/technical stuff in the technical thread.
06-04-2020
Virus benefits
Able to stay at home looking after pregnant girlfriend and the weather has been ok
Brothers internship at an IT company that supports the health service
Virus negatives
Our sales and deployments guys cant get into sites to do any work so customer stream has frozen, company has instituted a 20% pay cut cross the board for 3 months, I am now seeking other employment
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 06, 2020, 04:26:07 PM
Pardon my frustration, TWJ. Please keep the airborne/technical stuff in the technical thread.
it's ok man. I'm frustrated, confused, scared, and trying to keep shit sorted while learning as much as I can and trying to write about four things at once. I'm just going to stick to the personal experiences here. Not trying to spag up the thread.
4/9/2020
So far, I've been handling all of this pretty well. I think I mentioned it elsewhere -- I actually feel a little guilty because of how privileged I am .. me and my fiance's jobs are secure, we're both working from home, we live in a town with lots of woodsy trails we walk every day.. our families are safe.. the quarantine has made us even closer and helped us get better at communicating. Things are fine.
But it's still hard. I feel the stress gradually building-up. I've been pacing my energy - I know we're not at the halfway point yet (right now, I am betting on social distancing ending in early June). The days are really starting to blend together. It's monotonous. I can see why so many people are doing weird things to their hair this week. The mind craves impressions like the body craves food.
In the first few weeks of this, there was this shared vibe, "shit is off the rails, we all have to help each other through this." I feel like that phase is ending. This is all starting to feel normal. Not in a good way.
In my everyday life, I sometimes feel trapped in a rut.. the grind starts to drain me. I recharge my batteries through creative outlets and social contact. None of that is available right now, at least, not in the same way. Batteries are low.
Today I promise to do self-care.
-I've ordered some random stuff from amazon so that I have something to look forward to.
-I'm gonna try to go for a walk in a new place, just see some different stuff.
-I'm gonna reach out to some people that may need a call.
-I'm gonna do a big cooking project, probably chili with dried peppers
then I'll be fine
Stolen:
Day 1 – I Can Do This!! Got enough food and wine to last a month!
Day 2 – Opening my 8th bottle of Wine. I fear wine supplies might not last!
Day 3 – Strawberries: Some have 210 seeds, some have 235 seeds. Who Knew??
Day 4 – 8:00pm. Removed my Day Pajamas and put on my Night Pajamas.
Day 5 – Today, I tried to make Hand Sanitizer. It came out as Jello Shots!!
Day 6 – I get to take the Garbage out. I'm so excited, I can't decide what to wear.
Day 7 – Laughing way too much at my own jokes!!
Day 8 – Went to a new restaurant called "The Kitchen". You have to gather all the ingredients and make your own meal. I have No clue how this place is still in business.
Day 9 – I put liquor bottles in every room. Tonight, I'm getting all dressed up and going Bar hopping.
Day 10 – Struck up a conversation with a Spider today. Seems nice. He's a Web Designer.
Day 11 – Isolation is hard. I swear my fridge just said, "What the hell do you want now?"
Day 12 – I realized why dogs get so excited about something moving outside, going for walks or car rides. I think I just barked at a squirrel.
Day 13 – If you keep a glass of wine in each hand, you can't accidentally touch your face.
Day 14 – Anybody else feel like they've cooked dinner about 50 times this month?
I find people "dying" after 3 weeks of social isolation hilarious. I've worked from home since late August. I would rarely go out before all this, maybe once a week, shopping and gym aside. Adjusting that to shopping once a week, replacing gym with outside walks in the park and not going to the pub with Cara? Easy.
You are all like little babies.
Quote from: Cain on April 11, 2020, 03:16:38 AM
I find people "dying" after 3 weeks of social isolation hilarious. I've worked from home since late August. I would rarely go out before all this, maybe once a week, shopping and gym aside. Adjusting that to shopping once a week, replacing gym with outside walks in the park and not going to the pub with Cara? Easy.
You are all like little babies.
Been thinking the same thing. Every time I've found myself with that much free time, I've always ended up happier and healthier. I eat better because I garden and eat vegetables. I walk, like, 40 miles a week. I lose 10+ lbs a month. In all aspects, I am better... faster... stronger. Then I get a job and go back to fast food cheeseburgers, frozen dinners, 3+ energy drinks a day, and constantly thinking about murdering my supervisor with a hammer. Everything I accomplished in 4 months is wiped out and then some within about a year.
All so I can save up enough money so that I can afford to get old, which will happen sooner now except it won't because I'll die first anyway.
Shit, this plague is the most excitement I've had in years, and I'm still working. If I were just a tad less "essential" I'd be having the time of my life.
:lulz:
Well, 18,500 dead in the USA so far, more than half of them in NYC. They've got the mass grave thing going on Hart Island again (wait long enough and anything will come back in style.)
Pima County is at 543 cases, 16 dead. Only thing is, we didn't have any available ventilators BEFORE the Boomer Doomer.
Just under a thousand died here today....though you wouldn't know it if you scanned the BBC headlines or the front pages of the Tory press. No, they're all focused on how Boris Johnson is slowly improving, and getting to catch up on his Netflix movie backlog. Fantastic reporting, really A+ stuff.
Quote from: Cain on April 11, 2020, 05:44:55 AM
Just under a thousand died here today....though you wouldn't know it if you scanned the BBC headlines or the front pages of the Tory press. No, they're all focused on how Boris Johnson is slowly improving, and getting to catch up on his Netflix movie backlog. Fantastic reporting, really A+ stuff.
I was so busy hurling shit at Trump's image on the TV, I missed some more hot 2020 action.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/04/massive-eruption-at-indonesian-volcano-krakatoa-report.html?fbclid=IwAR1FeZbnxaXq8Y8Eon7BbLvBSYgEWeDDTre7IBUd1abStQLIFFtOSzmUocg
There's also been a swine flu outbreak in Poland (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/african-swine-fever-outbreak-reported-in-western-poland).
Quote from: Cain on April 11, 2020, 05:56:29 AM
There's also been a swine flu outbreak in Poland (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/african-swine-fever-outbreak-reported-in-western-poland).
OH, GOOD.
Also, on the lighter side....
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/shkrelis-plea-from-prison-free-me-and-ill-cure-covid-19/?amp=1&fbclid=IwAR2ZMR6kKu60_MCRrGW3kFNVIPn1Ag8GjDhCYrufVlXWcxN_7e2ofdtUcJM
:lulz:
Quote from: Cain on April 11, 2020, 05:44:55 AM
Just under a thousand died here today....though you wouldn't know it if you scanned the BBC headlines or the front pages of the Tory press. No, they're all focused on how Boris Johnson is slowly improving, and getting to catch up on his Netflix movie backlog. Fantastic reporting, really A+ stuff.
I'm assuming this is to put off the 4 figure death toll headlines for another 4 days or so. The toll here is already beating Spain and Italy and once 1k+ a day drop its hard to pretend that this has been handled remotely competently.
What I'm waiting for now is how quickly they shove Johnson out for an "I'm OK folks". The longer it takes him to recover, the harder it is for the dwp to sanction people for being ill for a lesser duration.
Oh I'm sure the hacks will find a way to argue it's being handled competently. Mostly by just completely ignoring the death toll and concentrating on "criticising the government in a time of crisis." It's already started:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVUo38KX0AEyPqL?format=jpg&name=900x900)
I keep hearing how we're nearing the peak, then another region has CV go through it like shit through a goose.
Yeah, I can't say I trust this "near the peak" stuff when it is coming from governments who spent the last 12 weeks lying to us, on this very same issue.
4/11/2020
Last night I had a sort of nightmare vision while hovering on the cusp of sleep. I saw something like a leering demonic face cast in matte black metal, maybe Iron. A little serpent looking bugger dropped out of its mouth and the thing was pinkish-red and coiled up like, well like an RNA strand. it uncurled and I quickly realized it was suddenly a bit larger and now had two heads, each looking slightly different, but basically the same in color and structure. they were like snub-nosed serpents with almost human looking eyes and eye placement. Their mouths opened up on shiny gray teeth and it very quickly began to expand and grow more heads. I don't recall when it transitioned, but eventually it was more like a scourge style whip with Brass looking heads on more tips than I could count, dozens minimum. I saw a disembodied hand grasping the handle and an almost cartoonish image of earth. It began to strike and rend as the earth turned in place and I saw DARK red blood almost like mud in color begin to flow out of the welts and divots on its surface. This was not accompanied by sound, but I FELT screaming like I only ever heard in people beyond "level 10" medical pain, like wild animal agony. When I began to smell rot I snapped out of the stupor. I immediately questioned my new alt and He said that He saw what I saw, but did not produce the vision. He seemed, for Him, a bit rattled too. We smoked like three cigarettes and talked about things I'm not comfortable talking about here. I took some sleep aids, melatonin, and vitamins and slept dreamless for long enough to feel physically and mentally refreshed, but I am a bit haunted still. I rarely remember my dreams for long, but this has stuck pretty hard.
Otherwise things are stable and even fruitful as I experiment with the Zoom technology and get to talk to friends that occasionally drop in. I am learning as much as I can and have spent probably 14 hrs a day at my computer with breaks to stretch and get other chores and necessities taken care of. My dad is slowly realizing the scope of what's going on. He's finally talking in terms of long range preparations for disaster. I tried to tell him over a month ago.. :|
We live right between Milwaukee and Chicago. The default risk of failure on the infection roll here is a bit elevated as a result. I wear a mask whenever I go out, which is as rarely as possible.
Just in case anybody had any doubts about just how fucked we are...
http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2020/04/set-your-alarm-jupiter-venus-and-moon.html?fbclid=IwAR3z4ZnQEVatDSe_p_qUkNQ6QcR3I7gUDA4eeD6_wWh7hZIoyOVcSdCf0cA
Quote from: Bruno on April 12, 2020, 03:31:51 AM
Just in case anybody had any doubts about just how fucked we are...
http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2020/04/set-your-alarm-jupiter-venus-and-moon.html?fbclid=IwAR3z4ZnQEVatDSe_p_qUkNQ6QcR3I7gUDA4eeD6_wWh7hZIoyOVcSdCf0cA
Well, while all this is going on, at least Mercury isn't in retrograde. :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 12, 2020, 06:54:10 AM
Quote from: Bruno on April 12, 2020, 03:31:51 AM
Just in case anybody had any doubts about just how fucked we are...
http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2020/04/set-your-alarm-jupiter-venus-and-moon.html?fbclid=IwAR3z4ZnQEVatDSe_p_qUkNQ6QcR3I7gUDA4eeD6_wWh7hZIoyOVcSdCf0cA
Well, while all this is going on, at least Mercury isn't in retrograde. :lulz:
It will be...
It. Will. Be.
/
__________
| |
| (insert |
| picture |
| of dying |
| yoda |
| here) |
| |
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
My life has changed very little. I live way up in the mountains, my job fell apart slightly before the plague hit so I have been doing the homemaker thing and working a few little side hustles that I can do long distance. My wife is a nurse, but at a small hospital that has only see one case so far. Her work is more stressful than usual, with extra gear and so forth, but not actually any more dangerous. She's not having to work more hours, just a little grouchier about the hours she does work. We used to go down valley once every couple of months to see my family or go out on the town and we can't do that currently, but it wasn't exactly a common routine. Most of my concern isn't for the short term, our bills will get paid and the disease isn't likely to kill either of us, my parents are in good health and staying safe, hers are as well. What I am scared of is the long term, the quarantine has disemboweled the economy and that means that as it lifts things are going to be very different in the long term. I don't know exactly how society is going to change from this, there's a tiny optimistic part of me that sees resentment against landlords and support for retail workers and thinks "socialism!" but a much bigger part that suspects we are going to come out considerably worse off, with far less small businesses and more government control of our daily lives. Instead of asshole landlords we'll be paying rent to the bank.
We have been lucky to go this long without the agricultural sector being slammed, but...
https://apnews.com/0cd7680d2d221944ed05f86691bb3537
I've just been looking around, and this century is objectively worse than the 20th century, at least so far.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 13, 2020, 12:21:52 AM
I've just been looking around, and this century is objectively worse than the 20th century, at least so far.
I agree. Fuck it's like the 20th century never had an education, suffered fetal alcohol poisoning, and got REALLY into meth and started willfully fucking a pig, then televised it before a massive, global audience and got the highest ratings in history. sort of.
CALLED IT.
https://apnews.com/ba9578acf23bdb03fd51a2b81f640560
QuoteTrump, who has been chafing at criticism that he didn't do enough early on to fight the virus, reposted a tweet that referenced Fauci's comments and that said "Time to #FireFauci." Trump again pointed to his decision in late January to restrict travel from China, writing, "Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up."
4/14/2020
I'm putting this here because I will not soil the data thread with it, but it IS an exemplar of the misinformation problem. I was sent this by my brother when we got into a bit of an argument about Donnie. I told him that Donnie was lying and he leaped to his defense like he was a Secret Service agent who saw a gun. He cited the "Illuminati" shit that is rife within my family and I tried to explain to him that the factions now in play barely resemble the old shit anymore, and moreover that our aunt, among others, was mostly wrong about the power dynamic then and that NOW it's a completely different game. He was like "I KNOW and President Trump is a hero for bringing it all down." essentially. THAT SET ME OFF!!(.... just this moment he sent a second video) we had it out a bit and he basically dug his heels in and kept fucking that pig harder and harder. He told me to watch the first video below. I am in the process so as to understand the horse shit he's huffing and it's WORSE than I thought, much, much worse than I fucking thought. I had to take a break to get this out but intend to finish the video(s). I suggest that nobody else do so unless they need an emetic effect and desire insomnia. It would be FUNNY if not for the MILLIONS that hold it true with fanatical, dangerous, blind devotion. My brother is gone. A horrible THING is pretending to be him and trying to make ME like IT.
I have said before that the "Age of Reason" (merely a brief season really) is dead and that we live in the Neo-Mythic era wherein superstition and bullshit become exaggerated in power beyond all belief by technology and advanced Sophistry. Here's the proof of that below. I lost my brother to it a WHILE ago and barely noticed the changes. I'm so fucking tired.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=522236455129860 (still watching, though I've seen enough)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjybyJ59Lw&fbclid=IwAR1aqw5Jytczc88f-76YWPUOy6HDBXx3kX-QAJqR4vzj1Qvb-8NsrFPvz1M (dessert)
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 15, 2020, 12:24:55 AM
4/14/2020
I'm putting this here because I will not soil the data thread with it, but it IS an exemplar of the misinformation problem. I was sent this by my brother when we got into a bit of an argument about Donnie. I told him that Donnie was lying and he leaped to his defense like he was a Secret Service agent who saw a gun. He cited the "Illuminati" shit that is rife within my family and I tried to explain to him that the factions now in play barely resemble the old shit anymore, and moreover that our aunt, among others, was mostly wrong about the power dynamic then and that NOW it's a completely different game. He was like "I KNOW and President Trump is a hero for bringing it all down." essentially. THAT SET ME OFF!!(.... just this moment he sent a second video) we had it out a bit and he basically dug his heels in and kept fucking that pig harder and harder. He told me to watch the first video below. I am in the process so as to understand the horse shit he's huffing and it's WORSE than I thought, much, much worse than I fucking thought. I had to take a break to get this out but intend to finish the video(s). I suggest that nobody else do so unless they need an emetic effect and desire insomnia. It would be FUNNY if not for the MILLIONS that hold it true with fanatical, dangerous, blind devotion. My brother is gone. A horrible THING is pretending to be him and trying to make ME like IT.
I have said before that the "Age of Reason" (merely a brief season really) is dead and that we live in the Neo-Mythic era wherein superstition and bullshit become exaggerated in power beyond all belief by technology and advanced Sophistry. Here's the proof of that below. I lost my brother to it a WHILE ago and barely noticed the changes. I'm so fucking tired.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=522236455129860 (still watching, though I've seen enough)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjybyJ59Lw&fbclid=IwAR1aqw5Jytczc88f-76YWPUOy6HDBXx3kX-QAJqR4vzj1Qvb-8NsrFPvz1M (dessert)
Thanks, could you not spoil the plot of future Marvel Movies next time okay.
Also the "Age of Reason" relies on you to make it happen. It doesn't mean the rest of the insane fuckholes who run things are part of it.
Quote from: Hagtard Celine Dion Mustard on April 15, 2020, 01:01:12 AM
Also the "Age of Reason" relies on you to make it happen. It doesn't mean the rest of the insane fuckholes who run things are part of it.
Consensus is dead.
There is no data.
There is only FOOLS.
Quote from: Hagtard Celine Dion Mustard on April 15, 2020, 01:01:12 AM
Also the "Age of Reason" relies on you to make it happen. It doesn't mean the rest of the insane fuckholes who run things are part of it.
Let us know how that works out for you. :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 12, 2020, 08:22:26 PM
We have been lucky to go this long without the agricultural sector being slammed, but...
https://apnews.com/0cd7680d2d221944ed05f86691bb3537
Trump is also talking about cutting farm worker pay, which is going to do a great job of attracting people to a field already reknowned for low pay and shitty working conditions.,..
Florida's governor has deemed pro wrestling an essential business amid the state's stay-at-home directive.
https://apnews.com/43708c73899f2558e0f02df943fc0468
(http://www.chinagreenelvis.com/art/comics/discordia/0207---Pointless.png)
If you see other people as an obstruction and not the goal, then you're doing it wrong.
Hail Eris.
If you have goals you're doing it wrong.
Fuck Eris.
If you obstruct people, you're doing it goal.
Have Eris.
I you are eris you are both the obstruction and the goal
Hail with a chance of showers
If it's hailing you should evacuate the plane.
Bail Eris.
Quote from: Hagtard Celine Dion Mustard on April 15, 2020, 06:53:40 AM
If you see other people as an obstruction and not the goal, then you're doing it wrong.
If other people don't want me to see them as an obstruction, they should just get out of my way.
Snail Eris.
If you REALLY want to get rich quick get into "Frack" mining.
Shale Eris.
You know what happens when you invoke the name of the Goddess of Strife?
Fail. Eris.
Quote from: LMNO on April 15, 2020, 02:57:08 PM
You know what happens when you invoke the name of the Goddess of Strife?
Fail. Eris.
>Eris.exe not found
>abort, retry, fail Eris?
4/15/2020
The nicotine fits are on me full swing. I'm doing ok, but the day has a kind of surreal feel to it. Got my state taxes back over a week ago, but federal has yet to come. Not sure about this stimulus shit either. Frankly I just need to get my shit together better in terms of online banking and financial transfer. Thinking about basically panhandling for money on the internet in exchange for "OC" memes and otherwise finding short term income through my computer. Chatting with altered in the zoom room last night showed me that my laptop bottom grade drek that just barely supports zoom at all. Might take her advice and trawl through craigslist and similar for a better one when my return and hopefully stimulus come in. Been doing FB live nature walks with Vermin Supreme here and there. I really like him on a fundamental level. Chatting with a buddy of mine yesterday morning we thought that if he DOES get on the debate stage he needs to drop the boot, oil his beard,(NO TRIMMING the beard gives him power like Samson) and wear a VERY nice high fashion suit just the once then immediately go back to the boot shtick.
I have decided to try to smile more. I'm... not good at it just yet.
https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/protesters-jam-downtown-lansing,14162
QuoteMany defied social distancing mandates in Whitmer's order, crowding closely together with rifles and signs supporting Donald Trump. Others stayed in their cars and trucks, some pulling construction gear, landscaping equipment and motorboats. Music blared from loud speakers.
Hundreds ignored guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by not wearing masks or face covers, shouting about how Whitmer needs to be removed from office.
:lulz:
Well...Bye.
:lol:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 16, 2020, 12:01:15 AM
https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/protesters-jam-downtown-lansing,14162
QuoteMany defied social distancing mandates in Whitmer's order, crowding closely together with rifles and signs supporting Donald Trump. Others stayed in their cars and trucks, some pulling construction gear, landscaping equipment and motorboats. Music blared from loud speakers.
Hundreds ignored guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by not wearing masks or face covers, shouting about how Whitmer needs to be removed from office.
:lulz:
Well...Bye.
It's a shame this thing has such a low mortality rate. Can you imagine Trump announcing that it's time to go back to work cos the the economy will just magically reappear in a poof of bigly jesus smoke or some shit and all the retarded motherfuckers who listen to him for anything other than lulz actually do it, only instead of a tickly cough it's ebola with a stupid high r0. It's like eugenics but it's okay to laugh cos god did it.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on April 16, 2020, 12:15:23 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 16, 2020, 12:01:15 AM
https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/protesters-jam-downtown-lansing,14162
QuoteMany defied social distancing mandates in Whitmer's order, crowding closely together with rifles and signs supporting Donald Trump. Others stayed in their cars and trucks, some pulling construction gear, landscaping equipment and motorboats. Music blared from loud speakers.
Hundreds ignored guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by not wearing masks or face covers, shouting about how Whitmer needs to be removed from office.
:lulz:
Well...Bye.
It's a shame this thing has such a low mortality rate. Can you imagine Trump announcing that it's time to go back to work cos the the economy will just magically reappear in a poof of bigly jesus smoke or some shit and all the retarded motherfuckers who listen to him for anything other than lulz actually do it, only instead of a tickly cough it's ebola with a stupid high r0. It's like eugenics but it's okay to laugh cos god did it.
I just want to see MAGA freaks do the 70 inhalations per minute Covid beat-box thing.
I don't give a damn if they make it or not, really.
Yeah, I guess I'm just pissed cos I was robbed of the ultimate summer punchline when Boris survived :cry:
ETA: the gag was "Covid-19: Protecting the NHS one dead tory at a time" and the fucking prick stole it from me :argh!:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on April 16, 2020, 12:25:24 AM
Yeah, I guess I'm just pissed cos I was robbed of the ultimate summer punchline when Boris survived :cry:
Well, we can't have everything.
ETA: Assuming he was ever actually sick.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/coronavirus-cases-skyrocket-in-south-dakota/?utm_source=facebook_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site+buttons&utm_campaign=site+buttons&fbclid=IwAR2CmI8ZaJoNlObFLfigIDNXUnsvOTjQDlgxF8w7qqwItdiGWQqScfLOTrU
I'm going to post that as a reply next time I that - all the best coronavirus responses are in countries run by women - meme floats past my feed :evil:
At work, they've started giving every employee a fresh surgical mask every day. That's something like 700-800 masks a week. During a shortage in which medical personnel do not have enough masks. I have no idea where they are coming from, or for how long they will be able to sustain that level of use.
I'm not throwing mine away. I'll sanitize them, and give them out to anyone who needs one.
I live in Brooklyn. The bodegas and the grocery stores are open, I hear the banks are too but I never visit a physical bank. My weed dealer is doing well. Waiting in line to go grocery shopping is strange, and the latest strains I picked up give me the munchies something fierce so I suppose I'll be supporting the economy more. It evens out, all the furniture is supporting me more. I have so many things I want to do but I am experiencing an extreme bout of executive dysfunction.
I bought a face mask at a Korean book store when this all started (fashion!) and it was probably the best investment I have made recently.
Spent more time reading about David Bowie than anyone has ever needed to.
I rewatched Contagion last night. All things considered, I think the public has adapted fairly well to social distancing.
Quote from: Cain on April 16, 2020, 12:58:31 PM
I rewatched Contagion last night. All things considered, I think the public has adapted fairly well to social distancing.
Is that the one where Jude Law is responsible for about a third of the fucking posts I see on Facebook right now?
I convinced my fiance to watch the SyFy channel's Dune (the one from the year 2000)
she's actually loving it...?????
Time to call off the marriage Cram. Sorry, but it's better you found out now.
I liked the mini-series, the acting is a bit ham, but it captures most of the plot points fairly well
Unfortunately it doesn't have my favourite mythos additions of david lynches such as milking cats daily for antivenon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFKjE6lg52M)
Diary entry. Month in review 13.03.2020-16.04.2020
One month into lockdown in Bulgaria. Was quite surreal when it hit initially, I was only flying back to sort out some documents with the idea that I'm going back to the UK to sort my life out. I'd been living off grid in squats and caravans and had made a point of not paying too much attention to the news over the last few months and fully thought the whole covid shit was just another meme about something that's gonna kill us all that everyone's getting hyped on.
Was recording some raps at a friend of a friend's studio, having some drinks. Finished a song and sat down to roll a spliff, the recording engineer turned on the TV and the Prime Minister announced we're in lockdown. Recording engineer is typical woke Bulgarian boomer - head's a mish mash of new age nonsense, Russian fake news propaganda and all the bullshit clickbait you can find. Everyone's high as fuck and he's ranting about how this is it and the New World Order have finally got their global domination plan in full swing and we'll all be microchipped and arrested. Got a taxi back home, because I didn't want to be walking around the newly announced police state with my weed on me. Next day is smoking and reading everything I can find about Covid, catching up on a few weeks of mass hysteria I'd missed out on. Start freaking out trying to figure out whether to get back on my flight to the UK, where I used to live in a caravan or stay in Bulgaria where I have a house to myself. Difficult decision, eventually donate my weed to a friend so that I can clear my head, start meditating regularly and realize that Bulgaria might be my best bet for having a chill time during the pandemic.
Following couple of weeks are surreal - for the first time in my life I fully support the Bulgarian government. I always thought we were the idiots and we had to learn from western leaders, but so far Boris Johnson's essentially told people "yeah sorry your loved ones are gonna die" and Trump is trying to convince his supporters that it's all a plot by the Dems to fuck up the election for him. Obviously this whole madness goes through thirty different iterations of "This was the truth all along" over the next few weeks. Meanwhile prime minister Boyko Borisov's mafioso swagger seems surprisingly fit for the handling of the crisis. "Look western leaders keep saying two-three weeks. They say that so that people don't panic. Realistically they don't have any clue and neither do I" he says on the question of how long the lockdown is going to last. When asked about what the long-term effects will be he says that Bulgarians will forget about the whole thing in three days as soon as its over much like we get over anything else. This gives me some weird kind of hope - our general backwardness and refusal to integrate new technologies might just mean that once everything is done we'll have less of a cyberpunk dystopia than in other places.
There's something endearing about being in an East European state that isn't as immersed in the simulacra as the UK is: people here know that disaster is a part of life so they don't need to automatically assume we're living in Mad Max. Everyone's fairly chill if annoyed that there is no financial support from the government. This might be our biggest issue going forward - if the government doesn't curb their stealing of EU funds and start supporting small businesses and everyone that's become unemployed in the last few weeks people are going to stop giving a fuck about the virus and start organizing to take down the government. Such attempts have already started, but the stupidity of the organizers has been too detrimental to it being anything but people getting hyped up on Facebook Live. As much as I dislike those currently in power I'm fairly certain that any attempts at taking them down will be co-opted by "Brotherly Russia" and we'll end up in some completely new nightmare scenario. So here I am, for the first time in my life firmly supporting the Bulgarian government and praying that they realize the threat they are under if they don't offer financial assistance to the people.
that was very interesting -- thank you for sharing what it's like out there
2020 Apr. 16
One of the things I miss, now that I'm working from home, is the ability to walk over to a co-worker's desk, ask them a question, and then hover ghoulishly until I get a response. Slack and email, being fundamentally asynchronous, don't support this. All I can do is send a message, and hope they get around to answering it, eventually.
On the plus side, asynchronous communications does make it easier to put off dealing with those of my co-workers who habitually ask stupid questions.
Yup.
16.04.2020
Personal diary entry:
I've realized that the greatest battle at least in my perspective is staying on top of everything, being there for other people, supporting my family and my friends as much as possible. Doing my best to not let the lockdown get to me psychologically so that I can support others who have been affected worse than me.
So far I've been lucky, managed to cash in some tax rebates and the conversion rate means I have a month or two of all living expenses covered. Spent the last two days sorting out reduced rent for my parents who are currently in Bradford of all places and instructing them on how to delay bill payments. For the first time my experience of being a reprobate and a liability is of value to those around me - while all the respectable people around me were paying bills on time and working I was learning how to get away with debt, delay bills and do those sad phone-calls to agencies that you owe money to, where you tell them that due to unforeseen personal issues you will only be able to pay them back the 500 quid that you owe them in monthly installments of 50 pounds.
Managed to cut out getting high, stopped getting drunk every day and I'm now practicing some relaxation exercises of Regardie's "One Year Manual" to stay relaxed and on top game. Bizarrely found out that none of these things were the culprit in me being useless on most days and found out that eating sugar early in the morning is the number one cause of me being an inflamed and depressed sack of shit. Getting productivity up has been a struggle still, but plan on disabling facebook in the next couple of days and switching to brick phone so that I can get that "aint got no internet" boredom that makes you get all the useful things done.
The potential of civil unrest and people trying to loot my house (squatting teaches you a lot about how unsecure most buildings are) has caused me to start practicing my sword fighting skills, using my great grandfather's sword from the Balkan War (gradually turning into the living embodiment of the I studied the sword meme, but I take it that I'll be quite happy to help those that were busy doing other shit loll) . This has lead to a lot of reminiscing about crisis and my ancestry's history of dealing with it. When communists came into power my Grandfather's family had their house taken from them. He was sent to a small village to live there with his mom. Within a month he'd taught himself how to be an electrician from some books he had and was making money, gradually helping my family to get brought back together and return to the city. From then on for the rest of his life he was the go to guy if you were trying to escape the country, get illegal books and records, want to know how to hack a radio to catch BBC or are on the run from the KGB.
In light of that my initial response to the crisis being mainly getting drunk and browsing the web seems downright pitiful. All of the "its a very traumatic event for everyone, take time for self-care" stuff I see my western friends post on facebook does not look like the right take, especially when said "self-care" seems to consist of binge watching netflix and I try to put as much pressure on myself as possible. Of course getting stressed out isnt the way forward either. I've found that using some of Regardie and Hyatt's techniques for Undoing to be the most efficient way to clear my head enough to allow me to do things in a focused manner so sticking to doing them daily is where the battle is for me.
Still feel slightly lost, but I am grateful that I took as much acid as I did when I was growing up - the uncertainty and the chaos feel somewhat homely the whole influx of chaotic novelty isn't all that novel of a feeling.
Welcome to PD cigarki spiritual. Wish it was under better circumstances. Thanks for sharing. The perspective is invaluable.
Credit where credit's due, this response is pretty much on-point.
Quote"Look western leaders keep saying two-three weeks. They say that so that people don't panic. Realistically they don't have any clue and neither do I"
It says 1) I'm not going to bullshit you, but also 2) when I know, you'll also know, and 3) don't listen to morons making populist plays abroad, they're just doing what populist everywhere do, telling people what they want to hear.
Quote from: Cain on April 16, 2020, 06:20:46 PM
Credit where credit's due, this response is pretty much on-point.
Quote"Look western leaders keep saying two-three weeks. They say that so that people don't panic. Realistically they don't have any clue and neither do I"
It says 1) I'm not going to bullshit you, but also 2) when I know, you'll also know, and 3) don't listen to morons making populist plays abroad, they're just doing what populist everywhere do, telling people what they want to hear.
I find myself wishing they'd just rip the bandaid off and tell people, "Look you might not be leaving the house til the middle of next year. Sack the fuck up!" but then I think to myself "Fuck it. as long as we collectively come out the end of this friendly warning with the ability to jump to battle stations without any hemming and hawing, we might just survive the big one if and when it comes. If all it takes are some comforting bedtime stories to ease the public into the reality of the situation then I'm actually okay with that."
WAYSA?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-carnival-cruise-coronavirus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
QuoteGuests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship's Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies.
Everyone should die.
Quote"Evvverrrybody went to the buffet," recalls 61-year-old Debbi Loftus, who was traveling with her parents. "I just thought, Oh, crap, the ukulele concert is going to be canceled."
I can't stop
Well if it's any consolation, they probably will.
QuoteAfter the Great Recession crippled the cruise business, Arison began to look like a less capable steward. In 2012, Carnival's Costa Concordia crashed into a rock formation and sank in the calm seas off Tuscany, killing 32 people, including a child, while the captain abandoned ship. The following year, a fire in the engine room of the Carnival Triumph, now better known as the "poop cruise," left hundreds of guests stranded in the Gulf of Mexico without air conditioning or working toilets for several days. During both the Tuscany crash and the poop cruise, Arison was spotted at Heat games.
How can we live without cruises? :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 18, 2020, 11:45:16 PM
WAYSA?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-carnival-cruise-coronavirus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
QuoteGuests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship's Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies.
Everyone should die.
Everybody does 8)
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 18, 2020, 11:45:16 PM
WAYSA?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-carnival-cruise-coronavirus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
QuoteGuests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship's Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies.
Everyone should die.
My general disdain for my fellow humans is gradually changing to a kind of indiscriminate hate.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-white-house-blockade-for-coronavirus-ppe.html?utm_source=fb&fbclid=IwAR1G8GYFvi6uYr6UOMEGglU_bOVPw6WPT1L4bHWZYEvegUvfCID8qVuhwts
:eek:
CALLED IT.
Not that it was difficult. :lulz:
https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-reports-highest-coronavirus-infection-increase-after-week-protests-reopen-state-1498835?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1LB9ljsjT05NyhuU4Q2P0ACBZg21ycSsfan0lN-zDkjOeeUM4cG7kXV8k#Echobox=1587343042
Wooooooooow. :lol:
https://theguardiansofdemocracy.com/gop-lawmaker-says-stay-at-home-orders-no-different-than-nazis-sending-jews-to-death-camps/?fbclid=IwAR37IZ4Ev-u2qcPTh7LhkdJFtnkssG8Rbj9FVDXRPXCOBmQxh8xJ6PT_E7k
Quote"And when you have government telling you that your business is essential or non-essential, yours is non-essential and someone else's is essential, we have a problem there," Scott said. "I mean, that's no different than Nazi Germany where you had government telling people either you were an essential worker or a non-essential worker, and non-essential workers got put on a train."
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 20, 2020, 02:26:42 AM
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-white-house-blockade-for-coronavirus-ppe.html?utm_source=fb&fbclid=IwAR1G8GYFvi6uYr6UOMEGglU_bOVPw6WPT1L4bHWZYEvegUvfCID8qVuhwts
:eek:
I got a fucking explanation. Motherfucking TREASON. :kingmeh:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 20, 2020, 02:59:03 AM
Wooooooooow. :lol:
https://theguardiansofdemocracy.com/gop-lawmaker-says-stay-at-home-orders-no-different-than-nazis-sending-jews-to-death-camps/?fbclid=IwAR37IZ4Ev-u2qcPTh7LhkdJFtnkssG8Rbj9FVDXRPXCOBmQxh8xJ6PT_E7k
Quote"And when you have government telling you that your business is essential or non-essential, yours is non-essential and someone else's is essential, we have a problem there," Scott said. "I mean, that's no different than Nazi Germany where you had government telling people either you were an essential worker or a non-essential worker, and non-essential workers got put on a train."
I'm unsurprised only because internet dumbasses have been making this claim for weeks.
trying to predict the future by imagining the worst possible scenario
Following public health guidelines is now politicised. In a just world, this would only hurt the people not respecting social distancing.
In my mind, the worst case scenario is that a lot of people die, and then the Trump camp claims that it's not a big deal at all and does a victory lap.
And look - America hasn't cared about deaths at this scale for a long time. 647,000 Americans die each year from heart disease. Covid has killed 40k americans so far. So even if you multiply the covid deaths by 10, it's still not on par with heart disease, and we stomach that every year. I think about how all those kids got shot to death at Sandy Hook and we didn't do anything about it. In fact, the biggest long-term response to Sandy Hook was calling the victim's families liars and showing up in person to troll them. So I don't have faith that reality will ever land for these people.
The other worst case scenario I can imagine is that there's another covid wave, and November's getting closer and closer, so Trump decides to crack down at a federal level, but in ways that fuck up urban areas. Like basically any action that would intensify supply chain shorts (such as the proposal to slash salaries for H-1B visas, which fucks migrant farm workers that came here legally). And then we're in a situation where we actually do need to be liberated from the quarantine, but we've built a huge case about how irresponsible that would be.
Quote from: Cramulus on April 20, 2020, 01:48:48 PM
trying to predict the future by imagining the worst possible scenario
Following public health guidelines is now politicised. In a just world, this would only hurt the people not respecting social distancing.
In my mind, the worst case scenario is that a lot of people die, and then the Trump camp claims that it's not a big deal at all and does a victory lap.
And look - America hasn't cared about deaths at this scale for a long time. 647,000 Americans die each year from heart disease. Covid has killed 40k americans so far. So even if you multiply the covid deaths by 10, it's still not on par with heart disease, and we stomach that every year. I think about how all those kids got shot to death at Sandy Hook and we didn't do anything about it. In fact, the biggest long-term response to Sandy Hook was calling the victim's families liars and showing up in person to troll them. So I don't have faith that reality will ever land for these people.
The other worst case scenario I can imagine is that there's another covid wave, and November's getting closer and closer, so Trump decides to crack down at a federal level, but in ways that fuck up urban areas. Like basically any action that would intensify supply chain shorts (such as the proposal to slash salaries for H-1B visas, which fucks migrant farm workers that came here legally). And then we're in a situation where we actually do need to be liberated from the quarantine, but we've built a huge case about how irresponsible that would be.
Multiplying the deaths by 10 isn't even looking like a realistic best-case right now. WHO estimates 2-3% global exposure. That would mean we're only just getting warmed up.
Quote from: Cramulus on April 20, 2020, 01:48:48 PM
And look - America hasn't cared about deaths at this scale for a long time. 647,000 Americans die each year from heart disease. Covid has killed 40k americans so far. So even if you multiply the covid deaths by 10, it's still not on par with heart disease, and we stomach that every year. I think about how all those kids got shot to death at Sandy Hook and we didn't do anything about it. In fact, the biggest long-term response to Sandy Hook was calling the victim's families liars and showing up in person to troll them. So I don't have faith that reality will ever land for these people.
This is what we doktors call a "category error".
QuoteThe other worst case scenario I can imagine is that there's another covid wave, and November's getting closer and closer, so Trump decides to crack down at a federal level, but in ways that fuck up urban areas. Like basically any action that would intensify supply chain shorts (such as the proposal to slash salaries for H-1B visas, which fucks migrant farm workers that came here legally). And then we're in a situation where we actually do need to be liberated from the quarantine, but we've built a huge case about how irresponsible that would be.
He's already doing that (he just closed the borders at the same exact time he's asking for people to rebel against quarantine). And you are correct, it's going to get worse.
Imagine learning that teachers are in fact worth paying.
https://apnews.com/a3e86445d1387ecd8d1df8f9f7743e1f
:lulz:
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
:| 4/21/2020
I'm on the verge of despair for the moment and at least I have this diary to get shit off my chest. Today while I was trying to nap I had the distinct displeasure of hearing one of my dad's loudmouth friends in the house despite all of our collective efforts to isolate for my dad's fucking sake mostly. They talked a bunch of ignorant political bullshit about how there wasn't really a big old virus problem and that the fucking DEMOCRATS were just tryin to disrupt the election by having all those mail-in votes re-written and counted in their favor. Between my brother getting his soul eaten by a giant, outlandish conspiracy theory lie-monster and listening to my dad violate our major sacrifices to maintain isolation just to talk stupid shit out of his ass with a agreeable fucking moron nodding along the whole way I'm just about to rage quit. I tried to sit with dad for a little bit to eat dinner at his request. He asked me what was wrong. When I told him he low-key fucking mocked me for thinking I knew things and then, when I called him on it, he gas-lit me. I'm so fucking done. I CANNOT continue to bear any more grief or consideration for any fucker in this house just to be directly shit on for my trouble. I have to continue to go about my various projects, but I'm living in a house of corpses as far as I care. If someone gets seriously ill it will be my final courtesy to give them silence rather than an "I told you so asshole" in all my bitterness and spite. I am dealing with a LOT of bitterness and spite in addition to extraordinary grief, trauma, paranoia, personality disorder, burgeoning rage, and I'm down to the last of my meds with just a bit of the mood stabilizer in reserve for an emergency and a couple months worth of antidepressant left from a stockpile given to me by HHS in LaCrosse before I moved.
I can't even keep writing for the moment. Just getting that out has my hands shaking just a bit and my stomach is now sour despite just having eaten.
I am breaking. A baby bird I tried very hard not to adopt is now in and out of the hospital. Her abusive partner has finally moved out, but I deeply question the long distance couple who she's latched on to as a replacement. She can't use her legs and lives with a useless roommate. It's fucking killing me.
City Council can't get their shit together to approve of rental assistance. I quit my position in the local Our Rev group because I can't deal with their "we can't let the crisis affect the process" bullshit right now.
I am no longer friends with someone I devoted a lot of time and resources to. She decided her comfort was more important than the safety of the community. I have no remorse.
The guy I ran against is making phone calls to seniors and doing delivery runs I send him on. No ego, no posturing. I am not going to forget /that/ either.
Every night is a struggle to convince myself to go to bed instead of wandering the streets. I am carrying too much for too many people.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on April 22, 2020, 01:49:12 AM
:| 4/21/2020
I'm on the verge of despair for the moment and at least I have this diary to get shit off my chest. Today while I was trying to nap I had the distinct displeasure of hearing one of my dad's loudmouth friends in the house despite all of our collective efforts to isolate for my dad's fucking sake mostly. They talked a bunch of ignorant political bullshit about how there wasn't really a big old virus problem and that the fucking DEMOCRATS were just tryin to disrupt the election by having all those mail-in votes re-written and counted in their favor. Between my brother getting his soul eaten by a giant, outlandish conspiracy theory lie-monster and listening to my dad violate our major sacrifices to maintain isolation just to talk stupid shit out of his ass with a agreeable fucking moron nodding along the whole way I'm just about to rage quit. I tried to sit with dad for a little bit to eat dinner at his request. He asked me what was wrong. When I told him he low-key fucking mocked me for thinking I knew things and then, when I called him on it, he gas-lit me. I'm so fucking done. I CANNOT continue to bear any more grief or consideration for any fucker in this house just to be directly shit on for my trouble. I have to continue to go about my various projects, but I'm living in a house of corpses as far as I care. If someone gets seriously ill it will be my final courtesy to give them silence rather than an "I told you so asshole" in all my bitterness and spite. I am dealing with a LOT of bitterness and spite in addition to extraordinary grief, trauma, paranoia, personality disorder, burgeoning rage, and I'm down to the last of my meds with just a bit of the mood stabilizer in reserve for an emergency and a couple months worth of antidepressant left from a stockpile given to me by HHS in LaCrosse before I moved.
I can't even keep writing for the moment. Just getting that out has my hands shaking just a bit and my stomach is now sour despite just having eaten.
That sounds frustrating as all fuck-out, man.
I know it's little consolation--but there are periods where everybody goes insane. You can't do much about it, they've chosen it. And that's contageous, too. All we can do is try to stay sane ourselves. Maybe it takes a
mental quarantine.
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on April 22, 2020, 05:30:34 AM
I am breaking. A baby bird I tried very hard not to adopt is now in and out of the hospital. Her abusive partner has finally moved out, but I deeply question the long distance couple who she's latched on to as a replacement. She can't use her legs and lives with a useless roommate. It's fucking killing me.
City Council can't get their shit together to approve of rental assistance. I quit my position in the local Our Rev group because I can't deal with their "we can't let the crisis affect the process" bullshit right now.
I am no longer friends with someone I devoted a lot of time and resources to. She decided her comfort was more important than the safety of the community. I have no remorse.
The guy I ran against is making phone calls to seniors and doing delivery runs I send him on. No ego, no posturing. I am not going to forget /that/ either.
Every night is a struggle to convince myself to go to bed instead of wandering the streets. I am carrying too much for too many people.
Your heart is so powerful.. And what you do is so important. Sincerely: Mr. Rogers would be very proud of you.
I know someone who is doing her best to pull someone out of an abusive situation, and it's not working... and it's breaking her too. The hard part (for her) is recognizing the limit, the point at which she can't give more than she's already given. Past that point, all effort is wasted.
4/22/20
I have 50 employees working from home, 18 employees working on site, and 32 employees home on full pay.
Today, two of the employees here tried to start a mutiny because other people are being paid for not working, so why should they work? The extra $5 hazard pay and the lack of risk notwithstanding (and which they still expect to get if they go home). The funniest bit is the two people bitching about having to work are also MAGA freaks who think the virus is a liberal plot.
It occurred to me 30 minutes into listening them bitch that I could just feed them to HR and bring in two other people that would like the extra pay. So I did.
Yes, I know there's a plague on. Yes, I know that Donald Trump is here to save us all. But if you are safer here than you are at home and you want to have it both ways AND the middle, then just call me Lieutenant-Colonel E. V. Martin, because I am simply not having that shit.
2020 Apr. 26
I learned something about supply chains today. The land surrounding Saskatoon is primarily agricultural, and you can find grazing cattle less than twenty minutes from the city limits. I assumed that our meat was largely sourced from the cattle pastures that dot the nearby prairies.
I was wrong.
The Cargill meat packing plant in High River, Alberta, has been closed to an outbreak. As of Friday, there were 558 cases among plant employees. I didn't think this would have any effect here; after all, the plant is over 600 km away. But today my usual grocery store had notices up that, due to the plant closure, there was a purchase limit on beef (4 pkgs per customer). They were entirely out of ground beef, and what little pot-roast was left was the most expensive cuts.
The store running low on flour and sugar is annoying, but it's just caused by people hoarding. If actual consumption doesn't increase, it's not a big deal; it's just a glitch in distribution as some long-term inventory moves from store shelves and warehouses to people's pantries. A disruption in production itself is more worrisome, particularly when it shows how fragile a system can become when you exploit economies of scale to the point of introducing single points of failure.
Some fuckers around here are getting aggressive towards people for wearing masks i.e. loudly mocking them and violating their space, reaching over them to "browse" things on the shelves, etc...
Also, I should mention that as of January 1 this year, Tennesseans can get their concealed carry permit online by watching a 90 minute video, and paying a hundred bucks. I don't think there is even a test.
Things around here are about to get Real Fun.
Quote from: Bruno on April 28, 2020, 07:18:19 AM
Some fuckers around here are getting aggressive towards people for wearing masks i.e. loudly mocking them and violating their space, reaching over them to "browse" things on the shelves, etc...
In the 1918 pandemic, crowds in San Francisco would attack people wearing masks. Humans are stupid.
4/28/2020
I find myself overwhelmed with depression for the last few days. So much so that I can barely get out of bed or bring myself to do anything productive on the computer, or even watch something entertaining. Part of it is sheer bad chemistry, sure, but the lion's share is despair about my home life and the ever expanding maw of stupid I daily watch people I once considered reasonable and intelligent throw themselves into. there are medical personnel taking their lives from watching so many people die and being able to do nothing. I'm not suicidal, but I am definitely crippled from seeing the sheer scale of fuckery going on and being able to do nothing. I have not opened the Zoom room for the last 2 days and probably won't today either, despite telling altered that I would. I can't handle connection to people right now. Even now I just want to crawl back into bed and let time wash over me, but I had to pee and thought I would check the web before I crash again. I know lying down is not good for me, and it exacerbates the depression, but I do not currently have the power in me to do much else. I'm going to try to keep busy for at least a little bit, but I'm just not able to focus meaningfully. Every time I try to look to the future it's like getting poked in the eye, and what I do manage to see is... bad. Looking to the past is not very helpful because I'm currently deprived of the ability to appreciate anything good, and have never been the nostalgic type. I have some real ability to focus only on the ever flickering present moment, and so I can still do things, but they are not very meaningful things. I feel heavy. Even now it's like my fingers need a disproportionate amount of my conscious control just to type. I'm just going to stop now. It feels like my brain is out of breath from this effort.
that sucks man - I know you're not looking for advice, but let me suggest that it may be time to unplug from the news. These days I find that I need to manage my news-intake, limit myself to only reading news when it's my intention to sit down and do that. And not click random links in the newsfeed. Otherwise I end up on this anxiety treadmill where I spend all day stressing out about shit.
And remember that things which are outside of your control are not worth your mental efforts. You have a sphere of things you can influence directly, a larger sphere of things you can influence indirectly, and outside of that is a much larger sphere of stuff you shouldn't let get to you.
I also don't know if you have the opportunity to get outside and move around your body, work up a good sweat, but that works magic on the psyche.
Quote from: Cramulus on April 28, 2020, 07:05:48 PM
that sucks man - I know you're not looking for advice, but let me suggest that it may be time to unplug from the news. These days I find that I need to manage my news-intake, limit myself to only reading news when it's my intention to sit down and do that. And not click random links in the newsfeed. Otherwise I end up on this anxiety treadmill where I spend all day stressing out about shit.
And remember that things which are outside of your control are not worth your mental efforts. You have a sphere of things you can influence directly, a larger sphere of things you can influence indirectly, and outside of that is a much larger sphere of stuff you shouldn't let get to you.
I also don't know if you have the opportunity to get outside and move around your body, work up a good sweat, but that works magic on the psyche.
The shit comes to me whether I want it to or not. The ostrich maneuver is straight up folly moreover and doesn't protect fuck all, least of all my mind.
I am in part disheartened to discover just HOW MUCH is both tragic and outside of my control, even as I see what influence I do have erode daily.
I do take exercise. If it were a cure I would be well long ago, but it's sometimes like a bad joke when depression gets bad enough. It's a bandaid over gangrene, not even helping. Imagine seeing the beauty of nature with your eyes and only feeling loss because not only can you not appreciate it, it ANNOYS you for reminding you that you're too fucked to process beauty correctly.
I don't mind the unsolicited advice. I know it comes from a place of compassion, but it's advice about staying dry given to someone who can't come out of a rainstorm and sees flood waters coming up fast..
And then this happened.
https://apnews.com/761aded9e0bfec12057bb22fe65ff145
QuoteCHICAGO (AP) — A judge in southern Illinois ruled Monday that Gov. J.B. Pritzker's stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the coronavirus exceeds his emergency authority and violates individual civil rights.
Clay County Circuit Judge Michael McHaney sided with Republican Rep. Darren Bailey, who sought a temporary restraining order against the Democratic governor's far-reaching executive decree. Pritzker has relied on an April 2 statewide disaster declaration as authority to close schools, shut down nonessential businesses and limit movement by individuals from their homes because of the potentially deadly COVID-19.
Pritzker accused Bailey, a Xenia resident, of being "blindly devoted to ideology and the pursuit of personal celebrity."
"It's insulting. It's dangerous and people's safety and health have now been put at risk," Pritzker said. "There may be people who contract coronavirus as a result of what Darren Bailey has done."
Oh, for fuck's sake.
https://apnews.com/96a451475c34ed11b3698e3dc4eff371
QuotePence comes under fire for going maskless at Mayo Clinic
4/29/2020
All things considered my day started better than I expected. Had som 8-bit jams with Cram on FB. Some of my memes are circulating nicely. Had an acceptable breakfast. Then I just HAD to contradict my brother when he posted the the attached pic to FB and told my uncle who questioned his evidence that it was on HIM to disprove it. I told him that's not how truth and logic work and it turned into a personal argument both on and off line wherein he grandstanded on his infallibility and blustered about how insulting I was for suggesting he was not "awake" but still in a deeply delusional dream like I had insulted the honor of everything evers.
I consented to send him some hard data on the topic of fatality rates in pm and before I could even fire up google and go through my browser history he was spamming me with more crap. when I literally quoted an article that he sent as "Evidence" that was the exact opposite of his assertion about the New York mortality rate being artificially inflated "to secure funding" and questioned his grasp of the facts. THAT DID IT. Straight to personal attacks and bullshit to cover for the VERY obvious imperfection of his whole edifice of bullshit. And now he's talking shit to Dad trying to discredit me and make me seem "dangerous". Fuck him.
We're straight up not talking anymore for now. I have unfollowed him. I won't unfriend him in case I need to contact him in an emergency, but I have put the final nail in that coffin. I'm not as sad as I thought I might be. I have at last discovered conclusively that there is no salvage to be had. My brother is gone and what remains of him is just some potentially dangerous shit to deal with, not a person, much less one I love. I'll just play to his ego from now on as necessary to make a tolerable puppet of him and NEVER turn my back to him. Worst part is he's just a small sample of the profoundly dangerous, delusional pathology of the mind going around faster than Rona ever could. See my brother is not STUPID. He's fairly bright intellectually. He represents what can happen to a decent processor carrying loads of bad signal to everyone around them. There is nothing I can legally do to stop him or anyone like him from spreading that signal. That has me disheartened gravely. That has me wondering if things like representative government and free flow of information and expression are GOOD things in a functional social sense.
It's just going to get more fucked from here. This is still the prelude, much less any sort of climax. I'm not going to, but I REALLY want a cigarette, and a ball jar full of rail gin and scotch. Masochism has the side effect of taking your mind off of the worse pain sometimes. I'm just tired of hurting all the time, and only have pain escalation to look forward to.
Governor Ducey1 just extended our lockdown for 2 weeks. So there's that.
1 There is no bad way to pronounce that.
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Congratulations. Welcome to the club. You never get to stop worrying again. :whack:
Congrats Faust
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Nice to have some good news for a change - welcome small Faustess
5 days is a real holy week - everyone knows godess doesn't work weekends
Hope they are both well, you didn't say, and tell them that nutjobs all over the world are sending healing thoughts . . .
birth is no laughing matter - it makes the stiches hurt
PS does that mean littl'un will share a birthday with the mewling Tory bastard in no 10?
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Congrats, Faust!!! Would love to see a pic!
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Blessings to your child and I hope for a full and swift recovery!
Congrats, Faust!
Thanks guys
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 30, 2020, 06:08:53 AM
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Congratulations. Welcome to the club. You never get to stop worrying again. :whack:
Sounds about right based on the first day
Quote from: MMIX on April 30, 2020, 11:14:48 AM
Nice to have some good news for a change - welcome small Faustess
5 days is a real holy week - everyone knows godess doesn't work weekends
Hope they are both well, you didn't say, and tell them that nutjobs all over the world are sending healing thoughts . . .
birth is no laughing matter - it makes the stiches hurt
PS does that mean littl'un will share a birthday with the mewling Tory bastard in no 10?
The baby was perfectly happy, but herself had very high blood pressure that was increasing so they didnt want to wait, went with the csection, but herself sounds a lot better now that she has had some rest and its slowly starting to come down, but they said it could take a couple of weeks. And yes she shares the same birthday with Boris Jr so I assume this gives my child +1 stat boosts to whatever the brexit stat is and bike riding and -1 to international trade and haircuts
Quote from: Cramulus on April 30, 2020, 01:11:10 PM
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Congrats, Faust!!! Would love to see a pic!
Here we go, there's our little spud trying to gnaw at anything nearby
Corona has made any hospital experience really weird, thankfully they are taking it really seriously and the maternity ward have strict rules and no cases so far:
Enter hospital through pare of quarantine tents: "Showing symptoms + no symptoms" I assume the showing symptoms tent just leads to a trapdoor
Partner allowed there for delivery then its hit the road, no visitation
All the women in recovery have to wear masks, only one nurse at a time in the room to do checks and things (unless there is active need) others stay out at station unless called.
AWWWWWWWW!
Cuuute.
As per my papal authority, I hereby declare her the Patron Saint (interim) of Gnawing at Anything Nearby.
Here Faust.
Quote from: Cramulus on April 30, 2020, 04:09:22 PM
AWWWWWWWW!
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
what Cram said
lovely picture Faust, she's gorgeous
:thumb:
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 02:31:00 AM
Baby girl was born at around 8:45 april 29th.
We needed a c-section so the recovery will take longer (I wont get to see them again for the next five days).
Welcome to this run down condemned amusement park of a world baby, Im so sorry.
Congratulations!
Any birthsign problems can usually be offset by the right class choice. Upper is usually a good bet for most things in the UK.
:-*
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 04:00:13 PM
Sounds about right based on the first day
If at any point, you would like a playbook/timeline of your upcoming worries, so as to prepare for them, just say the word. I kept a diary.
The Faustling is adorable!! Congrats to you both!
An actual cute baby! Congrats on not getting a hamgoblin!
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 30, 2020, 07:02:37 PM
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 04:00:13 PM
Sounds about right based on the first day
If at any point, you would like a playbook/timeline of your upcoming worries, so as to prepare for them, just say the word. I kept a diary.
I'll try without it at first (in case it adds worries that I would have been blissfully unaware of), but that is a really good idea to keep a Journal, and something nice / horrifying to let them read when they are old enough to have their kids
Quote from: Faust on May 01, 2020, 11:48:30 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 30, 2020, 07:02:37 PM
Quote from: Faust on April 30, 2020, 04:00:13 PM
Sounds about right based on the first day
If at any point, you would like a playbook/timeline of your upcoming worries, so as to prepare for them, just say the word. I kept a diary.
I'll try without it at first (in case it adds worries that I would have been blissfully unaware of), but that is a really good idea to keep a Journal, and something nice / horrifying to let them read when they are old enough to have their kids
It is.
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on April 30, 2020, 10:52:53 PM
An actual cute baby! Congrats on not getting a hamgoblin!
I FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED
Dang, Faust!
Nice baby! :thumb:
https://apnews.com/5a70d53a228265269c07a59764382273
Reminds me of a line from Kipling.
QuoteFor it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!
https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
QuoteGAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation's top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled "Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework," was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance "would never see the light of day," according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.
More, so much more, at link.
May 20th, up until now I havent known anyone who has caught the virus, my coworkers and social groups adjusted for the social distancing fairly easily (we now just play warhammer fantasy role play online).
Yesterday I found out the partner of my girlfriends sister (who spent Christmas here the last two years) mother caught it and passed away, she was in her fourties. She has been told by the german authorities she cant fly home for the funeral.
I dont know her well, but the situation.. I dont know how to get my head around just how much of a awful mindfuck that must be on top of the grief of losing a parent
Quote from: Faust on May 20, 2020, 10:54:17 PM
May 20th, up until now I havent known anyone who has caught the virus, my coworkers and social groups adjusted for the social distancing fairly easily (we now just play warhammer fantasy role play online).
Yesterday I found out the partner of my girlfriends sister (who spent Christmas here the last two years) mother caught it and passed away, she was in her fourties. She has been told by the german authorities she cant fly home for the funeral.
I dont know her well, but the situation.. I dont know how to get my head around just how much of a awful mindfuck that must be on top of the grief of losing a parent
Aw, fuck.
We have 5 confirmed cases at work now. I have been pouring bleach on anything that slows down.
Where is the zoom?
5/21/2020
I have been through such a strange undulation of my reality lately. it's like things are a rapid boil and all sorts of horrible shit is being brought to the surface. Even as the math picture on the virus gets exponentially worse than the early numbers indicate a ridiculous social movement is springing up calling for "Freedom" instead of the systemic changes that might actually work to buy us time. I have witnessed this first hand through my fool ass brother, but that no longer matters, and I need to wean myself of the habit of calling the wretch "brother" he is not, and probably never was, any such thing. For a couple months it turns out he has been shitting down my back to "dad" and trying to get me out of favor and out of the house. I strongly suspect this is because he's a narcissistic, delusional psycho much like mom and I committed the high crime of contradicting him and calling him out on being deluded, citing actual facts contrary to his psychosis. Dad let him do it, and I also had the displeasure of hearing my goof father airing, falsely,my dirty laundry to some shitneck while on the phone, for no reason other than gossip it seems. i wasn't trying to spy, but i happened to be in earshot and heard my name.
Yesterday my bro tried to coerce me outright and meaningful shit got said. I have made some arrangements with trusties back in LaX for crash space and intend to either get re-settled into the medical system through my connections in LaX or to jump for parts as yet unknown from there. I NEED to get away from my toxic ass fam. I WANT to leave Wisconsin for ever and find a new home state because FUCK WISCONSIN for deciding that drinking and alcohol money were more important than slowing this pandemic. Not sure about the latter, but the former is a done deal in two weeks. In making the decision i feel as if a huge weight literally came off my chest. I'm done with them and their bullshit, and so only have my own to deal with.
Come to California. We're only half way sane but it's better.
Quote from: Faust on May 20, 2020, 10:54:17 PM
May 20th, up until now I havent known anyone who has caught the virus, my coworkers and social groups adjusted for the social distancing fairly easily (we now just play warhammer fantasy role play online).
Yesterday I found out the partner of my girlfriends sister (who spent Christmas here the last two years) mother caught it and passed away, she was in her fourties. She has been told by the german authorities she cant fly home for the funeral.
I dont know her well, but the situation.. I dont know how to get my head around just how much of a awful mindfuck that must be on top of the grief of losing a parent
I'm sorry to hear that. I had a similar situation last month with my grandmother. Her death wasn't COVID-19 related at least, and that your acquitance's was has to add an extra layer of surreal horror.
Quote from: Juana on May 22, 2020, 12:39:08 AM
Come to California. We're only half way sane but it's better.
Quote from: Faust on May 20, 2020, 10:54:17 PM
May 20th, up until now I havent known anyone who has caught the virus, my coworkers and social groups adjusted for the social distancing fairly easily (we now just play warhammer fantasy role play online).
Yesterday I found out the partner of my girlfriends sister (who spent Christmas here the last two years) mother caught it and passed away, she was in her fourties. She has been told by the german authorities she cant fly home for the funeral.
I dont know her well, but the situation.. I dont know how to get my head around just how much of a awful mindfuck that must be on top of the grief of losing a parent
I'm sorry to hear that. I had a similar situation last month with my grandmother. Her death wasn't COVID-19 related at least, and that your acquitance's was has to add an extra layer of surreal horror.
If I have a place to land, and i will hit the ground running, California is a definite possibility. I wanted to get out there in 2015, but things fell through. Definitely a possibility.
Only now it turns out that the CDC has in fact fucked the dog, and all their testing/contagion numbers are bullshit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/us/politics/coronavirus-tests-cdc.html
So now we don't know what the rate of infection is, just the deaths/population numbers.
Well, let's hope they can disentangle that sooner rather than later. It looks fixable, at least.
There's a paywall, but I think I got the gist. I just want real numbers to look to, but I guess even that is too much for the current systems to do. I am just about to give up trying to track this shit at all. :x
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on May 24, 2020, 07:54:44 PM
There's a paywall, but I think I got the gist. I just want real numbers to look to, but I guess even that is too much for the current systems to do. I am just about to give up trying to track this shit at all. :x
I'm a subscriber. You want the article?
Quote from: Juana on May 24, 2020, 08:04:47 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on May 24, 2020, 07:54:44 PM
There's a paywall, but I think I got the gist. I just want real numbers to look to, but I guess even that is too much for the current systems to do. I am just about to give up trying to track this shit at all. :x
I'm a subscriber. You want the article?
Yes please.
QuoteC.D.C. Test Counting Error Leaves Epidemiologists 'Really Baffled'
The Centers for Disease Control has been lumping together tests for active coronavirus with tests for recovered patients, boosting testing totals but muddying the pandemic's course.
WASHINGTON — As it tracks the coronavirus's spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing.
Now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One of the agency's data tracker websites has been lumping them together.
Stunned epidemiologists say data from antibody tests and active virus tests should never be mixed because diagnostic testing seeks to quantify the amount of active disease in the population. Serological testing can also be unreliable. And patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice in the totals.
"It just doesn't make any sense; all of us are really baffled," said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida.
Epidemiologists, state health officials and a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. said there was no ill intent; they attributed the flawed reporting system to confusion and fatigue in overworked state and local health departments that typically track infections — not tests — during outbreaks. The C.D.C. relies on states to report their data.
If the agency intended to bolster the testing numbers for political purposes, the advantage to Mr. Trump would be minimal. The Atlantic reported that on Monday, one of the C.D.C.'s trackers reported that 10.2 million viral tests had been conducted nationwide since the pandemic began. On Wednesday, after the C.D.C. stopped differentiating virus tests, the number went to 10.8 million.
A spokeswoman for the C.D.C., Kristen Nordlund, said viral testing was much more common than antibody testing in the pandemic's early days, and some states combined the virus tests together with the few antibody results they had.
"Now that serology testing is more widely available, C.D.C. is working to differentiate those tests from the viral tests and will report this information, differentiated by test type, publicly on our Covid Data Tracker website in the coming weeks," Ms. Nordlund said.
State health officials in Virginia, Texas, Georgia and Vermont also said they were beginning to disaggregate their testing data.
"This is not an intentional misuse of information — it's part of the fog of the infectious disease war," said Michael T. Osterholm, a University of Minnesota professor and former state epidemiologist who was sharply critical of the disease control centers early in the pandemic. "We've done surveillance for cases, and now we're all trying to do testing, and it presents unique challenges."
Whatever the reason, the numbers are fueling Mr. Trump's frequent — and inaccurate — boasts that the United States is doing more testing "than all other countries combined," a claim that the fact-checking website PolitiFact has declared "pants on fire wrong." Governors rely on testing in deciding how far to go in reopening their economies. With all 50 states moving to reopen, accurate tracking is essential.
"We're like the blind epidemiologists trying to understand the elephant," said Michael Levy, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Health officials, he said, need good reporting to "understand the relationship between the epidemic that we can't see, and the data that we can see."
Scott J. Becker, the executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said there was another reason states were tracking testing: Mr. Trump wants the numbers.
"We've never needed to capture test volume. That is what the White House wanted to know, how many tests were being done," Mr. Becker said, adding, "Ordinarily this all works through the public health system, but in this response, there's been a drive to have data numbers, at multiple levels."
Like Ms. Nordlund at the C.D.C., health officials around the country say diagnostic tests, which detect the presence of the virus, had initially far outpaced antibody tests, so agencies grouped them together. While both numbers are helpful in assessing the scale of the outbreak, only viral test numbers can indicate a state's ability to identify people who currently have the virus.
Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said mixing the two numbers would distort the picture of the coronavirus outbreak in various parts of the country. In most places outside of New York City, the center of the outbreak in the United States, the proportion of people who have been exposed to the virus, and who would produce a positive result on an antibody test, is likely to be lower than 10 percent.
"What that means is that those tests are more likely to come back negative, which means that you could end up with a misleading picture overall," he said. "You'll think there is less disease there than there actually is. That is not something that is going to be helpful, to say the least."
The mixing of the results was first reported by The Atlantic and local news outlets, like The Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Texas Observer, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer and WLRN, a radio station in Miami. Virginia first faced criticism for combining its test results this month, but has since stopped the practice, effective May 14, the state's health department said on Friday.
Clark Mercer, the chief of staff for Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, a Democrat, initially defended the strategy last week at a news conference, saying that it was important for the state to report totals that included antibody tests in order to be ranked properly compared with other states.
"If we are going to be compared to all 50 states," he said, "I want to make sure it is apples to apples."
But a few days later, Mr. Northam, who is a physician, said he had only recently learned that the data was being combined and had since directed the health department to disaggregate the results. Serology, or antibody, tests accounted for 9 percent of tests in Virginia, Mr. Northam said — a figure that Dr. Lilian Peake, the Virginia state epidemiologist, said would not have drastically changed the state's overall results.
"For the 20 years that I've been a public health leader, we've never focused on testing, and this is a new virus, so we are still learning about it," Dr. Peake said Friday. "The tests are being developed, and we are still learning how to interpret them."
Health officials in Texas also announced this week that they had made changes to exclude antibody tests from its tally of total tests, and Vermont previously removed tests for antibodies from the numbers on its website.
"If we include serology, we inflate the denominator," Erik W. Filkorn, a spokesman for Vermont's health operations center, said in a statement on Friday, adding that the effect had been minimal. Serology tests accounted for 4 percent of all tests in Vermont, he said, and including them may have increased the percent positive rate by "a fraction of one percentage point."
In Georgia, a state that is being closely watched after it became one of the first to reopen businesses last month, officials said they were working to improve transparency after reports that up to 15 percent of the state's tests were antibody tests. While Georgia's coronavirus caseload has remained more or less the same in recent weeks, the latest developments raised questions about the accuracy of the numbers.
"The integrity of our data is absolutely our No. 1 priority," Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, said at a news conference on Thursday.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health is still using a small number of positive antibody tests to inform the state's total case numbers, a spokesman, Nate Wardle, said on Friday. But he said those antibody tests were not skewing results — they represent less than 1 percent of total cases in the state, he said — and were not being used to decide whether regions should reopen.
Mr. Wardle said patients who had a positive antibody test as well as symptoms or a high-risk exposure had been included in the state's "probable" test count, based on guidance from the C.D.C., which allowed the state to track whether patients who had symptoms early on may have had the virus.
"We think the way we are reporting the data is correct," he said, adding that the probable cause cases were broken out and kept separately from confirmed cases. "We are not using our probable cases in any of our decision-making."
Westchester NY is beginning to reopen tomorrow :eek:
honestly, having trouble processing it
I've had my mental energy reserve set to the "we aren't even halfway through this" setting, and I've never adjusted it. I have been living life one day at a time and not thinking too hard about the future. Now restaurants and businesses are reopening? look, I'm not gonna be on the front lines, but I am very grateful that the end of the first wave may be in sight.
The shelter in place order is lifting on Tuesday here. I strongly doubt any of us in the US are at the end if the first wave.
Yeah. We're not even at the proper peak of the first wave, near as I can tell.
Over here in NY, we are past the first-wave hump. (see attached graph) We're probably further along than many parts of the country.
The metrics for reopening in NY are:
- Decline in Total Hospitalizations - hospitalization must have been continually declining for 2 weeks. (regions also pass this criteria if they maintain fewer than 15 hospitalizations)
- Decline in Deaths during a 2 week period. If there are spikes, the criteria is failed.
- New Hospitalizations - it's possible for a region that has seen a high level of infections – for example, New York City – to see a sustained decline in hospitalizations and deaths over a 14-day period, while still having an underlying infection rate that is too high to allow for a safe phased re-opening. Therefore, there needs to be fewer than two new hospitalizations per 100,000 residents (measured on a three-day rolling average)
Westchester NY (where I live, just outside of NYC) used to be the second-worst hit county in the USA... we had a spike on March 5th, but we've been declining continually since then. Gov Cuomo says we can start the phased reopening today.
This doesn't mean that we're in the clear, but it means that we're about as safe as we can be prior to a vaccine coming out.
In NY, the rate of infection amongst essential workers is lower than the infection rate for the general population [citation (https://www.amny.com/coronavirus/that-means-ppe-works-lower-covid-19-infection-rates-in-essential-workers-gives-cuomo-optimism/)]), meaning that PPE works. This tells us that "low-risk" businesses
could reopen without creating a spike.
I'm glad the data backs you guys opening up! Is the mask order still in place?
Those of you on Facebook with me have already seen the post I shared but at least there's this for us bc we've been open two days now.
Fresno: "only God can tell me to stay inside!"
God: "here's four days of +100° a month early. Enjoy."
Quote from: Juana on May 27, 2020, 08:21:35 PM
I'm glad the data backs you guys opening up! Is the mask order still in place?
Yeah, we still need to mask before entering any business. Many businesses require curbside pickup. That was normal for restaurants, but now it's also the same for like, cell phone stores... you can call in, talk to the person etc, buy the product, but then you need to wait outside the store for them to come out and hand it to you. Not clear what exactly IS allowed to open right now, but am starting to see more traffic.
Political economy of shit-flinging is escalating on one of the domestic fronts in which I can mostly function only as a spectator. Bad actors in bad faith abusing a bunch of old ladies with intimidation, threats, law-suits, violent language and constant disruption of peace way into the morning. Shitty, shitty people right from the start. Had to step-in a few times; can't do that no more... exposing myself, retail... so, here I go, complaining and shit in some sort of twisted karmic groove because I thought Memorial Day would be nice to go out into the sun for a second. That, or it's the covid talking.
There were fifteen deaths since Friday and ten were today. It's been a little over two weeks since my town opened and all ten were here. SURPRISE!
We now have 16 confirmed cases at work and one death.
Thanks a lot, Governor Ducey, you spineless fucking flatworm.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2020, 01:11:23 AM
We now have 16 confirmed cases at work and one death.
Thanks a lot, Governor Ducey, you spineless fucking flatworm.
what the fuuuuuuuck
Jesus Christos, that's horrible
I sure hope you're taking that hydroxy
I'm just waiting for it to start rampaging through the ranks of people like that. I think that's all we can do at this point (unless I guess Minneapolis's and LA's strategy gets wide adoption).
Quote from: Cramulus on May 29, 2020, 01:18:23 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on May 29, 2020, 01:11:23 AM
We now have 16 confirmed cases at work and one death.
Thanks a lot, Governor Ducey, you spineless fucking flatworm.
what the fuuuuuuuck
Jesus Christos, that's horrible
I sure hope you're taking that hydroxy
Nope. My section is wearing full-face respirators and soaking everything in bleach.
Today and yesterday were my first days working outside the house (not in the office, outdoors) since mid-March
INSTANTLY scorched the back of my neck lobster-red because I haven't had any time in the sun to build up my usual tan :lulz:
New Jersey, despite being a land of absolute fuckers who will fuck up your shit, you fuck, as well as Italians, has had almost total mask compliance in every store I've been in for the past two months. People here actually give a shit, although they'll kill for saying so.
I've been maintaining my connection to outside world mainly by participating in a mutual aid project, because lol socializm.
Malden is at 76 deaths as of today. Nearby Chelsea is even harder hit.
june 1-2, 2020
the boi is entering their 'fight me' phase of adolescence. they're not allowed to go play with the neighbor kids, because none of them practice social distancing and none of them wear masks. he flounced out of my room, only to later come back and apologize for calling me stupid. i hadn't heard him in the first place. hearing is going p quick, i guess that'll help me keep my cool in the coming years.
we were well off in may - douchey is absolutely a douche in every way possible, but he secured the poor and recently jobless the extra funds to eat solid meals, plural, every day. i remain skeptical that it was a political move, because when you're hungry, you remember who will hand over a sandwich for nothing for a long, long time, and forgive far more than that sandwich was probably worth in the long run.
there's been Things happening, a new disaster set in the new normal, and my phone somehow became N E T W O R K L O C K E D at 2am. i don't know if it's the all nighter talking crazy, or if smth gross is afoot.
Yeah, I got that network lock too, reminded me I had to terminate my good 'ol copper wire contract. Because A) that's exactly when it's supposed to work and B) other 'ol timey telephony provisions clearly nothing. So good.
Then, from looking at the world through this keyhole, everything is now connected.
I post mittens :
fireworks go off outside my window
->these two things are causally related
Yes, I will sleep well tonight.
7-12-2020
The last entry in this diary was the better part of a month ago. Perhaps this is fitting. So much has changed both in the world and for me personally. The US pretty much went full potatoe, so to speak. We just opened right up and pretended nothing was wrong anymore. Our numbers are exactly like seeing the moment when a fat kid gives up trying to do a chin-up and just drops off. We're in the range of 60,000 new daily cases. We have managed to kill as many folks as WWI in less than a tenth of the time and are looking to quickly surpass WWII in less than a sixth.
Everyone is pretending nothing is happening though. In Wisconsin at least most folks are unaware of even basic facts or worse have adopted personally preferable lies largely pushed through far right media outlets. In public places like Walmart I estimate less than a fifth of folks wear masks. WHO is under petition from hundreds of scientists in dozens of countries to recognize the virus as airborne. WHO has acknowledged that it cannot be ruled out, but has been unresponsive about reclassifying the vector, downplaying the role of such transmission even as the R0 clearly indicates the likelyhood and the numbers rise exponentially. For the VAST majority none of these realities exist, much less are understood. And so it goes.
I have largely extricated myself from living with my family and hope to complete the process of moving back to LaCrosse by the end of the month. The saying that familiarity breeds contempt is true. Whatever illusions or justifications I may have had about the EXTREMELY bigoted nature of their politics and personal beliefs have disintegrated entirely. Rather than benefit materially from giving my tacit approval I have openly disowned them explicitly because of it and moved out. I now do what I can to get by, much of it quite unlawful. I have friends in the area that are like family and am getting by comfortably for now, but infection hangs like Damocles' sword over me every day. True isolation is no longer an option for me and so I live on the assumption that I could well be dead or worse in a couple weeks or a month either from covid or "The Life". It's a different reality entirely, but I must say that in my desperation I have found a challenge and oddly some of my depression seems to have lifted, even as my other mental conditions seem to be exacerbated. I am definitely going crazier in essence, but I feel happier or at least less like a burnt match.
A rabid rat am I
Sharp of tooth
red of eye
Mad and clawing
Until I die
Of the fire
Other rats
Or talons
From the sky
2020 Jul. 22
Although I appreciate that many retail locations have made hand sanitizer available near their entrances, this does not come without certain risks/consequences.
I have encountered at least one dispenser (of the pump variety) which is aligned such that, if one's hand is not positioned properly, it will deliver a jet of said sanitizer directly to one's crotch.
At which point one is reduced to traversing the pharmacy / post-office with a splotch on the front of one's pants.
At least it dries fairly quickly.
Jul 29, 2020
———
If you're racist, you might say I had it coming.
Fuck you.
The mission was simple: walk to Chinatown (two and a half blocks), pick up item from Walgreens, return.
We successfully completed this part of the mission, but my friend decided we were going to go a bit further from home to pick up baked goods from a nifty cafe.
And this was where the trouble started.
About three hallways wide, this was a narrow pathway bordered on either side by outdoor eating areas, packed to the gills, people unmasked, walking directly into each other freely and without worry.
We made it to the cafe, where masks were mandated but all the white girls decided that masks meant they could invade people's personal space. Well, decided. They changed their mind when I gave them the whites-of-the-eyes panicked horse glare.
On our way out was The Incident.
3 unmasked men, chatting with each other, coughing on occasion, grinning, no masks in sight. There are two narrow walkways in between the eating areas. They walked down the one WE WERE ALREADY ON, WALKING IN THEIR DIRECTION.
We escaped over some planters, flipped off the crowd while I used the benefit of my ridiculous respirator to make a sound like a deranged bull transmogrifying into a swarm of bees (as a deterrent to any assholes deciding we needed to be taught a lesson), and left this hellhole.
The people serving the outdoor customers were largely East or South Asian, were dressed in the functional equivalent of hazmat gear, and looked terrified.
The average customer was white or Hispanic, unmasked, wearing expensive polo shirts or dresses according to gender, ostentatious as fuck with showing how rich they were. Real "gold plated iPhone case" sort of crowd.
And what did I pick up at that cafe?
Matcha.
And it was just shitty green tea dust, not even real matcha. Bitter as the day is long. Could have gotten a near equivalent experience from unsweetened Lipton, for fuck's sake.
I spent five dollars and risked my life for matcha so bad that a thirty cent teabag compares favorably.
2020 Aug. 19
When the pandemic began, they shut everything down. Then, as the alarm subsided, they've gradually been opening things up again; restaurants, tourism, non-essential stores, etc.
But not only have the conditions which led to the initial shutdown not improved, but the numbers now appear to be worse. Either the initial alarm was an overreaction, or the current recovery is optimistic, even delusional.
I check my stocks, and they look pretty good. I don't understand why they look so good. I think Mr. Market may have misread the situation.
Somebody explain to me why now isn't a good time for a frenzied selling spree.
Because the Market became detached from reality years ago.
Sell when the 1% start getting impacted.
Hey, we're fucking idiots.
Look Dok, we've only been dealing with this for 17 months now. You can't just, like, expect people to learn overnight.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on April 11, 2020, 05:41:28 AM
Well, 18,500 dead in the USA so far, more than half of them in NYC. They've got the mass grave thing going on Hart Island again (wait long enough and anything will come back in style.)
Pima County is at 543 cases, 16 dead. Only thing is, we didn't have any available ventilators BEFORE the Boomer Doomer.
God. Does anyone even remember just 18,500 dead?
We're doing about that much per week right now.