Ume and I have formed a Smaller East Anglian Coprosperity Sphere and are co-self-isolating in the fens. My mother's care home has gone into complete lockdown.
I am well; my adoptive homeland likewise, for now.
The Selkie and I are both fine, as are our various relatives, aged and otherwise. Going through a 12-week exercise programme to stay active and playing a load of boardgames.
Allow me to be the first to argue about the difference between semi-weekly and bi-weekly.
I'm fine, cooped up in my apartment which could use a vacuum, remotely working, and growing a beard.
That's why I need to vacuum.
Did you move house and head north or are you still put? I remember you were mulling that over a while back.
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Whoever it was who mentioned Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire, thanks.
|>
Entirely well here in London N6. Basically following semi-isolation or at least...non-normal routine since last Monday.
Discovered that the mantelpiece is pretty much the right height to use as a barre, so on Saturday did Lynn Charles' class from Badisches Staatstheater and on Sunday did my usual teacher's class, now via videoconference from her dining room. She decided to include some turns and even minimal jumps, and to my surprise I got away with it without crashing into anything.
LC's class is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oUNI1hijtE (will kick your arse, don't do this if you don't do it on the reg)
I have just been closing a bunch of browser tabs and a startling number were things I was planning to do or see or eat or whatever.
7: no, still down south, unfortunately - being close to the hills would be rather nice right now.
Woke up this morning and checked myself for symptoms -. breathing ok, no cough, no indication of fever. My wife also reports no symptoms.
I'm just exhausted, but I think that's because I'm working without stopping.
Take it easy. Go into the office. See the coworkers for a change.
I'm ok. Tim is classified as essential and has to go to work. I'm working remotely. I've had a mild itchy throat and dry cough for a few months, but I cough a lot when anxious. Sneezing some too, but I think that's allergies.
I'm fine, I finally have a phone again, Newt's with me making a really absurd amount of deep fried mozzarella sticks and being insulted that I can do more chin-ups than he can (admittedly, I'm lifting a lot less weight a much shorter distance). Sally's safe in Santa Cruz, my dad is socially-distancing well in Westchester, my mom is socially-distancing badly in Lower Manhattan, Dr. Oops' goats have had a total of seven kids and she was due to take the hogs to be slaughtered yesterday (there are also chickens). The cats suck, but they've always been terrible cats.
With Newt there, it's unlikely they'll eat you if anything happens.
Allow me to be the first to argue about the difference between semi-weekly and bi-weekly.
I intended to communicate twice weekly. I was thinking this would be a Tuesday-Friday feature?
I'm pretty sick with what I'm sure is just sinus stuff (wet barking cough, painful congestion, blowing my nose constantly, tired but with trouble sleeping) and it's annoying me and making parenting/teaching/working difficult, but the girls were lovely about playing together last night so I could rest. The dog park got closed yesterday because people were dumb about clumping, so I'm about to take the puppy for a longer walk than I'm interested in, but I have an old inhaler that's helping a lot and I finally got onto Medicaid, so I have insurance coverage if I need it.
My girlfriend has decided because of that shelter-in-place in Ohio where she lives, we should stop being with each other for at least a few weeks and maybe the duration. She would still come here if I got too sick of course, but otherwise we'll each manage our parts on our own. I'm worried about racist incidents when she needs to walk to the store or whatever, but she's probably okay living near the university.
Today seems maybe better for my symptoms, but now Nia and Mara are having some too. Everyone woke early today and there's a lot of grouchiness. It will probably just go on like that.
We are currently on Day 1 of blowing through our attempted schedule, meaning we were supposed to wake the kids up over an hour ago, and have fed them and sat them down to look at school work by 15 minutes ago, but they're all still asleep. It's hard to care very much about this.
15: Can't say I enjoyed it, mediocre repetitious writer, and shitty copy-editing in the edition I read. But enough to be worthwhile.
19.1: Good news is, you're a walrus.
I am on my second day of no fever after running one briefly, which is helpful, because it means according to the CDC website, even assuming this is Covid-19 I'd be good to treat myself as recovered on Thursday.
It's definitely much better to be someplace with another person and a dog, and I think my friend wants me here for the same reasons I want to be here (plus I can help with the dog), but I'd like to find another solution than camp out in someone else's studio apartment for god knows how long. My last romantic partner is thinking about coming to stay with me while this is going on (we reunited briefly in the early plague times) but if he decides not to my de jure roommate has offered her room rent free for the duration of extreme prohibitions on outside the house social activity and I want to look around for someone who would take it.
It's definitely much better to be someplace with another person and a dog,
This is my opinion and also the Selkie's; she is looking around for a dog to acquire.
This is not a good time to steal a dog. The person looking for it will likely not be very good at social distancing.
Day 10 of working from home, day 9 of also having my wife working from home with me in our semi-finished attic, and our son semi-homeschooling at a small desk in the hallway space between us. (Duolingo, Khan Academy, some Outschool classes, Just Dance for indoor movement, Zoom playdates with friends and occasionally the rest of his second-grade class). Almost getting work done sometimes.
Plenty of food, no actual need to go outside any time soon, wanting to patronize our suffering local restaurants but still feeling a little iffy about takeout. Baking a lot of bread.
Kind of sad about not really getting to work out, since I was just hitting some nice milestones in weightlifting. But even in addition to the wisdom of not going out to a gym, the gym closed and laid everybody off, including the trainer I'd been working with.
it's been a week since sore throat, congestion, cough and fever started. congestion and sore throat clearing up starting yesterday, but fever ongoing, which is unlike any regular cold i've ever had. managed to cough an astonishing amount of crap out of my lungs yesterday. hopefully i get through the next 5 or so days without it going south. generally feel v shitty. all of the ca courts of appeal issued emergency orders on friday of last week and yesterday kicking all deadline out 30 days thank you sweet jesus, thank you. trying to get some time off work but all my clients are going bananas.
alex - will pass along the dance link to the kid, who unfortunately started with the sore throat and congestion day before yesterday. :( better half hasn't complained of anything yet am hoping beyond hope he gets it asymptomatically and that doing so confers immunity please please please.
i am worried about megan's partner. last i read he had a super rough 24 hours, hope he is solidly on the mend and the rest of the family is in blooming health.
good cheer and wishes to all.
Me and my wife are fine (we're in a post code just one over from Alex, small world), although my throat started being sore enough last night that I think it might not be just be stress. I've been more or less in a half-hearted isolation for almost two months for various reasons. Looking at my google timeline I've only used the tube twice in the last month, so fully locking down hasn't been that hard. Now that everyone else is home all the time, our row of flats feels a lot more crowded.
A few days ago somebody's sexy knickers mysteriously appeared in our back yard. It was windy but there were no clotheslines out so we think a cat stole them from somewhere and dropped them. (This is not a good explanation, but we don't have a better one.) Might have been a way to break the ice at sexy parties with the neighbors, but we thought better of it and they were unceremoniously thrown away.
26. I've definitely been thinking about food safety. This (pretty well-sourced, I thought) overview suggests that foodborne transmission is either rare or zero. (Singapore looked carefully, but did not detect. There's one HK apartment building that may have had transmission of SARS, but apparently also had bad plumbing).
https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03/food-safety-and-coronavirus-a-comprehensive-guide.html
Nathan: why don't you see if you can schedule a zoom workout w your trainer? Our kids' dance teacher is even holding dance class.
Nathan: why don't you see if you can schedule a zoom workout w your trainer? Our kids' dance teacher is even holding dance class.
somebody's sexy knickers
You've gone native.
Speaking of check-ins, what happened/is happening to the blog and sidebar?
We're fine, loved ones fine, I'm just worried about NY. Did you ballet people see this pas de deux?
In the old country, 550 cases across all provinces, three week lockdown, army called out.
Yeah, the Serious Eats article about food safety helped, I'd seen that. I still find myself getting a little paralyzed at the logistics of dealing with the packaging, wondering what I have to decant or reheat, etc.
Trainer: I'd happily pay him for some sessions, but so little of what we were doing was body-weight kind of work, and I don't have any equipment here, certainly not (say) a squat rack or bench press or set of dumbbells.
31: the problem is whether Nathan has any iron to lift. Hilariously, there is literal panic buying of weights going on (and I am seriously looking at joining in - I don't have anywhere I could build a power rack but some kettlebells would be nice)
36: a pro friend of mine decided to stream his own class and had to deal with a cat, too. I'm a bit more worried about legend teacher R/enato P/aroni, source of implausible quotes, who is apparently in self-isolation and is in like three different high risk categories.
(Also, Ajay's advice to get a thermometer has been absolute gold. Tickling throat? Sense of impending doom? Take a temperature reading. Huh, 36.7 is it?)
Doing well here. My partner works in retail and he's paid through the next pay period. After that, who knows. Luckily, my own job is as secure as one can hope for in these crazy times.
He's spent the last few days cleaning and oiling the five (!) sewing machines we have. If only we were allowed to see people, we could have our own not-a-sweatshop going in my attic/3rd floor area. As it is, it will just be the two of us sewing masks tonight when I finish work.
Yeah, I think my muscle mass is exponentially decreasing. We have some ancient free weights in the basement somewhere, and a doorframe-mounted pull-up bar. I'm thinking of repurposing the empty church parking lot next door as a track for interval training. If the concrete is too hard, there's also dirt.
41.last yeah, it's been a real relief since I've gotten one.
I'm basically on week 5 of quarantine what with this new baby. State of emergency declared here Sunday so it'll be weeks still. I was coping well with both bits (no PPD either) but today hydrobaby has spit up all night and morning so concerned. But doctor's office closed. Also worried because 6 week check up now at hospital which seems not good? Although only 3 cases here so far and all from travellers. Also now worried about returning to work post-leave in Sept. I have so much time to worry.
Was hydrobaby announced before? Hydrograts!
Anybody have thoughts on how to clean off plastic milk bottles when I bring them in the apartment?
Just because babies don't die of covid doesn't mean you should have them lick things clean for you.
It's been almost 2 weeks since my known exposure. No symptoms in our house, so self-quarantine should end on Wednesday, but the mayor just issued a stay-at-home order, so our lives won't change much.
The good news is that M/tch can do his weekly shift at the farmstand, so we should be able to get some eggs. (Eggs, yeast, and flour are all in short-ish supply at grocery stores. I'm annoyed about the yeast because I'm sure that half of it will still be sitting in people's pantries long afer it's expired. If you're going to hoard, at least stick to non-perishables, people!)
I have been using the same stuff you use to clean computers, and it turns out, also piercings - I bought a sprayer of isopropyl alcohol a while back when you could still Amazon for it if you pretended it was for your piercings or whatever.
My local corner shop has started stocking commercial disinfectant kits now - a 750ml bottle of concentrated disinfectant and an empty sprayer. Water, 10ml of concentrate, good to go, now looking for something to spray.
Baby thread! through all this my sister is in Rome with the new baby, who is absolutely fine, unbearably cute, and is consuming milk at the rate of 1 litre/day.
54: If you don't have a plentiful supply of alcohol wipes or something like Alex suggests, just put it in the sink and wash it with soap and water.
we should be able to get some eggs
Then you can have ham and eggs. If you had some ham.
I'm sure hydrobaby is fine and is def eating a ton but there isn't anything to do to distract my worry.
It's been snowing every second day since early February so even socially distant walks are out.
I feel so sad for the expectant mothers in NYC told they can't have anyone with them for birth.
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Why did nearly a million king penguins vanish without a trace?|>
Voltroned into two hundred thousand emperor penguins.
28: A few days ago somebody's sexy knickers mysteriously appeared in our back yard
We've been amusing ourselves following the travels of a Wayward Exercise Ball in our backyard over the last week and a half. It showed up behind my garden during a very windy day. I left it because it is pretty visible so maybe someone would claim it. Since then over a series of somewhat windy days (from various directions) it has moved around to about half-a-dozen different locations traveling several hundred feet, in the process getting to a far edge from where it first showed up (but not leaving the yard to my knowledge). It is now over close to the garden and has been for a few fairly still days. For a couple of days it was joined by a Wayward Sheet of Plastic (probably from the construction next door) which made several moves of its own but which is gone now (I suspect someone from the construction crew retrieved it since it was not windy the day it disappeared. I should have taken daily photos.
No really, we're adjusting well to being home and are focusing on important self-improvement activities.
i am worried about megan's partner. last i read he had a super rough 24 hours, hope he is solidly on the mend
We are fine! After 36 flu-like hours, he woke up at 85% of normal and we've been back to health for 3 days. Can leave quarantine on Thursday.
No worries for us. We are cleared. The only remaining mystery in our COVID 19 experience is when we can get a serology test.
Who else is cooped up solo? I feel like that's a distinctly different experience than with a partner/family/ward/faceless old woman.
I'm holding up pretty well, guilty about how much I deemed important enough to order online for delivery (plus a preordered book that shipped on its own), smug over having delivered my dozen spare wildfire N95 masks to the homelessness agency I'm on the board of. Have been jogging, but want to get out on my bike.
In good health, working from home as I have for a year now, planting some stuff in the garden, haven't gone anywhere except state parks in several weeks. Surly teenager is surly, moreso since he discovered that driving license tests are cancelled for the duration, which may extend to his birthday.
Hobby to stay awake during the weekly firm-wide meetings on webex, about 15 tiny heads on my screen and the boss yammering about how we are still getting paid so we better still be working): Keep score of how often each colleague touches face. Bonus point for touching face while addressing the group. Big bonus if someone touches face while talking about the importance of not touching face.
My other new hobby is psychoanalyzing guests on the Rachel Maddow Show based on what's visible of their home offices during skype interviews. Principal conclusion to date: People who keep the books they bought for freshman English for 30 years are likely to pursue successful careers in epidemiology. Or maybe I don't have the causality quite right.
We're doing fine. (In the DC area, if anyone forgets: me, Cassandane, and our four-year-old Atossa.) The biggest problem is figuring out the limits of working and home while parenting. If we didn't have a kid, we could both work from home full-time - it's not normal for us and there are network issues, but it's what both our jobs have moved to. When Atossa is sick on a normal day, I've had no problems working from home up to half the day while she sleeps or watches a movie and parenting the rest of the time. But that's not tenable for the duration. The grocery stores look scary but we're well stocked for the next week.
I get annoyed and stressed and think about commenting and don't do so because it's very much first world problems compared to the people who are actually sick, have lost their jobs, have multiple risk factors, etc.
I'm doing ok, still some of the weird tightness in my chest that I think is probably anxiety because it still hasn't turned into anything else. Stores have been increasing stock but I still can't find rice around here. Maybe next week's venture out will turn up some.
Who else is cooped up solo? I feel like that's a distinctly different experience than with a partner/family/ward/faceless old woman.
I'm sure that it is. I'm grateful to be penned up with other humans (humans who don't need constant attention, that is). Minivet, I hope you're doing synchronous activities with friends and family -- watch parties, video calls, etc. I think I'd need those to stay sane.
Yes, a bunch of that. Dinner parties, etc.
I was also thinking of trying one of the tabletop simulators to play some socially distant board games. Board Game Arena seems like the least complicated.
Personally well here in Fresno, CA. We're under shelter in place and obeying well; I've been work from home for a few years, so there's not a lot of personal adjustment, though helping the former office workers adjust was fun to watch.
My wife is hard pressed; as "other retail" her store is closed until the end of the month at a minimum. She laid off all of her employees on Wednesday and has been somewhat depressed about it. Working with the landlord has been frustrating -- she asked what he'd considered for lease abatement (or similar) given the state's orders to be closed, so obviously not a normal month. Landlord was "I don't have any thoughts, what do you propose?" So the uncertainty is tough.
She's a part of a few retailer groups (she serves on the national board for her industry), and is one of the few arguing that businesses should abide by the letter and spirit of the closure laws and orders. As gamers, they're used to finding loopholes, and since their livelyhoods are on the line they've got strong incentives to classify their businesses as essential. One pathetic attempt was "Well, we sell snacks and sodas, which makes us a restaurant, so we can do curbside pickup & deliveries..."
I wound up filling my weekend with board games and roleplaying over the net (on board game arena and roll20); needed to move more. I did sneak in a decent walk, but must do more, though Sunday rain was a persuasive argument against.
Relevant to Unfogged:
"So we're doing The Trolley Problem but the most important thing is to save the trolley."
As a bonus, the lieutenant governor of my fair state wants to shove everybody's grandparents onto both tracks.
I don't have any symptoms but as someone whose default state is unproductive obsession with his social isolation this has been a bit triggering.
We're doing well here. Working from home has been an adjustment for me, and they're still working on getting my VPN working so I've been limited in what I can do so far. The state IT people have understandably been swamped lately, but it should be sorted out by the end of today or tomorrow.
Yesterday was Amadea's birthday, which was just incredibly difficult timing, but one of our friends not only baked her a cake from scratch (after she had made an unsuccessful attempt herself) but organized a surprise virtual birthday party over Zoom including lots of her friends and family. Then we watched the new Emma movie with the fancy projector and screen that she bought the other day to soothe herself after losing her job. So she ended up having a nice birthday after all.
I'm doing okay (in NW Washington), but am adjusting to the new "Stay At Home" order. I knew it was coming, but I'd been going into the office to work (low risk -- no contact with other people on my commute, private office, no contact with the public and, for the last week only 3 co-workers in the building). I am not well set up to work at home and we'll see how long it takes to adapt. Also just generally mentally and emotionally frazzled.
But, as far as problems go, I have been lucky so far.
"So we're doing The Trolley Problem but the most important thing is to save the trolley."
But at this moment in late March 2020, humanity and its various leaders and institutions are in fact looking at an honest-to-god trolley problem, and it is crucial that we have a global and democratic discussion about how to resolve it. This is too important to leave to the meritocratic leaders of civil institutions and businesses, too important to be left to the various elected officials and authoritarian bureaucracies, too important to be deferred to just one kind of expertise.
...
Just DM me when I'm allowed to push somebody in front of a train again.
Terrence McNally just died of coronavirus.
Porn hub daily visitation rate changes. (Graphic is a bit deceptive,; it is up by about 12%.)
Reporting from day 1 of lockdown! I've been working at home since last Wednesday, and that's been fine albeit having various tech issues that I think will finally be resolved with one last Amazon delivery today....
I actually really like working from home, even on my picnic table and plastic folding chair. My husband had his first day at home today too - there's concern over the family business (clothing shop) but it looks like everyone will be able to be paid and we qualify for various grants, so hoping that we can weather out the recession to come rather than thinking an extended shut down is an end.
Healthwise, all of my older loved ones are fine and obeying lock down/shelter in place, so can only hope they remain healthy.
I am pretty much made for isolation. All my friends are online anyway, so that's no different, same with my relatives. Main hobbies - cooking, reading, yoga - all can be done at home happily. Husband and I get along alone well together, and are quite used to being each other's main company. Cats are cute and snuggly. House is just big enough to not be underfoot all the time.
I'm a little bothered by how ... not bothered I am. I am concerned for people's health, saddened at the loss of life that's already happened and have what I feel is an appropriate level of concern over the state of the world, but weirdly my anxiety - which is generally amped to the max - is actually BETTER than usual. I don't get it, though apparently according to Twitter it's not uncommon.
()!
I am concerned for people's health, saddened at the loss of life that's already happened and have what I feel is an appropriate level of concern over the state of the world, but weirdly my anxiety - which is generally amped to the max - is actually BETTER than usual. I don't get it, though apparently according to Twitter it's not uncommon.
I'm feeling similarly, especially now that I'm actually working from home. The uncertainty and constant changes last week were very stressful but just being hunkered down is easier.
one of the biggest things I have been "working" on; not gaining weight (or actually losing it). Have adopted our usual travel regime of late breakfast/brunch and early dinner. Getting some exercise, walking, and having the erg (indoor rower) is a godsend. To actually lose weight I find I need to be fairly hungry for chunks of time. Hard with being at home and so many opportunities to rage eat.
But overall being retired has made this less disruptive than it would have been otherwise.
83: One person I know said that they felt better because for once their anxiety wasn't obviously overblown, so their meta-anxiety was reduced.
Teo!! Yes, I had been a little more on edge than normal before I started working from home as well, especially with getting on the train for London every day. (Not that I went all the way there, but you know, people.)
One person I know said that they felt better because for once their anxiety wasn't obviously overblown, so their meta-anxiety was reduced.
I'm wondering if it is this as well. It's hard to decipher the inner workings of my brain, it would seem. The Twitter thing I saw (obviously the place to self-diagnose!) said that people with anxiety born out of trauma (childhood or otherwise) tend to actually do better in such situations, and it fits well with my general observation that when things are truly horrific, I actually cope pretty well and can shut it down. It's when everything is mostly fine that my brain decides I really really really need to worry about that thing I said 10 years ago.
34: thank you, mossy, v kind - stay safe and well.
thanks to all for good wishes, thinking of all of you in imaginary-playground-world. thank you megan for the update.
was told by a public agency lawyer earlier today that he's seen some data indicating bay area's early action may be starting to pay off.
everyone go read the jurgen klopp sex fantasy thread i linked to in the light relief thread, impossible to convey how necessary this is. preferably give it a dramatic live reading to a co-quarantinee.
NMM to Terrence McNally, who died of coronavirus related complications.
We are fine. As per earlier posts, we both had colds a few weeks back, and now have niggling tight chest and mild cough/pleuritic discomfort. But, we didn't have temperatures.* So, who knows. Probably had colds. Maybe had mild case of the dreaded thing.
I think it's fair to say that the stress/confinement is a bit crazy-making, and xelA is not doing great with the enforced isolation.
One person I know via an online community -- not someone I personally had much interaction with, so this isn't a personal loss -- has died. Which brings it home a bit. Other people in the same community are hurting.
* or rather, my wife had one for about 20 minutes (literally). I, on the other hand, basically don't get temperatures. When I was in hospital 10 years ago with a raging post-operative infection and getting vancomycin literally pumped into me, I was running a mild fever. My normal resting temperature tends to be around 36 - 36.2.
I'm being lazy and not emailing one of the FPPs but I'd like to request a thread or two for media recommendations while we're all stuck. Two would mean one for dystopia and one for distraction, to be clear. But do whatever you like.
My ability to fill my lungs has decreased steadily all day. I'll call a doctor in the morning if that continues since it alone is a problem even though my temperature is quite low. I really do not fucking want to deal with being sick on top of all the rest of this, though really I'm whining when I've been in bed almost all day and threw food in the oven but that's it. Maybe I'll go see if the unemployment website can stay up long enough for me to file a claim, which it hasn't managed so far.
We're good. The Calabat is disheartened because the school closure is now through May 2. Pebbles has a cold, but she's three, so that's sort of the constant state of affairs. shiv and I are mostly well (I seem to have a seasonal allergy related intermittent light cough, which is terrifying the Calabat but otherwise non-bothersome), and trying to work from home while the kids are home. Utah has been a bit ahead of the curve, I think (although we probably have fewer beds/ventilators per capita than other areas), except for the bit where people swarmed the airports to welcome home returning missionaries in large crowds (signs, balloons, hugs from immediate and extended family and then parties at home because dumb.) There's a lot of rage over that though so maybe we've seen the end of that stupidity.
I'm bummed out. We tried to go swimming in the river just now, and the river is PACKED. Like, unsafe packed. We couldn't find a safe place and had to sadly walk back home. Now I'm worried that they'll have to shut down the parks in general to keep crowding down, and that would nix all my early morning walks and things I do safely in the park.
How are they handling open greenspace parks in shelter-in-place places? I saw that you're allowed to exercise outside safely. Is that how it's playing out? are hoards of people sunbathing on nice days, or has that not yet been tested???
People are walking around my neighborhood more often than usual, but not too the point of crowds. I don't know what the parks are like.
85: You want a workout, try self-quarantining with a 4-year-old. So far today I've carried her about four blocks, played tag around the house, caught her in midair as she jumped off my bed, thrown her over my head, and held her up for an extended period so she could try to hang from a lintel. I could only get her to sit down, not counting in front of the TV, by doing pushups with her on my back.
Everyone in the Bay Area also flocked outside on the weekend (article from Sunday), so now they'll have to close the parks. I am not sure what causes the mass common sense deficit, but it's frustrating. At least we can sneak around the neighboring churchyard without fear (I think of this as a moderate service to them, since it doesn't seem like church personnel are keeping much of an eye on it).
85: OK. just had a short episode of rage eating because my wife turned on the "briefing" and i had to hear that evil sycophantic motherfucker Mike Pence talking. And now the main motherfucker himslef.
She's trying to kill me before I get it and infect her. Right? Right?
The mendacity is just too much TO TAKE.
Ah at least it was short.
If you see a black spectral dog, maybe leave.
99: I did not mean that to be in all caps.
There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.
Feeling OK but biting my nails for the next few days. My 9th-grader had a sleepover at a friend's house on the 13th, where the mom is a nurse, and in my innocence I thought "Perfect, that's the safest place he could be." The day after she dropped him off -- and shook my hand! -- she started having cold symptoms. Now she's tested postitive. Neither my son nor I feel any less crappy than usual this time of year; I have a lot of sinus issues but the lungs don't tend to get involved. I'm 56. Two weeks from the dropoff/ handshake would be Saturday morning.
Also, it is bad to walk widdershins around a churchyard.
I'm still assigned to the school for now as we're giving out breakfast and lunches as a drive through operation as well as pre assembled food boxes from the food bank. Definitely better than patrol, who is currently seeing a 30 percent increase in domestics.
I guess 104 is expected, but sad.
Robbery, larceny, burglary, all significantly down. Lot's of closed businesses and it's hard to break into houses and steal their packages when everybody is home.
I was thinking it would be need conspicuous to wear a mask, so maybe some opportunities.
I think we have to keep the parks open. Even crowded parks are safer than people going over to their friends' houses. Outside you have sunlight killing the virus, and no doorknobs. Most spread in China was within living spaces.
I guess 104 is expected, but sad.
They really need to go full Bernie and give everyone 2k a month until the restrictions are lifted. Would really help take the stress levels down a notch and maybe help make a dent in those DV numbers.
Alternate plan, Trump uses DPA for the mass production and distribution of edibles to chill everyone out.
104: yeah, my CPS informant said that a) having liquor stores be "essential" is not great for DV levels and b) drug use within her caseload was going up and she expects more overdoses to happen in general, which will presumably need to be managed outside the hospitals if at all possible.
Still really worried about my friend's wife, the ICU nurse in Manhattan. I wish there were something I could do to help them. I think my attempts to sew masks with my existing sewing skills would not be beneficial to anyone.
I have too much work try try edibles this week.
94:. If we ever have a warm sunny day we'll find out. That probably won't happen for a week at least.
Our weather hasn't been good here either. But they had to shut some trails at Zions because Angels Landing and such were packed with idiots.
I work for a small grocery business with 6 stores, and our management did an excellent job with moving to curbside pickup and work from home. I do IT and produce procurement, so I've been too busy to think most of the time, which is a real blessing. Maine is starting to seriously lock down, and we're seeing enormous demand for fresh produce and staples.
I work for a small grocery business with 6 stores, and our management did an excellent job with moving to curbside pickup and work from home. I do IT and produce procurement, so I've been too busy to think most of the time, which is a real blessing. Maine is starting to seriously lock down, and we're seeing enormous demand for fresh produce and staples.
How are they handling open greenspace parks in shelter-in-place places? I saw that you're allowed to exercise outside safely. Is that how it's playing out? are hoards of people sunbathing on nice days, or has that not yet been tested???
So far our neighborhood park has been busy but fine (except for the handful of kids on the playground; that's going to be impossible to control). Plenty of room for people to give a wide berth on walks and let their dogs run around. People are out playing tennis and basketball; I don't know if they're mixing households.
This making me realize that we're going to be missing some of our essential signs of spring. Because we back onto the park, we usually hear endless refrains of "happy birthday" from the picnic tables on the weekends, the ping of aluminum bats in the evenings, and lots of kids generally screaming their heads off any old time.
(No, the picnic tables aren't the ones singing, smartass.)
Hi all, thought I'd check in after lurking for I don't know how many years. I'm holed up alone in my new town, Amherst, and should be writing or painting or doing something improving but instead am reading scifi and watching mystery series on Prime. There are a lot of quiet places to walk around here. It's a big change from Chelsea, MA. There was a great horned owl hooting out back this evening. You don't get that in Chelsea.
94: In New Jersey, just outside the epicenter du jour. Parks with playgrounds and basketball courts are closed. State parks witt hiking trails are open and last weekend not crowded. The beaches have been open so far, they're great for chilly walks at this time of year but too cold for anything else, and not at all crowded. They will probably close when it warms up.
Pot shops are considered essential here (as are liquor stores). They're doing a brisk business.
I would 100% rather have anyone prone to violence stoned out their gourds than drinking.
mcmc!
111 it's the stress levels and confinement I was thinking about.
Having alcohol available makes it harder for some but easier for others - cutting off anyone with a dependency on top of everything else will be messy.
I think everyone know I live in SW Michigan. I can't work from home much, so must be on site every day this week. AJ is essential, but his duties are more sporadic. His job just decided to prioritize manufacturing of current products over R&D work and allowed him to work from home unless there's an issue that needs his attention, so he's expecting to be largely at home. The caseload in MI is basically all Detroit, and the governor acted pretty quickly, so I'm hoping we miss the worst, but I do not like showing up at a site with hundreds of staff on site, most of whom are young, like first job out of college young. They aren't taking the orders remotely seriously, and luckily, my lab is tucked away, or I'd lose my temper pretty fast over such careless behavior. My worksite announced they'll donate PPE to the local hospital, which is pretty nice. I was starting to feel guilty over our stocks. It's still quite cold here, so trails are relatively deserted, but a walk Saturday made us both pretty anxious since we ran into a few small groups that didn't seem to be following the rules.
I'm worried for friends and family.
My brother once bought a used Volkswagen Beetle in SW Michigan.
On topic because I was worried about him driving that car on a public road.
Mr. Robot, the kitties, and I are reasonably healthy in DE. My anxiety hit me like a sledgehammer last night, but that's partly due to the fact that I'm trying to figure out how to convert 8 weeks worth of four college courses to online learning. It will be fine, but in the meantime I'm both stressed and experiencing survivor guilt that we're so much better situated to ride this out than so many people we know.
120. mcmc: Please recommend some good mystery series! We liked Broadchurch. (Only three seasons? How dare they!)
I'm irked that Shetland apparently isn't streaming in America.
I'm beginning to regret letting my hair grow to near mullet levels before quarantine.
Party in the back, poorly maintained business in the front.
VPN in the back, Zoom in the front.
Kind of sad about not really getting to work out
Some ideas.
Get a trap bar and some plates. On the trap bar, get one with the raised grips so you have a couple different heights. Takes up very little space in a corner, maybe the best single lift you can do for overall strength and speed.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=trap+bar&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
For the plates, Rogue is popular, I prefer these guys.
https://www.newyorkbarbells.com/rubberplates.html
These are also great, unfortunately sold out at the moment. He's got free tutorials, worth following on Instagram for other ideas.
https://patmcnamara.myshopify.com/products/gitchusum-resistance-bands
https://www.instagram.com/tmacsinc/?hl=en
And this guy, super creative with body weight workouts.
https://www.instagram.com/brotherfaris/?hl=en
Our gym was like, "Come take a bunch of equipment home and use it to follow along with videos!" So I have some kettlebells and dumbbells, but I could have grabbed whatever.
It's highly possible that your gym would rent out equipment to you - I know you're on shelter in place, but I bet if you stayed in the car and they brought it out to you...actually I have no idea. That would still be fine here.
132: It's suspense more than mystery, but Bloodline is really good.
My ability to fill my lungs has decreased steadily all day. I'll call a doctor in the morning
I say call a doctor now. No virtue in suffering!
140: I have an inhaler that helps and so do hot baths and there's a humidifier beside my bed that might make me better by morning. I have historically been kind of stupid about putting off my own medical care, but not when it comes to being able to breathe. I'll get emergency medical care if it's an emergency, but otherwise I have eight hours until the office opens and I can call and request whatever kind of appointments they give now.
132: Sorry, Dave, I really haven't found much good. I watched a couple of seasons of Vera, which was okay but got formulaic after a while, some Wallander, a truly awful Miss Marple. Started watching Blow the Man Down (a movie, not a series) and that seemed pretty good, but I got distracted and missed the end. I'm going to try Broadchurch next--Olivia Colman!
141: Makes sense! Exclamation!
Hi everyone. I am mostly happy to mostly not be around here for my own psychological benefit (and probably for many of you the feeling is mutual!) but wanted to check in to see that everyone is OK and surviving. Social isolation blows and IME being isolated with your family is mostly way better but sometimes worse. Anyhow, I want to preserve sanity snd don't want to get back into the mix here, but I am sending out good thoughts for everyone. And, if you are feeling in need of someone to talk to connect with, let me know -- most of you have my email or other place (which by the way just means Facebook) address and I am happy to talk and escape my kids. Also currently reading one of the LKs books, which is great! Hang in there and stay alive, assholes.
Halford! Thanks for checking in...
Doing ok here in the Bay Area under SIP. I'm working from home, my wife is retired, and our adult son is unemployed, so we're all homebodies for the most part. Timing sucks for our son - I had been hoping he would find a full time job before the next recession hit, and he had applied to be a census worker, which would have qualified him for some other government job possibilities afterwards. Not sure what's going to happen with the census now - are they really going to be sending workers door to door come April, and would we really want him doing that if they do?
We're still allowed to exercise solo outdoors, and the trails are open in the park next door, so I got a 2 mile hike in yesterday. Only encountered a couple other people, and we kept our distance from each other.
Good to hear from everyone else.
Halford! Thou shouldst be ruling in this hour.
Each park marked with a pyramid of skulls
To mark the failed quarantines and show your power.
Still on his throne of iron our tyrant mulls
The stern chastisements that his subjects crave --
they know they do, deep down --
to keep them from the dark and ravening grave
all while they chant together "fuck you, clown!"
"your power" should of curse be "thy power"
Hey, here's an interesting story about epidemiologists:
The famous "Imperial Study" came from a team at ICL led by Roy Anderson. Just out is another study, the "Oxford Study", https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model%20%2813%29.pdf?dl=0 which comes to radically different and much more optimistic conclusions; this is from a team at Oxford led by Sunetra Gupta.
Twenty years ago Roy Anderson resigned his post as Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford and went, with his disease modelling team, to Imperial. This followed his suspension on full pay in 1999 for publicly and falsely accusing a fellow academic of sleeping with her department head in order to get a research readership.
That fellow academic was, of course, Sunetra Gupta.
This is going to make a fantastic film in five years' time.
156 I'd watch the hell out of this
I knew something was up when Prince Charles didn't check in on this thread.
Let's hope that the family still abhors all that touchy-feely nonsense.
re: 155
Wow.
I have bad feelings about L*nacre anyway (my D.Phil supervisor was there, and was a dick).
160: AIUI the Linacre Professor of Zoology isn't related to Linacre College - they're just both named after the same chap. The Linacre professorship's actually attached to a fellowship at Merton.
Halford!
mcmc - how's Amherst? Were you (pre-COVID) working remotely or do you have a new gig?
157: how about a story about a pandemic told through the medium of recipe blogging? http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_11_15/
They closed all the river parks by 11 pm last night. I am deeply saddened, even though it was truly the right thing to do, and the only choice possible. I just wish there was some way I could still use my beloved big backyard.
I just wish there was some way I could still use my beloved big backyard.
Why can't you?
They have shut the cathedral, which makes me sad. I think that sacred spaces are really important, and absent a trout stream to walk along I'll use any church I can get. It's going to hit a lot of people hard.
If only the Tudors hadn't pawned off the censer.
Talk about entitled suburbanites.
Eleventh day of homebodiness, I started working from home a week earlier than most of my company. Doing technical writing for a software company that supports pharma research, so not only is it well suited to remote work, it's also not likely to crater in the aftermath. Plus Germany (and the EU more generally) seem to have gotten ahead in promising support, so there's not going to be such a huge wave of layoffs.
We are out at the edge of Berlin, are allowed to go grocery shopping and necessities, plus there are outdoor spaces for when that's needed.
how is it suburban to think of a public greenspace as your best way to access nature?
By privatizing said public greenspace, viz. annexing it to your backyard.
I did call the doctor and saw someone I really liked (whose normal office is far from mine, oh well) and got a bronchitis diagnosis of my very own. I'll pick up medicine when it's available and just keep resting.
180: oof. yes, I hope the meds ease your symptoms.
The girls have been really great at keeping themselves busy while I've been sick. I think it's working better than if I'd been able to help them with schoolwork and finding things to do.
I keep failing CAPTCHA tests lately. "I am not a robot" seems too absolute. I can only agree with something like "If I am a robot, I was programmed to not know I am a robot by somebody who was very good at their job."
Questioning the nature of your reality?
Isa Briones can play you in the movie version.
I wasn't programmed to know who that is.
Doesn't look like anyone to you?
This is huge, if it works out: millions of at-home serological tests to be made available within the next few days. (Distributed by Amazon!)
Hope it works out. This is where we are:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/
155: Juicy stuff!
This was a nice idea, Heebie.
I'm on day 12 post-exposure without symptoms, although I had a brief panic when I woke this morning feeling very tight-chested and wheezy. Apparently just another bout of a mysterious new allergy I seem to have acquired just in time to scare me and everyone around me during a pandemic. I wake up most mornings with some degree of cold-like symptoms that clear up once I'm up and around except for an occasional cough that erupts most commonly when I'm having to squeeze by someone in the store or on the pavement.
My local Coop (grocery) is closing early tonight for restocking, which is a good call because it's all but picked clean. They've put signs up everywhere declaring they'll only sell one of anything to anyone and telling shoppers to stand far apart when queueing for the register, an order the fragrant fellow immediately behind me somehow failed to notice, making things awkward.
Been going out for long walks to the bigger parks that are walkable from my house. They're busy but not as crowded as the Bay Area parks are supposed to have been, and there's noticeable improvement in distancing behaviours for the most part. It's really helpful to have urban parks that are big and wide-open enough that you're not constantly facing pedestrian games of chicken with other park-goers on the footpath.
Still getting fuck-all work done and the sense of timelessness for want of structure is constantly messing with me. Really hard to remember what day it is without checking most of the time.
Why the fuck did my phone change ö to õ?
The famous "Imperial Study" came from a team at ICL led by Roy Anderson. Just out is another study, the "Oxford Study", https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model%20%2813%29.pdf?dl=0 which comes to radically different and much more optimistic conclusions; this is from a team at Oxford led by Sunetra Gupta.
Even if Anderson is a horrible person and the Imperial Study is bad science, it might end up the most morally-positive bad science ever if it really forced Bojo et al to get serious about virus response and isolation. (Enough to make one reconsider Jesuitism.)
Had a nice virtual drink with friends by phone last night. We're going to try Zoom next time.
I have to go to the doctor's for a routine blood test tomorrow, which is a bit of a pain, as there are bound to be people hanging about in the waiting room, so I'll presumably have to change when we get back. Such are the excitements of life under lock down.
I have to go to the doctor's for a routine blood test tomorrow
They're still doing routine blood tests? A lot of standard functions are being cut. My mother has pernicious anemia, and needs a vitamin B12 injection every six weeks or she starts getting nasty symptoms (without the injections it eventually kills you, slowly and unpleasantly) but was told by her surgery receptionist that they've stopped giving them until the crisis is over because they don't have the nurses. She's managed to get the doctor to prescribe the drug and leave a syringe at the surgery for me to pick up for her, and a nurse who lives in her road will give her the injection. But she called the patient association for the disease for advice, and was told of people in other areas who are just being refused full stop.
I have an MRI booked next week. I've no idea if it's still on. I received the letter confirming the appointment after the initial beginning of coronavirus related restrictions, though. But ... my local healthcare trust is particularly badly hit by the virus. So I'll make sure I phone ahead.
Actually, _the_ most badly hit, I think.
Anybody want to talk me down from freaking out about how easily this all tips into fascism? Someone elsewhere was all, "Those sillly dystopian novelists! There's a global pandemic and instead of going Mad Max, people are sharing art and singing on balconies!" Sure, but we're still in the prequel, when the Hunger Games was just a cheeky name for a pie-eating contest.
What will happen when so many people become sick that food supply chains become unreliable? When do people start hoarding food and medicine at the point of a gun? Which civil liberties will people be willing to trade for perceived safety? And which civil liberties for other people would they trade? (Hello, internment camps.) AG Barr's proposal to suspend habeas corpus was shut down very quickly, but he fucking asked for it and we're only a few weeks into this and there was very little news coverage. Workers are walking off the job because of unsafe conditions. At what point is the army called out to force them back to work?
Etc. I'm spinning out.
My personal take on this, Sir Kraab, is that this disease isn't quite bad enough to cause that chain of events. I could see it if the disease were a touch worse: hit children, left a health consequence (polio, rubella, zika). But at this level of consequence (most people will be asymptomatic or have mild cases, some will have a bad two weeks, some few will have worse or die), I don't expect complete collapse. I think there are small chances of it going either way, for fascism or for mass good collective action. But the most likely outcome is muddling through. Which I find a bummer, since I'd rather bigger chances of positive upheaval.
Not to say that I want it to be worse. I'll just be bummed if we do all this for months and come away with some mild tweaks to unemployment insurance.
What will happen when so many people become sick that food supply chains become unreliable?
We're not going hungry. There is an enormous amount of flex in the food supply. We export massive amounts, like half of our wheat and rice production, 6 billions pounds of chicken a year, 3 billion pounds of beef, etc.
Kraab, the curve that our would-be overlords want to get to is the steep up and steep down --- lots of death but then it's done, and we can go back to spending money keeping the economy in motion.
I didn't read the bill, but the news reports made it look like what Barr was asking for is the ability to request stays from the chief judge in each district, rather than each judge presiding over a case. It was never going to pass the house. I can see the wisdom, though. (This is made easy because we have a first class chief judge in this district. Everyone who's ever said or thought a bad word about Max Baucus can break quarantine and come up here and fight me). The supreme courts in Montana and Idaho have each issued blanket orders on scheduling, and our chief here has directed the municipal and county judges to look at their jail rosters and release every single person they can, consistent with public safety, without bail. A great experiment in anti-authoritarianism.
206.last sounds like a great idea.
Agree with gswift that at least at current there isn't a seemingly plausible scenario that has lots of people going hungry. There are perhaps a few plausible scenarios that have food *choice* drastically reducing, which would be shock.
Good points, everyone. The particular thing that set me off today was seeing pictures of Purdue and Pittsburgh sanitation workers striking and suddenly picturing them being herded back to work by soldiers. In reality, lots of workers, both union and non-union, are using collective action to get raises, sick leave, and safer conditions which is fantastic to see.
It's just that so much fucking much has happened that we never thought we happen and we have these would-be authoritarians in power.
And now off to group therapy by Zoom!
The Pittsburgh issue was mostly just confusion. Which is good because Friday is trash pickup.
I was last at Costco a week ago and they were already limiting purchases of milk and eggs (along with cleaning supplies and medicine)
People without toilet paper need either a bidet or some laundry soap.
Anybody want to talk me down from freaking out about how easily this all tips into fascism? Someone elsewhere was all, "Those sillly dystopian novelists! There's a global pandemic and instead of going Mad Max, people are sharing art and singing on balconies!"
Maybe it's not exactly denial of dystopia. Maybe it's more like: See, fascism isn't all that bad. People are still singing! Which, of course, is one reason people ought to be freaking out about how easily all this tips into fascism.
Hmm. I guess the original assignment was "talking you down." I do agree with everyone that societal collapse on the scale that you discuss really isn't imminent. And the fascism bit, well, that's kind of old news at this stage. I think it's a real possibility that the deep problems that we will have are going to discredit the fascists.
We have a lot of rationing here: Ground beef, ground turkey, milk, all bread products, a bunch of cleaners and wipes, as well as toilet paper and paper towels, and I can't remember the rest.
We are truly in hell. I am not adjusting well psychologically.
199: I am not a doctor, but I do have pernicious anemia, and usually get a shot every month. Since I'm on sabbatical and didn't want to set up getting shots here, my doctor agreed that it was fine if I just took 1000mcg oral tablets daily for several months. There's research to back it up: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4993789/
(The key point is that pernicious anemia only stops 99% of oral B12 absorption, and the remaining 1% is enough if you're taking large supplements.)
Also the liver stores several years worth of B12, so if you have well-controlled pernicious anemia where you've been getting shots for a long time and you stop the shots, you won't actually have a problem for several years.
well-controlled pernicious anemia
Until there's a breakout from Arkham.
214: I assume by rationing you mean supermarket-imposed limits, right?
I find it easier to sing Happy Birthday twice in a row if I think of singing it to two different people. Tomorrow is the birthday of both Paul Erdös and Eazy-E.
211: Remember when shitting in the shower seemed like a bad idea?
imo the biggest risk to the food system is how much it relies on immigrant labor. if enforcement results in those workers suffering disproportionately (on top of higher risks they face bc of poverty and substandard/insecure housing, weak rural healthcare syx), then the rest of us better hope ag robotry is poised for massive leaps forward. or we could agitate for sensible humane immigration policies & universal healthcare but magic robots probably more realistic.
btw my afternoon of fever and chest pain going great, how's yours?
great to hear you and yous are well, halford. take care Thorn!
I think it's a real possibility that the deep problems that we will have are going to discredit the fascists.
Sweet jesus, I hope so.
So I know I mentioned our niece, who spent 2 weeks with us in February. She's taking a gap year, working in Canada, doing temporary gigs through HelpX etc. So she just escaped the gig that was supposed to go for a month -- some sort of island scuba/whale watching outfit north of Vancouver Island -- which was very much not as advertised. So she's sitting in a hostel in the far north of the island, trying to figure out where to go next. Home to Germany is the obvious answer, but not what she wants. Maybe one of the places she stayed near Calgary would take her back. The border is closed, so coming here isn't an issue.
So, you're 19, it's the best adventure ever, and there's a global pandemic.
Britney Spears outfits matched with editions of the Communist Manifesto: https://twitter.com/timoteachalemet/status/1242617385053536257
Britney Spears outfits matched with editions of the Communist Manifesto: https://twitter.com/timoteachalemet/status/1242617385053536257
That is impressive and one of the strangest things I've seen.
I love that there's someone out there who is familiar enough with both to make that connection and then put the rest of the photo-essay together.
I love that there's someone out there who is familiar enough with both to make that connection and then put the rest of the photo-essay together.
162: Hi BG! I like Amherst a lot--where I live seems more pleasingly rural than it actually is. I'm close to a lot of conservation land and the rail trail, which aren't heavily used, so I can go out for walks. I'm not really working much--I do book and cover design for a poetry press. You can imagine how remunerative that is. Thank god for social security...
Today I went to a CVS to pick up some things. They had a set of tables lined up in front of the cash registers. The cashiers, in nitrile gloves, each had a basket on a stick. You put your purchase in the basket (they were sort of like the collection baskets at church when I used to go there) they pulled it in, rang it up, and pushed it back across the table to you. Then they pushed the receipt over in a smaller basket. It was like something out of Journal of the Plague Year. Of course the cash registers were only three feet apart, but I guess nobody breathes sideways...
219: good clarification, yes. HEB-imposed. I meant to respond in kind to 210.
I don't know why, but this made me laugh.
So, you're 19, it's the best adventure ever, and there's a global pandemic.
There must be so many young people, on gap year adventures and study-abroad programmes and etc, who are now stranded behind closed borders, stuck in a COVID-19 limbo, with family and friends frantically worrying about them back home...
I hope your niece finds her way to a safe place. Can she just stay at that hostel for the next little while?
A few days. It's kind of a grieving process, I think, before she accepts what is actually happening. The various other German kids she'd met have all gone home. I think being on an island with no internet or cell service for the last week has led her to misapprehend the scope of what is happening. She was only able to leave the island because some fishermen's boat had sunk a day or two before she got there, and they came back to haul it out. And gave her a lift back to Port Hardy.
The HelpX thing is really a crap shoot.
We have a friend that is making it her retirement -- she can't afford to live here, so she goes from one HelpX gig to another. Europe in the fall, SE Asia this winter. Somehow even with the airfare it pencils out.
I was just perusing the listings, and there is way less sensitivity to covid than there should be: I hope Noel doesn't grasp at something. I guess it's inherent in the whole off the grid thing to think you're actually off the grid -- and while there are islands in Queen Charlotte Sound where you kind of are, it's also pretty leaky.
Moby should totally have helpxers build him that cob house.
Totally not the whale-watching I expected.
Also the liver stores several years worth of B12, so if you have well-controlled pernicious anemia where you've been getting shots for a long time and you stop the shots, you won't actually have a problem for several years.
That's reassuring to know, thanks. In the UK injections are generally once every eight weeks, but mother complains so much about tiredness, sore mouth, etc. after a month or so that for her they do them every six. She has various health conditions, some (I believe) more or less psychosomatic and some definitely not, which she has built her life around for literally as long as I can remember, so of course is making a big deal out of this.
re: 231
The post is great.
But ... it's relatively easy to write code to do this. I'm not sure whether the person just did a couple of good hand-stretched Google Image searches and eyeballed them, or used a bit of web scraping and palette matching.
It's certainly becoming a thing - I've seen "Chris Evans as different brands of hand sanitiser" as well. It's fun but it's no @GiantMilitaryCats, I have to say.
It's a genre, I've seen it as like Ivanka Trump as different handbags, and so on. I wonder if there is a script online for it or if they're all curated.
I've certainly written palette matching and perceptual hashing stuff before, so I could definitely do this.* And could make a service for it, if someone wanted to pay my consultancy rates.**
* mostly by wrapping existing libraries.
** obviously not really.
Historically speaking this doesn't look like a very conducive time to tip into fascism. Fascism, I would say, is an extreme form of Whiny Imperialism.
(clicks link)
Whiny Imperialism is one of three dominant strands of Western political thought. It is contrasted with Bossy Imperialism, in which one nation subjugates another out of a sincere conviction that they are doing the second nation a favour, and Cthulhu Imperialism, in which one nation subjugates another more or less by accident, for domestic (usually commercial) reasons, rather than out of any particular animus or concern for the second nation one way or the other. A Whiny Imperialist nation subjugates others because it feels that it has been hard done by in the past, and the world owes it a favour.
This renders it arguably the most dangerous of the three. A Bossy Imperialist can, eventually, be convinced that he is not in fact acting in the best interests of the inhabitants of the conquered nation. A Cthulhu Imperialist will depart once the conquest no longer makes domestic or commercial sense. But a Whiny Imperialist will be impervious to these forces, as he is doing it purely out of a feeling of bitterness and spite.
The British Empire, like most early modern empires, began as an outbreak of Cthulhu Imperialism, and mutated in the late 19th century to Bossy Imperialism. The French Empire, a late development, was more or less Bossy from its origins in the late 19th century. The Russian and Chinese Empires began as Cthulhu and Bossy empires respectively, but have mutated in the latter half of the 20th century to Whiny - the German Second and Third Reichs are examples of empires that were Whiny from the start.
But I think you have to have a period of perceived national humiliation and defeat to get a properly Whiny empire going, and the US is nowhere near that.
236 You may not have heard, but the US had to endure a Black man as president. For 8 long years.
(And damn near had a woman.)
I like the typology in 246, but I can't quite place the Spanish and Portuguese empires in it. In their early stages they seem to have been Cthulu and Bossy simultaneously, since they were mostly about extracting raw materials from the Americas and manufactures from Asia but ideologically justified this by imposing Christianity as part of the package. They largely delegated the Whining to the successor states.
I think the Chinese empires (plural) generally started Cthulhu and drifted Bossy over time (Qin-Han, Sui-Tang, Song, Qing). Possibly excepting the Ming, who might have started Bossy but definitely ended Whiny. Yuan obviously were pure Cthulhu.
I was just on a Zoom call that was attacked by ne'er-do-wells. A apparently Zoom Bombing is now a thing?
They called into the meeting - which was a public covid-19 response meeting hosted by the mayor and also being broadcast on the radio - and immediately shared their screen. What they were sharing was the feed from some other group chat hosted on one of those hippity-hoppity 4chanish "apps" the kids are using today. Anyway, once they had commandeered the shared Zoom screen they started dropping n-bombs and playing gross-out videos. The organizer had to kill the meeting.
Anyway, if you host a Zoom meeting, be careful with the "share screen" permissions, lest you fall prey to one of these bands of marauding digital bandits.
Off hand I'd say the Spanish empire (starting with the Catholic Kings) was mostly about the empire in Europe, not the world, and that empire was always about the Universal Monarchy - Bossy, not Cthulhu. The colonial policies were about revenue for the (Catholic) Crown or (incidentally) conversion of the heathens (to the Church). Very Bossy. From what little I know the Portuguese were much more Cthulhu throughout. (Sebastiaõ I Dumbfuck being the exception that proves the rule).
214: I tried to buy ground beef yesterday evening. I talked to the guy in the butcher shop, and he said that they were getting less than their full order, but that people also seemed to be stocking up, and ranchers only have a certain number of beef cattle ready for market each month. Chicken supplies looked ok. Thus far they have not rationed meat whereas they have rationed certain cleaning supplies. Even with rationing, can't get disinfectant wipes or rubbing alcohol.
Also the Bossy China analysis requires one to take at face value the pious professions of the Confucians who wrote the chronicles (but didn't very often run the show) which I for one am disinclined to do.
Bossy Imperialism, in which one nation subjugates another out of a sincere conviction that they are doing the second nation a favour
I think I would call this "Kipling Imperialism," and describe the "sincere conviction" as a rationalization, rather than a reason.
But I think you have to have a period of perceived national humiliation and defeat to get a properly Whiny empire going, and the US is nowhere near that.
When I was young, I used to wonder what it would take for it to happen in the US, and I came up with a formula roughly like this. The thing that separated the US from Weimar Germany was a severe shock to the system.
Turns out I was nowhere near sophisticated or cynical enough. Most obviously, from my bubble of a white-privileged childhood, it never occurred to me that apartheid America was struggling to emerge from a fascist system,* rather than hoping to stave one off.
But there were two other things I was oblivious to: I failed to grasp the broad definition that white people would come to have for "humiliation and defeat." Turns out, the Obama presidency, after decades of emerging civil rights, was a huge shock for a lot of people. Also: Our institutions were a lot weaker than I imagined. One example; I never had the reverence that some have for the "free press," but holy shit have we been failed by our media.
*Maybe this isn't "fascism" I'm talking about here. Maybe "herrenvolk democracy" is a better phrase. Still, once you acknowledge the nature of such a democracy, the potential slide to genuine fascism isn't so hard to anticipate.
Postbellum South has to be paradigmatic Whiny.
I wonder when the postbellum period will end.
256, 257: Yes. I'm not sure what Whiny Internal Imperialism should be called but we are stuck in the middle of it, and have a President who is pretending we have suffered such defeats and humiliations.
Oh, and I guess I should have read 255 which I think is astute.
Temporarily Humboldt County:
CONQUISTADOR: Welcome to New Spain! This is your new Father - Father Corona.
FATHER CORONA: Pax vneuti nicutm! down on your knees, now! D'ye recognize what I'm holidn' over your head, lads?
INDIAN: It's a Cross. The Symbol of the Quartering of the Universe into Active and Passive Principles.
FATHER CORONA: God have mercy on their heathen souls!
CONQUISTADOR: What the Father means is - what is the Cross made of? Gold! Have you got any?
242 et al: Nor Presidents as beautiful buildings. (One of the more intriguing random things this blog has exposed me to.)
Pedantically, I want to resist the conflation of Whininess with Fascism. Frequently comorbid, yes; the former a necessary condition for the latter, perhaps; identical, no.
I liked Chris Evans before he was famous.
I liked Chris Evans before he was Cap.
I liked Chris Evans when he was only moderately ripped.
I liked Chris Evans when he was fourth-billed in an ill-conceived Keanu vehicle.
I liked Chris Evans when he died a distressingly believable death in said vehicle.
And now Chris Evans is hand sanitizer.
The colonial policies were about revenue for the (Catholic) Crown or (incidentally) conversion of the heathens (to the Church). Very Bossy.
Pretty Cthulhu from the locals' point of view, though.
If your frame of reference is Aztecs Cthulhu and Bossy might be a distinction without a difference.
Anyway, your own typology is defined very much from above.
On reflection probably every Chinese empire ends as Whiny. The CCP is distinguished in starting Whiny and just staying there.
Ah, right. Maybe the postbellum period has already ended, and we're in the antebellum period.
Steven Erikson started the Malazan series for serious while underemployed in BC. The Teutoniece should stay put and get to work.
I dreamt that I was on a road trip with Bernie Sanders, just the two of us in a car. Somewhere in the west. He was driving, and I was trying to make conversation, but he was kind of cranky.
The civil war ends when whoever follows Biden wins, on the strength of huge support from people of color and people now under 45. And pursues a policy of No Quarter towards conservatism. Trump recreating the Reagan Counterrevolution was always going to be a farce, and fortunately he's just not a good enough entertainer to carry it off. Beyond the one time where stars aligned in wild and unexpected ways.
This is an interesting take: Trump as authoritarian weakman letting a convenient crisis go to waste.
Never send a pee fetishist to do a scatologist's job.
273 He does seem cranky.
So, apparently the new idea is to lift social distancing on a county by county basis. Because it'll really get the economy back on its feet if you put people back to work in sparsely inhabited counties on the plains.
We're at 71 cases statewide -- holding steady at 6 here for several days now (a whole week?). SD is working, I think. Did the 6 people get it here, or someplace like Seattle? That would be kind f useful to know.
13 in more conservative Yellowstone (Billings), 24 in tourist recreation paradise Gallatin. Gallatin is a bit behind us in population, but way ahead of us in second homes for out of state rich people.
We're up to 59 cases statewide. Anchorage has the largest concentration but Fairbanks and Ketchikan, which were the early hotspots, are continuing to show significant growth. The first death being counted for Alaska was a guy who appears to have contracted it while at a hospital in Seattle for other health problems.
The link in 24 is really good.
274: A useful heuristic is that if Politico is trying to provide anything beyond the most superficial punditry, it is still providing the most superficial punditry. And this is doubly true of John Harris. Harris's piece is so bad, even most of the individual sentences don't hold up. Here's his thesis:
Would-be tyrants use crisis to consolidate power. Trump, by contrast, has been pilloried from many quarters, including many liberals, for not asserting authority and responsibility more forcefully ... Rather than seizing on a genuine emergency, Trump was slow to issue an emergency declaration, moved gingerly in employing the Defense Production Act to help overburdened local health systems, and even now seems eager to emphasize that many subjects -- closure of schools and businesses, obtaining sufficient ventilators -- are primarily problems for state governors to deal with.
Part of this springs from Harris's own admiration of authoritarians. He thinks that they really do make the trains run on time, so Trump's failure to do so is anti-authoritarian.
But Trump has, in fact, asserted his authority, and contra Harris, the hallmark of his authoritarianism is to deny responsibility; to shift blame and take credit. I wonder why Harris didn't bring up Trump's invocation of the "China flu." This, after all, is yet another example of Trump's weak refusal to claim responsibility like a true strongman. It's our flu, goddamit! We're in charge here!
Harris's thesis could be more simply stated: Trump isn't trying to be a strongman. He just seeks to force others to do the work to maintain society, reap the rewards of their toil, and be held responsible for nothing. Harris couldn't be any more incoherent if he were Thomas Friedman.
Oh, wait. I didn't know heebie liked it. Never mind.
In order to work at home, I fetched an old keyboard out of storage and it's freaking awesome! My fingers just glide across it. You all can expect much longer comments from me for the duration, just for the pleasure of typing.
You can have your blog back now.
You can have your blog back now.
It's all of our blog.
[That doesn't look right. What is the grammatically correct way to phrase that?]
240: wait, how did we have exactly the same mother??????
sending love & calming thoughts to all!
"And on the sign it said, 'fuck you, clown.'"
As an update, I woke up able to breathe through my nose today, though that has come and gone throughout the day. Still, huge progress. Then I spent the day in bed as much as possible. I'm hoping to do the same tomorrow. Tonight I get to go out and try my first pickup from the grocery store parking lot, because Thursday night was the only slot still available when I ordered on Monday morning. I mostly chose frozen stuff the kids can heat up in case I was still too sick, but at the rate they're eating every time my back is turned it may only last us another day or two. I actually sent them to school (at the end of our block, during a dog walk) for takeout free breakfast today because I was too tired of the whining about cereal and fruit.
Gov just announced SIP. 90 cases now -- one new one here, 14 new cases in Gallatin.
News story about how HEB (biggest grocery chain in central Texas) has been preparing for this since 2005. (The story is no doubt a bit too rosy, but it's true that they've been doing a good job of keeping stores stocked and communicating clearly. Most of the people I know who work there think it's a pretty decent place. They call employees "partners," though. Blech.)
we have been working on our pandemic and influenza plan for quite a while now, since 2005, when we had the threat of H5N1 overseas in China. That's when we first developed what our plan looked like, [as well as] some of our requirements and business implications. In 2009, we actually used that plan in response to H1N1, when the swine flu came to fruition in Cibolo, and refined it, made it more of an influenza plan. We've continued to revise it, and it's been a part of our preparedness plan at H-E-B ever since.
People are super loyal to HEB. I like them well enough.
So: how much are other grocery stores nationwide limiting supplies?
294: Ours (Meijer) had limits on some popular items last weekend. No more than 2 packages of chicken or pork per purchase. I think dried pasta and rice were similar. Almost everything else was fine - there was cheap TP available (no limit) but no disinfecting wipes and no thermometer batteries (I was looking for one, sadly). It is sort of nice to live somewhere with stupidly big houses (ours is not particularly large, but after living in 500 sq ft in DC, it seems HUGE) that allowed us to store a few weeks' worth of food easily.
Also, gswift, if you're around, thanks for the workout link you posted the other day!
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I need to vent about something. I really feel like my bio lab TA (I'm in a virtual lab right now) is a very nice person but has some kind of verbal processing problem, or something, and has trouble taking in any question, no matter how simple, that isn't the way she's already thinking about something. Here was a question from the lab manual: refer to table 7-1 to answer the following question. Are there any temperature values where the absorbance values for the E tube are quite close to the absorbance values for the C tube? If so, explain, etc."
She suggests drawing a graph of the absolute values of these things for some reason. I suggest, in the form of a gentle question, that the table we already made has the difference between the E and C tubes at every temperature, and perhaps we could just look at the points for which the difference is close to zero?
She says no, that's wrong. She's painstakingly drawing this ridiculous graph in some kind of Blackboard program right now.
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Yd, I made wipes out of paper towels, vinegar, and alcohol, following an internet recipe. Am I living in a fool's paradise thinking that this will help me?
(It's also just so bizarre, at Tia U, that the overall atmosphere in Bio is that people around me are extremely confused and not school prepared, whereas in orgo I am a mediocre student. I guess Bio is the freshman weeder and a lot of these students decide the science track is not for them.)
What did you end up deciding about your chemistry class, in light of the world turning upside down?
299: I'm following along and doing the work and attending online class but I'm going to withdraw and retake it, which I was decided on anyway, but the idea that now was the time to be taking such a challenging class became especially ridiculous in light of events. I am impressed by the achiever beavers who are all still all over the material in recitation. I am only in the past couple days able to find concentration to do moderate amounts of work per day. Tia U even gave us extra time to withdraw this semester because of all the confusion. We had an "instructional pause" then classes started again, and starting tomorrow there's a new "recalibration period for equity" and classes are canceled again to restart on Wednesday, and then it's Spring Break -- just the constantly mutating schedule is so much to keep track of.
294.2: Whole Foods had limits on staples. The limits were pretty high. Giant Eagle had no limits on anything but water. There was very little toilet paper and what they had was in giant packs, way to big to carry on the bus without looking awkward.
300: I gotta imagine that this means withdrawing won't come with quite the same stigma as you were imagining, at least. So they're not watering down the course? I guess they can't if students have to take the MCAT. I'm totally sandbagging my classes.
Charley, did you see this recent piece on Butte and the 1918 pandemic? )"When Butte wouldn't shut down
The devastation of the 1918 flu and our collective trauma") I guess there was a book written on it previously so maybe it is a well-known bit of Montana history.
Yet when I wrote a book about the cholera pandemic, people said "When Butt Wouldn't Shut Down" was too crude for a title.
302: Yeah, I've had that thought but it seemed vulgar of me (not of anyone else) to mention it.
My upstairs neighbor's hacking cough is audible down here. My roommate was sick enough yesterday to go to the doctor and get an inhaler (which she says is helping). She's freaked out about what would happen if she needed a ventilator. I told her I still thought she wouldn't. I debated adding that she was so young I thought she'd get triaged into getting one if she did need it, but I didn't think there was any way saying that if necessary she'd be be allowed to live at the expense of someone else would be anxiety-alleviating for her.
And no, they're not watering it down at all. They might need to cut a chapter because we've lost instructional days. And we're not taking the ACS exam, I think.
My quasi romantic partner was sick, but reports feeling better today.
...but I didn't think there was any way saying that if necessary she'd be be allowed to live at the expense of someone else would be anxiety-alleviating for her.
"Crime and Punishment" argues that is justified and that she should take the wallet of the person who doesn't get the ventilator. At least, the part I read.
I couldn't finish the book because of Russian nicknames being incomprehensible.
The model suggest that she'll wind up finding Jesus in a prison camp, and I don't think she'd find that anxiety-alleviating either.
I guess that it's not a spoiler he got caught. It's in the title.
I woke up able to breathe through my nose today, though that has come and gone throughout the day.
Yes, that's how breathing works.
("Mike! Can you stand outside my car and tell me if my indicators are working?"
"Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No.")
285: All your blog are belong to us. (Obvsly, if belatedly.)
304: That and Chuck Tingle was already on it.
297: If your goal is to disinfect, I would just make 70% alcohol or 20% bleach. Less than 60% alcohol doesn't really disinfect. The mix you describe (with vinegar) might disinfect; I'm not sure, but it's probably a better cleaner (removal of dirt) than true disinfectant.
It's nice how British leaders follow the stream of history. Nazis taking over in Germany, have one for a king. Covid-19 taking over, have a prime minister who licks door knobs so he's sure to get it.