The idea behind "The Power" always sounded a bit off, because women, a lot of the time, actually already can injure or kill men at will. Using, for example, guns. And guns have much longer effective range than magic electric sparks.
They can't do it with impunity, of course, because it's against the law. But in "The Power" they can't do it with impunity either.
It doesn't seem to have changed our society that much, because they tend not to do it; it turns out that most women are not natural murderers or natural torturers, even if they could potentially gain political power by murdering or torturing. But it's simply not the case, as "The Power" seems to suggest, that there's this great potential for murder among women that's only awaiting the practical ability to murder. If they wanted to, and if they weren't worried about the legal consequences, most women could murder pretty much any man they wanted to.
What the book reminds me of, most of all, is the desperate cry from the psychotic narrator at the end of Damon Knight's "The Country of the Kind":

YOU CAN SHARE THE WORLD WITH ME. THEY CAN'T STOP YOU. STRIKE NOW. PICK UP A SHARP THING AND STAB, OR A HEAVY ONE AND CRUSH. THAT'S ALL. THAT WILL MAKE YOU FREE. ANYONE CAN DO IT.

Second was these two tweets from (apparent) editors of academic journals, noting dramatic drop in recent article submissions from women as compared to men.

Anecdotally and generalizing from what I suspect is a much smaller data set, I've noticed that as well, but with some twists. I only know details of academics' lives if people share them with me but the women with young children who owed me essays almost universally let me know early in the shutdown that childcare plus moving courses online was going to make it impossible for them to meet deadlines, which was totally understandable. This was also true for a smaller number of men (in a journal where we're pretty close to parity) and both men and women who didn't mention children also had deadline trouble because of the general state of the world. I'm reading between the lines here, but I've seen more senior women volunteering to write than usual and even before these tweets I wondered if it was a way of taking on work for those they knew would be occupied elsewhere. I'm more interested in how this will play out longer-term than in what it was like at the beginning of the crisis, but that's because of how the deadline timing falls. Right now we need to figure out how to get people to turn work in right after the semester ends, which I suspect will be a challenge.

1: but in the real world men have guns too.

First off, Ajay, NO SPOILERS. Watch it, buster.

Second:

Using, for example, guns. And guns have much longer effective range than magic electric sparks.

I've never carried a gun with me anywhere, and so I've never had that experience. Also it seems like they can deliver a shock in much more subtle ways than shooting someone. Much more like twisting someone's arm a touch to make them whimper. Being able to sit pretty and coyly smile while someone writhes is a whole 'nother thing than pulling out a gun and putting a hole in them.

Apologies - will try to avoid spoilers!

But, to 3, in the world of "The Power" men have guns too as well.

I've never carried a gun with me anywhere, and so I've never had that experience.

I have; but I can't say that I was engulfed by a wonderful sensation of power at the knowledge that I could kill or wound - or just terrify - anyone who got in my way or annoyed me. I was more worried about leaving it in the vehicle accidentally.

But the question then is: why not carry a gun everywhere? If your local legal environment permits, of course. Imagine being able to coyly smile and sit quietly while terrifying someone with the knowledge that you could maim them, paralyse them, bleed them out at will!
Why not, for a closer parallel to The Power, carry a Taser as well?

I mean, what you're saying is true, but I'll say it better: On the highway, everyone is equally dangerous, but we don't all drive the same.

Nevertheless: the back rooms of frat houses would go differently if women could electrocute men at will.

You're welcome.

Men would respond and adapt by constantly approaching strange women and asking them to recharge their iPhones.

That was a gag in Shazam.
It was available for eloan from our library so I got a copy.

It's just really stressful to be home all the time. Certain people blame the anxiety of the disease and various economic uncertainty, but if I point out that the real problem is the people we met along the way live with, I'm the asshole.

I am still working to submit articles though. I think Witt's tweets are matching my experience. People are finishing things that had been in the file drawer marked "later".

On the highway, everyone is equally dangerous, but we don't all drive the same.

In this universe, women have the ability to break the analogy ban at will, using special organs attached to their clavicles, but most still chose not to do so.

I guess my main problem was that (breaking the ban myself) it felt a little like a book which said "Imagine if any woman in the world could magically talk to any other, regardless of location, instantly! Think how that would overturn society! Think of the networks of international solidarity and information that women would build!" but ignored the fact that mobile phones already exist.

Thanks for posting, heebie!

Since I sent that in, I did find out that one of my brothers-in-law has been working serious amounts of overtime (he's in pharma) supporting clinical trials trying to find COVID-19 medications. So that's a little piece of anecdata in contradiction to my argument.

Regarding ajay's argument -- dude, with all due respect, I think you are seriously missing the point. A gun is a piece of equipment that is not connected to a human. It can be wrested away from them. It can malfunction. It can be difficult to disguise. It requires additional items (ammunition) for purchase. It requires regular practice to be able to use safely. And perhaps most of all, at least in the United States, my understanding is that people are specifically taught to not pull a weapon unless they are prepared to use it, and when they shoot, to aim for the center mass (torso) of a human.

NONE of those things are true of imaginary electrical shocks that a woman could aim from her fingers.

The idea behind "The Power" always sounded a bit off, because women, a lot of the time, actually already can injure or kill men at will. Using, for example, guns.

At the risk of repeating what's already been said, I don't think this is right. As a reasonably fit, fairly large, average-strength male, I walk around, without the need to arm myself, with the power to physically dominate most women, even ones much younger than me. It's a visible power, but not one that I even think about. It just exists. Of course, I don't use it, except to open the occasional pickle jar.

I haven't heard of The Power, but if we want to analogize, it's as if there were a social norm that women generally carried sidearms, and men could not. It's not using the power that matters; it's routinely having it and displaying it.

The legal issue surrounding guns is entirely different from the legal issue surrounding physical strength. It is much more illegal (both in penalties and general enforcement) to shoot someone than it is to beat someone.

You could likewise say that in the age of The Pill, the reproductive lives of men and women are equal and similar. You'd have to overlook a lot to say that.

I have; but I can't say that I was engulfed by a wonderful sensation of power at the knowledge that I could kill or wound - or just terrify - anyone who got in my way or annoyed me.

I certainly feel the same way about whatever physical strength advantage I have -- I wouldn't dream of using it, or threatening someone with it. But when I see an openly carried weapon, I am intimidated. I don't think I'm unusual that way, regardless of the intent of the person carrying the gun.

Surely I am not the only person who is intimidated around armed police officers. Latent power matters a lot, even if there is no meaningful threat.

13 - I don't think those points are relevant. The book asks "what if all women had the power to kill or torture at will?" and my question was "this already is the case in certain admittedly limited circumstances and it doesn't seem to have had anything approaching the effects in the book". Pointing out that guns need ammunition to work, and occasionally have stoppages, doesn't really undermine that, or I don't think it does.

We all ridicule the slogan of "An armed society is a polite society" but isn't a big part of the book the idea that "a Powered society is a polite society"?

In what way is "The Power" not saying "imagine if every woman had a magic invisible handgun/Taser that couldn't be taken away from her, never jammed, never ran out of ammunition and that she could carry everywhere"?

I can confirm that the second tweet did indeed come from a journal editor. Most of the academic moms I know are saying they're getting nothing done beyond (shitty) teaching (with the exception of one person who has a lower course load and slightly older children). The academic dads I know aren't saying anything. I no longer have research responsibilities, just teaching and service, and I don't have kids, but I'm getting virtually nothing done except quite terrible teaching. I am doing slightly more housework, but I'm not up for arguing about it yet.

it turns out that most women are not natural murderers

Except when it comes to filicide. At least they used to be. A DOJ paper looked at the numbers from '76-'97 and mothers were right there at about half. Take that patriarchy!

12: How is 6 an analogy? it's a literal context in which women and men are equally physically powerful. It's as if you and I were in a high school debate team and I made a more compelling argument.

I'm not exactly sure what 6 was trying to say, to be honest. (Also it is too an analogy: "this fictional situation in the book is like this real situation on highways".)

I mean, yes, some people are safer drivers than others. Very few people, even though they could do so, choose to drive in a way that intimidates, harms or kills other people.

17 suggests a possible sequel to "The Power" in which children acquire the ability to emit electrical sparks in order to murder or torture their parents at will, but I think that turns into "It's a Good Day".

6 was saying "If we want some indication of how people behave when their strength and ability to recklessly or deliberately endanger others, is no longer proportional to their muscles, we could observe highway driving.". It's not an analogy. It's a source of data.

We could observe driving to make a child's sporting event if we want to really scare ourselves.

Good lord that first tweet. Yeah, the nanny is only mentioned in passing, because she's not the subject of the article. People who work pay for childcare. And people with money can afford to have it be one on one with a nanny. "Unsung legend". Dude, you're playing with one toddler in an upscale apartment. Calm down there Superwoman.

23: The nanny is apparently not living in. So she's commuting in a dangerous environment.

And the fact that she wasn't (a) subject of the article is exactly what the tweet is critiquing. When you publish a glowing profile of two celebrities with adorable pictures of the dad holding his child and cooking, you're literally erasing the person who is making their "cute working couple" lifestyle possible. And endangering her life with her commute in the process.

21: well, OK, but what's the conclusion from that? On one side you can say "women are slightly safer drivers per vehicle mile than men" and on the other side you can say "but it doesn't lead to any sort of massive societal change to give men and women equally-sized cars, even if you limit it to the way people behave on vs off the road, and most people actually don't use their ability to hurt people because most people don't do that". Plus if you recklessly endanger other people while driving, you're generally also recklessly endangering yourself, which I feel is probably relevant.

God, nobody is being erased. If you want an article about childcare workers then just write that article instead of complaining that the nanny isn't the centerpiece in an article about her employers.

I was trying to bolster your claim that women wouldn't be maniacs if they were physically equivalent in strength to men, but now that you've successful deconstructed it, I see the error of your ways.

I advise all of you to calm the fuck down and eat a durian.

The people I know of with nannies have had them stop showing up. Unclear which ones are still paying them and which ones have made a push to get them on unemployment.

Being able to pay for childcare right now would be great! But not actually possible. It does kind of irk me that I'm the only person in my immediate team at work (including my manager) who (a) has children and (b) has a working spouse instead of a SAHM. Both teammates with kids were in fact already home-schooling them, so the current situation is not nearly as different for them as it is for me. Higher-up management has been pretty loud about "take care of yourself and your family first", which is nice, but I still stand out a lot as being able to get a lot less done.

27 has not really clarified things but thanks!

28: ohhh no no no you don't get me that easily. Stay away from the durian, people, it's a trap.

The pandemic is revealing that the second shift is the third shift here. Shiv has been good in some ways. He already works from home, and his boss let him rearrange his hours so he works from 6-12 and then puts in time in the evening. I nominally get the afternoon, until dinner, after homeschooling the kids. But noon turns into 1 and somehow I'm doing 80% of the dinner prep. You run your job on 3.5 hours a day, okay? We had words and now it's mostly fixed and it helps that the kids have mostly figured out that if they don't bother me they can run wild.

Also totally over busybodies with nothing else to do besides take pictures of parking lots at trailheads to prove that people aren't socially distancing. Sure, Karen, you were just driving by. You weren't planning a walk like everyone else...

15: The existence of guns does not, in practice, erase the social effects of most men being physically capable of easily winning an unarmed physical fight with most women. Saying that men act physically threatening all the time would be an overstatement -- I'm not face-to-face in the same room with opposing counsel all that often, and the vast majority of interactions are either pleasant or at least politely low-conflict, but when men get angry they do often act physically threatening. I have multiple times in my career been in a situation where I was making myself consciously remember that it was really unlikely the angry man with forty pounds of weight and four inches of height on me was going to actually hit me, but knowing that I was counting on his social inhibitions rather than my ability to defend myself.

Being able to push someone else around physically through greater physical strength can be done in a calibrated, socially acceptable way that has very little relation to being able to kill or threaten to kill them with a gun. I haven't read the book, but it seems clear from the description that the fantasy is about flipping that dynamic: what if instead of women having to deal with the fact that most men have the physical capacity to hurt or overpower them, and that some men exploit that capacity in social interaction even when they're not literally committing violence, men had to deal with a similar capacity in women?

The piece is exactly what it's designed to be, a clickbait fluff profile of a couple local news personalities. Not something I would read but of course the focus is on the couple, that's the point. The plight and dilemma of childcare workers would be a more interesting article. Good news, virtue tweeter is an editorial director at a news outlet and could make this happen.

My wife's HATING the online teaching thing. Way more time consuming, way less results, stuck at a desk for hours. And middle school's not out until the first week of June.

At home middle school sucks.

Good news, virtue tweeter is an editorial director at a news outlet and could make this happen.

That's weird, the Texas Tribune doesn't seem to have published a single article about nannies or childcare workers since the pandemic started.

34: I can't even imagine. At least my students are adults and I have years of experience teaching online and so while the switch was tough, it was manageable. The Calabat's teacher sends home packets with optional online work, which I appreciate. But she's not really teaching, which works fine for us but I can't imagine most kids teach themselves.

28 as long as you can still smell it you're ok.

Also totally over busybodies with nothing else to do besides take pictures of parking lots at trailheads to prove that people aren't socially distancing. Sure, Karen, you were just driving by. You weren't planning a walk like everyone else...

Sing it. I suppose it's an empirical question what actually works, but do you know what I think *I* would find both motivating and pleasant as a tone about this? "Please do your best. You are a reasonable judge of your own particular circumstances and what your best is."

As a matter of journalistic critique, I agree with gswift. It's a celebrity story. It's not about the nanny.

As a social critique, Witt accurately describes the problem with the appeal of these narratives. They inevitably make important people vanish.

So yeah, the NYP's choice of subject matter is totally ordinary, and therefore its treatment of the subject matter is standard, as gswift says.

I think gswift misses that the fact that this is so ordinary -- and indeed reasonable -- is a huge problem; indeed, so much bigger than this particular story that it's difficult for some of us to even recognize the problem in the story itself.

Since this is the thread for banned analogies, I will say that I was well into adulthood before I really had a glimmer of understanding of the role of slaves themselves in the Emancipation Proclamation. They got written out of that history for much the same reason that we focus on the hardships of TV people rather than the folks who have it much tougher and have much more of an impact on the world.

It's worth saying that that some nannies are immigrants who send money back to their families in their home countries and are separated for long periods from their own families, even their own children, while taking on a deep emotional bond with another family's children that the parents are free to terminate at will (and sometimes do at the cost of pain to both the nanny and children). I don't think I'd call it heroism for all the reasons people have been complaining about the word "hero" lately, but caring for a single child in a private home can be, depending on the circumstances, very difficult work.

39 And usually those photos are taken with a telephoto lens and they flatten the perspective so people only appear to be bunched up but there's plenty of space between them. It's ridiculous.

39: what I actually did was point out helpfully that there is no requirement for *cars* to socially distance, then snark to a sympathetic friend about it, and then send sympathetic friend a picture of the same trailhead at 10am on a Sunday, when predictably it was empty and I had 10 miles of multiuse path mostly to myself.

It was the first nice Saturday in two weeks, following a week of snow, rain, and an earthquake or two. It's not a surprise that 2pm on a Saturday is going to see people outside; surprise, Karen, everyone had the same idea as you.

(We were at a different spot on the same river and it was pretty easy to keep distance from other families. Not everyone was doing that but it had nothing to do with the trailhead.)

42: this was literally a picture of a parking lot! No people. Just thirty filled stalls.

I can't believe (read: I can totally believe) all the dudes here defending that article. Of course it's erasing the nanny and her work. Come the fuck on.

Blume!

I didn't read the article.

I did read the tweets. Because that's my attention span these days.

I've been lurking more often because I've been reading the semi-weekly check ins.

The workers that make the durians possible are probably underpaid, but they don't have your children breathing all over them either.

But my valorz.

working on being generous to those who are dealing with stress by rigorously missing the point ... working on it ... working on it ...

It's hard to get durian around here even in the best of times, Mossy. Even the Asian markets don't always have it on hand and the giant international market charges a lot for inferior product on this front, though it does other things better. Mara really wants to try durian, maybe because she can't smell. Odile has gotten the girls durian takeout desserts when she and I have gone to restaurants, but they haven't been a hit so far. I can handle it in that context but find the aftertaste unpleasant.

Can she taste?

42 was a general comment on those types of photos and not directed at anyone here.

The one thing they have got to do, if lockdown is going to continue, is to get rid of this ludicrous "STAY OUT OF THE PARKS" business.

Stay 2m away from other people, and don't handle stuff they're handling. Don't get into confined spaces with other people like vehicles, restaurants, etc. If you've got symptoms, or you've been exposed, stay at home. If you live with someone who's got symptoms, or who's been exposed, stay at home.

But the idea that we all need to avoid sitting outdoors in the sunshine is giving rise to embittering, petty "put that light out!" activism, and it's pretty pointless from an infection control perspective. Even on the most glorious of summer weekends, London's parks are not so crowded that people are sitting within 2m of each other. And the medical standard for "exposure" is "within 2m of an infected patient for a continuous period of 15 minutes".

53: Some. And she can smell/sense certain chemicals (has twice each recognized ramen seasoning packs and popcorn machines without seeing them in action) but a lot of eating is about texture for her. She used to insist that sour cream and ice cream could be used interchangeably, for instance. She has very strong likes and dislikes, though luckily she's loosening up over time.

Durian has excellent texture.

Durian is awful not because it tastes awful but because it tastes ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE very nice. It has a lot going for it; the creamy texture, the taste that's a little like strawberries or pistachio. It's very nearly the sort of thing that should be delicious. But the smell, god, the smell. And the aftertaste. It's the uncanny valley of foods. If only it was like, say, unripe persimmon, my reaction would be "this fruit is very bitter, I will not eat it again", but I wouldn't have the same sense of dread and cosmic horror that durian produces.

But the idea that we all need to avoid sitting outdoors in the sunshine is giving rise to embittering, petty "put that light out!" activism, and it's pretty pointless from an infection control perspective.

Yeah, we've got people like that on a group of fans of the local recreational lake. They moralize the crap out of it, and try to make their position unassailable by saying they're nurses and they see how horrible the disease is. (And it's also mixed up with the issue that a good chunk of the lake forces people into now-too-narrow spaces by design.

Stupid landscape designers and their ornamental icebergs.

55,59:

People whose primary joy in life derives from being moralizing scolds probably constitute a significant voting block. That might be figuring into the political calculus behind the bans.

I read The Power, Dietland and Jane Doe and speculated that I was seeing a trend of ragelit, because they all three have themes of women committing violence on men. They all came out at about the same time, 2016, 2017 and feel like pure female rage fantasies. I am not opposed.

Heh. My sister who lives in Oakland came out to visit this weekend purely to get away from the moralizing scolds.

There's a lot of people doing work for very little money but that makes other work possible. Or work that makes it possible for others to stay home. I'm thinking of mainly grocery workers and delivery people. The people bearing most of the risk aren't usually being paid that and some of them aren't even covered for their treatment costs if they get sick.

The people in the packing plant in Hall County are getting an extra $4/hour plus more PPE, which sounds like something in the right direction. Unlike nannies or instacart workers, they have a union (which is not easy to have in Nebraska).

People whose primary joy in life derives from being moralizing scolds probably constitute a significant voting block. That might be figuring into the political calculus behind the bans.

Yes, it's purely the Republican base coming out to whine about the bans, while the moralizing scolds are more likely to be traditional swing voters.

And right now I want to be one of those moralizing scolds because a representative of our 401k servicer is giving the annual presentation about investments and going on and on with charts and how we'll do better by not selling, and I know this is his job but I want to give him a shake over the internet and say "PEOPLE ARE DYING!"

Don't worry. We have shares in a coffin manufacturer.

Everyone will buy the cheapo models if the funeral is quarantined.

Oil is so cheap now. If boats are also in a buyer's market, I think a modified version of a Viking funeral would work with social distancing.

A few weeks ago I was at the Costco here and noticed that they had freeze-dried durian, so I got some. It's okay.

Dry bulk is down. Tankers are way up.

We've been walking Amadea's dad's dogs most days lately, usually at parks and trails in our part of town where we see very few other people. Yesterday we had to be in a different part of town for something else so we walked them on a more popular trail that apparently has been the target of significant social media crowd-shaming, and there definitely were a lot more cars in the parking lot, but still very few other people on the trail itself. It does sometimes seem like a lot of stuff is being significantly distorted by social media these days.

"I had some freeze-dried sirloin. It was okay"

Blume!

Speaking of people whose pseuds end in u-m-e, wondering how Ume and kids are faring... please do drop into tomorrow's check-in thread if you get a chance?

NDWA seem very on the ball as organizers. I gave to their most recent campaign and have been on their mailing list for a few years now. I hope their efforts are doing at least some of what they need to.

"It does sometimes seem like a lot of stuff is being significantly distorted by social media these days."

Report on walking in New Jersey: The Nature Conservancy trail in inland Cape May County was open Saturday, with a sign reminding all users to keep social distance, and my wife and I had the entire place to ourselves. Even with the beaches and the state and county and municipal parks closed. Don't tell anyone.
.

It may be that there isn't more distortion but that more people are relying on it for information lately.

What's the oil implosion doing to AK politics?

Freaking people out, mostly. The state will have to do something at some point to deal with the fallout, but I haven't seen much in the way of specific proposals.

The cruise ship collapse is another devastating blow to the AK economy, and given the seasonal nature of tourism here it seems to be getting more immediate attention than the oil price collapse.

80 to everything.

I went walking around Whetstone and the Park of Roses with my stepdaughter yesterday. The last time we were there people were playing tennis on all the courts. This time -- well, the weather wasn't as nice, so that's probably the main reason why there were fewer people, - but people weren't playing 'normal" tennis, I eventually realized the reason was that they had taken down the nets. So people brought their own nets -- I think some of them were playing "pickleball" -- anyway, they were closer together than they would have been playing regular tennis.

And seafood!

Fishing appears to still be a go, but the fishing communities are very worried about the potential impacts of the influx of fishermen and cannery workers and the state hasn't been super-reassuring about it.

You can sell ornamental icebergs. There has to be a market.

Not for much longer we can't.

I was thinking demand for seafood is way down because no restaurants.

I think the ultimate result of all this for Alaska specifically will be probably be to force the state to stop dicking around and institute some sort of broad-based tax. Given the current political makeup of the state government it'll probably be a sales tax rather than an income tax. I don't know how quickly that'll happen though. There's still a lot of denialism out there about our fiscal reality, which was already pretty bad before the coronavirus came around.

88: Yeah, I'm sure that's true. Even if they do go ahead with the summer fishing seasons prices will surely be way down from past years.

I'm super hoping that fishing itself will substantially slow (rather than that fishing continues and they freeze the fish) and fish stocks get a year to recover.

This is a good article on the fishing situation.

We were just talking about getting more fish next time we go shopping. Farmed Tilapia and salmon.

In terms of social scolding, I've been wondering about the Florida beaches. On the one hand, De Santis is a horrible human being and I'm quite comfortable being knee-jerk opposed to anything he does.

On the other hand, part of what makes the beaches look so crowded is the absence of anything for scale. If there were trees, and fountains, it might suddenly look like the gaps between groups were not terribly unsafe.

In addition, beaches are windy. Talk about being well-ventilated from other people's aerosoled spittle.

I think an important side aspect is that intimidating other people by making it clear you could win in a fight without actually having the fight is just incredibly ingrained all across the animal kingdom. Even if your civilized brain knows you're not about to get in a fight, the animal brain is still scared if it's a fight you know you'll lose.

As others have said, the gun analogy is truly bizarre, you can't carry a gun while naked, and even when clothed if someone is physically close to you and stronger then it's just as much their gun as yours.

Due to being short I've never really had the sense that people are physically intimidated by me (e.g. the way that people talk about men taking up space on sidewalks is utterly foreign to me), but when I was young I did always have the sense in the back of my head that in most cases if worse came to worse I was going to be faster than whoever was chasing me. That's certainly not the case anymore and when I get around to thinking about it it's kinda scary, but at this point it's hard to learn new fears.

||

It's 4/20, and you're probably wondering what the US Supreme Court has done today to celebrate. Three cases: (1) yes, the US Constitution requires states to require unanimous verdicts in trials for serious crimes. Gorsuch wrote the opinion, joined in various parts by various of the liberals, and in part by Kavanaugn. Thomas concurred in the judgment, saying that the Court is relying on the wrong part of the 14th Amendment. Alito wrote a dissent joined by Roberts and Kagan (in part). (2) in a procedurally wild patent case, Ginsburg wrote for the Court that you can't appeal from that special administrative proceeding to invalidate patents, even if you can show the administrative body was precluded by law from taking up the matter. Gorsuch wrote a dissent, joined mostly by Sotomayor. God help me, once again, I find the man making sense, although I get why Sotomayor didn't join his section saying [use a Charlton Heston voice here] 'it's property, dammit, and can't be taken away by the executive!" (3) as expected, decided to screw with the Montana residents living in a superfund site, saying that they -- people whose yards are polluted -- are potentially responsible parties, and so need EPA approval to pursue a separate state action for funding to do some clean-up beyond what EPA is mandating. Roberts wrote; Gorsuch (joined by Thomas) was eloquent in rejecting the argument that they were potentially responsible parties under CERCLA.

|>

Apparently, the price for a barrel of West Texas oil delivered in May is $-.79. In theory, every barrel of West Texas oil is one that I don't have. I think I may be a billionaire.

As a male academic with tenure and no kids, I'm not quite sure what the right response is to the problems mentioned in the post. Of course I could do less research, but that doesn't seem reasonable (especially since it's what I'm still being paid to do)... I guess the answer is to try to prioritize doing solo work on projects that are collaborations with women with children, but in a way that doesn't put pressure on them to also do more work? That's a bit of a tricky needle to thread, especially for projects that are in earlier stages.

Re 'The Power'; this looks like an interesting book so thanks for the tip.

I also thought of guns but I think people up thread have drawn out the differences quite well.

For a while now, I've wondered whether or not physical strength and its threat advantage has any role in professional confrontations. I think in the end it doesn't have much of a role, although possibly it could cause some people to blink, some of the time. I imagine that if you're a manager who's physically comparatively weak, you might sometimes forget that you have the power (within the law) to sack, demote or sanction a physically stronger (and likely younger) subordinate. However, I don't think many organisations are run by the physically strongest member; rather, it goes by intelligence, energy, networking, charisma; things like that. For good or ill. And with a gender imbalance.

'On the street', or in private homes up and down the land, things are probably a bit different. At 48 and 95 kilos, etc. I confidently walk everywhere, day or night. I might walk quicker in bits of my neighbourhood where I've heard of muggings. I've had the thought that when I'm 88, say, I won't be as confident. And yes, all pedestrians are at risk from all drivers.

You're making me think of that song lyric:

Pretty girl, young man, old man, man with a gun

98: I think the right answer is to be a vocal advocate for the processes in place for tenure and promotion over the next few years - whether or not you're on the right committees, to advocate for policies that don't penalize people for being unproductive during this time.

I don't think there's any harm in being productive. You just want to actively be on the lookout for the crossroads where people will be penalized, and figure out how to protect those who are not being productive from having a negative impact on their career.

The Supreme Court also allowed a rare additional brief to be filed (post-oral arguments) on the DACA case. The brief is from the plaintiffs, arguing that the 27,000 DACA recipients who are healthcare workers are playing a critical role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have no idea what it means that the administration chose not to respond to the brief. I'm still very pessimistic about the Court's eventual ruling, though.

I don't think there's any harm in being productive.

Why take the chance?

Okay, sure, but what if men could have only one gun, and women could have two guns? What then, heebie? What. Then.

Also: Blume!

Five minute abs! Razors with eight blades! Thanksgiving dinners with five animals crammed inside each other like Russian dolls!

I agree with every part of 94. Speaking as someone with no background in science or medicine, and who has no useful knowledge of any kind, it seems to me that we're being way overcautious by closing down outdoor public spaces. In LA they've shut down all the parks and hiking trails, and the tennis courts are chained and locked. For fuck's sake! You're always going to be more than six feet apart in singles play, and beachgoers, runners and hikers typically don't spend substantial time within two yards of people other than the ones that they arrived with. Open the parks and beaches, and enforce mask-wearing and social distancing. I'm going crazy here.

106: I don't know what the chain of reasoning was, but the Bay Area orders name tennis specifically as one of the activities that needs to shut down. Maybe they're concerned people not in a household together will play and contaminate via ball contact and off-court proximity?

I don't think the main problem is going to be internal committees, I think the main problem is going to be NSF grants and how that plays out secondarily in terms of local decisions. One unproductive year leading to several years of not getting grants leading to lowered productivity in those years (due to lack of collaboration funding and the time sink of reapplying) etc. Talking this through, what I should do is ask the relevant person in my department whether there's anything reasonable I can do to help in terms of her getting her CAREER grant application polished and submitted in time.

contaminate via ball contact

ATM

In New York the parks are open, at least. There's just a dour miasma on social media, and indeed from the governor, around using them. In fairness, when you go to the park around here, there are a lot of little lapses.

But then, I honestly don't understand the public health argument for more severity than we have right now. The curve, it is flattened, in New York either because social distancing flattened it, because we closed the barn door too late and everyone had it already (I think this is likely at least somewhat true), or a combination. There is excess ICU capacity. Maybe some increment in lives saved could be gained from waiting for more clinical care insights to percolate, or more drug trials but people also have to live their lives. Better protecting grocery clerks, etc., is a step that should happen by means of infrastructural and procedural changes at stores which is much more effective than telling people to behave a certain way that is actually not truly possible unless you want to greatly extend your time (and everyone's time) in the store, which is also a problem. I read something about switching to all curbside pickup. That makes sense!

At least they changed the instruction from "six feet apart at all times" which was an impossible-fantasy-land kind of dissonant, yet was causing all kinds of rage on my Facebook feed about other people's supposedly irresponsible behavior on the sidewalk, and in the grocery store, as if there was always a good choice, to "six feet or wear a mask".

Someone on my feed linked this article I don't even want to fish out again about how you're a bad person who doesn't understand sacrifice if you, say, take a six foot apart walk with your friend. I can't say I don't understand the freaking out in social media, and in actual media, because people are going to freak out about something making them anxious. I find it hard to take and would be better for getting of Facebook again were it not for the fact that I've been lonely like knives for over a month now, and would certainly choose to die rather than live the rest of my life like the past five weeks, but I get it. I do not get the public health case for wanting something other or more than what is happening right now, since deep misery and isolation is also a public health concern.

how you're a bad person who doesn't understand sacrifice if you, say, take a six foot apart walk with your friend

Yeah, this kind of shit is making me crazy. I'm doing my best and haven't seen any of my friends in real life for the past month except for three short visits where we wore masks and stood about twenty feet apart, but I'm still visiting my parents, which I feel pretty torn up about (really, I'm so anxious and fearful about this that I can't sleep at night). They're in their seventies and I know I shouldn't, but the alternative is that they'll die of loneliness because they don't really do any kind of social media, and anyway my brother is still visiting them, and if he is going to do it, it makes no sense for me not to, since I practically don't come near anyone or touch anything anymore, and he lives downtown in a condominium complex where he has to touch elevator buttons to get to his car. At first I told both my brother and my parents that we couldn't visit each other for the duration, but that's just inhumane -- aside from the fact that my brother and I are, no exaggeration, the main source of my parents' happiness anymore, my brother lives alone and is an extremely extroverted person who loves his large group of friends and is really into competitive sports, and all of those outlets that he loves have been taken away from him, and is he supposed to be buried alive in his highrise box without any human contact for months? If he's willing to not see his friends, and be super careful the rest of the week just so he can play ping pong with my mom and patiently provide tech support to my dad I'm not going to take that away from him or my parents. Anyway, this is really longwinded but people get so judgmental that I've stopped telling people that he and I still visit my parents. It's not like I'm cavalier about it, it's actually tearing me up all the time. Gah I hate this.

Tia, have the volunteering opportunities panned out yet? That sounded like such a good match for you going stir-crazy.

106. Except in a few places such as Walden Pond, people go in both directions on trails, and the trails can be pretty narrow. People will be at least briefly in close proximity. The fact that both players (or all four in doubles) touch the ball was explicitly mentioned as the main reason you couldn't have tennis anymore. I personally think we are getting a bit overwrought the risks of transmission outdoors, but there are "studies" that show a sneeze or heavy (from exertion) breathing can go 30 feet, not just 10 feet.

112: No, the National Guard somehow got involved and froze NYCH&H's HR process. I applied for one of the jobs they announced (patient escort), even though on paper it's a terrible idea for me to take a 30 hour a week job right now, but I have little faith that their HR is going to handle that process in anything like a timely fashion either. My situation is improving though, because barring disaster an itinerant Argentinian musician is going to come stay with me tomorrow or the next day. I'm a little nervous about the obvious risks involved with inviting a long term guest who can't pay rent into your home, but I met him through a friend of a friend who also had him stay in her home for a while, eventually asked him to leave, and can vouch for him in the exact same kind of interaction. (Lately I'm really connecting to this particular class of immigrants who have very few financial resources but manage through some combination of education, near fluent English, charm, and good looks to attach themselves to the resources of middle and upper middle class USians). I have to change something, and it seems like we could speak Spanish and play music together. I'd put the probability that he wants to sleep with me at about 70% and I wasn't really feeling that, but I also think I can parry. He brought up Lex spontaneously in our conversation to make some point about something or other and I made a big show of pointing out that I had it on my phone. I also don't actually blame him for trying to feel that possibility out. On Lex there are women advertising for other women to straight up move in with them and be lovers, so.

On Lex there are women advertising for other women to straight up move in with them and be lovers, so.

And yes, I did write one of them to say, I wish. I for serious might have considered one of these invitations but I need a private space for therapy work. Also I have a bedroom open. It makes so much more sense for someone to come here.

(Lately I'm really connecting to this particular class of immigrants who have very few financial resources but manage through some combination of education, near fluent English, charm, and good looks to attach themselves to the resources of middle and upper middle class USians)

I TOO HAVE FALLEN PREY TO THE WILES OF GIGOLOS

I haven't read the comments. I dislike very much that they erased the nanny's work, but i am more bothered by the fact that they chose to have her commute to work. If they wanted to give her extra pay and have her be a live-in nanny, I would resent some of their privilege, but I would not feel angry in the way that I do. I have actually enjoyed Katy Tur's coverage, and now it is somewhat spoiled.

My small personal pet peeve is that some work has been done on making people who are in charge of hiring and promotions more aware of these issues when it comes to childcare but less when it comes to elder care. There was a Piece by a Yale med student who had to take a leave of absence to care for her disabled and divorced mother. Her mother needed hands-on care but had too much money from the divorce settlement to qualify for aids through the State. She and her sister had been alternating in taking primary responsibility for their mother's care since high school.

Grandma!

106-107: Tennis is shut down here, too, and that means I can't get a game in with my son, which in some ways is just as well because the bastard has started to beat me.

But yeah, the theory is that people handle the same tennis ball and thus theoretically spread germs. I don't buy it, either. And the basketball hoops have come down, too, which again means I can't play with people in my household. It sucks.

116: Keep it in your pants right now, GRANDMA. They've got bad cooties.

I somewhat suspect a lot of the parks and facility stuff is being driven by a combination of fear of liability and lack of resources to service them.

I don't understand the logistics of 118, can't you just spend the settlement money to hire aids until the money runs out and then you qualify for one from the state?

123: I think she had about $40k/ year in alimony.

123: I think she had about $40k/ year in alimony.

$30k.

You need to have like less than $2k to your name which was less than their rent, so they put together a bunch of informal caregiving.

You need to have like less than $2k to your name which was less than their rent, so they put together a bunch of informal caregiving.

You need to have like less than $2k to your name which was less than their rent, so they put together a bunch of informal caregiving.

You need to have like less than $2k to your name which was less than their rent, so they put together a bunch of informal caregiving.

She and her sister did hire some people, but they had to supervise them and be there when things fell through.

Here's the article.

And I was wrong about rent. They owned, i.e. had a mortgage.

I was missing that it was alimony income and not wealth, which does make it a bit unusual. At any rate, they'd presumably have the same problems with state provided aids that they do with hired ones, and the state thing isn't the main issue.

So, the protester in Harrisburg who misspelled "Pennsylvania" on a sign demanding we "re-open Pennslvania"? Does that mean she's an out of state plant or just really careless?

I mean, even good spellers can have a lapse. I'm just thinking that maybe somebody else would have noticed before she mugged for the camera with it.

134: But her main point that there is more official recognition for people with children and that she lost her childhood to trying to care for her mother and maintain middle class financial stability is valid. Also, the whole thing where disabled people have to impoverish themselves to get care is ridiculous. We don't tell multimillionaires that they can't have Medicare pay for their heart surgery. We just tax them on their other income. It should be the same with childcare.

136: In my experience it's a little easier to mess up when doing it one big letter at a time. And if you only have one posterboard and you're only slightly thicker than average you might notice it yourself but decide it's good enough and people probably won't notice.

Does Georgia say "Body Arch Studio" instead of "Gonad Waxing Parlor"? I'm trying to understand the announcement of what is being opened.

138: Probably. The moral of the story is only write "PA".

Oh sure, NOW I'm a bastard.

This thread made me cooking dinner tonight, and it wasn't very good. I blame the chicken.

142: Was I supposed to spice myself?

You should have been butchered a while sooner.

144: non.

Right, but I just had the boneless, skinless breast.

146: to be fair, that was probably your original mistake.

The chicken could have died with more of himself in the package.

More or less back on the topic of physical threatening, I'm really becoming more and more unsettled by all the protests with people carrying guns, even when they spell the signs wrong.

People whose primary joy in life derives from being moralizing scolds probably constitute the bay area.

Sorry, it's a reflex at this point.

(Lately I'm really connecting to this particular class of immigrants who have very few financial resources but manage through some combination of education, near fluent English, charm, and good looks to attach themselves to the resources of middle and upper middle class USians)

THE TIME HAS COME
TO BE A LOVER FROM THE ARGENTINE
TO SLICK MY HAIR BACK WITH BRILLIANTINE
AND GARGLE HEAVILY WITH LIS-TER-INE...

I didn't want to put this under a brand new post, but WTF, the US is going to have an executive order suspending immigration? Jesus. I could not hate him more. Announced via Twitter, of course.

In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!

re: distancing

We've stopped going to a couple of the local parks, as it's just not possible to maintain any kind of reasonable distance from other people. Partly because of the design of the parks, which funnel you in through fairly narrow gates and pathways before they open out, partly because, those exact bottlenecks seem to the place where some people want to mysteriously hang out.

The nature reserve across the railway tracks is pretty nice, and although it gets quite busy, it's big enough that people can maintain distance, and there's space to sit and chill on the grass if you want to, or play with a frisbee or a football.

There are still some arseholes, though. But ... there always is. Current circumstances just make them more apparent.

re: child care

After initial maternity leave, Mrs ttaM and I have basically always split that evenly. When he was little, my wife worked all weekend, and I solo parented for 2 days, she did the same mid-week, and we had him in daycare the other 3 days, and I did the majority of the daycare pickups and drop-offs. Since he started school, we split things evenly. I do marginally more routine solo parenting, because my wife sometimes works weekends, but I travel for work, and am sometimes away for a few days at a time, so it all more or less evens out over the year. We each do the same number of pickups and drop-offs from his after school care.

But .. since lockdown, my wife is doing much more childcare than me. We've gone from a more or less exact 50/50 split, to something more like 80/20.

She can't work from home. Her job isn't set up for that. Whereas my job, I have always worked from home some of the time, I'm just forced to do it all the time now. So we are into a very uneven home-schooling split, where my wife is doing almost all of it, which feels very unfair, and is clearly stressful much of the time.

That said, I'm still doing most of the cooking and all of the food shopping and errand running, and have _way_ less leisure time than my wife, since she still has some time in the day to relax, do some exercise, read a book, etc. Whereas I am struggling to keep up with work.

WTF, the US is going to have an executive order suspending immigration?

I bet you it isn't.

75: Thanks, Lurid. The boys are still in Japan with their grandparents, and Hitsuji's school has gone online until at least after Golden Week in early May. His classes are full-on in real time, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. plus homework, which would make doing them from the UK difficult because of the time difference (night school!). Tatsu is still working editing his friend's Fortnite videos - viewing figures have spiked even higher since the lockdown- but his direct flight home in May has finally been officially cancelled, so he has to decide whether to stay and hope there are flights in the summer or to try and reroute while there are still definitely flights from Tokyo. They aren't seeing their father because their grandmother has banned in-person contact as an infection risk. I think they're both doing all right where they are - in fact they get more exercise and sunlight there because they actually listen to their grandparents telling them to go out for a walk - so my instinct is for them both to stay until Hitsuji's term ends in July and come back together then. Hopefully there will still be flights at that point.

JFC my dad is forwarding nonsense like this to me.

Your parents are politically unhinged, and it's wise to view these things like a small child throwing a tantrum.

155: I bet we will have one written and signed that is challenged in courts and doesn't end up happening, but will test the limits and eventually have some permanent, court-approved form like the Muslim ban.

Oops. Me.

OK, having now read 'The Power': it's good, and well written, and so is 'The Story of O', next to which in the bookshelf this book surely must go. There is a lot of sexual violence. Shame on all, etc.

On the question: 'is the fear in the world equally distributed?', I'm not sure this book will help you to answer that, although it may prompt reflection.

Boy, that was fast. No spoilers! I got about two more pages read last night and then fell asleep.

Haven't read the comments yet, but I was definitely doing less office work and more parenting than Cassandane for the first couple weeks of this. My time sheets show it, among other things, and her office made history for their response to the coronavirus whereas mine didn't. It might have been even or she might have had a slight edge for the following couple weeks. She probably has a strong edge on parenting for the past few days due to me changing contracts. Which is rapidly getting frustrating, maybe I'll comment in more detail on it soon, but anyways. I hope it'll get somewhat more equitable soon, both out of principle and because juggling work computers sucks.

156 is good to hear, thanks.

I think I will have to draw the line at a workflow where my workday is broken up by homeschooling, and then work gets shunted into the evening hours, because "literally no free time" is not psychologically tolerable for me. It all fits now, but I can imagine a scenario where work ramps up a lot, and it's not great.

I now have dry active yeast. Whole Foods must have broken up an institutional-sized pack and parceled it out in their own packaging.

I have no clue who buys a 1/24th scale model of a bunch of women in Daisy Dukes, but I suspect it's not a healthy group.

If you did psychological assessments of men who purchased all different sizes of figurines of scantily clad women and plotted maturity against the scale of figurine, I wonder what he line would look like.

This would have made much more sense on the other thread. Sorry.