Found an easier way to make cloth masks using hair elastics instead of tied straps. I can sew one in about five minutes now and they're easier to take on and off.

Another 518 cases reported here today.

Cluster found aboard a navy ship (after disembarkation). 200k people ordered to home quarantine after tracing.

After Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers laid to rest the carefully cultivated myth of the EU's irreversibility, europhiles argued that Britain was a special case, an island nation that could never fully commit to the continent. It's different when Italy turns against you.

The fallout from the virus could place a third of the 300 million informal jobs in Africa at risk, while between 9 million and 18 million formal jobs could be lost, according to McKinsey & Co. It also sees as many as 35 million people having their wages and working hours cut.

3 That's a very large ship.

1: How many are. You trying to have per person? I ordered a pack of 5 from a Sports bag company called Caraa and some more from Zazzle. The Zazzle ones let you insert a disposable mask inside as well.

If you do your laundry once a week does 7-8 per person I. The household get the job done? I won't get the ones I ordered until May, but I think we're going to be wearing masks of some kind for a while.

I feel like we sort of blew over the tragedy in Nova Scotia a few days ago - it's been mentioned in the comments by hb and jpj, but still: how horrible.

The 16mo baby has gone completely haywire. Don't know if it's a molar coming in or early-onset Terrible Twos. Or maybe she's just developing into a moody asshole who throws food everywhere.

I already gave up on working today and called in a personal day, because there's just no way.

I'm fine, as is my family.

9: She's signaling that she's ready to try Chipotle.

All well here. Moving to socialising over Zoom has been fairly smooth - this http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_15872.html#1943236 has now seen the light of day as a TTRPG campaign.

Or, if she's already tried Chipotle, she wants you to add guacamole.

Still all fine here! Beyond the fact that the beautiful gorgeous sunny weather is trying to demoralise me with hayfever, and so I have to just look out and can't even go and sit in the sun or take a walk without developing horrible sinus headaches. (I know, I'm lucky that I have a patch of a backyard that I can do that in!)

I finally got back to long, brisk walks last week, and I ran yesterday for the first time since isolation began. Still eating and drinking too much, but otherwise, my household is holding up well.

13: The child has indicated that guacamole is delicious but also belongs on the floor sometimes.

Right. Then all you have to do is point out that "almost never" is still "sometimes".

Still holding it together here. Realized that my toe on the injured foot is independently injured, so I need to talk to the podiatrist about that. Certain housemates who shall remain nameless have been hogging all the chicken tenders that were for the whole house to share. Did a zoom with the family on Sunday which was nice, my sister looked ok, and my niece also seemed in good spirits. I will be really glad when my foot is healed enough that I can take showers standing up.

We're all doing pretty well. I'm on new ADHD meds, and it makes staying at home 1000% better. My unmedicated state is both stuck on a couch and unable to figure out what to do, but also restless and cranky. My medicated state can do things and then not do things, and feel fine with both.

19: Are they better than the old ones?

We are mostly good. xelA has been amazingly difficult about home learning this week, and has been a little shit generally. He has, however, suddenly graduated to reading Harry Potter and "playing"* chess.

Which would be sort of fine, except he only wants to read Harry Potter rather than do any home schooling. And he is hyper-competitive and unable to handle losing, which makes chess a total nightmare.

I have had a crushing headache for 2 days, which means my tolerance for this is .... low.

* for 7 year old values of playing, and not chess prodigy levels, grumpy "can just about understand the rules and hates it when he loses any important pieces" levels.

Hard to say yet. My problem is getting headaches, and on the Adderall I seemed to get increasingly sensititzed over time.

Vyvanse is 1x day, not 2x a day, and on the first two days I did get a headache during the coming down period, and the timing was so clearly linked to that that I reconsidered my previous Adderall headaches - maybe taking two doses a day was just leading to one long never ending come-down induced headache, and I should have just tried XR.

At any rate, yesterday I didn't even get a headache at the end of the day, so if this ends up holding, I'll be very happy with it.

21: We should let him and Pokey zoom-chess. Pokey also really likes the idea of chess and knows what the pieces do. And he's also insanely competitive and cannot handle losing whatsoever. It will be an epic disaster.

Also the doctor was really funny when she was suggesting that I try Vyvanse, because she was basically saying, "This is the good stuff. It's really pure. It doesn't have all the impurities of those other stimulants. Uncut."

My son has had lessons in chess and can beat me very easily. I suspect he would be in bad temper if he lost, but it's been a couple of years since he's lost to me.

Apparently, making a little wedge of pawns isn't a very original opening strategy.

[giggle]

Answering a question raised some time ago about whether spread of infection is less of a problem in exurban/rural areas. NY Times list of the 20 US counties with the highest per capita numbers of cases, in order.

1 Marion, Ohio
2 Rockland, N.Y.
3 Westchester, N.Y.
4 Nassau, N.Y.
5 Pickaway, Ohio
6 Blaine, Idaho
7 Randolph, Ga.
8 Louisa, Iowa
9 Lincoln, Ark.
10 Suffolk, N.Y.
11 Union, N.J.
12 Orange, N.Y.
13 Terrell, Ga.
14 Passaic, N.J.
15 Early, Ga.
16 Hudson, N.J.
17 New York City, N.Y.
18 Orleans, La.
19 Dougherty, Ga.
20 St. John the Baptist, La.

The Ohio counties at the top are rural, and have large prisons. More interesting, Rockland County, New York, is extremely exurban, a long commute to New York City but very spread out (except fora few weird ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities that may skew the numbers). Westchester and Nassau are the close-in suburbs of New York City. Suffolk County New York is the Eastern half of Long Island, mix of suburbs, beaches, and rich people estates. Blaine County Idaho is Sun Valley. The Georgia counties are in the Southwest part of the state, very rural. The first two New Jersey counties are suburban. No real cities in the top 15! Then Hudson County New Jersey (Jersey City), New York City, adn New Orleans.

So, most rural areas are essentially free of virus to date, but they are definitely not safe.
Also of note, the exurban New York counties are very wealthy and very white

Also, WTF is Georgia opening up first.

They don't want SC to get the jump on them again.

re: 23

Oh god. It'd be a hilarious car crash.

Heebie, you probably already knew this, but with Vyanase you may need to limit your caffeine intake. Just saw some other imaginary friends of mine talking about that and thought I'd pass it along just in case!

My first quick read of 31 was that Vyanese and caffeine potentially made you susceptible to hallucinating imaginary friends.

A few more imaginary friends would make social distancing more bearable.

shiv's green card -- the literal card, not his residency status -- expired in January. I lost my absolute shit at him when I discovered this in March the same week that everything blew up, because when I mentioned it in November (your ten-year card is coming up!) he didn't listen to me. It is not a big deal on the surface -- he just needs a new picture and biometrics done. He's not out of status -- it's sort of like having a lost driver's license. It is processing. But now nothing is processing because the offices are closed, the President is a xenophobic nightmare, and the economy is blowing up. I don't know what happens if he loses his job without an easy way to prove that he's here legally to other employers. Does that make him a deportable public charge? Probably. So far his job is fine, and his employer actually managed to get stimulus money and sent out an e-mail reassuring everyone and pointing out that they had no layoffs in 2008, but employers lie all the fucking time.

Just move back to Canada? Sure! The Canadian border is closed to me of course, but who cares. Oh, wait, shiv also has to be the person to file the kids' Canadian paperwork and so of course that hasn't happened so we're having a lot of fun arguments about How I Cannot Be The Only Adult In This Fucking Household When It Comes to Immigration and Surprisingly I'm Not The Canadian Citizen Here and I Can't Register Their Births and Yes, Mom, You Voted For Someone Who Will Deport Your Son-in-Law.

We're fine. [sips coffee] This is fine.

Y'all are living such different lives from me. I'm at work, trying to fix some broken equipment, after which I will try to fix different broken equipment. Same old, same old. The surgical masks issued to all staff fit me poorly and fog my glasses, so I'm debating whether to be a princess about it or just suck it up. The other difference is that to avoid touching my face, I'm not wearing makeup and my (long) hair is pulled back into a bun or braid. I have had three people tell me they didn't recognize me, which is understandable given the mask and hair, but I could have done without the vaguely disgusted tone. I keep reciting to myself, "If I have to go to work in a pandemic, I'm going to be safe, not well-groomed."

A meatpacking plant one county over just announced 60 cases out of 1300 workers. Cases have peaked in Detroit but Grand Rapids is increasing, as other non-Detroit areas, which means that although overall caseload is decreasing, it's also not burning out.. Michigan is reopening garden stores and golf (and some other stuff) on May 1.

I'm having a ton of trouble sleeping. I apparently now just wake up at 3 am. We're fine, and our friends and families are fine, and AJ and I are very lucky to have jobs. Generalized stress, I suppose. Oh, and anger. There's that, but that's not all that different than the past three years of increasingly severe government failures.

I'm fine but definitely a little frazzled and not focusing as well. In the last two weeks I've had two moments of missing meetings just because I got confused about the time. Neither of which were a big problem, in both cases everything that would have happened in the meeting can be done over e-mail (and reasonably efficiently), but it's very unlike me to be so flaky.

It really is a different universe to picture leaving the house everyday for work like that. Strange.

One odd thing is: usually in life we all have several contexts that we switch back and forth between. I'm specifically thinking of the kids: they're at home, they're at school, they're at afterschool, etc.

Now they have one context, and they haven't left that context in six weeks, and it's like they're doing a very deep dive into this one environment in a way that you couldn't if you're switching back and forth.

A deep dive can go really well or really badly. A friend of mine is so overwhelmed with anxiety that she needed a break from her child, but felt terrified to send the child to the grandparents' farm for a week. Etc. A deep dive can also go really well, if everyone feels free from major fears or anxieties, free from cabin fever or loneliness, and is able to find ways to engage and enjoy themselves.

It's just a deep dive, however it goes. I definitely feel a widened gulf between our house and the outside world, just from no longer crossing back and forth as much anymore. (Except here.)

Maybe the deep dive isn't a universal experience? I'm not sure what the alternative is, though.

I have picked up some work from an outfit of simply incredible amateurishness and entitlement. They pay a good day rate, but have simply no fucking clue at all about management, editing, or making your way in a competitive market. It's like I have gone back to the ugnadiar ca 2005 except without the admirable colleagues and the unearned prestige.

In better news, I have managed to keep Queen Henrietta Maria'a Echo Show working for more than a week now, with only one interruption. Her Majesty is getting the hang of video calling, and if I stand beneath her window I can diagnose most wifi problems.

Also, it is possible that Nell Gwynne and I have secured a bijou little palace, hardly more than a hunting lodge really, which we might purchase even though we must apply to the moneylenders first. It would be very agreeable, though it lacks stables and even servants' quarters.

I find that the lockdown produces two longings in me, temporally incompatible, but emotionally harmonious: I want solitude, and I want a crowd. I long for the simple human experience of sitting in a cafe or bar and watching the world go by: the company of strangers like TV, that I can attend to or not as the impulse moves me. Well, I'm going to have three days of solitude now, and at the end of it will be very glad of Ume's company. But I am surprised by how much I want there to be other people around. We didn't feel at all like that when we were walking in the mountains last summer. On the other hand, this has gone on much longer -- and the scenery here is primed for people. Deserted streets are unnerving in the way that deserted reindeer pastures are not.

34: I've been trying to get Tim to do his citizenship application. He put it off because of the backlog Trump created when he required interviews for employment-based green cards. He also didn't want to have to be sworn in while Trump was President, but now I wish he had it.

I am very worried about the fall semester, on a personal level. Suppose there is a ban on gatherings of more than ten people? Will the public schools be able to function? Will my entire semester be online?

My online month has been very successful, due heavily to:
1. Watering down the material significantly
2. Relying heavily on my existing rapport with the students
3. putting a ton of time into making it work.

If it were an entire fall semester, it would seem:
1. - not so okay to water down an entire semester
2. - no existing rapport with students
3. - I suppose I could use this summer wisely to do the work ahead of time, but I'm generally pretty shitty at that kind of thing.

We're still fine here. The mayor and governor announced tentative plans for phased reopening based on improving conditions, with the primary trigger being a 14-day downward trend in new cases. We only had two new cases confirmed yesterday statewide, so we may well be on that downward trend already though it's too early to say for sure. The plans call for restrictions to be reimposed if cases start to increase again. It seems like a reasonable approach to me, and it's interesting that the mayor and the governor (who are very far apart ideologically) seem to be coordinating well on this.

The rest of the school year was officially canceled yesterday. Nia cried for a while and then decided to focus on beefing up her birthday list. Odile moved in last night and that's been great, though I overdid it with cleaning and organizing and now I am pretty wiped out. But taking it easy and just cooking today (and dishes and laundry) is easy enough and it's been very pleasant. Nia and Mara are doing more band time (guitar and drums) and Selah wants to pick up an instrument but her suggestion is saxophone and I'm not buying one for a 7-year-old. She's not really interested in the piano that's already in the room. She's also doing close to zero schoolwork and I need to be better about fighting her on that but fuuuuuck. I don't want to.

Aside from spending too much time on random data analysis, I'm fine. The law firm is still trying to find the perfect covid-19 class action, while many competitors have beat us to the punch.

Surly teenager is marginally less surly since the DMV announced that it plans to start giving drivers license tests in May, before his birthday. Will it happen? Stay tuned!

Also, the school district announced that the senior prom is NOT cancelled, but is rescheduled to mid-June (not relevant to surly teenager who is not a senior). I'm sure social distancing will work well there.

I think we are definitely on the cabin fever end of the spectrum. Mrs ttaM is enjoying it much more than me, because she is getting quality kid time, and no work (she hates her work). Whereas I am overwhelmed by work, but failing to do it all as efficiently as I normally would.

40 is me so hard. I spend a lot of my time either sitting in the corner of our department lounge or going to a coffee shop and mostly doing my work but being briefly distracted by overheard conversations and people walking in and out. I just want to go overhear a first tinder date in a coffee shop. I'm really struggling with quarantine life. I've developed insomnia every other night where I spend 3 hours thinking about math from 11pm-2am even though I spend the day doing too little math. Heebie's comment is making me want to try ADD medication, but I'm not sure how I'd even go about that with my primary care doctor out of state.

I'm really sorry to hear it, Cala. That would be beyond stressful in a normal time, never mind a pandemic.

Technically OK. We also just had school cancelled for the rest of the year today, which hit the 7-year-old pretty hard, and caused him to realize that summer camp might not happen, either. Speaking of summer, we acquired an air conditioner for the non-climate-controlled attic we've got our home offices in, and now I'm dreading getting it up the stairs.

Haven't been inside a store in a month. The slightly-random-box-of-groceries-from-a-restaurant process has been working out well for us so far.

I'm astoundingly unproductive at work, and they're being very understanding and tolerant, but at the very least it's taking an emotional toll to be technically working and feeling pretty useless.

Watching more TV. Finished The Good Place, not sure where to go next to be distracted from everything.

I paused my profile on both my dating apps, but apparently people are still trying it and even having remote first dates? Seems doomed to fail, honestly, but the longer this period gets the less I want it to be a dead period for me in relationship potential.

49: they are about to start letting restaurants sell groceries here (zip my town). How does that work where you are?

"trying it" = dating apps, not my profile

Still doing fine. A pretty good weekend; we installed Diablo III again and played for hours on Saturday, then again Sunday evening. I've done some good cooking -- the weather's beautiful, so we've fired up the grill and really enjoyed hamburgers and grilled chicken. I've put some pork in the slow cooker to shred over tortillas tonight.

Saturday was my first grocery store queue during the pandemic; it wasn't long (only 10-15 minutes outside the store, with a patient crowd and clearly taped off standing indicators. Everyone in masks was odd, as was the experience of wearing them. Oddly, the first time out (picking up Thai Friday night), my mask slipped off my ear and swung open like a barn door within the first minute or two; I was embarrassed, but they were nonchalant. I had no issues for the much longer grocery shopping trip, so that's probably just a thing to double check when putting them on.

My wife's hit a bit of a stumble -- late last week she was doing well and focusing on getting the e-commerce site up. But her motivation is highly variable, easily smashed by the national news and rumblings of state and local rule changes. She's currently half-anticipating a return to modified work on May 6, when the current set of restrictions ends -- but probably curbside or delivery only. Essential stores have been operating under half-occupancy requirements and documents -- the least restrictive update imaginable would be extending those restrictions to non-essential businesses, which would allow for limited shopping and possible (heavily modified) events. One big reason for her annoyance is that the next-door city announced that their "big hat days" celebration is still scheduled for June... well outside of any reasonable expectation for public gatherings in CA. But they've been flaunting closure of non-essential businesses for the last month, so maybe they'll steam ahead anyway.

50: My brother had a Zoom first date that apparently went well. "Doomed to fail" is kind of his thing, though.

I just got a call back from the unemployment office after I called them April 3, though they'd been calling a few times a week to give me a prerecorded message letting me know I was still in line and they'd get to me when they could. I'm getting unemployment (I think; this latest check hasn't shown up yet and I don't know what's going on with the $600 thing either, though I got a one-time payment of 5-something with my first check) but the Tier One Customer Service Rep I talked to couldn't do anything about the fact that one quarter's earnings hadn't been listed (and thus aren't counting toward the base amount that determines how much I get paid) other than to say that lots of other people were having this problem too. I just sent an email that's supposed to make a note in my file, but it took five tries to be able to log in and find the email address and that was after "make a service request" sent up an error message three times. And all of this seems tons and tons better than what it's like for my friends in Ohio, most of whom haven't gotten through to even get approved.

The mayor and governor announced tentative plans for phased reopening based on improving conditions, with the primary trigger being a 14-day downward trend in new cases.

That sounds very similar to what I have heard here - the trigger for reopening will be two weeks of declining numbers.

51: Somerville affirmatively allows it. Cambridge hasn't banned it, and the first few I did were from restaurants there. They generally put up a list or some online order form with time slots included; one place did delivery (with or without a normal takeout-food order). I got a "dairy box" from one place, a fairly random veg-and-cheese box from another, and from one place that was just emptying their fridge before they closed, a flat of eggs and a 5lb bag of coffee.

56: There is a Whole Foods within walking distance of me where ai go for milk and yogurt, but I would love to get dairy delivered. Arlington said they were going to start doing it, but I don't know how to find a participating restaurant.

50: yes! Try it! Tell us everything!

Cala, that does sound grim.

Hypothetically, does Zoom now have a collection of pictures of people's genitals? Isn't that how J. Edgar Hoover made homeless a fixture?

My phone is getting worse and worse now that it knows I can't replace it easily. "Made himself a fixture."

34: They've never had the manpower around here for anything but illegals with felonies and that's likely even more so now. For real, I've had guys detained on calls where it turns out we don't have a criminal charge but they have an NCIC hit for a deportation order (non violent, just skipped on their court date), and the call to the local ICE guys was "we don't have time for that, cut him loose".

Doing ok. There has been a change in what kind of charade my job is, due to All This, which would require lots of boring explanation. I guess I'm mostly thinking they won't get rid of a bunch of us before July, so that's good in a way.

I have lots of projects to pass the time but am not working a great deal on any of them. I have done the Friday and Saturday NYT crossword every week for years and suddenly for reasons I don't underestand--you'd think I'd be really glad of the distraction and the feeling of something being consistent and just like before--I have kind of stopped doing it?

I'm lying on my back in Alamo Square with my laptop propped up on my legs. Just hit the 30K word mark on a novel about sentient bacteria. My bike is on its side next to me; I wish it were a dog. 15 or so social distances away, a naked man is meditating incredibly loudly. The pollen is making me sneeze like a motherfucker but it's worth it for the disinfectant properties of sunlight which I choose to believe the evidence supports.

It's great reading everyone's summaries. I wish we were all in a cabin playing Boggle.

I legitimately do believe in sunlight as a disinfectant! Which lets me feel justified in spending as much time as I can in the big park near my apartment. Boggle does sound good, though. Maybe Newt will play with me.

We are so diminished we are actually beginning to watch birds. I never thought it would happen to me.

62: I know, but "probably no one is going to bother to make a case of it" isn't super comforting with immigration law. It's a very weird area. Anyhow, we'll be OK. I just need like one motherfucking day off from crisis mode.

quagmire

Probably in a couple of weeks, we'll get into a new one.

Y'all are living such different lives from me.

My thought as well. No chance of being laid off for me or my wife, no kids at home, oversized house for two people, yard with roses and a garden and large park a block away, have workout equipment at home, etc. Wife's hating teaching online but I've got it pretty easy. The SRO's are working at the food pantries and lunch programs. The one I'm at is out of the Community Learning Center next to my middle school. Mon and Wed is unloading food deliveries and assembling the bags of food. Tues Thurs is additional deliveries and handing the foot out. I'm there four days a week for around four hours a day and get a decent amount of exercise out of all the lifting and carrying. Thank god my crazy sister and her three kids (8,6,4) moved out last year.

Still fine physically. I think I'd be fine mentally if not for the four-year-old, who constantly wants attention. Getting things set up at the new job has been a real pain but I think I'm over the worst of it, knock on wood.

We could be a bit better about social distancing. Today I went to the post office (taxes, plus a refund on stuff for the trip to Japan that didn't happen), Cassandane got takeout for dinner, and I'm going out in a minute to the bodega for some essentials. I think this will be the last outing until Monday, for whatever it's worth.

I really want to get some takeout, but we have not yet. I'll go to the grocery store tomorrow. It will be the first time in eight days I'll have been in a building that is not my house.

I think I'd be fine mentally if not for the four-year-old, who constantly wants attention.

Apologizing in advance for saying something unhelpful, but you know what my life lacks right now? A four-year-old who constantly wants attention. I miss my former four-year-olds.

I legitimately do believe in sunlight as a disinfectant!

I do too! It's also a great mood-booster. Today was grey and overcast and gloomy, and we had snow this morning, which didn't exactly help overcome my recent failure to distinguish one day from another, and perhaps one season from another, as well (is it Monday? or Tuesday? is it finally Spring? or are we living through a seemingly everlasting Winter?...).

7- we just have a couple per person because we never go anywhere. Weekends we've been walking around empty college campuses catching Pokémon, and haven't gone within 20 feet of anyone else. So far hit Tufts, Harvard divinity, Harvard law, Harvard business, MIT, and BC. Maybe Wellesley next weekend.
56- suggest any places? I could use a flat of eggs, between baking and breakfasts and desserts I think we've gone through about 8 dozen in a month.
My goddamn oven broke today, less than two years old. Pretty sure it's the igniter so going to try to fix it myself with a part arriving Thursday even though I try not to mess with things connected to a gas line.
They're repaving my street and just started jackhammering right outside my window.

Oh and we played cards against humanity last night with our 13 and 15 year old which maybe wasn't appropriate but was entertaining enough. Apparently kids these days don't yet know everything.
I'm pissed my wife chose "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Full Frontal Nudity" over my "Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Female Orgasm" but she said the former was more apropos given Radcliffe's subsequent acting career.

Is Skyrim good/reasonably for a thirteen year old? Because it really seems like it could make my parenting easier.

If that's slang for a sex act I'm going to say no.

I guess the youth came up with their own version of the mile high club.

Was it somebody where who mentioned the guy who predicted only 500 COVID-19 deaths? I remember hearing about it and usually I hear about thing here. Anyway, he wrong and link text">a huge liar.

Was it somebody where who mentioned the guy who predicted only 500 COVID-19 deaths? I remember hearing about it and usually I hear about thing here. Anyway, he was wrong and a huge liar.

I win again!

80 was written on my laptop.

Richard Fenno died. That's too bad. I feel vaguely bad that I never finished his book.

I just came back from my first time outside my apartment in over two weeks. I had to do a big grocery shopping. And throw out the garbage (I don't generate a lot and I do the old trick of putting any organic garbage in a bag in the freezer so it doesn't smell.)Also hit the pharmacy and bought a pack of 100 disposable face masks and some hand sanitizer. Maybe I should have waited till next week during Ramadan but I was getting sick again of just eating pasta and had run out of soy milk and some other things, and I've been craving eggs. And cheese. Store was a bit busier than I had expected but not too bad, no doubt I'm not the only one who thinks the best time to go shopping is first thing in the morning during a weekday.

84: Keep on typing. That's why they call you a ghostwriter!

Lots of face mask wearing here, a lot more than the usual. I'm disappointed to see there is still construction going on around my neighborhood (which I can sometimes hear from my apartment). It looks like they're redoing the sewer lines or something.

15 or so social distances away, a naked man is meditating incredibly loudly.

Is he taint sunning?

Taint tinting, surely.

'Taint working: that's the way you do it -- get your money for nothing and your chicks for free.

I bet it caused the coranavirus. The timing is right.

And it's certainly batshit.

I'm starting to feel a phantom mask even when I'm not wearing one.

81: Links don't quite work, but the Epstein thing fascinates me. The first thing he does is predicts 500 US deaths -- and explains how he arrived at that number. He took the then-current number of US deaths, compared it as a ratio to the then-current number of world deaths. He then projected 50,000 world deaths and used the ratio of current US deaths (where the virus had barely gotten started) to the then-current total of world deaths. He came up with 500.

When that number immediately became obsolete, he said that oops, he made a mistake -- but he never described the mistake. He said US deaths would be 5,000 -- again, still based on the 50,000 world deaths.

So now that he has gone back and adjusted history - pretended that the bullshit never happened - surely this is going to damage his reputation, right? The Hoover Institution is going to have to fire him.

Hah! Who the fuck names their scholarly institution after Herbert Fucking Hoover? It's like they've made an overt commitment to being wrong on the biggest issues of their time.

something something intellectual vacuum

It's worse than that- he didn't pretend it didn't happen, he tried to edit the correction to his original piece to make it look like the original "mistake" was to say 5000 so that then the unexplained "correction" updated his original number to 50k, which is still too low but probably not 2-3 orders of magnitude low. He then changed the URL so that people trying to find the original correction would find the edited one. It shows not just an error and not just trying to hide past mistakes but active deception to make himself still seem correct after two howlingly bad estimates.

I'm will to believe buttholes are intensely sun sensitive, but I just don't understand how someone can be so free of dignity.

Is Skyrim good/reasonably for a thirteen year old? Because it really seems like it could make my parenting easier.

Sure! My kid has been playing it since he was 10, and I am totally a responsible parent.

Who the fuck names their scholarly institution after Herbert Fucking Hoover?

Montgomery County, Maryland? I almost went to Herbert Hoover Jr. High School.

96 to 95.

77/97: I would say yes, but warning that it is violent. The game is mostly played first person, and you use melee weapons and bows to harm other people. That being said, it isn't particularly realistic. Sexuality is also alluded to, but isn't a major component. I recall one small side quest where you help somebody slut shame someone else. And there's drug use. One side quest I stumbled across in my most recent playthrough involves going to what's essentially an underground opium den; you gradually realize that the dealers are actually vampires who are farming the patrons for blood.

All that being said, it's probably about perfect for someone developmentally that age, there will be some mildly challenging ideas (in a civil war between fascist collaborators and white supremacists, who do you side with?), but mostly it's dumb fun. All problems are solved by either collecting items or putting an axe in the right person's head.

And then I took an arrow to the knee.

The vacuum cleaners are named after Hoover because they really suck.

cala - if you need an immigration law consult get in touch with me through heebie, i have an extremely high quality referral for an area rife with super shitty lawyers. seriously - at least do a phone consult with her if you need a lawyer, at a minimum to set the bar for anyone else to clear.

better half has completed everything on his end to renew his green card, just waiting on them to send it. and waiting. he'd also submitted everything needed to get citizenship, have no idea whether he'll ever get an interview ...

we are otherwise fine and continuing to enjoy each other, thank god. 420 was amazingly peaceful, the only benefit of this wretched pandemic thus far. the neighborhood (across the panhandle from the haight-ashbury) is usually literally overrun - like, cars trying to drive down the sidewalks, immovable traffic jams, hordes of people spilling out of the park and into neighborhoods for blocks and blocks. this year - a tiny uptick in the number of spaced out young people walking in the park? plus they barricaded off hippie hill and for a couple of hours there were constant helicopters flying overhead. marijuana enthusiasts - open to public health messages! although can you imagine being dependent on unfiltered smoking during this misery? yikes.

the weather is supposed to warm up to the high 60s-low 70s for the next few days, without much fog, so hoping the prediction holds true as could really use the mood lift.

86: heh.

97/98: Thanks. I already bought it because honestly what else is he going to do?

Another 608 cases here today.

Ok, shit, what's going on there?

102: It's a good time sink. It's also very pretty, modulo its age, and the music is astounding, modulo it being made by a rapist.

Arrakis has a similar number of total cases and number of daily cases to Belarus, but doesn't have the whole play-football-while-Rome-burns thing going on. A lot fewer deaths, though.

IMO there's no point in trying to stop kids from enjoying cultural products with some kind of fucked up element, because that's most cultural products, but it is a good idea to engage with them about those elements and try to put them in context.

We applied to renew the kids' passports on Feb 29. State department cashed the checks the following week but we still haven't gotten anything back yet which means the kids have no photo ID or ability to leave the country. Which probably isn't important right now but is still the kind of thing that makes you slightly nervous.

If you go to rural Maine, you could probably walk into Canada and hope for the best.

Hmm. Our kids have never had any ability to leave the country.

Though Covid and Lyme is maybe not a great comorbidity to have.

Re: Skyrim, it's more young teen friendly than The Witcher. Certainly less sex/nudity. It does have some fairly dark questlines, though nothing that I can remember like, say, The Bloody Baron.

I thought that was Harry Potter.

re: 44

Saxophones are stupidly loud. I played tenor for a few years, and gigged in a band, and I loved it. But I literally couldn't practice in apartments. At least with trumpets and other brass instruments you can get a mute (and even a fancy mute with headphones etc).

Plus you have to be able to pronounce the word "embouchure" out loud.

I had wondered why the saxophonists here all seem to practice under highway bridges.

104 I think much the same that you were pointing out with that story about Singapore (though they are nowhere near Singapore in their response- still though, miles above the US response), which is migrant workers living in dormitories and still being bused to worksites.

70: The world is so small. I started following your sister's Instagram years ago, never realizing the connection. I followed back when she was married because she posted interesting content and I like following people that live near me. At some point in the past year someone left a comment on one of her posts with your last name and I wondered if there was a connection. You mentioning the ages of her kids confirms it!

I'm will to believe buttholes are intensely sun sensitive, but I just don't understand how someone can be so free of dignity.

George Clinton said, "Free your mind and your ass will follow". Listen to the Mothership, heebie.

Honestly, sheltering in place has been strangely pleasant so far. Working from home and the weather is great so I have the windows open and listen to birds all day. We take hour-or-so-long hikes on the trails around here most afternoons and I'm finding pulling weeds from the beds around the house (a habit I certainly never had before) a surprisingly satisfying diversion. The kids mostly stay in their rooms chatting with their friends and playing video games and could hardly care less about distance learning. Without fast food breakfasts and food truck lunches, I've even dropped about five pounds since this all started. Plus I don't have to make any excuses for not showing up to this or that social obligation and can fully indulge my latent hermeticism.

93: Pity Stanford, who have no other presidential alumni to name their fake-Spanish concrete phallus after. They really put the free-enterprise dipshits in the tower too; my college girlfriend worked as a campus tour guide and along with all the tourists she shuttled up and down in the elevator were sometimes prominent nineties Republicans. One time she got Gingrich and was surprised he didn't look more like the caricature.

118: This is me too - strangely happy and content. I'll wait to scorch my butt for when I've got something to complain about.

Oh good, I have something to complain about.

Remember how they asked me to tarp up my office so that they could work up in the ceiling next week?

I emailed and said " Can you tell me a little bit more about what I should do to prepare my office for next week? I can come get my plants, but I don't think I can tarp up my bookshelves by myself. (And I don't have any tarp...)"

I just got this reply: "The book shelves can stay and we can work around them, but we wanted to give the opportunity for you to move them if you want, as they will get dirty. Also there were a few items around the case that we will have to move. "

I don't understand! I just don't want them dirty! I don't want to move all my bookshelves out! I also don't want to suntan my taint!

Anyone who's interested in playing in an invitation-only online trivia league (Learned League) should email me. It's nerdy, but it's fun, and I have invitations to give away.

I kept losing, but I think that's because google stole my memory.

I lose a lot too, but it's still fun.

Yes, it was. I only stopped because my new job was requiring an adjustment.

I looked into a bunch of portable saxophone options but ended up buying a 3/4-size guitar, solely acoustic this time. Can't hurt! And I'm in favor of time spent noodling, especially when it means leaving me alone. Now I guess I just need hooks for hanging guitars or it's going to get a bit more cozy than we can handle even if Odile doesn't end up getting herself one too.

We have maybe a 1/3-sized guitar. Maybe it's just a ukulele? I don't know how to tell. As long as nobody plays it, I'm fine with it.

If you see a Facebook post from a friendquaintance about getting turned down for a job at Trader Joe's is it weird to offer them some money from stimulus you don't urgently neeed?

Do you still have the oud, Thorn?

129: I do indeed, but I don't want to share! And I really haven't learned to do anything useful with it. I've picked up sashiko embroidery and crochet in the last year or two, but nothing that takes actual thought or work. I hope I will someday.

My gift to you all today is spreading the good word of Joel Dongsteen, a bot that replaces "God" with "your dick" in Joel Osteen tweets.

https://twitter.com/JoelDongsteen

The internet is truly a thing of wonder.

A sample for you non link clickers.

Your dick can do what medicine cannot do. Medical science may run out of options, but your dick never runs out of options. He breathed His life into you. He has the final say; nothing can snatch you out of His hands.

Your dick says, "Be still and know that I am your dick." You could think of a hundred things that could go wrong, but your dick didn't bring you this far to leave you. He's keeping the trouble from defeating you. Stay in peace; you're in the middle of a miracle.

Your dick has waited on all of us. Now He's asking, "Will you wait on someone for Me?" Will you call them, encourage them, let them know that you care?

I cannot get enough.

Are you recognizing the Source? Are you thanking your dick for every good thing? The more you acknowledge your dick's goodness, the more of His goodness you will see.

Oooh! Everyone list your SAT scores, income, and learned league rundle! In our household we did really well last LL with two promotions, I'm now in B and RWM is in A!

Looking up LBs stats... Impressive! Why did we never have an Unfogged pub trivia team?

These are trying times but keep in mind

When you honor your dick, you are connected to a supply line that will never run dry. You're not at the mercy of the economy or who likes you or what your boss does. Your dick has all kinds of resources He can use.

Reading this thread backward and getting to 131, I LOLed.

128: Yes. Unusual kindness is weird.

But I mean, is there any chance it would be taken badly, in, like, we don't know each other all that well/I didn't ask for money/I don't take charity kind of way?

140: Absolutely. Offer anyways. Better to get told no than to wonder if you could have done more.

129, 130: my guitar lend is ready!!! v excited, need to arrange socially-distanced hand-off. the oud is sso sexy, waaaay more than guitar, wow. also, thorn - please keep in mind that a "mindless" practice is *extremely helpful* in maintaining sanity, my god the most helpful sustaining things i've done in the last week are walks, bike rides and kneading pasta dough. just to take the edge off with some mindless repetitive physical activity. soooooo necessary.

strongly endorse 141.

What about sending them a check anonymously? "Here is some money, no strings attached." Probably the easiest way is to get a 3rd party to give money on your behalf, and agree to keep you anonymous, and include a note from you.

Oh that would have been a good idea, and easy to implement since we do have tons of friends in common, but it's too late I sent a Facebook message.

If he says no

Too often, we're discouraged over what your dick has ordained. But there are times your dick will take you backward before He thrusts you forward. The cutback is a test.

If he says yes

Your destiny is connected to helping the people your dick has put in your life. Who can you bless, who can you help heal?

I'm no great shakes. There are some Unfogged-associated players who kick my ass reliably and effortlessly.

144-145: There was a time that I had two friends who embodied opposite ends of the value system we are discussing. One of them was a man of great personal decency who contended that all charity ought to be anonymous (Ken). The other was a morally dubious character in his personal life who enjoyed making a big public show of his good deeds (Terry).

I don't know which of them had a bigger beneficial impact on the world, or even which of them made bigger sacrifices. Of course with Ken, I don't know in part because he was simultaneously quite generous and quite serious about not advertising his charity.

Ken was anti-union -- not vociferously, and not in a way designed to sabotage pro-union people. But in a right-to-work state, he wasn't going to participate. Terry would stand up in front of a crowd and make ostentatious, effective table-pounding speeches in a way that jeopardized a career he was deeply devoted to. But he was useless in the behind-the-scenes work of unionism; the picket lines; the envelope stuffing; the participation in union leadership or the nuts-and-bolts work of unionism.

Ken's view -- with all of its genuine humility and decency -- gets something importantly wrong about virtue, I think. Ken viewed charity, in a sense, as egocentrically as Terry did, because Ken thought charity was primarily about his own moral improvement, rather than improvement of the world.

I loved 'em both. Terry is dead -- emphysema and alcoholism. I've lost track of Ken, but I'm pretty sure I'd know if he were dead. I think about them both a lot.

I got a "I couldn't accept that much money, but here is my Patreon if you want to sign up, which will help me in the long run and also make me feel like I'm earning a wage with my writing." If I sign up at the highest level it gets me to the amount I intended to give in four months anyway.

What about sending them a check anonymously?

The scripture says, "What you do in secret, your dick will reward in the open." Don't worry if you're not getting credit. Don't get discouraged if people don't thank you. Your dick sees your sacrifice.

135: I kept getting to the top of Rundle C and then losing. I never got into B.

151:

You can still become who your dick created you to be. The question is do you want it bad enough? Stir your passion up and make the decision, "I'm not going to live complacent, passive, accepting mediocrity. I'm going to pursue what your dick put in my heart."

Moby, remember

Despite the mistakes, despite the failures, despite the delays, your dick is saying, "I'm still going to bless you. I'm still going to heal you. I'm still going to bring that dream to pass."

I'll try to keep that in mind.

gswift needs to join LearnedLeague and write a special topics quiz inspired by Joel Dongsteen.

I missed the question on Bob Dylan in yesterday's 70s Music. I like to believe his born-again period never happened.

gswift, that is EPIC. Wow.

The 70s were a different time.

135: I'm annoyed about the new rules that put the top three in A into the championships because I was holding steady at 8th or so until a bunch of people tanked on the last day and threw me into third. I did pretty well for having a concussion last championship but I don't enjoy it and had thought I was safe this year. (I did well enough on my SATs and make slightly too much to qualify for Medicaid as an individual but have lots of headroom there with three kids.)

So anyway, my ex-mother-in-law died tonight. She had been looking up, but I guess she had a second round of pneumonia and didn't come back from it. She and my wife weren't close (and obviously she and I weren't, either) but I feel very bad for my father-in-law and half-brother-in-law.

Blah. Step-mother-in-law.

tom scudder, i'm so sorry. that close a brush with death - you feel it, even if you weren't close. much sympathy.

My condolences, Scudder.

Bleg: I need to buy a laptop today. Windows, good for some years, fast but not hectic (no gaming).
What processors, how much memory?

Tom Scudder, I am sorry for your loss. Whether or not you were close, it's upsetting and unnerving to have death claim a member of your family circle like that.

Just get an XPS 13

75: Chip in Farm in Bedford (near the Airforce Base) is an egg farm, and the prices are good. They are about a week fresher than what you get at the grocery store, so they last longer. They are open, but you have to call in advance for curbside pick up. They have reduced their hours and you have to order further in advance now, but if you can plan and pick up during the day, it's a good option.

Another 623 new cases here today. It was 608 yesterday. That's almost flat, right?

the trigger for reopening will be two weeks of declining numbers.

What's the trigger for closing again when the numbers go through the roof?

We're OK. Not too bored because reading is what I mostly do anyway since I stopped working. Mrs y has to write a bid for government money to provide services that would not be competed for in a civilised country. But she's good at that FWIW. Also, WTF do you propose as projects to occupy/feed kids over the summer under these conditions, bearing in mind that most of them will have no online facility because thy can't afford it?

141. Yes, that is the thing and the whole of the thing.

TS, sorry to learn that. Hard enough in normal times...

One of them was a man of great personal decency who contended that all charity ought to be anonymous (Ken). The other was a morally dubious character in his personal life who enjoyed making a big public show of his good deeds (Terry).

I have a friend who is more of a Terry than a Ken, but it's more extroversion and lack of self-awareness than being morally dubious. What I mean is that she's very extroverted and charming in person, but is a bit tone deaf on social media about how much of her charm falls flat in the written word. So you get things like these big, earnest appeals that if ANYONE is the slightest bit hungry ANYWHERE, please pm her and she will bring a big bag of groceries over and to a drop-and-dash to their front door.

I genuinely believe that she believes she's making these grand gestures out of a desire to take action immediately to make the world a better place, and that just plain volunteering at the food bank maybe hasn't occurred to her? I honestly don't know. Her gestures are flashy and spontaneous.

At the same time, she's got a whole lot of people who see her and look up to her, and like Terry, I imagine that she does help cultivate a world which promotes charity and helping others. I try to see her actions through that lens instead of being perpetually annoyed.

Yes, very sorry for the loss Tom.

If you do charity anonymously, some times you'll get caught at it anyway. The people who catch you may think other good things happening were done by you.

Sympathy, Tom.

I think the larger lesson I'll take from this interaction is that if the person you'd like to support is any kind of creator, the lowest friction, most supportive question to ask is, "do you have a Patreon?" Or you can just try to find that info without asking.

Thanks, people. We were both sure she was going to die when she first caught it - she was a terrible risk for various reasons - but then she seemed to be getting slowly (agonizingly slowly) better. And then, not.

My condolences, Tom.

175: Someone I know through work had a similar experience. Her father was getting better but then he died.

S/h/b 174.

173 I think the kids are doing OnlyFans these days .

Ramadan Kareem to all. Time to celebrate by opening up a new bottle of Jameson.

That's the usual way to celebrate it?

I don't even have any whisky.

Technically, I think the vanilla extract counts as an apéritif.

I will go take a celebratory bite of my bourbon vanilla Haagen Dasz!

118: And 24 hours after posting about how nice my lockdown experience has been, I'm now unemployed. That turned quickly.

Yikes.

I'm sorry, apo. That sucks.

184: oh no, shit. I'm so sorry.

Happy Jamesadan, Barry! There has never been a better time to make a series of Drunk Islamic History videos, you know.

Without much time to read over the thread, sorry for your family's loss, Tom. The amount of unacknowledged grief in this country right now is staggering. I want someone to stand outside the White House every day and read the names.

Apo, that sucks. Is it temporary, permanent, for-the-foreseeable-future...?

One of my uncles had a major stroke this morning and is in the ICU outside Chicago. His wife and daughter called 911 last night, but the paramedics were unconvinced that there was a serious problem; wife and daughter kept a close watch on him and drove him to the ER in the middle of the night, so according to my aunt, he was in care and being evaluated when the actual stroke began. This seems like it would raise the odds of a better outcome (they gave him tPA and so on), but it's still not good. I love my uncle, and I'm shocked that I'm so numb. I must be doing so much general emotional suppression right now, without even really noticing.

I am so sorry, LK.

I'm sorry to hear that lurid. My dad had a stroke and the stroke and the recovery was very scary for all involved.

188: Permanent. Me and about 10% of my company.

That's not good.

My son is now enchanting chickens to attack guards and then reanimating the chicken after the guard kills it. I'm going to count this as biology instruction.

Fucking hell, Apo; I'm sorry to hear that. Also condolences to Lurid and Tom.

damn, 184/191 sorry to hear that apo.

And sympathy to LK and Tom.

163: get 16 gb and a decent i7 for future proofing. And a good sized SSD. Otherwise, a lot depends on how much you lug it around, and how often it's the only screen you are using.

Oh, man....sympathy to Tom, apo, and lk.

A bit of positivity - my mom had a stroke about 15 years ago, and although she did have a difficult period of recovery, now, at 88 years old she's still living on her own in downtown Tel Aviv, and is in remarkably good spirits even with the quarantine.

Thanks, all. Early reports are positive. Another uncle had a severe stroke six years ago and is still pretty impaired, so everyone is jumpy, but so far this case seems to be going better. I'm glad your mom is well, peep! The stray cats of Israel must be loving quarantine (assuming they don't get catrona).

I bet most of them are nervous that Bibi is still running things.

Sympathy, Tom and apo. Lk, I hope your uncle makes a rapid and full recovery, but I'm sorry and how stressful to need hospitalization now!

Best wishes, apo and lurid.
Thanks, sb.

App- Am I right that you do technical writing for pharma research? Why would that be affected by this?

191 That's really awful.

apo - so sorry, what a disorienting misery.

lurid, hoping the best for your uncle, so glad he got medical care right away.

Apo, that is just awful. Damn this stupid virus: it is not only killing people, it is also upending people's lives in all sorts of horrible and unpredictable ways.

Lurid, I hope your uncle is okay.

Delurking again wish sympathies to Apo. Much of my mental energy lately has been navigating hr issues--the sort issues I'd thought I'd avoided working for a university.

Also want to send good wishes to Tom, Lurid, and Apo.

202: I think this was more company-specific than industry-specific, but things are disrupted all over and probably brought it to a head sooner rather than later.

I interviewed for about three different jobs there, about twenty years ago. No offers, so I had to work for Duke instead.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/appreciative-neighbors-howl-for-health-care-workers-in-missoula

Hey, uh, when is it appropriate to call the police about a missing person and what could they do? My brand new as of today temporary roommate went out for a walk to Central Park yesterday early evening. I was going to have class till 10, I told him. I went to bed and he wasn't back, and I just woke up and he appears to have never been home. I sent him a text and didn't get an answer, though if he's at someone's house he may be sleeping by now. Honestly I know I don't know him that well, but he has seemed promptly communicative. If he decided to sleep elsewhere I feel like he would have shot me a line. It's just so bizarre to arrive your first day at someone's house, drop off your stuff, go out in the early evening and not come home. In normal times it's easier to understand what might lead up to that behavior -- someone went out to a bar, etc. Now? It's hard to imagine the interaction that leads to a spontaneous night out. I mean typing it out it feels like the police are not going to be motivated by "this feels weird to me". Nor can I imagine what they could do.

There's a corpse in his luggage.

211: he may well have turned up by the time you get this, but a good way to approach it might be to imagine the sort of questions the police might ask when you called them, and work out what your answer might be.
So:
"OK. He didn't reply to your text yesterday. Have you tried calling him or sending another one?"
"Does he use WhatsApp or similar? Is he receiving and reading messages, and just not replying? Or is he not receiving them, or not reading them?"
"If he's just moved in, maybe he went back to his old place. Have you checked there?"
"Are there any friends he might have stayed with? Have you called them?"
"Did he seem worried or distracted when he went out? Where did he say he was going, exactly? When did he say he would be back?"
"Has he done something like this before ever?"

He's still not here as of 7L20 am. Now I've called him, and emailed him, and also FB messaged our friend in common. She could answer the last question. I searched for him on Whatsapp. Whatsapp says he was "last seen" at 8 pm yesterday. He was talking about going for a walk at around 6:30; I'm not sure what time he actually left. I don't know where his old place is (maybe our friend in common knows). He didn't seem worried. He was just going for a walk. All these contact attempts have between 2 am and 8 am on a Saturday morning so of course he could be sleeping.

Very sorry to hear that apo. That sucks.

And very sorry to hear about your uncle, lurid. That's terrible.

Tia, how well did you know this person, if at all, before you let them move in? Because ajay's last question will be the first one anybody asks.

I just found his Facebook page to see if I could get a sense of who else I might contact if this goes on. It's hard to tell who he's actually close to. He's friends with Yoko Ono.

Oh Jesus, Tia. That's weird. Does he regularly use Whatsapp?

216: Very little, which is why I am not in a place to say what is characteristic. I am hoping that our mutual friend will get back to me and I can ask her if this was normal when he was staying with her.

I can only say that this surprises me on the basis of our three interactions thus far which I realize is not a broad sample.

Apo, that's appalling. So sorry.

Also, that's rough, LK. Fingers crossed for your uncle.

218: We've been communicating by phone mostly, so I don't know. Although my baseline guess of someone from Argentina would be yes.

Wait, he's following Yoko Ono. I just can't see his friends. I guess that's not an avenue of figuring anything out.

" between 2 am and 8 am on a Saturday morning"
It's... Friday today?

yeah I figured that out a little bit later and just didn't think it was worth another serial comment correcting. What are days?

Aaarg wait let me freak out about one last thing. I'm not sure how long he's been in NYC but he didn't seem hyper familiar with his surroundings. Like, he asked me how to get to Central Park, and I told him, but this is a question I would not have needed to ask with the aid of google maps -- it's literally two right turns and then straight on till morning from my house. He also asked me how the neighborhood was, and my answer was, fine, I would have no warnings in normal times, and I've been to the bodega at night recently, but further than that it would be hard for me to say because I don't know how it is right now. He told me the two times he's been on the subway since this started it didn't feel safe. Now I'm feeling like I should have said explicitly that the north end of the park is very different from the south and middle of the park (which I know he had experience with), and if we're adjusting the subways to being more like the seventies and eighties than a similar adjustment for the park would mean don't go in it after dark, especially not the north end. It wasn't clear to me that he was going to -- he just said take a walk toward the park and explore. It's only now that I'm picturing what that might have meant.

That is indeed strange. Any luck hearing back from the mutual friend?

No, she's probably not awake yet.

Definitely message him on WhatsApp, then at least you'll have an answer to my second question. If it shows one grey tick, it means the messages aren't reaching his phone. Two, and it means they are, but he's not looking at it. Two blue ticks, and he's reading them (and therefore OK) but not replying for some reason.

I did. Two grey ticks.

Speaking as a foreigner with a terrible sense of direction, it is really difficult to imagine getting lost in Manhattan's hyper-logical grid system unless he's lost or forgotten your address.

(That was an hour ago.)

Are you more worried that something has happened to him, or that he's the type of person who will go off and use bad judgement during a quarantine about minimizing exposure?

Obviously the former is worse, but I'm just saying which one is causing you more anxiety? Because I think the latter is FAR more likely than the former, but I don't know if that's reassuring or scary.

The former. I'm not worried about exposure. I actually don't understand why the latter is more likely, except I guess base rates. I am just struggling to imagine that this person who texted me when he was going to be 15 minutes late to my house yesterday and included an explanation of what had happened with the trains that caused it wouldn't drop me a line to say btw I'm not coming home.

I can understand that kind of person really well. They respond promptly to anything that matches their priority at the moment, and they neglect anything else. So while he's worried about making a good first impression, or finding your apartment, or whatever, then he responds promptly. If he went out and met someone cute, then that took over 100% of his brain and now you're being categorized as the nudge who is distracting him from his pursuit, or from enjoying his post-coitus, or just watching a movie at someone's apartment and stoned out of his gourd, or whatever. But his attention is elsewhere (if he is that kind of person).

It's the type of person who gets really fervent about being free as a bird, man, and you can't control me, and you're not the boss of me, and sees normal politeness through the lens of daddy issues.

With an adorable Argentinian accent, of course.

I mean, I guess. An extremely neurotic high key older Jewish white woman found him a caring and considerate house guest for a period of some weeks. I really didn't get this impression.

Ok, then you do have some evidence to the contrary from a 3rd party.

I was just fleshing out what kind of person stops responding to communication when something fun happens. But that isn't consistent with 237.

Under the circumstances, then, I would wait to hear back from the mutual friend. Get as much information from her re: previous address, habits, other friends and so on as you can, and check that all out. And also check what he took with him when he went out. Did he actually take his phone or is it sitting on the side table? Did he take a coat? A wallet?

If it doesn't lead anywhere, then I would call the police. He's been missing overnight and it's apparently out of character for him. You've got a description and a mobile phone number, which is apparently still functional per 229, so that's a good start.

The only things in the room of his are his suitcase and the drawstring bag (probably with clothes) that he brought with him. No visible phone, wallet, coat.

OK, well, useful to rule that out.

Keep trying his phone, then, and keep trying the mutual friend until she answers.

I would not worry until well after sleeping-in hours, ie after lunch.

I'm in touch with the friend now. She was very alarmed, said "he would never do that." The only additional piece of information she has is where he was staying before, a hotel, who she is calling now. She also thinks they are Facebook friends which would assist in contacting other people she knows. She's also freaking out, though, and I'm not sure she's going to be an easy person to work with in a systematic process. She also said, "this is all my fault," and that's going to be an intense construal to deal with.

I mean, if something bad happened to him, and the police were persuadable as to taking it seriously, there is some benefit to activating them sooner rather than later. If he were injured in the park then the best time to start looking for him is 12 hours ago, but the next best time is now.

I mean, maybe I should go. How do you canvas a park? I could probably post on a mutual aid group and find some people willing to do it with me.

Thinking about it, the most likely scenario: the Argie, as we all know, is a creature of the late evening. He considers 11 pm or later to be a good time for dinner. So it's possible that he went out, got a call from friends on his phone while he was out, went round to theirs, had a few drinks, had dinner, got a bit pissed and went to sleep on a couch at around 4 in the morning. He's still asleep.

The other scenarios all involve him being unable or unwilling to answer his phone. For example: he's been arrested, he's been hospitalised, he's lost his phone and therefore your address (and can't remember it), he's just ignoring you because he's being weird and inexplicable.

If he got injured in Central Park last night, wouldn't he have been found by now? It's big but not that big. It doesn't have huge areas of undergrowth; it isn't Hampstead Heath.

It's just possible you have accidentally entered into a late-80s text adventure game and this is the exposition?

The thought did occur to me.

248: no this does not characterize the north end of the park which is actually quite overgrown in many places. Gay men famously used to meet for sex there. It is also raining moderately heavily right now. Anyway he didn't go back to the hotel where he was staying.

251: ah, OK.

Anyway, I called 911 and gave an initial report and the police are coming to my house to take more information.

The overgrown bit is called The Ramble, and was intentionally laid out to feel bigger by being hard to walk in a straight line through and see where you're going. It'd still be weird to go missing in there, but there are certainly places you could be lying out of sight for a while.

Me.

253: good idea.

Never mind he's fine. Jesus. I wish I had gotten this text a little bit before I called the police.

It's good that you know at least.

Knowing ten minutes ago would have been better, yes.

257: Still a good result!

What an irritating thing to happen.

According to the friend, who spoke to him, he thought "not bothering me" was the considerate thing. Good god.

Anyway the police have come and gone so I can go get milk for my coffee and go about my day.

I don't think that's inconsiderate of him. It was late at night, so he didn't want to bother you. Now he woke up and got your messages and responded.

That's most missing person calls. "Call your mom you asshat, ignoring her now means she's calling me."

257 glad to hear it.

264: I ... what? You've arrived as a long-term guest at someone's house for the first time, during a pandemic in which outside the house socializing is supposed to be extremely constrained, although obviously many people aren't really bothering with that, including him, since he got dinner with friends and stayed over with them. You drop your things off and let them know you're going for a walk. You never come back. If he didn't want to send me a text he could have sent me an email, a well known form of asynchronous communication that isn't meant necessarily to need immediate response. People reading here synchronously thought it was reasonable that I call the police. If you're behaving in a way that makes it reasonable for someone to call the police because they think you're missing, you're not thinking too hard about representing their mental state.

761 new cases here. The curve. It is not flattening.

I agree up to the last sentence. You told him you had class until 10. So he let it go (and probably had a few drinks) and so didn't think to send an email last night. Then he went to sleep.

That's still consistent with your increasing panic - which took place while he slept. Then he woke up and responded.

269: I can *imagine* how this happened. It doesn't mean it was *considerate*. Anyway this is making me very angry so I am going to disengage right now.

I'm really sorry for getting on your case - I know you're really struggling, independent of this morning's events. I am perceiving things differently, but I'm also 2000 miles away and not in the epicenter of the crisis.

Like, literally the definition of "considerate" is that you adequately consider the other person and their perceptions and needs. Fucking that up because it's late and you've had a few or whatever doesn't make you considerate. He also, frankly, was not considerate of himself, because Friend just told me on the phone that he is also not really here legally, so taking actions that may lead another person, with synchronous confirmation that their actions are reasonable, to call the police to ascertain your whereabouts are pretty ill-advised.

But whatever, I'm going to get some milk.

I mean, for that matter, it is pretty ridiculous on your first night in someone's house in the middle of a pandemic to go out with friends without checking in with your host at all how they felt about this. It's literally a violation of the law here. As it happens, I don't actually care about this part of it, at least for my own sake, but I don't know how he can be sure of that and it really takes "considerate" right off the table.

209 was wrong. I was thinking about a different place and it was a long time ago.

274; You're right, Tia.

257 et seq: GAH. I mean, I am relieved that 247 was correct, but what a clot.

Seconding 276/7. That would be an inconsiderate way to treat someone who is a familiar friend, it's extremely inconsiderate to do as a first impression.

I guess I should clarify that I think it's a "inconsiderate but easy to stumble into" kind of rudeness. Like, it's a passive rudeness, not an active rudeness. He woke up, think "oh shit", and reach out to your host. It had outsized consequences.

I'll lay off now. Sorry again.