Mr. 7 seems to be on strike as regards school-from-home, or perhaps as regards getting out of bed. I sort of expect this around age 12 or so, but 7-almost-8 seems early.
My eldest had a particularly bad bout of senioritis, and then Covid hit and the school year basically ended for him. The schools switched to a pass/fail mode with an extraordinarily generous idea of what constitutes passing, and so he will, in fact, graduate.
1,742 new cases reported here today. A few more days and 2% of the pop here will have had it. Testing below 3,000 again (grumbles).
So the tracking app that they made mandatory under pain of 3 years in jail or a $55,000 fine had a huge security flaw. And the last 3 mornings I've seen security checkpoints on the opposing lane that I figured were either security checkpoints or to enforce compliance with the app installation law. I just read a news story and it's the latter. Fucking hell.
Why don't they just add the tracking to Pokemon Go?
1: That has been all year here with the 7-year-old. Whenever school reopens, she'll just be walking down the block to get there. Surely that will motivate her to do better than when I had to drag her out to the car? I hope.
Non-traditional instruction ended I guess only 10 days ago but it seems like forever. We're not doing anything structured until at least June, though the school will be giving iPads back out and offering more online activities over the summer that I'm hoping will keep the kids engaged a little. Mara can now play Twinkle Twinkle on her violin, as can my girlfriend Odile, who's also got the basic guitar chords down. (And her summer language work started last week, so German twice a week, Greek and Latin probably once each unless an old professor of mine and I decide to do a Greek reading group with her, which we should.) Nia is playing her clarinet more and I think has come out of her emotional tailspin, in part because Odile encourages her and listens to her and watches Riverdale with her, though her bizarre sleep schedules still have me concerned. 7-year-old Selah occasionally wears clothes and otherwise is engaged in either elaborate doll play or screentime pretty much all the time. She's feeling left out a lot of the time, but the older girls are trying to involve her in a fake band sometimes and include her when things are good.
My anxiety about all of this finally hit, though I think it's subsiding a bit. Unrelated to each other, the basement flooded more than ever before in recent rains and the washing machine developed a clog that I haven't been able to fix and my phone stopped charging reliably and then died, possibly hastened along by my fall in the mud after I forced everyone to go hiking on what I knew would be a damp night just because it was the first time all three girls have been excited about a hike. I'm still fighting with the unemployment office (except not really, because we'll be able to get it worked out if they ever return my call) and it all just feels overwhelming. And that's on top of non-stop cooking (which is me being dramatic; Odile is downstairs making me a breakfast burrito as I write this) and regular chores and work and managing everyone else's emotions and just blah. It's a hard time to be an introvert. I want to curl up and disappear for a while. But I'm already doing better than I was a day or two ago and I'm sure I can keep going this way.
4: I've been absolutely shocked by your guys' numbers. I just can't account for it. Migrant worker housing?
We're at 1.3% positive in MA and motherfuckers are going to church.
Thorn, that sounds so rough. Sorry you're going through all that. Teach the younguns to make mac and cheese and keep cereal on hand to reduce the cooking burden? Probably not the healthiest option but easy.
All is the same here except I got to camp two nights volunteering on a seabird island which was obviously the best possible interlude. I tried hammock camping like the cool kids do and it was great. No worry about puddles creeping into your tent in a thunderstorm, and we had a pretty big one. Bug net worked. One of my companions described her night as "floating around my tent on my thermarest" but then she was awake to hear the raccoons getting into (my) cooler and describes her actions as "chasing them away in just my underpants and flip-flops" so she had an active night. And my boat didn't sink, and the mask I got from a friend who's making them allowed me, this time, to keep the thing on for four hours at a time without scratching or pulling it aside. It may only catch 61% of droplets instead of 84% but to the extent that masks are for show I put on a much better show with this one.
The undergrad that I depend on entirely to keep summer field work going is in the fourth? fifth? week of hiring delays at the university, so I've paid him out of my pocket for two weeks so far (shhhh). Not sustainable. But it looks like the hiring will eventually go through.
All six sick relatives have recovered from covid, including the 90 year old with dementia in a home.. So all is good here. We're facing summer at home with two teenagers but everyone with kids is dealing with that, right?
Why did the raccoon even put on underpants?
8.1 That's it I think, the migrant workers living in awful dormitory style accommodations. And they never put a halt to a lot of the construction work so they were being packed onto buses to the work sites. They've thinned out the number of people allowed on the buses now but I really think they need to just stop everything.
9: They do make mac and cheese! And are supposed to eat cereal for their breakfasts, though now there are fights about who deserves what and what happens if someone eats the good stuff before I make another store run. The older girls in particular had food-related problems before they came into foster care that still affect how they deal with hunger and scarcity, though in different ways. The end result is that I'm shopping a lot more than I'd hoped to and can't really stock up because everything will be devoured. That's sort of fine when it's fresh fruit and vegetables, less so with a box of crackers or things I was planning to make into a meal. I had banned the girls from the kitchen because of various stupid choices they made and then lied about, but I've been loosening that up except for cooking, which requires permission. (Messing up empty tupperware with shakes of red pepper flakes "because I'm bored" is going to remain off-limits.) I feel like I shouldn't complain because things really aren't terrible, but I also know putting that pressure on myself isn't something I should do. Sigh. It's normal to be tired of all this, I know.
I'm waiting for someone to come put in a new fence for us (very generous Christmas gift from my parents) and there will be a gate along the side yard where there's none now, meaning the dog can roam free, but I haven't wanted to plant anything back there until the fence is in and I have no idea exactly when that will be. My plant order arrives Thursday, so I guess this weekend we start up the vegetable planter regardless of whether it's ready to the standards I'd wanted. I'll also pick up a window air conditioner for Mara's room, where the desk Odile and occasionally I use is, and a door for my bedroom, which hasn't had one in the almost four years we've lived here. Being able to lock people out will improve my quality of life a lot.
Oh and the owner of the app is the ministry of the interior not the ministry of health. Their assurance that this will not be used other than for purposes of public health are bullshit. I mean I knew that before but this is transparent.
OK, so we all know that *our* NY friends here wouldn't be on this bandwagon, but I'm wondering if this is one of those let's imagine a trend and then find people out there to validate it stories, or if there really are a whole lot of people thinking this way. OK, it's NYC, there's a whole lot of people doing everything anyone can imagine, but you know what I mean. What, NY friends, are your friend circles like?
The thing is people move out of NYC all of the time, it's common enough to be a cliche. The question is whether there's still people moving in to replace them. I'd expect people moving to NYC is slowing down a bit year but that it will quickly bounce back once the pandemic is over.
If I got a job that would let me afford a three bedroom place within 3 miles of that job site, I'm moving to New York City.
I'm pretty sure some form of that article has been written every year since the 70s.
I couldn't even get past the first caption: "The FDR Drive on the East Side of Manhattan leads to Upstate New York," I don't even know most of the roads in the city but I'm pretty sure you have to take a turn off FDR drive (or Harlem River Drive that it turns into) to get to a road that goes upstate. I would have gone with the Henry Hudson Parkway which at least continues over a bridge out of Manhattan and into Westchester.
The hipster weirdo who teaches the juggling class I went to before the lockdown (shut up. I find it soothing.) is moving to Iowa to live with his girlfriend's family. I think that's not a choice exactly, just that you can't make a living as a street-performer/whatever else under these circumstances.
Iowa is mostly populated with failed street performers. It's an old story.
That and people with a corn fetish.
One has to expect that a lot of aspiring actors have gone home to live with their parents until theater and waiting tables exist again.
I like this guy, but I am a little curious about how his girlfriend's Iowan parents are going to react to the elaborately waxed handlebar moustache.
I get that this is a recurring theme. Does the last decade of increasing income inequality make a difference? Coupled with technological innovations making remote work easier for the professional class?
I laughed at the mention that the place the guy was going in Nevada is unincorporated, as if the form of government is relevant. You mean like Bethesda?
26 Sure, but you wonder if setting up an alternative lifestyle, and the consequent inertia lead to them not coming back. No matter, there's an endless supply of new people to come the NYC hoping to be a waiter/actor. It pours, maaaannnn, it pours
29: Where in Iowa do they live? I'd expect Iowa City to already have a reasonably high number of elaborately waxed mustaches.
Wasn't NYC slightly losing population the last few years anyway? I wouldn't necessarily expect the population to rebound, but I would expect the growth rate to trend back to the recent average.
Still doing fine here. It's been raining the past couple of days so work on the deck has been on hold, but I've been able to do a lot of reading instead so that's nice.
No idea -- I don't know the guy well, I just got the "don't expect class to start up again, it's been real" email.
I'm in Iowa very often, but only because that's the easiest gas station to use when returning a rental car in Omaha. I pay at the pump so I don't even see if they have elaborate mustaches.
I mean, obviously I learned enough to tell who the Iowa farmers will vote for over Trump.
Still here. The long weekend was nice. Went to the farmer's market (open air, masks, etc.), a lot more biking than usual, seeing a couple of Atossa's friends (briefly and outdoors), a lot more biking than usual, and other than that just relaxing.
Today has been relaxing on the parenting front. I'm told Atossa was well-behaved during my phone call this morning, and right now she's with a friend (who lives alone and has been good about social distancing) on a picnic/short road trip, to get some air for the kid and peace and quiet for us. It hasn't been relaxing on any other front though. That work call wasn't worse than normal but still wasn't great. The cleaners were about an hour late, arriving in the middle of another work call (I know, literal first world problems, sorry). Oh, and the toilet overflowed this morning. We had a put a bucket on the ground floor.
I worked a while on Saturday, finishing up a review that I should have finished during the week if I'd been halfway disciplined. But the remaining weekend was great -- including reading and finishing a couple of fun books. Today's the first day of in-store sales, so my wife was off early to get the 6' spacing marks down on the ground and check in on the new POS (point of sale) that matches the new webstore front end.
I'll shop tonight, to refill the few things the store needs, and our 10-14 day grocery restock for home. I'll keep an eye out for the impossibles (hand sanitizer and clorox wipes), but suspect that all of the businesses (with few exceptions) reopening at once will turn them even scarcer than they've been.
The lockdown is fraying very badly here, at least on the roads. On the other hand, it is possible to catch fish; I am thinking of a Swedish midsummer party with gravad rainbow trout, meat balls, cheese pie, cucumber salad and and amazing hazelnut/whipped cream/strawberry/chocolate confection I try to make once every year. This would be a house-cooling party in Ume and I get our plan together to move into a place down the street with views of the cathedral and room for both her children.
Fingers crossed.
I'm not an actor/bartender, but Cassandane and I are thinking about leaving DC. Primarily considering going to either her parents in CA or mine in VT. In either area schools seem more likely to reopen for in-person classes than in DC, and even if they don't, we'd have grandparents around to help out.
Nothing's definite, there would be lots of problems, etc. But we're thinking seriously about it.
Your dinner sounds lovely, NW. I hope you and Ume at least get to take advantage of it!
I should put this on the red/blue bot thread, but it's so strange to be on the good side of the state line for once. With stores/restaurants/bars in the neighborhood closed, the streets are empty at night. (And we have started reopening, but not as much or as quickly as OH.) Odile feels so much safer here, though I think her West Coast friends are boggling at that a bit. There was a giant frat party going on across from her apartment when she stopped back to check mail this weekend. And even though there are far far fewer Asian faces in my town, she hasn't felt any pressure or strangeness yet when she's out walking the dog. I do the grocery runs, so walks are pretty much her only interaction with others at this point.
41: one of the things the6 track here is cell phone data, because if cell phones have moved, people have, and they are violating the rules. We drove to a conservation area that was empty, because the parks near us are closed or full, but if you looked at where my phone was, I look bad. The other day we went for a long drive and never got out of the car. Again, no risk of transmission, but our phones moved.
That reminds me of the great video of the man wheeling a handcart full of phones down a deserted street -- deserted because google maps was directing all the drivers away from it because there was "obviously" a huge traffic jam of very slow moving phones there.
I gravade one substantial trout already and it turns out to work really well with rainbows. Also with Pacific salmon of various sorts.
50% salt; 40% white sugar;10% white pepper; masses of dill. Spread the mixture generously across the fleshy side of two large fillets and put the dill over the top; place them head to toe as a sandwich, skin sides out; wrap thoroughly in clingfilm; place on a dish in the fridge, with, optionally, another plate on top with something heavy on it. turn every 12 hours. After 48 hours remove, slice like smoked salmon, and eat. Or you can chop straight through and sear the little bits skin side down which is also great.
REcipes for the proper sauce available if anyone cares.
24: Iowa is mostly populated with failed street performers. It's an old story.
Apparently leaking Democrats nowadays as well.
We drove to a conservation area that was empty, because the parks near us are closed or full, but if you looked at where my phone was, I look bad. The other day we went for a long drive and never got out of the car. Again, no risk of transmission, but our phones moved.
This is why I'm not seeing the reason for the level of outrage at the whole Cummings thing over in the UK. From the blurb I saw it seems he and his wife were coming down with covid so they drove a couple hundred miles to drop off their 4 year old at his parent's house before they were incapacitated. Maybe our UK commentators have seen more detail? I haven't seen anything but the drive to his parent's house and back which isn't how covid is transmitted unless they were stopping at restaurants or something.
Bathroom stops, and also the risk to his parents which is being more strictly enforced in the UK than here, I believe. People there are required by the terms of the lockdown not to risk transmission to people over some cutoff age -- 65 or 70.
In reply to 34, Another Hundred People.
Yeah but there's no indication it's being spread via public bathrooms. And if they stayed away from the parents and just sent in the four year old that also doesn't seem like a big deal. Little kids just appear to be really unlikely to develop viral loads.
I'm not judging the necessity of the strictness of the controls imposed by the UK government, but they have imposed strict controls, which most IK citizens have been abiding by at the cost in many cases of great personal hardship, and which Cummings ignored -- his circumstances were not dire enough to allow for an exception to the rules.
So, he broke the law because he thought the law was stupid and unnecessary. If you think that's a good enough reason, it can be made to cover a lot of lawbreaking.
We usually put Knifecrime before Island.
Going to court tomorrow, so first haircut in 10 weeks today. No mustache trim, though, because masked.
Also bought gas for the first time since I got the car in early March.
The outrage is because everyone* else followed the rules, the rules specified by the government he is part of, often at great personal hardship. (And honestly, the rules here probably weren't even as hard as they should've been.) If you aren't sick, you don't have any excuse to drive far. (If it had turned out that his parents had lived not in Durham but 50 miles north in Scotland, I think that might have been even more explicitly disallowed.) If you are sick or expect to stay sick, you must stay home. And it was to multiple places. And he's not the first high profile government or government-related person to get caught breaking the rules--Scottish Conservatives made hay out of the SNP Scottish health minister taking multiple trips to her vacation home, which was much closer to her primary residence (pretty sure she got sacked). And I think there was evidence that he and his wife continued providing childcare, anyway.
And the entire concept of someone going out for a long drive to test their eyesight with their child in the backseat is at best baffling.
If it isn't enough that he broke all the rules defined by the government he is a major part of, at least accept he's been a total shit about it, completely without shame. Probably wouldn't cry at his mom's funeral, either.
* Rules followed in the breach, but most violations were much smaller. My neighbor would go out to ride bikes with his kids multiple times a day, who cares.
Up at 3 am for my walk at 4. Here's hoping I don't get stopped by the po po.
And back again, 4.5 miles. Saw no checkpoint as I took a different route but my friend did.
Well, things are pretty fucked up here. The police murder last night happened about 2 miles from our house, in a neighborhood that many friends live or have lived in. Big protests tonight near the murder site, and also at the 3rd precinct police station, which is about a mile from us. We're not going outside of course, but according to FB posts, there was a police riot in support of their right to murder Black people, with lots and lots of tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades being used. Several friends were eyewitnesses to the police riot, and report those munitions being used in areas where children and older folx were out protesting. Cops are jamming cell phone frequencies and no one by the police station can get a signal. I haven't heard that anyone I know was seriously injured, but of course if someone got nicked, we probably won't hear till tomorrow.
I also haven't heard from our white supremacist police union president, but I'm sure he's got some inflammatory things to say in the near future.
Ah, the Strib has a nice photo gallery that they haven't paywalled: https://www.startribune.com/outrage-after-death-of-man-who-died-in-minneapolis-police-custody/570774811/#1
Nice that everyone at these things wears a mask, now. The better to fuck with facial recognition systems that get run against the tape.
The outrage at Cummings: a primer.
As much as anyone does, he runs this government and is responsible for drawing up the rules. Johnson doesn't do detail. The rules were entirely clear. If you have symptoms or share a household with someone who does, self-isolate. Do not leave your house at all except for emergencies or for absolutely necessary shopping. You are allowed to exercise for an hour a day. That's it. No mourners at funerals, no visitors to hospitals.
What happens, Cummings' wife gets sick with the virus. He does not self-isolate but goes into work at Downing Street (where, it later turns out, two ministers and the PM also have the virus and the PM ends up in intensive care but survives). Then he returns to his wife and, depending on which story of his you believe -- for he has told both -- he either has or has not got the symptoms himself. Either way, he decides to drive to his parents' estate/farm at the other end of the country. It is not clear who he told he was doing this and he claims that neither he nor Johnson can remember their conversation but both are sure they had it.
[Miles in England are about four or five times as long as they are in the American West: a 250 mile journey is a big deal]
So he drives up there and with his family self-isolates in a spare farm building his parents happen to have. Note that they take no part in the child care. This is about the only legal bit of the story. His wife later writes a piece about this in the Spectator without mentioning at all the detail that they were 250 miles from home.
After he recovers, on his wife's birthday, he drives 30 miles with her and child to a local beauty spot so they can go for a walk, where they are spotted. HIs excuse is that he wanted to test whether his eyesight was good enough to drive back to London. [His wife is a competent driver and has written about commuting by car when she lived in the states].
He and family return to London. His wife writes tearjerking piece for the Spectator about their sufferings and I don't think anyone who read it supposed that it hadn't all happened in their London house. On his first day back at work he goes into his blog and alters an old entry to make it look as if he had been worrying about the pandemic six months ago.
But he had been spotted by members of the public both in Durham and in Barnard Castle. They reported it to both the Guardian and the Mirror, asked Downing Street for comment. That was six weeks ago, so the Downing Street press operation has known about this for a long time, and refused comment, while presumably preparing its defence.
Guardian breaks the Durham story. Cummings comes up with story number one -- that he had gone their for child care. Numerous party hacks rush to his defence "Man does what's best for his family" as one hack tweeted. The next day the papers blow that story up with the visit to Barnard Castle. Cummings and Johnson decide to front it out.
Just about everyone who has stuck to the rules, sometimes at real personal cost, is really, personally, outraged.
Can't sleep. Bedroom fan sounds like a breaking-up radio signal broadcasting Steve Reich. I hope this isn't finally my Yellow Wallpaper moment.
60: never mind that shit now, Natilo, don't you realise that the rich women are fighting about Instagramming recipes?
The police are firing pepper balls at unarmed protestors. I hope those are ethnically South Asian police, because otherwise it's a highly problematic appropriation of traditional South Asian spices.
1,740 new cases reported here today, almost the exact case count of yesterday. Testing has gone up again to around 4,700.
If you can prove he infected Boris, maybe a knighthood?
63: Ah, that clarifies a lot.
Except for this, which is a joke? Miles in England are about four or five times as long as they are in the American West
Jocular, but saying something socially meaningful? On the East Coast, I think of an eighty mile drive as a significant trip. You probably don't. The U.K. is scaled like where I live rather than like the American West, so a 250 mile drive sounds to people there like something completely unreasonable rather than something you might do for an afternoon outing.
69.2: The American mile has been trading very low since the pandemic, but I think this is a bit of an exaggeration.
70: exactly. "The difference between Britain and America is that Britons think a hundred miles is a long way and Americans think a hundred years is a long time."
re: 69.last
No. In terms of what's generally agreed to be a short versus a long drive, and also just the sheer amount of time it takes much of the time. NW is exaggerating a bit, but people in the US midwest would routinely drive distances that people in the UK would see as a major undertaking. Although, again, it depends a little precisely where you are in the UK.
I would routinely take 300 mile each way weekend trips to my folks back in Pennsylvania, which because of the mountains is a harder drive than if you stay within the Acela corridor. Doing that here is a much bigger deal both mentally and in terms of effort. Still building myself up to the idea of driving to the coast two counties over, but mostly that's just a fear of a left-handed gearbox.
Once you get east of the Allegheny Front, the driving gets hard. You can drive to Ohio more easily, if you don't mind being in Ohio.
[Leans out of window, spits out tobacco.]
West of the Allegheny Front, it's hard, too, what with Chestnut and Laurel Ridges. Even going the other way there's lots of curves until you leave the unglaciated zone. Downside is that then you're well into Ohio, upside is that you're guaranteed to have the right lane (or left if you prefer) to yourself.
[Leans out of window, spits out more tobacco.]
You're only supposed to spit the juice.
Anyway, I really don't like driving to Philadelphia. And I always feel like I'm going to die when I drive in New Jersey.
Good note, Mobes. You should be an executive.
I still miss snuff, but I like having teeth.
Executives are allowed to have teeth. Encouraged to, even.
So the whole Tory party is on board with the explanation that the rules aren't actually rules, but a sort of test to see if you love your family? Morally that's somehow worse than the Republican policy "These are the rules, but we have freedom in this country so you don't have to follow them -- I certainly won't".
I don't really want to go to the barber too soon but my hair is starting to get in my eyes. Maybe a home perm?
I have buzzed my coronavirus Grizzly Adams beard into a a large goatee. I shall make it smaller tomorrow and after that go for the pornstache.
84. Not the entire Tory party to be fair; many of them are livid and one junior minister has actually quit (his ministerial post, not Parliament or the Tory party).
Does the Anglican church still have prestige and clout with conservatives in the UK? The strong pushback from the Anglican church is interesting, and there's not really a parallel in the US since mainline churches have declined so much in clout and are not conservative affiliated anyway, while the evangelical movement is completely subordinate to Fox News and wouldn't break with the Republican party over something like this.
||
NMM to Larry Kramer. Feels really weird for him to go in the midst of this pandemic.Ave atque vale.
|>
This is maybe not a very good day to run telemarketing scams for fake police charities. Or maybe it is.
people in the US midwest would routinely drive distances that people in the UK would see as a major undertaking
We're only driving 1000 miles home tomorrow. It's not like we went to Montana.
We used to wake up at three in the morning, pile into the car and fall back to sleep while dad drove. We'd stop for breakfast at about eight, already in Kansas. Dad would let mom drive for maybe half an hour while he napped. Then he'd drive the rest of the day. He turned coffee and cigarettes into miles.
It turns out that smoking in a car full of children is now a bad thing.
AS THE GREAT BRITISH PEOPLE ARE NOW FREE TO DO WITHOUT BUSYBODY BRUSSELS BUREAUCRATS
91 That was a short trip. Take your coat off, stay awhile.
Do people going from Texas to Florida in May even bring coats?
Probably, since the air conditioning is just starting to ramp up.
In some countries the AC has dials so you can adjust it in case of unseasonal weather, or if you don't want to wear a coat.
Red Lobster doesn't let the customers set the dial.
70: I knew I'd acclimated to Utah when I drove the Calabat, then four, ninety miles round trip for a two hour playdate.
100: this is, thanks to COVID, twice as far as I am going for my summer holiday.
You could walk across Scotland. I've always wanted to do that.
89 is really upsetting news, even though I know it shouldn't be.
Mara decided to go back and do some math worksheets she hadn't during the year and doesn't want to work with me but did one with Odile yesterday and is now working with my (retired-math-prof) dad, which is pretty adorable. None of them have really taken to reading, though Selah loves stories and we finished Ramona the Pest as a bedtime story last night.
103: The paper said he died of pneumonia. I wondered if he%day gotten COVID for a second, and then I remembered that when AIDS was really stigmatized, the obituaries always said that the person had died of pneumonia.
They said Roy Cohn died from karma.
You can also walk across Wales. That seems slightly easier on a per mile basis.
Okay, question for all including lurkers: anyone else falling behind at work because (in part or entirely) of the childcare regimen? It is definitely catching up with me. This is not to imply that I have been grinding my hardest all this time, of course.
No, but that's because my only child at home is old enough to mix a respectable cocktail.
I'm using leave so I don't get behind. It's not really child care since he's 14, but more making sure there's something done that isn't video games and YouTube.
Newt's gotten sucked into playing a whole lot of online blitz chess, to the point where he's trying to cut back. He's terrible -- never played much before -- but he's finding it compelling now that he's found a version where you don't have to wait forever for the other player to make up their minds.
I'm playing rapid chess (10 min) not blitz, but boy is it a big problem for me and I've successfully cut down a bit. I think I'm under an hour a day.
We might have to try that. My son won't play chess with me because he wins all the time.
Thorne - Do you have any knowledge of Democratic challengers to McConnell? I want to give money but am not sure how. Plant to give money to Susan Collins opponent as well.
107: God yes. I started a job on April 1 in a totally new field and I'm being given plenty of time to figure things out, but doing it all remotely and helping watch a 4-year-old is slowing me down a ton. My wife is a tenure-track prof so we don't have much slack around. We brought in a nanny part-time for May and are pitching the boy back into daycare starting on Monday due to the basic impossibility of it, and have resolved to assess the epidemiological dangers of this move as gently as possible. Gah.
107: No kids, but still have less focus since the change. And I was work from home for years before COVID, so I don't even have that adaptation to blame.
I actually beat Newt last night, but not in any meaningful sense -- we're both bad enough that it was a matter of who made the last colossal blunder.
My son gets mad because I carefully make a wedge of pawns at the start. Apparently, that's the chess equivalent of using '1234' as a PIN.
Chess.com is the site Newt's been wasting his days on, if your son needs better opponents.
113: I considered registering as a Democrat to be able to vote this time but didn't follow through. I like Booker the best by far and think he may have a shot if he gets through. McGrath has gotten a lot of media attention nationally and I know plenty of people who know her, but she seems into disturbingly self-owning "centrism."
116: My big psychological breakthrough from playing chess as a teenager compared to restarting now is understanding that chess is almost solely about mistakes and almost not at all about "playing well." Do you make mistakes? Do you notice when your opponent makes a mistake? To the extent that "playing well" matters it's setting things up so that it's relatively difficult for you to make a mistake (because your pieces are safe and flexible) and relatively easy for your opponent to make a mistake (because their pieces are unsafe and inflexible).
120: I can accept that as generally true, and still say that in a game played by conventionally competent players, coming back from being down a rook and a knight is fairly implausible.
119: McGrath is the one the DSCC uses in the fund raising emails.
123: Yeah, she got lots of national attention while running for state office, which she lost. She's definitely being treated as the front-runner. She's just also in line with the reason I don't want to be a registered Democrat here. All of them talk about what they'd do in the role here and obviously anyone is better than McConnell. It would just be nice to get someone much better.
118: This Tolstoy quote seems right to me, but it won't help you play any better.
A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced that he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.
112: That's the opposite of how it worked in my family. Once I got better at chess and started winning, none of my siblings would play with me.
I get beaten like a gong by my son in Hong Kong, who likes to play games with a two-day-a move limit on chess.com. I prefer Lichess, mostly because the board is bigger and brighter on my phone; also it hassles me less to become a paid member.
gswift: the others have explained what I meant about miles. Driving in this country is much more tiring than doing so in the less populated regions of the states. The roads are narrower; the traffic is unremittingly heavy and usually aggressive with it.
128: Yeah I was totally in that Western US mindset. My Yellowstone jaunts are 350 miles, northwest MT like 670. 250 miles here doesn't even get me down to Zion National Park in the same state.
The Democrats in Kentucky kept getting 45% in elections by running that very conservative-looking guy named "Jack Conway". Maybe having a female equivalent will help but it sort of seems like she's been dropped in based on her great biography without having local bases of support.
I saw McGrath on Samantha Bee's show and I SWEAR. She had no charisma, even with Samantha Bee pitching her softballs and trying her best to make McGrath look good. I'm honestly mad no one weeds out the charisma-less and I'm sorry that charisma is necessary but IT IS and I cannot believe that we'd would waste electoral opportunities by denying this obvious fact.
130: Unclear? She lost her more local election in part because she wasn't from the central part of the state where she was running, but she legitimately is from the north. (She graduated from my HS right before I began, which I think skewed some of the support I see on my fb feed.) Having no background in politics doesn't seem like a great way to become senator but it's a stupid state sometimes. Who knows?
My son has got me playing chess in tournament settings. I have found that I am dramatically better with very long time controls. I won't go to tournaments any more if the clock settings aren't going to give me at least a three-hour game. In my last tournament before the lockdown, I beat a guy with a Chess Federation rating of 1580!
Playing my son is pretty demoralizing, regardless of the time controls. When he was about 12 years old, after beating me he'd start saying things like, "You're really not that bad." He still tries to encourage me, but now he's enough better than me that I don't mind the condescension.
107: oh god yes. 2 kids here-- 8 and 11. Keeping them occupied, staying on top of their online schooling (particularly for the 8 year old who needs lots of help with some of the Google classroom stuff) breaking up their fights, dealing with the "what can we doooo!" complaints, keeping them from making Hogwarts in Minecraft and watching sitcoms on Netflix all day, trying to get them some physical activity: it takes up a huge chunk of the day. And evening, because they aren't getting tired out like they would if they had school, friends, and sports. There's no end in sight-- school is cancelled for the year, summer camps are on pause or cancelled outright, and our parents are all thousands of km away.
In a slightly different world, doing all that stuff would be fun, and 'spend 5 months with your kids!' would be great; they're great kids and fun to be with.
But meanwhile my wife and I are both full-time WFH. In practice, since my work is more flexible, I've been doing most of the kid-wrangling during the day and doing a half-assed job of my job. And we're both working past midnight every night trying to get caught up.
My wife's workplace is re-opening in a modified way in a few weeks. She's responsible for implementing the modifications, but then she's going to go on emergency leave for the summer, as the Can. fed. gov't has income assistance for people who do that.
I feel pretty guilty about that, since it looks like (and maybe is) a classic 'women do the childcare/gender wage gap' kind of decision. But it also makes the most sense. Argh.
So, do I just wait for the General? I want Trump gone more than anything, but I want McConnell gone almost as much.
Out of a deep commitment to being shits, the Pennsylvania House Republican delegation notified nobody in the Democratic delegation that one of their members had a confirmed case of COVID until two weeks later.
136: Barry, I hope you're getting really fit. I'm trying to walk more to burn my quarantine 5-6 pounds. I think. All I know is that my button down shirts are tighter.
Kevin Drum pointed out that Amy McGrath has a great voice for TV ads, and I think that's right. But she is very unlikely to beat McConnell in a presidential election year, perhaps for the reasons mentioned in 131 and 132. Better to put our hopes on Colorado, Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, and the rest.
My first thought on reading 140 was to wonder whether we're the Professor or Mary Ann.
The Howells each got screen time for their face alone and they were both worthless shits.
141: Guilty as charged---of the two, I know which one I am. But I really was impressed with McGrath's voice.
Gilligan and the Skipper were shits. The Professor and Mary Ann did all the work.
And back home. Almost 4.5 miles again. Saw lots of fish, a heron, and a tern diving for prey.
39 I'm feeling much stronger and fitter but mostly just maintaining my weight. I'm trying to eat less and healthier and drop some lbs
You could walk across Scotland. I've always wanted to do that.
I would love to, but I am not currently in Scotland and the Scottish government isn't letting people into the country for non-essential reasons. Hopefully that will change very soon.
re: walking across Scotland
There's definitely easy routes, and hard routes. Doing the route of the Antonine Wall, not hard at all.
https://www.antoninewall.org/map
Or the slightly longer John Muir Way.
https://johnmuirway.org/route/
Stonehaven to Mallaig, say, would be a bit harder. Or really hardcore, Fraserburgh to North Uist.*
* ferries or mystic powers required.
The date on this tweet, read the comments too, pure gold : https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437
Holy shit, 1,967 new cases reported here today. I think that's an all time high, I don't recall it ever breaking 2,000. Testing though is getting close to 5,000 a day which is good.
He's using it: https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1266014363225219075?s=21
151 And my walking friend (I think I'll call her Pola, after Pola Negri) just sent me a video she shot from her balcony. She overlooks a large lot by the metro station. Anyway some heedless assholes are fucking playing soccer.
148: I wonder what Trump tweeted that same day? Someone cut an add of someone reading what Trump was tweeting about that day followed by Biden reading that tweet.
155 Nice to see that the Biden campaign is already on it: https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1266014363225219075?s=12
Bad luck that Trump's tweet on that day was one of his most coherent.
I think when this phone dies, I'm going back to Samsung. The Pixel just isn't robust and the battery is shit when it's cold.
I have a Galaxy Note9 which I like for smartphone stuff, but it is an absolutely terrible telephone. YMMV.
Samsungs suck with regard to the massive permissions they grant to apps. IPhones give you more control.
And should it be "IPhones" or iPhones" at the beginning of a sentence? Fuck you Steve Jobs.
You can deny permissions to apps. It's not hard.
Plus I don't want to learn a new keyboard.
It's really frustrating to me that the right has decided to make not wearing masks into a culture war instead of making *what's on the mask* the culture war. Sell cammo masks, sell American flag masks, sell MAGA masks, sell thin blue line masks, or Pepe masks, or Q masks, or whatever masks you think own the libs. Someone could be making a lot of money selling these to the Fox News audience. But no, instead the culture war is to just become an actual fucking death cult.
It seems disrespectful to breathe through the American flag.
This was the BoJo/Cummings thread, right? I'm oddly jealous of people who live in a country where it's possible for someone's approval rating to change by 20%.
165 Not if you have a Samsung and are required under penalty of law to have the app installed. Glad I have an iPhone.
Up again at 3 am for my walk with Pola.
167: Obama was smart that way. He'd arrange for the manufacture of Confederate Flag masks.
More appropriate here than in the Minneapolis thread, I will note that rather than just complaining about the stress as I have of late I actually made a shrink appointment yesterday. Hurray for self care!
Pola!!!! (The obvious choice. I really am vicariously enjoying your walks.)
And back home again. That one was a full 5 miles and just over two hours. Not as humid today.
174 Thanks! They're keeping me sane.
173: I'm also headed to therapy next week for the first time in a year (I'd gone for about a year prior to that for something specific, but now just struggling with quarantine-related unhappiness). What are people's experience with telehealth vs in-person for therapy during the epidemic? I'm trying out telehealth for the first meeting because it's free right now, but will have to decide whether to switch for future appointments. I feel like I'm just so sick of screens that maybe in-person would be better. But it also feels irresponsible and I feel like masks will also be pretty distancing and maybe no better than telehealth.
I've been doing telehealth therapy. I definitely don't like it as much as in-person, though it has been easier since I installed a new router which seems to have solved some of the connection problems we'd had before. Still, it has definitely been helpful in dealing with the stresses of the pandemic situation.
I'm OK. I think telehealth works for therapy if you've already met your therapist in person before. Don't know about other circumstances.
Protest in Philadelphia was passionate but pretty chill earlier. I stayed 1-1/2 blocks away from the main protest because even with masks it didn't seem like a good idea to be near chanting, given droplets etc. Now things are getting much more violent. I am sad for my city but strangely hopeful for my country. As raw and disturbing as the violence is, maybe it will scare the powers that be enough to make a few changes. I just hope no (more) people get hurt or killed.
There's going to be so much Covid from this.
I know. I'm worried about that too, on top of everything else.
If folks haven't seen the Killer Mike speech, it's very, very well worth watching.
180: Outside is better than inside, but group chanting or singing is really really bad for COVID. So many of the Europe outbreaks were seeded by soccer matches. It's a tragedy and will kill a lot of people.
179.1: Yeah it's the same therapist from a year ago, so hopefully it'll be ok. It's interesting how similar that is to lots of faculty concerns about online fall semester, that online teaching is kinda ok when you have an existing classroom dynamic formed in person, but will be much more unworkable if it's online from the start.
Thanks for sharing the Killer Mike speech, Witt. I remember his pre-concert speech in St. Louis when the Ferguson verdict came down all those years ago, and how terrible to be still trapped in this loop.
