6,163 karma · joined October 18, 2016
The main thing I've concluded based on people's reaction to the death tolls is that much of our population has not come to terms with their mortality and hate being reminded of it.
Yes, I'm sure the 20 days they were collectively quarantined was completely reckless and putting people in danger.
Edit:
Also, his wife caught it at work. Where she was being, you know, essential.
(Anecdote)
At the start of the pandemic, I took it all very seriously. We were in the fog of war and didn't know how serious it was, so we assumed it was very dangerous. We did our best to avoid people and do our part to "stop the spread" or "flatten the curve".
At the beginning of June, I started to get more bold with things. Wife and kids still avoided stores, but I would go for more than just the weekly groceries.
Sometime in July / August we started seeing some of our friends again.
September / October we started going to stores as a family again. Also started going to church again.
At this point, our habits are changed to the point that we just don't really go anywhere, but we don't avoid anything for "safety" reasons. We wear our masks in stores, etc. because most have signs on the doors asking us to and we try to be polite about it.
At this point I think I can count 20+ people of all ages that I know personally who have had Coronavirus. I don't have a terribly big social circle. In the words of my best friend, whose family had it over Christmas, "I wouldn't recommend going out and catching it on purpose, but you get through it just fine"
Which is to say, I think we know much more about the virus now than we did then, and the risk profile is very low for people without serious pre-existing health conditions or the very old.
And hell, my grandma's nursing home had an outbreak. I think they had maybe 6 or 7 people die out of the 60 or so people who caught it. That's a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy is that they were prevented from seeing family for ten months now and had to suffer alone, many of them degrading significantly from the lack of interaction. Thankfully they are getting the vaccine and should be allowed to open up soon.
I think they still have the bees. Haven't heard much about it lately.
Came home unsure what I'd find, but I figured it was a small mammal of some sort. At first we figured it was something that had nestled into the laundry and was very upset at being tumble dried. Opened the drier door just a crack figuring we'd hear the thing trying to escape or at least snarling at us.
Nothing.
Determined it was in the dryer vent.
I had converted from the normal flexible dryer hose to a solid metal tube the year before because I heard it was more efficient and we were having some issues with our clothes drying.
(Ended up being lint build-up. Clean your dryers out folks. I had cleaned all the obvious spots, but there was heat shield that was completely caked with lint and effectively acting as a hot pad keeping the warm air from getting to our clothes)
Anyway, proceeded to take the dryer duct apart, figuring it was a mouse or something. Every so often we'd hear the thing start moving around, so I'd kick the dryer on for a second to keep it from going into the blower and trying to get out that way.
We were trying to rig up something to catch the mouse in when we finally did get it to come out the open end of the dryer tube. It's a tight space so that was easier said than done.
Ended up accidentally disconnecting the end of the tube that connects to the dryer while we were fiddling and figured the mouse had escaped into our house.
Heard whatever it was moving around in there still, so I kicked the dryer on to dissuade it from leaving the tube from the wrong end.
Heard a big noise, and all the sudden a bird comes shooting out the pipe. About shit my pants and took off running up the stairs. My little 3 year old son had been down there at the time and I didn't realize. He started screaming, which I felt real badly about.
Was trying to figure out how we would get a bird to peacefully leave our house. I assumed it wouldn't leave willingly.
Crept back down the stairs, and there was a little house finch, sitting on the inside ledge of the window in our entry way. It looked at me as if to say, "I want to be out there, please."
So I opened the door and he flew right on out.
Literally the only thing I didn't try moving was that circle blob.
I'm guessing it works on Chrome, but it also would sort of surprise me that a maker website wouldn't test against Firefox. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
It's pretty obviously a response to the Parler incident, so I wouldn't expect them to have the infrastructure actually up and running yet.
On the other hand, it does seem almost guaranteed to be misinterpreted by most news sources.
I imagine if such a thing did occur, they would just kill the batch they were breeding and start over from a known strain.
(Not a microbiologist, so who knows though)
For something to evolve like that you need to re-introduce the mutated strains back to the source.
If there is no re-introduction (which there wouldn't be, because the worms would be bred in an isolated environment and not the sewer system), then there isn't really anything to worry about. There is no selection pressure at the point where breeding and distribution occurs.
I have a dream that Healthcare will someday be decoupled from employment. So much waste is tolerated simply due to the fact that the majority of the expense is borne by your employer before the number they put on your paycheck.
I can live on a part time salary without issue, but health insurance, which is already $200/wk for my family with my employer chipping in, would jump to more like $600/wk, which is just completely untenable. There is no sane reason why health insurance should be my single largest expense each month.
I see a fair number of Teslas around town, but I have to imagine they all just charge at home. I know of a single charging station in the area and it supports either one or two cars from what I remember.
Don't remember how I got Widevine installed exactly, but if I remember right, it's a blob ripped from ChromeOS, which is why it only works for Chromium and not Firefox.
Making that sound stop was a great motivator for getting out of bed.
Care to elaborate?
I assume the "political stunt" part was related to all the Trump deplatforming stuff a few weeks back.
Hadn't heard anything related to anyone actually getting any pushback for it though.
And that's why I said, "I think that will be borne out by research if anyone ever looks into it."
> You know what else does irreparable harm? Failing classes because you can't see!
And I am implying that I believe we are treating that problem sub-optimally and that I believe a better solution could be found for the majority of cases where myopia is an issue.
I read back through what I wrote and I believe I had a fairly measured tone with it. You disagree, that's fine. The whole point of "science" is that people are allowed to have contrary hypotheses and the data should be the final arbiter or who is correct.
This requires having a doctor you trust.
My experience with most doctors is that I can trust them about as far as a used car salesman.
I've always been suspicious of eye doctors since every visit they find an excuse to bump you up a notch or two.
Anecdotally, me and my brother had the same prescription in high school. I started refusing to go to the eye doctor. He kept going. I happened to see his contacts prescription maybe six years later. His prescription was now over a diopter stronger than mine. I needed new contacts, so went to an exam about that time. My prescription was still the same, "Well we'd like to bump you up a notch, but you can stay at this level if you want."
Further, I noticed growing up that the kids with the worst eyesight were the ones whose parents had the best insurance and could afford twice per year exams.
Anyway, I think glasses do irreparable harm to vision (particularly during adolescence). I think that will be borne out by research if anyone ever looks into it.
The myopia correction exercises do seem to help, but it's a fickle process. If it was easy it wouldn't be controversial. I would describe my experience as your baseline vision stays roughly the same, but you can learn to focus for short periods of time and improve your acuity by maybe 1 - 2 diopters.
Because people are assholes.
As for the rest, I haven't really gotten a straight answer on the vaccine. Seems there are people who say it is the best thing since slice bread, and others who say it will be about as useful as the yearly flu vaccine. No one actually knows.
I guess maybe the difference in my mind vs illiteracy and idiocy is that someone illiterate in a matter may still manage to put together that whatever they are doing isn't working and maybe they should try something else.
The idiocy comes in when people know it's not working, and know it's designed not to work, but dammit if they aren't going to live that way anyway and complain the whole time.
Your whole comment is conflating poor financial planning with actual poverty.
If you break people into: those legitimately without enough resources to get by, those who would have enough if they knew how to manage money, and those who have enough whether or not they can manage money; I would wager that the people with enough money but terrible planning skills would be the plurality, whether or not they were the outright majority.
Once you slip into the "I can afford this because I can make the monthly payments" line of thinking, you are pretty much by definition living at the cusp of your means. That's where most people are, whether or not it's a good idea for them to be.
I wish I could find the source, but I read a quote from someone that grew up back around the turn of the last century.
She said, "I never thought I'd be so wealthy as to have my own automobile. And I never thought I'd be so poor to not afford any servants"
Also, housing prices are highly regional. My brother bought his first house (4 bed, 2 bath) in our hometown for $58k about five years ago. Now he lives in a similarly sized house on 20 acres of land that he paid $200k for.
I live in a more populated area, but I also bought my house (3 bed, 2.5 bath) three years ago for $100k.
If you equate your income with your self-worth, then you'll never feel that you have enough.
If you can step outside that framework, you'll find that you may still make significant money, but it doesn't really matter so much.