Coronavirus Thread

Important hearings about COVID were delayed because Republicans were too busy being racist.

Thread:
" Talking about Africans’ economic conditions, Wade also wondered whether “variations in their nature, such as their time preference, work ethic and propensity to violence, have some bearing on the economic decisions they make.”

... okay, so apparently I'm not up to date on my racist tropes. What the hell does he mean by time preference? Like, does he think black people are super into central standard or something?
 
" Talking about Africans’ economic conditions, Wade also wondered whether “variations in their nature, such as their time preference, work ethic and propensity to violence, have some bearing on the economic decisions they make.”

... okay, so apparently I'm not up to date on my racist tropes. What the hell does he mean by time preference? Like, does he think black people are super into central standard or something?

:puke:
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Europe and Central and South America also have more relaxed views of timeliness. Maybe we, the ones with the stick up our butts, are the problem
The C-levels where I work can't go a single day without saying shit like "If you're not early, you're late" and schedule meetings to start Monday at 8 am on the dot... and then wonder why everybody in attendance is a zombie that barely contributes.
 
Europe and Central and South America also have more relaxed views of timeliness. Maybe we, the ones with the stick up our butts, are the problem
Man, don't blanket Europe like that. Spanish, Italian, French? Most definitely. Belgium? It depends, some people are more one, some more the other. Germany? Hahahahah. My then-girlfriend didn't understand why I was rushing her when we were going to a concert in a church in Germany. "Oh but it'll start at like 10 past anyway, we've still got time..." The first note rang out at exactly 20:00:00. Yes, I was the kind of pedant who kept his wristwatch to within 1 ssecond of the atomic clock, I'm old and an idiot.
I like Germany and the Germans, but some of the stereotypes are just very much true :-P
More southern Scandinavians (Denmark, area around Oslo, etc) tend to more closely align with Germans, while more northern Scandinavia (Suomi, Fins, etc) tend to be more relaxed again.
Obviously personality plays a role but some of it is just societal expectations.

Some may say "stick up your butt" but I personalyl really dislike it when people come in late. Depends on the sort of thing, but in a wedding or a recital or a movie? Fuck you for making noise and bothering me and passing in front of me when I was on time and i'm sitting in my seat but you're just too important to show up on time. Also, colleagues taking advantage and coming in late and leaving early every day and still wasting half their working hours too.

....Good lord I'm becoming a boomer dad. And I'm neither a boomer nor a dad.
 
Man, don't blanket Europe like that. Spanish, Italian, French? Most definitely. Belgium? It depends, some people are more one, some more the other. Germany? Hahahahah. My then-girlfriend didn't understand why I was rushing her when we were going to a concert in a church in Germany. "Oh but it'll start at like 10 past anyway, we've still got time..." The first note rang out at exactly 20:00:00. Yes, I was the kind of pedant who kept his wristwatch to within 1 ssecond of the atomic clock, I'm old and an idiot.
I like Germany and the Germans, but some of the stereotypes are just very much true :-P
Can confirm
 
The C-levels where I work can't go a single day without saying shit like "If you're not early, you're late" and schedule meetings to start Monday at 8 am on the dot... and then wonder why everybody in attendance is a zombie that barely contributes.
I get to work at 7:30 so an 8am meeting is fine with me, but I don’t even tell customers I’m available from 7:30-8. The only exception I’ll make is for Australians since time zone issues.
 

Dave

Staff member
My work day starts at 7:15. I get here about 6:30. I sit, eat my breakfast/dinner depending on whether I’m on nights or days, and talk about how their night went. They make fun of me but I don’t care. I get to relax before my shift rather than running to get here.
 
The hilarious thing is that they're taking doses meant for large animals...

Aspirin will eventually kill you st too high a dose.

Fuck, the ancient greeks even knew that...
 
These people don't understand consequences because these weird foreign words with multiple syllables are scary and weird and un-American.
 
"Ivermectin Influencer" dies from side effects of taking Ivermectin

The admins on his social media are still promoting Ivermectin as a cure for all sorts of ailments.
So let's review:

Giving your trans child puberty blockers under a doctor's supervision is "child abuse" and the government should make it illegal.

Giving your autistic child a de-wormer meant for livestock because some dude on the internet told you to is just fine and the government should mind its own business because "mah freedums!".
 
So let's review:

Giving your trans child puberty blockers under a doctor's supervision is "child abuse" and the government should make it illegal.

Giving your autistic child a de-wormer meant for livestock because some dude on the internet told you to is just fine and the government should mind its own business because "mah freedums!".
Let me simplify it for the kids at home:
"Anything I like is fine, and my right. Anything I don't like should be illegal and is a moral outrage. And I should be able to take any steps at all up to and including murder to enforce these ideals."
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So let's review:

Giving your trans child puberty blockers under a doctor's supervision is "child abuse" and the government should make it illegal.

Giving your autistic child a de-wormer meant for livestock because some dude on the internet told you to is just fine and the government should mind its own business because "mah freedums!".
I'll do you one better - NOT beating the shit out of your autistic child with a stick is child abuse.

 
Nothing like spending the whole weekend doing volunteer work and serving food and drink to hundreds of people to get a nice healthy boost of fuckmybraindontworknomoreium. Guess who gets to quarantine for a week again? Yay.
 
Taiwan still has mask mandates, and I expect that when the requirement is eventually lifted, 70% of people will still wear a mask.

I personally like wearing a mask because I like to buy pretty masks and wear a different one every day. Here's today's mask.

Mask mandates were officially lifted throughout Taiwan this week, and as I predicted, I estimate around 70% to 80% of people are still masking up when they're out in public. No doubt this is just force of habit for some people, and this number will drop as time goes by, but it looks like overall there's been a strong cultural shift to masking up when outdoors in Taiwan.

As for me, I'm still wearing a mask cause I still enjoy buying and wearing pretty masks.

20230418_190953.jpg
 
Mask mandates were officially lifted throughout Taiwan this week, and as I predicted, I estimate around 70% to 80% of people are still masking up when they're out in public. No doubt this is just force of habit for some people, and this number will drop as time goes by, but it looks like overall there's been a strong cultural shift to masking up when outdoors in Taiwan.

As for me, I'm still wearing a mask cause I still enjoy buying and wearing pretty masks.

Sadly here the instant it was dropped 95% of people stopped wearing them. I now regularly see people coughing and sneezing and wheezing in public transportation and I can't help but think... I don't care if it's corona, a cold, the flu,... I don't want your damn germs, if you're sick how much of a sacrifice is it to wear a flippin' mask?!
 
Wearing a mask isn’t hard. Convincing them to care about other people, though. There’s the hard part.

—Patrick
And said people will say "If you wear the mask, it'll just lock the germs in and make it worse!" ignoring that it's then about not infecting others and not yourself.

My free shuttle is full of idiots .
 
My father-in-law constantly bitched and moaned that "some egghead virologist with a fancy degree is telling us what to do." I didn't care how much he complained so long as he put the mask on, which he did.

I kind of miss the early pandemic. I realize that I had it better than the vast majority of people. I got to teach online for a job I loved. I even got promoted so money wasn't an issue. I didn't lose any friends or family. My roommate and I got along and I didn't have to worry about a toxic or dangerous home environment. We did a Costco run about a week before lockdown and had plenty of food and toilet paper.

Among civilized people, there was this general vibe of "we're doing our part." I saw Andy Serkis read The Hobbit aloud from cover to cover in one day. The magazines I subscribed to hosted live video conferences so there was no shortage of lectures. My days were filled with work, books, video games, Disney+, and virtual workouts. The wife was just the girlfriend at the time and we found ways to set up socially distanced dates. For me, lockdown wasn't half bad. The worst thing to happen to me was my favorite Italian restaurant shut down so I couldn't get veal parmesan just the way I liked it.
 
I’m surprised I made it out of those Covid years alive. I’m one of those people whose only real social interaction with people was through work. So the realization of how alone I felt when I didn’t have an office to go to hit me hard. Luckily I had my wife and kids around.
 
I get that it was an awful time, the uncertainty, the deaths and sickness was devestating. But we moved back closer to family, who have allowed us to save for a home by not charging us rent, something that would have been impossible otherwise. My job went remote and hasn't changed back since so I don't waste hours commuting and now don't have to deal with distracting small talk and forced office social interactions. The move back pushed me to finally get my license and since I only drive for pleasure or quick errands I legitimately love driving where it was something I was afraid of doing before. I picked up fishing as a means to get out more and enjoy that so much. And as a generally introverted person, like mentioned above, the lack of social pressure to be social was amazing.

It's incredibly selfish and self serving but I almost only benefited from the plague and have always been conflicted with the privilege that afforded me.
 
Last edited:

GasBandit

Staff member
I'm torn, even from a selfish perspective, too.
The long term "new normal" expectation adjustments made some things better, but it's made some very important and personal things much, much worse.
 
Boosted today.

Also I will never understand the UNBRIDLED FANATICISM shown by those people who kept trying to FORCE people to go out and get together. I mean, I know I'm more introverted than extroverted, but these stir crazy people who were going all fight-or-flight over having to stay home like, "I will literally DIE if I can't go out and get a haircut!" No you won't, get back inside and don't come out until you have read every book in your house.

--Patrick
 
These people generally consider a store flyer to be heavy reading.
It's easy to blame this on stupidity, and god know stupidity plays a significant part, but I still maintain that a lot of the pushback came from being the least-suffering generations in human history on a mass scale. Even the earliest of Boomers were born after the Great Depression and WW2. We haven't had war on our home turf, or had to make major sacrifices for the good of the many. Sure, we had Vietnam, but Americans didn't have to give up daily luxuries or necessities for the troops like we did in previous wars. We've never had food scarcity like we did on the same level as the Dust Bowls. There were barely Americans alive who remembered life before things like the polio vaccine. We have been living in a time of unprecedented health and comfort compared to the rest of human history. So when asked to make sacrifices, even though most were small or fairly adaptable, a large chunk of people who have never to truly sacrifice, lost their damn minds. That's how spoiled and selfish we've become. And funny enough, it tended to be the most newly immigrated groups among us who adapted to the changes early on. People who came from countries that knew how much worse things could get, and they did their part to prevent it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It's easy to blame this on stupidity, and god know stupidity plays a significant part, but I still maintain that a lot of the pushback came from being the least-suffering generations in human history on a mass scale. Even the earliest of Boomers were born after the Great Depression and WW2. We haven't had war on our home turf, or had to make major sacrifices for the good of the many. Sure, we had Vietnam, but Americans didn't have to give up daily luxuries or necessities for the troops like we did in previous wars. We've never had food scarcity like we did on the same level as the Dust Bowls. There were barely Americans alive who remembered life before things like the polio vaccine. We have been living in a time of unprecedented health and comfort compared to the rest of human history. So when asked to make sacrifices, even though most were small or fairly adaptable, a large chunk of people who have never to truly sacrifice, lost their damn minds. That's how spoiled and selfish we've become. And funny enough, it tended to be the most newly immigrated groups among us who adapted to the changes early on. People who came from countries that knew how much worse things could get, and they did their part to prevent it.
To me, there's not much difference, I guess. Provincialism and spoiled self-centeredness are sparkling, homebrewed stupidity.
 
Top