All your holidays belong to the state. The state used a flimsy subtext to end everything you love. Do you like drinking? Late at night? In a pub? How about gambling? Movie night? Live sports? Dinning out? The fruit-based tech company store?
All gone. What the Hell are we supposed to do now?
Okay here’s a few links to occupy your time as you schlep around at working from home.
The President is fine. HE’S FINE GODDAMNIT.
Finding a job after spending most of your life fighting for communist 
guerrillas is tough, yo.
Good thing they have such awesome health care. We may die laughing at this one.
How do you pull this one off?
Here. Have some tunes.
Early links! It’s a Mick day miracle, A mickacle if one will.
On a normal St. Patrick’s day, I’d be at least two pints in by now, watching the Boys From County Hell (it should skip the interview part), playing at the House of Blues (for free).
As a reminder, the song the band is named after…
‘Tis a feckin tragedy, it is.
Diageo has already announced they’ve had to revise sales expectations down for the year because of everywhere getting closed. I doubt I’m going to get a chance to score any bangers and mash this year.
But I’ve got a reminder set to order my giant corned beef sandwich at 10:30 (when the place starts accepting online orders).
You go my friend!
(A local deli here is doing the same thing – order online and go there to pick it up outside. It actually makes sense as it is a tiny place.)
Here’s why the COVID-19 turd hit the fan over the weekend. The Imperial College released their new models of the epidemic to the White House and it ain’t pretty. Short version: We haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s coming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-rate-white-house.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Here’s how the game is played- as noted in the article, the CDC has 4 models, all based on “assumptions”, the one they’re playing up is the “worst case” model. They also have “best case” , “moderate case”, and “bad case” models. Then no matter how it turns out, even when it’s no worse than the regular seasonal flu (one of their assumptions) they can claim their (insert model here) predicted it.
based on “assumptions”
Like climate models.
Bingo
Or, if we enact draconian quarantine measures, and fatalities are low, they’ll claim they saved humanity. And they may have been right, may, but we’ll never know and a precedent will have been set.
I think we’re going to have some counter-examples across the globe.
No way the economy could take 18 months of that. I doubt it could take one more month of these measures.
Therein lies the problem and why DC is freaking out.
There was a fire in a subway tunnel in South Korea years back. The conductor decided it was too dangerous to let the passengers run on the tracks so he locked the doors. Dozens burned to a crisp. An analogy that came to mind.
Blecht. My memory isn’t so good, but still somewhat appropriate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daegu_subway_fire
Even under the best scenarios, that’s around 25% of the annul deaths (essentially on top of that minus perhaps some reduction from not going out as much) and the worst case scenario seems to be only coronavirus deaths, not including the regular patient loads of hospitals and further effects of delayed treatment.
How does one explain the 19% infection rate aboard the Diamond Princess?
Tons of booze?
*drinks*
no one knows
Anal sex.
I wouldn’t put much faith in that number. The Japanese government wanted it over and did close to zero monitoring (or follow up testing) of Diamond Princess passengers once they left. If you don’t have a confirmed case, you don’t have a case.
The health ministry initially wouldn’t test their employees working on/near the Diamond Princess because they were afraid too many would be positive and it would impact their regular work.
St Patricks Day? now I have to find my Orange shirt!
Are you actually Irish protestant, or are you just trying to be edgy?
I assume he is just feeling a little blue.
My last name is of Irish ancestry and I think far enough back my ancestors moved from Ireland to England, (my last name is also popular in the Liverpool/Manchester general areas) before coming to America as colonists.
So, far enough back, yes, Irish Protestant.
But mostly just obnoxious.
Similar here: a Scottish name the lost its Mc on a journey through Ulster. Got tired of steeling Catholic land, so we loaded up to kill some Injuns. Been hiding in the hills and growing red beards ever since.
My sister-in-law married into an Irish clan in SAV. The StP stuff there is epic, maybe the third largest parade in the country. I’m a nice guy about it: when they start bragging about being in America for almost two hundred years, I try not to giggle.
Thanks to a lack of digitized records, my family would have to send someone to Ulster to find out more from before the first one got off the boat. Timing was peak potato famine though, so we can guess why he left.
My aunts engaged in a decade long genealogy project, finding all the last name changes and cit-of-origin records pointing to the cities in Italy where our immigrant great grandparents came from and through Ellis Island. Last year, as a capstone, my brother took my Mother and one Aunt on a tour of all these cities in Italy to collect baptism records and see from whence we hail.
Turns out, our immigrant great grandparents fabricated their records, and the name changes might have been intentional not just a product of RACIS immigration clerks who don’t spell daigo names good.
New working theory, my Italian immigrant great grandparents where probably criminals.
Italian and criminal? That seems unlikely.
*knifes robc*
Ah a mick and a dago fighting? Good to see the old ways respected!
There’s some story about some castle burning where all the Belfast records were kept.
* Shrugs * I know my people’s story second hand going back to 1876.
That heritage thing is just amusement to me. I’m a product of the North Sea, dabs of this and that. The comfort I take from the Scots Irish stuff is simply acknowledging a very American arc: adventurous, speculative. The other notion I’ve got comfy with is that land titles are about all that matters: if you go back more than a century on much of anything, you’ve got a fight on your hands on who “owns” what. All I can say is who paid taxes on it the past decade; there’s no sorting the rest of it out.
My Italian friend used to wear red on St. Patrick’s day. Today I’ve got a DKM raglan on, and I’m planning on streaming their concert tonight.
ancestry.com says I am 69% english, 16% irish, 14% assorted germano-nordic, and 1% sub-saharan african.
And as far as I know, not a descendant of any immigrants, colonists (and slaves?) only.
Nice
This is not reddit (I had same thought).
By the one drop rule, you should be getting reparations.
When it comes to melanin, the 16% Irish wins out over that 1%.
If Lizzie Warren can be an Indian, you can be a black dude. Get in on some of that sweet Affirmative Action.
Jungle love FTW, yo.
I am and my wife is Irish Catholic. It’s a mixed marriage.
I also went to Catholic school for high school.
Obviously someone got up early to start drinking.
Coffee? Yes.
I do buy good coffee.
St. Patricks day is cancelled.
NOOOOO!
Yep. Bars are closed, concert halls are closed, parade is cancelled. And I’m sure the po-po are keeping an eye out to bust people for open container.
The diner that is open for dinner exactly one day a year (today) has gone to takeout only.
Why are they open one day a year?
I think it’s the “for dinner” part.
There are a lot of annoying places that close after lunch.
I assume the margins on eggs and potatoes are huge.
Lots of places in the business district where I work are open from 10:30 to 3:00 or something like that and serve only lunch.
Well yeah.
think about the cost of the materials.
Running the cooktop and paying the cook are fixed costs, so the more units you can move, the better the marginal returns become.
Yeah, and if you’re an owner/operator who wants to work less than 80 hours/week, you undoubtedly want to maximize your profit/time.
Plus your table turn rate is better than an evening meal would be.
What is with the spam filter? It seems to be overactive at moderating inoccuous comments by regular commenters.
cyber-coronoavirus.
with a hacking cough?
Make sure you wash your hands after using Snort.
innocuous comments by regular commenters
so sweet: the benefit of the doubt . . . so charitable after skipping the commute!
I can see comments awaiting moderation. I just have no authority to release them.
So, no benefit of the doubt.
I’ve punched all those buttons before to no avail.
You’d think the unauthorized wouldn’t be able to see, much less toggle, buttons they aren’t authorized to use.
“An error has occurred” is not a helpful error message.
Yet somehow it’s the one I see most often.
Stop coding for that error response?
Hope problem ends soon so comments fly free.
Gedanken sind frei. Comments will be regulated.
A well-regulated Commentariat, being necessary to the ??? of people who would prefer a free State
I must be going native.
I looked outside at the layer of new white stuff on the ground and thought “does that really count as snow?” It’s not thick enough to cover fallen branches, but it is thick enough to cover fallen leaves and make tracking simple.
No, that does not count. If you don’t have to break out the shovel/snowblower, it’s just a dusting.
True story:
When I first moved up here I of course noticed how beautiful and green it is. Then I also noticed how much it rains here to keep it that way. During my first two months, it never went more than four days without raining. I mentioned this to one of my technicians that it rained all the time here.
“What do you mean? It doesn’t rain all the time.”
“It rained today”
“Yeah, but not all day.”
When I lived in Bryan, I would put the top up on my Z3 less than a dozen times a year.
You know what a week without precipitation is called?
A drought.
Besides, leaving thr top down on a car just invites birds to poop on the seats and plants to shed in the passenger compartment.
Can confirm. I saw how quickly trees start to turn brown if there’s no rain. What I do wonder is if there’s a causal relationship between precipitation and soil. If it rained every week in TX/OK, most of the land would be flooded because of the clay soil. And if it rained here like it does in TX, there’d be nothing but the occasional sand burr growing.
If it rained every week in TX/OK, most of the land would be flooded because of the clay soil.
In Indiana, we had the clay soil and a bunch of rain. It gets saturated after a few days straight of rain, and then everything starts to flood. Drainage was important because the soil would only absorb so much.
One of the unexpected things I dealt with in TX and my wife deals with here in VA is the lack of rain in TX. I remember just wishing for a single cloud to show up in the sky, just one. Some change in weather.
Wife thinks that winter is dreary here in VA, and that its never sunny here.
is the psychological impact of the lack of rain in TX
Something that I was really looking forward to when I moved up here was dark skies.
Nobody told me that it’s overcast every night. I see fewer stars here than I did when I was living on Houston.
Four days! Where be this temperate paradise?!
The second part of that sentence gives the first part new meaning.
New York.
Oooh so there’s a new York. Interesting.
I never understood clotheslines when I visited the UK.
Refusal to acknowledge the economics of garment dehydration?
How can the clothes dehydrate with the humidity at that level?
I also never understood the hyperabundance of delicious blackberries growing wild and completely ignored by the local populace — human and animal.
Eating wild berries without a harvesting permit?
That’s an ASBO.
*spritzes bushes with poison*
Prickers or as we in NA call them “Owie Thorns”….
That’s called being dank.
“Finding a job after spending most of your life fighting for communist guerrillas is tough”
#Metoo
Skills are limited, not much demand
Alternate scene from The Graduate – “You want to know what the future is Son?” “I’m not sure…” “It’s toilet scrubbing!” *hops in pool with full scuba gear*
For K-Sue and our Hibernian brethren:
There’s no alcoholics in Ireland! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2_8Igq7ko4
There’s no gays in Ireland! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ByxyIAWrQ
Yay! Greeny! We love Greeny (or as the Native Mexicans call it, maize…)
“WARNING: Glibertarians.com contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. ”
But not Corona, amirite?
Not yet
Maybe Glibbing will not be on the list with sit-down dining, movie theaters, bars …
Communication through uncurated, unvetted routes has been banned, citizen. It’s for your own protection.
/it wouldn’t surprise me.
A well-regulated Commentariat, being necessary to the ??? of people who would prefer a free State
Three years after signing a historic peace deal in Colombia, former FARC rebels feel the government has betrayed them.
Many joined a reintegration village in the north since giving up their weapons, but they are still coming under attack by dissidents.
Government is dishonest? Well farc me.
Government speaks with FARC-ed tongue
This is a FARC-ry from surprising.
You people are FARCing ridiculous
Happy St.Patrick’s Day!
What’s so happy about it famine man?
Now you have a socially acceptable excuse to stay home and drink?
Now he has one?
EXACTAMUNDO JEFE!
Besides, why do I need an excuse for what should be the way to live a good life?
“So far, Latin America has been spared the worst ravages of the virus. Around 100 cases have been reported in the region since Brazil announced the first case on Feb. 26.”
I wonder why.
lack of testing.
Same reason it’s not being recorded in the Chinese colonies in Africa.
Also corona viruses tend not to propagate well in hot weather, possibly part of the reason flu season ends in the north as summer approaches.
Fantastic news! That means global warming will save us from the certain death of coronavirus.
I’m reading that isn’t true, but who knows.
It is known that flu viruses abate during the summer, and there are multiple theories out forth as to why, one of then being that the warmer weather and sun damages the envelope the viruses are packaged in, but there are other theories and potential factors in play as well and it is not well-studied.
https://www.abc27.com/community/all-fine-wine-good-spirits-stores-across-pennsylvania-to-close-indefinitely/
DOOM!
Really? Indefinitely?
Fuck you Wolf. That fucker wants to see riots.
All state liquor stores across Pennsylvania to close indefinitely
The irony that alcohol kills bacteria and viruses.
Need me to send you my Whiskey Rebellion flag to fly? And I’m also going to guess that PA doesn’t allow delivery of liquor (Ohio does, but from limited vendors, via FedEx/UPS and requires an adult signature).
I’ve got a spreadsheet of needs/wants for a home gym I’m setting up this summer. I forgot to make a list of totally sweet flags to hang on the wall. This is going on the list.
Several of my neighbors asked me about my “Jewish American flag”. I laughed and explained it was from the first rebellion against America.
“a home gym I’m setting up this summer”
This guy gets it
Cuba confirms first coronavirus cases, tells people to make their own masks
Libertarian moment?
It’s because of the US embargo.
Michael Moore nods approvingly.
But look at all those beautiful cars!
Funny how they always seem to find a shot with those cars. It wouldn’t surprise me if the were pushed up onto a flatbed for transport to another news scene.
I was in Cuba a few years ago. Those cars look pretty good — until you open the hood. What’s on display under there is a testament to gnarly human ingenuity in the face of non-existence of parts.
My understanding is a lot of diesels are under the hood.
Dish soap is a often used in lieu of brake fluid.
At least the brakes are clean.
In my novel about a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future one of the characters in the Bartertown fortress-city would be an old Cuban mechanic who is prized for his knowledge and ability to keep the vehicles running with no modern infrastructure.
…demonstrators’ complaints of social inequality and elitism when unrest began in October.
Protesting over “elitism”. That’s a new one to me.
idiot: “You have more than I do, which is unjust!”
you: “But I worked my ass off to get this while you sat in momma’s basement playing video games using your neighbor’s unsecured WiFi access.”
idiot: “SOCIAL JUSTICE!!! It’s my right!”
you: “Fuck off slaver.”
idiot: “We need marxism!”
*tosses red meat*
Play stupid games…
Ok… so I’m going to guess that the Far Side just uses a random selection of comics to pop up on their website each day… but this one popping up today just seems fitting.
There’s one a bout a leprechaun and one about four leaf clovers so I’d wager they are curated.
Here’s one about social distancing.
“Lemming Beach: Shocking aerial footage shows a packed Florida sands on same day Donald Trump urged ALL Americans to avoid groups of more than 10 and practice self-distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8119647/Shocking-images-crowds-sand-Clearwater-Beach-Florida-ignoring-coronavirus-warnings.html
Florida
All of the people on the beach were British tourists.
The UV from sunlight kills the virus undoubtedly.
Clearwater… Xenu comin’
^^^THIS^^^
I’m not getting the beach hate.
It is outside. It is windy. People are pretty much going to be more than 6 feet apart at all times.
Seems like a pretty good example of doing something that maintains “social distancing”. Certainly more than going to an office and sitting in a cube, riding public transportation, going to the grocery store…..
I think drunk college kids start getting handsy on the beach.
The last picture in the article…thicc?
Apparently, Butte has cancelled the annual
epic drunken bingesaint Padwreck’s Day festivities. Also, Bozeman and Missoula have closed down all the bars and restaurants. On whose/what authority, I know not. I expect Governor Monkey-See-Monkey-do to cast his eye toward California and do likewise.“Steve Bullock thinks you’re too stupid and feckless to be allowed to decide where to go or whom to associate with. Do you really want him as your Senator?”
*I suspect the answer will be a resounding yes.
I haven’t heard The Vines in years! Gracias Señor Sharpshooter.
Rhywun linked a band yesterday which intrigued me. I don’t generally share a musical taste with him but it was really good! Need to backtrack and find…
Dude! You dropped the ball! Your musical selection should have been THIS https://youtu.be/JRMobFKG-a4 h/t Tundra.
When the grocery store was out of toilet paper, I said nothing because I can understand why toilet paper would be in demand when everyone needs to blow their nose a lot.
When the computers store only had 1 chromebook left and I wanted 2 for my 2 kids, I said nothing because I can understand why computers would be in demand when everyone needs to e-learn their kids for 2+ weeks.
When the grocery store was out of my favorite locally produced, small batch pork rub, there was no one to speak for me. Because they were all at home wiping their ass and playing Scratch Jr.
First they came for the sports but I said nothing because I was’t a sports fan. Then they came for the churches and again I said nothing. Later they came for the bars and restaurants and I started to sweat a little. Finally they came for the liquor stores and that’s when I lost my shit.
They closed the parks here. Perfect space for social distancing. I think the real reasons were 1) you can’t have parks open if park workers not working 2) fear that people would play soccer or whatever and come into contact with one another
?♂️
I stocked up on booze last week, so I can ride this out for many weeks.
The Spice House may have you covered. Free shipping on their flatpacks. It’s the same family as Penzey’s, but without the woke signalling. They come recommended by Alton Brown, and I love their Vulcan’s Fire Salt.
“Bangkok brothel brings in coronavirus thermal scanners for its escorts and customers”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8120367/Bangkok-brothel-brings-coronavirus-thermal-scanners-escorts-customers.html
Can they detect the heat outline of a penis?
That’s “Shenis” The correct wording is “Shenis”. h/t The Gaijan.
I defer to you and John McAfee on such matters.
“T’wasn’t me! It were Straff that done it!”
But can they detect neurosyphillis?
Asking for a friend?
How many times can you get it?
Kent Brockman:
“Ladies and gentlemen, what you are seeing is a total disregard for the things St. Patrick’s Day stand for. All this drinking, violence, destruction of property. Are these the things we think of when we think of the Irish?”
“It’s St. Patrick’s day here in Springfield, a day when everybody’s Irish, except of course the gays and the Italians.”
“What are YOU luggin at???” The swan song of many a merry night!
I just discovered recently that at least one Simpsons episode was edited for UK broadcast to censor some scenes about the Irish.
I hope they kept the part when Homer said, ‘Look at me! I’m the Prime Minister of Ireland” with a beer barrel over his head.
Also. The British censor The Simpsons? My oh my have they become bunch of pussies or what?
Yes. Yes we have.
Become?
/thinks back to Clockwork Orange being banned in the UK
Yeah, but they had boobs way back when Monty Python was on TV. Real, nekkid boobs.
Long live Bennie Hill!
I finally started watching that Richard Wolff vs Gene Epstein “Socialism v Capitalism” debate last night. I got all the way through Wolff and part way through Epstein’s first arguments before bedtime, and will finish it up this evening. My takeaway from it thus far is that Wolff just plays the same old trope in angrily and intensely hammering the same old talking points, devoid of any meaningful data in context, railing against capitalism, and refusing to even acknowledge the the hundreds of millions dead, the liberty stamped out, etc. Epstein is cool and measured and supported by reality. Wolff seemed to have been under the impression that the schtick he pedaled was in some way arguing for a new and untested kind of socialism but provided nothing to back that up. It’s all an impassioned hectoring based on fallacies about “democracy” and “distribution”.
The Epsteins of the world always win those debates and the Wolffs of the world win the elections.
But most people are Teem Feelz instead of Team Think, and socialism appeals to TF with its promises of ending homelessness and poverty.
Not sure why you started that with “but”. I agree.
Everything before the ‘but’ is just a lie?
railing against capitalism
Whilst capitalism and the industrial age quickly led to children working the mills of England, it’s worth noting how there’s no history of any of those folk repairing to the farm. The legacy of capitalism is agency: we choose in which way we wish to exploit and to be exploited.
Serfdom died, but legions yet strive to re-erect it.
Fuck off, shitlord! Our democratically administrated, worker-owned means of production will vote on what and how much to produce, and not be slaves to the markets, to the oppression of economic reality! Workers of the world, unite!
To curb the epidemic
Very soon we will have some fraction of survivors with some level of immunity who are being quarantined for no good reason.
And there will still be cops roaming the streets to restrict them per dicta of governors.
And the majority of those governors will be Republicans.
And the majority of those freedom-loving Republicans will be re-elected.
ugh: I almost never get anything posted in the right place
That what HE said.
Sheep want security, and while they believe someone else will be sacrificed to the wolves to get it, they will suck any and all cocks to be the last in line.
The Feds Really Botched This Whole Coronavirus Thing, So We Should Give Them More Power
Prominent Italian Doctor Suggests Throwing Colored Pills At Coronavirus
Better headline – “Italians Switch Sides And Embrace Coronavirus Just As They Did In Two World Wars”
The Killing of Duncan Lemp (the guy the police in Maryland shot from outside his house) on Scott Horton’s podcast:
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/3-16-20-jim-bovard-on-the-police-killing-of-duncan-lemp/
And of course the police are stonewalling the investigation under cover of law.
Of course they are. They murdered that guy and so they are going to delay, deny and dig up dirt on Duncan.
And the prosecutors office won’t use the same toolset they would bring to bear on Joe shmo
Day 2 of WFH. I’m going to gain 20 pounds before this is over.
Tom Brady has announced he’s leaving New England though. So things aren’t that bad out there.
Our vpn was not built for the number of remote connections it’s being asked to handle, and is crawling.
That’s the nice thing about my works set up. They isolated pretty well so I rarely even need to be in the company network
We don’t let the outside world ssh to our servers. So, to do my job, I need to be on our network.
Normally, that’s no big deal. But now everybody is using the same access point.
You’re a network guy so it makes sense. But as a developer I just need to be able to spin up a VM and that really doesn’t need to hide behind the VPN.
Not sure how common it is, but most developers around here wouldn’t have a clue what they’d need in a new VM and haven’t got the slightest grasp of what hardware or operating systems are.
Not sure what they tought these people, but it wasn’t computing.
Good development shops have automated a lot of that stuff. Developers don’t have to know the ins and outs of actual VM’s.
Just run a script or click a button and a process will build a standard VM. This also has the advantage of making sure new applications will run on the standard VM in the production environment.
Also containerization is your friend.
Having improperly sized infrastructure is going to waste a lot of overhead.
My company has 33k global employees and yesterday 27K of them worked remotely without even causing the infrastructure to get stressed. They have this bandwith because we need it to deal with disasters. I am sure nobody saw this as another thing the infrastructure would help out with, but it has allowed them to be real flexible with people.
New York will pinch pennies on the most foolish of things. If it’s not a pet project, they will look at the absolute minimum they can get away with, and trim at least half off that.
(Of course, on pet projects they piss away cash in a manner that would make drunken sailors blush)
“I’m going to gain 20 pounds before this is over.”
Because of the weed?
No, he has a bet going with JD.
Doritos.
I see the next big problem after the Kung Flu is finally taken down to be the high incident of guys going to their doctors for orange dick syndrome. Once they realize that the issue isn’t really medical but the result of countless hours spent watching porn & eating Cheetos during home isolation, I am sure they will call another global pandemic emergency.
Everybody say it together!
THAT’S
MY
FETISH!
I’ll be the same weight – just 20 lbs more fat and 20 lbs less muscle.
During my final workout last night, I noticed that ESPN is now Tom Brady and UFC coverage 24/7. Belichick isn’t going to spend a lot of money on, or kiss the ass of, a QB in his 40’s.
Brady was never really paid what he was worth (hurts to say). Their offense was bad last year and probably would have made it to a Super Bowl again if the Antonio Brown thing had worked out.
They have little cap space* without him as it is, so it was kinda obvious for awhile now.
*They even have dead money on the cap now allocated to him
They were destroyed by injuries. They don’t seem to be able to keep a Tight End healthy for half a season.
Part of the reason Brady is who he is in the history of football with all those rings is that he did give a home-town discount that was spent on O-linemen and defense. I look at what Dallas is doing and see a really expensive recipe for failure.
All of which means the system is working as designed. It is specifically created to prevent dynasties. The Patriots defied physics in maintaining that level of excellence over that long period of time.
If we wanted to continue going on with most of our daily lives and still wanted to “flatten the curve”, what solutions are possible? Full on protective suits impractical. Home deliveries? OK. The one big problem is the restaurant/hotel/transportation industries.
1970’s technology
https://youtu.be/BgesL8cVgmI
There ya go. Why not encourage more camping? I’m just trying to think of a way for recreation and entertainment to find a comeback.
See my comment above about hours spent watching porn & eating Cheetos…
Company meeting this morning. We’re keeping open again tomorrow. Subject to change at any moment.
Fuck Kung flu.
Wash your hands.
I’ll wash ’em like a cat!
/licks hands, rubs them on his head.
Now do your privates!
But my knuckles are bleeding!
According to the headline I just saw, there are 85 fatalities from the plague. In a country with a population of 350 million or thereabouts. Truly, we are dooooooomed.
Abandon hope. Pray for forgiveness.
It’s pretty early, and it’s going to go up. Probably to the level of the 1957 (OMG) Asian Flu, which killed ~80k in the US and ~2 million worldwide. Might be a little too much panic but it’s silly to dismiss this as nothing.
Not nothing, but these emergency powers are what scares me. How easy was it to get people to beg for orange man to ass rape their liberties.
^This^
A thousand times this.
FFS, I saw a headline in my news feed that other states are looking to fucking DeWine for guidance. That former prosecutor who never conclusively proved that he didn’t have intercourse with his maternal unit. The constant announcements and lack of a plan are just stoking more uncertainty.
Gun grabbing RINO wannabe dictator, and no way he had intercourse with his mother unless she pegged him.
Heh….
What I am seeing is many people telling us orange man was not totalitarian enough and if they were running things they would have really given it to us good and hard. Mind you, they use this as a means to encourage the masses that love totalitarian collectivism to vote for them. Our problem is not just the totalitarian bent in the inept/corrupt/credentialed elite class, but how many amongst the sheep love the idea of being leashed and controlled.
Non-Corona virus nut punch: Cop who faked a search warrant gets job back.
No back pay! That will teach him.
Now that’s a punishment. Usually they get full back pay PLUS any overtime and “other work” they otherwise would have gotten.
Absolutely ridiculous
“…an arbitrator determined Serafin made an honest mistake and that his credibility should not be challenged given his experience.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
A story on why he wasn’t criminally charged in the case
So as we shut down, China is open for business.
I smell a rat.
Sell it to the Chinese, they’ll eat it.
Can I be your comedy agent?
I think the Chinese want to convince everyone that’s the case because their economy is getting wrecked permanently, but I suspect they are full of it. That’s why they are now saying the virus was released in China by the evil U.S. Army, and not of their making.
An arbitrator ruled late last week that Officer Travis Serafin should return to the Eden Prairie Police Department without losing any seniority.
Not fair. Everybody does it.
Media and government all received the “blame the millennials” talking points. Those kids are giving the virus to their parents and grandparents!
The Boomer Remover.
If you do have any old people in your life that you care about and interact with face to face you need to be careful, this thing kills them off at a high rate.
Yep. I’m staying away from my parents, and the girlfriend grandmother. Knowing my parents, my dad’s ignoring all the orders regardless.
Sounds like Tres Sr.
Well of course I don’t want my 98 year old grandfather nor my over 70 parents to die, but JFC shutting down the economy in an “attempt” to keep people that age alive is bonkers. My dad has smoked for over 55 years. The fact that he is still alive is amazing. If he died from pneumonia caused by the flu I wouldn’t blame society for going about their business.
Mobilize
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is arguing that the best way to tackle the coronavirus outbreak is for the federal government to take over critical private companies in the medical field and have them running 24 hours a day.
The mayor, who made multiple media appearances over the weekend, said that the current situation calls for drastic measures which include nationalizing certain industries.
“This is a case for a nationalization, literally a nationalization, of crucial factories and industries that could produce the medical supplies to prepare this country for what we need,” de Blasio told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Saturday, calling for “24/7 shifts” during what he called a “war-like situation.”
The following day, de Blasio reiterated this message, telling CNN that “the federal government needs to take over the supply chain right now.” He specified the need for companies that make ventilators, surgical masks, and hand sanitizers to be taken over and made to work around the clock.
I never saw that coming.
And once we have the health industry humming along perfectly, we can take over the rest of the economy. Our new Workers’ Paradise awaits!
“the federal government needs to take over the supply chain right now.”
Nothing says efficiency like gov’t bureaucracy.
No shit, de Blasio and any other politicos using this virus to push their nationalization agenda should be ashamed of themselves.
I know all the government places are super amenable to working 24/7
They’ll have 3 unionized shifts working 24/7 to maintain the output of the current day shift.
Tommy Friedman explodes
WFH
The nice thing is not having to dress and commute and drink bad coffee
just so that my research, suggestions, calculations, and white papers can be ignored anyway.
As I’ve said for decades:
a/ it doesn’t surprise me what they’ll pay me
b/ it doesn’t surprise me that my good advice is ignored
c/ it does surprise me that they do both a and b concurrently
“just so that my research, suggestions, calculations, and white papers can be ignored anyway.”
This is a big part of why I got out of the data analytics game. Over a career I might make less as a developer, but I couldn’t stand my work not being used.
I’d say 95% of my development work has gone unused. As the sales staff required me to make the software do more things, the sales staff then had a more complex story to tell the prospects – and they got nothing but blank stares. Nevermind that I tried to warn them before they added more that the requests should have been handled as custom mods that required additional payment, the sales staff insisted “other customers will want that mod” which was always bullshit.
As my boss once said to the sales manager in a product review meeting, “I want to be proactive here. What is your next excuse going to be when you can’t sell any more licenses after we put in these modifications?”
It depends on the job, but even in my worst Dev job, more people used what I made than listened to my stats.
I suppose pornhub is a type of research, Don.
At least when I give a warning, the businesses I support generally listen to me. Especially when I put it in writing, and say I want their approval on this if they want to move forward.
Items I’ve had suggested for call center operations and shut down this way:
1) Force calls holding to go to a VM box after X minutes
2) If calls are holding for a set period of time, play a message and disconnect them
3) Don’t put in any routing in case no one is logged in, that will never happen
4) Have 12 options on the first menu
5) Force calls holding for a set period to route to an operator, who has neither the access nor the training to answer the call
6) Force callers to listen to over 90 seconds of blurbs before getting to a menu
“Just give me a person already!”
That’s a staffing problem, not a phone system problem.
“Stupid computer.”
So those things are not mistakes?
Actually, I totally believe you.
I built a call center app (on Genesys) that allowed user-configurable queues, simultaneous inbound and outbound predictive dialing, automatic routing of calls based on customer status…. among other things, it allowed a team of 19 sales executives to move from handling less than 100 outbound calls per agent, per day while losing up to 20% of ad-based inbound calls due to queue abandons to dialing all 29,000 leads in the database every day (what the manager wanted) and never dropping a call.
They had 180 seats running on this. Productivity was up over 100%.
They eventually tossed it out because the new CEO preferred the handsets from a different manufacturer. A company his buddy owns. So they went with a simple ACD. No outbound dialer.
So, yeah. I completely believe your list.
I worked on Genesys when it was still Interactive Intelligence. I really loved working on that phone system, but the place where I was had some people who didn’t like it because they didn’t pick it. So they sandbagged the sales guy for the next RFP proposal.
And UCS: You’d be surprised how many people in the B2B environment don’t listen to the options at all. They have a note to call X number and press Y, Z, and wait for a person.
I absolutely don’t understand changing horses like that. All the consulting to get started is the big ticket item. Once you are up and running, there’s no reason to throw it away unless you have a pressing need that it can’t fill. And of course, there is no pressing need that another system was going to fill.
My favorite is “As of [insert date at least a year old], the menu options have changed. Please listen carefully”
How often do they expect me to be calling?
I will never memorize your phone prompts.
Heh. Me too.
Legal representation in 10 steps
1. Advise client against a course of action explaining the legal, and business risks of that course of action, suggest a better course that will cost small amount in legal fees.
2. Send bill
3. Client pays bill for consultation, ignores advice.
4. Foreseen risks eventuate
5. Advise client on best way to mitigate consequences
6. Send bill
7. Client pays bill, ignores advice
8. Things get bad for client and litigation starts
9. Give client a referral to litigator
10. Take call from furious client who has been told what the litigation will cost, explain that next time client should take my advice in step 1 and pay me the much smaller amount needed to follow that advice.
Move in-house.
Our GC’s office believes it has veto power over any business initiative. We spend an inordinate amount of time explaining what the issue is along with explaining we understand their concerns as well are willing to accept the risk.
I don’t mix well with corporate cultures.
Our GC’s office believes it has veto power over any business initiative.
Well, they should.
For a very narrow list of reasons. A smart GC knows that rolling the black ball will cost political capital, and will be very judicious in dropping the axe. And only after Step 1 above is disregarded.
Sure, just say every business is a dire existential and/or reputational risk. Rinse and repeat.
Pretty soon you’ve reached the “boy who cried woof” stage.
I was kidding a bit the statement you quoted. Our GC wants to the right thing, but it can sometimes be difficult for them to accept the same from us. We also have no desire blow up our business.
err… “wolf”
woof.
Sure, just say every business is a dire existential and/or reputational risk.
I know GCs like that. They are mediocrities who do not understand their role in the organization. They tend to have a litigation background, not a business/corporate law background.
To clarify. I am seldom telling a client “Do not do this deal.” Usually I am saying “Do not structure this deal in this way, instead structure it in this slightly more costly upfront way that addresses the possibility that things will not work out the way you are planning.” And usually the reason I am ignored is not really the few hundred dollars in fees, it is convenience, or avoiding a hard negotiation about some point that will only matter if things do not go as planned.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” sounds very pragmatic, but 90% of the time it actually represents magical thinking. The time to decide how a business relationship is to be terminated if it goes south is at the beginning when the two sides still like each other and share a goal. It is not when the two sides hate each others guts and have diametrically opposed desires. See also divorces and pre nups.
I don’t discount the value of a proper contract. They are for precisely when things go pear shaped. If it’s working out nobody ever looks at them.
However, let me talk to you about my conference calls that involve me, my purchasing department, my GC’s office the vendor and the vendor’s GC while we go through a 50 page master agreement…
just so that my research, suggestions, calculations, and white papers can be ignored anyway.
We just finished an exercise where we modeled our expected future growth purely on intuition, and plugged those numbers into a formula to calculate the expected portfolio size in five years. When the topic of this number being pulled from our collective rectum came up, the response was “I know. I don’t care. I need a number to justify an increase in our department budget.”
Literally could’ve drawn numbers from a hat and come to the same outcome. The process was all that mattered so that he could tell his boss “the team did analysis and came to this result”
Joe the “moderate”.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Sunday he would prevent oil companies from drilling as part of his effort to combat climate change.
“No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry,” he said at the CNN debate. “No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. Ends.”
Biden hasn’t called for an all-out ban on oil drilling before, which would have a radical, negative effect on the U.S. energy industry.
okay, well, there goes 100k Latinx votes in Midland that were this close to considering voting Blue
I’m constantly impressed by the flexibility of the American politician: he can get elected repeatedly whilst standing on his own member.
Related
After Sanders pressed ahead on his pledge to ban hydraulic fracturing across the United States in a bid to address climate change, Biden uttered the words, “no new fracking.”
But it was unclear if he was joining with Sanders or simply restating his own plan to ban new oil and gas drilling on federal lands, something that he and other Democratic candidates like former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg pledged – as his campaign said after the debate.
Biden added:
We should be talking about things I’ve been talking a bout for years, like high speed rail, taking millions of automobiles off the road, making sure that we move in a direction where no more, no more drilling on federal lands, making sure that we invest in changing the entire fleet of the U.S. military.
Great time to suggest Americans pack themselves together inside a sealed rail car.
They can easily turn off the choo-choos. No travel for you disease ridden peasants.
Harder to turn off everybody’s cars.
“ which would have a radical, negative effect on the U.S. energy industry.”
That’s a sizable understatement actually, his proposals would murder the US energy industry and other remaining industry would flock to India and China where energy costs are lower because they’ll continue to utilize fossil fuels.
The old “of course we are going to destroy your jobs” Gambit.
Not sure if I’ve seen anyone deploy that successfully.
Oil workers can learn to code and, failing that, they can go on welfare. There, the problem’s taken care of.
“No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry”
Well, he got one thing right.
The best thing for the fossil fuel industry would be Biden’s plan: Subsidize EVERYTHING ELSE thereby inflating demand for energy and letting supply and demand pour the tax money into the fuel industry indirectly.
Until he nationalizes the industry and supply drops even further.
“No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry”
Depreciation allowances for wasting assets is not a subsidy.
Does the “fossil fuel industry” get “subsidies” from the US’s no-longer-federal government or is that a political lie? Not trying to be snarky.
Its a mix. I think there are some legit subsides. But a lot of the “Subsidies” that the left talks about are tax breaks.
Might be a little too much panic but it’s silly to dismiss this as nothing.
Whatever happens, they will claim they saved us from a far, far worse fate, and only by maintaining total control of both economic and social behavior can we prosper and survive. The noose only tightens.
We definitely could end up with something much worse than this virus. 9/11 gave us the Patriot Act. Shudder to think what Covid will give us.
This
THIS
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY THIS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The branch covidians are downright scary with their frothing insistence that we “DO SOMETHING!!!”
I’ll consider us lucky if we get away with only mandatory vaccinations and increased CDC funding.
branch covidians
OMG I can’t stop laughing
branch covidians
Nice
+1 more. I’d join.
Where do you suggest putting the compound?
The Ocean. Easier to keep from burning down.
+1 Waterworld
Good answers.
What scares me is that there is no end game. No one has said, we need these emergency measures for 14 days. (Or whatever)
This open ended bullshit is crazy.
I have one buddy who is convinced that this is because the politicians have seen some horrible data from scientists that have really scared them. He keeps going back to “no one would tank an economy like this if they hadn’t seen something really scary”. Then I laugh at him and tell him that the pols would gladly tank the economy 10 times over if it meant that they would stay in power. What scares them is not doing something and then getting voted out when there are more cases of the Slant Sicks.
While I agree that there will be plenty of naked power grabbing, I also believe that they can’t offer an end because currently there isn’t one.
Until herd immunity is achieved thru infections or a vaccine, we’re going to be dealing with it. There’s no avoiding that.
Italy is our example of what can go wrong if you wait too long. And it is going very, very wrong in Italy.
Right now, it appears that they’re expecting the healthcare system to get overwhelmed sometime in late spring, early summer. They’re attempting to minimize the spike of cases needing hospitalization. Once the initial surge has passed, some herd immunity will be present. What happens then is purely guesswork. Watch what happens in China when they let off the quarantines for a guide.
“Shoo, fly!”
The first think to go wrong in Italy was the socialist healthcare system. Or do we not do root cause problem solving anymore?
Italy is our example of what can go wrong if you wait too long with an elderly population and health care system that has 1/4 the ICU beds per capita that we do.
Not apples and oranges, but also not a 1:1 comparison.
We are past the point where the reaction is doing more harm than the virus. Everybody has a hobbyhorse to ride, and they are flogging them around the track.
By all indications, this has topped out in China, despite China having all kinds of vulnerabilities and risks we don’t have. Korea may be the best comparison to the US, and this is far, far from a disaster there.
This will be well past the peak by July, but the overreaction is doing economic damage that will take years to overcome.
Part of the issue in Italy (actually northern Italy) was the legions of Chinese seamstresses who work in the fashion industry, giving cheap labor which allows the companies producing “Made in Italy” products at competitive prices. So a few hundred (or thousand?) of these workers had just come back from visiting their homeland during Chinese new year, bringing an invisible souvenir to share with the locals.
Here’s why I’m skeptical of the “seen something really scary” idea – if there truly were something scary ahead, wouldn’t China be there now, with hundreds of thousands if not millions dead? This thing has been spreading in China since last fall.
They’re gong to have herd immunity before we do.
In a few months they can take over!
We cannot allow a herd immunity gap!
“politicians have seen some horrible data from scientists”
Scientists like Paul Krugman.
Politicians can’t even understand polling data.
see “my white paper” above
Politicians can’t evenNo one wants to understand polling data.advancing one’s own agenda is the order of the day
Biden hasn’t called for an all-out ban on oil drilling before, which would have a radical, negative effect on the U.S. energy industry.
I’m working on my business plan for making artisanal tallow candles. I’ll soon be fabulously wealthy.
What did communists use before candles?
Electricity.
I would invest in a whaling ship
Call me Ishmael.
Tallow? Sorry, but they are banning cows as well.
Savior fetish
It will take more than one serious news conference to turn the tide of the pandemic. And Trump must prove in the coming days he has the focus to lead more than fitfully and that he can command the complicated machinery of the federal government and corral Americans behind him.
But it was such an unusual performance by the President that he may stand a chance of shocking watching viewers into action and getting them to fully understand the desolate reality of the coming weeks.
And one Great Leader shall emerge, to lead the flock. Without Him, all are doomed.
I fucking despise these people.
I remember Chocolate Jesus being interviewed on Maher’s old show in 2004 and thinking to meself, “Oh oh.”
Yikes – I think I just nuked a friendship with a joke about Rotherham and underage sex.
What was the joke?
Rotterdam
Worth It…
Biden added:
We should be talking about things I’ve been talking a bout for years, like high speed rail, taking millions of automobiles off the road, making sure that we move in a direction where no more, no more drilling on federal lands, making sure that we invest in changing the entire fleet of the U.S. military.
Bring back the cavalry!
changing the entire fleet of the U.S. military.
You’ll love the new M1A1 hybrid.
From a distance it will be interesting to see how a Humvee hybrid burns when it gets hit in the battery.
Hitler’s invasion of Russia stalls as Wehrmacht searches for a mall parking lot where they can recharge
LMFAO
Like a Bradley?
Diesel isn’t as entertaining to watch. The gas-engine Shermans burned real nice and hot.
Was making an aluminum armor joke from when they first came out.
Yeah, gas fires/explosions are a bitch.
I say US needs a steampunk flying battleship
+1 Starship Yamato!
Everyone needs a steampunk flying battleship! And ornithopters with hot armorkini clad pilots.
As long as my pilots are women.
Goes without saying.
Let’s green the MIC so there are fewer emissions when people are bombed unnecessarily. That’s so stupid it hurts.
When the fuck did that old alley-cat with a D behind his name start being a fucking Communist?
When the Communists in his party said they wouldn’t vote for him.
The moment it became politically advantageous and not one second before.
You both get a cookie. Disgraceful.
Remember, Joe is the “moderate” in this race.
There are no moderates. We have lefties and super far lefties.
This is including the incumbent president.
“Moderate” is in quotation marks. The big selling point for Biden is that he is perceived as moderate/establishment/mainline Democrat (remember: perception) and thus is more electable to beat BadOrangeMan than those whose masks have slipped.
So, nuclear reactors it is, then.
So woke. Much green.
The retail postal site that I work at had very little foot traffic today (mostly oldsters) but even the sorting plant is down in voluum of goods being shipped. Maybe a slow day at the plant but the retail one is real. Old folks are staying at home.
If it makes you feel better the US State Department is working. I should get my new passport this week, which I’m hoping I’ll still be using in July…
Wifey says that people passing through her airport are still travelling overseas. For vacations. Canada just closed every border except for you guys. Gonna stay in the flesh pots of Thailand for a spell?
The plan was Iceland, Belgium, Germany, and Amsterdam.
The plan…
The Plan
Heh knew it
The Schlieffen plan…
Not only the coronobullshit going on, but a spring frost had to come and fuck up all the fruit this year. goddamnit
Hydrangea are coming back from the roots: trimming off the dead stuff I spent the last five years coaxing to its maximums
With all the people who will die from coronavirus the demand will even out.
It is not about the demand. It is about it being hard to find apricots I like outside the ones I pick from my mom’s trees.
You need to plant a single chunk of horseradish root in Mom’s garden just for the LOL’s. Those things are Triffids, Man… Mint – same.
Mom has horseradish. It has not spread as much as people say, but it is not somewhere where it has much room to spread between some concrete walls.
Mint, man. *thousand yard stare*
I had some that escaped from a pot. By the time I was done eradicating it, I had a pit several feet across, and was dosing shoots with pure Roundup.
Pie, enjoy those concrete walls before the horseradish rips them down and fortifies itself in the rubble.
So Hungary and Austria closed their borders while there were a bunch of Romanians returning to Romania and not they are stuck between borders. Must be fun
France: We’ll show you how to totalitarian overreact!
It would become a shooting war except for the fact that they have nothing to shoot with. Oh Canada.
Oil workers can learn to code and, failing that, they can go on welfare. There, the problem’s taken care of.
The way we’re going, the smart move would be to teach them to be blacksmiths.
Put them all on stationary bikes that generate energy
The living will envy the GlibFitters.
+1 Hearty Chuckle!
The living will enslave the GlibFitters.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday encouraged citizens to work in the countryside and drive tractors as a way to overcome the coronavirus epidemic.
The former collective farm director, who likes to emphasise his connection to the land and rural residents, told officials at a televised meeting that “there shouldn’t be any panic” over the virus.
“You just have to work, especially now, in a village”, he said as the former Soviet country that borders Russia and Poland prepares to sow crops.
“It’s nice watching television: people are working in tractors, no one is talking about the virus,” Lukashenko said.
“There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone,” he added.
Belarus is famed in the former Soviet Union for its tractor production, with the Minsk tractor plant remaining a regional leader.
http://www.rfi.fr/en/wires/20200316-belarusian-leader-proposes-tractor-therapy-virus
Can we buy a Belarus tractor with the software unlocked?
I know a guy
I think you can. I believe they’re called Oxen.
Sure, but you can’t import it because of the EPA regs.
A young tractor’s journey from Milan to Minsk – https://youtu.be/1kgpVUE9RpQ
Ahem, “erotic”.
Russian Gordilocks
Man, the Slavs have their own unique brand of kooky politicians, don’t they?
So, my city (Pompano Beach) just joined the beach closing fad.
Per the mayor, the governor basically arm-twisted them into closing the beaches. So yesterday was the last day we got to hit the beach. Now, if you don’t own a boat, you ain’t recreating, I suppose. Maybe fishing at the boat ramp will become the next big crowd they have to deal with.
With 300,000 students out of school in Broward county alone, that’s a lot of kids with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Expect the homicide rate to spike….
as long as you don’t pass the virus to the poor manatees I’m okay with it
I went for my run yesterday afternoon and there were a couple of kids climbing over the park building, doing what young boys with nothing to do do best.
“Twitter takes down coronavirus tweets from John McAfee, David Clarke, and others
The platform had pledged ‘to protect the public conversation around Covid-19’”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21181617/twitter-coronavirus-misinformation-tweets-removed-accounts-covid19
OFFS!
“McAfee incorrectly claimed that “Coronavirus cannot attack black people because it is a Chinese virus.”
Obvious joke is obvious.
Just wait till his “Fuck a whale challenge” takes YouTube by storm.
If people don’t get that that’s a joke well, damn, what can I say?
I’m not even being partisan here. It’s stupid people’s fault. If you’re not able to joke around because people are to stupid, I don’t want to be a part of a group that lets them hang around.
Osaka man arrested after reserving and canceling 1,873 seats at 2 baseball games to get more space
According to police he admitted to the charges saying “I wanted to watch the game comfortably with no people around” and “I wanted to stand out [on TV].” The plan certainly worked but was not without consequences.
Despite the ingenuity and sheer patience it took to craft nearly 2,000 fake identities to make all those reservations, comments online had little sympathy for the suspect.
Just ahead of the social distancing curve
Wow.
Now that’s initiative.
Obviously a Tigers fan.
Not the brightest fans. Gee, I wonder how they found out who did it.
Why you are harming others by not “overreacting”
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1239243622916259841
was this covered?
“JMS III
@schmonj
·
Mar 15
Replying to
@nntaleb
and
@DineshDSouza
I’m a scientist by training, many years in a highly technical field. This I can say for certain. If we let scientists make our decisions, ALL risk taking will be stopped. Science is all about avoiding risk. But living life comes with risk and eliminating it is to stop living”
That is refreshing to see from a scientist.
buried in there is discussion of something that I had not heard. They seem to be claiming that academic models did not predict large impact from COVID early on and did not support banning travel from China when Trump took that action.
My first reaction was “we’d have heard that covered..” Then I remembered Anderson Cooper spending a half hour last night with a panel of “experts” analyzing the fact that Trump “lied” when he clarified an ambiguous “it” in a sentence to mean “nation’s response” and not “virus”. No, that really happened.
Same experts said that the white house rhetoric was 3 weeks behind in where they should be, and people are going to die as a result. Literally, they should have been telling people to shelter in place 3+ weeks ago when there were only cases on cruise ships.
I can’t even with these people. Can you even? Because I can’t even.
So let’s say that we did all shelter in place for the last three weeks. What then?
At some point you have to come out of your house and the virus will still be out there. It isn’t like we would emerge from our hidey-holes and discover that the virus has died completely out. Some Italian would fly in and we’d be on the path to infection again.
If you told me that at the end of a month there would be an effective vaccine, then I’d be more open to this strategy of hiding. But I don’t think that is the case.
There was a news story yesterday about a vaccine being readied for phase 1 trials. According to the story that means that it will be ready for distribution in as little as 18 months….
The point is to slow things down so two things happen. The relatively young and healthy develop immunity, while keeping the medical system from being overwhelmed.
I get the flattening the curve argument. I even somewhat support it.
What I’m bugged by is the media narrative. They make is seem like sheltering means that there won’t be any cases. They have done a terrible job explaining that this means the cases that will occur one way or the other will be spread out over time in order to alleviate the burden on the health care system.
I totally expect that 90% of the people working on the media don’t grok that at all. I’d bet most of them believe that corona will burn itself out during that 14 day period. The one’s who do get it don’t have the patience to try to explain it to the rest.
Whatever your specialty, the universal observation is that journalists get 90% of the details about your specialty wrong.
By large sample size and given the central limit theorem, 90% of journalism is wrong.
Exactly.
What I want to know is the area under the flattened curve the same as one without any preventive measures.
I’ve never actually seen an answer to this.
It’s hard to think of the curve as anything other than short run ( don’t @ me, Keynes); the presumption is we’re comparing a few months to a few more months.
Meanwhile
a/ babies are being born
2) work on a vaccine continues
There’s more to this than the supply-side of virus.
What I’m bugged by is the media narrative.
The media is compromised of mediocrities marinating in a toxic culture and responding to terrible incentives. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
I wonder why the medical system can’t handle a small spike in demand…
I can’t even wipe my own ass nowadays without the guiding hand of big gubmint!
WHEN BIG GUBMIT NOT AVAILABLE, STEVE SMITH TAKE OVER!
I agree with Taleb when I can understand WTF he’s talking about.
straffinrun! Don’t trust Taleb! Talking-head is ass whowle!
Donald Trump Supporter Does Coronavirus Challenge By Licking Airplane Toilet Seat, Twitter Reacts
https://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-supporter-does-coronavirus-challenge-licking-airplane-toilet-seat-2940597
Now THAT’S how you do stupid.
“The video was taken after Trump said that the coronavirus was just a hoax.”
I can’t find where he said that.
A righty fact-checker so take with the appropriate grain of salt:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/02/fact-check-did-trump-call-coronavirus-a-hoax/
In context it’s not what he said.
I can’t find a source that she is a Trump supporter either.
Source? The International Business Times does not need no stinking source. Bad Trump!
Meghan McCain knows what should be done with her!
The peasants are revolting
A group that owns several restaurants in Washington, D.C., has come out against new restrictions on bars and restaurants announced by Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) amid the coronavirus outbreak, saying its locations will remain open.
In a statement that appears to have been shared on Facebook and was captured by Washingtonian food editor Jessica Sidman, the Hill Restaurant Group (HRG), which owns Hawk ‘n’ Dove, Lola’s, Willie’s and other eating spots, said its businesses will “continue to operate as normal.”
“The safety and comfort of our patrons has and always will be a top concern for us at all of our Hill Restaurant Group restaurants,” the group wrote. “Our staff has been trained to maintain even stricter safety precautions to protect our guests.”
“In light of recent developments, all HRG restaurants will continue to operate as normal and we encourage our fellow industry folks to do the same,” it continued. “We understand the gravity of effects that the Corona Virus [sic] has or will have on our community especially the hospitality industry.”
“However, we will not bow down to pressure from the Mayor’s Office or any group for that matter who covertly is attempting to shut us down,” it added. “We fully support our employees and our patrons. It is not our burden to bear nor is it our staffs burden to bear.”
The mayor has made her ruling. Now let her enforce it.
Good for them.
This is fucked up.
Slide them some govt bailout money and I bet they’d shut down in a second.
Nobody is standing up for small businesses. We are fucked. If this continues for a month it’s over for many many business owners. It’s not like flicking a switch where people will all the sudden start streaming back and it’s all good either. These people have no idea what damage they are doing and it’s frightening.
They know exactly the damage they are doing and they are creaming themselves over it.
They’re going to get their ass kicked.
That’s what the OG nannies said when they passed the 21st amendment. It took a bunch of years but people are people. Good on them for standing up! You know they’re coming for your firearms next, Mexi? Right? Just saying…
Bowser responded to the restaurant group on Twitter Monday morning, saying it “must” comply with the District’s health notice.
“While I recognize that all of us have been stressed beyond our immediate understanding of how coronavirus has so quickly upended our daily lives and personal and business existence — you must comply with the DC Health notice,” she said.
“We all have an obligation to do our part to contain the spread of this global pandemic and get to the business of recovery as soon as possible,” she continued. “Until then, your compliance is required, and we will exercise the full force of our MPD, FEMS, DC Health and ABRA and the emergency authority to achieve it.”
Send in the goons.
Good morning, Señor Sharpshooter!
Happy St. Paddy’s day, you drunken louts.
So far, I’m not digging this lockdown bullshit. My phone and email have been eerily quiet. I don’t like this radiating freak-out of daily closures, either.
What in need, I think, is some great Irish music!
Stay groovy, fellow babies!
Here’s one that sort of fits with the times we’re in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDSud7vAH_0
Buenos dias Tundra.
Aww. Thought it would be Delores singing about how when she pulled a finger it lingers.
“DId you have to, did you have to, did you have to smell your finger…”
“DId you have to, did you have to, did you have to
smell yourpull my finger…”“Harrisburg – After consultation with the Wolf Administration and Pennsylvania Department of Health, today the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board announced the indefinite closure of all Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores and licensee service centers, effective at 9:00 PM Tuesday, March 17, to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.”
https://breaking911.com/all-pennsylvania-liquor-stores-closed-indefinitely/
WTF? Is that true?
You have 11 hours… use them wisely.
I’m not in PA, but still, that makes no sense. It’s a store, not a bar.
Fire up the bathtub! There’s moonshine to be made.
It’s true.
Fucking PANIC!
No, this is an opportunity.
*loads semi full of booze and heads for PA*
unexplained wave of trucker bombs litter Pennsylvania
You would think that today it would be Irish car bombs.
The Great Wave of Retardation is spreading!
Wouldn’t it be funny if this is the thing that finally pushes people over the edge?
And by ‘funny’, of course, I mean not funny at all.
Because Porta-potties are so much more sanitary?
Because
Porta-pottiesshitting in the trees behind the restrooms is so much more sanitary?go figure
This is seriously making me rethink my PA retirement plans.
Covid brought Capone back to life.
People can’t go out and they can’t buy alcohol? That’s cruel.
We could go to NJ…
*shudders*
That’s one way to bring back bathtub gin.
“We’re calling for an immediate moratorium on NYPD arrests.
“We are in the midst of a pandemic and our last priority should be to cycle New Yorkers through our broken criminal justice system, separated from their families, communities, and quality services.””
https://twitter.com/LegalAidNYC/status/1239606155133030400
What could possibly go wrong?
And here I was laughing at people panic-buying guns and ammo.
:begins to wonder how many 12 Gauge shells needed to send the “Fuck off” message.
Just one unless it’s a grizzly bear breaking into your place.
Enough to kill someone just by dropping the
crateempty cardboard boxes on them.Having all your shotguns loaded lets you put more lead at the bad guys faster than having to reload.
Though I am practicing my speed-loading.
Social Media Giants Should Pay Up for Allowing Misinformation
“Facebook, YouTube, et al. should pay into a $10 billion public trust that funds the institutions they’ve undermined: journalism, fact-checking, and media literacy.”
The first amendment only covers our lies!
public trust that funds the institutions
99% of Americans think elections are about taking over and forcing others to pay for your perversions
freedom is the furthest thing from their minds
Between the 1% who covet and gain power, and the 85% who want rules banning something else they don’t like, freedom is totally unwelcome. It comes with responsibility.
they’ve undermined: journalism, fact-checking, and media literacy
They did that on their own.
Yep. Now do Russian collusion.
“journalism, fact-checking, and media literacy.”
Institutions – aka the cuckoo’s nest.
STEVE SMITH offers advice.
STEVE SMITH GIVE BEST ADVICE.
From Animal’s link:
https://twitter.com/SallyMayweather/status/1239635475784249344/photo/1
LOL!
https://twitter.com/FernandoLeanme/status/1239560414943461381
The absolute funniest part of capitalist ideology is that they someone managed to convince everyone that “freedom” meant like…the freedom to choose between 63 kinds of shampoo, and not like…the freedom to quit a job you hate without losing your health insurance.
https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1239347908803100673
The absolute funniest part of capitalist ideology is that they someone managed to convince everyone that “freedom” meant like…the freedom to choose between 63 kinds of shampoo, and not like…the freedom to quit a job you hate without losing your health insurance.
sigh. Even for a commie, this is a weak argument. The Lie that communists push is that you should somehow be able to create something from nothing.
I remind you that it is the communist ideology that makes the case that since labor is what should be valued, a just system is one where doctor or engineer should earn the same as the turd polisher (guy that does 8hrs a day polishing turds). The appeal of this ideology to the unproductive and life’s losers is in the fact that they want others to be responsible for them being useless lazy shitbags.
Labor is only as valuable as what it produces.
Otherwise, it makes perfect sense to plow fields and dig ditches with earspoons.
So you dare tell them people in charge their turd shiners are not doing good work? To the gulag with you!
Ok. I might write an article on this. Because that isn’t a fair estimation of Marxist Labor Theory of value. Marx said it was the “Socially necessary amount of Labor” that determined price of goods. Just like Ricardo and (arguably) Adam Smith. The problem with the Labor Theory of value isn’t that it implies marxisim/ socialism. The problem is that socialist exploitation capital theory requires the labor theory of value.
“Marx said it was the “Socially necessary amount of Labor” that determined price of goods.”
Which is completely retarded no matter who said it.
It is. But slightly less retarded than “No matter how much labor is put into something, that is the value”. So yeah. If your a shitty ditch digger that takes 10 hours to do what it takes everyone else 1, Marx was not saying that your ditch is 10x more valuable.
How does one measure the social necessity of the amount of labor?
If the 10-hour ditch digger does a much better job than the 1-hour ditch digger, which is the better and which is the worse?
I’m not sure if Marx made much of an effort to describe that. I’d have to look at it.
The 3-hour ditch digger. 10 hours to do a 1-hour job has a high rate of diminishing returns. The 10-hour ditch is nowhere near good enough to justify 9 extra hours.
3-hour ditch digger
throw the high and the low bidders in the garbage every time
Perhaps the 3-hour ditch digger is optimal, but since the value is in what is socially necessary and not measured in currency, which of the non-optimal cases is worse? The 1-hour digger’s ditch may collapse, harming people and requiring a lot more time to clean up and re-dig, whereas the 10-hour digger wasted time that could have been spent digging other ditches or doing other “socially necessary” things.
What does that have to do with saying the labor of a doctor has the same value as the labor of a turd polisher? Yes, the price of the polished turds is based on an average of the polishers, not just one outlier. But the turd polisher’s labor has the same value as a doctor’s labor.
When that construction is used, what it really means is that all time, every single hour, has the exact same value.
It says absolutely nothing of skill or value to the recipient at all.
Not really if you start treating (and i think Marx did) education/skill as a form of Capital, then the amount of Labor that goes into the doctors 1 hour is Much Higher than the amount of the Turd Polishers.
But the value of education is limited in the same way.
If it takes as long to train a turd polisher as it does a doctor, then their values are equal. It wouldn’t matter that only 5 in 100 people would have the drive and intelligence to complete a doctor’s education, while 100 out of 100 could learn to polish turds. Their time still has the same value.
Logically identical to the drivel they just said.
I’d go a step further and say that the reason why Health Insurance is tied to employers is historical fluke to salary caps and that individual insurance would be more prevalent if the government hadn’t prioritized and then mandated that employers purchase your health insurance.
It was a stupid idea to tie health insurance to employment. That policy along with trying to make insurance into something it’s not (the primary way to pay for everything) is what fucked up American healthcare so much.
But yea, my job involves the financial aspect of healthcare, and it just pisses me off to no end when I hear Lefties casually saying that US healthcare is “completely unregulated” or “laissez-faire”.
Health insurance, other than catastrophic care insurance was a terrible idea, full stop. Unless you are an insurer.
Definitely. The whole concept was turned on its head by requiring them to cover everything from pediatric dental care to substance abuse treatment.
If you proposed making anything else affordable by copying what was done to the healthcare and health insurance industries, you’d be rightfully laughed out of the fucking room.
The dirtiest lie communists tell about healthcare in the United States is that it is expensive because it is capitalist.
If it were capitalist, then it would be cheap and the communists would be decrying the capitalists for driving down wages and prices.
It is expensive because it is not capitalist. It is tied to employment because doing so empowers the government to control it more. It has become part of the bureaucracy of employment control, which is a well storied enterprise in U.S. and state governments. Ponder on the tree of woe that the “capitalist” United States treats employment as a privilege rather than a right (unless you’re a cop, then apparently nothing can stand between you and continued employment).
The United States is where the delusion of “universal healthcare” meets the reality of scarcity without price controls. Nearly every other country that implements “universal healthcare” enacts price controls of one form or another. This leads to widespread shortages, which lead to lowered expectations, which eventually lead to earlier death. Dead people are the easiest and least expensive to treat and care for. The United States is, much to the chagrin of communists, so enamored of the notion that people should get healthcare regardless of cost that it has bloated prices across the board in a quixotic quest to give everything to everybody. Yes, of course this hurts the poor, but that is the near universal truth of all “altruistic” United States policy: from minimum wage to domestic welfare spending to foreign aid, every attempt to help the poor just immiserates more people.
I would dislike communists less if they weren’t such rampant liars. Every once in a while you find an honest one, but most seem to lack the basic intellectual foundation to look at the world and not attribute all its evils to “capitalism”.
I assume that post-corona will see a huge push for universal health care in the US (damn the truth, full speed ahead). If Biden wins, it’ll go through easily. If Trump wins, he’ll probably cave.
I mentioned on last night’s thread that one of the popular posts on Derpbook is the reports from places like Denmark & NZ that their nationals should return from countries with less than optimal health care. Those countries are including the US in that list because it lacks “comprehensive” health care (whatever that means). All my lefty friends are posting the stories with comments that essentially amount to “see, see!”
“Never let a good crisis go to waste” and all that. Never mind that China and Italy have state-run healthcare. They’re not real countries anyway, and it’s totally not racist to exclude them from consideration, although it’s definitely racist to refer to Wuhan or China when talking about the disease.
This reminds me of the discussion on gun control. For every Japan, there’s a Brazil, but Brazil doesn’t count because
it doesn’t comport with the narrativeit’s full of non-English-speaking non-white peopleit’s not a “developed country” (never mind the opinion of Brazilians), discovering whatever relevance that has on gun control being left as an exercise for the reader.Still have our self serve ban here in Baja Washington. Shut down restaurants and bars (note: not even reduce spacing between patrons first) yet stupid shit like forcing a pump jockey in your face to get gas is just insane. So it continues. None of the unhygienic crap on the leftists’ wishlists like bag bans or bottle deposits will be touched.
The Lefts Always.Stay.On.Message mentality (AOC calling for all her same policies in response to this, De Blasio calling for nationalization) shows that they are treating this as a crisis of oprotunity. Not something they are really afraid of.
“None of the unhygienic crap on the leftists’ wishlists like bag bans or bottle deposits will be touched.”
That would be letting a crisis go to waste!
If this goes through, it will be a good consequence of this whole shitshow.
Hey Neph, the Jameson Cold Brew would likely make an excellent Irish Coffee; that’s what I thought it tasted like the whole time.
social distancing champion
https://twitter.com/TheCoronaMemes/status/1239730810850119680
I am hoping that in “this time of crisis”(TM) more people will be emboldened to open carry and even some segment of the sheeple will start to think of that as prudent – at least in this atmosphere.
The more the idea of being armed becomes normal, the better our chances of keeping that right just a little longer.
I’m leaning this way.
Oddly, in the Volunteer State one can legally carry a long-arm only unloaded.
+1 AR-15 pistol
I grieve for the days when 13 year-old’s could walk over to the neighbor’s, firearm in hand, meet up and go plinking with our 22’s. Chasing hare was great fun and ruffed grouse are fine eating. Didn’t even need a hunting licence.
I lived at the end of the last road out of town. Part of my hatred of cops stemmed from my being hassled (but, in fairness, not arrested) for carrying a loaded rifle in the street.
A cool cop would have advised me to step over the curb, across the ditch, and out of his jurisdiction.
A real cop just loves lording over a teenager.
Chasing hare was great fun
Then you grow up and take to chasing another furry critter.
One does not simply chase Steve Smith.
Same in the behive state.
I don’t get out a lot, and i’ve never liked bringing attention to myself, so i don’t open carry. Also, while having it openly available should be a good deterence, i still don’t like that in order for it to be chambered you have to have a CCP/CCL.
“Oddly, in the Volunteer State one can legally carry a long-arm only unloaded.”
In that case I’d be carrying a nice folding stock FAL – with a half-dozen magazines in pouches ready to go.
Luckily for me I’ll be in New Mexico in a couple weeks where I can do that with the FAL loaded and just a flip of a switch to get going.
Commented about this last night. I’ve seen three people open carrying in the last two weeks whereas I haven’t seen a single one for a while.
DAMN YOU DeWine!
Slyman’s is only taking phone orders for 10+ sandwiches, and their online ordering is down. I can go in, but they’re currently running a 2 hour wait on sandwiches (and I fear for them getting shut down if there’s a line of people there for 2 hours). Here’s hoping it calms down at some point today.
I suppose I can get corned beef somewhere else, but some things are FUCKING TRADITIONS!
Order 10 sandwitches
And put them eBay?
I do not need over $100 of corned beef sandwiches. These sandwiches feed normal people for 2 days by themselves.
Order 10, then go to the people in line and sell 9
Shit. There are two places I’d like to get some take-out from. I wonder how hit they will be.
Your governor is on a roll.
Christ, what an asshole.
I would think someone with Wine in their name would be cooler
Like this!
Are wine coolers usually made with bad wine?
Day #3 of Sanitation Station. Still just a potato. Untouched.
I finally made it to Costco yesterday. On Friday I didn’t even try. It was surprisingly chill. Busy, yes, but most people seemed to be in a fine mood. I have an extra mouth to feed (more like 1.5) so I picked up a little extra. There was plenty of chicken, eggs (limit 1 flat), and paper towels. But of course no tp and the water section was decimated.
I waiting in line about 10 minutes to check out. It was a surprisingly blah experience.
You needed more than 90% of the water?
?
This place…
It is not clear yet what caused the collision but footage shows one of the trains mounted on top of the other.
Rule 34 baby.
Last night I posted a Union Leader article which included mention of a restaurant that was defying Sununu’s ban. I contacted the restaurant. They said they are not open for dine in and are not mentioned in the Union Leader article. I thought, “WTF? I know what I read.” I checked the Union Leader article today. It was modified over night. The original is not in the Wayback Machine, but as of this morning, Google search results for a key phrase show a bit of the original article.
It is not clear yet what caused the collision
Ima guess it was two trains on one track, and one didn’t stop in time.
Titty Tuesday makes no distinction between utilitarianism and technocratic tyranny.
http://archive.li/iFpW1
I like #19 and #20.
I had a thought this morning: baby boom in nine months. If you’ve got a significant other, what is there to do for date night?
Oral and anal?
am I getting too old?
The power going out for one night is one thing.
But I’m not seeing the sexy lining of this particular cloud.
Nothing else to do. Idle hands and all that.
Coronials!!!!
Amazon is suspending shipments of various non essentials:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/not-so-prime-virus-sparks-delivery-delays-shortages-amazon
Yikes.
Let’s go Wal-Mart and Target!
“This is your time. Their time is done. It’s over. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a great online retailer Amazon is. Screw ’em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it!”
Great moments are born from great
opportunitypanics.Reading Amazon’s blog post it would seem more like prioritizing essentials which in the near term may essentially mean nothing non essential.
It’s also on the incoming side, not shipping to customers. Obviously as stock runs out, that will affect customers.
And only third party fulfillment.
I may try to order something ‘non-essential’ where Amazon is the actual supplier.
You’re correct, the headline doesn’t exactly match the story but essentially it’s essentials only for now.
Well, looking at a book title today – item listed as “free PRIME shipping” says delivery on Sunday (as opposed to Thursday) – so it appears to be in place.
I’m still getting same-day delivery here in NYC.
That doesn’t make sense, how are they getting into the city so quickly?
*that was meant to be a joke, but I didn’t do the setup for the punchline to work.
@jenniferm_q SOP for libertarian women (lol jk libertarian women know they will be the post apocalyptic warlords)
Quote Tweet @Shaydozer Ladies it’s time to start thinking about if the guy you’re dating has post apocalyptic warlord potential
Heh. Not long ago a guy was in the news and I told my wife, hey, I know that guy. I went to school with him. You know what? He tried to bully me around in the 5th grade. As I was walking out of the room I heard her mumble under her breath “I bet that didnt last very long”.
The trouble is I don’t want to be a warlord, or any kind of lord. Being in charge just means everyone else’s problems become yours. No thanks.
Reminds me of my mindset when I was in the Marines – I wanted to pick up rank, but not because I wanted to boss other guys around. I just wanted one less layer of people who could boss me around.
Yeah, I can remember wanting to get that next stripe just to have some ability to filter out some of the BS that was constantly rolling down on us all. Couldn’t stop it all but at least I could manage it a bit better.
Carding out. Gonna eat some breakfast for dinner and catch some ZZZZ. Unless the Flu Manchu gets me or you first have a great one, Glibbies!
So, I’m looking at the virus map
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
And I notice a huge hole. Nothing in Russia.
Is that plausible? Look at the cluster all around Russia’s border. But nothing in Russia?
Hm….. makes me wonder what actions they are taking. Maybe we’ll get our “do nothing, don’t talk about it” counter example.
They closed their border almost immediately so maybe that. Also, probably not a lot of testing going on.
Please. They aren’t testing. Why bother? The Russian government has never, in its entire history, cared about the welfare of its people.
….or told the truth about anything.
Well you have to remember that Russia actually only exists as a figment of Democratic Fever dreams.
No. From an acquaintance, they aren’t doing testing and they’re coding deaths as pneumonia without postmortems, because Putin’s power grab election is coming up.
I can believe that. I imagine they took a cue from China.
Vladimir
Czars should be referred to by their first names
But nothing in Russia?
Well, aside from not testing/reporting, most of Russia is pretty empty of people.
Seeing tweets of empty supermarket shelves in Russia this week – assess that they’re contemporary and not rehashed 80s pics based on the clothing ;p
From this morning’s brickbat:
https://reason.com/2020/03/17/brickbat-the-lost-boys/
German researcher places mentally deficient young boys with known pedophiles on the theory that “they will love them and care for them”.
Happened in the late 60’s, written about in the 80’s… favorably.
Finally in the last few years they’ve been looking to take corrective action.
Effin’ Germany.
Glad my peeps bailed a couple hundred years back.
“ The program was the brainchild of sexologist Helmut Kentler”
Sexologist?
Vee haf vays of touching yuur junk.
See my quotes from the german wiki in the comments. It is way worse than it sounds.
I don’t know how that is possible.
Achtung! We have young boys who need love and men who love young boys. Put them together!
This gives a whole new meaning to Achtung baby.
Also, would the peloton wife.
Wait… the lady who is hired to play the attractive lady in a fitness ad is attractive?
What’ll they think of next….
Glibfir ypdate:
Bill DeBlasio explained to the peons why he’s allowed to go to the gym and you are not.
Is it the same reason Bloomberg told us he was allowed to have armed guards to protect him, while us peons didn’t warrant the right to defend ourselves?
Yeah, ’cause he receives so many (totally warranted) death threats a day in e-mail and social media – while us plebes are facing actual violent criminals in the streets, face-to-face.
Well, this is sure an interesting way of destroying the economy of the United States. I would’ve thought that it would have needed something more, but I guess an overblown cold is sufficient.
Even if it is a deadly and catastrophic plague that will LITERALLY affect every man, woman and child on the planet, why on earth would cratering the economy help?
If this is a power grab, it sure seems like a dumb one.
We’ll see if the people snap out of it in a week or two.
As I said before, I am fairly sure we have already had it in this household in the beginning of January. If it first appeared in China in November then it was in SF within weeks if not days. This is the precautionary principle run completely amok. I was working at a bar yesterday, they are well and truly fucked. Three weeks of not opening during one of the busiest times of the year. There is going to be some serious economic fallout because of this panic.
Heck, I was in Shanghai for a week in December – then two trips (work) to ski resorts in Hokkaido after that. Six flights with mostly Chinese passengers (not to mention all the Chinese tourists on the transit systems here in Tokyo). It would have been the slimmest of outside probabilities that I wasn’t exposed to it.
I just wish there was a test available now to show that I already have the immunity for it so there’s no risk of me transmitting it.
If you are going to die from the virus did you at least get to go to the winter festival?
It’s on my bucket list!
Only passed through Sapporo a couple times. Never had time to hang out there.
There is no test for that?
I don’t think there is a test for antibodies yet. They’re still just dealing with containing it at this stage.
Antibody tests are still in the development stage. Not sure when they will be available, but I think it will be in months, not years.
Isn’t it possible that they are using necessary precautions as a pretext to also push the boundries of their own power?
That is exactly what they are doing here.
Of course. Listening to our fucktard governor yesterday was infuriating. He was almost gleeful as he was busy shutting down small businesses.
But that’s exactly what I mean. You expand your power, briefly, but you set some pretty bad things in motion. Tax cattle are easy to manage. Angry and financially ruined men are not.
Given that there are still things on the books from WW1 and the New Deal, I have no doubt whatsoever that we will come out of this thing with some new powers that will be there for all eternity.
We’ll see if the people snap out of it in a week or two.
As testing ramps up, the number of confirmed cases will ramp up. The panic-mongers will have all the material they need to keep the panic going.
Sure, people as individuals will get tired of being panicked, but all the restrictions and quarantines and other bullshit Our Masters are frantically signalling and one-upping each other with, the stuff that is doing the actual damage, will persist into the summer.
They will keep it going as long as possible. The fuckers see this as a golden opportunity.
I’m no mathematician but isn’t it mathematically certain that each and every American is going to be exposed to someone who was in contact with someone who was in contact…etc. etc.
no matter how much self-quarantining and compulsive hand washing and 6 ft. of separation that goes on? I mean if I was diagnosed tomorrow and had been in contact with ten people yesterday, they’ve already be in contact with ten and so on and so on.
Once Kevin Bacon gets it, we’re all goners.
+6 Degrees
Damn global warming
Mad Scientist for the win.
+ 6 degrees
Yeah, yeah… refresh. Got it.
P(virus transmission | close contact) < 1
P(virus transmission) = (some constant or near constant multipliers) * P(unknown factors) * P(preventable risks) * P(close contact)
Of course, these aren't truly independent events, but you get the idea.
Why is it I felt a compulsion to respond to “I’m no mathematician” with some (very fuzzy) math?
I just applied a fresh layer of Reynold’s Wrap, but….
What if these gov’ts imposing draconian measures (closing restaurants and bars and owners being defiant) are deliberately sowing discord, hoping for un-rest, only to grant themselves MOAR powers in the interest of “public safety” ?
Hoping for unrest? What would that get them? They had the world by the balls – a compliant herd of tax cattle who generally ignored them and routinely voted against their best interests. So to fix it they want to start cratering their livelihoods and taking away hope for a happy life?
That’s silly. This is a standard ‘holy shit’ government response. They have to do something, right? It’s all they have in the toolbox, man. Like your neighbor with three years of TP.
To quote Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals”
No doubt they will turn around and say if they had had more power they could have done more sooner. The reality that this interrupted their schmoozing and banging staffers and living large on the taxpayer dime and they came rushing out of the stupor to “do something” won’t get as much attention.
The market’s back up
to February 2017
I think we might have found the bottom. For now.
There are some dead man walking banks out there. They will start to drop soon
I have not been forced to sell into the teeth of the worst plunge in my adult life. It isn’t the bottom yet.
I’m operating under the theory that this entire thing is a computer simulation to test my reactions. They got bored about a decade ago and just started messing with me.
Trump getting nominated was the giveaway. That’s just too ridiculous. Then he won? And then he’s the rational one in the room?
Yeah, I ain’t buyin’ it.
So this plunge is just to mess with me and see how I handle ludicrous situations. Kids at home, every possible location they’d go shut down, financial reserves wiped out, and depending on Trump for leadership and decision making.
Yeah…. .this ain’t real.
As I’ve said… any minute now I’m waking up next to Susanne Pleshette and figuring out that it was all a dream.
Suzanne Pleshette’s corpse? (January 31, 1937 – January 19, 2008)
Psychologist dreams he owns a B&B and is married to another woman
Yeah… all of it was a dream. I’m waking up with 1974 Suzanne Pleshette. Or Morgan Farichild. I don’t mind mixing memes.
Actually, I was coming of age when Kathy Ireland was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. So I’ll vote for Kathy Ireland. 1985 Kathy Ireland.
We’ll see about knock-on effects. Businesses with no revenue can’t pay loans or rent. I expect banking and commercial real estate to take a beating if the bullshit doesn’t go away in, say 4 to 6 weeks.
Which it won’t.
Which has me wondering what the state of my foreclosure (hasn’t even begun the process yet) will be in.
Probably Missouri.
That’s one helluva dead cat bounce.
China Twitter doing ironic jokes.
Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence
And my favorite Hong Kong protester makes an appearance!
I love that guy.
Sorry, China. You are losing this battle.
Here ya go.
Michael
@mjr880
·
11h
Replying to
@XHNews
I have a daughter who is 8 this year. She asked me where the virus came from. I looked at her and told her “We don’t know but the president says It’s from China”. She looked at me and said “That sounds a lot like racism, daddy”. Such clarity. Such wisdom.
lol
They are not interested in communicating a story with the facts, but in telling a story that promotes the narratives.
What the hell is that? It’s a joke, right?
*nods knowingly, stares off into the distance*
“Wisdom from the mouths of babes.”
Alternatively: “And a young child shall lead them.”
☭ TheEastIsRed
@EastIsRed
·
12h
Replying to
@XHNews
It is for a lot of MAGAtards. The “greatest country in the world w/ the greatest health care” can’t contain a virus while China, SK, Vietnam, Singapore as well as other developing nations have done so. When questioned on their logical thinking ability, they resort to racism.
Sick burn.
I’m guessing no
https://twitter.com/Steffi_Cole/status/1239360446446125062?s=19
What if these gov’ts imposing draconian measures (closing restaurants and bars and owners being defiant) are deliberately sowing discord, hoping for un-rest, only to grant themselves MOAR powers in the interest of “public safety” ?
No matter what happens, they will tell us it would have been worse without their enlightened intervention, and they need to keep those Moar Powers at the ready for the next
manufacturedpanic attack.I think we might have found the bottom. For now.
I have a couple of things on the screen right now,and I’m thinking, “Shoulda pulled the trigger yesterday, dummy.”
that time of day when the next cup of joe ain’t even fun any more
HAH!
I just got an email from my local range:
They are cancelling classes for now, but I’m happy to see them stay open.
Gun powder residue kills viruses…
But does Jet fuel melt it?
Now I want
the market to tank againmy picks to go back to the deep discount rack.Hey Yusef, you still with us?
Selling our masks back to us?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jack-ma-coronavirus-test-kits-chinese-billionaire-alibaba-shipping-masks-supplies-to-united-states-donating/
While I appreciate this in principle, the smugness and virtue-signalling behind this is rage-inducing. I find it extremely difficult to believe that there’s no longer a shortage of masks in China that has resulted in expat Chinese buying up masks worldwide to ship back to the motherland – and that Jack can consequently ship off a million of them (quality?) to the US for free.
Those masks are completely worthless. Let them buy all they want.
Not at all! They’re very useful……if you’re sandblasting something.
This is like when Citgo started donating gas to poor people freezing in their homes in the US.
The Jack Ma Foundation, which has used Twitter to post news in the past, shared more information about the donation.
Bullshit. Like the shipment to Italy that was called “aid”, these are all bought and paid for, I guarantee it.
CBS is reporting it. Even if you are right, what outlet is going to refute the claim? This is not a courtroom with an adversarial process.
SSRS is the devil. It’s on my shitlist with SharePoint, our database provider, our time tracking app, and Outlook
I’ve always had a fairly good experience with Outlook. But other than that I can get on board. Don’t know who your db provider is.
I wasn’t thrilled with Outlook…..until we switched to Google Mail at work. Holy shit, does THAT suck. I now remember Outlook very fondly.
Do you have to encrypt or digitally sign email often? Other than that, I can’t think of anything Outlook does better. And, even though it’s a desktop application, it’s basically useless if your Exchange server goes down, so the fact that it doesn’t technically require the Internet is not much help.
Yeah, it’s the worst – except for all the alternatives….
They’ve really been pushing Sharepoint here lately.
Here’s the deal on flattening the curve and the capacity of the US healthcare system:
The system is built to manage a bad flu season. We have them periodically, and we manage them (with some stretching and pain). If the Kung Flu was going to peak during a peak of the flu season, that would be bad and would overstress the system.
But its not. This was a typical flu season, and is already on the declining side of the bell curve. Kung Flu will peak after the flu season peaks. Assuming it is no worse than a bad flu season, we will have the capacity to manage it. Worst case scenario is that Kung Flu requires more negative pressure rooms (which you can be convert a normal room to; its an exercise in HVAC engineering) and respirators (which the CDC has a stockpile of).
Some curve flattening is a good idea, but you get the most bang for your buck by closing borders. Keeping patient zeros out has disproportionate benefit to trying to control an epidemic once it has a foothold. The stupid lily pad analogy points the way – keep the fucking lily pads out of your pond – but nobody gets it. In any event, we are past the point where border control has the maximum impact. Certainly no reason to import more, of course, but its here now.
As testing spreads rapidly due to the efficacy of a private lab industry, the number of confirmed cases will skyrocket, feeding the panic and pointlessly compounding the damage.
To be fair I’d expect the market to understand this. Politicians not so much.
The system
the System?
Isolated System.
Strangely appropriate.
In any event, we are past the point where border control has the maximum impact.
It’s like rolling up your windows after you farted. As for the curve flattening, it doesn’t look like they are even looking at cost/benefit in economic terms let alone rights terms.
Last what was officially a pandemic: US had 55,000,000 to 60,000,000 infected, 260,000 to 270,000 hospitalized, 11,000 to 13,000 dead. Even allowing for population growth, similar numbers would still rank COVID-19 low on causes of death. Current mortality rate figures for COVID-19 are only valid if you can point to somewhere with decent health care that also had mass testing.
What RC Dean posted about flattening the curve makes sense from the point of view of a hypothetical government dealing with it rationally as a medical problem.
We can speculate on how we got to PANic-DEMocrat-IC, but rational medical response as the guiding principle is not it.
In the case of the US, for example, ask an MD about the US’s 10-person limit or six feet of separation.
For folk who work at those take-your-pet-to-work places:
what expectations do your employers have while your dog WFH ?