Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Has it really been a decline or can we just see it because we're in the middle of it?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I just can't with you....

She started with the agency had provided a detailed a factual record to support, then took off on a flyer? I'm sure it was just chit-chat, making convo.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My suggestion was that we put some non-lawyers on the court, because lawyers are just wonderful at arguing forever based on their objective and very, very bad at reasoning to a solution based on evidence.

Reading what you have written, I am more convinced than ever. Indeed, let's fill a lot of judicial positions with non-lawyers. We need less "legal reasoning" (there's an oxymoron!) and more problem solving.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

So my (non-scientific) observation is that Omicron has peaked around here and is falling off a bit. Each morning I drive by an Urgent Care that is a big rapid test place. A few weeks ago each morning there was a line of cars in the highway waiting to get into the parking. People had to wait until someone else pulled out to get a spot. This week there have been empty spots in the lot.

How about where you guys are?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Yes, good point.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Cite, please. I found the transcript for you -- what are you talking about?

C'mon, Mr. My Firm Had A Case In The Supreme Court -- if you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The conservatives on the Court are solving problems. They just aren't the same problems you see, and you don't like their solutions.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I went into a Walgreens on 14th Street to buy cat litter at 5:00 PM and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of home Covid tests on the shelf, looking untouched.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Our numbers seem to have plateaued, both in daily positives and hospital admissions.

I wonder if the number is going down because everyone has had it now?

My brother, my sister, my 2-year-old niece, and my mother have it right now. My dad and my other sister do not. All triple vaccinated (except the niece), all living in the same house in the country until Friday, when my brother tested positive and they all separated to isolate. My 82 year old dad is at the highest risk, and he’s been with my mother the whole time. He’s been exposed for 5 days now and seems to be fine. Going theory is that his 45+ years working on respiratory issues in the ICUs exposed him to so many bugs he has a super heightened immune system. 2-year-old is happy she gets ice cream and can watch Nemo or Zootopia whenever she wants. Sister seems to have it the worst. Brother on the upswing. Mom holding steady.

Everyone thought it’d would be my husband or my sister’s who brought it to the family. Mine teaches in a yoga studio (he’s masked and doesn’t go near anyone, but it’s indoors and people are idiots). Hers teaches at Rice and went to South Africa and Malawi in the height of their Omicron outbreaks. (He was in Houston--aka Gomorrah to those living in the country for the last 22 months--when the ranch outbreak started, both working and getting ready for Sunday's marathon. He has stayed here while my sister and niece are isolated at the ranch.)

My brother and sister are flipping a house in the country, which is why they were there. Probably some close contact with a contractor or vendor was the source. No one out there really cares about any sort of protocols.

I just really don’t want to get it while I’m pregnant, no matter how mild this particular variant is. We are all back working from home full time until this passes, but I'll probably keep on staying here until the baby is born in early March even if the rest of the office goes back sometime in February.

We still have a ton of people out with Covid at work. The number of positives are still higher than they've been for the entire pandemic, but they're a little less than the week before and the week before that. Staffing has been an issue in some parts, but I suspect some of the work-from-home people are working while having it. It's on the clinical side we can't have people going in with it. I'm guessing we have another three or so weeks before we start seeing some definite declines.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We're getting our kitchen done and the contractors all seem to have gotten it in the last few weeks. Kid was also exposed two weeks ago at preschool, but we've have it invade the bubble.

I'm still going to the office part time, because there's no one here anyway and I'm in my office by myself, but would otherwise be working from home.

It's coming up fast!

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We had seven people in our house for Xmas, and four of them have had it since. My wife, the youngest Slothrop and I -- the three who live here -- are still uninfected. We are trying our damnedest to avoid it, for all the reasons but primarily because Ms. Slothrop is managing a short-staffed ICU, and if she has to stay home it'll be a clusterfuck.

Happily, around here it looks like R is down from 2.5 just before New Years to a little over .5.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Something don't jive here, homey. Maybe read an article or two.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Part time here too even though I was recently able to score a year's supply of Kn95s.

However, my office has very strict rules. You have to wear a mask if you get up from your open floor plan desk and take one step. But if you are sitting at your open floor plan desk you can take your mask off because the virus knows to stop if you are sitting working, making the bosses money.

What’s it gonna be, boy?
 

Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night
I can see paradise by the dashboard light

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

"Why do you have to get up? Bathroom? Icky, I don't make money off your bathroom time!"



[The better joke is, "bathroom time is not billable in and of itself," but PI]

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I don't usually reply to the same post twice, but rules R stupid.

I was at a Moth (hi Thurgreed!) storytelling show in Chicago. The club had a very strict mask required rule. The only exception? You could take it off when actively eating or drinking. It was a crowded bar. Everyone was "actively drinking" all night. Sitting two feet away from strangers.

When did I have to wear a mask? When I got called to tell a story. I was on a stage 5 yards from anybody telling a story and had to keep a mask on. Fucking stupid.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My in-laws got it flying home, my oldest went skiing in Utah and got it there, and my next-oldest went back to school for the start of the quarter and got it there. Our house is a COVID-free zone. We told the in-laws they should stay longer and fly home later, but they didn't listen....

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

B-I-L now has it. Some think it was from the marathon on Sunday. He came by here on Tuesday to borrow a rapid test, and that was negative. No idea where he got it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

For immunocompromised me, this is the kind of thing I have to avoid. I walk in a place, assess whether or not they apply common sense, and if the answer is no I leave. But it's 90% common sense, 10% rules.

We need a rule to just be careful in a sensible kind of way.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I can see the underlying thought though. You can tell a story with a mask on. You can't eat or drink with one. Will the same amount or more virus potentially be released into the air? Prolly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This is indeed stupid, but you may be surprised to learn that people are still trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That's pretty much how I've been operating as well, especially since Omicron became so prevalent. And I assume the unmasked indoors are diseased and give a very, very wide berth.

Local numbers are still ridiculously high, but seem to be either plateauing or decreasing a bit. I think the number of home tests have skewed the "official" numbers down. For example, none of my family has had a PCR test and therefore officially counted, but all tested positive on home tests. (Dad--most vulnerable and the one we took all the superhuman precautions for--still negative despite living with my positive mom this whole time.) Hospitalizations slightly down though. Still high, but lower than last week.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Hear me out. Wordle, but hourly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

With my average of 4.5 turns per day I’d be accused of churning the file.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Yeah, but do we actually have Capitalism? On the left coast you have titans of industry admitting their model is to create monopolies for themselves: https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-t...ers-1410535536

On the other coast, you have a finance industry using a largely rentier model.

It's better than socialism, no doubt. But it's also highly dysfunctional and leaves a majority of people (an overwhelming majority, according to polls) feeling like disposable cogs in a new gilded age system.

A country controlled in large part by speculators providing little if any value and monopolists (who do provide value, but at cost of eliminating competition) isn't exactly a stable or desirable situation.

So while the comic is funny, it also kinda misstates the critiques of the current system offered by the would-be "socialists." Which is understandable, as most of the people who think the system is fucked up can't concisely articulate why they think that themselves. If I were able to speak for them, I'd state the critique like this:

People are increasingly compelled to deal with more and more complex transactions and interactions as a result of: (1) rentiers compelling them to engage in new economic events that create fees and novel/enhanced income for these actors (FIRE and HC industries most notably); (2) a government that, rather than control these actors, aids them in creation of further complexities via legislation intended to go good but which actually just effects barriers to entry (hence, the decrease in new business formation); and, (3) being forced to work at jobs that provide no satisfaction and which in many cases workers loathe and only perform out of necessity and lack of options.

Even the winners in this economy don't really like it. It's brutally competitive, which can be invigorating when the result is satisfying. But I'd suggest that very little of what is done by most of the people doing well in this economy is satisfying personally or emotionally.

And if you're a loser in the system, well, you exist in world in perpetual disruption and anxiety. You're in debt, and the rentiers are drowning you a little more each month with increases in the cost of everything from which they can extract their rents. Neither you nor the winners are actually really, truly free, but you're quite literally a serf.

Who can claim this sort of existence is optimal for anyone outside the .00001%? It's a lunatic way to live. If one takes Keynes' prediction that as tech improved, we'd work less, down to 15 hours a week by the turn of the century, as rational, we're possibly the most irrational society on earth.

And UBI apparently won't fix it. We've had "UBI-lite" for the past two years and all it's done is create inflation.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Is it? Can we agree on a definition of socialism before we decide?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It's mostly performative at this point. Rote compliance rather than thoughtful behavior.

There's a definite industry, however, invested in keeping a battle going between those with blase attitudes about it and those who remain vigilant. And also, of course, an industry invested in pitting vaxxers vs. anti-vaxxers. Hence the Joe Rogan vs. Neil Young thing.

If you're not vaxxed, something's wrong with you. You can't properly assess risk. But I also don't care about you. Caveat emptor. You wanna traffic in conspiracy theories and paranoia? Have at it. I'm not masking up to save you. If I see you in the grocery store and I give you Omicron, that's on you.

And if you want to tsk tsk me about how I'd better be afraid of Omicron and act in a paranoid fashion, you'd do better to lecture the wall. I'm not terribly interested in engaging in your demonstration of what a concerned and selfless sort you are. We're both vaccinated, boosted, and I've had two variants of the disease, and We All Have or Will Acquire Omicron.

I love most of Neil's stuff, and I have iMusic, so his move means nothing to me. And I got bored with Joe long ago (he gets too high and meanders thru his interviews). The two of them, and the rest of the "Vaccine Controversy" and "Vaccine Piety" industries can take a walk. It's not interesting anymore. Like most of Joe's and Neil's recent work.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Some examples of what might be wrong include cancer and being younger than 5.

Nope.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

"A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

The "regulated" part is desired. The argument there is one of degree.

The "owned" portion is not desired. But there is an argument of degree, or regarding certain services and industries, to be engaged there. I'm increasingly coming to the view that some things, like health care, might not be appropriately placed entirely in private hands. I'm also reaching the conclusion that perhaps search should be a public utility. And that data mined from consumers should belong to the public rather than the sites and search engines that compile it. Or, alternatively, that people should be paid for the extraction and use of their data (Jaron Lanier's idea).

True socialism does not work. Partial socialism, which we have, can work. The cartoon suggested that we needed true socialism. I'd say to the extent socialism works, and it does for some things, it should be employed sparingly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

As to the people with cancer, while I sympathize, having the tail wag the dog (in this case a tail analogous to a lightning needle atop a skyscraper) has never been wise policy by which to regulate 300 million people.

As to 5 year olds, they're already getting it like crazy. Do you think with all the adults acquiring it and not even knowing it, the kids aren't getting it?

At a certain point, vigilance needs to cede to pragmatism. Are we there yet? Maybe. Maybe not. But when people are doing in night clubs what Hank was describing, it seems impossible for Omicron not to have infected almost everyone. Which is a good thing. A weak strain that boosts immunity hastens the endemic stage.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Welcome, Comrade.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

See, "wear a mask in public" seems like a really, really tiny thing to do for them. Especially if masks are free (which they should have been as soon as we were no longer concerned about availability of PPE for health care workers).

Yes, our fully-vaxxed 5 year old's preschool had to close for a week because one or more kids got it. That's exactly the reason we still need preventative measures. She goes to school with kids that aren't old enough yet and has a cousin who isn't either.

That would be a good thing, and I think Omicron out competing Delta has had positive effects, but as I understand the current state of the data (subject to change, of course): (1) Omicron is not necessarily milder for children, and (2) it doesn't seem to be providing lasting immunity (or immunity correlates with severity of illness).

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Beware do-gooders like Adder bearing governmental power - https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...id-19-deaths-/.

Denmark is smarter - https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/01/europ...ntl/index.html

And as for performative, the U.S requires fully vaxxed and boosted travelers to the U.S. to have a negative test within 1 day to enter the country, presumably to ensure that no COVID gets into a country where it is endemic.

But ... the children!

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Worse- work from home has severely impacted innovation. People can’t collaborate over Zoom very well. Companies in “dumb” states that relaxed those restrictions early, and are in office, are innovating like always. New England will be the new Mississippi. Florida will be the next California.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Worse- work from home has severely impacted innovation. People can’t collaborate over Zoom very well. Companies in “dumb” states that relaxed those restrictions early, and are in office, are innovating like always. New England will be the new Mississippi. Florida will be the next California.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If the lockdowns had little impact because lots of people ignored them, that's not really a stunning indictment of the government have too much power.

Seems like a better policy in a country where vaccination rate >80%. If my kids go to a public school and a significant proportion of kids in the school have parents who won't vaccinate them, that's a different sort of problem.

Yes, performative. What I have seen people (e.g., Tyler Cowen) say, though, is that the government wins support for other stuff through this sort of COVID theater. Just not enough of it, I guess.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Thanks for your sympathy.

Most of us aren't asking for policy to revolve around us. What we're asking for is some basic consideration. I will be socially distant, I will wear a mask, I will go to restaurants and other places that don't just do the minimum but follow common sense policies, and I'd like to not have any fucking idiots making a point of invading my space, abusing me for the care taken, or openly violating the rules of the places I have chosen to go.

During the next 6 months, while I undergo chemo, I'm going to take a lot of care, but I'm also going to be weakened. I'll work with whatever rules there are, but my biggest worry is assholes who flout the rules.

When I did this 8 years ago, without a pandemic, but for a 2 1/2 year stint, I was able to avoid even getting a common cold during the period because I was careful and people were considerate. But the environment is different now, and the arrogant (hi Les!), ignorant (hi again Les) people who make up for their limp dicks by swaggering around trying to dumpsplain the CDC, Fauci, and the poor waitress who is just trying to follow the rules are the worry.

Again, thanks for the concern. But really, a little common sense, a bit of deference to the rules, and a bit less fake testosterone are what I'd ask for.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This just isn't my experience at all.

One area I work heavily in is biotech. It requires labs, so working from home is a real problem. But government in both Mass. and California has prioritized rules that make sense for biotech, and the labs have generally stayed open. On the other hand, Biotech also requires broad collaboration among people dispersed all over the globe. The improvement in the ability to work from remote that has occurred over the last couple years has really helped there. But all those people are still clustered near top notch universities and medical centers. Yes, some are in Florida (I do a lot of work in Florida), and both Miami and Gainesville can benefit, but they aren't going to turn into little South San Frans any time soon.

I do less in traditional tech areas, but still a fair bit. The remote work has broadened hiring at a point when Mass. and California had a shortage - the fact that we can hire into a California company someone who is in Montreal or Chicago has really helped. Of course, when the pandemic is over, a lot of those people are going to have to move to Mass. or California or lose their jobs.

I do think there are opportunities for the places that aren't traditional innovators, but the biggest beneficiary on that score is going to be Canada, because they didn't spend four years fucking up their immigration system and keeping furn'rs out of their schools.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

No work from home just emphasized that we don’t give a shit about collaborating with you. No offense.