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

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

I think we are comparing pol pot to the Shanghai lockdowns.

No. I said what I meant - that Pol Pot would recognize a fellow dictator/totalitarian in Adder and call him friend. Every one of their ilk clothes emselves in altruism. It is the excessively, vocally altrusitic that are the ones to be scared of and almostly universally condemned in the end, after it is too late.

LessinYork

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

No. I said what I meant - that Pol Pot would recognize a fellow dictator/totalitarian in Adder and call him friend. Every one of their ilk clothes emselves in altruism. It is the excessively, vocally altrusitic that are the ones to be scared of and almostly universally condemned in the end, after it is too late.

LessinYork

So EU passport, the benefits are..... I can live/work in any member country for as long as I want? Anything else?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

I have been talking about lockdowns...
LessinYork

You may want to go back to edit some of your prior posts. Just sayin...

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Keep those crows on payroll. They're totally worth the grape cost. And you definitely don't want them to turn on you. Those guys can be pretty vicious to their enemies.

I like to hunt crows with AR15s, right after I'm done with the feral pigs and prairie dogs.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I like to hunt crows with AR15s, right after I'm done with the feral pigs and prairie dogs.

I live a quarter mile from Detroit's Zoo. Our skys look like what it must have been like above the Ark.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

When we weigh costs and benefits, let's remember two things. The first is, having to wear a mask just isn't that much of a cost, no matter how much some people bitch about it, and no matter how much some people become emotionally committed to the idea that it's intolerable. Certainly not compared to the costs of dying of COVID, or getting long COVID, or having a friend or relative die of COVID, or having to work in a hospital caring for COVID, etc. The second is, when you don't wear a mask, you not only expose yourself to some additional risk, you also expose other people. Many people seem incapable of acknowledging or weighing that risk, in some cases because they're ignorant but in many cases because they are assholes. Not wearing a mask is a little like dumping garbage on your own lawn and saying, "it's my property so I'll decide whether it looks good," but it's also like dumping garbage on your neighbors' lawns and saying, "fuck all of you."

If I had to guess, I'd say 5% of people I see are wearing masks. Even in a national museum I visited, it's a small number.

So it appears the overwhelming majority of people in the MidAtlantic are not masking. Therefore, anyone choosing to mask is probably not making much of a difference. And the virus is weakening as it mutates. (Could that change? Sure. But the likelihood of that is lottery odds.)

So doing what all the other Romans are doing is not dumping shit or piss or anything else on others. It's going along with the overwhelming majority of others. You can call that dumb, or selfish, or a sad form of herd mentality.

But what you also must call it is, How Life Works.

If you've ever had anything biopsied, which is scary, there's moment where you think, "It's all indifferent to me." And it is. The world will keep going. I'm sure in old age people have such reflections all the time.

That people will resiliently do what they do, even selfishly, is the oil in society's engine. Shit falters. Fuck, it looks like our political system is collapsing. Our economy is in a strange and possibly perilous state. Putin might nuke something and god knows what might follow. But people will get up and live their lives, and they'll live them according to behaviors, good or ill, that the majority of people decide are acceptable. And right now, those behaviors include eschewing masks.

I'm not saying you have to like it. Criticize it as you see fit. Your dissenting view has value. But I don't think it's wise, fair, or productive to analogize people at this stage dropping masks to litterers who don't give a shit about the rest of society. People move on with their lives. If the majority of them all moved on in masks, that'd be the rule. But that was never going to be the rule here, with a virus that's becoming endemic and isn't causing issues for most people.

And it's not because of Trump. The huge majority of people ditching masks are doing so because everyone is doing so. They're from all parties and backgrounds and, no - they're not doing it because MAGA nation normalized it. Not wearing masks was normal for millennia. It's still normal now. So people went back to the baseline.

We're not China. We err on the side of personal autonomy and that's part of what makes us dynamic in a way China will never be. It's bizarre to even compare what they do to what we do. Rote submission and reverence for authority without scrutiny is anathema to us. And I think disgust for any suggestion we should copy to even a small extent China's obedience-obsessed systems and culture is at the heart of Less's criticism. I give those who think China was or is on the right track with Covid policy the benefit of the doubt. Heart's in the right place. Less doesn't offer that. But Less and I both agree: If you're advocating that the Chinese approach, which would have trampled civil liberties, is workable or advisable here, you're nuts, and too credulous - dangerously so - to ever be given any kind of power in this country.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

No. I said what I meant - that Pol Pot would recognize a fellow dictator/totalitarian in Adder and call him friend. Every one of their ilk clothes emselves in altruism. It is the excessively, vocally altrusitic that are the ones to be scared of and almostly universally condemned in the end, after it is too late.

LessinYork

"Who will think of the children???"

If you hear that, the answer is almost always, uniformly, "not the speaker." Because, while we don't know the exact answer, we do know this: That motherfucker is incapable of useful thought.

The extreme altruists still, despite thousands of years of evidence, refuse to acknowledge the law of unintended consequences. "If we just had a rule, a policy, a regulation that made people do the following..."

The officious busybodies of society have actually done more damage than any other group. They're created a leviathan tax code that frustrates the honest and rewards those wealthy who can afford accountants to exploit its carve outs. They've brought us the concept of "zero tolerance" that underpins everything from the Drug War to every dimwitted HR policy you can think of to the entire make-work revenue-sucking industry of COMPLIANCE.

All in service to curing society's ills with aggressive action. "Let's pass a law!" And now, all these years later, let's become sclerotic as a result of the endless red tape, and let's drown in it.

"If we were all just obedient to our betters. Everything would work." Just like the CCP is functioning right now. The picture of perfect efficiency and operation.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If I had to guess, I'd say 5% of people I see are wearing masks. Even in a national museum I visited, it's a small number.

So it appears the overwhelming majority of people in the MidAtlantic are not masking. Therefore, anyone choosing to mask is probably not making much of a difference. And the virus is weakening as it mutates. (Could that change? Sure. But the likelihood of that is lottery odds.)

So doing what all the other Romans are doing is not dumping shit or piss or anything else on others. It's going along with the overwhelming majority of others. You can call that dumb, or selfish, or a sad form of herd mentality.

But what you also must call it is, How Life Works.

If you've ever had anything biopsied, which is scary, there's moment where you think, "It's all indifferent to me." And it is. The world will keep going. I'm sure in old age people have such reflections all the time.

That people will resiliently do what they do, even selfishly, is the oil in society's engine. Shit falters. Fuck, it looks like our political system is collapsing. Our economy is in a strange and possibly perilous state. Putin might nuke something and god knows what might follow. But people will get up and live their lives, and they'll live them according to behaviors, good or ill, that the majority of people decide are acceptable. And right now, those behaviors include eschewing masks.

I'm not saying you have to like it. Criticize it as you see fit. Your dissenting view has value. But I don't think it's wise, fair, or productive to analogize people at this stage dropping masks to litterers who don't give a shit about the rest of society. People move on with their lives. If the majority of them all moved on in masks, that'd be the rule. But that was never going to be the rule here, with a virus that's becoming endemic and isn't causing issues for most people.

And it's not because of Trump. The huge majority of people ditching masks are doing so because everyone is doing so. They're from all parties and backgrounds and, no - they're not doing it because MAGA nation normalized it. Not wearing masks was normal for millennia. It's still normal now. So people went back to the baseline.

Your talk about weighing costs and benefits lasted exactly one posts, replaced with following the herd.

We're not China. We err on the side of personal autonomy and that's part of what makes us dynamic in a way China will never be. It's bizarre to even compare what they do to what we do. Rote submission and reverence for authority without scrutiny is anathema to us. And I think disgust for any suggestion we should copy to even a small extent China's obedience-obsessed systems and culture is at the heart of Less's criticism. I give those who think China was or is on the right track with Covid policy the benefit of the doubt. Heart's in the right place. Less doesn't offer that. But Less and I both agree: If you're advocating that the Chinese approach, which would have trampled civil liberties, is workable or advisable here, you're nuts, and too credulous - dangerously so - to ever be given any kind of power in this country.

I missed the post where I advocated the Chinese approach, and so did you, but I guess there's really no difference between dumping on people who bitch about masks, locking down the city of Shanghai, and Pol Pot.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

They are totally worth it, though they are skittish with me still. Blue jays are worthless. They scream a lot but run like hell when the hawks come.

Oh forgot to mention that cooper went after a stray cat and tried to get my cat through the window. So fuck him.

I have a blue jay that comes every day at four to tell me that the feeder is empty. Every day yelling at my window. Goddamn glutton.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Your talk about weighing costs and benefits lasted exactly one posts, replaced with following the herd.

They're not mutually exclusive concepts.

But if you want me to take the side of arguing that wearing masks is at this juncture an inconvenience of greater weight than its benefit, we can do that.

Masks worn properly would require people to put them on in numerous circumstances that would be significantly disruptive to various behaviors and commercial activities. Should we all mask up at concerts? Mask up each time one stands up from his table at a restaurant to use the bathroom? How does one enjoy a bar while wearing a mask? What of gyms, where masking during cardio impedes one's ability to engage in the very activity one has gone there to enjoy?

The case can be made and won quite easily. But I'd rather not make it. Because it is an argument of absolutes where one of degree is needed.

Masks should not be the default. But people should be cognizant of those around them and respectful and if someone wants you to mask near them, you have a duty to comply.

We can be adults about this. In fact, it's the only way we'll move forward. Because people are not going to agree to default to masks, and they really won't do it when you analogize them to people discarding feces in the yard. You'll only alienate them.

I missed the post where I advocated the Chinese approach, and so did you, but I guess there's really no difference between dumping on people who bitch about masks, locking down the city of Shanghai, and Pol Pot.

I didn't say you did. I was speaking more broadly, trying to make a bigger point about Less' point. The "you're" is general, not aimed at you specifically. I never thought you advocated the Chinese approach.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

I have a blue jay that comes every day at four to tell me that the feeder is empty. Every day yelling at my window. Goddamn glutton.

AM or PM? I get the crows at 4 AM, then the blue jays, who sometimes come later. Our regular cardinal does the 4 Am too but they’re not so loud.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

They're not mutually exclusive concepts.

But if you want me to take the side of arguing that wearing masks is at this juncture an inconvenience of greater weight than its benefit, we can do that.

Masks worn properly would require people to put them on in numerous circumstances that would be significantly disruptive to various behaviors and commercial activities. Should we all mask up at concerts? Mask up each time one stands up from his table at a restaurant to use the bathroom? How does one enjoy a bar while wearing a mask? What of gyms, where masking during cardio impedes one's ability to engage in the very activity one has gone there to enjoy?

The case can be made and won quite easily. But I'd rather not make it. Because it is an argument of absolutes where one of degree is needed.

Masks should not be the default. But people should be cognizant of those around them and respectful and if someone wants you to mask near them, you have a duty to comply.

We can be adults about this. In fact, it's the only way we'll move forward. Because people are not going to agree to default to masks, and they really won't do it when you analogize them to people discarding feces in the yard. You'll only alienate them.



I didn't say you did. I was speaking more broadly, trying to make a bigger point about Less' point. The "you're" is general, not aimed at you specifically. I never thought you advocated the Chinese approach.

Sounds like you just gave up and said fuck it and expect everyone else to. I know more people out with Covid now than ever before. And sick too.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

AM or PM? I get the crows at 4 AM, then the blue jays, who sometimes come later. Our regular cardinal does the 4 Am too but they’re not so loud.

Blue Jays: assholes.

Geese: major assholes.

Swans: occasional assholes but are especially asshole-ish to geese, so enemy of enemy is friend.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Sounds like you just gave up and said fuck it and expect everyone else to. I know more people out with Covid now than ever before. And sick too.

Our office has been completely ravaged with COVID in the last few weeks. The mask mandate internally was cancelled just before the spike hit, and people were told to be in the office at least three days a week, because my partners thought a return to normalcy would improve productivity.

It didn't play out that way, with over a third of the office being out for at least a week or two. There are now tumbleweeds blowing through the hallways and finding people to get stuff done is almost impossible.

Oops.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I live a quarter mile from Detroit's Zoo. Our skys look like what it must have been like above the Ark.

What a great place to hunt crows with one of those AR 15s. Think anyone would mind?