It’s been a dizzying year. I was honest to goodness stunned when I turned on the tv today and they stated that the DNC starts tomorrow night- “Already? That usually doesn’t happen until Aug- oh, yeah.”
I mean I know this is a play out of every authoritarian’s handbook- do so much shit that it is hard for people to keep track of it all, but having all of this shit going down AND a pandemic is just bonkers.
Donald Trump’s Nonproliferation Ambitions
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I know. I feel like we should be about in the middle of April somehow.
The way we just kind of holed up inside starting in March, none of the things that we normally count on to mark the passing of the seasons have happened.
opiejeanne
Time is doing weird things, at least in my brain. I can’t tell if it’s been a couple of days, two weeks, or two months since Trump has done certain terrible things.
Jeffro
Remember back in late February, early March, when reputable people were saying we’d better dramatically ramp up testing nationwide if we wanted to get a handle on the pandemic? How’d that shake out? I mean, South Korea had its first confirmed case the same day we did and now they’re at 305 deaths total, so…oh…wow…really?
In other news, I also remember back when it was going to be Bernie, then Bloomberg, then brokered convention for the Dems.
Time sure flies…
James E Powell
I’m anticipating election day like an eight-year old waiting for Christmas. It cannot get here soon enough. And I really want
that official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells timeTrump to go down like the Titanic.I’m a teacher, so everything got weird when schools closed on March 13th, then after school ended and I had nothing to do, I fell into a haze where the only things keeping me on any sort of calendar were the HBO shows that don’t come out all at once.
We are starting school this week – all online – and I’m looking forward to having some structure in my life.
CaseyL
Just the other day I asked a friend how is it possible for time to crawl by and months speed past all at the same time. Just weird.
AJ
Yeah
Went to some awesome 12 step mtgs online this week after not going since March. So satisfying!
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne:
Yup. And don’t even try remembering all of the terrible things. If haven’t kept a list, you will hurt your brain.
mrmoshpotato
@CaseyL: Schrödinger’s Calendar
prostratedragon
91,070 bottles of beer on the wall,
91,070 bottles of beer …
(Implies a brisk rate of 75 seconds per verse)
Kent
I have three girls at home. All of them screwed by Trump and the pandemic.
Oldest just graduated from college with a degree in PR and marketing with a focus on travel and leisure industry. She can’t even find an unpaid internship in her field. Will probably work at one of the local ski resorts over the winter if they open, or else go down to Chile and live with her grandparents and work/study Spanish if they get their pandemic under control down there. Right now they are averaging under 2000 new cases/day for a country of 19 million. So about like us.
Middle child is starting her senior year of HS online with 5 AP classes plus band. Starting to do college applications for colleges that she can’t visit. Well, we’ll do some of our own DIY visits to closed campuses. She’s a leader in her HS marching band but that is postponed along with football until January maybe. Even cross country is canceled which she ran last year and was hoping to make varsity this year.
Youngest daughter is starting high school as a 9th grader online. Also wanting to play soccer and do marching band. No way to meet new friends in her classes except on zoom. Who knows when she will able to actually set foot in her new school and what that will even look like.
In any normal year this would be an exciting back to school season, starting new schools and such. Now it is nothing but dread. I guess on the plus side, by coincidence this is the only year between 2015 and 2028 that I won’t have a child in college. Oldest started college in 2016 and the youngest will graduate on time in 2027. This is the one gap year in the schedule. I guess the timing is convenient for us that way.
I know lots of you have it way worse. At least we have jobs. But it still sucks.
prostratedragon
Has this official logo been seen around here already?
Jackie
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): I just checked the calendar – Labor Day is just around the corner! And, it’s late this year – Sept 7. Schools not starting in usual manner has thrown my internal calendar for a loop.
SiubhanDuinne
I came across a clickbait headline “Royal Heartbreak,” and thought oh wot the hell wot the hell, and opened it. The “heartbreak” is that Princess Beatrice and her new husband honeymooned in France and now they are forced — FORCED, I tell you — to quarantine for the next 14 days. Yeah, it’s a fucking heartbreaker, all right.
prostratedragon
@Kent: Yeah, but of all the things we’re missing it feels most poignant for those about your kids’ ages. Such an eventful period of life, normally.
Poe Larity
Curious how the right deals with bad news from their base states as freedumb rolls out, I checked the Fox News comments on this article:
It’s a few hundred comments so far on whether this was already a liberal lesbian sorority or will be after two weeks of isolation.
So I think we can look forward to more of the same as this era speeds by.
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: Time dilation and stuff is more in Einstein’s wheelhouse.
prostratedragon
@SiubhanDuinne: If the number of people who find that sort of thing “entertaining” dwindles to zero we’ll at least got something out of it.
dmsilev
@Poe Larity: If a sorority member contracts lesbianism, does she have to be isolated to prevent her from further passing it along? And do masks help at all?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
I’m glad I graduated already. Just entering college or HS would have to be tough. It’s already a big transition. I feel bad for your daughters.
For me, I hated losing out on having my pinning ceremony and in-person commencement
geg6
I feel like time is flying right now. I’m back in the office Tuesday, then back in for move in Thursday and Friday. All week the week after I’m supposed to be in and perhaps the week after. And then a few days a week until, at the latest, I go back to home office Thanksgiving week until January. Then who knows? It has all hit me at once and I’m sorta scared. But I do miss students and my co-workers. And I took my test just before the weekend and should have my results tomorrow or Tuesday. I’m sure I’ll be fine, but I still worry. College students are not quite ready to follow orders, for the most part. We’ll see how it goes.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Poe Larity:
These people are such perverts
Kent
@dmsilev: Really guys? Aren’t we above that kind of inappropriate humor here?
Sab
@prostratedragon: Excellent!
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: The only list I’m keeping is one on paper, with daily COVID-19 cases in the US, WA, reported by Avi Schiffman’s page, and the ones reported by the Seattle Times for WA.
The two WA stat sets don’t entirely match, although today the total deaths and the new deaths match. I started in early March and tracked down as much as I could back to the start in February, but only the Seattle Times for a source. In April I started recording the rest. It now fills 14 pages in a little spiral-bound notebook. I will eventually graph them, but I am watching the numbers change and writhe on the pages. It’s horrifying.
Jackie
@dmsilev: Seriously?
phdesmond
@prostratedragon: first i’ve seen it!
West of the Rockies
@Kent:
I feel ya. My daughter starts her sophomore year of college online. She’s taking just the required stuff for transfer and holding steady until spring with hopes of a return to some kind of normalcy.
Covid struck in her second semester of freshman year. Her senior year of high school was impacted by the Camp Fire in Paradise. Last couple years (which were supposed to be fun and exciting) got mucked up big time.
She is resilient, but I worry.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow, even literal royalty are selfish, whiny, shithead children. Who the fuck is Princess Beatrice? (Don’t tell me. I don’t actually give a flying fuck.)
Yutsano
@CaseyL: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non subjective point of view it is more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey…stuff.”
EDIT: it’s pretty annoying when you have to fix typos from your copy and paste.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: No.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: You know about candygrams, right? I wonder if there’s a smackagram service.
Pete Downunder
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler said that time was nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. It is clearly falling down on the job.
Kent
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, well my 17 year old LGBT daughter would be pissed to read jokes about sorority girls “turning lesbian” because they are in quarantine together.
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: Would not surprise me at all.
Calouste
@SiubhanDuinne: There’s slightly more to that, in that the UK gave the green light to travel to a number of European countries, and then with 24 hours notice or so pulled the green light and said that Britons who returned from said countries had to go in quarantine if they returned. So a large number of people had to rush back home to avoid having to go into quarantine, and obviously not all of them managed to do so.
Kent
What is the best site you are following for WA State? I check into the Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Washington_(state)
And sometimes the Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/coronavirus-daily-news-updates-august-16-what-to-know-today-about-covid-19-in-the-seattle-area-washington-state-and-the-world/
And the state web site
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/NovelCoronavirusOutbreak2020COVID19/DataDashboard
But I haven’t really found a good go-to site for checking in on WA data where I can dive deep.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: What’s your address and what time window should I place the order for?
RaflW
I helped organize a rally to save the USPS / support postal workers that is happening tomorrow at noon in downtown Minneapolis. We’ve got 40 RSVPs and 100s of ‘interesteds’ on FB. Honestly, if 20 people walk up and down the sidewalk for an hour on a beautiful say with signs saying
“Stamp out Fascism” and “Remove DeJoy, not mailboxes” and we maybe get a shred of press, I’ll be happy. I’m so tired of being at home (as nice as home is). I’m so ready to get on with the change we g.d need.
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: Sorry, I’m at an undisclosed location; you’ll have to settle for something virtual.
dmsilev
Via Kevin Drum,
A brief search suggests that the most common term for a collection of Karens is an “entitlement”, though this is by no means universally accepted.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: I hear Liam Neeson is free. And then Daniel Day Lewis will drink your milkshake.
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
I commented the other day that something reminded me of the birdwatcher and the Karen in Central Park, which I had totally forgotten, and even now I couldn’t tell you when that happened without looking it up.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Oh for fuck’s sake!
RaflW
Oh, and my completely amazing BLaw professor, who was so damn good that I voluntarily took a second semester of Contracts, died of Covid two days ago. I seriously considered law school, he had such a great teaching approach and pushed us so hard. I ate up the chance to actually learn.
I met with him a few times as part of discernment. He made it pretty clear that law school would be a lot less fun than his class — and by fun, I mean it was the most difficult A I made in school, but the one I am most proud of.
He was still teaching at the same school, sounded like he was still loved and respected.
And damn if TCU isn’t still opening for in person instruction in about a week. Assholes.
Ian
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well yeah, they are being forced to stay out of England for 2 weeks. It’s not so bad for a royal couple but a lot of average English folks who had the temerity to think they could travel to France are going to be in a world of financial trouble and face potential job loss because Boris Johnson is every bit is much of a twit as our leader.
So not a lot of sympathy for the royals, but I think it is pretty heartbreaking for English tourists.
mrmoshpotato
@Steeplejack: Ain’t it fun getting flooded with shit from the Russthuglicans and having a bunch of people letting their Trump trash flags fly?
Eric U.
Penn State is run by morons. They are not going to be testing enough and they are doubling the population of State College this week. And mask usage among students is low, abut 50% downtown. I guess they really don’t want school to finish this semester. Good news is that projections show that only 2.5 students will die here.
FlyingToaster
We’re starting to gear up for hybrid Middle School. Looks like mornings M-Th, 2 core classes plus electives. Afternoons are remote, either at school (so the ‘rents can work) or pickup at 12:30 and login from home at 1, for the other two core classes. Keeping the amount of time the teachers are exposed down. Fridays are all remote, with all of the other school bumf (assemblies, advisories, cross-grade work, learning labs, office hours). I confirmed info with the emergency pickups (godlessparents) and filled out the intake doc. E-mailed & done.
School starts Wednesday after Labor day. Youngest cohort in each set (PK & K in elementary, 6 in MS) are live, the rest on Zoom. Every grade divided into two pods in different rooms with assigned seats. Teachers move between. Everyone from 2-8 gets a Chromebook. No cubbies or lockers. Masks with outside breaks. Every week a grade or 4 gets added. Everyone back in house for mornings by October.
Transmission hereabouts is relatively low, but simultaneous with school opening is the return of the University students (DAMN YOU, BU, BC, Tufts, Northeastern, Emerson, etc.). I’m looking forward to a Masshole redux of today in North Carolina. And maybe 7th grade will never go live, because of the fucking morons at the unis.
Kent
Around here a collection of Karens is called a “Home Owners Association”
They are to be avoided at all cost.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
I’ll tell you anyhow. Elder daughter of Prince Andrew, of Jeffrey Epstein fame.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, that’s good to not know. No thank you for telling me. ?
SiubhanDuinne
@Calouste:
But “heartbreak”? And I’m aware that probably it’s nothing of the sort for the newlyweds, just some news service hyping it up to get clicks.
One of which, to my shame, was mine.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
I live to serve.
Wyatt Salamanca
This is a real headline and not a parody from The Onion
Trump reportedly pushing new unproven coronavirus treatment that is also embraced by HUD Sec. Ben Carson and MyPillow’s Mike Lindell
h/t https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-reportedly-pushing-unproven-coronavirus-015618012.html
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
Hah! Reminds me of that X-Files episode, Arcadia, where some monster kills the residents of a development that violate the HOA rules
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
I don’t know if this has come up here, I completely forgot about it because it’s so unbelievable. And I’ve been reading and cooking and doing other things today. Trump is considering pardoning Edward Snowden. I mean, on the one hand, I’m sure Putin is getting tired of having him under foot and would like Trump to take him off his hands. But isn’t Snowden anathema to Republicans?
mrmoshpotato
@Wyatt Salamanca: I require all of my untested vaccines to be endorsed by a Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby who’s also a failure at life, a cardiologist and a seller of sleepytime head cushions.
artem1s
“Oleandrin looks to have antiviral activity at high doses in a test tube model,
great one more thing we have to tell MAGAts not to inject.
smike
@dmsilev:
Well done!
jl
@RaflW: Good luck. It’s outside, right? If everyone keeps 6 feet apart, wears face masks, keep yelling in people’s faces under control, should be fine. Have fun.
Steeplejack
@dmsilev:
I saw “a privilege of Karens” recently, which seemed spot on.
jl
@artem1s: Cripes! Oleandrin is the cardiac toxin in oleander species. Docs using that in people must be ultra super careful about it. You think hydroxy can cause heart problems, just see what this shit can do. You can get a fatal dose chewing on oleander leaves, species of your choice. Trump is trying to murder his base.
mrmoshpotato
@jl: Madman.
jl
I remember as tweener on the farm I thought picking random twigs and chewing on them was cool. My grandpa gave a lecture. Pointed out a few plants he said would kill me and to knock it off. Oleander got special attention.
So, being a dumb kid, next time I had a chance I picked an oleander leaf, tore it in two and touched the edges to my tongue. Ha ha, was that shit so bad? Yes it was. Just that got my heart racing and pounding, funny pressure and buzz in my head. I was down on my hands and knees for a few minutes worrying if I was going to be OK. People careless with that shit, be cardiac arrest epidemic. Just a few drops of that sap pack a punch. So, after that, no more random twigs in my gob.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
Princess Beatrice is Andrew’s elder daughter. While I don’t expect that she and her husband will be happy about two weeks in quarantine, I do know better than to take seriously the wildly exaggerated headlines beloved of the British gutter press.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Comment 51 for you too.
mrmoshpotato
@jl: Yikes.
Sab
@Wyatt Salamanca: The new treatment is made out of oleander flowers. Oleander is seriously toxic. It causes heart blockage. This is beyond nuts.
Sister Golden Bear
@jl:
And the problem is?
Cckids
@jl:
You can get a close-to-fatal dose using a length of oleander wood as a walking stick, or by burning it in a campfire. It’s for-real serious shit.
joel hanes
Oleander flourishes here in the SF Bay area, and in the 1980s long tall hedges of it, pink and white and salmon, ran down the center divider of big stretches of Hwy 101 — really quite lovely. I think there are still some highways like that out in the Central Valley.
I have spent literally days cutting back overgrown oleander in yards.
I had no idea that the sap was so toxic.
Sloane Ranger
@mrmoshpotato: I know you said you didn’t want to know but she’s Prince Andrew’s daughter and yes, that part of the extended Royal family does have a reputation for whining self pity.
Although to be absolutely fair, I’m not sure from the headline whether she described it as a tragedy or some obsequious writer did.
Sloane Ranger
@Ian:
Actually not even that. They are free to return. They just have to self isolate for 2 weeks.
I have no sympathy with them and the many other Brits caught up in this. The British Government has been as clear as they could be that people who travel abroad do so at their own risk because the government will impose quarantines at a moments notice.
Ruckus
@Kent: @Jackie:
I’m not a lesbian nor am I gay, but I have 50 yrs of lesbian relatives and lesbian and gay friends. Good friends. If they just read that without any prior knowledge of the person or the place I’d bet that they would be pissed as well. However. I’ve been punked in public, in a restaurant, by a gay man who I would come to later that day call a friend, because he did not know me. I called him out publicly because he deserved it and he knew it. We discussed it calmly and ended up laughing about it. Later that day, at his house. Because it was funny. And yes it could have been not so funny. But if you can’t see funny when it truly is that’s on you. Life isn’t simple, it isn’t clean and clear cut. I know gay men that you would never know were if you didn’t know them personally. And if you did, you’d never, ever forget it. The only way we can all live together with out anger and bullshit is to see the funny side of life and relish it, understand it, nurture it and accept it. I’ve seen it work and work well. I’ve seen serious and anger not work at all.
Just One More Canuck
@dmsilev: A privilege of Karens?
bluefish
I hear you, Cole. Like living in a submarine is how I think of it. I am eagerly awaiting a yard sign that expresses my family’s support for the USPS. Plus, I love the Balloon Juice Calendar. Love the photos, the wonderful pet names, the fabulous quotes. It’s been super cool and encouraging to observe the evolution of this site. Very grateful for that. Thx.