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New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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Battle won, war still ongoing.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / 2020 Is Going so Slow but Everything is Happening so Fast

2020 Is Going so Slow but Everything is Happening so Fast

by John Cole|  August 16, 202011:10 pm| 76 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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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.

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76Comments

  1. 1.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    August 16, 2020 at 11:18 pm

    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.

  2. 2.

    opiejeanne

    August 16, 2020 at 11:18 pm

    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.

  3. 3.

    Jeffro

    August 16, 2020 at 11:20 pm

    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…

  4. 4.

    James E Powell

    August 16, 2020 at 11:21 pm

    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 time Trump 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.

  5. 5.

    CaseyL

    August 16, 2020 at 11:24 pm

    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.

  6. 6.

    AJ

    August 16, 2020 at 11:27 pm

    Yeah

    Went to some awesome 12 step mtgs online this week after not going since March. So satisfying!

  7. 7.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 16, 2020 at 11:27 pm

    @opiejeanne:

    I can’t tell if it’s been a couple of days, two weeks, or two months since Trump has done certain terrible things. 

    Yup.  And don’t even try remembering all of the terrible things.  If haven’t kept a list, you will hurt your brain.

  8. 8.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 16, 2020 at 11:28 pm

    @CaseyL: Schrödinger’s Calendar

  9. 9.

    prostratedragon

    August 16, 2020 at 11:36 pm

    91,070 bottles of beer on the wall,
    91,070 bottles of beer …
    (Implies a brisk rate of 75 seconds per verse)

  10. 10.

    Kent

    August 16, 2020 at 11:37 pm

    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.

  11. 11.

    prostratedragon

    August 16, 2020 at 11:37 pm

    Has this official logo been seen around here already?

  12. 12.

    Jackie

    August 16, 2020 at 11:38 pm

    @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.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 16, 2020 at 11:38 pm

    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.

  14. 14.

    prostratedragon

    August 16, 2020 at 11:40 pm

    @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.

  15. 15.

    Poe Larity

    August 16, 2020 at 11:41 pm

    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:

     

    Oklahoma State sorority under quarantine after 23 members contract coronavirus

    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.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    August 16, 2020 at 11:41 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: Time dilation and stuff is more in Einstein’s wheelhouse.

  17. 17.

    prostratedragon

    August 16, 2020 at 11:43 pm

    @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.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    August 16, 2020 at 11:43 pm

    @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?

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    August 16, 2020 at 11:45 pm

    @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

  20. 20.

    geg6

    August 16, 2020 at 11:46 pm

    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.

  21. 21.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    August 16, 2020 at 11:47 pm

    @Poe Larity:

    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.

    These people are such perverts

  22. 22.

    Kent

    August 16, 2020 at 11:48 pm

    @dmsilev: Really guys?  Aren’t we above that kind of inappropriate humor here?

  23. 23.

    Sab

    August 16, 2020 at 11:49 pm

    @prostratedragon: Excellent!

  24. 24.

    opiejeanne

    August 16, 2020 at 11:50 pm

    @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.

  25. 25.

    Jackie

    August 16, 2020 at 11:51 pm

    @dmsilev: Seriously?

  26. 26.

    phdesmond

    August 16, 2020 at 11:55 pm

    @prostratedragon: first i’ve seen it!

  27. 27.

    West of the Rockies

    August 16, 2020 at 11:55 pm

    @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.

  28. 28.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:05 am

    @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.)

  29. 29.

    Yutsano

    August 17, 2020 at 12:06 am

    @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.

  30. 30.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    August 17, 2020 at 12:07 am

    @Kent: No.

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:08 am

    @dmsilev: You know about candygrams, right?  I wonder if there’s a smackagram service.

  32. 32.

    Pete Downunder

    August 17, 2020 at 12:09 am

    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.

  33. 33.

    Kent

    August 17, 2020 at 12:20 am

    @?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.

  34. 34.

    dmsilev

    August 17, 2020 at 12:22 am

    @mrmoshpotato: Would not surprise me at all.

  35. 35.

    Calouste

    August 17, 2020 at 12:23 am

    @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.

  36. 36.

    Kent

    August 17, 2020 at 12:26 am

    @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.

    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.

  37. 37.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:29 am

    @dmsilev: What’s your address and what time window should I place the order for?

  38. 38.

    RaflW

    August 17, 2020 at 12:31 am

    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.

  39. 39.

    dmsilev

    August 17, 2020 at 12:32 am

    @mrmoshpotato: Sorry, I’m at an undisclosed location; you’ll have to settle for something virtual.

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    August 17, 2020 at 12:36 am

    Via Kevin Drum,

    ‘Wild pack of Karens’ accuse grocery store of ‘committing WAR CRIMES’ for denying them entry because they refused to put on face masks

    A group of women have been dubbed ‘a wild pack of Karens’ after they staged an anti-mask rally outside a California supermarket.

    Video shared to social media on Saturday shows the small group of activists outside Mother’s Market & Kitchen in Costa Mesa, California after managers locked the doors to the store in order to keep them out.

    The women became enraged by the fact that they were unable to shop without wearing face masks, with one even accusing Mother’s Market of committing ‘war crimes’.

    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.

  41. 41.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:37 am

    @dmsilev: I hear Liam Neeson is free.  And then Daniel Day Lewis will drink your milkshake.

  42. 42.

    Steeplejack

    August 17, 2020 at 12:39 am

    @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.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:39 am

    @dmsilev: Oh for fuck’s sake!

  44. 44.

    RaflW

    August 17, 2020 at 12:40 am

    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.

  45. 45.

    Ian

    August 17, 2020 at 12:42 am

    @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.

  46. 46.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:42 am

    @Steeplejack: Ain’t it fun getting flooded with shit from the Russthuglicans and having a bunch of people letting their Trump trash flags fly?

  47. 47.

    Eric U.

    August 17, 2020 at 12:42 am

    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.

  48. 48.

    FlyingToaster

    August 17, 2020 at 12:42 am

    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.

  49. 49.

    Kent

    August 17, 2020 at 12:44 am

    @dmsilev: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.

    Around here a collection of Karens is called a “Home Owners Association”

    They are to be avoided at all cost.

  50. 50.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 17, 2020 at 12:45 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I’ll tell you anyhow. Elder daughter of Prince Andrew, of Jeffrey Epstein fame.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:47 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Well, that’s good to not know.  No thank you for telling me. ?

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 17, 2020 at 12:48 am

    @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.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    August 17, 2020 at 12:51 am

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I live to serve.

  54. 54.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    August 17, 2020 at 12:52 am

    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

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    August 17, 2020 at 12:57 am

    @Kent:

    “Home Owners Association”

    Hah! Reminds me of that X-Files episode, Arcadia, where some monster kills the residents of a development that violate the HOA rules

  56. 56.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    August 17, 2020 at 12:59 am

    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?

  57. 57.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 12:59 am

    @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.

  58. 58.

    artem1s

    August 17, 2020 at 1:01 am

    “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.

  59. 59.

    smike

    August 17, 2020 at 1:04 am

    @dmsilev: 

    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.

    Well done!

  60. 60.

    jl

    August 17, 2020 at 1:06 am

    @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.

  61. 61.

    Steeplejack

    August 17, 2020 at 1:08 am

    @dmsilev:

    I saw “a privilege of Karens” recently, which seemed spot on.

  62. 62.

    jl

    August 17, 2020 at 1:16 am

    @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.

  63. 63.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 1:24 am

    @jl: Madman.

  64. 64.

    jl

    August 17, 2020 at 1:27 am

    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.

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    August 17, 2020 at 1:27 am

    @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.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 1:30 am

    @Amir Khalid: Comment 51 for you too.

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    August 17, 2020 at 1:31 am

    @jl: Yikes.

  68. 68.

    Sab

    August 17, 2020 at 1:32 am

    @Wyatt Salamanca: The new treatment is made out of oleander flowers. Oleander is seriously toxic. It causes heart blockage. This is beyond nuts.

  69. 69.

    Sister Golden Bear

    August 17, 2020 at 2:06 am

    @jl:

    Trump is trying to murder his base.

    And the problem is?

  70. 70.

    Cckids

    August 17, 2020 at 2:49 am

    @jl: 

    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.

    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.

  71. 71.

    joel hanes

    August 17, 2020 at 3:29 am

    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.

  72. 72.

    Sloane Ranger

    August 17, 2020 at 6:07 am

    @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.

  73. 73.

    Sloane Ranger

    August 17, 2020 at 6:18 am

    @Ian:

     

    Well yeah, they are being forced to stay out of England for 2 week

    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.

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    August 17, 2020 at 6:34 am

    @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.

  75. 75.

    Just One More Canuck

    August 17, 2020 at 7:52 am

    @dmsilev:  A privilege of Karens?

  76. 76.

    bluefish

    August 17, 2020 at 10:29 am

    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.

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