Fauci: “We still are in the middle of a very difficult situation,” with record coronavirus cases and deaths. “But the sweetness is the light at the end of the tunnel, which I can tell you—as we get into January, February, March and April—that light is going to get brighter.” pic.twitter.com/nhcOKoTQ9Z
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 18, 2020
There’s an old Irish saying: Live, horse, and you’ll get grass. It comes from the days when short rations and dark days during February and March led to calamitous livestock deaths, just before the season of new growth. Observing Lenten privations wasn’t optional then, and it looks like it won’t be now… but *if* we can all hold on, well…
Why didn’t Fauci get vaccinated today? “We're waiting for the supply to come into the NIH. We haven't got our supply yet," he told NBC. “I hope that’s going to be in the next couple of days. If it does, I'm going to get vaccinated as soon as I can.”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) December 18, 2020
“It’s been a marathon … but by golly the finish line is in sight,” @Surgeon_General Jerome Adams says.
He notes many people of color among the researchers that developed coronavirus vaccine.
He says as a black man he’s aware of the symbolism of his vaccination today. pic.twitter.com/TqI09mA91a
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 18, 2020
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking of Covid and how the 1% are shifting all over the place; a Bloomberg article about how property owners are screaming at their corporate tenants for being to nice to their workers for to making them come into New York City.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-18/new-york-city-s-office-workers-are-gone-landlords-are-sounding-the-alarm
“Rosen says about 12% of his buildings’ occupants are back. In his view, companies have been too “nice-nice” with employees”
I am just thinking if I was a CEO of a major company what my reply would be to some statement like that.
different-church-lady
“Safe and Effective” is on the screens in the background.
Really drives home the sad reality that the newest part of Fauci’s job description is doing whatever he can to counteract the paranoia his boss just spent four years turbo-charging.
Patricia Kayden
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
For your Christmas viewing pleasure, MAGA hats roasting on an open fire with about 30 minutes of seasonal music.
Patricia Kayden
Mary G
O/T: I thought this was funny:
Evidently, it was a clerk that did who’ll possibly get in trouble, but good for them.
jl
IMHO, Fauci, Adams, and now that I remember, Messonnier, have been shown the best understanding of how to get public buy-in and trust, which is essential in controlling a deadly epidemic. Too bad they were yanked off the front stage, for being good at epidemic control.
A news report I heard this morning reported that Pfizer is saying unequivocally that there is no vaccine supply problem at their end. Doses are in the warehouse waiting for shipment instructions that the Trumpsters seem unable to provide.
Josh Marshall’s has been reporting, or maybe opining, that Trumpsters are trying to sabotage Biden administration from effectively delivering vaccines to make him look bad. They can do the former, but I have doubts about the latter. Hard to outdo the Trumspters in looking bad.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: Eventually there’ll be nobody left to sue but the historical record. And they’ll probably go ahead and sue that.
Aleta
I’m so angry all I can manage is linking to this extremely happy dog. https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1339545565894488064
The dog and I met another dog today in the park. She ran giant circles around him while he stood wagging his tail. She came from California and is named after a donkey.
UncleEbeneezer
Meanwhile in our neck of the woods…ugh:
“Los Angeles is now the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the most infected county of the most infected state in the most infected country in the world.
In the pandemic’s spring wave, New York held that distinction — and it still is the state to have seen the largest single daily number of deaths. But given that the tally of daily cases and hospitalizations continue to skyrocket in L.A. and the fact that ICU availability was 0% in Southern California on Thursday, Los Angeles is unfortunately catching up.
On Thursday, another 14,418 Covid-19 infections were confirmed in L.A. County. The new cases lifted the countywide cumulative total to 581,519. In a county of 10 million people, that means 1 in 20 residents has had the virus.
Even more shocking, Los Angeles County is now seeing more daily cases than entire countries, including onetime hotspots such as Spain, Mexico, Poland and Portugal.”
Mary G
Fuckers:
jl
I don’t see a link to the full Fauci comments. If anyone knows where to find them (I don’t have time to look right now), please provide a link and I’ll check later.
I haven’t seen any estimates of immunization induced herd immunity that suggest it can be achieved before late summer. So Fauci must be talking about harm reduction through immunization. If residents and staff of nursing homes and similar facilities can be protected by the end of January, that will probably cut hospital admission from covid epidemic waves by at least a third (Edit: see links in my comments in previous thread). Then immunization starting from most elderly and those with most risk factors can cut another 20 percent by end of March. That will greatly reduce the chances of health system crash, which is the criteria public health authorities use for the most destructive and stringent shutdowns.
To eliminate it, probably need to eliminate 75 or 80 percent of potential hospitalizations, from what I’ve read, and that can be done by April or May.
cain
Of course Trump being Trump is apparently doing whatever incompetence to make sure that we don’t get those vaccines in time.
He’ll wait till things are fucked up and then magnanimously say “I will solve the problem” and then will brag about how only he could have done it, nobody has ever had this problem before, and he solved the problem.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Our tax codes and investment rules favor and encourage investment in residential and light commercial (translation: office) real estate. This has steered capital away from dynamic, productive uses (infrastructure and business development, higher pay in all economic sectors, higher dividend yields and worker benefits) into static, inherently nonproductive use compared to the sunk cost.
The resulting skyrocketed real estate prices for purchase or rent for commercial space chokes business formation, entrepreneurship and expansion, and acts as an anchor on the neck of anyone moving an entity into those spaces.
A Manhattan developer is always first in line for a benefit or subsidy, yet is inclined to let the small RE investor or business operator hang in a crisis. Let Rosen and his scumbag friends start making demands for help for everyone, then we’ll talk.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: That’s brilliant! I’m sure that will help them win Georgia!
cain
@Mary G:
Right, so this is interesting – again, they are holding funding the govt hostage – and so basically after we pass it, we are supposed to let the economy burn in a dumpster fire so they can blame it all on us later.
I hate these people.
Elizabelle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Enjoying that this very minute. Thank you. The crackling sounds appeal.
Like breaking some sticks into very sharp points, and …
p.a.
Swinging topic from one tRumpublican debacle to another, is Adam working on a post abt the Russia hack?
I’m abt ready to move on from “lock him (them) up” result to the “Mussolini solution”, but that is wrong, correct?
jl
I think Congress should be funding for big federal covid control program. The value of every prevented case increased enormously with the arrival of effective vaccines. Lowering prevalence asap by any means necessary will greatly simplify and increase the effectiveness of early vaccine roll out. You can’t land nicely on a stable no or low disease heard immunity state with a lot of disease circulating.
The US, due to some radical defects in our approach, hasn’t been able to implement an effective shutdowns, except for the bending the curve thing, which has never been good enough for anything but a last ditch effort to avert total disaster.
Several countries, for example Slovakia, have been able to ‘crush the curve’ in two weeks with a national mass testing program. Probably can’t be scaled up for US, but maybe we could do it on a rolling regional basis.
different-church-lady
@p.a.: Emotionally, or practically?
Geminid
@Mary G: Republicans: tax cuts for me, austerity for thee.
Bill Arnold
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Good piece. Rosen is psychopathic scum, of course.
Fuckers knew that commercial real estate won’t come back until COVID-19 community is stopped or brought down to very low levels, and have been trying to mainstream dealth-cultism during the whole pandemic, in attempts to blunt the pandemic-caused decreases in their rates of wealth accumulation. Rather than, say, pushing universal masking with advertising and paid influence operations while indoors and improving ventilation systems (and airflow) o change out/filter exhaled air as soon as possible and minimize sharing of unfiltered exhaled air.
Open plan offices in particular are optimized for spreading respiratory viruses. They are forever tainted with death, now.
Jinchi
I’m curious with all this talk of Trump planning to hand out pardons as stocking stuffers. Don’t pardons have to list the crimes being excused?
Or can he just print them out out like coupons (Good for one free crime. Expires January 20th).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I figured that much, s. But the bit that was staggering was the a Landord dictating how his renters should run their businesses. I would think the reply would be “don’t you have a leaky pipe to fix boi?”
Frankensteinbeck
@p.a.:
Personally, I suspect the hack was incredibly easy with the White House being undefended from bugging. Putin probably has half the administration’s passwords.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bill Arnold: It sounds like it’s never coming back at pre-pandemic levels. Other articles at Bloomberg were pointing out how corporations are realizing how much money they are saving on office space rent and cost of living adjustment to wages by letting employees who work at home do so.
jl
Until we know how much the vaccines reduce transmission as well as disease, we don’t even know whether stable herd immunity can be achieved in the short run:
COVID-19 Vaccines and Herd Immunity
By Marc Lipsitch
https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/2020/12/17/covid-19-vaccines-and-herd-immunity/
But we can return to almost normal by mid-summer, IF we also improve epidemic control in the US. Edit: that is, we won’t go to some perfect herd immunity zero disease state, but it will be more like the long slog to control HIV/AIDS or multiple drug resistant TB (not costly in US, but a crisis in parts of Eastern Europe after Soviet Union fell apart). Those were costly, but did not bring societies to a halt.
And as I noted in previous thread, disaster relief funding (which is mislabeled as a stimulus) is enormously more valuable now with effective vaccines. We have a relatively short time horizon until the economy and society can start returning to normal, so disaster insurance for the epidemic is more valuable.
Someone needs to make a fuss about why these funding needs aren’t being discussed
Edit: and GOP bad faith BS about debt needs to be condemned. Cost of federal borrowing zero right now. See today’s Big Picture blog. No excuse not to fund needed federal programs.
bemused senior
@p.a.: https://sansurl.com/solarwinds is a good presentation about this.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP3LQNsjKWw
Bill Arnold
@p.a.:
Still no public evidence attributing it to Russia, FWIW. The technical reports by private companies have been careful about this, just giving the actor(s) names. Could be some non-Russia actor until proven otherwise.
I do wonder if there are multiple parties involved. Violates Occam’s Razor, but say Russia did it, and then their command and control system was hijacked by somebody else who spotted it and who used it to do the FireEye stuff for their own reasons. Or maybe drunk Russians. Drunk Russians is usually a good bet.
p.a.
@different-church-lady: Well, emotionally I guess. Wouldn’t want a meat hook have to endure that.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mary G:
Because it cannot be repeated enough.
Benw
@Patricia Kayden: saw that. File it under “no shit, Sherlock”
We were posting videos of it happening in REAL TIME
mrmoshpotato
“Go fuck yourself, Rosen. We’re a work-from-home company now.”
jl
@Jinchi: Madison, who I assume understood the text and original intent, said that corrupt pardons are grounds for impeachment, conviction and removal from office. I think we already have a couple that make Trump worthy of that fate.
That is moot at this point. But if the Senate just sits there and does nothing, maybe House should pass a bill of impeachment just to make the point.
mrmoshpotato
Well shit, John. Sounds like the Rethuglican trash party shouldn’t have spent 40 years directing this shit at the Democratic party all the while making the Rethuglican trash base crazier and more fascistic.
mrmoshpotato
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I feel sorry for whatever impoverished country getting a bunch of Trump trash clothes dumped on them.
mrmoshpotato
@Mary G: LOL, and I hope Louis DeJoy goes to prison.
jl
@mrmoshpotato: After the spectacle of Trump, forgive me if I view anything a NYC real state developer says with extreme prejudice.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden: Word is Trump is talking about doing something like the Apprentice again, so I am curious to see if Trump is also in the wingnut trap that when he gives up the Kayfabe about the stolen election his own base will turn on him as Deep State too.
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
“You’re fired.”
“No I’m not. I’m promoted. Here’s a paper from my lawyers saying so.”
Brachiator
@jl:
Biden is not president. Trump is still obstructing a smooth transition. This is all on Trump and the people being hurt are the Americans Trump is supposed to care about.
I heard some talk radio hosts noting that the Pentagon is responsible for getting the vaccine out. They speculated that some middle level employee there is not talking to whoever they should be talking to.
These hosts are unable to note the obvious. That the Trump administration either refuses to or is incapable of implementing competent federal oversight of dealing with the pandemic.
Kattails
Just spent another 2 hours cleaning up from the snow storm so haven’t checked the last couple of threads, but if no one has posted this… it’s a Brazilian ad about why you should use condoms, with an hilarious twist.
Soprano2
So I got COVID, and so did my husband. No idea where we got it, although our pub is my #1 guess. (I know, bars are bad. Pay me enough to pay my bills and I’ll close up.) I try to keep to myself when I’m there, but it’s not easy. I had a few aches and the sniffles last Friday, and felt tired, but I thought it was just because I needed some sleep. I felt better over the weekend, and didn’t think much more of it until I noticed Monday night that I had lost my sense of taste and smell! (When I couldn’t smell bleach, I knew for sure.) I found out how crazy the testing stuff is here. From talking to my doctor’s office, it doesn’t sound like I could have gotten a test until I lost my sense of taste/smell even if I had wanted one. Even at that I called Tuesday morning and wasn’t able to get a test until Wednesday at 9:15 a.m. I got the results fast, though, by the afternoon. It was constant people in and out of the drive-in testing facility, which highlights how bad COVID is here. So far my symptoms have been mild – what I mentioned before plus tiredness. I never had a cough or a fever. My workplace says I can go back on Monday; I guess they’re following the CDC guidelines.
My husband’s experience was different – he’s in the other health system here, and he’s on Medicare. He had to have a telemedicine visit with his doctor before he could get a test, even though he has extreme tiredness and an on and off again cough. He never had a fever either. He got tested last night, and got the results around noon – positive, which I figured. I feel badly, I’m afraid I made him sick, although we’ll probably never know for sure. He’s 73 and diabetic, so at higher risk than I am. I expected his doctor’s office to call this afternoon, but so far nothing. We’ve been wearing masks and distancing as much as we can, but we have a small house with only one bathroom so complete separation isn’t possible.
Eating when you can’t taste is weird – I can tell something is sweet or salty or sour or spicy, but can’t taste flavors. From what I’ve been reading I have a 25% chance it will come back in two weeks, otherwise it’ll take longer. I hope I’m not in the group where it takes months to come back. I’ve lost 5 lbs since Monday, but I don’t recommend it as a weight loss plan.
RaflW
NOW I understand why the Covid response has been so slow. They’ve been working so hard on naming our ‘space force’.
A StarTrek logo and the troops named after Guardians of the Galaxy. So many uuuuuuge Trump accomplishments in four long years.
HumboldtBlue
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
There will no return to “normal” even if we get the virus under control. Something has fundamentally changed.
Calouste
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: My reply to Rosen would be “Dead employees are not productive.”
RaflW
@Brachiator: If what Josh says is right, they of course are not even doing that well. MN’s governor Walz was already on the radio news saying that we were shorted 40% of our promised first shipment. And while the mouthbreathers will believe anything, it is obvious that Trump is still president as of now. So the delayed vax is on Donald, Mike and the Klown Kar Kabinet.
TS (the original)
@Brachiator:
Nothing/No-one in the trump administration has ever indicated any form of competence
jl
@Brachiator: News report just said that Pfizer is claiming that they can’t get instructions on where to send the vaccine. I may have just assumed it was the Trumpsters who weren’t sending instructions. So, might be a temporary problem with communications among more competent actors, amplified by Trumpster chaos and incompetence. I hope so.
MisterForkbeard
@Chief Oshkosh: What I’m seeing on facebook is that the media is treating this as “Congress fails to come to an agreement”.
We can’t have a better government until the media fucking learns something about Republicans. It’s ridiculous and infuriating.
zeecube
I cannot wait for things to get back to just close to normal. In the last week during sleep, when having a dream, I have started to consciously social distance from and yell at the other figments of my imagination to wear a mask, WTH.
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: The most recent thing with stopping the military briefings is especially egregious. They say that Biden’s team agreed to a temporary holiday halt (which has been proven false).
They also say that one of the reasons they stopped is because there’s so many transition meetings in such a short time, so the principals can’t do their day jobs. You know why these meetings are all compressed? Because they refused to start them until over a month after the election.
It’s ALL their fault. All of it.
Matt McIrvin
@jl:
Hell, this article germy linked to in the other thread suggests that we may not even be able to START mass vaccination of the general public until August or September (rather than April as we were told):
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-advisers-warn-trump-mass-vaccine-timeline-may-be-too-n1251499?cid=eml_nbn_2020121
which I suppose would mean we don’t really get this under control until the spring of 2022.
TS (the original)
@jl:
Never give the trump admin the benefit of the doubt. if it looks like deliberate sabotage and/or incompetence, that is what it is.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
For FUCK’S SAKE!
Kent
I read these stories and if true, I don’t know why Pfizer doesn’t just keep shipping them out to the states in the same ratios as before. It’s not like they are going to go waste. So what if WA gets too many vials one week, it will all even out in the end. Are they really waiting for Jared’s say so or some such?
Kent
@SiubhanDuinne: Guardians of the Galaxy!!!
TS (the original)
@Soprano2:
It is almost inevitable that two people living together & sharing a bathroom are going to pass covid on to each other. Also inevitable that a government refusing to help people financially was never going to get the virus under control. Sending best thoughts for a fast recovery.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: The cold packs they’re being delivered in won’t keep them cold forever, will they? If the people receiving the vials don’t have adequate facilities to store them, they’ll be destroyed.
jl
@TS (the original): You’re almost certainly right. I’m probably fleeing from the knowledge that these crooks and stumblebums will be running things for the next six weeks.
General Honore has given some good interviews about disaster logistics during the epidemic, and he pointed out the difference between giving an organization the mission, versus using them as flunkies (my choice of words, not his) to carry out specific orders.
From what I know, so far, Trumpsters too arrogant and too reluctant to surrender possibilities of graft to give any organization a mission. So good bet both the military and Pfizer trying to work around Trumpster chaos and criminality. Probably best for officials to plan for delays and chaotic delivery.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@UncleEbeneezer: LA is, in fact, ahead of the entire state of Tennessee, which has a population of almost 7 million, and a cumulative total of 493,230 cases and 5,845 deaths. We’re down to 1,422 available hospital beds and 163 ICU beds. Tennesseans should drive very carefully—not only are we short on hospital and ICU beds, ambulance crews are limited too.
LA must be even worse in those areas as well.
Mary G
No idea if this is true, but I like the thought of all the goons and hangers-on being required to stay up all night being raged at.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kent:
It’s just so tacky.
jl
@Kent: Pfizer is part of the Warp Speed project, so may be complicated contractual issues to work out, or they surrendered ability to navigate critical part of supply chain.
If the delays continue, news media really needs to report it, and Dems need to make a huge fuss. Every day of delay means more death, disability, and more social and economic destruction.
Baud
@jl:
I thought they weren’t part of Warp Speed.
jl
@Mary G: Trump trying to get volunteers to help him barricade in the WH after the inauguration, or is he yelling at them for not personally reversing the Electoral College result, through sheer force of will, incoherent threats, and yelling.
scav
So, in this Land of Freedom!!™® Texas can tell other states how to manage voting and landlords can tell other companies how and where to manage their workforce.
mrmoshpotato
Are these shitstains allowed to bundle a bunch of crimes together?
ColoradoGuy
One change is that employees now know, for sure, that their employers don’t care if they live or die, and the entire GOP is just fine with 300,000 dead Americans.
jl
@Baud: Oops, thanks. Sorry, I got Moderna and Pfizer mixed up. Never Mind.
But larger point still holds, probably. Pfizer’s vaccine requires a special cold chain. They may not have the information at hand on how to ship things to hook into that.
Whatever, the problem needs to be worked out soon, otherwise there should be a huge public outcry.
Gin & Tonic
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s actually a lot more subtle, and very skilled. Not going to type a long explanation on my phone, though.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Half? I think they probably asked shitforbrains for them and he provided them all for $1.95.
Baud
@RaflW:
Hooah!Groot!raven
@jl:
RaflW
@MisterForkbeard: The newsers and their editors know. They also know they’ll get bum rushed by Republicans if they report accurately, and so they wimp out.
MisterForkbeard
@SiubhanDuinne: The important thing to remember is that apparently soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are NOT Guardians.
Good to know.
Mike in NC
@p.a.: The “Ceausescu solution” also works for many of us.
Elizabelle
@Soprano2: Sorry to hear that you and your husband have been ill, with COVID yet.
Hope you both recover well, and that the sense of taste is back soon. Please let us know.
Miss Bianca
@Patricia Kayden:
Today’s installment of “You Don’t Say”…sigh.
jl
@raven: ‘ Trump later called Jansen’s remark “an unfortunate mistake.” ‘
So, maybe now that Moderna vaccine is available, Trump will try to damage Pfizer for something one its executives said that he deems disrespectful?
Also Trumpsters blew their negotiations earlier this year with Pfizer to reserve more vaccine, and Trumpsters have only offered asinine and senseless reasons for the failure. I read that Trumpsters are trying to renegotiate. So, maybe making problems for Pfizer on the existing contract is Trump’s idiot approach to negotiating?
Edit: and yeah, I did correct my mix up of Pfizer and Moderna, after Baud called me on it. Sorry, again.
trollhattan
I remember the VP debate when Harris was asked if she would get the vaccine when one became available. She replied along the lines of, “If Trump tells me it’s safe, no, but if Dr. Fauci says it’s safe I’ll be first in line.”
Later, her opponent genius halted the proceedings trying to confront her on why she wanted to kill Americans by telling them not to get vaccinated, or some similar Pence logic®. I really, really wanted her to say, “English, do you understand it motherfucker?”
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
This is a massive undertaking. We will get there when we get there. I have confidence in Biden and the team that he is putting together.
And ultimately, the goal is to get as many people on the entire planet vaccinated.
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
They are Guardians, but just not Guardians of the Galaxy.
Mary G
Good lord. I had forgotten all about this:
Mitch is planning to let the government shut down to own the libs.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Yeah, that’s the bright side to delays that were just caused by the US losing its place in line: they just mean somebody else gets vaccinated instead of us, which does help control the pandemic globally.
jl
@Brachiator: Short term benefits of immunization will be reduction in potential hospitalizations from immunizing the most vulnerable: institutionalized elderly and oldest elderly in the community. That can be done by March or April.
So, every day of delay is a huge cost in lives, dollars and social wellbeing. Every day of delay merits huge and loud outcry from everyone, Dems, and media.
Mike in NC
@RaflW: Space Force needs to go away effective January 22, 2021.
Gin & Tonic
Here’s a long piece from Microsoft about the SolarWinds exploit.
https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/12/18/analyzing-solorigate-the-compromised-dll-file-that-started-a-sophisticated-cyberattack-and-how-microsoft-defender-helps-protect/
May be too technical for most jackals.
Soprano2
@TS (the original): Thanks. Like everyone else, the inadequate government response has been a frustration to me. There was never adequate help for businesses like ours that needed to be closed for an extended period. PPP was designed for businesses that were trying to stay open, so it was useless to us. I’ve read that there was also a disaster emergency fund that we might have used, but it wasn’t well-advertised or well-funded. The truth is that they needed to fund at least 3 months worth of bills and employee pay for everyone who needed to stay closed. We were closed for 2 months, but finally had to reopen because of the bills you can’t quit paying – utilities, cable TV, phone and internet among others. Even if we had waited the unemployment for our employees ran out at the end of July. Now, they would get next to nothing if we laid them off. What are people supposed to do? Republicans have put everyone in an untenable position – business owners need to pay the bills, and state and local governments need the sales tax revenue because there has been no help from the federal government. It makes me want to cry when I think about how much better this could have been handled, how many lives could have been saved if only Republican cared as much about keeping their citizens alive as they did about giving their wealthy donors a huge tax cut.
RaflW
@Mike in NC: Completely agree. This whole Space Farce has been an ego trip for the guy whose ego goes to Andromeda and back before his first Diet Coke of the day.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
Very sorry about why you lost your sense of smell/taste and hope that you and your husband recover fully.
I lost my sense of smell about 6 yrs ago.
So much of our lives are based upon smell, and we aren’t of course as good at smell as many other animals. A major portion of what you like/hate about any food is the smell, as your taste is only these 5, sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and savoriness. Everything else is smell. Garlic for example, gives you a treat when you cook with it, when the food is served, if you can smell, it does little for the actual taste of food other than fill out the fullness of what you eat, the savoriness of it, is it pleasant.
Soprano2
@Elizabelle: Thanks for the good wishes. Our dogs and cat are confused because dad is tired all the time and mom is home in the middle of the day during the week! I think I’m past the worst, since I figure I’ve had it since a week ago Wednesday at least. I’m more worried about my husband, and keeping a close eye on him. I’m keeping us alive with various canned soups and grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s hard to cook when you can’t taste or smell anything, and he doesn’t feel well enough to cook much.
Only one person at work had to quarantine because of me, and that was only because we had lunch together last Friday. I feel like I should apologize to her! My HR person said she usually has to quarantine several people every time there’s a positive test, which she says shouldn’t be happening. She’s right, too.
Yutsano
Okay so…when did the Pod People infect Josh Hawley?
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Can we make it a two-fer and add DHS? I don’t like having ICE and the Coast Guard in the same shop.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MisterForkbeard: ‘Both Siderism’ will kill democracy.
Mike in NC
@Mary G: He does have an uncanny resemblance to the Grinch, minus the green skin tone.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: Thanks. Sorry, that would suck, and take a lot away from the enjoyment of food and other things. One positive – it’s easier to change the cat’s box!
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: My mom lost her sense of taste as a result of tumor surgery. Took away one of her last pleasures; it was sad. I am sorry that you experience that as well.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@HumboldtBlue: one thing that I guarantee will change: one’s excuse for working from home. It’s no longer that one can’t afford an office, it’s that “I worked from home during the COVID epidemic and discovered that it worked better.”
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s how I feel about the garden threads.
cain
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
In many ways it does. Offices are actually more social gathering spots than productive ones. I’m always getting distracted by other people.
That said, I think being able to spend some time at work is great way to social engineer with folks.
CarolDuhart2
@Bill Arnold: Rosen better suck it up. At lot of companies are looking at reduced costs due to work at home, and the flexibility it brings, and will never bring everybody back fulltime to the office.
And a lot of workers appreciate this as well. No more long commutes or dressing up and those costs. And if you are fired, you still have the home office-and just log on to another employer.
Others may be looking at a hybrid-suburban offices that are closer and smaller and can accommodate people who dart in and out for a few hours at a time and are cheaper.
Rosen better be thinking about low-income housing or condos in some of those buildings.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Brachiator: this wins the thread
Ocotillo
Open thread, Mrs. O and I drove to the Texas Hill Country today. Our intent was to stop at the Johnson Ranch which is ran by both the Texas Parks & Wildlife and the National Park Service. There was a presentation on Buffalo soldiers but it was windy and cold and we under dressed for the temps so we ended up just doing a drive. Anyway, Blanco county, the home of LBJ is still rural although the highway between Johnson City and Fredericksburg has been “gentrified” by countless wineries. What was disheartening is this home of one of the strongest domestic presidents since FDR is now awash with Trump flags and thin blue line flags.
jl
@Soprano2: Thanks for great explanation about why the discussion of legislation needs to be framed in terms of disaster relief and insurance, not stimulus.
So, not a good situation since we are dealing with a corrupt and destructive administration and party, and a confused public discussion.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@cain: I agree, which is why I miss it. However, I bet the excuse will be in use for a least another couple of decades.
mrmoshpotato
Where’s the picture of Brazil’s own fascist shitpile?
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
That’s exactly what my buddy says, because he has to clean the cat boxes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: cooking for me, anything beyond “add heat and garlic” and I’m all “What am I? Fucking Escoffier over here?’
TS (the original)
@Soprano2:
Be nice to refute some of what you say – but the lack of support for “regular” Americans has been horrific and you have described it well.
Among everything else it has to do, the inquiry into how the pandemic was handled (mishandled) by the trump apologists will hopefully be a major congress event.
Mike in NC
@mrmoshpotato: Bolsonaro’s father, like Fred Trump Sr., should have worn a condom.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
I understand that it is more common than many realize. Aging changes many things. Still, it’s better to be able to go through aging than not.
Kent
So glad the family and I got out of Texas. 13 years in Waco was more than enough. We came for my wife’s residency and never really planned to stay that long but she kept getting promoted and getting prestigious offers. When we moved to Waco in 2003 we had a great Democratic Congressman and also a great Democratic mayor and the schools were well funded and high performing. It was a slow bleed every single year we were there and 13 years later like living in a different place, and that was even before Trump. We got out before the 2016 election. I don’t think most folks from other parts of the country realize how recent the complete GOP crazy is in TX. It wasn’t always that way. There was a time not long ago that it was more civilized and functional. At least if you were white and middle class I suppose. The racism has always been right under the surface everywhere.
We did like the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center down there. Really cool place. We took the girls to those sorts of places often when they were little.
Back here in WA its so nice to vote for candidates who actually win most of the time.
Sigh.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: BIDEN! NUKE THIS SHIT FORCE FROM ORBIT ON THE AFTERNOON OF JANUARY 20TH!
gwangung
@RaflW: I’d say Oans and their Green Lanterns have a word to share, too.
Kent
He’s going to get carpel tunnel syndrome from all the shit he needs to sign on January 20.
CarolDuhart2
And Rosen needs to come to Cincinnati. The smaller, older offices are already being turned into condos. Technology got rid of the typing pools, steno pools, and the big rooms of file cabinets. When you can store a business’s worth of documents in the cloud or on external hard drives or servers, you don’t need the space anymore.
This is just speeding up the process, and like the dying malls, commercial real estate needs to adapt to change even if its sudden.
And by the way this change underlies the small demographic and political changes in the inner city. As minorities and immigrants move to the suburbs, and smaller offices follow them, the people who occupy the converted office buildings are a bit more affluent and a bit more conservative than before.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
I wish you and your husband well and hope you both have a swift and complete recovery.
japa21
@cain: Back in the days when I was working a full time job, the office gave us the option of working from home 1 or 2 days a week. I ended up going in every day. For me, working at home meant I got less done. I was never able to give myself the structure needed. Not that working from home isn’t good, but my own make up worked against it for me.
debbie
@Aleta:
I’m almost ashamed to say how long I watched that tweet last night. ?
CarolDuhart2
@japa21: This is where the hybrid idea comes to mind. Offices located near the workers’s homes that are smaller and adapted to let people come in and out on their own schedule may be a compromise that makes commutes shorter. People could then have a more flexible schedule.
Soprano2
@jl: Thanks, all the “why don’t bars and restaurants just shut down for 6 months?” stuff has been frustrating for me. Those are people’s jobs, not just owners trying to infect people. What happens to our employees? Take out isn’t practical when 60+% of your business comes from selling drinks. It’s a bad situation for everyone. I’m afraid that in many large cities the restaurant/bar business will be a shell of itself for a few years even after COVID gets better.
Ruckus
@CarolDuhart2:
Rosen will never think about low income in any way. Not having it, not dealing with it, not even knowing that it exists. He lives in a world that few ever do or even see. And for most people that do live in that world they see nothing else. My experience around/near some of that world is that it is a complete world, except for the reality that better than 90% of the world don’t live in, near or around that world and don’t ever interact with any of it. And the people in it want nothing to do with the people that don’t live in it or support those who do. shitforbrains thinks he lives in that world, but he doesn’t. He lives in the subculture world around that world because he started with money and managed to basically fuck up everything he’s ever touched. He’s not in any way part of that ultra wealthy group, even the bottom end of it. He tries to fit in, he wants to fit in, but he never has. He’s too crass, too stupid, too deranged. Not that many of that class aren’t those things but he’s not just a bit of one of those he’s over the top in all of them.
HumboldtBlue
Georgia teen goes to the Cayman Islands and proceeds to be the ugly-America-selfish-spoiled-white-girl-white-privilege asshole and gets four months in prison.
All over wearing a mask.
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
This describes my work. At best, only 50% of employees will ever go back to working in the building. They’re talking about rotating people in and out of the building weekly and then working from home in between rotations. They’re also talking about some people just working from home.
The scheduling and math of this gives me headaches.
CarolDuhart2
@Ruckus: But he’s not going to ever get the full capacity he had before. Not that these buildings are going to be low income, but his choice may be between condos or empty offices. He may hold out hoping for a rebound in occupancy, but he may hold out too long for some of his properties to survive. Not only that, but the renters may have the upper hand for what property is left now.
Bill Arnold
@RaflW:
The Space Force is to defend against aliens, at least in the chaos that Trump calls his “mind”. Fairly sure.
Have to say though, that name pick for SF service members is just … interesting.
frosty
@Gin & Tonic: Too technical? Challenge accepted!
“Four years ago I couldn’t spell EnGineer and now I are one.”
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC: Totally agree!
debbie
@Soprano2:
A local craft brewery has created “beer bonds” for customers to purchase. Buy a bond for $50 and redeem it for $100 in food/beer purchases in July. There’s also a $100 bond that gets you $200 in July. Apparently it’s been successful.
Around here, bar/restaurant owners have largely gone MAGAT, filing lawsuits, insisting they can’t control their customers and shouldn’t be asked to. Tough to have much sympathy for them
ETA: My point being that there are creative ways to deal with this.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Is one of those signature stamps allowed?
Mike in NC
@Bill Arnold: In the classic comedy “The Russians Are Coming”, the Soviet sailor played by Alan Arkin refers to ‘United States Coastal Guardians’.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Jetski competition? LOL
ETA – I hope she gets the four-month prison sentence, though longer would be better.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
Wait, what are Coast Guard people called?
Ruckus
@CarolDuhart2:
Oh I agree with you, just that people like him will fail before admitting that they have to change and become part of the larger whole. And unlike shitforbrains he probably has enough money to actually continue to live like he’s wealthy for the rest of his life, he just might not have the growth that he thinks is necessary to maintain position. He needs to feel important, even as what he does and how he does it fails miserably.
frosty
I had a 1 3/4 hour commute each way by car, train, and Metro and when I got the option to telecommute one day a week I took it. I had the same reaction. On my last (much closer) job if I had to work OT on a Saturday I went into the office.
Mike E
@MisterForkbeard: While I’m driving I sometimes reluctantly listen to npr, and I caught their interview with the Dem mayor of Dayton OH about the hold up in the much needed federal funding… when it was over (and I stopped yelling at my radio) I imagined what the pre-interview chat must have sounded like:
Reporter: Hi mayor, I wonder if you can do me a favor. I’ve been both sidesing the crap out of these stories and I think I really threw my back out! Can you…
Mayor: Say no more! I got you, don’t worry, I’m gonna “inside the DC beltway” it really hard and talk about how road repair and garbage pickup isn’t democrat or republican.
Reporter: Perfect! Hey, I owe you one, thanks!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HumboldtBlue:
boy, there’s a lot there
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: Our hospital in OC currently has a 16 hour wait for an ambulance admit. They’re expecting it to get worse.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
I’m happy as a hypersensitive introvert to see the damage being done by the pandemic to the desirability of open plan offices. (Selfish, but an open plan office did damage to me personally.)
Have to say, though; interactions over web conferences can be very difficult; proper timing of the turn taking[1] in conversations is impossible due to lag (I’m sensitive down to about 10-20 milliseconds), and eye contact is impossible; staring intently at the camera is OK, but it means not looking at the [images of the] participants.
[1] Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation (2009; Fig. 2 interesting)
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Guardsmen
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Coastians? Coastal Elites?
UncleEbeneezer
@Ocotillo: we stayed at a wonderful ranch in Johnson City, owned by a fabulous, liberal gay couple when we visited a few years ago. I remember seeing Dixie swastiskas and Gadsden flags and gunhumper stuff in the local store. Made us really uncomfortable. Trump flags don’t surprise me in the least. Too bad because it’s beautiful country.
HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
She did get the four months.
And yeah, jet-ski racing. Getthefuckouttahere.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
I’ve heard Coasties. Here’s a thread (http website), where they say Guardians is occasionally used but disliked by Coasties.
http://www.uscg.org/Forum/aft/12134.aspx
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: Fuck…that’s terrible.
WaterGirl
@TS (the original): My best friend did NOT get COVID and neither did my next door neighbor – they were each living with their husband who DID have it. You have to be super careful and have a little luck.
HumboldtBlue
@SiubhanDuinne:
Coasties is the informal, Coast Guardsmen is the formal title.
frosty
@Gin & Tonic: FFS. Solorigate??? Give me a fucken break. Another fucken “gate”
The Lodger
@cain: After 300,000 deaths, it’s hard to wrap my head around the concept that things aren’t already fucked up.
Baud
@frosty:
IKR? Solarighazi is more 21st century.
The Moar You Know
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: That has not been the case of either my own personal job, or most of my coworkers, but we are managing. I will frankly be glad when we can get back in the office.
How I’m going to deal with my dog, who is now so used to both my wife and I being around 24/7, I have no idea. He’s gonna be a basket case. I can probably take him into the office part time for a while; but this is probably going to be an issue for the rest of his life. Wish me luck.
Martin
@Bill Arnold: I’m wrapping up a big project and the lack of in-person meeting has really hit hard. It’s not that Zoom is a poor substitute for a proper meeting, it’s that I nearly catastrophically underestimated the magnitude of the work that came from impromptu interactions – sticking my head in someones door, bumping into them in the kitchen, shit like that.
And I’ve always been an advocate to protect that kind of casual interaction. In my previous office I insisted on a suite that would give everyone an office with a door, but also one where we could yell (ask in a slightly elevated tone to indicate you wanted their attention) out a question and get an answer yelled back, because we did that constantly. If you needed privacy you could close your door.
So even with that front of mine, I still fucked it up. LOL.
VeniceRiley
My cousin’s husband got taken to the hospital today and is, as of an hour ago, critical. So, that’s 2 in the extended fam now.
satby
@VeniceRiley: Keeping them both in my thoughts and hoping for a good recovery.
Mike in NC
Title of an article in today’s Washington Post: “The Trump family keeps grifting, to the end and beyond“. The author goes on to claim that Fat Bastard could continue to hold fundraiser rallies for his PAC and serve attendees mayonnaise sandwiches. Sounds totally on-brand.
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah. I’m now hearing from my friend at county rescue that there are no ambulances to dispatch because they’re all idling in the parking lot of the hospital with patients in them.
I think this is what happened to NYC and why they had a big spike to correct their numbers – people died at home because an ambulance couldn’t come, and because there was no official diagnosis of Covid, they didn’t get counted until the coroner could catch up and provide the data.
So, don’t come to OC. Don’t drive. Don’t get in an accident. Don’t go surfing or skateboarding. Nobody is coming to help.
Steve in the ATL
@Ocotillo:
I’ve had Texas wine. This should read “ wineries” to be accurate.
JPL
@VeniceRiley: I’m so sorry.
Mary G
@The Moar You Know: I’ve seen a couple of rescues and shelters worried about the dogs so many people adopted to comfort them during the shutdown, but are going to be returned when people get their lives back. I hope they’re wrong.
Martin
@The Moar You Know: It’s a mixed bag. I’m normally very productive at home, but Trump and pandemic has turned my anxiety up and really hurt my productivity. So I go through these huge swings of being incredibly productive for days or a week or two, to logging lots of hours and getting nothing done because my brain don’t work for a week or two, and then swinging back. Sometimes I’m productive at 3AM and not at noon.
It is getting better and I should have a better feel of it come Jan/Feb. But historically I always got more work done at home than in the office, even when I was putting in 40 in the office.
But that coordinating piece with other people – I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Making matters worse, the main tool I used to use for that I no longer have (unrelated to everything else), nor do I have serendipitous interactions.
Yarrow
@CarolDuhart2:
I don’t understand this. Offices are all over. Workers live all over. What’s closer for one worker is farther away for another.
@HumboldtBlue:
The video indicates she was arrested because she broke quarantine rules and took off her wrist monitor. It wasn’t just about a mask.
Bill Arnold
@Mike in NC:
Good to see that in the press.
FWIW, Annie Lauri occasionally uses the word “grifting” in her post titles.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Looks like the government isn’t shutting down tonight, the Senate agreed to a 48 hour stopgap CR.
SiubhanDuinne
@VeniceRiley:
Oh, I am sorry. I’m holding him in my thoughts and heart.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The wife just sent me a text that her daughter won’t be joining us for Christmas(I’d kind of figured that’d be the case given her job), but she wants to invite a friend of ours over. My reply, ‘I don’t think that’s a great idea’.
mrmoshpotato
Good! What a selfish sack of shit!
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: So it’ll shut down on Sunday then. Mitch can’t get the votes but I’m betting Chuck can.
mrmoshpotato
@frosty: All started with that Watergategate thing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: I guess the hang up is the COVID relief bill.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve always called them Coasties. But I’d have to ask my friend who’s a Coast Guard vet.
VeniceRiley
Thanks everybody.
Hope everyone affected comes out the other side alive.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I was working at home before the pandemic and quite enjoyed it. However, I note that the pandemic changed how I felt about remote work to some degree. And yeah, a sense of anxiety increased.
One crazy thing is that before the pandemic I felt that I was in a special club. And then more of my neighbors began working at home as well. I would see them if I went outside for a brief walk.
The company I work for now has a number of remote workers. They use tools to add some places online where people can “hang out” on breaks. I’ve learned that remote working is a niche and some people have been doing it for much longer than I have and approach work differently than office workers. There is an adjustment to be made, especially when you have to work with other people.
I’ve also found that remote workers have preferences when it comes to equipment and accessories, everything from desks to headsets to monitors, etc.
It’s been an interesting journey.
JPL
@Martin: Whoa! Be safe.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
2 days here, a week there, before you know it you’ve got a fiscal year.
//
Is this any way to run a railroad?
Amir Khalid
@Bill Arnold:
I suspect that the US Space Force will not thrive under the Biden/Harris administration, and its resources and personnel will be put to better use elsewhere.
Yutsano
@VeniceRiley: …
Fuck. I’m sorry 2020 has been so rough on you. My thoughts are with you.
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
We’re not doing that. Take some cookies to the person and leave them on the porch, and see them next year.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Good thing nobody calls them Coasters.
TS (the original)
@WaterGirl: I would go with the luck – unless you have separate bathrooms which would make it much easier to isolate from each other. Would also need to know you had it to start the isolation.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: I’m pretty sure that one didn’t get by the committee.
patrick II
@Mary G:
Give with the left hand while taking away with the right. A nearly net 0 bill right now.
Martin
@JPL: Not gettin’ out of the boat. Hell, I’m not even getting on my bike until things get better. They don’t need me making matters worse.
patrick II
@different-church-lady:
I will guess that they have recently seen a poll favorable to them.
NotMax
OT.
Somewhat lesser known Barbara Stanwyck seasonal holiday movie, Remember the Night, coming up on TCM at top of the hour.
JPL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Who would have thought that just because they want to tie the hands of the feds, that the democratic members would balk. Mitch doesn’t want to allow for paid two week for those with the virus. What f..kers
patrick II
@p.a.:
That is the correct legal penalty for a traitor. But since we haven’t declared war we can’t say treason. Since we never declare war anymore it is open season for traitors. We need to adjust our laws to the reality of modern non-military warfare and treat traitors (until I find another word) with the seriousness they deserve.
PsiFighter37
This is interesting, and it suggests that AOC really has not done any meaningfully bridge-building within the Democratic caucus to win support. She needs to figure out how to become a workhorse and stop being perceived as a show horse, to reframe the old analogy.
JPL
@patrick II: trump touted that joining forces with Putin will enhance our cyber-security. What ever Putin has on him, it must be good.
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
Very interesting. The vote wasn’t even that close.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PsiFighter37:
that’s not fair, since literally her first day in Congress, she’s helpfully pointed out how stupid and corrupt everyone who disagrees with her is. It’s hardly her fault if she keeps it too real for a bunch of sell-outs, corporatists and olds
ETA: Oh christ, I didn’t even see the by-line/s on that story when I linked to it. Too perfect!
Brachiator
@cain:
We humans are social animals. A necessary part of work involves what might be called distractions. And working at home can entail a different set of distractions, especially if you have a spouse and kids or other family at home. Even beloved pets.
I mentioned elsewhere that I have been working at home for a while. I still have not found a good analog for being able to walk over to a colleague’s cubicle or office and chat, brainstorm, etc.
Quiltingfool
I just now read the best tweet on how the covid vaccine works. https://twitter.com/WheatNOil/status/1339624815137722368?s=20https://twitter.com/WheatNOil/status/1339624815137722368?s=20
I taught 8th graders about the immune system and I honestly think if I had referred to invading viruses as “assholes” (or, “this asshole again”) I’ll bet my students would have never forgot that lesson! I’m pretty sure had I done that, there would have been phone calls…
Captain C
@JPL: I would guess lots of debt, lots of evidence of financial crimes, and video evidence of some serious depravity, in that order.
Brachiator
@PsiFighter37:
I have no idea how AOC is doing in Congress, but I note that she was re-elected with 75 percent of the vote. I get the impression that the perception of her is largely unfair, and she has been the target of irrational hatred by conservatives. It reminds me of the crap that was thrown at Hillary Clinton.
But like I said, I don’t know much about how she did in her first term. I hope she has the smarts to adjust as necessary. But I also hope that the Democratic Party leadership also has the smarts to adjust to her. Other people like her are coming up in the party ranks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: Considering the explosion in cases here, that’s my feeling. He doesn’t get out much, but he does work for big company, that concerns me most of all. I didn’t figure we’d see the kid, she’s had some COVID patients.
ETA: My b-day is about 4 weeks after Christmas, I’d rather it not be someone’s funeral, especially mine.
rikyrah
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Pardon my French, but
HELL MUTHAPHUCKIN’ NO?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Nah, I can do without them.
frosty
@NotMax: Thanks for the recommendation last weekend for A Matter of Life and Death. I really enjoyed it. You were right about the beginning. It hooks you in for the rest of the movie.
mrmoshpotato
@Quiltingfool: Your memory cells say “you’ve got to be kidding me, THIS asshole again? Get the fuck out of here!”
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: No love for Mondale I see! (Yes, he is, and he’s 92.)
rikyrah
@jl:
This is deliberate?
They wanted to use the vaccine to punish Blue States?
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Yup. And I am going to call them fuckers. Fuckers.
jl
@Quiltingfool: Thanks, great explanation.
Some interesting research I’ve read about suggests that the innate (versus adaptive) immune system is effective at delaying spread of the coronavirus out of the upper respiratory system. (edit: which is why there have been some trials on using old cheap vaccines for other diseases that really rev up the innate immune system immediately. Unfortunately that usually means you get walloped with side effects: fever, feeling like flu coming on , soreness, etc.). That only lasts a few days to a week, but might be a good emergency preventive prophylaxis.
It would be fun to read that person on the innate immune system: zombie cannibal white cells gobbling up anything that don’t look right, mafia enforcer cells telling infected cells that, sorry, they gotta go on a long ride off a short pier, etc.
Gin & Tonic
Do mice engage in cannibalism?
I have mice in my garage. Most nights I set an old-fashioned mousetrap; most nights I catch one. Two nights ago I caught one, which I found yesterday morning when I went out to get the dog food. But I forgot to remove it, so it stayed overnight. Today I went to get the trap and the expired mouse, and it was very clear that some small creature had been eating parts of the corpse. I don’t have any other small animals in the garage. Did another mouse come in, see the corpse and say to itself “you know what, I’m pretty hungry with all the snow out there” and chomp away?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
There are Subaru Diane cells? That wasn’t covered in Bio 1.
raven
@rikyrah: Like Florida?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven:
They know what they did.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: Laurie Garret, uber-wonky science reporter and no fan of trump, said much of this delay is due to the Nor’easter (sp?) that blew in the other day, and the general in charge of distribution holding back even more units until he was sure what they did ship out got to its destination/s. And he did a piss-poor job of communicating that to people.
That said, there is nothing trump, and McConnell, woudln’t do to sabotage Biden, if they can get away with it.
patrick II
@JPL:
It seems the Russians went ahead with that idea without telling us.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@VeniceRiley: I’m so sorry.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes they do. It’s, for example, a response to overpopulation.
Also, rats prey on mice, which is why you seldom have both infesting at once.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
I’m shocked. Is there no honour among rodents?
cain
@Brachiator: I don’t think you’re going to find a substitute.
I’ve always had a WFH privils for years, and I would work from home because of distractions.. but I loved coming into work so that I can hang out with my friends and of course being able to visit other people’s cubes and get some stuff done quickly.
Some things you can get done quickly in person than online.
Of course, now I’m online 100% because most of my team are either in Boston, California or in Paris.
CarolDuhart2
@debbie: Not a bad idea for restaurants. Buy a bond redeemable for meals in June and July. The restaurant gets the money now, and sooner than you realize you want a cooked meal and are short on cash that day. And a lot of times you may want something extra with that redemption like an extra beverage or dessert as well.
raven
@Brachiator: I worked from home for the last decade of my “career” and it didn’t bother me one bit.
Nelle
@Brachiator: I had a twenty or so minute chat with Katie Porter a little over a year ago about the coordination between the new women in Congress over questioning some rather hostile witnesses (fundraiser event -my credit card is overly fond of Porter). She said that the ways that their staffs help prepare them and coordinate with each other is phenomenal and that they have the best staff. They were coordinating and following up with each other, in contrast to grandstanding Gym Jordan and others. I got the impression that there is some powerful teamwork behind what we see.
trollhattan
Oh hell.
Learned just now that one of the kid’s buddies from way back in kindergarten days has died of an overdose. Sigh
raven
@Mike in NC: Emergency, emergency, everyone to get from streets. . .
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Right? You’d think the rats would just sashay in and say, “Yo, we’re in charge now and expect dinner at six.”
CarolDuhart2
@Brachiator: Those things will be possible post-Covid, with smaller offices and facilities that enable people to do a hybrid that combines the flexibility of working at home with the things that only an office can provide like dedicated equipment, office supplies, and pre-paid coffee. Not to mention companies may well schedule meetings and social events for the work at home workers.
raven
@CarolDuhart2: Even though I worked from home I was on the “activities committee” and we did those kinds of events.
NotMax
@frosty
Credit where it’s due. That wasn’t me, it was another. IIRC, Steeplejack?
CaseyL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A *very* piss-poor job communicating the reason for the delay, leaving people free to theorize that the vaccine is being held back for the same reason PPE was held back: so Kushner could skim/steal most of it and sell it to his cronies, to resell at twice the price.
I will believe the nor’easter is the problem when hell freezes over.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Amen to that, brother.
raven
Blaming a faulty algorithm, Stanford Health Care apologized Friday for a plan that left nearly all 1,300 of its young front-line doctors out of the first round of coronavirus vaccinations. The Palo Alto, Calif., medical center promised an immediate fix that would move the physicians into the first wave of inoculations.
NotMax
FYI.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ivanka finally managed to put together a puppet show explaining the whole state vs federal thing?
Chyron HR
@Brachiator:
Wow, it’s almost like she represents in a deep blue district where any Democrat can win in a landslide, in direct contradiction of Bernie’s teaching that red states are where the noble proletariat yearning for socialist revolution lives.
PsiFighter37
@Brachiator: It is evidently clear that the vast majority of Democrats do not support policies in content or in style that AOC does. Saint Wilmer would have been the nominee (and lost) by a mile if that was the case. As for AOC’s own election, she won with 71.6% of the vote, which is the lowest vote share for the Democratic candidate as the district is currently constituted. Yes, it’s still a blowout margin (look at the district makeup – not surprising), but I think it is evident that her numbers may continue to backslide, relative to where a super-safe district should be, if she is not perceived to be doing more. Playing ‘Among Us’ once in a while is nice for a social media viral hit, but it accomplishes absolutely fuck-all in real life.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chyron HR: Bernie-World seems to have recently re-convinced themselves that Medicare For All is “incredibly popular”, as a writer I usually like put it on a podcast the other day. I think they’re basing this on their own spin about the 2020 results
Brachiator
@PsiFighter37:
I guess that mainly she has to satisfy the voters in her district. What the majority of Democrats support today may not be what they support tomorrow.
I share your disdain for St Wilmer, but I presume that AOC is her own person.
So how many years before she drops below 50 percent? Fifteen? Twenty?
AOC uses social media well. That may be where a lot of future voters hang out.
zhena gogolia
I watched a whole Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray movie and you’re still on the same thread.
PsiFighter37
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s because the left / far left has an inherent lack of self-reflection when it comes to considering that it is remotely possible that they might not be right. They drink so much of their own fucking Kool-Aid that they are convinced that they can never do any wrong.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Why am I not surprised? It was a matter of life and death for Boeing: nobody has enough passengers now to fill bigger planes, so they absolutely depend on selling 737s. If they couldn’t get the new generation of 737 certified, their airline customers would go to Airbus, and bye-bye Boeing.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
It’s a great masterpiece of acting by Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Bondi. And Sterling Holloway sings beautifully.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Maybe, but it don’t pay the bills.
zhena gogolia
@frosty:
Another master class in acting from David Niven and Kim Hunter.
PsiFighter37
@Brachiator: Most people of voting age have more pressing things to think about than playing video games, and this is especially true as they age (speaking very much from personal experience on this one, as well as observation).
As for her own district, she will probably get away with doing nothing for as long as Crowley did – then she will be caught asleep at the switch. Frankly, that’s a problem for a lot of Democrats who have been in Congress for the past 10 years, where very little of consequence has actually been passed legislatively. Talking about “fighting for X” doesn’t mean squat when the bill never makes it out of a website or even committee.
NotMax
A novel approach to contract law. The details for facility the contract was drawn up to cover not a relevant part of the agreement.
One can almost see Professor Kingsfield slamming his forehead into the lectern, repeatedly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Boeing makes more than passenger jets, the Feds have an interest in their financial health.
PsiFighter37
@Amir Khalid: I would be surprised if there is another 737 MAX incident. Boeing knows that no airline will buy another plane from them if they screw this up…so while I would not be surprised if they tried to cut corners where possible, I have to imagine the company knows that another crash will mean they end up in Chapter 11 or worse – designing a new narrow-body jet from scratch will cost tens of billions of dollars and would not be seen for close to a decade.
Boeing would have been smart if they had told American Airlines to take a hike and spent the time to design a clean-sheet narrowbody frame in the early 2010s. The rush to keep (what was at that time) an all-Boeing customer on board led them to retread a design pushing 50 years and was past due for an overhaul.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: Surely Professor Kingsfield would have slammed Mr Hart’s (Mis-Terr Ha(h)Rt!) head into that lectern?
cain
@Bill Arnold:
I was never a fan of the open plan concept – but you know corps love it because they save money. Of course, now they save money by not having any buildings! :D
Brachiator
@CarolDuhart2:
I did some contract work for a company that is almost exclusively remote work, including the managers. No hybrid style set-up is necessary for them. It was an interesting experience. There was no such thing as a main office, of any size, to visit.
But other companies may have to make other adjustments. It is unfair for companies to shift some of their costs to employees, especially since current tax rules do not allow employees to claim office-in-home expenses.
It is also interesting to see that some employees are electing to move to other cities with more affordable housing and a more comfortable social life in order to do remote work. These people may not be interested in visiting the home office, and it is unlikely that the companies are going to set up satellite offices for occasional employee visits. Of course, this trend may not last of employees moving to other cities, but it creates for some very flexible remote work opportunities.
My nephew will be doing remote work until at least July. I don’t think he has been to the main office more than two or three times since May.
phdesmond
@Amir Khalid:
or “costives.”
costive (adj.)
“constipated, suffering from retention of hard fecal matter in the bowels,” c. 1400, from Old French costivé, from Latin constipatus, past participle of constipare (see constipation). Figurative sense of “slow in action” is attested from 1590s.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Probably would have opted for the smarmier student first.
“Mister … Bell. Would you be so kind as to step down here for a moment?”
:)
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
F-15s are much more profitable per unit, true, but they can’t hope to match the sales volume of 737s.
Jinchi
Just to be clear AOC is still a freshman member of Congress. She’s been in office for 2 years and whether you like her or not, she’s been central in framing the debate since she took office.
Her most recent offense was defending Joe Biden’s Deputy Chief of Staff, a woman who was getting flack for cursing Republicans while essentially scolding liberal Democrats (like AOC) who didn’t think Biden would have any luck working with Mitch McConnell.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
AOC uses social media well. That may be where a lot of future voters hang out.
But it may get bills passed. Social media is like that relatively new medium that FDR exploited, radio.
@PsiFighter37:
How many people on this blog play video games?
Is she doing nothing? With as many enemies as she apparently has within her party, how did she escape the front page headlines showing her to be a fraud? Unless, she was also doing her job, that is.
You either have to be part of the majority or have real bipartisanship to get things done.
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator: My daughter works for a decent-sized company a bit past start-up stage, based in NYC’s Flatiron District. Well before Labor Day (maybe it was July) they said “we’re never coming back” and permanently closed the office. She’s been working from home since mid-March, and expects that to go on forever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jinchi:
on twitter
NotMax
@Brachiator
Word through the grapevine is that her office’s constituent services are rated very highly by those in the district.
trollhattan
@PsiFighter37:
It was Southwest that primarily drove the Max, as they have only had 737s in their fleet since the beginning. Short of a fresh design replacement, a refreshed 757 would have been the better path because the 737 had foundational design aspects that render it inappropriate for new-gen engines and overall enlargement. (Anecdotally, pilots love the 757 and are “meh” with the 737.)
PsiFighter37
@trollhattan: From the history I have read, it was American that drove Boeing’s decision – they basically told Boeing they were going to order a bunch of Airbus’ next-generation A320neos.
different-church-lady
@mrmoshpotato: DEFUND THE SPACE POLICE!
scav
@NotMax: This new Trumpian world of law is fascinating, s it not? Schrodinger’s material elements of contracts, mere technicalities of standing . . . . I guess it will somehow prove to be a mere technicality if the factory is standing or not in Wisconsin, has someone checked what is Texas’s opinion on the matter?
trollhattan
@PsiFighter37:
American has ordered 100, United 135, Southwest 280 (#1 in the world).
ballerat
That. That right there is a judicial sick burn.
As it should be.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
Is she enjoying the remote work experience? Or finding it a challenge?
ballerat
Yes, yes it is.
lgerard
@Steve in the ATL:
You haven’t lived until you have Alabama wine
From The Sewage Plant Region
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator: She likes it. She especially likes not having to ride the subway.
NotMax
@Igerard
Chateau L’Effluent.
:)
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Boeing should have started with a clean sheet, but training paperwork apparently is a big deal (if they didn’t have to call it a new plane, then the training would be the same for all the pilots who fly the various 737 models and that makes the airlines happy).
But since they didn’t want to make a new plane, it has the ancient noisy cockpit (because of the way the windows were designed in olden times, etc.): AVSim (from 2012):
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
CarolDuhart2
https://www.carolduhart.com/whitehouse/2020/12/18/more-communications-staffers/
On my blog, I’ve been keeping track of Biden appointments and some developments. Mostly Twitter links, but that’s where I find them.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Long in-depth read, also too, on a different hazard (The Los Angeles Times).
‘We are slowly being poisoned’ How toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes
WaterGirl
New post up after On the Road.
Yarrow
@Brachiator:
I wonder how this change will affect employer-based health insurance. A small/mid-sized company based in a certain state they may offer health insurance that has a network of doctors, hospitals and other providers only for that state. But if employees decide they want to live all over the place then that model of health insurance doesn’t work. It would be a significant cost increase for companies to offer health insurance that has networks in all 50 states to accommodate employees that work all over the place.
Mary G
The tunnel is very long here: ICU availability to treat the sickest coronavirus patients is now at 0% in the 11 counties that make up Southern California.
The Orange County health officer said get yourself to the hospital if you can, ambulances are in short supply.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jinchi:
is “corporate consensus but not socially regressive neoliberal” a compliment in BernieWorld? Cause it sounds to my fusty old neo-liberal ears like she’s being an asshole about the newly elected Democratic President for… no good reason that I could think of
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She’s simply pointing out that if there were more than just two viable political parties, in the US, she and President Elect Joe Biden probably wouldn’t be in the same Political Party, because in regards to what each see as political priorities, aside from some aspects of Social Justice and Equality, they don’t share “common ground”.
For example, they have completely different views on both “Small Never Ending Wars”, Medical Care, Policing and “The Economy”.
Kayla Rudbek
In better news to head into the weekend, my only sibling was deemed essential worker enough to get the vaccine. First dose this week, second one to go.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Actually, I’d watch the hell out of that one, myself.