Anyone have recommendations for high quality air purifiers with a Hepa filter and Merv13+? I’ve tried different purifiers over the years and either they end up not having an actual Hepa filter, stop making replacement filters, or filter replacements are too expensive. I like my Levoit, but it turns out they aren’t actually Hepa filters. And my Renpho went from having $30-50 filter replacements to now $90 on Amazon. I can’t even buy them from Renpho anymore. #covid#COVID19#CovidIsNotOver
The show The Traitors is a perfect encapsulation of why democratic countries get stuck with awful politicians. It demonstrates how easily people are manipulated into voting against their own interests. How many people are driven by “vibes” which they refer to as their gut which mostly boils down to unconscious biases and siding with people who they want to be friends with rather than trying to figure out who is being deceptive. Australia season 2 is a particularly alarming example.
In high school I took a dystopian fiction class. We read books like 1984, A Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, and The Handmaid’s Tale. All were good books that captivated me at the time and feel pertinent to today, but having just finished Parable of the Sower it made me realize the aspect of the genre we were missing. All those books took place under an oppressive, centralized, authoritarian government, and what I find fascinating about Parable of the Sower is the lack of “leadership.”
It’s not that the government or authority figures didn’t exist, it’s just that they were irrelevant. Life descended into a free for all and while the narrator talks about the president and cops, they aren’t central to the story in any meaningful way. The country’s been picked clean, burned down, and everyone is left to fend for themselves. The narrative keeps making the point that it doesn’t matter what the authority is doing wherever they are because everyone now has to shape their own world.
It’s interesting to read a novel of this type where the narrator’s goal isn’t to “beat” the bad guy or bring down the government because if you’ve ever read those books, that isn’t often successful unless you’re reading in the YA space. It just has me thinking about that movie Leave the World Behind and how a character says something about how “there is no plan, just chaos” and now I can’t decide which prospect is more frightening.
The Fallout series is really good if you are a fan of the games. They nailed the aesthetic quite well and crafted a story that’s a nod to the games while being its own thing. I enjoyed it more than The Last of Us series (which I also liked). Unlike that show, it benefited from not having a narrow, linear plot to follow or deviate from though. It doesn’t take itself too seriously which makes for a fun watch. Also, Xbox put all the old Xbox games on Game Pass if it makes you nostalgic. #Fallout
@QuietLurker I'm not a gamer, although as an old can't get to sleep easily person I often fall asleep to some of the dnd games on youtube that go on hour after hour.....low volume, a "story" and man I sleep like a baby. lol
What I find fascinating in the Covid era is how some people who have developed serious health issues became wearier of risky behavior and more thoughtful about their choices, but many others have instead doubled down on risky behavior because “life is short.” There’s zero introspection that their own behavior might be making it much shorter. Almost as if that’s an impossibility. They’ll say becoming sick made them value their life more, but their actions contradict that purported belief.
@Lizette603_23 The thing is, I don’t even consider many of them to be stupid people. Perhaps their actions can be construed that way, but they themselves are not inherently dumb (at least the ones I know personally). It’s fascinating to me largely because it’s such a different reaction to my own. I can understand their rationale to a degree, but it also isn’t logical to me. Live and let live I guess, or not in many cases. Wish we didn’t all have to suffer the consequences of other’s choices.
In the 90s there were movies about corporate corruption featuring a lone employee that had to risk their life to uncover the truth. In the end, they always took down the evil corporation because the people, the media, the government actually cared. Nowadays, we’re rife with corporate scandals and all we do is shrug and say “of course.” Whistleblowers get murdered. The media maybe covers the stories for a day, a week. Stocks maybe take a dip. The CEO gets golden parachuted to another company.
Maybe the movies were always fantasies, but it seems so strange now. I was on the young side when the whole Enron scandal happened. Too young to pay close attention to the details, but old enough to remember there was a big hubbub about it in the media for quite a long time. If that happened today, I imagine it would be a blip in the news before we all forgot about it. I keep wondering if maybe it was always like this, but then I think back to that. Anyway, all those movies feel silly now.
Now I’m thinking about 24 and how wild that show felt at the time. How the president being a traitor was shocking. Now we’ve faced that reality and a significant portion of the media don’t treat it with any sort of seriousness, the man still has lots of supporters including an evil cabal of billionaires financing him. President Logan at least operated in the shadows with foreign adversaries. Now it’s all an open “secret” and people act like it’s normal. It feels like bizarro world.
Any Covid cautious people have any tips or warnings about flying? I have to fly for the first time since this started and am nervous about it. I know most people won’t be masked, that I should wear an n95 or better, I’ll have to lower it at security, to never remove it otherwise, but wondering about things like running the air on the plane. Is it better to keep it off or on? Any other suggestions appreciated. #Covid#Covid19#CovidIsNotOver#COVIDcautious