@dannotdaniel thanks .. yeah, it's the first time in like six years. Nothing much of value was taken (pro tip: don't leave expensive or irreplacable stuff in your vehicle) but it's a few hundred dollars to get the windshield replaced.
I wonder (but not too much) what would happen if/when Trump is POTUS again but faced with a Dem controlled House and Senate.
That might actually be the best outcome we can hope for in the #duocracy. We can hope there's some iota of justice that's meted out by the courts, but there was no legislative path forward after Pelosi seated 130+ sworn Seditionists in Congress.
At least w Trump 2.0, shitlibs might be upset about the stuff Biden gets a pass for just bc it's Trump.
I say I don't wonder about it too much because it's still the duocracy, and even with Dem majorities in both legislative chambers we can assume rotating villains will replace Manchinema in the Senate and Blue Dog Centrists will always side with R's on any key policy votes. The Progressives will get really quiet again until mid-terms, refuse to vote as a block, and whatever minimal crumbs are permitted by R's will be heralded as bipartisan "wins" as rights and conditions erode further.
I'm not going to tell you how to vote- many of my moots on here have zero faith in the electoral system, and rightfully so. I will ask that you #votelocal for the best candidates, because this is often where the buck stops and meaningful change is possible.
My own conservative suburb is a good example - a #grassroots campaign for a city council seat won against a corporate backed shill in 2021. Outspent 10:1, she triumphed by some 52 votes and has consistently delivered for our #community.
Walking around Sriracha #Thailand to get breakfast this morning, some 60%-90% of folks in mostly #KF94 respirators. It was just the Thai New Year's celebrations here over the weekend, maybe folks are seeing an uptick in sickies and responding appropriately, or just taking a simple effective precaution to avoid illness.
Fwiw, I've encountered very few coughers or wheezers in shared indoor spaces compared to what's been normalized in the US. Go figure 😒 #CovidIsNotOver#MaskUp
In the Netherlands I am a social outcast for wearing an FFP2/FFP3 mask. Sometimes I am wondering whether I would fit in better in an Asian country, despite not speaking the language and being of a different race.
@ABScientist I was just thinking about it this morning. Honestly, even with the language barriers at times, it has been so nice to not be a social outcast for wearing PPE during an ongoing pandemic. It's stupid how politicized it is in the West.
Even if it isn't the plague, there's so many fertile walking incubators for other bugs (rhinovirus, coronavirus, strep a, measles, mpox, etc.) right now, I am taking steps to minimize my exposure to any of them on this trip.
How the fuck are parents reconciling the frequent childhood illnesses that seem to be ripping through all my friends' households? This is not normal. We were never this sickly when I was growing up-- and I was one of the "sickly" ones (I had a bad dust allergy). I don't even have kids and I see it 😒
Denial can be a powerful agent, so I'm assuming that's how it's being dealt with until it can no longer be dismissed at scale. This is all so messed up. #CovidIsNotOver#sickkids
@RebelGeek99 It's shifting baseline syndrome, propelled by people's need to be in denial since admitting the truth—that they failed to protect their kids from a grave illness they could have protected them from—is too psychologically painful.
That is, people very much want what's happening now to be "normal" because otherwise they have to confront their own and society's failures, so they allow their brains to be tricked into shifting what is considered normal and forgetting the old baseline.
@justyourluck@RebelGeek99 Eventually if everybody keeps getting COVID then nearly every person in the country will have a close relative who is permanently disabled by it. There will be a tipping point, I think, where people simply won't be able to sustain the denial.
It might be triggered by a celebrity who is widely liked and respected going public about their Long COVID, like how the US basically shut down in March 2020 after Tom Hanks went on TV and told people he had COVID.
I have been wondering a lot about my career path, lately.
Started as a biologist, then a lab techie, then a biostatistician, and eventually an IT person. I recently left (was pressured out, essentially) a soul sucking job at a mediocre healthcare IT shop and I have zero desire to go back to that field.
We have a plethora of high quality data available to make important decisions... But as we've seen with at least COVID, the bottleneck seems to be more cultural than technical 😒
While adapting my skill set to energy could be healthier emotionally than staying in (returning to?) the healthcare space, the reality is the corporate oligarchy will not hesitate to sacrifice workers and entire families in the line of profiteering.
If rolling brownouts through low-income residential neighborhoods will free up a few TW to power shitty AI marketing algorithms for PepsiCo, it could well become my charge to implement it. Is this any better than complictly concealing a pandemic???
Obviously the only sensible option is to give up entirely on any sort of professional career, try to get a job at Amazon until I'm replaced by a robot, and die penniless in a gutter waiting for govt benefits that simply can't be funded because the corporation cannot be taxed.
Amazon probably wouldn't hire me because of an AI algorithm (I have a very ethnic looking last name and high education level) so I should try to come up with another plan.
I don't understand why anyone is alarmed or even raising an eyebrow about a "bloodbath" when leadership has been just fine reaching across the aisle to compromise with fascists the last 3 years 🤷🏻♂️
I've been sleeping a lot the last several days, which is good. Inadequate or low quality sleep makes a huge difference in how well our minds and bodies work.
I think back on the last several months of doggie hospice home care, helping with an adult disabled family member left without caregivers after her parents died, watching friends and family disabled by the plague, seeing HCW colleagues struggle, and no wonder it was hard to catch a solid night's rest.
@violetmadder Like MTG, I'm not giving it any oxygen. Working in the yard growing pollinator plants, cycling wherever I can, show up to city council so it's not all chuds - those will have more of an impact on my community hearts and minds more than lowering the bar to accept bipartisanship with fascists as an acceptable standard, no thanks, those shitlibs can think again 🌿 #MeanGreen
Pollinator plants! I am ON that shit! 2 flats of beach strawberries, 3 flats of island mallow seedlings, eight golden currant suckers, an oso berry transplant, and seven pipevine cuttings this week.
Cranking away on my plant data spreadsheet.
Feels good.
Am so sorry about your puppy BTW, you're going through a lot if we were local I'd very hug you.
The doggie hospice home care scorecard has dipped into the upper 30's... and we all know what that means. We've made a final appointment at the vets office for tomorrow morning. My stomach is turning, but we had a day full of a leisurely hobble around the block, hobbling and falling around at the park, all the best banana bacon treats, some real bacon and even a couple of little salmon sushi steaks, an arthritis treatment with massage and heat lamp, gabapentin, carprofen, carrying as needed..😓
I don't care if this account gets shut down because I hurt some shitlibs fee-fees. If you have a huge "progressive" following and are using your platform to strike left at kids protesting climate change instead of using that warchest of influence to rally to their cause, you sir are very much part of the problem.
Don't take any shit from moderate centrists. They are the next level of corruption, intertwined closely with the corporate interests of the oligarchy pushing the Overton window farther right at every opportunity. Fucking done being nice with these clowns. These are enablers, not allies.