But I am so sad in a way that I worry will take a long time for me to recover from. I was on Kotaku ’s podcast last week with James Vaughan, developer of infectious disease simulator Plague Inc . One thing he said, which stuck with me like a serrated blade through the chest, was that the most unrealistic thing about his game is how everyone comes together to combat the disease. Between anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, local governments refusing to shut down, and corporations failing to protect or fairly pay essential workers, I’m not sure how I can return from the knowledge that Americans do not seem to give a shit about their vulnerable neighbors. Some of us would rather see our fellow humans die horrible deaths than simply wear a mask and stay home.
We’re watching The War Farm, a history show about the the experience of the British farmer supporting the way effort in WW2. The privation, fear and pressure is a level of magnitude beyond what we have seen here, but the overarching theme, from the top of government in down, is that everyone is in it together, and that “fairness” goes hand in hand with sacrifice.
Ahmed — who later said he was joking — owns a condo in Trump Tower and has told people he’s friends with Trump, who wouldn’t have been eligible for a vaccine in Chicago.
I was just talking about your example with Mr. linkey the other night. We both work in the field of building performance (efficiency, health, etc.). At first read, your price seemed really high, but when you divide out to per person investment, and knowing it’ll last several years, it seems more reasonable. (Though I’m sorry your school had to make such tough trade offs )
I know there is some money in the relief package to help schools deal with COVID. I hope enough of them take the opportunity to invest in this kind of long term improvement, and also boost energy efficiency to help counteract the cost of heating/cooling all that extra air.
i’m hoping the republican attorneys general who are planning on suing to overturn the “no money going into tax cuts” element of the aid to states lose. otherwise every penny is going to go into tax breaks for the wealthiest fraction of texans along with corporations.
I totally spaced out that you are in TX. Beautiful state, but politically you have my deepest condolences.
Good luck! Educators and HCWs are the hero’s of my world.
Today marks 1 year plus 1 day since we have eaten food prepared by someone else (unless you count the 2 frozen pizzas Mr. Linkey has bought).
I know a lot of people have made a point of supporting local restaurants, and we have done that by sponsoring meals for others, but at the beginning of all this we didn’t know what was safe so stopped getting take out or eating out. After a certain point, it seemed like we might as well see how long we could go.
We shifted our food buying to 90 to 95% local farms, which has been great. A year in, I feel much more plugged into what our state produces, and it’s more than I would’ve expected. We don’t make our own pasta, though we could with local flour. But that and rice are really the only staples we haven’t found locally. We still get spices and bourbon from “away.”
And I readily admit that I would not have lasted this long if we didn’t have a dishwasher.
Volkswagen halts production of cars and trucks in Brazil because of the increase in cases of covid-19. The plants of the German company in Brazil will be closed from March 24 until April 4. According to a note released by Volkswagen, this extreme measure was taken to preserve the health of its employees.
I’m glad I’m not a physician, a nurse, anyone who needs to take care of dying Covid-19 patients.
I think I would just collapse right now, seeing the news.
Older, but still relevant:
Many of these conspiracy myths already existed in the 15th to 19th centuries. Sometimes it even gets a bit boring, because they are always the same building pieces. People demonstrate together, whether they are left, center, or right, but what connects them is their image of the common enemy.
Of course, there was a previous world war, that everyone over 30 had lived through and remembered, and the new generation of leadership had a plan for how to avoid everything that went wrong last time
There is an analogy in there somewhere with the U.S., the division over the war in Vietnam, and the “all in it together” attitude toward the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq a generation later
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