How's everyone doing?

Miscellaneous Blather
#202

Voluntarily back in the office for the second day this week. With 3 of us in an open-plan space with desks for 20, social distancing is not a problem. It’s nice to be able to talk to a small subset of my colleagues in person, and have lunch with people rather than whichever of our dog and cats happen to be awake.

The entire site is being obliged to take a week’s holiday the week after next. I’m not sure how this helps the company, but I suspect it’s something to do with accrued overtime and untaken holiday appearing as a debit in the accounts. Not going to complain- on the scale of genuine problems caused by the pandemic, that doesn’t register.

What does cause actual stress is talking to my family members in the UK who are of the Spectator-reading, Johnson-can-do-no-wrong school of thought, and are keen to tell me that the scientists were wrong/don’t agree/are clearly self-seeking in some way, and anyway, things aren’t perfect in Germany. I murmur something about comparative excess death rates and move the conversation on :smirk:

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#203

What does cause actual stress is talking to my family members in the UK who are of the Spectator-reading, Johnson-can-do-no-wrong school of thought, and are keen to tell me that the scientists were wrong/don’t agree/are clearly self-seeking in some way, and anyway, things aren’t perfect in Germany.

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#204

Yeah, room to myself. Private health insurance through work gets me my own room.

@SpiceTheCat - it’s quite clever to do that depending upon the industry. Cash is king right now, so to survive, businesses need to slash their expenses as much as possible. Labour is relatively fixed cost, and consuming holidays helps make it variable

#205
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#206

Apparently the seroprevalence in the population is quite low, and according to a testing survey in Spain, the results are similar, below 5%. We have a long, long way to go before herd immunity brings the death toll down.

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#207

Just ordered masks for my children to potentially attend school in September. Pretty certain 2020 can go fuck itself at this point.

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#208

What is the word there about school? Your district thinking full time? We have a friend on one of the community school councils here in Brooklyn, and the rumor we heard yesterday from her is that NY is considering only every other day in-class, with Friday remote. So your child would have in-class instruction 2 days a week and then homework 3 days a week.

#209

Not doing too bad in Aus, kids back at school, stayed working the whole time. Life is pretty much normal, but no interstate / international travel.

It’s nice being an island.

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#210

/laughs in British

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#211

Nothing here yet, but expecting something from the Governor by the end of June’ish. Some of the ideas being kicked around are staggered days, morning and evening sessions, etc. Biggest issue personally, and attributable to most people I imagine, is that at some point the court system (ie work) will reopen and my wife will have to go back to work… so if the plan is for the kids to be home every other day we do what exactly?

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#212

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1233861?__twitter_impression=true

#213

The shit show here in the States continues. Hopefully Azar and the HHS continues to make the data public. But he is a Trump mouthpiece. And more and more I’m completely nonplussed about people’s opposition to wearing mask. I’m seeing youtube videos of these idiots shopping without masks and store employees politely asking them to put on mask and they freak out. The governor of Georgia signed an executive order banning cities from mandating that people where masks in public. He is suing the the city of Atlanta for making mask rules even though cases are spiking there. Why did wearing a mask and social distancing get politicized and tied up with people’s identity and sense of liberty? Yes, it’s a little uncomfortable but when did we become a bunch of pansies.

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#214

Not going to lie, I thought the UK was a shitshow. Then I saw the anti-mask crowd chanting ‘my body my choice’ and my eyebrows flew off.

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#215

We have been somewhat lucky here in the US that even when Evil Imperialist Neo-Cons (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, etc) infiltrate our White House…they have still been ‘presentable’ to the rest of the world, and partially because they are often heavily backed by the Evangelicals.

But when the White House becomes a Japanese Game Show, the US is suddenly exposed for the batshit crazy majority that sits just below the surface in other times.

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#216

straight up lol’d at this… funny cause it’s true…

It’s kind of crazy - I think @kennfusion and I share a political and sociological mindset, and I know that I take for granted the area in which we live - it’s relatively diverse, mostly center to left leaning in political outlook, and relatively able to engage in meaningful discourse (for the most part - we still have our share of nutters). It kind of blinds you (me) to the level of batshitedness that exists elsewhere in this cesspool.

eta: just reread this and it seems like I’ve echoed @kennfusion’s post verbatim. Thundercats, unite!

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#217

Funny because after your promotion to Deputy Chief I looked up where you lived and it’s not a bad drive from Brooklyn. One of these days when the Zombie Apocalypse ends, I think I will drive over and we can grab a cup of coffee or something and discuss my desire to defund the police! :rofl:

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#218

Ha! I don’t live where I work for a number of reasons, but I’ll definitely take you up on that coffee and a game of something!

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#219

Dave looks on despondently from 5000 km away

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#220

Pubs have re-opened here. I have resisted so far. It’s been a week. I wish I could say it’s been easy.

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#221

I’ve no idea what this “km” thing you speak of equates to in normal measurement, ie, the mile, but you’re obviously welcome as well. :wink:

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