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Again, when another virus surfaces--and believe me, it will at some point--we are so so so fucked.

If we are willing to rewrite history, uninterested in coming up with more comprehensive and less drastic response for the next nasty down the pike, continually placing the interests of businesses and corporations before people, we probably deserve what we get.

No one liked life being put on pause for so long. No one. But we didn't know what we... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 11:58 AM on November 6, 2023

from the article...

But it’s time to be clear about the fact that lockdowns for any purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short-term were a mistake that should not be repeated.

...were there lockdowns for any other purpose?

In many blue states, however, that rationale was forgotten over time, and many people remained confined to their homes or apartments not just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by entropone at 11:44 AM on November 6, 2023

What else could the federal government have (legally) done? Pay people to quit their jobs?

UBI test run. /s
posted to MetaFilter by Selena777 at 11:42 AM on November 6, 2023

Admittedly I skimmed this, but I don't see anything about paying people to stay home. The US's unwillingness to help people actually lock down has to have made a difference. I don't see how you can talk about the success or failure of lockdown and only look at what rules we had on paper, not the social conditions surrounding those rules. I mean Canada has about 1/8 the population of the US and had about 1/25 as many deaths, and a big part of that has to have been that they paid people to stay... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by joannemerriam at 11:18 AM on November 6, 2023

Seeing history being rewritten while the pandemic is still ongoing explains a lot about the 1918 flu pandemic.
posted to MetaFilter by Yowser at 11:07 AM on November 6, 2023

One of the things that really worked for me about the first season is that it managed to use its goofy time travel multiverse story to tell a character driven tale about humbling a man full of ego. In season 1 Loki was driven, and felt dangerous and interesting. Then his encounter with Sylvie changed him, and made him become someone different.

But the problem with this season is that from there the show doesn't seem to know, or care, what drives Loki now. I mean... He... [more]
posted to FanFare by Cannon Fodder at 3:23 PM on November 4, 2023

God there was just so much I loved here. Having Shannon Fill back as Sito Jaxa was very moving to me, as was Boims being Acting Captain for the ramming-maneuver, but really this was just wall-to-wall fun surprises. B'Eth! Migleemo! T'Lyn solving problems via Twaining! "THIS GUY SUCKS!" The Ferengi paywalled Genesis Device!

So much to love here. Hope Tendi gets out of Mistress of the Winter Constellations duty fast, though, because she and T'Lyn really do need... [more]
posted to FanFare by Navelgazer at 8:50 PM on November 3, 2023

The ship that Mariner appropriated is named after Fabio Passaro, a Trek artist who passed away from cancer last year.
posted to FanFare by Marticus at 10:17 PM on November 2, 2023

I have no idea why I lost it at "What up, Bynars?", but I absolutely did. WHAT UP, BYNARS.

Also, Shax's face when Tendi requests barter by combat. So good.
posted to FanFare by phooky at 9:39 PM on November 2, 2023

He looks just like Tom Paris.

I don’t see it.
posted to FanFare by wittgenstein at 1:59 PM on November 2, 2023

And now when I go back and rewatch season 1 - because who am I kidding this is going to happen - the 'Harrassed Single Dad trying to corral a wayward child' energy radiating from Mobius in *every interaction with Loki* is going to be even more evident.
posted to FanFare by Faintdreams at 7:22 AM on November 3, 2023

Tom Hiddleston's physical acting was fantastic in this episode; he is SO committed to the bit. What a champ.

Did anyone catch B-15's real name?

So maybe it turns out that Loki is the real He Who Remains? Strange that the Loki variants were untouched by all the timey-wimey stuff. Maybe he can repair the Loom because he's a Jotun and the radiation doesn't affect him the way it does humans?

This episode and last have really... [more]
posted to FanFare by orrnyereg at 5:57 AM on November 3, 2023

Vegas to San Diego will take all day and by the end you’ll be knackered.
In Theory it’s short but by the time you hit traffic you’ll wish you’d never been born. You could overnight outside of SD like in Oceanside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by St. Peepsburg at 7:38 AM on November 3, 2023

Yes, we got our 3 year old both flu and COVID boosters. I'm not sure I can talk about decision-making because it wasn't a question for us. I don't consider myself to be particularly cautious about COVID anymore but the booster is strongly recommended by my local medical authorities. To me it's like, they tell me car seats are the safest place for my three year old, so I'm not out there becoming an expert in car crash physics. And I'm not becoming an expert immunologist either. The vaccines are... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by muddgirl at 11:19 AM on November 3, 2023

COVID is the 8th leading cause of death among children in the United States.

And this is almost burying the lede. It's

fifth in disease-related causes of deaths (excluding unintentional injuries, assault, and suicide), and first in deaths caused by infectious or respiratory diseases [...] it caused substantially more deaths in CYP (children and young people) annually than any vaccine-preventable disease historically in the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by pullayup at 11:08 AM on November 3, 2023

Vaccines and boosters work, and despite the defunding and downplaying of COVID, it’s still a threat to both my children (3 and 1) as well as anyone they come into contact with who are immunocompromised. They are both boosted and will continue to get boosters (along with flu and other recommended boosts) as long as they are available. To me, there is no downside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by knownassociate at 10:35 AM on November 3, 2023

Now someone do this for staffing services/employment help. (I am still trying to find a FRICKIN' JOB and I've been searching since July)
posted to MetaTalk by EmpressCallipygos at 8:36 PM on November 1, 2023

I also have a major fear of my life/reality actually being a hallucination and that I'm actually on a hospital bed having a psychotic episode this whole time

From my experience as somebody who has been simultaneously chemically and physically restrained in a hospital bed while a psychotic episode peaks, I don't think that's likely to be what you're doing.

The single most prominent feature of my psychosis was the feeling of... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by flabdablet at 1:44 AM on November 3, 2023 marked best answer

Theft is exactly what this is.

I've had this so hard across my life - career, community, creative, so on and so forth. Constant firefighting even when it's not your job - and for what? I'm glad someone has named this.
posted to MetaFilter by creatrixtiara at 1:16 AM on November 2, 2023

This seems very much adjacent to previous discussions here about emotional labor.

The corporate EFT example is interesting. I've long suspected bureaucracies make it deliberately frustrating to interact with them as a cost-cutting measure. Some share of people (often myself included) will just give up in the face of seemingly unlimited layers of tedious bullshit.
posted to MetaFilter by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:45 PM on November 1, 2023

Biggest issue for me is that I enjoy the movies, individually, and some of the shows, individually, but I can do so without needing every single show and movie to be intertwined and so connected that missing one episode of a minor third-tier character arc on streaming network X means half the new movie makes no sense to me.

Try standalone stories. Standalone characters. Not everything needs to be a 15 movie arc.
posted to MetaFilter by caution live frogs at 12:09 PM on November 2, 2023

Hey so I'm the original poster and here are some thoughts to help this discussion not go terribly:

First off, the author of the piece, David Forbes, is a trans woman so please do use "she" to refer to her.

It would be great if we could center the perspectives of trans people, queer people, Black and brown people, domestic violence survivors, unhoused people, neurodivergent people, and people from other groups whose... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 11:37 AM on November 2, 2023

I'm in DC and my landlord is one of the 14. Really eager to see where this goes.
posted to MetaFilter by capricorn at 11:47 AM on November 2, 2023

The thing that surprised me was the belt. In my house the snapping of the belt wasn't a warning, just a prelude. Between that and the social humiliation at school, they did a really good job of turning me anxious about ever showing enthusiasm about anything. I still have the enthusiasm, but damned if I can talk about it coherently to anyone for fear of getting The Look. Anyway, this was a really good and sad essay, and I hope the kid grew up to find someone who would touch... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mittens at 5:47 AM on November 2, 2023

I had a cold the weekend before I was to leave for a similar trip. I tested negative the whole weekend, and woke up feeling almost 100% better the day I was to travel. I took a covid test before leaving and guess what? Positive. I stayed home. It sucked. I tested positive the whole week but felt fine the whole time. I'd have been a super spreader if I'd gone!

Another data point. My husband had a similar work trip in July. Someone came with a cold and it turned out to be... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by pazazygeek at 7:26 AM on October 30, 2023

Thanks for your advice everyone! I ended up sending an email to the entire BlueCross/BlueShield of VT leadership board, saying that their decision was illegal, and threatening to go to the press on Monday. I got a direct call from someone on the board this afternoon saying “there was a misunderstanding” and my surgery has been approved. So, another win for Vermonters :)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Summers at 5:29 PM on October 28, 2023

Your spouse has very serious eating issues. They are almost certainly not issues that can be fixed and will most likely get worse. There is no victory end game here, and if there were, you wouldn't be the one winning the game, it would be the person who learned to perceive some patterns to manage his own condition, based on his ability to finally recognize cues that you never will be able to recognize because you inhabit a different body.

Right now... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Jane the Brown at 4:59 AM on October 31, 2023 marked best answer

To answer your top-level question: Mr. Blah and I both have some dietary restrictions, and we generally keep them in mind when making a grocery list via an app we both have access to. Whoever's doing the marketing picks up what we both want. But if either of us finds ourselves without something we want to eat, it's on us to figure out a workaround or get the thing we need.

To answer the question you didn't ask: This seems totally unsustainable and it puts way too much of... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by BlahLaLa at 7:14 PM on October 30, 2023 marked best answer

Update: I used the techniques of leaving later, mostly driving in the right lane, and giving morespace when there were tailgaters and had the most relaxing drive of the last 3 months. Thanks so much for everyone’s ideas!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by bbqturtle at 3:06 PM on October 26, 2023

Or is it that, in certain locations (like downtown SF), shoplifting is locally sharply elevated - causing chain stores to abandon those areas?

As the podcast linked above points out, this claim is objectively false. Shoplifting is not sharply elevated, even in places like San Francisco. Target and Walgreens wanted to close those locations for other reasons and are blaming it on shoplifting to avoid bad publicity and shareholder... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Bellman at 12:46 PM on October 28, 2023

As I was watching the scene after the credits I thought, we are witnessing a cultural shift. Reimagining all these old stories and time periods with a queer cast of characters, full of feelings well articulated (not that everyone isn’t messy - they just talk about it!), and forgiveness, and nontoxic masculinity in abundance. It seemed like a one-note joke at the start - what if pirates are secretly emotionally intelligent and silly, and they just need a good leader to bring it out in them? But... [more]
posted to FanFare by Isingthebodyelectric at 7:30 PM on October 25, 2023

One writer described this as "our pirate community theater production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and I couldn't love that more.
posted to FanFare by Countess Elena at 8:47 AM on October 13, 2023

That's the tricky part - Ed was this "bad" before as well, but it was backstory instead of active narrative.

Yes, yes, to this and everything that follows in FatherDragon's response.

The show's balance between tragedy, grim glances at the reality of piracy, and whimsy is one reason it's a current favorite of mine. Stede appearing to Ed in the form of a Merman to lead him back to the land of the living, because he... [more]
posted to FanFare by Atreides at 6:51 AM on October 9, 2023

It's been interesting to see how this show dances around the history - the partnership of Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach was a real thing, altho the romantic aspect of it is definitely conjecture. Zheng Yi Sao was also a well known pirate queen... altho she operated in the South China Sea (we can handwave that), and was born a full fifty years after Blackbeard died (little trickier, there). Still, excellent to see a broader perspective on the piratical eras than what is traditionally centered.... [more]
posted to FanFare by FatherDagon at 9:11 AM on October 7, 2023

I dunno why it is, but the idea that there is a dedicated towel service on the Red Flag delights me to no end.
posted to FanFare by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:56 PM on October 6, 2023

Clutter Block #4: Fantasy Stuff For My Fantasy Life

I've talked in here a bit about how earlier this year, I gave myself a bit of a spending overhaul. This is 100% the kind of thing I was talking about - I'd do things like see a twee little wicker picnic basket and think "awwwww, fun! I could get that and go on picnics and shit!" And then I'd get the basket and not actually use it. And one day I realized that's what I was doing, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 11:42 AM on October 26, 2023

also like, the thing about these articles, well let me preface this actually

five years ago a Life Event happened and I lost about 99% of all the shit I owned, and it sucked, it sucked so much, I'm an autistic-ass crouton-petter and I loved my stuff, I had some real cool stuff & a lot of adorable stuffed animals & yeah

also my mom used to do the thing where she'd threaten to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by taquito sunrise at 5:40 AM on October 26, 2023

a single woman buying an 80-inch TV to attract a man

Now I'm imagining a world where single women set up mancaves to lure wandering males with pool tables and shit.
posted to MetaFilter by adept256 at 12:16 AM on October 26, 2023

Not an awful episode, but not particularly interesting either. I enjoyed the brief real-world bookend scenes more than the entirety of the coma-dream scenes, which is a lot of 'meh' to sit through for a few good Garak/Bashir moments.
posted to FanFare by oh yeah! at 8:21 AM on November 30, 2015

Like, this was a very Rick & Morty episode, and I kind of wanted O'Brien to have some sort of epiphany about how fucked up it really is.

I had completely forgotten this episode.

O'Brien is really from slightly in the future?

O'Brien is really from slightly in the future?

O'Brien? is? really? from? slightly? in? the? future???

And it NEVER COMES UP AGAIN.
posted to FanFare by the man of twists and turns at 10:16 PM on December 8, 2015

Well, yeah, but like…where'd Locarno steal that ship from? I'm sticking with the Whale Probers.

It looked like he built it based on the blue prints that popped up.

So the deal is Locarno has been helping all the lower decks people on various ships mutiny and strand the officers on this planet?


Maybe? Though it seems like there's a reason he's targeting different... [more]
posted to FanFare by Atreides at 7:45 AM on October 28, 2023

"OK" was coined in the 19th century. Also he was on a branch timeline, so who knows what that history was or wasn't?

I found his character hard to get a handle on and affected, not to mention that the actor has made the whole business unpleasant.

Pruned people and things go to the netherworld we saw last season and usually eventually get eaten by a smoke monster.
posted to FanFare by emjaybee at 6:26 AM on October 28, 2023

I was surprised by Renslayer’s death, but it seems unlikely that’s the last of her.

Doesn’t getting pruned just send you to the end of time? You know, the same place she was at the beginning of the episode? (And probably the safest place to ride out a Temporal Loom explosion.)
posted to FanFare by ejs at 5:13 AM on October 28, 2023

Related: I was looking at an obituary post for a MetaFilter friend and I was surprised at how many people I still interact with on a nearly weekly basis. WolfDaddy
posted to MetaFilter by ColdChef at 10:34 AM on October 24, 2023

Hello there.
posted to MetaFilter by ColdChef at 10:30 AM on October 24, 2023

You know, I have been missing the Whelk of late, and was clubbing my brain trying to remember his government name so I could try to find him again. Is he on Mastodon?

I also miss Cold Chef's gentle/wicked contributions, among others.
posted to MetaFilter by wenestvedt at 8:11 AM on October 24, 2023

It's my 47th birthday and I've been here under a couple of user names since at least 2007.

I'm an Indigenous, brown, queer woman and all I want is for this place to be my safe space.
posted to MetaFilter by Heaventhenthesea at 8:54 PM on October 23, 2023

I don't think I'm a username anyone recognizes anymore (but maybe I am). Count me as another person that pretty much grew up here. My Metafilter membership spans - and, indeed, exceeds - the entire lifetime of my college-bound child. I once wrote this about Metafilter -- "I feel like I'll always have a home here. A community, where it's ok to be a nerdy shy girl who wants to talk about Big Things." and to a great extent that's still true.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by anastasiav at 8:22 PM on October 23, 2023

I have always really enjoyed Loquacious' long rambling Tales of the Pacific Northwest. in fact, I think they could be bound and published as a narrative memoir of an interesting life and perspective from the trees. those beautiful trees.
posted to MetaFilter by supermedusa at 10:00 AM on October 22, 2023

Oh holy shit no! Fuck everything about this! The way it lurched at him when he interrupted it about the rock garden and ended up moving on to the "calibration wall" or whatever actually freaked me right the fuck out and gave me the screaming phantods.

That is some really deep uncanny valley nightmare fuel right there.

If I was standing there and the bot lurched at me like without even pausing to reply after I said something I probably... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:00 PM on October 27, 2023