Bad optics

Another interesting context around the coronaplague is the different responses to Chinese pressures - and I don't mean in the media; putting aside Donald's vapourings, it's interesting to watch 'local' governments get a grip on the deeper issues, while the EU and British governments do their best to keep those heads firmly in the sand.

Witness Japan and Taiwan (the latter shockingly treated by China as usual) -

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/09/japan-ditches-china-in-multi-billion-dollar-coronavirus-shakeout/#6d2073db5341

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/taiwan-emerging-from-pandemic-with-a-stronger-hand-against-china/ar-BB13n4lQ

Meanwhile in Europe -

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-eu-rewrote-coronavirus-disinformation-report-china-pressure-covid-2020-4?op=1&r=US&IR=T

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/eu-foreign-policy-chief-denies-changes-to-report-on-china-coronavirus-disinformation

http://www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/eng/PressandMedia/Spokepersons/t1768831.htm

Yeah, carrying signs like "I need a haircut" doesn't really make it easy to empathize with them. Also, carrying various conservative paraphernalia, like Trump/Pence signs, when Republicans are firmly opposed to safety nets that might make their lives easier while they're at home to protect others/prevent the healthcare system from being overrun. Also, carrying weapons at a protest is... I don't know, this looks more like insurrection than protest. I can't imagine these guys supporting the carrying of rifles at a BLM protest, or at an anti-Trump protest, at a women march...

I understand that their government and their system means they'll suffer hard times during a quarantine, but it's like they're looking at the issues backwards.

Watch this video of a protest from one of my favourite current youtubers.

lol I just binged the All Gas No Brakes channel a couple days ago. An amazing display of the craziest people in our country, with the coronavirus protesters being no exception.

edit: But that said, Furrycon looks legit as fuck. I'd be totally down to dress as an anthropomorphic creature with some buddies, go out and get drunk. That sounds like a lot of fun.

DO IT. TAKE PICTURES AND SHARE THEM WITH US.

The witten girl at Furrycon sounds like she'd be fun at parties.

Also, I'm greatly amused how All Gas No Breaks somehow runs into at least one Flat Earth rapper wherever he goes.

I think I lost some IQ after watching that. These are...interesting people.

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-26-hvor-taet-er-folk-paa-hinanden-disse-billeder-er-taget-samtidig-men-viser-to
Perspective is important, when it comes to pictures.

So yeah, protesters at these right wing Reopen rallies are now carrying signs with NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP SLOGANS on them (the JB referenced here is JB Pritzker, the Jewish governor of Illinois).



Also, this was sent to me on Facebook, and it's just about the saddest picture you'll ever see. The contextual text is below in the image itself.



There is no fucking way the United States is ready to reopen yet, and it's a fool's errand to think this won't end in disaster.

Thousands of people in the streets for the annual "revolutionary" May Day protests. Lots of them without masks. No need to pretend that "right wing" has a monopoly on that kind of stuff.

Is that someone at a German leftie protest wearing a Hugo Boss shirt ?! That's amazingly tone deaf

To be fair, that's from Berlin where May Day protests are like an annual carnival or circus show so half the people who go there are onlookers who want to see riots for their entertainment. The ones in Hamburg and Leipzig are less carnivalised and you got a couple hundred protesters there each.

Apparently those costumes are really expensive (like $5,000+, wtf) and I'm not one with a visually astute eye that can build my own costume, but if I ever do it I'll post pics. Probably would go as a red fox, that'd be fun.

I can't even begin to comment on this...

We're not nazis, but we're like, nazis tho.

Another uniquely American story: A city in Oklahoma, the ninth-largest in the state, rescinded a mandatory mask-in-public order less than a day after it was put in place due to widespread incidents of people in stores verbally and physically threatening employees, including one instance of someone threatening a worker with a gun.

https://www.stwnewspress.com/covid-19/u ... c0023.html

According to this article the photo in question is Photoshopped but there were actually Nazi slogans used at another protest in Illinois.

The photo in question is from Illinois. It’s been proven to be real. The article you linked says images from Pittsburgh weren’t real. It even says in the article that the Illinois photos are real.

On a work conference call today discussing future 'return to work' planning, based on UK government advice.

In June.

Slightly concerning, given that the government muppets have been outspoken in their primary concern for Holy Mother GDP - there's no vaccine, no easy treatment, no real testing regime, no infrastructure to enforce cleaning / hygiene requirements - there are lots of concerns from undergraduate economics failures about GDP figures looking bad, however. All Hail FTSE.

Really not looking forwards to what the statisticians call a 'W' chart in terms of infections / death, when the government & big employers inevitably go ahead. July / August will be ugly months. To mangle a quote - they'll only stop to worry when they realise that they can't breathe through a market ticker.

Lots of context here -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/may/04/uk-coronavirus-live-draft-rules-on-post-lockdown-workplaces-leaked?page=with:block-5eafc6eb8f0806a479812a1e#block-5eafc6eb8f0806a479812a1e

I don't want to pick sides with this comment.

All I wanna say is these people really need to see how they look on camera. So mad they can't even string together a sentence. Nobody's mind is gonna be changed by you screaming at them in a rage. The interviewer trying to explain to that older guy in the red shirt that he was independent media was depressing to watch.

The novel is coming to an end?

On a sidenote I gotta say I'm glad Marianne Faithful recovered from Covid-19, she's responsible for like a quarter or more of all decent Metallica songs in the last 29 years.

I’m not gonna link to it, but there’s a new Covid conspiracy video floating around the internet called “Plandemic”. It consists of an interview with a discredited scientist that was fired for falsifying information related to a study she was doing in the early 2000s and arrested & briefly jailed for stealing notebooks pertaining to that study. The “documentary” is essentially the new Loose Change. It’s a bunch of bunk science and obvious falsehoods wrapped up in a semi-professional production, and tons of otherwise reasonable people are completely falling for it. Everything in that video can be easily debunked with a simple Google search. It uses appeals to emotion and logical fallacies to push its agenda. Nothing about that video stands up to any sort of even surface level fact checking.

So why, then, are people falling for it en masse? Well, there are a few reasons. Some people desperately want to believe that something related to Covid “just isn’t right” or “doesn’t make any sense”, be it out of legit frustration with the current lockdowns and the fear of an uncertain future for themselves, or, in more malicious individuals, just wanting every service worker to go back to their job in order to continue serving at the pleasure of those they serve. It is entirely understandable to be afraid of an uncertain future, but that’s no reason to eschew critical thinking and logical reasoning right now. Even if someone sharing the video is doing so in a supposedly “skeptic” manner, someone that discovers the video through them will buy into it hook, line, and sinker, and that is the person that will go out in public before we’re ready, and they’ll get infected, then pass it on to other people, some of whom might die from it.

There are actual, observable conspiracies that exist in this country. For example, there is a deliberate, observable, conspiratorial effort on the part of a few uber-wealthy individuals to use their money to buy influence through politicians passing legislation that benefits them and their corporations monetarily. That is real. What isn’t real is fake science peddled by a discredited doctor that has spent the years since her discrediting peddling nonsense and pseudoscience in order to make money. Believing in such ridiculous mistruths will only get you and your family infected with the current virus.

P.S. Actual skeptics all believe in science. A science denier is not a skeptic.

Real conspiracy: Senators who were informed of the gravity of the coming pandemic who sold their stocks while downplaying the dangers of the disease and giving priviliged information to family members.

Fake conspiracy: Coronavirus is a disease caused by 5G because Bill Gates wants to force people to vaccinate and use the vaccinations to implant nanobots to control us and depopulate the Earth because he's a satanic pedophile.

The latter is obviously untrue and doesn't hold to any level of scrutiny, but boy is it more entertaining!

My government is passing a bill for summer festivals, basically cancelling them until the 30th of September. No reference to concerts in closed spaces, but I have serious doubts they'll be happening as well. Strangely enough this comes out a day after Atheist (plus Cadaver and Svart Crown) announced a big European tour in September, with one of the dates being in Portugal.

Oh, and Brutal Assault was also postponed in the same way many others are being cancelled. Tickets are valid for next year and most of the bands are being kept on the line-up.

Thanks for the summary. Honestly. I heard this being mentioned around (fortunately, always with derision so far) but someone even said "don't google it, don't even give it oxygen" and I didn't but part of me was still morbidly curious so I appreciate the summary.

Sounds exactly the kind of spurious, anti-reality nonsense that I'd expect.

No more curfews where I live; hopefully, that's happening in many other countries, too. But it'll take quite some time before life fully returns to normal.

In case someone cares, Exit 2020 will likely be postponed or canceled. I mean, why risk it?

So which one of those mediocre #wakeupsheeple-core thrash bands do we think will release a song called "Plandemic" first?

Probably Megadeth?

Definitely the leader in the clubhouse.

I'd sooner bet on Havok, TBH.

Every person wants to believe---secretly or otherwise, self-consciously or otherwise---that there is an order to the way world-historical events affect our species, in a manner analogous to the exactness and predictability of math and physics. That something or someone or some group is directing events, that nothing is random, that emergence does not exist. If a comet 100km in diameter landed on Antarctica this moment, melting the ice shelves and doubling Earth's water vapor in an hour, tomorrow an unknowable-in-advance but predictably large percentage of our species would attribute it to some deliberate action by an omnipotent cabal, or to a deity, or to aliens. Every black swan out of nowhere, every gray rhino ignored, every hyperobject not comprehended receives the same treatment. Not surprising to see conspiracism manifest itself in COVID-19.

You can bet that Aftermath already have a Coronavirus concept album in the works.

Just getting over covid-19. It's not fun.

For me it was mostly fever and chills, no real mucous or lung butter but my lungs do feel weaker. That's weird especially since I have a long history with strep throat, flu, and other respiratory illnesses that either give me a good sinus full of goo or lungs full of filth to cough up.

Breathing in is still a bit tight but the fever is gone. Drinking tonight isn't helping anything but fuck it, I'm out of the weeds at least and be back at work on Monday just fine.

I have a coworker who got it worse even after excluding herself from work just in case she got it. She's older, has asthma, and she ended up on a ventilator for some time and was unable to even signal what she wanted. From what I heard a couple of days ago she's recovering now, thankfully.

Plenty of people at my workplace have died of it, it's a nursing home so it was expected but it's also the worst nightmare you could imagine in that sort of a setting. We were wearing full PPE the past few weeks. Still, I got knocked out of the fight for a week. Covid sucks, and it's even worse for those folks. Plenty of residents have been able to talk to their families over video, some who have been close to the end have had family members in the building wearing full PPE. It's been a heartbreaking past month and the worst may be over according to my boss a couple of days ago.

It's horrible holding a tablet knowing there's nothing you can do as a family cries together and says goodbye just to find that the resident they talked to died that night. It's happened over and over again. It's awful seeing someone who seems fine for the time you talk to them just disappear overnight. One woman, she was so with it, she knew exactly what was going on and she was one of my favorite people there. I held her hand, told her I loved her, joked with her and her son, and within six hours she was gone.

Hopefully it's almost over there. Still, it seems like the state is due for a good second wave because they're looking at reopening this weekend. It seems too early, even if our place got hit at the tail end of the peak.

This thing is so weird. It's like being beaten by Tony Soprano. It lays into you and then takes a breather for a couple of hours, eats spaghetti, sees its gumar, and then comes back to fight again before getting out of breath. It's just that so many end up out of breath before it does. Some people are fine one hour and wrecked another just to swing back. Others, like another man I knew, do well through the majority of the fight to the point they can sit on the porch and eat ice cream just to end up in hell and dying over the next couple of days.

It's tough to counter for these CNAs because it hits everyone so differently but they started seeing the pattern eventually and I still don't understand it because it is like a roller coaster on a downslope.

Yeah, Covid is no joke at all, and the fact that some people are still taking this extremely lightly is infuriating. I'm very glad my wife and I didn't have that bad of symptoms, but we've had our recoveries be weaponized against us by people who think the virus is no big deal. Meanwhile, people on my Facebook feed are relaying stories of their loved ones dying from Covid and having to say their last goodbyes through fucking Facetime, if they even get to have last goodbyes.

I saw before that you're in the same state as I. I hope we weren't talking about the same people but this state being so small, it could have been.

It's very possible. We probably know some of the same people, but just aren't aware of it.

--

Roy Horn from Siegfried and Roy died of Covid yesterday. He was announced as having it last Tuesday, and his condition nosedived since then. As a huge, lifelong magic fan, this saddens me. Dude survived getting mauled by a fucking tiger onstage, but he couldn't survive this.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/us/roy-h ... index.html

Is it weird to say that it's lucky that Little Richard didn't die of covid, only cancer? https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52601228

Tone-deaf would be more fitting, but sure.