ffs… Our governor is such a monstrous idiot. Missouri is like…two dots of relative sanity (STL and KC) with nothing but batshit madness between them, and “relative sanity” is a pretty low bar.
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Agreed. Gov. Cuomo made some horrible mistakes going into this -bickering with NYC Mayor Bill DiBlasio, the placement of COVID-19 patients in nursing homes… These things could have sunk him, but the bar is set ever lower, as other governors refuse to learn from those mistakes.
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1285337437787561984
And nothing will ever get better again:
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Something somewhat amusing, I guess this technically could go here:
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This is the bad place
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I’m from Spain, Barcelona. Despite the photograph (here in Spain media agencies go for the same packed beach under the sun), the article is right to point (or quote I think) that most new bursts of infections happen during nightlife. Age 15 to 29 years old are helping to spread the virus, as they take less (some none) precautions during social interactions. It’s also a cultural thing. Keep in mind, though, that compared to early april and may, more people is being tested, reaction is faster to order confinement of individuals or families in their homes, etc. So numbers need to be compared with all that in mind. Still, it will hardly get much better again, I agree.
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Oddly, considering how often I’m wrong, I hate being right -well, in this case, mostly right… Jared Kushner’s little boy’s club was perfectly fine knowing that COVID was killing NYC Democrats, because apparently Staten Island isn’t real, or they deserve to die for living adjacent to Democrats.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
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St. John Ambulance posts a layman’s guide to CPR on Twitter that includes putting a cloth barrier on pt’s mouth to reduce risk of transmitting the virus. Twitter predictably loses its collective shit.
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They’re not wrong.
Not having read the article yet, the obvious first thought is that post-Soviet Russia is an Oligarchy, and so is the US.
Read the article for the actual point of the article.
It mentions only sections of roads being built… and that brought back experiences of driving in Romania in 1993. It was crazy that a road would just end. A beautiful wide smooth highway and then: not a road. Just a dirt track. Drive on that for an hour, and suddenly back to the wide smooth highway.
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My main takeaway from having read it was this:
The author used to assume that the reason post soviet Russia was so… the way it was/is was because of being post soviet.
Now the author is seeing more or less the same thing here in the states and he’s forced to discount what he used to think was the cause as the US was never soviet and now he’s arrived on a new cause:
Staggering inequality.
In many way’s Scott’s not wrong, the oligarchs are living in a different world and talk about problems, such as roads or pandemics, as abstract things. They don’t have to use those roads nor is their experience with the pandemic even remotely similar to, say mine.
Scott isn’t wrong but also misses the point of the article. It’s like Scott saying “I’ve not read the article, but gravity exists” and then saying “Scott’s not wrong”.
The cause isn’t staggering inequality. That means the situation is possible, but not what is causing this precise malaise.
I think the author has correctly identified common traits between the post-soviet Russia and the current US. However, those common traits are by no means the cause. They are simply common symptoms of governments that are controlled by a few powerful people to serve their own needs and not the needs of the many.
You can say what you think the root of the problem is, but why be so dismissive of the article? It’s an interesting read with interesting observations, and I thought people on the forum might enjoy it.
Of course everything can be boiled down to whatever root cause you might want to see there, or you can find your pet cause in every topic.
However, not every article or link shared has to conform with your expectations, or go far enough in its conclusions. Always making everything about your own pet cause is another exhausting habit for readers of this forum. You take any topic, remove the subtlety and nuance, this time without even reading it, and make it about your own ideals.
To make it easier for you, you never need respond to anything article I share again. I’ll add a comment bellow every link saying “Yes, Scott, we know cars are evil and all billionaires are stupid” and then everyone else can just enjoy the article for what it is without you dumping on it or saying it doesn’t go far enough.
Maybe you could actually discuss the issue at hand instead of attacking me every time I don’t agree with you 100%?
I agreed that the author is correctly identifying things that the governments in US and Russia have in common. I just don’t see those things as the root cause of the problems we face. A culture in which public servants prioritize keeping superiors happy and obeying bureaucracy over actually serving the public causes many problems, but is clearly not a root cause.
I’m not discussing anything with you. I’m also not attacking you. There’s nothing to discuss and nothing to attack. I’m not posting here to start a discussion with you or anyone else.
I posted a link to an Article I thought was interesting and had some observations I’ve not seen outlined elsewhere. That’s it.
It’s not my job to now defend the article, the author, the conclusion, the depth, the breadth, or anything else.
I’m not saying I agree with the article 100%, nor that I disagree with you 100%. I’m not saying anything like that.
Maybe if others had responded, I’d be happy to discuss it with them. But now the discussion is “how Scott can steer the forum into his theories of political original sin without even reading the article” and how he can, after finally reading the article, criticize it for not conforming to his views enough.
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Normally after big juggling conventions and related travels, I arrive home, start relaxing and immediately get sick. There’s always some bug floating around the convention, and being super close to people watching shows, juggling in hot sweaty environments, parties and dancing, etc… it’s rare not to catch something.
I’m rarely ill at the festival or in the traveling/holidaying after, but it hits as soon as I get home and stop being so active. My body relaxes, and so it seems does my immune system.
Except this summer! I was invited to the French Juggling Convention. It ran five days, had 450 jugglers… but was 95% outside and with lots of distancing at all opportunities and mandatory face mask wearing. I was super active, took part in events, performed in the show. Then afterwards we went on a 10 day camping holiday with lots of mountain biking.
Now I’ve been home for a few days, and I’m having a weird experience where my body is shattered and recovering from all kinds of physical activity and tiredness from camping for two weeks, but without the swollen throat and bunged up nose and coughing that I’d normally have at the same time.
I prefer non-social distanced conventions, but I’m very much appreciating not having a cold or flu or any sickness since February, and also only having to spend two days recovering after a big convention trip rather than five days.
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