The US finally adopts contactless payment. But you still have to sign.
The premium attached to having any sort of outside space - garden, front yard, roof, balcony - will become immense. My neighbour downstairs has a garden, my neighbour upstairs has a roof terrace, I have neither, I am seriously considering murder and annexation in either or both directions.
Take the lower unit, that way the blood won't stain your ceiling.
We have a nice patio and a less nice driveway.
I've only been out on the balcony once since this started and that was to clear out the weeds that were growing in the cracks between the paving stones. But, yeah, I'm not typical in that regard. I'm fine looking at the view from inside.
2: This seems like something that could be negotiated for between neighbors. Text (leave a not if you don't know them) and ask if they'd message you when they've got an hour or so they're sure they don't want to be outdoors, so you could go be in the garden? It'd be weird in normal times, but under the circumstances it's not an unreasonable ask.
In the short term, I would settle for major merchants updating their websites so that one of the "filter" options is "in stock." It's driving me crazy spending forever scrolling through items trying to detect if they are in stock or not. Luckily there is very little I'm ordering (don't want to stress warehouse workers more than necessary), but it takes SO LONG to sift through pages of search results trying to see if Bed Bath & Beyond or Office Depot actually has dish detergent, or whatever.
In the longer term, I genuinely have hope that this will get more people to support public funding for parks and trails. People in my area who otherwise NEVER get out and use these areas are doing so, and I think at least a few of them will retain warm memories of their value after the pandemic is over.
6: unfortunately my neighbour downstairs is not a cooperative person. But we've found a handy community garden nearby which is just as good.
I am extremely lucky, I'm two blocks from a giant park that's big enough for a lot of people to be outdoors and properly far away from each other. So I can get outside and see human faces (other than Newt's) as much as I want.
2: Our upstairs neighbors are in your position. I've asked my wife about inviting them down to use our garden, but she's reticent, and reasonably so. (I realize this would be unreasonably forward with English neighbors, but they aren't English, and times are desperate.)
I'd fucking murder for a view much less a balcony.
That reminds me to open the blinds for the day.
WRT to the university situation, I've been 'enjoying' the series by the Higher Ed Strategy blog. It's not good news/predictions generally and worse for schools that rely on international students.
http://higheredstrategy.com/blog/
Sorry for the formatting. Typing one handed on my phone.
We have a tiny balcony. We also have a downstairs communal play park, with a couple of benches and a kids climbing wall, but it's locked closed. For CV-19 reasons.*
We are lucky that there's a kind of nature reserve/waste land the other side of the canal and railway track, so we can cross over and there's a lot of space to walk and play.
The only problem is the railway crossing and path in and out, where some people** are total dicks about any kind of social distancing. My wife asked someone who was standing there with her bike having a little break blocking the path (it's fenced either side and less than a metre wide), if they'd step back for a second to let her and my son pass through the gap into the nature reserve. No, was the answer. And then she shouted for her boyfriend to come and help her in handing out verbal abuse for the temerity to ask. I wasn't there, or the boyfriend would have had a bike suppository.
* we have very zealous building management.
** most people are very nice, but we've personally witnessed a couple of incidents in which people are very much not.***
*** there's a very strong correlation between being a total prick about social distancing and the wearing of lycra -- either the "runner" variety, or the "cyclist" variety.
I've only had one active "person being a dick" interaction, but yeah, a lot of people don't get the idea that if there's a bottleneck in the path, you really can't stop to talk or rest in the narrow part.
15.***: I've noticed this, too. I live near a nice linear park, great for walks, that I haven't even tried given the dickishness of people on the streets. It's a minority, but a much larger minority than I'd have thought. I've also been honked at for taking the lane at places where the pavement is too narrow. Surprisingly, not a BMW driver.
I'm so sad about all the parks within walking distance being closed down. But I've been sidewalking. It's fine. I miss the park. Also we totally have a back yard and a small stretch of woods behind our house that it not public park land and I am not in a situation like Barry's whatsoever.
Fewer long term effects than we expect. After 9/11, the early predictions were for a permanent decline in air travel, and the end of skyscraper construction. Didn't happen. The actual effects were the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and more security theater at the airports. Similarly, Hurricane Katrina and the several Miami and Houston hurricanes should have affected the popularity of flood plain construction but did not.
Some things that might have happened without 9/11, and logically should have accelerated, did not happen, just because of the value of proving that we could go back to the old ways. E.g., the world proved to be perfectly capable of living without floor trading on the New York Stock Exchange, obviously a relic from a pre-computer era, but they brought it back and it still exists today during the pandemic. The concentration of the finance and media industries in Manhattan and London should have reduced, but did not. Regarding Manhattan history will probably repeat itself. The parallel this time will be that the gradual trend towards on line higher education, which has been going on for decades, will stop. Implementation was too rushed.
The most unexpected effect of 9/11 was the popularization of political blogging, which barely existed previously. The parallel development this time may be the substitution of video meetings for audio conference calls in business (but not the substitution of video calls for in-person meetings). This is turn will revolutionize the personal grooming industries, as professional men will start using make up regularly to look less hideous on video, and women will need different products than they use now. Someone will become a billionaire by marketing office lighting optimized for video conferences.
Also, used book sales will jump as peopleneed to display bookshelves behind their heads on video conferences.
Was blogging really a response to 9/11? Or just to the malfeasance of the Bush administration in general?
...fish will be very slightly cheaper.
I really have to find a way to do some proper cardio in the house, though. Just the daily walk is not enough to arrest the weight gain.
re: 19.last
I've been choosing different (library-themed) virtual backdrops every day.
I was thinking about an exercise thread, but maybe "Parlor Games" is exactly right.
20 Yeah, I remember it being the Florida recount that was the big spur to political blogging.
Americans will realize how shitty homeschooling is and ban it make it mandatory.
18: Although state county and municipal parks in my area are closed, National wildlife refuges are open for walking. Why there are several of these in New Jersey ("New Jersey wildlife refuges are neither") I have no idea, but they have adequate walking trails and haven't been too crowded for social distancing. Check for any in your area. www.fws.gov. I think this is true for national forests and parks also.
This weekend's investigation: The Nature Conservancy is a private non-profit that accepts donations of land, and where suitable, maintains hiking trails. There are a few with adequate trails in our region. Are they open? No clues on the website.
Exercising has been going great. I've just been eating way too much so my clothes are shrinking.
For exercising, in case it helps anyone, here's what I'm doing:
- jogging every other day
- On the non-jogging days: 4 rounds of Sally Up/Sally Down, which kicks my ass.
(I hope Sally up/Sally down isn't problematic - it's a Moby song based on an old slave song, I gather.) Anyway, the song says "Bring Sally up! Bring Sally down! about 30x over three minutes, and so you have an exercise that you do accordingly.
For example, squats here.
I do:
- squats
- VERY elevated push ups (on a counter)
- abs
- burpees
and it kills me, but it seems to go quickly and pleasantly.
I guess I remember political blogging as starting when I got interested in it, but there was definitely a huge bump in the category after 9 11. Mickey Kaus and Josh Marshall were earlier. Instapundit, cursed be his name, started a blog in August 2001 and was in just the right position to blow hard and evil. Unfogged and most of the rest of the Unfogged sidebar started wihtin two years of 9 11.
I've already messaged Marilyn that I know a better way to spend quarantine time than whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.
I wonder what this means for the reaction to, say, the next forecast bad flu year. The last bad flu year killed 25,000 people in the UK and we barely noticed it.
29 is more or less how I remember it. Andrew Sullivan was another prominent early blogger. I still remember Kaus vacillating endlessly over whether to vote for Gore or Bush. It seemed idiotic at the time, but in retrospect it may rank among the stupidest things ever written, except that Kaus has managed to get exponentially worse. But post-9/11 was when political blogging became popular among amateur non-journalists.
You could roll a 20-sided die and the door will be opened if you get over 15.
I started my short lived blog in response to stupid 9/11 war bloggers. I stopped because I idiotically used my own name. I hadn't actually meant to but blogger asked for contact info that I didn't think would be publicly associated to the blog, and when it was I said eh whatever and don't bother changing it. I got blogrolled by instapundit- believe it or not he used to occasionally highlight people who disagreed with him instead of sending murderous hordes after them.
Don't take that as an endorsement, he's always been as stupid and overconfident as he was in later years, he just didn't always think his opponents were subhuman.
36: I'm old, but the blog is ancient. Probably well over 100 in blog years.
35: Wasn't there a time when ogged and Insta were comrades in the anti-idiotarian party?
Don't recall that, but I didn't join here until... 2006 maybe?
If we're doing blogger nostalgia, the one I've been most impressed with is John Cole. He went from hard core rightwinger to angry left/moderate including frequent self-deprecation about what an idiot he was. He also linked to/criticized me at one point. I met him a couple years ago when he was in town and despite his self-description as a misanthrope he's a good guy. I guess the LGF guy also came around to be more reasonable but I don't keep up with him, and confusingly he has the same name as a newer more rabid conservative who is totally insane.
I doubt the OP is that seriously meant, but I don't think we'll reference the pandemic quite that overtly - rather we'll be loaded with implicit references. I'm already seeing that on TV advertisements.
39: My memory was that Insty was remarkably friendly and active about networking with people regardless of their political positioning early on -- very strong on "While we may disagree on some political issues, surely we can all reach out and recognize when someone on the other side of the spectrum has made a good point," and likely to actually personally contact people like Ogged who he thought were good bloggers. And that's a big part of how he got so big, that lots of people recognized him as the reasonable friendly outgoing Republican who was willing to concede a point now and then. Sort of a version of McArdle's practice of being strongly socially connected with writers well to her left.
Wasn't there a term ("Instalaunch") for when a link from him brought a previously obscure blog into notice?
Why there are several of these in New Jersey ("New Jersey wildlife refuges are neither") I have no idea
I don't know about the NJ ones specifically, but in many cases they were established when a bunch of farmers went bankrupt and the government bailed them out by buying up their land (especially during the Great Depression but at other times too). This is also the origin of a lot of National Forests.
My favorite is the Nebraska National Forest, where they decided to plant the forest themselves.
48 seems right. The refuges are along the Delaware Water gap coast, in sections that are too swampy for beaches or for any kind of construction. The area would have been marginal for farmland 100 years ago.
On the Pennsylvania side, the Heinz National Wildlife Refuge is next to the airport, so it's a great place for deaf animals and humans to find refuge, less attractive for anyone else.
Also, the wildlife can't buy liquor on the Pennsylvania side.
I doubt the OP is that seriously meant, but I don't think we'll reference the pandemic quite that overtly - rather we'll be loaded with implicit references. I'm already seeing that on TV advertisements.
No, not serious. Just a goofy conversation Kraabniece and I were having about the Aftertimes. In reality, there will be a lot of coronavirus theater at stores and restaurants and an uptick in flu vaccinations. Everything else -- who the fuck knows?
I'm curious about the ads you're seeing. I've only seen the cloying "we're in this together" ones. (Granted, I generally only see ads when watching Hulu or Survivor.)
Sorry for the formatting. Typing one handed on my phone.
Formatting, eh?
26 -- Here, the city and county parks are open, but Glacier, Yellowstone, and the National Bison Range are all closed. And they were totally right to close them all. I don't know about the CMR -- it's a little outside our range. The other NWRs around are open.
My little fake blog of long ago got linked by A. Sullivan once. 900 people clicked over, none ever looked again, so far as I know. Good.
I'm curious about the ads you're seeing. I've only seen the cloying "we're in this together" ones. (Granted, I generally only see ads when watching Hulu or Survivor.)
This was the first one I noticed. Lots of play on IMDBtv via Prime. "With everything going on..."
Nine months from now there are going to be a lot of babies named "Covid."
Just like when kids were named "Daenerys", parents will be upset they named a kid after the bad guy.
Who would name a baby after a deadly virus?! I mean, why not name your child after a canonized saint, or at least a famous author?
Lots of kids named "Kevin", which is all three.
Looking for the "like" button for Moby's 61. Oh wait, that's at that other place...
It's all fun until you catch Kevin.
Saint Covid was an early Christian martyr who the Romans fed to the lions, no?
Ah yes, I recall when that famous painting of Saint Covid and the Crows got stolen from the Lourve.
In other news, the new subnational borders are out. My coronastate has almost 2.5 million people in it.
We're probably in a closer situation to people in Ohio at this end of the state, but we get to go with the fancy states. I guess because Philadelphia.
The South's solidarity in lack-of-solidarity is impressive.
Hall County Nebraska is over 400 confirmed cases out of a population of 60,000. It's only three weeks from the first recorded case in the county.
71: Is that the one with the meat packing plant?
There's lots of meat packing plants in other counties. I don't know why that one was causing more trouble or if it just went first.
But it's not the Smithfield plant that was in the news. That was in Iowa.
Or South Dakota, after looking it up. I think two people I went to high school with live in that town.
I have both pork tenderloin and beef tenderloin in the refrigerator, so it could be my fault.
It's fine. As long as you washed the butcher for at least thirty seconds.
Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain
"I would hit that" will be replaced with "I would quarantine with that."
Thou shalt not covid.
"How can I go back to work, I asked, if my result is positive? They said, even if you are positive, if there's no symptoms you can go back to work."
Meat-packing plant in Alberta told workers to go back to work, even if they had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Many of these workers are immigrants and migrant workers from the Philippines, so they don't count as Canadians, I guess, and their lives are therefore expendable.