Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

I'm sure the large airlines will jump at the chance to get larger by buying up equipment, runway slots, and routes at cut rates

i will be very interested once we come out the other side of the acute phase of the crisis to know which companies are doing right by their employees and which companies are doing things like karl's employer are doing. i hope somebody is keeping fairly reliable publically accessible documentation of this for future reference.

they'll be goners too at this rate, absent quite radical government intervention

I love the ongoing positivity from a friend:

An optimist’s take: from the New York Times, “When Cambridge University in England closed in 1665 because of the bubonic plague, a young man named Isaac Newton went home to the countryside. And there he sat under the famous apple tree and realized that the same gravity worked on the apple and the Moon. Let us hope that the current situation leads one of today’s scholars to make a breakthrough that will help future generations. Jay M. Pasachoff, Williamstown, Mass., The writer is a professor of astronomy at Williams College.”

The number infected in Austin has doubled each of the last few days, but outside of schools, restaurants, bars, and gyms, most businesses are allowed to be open. Many are closing anyway, but I don't really see why they aren't pushing more stringent measures. On the plus side, we can now get alcoholic beverages with our pick up and delivery orders, so we got that going for us, which is nice.

i will be very interested once we come out the other side of the acute phase of the crisis to know which companies are doing right by their employees and which companies are doing things like karl's employer are doing. i hope somebody is keeping fairly reliable publically accessible documentation of this for future reference.

No fucking way. I know an employment attorney (management side) and her phone has been ringing off the hook all week: first part of the week was, we want to pay our employees that choose to WFH; more recently, how do we furlough/layoff our employees without liability?

i mean you can ask lawyers "how do i screw over my employees while making sure i got mine" but at a certain point that question ceases to be a legal question

i promise i don't have any lit memes to share with you but my sense is that certain powerful people are perhaps overly confident in their ability to control the potential outcomes of this thing and lack a certain amount of creative imagination when it comes to envisioning the bounds of those possible outcomes

So you're saying they haven't found out about the pitchforks yet.

Was bummed about my show being cancelled but felt better when I found a good acoustic room and recorded a version of a song I was gonna do in it on uke. Therapeutic.

Neanderthal is Hooked on a Feeling

nice!

Great job man! Great voice!

Dayum, Neanderthal can SING. Props.

Bruh got pipes!

correct

good singing. you should get a guitar in your size.

haha one of my oldest friends made a similar joke earlier

btw thank you all <3

god spare me from group texts i am SO OVER IT

neanderthal fantastic

Great voice, Neanderthal

otm, very nice!

aw ty all. will have plenty of time to dink around on instruments in coming weeks.

what's everybody up to tonight?

My weekly board game group is downloading the 7 Wonders app so we can do a virtual board game night! Small joys

watched Two-Lane Blacktop

it was good

grading papers : /

working my way through a pile of my more under-played folkways records and deciding which ones are keepers.

reading

mostly trying not to become sick with anxiety over the article morbs shared in the “outbreak” thread tbh

catching up on s5 of Hill Street Blues

ahhh budo jeru now i had to click on it. i didn't see anything surprising there? what particularly is worrying you about it?

would love to hear if you have any particular faves out of those folkways records!

otm, Neanderthal is a very very good singer. And a very good criss cross sitter.

catching up and Neanderthal performing at high levels!

so if you’re shut in and decide to order non-local, amazon’s fastest option is five days out now

I might have to put on my full plague doctor regalia, which would get a knowing nod from people and not panic/jokes, and go to my regular Target store mid-day

caveman got chops!

i also like Neanderthal’s video ! turned my day around actually

xp upon reflection i don’t think can explain what was going through my head, not on a phone anyway, and in the mood i’m im. (i’ll post some vids in yr listening thread tho)

of all fuckin' things I forgot to get while I was at the grocery store replacing the roommate's bread I accidentally ate, I forget...body wash!

yay ANOTHER trip! or maybe just wait til the smell gets unbearable enough to the roommate

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/economy/unemployment-benefits-goldman-sachs/index.html

Early Thursday, a government report showed 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week. It was a sudden 33% jump over the week before and the biggest percentage increase since 1992.
But next week's report is likely to be far worse, according to Goldman Sachs economists.
They predict the report will show 2.25 million Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits this week — eight times the number of people who filed last week and the highest level on record.

today hit me hard - i think it was the combination of work emailing me to tell me i have to come in tomorrow to pick up my stuff for wfh (haven't left the apartment since saturday) and the news about the 34 year old dying. plus i ate bean burritos for lunch and that made me feel like i was dying of something most of the day.

a shitty side effect of all of this - not as bad as people actually dying of course - but my partner's debilitating chronic pain from degenerative disc disease is back now that she's gone 2 weeks without swimming. this is something she's dealt with for years but it got so bad she was basically bedridden for half of last year. everything changed when a doctor told her to try swimming every day (following specific instructions, in a wetsuit). it's the only thing in the world that gives any sort of relief outside of prescription painkillers. we knew this was going to happen, it just really sucks, and there's nothing she can do about it. who knows how long the gyms are going to be closed, and even if they were open she wouldn't want to risk getting/spreading.

Post Office staff very cheerful. I feel like a bad man still going there even.

you live near THE cheerful PO?

setting off on my hourlong rainy chemo walk

god spare me from group texts i am SO OVER IT

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, March 19, 2020 9:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

also being bombarded by this right now

Nice job Neanderthal. Lol at the combo of the ukulele and Bathory shirt.

We just did self isolation movie night with some friends. Using google hangouts and Netflix. The new Netflix mark wahlberg movie is really fucking stupid, even by the standard of Marky Mark movies.

heh, i see our management is now referring to the company-wide 20% pay cut as a "20% hair cut"

basically we all got a bowl cut, and not even a good bowl cut

Heh, a friend let his kids give him a mohawk. My kids have been asking to dye my beard, but I'm going to save that for a rainy day. Or, at the rate we're going, for a day that's not rainy.

the only thing worse than pay cuts is your company deciding to use a "cute" euphemism for it

Just feeling a tremendous wave of relief at finally hearing from Fandango. These are difficult times, and as things improve they fully intend to provide the same great service I've become accustomed to.

Whew.

one of my main complaints right now personally is that I did not get a haircut before all this went down so 2020 will be super shaggy

The Defected Virtual Festival, currently live-streaming on FB, is making my afternoon: https://www.facebook.com/DefectedRecords/videos/636324983813473/?v=636324983813473

i have clippers at home and plan to shave my head today or tomorrow
xp

Most on-brand thing ever: in the absence of holding services, the pastor from our local U-U church (we're not members, but we have a lot of friends there) just posted a video of him strumming an acoustic guitar and singing "With or Without You."