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

Excellent!

Seconded

Yeah I'm pretty happy with it! I ordered shears and a thinning razor to deal with the long top part eventually, but keeping the neck and sides short all the time is *chef's kiss*

great job! i have watched a couple of the videos you posted upthread and it seems possible, but i am still frightened

I'm just gonna look like a caveman.

I was clipping my hair and left myself a mohawk just for laughs. Our 5 year old came in and started giggling. I asked if I should keep it and she said YES!

So now I have a mohawk. And a popcorn dress-up dance party this afternoon. Kids can be exhausting but at least they keep things interesting.

nice!

i've always wondered, with mohawks - does it just stay upright? or do you have to put in a bunch of product, i assume?

(i am really ignorant about hair works, in case it's not obvious)

I reckon that depends on what kind of hair you've got. I'm flashing back to my tweenage mallpunk days and all the gel I put in my spikes...the real kids used Elmer's glue.

Small first world problems, but is the USPS always this unhelpful? It took them 48 hours to respond to my request about a package stuck "in transit" for over a month with, "We have looked into this and your package is currently in transit and we will update you when it arrives at the local post office". Assuming this means I just have to eat the money I paid and order it again?

they are actually always that unhelpful

Ugh. Directly supporting small shops and avoiding Amazon shouldn't be a gamble like this. Frustrating. Guess I'll just buy it again and consider the first purchase a "donation".

Can people recommend a decent set of hair clippers? Admittedly they appear to be largely sold out on Amazon right now so I guess that every bloke in the UK has already had that idea.

In orbit - that's good thanks. Will study those videos and hope for the best this weekend.

I've gone through 4 clippers cutting my (and my dogs') hair for the past 25 years. Current semi-pro one (Oster Fast Fade) is a bit quieter and balks less with our coarse hair than the entry-level models. Do oil them after every use, and expect to disassemble the cutting head every half-dozen cuts to brush out stray hair that builds up inside.

I can't speak to the accuracy of the viewpoint expressed in this article, but I like how it looks at activities through the lens of comparative risk.

https://slate.com/business/2020/04/coronavirus-parks-beaches-open-them.html

For example:

“A single virus particle could get you sick theoretically,” said Dylan Morris, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton who studies viruses and was part of a group that researched how COVID-19 could linger on surfaces and in the air. “But that’s a slightly misleading picture. How much virus do you have to encounter in practice to have a 50 percent chance of getting sick? It may take orders of magnitude more than one. Hundreds, thousands, before you’re at serious risk of infection.” That is reason to focus more on high-risk encounters, as in health care settings, than on low-risk ones—like passing someone on a bike path.

I also liked how this article addressed a bunch of questions that are probably pretty common, but don't seem to be answered elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/well/live/coronavirus-contagion-spead-clothes-shoes-hair-newspaper-packages-mail-infectious.html

Re. USPS. Don't give up hope. I sent a few packages from LA to Montreal last year. Following the tracking info I saw that all of them (!) were sent to Moscow (!!). And yet... Eventually all were delivered to their Montreal destinees.

I suspect that the postal clerk who gave me shit for coming in at the end of the day with 5 whole packages that did not cause her to work late was somehow responsible for this but I never got around to making enquires and once they were received it was moot.

Yeah, I mean clearly larger problems in the world and I'm happy to wait, I just wish there was some update or indication that they were trying to help. I was hoping for a, "hey we forwarded this to the last known station that received the package to see if they can help" but instead it's just constantly re-confirming the same thing the tracking tells me, i.e. nothing.

xp -- I cut my own hair the other day, and while it obviously isn't any kind of a professional job it is acceptable to me for the time being (used regular scissors because I didn't have shears, but I doubt that could produce any more split ends than were already present)

the worst part of it honestly was the 1-2 hours of motion sickness afterward from craning my head in every direction

that's a lot of motion sickness!

it might be the golden age for self-hair-care, the time of great experimentation and understanding

1. That puck shaped Remington seems v cool. Not sure I would want puck shaped given how i do, but the price is good and charges and guards, that's where i mighta gone if i'd known of it.
2. dropping a cat at the vet for shots yesterday i was waiting next to clipper rack. i actually looked up at the clerk and commented "wow, dog clippers are actually more expensive than human clippers!" and she responded "yup, dog hair can be coarse and filthy, the shears need to stand up."

most real clippers started at like $85 and went to $200.

my trans-species clipper arbitrage genius plan, dashed

I am hitting the fucking wall of self-pity and depression today. This just all feels so... futile. I am so very thankful to have a job, but I feel like right now that's the sole reason I exist... to make sure those wheels of capitalism keep on turning. Everything single thing I enjoyed doing in my free time has disappeared, I have absolutely no social life, every fucking single event I had planned for the entire year has evaporated. I'm not alone or unique, but the heaviness of just having fucking... nothing to look forward to is overwhelming me today.

feelin ya jon

things might get better!

Thanks, sorry to derail and wallow. Here I was thinking I was doing pretty well, it just all hit me this morning.

*checks thread title*

you are extremely on topic

things will get better. and you and we will adapt. you are appreciated here jon.

It's like not just the disappointment of waiting things out, it's the constant barrage of updates about how unlikely it is for all the things I love to even be around AT ALL when this is over.

already, mask-less is like the "before time."

don't comparative theology types explain that some of our conventions in dress and behavior were guided by concepts of physical wellness and safety, in addition to "spiritual" wellness? if so, which sect will decide first to state that masks are actually a requirement suggested by god, and that proper worshipful living means wearing one?

i think it'd likely be a new sect really, it would be weird to try to like, glue this one on maybe. unless like a pope or lama or roshi or whatever first required all parishioners to practice masking, and it held for a long time and then suddenly new scripture or revelation.

i'm going to go dig up a stump in my yard, it's gotta be better than me typing this, sorry. then i need to find a new crabapple tree somehow, which me luck.

which me, wish me, etc

good luck

now's a good time for everyone to try shaving your head imo
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/a32188285/women-shaving-head-covid-quarantine/
https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/quarantined-people-talk-about-shaving-their-heads.html
https://www.allure.com/story/covid-19-quarantine-hair-makeover

I literally see NO ONE except friends who deliver my food and my doormen, so any hair hacking will be done for comfort only

Interesting lecture here, starts at 1.08:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdcMqipMIY

xp -- I get motion sickness very easily, certain video games do it as well, as well as cars ofc

that presentation way outperformed my expectations and i was legit stoked to hear etymology of donning and doffing. it’s logically clear enough that im surprised how surprised i was.

Yeah, i saw it at exactly the moment you were musing on those points, so kismet

Melancholy Horny

I'm able to get through the day as long as I have work. But in the evenings I start wanting to "break loose." Then I remember that I'm too nice a girl to let myself violate social distancing recommendations, and I start to hate myself. Then I remember that I'm so incompetent with men that I couldn't get laid back in the old days, and I hate myself even more. The only thing that keeps me from binge drinking is that I don't seem to feel it anymore.

LOL, the CDs I ordered that I've been upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, trying to trace and get delivered and which I eventually got a refund for, have turned up - almost a month to the day after I ordered them.

#ClapForCDs

I got another notification from the USPS this morning basically again confirming mine is "in transit". It wouldn't be a big deal if it as something I could just order later if it never shows up, it's a limited edition of 500 thing, so I'm worried if I wait too long it'll be gone and then my only recourse will be eBay or discogs or something for much more.

LOL, the CDs I ordered that I've been upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber, trying to trace and get delivered and which I eventually got a refund for, have turned up - almost a month to the day after I ordered them.

Play once and shelve?

No way.

Some of us still enjoy and frequently play CDs, it's true!

They need a new name to make them ~fancy~ like rekkids > ‘vinyls’. i call them ‘metals,’ or sometimes ‘foils.’

compact discs!

Some of us still enjoy and frequently play CDs, it's true!

And playing them even more than usual, if not necessarily enjoying them more.