Blue Saturday

I shd've started a thread for all of these social media conspiracies - got sent a good one about a Chinese drama series from 2010 today as well - but there's more than enough rona threads already and it's late and I'm sleepy

Everybody gets ill and dies in A Dream of Red Mansions too so maybe these lads are onto something

*PS: Before laughing, read the book by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, from 1999, “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s master plan to destroy America”, on Amazon, then we talk. It's all there.

"then we talk"!!!!

The Doctor Who

they cornered the market on sonic screwdrivers too

lol a quick Google for that book reveals it used to be about how China did 9/11

I got sent that conspiracy shit in my family WhatsApp yesterday ffs, I did not expect to see it there.

then we talk

please let's not.

The Doctor Who declared this virus was also Silenced by the Chinese Authorities...

I remember the Doctor Who with the Silence but I didn't realise they were Chinese

this is making me glad I'm not on Facebook, which I've had mixed feelings about in general and particularly over the past week or two

I haven’t accepted my mother’s friend request on FB, the bad conservative memes I get on Messenger are punishment enough.

When my mother had an FB account she was upset cos I wouldn’t accept her, but I was entirely justified by 30 years of experience. One time I changed my cover photo and she messaged me within like an hour to ask what it was.

my mum told me on the WhatsApp to tone down my language on fb otherwise I might lose my job for calling the pm a cunt

Lol this is exactly why I didn’t have mine on there (not for my political opinions, which I don’t do on FB, but because I do say “cunt” pretty casually and it’d upset her).

Hahahahaha

Tbf, the messages annoying me the most on FB are still coming From Labour supporters giving it "now is not the time for politics, let's come together as a nation"

It's tried my patience this week, but in general I kinda like the "all human life is here" silliness of social media

same - although I do tend to keep work people off there. I have a couple but I think they're cool, we'll find out when I get the sack I guess

Luckily my mother is one of the 0.01% of American women unbothered by the word ‘cunt’ - we tend to ‘cunt!’ tag-team at my sister because the way she loses her shit at our language is hilarious.

I basically only use mine to access two meme groups, I’m on ilx a lot more than FB/Twitter.

interesting (very) long read on recent chinese social conditions (inc.its post-socialist health structures) as these interact with internal and also global markets, and role of all this in recent and not-so-recent pandemics:
http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/

(this is a weird thread to out it on but at a minimum it's a good counterpoint to the conspiracy theories upthread, also weirdly: if you know a better thread for it, by all means post it there also)

there's at least one specific China thread but Blue Saturday is a broad church

穹顶之下: Rolling 中华人民共和国 / People's Republic of China (PRC) Thread

i shared it there too

ok, i got a bottle of rum, enough baccy, a massive random playlist of tunes, it's FRIDAY

Noice

Ever glad for this thread which is an oasis of goodness on ilx

no oasis in this thread, sorry

my globe-trotting boy is back in the country, had to circumnavigate the globe for work. apparently he's off to Sweden in a fortnight, so i think we've found patient zero

gee i miss the pub

I walked to school the other day - a weird journey in all sorts of ways, not least because of how close it was, given how fucking long it takes me to drive there each day. I walked past various absences but it was the three pubs on the way I could hardly bear to look at.

fuck knows what happened towards the end of yesterday evening, i woke up in bed with Police Academy on the TV at some point. i think i might've fallen over because there are a bunch of ouch points around my body, lol home drinking.

I’m definitely having a bit of a wobble, I’d been doing pretty well before all this (sober since start of year, starting to get shit together) but plague makes monkeys of us all. I’m basically giving myself a pass for the rest of March and then I have to snap out of it somewhat because i) fancy deliveroo wine is an indulgence I cannot afford and ii) it is a very bad idea to be hungover right now

However my discounted craft beer crate just turned up so today I will be drinking to the memory of cafés and bookshops and trying not to think about how I took in the delivery and immediately touched my face 😄

(Then I will have to ring up and ditch them yet again, I wonder how many times I will do this before I start feeling bad (I always tell the nice young lad at the other end that I am stopping the service because I am an alcoholic with liver disease to forestall their objection-handling retention pitch))

My hangover says ouch but this isn't a time to be avoiding indulgence. I'll worry about finding some balance when there's a world outside to balance, I guess. Tho I do need to do some thinking, my head's been addressing some very long-ingrained shit lately, and that's impossible with a hangover.

This works out a lot cheaper than my pub drinking, which isn't necessarily a good thing 😅

If I were allowed outside it would certainly be cheaper! I spent £35 on wine last night 😵

Does drinking ever become mind-numbingly boring for you? I cut back significantly once I hit that stage.

Lads I wish for the best for both of ye, not least because seeing so much emoji usage from the pair of ye is very unnerving.

yeah i still have the luxury of grabbing a bottle or two with my food shop, apparently i'm more at risk from drunky accidents than the rona at the moment

xp the whole world is a family WhatsApp now, you have to just go with it 🤪

pom usually i'm a pub drinker so it rarely gets boring because it's usually my socializing time. it probably gets boring for other people once i pass a point :D

i'm only gonna drink indoors once every 5 or 6 days i hope, again i don't really get bored, it just makes me ramble more online

Does drinking ever become mind-numbingly boring for you? I cut back significantly once I hit that stage.

Fair enough – I never get bored of fraternizing with fellow lushes either.

🍻

this isn't a time to be avoiding indulgence

indulging avoidance is v much the way to go rn imo

Well played

For the first time in my adult life bar the odd January I am doing absolutely zero midweek drinking. Its partly a practicality thing - I hate physical shopping right now and booze is a precious commodity that shouldn't be frittered away. But mostly because I think the emotional drag of sustained boozing would be very bad right now.

We are it has to be said hitting pretty hard on Fridays and Saturdays. I think the picture might be significantly different if I were here on my own though.

Hopefully mine would be different if I wasn't XD

I've gone from a position of not drinking at all midweek - driven by my job, where even the mildest hangover tends to lead to disaster - to drinking every night. It's not sustainable but I get habituated pretty quickly so need to watch it (while also thinking, fuck it, why not?).

after last weekend, when I kind of cracked and got massively fucked up for 2 days, which wreaked havoc on me physically afterwards, my body clock was fucked, I'd had a cold the week before which was getting better but came back again worse, had earache, vertigo (I think this was probably from being too drunk to take my antidepressants - had vertigo before when I ran out for a few days), I told myself to stay sober for a bit because I'm someone who has let's say a tendency to binge drink at the best of times and this is only gonna get worse while I'm grieving and completely isolated

now my cold has gone again, the 3 day hangover is a memory and I feel OK, I think I'm going to struggle not to drink tonight tbh. I nearly did yesterday. I don't think I'll get trashed because my mood is a lot better than last week, but who knows. I haven't got that much booze left and no plans to get more so maybe just getting that drunk will remove the temptation a bit, and I can try and stay sober next weekend instead. I've been managing to get through the week OK

I’m cutting back after the last couple days. Just too easy to fall into bad habits.

I can’t imagine what you must be going through cp, thinking of you and hoping you cope as well as you can however you can

I’m out of the habit of daytime drinking and already smashed after just a few cans of “session” pale, and I’ve got Baltic Porter and all sorts to get through yet

The hibiscus sour i hope will serve as aversion therapy, either on the way in or (more likely) out

Hmmm, just reaching that "I could manage a drink to take the edges off" point of the day

Actually playing the "Halcyon" video on a loop and what would be really great would be some kind of soft, pillowy narcotic about now.

I’ve been listening to the Spotify playlist “space disco” (ie lindstrøm Todd terje and all that stuff), might be the first time I’ve really craved an mdma Skype sesh

The Beeb have got an hour and three quarter rona show on now and I'm having a rum in protest tbh

I've decided as long as Rona is running rampant I'm not drinking, so no doubt this will be the longest stretch of sobriety in my life. In fact, I haven't had a drink since the middle of the month anyway. If I'm not in a pub I don't drink anyway - only occasionally.

interesting (very) long read on recent chinese social conditions (inc.its post-socialist health structures) as these interact with internal and also global markets, and role of all this in recent and not-so-recent pandemics:
http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/

(this is a weird thread to out it on but at a minimum it's a good counterpoint to the conspiracy theories upthread, also weirdly: if you know a better thread for it, by all means post it there also)

― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

The outbreak thread is the best place (I put all pieces I am going through on there) as is Chiang (kept meaning to read this for the last month)