Met Summer Banter

[SJonesWX]

13 hours ago, Hoosier said:

You rang?

The Delta variant doubles the risk of hospitalization—but the vaccines still work

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/15/1026365/the-delta-variant-doubles-the-risk-of-hospitalization-but-the-vaccines-still-work/amp/

doubles the risk, from what, 0.1% chance to 0.2%?

enough about the fukin variants. 

[tamarack]

14 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I thought we had a snow fall, tho, the week before. Decent event in memory ( probably doesn't - ) serve.  It was cold up to and during that event, and it laid a decent pack down here.  

It was that newly seemingly perfunctory early to mid December snow storm prior to mid winter burn out pattern that's ever year regardless of ENSO this or Polar that - get's annoying but CC ftl I guess.   

Anyway my point was gonna be, that storm the week before seemingly rubbed it in, right?  lol.  I mean, it would have just been better if the Dec = piece of shit, period.

 

 

That Dec. 17 event was outside of my totally arbitrary "Grinching" period - 20th-28th.  And we were well north of the good stuff (story of winter 20-21) and got 1.9".  

[PhineasC]

10 hours ago, DotRat_Wx said:

How many people still aren't vaccinated? Has there ever been an event that changed our collective lives like covid? Media is supposed to just stop reporting on the virus because it upsets you? 

A new variant is news. Sorry. No one is telling anyone to stay home anymore. I'm sitting in my office right now not wearing a mask around several people. 

Hundreds of people dying a day still. 

Antivaccers love to say 'we don't know how it will affect us' long term, but love to cite the vaccine's effectiveness and then claim it's not a story.

Which one is it? 

The anti-vaxxers are not talking about variants anymore. They do not take that stuff seriously. Any variant and vaccine fear is coming from the vaccinated crowd. 

[NorEastermass128]

Lol. The only COVID talk I see anymore is in this thread. 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

48 minutes ago, SJonesWX said:

doubles the risk, from what, 0.1% chance to 0.2%?

enough about the fukin variants. 

Viruses mutate constantly, there must be dozens and dozens of variants at this point. 

[NorEastermass128]

Just now, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Viruses mutate constantly, there must be dozens and dozens of variants at this point. 

*Thousands or more

[HoarfrostHubb]

An I have my first cold in over a year...lol  

[PhineasC]

I purposely do not follow any news anymore. I used to be a real news junkie. I would read the major news sites all day, follow people on Twitter, and have cable news on in the background all the time.

I gradually started to cut it all off in 2018 when the government silliness and infighting reached a crescendo, and the COVID/SJW nonsense of 2020 was so disgusting I finally just cut it all off. My wife and I do not consume any form of "news" at this point, aside from whatever we sometimes might see online in various places. People know not to turn it on in our house.

I think 99% of it is propagandistic, jingoistic garbage designed to make the watcher scared, paranoid, angry, and compliant.

[amarshall]

14 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

I purposely do not follow any news anymore. I used to be a real news junkie. I would read the major news sites all day, follow people on Twitter, and have cable news on in the background all the time.

I gradually started to cut it all off in 2018 when the government silliness and infighting reached a crescendo, and the COVID/SJW nonsense of 2020 was so disgusting I finally just cut it all off. My wife and I do not consume any form of "news" at this point, aside from whatever we sometimes might see online in various places. People know not to turn it on in our house.

I think 99% of it is propagandistic, jingoistic garbage designed to make the watcher scared, paranoid, angry, and compliant.

I got rid of cable.  I refuse to watch network news.  Cut off Facebook in november.   Instragram only for cars boats and female anatomy.  Twitter for stocks and weather, delete any political content immediately. 

Once you can cut yourself off from the cancer that is media your mental well being increases 200%  Media has pushed covid for ratings which in turn has pushed public policy which nearly crippled this country permanently. 

[powderfreak]

16 minutes ago, amarshall said:

I got rid of cable.  I refuse to watch network news.  Cut off Facebook in november.   Instragram only for cars boats and female anatomy.  Twitter for stocks and weather, delete any political content immediately. 

Once you can cut yourself off from the cancer that is media your mental well being increases 200%  Media has pushed covid for ratings which in turn has pushed public policy which nearly crippled this country permanently. 

Yeah this thread is the only source of media for me.  Skiing, Red Sox, Instagram… box yourself into the stuff you like and remove all the rest.  Facebook is a largely negative complaining vibe from users, Instagram is much more positive/upbeat.

The media hasn’t changed in decades, you just have more avenues to see it now.  And everyone knew what the media was and did, it’s a business.  From Dateline specials in 1997 meant to scare suburban moms all the way to today.

Theres also a lot of people who complain non-stop about the media but yet can’t turn it off.

[powderfreak]

47 minutes ago, NorEastermass128 said:

Lol. The only COVID talk I see anymore is in this thread. 

Ha it’s true too.  Can tell when the banter thread goes “hot” what’s being discussed.  It’s not toenails.  It’ll be around for a while, going to live rent free for many as a background simmer.

[HoarfrostHubb]

I'm interested in checking out the 99 Levels place that just opened in Natick where Sears used to be in the mall.  Looks like a bigger version of Boda Borg (which is awesome) plus a Night Shift Brewing taproom.  All good things

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, NorEastermass128 said:

Lol. The only COVID talk I see anymore is in this thread. 

Short answer ?  Imho, get use to it. It may not be mainstream marketable in this kind of meme ( needed)  'ebb' cycle and collective exhalation, but, it will resurface given time. From nuances and insinuation, to debate and scholarly ambits, to veracious science and research, this will go on for decades. 

The longer version, that is probably because there were, in effect, two Pandemics? 

1     SAR-CoV-2;

2     The self-imposed/response by and at a species level. the general population are almost as much victimized by the 18 months of Pandemic's self-imposing mandates, as the Pandemic itself.  

Oh, the COVID-19 'variant' wins ( of course! ) in any figurative 'enormity debate' or comparison - blood and death tend to win trophies.  However, there is a trauma endured that is both as troubling as it is difficult to quantize - regardless of one's personal relationship history with the pathogen - i.e., whether they got the stupid thing, or know/love whomever that did.

And, I use the term 'species' quite deliberately there.  Because, everything the human world did to respond to this has no organically traceable, naturally occurring precedence along the biological evolutionary arc of Homo Sapiens - to wit, we are here, because all of that was allowed to happen.  We were not born with masks.  Humans need to engage in the spectrum of lighter side of touch, to the best part of f*k ... Distancing intrinsically torpedoes the ability to engage in these biological imperatives.   That is not our way, probably more succinct to say, we have no choice but to be that way.  That is important to truly understand and really, 'feel' is probably apropos.

Moreover, the following can be outright empirical proven: those that miss these necessities, beyond some personally definitive adaptation threshold, begin to manifest antisocial psychologies. Given time, behavior abnormalities express, and on and so on.  We, as a species, in order to form a more perfect utopian union, based upon the of hubris of knowing better than the Cosmos of natural forces that delivered us to that state of conceit (irony in this predicate), are not above those necessities at a biological level.  18 months pretending we are, took [ likely ] a bigger toll.

The psycho-babble ramifications for that journey are asymptotically attenuating - meaning, they slowly diminish, but they will never be absolutely zero. And the 18 months of masks this, and distancing that - you know,  ... I am not psychologist, but this cannot be evenly registered.  Some individuals can take isolation better. We are similar, person to person. We are not the same. This is quite obviously true comparing one 50-year old to the next.  Comparing 50-year olds to 5-year olds?

I am a middle aged, existentially built being, who has lived and survived ( so far ) through the vicissitudes of an oft iniquitous enterprise known as Humanity.  That schooling, that Universal education tells me that children, particularly during the formulative/socialization years of 3 to 9, were probably life-long neurologically programmed by this thing. They are more adaptive than adults 10X's their age, no doubt! But that adaptation is really more about absorption into the scaffolding of their future minds. We'll see how that wiring fairs.

18 months, executing precisely the wrong impositions, masks and distancing, to that particular diametrically needy age-group, is a facet in all this ... You know, I was once told when I was 7 years old, "In a month, there is a chance that you and I will travel to a different state to see our distant relatives."    "A month?"   "Yup, just 30 days."  Here I am at mid life, and I still recall the essence of that eternal wait, more so than any other circumstances or nuances about the reality of that era of life.   That torture, remains.  I am rather disgusted there hasn't been more thought consideration to how all this would effect these uncut diamonds ...I sometimes think to excoriate Western Culture's selfish justification rationalism tactics - it is cloaking clawing self-preservation in an insidious way ... sometimes it seems. The adults made this about them, first. But that's a hot take - I am not sure.

18 months to a 50-year old is a sabbatical by comparison; yet fervency in the personal ventilation of how trying times have become by the this age group, demands as much attention as any other narcissist front man of an 80's hair band. 

So, what we have unwittingly done ( whether proven ultimately good or bad aside ) was survive 18 months of cutting the 750,000 years of evolutionary strings that bind us together.  We may think we don't need one-another. Technology, in fact, is triggering this arrogance universally, anyway - but that's a whole 'nother Cyberpunk techno-sociological thriller!   In the meantime, barring another variant that transcends the Industrial Media Complex's mere marketing via dystopian cinema,  humanity in any 'social' media is prooobably NOT going to let this thing go forever. 

[Brian5671]

1 hour ago, amarshall said:

I got rid of cable.  I refuse to watch network news.  Cut off Facebook in november.   Instragram only for cars boats and female anatomy.  Twitter for stocks and weather, delete any political content immediately. 

Once you can cut yourself off from the cancer that is media your mental well being increases 200%  Media has pushed covid for ratings which in turn has pushed public policy which nearly crippled this country permanently. 

Bingo.

[Bostonseminole]

You will probably never feel an official air temp that warm again in your life. lol

Not sure I ever want to lol, but it was a great experience. Amazing landscape..


.

[forkyfork]

so you got your mandates lifted but that's not good enough? lolz. upper middle class white people are so fragile 

[forkyfork]

oh no, i see people with masks on!

*disintegrates into a quivering puddle of jello*

[Typhoon Tip]

2 hours ago, amarshall said:

I got rid of cable.  I refuse to watch network news.  Cut off Facebook in november.   Instragram only for cars boats and female anatomy.  Twitter for stocks and weather, delete any political content immediately. 

Once you can cut yourself off from the cancer that is media your mental well being increases 200%  Media has pushed covid for ratings which in turn has pushed public policy which nearly crippled this country permanently. 

Echo the sentiments here - although, as you intimate, we do not limit that concern to Pandemic-centricity.  Oh yeah, they are doing this modis operendi, with now more than laughable power

Firstly, I have not (yet) cut cable.  It's certainly on the table to do so, though. I'm waiting for all sports majors, with the exception of any kind of auto-racing ... to provide a separate means for access, then I likely will. It's coming.  In the meantime, I have come to accept and recognize, quite quickly and almost second nature, when a given turn of phrase or spoken word are faux, or 'complexively divisive'.  Bate to solicit thumb swiping smart phones, clicking a PC mouses, or pinging a channel on television so forth. And so I've evolved a personal aegis against the IMC, the 'Industrial Media Complex' and detect the bate and avoid it.  Or laugh -

- the IMC expression ( which I use liberally, admittedly)  borrows from Eisenhower's "Industrial Military Complex" - the two are, in essence, of the same ilk in evil spirit.

The older model of Industrial Militarism ( which probably gets harder to do in modernity World order/changes therein )  bombs some society back to stone age. Then, in swoops the bomber's in the name of support, but ultimately foundation their own economy out of rescuing and rebuilding and revitalizing. But this process, either by elaboration or accident ...strands the new order in some sort of dearth of sociopolitical identity.  Whereby, destabilization invariably fills that gap  --> war breaks out!  The Military/government/ and wag-dog ala modes of course then rationalizes involvement in foreign affairs - usually cloaked in rescuing Humanitarian war crimes - bombs back to stone age.  Cycle begins anew.

That's a cookie cutter Satanic rendition - lol.. .but in essence, Eisenhower's warning was beware of engaging in that. 

The media version, as hinted above, destabilizes by incendiary headline and content-spin bombs, 'artfully', perhaps 'dark-artful' equivocation tactical manipulation upon the unsuspecting, general population - and it is not a matter of intelligence at the individual level.  New information has no history in either wiser or non-the-wiser case. Hesitation by some, is usually reaction by those who don't really know any better and is, sadly, the majority.  Hooked.  

We are all recycling a smoldering resent over this.  I coined the expression last summer, "The moment in time the IMC figured out how to convert the very initial action of thumb swiping smart phones, clicking a PC mouses, or pinging a channel on television, into money, we were doomed."

We have not heard, read, nor seen illustrated in either still frame or in movement, any media that represent a perfect union with the truth.  In an absolute sense - which I'm over-stating presently to make the point - reality is in a state of adulteration by whores, burning down the societal house on either side. Whether as e-zombified, addicted dystopian stimulant junky audience, or "Christof" sociopathic illusionists on the other.  

You know...' art mimics zeitgeist'  - talk about the "Truman Show"!   That movie was in a lot of ways, visionary if not at socially aware commentary about the power and force the specter of media can automaton individuals.

[Brian5671]

18 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

so you got your mandates lifted but that's not good enough? lolz. upper middle class white people are so fragile 

self loath much?

[natedizel]

27 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

so you got your mandates lifted but that's not good enough? lolz. upper middle class white people are so fragile 

Racist much?

[NorEastermass128]

Life is pretty much back to normal here. We heal. We remember. We learn. We move on. 

[HIPPYVALLEY]

4 hours ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

An I have my first cold in over a year...lol  

It's been making the rounds around here for weeks.   I had it combined with allergies and was wrecked for a few days.

[DavisStraight]

Hottest place on earth today

 

U.S. likely claims hottest place on Earth as heat tightens grip on more than 100 million (yahoo.com)

[WhitinsvilleWX]

4 hours ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

I'm interested in checking out the 99 Levels place that just opened in Natick where Sears used to be in the mall.  Looks like a bigger version of Boda Borg (which is awesome) plus a Night Shift Brewing taproom.  All good things

Top level where Sears was is a Dave and Busters.

The bottom level i vacant and is/was a mass vaccination site. It's where I got my shot

[WhitinsvilleWX]

2 hours ago, NorEastermass128 said:

Life is pretty much back to normal here. We heal. We remember. We learn. We move on. 

I've read some blogs where some are freaked out over this Indian/delta variant and are afraid we'll have to lock down and go back to masking and shut down over it. They point to the UK cases rising and hospitalizations there going up ETC ETC and think that it will happen here. 

Some will fear this the rest of their lives. PTSD is real.

[powderfreak]

13 minutes ago, WhitinsvilleWX said:

I've read some blogs where some are freaked out over this Indian/delta variant and are afraid we'll have to lock down and go back to masking and shut down over it. They point to the UK cases rising and hospitalizations there going up ETC ETC and think that it will happen here. 

Some will fear this the rest of their lives. PTSD is real.

Plenty of people afraid of masking again or shut downs, likely more than are actually afraid of the virus/variants, ha.

But humans are weird and afraid of a lot of things, many of which don’t make sense. Like people being terrified of flying in an airplane despite it being the safest mode of transportation.  We have plenty of largely irrational fears; COVID is nothing new in that regard.

[NorEastermass128]

13 minutes ago, WhitinsvilleWX said:

I've read some blogs where some are freaked out over this Indian/delta variant and are afraid we'll have to lock down and go back to masking and shut down over it. They point to the UK cases rising and hospitalizations there going up ETC ETC and think that it will happen here. 

Some will fear this the rest of their lives. PTSD is real.

I'm sure there will always be those few people who worry over every development or variant.  

I'm vaccinated, most of my family is vaccinated, so I'm more concerned about Delta legroom (or lack thereof) in economy versus the Delta variant!

[PhineasC]

11 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Plenty of people afraid of masking again or shut downs, likely more than are actually afraid of the virus/variants, ha.

But humans are weird and afraid of a lot of things, many of which don’t make sense. Like people being terrified of flying in an airplane despite it being the safest mode of transportation.  We have plenty of largely irrational fears; COVID is nothing new in that regard.

This might be the first time we cheered those who wanted to transform society in radical ways over their irrational fear, however. I don’t see anyone in power calling for banning airplanes because some people are scared of them. 

[powderfreak]

28 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

This might be the first time we cheered those who wanted to transform society in radical ways over their irrational fear, however. I don’t see anyone in power calling for banning airplanes because some people are scared of them. 

Right, exactly.  Everything with this is how it ties into public policy.  Like people shouldn’t be surprised there are people afraid of variants, because humans are afraid of all sorts of stuff that doesn’t make sense.  

Same with the media.  The media hasn’t changed, it does the same sensationalist stuff it’s done since the 1980s, but really tapped into suburban middle class fears in the 1990s to grow ratings.  So people harping on the media, they are just doing the same thing they’ve always done…. the difference no one talks about (though saw Amarshall hit it earlier) is how it affected policy.

None of the behavioral stuff exhibited by humans during this is any bit surprising. But it crossed that boundary into public policy so now people care what others are afraid of.

[STILL N OF PIKE]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Right, exactly.  Everything with this is how it ties into public policy.  Like people shouldn’t be surprised there are people afraid of variants, because humans are afraid of all sorts of stuff that doesn’t make sense.  

Same with the media.  The media hasn’t changed, it does the same sensationalist stuff it’s done since the 1980s, but really tapped into suburban middle class fears in the 1990s to grow ratings.  So people harping on the media, they are just doing the same thing they’ve always done…. the difference no one talks about (though saw Amarshall hit it earlier) is how it affected policy.

None of the behavioral stuff exhibited by humans during this is any bit surprising. But it crossed that boundary into public policy so now people care what others are afraid of.

The media has 100% gotten worse . We can agree to disagree there but they have found a way to illicit emotion much better for clicks . They have honed their skills and they have many more outlets to overwhelm the chatter cycle and magnify emotion ..it’s 24/7 on multiple platforms ..and BC they are down to hype For clicks / views ...well that’s ..not good 
 

As a non business owner I’m not very concerned about variants . if I owned a business I would be Moderately concerned of the delta variant or others they may potentially develop later   , mostly due to the trauma of what we just went thru, where “over reacting” for safety was the Protocol and many were forced into going out of business . That umm..is trauma . Maybe This turkey day there could be another “spike” that spooks decision makers this certainly has a seasonal pulse to it  ...or maybe this mutates a bit more (delta variant is said to have different main symptoms- headache - sore throat ) sort of cold like bc the rest of the world hasn’t gotten this thing under wraps .  Again personally.. I’m not concerned but it feels to me like as a society we tend to either over react to things or under react as coping mechanisms and I couldn’t be too comfy If I had a ton of financial retail exposure that this is truly over .