A reminder: three months ago or so, our “experts” were telling us that masks were useless, not wanting to shake hands was racist, and restricting travel was too.

Now think about that the next time those experts tell you something.

Give it another month and the top 10% will be feeling it too https://t.co/pNE1bBx9ra

— James Marsh (@JamesMarsh79) May 18, 2020

He is correct. You can’t hollow out the bottom of your economy and expect the rest to just be untouched. It just cannot and will not work that way. Unfortunately, neither progressives nor the right understand the economy nor complex dynamic systems and how they fracture, so they don’t recognize the calamity that is still approaching. (And progressives really don’t understand how the economy functions at all.)

We’re in a state now that no matter what happens with the coronavirus — even if we develop a vaccine in the next year — a large depression is a fait accompli of our past and present actions.

The economy is large. There has been a shockwave created. This surging wave will inevitably cause a tsunami on a far shore. That shore is the top half of the economy. Because the economy is large, that tsunami takes a while to arrive. I’d say in 3-4 months things will get substantially worse, and then in fall as the second major wave of the pandemic hits many people in the US will actually start to starve.

Many of those in the top 10 percent will fall out of it. (Though, definitionally, there will always be a top 10 percent.) Poverty will increase. Food insecurity will be known by many who’ve never had to contemplate such a thing.

Later, I’ll write a post on how to realistically prepare. Summer will be mild for the virus and for food shortages. Now is the time to start. Believe me or not, wouldn’t you rather be prepared than left with no options?

It’s nice in a way that we’ve having a preview of the “progressive” future of living in the pod, never traveling, and other ascetic horseshit.

Turns out, it’s terrible. Remote video-only conferences suck, not leaving the house is terrible, and their whole desired future is obviously a huge bust. Once this is done a lot of those ideas will have disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Good riddance.

Harry Potter became the best-selling book series of all time by spinning up a world where children belonged, developed skills useful in collaboration with and/or against adults, often knew better than superiors & weren't afraid to try. IMO this subgenre remains largely untapped

— Mason 💦👏 + 😷 + 🏃‍♂️✂️ (@webdevMason) May 16, 2020

I agree, and I think this largely explains the current “progressive” pushback to the series, not any supposed lack of diversity. That’s just an excuse. What they really hate is its anti-authoritarianism and actual (instead of the current pretend) meritocracy. When I was a kid, I certainly knew better than most of the adults around me. Most of them were actively or passively harming me.

So I know these kids exist because I was one of them. Right now, we keep — well, used to keep — kids in what are essentially prisons, where they do nothing useful, are mostly tortured, learn little of note (or little at all), and contribute nothing to society.

Many people — including most progressives — want it to be this way. Harry Potter pushed back against that. That’s why kids loved it, even if they couldn’t fully articulate the appeal.

Interesting mask perspective on being autistic. I feared I would have sensory issues with the mask, but didn’t realize it would be mentally relaxing to not constantly worry about how to compose my face in public. I don’t have to smile or worry I look angry. pic.twitter.com/l13Q8lj9i6

— Janie Larson (@RedQueenCoder) May 15, 2020

I fucking HATE wearing the mask. HATE it. I reliably do it but it decreases my mental acuity and cognitive abilities greatly. I literally cannot make decisions while wearing one. The CO2 buildup must be massive because I cannot think at all while wearing one.

For instance, I stood in front of some products in Publix for about 10 minutes and could not make any decision at all because of the mask. I ended up buying nothing because I could not even think about it.

If mask-wearing continues, that means I will not be able to participate in society at all. I am not the only one who has this problem, either.

Sad to hear about the QZ layoffs, and about BuzzFeed UK and Aus shuttering. Have a feeling it’s only going to get worse.

— Yael Grauer (@yaelwrites) May 14, 2020

That is correct. The greatest destruction of wealth in human history is under way right now. Some of the effects won’t become apparent for months or years, but all is in progress — or rather, de-progressing — at this very moment.

It’ll take 25-50 years to recover, if ever we do. With climate change looming, I have my doubts.

just read something that claimed Nazi Bronies got their start in 2017

i hate hate hate that my first response to this was “that’s nonsense, I know for a fact that Nazi Bronies were a thing by 2011”

— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) May 15, 2020

I don’t know anything about Nazi Bronies, but I see all the time movements and such that the press claims were “started on 4Chan in 2015” when I know that the org in some form has been around since the 1980s, and sometimes since the 1960s.

The press in general is not very good at research, and especially on topics where people use a lot of code words and deliberate obfuscation. And where there’s not much about it on the internet.

Tech folks, I am stuck at home, in a weird mood and want secondhand drama.

Please tell me about the most horrific/terrifying/surreal security issue you’ve ever encountered?

RT for more horrors.

— Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose) May 14, 2020

I still feel bad about this one up this very day, but my story is the time I accidentally got someone fired because the company we were acquiring part of their business from sent us data they should not have. I was in charge of reviewing the data received and noticed there was much more than expected.

During a phone call to discuss the project, I mentioned that we seemed to have received much more data than expected, and could someone tell me what was all the other data we’d gotten?

The other company reviewed what had been sent and determined they’d provided other customers’ confidential data to us. Later, I found out that the very nice, very capable technical project lead from that other company had been fired for that mistake.

I don’t know for sure that they wouldn’t have noticed on their own, but it’s fair to say that I quite accidentally got her fired by mentioning that data during a meeting. Nevertheless, I needed to know what it was, and I didn’t think there’d be such terrible consequences for her.

I must’ve seen the video below soon after it came out in 1983. I didn’t know precisely what it was about at the time, but it was the first song I ever recognized as political. Before, I didn’t know that music could do that — that it could talk about more than love, be about more than being cool or sex.

It’s fair to say that this video made me pay more attention to the world and to music, thus it changed my life:

No matter what you think of U2, fucking great live performance. Using that broken-up military march rhythm was genius.

This is exactly how my brain works when I try to do math problems: