book i found in a JP free library pic.twitter.com/QWKnP72C08

— g̾u̾n̾ (@rodentsheriff) November 15, 2020

I have read this book and I can tell you: do not read this book. You will regret it. Though like me you might be unable to stop.

I can't believe you took seriously my daily updated forecast filled with charts and graphs. How dare you treat it like science.

— Chris Arnade 🐢 (@Chris_arnade) November 12, 2020

Great point. We’re supposed to treat all that like gospel truth except when it goes awry, then a bunch of frantic hand-waving starts and we’re told that it’s just a possible model, it’s all meaningless, and that no one should have put any credence in any of it. This is by the very same people.

Can’t have it both ways, but they want it both ways.

I’m really interested in the liberals’ “stay inside forever” response to the pandemic. At first glance, I think this is a reaction to observed state failure and an attempt at seizure of certitude from the jaws of ambiguity and decline.

But how this withdrawal dovetails with the diminution of risk and pleasure even prior to the pandemic, and how many people (especially on the lib side) see the world as having gotten more dangerous even as it has gotten safer, has me reconsidering how deep this goes.

My guess is that the pandemic has accelerated, as it has in other arenas, something that would’ve occurred anyway: the lib dream future of all being wireheads, ensconced in the pod, watched over by Brautigan’s “machines of loving grace,” not having to deal with the messiness of the world at all.