Take Off That Mask, If you are fully vaccinated, the time to resume normal life is now.

Right on. This is how we should be framing it, and doing it.

And yet, I fear that—like many of my friends and colleagues—she has, over the past months, become too attached to aspects of hygiene theater that ultimately do more to reassure us or to showcase our altruism than to combat the pandemic.

Combine virtue signaling, hygiene theater, polarization, trauma, and liberals expressing religious feeling for which they have no other outlet, you end up with behaviors that have little or no connection to the reality on the ground or even actual healthfulness.

Going to be that way for a while, I guess.

The worst defense of the MUTCD is "a lot of volunteers worked hard on it."

What matters is the final product and how it effects people. There is no A for effort. We're adults.

— Angie Schmitt🚶‍♀️ (@schmangee) May 17, 2021

That bothers me too, the whole “A lot of people worked really hard on this!”

WHO. GIVES. A. FUCK. This isn’t middle school. There is no participation badge. If it’s terrible, the only solution is to correct it, not tell me how many people worked so, so hard on it.

My old boss, who also believed the same, said this after some young gun who styled himself as being very clever royally fucked something up and cost a sister company a lot of money: “This isn’t high school and he doesn’t get any credit for how smart he is or how much he worked on this. He screwed it up and now there are consequences. That’s what being an adult is.”

Working hard isn’t enough. The solution also has to be good and appropriate for the situation.

I almost forgot…but today is five years since I set off on my coast-to-coast train journey in the States. I started this thread last year and didn’t quite finish it off, but will aim to finish it this time. It remains the best thing I have ever done. https://t.co/2RBx1wzeB4

— Tits McGee (@Scientits) May 17, 2021

But a bunch of libs have claimed you can’t learn anything if you travel, traveling itself is bad (for some reason), and that you also hate the planet if you do any rambling — and that trend had started before the pandemic. Now it’s only worsened.

Snarkiness and rantiness aside, I really am interested in what propels so many folks lately to claim that traveling itself — apart from any of its externalities — is inherently a negative thing. Because, as with her adventures, the travel I’ve done in my life stands out as some of my best experiences, and I’d gladly shave years off my life rather than be forced somehow to forget those times. I learned and saw and did so much and would not trade it for anything on this planet.

In the end I cannot answer why so many of late have turned out against travel. It’s just another symptom of the liberal shift to being against pleasure, against engagement with the world, but I also cannot fully explain all of that.

I’m glad she posted this. I like her so much more now because she’s not afraid to gush about great her experience was, liberal tears fall where they may.