wackywayneridesagain [none/use name]
I heard his voice once and wrote him off as a potential POTUS, but there’s a world where COVID plays kingmaker for him.
He definitely got a big boost off of the lack of anything precautionary for COVID. The world in which he can probably ride that to the White House is one that’s certainly possible, not the most likely outcome but definitely one of them. For now it looks like everyone’s just going to point fingers regarding the current spate of respiratory illnesses and various population level analyses of health conditions that went into decline throughout 2020/early 2021 before ticking up during 2021 and 2022… Lots of people with various motivations are going to blame COVID vaccine programs for these anomalies - they were approved on a shortened timescale as is so it’s not as if these claims can actually be defeated. None of that excuses Florida’s refusals to do the bare minimum at preventing unnecessary deaths, but if there’s any systemic problems that a largish number of people can be convinced is vaccine-derived, I’d expect him to win easily. Dems, to the extent they want to win, have put a fucking shit load of more faith in Pfizer & Moderna than I would ever personally. The Brandon admin has definitely tried to distance themselves from COVID & Warp Speed in large part, we’ll just have to see if anything comes of it.
It’s obviously possible, as similar incidents have happened before at BSL-3 & BSL-4 facilities, but luckily not lead to cascading pandemic levels of spread.
But it’s also impossible to prove this far removed from the event.
No solution or ban on this kind of research is bulletproof, but if people actually care about this shit though, they should push for an internationally standardized process for actual auditing & oversight of BSL-3 & 4 facilities. I do think you could convince some of these people who are genuinely concerned enough to support something like that, but it’s unlikely the natsec state would go along with the creation of a civilian/public agency to monitor their researchers and take biological samples to trace potential outbreaks after-the-fact. And plenty of these people would only be concerned when “China does it” and not care when it’s Ft Detrick or UNC Chapel Hill…
Who knows though, the BU researchers seem to have pissed everyone off with their recent COVID gain-of-function/compelled evolution research. Which they apparently didn’t even clear with anyone somehow? Maybe that was fake news, seemed unlikely to me but who knows. People are stupid and essentially anyone motivated enough can do those experiments, it’s just extremely unsafe.
They’re both officially 9-5 but pretty flexible, “bullshit jobs”, so the actual number of hours spent working varies a fair bit from week to week. Like the place that went 1 day per week WFH right before COVID, which I’ve since left, had maybe 2 hours of actual work and then the rest was just browsing /r/chapotraphouse, reading articles, organizing my file-sharing stuff, and the video forums on reddit like IdiotsInCars.
I’d say an average week I get about 30 hours of real work between the two, but I’ve definitely had the occasional week where it felt like I was doing 80 hours. It’s never felt impossible to manage though, there’s some relief to anxiety when I just reiterate to myself that it’s self-inflicted, if it actually gets bad I can just abandon the one I like less, etc
Similarly, FTX acquired naming rights to the e-sports organization TSM for a stunning $210 millionーfar out of line with comparable deals in the e-sports industry.
:miyazaki-laugh:
Nah, I’m sure it’s more common than that. One of the big credit reporting agencies fired 24 people recently for doing it, I think because their paycheck info from both their employers was somehow part of their credit report (?): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/equifax-surveilled-1000-remote-workers-fired-24-found-juggling-two-jobs/
Honestly that’s been my biggest concern, that credit reporting agencies would start selling “detection” services to employers who are too nosy (if someone’s getting all their work done, who gives a fuck?) and that might be a problem for me… The other big concern was doing the W-4 properly so I didn’t owe a lot of taxes and doing the 401k deposits correctly to not go over for the year.
No, it doesn’t hold up at all. Russia is basically just emulating the US but on a lag.
I’m seriously surprised by how poorly Russia is doing. It makes sense based on how everything’s played out, but it’s baffling that Russia wasn’t better prepared for this eventuality. Western foreign policy experts of many sorts have talked up the Russian invasion of Ukraine for almost 30 years (almost 20 at the time of the Russo-Ukraine War breaking out). It was always in the context of what would happen should the West make serious overtures regarding NATO/EU membership for Ukraine. Hell, iit was speculated on almost as soon as the USSR was dissolved, no doubt even beforehand in the event that it did dissolve in some circles.
Even if we pretend the 2014 origins of the Russo-Ukraine War came from nowhere, Putin has had 8 years to prepare for what I’d consider to be totally predictable… Not only is it the same playbook the CIA ran beforehand and during the Soviet-Afghan invasion, but the US had just withdrawn from Afghanistan and the defense contractors whose financial interests are served by our media and natsec state would clearly be looking for new avenues to launder US taxpayer money. If history isn’t accelerating and pretenses are still needed, we should see a US invasion of Ukraine before 2045 related to stopping ultranationalist terrorism spawned by… CIA training, money, weapons, and surveillance equipment…
+1 for metal straw - make sure it’s got a silicon tip tho so you don’t fall and impale your fuckken head
:porky-scared-flipped: :maduro-katana-1:
Never drink anything from a dispenser you don’t clean and don’t trust someone to clean. Which, for me, is none of the ones in public/restaurants.
I’m probably a little paranoid though, I don’t connect to the grid at all and filter my well for all the heavy metals and various bacteria in the groundwater around here just because I know eventually the shitty privatized/subsidized sewers and water in my area will go belly-up during the next infrastructure crisis.