living in the suburbs is like mall. Movies. Mall again. Go to target. Go to gamestop. Back to the mall. Barnes and noble. Back to the mall. Chili’s. Back to the mall. Eat hot chip. Lie. And I’m SICK of it!!!!!
I’m sorry god please forgive me I would give anything to go to Barnes and noble and then dinner at Chili’s with a lava mountain cake please lord take me back I’ll never complain again
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #juxtaposition #(…when was OP) #(…2020-01-10) #(*hell* of a timing‚ I do feel bad for them) #((second post is 2020-04-23; Poi’s comment is 2023-01-22)) #TBH I’m surprised this thread didn’t contain a *third* regretful post about people going to the mall and spreading Omicron everywhere #(personally I went to the mall last year in a respirator and had a lovely time) #((though I did *not* have dinner at Chili’s: I bought a smoothie and drank it outdoors)) #((lifting up the bottom of my elastomeric and sticking a straw through the gap)) #covid19 #illness tw #embarrassment squick #food
#I kept wavering on reblogging this because it feels like tempting fate #but the fact is: #that one post with the thing #(I found out yesterday that a month ago I spent two hours in a room with a maskless COVID-positive person) #(and emerged unharmed) #(God bless P100s) #(best sixty-two dollars I ever spent) #*knocks on wood* #illness tw #covid19 #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #body horror?
the pandemic is at an awkward point right now but we’ve finally hit the sweet spot for an important opportunity, which is that it’s the best possible moment to mask in public using like a darth vader or daft punk or immortan joe kinda mask. you could set it up to also be filtered if you want it to actually work as a mask, but the important thing is the fashion statement
see earlier this wouldn’t have worked bc people wouldn’t have trusted that it was compliant, you had to wait for masking rules to be relaxed to the point where a lot of people weren’t wearing them. and later it won’t work because it relies on the shared knowledge that people do still wear masks a lot for health reasons; the soul of the bit is that people know it’s covid-related rather than just cosplay
so, get out there is what I’m saying. clock is ticking
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#yesterday I had an exchange with a customer: #Him: ”What’s the respirator for?” #Me: ”I have immune problems.” #Him: ”Oh‚ so it has nothing to do with– okay.” #and now I’m so curious what he was planning to finish that sentence with #I feel like it might have been related #(I *know* I’ve had at least one customer who was under the impression that I’d chosen a respirator over a surgical mask for the Aesthetic) #(it’s quite possible that a *lot* of them are under that impression‚ and it just mostly doesn’t come up) #I really don’t know what’s going to happen to the abovementioned shared knowledge #apparently SARS-1 made a lasting impact on the masking cultures of the places it hit #and yet people in the Roaring Twenties forgot the lessons of the Spanish flu quite rapidly #I suspect there’s going to be a lot of geographical variation #for one thing‚ some people live in places where they see me around town‚ which is certainly a reminder #(I saw people’s reaction to seeing me when they walked into the restaurant in the spring and summer of 2020) #(the way I was a living public-health notice) #tag rambles #covid19 #clothing #transhumanism #illness tw #discourse cw? #amnesia cw?
#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)
(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)
Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.
There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.
When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.
A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.
16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?
Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.
—
(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)
#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment #which is coming up soon #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental) #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions) #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of) #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself]) #((that safety thing manifests here especially)) #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something)) #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages)) #((this I am much less sure I endorse)) #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too)) #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising))) #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses))) #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))
#I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games)
Hi, 2018!me.
I won’t lie to you: I do still know that feel. Things haven’t really changed much for us financially: still a slow bleeding kept at bay by unpredictable one-time cash infusions, still with a-home-in-good-repair being a cherished but distant dream. Still taking some gigs at $1.30/hour, though only the especially easy ones now. We graduated last year, and the diploma’s been *exactly* as much of a waste of time and resources as we feared it would be, though I have not quite lost hope altogether. I have made only $309 in deposits to my retirement fund, in the time since I was you.
Financially, we still don’t have the stability and security that we long for.
*Non*-financially, though, our position has improved. We’ve made new friends, and even mostly managed to keep the old, and (in addition to the non-practicality-related aspects) they’ve taught us (and we them) many useful things. I’m in better shape now: not *great* shape, but on a good day I can run for half an hour straight (almost two miles!), and even on moderately bad days I can do twenty minutes. I still work at the restaurant, but I’m allowed to mask at work now (I know, right, we thought that would *never* happen, didn’t even dare hope for it), and we were–by, admittedly, a terrifyingly narrow margin–not fucked over by the travesty that set the precedent that workplaces allow employees to mask.
(If this were two-way communication, I’d have opened with advice on getting higher-grade and more durable masks while they’re still easy to come by, so that the margin won’t be so terrifyingly narrow. But it isn’t, and I will have to content myself with knowing that it worked out for us in the end.)
(It didn’t work out, for a lot of people. A lot of people, in a lot of ways, are worse off now than they were in 2018. I do not live in as flourishing a world as we would hope.
But we, personally, were fortunate in this regard: we rose through the cracks of the problems that hit everyone, and that actually ended up counteracting a lot of the problems that were specific to us. It’s where most of the one-time cash infusions came from; it’s why I haven’t been sick–not *really* sick, not anything bad enough to make me wish I were unconscious–in over three and a half of the four years that separate us.)
((common-cold-induced depression isn’t normal, BTW. you know that weird non-depressive cold we had in December of 2017? yeah, that’s just what colds are like for normal people. sure does explain a lot about why people are Like That.))
The Ontarian government has announced plans to start covering dental care in a couple of years (a long enough delay that I’ve decided it’s still worth paying for a checkup this year, though I may skip next year). Our parents’ pensions will start trickling in next year, with the bigger ones starting in 2025. I still have a couple more ideas for how to break into an accounting career, and I still have the option of changing tacks and making a living in an unrelated field.
In the time since I was you, I have bought both a solar panel and a video game.
One way or another, we’ll get through this.
Remember, I love you.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #covid19 #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #venting cw? #bragging cw? #kind of both
Remember, if it’s been at least 2 months since your last covid vaccine (whatever it was), and you are over 18, you qualify for the new covid bivalent booster. This booster specifically targets Omicron B.A.4 and B.A.5., which are the dominant strains in the US, and account for over 98% of new covid infections.
As of a couple days ago, this was authorized for emergency use in the US. Your local vaccination place should be getting these in stock within a week or two.
Covid is still a threat. Get vaccinated if you can.
Excellent info!
Here is an article in case people want to read more about that sort of thing.
#I got a fourth dose of univalent in July so I’m not eligible until January #I stand by my decision: *I* have a respirator‚ but I get a lot of indirect exposure through my family members and #frankly it’s a miracle Brother hasn’t *already* brought one Omicron or another home from work #in order to worry about the long term you have to make it through the short term first #I’ve made notes on the family calendar for the 5th-dose eligibility dates of me‚ Dad‚ and Mom #and I’ll be keeping an eye out for changes in that date: #Ontario often starts with a long dose interval but then shortens it later as supplies catch up #(Brother hasn’t even had a *third* dose‚ let alone a fourth‚ and could go for the bivalent as soon as they’re rolled out) #(but I don’t know that there’s anything I could say that would make him *more* likely to do it rather than less) #(my best bet might be to stay silent and hope he comes to the conclusion on his own) #PSA #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #reply via reblog
Pfizers Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted
I think the problem here is precisely that he should have been counted
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#okay but I want to see the case study #what effect did getting 87 vaccine doses have on his immune system #what’s his titer #covid19 #illness tw? #vaccines #Spiders Georg
one of the Respirator Posters, canada posting but not the part of canada that most canada posting is posted from. strong opinions on things which go in houses
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#testimonials #in the future I hope to develop even *more* opinions on things which go in houses #covid19 #proud citizen of The Future #our home and cherished land #domesticity
This kind of acausal compliment makes me want to share my Halloween costume from last year:
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#relatable #clothing #proud citizen of The Future #(I think the plague doctors of old would be pleased to know what we have been able to build on their foundation) #(I especially think about this when I see people wearing bifold ~N95s) #(it’s most blatant there: you can *see*‚ at a glance‚ how this object partakes of the same Platonic essence as a plague doctor mask) #(but better‚ more perfected‚ closer to the heart of #the thing the plague doctors took the first fumbling steps towards with their limited understanding and their limited manufacturing tech) #(it’s so beautiful) #((I wish I’d kept a copy of a picture I stumbled across once)) #((some news article I think)) #((a picture from a COVID ward‚ of a group of doctors gathered around a patient’s bed)) #((and these people‚ the plague doctors of our era)) #((were wearing elastomeric P100s just like mine)) #((or rather‚ I am wearing one just like theirs)) #((it is *so* beautiful‚ what we have been able to build)) #tag rambles #illness tw #covid19
Have you heard that Moderna is testing an even higher dose vaccine now? It’s meant to be the “Omicron version” of the vaccine. They just floored it more. That’s the kind of solution that I would propose. “Use a bigger fucking needle, with more of the good stuff in there.” You have to admire their style.
Folks over at Moderna won’t be happy until it takes you three days to recover from the jab and aerosolized COVID bursts into flames within a 30-meter radius. Just walk directly into the hospital and hear crackling and shrieking from the ECMO ward as the patients remove their masks too early and get a backdraft situation. Walk right up to God and give him back the corpse of his precious virus. Better luck with your next plague, asshole. We knew how to make a number bigger.
Guy stands behind you at the 7-11, gets a little bit too close, breathes on your neck and it just blows his throat open. Headless corpses littered all around the gas station. You’ll be shooting up with Scanners-style boosters between particularly risky visits to Home Depot. Trying to get your range to a full kilometre sitting on the vaccine amplifier. Fuckin’ Professor X, plugged into Moderna’s Cerebro, psychically throwing immunization at the developing world.
Your blood is just incredibly aggressive T-cells, they start disintegrating the sample needles when the WHO kicks down the door looking for the gigavaccine patient zero.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have let it out,” you say as your eyes roll back in your head. Now that it’s loose from the host, it detects traces of other coronaviruses on their feet and legs. Sees the little spikes. Goodbye.
Day Two of containment breach: 100.000000% vaccinated.
Day Three: the T-cells got bored, mutated, and decided to fuck up polio too because it “looks kinda similar.” Average human life expectancy is now 739 years. The earth’s surface is a never-ending roaring hellfire, a Gaian apocalypse. Someone coughs in the subway in Seoul and is immediately reduced to his constituent atoms, mere grist for the immune system.
Moderna stock price goes up nine basis points.
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#unreality cw #illness tw #covid19 #vaccines #death tw #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog
Brinens and Things 