How COVID-19 is affecting society

[Innula Zenovka]

Thoughtful article in The Times on the problems facing Boris Johnson, but also heads of government all over the world, and US governors, when there are no good choices:

Johnson’s tragedy is that he has no safe option

The reason politics is so hard is that it is the realm of tragic choices. The prime minister will return to work soon to face the tragic choice that will define his career. Britain’s departure from the European Union is not such a choice, even if it was greeted like the next instalment of the advent

www.thetimes.co.uk

Johnson’s tragedy is that he has no safe option | Comment | The Times

Johnson’s tragedy is that he has no safe option Every political decision means weighing costs and benefits but rarely are the choices as grim as those the PM faces now Philip Collins Thursday April 23...

www.evernote.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

lol oops

 

[Fionalein]

AK-47... most Murican firearm evar since they got bought up by Putin!...

"Long guns" ... so PDWs are OK? OMG!

 

[Jolene Benoir]

He well understands that the Confederacy was more about states' rights than slavery? Do tell. It was about states wanting the right to continue slavery, extend it to new territories where possible and for the north to deliver both slaves and those that helped them up to them. They quaintly use words such as "fugitives from labor", "deprived of property" and "beneficient and patriarchal system of African slavery". It is contained right within the secession declarations of most, if not all of the states that seceded.

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

I do recommend reading it all, but here's a sample:

Georgia:

It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us.

Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

South Carolina:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Texas:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

It might be annual then, like the flu shot.

And probably about as effective.

How did we manage to beat back the SARS coronavirus in 2004?

 

[Fionalein]

How did we manage to beat back the SARS coronavirus in 2004?

Pure luck!

 

[Kara Spengler]

AK-47... most Murican firearm evar since they got bought up by Putin!...

"Long guns" ... so PDWs are OK? OMG!

I guess bandoliers of hand grenades are fine too?

 

[Kara Spengler]

He well understands that the Confederacy was more about states' rights than slavery? Do tell. It was about states wanting the right to continue slavery, extend it to new territories where possible and for the north to deliver both slaves and those that helped them up to them. They quaintly use words such as "fugitives from labor", "deprived of property" and "beneficient and patriarchal system of African slavery". It is contained right within the secession declarations of most, if not all of the states that seceded.

The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

I do recommend reading it all, but here's a sample:

Georgia:


Mississippi:


South Carolina:


Texas:

Yeah, one of my geekeries is history. While almost no event has one cause you can sort them into primary and secondary. In the case of the civil war it is not hard to argue (although people try) that slavery was primary and anything else was a distant second.

 

[Clara D.]

lol oops

So, swastikas and handguns it is!

 

[Aeon Jiminy]

 

[Fionalein]

Leave it to the German government to associate the Novel Coronavirus with the Umbrella Corp. logo... *sigh* this is serious no f*in computer game about zombies you f*in morons!

Coronavirus

Coronavirus und COVID-19 – aktuelle wissenschaftlich gesicherte Informationen und Antworten auf alle wichtigen Fragen von der Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung.

www.infektionsschutz.de

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I didn't watch the whole thing, but over here mortgage lenders will be typically be offering borrowers the option either to spread the three (or however many) months' repayments over the whole life of the mortgage or to extend the life of the mortgage by however many months plus interest.

Whatever happens, very few mortgage borrowers will have to pay the whole amount as soon as the lockdown finishes.

I'm much more worried about people in rented accommodation who haven't been able to work, since their landlords probably won't be as patient as the banks can afford to be.

Similarly, I'm worried about people who used to max out their credit card every month, then pay it off in full out of their next month's earnings, thus treating themselves to a phantom thirteenth month's paycheck every year (I made the mistake of doing that when I was younger, and it took me years to extricate myself from the hole I fell into when my partner was taken ill and I had to cut back on work considerably to become a carer).

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Revealed: 'former Vodafone executive' in 5G conspiracy video is UK pastor

Jonathon James is previously unidentified individual who reached millions with false claims about Covid-19

www.theguardian.com

A recording spread around the world at the end of March, purportedly featuring a former Vodafone executive claiming to let the public in on a secret that the coronavirus pandemic is cover for a global plot to install 5G mobile phone masts, track the world’s population through vaccines, and then destroy human society as we know it.

In reality, the Guardian can reveal, the voice on the tape making the baseless claims is actually an evangelical pastor from Luton who recently tried to convince Zimbabweans to use cryptocurrency in their economy.

Jonathon James, who regularly preached at churches in Bedfordshire, is the previously unidentified individual who reached millions of people with his detailed but nonsense claims that Covid-19 is a fake disease covering for the impact of 5G.

 

[Free]

Revealed: 'former Vodafone executive' in 5G conspiracy video is UK pastor

Jonathon James is previously unidentified individual who reached millions with false claims about Covid-19

www.theguardian.com

Sounds like we have our next John McAfee.

 

[Free]

More polling, more signs of intelligence.

Large majorities of Americans back coronavirus restrictions, slower return to normal: POLL

Large majorities of Americans favor the restrictions, fear moving too quickly to reopen the economy and remain uneasy about the pandemic, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows.

abcnews.go.com

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Yeah, one of my geekeries is history. While almost no event has one cause you can sort them into primary and secondary. In the case of the civil war it is not hard to argue (although people try) that slavery was primary and anything else was a distant second.

Yeah it's pretty wild; at the actual time of the Civil War the Confederates all agreed the war was very definitely about slavery and weren't afraid to say so. It was only a few years after they were defeated that the whole "oh it was only about 'states rights' in general" thing started up.

Whatever, but the biggest problem is how they've been given basically free-reign to rewrite history. There's a saying that goes "history is written by the victors", and being conscious of that issue Civil War historians tried to be "fair" and let the former Confederates be in charge of writing their own story assuming good faith, and so there's like some seriously respected sources that contain bits of this historical revisionism.

The one irritating thing about Ted Turner's mostly excellent Civil War flicks is the way he shows Confederate generals, like all of them, being all fatalistic and weak-kneed disappointed in the whole slavery thing, like "my oh my I wish we didn't have slavery, we totally should've ditched slavery before starting this war but oh well we have to keep fighting now I owe a sacred duty to Virginia despite its flaws, le siiiiiigh"....LOL like come on, give me a freaking break.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

The argument that the Civil War wasn't about slavery has to ignore everything that happened since the Mexican War, especially the entire 1850s.

Polk's expansion of the US, filling out the lower 48, reopened the question of slavery in the territories. Texas had slavery, but the rest of the new territory did not. The issue was reignited by the Kansas-Nebraska act which allowed slavery in Kansas if the settlers allowed it, invalidating the earlier agreement that slavery should not extend north of the Arkansas-Missouri border. Stephen Douglas included it in the act in order to get his fellow Democrats to support organizing Missouri as a territory so that Douglas could push for the northern route of the Transcontinental Railroad terminating in Chicago. That militarized pro and anti slavery groups.

Following that came the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required free states to assist in capture of escaped slaves (and that process was abused to enslave free blacks from border states). It was a massive and unpopular violation of State's Rights.

Adding to the fire was the Dread Scott decision, which managed to further erode the rights of states by limiting how states defined citizenship.

Add in Bleeding Kansas, Harper's Ferry, and the formation of the Republican Party out of the ashes of the Whigs and Free Soil parties, and you have over a decade of turmoil about slavery, which is the only backdrop that makes the Confederate decision to break up the Union after the 1860 election make sense.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Anyways back on topic ^^

Dang female shoppers

Japanese mayor says men should grocery shop during pandemic as women 'take a longer time'

 

[Free]

Japanese mayor says men should grocery shop during pandemic as women 'take a longer time'

He's never caught my brothers in a hardware store!

 

[Fionalein]

Anyways back on topic ^^

Dang female shoppers

Japanese mayor says men should grocery shop during pandemic as women 'take a longer time'

that guy has not met my dad...