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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. I wonder if that number is totally made up or just a product of creative statistics. Maybe particularly contentious divorce/custody situations get called “missing”, a family goes homeless and now the kid is “missing”, a kid gets briefly reported as missing but really just needed to charge their phone, and then you can get any number you want. It’d be nice to have an honest assessment of the situation, since the reality is probably bad enough. Absurd numbers just make it easier to dismiss. I guess Soul Asylum needs to bring back a longer version of their song.
  2. It might have come from the wet market or it might have leaked from the lab. Smart people who have no reason to make stuff up seem to say it wasn’t manufactured, so I’m inclined to believe them. We could use a bipartisan investigation into the origins and international alignment on the appropriate response and more importantly, a plan to stop future pandemics. We’ll get the My Pillow Guy hosting Jim Jordan at the Plandemic Cyber Symposium for a 144-hour lecture on miasmata and essential oils. That’s probably what we deserve.
  3. It sure seems like the backup plan in my state is to shut things down for two weeks. I know an administrator who just had to shut things down a few days ago — the whole district. Small districts don’t have a lot of resources. Delta is so much more contagious and teachers probably aren’t getting vaccinated in large enough numbers in rural areas. Of course no one wants to use masks in rural areas. If you refuse to use any of the tools to keep things running, then things might not keep running. Things shut down fast.
  4. It’s fun to talk about high-minded thing like muh freedoms vs. who will think about the children, all the relative risk management issues with kids, or even the nuts and bolts of funding, but there are schools shutting down in my state for a very simple reason. An outbreak among the faculty very quickly over strains the already strained resources of a district. It doesn’t take much for an exposure at a faculty meeting to shut a school down. You can talk all you want about wanting the best for the kids, but once faculty start having to isolate for two weeks, you lose the ability to have school pretty quickly.
  5. I have no idea. My service was as cushy as military service could be. My experience was so far from the things we imagine as military service, so I'm not even sure if I'm qualified to answer those questions. I suspect you'd get 1000 different answers if you polled 1000 service members. I remember a conversation I had with another soldier on the way to a funeral mission. He had a more typical Army experience than me. We were talking about why we joined. I talked about practical things like the details of the job I had, the excitement over learning new things, supporting my family, ect. I didn't mention any of the Army value stuff they pound into you. I guess all of these things can help provide meaning to the inherent stupidity. The Army values are fine values, but I joined for "selfish" reasons rather than all that patriotic stuff. This soldier was a bit baffled that all that stuff didn't play into my service. He was all about the romance of military service and couldn't comprehend my mindset. I just wanted to do my job well and learn new things and couldn't wrap my brain around his way of thinking. We both did our jobs well, so I guess the difference didn't really matter. I'm not sure if there's a coherent way to find meaning in an organization that is so absurd while taking part in actions that are so absurd. So much of it is so dumb, but it has a real human cost. We spent the past 20 years -- an entire military career -- fighting "terror" with so little tangible good to show for it and a lot of really bad stuff; and now leaving is hurting people like InkaUTexas' friends. I don't know how meaning, value, or honorableness can be assessed in such a messed up situation.
  6. The spiritualization of bad and cruel choices is maddening. For people of faith, God blessed us with brilliant saints of all and no faiths who worked tirelessly under extraordinarily difficult conditions to produce a miraculous vaccine. Finally we could end the death and suffering with just a minor inconvenience. The inherent value of life reaffirmed. You have not because you ask not; if you won’t accept God’s blessing via these wonderful people, what should you expect to happen? Good people sacrificed for this and so many people of faith are rejecting and vilifying them. There’s a twisted gospel message somewhere in there. A lot of the church could learn about the Gospel from the unbelieving world. They’re kicking our ass when it comes to upholding our stated values.
  7. Who’s playing?
  8. I’m disappointed that this thread had to be moved to the CR. We need a news-only gameday thread without the partisan bickering on a fast moving day like today.
  9. A few unrelated thoughts: 1. My military service was very insulated from most of the dangers of these stupid wars. The wars were obviously pointless and ill-conceived for so long, yet seeing the news of the past few weeks has been a bit of an existential kick in the pants. We try to conjure up some bigger meaning to a sacrifice, but seeing the plain futility is a lot to wrestle with. 2. I have friends who are recently retired or nearing retirement. They were junior enlisted when 9/11 happened or joined in the patriotic fervor of the era. The war took up pretty much their entire military career. Again, a lot to take in. 3. So much suffering: deaths, lifetimes of pain, suicides, and addiction. I tend to comprehend global issues in personal terms, so I can’t help but think of a few friends whose lives went totally off the rails thanks to their service in the war on terror. The scale of American suffering as well as all of those living in the middle of all of this is beyond my comprehension. 4.Democracy requires consent of the governed. Consent and foreign military actions seem to be in a bit of a conflict.
  10. Between the space alien invasion and the reinstatement, it’s a pretty big week.
  11. I wanted to post this story on another thread a few months ago. I don’t remember the context anymore. I spent a few minutes digging around the old site and couldn’t find it. My memory is that it was first posted by Mr. Wizard in the early shaggy days, but either my memory was wrong or my search skills are pretty bad. Either way, it’s a beautiful story.
  12. My unvaxxed father-in-law is in the hospital with COVID. My wife spoke with him today: vaccines will cause immune problems in the future, he got it from a vaxxed person, it was lab created, democrats are in on it.... It's so heartbreaking how deep the hole of misinformation is and how much suffering it's causing. Honestly, he's a victim of it and he'll never even understand it. He can't say two words without running out of breath; he's scared and keeps breaking down in tears; yet a made-up enemy is what he wastes his limited words on. He's been lied to over and over and he's been given over to his hate, and now he's suffering for it but it's all he has. It's so heartbreaking and so destructive. My wife texted a group of church friends from where we used to live. We use the group text to share life updates, people ask for prayer, keep in touch with some of our closest friends, ect. My wife asked for prayer for her very sick father. She can unburden herself from the situation and people can remind her that they love her and care for her. It should be a beautiful thing: I'm worried about my dad; ok, I love you and I'm going to petition the creator of the universe on your behalf. Even if you don't believe, it should be a beautiful expression of care and concern for a dear friend. The same couple that told us to take the horse paste when we got COVID mentioned the horse paste and then sent some link with "good medical info" from the AAPS. A little research shows that group to be a libertarian political advocacy group pretending to be a medical organization. They're anti-vax on steroids and dressed up in a lab coat. I'm all for exploring any political solution to national healthcare -- put it all on the table with regards to politics -- but how far down the rabbit hole of political degeneracy do you have to be to respond to a family crisis with that garbage? Even if your politics are the right big picture solution, how dark and twisted must your heart be to see that as an answer to "pray for my dad, I think he's dying?" "Can I tell you about the libertarian solution to healthcare? Here's some lies about medicine that'll kill you but align with my political views." It's so broken and deranged, and these were always such wonderful people before.
  13. It varied by the hour. Until my smell went away, it was not much different than my regularly scheduled late summer sinus infection. I forgot to add that while I really never had much of a fever, I had a few nights of weird chills as it progressed.
  14. My breakthrough was post nasal drip and fatigue to start. It turned into nasal congestion, loss of smell, sore throat, headache, and shortness of breath. I maybe had a mild fever for one night. Now it’s fatigue and some residual head congestion. Symptoms started a week ago Thursday, peaked this past week Wednesday, and I felt like I was truly getting better on Friday.
  15. Reading the article: 1. This is a few years old. 2. To both sides this thing, they also did a Big Bang one, “Should schools in America teach the creation theory of Catholic priest George Lemaitre as part of their science curriculum?” Predictably, Democrats overwhelmingly opposed it while Republicans supported it. Most likely, neither side knew what they were supporting or opposing in large numbers. Opposing Arabic numerals is dumber than missing the Big Bang reference, but just by a little bit. I'd rather none of these morons have any say in my child's education. 3. The Roman numeral puns in response to that tweet are excellent and worth the read.
  16. Post nasal drip started Thursday last week I think. Tested negative over the weekend and then positive early this week. Worst day was probably Wednesday where I had a fair bit of shortness of breath. I never had real chest congestion, just a stuffed up nose and felt winded. Last fever was maybe Monday night. I’m sure these would be classified as mild symptoms, but it’s also the sickest I’ve been on many years. And it’s a weird sickness that doesn’t seem to progress in the right order.
  17. I noticed that I could vaguely smell my kid’s play doh last night. There’s also a hint of ammonia in everything that I smell. I’ve read that some people get a fecal smell to everything, so I’ll take the ammonia.
  18. As two breakthrough cases, my wife and I had a friend text us yesterday telling us to take HCQ and the horse stuff. We were told that if we couldn’t get a human script, to just get the animal version and use online conversation charts. I had previously heard about this and thought the whole thing was a joke until someone close to us earnestly encouraged us to poison ourselves. Won’t take the “experimental vaccine” but will take horse dewormer.
  19. Trumpet playing was an event in the ancient games. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herald_and_Trumpet_contest
  20. I’m not insane, so I’m only taking a cocktail of Benadryl, sudaphed, and Who’s the Boss reruns, but yes, that’s the stuff.
  21. Mole family vaccine breakthrough update: - not dead yet. - Mrs. Mole and I both are having symptoms of a mild head cold so far. I credit either the vaccine or the horse worm paste for this. - One day, my pee smelled like asparagus pee, without eating any asparagus. It could be the horse worm paste, but I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere as a symptom. - I lost my sense of smell in the past hour or so. It’s weird. It seems like a good time to get in the habit of only eating healthy food, since you can’t taste it anyway. - We spent our summer in a cautious normal, doing things but avoid high risk situations, yet we still got sick. The doctor told me that she’s seen an uptick of breakthrough cases. My guess is that breakthrough cases will be relatively common. I have a feeling that delta is going to be wild as kids go back to school.
  22. That’s why I never got that feral pig I won.
  23. The vaccine meant that my parents could hold and play with their grandchildren again after about 18 months without that risk of killing them. I guess that’s not a big deal if you hate the concept of family.
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