The Glade 4.0

Just checking back on this, if no other takers - DE I'll PM you to talk timing. I'll probably check back in a couple days to see any other interest and run from there.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Are you on the Discord, or PM here?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Hey, PM me, too, I'd be happy to get your perspective these days.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oil prices went negative, that seems real bad...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I am not with the Discords. It'll be here, prob in the next 24 hours.


Kaffis - I'll contact here, Hangouts, or FB Messenger.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Hangouts is tomorrow (Thursday Apr 23) at 4p eastern. Any last minute add-ons PM me.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It's not as bad as it seems because it is regional but it is still amazing watching it go to 1 dollar and the news starts to report it and it hit negative 36 and change at the lowest point I saw.

As far as long term we can only hope the other nations do at least as stupid **** as we do otherwise prices are going to rise even worse than already kneecapped production will make them.

If it goes bad enough I might start to hope for a dollar collapse but I doubt it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Why would you want the dollar to collapse Elmarnieh? Seems 180 degrees from what you should want. Enlighten us, please.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Looks like our rugged individualism demanding we pretend like this doesn't matter and that people "**** off with that whole wearing a mask noise" might be costing us.

On the other hand, assuming you remain immune to this, getting this spreading throughout the "healthies" might put us in better shape compared to other countries come fall.

Fun times.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

His medical advisors are also liars performing CYA maneuvers. All our hierarchies and institutions are corrupt.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There's also the crowds of idiots "protesting" with mask use occasional at best - particularly at night when COVID amongst the rioters isn't being immediately hit with UV light. In fact, I question pretty much any recommendation or requirement that limits outdoor daytime activity; people needs boosts to their immune sysyem and both Vitamin D and exercise are better than sitting indoors scarfing down GrubHub pizza.

We've been camping the last 2 weeks (actually scheduled before thus all started) in literally nowheresville Nevada (U.S. 50 lives up to its loneliest highway rep) but there's been a huge spike at home in the Rio Grande Valley, and I know whats driving it - packages, quincenieras, birthday parties etc. Big extended family gatherings haven't slowed down a bit and a lot are at ranchos in the emptyness south if San Antonio where the authorities wouldn't even kniw they're happening.

As to mask wearing, I think there's 2 unintended consequences of the approach to getting people to do it, which I'll talk about when i get home and not having to use a phone.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So, as I was saying, unintended consequences.

One of these is easy: Trying to trick people into not wearing masks to preserve them for medical personnel greatly degraded trust in the message, but also had the obvious side effect that had more people been wearing masks earlier, the initial spread might not have been as bad. Then, the initial "lockdowns" might have been more successful, but combined with other serious mistakes (such as not protecting nursing homes) they ultimately didn't work.

The second consequence partly comes from an association of masks and social distancing with lockdowns. They are actually different measures, but they have unfortunately become messaged together. More significantly, though, masks, and to an even greater degree, social distancing, are already victims of excessive harping. This is to say, they are good ideas that people are tired of hearing about already.

Repetition is good for learning to do things; it is not great for changing thinking. After a few repetitions of a message, continuously repeating it simply annoys people. I have observed this in many places - the Dallas Airport's endless TSA security loudspeaker messages, in school, my wife nagging me, the Army's endless barrage of sexual harassement and assault "training" backed up with a poster about it on almost every wall,... you get the idea.

The general public is starting to feel nagged, and worse, nagged by people that have already proven they are willing to not tell the truth to the public. There is also that element of the public that thinks itself the mask police, further contributing to the problem.

The constant harping on social distancing, masks, etc. needs to stop. The worst example are stores with one-way aisles. This is the kind of thing that really gets people saying "**** you". It is treating adults like kindergartners, totally unnecessary if people are generally wearing masks, and not super useful even if some people aren't.

Overall, though, it is actively hampering efforts to get people to wear masks to constantly harp on them. People need to be reminded once or twice a week, not once or twice an hour.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I am not sure what is going on in Texas but up in Ohio there is no nagging about masks. The stores that "require" them have a sign up telling people they need to wear them. Since it is not a legal requirement though, some people choose to wear them and others choose to ignore it.

The people who choose to ignore are now doing ridiculous things to avoid wearing them, such as creating fake certificates of medical exemptions, screaming about "muh Constitutional Rights!", bullying people who are wearing them/employees trying vainly to enforce the store policies or actively flaunting social distancing measures in really obnoxious and obvious ways.

On the flip side I have seen mask-wearing folks shame others for non-compliance too.

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That's because Constitutional rights are a real thing in the United States, whether we like them or not. (Funny, that used to be something the left slammed the right with.) Any attempts to enforce social distancing measures became null and void when people with favored political opinions were given carte blanche to ignore them. If this is really an emergency, then it's an emergency all the way. That means we can direct our indignation over people ignoring social distancing to the race riots, or we can **** right the hell off.

Seriously, you need to understand that to have a productive discussion about covid. When you see someone who doesn't wear a mask, you need to understand that person just watched small businesses get crushed by the worst economic depression since the 1930s and when they spoke up in protest, they were told they were a genocidal lunatic that was going to get Grandma killed. A few weeks later, that person got to watch a protest over police brutality get hijacked by blatant communist revolutionaries, and were told that the riots were A-okay and weren't spreading the virus at all. You can't tell that person that they have to wear a mask when they can clearly see that social distancing measures don't apply to the favored political ideology. There is a striking parallel between social distancing and other aspects of the criminal justice system. It's almost like asymmetric enforcement of law creates social unrest. Who would have thought?

Social distancing and other preventative measures were a good idea. A complete lockdown was a stupid idea (which, let's be honest, contributed to the insanity going on in numerous cities). I understand why we did it, we were scared and we panicked. It's time to admit that and move on. People make mistakes, and we fix them.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

FULL STOP.

Show me the Constitution Right being infringed by stores requiring masks, having occupancy limits or enforcing six feet of spacing.

If you want to argue about the Constitutional repercussions of shutting down businesses in a pandemic then I will listen but vapidly whining that Jimmy's Pizza making you slap a mask over your germ-hole before you come in is infringing on your right to *something something* Constitution is ludicrous. It is the equivalent of a nudist whining over a no shirt, no shoes, no service policy.

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Okay I went back and finished reading your comments and it sounds like you are saying you aren't wearing a mask because:

Small businesses went out of business in the pandemic
People protested police brutality
Communists are overthrowing America(?)
Riots are acceptable (?)
People had to go into a lockdown during the pandemic

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Coro - absolutely agree except maybe your last paragraph.

A complete lockdown has proven to have worked in other countries. We didn't do a complete lockdown. We did a weak, half-assed lockdown. It's possible the half-assedness was mandated by the elements of your first paragraph (the constitution), and that's a reasonable argument. But saying we had a complete lockdown to me is like hearing people say Republicans want laissez-faire markets....




Hopwin - I didn't read it as a defense of "but muh constitution" as an reason not to wear a mask, but more a condemnation of the inequal application of the law and the lockdowns.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That isn't how this works. You need to show me where in the Constitution governments are granted authority for any law that they pass. American citizens do not need to defend that they have certain inalienable rights. We hold those truths to be self-evident.

What I'm saying is: Either you apply this righteous indignation across the board, or you shut your mouth. If we have an emergency that justifies suspending First Amendment rights to assemble because of covid, then we need to suspend them for everybody. You need to go tell BLM that they're spreading covid and killing grandma. Most people won't do that, because they're afraid of being called a racist and getting beaten with a crowbar. I can't fault you for acting out of self preservation, but you have admitted defeat, so it's time to drop it with the whole mask thing. Just because I won't physically assault you doesn't mean you get to lecture me on social distancing.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Except I'm telling everybody to wear a mask. Because BLM is doing that. And worse.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I thought it was understood that I was addressing Hopwin, there. And while there are BLM protestors wearing masks, I defy you to show me that their mask compliance rate is any higher than your local supermarket. More to the point, their numbers are orders of magnitude higher than the occupancy limits for public gatherings, rendering masks somewhat moot.


Fair point.

I am certainly willing to entertain better terminology to describe what we did compared to "complete lockdown," although if we're going that road, no country in the world had a "complete lockdown." Such a thing simply is not feasible regardless of the civil rights enshrined in the country's body of law. People gotta eat. What we did do was cripple our economy by throwing disfavored (generally smaller) businesses under a bus to take people out of circulation. Unfortunately, we simply couldn't resist the allure of using this disease for political gain. We were certainly going for a complete lockdown, but we realized we'd lose too much donor money in an election year if we did that.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yea, good points on the application of these lockdowns/quarantines/etc.

Reason, as usual, as a good article about it:

https://reason.com/2020/06/29/were-covi ... arsely-api



The mixed messages commentary is in there, to your point. The politicization isn't front and center enough. I'm really tired of the politicization of this, as well as the urgency of the 'news' to use this to drive revenue.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

OK, so I think we're talking past each other, and for once I'm going to attempt to not be the biggest ******* I can be. It's a lot easier when it's really only non-asshole posters remaining. edit: you guys posted 3 times while I was pontificating so I may be behind now.

- I think it is very important to differentiate between social distancing/masks, lockdowns, and quarantines/stay-at-home orders. These are accelerating levels of restrictiveness that require different justifications.

- social distancing/masks: I think no one is in disagreement that much of the upset over the masks can be laid at the feet of the Surgeon General/Fauci and their staffs flip-flopping and then admitting they had ulterior motives. That said, I also think that indoors, and probably at night outdoors, they are of some benefit, perhaps very large benefit. I also think most of us would agree that a private business owner has a right to require masks in their business.

As to whether the government can demand that of businesses, I do not think the Federal government can. The States, however, might be able to, and that would depend on the State Constitution and laws in question. The government certainly can demand it inside government facilities.

I do not see any Constitutional right impeded by masks. The question is not one of "do you have a right to not wear a mask?", it is "Does the echelon of government in question have the power to require it, and if so, when and where?"

I also find that the "You don't have a right to get people sick" argument is completely disingenuous. That is obviously true, but it applies only if someone is actively trying to get people sick. Lack of a right to get people sick is not a power to restrict people from exercise of their other rights, and disingenuous arguments like this actively harm efforts to get people to wear masks.

- lockdowns: By lockdowns, I mean mandating closing businesses

I agree that the lockdown was half-ass. New Zealand did a complete lockdown, but they are an island, making it very easy

I do not think that the Federal Government necessarily has the authority to order a lockdown. The Federal Government DOES have the authority to order businesses to stay OPEN, under the Defense Production Act, and could in theory open the entire economy by simply deeming everything essential, although that would be transparent because of its obvious absurdidty.

The fundamental problem with the lockdown was that it would have had to have been very complete, very short (5-6 weeks at most), and very painful. Disregarding the problems of getting a country of this size and this composition to do so in the first place, I am not entirely sure that the food supply chain could have stood up to it. It was starting to experience stress as it was. People just don't keep 5-6 weeks worth of supplies in their houses and the problem of keeping "essential businesses" open is that other businesses are essential to keepint he essential ones open. Even COVID tests ran across this; in order to make test kits, you need cotton swabs and other things, you need those businesses to stay open, you need trucks or planes available, they need fuel and maintenance... That said, other countries have solved this problem, but being physically much smaller than ours I am not entirely certain we could duplicate their success.

That said, there are certain activities that are very likely to spread COVID. Bars evidently are one. It seems likely movie theaters, concerts, and sporting events would be too. I find it likely that traditional churches are as well (though it pains me to say it), although some governments were way too eager to target them over other venues with similar likelyhood. I also think having a bunch of people cramming together to protest to be pretty likely to be a danger.

On the other hand, there was very little time to plan for this, or understand it, and when time is at a premium, a "panic" reaction may be the only reaction available because nothing can be devised that's any better. I think that such lockdowns as happened at the time were understandable and probably did slow the spread, but I also think that now that we have done it once, it is over, whether we got it right or not.

As to the effect on the rioting and protesting, I do think that the availability of a lot of people with nothing better to do escalated it, regardless of feelings on the issues at hand.

- Quarantine/Stay-at-home:

This is where I think that things have been of very questionable Constitutionality, and counterproductive to boot.

Exercise, Sunlight, Vitamin D, and being in bright, sunny, windy environments where it is hard for the virus to spread are all obviously positive. Closing of outdoor recreation areas was incredibly stupid; beaches, playgrounds, parks (especially national parks in the middle of nowhere) and the like are beyond idiotic. Obesity is a major risk factor with this disease; people do not need to be confined indoors scarfing down Pringles, and our public health authorities have 100% failed on this particular aspect of stay-at-home

Quarantine is an exercise of the police power, and has long been recognized as such - especially by states and localities. The state has great power to confine people positively known to be ill with contagious diseases.

However, this is a taking of liberty, and what do we require to take liberty?

Probable cause

In order to quarantine a person, probable cause to believe that individual is in fact able to spread contagious disease (such as a positive COVID test) must exist. The populace at large cannot be legally quarantined, and the "but we don't know who has it!" and similar arguments are just not good enough.

So what is the government to do instead?

Well, get people to wear masks.

And despite the numerous missteps there have been on masks, it remains a good idea. I agree with Coro on the righteous indignation, hypocrisy, and general desire to disregard mask advisories. I don't want to wear one. But, the fact remains, it's a good idea, and stores are private businesses withiin their rights to mandate them. People need to worry about wearing their own damn mask. They do not need to be the mask police, and they can exercsie their Constitutional rights just fine with one on. If that won't work, find a KOA in the middle of nowhere and stay there for a while. I just did it for 2 weeks; it was pretty fun. Bighorn Sheep are cool.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think a lot of them are inclined to wear masks for reasons unrelated to COVID, and so compliance is accidentally higher than you'd think.

That said, mask compliance is remarkably higher than you'd think at my local supermarket. Given the culture down here it's very surprising.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's better if it happens earlier rather than later. The dollar isn't backed by anything and the way the Fed is increasing the money supply is devaluing our money - most affected are the last to spend it which is not connected contractors or banks, its the people who get it in paychecks. Now that also means those who hold our debt are seeing the value of their holdings shrink as well. They will only hold on to or buy our debt for so long and no the Fed is buying corporate debt. Check out whats happened recently (aside from the 1 trillion of new dollars in supply per day).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So you attack me and then on a few seconds of considering it you also see the upsides in the long run. Funny. Maybe try considering first and typing second.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville