Made this in honor of today’s announcement. Yes that’s my actual mask in the meme.

I'm having to spend an undue time gently attempting to persuade my brother over email that today's announcement is a good thing. This thing where some people have been institutionalized by quarantine is real. At least he demonstrated self-awareness about that so that I didn't have to put time into establishing the obvious.

What's his counter? It seems to be fairly obviously a good thing

He raised concerns about the safety of it (though he's fully vaxxed), but those concerns are flimsy and he's wrong. He basically has ended up falling back into "but masks could still help," which...fine, but that's not persuasive in terms of dictating what policy should be for the population at large.

But then he moved onto admitting what is surely controlling his whole reaction, that he's just become very comfortable and happy with remote work, and he hates being forced back into the in-office grind, commuting and all. I'm sympathetic to that and I hope to not be back to 5x/week in the office myself, though I suspect that's coming. It is what it is.

These reactions are going to be common.

Have been in Pittsburgh the last few days on Pitt’s campus. I’d put mask wearing outdoors at north of 80%. Even runners and bikers which is insane. The girl at the bar where I got beer and wings told me she was so happy not getting a cold this winter that she wanted to keep wearing her mask. She’s also a fan of continuing social distancing. A waitress walked by and agreed.

Here’s the best take I’ve seen on the whole pandemic from Matt Taibbi:

“The arrival of Covid-19 has crashed America on a paradox that reads like the plot of a bad Star Trek episode. Half the country mistakes science for a set of inflexible decrees and demands it be worshipped as a religion. The other half believes the first group is always lying and defies even its sensible dictates, in its own theology of liberation. Science, a deliberative process, is collateral damage to the battle."

Laughed at this since it doubtlessly describes the first group:



I’m sure plenty of others have been made of equal value about the COVID denial crowd.

Yeah, I mean it seems like there's a couple of things at play.

The first one is that if you've been among the people who has been rigidly following the safety guidelines for over a year, that **** will warp your brain, and it's understandable that this will create a natural awkwardness in returning to normal. I don't have any mockery for this; it makes sense that people would feel this way. They should be trying to get over it though.

The more frustrating aspect is that the reactions I'm describing are also a byproduct of people being obsessively tribal and allowing themselves into fall into the trap of seeing this thing be politicized, with masks somehow becoming a tribal symbol. Obviously there's one person who bears a ton of the blame for this. But in any case, sensible people should not have let themselves fall into the trap of seeing masks as anything more nor less than a common-sense measure for everyone to do their parts to help fend off a raging global pandemic.

However, and I'm not going to pretend to be shocked by it, a bunch of people who were very comfortable using "believe the science" as a cudgel seem to have revealed this purportedly deeply held belief as actually being fairly hollow. A lot of areas of science are obviously well-settled, but a young deadly virus is not going to be one of those, and to truly be a follower of science is to expect and adapt to changes, even stark ones, in reaction to it. Science doesn't exist to cater to your comfort level at any given moment.

Of course, if a person's skepticism about lifting restrictions isn't honest and is just a pretext for "I don't want to go back to the office," I get the underlying impulse and feel the same way. But...just ****ing say that.

I think that’s mostly right. We have a serious collective case of Stockholm Syndrome.

I consider myself to have been a loyal pandemic foot-soldier since the beginning. Consolidated trips out, pretty faithfully masked/social distanced, etc. Could never buy into masks outside or exercising—my rudimentary understanding of parts per million prevented me from doing so.

I’ve always been acutely aware, however, of how damaging these lockdowns have been socially, culturally, and economically; and that pandemic mitigation measures must always be weighed against these costs. For me, the vaccine was always the ticket to freedom—the pandemic endgame. Once I got it, however, I began to feel super disillusioned that I could do seemingly no more things. I did an audible GTFO when Dr. Fauci cautioned against dining indoors even whilst vaccinated. Rand Paul (whatever you may think of him) was right in lampooning Fauci for double-masking in a room full of vaccinated people as engaging in nothing more than theater.

My bottom line now: It’s time to move on. Vaccines are and have been available to all who want one. If you choose not to get one, well, that’s on you. The world can’t stay paused forever on account of these people.

Brother, having 24 hours to digest the news, has turned around almost entirely and is on board with what the CDC did yesterday.

He’s more reasonable and willing to change his mind than most people, but still, hopefully we see similar patterns in the reactions of others.

Cocaine’s a hell of a drug. RIP.

Man, I saw "RIP New Jack" on Twitter earlier and just assumed it was the anniversary of his death or something.

Being a wrestling fan is also in the category of things that will **** up your brain.

He died as he lived. I had just rewatched his Dark Side of the Ring the other night, such an entertaining episode. His Smoky Mountain promos were on another level.

Crazy mother****er.

LKJ, since your the best crusader against recency bias:

Worst play in MLB history?

I can't think of one. Incredibly stupid. Though I will say that I have to assume the stupidity was all driven by 1B somehow being unaware of the fact of two outs, in which case the whole thing at least becomes less absurd, and you can kind of walk yourself through the mindset of him wanting to be able to tag before making an additional out, and then the natural reaction that comes when the runner gets close to home. That's a really bad mistake obviously, but a mental error about the number of outs is I'm sure something that happens more often than we realize.

In terms of completely unreasonable reactions that defy all explanation, I'd say that Clemens chucking part of Mike Piazza's bat at him during the 2000 WS, then trying to explain that he thought it was the ball, still takes the cake. Even if you could credibly believe that he didn't realize what totally dissimilar object he picked up, you don't pick up a ground ball and then throw it at the baserunner.

Lol, yeah, that is pretty nuts. I feel like he deserves more ridicule than he got for that.

Thankfully I do think it's pretty well-accepted and known that Roger Clemens is an irredeemable psycho. He's not one of those people that forces me to go on an unhinged years-long Frank Grimes smear campaign to convince people that they should see him the same way.

Well, this post wont do without examples

He had frosted tips as a 50-year-old.

But really: there were the Piazza incidents (flinging the bat at him was some weird paranoid reaction to thinking that Piazza was doing something after he plunked Piazza in the head in their prior meeting). And he once said that he wished Hank Aaron were still playing so he could "crack his head open" because Aaron said he didn't think pitchers should be eligible for MVP. He was also accused of statutory rape of a 15-year-old when he was 28 (while married with kids, though the age thing seems more relevant given the track records of pro athletes).

He has otherwise just seemed like an *******. Like, if Curt Schilling didn't exist, it feels like it would leave Clemens as the ******* pitcher of that generation.

No no, I need examples of the people that give you the unhinged neccesary rants to convince others.

Well that's a relief. The way I understood your question, I thought I was going to find out that actually Clemens is well-liked and respected.

My years-long crusade against Aaron Rodgers ITT would be an example of what you're asking about. Though admittedly I don't have receipts to prove that he's a terrible person, so mostly he's just a sports villain on the basis that his personality sucks and his fawning media coverage is obnoxious. Completely coincidental that they're both star Packer QBs, but I waged the same sort of war against Brett Favre before that. He's been kind enough to show his full ass upon reaching middle age, and has validated my years-long grudge against him that was largely based on a combination of his obnoxious fawning "just a kid having fun out there" media coverage combined with him being a really obviously phony good ol' boy.

Am I the only one who thinks LKJ may be a sociopath ? Lol

Lol, I don't think he is. He does have interesting and amusing views of the world though, and I always enjoy reading them.

I happened to Google the movie *clears throat* Norbit.

I am asking you fine folks to guess how much it grossed at the box office.