Bears pointing out that in addition to COVID going “long” once and basically upgrading everything about me I wanted since 5th grade, the second time presented as a classic Batman like… Robin-level puzzle I had to solve to turn from a serious threat to a minor distraction, and my overall experience here has been radically more positive and self-affirming than anyone else’s

Well, whatever else it was, this year was better than 2020.

kontextmaschine:

Honestly its good there are still people struggling against the culture turn, still trying to insist harder on the 2010s, they’re gonna be a source of cheap wins to elevate the next wave

Matt Yglesias, by contrast, who’s already made it, is baiting everyone annoying to tie together the positions of COVID cowering and “detractor of Matt Yglesias”, so when politicians with a clue about politics are forced to jettison the former constituency the latter is wiped from any relevance too

thefloatingstone:

vague-vixen:

the-world-of-erit:

This is a plea to my followers.

Stop buying Apple products. I know you’ve used them for most of your life, and I know it’s inconvenient to move to a new brand because in most cases, you cannot take your contacts with you on various chat apps.

I know this is inconvenient. I truly do.

But Apple is not the company it was before. There is now no difference between an Apple computer and a Windows computer in terms of graphic design. I know this for a fact. I had to use both in college 20 years ago, and non-apple computers are now generally better for design work than Apple computers.

Most non-apple companies encourage self-repair of your own devices, while Apple refuses it. I also know this for a fact, as I watched Apple computers become slowly less reparable through the late 90s and early 2000s. Where I was once able to do the repairs on our office computers, we had to start sending out our Apple devices because they started gluing things down on their logic boards. Notably the glue they used was not heat-resistant and led to device damage should the heat sink system fail. But they did this because they wanted to dig more money out of their customers.

Apple software is also designed to fail. I cannot believe people are still buying new devices after the scandal where Apple was slowing their phones in order to force people to purchase new versions.

Apple hardware is designed to become obsolete. Motherboards and logic boards are designed to hold exactly what comes attached to them and will fail if upgrade attempts are made.

Apple refuses to work with software developers despite promises of cross-compatibility. One of the very first coding problems I discovered was to discover a gigantic hole in a software program that made a plotter (giant printer) compatible with iOS. This caused a memory leak, leading to necessary resets of the computer after every 2 feet of printing.

I know that it’s not possible for most of you to just throw your devices away and buy a new one. I wouldn’t be able to do that, either. But eventually there will come a time when you have to upgrade, and I encourage you to take the plunge and purchase a non-apple device. I don’t even have a recommendation for you because literally anything is better than Apple. A rock that you write on is better than an Apple phone.

Unfortunately I expect to be shadow-banned on Apple devices because of this, and I’ll try to report on decreased activity as much as I can.

It’s time to stop trying to beg Apple to change. They won’t. It’s time now to just stop supporting Apple.

Stop wasting your money on easily broken garbage!

I have a perfectly working iPhone 6. I got it because the iphone 7 no longer has a headphone jack and requires you to buy Apple’s shitty bluetooth headphones.
Last month Apple decided they will not be updating the iphone 6 to the new iOS… for no real reason. They wil still release bug fixes but are not releasing version 13 for iphone 6.

ALL apps in the istore now require you to be on version 13 of the iOS to download the app. HOWEVER apps I’ve already installed and downloaded work perfectly.

There is literally no reason for this other to encourage consumerism and to put my perfectly working phone into a landfill.

I’m upgrading to Android as soon as I have the money.

I’ve already switched from mac to windows after Apple wanted to charge me $2000 for a macbook with only 100gigs of RAM. That’s less than a fucking PS3.

Apple Products are inherently awful, and there is literally no benefit to buying them whatsoever. Other than to look like a complete tool.

Fuck Apple.

@argumate, you asked HOW tumblr was going to use the #girl stuff to put the 2010s to bed and not vice versa? This is how. We’re the furthest upstream part of internet culture rn, remember? We’re gonna foul Apple’s reputation ‘til they cry uncle.

Man, all the bitter onions in sandwiches this trip really highlight supply chain issues, though they have been a regular reassurance I don’t have anosmia

Honestly its good there are still people struggling against the culture turn, still trying to insist harder on the 2010s, they’re gonna be a source of cheap wins to elevate the next wave

Flying back tomorrow. No symptoms but after 3 airports, 2 flights, and a week about town, can only assume I’ve caught Omicron already. So it goes.

Reading public health Twitter and have never been so pro-Biden as upon seeing those guys wailing about him letting us die in the course of serving and pursuing power, rending their garments, and gnashing their teeth

I am, of course, a proper pagan, with proper pagan morality, if someone places themselves In uncompensated service to me and my interests I take it as a testament they are beneath me; in contrast to the extent they use and expend me towards ends of their choosing they are my superior

(I mostly only consider Biden superior insofar as he embodies the role of President; positions reversed I’d do the same to him. Contrast Taylor Swift, certainly my superior as the world’s biggest celebrity, &ct, but able to acquire that role by virtue of her superiority in the first place [it is possible this ranking might change as I fully explore my new power post-recovery])

Think the Trump-COVID two-step really might usher in the dawning of American paganism, or at least a master morality to replace the Christian-inherited slave morality that manifests in things like therapeutic culture, a legal system that elevates victims over victors, or the whole “public health” edifice (or, honestly, the attempt to pass pussywillow Wiccans off as “pagan”)

And that all the 2010s, “cancel culture” and all that was a last gasp, that as the paganism born in the ‘60s* (much remarked on at the time and in the decades following) marched through counterculture to subculture to mainstream culture there was a last ditch attempt by the lowly to throw it back, exploiting whatever residual deference towards them remained. But unlike the '80s pushback it fell short, so from here on the American pagan future is unwritten

* you gotta untangle it here from stuff that was rather the next step in slave morality: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” was pagan, “Free to Be… You and Me” was an attempt to locate morality in the value of individual humanity just qua individual humanity; “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win”, “Hanoi Jane” respect for your enemies for killing your side was pagan virtue, resistance to “old men” spending young Americans’ lives as fuel for their war machine was unvirtue.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals, and a Happy New Year!

sarkos:

If you told seven year old me the headline “President announces Omicron battleplan” and there was a US Space Force, I would not have been able to accurately extrapolate the way things would suck

Oh, I see, people are putting “JD” (“Juris Doctor”, i.e. you graduated law school) after their Twitter usernames as part of a general trend to indicate your postgraduate degrees.

First off, we all notice you’re doing that, which is such a transparently pretentious teacher’s-pet-class grasp at authority; second if you want to poncily make clear you’re a lawyer by putting something after your name, it’s Esq. (“Esquire”)

All 3 extended family dinners this holiday week canceled for emerging medical issues, one of which wasn’t even COVID

oflline:

Guilty verdict in trial of Kim Potter, former police officer who shot Daunte Wright

So if truckers aren’t serving Colorado in retaliation for one being convicted of causing a deadly accident when his brakes failed, are cops gonna refuse to serve Minnesota for convicting one of them for killing a guy when she drew her gun instead of her taser by accident?

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Impressed that Joe Biden is blowing off all the human-wise, nation-foolish epidemiologists on Twitter who want him to cancel Christmas (our cultural shorthand for evil villainy). Like, “God, what we’ve got to do is all stay inside for two months straight, repeated indefinitely forever, and then find the time, labor, and money to refit the bones of every school in the country, ::squawk:: COVIDisAirborne ::squawk::!”

I mean, if we try to maintain the state of exception as-is he gets blown the fuck out in 2022 and 2024 and we definitely open up then. If this turns out bad it’ll refill the political capital account for restrictions.

Admittedly, my judgement is colored by the fact that I’m apparently one of the only people for whom “long COVID” was a net positive, and the year and a half it took me out of was like if there were any you had the option to miss over my life it would be those

Oh my God, and it lets him triangulate against the types all “you can’t just live for yourself, you HAFF to take on any amount of burdens in the interests of the wulnerable!”, in a way such that costs disproportionately fall on conservatives but they’ve already put enough markers down they can’t pivot to attacking him for not supporting restrictions enough, that’s brilliant

To those types: the answer to “who is the decision to let a plague rip through the population supposed to win over?” is me

Again, in fairness, my perspective is I’m sure at some level influenced by the fact I’m like the only person I’ve ever heard of for whom “long COVID” was a net positive

Biden Fails the Christmas Test | National Review

Well, if they can’t blame him for not cracking down harder, they can still use the suffering to charge up complaints that he didn’t generically solve it in time, fair enough.

Impressed that Joe Biden is blowing off all the human-wise, nation-foolish epidemiologists on Twitter who want him to cancel Christmas (our cultural shorthand for evil villainy). Like, “God, what we’ve got to do is all stay inside for two months straight, repeated indefinitely forever, and then find the time, labor, and money to refit the bones of every school in the country, ::squawk:: COVIDisAirborne ::squawk::!”

I mean, if we try to maintain the state of exception as-is he gets blown the fuck out in 2022 and 2024 and we definitely open up then. If this turns out bad it’ll refill the political capital account for restrictions.

Admittedly, my judgement is colored by the fact that I’m apparently one of the only people for whom “long COVID” was a net positive, and the year and a half it took me out of was like if there were any you had the option to miss over my life it would be those

resinsculpture-deactivated20221:

I don’t in the final analysis 100% endorse it as a life philosophy, but some folks on tumblr could use a dose of the old romantic notion that if you’re an artist you’re allowed to be a bad person and just do whatever. why don’t you try subsuming your life in some kind of creative labor instead of in random moral fashions that make you a less interesting person

tanadrin:

necarion:

brawltogethernow:

Am I a Gävlebocken information resource now because I posted about it once at three a.m. I am not. I’m just going to type from the heart on my phone without fact-checking properly. Each of you as private individuals have to fact check.

Once a year in Gävle, Sweden they build a massive Yule goat out of straw. Once a year the public takes it upon themselves to try to set it on fire and destroy it. This is illegal. The people displaying the goat do not want this to happen. You’d think at this point 55 years into the thing they’d have sort of good humoredly accepted the game they are participating in, but they have not. Every time an arsonist succeeds they tighten security on the goat. Nevertheless, trying to kill this Christmas symbol is Tradition, and when the goat burns the world rejoices. More extreme goat protection measures are responded to with greater feats of human ingenuity and/or dumb luck. A team got it with flame-tipped arrows once.

The Gävle goat has been set at least somewhat on fire the majority of times it’s been erected, but stood untouched for an unprecedented four year streak from 2017 to 2020, widely regarded as a shit bundle of years. Like not to be American about a seasonal Swedish tourist attraction but that sure is every single year the Trump administration was in office. Restrictions about gatherings mean its 2020 survival was literally a symptom of COVID-19. So to our innately apophenic species the decoration being reduced to ash and structural skeleton yesterday feels like a good omen, a necessary sacrifice even. Hats off to the brave vandal that got it this time. I am unclear if there’s a way to internationally crowdfund his likely fines.

There is a chart describing the yearly fates of the goat and its smaller sister goat on Wikipedia and it is hilarious.

Spokeswoman Rebecca Steiner said she was devastated by the attack on the seasonal institution.

“It’s just a week before Christmas and I cannot understand how a person can carry out this kind of attack to a Christmas symbol known all over the world,” she told the BBC.

the annual Yule offering must be made to propitiate the dark winter gods of chaos, lest they reign unchecked over the ensuing year

I mean, of course you don’t get to pass major welfare spending programs AND a total reorientation of the industrial economy AND changes to voting systems explicitly intended to nerf one party and buff the other with a bare 50-vote+VP nominal Senate majority, even in parliamentary systems with absolute voting whip loyalty there are feedback mechanisms that prevent that

fandoms-and-fairies:

acorri:

Not only is it real but there’s more

I think Twitter is actually just the worst website ever created

I hate this but I can’t stop laughing

I honestly suspect Omicron is going to mark the end of the COVID “state of exception” in America – it’s apparently so infectious that everyone will have the experience of seeing multiple close contacts catch it.

So, in mostly vaccinated social circles, the wave will make a sufficient impression of people catching COVID and it mostly being a bother to overwrite any earlier impression of outbreak as catastrophic; it will join the other human coronaviruses as perpetually in circulation, coming in waves that might have a body count in a nursing home you’ll probably catch and feel under the weather. You might even see people born from here out developing their immunological armor the old-fashioned way, by getting repeatedly infected as resilient children

Unvaccinated and mixed social scenes, by contrast, would presumably experience the wave as more traumatic in a way that pushes them to join the first group or generates sufficient will to apply other measures to raise vaccination rates

I absolutely believe a flood of even minor cases might saturate our healthcare system to the point of collapse in the meantime, but I don’t think the truth of this fact would generate enough will to apply or sustain any measures sufficient to make the difference in preempting it, so feh