TimB

All that model noise and it looks like we’re back to our usual pattern of alternating between unseasonable warmth and “cooler” periods that are still at or slightly above normal.

@WaryWarren’s response would indicate to me that you do have to spend a couple grand per month in rent in TX.

Climate and taxes maybe, but I’d be surprised if the “talent pool” is any better in a place like Texas or Florida than, say, New York or California. It might not be significantly worse either, but those two states aren’t exactly known for superior education. (Of course, it’s also industry dependent.)

It’s quite possibly not a fair generalization, it’s anecdotal based on the small number of people I personally know in that category. I think it’s questionable whether or not one hobby being a person’s entire identity is “healthy,” but I think psychoanalysis is far beyond the scope of this discussion, so my apologies for crossing the line of things that are or aren’t relevant here.

You’re probably right. There are a lot of people whose entire identity is “I go to the gym a lot” and I would guess that a lot of them have similar political views.

Would it? It would stand to reason that most people who go to the gym are health conscious and would be more likely than average to get vaccinated, so I don’t think they would lose a huge percentage of their customers.

Sorry, I missed it. Seems like the source is one that could have an agenda (though not necessarily), but it almost reads similarly to, say, if BP published findings that climate change isn’t occurring. That said, yes, going to the gym vs. working out at home can be very beneficial to some people. But I would put gyms on the list of places where a vaccine passport would be acceptable to me. Then no one is saying people who want to go to the gym can’t go, they just need to get the vaccine first. It’s not hard.

Source?

You’re plenty good at discrediting anything you have to say without even having to use terms like “CCP virus,” no need to add that. Ron Watkins would be proud of you.

Even if we pretend the masks are “personal bacteria farms,” please do explain how bacteria are at all related to covid. I’ll wait.

True. I would also argue there’s no use talking about a guy who didn’t deal with covid and left office 12 weeks ago. I’ll see myself out.

Even GW Bush is palatable compared to what we have today. I’m not going to name a list of names, it would quickly turn into a list of people who dared to disagree with a certain person. (But you get the point, that list includes every Republican nominee for President this century except for that person.) Edit: also not saying I support any of them or would vote for them, but I could at least find common ground with most people who did before the divisions in this country became what they are today. Edit 2: but really mostly only Abraham Lincoln. Eisenhower was pretty good too.

Yes.

“Unvaccinated” is not a characteristic. It’s a choice. And I’ll double down on what I said last night after a few drinks, except now I’m completely sober: if Ron DeSantis helps guide your thinking on any topic, we are on two completely different wavelengths and it is impossible to find common ground.

That’s the beauty of our society. You can shop online, order curbside pickup, or go to one of a business’s many competitors.

Comparing this to segregation is extremist. Period.

Again, business owners should be allowed to make this decision on their own. Maybe the government shouldn’t mandate it (but I’m okay if they do), but the government also shouldn’t prevent individual business owners from making this choice. The Arizona one looks especially problematic in this respect. I won’t put another dime into any state’s economy that passes a bill that bars businesses from refusing service to the unvaccinated.

Not sure if there’s any argument against it, but does anything in this country, regardless of which party is in power, get done according to common sense?

To add some perspective by looking at the data, DJF was above normal at Fairbanks, and if you include November and March in there, the cold season there was slightly below normal. That said, NWS point and click for Fairbanks suggests that -32 could be challenged Saturday morning, which would be impressive. Imagine waking up to -32 degree temperatures in April.

One could argue that the mere act of defending Ron DeSantis is extremist.

I think we’ll agree to disagree, but I still have faith that good teachers have found ways to curb it. Regardless, I’m only advocating for two more months of online schooling to get through this school year, and very little further damage can be done in two months.

And it seems from at least two of those three sources that teachers have gotten wise to it and already found ways to curb it.

Can we really say that’s “the way society is” because one kid (and maybe his friends, if he wasn’t just throwing them under the bus to lessen the amount of trouble he got into) did it?

Okay, that was a little extreme language on my part. But you have implied that 1) the vast majority of kids would cheat if they didn’t think anyone was watching, and 2) most kids have little to no intrinsic motivation to succeed, and what little motivation they do have is guided by fear.

I just don’t find it likely that when kids are learning remotely, most of them develop the mentality of juvenile delinquents who don’t care about cheating or its consequences because they don’t have a teacher watching over their shoulder at all times. And what your argument seems to boil down to is every kid is a juvenile delinquent at heart, they just need the right circumstances to bring it to the surface. Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to believe that all kids are sociopaths given the right conditions.