WNash

Honestly, it’s a personal preference. You certainly don’t need air conditioning if you can tolerate humidity and occasional 90F+ heat waves that can last week or so. We moved into a house with central air, and the comfort level is much higher, for us, our daughter (who has lung problems), and our pets. Since we’re both working from home, it’s nice to not feel sweaty and warm inside the house. But I’d say it’s not a necessity, especially if you can sleep through hot, sticky nights.

I think most colleges will come back, assuming we don’t have a calamitous widespread increase in cases, but it certainly won’t be “normal” — there will be capacity restrictions in classrooms, dorms, events, etc. Likely the same deal with restaurants, movie theaters, and other public accommodations. Not ideal, but it will be an improvement over the last couple of months, assuming the vast majority of people will behave responsibly (maybe too much to hope for).

I’ve been planning to till for three weeks, but the ground has been soaked. Now this weekend looks like another loss! Just get me a four day dry period going into a weekend so I can get my vegetable garden started.

Mazel tov!

Started putting in our vegetable garden. 80% of our seed starts died from shock, so we had to buy plants. Talked to an Earsing’s employee who said that going from snow to summer in a week killed a lot of people’s seedlings.

Good luck to her. What district?

You might want to ask your pediatrician if it’s possible to get an emergency dose of a steroid. Our daughter had a very weak immune system until she was 12 months - 15 months (due to treatment during a NICU stay). We had a steroid in the medicine cabinet just in case she needed it.

Great question. We actually had our deck redone last summer, with new decking, some strengthened joists, entirely new railings that are safe for our two year old, and completely rebuilt steps. We were told by our contractor to wait 12 months before staining. He recommended Ready Seal stain and sealer, and he suggested that we use an airless sprayer to apply it.

Today was a beauty. Bright sun all day, low humidity, enough of a breeze off the lake to keep you cool working in the sun. We just did not get many days like this in Tennessee. We power washed the back deck, got the patio furniture out of the garage attic and cleaned it off, put down the outdoor carpet over the decking (deck is covered, so it’s more of a veranda). I have some custom coolaroo blinds on order to keep the afternoon sun off us. I’m going to live out there this summer.

I’ve been told that stuff is great, please post a review

I think the Democrats are generally awful, so you’re incorrect

Yeah, this is the “nice” version of why I have you on ignore. The version with the cruel language and the name-calling is not something I need to see. But I do appreciate that you’re not arguing the math. EDIT: I should add that you have a very fair point in your slippery slope argument about international poverty and where do attempts at economic fairness stop. I should say that we can model fairness for other countries, but I should also add that our predatory economic system causes some of that overseas inequality too.

The fact that you’re omitting what allowed Republicans to maintain control of the court with ultimate authority is a pretty good indication that you are making a bad faith, non-objective argument.

I typically have you on ignore because your rants calling poor people lazy have been so morally noxious, but I figured you were replying to me, so I’ll respond since your points are somewhat substantive. You’re right that there’s global inequality that dwarfs what goes on in the US, but human beings aren’t organized internationally in a way that can address this. Some countries have been really effective at maintaining a low GINI coefficient, and some have been terrible at it. The only way that people have any chance at fixing this is on the national level. Most of the poorest countries still have high GINI, which is ridiculous, but ultimately this has to be dealt with by each country’s own system. What people need to survive this pandemic is income replacement, not wealth replacement. And most people don’t need income replacement. Real unemployment is probably in the ballpark of 25-30%, so we don’t need to replace the income of the remaining roughly 2/3rds. The ratio of total personal wealth to total personal income is about 5:1. Conservatively estimated, the top 1% controls roughly 30% of the wealth (about $35 trillion net household worth). Considering that we are replacing only the income of the bottom third, and the 30% decile is about $25k per year, it would only take about $750 billion to replace *all* annual personal income for the bottom third. That’s about three-quarters of one percent of the wealth of the richest 1%. So two years of replacement income for the bottom third is about 1.5% of the wealth of the richest 1%. Let me point out that two times that amount has been spent on that part of the pandemic stimulus that does NOT include the $1200 per person payout. The fact that it hardly seems possible that so few people own so much doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with my math, it means that there’s an insane problem with the capture of our government by the richest people.

You’re minimizing the effect that the prevalence of unitary executive theory among the judiciary and court packing has on Article III oversight. Court packing has also allowed one party to restrict voting and gerrymander to the extent that Article II oversight is greatly hampered. If our constitutional system can be so easily warped, it’s hard to say it’s all that great.

I agree, but the executive branch’s extreme secrecy and rejection of any and all oversight is about as far from what the founding fathers intended as can be imagined. For example, emoluments are explicitly banned by the Constitution, but this administration is fighting accountability for emoluments at every turn: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/trump-to-ask-supreme-court-to-stop-emoluments-lawsuit.html

This is very cool, and gives me some hope. Thanks!

Herd immunity without vaccine has an extremely high death toll, literally millions in the US alone. Moreover, it’s getting very clear that the sequelae of COVID-19 even among healthy young people are often devastating — stroke, kidney and heart disease, possible Kawasaki syndrome in kids, and other as yet unknown long term problems — and are not captured in the fatality rate. This is not remotely comparable to the flu. This is a good explanation of the problem of herd immunity with no vaccine: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-immunity-wont-save-us/amp/. A vaccine that is at least partially effective has a good likelihood of relative success at creating herd immunity. Simply reducing the severity would be a huge step forward, and researches are moving different kinds of vaccines — mRNA, attenuated, inactivated, etc. — may be combined for increased potency. And treatment protocols have already been revised and are showing preliminary success. I’d be much happier about re-opening society of the death rate were cut by 75% and the long term effects were controlled. There’s plenty of wealth to support a better than subsistence existence for everyone in the US, but it’s not only being hoarded by a tiny number of extremely greedy people, but this crisis is being used by those same people to even *further* concentrate wealth. Why else would capital markets be made more or less whole, while everyone else has to eat shit? And of course the real elites are encouraging us peons to fight each other for the right to die a horrible death as a result of making more money for them.

I’m sorry to hear about your mother. My mother lives 1000 miles away, halfway between her two sons. She has one grandchild, my toddler daughter. She’s 78, and she’s terrified she’ll never get to see her again. So she’s in the opposite position from your mom, willingly isolated and trying to avoid exposure to give doctors time to develop treatment protocols and researchers time to develop a vaccine. I have tried to get her to move up here with us, but she is reluctant to isolate her other son (no kids, divorced) in Texas.

I can see how some people see what he has done as a necessary shake-up of a corrupt system, but what absolutely confuses me is how those same people won’t hold him accountable for obvious self-dealing and genuine graft, both personally and by his administration. He has replaced one swamp with a far worse swamp, a morass of uncontrolled corruption.

Researchers are also finding indications that COVID-19 may have long-term effects for survivors, including cardiological, pulmonary, neurological, and renal complications. New information has been evident as the “pause” has gone on that shows the disease is certainly not localized to the lungs. Effects on ACE2 receptors, found in many major organs, and clotting complications have resulted in kidney failure, strokes, and abnormal heart rhythms even in many younger patients with “mild” cases. There are even indications that in relatively mild cases in young people, COVID-19 can damage gonadal function and disrupt male sex hormone production, potentially harming fertility in prime reproductive-age men. (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.20037267v2) The approach that would do the least harm long-term would be to continue the pause and give researchers and doctors time to develop effective protocols (and ideally a vaccine). But that would require literal redistribution of wealth, and the rich people who call the shots would rather see the people who do the work have their health ruined than give up some of their own hoard.

Getting some moisture enhancement off Lake Huron? The widespread cellular structure is pretty cool.

Pretty impressive burst of snow here. Radar returns show BUF is getting the same stuff, so this will likely go down as more than a trace.

The data you cite has no information about mortality rates. It’s just a list of total deaths by age group, without even the context of a date. Without reliable mortality rate data and an aggressive testing plan, it’s hard to imagine that people will want to come running back to work.

Nursing homes have been the site of many super-spreader events. When testing was nearly unavailable, nursing homes were given priority for test kits. As a result, this data is going to skew to the very old. Age is certainly a risk factor, but there’s an inherent bias in this sample, and if people draw the conclusions that this disease really just kills the elderly, that bias is potentially very dangerous.