#first and second year the pandemic

[hauntingblue]

You guys!!! My university is doing this really fun thing where it's impossible to have a normal uni year!!! It's so cool and fun

[citrusitonit]

i remember the pandemic impacted me so much i was out alone in the forest burying a puppy who died

[very-lost-hobbit]

I have covid :(

[a-little-podcast-blog]

NUMBER ONE ON TRENDING WE ARE SO BACK, BABY‼️‼️

[28mindgames]

glowing

[disasterhimbo]

I’m really sad I have to wait until [unknown date] to see The Boy and the Heron because it’s only being released in theaters and it’s not safe for me to go to the theater anymore :/

[katyspersonal]

I know this is supposed to be a stressful thing, but hearing everyone talk about dying from finals makes me a bit nostalgic and even jealous? I just miss university times so goddamn much.

It was really good to spend half of the day listening to the teachers talk about stuff I found interesting, and have to discipline myself to read/write to certain deadlines. (And to have much more free time..) Adult life with full time job just isn't the same. Every day is like another and new information isn't flowing as much but self-studying is less fun without a teacher and the whole class interested in the same topic. I even miss homeworks that I was putting more effort into than any sane person would! Much older and much more experienced people regularly praising my effort and depth of my thought was a crucial validation resource to think of it :')

[galariangengar]

💭

[roaringroa]

hate being sick fr

[magentagalaxies]

overdid it at my improv show last night and now all i can do is lay in bed having blorbo thoughts

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

wait, Derin how did your leaving make the hospital shut down?

I used to work as a live-in nanny for a pediatrician.

Now, the thing about hospitals in my country is that they are massively understaffed and massively underfunded. This is especially true outside the major cities. The staff are worked to the bone and receive little to no help in things like finding accommodation or childcare, making working in rural areas a very uninviting prospect; staff come out here, get lumped with the work of three people (because there's nobody else to do it), burn out under the workload and leave, meaning that those remaining have even more work because that person is gone. It's unsustainable and the medical staff are doing their best to sustain it, because people die if they don't, so to the higher-ups it looks like everything's getting done and therefore everything is fine.

My friend (and boss) worked one week on, one week off, swapping out with another pediatrician. This was necessary because it would not be physically possible for one person to handle the workload for longer periods of time. The one single pediatrician had to hold up the entire pediatrics ward, which was not only the only public hospital pediatrics ward in our town, but also the one that served all the towns around us for a few hours' drive in all directions. I regularly saw her go to work sick, aching, tired, or with a debilitating 'I can barely make words or see' level migraine, because if she took a day off, twenty children didn't get healthcare that day, and some of these kids' appointments were scheduled weeks in advance. She'd work long hours in the day and then be called in a couple of times overnight for an hour or two at a time (she was on-call at night too, because somebody had to be), and then go in the next day. Sometimes she would be forced to take a day off because she physically could not stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time, meaning she couldn't drive to work.

Cue my niece's second birthday coming up in Melbourne. I'd been working for her for about 3 years, and she (and the hospital) had plenty of advance warning that I (and therefore she) needed one (1) Friday off. That's fine, we'll find someone to work that Friday, the hospital said. Right up until the last week where they're like "oh, we can't find a replacement; you can come in, can't you?"

No, she tells them; I don't have anyone to watch my kid that day.

Oh, surely you can hire a babysitter for this one day, they say. Think of the children! We really really need you to work that day. I know we said it'd be fine but we need you now, there's no one else to do it.

There are no other babysitters, she told them. Unless you can find one?

That's not our responsibility, they said.

But I'm not changing my plans, she's got plans by now as well, the hospital knew about this one day weeks in advance, and with absolutely no reserve staff they're forced to reschedule all pediatrics appointments for that Friday. Not a huge deal, it happens on the 'physically too overworked to get out of bed' days too. I go to Melbourne, she goes back to her home in Adelaide for her recovery week, all should be on track.

My niece gives me Covid.

This was way back in the first wave of the pandemic, and there were no Covid vaccines yet. The rules were isolate, mask up, hope. I had Covid in the house, and it would've been madness for my friend and her toddler to come back into the Covid house instead of staying in Adelaide. There was absolutely no way that a pediatrician could live with someone in quarantine due to Covid and go to work in the hospital with sick children every day. And no support existed for finding another babysitter, or temporary accommodation, so the hospital was down a pediatrician.

The other pediatrician wasn't available to do a three-week stint. They were also trapped in Adelaide on their well-earned week off.

Meaning that the only major pediatrics ward within a several-hour radius had no pediatricians. They had to shut down and send all urgent cases to Adelaide for the week. To the complete absence of surprise of any of the doctors or nurses; of course this would happen, this was bound to happen, it presumably keeps happening. But probably to the surprise of the higher-ups. After all, the hospital was doing fine, right? Of course all the staff were complaining of overwork and a lack of resources in every meeting, but they could always be fobbed off with the promise of more help sometime in the future; the work was mostly getting done, so the issue couldn't be too urgent.

It's not like some nanny who doesn't even work for the hospital could go out of town for a weekend for the first time in three years, and get the only public pediatrics ward in the area shut down for a week.

[ingravinoveritas]

The people who keep saying this don't seem to realize that what makes someone ageless isn't not aging. It's who you are aging with. It's that growing older in the company of someone you love adds richness and fullness and color and makes every wrinkle, line, and crease a carving etched with memory. It's that Michael and David are going on this journey together at the same time as Aziraphale and Crowley and are making each season as meaningful as they are because of that. And if at this point someone thinks any other actors would have a hope of doing the same thing, they are sorely mistaken...

tHeY aGe tOo mUcH bEtWeEn sEaSoNs ToO bE PoRtRaYiNG aGeLeSs bEiNgS.

Good. I hope for season 3 they look ancient to you. I hope David Tennant’s crow’s feet are deep enough to drink wine from. I hope Michael Sheen’s waist grows another couple of inches and pops a button right off his waistcoat. I hope they add a little grey to Crowley’s signature red and I hope Aziraphale walks with a cane.

I hope between now and season 3 you can open your mind to the fact that they are by far the best two actors to fill those roles. And if they kept portraying Crowley and Aziraphale right through their 90s it would still be canon and be fucking epic.

[psilactis]

My fucking therapist just sent me a text that basically reads "ure sad bc u made horrible life choices and are a horrible person :)"

I'm so breaking up with her lol I'm fucking done

[deadpresidents]

"What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 millions people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn't carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn't paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."

-- "How Far Would He Go", TIME Magazine's interviews with Donald Trump, April 30, 2024.

I know we're saturated in coverage of Trump and it's easy (and probably better for our mental health) to usually ignore most of the articles when we see them, especially since he's so full of shit and infuriating. But it's also important to recognize that he is going to be the Republican nominee for President and he could absolutely be elected in November, and if you thought his first term was scary and dangerous, you need to understand that in a second term he's going to have people around him that are better prepared and VERY willing to do the crazy shit that he wants to do to this country. They aren't even hiding the fact that they are seeking vengeance against political opponents whom they feel have wronged them, and are ready to fundamentally dismantle the democratic foundations that are barely holding this country together after nearly 250 years.

Just look at what Trump says about the people who he incited to attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and halt the peaceful transfer of power that has happened every four years since 1789:

"Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. 'I call them the J-6 patriots,' he say. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, 'Yes, absolutely.' As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor."

Oh, and please note that Trump -- a former President of the United States and possible future President of the United States -- said on the record in these interviews with TIME: "There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country and that can't be allowed either." We are at a point where political leaders are outright saying that in this country again, and it's because of Donald Trump.

So, take the time to recognize that Trump is straight-up telling us the country we're going to be living in if he wins again in November. And understand that your vote matters -- and WHO you vote for matters -- because, as I've been saying for years now, ELECTIONS HAVE FUCKING CONSEQUENCES.

[helianskies]

mayb its the time of the month but i just got notifs of being in venice 4 years ago today and am now crying bc i suddenly miss it all. i miss those days, i miss the travelling, i miss being an undergrad, i miss saying to myself 'you know what, i'm going to treat me to a holiday',, i miss feeling that care-free

[carriesthewind]

I reread the IA's contemporaneous post justifying their "National Emergency Library", and one of the things that struck me is just how selfish it was.

(It was also full of falsehoods, ranging from exaggeration to outright lies, but that's another matter.)

While 2020 feels like it was several decades in the past, it was actually only a few years ago. And I remember March of 2020! I was there! And oh my god, is this post right in line with every other selfish, demanding asshole determined to make a global pandemic all about themselves!

First of all, there is the language of the post - it is a "tremendous and historic outage" that books are unavailable to patrons because libraries are closed for the pandemic. "Right now, today, there are 650 million books that tax-paying citizens have paid to access that are sitting on shelves in closed libraries, inaccessible to them."

Missing from this outrage is a recognition that, like. Librarians are people. They get sick, and die.

They did get sick, and died.

Libraries were closed not only to protect patrons and the public, but librarians too. Libraries were closed to protect people, human beings. Because generally speaking, even the most enthusiastic supporters of access to books and knowledge, prioritize lives over books.

The AI's post, however, reeks of an entitlement to things that *my* tax dollars paid for. Libraries and library collections aren't a public good. They're something *I* should be able to access anytime I want, damn the context or the consequences.

(Was it also a historic outrage when I had to wait several months to check out Nona the Ninth, because so many other people were checking it out?)

Second, as I said, I remember early 2020. And in spring and summer of 2020, there was more free content on the internet than before or since. So many people and so many institutions were bending over backwards to provide people with books and tv shows and music and podcasts and virtual tours and collections and just about anything that someone could figure out how to digitize. So many people were giving away books for free, or writing/recording new content to give away for free. I can't even remember how many times I heard or read someone telling their readers or listeners just to pay what they could, if they could. So many people and institutions were giving away so much, do so much, to provide access to knowledge and books and entertainment and information.

And in that moment, the IA decided to steal from people. When so many people, so many authors, were acting so selflessly, they decided that it wasn't good enough. And instead of giving away themselves, they decided to steal from authors and pat themselves on the back for "meet[ing] this unprecedented need," when they didn't even actually do anything themselves. Or maybe more accurately, the only thing they did was something irrelevant to the actual needs of the community, something they wanted to do anyway, something to try to use a pandemic as an excuse to advance their agenda.

Because third, there is zero concern for the population of patrons actually most impacted by the closure. The IA cares, to a fault, only about information being digitized.* But many people who use physical libraries, many of the people most impacted by their closure, are people who do not have access to the AI's so-called "open library." And people who could access digital books generally continued to have access to their library's e-book services, and to tons of other free content. The patrons who were actually in the most need are ignored as irrelevant.

*And I want to be clear - they care that information is digitized, not about digital access. "Access" means more than information being digitized and theoretically being able to be read.

It's so clear that IA didn't really care about the patrons of physical libraries. Instead, they saw a real problem, and instead of working toward any solutions, decided to use it as a prop to push their own agenda. (Again, while people were dying.)

It's just all so deeply selfish.