#pandemic memories

[arylongames]

I started playing ACNH at the beginning of the pandemic. There was a lot of staying at home so Animal Crossing was my escape.

Here I had my partner spend a date night with me watching shooting stars. ❤️ 💫 (even though we were actually in the same physical space 😂)

[saurotitan]

The Trouble With Stubble

Here's a little something about facial hair to make up for all the serious stuff I said last week.

Wow, I sure talked about some serious real-world stuff last week. Because I’m writing this post roughly two weeks before it goes live I have no clue what the fallout of that particular topic has been. Hopefully I was right to expect my audience could rationally and calmly interact with the subject of library censorship and religion without things getting heated. If I was wrong and The Archivist’s…

[misterehasamystery]

Been rewatching some pandemic era television. It revealed some serious trauma that I just never processed properly. It also reminded me of the friends that I made around the beginning of the hardest time in my life. They got me through divorce, depression, quarantine, and a significant amount of job insecurity.

Without their love, I wouldn't have held it together. I was already considering having myself committed at the start of my divorce, and with everything else, I would not have functioned without them.

They were strangers I met on the Internet. We all ended up in a messaging group that was ostensibly about kink and exhibitionism. There was constant shameless flirting, as well as many lewd and nude photos. And out of that, we built a little community.

Some people came and went. There was significant turnover, particularly in male members of the group. But there was a core of us.

Arie was the founder. Then we had Anna, Nayra, Toni, Jenn, Kyle stayed most of a year, Darrick, and myself, E.

There were plenty of others who came and went. Grimm and Majick were early members. Joseph and Kat popped in and out with long months or even a year between periods of activity. GG, Perry, Phoenix, Sam. So many others that I forget most of their names.

Rarely were there more than 10 active members at any given time, but it was enough. It was our little community online. In the darkness of that time, we filled our little corner with light, positivity, happiness, and love.

Of course there was drama, and fights. Falling outs happened. But for more than 2 years they were my people. We were loyal. We would send each other care packages and birthday presents. The group fell apart in early 2022, partly due to loss of momentum as people were able to go outside and interact with other people in person instead of online. However, I also contributed to that collapse.

Early 2022 I went and visited one of the core group. We were all amazing friends and the casual flirting had gotten me confused. Hanging out in person was fun. We got along so smoothly it was like we'd been friends for over a decade. And yes there was some casual sexual chemistry, but nothing super intense.

There was a play session we were both involved in that went badly due to poor communication and sleep deprivation. It wasn't so bad as to end the friendship, but while we were clearing the air and setting boundaries after that, I made the most idiotic decision.

I somehow felt like that would be the perfect time to suggest we become casual poly partners. In my infinite idiocy I had combined an easy relaxed friendship and mutual attraction into something that just wasn't there, and even if it had been, it would have been the worst time to suggest it.

The group was already fading, so a falling out between two of the most active members left the chat basically dead. It never really recovered and I still blame myself for the loss of the friend group. I stay in touch with only one other member these days.

I'm not sure where I was going with this story, but I'll leave you with the lesson I learned. Love has many many shapes. More so for those of us that are non-monogamous. The way it's described most of the time, it's supposed to be a feeling. But that's not really right. It's more of an action.

Love is the action you take when you care enough about someone that you would willingly give up something you value for their benefit. There are more acts of love than you can count. And the way you express it should depend on the type of relationship you have.

Trying to use the wrong expression in hopes of changing the dynamic isn't love. I was worried, confused, and hurt. Asking to change our relationship was not an act of love. It was selfish and stupid.

I regret it more than anything else I've done in the past 4 years. I can't repair the damage I've done. Trust isn't a bridge that can be built on only one side. And they have no need to even try.

[crumbsinthesea]

"It wasn’t until about two years into the pandemic, when the “vax and relax” era was clearly not going to work, that I had to reckon with my system for organizing time. I couldn’t delay the future any longer; I couldn’t continue protecting the story of my life from the pandemic’s incursion. So I accepted the terrible fact that the pandemic was going to continue indefinitely and was not merely an event in my life but rather the container in which the rest of my life would take place. This was a difficult reckoning. It required that I come to terms with a great deal of grief about the failures of those around me; about what I lost and will have lost; a privilege in thinking that these were the sorts of world-historical changes that happened to other people, at other times. But it was also a reckoning that rescued the orderliness of time, for me. It was as if the clock was un-paused, and life resumed its forward march. I think most people stabilized their warped sense of time by other means. Instead of accepting that the pandemic continued on, that we failed to contain it and so would need to incorporate its ongoing reality into the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, they instead transformed the fantasy of after into their reality. After the pandemic, after the lockdowns, after our world ruptured. They were able to interrupt the prolonged uncertainty that the pandemic had brought to all of our lives by erecting a finish line just in time for them to run through it. And as they ran through it, celebrating the fictional end of an arduous journey, they simultaneously invented a new before. This is the invention of memory. The Pandemic became something temporally contained, its crisp boundaries providing a psychic safeguard to any lingering anxieties around the vulnerability and interdependence of our bodies that only a virus could show us. No longer did it threaten to erupt in their everyday lives, forcing cancellations and illnesses and deaths. It was, officially, part of The Past. And from the safety of hindsight (even if only an illusion), people began telling and re-telling the story of The Pandemic in ways that strayed from how it all actually went down. It was a way to use memory as self-soothing."

--Emily Dupree, The invention of Memory

[foldingfittedsheets]

There’s a local company that will take cremated ashes from loved ones and pets and blow it into glass. My mom suggested it and it got put off but we’re finally immortalizing the best boy Sly.

The colors will be much different when it’s cooled and we’ll get to pick it up in a couple days.

[aaiiiiiiiiiii]

sanrio's taking too long so my impatient ass has to make its own food

[ladygreene13]

Ohmygodajwhjsbsksjs not me finding out i was actually, officially, Into Jonsa™️ SINCE 2019 from my old account on spiritfanfiction.com

[mumblelard]

just enough salt to fill the cellar

getting just enough of something feels like a kind of faith that i will be able to find more of what i need when the time comes. maybe this is what it means for me most of the time. something about trusting myself in a material way in the face of uncertainty

it feels like a kind of protest against the hoarding impulse at the heart of this system. i am resisting, in the language of the system, the overconsumption that defines and sustains it

but sometimes when i get just enough and no more i know it is a lack of faith in the future itself. an expression of doubt, measured in cups and ounces, that there will be enough time left to use even this amount, never mind bothering to get any more

[penumbrapolaroid]

august 4th, 2020

[fatehbaz]

.

[slowdesire]

biting the bullet and rewatching twin peaks i need to get lost in this world the same way i did in 2019-2020

[wuxian-vs-wangji]

Every time Prapai gives Sky medicine, he's narcoleptic inside 5 minutes.

[gumjrop]

The Weather

Twenty-seven US states remain at High to Very High levels of SARS-CoV-2 detected in wastewater since February 28, 2024, with five states not reporting.

Wastewater levels are decreasing throughout the country except in the Midwest. The South is still experiencing extremely high transmission. As a reminder, the last two weeks, shown in gray, are provisional data. These values may change as additional wastewater sites report data.

Despite these ongoing high levels of transmission in most of the country, and in defiance of pleas from civil society to protect the most vulnerable among us, the CDC has once again decided to walk back already insufficient protections – this time in the form of isolation guidance. It announced on Friday at 1 pm that it will repeal the 5-day isolation period for COVID-19 and instead treat COVID-19 like it does other respiratory viruses like flu and RSV, linking isolation length with symptomatology and fever. This policy, of course, is not based on the best evidence–just vibes and a lack of care for those of us still dying (1000s weekly) and still becoming disabled by Long COVID. 

Last week, the CDC recommended that people 65 years and older should receive an updated booster. It did not approve a booster for other people in high-risk categories because they didn’t bother studying the benefits and risks in these groups.

Wins

OK. So it’s been a rough week. But you know what? We are all fighting back. We see you all making calls, creating and signing petitions, joining and expanding Mask Blocs, creating and distributing zines, and making your own air-cleaning systems. We see so many more masked, tested, and ventilated events than we used to! We are mobilizing collective power to keep each other safe and to transform this state. 

Next week, March 11, will mark the 5th anniversary of the declaration of the pandemic. We’re not where we should be, but this pandemic has radicalized a lot of us. Keep connecting. Keep finding your people. Keep going. We will win. 

Oh! And check out these Free COVID-19 and flu test vending machines in King County, Washington!

Variants

JN.1 is still the most dominant variant circulating in the United States and is projected to account for 92.3% of all circulating variants by March 2nd, 2024. Two JN.1 descendants, JN.1.13 and JN.1.18, are now the second and third most common circulating variants, projected to be at 3.3% and 1.8%, respectively.

To check for circulating variants within your community, you can find your HHS Region through the CDC Variant Tracker dashboard.

Long Covid

In an article published in Science, Drs Ziyad Al-Aly and Eric Topol reviewed the perplexing case of Long COVID. They discuss the lack of consensus and systematization when it comes to the classification of the disease, partly due to its different mechanisms and manifestations. For example, younger adult and female Long COVID patients are more likely to be afflicted by fatigue, dysautonomia, brain fog, and post-exertional malaise, while older patients are more likely to deal with cardiovascular and metabolic complications. They also discuss the current potential treatments for Long COVID, but express that since nonpharmaceutical interventions have been neglected, vaccines are the only available therapy. However, vaccines are unable to prevent Long COVID. Ultimately, they state that the only way to prevent Long COVID is by ending COVID transmission, such as by administering pan-variant neutralizing intranasal vaccines.

On March 15, 2024, the Long COVID March will be taking place in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial. The march is intended to mobilize Long COVID patients and allies to demand acknowledgment and policy changes from the government. You can read the march’s mission statement, which includes a list of objectives. 

Take Action

Join us in demanding the CDC reinstate the 5-day COVID isolation policy. Despite the guidelines having already been dropped, we must still fight for adequate protections from COVID to safeguard our communities from harm. Make your voices known by sending a letter to the White House and your elected officials through our Action Network. The People’s CDC will also be implementing other action items in the coming weeks, so look out for those!

Today is COVID Memorial Day, in which we remember the 1.2 million lives lost to COVID in the United States, and show solidarity with the millions living with COVID grief and Long COVID. Check out Marked by COVID to learn more or to participate in today’s virtual vigil.

Again, we must continue to contact our elected officials to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, and we must continue to wear and require the wearing of high-quality respirators such as N95s and KN95s at protests and within organizing spaces. 

[aaverageguy]

when I was a kid i was totally obsessed with Rome to the point where it was the only thing I could talk or think about, even in my counselling sessions. This unfortunately led to my counsellor giving me the unfortunate nickname of Caesar because she had to take care of me after I woke up from my concussion IT WAS SO EMBARRASSING BECAUSE SHE ASKED ME HOW I WAS FEELING AFTER LEAVING THE HOSPITAL AND I JUST TOLD HER THE SAME THING I TOLD TO THE DOCTOR LIKE I DEADSASS SAT THERE AND TOLD THEM BOTH "yeh I feel like Julius Caesar"

[rotzaprachim]

עוד לא אהבתי די certified contemporary israeli bop

One must admit. It slaps

[avengerchuck]

Why are you awesome

All in a day's work, buddy!