#what is lockdown 3.0

[easystitchesdesigns]

Pinned Post: Easy Stitches Deisigns

Welcome everyone to Easy Stitches Designs!

Who am I?

My name is Clara, it is nice to meet you all.

I started cross stitching when I was about 6 or 7 years old - I was a hyperactive child in need of socialization. My grandmother had the idea of sending me to the local charity, where women and children would cross stitch patterns to turn into trinkets to sell out and donate the income for the homeless and the poor. I learned the craft, although I did not do much of it later in life. Come quarantine and I am in furlough. Whilst looking for something to pass the time, my grandmother calls me and talks to me of the times I used to do cross stitching. I have received several encouragement words and started again this craft - and it felt as if time never cancelled what I learned. And now, in Lockdown 3.0, I had enough courage to embark myself into this adventure, hoping it will last.

What am I offering?

Well, within this blog you will find several cross-stitching tutorials for beginners, as well as tidbits on projects and wips I am intending to show you all and some promo for the newest items in my shop. Of course my ask box is always open and should you have any question please feel free to drop by!

This shop offers cross-stitched trinkets, pattern booklets, ornaments, greeting cards - it is the perfect corner for any gift ideas! And you can customize most of the items to suit what you are looking for!

Where to find my stuff

Here below you will find everything I sell:

My Ko-Fi page

I post a lot of my WIPs on my Instagram and should you wish to look further I have a Facebook page and a Pinterest page for this shop.

Thank you for dropping by!

[the-amber-raven]

What made you watch 911? And what made you enjoy it?

This is probably a longer story than one might expect tbh 😂

But basically - it was Covid lockdown 3.0 (or maybe 4? Who even knows. There were a lot.) and I was looking for something new to watch because I'd already binged a couple sitcoms and Leverage during Lockdown 1.0 and 2.0 (For the record, if you haven't watched Leverage, I highly, highly recommend).

The Ghost Whisperer was available to stream on one of our free-to-air sites so I watched several episodes of that. I couldn't quite get into it - it was just a bit too angsty and for a lockdown show for me - however, because technology is a hellscape, I kept getting videos recommended about it on social media/youtube etc and eventually it moved on to showing me some 9-1-1 videos featuring JLH (I guess because it was her most recent projects? Who even knows how these algorithms work).

And because, y'know, lockdown and doomscrolling go hand in hand, I actually ended up watching a lot of those videos. I think it was the scene where Maddie goes into labour and Bobby tells Chim to "go meet [his] daughter" that finally got me intrigued enough to give the show a chance.

I watched Season 1 in that sort half-paying attention way and really enjoyed the character building and the found family vibes but it probably wasn't until the second half of Season 2 that I think I got hooked (that string of episodes from Ocean's 9-1-1 is just *chef's kiss*). I think it was just the found family vibes were so strong, the characters so well established and their backstory were clearly valued and I fell in love.

It was then season 3 that got me into fanfic (and it was fanfic which then got me into Buddie, if I'm honest, although I think by the end of S4 I would have been on that train too.)

[education30and40blog]

10 ideas for the Future of Work

See on Scoop.it - Education 2.0 & 3.0

The Pandemic Lockdowns and shift to remote first provided an unparalleled and unplanned disruption of dogma and destiny. Enforced dispersal challenged individuals and Organisations to find new ways of working, which many did with remarkable success, although sometimes at great personal cost. Today we appear to be seeking industrial scale normalization, a reimposition of order, and a return to the familiar. Organizations that were unwired are now busy rewiring, but typically to the legacy diagrams. So what are we missing, what are we giving away? What are the opportunities yet unexplored, some of which may challenge the conception of what work ‘is’, and how it sits in our broader perspective of ‘society’. The Social Age shows us that our built environment, structures of power, and rituals and beliefs around work, are simply stories that we choose to keep. There are other ways, other models, and to ignore them is to throw away the chance to do different, and do better.

[swimfaye]

Next Time Let's Not Lockdown, mkay?

Right now there is about four different diseases making its way through the population.

So, let's first look back to Feburary 2020 when there was the first inkling of Covid 19 or what was called the Corona virus and it wasn't a clever marketing campaign. then in march 2020 the CDC called it Covid 19 and said we need to lock down.

What was suppose to be 2 weeks turned into roughly 6 to 8 months.

One country didn't do this famous #lockdown. Sweden.

Now, Sweden has a current population of 10 Million where as California has population of 39 Million.

Today.

Now Back then the mortality rate of Covid 19 was 8. Yes not 3 not 5 but 8 out of 10 people were dying especially before the first mutation.

So that meant of the 10 people that got infected the rate of death was 8. Yeah, bad odds. seriously. really bad odds because hospitals EVERYWHERE were unprepared an average ICU unit in a small town had maybe 5 beds. Say the population was a 1000 people the hospital would be shutdown in hours and sending people to larger hospitals farther away.

So, this repeats everywhere eventually the large city hospitals shut down too. Now, we've all seen the horror stories of Hurricane Katrina when trying to evacuate a hospital ICU right? To say it doesn't go well is an understatement.

The population that was hit was 1 Million people. A Fraction was already in the hospital when it hit. By the time help arrived 5 days later 20% of the population in the hospital was not there.

Covid 19 was 10X Hurricane Katrina and it was rapidly attacking everything and everyone. Minimizing the amount of exposure via lockdown was an option versus what China just finished learning.

Now, Today 2022 There is Covid19 3.0 / The actual Flu/ RSV and just because we feel like it let's throw in MERS too.

All four are 1) infectious disease of the respiratory system 2) There is no Cure for any of them 3) There is medical equipment but not enough medically trained technicians or nurses for treatment.

Yet, We're Not going to #LockDown again because 1) Look what happened in China 2) look what happened in Sweden 3) We can just reiterate the simple six feet rule and mask and handwashing because

A) On Average only 5 out of 8 hospitalizations are severe

B) 3 out of the 5 will or could be fatal

C) No one is paying attention

D) Global recession is bad.

I admit Lockdown versus no Lockdown we don't win.

Today, I was in the public arena people were masked but not properly and there were people unmasked and I seriously believe

People DO NOT CARE if they get sick and die.

Its insane the amount of people that were less than six feet from each other and others were coughing and sneezing.

So get your mask supply and your hand sanitizer because if anything we're headed for a new CDC rule on social distancing and handwashing. If just because there has been a 5th disease out there and its coming ...we just don't know what it is yet.

but we do know to wear a mask, wash our hands and stay six feet apart , right ? !?

[26shivani97]

The Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday issued directions for the third phase of lockdown relaxations based on the Centre’s latest guidelines even as the state reported a record jump of 3,765 Covid cases in one day, and the highest single-day fatalities with 57 deaths.At least seven districts in the state have over 1,000 active cases.

[miss-crazy-rose]

I’ve been thinking: why did they only send Bucky to mandatory therapy? Why didn’t they send Wanda? I mean she was also marked as enemy of the state and some people seem to see her as “dangerous” and unpredictable . Sure she wasn’t brainwashed for 70 years but still she was traumatized enough to take a city in hostage and create a fake reality 👀

Which leads me to this : do you think they only started sending Bucky to therapy AFTER the Hex incident? 😅 Like someone in the government went :

“maybe we should make sure the avengers are ok, idk make them see a shrink so they don’t do shit like that again?”

“ALL OF THEM? That’s a lot of people dude and honestly I don’t know where half of them are right now”

“ok maybe not all of them... who would you say is the most traumatized right now?”

“Hm... Barnes? The guy got brainwashed and turned into a killing machine for 70 years”

“damn that’s true. Make an appointment for him. Tell him it’s mandatory or... or he is un-pardoned. Yeah that should do”

“got it”

[anciientboosh]

Julian Barratt [Films to be Buried With]

[ceo-of-daichi]

Does Boris Johnson care about University students or??

[glendowersbitch]

Might make a soc blog .... or do I just make my main soc with additional clusterfuck ... this is the the only one devoted to one fandom lmao

[six-costume-refs]

has aragon's skirt gotten like, almost comically larger in recent iterations or am i imagining it?

You’re not imagining it, no. Here’s the rundown:

Pictured: Adrianna Hicks, 2.0, 2020 Broadway; Showstoppers replica and/or 2020 costume in Broadway style, 2.0, @/mizzhelen1; Adrianna Hicks, 3.0, 2021 Broadway; Jade Marvin, 2.0, Breakaway 2.0 but costume made for Bliss 2.0; Melinda Porto, 2.0, Bliss 3.0; Paisley Billings, 3.0, West End 2021; Lauren Drew, 2.0, UKT 2020, paigeleigh59916

Two major factors in it:

1. A new style of skirt. Broadway 2020 costumes ran into issues because they had too many layers of PVC and were stored in a not-good environment over lockdowns. Six does not use a breathable or forgiving material and that was an issue. Six’s solution was to change the structure of the skirts to separate the peplum and bottom for better ventilation. However, the issue was only discovered mid-2021 and the change implemented a bit later, so not every 2021 skirt has it - you can see there that the Showstoppers skirt, which was either entirely made before or completed even around the time they would have known about the issue with the Broadway costumes, has the 2020 flat/connected style. New style is Adrianna’s 2021, Paisley Billings’, and then Melinda Porto’s is a midway point where the peplum isn’t totally flat against the bottom skirt but is less separated than the other two (why Melinda’s is set up that way may be due to variation in costume construction from the different studio). That separation definitely makes the skirts larger and may be what you’re noticing.

2. Costumes are fit on a custom basis by fitters, and as a result there’s always going to be disparities in how costumes are fit (good or bad). Six has especially exaggerated silhouettes, so anything slightly off is going to be more visibly exaggerated as a result. Aragon skirts are definitely a place where this seems to happen a lot (you can also compare just how inconsistent some of the fits are in that photo). There’s also been some weird stuff that seems to be going on behind the scenes that would also affect this - Nicole Kyoung-Mi Lambert in two different Aragon skirts, one of which did not fit her right and seems to have been started based on Keirsten’s measurements (might go into this in more detail in another post if anyone is interested); NCL potentially working from stock costumes, etc.

Since I made this photoset, Jade Marvin also received a new costume. The skirt is very, very long relative to just about any other Aragon skirt - that one is specifically a fitting thing rather than the new skirt style.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ed-tech apps spy on kids

When schools switched to distance learning amid the lockdown, it represented a chance to rethink education and ed-tech, from lessons to schedules to evaluation.

For the most part, we have squandered that chance, doubling down on the most destructive educational practices.

This is true across the board, not just in ed-tech. Take the bizarre start-times for classes - as early as 7AM for students enrolled in "period 0" classes. This timing has nothing to do with best practices in pedagogy or our understanding of adolescent brain-development.

Instead, it's a least-worst option arising from the US's unwillingness to treat high-quality child-care as a public good that benefits both kids and working parents. We open our schools at o-dark-hundred because parents need to get to work.

This, despite the fact that the majority of teens' body-clocks shift nocturnally as they go through puberty. We know that waking kids up early hurts their learning outcomes, but we accept that tradeoff because the alternative (kids whose parents can't earn a living) is worse.

Virtual schools represented an opportunity to shift education to more humane hours, but we blew it. And that's the least of our failures, barely registering in comparison with the way that we failed to fix ed-tech even as it grew to eclipse all other pedagogical questions.

Exhibit A, of course, is "remote invigilation," the spyware that we force students to install on their computers in the name of preventing cheating on the pedagogically bankrupt high-stakes tests we cling to.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/22/ihor-kolomoisky/#copyfraud

These tools are force-multipliers for the destructive power of high-stakes testing: their junk-science "sentiment analysis" facial recognition algorithms can't recognize dark-skinned faces, forcing Black kids to sit tests with multiple lamps shining directly in their eyes.

Students forced to use tools like Proctorio are expected to rotate their webcams 360' degrees to prove they're alone in a room at home - which means that poor kids who share a room (or can only get wifi in the parking lot of a Taco Bell) are penalized for poverty.

Unsurprisingly, a company that would knowingly torment children in this way is run by terrible people and behaves terribly. It's not just that the CEO doxed a child who complained about his products on Reddit:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar

The company has also abused copyright law to sue and intimidate its critics, including a student security researcher who revealed defects in the company's products:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/22/ihor-kolomoisky/#copyfraud

The fact that businesses that profit by spying on children are run by awful, awful people is no surprise.

One of the most established ed-tech categories is censorware, which schools are required to install as a condition of receiving federal funds, under 1997's CDA.

This software captures every student's click and search-term, and often their chats and emails, and spies on all of it, using arbitrary word-matches and human classifications to block kids (and teachers) from seeing materials deemed "inappropriate."

The premise of this exercise is that somewhere there is a boiler-room full of prudes so large that it can look at billions and billions of webpages and decide which ones are and aren't "child-safe" and that an "AI" can pass judgment on the pages they haven't got to.

Even if you accept that bizarre premise, remember: this isn't an editorial process, it's a surveillance system. It's one thing for a school librarian to make decisions about which books to shelve, but this doesn't require them to spy on everything every kid tries to read.

For censorware companies to block your kids' data-requests, they have to intercept and examine them. Censorware is spyware. Given that, it's worth asking, "Who are we allowing to spy on our kids?

Terrible people, as it turns out.

The school censorware industry is a subsidiary of the global censorware industry, and its largest clients aren't schools - their bread and butter is the tyrants of the Middle East and former Soviet Union, dictators who buy their products to keep their citizens in line.

These are the depraved human-rights abusers we get to spy on our kids (they also provide censorware for corporate, hotel and airport wifi!), and you know what? They've got *terrible* judgment.

Independent audits of their blocklists show that they're blocking about a third of the top search results for terms related to the common curriculum, with overblocking skewed heavily to women's health, reproductive health, and LGBTQ (no surprises there).

And, like Proctorio, these censorware companies have a long history of intimidating and harassing their critics, abusing copyright law to prevent independent analysis of their blocklists in a bid to make it impossible to test whether they are any good at their jobs.

We've been spying on schoolkids' online activities since 1997, and the pandemic only accelerated that process, and not just through test proctoring, either, as a new report from the Me2B Alliance shows.

https://me2ba.org/me2ba-product-testing-spotlight-report-published-data-sharing-in-primary-secondary-school-mobile-apps-2/

The report analyzed 73 mobile apps that 38 schools in 14 US states were using as part of their administration and instruction and found that 60% of them transmit student data to commercial data-mining companies.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/04/school_mobile_apps/

The apps were built using "free" SDKs from Facebook, Google and other surveillance companies; these SDKs make it easy to build apps quickly, but they also harvest the app users' data at scale and subject it to long-term retention and analysis.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#hyas

Me2B found that the apps were sucking up "identifiers (IDFA, MAID, etc), Calendar, Contacts, Photos/Media Files, Location, Network Data (IP address), permissions related to Camera, Microphone, Device ID, and Calls."

Ios devices were far less likely to harvest user data than Android apps, but 1 in 4 still spied on users, and on both platforms, "95% of third-party data channels... are active even when the user is not signed in and that these apps send data as soon as the app is loaded."

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[beebo26]

If Anne came back to Earth and experience the pandemic and lockdown and when she went back to Amphibia and had the reunion 3.0 with Sasha be like:

Sasha: *sneeze* *cough* haha... It's getting really cold out here I think I'm gonna get sick.

Anne putting a mask and spraying alcohol: No Sasha ! Stay away from me ok?!

Sasha on the verge of crying: A-anne y-you really hate me that much? now you're wearing a face mask and treating me like I am some kind germs ? *Running away while wiping her tears*

Anne reaching out her hand : Wait what ! No I don't hate you it's a misunderstanding! Sasha!

[we-are-knight]

I'm unsure if it's lockdown 3.0, the general state of the US and UK, or various other issues right now, but since my anxiety has returned from it's sabbatical from 2019, let me show you all the one good thing I actually did recently.

Since COVID has led to weird hobbies (transitioning from reading HEMA books for fencing to taking up baking, to calligraphy), I decided to try and make French Onion Soup. The ideal evening food to warm your soul against the crushing reality of a malicious late-stage capitalist dystopia.

First, onions. So many onions. I haven't attended any of the protests that have taken place in the past 2 years, being in a remote part of England, but it's nice to be able to still find ways to tear gas myself in my own home to appreciate a modicum of what people are going through elsewhere.

I'm just really really sensitive to onions, why did I think this was a good idea?

After cooking these asshole alliums long enough to stop making my eyes become watery pain orbs, caramelisation kicks in, and I can actually have time away from the pain of spiteful vegetables to be alone with my thoughts. Nothing quite beats the pleasure of cooking a meal, and filling the intervals between preparing ingredients with the existential crisis you are having coming from spending a year inside as the world burns.

Drown said thoughts with wine from a friend. Return to burning the evil out of those spiteful vegetables.

Between drowing the existential void in wine long enough to create the alcoholic equivalent of the Mariana's Trench, your onions are now a husk of their former selves, much like many of us being at the mercy of capricious powers that would happily see us all dead. Time to add the stock; in this case, duck stock made from the remains of Christmas dinner!

Leave unsupervised and allowed to simmer. Return after 30 minutes, add toasted bread of choice, layer with solidified cow extract, roast one more time under broiler to ensure hell vegetables are truly dead.

End product.

10/10, would contemplate dread reality while cooking again.

[cinematicnomad]

i hope you feel better soon! (and if you don’t mind me asking for some advice? would you mind talking a little about your transition to grad school? i’m in the middle of filling out applications and i’m looking at all of these requirements and stuff that they’re asking for and i don’t have anything at all that would make me a decent candidate - i tried my best during undergrad but my grades were never above subpar and i finished out school in lockdown so i don’t have any experience either - even though i /know/ i’d be really good at the work…. i’m just….feeling very despondent right know)

((sorry for the rambling 😅)

heyyyy anon! okay! i am totally happy to answer these questions. i am, in fact, a GREAT person to ask about this because i work in graduate admissions sooo i have more than just my own personal graduate school experience to help answer, but my entire career as well 😅

now, first caveat: i work for an engineering school, and graduate admissions does have some nuances that are unique to each general subject—what we do when reviewing an application for, say, a student applying to mechanical engineering, is gonna be v different from what the law school looks for, or what the english looks for, etc etc. but there are some general tips and tricks that i am happy to share!

first things first, your GPA is not the be all and end all. it really is a holistic review of your materials. i applied to grad school with a solid 3.0 from undergrad and i got in, and i can for SURE tell you that we admit students to the engineering program that have lower GPAs, even lower than our stated average on our website (but obviously—be aware, if admitted, most grad programs DO require that you maintain above a 3.0 in the program to graduate).

now, that holistic review comes in through the other materials you submit—your letters of recommendation, your resume, your statement of purpose, any test scores that are required...etc etc. (i'm not sure if your application requires test scores—i know a lot of admissions offices have moved away from them during the pandemic because accessing tests was v difficult for a time and waiving it obviously lead to an increase in apps which schools love to see.)

(this got long: more below the cut)

for your letters of recommendation: ask professors or employers who can really speak to your ability to succeed in graduate school. if they're somebody in the same field/subject that you're applying to, that's even better bc their opinion carries more weight. a lot of times we get students who submit letters of rec from people with really high titles but who don't know the student for shit and give a real generic letter—that's not helpful. the admissions office is going to be looking for specificity and for someone who can really speak about you and your strengths and why you're a good fit.

if you're worried about asking for a letter of rec bc it's been too long since you spoke to the professor/were in their class/etc, here's my advice: send them an email asking how they're doing and giving a quick update on your life. explain that you're applying to grad school (and where) and that you'd like to ask for a letter of rec from them. remind them what class (or classes) you took, what grade(s) you received (if they're good), what semester you were enrolled in, and why you liked it (their lectures were memorable! the subject material is what made you want to pursue a master's! it's the most fun you had in undergrad! etc etc etc). IF you saved copies of your old papers, offer to re-share them with the professor if they need a reminder of examples of your work. and then thank them for their time and consider and wait for their response. DON'T add their names to the application until they agree to write you a letter bc a lot of the app systems these days will auto-send the email to your recommenders as soon as their info is added, even before you have submitted the application.

THIS i speak from personal experience 😅 thankfully the professor agreed to write the letter anyway, lol

(note: extra rec letters, do not really help you at all. if an application requires 2, you don't get any extra kudos for submitting 3, or 4, or 5...when that happens there's no way to guarantee that the app reviewer will take the time to read all the submitted letters, they may just pick 2 at random, and those might not be the strongest. so it's best to stick to the requirements and to pick the recommenders who will sing your praises).

the resume is obvious—if you're worried GPA this is the place where you can highlight any special projects that you've worked on or jobs that you've had related to the area of study you're applying to. it's just a space that gives you the opportunity to provide the admissions office with more info about you, your skillset, and your background.

last, that statement of purpose. first thing: follow whatever instructions the program provides. the statement of purpose is where they're looking to see if you pay attention to detail. if there's a prompt, make sure you respond to it, and if there's a word count, make sure you stick to it. for the programs i work on, we typically look for 500 words max—if a student goes over that by 100 words, no big deal. if a student goes over that by 1500 words?? oh yeah, that's a problem. i know some faculty members who will just....stop reading the statement around that 500 mark even if there are still 3 more pages to go. we're looking to make sure that you can be concise and to the point and that you can follow directions.

if there's no prompt (my programs don't have one!) then it can be a little daunting what to write. a good framework that i suggest to students that i speak with is: past, present, future. so, start off talking about your past (where you got your bachelors, what you studied in undergrad, etc). since you mentioned your grades weren't the best, you can use this space to add in an explanation about how distance learning wasn't for you/the pandemic had an impact on your studies, etc. then move onto present: what are you doing now (are you about to graduate? are you working? is it in a related field or something totally different, etc) and why this is the moment you want to go to grad school. and then: future. what will grad school do for you and why is THIS PROGRAM the right fit. be sure to name drop the CORRECT school (you will not BELIEVE how many essays i've read with the wrong school). if it fits, mention any faculty that you're interested in working with/learning from, and any classes that look interesting to you. you can also talk about the location and/or the university in general, and how this program will help you to achieve your goals of xyz.

soooo those are most of the standard application materials. obviously some programs will require other things—portfolios, writing samples, etc, i can't speak to those with much authority.

make sure you pay attention to the application deadline! these will vary by program. submitting an application early doesn't usually help, but submitting an application LATE can hurt you, so try to make sure to have everything submitted on time.

BUT, last tip: a lot of admissions offices will offer application fee waivers so, take the time to search the website, sign up for an information session if you can (they'll usually drop a code at the end of the webinar), etc. if you don't see anything obvious, seriously, just send an email to the admissions team and ask if there's any way to qualify for an app fee waiver. if the answer's no, no big deal, but if there IS a way (like one of those webinars) they'll let you know, and then you can save yourself a good $80 or more.

ANYWAY, this got long, but i hope it helped. i'm here if you have any other questions. BEST OF LUCK!!

✨sleepover friday✨