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[Frumple]

Plague's not over for anyone except the folks it's killed, last I checked. It'll be over eventually, but near as I can recall it's fairly normal for major plagues to last a few years. We're not even through year two, yet. I think somewhere last year I settled on expecting this to still largely be ongoing in 2024 or 25, if nothing more unusual than the vaccine shows up. The vaccine was somewhat hope raising, but then chunks of the world turned to nergal worship and welp.

If some of the medical developments I've heard about pan out (iirc there's a pill form something or another that was looking like it might drastically reduce hospitalization rates, and incidentally also maybe cure some or all of the common cold) things might clear up real fast, real sudden (... at least for major countries...), but we're... not there, right now.

... but yeah, county I'm living in is sub-40% vaccinated. My despair glands flatlined months ago on that front,* I'm mostly just hoping the vaccines hold out for my immediate family that mostly didn't join the nergal worshippers and the plague doesn't kill or cripple anyone I'm particularly close to. So far, so good, but I'm not even sure we're at the halfway mark to this run, so... yeah.

*Or something. Emotional state for the plague's mostly been like how I felt walking around the neighborhood after a cat 5 hurricane went over my house. There's a feeling of "this shit is going to last half a decade" in the same way it was expected, almost normal, to see half the treeline gone and lots of collapsed roofs and crap. Somethin' about it being a disaster and all this shit being what's part of the particular disaster somehow takes a lot of the edge off for me, y'know? My personal fuckups make dealing with the (lack of) social aspects and whatnot a lot easier than it seems to be for a lot of people, though.

[Vector]

Thanks. Honestly. Locally they're like "OK BACK TO NORMAL GRAD STUDENTS, NO MORE MERCY" and I'm like ... brain borken no worky.

I'm gonna just sit here and work for a couple more hours, and then go to bed, I think.

[Rolan7]

Pillar of the local Pokemon GO community was flaunting his anti-mask stuff in the Triangle area Discord... but!  He did insist that he "doesn't start arguments" and was just expressing his personal rights.

Yeah I'll just dump my garbage off the side of in the road instead of giving a crap about other people, by that logic.  Don't @me, I don't start arguments, it's my personal business!

It's weird how all this shit has driven me into hopelessness and maybe hedonism, but certainly not an impulse to disregard other people.  I miss other people.  I miss seeing them succeed.  Who sees this shit and thinks "Haha, I'm gonna breathe on EVERY service person!".  I'm not certified to diagnose that as psycho shit.  (and it's, somehow, largely political)

I used to spend so much time chatting with libertarians (lowercase because ideology not party).  Now I'm not sure I could stand to be near one.  I'm sure most of them are nice, but this is like the one time we needed to come together.  But heck, it's more a Trump Cult thing than a libertarian thing... I just hate the overlap I'm seeing at times.

[TD1]

Hmmm, I prefer to think of these things as narratives. I went hiking the other day with a very Irish-catholic fella who went on at length about the sins of the British. Bloody Sunday, the potato famine, etc.

He wasn't being inaccurate. But the facts he presented were shaped by an internal narrative of victimhood.

My own personal narrative would have revolved around IRA bombs in my school, local Protestant farmers being shot for their land, the Narrow Water Massacre (in which the IRA bombed a convoy, waited until the injured were gathered and assistance arrived, then bombed them again), and so on.

Again, not inaccurate - just a narrative, and one which is likely shaped by the one-sided media attention given to the Troubles.

My point being - there are different narratives on many issues. It doesn't necessarily mean they're all wrong bar one. Assessment and balanced analysis of narrative and information would require the work of a professional historian, and even then we only truly get a better informed story.

[Loud Whispers]

My point being - there are different narratives on many issues. It doesn't necessarily mean they're all wrong bar one. Assessment and balanced analysis of narrative and information would require the work of a professional historian, and even then we only truly get a better informed story.

Or just post memes about it

[TD1]

My dear friend, I have no idea what you meme.

[JoshuaFH]

I've been feeling really depressed lately. Sometimes I get the pleasure of getting to hang out online with some cool friends, which gives me some emotional nourishment, but it feels like it'd take an entire 'nother lifetime of emotional nourishment just to return to zero.

I can't get my sleeping schedule under control. I don't feel tired until early in the morning. Then I sleep through the day, and just want to keep on sleeping. With my relaxed lifestyle, I'd think that my arm would have healed completely by now, but my right elbow still hurts two months after the injury.

I'm just feeling more apathetic than ever about life. I need to get a job, but mustering the effort to do anything more than stupidly applying to random positions with an old resume just feels like too much work for shit that isn't worth it. It really feels like my life is over, so who cares.

[Rolan7]

I can definitely relate to the sleep-schedule thing.  So can my dad!  Even, to some extent, my mother (though she's handling it much better).
I don't know - I go out!  I walk!  But maybe I'm not close enough to the window when the sun sets?  I don't know why my - and my parent's - circadian rhythms would be so off.

[Flying Teasets]

Too many deaths here. Far too many preventable deaths.

[martinuzz]

In Sierra Leone, at least 90 people died when a petrol truck exploded.
The petrol truck had collided with a passenger bus.
It was not the collision that made it explode though.
It exploded when people were plundering the truck for it's petrol, and probably smoking cigarettes while doing so.

[Jopax]

Cigarettes can't ignite petrol tho, they don't burn hot enough.

[LordBaal]

Maybe is was gasoline, not petroleum. Some places call gasolone petrol.

And yeah people be idiotic, everywhere and all the time.

Im sad because a dear friend is yet again caught up in a pyramid scam. This time is some obscure crypto and a "coaching university" called Zoe Academy.

People, please, its very obvious that "business" that "double" your money but depends on you bringing in more people, working on referals and the like are pyramidal scams.

She's really nice but very gullible and has been fucked over several times by scammers and even close people abusing her thrust.

Now, she has seen some monetary benefits sure, but otherwise the pyramid will never grow, and is suspicious they really encourage you to keep the money spinning in the roulette instead of withdrawing it to use it.

I saw this with One Coin, a poor woman even lost 6K euros on that crap. And an endless stream of "cloud mining" shity fads, like the one where a dude lost 10k.

I guess the allure of quick rewards with no effort is too strong for most people.

[Lord Shonus]

You can't ignite gasoline with a cigarette. Drop a cigarette in a pool of gasoline and it will just go out, even with vapor build up. A lighter might be able to set off a lot of fumes, but a more likely candidate in the case mentioned is striking a spark off the vehicle tank while ripping it open or something.

[LordBaal]

Electrical sparks too ignite gasoline quickly and while a cigarrete butt wont ignite it maybe a the horrible right lines of events like the butt staring a small fire could. Hell maybe someine puffing the cigarrete migth increase the temperature enough if doing so right on the fumes? Dunno, seems unlikely but stranger things have happened.

Edit: fuck fuck fuck..... my laptop just went belly up, I already dismembered it and it seems like effectively died. Very sadly it was our sustenance source. Luckily the one my sister damaged is still operational BUT requires the use of the only tv as a screen... with peter not going to school yet, this are going to be very interesting days until I manage to solve this.

[Magmacube_tr]

Ugh. I am posting this here because there isn't a thread about being mad.

I keep fish. Namely zebra and white cichlids. These species, while notoriously agressive, can live with eachother. But not with anything other than a cichlid. They'll kill them.

My dad brought guppies this night for me. He was apparently gifted with them by a friend he was visiting, who had a hundred of them in a giant tank. Four of 'em. Two males, two females. These fish are very fragile, especially when they are small. And these particular ones are very much so.

My mom brought them in, and I put them in my spare tank. Then dad came along, and started insisting that I put the guppies with the cichlids, saying that "it will be just, my friend said so." We started to loudly bicker, which then turned to an argument.

He, with his superior wisdom, said that I should just put them in to die because he "said so." I said fine, already knowing how that will turn out. So I took the small tank to the living room.

He put one of the male guppies in, which then was immidiately ganged upon by three cichlids and almost got killed in less than 5 seconds. He quickly scooped it back up, but not before one cichlid managed to get a good bite on its abdomen.

I assume the unlucky guppies swim bladder was damaged from the bite. It is struggling to keep its position, and can't go up the water column without having to beat its fins like crazy. Cichlids have very strong jaws.

I suspect it will won't survive and die of either internal bleeding, or will have a fatal bodily failure due to stress. I also think that it is in pain due to this.

He should have listened. And now, a creature is dying for absolutely nothing.