Deadly_Nightshade

My girlfriend is running a low fever and we had to cancel date-night in favor of doing something virtually so we ended up getting dinner from the same restaurant and watching something over Discord together, and that actually went fairly well. It's probably stress and not COVID but, still, we'll both feel better once the test comes back and that's confirmed.

Thus far I've mainly had fatigue, some muscle soreness, and possibly a light fever. It's not what I would call pleasant but I seem to recall feeling worse overall muscle pain from the Tetanus vaccine.

I got my second dose of the COVID vaccine, thus far I have some soreness around the site of the injection but no other side effects.

I've heard that some carriers will put 'attempted to deliver' if they're running behind so they don't have to deal with the package until another day but don't know how true that is.

I got a call from our internal contact tracing team this morning saying that I had briefly had contact with someone who had tested positive, so that's not great. Luckily I've already had the first half of the vaccine and the contact was minimal but, still, I'll be looking forward to the test results later this week to confirm that I didn't get infected and assuming the worst until then. And hopefully I won't have to go back on-site again anytime soon since 99% of my work can be done remotely and I've been trying to do that as much as possible.

Yeah, the quality of the show really started to degrade once D&D ran out of book material and had to come up with original plot (although they weren't that great about using book material either, particularly when they made completely unnecessary changes just to be more 'shocking' and 'controversial').

Arguably the United States has that dubious 'honor' with structures such as Fort Snelling in 1862 and you also had the concurrent use of camps by, once again, the United States in the early twentieth century in the Philippines as well as the German use of camps against the Herero and Nama although I believe that the most notorious, Shark Island, did come after the events of South Africa. However, that also depends on what you define a concentration camp to be and if it actively needs to be an extermination center, that is to say a death camp, or not.

I talked to a Wall Street Journal reporter on background for a story she was doing, it'll be interesting to see the finished work (in theory it should be out within the week unless it gets shot down in editing).

First half of the COVID vaccination acquired!

I signed up to receive the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine within the next few weeks. My team is going to figure out the exact order on Monday, since we don't want to take it all at once in case of any negative side effects, and I suspect I'll be towards the end since I'm able to work remotely (although also glad to be on the list and able to receive it given that, in the case of an emergency, I could go back on-site with some modicum of protection). I'll still be taking weekly COVID tests, even though I'm working from home we're all required to get tested at least once every seven days, but the more protection the better - particularly since I think this is going to get much, much worse. I also submitted a paper examining the 2019 Measles Outbreak in New York City and State to be published in a minor journal, so ideally it will pass peer review and withstand the editor's pen. But even if that doesn't happen it was still exciting to have been asked to submit something in the first place.

Having been on the ground for a similar violent event, when Neo-Nazi **** invaded my town and killed an innocent woman in a deliberate act of terrorism, I can safely say this isn't an isolated incident in any way, shape, or form.

According to various reports he was assaulted by the mob, including being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher, and died of his injuries after being put on intensive life-support. In other words, he was murdered.

There is a working jailbreak, although it hasn't been released to the public at this point, so my guess is that there will be plenty of non-Facebook units running around in the near future. At some point I should probably upgrade to an index, I've got a Quest Gen 1, and a legacy account so I don't have to use Facebook, and the original Vive but sometimes I do wish the resolution was higher and the new controllers look very interesting...

An even better example is a House race in 2019 in Virginia that literally came down to a coin toss since it was a tie vote, the ballot of the tie-breaking voter was tossed out since he hadn't filled it out properly and had written something in, meaning that if a single extra voter had come to the polls they would have decided the race.

Biden now has a slight lead in Georgia, it's looking worse and worse for Trump's odds of winning although the margin there will almost certainly be close enough to trigger an automatic recount and there are still ballots yet to be counted. I suspect that we'll also see an upswing in unrest tomorrow that might erupt into violence as the more extreme radicals on the right realize that Trump is in real danger of losing the race... And an equally high chance of unrest from the radical left if Trump gains a lead in enough states to put in over 270... Although if it is within one or two delegates I wouldn't sleep easy if I were Trump considering, if I remember correctly, he had two unfaithful electors in 2016 and he is even more polarizing now. The chance of this is probably highest if he does mange to stop the voting, although now that he's behind I suspect he'll suddenly change his position on that, but even without that I suspect there's a risk. And the same could be said of Biden although I think that is less likely this year than it was in 2016 when it was clear Clinton had lost and a protest vote wouldn't change the election.

I think we might not really know that until the midterm elections or 2024 when, most likely, we'll see people running on the Trump platform of nationalistic populism mixed with a bit of xenophobia but without Trump in the White House to directly rally around (unless Trump ends up winning, although that is looking less and less likely as the counting process draws to a close). There is a good possibility that, without the demagogue directly on the ballot, people might not be as supportive as they were when he was up for election.

It's not just you, the closer he gets to the election the more wild and erratic he has become (and I'm sure that the getting COVID hasn't helped his already questionable mental state).

Technically this is a cover of a metal song...

You should, it's one of the most famous works of short written verse to come out of WWII (it is by Martin Niemöller commonly known as 'First they came...'). Although the jump from 'people like to think they wont be a target of persecution until it happens and thus are willing to surrender the rights of others without realizing how the same could be done to them' to 'we can never oppose any socialist policies' was a bit drastic and uncalled for.

A White House?

Agreed, everyone thinks that are part of a protected class that will not be targeted by the tyranny of the majority or authoritarian minority until it happens (and, spoiler alert, they're all wrong): "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

I actually agree with this more than I disagree, although I suspect that I am more pragmatic while you're more principled. In my mind the reason for the government to exist at all is to attempt to preserve as much personal freedom and choice as possible while also stopping actions that overly infringe on peoples' agility to exercise and enjoy those personal freedoms. I do agree with strict scrutiny, although not always with how it is applied, and do think that there will need to be some compromises to personal freedom if someone wants to be part of society, for example wearing a mask during a pandemic because that is a minimal infringement of personal freedom that directly protects others heath and thus their ability to enjoy and exercise their personal freedoms, but that should be attempted in the least infringing manner. But unless an action is causing significant, active harm to others then, in general, I do not think it should be regulated - although I'm also currently running on approximately an hour and a half of sleep so I've tried to avoid making an absolute statement lest I think of an obvious exception when I'm less tired and more cognizant. And, personally, I'd much rather have an ineffective government than an overly authoritarian one (that's one reason I dislike Trump - he is the worst of both and manages to be both actively useless and dedicated to expanding the imperial presidency to an even more excessive degree than has already been done by both parties in the past).

While I suspect that no Justice could wholly be seen as supporting all civil liberties, in part because there are going to be situations where multiple liberties conflict, I would, personally, say that she did more to defend them than she did to restrict them (particularly when it came to the First Amendment). Although my guess is that, in part, we might disagree on Originalism and that might account for the conflicting view?

I'm the same way, I haven't actually been in the office for approximately six-seven months and don't know when I'll be going back. Although even after COVID clears up I'll probably keep doing at least some work remotely.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to drop $60 and, if I do, Steam or GoG should get my money (I'd normally be all for GoG but am slightly worried cross-platform multiplayer might be a pain and most everyone I know who I'd want to play with is likely going to buy the game on Steam).