OMG I came home from my afternoon playing hooky and started doing some work and one of my coworkers is also working this late! I want to tell her to stop but I don't feel like I can since I have a little still to do, but I was gallivanting around instead of working for like half the day...

Oliver told me a story about giving a classmate some gummy bears and him making them kiss. Oliver asked, “Is it gay if they are non-binary?” And he replied, “They are non-BEARnary!”

The kids are alright.

Ah, ha, ha!

And he replied, “They are non-BEARnary!”

Awww!

Aww, non-BEARnary.

This is a very good thing... [link]

Fun!

I don't get his strategy unless he thinks he can just rely on the hard core Covid is no Big Deal voters... but will enough be alive next year to vote for him?

Exactly. It seems like such a short term strategy. People are so very isolated in their news sources, but when their close relatives and friends are dying they might notice.

I've been seeing news stories that hospital/ICU beds in Texas are maxed out - they're flying people to out of state hospitals for care. The governor was asking for medical professionals to come in to help, since they're overwhelmed. DeSantis was asking for ventilators. There was a school board meeting in Tennessee where a number of people were not only protesting a new mask mandate but, afterwards, outside, they were threatening health professionals. In a similar theme, in California, some of the people who are going to homes that are in the path of a fire and telling them to evacuate are being threatened with guns.

Sometimes I despair of what's happening.

edited to add: there was a story in the newspaper this morning that some people are refusing the vaccine because of I Am Legend - the 2007 movie - in which a vaccine turns people into vampires? zombies? and they figure the same thing will happen to them.

Abbott (governor of Texas) is an asshole. He's asking medical people to voluntarily cancel elective surgery (and take the financial hit) but won't do anything himself like a mask mandate. I hates him, gollum.

Basically I think medical and emergency personnel should protect themselves - mark the idiots who won't evacuate and vaccinate on GPS and let them rot. No ambulances, no fire fighters, no help. I don't know if I'd even send anyone to pick up the bodies afterwards.

Amazon seems to think I'd like the book "American Marxism" by Mark Levin. I have to admit I like this bit from the excerpt.

"In America, many Marxists cloak themselves in phrases like “progressives,” “Democratic Socialists,” “social activists,” “community activists,” etc., as most Americans remain openly hostile to the name Marxism. They operate under myriad newly minted organizational or identifying nomenclatures, such as “Black Lives Matter” (BLM), “Antifa,” “The Squad,” etc. And they claim to promote “economic justice,” “environmental justice,” “racial equity,” “gender equity,” etc. They have invented new theories, like Critical Race Theory...

Marxists - people who disagree with me.

That's a lot of scare quotes.

The more you use, the scarier they are, right?

I've seen recommendations for what appear to be far right books in, IIIRC, Amazon/Audible Originals although maybe it was some other free/included in your membership thing, there seem to be a lot of those. I find it disturbing whether it's because these are actually popular or because there is some push to make them featured or whatever