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Venues/bars/restaurants that don't provide N95 masks to staff, fuck off. You're not a cool employer, you're endangering your non-union tip-jar staff to save yourself a couple bucks a shift. Smalltime evil.

Went to a show on Friday (check out Super Duty Tough Work if you like live-instrument/band-driven rap). Great show but my girlfriend and I got COVID, which is 100% on us for going. The venue is thee local spot for smaller indie shows (200 person capacity I think) and has a good reputation generally. When COVID hit, the community raised like $60K in 48 hours in a GoFundMe to help the owners with the rent and whatnot during closure.

Our first time back in 2+ years and we talk to the bar manager on our way in who says half their staff are off sick with COVID. Proof of vaccination for entry, but the place is packed tight and people are drinking and dancing. There's literally a breakdancing squad doing backflips on the dance floor. The swamped bar staff are squeezing through the crowd in dinky cloth masks at a mass spreader event. Zero chance any of them even get paid sick days.

So: fuck off woke indie venues that don't do the bare minimum to protect your workers w effective PPE.

Andrew wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 10:55 am Venues/bars/restaurants that don't provide N95 masks to staff, fuck off. You're not a cool employer, you're endangering your non-union tip-jar staff to save yourself a couple bucks a shift. Smalltime evil....So: fuck off woke indie venues that don't do the bare minimum to protect your workers w effective PPE.

That is pretty shitty. I've also come to the conclusion that I don't have much use for restaurants anymore, nor that the coming realities engendered by climate change and our manner of consumption should have any of us going out to restaurants or having others make our food at the scale and methods most restaurants do more than once every week or two.

Part of this was perfecting my home cooking game to the point where I can do as good if not much better than most commercial kitchens are doing. I don't have much use for finicky 'haute' cuisine - or whatever the fuck woke hipsters are labeling umpteen small plates of specifically stacked effort these days.

Granted, there are some things I won't do at home that drive me to go out occasionally: anything deep-fried, 60 hour tonkatsu paitan, smoked meats are good examples of things I can't or won't do at home. But, I've found that I'm actually the best pizza/burger/noodle/Chinese/Korean/German/Indo-Pakistani-Pashtun/salad/taco/Mexican/French/Spanish/Argentine/etc... place in town. 90% of what I get going out is stuff that I inevitably think "I do this better at home" - and get feedback from others that confirm this.

The comments on (trigger warnings) this video and this video defending bullying. Not the first time I see sentiments like these.

I know there is megacope going on with these folks, but how is it that these comments are so close to societal attitudes in general, that the step from one to the other seems so natural? Hardship makes stronger, people too soft nowadays, bullying is good and necessary.

With war, violent crime, extreme poverty, whatever, people could be excused for not being able to conceptualize them in other than fantastic and reactionary ways, since they are naturally detached from them, unable to relate. You'd think this is the one area where people would be able think about it sensibly and concretely. But having the option to make things better, they want to make them worse. When a child is bullied, they would stand and watch, and then make surprised pikachu faces when the next massacre happens.

This fuels my suspicion that bullying among children continues because it is condoned by adults.

Seeing things like this, it really just seems hopeless.

kokorodoko wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:35 am The comments on (trigger warnings) this video and this video defending bullying. Not the first time I see sentiments like these.

I know there is megacope going on with these folks, but how is it that these comments are so close to societal attitudes in general, that the step from one to the other seems so natural? Hardship makes stronger, people too soft nowadays, bullying is good and necessary.

With war, violent crime, extreme poverty, whatever, people could be excused for not being able to conceptualize them in other than fantastic and reactionary ways, since they are naturally detached from them, unable to relate. You'd think this is the one area where people would be able think about it sensibly and concretely. But having the option to make things better, they want to make them worse. When a child is bullied, they would stand and watch, and then make surprised pikachu faces when the next massacre happens.

This fuels my suspicion that bullying among children continues because it is condoned by adults.

Seeing things like this, it really just seems hopeless.

Until humans can acknowledge that we're ultimately hominid primates who've evolved behaviors that are opportunistic and self-serving - personally and within a given social cohort, we're not going to get very far and the situation is hopeless.

People don't want to have to step outside themselves and evaluate their behavior in a rational context. They want to rationalize their instincts, as though violating those instincts would be a betrayal of their very existence.

kokorodoko wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:35 amthis video and this video

See, even Chris Rock thinks that slapping Chris Rock ain't that bad!

Everytime I see someone begin a phrase with "Trust me", I want to reply "I don't".

kokorodoko wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 1:52 pm Everytime I see someone begin a phrase with "Trust me", I want to reply "I don't".

I have similar skeptical reactions to "for the record", "let's be clear", etc. They are excess, and not a fun kind.

On Friday I drove over 4 hours to the Quad Cities to see Low in Davenport, only to find out the show has been cancelled due to a Covid case in both bands. Godfuckingdammit.

So me and a friend who made the trip as well decided to drive 45 minutes to the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, where we saw some of Beach Bunny, The Body, and Kassa Overall. It was good to see some live music, even if what we saw wasn't what we traveled for.

I still have never seen Low, and I can't make the rescheduled date.

Shit man, I saw them a week back in Montreal and there was definitely ~20% of the crowd unmasked the whole time. I hope we/(they!) weren't the cause. Infuriating. Maybe every city venue is the same dunno. I deal with too much of that shit day to day at work I had to let it go for the eve and just be in the moment. There will be another gig!

I'm annoyed by the trend of YouTube videos getting excessively long. 10-15 minutes is optimal in most cases for the actual amount of information being conveyed. I don't have all day to sit and watch. I think Tom Scott has the right idea. Length does not equal quality... I thought ...And Justice For All made that perfectly clear.