Tetridict
9d ago
Today, the 23rd of March, marks six years since Boris Johnson implemented the first Covid Lockdown in the United Kingdom. This time of year will always remind me of those eerie first couple of weeks of lockdown. The cherry blossom trees, in all their Spring glory, standing lonely in the usually heaving central park at lunch time. Driving down the main motorway in and out of my city and not seeing a single other car at 5pm rush-hour on a weekday. The ease which unfounded terror was spread through the population during those weeks was eye-opening. The unquestioning acquiescence of all my fellow citizens made me realise for the first time just how subject to the whims of authority this society was and just how fragile and precious was my own freedom.
For the first couple of weeks, as the virus’s spread through Europe was meticulously tracked and broadcast, as carefully curated images of overwhelmed hospitals and rows of coffins were plastered across our screens, although I was already vehemently arguing against any imposed restrictions, I still retained some sympathy for the scared and frightened masses. But as the early data coming out of Italy and other places started to emerge and was so evidently at odds with the fearmongering propaganda all around me, my sympathy quickly gave way first to bewilderment and then slowly to anger.
As The Science™ took deeper hold and lockdown for two weeks to flatten the curve turned into lockdown for the summer turned into second lockdown turned into third lockdown and still the people clamoured for more restrictions and railed angrily against even the mildest suggestion that maybe we should ease up on the tyranny. Any moment now, I thought, surely any moment now the people will break and rise up against this imprisonment. All their lives they’ve been told that they live in a free democracy and now they’re happy to be essentially locked inside their homes, told they can’t visit friends and family, told they can’t touch or hug their family members, even if they’re dying, while with their own eyes they should be able to see that the virus for which all this suffering is supposed to be in honour of is so much less potent than they were told, while with their own eyes they should be able to see the hypocrisy of being ordered that grandparents are not to hold or even visit their new-born grandchildren while thousands marched shoulder to shoulder in the streets in celebration protest of the death of a criminal in a land 4,000 miles away. But no, the people never rose up. As Orwell, who understood the crowd better than any, once observed “Nowadays there is no mob, only a flock” and so it proved as my cowed peers meekly submitted to every curtailment of their freedom.
I will always remember lying in an empty field, reading a book in the warm sunshine and being buzzed by a police helicopter for being outdoors while not undertaking my mandated single-allotted daily exercise. I will always remember being told by the police to move on while sat in the deserted central park. I will always remember the multiple other times I was interrogated by the police for not cowering at home like a good citizen. I will always remember the fear in the eyes of my brother’s girlfriend as she shied away from anybody who got within two metres of her. I will always remember the depths of persuasion I had to employ to convince two of my friends to come and spend a night in the countryside with me during summer 2020, and the lies they had to tell their mothers to even be allowed out (and back in) their homes. I will always remember my work colleague who got suspended for hugging another colleague. I will always remember being kept apart from my partner in a foreign country due to closed borders. I will always remember being told by my own parents that I was not welcome in their house.
Today, the 23rd of March, marks six years since Boris Johnson implemented the first Covid Lockdown in the United Kingdom and life has returned to normal. The traffic is heavy and the parks are busy again. The Black Mirror-esque dystopian future that we got a horrifying glimpse of has faded away. Even the predictable economic and public-health consequences of lockdown have somewhat smoothed out. Covid came up in conversation the other day and my dad glibly remarked, “Covid? That’s ancient history now!” The world has moved on but, for me, the memory of Covid lockdowns still dominates my outlook. There is still a deep rage within me at the brutal illustration of the state’s power to strip away my freedom, cheered on wholeheartedly by the electorate. There is still a disbelieving resentment at how readily the populace succumbed to government control and willingly followed directives that just six months previous they would have loudly decried as inhumane. The hypocrisy of lockdown policies was responsible for a violent swing in my own politics, from casual left-wing socialist to hard libertarian, but most of all the lockdowns destroyed my faith in my fellow humans. The stark demonstration of just how easily manufactured-fear convinced the country to follow ridiculous commands replaced my underlying faith & trust in humanity with a smouldering disdain. The betrayal of even my own family, as they chose to follow the orders of tyrants and closed the door on their own child, drove a dagger into my heart.
I remember the lockdowns and I’m still angry.
Tetridict
2mo ago
My guess is that we'll see another 20-40% rise before the run stops
We're up 20% in the last five days, 7% today alone. Are you predicting a crash/leveling off in the next two weeks?
Tetridict
2mo ago
It's not that hot chicks can't have informed insights on geopolitics, it's just that as a hot chick you have so many other more fun options to do with your time than deep-diving in to geopolitics.
Maybe I should listen to Nebraska from start to finish and it'll click for me.
Everybody, if they get the opportunity, should do this at 2am while on an all night drive.
Tetridict
3mo ago
Decent writing but I can't stand dogs. They're rude, smelly, mostly idiotic beasts who think only with their stomach and are incapable of love. /r/dogfeee is one of my favourite subreddits and it's gratifying to me how, now that I have become a parent to a young newborn, how many posts I see in the parenting subreddits with new parents hating/regretting having a pet dog. They are disgusting creatures and your "dumb bitch" is 100% right to be wary of marrying a dog owner.
Tetridict
4mo ago
I really enjoyed reading this post. I also grew up with Harry Potter, not quite as extreme as every night for ten years but I read all the books multiple times, and your post reminded me that I used to spend hours reading HP essays on https://www.hp-lexicon.org/ back in the early 2000s.
I found your analysis of OOTP interesting and insightful. I haven't read a HP book for some years and it would be curious to read them again from an adult perspective but I'm a little worried the magic would be tarnished and i already have too many books to read.
I don't see the culture war angle of your post though, seems more suited to Friday Fun?
Tetridict
7mo ago
Islam is on course to dominate Europe within the next generation or two and Islam's take on the gender culture war is much closer to the Amish than to the descendants of the sexual revolution who are currently being displaced in their ancestoral homelands.
He's definitely gloomy about any future peaceful solutions. He paints a picture of perpetual violence and, at the end of the book, predicts no end to the conflict for the foreseeable future. I think one could safely say that the eight years since publication have proven that prediction correct so far.
I read Enemies and Neighbours by Ian Black last year and found it expansive and informative. Drawbacks are a mild pro-Palestinian bias which becomes more apparent towards the end of the book and the fact it only goes up to 2017 (when it was published) means it is now 8 years out of date but I found it to be an engaging, relatively balanced and detailed account of how modern Gaza became the mess it is now.
Tetridict
11mo ago
My baby son does this too but I assumed it was because they're over-tired just before they drop off. And when you're over-tired everything hurts more. I feel like everybody is more emotionally drained (thus, more likely to cry) in the evenings, makes sense to me that it would be the same for babies.
I (UK citizen) married a US citizen in 2023. We started the procedure to get me a green card immediately. There's a good chance it won't be completed until 2026. We're lucky enough that my wife is able to live in the UK so we can be together while we wait. Many of those waiting alongside us for spousal visas to be approved aren't so fortunate and have to stay apart in separate countries. I don't have a huge issue with the slow processing time, i approve of rigorous vetting for green cards. A number of my wife's friends in the US wonder why I don't just enter the country illegally. They even say that they'll find me work on the black market, no problem. Commonplace stories like the Mexican woman above are why they think this. Why play fair and by the rules if there's no penalty for cheating the system. If, instead, you actually get rewarded for cheating the system.
No, I don't agree that this woman should be given a green card. She should be deported and so should her children.
Tetridict
1yr ago
the Japanese were concentrated into camps in the United States.
Tetridict
1yr ago
I've never heard of the idea that Nazis made soap from the bodies of murdered Jews, and I am, by normie standards, a WWII history nerd
I'm far from a history nerd and I've heard the soap claim multiple times. I think I probably first came across it (as a kid) in a horrible histories book which are generally praised for their accuracy. I'm confident saying it was definitely part of the "mainstream holucost narrative" until relatively recently.
Tetridict
2yr ago
National Lab (LBNL) results support LK-99 as a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor.
Simulations published 1 hour ago on arxiv support LK-99 as the holy grail of modern material science and applied physics.
First claimed successful replication of LK-99
Accomplished by a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and posted 30 minutes ago.
Why this is evidence: The LK-99 flake slightly levitates for both orientations of the magnetic field, meaning it is not simply a magnetized piece of iron or similar 'magnetic material'. A simple magnetic flake would be attracted to one polarity of the strong magnet, and repelled by the other. A diamagnet would be repelled under either orientation, since it resists and expels all fields regardless of the polarity.
Hypothetically, if LK-99 turns out to be what it claims to be, what do you think will be the major visible consequences and changes for general humanity in the next 1 year, 5 years and 10 years?
On a personal level I can definitely admit that covid has broken me. I can't seem to let it go and I'm still hooked on lockdown and vaccine BS that a normal person would've long moved on from. I recognise that this is a problem and have actively been trying to spend less time and energy pursuing such material.
It's hard to move on though because the public response in general, and particularly that of my friends and family, to covid restrictions, was really shocking to me. How easily they rolled over and accepted the boot of tyranny in the name of safety. How quickly my friends turned on me for questioning the narrative and how even my own family turned against me and didn't want me around anymore. That stings and the trauma from that betrayal is at the root of my continued obsession.
And although they've moved on there's been no apology or acceptance that they were wrong. They still believe that they did the right thing. My friends ignore covid restrictions like everybody else now and my family invites me around again but the fact that they haven't acknowledged how easily they were manipulated and misled into evil, into pointless ostracisation, into supporting highly unethical and immoral policies, means that I can't trust them or wider society in the same way I did pre-covid.
So yes, covid has broken me. It broke my trust in my country, in my people and in my closest loved ones. Is it any wonder I can't let it go.
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a team shirt or scarf and get a photo of yourself taken with it?
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