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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2343 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 25, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm taking my third month long vacation in the past 12 months; given that we are probably seeing the very end of the covid price extravaganza that let me go to japan and london from Socal for a couple hundred bucks; this time filling out my map of Europe with Romania, Bulgaria, and greece (which I somehow managed to avoid up until now.) If I don't go now, I'm probably gonna not go for a long ass time; prices look like they are bouncing wayyyy back up.

I'm really gonna miss covid; that whole situation was so fucking convenient to me. Cheap plane tickets, cheap lodgings, cheap car rentals, incredibly cheap train tickets (including that summer ticket in Germany that was all local and national and some international rail with unlimited rides for like, 12 dollars or something. Shit was wild; I hope they do that again.), and short lines.

I guess It has to end eventually though, or all the places I like will go bust. This is me bidding a fond Farwell to the Coronavirus era, I really hope the people who want me to eat the bugs and live in the pod don't also make me go back to the fucking office.

I'm with @f3zinker. The response to Covid was awful and it basically destroyed the social capital I spent most of my adult life accruing. I hated it and think it was the worst political, social and economic disaster of the last two decades.

The diversity of human experience, right?

It let me stop being a human beast of burden and get on the social capital accruing section of the ladder.

Truly proves meritocracy is a myth: no covid, I work for wages until I'm dead. Yes covid: I get a degree, and now I own a house and have a funded retirement and all sorts of shit; where as you (maybe?) get absolutely fucked by the thing that helped me immensely trough no fault of your own and with no way to stop it (I assume).

Like TheDag said, I'm happy for you but I find myself still resentful about the whole pandemic situation. I was considered an essential worker at the time and saw an overall drop in my lifestyle quality. Wages were stagnant with no bonuses, even though supposedly I was too fucking valuable to stay home. No one was hiring in my specific field so I couldn't jump to another employer until right about the time partial re-openings were happening. My commute got a little shorter but all the amenities/services at and near my worksite were shuttered.

I didn't get the benefits of WFH. No binging Netflix, no experimenting with kombucha/sourdough/mead-making. No working on classes during my downtime. (If anything my workload went up.) Vacations I had planned for months got scrapped, including some not-easy-to-get backcountry backpacking permits in a few national parks. All of my social outlets were closed "out of abundance of caution" (which went right out the window when the media decided protestors somehow can't spread covid). I just got dry-railed for 18 months.

And like TheDag said, people definitely got hit worse than I did, some I know personally. Hell, whole nations got wrecked by this. Maybe I should just grin and bear it. But goddamn I am tempted to backhand anyone talking about how cozy and great the pandemic was into next Tuesday.

The pandemic measures very significantly and permanently reduced my quality of life. I won't bore anyone with the telling of the tale, but it's very lop-sidedly net negative for me.

Still, I can't fault anyone for profiting from the whole affair. I'd have done the same in their shoes.

Sure, make hay while the sun shines, but expecting me to give anything more than a token thumbs up to someone profiting off of a situation that reamed me is a long wait for a train that ain't coming.

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