A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@dancinyogi

An under appreciated fact, for sure. When the ACA was passed I thought "It's not perfect, but it'll expose problems and show what needs to be worked on." Wow was I naive back then about where things were going.

@KJ7OFH

The in-laws got our kids a 3D printer today, too. We got benchy successfully printed, so we're pretty happy about it. Enjoy!

@szattwellauthor

Thank you for the response! I'm going to give it a read myself first, in that case :)

@szattwellauthor

This is exactly the kind of book that my middle schooler loves. I notice that it's called "adult dystopian science-fiction" but would it be appropriate(content, not reading level) for middle school?

@DrPsyBuffy @sbarolo @warkittens

I think it's a little bizarre that this argument has taken over this site. It's not well advertised, but quite a few instances have the feature, and I guess it should be better advertised up front as people are picking instances. This one has it, and I haven't even used it, nor have I really ever seen anyone in it using it regularly.

@gwensnyder

I swore I wasn't going to wade into this again. Mostly because we have it here, but no one really uses it so I didn't see it as a big deal at first. But, here I am....

Is the answer going forward to make sure that people who want it end up in instances that have it when they start? To expand it to more instances? The arguing seems to have lost all semblance of finding a solution at this point and the go back to twitter BS needs to end. So what's the solution that people can get behind?

I mean, I get that a lot of people don't correspond with their instance admins for whatever reason. The one here is pretty outgoing. If it's a big deal to people I assume asking their instance admins to add it would lead to either it becoming more normalized, or, people migrating to instances that have it already if they're told no, right?

@shawrd773 @OkieSpaceQueen

We always described Santa as "the spirit of giving" to our kids, as well.

The first time I ever heard of this elf on the shelf nonsense was one day when they came home from school a few years back and the teachers all had them up. I shut that down real quick. Explained to them that it was no different than a stuffed animal in their bed and that they were free to tell their teachers that surveillance and blackmail weren't cool and their teachers could reach out if they had an issue with it. Never heard from them.

@neroden @EricCarroll

This is an argument that I really just don't get involved in any more, but, as someone who spent a significant portion of their career in R&D for technologies to help clean up nuclear waste I'll just say you're right. Anyone who tells you that nuclear has to be part of the future power generation of a "green" country hasn't spent any time in the real world of dealing with it.

@jaclynmacrae

I suspect you're right on all of that. Thank you for the response!

@IPEdmonton

I've watched quite a few really smart scientists stop masking, get sick a lot, and then seemingly be completely baffled as to why. I don't get it at all.

@pixplz @alicrook@sfba.social

That is very fortunate Ali. I'm glad to hear those exist. Our local school district did their best to straddle "both sides" the last two years with masks "encouraged" but not required, etc. However this past semester they just completely gave up and won't even mention "COVID" or "masks" at all.

@Gdac @pixplz Good for you for taking care of yourself and doing what you can for your classroom. Sadly none of the teachers I was friends with did any of that for themselves.

So sad to hear about the kids. That's what always gets me about our acquaintances. Their kids are always sick.

@luckytran

There were actual people who thought they'd just do a 180 after the midterms?

@fenandaj@mstdn.social

Perfectly said and it does help. Honestly, where we live there's exactly no one that we've seen taking a single precaution in almost a year now and it does get to me sometimes. Not in an isolating way, personally, I've come to learn that I just don't care, but, in a "Am I the crazy one?" way.

The last of our children's friend's families went back to in person school this past January(and one of them recommended a therapist to us that they saw to get over their "fear of COVID" to help us "get back to normal") and while everyone in our household completely believes we're doing the right thing it's still nice to hear other people are doing the same as we are out there.

On the social pressure, I will say that this year, for the first time, no one asked us to do anything for the holidays, which was surprisingly nice. We didn't have to explain to anyone that a pandemic is still raging. They either understand that we'd just say no, or they all forgot about us, and either seems like a step in the right direction :)

@artisanrox

You don't have to be faster than the zombie, you just have to be faster than the person you're next to :)

It really is wild. The cognitive dissonance runs deep.

@LadyInTheStudio

Thank you so much for sharing! It really is dystopian. One of the reasons for making this post was how insane it seemed to me to watch many scientists and doctors go about their lives like there was nothing going on. It's bizarre to me and often leaves me wondering if I've lost my mind.

It's great to hear about your property. We are(hopefully) moving from the suburbs to a lovely chunk of land off in the forest in 2023. I'm really looking forward to spending more time with nature.

@LadyInTheStudio

One thing I've really learned from making this post and reading what people have to say is that when you're on the "outside" it seems so obvious that people are damaging themselves, doesn't it? But they just don't seem to see it in so many cases.

@Nonbiner@mastodon.nl @pixplz It really goes to show how deep the "need for normalcy" can be, I guess. You're right, scientists and doctors seem to be some of the worst with their super spreader events this past year.

@natureworks I sincerely appreciate that advice! We are definitely starting out slowly as we learn the land and try to figure out what will work best.

@trendless

Yeah, getting ahead of myself there.

First - Convince people it's real and not over

Second - Convince people to wear masks

Third - Convince people to ditch the cloth ones for well fitting good ones