What's messing with your Groove?

[BalticSailor]

Latvia to go into strict four-week lockdown as of Thursday.

Yeah, we've almost flattened the curve - vertically.

[Loki]

I noticed that states that are getting cold right now are seeing a spike in Covid cases. Is that what's happening in Latvia?

[BalticSailor]

I noticed that states that are getting cold right now are seeing a spike in Covid cases. Is that what's happening in Latvia?

I don't think that's a factor, at least not a very significant one - the infection rates started a marked upward trend before any noticeable change in weather.
Our vaccination rates were fairly terrible (that has changed for the better in the last two weeks or so), and there's a lot of public distrust in government mandates as well as in vaccination. Since this spring, three new political parties have been registered, all of their platforms are more or less based on anti-vaccine populism. Overall, I'd say our government fucked up in multiple ways (poor communication w/ both experts and the population, very slow decision-making process, reluctance to implement new restrictions until it's almost too late, etc), and we are all now paying the price. The only reason I don't want the government to resign is, I know the fuckers (aforementioned antivax populists) who will try and to some degree certainly succeed to take their place, should there be an early parliamentary election - and their ideas on handling this situation guarantee collapse of healthcare system, for starters.

[Ominous Gamer]

I had a coworker years ago that I taught everything I knew to. She came in as a nearly blank slate and before she left we were the go to duo for tech support. To the point that the higher ups we didn't report to were asking if we minded changing library locations to help out their locations. She left the system a few years ago and repeatedly said that when she got the chance she was going to offer me a job because she missed working with me.

Well, she is in a position now to hire people and the first thing she did was offer me a gig. Same position she started at in her company when she left the library system. Pays a solid $20k more a year than what I make.

So where's the problem? Requires living in Orlando and we sign on our dream home (that is not in Orlando) tomorrow.

[Hazir]

Vet in Istanbul seems to have messed up sending out a blood sample of Leona (an abandoned dog we decided to adopt) to a lab in Ankara.

That's another month of delay before we can take her to Holland.

[Hazir]

I had a coworker years ago that I taught everything I knew to. She came in as a nearly blank slate and before she left we were the go to duo for tech support. To the point that the higher ups we didn't report to were asking if we minded changing library locations to help out their locations. She left the system a few years ago and repeatedly said that when she got the chance she was going to offer me a job because she missed working with me.

Well, she is in a position now to hire people and the first thing she did was offer me a gig. Same position she started at in her company when she left the library system. Pays a solid $20k more a year than what I make.

So where's the problem? Requires living in Orlando and we sign on our dream home (that is not in Orlando) tomorrow.

Ugh. That's a tough call.

[GGT]

I had a coworker years ago that I taught everything I knew to. She came in as a nearly blank slate and before she left we were the go to duo for tech support. To the point that the higher ups we didn't report to were asking if we minded changing library locations to help out their locations. She left the system a few years ago and repeatedly said that when she got the chance she was going to offer me a job because she missed working with me.

Well, she is in a position now to hire people and the first thing she did was offer me a gig. Same position she started at in her company when she left the library system. Pays a solid $20k more a year than what I make.

So where's the problem? Requires living in Orlando and we sign on our dream home (that is not in Orlando) tomorrow.

The perks of homeownership are vastly overrated. Sorry your happy bubble got burst so fast.

[Aimless]

Daughter indicating she wants to go into pediatric orthopedics... i'm tryna explain to her she should go into neuro but she counters by saying she wants to do research on her mum... how did it all go so wrong

[wiggin]

My 3 year old has had quite a few weeks: he first was put under for at triple scope, then had an anaphylactic reaction two days later that landed him in the hospital, has been dealing with a flare of GI problems that's leading to food refusal (and likely removal of dairy from his diet)... and just today came back with a positive strep culture and has 10 days of antibiotics ahead of him.

Poor guy, it's astonishing he's as cheerful as he is.

[Aimless]

My 3 year old has had quite a few weeks: he first was put under for at triple scope, then had an anaphylactic reaction two days later that landed him in the hospital, has been dealing with a flare of GI problems that's leading to food refusal (and likely removal of dairy from his diet)... and just today came back with a positive strep culture and has 10 days of antibiotics ahead of him.

Poor guy, it's astonishing he's as cheerful as he is.

Oof hope he gets well soon

[Loki]

My 3 year old has had quite a few weeks: he first was put under for at triple scope, then had an anaphylactic reaction two days later that landed him in the hospital, has been dealing with a flare of GI problems that's leading to food refusal (and likely removal of dairy from his diet)... and just today came back with a positive strep culture and has 10 days of antibiotics ahead of him.

Poor guy, it's astonishing he's as cheerful as he is.

That doesn't sound pleasant. Hope he's strong enough to terrorize you in no time.

[wiggin]

My 3 year old has had quite a few weeks: he first was put under for at triple scope, then had an anaphylactic reaction two days later that landed him in the hospital, has been dealing with a flare of GI problems that's leading to food refusal (and likely removal of dairy from his diet)... and just today came back with a positive strep culture and has 10 days of antibiotics ahead of him.

Poor guy, it's astonishing he's as cheerful as he is.

...aaaaand turns out he's allergic to amoxicillin (and, presumably, most/all beta-lactams). So one more late night epi/ER trip under his belt and he's now experiencing the wonders of clindamycin treatment.

He absolutely charmed the ER staff, though - apparently he was the talk of the entire floor because he's adorable.

[Ominous Gamer]

My middle child is also allergic to amoxicillin. We only discovered it after she broke out and looked like she had scarlet fever.

[Hazir]

I'm going through something recently that I can only describe as feelings of guilt over 'privilege'. I write privilege between quotation marks because it feels a bit odd to think about myself as privileged. During the first decade of my life the divorce of my parents caused an extreme decline in socio-economic status, to the point that dickensian destitution was getting within reach. Things then turned around to the point where I can say nowadays that I am back to comfortably middle class. My ability to get here has a lot to do with a type of lingering entitlement that put me in an elite high school. This paid off. I'm not rich, but also have no financial worries or debts of beyond the open balance of my credit cards. Which I without exception pay off in full every month.

What struck me recently that on the one hand I feel like I am giving back way too little. But this feeling gets mixed up with another feeling of being a bit of a prick by not recognizing enough that what seems trivial to me may not be so trivial to others. An example of this; a friend found out 20 Turkish lira he had tried to charge to his travel card had gone missing. As we were sitting next to the bosphorus, drinking coffee, he spent almost half an hour to get his money back. 20tl is about $2 and I was on the verge of saying that maybe we could solve this problem by me giving him the 20 liras. Which at the moment I thought it felt like a complete betrayal of our friendship.

And this kind of feeling accompanies pretty much everything I do for other people. Like whatever I do is kind of a dick move.

[Being]

They offer voluntary taxes to help alleviate those feelings. Try one of the lotteries, they can be fun along with giving back to society.

[wiggin]

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/10539...ia-parking-lot

How different might our country be if the quality of public education was not correlated with local housing costs. Such an obvious barrier to mobility should have been fixed decades ago.

[Steely Glint]

Is the quality of education determined by house prices, or are house prices driven up by the presence of good schools?

[wiggin]

Both. So the majority of a school district's funding is driven by property taxes, which are based on home valuations. So, more expensive places tend to have better funded schools. But of course better schools make the location more attractive for wealthier parents, who drive up already high housing costs. You can't get an expensive neighborhood without the amenities that make it expensive (transit, location, parks, housing quality, etc.), but once it's desirable you get a positive feedback loop with school quality.

There are some complexities here, of course. Big cities tend not to have neighborhood level funding formulas, but instead have big budget pools for the entire sprawling school system. But there are other factors that get involved - political pressure by wealthier and more engaged citizens/neighborhoods mean that budget cuts fall disproportionately on underserved schools (often under the guise of rewarding success/punishing underperformers), facilities are generally better in nicer neighborhoods, etc. An even bigger driver of inequality is various exam schools/magnet schools/etc. (the terminology varies) - kids who perform well in e.g. grade school and middle school exams can get competitive placement in much better quality schools inside the system (not driven by neighborhood). This, of course, heavily favors kids who are from wealthier backgrounds while still being able to claim it's a meritocracy.

There are other weird things that happen in desirable school districts - very odd demographics, where parents of school age kids pay through the nose to live in a better district until their kids are in college, after which they mostly move to cheaper places, leaving a big dropoff of residents in their late careers. You sometimes get districts that are well funded because they support less kids than expected given the tax base - either because parents have fewer (/can afford to have fewer) kids per household, or because a substantial portion of the households send their kids to private schools (for e.g. religious reasons), taking them off the school rolls.

But broadly, high housing prices is heavily correlated with school quality (or, at a minimum, per pupil spending). This is such an easy fix (flatten per pupil spending across the state, or at least within geographic regions) that the reason why it isn't implemented is painfully obvious - upper and upper-middle class households are willing to pay more for their own kids' educations but not for everyone else's.

[Loki]

Both.

[Ominous Gamer]

Is the quality of education determined by house prices, or are house prices driven up by the presence of good schools?

When we bought our house 5 years ago the local elementary was an A school and the middle was a B school. Now both schools are A and the high school is a B and our property value went up $140k (government FHA approved too). It's apparently more difficult for a school to retain an A than it is for a B school to move up to an A. Every family that put in an offer had kids that were under 12. Public school grades are huge, not just cause of the education, but consistently high grades suggestion a certain type of neighborhood people want to belong to.

[Steely Glint]

Apparently, around 25% of the US homeless population is employed. Higher if you include homeless families (like the one in the story) which include one or more working adults, and higher if you include people who are sporadically employed.

[Hazir]

They offer voluntary taxes to help alleviate those feelings. Try one of the lotteries, they can be fun along with giving back to society.

I haven't been clear enough; it's not that I do nothing, it's the feeling of unease it causes. Despite knowing that it's more than 99% of people do relative to wealth and income, I can't kick this feeling of 'it being (actually too) easy for me and degrading for the recipients. Very confusing.

[Aimless]

I haven't been clear enough; it's not that I do nothing, it's the feeling of unease it causes. Despite knowing that it's more than 99% of people do relative to wealth and income, I can't kick this feeling of 'it being (actually too) easy for me and degrading for the recipients. Very confusing.

Best to focus on things you can do that either facilitate survival or meaningfully improve agency & autonomy; that way, you don't end up getting distracted by things like the (familiar) situation you described, which fall within the scope of normal everyday hassle, and which risk stirring up unproductive inner conflict. One very effective way to leverage privilege to help, in a way that is unlikely to leave you feeling conflicted and weird, is to help people in their contacts with eg. govt. agencies—if they ask you for it—or help people looking for a job or a way into the job-market with good leads (eg. if you know someone who's hiring or open to taking on an intern and you know someone who might be a decent fit). And, ofc, to just meet people who need human connections. I rarely help people (in my immediate surroundings) with money, but often help with govt. or healthcare interaction and getting info on how to get into specific sectors of the job market (eg. getting into medicine or research), and occasionally with studies where appropriate.

[ar81]

Battletech community advertises itself as a great community. But it is the same as others. It has jerks too.

A guy crashed my car in bad faith. He was a bully and he crashed because he was in the mood to bully some stranger, but I do not react very well to bullies. He ended up being scared of me. I have a beast inside that once unleashed scares bullies without physical violence.

[Hazir]

Best to focus on things you can do that either facilitate survival or meaningfully improve agency & autonomy; that way, you don't end up getting distracted by things like the (familiar) situation you described, which fall within the scope of normal everyday hassle, and which risk stirring up unproductive inner conflict. One very effective way to leverage privilege to help, in a way that is unlikely to leave you feeling conflicted and weird, is to help people in their contacts with eg. govt. agencies—if they ask you for it—or help people looking for a job or a way into the job-market with good leads (eg. if you know someone who's hiring or open to taking on an intern and you know someone who might be a decent fit). And, ofc, to just meet people who need human connections. I rarely help people (in my immediate surroundings) with money, but often help with govt. or healthcare interaction and getting info on how to get into specific sectors of the job market (eg. getting into medicine or research), and occasionally with studies where appropriate.

You're right about helping people with my expertise, that somehow is way more satisfying and has zero guilt attached. On the side of that I do think it's my duty to also support financially.

[wiggin]

My sister is the chief of staff (read: head doctor) of a midsize government run hospital. She's one of the youngest COS' in the entire system and has been pushing hard to make the hospital improve its already good quality of patient care and healthcare outcomes. She was fresh on the job when the pandemic hit and earned her boss' accolades for anticipating needs and managing through a very challenging period.

A few days ago, a nurse on her staff who is unvaccinated came to work multiple days in a row with symptoms (obviously, this is expressly against the rules). The nurse since has been diagnosed with Covid, which she gave to dozens of patients and staff, leading to at least one death and lots of delayed/interrupted care. As you can imagine, my sister was furious at the senseless waste of it all. After handling the immediate ramifications of the outbreak, she wrote a strongly worded memo the hospital staff, emphasizing the importance of adhering to Covid guidelines and conveying her disappointment with how the hospital as a whole failed these patients.

The memo was leaked to the press.

You know what the response of her superiors has been? They've been uniformly pissed at her for sending the memo, because the optics of it look bad and make it appear as if the government organization running the hospital is doing a bad job. Someone much higher on the bureaucracy totem pole was testifying to Congress soon and it sounded like this might come up. So, instead of the organization sharing her concern and working to ensure that patient safety and quality of care is paramount (and figure out how to get everyone to agree to get vaccinated), they are crucifying her for daring to raise this issue with the staff.

She's ready to quit, which would mean that an incredibly passionate and talented physician would be hounded out of an important role because of ass covering bureaucrats.

[Aimless]

Ugh, I read about that. It's a well-managed hospital and this is bullshit. Hope your sis has the support of colleagues and other staff.

[Loki]

Wig, it sounds like she's better off taking her talents elsewhere. With bosses like that, she's going to face constant obstacles because of problems created by others. From the sounds of it, she shouldn't have much trouble getting a similar job elsewhere.

[wiggin]

Wig, it sounds like she's better off taking her talents elsewhere. With bosses like that, she's going to face constant obstacles because of problems created by others. From the sounds of it, she shouldn't have much trouble getting a similar job elsewhere.

She has been keeping an eye open for a good position. I don't know if she'll take it or not; she feels a lot of pride in her staff (all 1200 of them) and the work she's been doing, so it'll be hard to leave just because of the bureaucrats. But honestly given how she sounded tonight I won't be shocked if she does decide to jump ship. She'll certainly get paid better elsewhere.

[Ominous Gamer]

log4shell is being blamed for the ransomware attack on Kronos, a huge time keeping and payroll company used all over the country. Including by my employer.

I just got an email explaining that they are still trying to find a way to get our paychecks out before the end of the year.