Coping with Coronavirus

Well yeah that's what I'm envisioning. I buy 3 tickets and can sit consecutively. When my order is done the two seats on either side of my group become unavailable.

Something like that. It will be a lot easier to enforce with ticket sales and assigned seats.

Otherwise you'd just have to go through and rope off every other seat. That's going to annoy families that want to go together.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

Thanks.
It's definitely easier with someone you know and want to survive. This is opposed to some of the other aholes on Facebook. I am less empathetic towards them.

I feel you. The best I can manage most days is to remind myself that what I see from them on social media, however distasteful, is a very small part of who they are as a person and refuse to engage with them.

Stele wrote:

Well yeah that's what I'm envisioning. I buy 3 tickets and can sit consecutively. When my order is done the two seats on either side of my group become unavailable.

Something like that. It will be a lot easier to enforce with ticket sales and assigned seats.

Otherwise you'd just have to go through and rope off every other seat. That's going to annoy families that want to go together.

Blocking off the seats to either side of a patron wouldn't be sufficient. That's not six feet. You'd also need to consider the space in front of and behind each person in the theater.

You'd also need the chairs and armrests disinfected between showings, not to mention that every individual screen has a door with a handle that every patron will touch. Larger screens with stadium seating will have railings to disinfect, as well. And everyone touching all those surfaces will turn around and grab a handful of popcorn to shove in their mouth.

Concession and ticketing lines will need to be spaced further apart. If they're required to maintain distance between employees, I don't know how they even manage that with the narrow space behind the concessions counter.

Visitor confidence is a big factor, too. Movie theaters don't exactly have a reputation for cleanliness, and who wants to sit in a room with poor circulation with a bunch of strangers for a few hours right now? Ticket sales has plummeted even when theaters were running at half capacity. (And they're down something like 90% in places that never closed the theaters.)

I went to the movies as things were starting to ramp up in California and New York, and it was a nightmare of contact points and shared spaces. Theater chains are going to want to make sure they're well in the clear before they try to bring people in.

To bring this back to the topic of coping: it's going to be a long time before I get back going to the theater every week as a way to relax and de-stress. I'll adjust, and I've started to in some ways, but it's been tough. I can tell I'm struggling some days with having little time or space (physically or mentally) to myself.

Me and my mates have decided to use some this spare time we have on our hands now to do 24hrs of gaming to raise money for MacMillian Cancer Support (UK). This will be taking place on 8th May. We will be streaming it so anybody can pop in and say hey.
If anybody would like to donate, they can do so here - Awesomebroslive MacMillian

(also if there is a better place for this to live on the forums, let me know)

Well crap- looks like Washington State is closed through end of May and probably longer. I was really hoping a few things might reopen for Memorial Day.

@Onewild - I’ll make sure to check out the stream.

jdzappa wrote:

@Onewild - I’ll make sure to check out the stream.

Cool, we now even have a plan (all times gmt)

12-4 - war zone
4-8 - bored games
8-12 - alien swarm 8 player (hopefully we can find the 4 more players)
12-4 - halo 4
4-6 - open gaming
6-8 - dead by daylight
8-12 - sea of theives (hopefully kid friendly if we can remember not to swear)

Remember the game Vampyr from a few years back? Turns out its plot, settings, and structure are suddenly rather relevant.

I thought I was a vampire once but it turned out I was just criminally insane.

Posted by Brad Warner a Buddhist I follow.

UNSUBCRIBING

Over the past couple of days I have deleted the “news” app from my phone and unsubscribed to anything “news-like” that I was getting via email. I’ve deleted the “news” section from my YouTube feed as well. I’m not looking at Facebook or Twitter, although I will keep posting links to new articles and videos there. I am taking a public vow right here on this blog not to search for information about the pandemic. I am hoping I will be able to keep that vow.

The reason I’m doing this is because I have noticed that the essential information about the pandemic has remained the same for at least a month. Wash your hands, stay six feet from each other, wear a mask… etc. If anything new happens, such as the mayor or governor making changes to what people can do, I am confident that this information will reach me. It always has so far. When there’s a treatment or vaccine or whatever, I am confident I’ll hear about it without looking for it.

The questions I’ve been searching for answers to are things like; When will this end? Is there a treatment or vaccine available? How will this affect me and the people around me? The Internet and the news do not have answers to these questions, nor do random Facebook users, Twitter tweeters, YouTubers and the like. When those answers are available, I am confident that they will reach me without my having to make any specific effort to get them.

When I’ve stayed at Tassajara or gone on retreat at Mount Baldy, there is no access to the Internet and you can’t get a cell phone signal. There are no televisions, radios, or newspapers. Well… sometimes you get last week’s Sunday newspaper at Tassajara, or a magazine from a few months ago. But there’s no access at those places to current events or up-to-the-minute updates.

And yet, whenever something big has happened when I’ve been at those places, I’ve always heard about it. I was in Tassajara when Robin Williams died and I heard about it the following day. I even heard about the death of Jani Lane of Warrant because someone there knew that a friend of mine is the drummer for that band. For that matter, I heard about the death of Michael Jackson when I was walking around a Trader Joe’s supermarket. I didn’t need to see it on the news.

There is nothing in those updates that I am constantly offered that is of any value. There is nothing there I need to know. There is only constant repetition of information I am already well aware of. It’s not necessary, or helpful, or useful. The talking heads on the TV and the Internet do not know the future any better than I do, nor do the politicians.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I never did. No one ever did. In that sense, nothing has changed.

But what I do know is that I have important work to do, and my own bad habit of wasting time looking at trashy and poisonous entertainment disguised as “news” is getting in the way of that work.

Rather than wasting my precious and limited time on this Earth with worthless distractions, I’m dedicating myself to practice and to study. I’m dedicating myself to doing the serious work that I’ve been given to do.

I don't think that I consider choosing ignorance in pursuit of mental peace as the enlightened decision.

The argument is that cutting off the news feed is not choosing ignorance. He trusts his personal network of friends and acquaintances to get him the important information.

Which works just fine up until the point where all your friends and acquaintances take the same tack.

Two lovely British comedians are doing a podcast about parenting in lockdown (NSFW language.)

Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Lockdown Parenting Hell

SallyNasty wrote:

I don't think that I consider choosing ignorance in pursuit of mental peace as the enlightened decision.

I do not believe that I have learned anything particularly valuable in the news in the recent weeks. We don't know anything more about the disease really, we haven't expanded testing enough to have a much better picture of infection rates.

All I have "learned" from the news is the white people don't like being told what to do and that is not particularly useful, insightful, or helpful.

farley3k wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

I don't think that I consider choosing ignorance in pursuit of mental peace as the enlightened decision.

I do not believe that I have learned anything particularly valuable in the news in the recent weeks. We don't know anything more about the disease really, we haven't expanded testing enough to have a much better picture of infection rates.

All I have "learned" from the news is the white people don't like being told what to do and that is not particularly useful, insightful, or helpful.

I haven't watched a local/national news program in years and have also cut social media out of my life and I'd like to think I'm still relatively well-informed while also being much happier.

The best place I've found to keep up with actual news on the virus is the covid19 subreddit, where postings are restricted to academic sources.

Even if you don’t take it to an extreme, I find it helpful to be reminded that you don’t need to engage with the news as often as the outlets would like you to. I’m trying to keep in mind that checking my outlets of choice once a day is more than enough.

I would argue that paying any attention to the entertainment outlets that deceptively call themselves "news" is choosing ignorance. Engaging with social media in which the customers are the companies that buy personal information and the propagandists (both other state and corporate actors) who pay to promote their propaganda... that's ignorance. Continuing to visit "news" and "information" sites which support themselves with ads that disrupt normal use of the site, auto-play videos, and other forms of advertising that distract from the mostly information-free content (designed to promote engagement rather than enlightenment)... ignorance.

Curating your own sources of information is not ignorance, it is wisdom.

Tomorrow we will be doing the 24 hrs of gaming, starting at midday with COD Warzone. If you would like to donate, you can do so here
If you would like to watch, pop in an say hello. it will be here https://www.twitch.tv/awesomebroslive/

All times are GMT/BST, which ever we are in now, I've lost sense of time.

Just so say we are now in our 12th hour - moving on to Halo 4, all information is above if anybody would like to pop in and say hi

Dropped in for a hello during Halo 2.

Robear wrote:

Dropped in for a hello during Halo 2. :-)

Hopefully you got a Hello Too.

Robear wrote:

Dropped in for a hello during Halo 2. :-)

I saw, thank you. I did reply but I think you had gone by then. We ended up raising £550 for MacMillian Cancer Support.

Great job!

(I have not done FPS in a while and the viewpoint was making my stomach upset, sorry.)

Oh don't worry about that. We ended up having a few tech issues with Halo 4 anyway, even had to replay one of the levels.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Stele wrote:

At least the theaters with ticketing could maybe enforce some kind of empty seat between parties.

Half capacity is better than nothing.

The complexity probably goes up from same household groups getting tickets.

One of our local independent theaters was showing their plans for reopening. They're blocking off every other row. They're limiting ticket sales so that within rows, groups will be able to distance themselves. Masks are required for everyone.

deftly wrote:

Corona Cadence

Good to see the art of the sarcastic cadence is alive and well among Z-Gen soldiers.

Maybe off topic, but I am in isolation for at least 24-48 hours while I await the results of my corona test. Can anyone recommend one of these shows?

She-Ra (the new one)
The Witcher
The Castlevania

I am also open to suggestions as long as I can half-pay attention to the shoe while I’m sick. And it is available on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, or HBO.

NB. I don’t think I have it, but I had a fever and I live in one of the worst places in the US for it right now. (Blackhawk County, Iowa).

UpTolsomorphism, best wishes for you! It’s a long 24-48 hours while being the unsick one, I’m sure it’s even longer being sick. I’d start She-Ra myself, as I’ve heard very good things. Also, Hulu has a ton of old sitcoms from the 80s and 90s that are ideal background noise. I’m watching Step by Step right now (didn’t age so well) and Perfect Strangers is next on my list. Good luck, and I hope it comes back negative!

Husband really enjoyed She Ra.

Antichulius wrote:

UpTolsomorphism, best wishes for you! It’s a long 24-48 hours while being the unsick one, I’m sure it’s even longer being sick. I’d start She-Ra myself, as I’ve heard very good things. Also, Hulu has a ton of old sitcoms from the 80s and 90s that are ideal background noise. I’m watching Step by Step right now (didn’t age so well) and Perfect Strangers is next on my list. Good luck, and I hope it comes back negative!

I hope you watched Golden Girls first!