I wish I had time for any of that. I keep reading ideas for how to deal with the boredom of self-isolation, but nobody writes about the stress. My wife and I have to homeschool two kids while also doing our own jobs from home. We're lucky of course that we have jobs, and we can do them from home, and we have two awesome and healthy kids. But homeschooling while we work really is a bit much.
I’m right there with you. I get so irritated seeing stuff like this because I wish I could use my time to get ahead but we are just trying to stay afloat. At least we got our health which is what really matters.
Eh, some of us just have to keep working. No time to work on our magnum opus, because we're trying to remain productive in the ersatz offices we've cobbled together at home.
My home office for years was a walk-in closet. Just big enough for a small desk and a chair. Because I'd turned my old office into a server room, and it was too noisy.
But before I did that, I hacked used cube farm partitions into office space in said server room. It didn't actually work, because the scream of those 1U servers was very hard to block. But it would have been fine in the living room, or wherever.
Love how the third paragraph starts all positive and reasonable then suddenly segways into "Stop the Coronavirus Corporate Coup" and then an article about how "Hyperbitcoinization" is coming and how the modern economy is going to collapse from inflation.
You could also rest. You don't need to force feed yourself creativity and productivity.
I don't mean to take anything away from the author, just seeing a lot of this sentiment on social media. Thought it would be worth voicing a counter balance.
The problem with this reasoning is that it misses the key ingredient that might have helped people achieve great things: solitude.
Solitude is almost impossible to reach with today's attention economy (mostly social media), people will most likely spend their quarantine watching countless videos on the internet.
What the plague removed are distractions, we can't say the same for covid-19, unless you're trained to resist the attention economy, but then you wouldn't need a pandemic to do deep work.
I know I'm lucky to still have a job at a company that seems to be doing just fine despite the pandemic but I kind of wish I could have a month of time completely to myself
Nice but sadly also May (what did Newton do in his second month?)
The IHME models they chose to use are too optimistic, too many people aren't wise enough to understand or care how this works and won't be told what to do, there are going to be rather stubborn congregations for Easter.
Good advice to those of us who have the means to stay afloat, but it's not going to be just April the way things are going now.
Unless a working prophylaxis is found/confirmed May and June will be canceled too. That's what's unnerving about this whole situation: nobody knows what the endgame is. Say we're at the end of April. Then what? Open stuff back up? Not going to happen if opening it back up could realistically mean another 100K deaths before we shut everything back down.
So let's get those drug studies going in earnest, and lets rewrite the rules for what's "acceptable" in terms of regulation and rigor when faced with a potential death toll of this magnitude. I'm sure we can do more than a couple of studies at the same time, and in a shorter timeframe to preliminary results than "8 weeks" or "18 months".
It's amazing how people here are managing to find fault in a 3 paragraph long inspirational post. You don't have to do any of this stuff, it's not a mandate, just a person on the internet arguing for something positive.
For me, the fault is that the author seems to have an extremely limited perspective - seemingly assuming that everyone has a bunch of free time and is in the position to throw all their energy into creative endeavors or self improvement.
The millions of people who are unemployed and facing unpaid bills are not focused on their start-up idea.
There are people right now at hospitals in critical condition. Their loved ones not allowed to visit them as they face the chance of death.
There are thousands of businesses on the verge or closing permanently. Their owners aren't sitting around thinking they can use the next month to do more sit ups.
There are countless families who must continue working while now taking care of children not allowed to return to school. Those families also now have to figure out how to actually teach their children so they don't fall behind.
On and on it goes... I don't find this page to be inspirational in the least. I find it to be self-centered and naive. Funny thing is, I wasn't really that bothered by it to start with, but the more I think about it, the more angry I get at the author.
It isn't inspirational; I'm having a hard time settling on what I don't like about it, but it's not saying "look on the bright side", it's a rapid-fire machine gun of orders and demands, look:
> code that great app, learn a second language, donate blood, donate to your local food bank, do 5 pull-ups, then do 10, train like Arnold at home, learn about the current economy, learn about the future economy,
and they all ring with the same energy of a multi-level-marketing scheme, or a "death is coming, frantically DO THINGS" panic. Go shout that at your grandma, and see if she feels like being Isaac Newton afterwards.
> Let's all become Isaac Newton this month
Become offended by people criticising my ideas, take a 30 year sinecure job as Warden of the Royal Mint obtained by the patronage of an Earl, lose $3 million in the collapse of the South Sea Company, study the literal interpretations of the Bible, study Alchemy, sure I can do these things.
Oh you mean the cherry picked best bits of a 1-in-a-billion mathematical genius. Haha. Good one. Very inspirational and not at all depressing by comparison.
I agree with the theme of this, but the company I work for has been taking the COVID lockdown as an excuse to have more remote meetings, some of which are late at night for me (since this company is based in California and I'm in NY).
I definitely agree with making the best of a forced quarantine, I've been trying to get my brother-in-law to study for his GED (or whatever they call it in NY), but it feels like for the happy few that have a remote-friendly job, this crisis has actually decreased my free time.
My wife has been working from 7am-6pm every day for the past two weeks including about 5 hours a day on the weekends. About every third night, she'll have a 9pm meeting too and skipped a 10pm meeting last night. She's taking fewer breaks during the day than she would at the office as well. WFH is beginning to take a toll.
She knows that she needs to be better about stepping away and has this week, but another new "crisis" this morning means long days ahead.
We could also just take some time to relax and focus on self-care because the current situation is really stressful for most people. I don't think everyone benefits from the added pressure of being expected to produce some great work with their time in isolation. Some of us just want to get through the work day and then spend some time playing video games or read a book.
While the quarantine could provide a great opportunity for some to achieve great life goals, things could be quite different for parents working and caring for young children. With two working parents and a toddler at home, I'd be so happy to accomplish bare minimum work and home duties; pulling an Isaac Newton be darned!
Bleh. Clearly written by someone who isn’t trying to work a full time job without childcare for tiny children. This whole period will set the low watermark for my inadequacy as a parent and worker. Can’t wait for it to be over.
This guy is saying take the silver lining if you can. This is a positive call to action, take it and be inspired to do something. This general sentiment applies to life in general.
There’s a lot of comments here focusing on the negative. I think we’re all well aware of the things that aren’t going well. I have empathy for all those impacted by the pandemic, it does suck.
But, forgot glass half empty, go for half full! There are all kinds of opportunities out there (not equality distributed of course), and it is up to you to get creative and leverage those opportunities available to you no matter how mundane they may be. Do it!
Honestly? Fuck this. Millions of people are going to die. It's very likely some of your friends and family will be in that number. It's okay to mourn. It's expected that we will all mourn. The world we get out of this is going to be different and it's going to be a worse one for almost everyone.
You don't need to write King Lear or invent gravity. Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
I know that this will make it sooner than we thought for some, but for those who are going to die from this, this was always going to be their death date. I'm not trying to be insensitive and I'm not saying we shouldn't try our hardest to mitigate problems. We absolutely should. But when problems happen, lamenting has it's place, but only does so much good before it starts to do harm.
Maybe. So far only a few thousand have died so how about toning down the fearmongering hysteria? Also, 60 million people die every year. Every single year with or without the pandemic. Actually, it's more likely we'll have a lower death total around the world as a result of this pandemic as quarantine has prevented people from dying in car crashes, other diseases, etc.
> It's very likely some of your friends and family will be in that number.
No. It's very unlikely even in your worst case scenario. Unless you have the loosest definition of "friends".
> The world we get out of this is going to be different and it's going to be a worse one for almost everyone.
The world isn't going to be different. People are still going to eat, sleep, go to work, etc. Life will go on. Just like it did after the spanish flu, ww2, vietnam war, iraq wars, 9/11, etc.
> Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
Oh god. Stop watching the news. Unless you are paid to spread lies and fear, you aren't benefiting one bit from the hysteria. It doesn't help you, the toxic hysteria only hurts you.
> it's going to be a worse one for almost everyone
It could be, if we let it go that way. Or we could use this crisis to our advantage, learn from it and restructure things to be better for people in future.
This situation has exposed many problems that were already pervasive but just not as destructive to so many people as they are now showing to be under the stress our social system is being subjected to. The fact that so many people live paycheck to paycheck, that so many have poor access to healthcare, and generally have little to no safety net when times get just a little bad, through no fault of their own.
The pandemic has really shown how undervalued many of the most important workers in our society are and how fragile the systems we have in place are, due to the mismanagement of our institutions and the disproportionate power we have given to very greedy and callous people. We have an opportunity to reject the institutions in their current state and hold those in power to account for the crimes they are committing which are the same crimes they have been committing all along.
Agreed. This is a very stressful time already, and we've got at least another year of this. If some people are insanely productive, great! Lucky them. But if the best people can do is staying home, taking care of themselves and their families, and not freaking out, they get a gold star as far as I'm concerned. No need to raise expectations.
There's the short-term: thousands of unfortunate deaths due to a respiratory virus
and the mid-term: environmental issues caused by the over-consumerism and excessive activity in our societies. We can feel it with those lockdowns, improvement in air quality, noise stress reduction, etc.. those factors cause millions human deaths every year, as soon as this frenzy will start again, let alone for the rest of animals and vegetables
How do you know it will be worse for almost everyone? Parents will die, children will inherit windfalls (family farm? Dads truck?). Boomer politicians die, we see new blood in politics.
[+] [-] mcv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotherevan|6 years ago|reply
"You are not working from home; you are at your home during a crisis trying to work."
[+] [-] lovetocode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 01100011|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beart|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faitswulff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|6 years ago|reply
But before I did that, I hacked used cube farm partitions into office space in said server room. It didn't actually work, because the scream of those 1U servers was very hard to block. But it would have been fine in the living room, or wherever.
[+] [-] maxerickson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rad_gruchalski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tick_tock_tick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wpietri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdonahoe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abjKT26nO8|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rad_gruchalski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve-benjamins|6 years ago|reply
I don't mean to take anything away from the author, just seeing a lot of this sentiment on social media. Thought it would be worth voicing a counter balance.
[+] [-] theboywho|6 years ago|reply
Solitude is almost impossible to reach with today's attention economy (mostly social media), people will most likely spend their quarantine watching countless videos on the internet.
What the plague removed are distractions, we can't say the same for covid-19, unless you're trained to resist the attention economy, but then you wouldn't need a pandemic to do deep work.
[+] [-] morphogenesis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjr225|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|6 years ago|reply
The IHME models they chose to use are too optimistic, too many people aren't wise enough to understand or care how this works and won't be told what to do, there are going to be rather stubborn congregations for Easter.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Ventilators run out way before ICU beds.
[+] [-] TechBro8615|6 years ago|reply
This predicts a peak usage of 32k ventilators, but I don't see any data for how many ventilators we already have?
[+] [-] m0zg|6 years ago|reply
Unless a working prophylaxis is found/confirmed May and June will be canceled too. That's what's unnerving about this whole situation: nobody knows what the endgame is. Say we're at the end of April. Then what? Open stuff back up? Not going to happen if opening it back up could realistically mean another 100K deaths before we shut everything back down.
So let's get those drug studies going in earnest, and lets rewrite the rules for what's "acceptable" in terms of regulation and rigor when faced with a potential death toll of this magnitude. I'm sure we can do more than a couple of studies at the same time, and in a shorter timeframe to preliminary results than "8 weeks" or "18 months".
[+] [-] vlunkr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beart|6 years ago|reply
The millions of people who are unemployed and facing unpaid bills are not focused on their start-up idea.
There are people right now at hospitals in critical condition. Their loved ones not allowed to visit them as they face the chance of death.
There are thousands of businesses on the verge or closing permanently. Their owners aren't sitting around thinking they can use the next month to do more sit ups.
There are countless families who must continue working while now taking care of children not allowed to return to school. Those families also now have to figure out how to actually teach their children so they don't fall behind.
On and on it goes... I don't find this page to be inspirational in the least. I find it to be self-centered and naive. Funny thing is, I wasn't really that bothered by it to start with, but the more I think about it, the more angry I get at the author.
[+] [-] jodrellblank|6 years ago|reply
> code that great app, learn a second language, donate blood, donate to your local food bank, do 5 pull-ups, then do 10, train like Arnold at home, learn about the current economy, learn about the future economy,
and they all ring with the same energy of a multi-level-marketing scheme, or a "death is coming, frantically DO THINGS" panic. Go shout that at your grandma, and see if she feels like being Isaac Newton afterwards.
> Let's all become Isaac Newton this month
Become offended by people criticising my ideas, take a 30 year sinecure job as Warden of the Royal Mint obtained by the patronage of an Earl, lose $3 million in the collapse of the South Sea Company, study the literal interpretations of the Bible, study Alchemy, sure I can do these things.
Oh you mean the cherry picked best bits of a 1-in-a-billion mathematical genius. Haha. Good one. Very inspirational and not at all depressing by comparison.
[+] [-] PureDimension|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etrk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|6 years ago|reply
I definitely agree with making the best of a forced quarantine, I've been trying to get my brother-in-law to study for his GED (or whatever they call it in NY), but it feels like for the happy few that have a remote-friendly job, this crisis has actually decreased my free time.
[+] [-] brewdad|6 years ago|reply
She knows that she needs to be better about stepping away and has this week, but another new "crisis" this morning means long days ahead.
[+] [-] finaliteration|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pesfandiar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] millie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackyinger|6 years ago|reply
There’s a lot of comments here focusing on the negative. I think we’re all well aware of the things that aren’t going well. I have empathy for all those impacted by the pandemic, it does suck.
But, forgot glass half empty, go for half full! There are all kinds of opportunities out there (not equality distributed of course), and it is up to you to get creative and leverage those opportunities available to you no matter how mundane they may be. Do it!
[+] [-] Punkyou2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecopoesis|6 years ago|reply
You don't need to write King Lear or invent gravity. Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
[+] [-] gruez|6 years ago|reply
I get the tone you're trying to convey, but a 98% event isn't a miracle.
[+] [-] readme|6 years ago|reply
Glass is half empty for you then, right?
[+] [-] brink|6 years ago|reply
I know that this will make it sooner than we thought for some, but for those who are going to die from this, this was always going to be their death date. I'm not trying to be insensitive and I'm not saying we shouldn't try our hardest to mitigate problems. We absolutely should. But when problems happen, lamenting has it's place, but only does so much good before it starts to do harm.
[+] [-] JauntyHatAngle|6 years ago|reply
Does it work for everyone? No. Of course not.
But a "fuck this"? Why? If it works for people, good, if not, move on. No reason to bring down someone for trying.
[+] [-] rabryan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dntbnmpls|6 years ago|reply
Maybe. So far only a few thousand have died so how about toning down the fearmongering hysteria? Also, 60 million people die every year. Every single year with or without the pandemic. Actually, it's more likely we'll have a lower death total around the world as a result of this pandemic as quarantine has prevented people from dying in car crashes, other diseases, etc.
> It's very likely some of your friends and family will be in that number.
No. It's very unlikely even in your worst case scenario. Unless you have the loosest definition of "friends".
> The world we get out of this is going to be different and it's going to be a worse one for almost everyone.
The world isn't going to be different. People are still going to eat, sleep, go to work, etc. Life will go on. Just like it did after the spanish flu, ww2, vietnam war, iraq wars, 9/11, etc.
> Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
Oh god. Stop watching the news. Unless you are paid to spread lies and fear, you aren't benefiting one bit from the hysteria. It doesn't help you, the toxic hysteria only hurts you.
[+] [-] kiliantics|6 years ago|reply
It could be, if we let it go that way. Or we could use this crisis to our advantage, learn from it and restructure things to be better for people in future.
This situation has exposed many problems that were already pervasive but just not as destructive to so many people as they are now showing to be under the stress our social system is being subjected to. The fact that so many people live paycheck to paycheck, that so many have poor access to healthcare, and generally have little to no safety net when times get just a little bad, through no fault of their own.
The pandemic has really shown how undervalued many of the most important workers in our society are and how fragile the systems we have in place are, due to the mismanagement of our institutions and the disproportionate power we have given to very greedy and callous people. We have an opportunity to reject the institutions in their current state and hold those in power to account for the crimes they are committing which are the same crimes they have been committing all along.
[+] [-] wpietri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 11235813213455|6 years ago|reply
and the mid-term: environmental issues caused by the over-consumerism and excessive activity in our societies. We can feel it with those lockdowns, improvement in air quality, noise stress reduction, etc.. those factors cause millions human deaths every year, as soon as this frenzy will start again, let alone for the rest of animals and vegetables
[+] [-] api|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] op00to|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmarinelli|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] poletopole|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WantonQuantum|6 years ago|reply
(Kidding! I kid!)
What properties of Poletopole's constant make it interesting?
[+] [-] blattimwind|6 years ago|reply