I was responding to someone who was arguing that it is easy to get food without human contact, and I in fact noted that people leaving the house for fun activities was not the same.

The thing is, we live in a country where the president was literally telling people that the disease isn’t that bad and federal and many state governments literally obstructed the ability to enforce mask mandates, close schools and limit the number of people at religious observances. Many people in this country don’t…

Agreed. It’s not realistic to expect people to live in total lockdown, and for that matter even having the option to do it is a massive privilege that’s not available to a whole class of manufacturing, grocery, restaurant and delivery workers, not to mention healthcare and other emergency workers. Healthcare experts…

Just because that’s true for you doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone. I live in an urban highrise that prohibits deliveries to your door due to COVID. If I want to eat, at minimum I need to walk through hallways and stairwells used by others and get 5-10 feet from my doorman as well as people passing through the lobby …

It’s amazing to me how basically everyone on these threads claims they have sat in their homes for the past 11 months and calls everyone who’s ever done a non-essential activity a murderer. You are completely right - it’s a time for compassion and also for understanding that people aren’t perfect and are often doing…

Ha, I am Asian and at one point was working at an office that was close to a great Asian supermarket. I bought some stuff there to try to cook some of my favorite dishes that my mom makes and called her to ask for some recipes. The guy who shared my office at the time asked “did she tell you” and I said “not really.”…

Ha, I got a similar frother during the closing sales at the Flying Tiger stores in NYC - when I went, you could get any 10 items plus a tote bag for FIVE DOLLARS! So that means I paid 50 cents for mine (and another two bits for the one I gave to my own sister). Mine is pretty flimsy but it still does a great job with…

Why don’t they sell the little bottles of wine and booze that most of the plane gets? They’d be perfect for all the picnics we’ve now been forced to have due to social distancing!

And not only that, but there are a ton of prepared sides you can get out of the deli case at supermarkets too. I do think Boston Market originally filled a gap for working families that wanted a meal that felt healthier and more like home cooking than fast food without paying full restaurant freight, but there are so…

FYI that is clearly a polo mallet they are whacking people over the head with. A broom is way too declasse for this crowd!

See, I am a completist. I start one book at a time and read it through to completion even if I don’t care for it. Recently there was one mystery/thriller recently that was so awful I did just page through it quickly to find out how it ended, which is typically the closest I’ll get to stopping something once I’ve…

I don’t blame you, there are gaps in collections and stuff is reserved already all the time! If I could figure out how to sign up for more I totally would. It helps though that I share a Kindle account with several family members so we can all read each others’ loans on vacations.

I’m surprised you didn’t reference loading books onto your phone. It’s certainly not as comfortable as printed books but it gives you constant access. I am an extremely fast reader and would routinely finish a book during the 70-90 minutes of round trip subway commuting time I had in the “before times” and have read…

Believe it or not, over the air TV is still a thing so you may want to try going the antenna route to at least get access to the main broadcast channels for your vegging? I can’t do it where I live in NYC as all the buildings create too much interference but as I noted elsewhere on this thread I have a friend who was…

Well, getting rid of excess channels DOES count if you were being forced to pay for them in a bundle. I think it can work for people if 1) they can do over the air at their home and 2) are fine with only watching what they have access to. The one guy I know who’s done it successfully uses a fancy antenna and…

Seriously. They would have to be the most delicious things in the world to be worth all this effort and cleanup. 

I get that you are joking here, but suspending voting rights for people who don’t agree with you is a dangerous path to go down - and, not surprisingly, one that Republicans have been pushing for years. Let’s be better than that!

Agreed and very fair - a process where people who have been hurt unilaterally move on/forgive doesn’t work. But at the same time not being willing to meet those who have wronged you part of the way means nothing will ever change. I do think there will need to be some way to extend an olive branch to the other side,…

I urge you to read Evicted, a great book about a key driver of poverty. The author spent years living with his subjects and made close friendships, he looks both at the role that poor choices and institutional failures play for different families with a lot of compassion. One heartbreaking story he tells is about a…

Yes, the writer of this review seems so angry with Vance she’s looking for any criticism she can to throw at it, and some of them contradict each other. While the book undoubtedly did have problems I do think Vance calls out some real systemic issues that made his own success a true outlier, and indeed the fact that…