??!! Apr 28, 2020 at 12:00 pm

The Stranger predicts the future.

Comments

1

RE: Plant based meat

So I tried a plant based hamburger a few months ago. Like most other people, I was surprised that they pretty much nailed it. Taste, texture, it all tasted so much like a regular burger I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Thing is, what I thought was funny was that they nailed the taste and texture of a FAST FOOD burger. The "meat" tasted pretty salty and it was crumbly/fatty. It was funny, I thought, because meat eaters rejected all previous plant based meat UNTIL they managed to make it taste like low-grade, bottom-of-the-barrel fast food McBurgers. Only THEN was it accepted as delicious by John Q. Public.

Keep that bar low America.

2

My prediction is that people will try very hard to go back to old habits and routines. They want things to go back to exactly how they were before the virus. People tend to find change--even change for the better--frightening and difficult. I think that's a large part of the reason you get people protesting in favor of opening everything back up again and going back to work instead of protesting for UBI, universal health care coverage, and higher taxes on wealthy corporations. They're protesting to go back to how things were, not protesting to make things better.

2

veggie patties
& low bars
2 thumbs up!
WTG, America!

4

Quite shocked no one said working from home will be much more accepted. This will have profound inpacts on traffic/public transporation - more people will consider moving further away from Seattle because they can.

5

One of the great futurist prophets of the past century was Marshall McLuhan.
He was quite popular 50 years ago but is largely forgotten now.
Well worth revisiting in our tech-dependent, socially isolating new world.
With him in mind I predict a powerful sentimentalism toward real human face-to-face interaction will take hold.
I'd expect people will want to join choirs, enjoy outings to people-watch, get massages... tactile and sensory-rich experiences to balance the sensory deprivation and isolation of living online.

7

“The COVID-19 world will not be favorable to mass transit.”

Or the density mavens. Someday Seattle will thank our so-called NIMBY single family home owners for not handing the city over to tenement builders.

8

@4
Yeah, many companies were already starting work at home - the pandemic has accelerated that trend by years.
Renting or buying downtown office buildings is a massive expense for businesses and for government - an expense they would gladly get rid of.
@6
God knows, we already have herd mentality. That's what got us into this mess!

9

Meat use is already dropping for meats high on the food chain (beef, which is very bad for Climate Change and fresh water).

Transit is dependent on people working. Until people are working, transit use is down. Great time for ALL businesses to remove ALL parking other than bike and car pools.

10

@7, Actually, you're wrong. Density has nothing to do with COVID-19 cases in NY. If you break it down by neighborhood in NY, denser neighborhoods were no worse than less dense neighborhoods. The main reason NY got hit worse than anywhere else is because there are more international flights in and out of NY every day than any other airport in the country. International travel and a slow start on social distancing is to blame for NY getting slammed, not density.

12

But first, Mike Pence will die. And maybe he'll infect Trump and Trump will die, too.

Pence embodies GOP COVID-19 denial by refusing to wear a damn mask in a damn hospital
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/28/1941096/-Pence-embodies-GOP-COVID-19-denial-by-refusing-to-wear-a-damn-mask-in-a-damn-hospital#read-more

13

@5,
Agree. Yes, I actually recall McLuhan. I think he wrote "The Medium is the Message". I was just speaking with my sister in Indiana and mentioned that I can't recall the last time I touched someone. I'm single to begin with but at least I shook hands and had an occasional embrace.

The isolation is annoying and I really DON'T like being in front of a screen and not commiserating with my coworkers at the office. That plus, I miss my desk and chair (ergonomics) and health club. I haven't swam in 7 weeks (?!). My exercise routine took a hit. Thus my body feels bad/weird.

Yes, I thank my lucky stars that I'm healthy and am working from home. But, working from home was never in the cards. Wow, what an experience this pandemic has been.

14

re Generation Alpha - the Baby Boom was an actual,measurable demographic event. In fact it was a rebound to the norm after a giant drop in birth rates during the depression and ww2. All the other generations are defined as an offset from that point. Go look at a chart of birth rates since 1900. The fuzziness of the boundaries between tranches are going to get fuzzier with time until they dissipate.

Really, they are just marketing categories used by commercial interests. I sort of wish people would stop using them as an identity. But its just a peeve.

15

@10 Where would home buyers rather be stuck during a pandemic, your apodment or my little slice of heaven with a garden, playroom, office space, bedrooms for all, on a quiet tree lined street, north of the Ship Canal and south of 85th?

16

@11 Exactly. Mrs 404 took the bus to work before the pandemic, mainly because she’s shitty at parking. She’s been car hunting all week, waiting for a good pandemic sale, before she has to return to the office. No way will she ride ST’s COVID Junkie express.

20

@7 " Is there any doubt that New York's urban density and extensive use of public transportation contributed to the COVID19 outbreak there?"

Yes, quite a bit: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-stop-blaming-the-subways-20200422-oswffzvzfndm7ob5jcdl3zmb3m-story.html, https://www.marketurbanism.com/2020/04/19/automobiles-seeded-the-massive-coronavirus-epidemic-in-new-york-city/.

Worth mentioning is that there is an inverse relationship between cities with high transit modal share, and the virus. Cities like Detroit got hammered. Cities like Seoul did not (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share).

Meanwhile, there is general consensus that the reason New York became so fucked up is because the president, the governor and the mayor all dismissed the crisis until it was too late. Here is just one of the stories reflecting that (generally accepted) idea: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not.

21

@3 -- "It would cost a fortune to wire the whole state with fiber internet."

Yes, but we've done something similar before, and I would argue it was more difficult. The Rural Electrification Act was one of the many great achievements of the FDR administration. When the pandemic is over (and we are still in a depression) the similarities will be too easy to ignore. To quote the Wikipedia page "In the 1930s, the provision of power to remote areas was not thought to be economically feasible.".

22

@18 -- Bullshit. It was the actions that the city and state took that was the difference. Detroit is a very low density city, yet it has extremely high rates of infection. There are also extremely high density cities (like Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore) that have very low rates (much lower than Seattle, let alone Detroit). What matters is doing the right thing when hit with a crisis (and New York City didn't).

High density also saves lives, for various reasons (https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2020/04/coronavirus-urban-density-nyc-safe-city-public-health/610471/).

It is also worth noting that if cities were more densely populated, they would have elected Hillary Clinton (who lost only by a tiny amount). That, in turn, would have meant a lot fewer deaths in the U. S., as well as the rest of the world.

26

@25 read this back to us next month.

We'll wait.

29

Trump is losing the war.
Coronavirus Has Now Killed More Americans Than Vietnam War
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/28/846701304/pandemic-death-toll-in-u-s-now-exceeds-vietnam-wars-u-s-fatalities

Current deaths from COVID-19 in the United States: 59,246
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

30

@6:

"By the end of summer coronavirus will have gone the way of Pepe memes and Gangnam Style."

Until the inevitable second wave hits and we're all back to hunkering down in our homes for another two or three months until it passes.

@16:

Hope she factors in the cost of parking downtown or wherever she works, because that's going to get super-expensive, at least in the short-term. Pre-COVID monthly rates in the core were averaging around $260 - $300; given that so many transit commuters will be understandably gun-shy about getting back on a crowded bus I expect demand will skyrocket and prices will escalate accordingly. So, figure $350 a month will be a bargain - assuming one will even be able to find available parking.

31

@27 Something else you need to take into consideration along with the coming infections and deaths

Georgia men drink disinfectant believing it would cure coronavirus
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/georgia-men-drink-disinfectant-believing-it-would-cure-coronavirus.html

34

I think it is telling that the only change that resulted from 9/11 -- a major cultural event -- is due purely to governmental changes. There has been little cultural change due to 9/11, even though many forecast it. Lots of people said that big office buildings would stop being built, or that people would avoid big cities or large events, since they are more likely targets. None of that has happened. The only change is anti-Muslim rhetoric, but that is just one small feather in the white nationalist hat used by Fox News and the rest of the Republican Party.

The point being, it isn't clear whether this will have much in the way of lasting effect. Masks may be used more often, even by folks that aren't Asian. But that is really a small accelerator, which is what this event will be. More people will work from home, but those numbers were increasing anyway. Likewise with bidets, veggie burgers and rural internet access. But it won't be a dramatic change. If anything, I think people will reject virtual reality almost immediately after getting a vaccine. Live performances will be more popular than ever, like a horny prisoner released from prison.

Like a lot of things, transit improvements will be entirely dependent on who is in charge, and what they decide to do (as it has been in the past). There may be a move towards using science more in policy decisions, but both parties have moved away from that, and besides, with a little bit of effort, you can find studies to support anything you want (ask Sound Transit).

I do agree that this will mark a generation, as 9/11 did. They may even name the generation after it (I've heard of "generation-C", but "generation-V" makes as much sense). When people say "the virus" or "the pandemic", there will be little confusion as to which one they mean.

35

@25 -- Georgia is a major air hub. New York is a major air destination. There may have been some spreading of the disease to people who work in the airport, or local travelers who shared the same plane, but both were likely pretty low compared to someone who spends the next week doing what they've always done (go to restaurants, bars, plays, hang out with friends, etc.).

In contrast, early in the pandemic, it is quite likely that New York City had the most cases, and the most cases per capita. These were people who caught the disease overseas, who were then spreading it around not just a handful of New Yorkers, but a bunch. It is worth noting that New York is especially prone to spreading it in the early period, before New York shut down. There has been some evidence that the last Sounder game, for example, spread the disease, and was really a bad idea. New York had a bunch of similar events much later. The only city that is prone to spreading the disease that fast is probably Los Angeles. But L. A. shut down very quickly, like the rest of California. New York also has a very large Hasidic Jewish population that has largely ignored the warnings (even now), despite having been hit very hard by this disease.

36

"Legislators in Olympia haven't done this yet, but if Chattanooga, Tennessee can lay down its own fiber optic cables and become its own damn internet service provider, Washington state theoretically can, too. "

Didn't Seattle already lay down miles of fiber in the 90s when it was competing to be…whoever it was trying to be? Tacoma? San Francisco?

37

@27 more cases and more deaths in Georgia today. How are you going to explain away the numbers in a month if they're facing hundreds of cases a day and dozens (or more) deaths per day?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

38

My prediction?

Xina still won’t have a life.

40

stop begging trolly
it's 'beneath' you

41

all's we gotta do now is
wait n' see if Georgia
fucked up by opening
up too much, too soon

It's nice, their (probable?) self-sacrifice / kinda likely Demise all in the name of guinea piggery/boredom/flat brokeness/34Amnd/whatevertf.

Best of Luck!
Thanks!


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.