"whose attempted coup cost 5 lives and considerable damage to public property"

Indeed it did. Now your remarkable epiphany of intellectual honesty should include concern about damage to public property by rioters in Seattle, Portland, and cities across America.

The concept of a designated meditation space at work sounds like a great idea. Meditation, like exercise, is hard work and its easy to make excuses not to do it. Every workplace should have a zenbox or whatever the hell the thing was called.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

I enjoyed far more of this morning's Slog AM than I normally do when Charles writes it. I liked the Prufrock reference. I liked the vax bits. I liked the hatin'-on-Idaho bits. I liked it all, a lot. Which is weird.

I'm starting to think Amazon just uses shopping as a front for psychological research on how much beating and insult the workforce will take before breaking.

No doubt the amount of time you spend in the zen booth is tracked. Wages will be docked if you are in danger of achieving enlightenment.

@5, your comment so radically misses the point, it defies criticism. It exists in a netherworld of meaninglessness, free-floating in a bed of murky foam as it drifts along the shoals of linguistic oblivion.

The fact that Republicans are allowed to hold the government hostage no matter what is the biggest example of what a failure this country is (and how we have some nerve traipsing around the world pretending to be defenders of democracy).

The Republicans are traitors. They have to go.

As for gas prices, why do people, despite being told over and over and over and over, believe that the president controls the cost of gas? The president never has and never will be responsible for how much gas costs. And if Americans ever had to actually pay for the true cost of the gas they use, like everyone else in the world does, they would lose their shit completely.

@6 - money isn't the only resource that's in short supply in poverty. Time (because you're working three part time jobs with inflexible shcedules just to make rent) and mobility (because the public transit sucks in the cheap exurb you have to live in and of course you can't afford a car) also make it challenging to get to a vaccination appointment during business hours.

RE: Amazon's meditation booths

Wow. What a ridiculous band-aid.

@11:

Not to mention that, in addition to the other factors you cite, those same overworked poor people may also be caring for children or elderly family members, which cuts even more into the dearth of leisure time available to them to get on a bus for an hour-long one-way trip to the nearest vaccination site.

trapped in a Fullfillingmental Center
my Depends so fullfilled walking's a
Major Challenge let alone running to
and fro satisfying Big Bezos's every
Demand might it be alright -- just this
ONCE -- to swap them out for a Fresh
Pair? I promise to Meditate Well whilst
in the Time-Out box but it may get a bit
Stinky for the next drone so Sorry, guys!

oh and where do I recycle these diarrhea
saturated adult Diapers? shall I place them
in the Trash or just ship them out and let Some
one Else guess why they 'lucked out' at Amazon?

I was gonna reply to @5, but couldn't possibly top @8, which is just wonderful.

One of the Oregon counties that voted to defect is Lake in the south central portion of the state. I was listening to an interview with someone in that county's health commission recently. He said he received an email from someone who'd shown up to a restaurant with a group of people and was told by management that they'd be denied entry if they didn't REMOVE their masks.

How shitty of a human being would you have to be to not permit someone to employ simple precautionary safety measures at your establishment?

@11 -- it is Remarkable how the Privileged don't
even know they're Privileged nor how a third
of the Citizenry must attempt to Cope in
the Richest fucking Country in the
Known Universe. will they begin
to understand when they're
down in the muck with the
"bottom" 95.001 percent?

Do those meditation booths come with empty Gatorade bottles to piss in?
Asking for a friend...

Charles dear, we’ll be taking the F-150 over to Grand Coulée. They’re reopening the visitor center at the dam, and resuming the laser light show!

It's the height of homeowner privilege to tell people who've been stuck inside with a roommate or roommates for over a year, and who have the means to get out of the city, to not do it because vague handwavy reasons.

If Trailhead Direct was up and running this weekend I'd happily use that. It's not back until 6/5.

And no, a walk along a tidal flat, while lovely, is not the same as being in the mountains.

["Gas is not only expensive,
but we also shouldn't not be
burning it in the first place."

mind your Dbl Negatories, Chas!]

@20,

A global pandemic that's killed three and a half million people and counting is "vague handwavy reasons?" I'm not explicitly opposed to people traveling and may even do so myself, depending on a couple factors, but that's one ass-brained comment right there.

That guy they popped on the Mukilteo ferry with an assault weapon was carrying three magazines full of ammo, not three rounds. There's a difference, Charles.

@11: Uber and Lyft offers free and discounted rides to and from vaccination sites, so mobility is no longer an excuse for the poor.

@18:

If they don't live in a major metropolitan area or along the I-5 corridor, they may very well not live near a major chain pharmacy offering COVID vaccines - do a Google Maps search for "pharmacy" if you don't believe me.

@25 See @16

@11 -- This is it. This is why the government (or governments) have changed their approach. They are trying to reach out to people, to make it easy for them to get a shot. In some cases this means a home visit. In other cases it is a matter of education, as a lot of people don't know it is free, or where you can actually get a shot.

The problem is that isn't just the poor. There are still a lot of people who are reluctant to take a shot, for various (usually stupid) reasons. There is also a fair amount of overlap. The areas where we see the lowest number of shots are areas with lots of poor people, and people opposed for political reasons.

The problem tends to accelerate. In general, people become less reluctant to take a shot when their friends and family have taken the shot. This isn't happening in pockets of America (like Southeast King County). Of course age is one of the big problems as well. Even in Seattle -- which has done fairly well in terms of getting shots -- 35% of those in their 20s haven't even had their first shot. Those over 50 -- in every part of King County -- have done better than that.

I can't say I'm not just a little bit jealous of any workplace that features a zen booth/orgone box/orgasmatron, but since Amazon warehouse workers can't even use the restroom without being dinged I wonder how much "de-stressing" they'll actually feel able to do, regardless of what the "official" policy on its use might be.

Thank you 21 and thank you 23.

@27: If they don't have or can't get to phone they're probably homeless for which there has been outreach vaccination programs in every state. Rural as well. Our president says 90% of all Americans are within 5 miles of a vaccination site.

Again, poor and rich folk alike have no excuse to not get vaccinated.

@27 & @30 - I read somewhere else recently that many working class people who have yet to be vaccinated aren't doing so because they're afraid the side effects will cause them to miss work. I guess that's not such a "stupid reason" when you cannot afford to miss any work, although I'd ask them how much work do they think they'll miss when they come down with Covid.

@25 if you think someone who is poor (especially if they are disabled) can just get an Uber somewhere you are living in a fantasy land.

Despite what everyone believes, not everyone has a smart phone and as a disabled person I can speak first hand to the fact that these sharing economy companies like Uber aren't subject to the ADA (because they are classified as tech companies, not transportation companies).

And there are poor people who live where there is no Uber service (there is no Uber or Lyft here where I live and if you can get a cab - good luck! - it is expensive and none of them are handicapped accessible), where people have no idea what Uber is or how they would get an Uber (even if they have a smart phone), and any number of other reasons poor people (and elderly people and disabled people - both physical and developmentally disabled, and other disenfranchized people - people who do not speak English as their first language, people who are homeless, people who are mentally ill, etc.) could still not be able to access a vaccine.

Simply because you cannot imagine it or are not living it does not mean it doesn't exist.

Living in Idaho, I can attest to the fact that our Lt. Governor, McGeachin, does make Republican Governor, Brad Little, look like an Antifa-Communist-Anarchist in comparison.

@31/32: At some point, every human being regardless of socioeconomic status has the moral obligation to get vaccinated. Government outreach is working to reach the poor, rural, disabled, and homeless to get vaccinated. But there's only so much government can do.

@22 Rather than pointing you at the mountain of evidence that outdoor transmission is incredibly unlikely, I'll just let you stew inside your spacious house.

While I, fully vaccinated and with other fully vaccinated people, responsibly enjoy the great outdoors away from the city this weekend.

No, we're not through the crisis yet. But Charles's reasons for not leaving the city were only vaguely and partially about the pandemic. If you have the means to get outside, away from the city, and you feel like you need it as I'm sure so many people do, then yes, do it.

mind the
Variants
Scottie.

@21, I do not not not believe there is a proofreader not not not not on staff at The Stranger. Quel dommage.(Trans.: "This is most non-non-heinous!")

possibly l-t r but I'm leaning
toward an inadvertent n't.

and I gotta wonder why Chas
left 'em both...

three 'rounds' v. 3 magazines
with (perhaps) 20 rounds each
is when the rifle becomes a WMD...

here's to a Glorious 3-day
Weekend with Epic (non-
Nukular etc!) Clouds!

I used to sunbathe naked on the beach south of Carkeek, during high tide only the trains were getting free shows.