It does doesn't it? Perhaps a wall does need to get built!

@Observer-Effect I don’t know. I have friends in Lexington KY that I would miss.

@indirect76 Yeah, they are not all bad. There are millions of good individuals there South of the Mason-Dixon line. Its collectively that they become a problem!

@Observer-Effect try to bear that in mind when 9 out of 10 of the fucktards who are lynching you or burning at the stake are basically good folks.

@Surfpirate Ha! Good point.

Well the high tech sector of the south has lots of great people, i.e. the more educated folks. But the south's biggest weakness - which reinforces the racism, sexism, homophobia and war-mongering - is religion. I've lived in Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas. And seen it over and over . . . fucking Christians.

@Observer-Effect I think you just identified the 1 out of 10 in the group, what about the other 9?

@Surfpirate Yes.

I guess their imaginary friend is worth dying for

Absolutely Zero, Zilch, Nada, etc, etc, because when you are dead and gone THAT IS It.
You die, and unless your remains are cremated, you get a 6'x 4' hole in the ground where your mortal body continues to rot and decay, turns into a very stinky, smelly slush and years later all there is are just bones and the memories of you that others have until they too , of course, die.

You said it!!!

Yep! If we can get them to stay put, that's the problem. Like drunk drivers, I could care less if somebody risks their own life being dumb, problem is the folks they might hit!

@Observer-Effect True enough, we can't afford to sustain the hits that they can but we are generally more prepared to weather the storm. On balance and all things considered, Atheists are ahead in this game. The Achilles Heal in this viral event is that more Atheists are older than the average fuckwit religitard so they have that going for them.

I hear ya, but it’s bad when one of these yahoos goes to the grocery store and has the virus naturally select my father or someone’s grandma that are trying to be safe.

@indirect76 Up your game, take better precautions, let the law of averages take effect.

@Surfpirate There are a lot more older people on this site but when I was working with the Bernie campaign, I found that there were many young atheists right here in Oklahoma. When I was in college in the sixties, My atheism was unusual but I have a feeling it is not that unusual anymore .

@Lorajay a lot of people are at risk and there is little to be done to stop the yahoos of the world from doing what they do, all that thinking people can do is try to minimize the effect of the yahoos of the world. Sounds a lot like the everyday existence of a thinking person, coping with the idiots because you can't fix them.

The downside is they don't stay put, if we could build a fence then it would be great to let them learn about natural selection!

@Observer-Effect no risk = no reward LOL . But I agree. If only we could keep them all in lockdown for say another 6 months

The ones who pray right.

@Observer-Effect
They all pray, don't they? Maybe I should have said those who lack faith get it.

Yeah, after all it’s the “ Only Real Religion “. LMAO

Yeah, researchers have been warning of this for decades. Maybe its a good warm-up because - yeah, this is nothing like what could happen. A super infectious airborne version of an Ebola would devastate humanity.

@Observer-Effect Things happen, not necessarily good or bad, except from a chosen perspective. That said, devastating humanity might provide a respite to the planet's ecosystem. It may already be too late.

@racocn8 Yep, I don't think the words "good" or "evil" or such really have much meaning. Is the hunter evil? It certainly seems so to the prey.

We may have knocked the systems around us off kilter enough to kill off a lot of major species, hell - maybe even us. But give earth a few million years and brand new things will be flappy, swimming and walking around.

My only real frustration with mortality is that I'm curious! I want to see what happens!

@Observer-Effect I'm with you there. It's not unlike the extraterrestrial-UFO issue. I'd like to know so much more, but really, it's an open-ended quantity of information. Perhaps it's better if we simply objectify that our insatiable curiosity is a feature of our consciousness.

Fauci recently pointed out that America has become very pseudo-science oriented. And he certainly hit it hard. It seems like Americans tend to be on one "side" or another. Religious/"spiritual"/superstitious idiocy, or newage (rhymes with "sewage" ) spinoffs like: homeopathy, past lives, crystals, astrology - etc. Few are free of both ends of the silliness spectrum.

My condolences on the loss of your cousin.

@mcgeo52 Thank you. It just is what it is. This virus has rained on us in an unimaginable way and tragic for those families who didn't make it.

@TimeOutForMe, I don't think people here are ready for what's coming. Just from the the Trump rally today in Tulsa I can easily see half a million new cases by the end of July.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, consider the choir practice in Washington State. They had social distancing, used hand sanitizer, did everything by the book. Out of 60 people, 42 came down with COVID-19.

Apply the same 70% to the 19,000 people in the arena for Trump's rally and it works out to 13,300. That's just the people who get into the arena. Trump was talking about using the hall next door for an overflow of 40,000. Now we are talking 41,300. Remember, there are probably another +/-40,000 who will be in Tulsa but won't get into the rally. I'd say we are lucky if the number stays under 50,000.

BTW, that 50k is initial cases. Given that most of these people are not likely to wear mask, or spend time with people who do, the R value on this group will very likely be 3 or higher. We could easily be looking at half a million new cases by the end of July.

I hope I'm wrong, but not willing to bet that I am.

Let's see if Jacksonville learns anything from this in time to cancel the RNC convention.

@mcgeo52 Surely the invitation to the rally could be the most effective group suicide note in history?

@mcgeo52 I thinks it's just reckless and irresponsible behaviour. We still need to exercise caution ie wear masks, sanitise your hands as often as possible, wear a face visor where possible as the eyes are vulnerable to aerosal too. It gets into the nasal passage from the tear duct and into the lungs. Do not touch your face after touching surfaces at food stores etc. and so on. If the attitude is such that we shouldn't care and this virus will eventually blow over, it's going to take enough of us down. I understand we cannot sit at home like prisoners and let the economy slide even more drastically. We just simply cannot go out there and be reckless thinking we're untouchable. This §#! * destroys all your healthy organs in the process. There's no reliable vaccine yet. We do however have a temporary breakthrough drug which has been tested being used on certain patients and which is inexpensive and also had some success rate in the UK. Scientists are still hard at work to come up with a reliable vaccine. Until then we need to exercise caution where necessary and required.

Good chance those kids were lost causes being born into those families anyway...

Totally true!! But they are going to teach their kids that too unfortunately

It would be nice, but I think there's effectively a 0% chance of that happening.

@JeffMurray organized religion is on the decline. I recently read that there are as many non believers now as there are Catholics and Evangelicals

@SeaRay215ex Pretty sure when someone else recently posed a question about this, @TheMiddleWay found research that debunked this.

Or hole

He’s another one who can drop dead

Absolutely, we have freedom. So if I see you walking down the street towards my family, without a mask and "being confuse:::::" - possibly coughing on my kids?

I have the right to defend them. And I'll have fun doing it asshole.

@TimBruneau
Someone sent this video to me yesterday and perhaps worth a listen to.

...even though he is a religious person of some sorts, he is not confirming there's a heaven.

Religious people are living a religious life, doting on religious texts, waiting for a rewarding place somewhere else ie heaven. ... leads to an attitude that "here" doesn't matter - when this is all we have! Let's hope those xtians can spend all the effort they're spending trying to get to heaven into fixing "here" up.

I posted this video to demonstrate that sometimes even the religious leaders can put aside their religious texts, without adhering to them and make some real sense!

@TimeOutForMe That's awesome. Yes, I've seen that guy before. His philosophy is exactly mind. I think that we're pretty much trapped here in this life and death cycle, and we can either chose to make it better for our next cycle, or we can be depressed and pessimistic and cry about our difficulties. I've even come up with my own way of talking about it.

I think we as individuals all contain the same basic element of consciousness. I call it Iofus, or the I of us. It is the most basic part of you. And we live in what I call the illusion of multiplicity. By that i mean, our Iofus is independent in our bodies, but the phenomenon is universal, and no consciousness can exist without at it at the core. So, no matter what happens, you will always be aware as some form of Iofus because that relationship happens at the quantum level and each instance of Iofus is in effect entangled with all of the others. And even if our universe was destroyed, it would form again, and the Iofus constant would once again evolve into existence. Then you would awaken as someone once intelligent life evolved again.

The other element of our consciousness I call our effigies. I just use that term because effigies are images of the living that have passed on and died. They are the part of us that makes us unique. They are the parts of us that give us our unique identity. And they are never the same. Every moment your effigy is evolving and changing because you are changing, your experiences are changing you, and your brain is always chugging through information to make you more adapted to your environment. Your body systems are doing the same. And the world around us is also constantly changing. So our effigies must change to cope with changes in our physical and psychological environments. We are constantly being challenged, and we must constantly adapt, so we are constantly becoming a new person.

When you die, your effigy dies. It's gone. It is remembered or forgotten, but it is gone.

I like to imagine there is this great machine in another universe called the time eater. And what the time eater does is it records our existences as they happen. Then the machine is used to help shape new universes that come into existence in the multiverse. Or at least I like to imagine that humanity could evolve to a state where we could create such a thing. Then we could really start to create our own realities based on what that machine records.

Scifi, yes, but it is cool to think about. Because then you could imagine a race of conscious beings who try to make realities that allow the occupants of those realities the ability to take part in the higher level design of future realities. I write a series of insane erotica books called Cockerelles and Posies. I write under the pen name Kate Young. And the stories do get really perverse. However, the idea is that the science of their realm is used to showcase how our reality could be just another version of reality created by people who were like us and managed to ascend to a higher level of existence. It's all in fun though, but it does give me a sense of hope that maybe my crazy stories could some day inspire some civilization in our future to embark on a quest to explore such a technological feat.

Then people would basically be records in the Time Eater that could be resurrected to create other realities to explore. Our potential to experience a vast array of lives would be a possibility.

But, yes, it's all science fiction.

Thanks for posting the video.

@TimBruneau Wowww thanks for all that insightful information. You have a broad sense of thinking outside the norm and your imagination of "what ifs" is catchy too. I like that.

@TimeOutForMe Thank you. I spent a lot of time dreaming all of that up. It turned my life around. It got me out of doom-centered thinking. Now I'm taking care of myself, eating right, and exercising. I don't waste time running after the past. I'm trying to be proactive in using what resources i have to help push the human experience forward and into new frontiers. Of course, I['m not rich, but I do know how to build computers, and I spend time and money making sure my systems are working on distributed computing projects to improve the quality of life on Earth. I'm also a member of the Planetary Society. I think space exploration is necessary to move our technological understanding forward and keep humanity looking forward to new areas to study and investigate.

@TimBruneau "I think space exploration is necessary to move our technological understanding forward and keep humanity looking forward to new areas to study and investigate" .

I agree. I'm a sky child myself. Always wondering and hoping. Hopefully we would be able to do planet hopping with solar crafts my imagination . Look how small our wide world (Earth) has become. It's no longer a stretch or far-fetched. You can simply hop on planebut true! ...or Google earth. ...just watched some snippets on our news channel of your presidents speech at his rally yesterday. He's no doubt a mad man and a racist. I say bring those statues down. They're dark reminders of leaders who demonstrated white supremacy.

@TimeOutForMe Yes, he represents the christian right and the lets go out with a bang crowd. I hope when he dies he comes back next time aware in a black woman's body or a mexican migrant's shoes. If people would look at each other like we're the same person with different effigies, I think we'd see a change in how people treat each other, treat our planet, and how they spend their time and money.