Ugh! The mask below the nose drives me crazy! Are they really that stupid? Do they think they're fooling anyone?

@AmyTheBruce @AnneWimsey

@JeffMurray perfect!

I agree. As a nurse that works in interventional pulmonology, I have never once heard a doctor recommend to any patient with lung diseases so severe many require transplantation that they should be maskless in public at any time for any reason nor have they documented as such in their chart or on a prescription pad. I do not believe requiring masks is a violation of said law.

@JeffMurray Can you think of ANY condition that would require one to be maskless in public? I can't think of anything - but I'm not in medicine, either. It sounds like bullshit to me.

My own mother tried to pull that "I can't BREATHE!" crap about masks. I rolled my eyes, sewed her a larger mask, and told her to stop with the theatrics.

@AmyTheBruce Literally, no. I asked several nurses I work with too, an no one could think of a scenario where not wearing a mask would be more beneficial than wearing one. If the condition of your lungs is so bad you can't breathe without a mask on you should probably be in the hospital but definitely shouldn't be risking getting a potentially devastating respiratory disease which would very likely be a death sentence.

@JeffMurray i have several conditions that sometimes lead to shortness of breath. I can simply slow down until my lungs/heart catch up. I could wear portable oxygen, if i got worse, but of course under a mask. i could get stuff delivered, if only curbside. I would not go out naked! Nor without my mask!

Why?

@JeffMurray Good for him! Because Walmart blows. They are exploiters and I try to boycott them. When I didn't have health insurance I did use their pharmacy because they had $4 meds. I basically won't shop there. The Walton family sucks.

@barjoe See, I had a dude claim they treated their employees like shit with low wages and such so he wouldn't support the store while he was literally opening a bag from Burger King. If you don't want to support one thing or another because of perceived injustices, that's fine, but if you are acting with contradictions, it's kinda shitty to try to make others feel bad for their actions when you don't actually hold any moral authority.

@JeffMurray I didn't mean to make you feel bad. You can shop anywhere you want to. You were asking Dave why he never set foot in Walmart and I was telling you why and that I don't like Walmart. I also prefer to support local store chains and such. I don't know if it's true they placed third in superspreader but if they don't enforce mask policy you might not want to shop there. For your own safety and the health of your patients. No offense intended.

@barjoe By me, there's people in every store without masks, so it doesn't much matter where you shop. I only commented on Walmart because a few months ago they were leading the way in enacting restrictions that our fuckstick president was too stupid to, and now they pull this shit. Trump signs outnumber Biden 8:1 out here. There are so many Trump supporters, businesses find it valuable to place huge Trump signs in front of their stores. Shit is cray. I would not be at all surprised if he wins Ohio and the EC.

@JeffMurray In Philly, people wear masks in stores. I was in one deli where the owner threw someone out bodily and Dollar Tree where the police were going to arrest this lady for criminal trespass. There's plenty of Trumpers here, most white people are, and he did win Pennsylvania, but if a store has a sign for masks people wear masks.

@barjoe Then they must enforce. There's no way for the cops to bust people of the stores refuse to do their parts, inform the customers they are breaking policy, and alert the authorities...

@JeffMurray Trespass. If you are asked to leave and you refuse, you're guilty of trespassing. That's what that big Starbucks thing in Philly was all about last year. Those two black dudes were asked to leave. They refused. They were arrested. That's criminal trespass in Pennsylvania.

@barjoe That's my point. If a store won't do their part to tell customers to follow the rules and tell law enforcement when they don't, there won't be any trespassing charges...

@JeffMurray I can't MAKE anyone feel anything (they might choose my 'influence' ). I take responsibility for MY feelings. I don't accept responsibility for the feelings of others.

@FearlessFly Both of the hospitals I've worked for have anti-union policies. Tons of businesses do, yet I still work for and patronize them. I think it would be near impossible for me to only patronize businesses that are union, but I'm not sure if that's true everywhere. Whether or not you take responsibility is not what I'm talking about. I'm taking about behaving without contradictions, which to me is an important thing. For instance, I can't condemn someone for mistreating dogs while I contribute to the mistreatment of tons of other animals on a daily basis. It's not a popular opinion to think Michael Vick was treated incredibly unfairly, but it's required of me to not be a hypocrite. So while you can't force someone to feel or take responsibility if they do, I can't help but to point out what is most likely an incongruent belief/behavior.

@JeffMurray I made an "I' statement "I . . . have never set-foot".

My second response was to your words "make others feel bad", which, IMO, is a 'shitty' nonsensical English idiom since individuals (have choices) control their own feelings.

If you mean to say that you harbor NO contradictions, I'm skeptical. I avoid them also, but :

[en.wikipedia.org]

@FearlessFly
The 'I' statement seemed to carry with it an air of moral superiority or, at minimum, some shit talk about a business that isn't much different than many other businesses here.
I'm sorry, but I heard it the same way I hear people say, "Oh, I don't even have a television" like it makes them so superior to us lowly cretins that can be entertained by such nonsense.

People actually have ZERO control over their feelings. What would make you think you can control how you feel about something? I had a woman a work tell me she could choose how she feels about things. She actually told me I should choose to feel differently about something bad that happened in my life. It took every ounce of restraint in my body not to tell her she should just choose to be happy about her father sexually abusing her child which caused a fight between her and her husband that resulted in her divorce. Feelings are involuntary.

I am not saying I have none. I'm saying that I strive to have none, and I have none that I am aware of. If someone points one out to me, I immediately rectify it (which just happened a couple months ago on Nextdoor). If you can point any out for me I would appreciate the opportunity to fix them.

@JeffMurray "ZERO control" -- I disagree. I concede that peoples' feelings aren't necessarily voluntary, but their reaction(s)/behavior(s) can be voluntary.

The point I'm trying to make is that the "You make me __" (fill in the blank) is, IMO, nonsense.

Do you 'give the power' over your feelings to others ?
Is it intended to be an accusation or shift-the-blame-onto-someone ?

Better, are "I" statements -- "When you do , I feel ".

[psychcentral.com]
[healthline.com]
[psychologytoday.com]

@FearlessFly
What you stated in response and all three links agree that emotions are uncontrollable. Being able to control your response to them or actions you take is up for debate I guess . So I'm not sure what we're debating here. To me, and anyone else who really gives it some thought, the whole premise of giving someone power over your feelings is nonsensical. If you agree that you cannot control them, then the thought that you could give away the power over them that you never had is just plain silly. It makes as much sense as telling someone with IBS to reclaim dominion over the smooth muscle contractions of their gut.
So if you want to call it shifting the blame, that's fine, that's simply semantics at this point. The fact of the matter is since one has no control over their own feelings, others do have the power to make you feel certain ways. The 'you make me feel X when you Z' and 'when you Z, I feel X' is nothing more than a semantical difference as well.

The reason I italicized 'I guess' is because I know free will isn't up for intelligent debate, but since so many people don't know that, I find it easier to argue from a position that it is still debatable when it is inconsequential to the discussion. Since I am not making any claims about actions that result from feelings, the free will aspect doesn't come into play. My claim was simply that you have zero control over your feelings. You agreed, and your articles support that conclusion as well.

How exactly do they think they know this?

@JeffMurray You're from Cleveland. There's plenty of other stores. Don't shop there dude. Some people are from Bumfuck, Idaho and they don't have anywhere else to shop. Fuck Walmart!

@barjoe I don't see a manner in which I can boycott Walmart, afford to live, and be logically consistent, so until someone can figure that out for me, I'll still go there. And as for big box stores at least they didn't need to be bribed to stop supporting anti-gay causes like Target.

@JeffMurray It's not a factual statement, it's like sarcasm, but yes I avoid Walmart.

@Willow_Wisp Sorry, thought you actually read that somewhere. I get it now.