Coronapanic in the U.S. has enabled humans and dogs to share more experiences. #CovidBringsUsCloser From Palm Beach Gardens, Florida:
(“Dogs are required to be vaccinated and display current licenses.”; compare to “San Francisco’s new rule: Proof of vaccine or no dining in” (AP) and “De Blasio sending workers to see if restaurants follow vaccine mandate” (New York Post))
Separately, is “All Dogs Welcome” hate speech in the same way that “All Lives Matter” is?
Regarding the digging, my Samoyed breeder said “They dig in the winter to stay warm. They dig in the summer to get cool. They dig in the fall and spring to keep in practice.”
Finally, check out the adjacent playground for kids, almost entirely covered by shade structures:
One thing that I have noticed about Florida is the investment in public leisure facilities: parks, bathrooms, playgrounds, water parks, etc. All of these are vastly superior to and better-maintained than their counterparts in Maskachusetts despite the higher percentage of residents’ income consumed by taxes in MA (Tax Foundation). Also, as long as we’re talking infrastructure, the electricity grid here is remarkably robust. Every day or two it sounds like the world is ending via a thunderstorm and yet we have yet to observe even a momentary power glitch.
Related:
- Government, Hygiene, and Coronaplague (the filthy public bathrooms on Martha’s Vineyard prompt some original thinking from a 12-year-old passionate Democrat)
One of my friends down in the Keys keeps sending me enviable pictures of herself and SO having a wonderful time enjoying their lives and apparently not worrying very much about anything except where to take their next set of beautiful pictures doing fun things and eating good food surrounded by happy people of all races, colors and creeds. I keep telling her I am just going to come down there one day and camp out by the […whatever…] and do maintenance and clean-up duty. She is getting my room ready, says I can come down any time, they’ll make room for me. Good woman, great friend.
Dogs are facing the same dangers as humans! A hoax paper about canine rape culture was accepted in journals in 2018:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/arts/academic-journals-hoax.html
One of the paper’s authors, Boghossian, has resigned since:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/my-university-sacrificed-ideas-for
“Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues.”
Time to establish new universities, for example in Florida?
“Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues.”
That’s just getting closer to the good ole’ USSR. I have junk like “Political Economy of Socialism” and “Scientific Communism” in my U transcript (these, obviously, were mandatory). At least Soviets weren’t shy to call communism a communism. None of that modern B.S. pretending to defend the “rights” of freeloaders of various colors. Soviets were quite open and honest about violent repression of “bourgeoisie” and “capitalists”.
Re “All Dogs Welcome” – my FL community recently opened two new dog parks and nearby is a section of beach open to unleashed dogs. Not that any of this matters, as FL dog owners are notorious for flouting leash laws. Thought, yesterday, I drove my a nearby city park that warned in flashing red lights – “this is a No Pet park!” My rental condo is “no pets,” but the condo board is currently battling two new owners that violate the no pet rule, apparently they never intended to comply. Don’t know why they just didn’t buy elsewhere.
“All of these are vastly superior to and better-maintained than their counterparts in Maskachusetts despite the higher percentage of residents’ income consumed by taxes in MA”
I would guess that a much higher percentage of taxes in MA are necessary to pay the very well-paid MA public workers and their benefits.
“One of my friends down in the Keys keeps sending me enviable pictures of herself and SO having a wonderful timed…doing fun things and eating good food surrounded by happy people of all races, colors and creeds. ”
Key West is 85% White, 9% black. Maybe your friend is virtue signaling with her staged diversity pictures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West#Demographics
@SOMBFAB: It’s possible, but I doubt it. She’s not a virtue-signaling type, but she does like to move around and go to “cool places.” I was in a place today where the town’s demographics, according to the 2000 census (Old, but it’s the best I can find) were:
The racial makeup of the town was 82.77% White, 8.42% African American, 0.20% Native American, 3.15% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 3.12% from other races, and 2.31% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.54% of the population.
Well, this was a nice place, an upscale shopping mall, and my observation was that at approximately 25% of the shoppers were Black – I sat right next to three Black people on the bench outside one of the entrances checking my phone messages after I was through with my business there and was talking to one nice woman about what a beautiful September afternoon it was. Another 10-15% were visibly Hispanic. So apparently Black people and Hispanic people (can I use that word any more?) enjoy shopping for nice things, too, in a pleasant and well-managed bricks-and-mortar environment during COVID. I suspect the same is true in at least some of the places she sends me pictures from.
@SOMBFAB:
I was also at another bricks-and-mortar rather upscale shopping mall recently (anchored by a Macy’s, struggling hard on another beautiful evening) while I browsed for a sports jacket, tie, shirt and slacks in the Menswear department, and that evening just about EVERYONE around me in the department was Black. There were at least three families of Black people with kids, and I was briefly the only white guy in the whole department. I wasn’t scared! The hardest problem all of us were having was finding a sales associate, because it was getting late! Because the malls are under stress and strain like never before, many of them offering deep discounts on top-quality merchandise, I think I can safely conclude that Black people enjoy shopping for good bargains in nice stores as much as white people do, and they have just as many reasons to!
Some of my best friends…: One characteristic of Massachusetts (where Alex lives and I used to) is segregation. Census says that 9 percent of the residents are Black, but if you were a white upper middle class suburbanite in 2019 you could go for a month without interacting with a Black person (under coronapanic it would be a year or two!). My experience in Florida so far is that there is much more integration both in residential neighborhoods and at work.
(Separately, having returned from Key West a few hours ago, most of the people that one interacts with there are visitors, e.g., a 13-person bachelor party from Pennsylvania that was in front of us in line at the Southernmost Point photo location. Our Uber drivers were all immigrants, one who had floated via boat from Cuba about 20 years ago. There were some Black employees at Signature (the Bill Gates-owned jet fuel supplier to private jets that he purchased right about the same time as his book for educating the unwashed/stupid regarding climate change came out). I have a picture at “Miracle Leaf Health Center” in which the receptionist is a Black woman (guess which plant is a “miracle” cure for nearly all ailments!). Even if the skin color isn’t that diverse in Key West, the “lived experience” was much more diverse than anything an upper middle class person in Massachusetts would find locally.)
“…as long as we’re talking infrastructure, the electricity grid here is remarkably robust. Every day or two it sounds like the world is ending via a thunderstorm and yet we have yet to observe even a momentary power glitch.”
Thirty-one years in FL and I’ve lost power three times, each time during hurricane – Hurricane Andrew, Aug. 1992; Hurricane Charley, Aug. 2004; Hurricane Matthew, Oct. – from between two to six days and w/o AC the heat was brutal. Never any structural damage, but when the power came back on after Hurricane Matthew the surge fried my irrigation pump, irrigation timer, and tankless electric water heater. I subsequently installed a whole-house surge protector.