The administration left it alone for days saying they'll let private business sort it out. (Default investigation notwithstanding.)
When a bunch of news media started reporting the group was Russian and then insinuate it was a state sponsored attack, DarkSide said something along the lines of, "We didn't realize this would start geopolitical conflict. We will be careful to vet clients more carefully in the future."
They also accepted a ransom substantially below their typical going rate. The Darkside people were probably shitting their pants, this is not what they intended at all.
For me, the effect is less (or possibly just less noticable) after a few weeks. But some coffee or tea gets me going pretty quickly and the effects wear off.
I've always been a slow morning person, so 30-60 minutes to start feeling normal is on par for me, so it doesn't really affect my timetable, but you may have a different schedule in mind.
My morning bowel movements when I take magnesium l-threonate are amazing, however, which used to slow me down even more on a typical morning.
The key is to hunt for commercial-grade appliances. In some cases, they can be found and offer similar form factors to consumer devices, and in others you may be out of luck.
Commercial kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, and flat panel displays can be sourced to your expectations. Just prepare to spend 1.5-3x as much right out of the gate.
the problem is that most of these are horrendously oversized for private use. So I would like to have a commercial agitator to create yeast dough; these aren't even that expensive for their small series and local production - compared to e.g. kitchen-aid stuff -, but I both don't have the space/floor to put down a 4sqft/1000 pound appliance and I certainly don't need a 5 gallon bowl for my dough... I'm sure you could create and sell a home-sized variant of these, but yeah, distribution won't be easy.
I have to admit though that I sometimes dream of setting up a company, which just goes through all these relatively low-tech, electromechanical things and cyclically produces these. Problem is: it's capital intensive, low-margin, low-growth and requires you to keep people around. At this point you've lost everyone nowadays even if it is sustainable (nothing goes to waste when making these repairable) and keeps skills alive (which both the US and EU are paying extreme prices for through the military acquisition procedures).
In this vein I also suspect that most people could easily afford to get their whole furniture sourced in a "raw wood" edition (to be painted/oiled) from local woodworking shops, as the price difference is virtually nonexistent (built a bed with the help of friendly non-CNC-shops: was 12h of work, which clocks in at maybe 900USD. Material was 300.). If I go to a non-ikea, but industrial/imported furniture-store, similar quality would have cost me ~4000USD. But of course, a healthy ecosystem of woodworkers and designers would not concentrate wealth.
Note that commercial-grade appliances may have unexpected side-effects. I have a speed queen commercial coin-op washer and it's highly reliable and easy to work on, but you can't do anything but a full cycle on it.
Who gets hurt if social structure is affected by the apparent identity of masking? There are plenty of instances of catastrophic social division due to physical differences.
I think your choice should be your own, and based on health and other reasons. But it's pretty myopic to ignore the history of superficial social striations.
> But it's pretty myopic to ignore the history of superficial social striations.
I'm having difficulty understanding what this comment is implying. Should other peoples' opinions and reactions to wearing a mask (or not wearing a mask) be a factor in one's own individual decision making?
I can't reasonably assert that one should or shouldn't.
I just answered parent's apparently rhetorical question, "Who gets hurt if I wear a mask?" Their assumption is, "Nobody," but the truth aligns more closely to, "Maybe somebody."
This isn't a calculus I've thought through in depth, but the answer is almost certainly not "nobody."
Edit: Please keep in mind this comment is made during a particularly divisive time in world history, so my answer reflects that context. I'm not being so pedantic as to suggest, "well every action may hurt somebody." Rather, the effects of the choice is uniquely amplified due to our current social strife.
> This isn't a calculus I've thought through in depth, but the answer is almost certainly not "nobody."
That's fair; I don't doubt that there are isolated, contemporary examples where un-masking would have led to a better situational outcomes.
As far as if "public reaction" should factor into individual choice, my stance is more based in principle than practicality; bending to the will of popular opinion is a strategy that is highly stifling, due to the fickle and stochastic nature of group opinions. I think it's dangerous to suggest that there are any societal circumstances where everyone should just "side with the crowd." Superseding reason with groupthink rarely yields anything but disastrous outcomes, so I believe that if one can tolerate the ridicule and aggression, then they should stand by their principles.
To me I read it as a physical representation of what is going on online. People assuming other peoples beliefs based on if they are wearing a mask. The striation would be people's biases towards people wearing mask and not wearing mask. Despite the actual health risk now/ in the future.
You're being downvoted, but it's abundantly clear that at least some view masking as a moral or intellectual signal, and this "othering" is certain to have some impact, either personally or socially.
Furthermore, just as many warned in the early days of the lockdowns that extended lockdown may induce unhealthy behavior—which is evidenced in significantly higher suicide, mental illness, drug abuse, and so on—there are certain to be some undesirable side-effects of vaccinated mask wearing. What those would amount to is not known, but certainly deserves to be explored and expressed.
Why it has been left to the fringe skeptics to dive into these n-th order consequences—some real; some imagined—in the presence of the greatest minds of our times is, quite frankly, deeply disturbing.
It seems the world has transformed everyone into reactionaries, while it should be patently obvious that we should all strive to be rational in these complicated times.
This speaks very poorly for what we've built over millennia, and leaves the lessons of history to floresce in the corners while everyone goes to war with their chosen side.
Why is it suspect? It's huge news, and will affect businesses, events, weddings, vacation, personal life for the millions of people who have still been taking public health and the CDC seriously. It's news. And I don't think it's surprising that they would have the scoop around the same time.
It’s not that it is all over the news nor that they all had the news at roughly the same time; it’s that they apparently released news saying the CDC said so before the CDC actually publicly said so.
Press releases are issued in embargo constantly; this is not new or surprising. Every single press release we issued was embargo’d until a certain time, when basically everyone covered it at once.
Also, it's worth noting that this is usually done with good intentions: News outlets are highly incentivized to be the first one to break any particular story, so if a press release is not embargo'd, everyone will rush as fast as possible (on the order of minutes) to make it into a news alert. Even assuming the best possible reporter, such an article is bound to be poorly researched and edited because it is being rushed out. By putting a press release under a few hours of embargo, news outlets get a bit more time to prepare their coverage before it goes live.
(Please don't reply with specific examples where this standard is not upheld. I'm clearly not arguing that this strategy is 100% effective.)
The CDC has no authority regarding the masking of either vaccinated or unvaccinated people. Its guidelines may influence state response, but they do not supercede or even augment them. Yet they have been treated as supreme authority by many, as you well point out.
I understand the importance of unified messaging, please don't get me wrong. But the media has acted as the mouthpiece of the state for years, and this is yet another example of that.
Why might this be harmful? Can you conceive of why such marriage between the state and the press may not be in the best interest of the people?
This is 100% normal. Press is informed under embargo to assure information goes out quickly and widely once the information is ready/ public. Nothing nefarious about it.
Why wouldn’t the CDC publish guidance once it is ready, which the media can than report on? The mere coordination (and normalcy thereof) is exactly why people view these policies (gatekeeping) as nefarious.
I can give you an example, if you want information to get out and spread quickly, do you 1. put it on your website and wait until people notice it and dissiminate it or 2. Let the main information "spreaders" know in advance so they can prepare articles (possibly do some interviews) etc?
Which do you think reaches more people in a given time?
You post on your website, somebody notices, 'spreaders' race to get faulty quick copy out (better fast than right), gives the conspiracy theorists a headstart as people start looking for more detail.
Or you issue an embargoed release, allowing responsible 'spreaders' to get their ducks in a row, and then cometh the hour, cometh the copy-edited verbose well referenced pieces.
This model gives government the power of choosing who is and is not a “trusted source” and depends on a relationship where those sources report uncritically about the information they are being given. It is also prioritizing which (for-profit) business gets favorable access.
From a practicality perspective it makes sense. From a propaganda perspective it’s chilling.
You're getting a tug-of-war of downvotes/upvotes, let me see if I can expand too:
Rural: "The city-living ways don't work out here so well, but there's too many of you guys for me to even begin to tell you how to act or what to do, so as a compromise just let me be"
City: "Rural folk live really unsustainably/unculturably/deplorably but they don't know any better, its up to us to make them understand. Anyway the urban center provides more value than what the countryside provides, we should be dictating the path of progress in this county/state/country/continent.
The locus of power has always been around cities though, so that is where elites and elitism will always centralize.
