The whole post is worth reading but here are the headline quotes:
today there were 14 absent teachers 1st period
Second period I had another absent teacher. More of the same from 1st period. It was around this time that 25% of kids, including myself, realized that there were no rules being enforced outside of attendance at the start of the period, and that cutting lass was ridiculously easy. We left...
90% of the bathrooms were full of students swabbing their noses and taking their tests. I had one kid ask me -- with his mask down, by the way -- whether a "faint line was positive," proceeding to show me his positive COVID test.
I should note that in study hall and with subs we literally learn nothing. I spent about 3 hours sitting around today doing nothing.
By January the 3rd (when we returned from break) the numbers were up to 100 (as listed on the school Google Sheet). Today there are 226. This is around 10% of my school.
90% of the conversations spoken by students concern COVID.
One teacher flat out left his class 5 mins into the lesson and didn't return because he was developing symptoms
NYC views itself as progressive but honestly it treats most of its teachers like shit. It's unbelievable how inadequate and ramshackle the education system is in poor/working class areas, while a fifteen minute subway ride away sit some of the most prestigious universities in the world... I feel like an entire mini-generation is being permanently damaged by having their childhood stolen away from them capitalists whose fortunes depend on greasing the wheels of the financial system with the blood of the poor, and I only hope that some of the traumatized Zoomers realize who is really to blame for their mental impoverishment.
I had one kid ask me -- with his mask down, by the way -- whether a "faint line was positive," proceeding to show me his positive COVID test
One student tested positive IN THE AUDITORIUM, and a few students started screaming and ran away from him
:amerikkka-clap:
At our high school we still had the cheese touch game from diary of a wimpy kid so I can see it happening
Instead of cheese they just chose the kid they hated the most that week. Mostly fat girls and the 3 black kids in the school
The past few weeks have utterly convinced me that the USA is in full collapse, and the speed at which it collapses is only going to accelerate. The only question is how long people can pretend that things are normal
Yes, but it also accelerates and at some point it happens in free fall, over weeks or months. Something like the crisis in the 90s at the fall of the Soviet Union. Fun stuff
USA collapse is bleak, because for most of the population it has been. If you're European, and your country suddenly can't give you healthcare, and the rent explodes, and your kids (or you) can't go to school, you'd be like "oh shit! Collapse!" But here in the USA? That's just what it's like.
I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There. Living in Sri Lanka during the end of the civil war, I saw how life goes on, surrounded by death
Noteworthy article, not just for the US. People can pretend that things are normal for a looooooooooooong time.
"Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is."
I heard similar story from someone living in Iraq. The gist was basically, "yeah we do the same shit as you. We go to work, we watch TV, we have fun with our friends. But we might get blown up on our way to work, or we might see dead people laying in the street. You just have to learn to live with it because what else can you do."
Bonus collapse content from another post:
6/31 students in my home room are at home with positive cases. The district dashboard says we have zero cases. This is because we only report cases if we can conclusively prove that a case was contracted in the building. Only a registered school nurse can make this determination. We have no nurse.
There are actually two layers of catch 22. Even if we had a nurse, they could only establish in school transmission through reported close contacts. Supervised spaces like classrooms, cafeteria, and gym are considered inherently safe because of the presence of adults. From a staff email: “Please do not report close contacts that occur in supervised spaces. Close contacts are limited to incidents involving <3 foot unmasked proximity for >15 minutes among students that are not supervised. Unless the incident meets all of the above criteria, there is not need to report it.”
This is because we only report cases if we can conclusively prove that a case was contracted in the building.
Literally shit anti-communists would say China is doing right now
6/31 students in my home room are at home with positive cases. The district dashboard says we have zero cases
B-but in bad country they're faking their numbers! That would never happen in a free country!
No sweaty they're not faking or lying, you just have to read the fine print
This is because we only report cases if we can conclusively prove that a case was contracted in the building. Only a registered school nurse can make this determination. We have no nurse.
Catch-22. It's the best catch there is.
I read it back when it was published. I tried re-reading it in 2020 and just couldn't. Got maybe a third of the way through it and put it down because it was too real.
I was a huge science fiction reader when I was a kid, and now I really don't read sci fi because so much of it is terribly, horribly prescient. All of these problems were foreseen, we were warned in excruciating detail.
You should try some classic Arthur C. Clarke. The whole 2001 series is much more semi-utopian and optimistic than the modern dystopain trend. Vonnegut (my favorite author) is also good for that - even in his cynical and pessimistic works he finds the good in humanity (Cat's Cradle, Galapagos, Sirens of Titan are highly recommended).
There's that scene in Children of Men that I wish was more fleshed out... Clive Owen is taking a car ride to see his brother. Society all around is exactly like how you describe, but for a few moments the car goes through I think Hyde Park. It shows a very ceremonial looking procession of those fancy English soldiers on horseback. There's seemly some rich folks walking around exotic pets and listening to a brass band. Really hits home how the rich especially will try to insulate themselves and pretend it's all OK (for them at least).
It's like this everywhere, and it has been for a while. I graduated highschool in 2014 and could see the dysfunction brewing my entire life, and I'm not surprised it's collapsing now with the added stress. I had classes in highschool that were 50 students to a classroom where people sat on top of desks due to a lack of space. I've talked to some younger kids and they told me they often didn't even have permanent teachers for a few subjects. This is in a relatively wealthy area too, so I genuinely cannot even envision the apocalypse that is unfolding elsewhere where funding is worse
They need it. There are a lot of parents in the US who would read the story in the OP and 100% blame the unions.
Do you think the entire educational framework will collapse within a few years and we'll have a bunch of
superpredatorsextremely stunted and emotionally traumatized children who can barely read having to resort to the most naked forms of human depravity just to survive?Like I'm talking Mexico tier violence but with white people and a few other groups in there too. All bred out of people who quite literally never got any chance whatsover. No healthcare, no school, no daycare, no nothing, FUCK you. You're going to watch Pewdiepie on your moms MetroPCS tablet in the lobby of McDonalds while she pulls 70 hours a week just to live in a box with 3 other people as dysfunctional as you are. That's going to be the bulk of your childhood. If you're lucky you won't be assaulted by some pedophile when your mom is busy filling an order for 5000 whoppers from some techbro douchebags making another shitty Youtube video. Motherfucker, you are going to get to your teens and there are going to be mutated Hyperborean Proud Boys beating you for your lunch money and making sure you don't get any funny ideas about "communism". The best thing a kid born in 2020 can hope for will to be die huffing glue with some other fucked person in a bombed out, long closed Sears in the dead of winter.
Before they die, all they will hear is the non stop prattle of gun fire as the last Anarchist position in the nearby city is overrun by an Atomwaffen division. This is the future.
Turning a big dial that says "lumpenproletariat" on it, and constantly looking back at the oligarchy for approval like a contestant on the price is right.
I wonder how similar a collapsed US will be to Russia in the 90s.
We did a coup and created the system we wanted there and it led to that.
We have the systme we want here. The only difference is we got more money to keep things looking clean
The silver lining is that american acools were never good enough to do any real education. So there isn't much father to fall.
Kids will learn to read so they can erp sonic fanfic on twitter. Learn math so tell drugs etc. I mean unless they got enough money their parents pay to have kids learn.
Do you think the entire educational framework will collapse within a few years and we’ll have a bunch of superpredators extremely stunted and emotionally traumatized children who can barely read having to resort to the most naked forms of human depravity just to survive?
Yes.
If you are so confident that militant fascism will reign supreme, I am surprised that you don’t just surrender to it
I keep thinking about it and I don't think it will, but I'm pretty pessimistic about the future either way.
edit: at the very least, the near future looks very bleak
Militant fascism is likely going to be the death of me anyway, so I'd prefer to at least go down fighting it
This is amazing. You might like the movie Threads, it has an ending a little similar to this. It’s extremely bleak and depressing so be warned.
In the rich suburbs of the Deep South the students completely ignore coronavirus, 70% of students have their masks under their nose or have none whatsoever, and a third of students aren’t here :desolate:
Also the nurse for the school my mom works at is an antivaxxer lol
At least an alchemist would try filling your sinuses with alkahest instead of just prescribing prayer.
It's worse. An alchemist may have weird ideas but actual practical knowledge of how chemicals work and interact
alchemy is a coherent belief system, and it requires testing, so the alchemist would be able to run it, albeit with unnecessary steps. Antivaxx is incoherent and based on :frothingfash: .
Corona wiping out deep south former plantation owners would make my day though
I am aware, but thinking of white antivaxxers choking on their own fluids tickles something deep inside my soul
Lol gotta find that meme someone posted of the ivermectin antivax influencer on life support
NYCs reputation as progressive is weird, a lot of the real power is deeply entrenched blue dog conservative.
yeah it's like a reverse mott & bailey. 99% of them are slightly less racist republicans, then they dramatically point at AOC sitting by herself and say "look they're all socialists!!!!!"
I think slightly less racist may actually be giving some of them too much credit. The mayor might not be racist but he is a psychopath.
slightly less racist is misleading, I actually meant that they have a classier, more polite version of racism.
See Also: California. Sometimes you get a local government that tries to do something progressive, but if it's anything more than skin deep the state house shuts it down.
California elected Ronald fucking Reagan as its governor. That state is the definition of "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds". The worse city in that regard is San Francisco - they constantly congratulate themselves for being progressive while across the bay Oakland acts as a virtual storehouse for their oppressed reserve army of labor.
:morshupls: but really imagine the DOTA guy explaining things really fast as liberals and cons trying to grasp at straws over how this is fine and we're absolutely NOT a dysfunctional country like CHYNA
If I was a kid in the US I'd straight up bunk school just not to get covid. Maybe show up for attendance.
I dropped out and went straight to community college after my GED test. I'd highly reccomend it.
unrelated, my friend says that two walmarts in his area shut down due to covid.
Once the waffle houses close the pandemic is officially as disruptive as a hurricane
I mean yay walmart closed but that's incredibly bad news because they probably already destroyed every other business in the area. Now people can't get food or supplies. It's literally worse than the fantasy people hold of China's lockdowns.
Jesus. If my walmart closed I would not have a single place to get groceries for about 60 miles
Yeah but they won't just go home to their families and infect the adults causing a cascading collapse. It's fineeeeeeeeee and chillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
