Not Quite a motss.con x (via Zoom)

On Saturday, December 3, 2022, the soc.motss.con bunch had another Zoom call.

We had 10 people over the course of the 2½ hours or so I was there. I had fun catching up, and it seemed like others did too. Discussion topics (as I wrote them down, but not necessarily in chronological order) included: Zoom and technology Moving, home ownership and renovations, Christmas decorations Collecting things... and displaying them Getting former motsseurs on the call Knowledge, gaps, and storage Vacations, travel (domestic and international, and dodging Covid Hospice no longer enforcing tests, just masks Medical industrial complex, appointments, and coverage, and end of life Cluttering and decluttering, especially for collectors Pets, personal space, food, hoarding, where they pee, how they play, elder care and end-of-life for impaired pets College ridiculousness (U-M vs. OSU, omitting the "M" by the latter) Competence, in-, perception, and power differentials Farming and not eating (but still having butchered) animals you named Nutrition in meats; beef, lamb, whether and where mutton is from sheep or goat Volunteer work Recycling of cardboard and aluminum, the increased popularity of cardboard, and the paper industry Loss of industry and increased drug addiction Congress and the upcoming gridlock Pronouns and neopronouns (including "singular they") English and language evolution Spelling reforms in Dutch COVID as global shared experience; comparisons to cancer, trauma, AIDS, and perception of one's own experience Managing the end of life process for others and the trust involved (especially when they don't necessarily share the same reality as you do), whether to feed or starve at the end of life Getting rid of possessions, especially as end of life approaches... and when the likely recipients don't want them Apartments, locations, and costs (with rent control) Microwave meals Art, both public and private Bathhouses and dive bars Cis vs trans, and who's allowed where Surveys and gender and pregnancy What counts as "old" Activism, generations, race; shifting demographics; health care disparities Chronic illness and treatment and mitigation thereof, and whether and how much to trust the medical establishment COVID, symptoms and asymptomatic, vaccinations, comparisons to the AIDS pandemic Rules that should be followed, and rules that should be broken Priorities, such as happiness, health, family, and fairness Democracy, elections, voter IDs, voting against one's self interest; rural versus urban voting; privilege and assumptions Treason, sedition, executions, at federal and state levels The government intervention in the rail strike... and screwing over the rail workers Rationalizations, specifically how people justify going against their own moral code Devolution of the social contract; social norms Psychoses Not prosecuting crimes because of who knows whom