Corona-zona

  I remember when toilet paper stock in my local store began to shrink about this time last year. I saw people in the checkout line with their carts full of toilet paper. I  thought they were being stupid and resolved not to participate in the stupidity. Then it totally disappeared (along with almost all the other paper products) and was gone for quite some time. I came dangerously close to running out before some packages started to trickle back in. The disappearance was not the result of supply chain problems or any actual shortage. It was the result of panic buying . As soon as people calmed down stock  was rebuilt. Well now we might be on the verge of another toilet paper shortage.  This time it is supply-chain related, though not the way you might think. It turns out that most of the wood pulp used to make toilet paper comes from Brazil . They can make plenty of pulp, but for it to be turned into toilet paper it has to be shipped here. The problem is there is a ...

  The other day in Santa Cruz, California, anti-maskers staged a protest at a Trader Joes. It was the second time they'd protested there. The first time they got inside, but this time they were blocked by a phalanx of store employees.  Prevented from getting inside, they settled for harassing masked shoppers who were coming and going. The hypocrisy is astonishing: People who want to make their own choices about wearing masks are attacking people for making a different choice than they would.    More common is the individual version of this, where people throw tantrums because someone asks them to wear a mask. These mask-holes  trash stores , get into fights , and disrupt airline flights. What causes people to behave this way? Have they lost their freaking minds? A leading candidate explanation is psychological reactance . In a nutshell, it says that when people believe a freedom is being taken away from them, they put up resistance. Psychologist Jack...

Today I have updates on a few earlier posts for your reading enjoyment. Orgies COVID-19 continues ruining things for people looking to have a little sexy fun.  An earlier post , one of my most popular, detailed how a swinger convention resulted in a super-spreader event and how a gay orgy in Belgium exposed a supposedly anti-homosexual member of Hungary's EU parliament.   Last week, police in France raided a warehouse where a 100-person orgy was going on. Orgies are not illegal in France, but the group was violating curfew and mitigation ordinances.  People, please. Postpone your orgies until we get the pandemic under control, OK? How Not to Schedule, Florida Style In an earlier post I detailed how truly awful ADHS's bespoke vaccine reservation system is. Since then I've talked to several people who got word that shots were available but were unable to successfully schedule them due to flaws in the system. They gave up in frustration. It seems nobody is trying to d...

  The pandemic has been disrupting supply chains since early summer. We all remember having trouble getting things like paper products, baking supplies, staples like rice and canned soup.   Some of that was due to hoarding and some was due to disrupted transportation systems. But some of the shortages are a lot more complex than that. They result from shifts in demand. The shortage mentioned in the picture above is a good example. Actually, there is no shortage of aluminum but a shortage of aluminum cans . People are not going going to restaurants to drink soda, or bars to drink beer. Instead they are buying canned beverages to consume at home. Manufacturers were caught flat-footed, resulting in a shortage of cans.  This has hit local breweries particularly hard. They've lost business at their brewpubs, so to stay afloat they've turned to canning their products. But they are competing with the brewing and soft drink giants, who are themselves struggling to meet incr...