Just an ethical question I'm putting out there. I have not decided my stance on the issue, so please don't assume I'm advocating for one side or the other.

If Costco mandates that you wear masks, especially since the government does not, shouldn't they supply them?

I suppose not, since some restaurants require men to wear ties, but are not obligated to provide them.

Then there is the question about whether the masks are helping anything, but that's a whole other topic.

On the issue of whether he should wear a mask, I don't see why that's the hill he wants to die on. He's free to throw the mask away once he's out of the warehouse. For the record, I don't wear masks. I'm counting on the 50K IU of Vitamin D I take daily to protect me. But if Costco required it, I'd play along for the duration of my visit.

Incidentally, that video in which Tison tells him to "wear a mask" and "put on a mask." It would suggest that Costco does offer masks. Also, in responses to this video, I've seen at least one person who says that the Costco in his area offers masks for their customers who don't wear one.

Costco generally requires me to wear pants, too. I try my best to comply.

Middle daughter told me last week that when she walked down to the local grocery in her town (properly enmasked, by the way), she saw some dweeb at the door protesting that he shouldn't have to wear a mask to enter. "I have my rights!" he bleated.

So do the grocery operators. And in the past two-plus months, there's been plenty of time to find, make, buy, or order a supply of masks.

Their property, their rights.

But there's nothing stopping me from putting on the mask they provide, walk 10 feet in, and flop around on the floor like a fish out of water I can't breath, I can't breath, panic attack!

Hmmm...ADA lawsuit city?

RPM's example is significant. No shirt, no shoes, no service. The store is not obligated to offer you any of those. They are just the minimum requirements to enter the store. Same with masks and ties. If a place decides that is the requirement (or rainbow clown wigs for that matter) it is their location and hence their rules.

It may be wise for a store to offer accommodations (free ties or masks). But just because one store does doesn't mean all of them have to. This is a business decision and not an ethical one. After all if you demand all your customers wear rainbow clown wigs you may not get many customers if you don't provide them at the door.

Things get different when you move from private business and into government. With a private store you can choose to enter or not. Government regulations don't give you that choice. So government regulations are typically held to a higher standard.

All that said masks don't do much to protect you from viruses. They are mainly effective at protecting others from you. Even with your vitamin D and age you can still be an asymptomatic carrier. I consider it polite to wear a mask to help protect the more vulnerable who aren't in as good of health as you are.

Xenophobia!!

The New Black Panther Party held a protest today outside a Chinese-American restaurant in DC to protest China’s treatment of Africans. The restaurant has no affiliation with the Chinese government.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1262965980151480320

More in-depth information on the xenophobes.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/19/new-black-panther-party-launches-boycott-of-chinese-merchants-to-protest-racism/

Costco generally requires me to wear pants, too. ~ Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy@GMail.com) at May 20, 2020 5:02 AM

That's discrimination against skirt-wearers.

If a store requires masks, I wear a mask - or shop somewhere else. Masks in a time of plague are not a referendum on personal freedom.

How did this guy get into Costco and acquire a cart full of stuff without a mask?

Hmmm...potentially useful. Also, "welcome to the party, pal".

The winget command line tool enables developers to discover, install, upgrade, remove and configure applications on Windows 10 computers. This tool is the client interface to the Windows Package Manager service.

The winget tool is currently a preview, so not all planned functionality is available at this time.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/winget/

Considering the whole mask thing at Costco and other stores. I wonder if there has been a noticeable uptick in forged checks / fake memberships, or multiple people using the same membership card.

Darth- It's not possible that this will increase the availability of computing power to the owner without benefiting Microsoft disproportionately.

I use portable apps exclusively; Redmond has decided that they shall not be configured as defaults, so I'm fucked.

Conan, one commentator said that he wore a mask to get in but took it off at some point.

And in a separate video, the 3K whiner said, paraphrased, "I'm not the sheep - all you liberals are the sheep!"

Another commentator said, in effect, "amazing how fast conservatives stop liking private property when told to get off someone else's private property."

Another commentator said, in effect, "amazing how fast conservatives stop liking private property when told to get off someone else's private property." ~ Lenona at May 20, 2020 1:54 PM

The assumption seems to be that this guy is a conservative when, in reality, he's just an asshole.

From a 2014 thread, here:

...that shoe business reminded me of the 1993 PBS special: "Miss Manners and Company."

Synopsis:

"Miss Manners (Judith Martin) combines advice about social behavior with reflections on the history and meaning of etiquette. Members of the studio audience bring their problems to Miss Manners, and a company of actors dramatizes some of the situations that puzzle people in their daily lives."

(It was probably only 30 minutes long, but I forget.)

Some of the skits had rude characters who couldn't begin to grasp that THEY were the ones at fault. One that I remember was a quarrel between a barefoot teen girl and a shop owner who wouldn't let her in. She tried to make the argument that people with shoes carry more diseases, convinced HE was the rude and unreasonable one. The moral of the skit (maybe more than one skit) was: "Common sense isn't everything." I.e., decorum and a certain level of formality matter a lot too, depending on the setting.
____________________________________

And, from the same thread, I posted a link to a 2012 complaint from the CafeMom site, by Julie Ryan Evans.

First three paragraphs:

"Here we go again with the child-adverse masses out to squelch any sign or sound of youth from their daily lives. Cappy's Pizza in Florida is the latest establishment to jump on the bandwagon by officially banning rowdy kids with a ridiculously patronizing sign right when you walk in the door.

"It reads: 'Parents for the safety and comfort of everyone if you allow your child to run/scream/or misbehave, party will be asked to leave.' Kids are completely banned from the back patio. Talk about giving a parent indigestion before she's even ordered. If I saw a sign like that when I walked into a restaurant -- especially a pizzeria decked out with video games and other stuff that caters to kids -- I'd be walking right back out again.

"It's not that I don't think a restaurant has the right to ask a family to leave if they can't control their kids. I don't want to dine next to unruly ruffians (mine included) either, and I empathize with the business owner who says he's had things broken or stolen by out-of-control kids. On Facebook, owner Scooter Gabel wrote, 'My dining room goes from being a dining room to a bounce house with the arrival of some families.' However, it's the assumption that MOST kids can't be trusted to behave nor can their parents be trusted to handle the situation appropriately that I can't stomach...."

(snip)

Thankfully, most of the commentators had better sense.

Jennifer said on May 14, 2012 at 1:16 PM:
"Then let your kids be the ones who set the good example! Sheesh, do you get insulted by signs instructing you have to wear a shirt and shoes, too?"

And Bubbles said on May 14, 2012 at 1:32 PM:
"You must live on a completely different planet than I do. I'm a single mom to two young, energetic boys and I am always watching them like a hawk when we are out and about, ready to leave abruptly or pull them outside for a 'talking to' should they opt to go rogue and I find that I am the EXCEPTION in my area, NOT the rule. That sign would actually make me sigh a little bit with relief and think, 'at least I won't have to hear "but theeey'reee doing it so why can't we?" ' "

Me: I suspect what made Julie mad is that to her, it ISN'T like being expected to wear a shirt and shoes - she's thinking: "If my standards include tolerating some prolonged screaming but not running, how DARE any restaurant owner suggest those standards aren't strict enough!"

I should have said "in the same thread."

Anyway, the thread was mostly about Amy's idea of having at least a few restaurants that allow dogs. Here it is:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/03/perhaps-we-shou.html

The mask is more to prevent the wearer from spreading virus by partially attenuating it in the exhalations , rather than to protect the wearer from getting it.

I do not support government mask mandates, but I do support the right of businesses to require them until a time we get a vaccine or good medicine (like HCQ or Remdesevir) widely distributed to fight the Chinese Crud.

Meanwhile, thread on efficacy of HCQ in other countries

assumption seems to be that this guy is a conservative
_______________________________

You did see the bare chested video of him at home that I referred to, right? (It wasn't that far down.)

In other words, he DID seem to suggest, verbally, that he was not a liberal and had contempt for them.

Maybe he's a libertarian, but who knows.

In the meantime, we've all heard the saying "if you build a better mousetrap..."

Here's a great DIY trap - it's pretty simple. (Also, if you prefer, AND the bucket is deep enough, you can put 2 inches of water in the bottom. You don't want the water to be too high, and you don't want it accessible to pets or children, of course.)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=03xMecBdVvk

One nice thing about it is that the video itself is non-verbal, so it's intelligible to any interested person in the world with Internet access!

I suspect one reason it works is that it doesn't look anything like a regular trap, even though any mouse or rat could detect the human smell on it.

You did see the bare chested video of him at home that I referred to, right? (It wasn't that far down.) ~ Lenona at May 20, 2020 2:17 PM

Nope. I don't really care what this guy thinks he is. And I certainly don't want to see him shirtless.

...he DID seem to suggest, verbally, that he was not a liberal and had contempt for them. ~ Lenona at May 20, 2020 2:17 PM

I doubt this guy could articulate what being a conservative (or a liberal or a libertarian) means or any of the beliefs at the heart of any political philosophy.

Unless the customer's civil rights were being violated (and I didn't see anything close to that) it is their store and their rules.

I can choose to not shop there if I don't like their rules.

Lastly, the jackass proved just what kind of a-hole he is when he resorted to swearing/dirty name calling the employee.

The power of intrasexual competition:

https://twitter.com/PandasAndVidya/status/1263009720601894913

"Then there is the question about whether the masks are helping anything..."

"All that said masks don't do much to protect you from viruses. They are mainly effective at protecting others from you."

"The mask is more to prevent the wearer from spreading virus by partially attenuating it in the exhalations , rather than to protect the wearer from getting it."

Just for information: An N95 respirator mask, which if worn correctly is more effective than the surgical masks and cloth masks people are wearing all around, can filter out 95% of particles 0.3µm or larger. SAR-CoV-2 is in the range of 0.05µm - 0.2µm.

In an experiment in South Korea the scientists tested the effectiveness of surgical masks and reusable cotton masks for blocking SAR-CoV-2. Subjects with covid-19 were asked to cough five times on a petri dish without a mask, with a surgical mask, with a cotton mask, and again with no mask. They compared the contamination on the petri dishes and the inside and outside of the masks. They found that the masks weren't effective in filtering SAR-CoV-2, and there was more contamination on the outside of the masks than on the inside.

Lenona, this is why you need to learn statistics.

There are ~330 million people in the US. 16% of those have an IQ under 85 (53 million are not that bright). 2.3% are functionally retarded with an IQ under 70 (7.6 million). How hard do you think it is to find one retarded person? For that matter how hard do you think it is to find one asshole? How about finding someone who is high and doesn't know what they are saying?

You have a sample size of one out of a population of millions and are trying to call it representative. This is why you often haven't a clue what is going on.

If you're referring to this:

Another commentator said, in effect, "amazing how fast conservatives stop liking private property when told to get off someone else's private property."

I merely thought it was witty enough to quote. After all, as journalists have pointed out, this guy is hardly alone in such attitudes.

If the rude shopper hadn't made it clear that HE isn't a liberal, I wouldn't have quoted the above commentator.

At any rate, I don't assume that the commentator was trying to call anyone representative of most conservatives - it's just Twitter, after all. Geez.

Bullshit Lenona. That is exactly what was written.