This is exactly how I feel about the eclipse. I understand that people are excited, and I’m sincerely happy for them. But I fail to find the event anything but very mildly curious.
As I said, though, I’m very very happy for those who experience the eclipse as a big deal.
And the worst reason for not watching the eclipse:
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/898748875225260032
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Oh noez! All that lost productivity (which you weren’t gonna see a penny of, anyway)!
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Wait, how do people even measure “productivity” again? And why is everything measured in terms of widgets or units of goods or services (qty) when we’re supposedly past brick/solid/OFC anyways?
I mean, I’ve taken enough economics courses that I should know this but it feels nonsensical.
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I’m just guessing they assign some average time ‘wasted’ in looking at the eclipse or following the news surrounding it. Then multiply it by the average wage rate of the working population.
Let’s say 100 million employees, earning an average of $20/hr, spending an average of 20 minutes following the eclipse on the day. That’s ~ $700M.
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Jesus. I have trouble figuring out whether it’s more sad than ridiculous or vice versa.
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I’ll watch the eclipse, of course. And I’m not persecuting students for not showing up to class. But then again, I never do.
I’m just not very excited.
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Yeah, I’m a scientist and don’t really care.
Like here: https://xkcd.com/1877/
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Well, I personally would enjoy watching a total eclipse, with the abnormally rapid onset of darkness and animals reacting as if it were nightfall (cows coming back to the barn, birds nesting and going to sleep, nocturnal predators beginning to hunt, etc.).
But southern Arizona is almost a thousand miles south of the totality’s passage, so I probably won’t see much of anything from here. I’d be more excited if I lived in Illinois.
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At least your white privilege will allow you to see the eclipse, whereas racism will keep many blacks from seeing it (according to the atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/american-totality-eclipse-race/537318/
Does this type of thing seem as crazy when you’re on the inside as when you’re on the outside? It really looks like the US is regressing into mass superstitious hysteria…
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I want to believe the article is a parody. But I fear it isn’t.
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I’ve written about the time I saw an eclipse
And a little about why I think people get excited by them
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Obligatory:
Just be glad we know it’s an astronomical curiosity and not an omen/harbringer of doom, like they were in premodern times. Then you’d have to deal with all the freaked out people over the eclipse on top of all the other stuff which has been happening.
Will they have the kids look at the eclipse through a viewer on the ground at Klara’s daycare?
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Kids who are 4 and older will watch the eclipse. But with little one, getting them to keep the glasses on is an impossibility.
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“Obligatory:” Even more obligatory: One of the two or three greatest things in the history of the internet
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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