Over 100 King County Metro bus trips canceled - https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/over-60-king-county-metro-bus-trips-canceled/XRXIUVUGDFCZ5BNWHZFSDQPTO4/
Seattle Police Department activates Stage 3 emergency operations amid staffing shortage - https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-police-department-activates-stage-3-emergency-operations-amid-staffing-shortage
Amid crew shortages, Washington State Ferries to cut sailings on some routes by half - https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/q7r6c9/amid_crew_shortages_washington_state_ferries_to/
Seattle Public Schools are cancelling almost ALL school buses - https://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/q8t06f/seattle_public_schools_are_cancelling_almost_all/
Seattle Public Schools begs students to return after low enrollment affects budget; a decrease in enrollment means a decrease in budget - https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-public-schools-begs-students-to-return-after-low-enrollment-affects-budget
Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle are among the cities to see public school enrollment plummet for a second consecutive year. - https://fee.org/articles/cities-lead-the-way-in-another-massive-fall-exodus-from-us-public-schools/
Edit to add the email I got this week from Harborview/UW health services:
To Our Valued Patients:
At UW Medicine, your access to timely care is always our priority. While our teams are working diligently to meet your needs, we are currently experiencing very high demand for all services. As a result, it may be taking longer than normal to find open appointments with your healthcare providers.
If this is your experience, we ask for your patience and courtesy. Like many other healthcare organizations and industries, we continue to face disruptions from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our workforce and operations.
20 years ago I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time and thought it was crazy and unrealistic. Never thought I'd be living through it.
"Who is John Galt?"
I tried reading Ayn Rand a couple of times and never got past 5 pages, she was not my thing.
Synopsis?
LOL the book has a larger wordcount than War and Peace, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Les Miserables; but I will try.
The book takes place in an alternate timeline in the US in the 1940s which is in a deep depression. The protagonists are all STEM executives (one is a railroad exec, one is a copper miner, one owns/operates a foundry for high-strength alloys) for whom IMO the closes embodiment today is Elon Musk, and the antagonists are all Fauci types. The general theme of the book is the executives realizing that society at large hates them despite taking advantage of their unique skillsets and exiting society to their own parallel and independent society to let it collapse so they can rebuild when it does. Much of the book details scenarios where all the employees of a particular company just decide to quit, leaving it unable to fulfill some primary function to the detriment of society, and the government trying to prevent this from happening using more and more punitive measures.
It's a tedious read (the book is infamous for a 60 page uninterrupted speech made by one of the protagonists), but she does accurately portray our enemies and their mindset. I don't exaggerate when I say that when I first read the book 20 years ago I thought the antagonists were caricatures but found them moderate when I re-read it 2 years ago. I rarely read fiction and almost never re-read it; it and Starship Troopers are the two books where I've done both.
Other than nihilism, what were the intertwining themes of her books that was so important? She seems to be making a roaring comeback after 60 years of being in the dustbin.
Rand grew up in Communist Russia, had escaped to the West, and her books and philosophy were a particular brand of materialist, atheistic, meritocratic libertarianism known as Objectivism. She had a particular affinity for STEM types -- engineers and architects mostly. This philosophy was expressed and refined in all her novels.
The reason her books are making a comeback is because society is starting to very strongly resemble the societies in her books. Particularly Atlas Shrugged, because of all the lockdowns and the government's attempted control of all aspects of the economy and society (which are strong themes in that book). And since that book primarily concerns itself with the operation and decline of a railroad, seeing airlines and railroads now going through what she described in that book is of particular interest.
Fountainhead has similar themes and is much better in prose and narrative. Its better to start with that one.
I read Atlas Shrugged in 2017. Had I read it 5 years earlier, I would have dismissed all the antagonists as hilariously one-dimensional strawmen. But in these days of Clown World, I'm not so sure anymore.
Amazon prime has atlas shrugged in a movie (3 parts). Its Amazon, i know. but considering the content.
That trilogy is terrible. I could only (barely) get through the first movie and turned off the second one partway into it. Poor acting and script. And it's set in contemporary times but goes through some twisted logic to explain why everyone's still riding in trains instead of flying. Would have been far better to make it a period piece set in the 40s.