TubularCorporation

That's what I get for trusting Wikipedia, they hadn't updated the number since May of 2010 when it was slightly over 18,000 confirmed deaths - that larger figure is from August 2010. Either way, we're still a couple hundred thousand below the average flu season (around 250k deaths a year from flu is normal) but this has the potential to be a lot worse than that. And yeah, the "losing a quarter of the world population" thing was miswording, the 25% is actually the high-ball projection for the economic decline in this country over the next couple of months (actually 24%), juggling too many messages and posts at once. Anyhow, botched number notwithstanding, my point was that it's unlikely this will be on the same scale as 1918 becaseu so many of the conditions that led to it aren't present now, regardless of this virus being potentially more contagious, but we're already in worse shape than at this stage of the 2009 pandemic and a lot of countries are proving a lot less prepared this time around.

Friend of my family who was hospitalized with it last weekend requested hospice today. No idea if he's still alive or not, because the only contact we have is with his wife, who is in quarantine now herself and has no direct contact with him. Pretty terrible situation, and there's going to be a whole lot more, there've only been a few deaths in that state so far. My folks have about a 2-3 month supply of food now so as long as they're still clear in about 10 days they stand a good chance of weathering this but I expect to lose some people over the next few months, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to self quarantine and a lot of (probably most) people who are lucky enough still aren't doing it. I don't think it will be as bad as 1918-20 since but it's already a lot worse than 2009. I'm hoping it'll be comparable to 1968, which is pretty bad but a lot better than losing a quarter of the world population. Stay safe, everybody.

1080 is (allegedly, according to Roland marketing hype) the most recorded synth of all time for a reason. It's a nice sounding ROMpler that's flexible and pretty fun to edit.

If you don't mind shipping internationally and want something that's on the esoteric side, you could get a Kawai K1m well in your price range (there's one for £170.30 on eBay Japan right now -that's about 3x what I paid 4 years ago so it's a bit harder to blanket recommend one now, but it's still not bad) and maybe even have enough left over for a secondhand Volca Keys or something depending on shipping costs. I'm a big fan but it's definitely not a conventional polysynth so don't just grab one without doing a bit of research. It's very much its own architecture, no filters or anything, you have four single cycle waveforms with their own complex envelopes and some pitch modulation and cross-modulation possiilities, and you use that to do pseudo-additive synthesis (because there are groups of waveforms that you can use to kind of simulate adding different overtones by crossfading between them with the envelopes and joystick, although that's just a start). I've never used another synth quite like it, the Yamaha TG33 is probably the closest but they sound very different from each other and I think the K1/k1m/k1r sounds a lot more interesting. But if you like "old school lofi crusty sound" it's definitely got that, more so than the JV1080 for sure (although the 1080 is way more flexible). Just ignore the k1m user presets because they're wretched like most old digital synths (and a lot of new ones for that matter), although they do definitely have a certain charm. Here's a demo of some more interesting aftermarket presets: Another thing is that even though it doesn't have much in the way of realtime control, the MIDI implementation is pretty good, so you can modify just about every parameter in real time from your DAW or controller and get into some really exotic, unique sounds if you don't mind dealing with SYSEX. There's already a CTRLR panel for it but I've never tried that so I can't vouch for it. https://github.com/krylenko/KawaiK1Panel I don't know, it would be kind of a weird choice for "first synth" but it definitely stands out (and it was probably a lot of people's first synth when it was new). It's esoteric and limited in a lot of ways but it absolutely stands out so if you want something a bit unique it's worth a look. Also, Kawai released sysex dumps of all of their K1 expansion cards to the public domain years ago, and some of those sound a lot better than the factory presets.

Yeah, I heard the other day that projections for the big surge put it most likely Monday or Tuesday but it wasn't clear if they meant NYC specifically or the whole USA. Plus Spring Break ends tomorrow, so all of the idiots who caught it when they were partying in Florida this week are going to be spreading it all over the place soon.

I think you missed my point there.

Anyway, if it makes everyone feel better I did some quick math and only around 0.002% of the world's population has been infected so far, and more than a third of them have already recovered. So it's pretty rare in absolute numbers. If I calculated right, the odds of actually catching and dying from it are about 1 in 825,000 right now. OTOH a couple yeas ago my dad developed a rare autoimmune disorder that only about 1 in 1,200,000 people get so I'm not putting too much stock in odds.

As a sort of wishy washy long time Kropotkin fan I'm skeptical of M-Ls but I'll check it out. Usually they're pretty much on the same page as me in the short to medium term, and beyond that everyone's jsut talking out their ass really because we never have any idea how things are actually going to turn out.

If it makes you feel any better, most of the stuff I've read lists sore throat and headache as pretty uncommon COVID symptoms. This is a pretty good list: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200310/know-the-symptoms-of-covid19

Yeah, sorry THawkins, I was actually just getting ready to go through those finally.

I've pulled off two no-death runs of the Turbo Tunnel in the last 24 hours. Thanks, Covid-19.

Not official yet but we were told this afternoon to not expect work to reopen until May at the earliest.

That's what my state gov't is saying, too. They're now down to no gatherings above 25 and estimating 5 weeks minimum of exponential increase.

That really sucks, is WA providing unemployment benefits for people who are temporarily out of work because of it?

Hasn't been bad so far, but when it warms up more consistently it'll be rough for about a week. Usually it doesn't hit me until late April or early May but this year there have been so many out of season warm days that I get a few days of allergies every time one hits, and it's a little worse each time. I'm actually hoping that kind of eases me in to it, because usually the first 4 or 5 days of allergy season proper basically feel like having a really severe cold and that's the last thing I want to be feeling right now! Anyway, I'd put money on me being called in for testing by the end of the week regardless, just because of where I work.