2020
He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death was announced, Matt and Noah Colvin started a three-day, 1,300-mile journey from their homes in Chattanooga, Tenn., filling up a U-Haul truck with hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes. Then Amazon cracked down on price gouging.
“It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” [Matt Colvin] said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”….
Mr. Colvin said he was simply fixing “inefficiencies in the marketplace.” Some areas of the country need these products more than others, and he’s helping send the supply toward the demand.
“There’s a crushing overwhelming demand in certain cities right now,” he said. “The Dollar General in the middle of nowhere outside of Lexington, Ky., doesn’t have that.”
He thought about it more. “I honestly feel like it’s a public service,” he added. “I’m being paid for my public service.”
The “tragedy of the commons” is junk science developed by a racist who espoused eugenics and white supremacy.
We’ve stocked up on about two weeks of emergency supplies, like you’re supposed to. It wasn’t a stretch – we buy in bulk anyway.
All but coffee. We only have a few days of coffee because it’s really best if you brew it soon after it’s roasted and grind it just before you make it, with a burr grinder rather than a blade grinder, and I guess I’m a hipster now where’s my moustache wax?
I have two important videoconferences scheduled for Monday, and I spent much of the day getting the office in shape to be seen – or, rather, the part of my office visible from the Mac camera,
I used the Photo Booth app to photograph the office from the perspective of the Mac camera, and I picked up clutter to make everything nicer. But only within the cone of space visible to the camera.
There are five steps from my office to the yard and I went up and down them a million times, carrying out junk. My Apple Watch Activities app is giving me high fives.
I’ve been working on an article assignment that has me thinking about how work has changed from the beginning of my career to now. This is one of the ways. In the first half of my career, if I had an important meeting, I put on a suit and tie, made sure my shoes were polished, showed up a few minutes early, etc. Now, this.
Cory Doctorow: The CIA’s information security is really terrible
“Like Japan in the mid-1800s, the United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself.”
Meghan and Harry Overplayed Their Hand
The 1918 flu pandemic in San Diego: 366 deaths, sheep dip and mandatory masks
0.5% of San Diego’s population was killed in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic; the equivalent of more than 6,000 today.
From the San Diego Evening Tribune Archives: How San Diego officials reacted to the 1918 flu
The ballet dancer who led a prisoner uprising at Auschwitz
Franceska Mann, a 26-year-old Jewish ballet dancer from Poland, arrived in Auschwitz in 1943, part of a transport of 1,800 so-called VIP prisoners from Bergen-Belsen. The prisoners “had been lured into thinking they were en route to freedom as part of an exchange for German POWs ostensibly organized by the Allies. The Germans promised that Auschwitz was merely a stop on the way to Switzerland, but the women among the group soon found themselves being led to the gas chambers,” according to a 2019 report in Haaretz.
Women prisoners were ordered to strip by Nazi guards. According to one version of events, Mann performed a seductive strip-tease. While the SS soldiers were distracted, Mann took off one shoe and threw it hard at a guard, hitting him on the forehead. The soldier began to bleed and collapsed. Mann jumped him, stole his weapon and shot him dead. Two other Nazis were wounded by the gunfire.
In another account, she refused to remove her undergarments at first, then threw her bra in a Nazi guard’s face and jumped him, grabbed his pistol and shot him.
Her action inspired a brief, doomed uprising, which the Nazis quickly – and fatally – shut down. Survivors among the prisoners were gassed.
Remember Franceska Mann the next time you see some yokel waving a Nazi flag or other symbol of racism, and hear Trump equivocating “good people on both sides.” Be inspired by her. The American Nazis are coming first for Muslims, illegal immigrants, and other brown-skinned people. But they’ll get around to the Jews soon enough.
“It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet….”
Funny Twitter thread.
I’m getting email from every company I’ve ever given my address to, earnestly telling me how much they care about me and don’t want me to get Covid.
If they really cared about me, they’d send soup.
Apple TV+ 'Foundation' series production halts over coronavirus fears
What this tells me is the long-rumored series based on Asimov’s Foundation novels is in production — and therefore will happen. Looking forward to it!
I expect the series will take great liberties with the novels. And that’s OK.
“Sad ukelele” would be a great name for a podcast.
Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis
The GOP is a death cult.
The Ezra Klein Show: Trump didn't break democracy. Broken democracy gave us Trump.
Also: Republicans understand that politics is transactional. The NRA has been great for the GOP, and so the GOP is unwaveringly pro-gun.
Democrats are uncomfortable with transactional politics, and that’s why the Republicans, a minority party, are running the country.
A brief history of the floppy disk. Fascinating!