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Feds are seizing medical supplies from hospitals without saying what they’re doing with it [Noam N. Levey/LA Times]

“In order to have confidence in the distribution system, to know that it is being done in an equitable manner, you have to have transparency,” says Dr. John Hick, a Minnesota emergency physician.

“Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We don’t know,” one official said. “And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.”

The 10 Most Offensive Movies Ever Made [Keith Langston/Screenrant]

(1) The writer Tad Williams and his wife, Deb, had a cat named “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Kitten.” Or just Henry. Tad told wonderful stories about that cat, and Julie and I got to meet the cat, who was indeed wonderful.

(2) The following would be great names for podcasts: “I Spit On Your Grave,” “The Human Centipede,” and “Cannibal Holocaust.”

Swiss physicist Nicolas Gisin may have solved one of the fundamental mysteries of physics: Does time exist?

Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math

Relativity makes no distinction between past, present and future; they are all fixed. In relativity, “now” does not exist.

In real life, though, we know that time flows from past to future and we live in the now. Quantum mechanics agrees with real life.

How to resolve the contradiction?

Gisin thinks he has, using an obscure, turn-of-the-20th Century branch of mathematics.

Gisin’s theory, if borne out, would explain the nature of time, reconcile classical and quantum mechanics, explain whether numbers are real, describe the nature of “now,” and might require physicists to invent a whole new kind of mathematics. Kind of a big deal!

[Natalie Wolchover/Quanta Magazine]

Coronavirus breaks my iPhone: FaceID doesn't work when you wear a mask

Privileged person problem: When I go to the supermarket, I keep the shopping list on my iPhone. When I’m wearing a mask, Face ID doesn’t recognize me. I have to open my iPhone by entering the passcode a dozen times or more.

I heard about a feature called “Setup Alternate Appearance” for situations where you have an “appearance that can look vastly different.”

I tried it with my mask on this morning. Nope, didn’t work. It said I had something obscuring my face and I should try again.

Joanna Stern has more on the whys and wherefores at the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone needs to see your eyes, nose and mouth. It’ll work for many sunglasses but not all. It supposedly works when men grow and shave off facial hair, and when women wear or don’t wear makeup.

There’s apparently a workaround to the mask problem: masks printed with images of the lower parts of faces on them!

Doctors who’ve been living with this problem for years offer suggestions: Just use pen and paper, bunch up your interactions with the iPhone in batches all at once, tell someone you trust to unlock the phone for you, ir continue typing in your passcode like a savage.

Stern notes, and I can confirm, that you can punch in your passcode and otherwise use your iPhone while wearing thin nitrile gloves on with trivial additional inconvenience. 🌕

Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic.net: Cleveland Plain Dealer massacre; TSA child molesters and more

Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net

Cleveland Plain Dealer’s new owners massacre staff

The owners of the Cleveland Plain Dealer laid off all but 14 of the newsroom staff, then prohibited the survivors from covering the beats they’ve mastered over decades, giving those roles over to the non-unionized staff at cleveland.com. …

Among those affected: Ginger Christ, the paper’s health reporter, who has been stripped of her beat during a pandemic.

This during the largest public emergency in the last 75 years. Peak parasitic capitalism.

The TSA wanted to inspect a 16-year-old trans girl’s genitals

The scanner operator “she told Jamii she must go to a private room, expose herself, and let her ‘feel up in there.’ That is, a TSA supervisor demanded to molest a child.”

When her mother refused, TSA called in the police and top TSA managers. They were eventually released and drove 600 miles rather than flying.

The TSA previously strip-searched a grandmother on Mother’s Day to get a look at her sanitary napkin, and penetrated another woman’s vulva and “falsely told her that she could not refuse the search and abandon her trip and threatened to physically restrain her if she didn’t submit.”

Also:

  • The 400-year-old Bannatyne Manuscript may not be the oldest surviving F-bomb. Roger Fuckebythenavele ftw.
  • Excellent public domain Zoom backgrounds. Alas, my MBP is too underpowered to use Zoom backgrounds. I have not been moved to buy a greenscreen but these backgrounds may change my mind!
  • Monster-themed COVID PSAs.

What will you do the day social distancing ends?

I think we’ll be cautious and not rush out to any restaurants or crowded social gatherings.

But I think I’ll absolutely take the dog to the park, Lake Murray, where we used to walk every day. Stop and talk to people. Let Minnie sniff out some other dogs. That sounds lovely. With Julie of course if she wants to come. 🌕

This looks like a useful new feature on Inoreader: Convert Almost Any Webpage Into RSS Feed With Inoreader’s Web Feeds

Inoreader will let you subscribe to updates for web pages even when those pages don’t offer RSS feeds.

Whenever you see a web page with a series of updates, be it news articles, blog posts, classifieds, product updates, weather alerts, practically any series of HTML links, Inoreader should be able to present it as an RSS feed. This feed will then be continuously updated, and any new links added to the list will pop up as articles inside Inoreader. Just like any regular feed.

I’m guessing it does a little screen-scraping and looks for patterns in text.

Social distancing is getting hard in our house. And we’re normally people who have a limitless capacity for solitude and not going out.

500-year-old manuscript contains one of earliest known uses of the “F-word”

Scotland is the home of a 500-year-old medieval manuscript containing the oldest extant written F-bomb.

“The profanity appears in a poem recorded by a bored student in Edinburgh while under lockdown as the plague ravaged Europe…. The poem is getting renewed attention thanks to its inclusion in a forthcoming BBC Scotland documentary exploring the country’s long, proud tradition of swearing, ‘Scotland—Contains Strong Language.'”

That is darn interesting.

[Jennifer Ouellette/Ars Technica]

Life Without Toilet Paper Is Better

Frank Bures at Vice:

If you were walking barefoot through your yard, and felt the unpleasant squish of fresh dog do through your toes, what would be your reaction? Would you think, “Geez, I need to get some dry, easily torn paper to smear this off my foot”?

No. You would quickly get yourself to a hose, or a sink. You would find some soap. And you would scrub your foot off using your hands.”

Don’t thank me for sharing this.

Really. Don’t. I don’t ever want to discuss it.

This is what happens when a narcissist runs a crisis

Jennifer Senior at the New York Times:

Since the early days of the Trump administration, an impassioned group of mental health professionals have warned the public about the president’s cramped and disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats….

Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity….

Trump is genuinely afraid to lead. He can’t bring himself to make robust use of the Defense Production Act, because the buck would stop with him. (To this day, he insists states should be acquiring their own ventilators.) When asked about delays in testing, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” During Friday’s news conference, he added the tests “we inherited were “broken, were obsolete,” when this form of coronavirus didn’t even exist under his predecessor.

This sounds an awful lot like one of the three sentences that Homer Simpson swears will get you through life: “It was like that when I got here.”

Cambridge Analytica and other abusers killed the open, collaborative, API-driven Web 2.0. “It’s amazing, in hindsight, just how naively open everything was back then.”

This Video Has 3,627,803 Views - YouTube

A delightful video that takes a surprisingly philosophical and optimistic turn.

The stimulus bill seems big – $2 trillion – but it’s just one week of median income for small businesses and families.

Cory Doctorow: “The crisis is already four times longer than that, depending on which city you live in. The end is not in sight.”

Umair Haque: “Coronavirus is an extinction level event for modern economies.” We are living through the complete collapse of the US economy. This is happening now, will play out over the summer and will take generations to recover.

The solution for Congress is to just spend money to keep the economy going – or, more precisely, put the economy in suspended animation. Whatever it takes. Fund businesses to pay employee salaries and meet other essential expenses while the employees stay home, so when the crisis passes the businesses can just reopen their doors, call the employees back in and get back to work.

Only essential employees should be working now, and the government should spend whatever it takes to pay them and be sure they have the best protection we can provide.

Whatever it takes. $2 trillion is inadequate. A thousand trillion is a quadrillion. A thousand times that is a quintillion. If that’s what it takes, so be it.

After a church pastor in California announced he would defy shelter in place orders and hold services, his landlord, the Bethel Open Bible Church, changed the locks. [Lisa Fernandez/KTUTV] Via Cory Doctorow

Reminds me that I’ve been looking for years for a word other than “Christian” to describe the folks like those idiot pastors who are keeping their churches open. I have Christian friends; they are lovely, SANE people.

I’ve come up with “Fox News Christians” but I don’t really care for that either.

Why is Trump touting hydroxychloroquine? Follow the money

Trump and his cronies are investors in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Trump has been touting hydroxychloroquine as a possible coronavirus cure, despite lack of scientific evidence, and also despite significant risks to people who take it, and despite its being needed for legitimate, proven medical uses, such as treating lupus.

Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich and Maggie Haberman report at The New York Times: Trump’s Aggressive Advocacy of Malaria Drug for Treating Coronavirus Divides Medical Community

Sanofi’s largest shareholders include Fisher Asset Management, the investment company run by Ken Fisher, a major donor to Republicans including Trump.

Another investor in both Sanofi and Mylan, another pharmaceutical firm, is Invesco, the fund previously run by Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. Mr. Ross said in a statement Monday that he “was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing” the drug, “nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment.”

As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi….

Several generic drugmakers are gearing up to produce hydroxychloroquine pills, including Amneal Pharmaceuticals, whose co-founder Chirag Patel is a member of Trump National Golf Course Bedminster in New Jersey and has golfed with Mr. Trump at least twice since he became president, according to a person who saw them.

Andrew Cuomo is also touting the drug.

Dr. Daniel H. Sterman, the critical care director at NYU Langone Health, said doctors there are using hydroxychloroquine, but data about its effectiveness remained “weak and unsubstantiated” pending the study. “We do not know whether our patients are benefiting from hydroxychloroquine treatment at the present time,” he said.

On the other hand, many healthcare providers are advising use of the drug based on good preliminary results.

Dr. Roy M. Gulick, the chief of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine, said hydroxychloroquine was given on a case-by-case basis. “We explain the pros and cons and explain that we don’t know if it works or not,” he said.

Doctors at Northwell Health and Mount Sinai Health System are using it as well. At the Mount Sinai South Nassau County branch on Long Island, doctors have employed a regimen of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin “pretty much since day one” with mixed results, said Dr. Adhi Sharma, its chief medical officer.

“We’ve been throwing the kitchen sink at these patients,” he said. “I can’t tell whether someone got better on their own or because of the medication.”

Irony: Calling someone stupid, naive or malicious for failing to anticipate a leak in a speech that you failed to anticipate leaking.

Transcript: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly addresses USS Theodore Roosevelt crew about ‘stupid’ ousted captain [CNN]

Like a good kleptocrat, Modly echoes the boss’s party line: It’s all the media and China’s fault. Like the way the media and China laid off the pandemic response team, took numerous golf breaks and campaign rallies while the pandemic spread, ignored warnings from the Obama White House, Department of Defense and other sources that a pandemic was imminent and said the seriousness of the pandemic is a Democratic Party hoax.

Who Reads Cosy Catastrophes?

Jo Walton:

Cosy catastrophes are science fiction novels in which some bizarre calamity occurs that wipes out a large percentage of the population, but the protagonists survive and even thrive in the new world that follows. They are related to but distinct from the disaster novel where some relatively realistic disaster wipes out a large percentage of the population and the protagonists also have a horrible time. The name was coined by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, and used by John Clute in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by analogy to the cosy mystery, in which people die violently but there’s always tea and crumpets.

Cosy catastrophes were hugely popular after World War II in Britain, among people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading science fiction. They were a reaction (says Walton) to social programs that made life vastly better for working people, but somewhat less comfortable for the middle class, who could no longer afford servants, vacations to France, etc.

The social contract had been rewritten, and the richer really did suffer a little. I want to say “poor dears,” but I really do feel for them. Britain used to be a country with sharp class differences—how you spoke and your parents’ jobs affected your healthcare, your education, your employment opportunities. It had an empire it exploited to support its own standard of living. The situation of the thirties was horribly unfair and couldn’t have been allowed to go on, and democracy defeated it, but it wasn’t the fault of individuals. Britain was becoming a fairer society, with equal opportunities for everyone, and some people did suffer for it. They couldn’t have their foreign holidays and servants and way of life, because their way of life exploited other people. They had never given the working classes the respect due to human beings, and now they had to, and it really was hard for them. You can’t really blame them for wishing all those inconvenient people would…all be swallowed up by a volcano, or stung to death by triffids.

[Tor.com]

I have long thought that the two greatest threats the United States face are hyperpartisanship and the Republican Party.

It’s not lost on me that these two beliefs are contradictory.

A Recipe for Caesar [Common Sense With Dan Carlin] Either we find our way out of the current political tit for tat cycle, or we follow it to his logical conclusion: a Caesar

‘You’re basically right next to the nuclear reactor.’

Dr. Cory Deburghgraeve has volunteered for one of the coronavirus pandemic’s most dangerous jobs, despite an underlying condition that puts him at risk.

This is my entire job now. Airways. Coronavirus airways. I’m working 14 hours a night and six nights a week. When patients aren’t getting enough oxygen, I place a tube down their airway so we can put them on a vent. It buys their body time to fight the virus. It’s also probably the most dangerous procedure a doctor can do when it comes to personal exposure. I’m getting within a few inches of the patient’s face. I’m leaning in toward the mouth, placing my fingers on the gums, opening up the airway. All it takes is a cough. A gag. If anything goes badly, you can have a room full of virus….

Our team had a meeting on March 16th to figure out a staffing plan, once it was clear where this was going. Chicago’s becoming a hot spot now. Our ICU is almost full with covid patients. The pediatric ICU has been cleared out to handle overflow. The wave is just starting, and we need to limit our exposure or we’re going to run out of staff. Everyone basically agreed we should dedicate one person to covid intubations during the day and another at night, and I started thinking: I’m 33 years old. I don’t have any kids at home. I don’t live with older relatives. About an hour after the meeting, I emailed my supervisor. “I’m happy to do this. It should be me.”….

I try to keep my lungs strong. It’s hard not to think about, because I’ve had bad asthma since I was a kid.

I use an inhaler twice a day. I’m very in tune with my breathing, and whenever I’m getting sick, the first symptom is I start wheezing.

Hero.

[As told to Eli Saslow/The Washington Post]

How do you win a war when your government abandons you?

Interviews with doctors and nurses struggling to save lives in hospitals without federal support.

[New Orleans nurse Yani Turang] worked in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak [in 2015], but says that experience was less stressful than what her colleagues are enduring now in the United States. In Africa, she said, “there wasn’t even a question that I would ever have to reuse any supplies.” Her colleagues are now forced to purchase their own protective eyewear and face masks. She blames privilege and arrogance for this chaotic mismanagement, a “consequence of living in a world where you think you’re kind of untouchable.”

But Trump’s TV ratings are great. That’s the important thing.

[Wajahat Ali/The Atlantic]

YouTube is boosting ridiculous conspiracy theories about how 5G is the real cause of coronavirus. But it’s not because people are stupid – it’s because so many ridiculous conspiracies are real, says Cory Doctorow.

Youtube vs 5G arsonists

In real life, billionaires got rich lying about the safety of opiods, prosecutors and lawmakers covered up for pals like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, conspirators ignored evidence about Flint’s water. Scientific journals publish fake papers, doctors get paid off by pharma companies, and regulators are captured by business.

Compared with real life, antivaxxers, #PizzaGaters and even flat-Earthers don’t look so crazy.

Anna Merlan documents conspiracy theories in her 2019 book, “Republic of Lies,” Cory says, adding:

Merlan describes how conspiracists aren’t ignorant, but rather lavishly misinformed. UFO conspiracists can go chapter-and-verse on aerospace conspiracies, of which there are so. many. including, most recently, the 737 Max scandal.

Antivaxers know tons about opioid coverups and other medical malpractice. People who believe that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown black neighborhoods and spare white ones know all about when that actually happened in Tupelo, MS.

Susceptibility to conspiratorialism arises when someone is exposed to actual conspiracies, and trauma.

“I wouldn’t worry about even getting COVID-19 when COVID-20 is going to be released in a few months and it will support 5G.” - @joshua

Too soon?

Consider the Possibility That Trump Is Right On China

And consider that Trump might be right about globalization too.

Nadia Schadlow at The Atlantic:

At least as controversial as Trump’s critique of China is his emphasis on the importance of sovereignty and his insistence that strong sovereign states are the main agents of change. But states are the foundation of democratic governance and, fundamentally, of security. It is the citizens of states who vote and hold leaders accountable. And it is states that are the foundation of military, political, and economic power in alliances such as NATO, or organizations like the United Nations….

Contrary to what critics argue, “America first” does not mean “America alone.” That Trump might be introducing needed correctives to the hyper-globalization pursued by earlier administrations is generating serious cognitive dissonance in some quarters. And the reality is that only one organization in the entire world has as its sole responsibility the American people’s safety. That institution is the U.S. government. Whether led by Republicans or Democrats—or by Donald Trump or anyone else—it should always put the American people first.

I am shocked to find myself agreeing with this article.

Coronavirus hurts Silicon Valley caterers and event businesses

Salvador Rodriguez at CNBC:

Performers, food caterers, event planners, venue owners, models, DJs and others that rely on the tech industry are now staring at blank calendars with no idea of when they will be able to return to their livelihoods.

For much of the last 20 years I went to one or two industry events a month, mostly in San Francisco, the Bay Area and Las Vegas. I can’t imagine they’ll be among the first things to return when sheltering in place lifts.

Today is looking like it was not a great day to cut down on coffee. Tomorrow is not looking great for that either. 

I think we’ll go out to brunch today at DZ Akins, an excellent kosher-style deli just a few minutes drive way. It’s often crowded on Sunday; in a truly wonderful American fashion, this Jewish restaurant fills up when churches let out. But it’s worth waiting for a table.

The weather looks gray, but not rainy, which makes it a good day to visit Balboa Park and check out the museums. San Diego has some excellent museums, surprisingly so for a surfer/tourism town. Again, the park is usually crowded on Sunday and it’s hard to find parking, but worth the trouble.

Jack Butler at the National Review calls Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series a “comforting technocratic fable."

I loved the Foundation Trilogy when I was a boy. I listened to the audiobook of “Foundation” recently and was not moved to continue on. It doesn’t hold up.

Lately I am inclined to see the heroes of that series as badly misguided. Another writer might have even called them villains.

One of the fundamental problems with the premise of the series is that it assumes that human beings don’t have free will.

Asimov was by training a scientist. He was a Ph.D. in chemistry. And one of the fundamental lessons of that science comes from the study of the behavior of fluids. Liquids and gases. Individual molecules behave randomly and are completely unpredictable. An individual molecule in a liquid or gas might move in any direction at any time. There’s no way of knowing.

But if you put trillions of molecules of fluid together, they become completely predictable. Water flows downhill.

Asimov presumed the same thing for human behavior. Individual humans are completely unpredictable. Even billions of humans, the population of the Earth, cannot be predicted. But if you assume the entire GALAXY is settled by humans, billions of Earths, with a population in the TRILLIONS, you have a population that is completely predictable.

That’s the made-up science of psychohistory in Foundation.

But it doesn’t exist. And it would be terrible if it DID exist. As Cory Doctorow points out, if you could know the future for certain, what would be the reason to get out of bed in the morning? Particularly if the future is BAD. If you’re a Jew in Europe and it’s 1928 and you can predict the future with certainty, do you even want to be alive at that point?

That’s one of the problems with the Foundation Trilogy.

The other problem is alluded to in Butler’s description of the series as “technocratic.” Asimov gives us a choice between two lousy forms of government: An empire – in other words, a hereditary dictatorship, like North Korea or Saudi Arabia. Or government by bureaucrats. We never encounter a planet governed by a democratic government with a robust civil service that serves the will of the people. Nope.

Indeed, when I look back on science fiction from that period, I see a lot of galactic empires presented as benevolent, and other forms of benevolent dictatorships. You have to wait until Star Trek until you get something truly resembling representative democracy.

And the OTHER problem with the Foundation Trilogy is that it’s just plain old-fashioned. The prose and storytelling style has not aged well. The characters are flat and one-dimensional, and the action takes place offscreen and is described in dialogue.

Nonetheless, when I revisited the first novel recently, I did find charm in the retro-future vision. When Asimov imagines someone from the outer planets visiting the Galactic capital of Trantor, we see Asimov himself: A leading individual in one of the golden times and places of American history, immigrant New York from around the turn of the century to the 1950s. Jews and Italians fled hard lives in the old country and became Americans, and helped build America. My own parents grew up in that milieu; if I had a time machine it’s one of the times and places I would most like to visit.

And the Foundation Trilogy WAS among my favorite books when I was a kid. If I identify problems with it now, that doesn’t take away from my enjoyment then.

Nor does it take away from my admiration for Asimov, who was and is one of my heroes. He was far from a perfect person in his life, but who is?

As Alec Nevala-Lee writes in his recent book “Astounding," a history of science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s (recommended), when Asimov conceived Foundation, he was a teen-ager in New York, reading about the news of the Nazis rolling over Europe, and threatening America, with the Holocaust killing people just like himself, his family and friends. He dreamed of a world where he could somehow find assurance that everything was going to be ok.

Julie and I are both easily annoyed today. I came into her office to tell her about something that was annoying me, and before I could say a word she went into telling me about something that was annoying her. That annoyed the hell out of me.

I hope she is not annoyed by my posting this.

Also, I think maybe I picked the wrong historical event during which to reduce coffee consumption.

What did people do before toilet paper?

The ancient Romans wiped their butts with a “tersorium,” a stick with a vinegar- or salt-water-soaked sponge attached, although these may have been used to clean the latrine rather than the person.

Other ancient cultures used small stones, rags on sticks, spatulas, and – for scholars – manuscripts. Yen Chih-Thui, a sixth century AD scholar, said he didn’t dare wipe himself “on the names of sages.”

The Chinese imperial family was using mass produced rice-paper-based toilet paper by 1393.

Inventor Joseph Gayetty introduced the first mass-produced TP in the west in 1857; it was called “J.C. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper for the Water Closet” because they knew how to do product names back then.

By Erin Blakemore at National Geographic.

One month ago today I went to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club general meeting with a hundred or so of my closest friends. Following that, a small group of us had a light dinner and drinks at Hooley’s

This is a historic event for two reasons: It was the-second-to-last time I spent a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of people, prior to COVID-19 ramping up. The last time was as few days later, when Julie and I went out to brunch. A few days after that: Lockdown!

Since then, it’s just been social distancing.

The other reason this dinner is historic is I sat immediately next to someone who later got sick with COVID-19. We were packed onto that table so he and I were very close, nearly bumping elbows. He later spent a harrowing week or two in the ICU unit. He’s recovering at home now – thank goodness.

Fortunately for my and Julie’s peace of mind, I found out about this gentleman’s hospitalization more than two weeks after the dinner, well past the incubation period for myself and Julie. So we’re safe. Probably. I’m trying not to think about how little science actually knows about the spread of coronavirus, and whether that two-week figure might be simply be wrong.

Lots of things I’m not thinking about right now. I am becoming excellent at compartmentalization – part of me plans and prepares for the worst and part of me just tries to live life as normally as I can, working and spending time with Julie and reading my books and walking the dog and not thinking about the awful things that might happen. Nearly certainly will happen to so many people.

BTW, I realize this is extraordinarily self-centered – here’s this guy in the ICU and I’m all whew glad that wasn’t too stressful for me. I’m prepared to mount a LarryDavidian defense of my thinking.

Earthquake. About 50 minutes ago. Just a minor one, no damage or injury that I’m aware of. But it’s the biggest earthquake we’ve felt in a long time. Maybe ever.

Because life needed to get more interesting.

Help me with a thought experiment here. Those of you who identify as Republican or conservative: What are the values you hold most dear? What should our national priorities be? What should be government’s goals?

If you fell into a deep slumber and woke up in the United States 50 years from now what would you hope it would be like? Assume a cultural and political renaissance where everybody comes around to realize that your beliefs were best after all.

And how well do you think the Trump administration and present-day Republicans are doing?

Aside to my liberal/Democrat/progressive friends and family: Just sit on your hands on this one please. Let’s keep our mouths shut and learn some things.

From Google News a few seconds ago.

Republicans and Democrats perceive parallel universes with completely different realities now. But there is only one real world.

Researchers are building nearly microscopic robots, made from living cells, that live in petri dishes

Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life

Xenobots are designed to roboticists using algorithmic evolution in computer simulations.

Joshua Sokol at The New York Times:

Xenobots with a fork- or snowplow-like appendage in the front can sweep up loose particles (in a petri dish) overnight, depositing them in a pile. Some use legs, of a sort, to shuffle around on the floor of the dish. Others swim, using beating cilia, or link up blobby appendages and circle each other a few times before heading off in separate directions….

[Researchers crafted] virtual worlds that would reward particular behaviors by the clumps of repurposed frog. Take walking: First an algorithm produced many random body designs; some just sat there, others rocked or waddled forward. Then the algorithm let the best of the walkers procreate into the next generation; from these, another generation was produced, and so on, each one improving on the best designs. Another simulation, aimed at finding designs that could carry an object, became crowded with bagel-like bodies that had evolved a central cavity to hold things."

Eventually, robots like these could “sweep ocean microplastics into a larger, collectible ball,” “deliver drugs to a specific tumor,” or “scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries…. "

“[W]hatever their intended purpose, their bodies would be designed not by an engineer but by a simulacrum of real evolution built to encourage the right behavior in the target environment.”

Ethicists see possible problems.

A long and pointless post about coffee

Just before the lockdown went in place in California, I had brunch with Julie at Farmer’s Table. The coffee was excellent, so much so that I asked the waitress about it. She said they got the coffee from a place in Barrio Logan (and now I see on Google there is more than one coffee place in Barrio Logan. I think Cafe Virtuoso was the one she said.)

I asked the waitress what equipment they use to make the coffee, and she said just a restaurant coffee machine. Not a fancy pourover. Just a drip coffee machine.

So I remembered that and a while later I was Googling about coffee, and came across an article – which I now cannot locate – about how baristas make coffee for themselves, at home. One of the respondents said he used a Mr. Coffee. Just a Mr. Coffee.

And that intrigued me because the Aeropress, which is how I’ve been making coffee for a couple of years, is a bit more fuss than I like in the morning. Same for a French press. And with a Mr. Coffee you assemble the ingredients, press a button and you’ve got coffee a few minutes later.

I thought about that for a couple of weeks and priced a Mr. Coffee on Amazon and it was $22 for a four-cup version. I discussed it with Julie and we said sure why not and I ordered.

While I was waiting for the delivery, I read the reviews – really should have done that before I ordered, right? I had just looked at the overall rating. But now that I read the reviews, I saw that the four-cup machine didn’t actually make four cups. Mr. Coffee measures a cup at 5 ounces. WTF, I thought to myself. That’s 20 ounces of coffee. I like to have about 24 ounces in the morning. Three cups. Three real cups.

Plus, I realized that, although Julie and I make coffee separately, the reason we do it is because the Aeropress only makes three cups, and even that is pushing it. However, if we had a drip machine I could make coffee for both of us in the morning.

So I’d bought the wrong size.

Or had I? Yesterday, I thought to myself that three cups of coffee is really too much. The caffeine doesn’t bother me (or I don’t think it does – I do sometimes have trouble sleeping, but I do not attribute that to coffee. I attribute that to the world, which was a troubling place even before COVID-19). However, I just don’t enjoy that third cup as much as the first two. Plus, drinking three cups of coffee takes a lot of time. That doesn’t matter when I’m just working at my desk, but it’s annoying when I want to be out and about in the morning and I have to wait to finish my morning caffeine fix.

So fine, I said to myself. I’ll cut down to two cups. And Julie said she’s fine making her own coffee in the morning. So we decided to keep the four-cup Mr. Coffee.

But wait, there’s more to this.

Last night I remembered something. We have a third spigot on our kitchen sink. We have the normal hot and cold, and a third one that dispenses even hotter water, for coffee and tea. And that spigot dispenses water at the perfect temperature for brewing with the Aeropress.

Except I remembered that a few weeks ago I accidentally splashed myself with the spigot and it didn’t hurt. And I said to myself at the time, that should have hurt more. I wonder if the spigot is set hot enough? And I promptly forgot.

I mentioned this to Julie last night and she said she runs the water a few seconds before filling the Aeropress. She waits until she sees steam coming up. I said I used to do that too – why on Earth did I stop? No idea.

So I decided to make myself one more Aeropress this morning before I try the Mr. Coffee tomorrow, just to have a proper baseline for comparison. I made a three-cup pressing this morning because I only got about five hours' sleep last night. I don’t know if I taste much difference in the flavor but it’s hotter than it has been, which I like.

I may make a two-cup batch in the Aeropress tomorrow, just to be comparing like amounts with the Aeropress and Mr. Coffee.

I’ve been troubled by insomnia for months, but just last night I was thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t had a bout in weeks. Been sleeping soundly every night. Thank goodness for that, I thought last night.

You’ll totally guess what happened!

I’ve seen a bunch of inspiring chalk messages around the neighborhood this week.

ME (grocery shopping while wearing mask, consults shopping list app on iPhone)
MY iPHONE’S FACIAL RECOGNITION: “Who the hell are you?”
repeat several dozen times

Report on an excursion to the supermarket

I went to the big Von’s on University Avenue to stock up today

I wore nitrile gloves, as I did the other time I went to the supermarket nine days ago. I also wore an N95 mask – my first time out in public wearing one.

I felt self-conscious about the mask, and over the past few days I was mentally rehearsing the conversation I might have with a hypothetical person who might confront me about using the mask when healthcare professionals are doing without. I imagined myself saying, “We bought the masks long before the pandemic; Julie uses them when she cleans the litterbox. We had the gloves too. We’re not hoarding; we have 10 masks and 100-200 pairs of gloves.

“We do not have a large extended family in the area,” I would have said, “so if one of us gets sick the other one takes care of them. If we both get sick, well, we’re screwed.

“By protecting ourselves, we avoid becoming additional burdens on the healthcare system,” I would have said.

“And also, you may be right,” I would have said to the hypothetical person.

Nobody non-hypothetical confronted me.

The supermarket crowd was light, but I would not have found it remarkably light on an ordinary day. Only three or four of us wore masks, and a few more wearing gloves. None of the supermarket staff seemed to be wearing masks, but the pharmacy staff did. The cashier, at least, was wearing gloves, of the type that food service workers usually wear.

One man brought his son, who looked to be about 4 years old. Seems like a bad idea. Maybe he had nobody to watch the kid?

The supermarket had most of the things I was looking for. Plenty of fresh produce, even fresh asparagus for a treat tonight. They did not have Julie’s favorite brand of salad dressing, but that might not have been virus-related as the shelves were full of salad dressing. Maybe they just didn’t carry it.

Also absent: Toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I keep hearing the supply chain is fine with those, and people are just hoarding. So when will that ol' supply chain kick in? Eventually people will run out of room in their houses for toilet paper.

I also was able to find two big bottles of my favorite hand soap, Dr. Bronner’s. That was a pleasant surprise.

I still get occasional comments on this article I wrote 10 years ago. Ten years!

5 reasons why people hate Apple

I just got an email this morning.

The email had no context. Just a short two sentences on why the sender hates Apple – he’s an Android user and was using Dark Sky until Apple bought it this week and shut off API access, including Android.

I replied by asking him why he was sending the email to me. But I was still waking up when I sent that reply, because truly I already knew. That article.

I just reread it. It’s a pretty good article. If I were writing it today, I’d spend time discussing Apple’s monopolistic practices. Or quasi-monopolistic – they don’t own the market, but they control a big chunk of it. It’s the same all over the economy; a few big companies control each industry. They compete against each other but mainly they’re concerned with stifling new competition.

I’m still nearly exclusively an Apple user but I have fewer illusions today. When you do business in the current economy, you compromise your principles. Like using Facebook, for example.

Baked potato + kosher-style spicy brown mustard: Good idea? Discuss.

I just did the census. For “origin” I put in “American,” after Julie pointed out that her great-grandparents (and my grandparents and great-grandparents) were from other countries, but she and I are from right here in the USA.

I gave serious thought to putting in “human” for race, because I am becoming seriously convinced that racial differences aren’t just social constructs, they’re toxic bullshit.

But I went with the conventional answer: White.

Although to people who get really exercised about race, Jews aren’t white.

Fellow Americans, take the census today, if you have not already: 2020census.gov. It’s important; it’s how representation and government services will be distributed over the next decade.

In the “Reign of Terror” episode of “I, Claudius,” a character being beaten to death at the behest of a tyrant declares: “I’ve never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition and without scruple, can destroy a country full of clever men.”

This TV drama is about ancient Rome, and it aired in 1976, so of course this quote has absolutely no bearing on today.

Via the delightful “I, Podius” podcast, with John Hodgman and Elliott Kalan.

The petty tyrant in the above scene is Sejanus, played by a thirty-something Patrick Stewart. Sir Patrick has hair in “I, Claudius” but – I learned in a previous episode of the pod – it’s stunt hair; Stewart has been bald since he was 19.

Larry David: “I basically want to address the idiots out there…. You’re passing up a fantastic opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to stay in the house, sit on the couch and watch TV!” twitter.com/gavinnews…

The US is losing jobs drastically faster than other nations -- by design

Emmanual Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, writing at the New York Times: According to some projections, unemployment might rise to 30% in the second quarter of 2020 in the US, far beyond what other nations are seeing.

Elsewhere, “governments are protecting employment. Workers keep their jobs, even in industries that are shut down. The government covers most of their wage through direct payments to employers. Wages are, in effect, socialized for the duration of the crisis.”

Then, when the crisis ends, workers and businesses just pick up where they left off.

But in the US, we’re relying on improved unemployment benefits. You suffer the stress of losing your job, you have to apply for unemployment, which is burdensome and swamps the system.

Many Americans will find that when the crisis ends, their jobs are gone, with many of their former employers out of business.

That’ll slow down recovery, whereas in Europe, people will just get back to work.

And as they’re losing their jobs, Americans also lose health insurance.

There’s a saying that when the US goes to war, it mis-applies the lessons of the last war. That’s what’s going on here. Conservatives and progressives were both rightly appalled by the lesson of the 2008 bailout, when we propped up broken businesses and rewarded the thieving and incompetent investors and managers who crashed the economy, while abandoning middle class and poor victims to fend for themselves.

But the situation is different now. Yes, we still have an economy that rewards greed, stealing and incompetence, but coronavirus is slaughtering both good businesses and badly run businesses. Government’s goal should just be to press the pause button on the entire economy, then resume, and fix structural problems, when the crisis passes.

Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.

Cory says: “The package also needs to create Covidcare For All, universal health coverage for the duration of the emergency (and beyond, ideally – once Americans get a taste for it).”

A major medical staffing company just slashed benefits for doctors and nurses fighting coronavirus

Yes, you read that right. The company, Alteon Health, slashed benefits to emergency room healthcare workers during the pandemic. These emergency room healthcare workers are literally the most important people in the world right now.

Isaac Arnsdorf at ProPublica:

Alteon Health, a staffing company backed by private-equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners, will cut salaries, time off and retirement benefits for providers, citing lost revenue. Several hospital operators announced similar cuts.

Most emergency room providers in the US work for companies like Alteon – staffing companies with contracts with hospitals. Coronavirus is eating into those companies' profits.

Steve Holtzclaw, CEO of Alteon Health, delivered bad news to employees Monday: “Despite the risks our providers are facing, and the great work being done by our teams, the economic challenges brought forth by COVID-19 have not spared our industry.”

The memo announced that the company would be reducing hours for clinicians, cutting pay for administrative employees by 20%, and suspending 401(k) matches, bonuses and paid time off. Holtzclaw indicated that the measures were temporary but didn’t know how long they would last.

In other words: Thanks for risking your lives and families to save the rest of us. Now go fuck yourselves.

The cuts are coming at a time when these emergency room workers are accruing the cost of living apart from their families to avoid infecting loved ones.

One doctor said he’s getting a $20,000 annual pay cut.

He said, “This decision is being made not by physicians but by people who are not on the front lines, who do not have to worry about whether I’m infecting my family or myself. If a company cannot support physicians during the toughest times, to me there’s a significant question of integrity.”

That’s far more diplomatic than I would use.

Hospital operators, including Tenet Healthcare, Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Atrius Health, are also announcing cuts.

Another Alteon physician said he had been planning to ask for time off to go help out in New York, where the coronavirus outbreak is the worst in the nation. Now he has no paid time off, and he thinks his employer won’t support him if he gets sick. He said if his pay drops he’ll have to look for a new job.

“I have a huge loan payment. I have rent. I have groceries. I’m not going to sacrifice my life for when I get sick and they’re going to say, ‘You were replaceable,’” the physician said. “I cannot believe they did that to us."

Tell me again why it would be bad for the US to have Medicaire for all?

Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

Seth Davis was stranded at Los Angeles Airport for three months after his wallet was stolen Christmas Eve.

Until a few days ago, he and his seizure dog, Poppy, lived at Terminal 6, sleeping on the floor behind a pillar.

Stranded and homeless at LAX. Then coronavirus hit - Los Angeles Times

Devastating story, by Maria L. La Ganga with photographer Francine Orr:

Davis had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and epilepsy. He had been in foster care or adult protective services for most of his three decades. He survived on Social Security and food stamps. As Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, his wallet was stolen. Then his identity was hijacked and his bank account plundered.

What was already a precarious life began to spin out of control.

Davis and Poppy were not sick, yet the coronavirus hit them hard. The agencies that could help them, he said, had been mostly overwhelmed or closed in recent weeks. On Tuesday evening he had $5 and change. Poppy was out of dog food.

They were homeless and alone.

You’ve maybe heard that about half of Americans are one paycheck away from disaster and ruin. Davis is one of those people. $350 made all the difference to him between a comfortable, albeit difficult, life, and homelessness.

Loss of taste is a warning sign for COVID-19 so if you wear any of the following, immediately self-isolate:

  • Socks with sandals
  • side-cut tank tops
  • Shoes with velcro fasteners
  • Ugg boots
  • Pajama pants in public

A year ago today I was at San Diego Airport and saw this tile for sale at one of the shops. For the rest of my life, I will regret not purchasing it.

That sad moment when you realize it may be time to throw one of your favorite T-shirts into the rag bag.

You shouldn’t use Zoom; it’s a privacy disaster. - John Gruber at Daring Fireball

I agree … but I gotta be honest here; I’m following the course of least resistance and using Zoom anyway.

Gruber advises using Zoom on the iPhone or iPad, where you must use Zoom. I’m going to think about whether I can somehow elevate my iPad to give me a good camera angle on Zoom.

Similarly, I’m very active on Facebook despite strong misgivings about its business model. Path of least resistance. It’s where the people are.

High Fidelity at 20: the sneakily dark edge of a comedy about bad breakups

Scott Tobias at The Guardian: High Fidelity is the story of a self-centered jerk who learns to become less of a self-centered jerk.

Also, this: “One of the film’s most insightful and endearing qualities is how much it’s willing to poke fun at Rob, Barry, and Dick’s record-clerk arrogance without belittling their passions entirely.”

Love this movie.

Didn’t even try watching the new gender-crossed TV series. I am not offended by the gender-crossing. I do feel like the main character is a male archetype, and doesn’t work as a young woman. But if they can make it work, that’s cool.

It’s just the TV series did not look appealing to me. And the movie already exists – it is perfect as is, it cannot be improved.

His actual name is “Victor Von Doom.” Shouldn’t that have been kind of a red flag?

📷I saw this sign today on my walk. No, I have not got religion. I am still the same nonebelieving Jew I’ve always been. I just like the sign.

I have seen it a million times before but this is the first time I’ve really taken a second to look at it.

A Las Vegas farm feeds 4,000 pigs slops made from waste food from casinos. The farm is now struggling.

Tiana Bohner at Fox5 Las Vegas:

“Pigs are a lot like us so they love sweets, candies, ice cream,” Las Vegas Livestock co-owner Hank Combs said. “They like meat and potatoes. They’re not a big fan of salads and produce, but they will eat it.

On a normal day, the farm would get 20 tons of food from casinos and restaurants across the valley. Once the strip shut down and casinos closed, their food source was cut off…..

Months before the coronavirus outbreak, Combs and his company developed and designed a new system. The first of its kind, it can un-package anything, allowing them to use the food inside sauce packets and milk jugs.

The farm blends the food then boils it.

Farm scraping by to feed 4,000 pigs without Las Vegas Strip leftovers

Via John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who notes this as an example of the extraordinary interconnectedness of the present-day economy.

Glice is building artificial skating rinks with plastic panels instead of ice

On Roofs or in Basements, a New Way to Ice Skate

You can use Glice rinks year-round or in tropical climates.

Alyson Krueger at the New York Times:

Glice is arguably more ecologically conscious and certainly more convenient than traditional ice rinks, which require large amounts of water and electricity, as well as noisy, cumbersome machines including refrigeration systems and compressors.

“In the past I worked for a hotel that had a traditional ice skating rink,” [said David Lemmond, general manager of the William Vale hotel, which has a Glice rink installed]. “You wouldn’t believe the logistics of it. It requires an enormous amount of infrastructure to keep frozen water frozen”: water tank, refrigerated pipes, 24-hour compressor and the famous Zamboni, which re-cuts the surface after it gets marked up and lays down a new layer of water to freeze.

Critics argue that Glice rinks are still bad for the environment because they are made of, well, plastic. But the company replies that this plastic is durable, with panels lasting 12 years, after which you can flip them over, and use them for another 12….

But skating on a Glice rink is not a perfect substitute for the romantic capades of yore. There are no grooves from skaters or marks that show where a turn was made. There are no timeouts for the Zamboni, or cold air coming off the surface. Flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes and visible puffs of breath are not a given.

“It definitely takes some getting used to,” said Mr. Moore at the William Vale. “There are some differences. It doesn’t quite bite as much when you dig into the ice, so most people find it more slippery at first.” It takes about 15 minutes for skaters to adjust, he said. Many people do a shuffle-like motion until they realize they can make longer strides.

No Zamboni? That’s just wrong!

According to BMI calculations, I am at the high end of healthy weight range and could still be healthy if I weighed up to 25 pounds less. That seems nuts to me.