I followed @bestoftimes this morning and added two books to my to-be-read list from his feed. Thanks!
Coronavirus: Drive-in theaters report uptick in business - Axios
Fond memories of going to drive-ins with my parents and brothers as a child, and later with friends as a teenager.
Mel Gibson - The Road Warrior (1981) via
We need a moonshot program to build a first-class healthcare system in the US in the next year or so.
This will certainly be difficult but it will benefit in so many ways.
This Is How We Beat the Coronavirus www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…
Trump viciously attacks NBC News reporter in extended rant after being asked for message to Americans worried about coronavirus www.cnn.com/2020/03/2…
Trump is outbidding state agencies for medical supplies.
“Trump has refused to coordinate federal procurements of emergency supplies for states, saying the fed is not “a shipping clerk” for state governments.”
A bidding war for medical supplies is a terrible idea right now.
- Cory Doctorow
Right to Repair is important during a pandemic, because medical professionals are the right people to make decisions on field-repairing hospital equipment, not med-tech company shareholders and their lawyers - Cory Doctorow
Charter is now letting employees to work from home . www.lightreading.com/cable-vid…
I saw Lake Murray looking spectacular this afternoon. 📸
We’re not going back to normal: Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever. www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/…
Senator Richard Burr Warned Of Coronavirus Effects In Private Meeting - NPR
Even while GOP leaders were ridiculing and downplaying coronavirus risks, at least one – Senator Richard Barr, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee – was simultaneously saying the opposite to big-money constituents, warning them that the virus was extremely dangerous. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
Steve Sinofsky compares the evolution of the iPad Pro vs. laptops replacing many PCs and PC servers replacing mainframes.
The newer, smaller, more flexible device begins to take on the characteristics of the older, bigger, more rigid device.
However, in the case of the laptop and PC server, the new devices were much less expensive than the ones they replaced. Not so with the iPad Pro vs. laptop!
Empty Grocery Shelves Are Alarming, But They're Not Permanent
America’s grocery supply chains are going strong. Shelves are bare because of spiked demand. “It’s like the weekend before Thanksgiving — day after day after day.” www.npr.org/2020/03/1…
Cory Doctorow: Fox News is a suicide cult. Theirs and Trump’s initial coronavirus denialism is still helping fuel the spread. pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…
Cory Doctorow: “How to structure a fair covid bailout: Stimulus, not private jets.” pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…
Cory Doctorow: The Democrats' worst Congressman is out of a job
“Congress’s worst Democrat is Dan Lipinski, a corrupt, anti-abortion, corporatist, gunhumping asshole…. "
And now he’s primaried out.
Shameful that the DNCC supported this clown.
15 Broadway Plays and Musicals You Can Watch On Stage From Home www.playbill.com/article/1…
Beijing fears Covid-19 is a turning point for China and globalization
China didn’t start coronavirus, but Chinese incompetence and authoritarianism is a big part of the reason why it’s now a global pandemic, rather than a local problem.
The same Chinese government that mishandled the crisis at first is now telling us that everything’s fine in China now; they’ve got it under control. Seriously?
Michael Auslin:
While the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, China is fighting a propaganda war. Beijing’s war aim is simple: shift away from China all blame for the outbreak, the botched initial response, and its early spread into the broader world. At stake is China’s global reputation, as well as the potential of a fundamental shift away from China for trade and manufacturing. Also at risk is the personal legacy of General Secretary Xi Jinping, who has staked his legitimacy on his technocratic competence. After dealing with the first great global crisis of the 21st century, the world must fundamentally rethink its dependence on China.
… no one knows if Beijing’s claims that new indigenous cases are slowing down are true or not, given long-standing doubt about the veracity of any official Chinese statistics, and the party’s failure to act in the early days of the coronavirus.
Auslin goes on to say that the coronavirus pandemic is making globalization downsides apparent, particularly the reliance on China for so much manufacturing, particularly essential drugs.
Jeet Heer: The Democratic party's DC leadership is failing the coronavirus test
Congressional Democrats are to the right of the GOP on coronavirus relief.
If Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez find a way to speak with one voice, they can push the Pelosi–Chuck Schumer–Joe Biden wing to act with urgency. Otherwise, we’re stuck in a world where Romney and Cotton are to the left of the Democratic Party’s leadership.
We live in Zoom now www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…
‘Friends’ Reunion Special Delayed at HBO Max www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed…
They will not be there for you.
I heard you like coronavirus memes so here are 28 coronavirus memes
When your phone links you to a crime: How law enforcement used a “geofence” warrant to identify a suspect of a crime he didn’t commit.
Google tracked his bike ride past a burglarized home. That made him a suspect.
Dr. Fabiano Di Marco, a doctor in a hospital in Bergamo, Italy, shares his story: “It’s like a war,” he says. “We cry every day.” The US may be headed the same way. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…
The origin stories of the peace sign, smiley face and power button symbol.
There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren’t so straightforward. Like, why do a triangle and a stick in a circle indicate “peace”? Where does the smiley face actually come from?"
If you must smoke while wearing your influenza mask, 1918 reddit.com/r/OldScho…
How to avoid the time-suck of social networks while working at home www.zdnet.com/article/h…
Bill Gates: Countries shut for coronavirus could bounce back in weeks — www.cnbc.com/2020/03/1…
Sister Maria Elena Romero, a cloistered nun, offers advice on social distancing, which nuns and monks have been doing for nearly 2,000 years.
U.S. Virus Plan Anticipates 18-Month Pandemic and Widespread Shortages
18 months!
Cory Doctorow: Plague precautions from 1665.
A comprehensive list, resembling extreme measures we might see today – both virtues and flaws (tippling in public houses STILL permitted).
Science was just getting started then, but people had plenty of experience with plague.
Among the precautions: Public entertainments, including bear-baiting, are banned. The bears must have been pleased.
Cory Doctorow: "Bigoted Republican Congressjerk votes against coronavirus relief because it might cover same-sex partnerships."
Cory: “The Republican Party, folks. The party of death and poverty and tragedy and hate. Remember that in November.”
In reality, the law that hateful moron Andy Biggs (R-Az) objects to makes no change to US policy regarding same-sex partnerships. None.
Also, the way infectious disease works is that for any of us to be protected, all of us need protection. Even people we find contemptible, like Andy Biggs.
John Green on coronavirus: “Togetherness is the superpower of our species. Like, yeah, we as individuals are very smart, as animals go, but it is our collective knowledge that has made us so successful.”
American Airlines blew $15B on stock buybacks to benefit shareholders, jacked up prices and nickel-and-dimed customers. Now it wants a $50B bailout - 3x 9/11.
When companies make good decisions, management and shareholders are rewarded. When companies make bad decisions, they scream for help to Uncle Sam … and management and shareholders are rewarded at taxpayer expense.
Good thing Bernie is going down. Otherwise we might have socialism or something!
NYT: Trump Now Claims He Always Knew the Coronavirus Would Be a Pandemic
Trump lies compulsively, and many times a day, about things that are easily verifiable as untrue. He claims he always knew the coronavirus would be pandemic within days of having gone on the record numerous times downplaying the seriousness of the virus and ridiculing people who took it seriously.
None of this is secret. It’s all on video. You can see it for yourself. Probably you did see it.
Scientists warn we may need to live with social distancing for a year or more
Grim reading.
Facebook was marking legitimate news articles about the coronavirus as spam due to a software bug
San Diego leaders back freeze on evictions tied to coronavirus outbreak despite landlord concerns
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he has put the California National Guard on alert to help protect communities and fight the spread of COVID-19.
Suddenly unemployed, San Diego workers grapple with how to pay rent and utility, grocery bills
The Atlantic: America’s Restaurants Will Need a Miracle
Social distancing could prove devastating to the restaurant industry, as restaurants are becoming vital economic infrastructure.
Americans now spend more at restaurants than at grocery stores—something they had never done before 2015. This modern dining revolution has made restaurants one of the country’s most important sources of work. In 1990, manufacturing employment was almost three times larger than the food-service industry, but today there are about as many jobs in food service as in manufacturing. Restaurants are the new factories, and without them state and local economies across the country would fall to pieces. Food-preparation and food-service jobs now account for more than 10 percent of all employment in Nevada, Hawaii, and Florida.
Having a wonderful time, 1969
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/fia3db/having_a_wonderful_time_1969/
Scientific American: Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole
On the research vessel, Polarstern, at the North Pole, time zones, seasons and even day and night are meaningless.The sun rises and sets once a year, and 24 times zones converge on a single point.
The captain changes the ships time zone arbitrarily, to communicate with other ships on different clocks.
“There is nothing in this world that occurs to you that has not occurred to me first. That is the affliction I live with.”
Shit.
Charter employees are fuming as the Internet and phone provider prohibits working from home, despite coronavirus.
One engineer sent an angry mailblast to a SVP and hundreds of engineers. He doesn’t work at Charter anymore.
Cory Doctorow: Be sure to fill out your census. Do it online or by phone.
Filling out your census is important to your community getting its share of federal representation and services.
Cory Doctorow’s Twitter account was suspended for a day, because of a list of trolls he created called “colossal assholes.”
Says Cory: “‘Colossal assholes’ got me suspended, but not its companion list, ‘Toe-faced shitweasels’”
But he’s back now.
Family Room Decor, 1970s retropopcult.tumblr.com/post/6128…
Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now
The qualities that make him a problematic governor in normal times are right for a crisis like the one we’re in.
We are legit running low on TP. May have to use cats instead.
Andrew Sullivan: Reality Arrives to the Trump Era
Andrew Sullivan finds similarities between the initial public reactions to the coronavirus, the gay community’s initial reaction initial to the AIDS epidemic – which, as a gay man, Sullivan lived through – and the 1918 Spanish flu.
In all three cases, the initial reaction was denial and complacency. Even people who accepted the reality of the situation failed to gauge its seriousness and react appropriately.
Ira Glass, at this American Life, compared the current period to waiting for biopsy results from the doctor.
www.thisamericanlife.org/696/low-h…
Julie and I have been through biopsies a few times and the metaphor is perfect. You walk around living your life as usual – eating, working, watching TV, etc. – and not even feeling particularly scared most of the time. But in the back of your head is this little bubble of fear. You know that everything could turn awful very soon. Or it could all be … nothing.
Also, this from Sullivan:
With Trump, we have a deeper crisis, of course. Trump is incapable of admitting error, numb to any form of empathy, narcissistic even in a communal crisis, and immune to any kind of realism. He simply cannot tell anyone bad news. And he cannot keep a story straight, which is essential for public health. His only means of communication is deceptive salesmanship.
(Emphasis mine.)
At the end of this weekend’s This American Life, Glass announced that he’d been exposed to the virus and was going into self-quarantine.
A white Republican mayor seeks the truth about Tulsa’s race massacre a century ago
Two more seasons of Bosch, then no more. Alas!
Even with coronavirus, the US toilet paper supply remains strong. Interesting article for supply chain nerds.
“Barring a new craze for mummy costumes, the actual use of toilet paper is unlikely to increase.”
He comes to talk to his dad every day since the nursing home is on lockdown https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/fjlguv/he_comes_to_talk_to_his_dad_every_day_since_the/
Anbara Salam on Twitter:
“As a public service in these stressful times I’d like to offer, as a palate cleanser, the most embarrassing moment of my life.”
The lobster pool float completes the tale.
The Man With 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Just Donated Them
Cut the guy some slack. He’s in a perfectly legitimate business, he saw an opportunity and he overreacted.
If you hate the guys who hoarded all that hand sanitizer, wait until you find out that a few hundred people have hoarded half the wealth in the country.
And they’re not keeping it in their garage, either.
P.S. If you sent this guy death threats, he’s not the asshole. You’re the asshole.
Cory Doctorow: TikTok’s secret guidelines require moderators to suppress videos from old, ugly, fat, disabled and poor people.
How to prepare for coming layoffs: Good advice from Cory Doctorow, who’s been self-employed for nearly 20 years. :)
Cory Doctorow: An Italian hospital fixed its ventilator with 3D printed parts.
Stupid TiVo didn’t record the debate.
What’d I miss?
Went to the store. Did not buy extra TP. Did buy extra coffee.
It’s called “priorities.” Look it up.
I’m ready for the debate.
NBC’s Saturday Night Live Various Artists Arista Records/USA (1976)
The opening to Chiller Theater scared me when I was a kid. I couldn’t watch it.
Still scares me now but I’m a grown-ass adult so I made myself sit all the way through.
Republican blogs are pushng the meme that Uncle Joe has dementia. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that, because the Republicans are also criticizing the Bidens for nepotism. I expect they’ll next criticize Biden for having a bad combover and orange spray-tan.
I’ve seen the videos that purport to show Biden’s senility and I just don’t see it. In one he wanders off-camera during a Facebook Live chat. In another, he stumbles over when he would take office as President. In neither case does this seem like anything other than a gaffe.
Sure, I’ll watch the debate closely tonight to see if Biden seems to have all his faculties. But even if Biden is so deep in dementia that he doesn’t know his own name, I’d still vote for him over Trump.
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.
Covid-19 needs a new name. Branding matters, people!
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.