An astrophysicist proves he is not a rocket scientist when he gets magnets stuck up his nose while inventing a device to keep people from touching their faces - Naaman Zhou at The Guardian
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.
Making the case for municipal broadband - Cory Doctorow
The Koch network is pushing for an end to covid lockdown and social distancing, while sending its own workers home to ensure their health and safety. - Cory Doctorow.
The group previously pushed to slash the CDC, contributing to US unpreparedness for the pandemic.
Lax antitrust regulations killed a plan to stockpile ventilators
Monday, March 30, 2020
Cory Doctorow:: 13 years ago, the US Dept of HHS awarded a contract to design low-cost, reliable ventilators to Newport Medical Instrument of Costa Mesa, CA. The ventilators would cost <$3k, allowing the US to procure a shit-ton of them against future pandemics. This was a problem for existing med-tech giants, who charged >$10K for competing ventilators… So Covidien, a med-tech giant, paid $100 million to buy Newport and killed the project.
Pandemic surveillance will be abused
Monday, March 30, 2020
Before using tools built by data harvesting companies to track the coronavirus pandemic, we must assume the tools will be abused, says Violet Blue at Engadget. Our failure to contain coronavirus has nothing to do with failure of “invasive surveillance,” Blue says. It’s because autocrats in China and the wannabe autocrat in the White House refused to take coronavirus seriously in the beginning. Surveillance advocates are trotting out the old canard of privacy vs.
Big tech conferences could be a COVID-19 casualty
Monday, March 30, 2020
Lindsay Clark at the Register predicts smaller, fewer tech conferences post-COVID-19. My first was CA World in New Orleans in 1998. In front of an audience of thousands, then Computer Associates CEO Charles Wang wandered across the stage pontificating as a chorus of children danced about him (no, really) and I knew I had indeed entered a whole new world of weird. A chorus of children dancing around the CEO is actually not particularly unusual for a tech conference for a billion-dollar company.
Julie took this photo of Minnie saying good morning to her. My legs at the right. 📷
Julie took this marvelous photo of a mallard swimming in the pond in our backyard. 📷
Julie took these outstanding photos of Vivvie. 📷
The problem with making coffee is you haven’t had your coffee when you’re making your coffee.
I saw this excellent sidewalk chalk art walking the dog yesterday. Drive to the flower.
Portrait of a weekly newspaper in the small town of Julian, California, circulation in the hundreds, founded in 1985, owned and run since 2004 by Michael Hart, now 67 years old, and his wife Michele Harvey, 69.
Small Julian newspaper is all about community, by J. Harry Jones at the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Just once, Michael Hart and his bride of 17 years, Michele Harvey, took a few days off to stay at an inn at Joshua Tree.
“It was sort of our honeymoon years after we got married,” Hart, 67, said.
“Just once we took off three days in a row,” Harvey said. “Those three days and two nights were really all we could stand to be away.”
Since the summer of 2004, Hart and Harvey, 69, have been putting out the weekly Julian News. The newspaper was established in 1985 and had a handful of owners before they purchased the business for $200,000.
“He puts in 70 to 90 hours a week,” Harvey said of her husband. “Make that 65 to 70,” said Hart.
The writers are colorful characters. One “was obsessed about the size of his byline.”
“He wanted his byline to be bigger than the headline of his stories,” Harvey said. He would bring into the office many examples of bylines from newspapers around the country.
And then there was a contributor who didn’t know how to replace the ribbon on her typewriter so instead she would put carbon paper between two white sheets of paper and then write her column even though she couldn’t see what it was she was composing. She’d then give the carbon copy of the column to the paper to let them try to figure out what it said.
Social distancing vs. economic recovery is a false choice. According ta recent study, cities that enacted social distancing hard and fast during the 1918 pandemic were quicker to recover economically. “… the earlier, more forcefully and longer cities responded, the better their economic recovery.”
Scott Duke Kominers at Bloomberg:
That’s not to say that the flu pandemic didn’t cause an economic strain: the authors found that the areas hit hardest saw real declines in manufacturing employment and output, as well as a persistent reduction in bank assets — probably because of losses on loans amid bankruptcies. They also found a decline in auto registrations, which they say suggests a decline in demand for consumer durables.
That said, the cities that implemented aggressive social distancing and shutdowns to contain the virus came out looking better. Implementing these policies eight days earlier, or maintaining them for 46 days longer were associated with 4% and 6% higher post-pandemic manufacturing employment, respectively. The gains for output were similar. Likewise, faster and longer-lasting distancing measures were associated with higher post-pandemic banking activity.
Cory Doctorow: The US coronavirus epidemic is Part 2 of the 2008 financial meltdown, in the wake of which we elected dufus strongmen, gutted emergency preparedness budgets and passed the money to billionaries.
Before reporting to the American people, coronavirus task force members need to say how wonderful Trump is - Meredith McGraw at Politico
Doonesbury captured Trump 44 years ago, in this strip about Chairman Mao. via
Screenwriter J.D. Shapiro on the making of the 2000 movie, “Battlefield: Earth:”
“I Penned the Suckiest Movie Ever - Sorry!"
“… comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.”
Stella, a dog, jumps with gusto into piles of leaves. - video