“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!
Find out which weather service is most accurate in your area
ForecastAdvisor shows you the accuracy of major weather forecasting services in your area. It says that The Weather Channel and AccuWeather are most accurate for us, which matches my unscientific explorations.
There is a joke that San Diego doesn’t need weather forecasts because the weather is always the same. There is some truth to that – but only some. Generally, you can tell what the weather is going to be by looking at the calendar, and any forecasting service will give you the rest of the information you need. It doesn’t rain much, which is bad, because we’re in a drought. It gets chilly, but not cold, in the winter. Sometimes too hot in the summer, in our party of the county. Spring and fall are lovely.
But we’ve been having rain for days, and I like to schedule my walk around the rain. So suddenly I care about the accuracy of weather forecasts. The Weather Channel and AccuWeather seem to do best for hourly forecasts.
Dark Sky, which fans say can do an uncanny job of predicting rain down to the MINUTE, doesn’t work well here at all.
AT&T CEO pay rose to $32 million in 2019 while he cut 20,000 jobs
The Verge guide to Twitter (with a contribution from yrs trly)
Reporters Without Borders uses Minecraft to sneak censored works across borders.
The Zoom virtual background for videoconferences doesn’t seem to work with my Mac. I can buy a portable green screen, that attaches to the back of a chair, for $65.
Or I can just clean my office.