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“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.

Lax antitrust regulations killed a plan to stockpile ventilators

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.

Covidien is now a division of Medtronic.

Medtronic has been leading the fight to kill off an open artificial pancreas, which could free people with diabetes from dependence on meds. These people become “ambulatory inkjet printers, dependent on manufacturers for overpriced consumables to keep their fucking organs working.”

Medtronic pacemakers and defibrillators “can be wirelessly hacked to kill you where you stand.”

And Medtronic has worked with other companies to kill state Right to Repair bills, which is one big reason hospitals are now struggling to keep lifesaving equipment going during the pandemic.

Philips now has a contract to deliver artificial ventilators. It hasn’t shipped.

Pandemic surveillance will be abused

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. safety. But it’s not a “vs.” – privacy is a form of safety. When we have less privacy, we are less safe, from overreaching police, unscrupulous big business, terrorists and stalkers.

Israel and China are going full 1984.

On the other hand, countries like South Korea and Taiwan are balancing surveillance with privacy protection. Even Singapore, which otherwise ranks low on civil liberties and privacy protections, understand that it needs to protect privacy during the pandemic.

Singapore “clearly gets that if you treat your people’s privacy and data the same way Facebook does (or China, or Zoom for that matter), your problems are going to breed problems like tribbles,” Blue says.

These data collection tools were not built to save lives in emergencies: they were purpose-built for exploitation and abuse.

The only way to repurpose them safely and effectively is to treat them like they’re radioactive: we must proceed with the certainty that all virus tracking and tracing tech will be abused.

Violet Blue also outlines privacy problems with Zoom. It’s a privacy nightmare. I’m going to look for alternatives.

Big tech conferences could be a COVID-19 casualty

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. You see some weird-ass shit for entertainment at conference keynotes.

Already pre-COVID-19 we saw the big vendor-neutral tech conferences dry up. Remember COMDEX? Remember Interop? And there were always rumors that the gargantuan Mobile World Congress was struggling to break even.

These were replaced by events sponsored by individual vendors, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Cisco, VMware, etc., with attendance in the tens of thousands, as well as smaller, focused multivendor events with attendance in the hundreds.

I prefer the smaller, focused events myself; easier to find people to talk with who are useful professionally.

At the bigger events, sheer navigation becomes a challenge. Some years, my commute to and from Mobile World Congress was 30-60 minutes on public transit, like a regular job. Though part of me actually enjoyed that; it made me feel cosmopolitan and worldly. Like I lived in Barcelona.

Salespeople love conferences because it helps them generate leads and make deals. Engineers get a rare opportunity for face-to-face networking. And everybody loves the parties.

Or, rather, everybody except me loves the parties. As an introvert who went to one or two conferences per month, I looked forward to the opportunity to go back to my hotel room and decompress.

Big conferences give CEOs and senior executives the opportunity to bask in front of a wildly cheering crowd of thousands. They get to be rock stars for a day. Don’t overlook that as a driver keeping big conferences in business.

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.

Doonesbury captured Trump 44 years ago, in this strip about Chairman Mao. via

Podcast downloads in the US have fallen about 10%. True crime podcasts are down the most, and comedy podcasts are also hit hard.

Coronavirus Causes Dip in Podcast Listening

Makes sense. Social distancing = fewer people commuting.

I listen to podcasts while walking and doing chores, so my podcast listening duration is unchanged. However, more of my podcasts now are daily news than they were before.

The San Diego City Attorney is seeking an injunction against Instacart

Chris Jennewein at the Times of San Diego:

The San Diego City Attorney’s Office has petitioned an appellate court to reinstate its injunction against grocery delivery company Instacart, which the city alleged misclassified its employees as independent contractors, and now places Instacart‘s workforce at greater risk because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The risk is not just to Instacart workers, but to all the people they come in contact with. They’d literally be carrying infections into people’s homes, along with groceries.

How Huawei is dividing Western nations

Scott Bade at TechCrunch: Western countries are split on whether to ban Huawei outright on telco networks, like Australia does, or allow the company to be used cautiously, like Britain.

The US is, of course, calling for a Huawei ban.

Much of the split is geographic. The US and Australia are Pacific powers, with China as a neighbor. For Europe, China is a half a world away.

If war breaks out between the US and China, the US and its more Sino-cautious allies fear their vital networks would be controlled by the enemy. And even in peace, Western nations don’t want to see those vital networks controlled by China.

You can’t chalk this one up to more Trump idiocy. The US started turning up the heat on China under Obama. And a million Uighurs will tell you that China is not a nice country.

This painting by Rudolf Sieber Lonati was used on the covers of Silber-Grusel-Krimi #213 and Larry Brent #49. Via

‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide

Noam Scheiber, Nelson D. Schwartz and Tiffany Hsu writing at the New York Times:

… a kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had.

I have developed my own modification to the standard hand-washing technique you’ve seen on YouTube and in GIFs, which I believe will be beneficial (although I am not a medical professional):

In addition to turning off the faucets with the towel, to avoid contamination, also use the towel to open the bathroom door and turn out the lights. This further avoids touching contaminated surfaces.

Then go out in the living room and let the dog lick your hand.

Nurses Share Coronavirus Stories Anonymously in an Online Document - Edmund Lee - The New York Times

More than 1,200 health care workers have used a private online document to share their stories of fighting the coronavirus pandemic on the front lines.

In their accounts, they say the outbreak has turned American hospitals into “war zones.” They talk about being scared to go to work and anxious that they will become infected. They describe managers who seem to not care about their plight.

“But we show up and have to keep showing up,” one nurse wrote, “and we have to test ourselves.”

The document was created on March 19 by Sonja Schwartzbach, a nurse in New Jersey who is studying as a doctoral student. She said she started compiling the accounts after she determined that hospital conditions were “far worse” than most people realized and that her fellow health care workers needed a place to share what they were seeing.

One month ago today I took Minnie in to the vet for her bordatella and heartworm test.

Two years ago today I was on a train to LA for a conference.

Three years ago today one of my oldest friends was in town for a conference, and so he and another of my oldest friends got together for dinner.

So much activity involving being around people, at less than a 6' distance!

Coronavirus changes everything about the 2020 election. Trump is now the favorite to win. All he has to do is not fuck up egregiously.

People will continue to support Trump even in the face of normal incompetence from him – it will take outrageous incompetence to undercut Trump’s support.

On the other hand, outrageous incompetence is something that Trump regularly does. This is a man who went out bankrupt – repeatedly – running casinos, and whom no legitimate bank would do business with.

Cory Doctorow: “Reasonable covid food-safety advice: Sanitize your hands and your cart, practice social distancing, and…you’re done.”

This pretty much matches what I’ve read on Consumer Reports, and what I did when I went out grocery shopping Tuesday.

Also, I’m saving up grocery shopping for big runs. Normally, when I run out of something, I go out and get it. However, I’m running out of apples now and I’ll just do without apples a few days until I have a lot of stuff to buy.