How COVID-19 is affecting society

[Kara Spengler]

Musk frequently gives the impression that he's trying to model himself on Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in Alan Moore's Watchmen.

Half the time he comes off as Rorshach but with less of a personality.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I guess I missed it, but tech tubers have been calling it human malware to get around youtube demonetization. I'm mildly amused, which will probably be today's high point.

From what I hear yt finally relented. It was getting amusing watching them not talk about (or use a euphemism for) the biggest story in the world right now that affects so much. For example, if you are talking about disney parks being closed, movies pretty much at a standstill, changes to working in nyc, presidential press briefings, or even comic distribution woes you pretty much need to use 'the word' at some point.

 

[Kara Spengler]

My irony gland just overloaded.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

No leadership and no plan: is Trump about to fail the US on coronavirus testing?

Declarations of false victory and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined testing as experts warn reopening the US could result in disaster

www.theguardian.com

Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.

“We’ve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day,” Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week, in which Trump touted testing as “one of the great assets that we have” in reopening the US.

But at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.

“No, definitely not, you can’t open up with that number,” Weyl said of Pence’s announcement. “It’s not even remotely in the right ballpark. It’s off by a factor of 10.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

'We're modern slaves': How meat plant workers became the new frontline in Covid-19 war

Workers interviewed by the Guardian describe pattern of alleged negligence at plants run by some of America’s largest food manufacturers

www.theguardian.com

One African American worker at a Koch facility that had been targeted by Ice, spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. He alleged that while Koch had recently begun taking workers’ temperatures before shifts, they had also withheld details of any workers who contracted the virus. He claimed the company was now handing out surgical masks, but had forced workers to use them over two or three shifts.

“They ain’t offering nobody no disability, no unemployment, no time off,” the worker said. “I just keep my hands washed up, my face covered up, my whole body covered, and I pray to myself and hope I don’t catch it. The truth is there’s a chance that everybody in will catch it.”

Koch Foods did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Why conservatives find masks so triggering

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks

They once saw masks as a simple remedy to the virus’ spread. Now it’s an instrument of government suppression.

www.thedailybeast.com

But that won't stop the Orange Azathoth from trying to monetise them

Trump Campaign Reportedly Orders Red ‘Trump-Branded’ Face Masks

Move over, MAGA hat.

nymag.com

 

[Monica Dream]

Half the time he comes off as Rorshach but with less of a personality.

So...Hector Godfrey, then?

 

[Kara Spengler]

Why conservatives find masks so triggering

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks

They once saw masks as a simple remedy to the virus’ spread. Now it’s an instrument of government suppression.

www.thedailybeast.com

But that won't stop the Orange Azathoth from trying to monetise them

Trump Campaign Reportedly Orders Red ‘Trump-Branded’ Face Masks

Move over, MAGA hat.

nymag.com

If they are like the rest of his stuff his cult may not want to trust their lives to them.

 

[Romana]

It's tempting to treat him as a harmless crackpot, and it's clear that he is pretty disturbed, but he's certainly not harmless

Icke antisemitic conspiracies viewed over 30 million times, new research shows

I'm Jewish and I would never treat antisemitism as harmless.
When we say "never again" we mean it.
Someone says anything anti-Semitic around me or it's in the news, the red warning flags go up immediately. Even if it's a neighbor or a friend (which has happened), once they say something like that I see them differently.

ETA: my iPad hates me.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I'm Jewish and I would never treat antisemitism as harmless.
When we say "never again" we mean it.
Someone says anything anti-Semitic around me or it's in the news, the red warning flags go up immediately. Even if it's a neighbor or a friend (which has happened), once they say something like that I see them differently.

ETA: my iPad hates me.

Reading this, I realise my impression of Icke is based on the first part of his career, back before 1991, when he was a popular TV journalist and personality who was fired for his opposition to Margaret Thatcher's hated poll tax, and who then became an important figure in the Green Party here in the UK, interested in New Age spirituality, before he suffered some sort of nervous breakdown which left him persuaded he was the "son of the Godhead" and spouting all sorts of prophetic nonsense, culminating in an catastrophic appearance on a prime-time chat show that really should never have been broadcast


After that, I was aware of his increasingly florid delusional structure via incredulous press reviews of his books (this is all pre-internet, remember, or before the internet became a major social and cultural presence), which concentrated in particular on his belief the Royal family, rather than anyone else, are shape shifting reptiles.

My mental picture of him is pretty much that that referenced by Warren Ellis' John Constantine: Hellblazer #143: Telling Tales, which explains the real reasons for both the assassination of JFK and the murder of Princess Diana:

I was delighted to discover you can read the whole comic (indeed, the whole collection) online.

But that was 20 years ago, of course, and I'd not really registered what he's turned into, since I don't do Facebook and he doesn't feature in my parts of Twitter or YouTube.

 

[Romana]

Reading this, I realise my impression of Icke is based on the first part of his career, back before 1991, when he was a popular TV journalist and personality who was fired for his opposition to Margaret Thatcher's hated poll tax, and who then became an important figure in the Green Party here in the UK, interested in New Age spirituality, before he suffered some sort of nervous breakdown which left him persuaded he was the "son of the Godhead" and spouting all sorts of prophetic nonsense, culminating in an catastrophic appearance on a prime-time chat show that really should never have been broadcast


After that, I was aware of his increasingly florid delusional structure via incredulous press reviews of his books (this is all pre-internet, remember, or before the internet became a major social and cultural presence), which concentrated in particular on his belief the Royal family, rather than anyone else, are shape shifting reptiles.

My mental picture of him is pretty much that that referenced by Warren Ellis' John Constantine: Hellblazer #143: Telling Tales, which explains the real reasons for both the assassination of JFK and the murder of Princess Diana:

I was delighted to discover you can read the whole comic (indeed, the whole collection) online.

But that was 20 years ago, of course, and I'd not really registered what he's turned into, since I don't do Facebook and he doesn't feature in my parts of Twitter or YouTube.

I know I’d read about him before. There’s a TV writer I follow who often calls out Twitter for allowing hate posts (especially antisemitism, because he himself is Jewish), and I’m pretty sure it was him who posted about it.
I hadn’t come across Icke’s posts myself, but I realized when I read that article that I’d seen posts from his followers, or at least kindred spirits..

 

[Rose Karuna]

Why conservatives find masks so triggering

Trump World Turns on the True COVID Villain: Surgical Masks

They once saw masks as a simple remedy to the virus’ spread. Now it’s an instrument of government suppression.

www.thedailybeast.com

But that won't stop the Orange Azathoth from trying to monetise them

Trump Campaign Reportedly Orders Red ‘Trump-Branded’ Face Masks

Move over, MAGA hat.

nymag.com

Dennis Prager touts that he won't wear a mask outdoors, citing Germans who disobeyed the Nazis and the civil disobedience of Rosa Parks

This utter piece of racist shit has the temerity to cite Rosa Parks????? Fuck him.

 

[Beebo Brink]

SUVs Get Parked in the Sea, Revealing Scope of U.S. Auto Market Glut

 

[Cindy Claveau]

SUVs Get Parked in the Sea, Revealing Scope of U.S. Auto Market Glut

That's not encouraging at all, now that my son has become a licensed dealer. He's buying cars on auction and restoring them for sale, but if the market is that flat he's in for some tough times.

 

[Beebo Brink]

That's not encouraging at all, now that my son has become a licensed dealer. He's buying cars on auction and restoring them for sale, but if the market is that flat he's in for some tough times.

On the other hand, if he's selling them at lower prices, he may get by. A lot of people will still need cars, they just wont' be able to afford new ones.

 

[danielravennest]

That's not encouraging at all, now that my son has become a licensed dealer. He's buying cars on auction and restoring them for sale, but if the market is that flat he's in for some tough times.

I would expect the market for big-ticket items will be dead for the next several months, because people are either out of work, or worried about losing their jobs, and therefore not spending. If he can wait out that period, people will eventually need to buy cars again, because they don't last forever.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Warren Buffett dumps US airline stocks, saying 'world has changed' after Covid-19

The legendary investor indicates that financial markets could still have further to fall as worldwide cases edge towards 3.5m

www.theguardian.com

Berkshire Hathaway had held sizeable positions in the major US airlines, including an 11% stake in Delta Air Lines, 10% of American Airlines, 10% of Southwest Airlines and 9% of United Airlines at the end of 2019, according to its annual report and company filings.

But with thousands of planes parked on tarmac across the world and no clear timetable for the resumption of air travel, Buffett said he had sold his stocks as the airline industry’s outlook rapidly changed.

“We made that decision in terms of the airline business. We took money out of the business basically even at a substantial loss,” Buffett said. “We will not fund a company … where we think that it is going to chew up money in the future.”

 

[Arkady Arkright]

We in the UK have our own MAGA-type fuckwits, though not as many as the USA - Protesters in London take part in group hug in defiance of lockdown

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Pandemic brings Trump's war on science to the boil – but who will win?

Three years of hostility to evidence-based policy have led to a crisis in which the president’s ill-informed, self-serving ‘hunches’ have deadly consequences

www.theguardian.com

All the scientists consulted by the Guardian agreed that the cause of evidence-based leadership would emerge from the current crisis stronger.

Naomi Oreskes, an historian of science at Harvard, pointed out that Americans remain generally favorable to the scientific mission. A recent Pew survey found that 73% of Americans thought that science had a positive impact on society.

“The impression that anti-science sentiment is on the rise is false – it’s what the merchants of doubt try to stoke because they want us to think that, to distrust science,” Oreskes said.

McCarthy believes that Covid-19 has handed science an unexpected gift. “People are beginning to see the costs when you don’t tell the truth and you sideline those who do.”