The Bee Is Declared The Most Important Living Being On The Planet – “Earthwatch Institute concluded in last debate of Royal Geographical Society of London that bees are the most important living being on the planet, however, scientists have also made an announcement: Bees have already entered into extinction risk. Bees around the world have disappeared up to 90% according to recent studies, the reasons are different depending on the region, but among the main reasons are massive deforestation, lack of safe places for nests, lack of flowers, use uncontrolled pesticides, changes in soil, among others
Bread baking is on the rise (*ahem*) during the pandemic. Yeast and flour are in high demand (my local store has been sold out of yeast for at least a week and a half).
A helpful visualization about the value of social distancing and staying home — created by Siouxsie Wiles, a microbiologist and science communicator based in New Zealand
Edible Forest Gardens: A Quick Review of a Very Beautiful and Useful Book
A permaculture gardening book for those isolated and seeking a project, or just a good read
These are trying times. Feel-good shows fill a purpose — please see Yvonne Villarreal’s “I Love Lucy” suggestion below — but so do multiple seasons of feel-bad reality series that focus on the worst aspects of human behavior.
100 best TV shows watch while quarantine
CNET – A research group scrapes more than 500,000 Instagram profiles in Italy to see if people are abiding by the quarantine. “Your posts on social media have been harvested for advertising. They’ve been taken to build up a massive facial recognition database. Now that same data could be used by companies and governments to help maintain quarantines during the coronavirus outbreak. Ghost Data, a research group in Italy and the US, collected more than half a million Instagram posts in March, targeting regions in Italy where residents were supposed to be on lockdown. It provided those images and videos to LogoGrab, an image recognition company that can automatically identify people and places. The company found at least 33,120 people violated Italy’s quarantine orders. Andrea Stroppa, the founder of Ghost Data, said his group has offered its research to the Italian government. Stroppa doesn’t consider the social media scraping to be a privacy concern because researchers anonymized the data by removing profile and specific location data before analyzing it. He also has public health on his mind. “In our view, privacy is very important. It’s a fundamental human right,” Stroppa said. “However, it’s important to give our support to help the government and the authorities. Hundreds of people are dying every day.”..
COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70% And Streaming More Than 12% - Forbes: “The first internet streaming and usage figures are coming in as the coronavirus pandemic places a quarter of the world’s population under lockdown. As millions of people go online for entertainment and more, total internet hits have surged by between 50% and 70%, according to preliminary statistics. Streaming has also jumped by at least 12%, estimates show. While an increase is not surprising with so many people ordered to stay at home, streaming of many planned sporting and musical events is impossible as they are cancelled. They have been replaced by some stars such as Coldplay’s Chris Martin, John Legend, U2’s Bono, Yungblud and Christine & The Queens offering impromptu home concerts. Still, the largest increase comes from other movie and music streaming…”
Media Paywalls Dropped for COVID-19 Crisis Coverage
Notes: The Industrial and Neoliberal Origins of COVID-19 (aka SARS 2.0) Yasha Levine, Immigrants as a Weaon. Yasha’s been on fire for the last few days
Stars – they’re just like us! As in: losing their minds with boredom and making increasingly hysterical content. Here are some of the best regular feeds