Former top public servant: I won't download the coronavirus app
Former digital transformation public servant Professor Lesley Seebeck won't download the coronavirus tracing app because of the government's track record on data.
Was This The Social Media Of The 1700s?
In 1769, amateur historian James Granger published theBiographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution. It was an interactive book, aimed at collectors of printed images—a popular new hobby at the time. The Biographical Historyfeatured portraits of historical figures and blank leaves to let readers take notes referring to their own collections. Soon, collectors went beyond the book’s intended use, instead adding their own portrait collections directly inside. – JSTOR
ALEX MITCHELL: Changing of the guard in NSW
Damien Tudehope, ultra-conservative Minister for Finance and Small Business, is the new Leader of the Government in the NSW Upper House. He replaces former Arts Minister Don Harwin who quit in disgrace. The Liberal Party’s right-wing faction is now calling the shots. Continue reading
The Real Reason to Wear a Mask The Atlantic
With and without masks:
In this experiment, investigators used a laser in a darkened box to visualize approximately 300 droplets that were generated during speech.#COVID19 #SARSCoV2pic.twitter.com/bLaX9ORDT9— NEJM (@NEJM) April 23, 2020
Even so, the oft-repeated test sentence — “Stay healthy!” — misstates the rationale for the general population using masks: They do not so much protect you from others, as others from you. The ethic is quite literally #NotMeUs (hence, politicized, as the very notion of public heatlh is politicized).
The House's doctor advises members to wear masks to prevent them from spreading infection to others. Reps. Michael Burgess and Jim Jordan are among those ignoring that advice. So watch Jordan over Burgess's shoulder here.pic.twitter.com/mQFNS9r2bH— Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) April 23, 2020
Working from home
Network president Jeff Zucker sent a
memo to staff that said most of those who are working remotely will continue
doing so until at least September. Right now, about 10% of CNN’s staff around
the world is working in studios and offices. Another 5% could return early this
summer.
In the memo, obtained by the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Zucker
told employees, “Of course, none of these dates are set in stone, with many
questions left to be answered before we can move forward. But, to be clear,
production of our programs will continue from home, as it is now, until the end
of summer. Same for digital.”
What’s stunning is just how good CNN’s coverage has been with
guests and even some anchors working from home. And not just CNN. All networks
have adjusted well to a new way of broadcasting. It just goes to show that when
it comes to interviews and panels, it’s not how the guests look, but what they
say. In the end, the info is still the thing.
Powerful piece turned last week by Fox News
foreign correspondent Trey Yingst, who reported from inside Israel’s
second-largest COVID-19 intensive care unit. Yingst said doctors and nurses
there told him they weren’t afraid because “they are too busy saving lives.”
One scene showed a nurse holding up a phone to a patient so he
could FaceTime with his family. In another moment, Yingst reported on a
22-year-old patient whom doctors fear might not survive. That patient’s mother
delivered cookies to the staff because she desperately wanted to do anything.
Yingst said it was “humanizing and haunting at the same time.”
“The same openness that enables health authorities to innovate with Bluetooth data will also permit everyone from advertisers to police to immigration officers to do the same unless new privacy laws are enacted to stop them” — concerns about the plans of Google and Apple to help with COVID-19 contact tracing, from Evan Selinger (RIT) and Albert Fox Cahn
The Journal of Controversial Ideas now has a website — edited by Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Francesca Minerva, and Peter Singer (Princeton), it is now accepting submissions (previous discussions of the Journal)
9 questions about the pandemic, political philosophy, policy, and more, addressed by 9 different philosophers — at the Justice Everywhere blog
Would you choose to live forever? — a recording of a webinar with John Martin Fischer (UCR)
In situations of despair and tragedy perhaps the best we could hope for is “accompaniment” — Nicholaos Jones (Alabama, Huntsville) reflects on the importance of “enriching, and making manifest the value of, the other’s efforts”
The philosophy on Pete Buttigieg’s bookshelf — Dworkin, Korsgaard, Rawls, Raz, and more (via Bruno Leipold)
Refraining from the “weaponization of contemporary analytic philosophy” — Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) draws some lessons from Seneca