Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
— Yoda
“ Why Is This Age Worse…?”
Anna Akhmatova
Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?
In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitters in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.
and the clustered housetops glitters in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.
— 1919 COVID-1919
The New York Times – Kara Swisher: When the pandemic is over, we most certainly should fear the industry more than ever. “If power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how can we best describe the kind of power Big Tech will wield when the coronavirus crisis is over? How about this: The tech giants could have all the power and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter. This is the conclusion that many are coming to as the post-pandemic future begins to come into focus. Wall Street sure is signaling that the power lies with tech companies, vaulting the stock of Amazon to close to $2,400 a share earlier this week, from $1,838 at the end of January. While the price fell on Friday to $2,286 a share, after Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said he would spend future profits on the coronavirus response, that still gives the company a value of $1.14 trillion….”
This is fascinating: mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genome have allowed scientists to track the spread of the virus around the world. Seattle/SF viruses came from China, but NYC's came mainly from Europe
Lawyer dressed as Grim Reaper stalks Florida beaches to protest reopening Independent
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Harmoniously Denied: The Wider Implications of China’s Censorship on COVID-19
How China’s Covid-19 censorship illustrates how Chinese citizens have internalized what were once top-down controls.
Washington Post – Managers turn to surveillance software, always-on webcams to ensure employees are (really) working from home – “Always-on webcams, virtual “water coolers,” constant monitoring: Is the tech industry’s new dream for remote work actually a nightmare?…In the weeks since social distancing lockdowns abruptly scattered the American workforce, businesses across the country have scrambled to find ways to keep their employees in line, packing their social calendars and tracking their productivity to ensure they’re telling the truth about working from home. Thousands of companies now use monitoring software to record employees’ Web browsing and active work hours, dispatching the kinds of tools built for corporate offices into workers’ phones, computers and homes. But they have also sought to watch over the workers themselves, mandating always-on webcam rules, scheduling thrice-daily check-ins and inundating workers with not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats…
Nearly half the U.S. labor force is now working from home, according to a study by MIT researchers in April. And many employees are probably working longer and more sporadic hours than ever before:NordVPN Teams, which runs virtual private networks for businesses,said in March it had seen working time in the United States climb from eight to 11 hours a day since the stay-at-home orders began…”
Dear Professors —It’s been a minute, right? A few months ago, you were talking smack about my year in a cabin. Now you’re trapped in your condo in Yonkers or the backside of Amherst or wherever, and you’d trade it in a heartbeat for 150 square feet and a whole forest full of owls and frogs and shit.Don’t play dumb, bruh. You’ve spent most of your short career trash talking me. Every damn fall, you tell your first-year Am Lit seminar that I’m completely full of shit. You stand there in your goddamned tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches, and tell the kids how my experiment in self-reliance was all just a sham. Then you angle your head just so, and say something snarky about “performative solitude” or “cabin porn.” And for the coup de grâce, you proclaim that I was never really alone at Walden Pond, because I had regular visitors.Bitch, I disclosed my visitors — I wrote a whole damned chapter called “Visitors.” Can’t blame me if some debutante from Darien didn’t read it. And who’s entertaining visitors now? Not your quarantined ass.So sue me if my social distancing included regular visits from a Canadian woodchopper and multiple half-witted men from the almshouse. You, my friend, are leading a life of quiet desperation, where your only contact outside of Zoom is a fast-food delivery guy who you pay by app.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—Tax Relief for Individuals and Businesses Updated April 28, 2020: “The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—Tax Relief Congressional Research Service 1ongress has considered a number of proposals that seek to mitigate the economic effects of the Coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19, pandemic. One such proposal, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act (P.L. 116-136), was signed into law on March 27, 2020…This report briefly summarizes the major individual and business tax provisions of the CARES Act, as enacted. Links to CRS resources that offer additional information are provided. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that the individual and business tax provisions in the CARES Act would reduce federal tax revenue by $543.4 billion over the 10-year FY2020 through FY2030 budget window. The JCT also prepared a technical explanation of the provisions…”
FELLOW TRAVELERS, USEFUL IDIOTS, OR WHOLLY-OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF THE PRC — YOU MAKE THE CALL! The Atlantic Favors the Chinese Communist Party’s Approach to Free Speech.
Naturally, Dem Party hacks see this level of colossal failure and think: "Draft Cuomo!"https://twitter.com/ChaseMadar/status/1255508017912655874 …
FELLOW TRAVELERS, USEFUL IDIOTS, OR WHOLLY-OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF THE PRC — YOU MAKE THE CALL! The Atlantic Favors the Chinese Communist Party’s Approach to Free Speech.
YouTube Used To Be About User Content. No Longer
It’s first tagline was “broadcast yourself.” But more recently, big video producers have begun to dominate the platform, changing it. – OneZero
Harvard University: “Our bipartisan group of experts in economics, public health, technology, and ethics from across the country, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, has released the nation’s first comprehensive operational roadmap for mobilizing and reopening the U.S. economy in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience: Massive Scale Testing, Tracing, and Supported Isolation (TTSI) as the Path to Pandemic Resilience for a Free Society,” lays out how a massive scale-up of testing, paired with contact tracing and supported isolation, can rebuild trust in our personal safety and re-mobilize the U.S. economy.
Among the report’s top recommendations is the need to deliver at least 5 million tests per day by early June to help ensure a safe social opening. This number will need to increase to 20 million tests per day by mid-summer to fully re-mobilize the economy…”
Watch Workers 1000 Feet Up Building The Chrysler Building
This footage from 1929 and 1930 of the building’s construction – including the placement of an iconic 61st-floor Art Deco eagle – showcases how these workers were less comfortable delivering canned lines for the cameras than they were sitting atop beams hundreds of feet high. –Aeon
Typically when this country goes through tragedy or hardship, it bands together. Think back to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the United States pulled together. We’ve also seen examples of solidarity and support after natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Houston floods caused by Hurricane Harvey or any of the annual tornado outbreaks that devastate towns in the Midwest and South. In troubled times, Americans tend to push in the same direction.
President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard reporting on the “County to County” election project. (Courtesy: NBC Universal)
Typically when this country goes through tragedy or hardship, it bands together. Think back to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the United States pulled together. We’ve also seen examples of solidarity and support after natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Houston floods caused by Hurricane Harvey or any of the annual tornado outbreaks that devastate towns in the Midwest and South. In troubled times, Americans tend to push in the same direction.
The coronavirus story, however, has been different. Yes, there
is a sense of we’re-all-in-this-together because we have this shared experience
of staying at home. And, for far too many, there’s the shared grief of losing a
loved one and the shared stress of losing a job.
But there also is a clear divide in this country, too. It
centers on how we believe we got here and where we go from here. It is mostly
down party lines. And examples can be seen in how people are consuming their
news.
Consider this: Fox News has never been more popular. The network
is setting records.
April produced the best primetime numbers in the history of Fox
News, with an average viewership of 3.68 million. Let me repeat that: the
most-watched primetime month in Fox News history.
Not only was that the most-watched primetime month since the
network debuted in 1996, it’s a 54% jump over a year ago. All three of its
primetime shows — led by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — are
individually seeing some of the best numbers they’ve ever seen.
As far as total day viewers, Fox News’ average of 2.2 million in
April is the second-best month ever, surpassed only by April 2003 when Fox News
was covering the early stages of the Iraq War. Bret Baier’s show, boosted by
the White House coronavirus press briefings, pulled in 5.3 million total
viewers — best on all of cable news for April.
The point: These are huge numbers for, let’s face it, a network
that often is supportive of President Donald Trump, his ideas and the
Republican Party. Fox News’ primetime hosts are fiercely loyal to the president
and it says something that those hosts are delivering the biggest audiences in
the history of the network.
Then again, if you believe that CNN and MSNBC — and I’m talking
primarily in primetime — lean to the left, those numbers are huge, too. In
fact, combined, they pretty much run right alongside Fox News.
Take April primetime viewers. If you were to add up MSNBC (2.03
million) and CNN (1.94 million), you get 3.98 million viewers, or about 305,000
more than Fox News. That’s pretty much a wash.
Same with average viewership in total day viewers. Add up CNN
(1.36 million) and MSNBC (1.248), and you get 2.64 million, or about 407,000
more than Fox News.
The thing that stands out about all of this is the cable news
networks have rarely seen these kinds of numbers. While Fox News is drawing
record numbers, so is MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which is typically highly critical
of Trump. April was its best viewership month.
So what does this all mean? Never have citizens been watching
the news more closely and, one could reasonably assume based on the well-earned
reputations of those networks, never have those citizens been more divided.
In a word: no
Fox News’ Sean Hannity got the brushoff Tuesday from The New
York Times. Hannity hired attorney Charles Harder — the lawyer best known for
the Hulk Hogan case that took down Gawker — to get a retraction and apology
from the Times over columns criticizing Hannity. One of the columns in question
was an April
18 column by Ginia Bellafante that quoted a woman who said her father died
from the coronavirus and that he might have dismissed the dangers of the virus
because of his steady diet of Fox News.
Bellafante wrote, “Early in March Sean Hannity went on air
proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting
scared ‘unnecessarily.’”
That was just one of the columns Hannity didn’t like.
In a rather
dismissive response to a letter from Harder, the Times said — in a word —
to not expect either a retraction or an apology.
Through newsroom attorney David E. McGraw, the Times also took a
shot at Harder’s rather lengthy letter in their response:
“I write in response to your 12-page letter alleging that your
client Sean Hannity was defamed by three columns in The New York Times.
“The columns are accurate, do not reasonably imply what you and
Mr. Hannity allege they do, and constitute protected opinion.
“In response to your request for an apology and retraction, our
answer is ‘no.’”
A media criticism from a media critic
President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In
her latest piece, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan says
the media is getting better at covering President Trump, but that history will
not judge the media kindly, especially when it comes to covering Trump and the
coronavirus.
“ … the coverage, overall, has been deeply flawed,” Sullivan
wrote.
Her criticism: “We normalize far too much, offering deference to
the office he occupies and a benefit of the doubt that is a vestige of the
dignified norms of presidencies past. And day after day, we allow him to beat
us up. And then we come back for more.”
As always, Sullivan’s column is a thought-provoking read,
although I’m not sure I agree with some of her premise. She’s right when she
says Trump’s outrageous claims and comments can distract us all from the truly critical
stories.
But, Trump’s “un-presidential” behavior (my words, not
Sullivan’s) has not been normalized by much of the media and he does not get
the benefit of the doubt by many who cover him. In fact, media outlets have
become bolder in their criticism and pushback of Trump, including Sullivan’s
own paper.
Certainly, Trump supporters — which includes part of the media
(read: Fox News primetime) — praise Trump’s media attacks and his
against-the-norm behavior. That behavior and attitude, unlike what we’re used
to seeing, are why many voted for him and continue to have unwavering support
for him.
Sometimes, the media has no choice but to cover the president,
including what he says and what he does. Responsible journalists then follow up
with fact checks, context and even criticism for what many feel is abnormal,
inappropriate or ineffective behavior, and how all that could impact Americans.
But does covering the president sometimes mean HIS message gets across?
Sullivan wonders how we will look back at this coverage years from now.
Sullivan writes, “When we have that distance, what I suspect
we’ll see is a candidate and a president who played the media like a puppet
while deeply damaging the public’s trust in the press as a democratic
institution. Someone who dazzled us with his show, while acting constantly in
his own self-interest while we willingly — almost helplessly — magnified his
message.”
Staying on the story
NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard reporting on the “County to County” election project. (Courtesy: NBC Universal)
Last November, NBC News launched something called “County
to County.” It was scheduled to be a yearlong project leading up to the
2020 election. The idea was to focus on counties in five battleground states
likely to play critical roles in the election: Milwaukee County (Wisconsin),
Beaver County (Pennsylvania), Kent County (Michigan), Maricopa County (Arizona)
and Miami-Dade County (Florida).
Well, the coronavirus pandemic has not stopped the project.
Reporter Vaughn
Hillyard’s latest report checks in on those five counties as they deal with
the same things all of us are dealing with — life during the time of
coronavirus. In addition, Dante
Chinni’s companion piece breaks down the number of coronavirus cases and
deaths in those five counties.
Chinni’s piece shows the harsh health and economic impacts being
felt in those counties. For example, Kent County in Michigan has been hit
especially hard, with 906 confirmed coronavirus cases (that’s 139 per 100,000)
and 29 deaths and data that suggests the spike is still coming. In addition,
unemployment has jumped 2.4% since February. These are the kinds of numbers
that could have an impact in November.
Pot and kettle
Poynter’s
Kristen Hare and Ren LaForme have been all over the Gannett layoffs in
recent days.
Meanwhile, the New
York Post’s Keith J. Kelly writes not only about the layoffs, but that
photographers at Gannett are complaining about not having suitable protective
equipment when they go out on assignments.
Speaking of the New York Post, the paper has written plenty
about job cuts and furloughs at other news outlets, but there has been little
reporting of furloughs at the Post itself.
Post NBA writer Brian
Lewis tweeted last week that he has been furloughed. No word on the number
of furloughs and for how long, but sources told Poynter that it could involve
20% of the newsroom and the furloughs could be 60 to 90 days, and possibly
longer. Post editor-in-chief Stephen Lynch did not respond to a request for
comment.