Not much going on these days.  Moved some heavy rocks around the yard.  Been meaning to do that for years.  Cooked some red beans on the stove top, old style.  Working on my robot mower.  Looks like bad sensors.  Not sure what the fix is.  Have a call in to the manufacturer.  Got some takeout from a nice local place for my 25th wedding anniversary.  Originally planned to be in Paris, but what can you do?  Got my wife this cool little fountain as an anniversary present.  Got this little electric chipper to get rid of some brush piles in the back and to use the mulch in the beds in the front.  Slow going but I have lots of time.

Every now and then the great dumpster fire that is Twitter produces a gem.  Guns N Roses lead singer Axl Rose gets into it with Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin.

https://mobile.twitter.com/axlrose/status/1258161648184905728

A good visualization of wealth inequality.  I gave up scrolling about a fourth of the way through.

A good read by Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton.  Don’t let the title put you off.  It reminds me of a time when I was working at a promising tech start-up and the country’s economic situation changed, abruptly.  An employee quipped that his job went from a high-risk, high-reward situation to a high-risk, low-reward situation. I think something similar has happened to the US in general, at least for the bottom 90% or so.  From the Boston Review.

Deaths of Despair

Boston Review talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton about COVID-19, the relationship between culture, financial hardship, and health, and why capitalism’s flaws are proving fatal for America’s working class.

Ran across this thoughtful article in The Bulwark.  Always interested in where these things are coming from, I looked at the masthead.  Claims to be “reporting free from the constraints of partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices”.  Don’t recognize any of the names, but there is one photo without an associated biography:. William Kristol.  I remember him as a right wing taking head who was an early supporter of the war in Iraq.  Wiki says he is a Democrat as of 2020, after a lifetime of what can only be called right wing, partisan Republican politics.  Interesting times.

As far as the article, it makes the case that places like Vegas and movie theaters will never reopen, in their current form.  For at least a year, maybe much, much longer, nobody is going to want to spend time in large places full of strangers. Fine with me.  I never really did like crowds, with the possible exception of Mardi Gras.

So are there alternatives?  For some reason I thought of the karaoke bars in Japan, which are really a collection of small rooms rented out by groups of friends for food, drink and singing.  Instead of one huge movie theater, how about lots of very small ones, with food and drink service?  You could pick the movie and the time that is convenient.  Maybe pick any movie, they way you would at home.  I know I have thought about having friends over to watch a movie, but there aren’t enough seats, etc. in my house.

These mini-theaters could also be great for watching sports, or even, uh, karaoke.  Same could happen in Vegas.  I suppose there is some appeal to that vast room full of clanging machines.  But maybe a smaller room for friends could be fun too.

I’m not sure how it is all going to change, but I am pretty sure it is all going to change.

Oh, air travel.  More than ever there is a case for high speed rail which can provide more room and separation than feasible on an airplane.  I have taken high speed rail in Europe and Asia and find it much better than air travel in just about every way.  I say lets get to it!

We Cannot “Reopen” America

No matter when government stay-at-home orders are revoked, the American economy will not reopen. Because the source of the economic shock is not government orders. It’s the pandemic.

I heard a commentator say today that there are one million people in the US who have recovered from COVID-19.  At first this sounds good until you realize there are 330 million people in the US, so this is about a third of one percent.  This is almost certainly an undercount with the real number unguessable, given the lack of testing.  But let’s say that is true.  There have been 60,000 deaths, which is also almost certainly an undercount.  Multiply that by 330 and you get almost 20 million dead after everyone else in the US recovers from COVID-19.

Not reliable numbers, but then only ones we have.  Oh, and let’s say this took three months.  To run its course it would take 900 months or …. 75 years.  Somebody check my math.  I wonder how Sweden looks.

Back when I was on social media, the stepson of a friend believed, it seemed, that the Earth was flat.  My friends wife wanted someone to talk to her son and, I suppose, convince him that the Earth was actually round.  My first reaction was that this was just someone having a bit of fun with the people around him.  I was assured this wasn’t the case.  My take was that this was all harmless, that I seldom notice the curvature of the Earth, and unless he was working at NASA, this was probably harmless.   Surely everyone has some quirky beliefs.

I suppose it was still troubling to his mother, and I had no interest in having a discussion about the shape of the Earth with a stranger.  I didn’t see myself convincing this young man of the non-flatness of the Earth, and I was sure he would not be moving me any closer to his, um,  worldview.  It would have been a waste of my time and his.

Today I read a very good posting which ties this bit of quirkiness to all the other reality “deniers” out there. Vaccines, the Holocaust, the moon landing, etc.  It is really surprising how many of these reality denial groups are out there, each as absurd as the next, some more harmful than others.  The premise is that it is a bit of a protest against the modern world, in a less explicit way than Ignatius Reilly.

From the Notes From Disgraceland Blog:

One Day the Day Will come when the Day Won’t Come

From the BBC:

BBC News – Coronavirus: New Zealand claims no community cases as lockdown eases