We have a small pond out back. Used to have a nice koi until a raccoon got him.  Replaced Mr Koi with a few goldfish and some minnows.  By now we are down to one goldfish and a couple of minnows.  I feed them most every day, and noticed I was running low on food.  Usually I would go to the local pet store, since a small container lasts maybe a year, but with COVID-19 I decided to order it on-line.  Amazon had a minimum order of two. Ok, this is light stuff.  I ordered two.  Turns out I should have looked closer.  While the containers look identical, the ones I ordered are 3x – 4x the size of the one I have.  Now I have maybe a decades worth of goldfish food. Could be worse.  I know someone who thought they were ordering ten bananas on-line and was surprised to find ten *bunches* delivered.

I followed COVID-19 in Japan somewhat closely.  I admit the reported lack of direction or serious restrictions seemed like a mistake to me.  But it looks like Japan had done a good job of really beating down the curve.  There isn’t a lot of agreement in the reasons, and there may be many, but it could be extensive contact tracing and following the “3 C’s” rules.

Experts are also credited with creating an easy-to-understand message of avoiding what are called the “Three C’s” — closed spaces, crowded spaces and close-contact settings — rather than keeping away from others entirely.

From Bloomberg:

Did Japan Just Beat the Virus Without Lockdowns or Mass Testing?

I’ve been using Plex for a while to manage my photos, videos and music.  Good stuff, I can recommend it.  Have had the server running on my old x86 PC for years.  Moving everything to my new Raspberry Pi 4 server was easy, except I couldn’t figure out how to make playlists.  Going through some old files it turns out that there was a bit of work involved that I had forgotten.  The server API supported playlists and they showed up nicely in the UI, except there wasn’t a place in the UI to load or create playlists.  Seems it has been this way for years.

There is a fairly simple command you can post to the server, but it requires a bit of specialized information.  I figured I could write a simple python script to take care of it.  Funny I wrote code almost every day for many decades but this is the first code I have written in almost a year.  It was actually a bit fun.  Decided to put it on gitHub in case anyone else wants to use it.

I telecommuted most of my career.  This includes west coast tech companies and large New York City banks.  My salary was always the going rate for these locales.  If people want to negotiate using your living arrangements, I’m ok with that.  But I’m blown away that a company (Facebook, of course) is trying to tie salary to where you live.  How does this work, in the real world?  If I move to a more expensive neighborhood do I get a raise? Will I get a pay cut if I sell my house and move to a cheaper place, in the same city?  This is just another abusive tactic used by abusive employers.  Sad thing is they will probably get away with it.

Facebook employees could receive pay cuts as they continue to work from home

Spent a lot of time playing Pac-Man and later Mrs. Pac-Man.  Definitely my favorite game of all time.

The game that ate the world: 40 facts on Pac-Man’s 40th birthday

I like to read and keep up with the news, especially these days.  Since I get most of my printed (?)  news on line, a big problem is avoiding nonsense and click bait.  Click bait is an easy one to solve. If the headline isn’t a headline (that is a short summary of what the article is about) then I ignore it.  It could be a perfectly legit and interesting article, but if it has a  clickbait headline, I’m not reading it.

I also look at the source.  Something from a sketchy source I also tend to ignore.  Sometimes I may read it but, as they used to say, take it with a grain of salt.

Today I came across this one.  From the Times of Israel.  Seems to be a legit news source.  The person being written about seems to be claiming vindication of his theory that all infectious disease outbreaks peak in 40 days and end in 70.  Seems nonsense on the face of it.  Lots of plagues in history have gone on for years.  Who is this guy? Well, he is:

Isaac Ben-Israel, a prominent mathematician, chairman of Israel’s Space Agency, and a former general

Whatevs.  Still a crank it appears.  Then I did something I try to never do:. I read  some comments.  There were only a few, half highly dismissive, the other half laudatory.  I couldn’t resist looking up one of the positive commenters.  Someone from Bob Jones University.  Ok, call me an academic snob if you want.

Anyway, maybe it was click bait.  Should have been suspicious of any article that starts with “I Was Right”.

I was right, says prof who predicted pandemic would play itself out in 70 days

Isaac Ben-Israel says virus disappears everywhere at same speed, rendering interventions irrelevant. Public health expert: He ‘has no clue about epidemiology and public health’

The Guardian (UK) asks the question: What respect do people owe a government that cannot protect them and cannot claim democratic legitimacy?

Wisconsin is starting to resemble a failed state

A good Sunday read from the Los Angeles Review of Books.  Post-war America was mostly successful in keeping money and power at arm’s length from each other.  Since the Cold War wealth has concentrated, politics has been infused with vast sums of money in the form of “campaign contributions” which now seem limitless (see: Citizens United).  Where does this lead?  Back to one of the most stable systems ever, Feudalism.

Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?

Probably lots of charts like this out there that track / reflect the pandemic and it’s effect on the economy.  This one seem pretty telling from Elektrik Check Tesla’s impressive chart of pandemic’s impact on Supercharger use.