Flutterby™! From 2020-03-02 to 2020-03-30

Charlene's dad had this cast bronze sundial that never got put anywhere. I had some redwood. The top can turn, the brass is so that we can note times and angles for seasonal adjustments.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Model Building ]

Charlene's dad had this cast bronze sundial that never got put anywhere. I had some redwood. The top can turn, the brass is so that we can note times and angles for seasonal adjustments.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Model Building ]

Yikes: Ars Technica looks at the case of Hyland's "homeopathic" nightshade/belladonna teething tablets killing kids, apparently the dose wasn't homeopathic, there was enough belladonna in it to be an active ingredient.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Law ]

Well fuck. Android malware can steal Google Authenticator 2FA codes

A new version of the "Cerberus" Android banking trojan will be able to steal one-time codes generated by the Google Authenticator app and bypass 2FA-protected accounts.

Interesting: "Cerberus" Android malware also uses the accellerometers to hide itself from analysis if the phone is generally static.

[ related topics: virus Invention and Design ]

Plane Contrails Have a Surprising Effect on Global Warming

New research out of the UK has found two silver linings in the cloudy conundrum. The first is that just 2.2 percent of flights create 80 percent of contrail-related warming. According to a January paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the troublemakers are mostly flights that take off in the late afternoon and early evening, whose contrails live mostly during the night—when they still trap some heat but can’t deflect any sunshine (which can balance out their impact). “The effects at night are purely warming,” says Marc Stettler, the lead author on the paper, Mitigating the Climate Forcing of Aircraft Contrails by Small-Scale Diversions and Technology Adoption.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Aviation Theater & Plays Model Building Woodworking Global Warming ]

With the Coronavirus / COVID-19 spreading (Second case confirmed in Sonoma County, and The Healdsburg School (a private school) has canceled classes), large public gatherings are starting to cancel (Game Developer's Conference is canceled/postponed), here's a modest proposal: A plan to save the Tokyo Olympics, including telecompeting!

Individual competitors could simply perform their portion of each event at home — in between trips to the fridge, while watching Love Is Blind on a second screen — and submit those event for comparison, as long as the VPN works and the kids take a nap.

I promise it’ll be every bit as effective as when I work from home!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Law Current Events Work, productivity and environment Sports Conferences Handicaps & Disabilities ]

Back when what we experience as the modern GUI was envisioned, typing was something your secretary did...

This Hack Turns Your iPhone Into An Android

It's Project Sandcastle from Corellium.

[ related topics: iPhone ]

Super cool: Facebook Group: One Of A Kind Woodwork Creations By Henk

Bored Panda: This Retired Cabinet Maker Goes Viral For Making Broken And Weird Furniture That Belongs In Disney Movies

New Zealand woodworker does really cool fractured and broken kind of furniture.

Hat tip to the awesome Tara Calishain over at Research Buzz

[ related topics: Movies Invention and Design Woodworking Home Improvement ]

Rule 34: Coronavirus Porn Is Going Viral on Pornhub

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Lancaster Professor Dame Sue Black is doing research on the uniqueness of hands to help convict child abusers

"I asked the clerk: 'what did we do wrong?' she said we didn't do anything wrong, the jury just didn't believe the girl because she didn't break down in court, she didn't cry.

"That's no way in which justice should be decided, that's why we started doing the research."

Over the next 14 years Professor Dame Black began researching the anatomy of human hands, bringing her evidence to court and helping to convict dozens of peadophiles.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Current Events Work, productivity and environment Law Enforcement ]

Bloomberg attracted few votes — but his ads still grabbed the attention of many kids

Via MeFi, where I wrote:

As we've watched lies about online advertising destroy the traditional media world, it seems to me that this is a lesson kind of on the same scale as when all of those Facebook misrepresentations about the efficacy of video destroyed so many media outlets.

I mean, this is a guy who presumably was hiring people who knew how to do savvy ad buys, and spending a sh*load of money, and basically ended up marketing to middle schoolers.

How many other ad managers are waking up right now and realizing that how the impressions of their spends were being represented to them are total bullshit? "I was hoping to target 35-50 year old women, and instead I got 13 year old boys..."

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Movies Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media Marketing Currency Video ]

Rivertown Squares took everything I threw at them tonight: lefty Spin The Top and Recycle, Spin Chain Thru in a singing call figure. And fast, I didn't have to cheat figures for time...

The most amazing thing about profiling Mac Cocoa apps is realizing that this framework that's pokey on a modern multi-core multi-GHz processor was once usable on a 25MHz 68030.

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

The evidence for evidence-based therapy is not as clear as we thought

That leaves 50 per cent of ESTs with subpar outcomes across most of our metrics (eg, eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing for PTSD, interpersonal psychotherapy for depression). In other words, although these ESTs seemed to work based on the claims of the clinical trials cited by the Society of Clinical Psychology, we found the evidence from these trials lacked statistical credibility. For these ESTs, the relevant research results are sufficiently ambiguous that we cannot be sure that they really do work better than other forms of therapy.

American Psychological Association — Evaluating the evidential value of empirically supported psychological treatments (ESTs): A meta-scientific review.

Empirically supported treatments (or therapies; ESTs) are the gold standard in therapeutic interventions for psychopathology. Based on a set of methodological and statistical criteria, the APA has assigned particular treatment-diagnosis combinations EST status and has further rated their empirical support as Strong, Modest, and/or Controversial. Emerging concerns about the replicability of research findings in clinical psychology highlight the need to critically examine the evidential value of EST research. We therefore conducted a metascientific review of the EST literature, using clinical trials reported in an existing online APA database of ESTs, and a set of novel evidential value metrics (i.e., rates of misreported statistics, statistical power, R-Index, and Bayes Factors). Our analyses indicated that power and replicability estimates were concerningly low across almost all ESTs, and individually, some ESTs scored poorly across multiple metrics, with Strong ESTs failing to continuously outperform their Modest counterparts. Lastly, we found evidence of improvements over time in statistical power within the EST literature, but not for the strength of evidence of EST efficacy. We describe the implications of our findings for practicing psychotherapists and offer recommendations for improving the evidential value of EST research moving forward. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Via Metafilter

Short version seems to be that your therapy is probably making you feel better, but the evidence that you're going to continue to feel better because of your therapy is pretty scant.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties Mathematics Databases ]

British Journal of Photography: Porn Moms by Mary Beth Koeth

In 2017, photographer Mary Beth Koeth rented a car and drove from New York City to Edison, New Jersey, for the erotic arts convention Exxxotica Expo. Her goal was to meet mothers working in the adult film industry, to try and answer some of the questions she had about their lives. How do they balance motherhood with their work? How are they treated at school gatherings?

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Automobiles New York ]

'Be Careful Who You Treat Like Shit': A Former Porn Star Sues Her School

Nicole Gililland alleges that her college discriminated against her for working in porn. She's hoping to set a new legal precedent for sex workers.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Space & Astronomy Law Work, productivity and environment Education Aviation - Helicopters ]

So we need toilet paper. We were adding it to the shopping list, and I said "nobody's gonna have toilet paper." Charlene said, unaware of the news, "really?" I said "yeah, apparently there have been huge runs on toilet paper."

Then I realized what I'd said.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Surveillance Firm Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media.

Three of the apps created by Pink Unicorn Labs were called "One Direction Fan App," "EDM Fan App," and "Formula Racing App." Motherboard found these three apps on archive sites and downloaded and analyzed them, as did an independent expert. The apps—which appear to have been originally compiled in 2015 and were on the Play Store until 2016 according to Google—outwardly had no connection to Banjo, but an analysis of its code indicates connections to the company. This aspect of Banjo's operation has some similarities with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with multiple sources comparing the two incidents.

This malware company also: This Small Company Is Turning Utah Into a Surveillance Panopticon

Banjo is applying artificial intelligence to government-owned surveillance and traffic cameras across the entire state of Utah to tell police about "anomalies."

Via this Twitter thread.

[ related topics: Music Photography History moron Journalism and Media Law Enforcement Sports Artificial Intelligence ]

Harry's Masculinity Report USA 2018. 5,000 men surveyed in the US. For all of that foofarrah we hear about "family"?

Job Satisfaction is by far the strongest predictor of positivity, being around three times higher than the next strongest predictor in every region and across the US overall.

Via Pocket Worthy: The Strongest Predictor of Men’s Well-Being Isn’t Family or Health

[ related topics: Health Sociology Heinlein ]

A few years ago I gave away my copy of Eva Harris's "A Low Cost Approach to PCR". Now I'm realizing that repurposing a blender and a record player and coming up with some electrophoresis gel might be my best hope for helping my community track the COVID-19 spread...

[ related topics: Community ]

Have to admit that as an SF Bay Area homeowner, I'm super nervous about this impetus to cause us all to set up remote work processes. If we lose the geographic advantage that face-to-face contact gives us in this economy...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bay Area Work, productivity and environment California Culture Economics ]

There is hard data that shows "Bernie Bros" are a myth

A computational social scientist's study shows Bernie's Twitter followers act pretty much the same as everyone else

I've long thought that the whole "BernieBro" thing was a Russian disinfo operation, and it looks like there might not even be enough activity from the professional trolls to skew the data...

[ related topics: Television Salon magazine ]

RT buttplug.io 🍑 🔌 - Open Source Sex Tech @buttplugio

Wow, bold move to provide WFH workers with remote vibes, but we're on board for this initiative.

https://www.remotevibe.team/

RT Emily M. Bender @emilymbender

The #COVID19 song parody I'm waiting for: The Zoom Where It Happens

Got a friend in WA state who's been finally diagnosed with COVID-19. The process of her getting her actual diagnosis has involved accidentally destroyed samples and all sorts of absurdities that I chalked up to local incompetence, but as I read more and more of the news about how this thing has been playing out in Washington it seems more like national incompetence that the local authorities have been fighting. She believes she got the infection around Valentine's Day, symptoms showed up 8-10 days later but she chalked them up to allergies, which she's had, because she wasn't running a fever. And it got worse and worse. She's on the mend now, but....

And the square dance community up there has both been reacting by preemptively shutting a lot of stuff down, but partly for reasons: There's a 43 year old in that community who's died already.

RT Matt Haughey @mathowie

another idea:

• use a youtube downloader to grab an hour long train-ride video

• apply your train video it to zoom's virtual background

• all your meetings now have a backdrop of a strange erotic journey from Milan to Minsk

[includes animated gif]

[ related topics: Free Software Erotic Sexual Culture Animation Current Events Sports Machinery Community Trains Video ]

Discussion about ring lights for video conferencing has me thinking about dynamic lighting setups to provide different moods to accent the topics: Spooky chiaroscuro under-lighting, pensive side-lighting, soaring dramatic sunset lighting...

[ related topics: tolkien Community Video ]

Corvid 19

[ related topics: Photography ]

I'm still pissed off at the New York Times for all sorts of reasons, and I don't like using up my paywall reads even so. You've probably already seen this article linked to by other people, but this is very very much worth a read.

A while back I gave away a copy of Eva Harris's book "A Low-Cost Approach to PCR". I got it back in the days when "computational biology" was the next big thing; it was written with a sense towards hacking together diagnostics labs in developing nations, building centrifuges from blenders, repurposing record turntables for agitating samples, and so forth. I didn't go anywhere with it because it seemed like the hazardous materials handling of known mutagens with mercury in them was a little above my "doing gene sequencing in my kitchen" sort of cavalier approach to safety.

At any rate, I'm kinda wondering if a culture of publishing electrophoresis prints would be a good thing, or just raise the noise level.

‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response, about how Washington State health officials identified COVID-19 samples early.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books Health Invention and Design Bioinformatics Astronomy Sociology California Culture New York ]

On February 28th we ordered a dishwasher from a vendor on Amazon, delivery date was like March 5th through 11th. We ordered it this way because that was roughly the same order time as any other vendor we could find, and one click.

The order contained a tracking number via XPO Logistics. Tracking number didn't work on the XPO Logistics tracking page I could find, so I sat tight, figuring that residential deliveries went through a different system than big commercial shipments.

Yesterday we had had no contact with XPO about delivery, so I called up XPO. While on hold for a human they gave a URL, I went there, tracking number worked on *this* page, and indicated that they had not yet actually received the package. And then I talked to a nice lady who relayed the same information to me.

So I went on Amazon, left an angry note for the seller, who responded with a third XPO Logistics web page, that indicated that, in fact ,the package was in Missouri.

So a 100k employee company that operates in 30 countries has at least 3 distinct package tracking systems (and probably operating sub-units), none of which know about the others, and whose phone support doesn't even know how these 3 business units interoperate.

Sigh.

[ related topics: Books Work, productivity and environment ]

The referenced list showed up on Nextdoor a day or two ago. This article comes via the official Stanford Twitter account. There's a lot of information of dubious quality floating around out there...

A viral list of dubious coronavirus tips claims to be from Stanford — it isn’t

There’s a Facebook Coronavirus Post Going Viral Claiming to be From Stanford. Don’t Believe It.

No, you can’t test yourself by holding your breath, and other claims debunked.

[ related topics: Politics Boats Education ]

I'm just gonna gulp and leave this right here: The Lancet: Real estimates of mortality following COVID-19 infection.

doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30195-X

In light of the confirmation that, yes, the Trump administration was responsible for the reorganization that destroyed the CDC's pandemic response efforts, it's worth looking at how other countries are doing.

One of the things that this pandemic is laying clear is just how bad the US healthcare system is. As a percent of GDP we pay twice what developed nations pay for healthcare, and get pretty lousy outcomes. Someone yesterday was ragging on China's healthcare system, and I went and looked, and despite their *much* higher smoking rate, and presumably higher poverty rates, they've only got a life expectancy 2 years shorter than US residents.

Every developed nation, of course, has a much longer life expectancy.

So right now it appears that the fastest cheapest way for a USAnian to get a COVID-19 test is to fly to Singapore.

Covid-19: Swab test for travellers entering Singapore, as MOH warns of new waves of infection

Later addition: Inside Jared Kushner’s coronavirus research: a wide net on a giant Facebook group

[ related topics: Drugs Invention and Design Pyrotechnics Economics ]

Trail of Bits: Our Full Report on the Voatz Mobile Voting Platform

... Logical checks for specific elections are hard-coded into both the backend and clients. Infrastructure is provisioned manually, without the aid of infrastructure-as-code tools. The code contains vestigial features that are slated to be deleted but have not yet been (TOB-VOATZ-009). Validation and cryptographic code are duplicated and reimplemented across the codebase, often erroneously (TOB-VOATZ-014). Mobile clients neglect to use recent security features of Android and iOS (TOB-VOATZ-034 and TOB-VOATZ-042). Sensitive API credentials are stored in the git repositories (TOB-VOATZ-001). Many of its cryptographic protocols are nonstandard (TOB-VOATZ-012).

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Not The Onion: Reuters: Mexicans wonder if Trump's wall could stop coronavirus spreading south

Residents of the city of Tijuana, just across from San Diego, California, have for years crossed back and forth daily to reach jobs and schools. Many say they are now wary of bringing back the contagious disease from the U.S. side.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Food ]

If I Were an Abuser, What Church Would I Want to Attend?

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama ]

Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum found in Miami Beach hotel room with suspected meth, police say:

Police say they were called to the Mondrian South Beach early Friday morning and found paramedics treating Travis Dyson, a 30-year-old Miami man, for an apparent heart attack. They say two other men were in the room: Aldo Mejias and Gillum.

Police say Gillum, who was not arrested, was too intoxicated to answer questions. An offense incident report says that officers found three clear plastic baggies of suspected crystal meth on the bed and floor.

PLOS ONE: Methamphetamine Reduces Human Influenza A Virus Replication, Yun-Hsiang Chen, Kuang-Lun Wu, Chia-Hsiang Chen. That's https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048335 . I mean, sure, COVID-19 is not influenza, but it can't hurt, right?

[ related topics: Drugs Politics virus Nature and environment moron Current Events Law Enforcement Heinlein Travel Furniture ]

National Geographic: Exclusive: 'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

"You kids and your 'social distancing'. Back when I was young we only had a life expectancy of fifty three years." Trying to explain why only the younger generations seem to be taking the pandemic seriously...

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Somebody is just fine with the social distancing.

Somebody is just fine with the "social distancing."

[ related topics: Photography ]

Monty Python's silly walk: A gait analysis and wake-up call to peer review inefficiencies

Yep, from Tara Calishain

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Python ]

Since it seems like we're gonna have some issues with ventilator capacity, from January of 1952: Do It Yourself Iron Lung

Community transmission is happening:

Marin hits ‘new stage’: Coronavirus infections in community, two cases of community transmission.

Press Conference to Discuss First Case of Community Spread of Coronavirus in Sonoma County

The County of Sonoma invites interested media to attend a press conference, where officials will answer questions about the first case of community spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Sonoma County and about the local health emergency response.

[emphasis mine]

Ways to participate in the global economy (and misunderstand economics): Reuters: Germany tries to stop US from luring away firm seeking coronavirus vaccine

Welt am Sonntag also quoted an unidentified German government source as saying Trump was trying to secure the scientists’ work exclusively, and would do anything to get a vaccine for the United States, “but only for the United States.”

Via this tweet, which claimed some more confirmation of the exclusivity demands which I don't see in the article.

[ related topics: Quotes Photography Weblogs Health Invention and Design Bay Area moron Law Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Community Conferences Economics ]

I just wanna say kudos to Sprouts for having their baking process under control. A loaf of bread with better than half a gram precision.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Given the number of times I've had to click "Dismiss" on the "Enter a value or leave blank if this does not apply to you" fields, TurboTax is taking a UI cue from clicking games.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama User Interface Games ]

https://www.ntnu.edu/corona/students-abroad

In line with the advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I, as NTNU’s Rector, strongly recommend that all NTNU students who are outside Norway return home.

This applies especially if you are staying in a country with poorly developed health services. This also applies for countries with poorly developed collective infrastructure, for example the USA, where it can be difficult to get transport to the airport if you don't have a car. The same applies if you don't have health insurance.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Health Aviation Automobiles Aviation - Helicopters ]

Am being forced to monitor some conference calls for other people.. OMG! This could all be an email. A short one.

[ related topics: Conferences ]

Fuuuuuuuu.... Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study

Median duration of viral shedding was 20·0 days (IQR 17·0–24·0) in survivors, but SARS-CoV-2 was detectable until death in non-survivors. The longest observed duration of viral shedding in survivors was 37 days.

doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30566-31

In case you had any question at all that bailing out investors is a moral hazard, and we should be letting companies go bankrupt, or nationalizing them: U.S. Airlines Spent 96% of Free Cash Flow on Buybacks

[ related topics: Ethics Aviation Law Current Events ]

And here we go: "The Sonoma County Health Officer has issued a Health Order directing residents to shelter in place effective tonight at midnight on Wednesday March 18, 2020."

https://socoemergency.org/covid-19-message-17-march-2019/

[ related topics: Health ]

RT Jesse Case @jessecase:

The Vatican canceled Easter. You know how much stuff has to suck for the Pope to be like "you know what, this year Jesus stays dead".

[ related topics: Religion Humor Law ]

So there's been lots of talk of a universal basic income as a way to recover the economy from this disaster. Thousand or two thousand dollar a month checks. There's been the usual "shouldn't only poor people get it?" which brings up all sorts of administrative overhead issues, so the obvious answer is send it to everybody and make income taxes a little more progressive.

Anyway, in one Facebook group someone asked "What's the least useful thing you can do with a $1,000 stimulus check from the government?"

And I went for the knee-jerk "hookers and booze", but then I thought about how money circulates, and where that money would have the highest velocity and thus the best chance of doing some good for the economy.

From the standpoint of doing the most good, sex workers and my corner convenience store are probably about the absolute *best* place I could blow that money.

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture moron Currency Economics Government ]

A little lighter linking on COVID-19 this morning:

Eliza Rubenstein on Facebook: I Am The Very Model Of Effective Social Distancing

I am the very model of effective social distancing!

I listen to the experts on the topic of resistance-ing;

I know that brunch and yoga class aren’t nearly as imperative

As doing what I can to change the nation’s viral narrative.

...

Dana Jay Bein: Coronavirus Rhapsody

Is this a sore throat?

Is this just allergies?

Caught in a lockdown

No escape from reality.

...

And then the serious shit:

NPR: Intelligence Chairman Senator Richard Burr Raised Virus Alarms Weeks Ago, Secret Recording Shows. Which takes us back to A timeline of Trump playing down the coronavirus threat.

Addendum: Also looks like Burr was engaged in insider trading

CDC analysis shows coronavirus poses serious risk for younger people. Risk of death is still low. Risk of infection looks flatter than we thought previously. Longer-term health problems are emerging.

[ related topics: Politics Health virus Television Artificial Intelligence ]

While we're lining people up for the guillotine, over the past decade Boeing spent $43.44 billion on stock buybacks, while managers ramming the flawed 737 MAX MCAS system through the FAA were whining about the FAA pushing back on them and costing them $5k in flight change fees.

Airlines and Boeing want a bailout, but look how much they've spent on stock buybacks:

Boeing’s free cash flow for 10 years totaled $58.37 billion, while the company spent $43.44 billion, or 74% of free cash flow, on stock repurchases.

[ related topics: Aviation History Economics ]

It's generally well accepted that the introduction of agriculture lowers the standard of living for a society. Hunter-gatherer societies have an amazing amount of leisure time to the amount of time necessary to provide for survival. Introduce agriculture, and the population density can go way up (and life spans go up a little), but suddenly rather than working 2-3 hours a day, people have to work 10-12 hours to survive.

And for the large underclass it's a Malthusian existence: Have a good year or three for crops? Population rises, quality of life goes down. Have a famine, or a plague? People die, horribly, but the next few years have a higher standard of living, there's more to go around.

Of course there's also generally an upper-class that spends their time building big fancy palaces, or churches, and experimenting with high fashion, all while convincing the lower classes that the other guy's lower classes wanna steal their grain so they should go fight.

Then comes the Industrial Revolution. It happens in England, and suddenly there's a rising tide that lifts all boats. It spreads, and eventually we get into the 20th Century and see even industrialists like Henry Ford realizing that 8, even 6, hours a day of work is where you get optimum output from humans.

There are a lot of theories about why it happened, and why it happened in England, but some of the most credible ones revolve around the French Revolution scaring the British Aristocracy absolutely shitless, and so causing them to spread their wealth around a little bit more.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about guillotines recently, and if you've got 15 minutes this 3 parter is a good refresher on something that didn't help France much, but might have brought the middle class to the rest of the world...

• God and Grain: The French Revolution, Part I
• Headless Monarchy: The French Revolution, Part II
• REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Movies Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Boats Machinery Fashion ]

Visual Capitalist — Infection Trajectory: See Which Countries are Flattening Their COVID-19 Curve

Fake animal news abounds on social media as coronavirus upends life

The swans in the viral posts regularly appear in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area, where the photos were taken. The “Venetian” dolphins were filmed at a port in Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of miles away. No one has figured out where the drunken elephant photos came from, but a Chinese news report debunked the viral posts: While elephants did recently come through a village in Yunnan Province, China, their presence isn’t out of the norm, they aren’t the elephants in the viral photos, and they didn’t get drunk and pass out in a tea field.

[ related topics: Photography Movies Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Look at us! Blowing past Spain and on track to take over China! USA! USA! USA!

(Okay, not totally fair, 'cause these are absolute numbers not relative ones, but...) RT Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers

No other country has been this far into the pandemic and still had the number of cases growing at the rates the U.S. is seeing.

( https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 )

[ related topics: Photography History ]

Just donated my unopened box of N95 masks to Petaluma Valley Hospital healthcare workers. Now can we fire and strip the pensions of the administrators who didn't have a buffer of and long-term contracts with suppliers of basic healthcare supplies?

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

ReFB Luke Basile:

This shutdown sucks for everyone in the service industry but it especially sucks for men because we're losing $1 for every $.79 women are losing.

Serious Eats: Food safety and coronavirus — a comprehensive guide to eating out (and take-out) in the era of COVID-19

[ related topics: Food Douglas Adams ]

U.S. Shows Willingness to Remove Tariffs on Medical Supplies

USTR said the comment period will run until June 25 and won’t replace the process to request exclusions from the tariffs. Comments submitted “are limited to comments on products subject to the tariff actions and relevant to the medical response to the coronavirus,” the USTR said.

So June 25th, while in the mean-time I'm being asked to donate any unopened boxes of gloves and N95 masks to local hospitals that fucked up their inventory flow. Hmmm.

Some good stuff in this: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming — Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus—but first, we need lots more testing.

Now that we've missed the opportunity for early testing, is it too late for testing to make a difference?

Absolutely not. Tests would make a measurable difference. We should be doing a stochastic process random probability sample of the country to find out where the hell the virus really is. Because we don't know. Maybe Mississippi is reporting no cases because it's not looking. How would they know? Zimbabwe reports zero cases because they don't have testing capability, not because they don't have the virus. We need something that looks like a home pregnancy test, that you can do at home.

[ related topics: Health virus Current Events Television Gambling ]

A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers

Results The rates of all infection outcomes were highest in the cloth mask arm, with the rate of ILI statistically significantly higher in the cloth mask arm (relative risk (RR)=13.00, 95% CI 1.69 to 100.07) compared with the medical mask arm. Cloth masks also had significantly higher rates of ILI compared with the control arm. An analysis by mask use showed ILI (RR=6.64, 95% CI 1.45 to 28.65) and laboratory-confirmed virus (RR=1.72, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.94) were significantly higher in the cloth masks group compared with the medical masks group. Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006577

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/

[ related topics: virus ]

Finally, a Medium post on COVID-19 that's worth reading: Flatten the curve of armchair epidemiology https://medium.com/@noahhaber/...mchair-epidemiology-9aa8cf92d652

Kinda glad these shelf supports are going to be hidden, otherwise I'd try again...

[ related topics: Photography ]

I am, however, fairly pleased with the miters on the lip of this shelf. Need to figure out if I should do a grain filling pass on that mahogany. I mean, I should, but I'm impatient.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

Oh, look, turns out Boeing wasn't actually in trouble, the CEO just wanted a handout.

Boeing CEO: No government equity stake in coronavirus aid

[ related topics: Aviation moron Economics ]

[ related topics: Photography ]

This actually looks pretty cool: Singapore introduces contact tracing app to slow coronavirus spread. TraceTogether tracks Bluetooth device IDs it's seen, if you get infected and share your database of device IDs, you can then be correlated to other people who've shared their databse, for virus tracking.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Wireless virus Databases ]

Shelter in place

[ related topics: Photography ]

Friday, February 7th: "Biegun said the United States has also sent nearly 17.8 tons of medical supplies to China, including masks, gowns and other protective gear." Something about economists taking in each other's washing. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2012FH?

[ related topics: Heinlein Economics ]

I have lost track of the days that we've been isolated. We're digging through the food stores, trying to piece together meals....

[ related topics: Photography Food ]

RT Orli Matlow @HireMeImFunny

I just took a COVID-19 test turns out I’m 100% that rich

Oh, look, the economic stimulus package will help those struggling "...couples with more than $500,000 in annual capital gains or income from sources other than their business".

Bonanza for Rich Real Estate Investors, Tucked Into Stimulus Package

A small change to tax policy could hand $170 billion in tax savings to real estate tycoons.

[ related topics: Politics Economics Real Estate ]

The Volatile Mermaid @OhNoSheTwitnt

Batman is rich, his parents are dead, and he allows animals that most people would consider pests to live in his house, therefore Batman is the Disney Princess of Gotham. I will not being taking questions at this time.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Real Estate ]

RT LMVT Catmin @LMVTACAB

I get all the guillotine jokes. I do. but in a moment of crisis like this, those kinds of jokes are inappropriate and dangerous. You can't maintain proper social distancing with a guillotine. Be responsible and use RANGED weaponry (at least 2 METER range) per CDC recommendations.

A COVID-19 Admonition ***EXPLICIT (YouTube video) "Stay the fuck at home".

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

So I love y'all, I really do, but I can tell who works from home and who... uh... doesn't by who loses track of what day it is.