Not all heroes wear capes. Some spread misinformation about coronavirus: pic.twitter.com/V3uS0ZclS5
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 12, 2020
So let me get this straight: We can afford to give airline companies billions in bailout even when they’ve spent billions on stock buybacks, but we can’t afford to bail out the postal service?
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) April 12, 2020
Florida’s governor promoting a hand sanitizer that contains no disinfectant and which the CDC says will not kill coronavirus https://t.co/T3RfoyfAXQ
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) April 13, 2020
• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
7 Wondrous Breads to Make When You’ve Had Enough Sourdough
There’s a wide world of recipes that don’t require buying yeast.
This bread comes with a side of fortune-telling.
WITH ACTIVE DRY YEAST IN short supply, many home-bakers who are sheltering in place have succumbed to the siren song of sourdough. But people have produced bread without yeast across history, cultures, and climes, leaving an incredible array of styles to choose from when your leavening options are limited. From the sticky-sweet steamed bread of Colonial New England to the Icelandic rye that rises in a hot spring, here are seven breads that prove you don’t have to track down that elusive packet of yeast to make something extraordinary.
Turn bland brews into delicious bread.
Beer Bread
The relationship between brewing and baking dates back centuries and is especially prevalent within European cookbooks of the 1700s and 1800s. Brewers would skim the “barm”—a yeasty foam generated during fermentation—from the tops of their brewing vats and give the frothy mixture to bakers to leaven their dough. (This is why some old bread recipes, such as this one from the 1855 edition of An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, measure yeast in “pints.”)
But you don’t need to take up home-brewing to make beer bread. The carbonation provided by a 12-ounce can of beer helps get the job done. Simply start with a bland brew (think Miller Lite, PBR, or anything that won’t have a strong impact on the flavor), then add flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. If using self-rising flour, you don’t even need the baking powder and salt. Try the New York Times’ recipe for a tender loaf that still packs yeasty notes. …
I was in prison for two decades – here’s what I learned about isolation
I often thought I would lose my mind from being entombed and cut off from the world, but then something happened.
‘Some people might wonder whether I find it irritating that people call this house arrest. I don’t.’
I’ve been watching the rain outside my bedroom window for several hours. An eerie, familiar feeling haunts me as I observe the outside world from inside four walls. It’s starting to feel like this room is all I’ve ever known. I feel disoriented, like I’m still in prison. I sip my coffee and steady my thoughts.
I’m a 41-year-old woman who has spent almost half her life incarcerated. I sometimes fear there’s nothing meaningful I can contribute to society, but with a global pandemic forcing much of the world into lockdown, I have an unexpected opportunity: to share the lessons from my prison experience that might help others to adjust.
When I was released, I unknowingly walked right into another lockup. Parole mandated that I wear a GPS ankle monitor for the first year of my so-called freedom. I would have to make weekly schedules and would only be permitted to go to locations approved for the day. Approved locations consisted of work, church, medical appointments, the grocery store, the bank, the post office and gas station. Essential daily living needs only. At least living under house arrest and two 10-year stints in prison prophetically prepared me for worldwide lockdown.
Stay-at-home orders from world governments range in severity but more than a third of the human population is under some type of lockdown or restriction. Some people might wonder whether I find it irritating that people call this house arrest. I don’t. It doesn’t matter how either of us got here or what you call it, it’s painfully difficult just the same. …
What Biden Learned the Last Time the World Stopped
He oversaw the 2009 economic recovery for Barack Obama. If he wins the presidency, his first task will be to perform an encore on an even more daunting scale.
It was by far the largest enterprise Joe Biden had ever led: a nearly $800 billion government-spending program intended to rescue the country from the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. It involved more than 100,000 projects—275 programs within 28 federal agencies. “If we do everything right, there’s still a 30 percent chance we’re going to get it wrong,” Biden himself said at the time.
But in overseeing the 2009 Recovery Act as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden shepherded an effort now seen as an effective and remarkably fraud-free response to the financial crisis, even if it won little praise or political credit at the time. If Biden has the good—or bad—luck to win the presidency in November, his first task will be to perform an encore on an even more daunting scale.
It wasn’t a glamorous job, involving as it did minding hundreds of minor details and scores of bureaucracies, and some public officials doubtless would have found it boring. But it was the kind of close work that’s required for good management in any crisis, and Biden seemed to take to it with an enthusiasm that those who were there in the trenches with him recall with pride.
“He would be the most battle-tested president to come into office that we’ve ever had in this regard,” said Biden’s longtime economic adviser Jared Bernstein, a progressive expert on income inequality who would doubtless have a role in a Biden administration. “FDR did amazing work on the Great Depression, but he was throwing noodles at the wall. Biden would bring a unique experience to the office, having been the implementer in chief last time.” …
RELATED: If Biden Wins, He’ll Have to Put the World Back Together
His post-pandemic agenda will have to be a master class in redesign.
If Joe Biden wins the election in November, he will likely be sworn in—perhaps virtually—under the most challenging circumstances since Harry Truman became president in 1945. The country will probably be in the end stages of a brutal pandemic and faced with the worst economy since the Great Depression. The Treasury will be significantly depleted. Millions of people will have lost loved ones, their jobs, much of their net worth. Hopefully a vaccine or an effective treatment will be closer to reality, and our national attention can shift to what comes next.
We judge our great presidents by how they managed harrowing trials and wars: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War; Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Depression, followed by World War II; Ronald Reagan and the Cold War. But many of the bigger and less historically rewarding challenges are what come immediately after—how to rebuild and remake the country and engage in the wider world. Think about Ulysses S. Grant and Reconstruction, Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, Truman and the architecture to wage the Cold War, George H. W. Bush and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some failed; others succeeded. All faced enormous obstacles explaining what just happened, what had changed, and how we must adapt. This is the category of presidency that Biden, or Donald Trump if he is reelected, will find himself in.
If Trump wins, the country can expect more of what we have seen in the initial phase of dealing with COVID-19—shifting the economic and health burden to the states and Congress, a lack of interest in international cooperation, and a refusal to critically scrutinize the response.
But what about Biden? The beginning of his presidency will have a unique logic and character that sets it apart from the early stages of the crisis. His first year will be shaped in various measures by the public reaction to the horrors of 2020, the national Rorschach test of seeing Trump’s silhouette finally from a remove, and a dawning reality of exceedingly difficult choices across the board. …
5 Creepy AF Deaths That Popped Up In The News
When you’re a police officer and have to respond every time someone finds a dead body, it can get a little routine after a while. Every death is dramatic to someone, but they eventually tend to run together. Except for, you know, when they’re really weird.
The following recent cases of bodies turning up are all creepy enough to get you looking over your shoulder, in case the conspirators are coming after you next (or in case the vengeful ghosts are near).
5. Someone Keeps Killing The Butterfly Men
Some professions are fraught with danger, but if you settle on just the right job, you should be able to live into old age suffering zero stress and no harm. A job like kitten comforter, cloud whisperer, rainbow watcher, or butterfly manager. The last of which is a real thing, as shown through the case of Homero Gomez Gonzalez, manager of Mexico’s El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve. Millions of monarch butterflies come to the Mexican state of Michoacan annually as part of their winter migration, and El Rosario is a good place to be surrounded by them, like in the below video. Gonzalez was posting videos like that right up until January 13, when he went missing. His body was found two weeks later.
En el Santuario El Rosario Ocampo Michoacan “ El más grande del mundo “ pic.twitter.com/WlCJuOcG4Q
— Homero gomez g. (@Homerogomez_g) January 12, 2020
He had been dropped down a well near the Preserve, his head having been beaten in before he drowned. Which sounds like a bit of a cautionary tale on just how dangerous Mexico is, how just about anyone can be randomly murdered by passing robbers. Or maybe this was a kidnapping gone wrong — Homero’s family had received calls from alleged kidnappers, asking for ransom money. Except, Homero’s body was found with $500 in pesos still on him. Money had not been the motive here, unless the killers were really incompetent.
Within a week of Homero’s body turning up, so did the body of a second Butterfly Preserve employee. This one was Raul Hernandez Romero, a tour guide. He’d been missing for the past weekend, and his body wound up not down a well but up a mountain, at the very highest part of the Preserve. He too had been beaten, and the cause of death in his case had something to do with his being stabbed in the head. …
UNRELATED: Shaq Once Offered A Teammate $10K To Fight Kobe
Shaq and Kobe Bryant’s three-peat Lakers were one of the NBA’s most dominant dynasties. On the court, the pair tore the league to pieces and made for one of the best one-two punches in history. But off the court? Those two kinda hated each other. And when those are the two most high-profile personalities on your team, it can create a little friction in day-to-day practices. Take it from Isaiah “JR” Rider, who joined the Lakers in 2001 as a free agent after their first title.
Isaiah Rider said Shaq offered him $10,000 (in 1 dollar bills) to "get into it" with Kobe in practice.
Full #AllTheSmoke Episode: https://t.co/h9k1PdQPLA pic.twitter.com/IdjIMZkJ6s
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) April 9, 2020
In a podcast interview with Steven Jackson and Matt Barnes, Rider claimed that about three days into his tenure with the team, Shaq sidled on over the way a seven-foot-tall living giant does and told him that he had a good $10,000 in singles that were all Rider’s if he “got into it” with Kobe in practice. This wasn’t some rookie hazing either, Rider had been in the league for about seven years at that point. Rider, realizing that 10Gs was worth notably less than his actual contract, politely declined.
But still, a hell of an offer, right? Host Matt Barnes laughs it off, probably remembering the times he tried to get into it with Kobe for free and failed: …
Just finished Tiger King.
Not sure what I’m missing. Why is the whole country celebrating this guy??
He’s a piece of shit. And so is his whole gang of misfits. I guess I’m missing something.— Ben Leber (@nacholeber) April 12, 2020
A Reporter Threw The ‘Tiger King’ Softball To Trump
Ed. This was posted on April 9th.
With U.S. coronavirus deaths passing 14,000 and cases nearing half a million across the country, one reporter thought that now would be an ideal time to ask the President of the United States about … Tiger King. And since there’s no logical reason why an actual flesh-and-blood human being would ask an elected official about a popular Netflix documentary during a briefing about a deadly pandemic, we can only conclude that this event is evidence that we’re all living in Hell and this was just another example of cosmic punishment we’re being subjected to for whatever past sins we committed.
During the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing on Wednesday, New York Post reporter Steven Nelson took a brief sidebar from the emergency everyone else was blathering on about to ask President Trump if he would consider pardoning Joe Exotic, star of Tiger King — or as Nelson described it “one of the biggest rating hits of the coronavirus, aside from these briefings.” …
Dear Therapist: I’m Losing Patience With My Boyfriend in Quarantine
I used to daydream about spending more time with him, but now his habits are starting to get on my nerves.
Editor’s Note: very Monday, Lori Gottlieb answers questions from readers about their problems, big and small. Have a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.
Dear Therapist,
I always used to daydream about spending more time with my boyfriend. We have been together for more than two years, and although we live together, we both have busy work lives. He is a chef and restaurant owner who is out of the house from 9 a.m. until after midnight most days, and I work long hours in the film industry.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, we used to spend an hour at the end of each day catching up about our lives. Sundays, which we both had off, used to feel like special occasions, and we would make the most of them by spending quality time together.
My boyfriend is autistic, and it took me a while to appreciate the ways in which he is different from me. Most of the time I admire his outlook on life, but during this time in isolation together, I’ve begun to find him irritating in a way I’m not used to. He tends to repeat himself when he feels anxious, so we have had many daily conversations about the coronavirus, his cooking, and what our plans are for the next few days. I feel that his anxiety is making him get stuck in his own head, so while he is more than happy to talk about his thoughts, he is rarely ready to listen, and often distracted. I miss the days when we used to talk about other things— cinema, literature, psychology, and our feelings. I have spoken with him about this, but it hasn’t made a difference yet.
What’s more, he is used to having a structured schedule and working under pressure, but now he doesn’t know where to channel his excess energy and instead tries to remain productive with a long to-do list. I usually like to be productive as well, but something about his need for structure annoys me now—maybe because I recognize it in myself—and I’ve been condescending toward him. To complicate things, we are staying with his mother, and I find it difficult to contain my anger in front of her. It comes out passive aggressively instead.
This time spent under the same roof is showing me the problematic aspects of our relationship, and making me question whether this is really the right fit. I have wondered this at times before. For the most part, I feel like I am with someone special who “gets me” and makes me happy, but now I’m second-guessing myself and wondering what all of this dissatisfaction really means.
Anonymous
London
…
A house in the country: how the pandemic exposes ‘secret money’
I am among the lucky few with a place to stay outside New York City. My privilege is a reminder of a skewed society.
‘This crisis has laid bare the privileges some of us are afforded.’
There’s been plenty of conversation about all the ways this pandemic has laid bare the brokenness of our systems: 27.5 million Americans without health insurance, the massive gaps in public health and healthcare funding, the two in five of us who couldn’t come up with $400 in an emergency.
To many of us, none of this feels shocking – we’ve been grappling with the depth and breadth of America’s systemic failures for years. My husband and I are some of those people without health insurance. Our family just moved into a new apartment contingent on my husband’s new job but it is non-essential and can’t be done from home, so he’s not working. His paid time off is set to run out soon.
This crisis has also laid bare the privileges some of us are afforded. In New York, people of a certain class are escaping to their country houses. Secret money, a friend of mine calls this, when acquaintances who complain along with you about the difficulty of making it in a certain profession or paying rent in New York City, and then you find out they have an extra house and their kids go to private school. But also, in my experience these last few weeks, this pandemic has exposed the privileges that some of us still have, regardless of how broke we are.
In addition to being under 40 and without any underlying health conditions, in addition to our educations and my ability to work from home, we have access to my husband’s brother’s wife’s family’s New Jersey country house right now. I keep saying all those things – husband, brother, wife – to people when I tell them that we left the city to prove, I guess, that we’re not one of those families who have secret country houses of our own.
I have been embarrassed by this access, in the same way I’m embarrassed to have parents who have money, which is to say, I find people having things that they did not earn, or people having so much more than most, to be sort of abhorrent without always knowing why I feel that way. Privilege is abhorrent, I think, because of how fundamentally skewed and unfair its allocation always is. …
TL;DR All I need in life is this Facebook group where everyone pretends to be ants
BITE
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These things are called ants.
“I am tired of bringing food to the Queen to justify my existence,” a poster writes. “When does it end? When can I have some of the food I bring home? When will I see the value of my labor?”
“You goddamn traitor,” reads the top comment. “BITE,” writes another user. “BITE BITE BITE,” writes another.
“Someone just peed on my whole family,” says another post. “Rest in pees,” commiserates a commenter.
“Just found out my homie got crushed by human today RIP bro,” another poster says. Then: 25 replies, all variations of “F.”
Welcome to “A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony,” a Facebook group with over 135,000 members who are, well, pretending to be ants in an ant colony. It’s been around since June of last year.
The group is one of a large, interconnected network of semi-satirical, semi-reverent Facebook groups centered on loud and fervent pretending. One of the largest is “We Pretend It’s 2007-2012 Internet,” a haven for Club Penguin references, troll faces, and long-forgotten meme formats. There are its offshoots, “We Pretend It’s 1453 Internet” (“Oh, today’s youth, always dying of the plague,” reads a recent post) and “We Pretend It’s 1897 Internet” (“Ladies, lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours!”). There’s “A group where we all pretend to be boomers,” “A GROUP WHERE WE ALL PRETEND TO BE DRAMATIC TUMBLR USERS” and “A group where we all pretend to work in the same office” (“Who the fuck stole my stapler?”). …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
John Oliver discusses how Coronavirus is impacting the US workforce, from mass unemployment to the problems faced by essential workers.
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
FINALLY . . .
Social Distancing Is Bringing Drive-In Theaters Back to Life
“I really think it’s gonna help the drive-ins. Will it last? Only time will tell.”
The Basin Drive In, in Utah, opened earlier than usual this year—even though temperatures were in the 30s when this photo was taken on March 27.
LAST MONTH, JOHN WATZKE WAS going about a normal day at his drive-in theater in Ocala, Florida, when a customer called him to share concerns about COVID-19. Watzke, who has run the outdoor business since 2011, knew he had to think fast. “I got a window from my storage building, cut a hole in the concession’s sidedoor, and put the window in,” he says. “By the time everybody got here, they could safely pick up orders.” In less than a week, he gave the 72-year-old venue a total makeover: he acquired new food packaging, cordoned off parking spots to create buffer zones, and implemented strict sanitation guidelines for employees. The two-screen venue, which was relatively quiet this past winter, is now keeping busy even on weeknights, welcoming as many as 200 cars at once.
Though Florida is currently under a stay-at-home order, the Ocala Drive-In Theater is one of several drive-ins enjoying an unexpected renaissance, and says it received permission to remain open from the governor and local police. As the coronavirus pandemic has altered millions of lives across the U.S., these old-timey facilities offer a temporary escape from reality. Because visitors enjoy films from their cars, they can still practice social distancing.
Watzke, a 63-year-old former projectionist, has heard of at least 11 drive-in theaters in America that are currently operating under strict public health guidelines. While that’s a small fraction of the 305 businesses known to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, the response he’s witnessed has been strong enough to offer a glimmer of hope. “This could actually be an upslope of the industry that we haven’t had in many a year,” Watzke says. Atlas Obscura asked him how he’s nurturing his business and his community during a pandemic. …
Who’s going to tell these people they have to move their houses so we can have the theater back?
PROTIP: The marquee is available for rent.
AHEM!
TODAY I’M MAKING IT WORK by picking up lunch at Goodfella’s Diner. My employer is taking call-in and walk-in orders for food for carryout. You can pay at the curb if you do not wish to leave your car. My boss will persionally bring food to you if you do not wish to leave your home.
Family-sized entrées to take-and-bake and grab-and-go burritos are also available.
PROTIP: If you already have a Goodfella’s to-go menu, please tell your server when you call. We’ve already gone through more than half a ream of them and I’m running out of black ink.
PROTIP: You can print your own Goodfella’s to-go menu at the hyperlink above. Be sure to tell your server you don’t need a duplicate.
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
NEED SOMETHING MORE BARELY UNINTERESTING AT ALL TO DO?
Watch the osprey camera some more. You’ll never need to go outside again.
Right now one bird is covered with snow hunkering down in the nest, presumably keeping an egg warm. The other bird is standing at the far edge of the nest, probably shopping for breakfast.
I’m still wondering if they know they’re being watched…
I don’t post a lot of memes but this is pure art. Whoever made it, take a bow. pic.twitter.com/0Y5S7b9pez
— Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) April 12, 2020
Good times!