Join me while I school people who think their religion is more important than our lives.
My confidence in this team rivals what I might feel if I were hit head on by an 18 wheeler tractor-trailer. While walking. In 112-degree heat. During rush hour. Oh look, there are the vultures swirling overhead. https://t.co/VAj4DHvQwt
— Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) April 13, 2020
• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read while in antisocial isolation • • •
Echoes of the 1894 Plague Still Reverberate in Hong Kong
Death was not the end of the indignities the Chinese community faced during that pandemic.
The Staffordshire Regiment amid the destruction of homes in Hong Kong, 1894.
AS COVID-19 STOPS THE WORLD in its tracks, a 19th-century pandemic still haunts Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district. Nearly 130 years ago, the neighborhood was an epicenter of one of the deadliest pandemics on record. Like many former plague hotspots, the area still carries with it the weight of that tragedy.
In 1894, the waterfront city was a British colony and vital port of trade. As such, it experienced a mass influx of mainland Chinese laborers, from tradespeople to servants, who came to the city in search of employment. These almost 200,000 individuals settled primarily in Sheung Wan, then known as Tai Ping Shan or Taipingshan. In fact, the British had relegated the Chinese community to the area as early as the 1840s in order to develop land elsewhere.
Joss House on Hollywood Road in Hong Kong in the late 19th century.
At only about a half square mile, the impact of so many people on such a small area caused the neighborhood not to grow as much as distend, and before long families and workers were living on top of each other in unspeakably squalid conditions. Possessions, people, and even pigs shared single rooms, as did cattle, with calves often slaughtered in situ upon reaching maturity.
This was in dramatic contrast to the lives of the city’s European residents, who lived in comparative splendor just miles away. As Edward Marriott explains in his book, Plague: A Story of Science Rivalry, and the Scourge That Won’t Go Away, “in the ‘Peak District,’ on vast sprinklered lawns, in front of stuccoed palaces, lifting tumblers of fresh-squeezed lemonade from silver trays, women in white dresses spent the afternoons playing croquet.” …
Means TV: inside the leftist, worker-owned streaming service
The entertainment media cooperative considers itself a ‘post-capitalist’ streaming service – and a critical counterweight to rightwing media.
‘The political stakes are becoming really, really clear that it is, as it always has been, a matter of life and death.’
Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes met at a meeting for the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Both were working for automakers in the city: Hayes created freelance video content for them while Burton ran social media for the same companies. Together, they launched Means of Production, a media company that would take no corporate clients.
Five months later, they made Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s viral Courage To Change video. The social capital they accrued, plus a bit of savings, led them to launch Means TV – a worker-owned, leftist entertainment media cooperative, supported entirely by subscriber money. As of 7 April, they have 3,700 subscribers, most of whom pay the full fee of $10 a month, though Burton notes that they “always offer discounted subscriptions to anyone who can’t afford it”.
Burton and Hayes describe Means TV as a “post-capitalist” streaming service. “We can start projecting a vision beyond capitalism, and couch our entertainment within this idea of imagining a reality similar to our own, but without the corrosive and toxic effects of capitalism,” says Hayes.
The video Burton and Hayes made for Ocasio-Cortez.
The interface for Means TV reminds one of a pared-back Netflix, with content divided by format: full-length films, series, comedy, animation, even kids’ content. Wrinkles and Sprinkles, for example, is a kids’ show which finds two cats – one a crusty, wisened elder and one a peppy kitten – learning about direct action and solidarity. Feature-length documentaries detail the Palestinian resistance movement, invasive swamp rats threatening the Louisiana coast’s communities and culture, and indigenous children in Guatemala dodging police in the city while finding ways to provide for their families.
Means follows a simple metric for determining suitability of content: “Is this punching up or down? Is this going after people that have more power than us, or is this denigrating people that have less power than us?” …
Trump Uses Coronavirus Briefing to Play Batshit Campaign Ad Attacking Press
NEW LOW: The president also declared he has “total” authority if governors disagree with him at an off-the-rails briefing.
President Donald Trump took over Monday’s White House task force briefing to lash out at critics and the press with a bizarre video that amounted to a campaign ad, before later declaring his authority is “total” if governors disagree with him during the coronavirus pandemic.
Monday’s unprecedented press briefing began to go off the rails with the video, but before the end, the president was falsely trumpeting definitive authority during the health-care crisis that has already led to the deaths of more than 23,000 Americans.
The briefing almost immediately devolved into the president airing widespread grievances against his critics, from his likely 2020 general election opponent Joe Biden to governors and reporters who have dared to call his virus response into question over the last few weeks as American life has ground to a halt during the pandemic.
In a mash up of clips and audio that amounted to a campaign ad, Trump lashed out at critics and returned to his favorite pastime of going after reporters. The video began with a white screen saying “the media minimized the risk from the start.” At one point, it showed news clips of different governors giving kind remarks about the president’s response to the pandemic.
An agitated and indignant president pointed at the seated press corps, telling them that while he’d answer some questions after airing his montage of coronavirus praise that maybe “I’ll ask you some questions because you’re so guilty.” …
UNRELATED: The antidote: your favourite reads beyond coronavirus
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by coverage of the pandemic, try this list of non-coronavirus articles that our readers spent the most time with over the long Easter weekend …
Censorship That Unintentionally Made Shows Hilarious
About 99% of cartoon censorship consists of replacing “damn” for “darn” and making characters yell out “I’m OK!” after they’ve just been shot in the face. But occasionally, the censorship is so absurd that it actually increases the show’s entertainment value. So let’s thank those stuffy TV censors for unintentionally hilarious moments like …
6. Steven Universe Censored Violence Against Watermelons
Despite being hailed as a supposedly “progressive” show, Steven Universe features a sickening amount of violence … against watermelons. In one episode, Steven creates some watermelon beings that get slightly overprotective of him (i.e., they start attacking people), so Steven’s so-called friends viciously slaughter a bunch of them.
Luckily, various countries saw it fit to protect children from all that fruity gore. Here’s the scene from above as it aired in Latin America:
Other regions, like Oceania and Southeast Asia, removed the watermelon violence altogether, collectively saving parents millions in therapy bills. Several countries also censored the opposite of a fruit dying: yes, a vegetable being born. In the episode entitled “Onion Friend,” Steven’s onion friend shows him a tape of his birth, as one does. You never see the recording itself, only Steven’s reaction, but that was already too gross for Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, Turkey, North Africa, and all of the Middle East (which, except for Israel, has since stopped airing the show).
And of course, many countries don’t like the fact that not every single character in this show is 100% straight. The UK censored shots of two female characters dancing together, while Kenya straight up banned the show for “promoting homosexuality” by … acknowledging it exists. It’s like they think millions of kids are gonna say “Wait, you can DO that?!” and go off and be gay. (It’s probably more like thousands, relax.) …
UNRELATED: What Ungodly Creation Is The Pontiac Aztec Trans Am?
If you remember the Pontiac Aztec, a midsized cross-over from the early 2000’s, it’s probably due to its legacy of being one of the ugliest cars of all time. (If not from that, then you’ll remember it as the car belonging to Walter White.) But in an era of extreme makeovers and too much time on our hands, even the ugliest of cars deserves a chance. That could explain why Abimelec Arellano of Abimelec Design decided to cross the Pontiac Aztec with, oh god, a Firebird Trans Am. …
New Sympathetic Alarm Clock Just Lets You Sleep https://t.co/opZubY8Z4B pic.twitter.com/uplkxngoSq
— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 14, 2020
Ed. Don’t need it. I sleep when I’m not awake anymore, usually around 10. I’m awake when I stop sleeping, usually around 6:45. (I abruptly get up when the bird starts talking, currently around 7, in what is known as oversleeping). After getting up at 3:45 a.m. every day for so many years and never having enough sleep, I have 9 hours available every day for sleep, and I’m using them while asleep. Initially I was resistant to working 3:00 – 8:00 p.mm. shifts as host, cashier and shift supervisor following the downfall of Karen (more on that ahead), I have been sleeping well because I’m not regulating when it starts and, especially, when it ends.
Generation C Has Nowhere to Turn
Recent history suggests young people could see their careers derailed, finances shattered, and social lives upended.
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WHEN ANANAY ARORA looks off his balcony, he doesn’t see much these days. From his high-rise apartment, which he shared with three roommates before one of them moved back to Taiwan a few weeks ago, he has a view of Arizona State University’s campus, where Arora is currently a sophomore majoring in computer science. It’s usually full of life, but like most colleges across the country, ASU canceled in-person classes in mid-March. “Everyone’s gone home. Nothing is going on,” he told me. “It’s kind of depressing.”
Like a lot of young people waiting out the coronavirus pandemic, Arora is contemplating his future, which includes a prestigious internship at Apple meant to begin in May. That’s why he stayed in his off-campus apartment instead of heading back to live with his parents in India. “If my internship happens and there’s a travel ban, I wouldn’t be able to get back,” he said. It’s not just a summer job: In the tech industry, being a good intern is by far the best way to get a coveted job offer after graduation. “Getting an [internship] interview is hard,” Arora explained. “If my internship gets completely canceled, I don’t know if any company is going to interview me again.”
In the face of enormous uncertainty, Arora and his classmates Kaan Aksoy and Devyash Lodha created ismyinternshipcancelled.com, which lets students submit what they know about various companies’ plans and keep track of which ones are still planning to bring on new people, and if they are, whether those internships can be done remotely. Arora says that in the few days since he and his friends launched the site, which currently lists more than 300 companies, thousands of people have visited.
For healthy young people like Arora—who seem much less likely to have severe complications with COVID-19 than their elderly counterparts—living through a months-long quarantine and the deep economic recession likely to come after it will have consequences all its own, most of which, for the moment, are unknowable. It’s hard to imagine the future of this cohort in any detail, beyond the fact that their lives will be, in at least some ways, profoundly different from what they might have been. While writing about how the pandemic might eventually end, my colleague Ed Yong posited that babies born in the post-coronavirus era, who will never know life before whatever enduring changes lie ahead, might be called Generation C.
But Generation C includes more than just babies. Kids, college students, and those in their first post-graduation jobs are also uniquely vulnerable to short-term catastrophe. …
zEd. I’m a little over 22 minutes into google’s suggestion. It’s trippy tempos are making these errant ramblings barely uninteresting at all things a lot of fun to cobble up. Or maybe I’m still a little bit high from last night. Whatever. I’m not supposed to be anywhere else in the first place.
The ‘Karen’ meme is everywhere – and it has become mired in sexism
Countless TikTok videos are dedicated to the Karen meme. What was once a way of describing women’s behaviour is now too often about controlling it
Jess Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding.
Why is everyone talking about Karen?
Dan, by email
Karen has been a busy lady of late. There have been more than 816m views to TikTok videos dedicated to the Karen meme, and last week, just days before Jess Phillips was appointed shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, over 11,000 people liked a tweet saying “BREAKING: Jess Phillips assigned Shadow Karen Minister.” But Karen? Who the frick is Karen? Well, as Jennifer Aniston would say, here’s the science bit.
“Karen” is commonly used in the US to refer to a strident middle-class white woman who talks down to people of colour, usually in serving-staff positions. But the term was never just about racial oppression. As Vox wrote in its extremely extensive history of the trope, the comedian Dane Cook was using it in his act in 2005: “Every [friendship] group has a Karen, and she’s always a bag of douche.” The term went more mainstream a few years ago when someone on Reddit wrote so much bile about his ex-wife that his posts got their own subreddit called “r/FuckYouKaren”. One of the most popular ever tweets using the Karen meme was posted a month ago, just before the lockdown: “I’m scared for people who actually need to go to the store & feed their fams but Susan and Karen stocked up for 30 years.” This was liked 1.2m times, because only women shop, apparently (and shop selfishly). This weekend, the Sunday Times defined Karen as “an annoying person in the office”, and you have to admire the use of the genderless word “person” there because I’d love to know how many men out there have been called “a Karen”. I’m gonna guess it’s a feminine, curvaceous zero. “Karens are moms – pushy ones. They share corny inspirational quotes on Facebook, buy merchandise inscribed with ‘Love Life Laugh’ and love to ruin teenage fun,” Elaine Moore wrote in the FT. Moore adds that Karen is her “favourite internet villain”. Pushy mothers: aren’t they THE WORST? Lolz.
The Karen chat stepped up a notch last week when the feminist writer Julie Bindel tweeted: “Does anyone else think the ‘Karen’ slur is woman-hating and based on class prejudice?” Cue a social media firestorm, one I blithely wandered into: “Yes – it’s sexist, ageist and classist, in that order.” Soon, I had thousands of responses. Some were from people of colour, frustrated that the term’s original meaning had been lost and that two white women were denigrating a term they use to describe racism, and fair enough. But they were at least equalled by men gleefully calling me a Karen (“OK, Karen”) and telling me to make them a sandwich. Truly, few things warm the heart like the palpable excitement of men when they find a new misogynistic term they can lob at women with impunity. …
EERILY UNRELATED: Woman’s attraction to chandeliers not a sexual orientation, Ipso says
Amanda Liberty made complaint about article in the Sun mocking declaration of love for German light fitting.
A woman in a long-term relationship with a 92-year-old German chandelier has been told that her attraction to historic light fittings is not considered to be a protected sexual orientation.
Press regulator Ipso made the ruling after Amanda Liberty, a woman from Leeds in her mid thirties, complained about an article in the Sun mocking her public declaration of love for Lumiere, her name for an intricate lamp she bought on eBay.
She argued that the newspaper’s article breached the regulator’s code of conduct which requires publishers to avoid prejudicial or pejorative references to an individual’s sexuality.
Liberty identifies as an ‘objectum sexual’ – an individual who is attracted to objects. …
Eerily, humans overlab into the ven diagram of the universe known as objects. I won’t go further. I have other things I want to do today.
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
This spring, teens are trying out their rented dresses and tuxedos, perfecting their makeup, and practicing their dance moves to get ready for that big prom night out in their own homes. Vacations have become staycations, and let’s-meet-at-Katra-Lounge-but-if-that’s-too-far-let’s-just-do-something-in-Williamsburg birthday plans have evolved into virtual parties that start with the exciting step of downloading Zoom.
Before the era of COVID-19, people were anxious about screen time destroying our ability to connect with each other in real life. But for those 13-year-olds who don’t want to cancel their bar mitzvahs and that couple who had their heart set on that anniversary trip, screens are now the best consolation prize.
Health crises eventually end, and soon, people will get comfortable being within 6-feet of each other. But in a post-pandemic world, we may realize being that close and touching a stranger’s hand isn’t even a risk we’re willing to take—or a risk we have to take.
“I think it’s going to make us consider what are the advantages? And what are the advantages of being there in person and what do we really miss and need?” says Ioana Literat, assistant professor of Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design at Columbia University. “I think that the emphasis should be on human agency. Right? It’s not what social media does to us, but what we do with social media.”
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Farmers dependent on foreign workers are racing against time as the growing season begins and coronavirus delays hundreds of thousands of their farmworkers around the world.
Around the world, worshippers and religious leaders find creative ways to observe a socially distanced Easter, while some churches in America hold in-person services despite the public health risk.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Isolation Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
GOOD NEWS: President Trump has discovered who is at fault for the Trump administration’s colossal coronavirus failures.
President Trump seemed to be floating the idea of firing Dr. Anthony Fauci over the weekend after the nation’s top infectious disease expert confirmed that lives might have been saved had the President acted sooner to confront the threat of coronavirus.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth takes a closer look at the president getting ready to “reopen” the economy after a bombshell New York Times report revealed more details about how he ignored the threat posed by the coronavirus.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
小さい箱に、入っていることにしたいまる。Maru wants to get into the small box.
The first egg at the Boulder County Fairgrounds osprey nest of the 2020 season was laid on April 10.
FINALLY . . .
When Chinese Americans Were Blamed for 19th-Century Epidemics, They Built Their Own Hospital
The Chinese Hospital in San Francisco is still one-of-a-kind.
In 1933, Minnie Sun worked as a nurse in the baby ward of the Chinese Hospital. Bruce Lee would be born there seven years later.
CALIFORNIA’S FIRST CHINESE IMMIGRANTS ARRIVED at a tumultuous time. From the 1860s to the early 1900s, a raft of epidemics, from smallpox to cholera, ravaged the San Francisco Bay Area, and especially Chinatown. Lacking scientific research on disease transmission, local health officials often blamed outbreaks on living conditions in Chinatown and the vices of its inhabitants. In 1877, the surgeon Hugh Toland told a congressional committee that Chinese sex workers caused 90 percent of syphilis cases in the city.
This history makes the recent uptick in anti-Asian discrimination, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, seem searingly familiar. In 1885, San Francisco’s health officer declared Chinatown a “social, moral, and political curse to the community.” The Board of Health proposed draconian measures to quarantine and destroy buildings where infections had spread, demolishing many businesses and homes in the process. Public officials not only portrayed Chinese Americans as breeders of disease, but also denied the group access to health care, refusing to finance critical services in Chinatown and raising the cost of treatment for Chinese patients at municipal hospitals. As a result, the Chinese accounted for less than 0.1 percent of hospital admissions in the late-19th century, according to medical records from city and county institutions.
The deserted streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown on April 1.
In response, the Chinese diaspora organized. Well-connected merchants of the Chinese Six Companies—a federation of mutual aid associations—decided to self-fund their own hospital. In 1900, the year the bubonic plague hit San Francisco, Tung Wah Dispensary opened its doors to Chinatown residents, becoming the first Chinese-American medical facility in the continental U.S. A quarter-century later, it became the Chinese Hospital, which now has locations all over the Bay Area.
Laureen Hom, a political science professor at CalPoly Pomona, wrote a case study about the origins of the Dispensary. Atlas Obscura asked her about the long history of discrimination and civic engagement in Chinese enclaves, and how they resonate in the time of the new coronavirus. …
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 the bird is sitting on an egg in the snowpacked nest. I’m certain we’ll be seeing a lot of this for a while.
I’m still wondering if they know they’re being watched. After this snow melts, I ride over on my bike and ask.
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!
We believe we have something you’re looking for, world! It’s called hope! pic.twitter.com/Tn4BQDWAO2
— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) April 13, 2020
Well played, sir!