• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Mopion
Looking like nothing more than a cartoon deserted island, this tiny sandbar is home only to a single umbrella.
Mopion. Embiggenable.
SUPPOSEDLY THE SMALLEST ISLAND IN the Caribbean, Mopion is more of a cay (a low inlet mainly composed of coral or sand) and its size depends on the tides. But its iconic umbrella is never quite submerged.
The very first name of the island seems to have been Morpion, with an R, “morpion” being the French word for “pubic louse.” But over time it appears the R has been removed according to more common Caribbean speech patterns. Mopion is part of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines island chain and is considered by many to be a sort of geographical mascot for the whole area. It’s easy to see why.
A pure sandy beach surrounded by a lovely underwater reef, Mopion is a quiet gem in the middle of turquoise waters. At just 100 feet (30 meters) long or so (depending on the tides), the small sandbar is so low that a thatch umbrella was built on it for the sailors to spot from a distance to avoid dashing their vessels on the reef. The straw parasol is also the only protection against the sun for anyone marooned, intentionally or otherwise on the idyllic little piece of land. Visitors are also known to leave their mark carved into the trunk of the umbrella. …
Brazil’s Pandemic Is Just Beginning
The hardest-hit country in Latin America is facing a ‘perfect storm,’ as inequality collides with COVID-19.
The United States is clearly ground zero for the coronavirus outbreak at the moment, but the next one may already be emerging 4,500 miles south.
“Brazil is probably the next epicenter of the pandemic in the world,” Luciano Cesar Azevedo, a physician who has been spending his days and nights treating COVID-19 patients in intensive-care units in São Paulo, the country’s largest city, told me this week. “I think Brazil is going to get close to 100,000 deaths.” On the day we spoke, Azevedo noted that ICU beds in the city’s public health-care system were at 90 percent occupancy. He said Rio de Janeiro, whose health-care system is already seriously strained by the outbreak, could become Brazil’s New York.
Tom Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health notes that the country reported 3,700 new daily cases on April 23. Less than two weeks later, on May 6, new daily cases had more than tripled, to 11,896. The developments in Brazil “are really concerning,” Inglesby told me.
The nation of more than 200 million people has so far recorded fewer than 10,000 deaths from COVID-19, a small fraction of America’s death toll. But confirmed cases and fatalities are rapidly growing, each day leading to dismal new records and rendering Brazil the hardest-hit country in Latin America and one of the worst-off in the world. Flu season hasn’t even arrived yet (the Southern Hemisphere is heading into winter), and a dengue outbreak in the country may peak just as the coronavirus outbreak does. Inadequate testing means that Brazil’s official case count, which is already well over 100,000, could actually be as much as 10 times higher, according to Azevedo, who is also a professor of critical care and emergency medicine at the University of São Paulo, which runs a public hospital, and the head of education at Hospital Sírio-Libanês, a private facility. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, one of the world’s leading coronavirus deniers, is pushing to ease social-distancing restrictions and reopen the economy, which could accelerate the spread of the virus. “We are only at the beginning,” Azevedo said. …
RELATED: What Happens If a ‘Big One’ Strikes During the Pandemic?
Hundreds of preexisting plans deal with individual natural-disaster scenarios. But these plans haven’t accounted for COVID-19 happening at the same time.
On April 12 and 13, dozens of tornadoes tore through several southern states. Homes were obliterated, hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and 36 lost their life. Many sped to shelters as twisters mangled the land behind them. But one family was turned away at the door of a tornado shelter in Crossville, Alabama, because the hopeful entrants didn’t have enough face masks for every family member.
This is just one possible consequence of a deeply uncomfortable scenario: if, during the coronavirus pandemic, America is rocked by a large-scale geological or extreme-weather disaster, one that causes mass casualties and widespread infrastructural devastation. Any such disaster would be horrific enough in isolation, but one striking the United States today, now home to a third of the world’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, would place a nightmarish gantlet of novel obstacles between first responders and saving the lives of the afflicted.
For many, the mere notion of coterminous catastrophes is unconscionable. Brian Terbush, the earthquake/volcano program coordinator at Washington State’s Emergency Management Division, says there is always a thread of fatalism among some members of the public when it comes to earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis, and the like. People sometimes ask: “Why should we prepare for one if it’ll kill us anyway?” Now Terbush is hearing something different: “Aren’t we going through enough right now?”
The pandemic is already undeniably traumatic, enough to make people unwilling to consider that the situation could, in fact, worsen. But geoscientists and emergency managers don’t have that choice. They have to ruminate on the unthinkable, because that’s the only way they can prepare themselves, and the public, to navigate a confluence of calamities.
Short of a medical miracle, the coronavirus scourge will persist in America into the foreseeable future. And the odds of a disaster not happening during that time are low. How will the country, whose attention remains glued to the pandemic, handle a synchronous act of destruction? …
Meat-free future? Coronavirus exposes America’s fragile food system
Supply chain problems and workplace infection risks mean experts are urging US producers to focus on sustainability.
Tyson Foods employees in Springdale, Arkansas. For some critical observers, the crisis in America’s huge industrial meat production sector came as no real surprise.
Americans are nearing a future where the nation’s beloved steak dinners, cheeseburgers and barbecue are under threat, if the world’s second largest meat processor is to be believed.
Tyson Foods warned “the food supply chain is breaking” last week and said meat shortages were on the way to the US because the coronavirus pandemic was forcing it and other big companies to close several meat processing plants as their workforces became infected.
But for some critical observers, the crisis in America’s huge industrial meat production sector came as no real surprise. Will Harris, a cattleman at White Oak Pastures in southern Georgia, said he always knew a “trainwreck” would hit the factory farming industry.
Harris knows intimately how fragile factory farms and their supply chains can be, because for two decades, he raised cattle for the industrial beef production system.
“For the past 70 years, big multinational corporations have moved our food system further and further down the road of focusing only on efficiency, only on taking costs out of production,” Harris said. “And in doing that they created a very fragile food system where a lot of things can go wrong.”
But Harris said there is an alternative: his style of farming. …
The Best of Social Distancing Erotic Literature, Reviewed
The two great scourges of quarantine are boredom and horniness. In this context, the first writer to claim the title Covid-69 is our Edmund Hillary. But for every person penning “Jane’s roommate was attractive and she thought it would be nice to have quarantine sex with him,” there’s someone trying to corner the market with “Quarantine had made it difficult for Titania Rosemary and her three huge bazongas to seduce her hot were-brother, but not impossible.” I can sympathize with the challenge of standing out, having recently released a novel. And while it’s not erotica, you can’t enjoy a nice new horror-comedy before you’ve masturbated. So let’s get that out of the way with…
6. Quarantined with Father-in-Law: A Forbidden Father-in-Law Pregnancy Fantasy
“It was day three of the quarantine of the Coronavirus pandemic,” wordsmith Ava L. Lovelace informs us, and our heroine, Reese, is sick of her loutish husband. All he’s done is play video games, and … wait, it’s only been three days? Lady, quarantine is not the cause of your failed marriage. Reese storms out, responding to her useless husband’s responsible declaration of concern for public health with “Fuck the government,” and drives to the family cabin.
There she runs into her father-in-law, Oliver, who was driven out of his home by a nagging shrew of a wife who kept wanting to watch the news. Fellas, don’t you hate it when chicks stay informed on current events? They’re always yapping about how developments abroad will impact federal interest rate adjustments! Upon discovering that Reese is also at the cabin, Oliver secretly masturbates with her underwear before he even says hello. Hey, if there’s one thing I know about women, it’s that they love it when men three decades their senior get surreptitiously “possessed” by the scent of their laundry… “hemper”? Dammit, Lovelace, you’re ruining the immersion! How am I supposed to enjoy the image of an old man cranking one out when I’m distracted by typos?
Over the coming days, pun unfortunately intended, Reese and Oliver settle into a routine of making dinner, watching Netflix, drinking wine, complaining about their spouses, and falling in love. Now, I think you see what forbidden fantasy is unfolding here: these people broke quarantine and are selfishly enjoying the benefits! I know we’d all love to be out there seducing our in-laws, but people could get hurt. Reese “[feeling] the extent of his ball sack” as Oliver impregnates her with the child she’s long yearned for is all well and good, but what other fluids are they exchanging? And what about all the people they encountered while buying the supplies meant to last them months?
While I’m sure it would have been difficult for Oliver to resist a woman who is “hot and sexy as hell,” the two attributes that make up a complete package, there’s nothing sexy about irresponsibility. And not to judge their personal lives but, once the thrill of the romance wears off, Reese is going to have a hell of a time raising a child whose adult half-brother was once married to his mom. Oliver and Reese’s careers aren’t mentioned, but I hope they’re making enough to afford a good therapist. This is why you should just stay home and read a nice new book. …
UNRELATED: Inventors Who Can’t Stand Their Own Creations
Like Frankenstein and his monster, lots of inventors throughout time have regretted their own creations. Here are 12 people who have nothing but shame and regret over their own legacies. …
Surviving This Pandemic Isn’t Enough
We need to remake the world we left behind. And we need to start with how we care for one another.
My partner’s been making a verbal note every time he comes across a sign of hope. He calls these signs “seedlings.” A friend’s listless nonprofit finds a new purpose delivering boxed meals to isolated elders in an immigrant community. Seedling. A man runs bare-chested along a road beside the ocean, waving aloft a blue flag with a picture of the Earth. Seedling. We meet a group of our neighbors, who gather at a safe remove in the long yard we share, for what has come to be called “BYOB social-distancing happy hour.” Seedling.
My partner knows, more than many, how bad a spot we’re in. He’s worked in emergency medicine his entire adult life, most of it as a tech, usually one of the first people you see when you arrive at an emergency room. As the disaster coordinator for an urban hospital, he spent weeks in FEMA training in Alabama, drilling for an eventuality exactly like this pandemic, learning how to retrieve the right medication from a cage that notifies the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when it is opened.
He’s not in an emergency department anymore, thank goodness for me. We moved across the country to California last year, to the Bay Area, and for the first time in his life, he’s taken a job that does not place him among the first responders. Yet he’s still primed to see that the federal response has not gone the way it’s supposed to. One of the unquestioned premises of my partner’s training was that the federal government would have the best answers on what was unfolding and what to do. This makes the daily White House briefings difficult to watch, knowing now that the only thing possibly more lethal and more viral than COVID-19 at this moment is a president’s lie.
Lately, I find myself thinking about the book Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, which has enjoyed a resurgence amid the pandemic, for good reason. I have enjoyed postapocalyptic novels for the bulk of my life, and Station Eleven is one of my favorites. The focus of the book is a troupe of performers called the Traveling Symphony, who go from town to town in a hollowed-out world and furnish the residents with delight and enrichment through art. One side of the lead caravan carries a motto from an old episode of Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.”
Americans are being asked to answer this question: Which parts of us will survive? The disease cannot kill all of us, but it’s already wrought too much loss for us to escape this calamity whole. The losses have been squeezing in on us in tightening circles of grief, choking those who’d lost the most before. A colleague’s wife. A neighbor’s income. My mother’s goddaughter. Now, we are told, we must choose what to save: our comfort? Our humanity? Our elders? Our jobs? Our voting rights? Our lifestyle? Our community? …
Vitamin D appears to play role in COVID-19 mortality rates
After studying global data from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between severe vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates.
Led by Northwestern University, the research team conducted a statistical analysis of data from hospitals and clinics across China, France, Germany, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States.
The researchers noted that patients from countries with high COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy, Spain and the UK, had lower levels of vitamin D compared to patients in countries that were not as severely affected.
This does not mean that everyone—especially those without a known deficiency—needs to start hoarding supplements, the researchers caution.
“While I think it is important for people to know that vitamin D deficiency might play a role in mortality, we don’t need to push vitamin D on everybody,” said Northwestern’s Vadim Backman, who led the research. “This needs further study, and I hope our work will stimulate interest in this area. The data also may illuminate the mechanism of mortality, which, if proven, could lead to new therapeutic targets.” …
DON’T HOARD VITAMIN D
Go outside, get some exercise, and make your own.
Ed. I considered Scooter the Lemming as my spokesman, but instead chose Scooter the Nerd. He’s pretty pasty and probably hasn’t seen the light of day for most of his life.
Defcon Is Canceled
For real this time. Its sister conference, Black Hat, has also been called off.
The Las Vegas gathering, which would have taken place in August, will move to online sessions due to uncertainty about the Covid-19 pandemic.
FOR YEARS, A simple and elegant inside joke has permeated Defcon, the influential hacking conference. You say it to your friends, you reference it during your talk, you design a fake website to try to trick unsuspecting rubes: Defcon is canceled. On Friday, though, the bit became reality. Organizers announced that the Las Vegas gathering, which would have taken place in August, actually is canceled this year due to uncertainty about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Defcon’s more buttoned-up sister conference, Black Hat, which takes place in the days leading up to Defcon every year, has been called off as well. Both events will host online conferences instead that include research talks and social events. The founder of both conferences, Jeff Moss, who is also known by his hacker name the Dark Tangent, said in a forum post that the 28th Defcon will be known as “Safe Mode,” referencing the name most operating systems use for their diagnostic and recovery mode.
“While cancellation negotiations are still ongoing I’ve been lucky that the DEF CON Goons and community writ large have been amazing, helping me to navigate in a safe direction,” Moss wrote. “I am proud that over the years we have all gotten better at self care and supporting each other outside of Con and I can’t wait to see everyone when it is less chaotic and uncertain. Hackers do like security.”
The Defcon organizing team already has plans to coordinate talks, help facilitate subject-specific “villages” that are usually independent in-person events, and host events like remote capture-the-flag hacker challenges, remote Ham radio licensure exams, movie nights, and a Mystery Challenge. Moss says he made the initial decision to cancel on April 11, but needed weeks to work out the legal and financial logistics of shelving this year’s event before going public with the announcement. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
A third-generation letter carrier, Tamara Twinn has been with the United States Postal Service for 14 years. As an essential worker, she’s delivering mail to hundreds of people each day.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
This week’s top stories: COVID-19 is mutating, Trump won’t wear a mask, and college students want a refund.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Here’s me commentary on Sumo wrestling.
FINALLY . . .
Found: Possibly the First Recorded Death-by-Meteorite
Call it a cold case from space.
They don’t often hit humans, but when they do, they hurt.
A LITTLE STAR TWINKLING SOUNDS like a cute thought—until that star starts rapidly growing in size, forcing you and everyone nearby into shelter as it pelts the Earth with extraterrestrial strata. Meteorites rarely cause even injury with their otherworldly masses, but in August 1888, a space rock apparently went the whole nine yards, striking and killing one man and paralyzing another in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The death was recently ID’d in documents found in the Turkish state archives, and reported in a paper published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. Among 60-million-odd archival papers recently digitized was a 130-year-old manuscript that recorded the lethal meteorite strike.
“We were looking [through] the archives for a long time,” says Ozan Ünsalan, a physicist at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, and lead author of the new study. “[We searched] keywords like ‘meteorite,’ ‘falling stones,’ and ‘fireballs.’”
The report was originally written in Ottoman Turkish—a language read and spoken like modern Turkish, but written with an admixture script of Arabic and Persian—which is why it may have evaded detection until now.
Sulaymaniyah is now a metropolis—a far cry from what the site looked like in 1888.
If you knew the true frequency of meteorite impacts, there’s a good chance you’d never leave the house. NASA’s fireball database looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, with a profusion of multicolored dots perforating a map of the world. …
Ed. I’m under a safer at home order, so I’m supposed to only be in my house or yard (or at work, supervising the young-uns as they color). Just what is the chance that a stray meteorite would strike me in my small part of the universe? Besides, I have enough to panic about already.
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
Good times!
By not wearing a mask the President is putting America's future in hope.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 10, 2020
Need something more barely uninteresting at all to do?
Right now there’s one bird sitting on what appears to be a bunch of eggs. The other bird seems to be looking for something tasty to kill.
Ed. Yes, that’s a cut-and-paste of another day.