• • • google suggested • • •
Fades in and out for interruption-free looping
Consistent gentle rain throughout
Two alternating wind chimes every 10 minutes to mark time
Several short rain variations intermixed approximately in the middle of each chime
Elongated Background Music:
0:00:00 Rachel’s Theme 800% Slower
0:35:10 Blade Runner Blues 600% Slower
1:36:15 Esper Analysis (Longing + Empty Streets) 600% Slower
2:35:51 Fading Away 800% Slower
[Vangelis tracks stretched with Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch]
Intro and Outro:
Clip of unaltered “Blade Runner Blues” by Vangelis plays at start
Pompeii 76 A.D./Bicycle Riders by Gail Laughton plays at end in place of wind chimes
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Dig This: An Online Field School for Junior Archaeologists
At-home lessons and pro tips could help quarantined kids hit pay dirt.
All you need is a good tool, the right patch of dirt, and an internet connection.
THERE COMES A TIME IN every kid’s quarantine when the outside world starts to look awful irresistible. Maybe it’s the familiar warmth of springtime, or perhaps the stir craze that has come with being cooped up in the accrued months of social distancing. Whatever the cause, most kids right now are unable to hang with friends on the nearest (temporarily closed) playground and get their hands dirty.
“What can you do if you’ve got a bunch of kids with nothing better to do?” says Carenza Lewis, an archaeologist at the University of Lincoln in England. “Get them digging.”
So was created Dig School—a partnership between the university, the Council for British Archaeology, and the preservation organization Historic England. Led by Lewis, Dig School is now offering 20 online workshops, styled for junior archaeologists between ages 10 and 15, that teach the basics of excavatory science through at-home exercises and lessons from the field.
Some lawns have gardens. Others have dig sites.
With even professional archaeologists’ field seasons foreclosed by stay-at-home orders, Dig School spotlights the progress that can be made from home, and serves as a reminder that archaeological inquiry is bound only by one’s curiosity—and, of course, whatever the local law might be concerning hole-digging where you live. …
Trump’s obsession with Obama is an attempt to distract from his failures
The US president ignored the coronavirus pandemic, failed to prepare for the worst and is sinking in the election polls – and he wants us to forget all that
‘This is Hunter Bidengate and Clinton emailgate. This is smeargate and distractgate.’ This is steaming pile of shitgate.
After two months of quarantine, we all start to dream about breaking free from our perfect little prison. Amid the endless days and nights of impending doom, whose thoughts have not turned to the place that gives us the most hope?
How can you not yearn to swap the relentless grind of this Groundhog Day for the sun-filled uplands of your own happy place?
Your dream destination might be a Caribbean beach or simply a local bar. But for Donald Trump, his Shangri-La is that corner of the 2016 election when he was just an honest grifter screaming conspiracy theories at Hillary Clinton.
His love boat has one port of call, far away from a pandemic and recession: a place they call Obamagate.
What is this wonderland where our impeached president can finally kick back? It is a place where the corrupt are cleansed, and the cops are all crooked; where tainted elections are purified by the sheep dip of Fox News; where former presidents are mentioned far more than pandemics.
But what, exactly, did the last president do, beyond wearing a tan suit, that could possibly earn him the dreaded suffix applied to every scandal from Donutgate to Pastagate to multiple Piegates? …
RELATED: A disgraced scientist and a viral video: how a Covid conspiracy theory started
In Plandemic Dr Judy Mikovits blames coronavirus outbreak on a ‘circular cabal’ led by Bill Gates, accuses Dr Fauci of burying her research and says wearing a mask ‘activates your own virus’
Judy Mikovits, right, in 2011 at the Whittemore Peterson Institute, where she lost her job after a controversy.
On the surface, it is a classic tale of whistleblowing.
A brave insider claiming to lay bare corporate power corrupting the US government. A truth teller courageously naming names who are part of what she calls a “circular cabal” killing Americans.
Seen from another perspective, the viral video of Dr Judy Mikovits blaming the coronavirus outbreak on a conspiracy led by big pharma, Bill Gates and the World Health Organization is the work of a discredited crank. But scientists fear that does not make her claims any less dangerous because, in an age of conspiracy theories, those about medicine have unusual potency.
The film of Mikovits is taken from a soon to be released documentary, Plandemic, in which the virologist claims US health agencies buried her research showing vaccines weaken people’s immune systems and made them more vulnerable to Covid-19. She also asserts that wearing masks is dangerous because it “literally activates your own virus”.
Mikovits’s claims have gained currency in part because she points the finger at Dr Anthony Fauci, the face of the Trump administration’s scientific advice on coronavirus and director of the agency she claims buried her research, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In an added twist, Trump has given weight to Mikovits’s claims with his own questioning about the origins and spread of Covid-19. …
Don’t Blame Econ 101 for the Plight of Essential Workers
They’ve been systematically devalued for years. But they don’t have to be.
Embiggenable.
The workers who restock grocery shelves. The workers who aid the dying in hospice-care centers. The workers who pick strawberries and butcher chickens and cows. Who transport vital goods from port to store, and spirit away trash and recycling from homes and businesses. Who change the linens in hospitals, deliver food, watch babies, and help people with disabilities. Along with doctors and nurses, these are the heroes of today’s crisis. They are the people putting themselves at risk to keep others alive and society functioning through the country’s shelter-in-place orders. They are the essential.
So why are so many of these workers making poverty wages? How can work worth so much be worth so little? Over the past few weeks, I asked economists and labor experts that question. The answer was discomfiting: These essential jobs are bad jobs not because of ironclad economic laws, but because of the kinds of people who hold them and the kinds of labor laws we have chosen. They are bad jobs because we have not cared to make them good jobs. But there’s some comfort in that: We can choose to care.
The need for change has long been apparent. Before the pandemic, many essential workers were just getting by. Now their jobs are more dangerous than before, and many cannot afford to quit, not with the unemployment rate at nearly 15 percent. One in seven essential workers lacks health insurance, and one in three lives in a household that makes less than $40,000 a year. Millions of grocery-store workers and slaughterhouse employees and home health aides rely on food stamps. Our most essential, most useful, and most needed people are our most economically fragile.
Simple economic concepts, such as supply and demand, certainly help explain these dynamics. These positions tend to require relatively few educational credentials or certifications. The skills necessary to work at a checkout counter or change sheets in a hospital tend to be easy to pick up and nontechnical. This means that the pool of eligible workers is large, and it’s easy for employers to hire and fire. You don’t face a high barrier to entry if you’re looking for a job as a line cook or a nanny. And replacing you is not hard, if you quit or get laid off. …
RELATED: I’m Risking My Life to Bring You Ramen
How meal delivery became surreal.
Images above, from left: Darnell Young and his skateboard; Indigo, a popular restaurant in the H Street corridor of Washington, D.C.; Tymeer Roberts delivering meals on his scooter. Embiggenable.
WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS arrived in Washington, D.C., and Homeland Security named me an “essential critical infrastructure worker,” free to work as others sheltered in place, I felt like a wallflower at a party suddenly beckoned to the dance floor. I nearly glanced right and left—no other girls there—and put a hand to my bosom. Me?
I doubt I’ve ever before been considered critical or essential to anyone not immediately waiting on a meal I was delivering. Lurking at restaurants until my app dings and offers me a job, then dodging in and out of traffic on my bicycle, I normally drift between invisible and pain in the ass. But here we are.
I’d been sitting out the last few winter weeks, looking forward to riding in warm weather. It arrived on the second day of spring, 71 degrees and balmy, when the coronavirus claimed its first victim in the city.
I suited up for my evening rounds. Leggings in a light-colored print that would flash in headlights, layers of tops, a windbreaker. My backpack: a peasant basket I’d bought in Laos, with an insulated delivery bag inside. I’ve dotted the basket with reflective tape.
There are people who deliver in cars, and then there are the rest of us on everything else. My bicycle is a 1980s Bridgestone that a friend gave me in New Orleans; a woman had traded it to him for work on her car. Someone stole it, but months later I spotted it on Frenchmen Street and got it back. Bike enthusiasts walk up to me to say the Bridgestone is a museum piece. I thought it was badass until I saw another courier, a young fellow a head taller than me, inside a Thai restaurant with a skateboard under his arm. …
Voting By Mail Should Be The Norm Come November
California Governor Gavin Newsom just passed a large measure that will ensure every registered voter in the state gets a ballot in the mail for the November election. This will make them the first state to make it an automatic mailing in light of the coronavirus pandemic. It won’t replace in-person voting, but it should ultimately make things both easier and safer when the time comes. California is the biggest state in terms of electoral college votes, and it’s also got just as many challenges for its voters getting to the booth, so every other state should look at this and make vote-by-mail a priority.
California has every obstacle you can think of to prevent people from voting. Rural areas where the nearest booth is miles and miles away? Check. Crowded urban voting centers where the lines can be longer than the one at Space Mountain? Double-check. An unjust amount of people working ungodly hours that prevent them from getting to a booth? Triple-check. These problems exist around the country, so voting by mail would give people a chance to sit down at home, make sound, informed decisions, and then feel good about doing their civic duty.
The problem here is that the people who can reliably get to a voting booth for down-ballot elections tend to skew conservative — the elderly/retired, those wealthy enough that they can take off work, and your crazy uncle that blames Obama for the existence of the Soviet Union. The in-person voting stations will also likely take a hit in November, because if the Wisconsin primary is any indication, those same old/rich/nutjob people are also the main people volunteering to man the voting stations, and will likely stay home if/when the coronavirus still presents a threat. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Your steaming pile of shit hates it.
UNRELATED: Nonbinary BDSM Sex Work In ‘Animal Crossing’ Is Helping People
By now, you’ve probably seen a couple of quality memes about what the best way to pay off your debts to raccoon tycoon Tom Nook. If not, please enjoy this old standard.
had to pay off my debts the hard way pic.twitter.com/0CsA0tWTB9
— liam (@SimpPilgrim) April 1, 2020
As it turns out, there’s plenty of room for sex work in Animal Crossing — just ask Denali Winter. They’re a nonbinary hairdresser and sex worker; two professions hit as hard as anything during this shitstorm. But both this pandemic and this adorable game have brought out both the creativity AND horniness in people, which made it a perfect tool for Winter to help their clients in a new way.
In the game, there are a number of things you can do to humiliate someone on your island. You can hit them with a net, trap them in cages, and just generally make them feel bad (which you can then later mock with different “Reactions”). Doing this to an NPC villager might make them want to move to a new island, but some of Winter’s clients are paying for this experience in Bells, the in-game currency. They’ll go even further into the dom-sub relationship too, as clients find themselves doing chores around the island for them, such as watering flowers.
Furthermore, the fact that Winter is nonbinary is particularly attractive to clients who are figuring out their gender identity…
No insurance, no savings, no support: what happens when LA’s least privileged get Covid
Undocumented Filipino caregivers, South LA’s black neighborhoods and garment workers grapple with unequal toll of virus.
People wearing masks wait at the St. John’s Mobile Clinic to provide black workers with free Covid-19 testing in Los Angeles.
Lily has no health insurance, no doctor, and no savings.
The 57-year-old Los Angeles caregiver contracted coronavirus last month at work and survived after weeks of agony and isolation in her bedroom. Without access to healthcare, she drank boiled ginger and tried basic flu remedies common in her native Philippines. Lily made it, but at least two other Filipino caregivers in the city have succumbed to the virus.
Covid-19 has devastated Los Angeles, infecting people of all incomes and backgrounds, but the suffering has not been equal. The damage has been particularly brutal in communities that have long faced systemic racism and health and economic inequities, including the black essential workers of South LA, the Latinx factory workers now sewing masks and the immigrants of Historic Filipinotown.
In addition to disparities in the number of cases and deaths, victims of the pandemic fear the unequal toll will only become starker as California inches toward reopening – with those who most need help least likely to get it.
“I cannot get the support from the government because I’m undocumented,” said Lily, who asked not to use her full name. She’s not sure how she will recover after quarantining for more than a month with no income or paid sick leave, or how she will continue sending money to her children in the Philippines. “I’m waiting for any assistance. It’s really, really hard.” …
Grazing hell: 200 escaped goats hoof it through California neighborhood
Animals storm residential area of San Jose after breaking through a fence in incident caught on video.
Nature is healing, and in some parts of northern California, nature is revolting.
About 200 goats broke through a fence in San Jose and briefly stormed the streets of a residential neighborhood on Tuesday evening, in clear violation of social distancing guidelines as well as the state shelter-in-place order.
The goats had been coming by to eat through the vegetation on a hill in the neighborhood for the past 12 years, Zach Roelands, 23, a neighborhood resident who captured the madness on video, said.
They had been hopping on his neighbor’s fence, which created a hole. “Next thing you know they’re in the front yard eating everything in sight,” Roelands said.
In the video, some goats paused to pull up plants and flowers from nearby yards before following the rest of the herd, much to the chagrin of residents. Neighbors were panicked at first, trying to keep the goats away from their landscaping, but then mostly amused, Roelands said. “The goats have come for the past 12 years but this was the most entertaining they’ve been,” he said. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Judges, judges, and — more judges. One of the longest-lasting impacts of Donald Trump’s presidency may not be his Twitter feed, but instead, the record number of federal judges that he has nominated — and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shepherded through confirmation — in just the last 3 years.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Ever listen to Trump ramble and wonder what he was asked about in the first place? Now it’s a game you can play at home!
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
The legal cannabis industry booms during the pandemic while backdoor drug dealers struggle, and cartels turn to social action while their business is at a standstill.
Twitter allows its employees to work from home forever, an interview with Jared Kushner gets blown out of proportion, and Mitch McConnell calls Barack Obama “classless.”
Senate Republicans like Rand Paul are following Donald Trump’s lead and trying to sew skepticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice as it relates to reopening the economy.
FROM THE COMMENTS:
Matt Pryce 4 hours ago
WHEN IS A REPORTER JUST GOING TO SNAP AND GIVE DONALD A PIECE OF THEIR MIND, GOD DAMN WE NEED A HERO RIGHT NOW.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
This week in “Things That Were Already Horrible That Coronavirus Has Made So Much Worse”, we’re talking about the millions of Americans battling food insecurity. So put down your damn sourdough starter and listen up!
THANKS to TBS and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee for making this program available on YouTube.
Welcome back to part 2! Coronavirus isn’t just starving you of a social life, it’s also literally forcing millions of Americans to go hungry. Learn how food insecurity is amplified during a pandemic and then go to feedingamerica.org/fullfrontal to learn how you can help!
Seth takes a closer look at the president reeling politically from his deadly incompetence during the coronavirus pandemic.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
確信犯なまる。Maru crushes a box deliberately.
FINALLY . . .
Inside the Strange World of Coral Reef Crime Scenes
How scientists and law enforcement officers pioneered a new brand of underwater justice.
Before Dave Gulko and his group, there were few options for securing prosecutions for crimes against coral reefs. Embiggenable.
SOMETHING DIDN’T LOOK RIGHT.
It’s not illegal to fish at night off the coast of Oahu, of course, but there was something about the boat that seemed suspicious to the Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officer who was on patrol. Then, as he approached the vessel, he saw big splashes—the men on the fishing boat had thrown something into the water. But by the time he had actually climbed on board to look around, there was nothing there to see. All that remained was a wet gill net, some tiny fragments of coral, and the fish the men had caught—none of which, alone, constituted anything illegal.
But that doesn’t mean things were on the up-and-up. The officer suspected that the men had something to hide—specifically that they had been using their nets illegally. Most likely, they had placed them on the bottom and left them there unattended for a while before pulling them up. That particular use is against the law, because the nets left like that are more likely to get entangled in the coral, and then rip large chunks of the fragile, legally protected animal colonies up when pulled free. Plus, the law requires fishers to inspect their nets every two hours to release any undersized, illegal, or unwanted fish that get stuck. But without definitive evidence that large pieces of coral had been broken off and hauled up, there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing. So the officer temporarily confiscated the boat, and called David Gulko.
“That was one of my first cases,” says Gulko. Then, as now, a coral expert for the state of Hawai‘i, Gulko was able to identify the coral fragments, but they weren’t the key piece of evidence. That was other animals he found on the boat. “I went on the deck and started finding all these little tiny, tiny, tiny little crabs and shrimp,” he explains. Those species only live deep inside large pieces of coral. “That was the evidence that they had brought up big heads of coral in their net—the presence of a little tiny shrimp and crab on the deck,” he continues. “That’s what made the case and got the conviction.”
For the authorities, the entire case had been a series of lucky breaks. Back in the early 2000s, when this all happened, marine regulations were rarely enforced successfully. Agencies were understaffed, but there was also no standard training for conducting forensic investigations on and under the sea. With no accepted techniques for collecting and analyzing this evidence, even a strong case wouldn’t hold up in court. Marine biologists like Gulko knew how to study and monitor reefs, but that’s not the same. “We just weren’t doing well trying to hold people accountable for damaging reefs,” he says. In 2005, Gulko saw that officers from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority were holding a session on enforcing marine regulations at the first ever International Marine Protected Areas Congress in Geelong, Australia. He knew he had to attend. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
What more do I have to not do to convince you I'm not real?
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 13, 2020
