onfocus

"The compromise that was reached was to leave that option open for using tear gas or riot control agents in law enforcement and only in law enforcement."

Why we allow tear gas against our own people in peacetime. See also: TED Talk: Non-lethal weapons, a moral hazard?

"The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane."

The state is asserting its ability to continue to operate outside the law.

"Among 1,001 child contacts of these six cases there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19. In the school setting, among 924 child contacts and 101 adult contacts identified, there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19."

Super small sample size here but I hope this holds up with more investigation.

Powerful collection of American voices.

“When you’re exposed to tear gas, your eyes sting, your vision blurs, and you cry and blink uncontrollably. It gets worse the longer you’re in the gas: After a few seconds, you won’t be able to see, which will disorient and confuse you, potentially to the point of emotional and psychological distress.”

Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

Matt Haughey on social media trolls:

“Every bad thing at MetaFilter happened with someone who had been testing the rules for a year or two,” he said. “Those are the ones who tend to blossom into super-trolls over time. They’ll see what they can get away with, they’ll figure out what the limits are, and just stay a step inside. It can go on forever. And when you inevitably break and say, this is a bad idea, they freak out, and try to play the victim.”

Good for Twitter for starting to enforce their terms at this late hour. I can imagine a world where they enforced their terms all along and it makes me disappointed and angry.

“Polarizing divisive content is to Facebook as nicotine is to cigarette makers: a component of their product which their own internal research shows is harmful, but which they choose to increase, rather than decrease, because its addictiveness is so profitable.”

Ethics in social media.

“It took us ten years — between 2009 and 2019 — to create 22 million jobs. And we’ve lost 30 million jobs in two months.”

This is a tough read but it sure seems like we can expect a long, rough road ahead.

Cowie said state officials never expected each county to meet every indicator all the time. Public health authorities plan to monitor progress and offer support to counties. But they have no plans to push for new closures based on what they’ve seen so far.

Oregon has detailed criteria that must be met (loosely) for opening counties but only vague criteria for closing them again.

"We ran these surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our existing employees said that they were extremely or very interested in working remotely full time. And another 20 percent on top of that said that they were somewhat interested. So I think what’s basically going to happen is that, because it’s going to take a while to get everyone back into the office, you have like 40 percent of employees already who were fairly willing to work remotely."

I always thought it was strange that these big silicon valley companies who make online tools were against remote work. Circumstances are forcing their adjustment but this could be lasting.

"The juxtaposition of images in the news of farmers destroying crops and dumping milk with empty supermarket shelves or hungry Americans lining up for hours at food banks tells a story of economic efficiency gone mad."

Ironically, optimizing industry for efficiency has made it less resilient when faced with different market conditions.

"This, then, is the state of things: The White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal. That is not because these things are impossible. At this point, there are dozens of plans floating around and dozens of governments offering models it could choose from."

It's not going well.

"All these infection events were indoors, with people closely-spaced, with lots of talking, singing, or yelling. The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, outbreaks spread from shopping appear to be responsible for a small percentage of traced infections."

Great summary of which environments pose the greatest risk as states start to open again.

"Why admit and apologize for errors? Two reasons: First, blame is a seesaw. If you blame yourself more, others blame you less; they may even tell you why it wasn’t really your fault, everybody else got it wrong too, you were misled, etc. And second, the forgiveness process starts with acknowledgment. It is vanishingly hard to forgive people who won’t admit fault."

CIDRAP—University of Minnesota illness prevention group—offers strategies for effective COVID-19 crisis communication.

"But even as the national political discourse has adopted reopening as the central debate, polls repeatedly show that Americans overwhelmingly back restrictions and do not support reopening most businesses. The consensus is especially notable in an era when nearly every poll question seems to serve as a referendum on Donald Trump, with his supporters lining up against his opponents. Here, despite Trump’s pleas for reopening, Americans are remaining united—and not heeding him. What if government reopened the country, and no one came?"

Maybe survival instinct > political affiliation?

"Through her work, she's found that those who have been through a period of isolation value the experience for what it has taught: They have a better idea of their personal values, and they're more committed to acting on them. "When people have space to sit back and think it allows them to figure out what's important to them," she said."

Lessons from others who have been isolated.

"Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default. To succeed this will require one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history, the execution of which will, I think, consume the president’s re-election campaign."

Running out the clock while making people doubt the clock. We lost another month and nothing is changing to contain the virus.

Profiles of some covid-19 victims. It’s difficult to process the toll of covid-19 without taking some time to see who we’re losing. Numbers are numbers and that’s how I’m understanding covid-19 right now in charts and data. This NYT piece is a step toward a different type of understanding.

"The opposition expressed by sizable majorities of Americans reflects other cautions and concerns revealed in the survey, including continuing fears among most people that they could become infected by the coronavirus, as well as a belief that the worst of the medical crisis is not yet over."

Overwhelming majority says it’s too soon to open. Protest sentiment you see in the news is a small minority.

"Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

Tech pioneer Tim Bray leaves Amazon over warehouse worker firings.

The Board was presented with a unique and complex situation – impacting one of the largest registries with more than 10.5 million domain names registered. After completing its evaluation, the ICANN Board finds that the public interest is better served in withholding consent as a result of various factors that create unacceptable uncertainty over the future of the third largest gTLD registry.

This is a relief. The .org top-level domain is not being sold for parts after all.

Interesting visualization of the disparity between the ultra-rich and others. This might indicate a problem with the system?

Willie Nelson playing the entire Red Headed Stranger album live on Austin City Limits in 1976. (!!) You might also want to see all 143 (!!!) of his albums ranked. I was happy to see Red Headed Stranger near the top. It has always been a favorite of mine.