Month: April 2020

All for one, one for ???

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by liberal japonicus I usually don’t do this, but I feel I need to throw everyone a bone. From here The same goes for the three companies affiliated with Monty Bennett. Ashford Hospitality Trust, where Bennett is chairman and a large shareholder, was able to treat each individual hotel property as a separate business when … Read more

For hsh

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by JanieM

5/16: US and UK updated to today. But US numbers are bizarre — Worldometer doesn’t agree with itself, in that today’s total deaths minus yesterday’s (as I copied them each day) gives a value quite a bit higher than the # they show in the daily deaths graph for today. If I dig deeper, I see that for at least the last few days, the #s in the “total deaths” graph don’t agree with the numbers I copied into a spreadsheet every night after they cleared the by-state table for the day. I know they adjust numbers sometimes, but these are big numbers, and I don’t see an explanation as yet. I’m not sure I’m going to bother continuing with this if the data is this murky.

5/14 note: I’m going to keep updating these for the time being, although even the number of deaths is reportedly being manipulated by different states in different ways, so I don’t know how indicative these numbers are. The time when Worldometer cuts off each night varies, but usually the updates are ready by 10:00 p.m. eastern time, and surely by 11:00. If I get time I might see if I can put a link to this post on the front page, and if I really get time I’d like to do some other graphs as well. We’ll see.

2 US graphs 20200516

This didn’t take long, although it would be quicker to make these if I had been collecting daily data in a useful format all along. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Any other countries you’d particularly like to see?

Numbers came from the “Daily New Deaths in the US” graph here.

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And for lj’s “yellow peril” collection, from Tom Levenson at BJ: Weaponizing Bullshit, Chattering Classes Edition

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Your medical speculation thread

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by liberal japonicus Russell posted on a government reset, and I thought that a thread where we just talked about the medicine and the science of CoVID-19 might be nice. Fair warning: you bring politics in here, your comment will be deleted but your name will be left up to be ridiculed. I understand that … Read more

topic for discussion

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by russell After 9/11, there was a lot of talk about the Constitution "not being a suicide pact".  I agree with that, although probably not in the spirit with which that idea was presented at the time. The fundamental premise of American governance is self-government, by the people, in a republican form.  "In a republican … Read more

Looking for death

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by liberal japonicus image from this Guardian link. To support the Guardian, go here or here. From Anthony Beevor’s The battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Soon after the ceremony began, Professor Francisco Maldonado launched a violent attack against Catalan and Basque nationalism, which he described as ‘the cancer of the nation’, which … Read more

Massacre in slow motion

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by liberal japonicus One thing that we’ve done here is when there has been an event like the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting, we’ve taken the time to post links to remembrances of the victims. When I saw that jazz saxaphonist Lee Konitz had died from complications related to CoVID-19, I realized, (really too late), … Read more

I got yer clash of civilizations

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by liberal japonicus

I’ve mentioned my distaste for the Yellow Peril hot takes that pop up. They are easy enough to do and are often the product of intellectual laziness rather than truly held on to racism. It seems to me that the waves of Chinese tourists proves that they are just like us, parents pulling quasi reluctant teenagers and overly excitable little kids to see some place because it is good for them. Sure, it may look different, with grandma and grandpa squeezing into subway cars and trying to figure out the best yatai in Fukuoka, but I see the same impulse as all of those family trips in the late 60’s/early 70’s that Mad Magazine used to make fun on. But underneath it all, they are just like us and it is simply a lack of imagination to think otherwise.

So what’s it like when the boot is on the other foot? Try this on for size

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Taking a Ride

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by JanieM On March 11 I took my car to a once-already-delayed appointment to have a factory-ordered repair done. My son and I dropped off the car, then went to the grocery store. That was the last time I was out and about in the world, except that each weekend I’ve been taking a solitary … Read more

What I’m reading and what I’m looking for

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by liberal japonicus This one about Neaderthals, speculations about cognitive ability and the ability to make fibres. https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/04/archaeology-ancient-string-discovery-sheds-light-on-neanderthal-life/127432 This reminds me of an interesting article pointing out that the naming of ages (bronze, iron) occurs because those are the things that are likely to survive, but we would probably have a better idea of the … Read more

To serve two masters

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by liberal japonicus I don’t know if the commentariat here has a lot of military experience, my impression is no. (I don’t, but there is one person here who I think does have some experience/insight, but I leave it to them to speak) And I realize there are a lot of things that, if you … Read more

Don’t call it going online, call it ERT

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by liberal japonicus Perhaps a bit of inside baseball, but here in Japan, things are very unsettled and everyone teaching is talking about going online. I’m the cranky uncle always yelling ‘don’t call it online, call it Emergency Remote Teaching‘! And you kids get off my yard!!!’. I was calling it Crisis Teaching, but ERT … Read more

Makes the world go around

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by liberal japonicus I’ve heard it tell round these parts, a few are interested in this. NPR present their dissection. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/26/821457551/whats-inside-the-senate-s-2-trillion-coronavirus-aid-package Of course, need to be careful, they are taking money from the public trough and some argue that if we had just spent the money on what was important, we wouldn’t be in this … Read more

A poetry thread

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by liberal japonicus Time to dig out your faves. Been reading Adrianne Rich and share this one with you. What Kind of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by … Read more