(1) B.C.V. / A.C.V. Kim Stanley Robinson argues “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations” in an article for The New Yorker.
…On a personal level, most of us have accepted that we live in a scientific age. If you feel sick, you go to a doctor, who is really a scientist; that scientist tests you, then sometimes tells you to take a poison so that you can heal—and you take the poison. It’s on a societal level that we’ve been lagging. Today, in theory, everyone knows everything. We know that our accidental alteration of the atmosphere is leading us into a mass-extinction event, and that we need to move fast to dodge it. But we don’t act on what we know. We don’t want to change our habits. This knowing-but-not-acting is part of the old structure of feeling.
Now comes this disease that can kill anyone on the planet. It’s invisible; it spreads because of the way we move and congregate. Instantly, we’ve changed. As a society, we’re watching the statistics, following the recommendations, listening to the scientists. Do we believe in science? Go outside and you’ll see the proof that we do everywhere you look. We’re learning to trust our science as a society. That’s another part of the new structure of feeling.
(2) SOMETIMES IT DOES TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me on NPR: “Who’s Bill This Time”
SAGAL: Yes. And what do you do there when you’re allowed out of your house?
TIBERI: I am an electrical test engineer for the spacecraft Orion, which is the world’s only deep space human exploration spacecraft.
JOEL KIM BOOSTER: Whoa.
SAGAL: No kidding. So, wait a minute. You’re helping to build the Orion, which is supposed to take us to Mars, right?
TIBERI: Yes, that is correct. So I work as a test engineer. I do software and electrical integration. And next year, we are launching for the moon.
(3) A VISIT WITH MANAGEMENT. “The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation” – video of a 2019 event.
The Baker Institute Space Policy Program hosts a conversation with senior space policy fellow George W.S. Abbey and author Michael Cassutt, whose new biography “The Astronaut Maker” chronicles Abbey’s rise from Air Force pilot to NASA power broker.
(4) YOU WOULDN’T GUESS THIS. CinemaBlend writer Adam Holmes, in “John Belushi’s Last Day On Earth Was Apparently Spent On The Set Of Star Trek II”, quotes Star Trek historian Mark A. Altman saying that John Belushi’s last activity before dying of a drug overdose was visiting the set of Star Trek II, because he “wanted to perfect his Shatner impersonation” and spent time watching William Shatner at work.
(5) RESISTING THE TEMPTATION. Roger Wolfson has “Advice for a Science Fiction Writer During the Time of Covid” – and where else but at ScienceFiction.com?
…Also like many writers, I have several projects in active development. But all my projects require answering the same question.
“How much or how little Covid do I put into this project?”
This is particularly important in the realm of Science Fiction, which is at heart, social commentary. And some of the best Science Fiction tries to take current social issues and expand them into the future in order to comment on them most effectively.
For me, when it comes to my projects, I want to talk about this pandemic. I want to talk about the social implications. The governmental implications. Personal implications.
Especially since I had Covid myself. I have a lot to say.
The problem is, any project I write won’t be on air – – if I’m lucky – for another year, or more…..
(6) BREAKING IN AND REMAKING. “NK Jemisin: ‘It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you’re white'” – so the author told Guardian interviewer Alison Flood
…She wrote another, The Killing Moon, which got her an agent. Set in a world based on ancient Egypt, it had an almost exclusively black cast – and didn’t find her a publisher. “It was the mid 2000s, and at that time science fiction and fantasy publishers were not super interested in stories with black casts by black writers. They had done some stories with black casts by white writers, but they were not interested in those stories coming from people who actually were black.” Rejection letters would say things like, “we like this, but we’re not sure how to market it. We like this but we’re not sure who its audience would be”– the implication from publishers being “that fantasy readers don’t want to read about black people. Black people don’t want to read fantasy. So what do we do?”
Jemisin decided to rewrite The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, making nearly the entire cast white. “All of them were horrible people. They’d shank each other for, like, nothing. And I wrote this angry story about this lone brown girl going into this place full of mean white people,” she says. It went to auction, with three different publishers fighting over it. “And I’m like, this is what you want?” she says. “I was pretty bitter … I’d taken such care in [The Killing Moon] to include sympathetic white people, but that wasn’t what they wanted.” …
(7) MAY 8 DEADLINE IF YOU WANT IN. The UC San Diego Library is producing a new edition of Short Tales From the Mothership, time coming in a more futuristic/modern event format — via Zoom! The event is scheduled for May 19, 2020 from 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm.
In the 1970s, sci-fi magazine editor George Hay encouraged authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, the namesake of UC San Diego’s Clarke Center, to write short postcard stories. Taking inspiration from Hay, this annual sci-fi micro fiction event allows participants to submit short stories inspired by UC San Diego’s iconic Geisel Library building, designed by famed architect William Pereira.
You have a chance to participate. Submit a science fiction or fantasy story (250 words or less) to Exhibit and Events Coordinator Scott Paulson at [email protected] by May 8. Participants will be invited to read their works at our virtual event on Zoom on May 19. This virtual event is free and open to the public. Registration details are forthcoming.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- May 3, 1996 — Barb Wire premiered. Brad Wyman produced the film, and It was directed by David Hogan from a screenplay by Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken. The story was by Ilene Chaiken based on Chris Warner’s Barb Wire comic series. It stars Pamela Anderson in the titular role with the additional cast of Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier and Steve Railsback. It received overwhelmingly negative reactions by critics and was a box office bomb. It holds a fourteen percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes among audience reviewers.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born May 3, 1896 — Dodie Smith. English children’s novelist and playwright, best remembered for The Hundred and One Dalmatians which of course became the animated film of the same name and thirty years later was remade by Disney as a live action film.(Saw the first a long time ago, never saw the latter.) Though The Starlight Barking, the sequel, was optioned, by Disney, neither sequel film (101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure and 102 Dalmatians) is based on it. Elizabeth Hand in her review column in F&SF praised it as one of the very best fantasies (“… Dodie Smith’s sophisticated canine society in The Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking…”) she read. (Died 1990.)
- Born May 3, 1928 — Jeanne Bal. In Trek’s “The Man Trap” episode, she played Nancy Crater, in reality a lethal shape-shifting alien. This was the episode that replaced “The Cage” which the Network didn’t like. She also had one-offs in Thriller and I-Spy. (Died 1996.)
- Born May 3, 1939 — Dennis O’Neil, 81. Writer and editor, mostly for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the Sixties through the Nineties, and was the Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement which makes him there when Ed Brubaker’s amazing Gotham Central came out. He himself has written Wonder Woman and Green Arrow in both cases introducing some rather controversial storytelling ideas. He also did a rather brilliant DC Comics Shadow series with Michael Kaluta as the artist.
- Born May 3, 1951 — W. H. Pugmire. S. T. Joshi has described Pugmire as “perhaps the leading Lovecraftian author writing today.” Let the debate begin. I don’t have a dog in this fight as I’ve never even heard of him. I will note that he shows up in most of the digital Cthulhu anthologies from the usual suspects and of course he’s in all of the Joshi Cthulhu anthologies that I looked at. (Died 2019.)
- Born May 3, 1962 — Stephan Martinière, 58. French artist who was the winner of the Best Professional Artist Hugo at Devention 3. He’s done both genre covers such as Ken MacLeod‘s Newton’s Wake: A Space Opera, and conceptual work for such films as The Fifth Element, Red Planet, and, errr, Battlefield Earth.
- Born May 3, 1969 — Daryl Mallett, 51. By now you know that I’ve a deep fascination with the non-fiction documentation of our community. Mallett is the author of a number of works doing just that including several I’d love to see including Reginald’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards: A Comprehensive Guide to the Awards and Their Winners written with Robert Reginald. He’s also written some short fiction including one story with Forrest J. Ackerman that bears the charming title of “A Typical Terran’s Thought When Spoken to by an Alien from the Planet Quarn in Its Native Language“. He’s even been an actor, appearing in several Next Gen episodes (“Encounter at Farpoint” and “Hide and Q”) and The Undiscovered Country as well, all uncredited. He also appeared in Doctor Who and The Legends Of Time, a fan film which you can see here.
- Born May 3, 1982 — Rebecca Hall, 38. Lots of genre work — her first role was as Sarah Borden in The Prestige followed by being Emily Wotton in Dorian Gray and then as Florence Cathcart in The Awakening which in turn led to her being Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3. Next up? Mary in Roald Dahl’s The BFG. Is she done yet? No as next up is the English dub of the voice of Mother of Mirai no Mirai. (She might’ve wanted to have stopped there as her most recent role was Dr. Grace Hart in Holmes & Watson which won an appalling four Golden Raspberries!)
- Born May 3, 1985 — Becky Chambers, 35. Her Wayfarers series won the Best Series Hugo at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon. A Closed and Common Orbit was a finalist at WorldCon 75 for Best Novel but lost out to another exemplary novel, N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate. Record of a Spaceborn Few would be on the ballot at Dublin 2019 but lost out to yet another exemplary novel, Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars. (A digression: The Wayfarers are the best series I’ve listened to in a long time.) “To Be Taught, if Fortunate” is a finalist this year at ConZealand in the Best Novella category and I’ve got in my short list to be listened to.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- What might other planets be like? Here’s Garfield’s idea.
- Free Range shows what happens when someone opens the wrong door.
(11) TIME TO REFILL YOUR LID. Alasdair Stuart’s “The Full Lid 1st May 2020” takes a look at newly announced Doctor Who transmedia story “Time Lord Victorious” and what it tells about the show and its relationship with fans and the world it exists in.
Also, this week, Stuart looks at Lorcan Finnegan’s chilling suburban horror Vivarium and Jules Scheeles’ wonderful comics work. Interstitials are some of the best bits of week one of DC Comics’ daily digital offerings.
The Full Lid publishes weekly at 5 p.m. GMT on Fridays. Signup is free and the last six months are archived here.
Earlier this week, Time Lord Victorious was announced. It’s Doctor Who‘s first (as far as I can tell) trans-media project, telling one story from multiple perspectives across audio drama, books, comics, escape rooms (!!) and collectibles. It’s Crisis on infinite Gallifreys, it’s X-Men vs UNIT, it’s a crossover. A big ‘we fill the stage with goldfish and angst!’ crossover that will tell a massive flotilla of new stories forming one unified narrative. Oh and it features three of the Doctor’s best loved faces.
So of course a lot of people have decided this is a bad thing.
Let’s talk about the crossover, about why some folks feel that way, and why I don’t.
(12) SUPERMARIONATION REVIVED. Two episodes so far. Be sure to watch the “Making Of” at the end of the first episode – begins at 10:35.
‘Nebula-75’ is a new puppet lockdown drama made entirely during confinement in 2020 using only existing puppets and materials. Filmed in Supermarionation, it follows in the tradition of ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘Stingray’ and ‘Fireball-XL5’ while at the same time also being filmed in SuperIsolation and Lo-Budget! ‘Nebula-75’ charts the exploits of Commander Ray Neptune and the crew of the spaceship NEBULA-75 as they make their way across the stars, encountering strange worlds and forms of life hitherto unknown by mankind. It has been created and produced by a small group of filmmakers during the British lockdown on 2020. Although team members from around the world contributed remotely to pre and post production, the entirety of the filming for NEBULA-75 was undertaken by a crew of three who happened to already live together in a small flat in London. Their living room was transformed into a makeshift movie studio – with bookshelves, cardboard boxes and other household objects becoming the interior of the show’s hero spacecraft. This flat was also fortunately home to many of the puppets, props, and costumes that have been accumulated over the course of different productions.
(13) NOT MORE SPARKLY VAMPIRES! J-14 tries to interpret the cryptic clues — “OMG: Author Stephenie Meyer Drops Major Hint She’s Releasing New ‘Twilight’ Book”.
Get ready, people, because it looks like Bella Swan and Edward Cullen’s story may not be over just yet! Yep, that’s right. Almost 15 years after the first Twilight came out, the author of the book series, Stephenie Meyer, just dropped a major hint that she’s got a new book in the works, and fans are seriously freaking out over it!
Get this, you guys — Stephenie has upgraded her website with a very mysterious countdown that has everyone convinced she’s dropping another part of the series.
…The countdown is set to stop at midnight on May 4, 2020.
For those who forgot, back in 2008, rumors spread that the author was working on a new Twilight book, called Midnight Sun, which was going to be the same story but told from Edward’s point of view instead. The first twelve chapters were seemingly leaked online at the time, which in the end, caused Stephenie to shut down the book….
(14)NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Stanley Johnson Pushes For New Release of His 40-Year-Old Virus Novel” in The Guardian, Mark Brown says the British prime minister Boris Johnson’s father, technothriller author Stanley Johnson, is trying to get British publishers to reissue his 1982 novel The Marburg Virus, saying it’s topical and that copies of the paperback are currently selling for 57 pounds on Amazon.
The SF Encyclopedia says this novel is sf (I looked it up!)
…In Johnson’s story, the equivalent of Wuhan is New York, the virus breaks out at the Bronx zoo. Soon the rest of the world bans planes travelling from the US. The main characters are involved in a desperate attempt to track down a rare breed of green monkey, which was the source of the virus.
Some subplots are more improbable than others. One involves the Brazilian head of the World Health Organization and his deputy, a sinister, monocle-wearing Russian with an upper-class English accent, travelling to the Congo to personally oversee the destruction of monkeys responsible for the virus … or so they thought….
(15) RETIRE TO A SAFE DISTANCE. “Coronavirus Fears Have NASA Urging Space Fans To Stay Away From Historic Launch” – NPR has the story.
Because of the coronavirus, NASA’s top official is asking space fans not to travel to Florida later this month to watch astronauts blast off from American soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.
“When we look back to the space shuttle launches, we had hundreds of thousands of people that would descend on the Kennedy Space Center,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a pre-flight briefing. But, he noted, now is unfortunately not a good time for people to gather in large crowds.
“We’re asking people not to travel to Kennedy, but to watch online or watch on your television at home,” said Bridenstine, who confessed that it made him feel “sad” to have to say this.
The upcoming test flight is historic because the two astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, won’t be flying in a NASA vehicle. Instead, they’ll go up inside a capsule created by SpaceX, the rocket firm founded by wealthy entrepreneur Elon Musk.
This first launch of people in a company-owned spacecraft, currently scheduled for 4:32 p.m. EDT on May 27, will be a milestone for both NASA and commercial spaceflight.
(16) REMEMBER THAT MAN-MADE VIRUS? “Love Bug’s creator tracked down to repair shop in Manila”.
The man behind the world’s first major computer virus outbreak has admitted his guilt, 20 years after his software infected millions of machines worldwide.
Filipino Onel de Guzman, now 44, says he unleashed the Love Bug computer worm to steal passwords so he could access the internet without paying.
He claims he never intended it to spread globally.
And he says he regrets the damage his code caused.
“I didn’t expect it would get to the US and Europe. I was surprised,” he said in an interview for Crime Dot Com, a forthcoming book on cyber-crime.
The Love Bug pandemic began on 4 May, 2000.
Victims received an email attachment entitled LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU. It contained malicious code that would overwrite files, steal passwords, and automatically send copies of itself to all contacts in the victim’s Microsoft Outlook address book.
Within 24 hours, it was causing major problems across the globe, reportedly infecting 45 million machines. It also overwhelmed organisations’ email systems, and some IT managers disconnected parts of their infrastructure to prevent infection.
(17) FROST ON THE PUMPKIN. Bob Burns’ Hollywood Halloween shows a unique haunted house put together in 2002 by some well-known special effects creators.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Lise Andreasen, Michael Toman, Contrarius, Mike Kennedy, Cliff Ramshaw, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
16) I remember that one. I got to work early that day and so didn’t hear any news about it. I got the first email suite early and didn’t open the attachments (I “viewed” it and saw it was code). Shortly after that I needed to create an email rule to drop “iloveyou” emails in a special folder.
CSI: Sunnydale.
(1)
Thanks Mike, that was an interesting read. I guess we won’t know if we are living through a singularity until we are on the other side. But I do agree that something significant is happening globally.
I also found KSR’s article to be quite USA-centric, which is not surprising given its audience. Meanwhile in New Zealand, we have recorded our first day with no new COVID19 cases since 28th February when our first case was confirmed. It feels like today, May 4th, also Star Wars Day, is an important one.
There has been talk of COVID19-free countries that have good testing, contact-tracing & quarantine procedures in place forming new partnerships that allow citizens to travel relatively freely between them: a COVID-free Union where citizens of member states can travel between borders, like the European Union?
The long-term economic effects of COVID19 have yet to play out & I expect will be with us for years too.
@4 typo: “dug overdoes”
@6: and yet, in 2014 a major publisher(*) put out Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon — which IIRC has no white people at all in the cast. We reel and stumble vaguely in the direction of a better future?
(*) Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, Simon & Schuster’s SFF imprint in the US.
I’m waiting for Carl Kolchak to get fired from so many jobs that he ends up writing for The Sunnydale Press.
(8) The original comic wasn’t that bad and that was far enough back that we were sort of interested in any movie with comic book origins.
(9) It’s Napoleon XIV’s (Jerry Samuels) birthday. Only in certain parts of the interwebs would his birthday get mentioned before that of Pete Seeger, James Brown, or even Christopher Cross. Ha-Haa!
Also comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. There was a time I could confidently spell Sienkiewicz, but those days are far behind.
Pixelscroll FL-770
(9) To be precise, ‘The Cage’ was replaced by ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, although NBC chose ‘The Man Trap’ to open Star Trek’s US run. In the UK, the BBC launched the show with ‘Where Mo Man…’.
(4) I don’t buy it, if only because I once owned (and read more than once, before donating it to the library store) Bob Woodward’s Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi, and (in the manner of Woodward & Bernstein’s The Final Days) each of Belushi’s last 10 or 15 days was given its own date heading and was chronicled in detail. If such a thing had happened during Belushi’s last 24 hours (or last two weeks), it surely would have appeared in Woodward’s book, probably with multiple sources.
Moreover, a discussion thread at Trek BBS (www.trekbbs.com/threads/inglorious-lies.304183/) includes one commenter’s information that although there were likely reshoots in March (principal photography having been completed in January), they would have occurred weeks after Belushi’s death.
(9) NBC wouldn’t have premiered with “The Cage” (that is, cut to fit in an hour timeslot) because its cast, including the captain, was so different from the final cast. (It must have been confusing for viewers, though, to have been shown the second pilot “Where No Man…” as the third regular episode, for although it had Kirk, Spock, Sulu, and Scotty, it was missing all the other eventual regulars, who’d already appeared in “The Man Trap” and “Charlie X.”)
Meredith Moment: A Star Wars bridging novel my Rebecca Roanhorse is a kindle daily deal.
Star Wars: Resistance Reborn
I have not read it, but the blurb seems to suggest explaining how the end of Last Jedi became the start of Rise of Skywalker, which dear God, was needed,
(15) Cool thing about where I live is that I can see a launch from my house, though it for a big event like this its tempting to make a 30 mile drive for a closer look.
(9) It seems the UK showed Star Trek in production order rather than broadcast order. When the show was syndicated that was the order they showed it in Miami. I wonder if it was the same everywhere else.
gottacook says NBC wouldn’t have premiered with “The Cage” (that is, cut to fit in an hour timeslot) because its cast, including the captain, was so different from the final cast. (It must have been confusing for viewers, though, to have been shown the second pilot “Where No Man…” as the third regular episode, for although it had Kirk, Spock, Sulu, and Scotty, it was missing all the other eventual regulars, who’d already appeared in “The Man Trap” and “Charlie X.”)
Ok I’m confused. NBC did premier with The Cage. And it wouldn’t have been confusing to viewers as they hadn’t seen any other episodes to compare it to. Or am I understanding what you’re saying incorrectly?
Cat Eldridge: NBC did premier with The Cage.
Nope, ‘The Cage” was never shown. It was the pilot used to sell the series to NBC, which caused NBC to ask Roddenberry to go back and re-shoot another pilot (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”) with some changes (including not having a woman as second-in-command).
The first episode shown was “The Man Trap”, followed by “Charlie X”. “The Menagerie” Parts 1 and 2 was a fix-up episode, shown later in the season, and created by putting a frame around “The Cage”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060028/episodes?year=1966&ref_=tt_eps_yr_1966
JJ, my bad. I need to wake as I got it right in the Birthday notes. Thanks for the correction.
c4c
@1
Yes, thanks for the link. Since my sub lapsed, I haven’t spent much time with the NYer.
I’m so multivalent about the covid-19 situation, even lovely KSR (I just finished his Years of Rice and Salt, and recommend it without reservation) can’t walk me through my feelings.
I agree with Soon Lee that the upshot will depend upon where you live. I guess I–foolishly–thought, because all this pandemic science has been available and in our peripheral mind for so long– at least since The Hot Zone and The Coming Plague were bestsellers, if not AIDS, that our government would be minimally prepared. Even Trump, surely even he, could not screw up the nation’s grown-ups to this extent.
I think the “afterworld” seems to USers so bleak because our fellow citizens are so blitheringly revanchist.
I mean, the Stars and Bars and swastikas at a “we demand the risk of contracting and spreading a deadly disease” rally? Great gracious Buddha, what a sad sorry species we are!
Anyway, I think the project of progress and global improvement of the human condition will survive this. I think.
8) Not noted is that the plot of Barb Wire is a irect skiffy remake of Casablanca. Also not noted is that Barb Wire has one of the least titillating nude scenes in film to introduce the character. I paid under a dollar for the rental for Bad Movie Night, and I think I overpaid.
IIRC, “The Menagerie” (not “The Cage”) used the first pilot (never shown) as back history for Pike (and Spock).
(11) I was amused by this passage, with links:
It has, after all, crossed over with itself three, five, two, sort of and thirteen times before.
Three = The Three Doctors
Five = The Five Doctors
Two = The Two Doctors
Sort of = The Curse of Fatal Death
Thirteen = Day of the Doctor
Left out were Dimensions in Time and Time Crash, both of which were made for charity and deserve to be included along with the The Curse of Fatal Death (no comment on comparative quality).
1) The crisis has shown me how little credence so many people put in science when it tells them something they don’t like.
@John A Arkansawyer
The crisis is just confirmed to me that there is a difference between science and “science”.
Science is the practice of apolitical investigation that includes uncertainties that can be hard to translate into policy objectives.
“Science” is a political cudgel used to attempt to compel people into silent compliance.
Regards,
Dann
“It used to be said that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. Today, we admire those who curse the candle—because it is not perfect, not free, not whatever the complainers want it to be.”–Thomas Sowell
Still alive.
It would be unreasonable to put the AC in the window in early May in Massachusetts, right?
@Lis Carey
We still have the furnace running in southern Michigan. Kind of odd for us at this time of year. I’d ship you a box of cool air, but I think it might spoil.
Regards,
Dann
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. – Thomas Jefferson
@Lis
If it’s hot enough to ask that question, it’s hot enough to do it.
@P J Evans–I think when I see Dave, I’ll ask him to do it. If it’s this warm tomorrow, I will even knock on his door.
C’mon–everybody knows that Dave’s not here.
Meanwhile, down here in TN, we are forecast to have a low of 32 on Saturday — nearly a month AFTER our average last frost date.
Sigh. We’ve had an incredibly warm winter and early spring, and now this — the poor confused plants won’t know what to do!
@Dann: What you say is not entirely untrue. Nonetheless, people who have ideological reasons for not wearing a mask in the company of others during a pandemic are almost certainly either putting no credence in science or trying to spread disease or fear. Maybe I overestimate their numbers; they are still out there. I see them.
May the Fourth be with you all!
@John —
Speaking of idiots — a Michigan security guard was shot and killed today because he took a woman to task for not wearing a mask. Seriously, just how crazy ARE these people??
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/04/security-guards-death-might-have-been-because-he-wouldnt-let-woman-store-without-mask/
We had a fistfight break out over mask wearing at supermarkets, but all that happened were some mild injuries. Proof that freely available guns make everything worse.
@dann665: indeed, which is why the clownish incompetents in the UK placed one of their own on the supposedly independent scientific advisory board so they can pretend to be “following the science” while actually ignoring the scientists and placing their own fat, dumb thumbs on the scale. It’s why Trump is still having to share the stage with Fauci, so you can all pretend to be following the science, while Trump spouts gibberish about miracle cures, drugs that don’t work on coronaviruses and injecting bleach.
Contraius says Speaking of idiots — a Michigan security guard was shot and killed today because he took a woman to task for not wearing a mask. Seriously, just how crazy ARE these people??
It’s seriously doubtful that the killers had any ideological reason whatever for what they did given they were of the same class and race as the person they murdered. Wrong place, wrong time is much more likely in this case to be tragically what happened.
Cat Eldridge: Wrong place, wrong time is much more likely in this case
No, it was totally premeditated. The woman and her adult son were at the store, and the security guard chided her for not wearing the required mask and told the cashier not to serve her. She and her son went home and complained that she’d been disrespected to her husband, who came back with them and shot the guard.
Now, it’s possible that the offenders were more stressed out than usual due to the circumstances, but you know, no matter how stressed out I got, I’d never be shooting someone for disrespecting me or my family member — and I doubt that a court will cut the gunman any slack for epidemic-related stress.
JJ say No, it was totally premeditated. The woman and her adult son were at the store, and the security guard chided her for not wearing the required mask and told the cashier not to serve her. She and her son went home and complained that she’d been disrespected to her husband, who came back with them and shot the guard.
I know that the killing itself was pre-mediated. I’m talking about the ideological aspect. I’m assuming that the killers didn’t know the victim before hand so “wrong place, wrong time” and so no previous acquaintance of the parties was what got him killed. Now I could be wrong and that would be something that a a Jury would need to weigh if it is a factor.
A local discount food market heavily shopped by the local ethnic populations requires face masks. The male on door duty told me that he’s been verbally abused a number of times by would be patrons who told him that he had no right to tell them they had no right to shop without a mask.
He gets the Manager who points out that it’s private property and therefore yes, they do have that right to do just that. That makes most of them even angrier…
@Cat —
Umm, Cat, you seem to be assuming here that people of the same class and race can’t have differing ideologies. Are you sure that’s an assumption you want to make?
Hell, my FATHER and I had serious ideological differences. I have serious ideological differences with many people of my own race and class. Why should sharing a race and class rule out ideological differences in your mind??
Contrarius asks Umm, Cat, you seem to be assuming here that people of the same class and race can’t have differing ideologies. Are you sure that’s an assumption you want to make?
Hell, my FATHER and I had serious ideological differences. I have serious ideological differences with many people of my own race and class. Why should sharing a race and class rule out ideological differences in your mind??
Because there’s absolutely no reason at all to assume that there was anything ideological involved here. Not everything that happens of a violent nature involves ideology. Sometimes it’s just someone gets fucking pissed off about how they thought they were perceived that they were treated.
Not everything can be blamed On Trump or the taint he’s left on American cculture.
@Cat Eldridge (amplifying @Contrarius): It’s seriously doubtful that the killers had any ideological reason whatever for what they did given they were of the same class and race as the person they murdered. What planet have you been living on? For all the noise about Charlottesville, “I can’t breathe”, etc., race and class are not the exclusive dividers; there are plenty of white people outside the middle-to-upper class who never had any patience with the Cheeto, and even some who supported him against Clinton for reasons ranging from ~conservative ideology to outright sexism who are now starting to come to their senses. (OTOH, there are Black and Latinx people who support him.) What I see going on here, from (among other things) public statements by idiots, is that there are people who are such desperate supporters of Trump that they take any contradiction of his maunderings personally. (Have you seen the current narrative that the shutdowns are a plot to crash the economy so that Trump will lose the election?) It is not surprising to me, given (e.g.) the armed demonstration a few days ago against the Michigan governor, that a Michigan resident would be meshugana enough to commit first-degree murder when their ideology was personally challenged.
To put it even more bluntly: the narrative that it’s all about easily-recognized markers that separate Them from Us is one of the many Big Lies of a gallimaufry of nasty reactionaries; it’s not a good look.
@Cat —
Baloney!
The guard told them they’d have to wear masks. They killed him because he told them they’d have to wear masks. End of.
Why do you think that doesn’t involve ideology? At the very least, it involves the ideology that someone deserves to be shot for disrespecting you.
Did I blame this on Trump? No, I did not.
@Dann665–A shipment of cool air would be lovely, but I fear you are right that it would spoil in shipment. 🙁
@Cat Eldridge: We have organized groups of people staging “protests” against masks and social distancing as a terrible violation of their rights, while carrying long guns, swastikas, and Confederate flags. One of the most notable of these was in Michigan, where they stormed the state house and chanted “Lock her up.”
Then we have, in Michigan, a woman and her grown son go to a Dollar Store and try to enter without masks. The security guard refused to let them, there was a nasty confrontation, and they left.
Then they came back, with the husband, and with a gun, and confronted the security guard again, and shot him dead. For “disrespecting” the woman.
And you say there’s absolutely no reason to connect the “protest” in the state capital with the premeditated murder of a security guard just enforcing the store’s mask requirement. Well, that’s an opnion, for sure. No one can deny it’s an opinion.
Speaking of ideology and idiots and contributions to violence —
I’m reading today that all of a sudden Hannity is telling these “wonderful” protesters that for heaven’s sake they shouldn’t be carrying guns around. Perish the thought.
Gee, do we see a connection here?
@John A Arkansawyer
I see them as well. While I sympathize with many of their underlying motivations, their methods of protest leave a LOT to be desired.
The….individuals….flying the confederate flag in Michigan grind on my sensibilities. They could go with the Gadsden flag or the Betsy Ross flag if they were interested in a symbol of liberty. Instead they have adopted a symbol of oppression. SMDH….
For context, I’m one of the fortunate folks that can work from home. In the evening, I make masks for area hospitals/care homes. We are taking this mess very seriously.
If our governor could have just treated adults like adults instead of trying to micromanage things, I think the “protests” would have been contained to some individual grumbling.
@Cat Eldridge
Some of this is genetic. Whether we are talking about my Scots/Irish ancestors that had their fill of the British monarchy, Indians who refused to accept the caste system of their country, or Iranians who refused to bow to their new theocrats, Americans have stiff necks for good reasons.
Sometimes having a stiff neck is an asset. Sometimes….it isn’t.
Regards,
Dann
TANSTAAFL/TINSTAAFL/TNSTAAFL – Truth no matter how you slice it.
Aaaaaaand, in another case of “just how stupid can people really be”, ANOTHER Michigan man has just been arrested, this one for assault. This was a guy walking into a Dollar Tree (different from Dollar General or Dollar Store) store — who, when told he had to wear a mask, proceeded to wipe his nose on the employee’s sleeve.
But of course, according to Cat, this can’t possibly involve ideology — since both the man and the employee were white. Right?
@Dann665–
Um, what? Could you clarify that?
Because right now, I’m trying to picture how one contains the spread of a highly contagious disease that can be spread by people who are not yet or may never be symptomatic, but which can kill or do permanent organ damage to some nontrivial number of those infected, without enforceable rules.
Seriously. In what way did Governor Whitmer “micromanage” or otherwise not treat you like an adult?
Sometimes, an important part of being an adult is recognizing when unwelcome rules are actually necessary.
I mean, leaving aside the considerable evidence that these aren’t just individual Outraged Michiganders–or Marylanders–or, yesterday, Bay Staters–getting together to express their Outrage. These are funded and organized and produce quite small turnouts. Their purpose is to encourage, and create the illusion of, a broad public outrage that doesn’t exist. People, including Republicans, are more worried about restrictions being lifted too soon, rather than being kept in place too long.
They’re managing to encourage some fools to do stupid things, and that’s their immediate goal, in pursuit of the longer-term goal of causing disruption and division.
A lot of people are pissed off at all the rules that grocery stores suddenly enforce upon their customers, rules that were usually pushed on them by the state government and that are not the fault of the poor supermarket employees who have to enforce them. Tempers are often frayed, a lot of people are fed up and I have personally witnessed confrontations between staff and customers. Are these confrontations politically or ideologically motivated? Some of them certainly are, e.g. the white supermarket cashier who decided to yell at the Pakistani immigrant couple (even wearing masks before it was made mandatory) that they didn’t have a shopping cart, when they were at the check out and a shopping cart wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. Never mind that it was 9 PM, there were only a handful of shoppers in the store and the couple hadn’t bothered anybody. Others probably are just people being angry.
However, there is a difference verbal confrontations along the lines of “Forgert it, I bet your shitty store doesn’t have [product] anyway” and physical assault or even murder. And the armed protesters in Michigan at the very least demonstrate to others that violence is an acceptable way to react to being annoyed by restrictions.
Also, it is perfectly possible to protest corona virus related restrictions, while maintaining social distancing and without endangering fellow protesters or bystanders. There have been several protests against the corona restrictions in Germany. Restaurants protested against the enforced closures by placing empty chairs on public squares. A highly visible protest, makes the point and doesn’t endanger anybody, because chairs can’t catch Covid-19. There have also been protests of people, many/most with masks (which is an issue in itself, because covering your face during a protest/rally is illegal in Germany, but I guess anti-infection measurs trump mask bans in this case), standing 2 meters apart on public squares or a group walking around distributing copies of the constitution, while maintaining the necessary distance. One artist set up statues as a protest – 2 meters apart, of course. And Fridays for Future are now staging virtual protests.
So in short, you can protest against the restrictions (or other things) without being stupid about it and endangering yourself and others. And there is absolutely no reason to carry guns at a protest. This isn’t 1919 after all and there is no free corps waiting to gun down Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht..
Resurfaced after reading “Network Effect”, the latest Murderbot. What a ride!
Here in boring Massachusetts, and a short distance away in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire, when I’ve had to go out myself (which I try to avoid, being high risk, I stand in a line, with everyone minding the tape on the ground marking out the six foot intervals, everyone wears masks, and waits peacefully till someone leaves the store so someone else can go in.
We did have an astroturf “protest” yesterday, and not everyone is as good as one might wish at maintaining social distance while reaching for things on the store shelves.
I haven’t seen the anger that is, apparently, only to be expected. I might expect it, of course, if two people were reaching for the last roll of toilet paper. Not at someone enforcing store rules.
@lis That protest at the Statehouse yesterday was certainly a sad affair. If they got more than 150 people there I’d be surprised.
Re: guns
The guns are not the problem. The people are the problem…always.
In the case of the protests, it is nothing more than performance theater. Akin to the D.C. protests a few years ago with people cosplaying as genitalia.
Yes, I’ve been down the gun rights rabbit hole many times. We don’t have to go back down it again.
@Lis Carey
There were a few things that stood out to me.
fishing from a motorized boat was illegal, while fishing from a non-motorized boat was legal. I kayak. We raft up in close proximity on a regular basis. There isn’t any epidemiological basis for her order on that issue.
golf (including disc golf) was illegal. While I can see the sense in regulating the clustering of people, both activities can be accomplished while maintaining proper social distance.
purchasing of painting supplies and seeds for home gardens was illegal. Yet we were able to do a curbside pickup of other needed home improvement supplies from the local big-box retailer. This is the time of year when home gardens need to be planted. There are people that rely on home gardens for a non-trivial number of calories.
One nursery (i.e. plants not children) was closed while a second remained open. The second had a bakery and therefore was considered a “food source” and remained open.
The sale of certain products such as child seats were banned. So if you had a newborn but no car seat, you couldn’t purchase one to bring them home. If your car seat was broken in an accident, you couldn’t purchase a new one.
It would also have helped if she would have masked up back in March. That would have been true leadership. She doesn’t seem to have that quality.
What she should have done is to define in broad terms the conditions to avoid and leave it to the adults to figure out how they can satisfy those reasonable limitations. She opted to micromanage activities instead.
Gov. Whitmer has demonstrated that she is a standard politician that likes using that power to tell people what to do but doesn’t like to be told what to do. I suspected it when she ran for office and regret having the suspicions be confirmed.
There’s a meme running around that points out a laundry list of concerns that include both acting properly to limit the spread of the virus and concern about government deciding that our rights are secondary to bureaucratic interests. A person can be legitimately concerned about more than one issue at the same time; especially when multiple issues are in tension with one another.
@Cora Buhlert
I’ve been pretty lucky when it comes to interacting with others at the store. A couple of guys were about 60% to the point of brawling over social distancing. Nobody actually swung and things calmed down after a bit. But otherwise, everyone has been very accommodating of one another. Lots of mildly awkward moments, but we’ll get through it.
Regards,
Dann
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome. – Isaac Asimov
@rochrist–Yes, that “protest” was a sad little affair. And they bunched close together, as if afraid reality might intrude.
I had to make a quick run to the store this morning before work. Nearly everyone was wearing a mask–except, I noticed, the security guards.
Maybe they thought their uniforms would protect them.
Dann665: fishing from a motorized boat was illegal, while fishing from a non-motorized boat was legal. I kayak. We raft up in close proximity on a regular basis. There isn’t any epidemiological basis for her order on that issue.
You are wrong. A motorized boat is a lot more likely to result in a callout to EMTs than a non-motorized boat.
And you say “We raft up in close proximity on a regular basis”, after complaining about being “micromanaged”? Seriously? It’s people who can’t behave like responsible adults, who do stupid things like rafting up in close proximity, who require the issuing of the rules you call “micromanagement”, because they can’t be trusted to behave like responsible adults. It’s not infecting themselves that’s the problem — people who behave stupidly like that have brought the infection on themselves. The problem is all of the innocent people they will take with them.
You say “What she should have done is to define in broad terms the conditions to avoid and leave it to the adults to figure out how they can satisfy those reasonable limitations” while simultaneously pointing out that those so-called adults can’t be trusted to satisfy reasonable liimitations.
The protestors at the statehouse, who are not observing safety rules, are Demonstration Number 1 that there are people who can’t be trusted to behave like responsible adults. And if the damage was only limited to those irresponsible “adults”, that would be fine. The problem is that it’s not — those people are going to kill a lot of innocent people who didn’t deserve it.
Dann665: Gov. Whitmer has demonstrated that she is a standard politician that likes using that power to tell people what to do but doesn’t like to be told what to do.
What does this even mean? She was elected to run the state in its best interests, and that’s what she’s been doing.
Dann665 on May 5, 2020 at 1:51 pm said:”The guns are not the problem. The people are the problem…always.”
It’s both.In any population you will always get people who are idiots/ criminals/ extremists etc. These people can do a lot more damage if they have access to guns.
Australia: suffers mass shooting. Bans assault weapons
New Zealand: suffers a mass shooting. Bans assault weapons
Canada: suffers a mass shooting. Bans assault weapons
USA: suffers mass shootings. Sends hopes & prayers.
In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, you can still a gun license & own guns though, just not the sort of automatic weapons associated with mass shootings.
American exceptionalism is not helpful in keeping its people safe.