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silveradeptGreetings, everyone! How are you all doing, given that some of you are still just as hard at work and dealing with a more surly population than usual, and some of you are dealing with the complexities of doing work while at home while schools have been shuttered, and still more of you are trying to figure out what to do at all, because you've been furloughed, laid off, or otherwise put out of work and your bills are still due. Whatever your situation, I hope that it improves and stabilizes in your favor soon.
A prayer for the Spring Equinox: Let the time of hoarding be done, and spread fairness and justice to all. And perhaps, when we are done healing ourselves, we will continue the work of healing the planet that our absence has started. Perhaps by starting with an address to the natural world, from those who wish to live in harmony with it. And then by realizing to defeat climate change, the underpinnings of what brought it into existence, many of which are prodoundly racist, also have to be addressed and rectified.
Some comedy - Intern Maureen's Guide To Not Being Murdered In A Quaint English Village, which mostly boils down to "Don't go to quaint English villages, but if you must, stick to the pub and hang out with people walking dogs".
Supposedly "Tibetan" singing bowls are not Tibetan at all, and have only acquired that moniker to make them appeal to white people who want the exotic and mystic mythos of Tibet.
Selected stories of women making history on the east coast of the United States and on the west coast of the United States.
More things have appeared online to help people learn and enjoy and stay connected to their communities. Authors doing book read-alouds and drawing sessions. A set of Haymarket Books e-books available for free.rmc28 has a few other book giveaways from around the web. bladespark has a free book available, along with others from JMS publishing. (I have known bladespark over Internet from the "three exclamation points stand for quality" years of my life, for full disclosure purposes.)
Various platforms for the purpose of sharing videos between people, watching them together, and chatting about it. And a Twitter thread of musicals and shows that don't already have commercial releases and aren't, presumably, bootlegs of the same. Also, Til Further Notice, a streamed concert of performers, mostly from their living rooms, that would have taken place in Willie Nelson's backyard.
The Down Dog Yoga app and other fitness type apps made by the same company are free until April 1, because exercise. Similarly,
Headspace has done the same for many of their meditation courses, because mental health.
Milk Street online classes are fee until 30 April, since our kitchens are likely to get more use right now.
spindizzy has another list of free and reduced price things, and tozka has updated their list since last posting.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
covid_corvid is attempting to magpie together all of these links and offers into a single place, with category posts, so if you like organizing what you've found or been linked to, that's a place to do it!
covidcoffeecorner has appeared, with a daily talking prompt to bring the community together to talk anout anything but the virus raging around.
fandom_checkin can also be a daily discussion point, as well as a place to let people know how you are doing on a regular basis.
stayinside is for people to commiserate and have community because they're stuck inside and can't go out.
fansathome is a rec community (because one of the things we do when given lots of time is recommend ways of making our TBR piles longer).
A Twitter thread of animal cameras. Because wildlife is sometimes the best thing to put on your screen. And if that's not enough, even more wildlife and animal cameras to look at.
If you would like your entertainment on tape, The Internet Archive has a VHS Vault of all sorts of things that came out on VHS when that was the dominant platform.
a gigantic list of linguistics resources, just in case you wanted to learn and immerse yourself in material about the study of languages.
Audible has opened up a portion of their collection for use for free. Additionally, several streaming services are offering 30-day trials of their services, rather than the 7-day trials they usually offer, in case you have time and have a particular show you want to binge in a hurry.
Sir Patrick Stewart is reading Shakespeare sonnets, one a day. And sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann is introducing a bigger audience to the works of humorist and essayist James Thurber through readings. (Whatever you think of his politics, or his sportscasting, Olbermann is good at reading Thurber. And Thurber is funny and underrated. Although not, in any way, universally a good, as none of us are.)
A virtual performance of singers and instrumentalists of "Love, Sweet Love". Which is one option, and there's a nice Google doc making comparisons between platforms to see how good they are for music instruction or simultaneous playing.
And, if you are a fan of Good Eats, or the style in which Alton Brown does cooking, information, and preparation, then enjoy this video of his handwashing technique and why soap and water is remarkably effective against COVID-19 and other viruses of its type.
As to the virus itself, it looks like there are some promising clinical trials for an early-infection drug.
A graphic series explaining about four groups of persons, how they relate to COVID-19, and why people are being asked to interact as little as possible and at a safe distance. Two of the four groups are relatively easy to identify, as those who are already infected and those who are likeliest to be in close and continued contact with them. A third group is much harder to figure out, because they could have it and transmit it, but not actually have symptoms until after they've transmitted it. The fourth group are people who usually don't go out, and if the rest of us stay away from each other, we can make the unknown third group better known and we can protect the fourth group (and the third group) from becoming part of an infected group.
Ibuprofen seems to be an okay drug to take to try and relieve some of the symptoms of COVID-19, despite a Tweet from a health minister in France that suggested ibuprofen might exacerbate the virus.
The various states of the United States have had varied reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of which you will find sensible, others of which you will wonder why those jokers got elected in the first place.
Laura Gao talks about Wuhan, a city now infamous as the origin of COVID-19, and how people around her have gone from racistly ignorant to ignorantly racist because of it, discounting the rich history, art, and culture of Wuhan.
A person who decided to indicate his displeasure with COVID-19 precautions by licking various things on a shelf has been charged with making terrorist threats. Of course, said person also filmed themselves doing it with commentary.
A picture that suggests the seriousness of the COVID-19 epidemic - The Kaaba, the most holy of locations for Muslims, deserted, with no pilgrims around it at all. (If that doesn't strike you as intensely impactful, here's a Twitter thread by the same person explaining the things that make this very important, including the pilgrimage as a pillar of Islam, and the fact that all prayers of Muslims are supposed to be directed to that specific spot in Mecca. (If you are ever invited to pray or observe in a mosque, there is something about that mosque's construction, architecture, or decoration that makes it easy for someone to orient themselves in the correct direction for prayer. Your host can probably point it out to you.)
Right now, the best thing to do against COVID-19 is fight a holding action - give no ground by giving no methods for community transmission and infection - until vaccine, treatment, and immunity through infection will close off infection avenues for the virus until it is under control. What that probably means, in this case, is a lot of strict measures now to get things under control, and then keeping infection rates low enough that control is maintained while allowing much of regular life to resume, until immunization and treatment are possible.
Which, yes, means doing things like not going to your regular dance group - community dancing is an easy vector of transmission.
Food, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be a method of transmission, so long as you observe proper protocols about food safety. Which also means: don't be racist about your takeout choices.
Figuring out which regulations to be very strict on and which ones to be very thorough with can help make sure there's enough hospital workers and equipment to treat patients with. Because they're already getting overwhelmed with the number of cases.
iFixit is sourcing repair manuals and information on medical ventilators, so that when they break, or bits of them break, those who need to fix them quickly can have access to the repair manuals and figure out what parts need replacing. 3D printers all around the world are designing and manufacturing PPE and various important parts for ventilators as larger manufacturing capacities are still not mandated to spin up those things. Although some are doing so on their own.
Distributed computing projects like Rosetta@Home and Folding@Home are prioritizing research in trying to find useful drugs and targets for those drugs to fight COVID-19. If you would like, you can contribute your unused computing and GPU power toward these projects (and many others) by installing the appropriate computer units. (It would be fabulous if some people who were on World Community Grid and Rosetta@Home, both of which use BOINC, wanted to join up with team Organization XIII, if you want a team. It's a very "team of me" at the moment.)
An untested method for attempting to get one ventilator to ventilate four patients might start seeing use in very desperate situations, but the conditions for testing it are very specific to see if it might work, which might not give it much use at all.
Stuck in quarantine sometimes means you have enough time to filk. And if you have good friends to sing with, then it's even better. Harvard Med Students doing a cover of "All The Small Things", for example. Or a Balkan singing group filking at a proper distance from each other.
Visualization of pandemic deadliness, for context, although the COVID ball is, of course, changing in size every day. Which is another reminder that the math almost never comes out on the side of good things happening.
princessofgeeks is soliciting specific input about how people who cannot work from home at all are handling being out and interacting with people and things in a potentially COVID-19 rich environment, and how they keep their own households as clean as possible.
Hope often springs from action and feeling like you can do something, even if it's a small thing.
And now for some corvid-related things, like a story from some time ago about a crow adopting a kitten, corvids annoying and aggravating other animals, and several displays of corvid intelligence and thinking.
Last for tonight, you can watch and see what a sub-30 second run of an agility course looks like. It's done in a hurry. I'm not sure there are humans that can run a similar kind of steeplechase like that in that kind of time.
Also, some very delightful pictures of nature (and sometimes, the interactions we have with it, but mostly nature).
A prayer for the Spring Equinox: Let the time of hoarding be done, and spread fairness and justice to all. And perhaps, when we are done healing ourselves, we will continue the work of healing the planet that our absence has started. Perhaps by starting with an address to the natural world, from those who wish to live in harmony with it. And then by realizing to defeat climate change, the underpinnings of what brought it into existence, many of which are prodoundly racist, also have to be addressed and rectified.
Some comedy - Intern Maureen's Guide To Not Being Murdered In A Quaint English Village, which mostly boils down to "Don't go to quaint English villages, but if you must, stick to the pub and hang out with people walking dogs".
Supposedly "Tibetan" singing bowls are not Tibetan at all, and have only acquired that moniker to make them appeal to white people who want the exotic and mystic mythos of Tibet.
Selected stories of women making history on the east coast of the United States and on the west coast of the United States.
More things have appeared online to help people learn and enjoy and stay connected to their communities. Authors doing book read-alouds and drawing sessions. A set of Haymarket Books e-books available for free.
rmc28 has a few other book giveaways from around the web. bladespark has a free book available, along with others from JMS publishing. (I have known bladespark over Internet from the "three exclamation points stand for quality" years of my life, for full disclosure purposes.)Various platforms for the purpose of sharing videos between people, watching them together, and chatting about it. And a Twitter thread of musicals and shows that don't already have commercial releases and aren't, presumably, bootlegs of the same. Also, Til Further Notice, a streamed concert of performers, mostly from their living rooms, that would have taken place in Willie Nelson's backyard.
The Down Dog Yoga app and other fitness type apps made by the same company are free until April 1, because exercise. Similarly,
Headspace has done the same for many of their meditation courses, because mental health.
Milk Street online classes are fee until 30 April, since our kitchens are likely to get more use right now.
spindizzy has another list of free and reduced price things, and tozka has updated their list since last posting.covid_corvid is attempting to magpie together all of these links and offers into a single place, with category posts, so if you like organizing what you've found or been linked to, that's a place to do it!covidcoffeecorner has appeared, with a daily talking prompt to bring the community together to talk anout anything but the virus raging around.fandom_checkin can also be a daily discussion point, as well as a place to let people know how you are doing on a regular basis. stayinside is for people to commiserate and have community because they're stuck inside and can't go out.fansathome is a rec community (because one of the things we do when given lots of time is recommend ways of making our TBR piles longer). A Twitter thread of animal cameras. Because wildlife is sometimes the best thing to put on your screen. And if that's not enough, even more wildlife and animal cameras to look at.
If you would like your entertainment on tape, The Internet Archive has a VHS Vault of all sorts of things that came out on VHS when that was the dominant platform.
a gigantic list of linguistics resources, just in case you wanted to learn and immerse yourself in material about the study of languages.
Audible has opened up a portion of their collection for use for free. Additionally, several streaming services are offering 30-day trials of their services, rather than the 7-day trials they usually offer, in case you have time and have a particular show you want to binge in a hurry.
Sir Patrick Stewart is reading Shakespeare sonnets, one a day. And sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann is introducing a bigger audience to the works of humorist and essayist James Thurber through readings. (Whatever you think of his politics, or his sportscasting, Olbermann is good at reading Thurber. And Thurber is funny and underrated. Although not, in any way, universally a good, as none of us are.)
A virtual performance of singers and instrumentalists of "Love, Sweet Love". Which is one option, and there's a nice Google doc making comparisons between platforms to see how good they are for music instruction or simultaneous playing.
And, if you are a fan of Good Eats, or the style in which Alton Brown does cooking, information, and preparation, then enjoy this video of his handwashing technique and why soap and water is remarkably effective against COVID-19 and other viruses of its type.
As to the virus itself, it looks like there are some promising clinical trials for an early-infection drug.
A graphic series explaining about four groups of persons, how they relate to COVID-19, and why people are being asked to interact as little as possible and at a safe distance. Two of the four groups are relatively easy to identify, as those who are already infected and those who are likeliest to be in close and continued contact with them. A third group is much harder to figure out, because they could have it and transmit it, but not actually have symptoms until after they've transmitted it. The fourth group are people who usually don't go out, and if the rest of us stay away from each other, we can make the unknown third group better known and we can protect the fourth group (and the third group) from becoming part of an infected group.
Ibuprofen seems to be an okay drug to take to try and relieve some of the symptoms of COVID-19, despite a Tweet from a health minister in France that suggested ibuprofen might exacerbate the virus.
The various states of the United States have had varied reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of which you will find sensible, others of which you will wonder why those jokers got elected in the first place.
Laura Gao talks about Wuhan, a city now infamous as the origin of COVID-19, and how people around her have gone from racistly ignorant to ignorantly racist because of it, discounting the rich history, art, and culture of Wuhan.
A person who decided to indicate his displeasure with COVID-19 precautions by licking various things on a shelf has been charged with making terrorist threats. Of course, said person also filmed themselves doing it with commentary.
A picture that suggests the seriousness of the COVID-19 epidemic - The Kaaba, the most holy of locations for Muslims, deserted, with no pilgrims around it at all. (If that doesn't strike you as intensely impactful, here's a Twitter thread by the same person explaining the things that make this very important, including the pilgrimage as a pillar of Islam, and the fact that all prayers of Muslims are supposed to be directed to that specific spot in Mecca. (If you are ever invited to pray or observe in a mosque, there is something about that mosque's construction, architecture, or decoration that makes it easy for someone to orient themselves in the correct direction for prayer. Your host can probably point it out to you.)
Right now, the best thing to do against COVID-19 is fight a holding action - give no ground by giving no methods for community transmission and infection - until vaccine, treatment, and immunity through infection will close off infection avenues for the virus until it is under control. What that probably means, in this case, is a lot of strict measures now to get things under control, and then keeping infection rates low enough that control is maintained while allowing much of regular life to resume, until immunization and treatment are possible.
Which, yes, means doing things like not going to your regular dance group - community dancing is an easy vector of transmission.
Food, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be a method of transmission, so long as you observe proper protocols about food safety. Which also means: don't be racist about your takeout choices.
Figuring out which regulations to be very strict on and which ones to be very thorough with can help make sure there's enough hospital workers and equipment to treat patients with. Because they're already getting overwhelmed with the number of cases.
iFixit is sourcing repair manuals and information on medical ventilators, so that when they break, or bits of them break, those who need to fix them quickly can have access to the repair manuals and figure out what parts need replacing. 3D printers all around the world are designing and manufacturing PPE and various important parts for ventilators as larger manufacturing capacities are still not mandated to spin up those things. Although some are doing so on their own.
Distributed computing projects like Rosetta@Home and Folding@Home are prioritizing research in trying to find useful drugs and targets for those drugs to fight COVID-19. If you would like, you can contribute your unused computing and GPU power toward these projects (and many others) by installing the appropriate computer units. (It would be fabulous if some people who were on World Community Grid and Rosetta@Home, both of which use BOINC, wanted to join up with team Organization XIII, if you want a team. It's a very "team of me" at the moment.)
An untested method for attempting to get one ventilator to ventilate four patients might start seeing use in very desperate situations, but the conditions for testing it are very specific to see if it might work, which might not give it much use at all.
Stuck in quarantine sometimes means you have enough time to filk. And if you have good friends to sing with, then it's even better. Harvard Med Students doing a cover of "All The Small Things", for example. Or a Balkan singing group filking at a proper distance from each other.
Visualization of pandemic deadliness, for context, although the COVID ball is, of course, changing in size every day. Which is another reminder that the math almost never comes out on the side of good things happening.
princessofgeeks is soliciting specific input about how people who cannot work from home at all are handling being out and interacting with people and things in a potentially COVID-19 rich environment, and how they keep their own households as clean as possible.Hope often springs from action and feeling like you can do something, even if it's a small thing.
And now for some corvid-related things, like a story from some time ago about a crow adopting a kitten, corvids annoying and aggravating other animals, and several displays of corvid intelligence and thinking.
Last for tonight, you can watch and see what a sub-30 second run of an agility course looks like. It's done in a hurry. I'm not sure there are humans that can run a similar kind of steeplechase like that in that kind of time.
Also, some very delightful pictures of nature (and sometimes, the interactions we have with it, but mostly nature).
no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 10:07 pm (UTC)What does !!! mean today? /another old
no subject
Date: 2020-03-27 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 10:51 pm (UTC)Thanks for the links!
no subject
Date: 2020-03-27 12:44 am (UTC)Surely this is over the top!
« Diehard connoisseurs travel across the planet hunting for authentic antique Tibetan singing bowls, which they insist have been infused with “sacred ancient sound technology,” unlike cheap and fraudulent “modern knock offs.” »
...my goodness. I just thought they sounded cool and were pleasant for meditation. Didn't realize it was a whole... Thing.
Now I'm trying to figure out where they *did* come from, mystical ancient sound technology or no. Seems like perhaps China, according to Wikipedia.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-27 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-27 05:11 pm (UTC)disappointed, yet not surprised to hear about the tibetan singing bowls.
the article about the english village was a delightful read :D
no subject
Date: 2020-03-27 05:53 pm (UTC)It's not surprising, no, about the bowls, but it is still a disappointment.