#uncategorized
DNA Lounge: Wherein Musicians Are Begging Fans to Mask Up at Concerts
"Yes SXSW was a superspreader event, and yes my entire band got COVID, as did many others," tweeted Canadian singer-songwriter Charlotte Cornfield. "We obviously knew there was a risk going in, but really feeling for everyone whose tours/lives have been derailed by this thing." Several other bands and radio DJs, music promoters, and record label employees have tweeted similar sentiments after testing positive. [...]
"Large swaths of the live music industry are overeager to pretend we're out of the pandemic. We're leaving behind many folks with disabilities and illnesses, which is not a new problem -- just a new way the ableism inherent in many venue spaces is being expressed since COVID," Speedy Ortiz singer-guitarist Sadie Dupuis tells Pitchfork. "When mask mandates first went away, the largest nurses' union in the country petitioned the CDC to reverse its decision and reinstate masking due to breakthrough cases. Because, vaccinated or not, masks are incredibly effective at preventing infection. With many of us having received boosters six-plus months ago, their efficacy is waning. A breakthrough case could wind up costing your favorite artist tens of thousands of dollars of expected income, the difference between a profitable tour and a tour in the red." [...]
Harpist Mary Lattimore says she still doesn't feel comfortable performing live, but knows it's an essential part of her job. "I link it to the lack of streaming revenue for artists," she explains. "Tour income is basically the only income. It was nonexistent for years so we have to get out there, but we're pretty vulnerable, going from place to place every night. One case of COVID and bands potentially lose thousands and thousands of dollars." [...]
For other touring artists, mask policies aren't necessarily up to them, but rather the headliners they're supporting. Wednesday are slated to open for Beach Bunny on a two-month-long tour, and their newfound discomfort around COVID-19 policy isn't reason enough to bail on such a big opportunity. "Because we're just openers on the tour, I don't feel like we have a ton of authority [to ask for that]," [...] The most I've felt comfortable asking people to wear masks so far is saying, 'Please wear your masks tonight; we have more dates we gotta play,' into the mic.
But "catching COVID might scuttle the tour" is only the start of it, as all of this completely ignores the specter of Long COVID. Wait until two years from now when you learn that your favorite band isn't a band any more, because the financial pressure to crowd into small rooms with antimaskers and antivaxxers means that now they have MS, or diabetes, or 20% lung function, and -- oh yeah -- no health insurance. (Are you kidding? They were in a band. )
Following the money
One thing that has long baffled me about our ongoing global clusterfuck has been the push to just pretend that it's not happening. Who benefits financially from that?
I think the answer is, commercial landlords and hotel financiers.
Backing up:
I don't think that the dropping of all mitigation measures happened just because "people" are "over it". I don't think it's some spontaneous groundswell. People have been given permission to say they're "over it", by misinformation campaigns that have been inflicted upon them.
Random individuals may be driven by infantile short-sightedness, but they are being encouraged in this by businesses, governments and state actors; they are being given cover to just pretend that it's not happening. Businesses are legendarily short-sighted, rarely able to see past the end of the quarter, but more than two years into this, shouldn't they have seen some patterns emerge? Even from the point of view of Capitalism Red in Tooth and Claw, how is it in their interest to have their employees dying by the thousands? To have them become saddled with life-long disabilities that will impact work and jack up the companies' own insurance costs for decades to come?
We've got stunts like this, where Maskless Mayor Breed gathers together a Rogue's Gallery of the world's worst businesses and pressures them into forcing their employees back into their cars and cubicles:
By committing to San Francisco, these businesses and many more are investing in this city and the people who live and work here. We are excited to welcome people back to downtown to work, dine, and experience our arts and culture. March is a new chapter for SF!
Which, due to character limits, she followed up with a second twit containing nothing but a list of the various companies' twitter handles. Ideally she'd be forced to wear their logos on her blazer like a NASCAR jacket, but she probably wouldn't even be embarrassed by that. Scarlet letter my ass.
tbreisacher: If the @SFPride parade was a tweet:
London Breed:
>
>> @BankofAmerica @BlackRock @sffed @FibroGenInc @GapInc @warriors @Google @HOKNetwork @Invitae @jpmorganchase @Meta @salesforce @united @Kilroyrealty @Mastercard @Microsoft @Orrick @SFGiants @SFSymphony @SPUR_Urbanist @Uber @usfca @Visa @WellsFargo
If a CEO wanted their employees back in the office for whatever reason (they think they're more productive, more controllable, whatever) they would just DO it. they don't need permission. They don't need the mayor campaigning for it. It's literally their call, and theirs alone. So why is the mayor campaigning for this? On whose behalf? We know it's not the CEOs, those are the targets of the campaign.
Part of the party line on this has been about the financial pain suffered by other downtown businesses, so is this on behalf of the hot dog cart on the corner? The food truck, the pizzeria, the upscale lunchtime businessman steakhouse?
No. Those businesses have no lobbying muscle at all. And more to the point, the various mayors and governors gave zero fucks about those businesses during the decades when the tech companies were building their own "free" cafeterias and restaurants directly into their office towers. Those companies did the math and figured out that if they served their employee a $6 meal in-house, they'd get an extra 2 hours work out of them every day. And all they had to do was shank that hot dog cart, that food truck, that pizzeria. The mayor gave zero fucks while that was happening.
So who's left?
Commercial landlords. They see the spectre of the Googles of the world deciding that they need half as much floor space, and strong-arming their way into smaller leases, or just defaulting on it and daring them to fight it out in court. "We're Google, what are you gonna do?"
I think that those are the donors on whose behalf Breed is lobbying. That's why she wants us to believe the pandemic is over. So that when the CEOs tell everyone to get back to work, to justify those downtown tower leases, that the drones don't just quit. She, and the landlords, require the consent of the abused.
Notably, it will not be the employees of the commercial real-estate holding companies whose lives will be put at risk by these back-to-the-cubicle policies.
Who else, though? Here's another clue:
Breed is currently on a corporate-funded tour of the Great Houses of Europe, glad-handing movers and shakers in the capital cities, putting on her dog-and-pony show about how San Francisco is still a great tourist destination. Hitting all the talking points countering the Fox News stories about blood in the streets, telling everyone the Tenderloin is still a safe and welcoming place for High End Retail.
So who benefits from that? Which lobbyists will be pulling those strings? Airlines, obviously, but more importantly, hotel financiers, and the money-laundering oligarchs who love them.
As we learned from Scooby Doo, Donald Trump and Lex Luthor, it's always a real estate scam.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
#uncategorized #bigbrother #conspiracies #corporations #doomed #firstperson #plague #sf
Y2038
Your periodic reminder that we are closer to the Y2038 bug than the Y2K bug:
SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP("2038-01-18 19:14:07") -> **2147483647;**
SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP("2038-01-18 19:14:08") -> **NULL;**
SELECT VERSION() -> 10.4.22-MariaDB-log
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
#uncategorized #computers #doomed #firstperson #linux #time_t
Robot war dogs hunting migrants now
Dystopian robot dogs are the latest in a long history of US-Mexico border surveillance:
Each is embedded with different types of cameras (thermal, night vision, long-range) and sensors (chemical, weapons detection). DHS praised the device's ability to cross multiple terrains -- including sand, rocks and hills -- and its durability in high heat and cramped spaces.
DHS' choice of vendor sparked additional concern. While most police departments leased their pups from Boston Dynamics, which forbids customers weaponizing any of their tech, DHS chose Philadelphia-based Ghost Robotics. Late last year, the company debuted a version of its robot dogs equipped with long-range guns capable of hitting targets at a reported 1,200 meters.
DHS's oddly cheery blogpost also implied the robots would be used beyond the border itself, including "towns, cities, or ports'' where DHS agents might encounter dangerous conditions. Federal officials have increased authority to stop and search civilians within 100 miles of the border, despite fourth amendment protections against arbitrary or excessive stops and seizures.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
#uncategorized #bigbrother #computers #corporations #doomed #grimmeathookfuture #killdozer #madscience #robots #security #stormtroopers
Cheese Caves
This cheese is not a cheese of honor.
No highly esteemed cheese is commemorated here.
No valued cheese is here.
What cheese is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.
Cheese Caves and Food Surpluses: Why the U.S. Government currently stores 1.4 billion lbs of cheese:
Hundreds of feet below the ground in Missouri, there are hundreds of thousands of pounds of American cheese. Deep in converted limestone mines, caves kept perfectly at 36 degrees Fahrenheit store stockpiles of government-owned cheese comprising the country's 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese. [...]
The government set a new policy to subsidize dairy, providing two billion dollars to the industry over the next four years. While this plan was welcome to dairy farmers, it also primed them for overproduction.
Farmers who had been struggling were motivated to produce as much dairy as they could, knowing that whatever was not sold on the market could likely be purchased by the government, and it was. By the early 1980s, the government owned over 500 million pounds of cheese. The reason the dairy product was converted to cheese was because it has a longer shelf life than other dairy products as the government searched for solutions to the problem it had created. [...]
Though demand is declining, production is not. It has risen 13% since 2010. In 2016, the American dairy industry dumped a whopping 43 million gallons of milk into fields, animal feed, and anaerobic lagoons. Though this waste is staggering, it is also not representative of the size of the surpluses being run by dairy farms. The dairy industry received 43 billion and 36.3 billion dollars in 2016 and 2017, respectively, from the federal government. In 2018, 42% of revenue for U.S. dairy producers came from some kind of government support.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen has a new gig: Monkey Vivisectionist
15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Chips Died:
"Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from debilitating health effects," said the PCRM's research advocacy director Jeremy Beckham. "They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals."
Neuralink chips were implanted by drilling holes into the monkeys' skulls. One primate developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized. Another was discovered missing fingers and toes, "possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma," and had to be put down. A third began uncontrollably vomiting shortly after surgery, and days later "appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue." An autopsy revealed the animal suffered from a brain hemorrhage.
The PCRM filed a complaint with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday, accusing UC Davis and Neuralink of nine violations of the Animal Welfare Act. "Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a 'brain-machine interface,'" the group wrote in the complaint. [...]
Musk said in December that Neuralink hoped to start human testing this year.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
#uncategorized #computers #doomed #madscience #monkeys #parts #tasp
Neoliberal John Snow
This whole account is pure gold.
Broad street businesses were complaining so I reinstalled the pump handle.
There is no parliamentary solution to the 1854 cholera epidemic. Cholera will be circulating in our community for hundreds of years and we must realize a new normal of life.
I'm relieved to let you know that most people dying from cholera in the 1854 epidemic have multiple comorbidities.
I respect the individual choices of all Londoners in this 1854 cholera epidemic. If you have cholera and want to defecate in the drinking water, that is your individual freedom. If you are afraid of getting cholera yourself, simply don't drink, cook, clean, or bathe with water.
We've been struggling with the 1854 cholera epidemic for so long. Zero Cholera isn't a realistic goal. The parliament simply cannot allocate the necessary funds to upgrade the London sewage system.
Look at that! The Royal Navy received a larger budget increase than requested.
The cholera epidemic of 1854 has split Londoners into two adversarial groups: Those who will defecate in the drinking water and those who won't. Can't we find middle ground to heal this rift, and simply drink the feces-contaminated water?
The 1854 cholera epidemic has disproportionately burdened the destitute. Calls for Queen Victoria to provide support for this group have not gone unheard, and she now recommends that these people stop being poor.
The Supreme court ruling means companies can now take down their burdensome "Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work" signs. Great news for businesses in this 1854 cholera epidemic.
Our restaurant industry is ready to serve you in this 1854 cholera epidemic! If you are having uncontrollable diarrhea when you arrive at the restaurant, please be sure to hold it in until you are seated at your table.
The 1854 cholera epidemic has been difficult for Londoners. To alleviate this burden, Queen Victoria is proud to announce that each household in London can register to receive 4 entire squares of toilet paper! Please avoid contracting cholera during the 7-10 day shipping window.
As I watch excrement dribble down the pantleg of the grocery clerk and expand the puddle on the floor of the produce department, I smile. Our 'Get to Work' policies allowed this boy with the sunken eyes to meaningly contribute to the economy, despite the 1854 cholera epidemic.
It's not an 'anti-clean-water' protest, they just oppose any mandate for the installation of sewers during the 1854 cholera epidemic.
You orphans have nothing to complain about. Your parents died WITH cholera, not FROM cholera. They really died from hypovolemic shock.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
