Here’s a cheery little musical interlude to take our minds off (not really) the horrors around us.
A song.
Let’s let all the old people die
Grandma and grandpa had long happy lives
Now let’s let them sacrifice
Themselves to the stock marketThis is America, land of the free
Mightiest, greatest, best country
Where you work a lifetime to the bone
And then we just let you die pic.twitter.com/MYnS6iZt1e— New podcast! As It Happens: Song A Day (@songadaymann) March 24, 2020
Gallows humor is better than no humor at all, I guess.
In other notes, check out this map of rural hospital closings since 2002–most since 2010, after red states decided they didn’t need no stinking Medicaid expansion. Details here.
And with that, open thread.
Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man in an Armchair, 1652.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
WaterGirl
Tom, did you forget to give your post a title? Or is this no title thing a form of protest?
NotMax
“The title of this post restricted to topmost level security clearance only.”
:)
Hunter Gathers
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He needs to have rented rooms at his hotels soon, or he’ll miss his loan payments to Vlad, who will have no choice but to raise the vig.
raven
Seems like there are a lot more closed hospitals than that in Georgia.
Suzanne
Rural hospital closures and a staggering shortfall of medical providers in rural areas are two enormous problems in the country right now that get next to no media coverage.
I always laugh when I see right-wing rural people comment about how independent they are, and they make comments like, “We grow all the food!”. I always want to reply, “And we provide all your medical care!”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: “Dr Fauci’s great-great-great (x 7) grandfather, reacting to a demented burgher’s plans to address a recurrence of the Black Death”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’m sure we’re all getting a crash course in videoconference software.
Zoom has been a standout in the field. I’m amazed when you have the “gallery view” (thumbnails of everybody on the call), how social it feels. Sure it’s not totally the same as a face-to-face experience, and when multiple start talking the lags get kind of wonky. But it’s about as close as you can get, and it’s genuine human interaction.
The only problem is that one person who doesn’t understand the concept of “mute”.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
A friend of mine wanted to know why we didn’t have a feature where we could mute selected other people.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: hahahahaha
nicely done
edit: I’m actually pretty impressed that the flyouts could handle a post with no title. It says “Next Post”. well done, guys!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: I don’t use zoom, but I suspect that with all this teleconferencing there are gonna be a lot of “I thought I had hit mute when I said that my boss could fuck up a peanut-butter sandwich” stories
ETA: Joe Biden coming up on MSNBC, for those interested
mad citizen
The Nacissist in Chief has caused me to know sooo many things about him over these years. So thanks/no thanks to the juicer the other day who wrote “he’s doing the accordian thing again” when he makes shit up. It’s all I see now. And this moment, it is the picture on cnn.com, doing an outside concert today.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that was worth a laugh out loud!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We’re now over 50,000 cases nationwide and nearly 700 deaths. Those numbers have doubled in 3 days. They’re likely to be big enough by Easter that even with Fox beating the drums, his cultists may not be totally convinced.
This is my favorite site right now for COVID stats.
Nicole
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Ha! My 9-year-old had a video conference via Zoom with some of his classmates and NONE of them understood “mute.” The parent who orchestrated it finally had to mute them all and then unmute them one at a time. I wanted to give him a medal after it was over.
Immanentize
Just a fun fact while we all mope. I found and am trying to reanimate some Loofa seeds from my wife’s grandmother. Everyone in that female line is now gone. But maybe the seeds will make it and provide me with scrub pads for the rest of my life? Hoping!
Nicole
Also, that song is awesome. The DNC should get the rights from the guy and do commercials starting off with the Lt Governor’s comment and then a montage of Trump, McConnell, Collins, et al, set to the song. They could run it between now and November.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mad citizen: now I’m picturing Jared in one of those little red hats and matching vest
Ceci n est pas mon nym
You can do that? I didn’t think the moderator has that much power. All we’ve figured out is that you can have people default to “mute” when they join, and then they have to manually unmute.
Nicole
@Immanentize: I initially misread “everyone in that female line is now gone” to refer to the loofah seeds, not your wife’s family line. I thought, “They can sort loofahs by sex? HOW?” And that those would be some highfalutin’ loofah seeds, to have a pedigree and all.
And then I figured it out. It’s been a long day. As they all are right now.
dmsilev
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
There are some videos floating around Twitter etc. of kindergarten classes that are being held via Zoom. Six year olds are not, as a rule, skilled at proper Mute etiquette.
Feathers
Ireland has nationalized their private hospitals.
Nicole
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I know when I did a play reading with my theater company last week that the guy orchestrating it was able to mute individuals in the call and then unmute them. I think it may have to be the person who sets up the call, but yeah, I think they can mute and unmute other people on the call.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Fucking SBA – I couldn’t come up with a worse process if I tried. The website is straight out of 1998, where you have major lags on every single task, documents cannot be uploaded per page (only as you go down), and multiply repetitive questions don’t autofill.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Topical detour to mention to you that recently came across a mouth-watering bread baking web site in Russian.
Immanentize
Also, why are people not blasting, on repeat, Race for the Prize by Flaming Lips?. I am:
scav
Every town could have its own Tomb of the Unknown Consumer.
Immanentize
@Nicole: I really think most would consider Loofas male. Amirite?
WaterGirl
@Feathers: “There can be no public vs. private here.”
I am nodding.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Wow, looks great. I love that kind of bread.
WaterGirl
Tom, I will love you forever for posting that song.
mad citizen
@Immanentize: Big Flaming Lips fan here. I think I started with album–great piece of art. I listended to the latest yesterday on amazon–the Deap Lips. So in the spirit of BJ, this catchy tune “the motherfuckers got to go” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=270LoUXWWxY
I found that worldometer site a couple weeks ago for all the virus numbers–great site.
Suzanne
@Immanentize: You mean falafel?
FlyingToaster
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My daughter has been in school since last Tuesday via Zoom. Weekdays, every hour from 9-3, 4 core courses plus 1 elective daily, plus check-ins with individual teachers during lunch (12-1). Saturday Music School, theory class and group violins. Spring play rehearsals Fridays afterschool, Strings TourGroup rehearsals weekend evenings.
Zoom rocks, and kids seem to figure out the controls faster than their instructors.
Elizabelle
That is one catchy song. (Kind of hesitated on that adjective.)
Suzanne
@FlyingToaster: Mr. Suzanne is a special educator. Most of his students can’t do online education.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Immanentize:
I once scored a crew pass that somebody left on the ground a few hours before the start of a big music festival – I got to be on the stage with the Flaming Lips, handed ’em a little of their makeup and costumery, but was mainly a useless stagehand.
It was awesome looking out at a large, screaming audience.
Immanentize
@Suzanne:. Never saw a Loofa on the vine, huh? Or Animal House? Sensuous or sensual?
Immanentize
@mad citizen:
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
My fave.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: Someone, somewhere, will figure out how to have 100 older people singing that song, simultaneously, with each face in their own little window on the same screen.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: Zoom of course
Tom Levenson
@WaterGirl: Forgot.
See belated fix.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: I didn’t know if Zoom could handle 100. :-)
BTW, are you still planning on writing the ZOOM guest post? Looks like it would help more than just the distance teaching people.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson: It made me laugh!
edit: I was impressed! My RSS reader made the title:
Just from your introductory line.
Caroline Abbott
Close a rural hospital, and the doctors and PAs leave because they can’t care adequately for their patients. Nurses and medical technicians leave because they lack patients and places to treat them.
The cascade of loss hits hospital housekeeping, launderers, security, IT folk, nutrition support, and a host of other jobs.
Attorneys, accountants, banks, and others whose income is partly dependent upon the town’s medical profession can’t pay their mortgages. They leave town.
Soon the public schools’ enrollment drops, reducing the amount of state money allotted. Classes are strained. Teachers and administrators start to leave.
Local sales and property taxes falter as the tax base dries up. If the hospital was financed in some part by local bonds, that burden gets carried by fewer and lower income residents. Eventually the local governments’ bond ratings fall, making it more difficult to invest in infrastructure.
Area residents eventually stop buying as much at the regional Walmart (which long ago replaced most local small businesses) because they don’t have income to spend. Walmart leaves, or lays off workers (too little demand even for on-demand shifts) and stocks less inventory.
It’s not pretty. I’ve watched it in Oklahoma for too long to be anything but horrified, especially when rural residents are left with little choice in an epidemic but to travel to other towns for basic needs, thereby raising their potential for exposure to diseases for which they will not be able to find treatment.
Immanentize
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Nice.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: I’m finishing this brief by Thursday — after that?
BTW, zoom better be able to handle 100. That’s the usual number in my crim. class
Suzanne
@Immanentize: Ummm…. Google “Bill O’Reilly loofah”.
NSFW.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: @Immanentize:
It would sure help me – going to look into having a first reading via Zoom for my play production!
FlyingToaster
@Suzanne: Only half of our school can. The rest are too young for Chromebooks and Zoom; they’re getting e-mailed homework packets and links to videos for tablets.
So much of what’s done in PK and K is interpersonal skills and setup for how to learn. This is not going to go well.
My god(less)son — now aged out of school — is on the spectrum; his wiring lent itself well to remote learning, but that is so not true for most non-neurotypical students.
Suzanne
@Caroline Abbott: Yep. In many rural places, the local hospital or health system is the largest employer. So I don’t have much patience for rural right-wingers blathering on and on about how self-reliant they all are.
JaySinWA
@Immanentize: It’s what Zoom claims as to support for their minimal plans, You can support more for a price. As to whether it actually works, I can’t say.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Cool .. I would love to use something besides google duo for facetime with my one year old grandson. I have puppets coming so I can keep him excited for more than a minute or two.
Yutsano
@Caroline Abbott: And the people left blame libruls, black and brown folks, queers, and abortion for their situations. Everything to not point the fingers at themselves and figure hey maybe what we’re doing doesn’t work anymore.
Feathers
@Suzanne: Sarah Taber @sarahtaber_bww tweets frequently about how rural America is basically ruled by land barons who control the state legislatures. They maintain control of the local population by demanding low taxes and thus zero social safety net. Saw it in upstate New York dairy country.
Keithly
@JaySinWA: My home institution, Enormous State University, has an institutional license that has successfully hosted up to 300 participants.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Sounds good!
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
What a playah! [eyeroll to the point of damage]
Kattails
@Tom Levenson: I always enjoy your artwork selections, thanks! Good post even if it’s going kind of incognito.