The words “great” and “depression” are being used in close proximity these days. Joseph Stiglitz says a depression is when people only spend money on food, and by that definition we are kind of there. Noah Smith at Bloomberg says the U.S. unemployment rate currently stands around 11% and could be headed for 20% or 30%. The Great Depression topped out at 25% so by this definition too, we are headed there. The article points out that it is not just the depth of the recession that is important but its duration. At this point, there has not been a spike in interest rates or widespread bank failures, and the stock market has stabilized (i.e., it’s fluctuating around a lower level than its recent peak, but not wildly fluctuating). As people are legally allowed to resume normal activities, we will see if they do or if they choose not to out of fear. That is when banks and investors could get even more nervous about lending to businesses without good prospects of success, interest rates could spike, and a long-lasting wave of bankruptcies, defaults, and job losses could ensue.
Category Archives: Web Article Review
why pay for office space?
I figured cheap-ass companies would try to keep people working from home to avoid paying for office space. This confirms it:
- “A Gartner, Inc. survey of 317 CFOs and finance leaders on March 30, 2020, revealed that 74% will move at least 5% of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19.”
- “In fact, nearly a quarter of respondents said they will move at least 20% of their on-site employees to permanent remote.”
one more covid tracker
I thought I was over covid trackers, but I just can’t help it. I know this isn’t my first “one more”, and it might not be my last. This one plots new cases over the past week on the vertical axis vs. total confirmed cases on the horizontal, the animates over time. You can add any country or U.S. state. The simulation starts whenever 10 cases were reported in that location, and you can see them grow at first exponentially and then deviate from the line when they start to get it under control. You can pick a log or arithmetic axis – log is good for the math, but it kind of lets you forget that there is a difference between 10 people dying and 10,000 people dying. Anyway, it’s nice and thanks to this person for posting it for free.
ferrets and coronavirus
Ferrets are highly susceptible to coronavirus. Apparently, ferrets are susceptible to similar respiratory diseases as humans in general and are used in research for that reason. Cats are also susceptible, but dogs and farm animals generally aren’t.
If this were a movie, humans would eradicate the virus but it would persist in a small community of feral cats somewhere, mutate into something even more horrible, and jump back to humans.
New Start expires February 2021
With the coronavirus crisis raging, it is easy to forget that nuclear weapons are still out there. One thing coronavirus should be teaching us all is that the unthinkable can happen. Trump, aka the angel of death, has already made us all less safe by withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, the nuclear deal with Iran, ratcheting up tensions with China. Now the New Start treaty, through which the U.S. and Russia have achieved further arms reductions over the past decade, is set to expire on February 5, 2021. The current administration and/or the current Congress could do the right thing just this one time and extend the treaty. Then the next President and Congress could start working on extending the gains.
why schools are shut down
In this video, a researcher puts a harmless but glow-in-the-dark powder on a 3rd-grade teacher’s hands and on one random third grader. By the end of the day, the entire classroom and everybody’s faces all glow in the dark.
Noam Chomsky on coronavirus
Here’s Noam Chomsky on coronavirus:
Describing the US president as a “sociopathic buffoon”, Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, “it’s worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that’s happened in human history.
“Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we’re facing – one is the growing threat of nuclear war … and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming.”
While the coronavirus can have “terrifying consequences, there will be recovery”, said Chomsky, but regarding the other threats, “there won’t be recovery, it’s finished”.
Al Jazeera
In other words, our government knew a major pandemic would eventually happen, and in fact was certain given enough time. Our experts told our government and political system what it needed to do to prepare and respond. It did next to nothing, and now we are in crisis.
Like he says, this crisis will pass, though not for those of us who don’t survive it. But the climate crisis will not pass. It is certain, and we know what to do, and we are not doing it. We are not preparing, and we will not be able to respond when the worst happens. This is the major lesson of the coronavirus – there is not some secret plan or agency that is quietly and competently preparing to meet the threat when there really is no choice.
Just to review, here’s a short list of things we need to do.
- Secure the long term food supply.
- Protect most of our coastal population centers, while possibly strategically and gradually abandoning some areas.
- Ramp up innovation.
- Do our fair share to bring down global emissions.
As for nuclear weapons, they are the acute crisis to make all other acute crises seem trivial by comparison. We need to lead by example, and also reengage with international institutions to work on the problem.
AI and rural jobs
This Wired article is written by a Microsoft executive originally from the southwest corner of Virginia, which is where I happen to be originally from. He gives a few examples of how technology can transform old jobs and create new jobs in out of the way places.
- Running “automated” farming equipment requires some combination of mechanical fix-it ability and IT help desk ability.
- Keeping the books at a nursing home chain requires some fairly advanced database skills.
- Precision plastic parts can be molded locally by technicians trained at community college, rather than ordered from abroad.
Comet ATLAS
And now for something fun and, by definition, not coronavirus related. Not that some people won’t see this as a concurrent sign of the apocalypse. But there is an unusually bright comet called ATLAS out there, and we might be able to see it with the naked eye sometime in April or May.
As to how bright Comet ATLAS will get, that’s anybody’s guess. It might become faintly visible to the naked eye under dark sky conditions by mid- or late April. By mid-May, when it disappears into the bright evening twilight, perhaps it will have brightened to second magnitude — about as bright as Polaris, the North Star.
Space.com
I thought I remembered seeing Halley’s comet in the 1990s, but after reading up on it, I probably remember people talking about Halley’s comet in the 1980s (when I was in elementary school) and then saw either Hyakutake or Hale-Bopp in the 1990s (when I was in college). I live in a brightly lit city now, and am not allowed to leave my house, but back then I lived in Central Pennsylvania and if I drove for 10 minutes in any direction it would get pretty dark.
Anyway, Atlas is supposed to be visible in the North to Northwest sky. I wouldn’t mind learning to read star charts if I ever get the time, but I recently discovered that there are a ton of astronomy apps out there. I’ve been using Sky View, and it’s great but just one of many. You just point your tablet at the sky and it labels whatever is there for you. You can convince yourself it is accurate just by pointing it at the moon. It actually works just fine in the daytime, on a cloudy night, or if you point it down at the ground and want to know what a person looking up at the sky in the Australian outback might be seeing. Space is predictable like that, and GPS works that well on the average device owned by the average Joe. Pretty neat.
And as for the Apocalypse, nobody is suggesting this thing is actually headed anywhere near earth. This article says it will be 273 million miles from the Sun. The Earth is about 90 million miles from the Sun, so that is only three times the distance, but I don’t know if the Earth is on the same side as the comet right now, so it might be more. It’s far and we have plenty of other things to worry about here on our little blue dot.
Joint Task Force – National Capital Region
The Joint Task Force – National Capital Region is the unified military command responsible for Washington, D.C. and surrounding regions if they become a “battlefield”. In other words, if there is an armed attack, or if all hell breaks loose for whatever reason, and civilian government functions break down. According to Newsweek, it has been activated.
JTF-NCR is responsible for what the military calls “homeland defense”: what to do in the face of an armed attack on the United States, everything from guarding Washington’s skies to preparing for the civil unrest that could occur if a nuclear weapon were detonated in the capital. But most immediate, JTF-NCR is charged with facilitating continuity of government, particularly moving civil and military leaders to secret locations were the order given to evacuate the city.
Newsweek
You would assume that the commander in chief has command over the commander of this unit, which would be comforting in even remotely normal times. But the commander of this unit does have the authority to take whatever steps he or she (it’s a he) deems necessary if there is no civilian oversight available.
It seems unlikely there are any missiles inbound. It seems entirely likely that the Covid/election season could be the time a foreign enemy could try a cyberattack or attack critical infrastructure like the electric grid – kick your enemy while they are down. Hopefully we are ready for that.
Newsweek was the first “main stream media” source of news I paid attention to when I became aware of current events sometime in middle school. I don’t know if it is still the credible source of information I considered it back then (or if I was right back then.) One questionable claim did catch my eye – “Federal officials in the nation’s capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government.” Taking a look at that claim on the University of Washington modeling site, it doesn’t hold up. The entire Boston-to-DC corridor is in fact hard hit, but the death rate and hospital utilization rates in DC are peaking right about now (I’m writing on Saturday April 18, the Newsweek article is from Thursday April 16) and both are projected to start falling. Hospitals in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia are busy but not expected to be overrun like they were in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. So it’s not clear what evidence the “federal officials” cited above would lead to a projected “New York-like epidemic…that could potentially cripple the government”. Perhaps some of these officials are used to working from home anyway, like in a white house for example.