Link round-up for 12 April 2020

Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week.

o o o o o

Have a few religion cartoons, and a few cats.

Debra She Who Seeks goes to the grocery store.

Grow a new cash crop, how to bribe a police officer, and other tips.

Here are some song jokes, plus Trump as captain of the Titanic.

Locked-down Australians dress up to take out the trash.

Easter is canceled in Germany, but they still have snark.

Even covid-19 has its lighter side.  More here.  And here.

Everybody is working from home now.

Nice and peaceful.

Easter eggs?  These are Easter eggs.

Violating quarantine is a mistake.

It's a different kind of treehouse.

When you make a mask, make it with style.

Home and garden.

Why waste a band-aid?  I just use a small square of cardboard and some tape.

Ole Phat Stu has some unusual clocks.

Halloween 100 years ago was a bit different.

Tim Klein creates bizarre art from jigsaw puzzles (link from Nonnie9999).

Some movie posters kind of miss the point.

Here's why Namibia is shaped like that.

Do your online shopping intelligently.

It's a versatile article of clothing.

It's hard to imagine these magnificent places devoid of visitors.

Plans are under way for a Frankenstein museum (found via Mendip).

Editors saved Star Wars.

Don't push people too far.

From the air, a city under lockdown looks eerily almost deserted (this is Johannesburg).

Turns out that nobody really misses John Galt.

Why bother "fighting, warring, struggling and scheming" to get what you want, when all you need to do is ask?

Read a survivor's memories of Christian homeschooling.

The end of the world is near, just as it has been for 2,000 years.

"It is the theodicy of a sadist."

A well-known quote from Ursula K LeGuin needs to be put in context.

Chelsea Clinton pwns Jared Kushner.

"How do you get from here to the rest of the world?"

Some sports organizations are waking up to the unfairness of allowing males to compete in female events.

Here are some worthy groups to donate to.

A covid-19 vaccine hasn't even been developed yet and already the religious nuts are thinking up objections to it.

The winner of the Wisconsin primary thanks his campaign team (found via Hackwhackers).

Pornhub helps, fundies bitch.

We could have had a real president.

Mississippi's governor celebrates racism.

Stopping food intake and mumbling to yourself won't solve anything.  Viruses aren't afraid of swords and old bits of wood, either.

A protest gets some new supporters (found via Hackwhackers).

Stupidity has consequences.

The Devil is in the Church.

Some try to help.

History tends to repeat itself.

Totally contained, this is fine (found via Hackwhackers).

Volunteers answer a hospital's plea for the protective equipment the government won't supply.

This nutcase wants a global Catholic theocracy -- and he's a Harvard law professor.

Here's why covid-19 is more dangerous to diabetics.

Read this memo from a grocery-store manager.

Wonder why some Instacart shoppers are on strike?  Maybe it's because of shit like this.

The Rude Pundit seems rather unimpressed with Jared Kushner.

Senate Democrats propose hazard pay for essential workers (as I suggested here).

Trump and his cronies can't address the pandemic because they lack basic humanity.

A doctor reports from the front lines of the pandemic.  Here's one of the many heroes we've lost.

Is this a rational system?

Tony Spell, rapidly emerging as the "poster pastor" of Evangelical refusal to abide by social distancing, says "true Christians" see death as a "welcome friend".

Trump's self-interest is at odds with public health.

Some banks stand to make a ghoulish profit off the pandemic.

The US death toll is probably much higher than official figures indicate.

There are now mass graves in New York city.

"The Trump administration's incompetence is so staggering, so jaw-dropping, it would have been rejected as implausible in fiction not long ago."

It's not just Republicans' incompetence that will kill people, it's their determination to keep the churches packed and the gun shops open.  Kansas Republicans have overturned the governor's order limiting church gatherings.

"This is Trump's fault" -- David Frum chronicles the failures and bullshit.

Some of the plans for "re-opening the economy" sound scarier than the pandemic.  Relaxing the lockdowns too soon would actually wreck the economy even more.  We need large-scale testing first, but Trump is cutting federal funding for that.

The pandemic has exposed conservative ideology as a delusion (found via Michael in Norfolk).  Government should not be run by people who don't believe in government.

The PPE shortage has consequences -- over 700 healthcare workers have tested positive for the coronavirus in just one Detroit hospital system.  Hospitals throughout the country are beset by crippling supply problems.

With the federal government AWOL, state governors must lead -- and most of the Republican ones are too scared of Trump.

There has been a "horrifying surge" in domestic violence under lockdown conditions (as fellow blogger RO anticipated two weeks ago).

The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of the US economy and of the trans-national world order -- and the dangers of dependence on fascist China.

Some people who recover from covid-19 are left with permanent lung damage.

Here's an overview of the drugs currently being studied as possible treatments for covid-19.

Our technology is now good enough to measure the wind speed on a world two hundred trillion miles away.

This tiny creature may have been the ancestor of almost all modern animals (found via Notes to Ponder).

Any relaxation of the present precautions will lead to a resurgence of the pandemic.

Here's what Europe's busiest shopping street looks like now.

Several of the doctors who died fighting covid-19 in Italy were Arab immigrants.

Spanish police have no patience with virus-spreading church gatherings.

Malta has seized almost €30 million from the Vatican's bank after the latter tried to weasel out of a deal.

Near-deserted cities and roads in Israel dramatize the impact of the lockdown.

The ultra-religious Haredim are 10% of Israel's population but have over 50% of the covid-19 cases, due to their leaders' initial disregard of the government's public-health orders (found via Earth-Bound Misfit).

"It’s a divine punishment against homosexuality."

Lift the sanctions on Iran so it can fight the pandemic -- also, cartoons celebrate the heroes of the struggle.

Covid-19 hasn't hit Russia hard yet -- but it will, for reasons that suggest Putin isn't as smart an operator as we tend to think.

India uses light to express defiance of the virus.  The country is perhaps two weeks away from the kind of disaster now engulfing the US.

Japan is pulling production back home out of China.  When will we wise up?

Last week I noted that Japan wasn't acting fast to forestall the spread of covid-19; now it's facing the consequences.

Even South Korea faces a second wave of the virus.

The pandemic reveals the stupidity of excluding Taiwan from international organizations.

As the virus's second wave takes off in China, Africans residing in the country face hostility (the regime is attributing the new wave of infections to people entering China from outside).

There's a little good news from South Africa.  The country is seeing a slow-down in infections, but it may not last.

If we vote Trump out, we get rid of all these turkeys as well (found via Octoberfarm).

Don't get complacent because of Biden's lead in national polls -- the swing states are a lot closer.  But Trump may be sabotaging himself in Michigan and Florida.

Americans want a public option, not single-payer.

Remember how much is at stake.

Worst president ever.

Here are some of the dirty tricks Republicans will use.

The path to control of the Senate runs through Georgia.

Spread these ads around.

[1,179 days down, 283 to go until the inauguration of a real president.]