Yeah...

Quote from: undefinedIt was always hard making a living as a musician in New York City. The quarantine has made it impossible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/nyregion/amy-madden-new-york-musician-quarantine.html

Quote from: undefinedEven during the long period in which creativity was better supported, making enough money for the essential things was not easy, yet it was unclear then how much more challenging the exercise would become. This particular life was already scarred by the slow burn of the music industry's technological revolution and the brutal economic realities of New York. The pandemic rendered it to ash.

In recent years, Amy Madden had made a meager living playing in bars, most of them the dives that had defined a vanishing cultural style in the city. Now the virus had forced those bars to close. A part-time job she had at an art gallery became another casualty of the national lockdown.

QuoteI miss the shows and I miss the scene. I've actually found myself being acutely depressed when I think about the state my beloved scene has been reduced to, but not entirely for myself. I've been to hundreds of gigs now. I've seen hundreds of bands. I've seen so many I can't even remember them all. I'm sad for the future, for those who are just coming through.

But I am most concerned about the industry itself. The thousands of people who relied on the industry for their livelihood – not only the musicians, most of whom barely scraped by at the best of times, but the roadies, riggers, techies, venue and studio owners, gig bookers, publicists, promoters, backline suppliers, and all their staff. Who's looking out for them now? I'm missing my live music rush, but these people depend on it financially.

Let's not forget that it's not just live music that's suffering here – theatre, dance, comedy, even film and TV... every area of the performing and creative arts has been gutted by COVID-19 and at every level of government it has been denied any form of financial assistance. Pubs and clubs might be reopening, but who knows how long it will be before they are once again filled with the clamour of live entertainment, and what restrictions will be in place once they are? For those of us who love it live, all we can do is support the scene and those impacted however we can.

http://www.loudmag.com.au/features/ever-gonna-see-live-bands/

QuoteULTRA RICH KEEP GETTING ULTRA RICHER: The news comes after progressive think tank 'Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies' found that the total net worth of all American billionaires rose US$434 billion (A$663 billion) since state lockdowns began on March 19. Because that's just how that country works!

From a Crikey email linking to this story:  https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/tale-two-crises-billionaires-gain-workers-feel-pandemic-pain/

OMG...    

Here comes that poem again:

HAPPY IS THE MORON

Happy is the moron
He doesn't give a damn
I wish I were a moron
Oh no! Perhaps I am!

Like bad driving, it would be fine if it  only affected them - but it unfortunately has a lot of collateral damage, on people who did not make those choices.  Otherwise I'd be Darwinistic and say, "Go for it!" 

It's funny how American freedom is often apparently just a euphemism for American entitlement, short-term thinking and refusal to use the brain to even 10% of its capacity...

At least a bit of an optimistic message (sorry, German article)

https://www.gmx.net/magazine/news/coronavirus/drosten-optimistisch-chance-herbst-winter-zweite-welle-34744188

He says that maybe we will have no 2nd wave; also that in Germany the restrictions helped to avoid a large(r) number of deaths.

Good article, thank you, @Ulrich.  It's interesting to get a view into a non-Anglo media.

Here's an article on British music and the current crisis:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/music-venues-british-culture-taskforce

QuoteThe Taskforce (only one member under 40!) includes the director of a Lincolnshire theme-park Fantasy Island, yet no direct mention of music, even in the sub-committees it will set-up, which will cover "sport, entertainment and events, museums and galleries, heritage, tourism and libraries". In normal times, no one would expect a Conservative government to proactively care about a world that consistently rallies opposition to it, and which – up late, non-conformist, possibly on drugs – is the antithesis of middle England. But given live music's cultural and economic heft (£1.1bn annually), you might imagine that in a national emergency, culture secretary Oliver Dowden would feel grudgingly obliged to support it.

First Dog drips with satire at the resumption of football in Australia. 



from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/29/take-that-covid-19-you-cant-stop-the-compulsory-emotional-juggernaut-that-is-footy

So this is exactly why everyone wearing masks in confined environments like public transport is so essential, and why wearing masks in public places with other people not of your household is a good idea:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/30/could-nearly-half-of-those-with-covid-19-have-no-idea-they-are-infected

...and this is why the moment there is community transmission you basically have to treat yourself as potentially infectious, although asymptomatic - to safeguard against spreading the disease.  For the same reason wearing a seatbelt is a good idea:  Not for the 999 times you don't need it, but the one time you do.

...as two friends who've been through a SARS epidemic have said to me from the start, while there was still general ummhing and aaahing about it in the West.  (SARS, like COVID-19, is a coronavirus, and a better model of comparison than flu).

One way asymptomatic people can spread virus without even realising it:

- because they too cough to clear throats and sneeze from general irritation, which will spread infected droplets unless a mask is on (to someone physically close to them, and to surfaces)

A commentary:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/31/donald-trump-coronavirus-pandemic-george-floyd-minneapolis-tweets

Quote from: undefinedBy having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office.

He is not governing. He's golfing, watching cable TV and tweeting.

Trump's response to the last three ghastly months of mounting disease and death has been just as heedless. Since claiming Covid-19 was a "Democratic hoax" and muzzling public health officials, he has punted management of the coronavirus to the states.

Governors have had to find ventilators to keep patients alive and protective equipment for hospital and other essential workers who lack it, often bidding against each other. They have had to decide how, when and where to reopen their economies.

Trump has claimed "no responsibility at all" for testing and contact-tracing – the keys to containing the virus. His new "plan" places responsibility on states to do their own testing and contact-tracing.

   

It seems we're reading the same articles!    I'd just read that.  Did you catch the Guardian pieces about that UK advisor whose nose has to be longer than Pinocchio's?  ...calls a sightseeing trip to a castle with a toddler in the back an "eyesight test"...      

This landed in my inbox courtesy of Crikey yesterday:

QuoteINDEPENDENT AUTOPSY FINDINGS TO BE RELEASED

According to The Sydney Morning Herald's live blog, the attorney for George Floyd's family is set to release findings from an independent autopsy into Floyd's death, while Donald Trump has called on a collection of governors to "dominate" and arrest protesters.

The news comes after protesters surrounded the White House, a semi-trailer driver was arrested for speeding into a Minneapolis protest, a third man was killed — this time in a shooting with Kentucky police and the National Guard — and even more frankly unbelievable police actions, with some newer examples including:

* Las Vegas police just kind of grabbing and dragging a random passer-by;
* Phoenix Police putting ICE holds on three arrested protesters; and
* NYPD union the Sergeants Benevolent Association doxxing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's daughter Chiara de Blasio, who, after being arrested for protesting, had her arrest information published on Twitter including her home address and ID number.

On the protesters' end, The Associate Press reports that at least 4400 people have been arrested for offences ranging from stealing and vandalism to blocking highways, breaking curfew, and peacefully protesting. In one of the more delightful, still-at-large counterexamples, someone has apparently blocked the Chicago police scanner with the 2007 hit Chocolate Rain.

PS: As Perth Now reports, hundreds of Western Australians rallied in Perth last night both in solidarity and in protest of Indigenous deaths in custody.

One good thing about the ubiquity of mobile phones these days is that these kinds of abuses often get recorded by someone's camera... when I followed the links in the above article yesterday, I was just gobsmacked.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing, even though I've heard about this so many times.  To see this stuff is so confronting...

I don't want to start a topic on this stuff because it would be too depressing.  I just thought of this in response to the stupidity of Trump as regards COVID-19, and this is just another example of an issue in which his response is totally incompetent.  I'm very heartened to see so many people saying they've had enough, and the international support.  It's just unfortunate that we have a pandemic at the same time we're having these much-needed protests everywhere. 

Quote from: SueC on June 03, 2020, 12:36:51This landed in my inbox courtesy of Crikey yesterday:

Poor George Floyd used to be best friends with a former NBA player, Stephen Jackson, who was infamous for being one of the "bad boys" of the Indiana Pacers basketball team who got into that terrible brawl with the Detroit Pistons in the Palace of Auburn Hills (coincidentally where The Cure's Show was recorded). He wasn't a bad boy at all in the "real" world outside basketball, though, and he already was an anti-racist activist before this shambles happened.
You can guess the state Mr Jackson is in now... 
Most of the NBA is quite angry at this scandal.

The worse of it all, is... how does someone called "Chauvin" get no education to what his name means, and ends up committing a horrible racist and chauvinist crime, and worse, in front of the cameras/mobile phones, and as a cop in duty?
Not to say how Chauvin is a French (ie, non-Anglo) name, and someone should also have explained to him what things like Le Grand Dérangement were?

Ignorance is bliss, I suppose...

That said, it also looks like anyone can be a cop, because such "I can't breathe" scenes have sadly also happened in Spain... only that in our case the poor guy was a white, gay, HIV-positive man (the cops obviously didn't know, which is no excuse).

However, it's also true that cops often have very strained jobs and schedules.
So blame cuts, too.

Then there are all the demonstrators and rioters (and cops and National Guard) obviously not respecting anti-coronavirus social distancing any longer...
And then you have Donnie McDonface strutting around "I'll send them the army!" all over the place, because he's had riots just outside the White House.

I think we're in for some even more "interesting times"...

Jeez, it's all so fvcked up it's almost neverending.

More depressing stuff about that in the Inbox this morning, but also this heartening story of what people are doing for each other:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/dc-protesters-sheltered-trnd/index.html

I did notice in the last couple of days looking at the protests, that the protestors seem to be majority mask-wearing*, more so the general US populace, some of whom argue terribly about their "rights" when asked to wear a mask in a shop.  (Friends from the US have related to me some choice observations about people ranting to store security about American freedom when asked to wear a mask for the safety of the community.    )

PS:  Someone once told me that everyone is useful.  The very worst people serve as bad examples.

*and in marked contrast to the "end lockdown" and "COVID is a hoax" type protestors!  Not many masks there...