Good evening, Kibitzers!
Last-minute update: the new on-sale date for Netroots Nation tickets appears to be June 22. side pocket has naturally called and required them to explain themselves. “Technical difficulties”, and they’ll go on sale NEXT Tuesday at “noon”, which I take to mean noon PT, 3 pm ET. Okay then!
I’ve almost always lived within easy transit distance of New York City (and when I have not, it’s made me sad). I once lived in the middle of it, for not nearly long enough. It’s enormous and sprawling, and has the problems, and also the good features, of many cities rolled into one. Its neighborhoods are large enough to vary dramatically in their circumstances — wealthy areas are very wealthy indeed, and struggling areas must fight hard to bring help to their communities, even when the city government is controlled by Democrats/liberals.
It happens that a few video stories about the struggles of New York neighborhoods have gained visibility recently. They’re represented in this diary, in some cases by the story of the story.
Some of these videos are a longer form than I usually post here. You certainly don’t have to watch them now, if you want to scroll down and chat, but I heartily recommend them for when you have time.
The first is new from Vox’s Missing Chapter video series. The series is about bits of history that have been buried because they’re not in keeping with the history endorsed by those who want to hold onto power. They covered the Tulsa Race Massacre two years ago, for instance, even before the Watchmen episode that introduced it to many. Here is the series playlist, newest first — the next video down is Why the US Government Murdered Fred Hampton.
This one is considerably more cheering than that, though. It’s about the women who transformed blighted areas of 1960s-70s New York City through “radical acts of gardening”. [12:36]
Next is a segment of Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman, concerning a new short documentary, Takeover, featured at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film and this segment explore a 1970 event in which members of the Young Lords Party occupied the crumbling Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, and managed to not only not get killed by the police, not only draw media attention, but actually wring some concessions out of the city that improved things for people. We all know Denise Oliver Velez was one of those Young Lords, don’t we? You’ll hear her tell part of the story here.
The actual film is 37 minutes long; I have no idea what its future distribution will be, but now through June 23, one can see it by buying a pass ($30 total) to stream any/all of the festival’s featured shorts. The festival’s page on the film is here. [16:51]
Stories of New York are not all documentaries, of course. The movie of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first musical, In the Heights, just opened, and can be streamed on HBOMax. “The Heights” is Washington Heights, the area of Manhattan up near the George Washington Bridge, north of Harlem. Here’s the trailer. [2:24]
And here’s the opening production number where we meet the characters. Keep in mind that this musical preceded Hamilton, so if you hear some echoes, they go the other way. [8:31]
And now, let’s step away from the city and look at some fireflies. I told nomandates yesterday I would dig up this video, after she posted some lovely tweets about them. The videographer states that this is completely un-manipulated, realtime footage of fireflies near his Fairfield, Iowa home. [2:28]
Today’s Political and Other Short Subjects:
I would like to make sure everyone has noticed that the splendid Val Demings (FL-10), one of the impeachment managers (in the first impeachment), is running for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat. (Those inclined may pitch in here.) [Aaaaand, here’s our Denise with a Black Kos diary outlining what Val is facing and what we can do to help. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear she’s bad because she’s a cop!!!1!! Hmm, sounds familiar.] [2:58]
brittlestar explains that “canceling history” is not a thing. [1:08]
Amber Ruffin looks at how we got to be fighting about Critical Race Theory with people who don’t know what it is yet still object to it vociferously. [6:35]
The Parody Project has used a Paul Simon tune for a song about the exit of the “King of Corona”. [2:43]
Rocky Mountain Mike has a whole K-Tel ad for Louie Gohmert’s imaginary new LP. [1:10]
Finally, in honor of the upcoming solstice, we join Dr. Brian May as he takes us along for a stroll amongst the stones of Stonehenge. (For the record, regular people are not allowed to do this.) [1:09]
Stay safe! 💙💙💙💙💙
🌟 Democracy Docket 🌟
The Democracy Docket website, founded by formidable our-side attorney Marc Elias, carries breaking news about current election law, more in-depth articles, and, always, information plus all available legal documents (as PDFs) about every active election law case.
Marc Elias and Democracy Docket on Twitter are good sources of current news about election law, including all the voter-suppression crap going on. You can subscribe to the Democracy Docket email newsletter here to get the latest updates. Democracy Docket also has a YouTube channel.
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We have come to the point where Chef José Andrés’ worldwide relief organization is so ubiquitous that I’m just giving it its own box here. I can’t even link all the places they’re working. They’re feeding people who need meals wherever they find them, for whatever reason and by whatever means, including supporting local restaurants by contracting with them for meals. Pretty much every tab at that website will tell you something amazing.
You can always donate or volunteer at their website, but it may not be up on the very latest news. For that, check Twitter for Chef Andrés and for World Central Kitchen.
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It has been 1,363 DAYS SINCE HURRICANE MARIA MADE LANDFALL IN PUERTO RICO ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2017.
As federal money has begun to flow, so many problems have built up, due to various natural disasters, drought, Covid as a pandemic and with its economic impacts, it’s not the case that a big pile of cash is just going to fix everything there. At the root of the problem is racism; what a surprise. It’s easy for wealthy colonizers to loot a place when there aren’t many people who care what happens there. It’s… kind of a pattern.
Since no one can snap their fingers and declare the problem solved, this box is now tracking reports from Denise Oliver-Velez. To learn more about what’s going on there, her Twitter feed and Daily Kos comments are good starting points.
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🚒 2021 CAL FIRE incident map 🔥 CAL FIRE home page 🚒
🦠 COVID-19 🧫
Missing some past entry? My past diaries list, where the older purple boxes still live.
The CDC’s guidance page for mask wearing. And now, new guidance for fully-vaccinated people. The previous chart was perhaps more useful; the new one just shows no masking at all on the vaccinated side. If you’re not down with that, you’d probably rather know what was recommended before.)
🦠 The COVID-19 Data Dispatch is a website devoted to examining and interpreting Covid-related data. (They offer a weekly update newsletter.) This week, It’s Time to Worry About the Delta Variant.
NEW: More about the Delta variant (also called B.1.617.2) in this unrolled Twitter thread from Bob Wachter, chair of the UC San Francisco Dept of Medicine. So that’s two votes for “time to worry”, especially about the unvaccinated.
Dr. Greg Dworkin shares this New York Magazine article that explains what was going on with that weird New York Yankees “outbreak” and discusses a more useful way to understand the immunity created by vaccination.
NEW: In place of a SciShow video, here’s a vlog post from founder Hank Green, part of a long dialogue he has with his brother John, musing (and ranting) about how to respond to people with vaccine doubt and anti-vax arguments. SciShow Covid playlist here.
This video is not specific to Covid, but offers a fairly simple account of how our immune system works.
The Atlantic has listed their ongoing virus coverage here, and none is behind a paywall. They add new articles often, including these two: COVID-19 Vaccine Makers Are Looking Beyond the Spike Protein and On Top of Everything Else, the Pandemic Messed With Our Morals.
I’m not listing this Atlantic article above, because I don’t see it on their virus coverage list so it may be paywalled. But it is interesting, if you can see it. Putting Microchips in Vaccines Is a Terrible Idea, When You Think About It, by the chief scientific officer of a data company that makes wearable devices. I’m sure he wouldn’t convince any Q people, but then, who could?
xaxnar’s diary (with its comment thread) discusses neurological impacts seen in “long-haul” Covid sufferers. wilderness voice’s KosAbility diary (and comment thread) offer further discussion of long Covid, its symptoms, and their relationship to ME/CFS.
This tweet by Joseph Allen links to a NY Times visual presentation about how we can change the airflow in classrooms to make it safer. There’s also a link from there to an Instagram “augmented reality” classroom visit.
The Washington Post is maintaining this page that tracks vaccine arrival and distribution state by state. Note this is NOT paywalled.
This excellent video explains clearly how viruses are killed by washing with soap. h/t Sara R!
The lung exercises in this diary are still good for anyone, sick or not.
[Sara R and winglion have suspended taking orders for masks while Sara is recovering from her surgery.]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Susan Collins said that she is “a little bit sad” to see Senator Joe Manchin replace her as the nation’s most annoying senator.
“For years, I’ve been the most aggravating person in this legislative chamber, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” she said. “Still, if an obscure senator from Maine can’t wield outsized power anymore, it’s only fitting that the baton be passed to an obscure senator from West Virginia.”
[snip]
In an official response to her remarks, Manchin said, “I’ve been a big fan of Susan Collins’s work as a vexing time-waster for as long as I can remember. In terms of being infuriating, she has set the bar very, very high for me.”
— The Borowitz Report, at The New Yorker
This Week in Boredom:
- NASA/Space News: Perseverance rover is all checked out, done playing with the helicopter, and ready to drive into Jezero Crater and begin its science mission on the crater floor. ✨ NASA will collaborate on the European Space Agency’s upcoming Venus mission, EnVision. JPL will develop a higher-resolution radar to measure surface features. ✨ A nice article on a citizen-science project to discover exoplanets by looking for changes in stars’ brightness, and how several ordinary people around the world were listed as co-authors on the study announcing the discovery of two new planets.
- NASA’s Skywatch video for June tells you what to look for in the sky this month. 🌓 Meteor Shower Calendar, 2021-22. 🌓 Video: Astronomy Calendar 2021 (covers other events besides meteor showers).
- Astronomy Picture of the Day: China’s new Zhurong rover deployed a remote camera to snap its picture on Mars. ✨ Also this week: A couple of nice solar eclipse photos, here and here. ⭐ A short and impressive video of a supercell thunderstorm. ⭐ A stunning closeup of Jupiter’s largest moon (bigger than Mercury), Ganymede, taken last week when Juno made a close pass.
- Live cam: The Charles River in Boston, as seen from the Museum of Science. There’s an unbelievably annoying beep, so be prepared to turn the sound off.
- Zooniverse: Prompted by a Mark Sumner diary, we took up with a website called Zooniverse, in search of new research projects that ordinary people can help with by doing relatively time-intensive tasks like transcribing, sorting, and classifying. They’re typically tasks that are not very hard for people, but too subtle for AI. Mark's diary can give you a sense of the kinds of things available to participate in. 📖 Today, though: NASA also has a list of citizen-science projects, as noted in the NASA article above, and they’re not all about space. You can also help study things from coral reefs to landslides to penguins. They need people to measure snow (looking at you, Fella) and people to help map bird diversity in Sonoma County. Have a look!
- Smithsonian Online Exhibition: From the National Museum of American History, a collection of political novelties. The earliest items were intended as commemorations, but by the time of Andrew Jackson, campaign swag had taken hold. (My favorite might be the Woodrow Wilson nutcracker, who cracks nuts in his jaws. Is that… good?)
- Tasting History: Join Max Miller as he explores the history of food, including some ancient recipes. Today, he makes Hippocras, a medieval spiced wine, and discusses the its origins and why it may have become as wildly popular as it was for hundreds of years.
- Individual coffee-mug cake substitute: Back to the decidedly odd You Suck at Cooking, for some extremely tasty-looking homemade fudgsicles.
- Time machine: Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen perform Rock That Boogie in 1974, apparently somewhere in France, based on this video being watermarked by the Institut National de l’audiovisuel.
- Obama White House video: This is part 2 of the Obama Foundation’s trilogy of videos about the extraordinary day of June 26, 2015. This segment covers the service for Reverend Clementa Pinckney. We’ll catch up with parts 1 and 3 next time.
- Ukulele Duet: Ukulele virtuoso James Hill is back, with a live performance of Billie Jean that expressly creates an imaginary band onstage.
- The Frick Collection’s “Cocktails with a Curator”: Discussion of a Madonna and Child with Saints panel by Gentile da Fabriano, a 15th-century painter in the International Gothic style . This week’s complementary cocktail is a Cosmopolitan. (New videos in this series post at 5 pm ET on Fridays, with the week’s cocktail recipe posted in advance. They run around 15-20 minutes.)
- The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto has some extremely fabulous collections. They are still closed due to Covid, but like many larger museums, they are presenting items from their collection online, a new one every other week. In the newest post, a “pullover” from Dior shoemaker Roger Vivier, for the 1959 collection by Yves Saint Laurent. Pullovers are full-size models of a shoe upper, to display the proposed design.
- The Metropolitan Opera is still streaming free operas daily. YOU CAN ALSO attend special 75-minute livestream concerts for which you must buy a $20 ticket. The livestream occurs at a certain time, but is available for ticketholders to view (and re-view) at any time in the ensuing two weeks (sometimes longer). There are two current concerts: Wagnerians in Concert, available through June 25, featuring sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager, and baritone Michael Volle, singing Wagner and Strauss. And, Three Divas, also available through June 25, featuring sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, singing an assortment of arias and songs. There’s further information at the links about how it works. The Met does not plan to re-open physically until September 2021. The entire 2020-21 season, through June, is very wisely canceled.
- New York City Center has no more paid events on deck, but does have numerous music and dance performances that can be viewed for free. In the case of their Studio 5: Dancing Across Continents series, each new episode can be seen for free for two weeks, but with a membership, you can see the whole series at any time. See their All Events page for more on all their offerings.
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