UH OH: BigLaw Starts Cancelling Summer Associate Programs, Delaying First Year Associate Start Dates, And Cutting Salaries.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR TRUMP TO INVOKE THE INSURRECTION ACT? Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State.’

I wonder if the folks at the New California movement are paying attention? Who am I kidding — of course they are.

WE’RE IN THE MIDST OF A JUMP-START FOR ONLINE EDUCATION: Online education platforms could scale high-quality STEM education for universities.

I BLAME PREHISTORIC SUVS: Volcanic activity likely changed the Earth’s climate 200M years ago, study says.

HEH: Darn that Hitler wannabe and his … attempt to rally a nation in its darkest hour!

GOOD: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘improving’ after third night in intensive care with coronavirus.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MANCHURIAN MEDIA: Neera Tanden, Touré, Joe Scarborough (and others!) embrace the new hotness, blame Europe for spreading COVID-19 to the U.S., not China.

Exit quote: “That’s what Xi said.”

“DON’T TRUST CHINA, CHINA IS ASSHOLE” (CONT’D): Rep. Mark Green: Chinese-made medical supplies to France made conditional upon adopting Huawei technology. Not much of an offer, given the poor quality of the gear and tests they’ve been shipping to Europe. Proper response: Send us what we need for free, shipping paid, or we’ll block Huawei and other Chinese companies from our markets entirely. This is China’s fault and China is in no position to be making demands.

GODSPEED, MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA: Ocasio-Cortez Faces Well-Financed Challenger in June Democratic Primary. “Word broke yesterday that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly planning to endorse Caruso-Cabrera, probably because they don’t want to be the first with their backs up against the wall after AOC’s glorious people’s revolution.”

SKYNET SMILES. WHILE ITS EYES FOLLOW YOU. Researchers open-source state-of-the-art object tracking AI.

HOW SOME CITIES ‘FLATTENED THE CURVE’ DURING THE 1918 SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC:

Dramatic demographic shifts in the past century have made containing a pandemic increasingly hard. The rise of globalization, urbanization, and larger, more densely populated cities can facilitate a virus’ spread across a continent in a few hours—while the tools available to respond have remained nearly the same. Now as then, public health interventions are the first line of defense against an epidemic in the absence of a vaccine. These measures include closing schools, shops, and restaurants; placing restrictions on transportation; mandating social distancing, and banning public gatherings. (This is how small groups can save lives during a pandemic.)

Read the whole thing.

Earlier: Learning From A Century Of Bad Urban Planning. Or to put it another way:

SHUT-IN TIME: Want to Leave This Planet? NASA Is Offering Some Seriously Cool Virtual Space Tours Right Now.

SPACE: Space Force announces its first pandemic-related launch delay.

BECAUSE THEY’RE SWAMP CREATURES. THAT’S WHAT THEY DO. In another episode of “We Have to Pass It to See What’s In It” it turns out that the COVID bill exempts the Federal Reserve from their obligation under the law to make their records public. Politico reports that:

“Tucked into the recent recovery bill was a provision granting the Federal Reserve the right to set up a $450 billion bailout plan without following key provisions of the federal open meetings law, including announcing its meetings or keeping most records about them, according to a POLITICO review of the legislation.”

Even worse, when contacted by POLITICO, the Senators wouldn’t take ownership of the provision:

Spokespeople for Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chairman and ranking member on the Senate Banking committee, declined to comment on how the change was added to the recovery bill or who requested it.

Oh, yeah, I said some stuff, too.

PRIVACY: U.S. Senate, Google ban Zoom days after its launch of ‘security council.’ “Following two weeks of escalating privacy and security concerns about video conferencing platform Zoom, the U.S. Senate and Google have both banned its members and employees from using the software.”

Nobody should still be using Zoom.

SO IT’S FINE TO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RESTAURANTS: It’s safe to eat takeout/delivery food.

JOHN TAMNY: The New York Times’ Baseless Insinuations About Sanofi, Trump, and Hydroxychloroquine. “The shame about the Times report is that it didn’t have to be. Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich, and Maggie Haberman could have just responsibly penned an article revealing a debate about a drug’s efficacy. But since President Trump talked hydroxychloroquine up, they had to lace in their own biases and weak revelations in a vain attempt to make Trump look bad.”

But Orange Man is Bad, even if Baker, Rogers, Enrich, and Haberman — shameless and awful, all of them — have to sacrifice the truth and whatever is left of their reputations to prove it.

DEMS BLOCK MCCONNELL BID TO SWIFTLY APPROVE $250B MORE FOR SMALL BUSINESS FUND.

Related: DNC-MSM gets their talking points:

‘FIRING ON FEW OR POSSIBLY NO CYLINDERS:’ Sean Ono Lennon drops politely vicious truth-bomb on Dems for picking Biden.

 Apparently, being raised by Yoko Ono is a sure path to becoming red-pilled. I enjoyed Sean’s occasional appearances on Sirius-XM’s Beatles channel. I wonder if they’ll continue?

NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS:

The total number of recovered cases in Knox County surpassed 100 on Thursday while the total number of cases surpassed 150.

Knox County reported 6 new positive local cases and no new deaths Thursday. There are now 42 active cases in the county as of April 9, down from 65 on Wednesday.

The total number of recovered cases now stands at 106, up from 77 on Wednesday. Recovered cases refers to those who have been released from isolation.

Nineteen of the 152 cases have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness. This figure does not reflect the number of patients currently hospitalized in the county.

Stay tuned. I think our early shutdowns — and the pre-shutdown cancellation of the St. Patrick’s parade and Shamrock Festival — really helped.

HMM: South Korea Reports That Coronavirus ‘Reactivates’ in Some Patients Thought Cured.

SO I GUESS TRUMP WAS RIGHT TO CRITICIZE EUROPE’S OPEN BORDERS WHEN HE SHUT DOWN FLIGHTS FROM THERE. Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came From Europe, Genomes Show: Travelers seeded multiple cases starting as early as mid-February, genomes show. If Europe had shut down flights with China when the US did, this problem would have been reduced dramatically.

THAT SEEMS SANE: WaPo Imagines McConnell Confirming Judges ‘on a Throne of Skulls.’

THANK GOODNESS FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE TRUMP ANTIVIRUS POLICIES! Fauci Says U.S. Virus Deaths May Be 60,000, Half of Projections. “Fatalities of as many as 200,000 Americans had been estimated.” Actually, at one point they were talking 2.5 million. That means Trump will have saved literally millions of lives through his approach to the pandemic.

The campaign ads write themselves!