ANOTHER REASON TO WEAR A MASK: Artificial intelligence can predict a person’s personality using only a selfie.
Archive for 2020
May 23, 2020
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Time is Pimm’s O’clock? How to make the perfect Pimm’s.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Biden: ‘If You Don’t Let Me Sniff Your Hair, You Ain’t A Woman.’
NAACP PUSHES BACK ON BIDEN’S CLAIM IT ENDORSED HIM AFTER ‘YOU AIN’T BLACK’ FUROR: “‘Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden made a comment about the NAACP’s endorsement,’ the statement by Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said. ‘We want to clarify that the NAACP is a non-partisan organization and does not endorse candidates for political office at any level.’”
Related: When you’re a leftist who has lost the Grauniad: Black Americans are in an abusive relationship with the Democratic party.
Exit quote: “Again and again, Biden’s relationship with black Americans, like the Democratic National Committee’s relationship, has been patronizing at best and actively harmful at worst.”
WHY IS POPULAR SCIENCE RUNNING AN ARTICLE ON Diaphragms in Literature?
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Dems Block House Investigation Into China’s Coronavirus Lies and Malfeasance.
NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Coronavirus in Tennessee: 23 active Knox County cases, 331 total. “The Knox County Health Department reported four new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, to bring the county’s total to 331. Knox County reported 23 active cases on Saturday, down from 27 active cases on Friday. The total number of recovered cases grew to 303 from 295. . . . There is one Knox County patient currently hospitalized due to COVID-19. Of the 331 cases, 38 of them have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness and five deaths.”
Yesterday was the three-week anniversary of our reopening.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Love’s Johnny Echols on Playing With Little Richard vs. Chuck Berry.
WELL, TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY WERE SENDING INFECTIOUS SICK PEOPLE TO NURSING HOMES INSTEAD: $21M Brooklyn field hospital never saw a patient amid coronavirus pandemic.
ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THAT WE’D BE STACKING BODIES LIKE CORDWOOD: No coronavirus catastrophes following reopenings of Georgia, Florida and Texas.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH THE SON OF JOHN AND YOKO IS A VOICE OF SANITY:
Earlier: John Lennon’s Son Denounces Political Correctness, Says Leftist Intellectuals Have Become Pathetic.
JAPAN BEATS CORONAVIRUS WITHOUT LOCKDOWNS OR MASS TESTING.
Japan’s state of emergency is nearing its end with new cases of the coronavirus dwindling to mere dozens. It got there despite largely ignoring the default playbook.
No restrictions were placed on residents’ movements, and businesses from restaurants to hairdressers stayed open. No high-tech apps that tracked people’s movements were deployed. The country doesn’t have a center for disease control. And even as nations were exhorted to “test, test, test,” Japan has tested just 0.2% of its population — one of the lowest rates among developed countries.
Yet the curve has been flattened, with deaths well below 1,000, by far the fewest among the Group of Seven developed nations. In Tokyo, its dense center, cases have dropped to single digits on most days. While the possibility of a more severe second wave of infection is ever-present, Japan has entered and is set to leave its emergency in just weeks, with the status already lifted for most of the country and likely to exit completely as early as Monday.
Nobody’s sure why, but I note that places that have done well seem to be places where people routinely wear masks when they fear they might be sick.
Plus:
While Japan may have avoided the worst of the health outcomes, the loose lockdown hasn’t protected the country from the economic impact. Its economy, already dealing with the impact of a sales tax hike in October, officially slid into recession in the first three months of the year. Economists have warned the second quarter will be the worst on record, and the specter of deflation, which haunted the economy for decades, once again looms. Tourist numbers plummeted 99.9% in April after the country shut its borders, putting the brakes on a booming industry that had promised to be a growth driver for years. As in other countries, bankruptcies have risen sharply.
Even with the end of the state of emergency in sight, authorities are warning that life will not return to normal. When case numbers slowed in early March, there was public optimism that the worst was over — only for cases to spike again and trigger the emergency declaration.
There are no true winners in a pandemic.
THE KING OF GERMANY WILL ACCEPT YOUR BANK DEPOSITS NOW: Who Is Germany’s Self-Proclaimed King Peter Fitzek?
King Peter’s subjects are adherents of the Reichsbürger movement, whose members believe Germany doesn’t exist. The republic, they contend, is a limited liability company controlled by the Allied victors of World War II—and, according to the more anti-Semitic, the Rothschild family. Reichsbürgers print their own passports, often refuse to pay taxes, and clog courts with paperwork, along the same lines as the U.S. “sovereign citizen” movement.
And like their other American kin, QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory alleging a “deep state” plot against Donald Trump—they’re products of the digital age of unreason. Reichsbürgers are indoctrinated by low-budget YouTube talk shows hosted by the likes of Jo Conrad, who says Freemasons, lizard people, and child-murdering cults have overrun Germany.
Big if true.
SO MUCH HATE AT HARVARD: Harvard’s attack on homeschooling (and Christian parents) is maliciously false.
KAREN HAS SPOKEN: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extends Michigan stay home order to June 12.
Given that Dr. Fauci has said, as CNBC reports, “staying closed for too long could cause ‘irreparable damage,’” I’m assuming Gov. Karen is fine with that notion.
On the other hand, as Melissa Mackenzie of the American Spectator tweets, “I want Whitmer to lock down Michigan until the state is punished so severely for voting Democrat, they don’t do it again for a generation.”
FASCINATING TECHNOLOGY BUT IS IT REALLY THE LAST SUPPER LOCATION? Count me skeptical of the claim, but using infrared technology to recreate a building’s digital history could open a whole new field of inquiry in archeology and maybe criminology as well.
IT’S EASY TO TELL WHO’S ON THE PAYROLL, OR AT LEAST ON THE TEAM: Dem senators support resolution calling ‘Chinese Virus’ racist. “Colleges across the country have made similar attempts to keep students from using the ‘racist’ phrase.”
