Hello, good evening, happy Friday. I had a lot of work to do this week, so this week’s newsletter is later in the day (night), sorry. But a lot has happened, so, there’s that.
Watchmen is over but this is still my favorite meme from this week. Also it describes our general feelings of dread about quarantine, I think.
So we beat on, boats against the current
The world of conspiracy theories is wild and unbelievable. The people who believe this shit are so far down the rabbit hole that the hope of ever reaching them seems… naive.
Ben Collins does a great job reporting about them and the people affected by the nonsense they believe, though.
At the end of another long shift treating coronavirus patients, Dr. Hadi Halazun opened his Facebook page to find a man insisting to him that "no one's dying" and that the coronavirus is "fake news" drummed up by the news media.
Hadi tried to engage and explain his firsthand experience with the virus. In reply, another user insinuated that he wasn't a real doctor, saying pictures from his profile showing him at concerts and music festivals proved it.
"I told them: 'I am a real doctor. There are 200 people in my hospital's ICU,'" said Halazun, a cardiologist in New York. "And they said, 'Give me your credentials.' I engaged with them, and they kicked me off their wall."
"I left work and I felt so deflated. I let it get to me."
I think this is a big thing that has gotten to me over the past few weeks. I have an absurd amount of anxiety about people who refuse to comply with the quarantine orders, whether for political or anti-scientific reasons. They aren’t just endangering themselves, they’re endangering their communities. It’s utterly terrifying.
I went to pick up beer and food from Revolution after work (it was delicious), as I do each week, and each week I keep seeing so many people who aren’t wearing masks. Masks are now required by law in Illinois. And yet! I am therefore extremely not optimistic about “reopening” any time soon.
You do not want to develop the debt of a lawyer without becoming one
If you were wondering whether this was going to be another depressing piece, sorry, yes, but also oh my god.
What if you spent three years in law school, taking classes in contracts, torts, and constitutional law, and paying more than $11,000 a year, but — here’s the twist — at the end of it you weren't a lawyer? That's what a small number of online law schools are offering with a degree called the Executive Juris Doctor. The schools explain upfront that students won't be eligible to practice law but can use their “advanced legal training in one of the many law-related areas.” Yet many students find that what seems like it could be a leg up amounts to little more than an expensive education in the difference one letter makes.
“I finished July 26 and am looking for a job. I could scream because instead of getting a JD degree qualifying me to take the California Bar, I settled for the underdog degree, EJD. This is a non-bar attorney degree. No one knows what the f--- it is and trying to describe it makes you look like a goddamned fool. Yeah, I screwed myself it appears,” Copperas Cove, Texas, resident Brenda Cuney told BuzzFeed News.
Including the “JD” letters in these degrees should be illegal. Marketing these degrees this way should be illegal. The entire reason why we have state bars - cartels that they are - is so that they can regulate the practice of law. Now, my opinion is that they should be working to prevent shit like this from happening. This story is totally unconscionable to me, it should have not been allowed to happen, I feel so awful for all of these people. Going through law school is hard enough on its own, I cannot imagine going to some fake-ass school and getting a fake-ass degree with no job prospects.
The cruelty is the point
During a private call on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that “every scientific and medical report shows” state reopenings “ipso facto” lead to an increase in novel coronavirus cases, even as he publicly announced plans that same week to end an executive stay-at-home order in the state.
“How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?” Abbott asked during a Friday afternoon phone call with members of the state legislature and Congress. “Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening—whether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of society—in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It’s almost ipso facto.”
I mean come on, of course they know what they’re doing, they know that “reopening” the states is going to cause deaths and they just don’t care.
I have seen countless conservatives argue that “there has to be a line” when it comes to economic losses versus losses of life. I don’t know if they are just excluding the economic losses that would result from massive loss of life. I am pretty sure they are not accounting for the racial breakdown of COVID-19 casualties and how poorer areas (inhabited mostly by people of color) are seeing higher mortality rates.
The policy decision being made is that the lives of service workers are expendable. It is an abhorrent decision. Go watch Season 3 of Westworld, or something, figure it out.
Also:
Shameless friend promotion
My friend Grace Thomas made this amazing video this week, please watch and enjoy it. She is brilliant.
I don’t get it
Seriously, I do not understand the people in this story. But what a story:
Just like everyone else in the world, Kingyo, a college student in Texas, has been washing his hands a lot these days. He, though, does it a lot differently than everyone else, purposefully running the ends of his sleeves under the water while doing so. “I love the feeling of wet sleeves around my wrist; it’s the absolute best feeling,” he confides. “Texas can be so hot, and the heat makes my body feel fuzzy and uncomfortable. But cold water is just so biting and sharp. It’s refreshing and keeps my hands cold.”
Tell the truth
Margaret Thatcher said that “there is no such thing as society,” and Ronald Reagan said that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” These stupid slogans marked the turn away from the postwar period of reconstruction and underpin much of the bullshit of the past forty years.
One of my favorite undergrad professors introduced me to Kim Stanley Robinson. I was delighted to see his name on the byline of this piece in the New Yorker. He is telling the truth in public, here, and what a liberating thing. It feels like we get so little of that, these days. We see fragments of it here and there, little glimpses of the light that we are longing for. Moments of candor, shards of honesty. But the larger, illuminating force of the truth about how all of conservative politics has undermined our ability to respond to the crises confronting us on a global scale… that has gone mostly unaddressed.
Much of the bullshit of the past forty years. Quite.
Magic puzzles
My friend Max Temkin launched a Kickstarter this week for the inaugural release from his new project, The Magic Puzzle Company. He loves magic, and he teamed up with other magicians to create puzzles that are also magic tricks. They are so cool, please check it out. I have not played the prototypes, but I backed it instantly - in fact, I was backer #4 out of 17,012 (so far).
Also the project was allegedly so successful that it broke Kickstarter.
Here is the artwork for each puzzle, it is great:
You deserve some good animal content
Okay. Have a great week. Stay inside.
What's Good: May 8, 2020
Who is your favorite Watchmen character?