Love in the Time of COVID-19

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Today marks one year that I had to resign from my job because I couldnā€™t get reliable transportation to and from the worksite, 23 miles from my residence.

I got a call from my MI-DHHS caseworker (she used her own phone, so I didnā€™t answer till the 2nd call, as I didnā€™t recognize it) this morning and it was kind of rough for me. I had applied last Friday for State Emergency Relief on the electric bill (one thing I found out - our usage has gone down, but even so DTE raised their rates 4.5 percent, a compromise - DURING A PANDEMIC - to the 9 percent they wanted) and also for cash assistance.

She knew about my singing gig, and it did count as income as I had secured a letter from my partner stating I worked for him. But that - $70 month, max (two gigs, we split the take evenly) - wasnā€™t enough. And then the pandemic came along, and gigs disappeared. So even with me owning the house, and being a taxpayer, even though Iā€™m in tax-debt, I had to tell her where Iā€™m getting money.

That was tough. Even though I know itā€™s no failing of mine. I also had to talk more about my emotional and mental disabilities.

Why is the money that should be helping folks like me and worse being misdirected? I mean, I KNOWā€¦I doā€¦but yā€™knowā€¦being bombarded daily, even if not by my own choice, of how terrible those in power can truly be in wielding that powerā€¦it makes no sense.

But, as Charlie said: ā€œNo sense makes sense.ā€ Which makes things better-worse to meā€¦yikes.

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ā€œHello Facebook put back my profile page and videos up or your computers with start crashing till you do,ā€ she tweeted. ā€œYou are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name.ā€

Yep, this totally sounds like a person the President should be amplifying.

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And that puts me in mind of the ā€œblow-jobā€ that Kenneth Copeland gave COVID-19ā€¦

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One of the good things about indefinite work from home - the chance to fiddle around on little projects through out the day.

One of the bad things about indefinite work form home - the chance to fiddle around on little projects through out the day.

Background - Working on building new configuration for the next generation of hand held scanners we use for warehousing.

The easiest way to get them from out of box (or wiped to default configuration) to configured for production is to scan a bunch of 2d barcodes.

Trying to scan these barcodes off an LCD is pretty hit or miss. And miss is definitely winning.

So that means printing them, which honestly wastes a lot of paper as it is a lot of configure-test-reconfigure-retest.

If only I had an e-ink monitor.

Wait a minute, I do have an e-ink screen I never got around to usingā€¦

And then like that Iā€™m down a half-hour time sink trying to figure out how much trouble Iā€™ll have getting the RPi working with it and right now, I just donā€™t have the time to spend on it.

But itā€™d be much more efficient (if I didnā€™t factor in all of the design and build time for it)

Oh, well. Printer goes brrrrrrrrrrrr.

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My printer wonā€™t take in paper. Iā€™ve used every way I could think of that would be non-damaging to clean the rollers but still nothing.

So my printer doesnā€™t suck, which sucks. And Iā€™ve got brand-new ink and paper. Iā€™m with you in spirit, Brother.

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The city forced them to change the wedding plans and have people watch remotely, but

The couple also held a rehearsal dinner the night before the event, which more than 40 guests attended, according to the San Francisco Chronicle .

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Am I the only one that feels like we blew past that exit sign months ago?

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If youā€™re looking for a (to me) fascinating rabbit hole to fall down that may be able to provide a solution to this, allow me to point you to esphome. Itā€™s a (yaml) configuration-driven software stack for extremely low power single board computers like the ESP32 and ESP8266.

In your particular case, it looks like they support a number of e-ink displays, and a quick look on Amazon has fully assembled modules for ~$30. If youā€™re comfortable with docker, you can plug one of these in to USB, create a config file, and upload it with a simple command-line. Once thatā€™s done, further updates can be done over Wi-Fi.

Fair warning: once you head down this path, you may find your self with more projects than you started with.

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Well, thatā€™s just ā€¦yeah. Good thing I have to go into the office today.

Thanks for the link, I likely have all the bits and bobs (if I can find them) to make that work.

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So far, theyā€™ve decided that the way to go for us is to divide our classes into at first 2 and now into 4 cohorts for each class. For my campus, my class is capped at 33, so thatā€™s about 8 people per cohort. It also means I have to do each lecture 4 times, over 2 weeks (T/R class). That means I can only have about half the lectures than I normally do and cover all the topics I want to cover in that time, too.

I think my particular situation is similar to yours, in that itā€™s a commuter school essentially, with the exception of the main campus of Georgia State, with no dorms for the Perimeter campuses.

Although I just looked at the cohorts I have (which in the system are still divided into 2 CRNs or cohorts for the same classā€¦ one has no students enrolled, the other is only up to 9?

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I do marketing stuff for a senior care company, and we had a call today about a bunch of things. One of them was about COVID in the different communities.

They are handling this better than the government, by a long shot, just by being open and honest about what is happening, and by doing their level (science based) best to keep people safe.

They had a situation where multiple employees tested positive (found on routine testing done by the company) but no residents were infected. Because they wear masks, and other PPE as appropriate. This isnā€™t to say that no residents have contracted it across all their places, just that doing what is proper leads to better outcomes than pretending itā€™s no big deal, or making it a whole political loyalty thing.

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I did some surveys in my classes. In one, half the class wants to be online. So that means I can fit everyone. In the other, most students want to come each day, so thatā€™s harder.

But a palā€™s lab just published this preprint on team-based learning in online classes: https://www.authorea.com/users/338790/articles/465209-implementing-team-based-learning-in-the-life-sciences-a-case-study-in-an-online-introductory-level-evolution-and-biodiversity-course

Hoping to adapt ā€¦

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Letā€™s revisit March 2020. Trumpā€™s reelection chances depend on repairing the crashed economy, and the process of repair depends on re-opening the economy. But re-opening America can mean only one of two things: the pandemic is over or making people live with the pandemic. Trump is in a terrible hurry, so he settles for the former. But it doesnā€™t work. Re-opening America while infection rates and death rates are very high (what I call necro-economics) proves, by June, to be deeply unpopular with voters. The V-shaped recovery ainā€™t happening like itā€™s supposed to. What to do? Look over here, thereā€™s George Floyd and the protests his murder ignited.

At that point, Trump exhumed and dusted off this passage from his inaugural speech: ā€œThis American carnage stops right here and stops right now.ā€ This was about cities, their liberal mayors, their tolerance. These cities are decaying, are in chaos, are without law and order. This is the show Vigdor is trying to enhance with his New York Post piece. But who is Trump and Vigdor trying to scare? Who is their audience? Oddly enough, itā€™s suburban voters.

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