On the YouTube description of the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: "As COVID-19 continues to dominate the news cycle, John Oliver looks at the various sources of misinformation about the disease – from televangelists and the right wing media, to President Trump himself." — Read the rest
Harbor.im is a California "retreat" for rich people to escape the coronavirus pandemic. Ride out the crisis while enjoying daily yoga and breathwork, pool parties and COVID-19 testing "when available" in a beautiful west-coast locale! Get "the most fulfilling experience" of the pandemic without getting closer than 6ft to another human being! — Read the rest
Does anyone ever read the introductory paragraph preceding a listicle like this? I sure don't. I always skip straight to the numbered list. So without further ado, here are the 5 types of villains making the pandemic worse for everyone else:
1. — Read the rest
Someone needs to tell him life is on the record pic.twitter.com/NPhxjQdcid
— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) March 19, 2020
Recount assembled Trump's statements about coronavirus — all downplaying it, some calling it an outright hoax — and put them in a nice calendar so you can see the exact point where we were always at war with Eastasia. — Read the rest
Qanon grifters see a new opportunity in the coronavirus scare: anyone self-isolating or quarantined can be described as under "house arrest" for all the usual Qanon fantasy crimes. Oprah Winfrey, among the many thusly targeted, blasted the conspiracy theories with oxygen by publicly denying them on Twitter. — Read the rest
My favorite thing about joke D&D alignment charts is that I am always, always Chaotic Good. I just can't avoid my nature, and everybody knows it.
Lawful Good: washing your hands, social distancing, and forwarding your mom's pandemic advice emails to your friends
Neutral Good: taking loong moody walks by yourself at weird hours of the day
Chaotic Good: having a facetime tinder hookup and venmoing your service industry friends what you would have spent at the bar
Lawful Neutral: writing a series of poems/personal essays on what "distance" means to you
True Neutral: putting aside your manuscript to watch all 543 episodes of chopped
Chaotic Neutral: adopting a lizard
Lawful Evil: hoarding hand sanitizer and toilet paper
Neutral Evil: exacerbating panic and yelling at people on the internet
Chaotic Evil: having the privilege and resources to be able to self-isolate and choosing not to because this is America and you feel fine
via Aiden Arata on Instagram
Top image via Wikimedia Commons / CC 4.0 — Read the rest
Climate change. Pandemics. Nuclear war. While these are undoubtedly devastating realities or possibilities, could they wipe out humanity entirely? Highly unlikely, writes Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute. From Quartz:
— Read the restA century ago, the Spanish flu caused a staggering 20-50 million deaths, more than WWI.
Stuart Candy of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies emailed me about their new alternate reality game, Coral Cross. Commissioned by the Hawaii Department of Health and bankrolled by the Center for Disease Control, the game is about… pandemic flu. — Read the rest
From Reason.com, a review of Ammon Shea's The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads, which explores some of the remarkable technologies that were prefigured by the idea of publishing a whole city's contact information in one universally available directory. — Read the rest
There's always been an unresolvable tension between artistry and fame. Very few people find fame to be what they had hoped. It comes with a lot of strings attached. It's like a drug — once you've had it, you spend the rest of your life chasing more. — Read the rest
When the Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on February 18, 2021, it was carrying a tiny passenger. Attached to its underside was a helicopter that would attempt something new for a NASA Mars mission: flight. Producing lift isn't an easy task in the thin atmosphere of Mars, but if they could prove it was possible it would open up new possibilities for exploring areas that are hard to reach by traditional rovers. — Read the rest
Science journalist and host of the Pandemia Podcast, Kai Kupferschmidt, posted today on his X/Twitter that Paul Alexander, who called himself "Polio Paul" on his TikTok account, passed away on March 11, 2024, at the age of 78.
It's a tragic story—a man who survived one pandemic, polio, and lived over 70 years in an iron lung—didn't survive our current, ongoing pandemic. — Read the rest
In Atlanta, the streets are safer for car tires, thanks to the efforts of a guy known as the "Atlanta Magnet Man." Alex Benigno has taken it upon himself to remove nails, screws, and other metal bits from the streets by biking around with a magnet-equipped trailer. — Read the rest
The 18th annual Santa Monica Film Festival, which held in-person screenings on Saturday, February 3 and which is running online screenings through February 28, chose to feature and then give awards to some dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories masquerading as "documentary" films. — Read the rest
Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to get the Supreme Court to erase the hefty fines she racked up during the Covid pandemic when she repeatedly refused to wear her mask on the House floor. But the Court couldn't be bothered with Marge's self-inflicted woes, denying her appeal to a lower court's ruling. — Read the rest
The latest wellness trend involves sticking coffee up your butt, and who better to report on this phenomenon—which, of course, has been spreading through social media—than the Conspirituality Podcast. We've covered the brilliant work of the Conspirituality Podcast many times here on Boing Boing—I'm a big fan of the show, which has the tagline "Dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis," and which defines conspirituality as "a study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism." — Read the rest
A new report from the Urban Institute once again busts tired and false myths and stereotypes about public assistance. The new report presents results from a guaranteed basic income pilot program that was run by the city of Austin, Texas in partnership with non-profit organization UpTogether and ten other community-based partners. — Read the rest
It's easy to fleece a MAGA dupe. Just tell them you've got a pill or good luck charm to protect them against George Soros, Bill Gates, or any other overlord of the adrenochrome-drinking reptiles who control the media and the deep state, and they'll max out whatever's left on the credit card to buy it. — Read the rest
With post-pandemic demand for new jets growing and the competition in bad shape, Airbus is picking up the slack. The Wall Street Journal reports that the European plane maker is shattering records for orders. It can't keep up with demand and is sold out for a decade. — Read the rest
On his NewsNation show "Cuomo," journalist and former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo recently opened up about his struggle with long COVID. He shared that he's currently been battling a cold for over a month, and also relayed that since contracting COVID in Spring of 2020, his health hasn't been the same as it was pre-COVID. — Read the rest
