Google, Apple, Facebook all know where people are moving around and where they’re locked down. People in pre-CV America would have freaked if they made the data public, in aggregate. Personally I’d love to see it.

Those of us who are locked down should know that our lockdown doesn't really begin until every state in the country does it.

This time thanks to Trump the entire country is ground zero.

My friend Om Malik, one of the original bloggers and now a VC, has started a podcast, because what else does he have to do. This is a silver lining to the pandemic. All kinds of OG bloggers are dusting off their websites and getting back to work.

We're updating the Cuomo podcast, still have to submit it to various podcast aggregators, and Woodstock Today is catching on in the community.

We are now clawing our way up the other side of the abyss. Making features for the CV epoch. Wheee! ??

What viral means

I heard someone parrot what the president said about how car accidents kill 65K people a year, yet we don't shut down the car industry. So why do we all have to hibernate in isolation while the scientists find a treatment or a vaccine for this killer disease, Covid-19. I suppose it's good to explain, one time, in one place, why a virus is different from a car accident, using Twitter as an example.

Most things I post on Twitter are not viral. One or two people may RT it, and that's it. Once in a while I post something does go viral. That means a few people RT to people who then RT it to people who then RT it, etc. Sooner or later 100K people have seen my stupid little tweet. Covid-19 is like that. If you have it, and you don't isolate, you will give it to 3 other people, and they will give it to 3 more people, and so on. Very quickly a million people have it. It goes viral. I'm sure Trump has used that word perhaps without really understanding what it means.

Now why is that a problem? We'll answer that in the next lesson.

Instant updates

I've gotten a few requests from people who get the nightly email who want more frequent updates to the main blog and the linkblog. There are feeds for both. If you follow them in an RSS reader, you will get the items as they are posted, throughout the day.

Here are the feeds:

• http://scripting.com/rss.xml
• http://radio3.io/users/davewiner/rss.xml

This week's Radio Open Source is worth a listen. The economics of Coronavirus. They breezed by a huge issue. Millions of Americans without health insurance, no savings, no job, sick, homeless, hungry, plus guns. The ticking time bomb I wrote about briefly on March 21. The so-called stimulus Congress passed, what a joke, does nothing to address this. I would much preferred see the $2 trillion give everyone the health care they need, keep us all fed, and reboot the economy around serving the people of the country. The UK did this, by guaranteeing 80% of people's salaries for the duration. They already have a national health care system. We are headed for a big crash. Congress didn't deal with it.

I think it's clear now that if SXSW had gone on as scheduled, Austin would now be a hot spot for the virus, like New Orleans or New York.

I don't feel good about this. I was glad to hear Boris Johnson got the CV, not because I hold anything against him, but if he can get it so can Trump. And I think that would be good for Americans who are scared out of our minds about this disease esp because our president is not.

It helps to remember we are an occupied country. Vichy America. The person at the podium is our Marshal Pétain.

Meta-chaos

There's chaos and there's chaos about the chaos.

Reduce the chaos until what we're doing is as smart as possible, to reduce death, and hasten the time we can resume living.

The way we're living now is not sustainable, we have to stay focused and not give in to the circus.

Here's a howto for the Cuomo daily podcast.

BTW, for techies, here's a look at the actual XML of the feed. Browsers work hard to hide this from us, but it's interesting even if you don't know what all the elements do.

I wonder how much more effective the lockdown would be if we all had good supplies of disinfectant. I have none. It's been two weeks. Why is there such a lag in producing hand sanitizers and wipes?

If our country is to have strong national borders, we need a uniform lockdown policy across the whole country. Or else we have to form federations of states with identical policies. This is starting to happen in the northeast, btw.

If Glenn Beck is so ready to die, he should kill himself, or shut up and let the dying speak for themselves to the extent they can.

Imagine there’s a fire burning in your apartment building. Your apartment is engulfed in flame. The president says it’s time to go home, sends the fire department away. Back to work!

Another analogy. General Patton is leading us to war with a dangerous enemy. He gives us an inspiring speech. Then he changes his mind and surrenders.

Trump is suing to get this taken off the TV. I don't know why. It's all about Trump. I thought he liked the attention.

I guess Trump's lawyers never heard of the Streisand Effect.

Another silver lining. We're finding out which countries have the best health care systems.

I'm looking into how to submit a podcast to Apple, and was surprised that their feed requirements are perfectly reasonable. I was expecting horrors.

Podcast feed for Cuomo daily briefing. Thanks to Richard Bluestein for doing the conversion to MP3. We now have two episodes. Questions or comments here.

I have a friend whose birthday is today. This is what I wrote on her timeline. "Not much chance of a happy birthday this year, so I wish you some happiness today, maybe for a few moments before the sense of dread takes over again. This is what passes for birthday greetings in 2020."

People wait in long line at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.

Someone should ask Trump what kind of country would we have with no health care because all the doctors are dead. Of course when it happens he’ll say “no one could have foreseen..” The US will beg first world countries to send us doctors.

I just realized local news is a lot more relevant now. When Gov Cuomo speaks, I listen carefully now.

The UK is getting its act together, after a bad start, meanwhile in the United States we know what to do, but can’t get our president to stop sulking. If he wants everyone to get back to work, he should set the example. Quit crying and do your job or get out of the way.

I find this mesmerizing.

Audio of Gov Cuomo's press conference for today. My next project is to figure out how to flow this through an RSS feed so it can be a podcast. Richard Bluestein did the MP3. More tomorrow.

Let Trump ride on the NYC subway for a couple of hours every day and see how he feels then. Turning on the economy in NYC, which is probably what he cares about, means cramming millions of people into virus-infested subway cars each for an hour or two every day. If Trump wants to ride with them, well I'd be impressed, and would also ask Mike Pence to be ready to assume the presidency. Trump may have forgotten that at age 73, he's in the expendable class according to his Republican (supposed) friends. Make sure your will is current Mr President.

Braintrust query: I grok regex, but I have a mental block against working in it. It's weird because I used it all the time when I was a grad student, but after programming on PCs and Macs, I became regex-phobic.

I'm looking for volunteers to produce MP3s every day after Gov Cuomo's talks. I want to have it be a podcast feed. I can do all the RSS work.

Don't waste time on Trump's idiotic idea. He just wants to own a news cycle. He remembers what that was like. He's a troll, now and forever, even with our lives. Don't take the bait.

George Patton: "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

Pelosi, make a condition of the stimulus that Trump resign.

Why America is so bad at Covid-19. It’s our attitude, there are never consequences for Americans. That’s for other people. We have wars and tax cuts at the same time. We don’t see the coffins of our returning dead. Nothing happens to us. We can’t imagine things not being normal. The generation that grew up during World War II, who experienced the Holocaust, the advent of nuclear weapons, that generation is gone now. Everyone alive today, not just boomers, have been spoiled. We're all coming awake now from a life-long trance. For the first time in our lives, we have to deal with the mortality of our country. Don't cry for America. It's time to grow up, again. Couldn't have a more perfect person as president. It's easy to see he is our past. Now how do we move beyond that.

My parents were born in 1929 (father) and 1932 (mother), in Bucharest and Prague. They fled from the Nazis as children with their parents, to NYC. Their lives were formed in chaos.

I always wondered why bike delivery people in NYC put plastic bags over the handles of their bikes. Today I found out. "They keep your hands warm, particularly when you're biking really fast and the wind is bad. Can still access the gears and brakes this way, which you couldn't do easily in gloves."

Went to a local supermarket this morning. It was empty of people. The shelves were pretty well stocked. I went because a friend told me there were paper products. I got four rolls of paper towels. And two packages of bacon (why not, who knows when we'll see it again).

Note to people who manage websites that deliver timely and vital information about the virus. Think clearly about the user experience. Some sites have popups and cluttered templates, even paywalls. If technical people want to do something to help, i.e. the people who read this blog, try to simplify and ease access to your sites.

My friend Enoch Choi on the front line.

Nothing like impending doom to focus the mind. ??

I watched the finale of season 3 of The Expanse without realizing it was the last episode before Amazon took it over. It was masterful. I'm going to have to watch it again. BTW, my favorite character is Drummer. I am a Belter, for sure.

People who make Skype should watch cable news. What's wrong? Why do so many of the remote experts look and sound so shitty. Come on you all can do better! ??

I read in an article about China and South Korea how they relied on location data from people's phones to know where contagious people had been. NakedJen had to install one of these apps before they'd let her enter the country, just to switch planes. I'm guessing that in the US we can't use that data even though companies like Google, Apple and Facebook have it. The context has changed, and now trillions of dollars are at stake, the existence of our economy, our lives (hope that's not too dramatic). Perhaps it's time to re-think our assumptions.

Amy Klobuchar's husband has CV.