In true pop-up art fashion, the 7-foot-tall monolith made of tasty and aromatic gingerbread mysteriously appeared in San Francisco and then – perhaps unsurprisingly – collapsed the next day.
The tower, held together by icing and decorated with a few gumdrops, delighted the city on Friday when word spread about its existence.
The gingerbread monolith appeared on Christmas day, but had collapsed by Saturday morning. Photograph: Karl Mondon/AP
People trekked to Corona Heights park throughout the day, even as light rain fell on the ephemeral, edible art object. In one video posted online, someone took a bite of the gingerbread.
Phil Ginsburg, head of city’s Recreation and Parks Department, told KQED the site “looks like a great spot to get baked” and confirmed his staff will not remove the monument “until the cookie crumbles”.
They worry about the potential emergence of a mostly male and increasingly interracial working-class coalition for Republicans that will cut into the demographic advantages Democrats had long counted on. They speculate that the tremendous Democratic gains in the suburbs during the Trump years might fade when he leaves office. And they fret that their inability to make inroads in more rural areas could forestall anything but the most narrow Senate majority in the future.
“We just need to acknowledge that Trump’s poison was deeper in the bloodstream of the American electorate than we thought,” said Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, which ran a $62 million ad campaign to hurt Trump among White working-class voters in three northern states that Biden won.
Upping the stakes further is the grim math of the midterm elections in 2022, when historical trends favor a Republican takeover of the House and continued Senate control, especially if they can hold the two Georgia seats in a runoff Jan. 5 that will again test the party’s reach among college-educated White and working-class Black voters.Democratic losses in the House combined with post-election retirements could reduce the party’s majority to a razor-thin seven-seat margin if the two outstanding contests are called for Republicans.
“We won back the House and the White House in the suburbs, but my sense is we are leasing that support — we don’t own it,” said Robby Mook, the manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign who led the House Majority PAC this cycle. “With Trump gone, that lease is up for renewal. If we don’t hold on to our gains in the suburbs or replace it by winning back working-class White voters, we will have a problem.”
Oh, SHUT. UP. We have heard these same “fears” from “experts” before every social event all year and they have proven to be wrong. Election… Independence Day… Memorial Day… Labor Day… Thanksgiving… and no spike after any of them. Meanwhile, states that are locked down the tightest (cough: California) are seeing massive spikes and states that are pretty much going about their business are doing fine (Florida). Locking down healthy people doesn’t stop anything.
I think it’s safe to say that the “experts” that the media keeps going to are not really experts at anything at all. Enjoy your Christmas, y’all, without guilt or shame.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hard-hit California eclipsed 2 million coronavirus cases on Christmas Eve as the U.S. headed into a holiday season of travel and family gatherings that threaten to fuel the deadly outbreak across the nation.
Despite warnings from public health experts to stay home, over 1.19 million travelers passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints Wednesday — down by about 40% from a year ago, but the highest one-day total since the crisis took hold in mid-March.
Airports also recorded around 1 million travelers on each of the five days between last Friday and Tuesday.
Figures show there were 126,300 fewer New York residents in July, compared to one year earlier, signifying a drop of nearly 0.65 percent. Illinois trailed New York with a 0.63 percent population decline and Hawaii and West Virginia followed with 0.61 percent and 0.58 percent drops, respectively.
The Census Bureau released its estimates based on 2010’s numbers — the numbers for 2020 will be released next year.
With the new numbers, New York could potentially lose one seat in the House of Representatives, dropping to 26, according to analysis conducted by The New York Times.
A top public health official on the White House coronavirus task force has said she will retire after it emerged she hosted a holiday gathering.
Dr Deborah Birx, who is 64, cited the criticism she had faced for a family get-together over Thanksgiving in Delaware in her decision to step aside.
“This experience has been a bit overwhelming,” she said. “It’s been very difficult on my family.”
[…]
She had urged Americans in the days before Thanksgiving to restrict gatherings to “your immediate household”.
But it emerged on Sunday she had travelled from Washington to one of her other properties, on Fenwick Island in Delaware, where she was joined by three generations of her family from two households.
While in Delaware, she did an interview with CBS in which she noted that some Americans had “made mistakes” over Thanksgiving by travelling and they “should assume they were infected”.
We have seen hypocrisy from our politicians and public health officials throughout this pandemic. Now, people can be hypocritical about all sorts of things. I am, at times. We are human and it is easier to say than to do. But the pervasiveness of it during this pandemic tells us something… what?
Are the politicians and public health officials just flawed humans who screwed up? When they get the call from their family inviting them over, they just succumb to the natural human desire to be together?
Do the politicians and public health officials think that they are truly better than the rest of us? They believe that we are in a serious pandemic, but they can write their own personal guidelines based on their judgement of the risk factors. The rest of us are too stupid to do so. After all, they are the smart ones, right?
Do the politicians and public health officials actually believe that the pandemic is serious? In their hearts, do they believe that the pandemic is a big nothing-burger and they are just feeding into the hysteria because it advances their personal power or ideological goals?
I suspect it is a mixture of the three potential possibilities with a heavy emphasis of the latter two.
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. It is a departure from my usual fare. Here’s a part:
Christmas is a time of joy, but shaded with guilt, for from the manger, we can see the cross. Jesus came into our ghastly world for the singular purpose of being brutally killed to atone for the sins of humankind — including my sins. It is sometimes difficult to take joy in the beginning of a story when you know how devastating the end is. But that isn’t the end of the story. Jesus rose in glory from the dead and waits in splendor to welcome us into our eternity. Because he rose, so shall we. From that, Christians take joy and meaning for our lives. This mortal life we lead is a transient prelude to a story whose end is not ours to write.
As we celebrate Christmas by giving gifts to each other, it is really a celebration of the gift that Jesus gave to us. Without the baby, we would not have the man. Without the man, we would not have our salvation. For that, Christians are forever thankful.
It is with this knowledge of our salvation that Christians walk through this mortal life with earnestness, confidence, joy, and love. Earnestness to do the most good with the gifts God gave us in the short time we have. Confidence in our destination. Joy in our purpose. Love for our fellow humans. It is with this in our hearts that I hope we will approach the issues that we will face together in 2021 and the years left to each of us.
This is coming. Eventually, it won’t just be about Coronavirus. Fight it now.
Work is being carried out to develop coronavirus freedom ‘passports’ that will allow those who have tested negative to enter pubs, schools and workplaces.
Two firms have been awarded Government contracts for exploratory work on a new app that would allow people to prove they do not have Covid.
The Department of Health said no decisions had been made on introducing the passport.
The contracts envisage a system under which people are assigned a QR code on their smartphones linking to a digital passport that includes a photo of them.
After a Covid test, this would be updated at the test centre and when people want to enter a venue they could present their QR code as proof of their negative status.
Every US state has been advised to consider ethnic minorities as a critical and vulnerable group in their vaccine distribution plans, according to Centers for Disease Control guidance.
As a result, half of the nation’s states have outlined plans that now prioritize black, Hispanic and indigenous residents over white people in some way, as the vaccine rollout begins.
According to our analysis, 25 states have committed to a focus on racial and ethnic communities as they decided which groups should be prioritized in receiving a coronavirus vaccine dose.
A new study shows school districts that began the year with virtual education lost more students than districts that began the year with in-person education.
The study, “Opting Out: Enrollment Trends in Response to Continued Public School Shutdowns” by Will Flanders with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), said, “Districts with exclusively virtual education saw a 3% decline in enrollment on average relative to other districts in the state.”
School enrollment is down overall as parents deal with difficult choices during the Covid-19 pandemic. On average, according to the study, school districts saw a 2.67% decline in enrollment this year. In previous years the drop was 0.3%.
“Everyone has had to make adjustments due to the pandemic. But the decision of many teachers’ unions to oppose any attempt at in-person learning appears to have consequences,” Flanders said about the study. “Many Wisconsin families have opted out of schools that are not even trying to accommodate in-person learning.”
There were schools that did see an increase in enrollment, virtual charter schools and parental choice schools.
But if you approach the village’s central cafe, you’ll hear a rather unusual sound. It’s the buzz of conversations among elders in a 3,000-year-old language called Tsakonika.
The speakers are the linguistic descendants of ancient Sparta, the iconic Greek city-state, and part of a rich cultural heritage and population called Tsakonian.
Thomais Kounia, known as the “empress of Tsakonika” for her mastery of the language, tells her friend about the bread she baked that morning, but my Greek translator cannot understand her. Instead, Kounia translates for him in Greek, and he then tells me, like a game of Chinese whispers. I am in awe. These ladies are some of the last fluent speakers of one of the world’s oldest living languages
Today, only about 2,000 of the 10,000 Tsakonians, primarily elders, still speak Tsakonika at all, and the language is limited to 13 towns, villages and hamlets located around Pera Melana. While Greek is the region’s official language, Tsakonika is often spoken at home and casually in public here. Yet, its future remains uncertain.
A young mother says she and her husband were kicked off a United Airlines flight because their two-year-old daughter refused to wear a mask.
Eliz Orban was in tears during a video she shared Friday on Instagram showing herself in the airport along with her husband and daughter, Edeline, after getting off the plane.
‘We just got kicked off a flight because our two-year-old would not put on a mask,’ Orban, who was flying with her family from Colorado to Newark, New Jersey, said.
[…]
In the clip, the agent is heard telling the couple that their luggage, including their daughter’s car seat, would remain on the plane and head to their final destination.
‘Our child seat is on that plane. How are we supposed to go home?’ Orban is heard asking.
Last week, two health-care workers in the United Kingdom who were among the first batch of people to get the vaccine after it was authorized developed anaphylaxis, a severe allergic response.
Both were known to have a history of severe allergic reactions, and both were treated and recovered. A third person reportedly suffered a rapid heartbeat. British authorities issued new guidance saying people with a history of anaphylaxis should consult with their doctor before taking the vaccine. Researchers do not know what substance in the vaccine formula triggered the severe allergic response.
“When you make a decision to launch a vaccine like this, it’s not because you know everything,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel that endorsed the vaccine Thursday. But, he added, “I think we know enough.”
Of course there will be side effects. And of course they will be different for different people. Humans are complex organisms and the injection or ingestion of any substance will have varying effects.
Demands of 100% safety are not reasonable? That various vaccines will likely help a lot of people avoid getting COVID-19. It will also likely hurt and kill a few people. There are risks. There are also risks if you don’t get the vaccine, and those risks are also different for different people. It is up to each of us to weigh the risks and make the best decision we can.
As for me, I’ve already had it, so I don’t need the vaccine. I’ve been naturally inoculated. Some of y’all might want to think about getting the vaccine when it is available. Some of y’all might be young and healthy and decide that it is not worth the risk because there is a 99.9% survival rate from COVID-19 for your demographic.
Workplace harmony, culture and productivity all depend on successful communication. And while language gaps between senior leadership and newer hires aren’t unusual, they’re usually bridged by a shared lexicon of ‘business speak‘. But now, the first generation of true digital natives is entering the workforce, and a pandemic has forced us into virtual offices. Workplace communication is undergoing a major shift, with some huge potential pitfalls.
[…]
The move to remote work in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic means younger generations, who are digitally fluent, suddenly have far more influence over communication and culture. It goes beyond slang and internet-speak abbreviations. Gen Z, used to informal, near-constant contact, spurns the prim email in favour of a quick Slack message. But that can be a tough pill to swallow for older generations, who are accustomed to dictating the professional rules of communication.
Kovary points to a former client: a company who came to her for advice after a run-in with a young intern. “On the first day, she emailed the CEO because she couldn’t find access to information she wanted. At the end of week one, she sent a company-wide email, to 8,000 people, with all her ideas. They called me and said, ‘obviously, we let her go’.”
Kovary explains that while the company’s leadership felt the intern “totally violated the unspoken rules of the communication chain”, what really happened was a generation-gap issue. “Most companies don’t want a new hire to email the CEO directly, even if that CEO has said, ‘I’m always available!’ They don’t really mean it, but the new hires don’t understand. I tell executives all the time, don’t tell young people ‘message me with your ideas’, and then be surprised when you get them.”
Stillman says Gen Z values authenticity above all else. It’s why younger employees are less willing to do the same ‘code-switching’ that past generations have. Forced assimilation to a shared lexicon isn’t sustainable anymore, says Nicky Thompson, a London-based business psychologist with a background in linguistics. Code-switching can be especially harmful for people of colour; research shows it can hinder performance and increase burnout. And Gen Z won’t put up with it.
Language and communication evolves and that’s great. What I struggle with is the hubris infused in this article. The underlying assumption is that business needs to adopt the communication norms of Gen Z. Maybe some of them, but the purpose of communication is to… you know… communicate. The purpose is to convey a thought, directive, or query to someone else. Every good communicator must think about their audience and be willing to craft their communication in a way to effectively send the intended message. I would suggest that it is just as important for Gen Z to think about how to appropriately communicate to other generations as it is for the rest of us to figure out how to communicate with them.
Tech giant Oracle Corp. said Friday it will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and let many employees choose their office locations and decide whether to work from home.
The business software maker said it will keep major hubs at its current home in Redwood City, California, and other locations.
‘We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,’ the company said in a regulatory filing.
[…]
This month, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the early companies in Silicon Valley, said it will move to the Houston area and build a campus with two five-story buildings by 2022.
‘HPE’s largest U.S. employment hub, Houston is an attractive market to recruit and retain future diverse talent, and is where the company is currently constructing a state-of-the-art new campus,’ the company said in a statement.
[…]
Texas also offers a lower cost of living and no state income tax, both of which may appeal Oracle as well as South Africa-born Musk, 49, who overtook Bill Gates to become the world’s second-wealthiest person last month as Tesla stock reached ever-greater heights.
I would point out that there is nothing stopping Wisconsin from attracting businesses like this. It’s a choice.
I have been operating under the assumption that the COVID-19 pandemic would end the same way every other viral pandemic ends: virtually everyone will catch it or be vaccinated for it. My number came up a few weeks ago as I was diagnosed with COVID-19.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have opposed using the violent, coercive power of government to impose lockdowns, restrictions, mask orders, and the like. Using the blunt instrument of government to fight a natural phenomenon is anti-liberty and results in countless negative consequences that we are just beginning to understand. Our government is useful to pool resources and provide information, but individual citizens retain the right and responsibility to live their lives according their own values and risk assessments.
Even though I oppose tyrannical government decrees, I do understand the science of viral infections. I did not want to get sick and I did not want to get other people sick. Like many Americans, I have spent months wearing a mask when out in public, obsessively washing hands, sanitizing surfaces, avoiding close contact with people (something that goes well with my misanthropic tendencies), and staying close to home.
At the same time, I am not going to give up months and years of living for the miniscule risk of death from COVID19. I took reasonable precautions to prevent the spread of disease, but I did not live like a recluse. I supported local restaurants and stores, fetched groceries, attended to my routine health care needs, enjoyed the parks, cheered on my teams, worked, played, and went about living my life.
In the end, they call it “inevitable” for a reason. Despite taking CDC-recommended precautions, I caught COVID-19. I don’t know where it came from. I did not knowingly come into contact with anyone else who had it. Likely, I caught it in passing from someone at a grocery store or restaurant who may not have known that they had it.
The first indication was a scratchy cough on a Friday in November. Saturday and Sunday were pretty crummy. I experienced varying degrees of fatigue, aching joints, coughing, headache, and general symptoms between a bad cold and a mild flu. By Monday I was feeling better but decided to get tested for COVID-19. By Thursday, I was almost completely better, and my test came back positive. Per CDC guidelines, I isolated for another 10 days, spent some time on the phone with a contact tracer (she was delightful), and now I am back to normal, except now I have a super-charged COVID-19-killing immune system.
COVID-19 is a nasty disease that is severe or deadly for some people. We need to be careful about spreading it — particularly to people in higher risk categories. But for every story you read about someone who was severely ill or died from COVID-19, there are more than 40 people whose story is more like mine. It was a rough few days and I am fine. That does not include all of the people who have had COVID-19 and did not get tested or never had any symptoms.
The point of the story is not that COVID-19 isn’t serious. It is very serious for a small percentage of people. For most people, however, the risk is a few days of unpleasantness. For most people, a few days of unpleasantness is not worth throwing away our livelihoods, our children’s education, our mental health, our life’s savings, our liberty, or our enjoyment of life. For most people, we have already sacrificed too much of life for so small a risk of death.
Fear is a powerful emotion. Fear is also the emotion most often used to subjugate people. Fear of war. Fear of enemies. Fear of natural disasters. Fear of global warming. Fear of disease. All of these fears have been, and are, used to convince free people to accept more regulation, more restrictions, more government, and less freedom. “It is for your own good,” they coax in soothing tones. “Think of grandma,” they say to stoke your familial loyalties. “You don’t want to get the dreaded virus,” they warn as if the politician has exclusive magic to protect you from disease. Meanwhile, they strip away one more liberty and stick their hand further in your pocket.
Hearing a politician say, “trust me, I am here to help” should make every freedom-loving American’s hair stand on end. Living longer is less important than living free. In the case of COVID-19, we must each evaluate the risk according to our individual characteristics and tolerance for risk, but not impose our choices on our neighbors through the police power of government.
Tenet director Christopher Nolan is leading a chorus of furious protest from the film industry over Warner Bros’ decision to release its entire 2021 slate in the US simultaneously in cinemas and on its streaming service HBO Max.
In an interview with E!, Nolan said his response was one of “disbelief” and that “there’s such controversy around it, because they didn’t tell anyone … They’ve got some of the top film-makers in the world, they’ve got some of the biggest stars in the world who worked for years in some cases on these projects very close to their hearts that are meant to be big-screen experiences … And now they’re being used as a loss-leader for the streaming service … without any consultation.”
He added: “It’s very, very, very, very messy … [It’s] not how you treat film-makers and stars and people who … have given a lot for these projects.”
[…]
John Stankey, the chief executive of AT&T, which owns both Warner Bros and HBO Max, defended the move on Tuesday, calling it a “win-win-win”. He said: “I know there’s a lot of noise out in the market, people with different viewpoints. Anytime you’re going to change a model, it’s going to create a degree of noise.” Stankey said the move would give customers a “choice”, and the longer-term would be “dictated by what consumers wish to do”.
Remember that this is all about the money. All of the directors, producers, etc. have been paid – except for those who have compensation tied to box office receipts. They are perfectly happy to sit and wait for the theaters to reopen. Warner Brothers, meanwhile, shelled about a lot of money to make these movies and hasn’t been able to reap any return on that investment. They are trying to salvage some revenue for the year and generate funds to reinvest to make more product. Nobody makes money on movies that nobody is paying to see – except the people who were already paid to make them.
It was just a normal start to the game between the Waverly High Tigers and the Portsmouth West High Senators in West Portsmouth, Ohio. Both teams were lined up and the game announcer directed everyone to stand for the National Anthem, but something went wrong. Instead of music, all you hear is silence during a livestream of the game.
The sound system was experiencing some technical difficulties and after several awkward minutes, a man’s voice begins singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
One of the Waverly parents, Trenton Brown, decided to sing the anthem to get the game going after some encouragement from his wife.
“I looked over at the announcer and the music didn’t play and didn’t play and I looked over and he was getting a little frustrated. My wife gave me a little nudge and said “Sing” and I said, “All right,'” Brown told CNN.
Although Brown said he has been singing and playing music most of his life, he had never performed the National Anthem solo.
“There was a lot of awkward silence … and then I started singing and that was it,” he said.
When he finished, he said he sat down and started his eating popcorn and drinking his Mountain Dew.
US airlines will no longer be required to transport emotional support animals after passengers insisted on bringing on board their horses, pigs, peacocks and turkeys for psychological reasons.
Wednesday’s rule change by the US Department of Transportation now says only dogs qualify as service animals.
The agency said unusual animals on flights had “eroded the public trust in legitimate service animals”.
Airlines say the old policy had been abused and was dangerous.
The new rule defines service dogs as “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability”, and says other animals should be treated by airlines as pets that can be placed in the cargo hold for a fee.
Those of us who have had it with COVID hijacking our lives (and American life) have weighed the risks and want us to return to “normal.” But the other half thinks we are nuts for “ignoring the science” and risking our lives and doing our part to keep spreading the virus.
So, we have a country, and a state, at odds with one another because we are on different timetables with different perspectives and different priorities. There is only one way to resolve these differences and that is for government to butt out and let people make decisions for themselves. One size fits all never works but it especially doesn’t work when you have a country of two sizes. Businesses that want to open at full capacity ought to be allowed to do so. Those that want to close, or limit their clientele, should be free to do that as well. If public schools want to close because of a virus that doesn’t make kids sick, that’s the prerogative of their school boards. But if private schools in the same community want to stay open because they understand the downside of not educating children is worse than the risks of COVID, they ought to be able to do that as well. That’s why the Racine case headed to the state Supreme Court is so critical. The Racine health department has issued an order closing all schools in the city (and some adjacent to the city) whether they are public or private. Wisconsin Institute For Law And Liberty (WILL) is suing. The right of the leaders of private schools to make their own decisions has to trump the rights of bureaucrats to take away those basic rights. Parents silly enough to send their kids to the mediocre (I am being generous) Racine Unified district have opted to exile them to another year of “virtual learning” in which they are going to fall even farther behind their peers. But the moms and dads who have opted to send their children to private schools shouldn’t be stuck with the decision made by leftist government officials afraid of their COVID shadows.
We all know the risks and ways to mitigate the spread of the virus. If you need to stay home, then do so. You are not harmed if I go to a restaurant with other people who are willing to accept the risk.
