Coronavirus News (279)

Kamala Harris and the ‘Double Bind’ of Racism and Sexism Reactions to her debate performance show not only the bias that women and people of color face, but the fact that for women of color, that bias is more than the sum of its parts. ............  and a top Google search around that time was whether she was born in the United States. ........... unleashed a steady drip of racism and sexism, underscoring not only the double standards women and people of color face, but what happens when multiple identities meet: a Black woman, an Indian-American woman, a woman whose parents were immigrants. .........  One of the oldest racist tropes is that of the “angry Black woman.” ........   “Angry,” “mean,” “aggressive,” “disrespectful”: All of these words, which Mr. Trump has used to describe Ms. Harris, play to this stereotype, which was also used against Michelle Obama. False suggestions that Ms. Harris is scheming to run the country in Mr. Biden’s stead play to it, too. ...............  a tightrope: Stereotypically feminine behavior can lead voters to see women running for office as more likable but less of a leader, while stereotypically masculine behavior can make voters see them as more of a leader but less likable. .............  “the classic double bind” ........... “Women can either be seen as leaders or they can be seen as feminine, and the two don’t go together.” .......... another racist trope, the promiscuous, hypersexual “Jezebel.” ............... T-shirts with the slogan “Joe and the Hoe” were briefly available on Amazon. ............   The lawyer and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” three decades ago to describe how various identities can overlap to produce discrimination more complex than just, for instance, racism plus sexism. ........... “women may not vote against the rampant sexism because of race, and people of color may not vote against the racist and xenophobic dimensions of the Trump assault because of anti-Black racism within Indian communities and misogyny within Black communities.” ............. identity policing. ............. Identity policing is related to broader patterns of “othering,” or casting a person as “not one of us.” .......... the frequent mispronunciations of her name  

Britain’s Boris Johnson pressured to introduce ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown to stop the coronavirus

The US is seeing a resurgence of Covid-19 cases. Small household gatherings are helping drive it, CDC chief says  "The consequences of this virus, particularly for older folks -- the people that we really want to gather with on Thanksgiving -- can be really dire," he said. And frankly, I'd rather do a Zoom Thanksgiving with people that I love than expose them to something that might kill them" ..................  US health officials should know by November or December whether there is a safe and effective vaccine, Fauci said, adding, "It is conceivable that we might even know before then." 

Biden leads Trump by 17 points as election race enters final stage Opinium/Guardian poll finds Biden ahead by 57-40 margin Biden leads on healthcare, the economy and race relations .......... a record 17 points .....   It is just short of the lead in the popular vote that Ronald Reagan enjoyed in his second landslide victory in 1984. Four years later, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis led George HW Bush by 17 points only to suffer defeat, but that poll was taken in July so Bush had ample time to recover. ........ some Republicans fear a rout in the races for the presidency, Senate and House of Representatives. ....... a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour. .......... Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. ........ His reputation as a successful businessman took a hit from a New York Times investigation into his tax affairs. ........ voters say Biden, 77, has better mental stamina than 74-year-old Trump by a 48% to 44% margin. ........ Trump’s core support is notoriously loyal, and still turning out at his resurrected campaign rallies .......... Nearly two in three (62%) of ex-Trump voters (who voted for him in 2016 but will not do so this year) say his handling of the coronavirus pandemic is the reason they switched their vote. In addition, almost half (47%) of ex-Trump voters say his personality and behaviour contributed to the switch. ......... Democrats have said a massive victory is the surest way to avoid lengthy legal disputes that could even spill over into street violence. .......... Biden’s lead relies on the success of mail-in voting, likely to hit record levels during the pandemic. ....... when it comes to mail-in voters, 75% intend to vote for Biden and only 22% intend to vote for Trump. .........  Half (50%) of voters are worried that if the president loses the election, he will not concede. 

The Next Generation of Office Communication Tech with 42 percent of American full-time employees working from home for the foreseeable future as the pandemic lingers, new forms of mixed reality technologies are creating mainstream virtual substitutes for offices, and redefining the future of work in the process. ............  Many companies we work with are using them to shrink their real-world office footprints by about a third on average and energize far-flung employees, many of whom are already more productive while working from home with no commute. .............  Longer term, companies will use mixed reality to create conditions for remote collaboration and innovation that are as good as, or even better than, in person. ......... multidimensional “collaboratories” that are improving knowledge worker productivity and collaboration.  ....... Almost a decade before the pandemic struck, technology pioneers began using large-screen video “portals” to connect satellite offices into each other’s worlds through informal, always-on video feeds. ........... Now teams in some of the world’s largest financial services companies and retailers meet in virtual offices using mixed reality programs like Sneek and Pukkateam. ........... The anonymity and scale of the online platform let managers hear more voices, including those who typically would not speak up in person. More employees participated, as peers freely validated each other’s observations. One participant said they had “never felt this listened to before.” ........ online sticky notes, shared digital whiteboards and live co-editing of wikis, slides and documents to bring people together. ...........  could design and launch a new digital banking business line and product in a virtual workspace just as well, and in a fraction of the time, as it had one year earlier for another product, when it flew in people to brainstorm in person. .......... the combination of video, voice, chat, and collaboration tools created more opportunities for all team members to contribute, rather than be drowned out by those with loud voices or a forceful presence — or if they simply missed the session because they couldn’t fly in. With greater representation in the virtual room, teams were able to realize better and more holistic solutions in a way that just wasn’t happening before. .........  practically every large corporation we speak with today is asking for innovations to make virtual working sustainably productive. .........  large multi-monitor displays that will move virtual collaboration from laptop screens to a more immersive full-size format .......... Ten years from now, we will look at the current crop of virtual office, focus group and collaboration tools with the same disdain we now have for crackly phone calls. 

Coronavirus News (278)

MUSK: TESLA IS ROLLING OUT A BETA OF “FULL SELF-DRIVING” NEXT WEEK  “I drive the bleeding edge alpha build in my car personally,” he added at the time. “Almost at zero interventions between home and work.” ....... According to Musk, the update will take the feature from 2D to “4D,” meaning that the vehicle will be able to not only sense the three-dimensional world around it, but also predict changes in factors like location, direction, and speed.  

Why The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings Are Verging On The Absurd Modern Supreme Court confirmation hearings are empty theater, and Barrett’s is no exception. ........... She would likely vote to further dismantle Obamacare, uphold abortion limits that would make it impossible to get an abortion in some states, invalidate most regulations on guns and back corporations over individuals in most legal matters. She does not seem inclined to recuse herself from a case involving Trump’s election, even as the president has implied that he wants Barrett confirmed, in part, to rule in his favor if election-related issues reach the Supreme Court. ............. Barrett, if confirmed, would be to the ideological right of both Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh .....  polls show that a clear majority of Americans believe that the winner of the election should choose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement ...... She didn’t say anything to annoy Republicans or win over Democrats. And, of course, that was the point. 

Trump’s Chances Are Dwindling. That Could Make Him Dangerous.  Every scientific poll we’ve seen had Trump losing the debate, some by narrow margins and some by wide ones.  ........ John McCain, for instance, briefly pulled ahead of Barack Obama following the 2008 Republican convention, and Obama didn’t really solidify his lead until early October. .......... Hillary Clinton led by only 1.4 points in our national polling average heading into the first debate that year. ......... It’s been an exceptionally stable race. ...... In 2016, the polls did show Clinton ahead, but between tight margins in tipping-point states and the large number of undecided voters, there was a fairly high probability — around 30 percent, according to our forecast — that Trump was going to win anyway. ............  nothing intrinsically rules out a larger polling error. We had one in 1948 — when Dewey didn’t defeat Truman, after all — and in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won in an epic landslide instead of the narrow margin that polls predicted. ............. a 7-point Biden lead on Election Day could, indeed, turn into a 2-point Biden popular vote win where Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College. ....... But it’s about equally likely that a 7-point Biden lead could translate into a 12-point Biden win, in which he’d not only carry states like Georgia and Texas, but would also have a shot in South Carolina, Alaska and Montana. ..........  Even a small probability that the U.S. could become a failed or manifestly undemocratic state is worth taking seriously. ........ Consider that Trump’s convention produced, at best, a very meager bounce in his favor. His attempt to pivot the campaign to a “law and order” theme fell completely flat in polls of the upper Midwest. He’s thrown the kitchen sink at Biden and not really been able to pull down Biden’s favorables. His hopes that we’d turn the corner on COVID-19 before the election are diminishing after cases have begun to rise again in many states. His campaign, somehow, is struggling to hold on to enough cash to run ads in the places it most needs to run them. The New York Times and other news organizations are likely to continue publishing damaging stories on his taxes and personal finances from now until the election. And now he’s seemingly lost the first debate. ......... If Trump intuits that he’s unlikely to win legitimately — it’s not hard to imagine him escalating his anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior. It’s also not hard to imagine this rhetoric further eroding his position in polls. ...... So we could be headed for a vicious cycle where Trump increasingly gives up on trying to persuade or turn out voters and voters increasingly give up on him.

How Trump Could Spark A Full-Blown Election Crisis  

An Open Letter to Judge Amy Coney Barrett From Your Notre Dame Colleagues from what we read your confirmation is all but assured. 

White House Embraces Covid-19 ‘Herd Immunity’ Declaration  

White House embraces a declaration from scientists that opposes lockdowns and relies on ‘herd immunity.’   The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable — an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine. ..........  about 85 to 90 percent of the American population is still susceptible to the coronavirus. ....... The Great Barrington Declaration, which argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of businesses and schools. .......... “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” ............ The document grew out of a meeting hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian-leaning research organization. ..........   Sunetra Gupta and Gabriela Gomes, two scientists who have proposed that societies may achieve herd immunity when 10 to 20 percent of their populations have been infected with the virus, a position most epidemiologists disagree with. .......... What they found runs strongly counter to the theory being promoted in influential circles that the United States has either already achieved herd immunity or is close to doing so, and that the pandemic is all but over. That conclusion would imply that businesses, schools and restaurants could safely reopen, and that masks and other distancing measures could be abandoned.  

New virus cases are trending upward in a majority of the states.   Uncontrolled coronavirus outbreaks in the U.S. Midwest and Mountain West have strained hospitals, pushed the country’s case curve to its highest level since August and heightened fears about what the winter might bring. ............ the country’s trajectory is worrisome — and worsening. Many experts fear what could happen as cold weather encroaches on more of the country and drives people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily. ............  New cases are trending upward in 36 states, including much of the Northeast ........ Testing remains insufficient in much of the country.