jducoeur

(I've just sent this to the relevant officers, but I'm also sharing it publicly: this is a serious topic, more than worth some proper public discussion, not just random conversations on Discord. Comments are welcome, but keep them civil, thoughtful and productive; I will squash or delete anything that gets too heated. I encourage you to write your own letters -- feel free to crib from here if that seems useful to you, but please make your feelings known to the powers that be.)

Unto Their Majesties and Highnesses of the East, the Kingdom Seneschal, and the Board of the Society, Justin du Coeur sends greetings and concerns.

I read yesterday's updates to the COVID policies with some dismay, which was heightened by the online discussions around it. As I had expected, the result is that a number of members are no longer comfortable attending indoor events -- which in practice means all events for about 4-5 months in these parts. Realistically, some of those people will just give up and go away. Worse, the folks who are least comfortable with the new rule are in many cases the newest and most enthusiastic members; given that retention is a long-term challenge for the Society, anything exacerbating that is, IMO, a grave mistake.

And the hell of it is, I don't think any of it is necessary. Fundamentally, the problem here is micro-management. We've swung from "All Events Everywhere Must be Fully Masked" to "No Events Anywhere are Allowed to be Fully Masked". (Yes, yes -- it is possible to get exemptions from the SocSen, but let's get real: very few local autocrats are going to even dare to send that email. The broad perception is that you've forbidden it, and that's that.)

Putting it bluntly, that sort of rigid rule only makes sense in a world where there is broad consensus about the problem -- and we don't live in that world. On the one hand, we have people claiming that the pandemic is over and everyone should just go back to normal; OTOH, we have the reality that hundreds of people a day are being killed by COVID, vastly more are being crippled by it, and lots of folks are extremely worried. I know too many SCAdians who have had their lives destroyed by Long COVID, and many of my friends are terrified by this rule change, despairing of what it says about the SCA.

A lot of people are making entirely reasonable risk-analysis decisions that, for them, the new SCA rule is irresponsible. And indeed, it is out of line with much of the rest of geekdom -- most of the other activities I participate in (ranging from dance gatherings to SF/F conventions) are nowhere near this casual about masking yet, so we look even more irresponsible.

And no, it isn't enough to say, "if you are worried, wear a mask yourself". The science is crystal-clear here: having everyone masked is far more effective at preventing the spread of COVID than just doing so yourself. The rule as it stands comes across to many people as a statement that the SCA as an organization does not care whether you live or die -- and moreover, is actively preventing you from being safe, even if the local branch wants to be.

To address this, I propose a small tweak to the rules. We need an additional codicil, saying basically:

* Specific events may require more stringent masking and/or proof of vaccination. Any event with such rules must state them clearly in all event announcements and publicity.

I'm sure that people will fiddle, catastrophize and wordsmith this to death, but really -- that's all it needs to say. By allowing events to have stronger rules, we provide for variations in local culture, as well as the different nuances of, eg, indoor vs. outdoor events.

Different areas will make very different decisions about how to handle this, based on real-world culture as much as SCA. Some places will take a purely laissez-faire attitude, along the lines of the new rules. Other areas (likely including this one) will tend to require masks for indoor activities for the time being. Some will likely split the difference, experimenting with both styles and seeing what folks prefer. That's fine: our cultures are different, and the problem here arises solely because of a bad habit that tries to squash those differences out of existence with rigid universal rules.

I urge you to seriously consider this straightforward amendment to the policy. Allow local branches some latitude to see what works for them. It isn't that hard, it would largely defuse this crisis quickly, and it would better allow the SCA to conform to the differences in real-world culture that are the reality we need to deal with.

In Service,
Justin du Coeur, OL OP
Chatelaine, Barony of Carolingia, East

Fix the Mask was a Kickstarter I backed a couple of months ago. Having just given mine its first serious use, let's talk about it briefly.

The idea behind FtM is that the common melt-blown surgical-style masks are now thoroughly common (enough so that I no longer feel guilty buying them -- I got my pack in Staples). They're fairly effective, significantly moreso than most fabric ones according to most reports I've seen, but not even remotely N95 level, mostly because of fit: they cover your mouth and nose, but are pretty loose around the edges.

So the FtM is a rubber frame that you put over a surgical mask, specifically designed to seal it down properly. It pulls the mask down over your mouth and nose, so that you are breathing through the mask, rather than around it.

I don't spend enough time indoors outside the home to usually care, but tonight was massage, which is when I really do. Yes, Kate and I are getting massages again: while it's a risk, Massage Therapy Works is sufficiently paranoid that we don't think it's a crazy one. (The fact that I've had massages repeatedly cancelled out from under me is actually encouraging: any time a therapist has a potential exposure, they are apparently required to get tested and take time off to make sure they have a clean bill of health. And neither of us can go much more than six weeks without hitting "badly broken", so the tradeoff is real.) That said, even with their considerably-improved HVAC and PPE on the therapists, it's being inside a room with someone else for an hour, so good masking is especially important.

Overall, FtM seems to work as billed, pulling my mask good and tight for the duration. The surgical masks breathe far better than fabric ones, so it was a more comfortable experience than I've had with other masks. The only real problem I've found is that my beard is slippy under my chin, and it took a while to get everything securely seated. Getting the FtM on is a mild hassle (and their instructions for unpacking and assembling the thing leave something to be desired), but the fit around my nose is good enough to mostly fix my usual glasses-fogging problem, which is a good sign. Once it is on, comfort is fine: I had no problem wearing it for about three solid hours. (Including the walk to and from Davis, and picking up dinner.) I found that it worked particularly well with a plastic frame over my mouth and nose (which I am mostly doing these days when I need to wear a mask for more than a short time, especially if I have to talk).

It's not dirt-cheap ($15 each), but should be indefinitely reusable so the price isn't bad. And while they are quoting shipping delays of up to a week, that's nothing compared to the several months waiting for the Kickstarter.

So it's worth considering. If you need to spend significant time indoors around other people, this seems to be a good add to the standard melt-blown masks, providing something at least approximating N95 quality without having to feel guilty that you are using PPE that belongs in better hands.

Kate and I have plenty of masks, technically. We have a few high-quality ones made by friends, and we have a big pile of cheap-but-adequate ones that I bought off of Amazon. The cheap ones are actually pretty good for just running into somewhere for a few minutes. But none are great for long-term use: the homemade ones tend to be a tad tight (my nose gets a bit squished with long usage), and the Amazon ones are somewhat floppy in their center section, especially after washing a couple of times (so I wind up chewing on the fabric after a while).

So I put it out to the lazyweb of my friends: any recommendations? I'm specifically looking for masks that are adequately safe (I'm not worried about N95-level protection, but they should be at least multi-layer fabric), but also somewhat comfortable. That probably means somewhat shaped around the nose so that it doesn't press on it too much, probably not floppity t-shirt fabric, and ideally not excessively hot and stuffy. (And in a perfect world, snug enough at the top to not cause my glasses to fog too much.) Reusability is very strongly preferred: while I'm willing to consider disposables, I dislike them on principle -- something that can be washed would be much better.

Suggestions? Don't worry about cost for purposes of this question -- I want to get a better sense of the options, and am willing to pay a bit for something that's good.

Okay, let's talk about some good stuff. While it's certainly heavy times, I'm seeing a lot of pushing through the adversity, in many different ways, and it's important to remember the light. So let's have a long stream-of-consciousness diary entry for this week.

---

The highlight of the week was Wednesday. Kate and I took the afternoon off, and wandered out to Great Brook Farm Park in Carlisle.

It wasn't quite perfect -- the farm was shut down (so no ice cream, and no official visits with the animals, although we got to see the chickens up close, since they were wandering around loose); more importantly, the restrooms are still closed, which limited the amount of time we could spend.

Still, it was great fun. The park turns out to have a bunch of well-marked, clear paths, which were a little bit crowded -- as well as some just-barely-marked trails, hiking up and down through the forest, which weren't. We got a good five-mile hike in, running into occasional people (including one group of two mothers and three kids who had gotten a little too deeply into the woods for their own good -- we connected them with some more-experienced locals who helped point their way out), but mostly wandering on our own, scrambling around the dirt and rock, visiting by the log cabin (which had seen better days: something clearly fell through its roof recently), and generally having a grand time of it. It was just what we needed, a bit of nature, with few enough people that we only needed to mask occasionally.

---

After that, we got to see some of the beginnings of things reopening.

Personally, I think it's mostly going pretty well. Most people I encountered were being reasonably sensible, which is the most important thing: keeping their distance, masking any time they were near anybody else, trying not to crowd up. I suspect that if everyone was able to be sensible all the time, we wouldn't need lockdowns at all -- sadly, everyone being sensible is a pipe dream. But it wasn't bad.

We stopped at Dairy Joy in Weston, for post-hike ice cream, our first of the year. Kate has been going there for soft-serve her entire life, and she introduced me to it early in our relationship: it's the only place I know where coffee/raspberry swirl is an official thing. (In practice, she gets a cup of raspberry, and steals some of my coffee cone.)

---

Thence to Waltham, to swing through Outer Limits for my current comic-book shipment. The pandemic has dealt the comic book industry a body blow, but paper books are starting to ship again, which makes me happy: there's still a lot that I buy in hardcopy. (Although the situation has accelerated my movement towards e-comics via Kickstarter, which are still doing fine: while the comics industry is kind of shaky, the medium is just fine.)

The big surprise in Waltham is that, no kidding, Moody Street has been closed, all the way until November. It's a gutsy but smart move by the town.

Moody Street is arguably the most important restaurant district in the Boston area, and has been more or less since I was in college. Since Waltham was the less-ritzy district, it was where the ethnic restaurants started (the original Mother India on Moody St was AFAIK the first Indian restaurant in the region), and it just kind of started a boulder rolling. Today, I still think of Moody as the best concentration of interesting restaurants around.

The problem, of course, is that restaurants have to spread people out now -- and nobody's got that kind of space. So the city has declared that most of Moody Street is now a pedestrian way, and restaurants are officially allowed to spread their tables out into the middle of the road.

It's very clever. While it doesn't eliminate the risk, there seems to be a solid consensus that covid risk is way lower outside than in. And by using the street, places can have a reasonable number of tables without being too crowded.

So yay for Waltham for going all-in on this experiment. I suspect there will be some growing pains (in particular, I expect some idiots to crowd together too much there), but hopefully it will provide a semblance of normalcy in our abnormal times.

---

On the subject of reopening: Bagelsaurus has started doing more-conventional takeout. Hosannas in the highest!

(For those who haven't discovered The Creed of Bagelsaurus: they're my personal pick as the best bagels anywhere. That's a little heretical, since they aren't nearly as chewy and leaden as a classic New York bagel, and they are very, very Large -- but they're well-made, with a fine crust and absolutely packed with flavor, and they toast better than any other. My weekend is not complete without one of their Everything Bagels.)

They've been gently finding their way through the crisis, since the store couldn't be open in its usual form. (Under normal circumstances, the place has a line out the door all morning, every morning.) For the past month or two, they've been opening online orders once a week on Sunday, for pickup at the end of the week. That was a smashing success: for the first couple of weeks, pent-up demand was so high that they were selling out the entire week's supply in less than a minute.

Anyway, they've now moved to more conventional takeout: order online, then swing by and pick up your numbered bag, which is sitting for you in the doorway. The honest truth is, it's easier for me than it's ever been -- traditionally I would spend 10-15 minutes in line to get my half-dozen, but now it takes only seconds.

And yes, it's a little thing: but the little things are what makes life feel a little more normal now.

---

Of course, things aren't normal. Protests are everywhere. I'm mostly proud of Boston: all of the protests I've personally encountered so far have been clear and strong, and completely peaceful, with nobody escalating things. Most have been appropriately loud, although I have to say that the most powerful IMO was one lone vigilant, on the corner of Waltham's central square, silently holding up a sign to remind everyone.

---

Ending with the stupid little thing that has the most immediate effect on my life: Bridgegeddon is finally drawing to a close! Hooray!

For those who don't live near here: Broadway is the main thoroughfare of this side of Somerville, an absolutely vital artery. That artery has been severed for over a year now, because the Broadway Bridge (a block from our house as the crow flies) was too narrow for the Green Line Extension project, so they had to tear it down and replace it. It has made for a fairly ghastly time: half of the trips out of our house have involved strange diversions, and getting anywhere without going literally miles out of my way required cutting through local roads that shouldn't be used as through streets.

Anyway, as we came home from our out-and-about, we were startled to realize that cars were coming over the bridge. It's still partial -- just one lane in each direction -- but still a huge relief to everyone in this area, since it means that traffic can start to return to something resembling normal. (With any luck, it will mean that city busses stop careening down Cedar Street, which is nowhere near wide enough for them.)

---

Putting all that together: it almost seems wrong to say, in the face of what's going on, but Wednesday was a good day -- sunny and friendly and a reminder that the world still turns and we will get through all this tsurrus. And based on the progress I'm seeing as a result of the protests, things might even get a bit better. So I'll take it...

verdantry gave me five questions. (Thanks!) If you'd like a set (and I know you well enough to have any clue), comment here and I'll give you some to put in your own journal. (Eventually -- coming up with questions can be hard.)

Which of the SCA activities you've dabbled in is something you'd like to get back to, one of these days?

Sooo many to choose from. Hmm...

Rapier? In principle I'd love to, especially given that the state of the art has improved so much, in so many interesting ways, since I was active in it. But realistically it probably isn't going to happen.

Sewing? I've tried and bounced off of that a couple of times, and there is no good reason why I can't learn it more properly. Maybe.

I'm halfway-tempted to say Cooking, since it's been something like a year since I did any real reconstruction. But I think that one is still active, just at a low simmer.

Let's say Archery: I'm quite fond of it, and it's probably the single art where I am most proudly Adequate. I occupy a surprisingly unusual niche in it -- when you look at the scores at Pennsic, I am better than most of the populace, while still being comically amateur compared to the people who actually work at it.

I've been fond of it for most of my life (I picked the sport up as a kid, and have done it now and then throughout my SCA career), but got sidelined a couple of years ago by tendonitis. Now that my shoulder isn't bothering me routinely, it would be interesting to see whether I can get back into the swing of it, once circumstances are easier.

What's the most thoughtful gift someone has given you?

In terms of impact on me, it would probably have to be Inae pointing Kate in my direction ten years ago. But I think that was more for Kate's benefit than mine (to encourage her to have more social life), so "thoughtful" may not be quite right.

Really, I have no idea about most, and would probably come up with a different answer tomorrow. But let's choose a tiny one that affected me profoundly.

It was the SCA 25th Year Celebration down in Texas. I was very much an up-and-comer -- I think I had recently started The Letter of Dance, and was starting to get well-known, but I was still pretty low on the totem pole. I wound up spending most of the event hanging out with what I came to describe as The Dance Cabal, and it was a fairly momentous event for the SCA dance community, because while there were only maybe a dozen of us, we represented a wide swathe of the Society. It was the first time such a diverse bunch of dancemasters had worked together, and we had a blast.

Anyway, part of TFYC was a Laurels' Prize Tournament -- I believe the first one I'd ever encountered. I believe that I didn't enter (I've never been particularly into A&S competitions). But afterwards, Mistress Lizbeth Ravensholm (one of the Society's more serious dance scholars) came up to me and gave me a prize anyway, because she'd been impressed with my dance teaching during the week. It was just a little pewter spoon, but it blew me away, knowing that a leading Laurel from across the country had noticed me like that.

The moral of the story is that the little things can sometimes really matter to someone.

What type of stories tend to really hook you?

I don't think it's entirely consistent, but looking at what I like, there seem to be four common elements:

• Interesting world-building. That doesn't necessarily mean in the sense of creating a science-fictional or fantasy environment, but I always like to have the sense of depth that comes from someone having thought through the details.
• Good writing, and specifically richly-drawn characters with motivations that I can understand. (Whether or not I can relate to them.)
• Thematic depth: a story that means something, on some level.
• The sense that I am reading a story, dammit, not just a serialized adventure. That means having a beginning, middle and end, and preferably a good chunk of foreshadowing.

I'm amused to note that this list is in order of importance, from least to most -- and also in the order in which they came to matter to me. That gradual shift in priorities goes a long ways to explain why my taste in comics has changed dramatically over the years.

(I've just restarted the epic Inventory The Comics Project. This has been in process for, no shit, 25 years now, but I'm gradually making progress on it, having restarted two days ago after about a two-year hiatus. It's already probably the largest single Querki Space, and has a long ways to go -- I'm currently in "F". I'm sorting all the comics up through around 2007, and breaking them down into "Discard", "Keep Permanently", and "Think About It Again Later". And it's fascinating how many of the comics I adored in college now go straight into the Discard pile, because while they are nerdishly fun, they aren't all that well-written, and they aren't actually stories.)

Tell us your favorite "No shit, there I was" story.

Surprisingly, this is the tricky one. Most of my usual "no shit" stories didn't actually happen to me. (I'm quite fond of telling The Vis Cycle.) And the ones I do tell most often about myself aren't appropriate to post online. (Sometime when this is all over, and we can actually sit down together, and we have half an hour and appropriate beverages, remind me to tell you The Saga of the Trip to Quebec, aka How I Spent My 19th Birthday, aka How I Just Barely Didn't Get Arrested.)

But okay -- let's go way back to the beginning...

No shit, there I was -- at my first Pennsic. I was an innocent in nearly every sense of the word, not yet a year into the Society, and had been invited to camp with The Barony-in-Exile of Branswatch, otherwise affectionately known as The Filthy Greenshirts.

(Yes, we had green shirts, and yes, they were often filthy. Branswatch's claim to fame was the Pennsic Woods Battle. We were led by the late and much-lamented Earl Sir Aelfwine Dunedaine. At the beginning of each Woods Battle, he would cry "Follow me!", and vanish into the woods, with the rest of us trying desperately to keep up behind him. Traditionally, the Midrealm would march down the causeway, mighty warriors that they were -- and we would descend upon them from all around. Filthy Greenshirts made great camo.)

Anyway, back to "there we were"...

It was the middle of Pennsic, and the Midrealm King put out a call for guards for The Mighty Midrealm Camp Gates. Thing was, though, he never said that the guards had to be Middies -- or even vaguely loyal to the Mid. This seemed like a fine opportunity.

So we spent the next day drilling. Our commander in this scheme, James the Fair, drilled us in "Left Face!". And "Right March!". And all sorts of terribly impressive-looking, utterly irrelevant military crap, such that by the end we were clearly the best-drilled, well-trained candidates to "guard" the Midrealm, who were obviously so disciplined that we would never do something like filch the Midrealm's Crown. No, never.

We would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling kidknight. As we were performing our audition as The Best Guards Ever, one of the Midrealm Chiv happened to wander out, look at us, and pull the watch commander aside. Thing is, Aelfwine wasn't going to let the rest of us have all the fun without him, and he was a wee tad recognizable. So it was back to the lab, to await another night to take over the world.

(Really, that was one heck of a War. It was also, IIRC, the year that we built sturdy sedan chairs, to ferry Aelfwine and Arastorm into Pennsic Great Court, forcing Berowne of Arden to spend a good minute using his Mighty Heraldic Baritone to intone, "Siiit dooown, siiit dooown -- they're not royalty...")

What are you hoping to see come out of the aftermath of the pandemic?

Honestly, what I most want to see is for more of the country to wake up to the fact that cronyism and incompetence at the top is dangerous and deadly, and is what we have right now. Governments regularly get brought down by the death toll from wars; this is going to see a lot more deaths, and most of them could have been avoided by a competent administration.

More positively, though: I'd like to see folks seeing the lesson on the ground here, which is that we're better when we work together. There are so many cynical forces setting us against one another, but when push comes to shove, most people do work together and try to do the right thing, especially when they are given good information. For all the dysfunction at the top, many states (although, sadly, not quite all) are working hard to keep their people safe, and the ones that do so are being recognized for it -- many governors are way more popular than their parties are.

The moral of the story to me is that people still like sane, competent leadership, regardless of party affiliation. I'd dearly love to see that trend continue...

... which of course means, I just got back from the grocery store.

Yes, I wore a mask (and gloves); yes, I kept a good distance from everyone else; yes, I washed my hands thoroughly after unloading everything. The anxiety was still rather literally breath-taking.

(It doesn't help that Siderea managed, as usual, to land the perfect metaphor yesterday.)

As to "breath-taking": I realized, about a quarter of the way through the store, that I was rather close to hyper-ventilating. Which is almost perfectly counter-productive: maximizing the airflow through the mask is not the point. I had to pause for 20 seconds to return my breathing to normal.

I'm really not used to fear any more: quite frankly, the process of Jane's death left me much more likely to react with anger than obvious fear per se -- more "fight", less "flight". (No, this doesn't come up too often in real life, but occasionally my dreams remind me that there's still more broken glass in my head than I like to admit.)

But the ambient sense of "there are killers out there on the street who want nothing more than to break into the house and murder us" is kind of getting to me, especially over time. I'm going to have to spend some time getting my head straight there. Granted, the terror about going out amongst uncontrolled people is useful under the circumstances, and arguably somewhat rational, but I don't want to come out of this even more broken. (And fear rarely leads to good decision-making, in my experience.)

Anyway -- as to the store itself, I don't have anything to complain about. The Porter Square Star is actually managing better than I might have expected, not just with limiting the number of people inside, but in terms of their attempts at traffic management. They've taped down the floors to try to create a one-way traffic flow through the store, so people don't have to pass in the narrow aisles. It's at best partly successful (because people are idiots who can't be arsed to follow nice clear one-way signs), but I applaud the effort.

The actual stocks reveal a lot about the panic-buying. (And to be fair, the sensible prepping.) Fresh produce is mostly abundant and high-quality, arguably moreso than usual, whereas the soup section is thin (as it were) and you still can't find a roll of toilet paper for love or money.

Anyway: lots of groceries bought, so I don't have to go do that again for a little while. How are y'all doing with it?

(This one's mostly a diary entry, albeit one of the moment.)

As word gets around about proper comportment in the Age of Covid (and I can't wait to see what the effects on social norms turn out to be in five years), everybody has heard that an important one is Don't Touch Your Face, particularly when you're out and about -- that's how virii picked up by your hands from surfaces can get into your respiratory system.

This has led to various observations about the fact that it's kind of hard not to touch your face, since it's something that folks just do unconsciously. (I was put in mind of it when reading this Oatmeal cartoon over lunch.)

Which leads me to realize that this is another way in which this is all a little less different for me than for most people. (Along with working from home, which I've done for many years now already.)

One little detail most folks don't realize is that I have, at least officially, just a touch of Tourette's Syndrome. Vastly milder than what people usually mean by the term, but when I was a kid I had twitches so bad they would give me terrible headaches. I was officially diagnosed at around age 12, and sent on my way with, "It'll probably get better as he gets older. If it doesn't, there are treatments, but you really don't want to go there if you don't have to."

In fact, it did gradually improve; by the time I got to college, I had it mostly under conscious control. You may still notice my neck twitching or my fingers twisting up when I'm tired, but in general I've learned to notice when I'm about to do things like that, and just not. That doesn't mean the urge to twitch went away, though -- I've mostly just learned how to not do it.

And the thing is, I noticed yesterday that the "don't touch your face" is remarkably similar. It's something I'm used to just doing, out of habit, and not doing it can be annoying. (When I think about it, my face starts to itch.) But the mental disciplines, to pay attention and just tell myself not to do that, are very similar to the ones I've had to follow my whole life.

None of which makes it enjoyable, mind -- it's still subtly stress-inducing. But it's helpful to already be somewhat in practice with this sort of thing...

Just got back from grocery shopping. On the way there, I had my iPod on shuffle for my Road Music playlist, as usual. This playlist has, no shit, 3861 tracks (and growing), about ten continuous days of music. What can I say? I like variety.

What does it play me, out of that massive lineup?

"Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult, and Chris de Burgh's "Don't Pay the Ferryman".

Seriously -- I like a little bit of random synchronistic editorializing now and then. (That's why the buttons.) But that's a little on the nose, doncha think?

Over breakfast this morning, Kate noticed an ad for a local co-working space, and remarked on the unfortunate timing there. Which led me to realize that things have just gone from bad to much, much worse for WeWork.

Think about it: their business model is all about leasing buildings, and then renting desks to folks who want to work in a group environment. For at least the next few months, that business model quite clearly makes no sense at all.

A bit of quick Googling turned up this Bloomberg article, which seems to indicate that yeah, the relevant power players had the same realization (or at least, started acting on it) yesterday. Apparently, SoftBank (the VCs behind WeWork) has a deal in the works to buy up to $3 billion of its stock -- it doesn't sound like they were technically planning on taking the company private, but something not far off. And now they are trying to pull out, because it's starting to look daft.

Granted, of the businesses that might conceivably go under as a result of the current crisis, WeWork is way, way down my priority list for shedding tears. I'm way more concerned about local stores and restaurants, and trying to keep patronizing them -- conveniently given additional incentive by Amazon's decision to de-prioritize non-essentials for the time being.

But still -- there's a lot of interesting stuff to reflect on here. The pandemic is a bit less awful than it might have been, because a fair chunk of the economy has already shifted to people working individually, in one way or another. But co-working spaces are an attempt for folks to create communities out of that individuality, and this is going to blow a hole in all of their finances...

Just went to do my morning run (in the basement, on the elliptical), where I'm currently watching Dark on Netflix. (Which, BTW, is a fascinating, twisty, and, yes, dark time-travel story, dubbed from the German.)

Loading Netflix to begin with took quite a while; loading the show took quite a while; and about five minutes in, it crapped out entirely and froze.

Sigh. I was expecting this to start happening -- even not counting the people working from home who are simply playing hooky, there are a lot of kids, folks out of work, and other people finding themselves stuck inside with nothing to do. And having made themselves the brand for "what to do when you're stuck inside", Netflix is presumably slammed, and starting to have difficulty with the load.

Hopefully they'll manage to scale up quickly. (Although, which China Inc in low gear due to the virus, that may be hard -- I would bet that server supply chains are a mess right now.) And more generally, ability to cope with the increased load is suddenly going to be a big competitive advantage for streaming providers that can pull it off.

And in the meantime, that gigantic stack of backlogged DVD courses from The Teaching Company is starting to look like a fine investment. It was prepping! Sure it was...

(Currently in the middle of "The Italian Renaissance" -- not as exciting as the McWhorter courses, but helps fill in some holes in my knowledge of period culture. Today was basically "So who was Petrarch, anyway?", which I had always been a tad fuzzy on.)