Link Log Roundup for May 8, 2020
In this edition: public opinion, Stanislaw Lem, more spreading, porn, Dutch cursing, being foreign, restaurant restrictions, appeasing the enemy, and architects.
Your daily look at links I’ve saved to my Link Log (RSS) over the course of each day but didn’t necessarily address or highlight here on the blog. These are the links I logged yesterday, and not necessarily links to things published yesterday.
The Public Is Astonishingly United
Apparently most Americans are not eager to think of themselves as warriors—or are simply wise soldiers, with strategy as their strength. A poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland released yesterday finds that eight in 10 Americans oppose reopening movie theaters and gyms; three-quarters don’t support letting sit-down restaurants and nail salons reopen; and a third or less would allow barber shops, gun stores, and retail stores to operate. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last week found similar numbers: Nine in 10 Americans don’t think sporting events should have crowds without more testing; 85 percent would keep schools closed, and 80 percent would keep dine-in restaurants shut. There is no significant difference in views between residents of states that have begun loosening restrictions and those that have not.
The Case for Stanislaw Lem, One of Science Fiction’s Unsung Giants
In the face of this cynicism, Lem’s work acts as a corrective to the notion that the universe exists merely as a property to be gentrified by tech moguls. In many of his novels, Solaris perhaps most notably, Lem extends a vision of the universe as deeply inhuman, yet still capable of granting transcendence to those who surrender themselves to it. Our attempts to understand, much less monetize, the cosmos will always be met with frustration, but our acts of observation and careful study will allow us to glimpse, perhaps, our own place in it.
Coronavirus in the U.S.: a high plateau of cases portends more spread
For all the talk of a second wave of coronavirus cases hitting the United States this fall, one consideration is often lost: The country is still in the throes of the first wave of this pandemic.
Could the porn industry offer a model for reopening amid Covid-19? - STAT
Yet for all of that expertise, it would be hard to imagine the Trump administration, or state politicians, reaching out to the porn industry for guidance. Stabile said that while he has not been contacted by any government officials, he would have plenty of advice to share. “It’s going to be an ongoing process. It’s not going to be a binary open or shut,” he said. “But it’s not as heavy a lift as people think. This is something that’s doable.”
The Wide World of Disease-Based Dutch Profanity
The Dutch people I spoke with drew a line between different types of swearing. One kind is the general angry exclamation, what you might yell if you stub your toe. Those are often actually English words, like the ones that refer to excrement or intercourse. The other type is the more interesting one: what you say in anger to another person, or an object or situation that has enraged you in some way. And those are absolutely dominated by medical terminology.
Why is this interesting? - The Being Foreign Edition
I like feeling foreign even if it sometimes makes you sad. I don’t like feeling lonely but I can take it in a city that has a street life of people ambling around, Hopperesque diners you can have coffee in, hopeful that something will change in the next instant. I like America, but I fear living in some town where you have to drive to go anywhere there are people. I like being inside, but I want the freedom to criticize as an outsider.
Oregon Restaurants Struggle To Survive Amid Coronavirus Restrictions
Across Portland coffee chain Nossa Familia, Bend-based brunch attraction The Lemon Tree, and Portland Korean food cart Kim Jong Grillin, some aspects of the story are the same: owners and customers are intensely concerned about public health and cleanliness; sales are down, or non-existent; and the near future seems unfamiliar when viewed through pre-coronavirus lenses.
Trump Isn’t Fighting the ‘Invisible Enemy.’ He’s Appeasing It
We need to understand, in other words, that the president of the United States is not a true president in any fully republican sense as much as he is a figurehead unworthy of respect except to a nation within a nation advancing an insurrection begun 40 years ago that does not seek political independence from the whole so much as domination of it.
As grim as things are right now, we’re getting a glimpse of society in general and architecture in particular that we don’t often see. It’s not the altruism that’s a revelation so much as the pragmatism, the willingness and ability to confront workaday problems. As Manaugh told me: “I think that that kind of creative emergency thinking reveals that we already are surrounded by many spatial solutions to many existing societal problems, they’re just not possible yet politically.”