You should read this for 4/12/2020:
Art, Music, Film and Theatre
Benedictine nuns release Gregorian chants to help ease coronavirus isolation
They have instead allowed the release of a week’s worth of their chants https://www.neumz.com/ for the six days Christians refer to as holy week, preceding Easter Sunday, the highlight of the religious calendar, when the chants have a particular importance. The rest is to go live next month.
Adrian Edmondson: ‘Hamlet saved me from being expelled’
Malvolio’s a sharp-tongued, po-faced joykiller, but he can’t have started out that way. He runs the household with meticulous precision. And while he’s unpleasant, he never does enough to provoke the wicked prank the rest of the household pulls on him, to be left imprisoned and losing his marbles.
Thankfully we no longer find someone being bullied as hysterical as people used to. I decided that if I could get the audience to laugh at him being bullied and then feel very guilty about it in the last scene, then I would have won … comedy and pathos are brilliant bedfellows. Discuss.
Twelfth Night will premiere on Marquee TV on 11 April, with a watchalong on Twitter starting at 7.15pm.
Books, Libraries, Writing, and Language
500-year-old manuscript contains one of earliest known uses of the “F-word”
Happy Birthday, Statute of Anne
Unfortunately, however, while in the early 18th century the focus on protecting and enhancing the rights of authors was intended to facilitate the growth of public discourse around those ideas, today that same focus on authors’ rights does the exact opposite. With so much emphasis now being put on the rights of the author as owner of the work to control it, at the expense of the public benefit the system is supposed to impart, it has had the effect of choking off what discourse these works might spawn. Through needlessly lengthy monopolies and overly-expansive interpretations of the reach of these rights, history seems to be repeating itself, returning us to the discourse-choking limitations of the licensing era and forsaking the promise of the Statute of Anne to promote its spread.
Coronavirus | COVID-19
More Details on Airlifts and Supply Seizures
According to Pritzker, the US military planes airlift the PPE and other medical supplies to the US and then hand them over to the major medical supply distributors the White House taskforce is working with. That part was clear from the discussion April 2nd. What Pritzker confirmed is that the states then have to bid against each other to purchase the supplies from those distributors.
Veterinary scientist hailed for Faroe Islands’ lack of Covid-19 deaths
Seth Meyers lists every time the Trump administration was warned about a pandemic
All jokes aside, Meyers makes an incredibly strong and frustrating case for one thing: “They knew.”
At White House coronavirus briefings, rescue efforts are extensive but often aspirational
These pronouncements and pledges have turned out, again and again, to be a description of the administration’s aspirational response to the pandemic, not the one doctors, nurses and stricken families are reporting from the front.
That is where emergency responders and hospitals are dangerously low on protective gear, and where widespread, rapid testing for the virus in retail parking lots is not, in fact, a reality. Where millions of small-business owners are struggling to get federal assistance they need to stave off collapse and where millions of people are newly unemployed and fearing ruin.
. . . .
While all crisis leaders have to chart a delicate course between comforting the nation and providing reliable information to its citizens, the president and his top political aides have repeatedly used the nationally televised briefings to describe efforts and actions that have not panned out.
Read this New York Times article Ma href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage”>He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus “An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.” Then read this Twitter thread: from Eric Lipton @EricLiptonNYT with texts sent in early March.
By the last week of February, it was clear to the administration’s public health team that schools and businesses in hot spots would have to close. But in the turbulence of the Trump White House, it took three more weeks to persuade the president that failure to act quickly to control the spread of the virus would have dire consequences.
Food and Drink
No flour, eggs or butter? No problem! 23 cake recipes for when you’re missing an ingredient Includes recipes as well as tips for substitutions.
I have finally mastered the dark art of sourdough baking. Here’s how to do it
And Here’s a Helpful Timer for All That Sourdough You’re Making
Thankfully, a home baker and journalist Stuart Thompson created Bread Scheduler, a scheduling tool that helps you plan all that rising and resting with precision. Just choose one of six recipes provided and pick a start time, and Bread Scheduler will spit out timed, step-by-step instructions, along with timer reminders and helpful photos.
Via LifeHacker: Find and Share New Recipes With This Open Source Cookbook THere’s a Web version, or you can download the .pdf file.
Via Smitten Kitchen: ultimate banana bread
Hot cross buns (with grated orange zest and spices)
History and Archaeology
Science and Nature
This Lizard Is in the Middle of a Wild Evolutionary Transition, Scientists Believe
Three-toed skinks are one of a handful of species capable of bimodal reproduction, meaning that some populations are oviparous while others are viviparous. However, it is the only species that has ever been seen employing both modes during the same pregnancy, which demonstrates an unprecedented example of reproductive versatility.
April pink full moon: readers’ photos of the supermoon
Technology
Worried about Zoom’s privacy problems? A guide to your video-conferencing options
💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰
Trump holds “financial interest” in pharmaceutical company that produces hydroxychloroquine: NYT
You’ve Got Less Mail: The Postal Service Is Suffering Amid The Coronavirus
The terms of the loan included in the last funding bill could give control of large parts of the agency to the Treasury Department, and Dimondstein says the Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to eventually privatize the Postal Service. “It’s in writing,” he says. “That’s their plan.”
. . .
Congressman Connolly says the next coronavirus rescue bill should provide a cash infusion of $25 billion to the Postal Service and forgive the agency’s debts, which House Democrats had pressed for but failed to get in the last funding package, after objections by Senate Republicans and the White House. He notes that lawmakers provided about $50 billion in that bill to help the airline industry.
The whistleblower that reported President Trump’s inappropriate conversation with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky saw their report buried by the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel. So much for the proper channels. President Trump himself asked for the whistleblower to be outed, undermining the protections the federal government has established to ensure wrongdoing is reported.
The only party receptive to the whistleblower’s complaints has now been fired by President Trump, closing the loop on the White House’s retaliatory actions.
President Donald Trump on Friday fired Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who had told Congress about the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment, the President told Congress in a letter obtained by CNN.
Pay It Forward and Make It Better
Color Our Collections Free downloadable coloring books and sheets from various museums, based on their collections.
