The Weekly Whatever: The Machine Starts
Quotes of the week
“You’ll be pleased to know that we do consider both the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers, but as you can imagine, at this time they’re going to be potentially quite busy at home with their family as well and their own bunnies.”
— NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
“We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way that we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health.”
— Joe Biden.
Woodpecker engineering
- Boeing 787s must be turned off and on again every 51 days. (Airbus A350s must be power cycled every 149 hours.)
Wait, what?
- Bookings for cruises are up 40% since before COVID-19.
Dystopia technologica
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Clearview face recognition app has ties to the far right.
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Zoom accepts that it has privacy issues, hires ex-Facebook CSO to help "fix" them.
For science!
- Scientists creating living robots out of frog skin cells.
Threat Level Orange
- Trump pushes FDA to approve untested treatments based on anecdotes rather than science.
Well, fancy that!
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Trump hotels to get coronavirus bailouts.
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Scotland, birthplace of "fuck".
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Black men in surgical masks asked to remove them by police.
Sick, sad world
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Prototype smart toilet identifies you by photographing your sphincter.
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Mike Tyson offered zookeeper $10,000 to let him fight a gorilla.
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Police in Louisiana announce quarantine by playing siren from "The Purge".
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Nudists told to wear face masks by police.
Actual good news
- Bill Gates funding 7 new factories to manufacture potential coronavirus vaccines, will discard whichever ones don't work, even though it'll "waste" billions.
Going viral
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Medical society that published the study suggesting hydroxychloroquine might be effective against coronavirus withdraws the study for not meeting its own academic standards.
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Ammon Bundy hopes to hold an Easter service for 1,000 people.
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Trump surrogate at Texas nursing home doses residents with hydroxychloroquine, without family approval.
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Bureau of Prisons buys $60,000 of hydroxychloroquine.
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Florida governor proposes reopening schools next month based on his belief that coronavirus doesn't threaten kids.
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Trump says widespread coronavirus testing "would never happen" and isn't needed to reopen the country.