This week's On the Media interview with Laurie Garrett is a must-listen. Perspective and history on the virus that's disrupting life and the economy of the world, soon to affect the lives of Americans. Garrett says this will test the mettle of Americans. She's not optimistic. #
Silver lining? Dramatic decrease in pollution over China "at least partly due to an economic slowdown prompted by the coronavirus."#
- I was at dinner with friends last week and the subject of cancel culture came up. Some of them were not familiar with what it is. I promised to try to explain here on my blog.#
- Here's a piece by Quinn Norton about getting cancelled. Briefly, she had gotten a plum job on the Editorial Board of the NY Times, but then when the appointment was announced, controversial tweets she had retweeted (according to her account) surfaced. The Times withdrew the offer. #
Anyone with a public presence on the net is subject to cancellation. I have had people trying to get me fired for my public writing since the early 90s, when someone called UserLand's office to try to get me fired for my not-sufficiently-Apple-loyal posts on AppleLink. Since then, it's happened many times. The pressure to conform is one of the reasons I deliberately lowered my online profile in the early 2000s after coming pretty close to dying, at least in part from the stress. #- When Warren attacked Bloomberg on stage at the Democratic debate, she was trying to get him cancelled, and presumably to gain notoriety for herself for being the one who did the cancelling. So cancel culture has arrived at the highest level of US politics. #