Here's a new service for LO2 users. Use this kind of outline for documents you want to add to or refine over time. FAQs, guidelines, instructions, screeds. Definitely not for blog posts, since there's no time element in it. There's lots of depth to this kind of outline, and it's easy for me to add new features. So that's an extra bonus. If a small community of writers develops here, I will have incentive to show you how to use the other features, and perhaps add new ones. #I chose this route for rolling out rendering for outlines very deliberately because it didn't include blogging features. It's focused on writing. There are already countless ways to blog. But there's a common feature set between the this.how docs and Old School blogs, so any skills you pick up here can work for blogs too, if there's ever a need to go that far. I have found this format useful even though I have a blog. So when you think -- I should write some guidelines for this, or a FAQ or directions for cooking a type of bread, writing that isn't of-the-moment, then you can use LO2 to write and revise it, and send people the URL of the my.this.how rendering of it. #
If the airlines thought they would lose all that money from a shutdown, instead of being bailed out, maybe they would have pressured the government to act more aggressively against the virus.#
McConnell had polio as a child, it left him disabled for life. I grew up after there was a vaccine, but just barely. The vaccine came out in 1954, I was born in 1955. So there were polio victims in school when I was. There was a girl, Bridgett, who played with us in a wheel chair.#
It's pretty obvious that Cuomo should be the Democratic nominee. What's happening now is a much more rigorous vetting than the primary debates (a reality show).#
I have a question about Apple podcasts. The new Cuomo podcast shows up in my iPhone podcasts app. Screen shot. It also shows as having updated. But when I look at the page for the podcast it only shows episodes through Tuesday. Today is Friday. Is there something wrong with my feed? I want to get this working properly. I also noted that Sunday and Monday are missing too. They are most definitely in the RSS feed. #
- Testing and contact tracing is central to turning the lights back on before there's a Covid19 vaccine. Since the US government isn't doing it, we have to do it. We can't afford to wait. Lives and livelihoods are at stake. Too important.#
- Testing#
- Testing is doable. Since the FDA is a bottleneck maybe California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Masachusetts and any other state who cares about its people can break free, or work with the US government's FDA to loosen things up so we can get say 10 million tests done per day for the forseeable future. You should be able to get one whenever you want one. #
- I heard on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning that the testing part apparently is doable, we can scale it up. It'll cost $100 billion to start, but if it got us out of this mess a month sooner it would be a good investment. #
- Contact tracing #
- Contact tracing is easily solved, very quickly. It's more of a political problem than a technological one.#
- MIT has an app for contact tracing. It has the right privacy configuration, the information isn't shared without you sending the data somewhere. By default it never leaves your phone. But the MIT app is on very few phones. #
- On the other hand, Apple and Google and others have very good data for contact tracing and their apps are widely deployed. World-wide. We wouldn't just be solving the problem for the US, we'd be doing it for everyone everywhere who has an iPhone or Android phone. #
- But they are reluctant to even say they can do it for fear of the backlash. It's time to have this conversation. Maybe the surveillance aspect of the new technology is worth supporting if it saves lives and can easily be turned off, by the user, when we're no longer in crisis. #
- My friend Doc Searls is the expert on this. I'll ask him what he thinks. #
- Update#
- Shortly after this piece was posted, Apple and Google announced they're going to work together on contact tracing. Wow. That's quick turnaround! 💥#