Nathan Simpson dropped by with his flatbed. $1 per pound of sheet metal.

https://quillette.com/2020/04/14/searching-for-a-covid-19-test-in-america/

The author describes the process involved in actively trying to get tested for the disease, given symptoms and history.

The upshot is: we have some idea of the mortality figures for this disease in the US (although there are indications that there are many uncounted deaths of people who never make it into a hospital). We have a very much more approximate idea of infection rates, because we aren’t testing people in a comprehensive way.

Until these two numbers are nailed down within an acceptable range of error, and we can surgically test everyone following contact tracing paths on demand, relaxing the worst-case self-isolation instructions seems like a huge gamble with people’s lives. As a heuristic, I’ve been assigning a confidence level based on the ratio of the two being in the range of 2% or so, based on mortality rates from other parts of the Western world and the more reliable mortality numbers. I see no evidence that either of these numbers can be trusted for the foreseeable future, so I don’t expect to be out of self-isolation anytime soon.

Source: Making Music – MakingMusic_DennisDeSantis.pdf

An interesting book on the process of starting, working on and completing a piece of music.  In the conventional sense, using conventional tools.

Source: Scripting News: Biden can make a difference now

I talked through the same idea with Shelley a few days ago.  The guy has the opportunity to show what leadership should look like, as a contrast.

Source: Absolute scale corrupts absolutely · Tailscale Blog

Tailscale is interesting.  They’re pushing auth into the networking level, using WireGuard, so all connections of any type across the net are secure and restricted (if appropriate), and identity is associated with IP.  As one of the founders says, it’s like going back to working on LAN: you can do arbitrarily insecure things, because it’s locked inside a building that only a few people can muck with.  But it’s a LAN you can get to from anywhere and anything.

They also like to build things that are simple to use, by design.

https://twitter.com/racheljulie/status/1245114069339852802?s=20

46.1% of the voting public think this government is doing a good job and should be returned to power. Meanwhile, here’s what they are actually doing.

https://e-vent.mit.edu/

from my friend Douglas, entertainment in a time of lock-down:

Some of that candor he’s known for. Discussing Democratic proposals for ensuring that the election in November goes ahead, things like universal vote-by-mail, he said

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus