I’ve had to decline participation in a couple of WICA things that I’ve been wanting to do for a few years, just because I can’t justify the risk to staff, performers or audience.

This is why:

It is a delusion to think that merely injecting money will bring back the happy mix of jobs and incomes we’ve lost in the Covid-19 pandemic.
— Read on theintercept.com/2020/09/01/biden-economic-policy-us-economy/

By J K Galbraith. No, not that one. A call for a once in a lifetime rethink of how to recast the system to make it work in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Can Public Shaming be Useful? https://quillette.com/2020/09/01/can-public-shaming-be-useful/

More thinking to be done. There’s the all-or-nothing shame of social media, which as the author says is retributive but doesn’t allow for redemption. There’s the power of the individual who refuses to be shamed (see our President). There’s the emerging societal shame of not wearing a mask during a pandemic, cross-cultural and not about the individual. And there’s the related concepts of forgiveness, sin, conformity in a time when religion is not a power.

I’ve been thinking about shame as a social force lately, and the Catholic idea of the default position of sin and easy redemption before that. The article has some interesting insights on both these things.