Wellpers, we've got the vaccine produced and approved. The only thing left for government to screw up is distribution.

To be clear, people will die because of this.

If only there were an aggressive chief executive to rattle some cages, terminate some weak performers, that kind of thing.

• It's the NYT, but you might wanna read this one anyway:

Why Some States Are Predicting Higher Revenue Amid Job Losses

• If only all contention on the internet could be so readily concluded. Note tweet dates.

I'm cyberstalking you all by going to Amy's friends list and plugging in your names.

She has a lot of friends named Ben and Patrick.
She has a lot of friends named Jay but none whose last names start with R.
She has no friends named Lenora or Crid
She has no friends named Artemis but has several Dianas.
No Orions.
I'm not even gonna try Momoffour or Sheepmommy.

• A not-bad piece about the impact of Covid on Manhattan.

“Don’t leave,” Rosen says, heading for the elevator. “Pay the high rent. Come on!”

Then he lowers his voice and says, “See what I have to deal with every day?”

A week later, Shaerf, who lives in Manhattan, says the company decided a while ago to decamp to the suburbs, where four of the senior executives reside, and that the rent had nothing to do with the decision. That was before the pandemic. Shaerf says his partners wouldn’t come back now even if Rosen sliced their Chrysler Building rent in half. They don’t want to get on a train and come into Midtown. It isn’t just the threat of Covid-19. “There’s nothing to draw them in right now,” Shaerf says. “There’s no nightlife. And there’s no day life.”

In September, more than 150 New York business leaders wrote an open letter to de Blasio urging him to do something about the city’s deteriorating quality of life. Rosen didn’t sign it. He’s friendly with de Blasio and gets to tell the mayor directly what he thinks of him. “He’s got an earful from me,” he says. Not that it did much good. Rosen says de Blasio, who’s nearing the end of his second term and prohibited by law from seeking a third, is wallowing in self-pity. “He’s done,” Rosen says. “He’s just checked out.” A de Blasio spokesman defended the mayor’s record on school reopening and disputed the charge that de Blasio is no longer fully engaged in his job.

The countryside/suburbs are a much better place to be during the pandemic, especially if you're at all outdoorsy. You can still garden, walk, play outside.

Check out the new season of Portlandia:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1339919482593153030

The party of the people>

https://twitter.com/stone_toss/status/1339403967533559814

From Dec. 3, a black Smith College professor who's bound to get a LOT of media coverage next year, when her book comes out (don't worry, you should love it):

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/12/03/feminist-scholar-loretta-ross-is-calling-out-cancel-culture

It's 46 minutes long, so what you see in print is clearly not the whole thing.

Move over, Daryl Davis.

Excerpt:

NPR: C.T. Vivian once told you something that you say really changed the way you viewed your own activism. What did Reverend Vivian tell you?

Loretta Ross: “He came to the office one day and he said, ‘When you ask people to give up hate, then you need to be there for them when they do.’ And when he first told me that I didn't want to hear that message. But I couldn't curse at a minister, so I had to just suck it up and say, ‘I'm not the turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl. What are you talking about?’ Because if a Black girl can’t [hate] the Klan, who can she hate? But it sunk in. And that's what’s led to me talking about the ‘calling in’ culture right now. And he was right.”

NPR: You mentioned the Klan a second ago. What does that have to do with this idea of ‘callout’ culture?

Loretta Ross: “If a Black woman can learn to have civil conversations with someone who's been in the Ku Klux Klan, we should be able to have civil conversations with everybody. Because we have to remember that there is humanity behind the words, that there is humanity behind the action. And I'm not necessarily talking about walking up to the boys in the hood and saying, 'I want to be your best friend,' or anything.

"But at the same time, we can't dehumanize people simply because we disagree with their political perspectives..."
____________________________________

Professor Ross was also on NPR today. Her upcoming book is called Calling in the Calling Out. She may also have a Ted Talk - I'll have to check.

And no, she doesn't believe in trigger warnings in her classes - despite the fact that, among other things, she was raped twice in her childhood - once by a stranger and once by a cousin. (She gave birth to her son as a result.)

@Lenona,

Now that there's a Democrat POTUS, suddenly cancel culture is bad. Hmm.

The NYT "forgot" to mention that the elderly vote tends to skew on the conservative side.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JCompson_III/status/1339814373121011712

Who's Daryl Davis?

This guy,

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DFHM7qwOHskM&ved=2ahUKEwjloMu13tjtAhUVJjQIHSZiDGM4KBCjtAEwAHoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2F0E9bWjBMAbUxWnmWGQR4

Daryl Davis | Amazing Boogie Performance
YouTube · Colt Balok
Sep 29, 2019

Daryl Davis has been mentioned by Amy more than once, for persuading 200(?) Klansmen to leave the KKK. Often, one by one.

And Spiderfall, keep in mind that it often takes more than a year to write a book. In other words, chances are Ross started writing the book even before COVID - and before most people thought Trump WOULD lose.

Not to mention that anyone sensible could see, long ago, that pretty much everyone's future would be at risk if cancel culture wasn't stopped soon. If COVID hadn't happened, radicals would have realized even earlier that they couldn't keep eating their own.

Whoops - I meant Sixclaws, not Spiderfall.