May 8, 2020

Loeffler Got Lucrative 9 Million Dollar Parting Gift From Public Company en Route to the Senate

The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, which her husband runs, changed compensation terms to give Kelly Loeffler, a top executive, awards worth millions of dollars as she left for Congress.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/politics/kelly-loeffler-compensation.html



When Kelly Loeffler accepted an appointment to be a United States senator from Georgia, she left behind a high-paying job as a senior executive at the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. But on her way to Washington, her old employer gave her a lucrative parting gift. Ms. Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate in December and is now in a competitive race to hold her seat, appears to have received stock and other awards worth more than $9 million from the company, Intercontinental Exchange, according to a review of securities filings by The New York Times, Ms. Loeffler’s financial disclosure form and interviews with compensation and accounting experts. That was on top of her 2019 salary and bonus of about $3.5 million.

The additional compensation came in the form of shares, stock options and other instruments that Ms. Loeffler had previously been granted but was poised to forfeit by leaving the company. Intercontinental Exchange altered the terms of the awards, allowing her to keep them. The largest component — which the company had previously valued at about $7.8 million — was a stake in an Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary that Ms. Loeffler had been running. “It looks, feels and has the sweet aroma of a pure windfall,” said Brian T. Foley, the managing director of Brian Foley & Company, an executive compensation consulting firm in White Plains, N.Y.

The generous dispensations are not illegal or against any congressional rule, but they are certain to feed questions about how the Senate’s newest and wealthiest member has handled her finances, an issue that has emerged as a potential risk in her campaign. They add an important asterisk to Ms. Loeffler’s frequent boasts that she sacrificed huge sums of money to serve her state. They are also notable in part because she is married to Intercontinental Exchange’s chief executive, Jeffrey C. Sprecher. Ms. Loeffler’s allies defended the compensation package, saying there was nothing inappropriate in the arrangement.

“Kelly left millions in equity compensation behind to serve in public office to protect freedom, conservative values and economic opportunity for all Georgians,” said Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Ms. Loeffler. “The obsession of the liberal media and career politicians with her success shows their bias against private sector opportunity in favor of big government.” Josh King, a spokesman for Intercontinental Exchange, said the awards to Ms. Loeffler reflected what he said was her instrumental, long-term role at the company. “We admire Kelly’s decision to serve her country in the U.S. Senate and did not want to discourage that willingness to serve,” Mr. King said in a statement.

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May 8, 2020

This Is the Reason Why Sweatshirts Have a V at the Neck

https://gearpatrol.com/2020/05/07/sweatshirt-v-insert/



Take a look at your sweatshirts. You might notice that some have a peculiar feature at the neck — a V-shaped stitch that sits right at the middle of the collar. Why is it there? It’s a confounding detail that has stumped people for years. That little detail goes by a few names, most commonly the V-insert, V-stitch and, its tastiest moniker, the Dorito. You won’t find it on every sweatshirt, though. It’s become less prevalent over the years and was phased out by many brands, fueling the confusion surrounding its intent.

Originally, the design was a ribbed knit material that was inserted at the collar and stitched into place. It served two main purposes: Like the ribbing at the sleeves and at the hem, the ribbed insert allowed the wearer to more easily don the garment without it losing shape. As the wearer would get their head through the neck of the sweatshirt, the V-insert would stretch to accommodate. The elasticity of the ribbing could stretch as needed without losing integrity.

The second reason is that it helped to absorb sweat. If you’ve seen someone sweat through a crewneck, you’ll know that the chest is a major point of perspiration. Though, the V-insert could only take so much. Early versions saw the V-insert at both the front and the back of the collar while others would just have one at the front. Eventually, the detail became merely decorative as companies began to stitch a V at the collar without the ribbed material, weening the consumer before leaving it out altogether.

But, the recent resurgence of heritage brands and a focus on vintage influences has brought the V-insert back into vogue as brands like Merz B. Schwanen, Buzz Rickson’s and Champion Reverse Weave look to capitalize on archival styles. Whether you use yours to catch some sweat or the one you’ve got is purely ornamental, you now have a new fun fact to share.

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May 8, 2020

Remembering Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider

The Kraftwerk cofounder died aged 73. Here, we look back on 11 essential records from the catalogue of his pioneering band.

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3696



Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck

Though Schneider and co. would probably like to forget this exists (all three early Kraftwerk albums have never been re-released), it's a crucial hint at the musical invention that was to come. More in line with German peers like Popol Vuh and Ash Ra Tempel, "Ruckzuck" might not have the futurism and synth savvy of later albums, but the discordant organ, proto-motorik beat and unforgettable flute offer evidence that this was a band trying to do something different.




Kraftwerk - Tanzmusik

While Kraftwerk would become known for their man-machine rhythms, their transitional 1973 record, Ralf And Florian, has decidedly human charms. Recorded with the legendary Conny Plank at the yet-to-be-named Kling Klang Studio, the band's third studio album feels of a piece with the greater exploratory spirit of Düsseldorf's Krautrock scene. There's a wooly, hippie energy behind ambient flights like "Tongebirge (Mountain Of Sound)," but it's on "Tanzmusik (Dance Music)" that the motorik cool which drove 1974's landmark "Autobahn" emerges. The track is an ecstatic mix of the organic (handclaps, wordless voices) and the electronic (synths and sequenced rhythms), a tantalizing view of the road ahead.




Kraftwerk - Autobahn

Depending on who you ask, "Autobahn" is the world's first "techno" hit, a 23-minute synthesizer odyssey distilled into three minutes of breezy cruise control for the version you'd hear on the radio. Combining the longform, upbeat experimentation of the group's early work with the simple pleasures of The Beach Boys and a penchant for melodic switch-ups and synth sweeps, "Autobahn" is where the Kraftwerk we know and love truly begins, a song that gets across one of the simplest pleasures in life—driving down the open road—with only machines, making synthesizers sing at a time when most people could barely figure out how to use them.




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May 8, 2020

The New Culture War

You’re either a liberal snowflake controlled by big government or a greedy conservative willing to sacrifice Grandma for the economy. It took less than two months for Americans to get here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/politics/liberal-conservative-coronavirus.html



Wear a mask? You’re a liberal snowflake controlled by big government. Want to reopen restaurants? You’re a greedy conservative willing to sacrifice Grandma for the economy. It took less than two months for the coronavirus pandemic to become just the latest battle in the culture wars. With the country still in the firm grip of the coronavirus pandemic, conservatives are on social media and Fox News stoking protests that argue masks, stay-at-home orders and social distancing violate constitutional rights and are causing unacceptable harm to the economy. Liberals, at the same time, say personal liberties must be sacrificed for public health, even as millions file for unemployment and more than a quarter of the work force is jobless in some states.

Take a look at what two governors — one from a reliably Republican state and another from a reliably Democratic state — said this week. “We have a public health crisis in this country, there’s no doubt about it,” Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “But we also have an economic crisis.” “We have turned the corner and we are on the decline,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, citing an article showing that the death rate has fallen by half in New York City, in his daily briefing on Wednesday. “To me, that vindicates what we are doing here in New York, which says: Follow the science, follow the data, put the politics aside and the emotion aside. What we’re doing here shows results.”

The problem with all these politics? Epidemiology. So far, the virus has hit Democratic states the hardest, with the most cases per capita in five deeply Democratic states — New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California and Illinois. Cities have borne the brunt of the caseload. And African-Americans and Latinos — a key part of the Democratic coalition — are getting sick and dying of the virus at higher rates. But anyone who believes this virus is fading away — or somehow contained to urban areas — is engaging in some serious magical thinking.

At least 25,000 new coronavirus cases are identified almost daily, meaning that the total in the United States — which has the highest number of known cases in the world — is expanding daily by 2 to 4 percent. A New York Times analysis found that 18 of the states that are reopening had an increase of daily average cases over the last two weeks. Fifteen of those states are led by Republican governors. Three of the top five states where the virus is spreading the fastest — Texas, Georgia and Ohio — have Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures. All three have moved toward reopening. In the Midwest and South, smaller towns and more rural areas have suddenly been hit hard as the virus tears through nursing homes, meatpacking plants and prisons. The nation’s highest per capita infection rate can be found in Trousdale County, Tenn., a rural county where a prison has become a hot spot. Businesses in the county are reopening this week.

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May 8, 2020

Beware Overblown Claims of Coronavirus Strains

The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations

There’s no clear evidence that the pandemic virus has evolved into significantly different forms—and there probably won’t be for months.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-strains-transmissible/611239/



As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory released a paper that purportedly described “the emergence of a more transmissible form” of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This new form, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single mutation, which is now “of urgent concern.” The paper has not yet been formally published or reviewed by other scientists. But on May 5, the Los Angeles Times wrote about it, claiming that “a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus could be more contagious than [the] original.” That story quickly went … well … viral.

But “the conclusions are overblown,” says Lisa Gralinski of the University of North Carolina, who is one of the few scientists in the world who specializes in coronaviruses. “To say that you’ve revealed the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2 without ever actually testing it isn’t the type of thing that makes me feel comfortable as a scientist.” She and other virologists I’ve spoken with who were not involved in the Los Alamos research agree that the paper’s claims are plausible, but not justified by the evidence it presents. More important, they’re not convinced different strains of the coronavirus exist at all.

“We have evidence for one strain,” says Brian Wasik at Cornell University. “I would say there’s just one,” says Nathan Grubaugh at Yale School of Medicine. “I think the majority of people studying [coronavirus genetics] wouldn’t recognize more than one strain right now,” says Charlotte Houldcroft at the University of Cambridge. Everyone else might be reasonably puzzled, given that news stories have repeatedly claimed there are two, or three, or even eight strains. This is yet another case of confusion in a crisis that seems riddled with them. Here’s how to make sense of it. Whenever a virus infects a host, it makes new copies of itself, and it starts by duplicating its genes. But this process is sloppy, and the duplicates end up with errors. These are called mutations—they’re the genetic equivalent of typos. In comic books and other science fiction, mutations are always dramatic and consequential. In the real world, they’re a normal and usually mundane part of virology. Viruses naturally and gradually accumulate mutations as they spread.

As an epidemic progresses, the virus family tree grows new branches and twigs—new lineages that are characterized by differing sets of mutations. But a new lineage doesn’t automatically count as a new strain. That term is usually reserved for a lineage that differs from its fellow viruses in significant ways. It might vary in how easily it spreads (transmissibility), its ability to cause disease (virulence), whether it is recognized by the immune system in the same way (antigenicity), or how vulnerable it is to medications (resistance). Some mutations affect these properties. Most do not, and are either silent or cosmetic. “Not every mutation creates a different strain,” says Grubaugh. (Think about dog breeds as equivalents of strains: A corgi is clearly different from a Great Dane, but a black-haired corgi is functionally the same as a brown-haired one, and wouldn’t count as a separate breed.)

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May 8, 2020

Tom's World (NSFW)

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2020/05/08/toms-world/#more-19635

The celebratory stamps produced by the Finnish postal service in 2014.



A post for Touko Valio Laaksonen, the man known to the world as Tom of Finland, born 100 years ago today. Back in March I finally acquired Tom of Finland XXL, a gorgeous, heavyweight Taschen volume edited by Dian Hanson, as a result of which Tom and his leather-clad muscle-men have been in my thoughts even without his anniversary. The thick-necked hunks that populate Tom’s drawings have never been my ideal of masculine beauty but I admire his dedication to erotic obsession as well as his draughtsmanship, the latter even more so after seeing the high-quality reproductions in Hanson’s collection. The drawings from the 1970s and 80s are especially impressive, when success had given the artist more time to spend perfecting his figures and capturing all the ways that leather apparel folds itself and reflects the light. His beautiful pencil renderings of jackets, trousers and boots treat their subjects to the careful scrutiny that Dutch still-life painters used to devote to pheasants and apples; this is a fetishist’s infatuation raised to the status of art.

Tom of Finland’s progress from amateur pornographer to gallery artist and national institution is a very unlikely career path, especially when he wasn’t dependent on the support of the art market. Tom’s earliest drawings and comic strips were relatively simple things but still explicit enough for the Finnish authorities in the 1940s to find them obscene. Many erotic artists have been subject to similar opprobrium but none of them have achieved posthumous fame as the most internationally visible male artist from the nation that once proscribed their work, and all this without toning down that work in any way. Tom shares his celebrity with Moomin creator Tove Jansson, which means that Finland is now the only nation in the world whose art is represented internationally by a gay man and a lesbian. Their work, needless to say, could hardly be more different, despite both artists being adept at black-and-white illustration and the creation of sequential narratives. Jansson’s Moomins have been universally popular for many years but Tom of Finland’s art, which has never been anything other than gay pornography, is inevitably limited in its appeal. The lavish depictions of cock-sucking and anal sex are so profuse and unrelenting that whatever is shown of his drawings in the general media is always carefully selective, shunning the enormous penises in favour of a moustached face or a pair of embracing clones.

I’m amused by this and also reassured that there are still a few aspects of human life that are too anarchic for exploitation by mass media. The global domination of American culture and American technology has rendered everything grist to its all-devouring mill, everything, that is, except for explicit sex. Pornography is also a part of the US cultural behemoth but it’s like the bastard child that everybody pretends doesn’t exist and wishes would go away. America’s gay publications gave Tom of Finland his nom de plume and made him famous, but porn, for a variety of reasons, resists universal acceptance and approval. Tom’s art is so single-minded in its representation of gay men gleefully fucking each other that there’s little about it that can be exploited by cultural products intended to appeal to the widest audience, or sold to nations with repressive attitudes to gay sex and sexuality. Tom’s libidinous leather-clad hero, Kake, ejaculates his way through multiple penetrations and gang bangs the likes of which you’ll never see in a big-budget franchise, no matter how much Hollywood teases audiences with more polite same-sex scenarios. How many erections are a paying audience prepared to swallow?

Several of the drawings shown here have been chosen for the recurrence of the name “Tom” which appears as a brand signifier but also functions as an icon of what I regard as Tom’s World, a parallel universe where all the well-built, prodigiously endowed men resemble each other, and where all are sexually available. Pornography has always created these enclaves of licentious fantasy but few are so immediately recognisable as Tom’s World. It’s a circumscribed place, of course, but then so is any fetish zone which by definition excludes everything that isn’t of maximum excitement to the fetishist. Tom’s exaggerations can seem ridiculous to anyone who doesn’t share their appeal but this too applies to all sexual fetishes. The major surprise of the artist’s career during his lifetime was the discovery that the drawings he made in the 1950s and 1960s of his leather and uniform obsessions were sufficiently compelling to be adopted as a model by gay men in the 1970s. We see this enacted in Dome Karukoski’s film biography when Touko arrives in America and is astonished to find clubs filled with men all dressed in imitation of Kake and his friends. (See also the club scenes in William Friedkin’s Cruising.) Tom’s World had become that rare thing, a fantasy potent enough to leak into our world and change a part of it.

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graphic pics at the link

May 7, 2020

CDC Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age (as of the week ending May 2, 2020)

These numbers are for the total pandemic to date, NOT a weekly total.

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data



There are around 61 (actually more as the numbers I have are from 2018) million people under 15 years of age in the US, and 10 total documented deaths in that cohort.

Under 25 years of age (over 104 million people), 58 total documented COVID-19 deaths (48 plus 10)

Under 35 years of age (over 150 million people) 375 total deaths (58 plus 317)

Under 45 years of age (over 191 million people) 1171 total documented deaths (375 + 796)

99.2% of all US CDC documented COVID deaths have come from the 35 years of age and over cohort

97.3% of all US CDC documented COVID deaths have come from the 45 years of age and over cohort

92.2% from the 55 years of age and over cohort

These numbers are at the time of this report, the numbers of deaths are larger now, but the increase in terms of raw numbers will be low for the under 35 years of age cohorts, and I would assume the percentages overall should be very close in terms of distribution.

Adjusting for the total death count (which is tenuous in terms of outcomes, as many of the younger deaths more than likely had comorbidities that took them out early) as of today, the under 15yo cohort (61+ million people) total deaths would be 17, the under 25yo cohort (104+ million) would be 101 total deaths, the under 35yo cohort (150+ million people) would be 655 total deaths, and the entire under 45yo cohort (191+ million people) would be 2045 total.

Sweden

Here in Sweden, we have kept all the under high school level schools opened, have never went into total lockdown, and yet we have a total of 18 deaths from COVID-19 under 40 years of age, 7 under 30yo, zero deaths under 20yo. Even in the 40 to 49yo cohort, there have only been a total of 29 deaths.

Almost 99% of the deaths are OVER 50 years of age, yet that under 50yo cohort is roughly TWO THIRDS of our entire population. In other words, amongst a group of 6.7 million people here (out of 10.1 million total pops) we have had a total of 47 deaths, and most of those had comorbidity.

The youngest half of the population in Sweden has had a grand total of 18 deaths, and that is with almost all the middle schools (and under) wide open the whole time, and no lockdowns anywhere.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

96% of the COVID-19 deaths here are over 60yo, 88% over 70 years of age. 65% have been over 80 years old.

May 6, 2020

Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.

A survey suggests that pandemic-era domestic work isn’t being divided more equitably than before the lockdown.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html



Home schooling, the new parental chore brought about by coronavirus lockdowns, is being handled disproportionately by women, according to a new poll by Morning Consult for The New York Times. Fathers don’t necessarily agree — nearly half of those with children under 12 report spending more time on it than their spouse — but just 3 percent of women say their spouse is doing more. Eighty percent of mothers say they spend more time on it.



There is also more of the usual housework and child care during lockdown. Even though men and women are both doing more, the survey found, the results suggest they aren’t dividing the work any differently or more equitably than they were before. Seventy percent of women say they’re fully or mostly responsible for housework during lockdown, and 66 percent say so for child care — roughly the same shares as in typical times.

Again, men and women see it differently. A much smaller share of men, about 20 percent, agree that their spouses are fully or mostly responsible for both housework and child care. About 20 percent of men say they are fully or mostly responsible for these tasks during lockdown. Only around 2 percent of women agree. Past research using time diaries has consistently shown that men often overestimate the amount they do, and that women do more. Many researchers and couples assumed women were bearing the brunt of the extra labor during the pandemic, but this is among the first efforts to quantify it at a national level. The survey asked questions of a representative group of 2,200 Americans in April. (The questions about housework and child care were asked only of people who said they lived with partners or children.)

Another, not-yet-published survey of domestic labor during the pandemic, by a University of Utah sociologist, Daniel L. Carlson, and colleagues, found that similar shares of men reported doing more than women said they did. The survey also found that mothers were primarily responsible for home schooling, even when couples otherwise shared child care responsibilities. The additional time that women typically spend on domestic work, particularly child care, has significant consequences outside the home: It is a major reason for their lower pay and stunted career paths. Now that they’re spending even more time on these chores because of the pandemic, the repercussions could worsen.

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May 6, 2020

If the US averages 1,000 COVID-19 deaths a day, it will have a quarter million by election day

1,000 a day is almost 60% less than the death count from yesterday.

If yesterday's death rate is the overall average, then the total will be around HALF a million dead.

If it is reduced to an average of 500 a day, it still yields 160,000+ dead by election day.

706 deaths a day yields 200,000 dead by election day.

If there is 2nd wave, it will kick in and start to ramp up by the end of September, beginning of October, so you would have 5 or so weeks of ramping up rates right before the election.

May 6, 2020

Transnational social production networks--an answer to the coronavirus security crisis

The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the need for transnational collaboration to produce socially useful goods—an idea aerospace workers in the UK hatched decades ago.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/transnational-social-production-networks-an-answer-to-the-coronavirus-security-crisis

The coronavirus crisis and shortages in ventilators have challenged the claim we have entered a ‘post-industrial society’. As the EU Observer reported last month, ‘EU countries have reported shortages of ventilators, personal protective equipment and testing kits—especially in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and France where there are very high coronavirus patient loads requiring intensive care’. Traditional global supply chains have proven unreliable. In the Netherlands, 600,000 face masks imported from China were defective. In Belgium, 100,000 proved useless, even containing animal faeces. Germany lost about six million masks at a Kenyan airport. Global outsourcing has seriously hampered local production of ventilators in the United States.

Breathing machines

In response to the production crisis, teams of inventors, frontline health professionals and other networks involving governments have used a diversity of innovation and production platforms to compensate for catastrophic failures, of both the market and established planning mechanisms. These platforms represent networks of innovators who can design, test and develop prototypes and mass-scale production. As Dr Daniel Horn explained in the New York Times, ventilators are ‘mechanical breathing machines that are the crucial lifesaving tool when a patient’s lungs fill with fluid, making it very difficult for the lungs to oxygenate blood’. In the US, a volunteer team based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology rapidly brought together engineers, physicians, computer scientists and others to develop ‘a safe, inexpensive alternative for emergency use, which could be built quickly around the world’. The projected cost of this system was only $100. Doctors are key, as they develop performance specifications for designers. At top US hospitals medical professionals found themselves receiving ‘phone calls from tech leaders asking for ventilator specs’.

Missiles to ventilators

In Italy, one hospital responded by direct production of substitutes. At Maggiore Hospital in Parma, doctors used a 3D printer to modify scuba masks, so that they could be hooked up to oxygen. Dr Francesco Minardi said the hospital’s quick fix could be compared to wartime triage. Earlier, the government ordered Siare Engineering, Italy’s sole ventilator manufacturer, ‘to quadruple monthly production, even deploying members of the armed forces to help meet the new quota’. The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, argued that the need for ventilators could be compared to that for missiles during the second world war. Yet missile-to-ventilator conversion has occurred in Israel. The platform there brigades the defence ministry, the government-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and Inovytec (a medical-device maker). A missile-production facility has been converted ‘to mass produce ventilators and offset a shortage’. The ministry claimed that ‘dozens of ventilators were tested and assembled’ with ‘rapid retooling of the missile production line … completed in days’. In Sweden, similarly, an incumbent corporation has been a critical platform. The carmaker Volvo has converted production at its Tuve factory in Gothenburg to make protective visors. It aimed to make 1,000 such visors daily, with 3D printers facilitating a quick production change.

Potential barriers

There are three key potential barriers to using novel production platforms. First, there are knowledge barriers, as with the specialised capacities required to design, develop and produce ventilators from scratch. The efforts at MIT and Maggiore Hospital illustrate how these can be addressed: various specialists create teams to overcome knowledge gaps. Diverse teams of experts tied to incumbent political actors—hospitals, governments, medical suppliers, defence and automotive firms—have advanced ventilators. Secondly, supply-chain shortages can create bottlenecks for delivery of key components. Stefan Dräger, chief executive of Drägerwerk (one of the world’s largest ventilator producers), explained: ‘We source different parts that we need for production from suppliers around the world. A lot comes from Europe but also from the US, Asia, Australia and New Zealand … These supply chains must not be interrupted under any circumstances.’ If they were, he added, ‘the whole world has a problem’.

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