From Slate:

The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane. Here are some of the ways law enforcement officers escalated the national unrest.

This is exactly what I’ve been seeing unfold on Twitter over the past few days. The original protesters of the killing of George Floyd don’t seem to be the ones out of control here.

Golden Hour in Astoria

Gothamist:

By the time the evening’s protests were over, the frustration of the New Yorkers gathered had run headlong into the aggressive mass-arrest protest-policing tactics of the NYPD. Some protesters were in the hospital. Police vehicles were on fire. And with more protests scheduled over the weekend and in the days ahead, there was every indication that the outpouring of anguish over police violence, and the violent police response to it, will only continue.

#GeorgeFloyd
#BreonnaTaylor
#AhmaudArberry
#BlackLivesMatter

CASISDEAD - City Slicker

I started using this app called Krisp over the weekend, and I’m def impressed.

I was using Discord over the weekend and tried the built in noise suppression. The description for the feature explains that it uses an embedded version of Krisp for it. The app uses machine learning to figure out which sounds are voices, and filters out everything else.

I live right above a night club (which sadly has been silent for the past few months) and next to the N train (which seems to run exactly the same as it always has) and New Yorkers are still New Yorkers so voice calls have been hard with all the noise. I’ve been using Krisp for my Discord, FaceTime, and Hangout calls over the weekend and it completely blocks out all of it.

I’m impressed with how it works but I’m also into machine learning (ML) and all the stuff people are calling AI these days so it’s even more interesting to me. I’ve also been reading about NVIDIA’s version of this, which works through their RTX graphics cards.

I’ve been wanting to start using ML in my projects for a while but I never came up with good enough applications for it. Voice detection is a perfect use case. I think this might have given me a reason to try playing around with it again.

A coronavirus vaccine trial has gone well! It looks like we might actually be on track for having a vaccine ready by the end of the year, which is critical since the US government has decided that the best course of action is to pretend the virus doesn’t exist.

From the article:

Those people, healthy volunteers, made antibodies that were then tested in human cells in the lab, and were able to stop the virus from replicating — the key requirement for an effective vaccine. The levels of those so-called neutralizing antibodies matched the levels found in patients who had recovered after contracting the virus in the community.

Resident Evil 2 is a really good game.

I keep seeing articles come up about not shaking hands anymore. I’m all for it.

Handshakes were always awkward for me. First, because I usually had pretty sweaty hands (not so much anymore for some reason) so I just kind of just mostly avoided them, and then because I was avoiding them I was less familiar with them so it was just never really that comfortable for me. Actually now that I think about it, it might have something to do with some of my trouble holding on to close friends growing up.

Anyway, I still mostly just avoid handshakes to this day, so it won’t be too weird for me to come up with a gesture that I try to normalize instead.

I just read an article about restaurants in Hong Kong adapting to the pandemic. I like the sound of a lot of these changes. Considering some governments' complete lack of an attempt to control the virus, we’re just going to have to make a lot of these kinds of changes so we can actually try to safely live our lives for the next two years before we get a vaccine.

America’s Racial Contract

The implied terms of the racial contract are visible everywhere for those willing to see them. A 12-year-old with a toy gun is a dangerous threat who must be met with lethal force; armed militias drawing beads on federal agents are heroes of liberty. Struggling white farmers in Iowa taking billions in federal assistance are hardworking Americans down on their luck; struggling single parents in cities using food stamps are welfare queens. Black Americans struggling in the cocaine epidemic are a “bio-underclass” created by a pathological culture; white Americans struggling with opioid addiction are a national tragedy. Poor European immigrants who flocked to an America with virtually no immigration restrictions came “the right way”; poor Central American immigrants evading a baroque and unforgiving system are gang members and terrorists.

Vibe

I tried out Risk of Rain 2 tonight and was really into it. I played the first one a few weeks ago because it was in my Steam library (probably through Humble Bundle or something) and I’ve been thinking about the second one.

There are a lot of things I like about the game, but one of coolest part of the series to me is that the first is 2D and the second is 3D, but they’re still both basically the same game. It’s a dope example of literally adding a new dimension to a thing.

From an article about masks and why everyone is encouraged to wear one:

Masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer. Protecting the wearer is difficult: It requires medical-grade respirator masks, a proper fit, and careful putting on and taking off. But masks can also be worn to prevent transmission to others, and this is their most important use for society. If we lower the likelihood of one person’s infecting another, the impact is exponential, so even a small reduction in those odds results in a huge decrease in deaths. Luckily, blocking transmission outward at the source is much easier. It can be accomplished with something as simple as a cloth mask.

I just watched the season 3 finale for Westworld. I really didn’t like it or the entire season. I’ve been disappointed from the start of the show, but this was definitely the worst one.

I just read an article about the next phase of the pandemic, written based on what’s been happening in the UK. It talks about this being the moment of maximum risk now that some countries are nearing the end of the first wave.

According to the article, they were able to “flatten the curve” by staying indoors, but because they did, they don’t have herd immunity (and therefore most of them are still susceptible). So they’re gonna relax because they did a good job, open everything up, and then game over.

I agree with most of the analysis, but it leaves out the fact that way more people had it than we first thought. If people can’t get reinfected and the virus doesn’t mutate much (those are both big ifs) then it’s possible this isn’t as dangerous a moment as the article is suggesting.

Either way, there are way too many unknowns right now (when we’ll have adequate testing, if we can get reinfected, how long the virus lasts, when we’ll get vaccines/treatments, etc) to feel comfortable opening things back up.

Disinfecting a surface requires two steps. Cleaning first, then disinfecting. I didn’t know that.

Also from the article, here’s a look at how long the virus lasts on different surfaces (you can see why there was hesitation around recommending mask use):

I’m glad Zoom is continuing to improve things:

Zoom is clearly responding quickly to the issues that have been raised, just as it has seen an influx of millions of new users using its service during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Zoom reported a maximum of 10 million daily users back in December, but this skyrocketed to more than 200 million daily meeting participants in March. There are still more issues to address and improvements required, but 20 days after Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan promised changes, we’re now starting to see exactly how Zoom is responding.

From an article on America’s inability to build:

The question, then, is why don’t we build? What’s stopping us? Here’s my answer: The institutions through which Americans build have become biased against action rather than toward it. They’ve become, in political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s term, “vetocracies,” in which too many actors have veto rights over what gets built. That’s true in the federal government. It’s true in state and local governments. It’s even true in the private sector.

Happy 420 everybody!!