33 years later.
Still Together
2
Spin This
There is no country in the world where confirmed coronavirus cases are growing as rapidly as they are in Arizona, Florida, or South Carolina. Germany yesterday reported 298 new cases of COVID-19. The U.S. reported over 59,400 cases and 948 deaths.
Thursday’s Required Reading
1. Back to Church, but Not, Let’s Hope, Back to Normal.
“One way to think about this pause in our lives is as a rare—likely a once-in-a-lifetime—opportunity for a reset. We actually stopped, the one thing our societies have never heretofore done. Things ground to a halt, offering us the chance to examine our lives and our institutions. And now, if we want it, we have a chance to rearrange them.”
2. Stop Building More Roads. Dan, Dan, The Transportation Man has been saying this for years. Who knew he knew what he was talking about? For some reason, the authors fail to mention that the President has sporadically talked about investing in infrastructure, but not followed through at all.
3. Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US. I’ll take “What the President Won’t Talk About” for $500.
“Consumers will ultimately pay the price for inefficient production and increased component flow. U.S. research agency Center for Automotive Research estimates that 13% to 24% of all cars sold in the U.S. will be subject to tariffs. If automakers pass these costs on, prices will rise by $470 to $2,200.
The center also said U.S. car sales will drop by up to 1.3 million units annually due to the Trump administration’s trade policy — including sanctions on China. It estimates that 70,000 to 360,000 jobs will be lost, leading to a $6 billion to $30.4 billion reduction in gross domestic product.”
4. Two Chefs Moved to Rural Minnesota to Expand on Their Mission of Racial Justice. Such a hopeful story about social infrastructure. Great pictures on top.
5. This vertical farm could be the answer to a future without water. New Jersey isn’t the only place where farms of the future are starting to bloom.
Giant Obama Statue
On the lawn of the WhiteHouse.
Bonus points for Borowitz’s bipartisan sense of humor:
“Reached by reporters at his home, Obama said that he ‘wasn’t sure’ that he deserved a statue. . . “
The Demagogue’s Playbook
By Eric Posner. This podcast episode with Posner is excellent.
What, according to Posner, is a demagogue?
“Despite it’s overuse, ‘demagogue’ has a core meaning that has remained stable over millennia. It refers to a charismatic, amoral person who obtains the support of the people through dishonesty, emotional manipulation, and the exploitation of social divisions; who targets the political elites, blaming them for everything that has gone wrong; and who tries to destroy institutions—legal, political, religious, and social—and other sources of power that stand in their way. The demagogue is frequently considered to be (and in many cases actually is), crude, vulgar, and violent—contemptuous of manners, civility, and norms, which the demagogue sees as structures that keep the elites in power.”
Reminds me of someone, I just can’t put my finger on it.
Tuesday’s Required Reading
1. What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently.
“I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them.”
2. The Tesla of masks. How ’bout it Captain?
3. Take this new and improved personality quiz. Isn’t there still a built-in complication–our inherently subjective sense of self?
4. Democratic ad makers think they’ve discovered Trump’s soft spot.
. . . unlike four years ago, they are no longer focusing on his character in isolation — rather they are pouring tens of millions of dollars into ads yoking his behavior to substantive policy issues surrounding the coronavirus, the economy and the civil unrest since the death of George Floyd.”
5. France bans Dutch bike TV ad for ‘creating climate of fear’ about cars’.
Two Wheel Craziness
Everesting is seeing how fast you can go uphill the equivalent of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet (8,848 meters). To be official, the rules dictate it has to be one climb, up and down, over and over. The most I’ve ever climbed in one day is approximately 10,000 feet, a sad sack one-third Everester.
Now some unhinged cyclists have decided Everesting isn’t challenging enough. Real climbers now are “trenching”, as in descending the equivalent of the Mariana Trench, which requires climbing almost the same distance, 36,037 feet (10,984 meters) because again, it has to be on one climb, up and down, over and over.
News Alert: Grand Designs Is On Netflix
Four plus years ago I made my case for this British series about couples determined to build their own homes in What I’ve Learned From Grand Designs.
Now Natalie Rinn of The New York Times has three reasons she loves Grand Designs. Welcome to the party.
When I recommended it, it was probably hard to find, not any more though thanks to Netflix.
Happy Birthday USA?
In the (dis)United States, we’re living in historic times, not just an every 50 year Civil Rights movement seeking racial and economic justice for people of color, but a slow and steady decline in our quality of life relative to other developed countries. Even though we’re too close to see it and too proud to acknowledge it, we’re a couple decades into a seismic, century long shift in our relative position.
Here are the numbers for those in denial like Michael Medved and Michael you know who.
The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.
In today’s New York Times, David Brook’s explores our “crisis of the spirit” in “The National Humiliation We Need”.
He believes:
“Our fixation on the awfulness of Donald Trump has distracted us from the larger problems and rendered us strangely passive in the face of them. Sure, this was a Republican failure, but it was also a collective failure, and it follows a few decades of collective failures.
On the day Trump leaves office, we’ll still have a younger generation with worse life prospects than their parents had faced. We’ll still have a cultural elite that knows little about people in red America and daily sends the message that they are illegitimate. We’ll still have yawning inequalities, residential segregation, crumbling social capital, a crisis in family formation.”
I agree.
Coaching Postscript
- Another reason I’m coach-adverse is that when I need help with something, I’m not good at admitting it. Maybe “they’re” right when they say asking for help is the hardest part.
- Another challenge in this realm is not knowing how good a particular coach is relative to others in their field. How do you sort through everyone to identify the few who really know how to coach well? Word of mouth is inefficient. Some sort of additional curating is needed.
Pressing Pause 