Imagine there’s no apocalypse. Movies like Clive Barker’s ‘Nightbreed’ show how the erosion of society need not mean the erosion of our shared humanity.

Nightbreed! Now there’s a great movie that almost no one has seen. Highly recommended. It’s High Weird in all the best ways.

This is the most pennywise, pound foolish thing ever. US GDP is normally about $59 billion a day. If the quarantine is costing us even a fraction of that you could make ventilators out of antique cars and face masks out of designer gowns and it would still be worth it. https://t.co/QAQYIAgs7r

— Rogue Works Progress Admínistration (@GabrielRossman) March 28, 2020

The average ventilator weighs about 15 pounds, or 240 ounces. The price of gold is currently at $1,675 per ounce.

Therefore, a ventilator made out of pure gold (not possible, but just a thought experiment) would weigh more like 80 pounds and would therefore cost $2.14 million each if it consisted of gold only. Even with that absurd stipulation, it’d now still be worth making thousands of them considering how much this virus is destroying the economy.

That’s right — it’s now cost-effective to manufacture ventilators out of pure gold. Shows you how we are a land full of dipshits ruled by the biggest dipshit.

I finally read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Not sure what explains the rave reviews. Perhaps another case of a literary author attempting a genre work. It was deeply ok, verging on mediocrity. I didn’t quit reading mainly because it was so short. Got through it in a few hours. Don’t really recommend.

Nothing in the work is bad, exactly. It sprawls across time in a way that doesn’t reveal much. What’s this book attempting to say? I don’t know. Something about fame, and being known, but it doesn’t say enough. There’s nothing there. It’s a stage with no play. The best parts, and the parts that could’ve made something great, were about Miranda and her project. The rest were just present and accounted for.

Read Earth Abides for a similar theme, tone and feel and a far-superior novel.

A major roadblock in defining the predictability limits for complex technosocial systems is their sensitivity & dependence on social-adaptive behavior. The behavior of the system when in a stationary state is irrelevant for anticipating its behavior when put under severe stress. https://t.co/UVzrhZw2y7

— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) March 28, 2020

This guy knows what he’s talking about. Most “experts” do not. If we restart the economy by the end of May, we’ll most likely be ok. Mid-May would be safer.

Past that, it’s possible societal/civilizational collapse — in the US at least. After July or thereabouts, there will be no restart possible. In that scenario, I’d estimate 2-7 year deaths in the 20-40 million range. Much more than that if the collapse sparks any wars. People are comparing what will occur to the Great Depression. However, that’ll seem mild compared to a complete collapse that’ll result from this economic halt, which is not what occurred then. The past only rhymes and is not a map to the future.

If you think I am exaggerating, take your chances. You’ll see.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul’ is a 17-minute new song about JFK — and maybe coronavirus?

Have we not been tortured enough by current events? Have we not suffered our fair share?

I think this song is actually about a homicidal chicken.