Today's links
- Socioeconomics of coronavirus: Everything bad is now worse.
- How to drain your lungs: Knowledge is power.
- Bookshop: a local, indie alternative to Amazon: What could booksellers find to buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell.
- This day in history: 2010, 2019
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Socioeconomics of coronavirus (permalink)
Here's a bit of neo-Gatsby*: an Axios-Ipsos poll from last week showing that the richer you are, the more likely you are to be working from home, and the less intact your mental wellbeing is likely to be.
Working in an "essential industry" is correlated with lower wages and educational attainment. IOW: if you're risking your life working with the public, it's likely that you are so economically precarious as to have no choice.
3% of people with high-school educations and <$15K household incomes are working from home.39% of people with Masters' and >$200k household incomes are working from home. However, the former group reports better mental health outcomes than the latter.
*"Let me tell you about the very rich.They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early. It does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, are very difficult to understand."
How to drain your lungs (permalink)
Chest Physiotherapy: AKA, the art of clearing fluid out of sick peoples' lungs. A lot of the work here is "postural" – arranging the patient in a series of postures that allows lobe-by-lobe drainage.
https://www.respiratorytherapyzone.com/chest-physiotherapy-positions/
You can assist the process with "vibration and percussion," if ordered by a physician.
Postures should be held for 3-5 minutes each.
Intended to treat "Cystic Fibrosis, bronchiectasis, chronic bronchitis, aspiration pneumonia, ciliary dyskinetic syndrome, and COPD."
Indications for CPT: "More than 25–30 mL sputum production per day."
Possible adverse reactions: "Hypoxemia, increased ICP, acute hypotension, pulmonary hemorrhage, pain, vomiting, aspiration, bronchospasm, and arrhythmias."
"Stop the treatment and put them back in the normal position; then notify the physician."
Bookshop: a local, indie alternative to Amazon (permalink)
Amazon is an "essential business" because it sells things like sex toys and hammer drills (don't mix these up!). But they also sell books. Your local indie bookseller is likely NOT an essential business, so they are now fighting Amazon with both hands tied behind their backs.
Some bookstore owners – like San Francisco's Borderlands Books – are allowed to pack and ship existing inventory, and are shipping nationally. If your local bookstore can do this, order from them, for all our sakes.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/02/eff-livestream-today/#sf-in-sf
If not, try Bookshop.org , an affiliate system for indie booksellers. Bookshop has its own warehouse and shipping, but you can nominate a local bookseller to get 10% of your purchases (that rises to 25% if you follow a link from your local).
(If you want an audiobook version of this, try http://Libro.fm , the DRM-free indie-supporting alternative to Audible, Amazon's monopolistic, DRM-mandatory audiobook store).
Bookshop also offers affiliate links for authors:
https://public-production.bookshop.org/documents/Bookshop%20Author%20Brochure.pdf
Ideally, I'd like to see all publishers allow their authors to sell their own ebooks, the way Tor Books allows me to do. When you buy my ebooks from me, I keep the 30% Amazon skims, then send 70% to my publisher, who send me 25% of that as a royalty.
There's nothing more commodity than an ebook, they're identical no matter where you buy 'em. Authors' orgs could set up hubs to search for direct-purchase options, and these would double authors' ebook revenues in one go.
(Image: Martin Cathrae, CC BY-SA)
This day in history (permalink)
#10yrsago Alternate cover for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom https://web.archive.org/web/20100410031930/http://www.orangeopossum.com/downandout.html
#10yrsago Shirky: What "people must pay for content" really means https://web.archive.org/web/20100404013927/http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
#10yrsago Bruce Sterling's State-of-the-Spime address https://vimeo.com/10256403
#1yrago The Internet Archive has recovered 500,000+ of the 50,000,000 songs Myspace "accidentally" deleted during a server migration https://www.techspot.com/news/79511-internet-archive-recovers-half-million-lost-myspace-songs.html
#1yrago Ontario's low-budget Trump-alike wants to eliminate sedation for people getting colonoscopies https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/04/04/exclusive-changes-proposed-to-ohip-coverage/
#1yrago Colorado's net neutrality law will deny grant money to ISPs that engage in network discrimination https://coloradosun.com/2019/04/05/colorados-own-net-neutrality-bill-gets-some-teeth/
#1yrago The New York Times's chilling multimedia package on China's use of "smart city" tech to create an open-air prison https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xinjiang-china-surveillance-prison.html
#1yrago Googler uprising leads to shut down of AI ethics committee that included the president of the Heritage Foundation https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board
#1yrago Most paint-spatters are valid perl programs https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGGNMfmfpWB-DzWS3Jr-YLcRNRjhp3FKS6v0KELxXK8/preview
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/, Alice Taylor (https://twitter.com/wonderlandblog/).
Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.
Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.
Latest podcast: Author’s Note from Attack Surface https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/30/authors-note-from-attack-surface/
Upcoming appearances:
- Short Story Club, April 7, 530PM Pacific https://www.shortstory.club/
Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627
(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583
This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commerically, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
How to get Pluralistic:
Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://pluralistic.net/plura-list
Mastadon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://mamot.fr/web/accounts/303320
Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic
When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla