there seems to be quite a lot of that going around.
This is a New York Times column about the influence of the evangelical right wing on the current administration, which explains at least in part, why they are so spectacularly incompetent in dealing with this crisis.
" For decades, Christian nationalist leaders have lined up with the anti-government, anti-tax agenda not just as a matter of politics but also as a matter of theology. Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council, one of the Christian rightâs major activist groups, has gone so far as to cast food stamps and other forms of government assistance for essential services as contrary to the âbiblical model.â Limited government, according to this line of thinking, is âgodly government.â
When a strong centralized response is needed from the federal government, it doesnât help to have an administration that has never believed in a federal government serving the public good. Ordinarily, the consequences of this kind of behavior donât show up for some time. In the case of a pandemic, the consequences are too obvious to ignore."
Yesterday we tired out @HadeerGhareeb game âdidiasksâ in a video call. Was good fun and social exercise :). But the call was disconnected a few times, so we thought about making the game into a discord thread.
This is the first start :). @HadeerGhareeb will ask us as a community her carefully designed questions for opening up socially.
The first one is about the future of communication. Have a look at the link and give your answer :).
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Just watched this beautiful video. A reminder that all shall pass.
DANCE DANCE from Thomas Blanchard on Vimeo.
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trying to play hangman in a language I do not master, with a 7 year old who cannot yet spell. 
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Sounds like fun. I tried once to play Bananagrams in Armenian, while speaking like at 5yo at best, and knowing a fraction of the alphabet. It was entertaining, especially for who got to check on my spelling and words.
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letâs just see what happens if this is put here :):
I spent this (rainy here in northern California) weekend alternating between reading, talking and listening about the now-rapid spread of the virus in the USA in a general state of horror, semi-escaping by doing numerous video chats with family spread out around the country, one of which was a dance party with 3 generations, and completely escaping by reading a novel. When it wasnât raining I was often out in my big yard gathering up fallen tree branches from over the winter so I can burn them while it is still permitted. Looks like fire season and the virus might overlap this year in California. Almost too much to contemplateâŚ
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Giving this a go, after a while away - nice to see some familiar faces here again!
I turned 38 this weekend, and after looking at different video tools, I figured out a way to hack zoom into using it like time-limited video inbox for video greetings, as an experiment in using video, and the scope for expression it offers over text:
https://blog.chrisadams.me.uk/2020/03/29/experiments-with-remote-birthday-greetings/
It worked out pretty well - I had designed this specifically to make it possible for a group of people to send a message at the same as a recorded video, but what came through were mainly individual video greeting, which were still nonetheless welcome. It sucks that the only service I could use for this was zoom, even after paying to try out a bunch of competitors - lets hope we see a more diverse ecosystem evolve over the coming months.
Also, given weâre all talking COVID-19, I shipped a related project I started working on last week, with a long standing client, Spendnetwork.
It uses the last ten years of collated open spending data to make it easier to for budget holders to find suppliers of critical products and services in the context of COVID-19:
Iâm hoping itâll be useful, as in local government, when people leave their post in an organisation, lots of knowledge about supplier relationships leaves too, which slows an effective response.
The goal weâre going for is to mitigate against this, by piecing together information from lots of organisations that arenât in competition from each other, and whose aggregate activity can reveal patterns in their own expenditure, resulting in better use of limited funds.
with some of this out of the way, Iâm expecting to get back to some community building work on http://climateAction.tech and the Green Web Foundation, but thatâs for another update.
Stay safe, fellow ryders 
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Hei, @mrchrisadams, happy birthday!! Very cool! So your meeting was set to last for a whole day, so that it records everything during that day?
Was just reading this on fb, people doing bday parties and even wakes 
Last night I went to a birthday on Zoom. Gloria Gaynor - I will survive with lyrics on shared screen and danced on Phoenix - lark. I also had cake in tune with the times, meaning in the shape of toilet paper roll that was written âWiping away another yearâ. (Happy Birthday Andreea Mottram!
I wish you a lot of time
How do you guys bring the offline connection to online? Maybe you have happy hours on Zoom or Skype as you had weekly after work. Maybe you can meet your friends to eat together in front of the camera if you canât go to the restaurant once a month. Maybe break the big family Sunday meal in small active windows. Maybe you can throw parties where everyone dances in their own room to a common music. Maybe continue an online support group. Look, an extraordinary example I found the online wake of the late professor -------, where people who knew him and shared events and stories about him in a dedicated Facebook group.
Nice idea @mrchrisadams 
Weâre working on our own video conferencing app, this could be a really cool feature to implement on it. Iâll DM you the link, as weâre keeping it for internal use at the moment.
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Had a panic attack while doing groceries. Under normal circumstances any less than one meterâs distance to unknown humans (and dogs) is trying. Avoid crowds like the plague (dont go to e.g concerts for this reason). With this thing going on, people getting within 3 meters kicks off anxiety attacks. This is going to be me any day soonâŚ
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My stay-at-home project - converting an old falling-down chicken coop into a sturdy shed. Built those doors yesterday. All old-growth redwood salvaged from other projects. There is a book called âGood to Greatâ that posits it is easier to go from being good at something to great than it is going from mediocre to good. In carpentry, I am trying to prove that theory wrong. The key word is âtrying.â
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My partners company is trying hard to make their employees comfortable in home office, sending the ergonomic office chairs, screens, a care package with a teddybear. And for this Friday they send every employee a lunch. But they might not have thought that through. They are sending lunch for one person to each employee. I guess that in a family with two kids or so they might be a bit disappointed that mum or dad is getting delivery, but they not ;). But nevertheless, they are trying which is a nice effort.
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thatâs really lovely.
When watching any film or series where they share food in public or shake hands like normal people I now have an immediate reaction of:" NOOO! you should not do that!". Noticed something similar with old movies when they need to communicate something and canât reach each other immediately thinking: âJUST call or send a message.â or âJUST google itâ. Before remembering that in that era their were no smartphones. Brain immediately interprets âimagesâ from the past under a current lens.
Did you experience similar?
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Looks to me like you are already great at home repair/remodeling, John!
As long as no precision is requiredâŚ
@hampus living the dream in Blivande, where he set up a production line to produce visors and gowns for a local hospital. They are expecting 300 gowns and as many visors as we can make on Monday. I will be going there tomorrow morning to work all day with @kimgajraj and TEAM MICROBE.
Weâve got a scoreboard, competing for KUDOS $ and a secret prize. We got plenty of materials donated to us, so we will be running the production line as long as we can.
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