There Are No Snakes in the Hospital

Perhaps you’ve seen a bombardment of not-very-affordable design “solutions” to questionable coronavirus-related lifestyle hindrances. How do I wear a face shield while expressing my fanaticism for Devo, they ask. Can we make PPE look more like a Jean Nouvel tower, they wonder. I will challenge norms during a pandemic, they say.

If something is bugging you about this, here is an essay for you.

Architecture critic Kate Wagner has coined the trend “PR-chitecture.” Wagner writes:

“In short, PR-chitecture is architecture and design content that has been dreamed up from scratch to look good on Instagram feeds or, more simply, for clicks. It is only within this substance-less, critically lapsed media landscape that Coronagrifting can prosper.”

See, for example, these conceptual face sneakers and lettuces. Wagner argues that “these tone-deaf art world creeps are using such a crisis for shameless self-promotion and the generation of clicks and income, while providing little to no material benefit to those at risk and on the frontlines.”

Wagner targets Dezeen and designboom as the main offenders, with pieces featuring a 3D-printed door-opener, a #StayTheFuckHome desk (a desk), and glistening prefab ICUs. To Dezeen’s credit, they blogged the piece.

If you’re at the point where your mind is embroiled in imaginary twin wars between your hands (Lefty and Righty) and feet (Footie One and Footie Two), then this animation will ease your mind. Foot, meet hand. Hand, foot. Alliances are forged. There’s peace for now.

Here’s further proof that no U.S. election will proceed free of social media attacks which unfurl into a debate about speech and terms of service. According to Dartmouth’s college newspaper, racial slurs and threats against a candidate for School Assembly vice president surfaced on the anonymous college chat app Librex, which forbids users from “targeting” individuals, except public figures.

Is the Student Assembly VP candidate a public figure? And if so, should attacks irrelevant to their campaign be allowed to stand?

Hungry young journalists, we can assure you there is no limit to this content.

It’s also heartening to know that Dartmouth’s newsroom is still reporting at 2AM on a Tuesday, upcoming finals be damned.

Here’s the latest drop from MSCHF, the crew who brought you Nikes customized with holy water and a Chrome extension that hides Netflix streams in a fake conference call. Now you can switch all of your app icons back to their old design using the browser-based app Icon Rewind. But be warned: old 3D app design is a psychologically disturbing netherworld with no universal light source.

Are toilet paper rolls getting smaller? The prepper blog The Prepared measured a “pre-panic” roll side-by-side with a “post-panic” roll, both of the Sam’s Club brand. They indeed found that the newest roll has decreased in diameter by three-quarters of an inch.

Both appear to be unbroken rolls.

It’s possible that they have peeled off a few layers to doctor the evidence because they’re in bed with Big Bidet. But I don’t want to believe it.

I’ve long since blown through the February toilet paper supply, so I have no independent evidence to prove this.

Some were skeptical of the viability of Wuhan’s plan to test all 11 million residents within ten days, but it looks like it will be done: the city has tested 6.5 million people in less than two weeks, according to the New York Times. That’s 90 percent of the population, after including children and people who’d already lately been tested, the paper notes. According to the Times, the tests are still being processed and have uncovered 200 positive cases, so far.

If you thought the incessant predictions that we’re pivoting to online learning after the coronavirus were bullshit, you may be partly wrong. This is to say that massive open online courses (MOOCs) for adults are baaaack. After a years-long drop-off, the New York Times reports that Coursera, a free-to-low-cost online course platform founded by Stanford University professors, has enrolled ten million people since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. (Coursera recently made all of its courses free for people who’ve lost their jobs due to the coronavirus outbreak.) Similarly credentialed programs Udacity and edX have also seen an unusual surge.

They’re good programs.

Still, here’s hoping Andrew Cuomo’s wish to rid us of classrooms doesn’t come true.

YouTube is automatically deleting comments including two phrases that are critical of the Chinese Communist Party. The Verge first reported the phenomenon, including the phrases “共匪” (“communist bandit”), an old slur for Chinese communists, and “五毛” (“50-cent party”), a term for paid internet commenters propping up the Party. (I tried this on a Liberty Mutual ad, and they do vanish almost immediately.)

“This appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to Gizmodo.

YouTube also said that the company has been increasingly reliant on automated systems due to covid-19.

It’s an ominous error in the wake of Google’s massive secretive operation, Project Dragonfly, a Chinese state-appeasing search engine, which Google dropped last year after criticism from employees and senators.

Here is the single entrant and now-champion of the Best, Most Sober Quarantine Dad Competition. According to a Twitter user, their father constructed an elaborate umpteen-foot-tall Kookaburra bird, with a moving beak and laughing call. This might be the best publicity dads ever got.