The President is a one-man catastrophe — we can fix this
He's a superspreader of Covid19, racist hate, and a million other terrible things.
Sree’s Sunday Note newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). The promo card you see above is for IMPACT Summit 2020 #DesisVote that my team and I were honored to help produce. 3.5 hours of incredible conversation and insights that you can rewatch here. Including a rare joint appearance by all four South Asian Members of Congress, interviewed by Ambassador Richard Verma, former US envoy to India.
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; and a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob).
TUNE IN: Sunday #NYTReadalong w/ Neil Genzlinger, obituaries writer for the NYT. We were joined by Dan Barry, who will share his reflections on Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jim Dwyer, who died this week. Sunday’s positivity episode of my daily, global show is all about how Art Heals the World, with guests Grace Cho of Artrepreneur, Dilbur Parakh of Aseema, Christine Biancheria of Friends of Aseema - 9 pm ET or any time later you like.
The best way to know when I’m on the air and see all my archived Covid19 shows, is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. We’ve been going for 215 straight days!
My Digimentors team is working with companies and nonprofits around the world to create virtual events. We’ve worked on events for 50 people and 100,000 people. See our new brochure. Don’t cancel or postpone your conference - contact us! sree@sree.net
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It seems like it’s been a constant refrain over the last 3+ years, but…what a week this has been.
Covid19 has been tearing through the White House — which has more new active cases than several countries — and it all starts with the President.
But it’s not just Covid19 and his complete disregard for any sort of measure that could protect people from this horrible illness, it goes so much deeper than that. In Michigan, a group of right-wing domestic terrorists — and they are terrorists, no matter how difficult it is for people to ascribe that term to white people — were thwarted in their attempt to kidnap the governor and stage a coup.
The local sheriff thinks we should cut these poor guys some slack. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but jump down to “Watch Something” and take it all in.
The FBI has, for years, warned of the threat of right-wing, white nationalist terrorism, and is particularly concerned about the next few months. But local police have handled these groups with kid gloves for years, from the Bundy family’s occupation of federal land in Oregon, to Charlottesville, to Michigan, and countless other instances.
The fact is that there’s a very simple explanation for why these groups are as publicly active as they are — they have the President’s explicit support. On the debate stage, the Presidential debate stage, he told one of the most prominent white nationalist groups (I refuse to even name them here, and journalists should do the same) to “stand down and stand by.”
There’s not a lot of wiggle room there. It’s clear what he meant, what he thinks, and how he plans to approach the results of the election. He’ll fight it in the courts, and he wants these creeps to fight in the streets.
Need more? Here are a couple of very easy-to-follow examples:
One would hope a brush with death would spawn a bit of humility, but this is Donald Trump and he doesn’t have any. He is back in the White House, likely infecting more people, and says he will hold more rallies - one every day till the election is the plan for now. He’s the consummate superspreader of everything awful in the world, and we all have the power to get him out of the presidency and into the hands of his debt collectors — of which there are many.
Let’s do just that. If you have any questions about how and where you can vote in your state, go to vote.org, it’s a great resource.
- Sree
Read Something
It doesn’t get much clearer than this.
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Tech Tips from @newyorkbob: The New Smartphone Sweet Spot
In a normal year (remember those?), this would be the time when major cell phone companies would be holding huge, well-catered press events to unveil their glitzy new products for the holiday season. In this year of pandemic-induced empty pockets, however, the focus is less on thin and light handsets than on smaller price tags.
Last week, Google introduced the Pixel 5 ($699) and Pixel 4a 5G ($499) Android phones, both of which offer excellent features like powerful Qualcomm processors and the ability to connect to high-speed 5G data networks. However, the key announcement was the pricing: Both cost less than the old flagship Pixel 4 ($799).
With the new Samsung Galaxy S20 Fan Edition ($700), the company cherry-picked key features of more expensive Galaxy S20 series units, like its 32-megapixel selfie camera, resulting in a still-very-sophisticated 5G handset. In a press release, Samsung notes that “COVID-19 disrupted the world as we knew it…and that is why we created Galaxy S20 FE to deliver flagship experiences to reach even more consumers.”
Mid-priced handsets like these — and others like Apple’s $399 iPhone SE — offer carriers the ability to offer them for free or at much lower prices when bundled with a calling plan. With many users choosing to hang onto their current phones until their incomes rebound, the coming holiday shopping season will probably be full of discounts and rebates on middle-of-the-pack models. So, keep your eyes open — and keep a good protective case on your current phone.
Listen to Something
It’s ALWAYS worth your time to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci — ALWAYS. The fact is that, if our leaders had listened to and followed his advice from the start, the last seven months(!) would have been remarkably different. Instead, here we are, approaching 250,000 deaths from Covid19 with no end in sight. This is a great episode of The New Yorker’s flagship podcast — stick around for the segment on white nationalists in Portland as well.
Watch Something
The group of right-wing domestic terrorists in Michigan is not a “militia,” it’s a group of domestic terrorists. If this interview with the local sheriff is any indication, things are going to get worse before they get better. Unbelievable.
Odds & Ends
🗞 Sundays are busy at Digimentors. 8:30-10:15 am ET, we read the print edition of the NYT out loud for you to watch live or later. 9-10 pm ET, we interview generally positive people to put some pep in our step as we go into the new week. Today’s videos:
Sunday #NYTReadalong w/ Neil Genzlinger, obituaries writer for the NYT, and longtime NYT reporter/columnist Dan Barry.
Daily Global Covid19 Show, 9 pm ET (or anytime later you like): Art Heals the World, with guests Grace Cho of Artrepreneur, Dilbur Parakh of Aseema, Christine Biancheria of Friends of Aseema
The Readalong is followed Sundays 11 am-noon ET by a new medical show I’m co-executive producing with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, M.D. (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, M.D. (@MarinaKurian), called She’s On Call (watch live or later).
The Sunday #NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack and Strategy Focused Group. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
🎧 Every Saturday, I host a call-in show on WBAI 99.5FM (@wbai) - "Coping with Covid19" - focused on being helpful, hopeful, and focusing on the pandemic's effects on society’s most vulnerable. Listen live Saturdays from 12-2pm EST, or later. And, of course, call in or tweet questions for us using the #wbaisree hashtag! Listen to this week’s episode here!
📺 A reminder to watch my Daily Global Show. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn something every time. We’ve had 200+ shows and 350+ guests - and 1m+ viewers. Check out the archive and please subscribe to my YouTube channel. And/or sign up for my WhatsApp alerts list (it’s not your typical WhatsApp group, just a text when I’m live!). We are in partnership with Scroll.in, one of India’s best news and culture websites.
Recent highlights:
Sapphire, whose novel became Oscar-winning “Precious” (she’s newly on Twitter!)
Dr. Keiji Fukuda of HKU, former pandemics expert at WHO & CDC
👀 Did we miss anything? Make a mistake? Do you have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let us know! Let’s collaborate!
Sree, thank you as always for your weekly recap. I have an idea I'd love to collaborate on for your YouTube show or this newsletter.
I've just launched the #VotercadeChallenge with a couple of friends, to encourage mail-in voting and in-person dropoff. It's like the ALS ice bucket challenge — but for voting (and without the ice). Voters upload a picture of video of them at a dropoff location and share it online, with the hashtag #VotercadeChallenge, and tag 5 friends. It's 100% grass roots, we've made it 100% nonpartisan so people will feel comfortable participating and sharing, and we are hoping for some serious traction this week.
Can you help us with a plug and possibly your participation? Details: VotercadeChallenge.com, Twitter: @VotercadeChallenge FB: https://www.facebook.com/VotercadeChallenge Insta: https://www.instagram.com/votercadechallenge/
I'm on Twitter at @ericanista if you want to DM me. Sree, thank you in advance for your kind consideration!