The state of things
The US is a country mired in several crises, no matter what anyone says.
Sree’s Sunday Note newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). The image above shows new dining bubbles on Broadway at Cafe du Soleil. What innovations have you seen in your town? Send me a photo - we can feature it in a future newsletter.
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; and a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob).
TUNE IN: Sunday #NYTReadalong w/ Edgar-winning mystery writer David Housewright) and the Daily Global Covid19 Show, 9 pm ET w/ bestselling author and entrepreneur Damon Brown.
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We’ve been led to believe that there are two realities in America. There are not two realities. There is one reality in America, and there is a sizeable group of people who are unable or unwilling to accept it.
This is the situation, as it stands today.
1. As of this Saturday, Covid19 has killed 193,000 people, at least. According to Bob Woodward’s new book, the president seems like he was actually pretty well-informed on the virus in the early days of the outbreak. He, of course, decided that conveying that info to the American people wasn’t a winning political strategy, and here we are. Meanwhile, doctors all over the country are very publicly denouncing his Covid19 adviser:
2. Schools, and education generally, are being completely disrupted and the US does not have the social infrastructure to deal with it. It’s easy to say, “work and study from home,” but doing those things in practice is something else entirely. Unsurprisingly, the effects have been especially severe in non-white and poor communities. Technology gaps, home stability, reliable access to food and shelter, parents (single parents, especially) working multiple jobs — all of these things have come together to paint a picture of a social system in America that is a “social system” in name only.
This is a great discussion with former Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., on how to study inequality, how people are already it, and the core issues that drive it.
3. The entire west coast of the US is on fire. Put simply, this is our inaction on climate change coming full circle, and this is the world we are leaving for our young people. It’s not even fire season.
To boot, wild rumors are circulating on social media about BLM and Antifa-affiliated people starting the fires and armed militias are “conducting patrols” and “roadblocks.” And the police are turning to social media to try to break threads of lies and made-up stories. This June, Americans bought 3.9 million guns — a record.
The headlines now are all about what will happen in the next 50 days before the election and how it all comes down to that. But we need to be thinking about the next 50 years.
The importance of this election cannot be understated. To every Republican who has continued to support this administration through all the lies, all the mismanagement, all the disinformation, I have just four words for you: Come get your boy.
- Sree
One Virtual Conference You Don’t Want to Miss!
My Digimentors team is delighted to partner with my friend Jamie Metzl (@jamiemetzl) and his terrific team to produce Rise or Fall Together: The OneShared.World Interdependence Summit 2020. Thursday, Sept. 17, 9-noon ET. Speakers include His Holiness the Dalai Lama; WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus; LA Mayor Eric Garcetti; Opera star Renee Fleming; and Michelle Williams of Harvard Chan School of Public Health. It’s FREE! But please register.
Read Something
There are a lot — A LOT — of people falling victim to conspiracy theories. Please don’t be one of them.
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Tech Tips from @newyorkbob: Back to Work? Slow Down Before You Power Up Your PC
Each week, veteran tech journalist Robert S. Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him on @newyorkbob.
As schools and businesses reopen after the pandemic shutdown, many office computers mothballed since March are suddenly coming back to life. While we’re all anxious to get back to normal workdays, don’t be in a hurry to grab that mouse. Your work PC may not be ready.
Before you run any work apps, stop, take a breath, and then update your computer’s operating system. Plenty of Windows and Mac OS security and bug updates have been issued since March. Next, you’ll need to download and install any antivirus and firewall updates since malware unfortunately evolves daily.
Be patient: It may take hours for your unit to download and install months’ worth of updates and reboot multiple times, but that’s probably better than a weeklong delay while a PC technician wrestles with ransomware.
Next, check to see if your work apps need updates. Look for something like a “check for updates” selection under the “Help” or “About” menus. Web browsers like Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge will need updating as well.
Once your computer software is properly updated and adequately defended, there’s one last thing you’ll need to do: Get back to work!
Listen to Something
This is a moving episode of the Politico Nerdcast. These interviews with young adults who were born on or around 9/11 offer a real insight into the next three decades of political and social life. There is a lot to chew on here — especially for parents — but the thing that really got me was that the US has been at war for their entire lives. Please give it a listen.
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Watch Something
This week, I had on my daily Covid show S.V. Dáte (@svdate), White House correspondent for HuffPost and author of 8 books, includes 5 novels, on my Daily Covid19 show. We discuss his latest nonfiction book: "The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus", and America’s ongoing health, economic, and race crises.
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/ Edgar-winning mystery writer David Housewright)
Daily Global Covid19 Show, 9 pm ET w/ bestselling author and entrepreneur Damon Brown.
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 150+ shows and 280+ 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!