A law limiting a trucker’s driving time was suspended nationwide for the first time since 1938 to allow for emergency transport of medicine, supplies and food.
California issued a statewide “shelter in place” to slow the spread of the coronavirus. All but essential businesses were ordered to close. The San Francisco Department of Public Health was quick to point out that cannabis is an essential and marijuana delivery service Eaze noted a 38% jump in orders.
More traditional New York, also under a statewide shelter in place ordinance, will keep its liquor stores open. People are drinking something called a quarantini.
Lines were epically long at Costco and other supermarkets as households went into full on panic-buying mode. If you’re wondering where all the toilet paper went, you might want to go to North Carolina.
Other businesses sadly suffered including Powell’s Books in Portland and the Boba Guys in San Francisco.
A lawyer has decided to sue China for $20 trillion for causing the global COVID-19 pandemic.
With everyone working or studying from home we’ve all been catapulted into the ReadyPlayerOne society that used to just exist in science fiction. Video conferencing software Zoom has become the defacto way to connect. People now joke that they now know what the “Z” in Gen Z stands for. Some creative uses of technology include:
- Using Zoom to have a karaoke party with strangers
- Hosting Work from Home happy hours and dinner parties
- Using Google Hangout to watch films on Netflix together
- Having a virtual Bar Mitzvah
- Streaming virtual rave dance parties
- Throwing an online-only record release party
- At SmartNews, where we always eat lunch together, the whole company tunes into a Google Hangout to share lunch.
Marvel introduced the latest group of super heroes and reminded us how much comic books have changed.
- Screentime can see augmented reality and real-time maps, and can “instantly Google any fact.”
- Snowflake is non-binary and goes by they/them pronouns and throws snowflake-shaped shuriken.
- Safe Space can materialize pink forcefields, but he can’t inhabit them himself.
- B-Negative is a goth kid obsessed with all the music and attitude of a “classic” long-past decades like the ’90s.
I’m getting old.
The feature image, a render of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, is by Kris Tremblay.
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