Category: TWTW

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were officially postponed to 2021 – which presents a problem for those in charge of branding.

Air traffic coming in and out of Chicago Midway was shut down when three staff members tested positive for Covid-19. During the shutdown, “student pilots took advantage of the situation and began taking off and landing at MDW for fun.”

As the situation in Florida started to get worse, a correspondent for the Canadian magazine MacLeans picked up and left for home and wrote about it in Escape from Florida: My 2,400-km drive back to the sanity of Canada.

Things are so bad that even Waffle Houses, that stalwart institution of the South, is closing down under a Waffle House Index Red conditions.

With air travel dried up, the major airlines had to look for places to park their grounded planes. Delta took over several runways at Atlanta airport to park some of the 600 planes they put out of service.

Stuck indoors under a citywide shelter in place order, residents of San Francisco are delivering rolls of toilet paper by drone.

Faced with a world without live sports, casinos are scrambling for new things to bet on. In the “this will not end well” department, a Las Vegas casino is filing paperwork to take bets on the outcome of the presidential election.

Other businesses had to retool themselves including the movie theatre that is now in the popcorn business, the hockey equipment company that is making face shields for hospitals, and the sail maker that has redeployed their industrial sewing machines to make medical masks.

As more people are working from home, dress code only applies from the waist up for the videoconference. Walmart shared that shirt sales are up but pants and skirt sales are down.

By the end of the week, after many were finishing a second week of sheltering in place, with the pandemic overwhelming NYC hospitals and looming over New Orleans, Today show host Hoda Kotb (a Nola native) broke down after interviewing New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees who just donated $5 million to help feed Louisiana during the crisis.

We love you, Hoda. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/rocZr8J4EE

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 27, 2020

In that brief moment, Hoda let out the gasp of raw emotion we’ve all been holding back. The sheer magnitude of the growing disaster we know we will face in the coming weeks must be met with acts of courage and generosity that we hope will be just as infectious as the virus we are fighting.

We can only beat this by working together like never before. More than any war, this is a global fight against a common enemy. More so than global warming which is abstract and distant the coronavirus is not only global but immediate. If there is any silver lining on the horizon, it’s that this threat to our way of life is bringing us together, around the world, to work as one, like never ever before.

Stay safe everyone.

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.

Friday last week they canceled SXSW. I think at that moment something they may have been reading about started to impact their life. Silicon Valley collectively gasped.

There was other news, I had a few stories in the TWTW notepad. . .

An 8-year old in Canada entered a raffle contest at his local hockey league and won a gift basket of $200 worth of cannabis products.

Reporters Without Borders is using the online game Minecraft to distribute suppressed journalism past government censors.

A Ukrainian chess grand master and his girlfriend were found dead after inhaling too much laughing gas.

An Italian winery had a mishap with their water supply sending 300 gallons of their product into the town’s pipes. For a brief moment, water became wine.

As the week progressed, more stories mentioned the coronavirus.

Scientists used AI to develop an antibody that has been shown to be effective against bacteria that no existing drug can eliminate. They named it halicin after HAL 9000. Could it be used to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus?

Looking for their own coronavirus angle, lifestyle site, Askmen, did a piece on how to look presentable from the chest-up while working from home.

The TSA changed its rules and was now allowing up to 12 oz bottles of hand sanitizers on all flights. I took a flight and the Southwest flight attendant walked the aisle with a trash bag to collect used handi-wipes.

Mexico, worried about the spread of the virus from the US, is considering mechanisms to control the flow of people from North to South.

The International Antiviral Society conference in Boston was canceled because of the Coronavirus. The TV soap opera, General Hospital, stopped filming because of the virus as well. By the end of the week, over 70 TV shows had halted production. Perhaps in anticipation of growing interest in dystopian sci-fi, filming of the latest Batman and Matrix films are carrying on, without delay.

Other events were canceled.

On Wednesday night, the NBA postponed all games. The NHL and MLS and Champions League soocer soon followed and the MLB postponed opening day. The Boston Marathon was pushed back and the PGA Tour as well. The NCAA canceled the March Madness tournament and all other contests. 146th running of the Kentucky Derby is still scheduled to run as normal on May 2 but organizers are closely monitoring the situation.

The Phoenix Suns decided to play out the rest of their scheduled season online in the game, NBA 2K20 and stream matches via Twitch.

The Olympic torch relay has been delayed but Japan insists the Summer Games will go ahead as planned.

With many schools shutting down and teaching students online,m video conferencing company Zoom is letting schools sign up to their service for free.

In an abundance of caution, organizers of Sweatfest and Fluid Swap 2020 felt it best to hold off.

Los Angeles and San Francisco postponed trials in the courts. Apple closed all their stores and Patagonia shut down not only its stores but also it’s online business.

Louisiana and Georgia postponed their presidential primary elections (don’t worry, the president cannot postpone the general election).

England postponed their local and mayoral elections for a year.

Following in the footsteps of China and South Korea, Italy, Spain, and France all issued orders for a lockdown to limit their population’s movement. On the bright side, lockdown didn’t keep them from singing from their balconies),

If VR doesn’t take off as an industry in the next few weeks, it never will.

— ian kennedy (@iankennedy) March 13, 2020

I am hunkered down with the family; social distancing as they call it. Stay away from others, #flattenthecurve and lessen your chances of catching the virus at the same time as others so that our hospitals do not get overwhelmed. We’ve canceled dinners, went food shopping at the crack of dawn to avoid crowds, binged on HBO and Spotify. I will most likely be joining many others and working from home for the next few weeks.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and rest up for the days ahead.

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New York City announced that the last few pay phones will be removed by the end of the month.

The crowdsourced science experiment SETI@home will pull the plug and stop scanning the skies for intelligent life. Maybe they found something?

Coronavirus panic hit Australia this week and the police had to be called in after a fight broke out over toilet paper. Rushing in to meet the need, a local paper started to include several extra blank pages for its subscribers.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society canceled its annual conference due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Research in England concluded that slow public transportation leads to poor school results.

The NHL will use a new type of hockey puck embedded with electronics that should help fans keep track of the tiny thing while watching a game on TV.

Hackers have figured out how to break into a phone sitting on a table with inaudible micro-vibrations that communicate via the phone’s voice control.

Fed up with having to change their clocks twice a year, the Yukon Territory in Canada will spring forward one last time and then call it quits.

A San Jose woman was crushed when she realized the plant she had been caring for tenderly for the past two years was a fake.

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A unsuspecting weather reporter in North Carolina gave us another case of a TV reporter getting unknowingly embellished by his Facebook livestream filters. Remember that Pakistani minister?

Homeland Security’s algorithm designed to keep out terrorists identified and denied a visa to a war crimes investigator.

What do you do when your country is overrun with a locust swarm? Release the ducks!

Scientists looking down have discovered a the first known animal that can live without breathing.

Scientists looking up discovered the biggest explosion ever. How big? 15 Milky Ways big. Oh, and apparently this is old news but the earth has a second moon orbiting the earth?

Despite his company owning over 5% of Apple, the famously frugal Warren Buffet finally traded in his old flip-phone for an iPhone.

It’s now a thing to snatch defenseless pigeons and glue tiny hats to their heads. Trump supporters in Las Vegas are forcing pigeons to spread the MAGA news probably inspired by someone who did this with sombreros last month in Reno.

A start-up in Denver has made a pill that you swallow that doctors can control over wifi to, as needed, remotely release medicine inside you. What could possibly go wrong?

Supreme published its latest collection of branded goods including Ziploc bags, an Oreo cookie and even a Mac Tools rolling toolbox. The Oreos are already re-selling on eBay for $4000.

Do you miss the sweet smell of McDonald’s ketchup? What about the pickles or hamburgers? Not to worry, the golden arches will sell you a set of scented candles. Eater, points out the idea is to light all six candles to re-create the smell of a quarter-pounder. Ugh.

People in Mexico have figured out that they can get over Trump’s multi-billion dollar border wall with about $5 of re-bar.

An Indiana man with a Crime Pays tattoo on his forehead was arrested, again.

The emotional support animal bar was raised yet again (remember peacocks and alligators?) when Ronica Froese flew first-class with her mini service horse.

The coronavirus scare has driven up the price of essential goods in Hong Kong, including toilet paper. So much so, opportunistic gang members held up a supermarket and stole 600 rolls.

Climate change has hit the European ski resorts hard. So hard some resorts in the Alps and Pyrenees are bringing snow to their slopes with helicopters.

Tesla cars are smart. They come with cameras that can read speed limit signs and set their speed accordingly. Telsas are dumb. Hackers used some black tape to fool the car to rapidly accelerate from 35 to 85.

Glen Davis drove a school bus in Minnesota since his graduation from high school in 1949. He enjoyed driving the bus so much, he asked to be buried in a lovingly custom-built, school bus casket.

Aided by 200 MPH tailwinds, a British Airways flight set the record for the fastest commercial flight from New York to London. Flight 112 made the trip just under 5 hours, 80 minutes ahead of schedule.

In San Francisco, similarly strong winds blew the glass out of the 41st floor of the hapless and slightly-leaning Millennium Tower.

In a touching application of VR technology, a South Korean mother was able to play with her deceased young daughter.

A small museum in Pennsylvania sent out one of their older paintings for a routine cleaning and was informed that said painting was a 400-year old Rembrandt.

The Girl Scouts are out with cookies again so everyone’s got a story of the entrepreneurial ones setting up shop outside their local marijuana dispensary.

Prescription medication is so expensive in Utah one insurance company is sending its workers to Mexico or Canada to pick up medicine for its members.

Engineers in Hong Kong have figured out how to harness electricity from raindrops.

Modern Farmer reports that someone has invented an autonomous robot that can weed your garden.

Someone fell for one of those phishing emails. Unfortunately that someone was a worker for the government of Puerto Rico and they ended up transferring 2.6 million taxpayer dollars to a fraudulent account.

She thought something was funny about her date. He insisted she come pick her up in her car. He then asked her to stop by a bank for a quick moment. Her fears were confirmed when “he came running back, sweating with sunglasses, a hat, a gun and $1,000 cash in hand.”

Kansas City beat San Francisco in the Super Bowl. It’s been a long time coming for KC (50 years for those counting) so residents were excited to see their team win, disrupting weather radar with their fireworks and setting couches on fire.

Kansas’ defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi melted everyone’s heart when he lay down in the celebratory confetti (made up of fan’s hopeful tweets), made a snow angel, then went out and paid off the adoption fees for all dogs in the area.

A performance artist made headlines when he caused a virtual traffic jam on Google Maps towing a wagon full of burner phones running Google Maps across various bridges in Berlin.

The Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty, was cleared of physical assault after a tussle with a fan. Tough town, Philly is.

Costa Rica announced that it gets its energy from nearly 100% renewable sources.

A draft executive order titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” proposes strict guidelines for acceptable design. Following the tradition of “Mussolini, Franco and a particular failed German art student (who) all pushed for a singular, classically inspired state architecture intended to project tradition, order and the superiority of the state.”

It was determined that the Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry last year, by a large margin.

Keith Richards announced he hasn’t smoked a cigarette since October.

A parking space in San Francisco went on the market for $100,000. A bargain compared to the one, “closer to the lobby” that went for $140k.

A Oakland man rammed a police car and sped off hoping for a quick getaway but things didn’t quite work out that way when all four tires on his car fell off.

They thought they were so clever, hiding all their drugs in two bags with the words Bag Full of Drugs blazoned on the side. “They’ll never look in here,” they must have thought to themselves. They were wrong.

Oscar Mayer is looking for new drivers of their famous Wienermobiles after a probably now former driver was pulled over for speeding in Wisconsin. Yep, that’s them up above.

A Tennessee man, hauled into court to appear before a judge on marijuana possession charges, “casually reached into his pocket, pulled a joint and brazenly lit it while talking about how marijuana should be legalized in the state.”

Scientists have figured out how to keep their robots from overheating. They make them sweat.

The Trump Wall project isn’t going so well. Parts of it have fallen over in the wind. Because of seasonal flash floods, it now looks like they will literally have to open hundreds of flood gates in the wall for months at a time “to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over.”

A Florida man, already facing drug charges, went a wee bit crazy with the technicolor Jackson Pollock effect on his house, mailbox, car, and trees and the neighbors are not pleased.

Luxury brand Louis Vuitton is opening up a restaurant in Osaka, Japan. Depending on how that goes, they may open up a hotel. Game console maker Atari is already working on their first hotel in Phoenix.

If you’re still looking for that special, romantic place for Valentine’s Day dinner, Waffle House is taking reservations.

Rent is so expensive in San Francisco that one developer is planning to rent out bunk beds in a basement for over $1000/month. They are marketed as “sleeping pods.”

Wondering how the senators keep going during hours and hours of presentations during the impeachment trial? I’m glad you asked.

For the first time in 54 years we have two teams that wear a red jersey to their home games. KC gets to wear red if you’re wondering. Enjoy the game but don’t drink too much and end up like the Mayor of Mahwah.

After driving around waiting for a calling from God, Nadejda Reilly decided to take it up a notch and drive into the path of an oncoming car. Local police charged her with aggravated assault for causing a wreck an injuring two people.

In India, a man suffered lacerations to his neck while taking his rooster to a cockfight when his prized bird turned on him instead.

Temps dropped to below 40 in Florida so it rained iguanas again.

Canadian Neil Young was finally granted US citizenship after his application was held up because of his long history of smoking weed.

In Italy medical marijuana is now apparently free of charge and apparently grown by the Italian Army.

If one Arizona lawmaker gets his way, it will become a felony to lick ice cream and put it back in the store cooler.

Nearly 100,000 gallons of cabernet sauvignon spilled into a river in Northern California at the Rodney Strong winery.

A man with ‘murder’ tattooed across his face sentenced for murder.

Several furries attending a nearby convention stopped a domestic assault, pulling the offender from his car and sitting on him until police arrived.

A Detroit man, trying to deposit a settlement check from a racial discrimination lawsuit against his employer, was refused by a bank that later called the four police officers on him and initiated a fraud investigation. So he sued the bank for racial discrimination.

Oh, and just in case you didn’t think the world is about to end – ‘Unprecedented’ Swarms of Locusts have descended on East Africa

Have a great weekend everyone!