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As part of my Quarantine Entertainment Obligation, there will be a 39 page site announced at the conclusion of today’s edition! It’s all old material, but . . . it’s resized! And there are new pages. I had planned to overhaul the Comic Book section completely, and I’m halfway through the 500 pages. This entry concerns comic book ads that look like comics but are actually ads, and how they manage to fail at both. It’s non-chronological, since I keep adding things as I find them, and the idea of imposing chronology on 39 pages for the sake of some historical is the sort of thing I want to do, but remind myself, firmly, that NO IT DOESN’T MATTER.
Went out to get my oil changed today. This seemed brave. I finally figured it out: it’s as if everything is radioactive.
Everything is not radioactive.
Now, if you’re in a store with other people, there’s a certain crawling sensation that you should not linger, lest you touch something and jam your finger in your mouth. Remember grocery store samples? One of my favorite parts of the Before Times, and we thought nothing of it. Except I did: I always felt a tiny little bell go off when I took the toothpick from the container, but then I realized that everyone was grabbing them from one end and spearing the food with the other, so you wouldn’t get a bug from this.
Anyway. Went to the store for yeast. They didn’t have yeast. I did not buy anything else. It was not proper to do so. Later, though, I was picking up take-out at a Mexican place - support your local struggling restaurants, this is murder - and had the time to breeze through the Dollar Store. Bounteous stocks. No yeast, but tons of vitamins, sundries, foodstuffs -
And lots of unsold St. Patrick’s Day geegaws. I mean, no one bought any. No one noticed the holiday at all. It’s amusing IN A GRIM SORT OF WAY as we’ll continue to note, but in the post-apocalyptic movies (AND THIS IS NOT THE APOCALYPSE) there are often holiday decorations up to make it extra sad and pathetic, but it’s always a big holiday. It’s never St. Patrick’s Day. Oh, they were cut down right as they were about to say Erin Go Bragh for some reason.
The worst thing for the urban enthusiasts is the idea that people in the suburbs, whose houses literally embody social distancing, might not get sick as much as people in the cities. Citylab: “Are Suburbs Safer From Coronavirus? Probably Not.”
The article discusses at an AirBnB listing for a 14-acre compound in the middle of nowhere. Looks safe, eh? Nope. Quotes from an expert about how our conception of the wilderness is wrong, ending with . . .
Or, in Keil’s words: “The idea that we can go to countryside to protect ourselves is a bit of a myth, because it doesn’t exist like it used to.”
No; no it doesn’t. So what’s the situation now?
. . . rural and exurban areas have their own unique health challenges. For one, new zoonotic pathogens frequently emerge in pastoral places where humans come into contact with animals.
That’s not really a problem in modern suburbs, is it? I'm not skinning raccoons in the kitchen.
And in the U.S. rural populations are relatively older, making them more at risk for falling seriously ill from Covid-19. More than one in five older Americans lives in rural places. Those living outside cities also have more limited access to health care generally: Rural residents live much further from hospitals than their urban or suburban counterparts, and more of them list access to good doctors as a major community problem.
True. But remember the title of the piece: Are Suburbs Safer From Coronavirus? Probably Not. We are not talking about the suburbs here.
When it comes to other, more familiar infectious diseases, cities benefit from higher vaccination rates and the accompanying phenomenon known as “herd immunity.” If a large enough percentage of a population has received vaccination to an infectious disease, the community can effectively stop its transmission to vulnerable people or those who didn’t get the shot. In a 2015 paper for Infection Ecology and Epidemiology, epidemiologist Carl-Johan Neiderud showed how coverage rates differ across city and county lines. In Indonesia, for example, more people have the measles vaccination in urban areas (80%) than in rural areas (67%).
Since we don’t have a vaccine yet, and since the authors quote Indonesian measles vaccination stats, I’m thinking this might not be the most pertinent point. And again, rural is not suburban.
Grafs skipped until we finally get to it:
Dalziel and Viboud both stressed that health researchers are just beginning to understand the transmission dynamics of Covid-19. But it looks like the first cases detected in Italy, Germany, and the U.S. were all on the urban periphery. Some U.S. hot spots — Kirkland, Washington, and New Rochelle, New York — are suburbs of major cities. While it’s too early to detect any consistent pattern in the spread of the novel coronavirus, “what those data underscore is the the fact that you’re not necessarily safe in the suburbs,” Dalziel says. “Those are counter-examples to the idea that it’s just happening in cities.”
In the case of Germany, some car-parts execs traveled to China, and brought the bug back to their suburban homes. How dense were these suburbs? How much community spread was there outside of the infected execs' families?
The more pertinent question would seem to be this: are you less likely to get the bug if you drive in your car to a large grocery store, or take a subway to a small, crowded one?
while the CDC recommends decreasing social contact to limit the spread of the virus, that’s just as doable in a downtown apartment as a countryside manor. Says Viboud: “If you’re staying at home and limiting outside contact, you’d achieve the same purpose.”
If you are in a first-ring rambler with a lawn, are you as likely to get COVAD from a neighbor who lives next door on the other side of the fence, or a neighbor who touches the elevator buttons, the communal washing machine, the door handles in the lobby? Are you less likely to get the bug if you drive in your car to a large grocery store once a week and stock up because you have extra room, or take a subway to a small, crowded store daily because you haven't room to store things, and don't have a freezer?
There are all sorts of advantages to the things they don't like. It's okay to admit it. I'm not expecting they will.
It's 1920.
The flibbertigibbet age of frolic has not yet gotten underway.
Bad layout here. Which strikers? |
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| It’s the locals, not the Spartacans. As for those guys: |
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Commie agitators and malcontents. Bolshies, the lot of ‘em.
Germany was in the middle of a post-war revolution, and two of the perceived paths forward were social democracy and a council republic similar to the one which had been established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the moderate Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led by Friedrich Ebert and the radical communists of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had previously founded and led the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund).
The revolt was improvised and small-scale and was quickly crushed by the superior firepower of government troops. Berlin was largely undisturbed. Long-distance trains continued to run on time and newspapers remained on sale, as the rebels passively confined themselves to only a few select locations.
But let’s just say that wouldn’t be the end of it.
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Not human nature, not the lessons of history. Only politics. |
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Mrs. Norman.
Her name was Vira, and she pulled through.
Vira Boarman Whitehouse (September 16, 1875 – April 11, 1957) was the owner of the Whitehouse Leather Company, a suffragette and early proponent of birth control.
And a rep for the US Government in Switzerland. Quite the life. |
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Some sangfroid was felt by the readers of the newspaper who were not members of this, or any other such august society redoubt. Even so, as a club for actors, it was down the rungs on the social ladder. |
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Designed by McKim, Mead, and White - members all, which is interesting. Of course Stanny was a member, and he was the main architect.
It’s two buildings: the addition was a duplicate of the original. |
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I’d love to see the interiors - the original ones, I mean. It was gutted in 2010 (!) and Moderne designs were installed.
Can’t imagine a reason why. Maybe the original designs just weren’t that hot. |
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The start of rent control: |
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Wikipedia:
In 1920, New York adopted Emergency Rent Laws, which effectively charged the courts of New York State with their administration. When challenged by tenants, rent increases were reviewed by a standard of "reasonableness." The definition of reasonableness was subject to judicial interpretation. Certain apartments were decontrolled beginning in 1926, and the Rent Laws of 1920 expired completely in June 1929, although limited protections against evictions considered unjust were continued.
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The start of rent control: |
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Not having any of the reformer’s booshwa, this one.
mY GraNdmOtheR iS dYinG |
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The cartoonist . . . |
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Has no record on the internet. Likewise the comic itself.
Perhaps this is the first time anyone’s thought about it in 90 years. |
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See you around, or not, due to social distancing. (Note: I think I wrote that Sunday. Already outdated.
Did you make it down here? Congrats! Here's the Comics Ads Comics Ads site.
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