Infinite Quack

Trump tests negative for coronavirus as questions mount over his personal risks in face of pandemic   Kwik-Faks[tm] for the impatient: Trump has tested negative for the novel coronavirus. Trump was seen stomping around the White House today, proudly brandishing a white folded piece of paper, and bragging about how negative his test results had been. Trump then held an impromptu press conference in which he went on at some length about how his tests were the best, that he tested better than anyone on Earth, and that he was thinking of becoming a doctor so he could administer negative-result tests to other world leaders, or something to that effect. Trump eventually unfolded the piece of paper, which turned out to be the words "Presadent Trump tests 1000% Negative" written in crayon. White House aides lined up to take turns at the podium, praising the President on his good health, and how clever he had been to get such an astoundingly negative result. Trump then roughly shoulde...

He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them "Retail arbitrage", better known as hoarding and price gouging. It's one thing to do that with dolls or something. It's another to do it with a product whose purpose is to slow the spread of a deadly infection. The grocery store near us has had no hand sanitizer on its shelves for a while. (Side note: You can make your own sanitizer with aloe vera and isopropyl alcohol. See How to Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer .) In a country so in love with capitalism, it's unrealistic to expect people wouldn't try to profit off the tragedy. But it's basically no different from war profiteering. One would wish that people's conscience would tell them they're crossing a line. Someone's always going to be willing to cross it, though -- whether out of greed or desperation, or just not caring very much that what they're doing harms society. This also exemplifies what's wrong with the libertari...

Microsoft, Amazon Advise Staff to Work From Home as Coronavirus Spreads, Facebook Contractor Confirmed Infected Though COVID-19 is ultimately going to affect everybody, this particular outbreak, the first significant one in the US, has had a particular impact on me -- though I'm not aware of anyone I know having caught it. A few years ago my wife and I took a vacation in Hawaii (on the Big Island) with family. We discovered her breathing was easier. We took a second trip to test it, and confirmed that she felt better on the island, worse again in the Seattle area ("east side", to locals). So we set out to make it permanent. We bought a house on the island a couple years ago, got our Seattle-area house sold last year. But I had to maintain a presence in Seattle for the sake of my employer Amazon, who were cautious about granting me broad approval to work remotely. I was permitted to do that for one week per month at first, then two. I got an apartment in downtown Seattle a...