Stuart Elden at Progressive Geographies is curating a list of "geographers, sociologists, philosophers etc. on covid 19." There's a ton of fascinating material there, and he is updating it regularly.

At company called unacast has used cellphone tracking data to produce a “Social Distancing Scorecard.”  It breaks down the US by state and county to measure the distances that cellphones travel as a proxy for social distancing.  It then grades areas from A to F based on the percentage decrease. Obviously this is a rough…

It seems that Trump is descending into his usual self-aggrandizement and racism – somebody must have slipped something into his Diet Coke for Monday's (semi) coherent performance.   Unfortunately, that's now worn off.  If you haven't seen it, the Washington Post skewers the blatant hypocrisy of Fox News.  Also, the Trump administration was given the opportunity…

As communal life comes screeching to a collective halt for the indefinite future (including not-quite-Italy-but-close bans on movement in San Francisco), and as public health officials go into “more lockdown is better” mode, it seems important to underline at least three things: (1) no one knows what they are doing, hence (2) these measures are…

In one easy chart:

We are here on the balcony because of a pan-demic, a terrible pandemic that we have handled perfectly.  More testing for the virus is coming soon.  But also not everybody needs or should get testing.  Also we are going to cap off the petroleum reserve gas tank at a great price.  Many wonderful amazing people…

A week ago, two people were killed in a mass shooting at UNC Charlotte that was only one of several shootings in Charlotte that week. Yesterday, one student was killed and several injured in a mass shooting at a high school in the Denver suburbs. As of now (5/8), there have been 118 mass shootings…

On April 30, a man shot and killed two students in a classroom at my university, UNC Charlotte.  He injured four others. On May 1, the day after the mass shooting at UNC Charlotte, a man was shot and killed in an apartment complex near the university.  On April 30, the day of the mass…

by Eric Schwitzgebel In a series of fascinating recent articles, philosopher Susan Schneider argues that (1.) Most of the intelligent beings in the universe might be Artificial Intelligences rather than biological life forms. (2.) These AIs might entirely lack conscious experiences. Schneider’s argument for (1) is simple and plausible: Once a species develops sufficient intelligence…