The Atlantic is now your one-stop shop for all your favorite hot takes!

Being in total lockdown seems to have given our brightest minds time to wander farther off the reservation than ever before, and The Atlantic wants to hear from them. Recently, the Internet gave the once-venerable source of lengthy pieces about the manliness of sailing the collective gas face when it published a "think" piece essentially saying, Maybe what we need is more fascism?

I guess to appease people fond of the other extreme of tenured idiocy, come now law prawfs Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods to argue that AKSHUALLY totalitarian government surveillance and censorship are GOOD.

In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.

 The authors' premise is that because privately owned corporations do this to some extent anyway, we might as as well give the government -- which, the authors forget to mention, has the power to seize property and imprison and execute people -- all the keys because of the three R's: Russians, Ring, and 'Rona.

Goldsmith and Keane provide a bit of the old false equivalence:

These and similar developments are the private functional equivalent of China’s social-credit ratings, which critics in the West so fervently decry. The U.S. government, too, makes important decisions based on privately collected pools of data. The Department of Homeland Security now requires visa applicants to submit their social-media accounts for review. And courts regularly rely on algorithms to determine a defendant’s flight risk, recidivism risk, and more.

And also a bit of the old assuming facts not in evidence:

The First and Fourth Amendments as currently interpreted, and the American aversion to excessive government-private-sector collaboration, have stood as barriers to greater government involvement. Americans’ understanding of these laws, and the cultural norms they spawned, will be tested as the social costs of a relatively open internet multiply. [Emphasis added.]

I'll leave it to the good people of the Commenteriat to marinate on this. Meantime, I've got to finish up my own Atlantic submission: a think piece explaining how, actually, primogeniture ensures the divine right of kings stays within only the purest bloodlines.

Key Piece Still Absent from COVID-19 Puzzle

Is it airborne in aerosol particles from our breathing and talking, or only in larger droplets, splattered by coughing or sneezing?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/airborne-coronavirus-detected-in-wuhan-hospitals/ar-BB13kV91?li=BBnb7Kz

We don't know. China doesn't know. Nobody knows. Airborne transmission would explain a lot, but there is still one Hell of a lot nobody knows about this virus, months into the pandemic. Dangerous, clearly, and looking about as dangerous now for the 55-60 age group as the over-60 age group.

As states reopen, what will happen? Will we now attain peak death toll despite the disruptive investment intended to "flatten the curve"?

In 1918, government did not stop the pandemic. The pandemic stopped itself, when it ran its course. In other words, when the population had been so thoroughly exposed that people had lived or died en masse, "herd immunity" kicked in and shut it down.

Is our government today more capable? Is our science significantly advanced since 1918?

I am thinking we will soon know the answers to the questions, and they may not be the answers we would have preferred.

Russian Doctors are Just as Accident Prone as Russian Journalists

Very clumsy people, accidentally falling out of windows at a running start.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/russian-doctor-with-coronavirus-mysteriously-plunges-to-death/amp/

COVID mask accidents and other ruminations

I had better luck than this driver, who passed out while driving with an N95 surgical mask, but is there anyone else out there who has trouble breathing through these things?

Okay, I have N90 masks, but still. Its hot and stuffy in there!

I did manage to glove and mask up for our bi-monthly COSTCO  run (Cabo COSTCO now requiring masks), make it to the parking lot and finish shopping without passing out. But yikes.

Returning to the sanctity of my car I  was then confronted with how to take off the mask without dumping all of the accumulated COVID particles all over the place, so with my still gloved hands I simply pulled the mask forward until the rubber bands broke.

This was not the best idea I have ever had as the one inch welt on my neck where a rubber band snapped back and smacked my flesh real good. So I am officially part of the COVID morbidity statistics.

Maybe I should have watched a few YouTube videos on how to actually use this medical equipment!

Tomorrow's column will discuss safety tips surrounding the IV injection of Lysol.

Stay safe kids!  

New York Responds to the Kommisar In the Only Way Appropriate: with dick picks

Comrade DeBlasio creates a hotline for New Yorkers to snitch on each other for not social distancing. Hilarity ensued.

http://nypost.com/2020/04/21/de-blasios-social-distancing-tip-line-flooded-with-obscenities/

Never Have I Ever (Until Now)

Friday morning, I went to the grocery at 7:00 AM. For the first shopping trip in more than a month, and I was damned tired of cooking beans and rice and pearled barley and split peas, with dried soup greens and dried vegetable flakes. I don't think I've ever gone to the grocery before at 7:00 AM, but this was when they opened, like, right after they deep-cleaned the place, so I'm in there with the truly elderly, all coming at the start of the day. It was also my first shopping trip in many years where I actually filled a cart, and my first shopping trip ever in a half facepiece, twin-cartridge respirator.

I was pleasantly surprised to see most of my fellow shoppers were, in fact, at least masked, and most were also carefully observing social distancing. Thoroughly tired of cooking without fresh produce, I scored some nice red onions, green bell peppers and celery for the weeks ahead (because I'm gonna prep and freeze them). Also, lots of frozen microwavables, and some TP (I didn't really need yet, but just in case) and some snack food.

A bare 1.3 hours after I launched this mission, I was back home, with everything appropriately stowed, and the respirator and cartridges appropriately decontaminated and back in their sealed containers. An appropriate amount of (almost responsibly controlled) binge feeding followed, though I have yet to open any of the snack nuts or chips and salsa. At the close of the day, a two-hour treadmill workout took off about 1140 of those calories, followed, however, by a few Rolling Rock, extra pales.

This is life in the pandemic. At dawn, 40 roses to feed, and bills to pay, maybe some mowing to do, and getting ready for another week. No need just now to iron the white shirts or steam the suits and ties. I've been spending more time in denim jeans and blue workshirts than any time since my teenage years. 

My first Zoom meeting is this afternoon

and I am dreading it. Planning my outfit is nerve-wracking! On that note, you've probably seen this dress code edict from that Florida (!) judge but if not:

 [Source: Miami Herald]

Judge Dennis Bailey, who sits on the board of the Weston Bar Association, offered advice to attorneys appearing on Zoom: dress appropriately.

"One comment that needs sharing and that is the judges would appreciate it if the lawyers and their clients keep in mind these Zoom hearings are just that: hearings. They are not casual phone conversations. It is remarkable how many ATTORNEYS appear inappropriately on camera."

"We've seen many lawyers in casual shirts and blouses, with no concern for ill-grooming, in bedrooms with the master bed in the background, etc. One male lawyer appeared shirtless and one female attorney appeared still in bed, still under the covers.

"And putting on a beach cover-up won't cover up you're poolside in a bathing suit. So, please, if you don't mind, let's treat court hearings as court hearings, whether Zooming or not."

“If you look at how you are dressed, that signals something about what you are prepared to do,” environmental psychology expert Francis T. McAndrew told told Vogue Magazine.

 “So, if you’re dressed like a slob and you are in your sweat clothes, you’re either prepared to work out at the gym or clean out the basement, but you’re not doing anything professional or mentally challenging, and that spills over into your motivation and confidence.” 

Same week Avenatti released due to COVID-19 he's suspended from practicing law

When one door opens, another closes.

Anyone getting really fat at home?

For the record, I am not, though the scale and I did have a slight misunderstanding last week, but now I'm back to living on power bars, booze and caffeine, so we've resolved our differences.

The culprit was clearly take-out food; so to anyone out there getting dinner delivered, BE CAREFUL.

Meanwhile, Lat can't wait to pack on the pounds:

"My mom stocked up on all my favorite foods before I came home -- e.g., chips and guacamole, salmon, chocolate-chip cookies, ice cream -- and I am going to town. "

Glawker's Tips Drying Up?

Last week saw Sister Staci running a story on a firm that had launched a 15% to 25% layoff (depending on whose version you believe) on March 19. Despite Glawker's public pleas to its remaining readers for "tips" on the layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts, Glawker was two weeks late getting its "scoop" to readers. In point of fact, the hapless Glawker, which tended to be at the forefront of such news cycles (in the days when it had comments), now seems to be running well and regularly behind news sources such as American Lawyer. Could it be that all the people who don't comment anymore also don't provide "tips" anymore? Or, perhaps they have ceased to follow Glawker's dismal web traffic at all.

Ex-Harvard professor writes garbage contract

We're doing a bunch of updates to our form file at work right now.  While perusing Ken Adams's blog I ran across the following post.

https://www.adamsdrafting.com/lets-look-at-elizabeth-warrens-proposed-release-language/

To put it mildly, this is a bad draft.  If this draft came from a summer associate, I would recommend them not joining my group.  I also agree with one of the comments that his fourth point is the best.  That's full-retard level of stupid:



Hope you all are staying safe and fighting the urge to lick toilets.

The Greater Good: COVID Edition

We have reached peak kek.  I was going to write about what a bad idea this is, and how it could end up over reaching, but I don’t actually need to paraphrase the author. It’s apparently a feature, not a bug.


“ Such an approach—one might call it “common-good constitutionalism”—should be based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate. In this time of global pandemic, the need for such an approach is all the greater, as it has become clear that a just governing order must have ample power to cope with large-scale crises of public health and well-being—reading “health” in many senses, not only literal and physical but also metaphorical and social.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037/