sábado, 9 de maio de 2020

Version 2.005

I woke up to a rainy day and even though it was pouring, it took me a while to realize it. I had seen the forecast yesterday and yet I was shocked at my surprise of how much it was raining and how dark the day was. And it was also chilly; the temperature has been unpleasant all week long and I often go to the air system setting to see if I made a mistake.

The morning was mostly spent on conference calls since 7:30 AM. We all cheer that it's Friday, but time is going by so fast that the rest of the week becomes a blur. During the third conference call, I hear the cardinals outside and I went to the window to see if I could find them, but I could not. For a few weeks now, a couple of cardinals have been coming to the garden to feast on our bird feeders. The male watches the surroundings and the female eats. Very seldom does the male eat and he only does it when he approaches the female and she puts food in his mouth. They seem like a nice couple.

The U.S. unemployment rate is at 14.7%, but it could be 5% higher, since the margin of error is much wider than the data indicates--there aren't that many observations with similar conditions to validade the estimate. But leave it to Americans to freak out about an unemployment rate that is trivial in other parts of the world. It is hard to imagine that health insurance will not be decoupled from employment after this pandemic or, at least, an affordable basic insurance will have to be available, no questions asked.

Yesterday, we learned about the killing of a black Georgia young man that took place in February. Why only now did we hear about it? Probably because the two white men involved, one of them a former police officer, were charged with the crime. And now we ask black folks to wear masks, when even with a bare face they are targets. It just seems like a catch 22.

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