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I finished The Mirror and the Light the other day. I did read the other two as they came out. The whole trilogy is beyond wonderful. And it may have an effect which fiction rarely has: to change the way the protagonist, in this case Thomas Cromwell, is perceived in history. He comes out of it a fully-fleshed human being. I especially like the way Mantel has researched things like clothes and food, and how she tries to make the way people think, talk and interact real to the period. Ken Follett's series beginning with The Pillars of the Earth is also wonderful on the detail level, but the people might as well be living in LA from the way they talk and think. We know the end before we are at the beginning, but I have to say, when it finally arrived I was completely involved emotionally. The videos of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were wonderful. I hope they continue with the same team and do the third.

So Ozark is on Netflix. Started watching it tonight. Put me right off thinking about moving.

I don't dispute it, just point out that they are very small samples.

Sharp eyes, @SirBIllybob. It is true. No denying it. San Marino has, according to the list, 1,243.2/million. The Channel Islands have a whopping 12,422.4. Diamond Princess has 3,679.6. Of course, San Marino has a population of approximately 33,925 people. The Channel Islands, 173,863. Diamond Princess? Hard to find it among political jurisdictions, even the smallest. According to its own figures, it can hold 3,770 passengers and crew. It had just 13 Covid-19 deaths. Of course, there are hardly a million people on the DP, or in the three other lilliputian jurisdictions. Statistics are interesting things when they move out of the realm of the larger sums. They would seem to give way to the vagaries of small events in small groups of people. https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/ships/di-diamond-princess/ A couple of mainland shopping trips and a raucus pub night or two in Jersey. A wayward tourist van or two stopping for stamps to collect or perhaps duty free goods in San Marino. I see Andorra (77,256) isn't listed. All that liquor, all those tax-free tires. A couple of good spewing coughs and you're off to the races. Perhaps something happens to ratios when their numerical elements dwindle down toward the negligible end of things. But Belgium is a small but still substantial country. Language wars forever. Rainy climate for sure. Maybe all those faceless international EU bureaucrats scurrying to and fro? Who knows how many trips are made hither and yon, measuring every conceivable thing to be standardized and regulated. God knows how many viral particles are picked up measuring fishing lines or milk bottles or aspirin pills in every little corner of every formerly sovereign country within their extensive purview.

So.... Back to numbers. What is it about Belgium? So much time has passed and Belgium is still at the top of the deaths/1 million population index, by a huge amount: at this point (1:05 pm PDT on 3 June 2020) 833.6/mllion, with the UK, Spain and Italy in descending order clumped in the 500s. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/ Belgium has been at the top for so long, and by so much, Anyone have thoughts as to why?

Very pretty. Love the hair. The tattoos not so much. The condom is definitely not the sexiest part.

Brilliant!

For this time of death from a time so many still remember, back to an earlier time of madness and death:

Well we had Arnie, but the Governator has left the scene. Newsom has his points, but Arnie was a lot more fun.

I can’t help thinking when an escort says “it’s all about chemistry” what he really means is “I used to be drop dead gorgeous, about 20 years ago”.

Viola! indeed. Nothing you say is in conflict with my post. By inevitable is meant the fact - yes, it is a fact - that the pathogen will continue to be vectored into the population. We can meliorate that process, but it is now and will be a continuing biological fact. Over time more and more of a population is exposed. It just happens. We can slow it down and if/when (hopefully, when) a vaccine is developed we can, as you helpfully point out, speed up the process in a much more controlled and less destructive way. My point is simply that with more knowledge come better strategies to meet this ongoing (and yes - inevitable, though not completely unmanageable) biological process.

Great evocation of the period, including not rewriting their cultural norms to fit our current ideas. People drink and smoke like there’s no tomorrow and most women are not yet anywhere near self-realizing. I love the sets. The houses especially. Meticulously honest.

This article is horrifying but, to anyone who has lived in NYC, not exactly surprising. The Governor and the Mayor aside (but really not, because publicly run places like that are ultimately their responsibility), New York, City and State alike, long ago chose the let-the-government-run-it model. Not socialism exactly, but too big to be run well unless you have a managerial genius like Bloomberg watching everything like a hawk all the time. And maybe not even then. There is something about government-run institutions that lends itself to lowest common denominator-ism. Not in every case, of course, but with enough regularity to see patterns. Lax management, over-powerful unions, promotion of the under- or even non-qualified, featherbedding, money for one thing somehow ending up in support of something else. The games are endless, and here you see what it can lead to. When it is discovered, it's always like Claude Rains in Casablanca: Shocked, Shocked to find gambling going on! Negligence? Mismanagement? Here? Who could ever have thought such a thing! New York is the poster child for why the government (or at least our government) should not be trusted to run more than it has to. Just try to fix something in that system. Good people spend their professional lives trying to make it better, but more often than not entropy is the default winner.

As I understand it, “herd immunity” is something that happens, whether we like it or not. A pathogen makes its way through a biological community and those who come out the other end are resistant and comprise its continuity. The question is not whether or not we will develop herd immunity, but how we manage that inevitable process. So the debate is really about how to meet this infection most usefully. As we become more knowledgeable about the virus, who it affects most and how, we can make better-informed choices. We can move from sledge hammers to scalpels, from total lockdowns to sensible precautions altering previously "normal" behavior. I see this as a continuum from initial necessary, total defense to instructed containment. The goal, it seems to me, is to achieve “herd immunity” to the extent we can with as little death and destruction as possible along the way, protecting as best we can those most vulnerable, so that our economic and social lives can go on. If an effective vaccine can be found, á la smallpox, Hooray! If it becomes a condition to be managed, so be it. But the main thing is to pay attention all along the way, and be ready to adjust our understandings and behaviors to shifting states of knowledge, to minimize harm and maximize the biological future of our community, since we will have to live with this thing as part of our environment from now on. As some wise prophet once said, Shit Happens. This is our shit, happening now. It’s not ever going to go away.

Thank you, @bigjoey, for the Tablet article. As I read it, the article does not so much argue the case for herd immunity per se, but for seeing through a taboo- (in the anthropological sense) driven response which isolates and ostracizes those who discuss it. In other words, the creation of a group-think mob mentality in the analysis of this event. The truth is that the science of this event, both of the virus itself and its associated epidemiology, is not fixed. This section spoke volumes to me: “What is especially hard to accept at the moment, is that science has not yet answered all our questions so that we can know with a comforting level of certainty, what policy is best. We must live, for the moment, with some ambiguity. Those who can’t handle this ambiguity are promoting false certainty, the product of some fictional settled science, and anyone who deviates from that must become YouTaboo, unclean, impure.” I think this is an important insight.

And now for something completely different. Lilyhammer. I love it! Comedy of contrasts.

Lake Mead water situation - not desperate but still not out of drought conditions: https://bouldercityreview.com/news/lakes-tide-turns-water-at-highest-level-since-2014-not-enough-to-end-drought-56563/

Perhaps you should take a look at the rest of the series. At least skim through the club scenes. Maybe you’re one of the extras! Much of the plot revolves around two families who control the club-and-drug scene on Ibiza. At least they do in the story. I have no idea of the actualities in real-life Ibiza. But it refers back to a murder 22 years before. Maybe the club you were in is a real referent in the show. It was filmed in 2019 and only released this month, so 22 years ago would be 1997-98, just a few years before you were there. Here's DC-10, near the airport: https://www.ibiza-spotlight.com/night/clubs/dc10_i.htm#&gid=1&pid=5

Wow! Toward the end of the series the protagonist plans a very big club by the end of the airport runway. I wonder if it actually existed. Trashy for sure. I like trash in entertainment, not so much in life. I went back and read my list again ... they really packed a lot in. It has a certain fascination, both the psychological dysfunction of the main characters and the sociological situation. The “best” character is a lovable, honest, integrity-filled bouncer/enforcer/thug who’s really good at hurting people. Your go-to guy for a clinically clean, untraceable murder. You just have to love him. Perhaps there’s a message there but I’m not sure what it is.

Not to be a plot spoiler, but it’s a large truck with flexible walls fitted out as a living room. Quite sinister, actually, in a sort of over-the-top gangster kind of way. A little like the sort of place your mad aunt might have, but on the bed of a truck. Complete with unsatisfactory relatives.

Well, in case anyone's interested, I watched all 10 episodes of White Lines. Not sorry I did, if only to satisfy curiosity. All I can say is, It's enough to put you off clubbing, loud music, drugs, beaches, rich people, ambitious, sexy and dangerous blond djs, Romanians in little boats and their relatives in big truck living rooms, scuba diving, little red sports cars, drug-based new age spirituality, pet funerals, fucked up English families, fucked up Spanish families, brother/sister obsessions, mother/son obsessions, four-sided friendships, birthday parties, Ibiza and women, especially naive/narcissistic women without a clue what they are doing to everyone around them, for life.

Boy, is that the truth!

And this, raising important questions about the initial statistical modeling behind the coronavirus closures. I cite the Breitbart article because you can read it to the end. Unfortunately, the Daily Telegraph article it is based on is behind their firewall, which not all will want to breach through subscription: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/05/18/telegraph-uk-lockdown-a-result-of-the-most-devastating-software-mistake-of-all-time/

Back to the original question: No.

So far during the present lock-down, in no particular order, I've binged on: The Politician (pretty good) The Windsors (meh) The Assassination of Gianni Versace (absorbing) After Life (I have a hard time keeping focused on it - on the series, not the topic!) Hollywood (great! until the end, which wasn't so great) Designated Survivor (great in the beginning, lost its mojo eventually) Episodes (for the second time, I think) Babylon Berlin (fantastic) The Valhalla Murders (loved it, but I once studied [Old] Icelandic) I've just started White Lines. (not sure what I think yet, but at this point it doesn't make me want to go to Ibiza.) *** UPDATE: I'm in episode 4 and I realize I don't care about the selfish bastard brother who was killed or his totally f*ckwit sister, who wants to solve his murder and seems to ruin every other life she intersects with, self-centered (runs in the family) idiot that she is. But I've got this far. I'll probably continue through the series. Thank god there's only one season.*** I keep dipping into Rise of Empires - the Ottomans. I like its insight into the character of Mehmet. Practically nothing on Constantine. Very much from the Turkish perspective. Plus a bunch of movies. The Coen Brothers are growing on me, as are Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Murphy.