The 2020 Tournament of Books is LIVE.

It's the 2020 Tournament of Books! Wrap up the Zombie Round with Lost Children Archive and Optic Nerve!

The Morning News
Zombies are here! Join the conversation in the final days of the 2020 Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes.
↩︎ The Tournament of Books 5d
The world’s biggest condom producer, based in Malaysia, says the lockdown will cause a widely-felt shortage.
↩︎ The Guardian 7h
"12 million gloves, 130,000 N95 masks, 1.7 million surgical masks." America is airlifting in medical supplies.
↩︎ Axios 7h
Corporate conglomerates are interpreting "social distancing" with logo redesigns.
↩︎ CNN 7h
While media consumption is up generally, podcast consumption is down, perhaps because people aren't commuting.
↩︎ WWD 7h
For researchers who study boredom, this is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hopefully learn some really important things."
↩︎ The Washington Post 7h

It is extremely difficult to predict how many of the 164.4 million people who report working for pay at any point during the previous year... will experience reduced hours or earnings as a result of the current coronavirus-related economic slowdown. 

Who are the workers most likely to need emergency income support during the coronavirus crisis?
↩︎ Econofact
7h
Why to pay people to stay home: the history of livestock epidemics shows quarantine combined with financial incentives works best.
↩︎ Washington Post 7h

Take heart! Humanity's been through it before. There will be an Other Side, eventually. We just need to make it through this part, between Before and After.

Margaret Atwood’s advice for surviving pandemics.
↩︎ The Globe and Mail
7h
Collective and remote, digital and human: Record yourself playing along with a neural net trained to "Disintegration Loops."
↩︎ Robin Sloan 7h
Gerry is a font made out of gerrymandered Congressional districts.
↩︎ Ugly Gerry 8h
Google presses pause on its tradition of April Fool's jokes in light of the coronavirus.
↩︎ The Verge 2d

We spend our days spearing Internet-delivered raspberries with the baby fork. “Mama help,” she says sometimes, plaintively. She needs something but she doesn’t know exactly what it is. I know exactly what I need: another human body.

A month after filing for divorce, single mom Leslie Jamison contracted COVID-19.
↩︎ The New York Review of Books
3d
Twenty-eight years ago, Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the pope on TV. The time since has been "incredibly isolating."
↩︎ The Washington Post 3d

A tape of John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Roy Brooks and others playing loose versions of bebop standards in 1958.

Found in a round-up of clips of famous musicians and bands in rehearsal.

3d

Is this the first film to be made completely in quarantine? It's definitely one of the better ones (with a celebrity cast almost entire found on cameo). From Ben Berman, director of The Amazing Johnathan Documentary.

3d
Fashion designers are desperate to make masks and gowns for healthcare workers, but can't find proper guidance or materials.
↩︎ GQ 3d

Sports commentators are out of work, too.

But some like Nick Heath find other things worthy of play-by-play.

Find more through the hashtag lifecommentary. 

3d
H-E-B has been preparing for pandemics since 2005, but it didn't see the run on toilet paper coming.
↩︎ Texas Monthly 3d
Yet more stuff to watch: all of the short films that were supposed to debut at SXSW.
↩︎ Mailchimp 4d