Crowd control
I will say that, as someone who looks at these numbers almost every day, the coronavirus picture in North Carolina seems promising. Most metrics are trending in the right direction, but we must recognize these results as a function of what we’ve been doing: social distancing, masking, staying at home and washing our hands.
The outbreaks in some NC colleges make great news (more on that soon), but they don’t diminish what we’ve achieved here so far, nor where we’re headed.
Still, most of the news today points towards staying away from crowds — or, at least, the wrong crowd.
Some news
- The former Greensboro cop who says he was fired for speaking out about George Floyd spoke with Triad City Beat.
- Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was charged with fraud for allegedly skimming money from his Build the Wall campaign.
- Closer to home, state Rep. David Lewis (R-Harnett) stepped down today after being charged with federal crimes, including failure to file taxes and lying to a bank. He allegedly siphoned $65,000 off of his campaign account.
- Airbnb issued a “global party ban” at all its short-term rental properties.
- After new coronavirus clusters emerged at NC State, the school has gone fully online.
- Go get some paletas.
The numbers
- Bad day in North Carolina, with 1,972 new cases, making 149,904 total. Hospitalizations remained stable, and our positive test rate jumped to 8 percent.
- We added 11 deaths (2,464).
- Guilford County adds 88 for 6,123 total, with 3,617 recoveries and 154 deaths.
- Forsyth County clocks 61 new cases for 5,681, with 4,960 recoveries and 62 deaths.
A diversion
A couple days ago I put a supercut of an early Batman serial in the Diversion space, which led me down a YouTube/Wikipedia rabbithole of old-time, movie-house serials that dates back to like 1910 and Edison Studio. I was unable to find any of Edison’s work (yet) but I did come across this gem: “The Iron Claw” from 1916 is one of the oldest serialized shorts in existence. It’s silent, of course — this was 1916 — and as far as I can tell, only two episodes have survived: Chapter 7 Parts 1 and 2. Here’s Part 1, “The Hooded Helper.” Let the algorithm do the rest.
Program notes
- Tonight’s featured image is “Portrait of a Horseman,” by James Seymour, undated. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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