But I’m A Cat Person
Green Grass (wallpaper set | Sparrow, Patrick, Bianca | worksafe)
Leif & Thorn
Being Tiernan (sketch | Thorn, Tiernan | worksafe)
Happy Not-Eurovision (art | BICP characters as Kolpovision singers | worksafe)
Madoka Magica/Pretty Cure/Aikatsu/Magical Emi
Mahou Shoujo Madoka (art | 7 different Madokas | worksafe)
She-Ra
The Line (comic | Scorpia | G)
This Week in Leif & Thorn:
The song contest begins! Now, where did Kale get to…?
Finally managed to give blood on Sunday, after a few misfires earlier in the month. (For the first time, my pulse kept coming in high. This round I cut all caffeine for a week, recorded my own pulse a couple times a day to figure out the best strategy, and set the appointment for shortly after I woke up. Success!)
Other nice/heartwarming things:
April 14: ““I re-read ‘So Much Cooking,’” one of my friends said on social media, tagging me, “and realized I hadn’t stocked up coffee. Now I have. So, thanks.” Someone else bought two bottles of chocolate syrup, crediting my story. Another person bought themselves birthday cake ingredients. “I’m shopping based on what Natalie would want,” someone else told me.”
May 16: “Buildings around Europe and beyond were lit up for Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light. Shine A Light was played by the Rotterdam Philharmonic, from home.” Video that’ll hit you right in the heart.
May 17: “A Roman Catholic priest in the Detroit area has taken aim at his parishioners in a bid to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, using a squirt gun to shoot holy water.”
In less-heartwarming news, public-health data in the US is being skewed by people with a financial interest in reopening things, safety be damned. A few examples:
May 18, Florida: The data architect of Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard: “As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it.”
May 18, Georgia: “But on closer inspection, the dates on the chart showed a curious ordering: April 30 was followed by May 4; May 5 was followed by May 2, which was followed by May 7 — which in turn was followed by April 26. The dates had been re-sorted to create the illusion of a decline. The five counties were likewise re-sorted on each day to enhance the illusion.”
May 21, the whole US, via the CDC: “The government’s disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same.”
It’s the one from Johns Hopkins University, for anyone who wants a good site to check in with. There’s also good detailed graphs — scroll down for links to all the options — on this page by Worldometers.org. Other options: Links to a variety of COVID-19 maps & visuals.
Happy/reassuring/uplifting links:
Lockdown Omens, written by GNeil and performed by Sheen and Tennant — in which Crowley isn’t setting a bad example and Aziraphale is catching up on his reading.
April 22: What masks don’t help with, what they’re very good at, and why it makes a difference if you wear them: a lengthy and detailed breakdown.
May 4: “Staff working in a care home in France have kept their residents safe by locking down with them for 47 days and nights to wait out the coronavirus storm.” And it worked — not one of them died.
All the other virus links:
April 10: “A doctor who has been testing the homeless in downtown Miami for COVID-19, the deadly infection associated with the coronavirus, said he was handcuffed by police outside his Miami home Friday morning — for no reason that he can discern — while he was placing old boxes on the curbside for pickup.”
April 24: Virus sweeps through Bible Belt evangelicals who won’t stay home. “Bishop Gerald Glenn, founder and leader since 1995 of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Virginia, was the first black chaplain of the town’s police. He had vowed to continue preaching ‘unless I’m in jail or the hospital’ before his death from coronavirus earlier this month.”
April 28: “These numbers are preliminary because death certificates take time to be processed and collected, […] In Connecticut, for example, where reported coronavirus deaths are high, the C.D.C. statistics include zero reported deaths from any cause since Feb. 1, because of reporting lags.” And even with that — the death counts are way up in places that are (a) hard-hit and (b) have numbers starting to come in. Like 120% of normal in MA, and 325% of normal in NYC.
May 7: “It’s not that the bathroom poses a more serious coronavirus risk than anything else you’re doing. (Workplace consultants believe the bottleneck on the return to downtown offices will be elevators.) But it does serve as a reminder that what we’re really talking about, when we talk about density as a factor in disease transmission, is particular spaces that a number of people have to share.”
May 8: “I ended up in an isolation room in the antechamber of the intensive care department. You’re tired, so you’re resigned to your fate. You completely surrender to the nursing staff. You live in a routine from syringe to infusion and you hope you make it. I am usually quite proactive in the way I operate, but here I was 100% patient.” A virologist’s infection story.
May 9 (NYT): “Dr. Bright was largely sidelined by personal disputes with Dr. Kadlec and his aides, some of which long predated the coronavirus, the documents suggest. By the time the pandemic arrived in force, the relationship between them had become toxic, with Dr. Bright increasingly left out of key decisions. His ideas about battling the threat ‘were met with skepticism,’ the complaint says, ‘and were clearly not welcome.’” Hey look, it’s the scientist from the first act of Every Disaster Movie Ever.
May 10: “People disregarded a rule to order an hour before pickup and demanded their ice cream anyway, he wrote on [the Polar Cave Ice Cream Parlour’s’ Facebook page. Customers took out their anger at delays on overwhelmed employees, including a teenage girl who quit, he said.”
But I’m A Cat Person
The Grass is Greener 2020 (art redraw | Sparrow, Bianca, Patrick | worksafe)
Leif & Thorn
Sunset map of Central (art | landscape | worksafe)
Suited, Not Stirred (sketch | D10 | worksafe)
Final Fantasy
Cloud and roses (sketch | Cloud/Sephiroth | worksafe)
Madoka Magica/Oz books/Sailor Moon/Hellsing/Colbert Report/Home
Six Fanarts – Favorite series (meme art | Sayaka, Dorothy, Hotaru, Integra, Jon/”Stephen”, Tip, Oh | worksafe)
Madoka Magica/Cardcaptor Sakura/Pretty Cure/Sakura Wars
Mahou Shoujo Sakura (art | Sakura, Sakura, Sakura, Sakura Kyoko | worksafe)
Magical Girl Friendship Squad
Magical Roommates (art | Alex, Daisy | worksafe)
Romeo and Juliet
Mercutio and his Romeo (prompt art | Mercutio/Romeo | worksafe)
General/Miscellaneous
Lucca and the Kids (reward chibis, worksafe)
Figure drawings 5-3-2020 (life drawing, NSFW)
Lesbian Ensemble (multi-lesbian art, worksafe)
This Week in Leif & Thorn:
Leif gets a quiet moment to bond with Kale, and there’s a new guest at the door.
Ordered some art supplies online a few days ago, and ever since then I’ve had this weird anxious fixation on the package-tracking page. I guess it’s being transposed from feelings about the stats on the COVID-tracking page?
Urgh. I just hope the arrival tricks my subconscious into thinking there’s been a globally-significant drop in Things To Be Anxious About.
Anyway, links about gun violence and/or police brutality have still been piling up while I’ve been posting all-pandemic links, so here’s some of those.
This CBS New York article lays out some specific criteria for Governor Cuomo starting to lift New York’s lockdowns and relax its stay-at-home orders. In short:
Different parts of the country are in all different places pandemic-wise, so you’d have to hold each state or city up to that list individually and see how it compares. Take this article about Texas’ plans to enter the first stage of reopening on May 1:
So…not as reckless as they could be, but not as cautious and well-prepared as you might hope for, either?
And the order of business reopening seems…odd. For another comparison, Ohio is doing non-urgent medical services first, followed quickly by manufacturing and construction; consumer retail will be held off for 2 weeks, presumably more if infections flare back up; and restaurants are being saved for even later. Libraries in particular are designing their own reopening timeline, where the first stage involves staff providing limited on-site services (e.g. reference calls, interlibrary loan, shelving returns from the drop box) without being open to the public at all.
Ugh. I really hope we can thread this needle, but it’s not going to be easy.
Anyway, have some links. (I pulled out the good-for-the-soul ones and saved them for the end.)
Officials on the Council to Reopen Crystal Tokyo
Leif & Thorn
water under the bridge (sketch | Ceannic scenery | worksafe)
Mulberry Sunset (art | Leif/Thorn | worksafe)
MCLIS and Chill (art | Archie/Rowan | worksafe)
What if we all started with love (art | Leif/Thorn | worksafe)
Frozen/Legend of Korra
You Are The Bridge (art | Elsa/Korra | worksafe)
Stargate/Fairy Tail
A is A cover (crossover art | SG-1, Fairy Tail crew | worksafe)
General/Miscellaneous
Six Fanarts – follower prompts (art meme | Miss Honey, Hinata Hyuga, Mustache Girl, Misato Katsuragi, Zoe SleeplessDomain, Miss Marple | worksafe)
Webcomic Woes 30 – Wonderful mass guessing (comic, G)
This Week in Leif & Thorn:
Leif bonds with new people through the shared language of music!
