Jammies is reading the New Yorker behind your back.

What a dumb rule that is. 11 days isn't much at all -- especially over the course of nine months. Was this designed by viruses to better ensure their spread?

My kid worked for the US C3nsus.

He came across a house , large family, kids in the yard, no answer at the door. Protocol is then to ask neighbors-- he learns that it's an extended family, uncertain immigration status (not a census question), and there's a kid who's not theirs living there, maybe 7, never been to school. Kid's apparently US born, but parents were deported (last year-ish?). Informative neighbor lady is kind of worried about the kid's welfare, family's not that great to the kid and not that great at keeping it together generally. She has occasional conversations with a teacher whom she knows about the kid. Honestly, I'd just like to make sure the kid has shoes and books, maybe set him up with a way to talk to mom and dad if that's possible. There are food lines here at churches and pantries when they announce something, and this is a pretty rich place.

I tried talking with a friend who's part of a volunteer literacy group-- they only take adults interested in reading. Reaching out to anyone official could have catastrophic consequences for the family, I really don't want to do that. Family (and I) live in a blue state where CPS is probably adequately funded and has people who are not horrible working there, but that seems like an extreme move I don't want to make without a lot more information.

Due to the source of the information, I can't even approach neighbor lady (who the fuck are you? Oh I learned about the situation from a privacy-sworn source who you talked to earlier, you can totally trust me because I am tall no I have no specific skill or background for this.) Plus my Spanish is adequate for basic exchanges, but this requires delicacy. So I seek a plausible intermediary organization where a stranger will preserve confidence about the source of the information and then act with good judgement, no problem in our well-functioning society. The handful of local civic organizations where I know people from light participation are heavily white, even though my neighborhood is 1/3 central american. My sports budddies also don't include any Spanish speakers-- I'm too slow on my feet for soccer.

2: Texas has the extraordinary talent of taking a kernel of a good idea and weaponizing it against those who it was designed to help.

3: Oh god, that's rough. I'm thinking immigration rights advocates might know a good resource to go through.

3: Do you know what school the kid should be attending? If they're drawing off of a population with that hispanic immigrants they likely have a number of Spanish speakers and/or a Spanish speaking liasion to that community. Maybe even a parent group from that community. If someone came to one of my schools with that problem the school and community center next door would absolutely coordinate a home visit. We do it all the time.

7: Over 50% of the students in our district never logged in or picked up homework packets when school let out in March, and that's a big part of the reason our health district wanted our school district open completely. (referring to a mountainside town of 90,000 as the 'inner city' was a bit much, tho.)

We have a parent-teacher conference with the online teacher next week. I'm pretty sure she has no good sense of who is in her classroom, and the Calabat is performing well even though he hates it, so it's going to be a pointless ten-minute conversation. Telling her the system is atrocious isn't productive, and I don't want her getting bad feedback for a situation that isn't her fault.

I'm seeing a lot of yard sales in my neighborhood.

I think many people are suffering. I wish people in government were doing something about it.

I'm so grateful to Bernie. I think without him we wouldn't have gotten the unemployment boost we got.

When I was meeting with students* after our first exam and asking about how they approached studying & etc., one thing I've learned is that between being isolated and things moving so fast people haven't been able to arrange to study in groups this semester. This bothers me because, while of course some people do fine studying on their own, I know from past years that many people really do better when they can study in groups, and it seems like this group is being disproportionately slammed by the move online.

*Different demographic than what most people are talking about: postgraduate/professional school.

6 is a good idea, thanks, I'll try contact there.

9: I actually have an extra credit structure around study groups, outside of class. As in, every homework assignment has a host attached. The host runs a study group for an hour and keeps a sign in sheet. Anyone who attends gets a bit of extra credit thrown their way. It's very good for building community in a class, because students don't have to be friends to have a reason to show up, so it alleviates the awkwardness of showing up as a stranger. It's been particularly useful this semester - I just let them use my office hours zoom, whether or not I'm there.

I think about the stuff in the OP constantly, but I've been busy playing work catchup today. Maybe later I can find something to say.

"It's a great place to be rich," my dad always said of America, "but don't get sick, and don't grow old..."

TRUMP HAS COVID!!! these showrunners are crazy. reverse twist october surprise. I imagine a biden presidency, so long as the source of legislative intransigency can be destroyed, would do much better on issues of childhood poverty. also, trump has covid, just, you know, that's happening.

Now very aware that Biden spent an hour and a half standing indoors ten feet away from a spitting, shouting coronavirus carrier, with no barrier between them and neither one wearing a mask.

Yes.

9, 11: I'm teaching with a "flipped class" style for the first time ever because I was worried about whether students would find groups to work on problem sets with. I record all my lectures in advance, then use synchronous meeting time to do mandatory socializing by putting the students in randomized breakout rooms to discuss problems together. It seems like it's working okay, to make sure they know each other and start to form groups to discuss the homework outside of class.

A *majority* of households with children? Good criminy.

Also -- I read yesterday that Asian Americans have gone from a fairly low unemployment rate to the second-highest for US ethnic groups during the coronavirus. Not clear why, according to the article -- lots of small businesses, but more than Hispanic Americans? Too much last hired first fired in white collar jobs? Straight up because too many people associate Asians with the coronavirus? Many bad possibilities.

Kids are expensive. My parents could have had steak and cocaine every evening if it weren't for us.

15. Vice-president and Dr Biden have both tested negative. But this is just another reason why all forms of government need to be torn from the hands of the fucking boomers asap.