As an 18th century book title would say, "wherein some larger themes concerning politics are discussed, and some small tips are communicated as well":

Much as Amartya Sen used to say about famine, the Coronavirus pandemic is looking more and more like it’s rooted in political failures—first of all in China, then in Europe, now also in America.  And given America’s role in global order, the US’s failures should probably come before Europe’s in order of importance.  This piece, filled with the passive voice—the preferred verb tense of all politicians, public figures, and celebrities (those with minimally adequate PR agents, anyway) seeking to evade responsibility—gives some of that story.  And it makes even more clear how deeply cynical the European politicians are, even to the point of using the stupid outrages of the US to mask their own incompetences.   

The EU faces a kind of existential choice when it comes to Coronavirus, for if they respond with a major endeavor to take on joint debt, it may move the EU in a more federal direction.  But people are squeamish about that.  What will the EU choose?

The contrast between urban and semi-urban places, on the one hand, and rural places, on the other, in the US is striking.  We’ve seen this for a while, in the “red” vs “blue” divide.  Corona is amplifying these differences.  In fact this reminds me of something that Holmes and Krastev, in The Light that Failed, note—namely, that a lot of more progressive or liberal voters in Eastern European countries are young, and the young people in those countries are simply leaving for the West, where there are jobs and a future.  Perhaps a similar dynamic is playing out in the US—the rural voters fear the future, and are the ones who want a strongman, and so they’re trying to make the US like Hungary, while the voters who might counter them simply exit, moving to the cities and the suburbs.

From the domestic to the international: how the pandemic is revealing and amplifying flaws in the international liberal order, how malign actors like Russia and China and Saudi Arabia are capitalizing on this, and how Trump’s response to that is making things worse.  

How will cities be different after the pandemic?  This post tries to suggest (or predict? it’s unclear) some directions for the future.

A cool story about how Big Science is getting done (on dark matter) in the age of Coronavirus.

Good advice on establishing a solid circadian rhythm during quarantine.

And good advice about exercising during this era of staying at home, as well.  

And, among the many ways in which we are being invited to perfect ourselves in the pandemic, here are some relationship tips!  --On this, however, I am actually interested in them working, because our relationships with partners are non-contingent; we can’t, as it were, opt out.  So this is useful for you, not as an “optimization” project, but as a strategy for helping everyone cope in this situation. 

To quote David Foster Wallace: I wish you way more than luck.