Time to stop looking wistfully out of that window and accept the new reality of the Internet being the only place you’re safe 
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- So Much Cooking - ”This is a food blog, not a disease blog… I don’t know about you, but I deal with anxiety by cooking. So much cooking.” This short story by Naomi Kritzer, published in 2015, explores the impact of a global pandemic through the experiences of a food blogger whose life is turned upside-down by social distancing and death. Sound familiar? Kritzer reflects now on her story in Didn’t I Write This Story Already? When Your Fictional Pandemic Becomes Reality: ”Researching the story in 2015 was when I first encountered the phrase ‘social distancing.’ Obviously, you’d close the schools, and public gathering spaces like movie theaters; you’d have everyone telecommute who possibly could. How would you get food?… Pretty much all the articles I read included an ominous prediction that sooner or later, we’d get to test out all the theories about containment, mitigation, spread.”
- Is the interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua a fragment of a shattered alien world? - The cigar-shaped visitor may be a part of a planet from another solar system that was destroyed: ”A super-Earth, bigger and more massive than Earth, on a highly elliptical orbit its star (maybe poked gravitationally by a second star in the system and dropped too close to the first star) can be disrupted… if the pass is close enough the process winds up being similar to what happens to the rubble pile asteroids and long-period comets.”
- What Happened to Lee? - HT to eek for this sad tale of Lee Holloway, co-founder of Cloudflare, and his mental decline due to a rare brain disorder: ”In Cloudflare's early years, Lee Holloway had been the resident genius, the guy who could focus for hours, code pouring from his fingertips while death metal blasted in his headphones. He was the master architect whose vision had guided what began as a literal sketch on a napkin into a tech giant… But some years before the IPO, his behavior began to change.”
- Emergency Ward - A classic documentary short, filmed at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City in 1952: ”This gritty, groundbreaking documentary by Leo Hurwitz is considered a predecessor of the direct cinema (or cinema verité) movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.” All well and good, but there’s more: Eastman Museum at Home has a bunch of activities you might find useful if you’re stuck at home with bored children, from images for colouring in to such exotica as “How to make a thaumatrope”
- Melting Ice Exposes Mountain Pass Used by Vikings, Including Ancient Dog and Leash - ”Archaeologists in central Norway have uncovered evidence of a heavily traveled mountain passageway that was used during the Viking Age… Located on Lomseggen Ridge, the passageway is absolutely littered with well-preserved artifacts, including mittens, shoes, horse snowshoes, bits of sleds, and even the remains of a dog still attached to its collar and leash.” Once this has whetted your appetite, head over to read all the details in Antiquity: Crossing the ice: an Iron Age to medieval mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway.
- Gravitational waves reveal unprecedented collision of heavy and light black holes - ”Researchers with the world’s gravitational wave detectors said today they had picked up vibrations from a cosmic collision that harmonized with the opening notes of an Elvis Presley hit.” OK, the Presley thing is a tenuous hook to get a bit of publicity, as if black holes crashing into each other needed a hook
- The Fist of God - Kate Wheeler discovers the Bolivian tradition of tinku in which peasants fight, sometimes to the death, as explained by campesino Severo: ”I fight every year, sagrado, sacred… I can never break my promise, for that which is sacred is sacred always. Tinku is perfect, like the lightning. When it kills you, it kills you; when you have to die, you die. There is no justice or law. He who lets himself fall, let the earth be the one to complain.”
- Bring Science Home - Kids already bored with their thaumatrope? Here’s a whole load of science stuff they can do, from Scientific American: ”As the old saying (almost) goes, science starts in the home. Try our fun science activities, which parents and their kids ages 6-12 can do together with household items in just a half hour or less.”
- When a rising star of China’s live-streamers fell in love offline, it cost her the virtual world - The perils of having a life when your income depends on your virtual life: ”With thousands of followers, Shanghai live-streamer Nai Nai was a girlfriend to many, until she met Chinese internet legend Jiang Bo. Little did she know the price she would pay for her feelings.”
- Browse 213 manuscripts from the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy - The Royal Library of Belgium, KBR, has had to postpone its opening due to current circumstances, so here’s their collection of illuminated manuscripts to browse online instead: ”While waiting for the opening of the museum, you can now browse 213 manuscripts from this unique collection. For free, without any limitations. Zoom in on amazing miniatures, in full detail… Masterpieces such as the Roman de Girart de Nevers, the Peterborough Psalter and the Chroniques de Hainaut are among the 50 most prestigious manuscripts worldwide.” N.B. there’s a language selector at the top right of the collection pages, if French or Flemish aren’t your thing. This is by Willem Vrelant, from Leonardus Brunus Aretinus’ De Bello Punico.
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