Linked List: March 30, 2020

Monday, 30 March 2020

Krugman on the Zombie Response to COVID-19 

Paul Krugman, writing for The New York Times:

But I suspect that the disastrous response to Covid-19 has been shaped less by direct self-interest than by two indirect ways in which pandemic policy gets linked to the general prevalence of zombie ideas in right-wing thought.

First, when you have a political movement almost entirely built around assertions that any expert can tell you are false, you have to cultivate an attitude of disdain toward expertise, one that spills over into everything. Once you dismiss people who look at evidence on the effects of tax cuts and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, you’re already primed to dismiss people who look at evidence on disease transmission. This also helps explain the centrality of science-hating religious conservatives to modern conservatism, which has played an important role in Trump’s failure to respond.

Second, conservatives do hold one true belief: namely, that there is a kind of halo effect around successful government policies. If public intervention can be effective in one area, they fear — probably rightly — that voters might look more favorably on government intervention in other areas. In principle, public health measures to limit the spread of coronavirus needn’t have much implication for the future of social programs like Medicaid. In practice, the first tends to increase support for the second.

How to Open the Emoji Keyboard While Using a Hardware Keyboard on iPadOS 

This 2016 tip from Dan Moren is more relevant than ever. Apple’s Smart Keyboard cover for iPad has a dedicated Globe key you can press to get the emoji keyboard, but (a) most hardware keyboards don’t (including Apple’s own standalone Bluetooth Magic Keyboard); and (b) iPadOS 13.4 now lets you remap the Globe key to, for example, Escape.

So how do you type emoji? Easy: Control-Space opens the keyboard picker.

Bonus tip: This shortcut is similar to the Command-Control-Space shortcut on MacOS that opens the Emoji & Symbol picker.

Bonus complaint: One thing I love about the Mac emoji picker that is bafflingly still absent on iOS: search.

‘The Woman in Michigan’ 

James Fallows, writing for The Atlantic:

It’s nearly three-and-a-half years later. Everything we saw about Trump on the campaign trail we have seen from him in the White House, including the limitless fantasy-lying.

I submit that these three-and-a-half years later, much of the press has still not rebuilt itself, to cope with a time or a person like this. Or with a political party like the subservient Trump-era GOP.

To choose only a small subset of examples, from only the past three days’ worth of history, here are some illustrations. These are words and deeds that, each on its own, would likely have been major black-mark news events in other eras. Now they are just part of the daily onrush.

As Fallows repeatedly points out, the news media has normalized much of Trump’s aberrant behavior — not just including, but perhaps especially so, during this pandemic crisis — as “Trump being Trump”. It is in fact Trump being Trump, but Trump being Trump is anything but normal.

‘This’ 

Big announcement from my good friend Rene Ritchie — he’s leaving iMore and going solo, starting with a new YouTube channel. Finally.

He’s hopping on The Talk Show this afternoon for an episode that should come out tomorrow. We’ll talk MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but let’s also do a Q&A from readers and listeners. Send your questions — Apple stuff, indie media, working from home, handwashing tips, or otherwise —  to the @thetalkshow Twitter account. Public mentions preferred, but DMs are open too.