#Time for the weekly scramble to at least get half the week productive…

[xx-justsomeguy-xx]

not over how it is actually monday already omg

[luvrrszn]

and they were roommates *

COLLEGE ROOMATE!MIGUEL O'HARA x FEM READER (18+)

summary miguel o'hara is your roommate, and then he's more than that

warnings [all sexual themes are at the bottom end of the post] explicit/18+ (smut), unprotected sex, dom!miguel, not proofread

a/n (gif posted originally by @/cantstoptheimagines, can't figure out tumblr's gif shit so i'm doing this instead, hope that's okay :)) guys i'm so bad at writing smut please go easy on me also if u have requests PLEASEEE send them in i'm so bored

masterlist

"oi! you left your panties on the countertop again, you goblin! take it back!" miguel yells at you from your shared bathroom.

"my bad." you mumble, a piece of toast in your mouth as you shuffle into the bathroom, in a hurry to grab your underwear off the marble countertop.

miguel watches, amused, as you scramble to get your things together before your 8am class. it's 7:48am, and it takes you at least 15 minutes to drive to campus, and that's if you make every green light on your way there.

you're lacing up your sneakers by the door as miguel pours himself a cup of coffee. he walks over to shut the door behind you after you leave. as you run down the hallway to the elevator, he calls out after you, "buy some juice on the way back, we're out of that."

you give him a thumbs-up before disappearing around the corner.

—

you're cooking your favourite homemade meal—pesto pasta. turning off the stove, you turn around to grab a bowl from the shelves. when you turn back around, you see miguel hunched over your pan of pasta, mouth stuffed with food. YOUR food.

you slap him away from the pan, as he feigns hurt, "ow, ow, that hurts. now you gotta give me pasta to make up for it."

"you ate two bowls of instant noodles already, how are you still hungry? get away, boy." you swat his fork away.

"c'mon, please?"

you roll your eyes and give in.

you were never truly going to say no to miguel o'hara. you had cooked enough for two because you knew this was going to happen, and you knew you weren't going to say no to miguel.

—

"miguel! stop using my shampoo! and my lotion! you know they're super expensive, get your own!" you yell at him from the bathroom, inspecting the fullness—or now, emptiness of your body care products.

"hey, mami, what can i say? those are the real deal." he replies, barely looking away from his laptop.

"yeah, and they cost a shit ton. stop using my stuff and go back to your nasty 30-in-1 soap or whatever." you huff, glaring at miguel angrily.

—

saturday evenings are spent at the dining table going over the grocery list, preparing for your weekly sunday grocery runs.

saturday nights are spent on the sofa in the living room, watching a movie.

sunday mornings are spent at the grocery store, wandering down the aisles even though you've been there every sunday for the past year and a half, ever since you moved in with miguel after a mutual friend introduced the two of you upon finding out you were both looking for a roommate.

sunday noons are spent unpacking the bags of groceries, which more often that not contain bags of junk food that miguel somehow managed to sneak into the cart.

sunday afternoons are spent doing laundry. miguel loads the washing machine while you handwash the delicate pieces that require extra care. afterwards, you toss what can be put into the dryer into the dryer while miguel hangs up the rest of the clothes to dry. then, the two of you settle into a comfortable routine of folding laundry.

that's just how it was. every week, without fail.

—

the moment you fell for miguel was when you caught a horrible cold and he took care of you.

despite you trying to shoo him away multiple times, he never gave up.

"come on, princesa. you're sick, let me help you."

"i look like a hot mess right now, miguel. just leave me alone, i'll be okay." barely finishing your sentence, you broke out in a fit of coughs and wheezes.

"no can do. you're sick, so get your ass back into bed. i'll bring you some chicken soup, so for now, just rest." miguel replied, placing a bottle of water and some cold medicine on your bedside table.

when he returned, he found you curled up in your bed, duvet tucked under your chin. he placed the bowl of soup on your bedside table, before placing the back of his hand on your forehead, only to realise that you were burning up.

"take your meds, princesa. you're running a fever."

with his help, you washed your fever medicine down with a gulp of water. then, you snuggled back under the duvet. when miguel turned to leave, your hand shot out from under the duvet, grabbing his wrist. you croaked out a "stay".

without a word, miguel got into bed next to you, slipping his arm under your head. you curled into his chest, falling asleep to the steady rhythm of his heart beating.

—

the moment miguel fell for you was when you left to visit family during summer break and he opened the refrigerator to find each shelf lined with containers of food.

you had left that morning, hand gripping your suitcase handle as you said to miguel, "try not to die, finding a new roommate with such short notice would be hard."

miguel grinned and flipped you the bird as you turned around and disappeared down the hallway to the elevator. closing the door behind him, miguel beelined for the refrigerator. maybe there was some yogurt he could have for a quick breakfast.

upon opening the refrigerator, he found that each shelf was packed containers of home-cooked meals, all prepared by you. well, that answered the question of why the apartment smelled so good when he got home last night.

there were containers of pasta, rice, chicken, salad, whatever you could think of, it was there. turning around, miguel spotted the sticky note you had left on the kitchen island. he picked up the light pink sticky note and read your note.

"seriously though, miggy. try not to die. i'd be a little sad if you did."

he couldn't help but let out a little chuckle.

—

you are the one who first confesses your feelings. on saturday night, after movie night, you gather all your courage and say, "miguel, look, i-i have to tell you something. and when i do, or even after i do, i need you to promise you won't hate me."

miguel's heart is racing. worries fill his head and his heart, and he can't help but wonder if you are going to tell him that you want to move out. he takes a deep breath, and replies steadily, "i could never hate you. go ahead, princesa."

you turn to look at miguel, and you say, "you're my best friend, and there's nothing i wouldn't do for you. you know that, right?" he nods.

taking in a shaky breath, you continue, "i like you. and it's okay if you don't feel the same way. i can't remember a time where i didn't know you, and i'm not sure i want to either. so if you don't feel the same way, can we at least still stay—"

"shut up," miguel cuts you off.

you're taken aback, stammering, "w-what?"

"just shut up," miguel repeats as he moves towards you, encasing your lips with his. you let out a slight gasp, and miguel takes that opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth.

the kiss is everything you've imagined and more. it's hungry and passionate, but also gentle and reassuring. words were no longer needed; words weren't enough for miguel to express how much he liked you back.

you let miguel take control. you surrender, savouring every moment of the kiss.

and it leaves you breathless.

—

from that night on, nothing much changes. but at the same time, everything changes.

your weekend routines remain the same, but throughout the week, there's sex. so. much. sex.

miguel's sex drive is crazy, and you can barely keep up. not that you're complaining.

"miguel," you let out a breathy moan. your left hand is tangled in his hair, your right hand littering his back with scratches. miguel fucks you relentlessly, pulling his hips back and slamming into you in one fluid motion.

his hands slide downwards towards your nipple, and he toys with them, tugging gently and rubbing them between the pad of his thumb and his index finger. one of his hands slides even further downwards, and traps your clit. he rubs slow circles on it, drawing a moan past your lips.

his coordination is crazy, and you're stimulated in all the right places.

miguel senses that you're near your climax, and he speeds up, slamming into you with such tenacity that you almost believe he's in such a rush because the world might be ending in two seconds.

miguel goes faster, rougher, deeper, helping you chase your finish. the knot in your stomach tightens, tightens, tightens—then it snaps. you scream miguel's name as you cum all over his cock and go limp, seeing stars from what you think might have been the best orgasm of your life.

still deep in you, miguel feels every contraction of your pussy around his cock. you tighten around him, and after two more strokes of his hips, you're milking his cock for every drop of his cum.

out of breath, you lay there on the bed while miguel cleans up the mess on the bedsheets.

—

that afternoon, as you take out the trash, you bump into your next door neighbour, mrs palma. she looks and you and chuckles, "glad the two of you finally got together, but keep it down, wouldya, sweetheart?"

you turn as red as a tomato.

[rtbdltd]

4 Steps to Get Ready for Your Kitchen Renovation

There are two actions that come to mind as being the most important in getting ready for a construction project: avoid denial and prepare. Everything you need to do falls under one of these two categories. But how, specifically, can you prepare for the first day of construction? Here are the basic steps.

1. Make a list of items you need to have onsite when construction begins

Have you ordered the sink and tap? Do you have your appliance delivery scheduled?

The reason for this is that, once work starts, life gets a little more chaotic – OK, a lot more chaotic. Things such as ordering a sink will slip through your fingers, and you’ll find yourself scrambling when the contractor asks for something.

2. Establish expectations with your contractor

This isn’t just about telling the contractor whatyouexpect, this is also about the contractor and other professionals letting you know what are realistic expectations. This will make for a happier client and a more pleasant process overall.

As the homeowner, you actually do have some control over the schedule. Taking too long to finalise decisions can cause significant delays.

Don’t forget to be nice to the neighbours and tell the contractor to do the same. Let the neighbours know you’re starting a construction project and that there will be crews around. Tell them to please let you know if they have issues. Noise, debris and blocking the street with deliveries are often issues that come up with neighbours.

Set up a recurring weekly construction meeting to touch base with your contractors and other pros. You may not need it every week, but at least it’s on the schedule in case you do.

Here are some things to consider and discuss with your contractor.

-How long the construction will last.

-Whatyou can do to guard against delays. Often, this means having all the products onsite and not designing in the field and making changes.

-Dust control. How will the construction be sectioned off from the rest of the house?

-Debris removal. Are you getting a skip, or will debris be stored in the garage and removed in phases?

-Areas the crew can use. What will be the staging area for tools, cutting wood and tiles? What bathroom facilities will be available?

-Clean-up expectations. Some contractors clean up at the end of each day and others don’t. Communicate what you want, but also understand that certain requests may mean more expense.

-When you will have to be out of the house for the refinishing of floors, and for how long. What products will be used? Do they meet your expectations of low-VOC emissions?

-Hours that are OK for the crew to work. Can they work Saturdays? Arrange for things such as keys and alarm codes.

3. Empty out your cabinets

So now you’ve taken care of business, it’s time to get your hands dirty. Rather than dreading this, try to look at it as an opportunity to do some serious spring cleaning. Instead of throwing everything into boxes and deferring the editing process to the end, get it done now to make moving back in that much more fun. However, if you have too much on your plate to deal with this now, it can always be done later.

Put all the items you won’t need for a few months into boxes – or even better, big plastic bins with lids to protect the contents from dirt and dust. Separate out what you’ll want to use in your temporary kitchen: knives, coffee mugs, food you’ll eat and even a few wine glasses. Who says you have to drink out of plastic cups the whole time?

4. Set up a temporary kitchen

The more organised and prepared you are in this area, the happier you’ll be. A half-hearted attempt at a temporary kitchen isn’t recommended. Even if you don’t have children and plan to eat out every night, you’ll want a place to make a cup of coffee or a snack.

I think two tables are ideal, and if you have the room, two tables plus the kitchen table for seating. If you don’t have an old table, pick up a few folding ones – 60cm or 75cm deep by whatever length you can fit. If you’re using a table from the house, get a plastic-coated tablecloth to protect it.

Think about setting up your temporary kitchen the way you would a real kitchen, in stations.

Set up a station for cooking and prep. Include a combination microwave if possible or a microwave, a toaster, and even a hot plate if that’s something you’ll use. Also have out a big cutting board for making sandwiches and cutting fruit.

Have the contractor set up your old fridge in the temporary kitchen area.

Store food #large, clear plastic bins with lids under the table.

Set out an area for paper plates, napkins and utensils. Think of your temporary kitchen like a campsite or an outdoor picnic or party spot. The nicer and more organised it is, the happier and calmer you’ll feel during construction.

Written ByRebekah Zaveloff

[hermannsthumb]

Town council Hermann vs Alien Conspiracy Newt please!!!

THIS WAS FUN!!! inspired both by this tweet and conversations abt a newt/herm AU of that tweet with @k-sci-janitor (who also thought of the funniest sign newt made in this fic, aka the cheekbones one, and what his tats should look like). this is long sorry :/ gets a little spicy towards the end but nothing worse than a high pg13/light M

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The evening of the weekly town council meeting, it pours like nothing else. Which Hermann figures is really quite appropriate. Loathe as he is to soak his trouser legs, trudge through the mud that used to be his front walk, and hold his umbrella for so long his arm aches (for the community center is a mere half-mile walk away that Hermann can't justify substituting with a bus), he can't imagine council meetings happening in any other sort of weather. In fact, they rarely tend to; their dreariness seems to be a necessity, part of the preparation, as if to put everyone in as miserable a mood as possible.

Hermann hates council meetings. He supposes he'd be more sympathetic towards the plights of his constituents—if one can call one's neighbors constituents—if he'd wanted the damned job in the first place. As it is, he feels a bit like he was conned into it. Hermann had been a lowly physics professor at the local community college, passionate about public education and funding for public education and all those proper sorts of things an educator ought to be concerned about, when he suddenly found himself seized with the idea of making a difference. So he ran for a head position on the council. And he won it. Only no one told him that the council deals a lot less with public education and a lot more with noise complaints, cul-de-sac bake sales, and raccoons in dustbins, which makes why he ran completely unopposed all the more obvious.

A fat raindrop explodes against the edge of Hermann's umbrella and splashes his glasses. Hermann grits his teeth and wipes them dry with the cuff of his sweater. Bloody meeting; bloody rain; Hermann just wants to go back home, and fix up a nice pot of herbal tea, and set a blanket in the dryer for ten minutes, and...

"Dr. Gottlieb! Hey, Dr. Gottlieb, wait—!"

A blur in an oversized yellow raincoat hurdles itself at Hermann from the stairs of the community center. Hermann considers pretending he is a different Dr. Gottlieb, one who certainly has no reason to know maniacs in raincoats, or maybe high-tailing it in the other direction. This is the other reason why Hermann loathes council meetings: Newton Geiszler.

The unfortunate thing is that Newton Geiszler was, at one point, a respectable academic type, and in fact one of Hermann's own colleagues at the community college. (Hermann only found this out after the fact—he does not make a habit of intermingling much with the biology department.) And Hermann does mean was. Around a year ago, Geiszler was asked to temporarily step down from his position after he suddenly and unexpectedly went off the deep end. He has not been asked to come back yet. And not without reason. "Dr. Geiszler," Hermann sighs. "I've asked you not to lurk about here like that. It's...unsettling."

"Sorry, man, sorry," Geiszler shouts. He stomps over and makes himself at home under Hermann's umbrella. Hermann's not sure how he's been managing to see anything, let alone Hermann approaching down the sidewalk: his glasses are completely fogged-up and rain-splattered. "Do you mind if—thanks, dude."

Geiszler flips his hood down. He’s short, only coming up to Hermann's nose, with stubble nearly overgrown to a full beard and a mess of wet brown hair. He shakes that hair now, like a dog, soaking Hermann in the process. Hermann growls. "I beg your pardon,” he says.

"Oops,” Geiszler says. “Sorry. Anyway, Dr. Gottlieb, I'm really glad I caught you, there are—there are some things I wanted to tell you about. Before the meeting. They're—hold on." He rummages around in the deep pockets of his raincoat and produces a damp notebook, which he begins to flip through frantically. "It's about—"

"I know what it's about," Hermann says. Geiszler fumbles to push his glasses back up his nose. "In fact, there are some things I need to speak with you about as well."

"You've seen them?" Geiszler says in a hushed tone.

Hermann scowls. "I certainly have.”

They first started cropping up in the forest around the little cabin Geiszler calls home. Then, like dandelions or bamboo, they spread fast and far—to the town commons, in the front lawn of the coffee shop Hermann frequents, in front of his house. Whenever Hermann dashes one down with his cane or hauls one off to a rubbish bin, two more only crop up in its place. It's annoying, frankly. As if Hermann doesn't have to deal with enough already.

3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS IN ONE WEEK - WHEN IS THE COUNCIL GOING TO DO SOMETHING?, the new one sitting in front of the community center says.

It's better than last week's sign, Hermann supposes. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - AND HERMANN GOTTLIEB IS BLIND TO IT.

"You know you need a permit for those, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann says. "Or, at the very least, the council's permission. They're a public nuisance."

"My signs are a public nuisance?" Geiszler shouts. Hermann flinches back. Geiszler may be compact, but if he doesn't have the shrillest voice on the whole damned planet. "Open your eyes, dude! A dozen people went missing last month! The only public nuisance is whatever's coming from—" He bites his lip and jabs his finger at the sky, as if saying anything remotely akin to outer space would suddenly send fleets of UFOs pouring down from above. "And you're just letting them walk right fucking in."

“I thought they were flying in?" Hermann says. He raps Geiszler’s shin with the end of his cane. "Do get out of my way, Dr. Geiszler. The meeting starts in ten minutes, and you're welcome to air all of your grievances then."

Geiszler is silent as Hermann ducks around him and ascends the community center ramp. For a moment, Hermann thinks he may have won this small victory, and then he hears the wet slaps of Geiszler's rain boots against the pavement behind him. "Really funny," Newton says. "Real fucking funny, dude. I bet it'll be just as funny when they come for you next!"

Hermann unlocks the door. Geiszler waves a stack of black-and-white polaroids beneath his nose. "I took these last week," Geiszler says, and begins flipping through them as frantically as he had his notepad. Each one is blurry and indistinct, like Geiszler snapped them through a gauzy curtain with shaking hands. Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. "The day that waitress went missing from the bus stop. And two nights after that—your neighbor, the one who went outside to let his cat in and never came b—"

"Enough," Hermann says. He pushes the polaroids away, knocking two to the ground, and Geiszler scrambles to pick them up before they're ruined. "Dr. Geiszler, it is undoubtedly tragic that these people have—er—vanished, as they have, but continuously insisting extraterrestrials had something to do with it, and furthermore—" Geiszler opens his mouth as if to argue, but Hermann raises his voice and pushes on. "—furthermore, that I'm meant to do something about it, is completely—well, it's unhinged, frankly. I'm not law enforcement. Or the mayor. Or bloody—NASA. What do you want from me?"

Geiszler stares at him for a long time. He pockets his photographs. "They're gonna come for you," he says, ominously. "Just like they did for me."

The meeting goes off as expected, which is to say, badly. Hermann gets shouted at by nearly everyone in town, many of whom blame Hermann and his presumed negligence for the disappearances over the past year as well (blessedly, they don't also blame aliens), though many more of them blame him for more trivial things such as the broken water fountain in the commons or the library's slow wireless internet. Hermann can't decide which is worse.

As it is, when the clock strikes eight, he's more than ready to go home. "Right," he announces, standing up and making a show of tidying his meeting notes. They're already tidy: Hermann's notes are always meticulous. He continues—rather quickly, in case someone gets bold and attempts to interrupt him, "Thank you all very much for such a, er, productive meeting. I'll make sure to pass along everything you've said to the appropriate people. If there's nothing else..."

Geiszler jumps to his feet. A few people groan; Hermann has a feeling they're just about as sick of him as Hermann is. "Um, yeah, actually, I want to add something."

"No," Hermann says. “Dr. Geiszler, please, we can talk—”

"When we were outside," Geiszler continues anyway, raising his voice, "you asked me what I wanted you to do. Well, I just want you to listen to me! That's all! I have so much proof—so much I can show you—and you won't even—!"

"Proof?" Hermann says. "Your rubbish photographs?”

"It's not just the photographs! It's other stuff, too! Like—" Geiszler lets out a long, angry huff of air, and actually balls his fists up at his sides. Hermann has never seen him so incensed, not even when he accused Hermann of being an alien himself during a council meeting last summer. "Look, just come to my house and I'll fuckin' show you. Or are you that afraid of being—I don’t know, proven wrong?"

Part of Hermann is convinced that if he follows Geiszler out to his isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the very least, he certainly has no desire to spend more time with Geiszler than he's already forced to. Yet—on the other hand—Hermann does not appreciate the challenge, nor does he appreciate being made to look like a fool by the man who chairs the local paranormal society. "Fine," he snaps, and Geiszler startles in obvious surprise. "Fine, you wretched little man. I’ll let you show me whatever proof you think you may have, so long as you take every single one of those signs down."

"Um," Geiszler squeaks. He clears his throat. "D—deal?"

Hermann seizes his cane and thrusts his chair back under his table roughly. "Well?" he says to the rest of the hall, none of whom have budged since Geiszler began shouting his head off. He scowls at the lot of them. "The meeting is over. You can leave."

It's Hermann's job to shut down the building each week, so he waits for the very last stragglers to toss out their paper water cups, shrug on their raincoats, and file outside before switching off the lights and locking up. He finds Geiszler lurking by a rather worse-for-wear green VW Beetle at the curb, the hood of his raincoat flipped back up over his hair. Hermann desperately hopes that the car isn't Geiszler’s. He is Hermann’s ride home tonight, after all. "I took the signs down," Geiszler says in a rush. "All of the ones around here, anyway. I'll have to do the rest tomorrow." He jerks his thumb at the backseat of the Beetle, where Hermann sees a haphazard pile of some of the 3 ALIEN ABDUCTIONS signs. His heart sinks. The X-Files bumper stickers should've been a dead giveaway, really.

"Thank you," Hermann sighs. "Well, let's get this over with."

"The heat is busted, so you might wanna leave your coat on," Geiszler says apologetically when Hermann manages to squish himself into the passenger's seat. The floor is a sea of empty Dunkin' Donuts cups, stacks of pulp science (or, if Hermann were to be less kind, pseudoscientific) magazines spanning back at least half a decade, and a pin-littered linen tote bag filled to the brim with boxed Annie's macaroni and cheese.

"Uh, sorry," Geiszler says. "I had to run some errands earlier. You can just—toss that in the back. Yeah."

The ride is short but bumpy, and though the removal of Geiszler's shopping bag offers Hermann more leg room, there is nothing that can make up for his tragically awful driving and his tragically awful CD collection. Hermann almost bolts from the car when they finally pull up at Geiszler's ivy-shrouded cabin, so relieved to have made it there in one piece that he's all but forgotten that he must now spend the rest of the evening with Geiszler, too. He remembers soon enough: another duo of aggressive signs have been pounded into Geiszler's mossy front path, TURN BACK NOW - ALIEN ABDUCTION ZONE, and a rather good sketch of Hermann beneath WHAT ARE THOSE CHEEKBONES HIDING? "That one's from the summer," Geiszler says sheepishly, kicking down the latter with the toe of his boot. "I keep forgetting to take it down. I don't still think you're an alien, by the way."

"Er, thank you," Hermann says. "I suppose?"

"They wouldn't be that obvious," Geiszler says, emphasizing the they with a meaningful glance up at the night sky.

"Of course not," Hermann says.

He's not quite sure what he expected Geiszler's house to look like. Some sort of—conspiracy nutter's den, perhaps, with aluminum foil hats and deconstructed radios and elaborate photoboards full of thumbtacks and red string. Or the interior of his car on a larger scale, with empty takeout containers and crumpled up papers on every surface. He's...sort of right. There's a noticeable lack of tinhats, but there are plenty of (modestly-sized) corkboards on the walls and multiple coffee cups peeking out of a recycling bin. The rest is merely precisely what Hermann would expect from an academic in his 30s: books, and mis-matching furniture, and a sink of dishes begging to be washed. It's...a bit disappointing, frankly. Though Hermann is rather impressed with the sleek telescope angled in front of the back slider door. Impressed, and envious. It's a very nice model.

"Make yourself at home," Geiszler says, unzipping his voluminous raincoat and tossing it, along with Hermann's, over the back of a worn armchair. He's wearing a pair of torn skinny jeans and a band t-shirt that reveals his heavily tattooed, and deceptively shapely, arms. Hermann tears his eyes away and forces himself to sit down at one end of Geiszler's couch. "I'm gonna make us some coffee. Do you want any sugar or non-dairy creamer?"

"No, thank you," Hermann says. "I don't drink coffee this late. It'll keep me up all night."

"Well, I hope so, that's kinda the plan,” Geiszler says. He rolls his eyes. “The aliens never come before at least midnight. Soy milk or almond milk?"

Hermann thinks, briefly and longingly, of his nice warm bed, the blanket he intended to toss in the dryer, and the herbal tea he won't be having after all. "Almond milk?" he hazards.

Geiszler stares at him in evident disgust. "Dude, I was kidding. You know how bad that shit is for the environment? It takes, like, a fuckin' thousand gallons of water or something like that for one carton of almond milk. It's insane. I mean, I guess it's still less water than what dairy needs, but there are plenty of better options."

"Oh," Hermann says. Hermann drinks skim milk. "I'm sorry. Er. Soy milk?"

As Geiszler fixes them mugs, Hermann begins to poke around some papers scattered across the coffee table. One is a list of names and dates, seemingly random, Hermann thinks, until he recognizes (scrawled in purple ink at the very bottom of the page) that of the gentleman who disappeared from his back porch just down Hermann's street. When he recognizes another—a teenager who worked as a barista at Hermann’s favorite coffee shop—he realizes it must be everyone who's vanished from town in the past year. Another paper has the same dates repeated, though not alongside any names—rather, bizarre little phrases like circling lights and that sound again. "You found my notes," Geiszler says cryptically, and then thrusts a mug out to Hermann.

Hermann takes the mug. A logo on the side tells Hermann it was from some academic conference in California ten years ago. "What are they supposed to mean?" he says.

Geiszler snorts. "Uh, I thought it was kind of obvious. Look—" He sits next to Hermann, far too close, and points at the column of numbers on the first page. "These are the dates when people have been reported missing," he says, and then scans his finger over to the second page, "and these are the dates when I've observed extraterrestrial—or at least, unexplainable—activity overhead. See how they match up almost perfectly?

"Mm," Hermann says. He does not. "So—if I am to understand you correctly—you believe that a, ah," he takes the page back from Geiszler, "a 'weird swoopy sound' from overhead had something to do with that poor young woman disappearing from a bus stop last week?”

"It wasn't just a weird noise!" Geiszler exclaims. "I showed you the pictures. I ran outside when I heard it, and thank fuck I had my camera, because I caught those lights just as they were leaving. And then what do I find out the next morning? There was another abduction, at almost the exact same time I saw the lights!"

"Ten miles from here," Hermann reminds him. "It would've had to have been a bloody fast ship."

"Yeah, no shit, Hermann," Geiszler says. "They're, like, fucking—mega-advanced lifeforms. They probably have the tech to vaporize the entire Earth if they wanted. Of course it was a fast ship.”

Geiszler is still sitting awfully close to Hermann. He runs very warm, unlike Hermann, warm enough to make Hermann warm too—like a scruffy, tattooed, freckled furnace. Yes, freckled, for Geiszler has the lightest dusting of freckles across his round chipmunk-like cheeks that Hermann finds inexplicably charming. He wonders if Geiszler would notice him loosen his collar a bit, perhaps take off his sweater. He really is getting quite warm. "So, I was saying," Geiszler continues, and though he speaks almost directly into Hermann's ear, he sounds as if he's a mile away from him. "Waitress at bus stop—weird lights over my cabin—waitress gone from bus stop. The proof is, like, undeniable!"

"Indeed," Hermann says.

He undoes the top button of his collar. He hasn't touched his coffee yet—he wonders if Geiszler even cares. The tattoo on Geiszler’s bicep, some sort of space tentacle monster, stares back at Hermann. "I'm telling you, man," Geiszler says, "this is no joke. They're taking people, maybe even for good."

They're gonna come for you, just like they did for me. When Geiszler began spouting nonsense about aliens last year, he was not booted from the biology department right away. Mostly everyone at the college, Hermann knows, tolerated his eccentricities on account of his admittedly brilliant mind and popularity among the students. The final straw came when Geiszler's extraterrestrial delusions (for what else could they be?) reached a new level: he showed up to campus in his pajamas one morning, raving that the aliens were not only zooming about over his house, but had actually abducted him the previous evening. "You seemed to fare alright, though, didn't you?" Hermann says. "When you were—ah—taken? They even dropped you back off in time for work. Quite courteous, I should think."

"That's—" Geiszler begins to shake his leg up and down, nervous energy radiating up his body and through Hermann's. He spills some of his coffee on the carpet. "That was—that was dumb. I got lucky. I think I was one of the first ones, you know? Because the disappearances didn't really get bad until, like, a month after that? I was in bed—and, and it wasn't like how it is in movies, I wasn't sucked up in a giant beam of light or anything like that, one minute I was there and then the next I wasn't, I was somewhere...else. And—uh. I don't really remember what they looked like. I tried to—sketch them out, but it was like trying to remember a dream, all the specific details about them just faded once it was over. But, um." He rubs the back of his neck, and Hermann is surprised to see him blushing. "Well, if I'm being honest, I think I kinda freaked them out."

Hermann can't help but snort. "You what?"

"I'm serious!" Geiszler shrieks. "I freaked them out. I was just really excited about it all. Like, dude, come on, I was abducted by aliens. How fucking cool is that? I just kept asking a bunch of questions, like, are you gonna probe me? are you gonna take me back to Mars or Jupiter or, like, I don't know, fucking Gallifrey? do you even understand what I'm saying, how do you communicate? and then the next thing I knew, I was landing on my ass in the school parking lot. They must've been observing me like I was observing them, like, they maybe knew I worked there? Anyway—" He shakes his head. "I tell you what, I'm real glad I decided to not just wear boxers like usual to bed that night. That would've been really embarrassing."

Bombarded with the sudden mental image of what Geiszler usually looks like in bed, Hermann (feeling rather warm again) tugs at his collar and clears his throat. He has certainly seen more than enough for the night, and if his mind is straying to something as prosaic as what does Dr. Geiszler look like half-naked?, it likely means it’s time for bed. "Er, right. Dr. Geiszler—"

"Just call me Newt, man," Geiszler says.

"Newton," Hermann concedes. It gives him a private little thrill. No one calls Newton Newton; it’s always either Newt or Dr. Geiszler. "Newton,” he says again, “this has been a very—illuminating—evening, but it's getting rather late, and I think you ought to drive me home before—"

And then Newton begins to take off his shirt.

Yes, a small part of Hermann's brain whispers traitorously, yes, yes, yes, even as Hermann recoils and stammers out, "Newton, what—?!"

"Oh, calm down, I'm not coming onto you," Newton says. He drops his t-shirt on the floor and jabs a thumb at his chest. His bare chest. "See, look. Proof."

Hermann's not sure what he's meant to be looking at. The giant Godzilla tattooed over Newton's pectorals? The flying saucer tattooed above Newton’s belly button? Newton’s nipple piercings? Hermann thinks he understands what an overheating computer feels like, an influx of too much information with processors unequipped to handle it. "I," he says. Newton’s belly button is not pierced. Hermann’s not sure why he thought it would be.

"Look at my chest, dude!" Newton says, tapping his skin insistently.

It takes Hermann a great deal of effort to pull his eyes away from the nipple piercings. In the dead center of Newton's chest, spaced perfectly between his pectorals and right over the nostrils of Godzilla, is a strange, almost luminescent glyph of a language Hermann can't begin to recognize. It's raised from Newton's skin, more like a brand than a tattoo. And...well, when Hermann says luminescent, he really means it. The squiggle seems to glow blue. "This was on me the next morning," Newton says. "I think they marked me. Like you'd tag a lab rat?”

Hermann can't help himself: he reaches out and touches the mark. "Strange," he murmurs. Compared to the heat of Newton’s body, the glyph is quite cool. Frigid, in fact, like metal, and yet as soft as the rest of his skin.

He's close enough to Newton to hear the hitch in his breath when they make contact, and as he traces his fingertips over the glyph, he can feel Newton's heart pounding beneath them. Strange, indeed; Newton has been such a thorn in his side for so many months, and yet all Hermann wants to do now is touch even more of him. He trails his hand lower, down to the flying saucer on Newton's soft abdomen. Newton inhales sharply. "Um," he says. "Should—should I put my shirt back on?"

"Do you want to?" Hermann says.

"Not really," Newton says.

He stares at Hermann, eyebrows knit together behind his glasses, like he can't seem to make sense of him. His confusion is very much warranted; Hermann can’t seem to make sense of himself right now, either. Then, to Hermann's supreme annoyance, the pieces seem to click into place in Newton's mind, and he grins. "Oh, duh," he says. "No wonder. You wanna fuck me, don't you? That’s why you’re so obsessed with me.”

That would certainly explain the strange warm feeling that comes over Hermann sometimes when he thinks about Newton in the dead of night that he has, up until this very moment, attributed to bouts of temporary insanity and/or a latent murderous desire. Nothing so dramatic as all that, then—just regular human biology. Urgh. How disgusting. And for Newton, of all people. “Obsessed with you?” Hermann sniffs, desperate to retain some element of propriety even while he begins to tug at Newton’s button fly. “Newton, you have spent thousands of dollars on yard signs just to invite me over for a coffee.”

“Uh, yeah, and it worked,” Newton says.

He curls his fingers in the front of Hermann's sweater, thumbing over one of the buttons.

“Even when I thought you were an alien,” Newton says, “I still kiiiiinda wanted to fuck you.”

Delusional or not, Newton looks terrifically good with a beard.

"Wait," Hermann gasps some time later. "Newton, stop a moment—"

Newton pulls away from him, frowning. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose. "What is it?" he says. "Did I hurt—?"

But Hermann pats at his shoulder frantically, pointing beyond him at the back slider and the dark of the forest beyond that. Newton cranes his neck around. "Only I'm sure I saw something. Lights, or…” Hermann feels a small twinge of embarrassment. The night is dead silent, and dead still. “Well, now I'm not sure."

“You probably imagined it," Newton says. He slips back down to press a kiss at Hermann's jaw. “It’s too early to be them.”

Not even ten yet. Newton kisses behind Hermann’s ear. It feels very nice. "Yes," Hermann agrees slowly, his eyelids flickering shut. He smooths his hand up and down Newton’s back. "Yes, I suppose you're right." Newton’s stories must have left him on edge. Which is of course ridiculous, because they’re all a load of rubbish—there may be extraterrestrials somewhere out there in the great wide universe, but they’re certainly not swooping down and plucking up hapless test subjects from Earth, let alone their small town, every other day. Hermann has much more important things to concern himself with right now, like how it feels when he threads his fingers in the soft strands of Newton’s hair, or the sound Newton makes when Hermann digs his nails into his skin, or how wonderful kissing Newton is...

And, unobserved by both of them, the three lights hovering above Newton's cabin blink away as quickly as they'd come.

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Drug companies defend vaccine monopolies in face of global outcry (Washington Post) Abdul Muktadir, the chief executive of Bangladeshi pharmaceutical maker Incepta, has emailed executives of Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax offering his company’s help. He said he has enough capacity to fill vials for 600 million to 800 million doses of coronavirus vaccine a year to distribute throughout Asia. He never heard back from any of them. The lack of interest has left Muktadir worried about prolonged coronavirus exposure for millions of citizens of Bangladesh and other low-income nations throughout Asia and Africa who are at the back of the global queue for shots. Drug companies have rebuffed entreaties to face the emergency by sharing their proprietary technology more freely with companies in developing nations. The companies are lobbying the Biden administration and other members of the World Trade Organization against any erosion of their monopolies on individual coronavirus vaccines that are worth billions of dollars in annual sales. The fights over vaccine supply are not just over a moral duty of Western nations to prevent deaths and illness overseas. Lack of supply and lopsided distribution threaten to leave entire continents open as breeding grounds for coronavirus mutations. Those variants, if they prove resistant to vaccines, could spread anywhere in the world, including in Western countries that have been vaccinated first.

Colorado marks latest mass tragedy after 10 killed (AP) A shooting at a crowded Colorado supermarket that killed 10 people, including the first police officer to arrive, sent terrorized shoppers and workers scrambling for safety and stunned a state that has grieved several mass killings. A lone suspect was in custody, authorities said. The attack in Boulder, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Denver and home to the University of Colorado, stunned a state that has seen several mass shootings, including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting. Monday’s midafternoon attack was the seventh mass killing this year in the U.S., following the March 16 shooting that left eight people dead at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

COVID-19 strikes Brazil’s Congress as third senator dies (Reuters) A third senator has died of COVID-19 in Brazil, raising questions around precautions taken in the country’s Congress where as many as one-in-three lawmakers has been infected with the virus devastating Latin America’s largest nation. Senator Major Olimpio, a former policeman who backed and later fell out with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, was declared brain dead on Thursday by doctors at a Sao Paulo hospital where he had been in intensive care for three weeks. Brazil has become the epicenter of the pandemic, with by far the highest current daily death toll anywhere in the world. “People are very scared, and they are afraid to go to work,” said Silvio Ribas, a press secretary for Senator Lasier Martins, a 78-year-old politician who was released from hospital on Thursday after two weeks fighting COVID-19. At least 145 of the 513 members of the lower house have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past 12 months, along with 31 of 81 senators, according to a survey by news portal Poder360.

Spain hopes number of foreign tourists will rebound to half pre-pandemic level this year (AP) Spain hopes the number of foreign tourists visiting its sun-kissed islands and picturesque villages can rebound this year to half pre-pandemic levels, Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said on Monday. “Maybe the ideal goal is ... to get half of the tourists we had in 2019. This, for the industry, would be an achievement,” she said in an event held by Europa Press news agency. In 2019, Spain had the world’s second highest number of foreign visitors at more than 80 million. This plummeted by more than 80% to 19 million tourists in 2020, the lowest level since 1969, as a result of the travel restrictions imposed to curb the pandemic. Tourism accounted for around 12% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 and one job in eight.

Court orders French celebrity magazine to pay homeless man €40,000 (Le Parisien/France) Since its founding in 1949, the iconic French weekly Paris Match has published countless photos of the rich and powerful—and every now and then, a paparazzi shot might cost them. Last week, instead, the magazine was ordered to pay serious money to a homeless man for running a photograph of him without his permission. A court in Nanterre, west of Paris, ordered Paris Match to pay 40,000 euros to the man for running his picture. “Everyone, no matter their degree of celebrity, their wealth, their present or future occupation, has a right to privacy and enjoys exclusive right over their image which allows them to oppose its use […] without prior authorization,” the court wrote in its decision. The photo, published without the man’s consent in January 2018, showed the unnamed 48-year-old smoking crack cocaine on a metro platform in the French capital’s 18th arrondissement. Unlike other people in the photograph, his face was unblurred, the daily Le Parisien reports. Alerted by friends who recognized him in the Paris Match article, the homeless man sued the magazine: In May 2019, the magazine was ordered to pay him 10,000 euros in damages, but failed to remove the photograph from its website and app, resulting in an additional 30,000-euro fine last week. Le Parisien quoted the man as saying that he used some of the money to “help out friends” and that he now may be able “to get [his] wife and children back.”

Merkel Seeks Four-Week Lockdown Extension in German Setback (Bloomberg) Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed keeping German lockdown restrictions in force for another four weeks after Covid-19 cases rose beyond a level that may prompt government action to avoid health-care overload. The plan would extend and slightly tighten existing curbs through April 18, according to a chancellery draft seen by Bloomberg. Merkel and regional government leaders will discuss the proposals on Monday during talks on how to proceed with the lockdown amid an upward curve of infections in Europe’s biggest economy.

Russia’s top diplomat starts China visit with call to reduce U.S. dollar use (Reuters) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began a visit to China on Monday with a call for Moscow and Beijing to reduce their dependence on the U.S. dollar and Western payment systems to push back against what he called the West’s ideological agenda. Lavrov, on a two-day visit to China, is expected to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart at a time when both countries’ ties with the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden are badly strained. U.S. and Chinese officials on Friday concluded what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, while Russia’s ambassador arrived back in Moscow on Sunday for consultations after Biden said he believed President Vladimir Putin was a killer. Russia is also braced for a new round of U.S. sanctions over what Washington says was its meddling in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which Moscow denies. Speaking to Chinese media before the start of his visit, Lavrov said Moscow and Beijing were compelled to develop independently of Washington in order to thwart what he said were U.S. attempts to curb their technological development. “We need to reduce sanctions risks by bolstering our technological independence, by switching to payments in our national currencies and global currencies that serve as an alternative to the dollar,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript of his interview released on Monday. “We need to move away from using international payment systems controlled by the West.”

Turkey’s turmoil (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden joined with Europe to condemn Turkey over its decision to annul its ratification of an international treaty on preventing violence against women. Turkey’s exit from the treaty, known as the Istanbul Convention, brought thousands to Turkey’s streets in protest of the move. Turkey was one of the initial signatories and the first nation to ratify the convention. In a White House statement, Biden called the action “deeply dissappointing” and a “disheartening step backward.” The Turkish presidency released a statement on Sunday saying the convention had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality.” Turkey’s currency was also rocked on Saturday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired central bank governor Naci Agbal. The Turkish lira fell 15 percent against the U.S. dollar after the news broke.

In Myanmar’s hinterland, army uproots ethnic Karen villagers (AP) In the jungles of southeast Myanmar, the army was shooting and otherwise oppressing civilians long before last month’s military coup. This largely unseen repression continues even now. In the country’s remote southeast, an army offensive has driven as many as 8,000 ethnic Karen people to flee their homes in what aid groups say is the worst upheaval there for nearly 10 years. They’re now living in the jungle, with fears growing for their health and security, and no prospect of an early return. This crisis in the borderlands has been overshadowed by the deadly crackdown on the mass movement protesting the military’s takeover of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. But it also is a reminder of the brutal force Myanmar’s army has long used against civilians, and in particular the country’s ethnic minorities.

Think Covid’s Messed Up Your Travel Plans? Try Getting Into China. (NYT) Leave your partner and children behind. Quarantine for up to a month. Get inoculated with a Covid-19 vaccine from China, if you can find one. And prepare yourself for an anal swab. For the past year, people trying to go to China have run into some of the world’s most formidable barriers to entry. To stop the coronavirus, China bans tourists and short-term business travelers outright, and it sets tough standards for all other foreigners, even those who have lived there for years. The restrictions have hampered the operations of many companies, separated families and upended the lives of thousands of international students. Global companies say their ranks of foreign workers in the country have dwindled sharply. At a time of strained tensions with the United States and other countries, China is keeping itself safe from the pandemic. At the same time, it risks further isolating its economy, the world’s second-largest, at a moment when its major trade partners are emerging from their own self-imposed slumps. Other countries have their own travel restrictions, though few are as tight.

Dozens of towns isolated by flooding in Australian state (AP) Hundreds of people have been rescued from floodwaters that have isolated dozens of towns in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales and forced thousands to evacuate their homes as record rain continues to inundate the country’s east coast. Around 18,000 people had been evacuated from flooding in New South Wales by Monday and emergency services feared up to 54,000 people could be displaced with rain forecast to continue until Wednesday. A year ago, vast swathes of New South Wales had been charred by unprecedented wildfires following years of drought that gripped most of the state. Some of the same areas were now being by inundated by one-in-50-year and one-in-100-year rain events. New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said up to 38 parts of the state had been declared natural disaster areas. “I don’t know any time in our state’s history where we have had these extreme weather conditions in such quick succession in the middle of a pandemic,” Berejiklian told reporters. “So, they are challenging times for New South Wales.”

Israel revokes permit of Palestinian foreign minister (Washington Post) Israel on Sunday revoked the VIP permit of the Palestinian foreign minister after he returned to the West Bank from a trip to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed. The move appeared to be Israeli retaliation for Palestinian support for the ICC’s war crimes investigation against Israel. A Palestinian official said Foreign Minister Riad Malki was stopped Sunday as he entered the West Bank from Jordan through the Israeli-controlled crossing. Malki’s VIP card was seized, the official said. Losing the VIP status makes it harder for him to move through Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, and traveling abroad will require Israeli permission. The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced earlier this month that she was opening an investigation into possible war crimes by Israel committed in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip.

Small, cheap spy satellites mean there’s no hiding place (Economist) In the middle of last year, Ecuadorians watched with concern as 340 foreign boats, most of them Chinese, fished just outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (eez) around their country’s westernmost province, the Galapagos Islands. The law of the sea requires such vessels to carry gps-based automatic identification systems (ais) that broadcast where they are, and to keep those systems switched on. Some boats, however, failed to comply. This regular radio silence stoked fears that the boats concerned were sneaking into Ecuador’s waters to plunder its fish. Both local officials and China’s ambassador to Ecuador denied this, and said all the boats were sticking to the rules. In October, however, HawkEye 360, a satellite operator based in Virginia, announced it had detected vessels inside Ecuador’s eez on 14 occasions when the boats in question were not transmitting ais. HawkEye’s satellites could pinpoint these renegades by listening for faint signals emanating from their navigation radars and radio communications. HawkEye’s satellites are so-called smallsats, about the size of a large microwave oven. They are therefore cheap to build and launch. HawkEye deployed its first cluster, of three of them, in 2018. They are now in an orbit that takes them over both of Earth’s poles. This means that, as the planet revolves beneath them, every point on its surface can be monitored at regular intervals. Quilty Analytics, a research firm in Florida, expects the number of radio-frequency (rf) intelligence satellites of this sort in orbit to multiply from a dozen at the beginning of January to more than 60 by the end of next year.

Whoopsie, container overboard (Wired) Since November, at least 2,980 containers have fallen off cargo ships in the Pacific Ocean, in at least six incidents that have outfitted Davy Jones’ Locker with stocks of vacuum cleaners, frozen shrimp, some Kate Spade swag and more. Rising imports and bad weather have led to the above-typical cargo losses, as the 2,980 lost in the past few months is over twice the annual amount lost from 2008 to 2019. Bad weather is the main cause: the Essen attributed its 750 lost containers to “heavy seas,” the Eindhoven lost 260 containers after a blackout in the middle of a storm, and the Apus lost over 1,800 containers in gale force winds and large swells, one of the worst losses ever.

[brajeshupadhyay]

Two days before learning that she would lose her job, Lissa Gilliam spent hundreds of dollars online on baby products. A 37-year-old expectant mother, Ms. Gilliam had planned to ask local parents in Seattle for used strollers and secondhand onesies in a bid to reduce waste. But as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the area, new items delivered in boxes seemed a safer bet. She figured she could afford the splurge, earning $50 an hour as a full-time contractor designing educational curriculums for a nonprofit. But then, on April 2, her employer slashed her hours and told her that her contract would end in early May — a few weeks before she is to give birth. Suddenly, like many others, Ms. Gilliam became hyperaware of her expenses. She and her husband, a high school physics teacher, now take a painful daily tally of their financial priorities: Is that $5 monthly web magazine subscription really necessary? How much does watering the garden cost? When will they need to tap their paltry savings? “We’re OK for now,” she said. “But the bottom may fall out from under us.” As millions of Americans lose jobs, take pay cuts, close businesses and absorb family members into their homes, they are being forced to rethink where their money goes. Even before the scramble for new jobs can begin, people are cajoling creditors, looking for gig work or simply cutting back to get through the first few disorienting weeks. “An economic shock like this could have a long-term impact on people who have traditionally felt like they were being cautious, that they weren’t profligate with their money, but didn’t have to worry about paying for rent or affording food,” said Stephanie Aaronson, the director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “They might have more debt, which will make it harder to spend in the future, or they might just feel less secure, which could boost savings and potentially dampen the recovery.” Ms. Gilliam and her husband are waiting for Washington State to make jobless benefits available to contractors through a federal assistance program, and hope to take advantage of a state program for maternity aid once their daughter is born. A $15,000 construction project planned for the rear of their house is on hold. They canceled their gym membership, their Hulu streaming service, multiple newspapers and even the Adobe Acrobat software that Ms. Gilliam uses for design work. On the whole, Ms. Aaronson said, household finances “were in relatively good condition as of six weeks ago — they were actually pretty healthy.” Now, she said, “a much broader swath of households are experiencing a complete loss of income compared to what we typically see in a recession.” Before the pandemic, Carol Cruz’s private health insurance plan cost her $840 a month — up from less than $500 four years ago. The bill ate up most of her $1,200 monthly paycheck, exceeding even the $600 monthly payment on the house she shares with her husband and their 17-year-old granddaughter in Tulare, Calif. On March 29, she was furloughed from her part-time job as a mental health therapist until at least the end of May. Other than the state unemployment benefits she hopes to receive soon, Ms. Cruz, 62, no longer has an income. So she got on the phone for at least three hours a day, asking for leniency from the health insurance provider, her mortgage lender and the credit union that holds the loan for her husband’s Chevrolet truck. All offered her more flexible terms, including 90-day grace periods and pay-what-you-can options. (Some creditors, she said, were less willing to negotiate.) The adjustments help keep the bills manageable, Ms. Cruz said. But her grocery costs have doubled, now that the price of eggs has soared and her granddaughter is no longer having free lunches at school. “I don’t know about my future,” Ms. Cruz said. “I’m not letting myself think about tomorrow, just about whether we have food today and money in the bank.” But some people, many of whom have never seriously budgeted, are now mapping out strict spending schedules for the next few months. After being furloughed in mid-March from her bartending and serving job at a Minneapolis concert hall, Krissy Calbert, 26, went from earning $300 in tips some nights to having no income as she waited for government aid. “It was two weeks of just panic — I was just going off the groceries I already had, trying to ration until money came in,” she said. “You get really creative. You eat little half meals, and you experiment with your seasonings and condiments to try to forget that you’re eating the same thing over and over.” Earlier this month, Ms. Calbert began receiving a weekly infusion of $1,100 from the state. She is now trying to reschedule when monthly bills are due so she can space out the payments: $600 for rent, $75 for her phone, up to $120 for utilities, $60 for streaming services, $200 for credit cards, plus other expenses. “I’m trying to get all of my credit card payments into the same week, so I can have a credit card week, a rent week, a phone week,” Ms. Calbert said. She has switched her grocery shopping from Target to Aldi, where, she said, she can afford to splurge on fresh produce and protein. Without health insurance, she is willing spend an extra $30 or $40 on fruits and vegetables in hopes of keeping her immune system strong, she said. “I can’t take the risk,” Ms. Calbert said. “A hospital bill right now would ruin me.” More than half of lower-income adults in the United States say they will struggle to pay bills this month, compared to a quarter of their middle-income counterparts and 11 percent of those in the upper-income tier, according to a survey of nearly 5,000 adults by Pew Research Center. Researchers defined a three-person household earning $37,500 to $112,600 annually as middle-income. Over all, more than half of those who expect a federal stimulus infusion will use most of the money to cover essential expenses, while one in five say they plan to save the funds. To create a financial buffer, many people are hunting for freelance or part-time work. Searches for work-from-home jobs rose 126 percent in March on FlexJobs, while traffic to the site has boomed 58 percent from a year ago. On Upwork, companies are looking for people to provide tech support for their homebound employees and to draft corporate messages about the coronavirus. Lonn Dugan, a digital marketing specialist in Sylvania, Ohio, has seen many clients scaling back their promotional efforts, such as one nonprofit that cut its budget by 90 percent after a major annual event was canceled. But another client, an agricultural supply company, commissioned a major website update, while a local mental health group wanted to ramp up its virtual support groups. The pressure on Mr. Dugan, 60, is intense. His workday is three hours longer than it used to be, between his existing clients and his attempts to drum up new business. He and his wife lost a third of their incomes; neither is eligible for government aid. “We’re completely overwhelmed by the shortfall. We can afford groceries and maybe the house and car payments, and that’s it,” he said. “But we’re not alone, and we’re focusing on acceptance as opposed to hand-wringing. We’re taking care of necessities, and that’s enough for right now.” Still, Mr. Dugan admits being stretched thin emotionally. He misses his wife, even though they are in the same house and she no longer needs to make a two-hour round-trip commute to her health care job. But the couple are so busy trying to stay afloat that they have stopped cooking fresh meals and turn instead to frozen dinners and fast food. “We just don’t have time,” he said. “We’re exhausted at the end of the day.” The post Finances – The New York Times appeared first on Sansaar Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/05/finances-new-york-times.html

[celine-dahl]

Turning Tides || Celine Event Para

Celine looked down at the pallet before her, frowning as she counted out precisely fifty unmarked bags, roughly the size of a satchel similar to her own. She took out one of her knives, cutting swiftly through the worn canvas as the powerfully sweet smell of rot filled the storeroom she was currently in. Small, flowers, no larger than a gold piece, spilled out onto the floor, covering the dusty surface in vibrant shades of crimson and stark shades of brown.

The reed-thin man that had accompanied her shrank further back into the corner of the room as she turned to look at him, a snarl breaking past her calm demeanor. “What do you mean you don’t know what happened to it?” The hunter stalked towards her employee, who broke out into a cold sweat as she placed the tip of her knife at the soft juncture of his throat. “We just sent out a delivery two days ago. The next one is due in five days, and clearly you haven’t done anything remotely useful in that time span!” This particular operation was the one she kept an eye on above all others. Numbers flew by in her head, of dates when things were to be produced and others were to be delivered. And from what she had seen, her producers were at least days behind on their shipment.

Her eyes darted to another table in the stockroom, where a half-filled parcel of red power sat pitifully unpacked. The drug that rested there, Reaper’s Bane, was as powerful as it got. A narcotic of the highest grade, made from flowers that only grew on corpses under the right conditions, was especially potent on certain kinds of folk. Even the most seasoned fighter wouldn’t be a match against a peasant under the influence of this particular drug, but it did horrific things to user. Celine had witnessed it first-hand, watching the kinds of things an addict would do just for another fix, oblivious to the way it rotted them from the inside out. In smaller doses, however, distributed in the right way, it could bend a kingdom to its knees.

Nothing good ever came from dealing with Reaper’s Bane, but her operations ran like a well-oiled machine, never missing a beat. Her men would harvest the flowers in the dead of night, bringing them to the process facilities where she had them constantly grinding the petals and roots to a fine dust. Then Celine would have her runners, like Vivi, deliver them to the East to marked locations for pickup, rotating each drop-off weekly. It was a clean operation, and it brought in more money than the blonde could have ever imagined as a girl. All she needed to do was keep the cogs clean, disposing of those who couldn’t keep up with the demands of her client.

But this imbicile was making a mess of her operation, leaving weeks of product just to rot and decay under his neglectful watch. A late delivery had a number of ramifications, ones that went beyond just a simple pay cut. It would mean that they, namely she, would have to face her client and explain the situation. Celine wasn’t one to be spooked easily, but when it came to her, even she had good reason to worry.

“You fuck this up one more time, I’ll send you as compensation. I hear her Majesty still has a taste for flesh, not that she would get much from you.” Her eyes glittered in the dark, mouth twisting into a cruel smile as she looked him up and down. “But your wife and son would certainly make up the difference.” She pulled away from the trembling man as he sobbed before her, sinking into the corner of the storeroom. Celine looked down on him, imperious and disgusted at the pathetic display before her. “Oh get over it. If you don’t meet your quota, I’ll expedite that little promise. Now go.” He scrambled back to his feet, fleeing from her sight like a frightened rabbit.

Celine surveyed the room one last time before letting out a sigh. Hopefully the others could pick up the slack. Vivi would almost certainly need to run multiple times this week to catch up with the backlog. And if they couldn’t make their deliveries on time...well, she’d deal with the queen later.

At least it paid well.

[leam1983]

On Autumn

I call these chilly, wet days with bright colors and overcast skies the Dying Days. Nature's nowhere close to dying, she's just tucking herself into bed. No, what's really dying is a chapter of life itself. Maybe I see too much syncronicity in this, but defining moments in my life usually happened somewhere between late August and late November.

Today felt like one of those days: colorful, vibrant, chilly, with the earth smelling of decay outside the office - and everything telling me to get the Fuck outta Dodge while I still can.

The Big Boss is in denial. He's repeating to anyone who'll listen that the chip shortage is on its last legs. It's not. Appointments and referrals are in the pits, our no-shows are through the roof, and our clients are down to basically begging and groveling, plastering superlatives on dogshit rebates and hoping beyond hope that calling Joe Average for his 2014 Corolla's going to land them a buyback. My call center colleagues are filling in for the satellite teams that handle tire-change season for local garages. Hours might shift to a nine-to-five to reflect this, which I don't mind.

That covers October, and only October. November is usually dialed in months in advance, ahead of the Holidays, and now we have nothing. The salesforce might see its hours slashed within a week. I'm fine, being on the Production team, but the Sword of Damocles is still up there, all dangly-like. For the second week in a row, we've got nothing planned for Friday.

Next week? Hey Google, play The Twilight Zone's theme.

All because the global chip shortage is driving prices and import costs up the wall. Things get spread out across the chain, but the consumer ends up picking up the saltiest part of the final tab. It's hard to present anything as a great deal when you're looking at a 10% upmark cost for even last-gen sedans. That means no buyback offers. That means no clients for us, and those that do hang on are told to revise their expectations.

When I took the phone, I used to be able to bring in fifteen, maybe twenty referrals and appointments a day. Now, with the same skills and toolset, I bring in three. Sometimes five or six, on my better days - and that's for the mid-range and high-end sectors.

Try calling in and around factory and manufacturing districts. Try convincing a young mother that's already struggling to make ends meet in the midst of the Delta wave that shouldering a debt in the tens of thousands is worth it when her car's barely six years old.

Fuck, no.

The call center's deserted, our huddles turned into the seven or eight remaining regulars hashing things out around the coffee machine, and it's gotten harder than ever to keep the froshes motivated. Now, more than ever, they're aware of how upper management sees them.

They're disposable, and it pisses me the fuck off. We're some of these kids' first job ever, some of my youngest colleagues are still in their mid-teens - and the fun they had over the summer's evaporated. Now we're just the breadline they need for their smartphone contract or their tentpole console and PC releases. The breezy ones turned into cavalier types, then turned brazen - then stopped giving a shit. Four of them are playing hooky almost weekly. Instead of addressing things responsibly, the floor manager's pacing around the lanes and aisles, taking anyone aside who isn't transfixed with their desktop's set of Web apps.

"I'm afraid you're not giving us your 100%" is something I've heard several times over the past week, now. She's given it to me, too. I used to think Floor Manager Boss Lady could look fierce when she needed to - a moderately non-cliché Girlboss type - and now all I'm seeing is a cornered animal. Whenever she reports back to The Actual Boss, it's with taut skin and deepening worry lines. She's terrified.

The veterans feel it, too. Apart from their pension, the paycheck made their modest lives livable. Now, though? Those with enough strength left are scrambling, and those that can't are in the process of navigating HR's darkened halls to try and find an exit that doesn't land them on the unemployment line. Half of these guys' work is starting to look like the kind of stuff you'd see pushed around work placement agencies: pages and pages of LinkedIn printouts and Indeed screengrabs.

The Actual Boss is spending more and more time at the gym. He handles things well, but you can tell that there's a punching bag, somewhere, that's taking the blame for everything from the strikes in South Africa's silica mines to the various manufacturers' head offices being stuck trying to keep the shareholders in line with offers that aren't too generous.

Others don't have release mechanisms. Some colleagues of mine stormed out of the floor manager's office, cussed out shitty scripts in full view of Production team members or just stopped giving a shit. Our metrics are getting worse, which makes people feel worse.

People openly talk about looking for other jobs. In Quebec, at least, etiquette demands that you don't publicly discuss job-hunting while on the clock. There's been several reprimands, already.

As expected, nobody gives a shit. I sure as fuck don't. I don't give in to the temptation, but I also haven't worked my own authority as a fill-in supervisor all that much. I shield the other supers, all the while nodding at the mouthier types and adding I feel ya on the after-hours Discord group.

I've got three interviews lined up. Work's already notified. Supervisors and floor boss accepted that with looks of quiet resignation, but Actual Boss came up to me, offered to give me a raise out-of-pocket (assuming I didn't tell anybody) and more or less begged me to stay.

We get along well, but I also get along with girls in Accounting. How's it going to look for me if I drink from that cup and one of these girls notices weird extras in my slips? I can't do that, not in good conscience.

One of the sales reps took me aside, a few days back. They're not fazed yet, they're partly paid by commission. They make cash even out of sales they cinch outside of our referrals and appointments.

"You know why you'd never really hack it as a salesman, Brain? You're too nice. You empathize too much."

I realized that this was coming from the rat bastard in the salesforce; the salamander who's okay with pricing overused and worn-out demos as close to Stock price as he could without breaking the law.

I smiled icily, took a swig of coffee. "Yeah, it must be nice knowing you'll just go back to the same four Nissans and that you won't ever have to confront a customer's dissatisfaction. Betcha you sleep real well, at night."

He didn't pick up on my sarcasm. "They're just opinions, bro; I'm just here to deal, y'know?"

Sure. Deal away. In the meantime, some of my colleagues have been driving the same busted sedan to the point of being ordered by the cops to get their cars towed in for servicing - all because they can't structure their budget around a broken part that costs two hundred dollars to fix.

I caught one of my older colleagues weeping, alone in the cafeteria. An older lady, sweetest person you've ever met; everyone's Favourite Grandma, no matter the lack of blood relations. She was crying, because she wasn't sure how she was going to afford Christmas presents for her grandkids.

I hugged her after sanitizing my hands, social distancing be damned. If it weren't for my Disability Savings Account, I'd be forced to stick my inhalers on my Visa.

I figured the end of my tenure there would feel like a big, huge nothing-burger. Woop, one office - and zoop; another office!

Instead, it feels like I'm watching clumsy hunters trying to work out how to put a lamed hunting dog out of its misery. Doom and gloom around the water cooler, either in the meatspace or on Slack.

Time to send more resumés - except I'd rather stop and hug more people for a few days, first.

[disneyloading498]

Harem Atari 2600

Atari 2600 Complete Game List

Harem Atari 2600 Play

Atari 2600 Complete Game List

In short: if you're looking for an ordinary Atari 2600 ROM set, look elsewhere. It can be found almost everywhere on the Internet without too many problems. If you're looking for the most genuine and best documented Atari 2600 ROM collection in the world, then look. Welcome to the all new 'The What Are We Fighting Four'. One part Let's Play, one part podcast. The What Are We Fighting Four is Travis, Joan, Josh, and TV Di.

- A -

Adventures of Max

Little is known about this title other than it was part of the game development deal Atari made with Axlon during the late 80's. According the former Atari programmer Steve DeFrisco

'This was one of the “Designed by Nolan” games, which was never finished. It was to be set in Medieval times, the player is a knight with a sword. That’s pretty much all we had. John moved on to another company and the game was never finished. The opening sequence of the character running and jumping into the hole, and falling to the bottom worked, but that’s it.'

Bagman

This port of the 1982 Stern coin-op was programmed by Steve Hostetler for Atari. According to Steve he was almost finished with the game when they laid him off. Steve sent all his materials back to Atari after he was laid off, and it is unknown what happened to them.

Ballblazer

Previously thought to be only a rumor, programmer Tod Frye recently confirmed that this game was indeed once in development. Although the technically challenged 2600 was woefully underpowered to produce the split screen scrolling required by Ballblazer, Tod apparently had a demo up and running (various reports put it somewhere between 30% and 60% complete). The whereabouts of this demo are currently unknown.

Battle of the Sexes

Developed by Michael Case for Multivision. Multivision president Eugene Finkei talked about this game in the October 1983 issue of Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated: 'Battle of the Sexes is played simultaneously by 2 players. It's very innocent. Each player has surrogate partners scrolling across the screen. Each player must score with as many surrogates as possible while trying to knock out the surrogates of the other partner. There are different skill levels & variations: it can be played by 2 guys with girls scrolling across the screen or by women with men scrolling across the screen. To score, the player directs the figure to bounce together with the surrogate for a fraction of a second. No genitalia. And you don't shoot the other's surrogates, you merely get them out of the way.' This title was long thought not to have even been started, but the programmer recently confirmed in a 2007 interview with Digital Press that the game was actually completely finished: 'Battle of the Sexes involved male and female figures coming together from the top and bottom of the screen, to either shoot each other or screw each other. The owners kept the only copy. It wasn't as good (as Harem). It was basically like Pong. I knocked it out in a few weeks so we could say we had two games when we approached distributors.' The whereabouts of the one and only prototype are currently unknown.

Bird Programmed by David Lamkins, after he departed Parker Brothers for Activision. David worked in Activision's short-lived Boston office. During that time, he worked on a 'bird game' which was never published. He discussed the game in a 2002 article that appeared in issue #74 of the Atari 2600 Connection: 'I spent my time at Activision working on a 2600 game I called Bird. I’ve heard that Rex (Bradford) later described it as “a pterodactyl on a bombing run”, which is pretty good as a brief description. My inspiration for Bird came party from the Heavy Metal movie (the scenes with the girl riding the bird into battle), and partly from Activision’s Battlezone clone, Robot Tank (the point-of-view perspective of the playing field). The player piloted a bird which had a limited endurance that was affected partly by the intensity of the player’s maneuvers and partly by damage incurred from missiles fired by ground-based hostiles somewhat reminiscent of Dr. Who’s Daleks. The Bird game was really based around subtlety and survival. The player had to be sparing in his moves in order to make it to the next round. It was a shooter game, but not so much an aggressive game. It had kind of a Zen quality to it – probably way too cerebral for the market. I was recently contacted by Activision’s Ken Love, who is in the process of putting together a definitive collection of Activision games, including all the unreleased and prototype games. Ken wanted to acquire a copy of Bird. If any such copies exist, it’s either on a 20-year-old hard drive in some Activision storage locker, or in a dusty prototype cartridge in someone’s closet. That’s kind of a shame. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it one more time…'

Blow Out

Developed by Mattel, Blow Out was a party game that had 'Two roller-skating dancers drop darts from a scaffold onto rising balloons. An easy enough task, except these rude guys keep bumping into each other and knocking each other off the scaffold. When the music stops, that's the signal for the next players to take the controllers.'

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'David Akers only worked on the game briefly in June 1983 before being pulled off to work on higher priority projects.' It is unknown how far along this game got before being cancelled.

Candyland Surfing

According to former 20th Century Fox programmer John Marvin 'There was a surfing game where you surfed a rainbow. That was taking advantages of something you could do cheaply with the VCS, each scan line you could change the color and you got this great rolling rainbow on the screen. It was more a screensaver than a game, the problem was there wasn't a lot of gameplay in it.'

Circus Charlie A port of the 1983 Konami/Centuri coin-op. Parker Brothers announced Atari 2600 VCS, ColecoVision, and Commodore 64 versions of this title, and prototype boxes were shown in a CES press kit. According to a Parker Brothers internal marketing release schedule, this game was scheduled for a September 1984 release. The C64 version was actually completed but never released by Parker Brothers (it was eventually released by Konami in 1987). According to Phil Orbanes, former Senior VP of Research & Development at Parker Brothers, the VCS version received 'some coding' at the very least, and may have been completely finished. The programmer is unfortunately unknown, and as yet no prototypes of this game have surfaced.

Computer Corridor

Developed by Mattel. According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'This game started out as an original concept by Ron Surratt and Jane Terjung called Computer Revenge. At the same time, Spring 1983, Russ Ludwick was working on an Intellivision game called Moon Corridors, inspired by the arcade game Battlezone. In mid-1983, Marketing began an agressive campaign to release titles on as many different game platforms as possible. Noting similarities between Computer Revenge and Moon Corridors (mainly a 3-D grid effect), they decreed that the two games should be mooshed into one - Computer Corridor - and released on both Intellivision and Atari. By the time they tested and approved the idea, though, Russ was no longer working at Mattel Electronics and no one else was available to pick up the Intellivision version. A couple of months later Jane also left Mattel, killing the project altogether.'

It is not known how far along this title got before being cancelled.

Count's Castle

Also known as the missing CCW title, this would have a been a math title based on the Sesame Street Count character. An internal Atari memo puts the game at 80% complete, but the game was never finished. Apparently the original programmer left and there was no one available to finish the game.

Cryptogram

According to David Crane he developed this word game after moving to Activision from Atari. The game would display a scrambled phrase that the player would then have to unscramble in the quickest time possible. Players could also enter their own phrases if they didn't want to use one of the built in phrases. This game used a programming technique called 'Filled Venetian Blinds' which alternated the scanlines used by the regular Venetian Blinds technique every frame, making the image look more solid (no more lines) but also slightly transparent due to only half the image appearing on each frame. Unfortunately the game was deemed to be of 'limited interest' and Activision feared it wouldn't sell well enough to consider releasing so the project was abandoned.

Cumulus

According to the Blue Sky Rangers Website 'Cumulus was an original Atari 2600 idea by Jeff Ratcliff. His idea was to take a relatively simple game but use the extra memory available on a Super Cartridge to create spectacular visual effects not seen before on Atari - mainly really cool explosions. He worked on the game briefly in August 1983, programming a demonstration screen showing a high-resolution cloud with an enemy ship above it. While the game was listed on the weekly in-house status reports, it never received the four-digit product number that made a project official.' Sims 4 buying groceries.

A screenshot exists.

David and Goliath

Programmed by Rick Harris for Enter-Tech Ltd. Enter-Tech Ltd. did some Christian themed games for Sparrow who released Music Machine for the 2600. David and Goliath consisted of two stages: On the first David had to herd sheep and on the second David had to fight Goliath. Unfortunately the contracting company ran out of money and the game was never finished.

Dazzler

Port of the 1982 Century Electronics coin-op. Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Dual Scrolling

Based on a programming effect developed by David Akers in which the screen was split in two with each half scrolling a background independently of the other. Although there was no game designed to use this technique marketing apparently loved it and decided that a game could be designed around it.

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'After determining the same effect could be created on Intellivision, Marketing put the still-to-be-determined game - temporarily called Dual Scrolling - onto the official release schedule. That was December 19, 1983. Exactly one month later, Mattel Electronics closed. Although no game concept had yet been thought of, Dual Scrolling was one of the few games officially still in development for the Atari 2600 when the doors were shut.'

Flapper

Developed by Mattel. Flapper was to be a unique game where 'You control the Flapper to rescue baby Flappers from an underground maze. The maze is filled with snakes, bats and ghosts. Cave-ins and landslides keep opening and closing the tunnels. Luckily, the Flapper is a unique fellow: he has three types of beanies - chopper for flying, gun for shooting, umbrella for protection - and four interchangeable types of legs: flying, jumping, running and walking. You have to find and change the appropriate beanie and legs for him to overcome the obstacles and rescue the babies!'

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website Flapper was never finished, although some coding did take place. 'While the game was listed on the weekly in-house status reports, it never received the four-digit product number that made a project 'official.' Steve worked on Flapper briefly in August 1983 before being pulled off to work on higher priority projects.'

Flashlight

Not really a game, but another 'cool programming technique' for the 2600 that Mattel thought they could design a game around. Programmer Stephen Roney had developed an interesting programming effect on the Intellivision where a moving circle of light could illuminate the background and any objects within the circle. Another Mattel programmer, Ron Surratt, was asked to duplicate this effect on the 2600. Once it was shown that it was indeed possible Mattel tried to come up with a game to fit the effect, but closed their doors two months later.

Flesh Gordon

This was to be Wizards final game entry, but was never released. Based on the 1974 soft-porn movie of the same name, Flesh Gordon was long thought to have never been even started until the programmer of the game kindly set the record straight.

'Flesh gordon was finished. It sucked, sometimes literally if you know what I mean. It was a horrible game with a lot of sex and the payoff was the ability to hump using the joystick. There was nothing cool or interesting but then wizard video wanted what they wanted. There came a time when they stole a copy of the final or near final version which was sent for their approval. They refused to pay and they went to publish the game using the rom we sent them to approve. It was just about finished but it needed some finishing touches. We never did them. They never officially released it as I understand and that was no loss.'

What happened to the prototype that was sent to Wizard is unknown. Rumors over the years have surfaced that some collectors have access to the rom, but this has never been verified and is highly suspect.

A picture of the box exists.

The Impossible Game

Developed by Telesys, but never released. The Impossible Game was shown at the January 1983 CES show, and mentioned in an interview with Alex Leavens in the Aug/Sept. '83 issue of Video Games Player magazine. According to Alex 'It's a puzzle game, sort of like Rubik's Cube. You don't blow anything up and nobody gets hurt--it's strictly a mental challenge.'

Other than this short interview, the only other information we have on this game comes from Leonard Herman, who actually played the game. According to Leonard, the object of the game was to 'successfully navigate through six levels of 36 squares that are randomly chosen by the computer.' On the first level the player only had to pick one square at a time, but on each new level the amount of squares the player ahd to pick increased (2 on the second level, 3 on the third, etc.).

For more information on The Impossible Game, check out to Leonard's personal write up of the game.

Qixiang Electron Science Technology Co.，Ltd. Is a high-tech company with more than 20 years built-up experience of research, production and sales in the wireless communication equipment industry. The microphone is the Anytone type that has the A/B selection in the mic. There are 2 A/B indicators. The one near the A/B button tells you which VFO you are on. And the A/B at the top of the microphone indicates which VFO your receiving a signal on which is handy. Audio is loud and transmission is clear. Plug and Play Package: AnyTone AT-D878UV PLUS w/ SkyBridge Plus Dual Band Digital Hotspot “The SkyBridge Hotspot really opened up DMR for me. I enjoy being able to connect with talk groups from across the country and around the world. Anytone at 7777.

James Bond: As Seen in Octopussy

Before Parker Brothers decided to turn it into a crappy version of Moon Patrol, the James Bond game went through two different iterations. Originally starting out as James Bond in Octopussy, this version would have taken place on a train and be based on only one movie (rather than a series of movies like the final game). In this game James would have to shoot at and dodge bullets from two armed men as they ran around on a train cart. This version of the game was seen by more than one person at various game shows and was advertised in at least one PB catalog. It is highly likely that this game was completed, but dropped in favor of the 'Moon Patrol' version.

A screenshot the actual prototype running exists.

James Bond: Moonraker Demo

According to programmer Charlie Heath, he did a one screen demo of a James Bond game based on the movie Moonraker. Sadly it appears that the demo has probably been lost forever.

'I'd prototyped a 'James Bond' scene during my first first few weeks, to see what I could do with a VCS: you're in space orbiting earth in the space shuttle, chasing bio-terrorist pods to shoot them down before they break up in the atmosphere, while your shuttle and the pod are being buffeted about by reentry. You see something that looks a bit like a spinning earth bobbing about at the bottom of the screen. If you watch the movie Moonraker, it's one of the climactic scenes, but Parker wasn't interested in it for the Bond license because they wanted to do something that was more along the lines of Pitfall - little guy running around with various spy gadgets.'

'It wasn't much beyond a concept, but it was a pretty functional single screen 1st person perspective shooter. Not up to the level of Star Raiders gameplay, but I thought the pseudo-orbiting-world view was pretty cool and unique at that time. I didn't keep a copy of the code when I left Parker Brothers. It might be buried on a backup tape somewhere at Parker Brothers, but more likely the tape was reused for cereal inventory or something like that.'

Keystone Cannonball (Keystone Kapers II ver #1) Dan Kitchen worked on two unreleased sequels to Keystone Kapers. This first version involved Officer Kelly chasing the crook across the rooftops of a train. 'I had also done a sequel to Keystone Kapers, which was the Keystone cop on a train. And that was actually a neat thing because I was able to pull off some interesting software kernels where I had eight rotating wheels on the bottom of a train where you could normally only have 2 or 6 It was a very cute game. From screen to screen, from boxcar to boxcar fighting and trying to defeat the character from Keystone Kapers, who was the runaway criminal. That was a very huge game as it had non-symmetrical play and had a really nice, large engine at the front of the game and a very large caboose at the bottom of the game.' According to Dan the game never got to a playable state and was only around 20% done before being scrapped for unknown reasons. Recently Dan found his prototype which featured the train and officer Kelly running on top of the cars. You can see a video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u60o2nYEXM Keystone Kapers II ver #2 Dan Kitchen worked on two unreleased sequels to Keystone Kapers. This second version was a vertically scrolling game similar to Crazy Climber and involved Officer Kelly climbing a building while Harry Hooligan threw objects at him. According to Dan this version got to a playable state, but was cancelled for unknown reasons. - L - The Levee Game Programmed by Dan Kitchen for Activision. According to Dan: 'Keystone Kelly appeared in a yellow rain slicker running around ladders and platforms repairing cracks that would appear in a background Hoover Dam-style image complete with warning lights and a beautiful sun setting on the distant reservoir . The screen kernels were written such that I could change the background color on every scan line so the entire screen would slowly fill up with water if the player couldn't cement the cracks in time. There was also a mechanic to 'empty' the water on the player's side of the dam to keep the game going.'

- M -

M*A*S*H II Programmed by David Lubar for Sirius Software. This alternate version of M*A*S*H developed at Sirius was ultimately scrapped in favor of another version developed internally at Fox by Doug Neubauer. Programmer David Lubar describes what he remembers of the game: 'I know I had Klinger at the top of the screen, on guard duty. Once in a while, he'd try to run off, and the player had to stop him. Beyond that, I think the game involved taking supplies to different surgery tents.' 20th Century Fox had announced a M*A*S*H II game and it is believed that this version may have been planned for release as a sequel. A prototype of this game is rumored to exist in the hands of a private collector, but nothing has been released to the public as yet.

Mission Omega

Mission Omega was a space shooter developed by Commavid. According to an interview with some ex-Commavid employees, this game was finished but sent back to the programmer for some 'fine tuning'. The game was never re-finished in time to be released.

Mission X

Port of the 1982 Data East Coin-Op of the same name. Although released for the Intellivision, the 2600 version was never finished before being cancelled for 'unknown reasons'. It is not known how far along the game was before being cancelled.

Monkey Business

Designed by Mattel, Monkey Business was to be one of the few unique 2600 games designed by Mattel (all others were ports of existing Intellivision games). Although not completed, Monkey Business was fairly far along before being cancelled.

A description of the game found on the Blue Sky Rangers website reads as follows 'In the zoo, things have gone awry. Billy the Chimp has escaped and is up to no good. As any curious monkey would, he has managed to free the elephants! It's up to you, as Mike the Zookeeper, to return the elephants to their cages.

Once you have restored order in the elephant section, you must quickly run to the next section of cages. Perhaps you'll have to capture the loose Koalas. Maybe you'll have to avoid soaring hawks, battle fierce tigers or try to grab the slippery penguins. Along the way, you'll find items which will be of help to you, such as a bag of peanuts or a net. So grab your hat and stop this monkey business!'

- P -

Penetrator

Programmed by Bill Heineman for Avalon Hill. This game is not believed to have been advertised or even announced. According to the programmer: 'The game itself was a lot like Activision's Megamania. It was a simple drop from the sky shooter. It was unfinished because I left Avalon Hill to work for Time/HBO on a playcable system for the 2600. The game was probably 50% complete. My source to Penetrator was lost many years ago when the 5 1/4 floppy it was stored on simply went bad. The only EPROMS made were almost certainly erased to make way for Death Trap, etc, because we only had a few dozen and they kept dying on us because we burned EPROMS so many times. Only three dev cards were made, so all the other programmers had to write code, and test on an EPROM.' Avalon Hill's stay in the market was short-lived and it's unknown if any further work was done on this title, or if it was simply erased.

Pepper II

Port of the 1982 Exidy arcade game that was released on the Colecovison. It has recently been confirmed that the same programming team that was responsible for the Atari 2600 version of Turbo was indeed working on this game, but it was never completed (or even reached a playable state) due to the collapsing game market. A prototype case was found for this game, but it was empty as it was just a mock-up used for advertisements. Artwork sheets for the game graphics also exist.

Incidentally, there is no Pepper I. The II in the title referred to the fact that the character had two personalities (angel and devil) and not that it was a sequel.

Porkys

Not the same game that was released by 20th Century Fox, but rather a game based on the cartoon pigs that were seen on the electric sign in the movie. Former TCF programmer John Marvin remembers seeing this game while he worked at the company. According to John 'The game made no sense at all.' It is unknown what happened to this prototype after it was rejected.

- R -

Real Time Chess Real Time Chess (working name) was a strategy game developed by Greg Easter while at Atari. According to Greg: “You commanded one piece and tried to capture other pieces one at a time without stepping on any of the squares they could land on. In simple mode, all of the squares the other piece could move to were lit up. In expert mode, you had to keep that in mind yourself. So it was also a training aid for playing chess, sharpening your mind to keep track of different pieces. That game was about 90% done when I was told Atari would not be releasing any more games no matter what, so there was no point in my finishing it.” Greg said that that several test carts were made, but it is unknown where they currently are.

The Rescue of Emmanuelle Alan Roberts (designer of X-Man) talked about this game in the October 1983 issue of Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated: 'We are currently working on The Rescue of Emmanuelle, based on the famous Emmanuelle character. It is a male-oriented action game where one has to rescue Emmanuelle, the rewards being that, if you are skillful enough to save her, she is going to thank you, bestow her kindness on you. It's a climbing game. It takes place on the Eiffel Tower. The hardest part in designing the game is that the tower doesn't fit well on the TV screen. We're working on a scrolling system.' It is not known how far this game made it into development before being cancelled.

Robotron: 2084

A Proposed title for the ill-fated Atari Graduate add-on computer. A WIP version of this game was shown at at least one show before being cancelled (along with the Graduate). According to one eye witness, it was 'The most flickery thing I'd ever seen'. This isn't surprising considering the amount of objects that would be needed to be shown on the screen at one time was well beyond the poor 2600's capabilities. A picture of the title screen exists showing some pretty nice graphics for the 2600.

Sharp Shot

Port of the Intellivision game developed by APh Technologies. Mattel decided not to release the 2600 version of this game after it was widely criticized on the Intellvision as being 'too easy'.

Shove It! was a two player game being developed at CBS which would have used a special cable to communicate between two 2600s. According to programmer Bob Curtiss: 'Shove It! was my original concept for a two-player 2600 game that used two 2600 systems, each with their own TV of course. The idea was that someone would take their 2600 over to a friend’s house to play this game with them. A bit far-fetched at the time, but to CBS’ credit they were open to these kinds of ideas. The game was simple – there were 9 rectangular objects, sort of like long pieces of wood or metal, displayed in a 3D view, that you could ‘push’ or ‘shove’ away from you, and they would move toward the other player on their screen. They in turn could shove them back toward you. The two 2600’s communicated via serial data transfer with a serial cable connected to one joystick port on each machine. Did you ever imagine that you could send data from one 2600 to another via the joystick ports? You’d use the joystick plugged in to the 2nd joystick port to select which object you wanted to shove toward the other player, and the push the button to shove it. I had a functioning prototype working within 3 months.' Shove It! was cancelled after CBS decided to get out of the video game business and closed down their Atari 2600 development unit. Stomp it This port of the Bally Midway coin-op (which was also unreleased) was done by Alex Nevelson at Bally Midway but went unreleased. There is no information on how either the arcade game or home version would have played.

Sky Blazer

Sky Blazer was a multi-level air combat simulation game by Broderbund, similar to CBS's Wings. Although shown at the 1983 Summer CES show, the game was never released.

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Snark

Programmed by John Dunn for Atari, but ultimately unreleased. John would later go on to do Superman before leaving Atari. Snark was a combination Maze solver and shooter. Each game generated a new maze, and you were set upon by critters that you had to shoot in order to negotiate the maze.

According to John, Snark 'was my first game for Atari. It was not published while I was at Atari, and perhaps never was - I didn't track it. It had a video spin mode that caused the screen to color cycle really fast, and release was held up because there was some worry this would cause people to have seizures (I know, it's bogus - but this was the early days of video games, and that kind of intense color cycling was unknown territory).'

Snowplow Developed by VSS, Inc. for Sunrise Software. According to Leonard Herman, this game was shown at the 1984 Winter CES (along with Glacier Patrol, another Sunrise title that went unreleased). Leonard described the gameplay in his book 'ABC to the VCS': 'You operate a snowplow which must clear the eight horizontal rows of snow. Snow is cleared by merely moving your plow through it. Somewhere in each row you'll uncover a car which will then move across the row that it is in and must be avoided at the risk of losing a turn. When all the snow has been cleared, one of the six cars will flash on and off and you must get to it before time runs out while still avoiding the other cars. When the car has been reached, another car will begin to flash. After all six cars have been retrieved, you'll move on to a harder screen where you must again clear the snow.' After Sunrise Software folded, the rights to their 2600 catalog were apparently acquired by Telegames, who eventually released Glacier Patrol and reissued Quest for Quintana Roo in 1989. Yet for some reason, Snowplow was never released. What happened to the prototype that was shown at CES is not known, and thus far the game has never turned up in any form.

Solo

Solo was a 3-D flight simulation game by Broderbund. Although shown at the 1983 Summer CES show, the game was never released.

Super Pac-Man

According to an internal Atari memo preliminary coding was started on the 2600 version of Super Pac-Man. The memo lists the game as only being 5% complete, so it is doubtful a playable version of the game exists.

Tarzan

Port of the Colecovision game of the same name. Tarzan was developed by Wickstead Design (the same team behind the unreleased 2600 Pink Panther game). The game finished, but was unreleased due to it requiring a special chip for extra memory. A prototype of the game may exist with one of the programmers. An in-game screenshot, picture of the box, and a manual all exist.

Tank Blitz

Was to be the third and final game in the Milton Bradley Power Arcade series. Tank Blitz was shown at the 1984 Toy Fair along with its Armored Commander controller.

A picture of the cartridge with its controller can be seen here (thanks to Rom Hunter)

Target Omega Target Omega was a submarine simulation developed by Greg Easter for Atari. From Greg: “Another game which was only barely started was an extremely ambitious submarine simulator. There were three choices of views - periscope, radar and instruments. Your goal was to find enemy ships and sink them, as you would in most sub games, only there were additional complications of needing to keep track of fuel, battery power and sustainable pressure. I don’t remember too much of it now.” Given its early stage of development, it is unlikely that any copy of the game survived Those Little Buggers

Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Treasure Hunt

Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Underworld

Was to be a D&D type game by Commavid. A tape labeled Underworld is known to exist, and is believed to contain development source code. The current whereabouts of the tape are unknown.

Untitled Motorcycle Game #1 (real name unknown)

David Crane mentioned working on two unreleased games for Activision that involved riding a motorcycle. The first version was similar to Atari's Stunt Cycle where the player controlled a motorcycle that would jump over buses and other obstacles. According to David the game was abandoned because he ran out of objects (Player/Missile sprites) and couldn't display the buses properly.

Untitled Motorcycle Game #2 (real name unknown)

David Crane mentioned working on two unreleased games for Activision that involved riding a motorcycle. The second version was to be a motocross style game with a large segmented motorcycle that would realistically move up and down over the terrain. Like the first motorcycle game it was scrapped after David ran out of objects (Player/Missile sprites) due to the large realistic motorcycle.

- W -Wacko Port of the 1982 Bally Midway coin-op. This port was done by Tom DiDomenico while he was at Bally Midway but went unreleased.

Zookeeper

Perhaps one of the most famous missing prototypes, Zookeeper was a port of the 1982 Taito arcade game. Zookeeper was finished enough to have have been playable, and may have even been completed. The music/sound effects code for this game (by Robert Vieira) has been found, and is nearly arcade perfect. A video showing the graphics for this game has also surfaced.

Harem Atari 2600 Play

Return to Rumor Mill

[ruminativerabbi]

Feeling Hopeful

Several different people have asked in the last few days what I’m hoping Pesach will bring us all this year. It’s an interesting question, more so than I thought at first blush. Passover, of course, is a highlight of the year for us all. Families come together. The weather is usually dramatically improved over what it had been just weeks earlier. As a result, the whole effort to clean out our kitchens takes on a barely-hidden second level of meaning: yes, we are acting in accordance with tradition and law to rid our homes of even the last consequential crumbs of bread or any other leavened product, but we are also—and at the very same time—cleaning out the past year and its musty, fusty residue and preparing ourselves for a new year. Like I suppose it must also be for other Jewish Americans, the lead-up to Pesach is also a time of reflection for me personally: as I slowly pack away my snow boots and start trying to remember where I stored my walking shorts last fall when it was finally too cold to wear them, I feel a year falling away and something new dawning on the horizon. What will it bring us? That, pace Hamlet, is the question!

It’s always the question. But how much the more so this year with its pandemical accouterments, with its facemasks and endless CDC guidelines, with the scramble for vaccination in full swing as the age-limit drops and more and more of us get in line for our shots. Although we are obviously not through the viral woods just quite yet, things are feeling hopeful in a way they weren’t just a couple of months back. And so, as Pesach dawns, I find myself—and here I answer the question I led off with—I feel myself suffused with a sense of hopefulness and unanticipated optimism. I suppose readers all know the joke about the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist—the pessimist says, “Things couldn’t get any worse,” while the optimist responds, “Of course, they can!”—but even so, even despite our ethnic proclivity to expect disaster around every corner (which trait some would say we have elevated to an actual art form), I find myself hoping for the best, feeling buoyed by my hopeful sense that the worst really is behind us and normalcy will soon return to our beleaguered land.

The first Pesach had something of the same feel to it.

There’s more to that thought than you might at first think. Scripture—and this is particularly true of the Torah—is a literary work intended to present the story of Israel’s origins to an audience eager to learn the backstory to the great covenant that Jews in later centuries understood to bind them to God. As such, the laws that are the stuff of the covenant are interspersed with the narrative to create a kind of patchwork feel to the whole. To shul-Jews who hear the Torah read aloud weekly, this aspect of the text is so familiar as to be both unremarkable and almost unnoticeable. And yet it is also the case, at least here and there, that the juxtaposition of law and narrative creates a slightly misleading impression for those reading or listening only casually.  And a good example of that has to do precisely with the first Pesach, the experience in Egypt of which all subsequent Passovers have been the echo in history.

Set into the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt are all the rules that govern the paschal offering, the zevach pesach. The rules are somehow both complicated and simple: the Israelites are to procure a lamb or a kid on the tenth of the month, keep it safe it four days and then, on the fourteenth of the month they are to slaughter it, paint their doorposts and lintels with its blood, and eat it roasted with matzah and some bitter foodstuff. Scripture then quickly, almost imperceptibly, shifts into the future: this is not a one-time thing, it turns out, but the harbinger of a future holiday, one the observance of which will constitute a memorial, a festival, and a chukkat olam (i.e., a permanent statute). Furthermore, Passover—the holiday being heralded by this, its earlier iteration—is to be not simply “a” festival, but “the” festival of the Jewish year, the one that will, among other things, frame permanently the relationship of Israelites to their non-Israelite neighbors, to the citizenry of other nations, to the world itself: liberation from bondage will henceforth be the platform upon which the Israelite nation will stand for all time as the citizenry looks out at the world, the foundational story of which the rest of the nation’s history will be at least in some way derivative.

It’s a stirring passage, one known to most. But it obscures, at least slightly, the predicament of the actual Israelites to whom Moses is speaking. These are slaves who are being told to put their hiking boots on and get ready their walking sticks: departure, Moses tells them unambiguously, is imminent. Left undiscussed is how this must have played itself out among the Israelites themselves. Again and again, God has—speaking from their perspective—failed to get Pharaoh to grant them their freedom even for just a few days, let alone actually to free them from bondage. And this failure has repeated itself not once or twice, but on nine separate occasions. (The ancient Israelites had no reason to expect specifically ten plagues: they experienced them one by one—and each one was a failure: the wonders and signs may have been impressive, but they were still slaves, still not free to go, still being told to trust in the future without actually having been made free.)

What Moses tells them is, at best, unlikely: that God will bring yet another plague against the Egyptians and this one actually will work. And yet they do what Moses tells them to do: unsure as they must have been that this is going to work, having every reason to be suspicious, knowing they’ve been told before that Pharaoh will collapse under the weight of God’s imposing presence, they still do what they are told, painting their doorposts with blood, readying their walking sticks and their hiking boots, eating the meat according to their instructions…and waiting.

And then, finally, the midnight hour came. The tenth plague was the most awful imaginable and the nation and its hard-hearted leader could finally bear no more. The Israelites went free…but they must have been more surprised than impressed. For us, Pesach is the festival of freedom. But for the actual Israelites whose story rests just behind the narrative, Pesach—the first Pesach, the one undertaken in the shadow of all those many failed attempts to get Pharaoh to let the people go—for those people, it must have been a festival of hope, of faith, and of courage. They had every reason not to go along with the plan—they had, after all, been down that path nine times in the past—but they felt themselves able to hope, to dream, to look into the future and see freedom from the oppressive circumstances of the only life they had ever known.

I would like to suggest we adopt that line of thinking for this year’s celebration. I too am looking into the future this year, thinking carefully about what may yet come in the course of the next months. The numbers are going in the right direction. Although we are still reeling from the loss of well over half a million of our co-citizens to this horrific virus, including more than 3000 in Nassau County alone, the latest numbers seem encouraging. The vaccination program, despite its chaotic start, is working: as of this week more than a quarter of all American adults have been vaccinated at least one time and 14% of our co-citizens have been fully vaccinated. It’s tempting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, even though the flip side of those statistics—that 75% of Americans have yet to get their first shot and a full 86% have yet to receive both—is beyond sobering.

Still, Pesach is our festival of hope in the future, of national willingness to ignore the failures of the past and feel sanguine and optimistic about the future, of readiness to trust the leadership of our leaders and feel secure that, at least eventually, we will leave this state of viral bondage and become the fully free citizens of a fully immunized nation. Hopefulness is what’s called for…and Pesach is just the right context for the cultivation of hope. Therefore, I’m allowing myself to feel positive and hopeful…and I invite you all to join me in embracing both those emotions.

Joan and I wish you all a very happy holiday, a chag kasheir v’sameiach, and all the best. We’re not out of the woods yet. But we’re moving in the right direction…and that will have to suffice, at least for the time being.

[benjamingarden]

This Month On The Farm: October 2020

  Our first snow has arrived!!  Ok, so it was only about an inch, but, nonetheless, it arrived on the second to the last day of October.  And with it came some significantly colder weather including our first below 30 degree night. 

While the majority of our summer garden ended in September, we were the happy recipients of additional garden goodness throughout October in the form of cabbage, broccoli, green beans, squash, beets, carrots, peppers, tomatoes (the first half of the month), and herbs.  Needless to say, our freezers are chock full.

Garden Wins And Fails

Let's start with the fails and get those right out of the way. Eggplant, for some reason, did not do well for me this year.  I've never ever had an issue with it but 2020 was no ordinary year.  Cucumbers, too, did not produce well for some reason.  I've always struggled with melons, and this year, of course, was no different.  They did ok, not great.  And, of course, because of the early-on visits by the whistle pig (with the enormous appetite) who adored all things green, we had a rough start with greens, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and carrots.  Many eventually came back and others were replanted.

And the wins......  My peppers did outstanding this year as did my squash, tomatoes, beans, peas, sweet potatoes, and pretty much everything else in the garden.  Partial credit, I'm sure, goes to the soil that we continue to amend.  Partial credit also goes to the fact that I had time to weed, pick bugs, water, and do all of the things that make a garden happy.

On October 30th, the night temps dipped into the 20's, so I pulled of all remaining veg except for greens (kale, chard, arugula, mustard, and loose leaf lettuce).  I've left them growing but we did not get our tunnel made for the raised bed they are in so, unfortunately, I don't think they'll last long with just a cloth row cover.

Oliver & Jackson

Well, back to the specialty veterinary clinic we go.....  

Poor Ollie has been having some issues, come to find out he has multiple herniated discs.  He is doing well and it's nice to know what we're dealing with instead of guessing.  Initially we all thought (us and his neurologist) that he may have a brain tumor like Emerson as well, but it was ruled out with an MRI (thankfully!).

And then there's Jack.  Wouldn't you know that Mr. Jackson has a heart murmur, discovered at his annual check-up, and is now scheduled to see a cardiologist?  That guy must have been jealous that Oliver got to travel to see specialists......  Unfortunately they are booked until February, so as long as he doesn't show any signs of distress, he will go at that time (they will get him in as an emergency if need be).  

We expected this would likely come at some point as one of his litter mates has had some heart issues for a few years and is now on medications to keep it under control.  So, Jack will, at the very least, have annual appointments with a cardiologist to keep an eye on his heart.  And in case you're wondering, no, his heart murmur does not stop him from harassing Oliver or biting our toes at night.  

Some things will never change.

delicious apple cake

In The Kitchen

We haven't been out to eat or purchased food to-go since February so our kitchen stays quite busy.  Breakfasts remain fairly simple although I did make Cinnamon Swirl Bread and Blueberry Scones this month, just because.  For lunch we didn't make the switch to soups because of the moderate temps.  Instead, we continued to use the outdoor grill, make quick sandwiches or salads, and of course enjoy leftovers.

Dinners were fairly standard since we've been busy with our soap business.  I did try this recipe for Chicken Fajita Rice for Jay and he loved it. 

For dessert I tried this Apple Cake recipe and it is soooooo good.  As I've noted before, we very rarely use processed sugar, however, we do make exceptions from time-to-time and this cake is worth it.  I did cut the brown sugar used in the actual cake batter in half because I knew it would be way too sweet for us.  It was still definitely more then plenty sweet in our opinion.  I also substituted out the egg, used oat milk & vinegar for the buttermilk, vegan butter, and reduced the oil to make it something I would eat as well, but I'm positive if you are interested in making the recipe exactly as is it will be amazing.  

Jay has asked if it could be made for Thanksgiving so I will be whipping another one up today!

In The Coop

Absolutely nothing is happening in the coop.  The girls enjoy their feed and snacks but are still on their egg laying break.  Jay has been rationing his egg consumption and we did purchase a dozen eggs from our farmer's market a few weeks back so he could make omelets and scrambled eggs frivolously.  At that time we were getting 3-5 eggs per week but now we are getting none.  So we will be buying them again....

What I've Been Reading

I've continued to enjoy reading in the evenings.  I have realized that there are a few new (to me) authors whose writing I love - K.A. Tucker, Elizabeth Berg, Louise Miller, and Heather Webber.  All write very differently but I just really enjoy what I've read by each of them so far.

Here are some of my favorites read this month.  Actually I LOVED each of these (affiliate links):

The Simple Wild: A Novel and the second in the series Wild At Heart: A Novel - by K.A. Tucker (the third and final in the series is available December 1st)

Say You Still Love Me: A Novel - by K.A. Tucker

The Last Time I Saw You: A Novel - by Elizabeth Berg

The Late Bloomer's Club: A Novel - by Louise Miller

Midnight At The Blackbird Cafe: A Novel - by Heather Webber

One that I was surprised to really like, because it's not a book I would have normally chosen, was Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb.  I really enjoyed it and am so glad that I read it.

If you have some favorites that you would recommend, I would love for you to leave it in the comments!

soap curing on the shelves

The Soap & Skincare Business

We are incredibly blessed to be quite busy despite the craft shows being cancelled and having limited tourists in our town to shop at our weekly farmer's market.  Our online store continues churn out the orders and our local regulars continue to come out.  And, the holiday Artisan Market at a museum one town over is going to be able to open so we are thrilled to have our products there again this year.

Our farmer's market usually moves indoors in November, however, we are trying to stay outside as long as possible this year.  It's been chilly, I'm not going to lie.  A couple of Sundays ago we barely made it to 40 degrees and this past Sunday we were at, I believe, 41 degrees.  We did invest in a portable heater that is fueled by propane so that will be nice.  We can put our tent walls up and turn on the heater to get warm.  It's nice because it gives shoppers much more space to shop and makes them feel a lot more comfortable as our areas COVID numbers continue to rise.

Although this post was about 2 weeks late, I wanted to give you an October update.  Thank you to those of you who have reached out asking for this and other posts.  I'm hoping to get back to posting more often soon!  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we certainly have a tremendous amount to be thankful for.  Although we usually host a small gathering for friends, we will be celebrating just the two of us (and critters of course) this year.  It will be a great day off (except for cooking) that we've looked forward to.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

This Month On The Farm: October 2020 was originally posted by My Favorite Chicken Blogs(benjamingardening)

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/over-200000-people-have-died-in-the-us-live-covid-19-updates/

Over 200,000 People Have Died in the US: Live Covid-19 Updates

The virus death toll in the U.S. surpasses 200,000.

The death toll in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic passed 200,000 on Tuesday as the first day of fall brought questions about what may be ahead.

More deaths have been announced in the United States than in any other country, and reports of new coronavirus cases have climbed in the U.S. and parts of Europe in recent days, suggesting an uncertain new phase in the crisis.

Some estimated in March that fewer than 500 would die over the course of the pandemic. “More like 60,000,” the leading U.S. authority on infectious disease predicted in April. “Anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people,” President Trump said in May.

But even as the toll has gone from hazy estimates to cold realities, the sheer scale has remained hard to grasp. More than 200,000 dead is such an enormous loss — nearly two and a half times the number of U.S. service members to die in battle in the Vietnam and Korean Wars — obscuring the accretion of individual tragedies: a hard-working single mother, a Hall of Fame pitcher, a D-Day veteran, an inseparable couple and a picket line troubadour.

Now that 200,000 people have died — which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had discussed in March in internal documents as a low range for a worst-case scenario — infectious disease specialists are scrambling to determine how the pandemic could evolve in the months ahead.

Fewer new cases have been detected weekly since a summer surge in the South and West peaked in late July. But the nation’s caseload is again growing, especially in states in the middle of the country like Wisconsin, Montana and North Dakota. Early months of the pandemic had affected mainly urban, coastal areas. The virus is spreading more broadly now, through rural communities and college towns. The arrival of flu season and the prospect of cooler fall air — likely to send many people indoors — have added to fears about what the coming months may bring.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said he worries about the country entering the cooler months without having a handle on the virus. The country is seeing an average of about 40,000 new cases a day based on a seven-day average, according to a Times database.

“Those are the things that I get concerned about as we get into October and November and December,” Dr. Fauci said Tuesday on CNN. “I’d like to see us go into that at such a low level that when you have the inevitable cases you can handle them.”

Trends can change quickly. Early in April, around 800 people were dying each day, but that soon climbed. For two weeks, from April 13 to April 27, daily deaths calculated as a seven-day average stayed at more than 2,000. Nearly 800 deaths are currently being reported in the country each day. Some epidemiologists say the death toll could climb to 300,000 by the end of the year in the United States.

The painful milestones have come quickly: 50,000 deaths in April, 100,000 by May, and now 200,000, even as some states, such as Arizona, have shown how quickly both cases and deaths can decline by embracing mitigation efforts.

The United States has the highest total number of deaths across the globe, though a handful of countries in Europe and Latin America have seen more deaths per capita.

Still, the persistently high death numbers in the United States stand in stark contrast to mortalities in other high-income countries. Italy, once the center of the pandemic, reported 17 deaths on Monday; Germany reported 10 deaths the same day. In the United States that day, 428 people were reported to have died of the virus.

In recent days, countries that saw fewer cases this summer have seen the virus surge once more. Around the world, at least 73 countries as of Sunday were seeing upticks in newly detected cases as scientists race to find a vaccine and new treatments.

The presidents of the United States and China squared off in their speeches to the annual General Assembly on Tuesday, punctuating a superpower rivalry that the leader of the 193-member organization, Secretary-General António Guterres, has called a great global risk.

On the coronavirus, global warming, human rights, international cooperation and a range of other issues, President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, laid out starkly differing views in their prerecorded remarks.

Mr. Trump blamed China for the coronavirus and demanded that the United Nations hold the country accountable. Mr. Xi, clearly anticipating Mr. Trump’s attacks, portrayed the virus as everyone’s challenge and described China’s response as scientific, generous and responsible.

“Any attempt at politicizing or stigmatizing this issue must be rejected,” Mr. Xi said.

Mr. Trump has been a longstanding critic of the United Nations and has challenged its multilateral diplomacy as an impediment to his “America First” policy — even as the United States remains the biggest single contributor to the United Nations budget.

But as Mr. Trump has withdrawn support for U.N. agencies such as the World Health Organization and Human Rights Council, China has been stepping in to fill the void as the No. 2 financial contributor to the United Nations. China has taken leadership in a number of U.N. agencies over the past few years.

The U.S.-China rivalry has emerged as a chief worry for Mr. Guterres, and he made that clear in his opening remarks to the annual gathering.

“We are moving in a very dangerous direction,” Mr. Guterres said. “Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a Great Fracture.”

The University of Notre Dame said on Tuesday that it was postponing its upcoming game with Wake Forest and suspending “all football-related activities.” The announcement came after seven student-athletes tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, Notre Dame said in a statement.

The move reflects the uncertainty about pressing ahead with football and other collegiate sports. Overriding objections from infectious disease specialists, the Big 12, the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Notre Dame is playing this season, decided to try to play nearly a full season of football games in the months ahead. The Big 10 at first announced it would not play football this fall, but reversed itself last week.

A total of 13 Notre Dame football players are in isolation, including 10 in quarantine, the university said in its statement. Notre Dame was scheduled to play Wake Forest on Saturday in its first road game of the season.

The matchup, which was to be played in Winston-Salem, N.C., was far from the first to be postponed this season. Virginia Tech, for instance, has already had two of its games postponed, and a hastily scheduled game between Baylor and Houston was also scratched. College football officials expect a number of games to be postponed, or not played at all, in the coming months.

“We knew Covid would present challenges throughout the season,” Brian Kelly, Notre Dame’s head coach, said in a statement. “We look forward to resuming team activities and getting back on the field.”

The move by Notre Dame came after other pandemic-related problems at the university. Notre Dame suspended in-person classes last month after positive test results by 147 students, most of them seniors living off campus who had been infected at social gatherings.

A vote on vaccine rollout plans by a group that advises the C.D.C. has been delayed.

A committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed a vote on plans to prioritize initial doses of a coronavirus vaccine, should one prove safe and effective.

The vote was initially planned for Tuesday, at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. The committee’s next meeting is planned for October, by which point more data will have likely emerged from several vaccines in late-stage clinical trials around the world.

The results of the vote, when it does occur, will help determine who receives the first doses of any coronavirus vaccine that shows promising results in late-stage clinical trials that test whether the product helps prevent severe cases of Covid-19 or perhaps even infection by the virus. Typically, the committee votes on these recommendations only after they have been greenlit by the Food and Drug Administration.

Two federal officials familiar with the C.D.C.’s vaccine committee said that it was a smart move to delay the vote until more data emerges from clinical trials and the F.D.A. has begun its vetting process. Some of the vaccines have very different logistical requirements and might perform better in certain subsets of the population, factors that will influence the details of the rollout plan.

The delay was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. It was confirmed by the C.D.C. senior public affairs officer Tom Skinner, as well as attendees of the ACIP’s Tuesday meeting.

President Trump has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine will be available for Americans by October, raising alarm that he is pressuring federal health agencies to rush their scientific and regulatory deliberations before the November elections.

Pfizer, a front-runner in the race for a coronavirus vaccine, has repeatedly said that its trials may produce data on vaccine effectiveness as early as October, at which point the company might apply for emergency approval for use in a subset of the population. But no vaccines have yet been approved for even limited use in the United States. And Pfizer, along with eight other drug companies, have pledged to “stand with science” and only release vaccines based on results from rigorous clinical trials.

It’s still unclear exactly how an effective vaccine will be distributed, but health care workers are expected to be among those prioritized in any forthcoming vaccine rollouts. And because no one has started the process of developing a vaccine for children, it might be fall 2021 before there’s one for kids.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain on Tuesday announced new virus-related restrictions and said that the country had reached a “perilous turning point” in the pandemic.

“This is the moment when we must act,” Mr. Johnson said in an uncharacteristically somber statement in Parliament, as he announced new measures designed to save “lives and livelihoods” that could stay in place for the next six months.

Greater penalties for breaking virus restrictions in England will be introduced, and Mr. Johnson promised mask-wearing rules would be more strongly enforced. He also announced new restrictions on nightlife and encouraged people to work from home, ramping up the country’s efforts to curb a rising tide of confirmed cases.

Pubs and restaurants will be restricted to offering table service only and must close at 10 p.m., beginning on Thursday, Downing Street revealed on Monday night; ordinarily, there is no mandatory closing time, though many close at 11 p.m. The new rules are the most stringent since restaurants, pubs and many other businesses were allowed to emerge from full lockdown in July.

After pushing hard for workers to return to the office over the summer, the British government is now encouraging people to work from home. For workers who cannot do their jobs from home, Mr. Johnson said rules on making workplaces “Covid-secure” would become a legal obligation.

Mr. Johnson also announced that fines for failing to wear a mask or for meeting more than six people would double to 200 pounds (about $260). Repeat offenders can currently be fined up to 3,200 pounds (not 10,000 pounds as an earlier version of this post said). Staff in retail and indoor hospitality, as well as passengers in taxis and for-hire vehicles, will also now be required to wear masks.

Wedding ceremonies and receptions will be downsized to a maximum of 15 people starting Monday, adult indoor sports teams will be restricted to six people, and a partial reopening of sports stadiums expected for the beginning of October was postponed.

The restrictions imposed by the central government apply only to England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own policies, which have followed a similar pattern.

Tighter restrictions are already in place in some parts of the country, and the virus alert rating was raised on Monday to Level 4, signifying that the virus is in general circulation, with transmission high or rising exponentially.

In remarks to the public posted online on Tuesday night, Mr. Johnson pleaded with residents to abide by the new restrictions, warning that “we will put more police out on the streets and use the Army to backfill if necessary.”

He warned against downplaying the risk, arguing that the virus would inevitably infect the elderly and vulnerable if it spread unchecked.

“The tragic reality of having Covid is that your mild cough can be someone else’s death knell,” he said.

Britain reported nearly 5,000 new cases on Tuesday, according to a Times database. That’s the highest figure since early May, and more than eight times the daily average in early July — with a rate of hospitalization that is doubling every seven to eight days. While the daily death toll and the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients are still quite low, the government’s scientific and medical advisers said that, unchecked, the virus could spread exponentially, to 50,000 new cases a day by next month.

Britain’s opposition leader, Keir Starmer, took aim on Tuesday at Mr. Johnson’s handling of the crisis, denouncing him as “just not up to the job” and saying that a second national lockdown would be a “sign of government failure.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin offered an upbeat view of the economic recovery on Tuesday, calling it the fastest rebound from any crisis in American history. Yet he acknowledged that more than half of the jobs that had been lost as a result of the pandemic had yet to be restored.

Mr. Mnuchin and Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, projected optimism as they testified Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee. But Mr. Powell made clear that many of those gains were predicated on strong fiscal support, including additional jobless benefits and stimulus checks — economic support that has largely run out. Lawmakers show little indication of being able to agree on another package.

Mr. Powell told Congress that the economy had made meaningful progress but that the outlook was uncertain and policymakers will need to do more to help the millions of Americans who are out of work.

Mr. Mnuchin projected “tremendous” economic growth in the third quarter, noting increases in business activity, manufacturing and the housing market. He said that the 8.4 percent jobless rate was a “notable achievement” considering his own projections earlier this year that unemployment could hit 25 percent.

Nonetheless, Mr. Mnuchin said that more stimulus was needed and that he would continue working with Congress to strike a deal.

“The President and I remain committed to providing support for American workers and businesses,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “I believe a targeted package is still needed, and the administration is ready to reach a bipartisan agreement.”

Three N.F.L. head coaches have been fined for not wearing masks on the sidelines during games on Sunday, a league source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed.

Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks, Vic Fangio of the Denver Broncos and Kyle Shanahan of the San Francisco 49ers were each fined $100,000, with an additional $250,000 fine levied against their respective teams.

The league has mandated that coaches and other team staff members wear protective coverings over their mouths and noses at all times during games. Masks are not required for players.

During the Monday night game, the two head coaches, Jon Gruden of the Las Vegas Raiders and Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints, wore masks around their necks but frequently did not have them over their noses or mouths.

Both have said they were already exposed to the virus, with Payton notably having been the first N.F.L. coach to publicly reveal in March that he had been infected with the virus.

“I’m doing my best,” Gruden told reporters after the game. “I’ll have to pay the fine, but I’m very sensitive about that and I apologize.”

In other news around the nation.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said people should get a flu shot no later than the end of October. “If it’s available now, you should get it now,” Dr. Fauci said Tuesday on CNN. He added not to wait until “beyond October.” This is in line with the C.D.C.’s flu shot guidance to help “reduce the strain on health care systems responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Tuesday that travelers from Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island and Wyoming are now required to quarantine for 14 days, joining a list of those from dozens of other states as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that an announcement on the status of outdoor dining beyond Oct. 31 could come very soon. While indoor dining in the city is set to resume at limited capacity on Sept. 30, Mr. de Blasio said that outdoor dining in colder months involved a different set of health and safety concerns than during the summer. “The last piece to fill in is those rules around the continuance of outdoor: What makes sense, what doesn’t make sense, how will that work?” he said.

An Iowa school district that defied a reopening order moves toward a ‘hybrid’ model.

But the district has still not decided what level of coronavirus prevalence in the community would force it to send students home.

The dispute between the Des Moines Independent Community School District and Gov. Kim Reynolds is a stark example of tension between Republican state officials, who have followed President Trump’s lead on education policy, and local administrators, often in Democratic-leaning cities, who fear that in-person instruction is too much of a public health risk.

Ms. Reynolds has said she is prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable students, and the state’s Education Department has threatened to require Des Moines to extend its school year — at a cost of about $1.5 million a day — if it does not comply with state regulations.

But the local school board has argued that the high caseload in Polk County, which includes Des Moines, makes it unsafe to hold in-person classes.

Of the more than 80,000 coronavirus cases in Iowa, Polk has more than 15,000, the most of any county in the state by far, according to a New York Times database.

The Des Moines school board on Monday voted 6 to 1 to start phasing in a “hybrid return to learn” plan. Preschool students will begin returning on Oct. 12, followed by elementary, middle and then high school students by Nov. 10, the Des Moines Register reported.

However, the board delayed setting an infection rate that would force the district to revert to remote learning, deciding instead to invite public health issues to provide guidance on the subject at a subsequent meeting. That means the planned return to class could still be delayed.

Iowa officials have said that 15 percent of a county’s coronavirus tests must be positive over a two-week period before its schools can close their doors — a threshold that is at least triple what many public health experts have recommended. The rules also say that districts in counties that remain below 15 percent must offer at least 50 percent of their classes in person.

In two weeks across late August and early September, Polk County had an average positivity rate of about 8 percent.

‘It affects virtually nobody,’ Trump says, minimizing the effect of the virus on young people.

Mr. Trump minimized the dangers the coronavirus poses to young people, falsely telling supporters in Ohio on Monday night that the virus “affects virtually nobody,” just hours before the country reached the grim milestone of 200,000 recorded deaths linked to the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.

Mr. Trump, who has veered back and forth between claiming that he takes the crisis seriously and dismissing it as a transient problem that will disappear on its own, made his remarks during a rambling late-night rally at an airport hangar in Dayton.

“It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects, in some states thousands of people — nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody — they have a strong immune system — who knows?” Mr. Trump said.

“It affects virtually nobody,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing — by the way, open your schools!”

Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has rejected that argument. He told CNN on Tuesday that 25 to 30 percent or more of the population has an underlying condition, like obesity, that contributes to their risk of severe illness.

“It can be serious in young people,” he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of Sept. 16, about 78 percent of the people in the country who have died from the virus were 65 years and older, a demographic that has historically favored Trump. About 20 percent of the people who have died from the virus were 64 and younger.

The C.D.C. predicts that up to 18,000 more people could die from the virus by Oct. 10.

Teachers and school administrators around the country are struggling to address one of the most pressing challenges in the new school year: How to make sure students come to virtual class, and whether to punish them if they don’t.

Attendance data from last spring, while limited, suggests that the problem loomed large in many districts. In one survey of 5,659 educators around the country, 34 percent of respondents said that no more than one in four students were attending their remote classes, and a majority said fewer than half their students were attending.

More recent data indicates the problem persists, especially in poorer communities, including many urban school systems.

Data on why students disappear from virtual school is hard to come by, but there are some obvious explanations. Many students lack a computer or stable internet; others have to work or care for younger children; and some families were evicted and had to move.

It is also likely that some students found online learning so tedious or hard to keep up with that they just dropped out, especially since many schools stopped grading or taking attendance once they closed their doors.

Most states are pushing school districts to return to normal attendance and grading policies this fall, now that they have had some time to improve their distance learning programs. That is putting pressure on schools not only to keep students engaged, but also to keep tabs on their personal circumstances and emotional health.

Returning to normal attendance expectations has also sharpened a debate among education officials about how to approach truancy. Last spring, Massachusetts school officials reported dozens of families to the state’s Department of Children and Families because of issues related to their children’s participation in remote learning, The Boston Globe reported last month. Districts with large Black and Latino populations filed the most reports, the paper found.

But many districts have eased up on harsh truancy rules — which can involve fines and even jail for parents and, sometimes, students — during the pandemic out of concern that students had legitimate obstacles to attending class.

“I do think more schools are open to the notion that you need alternatives to legal action,” said Hedy Chang, the director of Attendance Works, a national group that promotes solutions to chronic absenteeism. “There’s a lot more empathy.”

Mexico announced on Tuesday that it would formally join the World Health Organization’s new vaccine-distribution initiative.

The program, known as COVAX, was announced on Monday, and will allow the 156 participating countries to pool their resources to clinch bulk deals with pharmaceutical companies while their vaccines are still in development, in an effort to ensure faster and more equitable distribution.

The W.H.O. on Monday urged more rich nations to support the project, which aims to deliver about two billion doses worldwide by the end of 2021. The W.H.O. needs the financial muscle of the rich nations to, in effect, subsidize the vaccines for the poorer members.

Three major economies — the United States, China and Russia — have not joined. All three are pursuing their own vaccine plans.

In a virtual appearance before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, insisted that Russia’s vaccine was safe and effective, and offered free shots to U.N. staff. Russia’s approval of the vaccine, which came with much fanfare, occurred before it had been tested in late-stage trials.

More than 130 potential vaccines are estimated to be in development globally.

Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said Tuesday that COVAX “represents the most secure means of access, because it includes vaccines from very different countries of the world.”

Mexico has seen one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, with over 700,000 recorded cases, or 555 per 100,000 people, and nearly 74,000 deaths, according to a Times database.

In other news around the world:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand has apologized after being photographed with supporters without social distancing or masks last week while on the campaign trail, drawing criticism from the public and opposition politicians.

The awards ceremony for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been canceled because of the pandemic, the Norwegian Nobel Institute announced on Tuesday. Instead of the usual ceremony at Oslo City Hall, a scaled-back event will be held at the city’s university with a limited number of guests on Dec. 10. The prize will be announced at a news conference on Oct. 9.

Russia has reported a sharp rise in the number of new cases, with Moscow the epicenter of a nationwide spike in infections. Official figures released on Tuesday showed 6,215 new cases over the previous 24 hours — a marked increase from the start of the month and the highest number of daily cases since mid-July. Of those, 980 were reported in Moscow.

South Korea on Tuesday suspended a plan to provide free flu shots for about 19 million people, amid reports of problems with storing some of the vaccines during transport. The number of newly confirmed cases in the country, which is battling a second wave of infections, has stayed below 100 for the past three days. But millions are set to travel domestically next week to celebrate a five-day holiday.

Sixteen more residential areas in Madrid exceeded the infection rate criteria to return to lockdown restrictions, government data showed Tuesday. Those areas are in addition to 37 areas that went back under lockdown on Monday, raising the prospect that restrictions on movement will soon spread further across Spain’s capital region. Ignacio Aguado, the deputy head of the Madrid region, said that health care services were struggling to control the spread of the virus, while Salvador Illa, Spain’s health minister, urged residents of Madrid to stay at home as much as possible.

Reporting was contributed by Livia Albeck-Ripka, Stephen Castle, Troy Closson, Rick Gladstone, Abby Goodnough, Andrew Higgins, Jan Hoffman, Mike Ives, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Apoorva Mandavilli, Victor Mather, Patrick McGeehan, Raphael Minder, Claire Moses, Campbell Robertson, Simon Romero, Dagny Salas, Anna Schaverien, Christopher F. Schuetze, Megan Specia, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Katherine J. Wu, Carl Zimmer and Karen Zraick.

[the-royal-courier]

Events This Week

For the Children Bake Sale

When: Thursday, May 4th Time:   Half past 7 bells (7:30 PM server)

Where: Stormwind Orphanage, Stormwind City

Hudson Shipping Company is proud to sponsor 'For the Children Bake Sale.' All proceeds to be donated to the Stormwind Orphanage. Hostess: Zel Williams. (Contact Anzelma in game)

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Studying the Scourge

When: Friday, May 5th Time:   5 bells (server) Where: Meet behind the Cathedral in Stormwind

As part of our journey into the Plaguelands. The Nature Expedition will be out in the field studying the effects of the scourge plague in both flora and fauna from the Plaguelands. Come join us as we learn close and personal how this has affected Azeroth. (Contact Firebát in game)

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Steelgrove Syndicate’s Fight Night

When:  Friday, May 5th Time:   7 Bells (server) Where:  TBD

New bracket system, and gambling system set up for those observing (in hopes of cutting the time of the event down!). Fighters cannot bet on themselves. 10k and 5k purse to 1st and 2nd place.  (Contact Verlai in game or @steelgrove-syndicate)

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The Stormwind Night Market

When:  Friday, May 5th Time:   8 Bells (server) Where:  Stormwind Docks (The series of tents at the base of the docks)

Offering a variety of items, curiosities, and acquisitions that one may find hard if not impossible to get elsewhere. With merits deep in foreign trade and a client list extending from pauper to prince, the Market offers to the public it’s stock of goods for a single night only every other week. Leave your preconceptions of the Trade District at home, and allow yourself to search for that elusive treat or item under the stars.  Visit The Stormwind Night Market for those hard to find items tonight!

(OOC: Contact Masnira or Lissmac for more information! We are open to outside vendors as well. Contact us before the event to get a booth spot! Note this market is a front for black market activity. Some questionable items will be for sale!)

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Hearts of Gold Charity Auction

When: Saturday, May 6th Time:  6 Bells (server) Where: Goldshire, Elwynn Forest

House Reinhardt invites the public to join them at the Hearts of Gold charity auction! Auctioning off rare artifacts, hand-made gowns and even some exotic creatures.  All the proceeds will be going toward the Stormwind Orphanage.  Live entertainment by an up and coming bard known as ‘The Fox’. Refreshments will also be provided by Miss Sparrow, running her tea booth, and Mister Xerathi, running his rum booth! A raffle with three winners to take home the grand prizes! Come and enjoy yourself while helping out a good cause!

(We will be auctioning off IC items which will be paid with IC gold, as well as auctioning off OOC items which will be paid with real gold! That said, all the items were donated by myself or those helping with the event, all the gold gained will be redistributed into other events in the future, as well as the raffle winnings!  If anyone still wants to set up a booth at the event, contact @madame-miersae)

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Children’s Week Charity Ball

When: Sunday, May 7th Time:   6 Bells Where: Ironforge

The Brotherhood of Iron's annual Children's Week charity ball, hosted to benefit the poor and orphaned children of Ironforge. There will be feasting, drinking, games, and entertainment! Price of entry: At least one donated toy (( ICly )) Dress your best!

(Contact Modarin in game for more information)

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OOC:  Blizzard Events

Children’s Week  [May 1–May 8]

Show an orphan what the hero’s life is like! Visit Orphan Matron Nightingale in Orgrimmar, Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath, or Orphan Matron Aria in Dalaran and make a child’s dream come true.

Battleground Bonus Event [May 2–May 8]

While this event is active, random Battlegrounds will award Honor at an increased rate. Glory awaits in the fields of battle!

PvP Brawl Warsong Scramble [May 2–May 8]

Do you have a flag? Warsong Gulch has always been the scene of an epic capture-the-flag battle, but what happens when you can capture your enemy’s flag without having your own at your base? Find out when you step into this PvP Brawl! We’ve also added a few more power-ups to the field of battle to stir things up a bit. To win, your team will need to be the first to capture five flags.

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Weekly Events

Amberstaff Wizard Coven Where: Ambermill, Silverpine Forest When: Tuesday’s @ 6 Bells

Do you seek power, as well as skill? Do you wish for the knowledge to pass any puzzle and best any foe? Are you in need of guidance and know not where to start? Those with the gift of magic are cordially invited to Ambermill, Silverpine- Beneath the Arcane Dome to test their ability and will to learn. Those with the ability to learn will be taken underwing and shown the path to greatness. Contact Archwizard Moonblade for more information (Helarsar in game)

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Wine & Poetry Night Hosted by Ludlow Vineyards Where:  Bridgeton Home (OOC: Ledgerman Lounge in Old Dalaran) When:  Wednesday’s at 6 Bells (server)

Join the employees of Ludlow Vineyards for an evening full of laughter, wine, food and good friends. Build a poem one line at a time from a theme chosen by the group.

@ludlow-vineyards  @elizebella @lumen

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The Vital Spice

When: Wednedays @ 6 Bells (server) Where: The Vital Spice (Canal Fit & Tailor Shop) Theme: Shop

The Vital Spice opens its doors to each Wednesday evening. Selling everything related to health care including herbs of the fresh, fried, and powdered variety, from all over the world, as well as, various exotic spices recommended for medical purposes. Specialized, hand-tailored bandages with healing salves soaked into the threads, tonics with various medical results, and much, much more!

(OOC: The Vital Spice is a Medicinal Store with a focus on realism and immersion for all parties involved. We actually go to pick the herbs, we actually bring them to the store, we actually have someone turn raw resources into products. All this in the name of an immersive experience for everyone.

Contact Elstine, Scassira, Sonnilyn , Galleia, or Tideguard to schedule bulk orders, or scripted RP.)

@harboson-c

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Steelgrove Syndicate Store When: Thursday @ 6 Bells (server) Where: Dwarven District (Pott’s Plates - Canal side) Theme: Shop

A small get together for those who wish to browse our wares, and enjoy good company. Refreshments offered free of charge! Join us at 6pm (st) until 8pm (st). ( @steelgrove-syndicate)

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Silverblade Contracts

Open: Monday & Tuesday: 4-6 pm, Friday & Saturday: 4-5 pm Closed: Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday Where: Cathedral District Theme: Shop

This shop hosts an array of services such as Weapon Sales and Repairs, Protection Services, and more! To inquire more about large orders or other services, please send word to Count Adorlan Matheredor (Adorlan in-game, @adorlan)  

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The Cask n Anvil: When - Fridays @ 6 pm server Where - Ironforge Who - Modarin Theme - Social

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The Wyrmhearth Tavern When: Saturdays @ 8 pm Server Where: Thelsamar Who: Annalura, Noelina, Leatei, or Oakenmoon

Theme: Social

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The Sparrow’s Nest When: Sunday’s Noon - 2 Bells (Server) Where: The Sparrow’s Nest (Essential Components in the Mage Quarter) Theme: Social Who:  Lakryss Sparrow

Come have a relax cup of tea in a quiet relaxed environment. All teas crafted by Miss Sparrow herself!

@lakryss-sparrow

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The Steel Pub

When: Sunday @ 6 pm server Where: in Anvilmar, Dun Morogh Who: Bath Ironstout Theme: Social

@bath-ironstout @ironstoutbrews

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Upcoming Events

First to Your Aid Charity Event When: Friday, May 12 Time:  6 to 8 Bells (Server) Where:  Stormwind Docks

House Addington and House Preston officially invite you to the docks of Stormwind to aid in the donating to Dalaran Infirmary, First to Your Aid, and in that aiding our troops who are fighting for all of us on the Broken Isles.

There will be food and drink, the selling of medical supplies, a one time free infirmary, and vendors to sell balloons alongside note cards in which you will be able to pen your late loved one and release it into the high heavens for their receiving.

Save for the free running of the Infirmary, all proceedings earned will be donated to First to Your Aid; we will also be taking donations otherwise for the Infirmary should anyone wish to give.

We pray we’ll see you there.

(OOC Info: We do still need a few people to help run vendoring and to heal in the infirmary, so please reach out to one of us if that interests you!If you’d like to be otherwise involved, please let either Ali/Ana or Loala know  @littlelady-lo @ananorah / @alistandra)

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Spring Brewer’s Festival

When: Saturday, May 13th Time:  6 to 8 Bells (server) Where: Stormwind Harbor

Come sample the finest ales, wines, and spirits the Alliance has to offer! Drinks, Entertainment, and Food provided by the Alliance Brewer’s Guild.

(For more info, /join alliancebrewersguild to contact someone!

Note:  We need more entertainers!  Contact Bathildis in game or @bath-ironstout if you would like to perform at the festival.)

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Ironforge Spring Craft Fest When: May 20, 6-9 bells Where: Great Forge area, Ironforge

The Dwarven clans of Khaz Modan, as well as other brothers and sisters of the Alliance, wish to host a crafter’s festival to honor centuries of fine craftsmanship! This will be the one year anniversary and Spring installment of this seasonal event!

Contact Bath Ironstout for your vendor booth, to be an entertainer, or more information. ( @bath-ironstout or You can message Bathildis, Davonna, or Modarin in game at any point or send your request via in-game mail!)

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Alliance Merchant Festival

When: Friday, June 10 Time: 7 to 10 Bells (Server) Where:  Celestial Court, Timeless Isles

Come out to support Alliance Merchants from around Azeroth. Games, food, drink, trinkets and more!

(Contact Loala in game or @littlelady-lo  for more information on how you can participate, host a booth or just come along for some fun! )

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(Have an event you would like advertised? Send a message to @risrielthron or contact Risri in game)

[automaticpostinfluencer]

US coronavirus cases top 100,000, California bans evictions for those impacted by COVID-19

The coverage on this live blog has ended — but for up-to-the-minute coverage on the coronavirus, visit the live blog from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific team.

All times below are in Eastern time.  

Global cases: More than 591,802

Global deaths: At least 26,996

US cases: At least 101,657

US deaths: At least 1,581

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

7: 26 pm: SF secures 300 hotel rooms for self-quarantine, will open new shelter at convention center 

San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Friday announced that the city had secured 300 hotel rooms for the purpose of self-isolating people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The city also will open a new shelter at its Moscone West convention facility. The 300 leased hotel rooms will be used to quarantine seniors, homeless people, first responders and health care workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus or under investigation for the illness and need to be isolated.

The city is also in the process of finalizing leases for an additional 3,000 hotel rooms next week, according to the office of the mayor. The new shelter at the Moscone West convention center will allow the city to house more vulnerable populations who are required to practice social distancing.

The shelter will allow the city to relocate some people from other shelters. Moscone West is typically used to house company conventions, such as the Worldwide Developers Conference where Apple has previously announced many of its iPhone and Mac products. “At a time when we’re encouraging everyone who can to stay home and stay six feet apart when they do go out, it’s important that our shelters and navigation centers also have the space to follow the public health requirements,” Breed said in a statement. —Salvador Rodroguez

7:09 pm: Nike learned a lesson in China: Some want to sweat away their coronavirus stress

Nike has a variety of mobile apps for fitness, including Nike Run Club.

Source: Nike

Nike‘s stores might be temporarily shut due to COVID-19, but the sportswear giant is getting more people to sweat during stressful times. With many gyms like Equinox shut down, people are turning to its apps, and that is helping boost its e-commerce business. 

Nike has made the premium version of its Nike Training Club app, which offers virtual workouts like a 43-minute upper body strength routine, or a 23-minute core strength yoga course, free to all U.S. consumers. It made the switch last weekend, when it started promoting a new ad campaign telling people to “Play Inside and Play for the World,” amidst the coronavirus pandemic. 

In the U.S., Nike has since seen a more than 100% increase in weekly active users of its NTC app, Heidi O’Neill, the president of Nike’s Consumer and Marketplace division said. And in China, where the virus originated, Nike saw an 80% increase in NTC workouts in the latest quarter. —Lauren Thomas

7:03 pm: Trump says he told Pence not to call governors who aren’t ‘appreciative’ of White House coronavirus efforts

President Donald Trump said Friday that he instructed Vice President Mike Pence not to reach out to governors who aren’t “appreciative” of his administration’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus in their states.

“If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump said of those state leaders.

“I think they should be appreciative. Because you know what? When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps of Engineers, they’re not appreciative to FEMA. It’s not right,” Trump told reporters at a daily press briefing at the White House.

The president mentioned Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both Democrats who have been critical of the White House’s actions to combat the deadly pandemic. —Kevin Breuninger, Christina Wilkie

6:56 pm: Fiorina criticizes coronavirus relief bill, says large companies haven’t ‘earned’ help

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina criticized the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, saying that the bill was too generous to large companies. 

“It’s the $500 billion of corporate bailout that I object to. I think it is not taxpayer money well spent, and I don’t think the companies have earned it, and they have vast resources at their disposal through some of the backstops and extraordinary measures that the Federal Reserve has taken,” Fiorina said Friday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” —Jesse Pound

6:51 pm: Airbnb freezes hiring and suspends marketing due to coronavirus

Airbnb will institute a hiring freeze and suspend its marketing as the company adjusts to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. 

The company’s founders will also be taking on no salary and its executives will take a 50% salary reduction for the next six months. Additionally, employees have been told that it is unlikely that they will get their 2020 bonus. The hiring freeze will impact all roles with the exception of a very small number of critical positions, according to the person, who asked to remain anonymous discussing internal matters. 

It’s a dramatic turn of events for Airbnb, which was poised to be the hottest tech IPO (or direct listing) of the year until the COVID-19 crisis struck the U.S. last month. —Sal Rodriguez

6:46 pm: As retailers extend store closures past the two-week mark, tougher decisions need to be made

March 27 was the day that many retailers set roughly two weeks ago as the marker for how long they planned to temporarily keep their shops closed. But as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise, nothing is opening back up again.

Not even close. 

For some, this might not come as a surprise. Many of these companies likely set the initial end-of-the-month date because they knew they could at least pay workers for two-weeks time, verbally committing to do so, and they had already paid their landlords March rent.

Now, heading into April, we are in uncharted territory. Where the industry goes from here will depend on many factors as the announcements from a number of retailers illustrate. —Lauren Thomas

6:40 pm: Inside the Navy’s hospital ships helping to ease the surge of coronavirus patients

Sailors perform a surgical procedure in an operating room aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort.

Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Danny Ray Nunez Jr. | US Navy

6:20 pm: Gov. Cuomo, the National Guard and FEMA transform the Javits Center into a hospital

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announces plans to convert the Jacob Javits Center on Manhattans West Side into a field hospital as Coronavirus cases continue to rise on March 23, 2020 in New York.

Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday that the construction of a temporary hospital at the Jacob K. Javits Center had been completed with the help of FEMA and the National Guard. The New York City convention center, which usually hosts events like New York Comic Con, is now home to 1,000 hospital beds that will be used to handle patient overflow caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The temporary hospital at the Javits Center in Manhattan is just the first of several that will be built in New York. Cuomo plans to have a temporary hospital in each of New York City’s five boroughs as well as in Westchester, Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties. –Hannah Miller, Adam Jeffery

5:45: US coronavirus cases top 100,000, doubling in three days

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 Friday, doubling in just three days as the pandemic accelerates and the U.S. rolls out broader testing measures.

Data from Johns Hopkins University showed the total number of coronavirus cases as 101,707 and the total number of deaths in the U.S. as 1,544.

The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in December. It has since spread to more than half a million people in almost every country around the world and continues to pick up speed, the World Health Organization warned earlier this week.

“The pandemic is accelerating,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday at a press briefing from the organization’s Geneva headquarters. “It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for second 100,000 cases, and just four days for the third 100,000 cases.” –William Feuer

5:30 pm: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper orders residents to stay at home order

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued a stay-at-home order Friday and closed the state’s nonessential businesses in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The order goes into effect 5:00 pm Monday, but Cooper urged residents to begin staying at home immediately.

“It’s what we have to do to save lives,” he said at a press briefing Friday.

Residents will still be able to leave for essential reasons, including to get food or medicine, according to Cooper. People will also be able to leave their homes for outdoor exercise or to help others.

North Carolina has 763 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and has had three deaths from the virus, according to data compiled by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. –Hannah Miller

5 pm: Trump signs $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill as the US tries to prevent economic devastation

President Donald Trump signed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill on Friday, as Washington tries to blunt economic destruction from the pandemic ripping through the United States.

The House earlier passed the stimulus package, believed to be the largest in U.S. history, by voice vote, which simply measures if more lawmakers shout for “aye” or “nay” on whether to support it. The chamber scrambled Friday to block an effort to delay its passage. —Jacob Pramuk

4:30 pm: California suspends eviction orders for those financially impacted by coronavirus

Medical personnel from Riverside (CA) University Health Systems hospitals administer a Coronavirus Test to an individual during drive-through testing in the parking lot of Diamond Stadium.

Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order banning the enforcement of eviction orders for renters affected by the coronavirus through May 31. The order is effective immediately, providing relief to tenants who have rent due April 1.

Landlords are prohibited from evicting tenants for nonpayment of rent and the enforcement of evictions by courts or law enforcement is also banned, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

Tenants must declare in writing no more than seven days after their rent’s due date that they cannot pay all or part of their rent because of COVID-19. Reasons for lack of payment could include being sick from the coronavirus, caring for someone who is sick, experiencing a layoff or needing to miss work to care for a child, among other circumstances. Tenants remain obligated to repay full rent in a timely manner and could still face eviction after the enforcement moratorium is lifted. They must provide documentation that verifies their financial status changed because of the virus. –Hannah Miller

4:15 pm: SeaWorld furloughs nearly all of its employees

SeaWorld has temporarily furloughed more than 90% of its employees as of April 1, according to an SEC filing. Furloughed employees will not be paid after March 31 and will be eligible for unemployment subject to local regulations. “The furlough period is uncertain at this time due to the temporary park closures and will be reassessed as business conditions dictate,” the filing said. SeaWorld said earlier this month that it initially planned to close all of its parks until the end of March. —Hannah Miller

4 pm: Trump orders General Motors to make ventilators under Defense Production Act

President Donald Trump has ordered General Motors to make ventilators under the Defense Production Act hours after criticizing the company for not acting quickly enough to produce the supplies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Korean War-era statute can force certain American companies to produce materials that are in short supply in the face of the growing outbreak.

The order comes hours after GM announced plans to build critical-care ventilators with Ventec Life Systems at one of the automaker’s components plants in Indiana. —Michael Wayland

3:45 pm: Disneyland and Disney World to stay closed

Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort will remain closed until further notice, according to an announcement from the Walt Disney Company. Hourly employees of the parks as well as resort cast members will continue to be paid through April 18, the company said.

Universal Orlando Resort previously extended its closure until April 19. After shutting down on March 16, the theme park originally planned to stay closed until the end of March. —Hannah Miller

3:30: San Francisco’s early restrictions seem to be helping hospitals avoid coronavirus overload — so far

In San Francisco, once feared to be a hotbed for the coronavirus, doctors are not yet seeing the dire overcrowding of hospitals that other areas like New York are are experiencing.

“I was on campus today, and it’s actually quite mellow,” said Dr. Bob Watcher, UC San Francisco’s Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine told CNBC on Thursday. “Because we’re not doing elective procedures that can be pushed back, it’s even quieter than usual.”

For now, UCSF clinicians are managing a steady trickle of patients entering into the emergency rooms with COVID-19 symptoms. while still bracing for a possible flood. As of Friday, San Francisco has 279 confirmed cases and the city saw its largest increase of COVID-19 diagnoses on Thursday. California now has more than 4,000 known COVID-19 cases. —Christina Farr

3:23 pm: Dow pares some losses, down 400 points

Major stock indexes pared some losses in late trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 400 points, or 1.7%, after falling as much as 1,000 earlier in the session. The S&P 500 slid 1.2% while the Nasdaq Composite traded 1.6% lower. —Fred Imbert

3:06 pm: Walmart, Kroger have already hired thousands of new employees 

Thousands of new Walmart and Kroger employees are already restocking shelves, checking out customers and working at distribution centers across the country.

Kroger is the parent company of grocery chains, including Fred Meyer and Harris Teeter. It has hired more than 23,500 employees so far, and it plans to hire an additional 20,000 for its stores, manufacturing plants and distribution centers in the coming weeks, according to a company news release.

Walmart hired 25,000 employees in less than a week, after it announced plans to add a total of 150,000 part-time and full-time workers through the end of May. 

The major U.S. grocers have some of the most aggressive plans to staff up as boxes of pasta, canned goods, toilet paper and other essential items continue to fly off shelves during the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve expedited hiring and received numerous applications from people laid off or fuloughed by restaurants, hotels or other hard-hit industries. —Melissa Repko

2:50 pm: Four dead on Carnival cruise ship amid new coronavirus outbreak aboard

Four passengers died aboard Holland America’s “Zaandam” cruise ship and two people on board tested positive for the coronavirus, the company said.

The company, which is owned by parent Carnival Corp., did not say how many passengers and crew were tested, but said 53 passengers and 85 crew members are exhibiting symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. There are more than 1,800 people aboard the ship, the company said, adding that four doctors and four nurses are also onboard.

The company said in a statement that “four older guests have passed away on Zaandam,” but did not specify whether they died of COVID-19. “No one has been off the ship since March 14 in Punta Arenas, Chile.” —Will Feuer

2:40 pm: France reports new spike in deaths

Members of the Charitable Brotherhood of Saint-Eloi de Bethune, each wearing a face mask, carry a coffin towards a grave, at Pierrette cemetery in Bethune, on March 27, 2020, as the country is under lockdown to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus.

Denis Charlet | AFP | Getty Images

French health authorities reported 299 new deaths from coronavirus, taking the total to 1,995, as the government has decided to extend by two weeks the national lockdown, now due to end on April 15 at the earliest.

The climb in the number of deaths represents a daily rise of 18%, a less-marked increase from the previous day.

During a press conference, health agency director Jerome Salomon added that the number of cases had risen to 32,964, a rise of 13% in 24 hours. —Reuters

2:11 pm: GM to start producing critical-care ventilators

General Motors and Ventec Life Systems said they have agreed to build critical-care ventilators at one of the automaker’s components plants in Indiana.

GM and Washington-based Ventec said officials are “working around the clock to meet the urgent need for more ventilators,” citing efforts to begin production at the Kokomo plant “already underway.” GM, according to a release, is donating its resources at cost. —Michael Wayland 

1:45 pm: Italy tops 9,000 deaths, overtakes China in cases

A view shows some of 35 coffins of deceased people stored in a warehouse in Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo, Lombardy, on March 26, 2020 prior to be transported in another region to be cremated, during the country’s lockdown following the COVID-19 new coronavirus pandemic.

Piero Cruciatti | AFP | Getty Images

Italy recorded 919 new deaths from coronavirus, the highest daily toll anywhere in the world, while the number of confirmed cases eclipsed the total in China where the virus first emerged.

Italy was the first Western country to introduce severe restrictions on movement after uncovering the outbreak five weeks ago. It has tightened them week by week, banning all non-essential activities until at least next Friday.

Only the United States has now recorded more cases, while Italy has suffered almost twice as many deaths as any other nation. —Reuters

1:30 pm: House passes $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (C) and Representatives Kevin McCarthy (L) and Steny Hoyer show the bill to the press after the House passed a $2 trillion stimulus bill, on March 27, 2020, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC

Alex Edelman | AFP | Getty Images

The House passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill, sending the unprecedented measure to President Donald Trump’s desk after a scramble to block efforts to delay its passage.

The plan, which includes one-time payments to individuals, strengthened unemployment insurance, additional health-care funding and loans and grants to businesses to deter layoffs, got through the Senate unanimously on Wednesday night. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the bill “as mitigation” of the disease’s destruction, predicting there would be more plans to aid “recovery.” —Jacob Pramuk

1:23 pm: Google is offering $340 million in free ads for small businesses as part of coronavirus help package

Google is offering $340 million in ad credits to small and mid-size businesses with active Google ad accounts as part of an $800 million coronavirus response package, the company announced.

As part of the package, the company is also donating the following:

A $200 million investment fund that will help NGOs and financial institutions provide small businesses with capital

$250 million in advertising grants to help the World Health Organization and government agencies offer information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19

$20 million in Google Cloud credits for academic institutions and researchers

Unspecified financial support to help increase production capacity for life-saving equipment, including face masks and ventilators. —Jennifer Elias

1:11 pm: Coronavirus relief bill gives small businesses more time to cover payroll taxes

Small businesses facing payroll tax payments are likely to get some relief from Congress – the option of deferring payment to Uncle Sam until next year.

In particular, the pending $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill will permit small businesses to defer their share of Social Security payroll taxes in 2020. Payroll taxes are shared by workers and their employers, so that each pays 6.2% toward Social Security and 1.45% toward Medicare.

Sole proprietorships would also qualify. —Darla Mercado

1:04 pm: Cramer sees oil plummeting below $20 per barrel on dual coronavirus-price war crises

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he thinks the price of oil will fall further because of demand and supply shocks from the dual crises of the coronavirus pandemic and global producer infighting.

Cramer cited oil prices as something high-frequency, computerized stock market traders are watching.

“I think oil takes out $20,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.” With U.S. oil trading around $21.50 per barrel early Friday, prices would have to fall more than 7% to go below $20. It was down more than 4% late Friday morning.

On March 18, the per-barrel price of West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, closed just above $20, in an over 24% single-day plunge that was its third-worst session ever. —Kevin Stankiewicz

12:54 pm: WHO officials enroll first patients from Norway and Spain in ‘historic’ coronavirus drug trial

The first patients in a “historic” trial to test treatments for the coronavirus have been enrolled in Norway and Spain, World Health Organization officials announced.

World health officials are testing four of the most promising drugs to fight COVID-19, including malaria medications chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, an antiviral compound called Remdesivir, a combination of HIV drugs Lopinavir and Ritonavir and a combination of those drugs plus interferon-beta. —Will Feuer

12:48 pm: The Fed’s balance sheet just passed $5 trillion for the first time ever due to rescue bill

Though its efforts to keep markets running and boost the economy are just getting into gear, the Federal Reserve’s asset portfolio has reached levels never seen before.

The central bank’s balance sheet, which consists largely of bonds and other assets it has purchased over the years, ballooned to $5.3 trillion for the week ending Wednesday. That’s well above the $4.52 trillion peak it hit in mid-May 2016 before the Fed started rolling off the bonds it had acquired during and after the financial crisis.

This latest peak has occurred in rapid fashion, the result of expansion begun in small steps earlier this year then accelerated with the growth of the coronavirus crisis. —Jeff Cox

12:43 pm: ‘Throw Massie out’ – Trump rages on Twitter after GOP Rep hints he’ll oppose coronavirus stimulus bill

Rep. Thomas Massie, leaves the House Republicans’ caucus meeting in the Capitol on immigration reforms on Thursday morning, June 7, 2018.

Bill Clark | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images

President Donald Trump lashed out at Rep. Thomas Massie, calling him a “third rate Grandstander” after the Kentucky Republican signaled he would oppose a $2 trillion relief bill intended to soften the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“He just wants the publicity. He can’t stop it, only delay, which is both dangerous & costly,” Trump said of Massie in a series of furious tweets.

Trump said that while Republicans had to “give up some stupid things” through negotiations with Democrats “in order to get the ‘big picture’ done,” the bill was “90% GREAT!”

“WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!” Trump added. —Jacob Pramuk, Kevin Breuninger

12:39 pm: Pence says economic fundamentals remain strong despite massive coronavirus impact

Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain robust despite the coronavirus pandemic that has tanked markets and led to unprecedented layoffs of millions of Americans. 

“While the stock market has ebbed and flowed, and even this week made dramatic moves, President Trump and our entire economic team believe that all the fundamentals continue to be strong,” Pence said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “And that, as we deal with the coronavirus that this economy will come roaring back once we see our nation through this challenging time.” —Tucker Higgins

12:33 pm: IMF chief Georgieva says the world is in a recession, containment will dictate strength of recovery

International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva said that the global economy is now in a recession thanks to COVID-19, but that she’s heartened to see world leaders finally realizing that only coordinated effort will be able to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“We have stated that the world is now in recession and that the length and depth of this recession depend on two things: Containing the virus and having an effective, coordinated response to the crisis,” she told CNBC’s Sara Eisen. 

“I’m very encouraged by what I see now. I see much clearer understanding [among global leaders] that if we don’t beat it everywhere we won’t be able to get out of it,” she added. —Thomas Franck

12:19 pm: Apple announces COVID-19 website and app in partnership with CDC and the White House

Apple has developed a new website and app that will provide a screening tool for COVID-19 symptoms as well as up-to-date information from trusted sources about the coronavirus outbreak.

The software was developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control, the White House-led Coronavirus Task Force, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The COVID-19 app is available on Apple’s App Store, and there is also a website that can be accessed from Windows or Android phones and computers. —Kif Leswing

12:12 pm: GOP Rep. Massie pledges to delay vote on massive $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), trailed by reporters, walks to the floor of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Capitol on March 27, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Win McNamee | Getty Images

House members are scrambling back to the Capitol on Friday morning as one member’s opposition to a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package is set to delay its passage.

With few representatives in Washington this week as the outbreak tears across the country, House leaders hoped to approve the legislation quickly Friday by voice vote — which simply decides whether shouted yeas or nays from members present are louder. But Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said he plans to force a typical recorded vote, which could hold up passage for hours as the House needs a quorum of 216 representatives present.

In a series of tweets announcing his plan to request a full vote, Massie argued the unprecedented rescue measure spends too much taxpayer money, criticizing Democrats for pushing for changes this week rather than approving an earlier version of the legislation. —Jacob Pramuk

12:08 pm: Bank of America CEO says struggling customers can defer loan payments online with ‘two-clicks’

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said that retail customers who are struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic can defer loan payments online with a simple two-click process.

“What we’ve told people is we’ll defer payments,” Moynihan told CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “If you have a cash flow interruption because of your employment and you need to defer your payments for 30, 60, 90 days, call us up.”

The second-largest U.S. bank by assets has had 150,000 requests for payment deferrals since the coronavirus crisis began in earnest in the U.S. this month, Moynihan said. To streamline the process, which can tie up call center lines, the bank is ramping up a way to apply for relief online, he said. —Hugh Son

11:59 am: Trump criticizes GM, CEO Mary Barra for wanting ‘top dollar’ for producing ventilators

President Donald Trump criticized General Motors and its CEO Mary Barra for their response to producing needed ventilators amid the coronavirus pandemic and wanting “top dollar” for such work.

Trump, in a tweet, said, “As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke ‘P’.”

In the initial tweet, the meaning of “Invoke P” wasn’t immediately clear. But Trump followed up with a second tweet saying he was referring to invoking the Defense Production Act that would force companies to produce such equipment. —Michael Wayland, Lauren Hirsch

11:53 am: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo extends school closures as coronavirus cases rise

Paramedics wearing protective equipment carry a stretcher into Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York, U.S., on Thursday, March 26, 2020.

Angus Mordant | Bloomberg | Getty Images

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo extended school closures across the state by two weeks to April 15 as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise, he said.

“When you look at the number of cases that’s still increasing, it only makes sense to keep the schools closed,” he said at a press conference.

Cuomo is also calling on hospitals across the state to double their capacity. The state currently has 53,000 hospital beds, but will need 140,000 of them for coronavirus patients over the next three weeks when the outbreak is expected to peak in New York, he said.

“We’re asking hospitals to try to increase capacity 100% … “We’re looking at converting dorms. We’re looking at converting hotels,” he said. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

11:47 am: Mnuchin says taxpayers will be ‘compensated’ for airline relief

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that the coronavirus economic stimulus bill before Congress is not an airline bailout and that taxpayers will be compensated for relief given to companies hobbled by the global pandemic.

At the same time, Mnuchin said in an interview with Fox Business Network that plane-maker Boeing has not requested government help.

“I’ve been very clear this is not an airline bailout,” Mnuchin said. “And that taxpayers need to be compensated for relief they’re giving to airlines.”

U.S. airlines are preparing to tap the government for up to $25 billion in grants to cover payroll in a sharp travel downturn triggered by the coronavirus, even after the government warned it may take stakes in exchange for bailout funds, people familiar with the matter said. —Reuters

11:39 am: ‘This will not be licked by Easter,’ doctor warns in call for two-week US lockdown

President Donald Trump wants the country to “open up,” but a growing number of health experts want a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Those experts are saying the United States needs to impose a two-week or longer pause of non-essential activity before federal and state governments can even think about economic and social life starting to return to normal. 

Far stricter restrictions on businesses and individuals need to be adopted – and not the loosening of restrictions called for by some, including Trump, the experts say. 

“This will not be licked by Easter,” said Dr. Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, who is one of the loudest voices calling for a shutdown. —Dan Mangan

11:30 am: America’s department stores can make it as much as 8 months with closed stores, analyst says

A sitting area typically filled with people is virtually empty as a man walks through Herald Square with a protective mask on March 12, 2020 in New York City.

Gary Hershorn | Getty Images

With stores temporarily shut due to the coronavirus pandemic — and a slim-to-zero chance of opening in the near future — America’s department stores are facing a cash crunch. 

Department store chains have enough liquidity to make it about five to eight months, with their stores sitting dark, in this coronavirus pandemic, according to an analysis by Cowen & Co. It says that is “better than feared” because the firm does not anticipate the temporary store closures will drag on for that long. 

In making these assumptions, Cowen is measuring liquidity as cash plus revolvers, relative to key expenses such as rent, labor and promised dividend payments. Cowen said labor costs are about 10% of annual sales, while rent is about 3%, to give a sense of what some of these expenses look like. —Lauren Thomas

11:18 am: Digital divide of US households without internet 

Data from Pew Research Center shows large swaths of the U.S. are trying to cope without a household internet connection while much of the country hunkers down to work and shop from home.

Before coronavirus hit the U.S., about 7% of private-industry workers had access to a flexible workplace benefit, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those jobs tend to pay well, which helps explain why access to telework varies sharply by income, according to the Pew Research Center.

Lack of internet access has also left millions of households cut off from vital services and information during the pandemic. —Melodie Warner, John Schoen

10:27 am: Real ID deadline gets pushed back due to coronavirus 

With air travel at a near standstill amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Homeland Security is extending the Real ID enforcement deadline a full year to Oct. 1, 2021.

“The federal, state and local response to the spread of the coronavirus here in the United States necessitates a delay in this deadline,” DHS acting secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement.

States across the country have temporarily closed or restricted access to departments of motor vehicles, which has prevented millions of people from applying for and receiving their new state-issued Real IDs, the statement said.

For now, adults boarding any federally regulated aircraft can continue to use their current driver’s licenses as usual for domestic travel and wait until 2021 to obtain a Real ID-compliant license. —Jessica Dickler

10:21 am: US consumer sentiment falls to lowest level in more than 3 years 

Doug Hassebroek shops with a protective mask during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Brooklyn, New York, March 25, 2020.

Caitlin Ochs | Reuters

U.S. consumer sentiment fell to a three-year low as the coronavirus outbreak ramps up, according to data from the University of Michigan. 

The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 89.1 in March — its lowest level since October 2016 — from 101 in February. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected consumer sentiment to fall to 90.

March’s decline in sentiment was the fourth-largest in nearly 50 years, according to Richard Curtin, chief economist for the Surveys of Consumers. —Fred Imbert 

9:35 am: Dow tanks more than 800 points following a massive 3-day bounce 

Stocks fell sharply, giving back some of the strong gains experienced in the previous three days to cap off another volatile week on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 800 points at the open, or over 3%. The S&P 500 slid 3.2% while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.9%.

Chevron, Boeing and American Express led the 30-stock Dow lower, sliding more than 5% each. Energy and industrials were the worst-performing sectors in the S&P 500 as they dropped 5.8% and 4.3%, respectively. —Fred Imbert

9:03 am: Billionaire Leon Cooperman: I’m optimistic the stock market has bottomed on coronavirus fears 

Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC he’s optimistic that the stock market has bottomed on coronavirus fears.

“If I’m right on the virus call, if I’m right and that’s the big ‘if’ … I think the market at the recent low … was close enough to the bottom to be called the bottom,” Cooperman said on “Squawk Box.”

The S&P 500 hit its recent low of 2191.86 on Monday, which was about 35% lower than the index’s last month’s all-time high.

The investor, who made his fortune picking individual stocks, said he sees an S&P range of 2,200 to 2,800 this year. —Kevin Stankiewicz

8:50 am: CEO behind Buffett, Bezos health venture says US ‘death toll curve’ worse than China

The CEO behind the joint health-care venture between JPMorgan, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway is calling for a national “shelter-in-place” order as deaths from the coronavirus continue to rise in the U.S.

“Our death toll curve is now worse than when China was at the same stage,” Haven CEO Dr. Atul Gawande told CNBC. “We have 12 states with more than 1,500 cases. China had one province,” said Gawande, also a renowned surgeon, author and speaker.

Gawande said health officials are learning from Washington state, where the death toll there appears to be declining. “Shelter in place, which some states are doing,” he said. “We don’t have the others on board. We really need a national shelter in place.” —Berkeley Lovelace

8:29 am: US infections on the rise 

8:13 am: Build-A-Bear Workshop and The Cheesecake Factory announce furloughs

Mall staples Build-A-Bear Workshop and The Cheesecake Factory both announced they are furloughing workers. Build-A-Bear plans to furlough more than 90% of its workforce, and The Cheesecake Factory has furloughed 41,000 hourly restaurant workers, according to regulatory filings.

Furloughed employees for both companies will continue to be eligible for employee benefits, including insurance.

Citing the impact of government regulations and landlord decisions to close properties, Cheesecake Factory is not paying rent for the month of April. —Amelia Lucas

8:04 am: Dow futures point to 800-point drop

U.S. stock futures pointed sharply lower following a strong rally sparked by increasing expectations of a massive fiscal stimulus from Congress while investors shook off grim unemployment data.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures implied an opening drop of about 800 points amid volatile trading. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also pointed to more than 2% declines at the open. —Fred Imbert

7:20 am: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson tests positive

Screen grab of Prime Minister Boris Johnson addresses the nation from 10 Downing Street, London, as he placed the UK on lockdown as the Government seeks to stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

PA Video – PA Images

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he has tested positive for COVID-19. “Over the last 24 hours I have developed mild symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus,” he said on Twitter. “I am now self-isolating, but I will continue to lead the government’s response via video-conference as we fight this virus.” 

“The test was carried out in No 10 by NHS staff and the result of the test was positive,” a spokesman for No. 10 Downing Street said in a statement. “In keeping with the guidance, the Prime Minister is self-isolating in Downing Street. —Will Feuer

7:13 am: New York hospitals will run out of medical supplies in a week, former FDA chief says

7:07 am: UK to pay pensions and pensions of furloughed staff

Britain will announce it intends to cover the costs of employer national insurance and pension contributions for businesses furloughing staff, a statement from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said. —Reuters

7:05 am: Norway predicts 2% economic slowdown this year

Norway’s government now predicts its gross domestic product excluding oil will contract by 2% this year as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, a sharper drop than the 1% contraction it expected last week. The forecast is based on the assumption that the urgent situation in Norway and other countries remains for the coming two months, and that growth thereafter gradually returns to the normal, the government said in a white paper. —Reuters

6:59 am: Spain’s death toll spikes by 769 overnight to 4,858

Two workers transport a coffin at La Almudena cemetery on March 26, 2020 in Madrid, Spain. Spain plans to continue its quarantine measures at least through April 11.

Carlos Alvarez | Getty Images

Spain’s death toll rose overnight by 769 cases to 4,858, the health ministry said, the highest number of fatalities recorded in 24 hours for the country. The total number of those infected rose to 64,059 from 56,188 on Thursday. —Reuters

6:10 pm: Hungary announces two-week lockdown

Hungary has become the latest country to announce a two-week lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said via public radio that while citizens must maintain social distancing, they would be able to go to work, shop and take limited exercise outdoors, starting Saturday. Orban said people can still go outside, but they cannot be in a group. Hungarian police will enforce compliance with the rules and apply fines, if needed. —Silvia Amaro

5:37 pm: Iran’s death toll rises to 2,378

The Iranian health ministry reported a total of 2,378 deaths from the virus and 32,332 confirmed cases, according to Reuters. —Silvia Amaro

5:30 am: Italy’s business morale plunged in March

A worker carries out sanitation operations for the Coronavirus emergency in Piazza dei Miracoli near to the Tower of Pisa in a deserted town on March 17, 2020 in Pisa, Italy.

Laura Lezza | Getty Images

Morale among Italian businesses plunged in March as the outbreak dampened economic activity, Reuters reported.

Data by statistics institute ISTAT showed that its composite business morale index — which captures the manufacturing, retail, construction and services sectors — sank to a reading of 81.7 this month from last month’s 97.8. The March reading was the lowest since June 2013, Reuters reported. —Yen Nee Lee

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Russia reports spike in cases; Hungary imposes national lockdown

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Trade Wars and Immigration Dampening the Business Mood

Are small businesses beginning to have feelings other than optimism as we near the end of 2018?

Headlines this week suggest that the ebullient air among small business owners like yourself is being overcome by worry. Maybe it’s just the holidays?

Or maybe it’s just the flu?

This week, we learned that retailers across the country are already dealing with or preparing for an escalation in the trade dispute with China. As relations between Washington and Beijing continue to teeter back and forth, retailers here are reacting by cutting back on orders from the country.

At the same time, a new report from National Write Your Congressman (NWYC) finds that the top concern right now among small business owners is immigration to the U.S. This is a relatively new concern (or at least a recent one) for small business owners. It’s the first time in the history of NWYC’s index that immigration has ranked among the top 5 issues concerning small business in America.

It’s the end of the week and almost the end of the year. Try not to worry. Think about that holiday party you’ve got planned. Remember, though, if you’re hosting, don’t let it get out of control.

Also, check out what else made headlines this week for small businesses in our weekly news and information roundup below:

Management

Office Fantasy Sports Leagues Good for Company Culture, New Survey Reveals

Businesses are always looking for ways to cultivate the culture of their company with the goal of improving the overall performance of the organization. A new survey from Kimble Applications looks at how fantasy sports leagues can have a positive impact in that endeavor. In the survey, more than half or 54% said sport related activities have a positive effect on company culture.

Marketing Tips

BrandintheBox Offers Small Business Owners Brand Building for a Monthly Subscription

A new subscription-based tool can help you define and build your brand through a series of dynamic strategies designed to corral in the intangibles so you clients get a full experience. BrandintheBox also supplies a series of guides and actionable tools that spring from the tried and tested cornerstones of brand-building.

Retail Trends

Free Shipping, Smooth Shopping Experience Led to Spikes in Spending Cyber Monday

The power of discounts was on display yet again this year during the holiday shopping weekend as more people scrambled to snag online shopping deals for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

Small Business Operations

32% of Your Millennial Employees Work in the Bathroom – and it’s NOT a Good Thing

That is a sign your employees are working too hard? And while this might sound like a nice problem for a small business owner to have, a new study shows that millennials tend to be workaholics — a tendency that can be bad both for them and for your business.

Technology Trends

Zoho Inventory Goes Mobile with Benefits for Small Businesses

A little over three years after its launch, Zoho Inventory becomes available on your mobile device with an all-new Android App. The 28th product release under the Zoho umbrella, Zoho Inventory was launched in 2015 and is a boon for small businesses.

The New Dell Vostro 5000 Addresses the Needs of Small Businesses

When it comes to computing, small businesses have a wide range of needs. The new Dell Vostro 5000 line of laptops have been designed to address these many different needs while taking into consideration the budget of said small businesses.

Photo via Shutterstock

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Finances – The New York Times

Two days before learning that she would lose her job, Lissa Gilliam spent hundreds of dollars online on baby products.

A 37-year-old expectant mother, Ms. Gilliam had planned to ask local parents in Seattle for used strollers and secondhand onesies in a bid to reduce waste. But as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the area, new items delivered in boxes seemed a safer bet.

She figured she could afford the splurge, earning $50 an hour as a full-time contractor designing educational curriculums for a nonprofit. But then, on April 2, her employer slashed her hours and told her that her contract would end in early May — a few weeks before she is to give birth.

Suddenly, like many others, Ms. Gilliam became hyperaware of her expenses. She and her husband, a high school physics teacher, now take a painful daily tally of their financial priorities: Is that $5 monthly web magazine subscription really necessary? How much does watering the garden cost? When will they need to tap their paltry savings?

“We’re OK for now,” she said. “But the bottom may fall out from under us.”

As millions of Americans lose jobs, take pay cuts, close businesses and absorb family members into their homes, they are being forced to rethink where their money goes. Even before the scramble for new jobs can begin, people are cajoling creditors, looking for gig work or simply cutting back to get through the first few disorienting weeks.

“An economic shock like this could have a long-term impact on people who have traditionally felt like they were being cautious, that they weren’t profligate with their money, but didn’t have to worry about paying for rent or affording food,” said Stephanie Aaronson, the director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “They might have more debt, which will make it harder to spend in the future, or they might just feel less secure, which could boost savings and potentially dampen the recovery.”

Ms. Gilliam and her husband are waiting for Washington State to make jobless benefits available to contractors through a federal assistance program, and hope to take advantage of a state program for maternity aid once their daughter is born. A $15,000 construction project planned for the rear of their house is on hold. They canceled their gym membership, their Hulu streaming service, multiple newspapers and even the Adobe Acrobat software that Ms. Gilliam uses for design work.

On the whole, Ms. Aaronson said, household finances “were in relatively good condition as of six weeks ago — they were actually pretty healthy.” Now, she said, “a much broader swath of households are experiencing a complete loss of income compared to what we typically see in a recession.”

Before the pandemic, Carol Cruz’s private health insurance plan cost her $840 a month — up from less than $500 four years ago. The bill ate up most of her $1,200 monthly paycheck, exceeding even the $600 monthly payment on the house she shares with her husband and their 17-year-old granddaughter in Tulare, Calif.

On March 29, she was furloughed from her part-time job as a mental health therapist until at least the end of May. Other than the state unemployment benefits she hopes to receive soon, Ms. Cruz, 62, no longer has an income.

So she got on the phone for at least three hours a day, asking for leniency from the health insurance provider, her mortgage lender and the credit union that holds the loan for her husband’s Chevrolet truck. All offered her more flexible terms, including 90-day grace periods and pay-what-you-can options. (Some creditors, she said, were less willing to negotiate.)

The adjustments help keep the bills manageable, Ms. Cruz said. But her grocery costs have doubled, now that the price of eggs has soared and her granddaughter is no longer having free lunches at school.

“I don’t know about my future,” Ms. Cruz said. “I’m not letting myself think about tomorrow, just about whether we have food today and money in the bank.”

But some people, many of whom have never seriously budgeted, are now mapping out strict spending schedules for the next few months.

After being furloughed in mid-March from her bartending and serving job at a Minneapolis concert hall, Krissy Calbert, 26, went from earning $300 in tips some nights to having no income as she waited for government aid.

“It was two weeks of just panic — I was just going off the groceries I already had, trying to ration until money came in,” she said. “You get really creative. You eat little half meals, and you experiment with your seasonings and condiments to try to forget that you’re eating the same thing over and over.”

Earlier this month, Ms. Calbert began receiving a weekly infusion of $1,100 from the state. She is now trying to reschedule when monthly bills are due so she can space out the payments: $600 for rent, $75 for her phone, up to $120 for utilities, $60 for streaming services, $200 for credit cards, plus other expenses.

“I’m trying to get all of my credit card payments into the same week, so I can have a credit card week, a rent week, a phone week,” Ms. Calbert said.

She has switched her grocery shopping from Target to Aldi, where, she said, she can afford to splurge on fresh produce and protein. Without health insurance, she is willing spend an extra $30 or $40 on fruits and vegetables in hopes of keeping her immune system strong, she said.

“I can’t take the risk,” Ms. Calbert said. “A hospital bill right now would ruin me.”

More than half of lower-income adults in the United States say they will struggle to pay bills this month, compared to a quarter of their middle-income counterparts and 11 percent of those in the upper-income tier, according to a survey of nearly 5,000 adults by Pew Research Center. Researchers defined a three-person household earning $37,500 to $112,600 annually as middle-income. Over all, more than half of those who expect a federal stimulus infusion will use most of the money to cover essential expenses, while one in five say they plan to save the funds.

To create a financial buffer, many people are hunting for freelance or part-time work. Searches for work-from-home jobs rose 126 percent in March on FlexJobs, while traffic to the site has boomed 58 percent from a year ago. On Upwork, companies are looking for people to provide tech support for their homebound employees and to draft corporate messages about the coronavirus.

Lonn Dugan, a digital marketing specialist in Sylvania, Ohio, has seen many clients scaling back their promotional efforts, such as one nonprofit that cut its budget by 90 percent after a major annual event was canceled. But another client, an agricultural supply company, commissioned a major website update, while a local mental health group wanted to ramp up its virtual support groups.

The pressure on Mr. Dugan, 60, is intense. His workday is three hours longer than it used to be, between his existing clients and his attempts to drum up new business. He and his wife lost a third of their incomes; neither is eligible for government aid.

“We’re completely overwhelmed by the shortfall. We can afford groceries and maybe the house and car payments, and that’s it,” he said. “But we’re not alone, and we’re focusing on acceptance as opposed to hand-wringing. We’re taking care of necessities, and that’s enough for right now.”

Still, Mr. Dugan admits being stretched thin emotionally. He misses his wife, even though they are in the same house and she no longer needs to make a two-hour round-trip commute to her health care job. But the couple are so busy trying to stay afloat that they have stopped cooking fresh meals and turn instead to frozen dinners and fast food.

“We just don’t have time,” he said. “We’re exhausted at the end of the day.”

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