I had abandoned these updates almost exactly three months ago (24 Jul 2020) and it’s been nagging me. My process had been to slowly build a list of notes over days and weeks and to review liked tweets that were my bookmarks of useful information. I would then try to organize it. When I stopped posting, I had very little new that I was experiencing and so updates and observations began to stagnate. From the start, I wanted this to be a way to remember each moment of a world that could radically change within weeks or days. Even though my July experiences were anemic, much still happened in the three months since then, and those months will be a dark age when I look back a year/years from now.
Trump flip-flops on masks and distancing in the most pandering way possible by restating what every authority was saying months ago when he was actively contradicting them. News outlets shame themselves by suggesting he’s being “presidential” now. Reports reveal Birx is spineless. #ETTD
15 Jul 2020
Hospitals must bypass the CDC and send data directly to HHS
16 Jul 2020
FL closes pandemic response center because it’s a hotbed of infection
17 Jul 2020
John Lewis dies
18 Jul 2020
Report on Birx yes-manning Trump and abandoning science
19 Jul 2020
Kemp tries to silence Keisha Lance Bottoms and she smacks him down
20 Jul 2020
21 Jul 2020
22 Jul 2020
Trump “sees the light” and recommends masks
23 Jul 2020
CDC reverses it’s recommendation that schools should not open
@molotovbouquet tweeted an image of Fauci and Trump in response to a new Lincoln Project ad about their respective histories:
The molotov account’s name is “Not Banksy” and states that they’re “not on Twitter, not @BryanSGaakman”. The image at the top of his bio looks like a Banksy, and his avatar is a man in a hoodie (the uniform of street artists):
The name “molotov bouquet” is likely a reference to a Banksy titled “Love Is In The Air (Flower Thrower)”. According to MyArtBroker, it first appeared in 2003 “in Jerusalem shortly after the construction of the West Bank Wall”:
@BryanSGaakman is an anagram (no, I did not figure this out) of “Banksy anagram”. His bio has an image of a possible Banksy (note the balloon for further reference below):
Back on 10 Jun 2018, someone stole a Banksy titled Trolley Hunters from a Toronto art gallery. The thief was recorded on security camera, wearing a hoodie. He shuffles around inconspicuously and alone, grabs the painting, then hurries out.
The suspicion is that Banksy was the thief who stole the Banksy because, well, it’s so on brand for him. In fact, just the day after the theft, Banksy posted a story of some hijinks he had just perpetrated on the Royal Academy of Arts. Under that anagram pseudonym, he sent them a work of art for a gallery show but it was rejected. (We all see where this is going.) He then turned around and re-sent it as himself. To quote Banksy: “It’s now hanging in gallery 3.”
I read a short thread that gave me a feeling I haven’t had since the very beginning in mid-March when we were all combing through those graphs and data tables at least twice a day. It feels again like we’re realizing there’s a catastrophe starting and the shock is as if we’ve never felt it before. I think re-reading my old posts refreshed those memories of that odd time back in March (four months ago?!) when everything started hitting. There was a nervous apprehension of the unknown; everything was new. The recent unbelievable spike is magnitudes greater than what we first experienced so, yes, the is as if we’re starting anew.