DEGREES OF SEPARATION

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Folks have been passing along photos of Seville on lockdown...

STOP, LOOK, LISTEN!
Degrees of Separation
I met my dad at a diner for lunch yesterday. (I feel lucky that we can still do that here in PA.) He had just come from a local gun show.
I don't think the attendees were practicing much social distancing there; lots of hand-shaking and back-slapping. I could picture them passing around rifle sights and boxes of hollow-point bullets. Not a big hand-sanitizer crowd. Dad seems kind of dismissive of the COVID-19 scare.
Before we ordered our sandwiches, he showed off his purchase—a new Trump 2020 hat (which features a rather mean-spirited slogan, instead of strong-minded and upbeat support of his candidate of choice). All in all, that's probably the best thing he could have brought home from the gun show.
—Kathy Sherretts

Indisposed:
Grist: Can the zero-waste movement survive the coronavirus? by L.V. Anderson
Given the rapid spread of COVID-19, all manner of reuse habits that might have been considered environmentally virtuous now invoke a kind of germaphobic fear response. We tend to think of plastic packaging as being sanitary. It’s not.

Behind bars:
Marshall Project: What Do We Really Know About the Politics of People Behind Bars? by Nicole Lewis, Aviva Shen, and Anna Flagg
(Article/interactive graphics.)
Long stretches in prison appear to be politicizing: The more time respondents spend in prison, the more motivated they are to vote, the more they discuss politics, and the more likely their opinions are to evolve.

It can happen to you:
The Root: The Mayor of Kansas City Went to Vote. A Poll Worker Turned Him Away by Joe Jurado
Mayor Quinton Lucas decided to turn the mistake into a moment of advocacy: as an elected official, he was able to get clarification from an official and return later to vote. Those who aren’t in his exceptional position may not be allowed the same courtesy. We need to make it easier for folks to vote, not harder.
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