Failing the Marshmallow Test. Photo credit: Susan Schmitz
We’ve entered our fifth month of shelter-in-place. The imperative of creating quiet space for work remains a challenge, like it does for so many.
The lack of civil jury trials remains the most remarkable change for my work. California courts are taking a scattershot approach to re-opening. Courts are hearing custodial criminal cases, emergency domestic issues, and other urgent matters. But for civil matters, the approach varies greatly. Alameda County is summoning jurors and allowing some to participate remotely, raising due process concerns. Los Angeles County will not set any more cases for trial in 2020 and is unlikely to call in jurors for civil cases this year. The Northern District of California suspended all jury trials yesterday.
Then there’s school. We learned this week that the California high school sports season is postponed until 2021. In urban California counties, any sort of in-person learning this fall looks increasingly unlikely. The impact this will have on kids, parents, and workers — and ultimately our economy — cannot be overstated. We missed our chance to knock down the virus this spring and summer, and now we’ll pay the price in many ways this fall.
Last week, we lost John Lewis. His principled life of non-violence transformed our country’s laws and still guides us through this period of social upheaval. With his passing, we lose a direct connection to the Civil Rights Era and the days of Jim Crow which preceded it. I link below to two of my favorite remembrances.
Writing
- Great Client Service Depends On Clarity And Trust, Rather Than Being Constantly Available
- Facial Recognition Technology — Mid-2020 Roundup: Keeping The Focus On Social Media Companies
Reading
- John Lewis on Love, Forgiveness, and the Seedbed of Personal Strength by Maria Popova.
- Ultralearning by Scott H. Young.
- Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America by James and Deborah Fallows. Jim and Deb are such great writers. I regret not reading this book when it was published in 2018, but their observations unexpectedly seem to offer more — not less — salience after all that’s happened.
Listening
- The Daily podcast. The Life And Legacy of John Lewis. Brent Staples, member of the New York Times editorial board, remembers Lewis and explains his philosophy of non-violent protest.
- Sam Harris Making Sense Podcast, Episode 211, The Nature of Human Nature, A Conversation with Robert Plomin. Professor Plomin, author of Blueprint: discusses the genetic influences on our behavior. A body of research shows that 50 percent of individual variance is due to our genes. The remaining influences on our personality — the nurture component — mostly comes from our “non-shared environment,” which we have little control over either.
- The Daily. The Vaccine Trust Problem New York Times health reporter Jan Hoffman talks about distrust of vaccines. The latest polling shows only 50 percent of Americans would be willing to get a coronavirus vaccine. To be effective, we need something on the order of 70 or 80 percent of people to get vaccinated.
- Mac PowerUsers, Episode 544, The Notes Roundup David Sparks and Stephen Hackett assess the many options for storing notes on your Apple devices, including a length discussion of Apple Notes. Unfortunately, no mention of two of my favorites: nvAlt and Liquidtext.
- Focused, Episode 104: Sleep and Sabbaticals David Sparks recounts his one-week “sabbatical.” Mike Schmitz tries contemporaneous journaling. And they discuss one of my favorite subjects: sleep.