Message Passing Middleware Resurection

In the olden days of the 1980s, "middleware," including messaging middleware was all the rage.  BEA systems, Vitria Systems, Tibco, and a slew of others competed to sell horizontally-scaled messaging middleware to the largest enterprises.  eBay's "Business Events Service" (BES) bus  is a 1980's based publish/subscribe system based on Oracle and Vitria middleware.  There are still many advantages of message-passing middleware system patterns over our current RESTful stateless HTTPS fashion.  A few modern, containerized versions of those venerable systems are coming back into vogue.  One such system is NATS.io.  Malta-based consultant R.I. Pienaar has written a great 5-part series on how NATS.io is applied in his "choria" puppet orchestration system.  What is old is new again!

Galaxy's Edge 7: Turning Point by Jason

This part of the ongoing saga is light on "magic," heavy on close-combat, and more fun, 4/5 stars.

xenophobia, nationalism on the rise

The Guardian is reporting a new wave of Chinese government official policy of Xenophobia to blame all wrongs on foreign devils.  The Global Village is in decline.

"the focus on foreigners – surprising given that 90% of imported cases were Chinese passport holders, according to the country's foreign ministry – is the leadership's attempt to shore up its image."

And volunteers are needed to shore up labor shortages in farms to complete the harvest in Israel under continued rocket fire from Gaza.

Cases, Tests, Hospitalizations

https://covid-19.direct/US

Here is another good source of data to track the contagion.  Drill down to your county. 

I am waiting for a tracker with a variable radius from a lat-long (geographical location) as we had in the 1960's for H-Bomb blast, damage, and radiation damage.

'Murican Makers making medical makeshift magic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=036UAwQ6PZw

Home made open source $100 respirator from parts you get at a local hardware store. Youtube Video

Yankee ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit, open source, and a gofundme page.  Awesome!

Surface Transmission

Johns Hopkins has published an interesting guide to which surfaces are more or less effective at transmission and how to maintain safe near-sterile techniques while handling fabrics, cardboard, plastics.

At-Home Workout by Ellie Woods

These ideas seem safe simple, low-impact, and flexible for time.

The Far Shore of Time by Frederik Pohl

Does not hold up very well, unfortunately.  Interesting story but very dated and contrived, 2/5 Stars.

American Butt Ball is 3,400 years old

An odd form of MesoAmerican soccer portrayed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvQjgC9sIY

is over 3,400 years old.  American Butt Ball  is not as old as the American baseball game aka protoball portrayed in the epic of Gilgamesh, of course.

The Year's Best Science Fiction (1986) edited by Frederik Pohl

Some of the stories are dated and do not hold up; others are fine, 3/5 stars.