by gina | No. 07
Issue No. 07
Hi everyone. Welcome to day.... um… 33(?) of stay-at-home-because-flatten-the-curve-pandemic-situation. I hope you and yours are well wherever you may be located. And if you’re in NYC: solidarity handshake-wave-jazz hands.
It’s crazily amazing to think that it’s been just over a full month since my employer closed its offices and moved to remote work. And this situation is indefinite. Upsides are (1) I still have my job, and (2) my office was remote-work adapted to begin with. A big challenge at work, from what I recall, was figuring out how to get the thousands of students who attend my employers’ schools the technology and resources needed to continue learning – a privilege in itself considering many students, particularly in the Southern and rural parts of the U.S., are not being educated because of poor infrastructure and cross-institutional failures.
In cities like NYC, Chicago, LA and more, the disparities of education and education technology have been made more stark, and it’ll only be a matter of time before we truly understand the overall impact that this pandemic has had on students throughout the U.S.
In a comment, either online or during one of the city’s live briefings, the NYC DOE Chancellor Richard Carranza said that technology will help break the education disparities in New York City. I raise a cautionary flag: do not fall into the tech-utopia obsession.
Technology is a means and not an end. It’s one thing to be able to provide every student in the city – any city – a computer to access their schooling but without reliable access to broadband, the computers are moot. And this has been, time and time again, proven by the experiences shared by low-income families who have tried to get service for their kids.
Here’s an excerpt from Chalkbeat (March 19):
The cascading effects of the pandemic are far-reaching, and the ways in which many institutions and policies have attempted to solve or ease the consequent outcomes are willfully deceptive at worst and hopeful at best.
Whatever happens in the months ahead, there’s no going back to “normal” or whatever “the time before the pandemic” means to people. Everything has shifted and this is an opportunity for people to take advantage and demand a better society, demand better institutions, demand better public services, and demand public ownership of those goods and services which state and private functionaries have proven to be ruthless and anti-human.
Watched & Read (since my last issue)
🎬 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Uncut Gems
• The Irishman
• Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
🎬 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• The Other Side of the Wind
• Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness
• The Social Network
• Harakiri
🎬 ⭐⭐⭐
• What Did Jack Do?
• The Foreigner
• The Last Samurai
🎬 ⭐⭐
• 6 Underground
• The Wandering Earth
🎬 ⭐
• Jupiter Ascending
• Tremors 3
• Tremors 4
• Tremors 5
• Tremors 6
📚
• The Foundation - Isaac Asimov
• Tribe - Sebastian Junger
• The Reactionary Mind - Corey Robin
• View Finder - Greg Jolley
• Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
• At the Mountains of Madness - HP Lovecraft
• The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories - HP Lovecraft
• Other Gods and More Unearthly Tales - HP Lovecraft
• A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Featured Print
September 2019, walking around in Bryant Park with my Fuji X-T1
‘Til next time.
🚲✌️