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The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide, we have passed the peak on new cases."These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country," Trump said.
A tone-deaf Microsoft ad featuring performance artist Marina Abramovic has been memory-holed after it was pilloried online. Was it her 'spirit cooking' notoriety from the Podesta emails or are people just sick of wealth-flaunting?
An ad featuring the Serbian performer's latest project, a "mixed reality" installation incorporating Microsoft's HoloLens virtual-reality platform, clearly touched a nerve before it was removed earlier this week. The video received over 25,000 "thumbs down" on YouTube before it was yanked and, while comments were turned off, it's safe to say the reception was a frosty one.
Abramovic is probably the most famous performance artist alive today, but she's also the most notorious - in no small part because of WikiLeaks' 2016 release of emails pilfered from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's then-campaign director. The emails appeared to open a window onto what the rich and famous get up to behind closed doors that was either tantalizing or repulsive, depending on one's tastes. Immediately following their release, internet sleuths dug up endless footage of Abramovic carving cakes shaped like human bodies, writing on walls with blood, and posing with various satanic-looking objects.
While many of the 'thumbs down' were no doubt from aficionados of the Podesta emails, Pizzagaters and other conspiracy analysts, 25,000 is an awfully large number to write off as "fringe types." When one considers that not everyone looking at the video saw the YouTube version, or had an account to register their displeasure, it's likely the tip of a sizable iceberg.
Abramovic's performance work - transient by definition - is a little more difficult to sell, but Microsoft seemed to have nailed it down with the HoloLens thing. Add in the general bad feeling against Microsoft founder and world's second-richest-man Bill Gates, who has been ubiquitous throughout the coronavirus epidemic pushing "digital certificates" and 18-month lockdowns as the answer to the virus, despite lacking a medical degree or any expertise in the field beyond the money he's poured into mass vaccination campaigns, and the backlash becomes understandable.
Hashtags like #BillGatesIsNotYourFriend and #BillGatesPublicEnemyNumber1 have proliferated in recent weeks as many of the same researchers who probed Abramovic's performance past have dug into Gates' questionable statements in support of microchipping the world and the myriad apparent conflicts of interest between the companies he invests in and the global health causes he promotes. Given his track record, his stated goal of vaccinating seven billion people has also raised a few eyebrows.
Even if Abramovic's "satanism" is wholly performative, and Gates really believes in the healing power of universal vaccination (from which he still wants legal indemnification), rubbing in the public's face the income inequality that has thrived amid the coronavirus epidemic - eight billionaires have hoarded half the world's wealth, according to Oxfam - will only pour gas on the fire.
Microsoft's Abramovic ad looks for all the world like a deliberate attempt to set off the very firestorm of outrage it accomplished. The ad may have been pulled, but the mission was accomplished.
Comment: As reported yesterday, Austria has eased its lockdown; it has also developed a "containment" strategy which involves testing all residents and employees of retirement homes as opposed to just symptomatic individuals, as they have been doing until now. After that, all medical personnel and retail staff will be tested. Despite Austria and other nations' lifting draconian lockdown measures, the WHO is still warning that Europe is in the "eye of the storm". The UK's health minister similarly warned that lifting the lockdown there would allow the coronavirus to "run rampant" - as if it's not doing so already...
The London Metro Police are behaving like little authoritarians:
The crisis may end up costing Russia $242 billion as oil prices start affecting the state budget. And over in California, $125 million in relief has been announced for illegal immigrants. And in France, 1/3 crew members of its only aircraft carrier tested positive.
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