Taco Bell and Social Distancing by Annette M. Hall

I was very excited to see that our local Taco Bell was open inside. Until I ate there. We went inside for the first time in a couple months. A huge hand sanitizer stood near the registers, all the condiment dishes were empty as were the straws and lids...

All the tall tables (where we prefer to sit), had signs on them like the image above and the legs were zip tied together so you couldn't sit down. I was going to sit there anyway because none of the tables were clean. The tables were either occupied (only two) or they were dirty. My husband went to the counter to ask the cashier to clean the tables. She came out to the lobby and cleaned ONE table.

Struggling rental car companies expected to sell vehicles at deep discounts by CNN Wire

With travelers staying close to home and airports turned into virtual ghost towns, rental car companies have taken a huge hit during the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday Hertz, which also operates the Dollar and Thrifty agencies, declared bankruptcy.

Industry experts expect the company to sell off a large portion of its fleet. Even when we were not in an economic crisis, shoppers could often find a good deal on a used car at one of the major car rental agencies, including Hertz, Avis or Enterprise. Rental car companies routinely sell off cars, usually after a year or two of service. For instance, Enterprise, which also operates the Alamo and National brands, sells a million used cars a year globally, according to a spokeswoman.

Android And iPhone Users Beware The Hidden Dangers With New Contact Tracing Apps by Zak Doffman - Cybersecurity I write about security and surveillance.

So, the big news this week is that Apple and Google have launched their watered down "contact-tracing" platforms into the world. Only "contact-tracing" has now become "exposure notification..."

...and judging by all the evidence to-date, they're not going to be effective enough to make a difference. Worse, they introduce a set of dangerous security risks that have not been addressed. False hopes, false starts. Let's clear something up from the start. Contact-tracing is not an opt-in Bluetooth app that might register your proximity to an infected person, under a very limited set of circumstances, including that you're both fully running the app. No, contact tracing is a manually-intensive, surveillance-heavy, privacy-intrusive process where a combination of brute-force measures and meticulous attention to detail, under the purview of well-trained operatives, roots out the spread of infection.

The Apple-Google contact tracing system won't work. It still deserves praise. by Jennifer Daskal, Matt Perault

This article is part of Privacy in the Pandemic, a Future Tense series. -- Big Tech's contact tracing initiative complicates the narrative of European governments protecting citizens against Silicon Valley's privacy intrusions.

In debates over digital privacy, American tech companies are often branded as the villains, with European policymakers cast in the role of savior. Big Tech is out to steal your privacy, but European governments are stepping in to protect it. Or so the narrative goes. But the new exposure notification system released by Google and Apple on Wednesday has turned these roles on their head, albeit in ways that at least some public health authorities say will make their job more difficult. It stands as a clear warning against type casting in this debate.

One-third of high school seniors say they will defer or cancel rather than attend all-online college by Scott Jaschik

Thirty-three percent of high school seniors say they would defer or cancel an admittance rather than attend an all-online college. Plus results from other surveys of students and parents.

Ninety-five percent said that they would honor commitments made to colleges that plan to reopen in the fall with social distancing measures in place. But the survey also indicated that the later an institution announces its policy, the more apprehension students will have about it. The California State University system announced this month that most classes in the fall would be online. But many other colleges -- including such prominent institutions as the University of Texas at Austin -- are planning for in-person classes in the fall. Both approaches are being criticized by some -- Cal State for being too fearful of what might happen and the campuses that are opening for taking a big risk with student and employee health.

Banned, Censored, Social Media by Annie

I have spent the last few years working on Facebook, neglecting my own work, I'm ashamed to admit. Facebook finally banned me, and I am very glad they did, because otherwise I might never have left.

I am totally against censorship. Do you want to know what I did to get banned? I posted this meme and they took it down, so I posted it again. Normally, after posting the second time they would leave it be, but not this time. They removed it again. So, I put it back up and I was banned from Facebook. All my content, all my uploads and all discussion and posts I've made over the last decade to Facebook were removed.

Does the Flu Shot Increase COVID-19 Risk (YES!) and Other Interesting Questions |

This may be the most important newsletter I have written to date. Here are the questions that will I will cover with the quick answer given if you are not interested in the whole story:

Could a new flu vaccine be partly responsible for the COVID-19 mortality rate in Italy? My colleague, Dr. Alex Vasquez, provided me with a valuable insight. In September 2019, Italy rolled out an entirely new type of influenza vaccine. This vaccine called VIQCC is different than others.

Geoengineering: Blocking sunlight to cool Earth won't reduce crop damage from global warming by University of California - Berkeley

Injecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet and counter the warming effects of climate change would do nothing to offset the crop damage from rising global temperatures.

By analyzing the past effects of Earth-cooling volcanic eruptions, and the response of crops to changes in sunlight, the team concluded that any improvements in yield from cooler temperatures would be negated by lower productivity due to reduced sunlight. The findings have important implications for our understanding of solar geoengineering, one proposed method for helping humanity manage the impacts of global warming.

World's Largest Animal Study on Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link

Scientists call on the World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer to re-evaluate the carcinogenicity of cell phone radiation after the Ramazzini Institute and US government studies report finding the same unusual cancers

Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale lifetime study of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. A $25 million study of much higher levels of cell phone radiofrequency (RF) radiation, from the US National Toxicology Program (NTP), has also reported finding the same unusual cancer called Schwannoma of the heart in male rats treated at the highest dose. In addition, the RI study of cell tower radiation also found increases in malignant brain (glial) tumors in female rats and precancerous conditions including Schwann cells hyperplasia in both male and female rats.

New Studies Link Cell Phone Radiation with Cancer by Charles Schmidt

Researchers call for greater caution, but skeptics say the evidence from rat studies is not convincing

Does cell phone radiation cause cancer? New studies show a correlation in lab rats, but the evidence may not resolve ongoing debates over causality or whether any effects arise in people. The ionizing radiation given off by sources such as x-ray machines and the sun boosts cancer risk by shredding molecules in the body. But the non-ionizing radio-frequency (RF) radiation that cell phones and other wireless devices emit has just one known biological effect: an ability to heat tissue by exciting its molecules.