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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.7.20

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 5:54 AM and sunset 8:06 PM, for 14h 12m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 86% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

 On this day in 1782, George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

Recommended for reading in full —

Craig Silverman and Ryan Mac report Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment:

Last Friday, at another all-hands meeting, employees asked Zuckerberg how right-wing publication Breitbart News could remain a Facebook News partner after sharing a video that promoted unproven treatments and said masks were unnecessary to combat the novel coronavirus. The video racked up 14 million views in six hours before it was removed from Breitbart’s page, though other accounts continued to share it.

….

On July 22, a Facebook employee posted a message to the company’s internal misinformation policy group noting that some misinformation strikes against Breitbart had been cleared by someone at Facebook seemingly acting on the publication’s behalf.

“A Breitbart escalation marked ‘urgent: end of day’ was resolved on the same day, with all misinformation strikes against Breitbart’s page and against their domain cleared without explanation,” the employee wrote.

….

The engineer joined the company in 2016 and most recently worked on Instagram. He left the company on Wednesday. One employee on an internal thread seen by BuzzFeed News said that they received permission from the engineer to say that the dismissal “was not voluntary.”

Craig Timberg and Andrew Ba Tran report Facebook’s fact-checkers have ruled claims in Trump ads are false — but no one is telling Facebook’s users:

Fact-checkers were unanimous in their assessments when President Trump began claiming in June that Democrat Joe Biden wanted to “defund” police forces. PolitiFact called the allegations “false,” as did CheckYourFact. The Associated Press detailed “distortions” in Trump’s claims. FactCheck.org called an ad airing them “deceptive.” Another site, the Dispatch, said there is “nothing currently to support” Trump’s claims.

But these judgments, made by five fact-checking organizations that are part of Facebook’s independent network for policing falsehoods on the platform, were not shared with Facebook’s users. That is because the company specifically exempts politicians from its rules against deception. Ads containing the falsehoods continue to run freely on the platform, without any kind of warning or label.

Enabled by Facebook’s rules, Trump’s reelection campaign has shown versions of the false claim on Facebook at least 22.5 million times, in more than 1,400 ads costing between $350,000 and $553,000, a Washington Post analysis found based on data from Facebook’s Ad Library. The ads, bought by the campaign directly or in a partnership with the Republican National Committee, were targeted at Facebook users mainly in swing states such as Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Chacour Koop reports ‘It spread like wildfire.’ How one man at church with COVID-19 led to 91 cases in Ohio:

A single person attending church with COVID-19 led to an outbreak of nearly 100 cases, showing the risk of group gatherings during the pandemic, Ohio officials say.

The 56-year-old man attended a church service on June 14 while infected with coronavirus, Gov. Mike DeWine says. By the Fourth of July, at least 91 people ranging in age from a 1-year-old girl to a 67-year-old woman had the virus.

“It spread like wildfire,” DeWine said.

Goalkeepers Have the Loneliest Job in Soccer, Here’s Why:

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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.6.20

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 5:53 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 15m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 92% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

 On this day in 1945, an American B-29 drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Recommended for reading in full —

Justin Baragona reports Trump’s Debate Moderator Wish List Is Stacked With Fox News Stars and Pushovers:

The Trump campaign released a list of suggested moderators for this year’s presidential debates and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is loaded with many of the president’s favorite right-wing pundits and Fox News personalities.

….

A large portion of the names would be familiar to the most devoted of Fox News viewers. While the president didn’t include his close confidants like Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs, and left off the denizens of his favorite morning show Fox & Friends, the campaign included several pundits and personalities featured across his favorite Fox programming.

Rachel Campos-Duffy, a Fox News contributor and former Real World cast member, made the cut despite her role as a sycophantic pro-Trump commentator across Fox’s opinion shows. Campos-Duffy is married to former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), a current CNN contributor who now serves as an official Trump surrogate.

 Tim Walker reports Trump still claims Covid will ‘go away’, Fauci disagrees:

Donald Trump claimed again on Wednesday that the coronavirus would “go away”, and “sooner rather than later”. That is not the view of his administration’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, who told Reuters it would take at least a year to bring the pandemic under control and it was unlikely the virus would ever be eradicated altogether. Meanwhile, Facebook for the first time removed a post from the president’s page that contained false information about the disease.

The US has now recorded 4.8 million Covid-19 cases and 157,690 deaths. The US census bureau has suspended a weekly survey tracking Americans’ quality of life, which painted a bleak picture of the effects of the pandemic and the economic downturn. And as Trump continues to insist schools should return in person in September, Chicago’s public school system has announced plans to teach the start of the school year entirely online.

Juan Perez Jr. reports NCAA ditches fall championships for hundreds of schools:

Division II and Division III officials nixed their fall postseasons after the NCAA’s governing board announced earlier Wednesday that each division could make its own call on whether to cancel the competitions amid the coronavirus pandemic. But administrators for higher-profile NCAA Division I programs have yet to pull the plug.

Division I campus sports officials now have two weeks to make a decision about their fall championships, though top college sports conferences are setting out ambitious football schedules and the nation’s blockbuster College Football Playoff says it’s pressing ahead with minor changes to its operations this fall.

As of Wednesday, 11 of the 23 Division II conferences had announced they would not compete in sports during the traditional fall season, according to the NCAA.

Why Calling the 2020 Election Will Be Different Than Any Year Before:

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City, Coronavirus, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Open Government, Public Health

Whitewater Common Council Meeting, 8.4.20: 6 Points

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At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, among other items — the council slightly modified its mask ordinance, discussed (but took no action on) a racial justice initiative that would create an Equal Opportunities Committee, voted unanimously to extend the lake drawdown project for approximately another year, and voted to continue virtual public meetings until local public health measures showed an abating pandemic. (The full recording of the meeting appears above; the agenda – the order of which was slightly adjusted during the meeting – is available here.)

A few remarks —

 1. Mask Ordinance Amendment. Whitewater amended its mask ordinance to allow a single speaker in certain settings (political or religious, for example) to remove his or her mask while speaking to an assembly situated sufficiently far from that speaker. (Video, 34:30.) A simple modification like this accords more closely with the state’s mask ordinance.  The amendment passed, and the council waived a second reading of the ordinance.

 2. Racial Justice Initiative. These recent months there have been gatherings, discussions, and marches in the city about racial justice, notably more acute since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (More than one local group has been involved in these events, and their aims are generally the same but particularly different from each other.) Whitewater’s city manager and the city’s council discussed an upcoming ordinance for the creation of an Equal Opportunities Committee. (Video, 48:15) This committee, as described last night, would be a seven-member body, with one council member, and six people from the area (either as residents or employees working here). (Video, 1:03:30.)

It’s best to wait for the draft of the ordinance before offering more about its yet-to-be-decided particulars.

Racial justice, apart from the scope of a single ordinance, is a far larger topic deserving consideration at length after some of these preliminary matters are decided.

 3. Residency. If the city wants to open committee membership (such as for an Equal Opportunities Committee) to residents living within the school district’s boundaries, there’s no significant objection to offer. By contrast, if the city wants to extend membership to employees who merely work here, that extension is a poor idea. People should be free to work and live where they want, but Whitewater needn’t extend committee spaces to those for whom Whitewater is simply a day job. See The Commuter Class.

There’s so much talk about stakeholders, but a stake should mean residency in the immediate area, voting in the immediate area, and beginning & ending each day in the area. Whitewater’s more than an airport lounge or a gas station along an expressway. No one who truly commits to a place happily goes off elsewhere each night.

Those who wish to improve the city – and even more those who wish to exercise political or legal authority within it – should be here to experience the consequences of their actions. Whitewater can find good candidates for an Equal Opportunities Committee from among those who live close by.

 4. Lake Drawdown Project. So Whitewater has two lakes in town, they’ve become clogged with invasive species, and the city has undertaken to drain those lakes to rid them of unwanted plants and fish. If it takes another year to assure (so best as one can) that the lakes are restored to good health, it’s time well spent. (Video, 1:13:40.)

 5. Virtual Meetings of the Municipal Government. This council voted unanimously to continue virtual meetings until the pandemic’s reach into Whitewater recedes. (Video, 2:14:15.)  In these months, the city government has functioned as well as others nearby with this format. It’s a sensible decision to continue for now in a virtual format. The arguments offered for re-opening deserve separate consideration, another time, for their inadequacy. (Video, 1:53:55.) 

6. Political Vacancies. This last decade has been a time of great change in Whitewater. Look away for even a moment, and people and places are different. (Video, 2:18:02.) Change like this is better than an alternative of the same few people for decade after decade.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.5.20

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 17m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

 On this day in 1914, in Cleveland, the first electric traffic light is installed.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Sam Levine reports Plan to shorten census deadline sounds alarm for disadvantaged Americans:

The Census Bureau will end its efforts to count every living person in the US a month earlier than expected, a move that will probably lead to an undercount of communities of color, poorer Americans and other hard-to-count groups.

Such an undercount would be catastrophic for those communities. The numbers from the census, which happens every 10 years, are used to determine how nearly $1.5tn in federal funds get allocated and how electoral districts are drawn for the next decade.

The bureau will shorten the deadline to respond to the census by a month and will end counting on 30 September, it announced on Monday. In April, the agency said it needed until 31 October to finish the count and asked Congress to give it a four-month extension of the 31 December deadline to produce data because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 Aaron Rupar writes “They are dying. That’s true. It is what it is.”:

President Donald Trump’s interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios began with him telling a dizzying string of lies about his coronavirus response and the state of the pandemic in the country. It ended with Trump making the death of civil rights leader John Lewis about himself. It didn’t go any better in between.

For the second time in a month, Trump’s attempt to sit down for an interview with a journalist willing to challenge him ended in disaster. Over the course of 37 minutes, Swan repeatedly exposed Trump’s inability to respond to the most basic of follow-up questions.

Trump’s difficulty with push-back is often concealed when he answers questions beside a loud helicopter or in the friendly confines of Sean Hannity’s show. But the Swan interview, which came out just two weeks after Trump’s similarly disastrous performance on Chris Wallace’s show, highlighted the degree to which Trump is unable to defend his record in the face of even mildly challenging questions.

On the topic of America’s struggles with coronavirus testing, including long wait times for test results that render testing almost worthless, Trump resorted to making stuff up.

“There are those that say you can test too much. You know that?” Trump said at one point.

“Who says that?” Swan responded.

“Read the manuals. Read the books,” answered Trump.

“What books?” Swan challenged, but no answer was forthcoming. Instead, Trump said that “when I took over we didn’t even have a test” — as if the Obama administration was supposed to develop a test for a virus that didn’t exist until nearly three years after Trump’s inauguration.

Jeanne Whalen reports Struggling U.S. manufacturers pivot to one product where sales are actually booming: facemasks:

Companies are stitching them on repurposed manufacturing lines in New England and 3-D-printing them at workshops in California. Hundreds of Etsy entrepreneurs have stopped sewing bags and table linens and switched to full-time mask production.

For many, the work started as a way to keep some money coming in as the economy crashed and to help their communities. Now, as coronavirus infections surge across the nation, some mask makers see potential for steady sales, at least for months to come.

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City, Coronavirus, Education, Open Government, Public Health, School District

Whitewater School Board Meeting, 8.3.20: 6 Points

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At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Unified School District’s board, the board heard a presentation from the district about fall instruction for the first two weeks of school, and the metrics the district is considering when deciding schools’ status after those initial weeks. The meeting was informational only, so the board took no action. During a discussion period, the board took just under twenty community comments or questions. A decision on the school schedule after the first two weeks of September is likely to come in mid-August.

A few remarks —

 1. The Real Decision Maker. It’s right – as a matter of open government – to have a community discussion period, but no particular point or speaker (from among parents or teachers) will be decisive. The same, quite candidly, is true of the board: the waxing or waning of the pandemic in Whitewater will sweep aside any angle, position, or view. If the pandemic abates, that easing will dictate the district’s response. If the pandemic grows deeper into the community, that natural and social condition will dictate a different response. Note well: some natural conditions are so powerful that they dictate – literally, command – a certain human response. Theories about the novel coronavirus will be put to a practical test. That practical test will drain the blood from political and emotional arguments.

This is no mere matter of aesthetic or political preference: for all the emotion in the debate about school policy this fall, and what the district should do, there will come an answer apart from those preferences.

 2. Convergence. While schools in the same area are now taking different approaches, that won’t last. Conditions within the same area are likely to drive everyone, after a month to two, to a common convergence. Differences between districts in scheduling for two weeks or a month will disappear as like-situated districts individually gather information that will lead to a similar result. When that happens, what the districts did for two weeks or a month will look small compared to the commonly-adopted result.

Not one of these area districts is yet in session, so there are no results by which to claim reasonably that one of them is now managing daily student life better than the others. Having confidence in some districts without seeing how they actually manage with students in class is presumptuous. If anything, there’s reason from across the country to think that many in-person experiences – in schools, universities, companies – will continue to be difficult and disappointing. Public and private organizations across America with far larger budgets find themselves struggling to stay open.

3. Presentation. Overall, this presentation was more informative, and the discussion less fraught, than at the last board meeting on 7.27.20. 

 4. Confusion Over Dates. Some parents last night worried that the board would not make a decision about how classes would be conducted after mid-September, leaving them too little time to prepare adequately. (Video, 1:25:30) In this, one sees an erroneous conflation of two decisions: how to begin the school year and when to decide what to do next. A board member correctly noted that these were different matters. (Video, 2:13:34) While the board decided previously how classes would be held through mid-September, a decision on what to do next was planned before mid-September. It’s right to note that these where different board decisions at the 7.27.20 meeting. (Video of 7.27.20, 2:40:38.)

It’s not hard to see, however, that in the emotion of the late July meeting, some parents would have missed this distinction.

A decision on what to do next month is likely this month. (Video, 2:18:10.)

 5. Criteria for a Fuller Opening. The district listed criteria for a fuller opening, but toward the end of the meeting at least one board member was unsure of those criteria. (Video, 13:00 for criteria.) There’s no substitute for reading and taking notes on the agenda packet in advance. 

 6. Asides —

There was a odd moment when a parent suggested that if the district were truly concerned about university students as a complicating source of additional community spread, then someone from the district should talk to university officials and tell them to close the campus. Well, good luck with that. Tails don’t wag dogs. Decisions about this local UW System campus, like all System campuses, will require approval from the regents and interim president Tommy Thompson.

There’s now a Zoom timer that commenters can see while speaking.

The Zoom chat box from a past meeting is gone – there’s no legal obligation to provide one, and it was nothing so much as a display of questionable literacy and unquestionable vulgarity. It doesn’t matter where (of if) a person went to school, but it does matter that someone trying to advocate in writing – about education, of all things – cares enough about his or her advocacy to pick up a few simple rules of spelling and grammar. Past generations, of people with hard lives, didn’t have to go to college to know how to write properly. Personal responsibility and self-respect begin, so to speak, at home. See generally Facebook Discussions as Displays of Ignorance, Fallacies, and Marginal Literacy.

One should watch or listen on one’s own; the best record is a recording.

This was a smoother night than July 27th. Poise on a recording matters greatly; both emotion and indecision play (and play back) poorly.

Previously: Whitewater Schools’ Community Focus Group, 7.8.20, The Whitewater Unified School District’s Proposed Fall Instructional Plans, and The Whitewater School Board’s Decision on Early Fall Instruction: 4 Points.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.4.20

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy.  Sunrise is 5:50 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 19m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9:30 AM via audiovisual conferencing and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM via audiovisual conferencing.

 On this day in 1964, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Garry Kasparov observes that Authoritarians Come Up With Things We Can’t Imagine:

Garry Kasparov of the Renew Democracy Initiative joins Morning Joe to discuss Trump’s attempts to undermine the coming elections and what can be done to protect the election.

 Amanda Carpenter writes The Blind Oracle of Noonan (‘The wistful, naïve pronouncements of the speechwriter-turned-columnist’):

Good news! All of us who are worried about President Trump and the future of the Republican party can pack it up. Peggy Noonan, our cherished Reaganic oracle, has spoken and has the answer to align the Always Trump, Sometimes Trump, and Never Trump factions of the GOP.

In her latest Wall Street Journal column, Noonan enters the “Burn It Down” debate and argues against voting out all the Trump enablers and sycophants because—are you ready for this?—“persuasion will be key” to saving the Republic. Ah! We can all rest easy, pour ourselves a cool beverage, and retire early. Our work is done! Praise be to Peggy!

That’s the kind of wistful, head-in-the-clouds analysis Noonan is known for, though. Like, wouldn’t everything be better if everyone just played along more nicely? Why all this anger toward a president who lets Russia put bounties on the heads of our soldiers, tear-gases peaceful protesters, and lies and obstructs justice as a way of life? Why on earth should Susan Collins, Martha McSally, and Cory Gardner be sacrificed on the altar of Trump just to prove a point about accountability? Because follow-the-leader Republicans like Collins will surely be the ones to save us from another trillion in deficit spending and finally stop funding for Planned Parenthood! Because Collins, of all people, must have “learned lessons” from Trump. We should all be so, so very concerned about the future of the GOP without Republicans like Collins.

Noonan concedes that “Donald Trump is burning himself down.” Yet she thinks we ought to keep voting for the people who handed him a lighter and kerosene.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Jacob Bogage report Postal Service backlog sparks worries that ballot delivery could be delayed in November:

The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs of mail across the country after a top Trump donor running the agency put in place new procedures described as cost-cutting efforts, alarming postal workers who warn that the policies could undermine their ability to deliver ballots on time for the November election.

As President Trump ramps up his unfounded attacks on mail balloting as being susceptible to widespread fraud, postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.

Why Everyone Is Going To Mars Right Now:

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CDA, City, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Walworth County, WEDC, Wisconsin

Whitewater & Walworth County’s Working Poor, 2020 ALICE® Report

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The 2020 ALICE® report, on those who are “asset limited, income constrained [yet] employed” is now available.  These latest data were collected before the recent recession – one can be sadly confident that hardship reaches farther now.

For Wisconsin, 11% of households were below the poverty level, and 34% (including those below the poverty level) were asset limited.

For Walworth County, 9.5% of households were below the poverty level, and 34% (including those below the poverty level) were asset limited.

For Whitewater 41% of households (of any kind) were below the poverty level, and 59% (including those below the poverty level) were asset limited. Looking only at households with minor children related to the householder, one finds that 23% of households in Whitewater were below the poverty level (relying on the same 2018 American Community Survey five-year estimates that ALICE® does for populations under 20,000).  Some additional households with minor children would also be asset limited, although the American Community Survey does not present that number for a community of Whitewater’s size. Using a households-with-minor-children measurement focuses on those particularly vulnerable.

A portion of the executive summary and the full report appear below —

From 2010 to 2018, Wisconsin showed steady economic improvements according to traditional measures. Unemployment in the state and across the U.S. fell to
historic lows, GDP grew, and wages rose slightly. Yet in 2018, eight years after the end of the Great Recession, 34% of Wisconsin’s 2,359,857 households still struggled to make ends meet. And while 11% of these households were living below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), another 23% — more than twice as many — were ALICE households: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These households earned above the FPL, but not enough to afford basic household necessities.

….

The number of ALICE households in Wisconsin has increased as a result of rising costs and stagnant wages. There are more ALICE households than households in poverty, and the number of ALICE households is increasing at a faster rate. The FPL, with its minimal and uniform national estimate of the cost of living, far underestimates the number of households that cannot afford to live and work in the modern economy. In Wisconsin, the percentage of households that were ALICE rose from 17% in 2007 to 23% in 2018. By contrast, those in poverty increased from 10% of all households in 2007 to 13% by 2014, before dipping slightly to comprise 11% of all households in 2018.This Report provides critical measures that assess Wisconsin’s economy from four perspectives: They track financial hardship over time and across demographic groups; quantify the basic cost of living in Wisconsin; assess job trends; and identify gaps in assistance and community resources. These measures also debunk assumptions and stereotypes about low-income workers and families. ALICE households are as diverse as the general population, composed of people of all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities, living in rural, urban, and suburban areas.

See ALICE IN WISCONSIN: A FINANCIAL HARDSHIP STUDY (2020).

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.3.20

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy.  Sunrise is 5:49 AM and sunset 8:11 PM, for 14h 22m 03s of daytime.  The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets at 6 PM via audiovisual conferencing.

 On this day in 1958, the world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, becomes the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the geographical North Pole.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Carolyn Y. Johnson writes A coronavirus vaccine won’t change the world right away:

The declaration that a vaccine has been shown safe and effective will be a beginning, not the end. Deploying the vaccine to people in the United States and around the world will test and strain distribution networks, the supply chain, public trust and global cooperation. It will take months or, more likely, years to reach enough people to make the world safe.

For those who do get a vaccine as soon as shots become available, protection won’t be immediate — it takes weeks for the immune system to call up full platoons of disease-fighting antibodies. And many vaccine technologies will require a second shot weeks after the first to raise immune defenses.

Immunity could be short-lived or partial, requiring repeated boosters that strain the vaccine supply or require people to keep social distancing and wearing masks even after they’ve received their shots. And if a vaccine works less well for some groups of people, if swaths of the population are reluctant to get a vaccine or if there isn’t enough to go around, some people will still get sick even after scientists declare victory on a vaccine — which could help foster a false impression it doesn’t work.

Wendy Lee reports Microsoft wants to buy TikTok as White House puts Chinese apps on warning:

Microsoft said it is in talks with the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to take control of TikTok in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. If the deal is finalized, Microsoft plans to bring all American user data to U.S. servers and remove data backed up in foreign countries. Currently, TikTok stores U.S. user information in the U.S. and backs it up in Singapore.

Microsoft said it hopes to complete the discussions with ByteDance no later than Sept. 15. But it is possible that a deal may not go through.

“These discussions are preliminary and there can be no assurance that a transaction which involves Microsoft will proceed,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Will Horner reports Coffee Drinkers Stay Home, Hitting Some Beans Harder Than Others:

Coffee futures linked to arabica, a softer, sweeter variety that is largely produced in Latin America and is popular in cafes and restaurants, have fallen almost 9% in New York trading in 2020.

Robusta futures, which track the beans used largely in freeze-dried coffees or in pods for kitchen-top espresso machines, are down less than 3% in London trading. Those stronger tasting beans are commonly grown in Vietnam.

The pandemic has changed where and how most people in the West consume coffee, with restaurants and cafes shut down because of lockdown measures, complicating efforts to accurately gauge demand, according to analysts. Meanwhile, the coffee market is poised for a glut in supply, in part due to bountiful harvests in Brazil, the world’s largest producer of coffee. That combination is threatening to derail any recovery in coffee prices.

Splashdown – SpaceX Demo-2 crew is back on Earth:

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