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Incredibly enough, there were only 5 reported new cases in Toronto today and under 100 in Ontario as a whole. We've been under the 100 new case mark for over a week now, with one or two minor spikes, and deaths are way, way down thankfully. More than anything it is probably due to pretty strict indoor mask rules (that people follow without too much fuss) and keeping the US-Canadian border closed... I'm still avoiding transit and biking everywhere, but when the rates are this low, I'm sure transit is reasonably safe. I haven't gone to any movies, though I might next week as they start ramping up again. I am going to the gym twice a week, and that is a level of risk I can live with for now. I may have mentioned that I am back in the office 3-4 days/week, but it is basically a ghost town (it's purely voluntary at this point). It will actually get harder to follow all the social distancing rules as more people return. For myself, I do prefer having a bit more separation between home and work. I'm not sure what others will do, but we are going to be sending the kids back to school in the fall (probably half in-person and half on-line, though the school board hasn't completely made up its mind...). Again, it's a combination of fairly low rates in the community (at the moment) and not having any grandparents living with us. I would probably make a different decision if we were in Florida or Texas, for instance, and I certainly sympathize with parents facing tough choices...

I was going to link to the same thing. Marion County's largest city is Ocala, and the Ocala City Council voted for a mask policy only for the mayor to veto it, largely because the sheriff said flat out he would refuse to enforce it. American exceptionalism at work...

Apparently the Blue Jays are pretty happy with the upgrades in Buffalo. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29640183/blue-jays-wowed-upgrades-sahlen-field-new-buffalo-home Looks like they are wrapping up the first game now: 4-4 tie going into the 10th inning, so a pretty exciting affair to inaugurate the new digs.

RIP - 94 - What an amazing run. Saw Hill and Pharoah Sanders (separately) in their second-last location (near Grand in River North) and then visited the club quite a few times in the South Loop location. I really appreciated the Sunday matinees that were oriented towards bringing children to the club, and I brought my son several times.

There are no circumstances that you can justify throwing coffee in someone's face. None.

Made a donation on behalf of Eric, who is sending a copy of the new Blakey CD to my father-in-law. Thanks, Eric!

I blame the Internet.

I don't think anyone is claiming that every song from every set was either recorded or presented on the Mosaic set. From a very casual glance, I'd say maybe 50% of the material from a one week stand has been preserved (or at least presented here), with the other songs either not recorded or not up to snuff, so then Don Thompson rearranged the rest.

Paul Desmond Toronto 1975 Disc 1

Apparently there is a high-profile anti-library op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail from a publisher (behind a paywall, so I won't link), and somewhat discouragingly, the Globe and Mail didn't let the Toronto Public Library respond. Publisher's Weekly posted the response instead: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/83996-canadian-libraries-respond-to-globe-and-mail-essay-attacking-public-libraries.html To some extent, the publisher seems to be a bit of professional contrarian. One of his pieces mentioned that crises are good for journalists and publishers alike (so I don't know why he is complaining about TPL at the moment): https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/new-gold-rush/ I think he's a bit of a knob, and I am certainly less likely to order any books from Sutherland House in the future, but hey, it's a free country and he can say what he likes... I have several of Melville House's Art of the Novella coming in at the library, and I'm most interested in Pushkin's Tales of Belkin and Benoît Duteurtre's The Little Girl and the Cigarette. I'm about halfway through Kundera's Life is Elsewhere (also a library loan...). It has its moments where Kundera is parodying romantic poets, though it also drags in places. I'm definitely not as entranced by this as the novel's ardent admirers, but I'll go ahead and finish it.

This is starting to remind me a bit of Pete LaRoca's Basra where it was relatively easy to find in the UK (and other parts of Europe), though with that super annoying copyright protection system applied, but it took ages to be reissued in the States. Even now it doesn't look that easy to track down a clean CD version of it.

Wilen/Petit Flashback Actually ordered just a few days ago, and it just arrived. Surprisingly efficient delivery!

I assume this is Moncur's Exploration we're talking about. It is nice. I should try to dig it out and give it a listen.

I only just heard that Herman Cain died from coronavirus (and perhaps some underlying conditions). It is by no means definitive, but the timing does suggest he caught it at Trump's Tulsa rally. I'm in no way implying he "deserved" it, but I would say the adults in the room should have called off the Tulsa rally, which was a spectacularly bad idea and surely did help spread the virus. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obit-cain-coronavirus-1.5668718

I used to stream BBC Radio 3 very heavily, though essentially all the programs I followed have vanished, and I simply lost the habit 2 or 3 years ago. But it was fun while it lasted... I don't think I've ever tuned in to Radio 6.

That is not clear, but they could probably change the permissions for the file so that it would no longer play in iTunes and perhaps not on an iPod. Or it might be removed when resynching. I recall the fuss several years back when Amazon removed 1984 from people's Kindle, and in that case the file was in fact deleted from hard drives.

That's what they say now, but on the face of it, the MLB has the worst thought-through plans of any of the major leagues. (Hold my beer, says the NFL...) And if one or two of the key players gets very ill or even dies, well, then we get to watch America's legal system swing into action. Practically another spectator sport in its own right.

I was hoping this was US issue only, and, as late as this morning, Canada's version of Amazon still said the release date was 7/31. But then I put in the order a couple of hours ago, and the release date had changed to unknown. I decided I would leave it in the order to qualify for free shipping on some other items, but this doesn't bode well.

That's very disappointing and yes it does seem to indicate there is some legal issue. I was going to pre-order, but I'll hold off for a while now.

I don't even know if it exists as a going concern, but I use an all-in-one software package called WaveClean, which allows you to first record the LP or 78 as a wav file and then to de-click and do further scrubbing (and you can set the level of declicking, etc.). I usually stop after one pass of de-clicking.

I'm not taking it personally or anything but I can't wrap my head around allowing visiting teams from presumably Florida and Texas and not from Toronto, where the virus is essentially under control. I would have thought the Jays would establish their own bubble (hotels, gym, etc.) separately from the Pirates. But overall the MLB plan is way riskier than the NHL plan (with far, far too much travel between stadiums). I think the NBA plan wasn't too bad in the abstract except that most of the games are supposed to be in Florida. I'm fairly sure that in all cases there will be so many athletes breaking the rules and the virus spreading out of control that all these experiments are ultimately shut down.

Oddly enough, it looks like the Blue Jays will share a stadium with Pittsburgh Pirates. I'm glad for their sakes, they are not heading to Florida as their home base.

I suppose this was inevitable but 31% of Americans simply no longer believe the number of COVID deaths (they think it is much smaller). Not asked in the survey but clear from the context is that they think this is an intentional smear of the President. This goes up to 62% of Fox watchers. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/us-coronavirus-death-toll-public-opinion-poll-accuracy Who knew you could bypass the 7 stages of grief* by simply denying that death occurred in the first place? I'll keep that in mind for future reference. * Of course, denial is actually the first step, but eventually people realize/accept that death has occurred. Not for this cult. They are in reverse.

Looks like alcohol and COVID just don't mix. A few flare ups across Canada, mostly linked to either reopening the bars or to house parties where the young'uns are congregating. The last few days in Ontario, there has been a spike in new cases of people under 35. I know for many of them the odds are that the symptoms won't be all that bad, but of course there will be the unlucky few and then always the risk of spreading COVID further. Certainly, my preference is to more or less close down the bars permanently and push people towards consuming alcohol along with food. I think we are at the point where a combination of complacency and COVID fatigue (the feeling that this will just never be over...) are setting in, and it just means the second wave will be worse than it needs to be. The plans for getting kids back in school in Sept. feels incredibly ad hoc. We're at the point where there really are no good options. The negative impact on kids from not having in-person instruction (potentially for an entire school year) is going to be enormous and cannot just be dismissed out of hand, even in the interest of trying to limit the spread of COVID. I don't have the answers either, but I'm definitely feeling that the unacknowledged costs of the lockdown are going to be huge.

Glad to hear it.