Arnold Hoogerwerf

🎵My week in music (week #14 2020)

BBC News:

Coronavirus: Why Dutch lockdown may be a high-risk strategy

“The Netherlands has tried to adopt an “intelligent lockdown”, but the infection is spreading rapidly and it has one of the world’s highest mortality rates from the pandemic.”

🎵R.I.P. Bill Withers… As a young kid, playing Lean on Me on the piano made me believe that I could play like a pro, and it helped me to keep on practicing. Such a sweet, simple but genius song.

AI powered brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are (almost) here..

🎵R.I.P. Krzysztof Penderecki… Listening to A Polish Requiem: XII. Agnus Dei

🎵 My week in music (week #13 2020)

🎥 The Post (2017) ★★★

📺 The Morning Show (2019) ★★★½

Great acting by a top notch cast (including even Jennifer Aniston). But Billy Crudup definitely stole the show for me. Also a very nuanced approach of the Me Too movement.

🌱 Blooming plum

“I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty”

Andy Warhol 💬

📺 E06S05 of Better Call Saul was the best episode of the series yet. Story wise, the Saul vs. Kim/Mesa Verde scene was equally important as the famous ‘Chuck court scene’ in S3, but this scene showed Saul at his best. And the amateur commercials made it almost too vile to watch.

🌱 Pricking out the germinated seedlings from the nearby park.

🎥 Up next in our Quarantine Ghibli Film Watching Experience was: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). ★★★

This must be one of the happiest films ever made. Almost no dramatic plots until just before the end maybe. It reminded me in a strange way of David Lynch’s The Straight Story.

🎵My week in music (week #12 2020)

Pretty happy with the new work desk at my shared workspace. Now let’s work from home for the unforeseeable future...

🎵 I very much love this idea for a collective drone concert in quarantaine. Hope it works out as planned!

”Let’s all gather (in our shelters) and produce a drone (in C) from our balconies and windows that can be heard across the city – unifying us all in isolation and reverberating love and compassion“

🌱 Magnolia in bloom

So, yesterday was quite a surreal day over here in the Netherlands. It was the first, sunny day of ‘the ‘Covid19’ lockdown, the Dutch way’. Instead of a total lockdown like China, Italy and now Spain and France, the Netherlands are opting for a controlled spreading of the Corona virus throughout the population. By taking less stringent measures, society will be less disrupted, but a lot of healthy, less vulnerable people (possibly up to 60% of the population) will get sick with mild symptoms of Corona over the next coming months. — Lees op arnoldhoogerwerf.micro.blog/2020/03/17/total-lockdown-vs.html

So, yesterday was quite a surreal day over here in the Netherlands. It was the first, sunny day of ‘the ‘Covid19’ lockdown, the Dutch way’. Instead of a total lockdown like China, Italy and now Spain and France, the Netherlands are opting for a controlled spreading of the Corona virus throughout the population.

By taking less stringent measures, society will be less disrupted, but a lot of healthy, less vulnerable people (possibly up to 60% of the population) will get sick with mild symptoms of Corona over the next coming months. This way, a kind of herd immunity will be established; a human shell protecting the elderly and the weak.

From a philosophical perspective, this is the ultimate act of solidarity one can ask from a whole nation. And hardly making any chance of succeeding, one would think. Yet that is exactly what our prime minister asked for during his televised speech yesterday evening.

It was a speech like no other I’ve seen on this subject, in which he basically acknowledged that there’s no use fighting this virus, because ultimately it will win, as long as there’s no vaccine or a certain threshold of immunity among the population. A humble and vulnerable position to take as a leader of 17 million, but it surely resonated with many open minded individuals. I’m in no way a fan of prime minister Rutte (he’s a liberal technocrat, I’m a progressive social democrat), but his speech convinced me too.

Still, I’m afraid that this policy won’t last long, mainly because it already is being politicised heavily. Many suspect this story is being used as a neoliberal excuse upfront for all the economical damage that will follow from the measures taken. Furthermore, if no other country in Western Europe will take equal measures, in the long run, our own ‘little herd’ immunity will make no chance against the total lockdown surrounding us.

The speech (in Dutch) can be found here

It’s median age.

Age and Coronavirus - Professor Robert

“Of the oldest 50 countries, 43 have identified COVID19 within their borders, as of today (March 15th 2020)

Of the youngest 50 countries, only 2 have.

43 vs. 2.”

Homemade bread with linseed, rye and sunflower seeds.

🎵 My week in music (week #11 2020)

🎥 As part of our social distancing regime, we’re watching Ghibli films on Netflix with the family. Spirited Away (2001) is a delightfully bizar, beautifully made animated film, one of the best Anime films I’ve seen (I didn’t see a lot of them.) ★★★½.

🎵♥️ Sixteen Oceans - Four Tet (2020)

🌱 First bee of the season in our blooming almond tree.