It isn’t just depressing to bring death into the foreground of consciousness by creating an atmosphere of violence — it’s also dangerous. Any political arrangement that lets masses of people die thematizes death, by making lethal violence perceptible, frequent, salient, talked-about, and tolerated.

Deaths can seem even more haunting when they’re not recognized as a real loss, which is why it’s so important how deaths are depicted by governments and in mass communication. The genre of the obituary is there to present deaths as a loss to the public. The movement for Black lives brought into focus for everyone what many people knew and felt all along, which was that when deaths are not rendered as losses to the public, then they are depicted in a way that erodes civic regard. When anyone dies from COVID, our political representatives should acknowledge it in a way that does justice to the gravity of that death. Recognizing COVID deaths as a public emergency belongs to the kind of governance that aims to keep the blue concoction where it belongs.

They are refusals to recognize the terribleness of death.

Raising death to salience in this way can create and then leverage feelings of existential precarity, which in turn emotionally equip people on a mass, nationwide scale to tolerate violence as a tool to gain political power.

Raising death to salience in this way can create and then leverage feelings of existential precarity, which in turn emotionally equip people on a mass, nationwide scale to tolerate violence as a tool to gain political power. It’s now a regular occurrence to ram into protestors with vehicles, intimidate voters and poll workers, and prepare to attack government buildings and the people inside. This atmosphere disparages life, and then promises violence as defense against such cheapening, and a means of control.

one of the worst things we could do is get used to death, treat it as unremarkable or as anything other than a loss.

“If we are paying attention to our environment, we are stimulating ourhippocampus, and a bigger hippocampus seems to be protective against Alzheimer’sdisease,”

But they also affect perception and judgment. When people are told which way toturn, it relieves them of the need to create their own routes and remember them.They pay less attention to their surroundings. And neuroscientists can now see thatbrain behavior changes when people rely on turn-by-turn directions

The idea of smart cities is born of what Watson describes as “the same human superiority-complex that thinks nature should be controlled”. What’s missing is symbiosis. “Life on Earth is based upon symbiosis,” Watson says. She suggests we replace the saying “survival of the fittest” with “survival of the most symbiotic”. Not as catchy, perhaps. But smarter

Roger McNamee warned Google can’t be trusted with such data, calling the project “surveillance capitalism”.

Transmission of material in this news release is embargoed until USDL-20-1838 8:30 a.m. (ET) Friday, October 2, 2020Technical information: Household data: cpsinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/cpsEstablishment data: cesinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/ces Media contact:(202) 691-5902 • PressOffice@bls.gov THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION —SEPTEMBER 2020

For release 10:00 a.m. (ET) Tuesday, October 20, 2020 USDL-20-1969 Technical information: Employment: sminfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/sae Unemployment: lausinfo@bls.gov • www.bls.gov/lau Media contact:(202) 691-5902 • PressOffice@bls.gov STATE EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT —SEPTEMBER 2020

In New Jersey, considered the second-wealthiest state in the nation, a staggering 930,000 residents had filed for unemployment benefits as of Thursday, state officials said, up from 55,000 for the same six-week time period last year.

Volunteer help has dwindled because of social distancing and a fear of contracting and spreading the disease.

Monetary donations are on the rise. Multiple food banks told CNBC that financial donations from corporate supporters and foundations have been more generous lately, and individual monetary donations have not stopped despite an nationwide economic slowdown

They’ve turned to purchasing food themselves using larger portions of their budgets to make it happen. 

Some food banks are seeing a decrease in the amount of food donated. The Capital Area Food Bank in Washington saw a 75% dip in donated food supply, CEO Radha Muthiah told CNBC. “It was just over the course of a week or so that we started to see these changes,” Muthiah said. “There wasn’t enough time to plan and anticipate this dramatic fall.” 

they haven’t gotten food to distribute or they don’t have the volunteers to man them

But front-line workers are preparing for more dire circumstances, as the government continues to push shelter-in-place warnings and as unemployment rates continue to rise. Several food banks told CNBC they anticipate an increase in the coming months in the number of people seeking sufficient food supply for themselves and their families.

Households with children are more likely to experience food insecurity, according to Feeding America, the country’s largest network of food banks. Often, food-insecure households rely on local food banks and other hunger relief organizations for support.