This blog has been offline for a while. I had moved the content (and custom domain) formerly hosted here elsewhere. There will be times I’ll be motivated enough to describe this migration.

For now, I want to re-start the blog at its wordpress dot com domain. My only goal is to keep my sanity. I will not polish and over-edit my posts, nor check them for errors and non-idiomatic English (I am not a native speaker).

I do not have special insights or competence in this situation. I will will refrain from “explaining” any data or statistics, I will just jot down random thoughts and observations I find helpful. I cross-check news, but I do not care about being “statistically right” in case I spot a somewhat reasonable reason for cautious optimism. What gives me hope is not hard data, but ad-hoc initiatives of people helping each other, and what gives hope may also help the immune system.

Seamstresses starting to sew masks for companies – helping both their clients and keeping their own businesses afloat. Farmers setting up self-service machines for fresh groceries. Such things are happening without public discussions about “regulations” – it is hard to convey what this means if you do not know my country’s culture from first hand experience.

Any semi-professional motivation to write about science and engineering has left me. I’ve spent a few days in a state of existential shock, and I know I am a privileged worker-from-home to even notice such feelings. I was waiting for an impulse to suppress it, by delving either into security/hacking or theoretical physics. So far, I felt the tug of neither, but I grabbed my 30-year old books by philosopher-doctor Viktor Frankl. I am not the only one turning to Man’s Search For Meaning as Coronoavirus reading.