I'm a little random-brained today, so you're getting random links.

First of all, amid all the cancelled conferences, EXARC will be holding theirs as a digital conference, live-streamed and later on available as well.

[caption id="attachment_5136" align="alignnone" width="864"] Note the genius symbol thingie in the bottom right corner. I take off my hat to whoever made this.


Tune in on their official website to learn about Documentation Strategies in Open-Air museums, free of charge, on March 26 and 27. (There will even be a Discord pub get-together, because there's no archaeology conference without a drink and a chat with the colleagues!)

The open-air laboratory Lauresham (where the European Textile Forum took place last year) has started a youtube channel where they plan to show clips of various places and activities taking place. Text is in German, but you can enjoy a view of that beautiful place no matter your language:


If you're looking for something else to do, you could try yourself in folding proteins - basically playing games for science. Relevant games, too, because there are puzzles related to the proteins in the Corona virus. You can download the programme on the official website (no phone apps available yet) and get going right away.

And that's it for today... different stuff tomorrow!

It feels surreal to be in the middle of a slow-motion catastrophe. Sometimes, life feels just entirely normal - there are orders to be packed (thank you for keeping my business running!), there are blog posts to be written, the cat wants to be let out. It's getting warm again outside, the sun is shining, the trees are starting to show first leaf buds.

And then, suddenly, it hits home again. The unusual, eerie quiet from the kindergarden and school right around the corner. The fact that all our events and planned meetings with family and friends (yes, down to meeting just two other people for a game night) are called off. The fact that I'm not sitting here alone, typing along, but on a desk in the same room, there's the Most Patient Husband of Them All, typing along as well in his quest to conquer the Home Office.

It is weird, and it's hard to process. Our world is definitely changing, and all this will leave a lot of traces. There's hope, though. We can flatten the curve if we all cut down on our social contacts for a bit, even, yes, even if it seems weird and excessive. The thing is - what seems excessive now might save our ass tomorrow (or, importantly, our grannies' asses). If you're in a country that isn't hit as hard yet, please don't make the easy mistake that almst everyone does and underestimate this danger. Stay home. Call off meetings. Ask for home office possibilities. Call off your social engagements, even the small ones. Phone your loved ones, and make sure they know about how serious the situation is. Every little bit of distance counts.

Even if taking your distance now should prove to have been a little excessive in a few months... I'd rather do that, and be considered a bit weird, than spread the virus. We don't get a second chance in this.

 

We're certainly, certainly living in interesting times right now. What I'm currently taking home from all this is a) how lucky I am, and b) how fragile our world and society can be.

I remember border controls from my childhood and youth. They were an added bit of excitement when travelling to another country, but they also always had a tiny drop of scariness. What if they would not let us pass?

After Schengen, after Europe grew together so much that border controls were abolished, every time I passed a border I was filled with wonder that this was possible, that I could just cross over, no questions asked, no passports checked. Even the money stayed the same! That sense of wonder held on, even though simultaneously I started to be annoyed by the passport controls when travelling into Britain. (They were Europe too, after all! Ah well, that is another topic for another day...)

Now the borders are closed again, all over Europe. All countries are trying to slow down the spread of COVID-19, and one of the steps is reducing travel - which has suddenly turned into something potentially dangerous instead of something totally normal, safe, and potentially delightful.

Yesterday morning, Bavaria has declared state of emergency; shops will close, as will gyms and other social spaces. It's a weird kind of danger, invisible and creeping and transmitted by fellow humans; way less obvious a danger than a physical attack or other war-like actions. Nonetheless, it is a danger, one to us all, and one that everyone should take seriously. Even if it feels weird.

This pandemic is changing our world, and it will surely change what happens in future. It has already cut an impressive trench through my calendar... there will be no NESAT this year, no wool fairs in spring, I won't be visiting my family for my mum's birthday this weekend, and I suspect there will be much more gardening time this year than ever before.

Free travel will come back - of that, I am sure. A small, optimistic part of me even thinks that maybe we'll manage to think things over while we are cutting down on our voyaging and manage to turn things into a bit more sustainable tracks when we're re-establishing our routes, at some point in the future... which, I suspect, won't be before summer.

Be safe, everyone. Take care of your loved ones - which might mean calling them and encouraging them to stay home, if they are part of the risk group. If you're still healthy, consider going to donate blood; this is going to be increasingly scarce in the next days and weeks. We're going to get through this, and the more each of us keeps their distance in the next two weeks, the better.

Yes, you've guessed it from the title - I'm writing about the virus again. When this all started, I was not aware of the possible consequences, as so many of us - but it has dawned on me, in the meantime.

It's spreading like wildfire, and we probably are mostly underestimating how far it has spread already. Here's an article with really, really scary numbers regarding this.

The gist of it: There's a point at which you cannot stop the spread of the disease, you can only slow it down in hopes of keeping the healthcare system from teetering over the edge of the abyss - because if that happens, mortality rate will shoot up, due to lack of medical staff, machines (such as respiratory machines), and medicines.

The measures necessary to slow down the epidemic have to be more drastic the later they are applied, and the earlier everyone acts, the faster the danger will be lessened. It's the "flattening of the curve" that gets mentioned again and again.

We are in all of Europe most probably already well past the point where the epidemic is stoppable, so our best chance collectively is to slow it down as much and as fast as we can. Which means cutting down on social stuff - which means no large gatherings, obviously; as little travel as possible, and staying at home if you can. Home office gets an option discussed more widely, and more often.

Humans are social animals, and we all need human-to-human interaction for our sanity. It's weird, in some way, to be aware of how important contact to other people is, and usually getting told that it is healthy to have a good number of friends and acquaintances to meet with - and now, basically, what we need to stay healthy, and to lessen the danger to the more vulnerable among us, is to keep away from other people. Social distancing, if you want to use a fancier term.

In the federal state of Bavaria, all schools and kindergardens and similar childcare institutions will stay closed from today on. Universities have been closed for a few days already, the start of the semester has been postponed, and all public gatherings are off until at least mid-April, but it looks like that might be extended. Non-essential shops are probably going to be closed from Tuesday on, as well as restaurants, clubs, and swimming pools (and, I suppose, gyms etcetera).

There's no complete lockdown on everything yet here, but it will certainly become worse than now before it becomes better.

If you're in a country that is not as badly affected yet - don't make our mistake and wait until things start to get out of hand. Take precautions (which does not mean hoarding stuff!), wash your hands, look into the possibility to work from home, and do your thing to help slow the spread. This mostly means: social distancing. Whether or not you have pre-existing health conditions, it certainly will be a smart thing to stay at home if you can, and away from other people if you have to go out. It's not just your own health - it's also the necessity to slow down the spread. Also make sure to tell your loved ones, especially if they are among the higher-risk group.

If you do go out, or meet friends and family members, take care and be safe. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, don't hug random strangers, and, again, don't panic-buy and hog hand sanitizers or face masks, they are needed elsewhere - like in hospitals and doctor's offices. (Or toilet paper. Or... dry yeast? Apparently, once a supply seems to run low, people panic and start to buy more of it, until it's all gone.)

By the way, people here are joking that when in quarantine, Germans will eat only pasta, shit an enormous lot and occasionally roll themselves in flour - because the most common suspects for "Hamsterkäufe", the German term for panic buying, are loo rolls, pasta, and flour. And on Friday, my aunt told me that the patron saint of protection against epidemics is called... St Corona. I'm still not over the funniness of this. (Wikipedia only tells about this in German, not in the English version.)

So. Stay safe, stay healthy, and make sure your loved ones do, too. Don't panic - but don't ignore the danger either. We'll all know in a few weeks whether what we did was enough or wasn't - and I do hope that it will be the former. After all, Pandemic is only a good thing if it's the board game, and even that is no fun if the cards are against you, and you lose... which can happen, if you are just a little bit unlucky.

Oh, and should you need something more medieval to time washing your hands than the old "sing Happy Birthday twice" - a single stanza of the Nibelungenlied should take you safely across the 20 seconds:

Well, there I was, doing things and getting stuff ready well in time for the conference - and now I will have another year to prepare: NESAT has been postponed.

I'm obviously not very happy about this - I was so looking forward to travelling there together with friends, to meet friends and colleagues up in the north of Finland, to hear about their new research and results, to chat with them and hang out and try new exciting foods and all the rest of wonderful things you do at a conference.

It's a decision I can understand, though. It's not a very large conference, but it is very international... and nobody knows how things will develop during the next two months. We've already botched doing enough things early enough with our climate, maybe it is time to err on the side of caution for a change.

And maybe, once the epidemic is over, we might actually do some similarly drastic things to keep our planet habitable? Just saying. Because obviously, it is possible to do stuff to counter dire things happening...

The Corona Scare has probably reached almost every corner of the world now, and things are definitely starting to get interesting in Germany. Bavaria has cancelled all events with more than 1000 people until April 19, and other federal states are following suit - among them Baden-Württemberg, though I couldn't find any dates on how long this ban will be in effect.

The cancellation of events in Ba-Wü will probably directly affect me, as there are two fairs there, one in mid-April (18th and 19th) and one at the beginning of May (8-10). At the moment, I'm not counting on either of the two actually taking place; the first because it's still just within the "ban time" that Bavaria has called out, and I'd guess that Baden-Württemberg will go for a similar time period, if not for a longer one; the second because though it is a good bit later, it's also a (substantial) bit larger, with more than 10 000 visitors during the three days of the fair, and it might well be that events in that size will still be banned then, depending on how things develop.

There's also a bike fair we were planning to go to, which is on the last weekend in April, in Rheinland-Pfalz. It's (unfortunately, in this case) also a very large one, with about 10 000 visitors, and a rather international one... so while the status for this is still unclear, I won't count on it taking place. Which would be rather sad, just like the wool fairs being called off. I do get that cutting out large gatherings of people, especially if the crowd comes from all kinds of places and will spread back out afterwards, will be helpful in slowing the virus spread.

NESAT is not before mid-May, and not very large - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that nothing dire will happen to put this in danger.

So. Things will develop as they will, and there's nothing to do right now than wait and see (and hope, of course, that the virus spread will peter out quickly). The virus has caused enough madness all around the world already - panic shopping included, which meant that hospitals and doctor's offices ran out of disinfectant and other necessary supplies, and could not get more because of people hoarding the stuff. That, obviously, is not a good thing at all. Especially since for most people, going a bit easy on the hugging and keeping up a good basic hygiene (washing hands, first and foremost) would be more than sufficient to keep risk down in normal life. We still know relatively little about the virus, including the real mortality rate, and panicking will definitely not help anybody.

Has the Corona Scare arrived in your area yet? Or are people still relatively relaxed?

So Brexit has happened - and, as is hardly surprising, with no proper deals sorted out between the EU and Britain.

I still can't believe something this stupid has happened. I can completely understand (as in intellectually comprehend) that the politicians who ran the referendum and started all that Brexit madness did not go back - could not, basically, without losing face.

But the crew at the rudder has changed since then, and there would have been ample opportunity to gather some courage together and say "hey, you know what, we can see now from the things happening that this was probably a bad decision, let's go back and stay in the EU". That did not happen, and I still don't get why.

Anyway - it is going to be interesting now how the transition period will end. Will there be a deal? Or will there be more dragging things out, to end all this with no deal whatsoever by the end of the year? We'll find out. Meanwhile, courtesy of a friend, here's a very nice Brexit song from some very funny Irish people (and you might want to turn the subtitles on, unless you are from Ireland...)