David Wallace-Wells: We still don’t know how the coronavirus is killing us https://nym.ag/3aQ7TAl
WP: Matthew Pottinger faced Communist China’s intimidation as a reporter. He’s now at the White House shaping Trump’s hard-line policy toward Beijing. https://wapo.st/35cFUcY
Time is running out for the West to stop China’s global takeover: For decades we have turned a blind eye to Beijing’s crimes and kidded ourselves it won’t take advantage of our weakness, says Edward Lucas. https://bit.ly/2W5ODK6
Ian Cowie: Why I’m walking away from China: The spread of the virus blame game has prompted Ian Cowie to start selling up. https://bit.ly/3f3nPmb
Daniel Drezner: Meet the new bipartisan consensus on China, just as wrong as the old bipartisan consensus on China. It would be great if everyone calmed the heck down. https://wapo.st/2ShFSvh
Joseph Nye: No, the coronavirus will not change the global order: We should be skeptical toward claims that the pandemic changes everything. China won’t benefit, and the United States will remain preeminent. https://bit.ly/3eZJYlt
Melanie Brock: Postcard from Tokyo: Life in surprisingly low-tech lockdown: While the Japanese have a great deal of resilience and are used to disasters, lockdown is testing their patience - and the old ways of working and studying. https://bit.ly/2zwzGcb
Robot dog 'spot' screens COVID-19 patients at Boston hospital: The four-legged robot is being used as a telemedicine platform, so healthcare workers can remotely triage patients. https://bit.ly/3aLxjPy
Who is likely to go without food in the looming supply crisis: IHS Markit has identified 12 'choke points' between farm and plate. Their analysts reckon one could get away with two or three or maybe even four that could be fixed with a rapid intervention (for example, no people to pick the crops, so wave large sums of money and enforce social distancing) under stress and risk of breakage. Anything more than four spells big trouble. https://bit.ly/2zzKiqJ
HBO Max is a branding disaster, and this ad proves it: It’s one thing to put HBO’s shows on a broader platform, but HBO Max is also diluting its brand. https://bit.ly/2Swjej5
You can say, “What we’re trying to do is preserve the quality and elegance of what HBO has been doing for 40 years and at the same time increase its output to a reasonable degree that doesn’t effect the quality and elegance and beauty,” as WarnerMedia Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt did to NBC’s Dylan Byers last year.
But the marketing for HBO Max so far is about as far from elegant and beautiful as it gets.
"AT&T is junking up Time Warner’s luxury product, HBO, and turning it into HBO Max. This is the equivalent of Hermès selling JanSport alongside Birkin bags.” -- NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway
Christina Paxson: College campuses must reopen in the fall. Here’s how we do it. It won’t be easy, but there’s a path to get students back on track. Higher education will crumble without it. https://nyti.ms/2YlPWae
Christina Paxson is the president of Brown University.
Alanis Morissette interview: ‘Female rage gets such a bad rap, but it’s part of being human’: For a generation of women, Jagged Little Pill was the album that spoke to them like no other. This year marks its 25th anniversary – but Alanis Morissette isn’t stopping any time soon. As she releases her ninth album, the original queen of angst talks to Charlotte Edwardes about young stardom, lessons learned and new motherhood at 45. https://bit.ly/2y7WZsA
Nicole Stott: What my spacewalk taught me about isolation: Feel as if you’re drifting in space? She knows what that’s like. https://nyti.ms/3bXbkqg
@CBCAlerts: MLB could resume by July 4 with minimum 80-game schedule. Possibility growing that games may occur in home parks likely without fans