hu cares | please scream inside your heart

In case you missed the best thing that’s happened on the internet so far this year, amusement parks in Tokyo are re-opening and the Wall Street Journal reported that patrons are being asked not to scream on rollercoasters, because those droplets can spread COVID. One video released by a park showed two executives — one in a suit — sitting stone-faced on a rollercoaster, ending with a message: “Please scream inside your heart.” First I scream-laughed, then I unexpectedly burst into tears; I have yet to see a more apt description of what we are all constantly being asked to do in 2020.

The government has massively bungled its coronavirus response, leading to a massive spike in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths? Please scream inside your heart.

After all, you’ve still got to report to work, if you’re still lucky enough to have one; ignore the fact that you might get COVID, because the people need to eat inside your restaurant and the president has decided the schools need to open, even if there are no precautions in place. Please just scream inside your heart.

And sure, there are other issues running rampant alongside COVID — systemic racism, transphobia, or sexual harassment, to name a few — but please, continue to scream only inside your heart, because any vocal criticism of the powerful people who uphold these toxic systems is, of course, an attack on their freedom. (And you want to keep your job right now, don’t you?)

While you’re following the rules and keeping those screams inside your heart so you don’t spread COVID, there are so many others still screaming out loud! Why is it that they are not screaming in their hearts? Well, they say, it is their right to scream out loud, COVID spread be damned, if COVID is even real. (Open your eyes, sheeple.) So, they are screaming, without a mask on, and you wonder: what’s the point of keeping all that screaming locked up inside my heart when so many are not? Should I, too, give in to just audibly screaming? What difference does it make if I only scream inside my heart while everyone around me is screaming outside their hearts?

I don’t know, but it feels like this rollercoaster will never end.

Three good things (the only good things?) from The Bird Site: Animal Edition

Akki @akkitwts

The most important thing you’ll see today

Ed Yong @edyong209

I was gonna try to end on an optimistic note, but I got nothing. Instead, here is a photo of a squirrel I saw on a walk earlier this week, who is giving maximal 2020 energy.

And because this last one bears a little explanation: Janelle Shane makes hilarious AIs, like these fake candy hearts. She made a parody of the popular Dog Rates account and the AI-generated images and captions are a wonderful fever dream:

dog_fakes @dog_fakes

This is Molly. She's very tall. We wonder what it's like at the top of the world. She does not. 14/10

What else I’m writing about

• We have no concrete plans or criteria for another shutdown, and as we’ve seen over the two weeks since I wrote this, states are hastily and messily shutting things down (Slate)

• New norms in the time of COVID (Washington Post)

• As the GRE moves online, it’s causing headaches for test takers and more graduate programs are removing the test from admissions requirements (Science)

• Police are needlessly furthering the spread of COVID by arresting protesters — and anyone convicted of non-violent crimes, tbh (Slate)