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Collective Dreaming, Grandparent Hugs, and the Soft Return of the NBA
Four stories we’re following about the coronavirus today
Published in
1 min readApr 29, 2020
- The psychological toll of the coronavirus has bled into our slumbering hours, triggering a global phenomenon that the AP refers to as “collective dreaming.” Surveys of Covid-19 dreamers reveal some common themes, like “a safe place suddenly being overtaken by the virus.”
- The current silence from companies like DeepMind, OpenAI, Facebook AI Research, and Microsoft — huge firms that hype A.I.’s potential to transform society — suggest the tech isn’t as revolutionary as we may think, a CNBC article argues. As the former director of machine learning at Amazon Cambridge bluntly put it, “This (pandemic) is showing what bulls — t most AI hype is.”
- In Switzerland, which is slowly loosening restrictions, children are now officially allowed to hug their grandparents — no get-togethers or babysitting, just hugs. But the reasoning behind the decision is controversial, says the BBC: The Swiss infectious diseases chief said kids “are not infected and do not transmit the virus,” but experts elsewhere disagree.
- Basketball fans, freshly hyped off the newly released Michael Jordan-Chicago Bulls documentary The Last Dance, have a new date to look forward to: May 8. As NPR reports, that’s when the NBA hopes to reopen team practice facilities — if local rules allow.
