Hendrix played this guitar: this week on Fresh Powder

Hendrix played this guitar.

 

If you’re going to be watching the NFL Draft tonight, you may recall that, at one time, it was expected to look like something vastly different than it ever had been before, but not in the way it’s turning out. Now, it will be a completely virtual experience. That it’s carrying on in spite of everything, though, is significant. The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis: How the NFL Draft Turned Into the Quarantine Super Bowl. “The defiant normalcy of the draft during a worldwide pandemic is weird. Maybe more than weird. Here’s one way to think about it: After the coronavirus inflicted economic hell on writers from Sports Illustrated and SB Nation, this year’s draft will function as a sports media stimulus package. You don’t need to think the NFL is a cuddly corporate force, or think most draft coverage is terribly important. But if a debate about Tua Tagovailoa’s hip keeps a few people employed, it’s probably worth having.”

. . . Will the format change be the cause of hilarious technical difficulties? This will be the reported setup for Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace tonight.

 

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“Now that her students are stuck at home, they seem hungry for connection. But such moments are scarce in online school. Saying ‘hello’ in the comments on Google Classroom isn’t the same as finding a minute to talk with the quiet kid who shows up early after lunch. Carried on at a distance, the relationships all seem so fragile.” Samantha Elkaim is a high school English teacher in lower Manhattan. She knows she can’t replicate a classroom. She just wants her students to keep talking. (New York Magazine)

 

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“How do you sum up something that’s so huge?” asks Alexei Hay. “One of the only answers is the emptiness, the thing that speaks to whatever everybody’s going through. The absence is more telling than taking a picture of anybody.” New York: Portrait of an empty city. “These are middle-of-the-night photos shot in broad daylight, snow-day pictures without the snow.”

. . . The photographer at my wedding, Jay Grabiec, is a senior airman embedded with the Illinois Air National Guard in Chicago, documenting FEMA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. His recent work: Images from the floor of an Alternate Care Facility in the making.

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Meet Room Rater, a Twitter account launched this month that rates the rooms in the background of Skype, Zoom and other video calls.