Thomas journals

One way in which other countries have leapfrogged the U.S. technology adoption curve is in the use of mobile phones to move money around.  For example, WeChat and AliPay are huge in China. Kids These Days now talk about Venmoing money to each other -- Venmo was a startup inspired by other countries' use of phones, then eventually the whole company was bought by Paypal so as to integrate the webservices with the mobile phoen services. Venmo tries to be a social network as well, flaunting (that is, sharing) information about your purchases and discussing them online...strange to me, but evidently rather popular.  Two other similar services are vying for popular attention in the U.S. now, with intriguing distinct characteristics: Zelle and Cashapp.  Zelle seems to represent an effort by the Big Banks to obviate the need for Venmo: Zelle is actually more efficient -- transferring immediately and directly from one bank account to another without need to expose any bank info...

CoronaVirus came to Morocco.  We felt pretty safe for a while.  Life went on normally, with the news about this virus in China, spreading to South Korea and Japan, then Italy. On February 2nd, Barb and I were returning by taxi from Meknes, when we saw speeding towards us a motorcade.  Was it the king?  No.  The police were escorting two large white buses, each with two guys in hazmat suits in the front!   Then I remember reading in the newspaper that the King had ordered the repatriation of the several hundred Moroccan students who had been studying in Wuhan!  The article noted that they would fly in to Rabat airport and then be quarantined at the Military Hospital in Rabat and the Sidi Sa'id Hospital in Meknes!  We saw them! Also, as we drove by the airport I saw a huge white 747 plane there -- it's a small airport. So that was our first  direct exposure, as it were, to the CoronaVirus. Two weeks later, as I retold this story in one...