Yeah, there was Easter-related stuff, but I was really talking about the burst of Check, Please! updates after Tuesday’s cliffhanger. On the third day, Bitty and Jack took a new step in their relationship and the whole gang was there for the celebratory pick-up game of hockey. On the fourth day, we saw the happily ever after ending — which in any other context would be too pat and twee and cloying — which Bits fucking earned.

There will be ups and downs in the future, but Ransom & Holster will always be best buds, Shitty¹ and Lardo will always love each other, Chowder, Nursey, and Dex will get on each others nerves (and never compel the others to stop), and Bitty’s mom and dad will be thrilled with Jack as a second son². The last episode was an extended Thank You from Ngozi Ukazu to everybody that helped make Check, Please, and to everybody that read it. Everybody feel good for Bitty.

• Okay, more seasonally appropriate perhaps: when I last spoke to Evan Dahm about his upcoming books a year ago at MoCCA, he was getting close to the finishing touches on his graphic novel of what happened to Christ Jesus in the time between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. This story is part of the Apocrypha, and the name given to it is the title of the book: The Harrowing Of Hell. The plan was to have the book out for Easter.

  Yeah, didn’t happen. Even before the novel coranavirus, Iron Circus publisher/supremo for life C Spike Trotman had difficulties, with at least one printer accepting the job and then rejecting it because … I dunno? They didn’t want to be associated with a story about Jesus casting down the gates of Hell and freeing the damned from their eternal torment? Anyway, it’s on track for a release in July, and to both tide us over and to honor the liturgical season, Spike released the first 37 pages on The Grams over the weekend. I’ve mentioned before that Dahm has drawn Jesus in a way that is somewhat self-portraiture; reading the opening scene (the trial of Jesus), Pilate looks just a little like how Ngozi Ukazu draws Holster (I may be obsessing over the CP finale a little). It’s the shape of the head, really.

  Anyway, it’s a cracking good read, and likely to give both believers and nonbelievers a new perspective on the central tenets of Christianity. Start reading here and work your way through some lush, deep, thoughtful pages.

• Hey, confused by everything to do with the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2? How predictions change from day to day, and how the unscrupulous and ignorant will use the confusion surrounding the predictions of experts to try to force us all out of our homes so that billionaires don’t lose of their precious money? Not surprising, as the entire business of predicting how the pandemic will go is reliant on a mathematics that depends on numerous variables, the assumptions for which depend on other variables, the assumptions for which depend on still other variables.

  Which depend on things like testing numbers and causes of death, both of which are lagging nearly everywhere.

  It’s enough to drive one to distraction, and complex enough that even veteran stats-wranglers and mathematic modelers are noping out of the predictions game. But just because the folks at, say, FiveThirtyEight aren’t making any predictions of their own doesn’t mean that they can’t talk about the process and methodology of making predictions. But how to render a complex topic understandable to a general audience?

  [finger snap] Weinersmith!

  A Comic Strip Tour Of The Wild World Of Pandemic Modeling will make for an engaging 15-20 minute dive into the math, and why we really don’t know what’s going on, but how each iteration of the model likely gets us closer to explaining reality (although on a lag). One thing’s for sure — reading a plateau or even decline in the number of cases as a reason to open everything up again will fucking get people killed you great orange moron, don’t do it. We need hard, reliable, statistically significant numbers, and that means widespread serological testing. Until then, stay in.

  Maybe re-read the whole of Check, Please while you’re at it? It’s a mood-raiser.

Spam of the day:

Stay protected from nasty bacteria in gyms

It’s not a bacteria, and you shouldn’t be going to the gym. Sheesh, the imagination on this kid!

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¹ Literally my only complaint is we never learned Shitty’s first name.

² Also, Tater will be there being almost as upbeat and innocent as Bitty. Tater’s a good dude.

Hey, have the days started to run together for you, rendering all sense of what’s a work day and what’s the weekend meaningless? Cool, cool … but I’ve got a work from home job and the weekend actually still has meaning for me and I am looking forward to this one like you wouldn’t believe. If the same is true for you, or if weekends are whenever you want them to be for the time being, doesn’t matter. I decree that tomorrow is the day for you to kick back and relax a bit. Here’s some info to help you plan what you might do.

• The :01 Books virtual convention, Comics Relief, which is set for Saturday next week¹, has released some more details in the form of a schedule. The event is shaping up to be something like an All :01 All The Time day of panel content, with the schedule and participants now up for your perusal. Fun starts at 11:00am EDT on the 18th (platform TBA), and if you have any questions for the panelists, you can submit them now².
• The Ringo Awards nominations are up, because pandemic or no, there were some great comics last year and it would be a shame not to recognize them. You (yes, you!) can nominate here until 5 June. The winners are presently scheduled to be presented at Baltimore Comic Con on 24 October, but I don’t think they can make any promises in that regard right now. Whether there’s a physical event or not, I’m sure the honorees will be sufficiently thrilled.
• As you may recall, I have noted that Homestar*Runner is a webcomic, and thanks to the machinations of one Mr S Bad, Homestar*Runner is now a webcomic with a free to listen soundtrack of 180 songs, jingles, background music, and other audio miscellania. It doesn’t contain the classic Strong Bad Sings And Other Type Hits (featuring Limozeen), but you can purchase that for a measly ten bucks (American). While you’re waiting for it to be delivered, revel (revel, damn you!) in 20 years worth of random aural delight.

Spam of the day:

Gwenith Paltrow and Kate Hudson have both taken selfies wearing the mask N95

Dude, don’t even. The only thing “Gwenith” ever takes selfies with is a fake-ass pseudoscience doodad — hello, jade vag egg! — that you can conveniently buy from the Goop store for the equivalent of two days labor at minimum wage. N95s ain’t got nearly enough woo to interest her.

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¹ Reminder: today is Friday. Unless you’re reading this on a different day, in which case maybe it’s not. Look at your phone, it’ll tell you what day it is.

² Oh, and everybody that submits questions will be entered into a drawing for a free STACK O’ BOOKS, winner to be announced during the Q&A session (session #6, 4:00pm EDT). 13 years or older, resident of the US to win, good luck everybody.

Is it BINGO if you fill all the boxes? I mean, any random day I teach I hit everything except Cat, Child, and Glasses Reflection before we’re done with introductions. Gemma Correll remains our most insightful observer of everyday absurdities and I’m so happy that The Nib runs her stuff regularly.

• Speaking of The Nib, editor/supremo/guy that keeps it all running when new media funding gets yanked Matt Bors has a new collection of his editorial cartoons that you can obtain via The Nib. Named for maybe his most famous cartoon, We Should Improve Society Somewhat is 184 pages of Bors at his best, and while it’s available via bookstores or comic stores near you, you should consider picking it up directly from The Nib.

  That’s due to the fact it’s pretty much sold out elsewhere¹, but also because The Nib is where you can add on a sketch/sign option, meaning that Bors will touch your copy himself, guaranteed. While you’re there, take a look at the other Improve Society stuff (your book will come with a sticker!) and back issues of The Nib in print; every sale will get turned into paychecks for cartoonists because shelter-in-place pandemic or no, The Nib is founded on the principle that cartoonists get paid for their work.

• The sixth annual Queer Comics Expo was due to occur 16-17 May, hosted as in years past by the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Naturally, nobody knows the degree to which travel and congregation will be allowed/advisable in five weeks time, so like other events before (and likely some still to come — looking at you, SDCC), it’s gone virtual.

  Applications are now being accepted for the digital artists alley, streaming content proposals, and merchant participation. If you are looking to exhibit or produce programming, applications are being taken until 11:55pm PDT on Friday, 1 May; acceptances will be on a rolling basis until available slots are filled.

  You might not have thought that a virtual con would need volunteers, but QCE has an application up to compile a list of volunteers for the next physical event, so get your name in early. Finally, admission will be free, but as QCE is in part a fundraiser for CAM, if you attend any part of the remote event (and even if you don’t), please consider dropping some cash CAM’s way.

Spam of the day:

Gibson Gives – Helps Nashville Musicians and Community After Tennessee Tornado

Okay, ordinarily I wouldn’t consider this spam, but the PR shop that sent it to me is abusing Constant Contact’s unsubscribe process. When I click on the unsubscribe link, it claims that the email was sent only to the address that it came from, and when I enter in my email address it claims I’m not part of the mailing list and so can’t be unsubscribed. Pretty crappy behavior, primeprgroup.com, and if I see any more of this bullshit from you I’m ratting you out to Constant Contact. They revoke customer access over nonsense like this.

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¹ Likely due to the disruptions at the distributor level, as the book should have been shipping at just about the exact moment that everything shut down, dammit.

Busy EMT shift on Tuesday night, including my first definite (as in, previous positive test) COVID-19 patient; with the decontamination and sanitization required, everything takes about twice as long as it does normally. I am short on sleep and despairing for the safety of everybody working the healthcare end of this crisis¹, but at least there’s some good stuff happening in Webcomickia:

• Rich Stevens often reacts to uncertainty by throwing himself into merch design and/or giving away stuff. He can’t really get out and work, but he’s got a bunch of envelopes, a bunch of stamps, and a bunch of stickers ’round the house, and figures giving them away will while away some hours. Details here, first come first served.
• Ryan Estrada has had the great good luck to live for a number of years in Busan, South Korea, a country that knows how to treat pandemics — particularly the respiratory kind — seriously. COVID-19 may have delayed his next book (see Monday’s post re: Iron Circus), but it’s about to come out and his co-author/wife, Kim Hyun Sook, have made a comic about their experience making the graphic novel.

  In case you didn’t know, Kim has had experience living through an authoritarian regime, having grown up in South Korea in its military dictatorship period; that time in her life is the basis of Banned Book Club, as she and her friends defied a repressive government to read forbidden books. If the thought of Estrada living in a society that’s functional in the face of pandemic threats isn’t interesting, maybe learning from Kim how to undermine the grip of a jumped-up authoritarian with a cabal of noncompetent sycophant enablers will be useful to you at this time.

• We’re light on specifics at the moment, but :01 Books (a place where everybody there is just the best person) have announced a virtual book festival for a week from Saturday. On 18 April from 11:00am to 5:00pm EDT (8:00am to 2:00pm PDT), creators will come together to show how the comics you (and they) love are made. Info here, register here (they’ll get back to you with further info), and we’ll share details in the coming days as they’re released.

Spam of the day:

Introducing the multi-state concealed carry certification. One ONLINE ONLY Certification is changing the way Americans get multi-state concealed carry permits.

Oh yes, please, all you gunhumpers please give this scammer your money for a piece of paper and try to conceal-carry in the state of New Jersey. No, don’t look up our laws, or how multi-state concealed carry isn’t a thing, just do it and see what happens.

And be sure to do it where there’s lots of cameras, because I can’t wait to watch that video on YouTube.

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¹ And let me be clear, I am doing this once a week, with sufficient PPE; if that ceases to be the case, I will not put my crew in harm’s way because nothing about being an EMT requires you to commit suicide, especially when you’re doing it for free. So for the sake of whatever you hold dear, keep your ass at home, no exceptions, until we’ve got a handle on this shit.

I myself am too spiteful to die in a pandemic that Donald Trump is mismanaging out of a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and malice (no matter what, I will live long enough to shit on his grave and to see his spawn and also Jared sent to prison for the rest of their lives) but others won’t be so indestructible. Stay home and leave the good masks for those doing the work.

Specifically, of the second :01 Second collection of Check, Please (subtitled Stick & Scones). This wraps up Bitty’s four years at Samwell, and presumably resolves the cliffhanger that Year Four, Chapter 22 (posted at noon today) has left us on. Unfortunately, the incompetent, malicious grifter in the White House has ensured that this is not a functional world, everything is disorganized, and review copies haven’t made it out to everybody on :01’s list because — and let me clear, this is important — people not dying is more important that me having an ARC to write about today.

So when I’m able to get a copy of Ngozi Ukazu’s sure-to-be triumphant conclusion, I’ll let you know. Until then, you can read very nearly the entire story online, and as a special treat we have Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin here to tell you about what’s going on Europe-ways.

I have news from the civilian zone, and news from the front.

On the civilian zone, the #coronamaison has become really big. How big, you ask?

• How about that much bigger after having received contributions from the (paid) illustrated prints for March of both Maliki and Laurel (also remarkable illustrations on their own rights), as well as many others since we last spoke of the project: Julie Manassero’s, Mathieu Bablet’s, Ozlisky’s, and Mifflue’s) caught my eye, but Gally’s has got to be the most remarkable of the bunch.
• How about big enough to have not one, but two sites that catalog the different creations so far?
• How about having the template being mass-printed by Sud Ouest for its readers? You know, the local newspaper that covers Angoulême?
• How about being used for remote schooling work everywhere in France, for art therapy, or for an illustration student work prompt?
• How about being realized as a 3D paper template [PDF] by an outreach society for the architecture trade?
• How about being mentioned in the friggin’ New York Times?
• How about big enough to have the template be hijacked by the web presence of a widely broadcast TV program: not only did they not credit the creators, but they even added their own copyright to the template … (this has been fixed since then). Fortunately, the #coronamaison was also featured on TV with proper credit at least two times, both times with an interview of #coronamaison architect Timothy Hannem, and once with an interview of #coronamaison inventor Oscar Barda. We at Fleen eagerly await the forthcoming TV interviews of #coronamaison project lead Sandrine Deloffre and coronamaison promoter Pénélope Bagieu.
• And how about, finally, being violently dismissed (no link, he does not deserve the attention) by everyone’s least favorite paedophilia enabler? Yes, I think all #coronamaison principals are going to wear his disapproval as a badge of honor.

And now for the front lines. I mentioned Solange Baudo, aka Soskuld, a few times here. She is a nurse’s aide but also chronicles her work in a comics blog, starting way back from her studies. However, about five years ago she quit the hospital to get a formal training in illustration and comics with the aim to work on that full time, which she has now been doing for the past year.

Until last week. Now it’s part time.

Because last week, she has again donned the safety gear and started working in a clinic for 12 hours shifts after volunteering on MedGo, as she relates in a riveting testimonial (French-only, sorry). Yes, in a COVID service near Paris, an area hard hit at the time of this writing.

Solange, we at Fleen salute you, and you can be assured that, the next time we meet, I’ll have something for you. I’m thinking a cake. A big one. But the best support I can give you right now is for me to stay at home.

As always, we at Fleen are grateful for FSFCPL’s observations from the heart of Europe. Rester en sécurité, mon ami.

Spam of the day:

Doctors can’t explain why this insane method passes every lab test …

Let me stop you right there. It’s because you’re full of shit and there are no lab tests. Fuck off.

For certain values of life, that is; in this case, the value would be The minions of a belligerent, poisonous space potato. The way found is how to ship the finest in webcomics merch to you in times of isolation:

Hello! Here’s some good news. Starting today we’re shipping orders again! We’ve figured out a one-person-in-the-warehouse-at-a-time policy that includes rigorous sanitizing before and after shifts.

The precautions we’re taking exceed those advised by the CDC and WHO, both of whom have indicated there is currently no evidence that COVID-19 is being spread through the mail.

Due to these precautions, shipping will be slower than normal. Please allow 4-8 business days for your order to ship (this is subject to change depending on the Situation¹).

However, due to widespread service disruptions that change on an almost daily basis, we will be holding on to non-US orders for a while longer until things clear up. As always, if you have any questions please contact us here or at topatoco.com/help

And huge thanks to our team: Agent Paperklip, @tomselleck69, @CptOblivion, @MrReciprocity, and The Marlboro Kid!

Hey, you know how you can add little notes to your TopatoCo order that get read by whoever is doing the packing of your merch? This would be the place to include a thank you, or some little token of appreciation². Maybe if we ask nicely, Topato can add a button to the ordering process that lets you add a tip for whoever is sending out your t-shirt, poster, or book order.

• In other news, Iron Circus Comics may have to change its name to Iron Circus Comics And Media or some such. The Lackadaisy Cats animation is gonna happen, and a short while ago they passed the (quite frankly ridiculous) US$225K final stretch goal. This is C Spike Trotman’s 24th Kickstarter, and I think she just passed about 20% of her cumulative funding in this one campaign alone.
• Speaking of, Spike’s not resting on her laurels. The whole COVID-19 starting in China thing threw her printing schedule out of whack (what with the real impact occurring just about exactly the same time as the Lunar New Year shutdowns), but that’s just given customers and distributors time to run up the orders on a bunch of her coming titles. So much so that there might have been shortages had she not increased print runs, which requires a bigger outlay of cash and possibly bigger delays which gives more time for more orders and I’m not sure if this circle is vicious or virtuous.

  Want to be sure to get your most-anticipate upcoming IC title? Public pre-orders are up, although some titles will not be shipping until October³, so check out the dates on the pre-order pages for Banned Book Club, The Complete Penultimate Quest, The Harrowing Of Hell, It’s Your Funeral!, The Nixie Of The Mill-Pond And Other European Stories, Smut Peddler Presents: Silver, Student Ambassador: The Missing Dragon, and the presciently-titled Softies: Stuff That Happens After The World Blows Up.

Spam of the day:

Shocking Proof God’s Plan Is Coming True…

Humanity has worshipped a few zillion gods and I’m curious which one, but I have a feeling you’re talking about the god referred to by the tetragrammaton, YHWH (which Larry Gonick reliably informs me is pronounced Yahoo-Wahoo). So tell me — if this proof is so awesome, why are you trying to get me to pay you to see it instead of spreading it far and wide? I really hope that you’re right and it is proof that your god is real, because as I recall he had some nice bits of vengeance planned for the profiteers and falsely pious like you.

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¹ Editor’s note: this is the general situation we live in right now, not the person who calls himself The Situation who last I heard was in federal prison for tax evasion.

² I will usually include a recipe for a cocktail that I’ve worked up, or a playlist suggestion for the next impromptu warehouse dance party.

³ Depending on how bad the world breaks further.

Late for its planned release on April Fool’s Day, and nobody cares about that. Also, if he had advertising on his various pages, given that this toy is making you archive crawl from here to Sunday, that would have been evil. Thanks for the distraction and not being evil, Randall!

Now if anybody knows what the clue Science Fiction Fetish refers to, I’ll be able to add some more stuff to my backpack.

Spam of the day:

you will need to watch the controversial video that will expose to you the secret to permanently and naturally curing

Nope. Not reading any further. Your video doesn’t suddenly and permanently and naturally cure anything. Fuck off.

Nothing is grabbing me today, got nothing in the potential stories queue, and it’s a Thursday. Thursdays have historically been the days I have to reach to find something to talk about¹ for going on fifteen years now.

But if quarantine has taught me one thing, it’s that it’s a fool’s errand to try to tell yourself that isolation will boost your productivity. I might have stressed over this a bit in other times, but today I’m giving myself a break. We’ll see what happens between now and tomorrow. In the meantime, take care, wash your hands, wear a fabric mask² if you’re out in public (handwashing protects you, mask protects everybody else), don’t go out unless you absolutely have to, and try to treat yourself kindly.

Spam of the day:

Now Is the Time to Stock Up on Wine! 15 Bottles for only $85

Booze stores were designated an essential business in New Jersey so if I need something to replace the rather nice Zinfandel I have open now, I will put on a mask and go down to the corner rather than order from your wine overstock brokerage in … Idaho? Seriously?

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¹ Not helping: even before they decided that they weren’t going to fulfill their basic functions, even before things started getting socially distant, Diamond has regularly shorted my local comic shop in general and my pulls in particular. Since I’ve been in, they sent out their last week’s distribution then apparently told UPS to interrupt delivery and return it to them for no godsdamned reason, so that last week’s worth of books I should have had pulled still hasn’t arrived. Maybe next Monday.

Anyway, I know this because once a week I call my shop and give them my credit card number for whatever they have for me so they aren’t entirely without sales. They’re now being told that things will be sent to them, so they may get books for the weeks of 25 March and 1 April sometime next week and I can hopefully get things mailed to me.

By the way, if you need comics and want to do mail order, give Rick a call at Comic Fortress. He’s a good dude.

² Lots of people are making them. Please save medical-grade surgical masks and N95 respirators for medical personnel. Oh, and remember they’re only good for about two hours so get a couple. Wash in soapy water and let ’em air dry.

Olivia Jaimes, the pseudonymous webcomicker that revived Nancy, is never better than when she gets meta. We all know what happens on holidays when she wants to quote, phone it in, endquote, pretending to dash off a strip that’s in the top tier of the funniest things to appear on the comics page that month¹. Today, April Fool’s Day 2020, was a day that none of us were really up for anybody lying to us. We get enough of that daily at 5:00pm EDT from the White House briefing room.

But today, Jaimes gave us a goof that knocked it out of that friggin’ park — why, exactly, has Nancy never changed i 80-plus years on the comics page? She’s a daywalker, obvs. It’s exactly what we all needed, and further proof that she is the best thing to happen to newspaper comics this decade. Go read it and get a bit of respite from all of the …. everything.

Spam of the day:

one of the best, affordable and reliable spy camera system

Too bad vampires don’t show up on cameras! Looks like Nancy and Sluggo are gonna chow down on your spammy ass.

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¹ See also, Sluggo is lit, Last year’s Plentiful Rocks.

I’m wondering if we’re starting to hit the end of Phase One of the coronavirus response. We still don’t have full distancing in all places (thanks, Republican governors!), and those of us that have been under restrictions for a couple weeks are hitting the it’s going to be how much longer? stage. Various notable people are being reported in critical condition or deceased because of COVID-19, new evidence how just how bad it’s going to get for the areas still in denial drop daily, and a concentrated, national response still hasn’t even started because of the insecure egotist in charge.

Things are about to get explosively bad in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia — and then everywhere else, hopefully not until we pass the peaks in the early-hit places. We’ll get there. We’ll find that what seems hard and isolating becomes doable (and those of us who’ve been doing it for a while will have it incumbent on us to help those that come behind). Practice helps (says the guy that had his first positive-screened patient over the weekend, and expects to get them regularly from here on out), but not as much as patience.

So. Deep breath. There’s some stuff here to take your mind off things for a bit, and an opportunity to help make something amazing, if it’s within your ability at the present time (which is absolutely not the ideal time). And, because we live in a crapsack reality, something that’s usually pretty bad has become downright terrible. Let’s start with that one and work our way up:

• Diamond is a monopoly, and those are never a good idea. Having already decided it won’t receive/ship comics for the foreseeable future, it decided today that because it’s not got money coming in from comic stores — that would be the comic stores that Diamond’s already said won’t be getting the product they ordered — it’s not going to pay its suppliers for product they’ve already received and sold.

  It’s a neat tornado of shitty behavior: announce you’re not going to be sending stuff to your customers, which causes customers to not pay you to do nothing, which causes you to not have money coming in, so you decide to keep what money you’ve already got and not pay the vendors that supplied you in good faith. Whatever form the direct market takes when all of this is done, I sincerely hope this course of action is the death knell for the crappiest link in the comics chain and that multiple new companies arise and put Diamond in the dirt.

  Oh, yeah, they did the same to the games distribution vendors as well.

• Couple weeks back we brought you news of Fredddave Kellett-Schroeder’s new interview series Kickstart, a project which got off to a comfortable start and then just sort of stalled. Don’t get me wrong — this funding curve would be great if it were depicting, say, a count of coronavirus infections¹, but it’s not where you want to be for a project funding. The FFF mk2 isn’t looking promising: US$64K-96K, with a goal of just under US$90K would be promising, except for one thing.

  The project was promoted to past backers of Stripped and other Kellett projects for 18 hours or so before the public reveal, and a good chunk of that day one total comes from the pre-announcement period. It’s a useful technique, but it throws off the funding formula, which relies on an organic launch. A better metric in this case would be the McDonald Ratio, which states that the first three days of funding equals one third of the total raised, or in this case about US$65K, well under goal. The dramatic dropoff from day two to day three, and the almost zero funding since² make this one a longshot.

  Which is a damn shame, because this series looks super interesting. There’s still time to turn things around, weirder things have happened, but it’s going to take a lot of people deciding they want this in the next nine days (days of uncertainty and economic stress nobody was considering back in early March). More likely, this is going to have to be shelved until a later time when people have spare money again. Just … if you have discretionary funds right now, give it some thought, okay?

• Let’s end on some unalloyed good news. Aud Koch has shared her first week’s quarantine art, and it’s stunning. Go take a good long look and forget all of … this … for a while.

Spam of the day:
Got a call from “Mike” who claimed to be calling to reduce my electric bill, from a clearly audible boiler room. I told him You’re lying, you’re trying to steal from me while a plague is underway, and I hate you. Felt great.

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¹ It bears a striking resemblance to the curve for South Korea, who have done everything in just about the complete opposite way that the US has. Never forget: both countries saw their first confirmed case on the same day. That being said, some of the worst-hit areas here in the US are starting to just maybe see a flattening in the curve and that’s good news. Don’t slack off now; hold the line and drive it down into the dirt.

² Including three days of negative funding. Ouch.