The Daily Valet. - 3/16/21, Tuesday

✔️ Going Digital

Tuesday, March 16th Edition

Cory Ohlendorf, Editor in Chief of Valet.

My digital SXSW plan? Having Texas barbecue overnighted to my home in California.

Cory Ohlendorf, Editor ⋯ @coryohlendorf

Today’s Big Story

SXSW Goes Digital

How do you transform a 280,000-person festival into a virtual event?

The cancellation of South by Southwest 2020 was a watershed moment in the coronavirus pandemic. Austin made the announcement that the festival was off just a week before it was set to begin. And within days, everything else got canceled, too: Baseball, the Final Four, Coachella, movies in theaters, weddings and any other fun you could have with more than three people.

SXSW is back on this year, but—like Sundance and those splashy Apple events—in digital form. And according to Texas Monthly, that might not be such a bad thing. It means no long lines, no traffic, no lugging around unwanted swag and a new way to tackle all the info and entertainment on offer.

In a normal year, the 100-year-old Paramount Theatre on Congress Avenue downtown would be gearing up to premiere buzzed-about movies. But while the usual studio films are sitting things out, the festival has curated a tight lineup of independent films.

Meanwhile, HBO—a brand apt to use the SXSW stage for flashy experiential stunts—is embracing the virtual aspect of the festival by creating a digital experience, called HBO Max Orbit, to showcase characters and content from the company’s catalog for attendees to explore. Others, like TikTok, are focused on capturing attendees’ attention with panel content, reports Digiday.

Other brands, like Wisconsin Cheese, are also aiming to continue to deliver an immersive experience for fans even without the tech-savvy of a virtual game. The cheese purveyor is delivering 2,021 personalized boxes of cheese (a literal ton of cheese), to SXSW attendees this week. The attendees will then eat the cheese as part of a virtual cheese tasting event hosted by comedian Nick Offerman.

Of course, music is still at the heart of the festival. Usually, attendees hop from pop-up performances to headliner concerts and everything in between. But this year, they’ll be “showcasing artists that have been on the cusp, but haven’t really been able to do much because of COVID,” says James Minor, who oversees SXSW Music. “It’s supposed to be the coming-out party for what happens next in music. I like to think that people are going to look at this year’s SXSW as sort of the north star for the year ahead.”

↦ Want to Attend? SXSW Online Passes are currently available at the $399 rate.

71 Million Americans Have Gotten the Shot

Germany, Italy, France hit pause amid safety fears

Vaccination in the United States is on the verge of big changes with manufacturers pledging larger supplies of the existing two-dose coronavirus vaccines by next month, and one single-dose vaccine recently approved.

In the meantime, vaccine seekers continue to overrun signup websites and phone lines as states have expanded eligibility to more age groups and people with medical conditions that put them at greater risk from COVID-19.

But not everyone is rushing to get poked. A third of Republicans said in a CBS News poll that they would not be vaccinated—compared with 10% of Democrats. Then there are other opposing groups, including African-Americans and anti-vaxx activists. Which is why the White House is set to unveil a wide-reaching, billion-dollar campaign aimed at convincing every American to get vaccinated.

Europe's already struggling vaccination campaign hit a roadblock as well on Monday when several countries said they will be pausing the AstraZeneca shots after several concerning side-effects were reported.

↦ Dig Deeper: The Associated Press looks into why countries are halting the AstraZeneca shot.

ISS Ditches 3-Ton Pallet of Batteries

It joins a sea of space trash orbiting Earth

Weighing roughly the same as a Range Rover and traveling 4.8 miles per second, a packaged heap of old batteries is now the heaviest single piece of garbage to be jettisoned from the International Space Station.

The pallet is packed with nickel-hydrogen batteries, and it will stay in low Earth orbit for the next two to four years “before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere,” according to a NASA statement.

NASA's ballistics officers “indicate no threat” of the pallet smashing into other space objects, but “this item, like all, will be tracked by U.S. Space Command,” a spokesperson told Gizmodo.

According to the European Space Agency, there's about 34,000 objects larger than 3.9 inches currently in orbit around Earth—in addition to millions of tinier objects, such as tools and bits of spacecraft. The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and the fear that space could get just as polluted as our oceans.

Nature Is Healing

Tortoises return to the Galápagos islands

Here's some good news: Three dozen endangered giant tortoises, born and raised in captivity, have been released into the wild on one of the Galápagos islands, where their species is originally from, reports the Jakarta Post.

Each of the tortoises is 6 to 8 years old, and weigh between 6 and 11 pounds. Each will live to the age of about 100 to 150 years old, be up to 4 feed long and weigh up to 700 pounds. (They were monitored and tested for disease before being released into nature.)

Danny Rueda, director of the Galápagos National Park, pointed out that “the scientific information we have on these tortoises confirms that they remain healthy with a good population structure that guarantees their survival.”

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Giant Tortoise population experienced “catastrophic decline”—from about 24,000 historically to about 500-700 in the early 1970s. But the decline has slowly started to reverse with programs like this.⠀⠀

In Other News

Other Things We’re Talking About Today

The Snyder Cut’s problem

Wine flasks

Quesadillas

Time to Clear the Air

You don’t have to have allergies to benefit

Before allergy season really gets bad (and apparently 2021 is promising a particularly rough and long one), we thought it might be a good time to talk about clearing the air ... literally.

Turns out, modern homes present something of a double-edged sword: They tend to be sealed up, keeping out drafts and making the space more energy efficient. But the downside is that a well-sealed home also traps in pet dander, smoke from cooking or fires, dust mites and mold.

And thanks to climate change, it seems that people's allergies are actually getting worse. Temperature increases lead to more pollen production, which can be a major irritant for those with respiratory issues like asthma, one new study suggests.

So what can you do? For starters, invest in a quality air purifier. These potent machines can actually rid the air of all ofthose nasties floating around that trigger respiratory issues like coughs, sneezing or stuffy noses.

↦ Buy: The best air purifiers for pet owners, big rooms or aesthetes.

What We’re Buying

A cashmere stocking cap seems unnecessary ... until you pull one on. And then you wonder why you hadn't gotten one earlier. It's soft, it keeps its shape and somehow (I don't know why, maybe the fibers?) it keeps your hair in better shape. The only downside? The high-end wool doesn't come cheap. But now's the time to invest, because this well-reviewed option from Nordstrom, available in three colorways, is now on sale for nearly 50% off.

↦ Get It $69.95 / $41.70 at Nordstrom