Ripped from the Headlines: March 2020: This Week In Culture: March 14–20, 2020

Google announced that it will not be updating Chrome or Chrome OS as previously announced so that the company, adjusting to different work schedules and requirements, can focus on maintaining existing products for users. With so many people even more dependent on their laptops and mobile devices for working from home, industry watchers say this is the right choice.

Rufus Wainwright is performing a song from his catalog online every day from his L.A. home. Many other artists are doing the same, staying in touch with their fans and trying to make up for having cancelled spring tours. Compassionate means "empathetic," from the Latin meaning "to suffer together with." In related news, Wainwright is an Old English name; a wain is a horse-drawn cart for hauling hay and other goods. A wainwright is a person who makes wains.

Desert Island Discs is a BBC interview show that started back in 1942. over 2,000 episodes are now available for download or as podcasts. Celebrities discuss their all-time favorite records, which they would need if they were stranded on a desert island. Genteel comes from the same root as the gentle in gentleman. It referred to someone who was well-bred and of high social standing, reflected in the overtly French pronunciation of gentil.

Bono released a new song inspired by all the quarantined Italians he saw on TV in the early days of that country's pandemic response. Titled Let Your Love Be Known, the song is just him accompanying himself on piano, evidently recorded at his home in Dublin. He posted the song on Saint Patrick's Day.

With movie theaters closing or already closed, Hollywood is postponing the releases of many movies. Studios are scrambling to figure out when to schedule these pictures without competing with their fall releases. Loom appears to have nautical origins, as in something, like a large rock, that appears suddenly out of a dense fog: dark, scary, and surprising.

Tom Brady left the New England Patriots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady announced the move on social media, but there was no news conference and none of the usual attention that this would have brought. Respite, from the same root as respect, means "a delay," with the positive connotation of being a welcome break from something.

Just in time for millions of new work-at-home employees, Apple has released the new iPad pro. It comes with a lidar-enhanced camera, making it usable as a 3-D scanner, and a new keyboard includes a trackpad, and USB port, making the combination very like a laptop. The vamp is the front of a shoe, so to revamp originally meant "to repair your shoes." Now it refers to anything that receives a significant upgrade or redesign.

One of the side effects of the pandemic is a huge decrease in pollution. Skies over Los Angeles are clearer than they've been in decades, and the canals in Venice, Italy, normally churned up by countless gondolas and motorboats ferrying millions of tourists around, are crystal clear. Fish are clearly visible, and the remarkably shallow depth of many smaller canals is obvious.

If you're going to be stuck at home, you might as well learn about some good TV you've missed out on in this golden age of streaming. The stoics were followers of the Greek philosopher Zeno in the third century B.C.E. He advocated for a life ruled by reason, not emotion, where ethical conduct was the main point of living. Stóa is Greek for "porch;" since Zeno lectured from a colonnaded portico in the Agora of Athens that's the name that stuck.

Thomas Waerner, a 47-year-old Norwegian, won the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska. Because the competitors remain far apart from each others, this race was one of the few sporting events to not be cancelled. Waerner won the nearly 1,000-mile race with a time of 9 days, 10 hours, 37 minutes, and 47 seconds. He is the third Norwegian to win this century.