Although there is no 2020 Wondermark calendar per se, observant Marksman Gary T. let me know that dedicated calendar fans can make a 2020 calendar at home with the aid of: • January–February: The 2014 Wondermark calendar • March–December: Either the 2009 or 2015 Wondermark calendar It’s Leap Day this year that throws things off. SO, […]

Above: A new sticker to accompany my new pin! For worthwhile and obvious reasons, Emerald City Comic Con was cancelled this past week. (It’s been tentatively rescheduled for August.) So, like many folks for whom that convention is a tentpole of their business year, I did all the usual prep for the show, but didn’t […]

Next week is basically nothing but robot butts

Night brun

Under partial lockdown due to the spiraling coronavirus pandemic, Spaniards are allowed to leave home only for essential outings, walking a dog being one of them.

Dressed as "Star Wars" characters, local officials in the Philippines are out and about to enforce strict quarantine measures while also handing out relief packages.

As Thailand's capital cautiously reopens many restaurants shuttered over coronavirus fears, the feline "employees" of the Caturday Cafe are back at work.

Determined to find an uplifting moment every day, the Yorkshire photographer Rebecca Cole has been in search of images that bring spring to her family and friends in lockdown. She has been sharing a daily image with them via Blipfoto for the last six and a half years, but photographing nature has provided a particularly welcome escape in recent weeks

Cutting short our holiday to Cuba as Covid-19 took off, it was an eerie feeling transferring through an emptying Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in the middle of the day with the shutters down on duty free. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got home but, while life felt uncertain, I knew my wildlife - my haven - would still be there. The countryside around Burley-in-Wharfedale, my home, has become my daily sanctuary, now more than ever.

The photographer Olivia Harris has been seeking out the sun worshippers of London making the best of their front stoops, balconies, window ledges and gardens, and finding out how they are managing under lockdown

We’d like to hear from people about how you’re remembering the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe

Friday 8 May will mark 75 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe. Before the coronavirus crisis, plans were made for street parties and parades, and even the first May bank holiday was moved for the occasion.

But with the UK still in lockdown, we’d like to hear how you will now be remembering the anniversary of VE day.

Many people have turned to jogging during the coronavirus crisis. These shoes, apps and gadgets can help you get going

With gyms and leisure centres closed, many people have turned to running. You can literally just step out of your door and begin your government-approved exercise but, if you want to make the most of it and improve your health and fitness, a few small things can go a long way.

An essential part of the recruitment process for any new teacher is meeting the pupils: but how do you do that under lockdown regulations?

If you are a teacher looking to move between schools during the coronavirus lockdown, how can you make the most of the online education experience with your new class? This is interesting new territory for many teachers. But there are thousands and thousands of teachers and pupils already learning remotely, in virtual schools – can they offer insights?

At a virtual school, lessons are delivered in line with each person’s personalised curriculum. Exactly as you would expect in a physical school space, pupils are taught how to interact with teachers, their peers and lesson content using whiteboard technology, quizzes, voice and video as well as receiving and sending assignment tasks. How should you introduce yourself to a new class, if you are meeting them online for the first time? If we consider how teachers deliver excellent classroom teaching practice in a physical space, how they prepare should not be approached any differently in an online environment.

American Revolution 2.0, which presents itself as bipartisan, has been assisted by far-right individuals – some with extremist links

Leaked audio recordings and online materials obtained by the Guardian reveal that one of the most prominent anti-lockdown protest groups, American Revolution 2.0 (AR2), has received extensive assistance from well-established far-right actors, some with extremist connections.

Related: Armed protesters demonstrate against Covid-19 lockdown at Michigan capitol

Complaints soar over useless face masks, handmade sanitisers and school meal scams

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More than 500,000 unusable face masks, and a garage selling fake Covid-19 testing kits, are among the hundreds of frauds investigated by trading standards officers since the start of the lockdown.

According to the Local Government Association, fraudsters have gone into overdrive during the past six weeks to exploit the public’s fears and the fact that they are stuck at home.

For a while supper and wine were sufficient; now I’m watching every adaptation that is better than its source material

I suspect I’m not alone in this but, at some point in the past two weeks, I hit my lockdown wall. Not literally, although apparently the “banging one’s head against the kitchen wall” phase kicks in on the eighth week, so that’s something to put in the diary. But last week I felt really, really over it. Enough with every day being the bloody same; enough with watching my children become increasingly fretful because they haven’t seen their friends in over a month, the equivalent of five years to a pair of four-year-olds. But unless you want to be one of those delightful people protesting the lockdown in the US, clothed in stars and stripes, AK-47s across their backs, what choice do we have? So, like Bill Murray, we grind out the same day, again and again and again.

The trick is to invent things to look forward to. For a while, “supper” and “wine” were sufficient, but repetition has dulled their efficacy. So I set myself challenges, driven on by the thrill of completion. Some people hear the word “challenge” and think, “Fitness!” Those people are not me. “Rewatch the entirety of 30 Rock” is more my speed. It is so soothing to watch a show about a luxuriantly bouffanted New York tycoon who isn’t a moron. In a just world, Jack Donaghy would be the US president instead of, well, you get the point. Then, sparked by his brilliant turn as Chris Tarrant on the ITV drama, Quiz, my next challenge was, “Watch every Michael Sheen performance in which he plays a real person”. This was deeply enjoyable, even if, in my lockdown-confused mind, I now think Brian Clough interviewed Richard Nixon on TV and Kenneth Williams was prime minister when Diana died.

Resuming the season is absurd and the ‘safety’ ideas are terrible, but whatever football decides it must decide together

“You eat alone, you choke.” During the years of plenty it became a habit to compare the Premier League’s wielding of power – always with a note of admiration – to the structures of a mafia family.

It isn’t hard to see why: the hierarchy of captains, the beautifully ruthless sense of unity, of a cartel of self-propelling interests. And yet the thing about mafia families is that now and then those interests start pulling in different ways. In mob lore breaking ranks is sometimes referred to as “eating alone”, with a certainty that bad things follow – and worst of all that bad business follows.

Kate, a call handler for a domestic violence charity, discusses the challenges of trying to deal with the rising number of calls during lockdown. Guardian reporter Helen Pidd has been reporting on the domestic violence cases being heard at Manchester magistrates court over the past few weeks

Rachel Humphreys talks to Kate, a call handler with domestic violence charity Solace. Since lockdown began, calls to helplines like this one have risen by 25%. The Counting Dead Women project recorded 16 killings of women and children in the first three weeks of lockdown - where they’d usually expect about five.

Rachel also talks to the Guardian’s North of England editor, Helen Pidd, who last month listened in on court four at Manchester magistrates court to hear how lockdown was changing the way domestic violence cases are being prosecuted. We also hear from David Philpott from Olliers Solicitors who has been working at the court for over 30 years.

Despite rising coronavirus case numbers, the US state of Mississippi is moving out of lockdown and reopening parks, restaurants and other non-essential shops. Oliver Laughland went to the resort of Biloxi to see how residents were responding

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The US southern state of Mississippi is the country’s poorest. It went into the coronavirus crisis with high levels of poverty and poor health outcomes. But following the period of lockdown and orders for residents to stay at home, the state’s governor Tate Reeves has eased restrictions - despite evidence that the rate of infections has not yet hit its peak.

The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland travelled to the Mississippi coastal resort of Biloxi where he tells Mythili Rao he found the lockdown has hit hardest those working in low paid jobs in the tourism industry. One restaurant worker describes how the loss of work meant he has had to rely on the charity of his neighbours and local food banks. But despite growing numbers of cases, people are flocking back to the beach and increasingly breaching recommendations of minimum social distancing. The state is reopening, but at what cost?

Lockdown has changed the way we date. Is it possible to form the same kind of connection through a screen? To find out, we set up six strangers on three virtual blind dates ...

Today in Focus has been wondering what online lockdown dating is like now social distancing has taken face-to-face meets ups out of the equation. So we worked with the Guardian’s Blind Date column and asked listeners to let us matchmake them with a stranger on a virtual date, with dinner provided ... Host Rachel Humphreys introduces the first three couples in part one of a two-part special.

Harry, a 32-year-old producer from the UK meets Jayson, a 25-year-old journalist in Hong Kong. Sam, a 34-year-old currently residing in Los Angeles has been paired with Jennifer, a 28-year-old civil servant from the UK. And Titus, 36, spent a virtual evening with Len, a 30-year old amateur Muay Thai fighter, despite the fact they live just a few roads away from one another.

Teenagers affirm evidence that suggests they are particularly struggling with coronavirus crisis

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When, in late February, Betsy Sheil turned 16, she thought she was staring down the end of secondary school, not the beginning of global pandemic.

“I was going to finish year 11 and do my GCSEs, then I was going to have a really long summer with my friends, hopefully go abroad – have that summer that everyone has.”

Six weeks into Britain's Covid-19 crisis, Anywhere but Westminster asks how a city keeps going when everything has ground to a halt. The team virtually visits Plymouth, population 250,000, to see how the services that are vital to a city and its inhabitants are scrabbling to stay afloat. The fishing industry is in meltdown, temporary housing is oversubscribed and nurses facilitate goodbyes over Zoom. Most of all, people are asking: what on earth happens after this?

• Watch our previous Anywhere but Westminster videos 

• Music: Lament by Simon Dobson: www.simon-dobson.co.uk
  

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The pandemic is giving us a lesson in life, hope and death. It’s one we should never forget

Back in the days when we all still hurried oblivious through crowded city streets, the names chalked on the pavement must have been easily missed. But now a long-running campaign by rebel botanists across Europe to highlight overlooked nature in the city, scribbling names and plant details alongside a pretty weed growing through a wall or a tree spreading overhead, has unexpectedly found its niche.

Going for a walk is the only real freedom many have had for weeks, and with no particular place to go but out, there is finally time to notice nature creeping through the cracks: the birdsong no longer drowned out by traffic; the daffodils in front gardens giving way to frothy peonies; a fat supermoon hanging heavy on the night horizon.

Consignments are being moved in bulk across borders as Covid-19 cuts off normal routes, say police

Organised crime groups are taking increasingly audacious risks as they attempt to smuggle large quantities of drugs into lockdown Britain, senior police figures say.

Analysing the latest operations of transnational criminal networks, the National Crime Agency’s head of drug threat said that police were making more significant seizures during the pandemic than normal.

Researchers call on government to do more to explain need for physical distancing

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Young men are more likely than young women to break lockdown rules, research suggests.

A team of psychologists led by Dr Liat Levita from the University of Sheffield surveyed 2,000 13- to 24-year-olds in the UK to examine the impact of the pandemic on young people.

DLC character debuts for game on May 13