Hello and happy pandemic-Friday-the-13th. In a week where nothing feels normal, turn on this sweet tune by Frances Quinlan and feel ok. It’s lilting and upbeat, just on the appealing side of the singer-songwriter spectrum, and as a bonus, it comes with a soothing video where a flowery watercolor landscape washes in and out. The lyrics narrate the rabbit hole that the narrator falls into when she reads a stranger’s note in the margins of a book. She’s curious about this person and takes off google searching to gather more info. Ultimately, she feels as if she’s come close to getting to know the writer from afar, but can feel that she’s fallen short. Quinlan explains in her press release, “There can be a one-sidedness to even the most loving and rewarding relationships. We will always have a part of ourselves we can’t or don’t know how to share.” She thinks that’s beautiful, and for the rest of us, it’s a reminder that loneliness is real even outside times of physical isolation. Listen here and breathe.

I’m looking through my email this morning, and man, who knew this many museums had me on their mailing lists? I’m sure your inbox is also full of notices about things that are cancelled and venues that are closed — but maybe you also have a few notes that are looking on the bright side. So far, I’ve gotten messages about “3 remote events you should check out today” (they were all HR webinars); a digital enactment of “what we had planned for SXSW”; and a live-streamed museum panel where all the speakers dial in from home. Because the point of events is largely meeting people, I plan on attending none of these. But you know what I’ve already jumped on? A link to a “cocktail hour” on Google Hangouts, dropped in a slack room as an open invite. An informal gathering of mostly-strangers connected by one friend, it was sort of like a cloud-based dinner party, only you could choose to just listen or bow out (and then back in) whenever you wanted. If glitchy, it was totally fun, and a wildly easy way to see new faces and hear fresh perspectives. If you’re feeling lonely over the next few weeks, try it! It will be weird and everyone will appreciate you.

On that note, now is a great time to be Zoom— or any conferencing software, for that matter. After years of sucking, the uh, renewed focus on video calls is probably about to make remote meetings really good. It’s also going to change the way we do medicine. Already hospitals are scrambling to make their nascent videoconference systems work better so people can dial into doctors’ appointments. Hospitals like Mount Sinai in New York are actively updating their workflows, and after Mike Pence announced this week that health insurers will start to cover telemedicine, stock of the remote healthcare company Teladoc jumped by 6.2%. At least somebody’s seeing a boost.

Of course Vulture has already come out with a pandemic reading list. But here’s one book that might be worth reading first: New Waves, a novel by Kevin Nguyen about friendships made online. The brief synopsis: two friends bond at work over being overlooked because of their race. Out of spite, they steal their company’s user database. Then one of them dies, and the other one, who’s paranoid at this point, wonders if her death was really accidental. So he hacks into her computer to search for answers, and instead, he ends up learning all kinds of things about her that had been invisible in their in-person friendship. What parts of people do we really know, and where are they really being themselves? Seems like Quinlan was onto something after all.