Link. Arms were twisted, deals made. As it should be.
Author Archives: jgordon
“Two different ancient wolf populations, one in Asia and another in the Middle East or surrounding area, contributed DNA to modern dogs.”
Link. Given wolves dogs are kind of inevitable.
Firefox now automatically removes tracking parameters from URLs to enhance privacy
Link. Want this everywhere.
“activity in America and Canada is now at around nine-tenths of pre-pandemic levels. Global activity is only around one-sixth lower than before the virus emerged”
Link. It was(?) bad. And in 15y it will fade into history.
Solar flares: “different latitudes on the molten star rotate at different rates—36 days at the poles, and only 25 days at the equator. Very quickly, those lines stretch and tangle, forming magnetic knots…”
Link. You might get 15 min warning to shutdown your phone and other gear.
HCQ retinopathy: “far lower estimate compared to previously reported figures”
Link. Good news for SLE and RA patients.
“Turkey had dropped its objections to the membership of Sweden and Finland”
Link. Another quiet win for Biden and the west.
“The president that emerged from her account was volatile, violent and vicious, single-minded in his quest to overturn an election he lost”
Link. A lunatic.
Los Angeles County Votes to Return Beach Seized in 1924 From a Black Family
Link. “.. Bruce’s Beach, will be transferred to descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, who bought the land in 1912 and built a resort.”
Flu vaccinated group has 40% lower risk Alzheimer’s than unvaccinated.
Link. Lots of vaccine reluctant patients will hear about this. Case-control so only suggestive. Thought is respiratory infections (COVID, Flu, etc) + immune response -> accelerated Alzheimer process.
Google caves to GOP pressure for filter-free GOP spam.
Link. I hate Google.
“we’re left with no good way to handle someone who has lost all their digital credentials—computer, phone, backup, hardware token, wallet with ID cards—in a catastrophic house fire.”
Link. I have offsite backups with the encryption code in a safe deposit box.
A Metabolite of Exercise: “Lac-Phe is produced under exercise conditions in mice, racehorses, and humans, and just the fact that it’s being made in CNDP2-containing cells shows how wide-ranging exercise effects can be.”
Link. Neat physiology.
“the virus is evolving so quickly that new vaccine formulations are out of date before such trials are even finished”
Link. “an accelerated process was already used to update the flu vaccine each year”
Today’s GOP resembles 1920s KKK.
Link. Both a reaction to social transformations.
Steven Pinker and Scott Aaronson debate AI scaling.
Link. Several longish essays. On initial review many good questions raised.
Harris implies those “shocked” GOP senators are full of sh*t.
Link. Everyone with a brain knew they were lying.
“The Army has hit 40% of its recruiting goals this year, with the struggle to fill the ranks seemingly so grim the Defense Department reduced its planned total force size because prior recruiting goals were out of reach.”
Link. I’m surprised.
WaPo’s Kathleen Parker of “calm down” fame.
Link. via Jay Rosen: “You don’t seem to be a very good thief. Maybe you should try something else.” She’s pretty shameless. Her Twitter sig says “dangerous thinker”.
How to Temporarily Disable Face ID or Touch ID, and Require a Passcode to Unlock Your iPhone or iPad
Link. Press and hold the power button and either volume button to hard-lock an iPhone or iPad. “Remember to do this every time you’re separated from your phone, like when going through the magnetometer at any security checkpoint, especially airports.”
Exporting/Archiving E-mail From Apple Mail
Link. Unreliable. Use EagleFiler.
“When state legislatures put in place the Black Codes, which created a second-class status in the South for Black Americans, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, overriding the Dred Scott decision to make
Link. SCOTUS has often been despicable.
“Walz signed an executive order Saturday directing state agencies — to the extent legally permissible — not to aid agencies from other states if they seek to prosecute their residents for traveling to Minnesota to get abortions”
Link.
“Patients with immune complications who were taken off checkpoint inhibitors did just as well as patients who continued…”
Link. Interesting. Short courses pending.
An insider reports on why America’s mega-projects fail.
Link. His US vs. EU union examples were unpersuasive however.
Contextuality in quantum physics: “They continued until, in the 117th direction, the contradiction cropped up”
Link. 117 is my new magic number.
“getting too little sleep most likely leads to long-lasting brain damage and increased risk of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.”
Link. The disorders also disrupt sleep, so reinforcing disease. Sleep apnea a key contributor.
The status of Bees.
Link. By a physicist because it’s really all QFT. Good review though.
China implements the Minority Report.
Link. 9/11 was a turning point. We knew afterwards that ubiquitous surveillance was inevitable. The only uncertainty is the degree of protection of the accused and whether “protected spaces” can exist.
“attacker needs a custom Thunderbolt 3 device and five minutes alone with your Mac. At the end of that, they can copy all your data, even when its internal SSD is encrypted and the Mac is locked.”
Link. Always assume your data can be read.
“I feel sorry that too many were killed on each side,” Sitting Bull said, “but when Indians must fight, they must.”
Link. An excellent tightly written history.
“saved the lives of 19.1m-20.4m people. Without vaccines, the study estimates, roughly three times as many people would have died from covid in 2021 alone”
Link. Lancet study.
“In 1958, however, the economist A.W. Phillips pointed out that there had historically been a relationship between unemployment and the rate of change in wages (as opposed to their level)”
Link. This is a great primer on inflation macro.
Your face bugs poop on you.
Link. “they’re evolving into co-dependent, symbiotic creatures that might provide us some benefits”
Schneier’s blockchain/crypto takedown only works because he excludes crime.
Link. Crypto is very valuable for a wide range of crime and activities that badly harm vulnerable people. We need to kill it.
T-Mobile Is selling Android user’s usage data.
Link. They can’t sell iOS data.
“Inside the cells of Thiomargarita magnifica, the researchers have discovered a bizarre, complicated structure.”
Link. An enormous bacteria that has many features of a eukaryotic cell.
“Greek tortoises and black marsh turtles, even displayed negative rates of senescence, meaning their mortality risk decreased as they aged.”
Link. They are pretty sluggish though.
Ukrainian cyber-defense effective: “moving much of Ukraine’s most important systems to the cloud, onto servers outside Ukraine.”
Link. Russia mostly failed on cyber, but great success with n the bio-lab con with help from Lachlan Murdoch.
“The only reliable way that I’ve found to prune Message’s storage use is to set it to only Keep Messages for One Year”
Link. There’s no export capability.
“Xinjiang produces more than 40 percent of the world’s polysilicon, a quarter of the world’s tomato paste and a fifth of global cotton.”
Link. Known to have forced labor, aka slavery.
“since 2000, and especially since the global financial crisis, businesses have persistently been unwilling to maintain a level of investment spending that used all the money households wanted to save, unless interest rates were very low”
Link. Too much money, too little demand.
“humans are the only animal that actually gets Alzheimer’s”
Link. If I knew that I’d *cough* forgotten. Why?!
Amway and Web3 – similar cultures.
Link. Guest post. Two cults.
Monkeypox spread explained: “They go specifically to have sex with many other men.”
Link. Ripping off the bandaid.
“After The New York Times asked Capital One about Mr. Oriach’s case… After The Times contacted Bank of America, it refunded …”
Link. Despicable. They cave when the NYT knocks but before that they shaft customers.
“myxoma virus killed 99.8 percent of the rabbits it infected, typically in less than two weeks”
Link. And recently it got more lethal!
China: “22 of more than 33,000 patients hospitalized after testing positive for Omicron developed severe illness”
Link. More curious and hard to parse numbers.
“The first thing to check if you experience sporadic networking failures is iCloud Private Relay”
Link. Too fragile.
“it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi Department,”
Link. Keep as reference.