Link. Eating disorder amplification.
Author Archives: jgordon
Making Paxlovid. Don’t expect a lot anytime soon.
Link. The modern world is more complex and wonderful and fragile and terrifying than we can imagine.
Americans unenthused about Expanded Child Tax Credit.
Link. This is a harsh nation.
“Alibaba’s profitability declined by 38% from a year earlier.”
Link. Xi is devastating China’s software industry. Also: “She lost more than 100 million followers” !
Google search: “the last few months I’ve noticed a huge decline in the quality of its results”
Link. For me they have been poor for years.
“you could buy a display that claims to be HDMI 2.1-certified but that actually supports only HDMI 2.0 capabilities.”
Link. Stick to quality vendors.
“Mayo Clinic said Tuesday that approximately one percent of its staff across all locations will be released from employment”
Link. Mayo did not blink. Kudos earned.
Djokovic Granted Covid-19 Vaccine Exemption.
Link. Spineless. Now let’s see if Australia allows him to enter.
Best review of N95 masks I’ve seen. Comfort varies; duck bill best.
Link. Dignity is so 2019. You must be clean shaven though.
Supple chain: “There are lots of good regulations too, and it’s a very hard problem to solve.”
Link. Deregulation and reregulation done well is vital work. Most of what he wants is government action to address market failures – and buy his products.
SciAm EO Wilson article – an angry response.
Link. Sociobiology is more than a little unpopular now.
Meliodosis from “contaminated bottles of an aromatherapy spray sold exclusively at Walmart.”
Link. Impressive they were diagnosed!
“Mr. Aung Kyaw, a video journalist for the independent Democratic Voice of Burma, was a prime target.”
Link. He and his family escaped. It’s hard to fathom this kind of stubborn courage in the face of a brutal and corrupt society.
The Year in Biology 2021
Link. A short and readable review. Multicellular life seems to evolve quickly.
Unregulated tests for birth disorders are usually wrong and widely used.
Link. When you test for rare disorders 99% specificity is not good enough.
“In the 1862 midterm election, held a little over a month after the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln and the Republicans got shellacked.”
Link. Doing the right thing is often a losing strategy. At least In the short term.
1619 Project: a flaw and the greater defense.
Link. Oversimplified for the sake of emotional impact, but gets the big picture right.
Aerial Tram car rescue.
Link. High risk rescue. Kudos for success
“The central government has delineated around a hundred million people to each of these megaregions and charged them to drive future growth.”
Link. Must read. “it has been a tragedy for the US that so many physics PhDs have gone to work in hedge funds and Silicon Valley”
“Oslo, a city of 480,000, maintains nearly 2,600 kilometers of groomed cross-country ski trails, all ten minutes by tram from the center of town.”
Link. On my list.
Japan struggles to raise lower income wages.
Link. Both highly automated and very inefficient.
Misogyny in South Korea: “More women attend college than men”
Link. Heritage of *intense* patriarchy meets “winner takes all” meets failed males meets social media meets reality that women are better at modern work.
The Emergent story: why US government emergency vaccine strategy failed.
Link. Huge NYT effort but narrative conventions limit impact. Failed for same reason government IT projects fail. Law and regulations guarantee failure.
Antarctic COVID – a containment failure.
Link. Would love more detail. False negative PCR with Omicron? Surface contamination? Hope they publish.
Siri Can No Longer Rate Songs.
Link. That sucks.
Zambia: “Covid is not at the top of her list of health care worries. “It’s cholera season, and people have malaria, and there is H.I.V. and TB,” she said. She does not know anyone who has been diagnosed with Covid.”
Link. Very different mortality context.
Renaming schizophrenia.
Link. Why we shouldn’t: “Scientists are reworking the clinical definition of schizophrenia … more as a syndrome than as a single disease.”
Potter verdict:,“committing a “conscious or intentional act” with her gun that creates a substantial risk”
Link. I will be surprised if the first degree manslaughter charge is not reversed on appeal. I don’t understand jury’s logic.
Moderator Sues TikTok for Failing to Protect Her Mental Health
Link. “suffers from horrible nightmares when she does manage to sleep over the content she’s watched”
“Do viruses always evolve to be less lethal? Some people call this the “Avirulent Theory”. The short answer is “no.”
Link. Natural selection finds good-enough local minima solutions.
“hourly workers have been securing raises, while middle-managers and white collar workers are, on average, losing significant ground”
Link. Hourly workers don’t vote and don’t get interviewed.
10 Best Illusions of the Year
Link. The changing room and ring oscillation illusions didn’t work for me. Hope that’s not a bad sign.
“More than half a dozen experiments made public in recent days all pointed to the same conclusion: Omicron is milder than Delta and other earlier versions of the virus.”
Link. Vaccine for FoxGOP.
Alzheimer’s Drug Aduhelm sucks and so do sales.
Link. Still can’t believe FDA approved it. EU smarter and I expect Canada to reject. Hope medicare declines to cover.
“Republicans have used violence and the news coverage it gets to gain through pressure what they could not gain through votes.”
Link. With support from The NY Times. “ As the recount showed the count swinging to Gore, Republican operatives stormed the station.”
Dershowitz on BBC attempts to exonerate Andrew from Maxwell verdict.
Link. Only the Palace could screw up so badly.
“amount of latency you get when you move your head, and if that’s too long, between you moving your head and the sound changing or remaining static, it will make you feel quite ill”
Link. Sound, not video. Great interview. Also, Bluetooth is still bad.
“Peak in four weeks and precipitous decline in another two.”
Link. Few deaths, but we think many immune already. They abandoned quarantine but did isolate.
Ban on Surprise Medical Bills Starts.
Link. “Ground ambulances were left out of the recent legislation because legislators determined they would need a different regulatory approach.” Legitimately bipartisan.
Don’t sign forms agreeing to pay extra.
How to turn off in-app review requests on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Link. “Swipe down again tap the toggle off next to In-App Ratings and Reviews”. App Store.
“Revert to the old keyboard auto-correct that didn’t replace correctly spelled words with typos and gibberish.”
Link. iOS 16 wishes. Also, contact groups — as with past 10 releases
“one of his final comments to fans being that he planned to seek asylum abroad to avoid getting vaccinated.”
Link. Commitment.
“troops on horseback hunted down and slaughtered all the Lakotas they could find: about 250 men, women, and children.”
Link. The story of the Wounded Knee massacre. It could have been easily avoided.
Among other things — why police and soldiers need training, leadership, and selective hiring.
NYT reviews a year of exercise studies.
Link. You can put-eat almost any exercise program, but exercise is key to maintaining diet induced weight loss.
Britain: Self-isolation cut from 10 days to seven with negative tests.
Link. They have lots of free tests so they can have better guidance.
“Even here in the U.S., where we’re free to leave whatever reviews we want on Amazon for Xi’s book, it’s rated 4.7/5 after nearly 2,000 reviews. Seriously, go look.”
Link. A must see Xi book.
“compared with the Delta variant, Omicron appears to be causing milder illness in children,”
Link. Just loads of em get infected. “the rate of pediatric Covid admissions in much of the country was still below the peak of what is typically seen with the seasonal flu, “
Workaround for iOS 15 Autocorrect Turning ‘20’ Into ‘2.0’
Link. Installed Apps with numbers in name mess with iOS autocorrect.
American prenatal sickle cell screening is a sociopolitical mess.
Link. Should have compared to Tay Sachs screening. Historically these programs have come out of a minority community.
Importing blog archive (bar) files.
Link. We desperately need this.