Link. Impressive. “everyone had tested negative for the coronavirus before the event”
Author Archives: jgordon
Terraforming Mars in 3 Simple Steps
Link. It’s easier to create fully artificial environments.
Google Can Now Help You Find a Doctor That Takes Your Insurance
Link. “doctors near me,” – can filter by insurance plan.
“Instead, a different set of cells, which he calls progenitor cells, give rise to most blood in living animals.”
Link. Not stem cells. They just casually toss that in. Also on CHIP: “proteins suppressed the growth of other stem cells and injured the environment where the marrow cells grow”
How This All Happened: American economy 1945-2021 in 5000 words.
Link. Damn.
Inside Apple’s Chat Support.
Link. Makes Amazon warehouse look good.
“Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina and Alabama — have each sequenced and reported fewer than 3 percent of their cases”
Link. Omicron will be found first in states that sequence well.
Jim Warren obit: “West Coast Computer Faire in the 1970s”
Link. Glory Days.
“The original virus that came out of Wuhan, China, in early 2020 did not infect rodents. But as variants — Alpha, Beta, Delta — started to emerge, those viruses could infect rodents.”
Link. We are not going to eliminate a rodent borne disease.
Omicron Time.
Link. The oracle speaks. (He’s great.)
52 things I learned in 2021.
Link. So much clean fun.
“Unless the animals exercise. In that case, post-mortem exams of their tissues show, the animals’ brains typically teem with healthy, helpful microglia deep into old age”
Link. Now replicated in humans with puny (by my standards) amounts of exercise.
“Worldwide, about 56 percent of people have received at least one vaccine dose. Every continent is above 50 percent except for Africa — which is at about 10 percent.”
Link. Lack of demand mostly.
Vaccines for the unwealthy: “growing signs in parts of Africa, as well as South Asia, that skepticism or outright hostility toward the Covid vaccines may run deeper than expected”
Link. Stop beating up on wealthy country vaccine use.
Molnupiravir looks useless and can’t be given to women at risk of pregnancy.
Link. “final data showed only a 30% relative decrease, and because the numbers also changed in the control group, the absolute change was only 3% in the end.”
Reith Lectures: AI and why people should be scared.
Link. AI worries are considered silly now. Even so I consider AI our greatest existential risk over the next 80 years. It’s my favorite Fermi paradox resolution.
“Marcus Lamb, co-founder and CEO of the conservative Christian Daystar Television Network who vocally opposed Covid vaccines, has died at age 64”
Link. Of COVID. He sent others into the valley, but at least he keeps them company.
“In Greece, the prime minister announced that Covid vaccinations would be obligatory for people age 60 and older, and that those who failed to book a first shot by Jan. 16 would face fines.”
Link. Mandate!
“The New York Times described the speech as Biden “trying to project an image of calm, and to keep the country from panicking, while also ensuring that Americans get vaccinated and take other precautions.” Perhaps he was calm, and the panic was largel
Link.
“contextual menu which appears when you Control-Shift-Click on the disk icon in the Time Machine pane.”
Link. Ctrl-option to verify. WTF Apple, is this documented anywhere?! Works in Mojave and probably earlier.
Monterey: “screensavers like the Classic, which displays a series of images, are as broken as they have been in Big Sur.”
Link. Hope this attention will lead to an Apple fix. Thanks Howard!
Monterey bugs and annoyances.
Link. Mojave was good.
“There were no COVID-related deaths yesterday in New York City, where the vaccination rate is 90%”
Link. NYC for the win.
Accessible Underground Passageways of Saint Paul and Minneapolis
Link. Visit by bike or foot.
Simpson’s Paradox and Vaccines: “all-cause death rates for vaccinated people aged 10-59 are significantly higher than for unvaccinated people in the same age group.”
Link. Age effect swamps vaccination effect. Great example.
Master Mask Testing Data Set
Link. Two years into the great endemic and this is the best consumer oriented information to guide mask purchases. We are truly a failed state.
Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of
Link. “… colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets”, are the little-known building block for all our plastic products”
Healthcare Industry Predictions For 2022.
Link. Doesn’t mention private equity; a suspicious omission. Useful as a guide to what money people say out loud to each other.
“As college graduates increasingly married other college graduates, earning power became concentrated within households, rather than being more evenly distributed across them.”
Link. The dominance of women in college education, and soon in lifetime earnings, will force changes to existing social roles.
“we are in a position where we have unilaterally broken nearly all of the contractual trade commitments that we made to other nations over the last 30 years.”
Link. Biden hasn’t fixed this Trump problem.
“In the middle decades of the 20th century, people on all sides seemed to agree about the problem: the vulnerability of rootless, ignorant mass society to political persuasion and propaganda.”
Link. Rupert Murdoch is our Goebbels.
Big Sur “Classic” screensaver doesn’t actually, you know, work.
Link. Crazy I never saw mention of this. I guess nobody uses it! Basically it has never worked and it still doesn’t. If you enable clock display it will work. Wonder if it works in Monterey.
“federal government has ramped up prosecution of crimes on flights, especially by passengers refusing to abide by Covid protocols”
Link. A few well advertised prosecutions will help.
‘Afghan Girl’ From 1985 National Geographic Cover Takes Refuge in Italy
Link. An unwilling symbol that the Taliban could not long ignore.
Iraqis Return From Belarus.
Link. Putin pulled the leash.
“molnupiravir, reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk Covid patients by 30 percent. An earlier analysis had found a 50 percent reduction.”
Link. Versus 90%+ for immunization. The meds won’t save the unvaccinated from their folly.
Iran runs out of water: “driest summer in 50 years”
Link. Mismanagement sure, but likely climate change. Iran needs Israeli water tech.
Afghan Economy Nears Collapse.
Link. Article doesn’t describe the negotiations presumably happening.
Israel and Iran cyberwar attacks civilians directly.
Link. Iran likely to attack US healthcare. Which could lead to non-cyber war.
Early stem cell therapy for DM I works better than expected.
Link. Lifelong immunosuppression still needed but this is a rare stem cell success in an experiment. Puny amount of development money and huge academic and personal effort. Years from the market.
Minneapolis tries a different integration approach – but Black parents are disinterested.
Link. St Paul Central High meets their goal — but advanced academic classes still have few Black students.
Infrastructure: “cost estimates are “systematically and significantly deceptive.”
Link. This is one of our great challenges.
Preparing your Mac for someone else to own (pre ECAS).
Link. This is what I have done.
macOS Erase All Contents and Settings: “EACAS is a thoroughly practical tool, as well as an elegant demonstration of the benefits of the SSV and Secure Boot.”
Link. Deep clean your Mac too.
Three Monterey bugs.
Link. Memory leaks mostly. Give Monterey a few more months.
macOS Explainer: .DS_Store files
Link. Resource Forks were easier. “be prepared to massage the folder until its .DS_Store behaves again.”
Making the case that the media is screwing America with its Biden coverage.
Link. The main driver of media coverage is clicks and negative stories get more clicks and engagement. This is American media now. (PS. Don’t look to Cohn for explanations)
Apple not updating their known malware protection?
Link. “If I were still reliant on Big Sur or any previous version of macOS, I think I’d use that time to try out some third-party protection”
2021 e-reader roundup: Kobo Sage, Kobo Libra 2, Kindle Paperwhite.
Link. I’m in the ePUB camp, almost always DRM free. So Kobo.
Luck maketh the man: lessons from the randomness of WW II torpedoes.
Link. A brilliant idea.