Link. Usual unpersuasive explanations. Maybe we will understand in a year or two.
Monthly Archives: September 2021
J.&J. Conundrum “The city of San Francisco also began offering a Moderna or Pfizer booster shot to J.&J. recipients about a month ago.”
Link. We haven’t “cheated” with a Moderna for our J&J guys — mostly because they are low risk. If approved we certainly would.
“Johnson went on to walk without a cane despite never regaining feeling on his right side. He can’t run anymore, which frustrates him, so he has turned to competitive bodybuilding instead.”
Link. Hard ass.
“Suicides were rare in both groups, but were significantly lower in those treated with ECT.”
Link. We aren’t set up to do ECT but it’s probably the best available treatment for suicidality. (Which is related to depression but not the same thing.)
Juul: “Wow, it’s successful. People are using it,’” Erica Halverson, a former Juul marketing manager, said. “… ‘Oh crap, the wrong people are using it.’”
Link. Learn from this.
NC voter ID: “judges stated that they did not find that the Republican lawmakers who approved the law acted out of racial animus, but rather that they wanted to depress Black turnout”
Link. “That made no difference, the judges wrote, because the discriminatory effect is the same, even if done for partisan gain.”
“lived across the hall from him in a rooming house in Galveston, Texas, where Mr. Durst was hiding from the authorities and living as a mute woman”
Link. Wealth did not suit him.
Google’s quantum computer time crystal.
Link. Conventional physics, amazing technology.
Israel’s assassination of Iran’s nuclear leader – Fakhrizadeh.
Link. Timed to beat Biden’s presidency.
“It is incumbent upon us, the voters, to ensure that no military officer ever again faces even the possibility of a choice between obedience to the Constitution and the fate of human civilization itself.”
Link. McConnell’s legacy.
J&J vaccine: nowhere near knowing if needs booster.
Link. Weird. We may need a different approach.
“the same 12MP specification has been in the iPhone camera system for years now.”
Link. Favors light sensitivity and low noise over digital zoom/cropping.
Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election.
Link. Target Black Americans with the intent of harming Black Americans. Russian because they are profoundly racist and mindlessly destructive.
“People who were vaccinated early tended to be older, richer and more educated”
Link. SCREAM it. This is why we do randomized placebo controlled trials. Being smart has huge advantages in everything.
Curing sickle cell disease.
Link. A million now but costs will fall quickly.
Inspiration4 crew members.
Link. “In addition to Jared Isaacman, the mission’s commander, there are three other astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon capsule.”
Synthetic Biology: optimized enzymes.
Link. Ginkgo Bioworks profiled.
China vaccinated: “people who refused to be vaccinated would have that entered into their “personal credit score.” They could be barred from going to work or entering hospitals and train stations.”
Link. Now THAT is a mandate with teeth.
“if mechanical Ultegra is going away, mechanical road shifting is most assuredly doomed.”
Link. I mourn.
Nipah Virus.
Link. For this reason alone we can never again have a GOP president.
RN sues to get spouse Ivermectin. Judge squashes.
Link. “Kentucky Supreme Court “only allows admission of scientific evidence based on sufficient facts or data.”
“CRT as being an analysis of social science through the lens of racial power dynamics — basically, discarding objectivity as a hopeless goal”
Link. If that is CRT I’m against it.
“list of spacecraft found in the Culture novels and short stories by Iain M. Banks.”
Link. I’m rereading Excession and I need this.
Another Way to Do Protein Structure Prediction
Link. Incidentally the most coherent presentation of Searle’s Chinese room argument I’ve seen in 30 years.
“The iPhone 13 Pro camera modules are entirely different from the non-Pro 13 and and 13 Mini, though”
Link. First year I’ve considered a Pro model.
macOS: run an app or tool at startup.
Link. I did not know. Very handy.
Trek’s Mino Link of Doom – beware the lost spacer (Trek Fuel EX mountain bike).
Link. 2021 model anyway. Needs a rethink but if you know about the problem the Fuel is still a fine bike.
“Why should we have to download and install 3.1 GB of macOS update just to get a minimal security update of a few megabytes?”
Link. Bad decision somewhere.
Vaccination exposes truth that a lot of American police are kind of dumb.
Link. We need smarter cops.
“California Democrats’ decision to clear the field and make the race a stark choice between a Democratic governor and a Republican nightmare worked out just fine.”
Link. 66% is incredible margin.
“age expressed in some of these responses is instructive — if only to truly understand the extent of the callousness currently baked into American work culture.”
Link. If you sold your soul to Satan you’d despise the soulful.
“Citizen Lab researchers and others suggest that Apple should simply provide an option to disable iMessage entirely.”
Link. iMessage is the new Flash.
Fine structure constant: “dimensionless combination of dimensionful physical constants: the elementary charge squared divided by Planck’s constant and the speed of light”
Link. So it varies?! (Probably not but the early universe discussion is confusing.)
Election 2021: Saint Paul Mayor
Link. That’s pretty simple.
Infertility and miscarriages in women physicians.
Link. Do schools advise egg freezing now?
UK Vaccine committee: “margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal program of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12- to 15-year-old children”
Link. Political pressure forced vaccine anyway. I’m very curious what the 5-12yo data will show in the US.
“Only in older adults over 75 do the vaccines show some weakening in protection against hospitalization.”
Link. I can’t reconcile this with the limited protective effect of J&J in reports from 1-2 days ago.
“a bug in CoreGraphics decoding JBIG2-encoded data in a PDF file”
Link. I remember JBIG2.
Here is the state of America circa 2021 – Kevin Drum
Link. Much of this I knew. Some I want affirmation of.
“Pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives have often each been mutually horrified to discover how radically their highest values differed from those of old allies and former comrades.”
Link. They are now the small-c conservatives of Democratic voters.
Facebook “built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules”
Link. Love to see Facebook broken into pieces but the depths of this article show how hard the problem is. (Trump and soccer guy most egregious).
The GOP is against civilization – and even “good” media colludes.
Link. If they cannot rule they will destroy.
Husband and wife dead: “Davy Macias did not get vaccinated because she was pregnant”
Link. Her husband almost certainly unvaccinated as well. Young orphans. She was a nurse.
SD physicians blame Sturgis Rally, Sturgis Rally supporters say that can’t be right.
Link. Bit of a silly article really.
Shootings way up in Minneapolis.
Link. It’s real here.
“I suppose I have three things to say about 9/11.”
Link. The only retro I have found not annoying. Better – it’s illuminating. (Of course he agrees with me. We usually do.)
“In 2016, Massachusetts became the first state where four-year college graduates represented the majority of voters in a presidential contest.”
Link. “realignment of American politics along cultural and educational lines, and away from the class and income divisions“
“selling fake vaccination cards with a government logo on them is a crime.”
Link. Federal crime. Article doesn’t discuss free distribution.
“protection was significantly higher among Moderna vaccine recipients (95 percent) than among those who got Pfizer-BioNTech (80 percent) or Johnson & Johnson (60 percent).”
Link. J&J shouldn’t be used going forward. Moderna is very impressive.
America’s generous religious exemptions for vaccination.
Link. COVID worship is a legitimate religion. The chosen ascend after a brief period of purification through suffering. Presumably.