Link. Wow. That’s a huge effect. Underutilized?
Monthly Archives: October 2021
COVID toes: “most of the patients tested negative for coronavirus.”
Link. Negative PCR! Extreme immune reaction.
Four mRNA flu vaccines in trial.
Link. Years from use unless we get another 1918. Combo vaccines further yet.
“ an officer’s chances of being killed at any vehicle stop are less than 1 in 3.6 million”
Link. They do a lot of traffic stops, so cumulative yearly death risk is much higher.
Jury of military officers condemns Bush-Cheney directed torture of al Qaeda fighter: “the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government.”
Link. Milestone on our hell ride.
How we fixed broken democracy in 1900: “less turnout, less participation, less of a voice for working people”
Link. Trump’s genius was engaging the non-college majority.
“$1 million that the town of about 870 people collects each year from traffic cases
Link. Police function in a broken system. “you are required to write a minimum of two tickets per hour while on grant time and there is zero tolerance.”
Inflation of low quality.
Link. I complained about this in the 00s — with poor quality Chinese products. For a while that got somewhat better.
““In 19th-century Britain, the largest single movement was the anti-vaccine movement,”
Link. They had the excuse that vaccines were still novel.
“Three-fourths of Black Americans, who form a decisive voting bloc in many mayoral contests, either support increasing or keeping spending on police the same”
Link. As expected.
“Fake versions of paper vaccine certificates issued by America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention go for $150 apiece on Telegram, more than some digital alternatives.”
Link. It’s hard to beat paper.
Do not attend the U of Florida.
Link. I assume the professors will show some spine. But still, don’t go to UF. Also, don’t live in Florida.
Eight things we learned from the Facebook Papers.
Link. “Comments are a significant portion of misinfo on FB” Imagine the burden of moderating comments. No wonder Zuck wants out of Facebook.
USB-C Hybrid Multiport Adapter – with built-in SSD compartment.
Link. Ok, that’s cool.
The Cybernated Generation: Time Magazine, April 2nd 1965.
Link. Must read. “Lovers of problem solving, they are apt to play chess at lunch or doodle in algebra over cocktails, speak an esoteric language that some suspect is just their way of mystifying outsiders.”
eBikes exceed maximal cyclist speeds.
Link. We will need RFID-like “bike” ID tags and systems for automated ticketing for trail speeding.
“Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
Link. Lesser known part of “liquidate” rant. “The new system undercut fascism at home, too, where its adherents had been growing strong.”
“Fortescue Metals Group, unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest factory for electrolyser machines, needed to produce green hydrogen from water.”
Link. Winter electricity.
“Buying a $1,000 iPhone can be equivalent to giving up $17,000 in retirement savings”
Link. Emily is rocking a 6s. Works fine..
“a single lineage galloped ahead to overtake and replace all the other wild horses”
Link. “one gene linked to docility and another to a stronger backbone”
Molnupiravir: “Merck has granted a royalty-free license for its promising Covid-19 pill to a United Nations -backed nonprofit”
Link. Lessons from HIV learned. Kudos.
“pregnant women are more likely to become severely ill and to die from Covid than other women of the same age.”
Link. Immune system suppressed to protect fetus. Slower response to vaccines as well including COVID vaccine.
“given either fluvoxamine or a placebo, the drug reduced the need for hospitalization or prolonged medical observation by one-third”
Link. An obscure cheap OCD med. The anti-inflammatory actions are a side-effect. I’d be cautious about it.
“Mr. Donziger and his associates had engaged in a conspiracy and criminal conduct by ghostwriting an environmental report used as a crucial piece of evidence and bribing a judge in Ecuador.”
Link. Good ends, bad means.
Vaccination rates rise in Black Americans.
Link. Helps that white right is insane.
Shortcuts: counting files and Quick Actions
Link. macos Automator scripting
Inline Skating San Francisco — from 1997!
Link. Web 1.0 medieval HTML pasted into pre-modern Blogger renders in Mojave Safari as well as it ever did. Peak document compatibility.
“Photos can import the contents of one Photos library into another … your albums and keywords will be left behind, so don’t consider this a complete merger.”
Link. Aperture imported and exported libraries with great ease – including keywords, albums, descriptions, ratings, and more. At this rate Apple will have a reasonable photo management product by the year 2045.
“Passkeys are WebAuth credentials intended to replace passwords for websites and apps with device sync and backup. The technology is now available in WebKit as a preview.”
Link. Safari 15 has a lot of new powers.
residential proxies – Google Search
Link. A small but thriving American industry that seems to largely funded by scammers and Russian hackers.
Exercise for autism – the home mini-CrossFit program.
Link. Sharing what has worked.
Fly brain connectome 1.0.
Link. A map, but not the terrain. We are still a way from emulating a fly brain in software. But one day…
“Apartments built in every single one of those decades began to filter up instead: they became occupied, on average, by higher-income people.”
Link. Essential read. Housing in America.
“The difference between gain of function research and research that would be expected to yield results showing gain of function in some cases is a subtle one.”
Link. Better oversight needed.
“clean energy advanced far more quickly than predicted”
Link. This is doable.
Flock license plate scanners for gated communities.
Link. The technology keeps improving.
Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip.
Link. The author is extreme. Easy to see why Apple dropped their max machine on him.
The Worm Blob: “It is not hard to fall in love with them.”
Link. Reads like it was great fun to write.
“South Pole thruster could literally be the one and only thing, after the ice melts, that truly saves our planet.”
Link. Spaceship Earth. Also, Feersum Endjinn is a great book by Iain M Banks.
“Many spyware companies, including NSO, prevent the targeting of United States phone numbers”
Link. China not worried.
“the gas tax doesn’t come close to keeping pace with federal spending on roads and highways … Congress hasn’t raised it in 28 years.”
Link. Myths about roadways refuted.
“The primary goal of a container is to hide the real OS from an application.”
Link. “Containers shouldn’t be confused with virtualization however, which provides a consistent hardware interface to the OS. A container is more about providing a consistent OS interface to applications.”Helped me understand the basics.
“Conspiracy theories are more visible online, and journalists feel they need to report on them to help make sense of what is going on. But that doesn’t mean there are more of them, or that belief in them has necessarily increased.”
Link. The 1970s were a heyday of astrology and crystals and UFOs.
“the Frauchinger-Renner paradox, which demonstrates that quantum mechanics cannot consistently describe the use of itself.”
Link. Gödel has thoughts.
“In Sri Lanka, people were able to automatically add hundreds of thousands of users to Facebook groups, exposing them to violence-inducing and hateful content.”
Link. Facebook is a global catastrophe.
“internal research over several years had identified ways to diminish the spread of political polarization, conspiracy theories and incitements to violence”. “
Link. They reduced engagement.
“The Cheneys are likely not unaware of what is happening among intelligence officials, which seems likely to involve some current Republican lawmakers.”
Link. People who know things.
How to use thecompendium.cards
Link. Open source. Lovely project.
Coordination Headwind – How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds
Link. The problem description is persuasive but the fixes seem a bit miraculous. Explains Google though.
Guns on sets: the safety protocols.
Link. Lots of things have to go wrong to cause serious harm.