Epicene Cyborg

Russia’s Laptev Sea Should Have Started to Freeze by Now. Normally, the ‘birthplace of ice’ freezes by late October. For the first time in recorded history, it hasn’t. That could have knock-on effects across the Arctic.

Mystery of unusual neutron star system revealed after 20 years, thanks to thousands of volunteers. Since they solved it, they should do the neutron dance.

Microsoft just force restarted my Windows PC again to install more unwanted apps.

Out of Work in America.

The road hogs are pigging out. Dave Barry from 1999.

President Trump is benefiting from single-payer, single-provider health care. We all should.

The pobblebonk frog makes the best noises.

Toxic Internet Culture From East To West. What the digital worlds of Japan’s imageboards and America’s alt-right reveal about real-life precarity.

The Corporatization of Nursing Homes. A tragic history of how we’ve treated elderly citizens, for profit.

The Importance of End-to-End Thinking in System Design.

“A huge reason that our politics is not so extremely polarised and so far out there is because we no longer have Murdoch-owned press in New Zealand, and it’s never taken a foothold.”

The People Who Prioritize a Friendship Over Romance.

How an Ill-Fated Fishing Voyage Helped Us Understand Covid-19.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused nearly 300,000 more deaths than expected in a typical year.

New Orleans to furlough city employees, 4,000 will go unpaid over 6 days. And the next phase of the pandemic depression begins.

As cases rise again, second thoughts on another lockdown. Lockdowns were good as temporary measures. Now we’ve failed and it’s too late.

On top of skyrocketing medical costs, many Americans face staggering surprise bills for “air ambulances.” What’s no surprise is that the private equity industry is deeply implicated in this nightmare — and spending heavily to make sure no one puts a stop to it.

Systemic Risk in the Broad Economy. Interfirm Networks and Shocks in the U.S. Economy.

The Internet, smart phones, and social media (ISS) have set human communication back about 20,000 years. That is, we now rely more on gossip than we have since we lived in small tribes.

Minivan buyers tend to be more self-confident and more “other-oriented”: more involved with family, friends and their communities.

Satellites Put the World’s Biggest Methane Emitters on the Map. Now the companies and countries responsible for a powerful greenhouse gas won’t be able to hide from view.

Down-to-Earth View of the “Recovery” in Near-Real Time, Eight Months into the Pandemic.

Driver of the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth identified.

Confronting the Parasite Economy. Why low-wage work is bad for business—and all of us.

Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line Far More Dangerous Than What They Censor.

Constructing Our Enemy: Synthetic Lifeforms in Film 1911-1979.

Supreme Court Justices Are Politicians, Too. And just like Republican politicians, the conservative justices are dedicated to preserving the right’s minority rule.

And if there is one thing we can definitively state, it’s that this virus is much, much less likely to spread outdoors than in.

After 2 Hurricanes, Lake Charles Fears Its Cries for Help Have Gone Unheard.

How Criminal Charges Against a Wall Street Icon Went from Front Page News to a Yawn at the New York Times.

‘Scarred for life’: Sage experts warn of impact of Covid policies on the young. The liberal idea of “stay inside forever” was always a moronic one.

Le gouvernement a donné son feu vert à un nouveau malus automobile lié à la masse pour les véhicules pesant plus de 1.800 kg. Une mesure destinée à lutter contre l’achat de modèles plus lourds et polluants et qui est critiquée par les constructeurs automobiles. Should be done in the US too.

Why small businesses in supply chains matter too.

Coronavirus Tanked the Economy. Then Credit Scores Went Up. The average credit score hit a record in July after millions of Americans had lost their jobs, scrambling lenders’ underwriting models.

As Local News Dies, a Pay-for-Play Network Rises in Its Place. A nationwide operation of 1,300 local sites publishes coverage that is ordered up by Republican groups and corporate P.R. firms.

The preexisting conditions of the coronavirus pandemic. An enormous new data set peers into the health of the world’s population before 2020.

All that is to say that starting at 1 is not an unreasonable position at all; to a typical human thinking about the zeroth element of an array doesn’t make any more sense than trying to catch the zeroth bus that comes by, but we’ve clearly ended up here somehow. So what’s the story there?

Covid-19: The global crisis — in data.

There’s a Word for Why We Wear Masks, and Liberals Should Say It. It’s high time Democrats played some philosophical offense on the concept of “freedom.” Liberals play offense? LOL.

After sidelining scientists, Europe plays catchup with new coronavirus wave.

Seven Laws of Sane Personal Computing.

Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press.

Zeptoseconds: New world record in short time measurement. In other words, they made Zepto Marks.

What has happened in the wholesale commodification of American culture is the gangsterization of American life. And people saw in Trump a gangster who wins. Nailed it.

Britons alarmed by unpleasant border infrastructure they demanded.

Why I’m Glad I Left America. Life in France is better, especially now.

Will SARS-CoV-2 become endemic?

Iowa derecho in August was most costly thunderstorm disaster in U.S. history.

Efficacy of face masks, neck gaiters and face shields for reducing the expulsion of simulated cough-generated aerosols.

Bullshit Economic Statistics.

The Third Coronavirus Surge Has Arrived.

Homes with gas stoves can contain approximately 50 to 400 percent higher concentrations of NO2 than homes with electric stoves, often resulting in levels of indoor air pollution that would be illegal outdoors.

The radical mysticism of identitarian reductionism.

The Money Men Could Save Us. But They’re Stuck in the Seventies. (And, unfortunately, yes, they mostly are men.)

Earth’s New Gilded Era. The world is getting hotter, and the divide between rich and poor is getting bigger.

The American Mortgage Is An Investment In Racial Inequality.

We Can’t Ignore Rural Voter Resentment.

The COVID response is missing an obvious cadre of experts. People trained in public health — who are not necessarily physicians — should handle public health crises.

From everything we can see, re-infection is a very rare event. I’d expect some re-infection because this happens with almost every virus.

8 Million Have Slipped Into Poverty Since May as Federal Aid Has Dried Up.

Julian Assange faces the ‘trial of the century’: 10 reasons why it threatens freedom of speech.

Proprietary Grapes Come With Draconian End User License Agreement.

Republican Judges Are Quietly Upending Public Health Laws. A catastrophic sequence of decisions has blocked states from responding to the pandemic.

Trump treats essential workers as expendable, and many Americans are following his dangerous lead.

The Modern Lives of Ancient Symbols.

A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1%.

We can’t let the WTO get in the way of a ‘people’s vaccine.’

The economics of vending machines.

Thirty-year failure to tackle preventable disease fuelling global Covid pandemic, Study reveals increase in high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and obesity, all risk factors for disease.

Inside the Fall of the CDC.

$5 Billion Lawsuit Accuses Google of Tracking Users’ Private Internet Activity.

The Five Deadly Sins of the Left.

10,000 Vintage Recipe Books Are Now Digitized in The Internet Archive’s Cookbook & Home Economics Collection.

The history of Satanic Panic in the US — and why it’s not over yet. Some of the victims of mass hysteria over satanic ritual abuse are still serving sentences.

Why Liberals Pretend They Have No Power.

COVID Models: What the Pandemic Has in Store for the World.

An extra artery in the human arm is a sign we’re “still evolving,” study says. The presence of the median artery in the arm has become more prevalent in the last few centuries, scientists say.

Cisco Delays Next-Gen Office Phone for 20th Consecutive Year. Only IT nerds will really get this one.

Gender-Role Ideology and Height Preference in Mate Selection.

The Key to the Productivity Puzzle.

New Gender-Inclusive USB Standards Rename Connectors to Dom and Sub.

The Fruits and Vegetables Used to Create Gory Horror Movie Sounds.

AI is an Ideology, Not a Technology. At its core, “artificial intelligence” is a perilous belief that fails to recognize the agency of humans.

Sweden’s gamble.

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