Epicene Cyborg

Why Is COVID-19 Worse In Some Parts of the World and Better in Others?

After Alarmism. The war on climate denial has been won. And that’s not the only good news. Don’t completely agree, but those dipshits are certainly less prominent now.

America Needs to Break the Back of its Fascist Movement Now.

Trump couldn’t have incited sedition without the help of Fox News. In most countries, and rightly so, Fox News would not be allowed on the air.

President-elect Joe Biden’s foreign-policy advisors have been eager to convey that “America is back” and ready to resume leadership of the Western world. But Biden and his team may soon discover that a foundation of past U.S. leadership—a reputation for competence—has eroded beyond easy repair.

What’s Wrong with the Way We Work. Americans are told to give their all—time, labor, and passion—to their jobs. But do their jobs give enough back?

Petco and the cold, lifeless modern brand.

To Put it Succinctly about Services: Everything Drops, incl. Jobs, but Prices & Wages Rise.

Biden Should Go Big, Fast, and Simple. The new president must not repeat Obama’s mistakes.

Closure of an iconic Paris bookshop alarms French bibliophiles. Lockdowns proceeding as expected.

Die Laughing at the Capitol.

Testing the waters: Analyzing different solid states of water on other planets and moons.

The Errand Friend.

Massive Inflation in Shipping Costs. And the Reasons.

Super-rich fuelling growing demand for private jets, report finds.

Household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and risk factors for susceptibility and infectivity in Wuhan: a retrospective observational study.

Anti-Terrorism “Meat Grinder” Coming Home.

The Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America. How 150 years of apocalyptic agitation culminated in an insurrection.

Misinformation dropped dramatically the week after Twitter banned Trump.

Del Monte $20 bill set to sell for nearly $60,000.

Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook.

Conservatives, not liberals, are more inclined to value feelings over facts, psychology study finds.

Why Rage Over the 2020 Election Could Live On. The false belief in a stolen election has entered the bloodstream of many Americans, and will not be easy to stop.

Tech Companies Are Profiling Us From Before Birth.

Software effort estimation is mostly fake research.

America’s Second-Worst Scenario. So far, cumulative acts of civic virtue have saved the republic. But the constitutional order is still in danger.

Seashells found inland in Jordan hint at why Neanderthals disappeared and modern humans survived.

The far right embraces violence because it has no real political program.

The Ireland Event.

US Capitol riot: police have long history of aiding neo-Nazis and extremists.

What motivates the motivated reasoning of pro-Trump conspiracists? New study suggests a desire to see society focus on men helps drive support.

The collapse of genetic incompatibilities in a hybridizing population.

Treating public schools like businesses is only making them worse.

When Are We Back To Normal? This is assuming most of the plutes want things back to normal, which they do not.

Removing space junk. Plans to clean up orbits around Earth are being hatched.

The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression.

The Untold Story of How the Republican Attorneys General Association, Funded with Large Sums from Corporate Felons, Including OxyContin Drug Pusher Purdue, Participated in Recruiting the Mob that Attacked the Capitol.

The Stock Market Is Broken as a Bellwether; Here’s How to Fix It.

The Radicalization of Kevin Greeson. How one man went from attending President Barack Obama’s inauguration to dying in the mob protesting Donald Trump’s election loss during the Capitol insurrection.

A large study of patients from a Wuhan, China, hospital showed that a half-year later, three-quarters were struggling with problems like fatigue, depression and diminished lung function. Not the fucking flu.

The Public Square Must Be Public.

HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know.

A Year of Coronavirus Devastation: How the U.S. Ensured Its Own Failure.

The rise of intensive parenting.

No absolute time. Two centuries before Einstein, Hume recognised that universal time, independent of an observer’s viewpoint, doesn’t exist.

I looked at all the ways Microsoft Teams tracks users and my head is spinning. Microsoft Teams isn’t just there to make employees’ lives easier. It’s also there to give bosses data about so many things.

Things that make sense on the internet, when spoken out loud, slip away from you as if you were trying to recall a dream.

The ‘megascale’ structures that humans could one day build.

Electric Eels Hunt in Packs, Shocking Prey and Scientists. The behavior, used by wolves and orcas to run down fast prey, is rarely seen in fish.

Everything Is Broken. And how to fix it.

Media suddenly shifts its tone on Trump — but that’s not courage, it’s cowardice.

Large bitcoin payments to right-wing activists a month before Capitol riot linked to foreign account.

Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp.

Billionaires backed Republicans who sought to reverse US election results.

Because social murder is passively—as opposed to actively, such as herding people into labor camps—carried out under market capitalism, we are fooled into thinking that it doesn’t exist. We already have death panels and have for a long time.

NASA gives up on taking Mars’ temperature. Meant to drive a heat sensor 3 meters deep into Mars, it only managed 3 centimeters.

Prop 22 Is Here, and It’s Already Worse Than Expected.

The NSA warns enterprises to beware of third-party DNS resolvers. Yes, plaintext DNS is insane, but encrypting it has its own tradeoffs. Plaintext DNS is “insane” only if you are an assclown.

Place-conscious federal policies to reduce regional economic disparities in the United States.

100 days of warning: inside the Boogaloo killings of US law enforcement. Extremism experts warned that the anti-government movement was planning attacks online. Why didn’t Facebook act? Because it was making them money, duh.

Increase in suicide following an initial decline during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

I’ve received several DMs from friends asking what do to about parents/family members who believe misinformation regarding the election, vaccines and COVID. Here’s a research-based thread to help explain the roots of these beliefs and how to (and how *not* to) address them.

Janet Yellen, Biden’s pick to lead Treasury, made over $7 million in speaking fees from companies she could regulate.

The US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life. Need to get out of here, stat.

One of the indigestible facts of this country is that most of its terrorism and nearly all its mass shootings are committed by mostly conservative-leaning white men, conservative here meaning those most earnestly committed to their white supremacist-misogynist identity politics.

The business owners, real-estate brokers, and service members who rioted acted not out of economic desperation, but out of their belief in their inviolable right to rule.

The Hacker Who Archived Parler Explains How She Did It (and What Comes Next).

I’m a pregnant doctor and I feel confident receiving the Covid vaccine. Here’s why.

US police three times as likely to use force against leftwing protesters, data finds. Shocking absolutely no one.

The Conditions Now Exist For A Long Term Right Wing Insurgency In America.

Recovering from Covid gives similar level of protection to vaccine. PHE found immunity from earlier infection provided 83% protection against reinfection for at least 20 weeks. Note that “at least.” If you don’t understand what that means, do better.

Want to understand the Capitol rioters? Look at the inflamed hate-drunk mobs painted by Goya.

L’éducation idéologique. (Article is in English.)

How Facebook Incubated the Insurrection. Right-wing influencers embraced extremist views and Facebook rewarded them.

The Last Thing We Need Is Another War on Terror.

There’s no unity without accountability.

Renters vs. homeowners.

Electricity Has Been in a Slump for 14 Years, But All Heck Has Broken Loose in How it’s Generated.

New research shows the connection between political victimhood and White support for Trump.

Unemployment Claims Rise Sharply, Showing New Economic Pain.

Why My Older, Smaller Library Was Better.

That Office AC System Is Great — at Recirculating Viruses.

Asymptomatic transmission of covid-19.

I truly don’t understand anti-maskers, and I know it’s because I have what they lack. Empathy.

How to Better Ventilate Your Home During the Pandemic.

The Scary Power of the Companies That Finally Shut Trump Up. Tech giants were right to ban the president. We still need to break them up.

Where sedition is rewarded.

‘My spending has gone up, not down, in lockdown.’ A study finds that the financial burden on poorer families has increased during the pandemic. Certainly true in the US too.

Ventilation and viral loads: the key misunderstandings of how coronavirus spreads.

‘The horror stories are countless’: inside the LA hospital at the center of the Covid crisis.

Think like a Virus.

How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism.

Jared Mauch didn’t have good broadband—so he built his own fiber ISP.

One striking aspect of the Capitol Hill putsch was that none of the rioters’ grievances had any basis in reality.

Donald Trump being banned from social media is a dangerous distraction.

Following Trump Ban, Facebook Tells Employees to Avoid Wearing Company-Branded Apparel.

For the founders, the key to a stable and enduring system rooted in the consent of the governed was the establishment of filtering institutions of deliberation that would enlarge the view of narrow self-interested constituencies, dispel delusions and dissipate the raw emotions of popular sentiment in order to reach a governing consensus.

Riots, effigies and a guillotine: Capitol attack could be a glimpse of violence to come. Guaranteed to come.

Improving natural ventilation in hospital waiting and consulting rooms to reduce nosocomial tuberculosis transmission risk in a low resource setting.

A tale of two Americas: Before Trump’s deadly coup, Georgia voters changed the country.

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