» 2021 » January Epicene Cyborg

Forget the ‘beginning of the end’, Covid is a permawar. Despite the crop of vaccines, the healthcare industry expects to fight coronavirus for years. Agreed. We let it get away from us, and now it’ll be with us forever.

This Is Us: Why the Trump Era Ended in Violence.

Feds: Evidence shows well-laid plan by some Capitol insurrectionists.

This Is Not Fiction.

Rogue antibodies could be driving severe COVID-19.

Another Way to Protect against COVID beyond Masking and Social Distancing. Boosting indoor humidity in winter can hinder transmission of the virus.

The persistence of memory in B cells: Hints of stability in COVID immunity.

How the American Unemployment System Failed.

The fantasy-industrial complex gave us the Capitol Hill insurrection. This is America’s brain on misinformation.

Why winter, yes winter, fires are burning in California.

The Age of Instagram Face. How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.

Oil Industry’s Public Climate Denial Campaign Dates Back to at Least 1980, Nearly a Decade Earlier Than Previously Thought.

Psychedelics are a waste of life.

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.

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