Flutterby™! From 2020-11-01 to 2020-11-30

Not yet peer reviewed, but probably at least a good estimate for a question we've all been asking: 2.5 Million Person-Years of Life Have Been Lost Due to COVID-19 in the United States, Stephen J. Elledge. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.18.20214783

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by tens of millions of SARS-CoV-2 infections world-wide, has resulted in considerable levels of mortality and morbidity. The United States has been hit particularly hard having 20 percent of the world’s infections but only 4 percent of the world population. Unfortunately, significant levels of misunderstanding exist about the severity of the disease and its lethality. As COVID-19 disproportionally impacts elderly populations, the false impression that the impact on society of these deaths is minimal may be conveyed by some because elderly individuals are closer to a natural death. To assess the impact of COVID-19 in the US, I have performed calculations of person-years of life lost as a result of 194,000 premature deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 infection as of early October, 2020. By combining actuarial data on life expectancy and the distribution of COVID-19 associated deaths we estimate that over 2,500,000 person-years of life have been lost so far in the pandemic in the US alone, averaging over 13.25 years per person with differences noted between males and females. Importantly, nearly half of the potential years of life lost occur in non-elderly populations. Issues impacting refinement of these models and the additional morbidity caused by COVID-19 beyond lethality are discussed.

Via this Cleveland.com article which came from ResearchBuzz

Some good observations about server costs, vendor lock-in, and hiring people who understand what's going on vs just how to manipulate a specific vendor's tools: Is a billion-dollar worth of server lying on the ground?, comparing OVH and AWS, and the inertia in moving between compute service providers like Amazon and others.

[ related topics: Books Currency ]

Remarkable New Evidence for Human Activity in North America 130,000 Years Ago

The team’s findings, published today in the journal Nature, could upend our current understanding of when humans arrived in North America—already a flashpoint among archaeologists. Recent theories posit that people first migrated to the continent about 15,000 years ago along a coastal route, as Jason Daley writes in Smithsonian. But in January, a new analysis of horse remains from the Bluefish Caves by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars suggested that humans may have lived on the continent as early as 24,000 years ago.

The new study, however, suggests that some type of hominin species—early human relatives from the genus Homo—was bashing up mastodon bones in North America about 115,000 years earlier than the commonly accepted date. That’s a staggeringly early date, and one that is likely to raise eyebrows. There is no other archaeological evidence attesting to such an early human presence in North America.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Invention and Design Astronomy Current Events ]

Fascinating thread about pulling the externalities out of the trash stream RT Justin Searls @searls

One thing I've been meaning to share about our year in Japan and one of the most fascinating aspects of its bureaucracy: garbage collection.

No, really! Garbage sorting is a massive part of daily life in Japan, and for numerous cultural, practical, and political reasons. Thread:

[ related topics: Politics Software Engineering moron Sociology ]

PROOF POINTS: White and female teachers show racial bias in evaluating second grade writing — Same essay with different names gets different marks

“Teachers were 4.7 percentage points more likely to consider the white child’s writing at or above ‘grade level’ compared to the identical writing from a Black child.” wrote the University of Southern California researcher, David Quinn, describing his June 2020 study in an article published Nov. 2 in the journal Education Next.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Writing California Culture Education Race ]

Ya know shit's getting bad when Deutsche Bank doesn't want to be associated with your money... Exclusive: Tired of Trump, Deutsche Bank games ways to sever ties with the president - sources

One idea that has come up in the meetings: sell the loans in the secondary market, two of the bank officials said. But one of the officials said that idea has not gained traction, in part because it is not clear who would want to buy the loans and the attendant problems that come with it.

[ related topics: Games Currency Economics ]

The most terrifying thing in the world to see on one's Facebook wall: "I read this on Epoch Times and it rings true..."

Dear Google "Assistant": what I want is to listen to my podcast uninterrupted and not have "you" pop up every time I put my phone in my pocket. Wish this shit was easier to disable and remove.

Whoah: To go along with that article yesterday about humans possibly being on North America a hundred thousand years before previously thought, Fossil Discoveries Challenge Ideas About Earth’s Start

The fossils add to a wave of discoveries that point to a new story of ancient Earth. In the past year, separate teams of researchers have dug up, pulverized and laser-blasted pieces of rock that may contain life dating to 3.7, 3.95 and maybe even 4.28 billion years ago. All of these microfossils — or the chemical evidence associated with them — are hotly debated. But they all cast doubt on the traditional tale.

[ related topics: Invention and Design History ]

Legendary porn palace the O'Farrell Theatre closes after 51 years

But the Mitchell Brothers' battles with the city of San Francisco went on for over a decade. Before joining the Board of Supervisors, Dianne Feinstein launched her political career as a pearl-clutching Presidio Heights housewife who campaigned against the spread of adult movie houses around the city. After years of dealing with her activism and attempts to shut them down — including a 1980 raid under her tenure as mayor in which 14 patrons and staff members were arrested on prostitution charges — the Mitchell Brothers famously fought back in court and then posted Feinstein's personal phone number on their marquee with the message "For a good time, call ..."

[ related topics: Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Movies Bay Area moron Theater & Plays California Culture Real Estate ]

"Everybody suffers because of the socio-sexual nature of humanity; any overarching problem in one area is going to affect the other. Yet devotedly, we keep trying so damn hard to exorcize the sexual demon from the equation and get rosy results." Karin Grace Wares, "Hot Blooded"

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Nature and environment ]

Recorded live in Germany!

[ related topics: Photography Theater & Plays ]

RT Autumnal Gambino @PrettyBadLefty

Biden lost in places where legalizing cannabis, raising the minimum wage, etc initiatives won, abandoning them ostensibly in order to chase Suburban Republicans who didn't vote for him anyway. A decision that will continue to be treated as a sign of pragmatism and maturity.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Terry and the Pirates. Stars and Stripes, January 27, 1946

[ related topics: Photography ]

Michio Shimodaira. All kind of GI. From the files of Pete Chepernich, part of the occupation forces of Japan, probably 1946 (with picture...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dutch "Bavaria Brewery" burns iron for heat, using it as a renewable energy battery

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics ]

Amazon thinks I should be buying toilet plumbing parts for my gift list. Not sure whether I should be pointing and laughing at machine targeted advertising... or disturbed that I'm so seen.

[ related topics: Books Photography Consumerism and advertising ]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a Twitter thread on failure of Democratic strategy in this election:

There are folks running around on TV blaming progressivism for Dem underperformance.

I was curious, so I decided to open the hood on struggling campaigns of candidates who are blaming progressives for their problems.

Almost all had awful execution on digital. DURING A PANDEMIC.

Also a few interesting strategy notes in this Twitter thread from Elizabeth Spiers linking to the middle of that thread

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Television Sports ]

RT Essential Employee @amyep9

The Democratic Party has refused to adopt progressive policies that are wildly popular with voters, like marijuana legalization (67% of Americans support), Medicare for All (69%), raising minimum wage to $15 (63%, and 81% of registered Dems). But sure, tacking right sounds great.

RT Katie Halper @kthalps

Lincoln project utterly failed - a higher percentage Republicans voted Trump in 2020 than 2016.

Meanwhile, the DSA @DemSocialists has won 26 out of 30 races this year.

Who are the pragmatists who know how to win, again?

[ related topics: Drugs Libertarian Work, productivity and environment Automobiles Race ]

Twitter Permanently Suspends Steve Bannon Account After Beheading Comments.

There are those who think that "Y'all Qaeda" or "Vanilla ISIS" is overstating the current level of anti-American behavior in the United States, but when we've got leaders of that community making direct callbacks to Daniel Pearl, well...

[ related topics: Community ]

Once again, The Onion is too close to home: Passed California Ballot Measure Allows Uber, Lyft To Categorize Workers As Car Parts

[ related topics: Food California Culture Automobiles ]

Just reading Karin Grace Wares' memoir Hot Blooded, and finding bits I want to quote:

Regardless of how it is packaged and presented, any indiscriminately imposed social agenda that denies the underlying reality of natural desire— keeping large aspects of it under wraps—manifests as a form of oppression, regardless of who is constructing it and why.

"That's... uh... great, Dan, you managed to make a big hole in the wall and cover it with plywood. Very productive."

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

[ related topics: Photography Journalism and Media Clothing ]

QAnon Is Supposed to Be All About Protecting Kids. Its Primary Enabler Appears to Have Hosted Child Porn Domains.

A group of anti-Q researchers that includes Aubrey Cottle, a founder of the online collective Anonymous, brought Watkins’ connection to the domains to Mother Jones’ attention. Another researcher, who asked not to be named to avoid harassment from Watkins supporters, reviewed the historical domain and routing information at Mother Jones’ request and agreed the records showed that N.T. Technology “hosted many domains with CP [child pornography] themed names over an extended period of time.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Aviation - Helicopters ]

"I mean, your gay square dancing friends seem kinda cool, why does square dancing have such a negative reputation, Dan?" Because straight square dancers:

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture ]

Recall for some second-generation Ring doorbells: Gizmodo: Your Cop-Friendly Spy Device Could Burst Into Flames.

Notice at https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050949611

Looks like this is for doorbells that have some sort of USB charging port on them, and the problem is if you use screws other than the provided ones; there's some way that they end up potentially puncturing the battery.

Also, despite being owners of 3 Ring products, if there's an off-site video solution that doesn't involve paying a subscription fee to a horrible company, I'm all ears.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama tolkien Fabrication Video ]

National Review: Where the Post-Election Lawsuits Stand

Starting to? US Republicans are starting to look a lot like authoritarian parties in Hungary and Turkey, study finds

(CNN) The GOP is starting to look a lot like an autocratic party, a large study into political identity has found.

Experts from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said the US Republican Party had become more illiberal and populist in recent decades and that its recent retreat from democratic norms has left it resembling authoritarian ruling parties like Hungary's Fidesz and Turkey's AKP.

[ related topics: Politics Food moron Journalism and Media Education Birds ]

GOP List of Alleged Voter Fraud in Nevada Contains Hundreds of Military Addresses

[ related topics: Current Events ]

From today's Stratechery, check out the graph of Apple vs Intel top performance about 3/4 of the way down this page. Apple's new machines are limited to 16G of RAM, but the power per watt of yesterday's Apple announcement is pretty astounding.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Theater & Plays Macintosh ]

With the Petaluma River dredging, boats are now returning to the turning basin.

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery ]

This is fascinating from a "what VR communities are starting to do with extended interfaces" standpoint... I remember when arcade games were evolving interfaces, now it's people with 3d printers and Arduinos...

Buttpluggin' With qDot - Intro to the OSR-2 (SFW video). The OSR-2 is a 2 or 3 axis Fleshlight holder developed by Tempest MAx (Patreon), apparently developed in the furry VR community.

Thread with some more links and someone offering printed and assembled versions in Europe.

[ related topics: Games Movies Graphics Community Video ]

Mississippi Republican calls for his state to ‘succeed from the union’ after Biden victory

As Twitter user 𝚋𝚊𝚡𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚗 @TheBaxterBean noted

Mississippi is one of the biggest moocher states in America, getting $2.13 for every dollar paid in federal taxes. Mississippi also has the largest percentage than any other state of residents on food stamps.

if Mississippi succeeded it would go broke in less than 90 days.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Food Currency Government ]

Observation of the morning: Petaluma Coffee Roasters Yemen Mocca Haimi is really tasty.

Oh, look, the police department that killed Breonna Taylor is in the news again: Louisville police, county attorney's office hide 738,000 records in Explorer sex abuse case

Another lawyer for The Courier Journal, Michael Abate, said the city’s conduct was especially egregious given the case involves the sexual abuse of children by police officers and the department’s failure to prevent it.

Metro Council President David James said Wednesday that "it’s very disturbing to me that either the county attorney’s office or the police department was so dead-set on making sure those records never reached the public.”

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture History Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Justice Department probe ends with no action against prosecutors who oversaw Epstein deal

[ related topics: Politics Law Enforcement Personal Lubricant ]

On the 50th Anniversary, relive that first video you downloaded over dial-up... Exploding Whale, Remastered.

[ related topics: Video ]

Militia leader Stewart Rhodes says he has men stationed outside of D.C. ready to engage in violence on Trump’s order

Rhodes: “We’ll also be on the outside of D.C., armed, prepared to go in, if the president calls us up”

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

McSweeney's: Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump's Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes — The Complete Listing (So Far): Atrocities 1 - 978

Last night Charlene and I were talking about what, if anything, we wanted to do for Thanksgiving. We got married on Thanksgiving eve, so we kind-of celebrate it as an anniversary, and often go somewhere to get-away. We were thinking about where that might be, what we could see, and we started digging into COVID-19 data. And we decided that we're not going anywhere.

It looks like Sonoma County is running 70-100 new cases per day, population 500k, so I dunno, that's somewhere between 100 and 140 new cases per hundred thousand per 7 days? CDC is claiming California is running 17/100k/7 days, so we're way over that, North Dakota is almost 170/100k/7 days. So Sonoma County's reluctance to actually take this seriously (see our Sheriff's deliberate undermining of efforts, for instance) is not helping our case rate at all.

And then, of course, that led to looking at international data and strategies, and the US is at 10M acknowledged cases and about .25k deaths, so either we've got a lot of shadow cases, or the US's death rate sucks relative to developed nations. I suspect a combination of the two.

It's kind-of astounding. And we're gonna be hunkering down here at home for quite a while longer.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Sociology Law California Culture Sports Marriage ]

Twitter thread of non-alcoholic drinks. I'm not opposed to alcohol, I've got a Mason jar of rum and coffee cold-brewing right now in an effort to make a Kahlua analogue, but especially since I've got the carbonation capacity to do all sorts of seltzer, I'm on the lookout for ideas...

[ related topics: Wines and Spirits ]

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

To support the allegations, the plaintiff's counsel tested a new Samsung Galaxy S7 phone running Android, with a signed-in Google Account and default setting, and found that when left idle, without a Wi-Fi connection, the phone "sent and received 8.88 MB/day of data, with 94 per cent of those communications occurring between Google and the device."

The device, stationary, with all apps closed, transferred data to Google about 16 times an hour, or about 389 times in 24 hours. Assuming even half of that data is outgoing, Google would receive about 4.4MB per day or 130MB per month in this manner per device subject to the same test conditions.

The complaint:

An iPhone device (again, without the Android operating system or Google’s applications) in comparable active use communicated with Apple far less frequently than Android devices communicated with Google’s servers. (Id. at 24.) (The two devices did have a comparable number of contacts with Google’s advertising domains, as was expected in light of the similar usage on both devices of third party websites and apps which provide information to Google.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Sports iPhone ]

At least they're engaging experts. Republican convicted of election fraud helps lead Trump rally baselessly claiming election fraud

And, of course, the fact-checkers have been having to work overtime from all of the alleged pictures of attendees at the Few Thousand MAGA March, including attempting to pass off pictures of the 2017 Women's March, a 2006 immigration rights march, and a Cleveland Cavaliers victory parade

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Civil Liberties ]

This is my shocked face: About 90K sex abuse claims filed in Boy Scouts bankruptcy

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

A little feel-good story for the day: A German man's Nazi grandfather took over a Jewish man's store. He tracked down his descendants to apologize

Edelmann sent a letter to Ehrenreich in English though MyHeritage -- unaware that she actually grew up speaking German.

He wrote: "I believe that if my family supported the injustice your grandparents experienced, it is our duty to take this into account and take over responsibility at least in getting in touch with you to listen and learn. As I am part of the Edelmann family I want to take the first step and listen to you.

"I do understand that you might not see any benefit for yourself personally in talking to me. But with me understanding and being able to teach my children and possibly other family members about the impact of particular historical decisions, this might help them to make better decisions in their lives," Edelmann continued.

"Currently, the political climate in our country is poisoned. There is a new antisemitism upcoming. I want to make sure that at least my family will never again be responsible for injustice experienced by others, but stand up to take part for the weak," he wrote.

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design moron Sociology Global Warming ]

Exchanging texts and misdelivered packages with neighbors; apparently the delivery service has every address in this neighborhood shifted, just after we all had our curb numbers re-painted. Huh.

It's kind of a weird way to tranche up the results, although the whole electoral system does that anyway, but: Brookings: Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy. What does this mean for the nation’s political-economic divide?

[ related topics: Politics Weblogs moron Economics ]

Despite record voter turnout, Indigenous communities face different kinds of voter suppression

"We still have tribes where you're forced to vote inside of a police station. That's your only polling place and they run your plates while you're there. Some of this is really egregious, outrageous, 1940s-style voter suppression. I wish people knew more about that," Landreth said.

I know a couple of people who've had some troubles with the law, who loaned their cars to family members, and said family members were surprised at how after not being pulled over for years, they suddenly had two or three traffic stops in the course of 50 miles.

[ related topics: Sociology Law Enforcement Community ]

Crooked: Why Joe Biden must sideline Fox

What happened in between? Well, we lost our nerve. We were bullied by the Washington axis of media elites (the ones forever spotted in Playbook attending a never-ending book party circle jerk) who play along with Fox’s ridiculous “Fair and Balanced” lie. For example, in 2009, when the Treasury Department made the watchdog who oversaw the 2008 Wall Street bailout available to every network except Fox News, the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks got together and boycotted the interview unless we included Fox, too. Boycotted! The press corps didn’t muster this same principle when Trump singled out news networks for disloyalty, or privileged Fox over all other outlets, or stopped conducting White House press briefings, or called journalists the “enemy of the people.” But when Obama was in office, the DC press corps beat its chest with righteous indignation (from Both Sides, of course) until we agreed to treat Fox as a legitimate news organization.

[ related topics: Books Erotic Technology and Culture broadband Current Events Journalism and Media Television Race Economics Real Estate ]

Downloading the Big Sur update, 12.18GB, gonna take close to 15 minutes to download. Apple's servers are slow. Sonic Fiber rocks.

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

Science Integrity Digest: Researcher photoshops his name onto a Nature Communications paper. Dude changes PDF and posts it to his own site.

Twitter user Abolfazl Madani, who works in Neuroscience / Quantum Machine Learning, pinned a tweet [archived] in which he shared his “last publication in #Nature” (sic). The link in the July 2020 tweet leads to a Nature Communications paper, not on the journal’s website, but on a WordPress page [archived].

[ related topics: Nature and environment Education ]

Trump team looks to box in Biden on foreign policy by lighting too many fires to put out

The Trump team has prepared legally required transition memos describing policy challenges, but there are no discussions about actions they could take or pause. Instead, the White House is barreling ahead. A second official tells CNN their goal is to set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.

[ related topics: Politics Race Real Estate ]

I wear a mask to protect others, but Amy from Medical Services is making me wonder about the wisdom of that.

The Onion: ‘I...I Am The Mainstream Media,’ Realizes Horrified Tucker Carlson Spiraling Live On Air

[ related topics: Food Theater & Plays Journalism and Media ]

Meet the Cat Who Turned Four Seasons Total Landscaping into a Virtual Reality Hangout for Furries. I thought I linked to another article about VRChat and Four seasons Total Landscaping, but I can't find it right now.

However, if you take your VRChat account, hook up the OSR-2 articulated AR Fleshlight holder to your VRChat and go pound a virtual furry Rudy Giuliani during a press conference... well, your kink is not my kink, but that's okay.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Conferences ]

Lawsuit: Tyson managers bet money on how many workers would contract COVID-19

In mid-April, around the time Black Hawk County Sherriff Tony Thompson visited the plant and reported the working conditions there “shook [him] to the core,” plant manager Tom Hart organized a cash-buy-in, winner-take-all, betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many plant employees would test positive for COVID-19.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Currency Birds ]

Programming: 1% algorithms, 9% trying to describe how the requirements have logical inconsistencies, 90% trying to keep up with how to tell the OS security settings "no, really, the app needs to do this".

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Disturbing new details in alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

New filings claim there was a Plan B the militiamen had drawn up, that involved a takeover of the Michigan capitol building by 200 combatants who would stage a week-long series of televised executions of public officials.

And, according to government documents now on file in lower Michigan court, there was also a Plan C -- burning down the state house, leaving no survivors.

[ related topics: Invention and Design moron Real Estate ]

Aspects of this theory are compelling: RT Vinay Gupta @leashless

Was Google's decision to kill Google Reader actually the key turning point in the destruction of western civilization?

Kills the decentralized web, gives rise to Twitter and Facebook becoming the algorithmic overlords. Maybe @dsearls @davewiner @disappearinjon @rezendi @miniver

Time to Streisand effect the shit out of these awful people: Brazilians will only be free when the last Bolsonaro is strangled with the entrails of the last pastor from the Universal Church.

A Brazilian Writer Saw a Tweet as Tame Satire. Then Came the Lawsuits.

The writer J.P. Cuenca calls it “Kafka in the tropics.” Evangelical pastors have filed at least 130 suits against him over a tweet, part of an increasingly common strategy against critics.

[ related topics: Religion Writing Woodworking ]

RT Zack Budryk @BudrykZack

"The Thing," a movie about a group of people who don't even really like each other stuck together in a single, snowbound location trying to figure out who has a terrifying infection, counts as a Christmas movie this year.

[ related topics: Movies ]

From Shadow: "An average IT department" (Reddit video), and, yeah, the featured franken-bike is kinda bizarre, but that back-to-back tandem actually looks like it might be kinda fun!

[ related topics: Video Bicycling Bicycling - Tandem ]

Also via Shadow: RT slate @PleaseBeGneiss

excel: is that a date?

me: 57.39 is very much not a date

excel: strong date vibes to me

me: h-how

excel: fixed it

me: 57/39/2020?

excel: you’re welcome

The results of defunding Planned Parenthood: Number of Iowa abortions climb after plummeting for decades

This link courtesy of a very sexually active friend of mine who passed it along with a discussion about having to have a talk with his Mom's physician about STD testing and her nursing home behavior. Talk about it and use barriers, kids: People over 45 are at greater risk of STIs, new study finds

Experts associated with the SHIFT sexual health initiative surveyed 800 adults across the south coast of England and northern regions of Belgium and the Netherlands -- with some 200 respondents identified as facing socioeconomic disadvantage.

Almost 80% of respondents in the general population group were aged between 45 and 65, while 58% of those considered socioeconomically disadvantaged were aged 45-54.

Researchers said "major changes" in sexual behavior in recent decades have seen rising numbers of sexually active older people -- but many barely consider the possibility of STIs.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Health Invention and Design Community ]

This picture was posted to a Facebook group this morning, for laughs, and reading the treble line broke my brain, so of course I had to try to record it. I'm not much on reading the bass clef, so I hope I got it... uh.... right? https://youtu.be/GB0xGVc7TaE

[ related topics: Music ]

Apple’s head of global security indicted on bribery charges

Thomas Moyer, who has run Apple’s security department since 2013, according to his LinkedIn page, had applied for concealed-weapons permits, according to the release. The sheriff’s office held up the application, the news release alleges, until Moyer agreed to get Apple to donate $70,000 worth of iPads.

Indictment at https://www.sccgov.org/sites/d...CCW%20Indictments%20-%20Sung.pdf

Via Violet Blue's Patreon post

[ related topics: Apple Computer Current Events Guns ]

Kevin Abosch @kevinabosch

I've seen what looks like legit proof of 5000 compromised Parler accounts including DM's of some well-known figures. Hackers decompiled the app, zero day exploit etc.. I wish I could unsee what I've seen.

Walter Shaub @waltshaub Replying to @kevinabosch:

Parler’s on Fyre?

Two studies that I haven't read, just want to hang a place to search for them:

A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine for Prevention of Covid-19 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2021801

No significant differences were observed in clinical status or overall mortality between patients treated with convalescent plasma and those who received placebo. (PlasmAr ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04383535.)

Postexposure therapy with hydroxychloroquine did not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or symptomatic Covid-19 in healthy persons exposed to a PCR-positive case patient. (Funded by the crowdfunding campaign YoMeCorono and others; BCN-PEP-CoV2 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04304053.)

A Randomized Trial of Convalescent Plasma in Covid-19 Severe Pneumonia DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2031304

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Law ]

Americans revive spirit of first Thanksgiving by carrying disease to new areas

“We wanted to keep alive the customs these settlers helped start,” explained one family that was traveling hundreds of miles to spread disease to people they didn’t know because they thought the trip would be best for their family. “We just want to do the same thing they did, but in a way that includes a dish that somehow incorporates both marshmallows and sweet potatoes.”

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food Sociology Travel ]

Scarleteen: Hell Is In Poland: Pregnancy, Power and Protest

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Civil Liberties ]

RT Prosanta Chakrabarty @PREAUX_FISH Replying to @hood_naturalist

Gotta remember the ‘YOLO’ in ‘ichthyology’

Fed study ties 1918 flu pandemic to Nazi Party gains

The paper, published this month and authored by New York Fed economist Kristian Blickle, examined municipal spending levels and voter extremism in Germany from the time of the initial influenza outbreak until 1933, and shows that “areas which experienced a greater relative population decline” due to the pandemic spent “less, per capita, on their inhabitants in the following decade.”

Via this Twitter thread which has a lot more on the long-term impacts of the 1918 flu pandemic.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media Television New York Economics ]

Charlene is making some nice little boxes from... we think it's pear... with Purpleheart keys reinforcing the corner joints.

[ related topics: Photography ]

ProPublica: Welcome to Coffeyville, Kansas, where the judge has no law degree, debt collectors get a cut of the bail, and Americans are watching their lives — and liberty — disappear in the pursuit of medical debt collection.

[ related topics: Law ]

In the blistering world of technological progress, where we now complain when the little devices in our hands that access all of the world's knowledge and carry around our record collection and let us talk to anyone anywhere, it's easy to overlook the produce department.

But when I think about what salad greens were like when I was growing up, or the world where there was only one kind of broccoli or cauliflower on the shelf, I'm astounded by the number and variety of peppers available to me on a grocery store run.

And Brussels Sprouts...

From Culinary Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom

[ related topics: Food ]