Analysis: 2005-2011 Predictions for Digital Life 2020
2020, the year of everything fake
Los Angeles Locked Down. Covid Came Anyway.
The Road to Revolution
Notes on technology in the 2020s
Return of the Strong Gods: Understanding the New Right
How an obscure British PC maker invented ARM and changed the world
Ten Charts That Tell the Weird Story of Oil and Energy in 2020
The Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis Goes Mainstream
Overdose deaths far outpace COVID-19 deaths in San Francisco
Learn the Knowledge of London
How to cook a medieval feast: 11 recipes from the Middle Ages
A Car That Connects Father, Son and Land-Speed Racing History
Jay Leno on How Driving Changed in 2020—and How It Will Change Even More
Artisans clustered along a Naples street have been crafting Nativity scenes for more than a century. But coronavirus restrictions and a dearth of tourists are threatening their survival.
FT People of the Year: BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci
I took FSFE to court. This is my story
Lockdowns may actually prevent a natural weakening of this disease
Leaving Hong Kong: As China cracks down, a family makes a wrenching decision
Coronavirus tracker: The FT has gathered and analysed data on excess mortality — the numbers of deaths over and above the historical average — across the globe, and has found that numbers of deaths in some countries are more than 50 per cent higher than usual. In many countries, these excess deaths exceed reported numbers of Covid-19 deaths by large margins.
God and the Pandemic
Why I’m Losing Trust in the Institutions
With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim
Facebook Managers Trash Their Own Ad Targeting.
Who and what will rise and fall in status?
Massachusetts General Hospital:
The researchers spent three years collecting data from multiple registries and databases in every country in Europe to estimate the number of babies being born with DS and the overall number of people with DS in the population. “People with DS were being counted sporadically, inconsistently, or not at all, depending on the country,” says Brian G. Skotko, MD, MPP, a medical geneticist at MGH and senior author. “But without an accurate estimate, it’s impossible for policymakers and advocacy organizations to determine how many resources and support services are needed for its Down syndrome population.” The researchers applied statistical modeling to create estimates in countries where there were gaps in data. “These data are as close to accurate as possible,” says Skotko. The data are laid out in both the study and an associated fact sheet.
Equally important, however, was for the study to establish a baseline of DS birth rates and pregnancy termination rates ahead of widespread adoption of new noninvasive prenatal screenings (NIPS). The new screening tests can detect the likelihood of a chromosomal condition in a fetus as early as nine weeks of gestation, after which an expectant couple can elect to pursue definitive genetic testing. As NIPS becomes widely available, fewer babies with DS are expected to be born.
A lone ice fishing hut.
The Great American Rail-Trail is the most ambitious biking initiative the country has ever seen. Stretching an extraordinary 3,700 miles from the nation’s capital across 12 states to the Pacific Ocean, west of Seattle, it’s an idea that’s been ruminating for 50 years. The Rail-Trail will connect more than 125 existing multi-use paths, greenways, trails and towpaths. An official route was announced to the public in May 2019 by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC), the Washington DC-based non-profit leading the effort, when the trail was already more than half completed.
Flying and photographing above a fanless Camp Randall recently [1], I pondered a conversation with friends on a vision for Dane County (the area surrounding and including Madison).
Perhaps the choice is between caretakers, that is, largely more of the same, or a go big vision. What might a go big vision include?
I have a few thoughts:
1. 20mbps per second (bi-directional) wireless internet available to every Dane County resident by 2023, for no more than $15.00 per month.
2. Reverse Mentoring. All elected officials and public managers meet with diverse mentors monthly. The reverse mentors include;
a. High school and college students
b. Small business entrepreneurs, who discuss the reporting, licensing, tax and benefit obligations they navigate
c. Homeowners
3. Improved quality of life
a. 80% of Dane County students exhibit reading skills among the top 10% world wide by 2025. 90% by 2027.
b. Hospitals and clinics should publish medical fees monthly, starting in 2021, along with annualized outcome data.
c. Meaningful crime reductions.
4. Reduced cost of living
a. Benchmark healthcare, tax and education staffing, costs and outcomes in Austin, Minneapolis, Nashville, Denver, Birmingham, Shanghai, Charlotte, Berlin, Cape Town, Taipei and Osaka.
b. Compare housing costs and regulation in those same communities.
c. Compare job opportunities, requirements and compensation among those cities.
5. Accountable interactions
a. Every public sector document and digital publication shall include a link or QR code to the publishing agency’s most recent 10 year budget and staffing data.
b. The county shall publish an annual guide to staffing costs, including number of employees, pay range (with median and averages) along with benefit descriptions and costs.
c. Parcel data shall include links to public sector budgets for the past 10 years along with staffing and benchmark data.
d. A group of citizens, professors and business people shall review Taiwan’s digital democracy tools and determine which experiences might be implemented here, in 2022.
e. Voter data shall be freely available online, updated daily.
Why don’t we enjoy some or all of these things, today? The answers may be illuminating.
1. Fanless football.
The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System
Why the US Dollar Could Outlast the American Empire
Undocumented immigrants far less likely to commit crimes in U.S. than citizens
Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out.
Chrome is Bad
Americans’ Mental Health Ratings Sink to New Low
Challenging the ‘Great Reset’ theory of pandemics
I assume I’m below average
Someone I know has had some quite useful COVID-related posts removed from Medium, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor—they’ve been deemed “COVID misinformation”. (It’s not what the WHO endorses!)
Where Did the New Mad Left Come From?
Can you hear me now? No.
Our history is a battle against the microbes: we lost terribly before science, public health, and vaccines allowed us to protect ourselves
ESRI can’t be stopped.
The New Yorker publishes editor’s note invalidating award-winning feature on Japan
“It will take months for us to get through all of our health care workers.”
Wisconsin will receive 49,725 doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of this week, officials said.
1,010 WI healthcare workers had gotten their first shots Wednesday.
As some are reporting, it was an overnight success story 15 years in the making.
Rather, only people with covid-19 symptoms should get tested.”
“The phrase “following the science” would perhaps be better expressed as “following the scientists”. Or, maybe “following some scientists — particularly the ones whose views align with my own”.
The mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) are kind of brilliant at a science level. I’ve had a few people in my real non-Twitter life ask me to explain how it works so I’m going to try my best here in this thread while I’m waiting for a patient to show.s=12
A new way to travel across the US.
Your Credit Score Should Be Based on Your Web History, IMF Says
Information Management in Times of Crisis
Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful Letter to Van Gogh on Fear, Bravery, and How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns
New CRISPR-based COVID-19 test uses smartphone cameras to spot virus RNA
Per its FEC report yesterday, Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election have cost his campaign about $8.8 million so far, including about $2.3 million on lawyers.
But they’ve helped him raise $207 million.
The Peak Oil Era Is Suddenly Upon Us
The economics of Christmas trees
You’re Only As Good As Your Worst Day (“Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm. ”—Publilius Syrus)
A cargo ship lost 1,816 containers during a November 30, 2020 Pacific storm.
The world’s first DNA ‘tricorder’ in your pocket
IKEA kills print catalog.
About 150 U.S. Cadillac Dealers to Exit Brand, Rather Than Sell Electric Cars
But what we have before us is a symbolic gesture, it appears to be style over substance, without any hint of enforcement, and I simply don’t believe it will do much good.
Jupiter and Saturn Will Soon Align in a Rare Astronomical Marvel, and You Can Start Watching Now
Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon
My Son Was Killed Because I’m a Federal Judge
Bathroom Reading: Too many still aren’t sitting comfortably
The Games People Play With Cash Flow
Toyota’s game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut
Thomas Astebro, Serguey Braguinsky and Yuheng Ding:
We document that since 1997, the rate of startup formation has precipitously declined for firms operated by U.S. PhD recipients in science and engineering. These are supposedly the source of some of our best new technological and business opportunities. We link this to an increasing burden of knowledge by documenting a long-term earnings decline by founders, especially less experienced founders, greater work complexity in R&D, and more administrative work. The results suggest that established firms are better positioned to cope with the increasingburden of knowledge, in particular through the design of knowledge hierarchies, explaining why new firm entry has declined for high-tech, high-opportunity startups.
