Meditation on song, mind and God.
2.14
Amazon responds to Elon Musk’s accusations of impeding SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet plans
List of inventors killed by their own inventions
The Full Automation Fallacy
Build or Die! US Industrial Policy with Rob Atkinson
How The US Legalized Corruption
People are fed up with broken vaccine appointment tools — so they’re building their own
Kate Bingham: Why the UK strategy on Covid vaccines has been a great success
The year 2021 will bring DeFi into adolescence
The days are long but the decades are short
The computers rejecting your job application
Protecting your capital during a war
We’re still missing the origin story of this pandemic.
China is sitting on the answers.
REPORT ON THE 2020 PROTESTS AND CIVIL UNREST
Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant
The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired.
“Yet what we see at times is people with a Bernie Sanders sign and a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in their window, but they’re opposing an affordable housing project or an apartment complex down the street.”
FORMER FBI OFFICIALS TAPPED FOR AMAZON’S GROWING SECURITY APPARATUS
1/ “Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote“: “medical professionals allow(ed) themselves to be manipulated by corrupt politicians & influenced by media propaganda instead of being guided by their own ethical principles
Credit scores and internet browsing
“More Money, More Vaccines?” Here’s a Solution in a Toolkit
News outlets paid off old editorial promises with new headlines: Ponzi journalism.
In defense of interesting writing on controversial topics
Martin Luther Rewired Your Brain
Road Trip: Wisconsin Winter Scenes
A beautiful, rather cold drive.
2.7
Fauci. Compare that to revisiting the Balaji thread.
The Effects of High?Information Environments on Legislative Behavior in the US House of Representatives
Wake Up, You’ve Been Asleep for 50 Years
Oral History Interviews During a Pandemic
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
Commentary on the Time 2020 election article.
From control rooms to testing, several strategies helped UP contain pandemic
How the New York Times deceived Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Today, the fate of the SpaceX Starship offers an example of how government oversight agencies can stifle innovation when they are unable to distinguish between innovation and execution and throw roadblocks in front of the single company that has transformed access to space.
Sweden: Here’s a graph they don’t want you to see
Now It’s The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner’s 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness
Political Strategist Bradley Tusk on What Micromobility Startups Can Learn from Uber
I found this discussion fascinating in light of my 2014 uber experience in Manhattan. I was astonished at the street, market and brand power uber created – and leveraged politically.
This discussion with Bradley Tusk – part of the recent Micromobility World conference – illuminates uber’s early approach to markets, governments and its powerful ability to leverage interest in app mobility.
Further, the conversation offers a frank look at “realpolitics”. To wit “but you know, if we waited for their permission everywhere, we’d never, would’ve got off the ground.”
and:
Because fundamentally, if they believe that you can make it harder for them when their next election they’re going to do what you want to do. If they think you can help reelect them, they’re going to do what you want to do.
And if they think that you can’t impact it, you’re completely irrelevant. So fundamentally, if there is legitimate, true demand among the people of the city to have more scooters in the fleet and on the streets and you mobilize that properly, it will happen.
mp3 audio version // machine generated transcript (pdf)
Madison Utility Costs
A recent neighborhood Facebook post mentioned a “HUGE” jump in the property owner’s MGE (Madison Gas & Electric) January bill.
I’ve occasionally taken a look at Wisconsin utility costs. MG&E has generally been the most expensive (2018-2019 PSC summer .xslx file).
A few links:
11.25.2020 Regulators approve 1-year electricity rate freeze, 4.1% gas increase for MGE customers.
11.27.2014 PSC approves a 80% increase in Madison Gas & Electric’s fixed monthly fee to “maintain a connection to the grid”.
The Madison utility company initially submitted a proposal last June that would have raised the fixed charge to $22 a month in 2015, $48 in 2016, and $67 by 2017.
The kilowatt-hour charge, meanwhile, would have fallen from 14 cents in the winter to 3 cents, and 15 cents in the summer to 4.5 cents by 2017.
2007: Isthmus on elected officials, lobbying and the utlity industry, including:
In 2002, Williamson had testified that Chvala asked him to send campaign donations from Madison Gas & Electric to the Kansas Democratic Party. Kansas allows direct campaign contributions from corporations; Wisconsin does not. From 1998 to 2001, MGE and its subsidiaries sent at least $170,000. Money from Kansas was then sent back to Wisconsin, to a group run by Chvala.
1.31
The Architecture of Mass Vaccine Distribution
A Curious Journey through the Story of the Passport
US Defense Intelligence Agency admits to buying citizens’ location data
Train Wreck: The Penn Central’s failure resonates today.
Moore’s Law & Cars
Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions – or inaction – by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.
WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely started via lab leak
They believe that the role they are ostensibly to serve is as the “enlightened stewards” of society, taking the liberty of reimagining everybody else’s lives.
The High Price of Mistrust
The public’s expectations on privacy were changing, he said, and Facebook’s old approach wasn’t cutting it anymore.
It’s clickbait, and it’s bad for you
Our Virginia regulatory state is failing us
Independent crafters get really taken for a ride by the federal government. We get taxed to the nth degree, and it wasn’t really worth it pursuing that as a business, even as a side hustle. I mostly just make them as gifts.
The difference between resistance and sedition, between protests and insurrections, is who’s in charge.
How we made Typerighter, the Guardian’s style guide checker
Talking about deplatforming with Yael Eisenstat
The GameStop Short Squeeze
A day in the life of your data.
Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologizes for funding a group tied to disinformation in Alabama race
The Case Against Anthony Fauci
46 – first and 45 – last
Joe Biden’s first speech as the 46th US President.
Commentary on the Biden Administration.
Donald Trump’s last speech as the 45th US President.
Commentary on the Trump Administration.
Ann Althouse commentary.
1.24
America’s New Corporate Tyranny
When political parties reverse their policy stance, their supporters immediately switch their opinions too
The Trump era did indeed change America–but it was far from the apocalyptic spiraling predicted by Democrats and the media.
Lockdown ‘killed two people for every three who died of coronavirus‘ at peak of outbreak
The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming
The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz
Exploring the Supply Chain of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines
Getting Off Big Tech Email
We Will Get to Herd Immunity in 2021…One Way or Another
SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Starship spaceports
‘It’s all fallen apart’: Newsom scrambles to save California — and his career
California plaintiffs sue Chinese tech giant Tencent, alleging WeChat app is censoring and surveilling them
Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2
Thank you for not turning the IRS into an instrument of persecution against your political foes, the way your predecessor did.
A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear, and now arise a political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.
Where Are Wisconsin’s Missing 180,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Doses?
We are doing close to 1 million shots a day and the Joe Biden plan is to do 100 million shots in 100 days. It’s literally the same plan.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography is a foundational technology for modern semiconductor manufacturing.
“Why, for example, should it be a U.S. negotiating priority to open China’s financial system for Goldman Sachs ?”
Political Appointees, outcomes and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Healthcare Price Transparency; a beginning
Starting this year, all hospitals are required to list their prices for elective services. Whether you have insurance or plan to pay cash – find and compare prices below.
Search for pacemaker and several options come up, with prices that vary by thousands of bucks. There are more than a thousand charges for different types of screws used in surgeries, some costing hundreds of dollars, others in the thousands.
Even finding out the charge for a Tylenol isn’t as easy as it might seem. Piedmont’s chargemaster for its Atlanta hospital has all sorts of variations of “acetaminophen.” Some are pills that also include hyrocodone, some have codeine, and the strengths vary along with the list prices that run from about $30 to over $500.
The federal rule requiring hospital price publication.
Federal taxpayers spent $38B+ in back door electronic medical record subsidies from 2009 – 2018 (!)