WhatsApp Soundly Beaten By Apple’s Stunning New iMessage Update

CET update

30 Years Since the Human Genome Project Began, What’s Next?

Police may access (Covid contact tracing) TraceTogether data for investigations: Desmond Tan

Here are the biggest acts of media malfeasance in 2020

Michigan man spends 37 years in prison, freed after witness says she lied

Deaths of Despair and the Incidence of Excess Mortality in 2020

The Lab-Leak Hypothesis

Predictions Scorecard, 2021 January 01

Top 10 Marketing Follies of 2020

Resources on transmission & prevention of COVID-19

The DC political Newsletters by Politico, Axios and Punchbowl are ALL sponsored by Facebook.

What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

Politics After Trump

The Indus Valley Playbook

As was the case with 9/11, our response to #AttemptedCoup (unauthorized entry of a capitol building by protesters) will cost generations of citizens their freedoms.

“Second Doses” post-mortem

Bellingcat breaks stories that newsrooms envy — using methods newsrooms avoid; “but you are a journalist and that is unacceptable”

DID YOU KNOW: Comrade Xi Jinping … cannot be “de-platformed.”

The Capitol Attack Doesn’t Justify Expanding Surveillance

Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act

Historic snowfall in Spain, Madrid airport closed

Rod Dreher:

Yesterday we saw a coordinated movement of Big Tech against Trump and his closest supporters. Trump himself has been cut off from nearly all forms of social media, and even his e-mail provider cut him off. Big Tech is moving against Parler, the right-wing alternative to Twitter. This is just the beginning. As Culper observes, the culture-war weaponization of corporate America has given the Left a massive advantage. As I have written in The Benedict Option and Live Not By Lies, in a country like ours, when Big Business takes sides in the culture war, the advantage is overwhelming.

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.

Stephen Starr:

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.

The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System

Why the US Dollar Could Outlast the American Empire

Why software ends up complex

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