Link. Grown-ups don’t do sarcasm. (Irony is fine.)
Monthly Archives: July 2022
“Some Alzheimer’s experts now suspect Lesné’s studies have misdirected Alzheimer’s research for 16 years.”
Link. UMN. Epic fraud if true. Would merit decades of prison. If true.
PubPeer is heroic.
“There are lots of rumors about President Putin’s health and as far as we can tell he’s entirely too healthy”
Link. Only the good die young.
“It took me a while to see that the postindustrial capitalism machine — while innovative, dynamic and wonderful in many respects — had some fundamental flaws.”
Link. Things are bad when David Brooks sounds like a 90s socialist.
“my 2009 exhortation for people to go all in on Facebook still makes me cringe”
Link. I’ve done similar. Mercifully not on a national platform.
“since the early 2000s, a big protest has started to feel more like a sentence that begins with a question mark”
Link. Fascinating. The fact that protests are easier to create means they overstate the political power behind them.
Humane is an ex-canary.
Link. Ugh.
AirTag battery indicator missing from ‘Find My’ app after iOS 15.6 update
Link. Bug most likely. Damn.
“Oversight and Reform Committee confirmed that the Trump administration’s attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census was a strategy to skew population data to benefit Republicans.”
Link.
“Some combination of factors — early retirements, reduced immigration, lack of child care — seems to have reduced the economy’s productive capacity”
Link. Good analysis of K error.
Australia and COVID.
Link. Fair enough. By now everyone should understand the risks.
The utterly awful story of C. Wesley Morgan, his family, schizophrenia, and an AR-15.
Link. This is a microcosm of America 2022. We can’t fix it all.
“Carried away by the furious momentum of #MeToo, I let myself forget that transparent, dispassionate systems for hearing conflicting claims are not an impediment to justice but a prerequisite for it.”
Link. Good she learned this.
“Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly Robin Vos said that earlier this month (not a typo), Trump called him to ask him to decertify the 2020 election, a plan some Republicans in the legislature are backing.”
Link. We used to laugh at things like this.
“The optimistic assessment from experts who study authoritarianism globally is that the United States will most likely settle into a dysfunctional equilibrium that mirrors a deep democratic breakdown.”
Link. Democracies are fragile.
Monterey Find bug: “on the Intel Mac the Finder’s CPU % rose to 100% and remained there, even after the searches were complete and the window had been closed.”
Link. This is so disappointing.
Virtual Screening for Coronavirus Protease Inhibitors: “This stuff not only does no good, it does actual harm. It gives outside observers ideas about the efficacy of virtual screening that are simply not confirmed by real-world experiments.”
Link. Complete failure.
The Atlantic Archive
Link. Very cool. I subscribe. I remember when The Atlantic was near death.
Jordan B. Peterson: “4 million followers on Instagram, 2.1 million on Twitter, 1.5 million on Facebook, 5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, and his books have sold millions of copies.”
Link. I’d like to know more about the hunger he feeds. Also, Instagram.
Obit of a psychonaut: Ann Shulgin.
Link. 91! She was made for the 60s.
“the average Mac receives almost exactly seven years of new macOS updates from the time it is introduced, plus another two years of security-only updates”
Link. At my age I have only 2-3 left.
Loose or defective iPhone charge port (lightning) – options.
Link. A fairly common failure mode and one reason to favor inductive charging and Bluetooth headphone. Apple will often give full trade-in credit ($165) or charge $400+ for a refurb replacement (fresh battery). 3rd part might be $150.
World’s most stubborn intellectual enlists volunteers against troll army.
Link. I’m in the cohort who advocated blocks. Hope the guardian solution works!
“if you don’t believe that great events can be shaped, great disasters caused, by sheer personal pettiness, all I can say is that you probably haven’t read much history.”
Link. It would be easier if Manchin were less dumb but even more corrupt.
“300 to 500 public university students in California sought medication abortions each month”
Link.
“GDF11 in mice stimulated the growth of new blood vessels in the brain and neurons in the hippocampus … published in the journals Cell and Science in 2013 and 2014.”
Link. Don’t recall much press then.
Instagram is dead – for photography.
Link. Photography is becoming a niche thing.
Story of a pizza guy life saver.
Link. Serious pain to save that baby. Medical bills to pay.
Why the Right dropped democracy.
Link. Bit of this, bit of that. America has been oddly religious and that’s dying.
“life could have begun as little as 300 million years after Earth formed.”
Link. Bacteria. Fermi paradox stuff.
“There are machines that will crank out oligonucleotide chains for you, and there are machines that will crank out proteins. There is no machine that will crank out polysaccharides to order.”
Link. Life is impossible.
Crimes against Transhumanity.
Link. Iain M. Banks Surface Detail explores this theme with a stay in Hell.
“unlike the vast majority of emulated humans, the emulated Miguel Acevedo boots with an excited, pleasant demeanour.”
Link. Via Charles Stross a must read bit of short SF. See also Bostrom.
Facebook Is Now Encrypting Links to Prevent URL Stripping.
Link. Will want to avoid using Facebook links.
Bidenomics has failed.
Link. Ultimately not popular enough and Biden’s win wasn’t big enough.
“Buy Local Now helps you browse the largest selection of name brand cycling gear online. When you find what you want, we connect you directly with your local bike shop to buy.”
Link. A search tool that supports local bike shops.
Trump on Musk: “…he’s another bullshit artist.”
Link. One perfect moment.
“lightweight virtualization makes it easier, safer and cheaper for ordinary users to run old versions of macOS, which in turn gives Apple greater scope to accelerate macOS into the future without having to care so much about supporting the past.”
Link. By old he means Monterey— this is a future perspective.
American hostages – a review.
Link. Does state department warn about travel?
“In my daily use, this $1,900 MacBook Air feels identical to my $4,700 MacBook Pro.”
Link. Gruber reviews tend to overlook the negatives however. “$1,500 configuration as the true base model”
“Has anything advanced female fitness more than CrossFit? Nope.”
Link. Avowedly reluctant praise for CrossFit. Filthy-fifty isn’t a routine WOD though, he’s writing about comp level CF.
Apple Service Programs: recalls and free repairs.
Link. Good to know before buying used.
Treating PSCK9 disorders with CRISPR tech: “Verve-101, is a lipid nanoparticle formulation of mRNA to code for the needed CRISPR enzymes and a guide RNA to send them to the right spot on the genome.”
Link. First human trial.
“physical tensions within an embryo set up patterns that guide growth and gene activity in developing tissues”
Link. Not only Turing’s theory. Evolution is infinitely baroque.
Defining Mass and Angular Momentum with the intractable equations of General Relativity.
Link. Important for analyzing gravity waves and black hole physics.
“eight countries will account for more than half the rise in population expected by 2050: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.”
Link. Egypt seems closest to Malthus.
“many men lose their Y chromosomes as they age”
Link. Why men die younger.
“… videos of police officers quickly showing overt symptoms or even collapsing after exposure to minute quantities of fentanyl … are just not pharmacologically possible”
Link. When you tell people something bad will happen to their bodies they feel it. The nocebo effect is powerful.
Why physicians are cautious about Long COVID.
Cryptomining Capacity in U.S. Rivals Energy Use of Houston
Link. Coal powered. Pushed to US by China restrictions. Not all spa city used.
It’s hard for the cv to evolve a furin cleavage site.
Link. So far no bat cv found in nature with that ability.