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  Quick Links, Updated Constantly

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The latest links
"A huge reason that our politics is not so extremely polarised and so far out there is because we no longer have Murdoch-owned press in New Zealand, and it's never taken a foothold."  theguardian.com
Oh goody, the new 2021 human glands have been announced. "A team of researchers...has discovered what may be a set of previously unidentified organs: a pair of large salivary glands, lurking in the nook where the nasal cavity meets the throat."  nytimes.com
A poem from Eve Ewing: "I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store".  poets.org
If you define "unemployed" as "a person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage but who can't find one", the true US unemployment rate is 26.1%.  axios.com
I Was In Charge of the Deck Chairs On the Titanic, and They Absolutely Did Need Rearranging. "When the Titanic slid beneath the waves, taking hundreds of souls with her, she did so with the most becoming, loveliest deck amenities imaginable."  mcsweeneys.net
Kamala versus Daenerys and the difference between mispronunciation & dispronunciation. "As far as I can tell, Americans have no problem saying 'Daenerys Targaryen.' Or 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.' Or 'Hakeem Olajuwon.'"  the.ink
From Scientific American (for unscientific Americans): Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them. It wasn't lab-engineered, it's not just the flu, natural herd immunity won't work, etc.  scientificamerican.com
Succession's Logan Roy and Gerri Kellman team up to advise Wisconsin voters on how to f*cking vote early, by f*cking mail, or in f*cking person. This is canon now, right?  youtube.com
In case you missed it the first time around, the 2nd edition of @craigmod's Kissa by Kissa book (about his 1000km walk along an ancient Japanese highway) is now available to order.  shop.specialprojects.jp
Sixty-two Films That Shaped the Art of Documentary Filmmaking. This is from Richard Brody, so you know going in that it's not a list of the greatest hits (heavy hitters like The Thin Blue Line or Hoop Dreams aren't on here).  newyorker.com
A timeline map of where Covid-19 cases occurred in the US. NYC + cities at first, then the South, and more recently the Midwest/West.  reddit.com
October 19
What A Summer Of COVID-19 Taught Scientists About Indoor vs. Outdoor Transmission. "If there is one thing we can definitively state, it’s that this virus is much, much less likely to spread outdoors than in."  fivethirtyeight.com
From the NY Times, a great profile of the inspiring Angela Davis. "As a bridge between the past and present eras of protest, Davis can explain both what went right and wrong while also helping to shape the future."  nytimes.com
Due to a scheduling issue, Lupita Nyong'o had to drop out of HBO Max's adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and now HBO just cancelled the whole thing. :(  collider.com
The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn't Be a Model for the Rest of the World. "From early on, the Swedish government seemed to treat it as a foregone conclusion that many people would die."  time.com
Coronavirus in Africa: Five reasons why Covid-19 has been less deadly than elsewhere. "The continent's strength lay in its tried and tested community health systems."  bbc.com
Which states had the best pandemic response? "If the country as a whole had the same per capita death rate as Vermont, the nationwide death toll would be 30,000 instead of more than 215,000."  politico.com
Herd immunity without a vaccine = mass murder. "The real death toll needed to reach herd immunity could far exceed one million."  nytimes.com
October 16
Inside the Fall of the CDC. "How the world's greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus."  propublica.org
Alan Taylor has been curating photos online for so long that you kinda forget how good he is at it. Each photo here is related to the previous photo either visually, thematically, or metaphorically. Fun to figure out the connections.  theatlantic.com
What I've Learned From Having A Trans Partner. "My partner doesn't want his body. But I do."  buzzfeednews.com
Pfizer has expanded their Covid-19 vaccine trials to include children 12 and older.  npr.org
A likely election outcome: Biden massively wins the popular vote and Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College because the GOP's voter suppression works well enough in key states (and we all blame something/someone else).  theatlantic.com
A new analysis published in JAMA puts the number of excess deaths in the US between March 1 and August 1 at 225,530. Only ~150K were officially attributed to Covid-19 (so the true death toll is 50% more than the "official" count).  jamanetwork.com
Was reminded of the limits of self-preservation by this Atul Gawande interview: Trump could have easily won re-election had he taken even moderately effective action against Covid-19 in March or April. It was a gimme and he just. couldn't. do it.  ft.com
October 15
A list of the 10 greatest works of journalism of the past 10 years. Writers on the list include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Isabel Wilkerson, and Michelle Alexander. The NY Times' 1619 Project is there too.  washingtonpost.com
This explains everything: "We like things because we choose them, and we dislike things that we don't choose."  hub.jhu.edu
Nature (the science journal) supports Joe Biden for US president. "We cannot stand by and let science be undermined. Joe Biden's trust in truth, evidence, science and democracy make him the only choice in the US election."  nature.com
October 14
Some examples of bitemporal charts (those that have two dimensions of time, like a graph that tracks stock or sales forecasts over time).  observablehq.com
Welcome to Fall, the Two Days Between Summer and Winter. "O.K., is that sleet? It's sleeting now. And it says that tomorrow it's supposed to be in the eighties. Then it's going to snow. How is that possible?"  newyorker.com
LeBron James continues to expand our concept of excellence. "What Americans insist on seeing as a deficit, you remind us is part and parcel of our cheat code. You are Black abundance."  theundefeated.com
"A team of physicists in New York has discovered a material that conducts electricity with perfect efficiency at room temperature — a long-sought scientific milestone."  quantamagazine.org
How a group of tenants in Minneapolis bought their buildings from the landlord who was trying to evict them.  nytimes.com
Stevie Wonder releases 2 new songs (one that he's been working on since 1968), his first new music in 15 years.  rollingstone.com
An Idaho university is telling students not to purposefully contract Covid-19 in order to sell their blood plasma: "There is never a need to resort to behavior that endangers health or safety in order to make ends meet." <-- Lol, have you met capitalism?  sltrib.com
The real end game for a conservative majority on the Supreme Court is a much more libertarian and business-friendly America, orchestrated in large measure by the Koch brothers.  nytimes.com
October 13
How a Road Trip Through America's Battlegrounds Revealed a Nation Plagued by Misinformation. "Unlogic is not ignorance or stupidity; it is reason distorted by suspicion and misinformation..."  time.com
Sean Penn & Ann Young Lee used their non-profit organization CORE to build one of the largest coronavirus testing programs in the US. Free tests for 10s of 1000s of daily patients, results back in ~48 hours.  gq.com
Aw, this sucks. Netflix announced that there will be no second season of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. My kids and I really loved this show – I wish more people would have watched it.  deadline.com
Now Facebook says they'll be banning anti-vaccination ads.  about.fb.com
Cristiano Ronaldo has Covid-19. It's astounding that so many of the world's best footballers have had it: Neymar, Zlatan, Mbappe, Pogba, Di Maria, Navas, Dybala. Fit or no, some are likely to have long-term health problems because of this.  africa.espn.com
Peru opened Machu Picchu for the first time in 7 months for a single Japanese tourist who got stranded in the country due to the pandemic and waited patiently for its reopening.  nytimes.com
October 12
Teens and young adults are having a hard time reasoning with QAnon-obsessed parents who have become radicalized by social media. "I love my dad, but at the same time I kind of hate him for this."  teenvogue.com
Facebook is finally updating their hate speech policy "to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust". Tho after years of being a welcoming place for harmful misinformation, this is like using a teaspoon to bail out a cruise ship.  about.fb.com
Etsy has banned merchandise related to the death cult QAnon from their platform. A search on the site just now yielded zero results.  theverge.com
A profile of Dolly Parton in the New Yorker. "In the partisan world of country music, Parton's persona defies categorization, at once down to earth and soaring high."  newyorker.com
October 10
I don't like the language here that school reopening fears were "overblown". With high Covid rates country-wide, parents & staff were correct to be concerned. We should be happy we prepared and were wrong. I hope the success continues.  theatlantic.com
October 9
No, wearing a mask doesn't make you sicker. So why do some people say that it does?  theatlantic.com
*checks calendar* Yep: It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.   mcsweeneys.net
This is super interesting: Islamic scholars wrote about concepts of evolution, natural selection, and speciation hundreds of years before Darwin.  vice.com
October 2020 »  •  September 2020 »  •  August 2020 »
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