Here is a link to a Google page of various information resources showing the total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the United states of America has exceeded 200,000.
For comparison, here is a document from the Congressional Research Service showing American War and Military Operations Casualties.
Primary Concern theory versus Worst Damage theory at Daniel Messler.
I’m a long-time fan of Randall Carlson which I owe to the Joe Rogan podcast. Anyway, outside of liking and subscribing to YouTube channels and videos, here is another way I can start to support his work.
So, yay! The iridescent Gnosis sticker is cooler than I hoped it would be!
Via aclu_nationwide
I am excited by restaurant delivery services and use them frequently.
I am deeply disappointed by quality control as our orders leave the house, however. Errors are so frequent that I’m actually happy when one order arrives complete. This is not a criticism of one restaurant or delivery service. It is a criticism of them all.
Quality has not improved since I worked the Burger King drive-through in the 1980’s.
I know the pressure is intense. I have worked at fast food and pizza joints. I get it.
But no one has got it right.
Back to School 2020
Shere Hite Dies; Her Work Lives
that feeling when you’re trying to configure a new service management tool, but every clarifying question leeds to several different related trails of questions
Spent some time this morning watching shows about politics and shows about the consequences of political conflict.
Any time we think of groups of people that include friends, neighbors and family as an enemy, I wonder if we aren’t then the problem. I’m including myself, here.
I do hereby disavow political parties. I will continue to study and learn. I will be performing my civic duty this fall to the best of my ability.
I’m neither happy nor hopeful.
The whole wide world
An endless universe
Yet we keep looking through
The eyeglass in reverse
Don’t feed the people
But we feed the machines
Can’t really feel
What international means
In different circles
We keep holding our ground
Indifferent circles
We keep spinning round and round
—Lyric by Rush
Hello world!
Above is a photo of my daughter Sofia
Dude! I was The Dude! #strikesandgutters #guttersandstrikes
“The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was likely unconstitutional.”
Via EPIC
“The Greeks had no original sin and no eschatology because they saw nothing inherently wrong with the world in the first place.”
Things you find reading papers from Academia for the joy of it
Just finished: The Case of the Missing Marquess (Enola Holmes #1) by Nancy Springer 📚
I saw that Netflix is releasing a movie called Enola Holmes and I wanted to find out more. Looks like there are many books in this series so there is a possibility this could become a thing.
I enjoyed the story though the target audience is much younger than I.
And…the worst case? I asked.
“Facebook might have won already, which would mean the end of democracy in this century,” Lanier said. “It’s possible that we can’t quite get out of this system of paranoia and tribalism for profit—it’s just too powerful and it’ll tear everything apart, leaving us with a world of oligarchs and autocrats who aren’t able to deal with real problems like pandemics and climate change and whatnot and that we fall apart, you know, we lose it. That is a real possibility for this century. I’m not saying I think it’s what’ll happen, but I wouldn’t count it out. There’s evidence every single day that it’s what’s happening.”
Take the amount of misinformation about masks and COVID-19 that was flying around Facebook and Twitter daily and in turn making its way onto Fox News. Most of the people who appear on air on Fox, Lanier pointed out, are themselves on social media, getting their information or lack thereof. And so disinformation goes from Twitter to Fox to the social media feeds of the president, and the cycle begins anew. Look at how powerful these platforms could be, to the point where “the sway of media is more powerful than the experience of reality—that people can be watching hundreds of thousands die from this virus and yet believe it’s a hoax at the same time, and integrate those two things. That’s the food for evil,” Lanier said.
Today I read about Jaron Lanier and Bill Gibson in a print magazine that wasn’t Wired. These are enough references to my age in one day…
For all of the talk of ecosystems, it was easier to share from my Apple Photos library to Micro.blog and to Instagram from my iPhone. Not my iPad, for which there is no native Instagram app, and for which the work-alikes did not allow multiple selections. So, while my iPhone was charging, I downloaded the iPhone app to my iPad, did the pixel doubling so I could type, and did the work that way.
There are probably more ways to do this, and really I wanted to do it elegantly from my MacBook Air, however I didn’t perceive a faster method than exporting and uploading, and I chose not to do that.
I feel that this might be a driver behind Catayst apps and unifying the underlying silicon.
First time in a sunflower field
Made it all the way through. It seems like this iteration is less “white” or “bright” than the first public beta. UI still feels fresh but more familiar.
Still going. Antici…
Haven’t seen this before
Proceeds like an iOS update with lots of time set aside for processing
Total size is about (?) 5 Gigs smaller than the first beta
Public Beta 2 update under way
I was pleased and impressed by the thoroughness of the profile of Psilocybin on 60 Minutes, of all places