rjshae

It's been a wee bit warm in the Seattle area. I just made it through the afternoon peak. Tomorrow it's supposed to cool down... to 95 F (35 C). We're not used to this up in the rainy northwest. 🌞

For now I'm just going to suspect it's some type of unexplained physical phenomenon. We didn't even know about sprites until 1994 or dark energy until 1999. We don't know anything about dark matter other than what it isn't, and we haven't fully explained baryon asymmetry yet. There are things we just don't know.

I like to think that liberty is a love of freedom balanced by a dose of mature responsibility. Just because one was vaccinated and has been careful to follow quarantine procedures does not mean one hates freedom.

Q. Reddit scientists? 🤓

When did the first COVID-19 case arise? No mention of Italy though. Coronavirus emerged in Italy earlier than thought, study shows I haven't heard much about that since last year.

Well the issue isn't that the number is small. It's that it exists at all. Conceivably it was done just to muddy the waters. But then why? I'm merely curious.

Claim that Chinese team hid early SARS-CoV-2 sequences to stymie origin hunt sparks furor I haven't quite bought into the lab leak conspiracy yet, but this deletion does seem just a tad odd. I don't think Hanlon's razor applies here. Or does it?

Growing food with air and solar power: More efficient than planting crops It occurs to me that this could have some useful applications for long duration interplanetary travel. Maybe they should team up with NASA and see if it can be improved?

n/m

Sounds like loads of none-fun.

Poor Grandma. 👩‍🦳

Optimistically, I'm hoping this period of needing vaccination cards will pass quickly. If not, they need to do something like add secure bar codes that can be compared against your ID card.

I don't think you are. Will we reach a point though where the school's education program becomes irrelevant to the athletes? Most of the players will never reach the professional ranks, so the education is the primary benefit.

The well-tolerated drug niclosamide, used for treating tape worm parasites, has shown good promise at inhibiting the COVID-19 virus replication within a host cell. A tapeworm drug against SARS-CoV-2? (Science Daily, June 21, 2021) Of course, this is just testing with cultured cells. It is undergoing a trial on COVID-19-infected people at Charité in Germany.

I do think that Trump prioritized his own election chances, and many of those on the right worked toward that goal. Declining economies frequently lead to a change of leadership on election day. He saw that the economy was going to take a significant hit from a lockdown, so he tended to encourage behaviors that would minimize that outcome. That included downplaying the medical threat, trying to sell questionable treatments, and discouraging the mass adoption of mask wearing and social distancing. This was never going to work, of course; the faster the pandemic spread, the greater the risk of a collapse of the health system. You can see what happened in Brazil and India.

The Texas power grid is isolated from the remainder of the USA. They had a major issue back in February due to a severe freeze. It wasn't actually all that funny; 151 people died from the cold. 2021 Texas power crisis

I suspect a significant factor in the US is the influence of the internet. This can be used to amplify the voice of small, anonymous groups and to create echo chambers that become self-reinforcing. Prior to the internet, when a typical person espoused a crackpot conspiracy theory, their buddies could be on hand to keep them well-grounded. That is often no longer the case, since people will head to the internet to anonymously spout rubbish. It doesn't help that foreign adversaries can help promote this behavior, to an unknown extent. We're more likely to be targeted by these malicious agents due to our foreign relations. I'm not sure yet what we can do about this. Another factor has been the isolation brought on by lockdowns, social distancing, and mask wearing. While necessary because of the lack of a vaccine, these measures are harmful to the human psyche. We need social contact. If a person is close to the edge psychologically (including the 1% who display psychopathic personality traits 🤪), this can completely knock them over into self-delusion and potential violence. Some of this may have been reflected in the rabid, illogical anti-masking posts I frequently see. Maybe. I'm hoping this effect will gradually fade as we open back up again. I completely understand the desire to rid ourselves of these quarantine measures, but I also agreed with their temporary necessity to prevent mass deaths.

Fun fact: January 6th is National Bean Day. It is closely followed by National Pass Gas Day on January 7th.

Smart Talented Unique Person in Demand