Clever Grasper
I thought this iteration of a robotic grasper for delicate objects was rather ingenious:
Elon Musk, the selective libertarian
Good commentary by Matt Yglesias, describing how Elon Musk is quite selective when advocating for his libertarian principles. He’s all for free speech on Twitter, but very quiet when it comes to suppression of free speech in China. He complained bitterly about pandemic-related protocols in Cali, but trumpets China’s “no new domestic corona cases” (no Covid restrictions there, eh Elon?). And he publicly advocated for Taiwan to become “a special administrative zone” of China a day before Tesla was granted a Chinese purchase tax exemption for its Model X and S EVs. It seems that profits take precedence over principle for Elon. Guess he does need the Benjamins for his Twitter purchase…
Christian authoritarianism
Will Bunch, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the blinders Republicans seem to have for political candidates failing to live according to their purported values: “Because the so-called “family values” of American fundamentalists now drawn toward Christian nationalism turn out to be mere window dressing that can be tossed for the movement’s true aim: authoritarianism.“
Paxlovid should perhaps be used more, particularly for those older than 60…
• Another worthwhile Morning newsletter from David Leonhardt of the NYT, riffing on how some therapies for Covid-19 are being underutilized, especially in certain populations. Improving usage and access might improve the persistent mortality of this disease, still averaging almost 400 deaths a day in the U.S. David L. is on leave for a few months; I’ll miss him! A revealing excerpt:
Nature is amazing
This was a wonderful story in the Times about the godwit, which holds the record for the longest annual nonstop migration for a land bird – over 7,000 miles, from Alaska to New Zealand! And that’s over 8-10 days, no stops for food or water, and flight by continuous flapping, not dynamic soaring. Their round trip migration is about 30,000 km, since the return trip includes a stopover in China. Scientists do not completely understand the birds’ physiology, since all models predict they should not have the available energy stores to make such a nonstop flight. An excerpt:
‘…they are proficient at the incredibly risky endeavor; the survival rate is more than 90 percent.
“It’s not really like a marathon,” said Christopher Guglielmo, an animal physiologist at Western University in London, Ontario, who studies avian endurance physiology. “It’s more like a trip to the moon.”’
Amazing stuff.
The Florida Fantasy
• Michael Grunwald, writing in the Atlantic, opines on the fantasy that promotes building and living in coastal Florida.
Red States and their Immigration issue
• Heather Cox Richardson, writing in her September 27 newsletter, puts the issue in perspective:
“More to the point, it is a myth that Republican-dominated border states are bearing the brunt of migrants seeking asylum. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post asked the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (TRAC) to figure out where the asylum seekers in the U.S. are.
From court records, TRAC calculated that 750,000 people are awaiting asylum hearings. More than 125,000 of them are in California. More than 110,000 are in New York. About 98,000 are scheduled for hearings in Florida, while about 75,000 are waiting in Texas. Most of the rest are scheduled for court hearings in Democratic-dominated states, such as New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maryland.”
Isn’t it ironic…
From Heather Cox Richardson, writing in her September 28 Newsletter:
“This destructive storm highlights the distance between reality and the ideology that calls for getting rid of the federal government.
As a newly elected congress member in 2013, now-governor of Florida Ron DeSantis was one of the 67 House Republicans who voted against a $9.7 billion federal flood insurance assistance package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Now, with Florida on the ropes, DeSantis asked President Joe Biden for an emergency declaration to free up federal money and federal help even before the storm hit, and said Tuesday, ‘We all need to work together, regardless of party lines.'”
Analysis of the state of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Tom Friedman, writing in the NYT, does a decent job of trying to define what the end result of the war may be. None of his predictions, alas, seem particularly optimistic. But they are probably realistic.
Zeynep Tufekci
• Zeynep Tufekci writes in the NYT about the benefits of the updated bivalent Covid booster vaccines. An excerpt:
“Many European countries and Canada, for example, did a better job of making sure more of their population got boosters. Their cumulative death and illness tolls from the Omicron wave are sharply lower than those of the United States, where only about a third of eligible adults had gotten boosters, compared with two-thirds of adults in many European countries. The United States has had a death rate 80 percent greater than Canada’s from the Omicron wave — a similar pattern holds globally. Countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have about 80 percent or more of their adult population boosted, and their death tolls are even lower.”