This hurts in so many ways.  We’ll miss you, Justice Ginsburg!

Scientific American steps up: “Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly. The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.”

Timothy Egan and Charlie Warzel of the NYT both brilliantly describe the increasing catastrophe, both environmental and humanitarian, of the western wildfires. Worth reading and then considering what you can do to help.

These pretty much say it all re. the U.S. response:

As impossible as it seems, DJT actually had the audacity to call himself “a great environmentalist” when today he signed a moratorium on offshore drilling off Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina – a moratorium his own administration had earlier proposed lifting. Despite his abysmal record of rolling back environmental protections, denying climate change, and and appointing incompetent (and industry-favoring) directors to government agencies with roles in regulating natural assets and the environment, he lauded his administration for “our incredible record of natural conservation and environmental protection.” Just incredible.  See Karni and Friedman’s report in the NYT.

I think Adam Jentleson has it right ( What if Trumpism Is the G.O.P.’s Natural State? ) when he concludes that Republicanism is no longer (if it ever was) ideologically aligned with classic conservatism; rather, it now comprises a base aligned with reactionary, authoritarian, nescient, sectarian/racist and non-compromising attitudes that are unlikely to change even if Trump is defeated in November. And Charlie Warzel has it right again. 

The Washington Post has a story on how Trump’s now just come out and admitted it – he’s attempting to starve the US Postal Service in order to prevent mail in voting. They quote (and have video from his interview on Fox) him as follows: “Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots..Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

I had a chuckle when I read this, from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, re. Uber’s threat to halt service in Cali if the state reclassifies its drivers as employees: Noah Smith: “Whatever you think of the employee/contractor issue, it seems clear that if Uber can’t survive except by classifying drivers as contractors, it was never as valuable of a business as people thought.”
These two things can both be true:
1) Uber saw how terrible traditional U.S. taxi services were, and created a much better alternative that people love to use, entirely based on the key insight that ubiquitous smartphones could and should change the game. Hailing, mapping, location tracking, payment, driver/passenger rating — all of it enabled via phones.
2) The idea that this business model was worth tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars was based almost entirely on exploiting a gray area in labor law, and thus the company’s workers.
3) The founder was an enormous jackass.

OK, that’s three, but they’re still all true.

• Alas, more complicated than simple town v. gown politics would suggest, the unfortunate – albeit somewhat understandable – urge to treat desperately ill COVID patients with unproven therapies has resulted in significant delays in understanding which therapies actually work and under what conditions they might do so. It’s done this by in many cases making it very difficult to recruit adequate numbers of patients to randomized, blinded, prospective controlled studies that should have given us more answers by now. (Headlong rushes to preprint publication haven’t helped.) This NYT article by Susan Dominus is illustrative: The Covid Drug Wars that Pitted Doctor vs. Doctor