Randall Munroe strikes again at XKCD.com:

Matt Levine, giving you one way to think about NFTs in the Me elsewhere/NFT Stuff section of his December 20 column:

‘Meanwhile there is another strand of thinking that is like “human life takes place increasingly online, and whereas people used to get meaning out of being seen promenading in the plaza in fancy clothes, now they get meaning out of being seen promenading on Twitter with fancy Bored Ape avatars, and we are finding ways to create artificial scarcity and gradations of status there and sell those gradations for a lot of money.” And here, I mean, I see the point of “human life takes place increasingly online,” but I do not really see the point “so I have spent $20,000 on a pixelated JPEG of an ape to use as my Twitter avatar because people will think that’s cool.” It’s possible that I am just not cool, though! In 10 years maybe everyone will spend thousands of dollars on their avatars and only crusty weird nerds will be like, “No, I will just wear a burlap sack to promenade in the plaza, it keeps the wind out, that’s all I need.”’

I love his sense of humor.  He goes on to say:

“…these relatively sophisticated ways of thinking about NFTs reflect of course a tiny minority of NFT projects. Most are just “let me scam some crypto bros who have too much money.” I would not buy those.”

Matt Levine’s Money Stuff is a wonderful reminder of the madness inherent in our modern world.  He’s brilliantly dissected the TMTG SPAC PIPE and in today’s post has an incredibly funny take on Big’s Peloton-related fate in HBO Max’s “And Just Like That…”.   A totally fictional streaming video episode manages to cause a billion dollar shift in PTON’s real-world market value, forcing the company to issue a statement with a cardiologist’s post mortem re. the real (?fictional) cause of death. What a crazy world we live in.

For more, see Birds Aren’t Real in the Times…

Might as well add some positivity to the discussion; the often curmudgeonly John McWhorter argues that there are some signs of progress around us in his NYT Believe It or Not, I Like Some Things in Our Progressive Era opinion column. 

Glad to breathe a sigh of relief after the Arbery decision lets us move more gracefully to a holiday that should rightfully be imbued with gratitude. Wishing everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

Rivka Galchen writes well about the current state of research into functional, energy-positive fusion reactors in her article in The New Yorker, Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?  It’s a worthwhile read.

Derek Hawkins writes in today’s Washington Post Coronavirus Updates:

New research out of Texas offers a grim illustration of the risks of not getting vaccinated. The state health department found that unvaccinated people accounted for more than 85 percent of the Lone Star State’s 29,000 covid-linked fatalities between mid-January and October. Seven percent of the deaths were among partially vaccinated people, while about 8 percent were fully vaccinated. Put another way: the unvaccinated in Texas were 40 times more likely to die of the disease than those fully vaccinated.

And as David Leonhardt writes in his Nov. 8th NYT The Morning, the gap in the cumulative death rate from Covid-19 between heavily T**** supporting US counties and heavily Biden supporting counties: “In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.”

If you haven’t already, please get vaccinated — it may save your life.

From the always excellent Heather Cox Richardson’s November 5 post:

“At about 11:30 p.m., the House of Representatives passed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) by a vote of 228–206. Biden promised to pass a bipartisan measure and after nine months of hard work, he did it: thirteen Republicans voted in favor of the bill; six progressive Democrats voted against it. The measure had already passed the Senate, so now it goes to his desk for a signature.

This bill is a huge investment in infrastructure. Axios lists just how huge: over the next 8 years, it will provide $110 billion for fixing roads and bridges, $73 billion for the electrical grid, $66 billion for railroads, $65 billion for broadband, $55 billion for water infrastructure, $47 billion for coastal adjustments to climate change, $39 billion for public transportation, and so on.

The Guardian’s congressional reporter, Hugo Lowell, noted: “Regardless of the politics, the passage of a $1.2T bipartisan infrastructure bill is a towering legislative achievement for Biden—and one that Trump never came close to matching.””

Remember—every single Republican voted against the Rescue Plan. If they had gotten their way:

-no checks in pockets
-no money for schools to reopen quickly and safely
-no quick recovery to 4.6% unemployment

— Bharat Ramamurti (@BharatRamamurti) November 5, 2021

There is very nice article in The Atlantic by James Heathers, one reminding us of the dangers of accepting as gospel medical publication results due to their very variable quality (or lack thereof).  This especially applies to articles on COVID-19 appearing in the midst of a pandemic, many of which are flawed.  Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID is his principle example.

Evaluating the quality of a research paper remains an important exercise.