• Dr F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine writes on Medscape about this interesting article from Plos One: “U.S. state policy contexts and mortality of working-age adults” by Montez, Mohri, Monnat, et al.  Dr. Wilson thinks that average education level may be the primary factor for the life expectancy discrepancy between states rather than state policies, but the authors in their abstract suggest that state policies may have a large impact:

“Simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives.”

and in their discussion:

“On average, Americans die younger than their peers in most other high-income countries. In a 2013 U.S. survey, 85% of adult respondents indicated that their ideal life span was 79 years or older, yet U.S. life tables predicted that only 60% of people born that year could expect to survive to age 79 [40, 41]. Our findings, which examine working-age deaths among adults ages 25–64 years, suggest state policies–specifically, their left/right lean–may be a contributing factor and provide new insights into potential strategies to reduce working-age mortality.”

• An excellent podcast by Ezra Klein, interviewing Gary Marcus’ “Skeptical Take on the A.I. Revolution”; definitely worth a listen.

• Mihir Desai at HBS and HLS opines — correctly in my mind — about the illusory promises of the crypto kingdom in his opinion piece in the NYT.

• Yet another example of how our American health care payment systems are completely bonkers:

Goodbill researched hospital charges for a liter of saline; available online for about $10, some hospitals were charging many thousands of dollars (in one case $26,667.03!!!) for a bag of N.S.  Goodbill used the machine readable lists of hospital prices mandated by the Hospital Price Transparency Rule to grab the data.

What a mess.

• David Marchese interviews Yejin Choi in the NYT; what I found to be an excellent discussion of where the science stands right now ensues.

• John Gruber’s Daring Fireball has a good post on Twitter and Musk’s recent machinations; recommended. One excerpt:

“But it gets better. Last night Twitter began classifying all links to all popular Mastodon servers as “malware”. That includes links to one’s own Mastodon account that a Twitter user might put in their account profile”

• I’ll be sad to see the wonderful Tony Fauci step down from his role at the NIAID.  He’s a wonderful man, and a true icon — especially for physicians like me who practiced through the beginnings of the AIDs epidemic and the subsequent discoveries of effective treatments. We’ll miss his resolute leadership and integrity.  He has a parting message “to the next generation of scientists and health workers” published in the NY Times.

• Philip Rotner, writing in The Bulwark, lays out an excellent timeline re. the evidence accumulated against the ex-president in the theft of government documents.   An excerpt:

‘The slow drip of information about Trump’s mishandling of those documents, which has lately become a gusher, seems to have had a hypnotic effect on the public. Each new piece of information is duly reported, but quickly cedes its place in the news cycle to the next one. The collective public reaction has become more “That’s Trump for ya!” than “Why isn’t this man in jail?”

He should be.

Take a step back. Get away from the drips and look at the complete picture revealed by a timeline of the saga of the stolen documents. Ask yourself, “What would the government have done to me if I had done this?”’

• Some things do stay the same – corporate whitewashing now extends to greenwashing, as petrochemical dollars are spent to slow electrification and obfuscate efforts to do so, all while trumpeting purported efforts to reduce emissions.

• House Oversight Committee Document release

• CNN on Big Oil disinformation

• Reuters on how old lobby teams up with fishing industry to fight offshore wind farms

• And a big culprit – the “Texas Public Policy Foundation“

• Thomas Edsall has a good essay in the NYT, where he wonders what it would take to remove the hold DJT apparently has on so many.   Edsall’s last paragraph sums up my question nicely:

“Which gets to the larger question that supersedes all the ins and outs of the maneuvering over the Republican presidential nomination and the future of the party: How, in a matter of less than a decade, could this once-proud country have evolved to the point at which there is a serious debate over choosing a presidential candidate who is a lifelong opportunist, a pathological and malignant narcissist, a sociopath, a serial liar, a philanderer, a tax cheat who does not pay his bills, a man who socializes with Holocaust deniers, who has pardoned his criminal allies, who encouraged a violent insurrection, who, behind a wall of bodyguards, is a coward and who, without remorse, continuously undermines American democracy?”