• I think Nicholas Kristof’s commentary on the Israeli-Hamas conflict in the NY Times is worth reading: We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit.  An excerpt:

“Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?”

• Joshua Benton discourses on our new U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives in his Atlantic essay, “Where is Mike Johnson’s Ironclad Oath?”  Another pathetic example of how near-complete abandonment of moral principle is now standard for the republican party.

• Tom Friedman gives a lucid (albeit depressing) presentation of the motivations behind the Israeli response in his NYT piece: Why Israel Is Acting This Way.  What a terrible, no-win situation, with enormous civilian casualties likely.

• Katelyn Jetelina responds to the nutso declarations of Florida’s (politically appointed) “Surgeon General” Joseph Ladapo, who when appearing on Fox News said “With the questions about negative efficacy, the persistence of spike protein, and then the stuff we’ve seen related to thromboembolic events like strokes and cardiac injury, I don’t feel comfortable … recommending [the vaccine] to any living being on this planet.”  Say what?

Jetliner goes through his arguments one by one and concludes, rightfully, that:

“Health policy decisions need to be grounded in an accumulation of evidence that provides a comprehensive picture of reality. He [Ladapo] combines legitimate points with profoundly foolish ones, which muddles the picture, creates a sense of false equivalency, and makes it difficult for the general public to discern the truth.”

In a related article, see differences in mortality data from 3 adjacent counties in 3 different states, each with different approaches to health care and public heath in a well-done Washington Post article by Lauren Weber, Dan Diamond and Dan Keating.

• Heather Cox Richardson discourses nicely on another reason why the U.S. is so divided (and why Congress is so dysfunctional) – the republican Operation REDMAP.  An excerpt”

“This Operation REDMAP, which stood for Redistricting Majority Project, was a plan to take control of state houses across the country so that Republicans would control the redistricting maps put in place after the 2010 census. 

It worked. After the 2010 election, Republicans controlled the legislatures in the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and they redrew congressional maps using precise computer models. In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. And yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives.”

• Sure, listen to the guy who managed to drive multiple businesses into the ground, doesn’t read, and loves to cut taxes for the rich (perhaps because he’s one of them) when he tells you how to fix your economy and deficit.  Because I’m sure he’s thought things through to the 9th degree…

Matt Yglesias opines in detail in his Slow Boring blog.

• More excellence from David Wallace-Wells, writing in the NYT about how air pollution acts in some ways to mitigate temperature rise. No, he’s not advocating for increased air pollution, but pointing out that some measures to improve pollution and CO2 emissions may contribute to location-specific rising temperatures.   Climate is complicated, lots of work to be done to understand how best to mitigate global warming.

• UCSF’s Bob Wachter along with Abraham Verghese and Eric Topol opine on AI in Medicine on Medscape’s Medicine and the Machine.  Poor Bob is no longer a NOVID, and the three riff about where they see LLMs and AI going in clinical medicine.

• If you have any interest at all in AI, I highly recommend this excellent podcast from Ezra Klein, where he talks with Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO, about Hassabis’ personal journey to AI and gets Hassabis’ perspective on its promises and perils.

• David French writes in the NYT about the legal perils besetting Trump and many of his fellow plotters; here’s an excerpt to which the electorate should pay close attention:

“We can’t ask for too much from any legal system. A code of laws is ultimately no substitute for moral norms. Our constitutional republic cannot last indefinitely in the face of misinformation, conspiracy and violence. It can remove the worst actors from positions of power and influence. But it cannot ultimately save us from ourselves. American legal institutions have responded to a historical crisis, but all its victories could still be temporary. Our nation can choose the law, or it can choose Trump. It cannot choose both.”