Randall Monroe and XKCD serendipitously meet up with JAMA…

Wallace J, Goldsmith-Pinkham P, Schwartz JL. Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA Intern Med. Published online July 24, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.1154

“Findings  In this cohort study evaluating 538 159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.”

Apparently, (see this science article in the NYT by Raymond Zhong) polar ice cap melting from increased global temperatures is not the only way we affect the wobble in the earth’s rotation axis; there are also effects due to our pumping of ground water!  I was completely unaware of the vast volume that must be being pumped in order to have a demonstrable  planetary influence.

I guess Jamelle Bouie agrees – from his NY Times Republicans Have Made Their Choice piece:

“Most things in life, and especially a basic respect for democracy and the rule of law, have to be cultivated. What is striking about the Republican Party is the extent to which it has, for decades now, cultivated the opposite — a highly instrumental view of our political system, in which rules and laws are legitimate only insofar as they allow for the acquisition and concentration of power in Republican hands.”

And don’t miss his June 24 column, Republicans Serve Up Red Meat for a Reason; it’s devastatingly accurate.

Setting aside the all-too-commonly voiced support for the candidate who is so obviously unfit for office, what I find most disgraceful among many republican political office holders is the divisiveness they continue to stoke with their pro forma statements of support for the orange one, statements that most of them know are untrue.  What they keep spouting with their “deep state,”weaponized,” “politicized,” (and worse) rhetoric is bad for a country already suffering from excessive division.  But apparently their concern is not for the country – it’s for staying in power, despite the obvious cost.

Another obvious example of politicking without regard to consequence – their push to cut funding for the IRS, which could result in an INCREASE in the deficit, since it will likely cut tax revenue by over $200 billion.

Maybe this is the first example of, well, AI offsetting some of the emissions costs of generative AI.  From venturebeat.com:

“Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) research lab DeepMind has achieved a remarkable feat in computer science through its latest AI system, AlphaDev. This specialized version of AlphaZero has made a significant breakthrough by uncovering faster sorting and hashing algorithms, which are essential processes utilized trillions of times daily by developers worldwide for data sorting, storage and retrieval…In a paper published in the science journal Nature, DeepMind asserts that AlphaDev’s newly discovered algorithm achieves a 70% increase in efficiency for sorting short sequences of elements and approximately 1.7% for sequences surpassing 250,000 elements, as compared to the algorithms in the C++ library. Consequently, when a user submits a search query, AlphaDev’s algorithm facilitates faster sorting of results, leading to significant time and energy savings when employed on a large scale.”

Wait, I can’t forget DeepMind’s leap in solving protein structures…

I honestly can’t remember nodding along with a Marc Thiessen opinion piece, but I did agree with most of this one in the Washington Post, where Thiessen writes “This is the ‘America First’ case for supporting Ukraine.”

Jamelle Bouie, writing in the Times, once again discusses the significant problems with the Supreme Court, both at present and for the foreseeable future:

“The problem of the Supreme Court isn’t that its members are mired in ethics scandals (although they are). It isn’t that it’s been captured by a network of conservative apparatchiks and right-wing billionaires (although it has). No, the problem of the Supreme Court is that it is a powerful and unaccountable branch of government whose traditional role has been to protect the rights of property and the prerogatives of the privileged above all other concerns.”

I’m afraid he’s right.

Madison Hilly writes in the NY Times about how the risks and health consequences of fission reactors (especially modern designs) are overblown, important since reactors may be necessary in order to reduce emissions as much as we need to in the next 2 decades.

As a physician, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act meant that any pharmaceutical or durable medical goods company giving me more than $25 had to report the gift to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; this reporting is publicly available here.  Since 2009, Massachusetts has required such companies to report any gifts in excess of $50.  105 CMR 970.00 prohibits gifting of entertainment or recreational items of any value, such as tickets to a sporting event or concert, or vacation trip and payments of any kind, except as compensation for bona fide services, etc.  As part of my academic appointment at Harvard Medical School, I had to annually disclose outside institution positions and appointments, resources and funding, outside activities, etc.  As a physician administrator, I did not allow Pharmaceutical Representatives to provide samples due to the well documented undue influence on physician prescribing patterns. Yet the Supreme Court, with much greater power and influence, the ultimate arbiter of justice here in the U.S., can’t see fit to self regulate behaviors that undoubtedly influence their behavior?  What’s wrong with this picture?  Since the supremes can’t seem to regulate themselves, they should be regulated by law.  See this NYT editorial.

Excellent article on the grid and environmental consequences of bitcoin mining in the U.S. by Gabriel Dance in the NYT here. Excerpts:

“34 of the largest mines identified by the Times together use more than 3,900 megawatts of electricity”
and
“The analysis found that the 34 mines’ power use was causing nearly 16.4 million tons of carbon pollution each year.”

To what end?