Hoops we jump through
• From the January 11 2022 Annals of Internal Medicine. An all too familiar reminder:
Webb Space Telescope Mirrors Deploy Successfully
Congratulations to NASA, the ESA, and the CSA today as the Webb Space Telescope hit a major milestone – the 5 solar shields had previously unfolded and positioned, and today the 18 hexagonal segments comprising the primary mirror completed a successful deployment and locked into place. One more burn before it gets to L2!
More data suggesting Omicron may well cause less severe disease
From Paul Sax’s HIV and ID Observations blog:
“What I’m about to write does not in any way to diminish how awful the pandemic is right now for just about everyone. But looking at the evidence and clinical experience on severity, I’m going to poke the beast and conclude that Omicron does appear milder.”
His post and corroborating data here.
Fingers crossed it really is the case, and that Omicron can outcompete any new more virulent variants that might appear.
Troubles for Our Democracy
• Osita Nwanevu has an excellent opinion essay in the New York Times discussing the unfortunate systemic representational inequities in the United States: Trump Isn’t the Only One to Blame for the Capitol Riot. An excerpt:
“At no point in his political career — not a single day — has Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of the majority of the country he governed for four years. And whatever else Jan. 6 might have been, it should be understood first and foremost as an expression of disbelief in — or at least a rejection of — that reality. Rather than accepting, in defeat, that much more of their country lay outside their ken than they’d known, his supporters proclaimed themselves victors and threw a deadly and historic tantrum.”
The silos social media and the internet have made possible have enabled the creation and reinforcement of this alternative reality; it’s all too easy to avoid evidence to the contrary.
RIP to a great naturalist and human being
R.I.P., E.O.Wilson. Thank you for your many contributions.
Randall Munroe strikes again
Randall Munroe strikes again at XKCD.com:
A singular scientific and engineering adventure
• Congratulations to everyone at NASA, the CSA, and the ESA on the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. This is a remarkable achievement that will lead to a better understanding of the fundamental nature of our universe. Lets hope for no problems on its way to L2 and with the deployment of the mirrors and solar shade.
Merry Christmas! We got you a new telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched today, beginning a one-million-mile journey to see 13.5 billion years into the past. Follow @NASAWebb and join the quest to #UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/TlYpoUHdJu pic.twitter.com/ilwWPuIJun
— NASA (@NASA) December 25, 2021
On NFTs
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.”
Tomas Puyeo on Omicron
• Tomas Puyeo does an excellent job discussing the early data on Omicron here. This is, I believe, quite a good assessment given the limited data available to date. Tomas authored the excellent “The Hammer and the Dance” substack post of March 19, 2020 talking about what might happen due to Covid.
His Omicron post is definitely worth a read.
Missing (due to lack of data, I presume) is a discussion of how antivirals like Paxlovid will influence outcomes. Alas, a full production ramp-up of Paxlovid is unlikely to come before the second half of 2022. See Scott Gottlieb’s take while being interviewed by Andy Slavitt on his In the Bubble podcast.
AP Review finds no evidence of widespread voter fraud
• An Associated Press review finds far too little voter fraud to have affected 2020 presidential election results.
An @AP review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 cases of fraud — a number so small it would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election. https://t.co/45F8jcUxFB
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 14, 2021