Links for you. Science:
Estimating infectiousness throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection course
Vulnerable people may need vaccine boosters this year, scientists say
Puppies Are Born Ready to Communicate With Humans
A herd of elephants has roamed 300 miles across China and is headed toward a city
A pandemic upside: The flu virus became less diverse, simplifying the task of making flu shots
Other:
“Critical Race Theory” Hysteria Is A “Satanic Panic”-Style Hoax From Fox News (must-read)
Sinema and Manchin’s Nihilistic Bipartisanship
Why should we go back to a job that doesn’t value or pay us enough to live? Is it a worker shortage or is it a strike? (“It occurs to me that if your restaurant closes because you can’t hire anyone for the shit pay you’re offering then maybe you should go get a job at one of the many other restaurants that also can’t hire anyone?”)
The various dishonesties in Rand Paul’s cocaine-quail presentation (“You can see the close attention to detail paid by Paul’s staff. The amount cited wasn’t $356,933.140. It was, instead, $356,933 — with a pointer to footnote 140.” Heh)
Jim Crow Is Back Because John Roberts Let It Happen
Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, leading Democrats in N.Y. mayor’s race, are backed by GOP billionaires (Yang is a conman, despite whatever one might think about a universal basic income)
Hire In-House, Don’t Use Consultants (subcontracting is bad)
The Future Could Actually Be Bright for Republicans
The toxic culture of American police: When officers are trained to be at war with the citizenry, collateral damage is the inevitable result
Bernie Sanders Is Fed Up With Republican Obstruction—and Democratic Caution
New York Times’ Star Reporters Push Back Against Union (we now know who the assholes are…)
Wrestling With the New Deal. The programs Roosevelt put together may not have met a Platonic ideal of modern progress, but they saved American democracy itself. (“The New Deal’s triumph over domestic fascism proved so comprehensive that we have all but forgotten the threat ever existed.”)
Cummings: Covid ‘chicken pox parties’ to reach herd immunity were considered by UK government. In an explosive evidence session, Cummings accused Boris Johnson of thinking Covid-19 was a “scare story”.
Five days, 100 vaccine doses and a wildfire of conspiracy theories
Meadows Pressed Justice Dept. to Investigate Election Fraud Claims. Emails show the increasingly urgent efforts by President Trump and his allies during his last days in office to find some way to undermine, or even nullify, the election results.
Democrats Should Just Create More Federal Holidays
Johns Hopkins enslaved people. Or did he? Some scholars question the university’s recent claims.
Covid-19 Is a Boon for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Buds
The racist legacy many birds carry. The birding community faces a difficult debate about the names of species connected to enslavers, supremacists and grave robbers
From fire chief to mail clerks, no one seems able to find housing in Martha’s Vineyard
White House science adviser sworn in on 500-year-old Jewish text
mikethemadbiologist
>“Critical Race Theory” Hysteria Is A “Satanic Panic”-Style Hoax From Fox News
No, it isn’t.
I don’t particularly care about how the right criticizes events in academia. In fact I make it a rule to to not waste a lot of time on right wing critiques, because by their very nature even what they’re targeting something worthy of critique their understanding of the real problems is half-braindead.
But ‘wokeness’ absolutely has become a cancer within academia and upper business circles. CRT is just one specific part of a wider problem. Discourse is actually being stifled, and people are actually being canceled and having their careers destroyed.
There’s plenty of left critique of all this woke gibberish, but you have to hunt around for it.
That article also also brings up the 1619 Project. The 1619 Project is an exercise in historical falsification, literally from jump. The first African ‘slaves’ from the titular 1619 weren’t slaves, they were indentured servants. It’s a fairly subtle difference, but a meaningful one. Key events like the multiracial Bacon’s Rebellion in 1675 don’t make a whole lot of sense in the context of the ‘racist slavery from the beginning’ original sin narrative 1619 is pushing. The Trot’s over at WSWS had a whole series going in depth to what a travesty of revisionism 1619 was.
We have forgotten where “identity politics” originated. It originated as opposition to violence without accountability; but, fatally, it durst not say so. What never should have been “we need to be nicer to {fill-in-the-victim}” should always have been “we need to beat bullies down so that they never dare act out again”. It’s not about identity because the bully doesn’t care about the identity of his victims, only their convenience.
Your Financial Times link is paywalled. Don’t do that.