Links for you. Science:

Rapid Increase in Circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant — Mesa County, Colorado, April–June 2021
Reduced Risk of Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 After COVID-19 Vaccination — Kentucky, May–June 2021
Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines in Preventing Hospitalization Among Adults Aged ≥65 Years — COVID-NET, 13 States, February–April 2021
In South Africa, Poachers Now Traffic in Tiny Succulent Plants. Police search the desert trying to track down the poachers selling Conophytums to collectors worldwide, threatening to wipe out rare plants in the wild.
Search the NCBI Hidden Markov models collection against your favorite prokaryotic proteins

Other:

The Very Serious Debate Club: On Josh Barro and his ilk
As my Post career ends, I remember a historic night in Berlin and dining on birthday goat
Death is Their Election Strategy
In his new book, “Reign of Terror,” Spencer Ackerman lays out how Trump understood the nativist power of the 9/11 era better than the elites who built a war around it.
Biden’s Eviction Moratorium Is a Rare Act of Presidential Civil Disobedience. The Supreme Court will almost certainly strike down the moratorium, but the president’s decision to heed the call of Cori Bush was the right and righteous thing to do.
Operation Fox Hunt: How China Exports Repression Using a Network of Spies Hidden in Plain Sight
Essaibi George is running for Boston mayor. Her husband, a housing developer, has had a lot of problems with City Hall
Hard Lessons From a City That Tried to Privatize Public Health
Covid Vaccines for Kids Can’t Wait
“Progressive prosecutors” are working within the system to change it. How is that going? What Larry Krasner has learned about trying to reform policing from the inside.
Sinatra with his home theater set-up.
Long Covid
I’m a Luddite. You should be one too
I Need To Stop Scrolling: The diminishing returns of constant covid news
Vaccination mandates are as American as apple pie
THE WRONGEST RIGHT-WING PREDICTIONS ABOUT ANDREW CUOMO
A New Pandemic Reality for America’s Kids
We Studied One Million Students. This Is What We Learned About Masking. (I agree with the masking, but we also should be doing screening)
Elizabeth Warren will propose a minimum tax on the nation’s richest companies.
‘What is happening to me?’ The teenagers trying to make sense of long Covid
The Best Policies to Fight Pandemics: Five Lessons from the Literature So Far
Why our school district is defying Florida’s ban on mask mandates — even if it means we lose funding
The U.N.’s dire climate report confirms: We’re out of time
Climate Denial, Covid Denial and the Right’s Descent (I would argue this goes back to the conservative cowardice about confronting creationism, for ‘nothing in movement conservatism makes sense except in the light of creationism’)
The Story Behind an Illegal Dumping Attempt to Keep Out Unhoused Residents Outside Ward 2 Safeway
Because I like exterminating any residual shreds of faith in humanity, I looked through the overwhelmingly hostile comments on a YouTube video by a doctor debunking some covid misinformation tonight. I noticed an interesting parallel to some “election theft” disinfo.