Happy Halloween! Let’s celebrate with some links. Science:

I Ate All Your Precious Golf Worms And I’d Do It Again
New pill helps COVID smell and taste loss fade quickly: The antiviral drug ensitrelvir, which shortens sensory problems, is one of the few COVID-19 drugs available to people not at high risk of grave illness.
World’s most water-repellent surface surprises its own inventors
pyngoST: fast, simultaneous and accurate multiple sequence typing of Neisseria gonorrhoeae genome collections
Hope for Florida’s dwindling manatees as review could restore protections: Since Trump administration removed species from endangered list 20% of entire population has been lost in just two years
Population immunity predicts evolutionary trajectories of SARS-CoV-2

Other:

‘He Seems to Be Saying His Commitment Is to Minority Rule’: A Q&A with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez on the Christian nationalist ideas that shaped House Speaker Mike Johnson. (absolute, must-read)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/opinion/mike-johnson-republican-party.html“>The G.O.P. Goes Full-On Extremist (gift link; this makes the critical point that movement conservatives are completely bugshit crazy when it comes to economics too)
What are new House Speaker Mike Johnson’s record and views on abortion? (bad. Very, very bad)
Memories of the Two-State Solution: A conversation with Dennis Ross, the chief U.S. negotiator in the 2000 peace talks, about why they fell apart, how Israelis came to believe that the Palestinian problem could be managed, and how Oct. 7 exploded that fiction. (gift link; important to read)
Moms for Liberty chair who pushed for removal of an Anne Frank book went on network that attacks “seditious Jews” (she seems nice)
Lurid Realities: Trump Implies That Selling Nuclear Secrets Is Treason
Junk Bond Trader
The Aftermath of a Massacre Is Always the Time to Push for Gun Legislation
How Elon Musk Changed the Meaning of Twitter for Users: Twitter was a deeply personal source of conversation, news and community for many people. One year after Mr. Musk took over, users say that has shifted — for better and for worse. (didn’t see much ‘better’ in the story…)
Enough with the warlords. There is another way: Israel’s addictive militarism has convinced us that the next dose of the drug will be the one that fixes things forever. But an alternative path exists.
A year ago, after producing hundreds of shoe styles and billions of dollars together, Adidas broke with Kanye West as he made antisemitic and other offensive public comments. But Adidas had been tolerating his misconduct behind the scenes for nearly a decade. (this would imply Kardashian knew about and tolerated this for a long time)
Few Americans Have Gotten the New Covid Shots, C.D.C. Finds
Yes, Prager U Wants to Indoctrinate Your Kids. But That’s Not Really the Point.
Emails Show Biden Staffers’ Confusion Trying To Help Desperate Americans In Gaza
A GOP plan for the census would revive Trump’s failed push for a citizenship question
Operation Warp Speed: The Untold Story of the COVID-19 Vaccine
Jenna Ellis’s long, strange trip to disgrace. In court, she’s contrite. On social media? Not so much.
Kyrsten Sinema’s Delusional Exit Interview: The Arizona senator believes she single-handedly saved the U.S. Senate.
‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’: The Israeli writer Etgar Keret has spent the last few weeks trying to make sense of the violence and loss around him. So far, he can’t.
Why You Can’t Trust X for News: The company formerly known as Twitter is a shell of what it once was.
Confessions of a Former SVB Executive
They’re All “Extremists”
Mike Johnson in the MAGA Meat Grinder
House Speaker Mike Johnson Blames Mass Shootings on “the Human Heart,” in Case You Were Thinking the GOP Might Actually Do Something About Guns
Biden, Gen-Z, and the Illiberal Left
“Libs of Tiktok” Is Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate”