June 2024
Monday, 24 June 2024
With Millions Suffering, Long COVID is Devastating the Economy
Salvatore Mattera, World Health Network: “But what about the US? […] The country as a whole now has more jobs than before COVID, but there are actually fewer US-born workers than there were in 2019. The US appears to be importing the healthy workers it needs…. Scholars have noted that inflation surged rapidly in Europe following the Black Death: The plague killed too many people, and those who survived demanded much higher wages …”
Saturday, 22 June 2024
Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
Ted Chiang: “The whole idea that disruption is something positive instead of negative is a conceit of tech entrepreneurs.”
Thursday, 20 June 2024
H5N1 Update
Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD: “In other words, Michigan is actively looking for H5N1, and it’s reflected in the numbers. For example, they set up a texting program with farm workers asking about their symptoms regularly. This is how they found the third human case in the U.S.”
Wednesday, 19 June 2024
June 19, 1984: X Window System
Jeffrey Powers, Today In Tech History: “This is not the ultimate window system, but I believe it is a good starting point for experimentation.”
Tuesday, 18 June 2024
Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases
Liam Proven, The Register: “… resulting in a teetering stack of dozens of layers of flakey unreliable code, which in turn needs thousands and millions of people constantly patching the holes in it, and needs customers to pay to get those fixes fast, and keep paying for them for years to come.”
Friday, 14 June 2024
Skateboarding cat breaks Guinness World record
Tuesday, 4 June 2024
Undergraduate Commencement Address by Ken Burns
Ken Burns: “I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of ‘us’ and also ‘we’ and ‘our’ and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there’s a them, run away.”
Sunday, 2 June 2024
1918 flu pandemic boosted support for the Nazis, Fed study claims
Chloe Taylor, CNBC: “Areas where the pandemic had a higher death toll also saw lower public spending per capita in the decade following the outbreak, which in turn contributed to extremist voting.”