Mummified pup unearthed in Russia had feasted on a woolly rhinoceros as its last meal before falling to its death in a landslide 14,000 years ago Daily Mail (Kevin W)
Time’s Arrow Flies through 500 Years of Classical Music, Physicists Say Scientific American (David L)
Quantum reality is either weirdly different or it collapses ars technica (David L)
US Wildfire Activity Web Map ArcGIS (tegnost)
California Reveals That the Transition to Renewable Energy Isn’t So Simple Slate (Kevin W)
Even a Few Hours of Paid Work a Week Can Greatly Improve Mental Health Brink
Honey better treatment for coughs and colds than antibiotics, study claims Guardian (resilc). Also reported here yesterday. Antibiotics aren’t effective, so this is a low bar. But still!
Why Civilizations Collapse The Side View (Chuck L)
#COVID-19
The Black Death Was The Worst Pandemic In Human History, So How Did It Finally End? All That Is Interesting (Micael T)
Chainsaws, Conspiracies, and Cops: Inside an Anti-Mask Dance Party Vice. Resilc: “Funny, last summer we stayed at an airBnB in Montreal. The guy was a socialist. He said much of Canada is loaded with Trump cultist types….”
With the Most Deaths In 150 Years, Sweden Reveals New COVID-19 Test-and-Trace Strategy Guardian
Estimated cost of recent epidemics/pandemics:
SARS (2003) – $40 billion
H5N1 (2006) – $40 billion
H1N1 (2009) – $45 billion
Ebola (2014) – $55 billion
COVID-19 (2020) – $8.8 TRILLIONInvesting in public health preparedness is FAR cheaper than the economic impact of a pandemic.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) August 19, 2020
Science/Medicine
Summary: in this study, despite having generally mild symptoms, children infected with #SARSCoV2 had a viral load similar to adults with severe #COVID19. Viral load did not differ by age, although young children may be less susceptible to infection.https://t.co/uCMJbkDACS
— Dr Zoë Hyde (@DrZoeHyde) August 20, 2020
Into the unknown: virus hunters and their quest to stop the next pandemic South China Morning Post (J-LS)
US
Las Vegas casinos a likely hotspot for COVID-19 spread, according to ProPublica investigation USA Today (resilc)
Political Response
U.S. official sees ‘real desire’ for smaller coronavirus relief bill Reuters. Um, big but late is functionally equivalent to small.
China?
China cautious on hitting back at US companies after Huawei sanctions Financial Times
Kudlow says Trump wants to ‘deny China’ some of the proceeds of a TikTok sale CNBC
Tim Wu: A TikTok Ban Is Overdue New York Times
The coronavirus pandemic has created a divide in China’s consumer economy, with makers of premium products rebounding strongly but those catering to mass-market consumers finding it tougher to return to growth https://t.co/OegilSxfAA
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 20, 2020
HK maids suffer twice as Covid-19 turns the screws Asia Times (J-LS)
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny ‘poisoned’ BBC
Mauritius
When incompetence is the lesser evil lexpress.mu (Colonel Smithers)
Syraqistan
Trump Says He Expects Saudis to Join Mideast Peace Deal with UAE Bloomberg
Iran sanctions: Trump threatens to unilaterally reimpose UN measures Guardian (Kevin W)
Report: Trump Administration Advances F-35 Sale to UAE Despite Israeli Opposition Haaretz
Lebanese President discusses timetable of disarming Hezbollah AMN (Kevin W)
Trump: I Made Israel Embassy Move for Evangelicals Antiwar (resilc)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Secret Service Bought Phone Location Data from Apps, Contract Confirms Vice (resilc)
235 Million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube User Profiles Exposed In Massive Data Leak Forbes
The man who built a spyware empire says it’s time to come out of the shadows MIT Technology Review
Trump Transition
The swamp wasn’t drained — it expanded The Hill. Resilc: “It’s long been a growth sector in USA USA.”
Donald Trump news: Senate intel report exposes US president’s letters to Vladimir Putin |Express (furzy)
Trump gives nod to Oracle buyout of TikTok in US BBC. Resilc: “Trump crips….’Oracle’s chairman Larry Ellison is a supporter of Mr Trump and held a fundraising event for him in February.’”
Anderson Cooper to MyPillow CEO: ‘You really are like a snake oil salesman’ The Hill
Michigan to Pay $600 Million in Flint Water Crisis Settlement Wall Street Journal. They got off easy. 80% to go to kids then under 18. Pool is 7,500 to 20,000. That means settlement per person = $24,000 to $64,000.
2020
Joe Biden is already planning a failed presidency The Week (UserFriendly)
Kamala Harris; Class Struggle and the Illusion of Identity in Capitalism Black Agenda Report (Carla R)
Billy Porter and Stephen Stills made a weird video of that Buffalo Springfield song to close out DNC Night 1 BoingBoing. OMG 20 seconds was all I could take.
Obama said people losing faith in the vote being meaningful is how democracy ends. That is just victim-blaming. Democracy ends when voting doesn’t change things. Voting for Obama didn’t change things, thus showing that democracy is weak and voting doesn’t matter.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 20, 2020
Transcript: Hillary Clinton’s DNC speech CNN (Kevin W)
Republicans quietly push mail-in voting despite Trump claims Politico (J-LS)
Could Trump Actually Win This Thing? American Conservative (resilc)
California Burning
Videos: California Wildfires Rage Across State, Tens of Thousands Forced to Evacuate Sputnik (Kevin W)
CalFire admits in presser this morning that they have NO resources to fight this. Like, NONE. Guess why? Bc the prison populations, who have for decades been California’s primary firefighter hand-crews on wildfires, are too sick with Covid to go. https://t.co/ZZKIpsN5lc
— RH Herron/Rachael Herron (@RachaelHerron) August 19, 2020
What’s driving Northern California’s freak ‘fire siege’? Mercury News (David L)
A Maine farmer went to pick up 800 baby chicks from the U.S. Postal Service.
They were all dead.
The USPS has been delivering chicks since 1918, but now…https://t.co/ffauxcwiSQ
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) August 19, 2020
Brazen Thief Drove Car Into Home Depot The Smoking Gun. Trussville, Al. About a half hour drive from here.
The farmer-influencer and the economics of streaming Tyler Cowen. Wellie, as a farmer, not much risk of being deplatformed.
Germany Begins Universal Basic Income Trial With People Getting $1,400 a Month For 3 Years Business Insider
UK Will Take a Crack At Regulating Future Self-Driving Car Systems CNET
Uber CEO On the Flight In California: ‘We Can’t Go Out and Hire 50,000 People Overnight’ The Verge. An admission that Uber did not prepare for losing the lawsuit.
Legislation to support CalPERS direct lending is withdrawn Bizjournals. We mentioned this in passing. Happened last week after the Meng blow up. Note CalPERS tried to pretend it pulled the bill, but the article makes clear it was the bill’s author, Assemblyman Jim Cooper. CalPERS’ new fallback is to sniff that it didn’t need the bill to proceed with its direct lending scheme.
Class Warfare
CEO compensation surged 14% in 2019 to $21.3 million: CEOs now earn 320 times as much as a typical worker Economic Policy Institute
Barack Obama is finally ready to jail rich people for their crimes The Week. How convenient that he has come around now.
Antidote du jour. How I feel. Tracie H:
My husband and I recently bought a little desert getaway house three hours away from where we actually live. Each weekend we’ve been driving there, loving the isolation and stark beauty of the desert. On the way back, we spotted this fellow on the side of a lonesome road (with a 65 mph speed limit), aimed toward what looked like was going to be an attempt to cross it. We turned around and went back to him. He seemed pleased to pose for a few pictures before I picked him up and moved him quite some distance back into the desert scrubs, admonishing him all the while about the dangers of the road.
And a bonus from Micael T: “Sport is apparently not unique for humans.”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
