Links 7/29/2020 – Church Security

Incredibly rare blue lobster saved from certain death by Red Lobster employees ABC

In California’s only known wolf pack, there are now at least 8 new pups CNN

Scientists revive 100 million-year-old microbes from the sea BBC. “After incubation by the scientists, the microbes began to eat and multiply.” Oh.

Tech giants invoke American dream to defend their power FT. Stoller on the Silicon Valley monopoly hearings:

Yup. Three out of four big tech companies are repped by former Obama officials. Amazon is repped by Lanny Breuer, who was the Obama guy who made the call not to send any bankers to jail. (Of course he doesn’t litigate, he is just the political heavy.) https://t.co/qMMuXz240w

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 29, 2020

One big happy!

Jeff Bezos To Washington: ‘My Dad’s Name Is Miguel. He Adopted Me When I Was 4’ NPR. You were lucky.

Absentee Ownership: How Amazon, Facebook, and Google Ruin Commerce Without Noticing Matt Stoller, BIG. And speaking of absentee landlords, there was that AirBnB “party house” in New Jersey the other day. 700 people….

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google The Markup. Google turning itself into a walled garden.

Online Bar Exams Come With Face Scans, Bias Concerns (1) Bloomberg. And crashes.

US Treasuries: the lessons from March’s market meltdown FT

#COVID19

Treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and combination in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 International Journal of Infecious Diseases. From the conclusion: “In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality. Prospective trials are needed to examine this impact.” From the Henry Ford Health Systems press release: “The vast majority received the drug soon after admission; 82% within 24 hours and 91% within 48 hours of admission. All patients in the study were 18 or over with a median age of 64 years; 51% were men and 56% African American.”

Why ICMR continues to stand firm on using hydroxychloroquine as prophylaxis Economic Times. Prophylaxis is also the use case advocated here. So we are conducting an enormous natural experiment.

COVID-19: India donates 7 tons of hydroxychloroquine to Nigeria Business Day. Here too.

Trump Doubles Down on Demon Sperm Doc The Daily Beast

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A Vaccine Reality Check The Atlantic

Moderna pitches virus vaccine at about $50-$60 per course FT

The computational linguistics of COVID-19 vaccine design Language Log

‘It’s like you injected adrenaline into them’: Facebook’s vaccine misinformation problem faces a new test with Covid-19 STAT

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City Praises Contact-Tracing Program. Workers Call Rollout a ‘Disaster.’ NYT

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Face masks are breaking facial recognition algorithms, says new government study The Verge (Re Silc). That’s a damn shame.

Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic Nature. From the abstract: “SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. …. [T]he lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.”

India

‘A villager cried at seeing my picture of a snow leopard. That moment had great meaning for me’ Times of India

Indian firms struggle to lure migrant workers back Agence France Presse

China?

Three Gorges Dam under fast mounting flood pressure Asia Times (KW).

China woos Asean neighbours in bid to avoid US-led coalition on its doorstep SCMP. The word “water” does not appear.

Australia Abandons Its Neutrality on the South China Sea Maritime Disputes The Diplomat

Mistress of invective:

The pro-BJ politician (white jacket) suggested taking welfare from the elderly. Bc most people on my timeline are too polite to attempt to translate this verbatim, here’s my public service in the name of the elderly and in service of this woman’s poetic feat of profanity. THREAD: https://t.co/HthIzlJpiO

— T▇▇ 謝▇ (@t1ffany4scale) July 28, 2020

BJ = Beijing.

The Koreas

Revised missile pact with US to facilitate Seoul’s monitoring of Korean peninsula via satellite Straits Times. Ask a Korean comments:

1. Nuclear waste reprocessing
2. USD-KRW currency swap
3. Nuclear sub construction
4. Tech transfer for satellite launches
5. Unlimited ranges for S Korean missiles

With the new missiles pact, Kim now has 2, 3 and 5. Keep watching this space, because this admin ain’t stopping.

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) July 28, 2020

Now South Korea’s Getting An Aircraft Carrier, Too Forbes

Seoul’s subway app to allow users to report passengers who don’t wear masks Hankyoreh

Syraqistan

Iran missiles target fake carrier as US bases go on alert AP

UK/EU

Labour anti-Semitism whistleblowers ‘could drop legal action that could cost the party millions if it expels former leader Jeremy Corbyn’ Daily Mail

Vloggers show how to migrate illegally on a jet ski The Economist

Venezuela Rejects Washington’s ‘Wild West’ Bounty Against Chief Justice Moreno Venezuelanalysis

Lithium coup:

“Renewable” energy kingpin Elon Musk practically takes credit for the Bolivian lithium coup just months after planning a meeting with Bolsonaro ahead of a Tesla factory in lithium rich Brazil https://t.co/PcizH4pLfQ https://t.co/7kTrA7fPsV pic.twitter.com/zaVqte1KHW

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 25, 2020

He can’t help himself, can he?

How a Police Spy’s Stunning Testimony Threatens the Official Buenos Aires Bombing Story Consortium News (CL).

New Cold War

No need for a new Cold War. Fiona Hill on Italy, Russia and China (interview) Formiche.

Trump Transition

Here are the differences between the Democratic and Republican stimulus bills CNN. Zero for the Post Office is bipartisan, apparently.

A wave of evictions is coming. Democrats are proposing a lifeline. Vox. Access to lawyers. That’s the lifeline.

Police State Watch

Federal agents pull out of Seattle, mayor says Reuters (dk).

The Portland Military Policing Model Isn’t the Beginning of a Trend — It’s the Culmination of One Jacobin

Vallejo police bend badges to mark fatal shootings Open Vallejo

Minneapolis police say ‘Umbrella Man’ was a white supremacist trying to incite George Floyd rioting Star Tribune

How The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office Has Used A Shadowy Charity Fund In Criminal Cases WLRN

Portland’s ‘Wall of Moms’: A Nonviolent Resistance Campaign with Historical Precedent Counterpunch

The Future of Nonviolent Resistance Erica Chenoweth, Journal of Democracy. From the abstract: “[E]ven as civil resistance reached a new peak of popularity during the 2010s, its effectiveness had begun to decline—even before the covid-19 pandemic brought mass demonstrations to a temporary halt in early 2020. This essay argues that the decreased success of nonviolent civil resistance was due not only to savvier state responses, but also to changes in the structure and capabilities of civil-resistance movements themselves. Perhaps counterintuitively, the coronavirus pandemic may have helped to address some of these underlying problems by driving movements to turn their focus back to relationship-building, grassroots organizing, strategy, and planning.” Well worth a read.