Links 12/15/2020
Digital technology reveals secrets of UK’s earliest dinosaur Guardian (Kevin W)
today I learned that naked mole rats, the only eusocial mammal known, have their own class of expat fuckbois whose job is solely to avoid work and leave the colony to go impregnate queens elsewhere to avoid inbreeding
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) December 14, 2020
Critical temperature for tropical tree lifespan revealed PhysOrg (Chuck L)
Excellent year for ‘wild ice’ skating on northern Minnesota lakes MPR. Chuck L: “More re the unusual cold but snowless winter in northern MN. This piece includes some awesome photos.”
Solving a Long-Standing Mystery About the Sun: How Stored Magnetic Energy Heats Solar Atmosphere SciTechDaily (furzy)
Don’t Use Or Buy Metal Grill Brushes The Worst Things for Sale. News you can use!
Tome raiders: solving the great book heist Guardian (Anthony L)
Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs and other services go down in multiple countries TechCrunch (furzy).
Powerhouse plants that bolster the food web PhysOrg (Chuck L)
#COVID-19
Stefano Boeri designs prefab vaccination pavilions to be rolled out across 1,500 Italian squares Dezeen (resilc)
Science/Medicine
‘Shocking and Alarming’: Indian Hospital Warns About Deadly Fungus in Recovered COVID Patients Sputnik (guurst). Just because screechy headline does not mean this not big time bad.
Diverse Functional Autoantibodies in Patients with COVID-19 MedRxiv
Virtually all children infected with COVID-19 show signs of blood vessel damage, study shows Study Finds
WTF, why weren’t they tested?
Everyone should read this paper, esp. Tables 15, 17, and 19, and this weird bit on pg. 41:
“Among 3,410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1,594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”https://t.co/lfzTZ88VCV
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) December 14, 2020
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock says a new coronavirus strain may be spreading faster than the original, but scientists aren’t so sure Business Insider (Kevin W)
WHO Epidemiologist: “Only with Vaccination of Younger People Will Number of Cases Decrease” Der Spiegel (resilc)
Are we out of the woods yet? Bruegel. Key section:
Four in 10 doctors in Belgium, the country where I reside, are not themselves keen to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Similar results have been found also in the UK. It is likely that such concerns exist in other countries as well.
These doctors are not vaccine deniers. Their objection is that the vaccine, despite all the money, effort and best science dedicated to it, has simply not passed the test of time.
UK/Europe
Covid-19: Greenwich Council ordered to keep schools open BBC (Kevin W)
The Netherlands to go into 5-week lockdown Politico
Italy likely to follow Germany with Covid Christmas lockdown Guardian
US
Hunger spikes, demand rises for US food banks BBC (furzy)
Latest updates as President not ‘scheduled’ to take Covid vaccine Independent (furzy). Don’t get this as a point of interest. He got Covid, remember? He should have immunity for a while, so him getting a shot theoretically deprives someone else. And because he had Covid, he presumably won’t have any reaction, while it looks like a fair number of other people will. If the idea is to show confidence, he could have Melania or Ivanka take it.
Finance/Economy
More U.S. Homeowners Seek to Delay Mortgage Payments Bloomberg
“Amazing” Hypocrisy: Democrats Make Wreck of Covid-19 Relief Negotiations Matt Taibbi
.@berniesanders is not impressed with master negotiators Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi: “What kind of negotiation is it when you go from $3.4 trillion to $188 billion in new money? That is not a negotiation. That is a collapse.” https://t.co/XlqPwdqHaR
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) December 14, 2020
Plastic surgery is up during the pandemic Washington Post (resilc)
Pandemic Failure, Vaccine Success Indict American Monopoly Capitalism Juan Cole
Pandemic stalls Indonesia’s push to escape middle-income trap Nikkei
China?
China’s ‘tainted’ cotton BBC. Underlying source has a blatantly partisan name, but one assumes that the BBC has vetted (as in read the Chinese) in the underlying records provided in the report.
Biden’s choice for US trade representative signals anti-China stance WSWS
In Latin America, a Biden White House faces a rising China Reuters
China has banned Australian coal in a huge escalation of the trade war, state media reports Business Insider Australia Business Insider (Kevin W)
Brexit (tweets below from guurst)
EU sees ‘narrow path’ to Brexit deal in coming days Politico
Actually, come to think of it, with the endless moving of “deadlines” Brexiternity has already begun. Welcome to the future. Whatever is agreed between the UK and the EU will always only ever be temporary. The UK/EU relationship will now be front and centre of UK politics forever
— Tom Hayes (@BEERG) December 14, 2020
We just heard via an importer, that lorries are taking 3 days to enter the UK and 3 days to leave and that drivers are either refusing to come and turning back with goods destined for our UK businesses, or they are demanding more money which is being passed back on to UK business pic.twitter.com/RHY09r2U0L
— EU Flag Mafia 3.5% (@EUflagmafia) December 14, 2020
One single trawler boat owned by the Dutch has 23% of all UK catch which it lands in Netherlands. Johnson risking trade with Europe for a Dutch firm? https://t.co/E1RD1rpPxw
— Denis MacShane (@DenisMacShane) December 14, 2020
New Cold War
CNN-Bellingcat investigation identifies Russian specialists who trailed Putin’s nemesis Alexey Navalny before he was poisoned CNN (Kevin W). So now Bellingcat has been elevated by the MSM. Charming.
Syraqistan
The Latest Phony ‘Peace’ Deal Is Stoking Conflict American Conservative (resilc)
Bibi wants Biden to bend the knee Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Trump Transition
William Barr steps down as Trump’s attorney general Guardian (Kevin W)
Foreign Workers Ban Has Left U.S. Schools With Teacher Shortages Intercept
Speculation swirls over Ivanka Trump’s potential run for US Senate in Florida Guardian
2020
Trump Allies Want ‘Alternative Electors’ to Declare Him Winner of the Electoral College Vice
Michigan GOP Rep Stripped of Panels After Threat to Biden Electors at Lansing Statehouse Daily Beast (furzy)
Biden
President-elect Biden Remarks on Electoral College Vote C-SPAN (Kevin W)
Will Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists? CounterPunch. Resilc: “It’s called market development for DoD/CIA
How do we hold the traitors to democracy accountable? Washington Post (furzy). Yet they don’t hold themselves accountable for the attempted coup of Russiagate? I sense way too much of this sort of thing on both sides: “I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.” Pol Pot
Gunz
Floridian Offers Novel Reason For Carrying AR-15 The Smoking Gun (resilc)
Our Famously Free Press
A record breaking number of journalists arrested in the U.S. this year Freedom of the Press Foundation (Tom H)
Police State Watch
Police Say Seizing Property Without Trial Helps Keep Crime Down. A New Study Shows They’re Wrong. ProPublica (resilc)
Exclusive: Read Elizabeth Warren’s Scathing Report on “Corrupt” Prison Audits Mother Jones
Defund Campus Police Slate
EU to unveil landmark law curbing power of tech giants DW
The Facebook corporate spin machine has people fooled into believing a break up isn’t possible. A former Instagram employee told the @davidcicilline House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee the exact opposite. (p. 151) https://t.co/elW4m1w1Pn pic.twitter.com/9A7lX09lym
— Sally Hubbard (@Sally_Hubbard) December 14, 2020
Reith Lectures 2020 – How We Get What We Value Mark Carney BBC. JHR: “Mark Carney has already delivered the first two lectures, the third is this week.” From the BBC site:
Mark Carney’s Reith Lectures will chart how we have come to esteem financial value over human value and how we have gone from market economies to market societies. He argues that this has contributed to a trio of crises: of credit, Covid and climate. And the former Bank of England governor will outline how we can turn this around.
Beware The ‘Post-War Hangover’ From Misguided Government Belt Tightening Heisenberg Report (resilc)
Class Warfare
Mark Zuckerberg, Venture-Capital Radical American Conservative (resilc)
Blackstone CEO Celebrates “Huge Increases in Rents” as Millions Face Eviction Jacobin (resilc). Lambert featured the underlying story yesterday, but in case you missed it….
Uber, DoorDash Raising Prices in California to Fund Driver Perks Bloomberg
From Chuck L. Trust me, read the thread:
I got to teach a great advanced undergrad class on “Theories & Uses of Power” this semester. Here’s a thread on how it went.
tl;dr books by @longtweetergram @KeeangaYamahtta @nickwestes @ininteriority & @stschrader1 are great. Read them and teach them.
1/20
— Scott B. Ritner (@podsekalnikov) December 9, 2020
Antidote du jour. Tracie H: “Weedy Sea Dragon at the Aquarium of the Pacific”:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
