Entropy Arbitrage Newsletter, (Almost) November 2020
October’s Idle Thoughts
Blog Posts for October 2020
Articles I’ve Been Reading
Web Pages That Caught My Attention

Entropy Arbitrage Newsletter, (Almost) November 2020

Today is Commonday, 15 of Skarl 4113. [4113.07.15]

…assuming you follow the Common Calendar, of course, but I assume you probably do not. Or should. Ahem. Newsletter!

Entropy Arbitrage welcomed visitors from Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Mexico, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States this month, which never fails to please me. Remember, all content is made available under the CC-BY-SA license, so if anybody needs to provide a translation, you don’t need my permission.

October’s Idle Thoughts

Newsletter number four, away! I’m sending out a bit early, since there’s an entire week (and Election Day) between now and the first Saturday of the month. So, it’s Halloween, and we’re all just counting the minutes until Daylight Saving Time ends.

Archiving Physical Media

A while ago, I started working on archiving my DVD collection. I have some movies and shows that aren’t readily available on streaming services, don’t want to track down a working DVD player to watch everything, and I could make better use of the shelf space than DVD cases.

I’m nearing the end of that project—it’s almost time to start thinking about setting up Emby or something similar—and have learned some surprising things.

Eight terabytes is a lot of space. I picked up a hard drive of that size at Costco, on sale for less than a hundred dollars. After “ripping” hundreds of DVDs, I still have half the drive free.
Ripping DVDs—even playing DVDs—is so much more unnecessarily difficult than it used to be. At some point over the years, the codecs for Linux have stopped working, even the commercial products. The best that I was able to put together was running ancient freeware on a rickety Windows machine. It shouldn’t be this hard to make backups of media, especially since…
DVDs degrade. Most of the discs are fine, of course. But a significant percentage of them are entirely unreadable or have dead “tracks” that the software will struggle for days trying to read, if I don’t manually abort the task.
DVD readers degrade, too. I’ve been buying cheap USB DVD players, and while they survive reading a decent number of discs, they seem to eventually all stop being able to read much of anything.

The next steps are probably going to turning the files into individual videos for different episodes, and then—as mentioned—setting up Emby for a home media server. One or the other will probably warrant a blog post, at some point. One day, I might even get ambitious enough to tackle the massive pile of VHS tapes, too.

Project Previews

Work has continued on projects I’m keeping relatively quiet until they’re done.

Renewed Lease to Doomsday

Here’s an actual preview, a bit of doggerel—meant to represent a part of a song—that will probably make an appearance in the novel.

wohi naw chéyélichyo téchyi-ye

mowéwe maw ma, wohi ma chéle,

ma shéno naw mopi. ma michaw a

le hipi fo chéle. le shémochyo

chuyéli, e foke me mete. ma

hichya michyi le metechyo, ma h’na

nuchuna chyochichyo. le chél-metyo

chuyéli ma. ma te ha péchyécho

ma chéle shuméshe péchyécho. (Oh!)

ma tifora shuméshe péchyécho.

le mete fo tifochyo wopo m’ha.

te hahére me tifora achyéfaw.

No, you’re not going bleary-eyed, it’s not in English. The story might lurch in a different direction as I write it, but currently, the plan is to use a predominantly immigrant neighborhood as one window onto the plot.

What’s that? You’d like a translation? Well, that would be telling, at least for now…

I will say that I’m a bit disappointed that the generated grammar (courtesy of VÜlgÅr, for anybody who needs such things) is a bit too English-like, in case any of you are trying to parse it.

Otherwise, the setting and the characters have mostly been chosen from existing sources and I have a good idea of the overall plot arc.

All Around the News

I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that this project was suitable for Django, but it wasn’t coming together. So, I abandoned that—at least for the time being—and decided to go with Ruby on Rails, instead. Django seems fine, to be clear, and I’m sure that my problems with it are more a matter of taste than anything else, but it feels like there are more steps to getting everything accomplished than I want to bother with.

That is, I can cook up the basics of the site with almost no work, with auto-generated scaffolding. Django, even with tools like Cookiecutter, seems to create an empty site and expect everything beyond the initialization to be written manually. By contrast, Rails doesn’t provide that sophisticated-looking empty site, but it does make it easy to get simple functionality working in minutes.

That delayed things, a bit. But domains are ready to go and launch should be coming later than I wanted, but soon.

Media

In no particular order, here are some things that I finished watching or listening to in September. No, I don’t remember when I started them.

I don’t talk about music much, but Heartache in C Minor is an EP by Echo Kellum, who you may know from his excellent run as “Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific” on Arrow, among other roles. I like his acting, so I figured I’d give his music a try. It’s definitely not my style—the audio is highly processed and there’s an undercurrent that might be interpreted as misogynist but also might be just part of break-up trauma—but Kellum is talented, regardless. If nothing else, it’s worth a listen for how it seamlessly drifts from low-tempo R&B to rapid-fire rap.
The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show is extremely watchable and covers an important moment in television history. However, there’s far too little of Harry Belafonte hosting The Tonight Show and too much of minor celebrities telling us about how important that week was. We’re told that there are two half hours and five minutes preserved by NBC, plus the audio for two episodes captured by a viewer, but we only get quick clips, not even the full interview with Martin Luther King Jr., and the modern interviews with Belafonte—who’s as magnetic as ever, even at ninety-three years old—are reduced to a handful of reaction shots. It seems like the whole thing would’ve worked far better as a limited series, using the original content and using “commercial breaks” to provide all the context they wanted.
I figured it was only right to watch Parasite after Knives Out, last month. Its focus on class is obviously more overt. The big downside, for me, is that foreign-language movies require my full attention, meaning that I can’t read or work on something else, while watching. Of the two movies that acknowledge the corrosive effect inequality has on society, I probably enjoyed Parasite more, because it’s basically a heist film, but also feel like the last third of the film went off the rails and suddenly wanted the protagonist family to be villainous. Or maybe I missed a few minutes of important subtitles.
Star Trek: Lower Decks, in some uncanny parallel to its main character, seems to delight in wasting its potential. It’s frustrating to have yet another Star Trek series that’s more interested in proving to viewers that the writers read a lot of pages on Memory Alpha, rather than having anything to say. In this case, the show is in a great position to criticize the tropes that the franchise has come to rely on and help move past them, but instead chooses to just…mention them. At least the new season of Discovery seems to be breaking new ground.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was the younger, commercial sibling to Where Are the Joneses?, which I’ve been watching for the Free Culture Book Club. I’ve been rewatching this, because it’s my favorite adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and one of the few that realizes Austen’s novel (also recommended) isn’t a singular or dual love story, but rather a comedy made from many love stories, no two of which are the same, but all legitimate. I honestly forgot how intense the story gets toward the end and how satisfyingly the various side-stories come together. The show inspired the creation of many mediocre copycat “classic literature as vlog” shows—including several created and/or distributed by the same studio—but I can’t hold that against this show. If you haven’t watched it before, do yourself a favor and fix that.
- Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical is a case in point, regarding adaptations that don’t seem to understand the novel. It adds straightforward comedic moments, like asides to the audience, while ignoring the (funnier) comedic moments in the text. It’s barely concerned with anything other than the Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy pairing. And characters like Charlotte Lucas say their piece, but it carries no weight, even implying in the end that she and Lydia will be unhappy. Strangely, as a musical, it also doesn’t appear to want to be a musical. The songs don’t have much stylistic consistency, and many songs either explain their scenes’ subtext or give Lizzie an opportunity to restate that she speaks her mind. I like musicals and Jane Austen, but wouldn’t recommend this at all. Most of the cast is impressively talented, though, and I did enjoy a couple of the songs, though I still don’t think they fit the show.
Sona, I stumbled on after finishing The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, created almost entirely by star Ashley Clements last year. It’s excellent, and if the effects, music, and editing were all paid market rates—I don’t know if they were, but it seems likely—it also represents a benchmark of what can be done on a shoestring budget. I have some problems with the ending and what seems to be a gratuitous Wil Wheaton cameo, but I want to see more from this world, and I will be watching for more from Clements.
Ted Lasso, I learned about through an episode of the Overthinking It (yes, the John C commenter happens to be me) and—despite the hassle of working with Apple’s consistently terrible software—the show is well worth the five hours and (if you don’t just cram it all into the seven-day trial period) five dollars. It’s not consistently funny, but when it’s funny, it’s very funny. But it’s also thoughtful about social justice, collaboration, success, and loss. It’s also a show that is (and hopes, but doesn’t require, that you also are) familiar with and excited about sports, literature, film, and musical theater. I’m half-watching other shows on Apple TV+, but none seem to be in this class and most of them just feel like knockoffs of other shows or the shallowest ideas available to 2019. Dickinson feels like it deserves to be good, however. It just isn’t, at least not for me.

Fewer daylight hours probably correlates with more screen time.

Blog Posts for October 2020

In case you missed one and don’t like RSS readers, here’s a round-up of the past month’s worth of posts.

Free Culture Book Club — MTF Sigma-5 “Pumpkin Punchers” - Sat Oct 31 2020
Tweets from 10/26 to 10/30 - Fri Oct 30 2020
Real Life in Star Trek, The Deadly Years - Thu Oct 29 2020
Writing a Twitter Bot - Wed Oct 28 2020
Developer Journal, World Eve for Audiovisual Heritage - Mon Oct 26 2020
Free Culture Book Club — Drakes - Sat Oct 24 2020
Tweets from 10/19 to 10/23 - Fri Oct 23 2020
Real Life in Star Trek, Friday’s Child - Thu Oct 22 2020
Developer Journal, Nanomonestotse - Mon Oct 19 2020
Politics in Art and Technology - Sun Oct 18 2020
Free Culture Book Club — Where Are the Joneses? Part 4 - Sat Oct 17 2020
Tweets from 10/12 to 10/16 - Fri Oct 16 2020
Real Life in Star Trek, Journey to Babel - Thu Oct 15 2020
Developer Journal, Indigenous Peoples’ Day - Mon Oct 12 2020
Voting as a Communal Activity - Sun Oct 11 2020
Free Culture Book Club — Where Are the Joneses? Part 3 - Sat Oct 10 2020
Tweets from 10/05 to 10/09 - Fri Oct 09 2020
Real Life in Star Trek, Metamorphosis - Thu Oct 08 2020
Developer Journal, World Teachers Day - Mon Oct 05 2020
Free Culture Book Club — Where Are the Joneses? Part 2 - Sat Oct 03 2020
Tweets from 09/28 to 10/02 - Fri Oct 02 2020
Real Life in Star Trek, I, Mudd - Thu Oct 01 2020

The most popular posts on the blog have been Recutils - Small Technology Notes, Victor Séjour’s Le Mulâtre, Writing Visual Studio Code Extensions, and Writing Browser Extensions with Configuration for the month.

Articles I’ve Been Reading

You’ve seen some of these already in Friday posts, but here’s more from the sources in my RSS reader that I thought were worth reading.

The President’s War on Dissent Is Using Trumped-Up Federal Charges from The Intercept
These Voters Got COVID-19 and Switched Their Candidates from VICE RSS Feed
Free food lures wildlife to suburban backyards from Futurity
Cops Said a Child Was Lost in Philly’s ‘Riots.’ Video Shows They Took Him From His Mom’s Car from VICE RSS Feed
Trump Administration Shields Racist Border Patrol Facebook Members from The Intercept
Here Are the “Extraordinary Measures” the USPS Plans To Get Your Ballots In from VICE RSS Feed
‘Conspiracy effect’ outweighs belief in real COVID science from Futurity
Mysterious ‘Planet Nine’ may hide in dark corner of space from Futurity
Texas Early Voting Exceeds Total of All 2016 Ballots from Latino Rebels
A Crash Landing Revealed Comet Ice Is Fluffier Than Cappuccino Froth from VICE RSS Feed
Glenn Greenwald’s Self Hack: “I could go on and on” from emptywheel
Facebook’s Mess of an Election Ad Policy Cost Biden $500,000 from VICE RSS Feed
Talking ‘Culture Warlords’ and the Second Civil War from VICE RSS Feed
Election Day needs to be a federal holiday because it’s good for business from Co.Exist
Congress Fails to Ask Tech CEOs the Hard Questions from Deeplinks
Overturning the Affordable Care Act Could Result in 68,000 Deaths from The Intercept
Report: US Knew of Problems Family Separation Would Cause from Latino Rebels
Body Camera Footage Shows Police Pursuit Before Moped Crash That Killed Black Man in DC from VICE RSS Feed
Just feeling exposed to ‘fake news’ makes voters cynical from Futurity
America’s Unregulated Fertility Industry Offers Patients Few Protections from VICE RSS Feed
Trump’s Slow-Motion Cover-Up of Erdogan Corruption and Jeff Sessions’ Meeting with Mike Flynn’s Clients from emptywheel
Susan Collins Backed Down From a Fight With Private Equity. Now They’re Underwriting Her Reelection. from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
Facebook Has Always Been Right-Wing Media from VICE RSS Feed
Expert: Trump speaks in coded language to his base from Futurity
A Rogue Mars-Sized Planet Is Hurtling Through Our Galaxy from VICE RSS Feed
Soylent Founder’s Unhinged Politics Rant Shows Tech Execs Don’t Understand the World from VICE RSS Feed
Why requiring a résumé is ruining your chance at finding a good hire during the pandemic from Co.Exist
We need to talk about using pet names for women at work from Co.Exist
Why do so many Americans not know how to vote? from Quartz
The Pandemic Is Devastating Women and Could Make It Harder for Them to Vote from VICE RSS Feed
COVID Tests Should Be Covered. Insurance Companies Are Using Sneaky Workarounds from VICE RSS Feed
How affordable health care can fight climate change from Futurity
The NSA is Refusing to Disclose its Policy on Backdooring Commercial Products from Schneier on Security
The UN Banned Nuclear Weapons, But the U.S. Isn’t Listening from VICE RSS Feed
QAnon and a Rape Joke Spell Trouble for Republican Congressman in Florida from The Intercept
How did music evolve? Harvard study reveals a surprising theory. No, it’s not a sexual mating call from Co.Exist
Yes, the lines are long. But voting is actually easier than ever from Co.Exist
Propane heaters are the new toilet paper from Co.Exist
ICE Wants New Jails in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania from Documented
Sen. David Perdue Led Dollar General’s Outsourcing Effort Into China from The Intercept
More than 500 business professors are urging CEOs to denounce Trump from Quartz
The DOJ Can’t Defend Trump in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Suit Against Him, Judge Says from VICE RSS Feed
Facebook’s Election-Week War on Accountability is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong from Deeplinks
Why Joe Biden will win rich places but not rich people from Quartz
Scooters are badly designed and increase inequality. Here’s how to fix them from Co.Exist
How to turn on end-to-end encryption in Zoom (and why you should) from Co.Exist
Hong Kong teachers self-censor as authorities target classrooms from Global Voices
This is the unseen factor pushing the COVID-19 death count even higher from Co.Exist
Men with physical jobs have 55% higher dementia risk from Futurity
Music industry forces widely used journalist tool offline from Freedom of the Press Foundation
Amazon Fired Employee for Leaking Customer Emails from VICE RSS Feed
Inside the Bizarre Publishing Ring That Linked 5G to Coronavirus from VICE RSS Feed
This is why we need to ditch the 8-hour workday for good from Co.Exist
Trump’s Pathetic Attempt to Get Netanyahu to Attack Biden Falls Flat from The Intercept
Clovis only made stone tools for about 300 years from Futurity
How will self-driving cars affect public health? from Futurity
The U.S. Is Having One of Its Worst Coronavirus Weeks Since the Pandemic Began from VICE RSS Feed
Fake ‘grammar’ shows apes get language basics from Futurity
Asian American New Yorkers See Highest Unemployment Growth from Documented
New Bill Strips Presidential Authority to Shut Down Internet from VICE RSS Feed
Swing States Face Risk of Militia Violence During Election: New Report from VICE RSS Feed
The Trump Administration Is On the Hook for More Than 130,000 COVID Deaths, Study Finds from VICE RSS Feed
The Real Reason Trump Is So Obsessed With Fracking from VICE RSS Feed
22 Ways to Make Thanksgiving Into Your Own Weird, Perfect Holiday from VICE RSS Feed
Indian ad featuring Hindu-Muslim family pulled after rightwing backlash from Global Voices
Flying During COVID-19 Isn’t Quite As Safe As United Airlines Says from VICE RSS Feed
Facebook Staff Urged to Snitch on Zuckerberg Over Election Disinformation from VICE RSS Feed
The Law that Indebted the USPS Is Even Worse Than You Think from VICE RSS Feed
Indigenous Voters Are Getting Hit Hard by Polling Station Cuts in North Dakota from VICE RSS Feed
‘It’s Very Much a Racial Issue’: Why Georgia Has Slashed Hundreds of Polling Places in the Last 4 Years from VICE RSS Feed
If you’re a woman or person of color in Hollywood, there’s bad news about the TV industry from Co.Exist
We need to talk about the science behind implicit bias training from Co.Exist
What is close contact? Here’s what the CDC says in new COVID-19 study from Co.Exist
Section 230 isn’t just a shield, it’s a sword—and it’s time to start wielding it against QAnon from Co.Exist
Want Some Terabytes from the Internet Archive to Play With? from Internet Archive Blogs
Open Access Must Be the Rule, Not the Exception from Deeplinks
Quibi is already dead from Co.Exist
Early trauma leads to changes in the blood from Futurity
The President Is Getting Desperate from VICE RSS Feed
COVID Is Ruining One of the Most Important Traditions of Mexico’s Day of the Dead from VICE RSS Feed
To Everyone Who Can Vote, From Someone Who Wished He Could from Latino Rebels
“We’re Not a Democracy” from The Intercept
Yearlong Protests and Demonstrations Continue in Haiti from Latino Rebels
COVID testing is still too slow in the US from Futurity
The Trump Administration Has Effectively Orphaned 545 Migrant Kids from VICE RSS Feed
The Trump Administration Is Getting Sued Over COVID Exploding in Prisons from VICE RSS Feed
NASA Landed a Probe on an Ancient Asteroid and Took a Sample In First for U.S. from VICE RSS Feed
Malicious Campaigns Are Trying to Stop Black and Latinx People From Voting from VICE RSS Feed
Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say from VICE RSS Feed
Twitter-Owned SDK Leaking Location Data of Millions of Users from VICE RSS Feed
The Fed Saved the Economy but Is Threatening Trillions of Dollars Worth of Middle-Class Retirement from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
Indonesian Security Forces Vow to Purge LGBT People From Their Ranks from VICE RSS Feed
This is how Big Tech is failing its Black employees from Co.Exist
4 things you can do right now to make the future of work (and life) more inclusive from Co.Exist
The acquisitions that made Google a search monopoly from Quartz
If You Love Your Family, Cancel This Year’s Holiday Gathering from VICE RSS Feed
Far-Right Trump Supporters Are Infiltrating Polling Stations from VICE RSS Feed
How Trump Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules from The Intercept
“Trumpcare” Does Not Exist. Nevertheless Facebook and Google Cash In on Misleading Ads for “Garbage” Health Insurance. from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
Days After Returning to Office, Facebook Content Moderator Contracts Coronavirus from The Intercept
Honey bees tell friend from foe by gut bacteria from Futurity
Postal workers really do not feel safe from Quartz
A Rookie Cop Was Just Fired For Posting on Neo-Nazi Forum Iron March from VICE RSS Feed
How Amy Coney Barrett Ruled in a Case About a Raped Pregnant Teen Is Worrying People from VICE RSS Feed
STEM TV for kids leaves out women, Latinx characters from Futurity
The Trump Campaign Is ‘Inspiring and Incentivizing’ Attacks on Gretchen Whitmer from VICE RSS Feed
Trump Campaign Embraces “Blacks for Trump” Founder Who Belonged to Violent Cult from The Intercept
QAnon Is Running the Pizzagate Playbook With Hunter Biden from VICE RSS Feed
Anthony Fauci Was ‘Absolutely Not’ Surprised Trump Got COVID from VICE RSS Feed
New York City Sees Record Census Count from Documented
Hispanics were the only ethnic group to see COVID-19 death rates increase this summer from Co.Exist
How we could save $4 billion in building energy costs—without any renovations from Co.Exist
Steve Bannon, Guccifer 2.0, Glenn Greenwald, and Me: How Glenn Greenwald Defends “Smear Artist & Cowards” from emptywheel
Why Do Nonwhite Georgia Voters Have to Wait in Line for Hours? Their Numbers Have Soared, and Their Polling Places Have Dwindled. from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
New York Times to Staff: You Can Only Trash Colleagues If You Have a Column from VICE RSS Feed
Minneapolis Will Consider Facial Recognition Ban from VICE RSS Feed
Fewer young adults drink than 20 years ago from Futurity
“That’s Rudy.” Trump Proves, Yet Again, That He Would Just Ignore a Defensive Briefing from emptywheel
Bisexuals get less health benefit from education from Futurity
A Desperate Trump Rallies in Iowa as He Cancels Ads, Loses Ground from The Intercept
Blue-light glasses improve your sleep and work from Futurity
Eurasia’s oldest balls suggest warriors worked out from Futurity
Inside the Fall of the CDC from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
Sending Letters to Incarcerated People Is Too Hard. This App Makes It Easy from VICE RSS Feed
YouTube Bans QAnon After Helping Mainstream QAnon from VICE RSS Feed
New book tells stories of suffering and resistance from Iran’s female prisons from Global Voices
Facebook Is Letting Trump Promise Voters a Nonexistent Free COVID ‘Treatment’ from VICE RSS Feed
5 Things to Do Right Now If You’re Anxious About the Election from VICE RSS Feed
Bruised masculinity can backfire in 2 ways from Futurity
Caribbean alphabet series provides lots of laughs on TikTok from Global Voices
A Profanity Filter Banned the Word ‘Bone’ at a Paleontology Conference from VICE RSS Feed
As Paul Singer Donated Millions to Republican Governors Association, Public Funds Flowed Into His Hedge Funds from The Intercept
Facebook and Twitter are finally using their most effective tool against disinformation from Co.Exist
Amy Coney Barrett’s Take on Voting Rights Act Exposes Her Entire Legal Philosophy as a Lie from The Intercept
Once again, NBC decided to serve Trump’s interests from Quartz
Twitter Is Banning Fake Accounts Claiming to Be Black Trump Supporters from VICE RSS Feed
Proprietary Grapes Come With Draconian End User License Agreement from VICE RSS Feed
Facebook Contractor Downplays Coronavirus Risk for Content Moderators from The Intercept
How Texas Republicans Paved the Way for Their Own Demise from The Intercept
Cricket ‘singing’ has been the same for 300 million years from Futurity
Black officers face discipline more often than white police from Futurity
Reinfected Patient’s Second Case of COVID-19 Was Even More Severe from Futurism
Right-Wing Trolls Made an Indian Brand Withdraw its Ad on Interfaith Couple from VICE RSS Feed
QAnon Fans Try To Explain Why Trump Took a Drug Developed with Fetal Tissue from VICE RSS Feed
Poll watching is legal, voter intimidation is not. Which does Trump actually want? from Co.Exist
Why America has way more roads than it needs from Co.Exist
The GOP Men of the Senate Really Want You to Know Amy Coney Barrett Has 7 Kids from VICE RSS Feed
Far-Right Twitter Trolls Won’t Admit They Were Wrong About Killing of a “Patriot” in Denver from The Intercept
Trump Is Returning to the Campaign Trail With Lies About COVID Immunity from VICE RSS Feed
How I learned not to hate from Global Voices
Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland from The Intercept
How to Support Someone You Care About if They’re Stuck at Home With Bigots from VICE RSS Feed
It only takes minutes for Earth to grow gems from Futurity
Donald Trump Spent a Deranged Evening Coughing at Sean Hannity from VICE RSS Feed
Blue whales switch when they sing for migration from Futurity
How Facebook Allows Misinformation to Spread Even After It’s Flagged from VICE RSS Feed
Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Preventing Trump Administration Cutting the Census Short from Documented
How campaigns use manipulative tricks to convince you to open their emails from Co.Exist
Trump Took a COVID Drug Tested Using Fetal Cells From an Abortion from VICE RSS Feed
Tally of nursing home deaths during Irma was too low from Futurity
Undocumented immigration either cuts or has no effect on crime from Futurity
What to Say if a Friend Insists ‘800,000 Children Are Trafficked Each Year’ from VICE RSS Feed
Facebook Just Forced Its Most Powerful Critics Offline from VICE RSS Feed
Local news covers murder victims from white places more from Futurity
Tuned lighting helps older adults get a good night’s sleep from Futurity
Monkeys show early bonding benefits last generations from Futurity
How One Man Built a Neo-Nazi Insurgency in Trump’s America from VICE RSS Feed
In-person college classes lead to about 3k COVID cases daily from Futurity
Narcissistic leaders poison their organizations for decades from Co.Exist
In Florida, the Gutting of a Landmark Law Leaves Few Felons Likely to Vote from ProPublica: Articles and Investigations
5 strategies to fix a toxic workplace from Co.Exist
What we (don’t) know about Trump’s Covid-19 long-term prognosis from Quartz
Post-election protests spark another revolution in Kyrgyzstan from Global Voices
Care for others drives use of chatbots for mental health from Futurity
Trump’s Job Description Does Not Include ‘Slandering Women,’ E. Jean Carroll’s Lawyers Argue from VICE RSS Feed
Fossils indicate ice age manatees near Texas from Futurity
Mitch McConnell Put the Senate in Recess. What Happens Now? from The Intercept
Restricting abortion is bad for the economy from Quartz
How San Francisco’s DA cut the city’s jail population without jeopardizing public safety from Co.Exist
The Supreme Court Just Mucked Up Mail Voting in South Carolina from VICE RSS Feed
The Boogaloo Bois Are Turning a Man Killed in an FBI Shootout Into Their New Martyr from VICE RSS Feed
It Took Hours for Facebook to Delete Trump’s False Claim That COVID Is Less Deadly Than the Flu from VICE RSS Feed
To fight climate change, put algae on the menu from Futurity
Homeland Security Wants to Erase Its History of Misconduct from The Intercept
Help, My Candidate Is Dying: Most Campaign Emails Are Manipulative, Study Finds from VICE RSS Feed
The Trump Admin Is Blocking the FDA’s Guidelines for a Safer COVID Vaccine from VICE RSS Feed
Restaurants indicate assimilation goes two ways from Futurity
AT&T’s Decision To Kill DSL Could Leave Millions Without Broadband from VICE RSS Feed
Social sameness can raise or lower suicide risk from Futurity
How reparations would work today from Quartz
Infected Trump Returns to White House, Risking Lives Just to Shoot Video Pro-Virus PSA from The Intercept
Trump Appointee to VOA Reporters: Criticizing Trump Is a Conflict of Interest from The Intercept
Politicians Have Always Misunderstood Springsteen’s ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ from VICE RSS Feed
Oven Roasted Autumn Medley from Budget Bytes
Come Back with a Warrant for my Virtual House from Deeplinks
Police violence takes a toll on mental health from Futurity
A Thousand Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection from VICE RSS Feed
Trump tweets ‘Don’t be afraid of COVID’ despite new CDC guidance warning of airborne transmission from Co.Exist
Fringe Conspiracy Theorists Think Trump Is an Immortal Alien, Got COVID as Cover to Shapeshift from VICE RSS Feed
A 5-cent sensor could detect the coronavirus in 10 minutes at home from Co.Exist
The Real Cancel Culture: Pro-Israel Blacklists from The Intercept
Trump’s Condition Is ‘Very Concerning’ and His Doctors Are Dodging Questions from VICE RSS Feed
Trump’s Turn From Immigration to the Enemy Within from The Intercept
Hunger-striking surgeon struggles to reform Nepal’s inadequate health care system from Global Voices
Twitter Says You Cannot Tweet That You Hope Trump Dies From COVID from VICE RSS Feed
Amazon Warehouse Workers in Minnesota Walk Off the Job, Protest Alleged Retaliation from VICE RSS Feed
Some Colleges Are Abruptly Cancelling the Semester After Thanksgiving from VICE RSS Feed
Trump Has Been Lying About His Health for Years—How Can Americans Trust Him Now? from VICE RSS Feed
QAnon Believers Think Trump Got COVID On Purpose Because of Course They Do from VICE RSS Feed
If COVID-19 pushes people to the suburbs, how can we make them more environmentally friendly? from Co.Exist
What happened when the Trump admin reimposed the US abortion gag rule in Kenya from Quartz
Why Are Employers Still Acting Like Offices Will Reopen ‘Soon’? from VICE RSS Feed
Some Black Lives Matter Supporters Say Their Stance Got Them Fired from VICE RSS Feed
Holocaust denial should be considered hate speech, survivors demand of Facebook from Global Voices
Restoring Democracy During the Pandemic Requires a Modernized Approach to Activate Voters (OPINION) from Latino Rebels
Donald Trump Is the ‘Single Largest Driver’ of COVID Misinformation, Study Says from VICE RSS Feed
Trump Is Essentially Slapping His Name on Food Aid Boxes Now from VICE RSS Feed
I’m Obsessed With Joe Biden’s Dr. Bronner’s-ass Hand Sanitizer from VICE RSS Feed
The Gravel Institute Is Trying to Make PragerU, But Good from VICE RSS Feed
Too many pictures hinder young kids’ reading from Futurity
Over 72 Hours, Trump and Chuck Grassley Provide Emmet Sullivan Proof that Peter Strzok’s Notes Were Altered for Political Reasons from emptywheel
This is why the Equal Rights Amendment matters for our economic recovery from Co.Exist

Web Pages That Caught My Attention

These are pages I bookmarked, basically. They might be old articles, non-articles, fiction, or any number of other possibilities. You’ve seen the web. You know what it’s like out there. And you also know that half the titles are probably bogus, because people are terrible at setting their page titles to something useful.

That’s it for this month. Stop by the blog and leave comments or contact me however else you see fit.

—John

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