Some Newsletters Worth Reading

I'm finding that reading email newsletters is a better use of my time than browsing the web looking for news or especially, analysis of current affairs. (Also better is using an RSS reader like Feedly, but I'll save writing about that for another time).

These are some of the newsletters that I subscribe to. They are all free, though some have a paid tier for more posts or features. 

• Field Notes is a weekly newsletter of urban nature writing and photography from author Christopher Brown. His latest book is A Natural History of Empty Lots which incorporates some material from this newsletter.. He has also written three dystopian, near future novels, including Tropic of Kansas, which I recently read and recommend. 
• Letters From an American is a daily newsletter from historian Heather Cox Richardson. She is especially good at putting current events into their historical context. This newsletter is my main tool for understanding what's going on behind the daily flood of US political news. 
• Ground Truths by Eric Topol, a cardiologist, still practicing, with some expertise in genomics, digital and artificial intelligence, at the Scripps Institute. Weekly, mostly about medical topics, including COVID-19.
• The Status Kuo by Jay kuo, a lawyer who takes "a deep dive each weekday into important political and legal topics, broken down in plain English and easily digestible morsels." He also writes for The Big Picture.
• The Big Picture, founded by George Takei publishes two in-depth articles a week on social and political issues. 
• The Munro Report by Alasdair Munro, a senior clinical research fellow in paediatric infectious diseases in the UK. Topics include child health, clinical research, and infectious diseases. 
• betakit, a weekly newsletter about Canadian startup and technology companies. If you're interested in Canadian tech news, betakit is the site to go to.
• Thinking About.... by Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale and author of the books On Tyranny, Our Malady, and most recently On Freedom. This is a good complement to Letters From an American.
• Transfer Orbit by Andrew Liptak, an author and historian who writes about cosplay and science fiction and fantasy. 
• Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy, by Phil Plait, astronomer and author of Death From the Skies: The Science Behind the End of the World. "Everything, the Universe, and Life".
• Your Local Epidemiologist by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an  an epidemiologist and data scientist. The newsletter covers a wide range of medical topics including the pandemic and other infectious diseases. Of all the medical newsletters I read, this is the best. 
• Unapocalyptic by Karl Schroeder, a professional futurist and science fiction writer. His goal is to provide "a community of dedicated people putting their heads together to find out how to use one to amplify the effect of another—to turn a jumble of ideas into a system for change."

I get several other newsletters, but most of those are published by the newspapers that I subscribe to and provide links to daily news stories that they want to promote.

Featured Links - November 18, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The marina waiting for winter

How to Stay Covid Safe When in Hospital. "A guide to navigating the risk of hospital acquired Covid - as well as how to manage overall risk of nosocomial infections and hospital derived complications." Reading this article may save your life.

Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges Hall discusses Norman Rockwell's famous painting. "Ruby Bridges became a civil rights icon when she was 6. Yet she didn't realize it for decades. The world knows her as the little girl in Norman Rockwell's famous 1963 painting, The Problem We All Live With, a black child being escorted to a white New Orleans school by federal marshals."

What Is RSS? If you aren't using an RSS reader, you're online life is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. I use Feedly and would have a hard time living without it.

In Memoriam: Thomas E. Kurtz, 1928–2024. Kurtz was the co-inventor of BASIC, arguably the most influential computer language. It was the second one I learned, after encountering FORTRAN in university.

Half-Life 2 remaster drops; no word on Half-Life 3. "Half-Life 2 RTX, a remaster of the original game featuring all kinds of fancy, cutting-edge graphics tech, has been revealed in full force and looks absolutely beautiful." I can't wait to play this! It's too bad there's no release date yet.

Trump Claims a Mandate, But He’s Wrong And It Will Cost Him. "Trump is already overreaching, giving Democrats a clear opening."

The Ghosts of John Tanton. "Today’s contentious immigration debate is the construct of one man’s effort to halt overpopulation, brace for climate change and preserve “European” culture. Now climate change is amplifying environmental concerns that have always run through the white supremacy and the anti-immigration movements. Experts warn that extremists who seize on global warming to justify violence are part of a far right trend to reclaim environmentalism as their own."

Photo of the Week - November 17, 2024

This is one of the trees along the shore of the spit leading to the entrance to Frenchman's Bay. Given the complete lack of leaves, I don't think it's doing too well.

Fujifilm X-S10 with Fujinon 27 mm/F2.8 at F6.4, 1/250th second, ISO 400, Velvia film simulation

 

Saturday Sounds - Julian Taylor - Pathways

Julian Taylor is a Canadian indigenous singer-songwriter. Nancy and I have heard some of his songs on SiriusXM's NorthAmericana channel and like what we've heard. Last weekend we drove up to Greenbank and saw him in a concert presented by the Greenbank Folk Music Society. We enjoyed it enough that we ordered tickets for a February concert presented by Acoustic Harvest in Scarborough. 

Julian Taylor in Greenbank

During his concert, he played several songs from his latest album, Pathways, which is embedded below. The title song is particularly captivating.

And here's a pro-shot video of Julian Taylor playing with his band at Toronto's Winterfolk Festival earlier this year. It's quite lovely.

We're Toast 54

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. (And based on the results of last week's US election, probably sooner than I originally thought). It is part of an ongoing series of posts. 

Autumn Leaves

• ‘Wicked problem’: five charts that show how the climate crisis is making Australia more dangerous. "A report by BoM and CSIRO checks ‘vital signs of Australia’s climate’ – and shows temperature trends will only worsen."
• Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past (gift link). "New construction at a military research site near Moscow reveals a specialized laboratory complex designed to research and handle deadly pathogens, experts say." It could be just because they want to do research to protect against pandemics, but given past history, I have my doubts.
• How Oceans are becoming an Acid Bath. "Oceans have saved us from the worst impacts of global warming but are turning acidic as a result of carbon pollution."
• Microplastics Likely Causing Wave of Cancer in Young People. "Millennials and zoomers have a new thing to worry about."
• We’ve Slipped Back into that Alternate Universe. "Took a nap, what a bad dream! Trump got elected, and the Senate was taken over by GOP! Like an alternate world! I mean, a rapist felon in the WH, a Senate that would work with Trump to make sure they can’t be voted out–that could never happen. What? No. Come on. No don’t tell me that. I said no."
• ‘Minimal progress’ made this year on curbing global heating, report finds. "Analysis by Climate Action Tracker puts median temperature rise by 2100 at 2.7C if current policies continue." I really didn't intend the title of this blog topic to be literal. 
• Space trash is falling from the sky. And that’s not the worst of it (gift link). "The world needs to clean up its junk."
• World on track for hottest year ever as carbon pollution hits record levels. "Extraordinarily warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic are helping to fuel an unusually active hurricane season."
• Expert: Trump's second term will create "hellscape". "If you haven't freaked out yet about Trump resuming office, Al Franken's latest podcast episode, "The Coming Hellscape," might do the trick. His guest, political scientist Norm Ornstein, and longtime observer of American politics, says Trump's victory could be devastating to the country."

Protecting Yourself from Government Surveillance

If you live in the United States, it's a good idea to start thinking about how you can protect yourself from being surveilled by the government. 

As Wired Magazine says in their Guide to Protecting Yourself from Government Surveillance:

“Undocumented immigrants, Muslims, pregnant people, journalists, really anyone who doesn't support him” need to reconsider their personal privacy safeguards, says Runa Sandvik, a former digital security staffer for The New York Times and the founder of the security firm Granitt, which focuses on protecting members of civil society. “Whatever platforms you're on, whatever devices you have, you need to have a sense of what kind of data you're generating and then use the controls available to limit who can see what you're doing.”

The guide covers several key areas:

• Encrypted communications
• Encrypted devices
• Cloud storage
• Online anonymity
• Location data
• Financial privacy
• Burner phones
• Your digital past, present, and future

Even if you're not a US resident, this article is worth reading as the measures it suggests may help protect your from scammers and abusive trolls. 

A Bit of Silver Lining in Dark Clouds

The political news coming out of the United States has been pretty grim in the last week, but there are some silver linings in the dark clouds. In his Tuesday newsletter, Jay Kuo points out that Trump's penchant for appointing sycophants may be threatening a presumable Republican House majority.

If the House race watchers are correct, the GOP may have 220 or 221 House seats in the next session, compared to the Democrats at 215 to 214. That’s already a fairly slim majority, and a defection of three or four members could sink any piece of legislation. We saw that dynamic play out repeatedly over the past two years, resulting in the least productive Congress in recent history.

That’s why analysts like Adam Carlson (and myself) are rather shocked at how many of Trump’s picks for key cabinet or operational positions are being drawn from the ranks of the House Republican Conference. By today’s count, as many as five GOP members could give up their seats if they are nominated and get confirmed by the Senate.

On top of Reps. Waltz and Stefanik, Trump reportedly may tap Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) for Secretary of Defense, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) for Secretary of Transportation, and Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) for Secretary of Agriculture.

There is even a world in which a 220-215 GOP majority moves this spring to a 215-215 tie.

If all this happens, and while we await special elections, Speaker Johnson might struggle mightily to push any legislation through, assuming he can even re-win the Speakership. Any delay in moving bills along will give Democrats that much more time to rally and lobby against them, particularly if they would strip away healthcare or raise costs on working families or the elderly, and peel off a few GOP swing district members.

We can only hope.