Featured Links - October 28, 2024

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

A burning bush in full flame

•  ‘Fandom has toxified the world’: Watchmen author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and Trump. "Enthusiasm can be a productive force for good, but our culture has rapidly become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in."
  
• Political Polarization and Health. "In addition to social determinants of health, such as economic resources, education, access to care and various environmental factors, there is growing evidence that political polarization poses a substantial risk to individual and collective well-being."
• Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health. "When dairy cows in Texas began falling ill with H5N1, alarmed veterinarians expected a fierce response to contain an outbreak with pandemic-sparking potential. Then politics—and, critics say, a key agency’s mandate to protect dairy-industry revenues—intervened."
• Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. "The limitations on Trump deploying the military in terrifying ways are almost non-existent."
• A Priceless Business Leadership Lesson From The Grateful Dead. "Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead’s singularly iconic and beloved bassist, died last week at age 84. He was a beautiful musician, a wonderful man, a sweet soul. He also – through his identifiably unique approach to his instrument and how it becomes so integral to the band’s creative development – exemplified more than just music. And the lessons we learned from him – and the boys – are more applicable to business than ever before. "
• How a conspiracy-fueled group got a foothold in this hurricane-battered town. "Over the course of 11 days, a supermarket parking lot became a snapshot of the chaos that can unfold in some corners of post-disaster America." I hope this isn't a preview of coming chaos, but I am afraid it might be.
• How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why. "A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of caffeinated inspiration/despair, I sat down and wrote a long Facebook post as to why we were ditching Google and switching to DuckDuckGo. Today I want to dive even deeper into this topic, and give you a first-hand account of how Google is killing hundreds of thousands of blogs and small publishers. And maybe give you some insight as to why they are doing so."
• Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan. "Born poor in colonial India and dead at 32, Ramanujan had fantastical, out-of-nowhere visions that continue to shape the field today."