COVID-19 Six Years Later

It's hard to believe that it's been six years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concern about COVID-19 has faded into the background for most people, but it's still out there, lurking in the air when you go our shopping or go to a concert. 

So what's the real situation with COVID-19 right now? Your Local Epidemiologist has published an article that looks at the current disease landscape; how much COVID is out there right now, how it's affecting people, and what are the current trends. 

Six years! Six years with a complicated data story of real progress alongside real stubbornness. This anniversary is striking to me for two reasons. The first is the virus itself: it continues to surprise us, and we remain humbled by how much we still don’t understand. The second is what has happened to us in its wake.

For myself, I'm still being careful, masking in crowded situations and in medical facilities like doctors' offices and hospitals. (A good rule of thumb is that if the staff are masking then you should be too.) I'll keep getting vaccinated twice a year and keep hoping for a vaccine that protects against infection. And I'll keep reading YLE and other reputable sites for reliable information about COVID and any other nasties that might be out there. 

Featured Links - March 4, 2026

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

• Fat Signing Bonuses, and Concierge Service, for Family Doctors (gift link). "In a country where a quarter of the population lacks a family doctor, Canadian communities compete in a zero-sum battle to recruit family doctors." The competition for doctors willing to work in small towns is becoming more intense in Canada, and I suspect, in the US as well. 
• This Looks Like an Insider Bet on Aliens (archive link). "Someone just put a lot of money on ET." I wonder if they have inside information. 
• Nature Comms: The Risk of Kidney Disease Increases Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Compared to influenza. Yet another reason to do everything you can to avoid catching COVID-19.
• Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted. "As vaccination rates decline, the economic consequences will increase, research suggests."
  
• AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder. "Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower. And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago."
• John Shirley's guide to wrecking your career in science fiction. "A short memoir with  material that may be upsetting. Published for the first time at Boing Boing. Some of it's about Harlan Ellison, a hero of my youth--an enemy for a while, then a friend once more. Joe Straczynski, I review The Last Dangerous Visions, which you co-edited, at the end of this."
• A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a 'crematorium for satellites'. "When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on Earth. But increasingly, the way we build, launch and dispose of satellites is starting to change that."
• The Stupidest Glitch Imaginable Killed a $72 Million Lunar Mission in a Single Day. "NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite was supposed to map water across the surface of the Moon, but glaring design and testing errors killed it."
• Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash. "The fertilizer that feeds America is key to the president’s next confrontation with Ottawa." 'Next confrontation` There's more? Oh, joy. 

Featured Links - October 21, 2025

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

• Sportsnet gives viewers what they want after Brendon Little’s Game 5 meltdown in ALCS — the unvarnished truth (gift link). Even the broadcasters from the network owned by Rogers (who own the Blue Jays) were criticizing manager John Schneider's controversial eighth-inning call. 
• Not needed, not wanted. "PEC defaces Sir John A's building anyway." A story about a citizen's successful action against small-town bureaucracy.
• Mark Carney Is a Very Demanding Boss. "His elbows-up enthusiasm won him the election. Now he’s governing like a Bay Street exec." A long and detailed profile of Canada's new prime minister. It's not a puff piece but the contrast between him and Trump is stark. 
• The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh. Some economic pessimism from Cory Doctorow.
• A High-Tech Ankle Guard Is Helping NBA Players Stay in the Game. "BetterGuards has teamed up with the NBA Training Association to outfit players with its adaptive ankle brace. The pro ballers are avoiding serious injury while evaluating the stabilizing design."
• The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn from China. 'The economic historian Adam Tooze, reflecting on his recent, intense engagement with China, put it to me in July with characteristic directness: “China isn’t just an analytical problem,” he said. It is “the master key to understanding modernity.” Tooze called China “the biggest laboratory of organized modernizations there has ever been or ever will be at this level [of] organization.” It is a place where the industrial histories of the West now read like prefaces to something larger.'
• How we sharpened the James Webb telescope's vision from a million kilometers away. "We would be using Webb's highest-resolution mode, called the aperture masking interferometer or AMI for short. It's a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope's cameras, enhancing its resolution. Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers. We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets."
• Millions of Us Have Likely Lost Our Smell Without Even Realizing It. "The impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continue to be felt across the world, but some consequences are more noticeable than others. New research suggests a large proportion of people may have lost their sense of smell after catching COVID-19, without even realizing it."
• ‘What I do with my body is none of your business’: musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland on trans rights, cult stardom and living with dementia. "His music was ignored for decades. Now, at 81, he is collaborating with pop stars. He and his wife talk about his extraordinary life – and facing severe illness."
• Constipated? Here’s What Actually Works, According to Scientists. "New evidence-backed guidelines highlight the things most likely to help you stay regular in the bathroom."
• Beware “Evil Kerning”: How Hackers Trick You with Fake Email Addresses. Someone needs to write a browser plugin that displays URLs in a monospace font that cant be kerned.

We're Toast 63

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. 

Our future

• Scientists issue warning after discovering concerning phenomenon in trees: 'Simply not keeping up'. "Increasing temperatures around the globe are threatening habitats and ecosystems. In fact, a study by the United Nations declared that 14% of the world's coral was lost between 2009 and 2018 because of warmer ocean temperatures."
• The Siberian Tundra Is Exploding. New Research Helps Explain Why. (gift link) "Spontaneous gas explosions appear to be increasing in northern Russia because of climate change and some specific local conditions."
• Trump's Crusaders: Christian Nationalists Are Gaining a Solid Foothold in Washington. "U.S. President Donald Trump has opened the doors of power to far-right Christian nationalists." Gilead is rising in the US. 
• Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. "It’s not just a phase."
• ‘Nightmare bacteria’ cases are increasing in the US. " Infection rates from drug-resistant “nightmare bacteria” rose almost 70% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists."
• COVID-19 infections impair our immune systems for months or even years. "Even mild cases can lead to serious health problems years later."
• European Society of Cardiology: Major Consensus Statement Released on Long-Term Cardiovascular Impact of COVID Infection. 'Professor Vassiliou said: “Covid-19 has a profound and lasting impact on cardiovascular health, with complications emerging during acute illness, recovery, and even after reinfections or vaccination. In the absence of clear evidence-based guidance, patients risk harmful treatments and clinicians face uncertainty.'
• Oxford Historian Offers Dire Warning With Prediction Of How Long Americans Have To Save Their Democracy. "Noted British historian, author, and head of the Oxford University European Studies Center Timothy Garton Ash wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian that the 2026 midterm elections will decide the fate of the United States.. Will it continue as a democratic republic of unified states or continue on its current path to become the Christian nationalist, White supremacist authoritarian regime the Republicans' Project 2025 called for."

Featured Links - September 16, 2025

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

Swans on the bay

• COVID-19 infections impair our immune systems for months or even years. "Even mild cases can lead to serious health problems years later."
  
• Alien: Earth—how realistic are the extraterrestrials? Three experts rank them. I haven't watched this show, yet, and after reading this I'm not sure I want to.  Eewww. 
• Building an Octopus Dictionary, One Arm Movement at a Time. "Scientists set out to understand all the ways the animals use their eight appendages. It wasn’t easy." Communicating with octopuses is one of the major story threats in Ray Nayler's excellent SF novel, The Mountain in the Sea.
  
• Rolling Stone Publisher Sues Google Over AI Overview Summaries. Based on my own experience, I think the publisher has a point.  
• Who Are Smith's Best Supporters? "A small but vocal group of true blue God fearing Conservative Alberta First believers called the Petro Paranoids."
• The Dangerous In-Between: Assassination, Fascism and the Fragile State of Democracy. "The exploitation of the Kirk murder fits a disturbing pattern: extremists need martyrs. It is how they keep the coalition of ragers, grifters and conspiracy haters in the same tent. And the people who would point out that Kirk himself drove the politics of hate? They’re being targeted, doxxed, and in some cases fired."
• How Apple has trained its AI to respond to Trump’s nonsense: report. "A new report examines how the Apple Intelligence has evolved since Trump once again became U.S. president."

Featured Links - August 26, 2025

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

Front yard hyacinths. 

The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian. "The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums. But conservative antipathy toward the institution began long ago—with the bones of Bible giants."

Scientists Propose a Smarter Way to Hunt for Alien Radio Signals. "We might find intelligent aliens by looking for them the same way they’d find us."

Covid and Our Arteries. "A new study on acceleration of vascular aging adds to the body of evidence." Yet more reasons to do whatever you can to avoid catching COVID.

4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC. "A lawyer representing the online message board 4chan says it won't pay a proposed fine by the UK's media regulator as it enforces the Online Safety Act."

The 9 Worst RFK Jr. Decisions to Date. "By every measure, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been — and continues to be — a disaster. His actions undermine scientific progress, public trust, and the health of millions. In a mere matter of months, his agenda has left lasting scars on America’s public health infrastructure, while reverberating globally by undoing decades of progress in vaccination and disease prevention."

Sadopopulism and the Fascist MAGA Ethos. "Trump’s policy is to inflict pain, even upon his own voters. But why does this work, and what will stop it?"

Five Ways to Fight Trump's Fascism. "People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Between now and the 2026 midterm elections, here are five practical steps you can take to make a difference." YouTube video from Robert Reich. 

We Are All Lisa Cook. "Nobody is safe from weaponized government."

The “Peace in Our Time” Moment. "Why Trump’s Deal With Putin Echos Munich 1938." The similarities between now and 1938 are clear. 

Dude, you broke the Future! A talk by SF author, Charlie Stross, from the 34C3 conference in 2017. It's eight years old now and still relevant. (YouTube video)

Featured Links - June 23, 2025

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

Flowers in our backyard

The MAGA Debt Bomb. "How Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Turns America’s Fiscal Crisis Into a Weapon for Authoritarian Looting." The adults in the financial world are getting worried.

FEMA is unprepared for the next Hurricane Katrina, disaster experts warn. "Cuts, chaos, and climate change are converging to leave Americans more vulnerable to disaster than they were in 2005." 

How the Grateful Dead built the internet. "Before the the internet took over the world, psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were among the first – and most influential – forces at the dawn of online communication." Fascinating history showing how music an culture intersected with the early digital revolution, focusing mostly on The Well. I was never on The Well but made extensive use of rec.music.gdead on Usenet once I got onto the real internet in the early 90s. 

'They quit after a few hours': Farmers admit they can't find American workers. "In a deep dive focusing on one farmer who voted for Trump, 36-year-old J.J. Ficke of Kirk, Colorado, the Washington Post is reporting that he along with other farmers are facing possible ruination now that the round-up of immigrants have begun in earnest and promised helpis uncertain."

New study suggests Long COVID is now most common childhood chronic health problem. "In a summary of the study's findings geared to the general public and published on the JAMA Pediatrics Patient Page, three of the authors of the longer study state that Long COVID is common, and, based on the larger study's finding, estimate that up to 10 to 20 percent of children who have had COVID-19 — even "mild" or asymptomatic initial infections — develop Long COVID. This translates to about six million children with Long COVID, which, the authors explain, "is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children."'

1 psychedelic psilocybin dose eases depression for years, study reveals. "Half a decade after receiving a psychedelic treatment for depression, two-thirds of patients in a new study remained in remission."

New theory proposes time has three dimensions, with space as a secondary effect. "Time, not space plus time, might be the single fundamental property in which all physical phenomena occur, according to a new theory by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist. The theory also argues that time comes in three dimensions rather than just the single one we experience as continual forward progression. Space emerges as a secondary manifestation."

Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence. As a new iPad user, I found this quite fascinating. 

How should we respond to people “doing their own research?”. "It’s become a punchline—but it points to something broken in how we share health information."

Narrative Theory for Science Communication by author Mary Robinette Kowal. "In this workshop, we learn how to use the foundations of storytelling to help you be more successful with science communication. Pretty much every story, fictional or nonfictional, can be explained through a fairly simple organizational theory. Together, we learn how to use these tools to connect more effectively with your audiences."

Featured Links - May 26, 2025

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

Crooked Creek, our favourite garden centre

• The rise of a new form of germ theory denial. "Outright denial of germ theory is still a fringe idea: very few deny that viruses and bacteria exist. Rather, it’s the effect of germs—whether germs are the true cause of an illness—that is increasingly being called into question."
  
• The Travers Take. Peter Travers, longtime film critic for Rolling Stone and celeb interviewer for ABC’s Popcorn, lets it rip on movies, TV, streaming, awards and the best and worst of pop culture. And he's ready for a fight.
• AI Slop PR's are burning me and my team out hard, anyone else experiencing this? "Lately there has been a huge push for teams to adopt tools like Cursor, the problem is that while yes they can generate code, it is just lately rapidly becoming an endless stream of AI slop."
• Why does Elon Musk love this socialist sci-fi series? "The broligarchs share a favorite author, but they might be missing the point entirely."
  
• An unearthly spectacle. The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb. "The Tsar Bomba is not just a subject for history; some of the same dynamics exist today. It is not just the story of a single weapon that was detonated six decades ago, but a parable about political posturing and technical enablement that applies just as acutely today. In a new era of nuclear weapons and delivery competition, the Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless."
• Beware SVG graphics used to Bypass Microsoft 365 Security Measures. "SVG and invisible Unicode is being increasingly used to hack Microsoft 365 and Google/Gmail users even with multi-factor authentication (MFA).  It’s possible because of significant enhancements in the Tycoon 2FA platform." 
• Thousands of enormous holes discovered on the seafloor, evenly-spaced with  eerie regularity". "For now, the Sur Pockmark Field stands as the best‑charted seafloor province on North America’s west coast, a natural laboratory where wind‑farm planners, geologists, and marine ecologists share common ground. What they’ll find next is anyone’s guess."
• Covid-19 vaccines, what just happened at the FDA, and why it matters. "This is not how vaccine policy should be made." People will die needlessly because of this decision.
• Physicists confirm the incredible existence of 'time mirrors'. "A team led by Dr. Hussein Moussa from the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) in New York City has now confirmed that these mysterious events actually exist. They pulled off a successful test by changing the properties of a device in a quick, uniform way so that signals reversed direction in time." Modern physics is getting really weird.
• Nobody’s Finished, We Ain’t Even Begun: The Guitar Players Keeping the Dead Alive. "Three decades after the final Grateful Dead performance, Jerry Garcia’s sound continues to cast a long shadow. Guitarists Jeff Mattson of Dark Star Orchestra, Tom Hamilton of JRAD, and Bella Rayne explain how they interpret Garcia’s legacy musically and with their gear."

Featured Links - May 12, 2025

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

Garlic growing at the Crooked Creek Garden Centre

• The New Pope: Who is "Pope Leo XIV" And Why A US Born Progressive Pope Matters in the Age of MAGA. "US Born Cardinal Robert Prevost is now Pope Leo XIV and he's no fan of Trump's America."
• Habemus Papam Americanum. "The elevation of an American-born cardinal to head the Catholic Church carries significant political meaning.."
• Ontario reports nearly 200 new measles cases as virus spreads across Canada. "Public Health Ontario reports 101 hospitalizations, including 75 children." This was entirely preventable. 
• Russia’s coming summer offensive could be deadliest of the entire war. "In the coming months, Russia is hoping to build on more than a year of gradual advances to achieve breakthroughs on the eastern front, while Ukraine aims to demonstrate to the country’s partners that it is capable of stopping Putin’s war machine and holding the line."
• Satellites Tracked a Volcano’s Secret Collapse for 12 Years – Then It Sparked a Killer Wave. "In 2018, the Anak Krakatau volcano in Indonesia collapsed catastrophically, generating a deadly tsunami. Now, researchers reveal that the volcano’s flank had been slowly slipping for years—an invisible danger detectable through satellite radar long before disaster struck."
• New theory suggests gravity is not a fundamental force. "A new theory proposes gravity isn’t a fundamental force but emerges from quantum electromagnetic interactions, potentially reshaping our view of spacetime itself."
• “Long COVID Mode”: Seeing the crisis through games. "Games are surprisingly useful communication tools in a world in denial about COVID-19 and Long COVID."
• Loss and Degradation of NOAA Sea Ice and Glacier data. "A very short post on breaking news that will almost certainly impact Alaska and Arctic Climate science and the lives, livelihoods and economics of people."

More About Disinformation 7

It's time for another post with links to articles about disinformation and misinformation. There's enough of it about that it's becoming a regular topic on this blog. I do plan on doing a another post next week about a tool I came across that some people might find useful.

• Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds. While it has caused chaos at many colleges, some Southwestern faculty feel their leaders haven’t done enough to curb the crisis."
• Scroll through Trump’s new covid website — and have your mind blown. "Scrolling through Trump’s latest foray into history-washing."
• AI Slop Farms Are Churning Out Fake Heartwarming Videos About Trump Figures. "Machine-made YouTube videos are racking up views while fooling the MAGA faithful." I haven't seen any of these myself yet, but I have seen a fair number of posts on Facebook that are just general heartwarming stories, and I'm prertty sure a lot of them are AI slop. 
• Sask. mushroom pickers sound alarm on dangerously misleading AI-generated books. "Amazon says it has removed the books after being contacted by CBC." AI misinformation can kill. 
• Fact file: Ways to spot fake visuals during coming federal election (gift link). "The Globe and Mail will cover topics as they arise. Here is a selection of tools and processes we use that you can also employ."
• Online sabotage (gift link). "Disinformation from abroad is a real danger in a race where Canada-U.S. mistrust is high (gift link). Here’s what the cyber threats might look like." 

Featured Links - April 7, 2025

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

A floor-cleaning robot

•  Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought. "Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in." This is probably the closest the space program has come to a disaster since Columbia was lost.
• Rewilding Death in the Appalachian Mountains. "A growing conservation burial movement is challenging the funeral industry’s environmental footprint while healing the land."
• A Note on Trade Deficits and Manufacturing, How trade deficits really work, from a real economist.
• Loomered. "Laura Loomer, an online right wing troll once driven from Trump’s side, has reemerged with a vengeance." The inmates have taken over the asylum.
• How to disable ACR on your TV (and why doing it makes such a big difference for privacy). "Smarter TV operating systems bring new privacy risks, with one major concern being automatic content recognition (ACR) - a feature that monitors your viewing habits."
• Inside arXiv—the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science. "Modern science wouldn’t exist without the online research repository known as arXiv. Three decades in, its creator still can’t let it go."
• Human bodies begin breaking down at two very precise ages. "A comprehensive study reveals some eye-opening insights about aging, focusing on exactly “when” things start to shift and how our bodies begin to break down, both inside and out."
• I visited the sprawling 'metroburb' where 'Severance' is filmed. "It's a 2 million-square-foot town under one roof."
• Digital hygiene. A good overview from AI researcher Andrei Karpathy. If you implement even some of what he suggests, you will be more secure online.
• Your data is unwell. "Sharing electronic medical records in Canada is a hassle – and, for some, a health risk. Tech companies and governments are looking for a fix to our patchwork of digital systems."
• COVID didn’t end. Its story just stopped being told. "That Canadians aren’t being supported through known complications of infection is a crisis of the moment, of 2025 – not 2020." The situation is much the same, or worse, in the US. 
• How I wrote the notes app of my dreams (no coding required). "The new phenomenon known as vibecoding lets you describe an app and have AI build it to your specifications. The results astounded me." 

Featured Links - March 31, 2025

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

The hydro marsh

• Gee whiz, Gboard! An invaluable new Android typing upgrade. An Undo button. Finally!
• When ‘tranq’ takes its toll. "Xylazine is for animals, but chances are that it’s laced into the street drugs where you live – and it can cost users their memories, limbs and lives. How did it come to Canada, and what’s being done about it?"
• In the ashes. "After wildfires burned houses and brush alike in Los Angeles, researchers have mobilized to understand the health risks posed by urban conflagrations."
• Bookish and world woes. "I am returning to Canada from the International Conference of the Fantastic and the Arts held in Florida. It was my first time there and although I was happy to reconnect with friends and meet scholars, my visit was marred by melancholy." By Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
• Why the ‘iPhone of smartwatches’ remains so elusive. "The wrist might be the best spot for a transformative wearable gadget. But Apple continues to resist giving third-party watchmakers a level playing field."
• ‘Something was wrong with my brain’: How covid leaves its mark on cognition. (Gift link) "Five years after the pandemic began, the neurocognitive effects of long covid are numerous and troubling. And some of these cognitive losses may extend to people who quickly recovered."
• 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving. "More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada."
• Discover These 15 Enchanting Libraries Sure to Thrill Any Book Lover. "Wall-to-wall books tell an interior design story without saying a word."
• Assault at Antarctic base could be a warning for future travellers to Mars. "Conflict among people living in extreme isolation and confined quarters is a concern for Mars Mission planners."
• Our Diet and Healthy Aging. "A very large prospective study assessed dietary patterns and healthy aging." Interesting and worth reading.
  
• Donald Trump is seeking to erase the United States as we know it. "What we are currently living through is nothing less than an erasure of the building blocks of our republic – a distortion of what it means to be American." It's wakeup time, sheeple. 
• Tales of Merlin and King Arthur Resurface After 750 Years, Hidden in a Bookbinding. "500 years ago, someone decided to use parts of a now-rare manuscript to bind together property records." How advanced imaging technology is helping historians discover the past. 

We're Toast 58

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. 

A thawing marsh

• An Economist’s Dire Forecast About Just How Much Climate Change Will Impact GDP. "As costly disasters multiply around the planet, some financial experts are raising alarms about what even more climate disruption could mean for the global economy decades in the future. Economic modeling by the University of Exeter and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the U.K., projects that proceeding with business as usual without sharply reducing emissions could cut global gross domestic product (GDP) in half as soon as 2070." It will be much sooner than that. 
• Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups. "The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant." Just mind boggling, how perverse and stupid this is. 
• Effects of microplastic concentration, composition, and size on Escherichia coli biofilm-associated antimicrobial resistance. "This study highlights the relationship between a widespread environmental pollutant, microplastics (MPs), and the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. While it is known that MPs facilitate resistance through several modes (biofilm formation, plastic adsorption rates, etc.), this study fills the knowledge gap on how different types of MPs are contributing to AMR."
• Real chilling effects. "A extraordinary pattern of government censorship and threats to speech." Stomping on critics and anyone who resists, one by one. 
• USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug ‘resistant to everything we have’. "Projects to detect, treat and research new ways to fight TB among those disrupted by sudden funding freeze." And I read yesterday that the Walter Reed Institute, one of the world's top institutes for studying infectious diseases has been shuttered. Pure insanity. 
• What We Know About Covid’s Impact on Your Brain. "Scientists worry that persistent cognitive issues caused by Covid signal that a surge in dementia cases and other mental conditions is on the horizon."
• Scientists Pinpoint ‘Tipping Point’ for Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet. "The vast landmass is melting quickly due to climate change, and may rapidly cause the complete loss of the island's ice."
• Plastic shards permeate human brains. "A study of microplastics and nanoplastics in brains shows an astonishing increase over time."

Featured Links - March 3, 2025

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

A model train layout at the Ganarska Railway Modellers show

• Europe’s New AI Weather Model Is Faster, Smarter, and Free—Here’s What to Know. "The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has debuted its own forecast AI model on the heels of a cutting-edge Google model released in December."
• Serenity meow! "With the right love and understanding, cats and humans can live more happily together. New research is upending long-held behavioural theories about how to achieve that."
• Profound Architecture and Multidimensional Depth: Jorma Kaukonen on Phil Lesh. I'm reading Kaukonen's autobiography, Been So Long, now. I found it interesting that in the article he says the first time they played together was at the Grateful Dead's 11/20/1970 concert in Rochester, which was my first Grateful Dead concert. 
• Trump Is Letting Russell Vought Go Wild. "Vought's Project 2025 unitary executive theory has us headed toward a constitutional cliff." This is one of the scariest articles about the current situation that I've read recently, and I've read too many. Gilead rising, indeed. 
• Europe: Is the Force Awakening? "A potential superpower realizes that it can’t rely on America." I'm beginning to wonder if Canada should be seeking membership in the EU. We do have a common border with Denmark, after all. 
• Virology Mini-Review: Pandemic Risk Stemming From the Bovine H5N1 Outbreak: An account of the Knowns and Unknowns. "This is a lengthy, and well-written review and I highly recommend that you read it in its entirety.  While cattle-centric, it touches on other aspects, including spillover into cats, pigs, humans, and other species."
• Surgery implants tooth into eyeball to help blind patients see again. This souns completely bonkers but it works for certain types of corneal blindness.
• Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation. "The legislation hasn't yet passed everywhere, but all 50 states introducing some form of right to repair legislation is a "tipping point” for the right to repair movement." This is good news.
• The biggest data breaches of 2025 — so far. "We’re barely a couple of months into 2025, but this year has already seen several data breaches affecting the personal information of millions of individuals, including everything from student records to phone data to sensitive health information."
• We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable. "The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts. And those still functional marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable concrete that gave Roman structures their incredible strength."
• Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid. "One of the top science journalists of our time discusses his new book."
  
• Massive Supereruptions Might Not Trigger the Apocalypse, Just Decades of Chaos. "An ultra-powerful eruption 79,500 years ago may not have disrupted the climate as badly as feared, according to Earth scientists."

Featured Links - February 24, 2025

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

Model train layout at Ganaraska Railway Modellers show in Port Hope

Cuts to U.S. weather and climate research could put public safety at risk. "Firings and budget cuts could slow emergency disaster response and weaken resilience efforts." This will also affect weather forecasting and climate modelling in Canada.

In 1177 BCE, Civilizations Fell Apart In A Mysterious Simultaneous Collapse. "What caused the late Bronze Age collapse?"

The Smarter AI Gets, the More It Start Cheating When It's Losing. "A recent study by Palisade Research, a research group studying AI safety and ethics, has revealed an unsettling trend: newer AI models can find and exploit weaknesses in cybersecurity on their own, bypassing safeguards and using shortcuts to complete tasks even when they're not technically allowed to."

The Grateful Dead: What a Long, Lucrative Trip It’s Been. "Now with the publication of The Economic History of the Grateful Dead: A Look Inside the Financial Records of America’s Biggest 20th Century Touring Act, we can see the numbers behind the music, at least of the Grateful Dead, the great American proto-jam band that has engendered a vast, multigenerational, cultlike following." They're hitting the top of the album charts. 

New Coronavirus Discovered in Chinese Bats Sparks Alarm. "A new bat coronavirus that has the capacity to spread to humans, similar to the one that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has been discovered."

The Nerd Reich. "Science fiction has long been the literature of nerds. The dudes in lab coats, the chess prodigies, the guys tinkering with computers. At a time when socially awkward science-obsessives were scorned by society, science fiction was sometimes a refuge … and became a haven for nerd-empowerment fables."

The hardest working font in Manhattan. "Last year in New York, I walked over 100 miles and took thousands of photos of one and one font only. The font’s name is Gorton." And it has a fascinating and unusual history. 

Featured Links - February 17, 2024

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

Winter water barrels

• Make the most of the snipping tools in Windows. "As usual with Windows, there isn’t just one way to snip, clip, or capture a screenshot of part of your screen. There’s a handful of options in Windows 10 and a more powerful new tool just for Windows 11."
• Canadian residents are racing to save the data in Trump's crosshairs. "Guerilla effort underway to preserve medical, environmental data from deletion."
• Appeasement at Munich by historian Timothy Snyder. The path the world is on is much like the world of 1938, and we know how that ended, though the current US administration apparently doesn't. 
• ‘A Maze the Size of Earth’: New AI Tackles Math Problems That Take Millions of Steps. "A newly developed machine learning algorithm is taking on math problems that have vexed experts for decades."
• Why the COVID Deniers Won (archive link). "Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath."
• On Having a Maximum Wealth. "A small thought experiment." Interesting but it doesn't go far enough. I would tax all income over $1,000,000 at 90 percent, and 100 percent over $10,000,000. I'd set a minimum corporate tax rate of 25% and graduate that based on revenue as well. It would be higher on income that wasn't based on sales or production. 
• Librarians gain protections in some states as book bans soar. "New Jersey just joined at least five other states that have taken steps against school library censorship."
• A ‘True Crime’ Documentary Series Has Millions of Views. The Murders Are All AI-Generated. 'The creator of a viral "true crime" series where the murders were all invented by AI explains how he did it.'

Featured Links - February 10, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. After last week's blast of political stories, this week's articles are mostly politics-free. 

A winter farm

• The Batbible. The series bible for DC's Batman comics, written by Dennis O'Neil and updated by Scott Petersen. 
• Why Kodak is ‘Cracking Down’ on Respooled Motion Picture Film. "This week, Reflx Lab announced that it would soon no longer be able to offer some of its respooled 35mm motion picture stock because Kodak is more strictly “crack[ing] down” on respoolers. So, why is Kodak forfeiting the extra money made by selling to brands like Reflx Lab?"
• When Doctors With A.I. Are Outperformed by A.I. Alone. "A series of recent studies compared the performance of doctors with A.I. versus A.I. alone, spanning medical scans, diagnostic accuracy, and management reasoning. Surprisingly, in many cases, A.I. systems working independently performed better than when combined with physician input." 
• The rise of ‘influencer voice’: Why this TikTok creator accent is taking over the internet and maybe the world. "Was that a question? Online platforms have long influenced how we speak. Now a new generation of TikTok creators are fueling the latest variant."
• Video Game History Foundation to release scans of 1,500 vintage gaming magazines. "The VGHF's digital archive will be fully searchable, allowing researchers and enthusiasts to track the first mentions of influential games, developers, and gaming concepts."
• An Exoplanet Menagerie for SciFi Writers. "What would it be like to stand on an alien planet? Here's a quick tour of recent discoveries."
• NASA’s Historic Asteroid Sample Holds Clues to Life’s Origins. "The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020."
• In Seattle, a Convergence of 5,444 Mathematical Minds (gift link). "Participants at this year’s Joint Mathematics Meetings explored everything from the role of A.I. to the hyperbolic design of a patchwork denim skirt."
• SpaceX has reshaped the landscape around Boca Chica, Texas. "The Starbase rocket testing facility is permanently changing the landscape of southern Texas."
• Why North England is poor. Some of the reasons discussed in this article would also apply to Northern Ontario.
• American Medical Association YouTube channel. Now that the CDC isn't doing updates about infectious diseases, the AMA has stepped up. 

Featured Links -- December 15, 2024

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

Birds on ice

The best science images of 2024 — Nature’s picks. "A breathtaking total eclipse, courageous penguins, volcanic smoke rings and more." There are some truly incredible images here. Best viewed on a large computer monitor. 

Google Timeline location purge causes collateral damage. "Privacy measure leaves some mourning lost memories." If you rely on Timeline data more than three months old, you should read this.

Miranda’s Last Gift (gift link). "When our daughter died suddenly, she left us with grief, memories—and Ringo." A beautiful and moving tribute by David Frum to his late daughter, and her dog. 

Debunking Every Myth You Hear Against Universal Healthcare. "Whether you are politically left or right, you should want Universal Healthcare as a human right—here are the receipts on why."

Powerful solar storms are a nightmare for farmers. 'Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed'. "When the sun's fury disrupts high-tech farming, precision turns to chaos." It does make me wonder if the universe really is out to get us. 

Alena Tensor—a new hope for unification in physics. "Our new article published in Physica Scripta brings new hope that such a theory exists. It demonstrates that the use of a certain mathematical object called Alena Tensor reconciles various physical theories, including general relativity, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics and continuum mechanics. Will this finally allow scientists to unify descriptions used in physics?" Some highly speculative new physics theorizing. 

Refinement of post-COVID condition core symptoms, subtypes, determinants, and health impacts: a cohort study integrating real-world data and patient-reported outcomes. "PCC can be categorized into four distinct subtypes based on ten core symptoms. These subtypes appeared to share a majority of pathogen and host-related risk factors, but their impact on health varied markedly by subtype. Our findings could help refine current guidelines for precise PCC diagnosis and progression, enhance the identification of PCC subgroups for targeted research, and inform evidence-based policy making to tackle this new and debilitating condition."

The latest in poker cheats: Tiny cameras that can see cards as they’re dealt. ""Several recent schemes were uncovered, so should players everywhere be concerned?" Only if you're playing $10,000 buy-in poker. 

Battery prices continue to drop, lowering the cost of electric vehicles. "The price of lithium-ion batteries in China has decreased by 51 percent in the past year. Lower battery prices make electric vehicles cheaper than fossil fuel cars in many segments, and large-scale battery solutions in energy systems become more profitable."

We're Toast 55

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 month's US election, probably sooner than I originally thought). It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

‘Depressing’ photo of suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne enrages Aussies. "A “depressing” photo of a mega housing estate just an hour outside of Melbourne’s CBD has enraged Aussies and left experts fuming." If they find that depressing, they should never try flying into Toronto's Pearson airport.

The Imminence of the Destruction of the Space Program. "New calculations put the date much closer than we should be comfortable with." The consquences of the Kessler Syndrome would be massive and far reaching, given our reliance on satellite technology (global communications and GPS location, to name just two)..

Persistence of spike protein at the skull-meninges-brain axis may contribute to the neurological sequelae of COVID-19. In other words, COVID-19 can damage your brain. 

Unexplained Heat Wave ‘Hotspots’ Are Popping Up Across the Globe. "The large and unexpected margins by which recent regional-scale extremes have broken earlier records have raised questions about the degree to which climate models can provide adequate estimates of relations between global mean temperature changes and regional climate risks."

Climate change is spoiling food faster, making hundreds of millions of people sick around the world. "The World Health Organization estimates 600 million people a year already suffer from foodborne illnesses."

Antarctic researchers warn of possible 'catastrophic' sea level rise within our lifetime in group statement. "Antarctica and the Southern Ocean have been undergoing rapid and extreme changes in recent years, including unprecedented heatwaves and record-low sea ice levels. Over the past week, more than 450 researchers gathered in Hobart for the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference — the first such event in more than a decade."

‘Climate bomb’ warning over $200bn wave of new gas projects. "New liquefied natural gas projects could produce 10 gigatonnes of emissions by the end of the decade, close to the annual emissions of all coal plants."

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.