onfocus

"The social internet promised us deep human connections — the sort that requires nuance and patience for messiness — but instead, it’s just turned us all into brands."

Insightful analysis of The Discourse.

"In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections."

This statement signed by dozens of political science professors is an excellent summary of the current threat to voting rights.

"A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential."

AI lacks nerve is a fantastic way to put it. [via om]

I'm trying out umami for visitor stats on my site and so far it's easy to install (yay, Docker all the things!) and looks great.

For all your salacious guitar photography needs.

"Even after decades of research, the SETI community has yet to find evidence of aliens, probably for the same reason that extraterrestrial beings, should they exist, would be unlikely to visit our planet—the space between stars, let alone galaxies, is unfathomably vast…[Wright] sees no problem with the desire to better understand our airspace and investigate unexplained phenomena, “but why drag astronomers into it?”"

Spoilsports.

"Bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has failed in the Senate, as Republicans staged their first filibuster since President Biden took office to block the plan."

We have a party complicit with a crime. This is like asking defendants to help organize their trial. Of course they derail it at the first opportunity. Democrats need to get past the idea that there are two parties operating in good faith and work to fix this environment on their own.

"I’m seeing probably the worst combination of conditions in my lifetime,” said Derrick DeGroot, a county commissioner in southern Oregon’s Klamath County. “We have an enormous fuel load in the forests, and we are looking at a drought unlike we’ve seen probably in the last 115 years.” Asked how worried he is about the 2021 fire season, DeGroot said: “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m a 12. Nothing looks good."

Yikes.

"Think strategically about how you want to allocate your attention. Many of the worst people on the Internet wake up every morning to hijack your attention. They want to use your outrage to build their brand and amass political power. Denying them the engagement they so desperately crave is how we fight back against the politics of 'owning the libs.'"

Trolling works. I appreciate the appeal here but I believe this approach takes the pressure off of platforms. Twitter and Facebook et al should be improving and enforcing their policies to stop disinformation. Sure, we can always do better as individuals, but the people who run large social media platforms have been mostly absent.

"That’s why we have to disentangle severe disease from symptomatic disease from asymptomatic acquisition and PCR positivity. And those are very, very different pieces. Unfortunately, again, we’ve had no nuance in our overall discussion at the national level, and it has really conflated all of those. We’re using the same word for all of those different things, and and that’s a really bad idea because it leads to fear and concern and confusion."

This interview with an epidemiologist explains the confusing Yankees post-vaccine positive tests.

"Google has been pushing sites to use AMP for years and continues to recommend it as “the majority of the AMP pages achieve great page experiences”. But for websites that are optimized for speed, their AMP pages are often slower than the regular pages."

Very happy to see this.

"Now that we have safe, effective vaccines, we can give people immunity without causing dangerous disease. That puts us into a global race against the virus. The more people who see the vaccine before they see SARS-CoV-2, the fewer severe cases, long-term health problems, and deaths. Faster worldwide rollout will save lives. It really is that simple."

A great explanation of why it's the novelty of the coronavirus that makes it deadly and explains some of its seemingly unique properties.