From the Washington Post – Feb. 26, 2021 Government agencies increasingly are accessing private information they are not authorized to compile on their own By Drew Harwell Feb. 26, 2021 at 1:55 p.m. PST U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have tapped a private database containing hundreds of millions of phone, water, electricity and other … [Read more…]
COVID-19: US federal accountability for entry, spread, and inequities—lessons for the future European Journal of Epidemiology William P. Hanage,corresponding author, Christian Testa, Jarvis T. Chen, Letitia Davis, Elise Pechter, Peg Seminario, Mauricio Santillana, and Nancy Krieger Abstract: The United States (US) has been among those nations most severely affected by the first—and subsequent—phases of the … [Read more…]
Dreaming? Last night, I thought of Timothy McVeigh, I saw images of the April 19, 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after the bombing, and I thought of Trump’s brag that “he’d not leave the political field.” Putting this together at 2 a.m. in a fog of sleep left me thinking of the WPE (Worst … [Read more…]
Limbaugh is dead. I wish Newt Gingrich was as dead. Lord I don’t like to say I hate, but it was close for these two clowns. The damage they have done to America is stunning. But, better wordsmiths than I are summarizing Limbaugh’s life better than I ever could: Don’t Read This If You Were … [Read more…]
From the New York Times: Johnny Pacheco, Who Helped Bring Salsa to the World, Dies at 85 A Dominican-born bandleader and songwriter, he co-founded Fania Records, known as the Motown of Salsa.
So we never forget, as the reign of the WPE (worst-president-ever) slowly slips into the sunset, we need to remember a few things. David Frum in the Atlantic has written an excellent essay covering some of those things: The Trump Crew’s Incompetence Lasted to the End. The former president’s lawyers were bad—but that was all … [Read more…]
His drawings were so outrageous that, on first encountering them, his fellow cartoonist R. Crumb recalled feeling that “suddenly my own work seemed insipid.” . A NYT obituary of S. Clay Wilson . . Hucklecatt Hawaii 1h ago Sitting in the upstairs rooms of Peter Rich’s “Velo Sport” shop in Berkeley doing windowpane and reading … [Read more…]
At the Guardian’s International Edition today, an article titled: ‘Invisible killer’: fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals shows a stunning increase in morbidity from fossil fuel pollutants. Oliver Milman … [Read more…]
From the Feb. 7, 2021 New York Times: Kelly J. Baker is a writer and scholar of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. She sees frightening similarities between that culture and the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. A most interesting essay showing how things have not changed in ~100 years, the rhetoric … [Read more…]
From the New York Times obits: Sharon Begley, a Top Science Journalist, Is Dead at 64 Long at Newsweek, she was regarded as one of her generation’s pre-eminent science writers. An “Enlightenment-era figure,” Jon Meacham said. … Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Begley would … [Read more…]