Saturday, November 21, 2020

Weekend Reading: The a Few Links, a Few Laughs, and Cute Animals Edition

I am finding the general discourse depressing these days. It is like we looked at all the possible ways to respond to a pandemic and chose all of the things that would make it worse and decided to do those things and then just yell at each other: "this is all your fault!"

I read this article by public health expert Julia Marcus about the lessons we could learn from the HIV epidemic when it first came out and it has stayed with me. We missed the chance to follow her advice and now we're in another surge. Still, the lessons about effective communication and risk reduction remain valid. 

And that's all I'll say on that topic.

Let's get to the links.

I think this article about Ben Carson's coronavirus diagnosis is the thing I read that made me the most angry this week - and I read about the GSA administrator's refusal to do her damn job and so the competition was stiff. Carson says Trump authorized antibody treatment for him. Why in the world would Trump's opinion about who should get antibody treatment carry any weight? This administration is running around modeling the worst behavior and encouraging their followers to disregard public health advice. When it catches up with one of them and they get sick, they get the best available treatments and so far, they have all survived. Their followers are not necessarily so lucky - and neither are the other people stuck with the consequences of their followers' actions. It is infuriating. 

I have been really impressed with the group Run for Something, so it is probably not surprising that I like their founders' advice for what Democrats should do now.

I found this article about four people who went to a remote pacific island to do environmental work in February really interesting.

David Roberts wrote an interesting article about electrifying our fleet of trucks and the industrial policy we'll need to do that - it is worth a read.

In recommended listening: I like Majority 54 for its no-nonsense view on politics, and I found this week's episode on the future of the Democratic party particularly good.

This made me laugh:


And so did this:


And this is beautiful:

Puffin!


And of course.... Bunny!


Have a good weekend!

Posted by at
Labels: ,

1 comment:

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)