onfocus

"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.

"Many of the 12, he said, have been spreading scientifically disproven medical claims and conspiracies for years. Which provokes the question: Why have social media platforms only recently begun cracking down on their falsehoods?"

It’s much easier to poison the information well than we realize because social media platforms don’t have an incentive to fix it. Poisoned water might even bring people to the well more often.

"Only when we are 0 percent busy can we step back and look at the bigger picture of what we’re doing. Slack allows us to think ahead. To consider whether we’re on the right trajectory. To contemplate unseen problems. To mull over information. To decide if we’re making the right trade-offs."

How inefficiency can be good, actually.

"The way I’ve framed the thought experiment in recent conversations is this: Imagine, tomorrow, an alien craft crashed down in Oregon. There are no life-forms in it. It’s effectively a drone. But it’s undeniably extraterrestrial in origin. So we are faced with the knowledge that we’re not alone, that we are perhaps being watched, and we have no way to make contact. How does that change human culture and society?"

This scenario is a little too specific. I'm in Oregon and now I'm worried. What does Ezra Klein know?

"The company paid the hefty ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment."

Facepalm. This should really help stem the tide of infrastructure attacks. We get a gas panic and the criminals get #!?*coin. At least the perpetrators can't buy Teslas with it.

"In the meantime, those who are already vaccinated can help speed up the process by encouraging their friends, family, and peers to get the shot. Surveys consistently show that around 1 in 3 unvaccinated people are waiting for others around them to get vaccinated first before they do so. Sharing vaccination stories, then, could give people the push they need."

I just want to share that I got the vaccine (twice!) and it was worth the minor inconvenience to help get everyone out of this pandemic. The inconvenience is nothing compared to over a year of lockdown life. We’re very lucky to have easy access to vaccines here in the US—we can do this!

"The investment bank calculated that a $1bn investment in bitcoin would produce the same carbon emissions as the annual output of 1.2m cars due to energy usage associated with bitcoin."

It's the opposite of buying carbon offsets.