Tag: Imported Post

Originally posted somewhere else (ex. a blog I don’t use anymore, or a social networking site) and moved here sometime later. Usually keeping the original posting date.

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November 23: Helicopter pilot finds “strange” monolith in remote part of Utah.

November 25: Using Google Earth to look for the Utah monolith site. One candidate that matches the landscape seems to have something vertical that appeared between the 2015 and 2016 images.

No coordinates in the article. Attempt no landings there.

December 7: After the Utah Monolith was found, everyone was making comments about 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as more have popped up, I’m starting to think about The Chronoliths. It’s a novel by Robert Charles Wilson in which obelisks appear out of nowhere, commemorating future military victories by someone no one has heard of – yet.

The monolith in Atascadero, California, was installed by a group of local artists who, on hearing about the one in Romania, figured, someone’s going to make a third one, so why not us?

It was meant to be something fun, a change of pace from the kind of conversations 2020 has been plagued with

After a group traveled five hours to tear it down on video, the town rallied around rebuilding the obelisk and putting it back up on the mountain.

December 27: I…what????? Gingerbread monolith appears — then collapses — on San Francisco hilltop

In true pop-up-art fashion, a nearly 7-foot-tall monolith made of gingerbread mysteriously appeared on a San Francisco hilltop on Christmas Day and collapsed the next day.

A tower made of gingerbread squares on a patch of dirt on a hill. Boulders and hikers visible in the background.

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Whatever you think of the electoral system, the fact that we have to wait for people to copy down those electoral votes is no longer helpful, and the fact that they can choose (or be pressured) to vote for someone else is a vulnerability in our democracy that should be patched.

You want to keep using electoral votes instead of the national popular vote? We can argue about that later. But we don’t need electors any more. Once each state certifies its election’s results, assigning its electoral votes should be automatic. It’s just math.

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Bizarre story (how could it not be?) in the LA Times on Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh’s experience with Covid-19 and the delusions he experienced at the height of the illness during two weeks in the ICU.

Among other things, he became convinced he’d written an entire new Devo album and hallucinated the band performing it live on the streets of Hollywood using augmented reality.

Months later, he’s still recovering physically.

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The way the Palantir network compromises Saruman and Denethor shows the danger in who controls the algorithm that manages your newsfeed.

Pippin picks it up, starts doomscrolling, and can’t put it down. Literally.

Aragorn plans out his post, gets on just long enough to make his point, and gets the hell out, knowing he’s made an impression.

imported from mastodon

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Infections are still high, but the LA/CA case-fatality rate has dropped since spring. Partly we’re spotting more of the mild cases, and younger people are a bigger percentage of cases now.

But also we’ve learned more about how to treat it:

  • dexamethasone for patients on oxygen
  • remdesivir shortens recovery time
  • nasal oxygen turns out to be enough for many patients who would’ve been intubated
  • we know about the clotting so we can jump on anti-coagulants

(Note that a certain high-profile Twitter user’s favorite covid drug treatment isn’t on that list because it doesn’t actually work on covid.)

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