‘Platypus Fish’ Discovery Changes What We Know About One Type of Evolution Inverse
Christine Lagarde: Climate change and central banking (PDF) Bank of International Settlements
Beyond State Capacity: Bureaucratic Performance, Policy Implementation, and Reform (PDF) Martin J. Williams. From the Abstract: “To advance the study of state bureaucratic quality, researchers should seek to understand the implications of bureaucracies’ collective nature, engage with contextual specificity and contingency in policy implementation, and focus measurement and reform efforts on actual performance rather than hypothetical capacity.”
The Coronavirus Vaccine Fail and International Elites Center for Economic and Policy Research
#COVID19
How Monopolies Slowed the Vaccine Roll-Out, and Small Business Sped it Up Matt Stoller, BIG
Blue Shield of California tapped to run state vaccine system KCRA. “Kaiser did not respond to emailed inquiries for comment.” I’ll bet. Let’s hope they do better than Massachusetts:
Vaccination program is going well in MA pic.twitter.com/NR1bdPEyXK
— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) January 28, 2021
Are vaccine providers selling your health data? There’s not much stopping them. Recode
* * *
Efficacy of Colchicine in Non-Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 (preprint) medRxiv. From the Abstract: “Evidence suggests the role of an inflammatory storm in COVID-19 complications. Colchicine is an orally administered, anti-inflammatory medication beneficial in gout, pericarditis and coronary disease. We performed a randomized, double-blind trial involving non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 diagnosed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing or clinical criteria…. Conclusion: Among non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19, colchicine reduces the composite rate of death or hospitalization.”
Coronasomnia: Pervasive Sleeplessness, Self-medicating Raise Concerns of Sleep Experts Medscape
More seasonal affective disorder this winter? ‘It’s obvious this year is different’ NBC
* * *
This breakthrough mask is a ‘smoke detector’ for COVID-19 Fast Company. Sadly, “the promising research is still being validated.” But the idea seems good.
How the CARES Act Forgot America’s Most Vulnerable Hospitals Pro Publica
China?
China reports a growing shortage of factory workers CNBC
Chinese New Year: Clamping down on going home for the holidays BBC
China’s Xi Champions Multilateralism at Davos, Again The Diplomat
China’s Xi Signals More Hong Kong Curbs With Call for ‘Patriots’ Bloomberg.
Jack Ma Can Call Ant Group Whatever He Wants, But Xi Jinping Is Gonna Call It A Bank Dealbreaker
Why Attempts to Build a New Anti-China Alliance Will Fail Foreign Policy
White House: ‘great concern’ over Covid origin ‘misinformation’ from China Guardian
As Bali attempts to forge a new era, we need to stop spinning fables about it and listen to Balinese Travelfish
Cambodia’s cash-strapped cyclo drivers treated to pedal-in movie Reuters
This is Asia’s top-performing economy in the Covid pandemic — it’s not China CNBC
Rumours and fear dog Philippine plan for coronavirus vaccine drive Reuters
India
Tractor rally: On the road despite disruption People’s Archive of Rural India. “Disruption” being the Red Fort seizure.
Indian police use facial recognition in search for farmer protesters FT
India Has Plenty of Coronavirus Vaccines But Few Takers Bloomberg
Syraqistan
Turkey enraged by Clintons’ TV show exalting Syrian Kurdish women fighters Al Monitor
UK/EU
A Time of Trial and My Sworn Evidence on the Sturgeon Affair Craig Murray
EU and AstraZeneca fail to resolve vaccine supply dispute FT
Sanofi confirms its will supply over 125 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses to the EU Reuters
New Cold War
Vladimir Putin warns of ‘dark anti-Utopia’ world in Davos speech South China Morning Post
How not to Help the Russian Opposition Irrussianality
The Truth Behind Russia’s Navalny Protests The National Interest
Where surveillance cameras work, but the justice system doesn’t Rest of World
Mexico’s pandemic policy: No police. No curfews. No fines. No regrets. WaPo
Biden Transition
Can President Joe Biden mend a torn America? Thomas Frank, Le Monde Diplomatique. A must read, full of good, clean fun. This splendid transition paragraph:
If we are truly dedicated to truth, as Biden calls on us to be, we must consider the entire sweep of the Trump era and in particular the sort of voters who, over the last few decades, have been shifting from the Republican to the Democratic Party. As it happens, these are Americans I know well: people of taste and education, for whom modern life is a succession of splendours and pleasantries. I mean the residents of the nation’s richest white-collar suburbs.
No wonder Frank doesn’t get invited to cocktail parties in Georgetown anymore.
Democratic Fascists Prepare to Drop the Hammer Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report. With typical extravagance….
* * *
Biden prioritizes climate change as national security concern, pauses oil drilling on public lands USA Today
Biden Freezes Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE Antiwar.com. The article body uses “pause,” not “freeze.”
* * *
Biden’s Pandemic Plan Might Just Work The New Yorker. Worth a read, if only — this being The New Yorker — to marvel at the logistical precision with which the blame cannons are already being deployed, one week after the adults were put back in charge.
Biden administration takes cautious approach as it touts using Defense Production Act CNN. “‘As much as the Biden administration talks about it, we sense that it’s going to be consultative, nuanced and strategic,’ in using the Defense Production Act, said one industry source.” Oxford comma issues aside, come on, man.
They use cards for the miserably inadequate $600 stimulus?!
another cute trick of this prepaid bank card $600 stimmy thing is that it’s actually $599.75 minus a 25 cent surcharge for something and you get one free ATM withdrawal but only in $20 increments and then have to pay $1 for your final $18.75
— hen-wen, oracular pig (@spindlypete) January 27, 2021
Global Speeds December 2020 Speedtest. Mobile: United States, #20. Broadband: United States, #10, good job.
GameStop
Discord bans server tied to Reddit stock surge page The Hill. Attaboy. Deplatform them!
Occupy Wall Street spirit returns as traders upset the elites FT. No.
How Trumpism explains the GameStop stock surge Chris Cilizza, CNN. Similarly:
–A bored/angry young man is the most dangerous person in the world.
–When countries have unemployed young men, who are single, the likelihood that country goes to war escalates
–We have cut the share of wealth of young people in half in last 30 years (19% to 9%)— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) January 27, 2021
Um, that’s GSE. No, I’m not bored at all:
Wallboard does that to young men pic.twitter.com/XpPNVwn9vY
— Chris Arnade 🐢 (@Chris_arnade) January 27, 2021
The country is being buffeted by groups that couldn’t exist 30 years ago Philip Bump, WaPo
What happened with GameStop? Markets Weekly. “It’s not David vs Goliath. It’s Goliath vs. Goliath, with David as a fig leaf.”
How Redditors Beat Hedge Funds at Their Own Game(Stop) Eric Levitz, New York Magazine
Late Cycle Bubblicious? The Big Picture. If a basement-dwelling family member is speculating in stonks, this might be a good link to somehiw induce them to read.
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Understanding Multiracial Whiteness And Trump Supporters NPR. “Multiracial whiteness.” See, the
HispanicLatinx voters who didn’t vote for Biden are… white. Musical interlude (lyrics).The Logic of Eugenics Still Haunts Virginia Boston Review
California’s forgotten investor-backed genocide squads Yasha Levine, Immigrants as a Weapon
Imperial Collapse Watch
The ‘Humanitarian’ Left Still Ignores the Lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to Cheer on More War Counterpunch
Class Warfare
In a Six-Day Strike, Bronx Produce Workers Doubled Their Raise and Inspired New York Labor Notes
How to Shut Down ICE Detention in Your Community, a Detention Watch Network Guide Teen Vogue. Now do Amazon warehouses:
Here is video from the COVID TESTING AREA at the Virginia warehouse that Poushawn worked in and worked on testing. As you can see there is no plexiglass to protect workers being tested with the workers like Poushawn who were working in that area. pic.twitter.com/D5NbhD2TFT
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) January 27, 2021
It’s time for a new, progressive supply-side economics The Center for Growth and Opportunity
You Are Witness to a Crime The Baffler. On ACT-UP, a social movement to learn from.
Antidote du jour (via PM):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
