This morning, my partner reported that Utica’s air quality was really. I checked the Real-time Air Quality Index (World Air Quality Index) and could verify that the station in Utica was signaling “very unhealthy” conditions.

You can see that Utica stands out alone as very unhealthy.

Utica Air Quality is 243 (very unhealthy)

Whereas our initial idea was “wow the fires in California have already drifted that far? Over 5000km? Is that even possible?”, you can see that no-one else between California and Utica is similarly affected. It’s not smoke. If you look... [More]

There is an unalterable dynamic in which the establishment rejects all heresy if it is a challenge to its power. It continues to repeat itself. In Midnight Mass, one of the characters told a story about Ignaz Semmelweis (Wikipedia).

“[…] was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures […] Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers in obstetrical clinics to disinfect... [More]”

Stop what you’re doing and learn about how clever corvids are. There is a lot of footage of them creating grub-digging sticks to quite exacting specifications. It’s quite incredible, but there you are.

True Facts: Crows That Hunt With Sticks by Ze Frank (YouTube)

“Anyway, science hippies put a camera on the crow’s tail feathers…”

The crows are capable of solving multi-step problems. There are several tubes arrayed around the crow. One of the tubes has food in it, but cannot be reached with the small stick that the crow is given. There is a... [More]

First, let’s take the less-hopeful, but more-sober article COP28 climate summit exposes the dead end of fighting climate change under capitalism by Brian Dyne (WSWS). It writes,

“The end of COP28 was also applauded by John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate. Kerry said of the draft resolution, “While nobody here will see their views completely reflected, the fact is that this document sends a very strong signal to the world.”

“That signal is that capitalist governments can and will do nothing... [More]”

The article We can’t afford to be climate doomers by Rebecca Solnit (Guardian) takes “doomers” to task for failing to maintain optimism in the face of overwhelming resistance.

“Stanford engineering professor and renewable energy expert Mark Z Jacobson tweeted the other day, “Given that scientists who study 100% renewable energy systems are unanimous that it can be done why do we hear daily on twitter and everywhere else by those who don’t study such systems that it can’t be done?””

This means nothing. First of... [More]

The article Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows by Patrick Greenfield (The Guardian) reveals what it says in the title. It’s an excellent article proving to us what many of us already suspected strongly or already “knew”: the carbon-offset system looks like a scam and it is a scam. The company Verra, responsible for providing about ¾ of carbon offsets globally, is being accused of having sold 20x more credits than it can actually verify. That is, it is being... [More]

As I was reading the article Polio declared a disaster emergency in New York after more poliovirus found by Beth Mole (Ars Technica), the following citation caught my eye,

“Rockland County—which is notorious for generally low vaccination rates after battling a tenacious measles outbreak in 2019—has a polio vaccination rate of just 60 percent among children under the age of 2, who are recommended to have three polio vaccine doses.”

People are not vaccinating their children because they see the injections as dangerous.... [More]

What’s the biggest source of CO₂ in the world? I was with a friend who argued that it was personal passenger vehicles. I was pretty sure that industry and agriculture produced the lion’s share of CO₂, but she was adamant. I thought it sounded like her source was conveniently placing the blame for a warming planet on individuals’ inability to conserve when I thought that our individual contributions, while not inconsequential, were not the place that we needed to start, necessarily.

When I had... [More]

I was listening to this video,

COVID decreased life expectancy by 2 years. What does that mean? by Sabine Hossfelder (YouTube)

Sabine said that the standard measure of life expectancy “is easy to misunderstand”. So, instead of expecting that people should make an effort to understand it, we dumb it down instead, making it easier to understand, but much less accurate. That is, people will get a less-accurate impression, but be just as confident in it. It will become the new reality, as usual.

Hossfelder talks about the Period life expectancy, which is a measure that assumes that every... [More]

The article So entwickeln sich die Corona-Zahlen in der Schweiz (SRF) is updated constantly. In the update from Monday, 24.01.2022, the matrix that shows the infection rate by age group was a particularly brilliant crimson.

Matrix of Infections by Age Group

If I’m reading this chart correctly, 4.5% of 10 to 19-year-olds were infected with COVID in the week from 10.01 to 17.01. That seems like quite a lot. Switzerland has a 7-day rolling average of about 32,300 cases per day. That makes about 226,000 per week. The latest population... [More] (Wikipedia)

In a recent article Links and Notes for December 17th, 2021, I noted that Doctor Mark Hanefeld seems to be underselling vaccine efficacy (predicted) and effectiveness (measured).

The podcast is linked below,

Coronavirus-Update Sonderfolge: Gerüchte und Fake-News zur Impfung einordnen | NDR Podcast by NDR Ratgeber (YouTube)

At 17:30, Herr Doktor Marc Hanefeld says,

“Nehmen wir mal einfach die Zulassungsstudien zu Biontech. Da haben wir eine 95% Effektivität. Und die Effektivität ist immer im Hinblick auf symptomatische Ansteckung. Das heisst, man wird angesteckt mit dem Virus und merkt was—hat... [More]”

I recently saw an argument that says that people like Greta Thunberg—let’s use her as a placeholder for any semi-affluent first-worlder—can argue all she wants for a massive reduction of fossil-fuel usage, but that she’s privileged to be able to do so, as there is zero chance that her life will be impacted negatively by it. The argument is that stopping fossil fuels now will leave the developing world even farther behind because they won’t be able to benefit from the economic growth they... [More]

A not insignificant part of the community doesn’t want the COVID vaccine. So, they’re coming up with their own versions. I heard from one friend that he’s taking dandelion extract. He’s convinced it will help fend off COVID, so that means he thinks he’s developed a partial vaccine, at least. The picture below comes from an anti-vaxx blogger I follow,[1]

Nyquil: just as good as the vaccine

The guy posted it without comment, other than to title it “A safe alternative to the “vaccine”“, so I have no idea whether he’s just kidding... [More]

In combatting the pandemic efficiently and successfully, Switzerland is in a pretty bad place right now. It’s not nearly as bad as Austria or Germany (or a bunch of Eastern Europe, for that matter), but it’s not too far behind.

There aren’t too many reasons to believe that things will go any better in Switzerland than it’s gone in those countries—with their overflowing hospitals and people dying due to emergency-triage policies.

That’s the thing about playing musical chairs for real: when... [More]

The Edit by Mr. FishCOP26 has come and gone and many people, if not most of them, didn’t even notice. It was the 26th meeting of world leaders to discuss which measures they can all agree to put into place in order to address climate change.

A few of the other summits are famous by their city names: Kyoto in 1992, where the U.S.—by far the biggest polluter at the time—refused to ratify it; Copenhagen in 2009, where the world’s worst per-capita polluter Canada torpedoed everything so that they wouldn’t have to... [More]

The DACH region ([D]eutschland, [A]ustria, S[CH]weiz) is looking down the barrel of its worst COVID wave yet. We are a good 20 months into the pandemic and nearly a year after the general availability of a highly effective vaccine. To be fair, most people under 65 were not able to get the vaccine until May or June (in Switzerland, at least). However, it’s been 5 months since then.

Stuck in the lifeboat

That’s more than enough time for a civilized and well-educated public to do the right thing... [More]

I keep finding people who suggest that the vaccine is “potentially sacrificing millions of citizens like so many experimental fruit flies.” That is one of the more reasonable formulations, as the author of the article Medicine Wants to Kill You by James Howard Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation) has included the word “potentially” to hedge his bets against the fact that many of us have not (yet!) fallen over with an acute case of death brought on by what they deem an untested—or under-tested—vaccine.[1]

They also seem to believe—and almost... [More]

People in Switzerland are pretty much done with being vaccinated, according to the video report FOKUS: Impfbereitschaft in der Schweiz am Limit (SRF), Switzerland has managed to fully vaccinate 63% of the population (64% at the time of writing) but pretty much everyone who’s not gotten vaccinated yet is not planning to do so.

“Das Impf-Potential in der Schweiz scheint ausgeschöpft, wie die neuste Sotomo-Studie zeigt. Personen, die jetzt noch eine Impfung ablehnen, haben ihre Meinung gemacht.”

The... [More]

The article Fossil fuels doomed in New York as regulator blocks new gas power plants by Tim De Chant (Ars Technica) writes,

“New York’s climate law requires polluters to account for two sources of emissions: from the plants themselves and from the natural gas supply chain. Once the latter was included—figures which in the past were nearly always ignored when determining a power plant’s pollution—the emissions quickly exceeded the DEC’s thresholds, the decisions say.”

I think that this is a good way of looking at... [More]

The article Biden Wakes Up From The Strangest Dream That He Was Attending International Climate Conference (Babylon Bee) is a joke, but…is it really? It feels true, doesn’t it?

I am an optimistic man and, yet, we must be realistic. These people at COP26 are nearly literally all of the same people who’ve done nearly nothing since Kyoto. Remember Kyoto? Nah, no-one does. That was COP3 in 1997. Almost a quarter-century ago. Back then, it was absolutely necessary that something be done. Nothing was done.
... [More]

I was browsing the COVID situation on Corona Zahlen Weltweit yesterday and sorted by %-deaths for the first time. I was quite shocked to see that a sizable country like Mexico had a lethality of 7.6%. Peru is at 9.1%.

Mexico COVID infection and death rates

The only countries higher than that are the tiny, island nation of Vanuatu (with only 4 infections total), Yemen, Peru, and Sudan. Yemen and Sudan are well-known to be in dire straits six ways from Sunday, with multiple humanitarian crises happening all at once, including war... [More]

From a comment on the article, Vaccine Success, Media Misery: Is Good News Taboo in the Trump Age? by Matt Taibbi (TK News)

“I find it interesting that for all the takes on who will and who won’t take the vaccine- and why- a simple reason is commonly overlooked: For many people in good health and of a certain age group, the virus poses little to no real threat. Yes, there have been terrible cases reported in surprising victims, but as far as the data goes, they continue to be anomalies.”

This is exactly the kind of... [More]

Virologist Christian Drosten was very good on his weekly podcast, (88) Impfmission possible by Das Coronavirus-Update von NDR Info (Apple Podcasts). In this episode, he lays down the cold facts: COVID will become endemic in the west. Get vaccinated or get COVID. There is no choice (C).

An English translation follows the German citation.

At 48:00,

“Christian Drosten: Jeder wird immun werden. 100%. Nicht 70% oder 80% sondern 100% in der Bevölkerung werden unweigerlich—ich würde mal sagen, in einem Fenster das von jetzt noch so anderthalb Jahre... [More]”

Biden recently informed the nation that things would be back to normal by July 4th—as if the virus cares.

Biden peddles national self-delusion on pandemic anniversary by Patrick Martin (WSWS)

“The language of collective loss, suffering and sacrifice, however, ignored the brutal fact that one section of American society, the super-rich, has lost nothing at all from 12 months of the worst pandemic in a century.

“While 527,000 Americans died, the billionaires increased their wealth by $1.4 trillion. While the economy... [More]”

The article CDC study finds c. 78% of people hospitalized for COVID were overweight or obese by Mark Crispin Miller contains the following text and the link below it.

“A study from the CDC, reported by CNBC, and yet it slipped right down the memory hole, despite—or because of—the further light it sheds on the entire COVID narrative, which has millions of slim, healthy people tightly masked and terrified of human contact.”

The article he linked, CDC study finds about 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were... [More] by Berkeley Lovelace Jr. (CNBC)

Coronavirus-Update #82: Die Lage ist ernst by NDR Ratgeber (YouTube)

Drosten’s pissed. I’ve heard “irreführende” about 90 times now. He thinks there are two options: let it rip and collapse the health system or go back into lockdown (“der Holzhammer”) … Germany doesn’t seem capable of doing anything in between.

He said “private Kontakte” are definitely where infections are coming from now. It’s no longer true that “wir wissen einfach nicht wovon die Infectionen kommen…”

At 37:30, he said

“Bei keinem diesen Viren gibt es eine “Dauerwelle”. Der Begriff “der... [More]”

Vor einem Jahr habe ich zum ersten mal von Herr Doktor Christian Drosten erfahren. Heute höre ich nahezu wöchentlich seinen Podcast mit Moderatorin Korrina Hennig auf Staatssender NDR mit. Er ist beruflich Virologe und kann sich sehr gut nicht nur über das Thema sondern auch die mit der Pandemie damit verbundenen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Themen diskutieren und verständigen lassen.

Coronavirus-Update #76: Astra-Impfstoff viel besser als sein Ruf by NDR Ratgeber (YouTube)

Bei 00:46:57 wird die berühmte Astra-Impfstoff-Studie aus Südafrika diskutiert mit Schwerpunkt... [More]

The podcast episode 134 | Robert Sapolsky on Why We Behave the Way We Do by Sean Carroll (Wondery) was a really interesting introduction/look at the science of free will as described in far greater detail in his book Behave (which I have not yet read).

Robert M. Sapolsky's BehaveI’ve included a partial transcript of the parts that I found the most interesting. The following comes from the end of the episode, where they both did an excellent job of summarizing the preceding discussion’s points as well as pointing out logical conclusions for e.g.... [More]

People’s behavior vis á vis COVID-19 at this point—ten months after the onset of the virus—is like when an action movie’s hero is in the swamp with a straw in his mouth, sucking a barely adequate supply of air through it, while his pursuers are still somewhere up there, looking for him.[1]

Were they still within earshot? Would they hear him if he just came up quickly for a good, solid breath? Were they completely gone? Was he suffering underwater for nothing? They’re not still around, right?... [More]

I played Kahoot[1] the other day with the family. The quizzes are pretty wide-ranging and pretty decent fun, especially for a mix of ages. One of the quizzes concerned sound and electromagnetic waves and I tried to explain why one of the answers was incorrect “in the moment”, as it were. Concerned that my explanation had engendered rather than answered questions, I take another crack at it below.

Radio vs. Sound Waves

I was thinking again about how you didn’t seem to convinced by my fumbling... [More]