Up From Facebook

  "The experiment involved 2,000 concertgoers, who were mostly young, healthy and not belonging to any high-risk group. Attendees had to provide a negative COVID-19 test result prior to the concert and their temperature was taken upon arrival at the venue. They wore FFP2 face masks during the event and were fitted with contact-tracing devices, which would complement sensors on the ceiling of the venue that collected data on their movements. "We want to study how much contact the participants have with one another during the concert - which is actually still not clear," research lead Stefan Moritz said. Fluorescent disinfectant was also distributed. "After the event, we can see with ultraviolet lamps which surfaces glow in particular, meaning they were touched particularly often," Moritz added. Halle scientists also tracked the movement of aerosols; the smallest particles in the air that can carry the virus." https://www.dw.com/en/german-scientists-run-conc...

  As a research scientist for nearly my entire adult life, I've made a career of critical evaluation of evidence and data. When the facts change, I change my mind. Not so with most of the Republican Party. And Trump knows this, so he just follows the practices pioneered by Stalin and Hitler: the big lie. Rely on peoples' intellectual laziness and tendency to default to arguments from authority, because arguments from evidence are hard. Here's a well-intentioned suggestion for how to insinuate facts and evidence into political discourse in the hope that there are some Trump supporters who actually care about them. Color me skeptical. "This is why I favor a sort of “Fact of the Day” approach to this. That is, short blurbs that simply display something in the news without reference to anything Trump has said." https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/08/fact-of-the-day-manufacturing-as-a-of-the-workforce-1985-2020/?fbclid=IwAR1ReDMf0d5wReTlZDEmTvX6Z7y4JA9n6xPXEfe...

  "The comments are a kind of whiplash turnaround from a months-long attack made by the President to undermine the mail service. He has worked hard at trying to convince voters — especially in Democratic-led states — that they will be unable to reliably cast mailed ballots during the COVID-19 crisis and has called the Postal Service as a “joke.” There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States, which Trump surely knows, but he’s used his attack on voting by mail as a campaign tactic to strategically suppress votes in places where he sees his second-term chances as less likely." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-shifts-attack-on-mail-in-voting-away-from-usps-now-blames-election-officials?fbclid=IwAR3wd_r3V65YvGtFS8Tsn_TuVmnJD1YINr6ypfBs1Qby3Gf0xVhJfFVyOW0

The term “cancel culture” is the re-branding of what the right-wing used to call “political correctness,” their rebuttal to idea that there is certain speech and behavior that is sufficiently offensive that it deserves to be excluded from public discourse. “Cancel culture” is a somewhat more versatile epithet in that it also subsumes the disapprobation of historical acts and figures revered by the racist right as undeserving of taxpayer-supported respect,   viz., monuments, statuary, buildings and military bases honoring people who committed treason against America to defend white supremacy.   The whining about cancel culture is no more deserving of our attention and respect than the whining about political correctness. There aren’t two sides to the use of the N word. People who use it deserve to be shamed and called out. Likewise, there aren’t two sides to treason against America. The Constitution makes it clear that in America, treason is criminal behavior. Honoring traitors...

  "The UAE was bribed with F-35s and other sophisticated weapons to recognize Israel. Trump and Esper made Lockheed Martin happy, ensuring campaign dollars for Trump’s reelection, and Esper did well by his old company and colleagues. Netanyahu winked at this erosion of Israeli military dominance, hiding this dimension of the deal from his own minister of defense and security apparatus, so that he could claim the recognition as a breakthrough for his personal diplomacy and charisma. Netanyahu is under indictment and he may betray Gantz by going to new elections and campaigning on having gotten further recognition from the Arabs." Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Only a week after the breathless announcement of the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) recognition of … About this website JUANCOLE.COM Was F-35 Stealth Jet Sale to Arab UAE at heart of deal with Israel and Trump? Did Netanyahu Lie? Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Only a week after the breathless announcement of the United ...

  I won't be watching any of the Democratic convention. This merely extends my track record of ignoring these media set pieces. That record is only matched by the number of Superbowls I've ignored (all of them, since they began). But I'm interested in political commentary, and this think piece by Matt Yglesias gets to the heart of the challenges faced by Democrats in running against an unpopular president who could still win. "Not coincidentally, pollsters find that this summer even as Trump is badly underperforming his 2016 results with white voters (especially women and college graduates), he’s doing a bit better with Black voters and with Hispanic voters. Upscale cosmopolitans seem to feel so deeply in their bones that Trump’s racism should be alienating working-class nonwhites that they experience psychological discomfort at contemplating the reality that it isn’t. Instead, polarization along lines of educational attainment and social trust is occurring so rapidly ...

  Yes, there are two sides to every question. In most cases, there is a correct side and a wrong side. In the case of Kamala Harris, the correct side is that she was born a US citizen. The wrong side is that her parents had to be citizens or permanent residents for her to be a citizen. President Trump pretended to be unsure about this, just as he pretended for five years that Barack Obama is not a citizen. In the case of the Harris noncitizen claim, it is backed by the racist C laremont Institute: "The Claremont Institute masquerades as an intellectual salon of the right, but it is really just a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right. It even granted a fellowship to Jack Posobiec, who helped promote the notorious Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Claremont’s resident bigots offer deranged fantasies of violently expelling Americans from their home country because of their ethnic backgrounds. Their work deserves the intellectual weight given to that of D...

Yes, I read polls. I'm a scientist and accordingly, I love data. "I know someone who says . . ." is an anecdote, not data.   Yes, I know lots of people say the polls were wrong in 2016. And some polls were way off and some pundits were wrong in their interpretation of polling data. That's why Nate Silver is my go-to on polling data. He is very clear on what polling data do and don't mean. Read the whole thing. Joe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states su… About this website FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM It’s Way Too Soon To Count Trump Out Joe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states su…

I've been tracking the SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 mortality in Israel for over three months. Of course, their prime minister is Trump without the bad hairpiece and orange spray-on complexion.   "JERUSALEM — As the United States and other countries anxiously consider how to reopen schools, Israel, one of the first countries to do so, illustrates the dangers of moving too precipitously. Confident it had beaten the coronavirus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May. Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school in Israel, possibly the world. The virus rippled out to the students’ homes and then to other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives. Other outbreaks forced hundreds of schools to close. Across the country, tens of thousands of students and teach...