What? You mean creationists lie about the scientific literature? » « So this is how 2021 ends

Twenty twenty too

New year, same as the old year. In 2020, I went into the spring term worried about this new virus everyone was talking about, and then it just got worse and worse until all in-person classes were cancelled mid semester and everything fell into chaos as we struggled to turn our courses into something new.

I’ll be content if 2022 doesn’t turn into a reprise of 2020, or 2021, or 1350.

What? You mean creationists lie about the scientific literature? » « So this is how 2021 ends

Comments

  3. angoratrilobite says

    My mom’s long term care facility is in lockdown because of this fucking virus… I couldn’t visit her on Christmas, I can’t say happy new year. This year is not even one day old and it already sucks. :(

  5. robro says

    Dennis K @ #2 — But 2022 has the “mid-term” election. If the GOP gets its way they will control Congress. Then they can wreck all kinds of havoc and grind the Biden administration to halt. Great preparation for a return of the Don in 2024…or some other person of his ilk, e.g. Don Junior.

  7. azpaul3 says

    @ angoratrilobite, # 4: A history we appear to be on the verge of repeating since we didn’t seem to learn from the experience the first time.

  8. says

    Three years ago I was sexually assaulted on New Years day. Then it was 2020, then it was 2021, now its 2022. The world seems dead set on insuring I’m never happy again. FML

  9. angoratrilobite says

    azpaul3 and christoph

    Oh! I’m not American, I didn’t realize that. I mean, I knew that the civil war happened just didn’t know when it was…

    Oh boy, I hope that doesn’t happen to you guys. :(

  10. Dennis K says

    @9 angoratrilobite — I don’t know. Another American Civil War might at least slow the spread of fascism around the world and would be a fitting comeuppance to the GOP’s dream of a Fourth Reich.

  11. raven says

    Twenty twenty too isn’t starting so well.
    We are at the start of the worst pandemic wave so far with Omicron.
    So when will it peak and how bad will it be?
    This is what a few of the models says.

    Washington Post By Joel Achenbach
    December 30, 2021 at 7:03 p.m. EST
    Crazy’ omicron surge could peak soon, but the virus is unpredictable as the pandemic enters its third year
    Some forecasts suggest coronavirus infections could peak by mid-January.

    “Omicron will likely be quick. It won’t be easy, but it will be quick. Come the early spring, a lot of people will have experienced covid,” William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an email Thursday.
    Forecasts of the current winter wave, in which omicron has come riding in atop an existing delta wave, are somewhat more plausible. Columbia University researchers have a model that projects a peak in cases during the week beginning Jan. 9, with about 2.5 million confirmed infections in that seven-day period — and potentially as many as 5 million.

    Columbia epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman said the infection numbers reported in recent days are already at the high-end of projections, and the peak could come sooner. Omicron is setting new daily records for infections with the virus. The seven-day average of new, officially confirmed daily cases soared to more than 300,000 Wednesday. Then came the eye-popping Thursday numbers from state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — 562,000 new cases, pushing the seven-day average to 343,000.
    “We’re talking somewhere up to maybe 10 million people,” Shaman said. “Maybe not all of them are contagious yet. Crazy numbers. Crazy, crazy numbers.”
    or
    A model from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington puts the peak of this winter wave at Feb. 6, with 408,000 confirmed new daily infections.

    The models have the Omicron wave peaking somewhere between January 15 and early February.

    After that, who knows?
    It could have a sharp decline like it did in South Africa or gradually tail off like Delta was doing.

    I’m not going any place not necessary for a while.

  12. stroppy says

    Somehow we jumped down to omicron. What’s up with that? Hopefully we have enough Greek letters left to cover whatever other variants are waiting in the wings.

  15. davidc1 says

    Off topic,but my laptop has been slow since I download a VPN,I have read on the interwebs that that can do that.
    But there are some that don’t slow down your laptop,thinking of uninstalling it.
    Too much trouble just so I can comment on the bastard guardian.

  16. Callinectes says

    @12 Nu and Xi were skipped for practical reasons. The rest were used on new variants that were monitored but did not go anywhere.

  17. Walter Solomon says

    robot @5

    or some other person of his ilk, e.g. Don Junior.

    Or “Don” DeSantis.

  18. whheydt says

    Re: davidc1 @ #15…
    I don’t know if it would work on The Guardian, but it works on other partially paywalled sites… Set up a Raspberry Pi (Pi4B-2GB or better) and configure the browser to delete all cookies on exit. Then when a site claims you’ve hit your limit for free articles, close and reopen the browser. That should reset the article count. If you don’t have a spare monitor (or space to set one up), run the Pi headless and use VPN to access its screen on your laptop.

  20. blf says

    whheydt@18, That does work on at the Grauniad; so does the automatic semi-equivalent, “private” or “incognito” mode. (I’m unsure about the Grauniad’s app, as I have registered.) In any case, please support the Grauniad if you can!

    davidc1@16, No true VPN should make your laptop slow. It will reduce the transfer speed on your Internet links, which (e.g.) means you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a page to load / refresh. It may also cause complaints from some search engines. However, operations not involving the network should proceed with roughly the same performance as previously.

    How much is the transfer speed reduced (by a VPN)? Depends. What is the raw transfer speed of your computer, of your LAN / WiFi, of your connection to the Internet, of the VPN server’s connection to you, of the VPN’s internal operations, of the VPN’s connection to the final site, and of that final site — as a partial list. Broadly, it depends very much on the quality of your VPN provider, who may be interfered-with by both your ISP and governments along the path. (I’ll ignore the whole issue of “VPNs” which aren’t really VPNs.)

    I myself have have fibre-into-the-home, use a highly-regarded VPN provider, and the transfer speed reduction is easily-acceptable. I can still download a gigabit in less perhaps one minute, etc., with probably the main annoyance being some search engines sometimes “think” I am spamming or a robot.

    And you don’t need to use a VPN to either read or comment at the Grauniad, excepting if you are in a country which censors the media.

  22. Silentbob says

    @ 19 Reginald Selkirk

    I hope when the pardon’s done they materialize in a puff of smoke and say, “Och, it’s aboot time, laddie!”.

  23. birgerjohansson says

    I am afraid of a return to 1859, namely the original “Carrington event “.
    Or even worse, a Miyake event, two orders of magnitude stronger. Goodbye, electronics.

  24. birgerjohansson says

    Read at Mano Singham’s blog.
    JSW telescope successfully unfolded the complex “shade” .
    Lawyers of prince Andrew fail to block a lawsuit from a presumed victim of Epstein & Maxwell.
    Unrelated: London had + 16.3°C yesterday. Absolutely no greenhouse effect, no.

  25. birgerjohansson says

    Schadenfreude.
    Polls show Brexit gets increasingly impopular.
    And even members of the tory party distrust Bojo.

  27. brightmoon says

    Just found out my oldest was in a house fire and lost everything . He’s alive that’s all I care about ! And I’ve got Covid/ bad cold / flu . I’m getting tested Monday

  29. brightmoon says

    #1 bruce . Frankly as a Black woman I’m worried about losing my civil rights both as a woman and as a BIPOC . These fundies are talking about biblically based slavery was benign and some of these deluded morons are Black . I think Alan Parr is one of the them IIRC

  31. davidc1 says

    I was banned from commenting on the guardian for reasons best known to their mods.
    I an in the countryside,so the broadband might not be the fastest,it seems to slow down
    around 6pm,plus the sodding laptop has never been the same since I installed windows10.
    It seems to slow down at the same time as the fan is going full pelt.
    Perhaps it needs a deep clean or something.

  32. KG says

    I was banned from commenting on the guardian for reasons best known to their mods. – davidc1@31

    Probably for repeated violence against orthography.

  33. richardh says

    KG@32:
    Probably for repeated violence against orthography.
    That would be rich, coming from the Grauniad.
    It’s taken their journalists 20+ years to learn that oh and zero are different keys on modern typewriterskeyboards.