The bad news will keep on coming

A diagram putting the danger of infection with COVID-19 in perspective:

Not shown is the human cost. Deaths from the coronavirus in Washington state have crept up to 6. All of them were people over 70; the death rate for the afflicted over that age is 15%. The virus isn’t done yet, either.

“We expect the number of cases to increase in the coming days and weeks,” said Jeff Duchin, health officer for the public health agency, who stressed that most cases will be mild. “We are taking this situation extremely seriously.”

Uh-oh. My mother lives in King County, and she is over 70. I hope she’ll take this as an excuse to quarantine herself and stay home for a while.

More answers to creationists

A couple of my anti-creationist pals, James Downard and Jackson Wheat, have released a new book, The Rocks Were There: Straight Science Answers to bent Creationist Questions, Volume 1. I expect it will be good, but I just ordered my copy 5 minutes ago, so I haven’t read it yet, and can’t actually review it.

That doesn’t stop the creationists, though: it has a single one-star review from a long-winded pseudoscientist named James V. Kohl. I’ve dealt with him before, he’s a crank. Don’t let his review stop you — we need more honest reviews to counter the nonsense kooks like Kohl throw around.

When did you last wash your hands?

John Oliver has some sensible advice.

As for my handwashing…all day long. I work with students every day all day (who I avoid touching, obviously), so I tend to wash my hands thoroughly about once an hour, or before and after I go to class. Not just for coronavirus, but because they’re filthy animals and disease vectors for all kinds of crap…and I have the potential to transfer diseases to a diverse lot of people who wouldn’t normally hang out together but are forced into my classrooms for those sweet, sweet credits.

Spiders are far less infectious than other humans, you know.

The only political punditry you need

I vote in the Minnesota primary tomorrow, along with lots of people in states all across the country. There is a stultifying mass of punditry hovering over the country: ‘experts’ are all telling you who to vote for based on this mysterious thing called “electability”, on prognostications about matchups next November, on how many other people are voting for candidate X vs candidate Y. Your goal is to get on the winning bandwagon early, because as we all know, whoever guesses which candidate will win tomorrow gets fabulous prizes.

Oh, wait, no they don’t. You win nothing for picking the same candidate the most people pick.

So I have some advice for you. Ignore your friends and families. Never mind the statistics and the odds. Drop-kick FiveThirtyEight into an open sewer manhole. Fuck the commentators on CNN and Fox and MSNBC. Don’t trust me to tell you who to vote for.

Instead, be totally selfish, and think exclusively about which candidate you like best, who supports the policies you favor. The calculus of figuring out who your neighbors and the people of California and Texas will vote for is totally irrelevant. Go into that booth and vote your conscience. That’s all.

Wasn’t that easy?

Then go kick Chris Cilizza and whatever other goofball has been calling the horserace. That’s the fun part.

News from the tech world

No drama here. We all know that science and technology is the domain of cool heads, objective thought, and rational personalities, so this post is going to be a bit boring.

First up: the owner and founder of 8chan are locked in a bitter battle. The founder, Frederick Brennan, called the owner, Jim Watkins, some mean names, and he then replied in the manner of a true defender of Free Speech by siccing the government of the Philippines on him with an arrest warrant, threatening to put Brennan in prison for 10 years.

Watkins is pursuing Brennan under the Philippines Cybercrime Prevention Act. The law was enacted in 2012 despite outcry from rights groups and the United Nations, which warned that it was not in line with international norms. Amnesty International said that it “rolls back protection for free speech” and would have a “chilling effect” on speech in the country. It has most notably been used against journalist Maria Ressa in what the Committee to Protect Journalists labeled a “campaign of harassment.”

Yay Free Speech!

In other news…Twitter. That bastion of reasonable debate and discussion has gradually evolved to become an important arm of the government. Like Alexander Hamilton had the Federalist Papers, our current president has been calmly making arguments for a new way of communicating with the people via Twitter, and rich people have noticed. A billionaire, Paul Singer, is buying a sizable stake in the Twitter corporation, so that he can use his wealth to push Jack Dorsey around. The fact that he is a billionaire clearly informs us that he is competent and wise, so this can only improve the site. Money gives you the right to rule any aspect of the world you want to change.

Singer has even taken on whole countries: in 2016, after a relentless campaign, he secured a partial repayment of debts by Argentina, arising from its financial collapse in the early 2000s.

Maybe he’s going to give Twitter to The Donald as a Christmas present?

Speaking of Twitter, you know it has a policy of supporting anonymity, for good or ill, and banks away a lot of confidential information which you’re only supposed to see if you’re a wealthy capitalist who wants to advertise on the site. It turns out there’s another way: worm spies into the organization who will compromise security and sell information directly to their clients, like Saudi Arabia.

A week after returning to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, Abouammo logged into the system he used to verify users, according to the complaint. That system, sources who’ve accessed it told BuzzFeed News, stores information including email addresses, telephone numbers, and last log-in time — sufficient personal data to track down a user in real life.

Accessing two Saudi dissidents’ information — one a prominent critic with more than 1 million followers, the other an impersonator of a Saudi Royal family member — Abouammo allegedly passed the information to al-Asaker. Twitter had long been a godsend to dissidents: Unlike Facebook, it had no policy requiring people to use their real names, allowing critics of repressive government to speak more freely. The allegations threw its value as a tool of anonymous dissent into question.

Hey! No fair! You’re supposed to pay Twitter for those privacy breeches, not some random employee! You know I think Saudi Arabia could afford to pay through appropriate corporate channels and grease the right palms here.

There. I’ve had enough of the great minds behind our technological enterprises, I think I’ll sit here and just drink coffee for a while.

Is Denver in the Danger Zone?

The American Physical Society has abruptly cancelled their March meeting…the day before it was to begin.

Many attendees are already in Denver, making this a rather ineffectual way to limit travel. It’s also the case that the World Health Organization is not recommending travel restrictions, so I’d be curious to know who argued for this cancellation, and why.

WHO continues to advise against the application of travel or trade restrictions to countries experiencing COIVD-19 outbreaks.

In general, evidence shows that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions. Furthermore, restrictions may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative social and economic effects on the affected countries. However, in certain circumstances, measures that restrict the movement of people may prove temporarily useful, such as in settings with few international connections and limited response capacities.

Maybe it has something to do with that last phrase — is the US now regarded as a country with limited response capacities? I hope not.

My wife is near Denver right now, and was traveling through the Denver airport yesterday. I hope this cancellation was an unnecessary over-reaction. I’m planning some meeting travel for the end of June myself, and I could imagine cancelling if the epidemic got much worse, but I wouldn’t wait until the day before!

Why does Chris Matthews still have a job?

He’s always been this way: unpleasant, obnoxious, poorly informed, and just generally been a grating presence on the news. I don’t know what segment of the population he’s supposed to appeal to — I don’t think he’s liked by either the right or the left — and Matthews has a serious misogyny issue.

This tendency to objectify women in his orbit has bled into his treatment of female politicians and candidates. He has repeatedly lusted over women in politics on air, including remarking in 2011 that there’s “something electric” and “very attractive” about the way former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin walks and moves, and noting in 2017 that acting attorney general Sally Yates is “attractive, obviously.” But he has reserved a particular contempt for the woman who made it closest to ascending the heights of American political power, Hillary Clinton, calling her “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “She-Devil.” The Cut obtained footage of him joking in early 2016, just before a live interview with then candidate Clinton, “where’s that Bill Cosby pill,” referring to the date-rape drug. In 2005, he openly wondered whether the troops would “take the orders” from a female president; after another interview, he pinched Clinton’s cheek; and in another, he suggested that she had only had so much political success because her husband had “messed around.” This evening anchor, in addition to everything else, has repeatedly challenged whether women are legitimate politicians or could be president at all. “I was thinking how hard it is for a woman to take on a job that’s always been held by men,” he said of Clinton in 2006.

When MSNBC was constantly being labeled as a left-leaning news channel, I just had to look at Chris Matthews to wonder what they were smoking.

I guess he’s been yanked from all of MSNBC’s election coverage, at last. Now they just need to fire him.