On The Origins of COVID-19

The question of where COVID-19 came from is of scientific interest, mostly, but unfortunately it has been politicized and used with racist overtones, e.g.: Trump’s calling it “the Chinese virus.” The worst part of it, to my mind, is that the ‘edgy’ branches of the media are also digging into the story in search of some kind of conspiracy angle, which is going to serve to further fuel less-disciplined conspiracy theories. This shit-show is going to continue for the forseeable future.

[Read more…]

A Clever Bit of Sleuthery

The whole “Columbus discovered The Americas” meme is stupid; rather obviously the people who settled down there 13,000 years before Columbus came, did. After all, they were there to greet him when he arrived, and promptly murdered a few of them. There were literally millions of people who discovered and inhabited the americas before Columbus was even born. What a strange conceit that it takes a white european to “discover” a place.

[Read more…]