Favorites April 20 2021

Apr 21, 2021

I’m working on the permanent name for this newsletter. May end up just calling it ‘Tugboat’, since that’s the name of the old list.

Andy @G33KatWork

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Andrew Cantino @tectonic

Ingenuity runs Linux (first time on Mars!) & uses a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor. It will fail periodically due to radiation. Solution: use a radiation-tolerant FPGA to keep an eye on the CPU & restart before/while falling out of the sky. https://t.co/PhXjkppfOP

Bring a second computer along to do the percussive maintenance. 🔨

Opinion Haver @AsInMarx

@pareene I like this graph where they basically don't remark upon the obvious conclusion that it sure seems like a lot of college republicans are nazis

From a study looking for horseshoe theory in anti-Semitic beliefs, (which they did not end up finding)

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Funding the tax police properly could generate tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue. slowboring.com/p/irs-budget

A trillion dollars in recovered taxes seems pretty good… but in comparison to that 7.5 trillion in total unpaid it seems like we should really be able to do even better.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Somewhat worrying numbers on vaccine hesitancy from the new Axios/Ipsos poll. 56% of US adults say they've gotten at least one vaccine dose already—great! But there aren't many Americans left who *haven't* gotten vaccinated but plan to do so. Just 14% fall into that category.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There is also a decline in people who say they'll let their children get vaccinated; 46% now vs. 52% from before the J&J pause.

It looks like the peak vaccination rate in the US was the day of the J&J Pause, although there’s a good chance that’s a coincidence. These numbers on vaccine hesitancy seem less likely to be coincidence.

Vox @voxdotcom

A new study has found that areas with Black Lives Matter protests saw a 15-20% reduction in police officers’ use of lethal force — resulting in roughly 300 fewer police homicides.

trib.alThe effects of Black Lives Matter protestsResearch shows places with BLM protests from 2014 to 2019 saw a reduction in police homicides but an uptick in murders.

“Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests.” The reason this happens is not known, they say it could be police put less effort in after protests, could be that the public no longer trusts the police and are less likely to help them, or something else.