Favorites February 20th 2022

Feb 21, 2022

Biden has handled Ukraine crisis incredibly well. Pursued diplomacy the entire way, armed Ukraine, refusal to commit any U.S. forces to Ukraine, call bullshit on Putin’s obvious attempts at setting up a false pretext for war. I’m incredibly thankful he’s there and not Trump.

Competence in our elected officials is nice, things could still go very badly, but I don't think it'll be because of US missteps.

Robinson Meyer @yayitsrob

What a scandal. For months if not years, the CDC has been collecting wastewater data for cities and states—which is the *best* data for predicting a local COVID surge, far better than tests or positivity or cases—but not publishing it.

nytimes.comThe C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It CollectsThe agency has withheld critical data on boosters, hospitalizations and, until recently, wastewater analyses.

The justification was that the data "wasn't ready for prime time," which definitely doesn't seem like the right way to be thinking for the first 2 years of a pandemic.

Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma

I think I end up in a lot of arguments with people who call themselves socialists because what they mean by socialism isn’t “egalitarian economic system” but “land where there are no tradeoffs, no one has to work, and Mom keeps making me hot pockets forever” https://t.co/ZEzXIsoEdU

Terry Taplin🚰🏳️‍🌈🥑🌹🚲🚍✍️🏾 @TaplinTerry

Still thinking about the time someone looked me straight in the eye & said we don’t need traffic calming because “people are speeding to work; what we need is to end Capitalism.”

"Hot Pocket Socialism"

HulkLawyerHat @Popehat

Dear fellow Americans: Canadians are not bound by our laws. They are citizens of their own proud sovereign nation with its own rich and distinct legal culture based on ice, Tim Hortons, and genocide instead of oil, Arbys, and genocide.

nilay patel @reckless

The First Amendment as an all-purpose magic internet law finds itself in a Canadian court, where the judge is not amused https://t.co/Rltcp1qp4A https://t.co/0C2ZPxv315

It was a bail hearing for an organizer of the Canadian Truck protest, one of the Canadians seemed to be confused about which country's laws they're bound by. Reminds me again of Neal Stephenson's point about American Legal Culture being exported via Starsky and Hutch reruns.