Favorites January 3rd 2022

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla

(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp will require its U.S. workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing in order to comply with new federal mandates, the company said in an update sent to employees on Monday. $SBUX

If we're going to mandate stuff, focus on the thing that works: vaccination.

Tara Sinclair @TaraSinc

Happy 2022 everyone! With Dec 2021 jobs numbers coming Fri, I'm reflecting on how much better the labor market has been than forecasters predicted. Example: median 2020Q4 @philadelphiafed Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) had 2021Q4 at 5.8% unemployment. Nov print: 4.2%

See also the graph of the unemployment rate over a longer period. While we are enduring slightly higher inflation, this is the prize, and I think it's probably worth it.

Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc @JohnDiesattheEn

This incredibly disturbing fake wikipedia page about the historic first guy to have his consciousness uploaded to a computer should win a Hugo award: qntm.org/mmacevedo from @qntm:

qntm.orgLenaRussian translation French translation This article is about the standard test brain image. For the original human, see Miguel Acevedo. MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo), also known as Miguel, is the earliest executable image of a human brain. It is a snapshot of the ...

I really like the way the faux-wiki format goes into extensive detail on some aspects but breezes past others not relevant to the article's subject. Anyway, if you're interested, someone went the rest of the way and turned it entirely into a wikipedia article.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Good news: PET scans show no long-term brain changes from Covid:

healthimaging.comLong-COVID patients show no brain dysfunction on PET scans, suggesting fatigue as main culprit

The article says that this means long COVID symptoms are the result of 'fatigue', which I take to mean damage to other parts of the body... lungs I guess?

Ezra Klein @ezraklein

Dead.

tiktok.comThe end of every podcast17.1K Likes, 173 Comments. TikTok video from tobin.mitnick (@jewslovetrees): “The end of every podcast”. The end of every podcast. original sound.

As far as I know, Ezra originated the whole thing where podcasters ask their guest to name three books which they're reading. If you're wondering what a kinetoscope is, they're quite large as home entertainment appliances go.

Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter

Patient #'s @UCSFHospitals stable at ~50 x 4d – w/ ICU % low (Fig L). Also, test positivity rate (symptomatic & asymptomatic; R) now falling. STILL TOO SOON TO BE SURE(!) &, to me, an argument to be MORE CAREFUL, but it's hopeful. Omicron may be hitting a big immunity wall in SF.

Would be very nice if that was the peak in the Bay Area already.

Letters of Note @LettersOfNote

Happy Birthday JRR Tolkien! instagram.com/p/CYQ8ZpVoVCW/

He needs you to learn how to pronounce Quenya (elvish) words, and he'll do it by forcing you to remember who all these damn elves are by name.

May 2018, Japan