Favorites July 1 2021

Marius Hobbhahn @MariusHobbhahn

I have been waiting for this! A detailed attempt to quantify the global response to COVID in all its facets

forum.effectivealtruism.orgCOVID: How did we do? How can we know? - EA ForumObviously it was a triumph: the fastest vaccine development, approval, and rollout in history (by a factor of 5). We’re up to 2.5bn doses in arms, out of say 12bn. And we got several good ones! Huzzah! Obviously it was a catastrophe: through dumb inaction and a comedy of errors, we squandered the c…

I like the detailed thinking here, asking "what would the best possible response look like?" A big item is challenge trials, the letter from 1DaySooner was signed by the world’s foremost consequentialist and deontologist. And yet they’re still considered unethical, and were not used to shorten the vaccine timeline.

The full thing covers much more than just this, it’s quite long.

Ezra Klein @ezraklein

It is hard to view your own country objectively. There is too much cant and myth, too many stories and rituals. So over the past week, I’ve been asking foreign scholars of democracy how the fights over the American political system look to them. nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opi…

Moving the democracy start date to the 1960s really clarifies things.

Benjamin Ross @BenRossTransit

NY mayoral primary may be a famous math paradox come to real life. If * Majority prefer Garcia to Adams * Majority prefer Adams to Wiley * Majority prefer Wiley to Garcia Then who wins?

Things aren't going well with counting up things for the NYC race

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

[quickly verifying with my accountant that he doesn't have a second spreadsheet where he says everything we're doing is illegal]

This appears to be the most straightforward explanation of the evidence against the Trump Org's CFO, who was just arrested.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This article is confusing. Experts make a great case that J&J recipients should get a booster. But then it's said a new study—so far described only in a J&J press release!—addressed "some of those concerns". Weak basis for concluding no booster needed. nytimes.com/2021/07/01/hea…

If I'd gotten J&J I’d definitely still want to find a way to get an mRNA booster as well.

MachinePix @MachinePix

Fractal vise for holding irregular shapes by Mantle & Co, restored by Hand Tool Rescue.

Funny looking, but it seems like a great idea

Palo Alto, August 2020