Favorites March 26th 2022

Eric Topol @EricTopol

This is about as close the United States has gotten to containing the virus since the pandemic began. Hospitalizations down another 600 today👍 Cases (7-day avg) are lowest in 9 months

Wow, pretty good, Santa Clara is almost at it's historical low. Canada is not quite as close.

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

TIL somebody vandalized Wikipedia to give the Pringles mascot a fake name (Julius) and the company decided to go for it, so retroactively it wasn't vandalism at all. (And became a Jeopardy answer.) Legendary-tier Wikipedia vandalism. https://t.co/FUDV6yw2XW

Platypus Man @Platypus222

@k8shep @wokeglobaltimes @PFTompkins Short version is that I made up a name for a mustached snack food mascot, added it to Wikipedia, and over time due to luck and a change of ownership it stuck and the company now claims ownership of it.

This is an absolutely amazing prank! There’s a whole thread if you want the gory details.

David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells

Excess mortality may be a better measure of the pandemic than more conventional metrics, and tells a very different story about the last few years. The US, which had the highest raw total of official deaths, ranks 46th in per capita excess mortality. (1/2)

nymag.comWhat a Single Metric Tells Us About the PandemicExcess mortality and COVID.

Upshot: adjusting for age, the US / Europe did ok compared to other countries.

Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom

Not sure I woulda gone there. But pretty clear Biden has now given up on meaningful relations with Russia for the foreseeable future, which was inevitable; no POTUS can really meet with Putin again. Goal should be the Cold War goal: Peaceful coexistence and avoiding disaster.

David Priess @DavidPriess

Whoa. Biden on Putin: “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.” That’s a big change in policy. https://t.co/nP734npq4n

They had to walk this back pretty quickly, definitely a gaffe. You're gonna want to stick to the prepared text when you're addressing international relations on this level.

Kishan @Knmurjani

@Noahpinion Already trying

India has historically depended on Russia for military hardware. This is seen as a big part of why they're neutral on Russia/Ukraine. China has been trying to co-opt India onto 'their side' but it's not clear that effort is going well.

• Thread documenting how Russia has historically never been particularly efficient at winning wars, depends entirely on massive manpower advantage.

• A thread covering where the Russia/Ukraine war is after a month.

• A child bicyclist was killed in Mountain View recently, which has brought bike/pedestrian safety to the forefront. I liked this short response to the city's bias towards inaction.

Ontario Art Gallery, 2019