Favorites May 28th 2022

October 2021

Remember when it rained that one time?

Trevor Bedford @trvrb

There is a notable drop in neutralization titer against BA.4 and BA.5 viruses in boosted individuals and individuals with BA.1 breakthrough infections (figure from Qian Wang, David Ho and colleagues biorxiv.org/content/10.110…). 11/12

It's probably time to switch to boosters targeting the new variants.

Ethan Mollick @emollick

🤯Every artificial sweetener was found by chemists who stupidly licked their hands! For sucralose: “a chemist in London was asked by his boss in 1976 to “test” a new chemical, but misheard it as “taste”—a potentially lethal error for a chemist, but one that worked out well.“

Yum.

southpaw @nycsouthpaw

“For all the anxiety over the latest surge in immigration, Mexicans — who constitute most of the unauthorized immigrants in the United States and most of the farmworkers in California — are not coming in the numbers they once did.”

nytimes.comIllegal Immigration Is Down, Changing the Face of California FarmsFarmers are turning to workers on seasonal visas and mechanizing what they can. Many labor-intensive crops are shifting south of the border.

Interesting quote: “Processed food is mostly automated ... Now the effort is on the fresh side.”

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Hispanic Americans, sustaining public trust in institutions!

Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma

this chart is f a s c i n a t i n g https://t.co/zn0frhwIVw

Small Businesses! Public Schools! Every line has something interesting.

Threads

• Summary of an interesting paper about how scientific papers with null results are interpreted by readers. Interesting idea expressed was the concept of having reviewers evaluate papers without knowing what their results are.