The aftermath of a pandemic that systematically killed the overweight seems a particularly bad time to make the argument that the relationship between weight and health is "a myth." @nytimes, does the world need more health misinformation? Really? nytimes.com/2021/05/26/opi…
And my God, it's not even "the aftermath." There were half a million *new* Covid19 cases diagnosed yesterday. Dispensing advice like this in the middle of a deadly pandemic is grossly irresponsible. And we all know you've done it for strictly ideological reasons.
Telling people lies like this because they conform to your ideological preferences is no better than telling people "masks don't work," or "vaccines kill." The evidence that overweight and obesity are deadly, and *particularly* so right now, is overwhelming.
Shame on you, @nytimes. Really. Running genuine misinformation like this will get people killed.
Actually, to be strictly accurate, I stealth-edit a *lot* of typos. We ran the wrong number on only just last week. (What was it? I can't remember. I just remember the horror of realizing the number was wrong, and sneaking in guiltily, in the dead of night, to change it.)
(Oh! I remember what it was. I referred to the Paris climate accords as the product of "COP21." That was a ghastly mistake. I think it was my fault, too. Though I don't know how I did it.)
No, "not many minor errors" would not be correct. @cosmo_globalist
I'd say, "many minor errors, but we work assiduously to correct them." We never strive to mislead.
Lucky Lusitano: Did anyone miss this lovely piece by @c_smrstik, which we published yesterday? On Sundays, we only publish beautiful stories about the world's beauties and pleasures: claireberlinski.substack.com/p/lucky-lusita…
It is obviously no longer Sunday, but if like me you woke up, looked at the news, and felt tempted by horror and despair, take a break and read this. Remind yourself that calm, peace, and harmony are also aspects of the world--
and these aspects are as real, and as true, as its cruelty, murderousness, and suffering.
It is not the worst of all possible world's. It isn't the best, but it certainly isn't the worst.
I should stress that I don't disparage the effort to learn as much as one can about virology, or complex human conflicts. To the contrary. There is, however, a specifically modern personality who drives me berserk: Someone who isn't humbled by what he doesn't know.
e.g., people who venture bold new theses in virology without grasping that never having so much as looked at an organic chemistry textbook probably forms an impediment to their ability to improve on the consensus view.
I have nothing against autodidacts, and arguments from authority are fallacious. But people who don't realize they're not yet in possession of the tools they need fruitfully to add to the store of human knowledge--but who insist upon trying anyway--really are a public menace.
Okay, I think I'm figuring this out. The cool resides in split-second micro-expressions that are dissonant from the body-language, overall. Let me show you what I mean. I'll present them first without commentary. Look first at this, A on the left, B on right.
And @robert_zubrin makes the extended case for nuclear in our essay of the day, and it's a humdinger:
"Per unit of energy, there is no safer source. Nuclear power is not only safer by far than fossil fuels—even excluding the claim that fossil fuels will wipe out the human race—but safer than wind, safer than hydropower, and safer than solar."