Both these columns appeared in the NYT today, but the moral distance between them could not be greater. @nytdavidbrooks ruminates on what the end of covid will mean for his social calendar. @zeynep urges us to step up vaccinating the world before millions more die needlessly.
I feel like this is the great fork in the road for Americans going into the summer. Do we pretend this pandemic never happened, or do we see it for the global phenomenon it's always been? (Brooks's column here nytimes.com/2021/05/27/opi… and @zeynep's here nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opi…)
There are times that America is capable of astonishing magnanimity. There are foods my mom still can't eat (like canned clam chowder!) because they take her back to the CARE packages that sustained her in early childhood after WWII, full of unfamiliar but life-sustaining food
The question of how to return to our pre-covid lives will answer itself. But saving all those we can from the pandemic will require immediate, sustained, and creative action. It's another one of those moments in American history when the country can choose to look inwards or out
Biden is older than my mom—I hope he also has some memory of the massive post-war relief effort, and the impression that it left in the minds of a generation of Europeans: that America is a land of unimaginable wealth, and willing to share that wealth unstintingly with strangers
A successful planetary effort to vaccinate everyone, everywhere, would imply that we have a fighting chance after the pandemic to coordinate our response to climate change. A retreat into national borders would mean the decline of the United States as a power really is terminal.
Basically Biden's staff bring him NYT press clippings in the morning on a silver tray, and the course of the pandemic hinges on whether some flunkie finds Zeynep's or Brooks's column easier to clip

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30 May
Because Bitcoin especially (through the Tether fraud) and cryptocurrency more generally is a pyramid scheme, of course Wall Street and venture capital need it to go mass market. It's the only road to getting out of their current investment at a profit politico.com/news/2021/05/3…
I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast
What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the technical claims of cryptocurrency and our now over 13 years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and it's not a promising technology
Read 16 tweets
29 May
People's thinking on this topic is tied in pretzels. The origins of covid matter because they will help us prevent the next pandemic. Lab escape and direct zoonotic transfer have radically different implications for how we do that. This is a public health issue, not geopolitics
China is an authoritarian surveillance state. They have ample relevant data to help determine the origins of covid, and can choose to share it or not. But our search for the answer should not be conditioned on their willingness to cooperate, or the consequences of making them mad
Chinese citizens, because they live under authoritarian rule, are unable to pressure their government from within for a candid investigation into the origins of covid. The only possible source of pressure comes from abroad, and we can't abrogate our duty to seek answers.
Read 5 tweets
29 May
The U.S. spent a trillion dollars (in today's money) on the Vietnam War. Imagine if we decided now to spend a thousandth part of that to get vaccines to all of Southeast Asia.
A timely vaccination campaign in Indochina could have a domino effect where one country after the other would achieve broad resistance against the spread of new and old variants of covid. Image
Whatever the State Department and CIA propaganda budget is for the next year, it should be diverted 99.9% to vaccine production, and 0.01% to painting big American flags on the crates of vaccine
Read 4 tweets
28 May
There's a recurring theme in Democratic circles that I think is under-examined, that goes "if only the rules were fair our party would win bigly". It's part of a wider feeling of denial about the last few years. I think Nate is right to call this out, and we need a better plan.
If you already can't imagine why people voted for Trump, or your thesis is some version of "they are evil", then you're not in a good position to think realistically about outcomes of future elections. You have to be able to confront the present before you can plan for the future
I turned in my prognostication card after two elections, but I am very grateful to the various candidates I worked with for giving me the chance to see Trump districts and meet Trump voters, and come away more confused and wary about my own political beliefs than when I started
Read 8 tweets
27 May
Excellent short thread about CA fires that applies to a lot of aspects of climate change. Underlying trends are often dominated by randomness. When the two line up, you break all records. But if the two are opposed, you can have deceptively mild outcomes even as trends get worse.
Unfortunately human beings don't see enough years in their lifetime for some of the longer patterns to be visible. Others only become visible on human time scales when it is far too late to do anything. Political leaders only have to hope for one or two lucky years on their watch
In the American West, things are even worse because there is a documented history of multi-year megadroughts (four in the last 1200 years) and you have to try to superimpose the effects of anthropogenic climate change on that as we enter a fifth one. science.sciencemag.org/content/368/64…
Read 4 tweets
27 May
Dear LazyWeb: I have a 13 inch 2020 MBP and a LG HDR 4K Display as a second monitor. After I power cycled the monitor, I can no longer get it to display at high resolution. Anyone come across this? I tried rebooting the mac, updating to latest OS, using different ports for cable
Thank you to everyone who offered tips. Swapping cables (to an Apple-made one) fixed this problem, even thought the peccant cable had been working before without issues. I guess it gave up the ghost.
It's incredible how bad the USB-C cable situation is, and about to get worse with the introduction of ones that can handle a higher voltage. They are all indistinguishable and designed so no two combinations of anything can interoperate. It's like reliving 2000-era wifi
Read 6 tweets

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