Scientists Discover Extremely Tiny Dinosaur Ancestor in Madagascar ScienceAlert (Kevin W)
A Surprise Comet Is Coming to Put on a Spectacular Sky Show — and It Won’t Be Visible Again for Over 6,000 Years Travel and Leisure
Marine Life Found in Ancient Antarctica Ice Helps Solve a Carbon Dioxide Puzzle From the Ice Age Gizmodo (Kevin W)
Rare night clouds may be warning sign of climate crisis Guardian (Leroy)
A heat wave thawed Siberia’s tundra. Now, it’s on fire. National Geographic (Geoff)
How Your Heart Influences What You Perceive and Fear Quanta (leeto)
Rare brain-eating amoeba case discovered in Florida Independent. Resilc: “Must be widespread. Totally explains Florida.”
#COVID-19
Note Melbourne has a population of 4.9 million, just like Alabama. Our new cases in the last four days? 4771. And with the holiday weekend, you can be sure there were fewer tests than during a normal week/weekend.
BREAKING: Australia’s Melbourne to be put on lockdown for 6 weeks after surge in COVID-19 cases, with 191 new cases reported overnight pic.twitter.com/nYQKYRD6KF
— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) July 7, 2020
Science/Medicine
THINK LIKE AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST: why are COVID deaths *still* not going up 3 weeks after case counts started increasing? There are many possible explanations, but one I haven’t seen mentioned is the impact of widespread testing on *early detection*.
A #tweetorial on LEAD TIME BIAS.
— Ellie Murray (@EpiEllie) July 7, 2020
An Interstate Trips Analysis during COVID-19 in the United States Cornell
Data show panic and disorganization dominate the study of Covid-19 drugs Stat (allan)
China failed to share Covid-19 clues Asia Times (Kevin W)
UK/Europe
Coronavirus vaccine: Anti-vaxxers, far-right and hippie moms unite in Germany Washington Post (resilc)
A third of Brits actually enjoyed the lockdown, report shows Zmescience (Dr. Kevin)
US
New York Is Ending Its Lockdown. I’m Not Sure I’m Ready to End Mine. Vogue. Confirming the thesis that what drives the contraction in economic activity is much more consumer fear than the lockdowns. And it is immediate for people who’ve seen enough Covid-19 deaths for it, which is clearly not yet the case in much of the US:
I have four friends who’ve lost their dads—but now my fatherless friends are basically being told by Governor Cuomo that it’s time to go out for brunch…..my husband is sort of convinced that he is going to die of the coronavirus.
More than 300 children in Texas day cares have caught COVID-19, and the numbers are rising Click2Houston
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms says she tested positive for coronavirus CNN
Navajo Nation faces twin threats as wildfires spread during pandemic Guardian
Political Responses
South Dakota governor, exposed to virus, joined Trump on jet Associated Press
Donald Trump rushed to reopen America – now Covid is closing in on him Robert Reich, Guardian
Nancy Pelosi’s husband among lawmaker-linked loan recipients New York Post (BC)
burning man receiving $2-5M in PPP loans is honestly the america we deserve
— paris martineau (@parismartineau) July 6, 2020
Grover Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform which has a long record of railing against federal government aid, received between $150K and $300K in
COVID small business aid from the Paycheck Protection Program… pic.twitter.com/mqgBZwDwfT— Will Ragland (@citizenwillis) July 6, 2020
Finance/Economy
Coronavirus: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan BBC (vlade)
Read the thread. This has huge implications for the 2020 elections. Many people register to vote not long before election time…..and how do you have a voting precinct or vote by mail if you have no address? Plus that also assumes the time and energy to vote, which is sorely taxed if you are worrying every day about where to sleep and how to eat.
The mass evictions have begun. We are about to see the largest increase in homelessness in US history alongside a continuing pandemic. pic.twitter.com/wexgfQwFW1
— Abolish SPD (@brian_noname) July 6, 2020
China?
US imports keep falling, except from China Quartz
Hong Kong Government Tells Schools To Remove Books Breaching Security Law New Straits Times
China Confirms Case of Bubonic Plague In Inner Mongolia Bloomberg
Banks Are Ditching London Offices, Not Just Because of Covid Bloomberg
Prince Charles plans to ‘dampen’ ‘sense of royal entitlement’ Daily Mail. BC: “I guess Burger King isn’t the only home of the whopper.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
New research reveals privacy risks of home security cameras TechPlore (Robert M)
FBI Expands Ability to Collect Cellphone Location Data, Monitor Social Media, Recent Contracts Show Intercept. You’ve been warned and you still carry a smartphone?
Facial-Recognition Firm Ends Operations in Canada, Watchdog Says Bloomberg
How Google Docs Became the Social Media of the Resistance MIT Technology Review. It is hard to treat a “resistance” as serious if it trusts Google. Note the prominent place given a post PropOrNot censorship project.
Trump Transition
Justin Trudeau snubs Nafta meeting with Trump in Washington Guardian
He Built a Privately Funded Border Wall. It’s Already at Risk of Falling Down if Not Fixed. Propublica
2020
U.S. Supreme Court curbs ‘faithless electors’ in presidential voting Reuters
Trump Targeting Wrong Battleground States, As Hillary Did New York Magazine
A Trump-Backed Senate Candidate’s Hedge Fund Disaster New York Times. From what I can tell, Trump is supporting Tuberville out of spite. But remarkable that this is dirt in the NY Times and not (so far) any AL media. Do football coaches get automatic pardons down here? Or has Sessions not bothered with oppo?
A little more than a decade ago, after departing from Auburn University where he was head coach, Mr. Tuberville entered into a 50-50 partnership with a former Lehman Brothers broker named John David Stroud. Their ventures, which included TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners — T for Tuberville and S for Stroud — turned out to be a financial fraud. Mr. Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Mr. Tuberville was sued by investors, who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments; he reached a private settlement in 2013.
Judd Gregg: The coming Biden coup The Hill (resilc)
The Marijuana Superweapon Biden Refuses to Use Atlantic
THERE’S A WAR GOING ON OVER KAMALA HARRIS’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE, WITH UNFLATTERING ELEMENTS VANISHING Intercept (resilc). Proof she is very much a Veep contender.
Never Trump Republicans turn fire on GOP senators in 2020 McClatchy. UserFriendly: “Odd, that is how I feel about all Democrats….”
Spencer Cox defeats Jon Huntsman in Utah GOP governor primary The Hill
Vermont Governor Allows Vote-by-Mail Bill to Become Law NECN
Plutocrats, Platitudes and Pitchforks Sardonicky (UserFriendly)
In An Insane World, Madness Looks Moderate And Sanity Looks Radical Caitlin Johnstone (furzy)
Supreme Court rules against law allowing debt-collection robocalls to cell phones engadget (BC)
L’affaire Jeffrey Epstein
Former Silicon Valley VC says Ghislaine Maxwell attended an investor party in 2011 despite reports ‘about her supplying underage girls for sex’ Business Insider. BC: “As a lawyer, what was Pao thinking to Tweet her statement and use the words that she “knew”? Breathtakingly stupid.”
Florida Prisoner Ripped Off Lowe’s to Build Home From Jail, Feds Say Daily Beast (resilc)
She Needed Lifesaving Medication, but the Only Hospital in Town Did Not Have It ProPublica
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline Has Been Canceled Mother Jones (resilc)
Uber Acquires Postmates For $2.65 Billion. Who Wants Takeout? Forbes (Kevin W)
The Big 4 audit firms keep failing. Now they’re being forced to change CNN
Federal Reserve official warns US recovery may be ‘levelling off’ Financial Times
Class Warfare
The Working Class Is Bearing the Brunt of Catastrophe—Again—With the Pandemic Esquire (resilc)
Robotic scientists will ‘speed up discovery’ BBC (David L)
Only bold state intervention will save us from a future owned by corporate giants Guardian (Chuck L)
The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism New Republic. Another attack on Taibbi.
On Disposability and Rebellion: Insights from a Rank-and-File Insurgency Counterpunch (leeto)
Antidote du jour (CV):
Moar cats, this one imitating a hedgehog:
— cats with threatening auras (@cursedcatss) June 23, 2020
And a bonus. Resilc’s metal art:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
