tingilinde

digital attitudes in taiwan

A fascinating talk/interview by Audrey Tang - Taiwan's Digital Minister.  (tips of the hat to Dan and Dave)

on tampering with the mail

It's serious stuff.

If you've been having problems apparently the people to get in touch with, given the management of the USPS is the source of the problem, is your state attorney general. 

 

sorting out risk of airborne cv-19

Getting some estimates with a simplistic model.  It's probably ok for looking at relative risks.  You may have to sign up (free) to use the site.

the high level is you want to have a lot of ventilation - outdoors is best.  Playing with the sliders on the top set of graphs is more informative than looking at the fixed examples below. 

snip

...

The model provides a rough estimation of risk, Jimenez cautions. (Of course, no model can explain exactly what will happen in reality.) Still, it can provide valuable clues to the relative risks of different activities. The risk also depends on the prevalence of the disease in your area, which users can input into the model to change the potential number of infected people in a given group.

As with any model, the calculations must make some assumptions, such as requiring the air to be mixed, so the virus is dispersed throughout the room. (This is why the model does not account for close proximity with other people.) That's not always the case in the real world, but it is appropriate for many situations, says Shelly Miller, an expert in indoor air pollution at the University of Colorado Boulder, who led the modeling effort to characterize the potential aerosol spread during the Washington choir practice.

The model underscores the importance of widespread use of masks and the risks of COVID-19 transmission in crowded rooms and poorly ventilated conditions—and in any of these settings, time is key, says Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineer at Virginia Tech who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses and provided feedback on the model. The longer anyone spends in a poorly ventilated or crowded space, the greater the predicted risk of falling ill.

...

Here's a more detailed model, again only aerosol risks, but the simpler model is better for those of us trying to get a handle on risky activities as opposed to worrying about the specifics of room design and specifics about occupants and their activities. 

 

 

 

the stories behind new yorker covers

A useful page from The New Yorker.

 

an analysis of robocalls

A nice analysis of robocalls.  The short video is a good high level view - the paper if you want a deeper look.

 

 

this.is.terrific

watch the credits too

 

2020: an isolation odyssey from lydia cambron on Vimeo.

inspirational music

a tip of the hat to Sukie

andy slavitt on voting

With one party hell-bent on destroying democracy, Andy Slavitt has a thread on how to vote safely.

 

 

side effects of mindfulness

The practice is doesn't always work.

 

from the postal workers union

 

what makes the post office great

Zeynep came to the US from Turkey  - she writes in The New York Times about the US Post Office.

snip

...

I noticed that Americans were a particularly patriotic bunch: So many of them had red flags on their mailboxes. Sometimes they would put those flags up. I presumed it was to celebrate national holidays I did not yet know about. But why did some people have their flags up while others did not? And why weren’t they American flags anyway? As in Istanbul, where I grew up, I assumed patriotism had different interpretations and expressions.

The mystery was solved when I noticed a letter carrier emptying a mailbox. I was slightly unnerved: Was the mail being stolen? He then went over to another mailbox with the flag up, and emptied that box, too. I got my hint when he skipped the mailbox with the flag down.

Yes, I was told, in the United States, mail gets picked up from your house, six days a week, free of charge.

I told my friends in Turkey about all this. They shook their heads in disbelief, wondering how easily I had been recruited as a C.I.A. agent, saying implausibly flattering things about my new country. The United States in the world’s imagination is a place of risk taking and ruthless competition, not one of reliable public services.

...

 

experience hacking

Planting a false smell in the brain of a mouse.

snip

...

Most natural smells will evoke widespread and temporally complex activity in the brain. For the purposes of probing and hacking the neural code, though, the researchers opted for a modest and manageable pattern of six small points, randomly distributed and stimulated in succession—a six-note neuronal melody lasting about a third of a second. The mice will never be able to tell us for sure, but this pattern of “notes” presumably smelled like something to them because it could be distinguished from other odors, as well as other six-note patterns in behavioral tests.

...

 

 

 

the wonder wheel

The famous Coney Island ferris wheel is 100 ..  a curious history, but now covid has stopped it. 

snip

...

Denos Vourderis, Dennis’s father and the clan’s patriarch, first had designs on the Wonder Wheel back in 1948, according to family lore. A Greek immigrant who peddled hot dogs from a pushcart, the elder Mr. Vourderis proposed to his future wife, Lula, with a grandiose promise: “You marry me, I buy you the Wonder Wheel.” In 1983, after 35 years running increasingly large food businesses, he made good on his promise, purchasing her the biggest ring of all.

...

 

 

leo szilard

One of the monumental physicists.  It's remarkable how many great physicists and mathematicians came from Hungry...

from gliding to powered flight

Lots of experimentation, but not a lot of success -- except for birds.