Read it.

This is an awful lot of work to read a few hundred words about how the Mets are—I am not spoiling anything here—currently being cheap and lazy and unaccountable and weird in the same ways that they’ve been for the last couple of decades. It is also the utterly normal experience of visiting a great many pages on the internet.

There are a few sites that look and work better—the ones that people pay for, generally, or ones built with the luxurious snowdrift margins of Medium—but mostly there are sites like this one and others that are even worse.

Even on the websites of august institutions ads interrupt the text every two paragraphs; ads follow you down the sides of the page like store security; ads pop up in boxes that resist being closed, the elusive little x evading your cursor.

The Safari browser has a feature called Reader that can get around a lot of this. But not everywhere.

In the last half-decade, ads have rapidly migrated from the sides and top of the page into the actual text. This is the result of pressures created by the transition from desktop computers to mobile devices. The ads need to get seen on a screen with no margins.

The ads that stalk you down the page reflect advertisers’ demands that their ads remain “in view.” And all the clammy unbidden video stuff is exactly as desperate as it looks. Not many people will watch video ads if given any choice in the matter. Taking choice out of the equation helps a lot.

Some sites have deliberately made the experience of reading them for free more assaultive, in order to bully readers into buying subscriptions. For the price of a small monthly indulgence on your end, it can all go back to normal and your laptop’s fan can finally turn off.

Or, you can just not read these sites. That’s my solution.

Read it.

Researchers from Canterbury Christ Church University have confirmed that human remains kept in a southeastern English church are almost certainly those of St Eanswythe. Dating back to the seventh-century, these are the earliest verified remains of a medieval English Saint.

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Never mind prevention or vaccines; the big question is “who can we sue after this blows over to rake in millions of dollars?” Yes, this is pathetic, tragic, perverse and evil, but that’s reality in a hyper-litigious society like the U.S.

Many people are struck by the apparent over-reaction of Corporate America to the Covid-19 threat, but this is the only rational response in a hyper-litigious society: the number one priority in a hyper-litigious society is to limit liability. Everything–and yes, we mean everything–flows from this obsessive concern with limiting future liability.

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a new generation of flexible, cost-effective advanced nuclear reactors.

Under the agreement, ORNL and TVA will collaborate on ways to improve the economic feasibility of potentially licensing, building, operating and maintaining one or more advanced nuclear reactors, such as a small modular reactor, at TVA’s 935-acre Clinch River site in East Tennessee. Such advanced reactors offer the potential of lower-cost carbon-free energy through reduced construction times and greater operational flexibility. TVA has not made a decision to build and would first need approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a specific design.

Read it.

People of Color behaving badly — what are the odds?

Hannity: Media using coronavirus coverage as political weapon

Texas Dems Announce Statewide Voter Drive to Unseat Trump  Good luck with that in Texas.

CBS Spends Segment Blasting Trump, Insisting He’s Not Hygienic

Did Nicolle Wallace Forget They Don’t Have Elections in China?

WashPost’s Costa Wrongly Says Conservatives Called Coronavirus a Hoax Until CPAC

Head Of Koch-Linked Think Tank Hopes Trump Will Die From Coronavirus

Yahoo: ‘Mental Health Professionals’ Say Biden’s Fine, Trump Endangers the Human Race  Quacks, quacks everywhere….

Biden: Trump ‘Imploding in the Process’ on Coronavirus

Obama Calls Trump a ‘Fascist’ and 5 Other Lowlights from Hulu’s ‘Hillary’ Documentary

GAFFE: NeverTrumper Rick Wilson Shares ‘Fake’ Trump ‘Dow Joans’ Tweet

SURABIAN: Facebook Says It’s Censoring Trump Ads To Protect Americans From Their Own Stupidity

Nicolle Wallace Touts Coronavirus ‘Shaking the Confidence’ of Trump’s Base for 2020

Nancy Pelosi On Trump After Reporter Asks About Coronavirus: ‘I’ve Thought He Should Be Tested For A Long Time Now’

Racist Washngton Post Reporter Circles Face of Trump’s Chinese Secret Service Agent, Noting Trump Was on Way to Coronavirus Briefing; Then He (Of Course) Lies About the Strange Racist Joke He Was Making

Guardian Climate Crisis: Coal Use is Not Falling Fast Enough

Environmental Activists Are Blocking The Clean-Up Of A Polluted Mining Site In Idaho

Climate change at Mount Rainier to increase ‘mismatch’ between visitors, wildflowers

Babylon Bee.

Self-quarantined before quarantine was cool.

Read it.

On Tuesday, the hosts of CBS This Morning warned viewers that common words and phrases with no racial context whatsoever were now somehow examples of “racism” in everyday life. It was all part of a segment designed to promote a “new book teaching kids the roots of racism.”

“Many headlines referred to the stock market plunge yesterday as ‘Black Monday,’ and that is just one of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that racism has been braided into our everyday culture,” co-host Tony Dokoupil lectured at the top of the 8:30 a.m. ET half hour segment. He then touted a new children’s version of the book, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, by CBS News contributor Ibram X. Kendi and co-author Jason Reynolds.

Read it.

I hope it lasts long enough for him to get primaried in four years.

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Because it’s MSNBC, everything is about racism. And that’s certainly true of Chris Hayes. The liberal co-host on Friday insisted that the Republican Party is not an option to African Americans because of “structural white supremacy.” The fact that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation didn’t seem to occur to him.

Somebody needs to tell Senator Tim Scott.

Read it.

Persons of Color behaving badly — what are the odds?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reminds us of some pretty important truths.

Many are freaking out over the steep decline in financial markets over the last couple of weeks. Not me: I haven’t lost a nickel. Why not? I haven’t sold anything.

Read it.

Funny how these ‘hate crimes’ all seem to occur in Blue States.

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The combined $39.7 million in contracts are from “Project Pele,” a project run through the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), located within the department’s research and engineering side. The prototype is looking at a 1-5 megawatt (MWe) power range. The Department of Energy has been supporting the project at its Idaho National Laboratory.

Pele “involves the development of a safe, mobile and advanced nuclear microreactor to support a variety of Department of Defense missions such as generating power for remote operating bases,” said Lt. Col. Robert Carver, a department spokesman. “After a two-year design-maturation period, one of the companies funded to begin design work may be selected to build and demonstrate a prototype.”

Read it.

Small-scale nuclear reactors are starting to be developed around the world. Proponents say they are a safer and cheaper form of nuclear power. But will they keep up with renewables?

Brian Stelter: Trump’s behavior at CDC spoke volumes of his mindset  Loserthink: Mind-reading. Actually, this tells you more about Brian Stelter than Trump.

Trump’s Coronavirus Press Event Was Even Worse Than It Looked  Wired ‘Science’.

Democratic Rep. Speier: Trump Willing To Put ‘Ardent Supporters At Risk’ Of Coronavirus At His Rallies

Trump Slams Cuomo For Criticism of Virus Response  Put Fredo in charge!

San Antonio Coach: Trump Is a ‘Coward’ for Coronavirus Response

Sick: MSNBC Hopes Coronavirus Deaths Rival Katrina’s to ‘Take Down Trump’s Presidency’

FLASHBACK: Maher and Rick Wilson Called for Recession, Hope to Get Rid of Trump

Sundown Joe Says He’s an “O’Biden Bama Democrat” and Says The Only Thing We Can Do Is “Re-Elect Donald Trump” As Concern About His “Sundown Syndrome” Increases

Michael Goodwin: Clinton Could Make Comeback as Dems Search for ‘Trump Slayer’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: ‘Civilization As We Know It Is At Stake’ In 2020 Election

Trump’s lack of coronavirus concern is concerning  More concerning is the failure of ‘journalists’ to recognize that he has the situation well in hand.

Trump — Not Coronavirus — Is ‘Pathological’ for Zach Braff and Hollywood Left

‘Morning Joe’ Says ‘Sick’ Trump’s ‘Stupidity’ Will Cause Americans to ‘Die’ from Coronavirus  You first, Joe.

Unfit To Print Episode 42: Trump Campaign Sues NYT And WaPo

Coronavirus as a Cudgel: NYT’s Baker Spreads Anti-Trump Fever on Front Page

Sad Climate Scientists: “I see a group of people sitting in a boat … floating right into a … waterfall”

Even fish at the bottom of the ocean can’t escape climate change

Europe sees warmest winter since records began

For 9 years, multinationals like Shell and Bayer funded prominent climate denier  The swine.

More accurate climate change model reveals bleaker outlook on electricity, water

Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?  You could always walk.

Delingpole: Wikipedia Airbrushes List of Climate Sceptic Scientists Out of History

Jane Fonda Throws Support Behind Bernie Sanders, Calls Him The ‘Climate Candidate’  If I thought that the climate change situation was really a problem, that would scare the shit out of me.

Read it.

Pennsylvania’s largest public employee union needs to stop evading a landmark Supreme Court ruling, an art teacher argues in a lawsuit that could undo key provisions of state labor laws.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association continues to negotiate provisions to give it “fair share fees” in collective bargaining agreements, despite the fact that the highest court in the land ruled those fees unconstitutional, a lawyer who represents the art teacher told The Daily Signal in an interview.

‘We don’t obey the law. Only the little people obey the law.’

Read it.

Haters gotta H8.

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Rahm Emmanual famously said, ‘Never let a crisis go to waste’. Let’s hope the Administration takes that advice to heart and uses this latest hair-on-fire exercise to make some progress on the Wall.

This blog stays on Nature’s Time all year ’round.

Read it.

This will not eld well.

Since I am in an ‘at-risk group’ (curmudgeonly geezers), I intend to self-quarantine for, oh, let’s be on the safe side, the next twenty years.

‘But Tim’, I hear you say, ‘you don’t leave the house anyway. What changes?’

Well, I’ll tell you: I get Pokemon Victim Points for Good Intentions; and, as we all know, Good Intentions solve all difficulties and erase all bad stuff. (And those points can be traded for valuable prizes later, and the way the markets are doing, I’m depending on them for my retirement.)

So if you should see me in public, be advised that it’s not me, and you should believe me rather than your lying eyes. Yeah.

Read it.

God alone knows why — I mean, any liquid you need to load up with cream and sugar to make it drinkable has something wrong with it.

Michael Fumento.

China is the origin of the virus and still accounts for over 80 percent of cases and deaths. But its cases peaked and began ­declining more than a month ago, according to data presented by the Canadian epidemiologist who spearheaded the World Health Organization’s coronavirus mission to China. Fewer than 200 new cases are reported daily, down from a peak of 4,000.

Subsequent countries will follow this same pattern, in what’s called Farr’s Law. First formulated in 1840 and ignored in ­every epidemic hysteria since, the law states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola — they all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu each year.

Read it.

Grab any random bottle of honey from your kitchen, coffee shop, or restaurant: According to a number of honey experts who spoke with VICE, the odds are high that your honey isn’t what it claims to be. Honey imported from overseas is often adulterated—either by having sugars added to it or by being cleaned, heated, or filtered—and then is blended with small amounts of true honey until the sticky substance is uniform.

World to end – film at 11. Women and minorities (and bees!) hardest hit.

ZMan provides a little historical perspective.

magine a variant of the flu that is four or five times more lethal than the common flu and it is spreading quickly. The experts are not sure exactly how lethal this new flu variant will be, other than it will be considerably worse than the common flu that hits every fall and winter. Further, they are unsure of the origin or how to combat it with drugs and therapeutics. Before long, it is a serious problem. This new influenza is a pandemic spreading rapidly all over the world

Now, you don’t have to imagine it, because you lived through it. The Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 infected about a billion people worldwide, according to most estimates. As is always the case with these things, the number of infected is always a best guess, as many are infected but are never confirmed. The death toll is a little easier to grasp, as it is hard to ignore a corpse, but many flu deaths are classed as other things. It probably killed half a million people.

Read it.

You have a choice. You can be a specialist, or a generalist. Which route should you choose?

My question is: Which pays more?

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

Read it.

pioneer of synthetic biology at the University of California, San Diego, Jeff Hasty has spent his 20-year career designing strategies to make genetic circuits in engineered bacteria work together. But several years ago, Hasty had to admit that even he couldn’t outfox the humble bacterium Escherichia coli.

Hasty didn’t have a problem engineering useful, tightly regulated new genetic traits or getting them to work in cells. That was the easy part. What’s harder, he discovered, is maintaining those traits. If a cell needs to divert some of its resources to make a desired protein, it becomes marginally less fit than cells that don’t synthesize it. Inevitably, cells acquire mutations deactivating the introduced genetic circuitry, and the mutants quickly replace the original cells. As a result, the desired characteristic disappears, often within 36 hours.

Natural selection works, even when you don’t want it to.

Read it.

Cropster started as a tool to lift coffee producers out of poverty. Now it has a bigger mission: to save the entire global food supply.

No pressure, but….

Read it.

Assuming, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Somebody tell Joe Biden.

Read it.

Most of us know the stories of medieval monks toiling in their scriptoria, diligently copying other manuscripts, either for their own or other monastery libraries, or perhaps as a private commission for the Duke of Thusandsuch, who had his own collection, and enough money for the purpose, and who wanted to show off his erudition and wealth. The end result, whether or not it was the tactical objective at the time, was the preservation of the wisdom of the ancients, and there’s nothing not to like about that.

But what was involved in getting a manuscript together? And suppose I wanted to duplicate the process today. What would it actually take to do that?

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

This is, technically, an act of war. War between Turkey and Greece is not out of the question.

This might prove an excellent excuse to kick Turkey out of NATO once and for all.

‘I’m profoundly sad, I feel guilty’: scientists reveal personal fears about the climate crisis  The Guardian.

Cartoons: A climate change pandemic  Washington Post.

Times: Coronavirus will Kill All the Old Climate Skeptics

Washington Post lies about Trump’s coronavirus presser

Liberals Cheering for Coronavirus

Todd: Coronavirus Can Be to Trump Like Iran Hostages Were to Carter  No, they can’t — Carter didn’t have four years of economic growth to point to.

Looking For Acceleration In All The Wrong Places

New Biden Stumble Leads To Allegations Of Deceptive Video Editing By Trump Team

Tapper Gets SCHOOLED By Surgeon General on White House Virus Response

Trump Campaign Sues CNN For Millions Over ‘False And Defamatory’ Statements

Will the coronavirus and the poor response doom Trump’s reelection chances?

Read it.

How likely do you think it is that ‘the author of national pandemic strategy’ will say ‘Nah, it’s nothing to worry about’?

This is why I am skeptical of most ‘experts’.

Read it.

Yet another in a long series of ‘journalism’ that starts out by insulting its readers. Gets tiring after a while.

In a recent study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we compared the complete genomes of over 100 organisms (mostly animals), to study how the animal kingdom has evolved at the genetic level. Our results show that the origins of major groups of animals, such as the one comprising humans, are linked not to the addition of new genes but to massive gene losses.

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No, not Warren.

To find out, we spoke with industry experts, chefs, and buffet owners. As it turns out, it’s harder to “beat” the buffet than you might think.

Well, shucks.

I ate from all-you-can-eat buffets for six years — we called them ‘mess halls’, and, boy, they were.

Read it.

Levine reported on Maza’s big family connections, which include multiple mega-mansions in Florida, a multi-million dollar apartment on the Upper West Side and a fancy yacht. This news, which broke Saturday evening, comes after Maza spent years slamming the wealthy.

Included in Levine’s article is a photo from a public realtor website showing the outside of one of Maza’s family homes in Florida. The mansion boasts a waterfront view.

Levine also tweeted out images of the family’s multi-million dollar pad in Manhattan. It is not immediately clear why Levine was locked out of his Twitter following the report, as the images are publicly available.

How is this news? Most people who ‘attack the rich’ are pretty much rich themselves.

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In the campaign to do away with biannual resetting of clocks in America, health experts point to studies showing heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents are more prevalent shortly after a time change.

And yet we continue to do it. Why?

What if everybody just said, ‘No, I’m staying on the same time all year around.’

Read it.

In the wake of Elizabeth Warren dropping out of the presidential race on Thursday night, NPR’s All Things Considered only the considered “opinion writers” who were feminist Democrats. The question from anchor Audie Cornish was “what did this primary season teach us about the state of things for women seeking the highest office?” Not considered: Shouldn’t angry feminists actually endorse a woman for president before they complain about everyone else?

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Until now, archaeozoologists have been unable to reconstruct the earliest stages of domestication: the process of placing wild animals in captivity remained beyond their methodological reach.1

Using the wild boar as an experimental model, a multidisciplinary team made up of scientists from the CNRS and the French National Museum of Natural History 2 have shown that a life spent in captivity has an identifiable effect on the shape of the calcaneus, a tarsal bone that plays a propulsive role in locomotion.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know….

Read it.

People have different ways of reacting to the coronavirus or Covid-19 situation. I have identified at least eight of them, all starting with the letter “P,” in a taxonomy that I hope is at least somewhat useful in making sense of a somewhat unusual situation.

Read it.

I’m waiting to see how ‘facial recognition tech’ fights back.

Funny how ‘artists’ never fight anything that might get them hurt, like crime or disease.