Wired: “With so many extensive online selling and donation resources, there’s no need to get bogged down. If we have stuff we neither want nor need, what should we do with it? A lot of people save items for “someday,” but Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, aka The Minimalists, advise against that. The Minimalists… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: January 2022
Supreme Court Appointment Process: President’s Selection of a Nominee
CRS Report – Supreme Court Appointment Process: President’s Selection of a Nominee, Updated January 28, 2022: “The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice is an event of major significance in American politics. Each appointment is of consequence because of the enormous judicial power the Supreme Court exercises as the highest appellate court in the federal… Continue Reading
This is just the beginning’: How high heat of 2021 drove catastrophic weather
NBC News: “…Each January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the European Union Earth observation agency Copernicus publish reports on the previous year’s temperature data. Copernicus ranked 2021 as the fifth-hottest year since 1850, while NOAA and NASA ranked it as the sixth-hottest since 1880. An NBC News analysis of global weather stations… Continue Reading
Do these 3 brain exercises to ‘stay mentally sharp and solve problems faster’
cnbc – “Creativity is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the better you’ll be at coming up with innovative solutions and ideas at work. One of the most effective ways do this is to train your brain to see and notice opportunities. Often you can find needs or problems hiding in plain sight… Continue Reading
Weird Old Book Finder
“A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books | by Clive Thompson – A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books – To help ‘rewild your attention’ I built a book-finding app [Medium / paywall] CBC Radio interview with this site’s creator. The interview is here (starts at 47:00) [h/t r/history] Link to… Continue Reading
Massive open index of scholarly papers launches
Nature: “An ambitious free index of more than 200 million scientific documents that catalogues publication sources, author information and research topics, has been launched. The index, called OpenAlex after the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt, also aims to chart connections between these data points to create a comprehensive, interlinked database of the global research… Continue Reading
General Social Survey – Americans are not happy
“Inside Daily Brief – More Americans now say they are “not too happy” than “very happy” for the first time in the 50-year history of the General Social Survey. Typically, more than 30% of respondents say they are “very happy” and between 10% and 20% say they are “not too happy.” But, in 2021, 24%… Continue Reading
Today is Data Privacy Day. Here’s what you need to do to secure your info
CNET: “There’s no shortage of made-up national holidays. Among the fabricated celebrations: Houseplant Appreciation Day, Irish Coffee Day and Bubble Wrap Day. However, there is one such holiday actually worth observing: Data Privacy Day, which happens to be today. It’s a good reminder to check up on the safety of your personal data. The holiday began… Continue Reading
Before pullout from Afghanistan US watchdog warned Afghan air force would collapse
Chicago Sun Times – “Months before President Joe Biden announced the U.S.’s complete withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, Washington’s watchdog warned that the Afghan air force would collapse without critical American aid, training and maintenance, according to a newly declassified report. The report by John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, had been… Continue Reading
FAQ about our most popular models of 3M N95 Respirators
“U.S. Government Distribution of N95 Respirators from the Strategic National Stockpile: In January 2022, the U.S. government announced a program to distribute N95s to Americans from the Strategic National Stockpile. If you receive 3M N95 Respirators (sometimes referred to as “masks”) through this program, read through the information on this page to learn more about how to put… Continue Reading
TikTok is confronting Holocaust misinformation but antisemitism persists
TechCrunch: “In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, TikTok launched a portal on its Discover page this morning, intended to educate users about the historic catastrophe, as well as the ongoing threat of antisemitism. The platform also hosted a similar portal last year. When users navigate to the Discover page on the TikTok mobile app,… Continue Reading
Petabase-scale sequence alignment catalyses viral discovery
Edgar, R.C., Taylor, J., Lin, V. et al. Petabase-scale sequence alignment catalyses viral discovery. [Full text – Free] Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04332-2: “Public databases contain a planetary collection of nucleic acid sequences, but their systematic exploration has been inhibited by a lack of efficient methods for searching this corpus, which (at the time of writing) exceeds… Continue Reading
