Events

We're in the home stretch. We have 14 days until 2021 starts, and 32 days until the Biden Administration takes office. As Andrew Sullivan said in his column today, 2021 is going to be epic. Meanwhile: After giving away billions in tax revenue to the richest Americans in 2017, the Republican Party suddenly doesn't like budget deficits again, coincidentally with them losing the White House. Fascinating. Atlantic City is raising money for charity by auctioning off the right to blow up one of the...

Welcome to the (abbreviated) lunchtime roundup: Not only have attackers breached hundreds of networks due to a subtle flaw in a complicated piece of software, it turns out that a Dutch software engineer has—for the second time—exposed a rather glaring flaw in an uncomplicated piece of wetware by guessing the STBXPOTUS's Twitter password. (It was "maga2020!". I am not making this up.) Thomas Edsall decries "the rise of 'political sectarianism'." It's time once again for Drew Magary's "Hater's Guide to...

FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, revealed last week that unknown parties had penetrated its network and that its clients, including the US Government, were at risk. Bruce Schneier has technical details about the attack. Former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert lays out the scope of it: The attackers gained access to SolarWinds software before updates of that software were made available to its customers. Unsuspecting customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which included a...

Josh Marshall outlines how the STBXPOTUS and his friends in the Senate have structured vaccination funding to give President Joe Biden a black eye within two weeks of taking office: Here are some basic outlines of what’s happening. As we learned last week the Trump White House skimped on actually buying enough doses of vaccine from Pfizer. But the federal government will cover the actual purchase of vaccines. The White House says the military is in charge of and has a plan to actual get the supplies to...

I'm looking out my office window at the light dusting of snow on my neighbors' cars, wondering how (or whether) I'll get my 10,000 steps today. My commute to work got me 3,000 each way, making the job tons easier before lockdown. Easier psychologically, anyway; nothing prevents me from going for a 45-minute walk except that I really don't want to. Instead of a lunchtime hike, I'll probably just read these articles: Palm Beach, Fla., has notified the STBXPOTUS that because he agreed in the 1990s not to...

Happy Hanukkah! Now read these: Thomas Edsall summarizes the sociology of resentment, hypothesizing that status is the single biggest indicator of political affiliation. Jelani Cobb digs into the Republican strategy in the Loeffler-Warnock race for Georgia's junior US Senate seat. The US Postal Service warns that it has absolutely no more capacity, and is near gridlock. (If only we could, you know, fund it.) It looks ever more likely that two weeks from Friday, the UK will crash out of Europe with no...

I posted a table about a week ago showing the number of American deaths per day from various disasters that we've had over our history. I did a bit more research, and we've had a lot more Covid-19 deaths, so I've updated the table: Average daily deaths from 1918 flu, October 1918: 6,290 Galveston hurricane, 9 Sep 1900: ~6,000 Battle of Antietam, 18 Sep 1862: 3,652 Covid-19, 9 Dec 2020: 3,411 Puerto Rico hurricane, 7 Aug 1899: 3,389 Covid-19, 6 Apr 2020: 3,156 San Francisco Earthquake, 18 Apr 1906...

The Electoral College has voted, and with no surprises, as of 16:37 Chicago time Joe Biden has received the requisite 270 votes to be elected President of the United States. And yet, we had a few surprises today: The loathsome STBXPOTUS fired his almost-equally-loathsome Attorney General, Bill Barr, which could not have happened to a better couple. The US passed 300,000 Covid-19 deaths today. Probably 250,000 could have been prevented. Security guru Bruce Schneier advocates for regulation of persuasion...

The Electoral College started voting early this morning. Each state delegation casts its votes separately, usually in the respective state capitol buildings. The New York just voted a few minutes ago, bringing the totals so far today to Biden 161, STBXPOTUS 158. California votes late in the day, so once again it may seem like it's close but it really isn't. In just a few hours, Joe Biden will officially be the President-Elect of the United States. The House and Senate will count the votes in a joint...

I'm not good at it, personally. But NBC News has some advice they've titled "How to talk to your friends and family about Covid, vaccines and wearing masks:" “You always want to offer your empathy first,” said Amy Pisani, executive director of Vaccinate Your Family, the nation’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to vaccine advocacy. “If they have a personal story, start with your shared values.” Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia in...