This site tracks Rt, the value that measures how many people the average infected person infects, in each of the American states. An Rt greater than one (depicted as red in this interactive chart) means the virus is spreading to more people. A value less than 1 means it’s on track to die out. Note…
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Journalists are often criticized for emphasizing bad news. On a day when there are no commercial airliner crashes, there’s no need for a story on the fact that everyone who flew today landed safely. I prefer to get my news from the web, so I don’t follow TV news in any form. However, I was…
From the Wall Street Journal: At a March 10 church choir practice in Washington state, 87% of attendees were infected, said Lea Hamner, an epidemiologist with the Skagit County public-health department and lead author of a study on an investigation that warned about the potential for “superspreader” events, in which one or a small number…
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Cops are trained to make snap decisions under highly stressful situations. Often their training saves lives. Sometimes they deeply regret decisions they make. After thinking back on his recent behavior while working during a protest at Foley Square May 31, NYPD officer Robert Cattani offered a heartfelt apology: “I know I made the wrong decision,”…
Medium is not a peer-reviewed source, and the author is anonymous, which affects how credible this article is. The clickbaity headline obscures the fact that this essay offers a good argument that much of the good done by cops doesn’t involve having a “monopoly on state violence.” It’s also a reminder that being “blue” as…
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The ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd were caught up in violence again on Saturday, as police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane. Here are some of the ways law enforcement officers escalated the national unrest.
A rubber bullet shot by the Hong Kong police on Sunday caused a journalist to lose sight in an eye. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) again urges the authorities to guarantee reporters’ safety. A reporter working for Indonesian-language media outlet Suara Hong Kong News, Veby Mega Indah, has permanently lost eyesight in the right eye on…
A Facebook meme with 52k reactions and 37k shares includes pictures of volunteers cleaning the streets in Minneapolis, the day after mass protests of the death of George Floyd. The pictures make a powerful point about the values of the community. However, the text includes an unnecessary slam against journalism, because it introduces the images…
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Powerful writing, by Matthew Schneier. Most of the essay is on the power of poetry as an oral art form. (See also Poetry is for the Ear and Poetry Writing Hacks: Top 10 Tips.) But I blogged it because of the paragraphs about the author’s father. Right now, a machine is breathing for my father,…
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If, like pollster Matthew McDermott, you shared (or at least chuckled at) that Jimmy Kimmel clip of VP Pence joking about delivering empty boxes because it confirms what you already believe about Pence; or, if you feel the C-SPAN clip that unfairly makes the VP look bad confirms your attitude about the lying America-hating media,…
My social media feed just featured adorable pictures of dolphins engaging with a sloth. Instead of blogging the Business Insider page or the Bored Panda or the Reddit pages or local TV news programs that repurposed content from the Texas State Aquarium, I wanted to find the original. The dolphin pictures are still frames from…