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Friday, February 26, 2021

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus

 The Healthy Gut Microbiome You Have Right Now May Not Be The One You Need in Old Age.


Life Is Odd: A Conversation With Dinty W. Moore - The Rumpus.net


The downside of receiving upwards of nine hundred submissions per issue is that you have to reject so many writers, and no, despite what some may think, we don’t enjoy that at all. With the quality of the submissions being so high, we find ourselves rejecting fairly good work, pieces that are maybe ninety-five percent of the way there but still aren’t perfect. The upside, of course, is that the work we eventually do publish is stunningly good. That’s the evolution that matters, of course


8 Ways to Read the Books You Wish You Had Time For HBR: “…A University of California reportshows we’re consuming more information now than we ever have before — more than 100,000 words per day. Think about how many texts and alerts and notifications and work emails and personal emails and news headlines and fly-by tickers and blog feeds and Twitter spews and Instagram comments you’re reading each day. With all that garbage reading, who has time for books anymore? In an earlier HBR piece called “8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year,” I shared how for most of my adult life I read five books a year, tops. I had a few slow burners on my nightstand, and read a couple of books on vacation if I was lucky. But then three years ago, I read fifty. Fifty books! In one year. I couldn’t believe it. I could suddenly feel books becoming this lead domino towards being a better husband, a better father, and a better writer. Since then, I’ve tried doubling down on reading. I’m now reading somewhere above 100 books a year. Sure, I sometimes hit slow patches, and bare patches, and slip into social media black holes. But here are eight more things I do to get back on track…”

 

I was the Australian doctor on the WHO’s COVID-19 mission to China. Here’s what we found about the origins of the coronavirus 



Samizdata quote of the day

And so it was written. Nothing is now unthinkable. The difference between China’s bureaucratic totalitarianism and our own is now a matter of degree, not kind. The future is a bleak vista. Scientists claim that lockdown cycles will continue for years, and regular reviews of personal freedom look set to become as quotidian as changes in interest rates. Even if Covid-19 does disappear, it will be a brave politician who, in a future NHS winter crisis caused by traditional common-or-garden influenza, refuses to impose restrictions that scientists promise will save thousands of lives. Civil liberties safeguarded during two world wars are now, as they are in China, gifts of the state.

– Jacob Williams


Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, February 13, 2021 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Paper – A First Look at Zoombombing; Google Chrome’s engineering director discusses how the company is trying to preserve digital advertising after tracking cookies are killed off; NSF pushing for agency-specific cyber-physical research; and They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them.


NASA

Watch NASA’s Perseverance Rover Land on Mars





Fraudster Caddick’s death may make it easier to recover stolen funds

Updated 

Lawyers believe the death of missing fraudster Melissa Caddick may make it easier to recover funds for the investors she conned out of millions of dollars.

Ms Caddick’s decomposed remains were found on a NSW south coast beach last weekend, three months after she vanished following a police raid on her home.

Courts approved an application for an arrest warrant by the corporate regulator for Ms Caddick on Monday, indicating it still held hopes in finding her alive.