Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Three Facts That Caught My Eye

Posted on September 6, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

Teardown of pregnancy test (from BBC)

Three not-quite-random facts that caught my eye recently, two about COVID, one about computers.

Scientific American: COVID-19 Can Wreck Your Heart, Even if You Haven’t Had Any Symptoms
‘Bradykinin Storms’ may be the method by which COVID-19 harms so many organs
So-called electronic home pregnancy tests are just regular paper tests with a computer chip that scans the results and outputs a word to an LCD. The disposable test carries onboard computing power nearly as good as the first IBM PC. And after one use, it and its battery become electronic waste.

Posted in COVID-19, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 3 Comments

Who is the loser now?

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

VoteVets’s new video:

Actually, we all are…

Posted in 2020 Election | 5 Comments

CDC’s Latest COVID-related Deaths Data

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

The vertical axis is deaths per million. Spot the outlier.

Click for a bigger image. Via Kevin Drum. Note that COVID death counts are likely undercounts as they do not include all “excess deaths“. [CORRECTED]

Posted in COVID-19 | 11 Comments

Banned by Facebook

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

Used to be “Banned in Boston” was the way to sell books. Now the way to make a video go viral is to say it was banned by Facebook. Susie Madrak reports that,

JoshSchwerin, Priorities USA’s comms director, wrote on Twitter, “They are refusing to let @prioritiesUSA run this ad because, according to them, it violates their sensational content policy. ‘Ads must not contain shocking, sensational, inflammatory, or excessively violent content.'”

“[S]hocking, sensational, inflammatory, or excessively violent content”???

You be the judge:

Posted in Trump | Comments Off