Fireball!
Today’s earworm: Firework/ball!
It Is Likely That Blue Zones Don’t Exist
You know how everyone knows there are certain parts of the world where people live longer because of all the yogurt they eat (like Soviet Georgia) or what kind of diet they eat or whatever. They are called Blue Zones. Well, maybe not.
This is just a preprint article (meaning it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet), but it looks like all of those blue zones were just a combination of shoddy record keeping and pension fraud.
For a slightly deeper dive, read this Arstechnica snippet
…Newman found a staggering number of errors in the data for every blue zone. For instance, in 1997, there were 30,000 Italians claiming a pension while turning out to be dead. In Costa Rica, 42 percent of citizens over the age of 99 were found to have “misstated” their age in the 2000 census, shrinking the blue zone in that region after error correction so much that the estimated life expectancy plummeted to the bottom of the pack. And in 2010, more than 230,000 Japanese centenarians turned out to be missing, imaginary, dead, or the result of clerical errors, amounting to an error rate of 82 percent. “If equivalent rates of fake data were discovered in any other field… a major scandal would ensue,” Newman wrote. “In demography, however, such revelations seem to barely mention citation.”
(and thanks to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and the IgNobel Prize for unearthing this!)
What Trump Wants To Do
I don’t think Trump meant what he said about what he’d have the National Guard and military do to Americans.
Oh wait, yes I do.
Transcript:
Kyle Clark: I missed something during last week’s Donald Trump rally in Aurora. Was standing there, heard it, just wasn’t sure if I heard what I thought I heard. So we did not play it back to you here. It seemed that Trump was talking in Aurora about using the U.S. military against Americans that he says hate this country. Listen to what he said.Donald Trump: We have the greatest military in the world, but you have to know how to use them. You have to know how to use them. But I protect you against outside enemies. But, you know, I always say we have the outside enemy. So you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say Kim Jong Un, you can say, but that’s not it’s going to be fun, if you have a smart president. No problem. It’s the enemy from within. All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.
Kyle Clark: All right, the military thing and the enemy within, like the comments are kind of next to each other, but it’s not super clear. Well, over the weekend on Fox, Trump just came out and said what he seemed to be saying in Aurora, that he has a desire to use the U.S. military against American citizens.
Donald Trump: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country, by the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages, they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they’re the problem in terms of Election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.
Kyle Clark: The Harris campaign responded to that, saying that it should, quote, alarm every American who cares about their freedom and security.
Signed up for a 5K!
I just signed up for my first 5K road race, running alongside my daughter as a Girls on the Run Running Buddy!
The race is November 2nd in San Leandro!
Volunteer for Kamala Harris Campaign
I just got a phone call from a Kamala Harris volunteer asking me to commit some time to the campaign. I will! He told me to go to Democrats.org/take-action/
There’s opportunities to be on a phone bank, send social media messages, volunteer locally, and other stuff. At a glance, it looks -very- organized and easy to get started with.
Finishing Up Comments on Flicker Memorandum
I’m thrilled about the impact I’ve had on the latest Memorandum to address the issue of lighting flicker.
I submitted several comments for BSR/IES TM-39, “Technical Memorandum: Quantification and Specification of Flicker” during the official Public Review period. The IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) Vision Science Committee reviewed my comments with care and integrated many of them into the document! I’m looking forward to the document helping to increase awareness of problems with flickering lighting and helping to push us toward solutions!
Didn’t Vote? Get Paid!
How is this not illegal? Cards Against Humanity is PAYING people who didn’t vote in 2020 to apologize, make a voting plan, and post #DonaldTrumpIsAHumanToilet—up to $100 for blue-leaning people in swing states. I helped by getting a 2024 Election Pack and contributing a bit extra: www.Apologize.lol
The Cards Against Humanity Folks continue to astound!
In case the site ever goes down, here is the homepage:
COVID Bookmark Dump
The COVID pandemic is done (and the endemic begun, read below). Here’s my bookmark pile from that era. All the COVID sites you ever wanted to fret over, all in one place.
covid
- WCCUSD 2022-2023 COVID Dashboard
- Activities for Children & Families – Google Sheets
- CCHealth Coronavirus
- Coronavirus Archives — Berkeleyside
- The COVID Tracking Project | The COVID Tracking Project
- COVID-19 Map – Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
- Mortality Analyses – Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
- Mortality Risk of COVID-19 – Statistics and Research – Our World in Data
- Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) – Statistics and Research – Our World in Data
- Corona Virus Science
- Coronavirus Information & Resources | Berkeley Unified School District
- COVID State-by-state by date total deaths
- US All Key Metrics | The COVID Tracking Project
- COVID-19 Projections Using Machine Learning | We use artificial intelligence to accurately forecast infections, deaths, and recovery timelines of the COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic in the US and globally
- District Updates / WCCUSD Return 2 School
- Covid Trends
- WCCUSD 21-22 COVID Dashboard › Daily Totals by Site
- Covid Trends – US Cases
- Covid Trends – CA cases
- 21-22 COVID Dashboard
Pre-K Activities for Kids, From COVID
This is still great for the 3-5 year-old set. We made this big Google Sheet with videos and kids activities during the COVID pandemic. Enjoy.
Activities for Children & Families