You may have heard there’s a presidential election this year. The fact that many of your acquaintances (and possibly you yourself) have gone completely nuts is an indication that it’s very close. Among the overheated things I’ve heard is that this election (like pretty much every other election in the…

I’m starting to wonder if the CDC et al. were right about masks in the first place, i.e. the people should not wear masks. Conceptually, ordering everyone to wear masks makes sense. Empirically, it doesn’t seem like mask mandates make any difference. …

Note: The CDC has recently taken the position that asymptomatic people do not need to get tested. For the record, I’m not 100% sure I agree with this. But I don’t think it’s nearly as bad an idea as most people seem to. So here are some of my thoughts…

I’ve been on Zoom meetings for a few hours a day, and decided to spice things up with some video backgrounds. Here’s my process, which you can use with any video on any major video service. (Editor’s note: this involves the command line. If this terrifies you, send a link…

You know the monkey trap? It’s where you put a peanut in a gourd with a small hole. The hole is big enough to fit the monkey’s hand, but not big enough to fit the monkey’s fist + the peanut. The monkey can’t remove its hand without dropping the peanut…

A friend of mine runs a lab for a large hospital in suburban St. Louis. He’s been working 18 hour days for the past few weeks without a break running tests for Covid-19. They can apparently process 200 tests a day. Considering we have over 100,000 cases right now and…

There’s a logical fallacy which probably has a proper name, but I call it the “This Fallacy”: Something must be done This is something Therefore this must be done If you spend any time following politics, this fallacy shows up all the time. The bigger problem for people in the…