Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Putin, Ukraine, and the Preservation of Power - Once more, the Russian President is poised to invade the nation. His weapons include military hardware, malware, and propaganda. - link

• Is the Plunge in the Nasdaq and Bitcoin the End of a “Superbubble”? - “Perma-bear” Jeremy Grantham has long warned of a much bigger and far more damaging crash that could include stocks, bonds, and real estate. - link

• What Is Eric Adams’s Plan for the Rikers Island Crisis? - The horrors in the city’s jail system have been several administrations in the making. Adams has given a few early signs of how he’ll try to manage them. - link

• The Damage Done by a Hollywood Stereotype - A conversation with Robert Capron, who was cast as Rowley Jefferson in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” - link

• In “Compartment No. 6,” the Stranger on a Train Is a Drunken Russian Bear - This Finnish film is heavy-handed, regressive, and short-listed for an Oscar. - link

From Vox

• How to depolarize a country -

  

  An expert makes a strong argument for transforming the way American elections work. But could it ever happen?

  Last week, the Democrats’ voting rights bills went down in flames, defeated by the Senate filibuster and united Republican opposition. While this doesn’t signal the immediate collapse of American democracy as some have lamented, it does mean that, at least for now, Congress will not take action to repair a political system that is barreling toward a crisis.

  At times like these, it’s worth taking a step back to reassess things. Just what exactly are the roots of our current democratic decay, and what can we to do fix it?

  Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America, has a clear answer: transform the way our elections work. In his 2020 book Breaking the Two- Party Doom Loop, Drutman argued that the very nature of a two-party system tends toward extreme polarization and conflict. Because voters and parties are forced into binary choices and competition, they come to see the other side not just as rivals but as enemies. What’s more, two-party systems have a tough time keeping extreme anti-democratic parties — like, say, the modern GOP — out of power.

  To break the two-party hammerlock, Drutman proposes changing the way American elections work — to adopt a new system along the lines of what Ireland uses, where there are multiple representatives for each district.

  It’s a radical vision for how we do elections and, for the next few years, an inconceivable one. If a Democratic trifecta can’t pass a much more moderate set of voting rights bills, what would take to pass a reform aimed at abolishing the political duopoly wholesale?

  What follows is a transcript of my conversation with Drutman, probing both his diagnosis of American democracy’s woes and what it would take for something like his solution to ever come about. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Zack Beauchamp

The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act failed because two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, were unwilling to part with the filibuster. Doesn’t that make you a little more pessimistic about any kind of big democracy reform? How can you expect the system to get fixed if it can’t deal with an immediate threat staring at us right in the face?

Lee Drutman

I’m pretty convinced that things are going to get worse over the next few years. The question is, do they get better?

There’s a part of me that feels like the only way we get to major structural reform is for the Republicans to win unified government in 2025 and then just overreach incredibly. And that there’s a huge backlash and Democrats are convinced that we need to reform the system and come into Congress and have unified government in 2029, recognizing that they have limited time and pass sweeping reforms. I mean, that’s my optimistic case at this point: that the ’20s will be a decade of decline and then renewal.

There are a lot of structural reasons why I think that is actually quite possible, a lot of them having to do with changing demographics in the youth bulge, as well as the changing politics of climate. But I don’t know — things could be bad for a while and we could wind up with a decades-long period of low-level political violence and other broader problems, especially depending on how the climate stuff plays out.

Zack Beauchamp

But when you put it like that, it suggests that the problem isn’t the party system per se.

We’re in agreement that the evolution of the Republican Party has really pushed us in the anti-democratic direction that we’re going. So if that’s the case, then it seems like the drivers of the Republican Party’s changes are primarily longstanding social dynamics in American politics — fundamentally, the conflict over race that has defined the structure and the arc of US history for so long.

And if that’s the case, why would having multiple parties change things so much? I mean, in the 1850s, you had Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans. The Whigs ended up falling apart because they just couldn’t navigate the question of slavery.

The fact that we had three parties for a brief period of time didn’t prevent the Civil War. That was really a conflict about slavery, not the number of parties that we had.

Lee Drutman

Right, fair enough. I think there are two ways that I would think about this in the current system.

One is just a practical challenge. Say you’re a Democrat and you think the Republican Party is incredibly dangerous: a party that’s been taken over by an extreme illiberal faction. Yet Republicans keep winning elections because they’re the default party for the [part] of the country that sees the Democrats as the opposition, or can’t bring themselves to vote for Democrats. So that’s a problem because I don’t see any way in which Democrats win an overwhelming national majority.

But what if there were a center-right party that could get 15 percent of the vote? [They] could align with Democrats to have a supermajority pro-democracy coalition, as you see in many other countries with proportional multi-party systems — Israel being a recent example.

So that’s on the practical side of how you get out of this. And then the other question that I think is worth asking is: Why did the Republican Party go so crazy? And I think a lot of that does have to do with the binary party system.

If you are a plurality of a plurality, as I think the MAGA faction initially was, you can take over one of the two major parties and there’s nowhere else for folks in that party to go — unless they want to join the opposing party. And this binary us-against-them mentality, it creates a political situation in which the Republicans basically had to double down on racist rhetoric because their economic policies were incredibly unpopular. They could do that in a two-party system, because there are only two [options].

Zack Beauchamp

Your proposal for enabling the rise of a multi-party system is a much more radical reform than what the Senate just rejected. The model that you like the best is basically patterned off of Ireland, with two notable features: ranked-choice voting and multi-member districts.

Can you talk about how those would work and why you think they’re desirable in the American context?

Lee Drutman

The Irish system involves multi-member districts: Rather than having a single member represent a single distinct geographical region, you have a much larger geographical region, and then you have [multiple] people represent that region and they’re elected proportionally. In a five-person district, the top five candidates would, after an election, go to Congress.

The Irish use ranked-choice voting as part of that. When you go into the [voting] booth, you rank candidates in order of preference and then candidates are eliminated from the bottom up. That means that you can vote for candidates that you might not think will have a chance, but your vote is not wasted: You get a backup vote. And in practice, that encourages candidates to be a little nicer to each other and work together and build coalitions.

I would note that it’s also the system that Northern Ireland adopted when it finally ended the Troubles and had a peace agreement, because it’s a system that encourages cross-cutting coalitions in tense times. If you look around the world and you look at what constitutional scholars and comparative political scientists say about how to build democracy in a diverse society, the thing that they would absolutely say is the worst, most dangerous thing to do is to have a heavily majoritarian binary system.

Zack Beauchamp

But It’s hard to get Congress to agree on anything, let alone to imagine the two parties coming together and agreeing to vote on for a new electoral system that would make them fracture or even, potentially, collapse.

So even if you’re right that the two-party system is at the root of our problems, and some kind of wholesale reform of how elections work could fix things, how could we plausibly imagine getting from point A to point B?

Lee Drutman

The first thing is that we have to think in terms of individual lawmakers and not in terms of parties. But the parties are really coalitions of groups [and] individual members of Congress. And there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party right now who are pretty unhappy with the direction of the leadership, and there are at least a few people in the Republican Party who are unhappy with the leadership.

So would AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and many of the progressive Democrats rather have their own party, and maybe form a coalition with the moderate Democrats but get to stand on their own? I think so. Might some centrist Republicans wish to run on their own party? I think absolutely.

So if you think in terms of individual members and factions and groups, there’s a potential [for] a lot of folks who are in Congress to say, “Look, this system isn’t working for us. We hate it. And I can get elected under a different system, and I actually might enjoy being a member of Congress more under that other system.”

Zack Beauchamp

In theory, yes. In practice, the problem is that in a hyperpolarized environment, whenever something gets proposed by one party or a member of one party, the people in the other party tend to take a reflexive stand against it.

So let’s take your hypothetical. You start with an AOC-sponsored bill that would change us to an Irish-style system. You can imagine every Republican in Congress running against it on grounds of it’s the far-left radical socialist takeover plan for American democracy. And you can see the reverse happening if Republicans proposed something like this.

It seems like the structure of a two-party system makes it very, very difficult to imagine a world in which individual legislators start thinking as individuals, in the way that you describe, given the partisan identities that get activated in any debate over a legislative proposal to change things.

Lee Drutman

Yes, that is certainly true. I hope that AOC does not introduce this legislation, or at least gets a surprising Republican co- sponsor, for precisely the reason that you suggest.

I think the challenge is really building that broad coalition at the start, in a way that it becomes harder to characterize this as a Democratic or a Republican bill. We’re clearly not there, but maybe we will be, and maybe it means that some states start experimenting with this.

There’s an interesting proposal in Wyoming — a very conservative state. There are some folks in the legislature there who are thinking about using multi-member proportional districts in their legislature. And one of the reasons for that is because the Republican Party in Wyoming is divided. It’s divided between a more classic conservative Liz Cheney wing and a more radical anti-Liz Cheney, pro- MAGA faction.

You see this in a lot of states, or in any city, that are solidly one party. California is an overwhelmingly blue state, but there are divides within the Democratic Party. New York City certainly divides within the Democratic Party, as the primary showed, although the ranked-choice voting made for some interesting coalitions. But the broader challenge is that we’ve got to think in terms of these intraparty factions, think about the coalitions that could emerge, and start building them ahead of time.

Two Senate races I’ll be watching most closely in 2022 are Alaska and Utah: Alaska, because of Lisa Murkowski running under a new system with ranked-choice voting; Utah, because Evan McMullin is trying to run as an independent and he’s going to try to challenge Mike Lee.

Now, the only way Evan McMullin wins is if Democrats basically stand down. And Democrats should stand down and endorse McMullin, because there’s no way a Democrat is going to win statewide in Utah. You could imagine that happening in a couple of states. I mean, there’s no way Democrats are going to win in Missouri or Louisiana, but a moderate independent might win if Democrats stand down. And then you could envision a group of moderate independent center-right folks who could support more transformative legislation.

Now, is that a long shot? Sure. But could it happen? Absolutely.

Zack Beauchamp

I think it’s worth dwelling on the reasons why that could be fairly characterized as a long shot, because it illustrates just how much of a mess we are in, in certain ways.

If you’re a Democrat and you hear Lee Drutman making this argument, I think you’d probably say two things. You say one, we can win in deep red states: We just won in Alabama in 2017. And two, even moderate Republicans now aren’t very helpful for the Democratic agenda.

So if Democrats can’t get Mitt Romney on board on their signature legislation, why would they sacrifice even a long-shot chance of getting another Doug Jones in office in favor of a moderate conservative who’s not going to back any of the things that their voters really care about?

I’m not saying your scenario is unlikely as some kind of gotcha — you’ve already said that it is. Instead, I’m emphasizing this point because it shows the ways in which partisan self-interest so distorts the way that parties and voters think about the world. Even if in the long run, it would be good for American democracy to have a larger moderate Republican faction — and I think it probably would be — it’s very difficult to imagine Democrats being willing to make the kind of sacrifice that you’re describing.

Lee Drutman

You’re getting at this really important dynamic between the short term and the long term. In the short term, we always have to win the next election because if the other side gets total power, they’re going to do awful things. And look: As basically a partisan Democrat, I kind of believe that. If Republicans get total power, they’re going to do some pretty awful things.

But at the same time, if we don’t take some chances and some gambles, we’re going to be stuck in the same cycle. And I think there’s a pretty good chance that Republicans will win at least the next two elections. And so if it’s a long shot for Democrats to win in 2022 and in 2024, then maybe we should just try a bunch of things that could potentially break this doom loop and get us to a better place for the long term. Be willing to take some short-term gambles, because if we keep doing the same thing we’re going to keep winding up in the same place.

• Why more Americans than ever are starting their own businesses -

  

  Workers are quitting their jobs to become their own bosses. 

  While millions of Americans are quitting their jobs in search of better employment, many of them are doing so in the hope of never having to work for someone else ever again.

  The pandemic has, at least for the time being, halted — and perhaps reversed — a decadeslong decline in the pace of entrepreneurship. Americans applied for a record 5.4 million business ID numbers in 2021, according to census data that goes back to 2004. 2022 is already on track to be a record year as well, according to projections from QuickBooks. While data on true business formations is available only through 2019, growth in ID number applications is closely related to actual business formations. Other datasets, including Bureau of Labor Statistics data that shows a rise in self-employed people as well as data from a number of companies that offer small business tools, bear out the trend toward record entrepreneurism.

  The recent growth in new businesses has big implications for the Americans starting them and the people who used to employ them, as well as for the future of government policy and the resilience of the economy in general.

  Part of what makes this rise of new businesses important is that it encompasses a broader segment of society than in years past. Women, Black Americans, and those without college degrees are starting a much larger share of online microbusinesses than before the pandemic, according to data from Venture Forward, a research initiative from GoDaddy, a web domain company that’s increasingly offering other small business tools. Women started 57 percent of those businesses since March 2020 compared with 48 percent before; Black Americans founded 26 percent, up from 15 percent pre-pandemic; and Americans without college degrees founded 44 percent compared with 36 percent. In 2020, the rate of women and people of all ethnicities starting businesses of all types increased sharply, according to Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship (2021 data will be out in February).

  “Sometimes our ideas aren’t listened to as thoroughly, so some people just take their own initiative, ‘Well I can do this better myself.’ And they do,” Kimberly Blackmon, a Black woman who, after the pandemic began, quit her job doing human resources for a furniture company. Instead, she expanded her skin care side hustle into a full-time business, launching a new location for Glowmour Beauty Medispa in Tampa in September 2021.

  “Working for myself is much more fulfilling,” Blackmon said. “I have an opportunity to be that CEO, and I mentor my employees and guide them. And I don’t want to ever have them feel how I felt when I worked in the corporate world.”

Americans’ reasons for heading out on their own to start their own businesses are as varied as Americans themselves, ranging from the financial to the philosophical. Some set off on their own ventures in industries where they’d previously worked for someone else, while others took on new careers entirely.

While business applications have increased in almost every industry since the start of the pandemic, the highest jumps were in retail, especially for stores that only sell things online. The data also shows sizable jumps in people starting transportation and warehousing businesses, which do things like coordinating package deliveries or processing returns. The number of new professional services businesses, including stuff like accounting or graphic design, also saw a rise, as did construction businesses, which might not come as a surprise given the hot housing market.

Ari Rasekh had been working as a group product manager at IBM when the pandemic hit. He began freelancing to give himself more flexibility to contemplate and fulfill his dreams.

“It took my departure from traditional employment for me to finally realize fully that I was inside a multi-year emotional lull when it came to my work. I was constantly trying to answer, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’” said Rasekh. He since founded Manor.care, which helps people maintain the homes they’re spending increasing amounts of time in. “The answer, I knew in my heart, was an entrepreneur.”

Staying home during the pandemic gave many Americans a little extra money and a lot more time to think about how they want to spend their time on Earth. Some realized they hate their boss or that they want to be their own boss. Others decided they want to spend more time with their kids and less in a car. Many cited wanting a feeling of control over their own destiny in an increasingly chaotic world.

People often start businesses out of necessity when there’s a recession or high unemployment like there was at the start of the pandemic. But now that the economy is booming and unemployment is low, that’s no longer a big factor. People are quitting their jobs in record numbers in what’s been called the Great Resignation.

“We’re kind of thinking about it as a ‘Great Reflection,’ where people are really taking stock of what they want out of a job, what they want out of employment, and what they want out of their life,” explained Danny Speros, VP of people operations at payroll, HR, and benefits software company Zenefits. “And no longer are those stacked-ranked with ‘job’ at the top. I think life is starting to be at the top.”

Increased access to health care marketplaces, more accessible business technology, and a raft of new opportunities created by the pandemic have also helped give many people the push they needed.

The rise of new small businesses also has the potential not only to change work for the owners themselves, but for the many more Americans working for someone else. People starting their own businesses are often leaving jobs working for others, adding to the tight employment situation in which there are millions more open jobs than people willing to fill them. That’s already forcing payroll employers to raise wages, offer more benefits, and generally make work better for those working for others. (The majority of the small business applications are for businesses that likely won’t hire people, at least not right away).

“People have what they consider a better alternative,” Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR), told Recode. Employers, in turn, will “have to offer them jobs that look better to them than their opportunities for self-employment.”

The decision to set out on your own, though, is full of risks, including steeper health care costs and unfavorable tax codes in addition to irregular paychecks and a high potential of business failure. While a number of groups are lobbying for better policy to support the growing ranks of American entrepreneurs, their benefits are not yet on par with employees in the US.

Still, America’s new business owners seem willing to take those risks, at least for now. And in doing so, they are reshaping the makeup of work in America.

Why they’re doing it

The psychological force of the pandemic cannot be overstated.

There’s nothing quite like a global health crisis in which millions have died to nudge people into rethinking how they live. Staying at home working or unemployed while much of the economy closed down gave people the time and space to consider their next moves, rather than continuing apace.

For some, that manifested in a desire for control. If you are your own boss, your success or failure at least seems dependent on you, rather than on the capriciousness of others. For others, it led them to see that life is short and that they had limited time to live out their entrepreneurial dream.

Bayete Stevens/Immaculate Visuals

As Blackmon put her decision to launch her medical spa, “One of the things with me leaving my job was I could catch Covid and be gone tomorrow, and I won’t get to do what I want to do.”

Instead, people got a chance to consider what would make them truly happy.

Baking had been a lifelong hobby for Emily Keller, but while working from home as a product designer during the pandemic, she really honed that skill and started getting requests on Instagram to buy her custom macarons.

“I just started to wonder what if I pushed this baking thing further?” Keller said. “What would happen if I gave it as much energy as I do my full-time job?” That led her to launch Tastee Treats Louisville, a home-based bakery in Kentucky, and reduce her regular job to part time in October. She hopes to quit her other job fully this year.

“I have made so many dashboards and apps and watched them all disappear and never get created,” she said. “Now I get to see my creations go out into the world and see people enjoy them.”

The pandemic itself also presented a lot of opportunities for would-be entrepreneurs who are typically more nimble than big businesses and are taking on everything from accommodating online orders to concierge Covid-19 testing to building home offices.

“Businesses are problem solvers,” said Thomas Sullivan, vice president of small business policy at the US Chamber of Commerce. “There haven’t been more problems to solve than right now.”

Extended unemployment benefits, lower spending during the pandemic, and increased savings also gave some people the money they needed to actually launch their businesses. It doesn’t hurt that many of the benefits of traditional employment — job security, pensions, unionization — have been in decline for years, making the perks of employment less rosy. Employee engagement at work dropped for the first time in a decade last year.

Additionally, the introduction of health care exchanges through the Affordable Care Act made it easier for people to get health care without going through their employer, taking some of the risk out of starting one’s own business. Biden’s American Rescue Plan expanded the amount of money people could make and still receive government assistance to purchase insurance through the exchanges, making non-employer health care a possibility for a wider swath of Americans.

That doesn’t mean the process of getting health insurance is easy or inexpensive, especially if you can’t pivot to a spouse’s insurance or if the exchanges don’t offer the type of insurance you need.

Chris Nedler quit his job last year at a clean energy nonprofit to work full time on his subscription podcast about moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It was difficult to find insurance that would cover him while traveling outside the US, and it came at a big premium. Nedler called the whole process a “debacle and a huge pain in the ass.”

Self-employment does, however, make some things easier, like letting people choose to work from where they want. The vast majority of Americans say they want to work remotely at least some of the time — a situation that has put many of them at an impasse with their bosses, according to the latest survey data from Slack’s Future Forum consortium. Executives are nearly three times more likely than non-executives to want to return to the office full- time.

“It’s amazing to be able to work for myself and report to no one and have total flexibility in where, when, and how I work,” Nedler said.

Not needing an office space also minimizes the costs for new business owners, who can forgo expensive real estate, in addition to more minor costs like signage.

Technology companies like Zenefits, GoDaddy, PocketSuite, QuickBooks, among many others, help small businesses compete with larger or brick and mortar businesses. The technology they offer includes everything from fast broadband to an influx of software that handles different small business needs — HR, tax, billing, payments websites — to make the prospect of starting your own business less onerous. Increased digital literacy, as well as mature online marketplaces where people can sell goods, has also helped small business formations.

“If we had this exact same thing back 15 years ago, we couldn’t pull this off,” said John Haltiwanger, a University of Maryland economics professor who has written extensively about the pandemic’s effects on business formation. “The world is better set up on all kinds of dimensions to be able to go out on your own.”

Still, it’s not clear yet whether all this technological support will help budding entrepreneurs escape the many risks still facing them.

Risks and what has to change

To be clear, starting your own business is a risky business; most new businesses fail within a few years.

“I expect most people probably are overly optimistic about their prospects: A lot of people take their life savings and put it into their business, and it doesn’t work out,” CEPR’s Baker said. He added, “It’s my view [that] it’s good they have the opportunity and some will work out.”

Even businesses that are ultimately successful can take a long time to be profitable, which is one of the reasons some of the entrepreneurs we spoke with are holding on to part-time or freelance work.

“I won’t make the same amount of money,” Keller said of her baking business, but she’s willing to deal with that shortfall rather than stay in her previous job. “The work was still the same, and I was still dealing with the same problems, same design tasks, and dreading all of it.”

In addition to erratic or nonexistent paychecks, small business owners have to contend with policy that doesn’t favor them. National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) President and CEO Keith Hall says the self-employed don’t have the same level of benefits as big businesses when it comes to things like taxation, the ability to borrow money, and access to retirement and health care benefits.

“If everything else is exactly the same, the self-employed person pays 15 percent more for health insurance than somebody who works for American Airlines,” Hall said. “That’s just not right.”

NASE, which offers members business advice as well as access to consolidated buying power for things like insurance and retirement saving, saw a record number of people join since the pandemic began.

Last year, the Biden-Harris administration announced new rules and reforms meant to give small businesses better access to loans and relief, but there’s still a long way to go until they’re on equal footing with larger businesses.

There’s also a big learning curve for these smaller entrepreneurs. Venture Forward found that a top need for online microbusinesses, in addition to benefits, access to capital, and affordable broadband, was basic business planning skills.

As Keller put it, “I always shied away from freelancing as a designer because I didn’t think I could handle the business side of things, and while it isn’t a strength of mine, it is a muscle that I am developing.”

Even for those who don’t make it, the tight employment situation provides some succor — they can always go back to working for someone else. What’s more exciting, however, for these entrepreneurs is the prospect that they, someday, will make it big.

“The failure rates are really high, but a small fraction grow really rapidly,” Haltiwanger said. “And so the really interesting question will be, who emerges from this?”

• How you can get free N95 masks from the US government -

  

  You’ll soon be able to get free N95 respirator masks from your local pharmacy or community health center.

  This week, the Biden administration will begin distributing free N95 masks — which provide the greatest protection among readily available disposable masks — to the public as part of its push back against the omicron wave.

  The administration had announced last week that it would be making 400 million N95 respirator masks freely available to the public at community health centers and pharmacies across the country. That announcement came on the heels of the rollout of a website for ordering free Covid-19 rapid tests.

  The N95s will be coming from the United States Strategic National Stockpile, which is the federal government’s reserve for crucial medicines and supplies for use during a public health emergency. The White House called the initiative the largest deployment of personal protective equipment in US history. Belated though it may be according to some experts, the flurry of giveaways signals a shift for the administration to go beyond a vaccination-centric campaign to fight and control the pandemic.

  Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and a former member of the Biden transition team’s COVID Task Force, said he welcomed the free distribution of masks. “There are people who can’t afford them, people who can’t get them because they don’t have internet, and being able to walk into pharmacies and just pick them up is fantastic,” he told Vox.

  The Biden administration appears to finally be responding to criticism this winter for its domestic response to the pandemic. As the masks make their way to distribution areas throughout the country, you may have some questions about how to get them. Here’s what you need to know.

  Where and when will the N95 masks be available?

  The free Covid-19 rapid tests are delivered by mail directly to people who sign up to get them from the covidtests.gov website. But Americans will have to go pick up the free N95 masks in person from local pharmacies and community health centers (many of which serve vulnerable and underserved communities), with supplies becoming available as early as this week. (You may want to call your local pharmacy first to find out if their shipments have come in.)

  The masks will be fully available at tens of thousands of such locations by early February, according to the White House. Pharmacies across the country have reported already receiving their shipments of N95 masks and distributing them to customers in recent days.

  The pharmacies participating in the distribution of N95s will be the same as those that partnered with the government to provide Covid-19 vaccines to the public. This includes big retail chains like Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy, Walmart, Rite Aid, Kroger, Albertsons (think Safeway and Randalls), and Costco.

  Are these masks free, and how many can each person get?

  Everyone can get up to three masks free “to ensure broad access for all Americans,” the White House said.

  Jen Kates, the senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Vox that it’s unknown whether the administration will distribute more masks down the road. But while it’s not clear if this is a one-time measure, the distribution of 400 million N95s amounts to more than half the total 750 million N95 masks currently stored in the Strategic National Stockpile, which might factor into the administration’s thinking on whether to have another giveaway down the road.

  Why N95s instead of cloth or surgical masks?

  In updated guidance issued recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that “while all masks and respirators provide some level of protection, properly fitted respirators” — the technical term for a face mask like an N95 — “provide the highest level of protection.”

  Experts increasingly are making the case that cloth masks are insufficient in the face of a virus as infectious as the omicron variant of Covid-19, as they are not very effective at preventing small airborne particles from passing through to the wearer.

  N95s get their name due to the fact that properly certified masks can filter out at least 95 percent of airborne particles, including aerosol particles and respiratory droplets. They also tend to have a tighter fit (if worn properly) that makes them superior to surgical masks, which are generally looser fitting.

  Although the administration is giving out N95s, masks like KN95s and KF94s are also considered to offer a similar level of protection that N95s provide, and are widely available from retailers. (N95s are certified by standards set by the United States government, KN95s by the Chinese government, and KF94s by the South Korean government.)

  The tricky thing is that there are fake versions of N95s and KN95s on the market. Here is the CDC’s guide to determining whether an N95 you encounter is the legitimate article. For KN95s, the CDC documents here what to look out for.

John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Can you reuse N95 masks?

Given that each person can only get three free N95s, you may need to extend the lifespan of the masks.

The CDC says you shouldn’t wear them more than five times. However, Anne Miller of Project N95, a nonprofit that assists communities with acquiring personal protective equipment, COVID-19 diagnostic tests, and other crucial supplies, told NPR that you can think about the five wearings in terms of eight-hour days, or 40 hours of wear total — meaning if you go for a 20-minute trip to the store, you can count that as 20 minutes off of that mask’s 40-hour life.

One way the CDC and other experts recommend extending the use of your masks is what Miller calls the “brown bag decontamination method.” You can store an N95 in a breathable paper bag for a week, and then reuse it, as the viral particles on it will have died off by then.

Still, you should also use your best judgment and dispose of any mask that appears dirty and hard to wear or breathe in, or if the fit is starting to loosen.

Will the free N95s fit kids?

The supply will not include child- sized masks, though the administration is working to procure masks specifically for children.

Because most N95s have traditionally been made for health care, manufacturing, and industrial use, there are no versions specifically designed for children, and one should avoid trusting any N95 marketed for children. Instead, aim to get KN95s and KF94s, as these kinds of respirator masks do have versions made for children.

Better masks, better late than never

The rollout of the masks comes during a period when Covid-19 cases are finally starting to fall overall nationwide following a debilitating weeks-long surge. That timing has some wondering whether the distribution of masks and rapid tests comes too little, too late.

“Better late than never,” Kates said, arguing that the plans are important signals that the Biden administration is pushing past “the politicization of masks” and that they will do more to control Covid beyond vaccination.

Emanuel, who has previously stated that individuals “wearing N95s is the single biggest thing we can do to reduce transmission,” emphasized to Vox that “we shouldn’t underestimate the power of social norms.” By distributing free N95s, he said, the Biden administration is encouraging people to be more “socially responsible.”

It’s a welcome move — but there’s a whole lot more that needs to be done, including improving ventilation on a wide scale, shoring up our hospital systems, bolstering global vaccine production capacity, and increasing the production of effective drugs and treatments.

In the meantime, sign up to receive rapid tests, swing by your local pharmacy in the next week to get your masks, and let’s hope that the omicron wave is on its way out.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Truly special ambassadors of strong relations between our nations: PM Modi writes to Gayle, Rhodes on Republic Day - Rhodes, a former Mumbai Indians fielding coach who resides in the country for a considerable part of the year, has a daughter named ‘India’, Gayle has been a big hit among cricket fans for his exploits in the IPL

• ‘Trying to get back to my old swing’ - Morikawa says he has hit the “reset button ahead

• Rahul Dravid and a period of necessary churning for Indian cricket - India’s dramatic slide in South Africa means that transition might have been advanced by a couple of years.

• Recent happenings won’t have an effect: Latif - Former Pakistan skipper say India has a strong base in IPL

• ‘Lack of red-ball cricket hampering players’ skills’: Unadkat - Unadkat laments about the potential cancellation of Ranji Trophy

From The Hindu: National News

• Don’t destroy ‘own property’, will resolve grievances: Railway Minister on violence by job aspirants - A committee has been formed and it will examine representations by the candidates, says Ashwini Vaishnav

• U.P. Assembly polls | Chandrashekhar Azad’s ASP reaches out to Gorakhpur voters as he’s set to take on Yogi Adityanath - Voters’ have differing opinions on his impact against the U.P. CM

• Save MKU Coalition appeals to Governor-Chancellor seeking transparency in V-C selection process - It appealed to the authorities for the appointment of an academically qualified V-C

• Salem railway division’s goods earnings grow by 116% - Divisional Railway Manager, Salem Division, A. Gautam Srinivas, said freight loadings and parcel earnings had both grown this year, compared to the same period last year

• On Republic Day, Tamil Nadu showcases tableau rejected by Centre - Freedom fighters, the Marudu brothers, Velu Natchiyar and V.O. Chidambaram Pillai were among those featured in the tableau; earlier TN Governor R.N. Ravi unfurled the flag in the presence of CM Stalin

From BBC: Europe

• Ukraine: US could sanction Putin personally if Russia invades, Biden says - US president Joe Biden says an invasion would have “enormous consequences” for the world.

• Ukraine: What is Nato and why doesn’t Russia trust it? - Nato countries are trying to help Ukraine in the face of a possible Russian invasion.

• Viral videos, stoicism and stockpiling on Ukraine’s uneasy borders - With an estimated 100,000 Russian soldiers now on Ukraine’s border, what do Ukrainians make of it all?

• Covid: Netherlands to ease restrictions despite rising case numbers - Dutch hospitality venues, including bars and restaurants, have been closed since 18 December.

• Lisa Smith ‘enveloped herself in the black flag’ of Islamic State - Lisa Smith pleads not guilty to charges of membership of the organisation and providing it funds.

From Ars Technica

• Fabs stretched thin as chip shortage shrinks inventories to just 5 days - Relief appears to be months, if not years, away. - link

• A bug lurking for 12 years gives attackers root on every major Linux distro - It’s likely only a matter of time until PwnKit is exploited in the wild. - link

• A rare find: archaeologists unearth 4,000-year-old board game in Oman - Team also unearthed remains of several large stone towers dating back to the Bronze Age. - link

• Neil Young tells Spotify it can’t have both him and Joe Rogan anymore - Musician wants streaming platform to address “fake information” on vaccines. - link

• Booby-trapped sites delivered potent new backdoor trojan to macOS users - Written from scratch, DazleSpy is the latest advanced piece of Mac malware. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A young couple dies on their way to their wedding -

  On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple were involved in a fatal car accident. The couple found themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting they began to wonder; Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter arrived they asked him if they could get married in Heaven. St. Peter said, ‘I don’t know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out,’ and he left. The couple sat and waited for an answer…. for a couple of months. While they waited, they discussed the pros and cons. If they were allowed to get married in Heaven, should they get married, what with the eternal aspect of it all? What if it doesn’t work? Are we stuck in Heaven together forever?’ Another month passed. St.  Peter finally returned, looking somewhat bedraggled. Yes,’ he informed the couple, ‘You can get married in Heaven.’ ‘Great!’ said the couple. ‘But we were just wondering; what if things don’t work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?’ St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slammed his clipboard on the ground. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked the frightened couple. ‘OH, COME ON!!!’ St. Peter shouted. ’It took me 3 months to find a priest up here! Do you have ANY idea how long it’ll take to find a lawyer?

  submitted by /u/cacarrot12
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• I was passing by my son’s bedroom and was astonished to see the bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then, I saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow, addressed to, ‘Dad’. With the worst premonition, I opened the envelope and read the letter, with trembling hands… -

  "Dear, Dad.

  It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you.

  I had to elope with my new girlfriend, because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.

  I’ve been finding real passion with Stacy.

  She is so nice, but I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing’s, tattoos, her tight motorcycle clothes and because she is so much older than I am.

  But it’s not only the passion, Dad.

  She’s pregnant.

  Stacy said that we will be very happy.

  She owns a trailer in the woods, and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter.

  We share a dream of having many more children.

  Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone.

  We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people in the commune for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want.

  In the meantime, we’ll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so that Stacy can get better.

  She sure deserves it!

  Don’t worry Dad, I’m 15, and I know how to take care of myself.

  Someday, I’m sure we’ll be back to visit so you can get to know your many grandchildren.

  Love, your son, Joshua.

  P.S. Dad, none of the above is true.

  I’m over at Jason’s house.

  I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the school report that’s on the kitchen table.

  Call when it is safe for me to come home!"

  submitted by /u/TeshaIbarraXlUk
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• It was the first day of school and a new Indian student named Chandra Subramanian entered the 5th grade -

  It was the first day of school and a new Indian student named Chandra Subramanian entered the 5th grade.

  The teacher said, "Let’s begin by reviewing some American History.

  Teacher :- Who said ‘Give me Liberty, or give me Death’?"

  She saw a sea of blank faces except for Chandra, who had his hand up:

  Chandra :- ‘Patrick Henry, 1775,’.

  ’Very good!

  Teacher :- Who said ‘Government of the People, by the People, for the People,
  shall not perish from the Earth?’’

  Again, no response except from Chandra:- ‘Abraham Lincoln, 1863’.

  The teacher snapped at the class, ‘Class, you should be ashamed.
  Chandra, who is new to our country, knows more about our history than you do.’

  She heard a loud stage whisper: ‘Fuck the Indians.’

  ‘Who said that?’ she demanded. But Chandra put his hand up. ‘General Custer, 1862.’

  At that point, a student in the back said, ‘I’m gonna puke.’

  The teacher glares around and asks ‘All right! Now, who said that?’

  Again, Chandra says, ‘George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991.’

  Now furious, another student yells, ’ What a stupid son of a bitch!’

  Chandra jumps out of his chair waving his hand and shouts to the teacher,
  ‘Joe Biden to Peter Doocy, 2022.’

  submitted by /u/burntpancakebhaal
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• Englishman, Welshman, Irishman and a Scotsman are taken prisoner and sentenced to death -

  The captors say “you each get one final request and then you get a bullet in your head”

  They turn and ask the Welshman what his final wish is and he says “I want 1000 men to sing”Land of my Fathers""

  They turn and ask the Scotsman what his final wish is and he says “I want 1000 bagpipers to play”Flower of Scotland""

  They turn and ask the Irishman what his final wish is and he says “I want 1000 dancers to perform the Riverdance”

  ​

  They turn and ask the Englishman what his final wish is and he says “Shoot me first”

  submitted by /u/smokeywokeypokey
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• The Earth’s surface is 70% water. -

  That water is uncarbonated. Therefore, the Earth is flat.

  submitted by /u/Wise_Philosopher_743
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