The President Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off? - The dangerous “yeah, whatever” phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency. - link
How the Fight Against COVID-19 Is Bringing About a Perilous Rise in Preventable Diseases in Poorer Nations - For many of the world’s poorest children, the death and devastation have only begun. - link
How Joe Biden Could Help Internet Companies Moderate Harmful Content - Liberals and conservatives have found fault with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—but for very different reasons. - link
Donald Trump, George Wallace, and the Influence of Losers - The outgoing President may find himself stunned by the speed at which former loyalists distance themselves. But his ideological imprint on the G.O.P. is likely to remain. - link
Atul Gawande on Coronavirus Vaccines and Prospects for Ending the Pandemic - The New Yorker staff writer, now a member of President-elect Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board, discusses when a vaccine might be ready for distribution, who should receive it, and whether eradicating the virus is possible. - link
From Vox
The EU’s biggest oil producer has taken a huge step: It’s ending oil production by 2050 -
The work of scrapping and recycling of the Tyra Field oil and gas platforms is underway at the port of Frederikshavn in Denmark, on September 15, 2020 | Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
Denmark’s significant move makes EU climate change targets actionable.
Denmark has just taken a significant step to lead the world on addressing climate change. The country announced that it will phase out all oil and gas exploration contracts in the North Sea by 2050. It’s the first major oil-producing country to take such a big step.
Following a December 3 vote, the Danish parliament has issued a near-total ban on companies receiving new licenses to hunt for and extract oil. The agreement will also cancel an eighth round of licensing that was set to occur. Licenses that were issued before the vote will be honored until 2050.
“We’re the European Union’s biggest oil producer and this decision will therefore resonate around the world,” Danish climate minister Dan Jorgensen said on Thursday.
The move to end oil and gas contracts by 2050 is not going to be cheap as it’s estimated to cost Denmark $2.1 billion, but the country appears ready to foot the bill. “It’s a tough decision, it’s an expensive decision, but it’s the right decision,” Jorgensen told the Washington Post.
Denmark has been extracting oil and gas from the North Sea since 1972. Tax revenue from oil and gas production has greatly benefited its economy, helping to build the Danish welfare state that takes care of its citizens across their lifetimes.
But ending oil and gas extraction and exploration, experts say, is the only way Denmark can meet the European Union’s climate pledge. In October, the European Union voted to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent from 1990s levels by 2030.
The decision, which passed overwhelmingly, increased the bloc’s pledge to the 2016 Paris Agreement, signaling Europe’s serious commitment to ending the climate emergency.
Denmark’s plans put the country in line with regional targets.
“It’s taking a measure that will probably ensure that Denmark can meet this goal within the EU of reducing emissions to the point where they can pursue carbon neutrality by 2050,” Wil Burns, professor and co-director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy at American University, told me. “And this is the only way they could effectuate that.”
Ole Jensen/Getty Images
Climate demonstrators gather around Parliament during the opening day on October 6, 2020, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The vote also came due to increased pressure at home. Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, announced plans in late 2019 to become the first carbon-neutral capital in the world, achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2025.
And as Reuters reported in June, the Danish Council on Climate Change, an independent body that advises Denmark’s government, called for an end to oil and gas activities to salvage the credibility of Denmark as a leader in the fight against climate change.
“A Danish halt for further exploration in the North Sea could send a strong signal in international climate politics and may even encourage other countries to follow suit,” the council said at the time.
The international environmental activist organization Greenpeace expressed their support for the decision on Twitter, heralding the move as a “landmark decision.”
Historic WIN for climate & people power! In landmark decision, oil producer Denmark ends future licensing rounds for oil and gas exploration permits in the North Sea and sets existing production to expire no later than 2050. Now, more countries need to end oil! pic.twitter.com/NyUg4CtsCb
Ending oil production by 2050 has been welcomed — and criticized
The move was also hailed by EU government officials including Finnish Minister of the Environment and Climate Krista Mikkonen, who applauded the decision via Twitter saying that the world needs more leaders on climate change.
Some other environmental groups were also happy. “This is a huge victory for the climate movement,” Helene Hagel of Greenpeace Denmark said in a statement. She added that Denmark has “a moral obligation to end the search for new oil to send a clear signal that the world can and must act to meet the Paris Agreement and mitigate the climate crisis.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was far less impressed, though, tweeting that the decision means Denmark will continue extracting oil and gas for another 30 years.
The real news here is that Denmark will apparently go on extracting fossil fuels for another 3 decades. To us children, this is not the “good news” that some people seem to think. We’re in a climate emergency. Act accordingly.https://t.co/3ywKQNQXA0
Denmark’s decision shows that Paris and regional and national commitments to reducing emissions are starting to have some real impact — and that’s good.
As the top oil producer in the European Union, Denmark’s move is significant, but other oil producing nations must take a similar pledge if there’s any hope of achieving the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
“You’re going to need a lot of other countries, especially major oil and gas producers, to step up,” Burns told me. “Norway and the UK both feel pressured to remain leaders on pursuing the climate agenda.”
While the UK and Norway are both major oil-producing countries and located outside the EU, the desire to lead on climate change could push the nations to make stronger commitments.
Neighboring Norway, Burns noted, is a much larger producer of fossil fuels, so a commitment to end oil and gas extraction would be a much more dramatic step for that country to take.
“If the US, this year or next year, starts to return as a positive force on climate, that along with measures like this one from Denmark might put pressure on other countries to do so,” Burns said.
The controversy behind a star Google AI researcher’s departure -
Timnit Gebru, a former co-leader of Google’s Ethical AI team, is a leading researcher on biases baked into AI systems | Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Timnit Gebru says she was pushed out of the company; now some are worried it will have a chilling effect on academics in tech.
Google’s workplace culture is yet again embroiled in controversy.
AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru — a well-respected pioneer in her field and one of the few Black women leaders in the industry — said earlier this week that Google fired her after blocking the publication of her research around bias in AI systems. Days before Gebru’s departure, she sent a scathing internal memo to her colleagues detailing how higher-ups at Google tried to squash her research. She also criticized her department for what she described as a continued lack of diversity among its staff.
In her widely read internal email, which was published by Platformer, Gebru said the company was “silencing in the most fundamental way possible” and claimed that “your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people” at Google.
After Gebru’s departure, Google’s head of AI research Jeff Dean sent a note to Gebru’s department on Thursday morning saying that, after internal review, her research paper did not meet the company’s standards for publishing. According to Gebru, the company also told her that her critical note to her coworkers was “inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.”
A representative for Google declined to comment. Gebru did not respond to a request for comment.
Gebru’s allegation of being pushed out of the powerful tech company under questionable circumstances is causing a stir in the tech and academic communities, with many prominent researchers, civil rights leaders, and Gebru’s Google AI colleagues speaking out publicly on Twitter in her defense. A petition to support her has already received signatures from more than 740 Google employees and over 1,000 academics, nonprofit leaders, and industry peers. Her departure is significant because it hits on broader tensions around racial diversity in Silicon Valley as well as whether or not academics have enough freedom to publish research, even if it’s controversial, while working at major companies that control the development of powerful technologies and have their own corporate interests to consider.
What led to Gebru’s departure
People are still trying to unravel exactly what led to Gebru’s departure from Google.
What we know is that Gebru and several of her colleagues were planning to present a research paper at a forthcoming academic conference about unintended consequences in natural language processing systems, which are the tools used in the field of computing to understand and automate the creation of written words and audio. Gebru and her colleagues’ research, according to the New York Times, “pinpointed flaws in a new breed of language technology, including a system built by Google that underpins the company’s search engine.” It also reportedly discussed the environmental consequences of large-scale computing systems used to power natural language processing programs.
As part of Google’s process, Gebru submitted the paper to Google for internal review before it was published more broadly. Google determined that the paper was not up to its standards because it “ignored too much relevant research,” according to the memo Dean sent on Thursday.
Dean also said in his memo that Google rejected Gebru’s paper for publication because she submitted it one day before its deadline for publication instead of the required two weeks.
Google told Gebru it couldn’t meet her conditions and the company was accepting her resignation immediately.
It’s a standard process for a company like Google to review the research of its employees before it’s published outside it. But former colleagues and outside industry researchers defending Gebru questioned whether or not Google was arbitrarily enforcing its rules more strictly in this scenario.
“It just seems odd that someone who has had books written about her, who is quoted and cited on a daily basis, would be let go because a paper wasn’t reviewed properly,” said Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist who is the former head of Responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence and has now launched her own company called Parity. Chowdhury has no affiliation with Google.
The conflict and Gebru’s firing/resignation reflect a growing tension between researchers studying the ethics of AI and the major tech companies that employ them.
It’s also another example of deep, ongoing issues dividing parts of Google’s workforce. On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint that said Google had spied on its workers and likely violated labor laws when it fired two employee activists last year.
After several years of turmoil in Google’s workforce over issues ranging from Google’s controversial plans to work with the US military to sexual harassment of its employees, the past several months had been relatively quiet. The company’s biggest public pressure came instead from antitrust legal scrutiny and Republican lawmakers’ unproven accusations that Google’s products display an anti-conservative bias. But Gebru’s case and the recent NLRB complaint show the company is still fighting internal battles.
“What Timnit did was present some hard but important evaluations of how the company’s efforts are going with diversity and inclusion initiatives and how to course-correct on that,” said Laurence Berland, a former Google engineer who was fired after organizing his colleagues around worker issues and one of the employees contesting his dismissal with the NLRB. “It was passionate, but it wasn’t just non-constructive,” he said.
Why Gebru’s departure matters
In the relatively new and developing field of ethical AI, Gebru is not only a foundational researcher but a role model to many young academics. She’s also a leader of key groups like Black in AI, which are fostering more diversity in the largely white, male-dominated field of AI in the US.
(While Google doesn’t break out its demographics specifically for its artificial intelligence research department, it does annually share its diversity numbers. Only 24.7 percent of its technical workforce are women, and 2.4 percent are Black, according to its 2020 Diversity & Inclusion report.)
“Timnit is a pioneer. She is one of the founders of responsible and ethical artificial intelligence,” said Chowdhury. “Computer scientists and engineers enter the field because of her.”
In 2018, Gebru and another researcher, Joy Buolamwini, published groundbreaking research showing facial recognition software identified darker-skinned people and women incorrectly at far higher rates than lighter-skinned people and men.
Her work has contributed to a broader reckoning in the tech industry about the unintended consequences of AI that is trained on data sets that can marginalize minorities and women, reinforcing existing societal inequalities.
Outside of Google, academics in the field of AI are concerned that Gebru’s firing could scare other researchers from publishing important research that may step on the toes of their employers.
“It’s not clear to researchers how they’re going to continue doing this work in the industry,” said UC Berkeley computer science professor Moritz Hardt, who specializes in machine learning and has studied fairness in AI. “It’s a chilling moment, I would say.”
Why every state should adopt a mask mandate, in 4 charts -
Youyou Zhou for Vox
The latest research suggests mask mandates help control the spread of Covid-19.
Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, toured North Dakota this fall, as the state was overwhelmed by one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the country. While she commended the state’s testing efforts, she was distraught by the noticeable lack of face masks in public spaces. “This is the least use of masks that we have seen in retail establishments of any place we have been,” she said at an October 26 press conference.
North Dakota, which at the time didn’t require masks, had the lowest mask-wearing rate in the country in October, according to survey data.
North Dakota is not the only state that lagged in a mask policy in the throes of a major outbreak, however: Eight of the top 10 states that saw the highest new cases per capita in October did not have a widespread mask mandate, as the chart below shows. (Several of these Great Plains and Midwestern states were spared significant outbreaks of the virus until the fall.)
Youyou Zhou for Vox
But the dramatic surge of Covid-19 across the country this fall and winter has forced some states to change course. On November 8, Utah implemented a mask mandate, as new daily Covid-19 cases continue to rise in the state and across the country. Several other states have implemented or tightened mandates since then, including Iowa and North Dakota. Thirty-seven states now have mandates, according to the AARP.
Over the course of the pandemic, America has been engaged in a massive and uncontrolled mask experiment: Some jurisdictions implemented and enforced mask mandates; others rejected them as public health guidance became politicized. President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned and even scorned the use of masks, and several Republican governors have followed his lead. President-elect Joe Biden, meanwhile, has called for a national mask mandate and for Americans to wear masks for the “first 100 days” he is in office, as vaccines roll out.
But the different state-level approaches mean researchers can now parse the results of a trial they never would have received approval to conduct. New research from Kansas and Tennessee suggests that not only do mask mandates prevent Covid-19 spread, they may also blunt the severity of illness and reduce the number of serious cases that require hospitalization. Other findings support the argument more and more public health experts are making: that masks remain among our cheapest most effective tools to control the pandemic — if worn consistently.
“If you’re not in the ICU, the only tools at our disposal that we know work are the tried-and-true public health measures, like social distancing, hand-washing, and masks,” says Vin Gupta, a critical care pulmonologist and affiliate assistant professor for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. “We’re bearing the brunt of those things being implemented poorly.”
“You’re less likely to get Covid-19 if you’re wearing a mask,” says Donna Ginther, an economist and director of the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas. And “even if you do get sick while wearing a mask, you’re less likely to get deathly ill.”
Let’s walk through some of the latest research on mask mandates and what it means as we head into one of the most perilous seasons in the pandemic so far.
New evidence from Kansas and Tennessee that mask mandates control the spread of Covid-19
One intriguing piece of evidence of the effect of mask mandates on controlling the spread of the virus comes from Kansas. In July, Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, issued a mandate requiring everyone in public places to wear a mask where 6 feet of social distancing couldn’t be maintained. It prompted an immediate outcry from conservatives. Because of a state law passed in June that allowed counties to supersede the governor’s emergency powers, 81 counties out of 105 opted out of the mask mandate altogether, and only 21 counties decided to enforce it.
Two researchers from the University of Kansas analyzed what happened next.
Youyou Zhou for Vox
Ginther, the economist working on this analysis, found that in the counties that enforced mask-wearing, new cases stayed roughly steady. But in the counties without mandates, even after controlling for how often people left their homes, they doubled. “We were stunned by the strength of the effect,” she says.
The public health officer of Johnson, the state’s largest county, was so impressed he asked Ginther to share her work with the Board of County Commissioners, even though it’s not yet peer-reviewed or even written up into a paper. She is currently working on publishing the results.
Ginther says it wasn’t until 12 weeks after the mandates took effect that the growth in cases began to slow. But she thinks her results are likely conservative. “A 50 percent reduction in cases is likely to be a lower-bound on the true effect of wearing a mask,” she says. “If you had 100 percent compliance, I would expect to see an even larger effect.”
Other researchers have made related findings. A nonprofit group called Prevent Epidemics recently published a report showing that, following mask mandates, coronavirus cases declined in Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The CDC found that in Arizona, after a mask mandate was put in place, Covid-19 cases dropped 75 percent. Conversely, cases spiked 151 percent when stay-at-home orders were lifted, demonstrating that behavior has a significant impact on viral transmission.
In addition to slowing the spread of the virus, new evidence from Tennessee shows that mask mandates could reduce the severity of the virus. A paper by researchers at Vanderbilt found that at Tennessee hospitals where at least 75 percent of Covid-19 patients came from counties with mask requirements, coronavirus hospitalization rates are the same as they were in July. In hospitals where fewer than 25 percent of patients come from places with a mask mandate, hospitalizations are 200 percent higher. What’s more, the researchers wrote, hospitals in areas with mask requirements and other mitigation strategies “are in a much better position to serve the entire spectrum of community health needs, not just Covid-19 patients.”
Mask mandates lead to more people wearing masks
Even if they aren’t always followed, mask mandates appear to be an effective tool in encouraging behavior change. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington found in August that mask use increased 8 percentage points after mask mandates, and increased 15 points if those mandates were enforced.
Only around 65 percent of Americans currently regularly wear masks, according to IHME. But in Singapore, for instance, around 95 percent of people wear masks, and they have one of the world’s lowest coronavirus death rates. “We know that countries that wear masks are doing much better,” says Ali Mokdad, the chief strategy officer of public health at the University of Washington.
Thirty-three states and Washington, DC, implemented statewide mask mandates between April and August. During the same period, an increasing number of Americans began to wear masks regularly, according to a weekly survey started in mid-April by the data intelligence company Premise.
Youyou Zhou for Vox
There is one caveat of all the analyses mentioned above: They simply observe behavior, which means that they can demonstrate associations — like case counts falling after mask mandates are put in place — but not causation. The gold standard to prove that would be a randomized controlled trial. But that’s a hard study to design in a pandemic because of ethical concerns.
Even without randomized trials, Rebekah Gee, a public health policy expert and secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health, says the body of evidence “confirms what public health experts have known since early on in this pandemic, which is that masks work.”
Masks could save 130,000 lives by February, but more Americans would have to wear them consistently
In fact, a study published October 23 in Nature Medicine by IHME’s forecasting team modeled current public health interventions — projecting case numbers based on current behavior — and found that universal mask use could save as many as 130,000 lives by the end of February 2021.
Mokdad says that’s why it’s essential to have clear, consistent recommendations to wear masks. He adds, “We never debate seatbelts. Is it okay if only 80 percent of people wear them? We say everybody should.” But while he would prefer that 100 percent of people wear masks, Mokdad says at this point, any incremental increase in mask use “for me is a celebration.”
Unfortunately, in many parts of the US, mask use is actually decreasing. In Florida, for example, which grappled with a serious surge in cases this summer, Mokdad says 70 percent of people were wearing masks in August. Now, only 65 percent are. “Wearing masks has been a response to fear rather than a good, persistent behavior,” Mokdad says.
Vox analyzed the relationship between the frequency of wearing masks from the Premise survey data and the Covid-19 cases in states from April to October. As the charts below show, in states with mandates where cases surged in the spring, more people now wear masks. These states — where more people consistently wear masks — are now less likely to see another huge surge in cases.
Youyou Zhou for Vox
Even though mask use has risen in many states, the nation as a whole is on a troubling trajectory, with new daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths all on the rise. Mokdad says he’s very concerned about the holidays. “As we go be with our loved ones — our grandparents, our kids — do you want to go sit at a table and risk the people you care about most, or do you want to wear a mask?” IHME models predict that if some US states increased their mask use from now on, they could reduce the number of future Covid-19 deaths by about 50 percent.
The stakes for getting this right are high — not just for the holidays, but for the rest of the pandemic, however long that might be.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently echoed Biden’s call for a national mask mandate. “If you don’t want to shut down, at least do the fundamental, basic things,” Fauci told the editor-in-chief of JAMA, “the flagship of which is wearing a mask.”
Rather than thinking about a mask mandate as something that takes away a freedom, as anti-mask protestors have claimed, Leana Wen, a physician and the former Health Commissioner for the City of Baltimore, says, “Mask-wearing allows you to do things.” If everyone wears a mask, it will keep transmission low, allowing businesses and schools to stay open.
“If you want a more normal life, we need to adjust our behavior, as opposed to locking ourselves away,” Ginther says. “Masks rise to the top as an approach we can take as a society to have a more open economy but not get everyone sick.”
Lois Parshley is a freelance investigative journalist. Follow her Covid-19 reporting on Twitter @loisparshley.
Editor’s note, November 7: Due to a data error, a previous version of the chart of increases in Covid-19 cases in October did not include Hawaii and miscategorized Louisiana as not having a mandate. In fact, Louisiana implemented a mandate in August. The chart has been updated to reflect these changes.
From The Hindu: Sports
PCB launches probe into players’ COVID cases in New Zealand - The interesting thing is the majority of the players belonged to two provincial teams.
Napoli renames stadium in honour of Maradona - The Naples city council unanimously approved the change of name from Stadio San Paolo to Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.
ISL | Chhetri seals it in BFC’s favour - Cashes in on a penalty to help his side beat Chennaiyin FC
Under-fire Zidane refuses to give up - Reports link Pochettino and Raul as his likely replacements
Olympics to cost extra $2.4 billion: organisers - The costs could rise further, with Tokyo 2020 saying it will release an additional $250 million in “contingency” funds to help cover the expenses.
From The Hindu: National News
Coronavirus | Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij tests positive - Vij on November 20 was administered a trial dose of Covaxin.
Cyclone Burevi | Tamil Nadu government deputes three IAS officers to Cuddalore - They will camp in flood-affected areas and monitor relief operations
Former Minister Kamatam Ram Reddy passes away - The 83-year old leader from Ranga Reddy district represented the Parigi constituency thrice.
Pakistani Rangers open fire on forward posts, villages in J&K’s Kathua district - Pakistani Rangers opened fire on forward posts and villages along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district, officials said on
States with stressed groundwater trade most cereals, find study - Rice and wheat dominate cereal production and it’s also known that they are intensely water-consumptive crops.
From BBC: Europe
Post-Brexit trade talks paused amid ‘significant divergences’ - Boris Johnson and European Commission chief Ursula Von Der Leyen will seek to break deadlock on Saturday.
Austria: Former finance minister Grasser jailed for corruption - The court said Karl-Heinz Grasser received kickbacks in return for information on property sales.
Denmark set to end all new oil and gas exploration - The European Union’s largest oil producer plans to stop extracting fossil fuels by 2050.
French Thalys train attacker ‘tried to kill me three times’ - American Spencer Stone tells a French court how he tackled the gunman on the Thalys train in 2015.
Suarez case: Juventus director probed over footballer’s Italian exam - A senior official at the club is placed under investigation over the player’s citizenship bid.
From Ars Technica
Shadow Moon tries to escape his demigod destiny in American Gods S3 trailer - We have hopes for a less rocky S3 with new showrunner and several new cast members - link
Feds logged website visitors in 2019, citing Patriot Act authority - Privacy-minded lawmakers want feds to have to get warrants for Web browsing data. - link
Lidar startup goes public, makes founder a billionaire - Luminar used a special purpose acquisition company to avoid a traditional IPO. - link
Rusty but intact: Nazi Enigma cipher machine found in Baltic Sea - Enigma device stymied Allied intelligence until Alan Turing cracked it. - link
NASA is about to have double Dragons at its space station - Also, NASA has agreed to fly on a Falcon 9 that has already been used three times. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
NSFW What did the egg say to the boiling water? -
I just got laid and you expect me to be hard in3 minutes?!?
I was standin next to this bloke in the changing room at my local gym yesterday when a mobile phone rings. -
He was getting dry so he puts it on loudspeaker. I thought straightaway wot a smug bastard!
MAN: “Hello”
WOMAN: “Honey, it’s me. Are you at the gym?”
MAN: “Yes”
WOMAN: "I am at the Metro Centre now and found this beautiful leather coat.
It’ s only £1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?"
MAN: “Sure, ..go ahead if you like it that much.”
WOMAN: “I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2021 models. I saw one I really liked.”
MAN: “How much?”
WOMAN: “£90,000”
MAN: “OK, but for that price I want it with all the options.”
WOMAN: “Great! Oh, and one more thing …. The house I wanted last year is back on the market. They’re asking £950,000”.
MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer of £900,000. They will probably take it. If not, we can go the extra 50 thousand.
WOMAN: “OK. I’ll see you later! I love you so much!!”
MAN: “Bye! I love you, too.”
The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment, mouths agape…..He smiles and asks: “Anyone know who this fuckin phone belongs to?”
A Chinese doctor cant find a job in a hospital in America, so he opens a clinic and puts a sign outside that reads “GET TREATMENT FOR $20 - IF NOT CURED GET BACK $100.” -
An American lawyer thinks this is a great opportunity to earn $100 and goes to the clinic.
Lawyer: “I have lost my sense of taste.”
Chinese: “Nurse, bring medicine from box No. 14 and put 3 drops in patient’s mouth.”
Lawyer: “Ugh. this is kerosene.”
Chinese: “Congrats, your sense of taste is restored. Give me my $20.”
The annoyed lawyer goes back after a few days to try to recover his money.
Lawyer: “I have lost my memory. I can’t remember anything.”
Chinese: “Nurse, bring medicine from box no. 14 and put 3 drops in his mouth.”
Lawyer (annoyed): “This is kerosene. You gave this to me last time for restoring my taste.”
Chinese: “Congrats. You got your memory back. Give me $20.”
The fuming lawyer pays him, then comes back a week later determined to get back $100.
Lawyer: “My eyesight has become very weak I cannot see at all.”
Chinese: “Well, I don’t have any medicine for that, so take this $100.”
Lawyer (staring at the note): “But this is $20, not $100!”
Chinese: “Congrats, your eyesight is restored. Give me $20”
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Ole Jensen/Getty Images
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Youyou Zhou for Vox
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Youyou Zhou for Vox
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Youyou Zhou for Vox
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Youyou Zhou for Vox