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

• The Biden Antitrust Revolution - A new executive order calls for the federal government to work proactively to end monopolies that undermine economic fairness and American democracy. - link

• Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare - How the pop star’s father and a team of lawyers seized control of her life—and have held on to it for thirteen years. - link

• Who Owns Mike Disfarmer’s Photographs? - Strangers made his small-town portraits famous in the art world. Decades later, his heirs want control of the estate. - link

• The Assassination of Haiti’s President - Jovenel Moïse’s family deserves justice for his horrific killing. So do all of the Haitian families who suffered during his rule. - link

• We Need the “Whole-of-Government” Climate Fight That Biden Promised - Some agencies are shirking—even as the heat keeps dialling up. - link

From Vox

• Making sense of the recent Covid-19 spike -

  

  The pandemic isn’t over in the US — but it is changing.

  Covid-19 cases are on the rise in the United States again. But this time, the story is more complicated than it was in previous waves.

  Since early January, when the United States hit a peak of 260,000 new cases every day on average, case numbers have been in more or less constant decline. Tens of millions of people were inoculated against Covid-19 in the following months. By late June, the country was averaging just 11,000 new cases per day, according to the New York Times tracker.

  But as of July 13, the US is seeing about 25,000 new cases daily on average, double the case levels of just a few weeks ago.

  Our World In Data

So far, hospitalizations have not increased as much: They’re up only slightly, from a seven-day average of 16,500 two weeks ago to about 19,500. Deaths, likewise, are still quite low: a daily average of 330 per day, compared to January when the US was losing more than 3,000 people per day. Both measures are still growing, if not yet as rapidly as cases.

Confirmed cases are a leading indicator. Somebody tests positive for the disease, but it may take two weeks for them to become sick enough to go to the hospital and even longer for them to die if they do not recover. (One caveat: Testing rates have dropped significantly in the past few months, so we may not be detecting every new case. But that only makes the rise in confirmed cases more concerning.)

This is still true — when cases accelerate, so do deaths, eventually — and the current trends reflect that basic reality.

But this time, about half of the country is now fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Some of those people could still contract the virus, but their illness is much more likely to be mild if they have received the vaccine. The Biden administration announced last week that nearly all the Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths being reported now are of unvaccinated people.

“The decoupling between cases and deaths has really occurred,” Andrew Pavia, who specializes in infectious diseases at the University of Utah, told reporters at an Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing this week. “We’re seeing an increase in deaths but not nearly to the degree previously.”

Still, so long as the virus is circulating, there are risks, especially to the half of the population who haven’t been vaccinated. The delta variant appears more transmissible and virulent than those that came before it, and, while the vaccines seem to be holding up well against it, it is still accounting for a bigger and bigger share of cases in the US.

Hospitalizations and deaths are also becoming more prevalent among younger people, another distinction from prior surges.

All in all, the situation is much messier than it was last year, when hospitalizations and deaths would grow like clockwork following a rise in cases. Here are three factors to keep in mind going forward.

1. Unvaccinated people are still very vulnerable to Covid-19

If you have not been vaccinated, you do not have protection against the coronavirus — and the increasingly prevalent delta variant appears more dangerous than previous iterations of the virus. Right now, it accounts for nearly half of new cases in the US, and it is expected to become the dominant strain.

As Vox’s Umair Irfan explained, the delta variant appears to be 60 percent more transmissible than the alpha variant first identified in the United Kingdom — which was likely already 60 percent more transmissible than the version of the virus first identified in humans.

Early evidence would suggest the delta variant is also more virulent: A study conducted in Scotland found that people who had contracted the delta variant were twice as likely to end up in the hospital, though the death rate did not appear to be significantly worse.

“As greater numbers of non- vaccinated persons acquire the delta variant, hospitalizations may indeed rise,” David Celentano, an epidemiologist at the John Hopkins School of Public Health, told me.

Different states also have different degrees of vulnerability, with vaccination rates by state ranging from 78 percent of Vermonters being fully vaccinated to just 42 percent of Alabamians. That has translated to the growth in cases: The states seeing the most new cases (including parts of the South, Midwest, and the West) per capita all rank in the bottom half of states in vaccination rates.

Then there is the changing nature of which age groups are being affected by Covid-19: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s polling, 85 percent of all people 65 and over say they have been vaccinated. But that percentage drops among younger cohorts, to 66 percent of people 50 to 64, 59 percent of people 30 to 49, and 55 percent of people 18 to 29.

2. Vaccines are protecting the people most vulnerable to Covid-19

These trends contain both good and bad news. The bad news is self-evident: Because younger people and people in certain states are less likely to have been vaccinated against Covid-19, they remain more likely to contract the disease. Especially as the delta variant becomes more dominant, a higher share of them will end up in the hospital. Some will die.

According to CDC data, the share of people hospitalized with Covid-19 who are ages 18 to 49 has grown from 20 percent of the total in January to more than 40 percent now. Americans 65 and over made up more than half of Covid-19 hospitalizations in January; they now account for less than 30 percent.

To be clear: Overall hospitalizations are still way down from their peak, so the raw number of young people getting seriously ill is not as large as the number of hospitalizations among older people during the worst of the winter surge. But, relatively speaking, younger people are now making up a bigger share of hospitalizations.

The good news is the other side of this trend: The people who are the most vulnerable to dying of Covid-19 have much more robust protection than they did last year. We have known from the start of the pandemic that age, as much as anything, is the best proxy for a person’s risk of succumbing to Covid-19.

That’s why nursing home residents and workers were prioritized when mass vaccinations began in early 2021. According to an AARP analysis of federal data, nearly 80 percent of people residing in nursing homes were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as of late June.

Over the course of the pandemic, they have accounted for a disproportionate share of Covid-19 deaths — 133,482 out of 608,000 total US deaths. But death rates among that population slowed significantly once vaccinations took off. In early January, US nursing homes reported more than 5,000 resident deaths every week, according to federal data.

In the last week of June, nursing homes reported just 147 resident deaths. That represents remarkable progress in protecting the most vulnerable.

3. Vaccinated people can contract Covid-19, but cases are almost always mild

The Covid-19 vaccines are very good, but they aren’t perfect. Some number of people who have been fully vaccinated will contract the coronavirus, and they may also account for some of the rising case numbers.

When the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were first approved, it was the astounding efficacy rates that got all the attention, preventing any kind of illness in 95 percent of people during the clinical trials. But even then, that meant 5 percent of vaccinated people did get sick.

That share will grow as the delta variant becomes more dominant; as Irfan reported, the initial evidence suggests the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is still 80 percent effective in preventing illness. But that means a larger number of vaccinated people may contract the virus and feel symptoms as the variant continues to spread.

That is still a high success rate. The World Health Organization said this week that most vaccinated people who do contract the delta variant experience no symptoms. They may also be less likely to spread the virus, as they appear to shed less of it, CDC Deputy Director Jay Butler told reporters at the Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing.

And the vaccines are still providing impressive protection against severe illness, which is reflected in the minuscule number of vaccinated people being hospitalized or dying of Covid-19.

“Breakthrough infections tend to be milder,” Butler said. “Even if infection occurs, [vaccination] decreases the risk of hospitalizations and death.”

Rising cases are not ideal. Millions of Americans are still vulnerable to Covid-19, and a more dangerous variant of the virus is taking hold. The number of deaths occurring each day is still the equivalent of a jetliner crashing every 24 hours.

But this is a different kind of wave than the ones that preceded it, with nearly 160 million Americans and counting now fully vaccinated. The solution is the same as it’s been for the past six months, as Celentano told me over email: “The best way to avoid the acquisition of SARS-CoV-2 is to get vaccinated now!”

Otherwise, as long as the virus is circulating, there are risks.

“The more virus that circulates, the more mutations that occur, and greater chance of the emergence of yet another new variant,” Jen Kates, director of global health at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me.

A new variant that is more deadly, more transmissible, or more resistant to vaccines “would of course have more severe public health implications.”

• Facebook wants creators, but YouTube is paying creators much, much more -

  

  YouTube gives half its revenue to the people who make its videos. Facebook — despite a $1 billion pledge — doesn’t want to do that.

  Facebook has nearly 2.9 billion users, so lots of people use Facebook to reach that giant audience. But Facebook wants even more people posting more stuff on its platforms, so it’s going to pay out $1 billion by the end of 2022 to encourage creators — people who make internet content for fun and profit but generally aren’t running full-fledged media companies — to make stuff for Facebook and Instagram. The impetus here is clear: Facebook wants more engaging stuff on its apps, and it’s also trying to compete with the likes of TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.

  Rewarding people who make stuff for you by paying them is a well-worn playbook for the big internet platforms. Yes, they would really rather have you give them your stuff for free — and you are very much welcome to continue giving Mark Zuckerberg pictures of your dogs and kids. Still, Facebook and its competitors have come to realize that people who are really good at making things often want to get paid for those things. So, fine.

  But it’s worth noting that there’s a meaningful difference between Facebook’s newest gambit and the one that Google’s YouTube has been using to great success: Facebook, for now, is giving creators a lot less money.

  When you make stuff for YouTube, you get a chance to make money the same way YouTube makes money — from ads that run next to the videos you upload to YouTube. At Facebook, though, there are two different pools of money: One is generated by ads connected to the videos and photos you post on Facebook, and the other is generated by ads everywhere else on Facebook. The first pool is the one that Facebook’s creators can access. The other one is really, really, big. And that’s the one Facebook is keeping all for itself.

  This is one of those that’s a little easier to understand with visual aids. So: Here’s a YouTube video by Mr. Beast, the site’s most popular creator. YouTube gets paid for the ads that run before and during the clip, and Jimmy Donaldson, the 23-year-old behind Mr. Beast, gets 55 percent of the revenue those ads generate.

  YouTube can also make money other ways, like selling banner ads on its homepage. But the vast majority of its money comes from ads attached directly to the videos it shows to more than 2 billion people every month. So YouTube is directly aligned with the people who generate the stuff that powers YouTube.

  At Facebook, though, that connection is much weaker. In theory, Facebook can run ads on videos on things like IG TV, its attempt to create a sorta-YouTube. But most of the money that Facebook makes from ads — and Facebook makes nearly all of its money from ads — isn’t tied directly to content users post there. If you flip through Instagram and see a Nike ad, that ad floats on its own. It’s not tethered to a post from The Rock or Kylie Jenner. The same goes for your Facebook News Feed.

  So though Facebook has some ways to share revenue directly with creators, it usually doesn’t give them a cut of money associated with their content. And it’s why lots of the new programs Zuckerberg laid out today are generally connected to frequency or performance — Facebook is fuzzy about what exactly performance means, though — as opposed to the revenue the content generates.

  Which means there’s a real money gap for creators who thrive on Facebook versus those on YouTube; it’s why top YouTube creators like Donaldson stick with YouTube instead of trying to branch out onto other platforms. And it’s why YouTube says it paid out $30 billion to its content partners over the last three years.

  So if Facebook really wants people to put engaging stuff on Facebook so it can compete with YouTube and TikTok and Twitter and Snapchat, why not give them a chance to make more money?

  People familiar with the company tell me there are two reasons. The first is practical: On YouTube, it’s easy to understand that someone who watched a Mr. Beast video watched the ad that ran before it. On Facebook or Instagram, though, it would be difficult to attribute the connection between the Airbnb ad you scrolled past and the Ariana Grande post you eventually landed on.

  The second reason is philosophical, and perhaps more important: I’m told that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t think Facebook content-makers should get a cut of all of Facebook’s revenue. And that while he’s happy Facebook content-makers are giving him content, he thinks he can replace them with others if they don’t like the terms.

  That philosophy runs a bit contrary to the fact that Facebook has just said it’s going to spend $1 billion to prompt people to give it content — Facebook clearly feels that it has to compete for creators’ time and energy. On the other hand, $1 billion over a year is much less than $30 billion over three years.

  And, to put a fine point on it, the “our content makes Facebook more valuable so Facebook should pay us for it” argument is the one that lawmakers in Australia and an increasing number of European countries are making to justify mandatory payouts from Facebook to publishers — a set of rules Facebook absolutely hates but has had to grudgingly accept.

  So telling creators — even those Facebook would really like on the platform — that they can have a piece of the entire Facebook pie — instead of a slice of a slice — doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.

• Racist trolls attacked England’s soccer team. Fans fought back. -

  

  Facebook’s and Twitter’s sluggish reactions show how they still rely on users to combat hate speech.

  It wasn’t exactly surprising that hordes of social media trolls viciously attacked three Black players on England’s soccer team with racist comments and emojis after a historic loss on Sunday, July 11. What was unexpected was how quickly even more social media users came to the defense of the players.

  “I’ve been working in anti-racism for over 20 years, and I am surprised at how huge and widespread and how swift the anti-racist response was,” said Sabby Dhalu, who works at the UK nonprofit Stand Up to Racism.

  Tens of thousands of commenters directly combated the racist attacks by posting positive messages on the personal Facebook and Instagram pages of the three players: Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka. By Monday morning in California, supportive comments started to outnumber the negative ones on players’ recent Instagram photos.

  Fans trying to counteract the hate speech on Facebook and Instagram urged fellow supporters to report offensive comments to company moderators. At the same time, they expressed frustration with these companies for their sluggish moderation of these attacks.

  While Twitter and Facebook eventually took down most of the blatantly racist comments, the onus fell to everyday users on the platforms to react quickly and shut down the toxic discourse. The incident showed how regular users on social media are increasingly stepping up when social media companies don’t do enough to stop the spread of hate speech on their platforms.

  Facebook, for example, does not proactively moderate a common type of racist attack, one that was being used aggressively on Rashford, Sancho, and Saka’s accounts: comments full of monkey and banana peel emojis. Instead, Facebook relies on users to report these kinds of comments, a company spokesperson told Recode. Once users report them, Facebook’s content moderators may take the comments down if the emojis are being used inappropriately. The company also encourages users experiencing harassment to defend themselves by turning on a “hidden words” feature that can block designated words or emojis in comments on their posts.

  Many soccer fans reported these types of racist posts to the social media company where the posts appeared, and also tried to overpower the posts by sharing positive messages of their own.

  One viral tweet said, “They’re colour blind when you’re winning, but can only see colour when you lose. Proud of you, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho. Still we rise.”

  The 15 most shared tweets containing the three players’ names as of Monday afternoon were similarly all supportive, according to data provided to Recode by social media research organization First Draft News. The hashtag “#saynotoracism” started trending on Twitter in the UK soon after the game. A supportive message about one of the players, Rashford, saying, “Our hero, always. There is so much love for you, Marcus Rashford,” was one of the most shared links posted by a verified account on Facebook on Tuesday within the previous 24 hours, according to Facebook-owned analytics tool Crowdtangle.

  But it takes only a relatively small group of users to successfully harass someone on social media.

  Twitter said it took down 1,000 posts in the 24 hours since the game. Facebook, which owns Instagram, declined to say how many posts the company removed, but said in a statement that it “quickly removed” an unspecified number of comments and accounts.

  Still, Facebook’s and Twitter’s responses also fell short in the eyes of many British politicians and public figures, including leaders of England’s Conservative Party such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who sharply criticized these companies for the vitriol on their platforms. In the past, Johnson and other members of the Conservative Party have been criticized for not supporting England’s football players when they decided to take a knee to protest racial discrimination. But this time, politicians, media outlets, and public figures across the political spectrum in England were unified in their condemnation.

  “I share the anger at appalling racist abuse of our heroic players. Social media companies need to up their game in addressing it, and, if they fail to, our new Online Safety Bill will hold them to account with fines of up to 10 percent of global revenue,” Oliver Dowden, England’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, tweeted on Monday.

  Social media companies have long struggled to police the flow of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms.

  In this case, Twitter said it used a “combination of machine learning-based automation and human review” to identify racist comments toward players, and that it “proactively” flagged a majority of this content with its technology.

  Facebook said the company “quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers” and that it will “continue to take action against those that break our rules.”

  “No one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere, and we don’t want it on Instagram and Facebook,” read part of a statement sent by Facebook. “No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we’re committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.”

  But Facebook is still relying on its users to identify much of this content.

  “I think it’s too much to be asking someone to make a complaint, every single time,” said Dhalu. “Companies need to be setting up a filter to prevent this. It’s pretty shocking that they’re not.”

  And while it would have helped deter abuse against these specific players if the platforms had chosen to proactively monitor and delete racist comments on their accounts, the issue of harassment and hate speech on social media is widespread. These companies need to enforce the rules better across the board, said Sunder Katwala, director of the UK-based multiculturalism think tank British Future.

  “I think the more fundamental point is: What is allowed and what isn’t allowed?” asked Katwala. “The [social media companies] are saying, ‘racist behavior has no place on our platform,’ but you’ve got all kinds of racist comments.”

  The English soccer team situation shows that social media companies still have a long way to go before they’re actually backing up their stated commitment to barring racism on their platforms. In the meantime, it seems that do-gooder users are counterbalancing the hate. Depending on how you look at it, that’s either a hopeful sign that shows everyday people are stepping up to combat racism — or it’s a disappointing indication that powerful social media companies still aren’t doing what’s necessary to stop hate speech before it spreads on their platforms.

From The Hindu: Sports

• IOC guidelines for medal ceremony | Participants to wear mask all times, no group photo on podium during Tokyo Olympics - According to the new guidelines, additional podium modules will be placed between gold and silver medallists and gold and bronze medallists to allow for social-distancing.

• Viswanathan Anand starts No-Castling event with win - Former world champion Viswanathan Anand defeated Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik in the first game of their four- game match for the Sparkassen T

• India at the Tokyo Olympics - After a long and impatient wait, the country will witness its strong and skilled contingent take part in 18 sporting events.

• 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on track despite pandemic - While China has largely eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus, it has maintained strict quarantine regulations.

• Games Opening ceremony might be attended by less than 1,000 VIPs in person: Report - U.S. first lady Jill Biden is also expected to be among the international guests for the ceremony.

From The Hindu: National News

• New Excise Policy will minimise corruption, provide fair competition, Delhi Govt. tells High Court - The policy, which divides Delhi into 32 zones and leaves only 16 players eligible for the trade, is giving rise to fear of monopoly

• Pursuing course of cautious optimism amid COVID-19: CBDT Chairman Mohapatra - The department is geared up to take on the challenge of domestic resource mobilisation in these uncertain times, CBDT Chairman Jagannath Bidyadhar Mohapatra said

• From Mizoram, limbless amphibian added to India’s fauna - Ichthyophis multicolor recorded in Mizoram seven years after the species was first recorded more than 800 km away in the Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar

• Army opens fire after Pak quadcopter spotted along LoC in Jammu - The Army fired on a Pakistani quadcopter after it tried to venture into the Indian territory along the Line of Control (LoC) here, official sources s

• Wanted Naxal killed by security forces in Jharkhand - A 45-year-old Maoist carrying a reward of ₹ 15 lakh has been killed by security forces in the jungles of Jharkhand’s Gumla district on Thursday, offi

From BBC: Europe

• Germany floods: At least 33 dead and dozens missing after record rain - Dozens more are missing after some of the worst flooding in years struck the west of the country.

• More flooding for Europe - There is more rain to come from the storm that brought Wednesday’s deadly flooding

• Australia attacks sweeping EU climate plan to tax imports - Australia, a fossil fuel exporting giant, says the EU’s plan to impose carbon trade fees is “protectionist”.

• Czech women seek compensation for coerced sterilisations - Thousands of women were sterilised without their consent in former Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s.

• Euro 2020: Four people arrested over racist abuse of England players - Players who missed penalties were targeted online after the team lost the Euro 2020 final.

From Ars Technica

• James Bond’s new car is a plug-in hybrid—the Aston Martin Valhalla - It has 937 horsepower from a pair of electric motors and a twin-turbo V8. - link

• Netflix will start publishing video games, has hired former EA exec - Follows years-long tiptoe into interactive specials, game-based TV series. - link

• Unvaccinated health workers are “unethical and appalling”—experts want mandates - Health organizations call for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for health care workers. - link

• After defeating Hernando de Soto, the Chickasaw took his stuff and remade it - The site offers rare evidence of interactions between de Soto and Indigenous people. - link

• With Apple Pay Later, Apple may take another stab at the PayPal model - Apple plans to offer iPhone users another way to borrow money. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A teenage immigrant boy comes home from school. -

  His mother asks him “How were your classes today?”

  “Today we had sex education mama”

  Shocked his mother replies. “What?! You go to your room and wait till your father comes home. He’s going to have stern words with you.”

  When the father comes home and learns about his sons class he replies. “This isn’t the old country, people are more liberal here, don’t worry. This should be good for him.”

  Feeling bad she goes upstairs to apologise and finds him vigorously masturbating.

  The mother says. “Luigi, when you finish your homework I want to have a word with you.”

  submitted by /u/daftwordhero
  [link] [comments]

• A Scientologist, a Catholic, and a Mormon are talking about their families. -

  The Scientologist jokes, “I’ve got 4 kids. One more and I’ll have a basketball team!” The Catholic joins in and says, “Well I’ve got 10 kids, and one more I’ll have a football team!”. The Mormon speaks up and deadpans. “I’ve got 17 wives. One more and I’ll have a golf course.”

  submitted by /u/Dawgpile615
  [link] [comments]

• Monkey Who Does Great Sex -

  A young sexy woman passing by a pet shop saw a board -

  “Monkey who does great sex”.

  She went in, bought that monkey & walked away with the Instruction Manual.

  The Manual said ‘Give a good bath to the monkey, then you take a bath. Make him sit on the bed and you lie down without wearing anything. Leave the rest to the monkey. Repeat all steps for repeat performance’.

  Accordingly, the woman gave the monkey a bath, bathed herself and slept on the bed naked.

  Monkey did nothing.

  Disappointed, she again gave him a bath, had bath and lay down naked on the bed.

  Again, the monkey did nothing.

  She referred the Manual to check for forward path. It said : ‘In case of no activity, call the shop owner for support’.

  She called the owner & he arrived in 10 minutes. He asked the woman to lie down. He then smiled at the monkey and shouted…

  “I’m teaching you for the last time, watch carefully!!!!!!”

  submitted by /u/swapniljadav
  [link] [comments]

• I told my girlfriend that the milkman said he had shagged every woman in our building except one!! -

  “I bet it’s the snooty bitch at number twenty three,” she replied.

  submitted by /u/littleboy_xxxx
  [link] [comments]

• A middle aged man was talking to his elderly father -

  “I wanted to thank you dad, I remember when I was younger and first dating girls you gave me a piece of advice. You said ‘good companion, good in bed, good mother - pick two’”

  The father looked kindly at his son and nodded.

  “Well, I feel like I have a good life. My wife is kind to me and a lovely mother to our three kids.” The father nodded back to his son with a knowing look and replied.

  “That’s great son, but when I said ‘pick two’ I meant pick the second one.”

  EDIT: credit to a likely source. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-17

  submitted by /u/Snuffleupagus03
  [link] [comments]