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

• Atul Gawande on COVID-Vaccine Distribution and When Normalcy Might Return - The New Yorker staff writer assesses the vaccination campaign so far, new mutations, and when it might be possible to enter public spaces safely without a mask. - link

• After Dark, Citizens and Myanmar’s Junta Face Off Across Ghostly Front Lines - Innovative grassroots resistance grows despite mounting regime intimidation. - link

• How Rush Limbaugh Invented Donald Trump - By subsuming his conservatism into the cult of one man, Limbaugh finished his career less as a leader of the Republican Party than as simply another Trump follower. - link

• The Rural Alaskan Towns Leading the Country in Vaccine Distribution - In Native communities where tribal health organizations are in charge of distributing the vaccine, herd immunity is on the horizon. - link

• The Sound and the Fury of Andrew Cuomo - Assemblyman Ron Kim was bathing his children when he got an unexpected call from the governor. - link

From Vox

• Why some Texans are facing catastrophic electric bills after a winter storm -

  

  Wholesale power plans left Texans on the hook for thousands of dollars after prices spiked.

  In Texas this week, freezing temperatures overwhelmed the state’s power grid, triggering rolling blackouts, multi-day power outages — and, catastrophic electric bills.

  According to the Dallas Morning News, some Texans have been hit with power bills totaling as much as $17,000 for only a few days of electricity, many times more than the usual cost of power in Texas.

  Specifically, it’s Texas residents who rely on a wholesale power plan, rather than a fixed-rate plan, who have seen their bills climb after the demand for power jumped dramatically across the state this week as Winter Storm Uri struck and temperatures plunged. Texas, which has a deregulated electricity market, has a number of providers, both wholesale and fixed rate.

  Fixed-rate customers pay an agreed-upon rate for their power, but wholesale buyers pay a variable rate; whatever the current price per kilowatt-hour of electricity is. Wholesale power plans, such as those offered by Texas energy company Griddy, can be attractive because during good weather, a customer on a variable plan will pay less than one on a fixed-rate plan, according to Public Utility Commission of Texas spokesperson Andrew Barlow.

  The problem is, weather isn’t always good — in Dallas on Tuesday, the low temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than in Anchorage, Alaska.

  That freezing weather led to rolling blackouts throughout the state amid an increased demand for power; in turn, that demand caused prices to spike, with wholesale rates soaring to about $8,800 per megawatt-hour in the Dallas area on Wednesday.

  According to Reuters, the wholesale rate before this week’s storm was only about $50 per megawatt-hour. On Wednesday, Texas’s Public Utility Commission moved to cap wholesale prices at $9,000 per megawatt-hour, or $9 per kilowatt-hour.

  Griddy, the wholesale power company that has faced the most rancor from customers online, warned customers on Monday that their rates could climb precipitously with the onset of cold weather — but those warnings didn’t come in time for many Texans to change to a new service provider, the Dallas Morning News reported Friday, and people were still caught off guard by their power bills.

  “$5,000 for five days is outrageous,” Dallas resident DeAndré Upshaw told Morning News reporter Maria Halkias Friday. “No one could have anticipated this except the people who manage the service and the power grid.”

  The winter storm was not the first time wholesale customers in Texas have been stuck with large bills due to unexpected weather; in 2019, a heat wave caused a spike in power usage — and a sudden increase in wholesale prices — that left many Texans paying hundreds of dollars more than they expected for power. But for some Texans, the current situation is worse by several orders of magnitude, and comes at a difficult time economically, with the US in the midst of a pandemic-related recession.

  According to The Verge, “4.8 million Americans were unable to pay at least one energy bill last year and received a disconnection notice from their utility company.” Texas’s supersized wholesale power bills are sure to make that problem more acute in the aftermath of the storm.

  As Texas struggles to recover from the winter storm — President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the state on Saturday — it’s unclear what comes next for Texans who got stuck with astronomic energy bills.

  In a Friday statement, however, Griddy said that it was “seeking customer relief” from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages most of the state’s power grid, and from the state’s Public Utility Commission.

  “Griddy is continuing these efforts and is committed to crediting customers for any relief received, dollar-for-dollar,” the company said. Failing that relief, customers could be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of bills.

  Gigantic electric bills are just part of Texas’s power problem this week

  Texas has been in unique difficulty this week in part because of the state’s unique power system: Unlike the rest of the lower 48, most of the Lone Star State relies on ERCOT’s independent, internal power grid, which provides about 90 percent of the state’s electricity.

  El Paso is the only Texas city that is part of the Western interconnect power grid. The rest of our state has its own outdated power grid thanks to officials trying to escape federal regulations. Thanks to them, 2.5 million Texans have no power pic.twitter.com/Ik9SSc4ioh

  — Sunrise El Paso (@SunriseElPaso) February 16, 2021

As Vox’s Umair Irfan explained earlier this week, it’s been a hard week for that grid, even though Texas is “the largest oil, natural gas, and wind energy producer” in the country. Demand has far exceeded supply, which is what led to rolling blackouts and dramatically higher prices.

According to Irfan:

The sudden cold snap this weekend put the state’s ample resources to the test, with demand reaching a record high peak for the winter, more than 69,000 megawatts. That’s 3,200 MW higher than the previous record set in 2018.

As demand reached new heights, the supply of electricity fell drastically in the past few days, far below what operators expected. Ordinarily, ERCOT plans for winter to be much warmer and anticipates a lower energy demand. Power providers often schedule downtime and maintenance during the winter months to prepare for the massive annual surge in electricity demand in the hot Texas summer. The state’s ample wind and solar energy resources are also diminished in the winter, so ERCOT doesn’t depend on them to meet much of the demand they anticipate.

Texas’s power grid was also hobbled by lower-than-usual electricity supply after natural gas pipelines froze in the winter weather, and as energy production dropped off across the board. This put the state in an even worse jam, and also contributed to high power prices.

Texas’s decision to remain on an independent grid dates back more than 80 years, according to NBC, and was intended to keep Texas utilities free of federal regulation. It’s succeeded on that count — but at the cost of not being able to borrow power from other states in a crisis.

“The Texas power grid is really an island,” Rice University professor Daniel Cohan told Vox earlier this week. “Whatever happens in Texas stays in Texas.”

As of Friday, things were getting back to normal with the Texas grid, though the state is still facing water and food shortages. ERCOT ended emergency conditions and returned to normal operation; the number of people without power fell to just about 58,000, as of late Saturday afternoon, rather than millions.

For Griddy customers and other Texans on a wholesale plan, however, the effects of the storm will linger in the form of gigantic power bills.

“I don’t have that type of money,” one Texas resident, Akilah Scott-Amos, told the Daily Beast this week. “I now owe Griddy $2,869.11. This is going to put me in debt, this is going to mess up my credit. Are they going to cut me off? In the middle of this ongoing crisis?”

• March Madness is back for 2021 — and so are the fans -

  

  Despite the pandemic, the NCAA will allow a limited number of spectators for both men’s and women’s tournaments.

  The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced Friday it would allow a limited number of fans to attend the the upcoming 2021 men’s and women’s Division I March Madness basketball tournaments in person, despite the risk posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

  According to the NCAA, fans will be present for every round of the men’s tournament, though only the later rounds of the women’s tournament — starting with the Sweet 16 — will have spectators.

  ATTENDANCE UPDATE!
  
  NCAA to allow limited fan attendance at DI MBB NCAA Tournament! #MarchMadness
  https://t.co/YFlndZLyxY pic.twitter.com/M3QzsYXvcn

  — NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) February 19, 2021

The tournaments will both begin in March and run into early April, with the men’s tournament set to kick off on March 18 and the women’s on March 21.

Teams usually travel around the country during the tournaments, but this year each will take place across multiple venues in a single city, with the men set to play every game in Indianapolis, and the women playing in San Antonio.

Arenas will be at as much as 25 percent capacity for the men’s games and 17 percent for the women’s, with masks, social distancing, and testing requirements in place for all games.

In a statement released Friday, the NCAA said that the decision to allow fans was made “in conjunction with state and local health authorities” and that the “number one priority for decisions around the tournament continues to be the safety and well-being of everyone participating in the event.”

However, a number of public health experts have said the safest thing to do would be to have no spectators at all.

“At this point in the epidemic, we can no longer say we don’t know enough,” Ana Bento, a professor in Indiana University’s epidemiology and biostatistics department, told the New York Times on Friday. “We know what to avoid in order to minimize risk. This is something that carries a lot of risk.”

According to Bento, the tournaments could easily spiral into superspreader events, worsening a pandemic that has already killed more than 495,000 Americans and knocked a full year off the average life expectancy in the US.

Superspreader events are of particular concern as new coronavirus variants continue to infect people around the country and threaten a fourth wave of cases. Last Sunday, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned that a more infectious — and possibly more deadly — coronavirus variant first seen in the UK could become “the dominant strain by the end of March.”

“Now more than ever, with continued spread of variants that stand to threaten the progress we are making, we must recommit to doing our part to protect one another,” Walensky said at a press conference Friday. “Wear a well-fitting mask, social distance, avoid travel and crowds, practice good hand hygiene, and get vaccinated when the vaccine is available to you.”

In 2020, the NCAA canceled both tournaments outright in response to the first wave of Covid-19 cases in the US. Almost a full year later, the country has reported more than 28 million total cases — but a steady decline in daily case numbers since early January 2021, as well as an accelerating mass vaccination campaign, has made the limited return of fans to indoor sporting events look more feasible to many sports officials.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 60 million vaccine doses have been administered in the US. Both of the Covid-19 vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration require two doses to be fully effective, and at least 17 million people have been fully vaccinated.

College basketball isn’t the only sport to bring back fans

Despite the pandemic, the NCAA isn’t alone in its move to allow a limited number of fans back to sporting events.

A handful of NBA teams are already letting spectators attend home games; New York’s teams will allow fans to fill 10 percent of their stadiums starting on February 23, according to the NBA. However, no NBA team has filled its arena to more than 25 percent capacity, and most teams haven’t even done that.

The NBA was among the first leagues to suspend its season in 2020 after a player tested positive for Covid-19 in early March, and later concluded the season in a “bubble” the league set up in Orlando, Florida.

The majority of NFL teams, meanwhile, allowed fans to attend at least some games in person during the league’s 2020 season, and about 22,000 people attended the Super Bowl earlier this month in Tampa, Florida.

A portion of that total — which represents about 30 percent of capacity at the Tampa Bay stadium, according to the New York Times — was vaccinated health care workers, but for about 14,500 other attendees, vaccination was not a requirement.

The NCAA also allowed fans during its 2020 football season, though that didn’t always go off without a hitch. In August, two major conferences — the Big Ten and Pac-12 — canceled their fall season before later reversing their decisions, and quite a few games ended up being canceled anyway after players tested positive for Covid-19.

Nonetheless, the college football season concluded with about 14,000 fans in attendance at the national title game in January.

As the New York Times points out, however, football has at least one major advantage over basketball when it comes to public health — unlike basketball, many football games are played in open-air stadiums, where Covid-19 transmission is far less of a risk.

Still, the NCAA is forging ahead with its plan. “This year’s tournament will be like no other,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said in Friday’s statement, “and while we know it won’t be the same for anyone, we are looking forward to providing a memorable experience for the student-athletes, coaches and fans at a once-in-a-lifetime tournament.”

• “It’s criminal”: A Texas community left without aid in the cold -

  

  An Austin organizer explains how the Texas freeze left her already vulnerable community in crisis.

  Gloria Vera-Bedolla, a Latina community organizer and mother of three, feels like her neighborhood near Austin, Texas, has been forgotten in a deep freeze that has plunged the state into a humanitarian crisis.

  “We continue to be the victims of social injustice, food injustice, systemic racism — all of it,” she said. “And lots of people don’t speak up because they’re not used to being heard.”

  Known as Forest Bluff, Vera-Bedolla’s neighborhood is on the east side of Interstate 35, where a vast share of the city’s Black and Hispanic populations reside. Her family moved there in 2017 after rising property taxes pushed them out of central Austin, drawn by cheaper real estate and more square footage.

  But the nearest major grocery store is more than 10 miles away and there is no public transportation, making it a food desert. Even under normal circumstances, the tap water sometimes runs brown. Many of her neighbors are undocumented immigrants who live paycheck to paycheck and are ineligible for public benefits. Her 24-year-old son is reluctant to visit because he’s been pulled over so many times by the Travis County Sheriff’s Department for no stated reason.

  When the record-breaking winter storm set in on Sunday night, dropping 7.5 inches of snow in parts of the county, it only exacerbated challenges that her community already faced.

  

  

  

  Unlike some in her neighborhood, Vera-Bedolla’s family never lost power, but their running water shut off, their furnace wasn’t working absent a sufficient supply of propane, and the flame on their gas stove was lower than a candle, making it hard to cook until her parents, who also live in Austin, delivered an electric hotplate on Thursday.

  She said she was in a better position than her neighbors, many of whom don’t have cars to access food or other supplies, have poorly insulated houses, and are elderly or caring for small children. One neighbor who does not have renters’ insurance and whose pipes froze and burst will have to pay out of pocket for the repairs.

  There wasn’t any help coming for Forest Bluff that Vera-Bedolla hadn’t requested herself as a liaison between her community and the city government, or from nonprofits working to administer relief. In addition to her day job in admissions for the Central Texas Allied Health Institute, she has been working with the nonprofit Community Resilience Trust, which is working to address racial equity issues in Austin.

  She had managed to procure 30 boxes of emergency food from Central Texas Food Bank and was urging the city’s emergency operations center to deliver a truckload of water on Friday. Meanwhile, her husband Roberto Bedolla had been breaking up the ice on the streets to allow cars safe passage, since the city hadn’t sent anyone to their neighborhood to sand them.

  

  “It’s awful. It’s criminal,” she said. “I feel like we’re being targeted, like we’re being killed off. You cut off our water. You cut off our fuel into our home. You cut off electricity for some people, and all they have is electrical appliances. It’s scary.”

  The problem isn’t power anymore, but access to food and water

  Earlier in the week, the dangerously cold temperatures and collapse of the Texas power grid left millions in the state unable to heat their homes.

  Vera-Bedolla and her husband slept by their fireplace under layers of blankets in the living room, waking up periodically at night to feed the flames with an increasingly depleted supply of wood. By Friday, they were down to their last two logs. Meanwhile, their two daughters, 19-year-old Bianca and 6-year-old Daniela, slept in the same bedroom with an electric space heater to keep them warm.

  They managed to keep the temperature to around 55 degrees in the warmest rooms of the house throughout the crisis, but her neighbors, whose houses were built with less insulation, were shivering in indoor temperatures in the 30s and 40s.

  

  

  On Friday, Texas began to thaw out, with temperatures rising to over 40 degrees in Austin. It is expected to continue warming up throughout the weekend, melting the ice that had made roads impassable and reducing pressure on the electric grid, which has restored service to all but about 58,000 residents across the state as of late Saturday afternoon. And Vera-Bedolla said Friday that her gas supply had also resurged, allowing her to heat her house.

  But Texans are now facing a residual crisis, of limited access to potable water and food. Many grocery stores closed for days and those that were open often had empty shelves, with delivery trucks unable to restock them until late in the week. Much of the state also remains under “boil water notices,” requiring residents to boil water for two minutes to kill any contaminants that could cause sickness, after frozen pipes burst in people’s homes and businesses and in public water mains, draining reservoirs to dangerously low levels.

  In Forest Bluff, those who don’t own cars had no choice but to walk to nearby convenience stores, which charge exorbitant prices for food that is often expired. This week, Vera-Bedolla said she saw more than 150 people lining up outside the stores, which had at that point been “picked clean.”

  

  The water pressure came back in her house on Friday night, but she was still urging the city emergency operations center to deliver 400 cases of bottled water to a nearby middle school so her neighbors don’t have to drink potentially contaminated water from the tap.

  When she has been able to cook a meal this past week, she has been making extra and bringing it to whoever wants it, including two neighbors who have infants to care for.

  She also went door-to-door to deliver the emergency food boxes — packed with oatmeal, rice, spaghetti sauce, pasta, and canned beans, soups, and fruit — to people going hungry in her neighborhood. One woman was so grateful that she praised God, making the sign of the cross.

  “I know it’s not going to be enough, but it’s going to relieve food insecurity for some families,” Vera-Bedolla said. “There are little kids going without.”

  Black and brown communities have been hit harder by the current crisis

  Vera-Bedolla said she feels abandoned by her government — and it’s not the first time she has felt that way.

  “We’re fighting these systems that were not made for the success of Black and brown people,” she said.

  Her frustrations are shared by people who have been seeking justice and more equitable treatment for people of color in Austin, which is among America’s most economically segregated cities, and its only high-growth city where Black people represent a declining share of the population.

  When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said earlier this week that Texans would rather suffer blackouts than hand over control of their power grid to the federal government, Chas Moore, the executive director of a grassroots organization called the Austin Justice Coalition, said that the comments felt far removed from the reality that minority communities face when catastrophe hits.

  “If you’re in a house that’s not well insulated and you don’t have access to clean, healthy food, chances are your experience with this whole thing is going to be completely different,” he said. “We bear the brunt of the debacle when things go awry. There’s just no way for people in certain situations to survive disasters like this.”

  Quincy Dunlap, the president and CEO of the Austin Area Urban League, said that while city officials have done their best to respond to an unanticipated weather anomaly, it’s obvious that relief hasn’t been distributed in an equitable manner.

  

  

  I-35 was built as a physical racial and economic dividing line, and once again, it served its original purpose earlier this week: On the affluent west side, empty corporate offices in downtown Austin glowed “like a Christmas tree,” never appearing to lose power or heat throughout the crisis, Dunlap said. Meanwhile, most of East Austin was in darkness.

  “When we switch the power out, the people should have the power first, and not the businesses unless they are deemed essential to supporting the people in the crisis response,” Dunlap said. “There is no human value in that distribution of power. There was no equity there.”

  For Moore, it didn’t feel like a one-off incident.

  “It’s not new. It’s not surprising,” he said. “It’s the boiling point for systemic oppression.”

  Montinique Monroe is a photojournalist in Austin, Texas, where she was born and raised. She contributed reporting for this article.

From The Hindu: Sports

• India net session: Kohli’s men get used to swinging pink ball, swanky stadium - While Jasprit Bumrah bracing for a comeback, Ishant Sharma is on the cusp of playing his 100th Test.

• Australian Open 2021 | Djokovic beats Medvedev for ninth title, 18th Slam - Novak Djokovic has won six of the last 10 major tournaments and is assured of remaining at No. 1 in the rankings

• Wasn’t unexpected: Aaron Finch on going unsold at IPL auctions - Aaron Finch had a forgettable IPL 2020 in the UAE, where he averaged just 22.3 with only one 50-plus score for RCB.

• England will have edge over India in pink ball Test despite home team’s unbelievable seam attack: Crawley - The 23-year-old is well aware that the hosts are armed with a potent seam attack.

• The feeling is surreal, says Suryakumar Yadav - Suryakumar was overlooked for the limited overs matches in Australia late last year despite a fine IPL

From The Hindu: National News

• India-China disengagement raises hopes for GM-GWM deal, but many hurdles remain - Re-employment is a sticky point as Chinese firm has not given specific assurances to Talegaon staff

• Suspicion cannot take the place of proof: Supreme Court - “An accused is presumed to be innocent unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Bench said

• Indo-U.S. exercise ‘Yudh Abhyas’ comes to an end in Rajasthan - The closing ceremony was held at Mahajan Field Firing Ranges.

• Anti-ULFA mood builds up in Assam over threat to kill 2 hostages - CM appeals for release of employees of oil exploration firm; activists slam ULFA for tarnishing Assam’s image

• Mehbooba presses Centre for talks with people of J&K - The PDP president, while visiting the family of a slain policeman, said J&K issue can be solved only through dialogue between India and Pakistan.

From BBC: Europe

• How European businesses are adapting to Brexit - Companies doing business between Europe and the UK talk to the BBC about the impact of the new rules.

• Greece #Metoo: Prominent actor Dimitris Lignadis held over rape accusations - The ex-boss of Greece’s national theatre faces underage rape allegations - the charges he denies.

• Pablo Hasel: Luxury stores looted and vehicles ablaze in Barcelona protests - The arrest of the Catalan rapper has ignited a debate over freedom of speech in Spain.

• Alexei Navalny: Putin critic loses appeal against jailing - The prominent Putin critic was jailed on charges of breaking the terms of a suspended sentence.

• Bird flu: Russia detects first case of H5N8 bird flu in humans - Workers have been infected at a poultry plant - but there is no sign of transmission between humans.

From Ars Technica

• The AI research paper was real. The “co-author” wasn’t - An MIT professor found his name on two papers with which he had no connection. - link

• New malware found on 30,000 Macs has security pros stumped - With no payload, analysts are struggling to learn what this mature malware does. - link

• As coronavirus variants spread, the US struggles to keep up - Without federal strategy or enough funding, US sequencing superpowers don’t work. - link

• What’s new in the first Android 12 Developer Preview - Lots of hidden features, and hints that the leak from the other day is true. - link

• Diablo II Resurrected tops BlizzCon announcement flurry - Expected announcements for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Hearthstone, more. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• What do you get for winning a muscle loss competition? -

  Atrophy.

  submitted by /u/VERBERD
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• I like my reddit posts the same way I like my girlfriends bra -

  [removed]

  submitted by /u/ChickenChimpanreeeee
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• Warning: 18+ -

  19

  submitted by /u/cyanide-tastes-lit
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• Unexpectedly, an artist’s wife started having sex with him every day. -

  Though quite unusual, he didn’t question his luck, deciding to just enjoy the ride.

  One day, his wife approached him. “Honey? Can you sketch a picture for me?”

  “Of course!” he replied. “What should I draw?”

  “What you think our baby will look like.”

  He stared back at her, eyes wide. Then, sighing heavily, he grabbed a pencil and pad, quickly sketched out a picture, and pushed it toward her.

  “What the hell is this?” she laughed, surveying the page. It was just a stick figure firing a gun at another stick figure, smiling, with no wounds showing on his stick body. “I asked you to imagine what our baby would look like!” she repeated.

  “And I got a vasectomy five years ago,” he said. “So I drew a blank.”

  submitted by /u/KairuSmairukon
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• Ted Cruz almost made America great again…. -

  …but then the idiot came back

  submitted by /u/Justlikeyourmoma
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