“Survivor” Is Still Compulsively Watchable - The show has evolved from a national treasure to a niche bastion of superfandom. - link
Joan Didion and the Voice of America - She knew that her country was built on exclusion and shame. - link
Ketamine Therapy Is Going Mainstream. Are We Ready? - The mind-altering drug has been shown to help people suffering from anxiety and depression. But how it helps, who it will serve, and who will profit are open questions. - link
Honoring the Legacy of E. O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy - The two naturalists helped to pioneer the field of conservation biology and remained determinedly hopeful that humanity would make better choices. - link
A Master Doll-Maker in the Valley - How Kumiko Serizawa brought a Japanese tradition to California. - link
From Vox
The very best TV show of 2021 -
The best TV shows of 2021 included FX’s Reservation Dogs, Prime Video’s The Underground Railroad, and HBO’s Succession. | FX/Prime Video/HBO
And 12 other terrific shows, from You to Reservation Dogs.
I have been making “best TV” lists in one form or another since 2006, taking only one year off in that entire time. (It was 2020, because I did this instead.) And in those 15 years, my introductions to my lists have only grown more ambivalent about the nature of list-making, especially for a medium where there’s so much stuff to consume.
So in making my 2021 list, I opted not to try to have a comprehensive survey of “the best” because I’m increasingly convinced that no one person can watch enough television to reasonably say what the best even is. What I watched this year was completely arbitrary. I long ago gave up on trying to “keep up with” TV as a medium, and I really only watched shows in 2021 if I thought I would find them interesting. So consider this list even more idiosyncratic and personal than it normally would be.
But I really do think that even if I had watched literally every show on TV, my top show of the year would have remained the same. I’ve known what my No. 1 would be since I screened it last spring, and nothing has really challenged it for the top spot. So here’s the best TV show of 2021, then 12 other shows I loved a bunch.
The best TV show of 2021: The Underground Railroad (Prime Video)
Any given series being lost amid the never-ending onslaught of new releases is completely understandable. I get why director Barry Jenkins’s astonishing adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel seemingly evaporated the instant it was released. There’s too much stuff!
Yet the fact that Prime Video seemed almost to treat this tremendous work — the best TV series I’ve seen in years and years — as an afterthought continues to frustrate me. Yes, a 10-episode miniseries about slavery and the ways it paints every single element of life in the United States with its poisoned brush to this day was always going to be a tough sell. But Prime Video didn’t even seem to try. (Releasing the series all at once when it resists easy binge-watching also may have been an issue.)
So let me do their job for them: This miniseries is a titanic piece of television. It follows an escaped slave named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) as she flees north, through a series of communities that serve almost as expressionistic explorations of the Black American experience in the wake of the Civil War, as potential progress is destroyed by white supremacy at every turn. All the while, she is pursued by a slave catcher who aims to drag her back to the plantation.
The miniseries’s most successful choice is to turn Whitehead’s novel — already episodic — into a TV series that leans into that structure. Jenkins, primarily known for his work on films like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, intuitively understands how Underground Railroad could perhaps only work as a TV series. Every episode gives us a chance to adjust to some new horrifying normal, before it is ripped away by the arrival of the slave catcher. It’s maybe not a series you would binge, but its storytelling choices mean watching it never feels like doing homework.
It’s as gorgeous and alive as any TV show I’ve ever seen, and it deserved so, so much better.
How to watch it:The Underground Railroad is streaming on Prime Video.
12 other TV shows I really loved (in alphabetical order)
Evil (Paramount+)
Possibly the wildest show on television right now, Evil is a series made up entirely of ideas that would get tossed out of most other TV shows for being too weird. A kind of more-religious X-Files, it follows a skeptical psychologist and a believer priest who investigate the supernatural. It’s the kind of show that accepts as a given that arguing over whether demons are real is a worthwhile discussion to have. In its second season, it deepened its mythology and gleefully tore through horror tropes as though it were holding a chainsaw tied to a machete.
How to watch it:Evil is streaming on Paramount+. A third season is in production.
For All Mankind (Apple TV+)
The second season of this alternate history space race drama improved by leaps and bounds over an already pretty great first season. In the world of For All Mankind, the main front of the Cold War in the 1980s is on the surface of the moon, and all eyes are on Mars as the next possibility for colonization. And yet the chief pleasure of this series is the dynamite character work, as showrunner Ron Moore and his writers explore a world where everything is different, but we’re still dealing with the same old shit.
How to watch it:For All Mankind is streaming on Apple TV+. A third season is in production.
The Great (Hulu)
Quite possibly TV’s horniest show, The Great lets Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult fume, flirt, and other F-words at each other in 1800s Russia. As Catherine the Great (see what the title did there?), Fanning is delectably fun, and as her husband, Peter, Hoult somehow finds a way to play the archetypal disapproving wife from a CBS sitcom, while being a man and starring in a prestige dramedy about Russian nobility in the 19th century. Season two deepened an already-good show, revealing that Catherine and Peter are really human underneath it all.
How to watch it:The Great is streaming on Hulu. No decision has yet been made on a third season.
Midnight Mass (Netflix)
The pinnacle of horror auteur Mike Flanagan’s recent run of limited series on Netflix, this horror tale of Catholicism and vampires is a piercing examination of the allure and toxicity inherent in any tradition that insists it has all the answers. Hamish Linklater is tremendous as a priest who leads his flock toward a brutal, bloody truth that will ravage their little town. There have been lots of horror stories about death cults destroying the world in the name of controlling it in recent years. This is one of the best.
How to watch it:Midnight Mass is streaming on Netflix.
Mythic Quest (Apple TV+)
As you know if you’ve been reading my work for any amount of time, I hate joy, and my year-end lists always skew heavily toward drama. But this Apple TV+ comedy is so funny and so winning that it bypassed my defenses. The second season dug into the unlikely working relationship between pompous Ian (Rob McElhenney) and frazzled Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) as they attempt to build a better video game at the studio they both work for. Every actor in this show is amazing, but Nicdao gave maybe my favorite TV performance of the year.
How to watch it:Mythic Quest is streaming on Apple TV+. A third season has been ordered.
Reservation Dogs (FX)
If Nicdao didn’t give my favorite performance, then that honor goes to Reservation Dogs’ Devery Jacobs, as Elora, a young woman trying like hell to escape the reservation on which she grew up. Sterlin Harjo’s series (co-created with Taika Waititi) takes viewers inside the lives of Elora and her friends as they pull off small-scale crimes in the name of funding an escape from Oklahoma to California. Reservation Dogs is a series that very slowly reveals what it’s really about, but across its eight episodes, it’s also incredibly funny and inventive.
How to watch it:Reservation Dogs is streaming on Hulu. Season two is in production.
Station Eleven (HBO Max)
The end of the world feels downright inviting in HBO Max’s unfortunately timed Station Eleven. Set in a world where a pandemic killed 999 out of every 1,000 people, Station Eleven had the bad luck to begin production right before Covid-19 swept the world, then the worse luck to launch the exact week everybody got obsessed with the omicron variant. Look beyond the premise to see a series that finds the human heart at the end of all things. This show’s sense of people caring for each other after all is lost can be deeply restorative.
How to watch it:Station Eleven is streaming on HBO Max. New episodes debut every Thursday through January 13.
Succession (HBO)
Kind of the consensus “TV show we* all care about” at this moment, Succession’s third season was a grand and glorious thing, beginning with father pitted against son and then somehow finding an even more gutting place to take its characters by its season finale. Endlessly witty and effortlessly of the moment, Succession is the only TV show that winds together the twin strands of familial abuse and toxic capitalism designed solely to benefit the people at the very tippy-top. A masterpiece? A masterpiece. *people who write about TV online
How to watch it:Succession is streaming on HBO Max. A fourth season is in production.
We Are Lady Parts (Peacock)
Just six episodes long, this British import made a good case for the continued existence of so many new streaming services. If Peacock didn’t exist, I likely wouldn’t have ever seen this amazing comedy about an all-lady, all-Muslim punk band named Lady Parts. I am especially taken with the deftly sketched frenemies relationship between Lady Parts’ lead guitarist Amina (Anjana Vasan) and lead singer Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), who have a real Lennon-McCartney spark. They hate each other; they make amazing music together.
How to watch it:We Are Lady Parts is streaming on Peacock. A second season has been ordered.
Work in Progress (Showtime)
What might be TV’s queerest show is also one of the best shows about aging. Chicago-based comedian Abby McEnany stars as a semi- autobiographical version of herself in this comedy that effortlessly explores the intersections of gender and sexuality that make this moment in queerness so dizzying and so complicated. Even more potent, though, is the series’ depiction of what happens when you realize you have to just keep living the life you’ve made for yourself. None other than Lilly Wachowski co-wrote and directed several episodes.
How to watch it:Work in Progress is streaming on Showtime Anytime. No decision has been made on a third season.
Yellowjackets (Showtime)
The new drama Yellowjackets had me in its first 30 seconds. A girl runs through the snowy woods. Strange, eerie cries surround her. She falls through the snow into a trap and is impaled by spikes. Then a mysterious figure shrouded in animal furs strings the dead girl up to collect her meat. Teen girl cannibals in the woods? I love it! I’m also struck by how smart this series is about how minor slights in adolescence ripple into dissociative episodes in adulthood. A lot of shows claim to be “about” trauma; this is one of the few that actually is.
How to watch it: Season one is airing on Showtime and Showtime Anytime on Sundays through January 16. A second season has been ordered.
You (Netflix)
I don’t know how the team behind You got three seasons of TV out of the premise “you have to hang out in the perspective of a stalker man all the time.” I also don’t know how the third season was the show’s best. Murderous serial killer Joe (Penn Badgley) has found his perfect match in fellow serial killer Love (Victoria Pedretti), and a series already laced with razor-sharp satire found its best target yet in Silicon Valley tech culture. A poison apple of a show. (Co-creator Sera Gamble is a friend of mine, but I liked the show before I knew her.)
How to watch it:You is streaming on Netflix. A fourth season is in production.
Five other shows, why not?
Here are five other shows I had great fun with, this time presented in reverse alphabetical order because there are no rules! If your favorite show isn’t on this list, assume that either I didn’t see it or I completely forgot about it. My taste and yours are exactly the same, I promise.
Y: The Last Man (FX): After a shaky start, I thought the second half of the show’s first season turned into my favorite kind of bonkers TV show, throwing ideas at the wall, then throwing even more ideas at those ideas to make them stick. A shame it was canceled! A shame! (Showrunner Eliza Clark has become a friend since I wrote about the show in September.)
The White Lotus (HBO): The last show I cut from the list above, Mike White’s acidic portrayal of rich-white-person obliviousness has several amazing performances and a slow-building sense that the world is doomed and the people who might fix that just don’t care.
What We Do in the Shadows (FX): I have seen few episodes of TV comedy as funny as the half-hour where the vampires who are the focus of this show go to Atlantic City and slowly lose it when deprived of their ancestral dirt. (I promise it makes sense when you watch.)
PEN15 (Hulu): I’m distraught that this comedy about two girls working their way through being 13 is over, but Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle wrung so much pathos and comedy out of being 30-year-olds playing 13 that I feel grateful to have had it in my life.
Hellbound (Netflix):Squid Game soaked up the headlines when it came to Korean imports this year, but I preferred this dark horror drama about the radioactive footprint of evangelical Christianity and angels who condemn people to hell for sometimes specious reasons.
Despite omicron, Covid-19 will become endemic. Here’s how. -
A health care worker hands out a Covid-19 test kit at a drive-through testing site in Riverside, California, on December 21. | Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The variant has changed how we get from “pandemic” to “endemic,” but that doesn’t mean we’re back to square one.
With omicron rates soaring, you may find yourself despairingly asking when — or even if — this pandemic is ever going to end.
The good news is that it will end. Experts agree on that. We’re not going to totally eradicate Covid-19, but we will see it move out of the pandemic phase and into the endemic phase.
Endemicity means the virus will keep circulating in parts of the global population for years, but its prevalence and impactwill come down to relatively manageable levels, so it ends up more like the flu than a world-stopping disease.
For an infectious disease to be classed in the endemic phase, the rate of infections has to more or less stabilize across years, rather than showing big, unexpected spikes as Covid-19 has been doing. “A disease is endemic if the reproductive number is stably at one,” Boston University epidemiologist Eleanor Murray explained. “That means one infected person, on average, infects one other person.”
We’re nowhere near that right now. The highly contagious omicron variant means each infected person is infecting more than one other person, with the result that cases are exploding across the globe. Nobody can look at the following chart and reasonably conclude that we’re in endemic territory.
Our World in Data
Looking at this data might make you wonder about some of the predictions that were floating around before omicron came on the scene. In the fall, some health experts were saying that they thought the delta variant might represent the last big act for this pandemic, and that we could reach endemicity in 2022.
The outlook is more uncertain now. So how should you be thinking about the trajectory and timeline of the pandemic going into the new year? And how should omicron be shaping your everyday decision-making and risk calculus?
When we’ll know we’re finally in “endemic” territory
Here’s one big question you’d probably like the answer to: Does omicron push endemicity farther off into the future? Or could it actually speed up our path to endemicity by infecting so much of the population so swiftly that we more quickly develop a layer of natural immunity?
“That is really the million-dollar question,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told me. “It’s really hard to say right now.”
That’s partly because endemicity isn’t just about getting the virus’s reproductive number down to one. That’s the bare minimum for earning the endemic classification, but there are other factors that come into play, too: What’s the rate of hospitalizations and deaths? Is the health care system overburdened to the point that there’s a precipitous space or staffing shortage? Are there treatments available to reduce how many people are getting seriously ill?
In general, a virus becomes endemic when we (health experts, governmental bodies, and the public)collectively decide that we’re okay with accepting the level of impact the virus has — that in other words, it no longer constitutes an active crisis.
With omicron surging right now and many governments reimposing stricter precautions as a result, it’s clear we’re still in crisis mode. “But so much depends on the burden it’ll place on the healthcare system,” Rasmussen said. “And that’s going to be different from community to community.”
Even if it turns out to be true that omicron tends to resultin milder disease than previous variants (we don’t yet have enough data to say conclusively), a massive increase in cases could still lead to a big increase in hospitalizations and deaths. That could further stress health care systems that are already in dire straits. That’s why Rasmussen concludes that “omicron certainly has the potential to delay endemicity.”
But there are also some hopeful things to bear in mind. “The incredible number of infections is building up population-level immunity. That’ll be crucial in terms of muting future waves,” said Joshua Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
In addition to omicron potentially building up some immunity in the vast numbers of people who are becoming infected with it, vaccinations and boosters are also contributing to “a significant immunity wall that’s being built,” he said. But he cautioned that “that’s a wall to the variants we’ve seen already. There could be another variant which could evade immunity down the road.” Some experts are already conjecturing that getting infected with omicron may not give you much cross-protection against other variants.
This is why Ramussen says “the key determinant” of when the pandemic ends is how long it will take to make vaccines accessible around the world (and to combat ongoing vaccine hesitancy). Currently, we’re not vaccinating the globe fast enough to starve the virus of opportunities to mutate into something new and serious. “If only a very small proportion of people are getting access to vaccines, we’re just going to keep playing variant whack-a-mole indefinitely,” Rasmussen said.
In the meantime, we do have another ace up our sleeves, which will hopefully also become available around the globe sooner rather than later: new treatments —like Pfizer’s paxlovid, recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and Merck’s molnupiravir, also FDA approved — that reduce the rates of hospitalization and death from Covid-19.
“Very important in the context of endemicity is the antiviral pills,” Michaud said. “If we have those tools, we’re looking at a very different state going into 2022. People shouldn’t feel like we’re back to square one.”
We’re not back to March 2020. But it makes sense to modify our behavior during the omicron surge.
Dire headlines notwithstanding, we’re in much better shape than we were at the start of the pandemic. We’ve discovered a lot more information about how Covid-19 works. We’ve manufactured effective masks, vaccines, boosters, treatments, and rapid tests.
We’ve also learned that having to hunker down comes at a real cost to our mental and economic health and wellbeing. The cost of a strict lockdown may have been worthwhile in March 2020, but by and large, that’s not what US experts are advising now.
They are, however, urging us to take more precautions than we might have been in the weeks leading up to omicron.
Take Bob Wachter, for example, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. In the fall, he shifted from being very cautious about Covid-19 to taking some more calculated risks, including dining indoors at restaurants and even hosting an in-person medical conference with 300 attendees. But now that omicron is causing cases to skyrocket, he’s being more cautious again.
“I see the next few months as a time to fortify one’s safety behaviors,” he wrote on Twitter. Here’s how he explained his reasons:
… and most importantly people (many MDs/RNs out sick too). Trust me, you want to avoid getting sick when the system is stressed. Third, I see the Pfizer oral anti-viral as a very big deal, and it won’t be available for 4-6 weeks (even then it’ll be in short supply).(10/25)
The other experts I spoke to agreed that now is a time to limit risky activities.
“I had taken my foot off the brakes in terms of my own behavior. But I’ve now started to put it on again,” Michaud told me. “I canceled plans to go to New Jersey to visit my family over Christmas. I’m avoiding more indoor environments. As of now, it does make a lot of sense to me to take additional steps to prevent yourself and those around you from getting infected.”
After the omicron wave passes, he said, he envisions relaxing precautions again. Modeling suggests that omicron could peak in mid- to late January in the US, with case rates steeply declining — and activities becoming correspondingly safer again — in February.
Rasmussen is also modifying her behavior in light of omicron, though she emphasizes that’s not the same as going back to a spring2020-style lockdown. Although she canceled an international flight over the holidays, she still felt comfortable going over to her colleague’s house for a Christmas meal. That’s because she and they had vaccinations, boosters, rapid tests, and great ventilation working in their favor.
“We have a lot more tools at our disposal for dealing with this than we did in March 2020,” she said.
We’ll know endemicity has arrived when those tools — and the long, painful experience of the pandemic itself — has enabled us to fully adapt to the virus, as the virus has adapted to us.
The 12 most-read Future Perfect pieces of 2021 -
Interestingly, they all dealt with one of three themes: Covid-19, giving people “free money,” or animals.
At the end of every year, the Future Perfect team takes stock of the articles that you, our audience, read the most. It’s a good way to understand what you found most helpful in our coverage.
A few subjects stood out — the dozen most-read pieces in 2021 all dealt with one of three themes: Covid-19, giving people “free money,” or animals. The first is unsurprising, but the other two highlight interesting trends. The idea of a guaranteed income has gained serious momentum this year, with several new pilot programs launching in the US. And surveys show Americans are increasingly concerned about the welfare of animals raised to feed them.
With that in mind, per our annual tradition, allow me to recap the 12 most-read Future Perfect pieces of 2021.
href=“https://link.vox.com/click/26127216.9222/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudm94LmNvbS9mdXR1cmUtcGVyZmVjdC8yMjIxOTM2Mi9lbmQtb2YtY292aWQtMTktcGFuZGVtaWMtc29jaWFsLWRpc3RhbmNpbmctbWFza2luZw/608adc2491954c3cef02e6bfB25f66422”>Once you and your friends are vaccinated, can you travel and quit social distancing?” by Sigal Samuel
I wrote this in January, when many people were thinking in binary terms about vaccines — “life before I get the shot” and “life after I get the shot.” I cautioned that change would be more gradual and a lot would depend on how well the vaccines reduce infection and transmission, which could fluctuate with the emergence of new variants. That held up pretty well, given the emergence of delta and, even more so, omicron.
This March piece clearly stated that the vaccines do reduce transmission, at a time when many health experts and journalists were being very cautious about saying that — to the point that they risked making people wonder whether it was worth getting vaccinated at all. More broadly, the piece offered a useful lesson in how we should and shouldn’t talk about uncertainty.
This May piece explored a tricky conundrum: Switching from beef to chicken is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions from your diet, but it comes with a massive increase in animal suffering. How can we avoid swapping one moral disaster for another?
How does Covid-19 stack up against the Black Death, say, or the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic? This January piece put our current pandemic in its historical context and reminded us that, although we haven’t entirely triumphed over disease, things used to be much worse.
A large study found that Covid-19 patients given fluvoxamine, an antidepressant that the FDA has already deemed safe, were 31 percent less likely to end up hospitalized (assuming they got the pill within a few days after testing positive). When Kelsey wrote up the study in August, this was a larger effect than any that had previously been found for an outpatient Covid-19 treatment, so it was heartening news (although fluvoxamine still isn’t widely prescribed for Covid-19 patients).
When Romney proposed the Family Security Act, Dylan explained in February that although it wasn’t a perfect plan, it would do a lot to chip away at poverty in the US. It also boasted a benefit over Joe Biden’s proposed child tax credit expansion: It had the makings of a permanent measure, whereas the Biden proposal was a one-year measure. Romney recently pushed his bill again as a potential foundation for a bipartisan compromise amid Democrats’ recent failure to pass an extension of the child tax credit.
In February, the spread of more contagious variants led some readers to ask whether they should be more careful, not just indoors, but outdoors too. This piece of service journalism was reassuring on that question, with virologist Müge Çevik saying there are “many things to worry about — outdoor brief contact is not one of them.”
Americans now eat twice as much chicken as they did in the 1970s. In February, Kelsey explained why, and noted that the shift can actually show plant-based meat producers how to get a bigger share of the market: drop prices like chicken companies did, and sell consumers on the health and environmental benefits of going plant-based.
This November piece made the case for getting a booster even if you’re relatively young and healthy, and explained something many of us needed to understand: Your booster is very likely not directly coming at the expense of others who still need initial vaccination. Vaccine orders are fulfilled in the order they were placed — skipping your dose won’t change that.
When the child tax credit, greatly expanded under Biden’s American Rescue Plan, started hitting households, parents were so delighted that they made viral memes about the payments. In July, Dylan argued that this vocal base of beneficiaries could advocate for the policy, which should become permanent given its huge impact on child poverty.
This summer, readers asked me everything from “What are the odds that we’ll get a variant-tailored annual booster?” to “Can I get infinite boosters? Is more always better?” I explained how scientists come up with answers to these questions.
Stockton’s experiment in giving out free money — $500 a month to 125 people for two years — has started to show results, and they’re encouraging: People who received the cash managed to secure full-time jobs at more than twice the rate of people in a control group. These results, which I reported on in March, help counter myths about the unconditional cash programs that have emerged as a powerful tool in the fight against poverty.
From The Hindu: Sports
Ashwin retains 2nd spot in both bowlers’ and all-rounders’ Test rankings - India leads the Test Team ranking, while New Zealand and Australia occupy the second and third positions
Novak Djokovic withdraws from ATP Cup in Australia - No reason was given but the top-ranked Serb has declined to comment on his vaccination status in recent months and Australia’s strict regulations require all players, officials and fans to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19
Sourav Ganguly stable, maintaining oxygen saturation of 99% on room air: hospital - Ganguly was rushed to a Kolkata hospital on Monday night as a precautionary measure after his RT-PCR test returned positive for COVID-19
SA vs Ind | India all out for 174 in 2nd innings, sets 305 for SA to win - India scored 63 runs in the morning session on the fourth day and lost two wickets
Warner eyes 2023 Ashes, win in India before quitting Test cricket - “We still haven’t beaten India in India. That would be nice to do”
From The Hindu: National News
Bommai to remain CM till 2023: Pratap Simha - Refuting speculations over the change in leadership in the State, Mysuru MP Pratap Simha on Wednesday said Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will comple
Police intervene as groups stage protest at Rangayana - Tense moments prevailed for a while at Rangayana here on Wednesday after a near face-off of the groups protesting against and supporting its director
Clear data supporting very high immune escape potential of Omicron: INSACOG - The genomic consortium, citing global data, said there is now clear experimental and clinical data supporting very high immune escape potential of Omicron, which appears to be the major component of its growth advantage over Delta
Don’t opt for VRS, Discom CMD tells diploma engineers - ‘No measures that are detrimental to the interests of the staff will be taken’
Over 860 children’s home functioning without adherence to rules closed down in Tamil Nadu: Minister - Social Welfare Minister Geetha Jeevan says action is taken against the homes after continuous monitoring of their activities
From BBC: Europe
Covid: US reports record infections as Europe’s Omicron cases also soar - Several nations see their biggest surge in daily infections as the WHO warns of Omicron’s “very high” risk.
Novak Djokovic withdraws from ATP Cup amid Australian Open uncertainty - World number one Novak Djokovic withdraws from Serbia’s ATP Cup team in Sydney amid uncertainty over his participation at the Australian Open.
Russian court orders oldest civil rights group Memorial to shut - The Supreme Court dissolves a civil rights group formed to remember victims of Communist repression.
Hugo Maradona: Diego Maradona’s younger brother dies aged 52 - Hugo Maradona, the younger brother of the late Argentine legend Diego Maradona, dies of a heart attack at the age of 52.
Vinyl sales soared again in 2021, thanks to Abba - The pop icons’ surprise return helped UK vinyl sales top five million for the first time since 1990.
From Ars Technica
Here are the 10 best cars, trucks, and SUVs we tested in 2021 - For the first time, more than half our top 10 is fully electric. - link
With US swamped by omicron, Biden scraps travel bans - Experts have long argued that such travel restrictions are ineffective and harmful. - link
Tiny tardigrades walk like insects 500,000 times their size - Also: the controversial claim of a frozen water bear achieving quantum entangled state - link
Alexa suggests 10-year-old put a penny on partially exposed plug - “Alexa: Stop recommending stupid and dangerous things.” - link
China upset about needing to dodge SpaceX Starlink satellites - A formal complaint to the UN under space treaties says the US is responsible. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Saw a guy the other day wearing a Let’s Go Brandon T-shirt -
It was nice to see someone representing the LGBTee community.
A lady goes to the doctor and complains that her husband is losing interest in sex. The doctor gives her a pill, but warns her that it’s still experimental. He tells her to slip it into his mashed potatoes at dinner, so that night, she does just that. -
About a week later, she’s back at the doctor, where she says, “Doc, the pill worked great! I put it in the potatoes like you said! It wasn’t five minutes later that he jumped up, raked all the food and dishes onto the floor, grabbed me, ripped all my clothes off, and ravaged me right there on the table!” The doctor says, “I’m sorry, we didn’t realize the pill was that strong! The foundation will be glad to pay for any damages.” “Nah,” she says, “that’s okay. We’re never going back to that restaurant anyway.”
My friend got mad when he caught me smelling his sister’s panties. -
I don’t know why he was mad, maybe because she was wearimg them, or because his whole family was watching. Either way it made the funeral a bit awkward.
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Our World in Data
