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

• Joe Manchin Kills the Build Back Better Bill - How will the country ever address the enduring market failures, glaring inequality, and big social-safety-net gaps that the plan was designed to tackle? - link

• The Rio Grande Valley’s Abortion Desert - Texas’s new law is the culmination of decades of legal restrictions and budget cuts that have left women in one of the country’s poorest regions with scant access to abortion. - link

• The Catch-22 of Addressing Election Security - How do politicians contend with the weaknesses in the voting system without fuelling baseless claims of election fraud? - link

• Getting Home for Christmas and Dodging Omicron - In London, with everything open, evading the coronavirus has felt like a warped game of tag. - link

• Is Donald Trump an Anti-Semite? - A revealing new interview peels back yet another layer. - link

From Vox

• How omicron could impact global progress to curb the pandemic -

  

  Omicron is more transmissible than previous Covid-19 variants. What is the plan to tackle it?

  In countries like South Africa and the United Kingdom, the omicron variant has caused a serious spike in Covid-19 cases. Now the United States is seeing an increase in cases of its own, causing worry over how Americans will fare this winter with travel, holidays, and large gatherings looming.

  “Omicron may still become a major threat to public health because what omicron [possibly] lacks in severity, it makes up in transmission,” writes Vox’s Umair Irfan.

  Some data has shown omicron to pose a lower risk to vaccinated individuals, but it is still a health concern for the overall population. According to estimates from the UK, omicron is 20 to 50 percent more transmissible than other variants and has now been reported in more than 30 states in the US.

  But the best defense against omicron is nothing new: vaccinations.

  “The vaccines still provide strong protection against hospitalization, and if a vaccinated person does fall sick and needs hospital treatment, they usually have shorter stays. With a booster shot, experts expect that protection to hold up against omicron,” writes Vox’s Dylan Scott.

  Other preventive steps like masking and social distancing are still worthwhile individual measures. On a larger scale, some places like California, New York, and Washington, DC, are reinstating indoor mask mandates to curb the spread.

  While data on this variant continues to emerge — including which treatments might be effective against it — health experts remained concerned about how omicron’s transmission rates will impact the country’s hospitalizations and breakthrough infections.

  To learn more about the omicron variant and the risk it poses in the US and abroad, keep up to date with this storystream.

• 6 epidemiologists on how omicron is — and isn’t — changing their holiday plans -

  

  You can modify your existing plans to make them safer.

  With the omicron variant causing huge surges of Covid-19 infection, many of us are anxiously reconsidering our holiday plans. Is air travel safe? Can we still hug our parents? How should we think about testing? What about holiday parties?

  I asked six epidemiologists how omicron is and isn’t changing their near-term plans. Most were already planning to keep things low- key, but they have added some modifications to make their gatherings safer in light of the variant. These include adding in buffer time between air travel and seeing relatives, testing multiple times, and taking into consideration whether contacts have been boosted as well as being vaccinated.

  As you’re thinking about how to make your holiday plans as safe as possible, it helps to consider things in two stages: what you can do before you or your guests set out, and what to do once you or they have arrived. Let’s break it down.

  Before you get to your destination: Planning, limiting contact, and testing

  When you’re considering how safe it is to travel for a holiday gathering, you might be inclined to focus on how the travel happens: driving or flying? But experts say it’s just as important — if not more important — to think about where everyone is coming from and how much they’ve been limiting their exposure in the days leading up to the trip.

  That means paying attention to the Covid-19 rates in the location you’re coming from and the location you’re going to. It’s true that the rate at which omicron spreads makes it hard to predict which places are safest, and testing data lags behind the true reality on the ground. But some places, like New York, are already seeing a lot more cases — including among vaccinated people — than other parts of the country. People coming from a hot spot may be bringing with them a worse risk profile, though they can reduce that risk by trying to limit their exposure before traveling and by getting tested (more on that below).

  If the people you want to celebrate with are within driving distance, that’s optimal — traveling by car will allow you to avoid extra exposures on your way.

  It’s less optimal if your holiday plans require air travel, but the experts I spoke to said you can probably travel by plane with relatively low risk, assuming you’re vaccinated and boosted and willing to keep an N95 or other high-quality mask on pretty much the whole time. (Different people have different levels of risk tolerance and susceptibility to severe disease, of course; you might reasonably feel more comfortable with this if you’re young and healthy than if you’re older or immunocompromised.) Experts say your goal should be to reduce the risk for both yourself and others.

  “I would advise wearing high-quality masks during travel and staying away from people as much as possible within the airports (especially if others are unmasked to eat/drink/etc.),” Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University, told me by email. “I would advise testing before travel to make sure you’re not exposing others. Ideally this would include a PCR test shortly before the flight, but realistically, these are getting harder to do because of a delay in turn-around times for testing. Rapid tests would be another alternative.”

  So try to wear an N95 continuously in the airport and on the plane, limiting as much as possible your time spent maskless for eating or drinking (especially when other people are close by). And plan to take a rapid antigen test (think BinaxNowor QuickVue) right before you leave for the airport, if you can get access to one.

Katelyn Jetelina, an assistant professor of epidemiology with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, is flying to California with two young daughters, whose great- grandparents are excited to spend Christmas with them. All the adults are vaccinated and boosted; the kids are too young to be eligible. Jetelina told me she’s been getting increasingly concerned about severe breakthrough cases among older adults, but rather than cancel the flight in light of omicron, she modified it.

“We changed our flight to arrive a few days earlier, so if we were exposed at the airport, then there were a few days between landing and seeing the great-grandparents. Adding a few days between the two will ensure that if we were exposed, then antigen tests would pick up the mounting infection,” she said. “We will test before leaving for the airport and every other day until the holiday event. The morning of the event, everyone is taking an antigen test.”

If you have to fly, you can similarly consider flying early and lying low — maybe in an Airbnb — for three or four days before taking a rapid test and then joining the group. This could be a particularly good option if the group includes older, immunocompromised, or otherwise vulnerable people.

Parents of children who are too young to be vaccinated may be finding it especially hard to decide on a plan that can keep things reasonably safe for both the children and those they come into contact with. The experts I spoke to recommended limiting social interactions for the kids in the days before a gathering, masking them when possible, and testing them.

Beyond that? “I think there really is a risk-benefit calculation that has to be made — and I think that’s going to be an individual, and family, choice,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins. “Make sure that everyone who is going to be at a given gathering feels comfortable with a small (and therefore unvaccinated) child being there. The one thing you don’t want to do is make others in your family uncomfortable.”

After you get to your destination: Running a risk-benefit analysis of different social encounters, plus more testing

All the epidemiologists agreed it’s best to keep gatherings small (two to three households or under 10 people is a good rule of thumb). Ideally, everyone there should be not only double-vaccinated but also boosted. Early evidence suggests that omicron significantly reduces the protection afforded by two doses, but a booster helps restore it.

“I’m much, much more comfortable bringing my girls around boosted people than unvaccinated or those with just two [shots],” said Jetelina, whose daughters are both under 3 years old.

“If I knew everyone in my holiday gathering were fully vaccinated and boosted, I wouldn’t be terribly concerned, unless a member of my party were older and had a health condition that put them at elevated risk of more severe disease, in which case I would have some concerns for their health,” said Janet Baseman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington. “We are still awaiting data on how well boosters protect against severe disease with omicron.”

Baseman added that maximizing ventilation in indoor spaces to increase airflow can help; if you have access to a HEPA filter, now’s a great time to get it running. Alternatively, you can open windows if it’s not too cold.

It’s important to avoid larger gatherings, especially if some people there may be unvaccinated.

“I had decided earlier in the year that I am not gathering inside with unvaccinated individuals,” Smith said. “It’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”

Dowdy told me that, as recently as November, his team at work routinely had social lunches of around 10 people and he never thought twice about attending. But his assessment has changed over the past couple of weeks. “I wouldn’t personally be going to an indoor holiday party with more than a few people,” he said.

Note that if people take a rapid test a day before the gathering and get a negative result, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re negative when they show up to the party. The test only reveals that they’re probably not infectious at the moment they put that swab in their nose; a day later, they may be carrying an infectious level of virus. At a Christmas party in Norway, the vast majority of guests were double-vaccinated and everyone had reported a negative result (PCR test or rapid test) one to three days earlier; nevertheless, 80 out of 111 guests ended up being diagnosed with Covid-19, likely with the omicron variant.

So don’t be shy about asking people to test an hour or so before showing up at your door. They can even do a rapid test in the car right outside your house.

Kate Grabowski, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, noted that it’s also good to have extra rapid tests on hand in case anyone becomes symptomatic in the days following the gathering (though it’s very hard to get tests now in many places). “Being able to know your disease status early into symptom onset is very critical for getting the best clinical care,” she said.

For some people, the happiness, sense of meaning, and mental health benefits that come with seeing family will outweigh the risks this holiday season.

“I’ve seen my nephew one time in the last three years due to the pandemic. We are literally missing out on his entire early childhood,” Grabowski told me. So her boosted sister and brother-in-law will fly in with their 4-year-old son to spend the holiday with her, after taking precautions like getting vaccinated, masking, rapid testing, and reducing exposure. “We have decided to take this calculated risk. Others may not feel comfortable, and that’s totally okay.”

Eleanor Murray, an epidemiologist at Boston University, is among those who feel more comfortable lying low for the time being, while cases are skyrocketing. She told me she decided not to fly out to see her relatives for the holidays. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think that other people can plan fairly safe ways to gather,” she said. “If we all make our holidays a little bit safer, our actions could add up to something big.”

• The Matrix: Refresher -

  

  No time to rewatch The Matrix trilogy before Resurrections? Here’s the important stuff.

  If it’s been a minute since you’ve seen The Matrix, or the other two films in the Matrix trilogy, don’t worry: The new film, The Matrix Resurrections, functions as more of a reboot than a sequel, so you don’t need to have every detail of the original franchise under your belt. Still, the basic storyline of the original trilogy impacts the new film, so if you don’t have time to watch all three original films again, it’s helpful to have a refresher.

  Warning: The rest of this article, obviously, contains spoilers from the original Matrix trilogy. If you want to discover them for yourself, now’s your chance to back out.

  Here’s the part you probably remember: Over the course of the first film, Keanu Reeves’s character Neo transforms from an isolated tech geek trapped in a virtual reality simulation, aka the “Matrix,” into the savior of all mankind, aka “the One.” He does this by falling in with a group of freedom fighters who show him the truth: The real world is actually a scorched, barren, post-apocalyptic prison now run by machine overlords who’ve created the Matrix to trick humans into thinking the world is normal, meanwhile keeping them docile and enslaved while the machines harvest them for energy. Ultimately, Neo discovers that he has the unique ability to see through the Matrix, which means he can manipulate its code from within and fight back against the machines.

  Newly armed with Neo’s special power, the fight for human liberation continues over the course of the next two films, Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions. The new film catches up with Neo — though not as you remember him — and rejoins the original Matrix storyline, but in an all-new context. Here are some of the highlights from the journey so far that you need to know for the upcoming film.

  1. The Matrix is kind of a predetermined, Calvinistic choice experiment

  The Matrix is just like any other computer system in that someone had to design it. Within the Matrix, the entity who embodies that creator is called the Architect.

  Neo meets the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis) halfway through the second film. He tells Neo that the Matrix periodically has to be reset to deal with the difficulty of combating human choice. He also informs Neo that instead of resisting the Matrix, he exists as part of its design, and that, far from being “the One,” he’s really more like “the Sixth.” Five other simulation messiahs before him have had to decide how to handle the impending Matrix reset. Neo’s choice involves a kind of Calvinism: If he works with the machines to reset the Matrix, he can choose which of the residents of Zion (the underground city where the freedom fighters reside) will get to survive and repopulate the Matrix. If he resists, the entirety of the human population will be destroyed. Neo chooses neither of these options.

  Still, the idea that the Architect has been allowing all of these simulations to play out before — including the part where the One helps decide how it all ends — casts a major shadow on everything that happens after their initial meeting, including the events of the new film.

  2. There are rogue programs that have their own parts to play within the Matrix

  In the first film, Neo’s main enemy is Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), one of the embodiments of the machines that exist in the Matrix. After Neo defeats Smith, he’s scheduled to be, basically, erased — absorbed back into the code. But Smith refuses and escapes the Matrix’s control, becoming a rogue program that can act on his own. Over the course of the films, Smith essentially becomes a virus who can replicate at will by taking over humans who are inside the Matrix. They don’t always look like Hugo Weaving, either, which can leave us with something of a “who is the human and who is the replicant?” situation.

  But Smith isn’t the only rogue program. There’s also the Frenchman (Lambert Wilson), a.k.a. the Merovingian, who functions as something of a crime lord over many other rogue programs and who tries to manipulate and control many of the people around Neo. And there’s Rama (Bernard White), a sweet guy who rebelled against the Matrix by marrying another rogue program and creating his own simulated “daughter” named Sati (played by Tanveer K. Atwal in Revolutions).

  Sati becomes crucial to the worldbuilding of the Matrix films. She meets Neo when he’s trapped in limbo, and Rama goes to great lengths to keep her safe from being destroyed by the machines. Since he and his wife created her simply to be their daughter, Rama says she doesn’t have a purpose, which makes her an anomaly in the Matrix, where everything is created to be of use. But it’s implied heavily that Sati does have a purpose. The Oracle (first played by Gloria Foster but later by Mary Alice) suggests at one point that she might be the next One, and many fans think that she might be an iteration of the Architect — or even a villain, since at one point she’s assimilated by Agent Smith, and it’s unclear when he relinquished his hold over her.

  What is clear is that Sati still has a big part to play; like Neo, her role is very much unfinished.

  3. Both Trinity and Neo die at the end

  Neo and his freedom-fighter soulmate Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) each have brushes with death in all three movies, with each brush getting more and more dire. In the first movie, Trinity barely makes it out of the Matrix before being annihilated, while Neo nearly dies from injuries both inside and outside of the Matrix but survives by becoming the One. In the second film, Trinity is fatally shot while in the Matrix, which would kill her in the real world, except that Neo reaches into her heart and extracts the bullet. (Manipulating the code lets him do stuff like that.) For his pains, Neo ends up comatose and essentially lifeless at the end of the second film, trapped in a weird limbo depicted as a train station until he wakes in the real world in the third film.

  The final film sees both Trinity and Neo perish near the climax. Trinity dies while trying to defend Zion against the attacking machines in what might be the most painful death of the series: En route to the machine city, she flies too high above the scorched atmosphere, and while she manages to shake off the machines, she loses control of her spaceship and crashes into a building back on Earth, leaving Neo to exchange a few final words of love with her before she dies.

  Trinity’s death arguably leaves Neo with nothing preventing him from fully sacrificing himself for the cause of saving humanity, which he ultimately does: after the machines — embodied in the form of a single entity cheekily called the Deus Ex Machina — learn that Smith is hellbent on destroying the Matrix, and with it, mankind, they strike a peace treaty with Neo and send him into the Matrix to battle Smith once and for all. Neo ultimately defeats Smith with a grander version of what he did in the first film, diving into Smith and exploding him from inside. This time, he allows himself to be fully assimilated by Smith — but he’s also allowing himself to be used as a kind of electric fuse for the machines, who use Neo’s body to send a massive jolt of electricity through Smith, exploding all of the bodies Smith inhabits throughout the Matrix, effectively destroying him completely. (For now.)

  Suffice it to say, Neo is pretty dead once that’s over with. But the other people Smith previously assimilated do return, and the Oracle, who’s among them, tells Sati that she believes Neo might be back again one day.

  4. Humans and the machines formed a fragile peace

  As mentioned, the machines are dead set against Smith destroying everything — so much so that they’re willing to work with Neo to defeat him. This allows the humans and the machines to create an uneasy, but hopefully lasting peace, one that preserves Zion and allows any human to exit the Matrix for the real world if they choose to do so. (Though we have to wonder, given how eager Joe Pantoliano’s character Cypher was to return to the blissful ignorance of the Matrix in the first film, how many humans would be all that quick to jump at the offer.)

  The Matrix is rare among cinematic narratives of its kind in that it doesn’t offer revolutionary overthrow as the ultimate victory for its heroes, but rather a tentative way forward, in which both man and the artificial intelligence can work together and build a new world. This ending also goes some way to address the fact that the humans created this problem for themselves — first they created the AIs, and then, once the machines revolted, they torched their own atmosphere in a futile attempt to get rid of the machines. By allowing the resolution to involve a truce instead of an outright victory, the Matrix films acknowledge that the humans haven’t entirely followed a traditional hero’s journey.

  5. Jada Pinkett Smith is totally in these movies!

  You might not remember her, but as the character of Niobe, Jada Pinkett Smith kicks major ass in the second and third Matrix films. A central leader among the Zion revolutionaries, Niobe pilots the spaceship Logos, uses guerilla tactics to successfully plant bombs in a major power plant, and figures out how to steer a hovercraft. She and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) have a romantic history, and it’s implied she still loves him, even though she’s moved on. Niobe also plays a major role in the video game Enter the Matrix, where she battles vampire programs and a whole bunch of Agent Smiths. Not too shabby.

  The Matrix Resurrections will be in theaters and streaming on HBO Max on December 22.

From The Hindu: Sports

• I thought missing Olympics is not the end of the world, says Srikanth after silver at worlds - The 28-year-old former world number one became the first Indian male shuttler to claim a silver medal at BWF World Championships.

• Felt like I was being thrown under the bus: Ashwin recalls a Shastri remark that crushed him - “I hold Ravi bhai in high esteem. We all do. And I understand we all can say things and then retract them. In that moment, though, I felt crushed”

• The Ashes | Ponting slams Joe Root for criticising England bowlers, asks, ‘why are you captain then?’ - After a crushing defeat in Adelaide, the England skipper had blamed his bowlers for not bowling the right lengths

• Pankaj Advani wins his 11th National Billiards title - Advani responded with breaks of 56 and 46 to restore parity at 1-1 after Sitwala’s breaks of 64 and 42 late on the evening of December 20

• FIR against Pak cricketer Yasir Shah for helping friend, who molested girl - In the FIR, the girl has alleged that a friend of the Pakistan Test leg-spinner had kidnapped her on gunpoint, raped her, made videos of her and later made threats to her

From The Hindu: National News

• Need to continue supporting, monitoring needs of children affected by COVID-19: Justice Ravindra Bhat - Justice Ravindra Bhat made these remarks during a review meeting held by the Committee for the protection of children and to take stock of the implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act and the Prevention of Sexual Offences Act

• No evidence to suggest that existing COVID-19 vaccines don’t work on Omicron: Union Health Minister - Mansukh Mandaviya was responding to a question on whether the vaccinations that are given in India are effective to develop immunity for Omicron variant

• Usha Mohandas elected chairperson of Kerala Congress (B) - This is the first time the State committee of the party meets after the demise of the former chairman and one of the founders of the united Kerala Congress, Balakrishna Pillai, in May 2021

• HC dismisses NIA appeal against bail to accused Gaur in Antilia bomb scare case - Naresh Gaur is accused of procuring SIM cards for prime accused and former Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze.

• Gujarat: Exam for recruitment to government posts cancelled after paper leak; key accused held - The written exam for the recruitment of 186 head clerks was held at different centres across the state on December 12 by the Gujarat Subordinate Service Selection Board (GSSSB), with nearly 88,000 aspirants appearing for the test.

From BBC: Europe

• Kosovo agrees to rent prison cells to Denmark to ease overcrowding - Denmark is due to pay €210m (£179m) over the next 10 years to rent 300 cells in the jail at Gjilan.

• Turkish lira in comeback after new plan unveiled - The lira sees strong gains for the second day running in response to moves to strengthen the currency.

• Berlusconi seeks comeback role as Italian president - Despite the scandals and a tax fraud conviction, Italy’s most colourful ex-PM could be head of state.

• Amazon-owned Twitch bans Amazon account after breast revealed on air - Amazon-owned Twitch bans Spanish Amazon Prime Video channel after host’s breast revealed during live show.

• Shropshire soldier brings cheer to Romanian orphans - Warrant Officer 2 David Hill and wife Sarah have been visiting orphanages abroad for more than a decade.

From Ars Technica

• Waze adds EV chargers to its app, joining Google and Apple Maps - Google subsidiary adds feature that Maps users have had for years. - link

• Details released on the Trump administration’s pandemic chaos - Report provides details of how Trump’s appointees got in the way. - link

• New study challenges popular explanation for London’s infamous “Wobbly Bridge” - “The shaking causes the syncing, instead of the syncing causing the shaking.” - link

• More EVs, hybrids likely to follow revised EPA fuel economy standards - EPA’s new rules apply to vehicles starting with 2023 model year. - link

• With Intel 12th-gen CPUs looming, LG’s debut gaming laptop opts for 11th-gen - LG’s first gaming laptop and Intel’s Alder Lake mobile chips are both expected to debut in 2022. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• My wife said if this gets 100 upvotes we can try anal -

  Please, stop upvoting! Her cock is huge!

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

• Why are Americans so stupid? -

  Because they shoot all the ones who go to school

  EDIT: I love jokes and comedic freedom… but I AM SO SORRY ABOUT THIS ONE LOL

  submitted by /u/Arrow_86
  [link] [comments]

• When the moon hits your knees, and you mispronounce trees -

  Sycamore

  submitted by /u/Life-is-a-potato
  [link] [comments]

• I sat my son down for the sex talk. -

  I said, “Son, what are you supposed to do before you have sex?”

  He said, “Trim your pubes.”

  I said, “No. Something else.”

  He said, “Clean your penis?”

  I said, “No.”

  He said, “Jesus! No wonder mum never has sex with you.”

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

• A despondent young woman who had lost her job and her house had decided to commit suicide. -

  She was walking along a bridge across the harbor, getting the nerve to jump in, when a young man saw her.

  “Don’t do it!” he called out. He looked at her and realized she was incredibly beautiful. He came closer.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. The woman told him.

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” he said. “I’m a crew member on a ship that leaves for Europe tomorrow morning. How about you come with me on the ship. I’ll bring you food and drink.” He slid his arm around her. “I keep you happy, you keep me happy.”

  She agreed. After all, there wasn’t much else to do. She didn’t have family. The man was quite handsome as well. No harm in trying.

  The next morning, he hid her in one of the lifeboats on the ship with a pillow and a blanket. Every night, he brought her three sandwiches and a piece of fruit, and they made love until dawn.

  One day, about a week after the affair started, the captain was doing his rounds and found her inside one of the lifeboats. “What the hell are you doing here?” She explained what was going on.

  “I get food and a trip to Europe, and he gets to screw me.”

  “He sure does, sweetheart. This is the Sydney Harbor Ferry.”

  submitted by /u/ninja_snail62
  [link] [comments]