Peak horseshit

Minot has become a paragon of North Dakota's pandemic crisis: a nightmare nexus of virus skepticism, underestimated rural spread, delayed action and an overburdened hospital system.

Inside the unprecedented campaign to prosecute BLM protesters.

U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign issued a statement on Sunday distancing itself from Sidney Powell, a lawyer who made baseless allegations of voter fraud at a news conference on Thursday. "Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own," Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in the statement. "She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team."

President Donald Trump's lawyer, Sidney Powell said an upcoming Georgia election lawsuit "will be biblical," as Trump's campaign continued its efforts to prove allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. "Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said in an interview with the conservative media outlet Newsmax TV on Saturday night. "We've got tons of evidence. It's so much, it's hard to pull it all together," Powell continued. "Hopefully, this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical."

In a tweet, Rittenhouse’s attorney posted a picture of the alleged shooter with Schroder, who he thanked—along with the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell—for “putting us over the top” to get Rittenhouse, who, again, is accused of shooting and killing (on video) multiple human beings, back out into the wider world where he can continue to exercise his own judgment about what the right thing to do might be. In the photo, it’s worth noting, both Rittenhouse and Schroder seem just pleased as punch that this event has occurred.

France’s parliament voted to approve a controversial law Friday that will ban the publication of images of on-duty police officers as well as expand the use of surveillance drones and police powers. Journalists’ groups, human rights activists and unions – including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International’s French branch – organised protests in Paris and other French cities on Saturday. Article 24 of France’s new security bill would make it a criminal offence for anyone to disseminate images that might “harm the physical or mental integrity” of police officers. People found guilty could be punished by a year in prison or a fine of up to €45,000. Critics of the bill say it threatens to make it more difficult for journalists and others to report on police brutality or other infractions, with journalists’ groups, human rights activists and unions organising the protests in French cities.

CA NAACP president Alice Huffman was paid millions by corporate ballot measure campaigns that her organization endorsed.

The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get.

When Logic is a Feeling (an attempt at a sort of "Remedial Trans 101")

Hospitals in the United States chargepatients as much as 1,800% more than their costs amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study. This article first appeared in Salon. The 100 most expensive hospitals in the United States charge between $1,129 and $1,808 for every $100 of their costs, according to a study by National […]

President Donald Trump has spent the three weeks since he lost the election savaging a pair of GOP governors for not backing his claims he was robbed. Republicans are worried it’s just the start of what’s in store from the soon-to-be-ex-president.

A Hasidic synagogue in Brooklyn planned the wedding of a chief rabbi’s grandson with such secrecy it was able to host thousands of maskless celebrants without the city catching on.

Why didn't the barn-raising model pan out? As Eghbal notes, it's partly that the random folks who pitch in make only very small contributions, like fixing a bug. Making and remaking code requires a lot of high-level synthesis—which, as it turns out, is hard to break into little pieces. It lives best in the heads of a small number of people.

Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly

Skeletal remains of what are believed to have been a rich man and his male slave attempting to escape death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago have been discovered in Pompeii, officials at the archaeological park in Italy said Saturday.

But I wondered if, as with Galatea herself, there might be a gap between creator intent and actual outcome in the creation of these stories as well as in their characters. Are the robots that the audience considers sexiest the ones who were created to be sexy? I took to Twitter, with two variations on the same survey. The nuance emerged. Fembot crushes varied widely, but a major theme appeared to be how likely they were to crush you. Fallout 4’s KL-E-0 and System Shock’s SHODAN were popular choices, and among men and women alike GLaDOS was declared “wife city.” On the boys’ side, Transformers like Cheetor were beloved, as were more recent entries like Detroit: Become Human’s Connor. Few if any robots on either side had been originally written with their physical or romantic appeal in mind, and many of the more famous and traditionally attractive female contenders (Blade Runner’s Pris, Halo’s Cortana) appeared to be left out. And then there was Data.

The mantis shrimp is four inches long and throws punches so fast they glow

In the middle of March, while many Americans were panic-buying milk and toilet paper, Michael Redmond had other things on his mind: how to safely house the dozens of people who rely on his organization for a bed to sleep in every night. The executive director of the Upper Valley Haven social service agency in White River Junction, Vermont, had read the reports that the new coronavirus could easily circulate among people living in close proximity — retirement homes, prisons, or homeless shelters like his. So he contacted the state to ask for advice. “‘Don’t worry,’” he recalls an official telling him. ‘“We’ve entered into contracts with local motels. If you feel you can’t operate your shelter, everyone can be given a room in a motel.’” Within days, Redmond was able to cut the number of beds in his shelter to reduce crowding and divert additional clientele to state-subsidized motel rooms. His nonprofit also organized outdoor dining and meal deliveries to further support social distancing. Eight months into the pandemic, Redmond has seen no Covid-19 cases among his patrons. Overall, there have been fewer than six cases in Vermont’s homeless population, according to the state health department. That’s far less than a 1 percent infection rate — a stark contrast with the 25 percent infection rate among the homeless across the US. Vermont has also remained an island of low coronavirus spread generally. Even with a recent surge — from fewer than 10 cases per day in September to 57 on November 18 — it’s consistently had one of the lowest infection rates in the continental US: 14.6 cases per 100,000 in the last seven days compared to 27 in New York, 74 in Georgia, 84 in Colorado, and 185 in North Dakota. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, has called Vermont “a model for the country.”

There were three individuals who developed asymptomatic Covid-19 infections despite having positive antibody tests, compared with 76 in the group without any antibodies. But none of the three became unwell.