Yes, they are spying on you

At least 87 percent of the world’s most-popular Web domains engage in some form of digital tracking without you ever signing in, according to investigative journalism nonprofit the Markup. Many, it found, even covertly record the way you move your mouse or type. This is the hidden tech that lets companies learn who you are, what you like and even the secrets you look at online so they can tailor what you see, make ads follow you around — or even sell your information to others.
The good news: You can run a privacy check on any site yourself by using the free tool made for the audit, called Blacklight.

Click here: https://themarkup.org/blacklight, type in a web address (eg cnn.com), and shudder.

The semi-good news:

There are steps you can take to protect your privacy on the Web.
For most people, I recommend making one simple change: switch browsers to one that includes automatic protection. I like Mozilla’s Firefox, but Apple’s Safari and the new version of Microsoft Edge also provide some protection, as do the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo and Brave.

I mostly use DuckDuckGo myself (DuckDuckGo.com). Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/25/privacy-check-blacklight/.

This overlooked variable is the key to the pandemic

A growing number of studies estimate that a majority of infected people may not infect a single other person. A recent paper found that in Hong Kong, which had extensive testing and contact tracing, about 19 percent of cases were responsible for 80 percent of transmission, while 69 percent of cases did not infect another person. This finding is not rare: Multiple studies from the beginning have suggested that as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission, and that many people barely transmit it.

An important point about the spread of COVID-19: contact tracing needs to find out who you got it from, not who you might have given it to, because that person probably infected everyone around them. This also explains why outbreaks are so unpredictable and apparently random.

Full article (approx 4,800 words): https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/.

New holidays

I have observed these new national holidays. The especially bad things about these holidays are that (a) they are unscheduled and can happen on any day; and (b) they can happen multiple times in a year:

National Red Traffic Light Day

When every light you hit is red.

National Slow Driver Day

When every driver in front of you is lost, confused, or incompetent.