Fighting bullshit

The Washington Post calls it “BS” in this informative article, but I’m willing to call it bullshit:

BS “involves language, statistical figures, data graphics and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.”…
A right-wing media site, for example, blared in a headline that several thousand DACA beneficiaries (undocumented children shielded from deportation by an Obama-era policy) have committed crimes against U.S. citizens, Bergstrom said. “But it’s an extremely low percentage of DACA recipients,” he pointed out. “Which means they’re being accused of crimes at substantially lower rates — massively lower rates — than American citizens. Of course the article doesn’t say that.”

Another example: there is an excellent (but probably spurious) correlation between pool drownings per year and the number of films that Nicolas Cage appeared in during that year:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/06/24/misinformation-is-everywhere-these-scientists-can-teach-you-fight-bs/

and the course:

https://www.callingbullshit.org/index.html

Na na na na, na na na na

Hey hey, goodbye.

Here’s the Jimmy Kimmel bit that I love and that inspired this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzhMpmHclU0. (1 minute 38 seconds.)

The people speak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZivPq1jNC4.

Lyrics: https://www.metrolyrics.com/na-na-hey-hey-kiss-him-goodbye-lyrics-steam.html.

Original version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhF6Yzws5PU.

60 funniest pet tweets of 2020

For example, the dogslide: https://twitter.com/KalhanR/status/1342104105158926337.

Or “Today in Find the Cat:” https://twitter.com/katehinds/status/1269697161329082370. Hint: find part of the cat.

Lots more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/funniest-tweets-cats-dogs-2020_n_5fc80db8c5b602f56798a3cf. Note that clicking on a photo will give you a slightly enlarged version, you may find details that were outside the original photo’s margins.

“Source code” of Pfizer COVID vaccine

Non-trivial, as we programmers say, but this is a very clear description of how one COVID vaccine works. If you want to know the details, it’s complicated but fascinating. I was particularly intrigued by how much we understand and can manipulate at a very basic level of our own biology:

An mRNA vaccine achieves the same thing (‘educate our immune system’) but in a laser like way. And I mean this in both senses – very narrow but also very powerful.
So here is how it works. The injection contains volatile genetic material that describes the famous SARS-CoV-2 ‘Spike’ protein. Through clever chemical means, the vaccine manages to get this genetic material into some of our cells.
These then dutifully start producing SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins in large enough quantities that our immune system springs into action. Confronted with Spike proteins, and (importantly) tell-tale signs that cells have been taken over, our immune system develops a powerful response against multiple aspects of the Spike protein AND the production process.
And this is what gets us to the 95% efficient vaccine.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/