The phone variety of Spam Wars - unsolicited, spoofed-caller, robo-calls (NoMoRoBo), etc. (more)

(see SpamWars)

Long COVID, also known as post-COVID-19 syndrome, post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), chronic COVID syndrome (CCS) and long-haul COVID,[1][2][3] is a condition characterized by long-term sequelae—appearing or persisting after the typical convalescence period—of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Long COVID can affect nearly every organ system with sequelae including respiratory system disorders, nervous system and neurocognitive disorders, mental health disorders, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, malaise, fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, and anemia.[4] A wide range of symptoms are commonly discussed, including fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, anosmia (loss of smell), parosmia (distorted smell), muscle weakness, low fever and cognitive dysfunction.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 4/29: Vaccination Slowdown. Compared to expectations, excluding inevitable self-inflicted cratering of our vaccination rate, this was mostly a best realistic case scenario week. Johnson & Johnson was unpaused. (more)

Worried About Breakthrough COVID-19 Cases? Here's What To Know. the current crop of vaccine breakthrough cases doesn't surprise or alarm public health experts. "I haven't seen any signals in the U.S. indicating that they are occurring at the levels that would give us concern that the [vaccine] effectiveness is going down," said Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. (more)

Ron Jeffries: Windmills: Can Scrum be fixed? I’ve been trying, so far without success, to get useful attention from the Scrum Alliance. (more)

enjoyable techno-thriller by Bruce Sterling ISBN:0-345-46061-8.... Fresh-perspective having read it multiple times over a couple years: I used to think of him as a Hero Warrior type, but now he smells a bit more like some who became unhinged by the World Trade Center attack, like Dennis Miller and Christopher Hitchens. Then again, maybe he's just channeling that for the sake of this book.* (more)

Animal Crossing[a] is a social simulation (cf TheSims) video game series developed and published by Nintendo and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami.[1][2][3][4][5] In Animal Crossing, the player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals, carrying out various activities such as fishing, bug catching, and fossil hunting. The series is notable for its open-ended gameplay and extensive use of the video game console's internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time. Since its initial release in 2001, five Animal Crossing games have been released worldwide, one each for the Nintendo 64/iQue Player (enhanced and reissued for the GameCube), Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch.[6] The series has been both critically and commercially successful and has sold over 60 million units worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing

Epic Games' Tim Sweeney reveals a more connected, 'Fortnite’-driven, game-unified world. Epic’s key promise is that its Unreal Engine 5, due in early 2021, will essentially render cinematic-quality, CGI-like effects in real time, complete with realistic lighting that had previously been more hardware-driven. (more)

Management people caught in the middle at a BigCo. With the power only to Say No. See Clueless.

Authoritarian High Modernism: James Scott concept, see Legibility. (more)

Immanuel Kant (UK: /kænt/,[20][21] US: /kɑːnt/,[22][23] German: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant, -nu̯ɛl -];[24][25] 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers.[26][27] Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.[26][28] In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that while "things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us.[29][30] In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume,[31] he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787),[32] one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of experience to answer the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, which would in turn make it possible to determine the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant drew a parallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposal that the objects of the senses must conform to our spatial and temporal forms of intuition, and that we can consequently have a priori cognition of the objects of the senses.[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) was a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), during the European interwar period (1918–1939), the Frankfurt School comprised intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist, communist) of the 1930s. The Frankfurt theorists proposed that social theory was inadequate for explaining the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics occurring in 20th century liberal capitalist societies. Critical of capitalism and of Marxism–Leninism as philosophically inflexible systems of social organization, the School's critical theory research indicated alternative paths to realizing the social development of a society and a nation.[1] (more)

In social science, disenchantment (German: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society.[1] In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, in which "the world remains a great enchanted garden".... (more)

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (/ˈveɪbər/;[12] German: [ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist, who is regarded among the most important theorists on the development of modern Western society.[13] His ideas would profoundly influence social theory and social research.[14] Despite being recognized as one of the fathers of sociology along with Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, Weber saw himself not as a sociologist but as a historian.[15][16] Unlike Émile Durkheim, Weber did not believe in monocausal (root cause) explanations, proposing instead that for any outcome there can be multiple causes.[17] He was a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) methods, based on understanding the purpose and meanings that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment", which he took to be the result of a new way of thinking about the world,[18] associating such processes with the rise of capitalism and modernity.[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber

Legibility guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott (more)

NYC live theater for kids, $20/ticket (more)

Frog and Toad are the main characters in a series of easy-reader children's books, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel (who also wrote Mouse Soup). Each book contains five simple, often humorous, sometimes poignant, short stories chronicling the exploits of the anthropomorphic frog and a toad. Some of their adventures include attempting to fly a kite, cleaning Toad's dirty house instead of postponing the chores to the next day, and finding out different reasons for isolation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_and_Toad

some time in the past when "things were better than today" (more)

Teresa Torres: Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions. I cringe every time I see product teams use a spreadsheet to rank the ideas in their, backlog based on some made-up math formula usually consisting of things like business value, user value, and technical difficulty. (more)