/2021

Their Jobs Made Them Get Vaccinated. They Refused.

The willingness of some workers to give up their livelihoods helps explain the country’s struggle to contain the pandemic.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/nyregion/new-york-workers-refuse-vaccine.html
Under the threat of losing their jobs, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers finally got a Covid-19 vaccine. Teachers, nurses and home health aides accepted their occupations’ mandates. The mass resignations some experts had predicted did not occur, as most workers hurriedly got inoculated.

Josephine Valdez, 30, a public school paraprofessional from the Bronx, did not.

Failing to meet the New York City Education Department’s vaccination deadline, Ms. Valdez lost her job this month. She is among the 4 percent of the city’s roughly 150,000 public school employees who did not comply with the order

“#instagram harms teenage girls” - #Facebook #Whistleblower: What You Need to Know | Time
▻https://time.com/6103645/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Frances-Haugen-60-Minutes.jpg?quality=85&crop=0px%2C0px%2C1920px%2C1005px&resize=1200%2C628&strip

Frances Haugen, a data scientist who worked at Facebook as a product manager on the Civic Integrity team, said the social media platform has lied to the public about resolving hate and violence to increase traffic and engagement—and in turn, profit.

#SEC

Military Bases Turn Into Small Cities as Afghans Wait Months for Homes in U.S.

An estimated 53,000 evacuees from Kabul remain on eight military bases across the country. Thousands more are waiting at U.S. bases abroad to come to the United States.

In late August, evacuees from Afghanistan began arriving by the busload to the #Fort_McCoy_Army_base in the Midwest, carrying little more than cellphones and harrowing tales of their narrow escapes from a country they may never see again. They were greeted by soldiers, assigned rooms in white barracks and advised not to stray into the surrounding forest, lest they get lost.

More than a month later, the remote base some 170 miles from Milwaukee is home to 12,600 Afghan evacuees, almost half of them children, now bigger than any city in western Wisconsin’s Monroe County.

The story is much the same on seven other military installations from Texas to New Jersey. Overall, roughly 53,000 Afghans have been living at these bases since the chaotic evacuation from Kabul this summer that marked the end of 20 years of war. While many Americans have turned their attention away from the largest evacuation of war refugees since Vietnam, the operation is very much a work in progress here, overseen by a host of federal agencies and thousands of U.S. troops.

While an initial group of about 2,600 people — largely former military translators and others who helped allied forces during the war — moved quickly into American communities, a vast majority remain stranded on these sprawling military way stations, uncertain of when they will be able to start the new American lives they were expecting. An additional 14,000 people are still on bases abroad, waiting for transfer to the United States.

“We built a city to house almost 13,000 guests,” said Col. Jen McDonough, deputy commander for sustainment at Fort McCoy, where about 1,600 service members are tasked with ensuring the massive operation runs smoothly.

On a recent warm autumn day here, refugees played a pickup game of soccer with soldiers, young children made arts and crafts with volunteers while their mothers studied English in an adjacent classroom, and families at a warehouse rummaged through boxes of donated underwear, shirts and jackets.

Afghan evacuees said they were grateful for the warm reception they have received at the fort, but for many, the long wait has been grueling. None have left the base since arriving, unless they were green card holders or U.S. citizens.

“I have asked many times about the date of departure,’’ said Farwardin Khorasani, 36, who was an interpreter at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. He fled Afghanistan with his wife and two young daughters and hopes to relocate to Sacramento. “We are jobless here and have nothing to do.”

U.S. officials say the delays are a result of a measles outbreak, medical checks and a vaccination campaign, as well as the need to complete immigration processing, which involves interviews, biometric exams and applications for work permits. Most bases in the United States are at or near capacity, and Afghan evacuees waiting on bases in the Middle East, Spain and Germany can be flown in only once space opens up.

A shortage of housing also is creating delays. Many families wish to settle where they already have friends or relatives, in places with existing Afghan communities such as California and the Washington, D.C., area. But officials have said that a dearth of affordable apartments could postpone their resettlement. On Thursday, Congress passed a short-term spending bill that included $6.3 billion to relocate and settle Afghan refugees.

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of the United States Northern Command, which oversees the operation at Fort McCoy, said the military was prepared to accommodate arrivals on bases through the spring, giving the authorities time to work through the housing shortage.

“We’ve built housing capacity and we are providing our Afghan guests the environment they need,” he said.

One of the first priorities has been to inoculate evacuees against a variety of diseases.

There have been 24 cases of measles, prompting a vaccination campaign against that illness, along with mumps, rubella and polio, an effort that is just winding down. People must wait at least 21 days after those vaccinations before receiving medical clearance to leave the bases.

Almost 85 percent of all evacuees on bases have received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine against the coronavirus, and the rate of infection among the population is less than 1 percent, General VanHerck said.

The bases also have seen crime, not unlike densely packed cities.

Two Afghan evacuees are in federal custody; one has been charged with engaging in a sexual act with a minor and another charged with assaulting his spouse, both at Fort McCoy.

The F.B.I. is investigating an assault on a female service member by Afghan men at Fort Bliss in El Paso. And in Quantico, Va., a military police officer on guard duty reported that he had observed a 24-year-old Afghan sexually assaulting a 3-year-old Afghan girl, according to a criminal complaint.

General VanHerck said the military would “continue taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety” of both those working on the base and the Afghan evacuees. He said many reports to law enforcement were made by Afghans.

The residents seen on a tightly controlled media tour of the base represented a cross-section of Afghan society.

Among them was a group of 148 young women who hoped to finish their university education in the United States, and the principal of an international school. There was an Afghan Air Force pilot who had learned to fly UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters in Alabama and Texas.

There were men and women from remote provinces, including a cook who had prepared food for soldiers in a far-flung outpost. Some people wore traditional Afghan attire. Others donned jeans and T-shirts. About half knew some English, but others would need to begin learning to read and write once they resettled in the United States, officials said.

Farzana Mohammadi, a member of the Afghan women’s Paralympic basketball team who has been unable to walk since she had polio as a child, said she hoped to keep playing sports and to study psychology in Seattle.

While optimistic about her own future, “I am only thinking all the time about my parents and younger sister,” said Ms. Mohammadi, 24, whose family was still in Kabul.

About 50 to 60 people live in each two-story barracks, where single beds sit side-by-side. For privacy, families have improvised partitions using sheets.

There are robust security details outside the living quarters, which are clustered into “communities,” each with a center where evacuees can get personal hygiene items or learn about activities, such as town halls with military leadership.

“Grab and go” cafes offering tea, coffee and light snacks are bustling. But the eight self-service laundromats have been underutilized: Most Afghans have preferred to wash their clothing by hand and hang it out to dry on lines, which the military quickly erected.

An imam certifies that meals served at four cafeterias are halal, but the lines to buy pizza at the base exchange often stretch outside.

After weeks of being bottled up together with no timeline for leaving, there have been tensions among the residents. Fights often break out in the line to enter the cafeteria, and there are occasional arguments between people from different tribes.

Several young single women said they were verbally harassed by Afghan men because they were on the base alone.

“We were told, ‘How are you here without your male family member? We won’t tolerate this,’” recalled Nilab Ibrahimy, 23, who made it to the Kabul airport in a convoy of seven buses carrying the 148 students from the Asian University for Women, based in Bangladesh, where they had all been studying before the coronavirus outbreak stranded them in Kabul.

Ms. Ibrahimy took the issue to the U.S. military leadership, and the entire group of students was moved to another barracks housing mainly single women. There have been no problems since, she and others said.

Passing the time has been another challenge. “When we arrived here, we were sitting in our rooms doing nothing,” said Sepehra Azami, 25, who was studying economics before she fled.

Ms. Azami, Ms. Ibrahimy and another friend, Batool Bahnam, asked some mothers whether they were interested in having their children learn basic conversational English: What is your name? How are you? Thank you.

They were. Soon, adults began approaching the young women about lessons, too, and classes were added for women and men. “The demand is really high,” Ms. Azami said. “Families are struggling with language barriers.”

Mounds of clothing have been donated to the refugees, but it took until last week for every evacuee to receive items.

On Thursday, it was finally the turn of a 12-year-old boy named Nayatola. Dressed in a brown kurta pajama, he searched for clothes in his size. He ended up with an oversize white pullover. On his feet were the adult-size plastic slippers his father had brought from Afghanistan — Nayatola had no other shoes.

As the day wore on, children could be seen outside doodling with chalk. When the visitors passed by, they called out. “Hello, how are you?” a few of them shouted, trying out their new English phrases.

Abdulhadi Pageman, the former Afghan Air Force pilot, looked toward the warehouse where families were getting clothes. “These children are the future of the United States,” he said, talking about the children on the base. “They will be scientists, engineers. You just have to be patient.”

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/us/afghan-evacuees-military-bases.html?referringSource=articleShare

#bases_militaires #réfugiés #asile #migrations #transit #Afghanistan #réfugiés_afghans #limbe

–—

A mettre en lien avec les pays qui ont accepté d’accueillir des #réfugiés_afghans sur demande des #Etats-Unis (#USA) et dans l’attente d’une #réinstallation (qui n’arrivera jamais ?). Métaliste ici :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/928551
#pays_de_transit

ping @isskein @karine4

Red Covid - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/briefing/covid-red-states-vaccinations.html

More recently, the racial gaps — while still existing — have narrowed. The partisan gap, however, continues to be enormous. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 86 percent of Democratic voters had received at least one shot, compared with 60 percent of Republican voters.

The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/27/multimedia/27-MORNING-sub2-STATE-VAX-VOTE-PLOT/27-MORNING-sub2-STATE-VAX-VOTE-PLOT-superJumbo.png

#Virginia Removes Robert E. Lee Statue From State Capital

https://i.imgur.com/AR3hPjQ.png

The Confederate memorial was erected in 1890, the first of six monuments that became symbols of white power along the main boulevard in #Richmond.

One of the nation’s largest Confederate monuments — a soaring statue of Robert E. Lee, the South’s Civil War general — was hoisted off its pedestal in downtown Richmond, Va., on Wednesday, bringing to an end the era of Confederate statues in the city that is best known for them.

At 8:54 a.m., a man in an orange jacket waved his arms, and the 21-foot statue rose into the air and glided, slowly, to a flatbed truck below. The sun had just come out and illuminated the towering, graffiti-scrawled granite pedestal as a small crowd let out a cheer.

“As a native of Richmond, I want to say that the head of the snake has been removed,” said Gary Flowers, a Black radio show host and civil rights activist at the scene.

It was an emotional and deeply symbolic moment for a city that was once the capital of the Confederacy. The Lee statue was erected in 1890, the first of six Confederate monuments — symbols of white power — to dot Monument Avenue, a grassy boulevard that was a proud feature of the city’s architecture and a coveted address. On Wednesday, it became the last of them to be removed, opening up the story of this city to all of its residents to write.

“This city belongs to all of us, not just some of us,” said David Bailey, who is Black and whose nonprofit organization, Arrabon, helps churches with racial reconciliation work. “Now we can try to figure out what’s next. We are creating a new legacy.”

The country has periodically wrestled over monuments to its Confederate past, including in 2017, after a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., touched off efforts to tear them down — and to put them up. Richmond, too, removed some after the murder of George Floyd last year, in a sudden operation that took many by surprise. But the statue of General Lee endured, mostly because of its complicated legal status. That was clarified last week by the Supreme Court of Virginia. On Monday, Gov. Ralph Northam, who had called for its removal last year, announced he would finally do it.

The battle over Civil War memory has been with Americans since the war itself. At its root, it is a power struggle over who has the right to decide how history is remembered. It is painful because it involves the most traumatic event the nation has experienced, and one that is still, to some extent, unprocessed, largely because the South came up with its own version of the war — that it was a noble fight for states’ rights, not slavery.

The Lee monument, a bronze sculpture made by a French sculptor, was erected to make those points. When it was unveiled, on May 29, 1890, the crowd that turned out was the largest gathering in Richmond since the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy in 1862, with around 150,000 participants, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

The statues on Monument Avenue were at the heart of Richmond’s identity, and the fact that they came down seemed to surprise almost everybody.

“I would have thought somebody would blow up Richmond first before anyone would have let that happen,” Mr. Bailey said. “It’s a modern-day miracle.”

But Richmond has changed. And as it became more diverse, demographically and politically, more of its residents began to question the memorials. Many people interviewed in this once conservative city said that they might not have agreed in past years, but that now the removal of the statues felt right.

“I’ve evolved,” said Irv Cantor, a moderate Democrat in Richmond, who is white and whose house is on Monument Avenue. “I was naïvely thinking that we could keep these statues and just add new ones to show the true history, and everything would be fine.”

But he said the past few years of momentous events involving race, from the election of the first Black president, to the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, to the killing of Mr. Floyd last summer and the protests that followed, showed him that the monuments were fundamentally in conflict with fairness in America.

“Now I understand the resentment that folks have toward these monuments,” said Mr. Cantor, who is 68. “I don’t think they can exist anymore.”

Now they are nearly all gone, and the city is littered with a series of empty pedestals, a kind of symbol of America’s unfinished business of race that is particularly characteristic of Richmond. (One smaller Confederate monument remains, of General A.P. Hill, in northern Richmond, far from Monument Avenue. The city has enacted a plan to remove it, but it has taken time because his remains are inside.)

“We’ve begun to peel back the scabs,” said the Rev. Sylvester Turner, pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church in the Richmond neighborhood of Eastview, who has worked on racial reconciliation in the city for 30 years. “When you do that, you experience a lot of pain and a lot of pushback, and I think we are in that place.”

Richmond’s statue story is not typical. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that while several Democratic-controlled cities in the South have removed Confederate statues, a vast majority have remained standing. In his state of North Carolina, there were about 220 memorials on public lands in 2017. Today, about 190 are still standing.

Progress on race in America tends to be followed by backsliding — and backlash — and many Black people interviewed in Richmond said they were bracing for that. Darryl Husband, senior pastor of Mt. Olivet Church in Richmond, works with conservative white churches and does not trust that they really want the change they say they do.

Mr. Husband was unsentimental about the Lee statue coming down, more interested in real change that would improve the lives of Black people.

“My first feelings obviously had to do with, ‘OK, what’s next?’” he said. “The symbol is down, but how do we deal with the rest of the symptoms that symbol represented?”

In Richmond, as in many other places, the argument over race now centers on whether American institutions have racism baked in.

Maggie Johnston, 62, a waitress who is white, might have rejected that notion earlier in life. She grew up in a Republican family whose firm belief was that hard work always brought success. But time in prison — and a wrenching reckoning with her own mistakes — opened her eyes.

Ms. Johnston, who watched the monument come down on Wednesday while walking her dog Peanut, said her friends say, “I’m a hard-working person and I don’t have any privilege.” She tells them that privilege is not about money. “Privilege is about thinking the world works for everybody else the way it works for you.”

Mr. Husband argued that the current thinking from conservatives on race was about who has the right to define America: “It says don’t mess with our power. Our power is in our ability to create the narrative of history.”

Corey Widmer, pastor at Third Church, a mostly white, largely conservative church in Richmond, said he had wrestled with resistance to the current moment. He has worked hard to help his congregants accept how much the country has moved on race. They have read books, held Zoom sessions and debated what was happening. Some congregants changed. Others left the church.

“There’s so much fear and so much political polarization,” said Mr. Widmer, who is white. He said every pastor in Richmond who is trying to help white Christians see Black Americans’ perspective and “reckon with our own responsibility has really been grieved by the conflict and pain that it has caused.”

He added: “And yet this is how we change. Face it head on. Work through it. Love each other. Try to stay at the table. And just keep working. I don’t know what else to do.”

On Wednesday morning, with the pedestal now empty, and General Lee on his way to a state warehouse, Mr. Flowers, the radio show host, was happy. He said he planned to celebrate by telling pictures of his dead relatives that “the humiliation and agony and pain you suffered has been partly lifted.”

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/robert-e-lee-statue-virginia.html

#Robert_Lee #guerre_civile #USA #Etats-Unis #statue #toponymie #toponymie_politique #histoire

ping @cede

Study: #Ventilation Helps Reduce [#sars-cov2] Levels in Dorms - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/05/health/covid-ventilation-college-dorm.html

The study had several limitations, including the fact that it included only young adults and that symptoms and window data were self-reported. The researchers also noted that they did not measure how much of the virus present in the room was viable, or capable of infecting other people.

Source :

Longitudinal Analysis of Built Environment and #Aerosol Contamination Associated with Isolated #COVID-19 Positive Individuals | Research Square
▻https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-861942/v1

Un algorithme de Facebook confond des personnes noires avec des singes
▻https://www.rtbf.be/info/medias/detail_un-algorithme-de-facebook-confond-des-personnes-noires-avec-des-singes?i

Un algorithme de recommandation de Facebook a demandé à des utilisateurs s’ils souhaitaient voir d’autres "vidéos sur les primates" sous une vidéo d’un tabloïd britannique montrant des personnes noires, a révélé le New York Times vendredi. ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/technology/facebook-ai-race-primates.html

La vidéo du Daily Mail, vieille de plus d’un an, est intitulée "un homme blanc appelle les flics contre des hommes noirs à la marina". Elle ne montre que des personnes, pas de singes.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/03/business/03facebook-1/merlin_174655161_debe5bd8-9802-4098-b3b1-3c0dba5bf0a5-jumbo.jpg

En dessous, la question "voir plus de vidéos sur les primates ?" avec les options "Oui / Rejeter" s’est affichée sur l’écran de certains utilisateurs, d’après une capture d’écran diffusée sur Twitter par Darci Groves, une ancienne designer du géant des réseaux sociaux.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/09/03/business/03facebook-2/03facebook-2-jumbo.jpg

"C’est scandaleux", a-t-elle commenté, appelant ses ex-collègues de Facebook à faire remonter l’affaire.

"C’est clairement une erreur inacceptable", a réagi une porte-parole de Facebook, sollicitée par l’AFP. "Nous présentons nos excuses à quiconque a vu ces recommandations insultantes."

#Facebook #intelligence_artificielle #racisme

Purdue Pharma Is Dissolved and Sacklers Pay $4.5 Billion to Settle Opioid Claims - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/05/29/science/00PURDUE-promo/00PURDUE-promo-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

Et donc pouvoir mener une retraite dorée grâce aux dizaines sinon centaine de milliards qui leur restent

…the settlement grants them, as well as Purdue, shields against all civil opioid claims.

#trompe_l’oeil #états-unis #injustice #sans_vergogne

#American_University of #Afghanistan students and relatives trying to flee were sent home.

Hundreds of students, their relatives and staff of #American_University_of_Afghanistan gathered at a safe house on Sunday and boarded buses in what was supposed to be a final attempt at evacuation on U.S. military flights, the students said.

But after seven hours of waiting for clearance to enter the airport gates and driving around the city, the group met a dead end: Evacuations were permanently called off. The airport gates remained a security threat, and civilian evacuations were ending Monday.

“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” said an email sent to students from the university administration on Sunday afternoon, which was shared with The New York Times.

“The scholar pilgrims who were turned away today while seeking safe passage to a better future need the help of the U.S. government who gave them the hope they must not lose,” the American University president, Ian Bickford, said.

The email asked the 600 or so students and relatives to return home. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be completed by a Tuesday deadline, so the U.S. military is turning from evacuating civilians to bringing its own personnel home.

The group was then alarmed after the U.S. military, following protocol, shared a list of names and passport information of hundreds of students and their families with the Taliban guarding the airport checkpoints, the university president said.

“They told us: we have given your names to the Taliban,” said Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore studying business administration who was on the bus on Sunday. “We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”

Hosay earned a scholarship that covered half of her tuition. She wanted to get an M.B.A. and start an all-female engineering firm.

When the Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15, one of the first sites the group captured was the sprawling, modern American University campus. Men in traditional Afghan outfits and swinging AK-47 rifles raised the flag of the Taliban and brought down the university flag, according to student and social media photos.

The Taliban posted a picture of themselves on social media standing at the entrance of a university building with an ominous message, saying they were where America trained infidel “wolves” to corrupt the minds of Muslims.

The photograph was widely shared among Afghans and sent students and alumni into hiding. They had reason to be scared. In 2016, the Taliban attacked the campus with explosives and guns in a terrorist assault that lasted 10 hours and killed 15 people, including seven students.

The university shut down its campus on Aug. 14 as word reached that the Taliban were on the outskirts of Kabul. The American University president, Ian Bickford, and foreign staff left Kabul for Doha that night.

Mr. Bickford said in an interview last week that he was working with the State Department to evacuate about 1,200 students and alumni. But on Friday after the deadly attack on the airport, Mr. Bickford said that effort had become much more complicated.

Mr. Bickford said the university was committed to ensuring all enrolled students would finish their degrees remotely.

The American University of Afghanistan opened in 2006 with most of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development, which gave $160 million. It was one of the U.S.A.I.D.’s largest civilian projects in Afghanistan.

For over two weeks, students and alumni said they struggled emotionally as their status changed from college students to fugitives overnight.

Several students interviewed repeated a poetic saying in Dari: “Our hopes and dreams have turned into dust.”

Mohammad, a 31-year-old father of three and part-time government ministry worker, had three more courses left to finish his degree in business administration.

His job and salary are now gone. His degree is in jeopardy.

“It’s as if you throw a glass on a cement floor and your life shatters in a split second,” he said Sunday from a safe house.

Yasser, a 27-year-old political science student, said he was told in an email from the university on Saturday to report to a safe location for evacuation. But after President Biden said there were security threats to the airport, the plan was scrapped and everyone was sent home.

Early Sunday morning, Yasser received another email from the university asking him to go to a safe house at 7:45 a.m. The students were told to bring only a backpack with two outfits. Videos shared with The New York Times of the evacuation show hundreds of students, carrying backpacks waiting on the roadside. Dozens of buses are lined up.

The chitchat among students abruptly ends and someone gasps. Someone cries. The students have just been told that evacuations have been called off.

“It was a frightening day,” Yasser said. “We went there anticipating to be rescued and returned home defeated.”

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/29/world/taliban-american-university-of-kabul-afghanistan.html
#étudiants #université #Kabul

Maker of Rapid Covid Tests Told Factory to Destroy Inventory - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/abbott-covid-tests.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/20/us/20-virus-test-promo/merlin_185846220_e9bd68cd-7951-4cec-91f8-aef2d60d6002-facebookJumbo.jpg

Abbott, un « #microcosme de la prise en charge des crises de #santé_publique par le secteur #privé »

America was notoriously slow in rolling out testing in the early days of the pandemic, and *the story of the Abbott tests is a microcosm of the larger challenges of ensuring that the private sector can deliver the tools needed to fight public health crises, both before they happen and during the twists and turns of an actual event.

Et ça ment comme pas possible

Asked why the materials needed to be thrown away, Mr. Ford cited a limited shelf life. But photographs taken in June and July of some of the estimated 8.6 million Abbott test cards employees said were shredded show expiration dates more than seven months away.

[…]

As for donating BinaxNOW, it is a U.S. product that is not registered internationally, Mr. Ford said. “We couldn’t just ship it there.” But he acknowledged that the company did in fact send a million tests to India in May, paid for by the U.S. government.

#covid-19 #pharma #corruption #états-unis

I Joined a Penguin NFT Club. Here’s What Happened. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/technology/penguin-nft-club.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/11/business/00roose-alt2/00roose-alt2-facebookJumbo.jpg

Par Kevin Roose

I decided to join the Pudgy Penguins because … well, it’s August and I’m bored. But I also wanted to explore a more serious undercurrent. For years, technologists have been predicting the rise of the “metaverse,” an all-encompassing digital world that will eventually have its own forms of identity, community and governance. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, recently said the social network would pivot to becoming a “metaverse company.” Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, has also bet big on the metaverse, raising $1 billion to build its own version of digital reality.

Metaverse enthusiasts believe that our digital identities will eventually become just as meaningful as our offline selves, and that we’ll spend our money accordingly. Instead of putting art on the walls of our homes, they predict, we’ll put NFTs in our virtual Zoom backgrounds. Instead of buying new clothes, we’ll splurge on premium skins for our V.R. avatars.

Pudgy Penguins, and similar NFT projects, are a bet on this digitized future.

“The way I describe it to my family members and friends is like, people buy Supreme clothes, or they buy a Rolex,” Clayton Patterson, 23, one of the founders of Pudgy Penguins, told me in an interview. “There are all these ways to tell everyone that you’re wealthy. But a lot of those things can actually be faked. And with an NFT, you can’t fake it.”

The first community NFT was the CryptoPunks, a series of 10,000 pixelated characters that was sold starting in 2017. They became a luxury status symbol, with single images selling for millions of dollars, and paved the way for other community NFTs, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a group of 10,000 cartoon primates that now sell for upward of $45,000 apiece.

Mr. Patterson and his co-founders hope that Pudgy Penguins will end up joining the NFT pantheon. The original collection sold out within 20 minutes, and more than $25 million worth of them have changed hands overall, according to NFT Stats, a website that aggregates data on NFT sales. Early this week, it was still possible to score a penguin for a few thousand dollars, but penguins with rare features, such as different-colored backgrounds or gold medals around their necks, can go for much more. The most expensive was Pudgy Penguin #6873, which sold for $469,000.

They were a gift, Mr. Patterson said, in appreciation of my willingness to learn about the community. (Since I can’t ethically accept gifts, I’ll be sending my Pudgy Penguins back to Mr. Patterson after this column publishes.)

I then joined the Pudgy Penguin Discord server, where I was greeted by a throng of fellow owners who were excited to see me, not least because they thought getting attention from The Times would increase the value of their own penguins. (After I received my images, I got offers to buy them for thousands of dollars.) The co-founders of Pudgy Penguins earn a royalty every time a penguin is sold, but other owners stand to profit only if they can resell their penguins for more than they paid.

To the uninitiated, Pudgy Penguins may seem fundamentally pointless, and in some ways, they are. But I wouldn’t bet against them for the same reason I wouldn’t bet against the continued appeal of blue check marks on Twitter or O.G. Instagram user names. Humans are status-seeking creatures, always looking for new ways to elevate ourselves above the pack. The first iteration of the internet tended to flatten status distinctions, or at least make them harder to pin down — “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” went the proverb — but newer technologies, including NFTs, have allowed for more obvious kinds of signaling.

#NFT #Pudgy_Penguins #Culture_numérique

New Data Suggest J. & J. Vaccine Works Against #Delta and recipients don’t need a booster shot - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/science/johnson-delta-vaccine-booster.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/08/06/us/06virus-briefing-JNJ-vax-SWAP/06virus-briefing-JNJ-vax-SWAP-facebookJumbo.jpg

Space Station Tilted After New Russian Module Fires Thrusters - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/science/russia-module-space-station.html

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The Nauka module met up with the orbiting outpost on Thursday morning, and later unexpectedly fired its thrusters.

Hours after a new Russian module docked at the International Space Station on Thursday, it unexpectedly fired its thrusters again and set the space station into an unexpected spin.

It took 45 minutes for mission controllers to get the situation back under control. NASA officials said there was no danger to the seven astronauts on the space station.

“Today was another day where we are learning how important it is to have an operational team that is prepared for every contingency,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator, said during a news conference Thursday afternoon.

The 23-ton module, named Nauka, adds a laboratory, an additional sleeping quarter and other capabilities to the Russian segment of the space station. After its launch last week, it encountered a series of propulsion problems that Russian controllers were able to resolve ahead of its rendezvous with the space station.

On Thursday morning at 9:29 a.m. Eastern time, the module gently docked with the outpost in orbit. Cheers could be heard over the audio feed as the operation was completed. Even that success was accompanied with some drama as the automatic docking system did not operate quite as expected, and Oleg Novitsky, a Russian astronaut aboard the station, had to take over manual control of Nauka to guide it the final few feet to its docking port.

“Oleg, congratulations, that was not an easy docking,” Russia’s ground control said to Mr. Novitskiy.

At about 12:34 p.m. Eastern time, Nauka upended the astronauts’ day when its thrusters unexpectedly started firing, twisting the orientation of the space station. The rate of spin reached a maximum of about half a degree a second and the station’s orientation twisted by 45 degrees.

If it had continued to spin at half a degree a second, the space station would have flipped around entirely in about 12 minutes.

Controllers fired other thrusters — first on Zvezda, another Russian module, then on a docked Russian Progress cargo vehicle — to push the space station back into its correct position by 1:30 p.m.

Opinion | Ben & Jerry’s Founders on the Company’s Israel Policy
July 28, 2021
By Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/ben-and-jerry-israel.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/07/28/opinion/28Ben-andJerry/28Ben-andJerry-facebookJumbo.jpg

Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield founded Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings in 1978.

We are the founders of Ben & Jerry’s. We are also proud Jews. It’s part of who we are and how we’ve identified ourselves for our whole lives. As our company began to expand internationally, Israel was one of our first overseas markets. We were then, and remain today, supporters of the State of Israel.

But it’s possible to support Israel and oppose some of its policies, just as we’ve opposed policies of the U.S. government. As such, we unequivocally support the decision of the company to end business in the occupied territories, which a majority of the international community, including the United Nations, has deemed an illegal occupation.

While we no longer have any operational control of the company we founded in 1978, we’re proud of its action and believe it is on the right side of history. In our view, ending the sales of ice cream in the occupied territories is one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history. It was especially brave of the company. Even though it undoubtedly knew that the response would be swift and powerful, Ben & Jerry’s took the step to align its business and operations with its progressive values.

#BDS

#Pfizer will turn to a plant in Africa to help supply the continent with vaccines next year. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/business/pfizer-will-turn-to-a-plant-in-africa-to-help-supply-the-continent-with-vac

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/07/21/multimedia/21virus-briefing-southafrica-vaccine-SWAP/21virus-briefing-southafrica-vaccine-SWAP-facebookJumbo.jpg

Il est hors de question de laisser les Sud-Africains fabriquer eux-mêmes les #vaccins,

… the South African producer, Biovac, will only be handling distribution and “fill-finish” — the final phase of the manufacturing process, during which the vaccine is placed in vials and packaged for shipping. It will rely on Pfizer facilities in Europe to make the vaccine substance and ship it to its Cape Town facility.

#Afrique #criminels

No Net Benefit of #Aducanumab for Alzheimer’s Disease, Panel Rules
▻https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/954909

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An influential, independent panel unanimously voted that aducanumab (Aduhelm) offers no benefit for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), adding to growing opposition from medical experts to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of this controversial drug.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) asked one of its expert panels, the California Technology Assessment Forum, to consider the available data about aducanumab and requested that members vote on whether there was sufficient evidence of a net benefit of aducanumab plus supportive care vs supportive care alone. All 15 panelists voted no.

#FDA #sans_vergogne

As Lebanon Collapses, Riad Salameh Faces Questions - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/lebanon-riad-salameh.html

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Et bien sûr, la partie essentielle ce n’est pas le #MSM qu’est le NYT qui nous la dit :

Nicholas Noe sur Twitter : “Most troubling part-the piece actively obfuscates your key pt by repeatedly stressing Native culpability Only: He “built an empire inside central bank & used it to make himself essential to rich & powerful players across Lebanon’s political spectrum.” What’s missing? We all know…2/2” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/NoeNicholas/status/1416704741854351366

Gregg Carlstrom sur Twitter : “Salameh turned the central bank into a patronage network and bought off Lebanese elites. But he also did all of this with the assent of Western powers that defended him for many years and didn’t bother to scrutinize him at all.” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/glcarlstrom/status/1416685733348265985

#Liban “#communauté_internationale” #complicité

Eric Topol sur Twitter : "In case you didn’t know #VaccinesWork against #Delta ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/us/arkansas-covid-19-vaccine.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Hom / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1416440546445316102

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6g09ZiVgAIOED7?format=jpg&name=large#.jpg

Opinion | Let’s Make Google a Public Good - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/opinion/google-utility-antitrust-technology.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/07/11/opinion/07yost_2/07yost_2-facebookJumbo.jpg

The preface to Google’s parent company’s code of conduct says, “Do the right thing — follow the law, act honorably and treat co-workers with courtesy, support and respect.” Google could do that by acknowledging what is obvious: It’s so dominant that the rules of private companies no longer apply to it.

The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/technology/computer-energy-use-study.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/06/26/business/24TECH-ENERGY-print/24TECH-ENERGY-3-facebookJumbo.jpg