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Enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources go into predicting things. Who will win elections? Who will buy the product? When will war break out? Much of this obsession with prediction is justified. We want to have foresight about particular outcomes of interest to us, so we are not caught unprepared. Even i...

Doom Eternal was delayed until March 20. It dropped – unintentionally – in the middle of a pandemic. Suddenly invasion of Earth by a terrifying inhuman force no longer felt like an abstraction. What I’ve found – sadly – quite fascinating is how the Doom 2016 reboot timeline’s narrative backdrop feels oddly in tune with the times. Even though it ...

The New York Times maintains a Coronavirus tips and advice section, with an updated publication date (as of this posting) of March 24, 2020 and an initial publication date of March 18, 2020. In response to the question “Should I wear a mask?” the Times writes: No. Unless you’re already infected, or caring for someone who is, a face mask won’...

i didn’t see this in goat simulator By now, you all probably have seen stories about crowds of people in the US that – despite COVID-19 – party, go on cruises, or throng bars and restaurants in spite of warnings of infection and pleas to flatten the curve. Naturally there has been much hand-wringing, some finger-wagging about boomers and/or m...

The last few weeks have been a profoundly radicalizing experience. Before the COVID-19 crisis entered into its current phase, it was reasonable to argue that the post-2016 counter-disinformation effort was based on good intentions but had serious flaws and was entering a state of diminishing returns. The Internet and social media, in destabiliz...

We generally assume the following about responsibility and punishment: Children are not responsible for their actions because they are not adults. Mentally impaired people are not responsible for their actions because they are not competent to make informed choices. Non-human entities (animals, bacteria, machines) ar...

It is incredible that something so small, so insignificant, and aggressively stupid as COVID-19 could be upending the world right now. But it is doing so. As tiny as it is, the virus has the power to inflict significant human harm. It reproduces, it kills, and those it does not kill it may nonetheless leave with lasting injuries. But the virus ...

COVID-19 is upon us, and panic is setting in as many Americans assimilate the following stylized facts: Containment has failed and the virus is now present across the country. US healthcare and emergency response systems are critically under-prepared. Many important political, discursive, and generalized institutiona...