Barbados will remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state (this is mostly symbolic at this point, as they’ve been independent since 1966). However, this doesn’t mean that the sun will finally set on the British Empire — that doesn’t happen until they lose the Pitcairn Islands.
Links
Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.
Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden
Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.
We believe one of the most important things we can do right now…is to get more people showing visible support for the candidates. We hope you’ll join us in spreading this message of unity and loudly proclaim your support for the Biden/Harris campaign!
A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup.
Conspiracy vs. Democracy
How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election
This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.
Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”
Why Goodreads is bad for books
After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.
Captioning Key: Guidelines and Best Practices for Captioning Educational Video
A Visual Guide to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus: What scientists know about the inner workings of the pathogen that has infected the world.
The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months: When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman.
Fan Spending Quarantine Creating Virtual LEGO Builds For Each Episode Of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’: Two great tastes that taste great together!