Dose Of News Useful Today

Tuesday, January 26th

📰 A Quick Preview

Welcome to Tuesday. Today we’re covering Google’s attempt to replace cookies, COVID variants, and Black Mirror IRL.

Let’s go. 🗞👇

⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.96 minutes to read.

Daily Sprinkle

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

–Bruce Lee

🦠 An Update on COVID-19 Variants

Several new strains of COVID-19 have emerged in recent months in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.

Preliminary studies have found the variants possess mutations that make them more infectious and, in the case of the UK strain, potentially more deadly than previous variants.

🤿 A deeper dive…
All three new variants are thought to have emerged independently of one another, with varying degrees of data collected on each one.

The UK variant, named ‘B117,’ was first identified in September, while South African researchers announced the discovery of a new strain called ‘B1351’ after cases spiked in October.
Earlier this month, Japanese researchers found a new variant named ‘P.1’ during a routine screening of four travelers arriving from Brazil.

Both Moderna & Pfizer - distributors of the only two vaccines approved for emergency use within the U.S. - have said their vaccines are effective against the B117 and B1351 variants, but reported slightly less protection against B1351.

As a result, Moderna said it will begin testing a new version of its vaccine aimed at combating the B1351 strain that could be used as a booster shot - if needed - one year after receiving the original vaccine.

🇺🇸 Closer to Home
The B117 variant has been found in at least 20 states, while the B1351 variant has not yet been detected in the U.S. Minnesota health officials confirmed the first known U.S. case of the P.1 strain yesterday in a resident who recently traveled to Brazil.

Last week, the CDC published a modeling study concluding the B117 variant is likely to become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March, in large part due to its increased transmissibility (estimated at ~50% greater than previous strains).
CDC scientists said increased spread of the B117 variant means 80% of the U.S. population would need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity – roughly 10% higher than some federal officials previously anticipated.

Nationwide, about 23.5M people have received at least one dose of the vaccine per Bloomberg, representing ~7.14% of the U.S. population. That includes the 3.44M people who have gotten the second of two shots.

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🇺🇸 Transgender Military Service

President Biden signed an executive order on Monday lifting restrictions against transgender service members in the U.S. military. The order overturned a ban imposed by former President Trump during his first year in office.

More: Biden signed two additional executive orders on Monday. The first reinstated COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-U.S. citizens traveling from Brazil, South Africa, and much of Europe, while the second directed federal agencies to strengthen requirements about “Buying American.”

Image via Axios.

LEFT CENTER → ABC News	RIGHT CENTER → WSJ

🇮🇳 Happy Republic Day

India’s 72nd annual Republic Day parade takes place today, with some events toned down due to the pandemic (rehearsal photos). Republic Day is a national holiday held each year on January 26, the anniversary of the date in 1950 when India’s constitution came into effect, marking the nation's transition from a constitutional monarchy into a newly-formed republic.

⏰ Catch Up Quick

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) announced he will not run for reelection at the end of his second six-year term in 2022, citing challenges with making progress on policy due to “partisan gridlock.” (Left-Center | Right-Center)
Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.3B defamation lawsuit yesterday against Rudy Giuliani, alleging he spread “demonstrably false” claims that Dominion committed fraud during the 2020 presidential election. (Left-Center | Right-Center)

☝️ 1 Last Thing…

🏛️ The Senate voted 84-15 to confirm Janet Yellen as the first female Treasury Secretary in U.S. history.

🎮 The Game Never Stops

The SEC halted trading of GameStop’s stock several times yesterday as the company’s shares rose as much as 144%, then briefly fell into the red on the day before closing at an all-time high of $76.79 (+18%).

Per FactSet, GameStop is the most-shorted stock on the market, with more than 138% of its shares sold-short.

With the help of an enthusiastic group of Redditors, GameStop’s stock is experiencing what is known as a “short squeeze,” where investors who have bet against a rising stock are forced to buy it to cover their losses – which in turn causes the stock to rise even more.

🔑 Key Concept – Short Selling

A stock “short” is when an investor borrows a share, sells it, and then buys the stock back to return it to the lender – essentially betting the stock they sell will drop in price.

If it does drop after selling, the short seller buys it back at a lower price and returns it to the lender. The difference between the sell price and the buy price is the short seller’s profit.

🍪 Cookie Fortunes

Google is reportedly making progress on a replacement for third-party cookies, according to a company update published Monday. Last year, Google announced cookies - pieces of user data often used by advertisers to better target online messages - will be phased out of its Google Chrome web browser in 2022.

More: Google said advertisers within its new system, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), can expect to see 95% of the conversions per dollar spent compared to cookie-based advertising. Dig deeper.

🐦 For the Birds

Twitter launched a test version of Birdwatch yesterday, a project billed as a “community-based approach to misinformation.”

The pilot, which is currently being tested by a limited group of U.S. applicants, allows users to add a note providing context to tweets they believe are misleading. Other users can vote on the note's helpfulness.

Twitter has yet to give a timeframe for Birdwatch’s full release.

More: The company also said it will make all data and algorithms behind Birdwatch available to the public.

🍩 Donut Holes:

🦚 Peacock secured exclusive streaming rights to WWE Network in the U.S. in a deal reportedly worth more than $1B.
📱 The average selling price of an iPhone in the U.S. reached a record $873 last quarter according to an industry report, up from $809 last year.
👣 Apollo CEO Leon Black announced plans to step down after an independent review found he made larger-than-expected payments to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein (totaling $158M), which the review ultimately deemed were justified.

🎓 Grad Dad

Image via Facebook.

When small business owner Mike Loven of Machesney, IL, enrolled in an undergraduate program at Grand Canyon University in 2016, he decided to keep his schoolwork a secret from his wife and two adult children.

This task was incredibly challenging given that Mike’s daughter, Taleigh, was an undergraduate student at the same school.
“It was not easy to conceal, but it was easy to play off that I was working on a spreadsheet for work and not some random calculation for an accounting class,” he told WTVO News.

After 4 ½ years of hard work, Mike graduated at the same time as his daughter with a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics, surprising his family with the announcement of his accomplishment.

In other news to cure the blues…

After sustaining severe burns during a house fire in 2018, a 9-year-old Shiba Inu named Taka became a therapy dog for young burn victims.
Robert Peters of Tipton, IN, has worked as a Pizza Hut delivery man for 31 years – last week he received a new car as a tip, complete with insurance and gas money.

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🤖 Speaker for the Dead… Microsoft has filed a patent that would allow the company to create AI chatbots imitating dead people – similar to the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back.”

❌💉 No Need For Needles… engineers at Washington University in St. Louis developed a near-painless microneedle patch that can be applied to the skin, eliminating the use of needles in a conventional blood draw.

🔌🏎️ Great Scott! The infamous DMC DeLorean might be making a comeback as an electric car. (No word yet on what happens at 88 MPH.)

🧠 Keep in Mind… a recent study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology suggests that some of the most common mental diseases - anxiety, PTSD, depression, and more - might not actually be diseases after all.*

*A well thought-out, nuanced response from one of our subscribers: I think the article you linked to is a bit misleading, and what you wrote about it is also a bit misleading. I found the study the article refers to, and I think a few things are important to note:

First of all, it is more of a "lit review" than a true scientific study. There was no hypothesis, there was no control and experimental group, there was no change to the environment of research participants, there was no statistical analysis, etc.
Secondly, it was done by a person trained in anthropology rather than psychology.
Thirdly, the main argument the author is trying to make is that those mental disorders are not purely biological, and it is more or less a critique of psychiatry's tendency to over-prescribe pills.

However, the field of psychology already agrees. Most psychologists follow a "bio-psycho-social" model, and studies have suggested that patients receive the largest relief from symptoms when they receive therapy in combination with medication. All of this to say, I don't think it's fair to simply say that "anxiety and depression may not be diseases after all". I think it is more nuanced than that.

🎥 Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The name ‘TMZ’ is an acronym for what?

A) Turner Media Zoo
B) Too Much Zest
C) Three Million Zeros
D) Thirty Mile Zone

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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Dose of Knowledge Answer

D) Thirty Mile Zone

The abbreviation TMZ, which predates the popular website and TV show, is shorthand for Thirty Mile Zone – an area in Los Angeles where production companies are exempt from having to pay overnight travel expenses when on location.