I have been trying (albeit not very hard) to come up with the best way to describe the stinky hand sanitizer that is going around these days. Then today somebody in the office described it as bad tequila and I immediately thought, “yup, that’s exactly… Read More
All posts filed under “health”
Peak meat
There is evidence to suggest, according to this recent Bloomberg Green article as well as many other sources, that we may be hitting “peak meat.” That is, the global production of animal proteins appears to be declining. It declined last year in 2019 and that… Read More
Canada’s COVID Alert app
I installed and setup Health Canada’s COVID Alert app this morning. It’s really simple to do that. You don’t enter any personal information. You just select which province you’re in, agree to let it use your Bluetooth, and give it permission to share the random… Read More
Was NYC’s urban density really the problem?
I posted this chart on Twitter last night. It’s from the WSJ showing new weekly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida, New York, and the U.S. as a whole. Now, the first thing I will say is that I relinquished my hopes of becoming an amateur… Read More
The state of the restaurant industry
People are starting to eat at restaurants again. Here is a recent chart from the WSJ showing seated diners at restaurants on the OpenTable network: OpenTable has been publishing this data since the beginning of the pandemic in something they call “the state of the… Read More
Niall Ferguson discusses life with COVID-19
Last night I watched this Munk Dialogue with historian Niall Ferguson. (Some of you may remember that I wrote about a previous dialogue with Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago.) One of the sobering lessons of history is that, without a vaccine, we’re probably not… Read More
Sidewalk Labs, Uber, Lime, and the demise of urban density
Today I am going to talk about 3 things that recently happened and/or that are on my mind. Sidewalk Labs pulled out of Toronto. I think this is sad. A lot of people have said that they’re surprised, but not surprised. The official reason is… Read More
New Yorkers are actually pretty healthy
Nicole Gelinas’ recent piece in CityLab is a good reminder that — despite all of the debates around COVID-19 and urban density — New York City is actually a really healthy place to live. Part of this obviously has to do with the city’s investments… Read More
Exposure tracing APIs to be released May 1
The “contact tracing” API that Apple and Google are working on and that I wrote about earlier this month is set to be released on May 1. Given all the concerns around privacy, it’s now being referred to as “exposure tracing.” The idea, here, is… Read More
Bill Gates on the first modern pandemic
After watching the docuseries, Inside Bill’s Brain, I couldn’t help but think that the work he and Melinda are doing isn’t getting nearly enough exposure. Here they are working tirelessly to eradicate global diseases, like polio, and find new ways to combat climate change. And… Read More