A compelling look at the downsides of being a successful twitch streamer. You can’t stop performing, or the audience will just go elsewhere.

Mask mandates saved lives and prevented COVID-19 infections in Missouri’s biggest cities during the worst part of the delta variant wave, an analysis by the state Department of Health and Senior Services shows. But the analysis, conducted at the request of Gov. Mike Parson’s office in early November, was never made public and was only obtained by The Missouri Independent and the Documenting COVID-19 project after a Sunshine Law request to the department. The study compared infection and death rates in St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County with the rest of the state. New state health Director Donald Kauerauf wrote in an email that the study’s findings showed the effectiveness of mask mandates and forwarded it to Parson’s office. The analysis wasn’t included in material the department prepared for cabinet meetings, the emails show. Neither the health department nor Parson’s office responded to requests for comment asking why the data has not been shared publicly. The comparison showed infection rates in “masked” jurisdictions were higher than the rest of the state in the six weeks prior to the emergence of the delta variant. Case rates then fell below other regions as the surge gathered force in late May and have remained lower since that time. The statewide data shows that, from the end of April to the end of October, jurisdictions with mask mandates experienced an average of 15.8 cases per day for every 100,000 residents compared to 21.7 cases per day for every 100,000 residents in unmasked communities.

There’s a dark and quiet beauty to the evening light.

Your phone defines you, the ad seemed to suggest. Windows Phone isn’t for everybody, just the dreamers, the sports fans, the mothers, the students, the utilitarians. It’s perfect for just your kind of person, whomever that may be.

I was born in Silicon Valley and spent much of my formative years at the Java offices on Alma. I went to computer camp every summer from 1995-1999. While some kids learned to swim, I learned to code.

Designers are great at considering the use cases that make sense to them. But an A/C unit that someone would operate at night? why bother to make the control panel glow?

I’m writing this on my iPhone (full disclosure, this will be partially about blogging). It feels incredibly odd, like eating pancakes with a caviar fork. I love this device, but complex content creation is not its strong suit.

It sucked, and it was awesome.

This post has been a long time coming. It’s easy to resist the urge to create and just curate the work of others. Scoble (among many others) has discussed at length about the benefits of curation over creation. That being said, he also has a blog.