There is some great news from Texas today: Covid cases and hospitalisations continue to fall more than two weeks after the state lifted its mask mandate and allowed businesses to reopen to full capacity. President Joe Biden dismissed this return to normality as “Neanderthal thinking”, but it appears as though it has not been the “big mistake” he claimed it would be. Let’s hope that it stays this way. The Mail has the story.
On Saturday, Texas’ seven-day Covid positivity rate reached an all-time low of 5.27%, while hospitalisations fell to their lowest level since October, according to the latest state data.
The state recorded 2,292 new coronavirus cases, about 500 fewer on average from last week, and 107 new deaths.
The number of people hospitalised with coronavirus, meanwhile, dipped to 3,308.
The latest figure marks a significant decline in hospitalisations in the state which had seen levels soar past 14,000 for a couple of days in January.
The drop comes 17 days after Republican Governor Greg Abbott ended the statewide mask mandate and other Covid safety measures.
Abbott took to Twitter on Saturday to celebrate the state’s progress, saying: “Today Texas hit an all-time recorded low for the seven-day Covid positivity rate: 5.27%. It’s been below 6% for 5 days & below 10% for an entire month.
“Covid hospitalisations declined again – now at the lowest level since October 3rd. Vaccinations continue to increase rapidly.”
Our leaders could certainly learn some lessons from what is happening on the other side of the pond.
Worth reading in full.
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A warning that clicking on a link to a 3rd party platform is a perfectly reasonable and sensible precaution, it protects Twitters users from malicious sites they can’t check (to make sure your blog is safe but someone’s site hosting a scam isn’t) every link.
Surely if Twitter wants to offer you a free service, but place certain restrictions on that to protect their business model, that also is perfectly reasonable? You dont have to use Twitter, maybe a better alternative could spring up, maybe on Substack one already has?
I agree up to a point but tend to think that in the long term it’s better to keep up with or beat your commercial rivals by being better than them and improving your own product.
But what they did temporarily was preferable to the political stuff Twitter used to engage in.
I’m not a fan of warnings regarding external sites – it should be caveat emptor. It’s just yet more noise and again has been and is being abused by many platforms for political purposes.
I think this is a matter between Twitter and Substack which unfortunately has affected some user who rely on both. It’s resolved now it seems. But Twitter is not wrong here. Copyright also covers collated and mechanised works. If you have spent effort building a database of public phone numbers or compiling a dictionary of words or word games, others are not allowed to copy and sell your collation. In these two examples proving that has been done would be difficult or near impossible as only a few changes are required to obscure any and all clue as to how the material has been gathered and if you happen to have collated the same materials through your own efforts, that is perfectly legal. But in this Substack/Twitter spat, Substack had been engaging in industrialised (read automated) scraping of Twitter tweets referring users to Substack and Twitter could see the Substack servers doing it; presumably in order to encourage or enable conversation threads in their new service branching off of those tweets. If they were doing that, it is copyright theft. This doesn’t relate to theft of the content of the tweets themselves, which are referred to and quoted publicly all over the place, but theft of Twitter’s work-effort their database – the collation.
Thanks for that – I wasn’t aware of this. If that’s the case then Twitter have a point. Glad it seems to have been resolved.
Young Jack – buy your own domain.
e.g. http://www.jackwatson.press is still available
And making and maintaining your own website will be a useful string to your bow (if you haven’t done such things already, it is a lot easier these days!)
If you want to keep using Twitter (I can fully understand why you will feel you still need to, even if you don’t want to) then publicising that domain on Twitter shouldn’t cause you any issues. I understand you can plug Substack functionality into your own domain, too.
Good luck and keep kicking, young fella mi lad.
Twitter is “a great way for the media and celebrities to cite me. Not many social media platforms allow you to connect with these people, which is something I have been working hard to achieve.”
I wouldn’t bother chasing celebrities, it will only end in tears. Rely on your own abilities. If your work is good enough you will make it.
First and foremost Elon Musk is an entrepreneur businessman and a fantastically successful one. He will act to protect his business in a very competitive world of social media. That’s all there is to know.