Trivial Trade-offs with the iPhone SE(2) →

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This time, the new SE’s trade-offs seem trivial. No face scanner, shooting photos in the dark or humongous screen? Those are minor inconveniences when you are paying 40 percent less than for an iPhone 11.

Who doesn’t want to save 40% on a new iPhone that uses the fastest and more current mobile processor as well as having an excellent camera? The biggest point that agree with Brian X. Chen on his iPhone SE (2) assessment is exactly this. He goes on to mention that he is more inclined to spend the $999 on an iPhone, as am I, but on day 2, why spend any more money?

“The new iPhone SE’s lack of compromise is what makes it remarkable. Apple took all the best parts from its expensive iPhones — including a fast computing processor and an excellent camera — and squeezed them into the shell of an older iPhone with a home button and smaller screen. At the same time, it managed to include useful features that were previously exclusive to fancy new phones, like water resistance, wireless charging and so-called portrait photos.”

Collaboration is Key →

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In interviews with a dozen of the world’s leading experts on fighting epidemics, there was wide agreement on the steps that must be taken immediately.

Those experts included international public health officials who have fought AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, flu and Ebola; scientists and epidemiologists; and former health officials who led major American global health programs in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Americans must be persuaded to stay home, they said, and a system put in place to isolate the infected and care for them outside the home. Travel restrictions should be extended, they said; productions of masks and ventilators must be accelerated, and testing problems must be resolved.

For some reason, Americans are still being complacent, denialist and love ignoring the specialists. We need to work together and nip this NOW! Besides it being already a bit late, it is ever too lat to save yourself and friends.

Drink Wine for Intellectual Taste Not Alcohol Levels →

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At its core, though, the debate is about the philosophical purpose of fine wine. Should oenologists try to make beverages that are merely delicious? Or should the ideal be something more profound and intellectually stimulating? Are the best wines the equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters or art-house films? And who gets to decide?

In the early 2000s, he recalls, he drank a syrah from the Rhone Valley in France with another sommelier. Like other Rhone wines, it impressed him less with its fruit flavor than with its hints at things that couldn’t possibly be in the wine: roasted meat, freshly turned soil. He liked how the wine felt in his mouth, crisp rather than weighty, and how the wine evolved as he drank it, one sip after the next. These, he knew, were hallmarks of bottlings from the finest regions of Europe. When he wondered aloud why similar wines weren’t made in California, the other sommelier said it simply wasn’t possible.

One of the best articles that I have read on the NYTimes pertaining to the Parker influenced American palate of wines. What's your flavor? I'm all for the unique flavors of each grape harvest from a specific field but once again, at what cost?