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What a turd of a year, eh? 2020 didnt start with a bang. It started with a plop. Its only April and already were all frantically fumbling for a lever, hoping to flush this deuce as quickly as possible, praying our toilet-paper stash holds out and the stench doesnt linger.

Maybe we should have seen it all coming. After all, the year began with Gwyneth Paltrows ridiculous lifestyle brand, Goop, releasing a six-episode Netflix series. Yep, Gwyneth Paltrow. The college-drop-out-turned-actor who couldnt identify a vagina on a diagram while claiming to empower women with a smorgasbord of pseudoscience. The same self-proclaimed wellness guru who endorsed squirting coffee up your keister, shoving a rock into your hooha, and letting bees sting you.

In her Netflix series, the madness continued. Among other things, she praised a wizard chiropractor who manipulates peoples energy fields by pretending to do Taiichi near them—like a weird guy in your neighborhood park who wears parachute pants and always smells like sandalwood. (At least its a social-distancing-compliant method, I guess.)

It was disturbing enough that Goop is a multi-million-dollar business. With the production of a Netflix series, it seemed like humanity had hit bottom. But, boy, was that wrong. Instead, it was just a skid mark on our collective underpants—a pungent prelude to what was sliding out next.

As our attention quickly shifted to COVID-19 and its heartbreaking havoc, so did my coverage here at Ars. Beginning in early January, I started reporting on the mysterious outbreak that linked to a live-animal market in Wuhan. Since then Ive been immersed in pandemic news, wading through the gush of data and events to try to provide thoughtful, measured, evidence-based reports to keep you as informed as possible.

Thanks to Ars

Its an honor to do this work and I hope youve found it helpful—and maybe even a little comforting—in these extremely challenging, unsettling times. Its my biggest hope for my work, in fact.

But, whatever success Ive had at serving up useful coverage, its all thanks to Ars. I couldnt do what I do anywhere else—and I know, Ive worked at a lot of places.

At Ars, I have the freedom to cover topics in my beat when I want and how I want. I can dart from writing light-hearted pieces about the tech behind fart-tracking pills to exposing abuses in the pharmaceutical industry to delving into Read More – Source

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