As of 1:46 p.m. EST on Saturday, a relatively new term of art, "Mass Formation Psychosis," trended in second place on Twitter, a position it continued to hold for more than 90 minutes as of this writing.
The phrase came to prominence in some circles in recent months after Belgian psychologist and statistician Dr. Mattias Desmet proffered a theory for what he sees as a global behavioral phenomenon stemming from the coronavirus pandemic declared in March 2020.

In Desmet's words:

Four things need to exist or need to be in place if you want a large scale mass phenomenon to emerge. The first thing is that there needs to be a lot of socially isolated people, people who experience a lack of social bonds. The second one is that there needs to be a lot of people who experience a lack of sense-making in life. And the third and the fourth conditions are that there needs to be a lot of free-floating anxiety and a lot of free-floating psychological discontent. So: meaning, anxiety, and discontent that is not connected to a specific representation. So it needs to be in the mind without the people being able to connect it to something. If you have these four things — lack of social bonds, lack of sense-making, free-floating anxiety, and free-floating psychological discontent — then society is highly at risk for the emergence of mass phenomenon.

Along with BlackRock and State Street, Vanguard is considered one of the "Big Three" index fund managers that dominate corporate America, and ultimately the world. "If historical trends continue, a handful of giant institutional investors will one day hold voting control of virtually every large U.S. corporation," said Jack Bogle in November 2018.

Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal shortly before his death in January 2019 in which he warned:

"Most observers expect that the share of corporate ownership by index funds will continue to grow over the next decade. It seems only a matter of time until index mutual funds cross the 50% mark. If that were to happen, the "Big Three" might own 30% or more of the U.S. stock market — effective control. I do not believe that such concentration would serve the national interest."

By November 2020, the "Big Three" managed US$15 trillion in combined assets, equivalent to more than three-quarters the size of the US economy and combined, they were the largest owner in 88% of the S&P 500 companies. By January 2021, the "Big Three" had almost US$18 trillion in assets under management.

Being the largest owner of a publicly traded company doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want, but it does give you enormous power.

Blackouts bring down governments. The Conservative administration of Ted Heath paid such a price at the ballot box in 1974 when it had failed to keep the lights on, having mishandled (to put it mildly) the coal industry. Now gas, rather than coal, is the dominant fuel in heating our homes. While a shortage of the stuff is not so critical as to lead to people freezing through lack of available energy, the effect on domestic bills could have a similar effect, at least among the poorest.

The soaring open-market price for gas combined with a consumer price cap imposed by Theresa May's administration (as pledged in her 2017 election manifesto) has caused the collapse of numerous suppliers. If the entire industry is not to be rendered bankrupt, the cap will have to be lifted to a level that would at least double the average household's gas bill.

That is a recipe for mass discontent. But, extraordinarily, it represents success in terms of the government's energy strategy. While natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels, it is still a hydrocarbon and therefore set for gradual elimination under the government's "world-leading" commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

This story has been updated to correct the snow lab's elevation.

Almost 18 feet of snow fell in North Tahoe during December, more than any other December in the past 142 years.

Located at Donner Pass, U.C. Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Lab reported a whopping 214 inches of snow through the month.

On Dec. 27, the lab recorded 193.7 inches of snow, breaking the previous record of 179 inches set in 1970. An additional 20-plus inches fell between Dec. 27 and 31, cementing 2021 in the history books for the snowiest December on record.

Here's the thing, there's about 150 people that rule the world. Anyone that wants to go into politics they're all f*cken puppets, okay? There are 150 — and they're all men — that run the world. Period. Fullstop. They control most of the important assets — they control the money flows. And these are not the tech entrepreneurs. Now, they are going to get rolled over, over the next 5-10 years by the people that are really underneath pulling the strings.

— Chamath Palihapitiya, Nov 10, 2017, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Some of you may remember Chamath Palihapitiya from his warning that social media was "ripping apart the social fabric of how society works," which received generous attention in the media and went viral as a result. What most people completely missed, and what no single major media outlet reported — at least to the best of my knowledge — was when he explained that "150 men rule the world" and they are "going to roll over" the tech entrepreneurs in the coming years.

The last two weeks have brought three new studies finding negative efficacy for two vaccine doses, meaning the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. These are study findings, not raw data, so have been adjusted for various biases and confounders, making it harder to dismiss them as anomalous or skewed.

The first is a pre-print study from Denmark, published on December 23rd, which looked at nearly all PCR-positive SARS-CoV-2 infections in Denmark from November 20th to December 12th and investigated them to see if they were likely to be the Omicron variant.

By comparing the vaccination status of those infected, the researchers found a vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant of minus-76.5% for Pfizer and minus-39.3% for Moderna three months after double vaccination (see chart above), meaning the double-vaccinated were considerably more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated.

They found the vaccine effectiveness against Omicron was significantly lower than against Delta, with Pfizer vaccine effectiveness at 53.8% and Moderna at 65% against Delta after three months. They reported that a third dose of Pfizer got vaccine effectiveness against Omicron back up to 54.6%, at least for a month. The full results are in the table below:

Premier League players are reportedly concerned that recent on-field heart problems are a possible consequence of taking the Covid-19 vaccine.

There have been a number of recent high-profile incidents involving players enduring heart problems on the field - including Christian Eriksen who collapsed due to a cardiac arrest at the European Championships and Sergio Aguero who was forced into retirement after he was diagnosed with heart arrhythmia.

The worrying spate of heart-related episodes in football has raised concerns over links with Covid and the vaccination programme to prevent it.

Severe weather brings record low temperatures in Seattle and huge snowfalls in California and Nevada

Severe weather sweeping parts of the US continues to bring record-breaking cold temperatures to the Pacific north-west and heavy snow to mountains in northern California and Nevada.

Emergency warming shelters were opened throughout Oregon and western Washington as temperatures plunged into the teens (below zero in centigrade) and forecasters said an Arctic blast would last for several days.

Sunday's snow showers blew into the Pacific north-west from the Gulf of Alaska, dumping up to six in (15 cm) across the Seattle area.

The National Weather Service said Seattle's low on Sunday was -6.7C (20F), breaking a mark set in 1948. Bellingham was -12.8C, which was three degrees colder than the previous record set in 1971.

The CDC shortened its COVID-19 isolation recommendation to 5 days for asymptomatic people after some disease experts said 10 days was too long The CDC's 10-day isolation period was excessive, experts say. The agency also reduced quarantine guidance for people exposed to COVID-19.

It was a steadfast rule for most of the pandemic: People with COVID-19 must isolate for 10 days after their symptoms start — or, if they're asymptomatic, for 10 days after their first positive COVID-19 test.


But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention altered that recommendation on Monday amid a steep rise in Omicron cases across the US.

What one year ago would be considered a crazy conspiracy theory is now becoming a reality.

A Swedish company, Epicenter, has brought forward new tech where they created a subdermal implant to show COVID-19 vaccination certificates. This makes it possible for people to keep their vaccination certificates, right under their skin in a microchip.

This implant contains a Near Field Communications (NFC) implant, whose data can be retrieved with an NFC-compatible smartphone or any such reader.