2021 archive
Vaccine Nation, Have Cake, Eat It Too Dept. 0
Jonathan Weisman highlights the hypocrisy of Republicans’ blocking the road to a cure, than complaining that the cure can’t get through. A nugget:
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates hit back hard: “If COVID-19 and inflation had lobbyists to help them kill more American jobs, Kevin McCarthy would be their favorite member of Congress,” he said. “He is actively undermining the fight against COVID, which is driving inflation.”
Vaccine Nation 0
As one who remembers images of infants in iron lungs because of polio and how vaccines made polio go away, all I can say is this:
The stupid. It burns.
Shills 0
It would seem I’m not the only one bugged by all those sports (and other) betting ads that are now flooding my telly vision.
Bob Molinaro, sportswriter extraordinaire, has a wonder:
Aside:
Personally, I spell gamble “l-o-s-e” (except for that one time I hit an exacta at Delaware Park; my then-father-in-law like the play the ponies–and he was pretty good at it, too–so we’d go to the track when he visited during racing season).
I will confess that he tutored me on how to read the racing form, but I picked those two horses myself.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a Virtual Box virtual machine of Mint Cinnamon on Mageia v. 8 with the Fluxbox window manager.
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
I recently listened to a podcast in which one of my favorite podcasters spent five minutes discussing a comment that podcaster made on Twitter. The complaint was that the person to whom the comment was directed (and which the podcaster admitted had been a mistake) had responded with a screenshot of the comment, rather than with a “quote tweet.” The podcaster’s point was that said podcaster could have responded to a “quote tweet” by admitting the response was wrong and apologizing for it, but could not respond to the screenshot. (My reaction was relief and self-congratulation that I never became a twit on Twitter.)
That such an inconsequential incident, such a tempest in a twitpot, could assume such significance, if only for a short time, is, frankly, distressing, which leads me to recommend Dr. Charles Johnson’s post at Psychology Today Blogs, in which he takes a look at how our metastasized “social” media has monopolized our attention and distorted our discourse, and at what we can do about it. Here’s a bit of what he has to day:
Faking a Passing a Fake
0
Wall Street’s got nothing on the Green Bay Packers.
Blacklist “Black Friday” 0
The New Jersey Star-Ledger’s Paul Mulshine had enough of “Black Friday” (the phrase, that is) and wants it to just go away.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
It looks like Cape May and Wildwood, where we used to vacation when I lived in the Philly area, are doomed have a less than propitious future.
In these parts, spring and fall have almost disappeared. From being a matter of months, they have become a matter of weeks.
When I was a young ‘un, growing up not far from where I write this, temperatures would gradually get cooler from September to November, usually with a bit of Indian summer around Thanksgiving. Then the cold weather would set in. Frosts were common from late October on.
No more.
We haven’t had a frost yet, and, last week, I drove the recycling to the recycling center with the top down on my car. And that warm day was not an exception.
This week, we are wrapping ourselves in down, but we still haven’t had a frost.
I fear we are well past the tipping point.
A Running Man? 0
Thom talks with Dr. Mary Trump about the prospect of Donald Trump’s running for president again and about the future of the Republican Party. Spoiler: She is not sanguine.