2023 archive
Stray Thought 0
Spending a few minutes (or even a few hours, if it comes to that) once a year to cast a ballot is a small price to pay for preserving democracy . . .
. . . especially when you consider that persons are willing to spend days getting a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
(snip)
The Evansville family said Cheeto was shot from behind more than 10 times and left in a ditch on Boonville Harmony Road.
We are a broken society.
Accessories after the Fact, Reprise 0
Susan Estrich exposes the con. A nugget (emphasis added):
But don’t tell that to Johnson, who wasted no time at all in getting on the hard-right bandwagon, wrongly trying to convince middle-class taxpayers that they are the ones who will be paying the bill if the IRS budget isn’t cut.
QOTD 0
Tom Baker, in the voice of Donald MacDonald, and Martin Compston, in the voice of Ewan Brodie:
Donald: Sentimentality is the curse of the working classes.
Ewan: No, Don. The curse of the working classes is the upper classes.
Aside:
One more time, if you can find Monarch of the Glen, watch it (I know it is currently on Tubitv.com). It is a superb series.
The Crypto Con 0
Bloomberg columnist Lionel Laurent thinks this isn’t over yet. He notes that
Follow the link for his reasoning.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another “responsible gun owner” displays politeness in passing.
Facebook Frolics, It’s All about the Algorithm Dept. 0
The Attorneys-General of New York and New Jersey explain why they have joined 40 other states in suing Meta for knowingly endangering the mental health and well-being of children and teenagers. Here’s a bit of what they have to say:
Remember, “social” media isn’t about being social or sociable. It’s about making tech bro fat cats fatter and fatter.
You don’t use it. It uses you.
The Lake Effect 0
The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini writes of Maricopa County (AZ–ed.) Recorder Stephen Richer’s effort to hold Kari Lake accountable for her lies about the 2020 vote count in Arizona and of her attempt to be no account.
A snippet:
It’s the ultimate whining admission of someone who can dish it out, but can’t take it.
Only in Lake’s case, what she dished out was dangerous.
Follow the link for the back story.
Dissecting Dissimulation 0
The Associated Press offers a round-up of dis- and misinformation about the conflict in between Israel and Hamas currently being “shared” (that’s another word for “spewed”) on “social” media.
I commend it to your attention, not only for the debunking, but also for the descriptions how the lies are crafted, from misrepresenting videos to mistranslating transcripts. Here’s one example:
THE FACTS: The video is from 2022 and shows soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division arriving in Romania.
The footage shows soldiers dressed in fatigues getting off of a plane at night, carrying their belongings and walking across the tarmac.
One post with the video on X, formerly known as Twitter, had more than 9,000 likes with text that reads: “HAPPENING NOW: Thousands of U.S. Marines Just Landed in Israel WW3 HIGH ALERT”
However the video doesn’t show Marines nor Israel, and it isn’t recent.
The original can be found on the Defense Department’s media distribution website, which says it shows U.S. Army soldiers arriving in Romania in June last year. “101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Soldiers arrive in Mihail Kogainiceani, Romania, June 28, 2022,” reads the video’s description.
The site says the unit was there “to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank” and conduct multinational exercises with allies across Europe.
One more time, “social” media isn’t.
And it especially isn’t a reliable source of factual news.
Education Deform 0
You too can get a Arteum Baccalaurreum in Stupid from Donald Trump’s “American Academy.”
Sam and the crew natter about the nonsensical, then veer off into a bit of reality.
Incensed To Kill 0
Richard Lettieri, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, takes a look at what research to date tells about mass. He notes that the recent shooting in Maine “mass shooting of 2023, a year that has witnessed 565 such massacres as of this writing. That’s almost two such calamities per day.”
He goes on to look at qualities mass shooters tend to have in common and identifies six; follow the link for a detailed discussion of each one.
- The majority of random mass murderers are white men (emphasis in the original–ed.), middle-aged or younger.
- They have histories of mental health problems.
- Chronic cynicism and brooding distrust are why mass murderers tend to be loners.
- Ninety percent of future mass murderers had prior contact with the law.
- The revenge motive is another animating force behind random mass murder.
- They typically have a history of difficulty maintaining employment, and are frequently out of work at the time of the killings.
In my view, though, he failed to address perhaps the most significant characteristic, though, granted, it’s not a psychological one: the ready availability of weapons of war at your local store.