Author's archive
Stray Thought 0
I near as I can tell, the most significant (and harmful) effect of “social” media has been to turn us into a society of exhibitionists, all jumping up and down screaming, “Look at me!“
Geeking Out 0
It’s been difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year, perhaps because I’m watching my country fall apart before my eyes . . . .
But I finally got around to decorating my computer.
That’s Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager. I’m listening to Ten Years Later on the QMMP media player as xsnow decorates my screen. Dolphin is shaded near the top the screen as snow accumulates atop it.
Grasping at a Broken Straw 0
The Las Vegas Sun editorial board if we can’t get rid of the guns, we have to get rid of the prejudice.
I reckon their hearts are in the right place.
And, in other news, pigs, wings.
Maskless Marauders 0
Northeastern University runs the COVID numbers and finds that “the median death rate for counties with the strongest Republican leaning was between 40% and 300% higher than the counties that leaned Democrat,” because, to be blunt, (these are my words, not theirs) some persons chose science and some persons chose stupid.
A snippet (emphasis added); follow the link for the rest.
As part of their research, the team created models based on death counts from the country’s 2,000 counties that looked at factors ranging from socioeconomic status to obesity. Even when controlling for every other variable, the team found that political affiliation factored heavily in the death rate.
We are a society of stupid.
The Peruvian Parallel 0
The editorial board of the Bangor Daily News sees a striking similarity.
“Reactionary Populism” 0
David decodes de code.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet another oxymoronic (emphasis on the “moronic”) “responsible gun owner” allows politeness to become child’s play.
Muskrat Love 0
Hypocrisy much?
“Less than 12 hours later, multiple technology reporters have been suspended.”
I suspect I’m not the only person who has come to suspect (to put it rather mildly) that Elon Musk doesn’t know what the heck he is doing and also does not understand the concept of accountability, which is not surprising if one has never been held accountable for anything ever.
Afterthought:
Driftglass sees a pattern here.
Twits Own Twitter, Ad Hack Dept. 0
To borrow a term from Bob Cesca, more muskery. From Techdirt, via Above the Law:
It appears that Musk’s solution to this is to force people to cough up their private info.
Momento Mori 0
For some fool reason (as my mother used to say), I find myself these past few weeks missing my old internet friend Shaun Mullen, maybe because it was three years ago this month that he passed.
We emailed regularly, but we met only once, a meeting I will always remember, dining together in Newark, Delaware, as I was on my way to visit one of my kids in Philadelphia and he happened to be in Newark for some reason of his own.
I am a better person for having known him.