First Looks category archive

Seth takes a closer look at the drone drama in New Jersey.

Jennifer Gerlach, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, reports on a recent study that seems to confirm that “social” media isn’t.

A study of 23,532 people explored possible relationships between self-esteem, narcissistic personality traits, and social media use. Of interest, low self-esteem and narcissistic personality traits are both correlated with high levels of social media engagement (Andreassen et al., 2017).

Follow the link for her thoughts on the matter.

And remember, you don’t use “social” media. “Social” media companies use you.

Off to drink liberally.

And it is a scam.

You can voucher on it, as the Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts points out.

It appears that, in reaction to Elon Musk’s antics, some Tesla owners are bumper-stickering it to him.

Can you think of someone who might be a suitable subject for testing the validity of this theory?

Off to drink liberally.

John Locke:

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

Via All Things Amazing, an image site (some images NSFW).

This witch.

We went out for breakfast, then swung by the Central Library to cast our ballots. (Virginia Beach satellite early voting sites are open this week, so you don’t have to drive way down into the boondocks to City Hall to vote early.)

There was a line, but it moved along very nicely.

Now all we have left to do is sweat out the wait until the results are in to find out whether we still have a democracy.

The EFF hears a rhyme:

Big Tech is borrowing a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook to wage war on your privacy, according to Jake Snow of the ACLU of Northern California. We agree.

Follow the link for a parsing of the poesy.

____________________

*Mark Twain.

No surprises here.

More courtesy on the concrete.

Detectives said the 75-year-old Giddens pulled a rifle out in the middle of the road rage incident, then shot and killed a 40-year-old father of three, identified by the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office as Jeffery Guida.

Giddens then turned the gun towards Guida’s truck where his three children, ages 13, 11 and 2 years old, were and pulled the trigger.

Just another day in NRA Paradise . . . .

I am not as charitable as Mike and Farron. They seem to concede that there might be somewhere somehow some legitimacy to crypto.

I think they are, as my old boss used to day, “in error.”

As far as I can tell, crypto is the most fiat of fiat currencies. It’s backed by nothing and no one and has value only because persons think it has value. It is the tulip of the computer age.

It persists only because persons will believe stuff that they see on computer screens when they would not believe the same stuff if it happened in real life before their eyes.

“Broligarchs.”

Methinks it’s spot on.

H/T Kimberley Johnson on last week’s Bob Cesca Show After Party.

In the course of discussing Squeaker of the House Mike Johnson’s refusal to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, David suggests that the past is prologue. He notes that

This is the trap of preparing people to go along with yet another attempt to overturn or invalidate an election.

I think David makes a valid point. Watch the video and decide for yourself.