First Looks category archive

Off to drink liberally.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

Court appears ready to tell Mike Lindell to get stuffed.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Michael Spivey runs the numbers and finds the correlation. A snippet:

If you compare the percentage of adults who own guns across all 50 states with the per capita gun deaths across those 50 states, the correlation is remarkable (Figure 1). States where more people own guns are the states that have high rates of gun deaths.

(snip)

The correlation in Figure 2 does not even approach statistical significance. The prevalence of mental illness in a state does not appear to be playing a role in the prevalence of guns deaths in that state.

Follow the link for the more numbers and the figures to which he alludes.

Louisiana Senator says, “Don’t count black women.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Via Job’s Anger.

At the Las Vegas Sun, Cassandra Rice has a taxing thought:

Let’s do a thought experiment. Say that you made $100,000 a day. It would take you 6,947 years to catch up to Musk’s level of fortune. This wealth is obscene. That’s the only way to describe it, when millions of people are struggling with the basics; one person having that kind of wealth is obscene.

Yet, thanks to our skewed tax code, they won’t have to pay more in taxes like the rest of us do.

Follow the link for more taxing thoughts.

An anti-vaxxer debates Sam about vaccinations. The result is predictable.

Aside:

Unfortunately, we have no vaccine against stupid.

Off to drink liberally.

When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, my mother subscribed to both McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal, because that’s what housewives did in the 1950s and 1960s. I would read them, because I pretty much read anything and everything I can get my hands on.

Back-alley abortions were a frequent topic in those magazines. I can’t say I understood the details back then, but I understood that women were dying needlessly because they were desperate.

And Republicans want to bring those days back.

About the other co-conspirator, well, I’ve got a whole category for lead poisoners.

Image via Job’s Anger.

Words mean what she wants them to mean.

Florida Woman.

Words fail me.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Adam Cohen looks at the issues gun control and abortion. He suggests that, as regards both issues, some persons reason backwards.

Via Job’s Anger.

Mangy comments at the Youtube page:

Though Trumpers constantly like to talk about Biden’s supposed cognitive decline, with such a limited intellect to start with, Trump’s decline is much harder to notice, since his intellect never raised to any great height. (Just ask his former professors, who have been quoted saying such things as “He was the dumbest SOB I ever taught.” Not a resounding academic endorsement.)

Recently, at a rally, Trump couldn’t remember the name of the candidate that he’d endorsed in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. He has endorsed J.D. Vance, but he said “We’ve endorsed JP…. or JD. We’ve endorsed J.D. Mandel and he’s doing great.” Josh (Not JP) Mandel is running in the primary AGAINST Trump’s endorsee. Trump created a new Frankenstein candidate, using parts of J.D. Vance and parts from Josh Mandel. Perfect really, since each one is only good for spare parts.

From the spam commenter:

Hmm it seems like your website ate my first comment (it was super long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any tips for first-time blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.

Yes indeedy-do. And it will continue to eat your spam comments and spit them back out.

Hoick! Ptui!

Aside:

The spam was not in the faux comment itself; that seemed innocent enough, like the quotation above. It was in the commenter’s (purported) email address, which linked to a hinky website.

It was not the first comment linking to said hinky website. It was more like the eleventy-first. And it will certainly not be the last.

Fortunately, I have software that catches the creeps and quarantines them so I can evaluate (and delete) them at my leisure. You have no idea how many creeps it has caught since I first blundered into the blogosphere a decade and a half ago. Heck, neither do I! But it’s well into the hundreds, if not the thousands.

Said software has served me and my two or three regular readers well.

Badtux explains why he disdains Elon Musk.

Methinks he makes some valid points.

Mangy explains his reasoning at the Youtube page:

While there is a big uproar about Kevin McCarthy’s many lies lately, the REAL story was that there were several times Kevin actually told the truth, and that has many Republicans up in arms. He told the truth about the danger in which idiotic Republican statements were placing the country and fellow Republicans. He told the truth about Trump being responsible for the events in The Capitol during the insurrection, and he told the truth about the baseless nature of “The Big Lie”. Then, he had a “come to Jesus” moment (or more precisely, a “return to Satan” moment) and went back to his tried and true modus operandi of lying, followed by lying about the lying.

The Portland Press-Herald’s Greg Kesich has been researching the history of Ukraine so as to gain some perspective into Putin’s war. He sums up some of what he has learned.

I commend his article to your attention.