First Looks category archive

Off to drink liberally.

Feel free to join us.

Lane Crothers shares a few thoughts on the proposed “University” of Austin.

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The University of Florida exercises its freedom of squelch.

Aside:

The UF’s defense of its actions is a masterpiece of lily-livered weasel-wording.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

Aside:

Truth (sic) Social is already playing fast and loose with software licenses.

The EFF looks at the proliferation of what it refers to at one point as “neighborhood watch” apps and reminds us, once again, that “social” media isn’t. They mention three apps specifically: Citizen, Nextdoor, and Neighbors.

A snippet:

These apps might seem like a helpful way to inform your neighbors if the mountain lion roaming your city was spotted in your neighborhood. But in practice they have been a cesspool of racial profiling, cop-calling, gatekeeping, and fear-spreading. Apps where a so-called “suspicious” person’s picture can be blasted out to a paranoid community, because someone with a smartphone thinks they don’t belong, are not helping people to “Connect and stay safe.”

As I pulled into the parking lot at my barbershop for my October haircut, driving my new(er) car with the top down, a woman was coming out of the adjacent child care center with her son, who looked to be about four years old.

As I maneuvered into a parking space, I could hear her say, “It’s called a convertible.”

Off to drink liberally.

Gene Lyons marvels at the stupid. A snippet; follow the link for the rest.

Strangest of all, of course, is that a genuine miracle cure does exist. A scientific miracle, that is: vaccines with the capacity to bring the pandemic to an end. Shackled by ignorance and paralyzed by fear, however, millions of our fellow citizens have refused to take it.

Propagandized by opportunists and madmen, and at war with everything known about communicable diseases since the life of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), many have taken refuge in humanity’s most basic pre-rational instinct: tribalism.

Today I received the notice to pay the annual registration fee for my 2003 GMC Sonoma pick-up truck.

I also received the return receipt from the certified letter that I sent to the DMV containing the appropriate form from my car registration document to notify the DMV that I no longer owned said truck. I have a new(er) car.

I’m hanging on to the former until I’m certain the latter has been properly processed.

Afterthought:

I think I shall name my car “Whitey.”

Whitey Ford.

Marauders who fly the fiendly skies.

Yet another person practices random acts of politeness.

Covidiocy is taking a toll on health care workers. Here’s a bit of the report from The Michigan Advance:

Across Michigan, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals spoke to the Advance about workplaces increasingly filled with aggressive and violent patients and their family members: people who are angry over pandemic policies, such as mask requirements and visitor restrictions, and take it out on those trying to save their lives.

Workers described people throwing punches and hurling cascades of threats at them after long waits in understaffed emergency rooms. Others will yell at doctors because they don’t believe their COVID diagnoses, and patients have threatened legal action if they don’t receive ivermectin — a drug used to deworm horses that some prominent conservatives are pushing as a COVID-19 treatment despite a specific warning from the Federal Drug Administration not to do so.

Tony Norman has more on the topic.

Republicans worry about the national debt when and only when there is a Democratic president.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Phil Reed offers some thoughts. A snippet:

Multinational companies and corporations are set up for a clear purpose—to make money. The rest, such as facilitating expression and communication between people, is just advertising and marketing.

(Syntax error fixed.)

David Lazarus explores the “your car’s extended warranty is expiring” robocall scam.

Even if you already know the calls are a scam, his explanation of the nuts-and-bolts of the con is enlightening.

Aside:

We sometimes get two or three of these a day on our cell phones and land line (yes, we still have a land line).

Per his article, the number of such calls in the United States this year is projected to be in the neighborhood of 13 billion. That’s about 40 calls for every man, woman, and child and about 120 for each registered vehicle.