From Pine View Farm

March, 2020 archive

The Epidemiologist Quacks Up 0

E. J. Montini warns us to get medical advice from persons who know what they are talking about.

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Misty Water-Colored Memories, Going Viral Dept. 0

Older couple on street looking at persons lining up for the

Click for the original image.

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Disinformation Nation 0

David does a round-up coronavirus scams. As he points out, these are not nice people.

Elsewhere, David does a round-up of coronavirus scam ads. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Viral frolics.

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What’s in a Name? 0

Sometimes, quite a lot.

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Life in the Socially Distant Future 0

Title:  Life in the Coronaverse.  Frame One, captioned

Click for the original image.

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QOTD 0

Howard Bloom:

Individual perception untainted by others’ influence does not exist.

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And God Said, “Let There Be an Exploit(ation)” 0

Words fail me.

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End Times 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Laura Otis offers a theory to account for the impulse to hoard toilet paper in the face of a respiratory disease pandemic. I think she may have a piece of the puzzle.

Here’s a bit:

For people who rely on disposable paper to clean themselves, lacking toilet paper threatens their humanity. It challenges the illusory human-animal boundary, and the artificial line between culture and nature. Loss of toilet paper points toward the dissolution of ALL boundaries, the apocalypse Bill Murray described in Ghostbusters as “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!”

Aside:

I’ve linked to several other articles also attempting to explain this phenomenon (you can find them with the search over there ——-> on the sidebar), because, frankly, the irrational stupidity (stupid irrationality?) of it leaves me gaga.

In related news, I had to visit my local drug store today and the TP shelves are still empty.

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Lowering the Barr 0

Methinks that a strong argument can be made that the current United States Attorney-General is the nation’s top law defacement official.

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The Rugged Individualist 0

Couple in truck with gun rack and bumper stickers reading

Via Job’s Anger.

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Rand Gestures 0

Karma happens.

And yes, Joe Patrice, to use your words, some Senators are indeed gobsmackingly stupid.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another great moment in politeness.

The woman had advised (the sheriff’s office–ed.) that someone may have been heard outside their home and went outside to check armed with rifles.

According to the caller, after inspecting the property they were headed back to the house when she stumbled and accidentally shot her brother in the shoulder.

Musical NotesGuns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.

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Tales of the Trumpling: the Trumpling Goes Viral 0

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonnie Tsui tells tales of Trumpling in these viral times. A snippet:

In an airport lounge at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport last week, a young woman was asked by a group of three men to move farther away due to their coronavirus anxiety. She texted her father about the exchange, who posted her note on Twitter: “‘I told them, sure, I’d move, but I’ve never been to China and that their racial profiling is what’s hurting this country.’”

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Symptomatic 0

Title:  Symptoms of pandemmic-level hypocrisy.  Image of Republican Elephant with arrows pointing to it labeled,

Via Juanita Jean.

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QOTD 0

Fergus Hume:

There are no ghosts except of a man’s own raising.

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Geeking Out 0

Mageia v. 7 with the Plasma desktop running on a Zareason desktop. The running applications are shaded (or rolled up, to use another term). The background is from my collection.

scrennshot

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A Tune for the Times 0

Warning: Some language.

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The Art of the Con, Going Viral Dept. 0

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the epidemic of scams designed to feed on the fear of COVID-19. Here’s a bit about one of them; follow the link for the lengthy litany.

And while the ink isn’t even dry on a Senate proposal to issue relief checks to individual Americans as part of a broader stimulus action, the Federal Trade Commission is already warning against scammers seeking Social Security numbers, bank accounts, or credit card numbers in order to release the funds.

“It will seem legitimate to people who have heard in the news that those distributions might be coming,” said Jonathan Sasse, marketing executive at First Orion, an Arkansas company that builds scam protections for mobile-phone users. “And often times, where scammers are very successful is if they’re dealing with a too-good-to-be-true thing like an offer of funds in times of desperate financial conditions.”

As the saying goes, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

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Facebook Frolics, Going Viral Dept. 0

Headline: Man claimed he had COVID-19 in a Facebook Live video filmed in NC Walmart, police say.

Words fail me.

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