From Pine View Farm

July, 2021 archive

Vaccine Nation, HIPAAcrit Dept. 0

(Misplet pun correxed.)

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Maskless Marauders 0

Marauders incongruously assembled.

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Vaccine Nation: A Doctor’s Story 0

AL.com has a lengthy report on one Alabama doctor’s experiences in treating COVID-19 patients in the least vaccinated state in the nation. She reports that, as she prepares to intubate new patients, they often ask for the vaccine, and she has to tell them, “I’m sorry, it’s too late.”

Here’s a tiny little bit; follow the link for the rest.

“I try to be very non-judgmental when I’m getting a new COVID patient that’s unvaccinated, but I really just started asking them, ‘Why haven’t you gotten the vaccine?’ And I’ll just ask it point blank, in the least judgmental way possible,” she said. “And most of them, they’re very honest, they give me answers. ‘I talked to this person, I saw this thing on Facebook, I got this email, I saw this on the news,’ you know, these are all the reasons that I didn’t get vaccinated.

“And the one question that I always ask them is, did you make an appointment with your primary care doctor and ask them for their opinion on whether or not you should receive the vaccine? And so far, nobody has answered yes to that question.”

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QOTD 0

Richard Hofstadter in “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”(PDF):

(The paranoid mentality) is nothing if not coherent–in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing 0

Siberia is on fire.

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Lost in the Algorithm 0

Elvie in the car with her daughter.  Elvie says,

Click to view the original image.

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A Money Pit 0

PoliticalProf.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

It seems that politeness is for the birds.

Earlier this week, two men were formally indicted for their alleged role in the shooting death of a golden eagle in Idaho.

Considered sacred by many Native American tribes, the golden eagle is protected by a trio of federal laws: the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Lacey Act, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

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Fly the Fiendly Skies . . . 0

. . . where you can be labeled “disruptive” while you are fast asleep.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Enabling frolics.

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Vaccine Nation 0

Man wearing MAGA hat, Stars and Bars cape, and carrying Trump flag asks,

Click for the original image.

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Boebert Is the New Gohmert 0

Mike Littwin.

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QOTD 0

Daniel Levitin:

Evolution doesn’t design things… The brain is… like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction.

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A Strange Diagnosis 0

Nevertheless, I fear that it is an accurate one.

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About That Algorithm 0

Goat:  Some days I find myself just sitting around on my phone judging others and I think,

Click for the original image.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Nir Eyal explains why persons stay buried in their phones, even as they step off the curb in front of passing cars, or, indeed, drive one of said passing cars. He identities four factors designed into “social” media and messaging applications to keep you “engaged.”

Here’s the summary (emphasis added):

  • People have become attached to their devices because devices facilitate social connection and because they’re engineered to capture attention.
  • Products that lead to habit formation often involve four steps: a trigger, an action, variable rewards, and investment.
  • Understanding how people interact with their devices can lead to better iterations of technological products in the future.

Follow the link for a detailed discussion of how “social” media sucks you in.

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Counter-Factual 0

Will Bunch notes that it has been 52 years since Americans landed on the moon–a feat made possible by science, Science, after all, is the pursuit of fact. He considers why so many Americans now reject science (think vaccines, for example). A nugget (emphasis added):

Less than a year after Apollo 11 came the first Earth Day — scientists warning that industrial progress threatened environmental destruction — and also the massacre at Kent State, amid a backlash of the so-called “silent majority” against what was happening on college campuses where many researchers are employed. Just like the lunar module, distrust in modern science was engineered by humans — billionaire industrialists who funded pro-fossil-fuel think tanks, and right-wing talk radio and later cable TV ratings seekers who mocked effete “tree huggers.”

Indeed, wealthy capitalists and the politicians who aided the backlash and rode it to victories — Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Ronald Reagan — were so successful that distrust in science and the conspiracy theories that flow from that distrust now spread as virally as COVID-19 itself, among everyday folks on social media sites like Facebook. Albeit with an occasional booster shot from the most cynical media celebrities like Fox’s Tucker Carlson.

I commend his article to your attention.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another gun left unattended,
Yet another life prematurely ended.

The sheriff said the (three-year-old–ed.) child’s parents were going door-to-door for a revival and briefly left their child in the vehicle. He said the child found the gun in the glove department of the vehicle, and the gun discharged.

And yet another day in NRA Paradise.

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The GOP’s One-Note Samba 0

As the world burns and drowns from climate change, two Republican elephants debate what to do.  One says,

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

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The Sacrifice 0

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Merchants of Fear 0

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier explains.

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