Vaccine Nation, Dis Coarse Discourse Dept. 0
The AP’s John Rady takes an in-depth look at the pandemic and vaccine hesitancy in one West Virginia community. He reports that medical staff are frazzled by long hours, overloaded wards, and efforts to combat the flood of traffic on the disinformation superhighway. Here’s a bit:
“In fact, I think sometimes the media hurts things because people are so dug in politically,” Bentz said in his office recently. “Instead of making a rational decision, they feel like they’ve got to stand on some principle. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. And unfortunately I think there’s just not the trust that we have in our government, in the media, for people to believe it.”
Decor 0
My local rag tells the story of how the German tradition of the lighted Christmas tree came to Virginia.
Joy 0
Our next number is dedicated to all the boys and girls who think that “happy holidays” is blasphemy.
Geeking Out, Christmas Dept. 0
Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager and Xsnow. The wallpaper is from muy Christmas collection.
Immunity Impunity
0
Tony Norman recounts how police officers’ killing a black man who had done nothing wrong becomes reduced to “a series of procedural flaws.”
Words fail me.
A Taxonomy of Tale-Telling 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Susan A. Nolan and Michael Kimball discuss the differences among misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (yeah, that last one is a new one on me, also; they define it at the link and methinks it a useful coinage). It’s a worthwhile read in these days of viruses, viral memes, and “social” media.