Quick Hits
Misc. stories worth noting, but that I don't have time to write about.
- Jamelle Bouie’s NYT column, How Has Joe Biden Become So Unpopular?, does a really good job of putting approval ratings into long-term historical context. (BTW, that is not a good title for that column).
- Daniel Larison raises some point worth thinking about: The Poor, Put-Upon Foreign Policy Establishment
- Via the NYT: The Strange Tale of the Freedom Phone, a Smartphone for Conservatives.
Reviews of the new phone haven’t been positive. CNET, the product-review site, said the $500 device appeared to be “nearly on par with a $200 budget Android phone.”
Yeah, but it comes with Parler pre-installed and has a PatriApp Store. Surely that is with the extra $300?
- Via UAB: UAB study, among others, shows masks are effective in preventing spread of COVID-19
- Jemelle Hill at The Atlantic: Most NFL Players Understand What Cam Newton Doesn’t
A popular saying in football is that a player’s best ability is his availability. The idea explains why injured players in professional football are often cut, released, or relegated to lesser roles.
- Via the NYT, the odds of infection are discussed: One in 5,000, The real chances of a breakthrough infection.
even with Delta, the overall risks for the vaccinated remain extremely small. As Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Friday, “The messaging over the last month in the U.S. has basically served to terrify the vaccinated and make unvaccinated eligible adults doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines.” Neither of those views is warranted.
The media have thoroughly botched the ‘breakthrough’ issue. ‘If it bleeds it leads’ has evolved technologically to become algorithms that prioritize and reward sensationalism. As Ringo likes to say, fear and rage, fear and rage.*
*Citation needed.
Thousands of orders for a cut-rate phone that he (checks article) yep, was going to source from the Chinese sounds about right for today’s modern conservatives.
But this quote is pretty much the cherry on top:
Pretty much on par with every other thing I’ve read that also includes the phrase “Bitcoin millionaire.”
@Jen: my favorite thing about the Freedom Phone is that the discount-bin chipset it uses is loved by despotic governments for being obsolete and poorly designed and Extremely easy to hack and spy on.
@Teve: It’s fortunate that we don’t have a despotic government here then. (At least not despotic to me and mine.)
Something that Atlantic article about Cam Newton neglected to mention, a team that has a COVID positive test out-break is likely going to have to forfeit the game, and nobody gets paychecks for that week. How can clubs not pay attention to their player’s, especially players in leadership positions, vaccine status?
https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-covid-19-outbreaks-unvaccinated-players-forfeit-cancelled-game
The “Freedom Phone” stuff makes me laugh like a lunatic.
The gullibility.
@de stijl: There are jokes in the faith community in which I grew up where taking advantage of someone was explained as scriptural by the person quoting “he was a stranger and I took him in.” Sadly, there was also no shortage of actual examples of the same theory happening in real life. It’s also sad that we ain’t learned nuthin from the past even as we’ve joked about and seriously examined it. There’ll be another scam after freedom phone, too, because there’s a sucker born every minute (and two to take him).
@dazedandconfused:
If a covidiot caused me a week’s pay, they’d probably wouldn’t survive my attempts to collect it from them.