It’s time once again for news and views that you can peruse. It’s time once again for your regularly scheduled Weekly Reader! Got some hot links, blog posts, or articles from a local paper you’d like to share? Head over to the comments and let us know.
Green Bay Packers Unveil Plan For Enacting Social Justice: Fund The Police (from Defector): “Axon is a billion-dollar company that invented the taser, but has recently pivoted its focus to selling body cameras. The company used to be named Taser, in fact, but changed to Axon in 2017 so as to present a friendlier face to cities looking to buy toys for their overfunded police departments.”
QAnon Supporters Vow to Leave GOP After Mitch McConnell Accepts Election Result (from Newsweek): “Supporters of QAnon, which the FBI has listed as a domestic terrorist threat, were certainly angry with McConnell, with people accusing him of working for the “deep state” and referring to him as a “RINO” [Republican in name only].
A number of QAnon accounts also announced on social media that they are considering leaving the GOP as a result of McConnell’s betrayal against Trump, who the conspiracy theorists see as a savior-like figure.”
Fact check: Misrepresented CDC study about community exposure to the new coronavirus (from Reuters): “Posts on social media say a study of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that a high percentage of people who wore masks became infected with the new coronavirus and that masks are ineffective. The results of this study, whose aim was to assess situations of community and close contact exposure, rather than the use of masks, have been misrepresented.”
Study Shows No Correlation Between Protests and COVID-19 Case Increase in General Population (from UC Denver): “Using anonymous cell phone tracking data from SafeGraph, Inc., as well as data on the local prevalence of COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the researchers found while social distancing between protesters may have decreased, the general population saw an increase in social distancing behaviors.
“This study shows that the impact of the protests on COVID-19 was not driven solely by the protest attendees,” said Friedson. “The overall impact on the population depends on the behavior of the entire population, some of which increased social distancing””
Dear Joseph Epstein, BA – Your Time is Done (from Whine and Sparkle): “Now, while I realize the Wall Street Journal is a conservative publication comprised mostly of old, sexist, and irrelevant white men, I also operated under the assumption that it was a business and financial-focused publication. Apparently there’s not enough going on in the business world though. I mean, why write about the new COVID vaccine, or the economic impact of the latest numbers of COVID deaths and unemployed Americans, when you can write about how annoyed you are that a woman with a doctoral degree actually expects to be addressed as “Doctor?””
Did Cards Against Humanity’s ironic humor mask a toxic culture all along? (from Vox): “CAH’s namesake card game, a self-proclaimed “party game for terrible people,” is an off-color derivative of the family-friendly Apples to Apples, the Mad Libs-style party game. Players use a small handful of words to fill in blanks within loaded phrases for maximum comedic effect, and the appeal lies in the goal of creating a more shocking, provocative one-liner from your hand of cards than your fellow players in order to be dubbed the funniest player in the group. It’s the kind of wordplay silliness that goes over well among a lot of drunk party-goers.”
“FACEBOOK GETS PAID”: Facebook’s Global Ad Machine Is The Company’s $80 Billion Annual Lifeblood. Workers Say It Puts Profits Over People. (from Buzzfeed): “Facebook’s handling of TikTok’s ads is one of many examples of its advertising system run amok, and the company’s ongoing prioritization of revenue over the safety of its 3 billion users, the public good, and the integrity of its own platform. The consequences vary: Consumers are sold goods they never receive or are lured into financial scams; legitimate advertisers’ accounts or pages are hacked and used to peddle those nonexistent goods or scams; credit card numbers are stolen. But the end result is often the same: Facebook banks ad revenue, while its users get ripped off.”
‘God be with us’: Covid-19 becomes personal in a South Dakota town as neighbors die and the town debates a mask mandate (from the Washington Post): “Timmins fell ill with the virus Oct. 24, his wife said. She was pretty sure he picked it up at one of the many games he went to, where people were casual about wearing masks.
“You may need a mask to get in the door, but once you were inside, you looked around and there were 300 people in the seats watching volleyball, pretty much going maskless,” she said. “Mitchell, South Dakota, is a small town. We trusted each other.””
Four months that will decide America’s future (from NBC News): “Yes, vaccines are coming, and the first vaccinations may begin next week. But their cumulative effect on the nation’s health will not be felt until well into 2021. If Americans do not change their behavior quickly, experts warn, the weeks and months ahead will be filled with more death and despair, packed hospitals and unemployment lines, and further political polarization and alienation.
The time to change our path is now.”
The ‘Japanese Bob Ross’: How a 73-year-old artist took YouTube by storm (from CNN): “Shibasaki, sometimes referred to as the “Bob Ross of Japan,” watched Ross on TV when he was younger. “I respect him very much as a pioneer,” he says.
But while Ross typically painted the mountain and river landscapes of North America, Shibasaki is inspired by his own surroundings of the Chiba countryside in eastern Japan.”
That’s all for today. Stop by again for more links you might want to follow. Until then, have a great rest of your week and happy reading!
Iacon East 