media

Sources

Recently a commenter was appalled that I hadn't read his link to an op ed in the Guardian. While I'm not required to read anything, I do often read the Guardian. Nonetheless an op ed is not a factual news article, it's an opinion piece, and you know what they say about opinions, everyone has one similar to other things that emit noxious gasses.

The Weekly Watch

Controlling the Narrative

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Is it collective amnesia? Have people forgotten the lie of WMD's? How about the democracy we brought to Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Do people think those countries are better off now than before we destroyed them? Are we so propagandized we've become blind? Sure seems so. The acceptance of absurdity seems systemic to me... down to and including today's time change. As usual, it may be that we're a dollar short and a day late ...but today we're also an hour early
(to give you an extra hour to shop after work)

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The Ninth Most Visited News Web Site (I'd never heard of)

Is disturbing, not in it's links, I clicked through to a few, which are standard right wing fare. What rankles is that the web site is founded by an anonymous source. There are no adds, no contact link.

It's like Drudge, just a list of links to articles, but no hint by the link where the articles are at. Before you click you've no idea if you are headed for a legit source or a lot lot worse.

The Weekly Watch

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COVID Fatigue

Everyone is sick of COVID, literally and figuratively. With the Trumps' infection it is worth looking at the state of the pandemic. This winter appears to ensure continued spread. Today, we'll examine some new treatments and understandings of the nature of the virus and its disease expression. I'm not a doctor, I'm trained as a soil scientist, so take this as my understanding based on my research and not as advice. The most critical factor is age, something we can't control, however many other factors are... things like: optimizing our health, protecting ourselves and others when out and about, and being aware of best treatments if we become symptomatic. Much of this essay will be review, but there's also some new research and I hope I've put together an organized and logical approach to the pandemic. Let's begin with encouraging news which I rarely hear discussed. Up to 50% of us may have immunity already because of exposure to other corona-viruses.

“Our team also tested uninfected healthy individuals and found SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in more than 50 percent of them. This could be due to cross-reactive immunity obtained from exposure to other coronaviruses, such as those causing the common cold, or presently unknown animal coronaviruses. It is important to understand if this could explain why some individuals are able to better control the infection,” said Professor Antonio Bertoletti, from Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) program, who is the corresponding author of this study.

Tuesday Open Thread ~ When the Levee Breaks


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"…much of the conversation about Hurricane Dorian—including most media coverage—ignores climate change. That's a mistake. It's akin to talking about lung cancer and being afraid to mention smoking, or talking about traffic deaths and being afraid to talk about drunken driving." ~ David Leonhardt

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Welcome to Tuesday’s Open Thread. A few days ago there was a news article in Joe’s EB about the media's coverage of Hurricane Dorian. The concern voiced in the article was that the kind of storm-porn the media loves to feed us, negates any real discussion over how to prepare our cities in the face of these extreme storms. This type of reporting isn't new. I watched the same coverage when I was living in New York after Superstorm Sandy. What is new are the storms themselves. So why aren't we talking about them in a more relevant way?

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