Do not, ever, complete an ID check on an incoming call. Thank the caller for alerting you, hang up*, go to the provider’s website for a contact number, and initiate the call from your side. https://t.co/7fR7JazNUA

— James “not the LBC dude” O'Brien 🇪🇺 (@sparrk) June 18, 2021

Right. I immediately laugh and hang up on these calls. None are ever legit. Why do people think they are?

I am opposed to Zero Covid and Covid eliminationism policies not (just) because I think in most places these strategies are effectively impossible, but because they lead to lockdown fanaticism and de facto soft fascism, have huge mental health harms, and will tend to reduce vaccine uptake and vaccination prioritization.

What sounds great on a screen is often not what works in the real world, no matter how many pretty graphs you got or how ideal it would be.

I like this shot of Lake Bell from New York Magazine:

That’s body paint, not a tattoo.

Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess.

That looks completely unusable. But this matches what the rest of the industry is moving towards as well. The whole idea is to get rid of tabs, get rid of any options or configurability, and to foist search on people so then it’s easy to push on them exactly what you want them to see.

That Apple is also playing this game is sad but expected.

And of course all the wankers will tell you how it must be this way as it’s more secure, nothing else was possible, it’s inevitable, etc. Because they are able to do nothing but spew the approved propaganda.

Finding lessons in the pandemic in sister cities in Germany and Virginia.

I know the headline is supposed to be inspirational, but the story really isn’t.

Am guessing we’ll never recognize the immense price so many paid to, essentially, protect old people. Yes, long Covid (which seems rarer than first reported), and sometimes younger people do in fact die. But statistically, neither of those is very common.

Basically, we asked the people least able to bear it and the least-affected by Covid to miss many of the most important parts of their lives to make sure that over-70s didn’t die. Asking “Was it worth it?” is the wrong question. “Worth” is not a valid measure of what occurred here, as that presumes these were the only choices available — again, the false dichotomy that is so common.

That we could’ve done something different is the truth of the matter, and that we did not is something we’re not supposed to realize or to talk about.

It’s a bit staggering to think about how much was sacrificed for all too many who will refuse to get vaccinated and still die anyway. It should not have gone down this way.

Why we should welcome the lab leak hypothesis. Plagued by fear, scientists have failed to protect us.

Even if the lab leak hypothesis for Covid is false and it was a completely natural event*, the fact is that there are many, many labs doing ill-advised and dangerous research with much-abused or nearly-nonexistent safety protocols.

Covid might not have emerged from a lab. No one truly knows. But it’s very possible it did, and that the next pandemic might as well.

*”Natural” in the context of us disrupting ecosystems and destroying habitat on a vast scale.

Seeing Biden flail around, getting nearly nothing done despite having control of the Senate and House demonstrates how much a lie it was that Obama was hamstrung by Republican intransigence back in 2008-2010.

He could’ve done more, just as McConnell would were the situations reversed, it’s just that Obama and now Biden simply did not and do not want to. That you won’t do what it takes to get things done when there is a path forward is not a reflection of your opponent’s power, but rather a lack in your own will and desire.

But Dems will make endless excuses for how all their elected leaders are just tiny helpless infants, so I guess they deserve what they get.

Y'all love calling ppl who can see shit a mile away "negative" or "miserable". Until the consequences start coming in, and we're wrong for saying "I told you so".

— SOLAECLIPSE®️ (@DrinkSolaPop) June 16, 2021

No one likes a Cassandra. Pollyanna will always be more popular.