The mother’s assertion below that the children’s trauma is “small” really bothers me. I know she says “grand scheme” but the tone is just so glib and barely-concerned that she obviously doesn’t care that much.

I don’t think most parents are very good ones. The majority wish to exert authoritarian control over their charges. Inside, she’s probably reveling in this devastation. That’s why she can barely muster up the heart to even appear a little sad about it all.

The reality is that kids do not have to be tortured this way; it’s a choice made freely. Crises reveal people’s true colors, and in most those hues are not very pleasant to behold.

Firefox 90 is released. At current market share trends, future announcements will be done with a large cc list, then eventually a phone call to Barry and Jessica to let them know about it.https://t.co/DbMi5saT0O

— Jason Scott (@textfiles) July 13, 2021

Ha. I love that Jason Scott has the same burning animosity toward Mozilla as I do. Not being propaganda-infected, he realizes that Mozilla squandered every opportunity, wasted vast sums, and is now digging their own grave as fast as they possibly can. All of that vast failure was eminently and easily preventable, too.

I wish I could get $400 million a year for failing so spectacularly. But no. Only CEOs and Mozilla get that kind of deal.

Um okay yes we could become a strict authoritarian ecostate, or we could just BUILD OUT NUCLEAR pic.twitter.com/NvqdrvzkCg

— Mason ‍♂️✂️ (@webdevMason) July 15, 2021

That’s the real answer, but everyone is irrationally frightented of nuclear power. We should be building better, safer, smaller reactors, and many, many of them.

It’s either that, or eco-fasicsm.

Looks like we’ll get eco-fascism.

The vaccines don't stop you catching or spreading the virus, they only mitigate how bad your symptoms will be. duh!!

— Petra Banister (@banisp200) July 16, 2021

This is mostly false. The vaccines absolutely do prevent infection in most people, and do work to reduce transmission even among the breakthrough infected by reducing viral load and by decreasing the infection period. So yes, contrary to this liberal messaging common lately, the vaccines do in most cases stop completely the infection, and also do greatly reduce the spread — that’s exactly why we see the virus surging in unvaccinated areas, and not in vaccinated ones.

Can people just not think? No, they cannot.

Damn, I am so tired of libs spreading lies like this that are easily researched and easily disproven both by just looking at the world and reading something. This is straight from the CDC website.

Studies show that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at keeping you from getting COVID-19. Getting a COVID-19 vaccine will also help keep you from getting seriously ill even if you do get COVID-19.

From what I’ve been able to assemble, even against the Delta variant, the mRNA vaccines are about 80% effective in preventing infection altogether.

So what she’s saying is just lies. I don’t know if she knows they are lies (I suspect she does), but who can tell these days?

I know you all love podcasts but I really hate the move from blog posts and articles to podcasts, especially for so much professional hidden curriculum stuff. The information density is so low and the delivery is so slow. It’s like 30 hours of listening to an hour of reading.

— Susannah Tysor (@scisus) July 16, 2021

This is the exact reason I despise podcasts and will never, ever listen to them. A total waste of my time.

I think for most people podcasts are filling a pseudo-social role, sort of like some people leave the TV on when they are home alone even though they are not watching it. But I don’t need that or want that as I am not very social and try to save up all of that to have the energy to devote to actual friends.

That’s the explanation I think for the appeal of podcasts to most people. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way — but it’s sure not for me. I just wish they hadn’t replaced blogs, as blogs were so very superior for my use case.

This thread of Brooke Bolander’s is really good.

I think most people have forgotten that web, but it was around from roughly 1994-2005 or so. It was vastly superior and so much richer and more fun. Corporations have obliterated it all; almost nothing now remains. I don’t have a formal name for this new era just yet, but we are now in the phase where central control over information is being aggressively re-asserted, where unauthorized channels of communication and organizing are being shuttered for “hate speech” and “porn” and other usually-bogus bugaboos, and where liberals are eager to tell you this is all “for your own good.”

It’s going to get worse, too, since both sides are all for it: libs for “protection from harm” pretenses and conservatives for “immorality” excuses and the like. All, of course, with corporations really controlling the marionette as both sides eagerly dance to the tunes Facebook, Google, Amazon, et al., are playing.

Like Brooke, I miss that old web. It was so much more whole and joyous and quirky and free.

The world would be vastly better off if smartphones and internet-based social networks had never been created.

That might be true in any possible world, but is definitely true in our hyper-capitalistic poorly-educated current milieu.