Richard North Patterson has it right when he advises that “Republicans play hardball—and, all too often, lie. Far better for Democrats to play hardball with the truth. The party of extremism deserves no less.” in his opinion piece in the Bulwark.
Paul Sax takes a positive slant on the development of coronavirus vaccines in his blog post, Are We Expecting Too Much from Our COVID-19 Vaccines? And this was an excellent response to the patently false rumors of adverse vaccine effects on fertility, authored by Alice Lu-Culligan and Akiko Iwasaki writing in the NY Times.
From an article in Inc. by Justin Bariso, reporting on a speech Tim Cook gave at Brussels’ International Data Privacy Day; excerpted from the talk:
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it, and we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.
If a business is built on misleading users on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.
We should not look away from the bigger picture and a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theory juiced by algorithms. We can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement, the longer the better, and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.
Too many are still asking the question, ‘How much can we get away with?’ When they need to be asking, ‘What are the consequences?’
What are the consequences of prioritizing conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of the high rates of engagement?
What are the consequences of not just tolerating but rewarding content that undermines public trust in life-saving vaccinations?
What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users joining extremist groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?
It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cause. A polarization of lost trust, and yes, of violence.
A social dilemma cannot be allowed to become a social catastrophe.”
Well said.
• A good piece by Ezra Klein, writing in the NYT: Democrats, Here’s How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It. Lots of work to be done, little time to do it, and the big question of what to do about the filibuster.
Maybe now America can begin to breathe again.
Tom Friedman, writing in the NYT: “President Donald J. Trump: The End – This terrible experiment is over.”
One can only hope.
• Jennifer Senior delivers an excellent read in her NYT opinion essay Good Riddance Leader McConnell. One delightful and fitting except re. McConnell:
“So if hitching his wagon to a sub-literate mob boss with a fondness for white supremacists and a penchant for conspiracy theories and a sociopath’s smirking disregard for the truth meant getting those tax cuts and those conservative judges … hey, that’s the cost of doing business, right?”
• This was a good discussion of the free speech and 1st amendment claims related to the president’s deplatforming from social media. Kim Wright authors the article in Harvard Law Today, with content from discussions with Yochai Benkler and evelyn douek.
Katz, Lu, and Sanger-Katz, writing in the NY Times, provide some perspective on what the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has meant in the US; using mortality data from the CDC, there were some 400,000 more deaths than normal from March 15, 2020 through December 26, 2020. Researchers from USC and Princeton estimate that average US life expectancy has declined by 1.13 years to 77.48 years, the lowest since 2003. Reductions for Black and Latino populations are 3-4 times more than for Whites.
• From John Gruber’s excellent Daring Fireball, quoting George Orwell, who was writing in 1946:
“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”