Skip to main content

Coronavirus/CoViD-19 and August 2020 News Digest: If You Don't Wear A Mask, You're Factually Stupid

Big things are in the works here at Tulip City Dispatch - things that are hinging on interviewing others.  In the meantime, I've been collecting some links, and want to share them with my readers:

The Sentinel's headline says it all:  A teen from Jenison was ridiculed for organizing a BLM protest.  He organized the event on Facebook, and both he and his classmates were subject to an inordinate amount of online harassment, bullying, and mean comments.  What stung me the hardest was reading about the local comments; people in the teen's community, and the community that I grew up in, spewing hateful rhetoric.  Jenison residents simply didn't want any BLM activity in their town.  While Jenison has never been a bastion of progressive politics, one thing that they profess to be is a Christian neighborhood...and there's no room for hate in Christianity.

Raw Story tells the tale of a rash of county sheriffs across the nation testing positive for CoViD after many of 'em vowed to not enforce mask orders.  Said one sheriff, "I have no idea how I contracted this and that is a lesson in itself: Anyone can catch this."  Your arrogance won't protect you from this virus.

Please, wear your masks, wash your hands, and put your trust into the doctors, medical professionals, scientists, and epidemiologists who've devoted their lives into studying and preparing for situations like this.  Don't let your ignorance and arrogance get in the way.  We're in this together, and without cooperation and mutual respect (wearing your mask whenever plausible), we're fucked.

Pretty straightforward - After President Trump threatened to postpone the November election in the US, a White House representative called out Hong Kong for postponing theirs, saying that “This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s prosperity,” as though postponing the US election would not undermine our democratic processes (Where have we seen this before?).

Psypost links low working memory capacity with non-compliance, especially as it pertains to wearing masks and socially distancing during the CoViD crisis.  I was skeptical, so I looked up a media bias fact check on PsyPost and found that they're pretty darn good.  Working memory is the ability to form connections and logic, and use critical thinking skills, while balancing the action/consequence connection within the brain.  This article is not saying that if you don't wear a mask, you're factually stupid...rather, it explores the rationale and reasoning behind certain groups of society to resist wearing a mask (for the protection of others).

I hope my readers have the forethought to click through my links above, filter through the information contained therewithin, and form their own conclusions.  I'm only a man, I'm busy, I have a job and other responsibilities that take up my energies.  While I strive for journalistic and academic reliability, I know I can't get all the way there.

Take care, folks!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Eddie Bentz Bank Robbery

Prohibition is one of the most storied periods in American history. Urban myths and legends abound nationwide, with tales of folk heroes like Al Capone, Babyface Nelson, and John Dillinger. Tall tales are woven around organized crime, wild bootleggers, underground saloons, and well-dressed gangsters. There's something uniquely American about the DIY ethos of taking matters into your own hands, making illegal alcohol, and selling it through clandestine channels; stickin' it to the man like those in the illegal alcohol industry did. These stories are immortalized in movies like The Road To Perdition and Public Enemies, as well as TV series like HBO's Boardwalk Empire and, well, PBS's Prohibition. Many lakeshore towns in Western Michigan have tales of organized crime and bootlegging. Easy access to Lake Michigan meant that bootleggers had easy access to boat routes, safely out of reach of authorities. Booze was funneled in from Canada, then taken by boat to cities all aro...
Post a Comment
Read more

XFinity Sucks. Or, Why I'm Excited For Holland BPW Fiber To Come Through Our Neighborhood

 The whole thing started in October - we hit the data cap for our XFinity plan in 2 or 3 days. I didn't know we had a data cap on our XFinity plan, so I was befuddled. Problem is, you can't just call XFinity, you must escalate your ticket up their chain of command: Start with their AI chatbot, escalate to a human typing on the other end of the chatroom, get transferred to an AI phone operator, escalate that to any number of human phone operators. Somewhere in that initial escalation, they discovered that we weren't on an actual plan from them, and the services we had weren't even offered by them anymore - our account had slipped through the cracks. Their "solution" to the massive data leak was to give sell us the premium tier service with no data cap...which didn't actually solve anything, it just passed the buck down the road. By October 6 or 7, we had blown through another terrabyte of data, so I reached out to Customer Service agai...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cedar Swamp Village

Holland has only been a settled city for a little over 170 years. But, it's got a dense, unique history. I took an interest in local history during my college years at Northern Michigan University, and was able to take that interest back home after graduation. Recently, I began researching for this blog, and hanging out at the library, poring through the Local History section. I found an old, forboding looking book, entitled Memorials Of The Grand River Valley, flipped open to a seemingly random page, and read the passage "The Indian village, near the southeastern limits of the city,w as also a prominent landing-place. The log-houses, built by the Indians, were of great service to the newly arrived immigrants; and, as it appears, there never has been any trouble between the Red man and the Dutchman." This piqued my interest, as I live near the southeastern limits of Holland. Was there an Indian village in my own neighborhood that history forgot? Memorials ad...
Post a Comment
Read more