Link Farm and Open Thread, Hand Eye Coordination Edition

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Ampersand

  1. “This is it” is the consensus among some COVID experts. So how should you assess risk for the long term?
    ““Eradication, meaning complete elimination of this virus from the world, is not going to happen,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert. “We’re going to be living with COVID.””
  2. Crypto Investors Are Bidding to Touch a 1,784-Pound Tungsten Cube Once a Year
    The cube is 14 inches on each side, and weighs 9/10ths of a ton. Bidding starts at a little over $200,000.
  3. We actually shouldn’t care about local college students | by Katelyn Burns | Oct, 2021 | Medium
    “Dozens of mainstream writers and pundits have carved out a career obsessing over the activity of kids at tiny liberal arts schools. It’s a joke.”
  4. The Firearms Policy Coalition Offers a Simple Way to Resolve the Texas SB 8 Case – Reason.com
    Interesting (although it makes sense) to see a gun rights group coming out against Texas’ anti-abortion law – or, rather, against the mechanism.
  5. Before the Final Frame: When Police Missteps Create Danger – The New York Times
    How officers can put themselves in danger, making shootings by police more likely. (Here’s an alternate link, but some of the features of the story – like the videos – won’t work on the alternate link.)
  6. No, America is Not Experiencing a Version of China’s Cultural Revolution – Nicholas Grossman
    An extremely good article. I don’t agree with 100% of anything, but I probably agree with 97% of this.
  7. How hospitals inflate bills for healthy births by labeling them “emergencies” : NPR
    As the story makes clear, this isn’t just one hospital; it’s an increasingly common practice.
  8. Is “casual sex” unhealthy? – by Cathy Reisenwitz – Sex and the State
    Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: It depends on each person’s values and why they’re having casual sex.
  9. Stop Calling “Wokeness” a Religion – Heterodox Academy | Heterodox Academy
  10. “The Liberty Way”: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults — ProPublica
    “But two former students did recall being punished after they reported being sexually assaulted. One said that after she reported being raped to school authorities, she was fined $500 for drinking alcohol and told she had to attend counseling.”
  11. Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly – The New York Times (And an alternate link).
    “In fact, because the police pull over so many cars and trucks — tens of millions each year — an officer’s chances of being killed at any vehicle stop are less than 1 in 3.6 million… ‘The risk is statistically negligible, but nonetheless it is existentially amplified.’”
  12. Justice Dept. Sues Penguin Random House Over Proposed Simon & Schuster Acquisition- The New York Times. (And an alternate link.)
    Interestingly, the case against the merger is based a lot on potential harms to authors of blockbusters (who would be less likely to benefit from bidding wars if two of the largest publishers merge).
  13. The Ohio AG says stings rescue trafficking victims. Often that means they’re arrested. | WYSO
    “I wasn’t being human trafficked. I was basically soliciting for money to support myself because of my criminal background. I’m not able to get a decent job. Now they’ve added to my criminal record. I didn’t feel rescued.”
  14. What does COVID-19 transmission have in common with sexism and harassment? As it turns out, quite a bit. | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research
    “Of course, this does not necessarily mean that sexism or sexual harassment causes someone to engage in risky behaviors related to COVID-19. However, it does suggest that similar overarching attitudes or beliefs may underly both types of “boundary-crossing” behaviors.” Thanks to Grace for the link.
  15. Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    “…historians and those who study democracy say what has changed has been the embrace of violent speech by a sizable portion of one party, including some of its loudest voices inside government and most influential voices outside.”
  16. Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Is a Threat to the Rule of Law
    “Once Rittenhouse fired his first shots, he and his attackers plausibly entered a context in which neither could be held legally liable for killing the other.”
  17. The Many Trials of Keith Davis Jr.
    He’s entering his sixth criminal trial. As far as I can tell, the Baltimore police are claiming that they initially shot him multiple times for one crime, but when that couldn’t be proved, they discovered that luckily he had committed a completely different crime so shooting him was all right. He was the first person shot by Baltimore police after Freddie Gray’s death, which is maybe why the prosecutor (a so-called progressive) is so determined to find some way to find him guilty of something. Meanwhile, he got shot nearly to death and has spent years in prison without ever being convicted, despite five going on six attempts. Police and prosecutors have essentially no accountability, and it’s infuriating.
  18. Photos by Yahor Urbanovich and Chandler Hilken on Unsplash.

This entry was posted in Link farms. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Link Farm and Open Thread, Hand Eye Coordination Edition

  1. dragon_snap says:
    November 19, 2021 at 11:59 am

    I stopped reading number 6 when it completely dismissed police defunding and police abolition. I will try to continue it later but that was hard to read.

  2. Douglas Scheinberg says:
    November 19, 2021 at 2:39 pm

    Link #17 goes to a .jpg not an article.

  3. Kate says:
    November 19, 2021 at 5:03 pm

    dragon_snap, That stood out to me as well. The quote is:

    Police really do kill unarmed black people. But when activists inaccurately claim such violence is common, that people of colour see it as much more concerning than crime, and argue that we should “literally abolish the police,” most Americans recognize that as wrong.

    But the killings are just the tip of the iceberg! Literally thousands of innocent people are stopped and frisked by police every year in New York City alone Even if crime in black communities is more common than police harassment and brutality, it can’t be addressed if crime victims are rightly afraid of being revictimized by the police (see also, rape victims of all races).
    Nonetheless, it is worth reading on to see their analysis of various studies of laughably small number of disinvitation events and cancellations:

    For that, we should look to data, and here again the problem looks smaller than anti-woke liberals make it out to be. In Liberal Currents, Adam Gurri cites the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which documented 426 “targeting incidents involving scholars at public and private American institutions of higher education” since 2015 and 492 “disinvitation attempts” since 1998. The organization Canceled People lists 217 cases of “cancellation” since 1991, while the National Association of Scholars (NAS) lists 194 cancellations in academia since 2004 (plus two in the 20th century). Based on these numbers, Gurri concludes, “If any other problem in social life was occurring at this frequency and at this scale, we would consider it effectively solved.”

    Moreover, as they outline, many resulted in no actual consequences for those targeted, and some of did not come from the left (eg. Liz Cheney).

  4. Ampersand says:
    November 19, 2021 at 9:39 pm

    “Link #17 goes to a .jpg not an article.”

    Oops. Thanks, the link has been fixed.

  5. RonF says:
    December 13, 2021 at 8:04 am

    As predicted from the thread on the Texas abortion law that was posted on September 1st, a State (California) likely will debate and likely pass a law that will allow private citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts”. I didn’t like the idea when Texas passed their abortion law and I don’t like it now.

Comments are closed.