Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Delta Is Ruining the Summer, and It’s Anti-vaxxers’ Fault The vaccines promised freedom, but political opportunists have spoiled that. No single factor explains the stall-out, but foremost among the culprits are partisan polarization and political opportunism. (The Atlantic) see also ‘What’s Covid?’ Why People at America’s Hardest-Partying Lake Are Not About to Get Vaccinated At the Lake of the Ozarks, vaccines are shunned, masks are mocked and the long-term consequences take a back seat to the time at hand. (Politico)
• I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax. He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill’s classmates.But Bill also had to deal with his father’s daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force. “I don’t know how to help someone that far gone.” (Vice)
• Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price A handful of powerful companies control the majority market share of almost 80% of dozens of grocery items bought regularly by ordinary Americans, new analysis reveals. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Food and Water Watch found that consumer choice is largely an illusion – despite supermarket shelves and fridges brimming with different brands. (The Guardian)
• Behind the Mercenary Spyware Industry As soon as your phone is infected, the Pegasus operator can see whatever you see. They can see your encrypted chats. They can see the messages you send. They can see the pictures you take of your friends and yourself. They can read your notes to yourself, look at your web browsing. They can even activate the camera and microphone and listen in, from your pocket, to the room that you’re in. It’s incredibly invasive stuff. (Slate)
• The dangers of Twitter: Sometimes death threats do come true And then came Twitter, the most powerful modern illustration of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that the medium is the message. Here, the flow of news is continuous, unregulated and fierily interactive. The instant, throwaway nature of conversation has been imported into a published, preservable medium. Spats that arise on Twitter now regularly flow back into the “old media” of print; and then — with the ease of retweets and replies — it has technically enabled the rapid amplification of praise or abuse, the latter resulting in the “pile-on”. (UnHerd)
• The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy In the time I spent with Mike Lindell, I came to learn that he is affable, devout, philanthropic—and a clear threat to the nation. (The Atlantic)
• The Amazon Is Fast Approaching a Point of No Return Brazil’s rainforest is being stolen and cleared at an accelerating pace, and the Bolsonaro government is fanning the flames. (Businessweek)
• How Unemployment Insurance Fraud Exploded During the Pandemic Bots filing bogus applications in bulk, teams of fraudsters in foreign countries making phony claims, online forums peddling how-to advice on identity theft: Inside the infrastructure of perhaps the largest fraud wave in history. (ProPublica)
• Police shootings continue daily, despite a pandemic, protests and pushes for reform Since 2015, police have fatally shot more than 6,400 people. (Washington Post)
• The FBI Says It Thwarted A Plan To Kidnap Michigan’s Governor. The Suspects Say It Was A Setup. (Buzzfeed) see also The FBI’s Kavanaugh garbage chute: This week, we learned that the FBI investigation was mostly a sham. And the truth about the investigation was covered up for years. (Popular Information)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Dr. Charity Dean. Dean was the director of the California Department of Public Health in 2020. She is a lead character in Michael Lewis’ book The Premonition: A Pandemic Story; Lewis called her “one of the people who saw the real danger of the virus before the rest of the country did.” She is co-founder of The Public Health Company.
Is “Anti-Vaxx” the new “Defund the Police” ?
Source: The Bulwark
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