RICHARD FERNANDEZ EXPLAINS THINGS:
Archive for 2020
August 29, 2020
NOW OUT FROM CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL: Debt of Loyalty (The Embers of War Book 2).
OPEN THREAD: I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse.
THEY’LL BE PASSED ENROUTE BY SHIPS USING AN FTL DRIVE: Could carbon-foam probes bring interstellar flight within reach? Solar-sailing ‘bubblecraft’ could get to Proxima Centauri in 185 years, a study suggests.
THIS KEEPS HAPPENING. IT FEELS LIKE THEY’RE ROLLING SOMETHING UP. US Marshals find 25 missing kids in NE Ohio, including one in Mansfield.
FIRE THEM ALL AND GIVE THE MONEY TO PARENTS: NYC teachers union prepares for strike authorization votes this week.
WHICH IS WEIRD, BECAUSE I THINK THE EVIDENCE THAT IT HELPS IS PRETTY SLIM: FDA expands emergency use authorization for remdesivir.
MICHAEL BOWEN: Race Talk Doesn’t Work Anymore. “The truce signed in the 70s by nominal blackfolks and nominal whitefolks has broken. Not by you and I, but by a collection of people who are determined to say that race matters, and that it matters more than you or I. It has broken over some truly phenomenally trivial bullshit which has been magnified many orders of magnitude into a symbol, perhaps the most incredibly weighty hot air balloon America has ever seen.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Qualified Immunity Is a Disgrace, No Matter Where You Live. And there’s even less reason to apply it to government officials who aren’t law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers at least have to make split-second decisions regularly. Ordinary bureaucrats not so much.
FUNNY HOW THIS KEEPS HAPPENING AT CNN: CNN Analyst and Yale Lecturer Asha Rangappa Under Fire For Doxxing A Journalism Intern.
Related: Don Lemon: “I don’t really understand how people say CNN is biased.”
PRO SPORTS ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE AND I DON’T CARE: MLB fans’ reaction to Jacob Blake boycotts says it all.
Fans don’t care nearly as much as they did. They’ve learned to live without sports, especially in their current diminished condition. They’ve learned that they’re taken for granted. And more and more they’ve determined that they won’t pay another dime to attend games or to watch them on TV.
Thursday’s game-time walkout in protest of police brutality may have been a sincere group action or largely based in peer pressure, but judging from the response of readers, none much cared. None were outraged or even disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a game to watch. . . .
MLB, like the NBA and NFL, has allowed its fan base — its financial blood flow — to erode.
Fans can’t help but apply Thursday’s walkout to their own realities: “Would I be allowed to simply stand up and walk out of work in protest of anything and not face suspension or termination?” And they conclude that they could not, or would not — even at a small fraction of big-league pay.
At the same time, our sports are growing desperate to reverse their downward viewership and incomes by artificial means.
Good luck with that. Just remember, the opposite of fan love isn’t fan hate. It’s fan indifference.
THE BIZARRO WORLD VERSION OF WAG THE DOG: Latest Chicago and Minneapolis riots broke out over police killings that never happened.
- Motss: What do you think about lining the President up for the Peace Prize?
- Brean: Our job’s over come election day.
- Motss: Yeah, but c’mon…
- Brean: What, just for the symmetry of the thing? [Motss nods] Well, if Kissinger can win the Peace Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up and found I’d won the Preakness.
- Motss: Yeah, but our guy did bring peace.
- Brean: There was never a war.
- Motss: All the greater accomplishment.
Of course, this is far from the first time a violent and destructive riot was built on a lie, as even the Washington Post (sometimes) knows: “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” Did Not Happen In Ferguson.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Decisiveness Matters in a Deadly Force Situation.