Twitter announced this morning that they’re putting Elon Musk, who just bought about 9% of Twitter, becoming the largest share owner of Twitter, on the Twitter board of directors. That doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out well for anyone.
Facebook is a toxic cesspit and Twitter’s worse. Tumblr’s got it’s own problems. Instagram’s a hive of Photoshopped weirdos… I’m pretty sure this whole “social media” thing has turned out to be a nightmare and we should all just go back to blogs and email.
I’m not saying blogs and email were better – it was just a lot harder to completely brainwash tons and tons of people at once with nothing but a LiveJournal and your Hotmail account.
Anyway, the news…
- NPR: Efforts to ban books jumped an ‘unprecedented’ four-fold in 2021, ALA report says – The American Library Association says they usually get about 500 challenges a year – about 500 tries at banning some book or another. In 2021 they got 1,597 book challenges. Many of those books were on LGBTQ+ topics or written by Black authors or LGBTQ+ authors.
- Vox: Pandemic-Proof – This is basically a landing page for Vox’s week-long push on how to prevent the next pandemic. Bookmark this and check back.
- Washington Post: The new red scare: The right leans into pedophilia accusations – If you’re hearing a lot of accusations of pedophilia and grooming levied against liberals and LBGTQ+ people, here’s why. The MAGA Cultists are ginning up the next moral panic.
- NPR: It’s not too late to stave off the climate crisis, U.N. report finds. Here’s how – Love that hopeful headline, there. We’ve got about eight years left to drastically change our ways to save the climate. I hold exactly zero hope that we will do what’s needed.
- Bloomberg: What If Fox News Viewers Watched CNN Instead? – This is from the Opinion section, and it’s “analysis,” but it’s talking about a study where they paid FOX News viewers to switch to CNN for awhile and charted the change in their opinions. Pretty interesting stuff.
Notes & Thoughts 