Cowboy Who?

“At a time when our country needs to come together, Democrats in Congress are rehashing the same strategy that they employed for the last four years: politically motivated overreach that will only divide us further.” — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel

It’s been almost a month since Scar’s army of primeval hyenas plundered Pride Rock, and it’s looking more and more like Scar fueled the violent insurrection himself. But just because his direct commands caused innumerable deaths doesn’t mean we have to continue attacking him after his rule has ended. I mean, seriously, can’t we just give the guy a break? By attempting to banish him to the elephant graveyard, we’re only further dividing the Pride Lands.

What would be the point in banishing Scar now that he is an ex-king? Sure, it would disqualify him from holding future office, halting his rumored plans for “the bloodiest comeback the Pride Lands have ever seen.” And, yes, condemning Scar’s actions would hold him accountable for the assault that desecrated the seat of our democracy and left countless antelope with the meat sheared from their bones. But what we need is healing and unity, not some meaningless condemnation that would echo forever in eternity.

Some might argue that they are on solid ground in seeking to banish our former king to the elephant graveyard after he incited the grisly revolt that took the lives of countless meerkats, warthogs, and elected representatives. But we can’t heal as a kingdom if we keep focusing on holding former leaders accountable for their violent crimes against nature. Yes, thousands of animal lives were taken during the rampage, but Scar is the insurrection’s true victim, and any attempt to hold him accountable is unlawful. His hate speech, though unpopular at the water hole, is nonetheless protected by the laws of the Pride Lands.

You have to remember; Scar wasn’t always a monster. Long before he became the revolting figure of vengeance and death that we all know, he was just a normal cub. He had a mother and a father just like anyone else. Until he ate them. This was around the time when the other lions started calling him by his now-infamous nickname, “Scarfer, the Bloodthirsty Cannibal” or “Scar” for short. And yes, he then proceeded to massacre most life in the animal kingdom with his razor-sharp claws and insatiable bloodlust. But it was a different time back then. We cannot banish him to the elephant graveyard because of his past mistakes. During his reign, he always stood for what he believed, and he had a genuine passion for learning.

Look, we’re not going to bring the animal kingdom together by denouncing a lion who ordered his cult of fanatical hyenas to “creep down to Pride Rock” and “take back our kingdom with your bone-crushing molars.” Scar may be a tyrant, a warmonger, and a 500-pound apex predator who only exists for the purpose of war, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy. No former king should be banished to the elephant graveyard for the rest of their days, no matter how many innocent lives they have taken.

So please, let’s not make matters worse than they already are. If we disregard Scar’s unrelenting threats that almost certainly triggered the violence, it’s pretty clear that he should be absolved.

Our 6th most-read article of 2021.

Originally published February 4, 2021.

“I never said any of these things since I have been elected for Congress. These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me.”
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, addressing conspiracy theories and violence she has endorsed and promoted over and over again.

Before you make the mistake of rushing to judgment, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: the terrible, awful things I have said and done and enabled and incited over and over again for most of my life and right up until a few days ago do not represent me as a person in any way.

Sure, you can look at only the part of my life where I said and did incendiary and hurtful things. But that would only be about ninety-seven to ninety-eight percent of my life. What about the other two to three percent, which all occurred after I found out I was hurting my image and career? Shouldn’t that matter just as much, if not more?

And what kind of example does it set, that we must be held accountable for the despicable ideas and lies we used to publicly promote and endorse many hours and minutes ago in the past? Are we as people not allowed to change for the better, in just the last few days, once it’s our very last resort to keep a job we shouldn’t have?

Besides, these things that everyone is claiming I believe are complete distortions of what I actually said! The media constantly takes things I say and then repeats them on their news shows and in their magazines, and they always leave something out, like the thing I haven’t even said yet that lets you know I don’t believe the thing I already said.

If the media wants to be completely accurate, they should write down every word I’ve ever said in my entire life, then wait for me to finish saying everything I’ll ever say, and then publish only the good things that everyone will like. Only then would they be totally unbiased. Until then, they’re just cherry-picking.

Have you noticed that I’ve gone over five paragraphs without saying and believing and doing the things everyone is accusing me of saying and believing and doing? Doesn’t that show you how much I’ve changed ever since my publicist and lawyer and bosses told me that I need to change? Well, I think it does.

I think I’ve done a great deal of growing and learning in the last seventy-two to ninety-six hours. And I’m a completely different person now than I was all that time ago last week. So I’m going to wait until everyone moves on to focusing on someone else who’s been caught doing and saying bizarre, harmful things for most of their life, and then I’ll go back to doing what I do best: things that definitely don’t represent me as a person.

“I often note, ‘I’m going to circle back’ — I hate to disappoint conservative Twitter, but I’m going to circle back on a number of things.”
— White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, 2/1/21

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

CNN: Last week, you said you were going to circle back to us on the specifics of the new Administration invoking the Defense Production Act. And you did. Is that the way you intend to conduct business?

PSAKI: Yes.

CNN: To get back to us when you say you’re going to?

PSAKI: Hopefully.

CNN: Don’t you mean “ideally?”

PSAKI: Yes.

CNN: Interesting…

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

DES MOINES REGISTER: We’ve heard two figures for the proposed COVID relief package. We’ve heard $1.9 trillion and $1.5 trillion. What is not included in the lesser bill?

[PSAKI begins to thumb through binder at podium.]

DES MOINES REGISTER: Why are you so co-dependent that you have to look it up right now?

PSAKI: I only see the one figure. $1.9 trillion.

DES MOINES REGISTER (sideways in seat, mask over ear, waving): Fine.

PSAKI: Go ahead.

AP: Dr. Fauci has said on more than one occasion there was a good chance that things might get worse with the pandemic before they get better.

PSAKI: Yes.

AP: Final answer?

PSAKI: No. He’s just reporting the current science.

AP: Phone a friend?

PSAKI: No.

AP: So, C: “Worse before better.”

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

NBC NEWS: Is the Biden administration’s plan to vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days ambitious enough?

PSAKI: Two things. Last week, President Biden upped that number to 150 million. The transition team came up with the figure 100 million before there was a vaccine. And at the time it was called a “bold goal.” The point is, we’re not going to stop when we hit 150 million. We’re not wasting any time with COVID response.

NBC NEWS: And I am?

PSAKI: I didn’t say that. Um, let me see… where was I?

VOICE IN BACK: Excuse me? Do I hear vaccine hesitancy?

PSAKI: No, I was pausing. But thanks for stopping by, Mr. Sheen… (points) Yes?

NEWSMAX: Did you mention something about fining the Lincoln Memorial $5000 because Abe refuses to wear a mask on federal grounds?

PSAKI: No.

NEWSMAX: Well, somebody did.

PSAKI: Was it you just now?

NEWSMAX: Could be…

PSAKI: Who knows? Go ahead.

GANNETT: Will you be quoting lyrics from My Fair Lady on a daily basis?

PSAKI: That was from West Side Story, but no.

GANNETT: You have all the answers, don’t you?

PSAKI: I’ll circle back if there’s more I can share with you. (points) Yes.

QANON DIGEST: What did you have for lunch?

PSAKI: Umm, salad?

QANON DIGEST: Lettuce?

PSAKI: Yes.

QANON DIGEST: Baby lettuce?

PSAKI: No, I believe it was spinach.

QANON DIGEST: Baby spinach?

PSAKI: Let me circle back to you.

QANON DIGEST: You just did.

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

FOX NEWS: Did you have something to say?

PSAKI: No.

FOX NEWS: Yeah. I didn’t think so.

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

TELEMUNDO: Bon Jovi?

PSAKI: Yes?

TELEMUNDO: I mean, Bon Jovi?

PSAKI: Yes?

TELEMUNDO: 2021. And we get Bon Jovi?

PSAKI: Yes.

TELEMUNDO: Seriously?

PSAKI: Yes.

TELEMUNDO: Exactly.

PSAKI: Go ahead.

OANN: Can you categorically deny that Mr. Biden used an earpiece at the Inauguration?

PSAKI: Yes.

OANN: What about empirically deny?

PSAKI: Yes

OANN: Well, which is it?

PSAKI: (points) Yes?

RADIO FREE MUNCIE: You mentioned four crises the President is focusing on: Getting the pandemic under control; Getting people back to work; Climate change; and Infrastructure.

PSAKI: Racial equity was the fourth. The pandemic, unemployment, climate change, racial equity.

RADIO FREE MUNCIE: I’m sorry, what?

PSAKI: Racial equity.

RADIO FREE MUNCIE: And how long were you planning to keep that from us?

PSAKI: Go ahead.

USA TODAYy: What time is it?

PSAKI: 3:47.

USA TODAY: Hey, is that a Rolex?

PSAKI: No.

USA TODAY: Can we get a confirmation?

PSAKI: Times?

NY TIMES: Not a Rolex. Circle back gets the square…

PSAKI: (points) Yes.

WALL ST, JOURNAL: Have you had a chance to speak with President Biden about the Senate delaying the start of the impeachment trial until February 8?

PSAKI: That is the decision of the Senate. In the meantime, the President is eager to get his cabinet appointments confirmed and moving forward with a bi-partisan COVID relief package.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Meeee-owww…

PSAKI: Go ahead.

THE DAILY KAREN: Where’s my $2000 check?

PSAKI: That is part of the President’s proposed COVID relief package. There will be engagement, there will be discussions, and then it’s up to Congress.

DAILY KAREN: Do you have my check?

PSAKI: No.

DAILY KAREN: I think you do.

PSAKI: No, I don’t.

DAILY KAREN: Can I speak with the manager?

PSAKI: There’s no manager.

DAILY KAREN: I’ll wait….

PSAKI: Let’s do one more.

VOGUE: January 22, you said. “President Biden has not spent one moment thinking about the color scheme of Air Force One.”

PSAKI: That’s correct.

VOGUE: And yet you think YOU chose that top you’re wearing….

PSAKI: I’m sorry….

VOGUE: Too late.

PSAKI: Okay, let’s do this again tomorrow….

There are eight million stories in the naked city of New York. The silliest one, at least today, involves a tweet sent by Bill de Blasio, the city’s beleaguered mayor. Posting on Wednesday evening, Hizzoner shared a story from Bloomberg about how the current dip in New York’s rental market makes now the best time for ambitious young strivers to move to the metropolis, when previously they might have considered a cheaper city such as Austin. “Move over Austin,” de Blasio boasted, informing followers about a little-known town called New York City that they might consider instead: Move over Austin, because as the song says, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere — and it’s easier than ever for young dreamers…View Original Post

The post Why Is Bill de Blasio Trying to Start a New York vs. Austin Twitter Feud? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Oh boy! My favorite podcast is live!

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The part where it gets really weird is when you realize you've made up entire memories to explain why you wrote down the note.

Today's News:

Initially commissioned in 1964, the Rothko Chapel was officially dedicated in 1971 after a fraught construction process and the tragic death of its namesake. As it approaches the half-century mark, Sotheby’s is assembling a panel of experts to discuss the singular building’s enduring legacy, its “50 years as a landmark of modern sacred art.” The discussion will be held as a virtual event today, February 4th, at 1:30pm EST.

The free webinar will consist of a conversation between BBC Radio presenter and University of the Arts London professor Shahidha Bari, Sotheby’s EVP and Chairman Lisa Dennison, curator and critic David Anfam, and Christopher Rothko, a writer and psychologist who has served as the custodian of his father’s legacy for the last 30 years.

As is noted in the event description, Rothko Chapel has a long history of serving as “a spiritual space, a forum for world leaders, and a place for solitude and gathering.” Nelson Mandela was given a Rothko Chapel Award and delivered a keynote speech there to commemorate the Chapel’s 20th anniversary in 1991. It has also persisted as a community resource harboring private moments of pan-spiritual, non-denominational reflection.

The Chapel enters its sixth decade with a fresh lease on the future. After closing in March 2019 for extensive renovations “to bring the space more in line with Rothko’s original vision,” the Chapel re-opened to the public last autumn. The Chapel, with its new skylight and renewed campus, was a Glasstire Top Five art pick on January 20.

“My father was always interested in the timeless, in those questions and matters in human existence that have enduring resonance,” Christopher Rothko stated in a preview of the renovation last September.“Walking into the restored chapel one cannot help but be swept up by the breadth and compass of his vision. We have followed that vision and allowed the chapel to speak, for the first time, with maximum clarity and resonance.”

The live webinar is free and open to the public. It will be streamed on Sotheby’s website today, February 4th, at 1:30pm EST.

The post Today: Sotheby’s Hosts Virtual Panel to Celebrate Rothko Chapel’s 50th Anniversary appeared first on Glasstire.

This post, update: my boss’s stress is out of control , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Remember the letter-writer whose boss’s stress was so out of control that people were asking the letter-writer about it? Here’s the update.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer to my letter! You were right that the lack of delegation from my manager was the heart of the issue. The main reason I didn’t ask about that specifically is because by the time I wrote to you, I had already tried the approaches you ended up suggesting. Turns out after reading AAM for years, my “what would Alison recommend here?” calibration is (thankfully) pretty good!

Unfortunately, after trying to be proactive about offering to take specific, discrete parts of our department’s work off my manager’s plate (and being told, “thanks, but no, I’ve got that” 90% of the time), couching my requests for work as a desire on my part to do the job I was hired for and grow professionally (and being told that I could just read articles if I wanted professional development), and asking whether she had concerns about my work that were preventing her from assigning me more things to do (and being reassured that my work was excellent), and a few other approaches that didn’t work, I finally had to settle on the old AAM mantra: “your manager sucks and isn’t going to change.” I think my manager was a pretty clear example of someone who was a brilliant individual contributor but not a good manager, compounded by the fact that our company offered almost no support or training for new managers.

As for the main question in my letter, I ended up not saying anything to her about how she was coming across as constantly visibly stressed out. I couldn’t think of a way of bringing it up without hurting our relationship, and eventually I just decided it wasn’t my problem to address. Any time a colleague expressed concern to me that our department must be overwhelmed, I could get by with a vague, “well, you know, it’s a rough time!” A weird silver lining of the current times is that it was always true on at least some level.

Unsurprisingly, my issues with my manager were just one symptom of working at a deeply dysfunctional organization. I was hesitant to look for another job, though, because on paper this was a dream job! It was a specialized role in my specific area of expertise, at a “prestigious” company in a “cool” industry that is notoriously hard to crack into. It’s the kind of field where people stay in their jobs for decades, and with COVID hitting the industry hard, job opportunities in my area dropped from extremely rare to non-existent. My options were essentially: 1) stay in the job and accept that the current situation wouldn’t change, 2) be willing to move anywhere on the off chance a job opened up in another city, or 3) change fields. After a lot of reflection, I decided to pursue #3. It was a really hard choice – like a lot of people in “cool” industries, a lot of my identity was tied up in my career and seeing myself as an “X person.” But I had reached a place where I just didn’t see a future for myself staying in the industry, and I was tired of being bored and miserable.

It took some time (I’d been searching for a while when I wrote to you), but eventually I found a job in a different field but doing similar day-to-day work. Alison, it has been absolutely amazing! I love my new job and my new company! It’s an incredibly collaborative and supportive work environment, and I’m getting to work on interesting projects and use skills that I hadn’t had the chance to use in all my years at my previous job. My new manager is a paragon of calm and is extraordinarily proactive about making sure that I’m developing new skills and that I’m doing work I find enjoyable and fulfilling. Working for a highly-functional company has really driven home just how dysfunctional my last company was, and I’m so, so grateful that I took the risk to leave.

Pornhub has been on damage control ever since a New York Times report published in December accused it of allowing the monetization of child exploitation, revenge porn and other illegal content with its lax policy enforcement. Now, the website has expounded upon the steps it has taken since then, including getting the services of a third-party firm called Yoti to verify the identities of users uploading content.

Shortly after the NYT piece went out, Pornhub banned all uploads from unverified users and prevented people from downloading videos. It then removed millions of videos from its platform, all uploaded by unverified users and non-content partners. The website, and all the properties owned by its parent company MindGeek, now only accepts uploads by members of its Model Program, namely studio partners and verified users.

Anyone who wants to join the program will have to verify their identities through Yoti, which requires applicants to submit a current photo and a government-approved ID. According to Ars Technica, Yoti is a London-based company whose customers (Pornhub, in this case) wouldn’t see any documentation submitted at all. In its support documents, Yoti says it can only see people’s submitted data for up to seven days while it verifies that their photo matches the one in their government ID using face recognition software. After that, it encrypts the information such that the company itself won’t be able to see it anymore.

In addition, Pornhub says its parent company expanded its moderation efforts with human moderators dedicated to reviewing every single upload. It recently launched a Trusted Flagger Program, as well, which gives 40 non-profit organizations dedicated to child safety on the internet the power to flag anything they think violates the website’s Terms of Service. The videos non-profit partners flag will be immediately disabled to prevent their spread as soon as possible, in case they truly do contain illegal content.

In the third week of 2021, clinical laboratories nationwide tested 23,549 specimens for influenza. Of those, just 0.3 percent (65 tests) turned up positive — a number that is, to put it mildly, absolutely wild.

“Normally, this time of year, we’d be running 20 to 30 percent positive,” said Lynnette Brammer, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Domestic Influenza Surveillance team.

Although the U.S. continues to struggle with COVID-19, it has apparently beaten the flu into submission. Since the end of September, the combined total of positive flu cases identified by both public health and clinical labs is fewer than 1,500. There are high schools with more people in them. The phenomenon is not only in the United States — worldwide, rates of influenza are nearly off-the-charts low. When you line multiple years up on the same graph, it can even look like there are no cases of flu this year. That’s how out of step we are with the norm.

[Why Fights Over The COVID-19 Vaccine Are Everywhere On Facebook]

Flu cases plummeted in 2021

Number of specimens and those that tested positive for the flu, plus the share that tested positive, from the CDC’s voluntary networks of clinical and public health laboratories during the third week of January, 2011-2021

Year	No. Tested	No. Pos.	Perc. Pos.
2011	11,067	3,710	33.5%
2012	5,364	320	6.0
2013	20,931	6,393	30.5
2014	17,480	4,680	26.8
2015	34,194	7,983	23.3
2016	20,761	1,658	8.0
2017	41,010	9,250	22.6
2018	75,417	22,642	30.0
2019	45,371	8,864	19.5
2020	65,248	18,967	29.1
2021	36,751	68	0.2

Prior to 2016, the CDC combined test results from clinical and public-health data, and from 2016-2021, it broke the results down by source. We calculated the overall share that tested positive for the flu from 2016-2021.

Source: Centers For Disease Control And Prevention

That data is mind-blowing, especially because many observers spent the fall worried about a “twindemic.” The minuscule flu season also raises a few questions: How can there be so many cases of one respiratory illness and so few of another? Why isn’t there always a tidy match between the places with the least COVID-19 and the places with the least flu, or vice versa? And, seriously, are the flu numbers really that low?

The answers are complex, even though this teeny-tiny flu season is a simple fact.

We don’t track the flu the way we track COVID-19. The average seasonal flu exists in a weird liminal space, serious enough to keep an eye on, but also not so serious that we are literally trying to count every single case. After all, most people who get sick with the flu won’t even bother to go get tested for it. They’ll have a couple bad days in bed (if they’re able to take off work) and otherwise go about life basically unchanged.

Instead, counts of flu cases come from a few different surveillance systems, including a network of around 100 public health and 300 clinical labs that participate in virologic surveillance, reporting weekly test numbers and positive cases to the CDC. There’s also a network of doctors’ offices reporting cases of “influenza-like illness,” a network of hospitals reporting lab-confirmed cases and mortality surveillance data from the National Center for Health Statistics, which pulls numbers for flu, pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses directly from death certificates. Other than the NCHS numbers, none of these networks represent truly national figures. They’re a sampling, from across the nation, and they’re reported voluntarily. This is why annual numbers of flu cases (and even deaths) are an estimate, extrapolated from the narrower picture we can see.

[Answers To All (Or At Least Some) Of Your COVID-19 Vaccine Questions]

All of that is to say that there were almost certainly more than 65 cases of flu in the entire United States a couple weeks ago. That number represents what was counted at the member labs — not what existed in total. And even this number is likely an undercount, experts told me, because, right now, people with the symptoms of respiratory illness are significantly more worried about COVID-19 than the flu. “If people aren’t getting tested for it, then we don’t find it,” said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “And the protocol isn’t to test for flu if you’re negative for COVID.” There are probably a lot of people whose fears of COVID-19 infection are assuaged by a negative test result, and who just go home and deal with whatever illness they do have without seeking any medical treatment.

That said, Hamilton and others told me there’s reason to believe actual cases of flu are, indeed, way down. The fact that we are seeing negligible flu seasons in other countries, which count their flu cases differently than we do, is part of the reason why. Also, hospitalizations for flu in the United States are also way down. “People in the hospital get properly diagnosed. So it’s a better indication of lower circulation in people,” said Adolfo García-Sastre, director of the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York. Between Oct. 1 and Jan. 23, there were a total 142 laboratory-confirmed flu hospitalizations in this country — 0.5 per 100,000 Americans over nearly four months. Typically, by this time of year, we’re talking dozens per 100,000 every week.

This massive shift, experts told me, is likely tied to the precautions we’ve taken to avoid catching COVID-19: mask-wearing, social distancing, obsessive cleaning of surfaces (which doesn’t do much to prevent COVID-19 but probably is preventing flu) and even keeping kids out of the classroom. “The major vector for influenza is children,” said David Topham, co-director of the New York Influenza Center of Excellence in Rochester. If they don’t get to breathe on each other like normal, they also can’t transmit as much flu. And that trick still works, even if flu isn’t the reason we’re keeping them distanced.

Influenza hasn’t been our target with all these interventions, but we’ve certainly given it a good pummelling. And that’s because flu just isn’t as transmissible as COVID-19. The R0 (pronounced R naught) — the number that quantifies the average number of people who will catch a virus from a single infected person — is significantly lower for flu than for COVID-19. “R naught is usually around 1 or 1.5 for flu. And for SARS-CoV-2 it’s between 2 and 4,” Topham said, referring to the novel coronavirus’s scientific title. “When you do masking and social distancing, you can artificially lower R naught. So that probably pushes flu down to a range of less than 1. Somebody gets infected, they infect less than another person, and then it’s not viable.”

Our strategies are working on COVID-19, as well. Just not as dramatically, because it was more likely to spread to more people to begin with.

[What Happens When You Get A COVID-19 Vaccine That Uses mRNA]

That doesn’t totally explain why places that have taken masking and distancing very seriously — Australia, for example — and places that have not — the U.S., say — are both experiencing a nearly nonexistent flu season. Significantly reduced international travel has probably played a role in that, Brammer said. Usually, our flu season follows that of the Southern Hemisphere. But if there wasn’t much of one there, and there wasn’t much travel to transport the virus — the flu has no way to travel.

Meanwhile, within the United States, flu rates have remained low in both the states that have instituted measures like masking mandates and those that have not. And García-Sastre said that’s probably because of a little concept you might have heard of: herd immunity. Just like you don’t need to vaccinate absolutely everyone to get a benefit in reduced disease transmission, you also probably don’t need to have the entire population wearing masks and practicing social distancing to see a benefit.

Still, scientists don’t know for certain what’s happening because the trouble with a really, really minuscule flu season is that it doesn’t leave you enough cases to make solid statistical inferences. We don’t know, for example, much about what happens when you get both the flu and COVID-19, because there haven’t been enough cases of it to do good research. We don’t really know how this bottleneck is affecting which strains of flu are circulating for the same reason. We don’t even know, for certain, that it is the masks and distancing that are squashing the flu because there are so few flu cases left to look at.

And that’s an irony that could end up affecting future flu seasons. Take the flu vaccine. Experts use data from past flu seasons to decide which strains people should be inoculated against. “It is definitely going to make the selection of viruses for next years’ vaccine more challenging. We just don’t have a lot to look at worldwide,” Brammer said. “What happens in the long term, I don’t know.”

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Five years or so ago, frustration at John Deere's draconian tractor DRM culminated in a grassroots tech movement dubbed "right to repair." The company's crackdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM (and the company's EULA) prohibited the lion's share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

Of course the problem isn't just restricted to John Deere. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and countless other tech giants eager to monopolize repair have spent years bullying independent repair shops and demonizing consumers who simply want to reduce waste and repair devices they own.

Fast forward to 2021, and roughly fourteen different states are all considering pending right to repair legislation that would put power back in the hands of consumers and independent repair shops. Some states, like Montana, are considering different types of legislation that would cover both consumer hardware and agricultural equipment.

COVID is also pouring some gasoline on this fire, highlighting how manufacturers frequently enjoy a stranglehold over tools, documentation, and replacement parts, which can literally put human lives at risk by causing repair delays:

"Covid has changed our relationship with technology and it's obvious that laws need to catch up,” Proctor said. “We need devices to work and learn, but manufacturers won't provide tools or information even when their stores are closed."

Throughout this whole movement, companies have tried to cling tightly to nonsense in a bid to derail momentum. Usually this involves hallucinating nonexistent harms that threaten public safety and security.

Such as when Apple insisted that passing a right to repair law in Nebraska would turn the state into a "mecca for hackers." Or more recently, when the auto industry tried to claim that expanding Massachusetts' existing consumer tech law, to make sure that independent garages could access tools and diagnostic gear, would result in a "boom in sexual predators." The multi-sector quest to demonize the right to repair movement is relentless, and almost always involves making up bogus harms related to security and safety:

The problem is nobody believes them, in large part because their motivations couldn't be more obvious. And the more outlandish attacks giants like Apple make on this genuine grass roots coalition, the more attention -- and momentum -- it receives.

The listing describes the Proud Boys as a violent neofascist organization whose members "espouse misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and/or white supremacist ideologies."

(Image credit: Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

Organizers had previously pushed the event back two months. It's the second year in a row the event was forced to shut down.

LUBBOCK // A hairless opossum in Lubbock became a viral sensation after the local animal shelter asked the public for fashion advice for the critter. KLBK reported that a concerned citizen brought the opossum, which suffers from alopecia, to the South Plains Rehab Center. Then officials asked the public to help them clothe the critter—a call that was echoed by the Today Show and the New York Post. “She needs an agent,” the rehab center’s director said. 

EDINBURG // A Catholic parishioner gave a priest in Edinburg a family heirloom that had been in its possession for 40 years: a human skull. KRGV discovered the strange handoff through an open records request in November. The Texas Department of Public Safety is looking into the incident, which it’s investigating as a “questionable death.”

COLLEGE STATION // Citing an uptick of rodent-related issues during 2020, Texas A&M University hosted a Rodent Academy in December. The confab brought together exterminators, public officials, and food safety experts, AgriLife Today reported. “As the Year of the Rat wraps up, there is no better time” for those with a gnawing interest to learn about rats, said Janet Hurley, an AgriLife Extension integrated pest management specialist in Dallas.

PLANO // A man in Plano was injured after his dog shot him in the leg, NBC’s Dallas affiliate reported. The pistol was tucked inside the man’s pants when he picked up the dog, whose paw pulled the trigger. The TV station noted the dog shot its owner “accidentally.” The man was sent to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Plano police urged residents to practice gun safety.

WICHITA FALLS // As many Texans redecorate and renovate their homes during the pandemic, some may consider adding a 10-foot-tall floating wooden duck sculpture. Wally the Wonder Duck, a Wichita Falls landmark, is for sale. Ralph Stearns, the local artist who crafted Wally, is asking for $8,000 for his one-of-a-kind creation. Wally spent many years afloat in local lakes, but now he’s strapped to a trailer, waiting for the chance to splash again.

TYLER // Almost 80,000 turkeys were smoked twice over when an explosion rocked Greenberg Turkey in Tyler on November 6. After receiving reports of an explosion and fire, the Tyler Fire Department rushed to the site of the 81-year-old business, KLTV reported. Firefighters found smoke billowing from the roof and debris in the roadway when they arrived. The turkeys were frozen and ready to be shipped at the time of the explosion. 

HARRIS COUNTY // Two people found themselves in hot water after trawling for shrimp in a fish nursery, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Field Notes. Responding to a complaint about illegal fishing, a game warden tried to call one of the suspects but the suspect hung up—and then butt-dialed the game warden back. “Maybe the game warden didn’t see,” one of them said to the other as the warden listened in. Both people were cited for catching undersize fish and ordered to pay restitution.  

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1. “Weston Road Flows”
2. “Orlando Sleepin’”
3. “In My Feelings”
4. “Too Good”
5. “Final Fantasy”
6. “Over My Dead Body”
7. “Coy Joy”
8. “Wandering Eyes”
9. “Can She Excuse My Wrongs”
10. “Flow My Tears”
11. “Look What You’ve Done”
12. “Gyalchester”
13. “Floods of Tears”
14. “Not You Too”
15. “Time Stands Still”
16. “Paris Morton Music”
17. “Unquiet Thoughts”
18. “Cruel Cares”
19. “None But Me”
20. “All Me”
21. “Now and Forever”
22. “Unkind Farewell”
23. “I’m Upset”
24. “Desires with Future”
25. “Come when I Call”
26. “Come Again”
27. “No Long Talk”
28. “Mrs. White’s Thing”
29. “Girls Love Beyoncé”

Aubrey Drake Graham: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 16, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 29
John Dowland: 2, 7, 8, 9, 10 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25, 26, 28

The program will begin with about 1 million doses a week sent to thousands of retail pharmacies. The White House is stressing that equity of vaccine distribution is a key component of the effort.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I loosened my tie and her cheeks flushed red, probably because of the chemtrails.

Today's News:

Don’t waste your time being friends with assholes

The COVID Tracking Project is coming to an end. On March 7th, the one-year anniversary of the initiative, it will publish its final daily update and stop collecting new data. Documentation and archival work will continue, but soon after the project will come to an official end sometime in May. 

Some important news about CTP: After a year of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting COVID-19 data for the United States—and months of preparation for what we’re about to announce—we’re ending our data compilation work on March 7. https://t.co/HtM9c0lwDB

— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) February 1, 2021

The COVID Tracking Project came out at a time when it was nearly impossible to get consistent data on the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. From the start, the group has maintained that it is the responsibility of the federal government to collect and standardize public health data from all 56 states and territories. Now that it seems the CDC and other public health agencies are up to the task, the volunteer organization is more than happy to take a back seat.  

“We began the work out of necessity and planned to do it for a couple of weeks at most, always in the expectation that the federal public health establishment would make our work obsolete,” co-founders Erin Kissane and Alexis Madrigal wrote. “We have seen persuasive evidence that the CDC and HHS are now both able and willing to take on the country’s massive deficits in public health data infrastructure and to offer the best available data and science communication in the interim.” 

One recent development the organization cites for its decision includes the recent restart of daily COVID-19 briefings. The CDC’s improved COVID Tracker, which now includes data on county-level testing, is another positive move forward, according to the organization. It’s hard to overstate the significance of the COVID Tracking Project. Not only was it widely cited by academics, the media and politicians, it also helped inform policy, with the group’s data making its way into proposed House legislation.

COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to strain U.S. hospitals. NPR built a tool to explore trends around the country. Look up your local hospital to see how it's faring.

(Image credit: NPR)

Dustin Diamond played the awkward sidekick Screech in the hit sitcom. He died Monday of cancer, after having been diagnosed three weeks ago.

(Image credit: Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images)

The Saved by the Bell actor, a child star in the 1990s, was diagnosed with lung cancer last month.

Since Texans 65 and older became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, my friends and I have been feverishly swapping emails and texts with links to vaccine registration sites, urging one another on, and reporting which sites work and which don’t. Online, it’s mass delirium and competition. (My friend John says he hasn’t been so angst-ridden since he was trying to score tickets to Hamilton.) But we aren’t just losing our minds over getting the vaccine; we’re also making big plans for our future. A week or two after we get our second round of vaccine, the first wave of baby boomers is going to be 95 percent immune to COVID. Unlike our younger friends and our grown children and grandkids, we will be free to…View Original Post

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