September 16, 2020

Trump to visit Northwest Ohio Monday

Shoring up support outside Toledo? Oh my.

August 28, 2020

There is Zero Chance that a Kenosha County jury (or any Wisconsin jury) convicts Kyle Rittenhouse

of first degree intentional homicide. It's at best an opening negotiating position for the DA, who will be lucky to get a plea deal to second degree reckless homicide (more or less a manslaughter charge) in this case.

It's gonna be a real shit show.

July 29, 2020

Illinois restricts youth sports for Fall - no competitive football or hockey (Pritzker on now)

No contact practices and team scrimmages only for soccer.

Can't find the references grid.

Baseball, tennis, golf OK for competitive games, as lowest risk.

June 2, 2020

Do "Flood the Zone" Police Tactics Actually Enable Looting in Large Cities?

I'm not asking a question I know or even expect a particular answer to. It's a genuine question. We've all by now experienced or seen images of massed police - sometimes seemingly 70, 80 deep - "facing off" against massed protesters. Or, massed or semi-massed police converging on an area in rapid speed, or engaged in kettling operations that flank and enclose protest crowds. I won't pretend to know about policing tactics. It does seem to me, however, that massing police in this manner is not the ordinary course of policing large urban areas, and that police are thereby spread thin, as it were. This would be especially the case for opportunistic looters who are going to go where the police aren't. There was some discussion of this when the Loop got completely shredded in Chicago on Saturday, and certainly it seemed to be the looters' tactic in Manhattan yesterday.

Is it possible that one factor contributing to the widespread, devastating looting is that police tactics are particularly ill-equipped to handle large protests, and that the current "flood the zone" and "massed police" tactics are deeply counter-productive?

May 30, 2020

Protests are complicated

Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be infiltrators, either right wing, white supremacist, or police.
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be experienced non-local left protesters who view it as a useful tactic (i.e., Black Bloc).
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be local left protesters who view it as a useful tactic.
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be local folks who are just fed up and angry and want to smash shit.
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be local folks who just let themselves get carried away in a crowd.
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be local folks who just want to get some shit for free.
Some people who are breaking shit and setting stuff on fire may be just the usual kind of people who like to fuck shit up for fun.

It's quite likely that all of the protests have some mixture of all of these kinds of people. There's a lot of wishful thinking going on here and it goes like this: The people who are doing the stuff I disagree with are not on my side. It's a seductive idea, and one that we'll cling to any evidence to support. But we're all grown ups here, right?

Life is complicated. Protests are complicated. Motives and tactics and actions in the heat of the moment are complicated.

It's never all one or the other.

May 30, 2020

Whatever one thinks about the protests, one thing is absolutely clear

They completely dwarf - in size, scope, organization - the "Lockdown Protests" that garnered so much attention in April and May. The Lockdown Protests look rather piddling in comparison. A few hundred people here or there? That's one block of protesters in Minneapolis. There were more protesters in Atlanta last night than in most of the Lockdown Protests combined.

April 22, 2020

Careful Research Debunks Stay-at-Home Protestor's Hair Claim

https://twitter.com/Maire_from_NJ/status/1252904319843733505

I'm crying laughing!

You may remember the Michigan woman who showed her roots, and suggested she has been unable to get her hair done under the Stay at Home order. One brave Tik Toker took a closer look...

March 26, 2020

Wired Article tracks Claims and Misinformation on Ibuprofen and COVID-19

https://www.wired.com/story/the-ibuprofen-debate-reveals-the-danger-of-covid-19-rumors/

TWO WEEKS AGO, national and world health authorities—and armchair experts and worried well-meaning people—were warning anyone concerned about Covid-19 to avoid ibuprofen. Now, facing contradictory evidence, they’ve backed off that claim.

But the brief online furor over whether it’s safe to use the fever reducer, and the attention paid to the claim that it might be dangerous, are important, both for how people protect themselves in this pandemic and also for how we consume news about it.

----SNIP----

March 26, 2020

South Side Don't Play: Chicago Grandmother ready to Snap on a Trumpie

https://twitter.com/RicWilson/status/1242563308185673729

March 26, 2020

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker stepping up

https://twitter.com/GovPritzker/status/1242962015712423945

The whole thread provides a decent initial plan.