June 22

 Looks like another warm and sunny day. And another with a dirty blue sky. I am really very tired of that. I would rather have rain. I didn't do much at all yesterday. One of those days when my get-up-and-go got up and went, as the old saying goes. I have a bunch of things to do today so we'll see how far I get.

I am getting very tired of another term/word: misinformation. It seems to cover everything from innocuous beliefs someone else doesn't share to outright provable lies. Robert Reich posts today on the matter focusing on big tech companies like Twitter and Facebook. A lot of ink (electronic and physical) has been spilt expressing outrage on all sides of issues which has resulted in much heat (and hate) with no resolution. The issue involves several nested problems but the most basic problem is we no longer have any authority that is widely accepted. 

To illustrate: vaccines and COVID vaccines in particular. My mother grew up at a time before vaccines became a normal part of childhood life. Polio, measles, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox, chicken pox, flu were also a normal part and all took a large number of lives, especially children's lives, each year. And in some cases left life long health problems for the survivors. I grew in a transition time as the first vaccines were rolled out. By the time I was a young adult they were so widely accepted that recruits in my boot camp class were lined up and given the full range of available vaccines. No one protested. When COVID came along Mom and I got the shot after considering carefully all of the available information--including some from very skeptical sources. One of my nephews refused both the shot and the advice to mask and his mother, my sister, told him not to visit until he was vaccinated and agreed to wear a mask. She and her partner both had health problems which made getting a COVID infection very risky. All of our formerly trusted institutions have suffered from a loss of trust and increase of skepticism, if not outright hostility.

Big tech/social media provides a new (to us) forum for a wide range of opinions/beliefs/whatever ranging from rational to whack-a-doodle insane. But we always had forums for that same range of "information." When I was a child I found a lot of books on all kinds of things: hollow earth, flat earth, ancient astronauts etc., etc., etc. I read a lot of other books as well that debunked all of those ideas. Our Constitution promises us a "free press" not a fair press, or even a truthful press. Our system depends on US doing our part and intelligently examining issues AND respecting those who don't agree with our conclusions. My sister respected her son's decisions concerning COVID but she didn't have to risk her life and health because of those decisions. I never saw the utility of Twitter and never signed up on it. I do use Facebook but very selectively. I play some games, keep up with family and a couple of real friends whom I have known for a long time before Facebook, and visit some crafting pages. And I think our politicians will find it difficult to regulate those companies as to the content they allow and most of their efforts will be ineffective in a global system where users can migrate to new sites that give them the information they seek.

Well, the USDA has approved lab grown chicken produced by two companies. I am always skeptical of these developments. I noticed the boosters for this technology noted how much water and how much land is devoted to raise meat animals. And I noticed the appeal to those who object (often rightly) to the treatment of the animals that feed us. However, let's also ask what the creating lab grown mean actually costs. How about the electricity and other power inputs? What about the components of the nutrient broth? And what will be done with the waste and does it involve any risks to the environment or people? And consider that animal waste is a problem for the concentrated animal feeding operations simply because there is so much of it. If the companies that intend to grow meat in a lab bring it up to industrial production (as the animal feeding operations have) how much waste will they generate? None of that is even considered by those who are blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes.

Rhyd Wildermuth has a post that explores the close relationship between religion and war. As I read that piece I thought of a classic story by Mark Twain, THE WAR PRAYER.

On the climate front, this was posted on Naked Capitalism today. Spoiler: not at all good.

And another interesting story from Naked Capitalism about our medical supply chains. This story notes a couple of weaknesses in our Medical Industry. First, we rely too heavily on foreign sources, often only one foreign source, for many of our drugs or drug components. When that supply line shuts down shortages happen. As occurred when that baby formula maker who shut down a contaminated interrupting the supply of a large percentage of the formula on the market. Second, this is one of many situations in which the market cannot be trusted to provide the best service to people. Generic drugs don't provide enough profit so companies stop producing them. Name brand drugs are profitable but large numbers of the customers can't afford them, and the insurance companies and drug program managers associated with them don't want to because that would cut into profits.