Indy Digest: Dec. 12, 2022
Any respect I had left for Elon Musk evaporated over the weekend.
Why, you may ask? I’ll let CBS News explain:
As Dr. Anthony Fauci prepares to step down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the end of the year, the leading immunologist faced derision on social media over the weekend from tech billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk tweeted on Sunday. The jibe, shared largely without context, drew support from prominent conservatives such as right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — whose account was reinstated with Musk’s decision to end the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy last month, and who has been criticized in the past for her own comments mocking the use of gender pronouns — as well as backlash.
In one way, Musk’s tweet is almost impressive, because he managed to promote COVID-19 misinformation and take a not-so-subtle dig at the trans community in just five words.
In every other way, it’s just awful. Of course, when he was called out for being awful, Musk dug in. From The Hill:
“Elon, please don’t mock and promote hate toward already marginalized and at-risk-of-violence members of the #LGBTQ+ community,” astronaut Scott Kelly, the twin brother of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), responded to Musk’s tweet. “They are real people with real feelings. Furthermore, Dr Fauci is a dedicated public servant whose sole motivation was saving lives.”
“I strongly disagree,” Musk replied. “Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone. As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.”
Multiple Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), have pressed Fauci on whether the National Institutes of Health has ever funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a claim Fauci has said is “entirely and completely incorrect,” as part of the Republicans’ claims that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.
House Republicans have repeatedly floated plans to investigate Fauci upon taking the House majority in January, a scenario Fauci has acknowledged. He has also indicated he will cooperate with any investigations.
Forcing your pronouns upon others? WTF?
The U.S. is plagued with numerous sources of misinformation and hate, from cable-news networks to social-media stars and beyond. And now, we have Elon Musk. He’s someone who is about as privileged as a person can get—and he’s using his privilege to be just awful.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
Will Smith’s Folly: A Lot of Work Went Into ‘Emancipation’—but the Script Is Devoid of Heft and Meaning
By Bob Grimm
December 12th, 2022
It’s clear that a lot of work went into this movie, but it’s mostly for naught, because Emancipation doesn’t seem to have any real sense of purpose.
CV History: In 1909, a Manhunt for a Local Native American Murderer Captivated the Nation
By Greg Niemann
December 10th, 2022
The dramatic 1909 manhunt for Willie Boy received press coverage across the country—and convinced some Easterners that the West was still living in savage times.
Remember the ’80s: Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig Make ‘White Noise’ Worth the Time
By Bob Grimm
December 12th, 2022
When it’s all over, White Noise feels like a scattershot experience—but the look of the film and the two lead performances make it worth the time.
More News
• Is the latest COVID-19 spike peaking? Maybe … I doubt it, but maybe. Here are the latest Palm Springs wastewater testing results for SARS-CoV-2, done Dec. 5 and 6. The takeaway: “The average number of copies (per liter) recorded at the city’s wastewater treatment plant decreased slightly. The average of 1,084,851 copies/L from the previous week went down to an average of 768,903 copies/L for December 5 and 6.” Unfortunately, the lab the city uses seems to be only testing for the BA variants, and hasn’t honed in on BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 (which are actually BA.5 subvariants), so we don’t know how dominant they are here. They’re currently making up 68 percent or so of cases nationwide.
• Several local publications are now under new ownership. From Gold Country Media: “Gold Mountain California News Media Inc. has acquired 11 California titles from Brehm Communications Inc. (BCI). Six titles comprise the Gold Country Media cluster, including the twice-weekly Auburn Journal and weeklies the Loomis News, Placer Herald, Roseville Press-Tribune, Lincoln News Messenger and Folsom Telegraph. The other five publications are in the San Bernardino Mountains and neighboring high-desert region. The group in the southern part of the state includes six weekly newspapers: The Big Bear Grizzly and Mountain News cover the resort and second home communities adjacent to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. The other titles in the group—the Hi-Desert Star, The Desert Trail and The Desert Mobile Home News—serve residents of the Coachella Valley in the high desert just north of Palm Springs. … The new owners have newspaper assets throughout the United States and Canada, including the Marysville Appeal-Democrat, the Lodi News-Sentinel and the recently acquired Grass Valley Union.”
• Notice that piece didn’t say who owned Gold Mountain California News Media Inc.? The Sacramento Business Journal clarifies: “A company linked to Vancouver, British Columbia-based Alta Newspaper Group, which owns newspapers throughout California and Canada, bought 11 more California newspapers from San Diego-based Brehm Communications Inc., which had owned the cluster of local news outlets called Gold Country Media.”
• The Palm Springs Post reports that AirBnB owners nationally are seeing a decrease in bookings, but that the numbers remain strong locally, despite some individual complaints: “Nationally, vacation rental occupancy is indeed way down, thanks to the explosion of new property listings increasing the supply. ‘The number of bookings is not down. But we have 23% more listings in the U.S. today than we had last year,’ said Jamie Lane, the vice president of research for AirDNA, a short-term rental analytics firm. ‘That means the number of bookings per available listing, or occupancy, is down pretty strongly off 2021 highs.’ … Could a bust really be happening in one of the country’s premier vacation destinations? The answer is complicated. Across the valley, AirDNA’s latest report shows thousands of active rentals with an average occupancy rate of 55.5%. That’s down from the typical peak spring season when festivals such as Coachella and Stagecoach are in full swing, but similar to fall and winter seasons in previous years. In Palm Springs, by far the most active short-term rental market, the most recent data available for the number of short-term rental permits shows that permits increased about 11% year-over-year. Despite that increase in permitted rentals, local occupancy remains almost the same as last year, according to AirDNA, at 63%. The average daily rate for a vacation rental has actually increased 5% from $570 last year to $601 this year.” More than $600 a night? Sheesh!
• Meanwhile, in Arizona, the outgoing governor is trying to build a border wall using … shipping containers? The Associated Press says so: “Work crews have steadily erected hundreds of double-stacked shipping containers topped by razor wire along Arizona’s remote eastern boundary with Mexico in a bold show of border enforcement by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey even as he prepares to leave office. Until protesters slowed, then largely halted the work in recent days, Ducey pressed forward over the objections of the U.S. government, environmentalists and an incoming governor who has called it a poor use of resources. … Federal agencies have told Arizona the construction on U.S. land is unlawful and ordered it to halt. Ducey responded Oct. 21 by suing federal officials over their objections, sending the dispute to court. Environmental groups say the containers could imperil natural water systems and endanger species.” Look at the photo in this article … and explain to me how these easy-to-climb-over things would do ANY good?
• Have you ever read a headline that seems so ridiculous, you had problems believing it, even though you trust the source? Such was the case with this ProPublica headline (and subhead) and me: “Inside Google’s Quest to Digitize Troops’ Tissue Samples: The tech giant has long sought access to a priceless trove of veterans’ skin samples, tumor biopsies and slices of organs. DOD staffers have pushed back, raising ethical and legal concerns, but Google might win anyway.” It’s a complicated story, so I recommend reading it, but here are a few details. It has to do with artificial intelligence: “Pathology experts call the (Joint Pathology Center) collection a national treasure, unique in its age, size and breadth. The archive holds more than 31 million blocks of human tissue and 55 million slides. More recent specimens are linked with detailed patient information, including pathologist annotations and case histories. And the repository holds many examples of ‘edge cases’— diseases so vanishingly rare that many pathologists never see them. Google sought to gather so many identifying details about the specimens and patients that the repository’s leaders feared it would compromise patients’ anonymity. Discussions became so contentious in 2017 that the leaders of the JPC broke them off. … But Google didn’t give up.” Eek.
• And finally … I had a similar reaction to this Daily Mail headline: “Scientists genetically modify a tobacco plant to produce COCAINE in its leaves.” Why?! Some explanation, sort of: “While cocaine is notorious as an illegal drug, it has also been used in medical practices as a local anaesthetic or to narrow blood vessels to stem bleeding. However, pharmaceutical companies are limited in ways they can produce the drug, as key steps in its biosynthesis have remained a mystery. Until now, scientists have not known how the precursor chemical MPOA is converted into a section of the cocaine molecule, methylecgonone. In their paper, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the scientists finally discovered what was missing.”
Support the Independent!
Thanks, as always, for reading us. If you have a buck or two you can spare, and you appreciate what we do, click the button below to learn about becoming a Supporter of the Independent. Again, thanks!
