Worldwide Stew

Reclaiming our Attention (and our Inbox)

In recent news, Meta and YouTube were found guilty of designing addictive products that harmed young people. There’s no doubt of the validity of that claim. However, they aren’t the only organizations responsible for co-opting attention.

My own attention deficit journey began this morning. I had nearly 3,000 unread emails in my inbox. What to do?

I looked at them the way you might look at a crime scene: who were the potential suspects? Sure, there were lots of suspects from a slew of different emails. SO, how to get filter through all these emails? Hmmm? What do many of them have in common?

And then they came for me

Pastor Martin Niemöller did what many Christians did when they saw the Third Reich systematically remove the rights of selected populations. Group by group, Hitler and his hinchmen took away the rights 1) of the press, 2) of educational institutions and their professors, 3) of races, 4) the mentally ill, 5) of dissidents, and of other groups.

Like all good religious people, he said nothing.

Then they came for him.

Gavin Newsome on the Trump Administration and Democracy

When I started Worldwide Stew, I intended the Blog area of the site to be generally positive in tone. I would reserve the Opinion area of the site for news and opinions about science, health, politics, and fun stuff.

And then we ended up with what can only be called a fascist Administration(Merriam-Webster definition at the link). At this point, the scaffolding that held up any form of democracy is quickly eroding, like hurricane-force winds along the shoreline.

Save Public Media

If you live in the United States and can read this text, it’s possible that you learned some reading on Sesame Street. As you got older, you might have watched an episode of the science program Nova. As an adult, you may have watched news programming on the Evening News Hour. While it is fair to say that PBS coverage does tend to lean left of center; unlike other network news, however, PBS makes a concerted effort to fairly cover multiple sides of the issues. For entertainment, you might have watched Downton Abbey. And, during emergencies, you would have had continual coverage. Moreover, you may also have listened to the radio presence of public media. These services are available to everyone, rich or poor. This even includes those who can’t afford cable, like those people whom we pay tiny sums of money to mow our lawns and replace our roofs.

Debates and other distractions

Author: Mike Davis