It’s the last Friday of my winter “break” which I put in quotes because I’ve been working on *all the things* this month with the hopes of moving some projects along before the waves of semester classes wash over me. It is nice to have a whole week where I don’t open the news to see the President doing something absurdly cruel and/or stupid, so there’s that. But that doesn’t mean it’s been boring…
I… don’t understand the whole Gamestop-reddit-hedge fund thing. I don’t understand the stock market in general, and that’s okay because I’ve never had money to even consider throwing at it anyway. Here’s a short explainer of the stock market shenanigans from Forbes and more coverage from the New York Times. Although it’s often being touted as a win for the “little guy” against the massive financial establishment, it leaves me to wonder what “little guys” have money to throw around like this in the first place.
If you’ve been paying any attention to reality, particularly in the U.S., then you know that fatal police shootings of unarmed Black Americans is a dire situation. Nevertheless, NPR digs even deeper into this crisis that uncovers some really disturbing stories of how the same officers are allowed to abuse and kill again and again, with protection from police unions and a shrug from departments.
It’s been called the “Fyre Festival” of the COVID vaccine distribution, but its consequences are far more serious. A vaccine distribution start-up by a 22-year-old “disrupter” reveals itself to be a devious money-making scheme, though it was trusted with thousands of vaccine does by the city officials of Philadelphia. This story came to us from Kelli via the Contact Form. I want to highlight that Philadelphians are now encouraged to sign up for vaccine information through the city’s Health Department.
And in education, in a story that truly made me say “WTF,” a college student learns partway through the semester that the professor “teaching” their online course is actually dead. Because we all know that the educational content we create is a commodity that the universities can just sell and that the real work of interacting with students can be shuffled off to the lowest paid TAs, right? This one was shared by a colleague who most definitely is alive and well and teaching their own classes.
Here is a cute animal of the week story via Muscadine on Discord that also takes a twist I didn’t expect. A woman realizes that she’s about to go into a doctor’s appointment with her pet sugar glider sleeping soundly in her bra. The thread is adorable and everyone makes it out alright, but apparently going viral leads the author to learn that having sugar gliders as pets is not a good idea. Nevertheless, the little goobers appear well-cared for, so I hope it works out for everyone!
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