Gilead
Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[1] fair use.
Apparently, Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue ain’t going so hot.[2] I know I wasn’t expecting very many people to sign up for it, but this seems even worse than I expected.
Mark Frauenfelder, “Only 180,000 people in the U.S. are paying for Twitter Blue. That covers about 1% of its annual debt,” Boing Boing, February 6, 2023, https://boingboing.net/2023/02/06/only-0-2-of-twitters-active-users-have-paid-for-twitter-blue-subscriptions.html
Abortion
Fig. 2. Sign at demonstration in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, May 3, 2022. Janni Rye, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Google has repeatedly been pressed to make changes to its search engine to curtail these issues. In 2022, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan wrote to the company twice, urging it to stop misdirecting users searching for abortion care to these crisis centers in Google Maps. The lawmakers also called on Google to limit the way crisis centers appear in search results and ads, and to add disclaimers clearly indicating whether a search result is an organization that provides abortions or not.
Google responded by pledging to clearly label these facilities in the future. But researchers in the study also found a number of ads still being served to users suggesting centers offer abortion care when they do not.[3]
Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, “Federal judge says constitutional right to abortion may still exist, despite Dobbs,” Politico, February 6, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/federal-judge-constitutional-right-abortion-dobbs-00081391
Poppy Noor, “Google targets low-income US women with ads for anti-abortion pregnancy centers, study shows,” Guardian, February 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/07/google-targets-low-income-women-anti-abortion-pregnancy-center-study
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 3. Too crazy for the Club For Growth: “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Isaac Arnsdorf, “Koch network to oppose Trump in primary after sitting out recent cycles,” Washington Post, February 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/koch-trump-2024-gop-presidential-primary/
Michael C. Bender, “Club for Growth Distances Itself Further From Trump,” New York Times, February 6, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/us/politics/club-for-growth-trump-desantis.html
COVID-19 Pandemic
Fig. 4. Photograph by author, November 8, 2022.
It turns out that doctors who are politically conservative were actually more likely to consider hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment [for COVID-19], despite the understood research. . . .
“[P]olitical ideology colors the evaluation of scientific evidence to a greater degree when it pertains to a politicized treatment,” the report reads. “After reading otherwise identical results, partisans’ responses were more polarized when the drug was identified as ivermectin relative to when it was anonymized, with participants who were more conservative reporting that the evidence was less informative, the study was less methodologically rigorous, and the authors were more likely to be biased.” The results, they add, “were not detectably different across lay and physician samples.”
In other words, partisans were more likely to dismiss research undercutting the efficacy of ivermectin when they knew the research was about ivermectin.[4]
These were peer reviewed studies, studies which should have been accepted as best knowledge we had at the time. That’s as good as it gets, particularly in an emergency (which conservatives were also very much inclined to discount).
It still failed to persuade people with doctorates in medicine (M.D.), people who should be well acquainted with scientific method and who should be receptive to positivism as a way of knowing. Conservative doctors seem also to have viewed vaccinations as less effective than their ‘liberal’ and ‘moderate’ counterparts.[5]
There is, I’m sure, more to be said here. Right now, the implications are boggling my mind.
Philip Bump, “Conservative doctors were more likely to see hydroxychloroquine as effective,” Washington Post, February 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/06/coronavirus-pandemic-conservatives-ivermectin/
So-called ‘ridesharing’
Drivers
Fig. 5. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.
So I finally got through the last of the obstructions to driving for Lyft yesterday. It’s changed a bit since last I drove for them. And I guess Lyft and Uber are in a contest to see who can be more abusive of drivers.
Lyft has something called Lyft Maps now. It’s an in-house navigation product, part of the driver app, but it’s even worse than Uber Maps, which is the counterpart that Uber rushed out the door when they were having a dispute with Google over self-driving car technology. Uber Maps is still a rush job and it’s terrible to the point of ludicrity; I’ve seen plenty of Uber drivers using it but they really shouldn’t. And I’m guessing more than a few Lyft drivers will be suckered into using Lyft Maps, which is just one facepalm moment after another.
Lyft also doesn’t integrate with Apple Maps, so I’m using Google Maps and will be evaluating it again, comparing with Apple Maps as I did before. One thing I can tell you is that Google Maps is still worse at keeping track of road closures.
I’m hoping it’s just that I’ve failed to locate the cancel function, but Lyft appears even less flexible about cancelling rides now. Pittsburgh has lots of places where you just can’t stop. Sorry, no matter what addled fantasies Lyft may have about customer service, if there’s no place to stop, I can’t stop, and yes, passengers do order pickups at locations where I can’t stop.
Uber provides a chat function in their app that allows text communication between riders and drivers. Lyft’s counterpart is limited to a very short number of canned responses. Lyft really wants drivers to call passengers, which I despise.
Lyft passengers seem even less clueful than Uber passengers about signaling drivers. Yes, you need to wave or gesture or do something, because no, I’m not a mind reader.
Finally, I’m seeing (and accepting) rides for even more insulting pay than I saw even with Uber.
This is going to last just as long as it takes for me to complete 50 rides, for which they guaranteed I’d make at least $1,200. That’s $24 per ride, which is a lot more on average than I’ve seen in quite a long time, and was exceptional even then. They’ll pay the difference when the total for those 50 rides falls far short. I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to prove with this incentive, because all they’re showing me is how little they pay and how they’re even more abusive than Uber.
- [1]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
- [2]Mark Frauenfelder, “Only 180,000 people in the U.S. are paying for Twitter Blue. That covers about 1% of its annual debt,” Boing Boing, February 6, 2023, https://boingboing.net/2023/02/06/only-0-2-of-twitters-active-users-have-paid-for-twitter-blue-subscriptions.html↩
- [3]Poppy Noor, “Google targets low-income US women with ads for anti-abortion pregnancy centers, study shows,” Guardian, February 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/07/google-targets-low-income-women-anti-abortion-pregnancy-center-study↩
- [4]Philip Bump, “Conservative doctors were more likely to see hydroxychloroquine as effective,” Washington Post, February 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/06/coronavirus-pandemic-conservatives-ivermectin/↩
- [5]Philip Bump, “Conservative doctors were more likely to see hydroxychloroquine as effective,” Washington Post, February 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/06/coronavirus-pandemic-conservatives-ivermectin/↩