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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Guy Babcock’s reputation was destroyed by lies online – but when he went looking for their source, he was shocked by what he discovered.
(New York Times, approx 20 mins reading time)
“The Babcock family had been targeted by a super-spreader, dragged into an internet cesspool where people’s reputations are held for ransom. Mr. Babcock was sure there was a way to have lies about him wiped from the internet. Many of the slanderous posts appeared on a website called Ripoff Report, which describes itself as a forum for exposing “complaints, reviews, scams, lawsuits, frauds.” (Its tagline: “consumers educating consumers.”)”
Sirin Kale writes about trying to quit her Diet Coke habit.
(The Guardian, approx 13 mins reading time)
“The greatest love story of my life has been with a carbonated beverage. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t addicted to Diet Coke. Some memories: I am sitting at the kitchen table at my grandmother’s house in northern Cyprus, screaming because my mother won’t refill my yellow-and-green patterned glass. I am four or five years old. My grandmother looks on, disturbed, as I wail disconsolately. My mother does not give in.”
One of the symptoms of Covid-19 for some people has been a loss of sense of smell. Can this help us actually learn more about smell?
(The New York Times Magazine, approx 39 mins reading time)
“Smell is a startling superpower. You can walk through someone’s front door and instantly know that she recently made popcorn. Drive down the street and somehow sense that the neighbors are barbecuing. Intuit, just as a side effect of breathing a bit of air, that this sweater has been worn but that one hasn’t, that it’s going to start raining soon, that the grass was trimmed a few hours back. If you weren’t used to it, it would seem like witchcraft.”
John Sullivan was at the recent Capitol riots. He says he was there as a journalist, but was he?
(The New Yorker, approx 19 mins reading time)
“John Sullivan made a habit of blurring the lines between activism, advocacy journalism, and opposition research. He tried to stay abreast of where the next big protest or riot was likely to break out, monitoring activist group chats on Signal and Telegram. “I was able to collaborate with the left in their community to gather information,” Sullivan wrote in an unpublished draft of a memoir. “But I also can connect with the right and successfully be in their presence without them being combative towards me.” When he was surrounded by left-wing activists or right-wing activists, he sometimes gave the impression of being one of them; at other times, he implied that he was working undercover to expose one side or the other.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on why vaccine nationalism is immoral.
(Foreign Policy, approx 8 mins reading time)
“At present, rich countries with just 16 percent of the world’s population have bought up 60 percent of the world’s vaccine supply. Many of these countries aim to vaccinate 70 percent of their adult population by midyear in pursuit of herd immunity. But COVAX—the multilateral mechanism created by the World Health Organization together with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, the vaccine alliance, to ensure that vaccines reach all people everywhere—is struggling to purchase enough doses to cover just 20 percent of the population of lower-income countries by the end of 2021.”
6. Major League baseball and mental health
The story of Drew Robinson, a San Francisco Giants player who dealt with mental health issues. (Content warning: suicide, suicidal ideation)
(ESPN, approx 49 mins reading time)
“The reason, Drew says, is because “I was supposed to tell a story,” and not just the story of what happened. The real story — the important story — is what happened after: every minute he’s alive, moments good and bad. It’s not some sanitized version where a man is saved and happily ever after is the outcome. It is raw and beautiful and ugly and melancholy and triumphant and everything in between.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Let’s go back to July of last year for this, the story of a man’s search for his identity, after being found as a baby wrapped in his mother’s coat.
(BBC, approx 20 mins reading time)
He had been found wrapped in a bright blue woman’s coat on Victoria Embankment, a road lined with trees and occasional benches that runs along the north bank of the Thames. The boy was judged to be one month old and, after no-one came forward to claim him, he was allotted a birthday. He also needed a name. It was common at the time to refer to the place a child was found – and so he became Victor Banks. “I always wondered who they were, you know? And why I would have been abandoned, I think that’s the main thing.”"
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Why would we give two hoots?
@Wishywashy: The government is attempting to undermine the cause of the protests by linking them to outside agitators. It’s not true of course.
The Serb government eased the lockdown before the June 21st election in order to get a big turn out and win votes, after the votes were counted they re-imposed the knockdown after announcing a spike in COVID-19 cases. The protestors upset at this, are a mix of people upset at the bent election and conspiracy minded who think COVID dies not exist or was exaggerated as a political tool to stifle descent.
The reason why we should care is that there is now a rapidly worsening outbreak of COVID in Serbia, the government capitulated to the protestors demands, ended the lockdown a 2nd time, so Serbia is now faced with a worsening mishandled outbreak they cannot control. That outbreak could force border closures and cause problems/outbreaks elsewhere in Europe.
Mr Bald of the Bald and Bankrupt YouTube channel caught Coronavirus in Serbia and was in hospital for a month and the ICU for a week.
Here’s his video: https://youtu.be/clscC120ZQM
He didn’t realise how ill he was and was taken to hospital in taxi by a concerned friend. They found his oxygen levels were in “the low 70s”. He recons the low oxygen levels affected his judgment and that’s why he didn’t realise he was dying.
Also, Serbia was caught covering up the severity of the outbreak.
There was an election on June 21, some protestors were upset about the bent election, think the corrupt government eased the lockdown in order to win votes. There’s now a second wave of infections, that’s why the lockdown was re-imposed, or maybe the first never ended, or maybe it’s to stifle protests. One of the leaders of the protest was a 5G conspiracy theorist, but there’s various reasons why people were protesting.
@David Jordan: he is brilliant to watch !! Especially his south American travels
@Maalouf: you might want to do a bit of background research on him, you will think twice about watching his videos.
@David Jordan: oh a communist sympathizer who worked for MI5 probably still does by the look of his videos. Reserch who you watch
@Tiktok: Sources please. Have been following him for a good while and this is the first I’ve heard of that
@Alex Nevin: Used enjoys his videos until I found out he’s a d!rty little git
@Hup Abù: eh hem..I quite enjoyed his videos until I learned he’s a d!try little git
@Alex Nevin: he used to post under a pseudonym in a sex tourist forum and people have corroborated events he mentions in the pseudonym account with facts known about his life (where he has been, an unfounded rape accusation, ex wife from Belarus, tips for learning Russian). He posted despicable stories and totally denigrated all of the people he pretends to be friends with. https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldAndBaldrDossier/comments/cz1sz4/the_x_files_of_bald_bankrupt_a_brief_summary_and/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body
@David Jordan: and that is hilarious because he was a denier until he got it
Sure or government used the pandemic to form a government nobody voted for!
@Aaron Jones: you got precisely what you voted for. No overall control….
@ℝ: yeah I never voted for mehole or Leotard!
@Aaron Jones: 76% didn’t vote for Mary Who either but sure that’s democracy for ye.
@GrumpyAulFella: I never voted for Mary Lou!
@GrumpyAulFella: Why can’t people understand how our voting system works!? What you mean to say is 76% didn’t give SF their no1 vote.
Probably the ringleader and a spy.
@:
They should protest at the Chinese embassy
have your say