{"id":2534,"date":"2020-10-20T19:21:05","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T02:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2020-10-21T07:19:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T14:19:09","slug":"covid-or-n0-reading-part-1-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/?p=2534","title":{"rendered":"COVID OR N0: READING, PART 1, NEWSPAPERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a little exciting. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Two of you asked what I have been reading during COVID.\u00a0 Among my faithful readers, two requesters is Legion.\u00a0 So this is a little exciting.\u00a0 But let\u2019s face it: COVID or not, I read a lot. I’ve always read a lot.\u00a0 A high school friend, Shirley with whom I had not spoken for more than 30 years, called to tell me about our friend Gayle’s death.\u00a0 Then, because, she said, she knew I would be, she asked, \u201cWhat are you reading?\u201d and we had a great good time reminiscing and re-connecting through book-talk. Reading is my way of life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Getting a grip on my enthusiasm,\u00a0 I am separating reading newspapers from books, even though it is not a clean break. Newspapers are a lifelong pleasure, my tether to the greater world, a place of surprise.\u00a0 They can cover anything, and sometimes do<\/span>.\u00a0 But be prepared for my choices, as you are in the company of one who has “information eyes.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Here I am in Maine, with hair, reading newspapers. Millie says, “Classic.”<\/p><\/div>\n

ARTCLES <\/strong><\/p>\n

In “The code: how genetic\u00a0 science helped expose a secret coronavirus<\/a> outbreak [in Iowa]”<\/strong>,\u00a0 Paraic Kenny, a tumor geneticist turned viral geneticist, became a disease detective, a genome tracker, in fact, a genetic epidemiologist.\u00a0 Its all searching to me, and I have loved searchers, strategies, or search results and reports\u00a0 forever.\u00a0 Now I’ll add tracking, investigating, even detecting, and become an “information epidemiologist”.\u00a0 See?\u00a0 Exciting!\u00a0 And what’s up with Iowa and secrets?\u00a0 That’s just plain un-Midwestern-ness.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I came across another\u00a0 timely “case study” of information tracking titled\u00a0 \u00a0“How sexist, racist, attacks on Kamala Harris<\/a> spread online.”<\/strong>\u00a0 I read this\u00a0 and learned of too many [massive sigh]\u00a0 social media sources I’ve never met, but which, when distributed, include the concepts of “spread” and “influence” and “sequence” which I do know [whew!].<\/p>\n

Now it’s QAnon I don’t get.\u00a0 It promotes a conspiracy of drivel, amorphously,\u00a0 without rhyme or reason or structure — at least to me.\u00a0 I don’t know what or who it is or how it’s information spreads, changes, infects or influences. I do wonder how so many naive\u00a0 people could have so much easy access to dangerous nonsense\u00a0 and so little ability to recognize the nonsense.\u00a0 Doing my best to thwart this pestilence by knowing more about QAnon’s paths to the gullible, I read recently and recommend: “How QAnon is spreading<\/a> during the pandemic..<\/strong>.”, and\u00a0\u00a0“Following Falsehoods<\/a>–A Reporter’s Approach….”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Here I am in Seattle, reading the New York Times…uh, differently.<\/p><\/div>\n

Too much?\u00a0 Well, I warned you about reading with an “info nerd,” Barb’s wonderful name for a group I want to be part of.\u00a0 Just to remind you all of my very useful liberal arts degree, I read a VERY interesting wide-ranging article\u00a0 about Edward Hopper’s early work<\/a>.\u00a0 As re-envisioned by a grad student<\/strong> in art history who found old magazines for amateur artists which had some pictures the adolescent Hopper copied for his early paintings.\u00a0 So given his copying, is Hopper less a teenage genius that gave meaning to “American-ness?”\u00a0 Is there even such a distinction as “American-ness”?\u00a0 With that, I’m enjoying a few minutes of canal watching, a mug of vegetable broth, and remembering American Studies’ friends.<\/p>\n

Somewhat similarly, I am newly sitting in Seattle and wondering if there is such a thing as a Midwestern sense of humor.\u00a0 I cracked a really funny joke in the poetry group\u00a0( Robert Frost transgendered as Roberta ?), and only the physicist\/jazz pianist, who had to find an aide to make his laptop stop playing a song he had brought to illustrate a point at an earlier meeting, only he got it, — finally.<\/p>\n

And my spidey senses must have been on high alert when I decided to read about James Murdoch, Rupert’s younger son who has left the fold<\/strong> because he has a brain and principles and decided instead to\u00a0invest “in start-ups created to combat fake news and the spread of disinformation, having found the proliferation of deep fakes ‘terrifying’ because they ‘undermine our ability to discern what\u2019s true and what\u2019s not’<\/a> and it ‘is only at the beginning as far as I can tell.”<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0Where we you James Murdoch all those years I was always looking for funding for my next project?\u00a0 AARRGGH!<\/p>\n

NY Times PUZZLES<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

I still think there might be number patterns in Sudoku (Charlie says there aren’t), and I still don’t like the Thursday NYT crossword, though I did “get” the last two rebuses.\u00a0 And Rex Parker’s blo<\/strong>g remains a vent-worthy read.<\/p>\n

NY Times COLUMNISTS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

My list of favorites grows:\u00a0 Gail Collins<\/strong>, smart, bit snarky, good natured, usually politics;\u00a0 Paul Krugman<\/strong>, broadly-read and -interested economist;\u00a0 Thomas Friedman<\/strong>, Middle East thinker about actions, connections, and implications (I also like novels by Daniel Silva<\/strong> and David Ignatius<\/strong>), and he, like Al Franken and the Coen brothers, is from Minneapolis-plus; Timothy Egan<\/strong>, usually writes about the West but I’ll read anything he wants to write about, and… he lives in Seattle; most recent\u00a0 fav\u00a0Siobhan Roberts<\/strong>, writes interestingly and knowingly about math, surely a miracle;\u00a0 and Farad M<\/strong>anjoo<\/strong> and, until the Atlantic “contracted” her away,\u00a0<\/strong>Zeynep Tufecki<\/strong> both of whom write broadly and knowingly\u00a0 about information matters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

WHEW!\u00a0 Enough.\u00a0 Be ready for more joy and curse of newspaper reading.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a little exciting. Two of you asked what I have been reading during COVID.\u00a0 Among my faithful readers, two requesters is Legion.\u00a0 So this is a little exciting.\u00a0 But let\u2019s face it: COVID or not, I read a lot. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2555,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roseledgebooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}