Category: Off topic

Good analysis from Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland:

Republican lawmakers intended to prohibit schools, cities, and counties from requiring masks when they amended an education bill on the final day of the legislature’s 2021 session. But House File 847, which Governor Kim Reynolds rushed to sign within hours of its passage, was not well crafted to accomplish that goal.

An apparent drafting error opened the door for the mask order Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague announced on August 19, with the full support of the city council.

Most news organizations missed the care this order was crafted with and followed with stories focused on Iowa City defying state law.

Despite Gov. Kim Reynolds maintaining that cities cannot issue such orders, the question hasn’t actually been tested in court.

Josie Fischels, writing for NPR:

The scene left by the 2020 Midwest derecho was “apocalyptic,” he says.

On the first anniversary of the derecho, I had a surprisingly therapeutic chance to talk about my family’s experience.

Zachary Oren Smith for the Press-Citizen:

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors has a vacancy, but unless you are one of the 350 or so delegates for the local Democrats, you won’t have much of a say in who fills it.

I’ve made a light mockery of the “who’s running?!” intrigue surrounding the Johnson County Board of Supervisors vacancy, but this is why: the choice will be limited to a tiny number of folks. (For the record: I am not one of them.)

The county government deserves coverage. But reporting resources are extremely constrained. Should those resources be devoted to writing profiles of five declared candidates, remembering that there could be a nomination from the floor we don’t even expect?

County government deserves real coverage. So let’s reflect: almost everyone was surprised by the resignation; where’s the coverage of how we got here? How did we have a supervisor who, allegedly, was putting in just six hours of work each week, or, as another supervisor wrote, “both literally and figuratively calling it in”?

Ed Zitron:

I think that it’s going to take a long time for anyone to really study and understand how social media affects us.

The whole piece is interesting, but I pulled this mostly unremarkable bit because, well—

Lately, watching For All Mankind in which everyone is smoking at NASA and everywhere else all the time, it struck me that social media could, in 50 years, be a thing we look back on like smoking: harmful and dumb and active.

Authentic shows about the 2020s made in 2070 will have to have all their characters checking Facebook and Twitter and Messages and Instagram their phones all the time.

Worse, we let our pre-teens do it and Facebook has developed its answer to Joe Camel.

Steve Petrow writing in The Washington Post:

I know I can only keep my vaccine status quiet so long — without appearing to be anti-vaccine. (Clearly, I’ve blown my cover with this essay.) To help me, I’ve found myself thinking about the yoga retreats I’ve attended. Toward the end of these retreats, the teacher will usually ask, “How do you take what you learned on the mat off of the mat?” The answer: intention and discipline.

The stress I currently feel with regards to the pandemic is more about the growing pressure to re-emerge into public. At the end of 2019, I had the goal to slow down and say no to more. For folks like me (which I suppose might mean an undiagnosed social phobia of some sort), the pandemic was freeing.

Vanessa Miller for The Gazette:

Given tens of millions in losses the University of Iowa Department of Athletics is absorbing from COVID-19’s devastating impact, outgoing UI President Bruce Harreld has agreed to permanently end an earlier deal requiring athletics to contribute $2 million a year in direct support to the main campus.

Additionally, the UI main campus — facing budget cuts and tens of millions in pandemic-propelled losses of its own — is nonetheless shipping $50 million to the typically self-sustaining athletics department this budget year.

The University of Iowa’s self-sustaining athletics department has an endowed head football coach who has long been the highest paid public employee in the state.

Matt Richtel reporting for The New York Times:

When the pandemic narrowed the world, Jonathan Hirshon stopped traveling, eating out, going to cocktail parties and commuting to the office.

What a relief.

Unlike Hirshon, I’m not diagnosed with anxiety, let alone severe social anxiety, but, despite the stress of the pandemic, I’ve found comfort in my introversion and staying home.

My ideal pre-pandemic weekend was, well, staying home. I hope very much to hold on to that as much as I can, and get anxious AF when I think about what returning to the wider world.

Nicole Carroll, editor-in-chief of USA Today:

Over the summer, six USA Today Network journalists were taken into police custody while doing their jobs, reporting from various racial justice protests. Three were jailed. They yelled, “I’m press, I’m press,” as they were tackled. Forced to the ground. Pepper sprayed. Handcuffed.

One of them, Andrea Sahouri, is going to trial Monday. The Des Moines Register reporter, eyes still burning from pepper spray, spoke about her arrest on video as she sat in the back of the police van last May. […]

“It’s clearly sending a signal, whether it’s intentional or not, to other reporters,” Ardia said. “Don’t cover protests in Des Moines.”

Ethan Stein reporting for KCRG:

An email KCRG-TV9′s i9 Investigative Unit received shows the Iowa Department of Public Health only alerted county health departments it was expanding eligibility criteria for COVID-19 vaccinations 8-minutes before the announcement was made.

Iowa’s response has been, um, chaotic. Much of the work has fallen to underfunded, “exhausted” county public health departments to deal with shifting requirements, mandates and policies.