Linked List: July 28, 2021

Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Mitch McConnell Is Going to Run Ads Urging Kentuckians to Get Vaccinated ★

David Morgan, reporting for Reuters:

“Not enough people are vaccinated,” said McConnell, a polio survivor. “So we’re trying to get them to reconsider and get back on the path to get us to some level of herd immunity.”

McConnell, who was vaccinated for COVID-19 in December and has been promoting vaccinations in public remarks ever since, plans to run 60-second radio ads on more than 100 Kentucky radio stations in the coming days promoting the vaccine with money from his re-election campaign.

More like this, please.

Charles Barkley: Sports Leagues ‘Should Force Guys to Get Vaccinated’ ★

Jade Scipioni, reporting for CNBC:

“Yes, I’m vaccinated,” says NBA legend Charles Barkley. “Everybody should be vaccinated. Period.”

“The only people who are not vaccinated are just assholes,” he says.

The 58-year-old NBA Hall-of-Famer says he personally thinks sports leagues should force players to get vaccinated. “Can you imagine if one of these guys that are not vaccinated, if they get one of these players’ kids, wives, girlfriends, moms and dads sick and they die over some unnecessary conspiracy bullshit,” Barkley says. “I think that would be tragic.”

More like this, please. (Via Paul Kafasis.)

Techdirt Is Now Entirely Without Any Google Ads or Tracking Code ★

Mike Masnick:

Techdirt is one of the very, very, very few truly independent media brands around. Almost none of the independent media brands that existed when we started remain. Some have been sucked up into larger companies or shut down entirely. Others have decided to go behind expensive paywalls. We’ve had to adapt and change over the years in many ways just to stick around, but in the end the reason we do this is because of the community we’ve built up here. For us to stick around, I need to ask the community to help support us as well. We have some cool experiments and projects in the works, so stay tuned for that, but in the meantime, if you can help us out, it would be hugely appreciated.

Techdirt is irreplaceable. There’s no other site like it. And indeed, indie websites that neither run crappy ads nor put their content behind a paywall are a dying breed. You go to an article at Techdirt and you see the article. No annoying popovers begging you to subscribe to a newsletter. You just see the article.