The Morning Dispatch: The Spotify-Rogan Snit

Plus: The awkward dance Olympic corporate sponsors are doing ahead of the controversial Games in Beijing.

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • President Biden told reporters on Friday he will be moving some—but “not too many”—U.S. troops to Eastern Europe and NATO countries “in the near term” to counter potential Russian aggression. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also told reporters on Friday Russia has amassed enough troops to have the “capability” to seize Ukrainian cities, if President Vladimir Putin decides to go that route. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, sought to downplay the threat of an imminent invasion, saying Friday Ukrainians “don’t need this panic.”

  • The Wall Street Journal reported Friday the Biden administration is “finalizing” an economic sanctions package that would hit major Russian banks, prohibit the trade of Russian sovereign debt, and apply semiconductor export controls if Putin goes through with an invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia’s oil and natural gas exports—and disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT payment system—are reportedly “off the table” for now, but could be reconsidered at a later date.

  • North Korea conducted its seventh missile test of the month on Sunday, launching an intermediate-range, “Hwasong-12” ballistic missile into the sea for the first time since 2017. A senior White House official told reporters the administration plans to respond to the escalation in the coming days.

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  1. Kurt Von Fuchs

    Wow, that was the best and certainly the most evenhanded coverage of the Spotify Bruja. In general, I find most commentators both on the right and the left surprised at Neil Young decision since Joe Rogan is so popular right now. Well this may be true in 50 years people will still be listening to Neil Young music and I'm not sure anyone remember who Joe Rogan was. Is actually a microcosm of how of how things should work in a free and open society. An artist decides to not be on a platform and he takes if you had 1000 of his fans with him but the platform still remains.

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    Philbnichols

    miasma - nice.

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    L L Cool A

    I watched the Chinese Coke ads and have two observations: first, I found it really strange that all the ads featured empty coca-cola bottles (or empty water bottles for that matter - just an empty plastic bottle), and second China must have a recycling problem as all of the ads involved combining Olympic sports with recycling of the empty bottle.

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    Maria B

    Young makes it quite clear he's in favor of free speech and just doesn't want to share a platform with someone who helps amplify dangerous lies. He's not worth anywhere near the money to Spotify that Rogan is, and I can't imagine he ever believed they'd ditch Rogan to keep him. How is his choice different from Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes leaving Fox? It's weird to me that the same people who see Goldberg and Hayes as admirable and principled see Young as intolerant and repressive. Is it just because Dispatch readers like Joe Rogan more than they like Tucker Carlson, or am I missing something?

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    Michael Berkowitz

    I don't think anybody's Dad can be a lifelong Spotify user.

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    cheerio

    I meant Ro...
    What do R0 values mean?
    Three possibilities exist for the potential transmission or decline of a disease, depending on its R0 value:

    If R0 is less than 1, each existing infection causes less than one new infection. In this case, the disease will decline and eventually die out.
    If R0 equals 1, each existing infection causes one new infection. The disease will stay alive and stable, but there won’t be an outbreak or an epidemic.
    If R0 is more than 1, each existing infection causes more than one new infection. The disease will be transmitted between people, and there may be an outbreak or epidemic. 1.5 and declining is in my comfort zone

    As for nationwide .. because it spreads so fast, the virus does not respect state borders. Last summer Florida and much of the South was on fire with Delta. It took something like 5 weeks to climb to the NE. I started masking again at the end of July after reading about the numbers and trouble with the hospitals.

    Also, the large number of patients are overwhelming us, we don't have enough staff for the beds and so our ratios are higher which makes everything less safe.

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  7. Eklees

    I don't think Joe Rogan's being on Spotify or not is likely to change the minds of anti-vaccers. What I find interesting is the strange dichotomy between MMR vaccines, which every person has to get before attending public (and most private) schools and the Covid vaccines.

    Almost no one dies from measles, mumps or rubella, although these viruses can be very damaging to a pregnant woman and infants (my mother got rubella in the first trimester of her pregnancy with my younger brother and he was born deaf in 1965). Yet, everyone has to get vaccinated against these diseases and very few people care one way or another.

    On the other hand, lots of people have died because of Covid, the vaccines clearly prevent or reduce infection, and break thru infections are much less likely to cause hospitalization. Why do so many people resist the Covid vaccine but are fine with the MMR vaccines? Is it because the MMR vaccine is administered to most people when they are babies?

    I recall getting vaccinated against small pox and polio, and these vaccines were considered miraculous. If Covid killed people at the rate polio did would there be the same resistance to the vaccines as there is now? Do we need a variant that kills 15% vs 3% to get vaccine compliance? What about MMR? If a Covid variant proved to be a teratogen would that increase compliance?

    I am just wondering what the logic here is.

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  8. enGage

    I listened to both the McCollough and Malone podcasts (and the Gupta, Osterholm and many other ones) as I seek out all things Covid. I guess I'll have to listen to them again as I just didn't get an anti-vax jibe. I thought the McCollough podcast was the better of the two and his main message seemed to be early treatment. The basic message was that the "all roads to the vaccine" approach have cost lives because of our unwillingness to provide early treatment. He, and others, believe that if you wait to treat Covid until one is hospitalized, it is too late. To be honest, Malone came across to me as stroking his own ego, but none-the-less I remember his main message being that the vaccines have more risk then we are led to believe and he's not alone in questioning if the vaccines should be given to the younger population. I certainly didn't buy into everything said in those two podcasts (and others), but I do think its fair to say the anyone that goes against "the narrative" gets branded. like most things, the Covid argument is not black or white - the truth is likely in the middle somewhere.

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    The Bell Tower

    Alexis de Tocqueville answers QOTD:

    "For if there are periods of history when the state control of writers succeeds in checking all progressive thought, there are others when it has exactly the opposite effect. But never has a policy of restrictions on the freedom of the press such as then prevailed failed to augment its influence a hundredfold. Authors were harried to an extent that won them sympathy, but not enough to inspire them with any real fear. They were, in fact, subjected to the petty persecutions that spur men to revolt, but not to the steady pressure that breaks their spirit. The legal proceedings taken against our writers were almost always dilatory, widely publicized but ineffective; indeed, they seemed less calculated to deter them from writing than to incite them to persist. In short, total freedom of the press would not have been so injurious to the Church as these half measures."

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  10. Richard Warner

    Chicken or egg? Does anti-Joe Biden sentiment exist because a “handful” of high profile influencers spread it or do those high-profile influencers spread anti-Joe Biden sentiment because there’s an existing market for it? It has to be one or the other - it can’t have anything to do with Joe Biden, right?

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