boscohorowitz
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“Durkheim observed that the conflict between the evolved organic division of labour and the homogeneous mechanical type was such that one could not exist in the presence of the other.[9]
“When solidarity is organic, anomie is impossible.[10] Sensitivity to mutual needs promotes evolution in the division of labour. “Producers, being near consumers, can easily reckon the extent of the needs to be satisfied. Equilibrium is established without any trouble and production regulates itself.”[10] Durkheim contrasted the condition of anomie as being the result of a malfunction of organic solidarity after the transition to mechanical solidarity:
But on the contrary, if some opaque environment is interposed … relations [are] rare, are not repeated enough … are too intermittent. Contact is no longer sufficient. The producer can no longer embrace the market at a glance, nor even in thought. He can no longer see its limits, since it is, so to speak limitless. Accordingly, production becomes unbridled and unregulated.[10]“Durkheim’s use of the term anomie was about the phenomenon of industrialization—mass-regimentation that could not adapt due to its own inertia—its resistance to change, which causes disruptive cycles of collective behavior e.g. economics, due to the necessity of a prolonged buildup of sufficient force or momentum to overcome the inertia.”
“It should be easy for Xi to prevent this. • Chinese Airlines Poised For Post-Coronavirus ‘Revenge Travelling’ (SCMP)”
I wonder if our topsy-turvy ruling systems haven’t created the kind of self-and-others-destructive pessimistic nihilism that history reports being so common among the victims of war and other devastations? Of the kind described here:
See: Anomie
“how many jobs can society do without? The answer, it would appear, is an awful lot.”
Aye. Much of the work performed by Euromericans of the Western Empire is non-productive work. At screaming best, neither productive nor destructive. At worst, and much of today’s jobs are, destructive. A shutdown of the Pet Rock factory would be a blessing.
On the other hand, once the price of energy in the USA is no longer supported by petrodollar geopolitics, many people will find new work doing very hard physical labor for much less reimbursement. INdentureship and similar forms of human bondage will reemerge. (The gig economy is a template for this already happening, but instead of share-cropping we have share-taxiing/share-delivery, etc.)
To twist a semi-famous quote by William Gibson: ‘The Greater Depression is already here, just not yet evenly distributed.’
The Great Depression of the 30s/WWII emerged into a world swimming with cheap oil, ore, and a vast new applied engineering sector making thngs that made life easier that we could sell to easch other and abroad. This time, we’ll emerge from a colossal monetary swindle into a world of enormous population overload and rap;idly dwindling physical resources.
On the other hand, obesity will rapidly be resolved.
But I’m saying nothing that the likes of James Kunstler haven’t already said, and in Kunstler’s case, with more than enough expressive color.
“…you really are a tonic unto yourself…”
I find room in myself for no one but myself. Split personalitires are messy. I am entirely full of myself. Perfect fit. It’s as if it was meant to be!
Regarding what VN Vet said above (and yes, I agree with him):
the situation with the CIC elites, early knowledge of the virus in Wuhan, and their seeming decision to pass on taking classically known effective quarantine measures, reminds me of 911, Pearl Harbor, and the Third Reich Reichstag event: whether or not those events were encouraged, allowed, or merely the result of incompetence remains abtract. What is concrete and real is what the power structures affected by those events did: took advantage of them as much as possible to achieve selfish ends otherwise unavailable to them.
That’s what I see happening now. It bodes well, imo, neither for the elites nor we the people. Collapsing nested economic bubbles, that are ultimately based on the petrodollar allowing the Fed to believe it could do monetary magic, are not respecters of one’s station in life. Nor are viruses, although those with more money initially will fare better than those who don’t. But, judging by how events are currently unrolling, ‘if this goes on’ it seems increasingly likely that wealth will not provide adequate protection from either the virus or the massive civil disruption that this popping of a global economic balloon seems likely to cause.
Turn Off-a De Bubble a-Machine, a-Please-a
Their jubilee won’t hold.
It’s good you didn’t respond to my remarks, Huskynut. I grow weary of dismembering glaring inconsistencies, logical fallacies, and patently closed thinking.
It reminds me of what was said about Barry Goldwater’;s campaign speeches, which were known to get feiry and alienate more moderate potential supporters.
After the speeches, Goldwater’s handlers would ask the reporters to “Say what he meant not what he said.
***
THere’s an old joke, sort of a variation on Aesop’s Belling the Cat fable:The termites gather in huge assembly to discuss their newest threat to peace and survival: the big old elephant who gets drunk regularly anbd comes stomping through the termite mounds just for fun.
The termites decide that what they’ll dop is gather en masse in the treetops and ambush the elephant when he comes traipsing their way next Saturday night.
The elephant walks through the ambush. Ten gazillion termits jump it at once.
The elephant’s knees buckle briefly, then he strains, shakes mightily, and all the termites are flung to the ground except one persistent little feller who clings to the elephant’s quivering dewlap. Emboldened by the sole termites persistence, the termites holler:
“Choke him!!!”
Also, what John Day said.
Bonnie rules the gang here even after admiring an amazing guitar solo in which it sounds like Jerry Garcia meets middle era Beethoven. Breathtaking… and then Bonnie owns ’em all:
“Taleb’s observation is 100% correct, and also 100% functionally useless to us in making sense of this crisis. Human beings never have and never will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner. We’re simply not wired for it. Neither I would observe is the entirety of the animal kingdom. We behave as if we will go on living. The litany of examples in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” illustrates that pretty well.”
Should we therefore give up any attempt to prevent such an event? Even if it is rationally apprehensible (i.e. not an inevitable asteroid or the Yellowstone caldera doing what it inevitably will in ways we can scarcely imagine how to avert except in silly movies)?
After all, we’ve done such a lousy job so far of surviving despite our exorbitant abundance of irrationality, right?
Also, what evidence is there that “Human beings never have and never will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner”? Oh, I don’t like our chances at all but I do know that we survived an Ice Age, were in fact practically born of one, and we ain’t all dead yet.
We simply do not know.
“So investing time and energy trying to mobilise people to respond in ways they will never respond is simply wasted energy.”
While I am very much on recent record that I don’t like our chances of simply enacting a major quarantine in an effective way, much less the chances of our using knowledge of evil world cabal biogenocide plots to counter same, I would never say that we could never effectively respond in a group-survival satisfying manner. Because, again, we don’t know. Dr. Fauci likes to make absolute statements like the ones you’ve just made. He at least has a fancy title.
“The health “professionals” modelled several scenarios. The lower death scenarios (which turn out to be more in line with what we’ve actually observed *were simply excluded from theirreport*. Get that – they modelled them but didn’t like the results they produced, so simply didn’t report the scenarios. That’s a damn scandal right there.”
The concept here is that of erring on the side of caution not complacency or arrogance or greed or confusion or… why yes indeed, dear hearts, it’s a damn scandal they didn’t go all-out cavalier on this one like Bojo or Trump or Macron or… my memory’s getting bad. Anyone recall a national leader/global health technocrat who didn’t initially lead with their chin and tell us this was just a Big Sniffle, no reason to panic, carry on…
A) “And that’s without discussing the negative externalities of the proposed action which are conspicuously avoided.”
B) “Bye, bye Grandma and Grandpa. So sorry about your luck. We decided the model looked better for younger people if we didn’t reduce GDP so we let Covid-19 run loose.”
A) “That, right there is a beautiful example of hijacking a rational discussion with a purely emotional dog-whistle, and sadly that’s exactly the widespread quality of debate.”Apparently, not running one’s remarks along the lines you think they should go is hijacking a debate. If this is your idea of establishing a middle-ground of debate, we’re gonna have to seriously move the goal posts, I guess.
And what is, exactly, “exactly the widespread quality of debate.” Other than your subjective impression expressed as absolute universal truth?
If, by “that’s without discussing the negative externalities of the proposed action which are conspicuously avoided” you refer to us here, I have to differ: such matters have been discussed here in myriad ways. If you mean in the circles of enforceable or officially declarative power: you’ve got to be kidding. I’ve heard economy over death count reduction, and death count reduction over economy, from many blithering members of the CIC.“Reasoning that the potential ultimate risk of Covid is human extinction and thus mandates the most extreme of precautions is, well, useless. I mean in scientific terms then yes it’s technically true, but the same is true of other edge cases (including GMOs and climate change). There is no particular reason (that I’m aware of) that this risk should be uniquely or especially true of Covid vs a mutation of a pre-existing virus, or from one that emerges tomorrow, or from other scientific edge cases (physicists have speculated on a black hole produced by the Large Hadron Collider..).”
The word ‘ultimate’ means, in this instance, ‘at the very worst’. It also means, ‘as far as the effect on homo saps can go’. It is a means of stating that this event is the kind of thing that can indeed make things very much worse, up to and including extinction. Picking on the most extreme and least probable negative outcome (and easy to prevent, I say, contrary to your standing position, seeing as how killing off an entire species is much more challenging job than merely driving into depopulated penury and misery) is gross cherry-picking. In this case, in a mine field, but that’s just a metaphor for fun’s sake. You know: “rambling semi-coherently”
Actually, there IS a reason “that this risk should be uniquely or especially true of Covid vs a mutation of a pre-existing virus, or from one that emerges tomorrow”: velocity of events.
Your logic here reminds me of Zeno’s* tortoise/hare/arrow refutations of time or movement, depending on your perspective. Lovely poetic paradox but it resolves easily when one considers that time, while theoretically infinitely divisible, does not stop moving while it is being infinitely divided. What is infinitely divided gets left behind, like every moment in time does.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
The whole point of flattening the curve is to reduce the s[peed at which the (metaphor alert!) water rises. A tsunami coming in at the speed of a glacier is no problem. A tsunami landing at 20-30 mph, as they typically do, is a very big problem even if it’s only 6’ feet high.
Not to ignore the other aspect: inertia. Once a virus gets in pandemic motion, it has considerable inertia that can only be significantly reduced by isolating the vectors of its momentum: in this case, people, although there’s also room for bats, maybe pangolins, maybe government research labs, and maybe even the many Drs. Evil who call 1% their home.
“Physicists” have been speculating for decades on string theory without a shred of supporting evidence outside of labyrinthine mathematical models. No one except ‘credulous mystics’ (to quickly coin a handy tar-brushed label) worried about the Hadron Collider. That’s one heckuva red herring though, bosco says admiringly.
“You know Taleb/Ilargi – when you can show me how this new morality will claw back the billions from the 1% to finance this humanity-embracing effort, rather than ditching the costs onto future generations, then I’m up for it.”
No one claims such magical powers. The struggle now is to keep viral panic and viral illness from doing worse damage to people – and the economy on which they depend. Period.
After that we can deal with the 1%. Maybe. BTW, history shows very little evidence that human beings ever have or ever will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner… most of which potentials, from atom bombs to Monsanto poisons and possible feral DNA breaking loose from patented genegineer designer molds to global warming to a whole lotta very destructive and economically expensive war, can be traced back to that 1% always encouraging their short-term greed over long-term group welfareand survival, especially the sustainable kind. So I find it funny to hold accountable the likes of Taleb/Ilargi and the CIC and even the human beings dominated by the CIC, to an approach pandemic mitigation that also prioritizes as much or more that we won’t get fucked by the 1% and won’t get fooled again.
You know what song I’m gonna play now:
<a href=”http://“Taleb’s observation is 100% correct, and also 100% functionally useless to us in making sense of this crisis. Human beings never have and never will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner. We’re simply not wired for it. Neither I would observe is the entirety of the animal kingdom. We behave as if we will go on living. The litany of examples in Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” illustrates that pretty well.” Should we therefore give up any attempt to prevent such an event? Even if it is rationally apprehensible (i.e. not an inevitable asteroid or the Yellowstone caldera doing what it inevitably will in ways we can scarcely imagine how to avert except in silly movies)? After all, we’ve done such a lousy job so far of surviving despite our exorbitant abundance of irrationality, right? Also, what evidence is there that “Human beings never have and never will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner”? Oh, I don’t like our chances at all but I do know that we survived an Ice Age, were in fact practically born of one, and we ain’t all dead yet. We simply do not know. “So investing time and energy trying to mobilise people to respond in ways they will never respond is simply wasted energy.” While I am very much on recent record that I don’t like our chances of simply enacting a major quarantine in an effective way, much less the chances of our using knowledge of evil world cabal biogenocide plots to counter same, I would never say that we could never effectively respond in a group-survival satisfying manner. Because, again, we don’t know. Dr. Fauci likes to make absolute statements like the ones you’ve just made. He at least has a fancy title. “The health “professionals” modelled several scenarios. The lower death scenarios (which turn out to be more in line with what we’ve actually observed *were simply excluded from theirreport*. Get that – they modelled them but didn’t like the results they produced, so simply didn’t report the scenarios. That’s a damn scandal right there.” The concept here is that of erring on the side of caution not complacency or arrogance or greed or confusion or… why yes indeed, dear hearts, it’s a damn scandal they didn’t go all-out cavalier on this one like Bojo or Trump or Macron or… my memory’s getting bad. Anyone recall a national leader/global health technocrat who didn’t initially lead with their chin and tell us this was just a Big Sniffle, no reason to panic, carry on… A) “And that’s without discussing the negative externalities of the proposed action which are conspicuously avoided.” B) “Bye, bye Grandma and Grandpa. So sorry about your luck. We decided the model looked better for younger people if we didn’t reduce GDP so we let Covid-19 run loose.” A) “That, right there is a beautiful example of hijacking a rational discussion with a purely emotional dog-whistle, and sadly that’s exactly the widespread quality of debate.” Apparently, not running one’s remarks along the lines you think they should go is hijacking a debate. If this is your idea of establishing a middle-ground of debate, we’re gonna have to seriously move the goal posts, I guess. And what is, exactly, “exactly the widespread quality of debate.” Other than your subjective impression expressed as absolute universal truth? If, by “that’s without discussing the negative externalities of the proposed action which are conspicuously avoided” you refer to us here, I have to differ: such matters have been discussed here in myriad ways. If you mean in the circles of enforceable or officially declarative power: you’ve got to be kidding. I’ve heard economy over death count reduction, and death count reduction over economy, from many blithering members of the CIC. “Reasoning that the potential ultimate risk of Covid is human extinction and thus mandates the most extreme of precautions is, well, useless. I mean in scientific terms then yes it’s technically true, but the same is true of other edge cases (including GMOs and climate change). There is no particular reason (that I’m aware of) that this risk should be uniquely or especially true of Covid vs a mutation of a pre-existing virus, or from one that emerges tomorrow, or from other scientific edge cases (physicists have speculated on a black hole produced by the Large Hadron Collider..).” The word ‘ultimate’ means, in this instance, ‘at the very worst’. It also means, ‘as far as the effect on homo saps can go’. It is a means of stating that this event is the kind of thing that can indeed make things very much worse, up to and including extinction. Picking on the most extreme and least probable negative outcome (and easy to prevent, I say, contrary to your standing position, seeing as how killing off an entire species is much more challenging job than merely driving into depopulated penury and misery) is gross cherry-picking. In this case, in a mine field, but that’s just a metaphor for fun’s sake. You know: “rambling semi-coherently” Actually, there IS a reason “that this risk should be uniquely or especially true of Covid vs a mutation of a pre-existing virus, or from one that emerges tomorrow”: velocity of events. Your logic here reminds me of Zeno’s* tortoise/hare/arrow refutations of time or movement, depending on your perspective. Lovely poetic paradox but it resolves easily when one considers that time, while theoretically infinitely divisible, does not stop moving while it is being infinitely divided. What is infinitely divided gets left behind, like every moment in time does. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes The whole point of flattening the curve is to reduce the s[peed at which the (metaphor alert!) water rises. A tsunami coming in at the speed of a glacier is no problem. A tsunami landing at 20-30 mph, as they typically do, is a very big problem even if it’s only 6’ feet high. Not to ignore the other aspect: inertia. Once a virus gets in pandemic motion, it has considerable inertia that can only be significantly reduced by isolating the vectors of its momentum: in this case, people, although there’s also room for bats, maybe pangolins, maybe government research labs, and maybe even the many Drs. Evil who call 1% their home. “Physicists” have been speculating for decades on string theory without a shred of supporting evidence outside of labyrinthine mathematical models. No one except ‘credulous mystics’ (to quickly coin a handy tar-brushed label) worried about the Hadron Collider. That’s one heckuva red herring though, bosco says admiringly. “You know Taleb/Ilargi – when you can show me how this new morality will claw back the billions from the 1% to finance this humanity-embracing effort, rather than ditching the costs onto future generations, then I’m up for it.” No one claims such magical powers. The struggle now is to keep viral panic and viral illness from doing worse damage to people – and the economy on which they depend. Period. After that we can deal with the 1%. Maybe. BTW, history shows very little evidence that human beings ever have or ever will respond to potential extinction-level events in a rational manner… most of which potentials, from atom bombs to Monsanto poisons and possible feral DNA breaking loose from patented genegineer designer molds to global warming to a whole lotta very destructive and economically expensive war, can be traced back to that 1% always encouraging their short-term greed over long-term group welfareand survival, especially the sustainable kind. So I find it funny to hold accountable the likes of Taleb/Ilargi and the CIC and even the human beings dominated by the CIC, to an approach pandemic mitigation that also prioritizes as much or more that we won’t get fucked by the 1% and won’t get fooled again. You know what song I’m gonna play now:
On the other hands(sic typo), the newer forms of networking that technology has given us, provide uncannily tribalesque opprtunities for enharmonic group behavior:
The internet has let me down. I searched for “schadenfreude Danke Schoen” and found naught… no wait. I’d mispelt Danke Schoen! Big Brother really *does* love me! I’m not the only one who thought schad-themed lyrics belonged with this tune!
My faith is restored.
How does this relate to whatever is deemed by this or that poster the Official Topic?
It’s a question. I *think* I know “the” answer, but I have been known to be wrong.
As a socio/psych-ological deomstration of basic human behaviors, we here seem almost classically textbook examples, per the wee bit of soc-psych I tell myself I know.
***
The “shrinking trust horizon” Nicole mentions is highly evident in our remarks about the larger institutions influencing our lives as well as our individual interactions to one another.
We amuse me, and I say that affectionately. A roomfull of mutts. (wags tail while simultaneously displaying canine incisors)
Thanks for sharing your ideas in more detail, Huskynut. Much appreciated. Srsly.
One doesn’t have to read my remarks. Srsly. It’s allowed.
Never mind, kim. I’ve torn apart enough logical fallacies, misreadings, and obstuseness for one day. Maybe all week. At least from one person.
***
Instead, I’ll post this, written quite a few years ago when I first started thinking I could maybe write a decent novel. Reviewing the first 15k pages today, I noticed how much this passage reminds me of places like here:
Ken arrived in Carlton’s life four months ago by way of an online political forum called Dao of the Average Jones, the kind of place where evil banking cabals and shadow governments are discussed with abundant credulity and wayward citations. A manifestation of the internet as the ultimate Gathering of the Nerds. Search engines have been helping odd ducks meet odd ducks since 1969, when a military industrial egghead first emailed another military-industrial egghead over the Arpanet.
Ken was mostly a lurker at the time, too awed by the spectrum of human weirdness revealed by peer-to-peer global networks to say anything, maintaining almost a wildlife photographer’s habitual hush, lest the dancing cranes or mating armadilloes be disturbed out of lens range. Not to mention the ability to google ‘mating armadilloes’ and probably find at least one image of just that.
Add the weirdness of watching new kinds of sex, sex never even imagined before, via online pornography. Cosplay porn, furry porn, BORG porn, anime porn (not to be confused with mere cartoon sex), NeoNazis Love Grannies, and enough bestiality to make a zoo administrator want to put electric fences on the people side of the cages. Even weirder was the documentary on Modern Bestiality, including interviews with the nicest looking, sweetest sounding people you could ask for, appearing no more nor less weird or attractive than straightahead normal people-fuckers, explaining their relationships with Lassie or Mr. Ed without seeming the slightest bit creepy, which was even creepier.
Dao of the Average Jones had been set up in 1998 by a Wall Street Buddhist who’d fled, running and screaming, from the industry in 1994 when Clinton dismantled Glass-Steagall. He’d survived the 1987 S&L stock market crash and knew what was coming. He’d intended it to be a voice for reform but was soon drowned out by doom’n’gloomers that he couldn’t justify banning because they usually had their facts half-straight even if many of them also suffered paranoid delusions. By 2002 he hardly ever visited anymore but kept it running because he was a nice guy.
Not that Ken arrived at the Dao to discuss politics. Out of the kind of whimsy only a search engine connected to a WorldWideWeb can inspire, he’d spun the wheel on ‘Thelonius Monk Plays Erik Satie’. He knew of no such record, but you never know. Google’s first search listing was a set of rambling sentence fragments bracketed by something Ken assumed was HTML code. He clicked and found himself on a three-month old discussion thread on the Dao.
Someone handled Tone Arm had written: “Monk adored his work. Satie was a huge influence on him. Monk would never play it in public because he felt his heavy-handed pianism was inadequate. But I never thought so.”
In only a few weeks the two became one of the Dao’s most infamous tag-teams. The two had great fun tossing verbal rotten eggs. Not quite trolling but more than willing to make fools suffer.
Soon they spent most of their time aboard the Dao hijacking thread topics toward jazz and Silent Era comedy.
By summer 2003 they’d abandoned Dao Jones but maintained frequent correspondence. By fall, Ken learned that Carlton was growing too frail to take care of himself. He invited him to come stay with him and his wife, Ada.
It didn’t take much to convince Carlton. Carlton soon pared his weak protestations down to one genuine problem:
“You’re my best friend, Ken. I’m 83?84? All my friends are dead, demented, or just plain doddering like me. We don’t have the energy to take a cab to the other’s house, and it’s, it’s too depressing to see each other. Old sacks of shit. We drain too much from each other even if we understand each other like fingers in a glove and share memories well up on the endangered species list. You’re the only fun I have anymore. I’m afraid that much contact with me will drive you away.”
Ken was smart enough not to refute this.
“You’re saying you’re kind of an asshole sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. We should get along just swell.”
“Just swell,” Carlton says, savoring the sound of an expression from his youth.
<end>Sleep tight, y’all.
Neil is a talented fellow, and has written some choice work, but he’s always cashing in on some worthy cause without adding any useful data. Lord have mercy:
Here’s one for all of our sense of dire foreboding and lonely prophecy. It’s glorious to be confused about really serious shit! What else is life!
“I’d really like to find some online community capable of withholding judgement for long enough to discuss the relative merits of various actions, as it’s utterly clear to me this is not occurring almost anywhere I can see.
Genuine question – am I the only one sensing or reacting like this?”Speak to us. Tell us your mind. Articulate your thoughts. Don’t ask us to wade thropugh a detailed technical article. Explain it to us in summarized terms. JUdgment is withheld here by the more inquisitive. For example, Raul. He makes his case.
Make yours, please. Don’t berate Raul or us FOR NOT MAKING IT FOR YOU.
It makes heads asploe.
“you are assuming that no more releases will take place. i am arguing that the very different outcomes (for instance, us v south korea or italy v germany) are the result of localized releases of a second, far more deadly agent. future such localized releases would be very useful in keeping people in line and following orders.”
I am making no such assumptions. Assuming what my assunmptions are seems rather assumptive.
I see no evidence in modern history that says this info will be useful. To change the scenario, one would have to stop the next wave from happening. Some kind of Mission: Impossible or mega Daddy Warbucks Saves the Day (shades of Bill Gates!), both of which concepts have sold many Hollywood movies but achieved no successful conflict resolution that I know of except minor incidents between highly trained armies of competing nations. USSR espionage ops vs USA espionage ops, that sort of thing. Whatever public awareness campaign one could do with the truth would face enormous obstacles in the public mind, since the same creeps who would release said virus would also be controlling the media, and that media has proven very adept at controlling the message even with the truth running around nekkid on both mainstream news and the more underground internet. Again: Jeffrey Epstein. (If I wrote the screenplay, the reason the virus was released when it was would be because the Epstein story was about to slip out of control. Gritty realism, just like in a goof Tarentino flick.)
You’ve spoken entirely in hypotheticals. You have yet to suggest a single practical means to use that info to significantly arouse the population to greater action.
I am NOT saying it can’t be done; I’m saying that the path from here to that achievement is a vast fogbank. Yes, it IS possible, but then, it’s possible that man will live on the moon. How has never been answered except as nice plots for sci-fi books of so-called “hard” science fiction (“hard” scientism, is all they really are). How it can be turned from possible to happening is a one-in-a-million Die Hard Returns Lethal Weapon in Mortal Combat the Awakening prospect.
So arguing that people like Raul should spend more time chasing elusive fey Smoking Gun data that no one knows what to do with other than enjoy the sense of vindictive certainty that blame allows, seems the oppposite of preparing for difficult times. It feels like an expenditure of discursive energy someone seeking to find their way through this mess can ill afford.
You know, I don’t just chatter here because I love the look of my text (if not the sound of my voice). I am way more egotistical than that. I also chatter here because I suffer the delusion that I serve a useful role in keeping the discussions here at least halfway on productive track toward some kind of greater communal understanding that can benefit us.
Even that much foolish vanity isn’t enough to will me to continue discussing this concept.
I wanna be happy.
It’s Great to be Here, It’s Great to be Anywhere
But despite my best attempts:
Test case: the whole world knows that the likes of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton were all over Jeffrey Epstein’s girly gulag. There really isn’t a denialist defense movement for Jeffrey, and the implications are obvious.
Yet the politics of the natiojn remain inane. Trump vs. Biden? NYC residents haven’t stormed the mayor’s bastille for letting Jeffrey disappear on his watch?
I just don’t see the practical potential for knowing who to blame during a time when What To Do is of paramount importance.
“we can adjust our actions and protect ourselves to the extent possible. most of us would prepare/behave differently if we knew that an active bio-war was being waged against us.”
How so? A virus is a virus is a virus. ONce released, the struggle is against contagion.
I have no prob with people believing this is biowar. I think it’s 50-50 myself that it’s at least the product of bioweaponry gone awry somehow.
But how, exactly, should we design anti-contagion protocols knowing they were released by Mini-Me rather than by accident or ‘merely’ the result of too many vectors swapping viruses between hominids and non-hominids? Are we supposed to overthrow the government first and then deal with the pandemic?
But all that aside: how are you going to sell the global populace, or even just us USA Americans, on this truth, if true it is? Are we going to commandeer the internet and broadcast Dah Troof to the entire populace?
You already believe it’s a master plan by the CIC, right? Does that change what the virus does? Does believing the virus is an intentional act by heavy players allow you to understand epidemiology and complex large systems better? Can you chart a better probability model knowing that Evil Men are behind it?
That sounds like action/disaster-movie plot outlining, not serious live/survival strategy.
Oh, yeah: what V. Arnold said. Attempting to write plain English after diving the deep waters of Taleb-speak, is a demanding job. Well done, senor!
Yeah, I think Raul earned some generosity. I might even do it online this time. I hear it’s the 21st century.
“I think it’s vital that men and women learn to mistrust all forms of powerful, centralized authority. Big government tends to create an enormous delay between the signals that come from the people and the response of the leaders. Put it this way: Suppose there were a delay time of five minutes between the moment you turned the steering wheel on your car and the time the front tires reacted. What would happen in such a case?
“PLOWBOY: I guess I’d have to drive pretty slowly.
“HERBERT: V-e-rrrrrrr-y slowly. Governments have the same slow-response effect. And the bigger the government, the more slowly it reacts. So to me, the best government is one that’s very responsive to the needs of its people. That is, the least, loosest, and most local government.”
Coming soon to a dismantled governmental structure near you.
Regarding spouse/child abuse increasing because folks are stuck together more often: when things change, things change.
Some spouses will find the desperation to harness up their courage and take a baseball bat to hubs while he’s asleep.
Some abused children will make that break for it and tell someone what’s really happening. Abusive parent might even find their momenbt with a baseball bat on their collarbone.
The elderly mostly need folks to look in on them. They did, in fact, before the virus wave. They’re old and sick and feeble and isolated too often. Right now, people are actually asking about their neighbors’ well-being sincerely, not in trivial social rituals (‘virtue-signaling’).
What the net benefit/damage to at-home abused will bes, who can tell? When things change, things change. Convexity, if you prefer.
“dismissing the possibility of intentional release is like denying that the twin towers and building 7 were wired for demolition. the key element is that wave 2 will be under someone’s control. there may be evidence which will confirm this (unusual death distribution in local areas as compared to influenza, for instance). this evidence is less likely to surface if we adopt your position.”
And what will we the people do with this information? Lead a mass revolution against our global overlords? While we’re scrambling to survive?
Currently, the problem is reducing contagion, not arguing Rubix-cube conspiracy complexities, which is what ALWAYS happens with topics like that. The inevitable search for the Smoking Gun will waste valuable resources that could be put to good use.
Knowing whom to blame (if, indeed, there is such a conspiracy, which is merely speculation with insufficient data to make firm conclusions) doesn’t provide solutiuons to the problems allegedly caused by said conjectural conspiracy, which problems are currently very real and just getting started.
There will be plenty of revolution as it is. Heads will roll*. The NWO is in full collapse right now. If they intentionally started this pandemic, that buttresses the notion that the CIC is too dumb to run a global empire if Gawdamighty Her Own Self handed it to them. This virus is killing them, jubilee or not. They won’t be able to hold on to their property*, which is mostly vaporware based on funny money they only get to call real so long as people can get enough of that money for themselves, which in turn requires the money have adequate value to buy necessary things.
Any financial reset/jubilee will invoke price discovery. The price of necessary things will then increase drastically once the perodollar swindle is terminated, and the purchasing power of the USA dollar is no longer supported by global oil demand. If the elites released this virus, they’re even stupider than I and other believe they are. I’m not sure it’s possible to be more stupid than I deem them. But maybe.
*”It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee to you. In it you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself, nor gather from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat of its increase out of the field. In this Year of Jubilee each of you shall return to his property.” Leviticus 25:8–13
The Spanish Flu gave Woodrow Wilson great cover for his draconian Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918. This hardly means that he and his cronies caused the Spanish flu. Hell, they didn’t even get to capitalize on it. The Sediton Act was removed in 1920.
Not that the above proves anything. But just because, here’s Bill Gates in a superhero suit:
You can’t see his face but it’s him. See how he battles evil in goofy monster suits amid phony staged wreckage? THat’s Billy fer sure.
And:
Those with the inclination might be shrewd to begin crafting stylish, weather-compatible ‘street burkhas’. A mutant virus spreading in maximum Jet Set global culture is only one of countless ways that we as a society will find ourselves much more concerned about avoiding contagion than in the past.
There’s drinking water: Flint, MI., comes to mind. Our water supply will become increasing septic as well as chemically toxic, which toxins tend to weaken immune systems and general resilience toward infection.
Pathogenic resistance to antibiotics: self-explanatory
Food shortages due to global climate disruption, topsoil erosion/loss of soil fertility, overuse of chemical farming, GMO ‘mutant mission creep’, increasing immunity of pestilential horde insects to insecticides accompanied by a major decline, ironically, in other insect populations, many of which used to reduce things like locust populations, likewise a reduction in general in wildlife, most of which eat things like locusts, lowering water tables, rising cost of natural gas which is crucial to our fertilizer supply…
Political collapse messing with all of the above while inducing elevated chronic stress, boredom, depression, and hostility.
etc…
All of these will make us more susceptible to pathogens while increasing the population and diversity of pathogens.
In the very early 80s, Frank Herbert, author of Dune*, a work of fiction that was kind of an ecological manifesto for the rising Boomer sci-fi crowd, did an interview with Mother Earth magazine. (I wonder it it still exists.)
Regarding the ecology, a very very complex system, and humanity’s influence upon same, he said (paraphrase alert): ‘You can hardly see the road ahead because you’re creating so much unknown, largely invisible, asymmetric consequences by driving this enormous car with a two-mile long front end. If you’re going to attempt to reengineer the planet, this thing homo sapiens calls Progress toward a Better Life with humanity in the driver seat, you have to drive real real real slow-w-w-w-w. cuz you can hardly see the road and it takes forever to turn the thing around.’
*the movie Lynch/studios delivered was a disaster. Unless you’d read the book beforehand, you couldn’t even follow the basic plot. I think there’s a metaphor in this ability of a genius auteur (Lynch) and the enormous backing of a studio working and spending in great amount just to produce an overwrought flop.
” masks amid silly fun.
I have no issue with the length of Doc. D’s posts… but then, I am no olne to judge in that regard.
But there’s no denying they’re a babe magnet.”
SHoulda taken my nap first. I meant that sock masks are babe magnets, not the length of one’s posts. Altho you know what they say about the size of a man’s, uh, post… or something.
WIsh I lived a rural life. Fate disagreed.
“Should they have the same rules? A: Who cares? They’re rural people. Why think of them at all?”
I could give many reasons to care for them but I’m sure the question was rhetorical, intended to emcourage discord and divisiveness.
I wear masks for two main reasons: the no-touch-face training they reinforce, and the message it conveys to the public: it’s ok to take this virus seriously, and best taken seriously by individual action rather than blather-me-down instructions from the evening news.
Also, I have a 3-year old niece whose immune system is weak. She has been very ill several times needing hospitalizations for this virus, that bug, etc. So I’m on a campaign to make them cool for her. I have been cell-cam filming little puppet show routines I send toher that include masks amid silly fun.
I have no issue with the length of Doc. D’s posts… but then, I am no olne to judge in that regard.
But there’s no denying they’re a babe magnet.
Most of those 19 people/square mile shop in stores and similar close-quarted contagion vector nodes. They also generally have lesser m edical facilities that I presume can be overloaded more easily than other places like, for example, Portland, which is what’s called a ‘medical hub’.
Not that MIchanonians don’t have ample reason to revolt
Daed children aren’t bitter, with or without OCD. Newborns typically have very weak immune systems.
The mother’s milk of a woman battling the virus, usually one of the most important initial parts of developing and strengthening infant immune systems, is an issue I wouldn’t mind hearing more about.
“My personal understanding is that we in medicine have not dealt with a virus that inactivates the ability of hemoglobin to carry oxygen before.”
I eat really well, many small meals throughout the day, immunity-building vitamins, an awful lot of red meat, and iron every day, cuz if this thing catches me anemic I’m asking for trouble. Those who also have anemic issues might benefit from looking up optimal iron absorption nutrient strategies. A lot of things can inhibit iron absorption. Like caffeine, for starters. (ouch)
Regarding cost/benefit analyses: not to steal Doc D’s thunder but these will be done almost always by the CIC or minions thereof, and will therefore mostly skew to the same inane blind corrupt incompetent result of too little too late for we common folk and too much too soon for the top tier people. I think we can all agree on that?
The only thing, imo, that the powers that be can do even tolerably well is too much or too little.
I think Ilargi has the charming quality of wanting to give Euromerican culture every chance to hear him beg/demand that it does the one thing it is even slightly able to do: heavy-handed top-down do-this-or-else enforced mandates.
Me, I think that boat done sailed but I can’t vouch that it won’t turn about and finally try to do something other than placate polls and shmooze* via media. There is some slight hope the gubmints will wake up in time to do something worth the trouble they’ll put us through either way (imo).
*gratuitous silent ‘e’Me, my predictive view for the USA is alighting steadfastly on a sticky blossom called balkanization along regional affinities and fundamental economics (i.e., natural resources and established infrastructure). How much civil disturbance this foments is a point spread bet at this point. How soon is another.
The ‘shrinking trust horizon’ central to dear Nicole’s view on these matters is drawing up tighter than a redneck’s ass cold-nosed by a Great Dane.
You can narrow up the side parts by rolling them tight. You can trim the face area somewhat for comfort.
Tomorrow, I should have some kind of ring-shaped, uh, ring, to insert in the snuffleupagus* part just below the heel. This keeps the snuffleaerator open for maximum air flow/even filtration. Noticeable difference in cooling effect with the snuffler held wide that way. Otherwise, it tends to contract on inhales, reducing the airflow/cooling effect.
This uses a very heaving hiking type sock. Newer socks are often made of micromagic materials with high thread counts(good filtration), low mass/density (less heat containment via insulation).
For kids, the right sock/design, with the aid of fun faux facial features, should help in the kids wearing them and not always poking their hands inside, which greatly reduces the anti-contagion benefit.
Be the first kid on your block to wear a dino mask!
*Latin for trunk
“Sure Dr D likes to neg out and is oft times quite the contrarian (but we kinda love him for it) but he offers a really needed Devils Advocate side to things.
How can we move forward if we don’t ask – Why is the roof leaking? ”I am all for finding and exposoing problems. In the process, one should try to not be a problem oneself… and one should especially try not to contradict oneself or repeat obvious falsehoods.
That’s all.
“Honestly, I know I still can’t write very well! I can only glue a string of words together.”
That’s writing, and from my perspective, you write a good clean page, WES. Institutional education beats the smarts out of most everybody, makes them think they’re dumb when they’re not et vice-versa.
upstateNY: well, thanx, podner.
The situation is, sumac.c, fucked. There are many perspectives on what’s most f’d up about this passage.
Some fear loss of civil liberties. I should, perhaps.
Some fear economic crash. I should, p’haps.
Some fear sickness even unto death. I should, p.
Some fear the loss of contact between our fellows which makes us human. I don’t, because I see people reaching out to others in new ways. Isee my children being forced to confront realities they wouldn’t otherwise, and doing so without me around, which is the reality they’ll have most of their lives. Perhaps I should fear this distance, but I don’t.
Later on, I may well see people reaching out kindly to each other. Later, I may see them reach out to each other hostilely. Some fear this. I should, p.
There are many other fears one could add to this package, all of them valid.
My personal fear is being trapped in one perspective, particularly involving fear, that becomes so central to my sense of understanding that it obscures my awareness of other critical aspects.
I keeps me options open that way. I rather hate doing what I “should”. I prefer to let the options inform me as they avail rather than tell them when and how to become apparent or apprehensible.
You should do what you think is right, even if others don’t share your perspective on what’s most important, most right, most wrong. Maybe you should even do what I tell you to do, but I highly doubt that.
Meanwhile, I Feel So Good
Why not? I’ve literally nothing better to do than be happy. I’ve tried the other options. Happy’s the one.
To make it clear: “Ilargi has become emotively attached to his position from all the posting on the subject.” is an absolute declarative sentence. You didn’t even render the courtesy of saying that *you* think Ilargi etc…
“For the record, I have tremendous respect for Ilargi, and there was no drive-by sliming intended or delivered. What I’ve observed over the past few weeks has been that on this topic Ilargi has adopted a strong and vocal position that has varied negligibly despite the variety of new information arising each day. That’s often a strong indicator of an idealogical attachment to a fixed perspective. On THIS topic.”
I like words. I like Ilargi. Maybe you should ask him what he thinks rather than tell him. Like I said, sometimes people don’t realize what they’re doing.
zerosum: it takes all kinds of voices to make this world run aground.
One never knows, do one?
“Our management systems just don’t have to be the crude blunt instruments we are currently applying.”
This is plausibly true, but it doesn’t relate to what’s happening in what VN Vet calls the Western Empire. Here in the WE, blunt instruments of various stripe are being applied too little or too late while too many people argue if it’s an NWO meisterplan or just the consequences of collective human action. In other words, chew-toying another false dichotomy for sake of armchair quarterbacking.
Here in the WE, blunt instruments, along with those of nuance and subtle finesse, are being chronically MISapplied.
Poor Ilargi, so helplessly, emotively attached to his perspective… to being an incredibly patient decent chap while people throw ad hominem jello at his windshield and then call him a victim of personal bias, which of copurse is so not a drive-by sliming, an injury to which insult is possibly added by the frightfully high chance that the slimer doesn’t realize that he is sliming. It happens.
Poor Ilargi, so helplessly, emotively attached to his perspective… while some of us are downright Vulcan in our clear cool Spockian logic detached from all personal emotional bias.
It would be funny if it wasn’t such a disservice to a fine forum with an especially fine pedigree going way back to one Jay Hanson aka The Claw to a few old Brainfooders.
