boscohorowitz
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Is This The Dawning Of The ‘Age Of Schadenfreude?’
“Over the years people have tried to analyze why we feel schadenfreude—evolutionary psychologists say it’s a way for us to assess risk and 19th-century Darwinian scholars suggested it was a behavior associated with “survival of the fittest”—but people have never really gotten comfortable with those academic explanations. You might outwardly protest that you don’t feel joy in seeing another person suffer, before returning to “fail” videos on YouTube.”
“To whatever degree this crisis was planned, unplanned, turned into asymmetrical attack, or whatever, it is being manipulated by elites to support their own positions of power and control. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. They are also at odds with each other, and will go through a culling, themselves. Stay out of the culling-of-the-elites if you can.”
J. Day, blogster“Most readers like best those poems of his where the ideas of emancipation, so characteristic of the Russian fifties, are expressed in a glorious storm of obscure eloquence, which, as one critic put it, “does not show you the enemy but makes you fairly burst with the longing to fight.”
Led by Zeppelin, or, a short story on modern political society by Rudyard Kipling
“‘It’s protective instinct, my dear fellows,’ said Pirolo, rolling a cigarette. ‘The Planet, she has had her dose of popular government. She suffers from inherited agoraphobia. She has no–ah–use for Crowds.’
“Dragomiroff leaned forward to give him a light. ‘Certainly,’ said the white-bearded Russian, ‘the Planet has taken all precautions against Crowds for the past hundred years. What is our total population to-day? Six hundred million, we hope; five hundred, we think; but–but if next year’s census shows more than four hundred and fifty, I myself will eat all the extra little babies. We have cut the birth-rate out–right out! For a long time we have said to Almighty God, “Thank You, Sir, but we do not much like Your game of life, so we will not play.”‘
” ‘Anyhow,’ said Arnott defiantly, ‘men live a century apiece on the average now.’
” ‘Oh, that is quite well! I am rich–you are rich–we are all rich and happy because we are so few and we live so long. Only I think Almighty God He will remember what the Planet was like in the time of Crowds and the Plague. Perhaps He will send us nerves. Eh, Pirolo?’ ”
(link is to my hermit blog so as to spare Raul a deluge of text)
“The pursuit of a condition of harmony defines utopian thought and discloses its basic unreality. Conflict is a universal feature of human life. It seems to be natural for humans to want incompatible things — excitement and a quiet life, freedom and security, truth and a picture of the world that flatters their self-importance.” John Gray Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.
Pursuant to coca leaf therapeutic prospects.
Temporary Burials Possible for COVID-19 Victims, But NYC Park Trenches Plan Denied
“NYC Council Health Committee chair Mark Levine initially said in series of tweets Monday morning that the city would soon need to face the “gruesome reality” of temporary burials, and that they would likely take place in trenches for caskets dug in city parks.
“Due to the number of dead bodies increasing on a daily basis due to COVID-19, the freezers at OCME facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn will soon be full, Levine said.
“This tweet has gotten a lot of attention. So I want to clarify: the is a contingency NYC is preparing for BUT if the death rate drops enough it will not be necessary. https://t.co/6wLO8qWtML”
Where will the bodies go? Morgues plan as virus grows
“Med Alliance Group, a medical distributor in Illinois, is besieged by calls and emails from cities around the country. Each asks the same thing: Send more refrigerated trailers so that we can handle a situation we never could have imagined.
“They’re coming from all over: From hospitals, health systems, coroner’s offices, VA facilities, county and state health departments, state emergency departments and funeral homes,” said Christie Penzol, a spokeswoman for Med Alliance.
“It’s heart-wrenching.”
“The company has rented all its trailers and there’s an 18-week wait for new materials to build more, she said.”
On the microbiological safety of a herd in context of a social contract
“The development and growing use of smallpox vaccine in the early 1800s triggered the establishment of vaccination mandates, especially for children. Then, as the incidence of smallpox declined over time, some governments loosened requirements, while other mandates remained in place. At the same time, a variety of govermental agencies and regulations emerged to oversee the production and testing of vaccines.
“The judicial branch of U.S. federal goverment has had a role as well in vaccination. A variety of court decisions have considered the validity of vaccination mandates and have attempted to address the conflict between individual rights and protection of the public’s health.
“Below (within) are a variety of events associated with the establishment of vaccination mandates and the role of government agencies in monitoring vaccine production and use.”
Possibly Relevant Data from a Very Old Conspiracy THeory
Gratuitous verbiage.
And the Lord said: 40 Days or Forty Years: Take Your Pick
More same.
ARE AGRICULTURE SEEDS DEEMED ESSENTIAL?? YES.
“The Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) has directed all large retailers to cease sales of non-essential items in stores and offered additional guidance for those retail stores selling in person essential goods to the public. Recent pictures circulating on social media appear to be from a box store which has roped off access to “non-essential” areas of the store, per guidance from ACCD, with various seed packets behind the roped-off section. As stated above, agricultural seeds have been deemed “essential” in Vermont per the Governor’s executive order, however a homeowner’s access to seeds has been modified to meet the Governor’s executive order.”
STATE OF VERMONT EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT ADDENDUM 6 TO EXECUTIVE ORDER 01-20 [Stay Home/Stay Safe]“6. Services or functions in Vermont deemed critical to public health and safety, as well as
economic and national security include: ….…”k. agriculture and farms, animal shelters, production and delivery of seed, chemicals
and fertilizers, CSAs and veterinarians;”Panic Buying Comes for the Seeds
“But the website cautioned that all buyers were agreeing to abide by “pandemic ordering terms,” and warned that the current shipping backlog was 18 to 24 days.
“Clearly, I was not the only person who felt that the best path through the pandemic was to panic-buy a bunch of seeds.”
cited oursuant to above article
Feds intercept 100 coronavirus test kits shipped to Portland apartment
“PORTLAND, Ore. — Federal investigators seized 100 coronavirus test kits being shipped from China to a Portland apartment complex, according to a federal search warrant. The coronavirus test kits were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and prohibited from entering the country.”
***
“The invoice showed the test kits were shipped from Anhui Deep Blue Medical Technology of Hebei, China.
“Deep Blue Medical did not respond to an email seeking comment.
“The invoice listed the tests as 50 cents per unit, with a total cost of $50 for the 100 test kits.
The price is far cheaper than a typical coronavirus test, which is at least $1,000 through certain private insurers and would require the use of an FDA-approved lab test center, explained an unnamed COVID-19 Physician Incident Commander for a major Portland area hospital in the search warrant.
“ ’50 cents is ridiculous even for a swab. But for a test to actually give a result itself it’s a preposterous cost,’ ” explained the physician incident commander.
“A product with similar labeling and logo was featured in a tweet by Chin Xinhau News. The tweet promoted, “15 minutes! New rapid test strips for #coronavirus have been developed by a company in Hefei, China. #FightVirus.”
“For the first time in history, the New York Stock Exchange on Monday will do something it’s never done: Operate on a fully electronic basis, after two individuals tested positive for coronavirus.
“The 228-year old Big Board temporarily shut its iconic trading floor on Friday, in a move which sent shockwaves through Wall Street, and made some brokers afraid for the future.
“ ‘This will kill the business of some floor brokers,’ ” says Tim Anderson, Equity Market Strategist at TJM Investments.
” ‘Many portfolio managers use price and volume information they get directly from the trading floor to help ‘right size’ buy and sell orders,’ ” he added.”
***
“Over the years, electronic trading and algorithms have replaced traders and brokers on the floor. Currently, the stock exchange floor operates with a fraction of the members it had during the 2008 financial crisis, the end of the Dot-com bubble, or the crash of 1987 amid the rise of automated trading.”
***
“John Tuttle, the NYSE’s Vice-Chairman and Chief Commercial Officer, told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Friday that the temporary shift toward automation was “absolutely not” the end of the trading floor. However, brokers submitting orders for clients may be affected the most by the temporary closure.“ ‘Commission rates are squeezed to the bone,” Anderson told Yahoo Finance. “Brokers don’t make anywhere near the money they used to make years ago,’ ” he added.
“By going fully electronic, brokers will lose access to commissionable tools like D-orders, which can be placed or cancelled almost up to the close of a trading session.”
‘This will kill the business:’ Brokers sound off as coronavirus forces NYSE to go all electronic
COVID-19 threatens food supply chain as farms worry about workers falling ill
“As Americans scattered to the privacy of their homes this week to avoid spreading the coronavirus, the opposite scene was playing out in the Mexican city of Monterrey.
“A thousand or more young men arrived in the city, as they do most weeks of the year, filling up the cheap hotels, standing in long lines at the U.S. Consulate to pick up special H-2A visas for temporary agricultural workers, then gathering in a big park to board buses bound for farms in the United States.
“I spoke with people going to North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi,” says Justin Flores, vice president of the AFL-CIO’s Farm Labor Organizing Committee, who was in Monterrey for meetings. “[They were] headed to destinations all over the country to provide really important labor that supports the backbone of our economy, which is the agricultural industry.”
“About 250,000 workers came to the U.S. on H-2A visas last year, the majority of them from Mexico. They’ve become an increasingly important piece of America’s food industry.
“Late in the day on Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City announced that it is suspending nonemergency visa appointments because of concerns for the health of its employees and visitors.
“At the same time, though, the embassy notified farm employers that many — perhaps most — of these farm workers still can get their visas, because they participated in the program last year and don’t require an in-person appointment at the consulate.
“Ryan Ogburn, visa director at wafla, which helps farms manage the flow of H-2A workers in the Pacific Northwest, says that 85-90% of their workers will qualify for this exemption. Meanwhile, influential farm organizations in the U.S. are pushing the Trump administration to ease the entry of more guest workers.
“The continuing availability of agricultural workers illustrates the paradox of America’s food supply in the age of COVID-19.
“One end of the food supply chain has been completely upended as restaurants go dark and consumers prowl half-empty aisles of supermarkets. Food producers, though, are operating almost as normal — at least for now. […]”
Raul: Straw Dogs was an excellent recommendation. The fact that reviewers seem to universally excoriate it as “often brilliant but..”, the “but” mostly being that it destroys their cherished idols, adds lustre. Reading it now. Thx again.
Here’s someone I once knew, nick-named Gaston Bulbous, turning blue with politically anxious anticipation (I used the attachment function):
Here is a mandarin consulting divine wisdom or at least firefly actuary tables:
Finally, a photo of an actual market display for a workout gym in a tiny town in NE Washington that seems apt for the times:
Good fortune, farewell, and thanks for all the fishes!
Because I bragged on it but forgot to share the actual link:
What a cherry-picking festival the comments section has become! *sigh*
Actually, I can shut my mouth. I think I will. The din of what has become another doom’n’gloom uber alles echo chamber has bored even loud mouth me into silence. I’ll just read the articles and Raul’s essays from hereon out and avoid the comments like the, um, plague.
Speaking of Raul: “You mean something went right? I’d still like to see proof.”
That’s one of the funniest lines I’ve read in awhile.
“Carry on, great warrior.” Lord Buckley
So now I have to watch Tucker Carlson to get some fundamentally defining accurate data. Oh, I don’t care about his political biases or ther FOX stigma. He just always look like he’s either recovering from dose of major sedatives or experiencing anal prostate orgasm.
Well, he does!
“Things are going from bad to worse. So the PM designates that old ladies, as shown in the picture, allow their old lady friends to slide but penalize anything younger and prettier (since they are obviously trollops).”
***
“The amendment to the current quarantine law transfers the power of issuing the necessary permits primarily to mothers and grandmothers, as well as wives and sisters where there in no mother or grandmother.”
***
I’ve known a few mothers and grandmothers. Generally, they’re more willing to do what’s needed to protect their children and those of others — if cooperative effort is what will save their own, which in this case is true. It’s part of their biological heritage, and why the ‘C’ word (you know, four-letter vagina with hard consonants) is as vile as epithets can be: because we expect women to be kinder and more willing to submit for the greater good than men, who are always rounding up in gangs, typically in uniforms so they’ll know who to hate and kill.
A woman who acts like a selfish bitch is perhaps the most reviled figure in culture. Evil stepmothers come too mind.
Meanwhile, here in the states, we see that is generally the younger among us who ignore quarantine protocols, cuz a) they’re young which usually means they’re less experienced at, say, 25, than someone at, say, 50, and b) experience is the taproot of wisdom, and wisdom is… oh, never mind.
I’d rather have a buncha old grannies policing the streets than a buncha male cops. I’ve dealt with cops. I’ve dealt with grannies, including a C-word granny or two.
I’ll take grannies.
Jesus/Temple/Money-Changers-Lenders
Wiki does a pretty good job on this one, it seems.
P.S. “Professor David Landry of the University of St. Thomas suggests that “the importance of the episode is signaled by the fact that within a week of this incident, Jesus is dead. Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree that this is the event that functioned as the ‘trigger’ for Jesus’ death.”[16]”
The war with Mammon was offically on from then on, with Jesus as the first divine casualty, per that mythos.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” (some rabble-rouser with alleged super-powers)
As for the military: every war game shows them losing in a confrontation with a population of angry scared USA citizens. It didn’t work in Iraw and it won’t work here, although at first, people will probably welcome martial law. There’s a small chance they’ll use martial law wisely and morally, but then, I have penis enlargement pills older than your average young recruit, so I ain’t buying that gambling chit. Nuh-uh.
I think that, riff-raff or not, zerosum, those lenders have no names because they don’t exist, best I can tell.
a) there is no stopping price discovery now. That is the essence of what we call The Reset.
b) price discovery will return the actual relationship between nominative value markers (e.g., money), creating a barter economy whether we like it or not.
c) barter economies are all about continual price discovery based on real goods and the real conditions affecting those goods
d) in such a situation, there will be little interest in borrowing money from the entities who trashed same, and by then, those entities will be more or less known, if only by the named concept of ‘central banks’. But the typical corporation has lists of major stockholders, senior officers, and members of the board of directors. Some luxury survival bunkers will find themselves flooded/smoked out despite all their fancy gizmos.
e) local banks will emerge, and locals will be very concerned with keeping money on track with the physical goods/energy resources/labor pools it represents, while the high visibility offered by localism will control such bubbles. Small banks may get foolish and crash but won’t infect others… and their managers will likely be hung or worse.
f) this is typically where the banksters go abroad and restart their racket with the next nation/kingdom/whatever wanting to wax rich and powerful. (This narrative closely overlaps with what the more rabid empire-haters tend to call Zionist bankers, although Zion hardly holds a monopoly on this stuff.) But none of today’s nations will be in that position except Russia and probably some African/South American regions, and Russia/China will have first dibs on them since might makes right in geopolitics and they now wield considerably more might than all of Euromerica combined, because Euromerica is suffering from massive resource depletion. Money means little without adequate resources. Local banks and barter economy will be the norm in those places for some time.
g) the only nation with adequate resource abundance and sound fiscal/financial policies is Russia, and Russia doesn’t want to lend us money because we have insufficient resources to pay them back with. To purchase from Russia, we will have to offer concrete goods in real-life barter value swaps. The exception to this might be them building nuclear power plants for us on something like a Rent To Own basis, payable in physical goods or specific markers thereof whose relationship to said goods will be closely monitored to avoid funny money hanky-panks.
BlackRock already drained the economy good from 2008 until now. The economy is now like those fracked oil wells/tar sands operations: pert near empty and hardly worth scraping their bottoms for what’s left.
It’s over for them just like it was over for Louis the 16th in 1789. And there are no available successors. The buck literally stops — and dies — here.
Evangelical Xtians and similar Biblically-based End Times Rapturologists might consider this evidence that the End Times are upon us. Something like them is here with or without divine intervention.
The only time Jesus is on record at giving in to His physical temper was when he encountered money-changers at the temple steps. Money changers had always been there, converting the various currencies moving through Israel at the time into local currency for donations and tithes to the temple priests. Nothing for JC to be pissed about.
But there was also a nasty gold-silver inequity trade going on that is the basis, per my reading, of today’s bankster playbook, although actual silver/gold was basically done by the time China collapsed under the Empress Dowager, it’s lingering momentum moving through the British pound sterling then the post-WWII gold-backed dollar. I think that’s what tripped Jesus’ trigger.
The petrodollar would’ve ben pretty good specie currency if we’d printed dollars based on known reserves and reliably predictable costs of extraction, since fossil fuels are what our modern scientific industrial civilization is based, but we didn’t do that. We blew bubbles, along with most of the resources necessary to continue enjoying such large populations living as we do, instead.
The chances that my grandkids will be wearing animal skins and trading dried fish are too likely for my comfort level, but that is not an absurd projection. It’s on the spectrum of Plausible Outcomes.
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” — Matthew 21:12–13
The other aspect of flattening the curve is to slow the rate of more or less inevitable spread so that it doesn’t overwhelm (a word recently used in overwhelming number, it seems) the medical system not to mentin the economy which, outside of seasonally dependent vital stuff (agriculture) and necessary extraction/production (fill in your list an it please ye), can indeed be shut down for three months/whatever IF we use enlightened federal leadership to declare a three-month moratorium on on loans/rents due and pumps enough money to us peasants to keep the essential services funded.
I thought we’d al;l gone over this stuff before.
Let’s ask the man in the street. Maybe he knows:
“Today’s Your Day for a Mac Now there are even more ways to love the classic Big Mac® taste. Get the new Little Mac™ or Double Big Mac now on Mobile Order & Pay. Order in the App, pass the line with a tap.”
Winning, right?
‘One of Atlantis’ great gleaming chord changes.’
Wow. I was thinking ‘sunset rays’ not ‘chord changes’ but was still also thinking about Shorter’s music. It’s like a racetrack for squirrels in cages inside my mind. Oh well A-OOgah!!!
Apropos of nothing but the very best: at last! concert footage from the Wayne Shorter Quartet from its seminal year!
These guys literally reinvented acoustic jazz as an art form encompassing all that jazz had ever been into something beyond genre, almost beyond what most people think of music… they’re improvising in strict tempo to precise song with written chord changes and basic melody lines, not free-forming all over each other.
One of Atlantis’ great gleaming chord changes.
One last note to the Doc Ds among us: yes, we know the savage elites are very powerful at present and very savage. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to hold on to Jackie Squatt as reality reasserts itself in a swarm of chaotic attractors imposing some new gradual order sweeping them along the tsunami’s cpourse like everyone else.
You may enjoy scaring yourself over and over with these immense bogie-monsters, and all of us here enjoy a bit of fearful thrill, but there’s room for not always deeming failure inevitable in this life. Really.
Monsters of the id
No longer stayin’ hid
And terrors of the night
Are out in broad daylight
No need to knock on wood
Don’t stop to say a prayer
It won’t do any good
They’re multiplyin’ in the air
Creatures of the deep
Are going without sleep
And phantoms of the dark
Have their own place to park
No need to lock the door
They’re sprouting through the cracks
They’re making room for more
They’re deputizing maniacs
Prehistoric ghouls
Are making their own rules
And resurrected huns
Are passin’ out the guns
No need to cause a fuss
Don’t go and make a scene
They know what’s best for us
They’re fightin’ fire with gasoline
The creatures from the swamp
Rewrite their own Mein Kampf
Neanderthals amuck
Just tryin’ to make a buck
And goblins and their hags
Are out there wavin’ flags
Oh, when will we be rid
Of monsters of the id
Monsters of the idDr. D Rich: Goats make me smile. Remarks addresszed to me that start with “no” and then tell me what should earn my happy attention, don’t. I don’t do well with the “imperative mood” in grammar choices. ONe might say that you literally got my goat.
