HerrWerner
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I won’t watch the Carlson interview live, I will catch highlights at some point. Arguably it is one of the biggest news items so far in 2024 for USAians anyway. Media is going bonkers all week. I put a clothespin on my nose and went on NPR to get their take. Nothing at all on their front pages of politics, world, national news. Nothing. I searched “carlson” and NPR came back with:
– a bio on contributor Rachel Carlson (she!/her!)
– the physics of the spiral pass (American football) wow!
– masturbation abstinence and who should be worried
– nicotine pouches and how republicans are weaponizing them in the election, or somethingand so on. riveting and life-shaping, all of it.
How far you fell NPR, what a pathetic lot of #***ing losers. It pains me to say it. I’ve sent them a lot of money over the years, as recent as ten years ago. All the good journalists are gone- retired or dead – and they did have some good ones, some formidable askers of questions, not so long ago. All the ones I grew up on. The new ones only know how to emote. They know how to write badly and say the same thing seven times in 8 short paragraphs. Old shrews, mean girls, crayon eaters that can’t identify a logical fallacy if it was glued to their ass.
//#end_rant//
I have a rare instance of disagreeing with our venerable Dr. D. Above, “…Nor are resources depleted. The U.S. in particular has frozen ALL resource use. Every mine was de-licensed, every mill shut down…”
Actually can’t totally disagree. YES those resources are there. YES those resources could be tapped. Yes “they” are probably keeping them off limits for political games (shortages and strife are the lifeblood of sociopaths, sycophants and lawyers after all)
It’s the cost to get at it that matters. And cost is not just tabulated in dollars (that’s easy, brrrrrrrrr!!) but rather in the cost to Nature, the cost against the future.
The easy stuff IS depleted. For oil, coal, even 10-cent bitcoins: the easy stuff is gone. The high ERoEI stuff is long gone. What’s left takes extravagant amounts of capital and energy and “cost” in terms of wealth and “cost” to the future health of the local ecology.
The 1901 Pennsylvania crude that was 100:1 (one unit of energy to extract 100 units of energy) was done by the 1960’s. Last time I drove through those parts, they are drilling there again, fracking like mad for crude and natgas. At extreme rates of capital depletion, for wells that last a year or two, take 100 tractor-trailers of sand and 200 tons of steel pipe. Nobody publishes ERoEI for fracking wells (not credible ones) but I’d guess 20:1 max, probably 10:1 average for a good well. They are better at extracting fiat from investors, than petroleum. When it’s done, the chemicals and the wastewater they injected never go away. It will find its way into aquifers and surface water. Could take a year, could take generations but it will poison whatever tries to live there in the future.
It’s a problem for “future” Homer Simpson. Most people DGAF. I suspect quite a few TAEs do GAF. I certainly do, some real actual environmentalists (rare beasts, indeed) do. Some landowners and farmers do, particularly the Amish because they have a long-term stake in particular place. They want to work the land generations from now, preferably without groundwater that’s hopelessly poisoned.
“Rare earths” are not that rare. There are deposits around the world. The refining process OTOH is dirty and results toxic chemicals, toxic slag and lakes of contaminated water. China has a monopoly on rare earths mainly because they are willing to do that dirty work, in backwater places far far from the centers of power. There’s an unknowable unseen toxic plume of contamination under Baotou that will persist for literal eons.
I’m sad to admit it, but if we’re gonna have rare earths, I’d rather mine them 8000 miles away where it’s Someone Else’s Problem. Inner Mongolia Homer’s problem.
I don’t have a solution for it. Well a small one, but *few* people want to partake. “Just. Use. Less.“
Conservation. The *other* C-word, toxic, that nobody says since Jimmy Carter “ruined” it. But then I’m a rarity.It’s hard. It’s hard to get away from it even if you actively avoid it. I bought a tiny bourbon, came in a cutesy cardboard box with cheap throwaway rare-earth magnets to snap it shut. I’m sure they made a million of those boxes, 2 million magnets mined, refined, unappreciated and then tossed back into the Earth in a landfill. Profligate, senseless use of a valuable costly resource. My two I keep in a drawer because they might come in handy some day.
Reference: Mongolia Homer lives in Bautou, there’s a decent BBC (ugh) article about it. You can view the toxic wastewater lake (it’s vast, shared by many mining companies) from your choice of corporate overlords, the googles earth or bing maps
@upstateNYer exactly (on China and pandemic)
We have/can have no idea what’s going on wrt covid in China. Official sources get filtered twice – once through state-controlled media in China, and once through state-nudged media here in the west. I haven’t sought info on blogs or independent sources about China in a long time – takes a lot of time to research and double-check. Who knows what’s real or staged.
I’ve heard two theories, equally plausible to me –
One is that leaders must “save face,” very important in many far-east cultures. They said they would eradicate covid and they have to deliver, or more to the point be seen to deliver on that. Even if it means locking down and immiserating whole cities. Vids in late 2020 showed ppl recreating and celebrating the end of covid in Wuhan, they have to keep that up, even if it means going full Mao mode.The other theory is it’s a deliberate slowdown of economic activity. For a variety of reasons – perhaps to punish the west, or to cover up their financial bubble. Could be to prop up prices through scarcity (making cheap crap from Amazon more cost more) or punish the west (throw supply chains in turmoil.) The on/off lockdowns keep a lot of people occupied – medical ppl in hazmat gear running around, apps that keep you indoors or ring-fenced to a certain area. Keep ppl off-balance, so they are too busy trying to get groceries to care about what a hash the elites have made of things.
It’s also possible the problem is genuine. Maybe China has nasty strains of rona they can’t get rid of.
@oxymoron Wishing peace and blessings on your family. There are vast swathes of topics I can no longer discuss with loved ones. I had a long and detailed exchange with my sister about the vexxes last year. Neither of us convinced the other. Siblings, identical raising, similar backgrounds, one of us is no longer any good at critical thinking, but both of us think we are. I don’t understand it but there’s a wall between us now. No matter how close we are on other things we can’t talk like we used to.
I hope you’re right about homes @UpstateNYer, sounds good to me! 1930’s-70’s homes also occupy some prime spots – proximity to town, shorter supply lines and utilities. Those old homes – not the best-insulated, but smaller and can maintain them with hand tools, build-quality’s no worse than the slapped-together mcmansions of now. We live in such a 70’s place now. I hope it sells when the time comes, haha
The Mrs. Frau Werner and I are looking at places to semi-retire to. I don’t expect us to ever retire fully like our parents could, cost of living won’t allow. We’re not in a hurry, have some savings (for now!) waiting for the right place right price. We have a wide range that appeals to us, but what we aren’t looking for is a modern 5000+ sq footer in the exurbs. A lot of owners don’t know it yet, that but those are destined to be the new slums, or abandoned, or stripped for materials and fuel. Or turned into multi-generational home/workshop/homesteader arrangements by legal/illegal immigrants that still know how to make those work.
TAE and comments are rockin’ it these last several weeks. RIM hasn’t featured Denninger in while, there’s a good one in recent days. It summarizes well the known-unknowns of the covid vexes, and surmises on the unknown-unknowns. The new bivalent boosters for fall sure sound awesome, tested on mice so you know it’s all good. The Bottom Line On Trust and Medicine https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=246813
Apologies if this posts twice, website acting wonky and my 1st try vanished…
I’d call the covid vexxes the second-largest medical experiment ever undertaken. The first being genetically modified foodstuffs introduced in the 90s. At first it was promised they were only going into the animal-feed stream. Then they “accidentally” found their way into the human food supply. Then the FDA approved GMO’s for us with no scientific evidence, merely inductive reasoning of “well they ain’t that different from the real thing, hurr durr” and “nothing’s happened so far” because you can’t see what you don’t study. And the checks from Monsanto and Cargill that fund the studies clear. And the Vatican jumped aboard in favor of GMOs too because they have centuries of knowledge on the subject.
Snap poll – What disease states have literally exploded in quantity and severity in the last 30 years? Diseases of inflammation – heart disease, food allergies, diabesity, crohns, asthma and on and on. Hell, cancer and a lot of chronic infections are probably result of inflammation simply because the body’s defenses are busy fighting autoimmune/inflammatory states and get overwhelmed (full disclosure I’m not a biologist, tho I can occasionally define what a woman is)
I state (without evidence, just observational) those GMO’s might be responsible for the explosion in inflammatory diseases. Our food system – devoid of nutrition, because nutrition has lousy shelf life, and lousy shelf appeal to boot – our food system was probably responsible for that from the 60s through early 2000s. Now we have GMOs, transgenes filtering through the food system with totally unknown, un-studied consequences. You can “prove” in the laboratory that genetically-engineered genes and breakdown products never make it to humans in the food supply; they are destroyed by the rumen or the GI tract or the heat of cooking or whatever. But release GMO foods into the world, and you introduce 100 new variables, 1000 times as many edge-cases as you could every look at in the lab. Without evidence, but it sure as hell would be great if someone would look into it. If we had a competent government, they would.
And on disease of inflammation – the source of so much suffering and laundering of money into the Medical-Industrial Complex – the NIAID (national institute of ALLERGY and infectious diseases) allergies being a disease of inflammation – WTF have those two f***ers Fauci and that Collins guy been doing the last 30 years at the NIH NIAID? Certainly not actually studying allergies or disease states. Somebody was the kingmaker, the Don, the “Sollozzo the Turk” (he’s good with a knife!) – directing moneys toward research he chose to support, including the dark money/military dollars being funneled to labs continuing all the genetic and weaponization work that we don’t do in the USA because we’re the good guys. Imagine all the grift and corruption and racketeering and plain old money-laundering that takes place in the vacuum of no oversight.
When I rediscovered TAE a few years ago, I had skepticism of Dr.D’s skepticism of gov’t. Now I see it, top to bottom, every facet of everything they do, tainted. I see the same thing everywhere. I have a stack of covid tests next to me provided by my employer because reasons. What, $30 bucks a box? What a racket. Still under an EUA, after 2.5 years, because it’s more profitable when you’re not fettered with a Quality System, like every other medical device from colonoscope to tongue-depressor. We’re in an emergency, doncha know. Half-ass works just fine. For 2.5 years now. Again, if we had a competent government, they would mop up the mess by now – covid tests made cheap under GMP and GDP, approved quality standards, Quality Engineers overseen by FDA quality “experts”. Maybe even produced in the USA where it’s easier to assess quality and integrity, even if we can no longer make the fancy filter paper for a lateral-flow test or whatever’s in that tiny vial of Ancient Chinese Secret that transubstantiates your snot into a diagnostic test [heavenly chorus.wav]
PS I’ve done it before but indulge me in thanking the ones who have influenced my thinks the most in virustime, RIM of course, Dr. John Day, Dr. D, Bosco in his variants, DBS, VP. AFKTT I wish we could grab a beverage. Phoenix I much appreciate your slice-of-life perspectives. Not an all-inclusive list – I rarely skip anybody’s comments!
PPS I wonder what goes on in the FDA at present. 75% going along to get along, silenced by the 20% sociopaths and careerists (the 75% think that 20% are the majority) the remaining 5% disgusted and trying to balance their integrity, feeding their family, and not getting vanished in the black of night; the sad fate of the whistleblower.
Not to belabor the point 😀 but my friend who lived in Japan heartily recommended Dave Barry’s book “Dave Barry Does Japan” which is a very satirical travelogue of his family visit there in the 80s
She said he pretty much “nailed it” on the first try, both the good and the bad of Japan. Pretty good for a humorist 😀
@john-day I too liked Japan and Japanese immensely, I soaked up the experiences and I’m glad for it – I would have loved to see it in the 70s. My visits were business trips so I did not live there but on the plus side, I got a less-touristy take on ordinary Japanese life, hanging out with my coworkers and commuting/dining/beers with them. Most of the time I was in Saitama, on the north side but part of greater Tokyo like Kamakura.
For a westerner, Japan is a study on what homogeneity and “getting along” can be for a society, adherence to shared set of social norms. The politeness and courtesy, afforded even to strangers and foreigners (most of the time), the low crime, the safety in the streets, society stability. Japan is not without its problems and drawbacks of course. And it can be personal – those social norms are strict and rather narrow, and you violate them with no small personal cost.
If I understand correctly “gaijin” translates to “barbarian” – but it’s not a pejorative term, it’s just that Japanese are in the club together and you gaijin were not born here and are not in the club. I had a good friend that lived there and in China for a number of years, married to a Japanese guy, she felt the same way – ever an outsider, never to be let in, sometimes a veiled insult from someone who didn’t realize she spoke fluently.
further on “we aren’t serious about it” – about conservation
I’ve been to places that were serious about it. Here in the first-world-soon-to-be-banana-republic we do not mention the word “conservation” Can’t bring ourselves to say it aloud, even think it, the forbidden c-word. It’s been tarred and associated with President Carter and stagflation and austerity- and that’s been quite deliberate. From womb to grave we are told to be consumers, that buying “things” will give you happiness.
Imagine the damage that does to the psyche, if your only role in life is to buy shit and pay taxes? Do not seek a rich and purposeful life that requires “less” – no participation as citizens, no spirituality, no support for like minds or kin. That is (or WAS) a lifestyle driving many people stark raving mad. I know office and PMC type people and all they talk about is stuff they bought/are buying/are binge-watching. It appears to be all they know. To me living brittle and fragile lives. Makes my eyes glaze over. I’d sooner weed the garden on a blistering summer day than hang out with them.
Now our betters are setting up a classic Batesonian double-bind. Whether it’s intentional or not, it’s going to drive ppl stark raving mad, but even MOAR. We’re being told yes consume consume consume, but do less of it, YOUR carbon footprint is too big, you’ll own nothing and be happy, eat ze bugs, turn down your AC but buy an electric car because climate, because science. The unmentionable c-word “conservation” – using less in the first place – that solves many problems before they are problems – is the un-speakable, cannot be mentioned.
In Japan they take it seriously. On a tiny, resource-poor island with a high population density you can do little else. When I was in Japan ppl turned off lights in a room they weren’t using. My hotel rooms I had to put my room key into a socket to turn on the room lights/AC/heat. (More importantly – you can’t leave the room on when you leave, stupid gaijin.) My engineer colleagues would save discarded paper and feed the blank side back into the printer. It was hot in the office because it’s spring in Tokyo and the windows were open and it was 75° and humid so suck it up buttercup (fine by me)
There were seven different recycle bins for waste streams of plastic, glass, foil packs etc and ppl did it because they are Japanese. Tiny, sensible cars. Literally thousands of bikes at the train/subway station entrance (NONE of them with locks, again because Japan) waiting for their commuting owner to get back from their downtown job. Cities and suburbs crammed with people cheek-by-jowl because it makes sense to run cities that way, not spread over the land. Because we need that land to grow food, silly gaijin. Rich volcanic soil is for growing rice not Costco with a 5-acre parking lot, we’ll make the Costco five floors tall and put it next the train station where it belongs.
@afewknowthetruth I read years ago that SA’s Ghawar oilfield has a 50% “water cut” that is, half of what gets pumped out of the ground is the seawater pumped in from the other side of the field to drive it toward the producing wells. That was 2002 ish.
Ghawar has been producing oil for 70 years. Early in its life it was self-pressurized. Drill a hole in the reservoir and light, sweet crude comes up. Later it had to be pumped out as the reservoir was drained, and still later seawater was pumped in (on the east side I think) wells were re-purposed as injection wells, to sweep the remaining oil toward the production wells.
What do you think it is now 20 years later, a 60%, 75% water-cut? maybe more? The oilfield engineer slipped up by mentioning it. Oil field data and the facts like the “water cut” are strategic knowledge, state secrets in SA.
Each one of these reduces the ROI, drives up the cost (both ecological cost and fiat money cost) It is a losing game where at some point it is too much of an economic/ecological disaster to continue. When it’s un-economical it will shut down (elites don’t care about ecology, only economy, to greatly oversimplify) Landowners in western PA are selling their souls – fracking will poison the aquifers (permanently, as in for as long as there are humans around) THat formerly good farmland under the well pad/retention pond will never be reclaimed. But If you don’t do it, your neighbor will.
Ghawar is a microcosm of peak oil. Sure there’s plenty of oil still there, but the easy-to-get stuff is long gone. EROEI was 100:1 (energy out: energy in) at the wellhead 100 years ago. Energy too cheap to meter. Lots of oil regions started out that way (Western PA, Spindletop TX, LA) Now most wells are probably 20:1 energy out:energy in.
@john-day points out that there’s probably “secret” oil fields out there, and I don’t doubt that. But they are not the easy, cheap stuff. Deepwater Horizon was in 5000 feet of water on a reservoir 13000 feet deep. There was much technology in that oil rig as there is in a Mars lander mission. Meaning just as much fragility.In a way I don’t think Dr. D is wrong either. German elites are slitting Germany’s industrial throat by refusing to buy Russian gas and oil “on principle.” We could stretch that fossil fuel 40 years easy if it were used sensibly. We could stretch the whole finite resource (oil, gas, coal) out over centuries if we were sensible about it. But we aren’t serious about it.
@Bill7 @John-day the off-topic audiophile tangent – I spent much time in HS and college when I had no money building my own speaker cabinets – I could not afford an amplifier with real power or good speakers, so I got pretty good at making bass-reflex cabinets to make the most of the puny audio equipment me and my friends had.
I worked for an audio firm for a while, and they had a listening room with reference speakers – Pioneer TAD 2401s. Magical. Massive 200lbf wood enclosures (still go for $10k+++ used)
– I was quite the audiophile 30 years ago but never had the $
– Now I have the fiat $ but my hearing is not so good
Plus too many other things to worry about besides fine audio, ergo I’m at TAERIM, “A Winter of Anger” seems well-received over at ZH, much actual discussion in top comments, snark and trolling lower than most articles, good on ya mate.
ZH has a useful critique of the BBC “documentary” unvaccinated
I tried to view the original program but is made unavailable outside the UK (even with a VPN) Now I know I need not bother. It is made on the “reality TeeVee” model. Six days of filming and discussion are reduced down to an hour of snark, GOTCHA! moments and strange off-topic diversions.Times where the interviewees won and the “protagonists” lost the argument are edited out. The host, the MDs and scientism-ists, and the “fact checkers” are up against some well-informed interviewees.
I’m not surprised but I had hopes. The show is promoted as an honest attempt to reach across the divide but is a crass re-hash of existing “muh science” browbeating and Kamala-logic. Logical fallacies galore – muh Authority, muh Higher Power (aka muh Science), alphabet soup, others
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-08-02/critique-bbc-documentary-unvaccinatedSome gems in the comments this week. @dr-d Dr.D thanks for the link “why liberals dump their oldest friends” I’m testing that idea, and it seems to fit. It explains the EXTREMELY visceral response – point out that there’s nuance in any story, challenge any bit of official dogma (on covid, ukraine, vax, green energy, ad infinitum) and it is met with fight-or-flight (KILL OR OUTRUN!!1! ALLCAPS!!11!! ) That’s the amygdala reacting, dominating the response. It is not conscious. I’ve watched ppl’s eyes, facial reactions. It’s reflexive, like disgust or fear or phobia.
There’s no reasoning with it; you cannot get around that reaction with logic, or even compassion in my experience. It bypasses the thought process, like the dread I feel when my fear of heights overwhelms my reason. The article assembled two missing bits for me – the amygdala’s role, and the concept that repeated training re-wires the brain. Exposure to NPR,PBS,BBC,Guardian et, – or any repeated stimulus – rewires the brain to simplify that task – evolutionary advantage (reduces the cognitive requirements of the brain, a sensible adaptation for the organ that takes 1/3 of the body’s resources to run 😀 )DBS thanks for sharing your survival story in Alaska! That was a near-miss, about as close as you can get to tragedy and walk away. Your take on the lesson is spot-on, I wouldn’t have figured it out right away. Understand what other people really do “owe” you, and make sure it matches what *they* think they “owe” you.
@Oxymoron your comments on animals reflect the stories (fictionalized real-life stories) from James Herriot’s farmers from the 1930s – animals were not coddled like today’s pets – animals were for meat, or else they were working animals (cat= mouser, dog=watchdog+ratter, horse=tractor) The old timers would not spend hard-earned “brass” on a vet bill for a cat. Only for a cow or a work-animal. Those stories are from a more austere time, like the one we’re headed into. People now may think that view as cold-hearted.
That said, we have two dogs and a cat that we will spend a ton of cash to keep them healthy and happy – they are not working animals but my companion animals, they give comfort and joy when many of the humans in my life the last 2 yrs have become insufferable and unsupportive. I recognize it as a privilege do so, for as long as it lasts!
A couple of Herriot’s stories are heartwarming because they tell the opposite – a businesslike farmer who cries over the pig he has just turned into bacon, a farmer who’s embarrassed to bring his dog to the vet because it reveals just how much he’s worried about his canine friend.@dr d @oroboros, most of the beef and pigs in the US are raised in feedlots (CAFOs) and with it most of the manure. Most farmers know that manure is a gift of nature. One of the many troubles we face in the US is trying to resurrect the natural fertility of the soil through natural amendments – manure, crop “wastes” and mulch. Very localized as Dr D pointed out.
Manure is bulky and low-value. Not a paying concern to transport it any great distance. And the manure from CAFOs is laced with pesticide residue, growth hormones, antibiotic residues. Few farmers want it anyway even if it was free. On 100-acre family farms, you can manage manure and other “wastes” and recycle them back into the soil easily. It works on that scale. On 20,000-hectare row-crop “farms” with the animals and their poop concentrated 1000 miles away in a feedlot, not so much.
BTW there is a wonderful book
- “Farmers of Forty Centuries.”
It is part travelogue, part time-capsule (1900 ish.) A retired ag official and his wife tour the far East and he geeks out about all the amazing clever ways the Chinese Koreans and Japanese eke bountiful nutrition out of the soil every year. And maintain fertility of the soil which has been farmed for literally thousands of years.
-HerrWerner@maxwell-quest well put. I have many relationships with blacked-out, taped-off topics that dare not be mentioned. Polite rules of yesterday (don’t talk religion or politics) have been replaced by a galaxy of hot-button no-go topics. Expressing even a conversational calm doubt in the narrative (“hey, do masks really help?” or “hey, what about when NATO attacked Libya?”) brings down white-hot heat. They project onto me a whole suite of dangerous untrue conspiratorial “beliefs” that I don’t hold but they believe I must be carrying around. That I’m stupid, anti-science(tm) “Projecting the shadow” a al Jung. (silly psych-101 stuff! I mean super-easy to spot the projection once you look for it. Total cult behaviour. Life-of-Brian crowd behaviour, “follow the gourd! the holy gourd of Jerusalem!”)
I have just *one* friend that sees through the Ukraine info that pours from the news direct and unfiltered from Zelenskyys crazed mind. She’s pissed about the hypocrisy of tears for Ukraine and DGAF for Libya. She’s a recent immigrant, perhaps that’s why, less conditioned by the ceaseless propaganda of the last 20 years in the west. The Life of Brian is just as apt as The Matrix.
A while back articles linked ‘childhood stress’ as a cause of maladies such as “vaxxine hesitancy” and “ukraine narrative hesitancy” or some such thing. My childhood experience was of being bullied, frequently, and when I sought help from “authorities,” I got not help or relief but indifference, contempt, more bullying. Which developed into a lifelong skepticism of authority – my best defense these last several years. My childhood stress was quite unremarkable compared to the suffering many ppl endure, and I only mention mine because – as @phoenixvoice said – “not all coping strategies are detrimental” 🙂 [this last paragraph shamelessly copied from my own post late the other day :D]
Right on, @phoenixvoice. “Life is a mixed bag. The same circumstances that cause mental distress will also push individuals to deal with that stress. Not all coping strategies are detrimental.” Glad your daughter has found a stable state again and directed her energy into positive/creative pursuits. Better than I could manage at her age. Bravo to both of you, and long may it continue.
A while back articles linked ‘childhood stress’ as a cause of maladies such as “vaxxine hesitancy” and “ukraine narrative hesitancy” or some such thing. My childhood experience was of being bullied, frequently, and when I sought help from “authorities,” I got not help or relief but indifference, contempt, more bullying. Which developed into a lifelong skepticism of authority – my best defense these last several years. My childhood stress was quite unremarkable compared to the suffering many ppl endure, and I only mention mine because – like you said – not all coping strategeries are detrimental 🙂Raúl, thanks for the PJW/Church clip, my only genuine laugh today. Whether true (I hope) or merely embellished, it was a delight 😀
-HerrWerner
The Babylon Bee completes the story
BB better than the MSM in every way
I wondered which character was Sauron in huskynut’s allegory. now we knowhttps://babylonbee.com/news/dr-fauci-reveals-he-has-forged-in-secret-a-master-vaccine-to-rule-all-the-others
Good essay, Huskynut – yes many ordinary people are “loath to…be confronted with the mundanity of their pre-Covid lives.” We *are* hardwired for the epic battle, a unifying drama because it gives us meaning and distracts us from the ordinary. The reality is none of the problems we had in 2019 went away. Most of our 2019 problems got worse from the two years of malign neglect.
Last year on a long car ride me and the Frau tried listening to an interview on NPR. Two health officials in California, both officials involved in heavy-handed lockdowns and mandates. One complained how a group of protesters woke her up from her nap, in her gated neighborhood, chanting slogans and playing ukuleles (the horror!) They were not adult enough to see their actions have consequences that other citizens do not agree with. They were picking and choosing which behaviors are acceptable, what “science” is correct, whose jobs are “essential,” which businesses are going to go bankrupt because the big-box stores can absorb the hits and the mom-n-pop shops can’t.
Covid took health officials and school admins from their dull, inconspicuous role and catapulted them into public figures, and those two ladies took a step further and chose the role of Petty Tyrant. They were shocked that there was blowback from the public. And perversely, it stoked their ego, hardened their resolve*, made them even more sure of their correctness and righteousness.
Repeat this 10,000 times across the nation and that leaves a vast number of people whose 15 minutes of fame are f’n over – and they cannot accept it, they may never let go of the Ring. There’s nothing left but to pick up the pieces* and start accepting their diminished place in life, start making peace with the vaxxed/unvaxxed and the wreckage we’ve made of our societies. The manifold intractable problems we forgot about and ignored. I see the cognitive dissonance hitting the PMC class particularly hard.
*”build me an army worthy of Mordor.”
** “rebuild the Shire”
“I wish my faith in God was as strong as these peoples’ faith in the vaccines.”
-somebody commented on ZH a while back, referring to a conversation with the poster’s dad.Slate article popped up on my feed. A glimpse inside the mind of a true believer. Author is trying to get her toddler through covid. All she can think about is vaxxing him. It is her sole focus, her sole hope. Stockholm Syndrome perhaps, or something more sinister, at any rate no awareness, no concept of the real risk, the cost/benefit of the vexxez. She is furious that the vax corporations keep pushing out the under-5 trials.
She seems to have no concept that other generations had to deal with crap situations and keep on. Maybe she has no living memory in her family to ask. Get through WWII, or the Blitz, or the Depression? Or going back further a civil war, a genocide, a collapse, the fall of the Roman Empire? Life went on, surely worse than the present times; people still found life, happiness, a reason to raise children.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/kids-under-5-vaccine-parents.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
“I want to scream. If I can scream, for a second? The pandemic is not fucking over, because children under 5 cannot get fucking vaccinated…”
“…It is the awful feeling that the world has moved on. The White House blithely anticipates a ‘winter of death’ and suffering for the unvaccinated, but, well, that’s their own fault, isn’t it! If you’re fully vaxxed, which you of course could be, omicron will be a sniffle and a five-day reality TV binge!”
“Someday we’ll look back on how we lived through something historic. Someday I’ll tell my son about the pandemic that happened when he was a baby… We’ll make it to whenever he gets vaccinated, because we don’t have a choice.”
“I’ll read him his little board book about vaccines. He’ll get his second and third shots or however many he needs, and eventually he’ll be just like you, as protected as possible, safe enough to go about his toddlery business with COVID being just another risk like accidents or the flu.”
I clicked through the link by our TAE voice-of-dissent and found it smarmy, contemptuous, ad-hominem. “Those stupids and their silly beliefs. Why can’t they be smart and superior like me?” Like, you know, just about every established “journalism” outlet does. The first “tell” for media outlets or googling or Wikifreakia is that they ALL SAY THE SAME THING. “and you are stupid for thinking differently and I will mock you because” oh TL;DR, FFS.
At one time PBS and NPR were (sorta) credible – in part because they challenged power, challenged the conventional wisdom. Even with their lefty bias they questioned authority across the spectrum and were more credible because of it. Five years ago NPR was concerned about election integrity, five years ago NPR was concerned about the FDA short-cutting safety in fast drug approvals: “the vioxx debacle!!! 1/3 of drugs get recalled <5yrs after approval!!! Danger! danger!” (That was during the Trump days when those things were bad, lol.) Now even Big Bird is in on the fix, brought to you by Pfizer and the number “three” and the letter “jabs”
Twenty years ago the media uncovered the shame of Abu Ghraib and embarrassed TPTB. We found out Specialist Tillman died ignominiously from friendly fire and a bad call from HQ. I can’t imagine our current media uncovering stories like that now, showing anything that makes the TpTb uncomfortable. That “bug” has been fixed and is now a “feature.” A generation of journalists has retired or been pushed out since then, the new ones are goldfish, fully plugged into the matrix and know nothing different. 10-second memory. Oh look, a new pronoun!
@john-day are those first few paragraphs your own? “All humans experience…” That was brilliant, it made some connections about bureaucracies I’ve been trying to piece together for some time. I had not thought of the corporations in terms of private bureaucracies that are optimized for the purpose(s) of the leader.
Charles Hugh Smith, the ArchDruid, and Kunstler have all laid out the course and fate of large entities under declining resources. But I think your analysis explains their sudden urgency in the last few years (and especially how the covid response was directed toward this end) It is a gathering of forces by the top leadership, a consolidation of power to grab as much *real* wealth and power as possible while it IS still possible. Because they are fragile/vulnerable in a declining resource/worker-bee/energy base. The merging of global corporations with the state (google, AWS, various banks, and now Pfizer are practically inseparable from the state)
For TAE fans in need of a bit of comedic relief – recommend the movie “Don’t Look Up” (Netflix.) It was almost made for this audience. I found it humorous, enjoyable, irreverent and full of mordant humour about our current crisis. The cast is well-chosen. The media, social media, the “science,” and political leadership and citizens (that’s us) get skewered un-mercifully. Some of the players are thinly-disguised composites of bathetic real-life characters (Hunter Biden, Bill Gates)
It is the most un-woke, caustically funny film I have seen in years. I can’t believe Netflix made it. Or that so many Hollywood a-listers and stars went along with it. Fair warning there is quite a bit of blue humor and swearing. The lead (DiCaprio) plays an astronomer at the focus of the story. His path is touching and runs from obscurity to fame to equanimity.
Apologies if someone here has mentioned it already.
@john-day agree about meta-studies. They can be misguided (unintentionally) or cherry-picked as much as individual studies can be. There I go assuming the “rational actor” model for humans again, I should know better. 😀 Meta-studies work well in non-politicized topics of science. Much like Wikipedia – is still (surprise) a good resource for non-politicized topics, like the Rankine cycle or plate tectonics (wacky-doodle science nonsense theory :-D) Anything on Wiki remotely related to current events is toxic-ally bent by bad actors (probably state actors) and not even worth visiting the page.@john-day thanks for yesterday’s link on IVM, it’s actually been some time since i looked up anything on treatments. it’s academic and depressing since I cannot expect that treatment here except whatever I can cobble on my own, the local health care conglomerates are all-in on the conventional practice (turn-blue + remdesifear + vax vax vax) Refreshing, there are more RCTs than I realized. People are actually studying this in spite of official headwinds
Nassim N Taleb points out that meta-analyses are likely superior to peer-reviewed papers. Meta-analyses have an averaging effect, They can also weigh individual papers (experiments) on their merits and faults – after the fact, and compare and contrast. Peer review is subject to groupthink and “log rolling” for lack of a better term within a small scientific community.
-HW@those-darned-kids pretty convincing satire let me try: 😀
“The agency works every day to use the best available science and data to quickly and transparently inform the American public about threats to health.”
“HerrWerner works every day using the Best Available Science(tm) and dataz to quickly and transparently make coffee, dress hisself, take the dog for a walk, and earn some bread to send 55% of it to the government”
not bad eh?
trying to pick up a vibe from deflationista’s old comments, I can appreciate challenging the narrative, because that’s what most of us are doing at TAE, challenging the external narrative. I’m not praising deflationista’s style of prose – just admitting that confirmation bias is ever-present, pulling one into a comfortable frame of thought that doesn’t comport with reality. I can fall for c-bias, as can everyone else. I am constantly on the watch for my own confirmation bias – but of course you can’t see your own cbias unless you are possessed of unusual humility and wisdom (and I don’t. I’m just a head floating in a jar. with teh internets.)
To take IVM up an example since deflationista brought it up – the data supporting Ivermectin is directional but not strong (my opinion alone – always willing to look at evidence both ways). But here’s the thing: what we have now is all the f*ing data we are ever going to get during this crisis. Small studies. Meta-analyses. Some are crap and some are pretty OK. There’s Uttar Pradesh and there’s Japan, maybe that means something. That’s all we got and we have to make a decision with crap data. Nobody is going to pony up $10-50 million on a gold-standard™ RCT and see whether it helps with covid or cures it or why, what the best timing is, and the right dosage based on weight, age, factor x, y z. Not in the face and a concerted and powerful effort to look the other way. Nobody would do that even if there was money to be made on it and there isn’t. (that said, I would take it if I had the option – based on meh evidence and the near-zero risk. simply a personal cost-benefit analysis)
Cui bono? Who benefits? (tip’o’the hat to Charles Hugh Smith) Who gets an advantage from this rule or that one? From this grant or that subsidy? Who makes a profit from this, or increases their power and influence?
As for “scientific evidence”
Hell most of the “evidence” I look at these days isn’t scientific at all. Judging the credibility comes first. The science or “Sciencz™” comes later:
Before I read a nooz article or a Gold-Standard™ “peer-reviewed™” (paper from a venerable institution that has never fibbed in its long history) and take it seriously, I have to look at motives and incentives. Who are the authors, Who do they work for? where are then in their Dunning-Kruger awareness? Is it possible they are just careless, are they actually malevolent? What motives do they have to bend the data, falsify it, lie outright? Only then can I read the paper the paper and see if it’s crap or not. So. many. variables. So easy to be wrong. So much at stake, so much money and influence polluting the science or the Scienz(tm)
Sorry for your loss, Germ. Glad that you are well. I wish all here a healthy mind and body in 2022.
Deflat – a modest suggestion for 2022 – ease off the Twitters. Twitter is mind-rot writ large. Twitter serves up the very worst of human nature and the worst algorithmic mind-polluting nudging confirmation-biasing AI – all in one platform served up in tiny snarky bits, calibrated precisely to trigger the amygdala into a torrent of rage or into cruel, self-satisfied (and false) superiority. And that is true irregardlessfully of one’s political leanings or beliefs – by its very design it trains the brain to react with hate or love and not think.
If I can offer another modest suggestion – read one of the English-language treatises on the Spanish Flu (Barry or Crosby, I’m partial to Barry tho it does start off dull) The parallels between 1918 and 202x are striking. NOTHING is new in human behaviour. Nothing.
It’s all there – the Great Mask Debate (never resolved to anyone’s satisfaction) Honest scientists toiling on the fringes with an ageless disease that no microscope could see. Incomplete knowledge. In the newly hatched fields of epidemiology, models that don’t fit – fit 20 year olds that die while the old and the young survive. False starts, false hopes (treatments, “vaccines” that did nothing against a virus) Authoritarianism and suppression run rampant. Science used as a tool for discovery and healing, Science™ used as a tool to bludgeon newspapermen and citizens into submission. Tragic figures like president Woodrow Wilson that span the whole of human experience from the purest of intent (a war-less future for Europe) to the totalitarian policies, misinformation and propaganda lodged against his own citizens.
And in the end, there was virtually nothing mankind could do to alter the course of the Spanish Flu. Virus gonna virus, unfortunately. Just. like. now. with 100 additional years of knowledge of virology and medicine and Science™ But there were certainly things leaders could do to make things worse. Just like now. The course of the disease back then – and now – is shaped as much by our response to it as anything in its little bags of RNA. A course shaped by foibles and triumphs of humanity and only slightly influenced by facts on the ground.
The Bene Gesserit litany against Twitter
I must not Twitter.
Twitter is the mind-killer.
Twitter is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my Twitter.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the Twitter has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.A very happy new year to all at TAE. A hearty thanks to Raul and the commentariat at TAE for keeping me informed and helping fend off personal insanity (or mere complacency) for another year 😀
US Supreme Court takes on the president’s vaxx mandate this month. The clear overreach, the illegality of the mandate is obvi. The absurdity of it in the face of recent events make it nonsensical. Constitutional and legal precedent should have made it a nonstarter months ago. But I don’t hold out high hopes of them doing the right thing. It’s a tight spot the USSC is in – uphold something from an unpopular el presidente and a key portion of his shredded credibility – and a divisive action they know will break the country. Or reject the mandate – and collapse a large chunk of the narrative, make the el presidente and his party even more feckless, expose the colossal shitshow of corporate Science™ suborned by politics. There’s a lot at stake; this ruling will trickle down to other countries and echo through the legal system for years.
I can see them picking a middle ground to save face for the belligerents, in a way which will make no one happy, the MaJoriTy OpiNioN reading something like “struck down, buuuuuut…OSHA shall rename itself ÖSHÄ and require employers over 112.7 people must be vaxxed, unless they have a darn good reason, and wear a scarlet letter on their sleeve and eVeRyBoDy gets anal-swabbed for the coof on odd-numbered Thursdays with a made-in-china test, unless they have a hyphenated name.” [unicorn emojis, cue the photo-op and the book deals]
Thanks, USSC, you are shining light unto the world.I sense that if the USSC upholds it, it will accelerate the in-progress disintegration of the USA considerably. I would call it “functional secession” – states or groups of states simply ignore what the diktats of the federal government. Kuntsler says that governments will become more impotent as peak oil/peak resources/the long descent starts to bite. Which I think is true in the long term. The feds can back up their diktats with force or financial incentives if they want to, and I’m sure they will. And they can sure make us more miserable in the process, but there will come a point where the wheels just come off and their power bubble shrinks until it doesn’t cross outside the border of DC itself.
Wishing a healthy and prosperous 2022 to all
– HW@john-day Re: on the footballers and other peak athletes having heart-related deaths and cardio issues – it is possible that covid itself is responsible in a significant number of these cases. The podcast I referenced above suggests that even a mild (symptomatic) case in some cases results in long-covid. perhaps it is equally accurate calling it post-covid syndrome.
It would not surprise me if athletes are more susceptible than the general population – the relative strain on their cardiovascular being far higher than the average desk dweller or occasional runner. Training oneself to peak performance, then having damage from the spike protein – I could entertain that the loss of even just a few % of heart or lung capacity becomes a deadly danger to a pro athlete but perhaps not not for an average Johann. And the damage is from the spike protein, caused by a covid infection OR from the \/a><><ez (heretical thought #1)
On long-covid there seem to be two categories – his numbers (and these are small sample sizes, but directional) is that about 20% of long-coviders were injured from the infection itself – often it presented as a symptomatic but non-hospitalized case, mild to moderate, which is scary that a ‘mild’ case can leave hidden damage. And not much can be done about it as the damage is to the organ tissue itself.
The other 80% have a long-term immune dysfunction, long after the virus has passed and been removed from the body, but the spike protein remains, literally inside some immune cells. This is not necessarily unique to covid-19 – and immune response seems to fix itself on its own after 1-4 years based on very small MERS studies. The resetting process to repair the immune system can (possibly) be accomplished much more quickly through their treatments which sound like mainly repurposed FDA-approved drugs (heretical thought #2)
Either way, the spike protein is the culprit – and suggests long-covid could be a result of EITHER covid-19 infection or through being \/axxed (heretical thought #1 again)
@zerosum can opener haha – I so often wish there was a “like” button, mordant humor being much appreciated in these dark times 😀
I connected a couple of dots based on a comment in JMG’s Dreamwidth blog. Dr. Yogendra and a small group of researches appear to be making good progress on “Long-Covid.” They are starting to understand the causal mechanisms, with important ramifications for actual covid, long-covid, and treatment of both. And their experience supports what RFK asserts about medical research. This podcast is not overly technical, and it is worth a listen in its own right. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1720010/9550788-dr-ram-yogendra-on-recovering-covid-celebrities-athletes-science-more-part-1
These guys are making great strides (actual, REAL science!) in understanding the causes and identifying Long-Covid. They are operating on a shoestring budget, have two+ peer-reviewed papers, and developed an assay which can find the inflammatory markers of long-covid that more generic diagnostic tests miss. They claim to have a few thousand ppl enrolled in studies and treatments. And claim to have recovered celebrities, athletes, relatives of prominent politicians. In any society that wasn’t totally corrupted and batshit-crazy, this would be on newspapers and local TV stations across the land, bringing tidings of great joy.
What happens now very much supports the assertion of RFK’s book – how Fauci and the rest of the NIH control research, control univerisites through their funding and grants, control an entire narrative in the industry that allows them to shut down dissent, defund, discredit, close down research that goes against their desired outcome. This “long-covid” team is having treatment success but can get no traction – they have sent their findings to NIH and the other letter agencies and heard crickets. Ditto for media contacts, even from “journalists” that cover long-covid.
An Olympic athlete they treated and recovered had to change doctors – her regular dr was told by his hospital administrator that he would be fired if he continued treatment. Their treatment by TPTB – the media, the medical-industrial machine, the Collins/Fauci axis – is all predictable in this light. There is only one f*cking narrative, serfs. Anything else, including real science, real research must be ignored, vilified, buried. Where have we seen that before.
Chooch – thanks for manning the sharp end. Your pushback on your employer is right and righteous. I admire your fight while I am taking a slower, more guarded approach w/mine. They mandated the vax back in July, and I sent a shot across the bow with a strongly worded document (it was a little over the top, I was f*ing pissed.) ADE. VAERS. Safety. I knew no corporate lawyer in their right mind was going to touch that document with a 10-foot pole.
Whether or not it made any difference, the company has been walking back some of the rules. Both vaxxed and unvaxxed have to mask or test. I have been granted a religious exemption. Exemption has a time limit (huh?!?) and don’t know if they will renew it, or tell me and my co-religionists to GTFO, but “whatever” at this point. Our PMC’s mandated the vax and I suspect they got a lot more pushback than they expected, including the people that have to actually carry out their rules and run the damn business. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at some of those meetings.
At the moment, I am winning-by-not-losing (hat tip to Dr. John Day.) I can deal with a mask rule for now. I don’t know how this thing is going to work out, but I am taking it day by day. I thank my lucky stars to not be in Austria. I don’t have an exit plan, but I feel confident the triple-soon-to-be-quad-vaxxed don’t have a plan either.
Who’da thunk it? The USA being (slightly) less batshit crazy than the UK, or Germany, or Austria, even most of Canada FFS? Amazing! In any contest I would put us at #1 in the Batshit Crazy awards.
Oxy – your description (couple days ago) of the gardening and the bounty of the season and fruits of your hard work sounds delightful. A shed made of eucalyptus planks? That’s got to be an aromatherapeutic wonder, and rot-resistant to boot, haha. I am jealous as we are in our first hard freeze now in North Batshitcrazyland. In the 20s this week (that’s about -5 in new money :D) Keep the faith.
Chooch: (Japanese glowing CoVid mask) Totally plausible and useful. Frodo’s sword “Sting” glowed when there were orcs about.
@doc-robinson and @boscohorowitz many thanks! Yeah that’s the guy (Clif High) I remember being riveted watching the vid, me trying to absorb, trying make heads or tails on how much I believed or agreed with.
Yes Bosco the interwebs is useless for finding contrary things, it’s dramatically worse than a few years ago. Good sites get sold, blacklisted, de-monetized, vanish, or they just purge “stale” content. Usually If I find a good article or vid these days, I save a copy to my PC, lest it go down the memory hole forever.
@boscohorowitz – do you recall the name of the guy you mentioned the other day in your comment? The “Some internet prophet guru, using (what I shall call) pattern recognition via verbal stochastics…”
It sounds like a video I’ve been trying to locate, that was the commentator’s area of expertise. It was a popular vid circulating on the interwebs this summer. He had very disturbing predictions on the topic of mRNA vaxxes, and was very direct about what was going to happen with Antifa and other useful idiots. It is not on the YouTUbEs obviously, was on Rumble or one of the other alternatives. White guy, probably early 70’s, not that that description helps much.
Does that ring a bell with anybody? I watched part of the vid and meant to give it a closer watch one of these days, but it’s not in my history or notes anywhere X-(
-HW
One reason the EUAs are still in place is because it’s cheaper (more profitable) to make the vaxxes and related paraphernalia that way. This may also explain (if it’s true) that different lots of vax cause more Adverse Events than other lots. And why effectiveness varies: some vaxxed ppl get sorta protected against covid symptoms, and others’ protection wanes and they get walloped. Something Polder mentioned the other day made me realize it could be intentional or at least serendipitous. A scary prospect.
Quality-control is expensive. I worked in automotive and med-tech. A medical product – even non-sterile ones like tongue-depressors, splints – must have a quality-control program. Cost of doing business requires: quality inspectors, bureaucrats, paperwork-filler-outers. A well-dressed PMC to go sip scotch with the auditors. A certain % of products get inspected and destroyed – tested for sterility, foreign matter, not killing people that much, etc.
The EUA dispenses with all of that expensive oversight because By Golly We’re In An Emergency. Since we live in Clown World, this “emergency” goes on for 20 months and counting. Companies are hoovering up cash for all sorts of barely-tested garbage – shitty covid test kits, disposables like masks and gowns by the billions. All products that are held to a lower standard than pre-2020.
It became clear to me early this year that some people don’t WANT this state of affairs to go away. I may be a little slower than the average TAE commenter 😀
Thanks @teri from me as well. In a way the OSHA scenario you describe is my “hoped-for” way out of the covid debacle.
Big corporations project being smart but are venal, silly, delicate flowers when it comes to their outward image. Most of them went all-in on supporting “popular” and violent movements last year to help install the Biden-shaped object. But they also can’t ignore the realities of running their business. Not for long, anyway. Replacing a worker you fired for being unvaxxed will cost 2-3 times their salary to replace. That’s if a replacement can even be had at all. I’m planning to take a sabbatical if the c-suite 5h1theads want to get rid of me over it. I’ll take my chances and hope it all blows over in a year.
And those mass firings are a liability if the tide of public opinion turns – and the vaxx turns out to be widely regarded as pointless/worthless/dangerous. That’s quite a real risk in the coming months.
I’m guessing OSHA has less latitude to bend laws and ignore precedent, the way the CDC and FDA have. There are real consequences (costs) to mandating a thing, be it steel-toed shoes, safety gear, personnel, etc. I can see an unlicensed vaxx with an iffy safety profile and even iffier effectiveness getting slow-walked through that system. OSHA playing by the rules (laws, precedent, public review) might be the stodgy bureaucratic drag-force that ends the covid nightmare.
It’s hard to see critical mass developing in the US public to push the covid debacle behind us. It’s happening, some ppl waking up and even the MSM slipping sometimes – but not fast enough and we will see real damage before it’s over. Lots of the public – maybe 40-50% in the US are sick and tired of it.
There are lots of true-believers who will connive their way to get a third jab early, can’t wait to jab their toddler. Those people are a lost cause. I doubt they amount to a large fraction of the population, but they have an outsized influence.
There’s a large middle ground of low-information people, many of whom got the jab but don’t pay attention and don’t know when they’ve been snookered. They could go either way, they could be allies (especially if boosters get mandated) or not.
Could not get a bad pun out of my head (the Hegelian Dialectic pic on TAE two days ago)
The Hegelian Dielectric: a charge of hysteria and fear particles is applied on one side of the Hegelian Dielectric. An equal and opposite charge is induced on the other side, composed of no freedoms and no security
The NPR article Raul quoted – that one is a shining example of what stinks about NPR. Notice they didn’t interview a single nurse or healthcare worker. The only voices we hear are from the PMC class – two CEOs of middling-size care provider agencies. They bemoan that they will have to fire people over the mandate *but* they can’t afford to lose a single person. At no point did they actually speak to or quote one of the people the article is actually about – the health-care workers in question. Pretty bad if even I can figure that out.
The ad banner pops up and reminds me how much my local NPR affiliate needs my $. NPR will never get another willing dime out of me. The media in a functioning society works to challenge authority. That is their sacred role, and NPR used to do that tolerably well. Then everything changed – first gradually in the early 00’s, and then all at once in the 2016 election.
They cowered before Bush 2.0 and his warmongering sycophants. Obama teased anyone outside of the PMC class with his contempt – and NPR very much wanted to be “in” with that class. Obama became untouchable his whole reign. Trump was a godsend to their brand – the white-hot fury of Orange Man Bad™ started and ended every story, somehow every problem and malady of society was because of Orange Man. It hurts all the more because I was an NPR fanboy for many years. NPR was my window to the world from the time I was a kid until the early 00’s.
A thought experiment – what would happen I was an NPR reporter and this was MY story. And I want to do my job as a #$*&n journalist. And I have quaint old fashioned ideas about telling the whole story. I hang up my ZOOM call with the CEO (with its predictable tale of woe, “but muh 6-figure salary”) and drive down to the donut shop by the hospital where HCW’s pick up their morning coffee – what if I interviewed some nurses who would rather quit than bow to the mandate.
What do they know? What do they say? I go back to my office and type up the common threads. At the very least, my editor would make me take out any quotes from staff. Almost certainly I’d be ostracized, criticized and put on notice. Two stories like that and I’m fired.
@polder I have to agree, I know of no one who has had severe vaxx (hospitalized) reactions. I also know of no one who had serious covid. I know many people who had bad vaxx reactions, ppl with bad bouts of the ‘rona. I only know one who was hospitalized for either (she was there for the ‘rona, in her 80s and mostly there for supportive care and observation – she recovered ok.)
I believe that is the limits of anecdotal evidence. That’s the trouble with it – my lived experience is completely different from TDK’s for instance. Normally I discount anecdotal evidence and rely on trusted sources, but there are no trusted sources. No “trusted sources” that can be taken at face-value anyway. “Science” fell flat on its face in Feb 2020 and is still floundering face-down and waving its arms in the mud and blubbering about more funding between gulps of air.
I believe both conditions are actually rare in the general population – both severe covid and severe vaxx reactions. That is not to say that both conditions are not extremely worrying. Severe covid is just not as prevalent as the PMC + MSM + Faucists want everyone to believe. And severe vaxx reactions can be masked as covid or something else, through incompetence or malevolence.
I was in the room with some co-workers and they were telling their tales of horrible vaxx reactions. Young, healthy ppl in the prime of life having severe reactions – dizziness, laid up in bed for days. Serious enough if they were my ppl I would worried enough to weigh an ER visit. I hope it was worth it for them. I hope they got some protection for the price they paid/will pay.
I know of “only” two people who died of covid (early 2020, both in their 90s, and not in my circle, 2 layers out) My social circle wasn’t that big before covid, and it contracted significantly in the lockdowns.
TDK’s anecdotal experience is different, which makes sense because as a music teacher that’s gonna put you in contact with a wide range of people.
A needed bit of humor. “The virus speaks” from an anon poster on JMG’s dreamwidth site. “I miss my bats.” 😀
“Um,” [the coronavirus raises its hand] I’d like to say a few things.”
“It’s not easy being a virus. In fact, it’s kind of a grifter life– you know, a grifter hops from town to town, one step ahead of the law, and I hop from host to host, one step ahead of the immune system.”
“If I don’t make the hop before the immune system gets me or the host dies, then I die too. So I need to get really good at hopping, and I need to not shoot my host out from under me before I can get to a new one.”
“Wuhan and Italy were pretty hairy, hosts dropping like flies, but I managed to make it out of there with a bit less virulence, and America’s been pretty good to me. Then I got to play in India and now I have an R0 of 5, woo-hoo! Jumping super powers.”
“My ultimate goal is to become the 5th common cold virus. OK, wait, no, that’s a ‘good-enough’ goal. My ultimate goal is that I could just stay in a host, not hurting them, just kicking back in low numbers, and the host’s immune system would be all chill about it. Like it was in my bats. I miss my bats.”
“I thought I was making some progress on that, too. Then you had to come up with this vaccine thing. A vaccine is bad enough, but a vaccine that then causes ADE?! Now that will make you all fragile as glass; hosts dropping out from under me if I breathe on them wrong! Augh! You all are such monkeys!” (sigh)
“I miss my bats!”
– SARS-Cov-2
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/141510.html?thread=17493958#cmt17493958
A brain-dump for @Wes 😀
My cousin worked for Bucyrus-Erie! I guess that would have been in the early 80’s, probably his first FT engineering job, definitely Cold-War era. He spent Glorious Time in Soviets Union as well. 😀 He has some interesting stories from then but not as colorful as yours, lol. I have a SU souvenir he brought my parents, a toy with three carved wooden bears on it. You move the base around and a weight swings and around and animates the bears, eating porridge (I guess, vegan bears?) from a bowl. He told me some stories about being in the SU when I was a kid. One was about how the BE equipment was designed to self–assemble at the job site – the pieces go together and you can use the shovel’s power to assemble itself. IF the crew knows what they’re doing. If not, they’d bring two other cranes over and try to put a big shovel together the hard way and futz it up in the process. Great lulz.
In another job he was there with a Japanese group that was setting up mining operations in Siberia someplace. The Japanese delegation volun-told him he was going to represent them to the Russians. He asked why, since he wasn’t even part of the Japanese company. They told him since he was an American, the Russians had more respect for him than the Japanese. (A surprise during the Cold War!) And that way he could negotiate getting the work done better than the Japanese team could.
Also on your LED installs – I earnestly think the White LED will go down in history as one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. No exaggeration – it provides more light at better efficiency and less of a waste footprint than just about anything else. From whale oil to kerosene to Edison’s incandescent to the CFL – hands down a more pleasing light from less energy and less fuss. That said, white LEDs DO take a non-trivial supply chain (semiconductor technology, solvent-etching, rare minerals.) I hope that humankind can manage to keep making them as we clatter down headfirst the Long Emergency or the Long Descent + Catabolic Collapse with our fearless PMC leaders pushing us along. 😀
My understanding is that temperature and on-off cycling is what kills LEDs, especially the white LEDs. Basically the temperature swing from on-off generates cracks in the bonding that makes the electrical connections to the chip. Overheating makes atoms migrate causing conduction tunnels that slowly grow and eventually ruin the chip. Not much of a problem in a well-designed light, with a proper ballast and heat-sink. But over-driven LEDs die pretty fast. You can see this in cheap flashlights – where they took a too-small LED and fed it from a too-big battery and it overheated.
