madamski cafone
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“refuseniks ”
As in those who resist being vakzinated and masks, etc., and maybe wish they had a real vaccine worth taking? I can’t quite parse your meaning here. đ
“I realized that as soon as I posted but didnât attempt an edit. I am sorry. It was unfair.”
Day to day, I spiritually live not by the Babble or Tao te Chink but by the aphorisms on Yogi (brand name) herbal tea bags. One of the best tells us to congratulate ourselves for making a mistake and recognizing it. I can’t possibly agree more with this than I already feel.
I think you deserve applause not just for the usual reason: ‘manning up’ to your mistake, but even more, the rapidity with which you recognized it. Self-awareness leads to self-mastery, says Yogi tea bag, and so do I, who am genuinely impressed.
“Same with disease: it exists, we donât usually erase them, yet it stops being so severe for reasons we donât comprehend, like malaria that killed everyone in the U.S. from landing until like 1900. Then mostly didnât, and shrank steadily after WWII until it hardly exists today. They said Florida, D.C. would be uninhabitable because of it. Theyâre not.”
DDT. Swamp drainage. Not immunity.
“Re #3: No data, but I recall an article that Covid antibodies in India are much higher than expected in the general population, which suggests, but does not prove, that it might be possible to develop immunity while taking Ivermectin prophylactally. Maybe so, maybe not.”
Different biiological mechanisms. Ivermection deals with the effects of certain symptoms of illness. Anitbodies should still develop while sick using Ivermectin.
Prophylactic can be misleading in this case. Ivermectin doesn’t prevent infection, it prevents symptoms when used adroitly and early enough. You might think of Ivermectin as major crowd control, and vaccines as secret police.
“A 1920 tube ham radio works like the day it was made.”
Be sure and replace thw capacitors before you fire that vintage wonder you found in a yard sale. Fry the works, it will, an old capacitor. Throw straight 110 voltage through those tubes, it will.
WES: so kind of you to ask about the novel.
Here is a snippet of Eleanor, madamski’s original:
Carlton and Eleanor lay down for that nap. After awhile, Carlton gets into his recliner. At his age, sleeping flat too long feels like being fitted for a coffin. It awakens Eleanor. She lays in bed and wanders shadowland, visiting forgotten memories. Not entirely forgotten, but missing crucial details to inform her why the memory is strong enough to have survived so many years. She has spent much of the past several years watching memories erode. Her relationship with memory has acquired a forensic aspect: what happened? Whodunnit?
When Jerome passed, she didnât want to deal with things anymore. She lay in bed a lot, too much, and cultivated a twilight consciousness, sort of a lucid dreaming state, that was the root of most of her Alzheimers, really.
She has a vast chest in the back of her mind, a huge wooden bureau with drawers, big as a museum, small as a china hutch. Inside are glass baubles, most of them tear-shaped, giant oval marbles with catâs eye memories inside them that she doesnât know what to do with, canât see how they fit into her lifeline, can only feel. Definite specific feelings, without accompanying explanatory details. Unsettling.
She finds herself in a rocker with a collection of glass memories in her lap that she pets like kittens. It startles her, awakens her fully. Then she remembers Geneve. She ought to call her. She thinks of Carlton, thinks about all those medications he probably hasnât taken since she arrived. She realizes both Carlton and Geneve need her.
Being needed is nice. An old familiar feeling that defined most of her years. Now it feels awkward. Nice but nervous. The bravado of making love and reclaiming herself has worn off, and she is just a scared old woman who goes into the living room, gets comfy on the couch, and watches Carlton snore, dentures rattling like venetian blinds.
He is such a frail old thing. How can she take care of him? Remember, please, that Eleanor is in no shape to handle so much mental clarity. Sheâs like the girl unexpectedly elected head cheerleader. She can hardly care for herself.
Wrong. She can care for herself. She can care for Carlton. She can care for Geneve. Carlton has an old grandfatherâs clock. Ticks and tocks. Needs winding. Like her, like Carlton. Neither of them can make it alone, even with each other. They need someone to wind them up and keep them on time.
She can care. She was surprised how badly losing Jerome buried her in herself, weakness not being her strong suit. Itâs time to be herself again. Her new old self. Not take charge, her typical mo, but just take care.
Take care, she whispers to Carlton. Iâll take care of you but you have to take care of me. Iâm losing my mind, you know.
âYes, Joan,â he murmurs in his sleep. His third wife. She tries to ignore it but it wonât let go.
Tip-toeing over to Carlton, she kisses him and whispers, âIâm Eleanor, you dope.â
âYes dear.â
She thinks about calling Geneve, but thatâs too much for now. So old, she is, so old⌠as she drifts off, she hears her father say, Little girl, youâve had a busy day. Time for bed.
It wakes her up enough that she soon finds herself wandering the shadowlands. She crawls up into the lap of a memory of her dad and goes to sleep as he rocks.
Asleep, Eleanor dreams about the shadowlands. Real dreaming, not twilight conscious lucid dreaming. In her dream, she finds a pair of knitting needles that she somehow knows will knit together things like glass memories. Memory marbles become skeins of glass yarn. It looks a frightful mess but she can not only knit with her eyes closed, she can knit in her dreams, a handy combination.
The result is something between a beaded glass curtain and an afghan. It prisms her memories into even more confusing shapes but she likes it. They’re her orphans, and she will love them as she made them. She doesn’t remember the dream later upon awakening, but remembers the moral: these memories, what’s left of them, and what you do with them, are yours. Might as well love them. If you forget who your husband is, love him anyway.
“Iâm not buying into the scary Great Reset thing. They may have the money, but they ainât got the brains. ⢠Why Are Globalists, Governments So Desperate For 100% Vaccination Rates? (AM)”
Nor do I but that doesn’t answer the headline’s question. The question has been in my mind since yesterday morning.
First, we don’t know that they’re driving for 100% vakz rate. They are surely driving for all the vakzinations they can rack up, but it is mere assumption that they want 100% other than they’re greedy, maniacal, and what pitcher doesn’t dream of pitching a no-hitter?
from the Zero Hedge article:
“They have to force us to be vaccinated as well â ALL of us, so that there is no control group and thus no proof os what they have done. They could simply blame mass health disorders on covid itself, or some other false culprit. If the vaccines are a Trojan horse that causes widespread illness or infertility, and the globalists get caught because a control group exists, then it will mean outright rebellion along with ropes and lampposts for them. “
He says globalists but refers to Westerndom. GLobalism being global, there will remain a “control group” even if Euromerica and associate nations achieve 100% vakz rates. I’ve heard, for example, of a place called Africa. It is not possible to create a total communication shutdown, and the conditions created by attempts to create such a thing would reset the resetters big time as society would collapse faster than an imploding star.
So I think we can dispense with the 100%/zero control group idea, even tempered realistically into 99%/tiny control group.
Another model of explanation I know of is DENIAL. Double-down on the lie. Pretend you’re not fucking up. Pretend that your ship is not sinking, because you’re the King of Wishful Thinking
âThe CDC is a group of bureaucrats used to working a 9-to-5 job of complete pointlessnes..â is kInd of the cornerstone of any understanding of Big Picture understanding of government.
Between these notions lies the idea of controlled population decimation, which I think is a sound conspiracy theory. If TPTB can sign off on the amount of mechanical military slaughter that we’ve inflicted since Sam became our Uncle, via a bureaucracy incapable of morally apprehending itself for being too busy reading memo minutiae, it can surely sign off on a bit of population reduction that doesn’t destroy real estate, only people and institutions.
A planned demolition? Quite possibly. Why, I’ll even tango with quite likely. But being planned doesn’t mean that what’s happening is part of the plan, much less that the Plan is going according to Plan. The Big Picture/Deep State conspiracy theorists/theories that seem most credible to me lean to the idea that the plan was befuddled, accidents happened, bugs got loose too soon in a manner difficult to track for purposes of control: the tiger you wuz riding by the tail got loose and left you in the cage.
I suspect Putin knows what he’s doing pushing for maximum voluntary vaccination. (A genuine vaccination is measured in cc’s; a vakzinatin is measured in kilo-zaps;) )
I know for certain that I am very proud of myself for helping my wife believe in me more than the medical establishment, and is therefore not vakzinated despite considerable office pressure in a medical establishment albeit the clerical side..
“and now word that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to be censored by Facebook.”
That’s good news to me. They’ll make poor choices even with AI assistance.
Dr. D mentioned Smokey. Here is an example of how much we rely on shaming people to do what we think is right rather than encouraging them to do what is good:
The message is coupled with Personal Responsibility: Only YOU can Prevent…. not anymore. Lightning strikes drive most of today’s fires. But The Message is delivered: YOU are BAD. Modernity has taken the worst of Xtian Fallen Man shame and coupled it with secular humanism’s bootstrapped Personal Responsibility (mostly in group lockstep, of course), and managed to create a homeless serf society whose peasants are perhaps more beguiled and befuddled than medeival peasants in France. (But I have a sign in my front yard that says Saxon Peasants Matter!)
A small slice of funeral home death data:
Memphis funeral homes see business surge amid COVID-19 pandemic and increased homicides
“I keep meaning to ask you how your book writingis going or went?”
I’ll get back to you tomorrow, WES. Dream young dreams.
“â A commenter handled madamski
He posted annoying, bad spamski
Some think heâs to critical
Lacks skills analytical
You donât like his stuff? Well be damnedski!”*swoon* You make a 65-year old man feel like an 89-year old woman, TAE Sum. I’ll miss being madamski. TIme to put her back in the novel now that I will have some clear long uninterrupted time to use. (Writing serious long-term fiction is like going into a trance weeks at a time.)
In real fictional life, not phony TAE commentor life, madamski is a 72-year old woman named Eleanor with significant Alzheimers compounded by a mild stroke. I have a sex scene between her and an 84-year old love magician named Carlton. Pre-readers tell me that it actually works.
And they all live happily ever after for a little while longer.
“â If the air smells funny buy food and stockpile booze”
Best advice since… long time. ‘nite
“Yes burning coal was a thing. It used to come by schooner from Nova Scotia. I have a bag of coal in the basement that my grandmother gave me.”
You and Wes are both fun lenses into an obscure corner of earth and its history. I can smell that bag of coal in your basement.
“One thing I will [bluntly] ask madam to do in the future is ⌠provide input without criticizing the commenter you are responding to. Sorry, dudette, but you can be super critical of other perspectives. I enjoy and appreciate a lot of the posts on here. When you constantly dis others, I constantly canât be bothered to read your posts.”
No prob but let’s keep it clean, ok?
First, who here, exactly, “constantly disses others”? Not me. I donât mean the absolute constant, like a radio transmitter, for you meant a vernacular meaning, something like âmost of the timeâ; but I personally take umbrage at this for even that is not true. If anything, I make more personally-aimed remarks admiring or praising or goofing around with others. Check my Replies Created and see.When I take off the gloves is:
a) when I see people twisting my or their own words weasel-wise, and they won’t respond to polite requests to address this. (This happens a lot, here and everywhere. Standard human mo.)
b) the other kamikaze trigger is folks who express attitudes of contempt for those who disagree with them rather than the issues they disagree with. Typical formula: If you believe that I’ve got a %^&* to sell you”. It’s like I said when I decided to pop someone’s carbuncle awhile back: don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing. IMO, the people who most lean on, and associate themselves with ‘proper behavior’ are the ones who deliver the most negative behavior
c) when people make claims without substantiation and wonât answer questions about them, or wonât acknowledge questions, period. That is especially Dr. D but also Raul. To me, tres rude. Maybe not so much for others?
Iâve given up on c). Rattling their cages does no good, so I donât get hardass with them any more. Waste of time.
Important context: I smack folks like that out of respect: it means I’m still trying to take them seriously. Some of them can take an (imo) earned licking and keep on ticking, and I still respond to their ideas and articles diligently if I feel I have some insight or significantly (or just amusingly) relevant data. Mr. House comes to mind. I explained my boundaries to him, forcefully after my frustration mounted, and he responds in a way I feel is honorable, even if I detest many of his responses both for their meaning and how he delivers them. He nonetheless respects the question and responds to it, and that is all a person can ask for. (Some Iâve given up and ignore them if theyâll ignore me. Some do, some donât.)As for being super-critical of othersâ perspectives: thatâs one of the primary things that genuine debate is about. I say, donât identify with oneâs perspective* if you donât want to feel bad about others attempts to point out the flaws they perceive in it. How dare they? How dare I?
*(Incidentally, this should give one a better perspective on your perspective, one less ego-clouded. I work hard at it.)I only say these remarks to explain and clarify: my ego is a minor part of my engagement here as far as disputes go. I have no need to be admired any more than I need to be despised. I know that most of what my ego tells me, both directly from myself and from reflections by others, is delusional narcissistic nonsense that the ego craves like junkfood. I work hard to keep it out of my thinking. Which is why, by the way, I wear mine on my heart: itâs where the ego belongs.
I will certainly honor the request that youâve made. You didnât have to try to justify it. (You mostly shot yourself in the foot there, Iâm afraid. I do it all the time. I canât recognize in others things I donât have inside me, capisce? Thatâs how empathy works.) Saying âprovide input without criticizing the commenter you are responding toâ was fine. You didnât have to commit the same sin I do and pin something like an obsession with dissing people on me, didnât have to make a negative perspective on me to âjustifyâ asking me to refrain from direct aggression. Iâll say âshitfuckdamnâ in church all day long until someone asks me nicely to stop. Shaming me, or standing on tradition, gives me hives. Me and Diogenes, baby.
Look, Iâm obviously way more blunt and verbose than yâalls, but I ainât any meaner than any of yez either. I just donât take any shit, and people, imo, dish a lot more shit than theyâre willing to cop to, which btw is where I specifically lost it, when Mr. House said, âDonât blame me, Iâm just the messenger.â Affected me the same way Fauci does, that remark. Mr. House is not that remark, but his unwillingness to accept responsibility for his own opinion, to own it as such rather than some absolute truth he was (major hyperbole alert) divinely ordained to deliver from OlympusI will refrain from hereon out from addressing the character of persons here, whether praisefully or negatively. I will ask them to, in kind, ask me nicely, and directly, any questions they have about my remarks, and will point out when I feel hurt by their approach, not in terms of their character but how I perceived the thrust of their hurt to be negative to me. Which is what Iâve always done until people responded with ad hominem remarks while calling me a Big Bad Butt-Hurter, whereupon I decide I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
People sometimes tell me Iâm mighty full of myself. I say, âIâm not a split-personality and I seem to fit myself like a glove. Who else did you think I might be full of? Iâm as humble as I can be, and I try hard, with decent success, and I am also as proud as I can be, also trying hard, also with decent success. I know what I know or what I at least think I know, and I am audacious enough to believe that the principles Iâm explaining here are valid, useful, and helpful. Not everybodyâs cup of tea, but then I donât write my remarks to be a comment thread best-seller. I donât care about your ego any more than mine, which is like a puppy: if it whines I pick it up and hug it; if it bites I scold it; if it will just wait and behave and let me do what needs doing, weâll go to the doggy park.
I write my remarks, in the somewhat unique way that I do, to express what I feel is valid or uplifting or amusing or poignant, from the basic human/animal condition to the wee specifics of the angels counting the cocaine dust on Fauciâs nose. Thatâs all. Not for my vanity. I donât need that. I know Iâm cool. I like me. They say God loves me. Itâs hard to trust people trying to sell you cosmic life insurance, but I believe them. Crazy me.
Yâall be yâall; Iâll be me. If being me hurts you, let me know. But make it good, âk?
âTry being a bit nicer, madam. There is no need to criticize everyone. It reeks of ego and indicates insecurity.â
Please note the above remarks. Now, here is MY request: could we all be a bit less dramatic and focused on the Evil of Bad Men and a little more on the Meaning and Quality of Life (including how best to maintain as high a standard of MQL as possible in the darkness weâre entering in earnest)? Because, Bad Men notwithstanding, that is the foundation of everything we discuss here.But donât do it because I asked. Only do it if it makes sense to you or at least gives you pleasure.
Balkanization at the governmental molecular level.
“Arizona school district defies state law, will mandate masks in fall
Phoenix Union High School district officials say theyâre changing course to protect their employees and families.” July 30, 2021 – 11:09pm“For the discussion, a) obviously, and people are just asking cafone to back up a little and be aware of room for others.”
Persnickety, I am. Big AND small print, read I. This means that, that if people just wanted a little room, i.e., less me, they could asnd should ask. Nice. Not dive in like kamikazes. I have no prob per se with direct, aggressive, even insultiung, so long as it owns itself as such and doesn’t hide behind petticoat propriety. And address me by name. It’s basic social relations 101.
Take a slug at me. I might even deserve itBut mean what you say and say what you mean.
I get in trouble because when I feel a situation warrants, I dive in kamikaze. FOUL language. Upfront ad hoiminems. In-the-face. To me, it’s just another communication/social tool. It was almost thrilling to see Archie and V. Arnold finally get direct even though it hurt my feelings because I too have a tender ego in there somewhere.
So, if one wants less me, and a little more room (a fallacious notion I’ll address in a second), say so.
But this is not a college colurse. There is no test at the end. You are not required to read and comprehend every post or article. If scrolling a bit more than usual to ignore me is too much effort for a person, I don’t see why I should even bother considering their complaint.
There are people here I tend to ignore and others I always read. Kinda like it is out there in that mondo thing on which we circle the sun.
Ask Me Nice… or get in my face. I respect both. The “nice” stuff inbetween I treat as an optional gift I give when it suits me. Middle-of-the-raod is, for me the lukewarmth that Jesus said was neither hot tea or cold beer.
I’m happy to talk about me, and am flattered some of yez take the attention in me, but I can’t possibly imagine I’n’I being more talk-worthy than the tolpics we normally traffic in.
“Such an account is:
a) probably genuine. They need a home and place to express themselves (ie a real appeal to genuine emotion)
b) most likely BS. TAE is a genuine and effective community and must be disrupted. Inject maximum BS to achieve the result
Myself, Iâm with b). Best solutions?”Since I am deemed a worthy topic although I do no gain-of-functin viral research or influence natinal monetary policy or hatch global domination schemes, and a referendum is called for, I’ll cast my wvote with a).
I think you guys should circulate a petition against me. Form a committee. Get a rope or at least some tar&feathers or maybe an app for dissing dissidents. I’ll be away doing real things in physical reality, but I am oh so excited to see what has become of me when I return in a few days.
This is fascinating albeit in a sadly predictable way. We are the neighbors in our neighborhood.
And remember:
Dear Kurt was apparently crystalized by that Dresden event. It was as if he had a virtual NDE for all of humanity and the entire biosphere. It is hard not to imagine him as the reincarnatin of Mark Twain, come down again as a bodishaatva to smaer a little grace and compassion on us.
Not half-bad as a plot device. Real life is like that: not hald bad as a plot device.
FINal observation: Apple Com[puters is named after Newton’s apple, a tribute to rational science.
But there is another apple, marked by a bite (which dentition is not part of the Newton myth any more than a chainsaw is part of Washington’s cherry tree myth), an icon of evil from pride not curiosity, an icon of a fairly universal fall from grace mythos like our familiar Adam and Eve.
Prince explores this one exquisitely, imo.
But this is way more fun.
“@cafone wrote: âHow can I help you deal with your anxiety about my refusal to vakzinate?â
This is a good suggestion, but knowing the dysfunctional personalities of my supervisors, it has no chance of success.”Please excuse me for begging to differ, and please do consider me a bit fanatical about this, but I have to disagree. I absolutely believe that it works, but that it also is VERY difficult… at first. Doing it is like being the Dalai friggin Lama, fer Buddha’s sake. But I have seen people do it, some of them quite young.
Unless it comes to actual physical confrontation (and even then, the best can slay with kindness), appealing to both your and their… dignity, let’s call it … with sufficient congruency (really smiling, really remaining calm, really meaning it) it is almost invincible.
But it requires laser-like focus, the simple true stuff, as o well demonstrated by this sid-down vaudevillian entertainer:
It happens. WIll be a major survival trait in the years before us.
The face Harpo makes imitating the picture was his early trademark before they did cinema. It was an expression made by a cigar-roller in their childhood neighborhood. Rolled like a machine but made this awful ugly face.
“In fact that would be why one would choose to say âNot trueâ rather than âYouâre wrong,â”
I’d already explained that they’re tantamount to the same thing. But I am biased because this has been a trademark of Mr. House snce his first entry: I am so right; you/they are wrong. I’ll
humbly(great big fucking lie alert) submit that a winky goes a long ways online. đBut the interpretation I inferred is mine, is only my impression, and there are always “other things” we should be doing, but fuck ’em.;)
“The 50% of Americans and smaller percentages in other nations are a control group for the experimental vaccines. If something goes wrong with the vaccines, then we will be the proof. I suspect this is what the elites are really afraid of.
“They have to force us to be vaccinated as well â ALL of us, so that there is no control group and thus no proof of what they have done. They could simply blame health disorders on covid itself, or some other false culprit..
“Pretty good fit, Iâd say.”
The logic makes perfect sense to me as far as it goes. And it may well indeed be their plan… which is where I see pointlessness (something like multipying zero by zero thereby yielding infinite zero, a compund paradox), in this perfect logic requiring nearly perfect execution to work (I’ll assume that “ALL of us” is rhetorical, meaning something like ‘a whole bunch more of us, as many as they can get’.
Assuming you mean, say, more than 80% or even 90% of Americans or, to be realistic, Euromericans vaccinated, which is perhaps attainable but anything but easy, we still have how many million left unvaccinated? At 10%, that’s 33 million Americans, not counting illegals. (Which issue opens a whole nuther can of worms: do we
exportdeport all these people who do our fundamentally serious work? Work that a seriously weakened populace already mostly useless outside a cubicle farm would be hard-pressed to do and well-enough paid to make the economics work?)SO 10% is closer than not to 40 million people, people who relatively healthy compared to the rest of the populace, and super-angry pissed with righteous anger (the most powerful kind) at almost everyone else from gubmint/corp to Lucy the Liberal Karen vakzinazi next door who’s now unable to work but still waves the Get Vaxxed banner (a form of “armchair liberal” if you will)… this is anything but an insignificant factor, especially since this 10% will be super-heavy on hollerboyz and such, poeple generally more helpful, but also more lethal when crossed, than most of the populace.
A bunch of gun-toting git’r’dunners, a modest minority of the populace… not unlike the size of the army that Washington (my favorite psychopathic gangster of that era) led to victory over the sillyass Brits led by some Biden wannabe named King George. Now, I am the last person to wax teahadi and beat my chest for The New American Revolution with or without a MAGA hat, but I do see this perfect plan of theirs already shredded after an all-out effort and faltering at 50%. They’re firing their last ammo with this barrage of scary Delta variant vakz drive redux as their fortress begins earnestly crumbling, their credibility is shot, and their last move after that is to use the military, which is doomed to fail, fast, maybe not even get off the ground, despite (or maybe because of) the huge amount of chickenshit passing for soldier in today’s USA Armed Farces.
They could call in their large number of mercenaries, not an insignificant force, but history shows that resorting to them is tantamount to failure, and it only works for invasion and harrassment, not keeping the peace at home, iron boot heels notwithstanding. (Both late-stage Rome and late-stage Italy of Machiavelli’s era learned this the hard way.)
So I find little logic, per the data and what history I know, to forecast them getting their wannabe Doc Octopoid grasp around our greasy little necks. I see them hoist by their own petard — if they’re lucky — or running a nasty gauntlet if we do it for them.
Meanwhile, here’s relevant data:
Most violence happens in the home, police tell us. I try not to fear any of it cuz the game is obviously afoot and courage is now our best anti-depressant/anxiety med, but my fear is far more focused on us all having to figure it out for ourselves and make it work (after a long dreary period of figuring out that we’re on our… etc.), and how dangerously messy that is bound to be. I fear my neighbors, which is why I assiduously cultivate little friendships looking for real people. Found a real family at last. Why, of course they’re from Russia. It’s like Leave It To Beaver with a Slavic accent. They’re building a house on the edge of town where the farms begin.
Call me corny and crazy, but I thanked God for sending them to us. Well, I been praying for awhile. Now, don’t be messing with my Magical Thinking. đ
“I grew up with a stratospheric level of gullibility and naivete.. probably a product of both nature and nurture. Then a series of life smack-downs laid me slow and I began a long slow reboot through dependency (on programmes, mentors etc) re-individuation to the current hybrid of socially conscious and connected but fiercely independent â genuinely interdependent to the best of my ability.”
It’s a hard row to hoe but the fruit thereof is the best, I feel.
Anyway, don’t think me unkind: “their innocence will pull me through”
“made it possible for me to steadily locate and reduce my naivete,
somethinga process that, looking back,”@absolute @noirette
I think it will be hard for people to process the enormity of the lies they have been fed and believed. And then when they understand what that impliesâŚRemarkably few people reach a point of maturity to grasp the sheer banality of most of the evil in the world. Many might grasp that starving 500k Iraqis…etc.
Nifty exchange. It’s almost a nature vs nurture question. Looking back on my wild and tangled life wherein I jumped the fence at age 16, I realize that my early childhood, which was wonderfully pleasant, was uniquely configured to give me uncommon internal intellectual fortitude, by which I mean willingness to trust myself over authority. That and a few unexpected events made it possible for me to steadily locate and reduce my naivete, something that, looking back, has developed at an increasing rate culminating in a nearly complete functioning cynicism by age 60.
The chief naivete I struggle with now is the tendency to think one can somehow help ‘fix the world’, and all the ego-driven angst, arrogance, paranoia, confrontationalism, etc. that such an attitude encourages and requires. Interestingly, I find that focusing on how to help those immediately around me in (mostly) little ways, tends to place me in ever closer proximity to the kinds of people one wants around one as society collapses.
I don’t focus, for example, about how to combat the official narrative, although I’ve strategized about it considerably (mostly because it seemed other people might benefit from it). I focus on how to help that particular person deal with whatever problem covid is causing. Retired, I don’t have mandatory cooperation zones like the workplace to trouble me with more confrontational covid demands… altho I recommend trying the just-described approach to such situations.
“How can I help you deal with your anxiety about my refusal to vakzinate?”
A form of killing them with kindness, if you will. Typically, they’ll go toxically narcissistic on you, try to get your goat, get you to stoop to their level. If you can hold your calm and smile (VERY hard; VERY rewarding, in my experience) and stay on track: “My lack of vaccination is not my concern. Helping you feel more comfortable is my concern.”
Egos are hungry little things, typically scarred like Freddy Krueger’s circumcision, always looking to “count coup” and score points because they perceive life as a battlefield, but give them enough encouragement and they’re vulnerable to opening up and telling you all their problems. And then maybe chastize you at the end for non-vakzing, since inconsistency and habit paradoxically dominate our logic and actions, but with much less leverage. More of an afterhought reminder to themselves that vakzing is still The Most Important Thing.
Some, howver, will ask you why you haven’t vakzed, not as a sneering challenge but with genuine curiosity?
“when those principles were enshrined”
The inverse ration between infection rate and virulence strength, I meant.
“This is a misunderstanding: Over the long-term, an endemic virus will become less lethal, and maximize transmissiblity. Any single mutation will may be more or less lethal, but selection against that mutation will only occur if the host is killed before transmission occurs. So it really depends whether that mutation virulence is sufficient to overcome any possible increase in reproduction and transmission. It must also compete with other strains, so all else being equal, a more virulent strain will do less well than less virulent strains. Of course all else isnât equal⌔
I’ll point out what you’ve already implied with the last sentence: in 2020s globalism, the number, depth, breadth, and speed of vectors is orders of magnitude above when those principles were enshrined. This allows a virulent virus to spread ahead of its own detection/sickness/death wave.
Have a few ebola superspreaders spend the day sneezing in Heathrow Airport and flying with 2-3 switchovers. It’s infectiousness will then work handily togethet with its virulence. It’s spread will have means to stay ahead of its tendency to immobilise/kill its hosts.
If my logic is flawed, someone please point it out? My brain hurts today.
“Or heâs not on drugs and he just knows this is all apart of the plan, like Gym Bro said last July.”
I should have made it clear that I perceive Fauci’s affect being much different now than it was when he was basking in glory with a fawning entirely compliant media. To me, this suggests that Das Plan is not going so well and he’s not liking the ride at this point.
Raul: âWeâre all the same again.â
Mr. House: Not true, some people have something never before used on humans floating in their bloodstream. Whatever that secret sauce is
Cafone: Itâs true in the sense Raul obviously meant it.
Yes, and I suspect Mr. House obviously knows that. His point was to point out an interesting and potentially relevant point, both for right now and in the future. A three-point shot.
If so, that only emphasizes my reason for quibbling: “not true” is a damn strong negative way to introduce something that we, including Raul, already know: some people got jabbed, some didn’t. It’s like saying ‘you’re wrong’ when really one is just showing another facet of a thing. Its the difference between saying ‘but you’ vs ‘and you’. It’s both a courtesy thing and about accuracy in communication. “Not true” is equivalent to “you’re wrong”, and we know Raul isn’t wrong in what he said, which was a tongue-in-cheek observation that the playing field is at least beginning to level out.
I have a thing about rhetorical hygiene, and am consistently vexed by needless contradiction.
One wonders what drugs Saint Fauci is on, and how long he has been addicted to them. cuz that kind of presentational, superficially emoptionally stable delivery before a camera, live or not, in the face of the jaws of defeat in direct snapping range, needs some GOOD drugs to pull off.
The lack of congruence between his various facial aspects is subtle, smooth, but oh so telling.
Wonder when Biden gets impeached by a GOP that realizes it’s time to flee a sinking ship, the S.S. Duopoly.
Here is a major morphne addict orchestrating his New World Order:
I recommend that if a link won’t post, just share the raw link. We can cut’n’paste. UNless that triggers WP bots’ allergies or something.
Nonetheless, I’m glad to hear that tdkids’ teeth received dental hygiene today. đ (runs, watches over shoulder for pea-shooter snipers, hollers, “Hey, I brushed mine too!”)
“*dear nsa, itâs a joke.”
Ahem. The dry cough of the impending tax audit sounded in the hall. TDkids flinched, braced for the worst. No one paid taxes anymore; this was more likely the Secret Spooks. She’d been laughing indoors without a mask again.
The door opened:
When covid first manifested, I concluded it would cost Trump his reelection, which was otherwise already in the bag. Trump would flounder badly on a topic — covid — people would take very seriously. My logic? viruses are real, very difficult to contain/control, and not political.
All 3 things are anathema to politicians in general and folks like Trump/Biden, etc. in particular.
Most responses to covid have been political because we let politicians rule the show. Funny thing we do. The above-posted article with this headline, People jabbed with PLACEBOS during vaccine trials will have same privileges as those who are âfullyâ vaxxed, UK minister says, is a perfect and hilarious example of this.
It’s funny even though it gets me moanin’.
I made a very complicated pun yeserday off the word ‘asymmetry’. The word was ‘mimetric’. Asked what that means, I had to deliver: A mimetric is, among other things, someone who mimes understanding the math i.e. the science. More roughly, it means someone who goes along to get along as their prime directive. Most people are more mimetric than not.
