thomasjkenney
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Another anecdotal data-point:
I was on the phone with my mom last night. My cousin (mid-40s F, dad’s side) is self-inflicted T2 diabetic, very bad (other immediate family likewise). A few days ago she suffered kidney failure. Time for dialysis. But there’s a catch. The hospital has taken no action yet because “…we need the space for COVID patients.”
So, a kind, dog-loving, food-cooking person who is now critically dancing on Death’s fuzzy doormat will exit this world much sooner.
But “…we need the space for COVID patients.” And my mom spit this out like it was the most normal and rational thing in the world. I wanted to punch a hole through my wall when I heard her say that.
Also, re: mRNA anything – We don’t have the technical chops to use it safely. We are a long way from that point. The reason they are all gooey over mRNA is because it really is the ‘holy grail’ of genetic engineering. There are 2 very good Niven stories on RNA: The Fourth Profession (somewhat optimistic and fantasy, quite funny) and World Out Of Time (near-future dystopia, The State controls everything, defrosts frozen convicts as needed and ‘re-educates’ them with RNA pills).
Lastly, Bill Gates is a eugenicist of software, leaving a trail of broken and burned projects wherever he sllithers. I have little doubt that this attitude colors his other ‘human relations’ activities.
OK, I’ll finish the article post-haste, but I have to say this:
This is having a severe impact on our mental health, though nobody apparently wants to talk about that either.
I’ve wanted to talk about this aspect from the beginning. My wife, ditto. My boss, yes. My co-workers, yes. Friends, yes. Internet forum cancel culture Sardaukar, not so much.
Oh, that Tessa just cracked my egg! Got some ruminating to do.
As a hint of what was stirred…
Galactic Center – Gregory Benford. Biological life in the cosmos usually ends itself by inventing AI and machines that rebel, exterminate.
There’s a lot to this, and it’s closely tied to the digital currency ‘event horizon’ problem. To seriously do bitcoin right, you need ever more processing power for each transaction. After a (short) while, there’s not enough energy on the planet to get rich anymore. In space, near a star, you have unlimited solar power. Put the bitcoin farms in space! Combine this greed with a pathological need to kill more efficiently, and you get violations of Asmiov’s 3 Laws (!!!), and we’re off to the races.
Now, for the cyborg angle, The Eyes Of Heisenberg – Frank Herbert. OptiMen run the show, peasants die en masse at a whim, cyborgs battle them from the shadows. Are we at that juncture where the ‘transhumanists’ are trying to break away? Should we let them? Are we already in an existential struggle with eachother?
Now, before I go off to ride my bike and digest some stuff, here’s Kurt Vonnegut Jr on The Future of The United States. I have not watched this one yet myself, but I’ve seen several of his other interviews, and read a fair number of his books.
This whole schmeer is beginning to feel bigger than WWII.
Oh, that Tessa!!!! (stomps away muttering to self)
@anticlimactic re: mortgage bundling
This was found to be illegal, as it breaks the chain of custody on the mortgage. This allows the debtor to challenge the validity of the contract. If your mortgage was thusly bundled, and you now find yourself staring into the ‘foreclosure barrel’ you might do well to squat and challenge.
@Mr Roboto:
Even if Iām wrong about face-masking, the only real harm it does is to the egos of right-wing special snowflakes.
Well, you’re also wrong about the ego thing. Masks are dehumanizing. If you don’t feel it, you might already be a sociopath.
@Raul re: MoA article
You might want to read through the comments in that thread. B’s “shred” failed to remove some inconvenient warts.
MoA just went ‘503 UNAVAILABLE’ but the domain still resolves and there is response to ping. I hope it’s nothing, but timing is a bit weird. Anybody else having trouble?
People have become data; data feeds the machines. How does it feel being so manipulated?
I try to keep as much noise in my data as possible. š
@Dr. D re: yesterday’s rec to read the ‘false positives’ article…thanks. I’m not a doctor, nor a professional scientist, nor a mathematician, but the math and concepts presented were blunt and concise. This is something I (and many others!) had long suspected.
Steamboat Trips Jr keeps a’floatin’ right on down the Big Muddy.
@Kimo re: the letter
I repeatedly bring up these very points, and at best I’m ignored, at worst I’m subjected to cancel culture shenanigans. Fortunately, nobody has accused me of sucking orange dick yet.
6% of people died from covid19 while having no KNOWN comorbidities. 94% died from covid19 IN CONJUNCTION WITH extant comborbidities.
That means, if they hadn’t caught covid19, they wouldn’t have died.
Meaning THEY DIED FROM COVID.
This shit is why we need data ethics standards
ā Damien P. Williams, MA, MSc, Tired. (@Wolven) August 30, 2020
Bullshit! What it means is that they would have died if they had caught any other serious germ…of which there are MILLIONS! C19 IS NOT THE ONLY GERM IN THE ROOM!!!!!
Can we please stop now?
That’s a quote from one of the most amazing movies ever made, Night of the Iguana. A desperate, nearly broken Hannah Jelkes utters one prayer: “Dear God…Can we please stop now?” I am forever hopelessly in love with Deborah Kerr for her performance in that movie.
@oxymoron re: seeming futility
Your actions have local effects, especially if you’re growing food. Sure, you’ll never be able to ‘fix XXXX-ism’ or whatever. Talk to friends, feed them, let them feed you, play a guitar, walk in the woods, teach a skill, learn a skill…these are all revolutionary acts, and all will drain a little more energy from the beast. Act locally, and you are now ‘changing the world’ on a different plane, tilted from the traditional, and able to intersect with other planes.
The goal re: virus is atomization, complete diffusion of social structure. “Smash the psyche, then you can imprint whomever you want on the subject.” Wasn’t that MK Ultra? They very nearly have us this time, but only the city folk (I’m one, unfortunately). Also, I remind, this is not a hoax bug. You wouldn’t rob a bank with a fake gun, eh? But…it is still just a bug.
Steamboat Trips Jr continues to flounder.
@John Day – Thanks! You are a wonderful brick in a very stout wall, sir!
re: the drowning
It seems more like they have convinced us to keep holding them above water. If we just stop buying all the crap they try to sell us, stop hating who they tell us we must hate, the grip is loosened. Every day now I’m trying to do something different about my life.
I’ve had several encounters while out hiking/biking where the other party seems desperate for conversation. The isolation is cracking a shell. Folks are more amenable to rational discussion. Less bravado, less contrarianism, more logic. Talk often wraps around to the basics of life like food production, artisan furniture, stuff that fits into Kunstler’s “Made By Hand” schtick.
My thing is bicycles. I’m really good at building and maintaining them. I have enough Dunning-Kruger to think I can build a bicycle from scratch (wood, bamboo, yucca) if I couldn’t get modern parts. There are a lot of machines that can be built with bicycle-like parts. Therefore, it follows (DK again) that I could probably engineer and build a host of useful machines if the need should arise.
My thoughts are very diffuse today. I’m rambling, so I’ll stop.
@Bill7 re: who else
I don’t have a large group of friends/family from which to get info, but there are trickles:
1) My mother, 72, 2x cancer survivor, life-long allergy/asthma sufferer – She got the bug last Nov while on a 3-week river cruise in Netherlands. She was in bed 2 of the 3 weeks of the cruise, horrible pneumonia that as recurred once since she returned. Doctors are concerned about ‘strange spots’ on her lungs. For whatever reason, her doctors have not tested her. It hasn’t incapacitated her, she’s still active in the garden, travels to her mountain retreat with her cat twice a month.
2) My brother, 50, life-long allergy/asthma sufferer with psych-related stress issues – He cohabits with mom, and got the germ from her. Bedridden for almost a month. Now recovered, and went on a huge hike to a 2900m peak the other day.
3) My cousin, 35, very obese, living in NYC – He and his house-mates suspect they had it, said it was bad, everyone in the house apparently recovered.
4) Random old lady, 70, hiker/outdoorsy type – Met her on a mountain trail, said she had it and was ‘tested to confirm’, and said “It’s bad, you don’t want it.”
My wife and I probably had it early last year, or had a very similar virus. Also, had ‘off-the-scale flu’ 2+ years ago. Wife passed out from fever in the bathroom. I became nearly delirious, required her care/attention for a day.
Steamboat Trips Jr
It’s quite telling that someone has to barge-pole this virus back into the main flow of the river once a week.
@Dr D:
ā¢ Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
…because most of the forest that could burn has already burned. And ‘…since 2003…’ is useless. There have been huge fires about every 2 years in the southern Sierra Nevada since before 2000. The Angeles National Forest is almost 30% burned, wasn’t that way in 1990. Just this past decade, the ‘normal’ fires in the hills northwest of Los Angeles have become ‘marching armies of flame’ that strip huge swaths of scrub as they are wind-driven west toward the coast.
So…are you distracting today, or are you just being your contrarian self?
@zerosum re: jubilee
There’s only so much ‘real’ wealth to go around. That presents a dilemma: Do you bribe your underlings in dollars that will soon be worthless, or do you start paying them in a more portable currency and trigger a panic? Only some of the elites will get to keep their Patagonian National Parks.
@bosco re: Spaniard, yes, Catalan at that, and I finally found liner notes for a different recording, states that it is meant to be ‘aterritorial’ to evoke northern scenes from anywhere. It grabbed me as ‘proto-american’ because it is very similar to some works by Villalobos and Ginastera. Perfect time for such chaotic and stirring music, eh?
From the other end of my americana concept: The Band – It Makes No Difference. My dad had a reel-to-reel, and I discovered ‘Music From Big Pink’ at an early age, about the same time I was also ingesting Niel Diamond, John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, Three Dog Night, Jimi Hendrix, Earth, Wind & Fire, Joni Mitchell, Switched On Bach, 1812 Overture, the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odessey.
When I returned to my car from a (30km trail/gravel) bike ride last night I heard hopeful noises. The location at which I was parked is deep in the woods. There are several summer camps nearby, and the closest was emanating the joyous sounds of piano and singers. Seems the benefits of community outweigh the fear for some.
re: the rant – very eloquent! The omnipotence has always been a veneer. It is ridiculously easy to gum up the works…especially for passive/aggressives such as myself.
re: americana, Amargos – Northern Concerto
@Dr D re: perspective
My wife’s GP has said “WTF?!?! This is just spit in the wind! What about real germs like dengue fever? What about all my patients with chronic conditions?” She said only 2 of her many elderly patients have died this year, and those died of pre-existing heart issues. For context, this is Northridge, a sub-zone of Los Angeles, houses and apartments, population is medium-density.
Pretty sure my mom had the germ (she imported it from Holland!) last year, and gave it to my brother (they co-habit). They both had very severe flu, and are now more or less fine. They both also have severe life-long asthma, and my mom is a 2x cancer survivor. Mom eats basically frozen and/or junk food, brother is a bit more nutrition conscious. Both really like the sunshine, and outdoor exercise (walks, gardening, yardwork, light construction projects). Unfortunately, both have been glued to the “Orange Man Bad Show” the whole time.
“It would almost be a kindness for some nation to pick a fight with us. Maybe we could pay someone to invade us.”
Hmmm… The Duchy of Grand Fenwick perhaps?
I see sneeze guards on the cashiers in every market, but still no sneeze guards on the fresh produce. A helpful market employee uses hand sanitizer on a cart that’s been sitting in the sunny parking lot for an hour or more. Shade tarps are set up over the ingress line outside the market, to helpfully prevent us from getting more vitamin D. People are wearing masks driving solo in their SUVs.
Too bad they can’t kill this virus with a gun…it’d be a done deal, eh?
I saw a medium-sized bear in the forest last evening, 40m away from me, climbing over a fallen oak tree blocking the road. He seemed healthy and happy, oblivious to my presence until I had the bad manners to alert him to my presence.
While we focus on protest, loot, vote, organize, shame, hide, whatever… a beautiful world still moves on about us.
And the wildflowers I saw yesterday were amazing!
I’m not sure where you’re seeing US airplanes everywhere. Here in the suburbs north of Los Angeles, it was normal to have near constant plane/helo noise 24/7. Now we have a couple airliners a day, almost no small aircraft (Van Nuys is THE small plane airport!), and a tonal shift in the helo traffic (not less, but different, more aggressive-sounding for some reason). It’s been this quiet since end of March.
@Dr. D:
Those with correct information have a hearty laugh all around.
No…usually those with correct information are burned as witches.
RE: San Berdoo facility, the Kaiser Steel Mill in Fontana was still standing when I was a teen, and there wasn’t yet much else in that area except vineyards and raw alluvium pushed down from the mountains yearly by the snowmelt. Now it’s all single-family houses – mini McMansions to full-size McMansions.
RE: Shale oil bankruptcies…it’s OK, it was all fake money anyway, right?
āThe dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!ā
ā Larry Niven
EDIT: …btw…It’s not just rocks we need to worry about.
RE: the Matisse
My immediate reaction was awe at his ability to use very unnatural colors, and their juxtaposition, to ‘synthesize’ the colors you should/would be seeing. It seems a kind of ‘meta-impressionism’.
As I say of much good music, it’s not something I really like (this specific painting) but I do respect the skill and intent of the artist.
re: Einstein and ‘scientific expiry’, I heard on the British panel show QI a quip from Stephen Fry that ‘XX percent of all facts will be false in some number of years’ (paraphrasing), and while the numbers were not accurate, the trend is obviously there. A longtime family friend once told me that there is about a 40-year lead that science fiction stories have on reality…that is, most stuff that is incorporated into science fiction will have been invented, discovered, or calculated within the succeeding 40 years. That may actually have been a statement by one of the authors (Niven, Benford, Asimov, ???), but a quick Google doesn’t turn up anything, and I have to get back to work.
@zerosum re: cartoonsTom Toles has always been a favorite of mine, as well as, of course, Scott Adams.
I read all that CJ quoted, nearly ‘cried for no reason’ in front of my wife on this peaceful Sunday afternoon. Reading these, and here’s what I’m hearing:
Unbroken Chain – Grateful Dead
Blue light rain, whoa unbroken chain,
Looking for familiar faces in an empty window pane.
Listening for the secret, searching for the sound
But I could only hear the preacher and the baying of his hounds.Willow sky, whoa, I walk and wonder why,
They say love your brother, but you will catch it when you try.
Roll you down the line boy, drop you for a loss,
Ride you out on a cold railroad and nail you to a cross.November and more, as I wait for the score,
They’re telling me forgiveness is the key to every door.
A slow winter day a night like forever,
Sink like a stone, float like a feather.Lilac rain, unbroken chain, Song of the sawhet owl.
Out on the mountain, it’ll drive you insane, Listening to the winds howl
Unbroken chain of sorrow and pearls, Unbroken chain of shy and sea.
Unbroken chain of the western wind, Unbroken chain of you and me.@Dr. D re: snow…
Not sure where you’re from that you haven’t seen it before, but Arizona and Mexico regularly get snow in winter. Come to think of it, all those places you mention regularly get snow in winter, and maybe even the AUS location (mountainous?). Here in Cali, we get snow in summer on some of the higher peaks. We used to get occasional snow here in winter, just north of Los Angeles at 300m (900ft) elevation, but I haven’t seen this for more than a decade.
Also, re: ezlexa1949’s comments about instability – my observations (I’m 51 yrs, lived in same region, so have some time for this) are that the dry-wet cycles and the high-low-pressure cycles have been compressed. We are frequently getting a ‘whiplash’ of high pressure followed by low pressure. This and the dry-wet are something I feel physically because I have some bone injuries and some congenital weather-related sinus issues.
Add to this the increase in atmospheric moisture, which remains in cloud form longer into the summer, with summer being more mild until September, and then brutally hot until late November. More days in early- to mid-summer look like San Francisco weather, with puffy low clouds and more fog.
RE: the cartoon, and apropos to both Brexit and COP24 – Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop – A Day In The House. “Much is being said, My Lords, but nothing, Nothing, NOTHING IS BEING DONE!” The album was released in 1989…so…’same as it ever was’ (to also quote David Byrne).
@V. Arnold re: the Magritte style. For me, it’s his seashore. It reminds me of the opening ‘Sea and Sand’ sequence from the movie Quadrophenia…and very apropos to themes of drug addiction and sociopathy.
RE: ‘extremophile’ species, I see this locally in the mountains with tree species. The White Fir (Abies Concolor) has a typical range, in the San Gabriel Mtns, of about 1800m to 2600m. There are few summits in the range higher than that, the highest just above 3000m. The habitable zone for the trees is shrinking like a draining lake in reverse. This makes me quite sad, since these trees are among the most beautiful anywhere.
RE: the Picaso woman, cartoonist Robert Crumb professes to a preference for rubenesque women in the documentary Crumb.
@VA and our host re: the circus…
I was instantly reminded of the Jacques Tati film Parade. It’s got some amazing performances, not what I expected at all.
RE: Time Traveling Russian Assassins
I just posted this at MoA, after taking a fresh look:
OK, I’m late to the party on the ‘flipped’ meme. It bothered me yesterday that there wasn’t enough detail to determine if it was the same hallway. Today, with fresh coffee, it hit me…just before I read comments here and at the C. Murray article that mentioned the flippage. Anyway, here’s my highlighted comparison, with red highlighting the ‘wonky railing’ and orange highlighting the shoulder straps of their carry-on bags. The straps have a lower confidence score, but if the two are both right-handed (or both left) it’s more likely they would shoulder the bag the same way.
