Goats Enjoy Playhouse Created for Them by Local High School Students Flipboard (David L)
VIDEO: Two Moose Trot Across Busy Slopes of Steamboat Unofficial Networks (David L)
‘A Rosetta Stone’: Australian fossil site is a vivid window into 15m-year-old rainforest Guardian (Kevin W)
Much Ado About Nothing Inference. Anthony L: “Scientists clueless when it comes to origins of life – Scientist says”
Truck spends three days dangling over China cliff BBC
China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ Just Broke a Major World Record For Plasma Fusion Science Alert (Chuck L)
#COVID-19
Provinces could make vaccination mandatory, says federal health minister CBC
Science/Medicine
Omicron: ‘The fastest-spreading virus in history’ El Pais (Joe Well)
Scientist GM has long been worried about brain/neurological damage. The studies here, and there’s more in the thread, are not new, but there aren’t enough people connecting the dots:
The virus appears to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier and cause significant neurological damage.
The ability of the spike protein to cross the blood-brain barrier was demonstrated in mice at the University of Washington.
(13/?)
Rhea, et al https://t.co/t4deIntuwl— Ian Ricksecker (@IanRicksecker) January 5, 2022
For context, the parenchyma is the functional tissue of the brain – your neurons and glial cells. It isn’t normally where T cells are:
“In the brain of healthy individuals, T cells are only present sporadically in the parenchyma.”
(15/?)
Evans, et al https://t.co/bsabM3KfFr— Ian Ricksecker (@IanRicksecker) January 5, 2022
More on not pretty T-cell action:
Die erste Beobachtung in der Studie war, dass eine bestimmte Unterart von T-Zellen in Patient*innen mit schwerem COVID-19 häufiger vorkamen. Diese Zellen zeigten Gen-Aktivierungsmuster für T-Zellen, die andere Zellen eliminieren können („zytotoxische“ Zellen). … (2/9)
— Emanuel Wyler (@ewyler) January 6, 2022
Women’s Periods May Be Late After Coronavirus Vaccination, Study Suggests New York Times. This is underplaying the effect. I know of one case way way way more extreme than this indicates. I cannot believe that in my small circle I could know of what this suggests would be a category of one.
Asia
Omicron breaking through HK’s ‘zero Covid’ defenses Asia Times
Um, no wonder: Senior HK officials put in quarantine after party Asia Times (Kevin W)
Duterte issues nationwide stay-at-home order for unvaccinated persons Rappler (furzy)
Thailand prepares 150,000 hospital beds in anticipation of Omicron surge Pattaya Mail (furzy)
UK/Europe
I really can't understand the lack of attention and discussion of this. This is *huge*. Shouldn't there be urgent focus on trying to understand what's going on here?
*570* 0-5 yr olds being hospitalised with COVID-19 *in just a wk* and rapidly rising isn't ok. https://t.co/dB34PUFeVK— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) January 6, 2022
How on earth is this not a scandal? Long COVID numbers in children have more than tripled in 6 months. 117,000 children with long COVID and 20,000 with illness for *more than a year*. How on earth is this acceptable? – these are children! https://t.co/Ld8gam6Chk
— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) January 6, 2022
UK vaccine panel says no immediate need for second boosters for elderly Financial Times
US
New York City School Operations Crumble Under Omicron’s Weight Bloomberg. As more or less predicted.
Justices Hear Case on Vaccine Mandate for Health Care Workers C-SPAN
Sounds like the NYT is telling its readers the Biden OSHA vaccine mandate is going down Alex Berenson. To be very clear, Berenson is more wrong than right on the science re Covid (but then he annoyingly finds research that’s been ignored that is important, so he isn’t always wrong, but a problematic amplifier given his record). But as former NYT reporter doing a media interpretation…that’s within his skill set.
Citi warns US employees they’ll be fired if they don’t get COVID vaccine New York Post
Insurrection has led to dereliction of duty Dennis Laich and Lawrence Wilkerson, Military Times. On vax refusniks.
The CDC is facing a real crisis of trust. They can help restore trust by changing processes. Be transparent about how decisions are made—what’s driven by science vs practicalities. Also, begin w draft guidelines & allow stakeholder input. It’s not too late but a reset is needed. pic.twitter.com/ShXK255Wou
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) January 7, 2022
Our normally polite and measured IM Doc has had it:
Behold this video. I cannot tell you how livid Joe Q Public is becoming. And they get to listen to this dope for answers.
like this md has any standing to evaluate other’s credibility.
“Guidelines with stakeholder input” I am not even sure what that means exactly……
but that will fix the credibility problem… yeah
I have a good idea – release every single unrestricted VAERS and v safe report along with the entirety of the Pfizer and Moderna data. Then we will talk. Until then shut up. Your bumbling is making the credibility problems so much worse.
maybe I should be grateful we are at least acknowledging the credibility chasm.
Finance/Economy
Capitalism’s perpetual pandemic WSWS
Covid Fueled by Neoliberal Austerity Black Agenda Report
Climate Change/Environment
New York Could Make History With a Fashion Sustainability Act New York Times (Kevin W)
As Cryptocurrency Becomes Mainstream, Its Carbon Footprint Can’t Be Ignored Truthout. Well, except it is…
How Explosives, a Robot, and a Sled Expose a Doomsday Glacier Wired (Chuck L)
China
India-China trade surge muffles beating war drums Asia Times (Kevin W)
A Million People Sign Petition to Strip Tony Blair of Knighthood Sputnik (MarkT). Good to see that some people in the UK still have a sense of honor.
How the EU destroyed Italian democracy Unherd (Micael T)
New Cold War
How far can diplomacy go? Awaiting the US-Russian talks in Geneva on 10 January Gilbert Doctorow (guurst)
Roman Abramovich settles libel claim over Putin biography Guardian. Confirms John Helmer, who was early onto the Catherine Belton suits and based on reading the allegations, thought she was in a world of hurt.
“I was horrified when I found out”: a new experiment with a nuclear power plant could be the last for Ukraine (Chuck L). Google translate screenshot. Warning, the worst ads evah!
Kazahkstan
Not keen about the color revolution label but some good detail: Steppe on Fire: Kazakhstan’s Color Revolution The Saker (Kevin W)
Anti-State Terrorists Are Attempting A Hybrid War Coup In Kazakhstan One World
Syraqistan
Mission: HEBRON Vimeo (guurst)
1/6
A Tale of Two Authoritarians Matt Taibbi
Republicans’ Jan. 6 Responsibility Wall Street Journal
Meet Ray Epps, Part 2: Damning New Details Emerge Exposing Massive Web Of Unindicted Operators At The Heart Of January 6 Revolver (GramSci). Dept. of Hhhhm…..
Biden
Biden administration poised to give pharmacies a major lobbying win STAT
— Holding Biden Accountable (@WaitingOnBiden) January 7, 2022
A Light in the Darkness American Conservative. Chuck L: “The world has truly turned upside down when The American Conservative puts out a puff piece on Dennis Kucinich!”
Criminal groping case against ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally dismissed CNBC (Kevin W)
Black Injustice Tipping Point
All 3 white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery are sentenced to life in prison NPR
Ahmaud Arbery’s killers sentenced to life in prison for 25-year-old Black man’s murder CNN (Kevin W)
Yale Law School Mourns the Loss of Lani Guinier ’74 Yale (Kevin C)
Woke Watch
Is Gauguin redeemable? No. Would he have wanted to be redeemed? Absolutely not Spectator (Anthony L)
Our Famously Free Press
Far-right extremists shift online strategies The Hill. Coastal elites continue to care about only vehicles they or their kids access, as opposed to talk radio. More selective blindness.
How Google helped TikTok take the throne Kevin-Indig
Leaning San Francisco skyscraper is tilting 3 inches per year as engineers rush to implement fix NBC (David L)
Cryptocurrency Investors Try to Turn Private Islands Into Blockchain Utopias Vice (furzy)
Class Warfare
GOP “Entitlement Reform”: Will Disabled Vets Become the New Welfare Queens? Counterpunch
US unemployment rate drops to 3.9% giving Fed room to raise rates Financial Times
Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom The New Republic (Anthony L)
Antidote du jour. Furzy: “Stacy’s barn kitty…..Minding the barn on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”
And a bonus (guurst). My cat Gabriel liked walking on the frame over the sliding shower doors and would show off by draping himself over it like a jungle cat on a tree branch:
Thursday vibes… pic.twitter.com/r6lc0OK9Lt
— Dr Anna Jerzewska (@AnnaJerzewska) October 7, 2021
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
227 comments
Comments are closed.
> How Explosives, a Robot, and a Sled Expose a Doomsday Glacier
I’m reading Wadhams, “A Farewell to Ice.” Some passages relevant to why they’re blowing stuff up:
(W)e need to understand how Antarctic sea ice differs from Arctic ice. Of course, Antarctica differs from the Arctic in that the Arctic is made up of ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is a huge land mass at the Pole surrounded by a vast ocean.
The thick snow [of the Antarctic] insulates the ice and its slushy wetness means that satellite radar methods for mapping ice thickness do not work well because the radar beam is reflected by the wet snow.
Why the world’s countries aren’t building ‘back-up ports’ inland is a mystery in need of solving…
The entire commerce aside from air transport would be suddenly ripped asunder were the over/under to happen and said ports were not usable anymore.
Cassandra and the line about a prophet not being recognized in their own land. It was in the Charlemagne Tha God interview with the Vice President of the United States. Harris said they were just learning how viruses mutate more or less. Climate change and so forth are just cultural signifiers for too many. Evolution is just a series of trivia facts.
The next Elizabeth Holmes will invent a solution in a garage and sell it to investors because markets. I’m reminded of Chris Matthews suggestion to send a submarine to solve Deepwater Horizon leak or his call to Manhattan project it when he learned about ocean pressure.
As a society, we’ve tolerated gross stupidity for too long, but the elites in general have much poorer educations than is commonly realized.
Excessive greed and hubris pass for intelligence these days. “If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich”
sums up the whole neoliberal ethos.
Once the full impact of climate chaos hits, greed and hubris will not be particularly useful for survival.
Similarly, I’ve wondered why cities like Bangkok are not desperately and rapidly figuring out how to keep themselves from being underwater in the near future.
Indonesia is building a new city on the island of Borneo with the intention of making it the capital city because Jakarta will eventually succumb to climate change (among other reasons).
I have a yellowed clipping about saying ‘Britain abandons coastal defenses.’
The island nations know.
SFO airport is likely to be rendered useless before the Port of Oakland is submerged.
Because if governments tried launching something that visibly omni-huge, the Big Public would see it and would ask: why not stop the carbon skydumping?
And governments’s owners do not want the Big Public asking that question in a voice as loud as the whole Big Public could ask it in at one time.
So there will be no Future Port Pre-Building.
Also, how much Future Port Capacity will be needed in a future world where 7 or so billion people have been killed off over the course of Century 21? Not very much port capacity will be needed in the Post Jackpot world which the Global Overclass is working to achieve.
IM Doc says “Behold this video”. Could we have a link to the video he;s referring to?
Maybe this will cheer him up a bit –
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importance-judge-orders-fda-hasten-release-pfizer-vaccine-docs-2022-01-07/
I am wondering why it is necessary to “process” these documents in the first place? Most of the documentation will be in the form of data-sets any way.
Supposedly they need to redact parts that reveal the identities of people involved in the trials. Sounds like “the dog ate my homework” excuse.
The video is the one immediately above his comment and I can easily see the cause of his frustration. For example, that new five-day rule was brought in about Christmas time so essentially through the back door. One of the great frustrations for me is that we are more than two years into the pandemic and we continue to make up measures as we go along and I am not only talking about the US but the other countries around the world as well.
As an example. Back in early 2020 we could have standardized lockdowns so that people immediately know what is required. So Level One would be life goes on as normal, Level Two is people wear masks when outside and do social distancing and so on up to Level Five which is hardcore pandemic countermeasures. So if the government announced that they are starting Level Two restrictions, everybody knows exactly what is required and what to do.
This can be adjusted to the cultures of different countries so Level One in Iran would mean that yes, you can still get to kiss the shrine while Level Three would be to forget it and go home to pray. Instead, we are still making up rules as we go along and they are seldom the same as the previous time. Again, it has been two years and we are still making up stuff as we go along.
Bring back the Tom Ridge alert color coding! Well that is not what I’m suggesting as a valid or a valued option, could that actually work. And no this is not intentionally a sarcastic idea.
I keep circling back to the satirical nature of our elite thought leaders and political betters.
Well, rising Dem star, Lina Hadalgo, is doing just that:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/making-lina-hidalgo-democratic-party-nursery-to-omicron-hysteria/279385/
I see, in Harris County, TX, it all is making sense now. I forecast a bright future for the young star. Holy cow is she pretty young (not that it bothers me much). Turning a spry 31 years old in February.
Texas has some of the most interesting state, and county governing practices. I must rely on the local Texas-based commenters for their insight.
As I understand it, the feds (CDC) makes recommendations, but it is state and local health departments that set the “rules”. So politics.
The CDC designs its recommendations to spread covid as far and fast as possible on purpose.. And secondarily to meet the demands of business for stopping people from calling in sick just because they are sick.
Either omicron transmits fast, or it has existed for a long time and wasn’t detected until recently. I have been following this gentleman on twitter for a while. He started talking about the GISAID database having omicron recorded earlier than November.
https://twitter.com/sanchak74/status/1470617401074991107
My understanding is that as test facilities using ARTIC V3 with their PCR equipment update to V4, they’ve been finding omicron. V3 itself obscured areas in the genome where the mutations were taking place. V3 + VSS (Variant Skip Short) can detect omicron, or V4 can. “The Omicron variant can be called confidently using NEBNext VarSkip Short (VSS) primers. ” Meaning, without VSS addition, V3 can’t.
https://www.neb.com/products/e7660-nebnext-artic-sars-cov-2-companion-kit-oxford-nanopore-technologies
There was a more succinct comparison of V3 + VSS and V4 on the NEB website, that I can’t find right now.
According to evolution clocks omicron could have started to differentiate by mid 2020. Then how it passed undetected? I give you 3 theories and you are free to choose any combination of those:
1) Hypermutation in immunocompromised hosts with chronic disease. In favor: has been seen before. Against: doesn’t explain how this could yield something so easily transmitted.
2) Passage through other host (rodents?) and back home to humans. Merit: some specific Omicron mutations seen in experiments with mice or mice cells suggesting rodent adaptations. Against: difficult to explain how it came back.
3) Silent transmission through humans with little pathological effect or masked and possibly in regions with low rates of variant sequencing. This is the one I favour the most given that most if not all samples are from clinical sources. Simple, what’s not to like about it? Only reason is overconfidence in human capabilities.
Would the last theory imply that it started somewhere else in Africa and it was only when it established itslef in South Africa that it was identified by the sophisticated medical services there?
or, because it exploded when the last mutations were acquired.
How quickly can test labs move from V3 to V4 to be able to detect Omicron?
I asked this here the other day — how are labs worldwide all of a sudden able to detect Omicron? How do we know that all the positive Covid tests are Omicron?
PCR tests include 2 genomic regions different to spike gene which are generally well conserved. Even spike gene can be equally detected if the primers used for that amplicon have sequences that are conserved (or even admitting a single mutation may be even two depending on the design).
Fazi and Cornetti: How the EU Destroyed Italian Democracy
I’m not sure that I am willing to let this bland assertion pass: “More recently, when Matteo Renzi pulled the plug on the Giuseppe Conte’s second government last January,”
A rewrite: “When Matteo Renzi, chief grifter and obvious student of the Clintons both politically and grifterly, pulled the plug with his splinter party and with a fit of pique on Conte II last January…”
Dropping Renzi in and not acknowledging his, errrr, increasingly toxic role in Italian politics is like not mentioning some of Tony Blair’s dubious achievements.
I also think that Fazi tends to demonize Draghi (having read other columns by Fazi). I’m not a fan of Draghi. Yet when the alternative is Matteo Salvini (the Trump Mini-Me of Italian politics) or Berlù (most famous for his policy of Bunga-Bunga) or Giorgia Meloni (a nicer version of Marine LePen), one wonders. Demonizing Draghi gives him too much credit.
Fazi and other writers are on steadier ground when they attribute the continuing crisis of Italian democracy to austerity politics. That’s the source.
I suspect that Fazi and Cornetti also are time-bound: They are too young to recall how the U S of A and its good-thinking friends kept the Italian Communist Party out of the Italian government. Another destructive act was remaking the Italian left into the Partito Democratico, which is a deliberate imitation of U.S. Democrats–all the way down to repudiation of past policies and general fecklessness and support of austerity policies.
Once the Italian left was destroyed, the Partito Democratico retained people like Renzi, who now fancies himself a centrist.
Renzi? Draghi? Hillary? Biden? Buttigieg? What could go wrong for democracy?
Happy New Year Sir!
#Concur
ChrisRUEcon: Buon Anno!
“Capitalism’s perpetual pandemic” WSWS
“In the Wall Street Journal, financial executive Rob Arnott unironically mused in a column published on January 2, “Should I try to catch the Omicron variant of Covid to advance the cause of herd immunity?”
They won’t.let that ignorant talking.point die either.
To recap for all these FOOLS:
1) anti-bodies produced from having caught a corona virus ARE TEMPORARY. Not forever. You din’t become immune.
2) NON-STERILIZING “vaccines” only provide TEMPORARY protection.
There is NO “immunity” to Corona Virus. There are methods of temporary protection.
I don’t care if I’m repeating myself, this ignorant “immunity” crap keeps being repeated.
And again, non-sterilizing vaccines WILL NOT lead to herd immunity.
I’m no virologist, but my nonetheless educated understanding is that cold viruses (corona-, rhino-, et al., and Covid-19 is a cold virus) produce zero (zilch, nichts, nada, 0) lasting immune response. Generally longer than norovirus response, but the length of immunity is generally measured in weeks. This has been known for decades. The vaccines will solve everything folks are just as deluded as the herd immunity folks- there has never been any herd immunity without sterilizing a vaccine, there has never been immunity at all to colds to achieve “herd immunity”, and the folks in charge knew this from day one. Vaccine-only for Covid is a fool’s errand consistent with the two principles of liberalism. It’s infuriating.
An RT interview with the director of the Gamaleya institute (Sputnik V) in February 2020 very clearly said the same thing…
It’s right there,Dr Leana Wen on twitter.
Left click the little arrow.
And gosh, being called a “Stakeholder”make me feel so important I’m emboldened to make a suggestion about that reset.
Retroactive abortion for Fauci.
And Wen.
Lest we feel too important, Stakeholder=Shareholder/executives/CEOs of pharma, airline industry, corporate medical complex, etc….
Dang, I was feeling so EMPOWERED after mistakenly thinking Dr Wen called me a stakeholder.
But she’s right about the messaging, the CDC really does need to find a nicer way express their enlightened policy of “Because Markets, Go die and take your kids with you”.
Maybe license the “Hello Kitty” image?
You know, kinda like “Smokey the Bear”, but cute?
R Walensky looks kind of uncomfortable in recent days.
I suppose, trying to adopt the posture of an un-embodied intelligence who doesn’t have a stake in the public consequences of CDC guidance, it might be possible to feel a teeny bit of sympathy for the predicament CDC principals find themselves in — it appears that they are tasked with persuasively communicating “guidance” that quite likely will cause long term harm to the public, but in a way that doesn’t alert the public to this and that will not result in negative public reaction in future. It scarcely seems possible, and they must realize this. I’d look unhappy too.
Oh “unhappy” all the way to the bank. Check out Julie Gerberdings net worth!
Maybe she is realizing someone is going to have to take the blame, shortly, and nobody has yet reached out to assure her she’ll be well compensated for her service to pharma.
They should be prevented from getting away with it, if that is possible. Bloggers and commenters can do their small bit in that regard by pointing out what CDC is trying to get away with in the baldest most un-ironical terms possible, over and over and over again.
Sorry! So Hello Kitty points at the camera with the caption “Only YOU can stop a market crash, you will get back to work and you will be happy!” Hopefully it will feel empowering!
On the bright side, thanks to the Biden team’s quest for gender equality, we now know a woman can screw up as much as a man and still not get fired. That’s progress.
Well, I’ve got a sharp pointy object that I’m willing to bring to the conversation…oh, not the kind of stakeholder you’re looking for? Sorry, my bad.
Obviously reading too much lately about the ‘pre-civil-war/pre-fascism’ state of the US, but ‘stakeholders’ (a term that has always annoyed me, on the level of ‘curated’) suddenly brought on the mental image of a rabble waving real stakes, advancing on the CDC. Or maybe they were waving ‘steaks.’ Whatever.
So far, at least everytime I have experienced it, when someone mentions consulting stakeholders, you can expect to get ( family blog ).
Consulting “stakeholders” is the same as having community meetings to discuss development. The development was already planned and going through. The “discussion” is to give the appearance of input of and caring about “stakeholders”. Also, can be used a stalling tactic. I worked for local government in housing and community development. I saw plenty neighborhood meetings.
The Bureau of Land Management plans to burn up to 1,000 piles of downed hazard trees, branches, and understory brush at Case Mountain Extensive Recreation Management Area (ERMA) southeast of Three Rivers in Tulare County, California. Pile burn operations will start as early as Monday, January 10, and continue periodically until Spring, depending on weather, air quality conditions, onsite observations, and resource availability. Smoke may be visible in Three Rivers.
The ERMA contains the only giant sequoia groves managed by the BLM. They are on Case Mountain approximately 7 miles southeast of the town of Three Rivers, California. The complex is comprised of six distinct sequoia grove units, which total about 444 acres.
The prescribed fire is part of a multi-year fuels reduction effort in the groves. The objective is to strategically thin trees; remove ladder fuels which can feed flames to the treetops; and remove needles, branches, and brush on the forest floor. The prescribed fire will enhance protection of the wildland-urban interface for the town of Three Rivers, improve landscape health, and remove hazardous fuels near giant sequoia trees. Burning will take place only when weather and fuel moisture allow safe and successful operations.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/01/08/blm-to-burn-piles-in-giant-sequoia-groves/
don’t burn, chip it instead, then spread on burn areas to support planting of trees that are less likely to burn see: usda forestry, for info ! yes big difference in species “ikeley to burn” some resist it massively !
They all have oxigen production qualities & hold water like a lake see USDA artical ” every forest is a lake”
think before hireing people to do things! Better to pay them for sitting at home than planting the next fire problem!
Thought of the same solution but I do not think it practical based on images of this area that Wuk has linked to previously. The area looks like it is difficult to get into and the problem would be to find a way to transport the massive amount of wood collected down the hills and to a place where they can be chipped. You must be talking about thousands of tons of material here so I can see why they decided to burn it in place.
Rev, it is tens of thousands of tons at least,a LOT of dead trees.
And as you note,not easily accessible.
Biochar in situ.
That picture of the snowy road in the link, it’s mostly quite steep and of the dirt variety which is definitely not conducive to carting away massive amounts of burnables in order to chip them, and then there’s the matter of cost, burning stacked piles costs relatively little and makes the problem go away and in this case will create 1,000 very nutrient rich areas for Mother Nature’s clients in the underground movement.
Lots of little lightning strikes that self extinguish.
Better to imitate Mother Nature.
Could it be buried, Hugel-bed style?
The man power and machines necessary would be staggering, and at that point, any potential savings would be lost.
Then even if evened out, the plants growing have been there since the decline of the mega fauna. Fires are part of the economy system. Then you nave to think about watersheds.
Chipping is probably not a good alternative as dried wood is much, much harder than wet wood. It can be done but would be a nasty job. When you cut firewood to burn the trucks are cut to the desired lengths as soon as possible. After it dries and becomes brittle it is split.
Wood chips are flammable and would not be suitable for a scenario of “spreading around and planting trees” in a low rain area. Their decomposition only takes place in the presence of water. Biochar, however, is a good idea.
“How on earth is this not a scandal? Long COVID numbers in children have more than tripled in 6 months. 117,000 children with long COVID and 20,000 with illness for *more than a year*. How on earth is this acceptable?…”
They really need to do the detailed testing and sequencing for variant info for each kid. Not just a sampling.
But we know that’s not happening in the Global Death Cult Economy.
COVID – my mother-in-law is 78. We were recently discussing shots, whether or not to get boosters, and side effects. She has a friend, 67, who got her period after she got her vaccine shot. I do not know which shot. Horrifying that would be a side effect.
All of us are leaning towards holding out as long as possible against boosters.
After my first shot of JnJ, I began having hot flashes again. I am 73. Not getting a booster!
Wouldn’t it be something if the vaccines BOOST fertility and we have a whole generation of quadruplets…
Am I wrong to not trust these numbers until they start differentiating between “with” and “for”?
And if something like VAERS is so messed up, where and how on earth are they getting these numbers for Long Covd cases? Is it self reporting?
I just cannot seem to get myself to trust these numbers anymore if they are just “told” to me.
You are right in not trusting the numbers. There are all kinds of ugly incentives attached to putting covid as the reason for hospitalizations. I believe this was found to be happening in New York recently.
Even being hospitalized with physical trauma like accident or gunshot and Covid requires additional resources to protect staff and other patients.
Otherwise no better than Cuomo and nursing homes and Covid positive patients.
If you have stroke, heart attack, diabetes complications, etc., the distinction of “with” and “from” becomes meaningless anyway.
I believe those numbers are from the UK, so I would assume of higher quality, since they have the NHS.
Today’s Must Read? Timely musing to ruin your weekend
Picked up from comments yesterday:
friend of the Court brief by a group of doctors/ medical professionals
re: Supreme Court hearings on OSHA mandates of vaccines for Health Care workers.
31 pages, 25 pages are very plain language, concise, and cover succinctly what many hear have read, heard, and seen over the past 2 plus years.
Truly a worthy read, in my opinion:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21A244/207051/20211230162830733_AFLDS%20amicus%20brief%20in%20support%20of%20emergency%20applications%20re%20OSHA%20ETS%20cases.pdf
Big hat tip and thank you for cocoaman. I remain crestfallen and disheartened
“It is the consensus of the medical community that the currently available
Covid-19 vaccine injections do not prevent the spread of SARS- CoV-2. Relevant
federal agencies have repeatedly acknowledged this consensus. Therefore, there is
no scientific or legal justification for OSHA to segregate injected and un-injected
people. Indeed, since the Covid-19 injections do not confer immunity upon the
recipients, but are claimed to merely reduce the symptoms of the disease, they do
not fall within the long-established definition of a vaccine at all. ”
That is succinct.
Unfortunately the final section of this brief serves as an argument that having covid provides you with lifelong immunity. A dangerous representation IMHO and throws doubt on the rest of their brief, which is well argued.
Not totally crazy –
https://www.science.org/content/article/t-cells-found-covid-19-patients-bode-well-long-term-immunity
T-Cells are important in long term immunity.
“Leaning San Francisco skyscraper is tilting 3 inches per year as engineers rush to implement fix”
Hey, why not leave it as it is. It worked for Pisa and it ended up becoming a tourist draw-card. I must confess though that if I worked in this part of town, I would want to know exactly which direction this building leaned towards as this won’t be a case where a building gets dropped vertically but might tip over and bang into the next building. Bit nerve-wracking if you worked in that building though.
We stayed @ the Grand Chancellor hotel in Christchurch about 15 years ago, and it turned into the Leaning Tower of Down Under in the 2011 earthquake and had to be blown up real good.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5069848/Slow-Christchurch-demolition-shocks-expert
So… if SF has an earthquake that drops the leaning tower of SF on your house, is that an act of god, or does the obligation rest on the tower’s insurance? Property earthquake insurance being a specific extra… so I wonder if the tower has it, and whether it will stand up after an event, since the ins. co.’s engineers will say the insurance is void as the building wasn’t to standard.
The good news is that Millenium Tower is ABSOLUTELY SAFE in a big earthquake.
The experts paid big bucks to fix the minor lean have said so unequivocally, and that settles the matter.
“Settles the matter”. I see what you did there.
Liquefaction is a bee-otch.
I would think that liquefaction would be preferred, since the building would sink down instead of falling over. That said, liquefaction is a problem on the fill soils on the Oakland side. It may be the Millennium Building is located on Sterner stuff. Location matters with liquefaction, since it is a property of the fill beneath the building
Tom Stone is right, they have and it does! :-)
Seriously, it needs to be carefully unbuilt/demolished. The refusal to admit the errors involved and take a step back at ‘Millenium’ (remember that naming fad? good times!) Tower is potently emblematic of the blissful delusionary inability to admit error that underlies almost every contemporary American reaction/inaction to/on issue after policy after crisis. DeCaprio’s rant at the CNN anchors in ‘Don’t Look Up’ that not everything is or should be pleasant and bubbly, crossed with the messages of Kornbluth’s ‘The Marching Morons’ should be metaphorically slapped across every PMC member’s face but will not be.
“Gravy Planet”* aka “The Space Merchants” — treason against an established advertising agency.
*Galaxy SF June 1952 et seq., I believe.
I think Matt T -who I often agree with (except perhaps thatThanksgiving is awesome) is wrong about Trump being nothing but an incompetent buffoon. One thing that has not been highlighted at NC is the purges going on at state level and the law changes. Essentially, any republican involved in certifying electors that failed to obey Trump’s wishes is getting axed and replaced by a loyalist. Also bills have been introduced to allow states to appoint different electors.
Being an attorney who has had sometimes “difficult” clients- and who is more difficult than Trump?-, I can extrapolate what is happening here:
(a) to keep the money flowing you tell that client that states and Mike Pence can do things that the law etc does not allow.
(b) when things fail to go as represented you say, well you need to change the law. This is now being attempted. This is not the actions of someone who is not a fascist and not a threat. He is both.
Michigan is a good example. The Republican who certified the Michigan vote against Trump’s wishes has been replaced with a Republican who says he would NOT have certified the 2020 vote.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/18/michigan-republicans-seek-replace-canvasser-who-certified-election/4202195001/
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/four-partisans-must-certify-michigans-election-one-makes-no-promises
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2021/10/18/new-wayne-county-gop-canvasser-wouldnt-have-certified-vote/8506771002/
We ignore or downplay this naked and despicable power grab at our peril. Taabi should use some of his sabbatical to research his , to me, thoughtless and unsupported conclusions. It’s easy right now, with all the genuine buffoons in the republican party , to laugh and downplay the threat. But it is very real and very powerful. Had this yahoo who now says he would not have certified Michigan been in the position he now holds in 2020 we would still be litigating the outcome. And the Michigan vote was not that close.
Trump continues to need to be stopped and repudiated.
NC should highlight what is going on in “Battleground states” across the country. Trump will run again , barring health issues. And he is setting himself up to win even if he loses.
Good points all. As a Canadian looking south, I worry about Trump’s seemingly unassailable influence on many Americans. Like you I perceive him as a serious threat and believe that ??? measures should be used to stop him.
As far as him running again in 2024, why wouldn’t he? I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to that question.
Americans don’t so much like Trump as they hate the rest of the political class. Put Biden up against a bag of moldy, fungus infected socks in 2024 and the filthy hosiery wins in a landslide.
Ahh, much gnawing and gnashing of teeth on this site about the measures used to attempt to stop him.
I’ve seen an article this week, probably in the daily WC that discussed the topic. It was probably a Salon article, and not paywalled like an NYT or WSJ.
State legislature(s) are on the ground level for where this is happening. My issue with Trump, as a chief concern* to myself, is the flippant nature for treating people like a Pence or a Chris Christie as no longer a reliable ally. It’s a Sith mentality. Not to imply or insist that Trump is equivalent to Vader.
*Opposing candidates in 2024 should illustrate his ridiculous statements as exhibits A to Z. At least pretend to be a statesman. He’s a casino and real estate guy after all. And a dubious business success.
Follow up thought. Biden did beat Trump, and Trump is no longer serving as president. Republicans play to win, buffoonery notwithstanding. I hope a loud mouthed R who isn’t Trump does run in 2024.
Our current situation is in the hands of the Dems, at the federal level. By all counts it is not going too well.
Trump only flourishes in the complete absence of credible Democrat leaders.
There has only been the tiniest and most grudging admissions from our news media that many Trump voters were casting FU votes to express their intense displeasure with both parties neither of which legislate on behalf of average Americans.
I still believe the loudest FU a voter can deliver is by undervoting. Skip the races where both candidates stink, but vote in local elections. News media ignores this, but the ignored candidates get the message loud and clear.
The problem with that strategy is its failed. Jeb! poisoned the well when he called “Trump supporters” con victims through his sheep dogs because it was obvious Jeb! was ticked they werent voting for his clals for deregulation and tax cuts. At that point, they were really none of the above,,hence their swings to Herman Cain and Carly Fiorino.
Democrats tried it. That was their campaign. Trump won. Pointing out his statements is irrelevant. One, GOP voters aren’t swinging for Cheney.
The guy killed 500,000 Americans and was 90k votes away from being reelected. “No drama, Obama” sans the Obama fetish is the real strategy. Trump is a clown. It takes care of itself.
As far as “real statesmen”, who are these mythical people? Pelosi is an officially open corrupt Speaker of the House. These people aren’t going to separate themselves from Trump to get non voters to vote and certainly aren’t going to swing voters.
These mythical people are indeed, not available to comment! It’s why I included “pretend”, as in even if it’s farcical just pretend you might even lead people that despise his very essence as our 45th President.
His statements prior to winning in 2016 were merely words from a lifelong pursuit of running an “empire” of sorts, quite possible to easily dismiss. Now when we get to his statements while sitting in the oval office, that is the grist for the mill. Repeat the one about liking military processions (as in communist China, or for comrade Putin); he’s on tape an awful lot!
Jeb sucked and we all knew it!
Plus, I’ll never forgive Jeb for “throwing” Florida for his brother in 2000.
It’s not an issue of “stopping Trump.” If he decided to retire from public life tomorrow, or got arrested, or whatever Team Blue fantasizes will be just the thing to discredit him, the Republican project to restrict voting rights and ensure permanent conservative minority rule which started long before him will continue.
A good way to stop it would be for Democrats to stop focusing on Trump; publicly promote and and pass voting rights legislation; and propose and implement policies which benefit people. Instead they continue to play their part in the decline of “Our Democracy” as well as the decline of any actual democracy, the economy, public health, education, etc.
Here’s an overview of restrictive laws passed to date and a look ahead to 2022.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021
Trump remains a creature created by and for Democrats. If Trump weren’t still around they would have to create another one to allow them to run policy-free campaigns. Interestingly, this also seems to be working for much of the GOP, just not the Lincoln Project / NoLabels types.
When I think of Democrats creating Trump, precisely three things come loudly to mind: NAFTA, PNTR for China and financial deregulation.
I think the last straw for the American people was Obama’s betrayal of the impassioned and euphoric voters who elected him in 2008 and less enthusiastically re-elected him in 2012. They thought he was a populist. His eight years in office showed them they were wrong. He had suckered them.
I lay Hillary’s defeat in 2016 directly at the feet of Obama. One cannot lie to people and not expect consequences. One of those was the rise of another “populist”, Trump. Trump is Obama’s legacy. Does he realize this? Does he care?
Obama letting Wall St. off the hook in 2009 lead directly to Trump IMO.
Trump is the “Obama Legacy”.
Trump is the “Obama Legacy” in one chart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc7wAjVPeCo
Tiabbi: “clique of mediocrities”
I guess “confederacy of dunces” was taken?
Not to mention “basket of deplorables”. Hey, we can all play this game!
at our house, Grapenuts is “Rocks”…shredded wheat is “hay” and CSpan is “Whores and Weasels”.
it can be fun having children.
A macédoine of mediocre misanthropes? Argh, that’s me. Nevermind.
The Unredeemed? I think the Great Unwashed also applies.
My Christian roots in my youth and upbringing is conjuring such thoughts now.
The Unwashed before it became a pejorative idiom, too many, referenced the delineation between a priest class and everyone else. The priest class tended the perceived needs [clothing/washing/feeding rituals] of figure of a god as its earthly manifestation and due to their proximity to it required they be shorn of all hair, long baths to remove everything but the newest of skin, and immaculately clean robes – hence clean [pure] enough to serve this god.
Everyone else was Unwashed regardless of wealth or status outside the priest class e.g. you are either a servant of the god or not.
Then again its not much discussed amongst western orthodox monotheistic religions that Jesus was not supportive of the heraldic priesthood as a cornerstone to his larger views. Once you drop that optic down and examine his life one might ponder why its not discussed with the unwashed – see how the context changes.
I had always regarded the Great Unwashed as meaning the same thing as the Hoi Polloi . . . . the lower class majority regarded by our Class Oppressors as ” the disposables”.
In the context of Intelligence and who gets to have classified secrets, I sometimes refer to us as the Great Uncleared.
I too am an attorney and have experience with difficult clients and with real estate speculators. The real estate speculator is in my opinion a different animal that some might realize. They take enormous financial risks day in and day out, living it sometimes seems at the edge of a cliff, and when buy or selling constantly play a form of mental chess with the other party to the negotiation over price, never hesitating to walk away at any moment. His approach to the head of North Korea was picture perfect real estate speculator tactics. Ordinary people do not live this way and almost never enter into negotiation over price except when they buy or sell a car, a house etc. The secret for them to get their way it seems is to keep everyone else guessing over whether they will accept your offer or walk away. Fear, uncertainty and doubt often operates to give the speculator what he wants when the other party caves in.
A similar thing happened to me recently. I had a pricey painting for sale at a gallery in Connecticut. The gallery owner called me and told me that he had an offer on it. Then he told me that the prospective buyer was a developer. I responded, “Oh, no!” In my experience developers rarely used their own money…and Trump typifies this. Anyway, I made counter-offer and the guy walked. And so it goes.
Oh no! You didn’t sell the Gauguin, did you? He’s about to be “redeemed” for Wokeness! Think of the Virtue Signal price multiplier!
(Whenever I think about the Woke Redemption of the Fauves, I see red, with a faint aura of mauve.)
I’ve introduced the term of art: “SlumLord” …to the local lingua franca…to denote that virtuous motherfucker yer describing.
there’s like 5 of them out here.
i wouldn’t pee on them if they were on fire.
and such a fate would not be undeserved.
“We ignore or downplay this naked and despicable power grab at our peril.”
How do you compare this to Darth Cheney, TIA, and The Patriot Act?
The norms fairy approves of the official authoritarians?
Sorry, but it’s now the ‘Norms Parliamentarian.’
Not to be confused with these parliamentarians…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBWH3OWfT2Y
I can assure you, dear readers, that if this crew was caught trying to “storm the Capitol,” the National Guard would still be patrolling Washington, the D of C.
I don’t think you can blame this on Trump at all. Republicans have been doing this for decades, and the Democrat party makes little mewling noises about it during the fundraising season (which is always) but does absolutely nothing to stop it. It was on Obama’s watch that the Republicans picked up 1,000+ seats in state legislatures all over the country, using their usual shenanigans coupled with the Democrat party’s own fecklessness. How was that in any way Trump’s fault?
And I’m so old I remember the Bush v Gore decision that ignored the will of the electorate and was a complete travesty of justice and to which the Democrat party responded “Thank you sir may I have another?” rather than putting up any kind of fight. We got a generation of war that is still ongoing as a result, and just a few days ago the Democrat party welcomed one the the prime beneficiaries of that decision, President Cheney, with open arms. Again, none of this is Trump’s fault.
I think Taibbi hit the nail right on the head in that article in describing Trump as a buffoon without much real power. It’s time to get over the TDS and focus on the real bad actors – the ones who actually have power and have for a long time.
> And I’m so old I remember the Bush v Gore decision …
I must say that I have mixed feelings about this ‘I’m so old … ‘ meme. When it first appeared, in an ironic way — e.g., ‘I’m so old I remember when only robbers wore masks’ — I thought it was cute. But when it’s used ‘straight’, it needs to have some genuine gravitas behind it: ‘I(‘m so old that I) remember when the San Francisco Longshoremen’s strike was suppressed by the police, National Guard and regular Army’. Otherwise it falls flat.
Bush-Gore is only 20 years ago and anyone over the age of, say, 30 who doesn’t remember it is guilty of either general ignorance or serious social negligence, neither of which is particularly humourous.
Just wondering if you have a “mandate” to invite one politician to your Thanksgiving dinner and you are only given two choices, would you invite Trump or Pelosi?
I invite them both over for dinner. And naturally, a glass of wine is offered for those who wish to imbibe of the vintage wine made available.
Princess Bride clip, from 1987.
https://youtu.be/rMz7JBRbmNo
AOC
and i’d ask her to dance.
Thank you for offering this. Just because the Democrats are a problem does not mean that the Republicans are not-a-problem.
And the hatred some people have for the Democrats is so Democrat Derangement Syndrome blinding that it prevents them from seeing the carefully rolled out Republican Conspiracy against legitimate elections state by state . . . .which will be used to keep future legitimate parties and people from getting the victories they win the same way as it could keep present illegitimate present Democrat parties and people from claiming the victories they earn. DDS democrat-haters seem not to understand this.
Tell us all something, please, if you will. And I see what you did there. Both parties are pissing down our backs. Should we enjoy the rain, or call it what it is? Democrats have not delivered their “adult plans” for dealing with the pandemic.
They are at best, ineffectual in their handling of what they proposed to be capable of.
go look at Foxnews front page right now…scroll down….second page? …third?…
no mention of what the goptea is up to in the states, regarding elections.
one might think that, if they really had smoked their own stash, that they’d be touting all the shenanigans they’re currently up to in the states, regarding voting.
i mean, they have this well funded and disciplined top-to-bottom media empire, and all.
instead, it’s all about how biden is a ChiCom out to eat yer babies.
Well I do see something referencing Taco Bell and chicken wings in the same sentence. That can’t be good; or can it? I suppose if the Waffle House gets panned as an option at 1am you go to the Bell for your cravings.
I’d prefer to laugh instead of cry, all else equal. I rarely watch anything on Fox News. Just. Can’t. Do. That. (hat tip to Meatloaf)
i consider Bat Out of Hell an almost perfect album.
Produced by Todd Rundgren, with opposition by the labels, because he thought it was a funny response to Springsteen.
Go Todd.
If this is the case, then at least we get a look at what effective governance looks like. Instead of whining, whinging, lying and pouting like spoiled children real work is getting done. And where would the Cheney’s stand?
The Ray Epps Jan 6 story was infuriating in numerous ways.
As usual, the movie Men in Black has a quote that fits. Here is one about crowd behavior.
Now if only more investigative journalists, remember them, were involved in researching and reporting on what happened, that could open a few eyes. Oh, yeah, Jay and Kay were already on it.
Maybe the real reason that we haven’t seen any real indictments for January 6th is that the FBI can’t afford to lose any more personnel this quarter.
fbi agents dont use their real names when working a case.
Informants do.
FBI can lose a couple agents for wife beating, the informants (snitches and narcs) will always be there.
Wray was appointed by Trump. That Biden failed to fire him for letting Jan 6 happen is yet another example of Biden channeling Ethelred the Unready.
Re “stakeholders”–Oh, we know what it means. Our government and regulators have been captured from tip to toe. But Biden is willing to bring the hammer down on those he thinks have no power to retaliate–i.e. the unvaxxed.
The founders thought you needed “checks and balances” to make this thing work. Gone. But we do still have elections and the opportunity to punish the current cast of the captured by replacing with another.
They think that by inviting stakeholders, they can avoid the pitchforkholders.
sounded more like a business meeting then a statement on public health care.
i am glad i stopped ‘watching’ news a long time ago.
you need time to analyze the BS they shovel our way, hard to do with tv.
The issue with Jamal Simmons and other younger political types is they have the misfortune of the internet never forgetting what you did online, in this case from a dozen years ago.
All it takes is one throwaway comment and you’re a done deal.
I’m sure a crack research team at ESPN is in a frantic search for all those deleted tweets by a high profile NFL wide receiver. Said player does not just burn bridges, but has annihilated them all. There is gold to be found in the interwebs!
Ergo, TB12 needs a hug and a new friend. Oh wait he does awake to Gisele, so he’s probably okay.
“I was horrified when I found out”: a new experiment with a nuclear power plant could be the last for Ukraine
This is really desperate stuff this. Launching all nuclear plants at once? It’s like navy ships. Yes, you can send all your carriers out to sea at the same time but when they come back, they will all require heavy maintenance and will no longer be available. Assuming that nothing goes wrong, this sounds like a hail Mary move to get over winter as they refuse to buy coal from the Donbass – though they are paying the Russians good money to take their radioactive wastes. But I doubt that it is wise this move going by the article below-
https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/ukraines-nuclear-impasse
IF they come back?
Send forth the goats! That was a pretty fun video to play through. I don’t have much direct knowledge about them, other than using them to clear an unkept lawn or pastures ( in a fenced enclosures ). I’ve been told they can also jump pretty well.
There’s a local outfit that rent out their goat herd to clear kudzu and weeds from yards and were in my neighborhood taking out the understory of a large median area. They put up a temporary fence around the feeding zone.
Ah, Tony Blair: alumnus/member of the WEF’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow program, class of 1993.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. / ;)
Tut, tut, tut. That should be Sir Tony Blair! You know, the noted war criminal that is always on the look-out for a quick bit of cash on the side. He and Bill gates would make such a great team.
Right. Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. Founder of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. (Among other… uh… notable(?) accomplishments.) / ;)
Blair
I would prefer to break bread with a more accomplished, interesting and knighted individual. Quite honestly, I can’t recall a better performance from some one who is not Sean Connery. The actor’s take on a brilliant psychopath is still remarkable to me.
Sir Anthony Hopkins. I’d be hopeful he does not order liver! I have other choices from the original ‘Alien’ film but alas both are dead.
Re: Harris’ staff
The MSNBC guest the new comms person complained about is one of the more prominent hispanic activists in Texas. Can Trump sweep all 50 states in 2024?
She’s the gift that keeps on giving. Trump must be salivating.
VP Kamala Harris tells @JudyWoodruff
that she knows many have reached “a level of malaise” nearly two years into the pandemic.
https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1479232562224668677?s=20
That and all the long-COVID hustlers out there looking to cash in on a fat disability check…fortunately we have gatekeepers and means testing etc.
I’m waiting for the first time I hear that sentiment expressed on the street. It’s always eat the weak. Blame the victim.
From Craig Murray:
What Kazakhstan Isn’t
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/what-kazakhstan-isnt/
note: Between 2002 and 2004, Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan’s longest southern border neighbor.
Thanks, thats well worth reading. Its good to see Murray back doing what he does best.
“The lack of intellectual flexibility among western commentators entrapped in the confines of their own culture wars is a well-established feature of modern political society.” Mr Murray on point yet again.
“How Explosives, a Robot, and a Sled Expose a Doomsday Glacier”
This is really a great article this and you can feel that you are seeing the frontiers of science at work. My hat is off to Erin Pettit for the dedication that she is showing by literally doing the hard yards as a scientist. But of course when you think about the implications of her work, they are not good and something tells me that we will get to see them up front and personal-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pettit
re: Much Ado about Offspring
This paper brings to mind a similar problem with claims that the mechanisms that produce consciousness have been identified. The two main issues, in my experience, are:
1. The claimants fail to note that no matter what they say, do, dance, rhyme, or riddle…all of it takes place within a conscious state. It makes for a firmer ontological argument to say that all that we experience, even that which seems separate from ourselves, is within consciousness. Not our individuated consciousnesses to be clear, but what I like to call Consciousness.
2. The claimants provide an argument of causation, but having failed to properly seat consciousness as the fundamental stuff of existence don’t see that their models are at least as likely to be mapping correlations.
Another scientific claim that seems problematic: making claims about the history of life based upon the fossil record. Isn’t the vast majority of life’s history a long rotted goop on some ancient beach? It seems we are missing most of the data set. I’m not saying you can’t say anything about it but it does seem like a big hole.
I am not a 100% on this as I have only listened to a few of his videos but I believe that Dr. Iain McGilchrist would agree with you on the consciousness part. Fascinating stuff IMO & I like his re-definition of Left / Right brain which means that I will have to get some new reading specs & actually read a book, starting with his The Master & his Emissary. If he is correct in his assessment of how those who mainly operate through LB think & behave – reductionist materialists, can never be wrong etc – it goes a long way to explaining the Godawful mess we are in.
Here’s a short video part 1 of 3 giving a taste which is fun & features John Cleese, in which they talk about creativity, humour & the meaning of life while having a big dig at the Woke ( Left brainers ? )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4rdZt_fe5k&t=11s 14.47 mins.
Thanks! I’m watching it tonight.
BTW – 365 poetry readings on his youtube channel, a good way to start the day if you happen to appreciate that sort of thing.
My best guess for Deepti Gurdasani
The word might be bronchiolitis. This change from previous variants could possibly be caused of different cellular/tissue tropism properties of Omicron. Just Covid joins the hordes of syncytial respiratory v. and others causing the same with high mortality in countries without the resources to treat it.
Re Revolver/Ray Epps–the hair on fire prose and constant repetition make this a slog. The article does raise the highly relevant question about why a group of militants aren’t being prosecuted but little evidence is offered other than supposition that they were working for the FBI or “government.” They could be genuine Trump supporters but ones who discredit the insurrection theory that Trump told his rally goers to go break into the Capitol. There was talk on NC from the very beginning that a militant group led the breach so this by itself isn’t news at all. It’s the non prosecution that is the real story and should be the focus.
I had a similar reaction. The “proof” in the article that Epps must be a Fed because he hadn’t been arrested made no sense. So I did a quick google on him and this snopes article seems to sum up the nonsense;
https://www.snopes.com/articles/389126/who-is-ray-epps/
Snopes is not reliable despite its self-assigned status as arbiter.
And there have been long form media stories on the very extensive efforts to identify and prosecute 1/6 participants.
Re: Scientist GM has long been worried about brain/neurological damage. The studies here, and there’s more in the thread, are not new, but there aren’t enough people connecting the dots:
Fatigue and cognitive impairment in Post-COVID-19 Syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159121006516
From the results:
“Meta-analyses of the two primary outcomes indicated that 32% of individuals experienced fatigue and 22% of individuals exhibited cognitive impairment 12 or more weeks following COVID-19 diagnosis. Furthermore, 13 of 14 studies examining inflammatory parameters re-ported elevations in proinflammatory markers (i.e., proinflammatory cytokines, C-reactive peptide, D-dimer, and procalcitonin) in a subset of patients. All studies investigating functional outcomes reported marked functional impairment in a sample subset”
So the spike protein of the virus (and created by your own body after the vaccine) crosses the blood brain barrier? So darned if you do and darned if you don’t? That cant be good. So we should expect neurological effects from the vaccine too?
Excellent question and no replies to it. Having listened to numerous experts on your question, most advise: No Vax.
I see numerous studies cited here and elsewhere that totally ignore what happens if there is prophylaxis and/or early treatment. It is stunning that scientists who command we should follow them ignore key variables in their studies, ignore them completely as if they did not exist.
So, Scientists, what are the results of your studies if there is prophylaxis and early treatment?
Much Ado About Nothing
While it is easy to get a thumbnail understanding of the argument that studies of the origins of life are going nowhere in particular … the language of organic chemistry used in this discussion wonderfully obscures the details of the author’s argument. The jargon may be the only concise and precise way to express the author’s thoughts — but somehow I doubt that is really true. And looking over the papers describing the capability of the Corona virus to cause neurological damage I am troubled by similar concerns about the utility of some of the jargon.
On the other hand, the website Inference appears to contain numerous speculations on a broad range of topics. Reading for even a thumbnail understanding of those speculations is enticing. I bookmarked the site for a time when I have more leisure to read its other contents.
“… the language of organic chemistry used in this discussion wonderfully obscures the details of the author’s argument. The jargon may be the only concise and precise way to express the author’s thoughts — but somehow I doubt that is really true.”
Yeah, I only skimmed the article as I was looking for some layman’s English. Didn’t find it. Too bad, I was interested.
I will only note that biologists and chemists have some fine theories about the origins of life on Earth. Unfortunately these theories have not to date, after decades of trying, been successfully proven in experiments. So far, no life created in a lab.
Anyway, the theory that Earth was seeded with life four billion years ago by a wayward comet appeals to me much more. I just like the idea that not only are we star-stuff, we might be alien-stuff as well (woo-woo!).
Now, how ???? life came to be, I’ll leave that to those questing biologists and chemists.
In the German Sci-fi television show Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot Der futurologische Kongress life on Earth started when a spaceship dumped its garbage on the planet.
I’m fairly certain that this plot line was cribbed from a sci-fi short story. I wish I could recall the title or author, but it was mid-70s when I read it.
The series used Stanislaw Lem’s Ijon Tichy character and short stories as a basis. The show started as a cheesy film student film (the spaceship was the student’s apartment) but made into a tv series. Low budget fun.
Maybe should read a bit of Nick Lane…
Appeals to me. What if the concept of “alien-stuff” is a disillusionment? What if all life is “star-stuff “?
The theory that the Earth was seeded with life from outside just moves the question. How did life start wherever it was seeded from? Of course the questing biologists and chemists can carry on with their research — which leaves the issue discussed in the link. How well is that research progressing, and how well is it answering the question. My impression from the gloss I could grasp is that present research is not approaching any answers and begs a lot of the details, while ignoring a series of gotchas along the way — and then trumpeting about empty triumphs.
So you’re skeptical of theory crafting in regards to the origin of life on earth, but you’re fine with it in regards to the origin of life on a space rock that then crashed on earth? Because it’s literally the same problem, regardless of which rock it started on. Panspermia is effectively one giant non-answer.
Well, if life started elsewhere and came to Earth via panspermia, trying to understand its origin based on early Earth conditions is pointless. That would be useful to know.
While your comment is correct, I am not sure it fits the spirit moving the research in the link. As I understood the discussion of the theory critiqued in the link — I got the distinct impression that the researchers were considering the conditions of the early Earth as a separate problem to be dealt with after coming up with a way to explain chemically how life might arise. I think the conditions on the early Earth were of much greater importance to Dr. Miller’s experiments in the 1950s. The early Earth, even today’s Earth offers a wide range of remarkable conditions and environments. I suspect researchers will imagine the environment after they succeed in explaining the chemistry. That is why the jargon obscuring the details of the link’s critiques of the chemistry so irritated me.
“Unfortunately these theories have not to date, after decades of trying, been successfully proven in experiments.”
I don’t know, Mildred. Maybe we could go with the opening “Un.” Our culture has enough of a God-complex already.
I hope our culture is beyond inventing gods to explain what we do not yet understand. There are plenty of much grander mysteries to use in conjuring God — mysteries probably never to be understood — than the origins of life.
The article rather put me off the rest of Inference, especially as Professor Tour seems to be a favourite contributor.
You didn’t miss much behind the jargon. It was prolix pedantry of the worst academic kind. I think the US terms these days is “inside baseball”? He was reviewing a paper by another group who claimed that short DNA sequences can self-assemble under certain conditions. He objected to their conditions being a high concentration of single DNA bases in a paste-like consistency. To be fair to him, that sounds a pretty implausible starting point anyway but perhaps the paper under review had reason for choosing it.
His objections were: where do you get the bases (the lab just ordered them but where do they come from before life emerges?!); how do you get such a high concentration; why does is the leaving group you identify leave (the references to previous papers seem to be entirely circular – a bit like the example of aersol / droplet boundary that turned out to be mistake decades ago and parroted ever since); and why don’t the side reactions that would ruin your hypothesis occur? All fair questions.
Personally, the search for plausible chemical hypotheses to the emergence of life has even less appeal than the search for the Big Bang. Concrete material benefits for our fellow man, not quasi-mystical investigations whose conjectures are unprovable, please. So a plague on both their houses, authors’ and critic’s.
Slim checking in from Tucson. It’s 11 years to the day since the Safeway shootings that claimed the lives of six and injured many others, including US Rep. Gabby Giffords.
There are some remembrances planned for this weekend and next week, but I don’t know how many will actually happen. Events are being cancelled right and left in the Old Pueblo. Reason: A certain virus that really likes human beings.
Here in Sonoma County the City of Petaluma closed City offices to the public until February 1 due to Covid.
When are they going to have a memorial for the people who “aren’t important”?
https://tucson.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/2021-breaks-record-for-most-homicides-in-a-single-year-in-tucson/article_517b475e-337b-11ec-addd-5fec4fb8edbf.html
I guess it only matters if one of “the elites” is shot.
Periodically, this organization hosts memorials for Tucson homicide victims:
https://homicidesurvivorsinc.org/
The new member of Harris’ staff sends a message that is loud and clear, she’s going to be a lot tougher .on anyone who steps out of line than Badass Joe has been.
And I am continually surprised at how many people underestimate her, she went from dropping out of the primary because she polled at less than 2% in her home state to the Vice Presidency in less than a year.
She’s slicker than frog snot on a warm day and meaner than a rattlesnake with a hangover.
And she’s incompetent. Her toughest chore will be to make Trump look acceptable but I think she’s up to the task.
She’ll send the Unsullied after you on twitter if you continue with your insolence
https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Unsullied
Harris pols show her support to be dwindling.
The K-hive never dwindles
I halfway suspect the reason Stacy Abrams was sidelined and pedo-priest champion Harris was placed was because uber-capable Abrams would make Biden look even dumber and more incompetent compared to Harris. They had to know Ka-babble’s record, that she is an idiot and a child. Abrams is pure establishment, so no ideological differences there. It’s a thought.
This theory also explains Buttegieg, the first gay Muppet to hold US political office. Truly, great people are surrounded by dunces, but wily fools surround themselves with them as cover. I’ve seen it in the flesh more than once. Biden strikes me as incestuously narcissistic enough to build an administration based solely on personalities he finds non-threatening and one’s amenable to sharing their Air Force 1 pudding cup when he insists.
Kamala Harris slid up the greasy pole faster than any other American politician has in the last 50 years.
That’s the only kind of competence that matters.
Slid up and then down and then around the party pole. She will land on her high heels no matter the outcome of her fast rise in politics.
No. Elizabeth Warren. And of course Trump.
Well worth reading:
The first in a multipart inquiry into Vice President Kamala Harris
“Her ill-timed laughter draws our attention, but it isn’t the only sign of Harris struggling with a modal transition. Take her ambush of Biden on an early debate stage. The attack began with awkward presumption, as she reassured the front-runner and former vice president that she didn’t think he was racist. What followed was convoluted, ostensibly a confession of personal sorrow over Biden’s past decades of friendship with formerly segregationist senators, friendship made worse by his once-upon-a-time opposition to integrationist busing. Even on her own terms, it wasn’t clear what Harris wanted Biden to do about this in 2021.”
“The attack on Biden was also a rhetorical mess—roundabout, ambivalent, excessively emotional—and Harris seemed to sense this in real time. What left her staff tearful in dress rehearsal wasn’t landing on opening night. When she senses a flop, the drama in her face stops conveying the drama of her words, and starts registering the challenge of her performance.”
https://alicefromqueens.substack.com/p/kamala-files-one
Liberal Democrat denialism continues:
It’s true, much has changed:
– Vaccinated individuals contract COVID frequently and any impact on transmissibility seems limited of extant at all
– Study on limited transmission in schools is suspect
– Children are increasing pilling up in ICUs
– Children do get sick and do get long-COVID, particularly starting with Delta
Yet we also know that
– Ventilation matters, and inexpensive solutions like Corsiboxes work
– High quality N95s work, and are widely available
– Wastewater testing works
– Sniffing dogs are still promising (work?)
But nothing from the Biden administration or the CDC on adopting proven practices that might allow schools to open, safely, for any length of time. Nor I guess any serious reflection on what went wrong, and right, with remote learning, because it isn’t like the world has changed since Jan 2020, eh?
It seems reality isn’t going to cooperate with Biden’s imperative of getting schools open.
And if you want schools open, you gotta tackle community transmission, but we can’t do that, because Markets.
Exciting.
Criminal groping case against ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally dismissed CNBC (Kevin W)
I just wish the incessant wall to wall coverage of the Me Too adherents saying we should believe the women and blasting this Cuomo decision would end. Wha!!?!? There has been no statements by Me Too adherents broadcast by the MSM about Cuomo??? Oh….never mind… let’s move on
“do not confuse our respect for the justice system with acquiescence”
Remember, Emmett Till was the first victim of the Me Too movement.
From the Twilight Zone Episode that is now our US Supreme Court –
Justice Sotomayor, from what I have seen of her appearance on news reports is absolutely high risk for severe COVID, regardless of her vaccination status, simply because she is so obese. Indeed, I admitted a fully vaccinated and boostered patient who is about her age and size this week to the hospital.
Justice Sotomayor, fully vaccinated and boostered according to news reports, decided to hear the case in her own office over Zoom. This is an appropriate medical decision based on what we know about the inability of these vaccines to prevent COVID transmission. And again, regardless of her vaccination status, she should do all she can to protect herself from COVID. Because of her obesity status, as her PCP, I would have done all I could for her to be vaccinated. On an individual level, it will absolutely decrease her chance of ending up in the ICU. But as I have become so good at explaining to patients the past several months, it will do absolutely nothing to decrease her risk of catching or transmitting the virus. Nor will it decrease the outpatient illness that people seem to get. I have seen ZERO difference in the outpatient illness between those vaxxed or not. It is about the same. A mild illness for many, a severe “knock you out for a few days” illness for many. Vaccine status seems to not make a difference in the outpatient illness.
But yet, she stated in her remarks and questions, that the vaccines are essential for protecting workers from spreading the virus. And by inference, this vaccine efficacy is worth firing millions of hard-working Americans from their jobs. And I repeat, she asked these questions, fully vaccinated and boostered, sitting in her office so she did not come into contact with the other justices – all of whom are at least fully vaccinated.
It seems to me she is admitting something wrong with the narrative, betrayed by her own behavior. And she is contemplating millions of Americans losing their livelihood? To protect the vaccinated co-workers from what exactly?
Is this how vaccines are supposed to work?
Am I missing something?
She also has diabetes:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-sotomayor-idUSKBN1F82HO
> four liberal justices,
I thought it was a 6-3 court. Does Roberts count as a liberal these days?
Maybe I haven’t been paying attention.
The link is from 2018, so it was accurate when it was written.
There was a link here in the past year about how Republicans packed the judiciary with conservative judges following a deliberate strategy to ensure that those chosen would sit on courts for very, very long periods of time. Not surprisingly, liberal Democrats adopted no such strategy. While any qualified individual ought to have a fair hearing for any position in government, in the real world, politics ain’t beanbag, as Lambert has said. And a seat on the Supreme Court is kind of consequential. (And this certainly isn’t out of bounds, as presidential candidate health always comes up during campaigns.)
I lived in Lake Tahoe once upon a time, and it didn’t always go by that name, as it was originally named after the 3rd Governor of California-John Bigler.
Lake Bigler lasted awhile until it got canceled by a woke mob of the era…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe
I guess it’s silly to even mention this, and I haven’t seen it said anywhere yet, amazingly.
But Joe Biden should immediately resign the presidency, along with CDC director Walensky.
This is malicious incompetence unlike any I’ve seen in my brief life. How can it be I’ve not seen anyone else call for this? These clowns have no moral standing to lead, if that is indeed what they’re doing is called.
I’ll drink to that, but make sure Mr. Anthony “Le science, c’est moi” Fauci leads the conga line right out the door.
Seen the book: The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert Kennedy Jr?
While you’re at it, listen to the 3 hour long interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast with Robert Malone, a highly skilled and honored scientist whose original work helped created the mRNA vaccines.
“Cryptocurrency Investors Try to Turn Private Islands Into Blockchain Utopias”
Vice? I immediately thought it must be from The Onion.
Re: Jan 6th
There is one big angle for the right about their claims of the riot of Jan 6th being some kind of Gladio/COINTELPRO incident that I have never been able to reconcile. On the whole, I think there is substantial evidence that that is at the very least a likely scenario given the presence of known informants in key positions of leadership. In this I am specifically referring to the fact that Reuters has run reporting identifying the national leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, as in the words of his lawyer in court documents from, I believe, around 2014 a “prolific informant” in Miami for law enforcement and that several other members had varying levels of contact with the FBI prior to the riot. For anyone knowledgeable of the measures that the US and it’s allies used to destroy internal left wing groups, that the leader of one of the most prominent organized groups on the ground in DC has a history of being an informant should be a massive red flag.
The thing I don’t get is that this should be an easy slam dunk for right wingers, and yet I have never seen any mention of the above facts in right wing media. Instead, what we have seen is either more speculative reporting such as with the reporting about Ray Epps (note: I’m not saying that the reporting is right or wrong, just unconfirmed compared with Tarrio’s history) or, more bizarrely, reporting that seems purpose made to provide a means to discredit allegations of federal infiltration and control. As to the latter, I’m referring to the story that emerged from Darren Beattie in Revolver and subsequently amplified by Tucker Carlson which argued that the mention of unindicted co-conspirators in charging documents referred to informants. The problem with this is that it’s basic practice that informants are not referred to as unindicted co-conspirators by prosecutors, meaning it was a story that was pathetically easy to debunk.
So this is the conundrum that I’m left with. There is in fact quite a bit of evidence that would at least lead to lines of inquiry as to whether what happened on 1/6 was some sort of Gladio/COINTELPRO provocation. However, instead of pulling on those threads, for some reason the more prominent right wingers I have seen pushing this narrative appear to be studiously avoiding pulling on those threads. Which, to me, leaves the two options that they are really pretty dumb in missing this, which is well within the realm of possibility, or for some reason, there is some reason that they have to avoid raising these points. And if you go with the latter option, that obviously raises the question of what possible reason would exist for them to cooperate in discrediting their own preferred narrative.
My understanding is that there are two kinds of right-wingers just as there are two kinds of dimocrats: fascists/oligarchs vs libertarians/socialists. It’s interesting that Beattie is pushing the “defund the police” line. Whatever will poor Tucker do? (I don’t follow him close enough to predict.)
And if you go with the latter option, that obviously raises the question of what possible reason would exist for them to cooperate in discrediting their own preferred narrative.
feel free to offer some possible reasons…
And thanks to both yourself,
The problem with this is that it’s basic practice that informants are not referred to as unindicted co-conspirators by prosecutors,
and jimmy cc
fbi agents dont use their real names when working a case.
Informants do.
for you insightful knowledge of “how things work”
Well, a significant number of Republicans have a personal interest in seeing the backside of Trump’s era. Those who want to run for President cannot do so without risk to their career until Trump relents or is disqualified. For them, there’s no benefit it doing too much to help Trump out.
Next, recall what Chuck Schumer told Rachel Maddow in 2017 when Trump said he would confront the FBI and CIA over Russiagate: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” The fear in Washington is real. When was the last time any of the intelligence agencies were held accountable for failures or scandals? Has a director or assistant director ever faced imprisonment, extradition, or civil lawsuits for which they can personally be held liable? A few small-fry get paraded and lightly sentenced, but the Bushes, Cheneys, and Brennans never face the consequences for the plots they conceive.
Lastly, Project Mockingbird is alive and well; aside from journalists, it seems to have expanded to legislators in recent years given the number of times I heard from leaders in both parties that Candidate X was simply the best because he or she had retired from the intelligence services or the military. For Republicans, this qualification was seen as evidence that the candidate would be on the right side in the culture wars, and among Democrats it was seen as a way to bolster the party’s defense credentials. The end result is a group of people across both parties who have very deep connections to the agencies they are tasked with overseeing. Congress is not immune from regulatory capture.
Criminal groping case against ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally dismissed CNBC (Kevin W)
AKA Cuomo hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still got the juice to threaten DA’s and Sheriffs who disagree with him.
https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo/status/1479535979790848002
Same bullying mob family, same bullying mob talk-
“do not confuse our respect for the justice system with acquiescence”
Well received my SS paper work telling me my new amount $82 not bad but my Medi-Care went up $125.00 Thank you govt:-( I can’t imagine how others will make it.
Sounds a lot like my late mother’s lament about her public school employee pension going up by X but the health insurance went up by Y and Y was greater than X.
Just as an interesting historical note…
I was recently reading a Dorothy Sayers mystery published in 1923 titled Whose Body?
Here is an excerpt from the book taken during an inquest;
The coroner, a medical man of precise habits and unimaginative aspect,
arrived punctually, and looking peevishly round at the crowded assembly,
directed all the windows to be opened, thus letting in a stream of drizzling
fog upon the heads of the unfortunates on that side of the room. This
caused a commotion and some expressions of disapproval, checked sternly
by the coroner, who said that with the influenza about again an
unventilated room was a deathtrap; that anybody who chose to object to
open windows had the obvious remedy of leaving the court, and further,
that if any disturbance was made he would clear the court.
;
VIDEO: Two Moose Trot Across Busy Slopes of Steamboat Unofficial Networks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saw a bear once on the slopes while skiing, but it was nothing compared to a couple moose, wow!
Isn’t that essentially the plot to most every Dracula film?
re: the Kucinich(sp-2) thing in American Conservative.
that is rather surprising, to find such a glowing send-up of Good Dennis in such a place(Dreher is one of my fave conservatives, altho he’s sort of wandered into the woods with his Orbanlove)…and the comments that follow are also, for the most part, positive.
I glean from those comments…language used, etc…that there may be a lot of people on that site who are homeless Sandernistas/non-woke-lefties.
of course, this potential “red/brown alliance” stuff gels pretty well with the findings of my long term, informal anthropological fieldwork out here in the sticks, too…
and Good Dennis has long been one of my heroes…UFO’s and all.
and re: “red/brown alliance”…that’s a terrible moniker..unless more people lived on dirt roads than do, today.
I’d call such an effort “The American Party” and be done with it, and let the policy and philosophy shine through the mud and gore that’s sure to be flung.(“mud and gore”= “brown and red”…see what i did there?—or, perhaps, sewer socialism(brown) and red blooded americana…idk, brainstorming while waiting to drive Youngest to town– a month to go before he’s a legal driver(shudder))
Dennis was in my living room in the early aughts at the afterparty for a political event. Everyone was well lubricated by the time he showed up with his handlers (there weren’t many – one or two maybe), and I was rather flattered that an actual presidential candidate would deign to come to a party held in a small rented apartment in the first place – it wasn’t exactly a ballroom at the Ritz. One of the revelers offered to help Dennis with an attitude adjustment if he cared to partake, and I remember that he graciously declined but did stick around to chat for a while. Very Presidential!
It was unidentified, it was flying & it was (presumably) an object. Until the MSM got hold of it.
Apparently all right to see them, now that we have sightings by the military?
Seems quite optimistic to believe that would actually change anything except at margins. Either
a) the data contradicts claims of the level of safety we’ve been told. In which case we are back to 2020 but with even less appetite for the other Non-Pharmaceutical interventions.
b) the data supports the level of safety we’ve been told and convinces relatively few (let’s say 5%) of those opposed to taking the vaccine. It’s always been a moving goal post. It used to be “oh well they’re all covered under the EUA”, then Pfizer got full FDA approval and then they said “oh you can’t trust FDA”.
RE: Leaning Skyscraper
This attempt to resolve initial bad foundation engineering with a process that exacerbates soil/foundation conditions is similar to the Seaside, FL collapse (only slower).
The lack of project management in the Millenium Tower rehab is beyond belief.
And what is going to prevent these new steel support pilings from rusting over time? Any surface coating applied to resist rust is likely to be compromised as they are driven down to bedrock.
Expect to see a ‘fire sale’ of reusable building elements and a controlled implosion in the future.
I wonder what happened with the owner in Millenium Tower who refused to pay his rather large property tax bill, which he reckoned was $0.00, which is what his dwelling was worth in the San Francisco real estate market.
Does the ability of the US to detect new cases “saturate” at some point, so that above a certain level of new infection, the measured levels reflect ‘surveillance system capacity’ rather than what is actually happening?
The Johns Hopkins COVID dashboard for US shows total cases by week doubling for the current week with respect to last week. I find it hard to believe that a system that was configured to handle the much lower rates of new cases in prior peaks and troughs will perform well if cases continue to double week over week.
Perhaps the apparent slowing of growth in the Water Cooler charts reflects detection/reporting system properties as much as actual changes in the pandemic trajectory.
little known fact about junior congressional staff, they are NOT well paid. Almost all of them live in crowded shared houses because housing is so expensive in the DC area. That means they are sharing common areas of their group houses. They come to work via public transportation. In other words, they live in a world where any airborne disease may easily be passed from one person to another. Omricon cases are spiking in DC. There is no way capitol hill is untouched.
Bondi v Byron Bay: The differing impact of COVID-19 on rents and property prices [Sydney Morning Herald]
But the good news is that there’s an NGO
to deal with the problem of people no longer able to afford housing due to Airbnb.
Some medieval music of Provence:
https://youtu.be/Sge237YCi9c
You have two managerial styles of the same economic doctrine, these are called republicans and democrats, post GFC should have informed everyone how the response to covid would be administered e.g. Boom and Bust or Bumpy Road don’t let a wheel fall off on the journey or you’ll have to pay for it …
And remember the faithful are always rewarded in the end.
Too put it another way … is everything the IMF now – ???? – where research is good but administration has its own agendas in implementing what the research informs.
“Scientist GM has long been worried about brain/neurological damage”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-finland-long-covid-idUSKBN2JH14W
Long COVID could become Finland’s largest chronic disease, warns minister
Cat on shower wall has a vulture look… ‘you’re looking just about ripe enough…
It seems to me that a way to at least not add to the education chaos in NYC and perhaps other omicron burn-barrels would be to just Stop The Meter.
Declare that all schooling is just Stopped for the entire academic year, and that schooling will begin again at the same grade level it was stopped at when it is truly safe to start it all up again. That way, all the One Million Children will still be age-together and will still be able to progress normally through the grades once the Education Conveyor Belt is restarted.
Of course that would require subsidised full-pay-equivalent payments to all the non-working school personell till it is safe to start the Education Conveyor Belt again. And that would require a governing regime we currently don’t have.
Could a united New York City apply certain Global Guerillas methods against the Federal Government so effectively as to torture the Federal Government into giving all the school personell of New York City those survival-in-place subsidies I just suggested?
GOP “Entitlement Reform”: Will Disabled Vets Become the New Welfare Queens? Counterpunch
Tough love here, in a culture of leave no man behind might be hard for some people. Glad they called it like it is though.
It’s time for our entire society to call our military what it is… a cancer that is slowly sucking our country dry. Death by a thousand cuts. Seems to be cancer for the rest of the world, how many people have we killed in the Middle East in the previous decades, over a million?
I hear Texas is great place to move as a Vet, use FF revenue to fund lots of nice things for them – as Lambert would say a Two’fer …
re: for the sailing identified
Here is a black and white film of a four masted ship rounding Cape Horn in 1928. It’s actual footage and live narration of the process of getting the ship ready and the trip itself. Boring as hell as far as I care but it’s authentic footage:
https://youtu.be/ZLzBDhilDL0
I guess I’m conflicted on Gaugin as I don’t like how he took advantage of a culture’s version of hospitality while knowing that he had the pox, but many others did like British mariners in Tahiti, which I think was a big factor in the Bounty mutiny – not that that excuses the troublesome symbolist. Supposedly different standards back then but if you look at the huge amount of human trafficking that goes on today in Europe alone, which features mainly women & children & the fact that we are still pillaging resources from smaller fry, maybe as a whole we are no better.
I do know that Gaugin made for him a huge effort to try & keep his family together, by getting a straight job as a salesman selling newly invented tarpaulin to I think the Swedes, which unfortunately didn’t work out & he does appear to have loved his kids, which is perhaps best illustrated by his paintings of them when they were very young – maybe his son remembered those days & is why he stuck by him.
If a documentary based on an anthropological study on the culture of Palestine at the time of Jesus, that I saw a good while back was correct, it would have been very likely that Joseph if he actually existed would have been around 35 with Mary being about 14 & pregnant as soon as she was able with at that time a 1 in 3 chance of dying from childbirth – the hell of menstruation was apparently not a thing as females spent all of their time being pregnant. Men in their times I suppose & would we have been any different if we had been there with them ?
https://artsviewer.com/images/G/gauguin/1881-12.jpg
Gauguin was a horrible person from what little I know of him or project onto him after “Moon and Sixpence”. But if you have ever seen his paintings close up and drunk in their colors and forms, I believe you would agree that casting aside his art, based on his horrible actions and character, would be a mistake and a great loss.
Enjoyed that film & I think your conclusion is correct as a lot of artists were & presumably still are not very nice people. From what I know Van Gogh would be impossible to live with & but for him getting into Art would be long forgotten as a religious fundamentalist nutjob. Cezanne was nasty, Degas a misogynist as was Picasso, Caravaggio a pimp & a murderer & Benveneto Cellini was by todays standards a psychopathic serial killer.
A lot of good people as well my favourite being Pissarro the first great Jewish artist who but for him – & he was not wealthy, Van Gogh would have been laid to rest pretty much like Mozart in an unmarked paupers grave dosed with quicklime.