Janet and John Edit RNA – by Francis Turner

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Janet and John Edit RNA – by Francis Turner

A.k.a. John Ringo is a prophet and probably about as well appreciated as Cassandra and the various biblical prophets in their own country.

Mr Ringo did a speech/facebook post almost 10 years ago called “The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse”, which is depressing and which you should go read. I was reminded of that post when this UPI story popped up at Instapundit recently.

‘Universal’ coronavirus vaccine may protect against variants, common cold

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

An experimental COVID-19 vaccine could potentially provide universal protection against future COVID-19 variants as well as other coronaviruses — maybe even the ones responsible for the common cold.

…

This experimental vaccine takes another tack. Researchers genetically engineer E. coli bacteria, removing the parts that make people sick and adding the coronavirus spike protein target to the surface of the bacteria.

The bacteria are then killed off and injected into the person or animal, where the immune system recognizes it as an invader and mounts a defense. The bacteria itself prompts the immune response, rather than something produced by human cells.

“All that you need to do that is you take your bacteria, you grow it and then you inactivate it with a little bit of formaldehyde, and that’s your vaccine,” Zeichner said.

Genetically editing E.Coli is something I know a fair amount about because about 20 years ago that’s what the startup I was working for was doing. We modified the bacterium so that it created interesting enzymes that could be used to create drug pre-cursors and the like. If we’d known anything about viruses and the need to create vaccines we could have created this one just as easily. At the time it was a moderately fiddly process to get the modified DNA to work, our scientists were exceptionally able and got the process working most of the time. These days it’s something that can be done by a moderately competent lab tech with 95% reliability. More to the point the equipment needed to do the whole thing now fits on a single lab bench and there’s no need for complicated sterile environments and the like.

The article mentions that a 1500 liter vat could make correctly modified e.coli very very cheaply and that is absolutely correct, all you need is a bit of warmth, water and some nutrients (sugars and minerals) and a week or so for the bacteria to reproduce to eat most of the nutrients (but not all, if they eat all then they die prematurely and that’s NOT GOOD for QA). You then filter the bacteria out using a large coffee filter (well OK a slightly better grade filter than that but not much), add the formaldehyde to kill them quickly and bottle the result which you then store in the fridge. You could, almost as easily, create a continuous process that pulled out liters of concentrated bacteria every hour at one end while adding new nutrient at the other. Once you had this going the cost of the process would be similar to the cost of brewed beer (i.e. well under $0.10/liter in bulk and you’d be able to make several doses (10? more?) per liter so the raw cost per dose would be under a cent) and the cost of packaging and distribution would be greater by orders of magnitude than the cost of making the vaccine.

Assuming the vaccination bit works, this really is trivial to produce in bulk with today’s technology and given that killed whole-cell vaccines have been a thing for a century or so we know that it’s going to be safe (as long as you actually kill all the bacteria – see the Cutter incident with the Salk polio vaccine). In fact if you copy this for other viral families then this will allow us to create vaccines for most viral diseases. You just need to find the common bit in the viral family to express on the E.Coli outer membrane and the DNA needed to get E.Coli to reproduce with that change. Given that the E.Coli genome is one of the best known to science once the scientific research that explains how to create the Coronavirus spike protein has been published any halfway competent PhD student will be able to modify it to see how effective it is for some other viral disease.

In a decade or so, presuming this and/or some similar efforts work, I would therefore expect that most people will be vaccinated against most know viral diseases (from Ebola and Wuflu down to the cold) and the cost will be something like $1 per person for the lot.

That’s the good news.

But Mr Ringo was predicting bad things, and so do I or at least I want to warn about the possibility of bad things. So let’s think how things could go wrong.

There’s the obvious failure to properly kill the bacteria. Now, unlike injecting live polio, injecting live E.Coli probably isn’t going to lead to death, but it’s not a good thing and especially when we get to the point that the immunizations are given to children it’s likely to cause serious side-effects. It could also result in the GM strain getting out into wild where it could mix and mutate with other produce interesting hybrids.

This won’t necessarily be a problem in the developed world because the QA processes in place should catch this kind of failure before the vaccines get distributed, but in other parts of the world that is not necessarily the case and once a hybrid strain gets out it can (will) spread worldwide. Note that both the Russian and Chinese wuflu vaccines have been notably less effective than the four western ones and one wonders how much of that is due to QA not catching errors like the one in the US where some morons mixed the up AZ & J&J vaccine ingredients and thereby trashed several million doses.

But then that kind of accidental error is not the real issue – the real issue is a deliberate different modification of E.Coli. Recall that some E.Coli strains are a normal part of the microbiome in your digestive tract. The question to ask is not, how can this vaccine effort go wrong? but rather, what have Chicom/Russian/other research facilities already done to modify E.Coli? and what happens when those E.Coli are released? Someone who brought in a vial of live modified E.Coli stuck them in a 100l tank with the right heat/nutrients and then caused the output of that to be spread in the misters of various supermarkets could cause a lot of fun. Precisely what would depend on the genetic modifications, but while zombification probably wouldn’t be one, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

As I know from my own former career, it’s not too hard to create E.Coli that produces pretty much any enzyme you want, and quite possibly any number of non enzymatic chemicals. So you get this E.Coli living in your stomach and it produces some kind of slow acting poison or something that (say) converted vitamin A to something useless. Then you and everyone else exposed would gradually go blind. Figuring out that this was caused by a mutant E.Coli would be a pretty long term project and in the mean time you have thousands of people who need intravenous injections of Vitamin A.

That’s the subtle attack, but you could go for the less subtle version. If, for example, the Chicoms really wanted to get rid of the Uighurs the right e.coli distributed in the rations could do the trick nicely. As John Ringo notes, if done correctly, it could attack something that Uighurs are genetically susceptible to but Han Chinese are not.

But then there’s the problem of evolution and the related problem of accidental release of it where it wasn’t meant to be released. E.Coli is a remarkably adaptive bacterium and the targeted bioweapon is likely to evolve to one that is less targeted. So once it’s wiped out most of the Uighurs it might evolve to wipe out lots of other humans too. And this assumes that the developers of the mutant E.Coli got the genetic susceptibility right in the first place which is likely not as easy as the developers of such a mutation might hope for. What this means is that if someone develops a mutant poisonous E.Coli as a weapon it is likely to spread widely far beyond the target population. (See also rumors about the origin of Wuflu and note how THAT bug has mutated in the last year)

The final problem is what happens in another 20 years when the Moore’s law improvements to Genetic Engineering take the current lab bench sized equipment and turn it into something the size of a food processor. At this point creating your own strain of E.Coli is the sort of thing high-school students do as a final year project. And this is where John Ringo’s warning really hits home, because now we see the pretty much inevitable release of thousands of GE strains of E.Coli into the wide world where they can mix with each other and more normal strains to produce who knows what. Fun times.

The only good news is that the techniques that have led to the current Wuflu vaccines can be used just as easily to counter all the plots of the mad mullahs and other would be killers and that, as with technology in general, there are a lot more smart people on the good (or at least the “don’t want to kill everyone”) side than on the genocide.

*Francis asked I add this link:


Brazil rejects Sputnik V vaccine, says it’s tainted with replicating cold virus. – SAH*

196 thoughts on “Janet and John Edit RNA – by Francis Turner”

  1. Two things spring to mind. One, was someone I knew who took a class required to be allowed to carry firearms (beyond hunting, etc. and yes, carry – open or concealed) related the instructor’s line, “It is your own person nuclear bomb. If you ever use it, the world will change and it will NEVER be the way it was before.” And the “gene machine” was some time before I heard that…

    The other, was that not long after the events of 9/11, a small gvroup looked into how hard it would be to make a bioweapon. Admittedly crude, but crude is ‘good enough’ (bad enough). Effective beats polish. They concluded… nearly two decades ago, that a small, determined group that had some clue could spend less than the cost a new car and a few months and have a seriously nasty thing to inflict upon the world.

    And that was 20 years ago.

    Increasingly I wonder if the concern about nuclear attack will become a bit of quaint history — with the excaption that it will be considered that a thermonuclear cleansing of bioweapon sites in called for.

    [Also: WTH is going on with the stupid half-line horror WP anti-editor? I know it’s NOT just me on my Linuix box with Vivaldi… but oddly the Andropid stuff still wasn’t screwed up… last I tried.]

      1. Sadly or happily, I don’t have much interest or ability in the life sciences.

        And my chemistry skills aren’t too great either.

        🙂

        1. I ought to introduce you to a dear friend of mine. Who has to occasionally remind his coworkers that “I choose to use my powers for Good, not Evil.” (I fully agree with him that if Force-choking ever became an option, there would be a LOT less congestion on the roads and much better driving after, oh, about a week or so.)

            1. ‘Tis all about the proper tool, and the proper angle of application. Easy peasy.

            2. Doing it while they’re spinning takes a whole ‘nother level of skill, though. 😛

                1. Well, it’ll take a generation or so, but it is a Disney property, so I expect a Broadway Musical version at some point.

                2. “Conan, the Musical” is on YouTube… Also, “Opera, Done by Animals.”

                  1. Opera By Animals is nothing new. My dad’s dog used to howl arias to accompany the harmonica.

                    1. Our cats howled with the harmonica too. I was trying to learn. They didn’t appreciate my efforts. I’d practice, I swear, they’d come from wherever to complain.

              2. Like removing a deuce and a half tire on the run. 🙂 (Duck Dynasty fans know Uncle Si claims this happened to him in Viet Nam.)

              3. Simpler, by far, to simply block the fuel injector.

                There are other, less innocuous points of failure.
                ~

      3. If you want nightmares look into how often biohazard 4 containment failures have been reported. Yes. Reported (and you know if the failure can avoid attention, it will not be.)

        I had an Auntie who worked in a level 3. I stayed with her the summer she took a year off and went to work at Burger King to save her sanity.

        Interesting times.

        1. went to work at Burger King to save her sanity.

          –
          Straight from the Level 3 bio-lab? 😛

          That might explain a few things…

          1. No, she went back and ended up V.P. of the biotech firm. But… that work is dead scary. She wanted something she could do with all her brain turned off.

    2. With respect to the Word Press (Delenda Est) issues, I am not seeing it on my machines. Running Pale Moon on two flavors of Slackware, one standard release, the other bleeding edge (Slackware-Current). I do not have a WP account.

      No resizeable edit box (though a day or two ago, I saw a scroll bar show up on a WP blog comment-window on the Current machine. OTOH, that one is a moving target and has peculiar quirks as various programs/libraries/kernels get updated. OTOH, it’s set up so that I can run WSJT-X and close relatives, like JS8Call. (Once I have things set up to use. Soon, I hope.)

      1. A useful work-around for the mini-box is to open a Notebook (if using Windows; for other Operating Systems substitute local equivalent) i which to compose your comment, the Copy/Paste it into the comment window.

        This also has the benefit of preserving your comment if (when) WP (may it Delenda Est) inevitably crashes or otherwise fails to accept your comment.

        More easily done if you are running multiple screens, but once you get accustomed to the process it isn’t too tedious.
        ~

  2. Mind you, all the usual suspects will start screaming how Big Pharma will never allow it because it would ruin their Evil Monopoly on vaccines. (A more creative bunch would suggest BP is already using the process to make vaccine, but isn’t telling anyone so they can continue to rake in obscene profits).
    Which means “reasonable people,” will consign the concept to the, “100 gallon per mile miracle carburetor,” bin, which isn’t useful, either.
    Sigh.*

    1. Big Pharma messes about with gain-of-function research in totalitarian states with a habit of using human beings as lab rats. See also Dr. “Mengele” Fauci.

      So, no.

      Perhaps if we called it Fascist-Commie-Aristo Pharma we could get past the mental road blocks?

      I value pharmaceutical R&D but there’s a kind of Gresham’s Law in effect here: we cannot rely on the old America playbook anymore.

  3. > the sort of thing high-school students do as a final year project.

    Maybe 20 years ago, Cuba was buying a ton of biological hardware, most of it used, from Europe. Fidel said that Cuba simply didn’t have the natural resources to be a competitive country as far as industry, but the cost of biological research was relatively small and was within the capacity of Cuba to do. He promised all sorts of things from Cuban biolabs… and then the whole thing went away, at least as far as American news of it.

    Fidel’s reasoning and plans seemed sound to me. I’ve often wondered if it was just another Cuban flash in the pan, or if they have labs tucked away here and there busily working on stuff.

    1. This is the country that was going to develop apartment-sized dairy cattle, and encourage people to grow grass in dresser drawers (!) in order to feed the cows and thus solve the lack of milk. I’d say 60% flash in the pan and 40% “be concerned about chemical shipments from Venezuela and North Korea.”

        2. Didn’t take me a LONG time to get it, but there was a definite “Huh?” 😛

        4. India has cows that live in apartments. The city dairy farmers were given modern houses or apartment houses, to improve the lot of the poor; and they decided the best use for them was as air-conditioned barns. So they knocked down any walls they felt like, keep the cows happy at night, and then still graze them various places during the day, while the farmers live in their old-style houses/huts.

          The barns/apartments are beautiful and clean, by all accounts. Just not carpeted, for obvious reasons.

    1. That is a solved problem: Make the tech as cheap and available as possible.

      It sounds counterintuitive to the usual narratives. Doesn’t that put world ending ability in the hands of every random psychopath? Well, yes, but the usual narrative was deluding itself about the ability to keep the tech out of those hands. Especially when the smartest of those psychopaths are probably already working in government biolabs.

      The reason why this works is because it means every person who has the inclination and ability to build defenses will also have the means. Defense is so hard that it needs every advantage it can get, and this is a field where 1,000x or 10,000x effective individuals exist, so getting one of those on your side is worth almost any number of average-competents on either side.

      1. THIS. It’s exactly the same for cyber-security. Openness as opposed to security via obscurity is almost always better – although I’d say the Dan Kaminsky DNS attack probably did warrant the responsible disclosure he did rather than just shouting it out to the world

      2. > Make the tech as cheap and available as possible.

        Never. Not as long as the Fed can horn in on it.

        That’s basically what has happened with the “designer drug” stuff. Jackleg chemists and kitchen-table labs, cooking up stuff that made them high. The DEA countered by restricting sales of some chemicals used in their processes. Jacklegs synthesized those and kept on truckin’. And the cycle has gone to the point of absurdity as the DEA keeps trying to ban “precursors”. And now it’s illegal to even possess certain chemicals which are designated as “precursors” to the “precursors” to the “precursors”, even if you’re using them for some perfectly legitimate purpose.

        Note the ATF does the same thing with explosives and propellants, other than black powder. If you want to make your own primers or Cordite (about the only nitro propellant that’s practical for DIY) you have to apply and pay for a license, which they may deny on any whim. If you’re a chemical hobbyist, note there is no lower limit for those controlled compounds, even if you’re working in milligram quantities.

        Feds grab control of anything they can, and defend their feoffs viciously.

        1. I didn’t say what was likely to happen I was talking about how one would go about solving it.

          I am well aware that the solution imposed on the world will be a madman’s dream of how to make the perfect setup for disaster.

  5. The cynical part of me says that maybe that’s why the non-education system: one simply has to be able to read and do math to follow the directions to end the world.

    The even more cynical part notes that someone who can muddle through will make a tiktok and then all one needs is following verbal instructions.

    The more optimistic side is reminding me that God loves fools, drunkards, and the United States of America, and also Lord, what fools these mortals be, which observations taken together is probably as good a reason as any why humanity still exists.

        1. The theme was Classic SF and there is a long history of after the apocalypse stories.

          This one, the apocalypse is more than even the most pessimistic of us is predicting.

  7. On the other hand perhaps this, The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup, world we’re creating isn’t the best of all worlds.

      1. I want to go home, too, but the enemy stole it and now we have to fight to get it back.

          1. Joy and tragedy, maybe, or dark comedy. Little of each I’m guessing.

      1. Hrmmm… *MIGHT* be an issue with vivaldi-snapshot (what I prefer – the V snapshot is oft better and more stable than others ‘stable’ releases – and I get the email client, at long last).

        1. Konqueror on KDE Neon (Ubuntu). Still “half-line horror.” Plus on some blogs, there’s no “Post Comment” button until I hit the Tab key.

  8. The other thing that’s happened in our education system, in addition to the whole CRT crap, is the inability to separate government from people and to recognize that governments have nefarious goals that include harm to civilians in other countries. We have two or three generations who hold the naïve expectation that because they’re nice and would never consider that course of action, nobody else will either.

    It’s a dangerous blind spot and one that’s encouraged by the whole PC/anti-racist claptrap. It spills over into everything else. The reaction to WuFlu is a good indicator. Nobody wants to believe that the Chinese government would 1) deliberately manufacture WuFlu, and 2) accidentally on purpose release it into Wuhan and then encourage its spread to the rest of the world.

    One of the reasons I created and taught my course on genocide was to get students to see that these things do not happen by accident, or are they simply a confluence of events. They are deliberate actions taken to eliminate a segment of humanity. They are political actions taken by governments against civilians. That sort of action is unthinkable to most in the Western world. And that is what we’re up against.

    1. Did that genocide course die when you left academia? Is there a way to bring it to a larger audience? Seems useful.

      1. Vicki, yeah. I’m pretty sure nobody in my dept (small only 4 now) is going to teach it. But if you’re interested (or want to shake up somebody’s world) I used a book called “Genocide: An Introduction” by Adam Jones (no relation).

        1. when I was last in the German-speaking world, I got several books about “ancient peoples killing each other in gruesome ways for Reasons.” Apparent honor killings in the early Bronze Age, mass murders in the Neolithic . . . people trying to wipe out entire clan-lines . . . Some things seem to change only in terms of the tools used.

        2. Why not gather your old class materials, shuffle them into a book, and publish it yourself?

      1. As long as you keep in mind that the ‘T’ stands for ‘twaddle’. 😦

      2. Even after several years, I have a disconnect at least once a day, marveling that the Bureau of Land Management has turned from jackbooted thugs to outright terrorists…

          1. Ditto.

            BLM? What did government land managers do now? … Oh. Wait. …. Sigh

            CRT? I mean it is old tech, but why are Cathode Ray Tubes bad to teach about? … Oh. Wait. …. Sigh. With this one, my brain doesn’t connect with the “new” definition until I see it spelled out. Whatever the supposed context doesn’t make sense. Right now I know it about Critical Race Theory. But unless the topic is regularly that, in a week or so, I’ll forget, again.

            But then I pretty much need a translator for text speak, beyond basic (K for Okay, example) simple stuff. I know. Any teen or young adult is going to say “It is all simple!” … No it isn’t … And I was in acronym central tech … Get off the Lawn!

          2. Yes. Why does CRT come out as Cathode Ray Thugs?

            BLM had a dark place in my heart since I moved to Flyoverland. Well, a bit sooner. I think they were the ones who did the “controlled burn” that clobbered Bandelier National Monument. Adding the other group to that name didn’t change much, though the urban contingent isn’t as likely to show its face around here.

        2. After the Bundy ranch fiasco, nothing about BLM’s actions surprises me. Shocks and appalls, but not surprises.

  9. “At this point creating your own strain of E.Coli is the sort of thing high-school students do as a final year project.”

    It was my junior year, not my final year, and it was 25 years ago. It also wasn’t an all-in-one machine the size of a food processor or lab bench, the PCR device was powered by tea heaters driven by a first-gen Mac and the E. coli was fermented in bottles in an incubator the size of a dorm fridge.

    This tech, as well as things like chemical weapons, has been within reach of bad actors for decades.

  11. a) a germ is a gas is a nuke
    b) come to the genocide, we have cookies
    c) ability to control use of a technology within a territory is cultural. Not all cultures are capable of having scientific/engineering capabilities, and refrain from accidentally releasing designer germs, or giving arms to terrorists.
    d) access to technology by cultures can be controlled with the mass murder of populations
    e) calling Americans loud idiots is racist against American culture
    f) the only sane answer is working to wage and win the nuclear wars of the future
    g) says deranged American ultranationalist
    h) no matter who tomorrow’s enemy is, you can’t be credibly accused of racism for wanting to fight them if you establish that you want to kill people of every race for sufficiently trivial reasons
    i) once the standard of “if a policy could help Russia, it is because of Russian influence” was admitted, the metagame of the American foreign policy debate shifted to the advantage of xenocidal/omnicidal position
    j) you aren’t working for Qatar or Russia or China or… /if/ you want to erase Qatar and Russia and China …
    k) and Iran
    l) There are a lot of pieces to the apparatus of killing the rest of the world in future nuclear wars. Some of the pieces also serve sane objectives. Working on those pieces might be a good idea.

    😛

    1. >> “no matter who tomorrow’s enemy is, you can’t be credibly accused of racism for wanting to fight them if you establish that you want to kill people of every race for sufficiently trivial reasons”

      I feel like this one deserves to be a meme. “I’m not bigoted, I want to kill EVERYONE equally!”

      1. Been done.

        Master Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: “There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on n*ggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless.”

  12. …okay, I promise that if the vaccine I got turns me into a zombie then I will only eat your brains. I’m not going to eat your eyes.

    1. ^^ This ^^

      I just how vulnerable the cure is going to make us for the next accidental release?

    2. As long as you don’t start singing about it. (Shudder).

      Seriously, though, that was my favorite Coulton song until I discovered Still Alive.

      2. >> “As long as you don’t start singing about it. (Shudder).”

        This one’s worse:

        You’re welcome.

  14. It is well understood that every author is in need of a good editor.

    Just ask any publisher.
    ~

    1. “Editors are ghouls and cannibals.” – Dorothy Sayers (through Harriet Vane).
      Though I was an editor and my dietary habits were impeccable.

    3. From the CDC site:

      Adenoviruses have historically been a common cause of acute respiratory illness in military recruits, although the frequency has significantly decreased since the reinstitution in March 2011 of adenovirus vaccine administration.

      1. More:

        Vaccination
        Currently, there is no adenovirus vaccine available for the general public.

        A live, oral vaccine against adenovirus types 4 and 7 is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for U.S. military personnel ages 17 through 50 who may be at higher risk for infection from these two adenovirus types. The vaccine is recommended by the U.S. Department of Defense for military recruits entering basic training in order to prevent acute respiratory disease. It may also be recommended for other military personnel at high risk for adenovirus infection. For more information about the vaccine, see Adenovirus Vaccine Information Statement (VIS). https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/adenovirus.html

        1. From that link (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/adenovirus.html):

          Adenovirus vaccine
          Adenovirus vaccine is only available for United States military personnel. There is currently no adenovirus vaccine available to the general public.

          Adenovirus vaccine contains live adenovirus Type 4 and Type 7. It will prevent most illness caused by these two virus types.

          The vaccine comes as two tablets, taken orally (by mouth) at the same time. The tablets should be swallowed whole, not chewed or crushed.

          The vaccine is approved for military personnel 17 through 50 years of age. It is recommended by the Department of Defense for military recruits entering basic training. It may also be recommended for other military personnel at high risk for adenovirus infection.

          Adenovirus vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines.

        2. > no adenovirus vaccine available for the general public.

          A) “This is good stuff, we’re reserving it for the military and to hell with the citizenry.”

          B) “It’s an experiment, like when we were inoculating soldiers with syphilis and seeing how long it took to kill them.”

          I’m not seeing any win here.

          1. C) “Risks+costs(vaccine) = X. Most people have risk(disease) less than X. Recruits being suddenly crowded in with folks from all over with increased physiological demands have a risk(disease) greater than X. Vaccinate recruits.”

            I’m not asking you to believe it, but I can see it.

            1. The thing that strikes me is “not even approved with warnings for civilian Docs to prescribe.” I’m not an expert on this, but only maybe the Gulf-War Saddam-has-bio weapon-smallpox thing was in the same category? Are there a lot more vaccines only approved for mil yet routinely administered to all new recruits?

              I also note it says 2011 was when dosing recruits was restarted – I can’t find anything on when it was given before and why it was stopped. Also, “hmm.”

            2. see also: colleges, large sporting events, amusement parts, airports, and most of the District of Columbia.

              1. Mostly, I hope, less physically demanding than basic training.

                Though now that you mention DC, if they’re not giving it to the politicians that probably rules out (A).

    4. >> “…..THERE IS A FREAKIN’ D20 VIRUS FAMILY?!?!?”

      Hey, the d20 system is open license. There’s no legal reason viruses can’t use it. 😛

    1. I remember…
      I remember when those were just coming on-scene at gun shows…
      I remember drooling over them, then silently walking away with my head hung low, for being a mere “young adult” with a savings balance that I could get out in quarters and still be able to swim, could not afford them…
      I remember Dolph Lundgren facing down an alien drug dealer packing a Calico pistol (and when will WE get those exploding bullets?)

      Might be time to once again revisit my desire for a Calico…

    2. Someone did an upper for the Ingram M11/9 SMG that used a 9×50 Calico mag, back about a decade ago. I bought a mag to see if I could DIY my own upper, but the builder had to relocate the barrel centerline up to meet the Calico feed lips, which needed a custom bolt, and… I decided not to follow through with that.

  17. You know, reading things like this, knowing the current “vaccines” for COVID are (in the US, at least,) still under FDA review so we have NO FREAKIN’ CLUE what possible side effects (other than the happens almost immediately stuff) might be, those of us who have not gotten the vaccine for whatever reason are either going to look really silly in a couple years, or really smart.

    And depending on how bad the side effects might be, there might be so few of us left we’ll by default be the smartest ones around…
    (Not that I think the effects will be that bad, but…)

      1. Unfortunately I have a family member who is definitely Not OK with my hesitancy about the vaccine. He bugged me again about needing to get my appointment lined up ASAP in order to be fully vaccinated in time for InConJunction (the local sf convention, at which we have booths).

        If I were more confident in the QA, I’d be less uneasy. But there’s been just too much abuse of our trust this past year, and the family member in question just can’t seem to see that.

        It’s even more complicated by some bigger conventions already requiring proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID test, for admission. None of our big August ones have announced such a requirement, but if they do, the idea of “lie about having an appointment and then return with a fake vaccine card” becomes a lot more high stakes. It’s one thing to do it to mollify a family member who shuts me down every time I try to explain my rationale for hesitating, and it’s another to falsely present myself as vaccinated to convention security.

        And we need those conventions. Another family member has been spotting us money to stay afloat, but we really need to be out there making money again, for our own well-being if not for the financial issues.

        1. Are you able to take an antibody test? I don’t know what they’d be called officially, but some kind of test that would show whether you’ve already had it asymptomatically. Not everyone who is already immune would show up on an antibody test, but if you happen to be someone who would, that might satisfy convention security. (Though I doubt it would mollify the fears of your family member.)

            2. Wait, sorry… what don’t don’t they give in the US? It looks from the comment sequence (WPDE?) like you mean antibody testing, but last I checked Labcorp was still advertising antibody testing for $10 a pop and the Red Cross has been yelling about testing all their donations for months, so I think I have missed a step someplace. Did they stop?

              1. Not the ones that test with a greater ….. sensitivity?
                I know in England they were giving tests that showed if you’d had it within a year. Here it’s like 40k.

        2. > But there’s been just too much abuse of our trust this past year,

          “Oh, you’re just being paranoid, hurr hurr hurr…”

        1. Note a lot of the things against the vaccine sound borderline insane.
          I’ve simply reached the point that if the government wants me to do something I WILL NOT. It’s not that I don’t trust them, I absolutely trust them to hate me and want me dead.
          At this point, a revelation they’re all lizard beings who hate humanity would not only not sound crazy, it would be anti-climatic.

          1. I’m having a very similar feeling. I’m not an anti-vaxxer — when I got a potentially dirty cut, I got a tetanus shot. But that vaccine is tried and true — I’ve had it several times with no more trouble than a little soreness in that arm. But I do not like being pressured to take a vaccine that’s still experimental, that still hasn’t been approved for anything but emergency use. And the harder they push, the fishier everything feels.

            1. Same here; a tetanus booster used to be the normal thing with a dirty wound.

              I never wondered how that was supposed to work; it takes time for the immune system to work with a vaccine; if there was tetanus in the wound, wouldn’t it have an unbeatable head start?

              [clickety] Tetanus takes three days to three weeks to establish itself. Tetanus vaccines take “a couple of weeks” to act.

              “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Yogi.”

              Is this more ‘magic medicine’, like prescribing antibiotics for viral infections?

              1. No, tetanus shots work most of the time. But if you’re already having a weak immune system, then yes, you might get a bad case of tetanus before the vaccine starts working. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen and you don’t die if it does happen. Hopefully, you already had a tetanus shot at some point, and are just getting another shot as a booster. (Most people.)

                My dad did step on a rusty nail, a few years back, and his shot worked and he didn’t get tetanus. But he did get every other infection, and it even got to just about the gangrene point. So watch out for rusty nails, kids!

              2. If the initial dose takes 1.5 weeks, and the high end of infection incubation is twice that, it’s a “can’t hurt.”

                Plus, boosters might be faster.

                1. Boosters should be faster, if my amateur’s understanding of biology is anywhere close to right. An initial vaccine causes the body to start manufacturing antibodies, but first it has to create the relevant “blueprints” (whatever the biological term for that is). Whereas with a booster, the “blueprints” are already there, and the booster just causes the body to go “Hey, wait, are we being invaded by that particular thing again? Ramp up production on the anti-tetanus blueprint, stat!” I don’t know how long that takes, but it would surprise me if it was longer than a week, probably 3-4 days.

                  But I don’t know where to get numbers for that, so if I’m wrong I’ll have to rely on someone else to inform me of it.

    3. I saw a snippet a few days ago. One of the controlled tests of the not-vaccine was aborted (because it was “sooooo-gooooooood”) and the control group was given the mRNA shot.

      Sure fills one with faith in the process, said nobody ever.

      1. This actually fairly standard procedure in medical tests. If the results are very conclusive early on that the procedure/drug/device is highly effective, it is thought to be unethical to keep the controls getting a placebo.

        1. “Conclusive”. Now, *that’s* a debatable term. The elevated reports of adverse reactions (last I heard, the Q1 results matched about 10 years worth of cumulative historical reactions) and the strange outbreaks of Chinavirus illness among the freshly innoculated raise my level of suspicion a lot. And that’s not getting into what seems to be getting passed on to bystanders as part of the process.

          It might be effective, but effective at *what*?

        2. Like the drug approved for treating heart failure in blacks. The control group was doing so much worse that they couldn’t keep them on the placebo.

    4. i) Standard FDA process could be inappropriately stringent.
      ii) Vaccines have a special liability carve out in US law. Goes through a special court, and the feds pay the damages.
      iii) Vaguely recall that the first vaccine press release was timed for after the election. Either the execs didn’t want to throw it to Trump, or the Dems threatened them with penalties if they appeared to help Trump.

      Lot of work went into the election, involving a lot of people, and a great many breaches of trust.
      iv) The usual trusted indicators of competence in pharma execs are open to renewed skepticism. Same with usual trusted indicators for bureaucrats in the FDA.

      Pharma QA and FDA approval rest on statistical models, which will have some implicit assumptions about level of systemic fraud, competence of the people carrying out various tasks, etc. Why trust it, even if the FDA had appeared to approve it by the normal process? Why assume that the competence gap hitting elsewhere won’t hit Pharma QA for a novel process and expedited production?

    5. I’ve already had the actual disease. I’ll skip the “vaccine” until we have a better idea what it does long term.

      1. Yeah, same situation for us. I’ll wear a shield, or if the doctor’s office insists, a face-diaper, but not the not-vaccine. We stayed away from our close neighbors after they got their shots. Screwed-up knee made that dodge a bit easier.

      2. You’ve got natural immunity, so keep the Vitamin D up and you’re golden.

          1. Darnit!

            Where can I get off this ride? It’s not even fun anymore.

            1. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.

              Now the quote is about a different subject. But the point does apply; a well developed sense of humor and (not overdone!) cynicism make things far easier to bear.

              (also see the recent comments on the latest post; I left one that directly applies to you)

          2. But you must still wear the mask. Two of them, preferably.

            Geeze, do I feel old; I can remember when Democrats were outraged by anybody’s questioning of anybody’s patriotism.
            ~

    6. > NO FREAKIN’ CLUE

      It’s not in the interests of the FDA, the CDC, the manufacturers, or the Incumbent Administration to have a clue. Nobody has any personal or organizational liability, by law. And if a clue *did* surface, they would kill it if they could and deny it if they couldn’t.

      The ass-covering for this one started before they even got to work on “vaccines.”

  18. Also, it may just be harder to spread plagues than we realize. Just re-read Berton Roueche’s “A Man From Mexico,” on the last smallpox outbreak in New York City (1947). The first case had traveled from Mexico to NYC by bus, with multiple stops on the way, then spent five days in a Manhattan hotel before taking himself to Bellevue. (They didn’t realize he had smallpox; it took a while and a few more cases before they realized it). He and his wife only made one stroll up Fifth Avenue and only stopped in a couple of stores.
    One of the people who caught it in the hospital (he had been transferred out of Bellevue to another hospital) rode the bus to come back when he got sick.
    There were 12 cases, total, and two fatalities. Also a very enthusiastic vaccination campaign, which the Mayor pushed hard. Maybe we still got lucky.

      1. In 1947, a lot of people had already had smallpox vaccinations, including everyone who had been in the military during WWII. Heck, there were probably still some people who had had cowpox.

        So yeah, the entire US was a hard target at that point. Maybe some little kids.

  20. I’m going to leave this one up to God. It’s definitely above my pay grade.

  21. I think nature, including the nature of our immune systems, are more resilient than we give them credit for. I just finished pouring nuclear green snot (rather hot guacamole salsa) through my gut and my body has managed to turn it into raw materials and energy. Try doing that with our most clever engines!

    Biotech is very interesting to me, and I’m going to hold out hope that it is put to constructive use. You want nanotechnology? This is nanotechnology.

    I’d say that, on the contrary, the ONLY HOPE that any technology is put to creative use, rather than repurposed for destruction, is if it remains squarely in the hands of the hobbyists, on the small scale, unregulated wild west. Bureaucracy and vast hierarchical organizations have only just gotten a firm grip on the personal computer and the internet, which is why our computational world is turning dark (and turning to crap). Nuclear power was strangled in its cradle by people wringing their hands about imagined disasters, which ensure that the only use our uranium will ever be put to is to blow up our cities. (Yaay! Now we’re “safe”!) Contrast the “little red schoolhouse” where the first power reactors were planned out after the release from WWII to the Sakarov bombs in the 50s/60s. Look at what aircraft have been turned into once they were taken from individuals (by onerous regulations) and claimed by corporations and the state! Bombers and cattle-cars in the sky!

    There are any number of uses to which advanced biotechnology can be put. One that comes to mind is to engineer/breed algae to make biodiesel from solar energy. One problem with just about every current solar farm (and wind farm) has is that none of them are backed by reasonable battery capacity. They produce energy for about 1/3 of the day, then natural gas backing plants have to kick on and off to keep the lights on. (Or not, if you live in California). The inability to store the power makes whatever production capacity has been rolled out pretty much useless to hold up industrial civilization. But if we could (even though taking the efficiency hit of using chlorophyll) store the energy as a hydrocarbon fuel we wouldn’t even have to change out our engines for some anemic battery technology.

    I have a bit of a Promethean attitude: Mankind’s problem isn’t all the things that individuals might do with powerful tools. It’s the terrible inertia of a stagnant civilization when those tools have been taken from you, and used against you. I’d trust some random tinkerer in his hackerspace over and above the Beijing Institute of Genomics, or whatever “experts” our idiocracy can cook up.

    If there’s a future worth having, it’s going to be built in someones barn, not by a paranoid security-state.

    1. Modern solar cells convert light into electricity at more than 20% efficiency. Photosynthesis converts light into chemical energy at about 0.02% efficiency.

      What I want to see is an electric car with enough batteries to go about 150 miles, and a 25 KW gas-turbine APU for longer ranges.

  22. Thinking of all the SF stories about out of control biological experiments.

    Remembers reading The Hot Zone about a real life ebola outbreak in the US.

    Remembers 2014 when ebola made it to the US, and landlords were washing the blood down the drains with a garden hose.

    Yeah, I can see things going swimmingly.

  23. Going completely off topic … you recall those mysterious “attacks” on our embassy in Cuba, leaving diplomats ad staff complaining of “severe headaches, nausea, dizziness, and loss of hearing and memory”? Perhaps you even read that experts think it was probably die to radiofrequency energy, spurred by high-intensity microwave beams?

    About that:

    S investigating possible mysterious directed energy attack near White House
    CNN) —

    Federal agencies are investigating at least two possible incidents on US soil, including one near the White House in November of last year, that appear similar to mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms for dozens of US personnel abroad.

    Multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that while the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions on what happened, the fact that such an attack might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming.

    Defense officials briefed lawmakers on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on the matter earlier this month, including on the incident near the White House. That incident, which occurred near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, sickened one National Security Council official, according to multiple current and former US officials and sources familiar with the matter.

    In a separate 2019 episode, a White House official reported a similar attack while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb just outside Washington, GQ reported last year.

    Those sickened reported similar symptoms to CIA and State Department personnel impacted overseas, and officials quickly began to investigate the incident as a possible “Havana syndrome” attack. That name refers to unexplained symptoms that US personnel in Cuba began experiencing in late 2016 – a varying set of complaints that includes ear popping, vertigo, pounding headaches and nausea, sometimes accompanied by an unidentified “piercing directional noise.”

    Rumors have long swirled around Washington about similar incidents within the United States. While the recent episodes around Washington appear similar to the previous apparent attacks affecting diplomats, CIA officers and other US personnel serving in Cuba, Russia and China, investigators have not determined whether the puzzling incidents at home are connected to those that have occurred abroad or who may be behind them, sources tell CNN.

    Defense officials who briefed lawmakers said it was possible Russia was behind the attacks, but they did not have enough information to say for sure. Another former US official involved in the investigation at the time said China was also among the suspects.

    [SNIP]

    Another mystery surrounding “Havana syndrome” is how the US government is confronting the problem. Among those investigating the mysterious pattern of possible attacks are the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department.

    Near the end of the Trump administration, the Pentagon sought to take the lead out of perceived frustration that other agencies were not doing enough to address the issue.

    “I knew CIA and Department of State were not taking this sh*t seriously and we wanted to shame them into it by establishing our task force,” Chris Miller, who was acting defense secretary at the time, told CNN last week.

    Pentagon leaders set up the task force to track reports of such symptoms hitting Defense Department personnel overseas, an effort that Miller said was intended in part as a “bureaucratic power play” to force CIA and State to take the problem more seriously in their own personnel.

    Miller said he began to see reports of these mysterious symptoms as a higher priority in December, after interviewing an alleged victim with extensive combat experience.

    “When this officer came in and I knew his background and he explained in an extraordinarily detailed but more military style that I could understand, I was like this is actually for real,” Miller said. “This kid had been in combat a bunch and he knew.”
    [END EXCERPT]
    ~

    1. WTF?

      Make that: “US investigating possible mysterious directed energy attack near White House”

      Sheesh.
      ~

    2. RF stuff? That could be dealt with or mitigated by Faraday sheilding, for rooms/buildings – at least to a degrees. Outside is another matter. And if it’s NOT RF… I’ve seen at least speculation that ultrasound might be involved and it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility – even if the end result might be infrasound.

      2. You’d expect every Federal office of any importance would have a basic Faraday cage on the outer walls, ceiling, and, if needed, floor. It’s cheap enough, and it’s only tax money, after all.

        On the other hand, the bureaucrats couldn’t surf Fecesbook and Pornhub on their phones while ‘on the clock’, so maybe that’s a non-starter as far as security goes.

        1. That’s logical, the first. And all too hu.. bureaucrat,the second. I suspect retail building to Faraday cage their restrooms (perhap with a password wifi that only BigWigs get the PW for) will happen LONG before gov’t catches up.. or on.

          1. You know, that could be a profitable niche market for a small business – installing Faraday shielding in bathrooms.

            Of course, regulatory creep means most places would require a contractor’s license and various permits… but some businesses might be willing to buy anyway.

        2. ‘Tempest’? I remember something about that being a standard for RF/EMI protection back in the 80s/90s.

          But Faraday caging the office would mean cell phones don’t work, and we can’t have that.

    3. It is the new iPhones.

      5G specifications were written to enable the RF side of the attack.

      PRC agents of influence have been carefully directing US Federal research in RF bioeffects away from uncovering non-thermal impact of certain radio frequencies.

        1. I actually cut things off before I went too deep into panic mongering and unreasonable remedies.

          Basically, between having the paranoia of a counter intel hobbyist, and someone a couple years ago giving me trouble for only knowing about the thermal model of RF bio-effects, I am a little equipped to come up with clever fraud here.

          Reason to be sure this isn’t correct is related to the FBI’s incompetence at the Hurricane Crossfire frame job.

          The PRC’s totalitarian bureaucracy has issues managing technical programs.

          PRC would not only need to develop the weapon, but understand the technical area well enough to reliably direct people away from discovering it. I could be wrong, but it seems rather improbable.

          I’m hugely skeptical of Big Tech, and think push back on smart phones, and on 5G/6G is probably a good idea. However, trying to profit from lying is bad idea, even when it seems like it might work in my favor.

  25. Here’s a post idea for Mrs. Hoyt when she needs a break: When an easy begins with “I am referencing this Thing which is worth reading in its entirety” how many stop reading and go pick up the Thing? I bet it is most of the Huns and Hoydens.

  27. Grrr. WordPress! You will not stop me sharing cheering news!

    Flash mobs: we can do this to – for life and liberty and truth and beauty and virtue.

    RTWT at The Book worm Room blog at the post ” Europe, Liberty, and Danser Encore flashmobs”

    1. And here’s the one that makes you stand up and shout “Huzzah!”, at the Gar D’Est

      (wpde! And stupid touchscreen trying to turn Huzzah into Nissan. Grrr)

  28. Yet Another Off Topic:

    http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=46356

    TL;DR: project for three teams (Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive) to do a sample rewrite of the Constitution.

    P 2A: we reserve all the power to regulate like we want

    L 2A: shall not be infringed

    C 2A: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah not only do we love the sound of our own voice but we ultimately agree with the progressives.

  29. Yet Another Yet Another Off Topic: (of particular attention to Kathy Leicester)

    Stay the fuck away from Freedom Munitions remanufactured ammo. They had issues in the past of blowing up a couple guns, but that was years ago and nothing bad has been heard since. So I recently topped off my .357sig with their ammo because that was was available.

    Now out of nowhere I’m getting bizarre accuracy issues, and after yesterday’s range trip I finally clued in that there are distinct differences in the fireball from shot to shot.

    This is probably not a safety issue for my particular case: stupid manufacturers usually fail by loading .357 to warm 9mm levels, and worst case I can restrict that ammo to my .357 AR which will be much stronger than any pistol ever could be.

    That kind of variation in 9mm…….? *winces*

      1. At least the old Czechoslovak (I said it was old) .38 rounds I had just fouled worse than burning creosote-soaked wood in a house fireplace. Reeeeaaaalllly made me wonder what the stuff they made for the USSR was like!

    3. Pull the bullets, run the cases through the sizer die again, mix and weigh the salvaged powder, divide by number of cases, reapportion, reseat bullets.

      Even if their quality control wasn’t crap to start with, some commercial reloaders just assume every batch of powder is the same as the last one and don’t bother to chronograph when they open a new keg.

      Ordinarily you’d just throw the pulled powder away, but at 2Q21 prices, salvaging it makes sense.

        1. Equipment is easy. Skills… all you need is Dean Grennell’s “ABCs of Reloading.” The real one by Grennell, not the fake that came out later by someone else, using the same title.

          Grennell not only shows you the right way to do things, he also shows you the *wrong* way, or at least the more common ones, how to avoid them, and how to fix them. Grennell assumes the reader is moderately intelligent and wants to learn how to do something; he then proceeds to tell them how to do it.

          It’s what I started with, back before there were BBSs, much less an Internet. (I was lucky; there are some not-great reloading books out there) There’s stuff that’s not in the book, but none of it is stuff you *need* to reload ammunition safely.

          If nothing else, “ABCs of Reloading” is an example of how to write a *good* instruction manual. And how often do you see that?!

          1. I plan to get into handloading Someday(tm), simply because I an interested in enough Odd calibers (both the cartridges, and Odd bullets in normal cartridges) to make it necessary. Likely also reloading depending on how the economics work out.

            But right now even if I was a master reloader, and had all the tools, and had the consumables, I don’t have anywhere I can run the process. I already have a number of projects just stuffed in the closet because executing is awkward at this time, and in the near future it won’t be.

            ‘course, enforced lack of progress doesn’t do much for my mood :-\

            1. > economics

              Grennell opens his book with a stone truth: “Reloading doesn’t save you money. It just lets you shoot more for the same amount of money you were going to spend anyway.”

              Grennell also ran an SF fanzine and sold a few SF short stories as well as being editor of Gun World for three decades. Interesting character; less SF and more guns than H. Beam Piper, but the same SF/gunhead type.

  30. Two probably off-topic, and not related questions. (Not even questions, really.)

    1. Does anyone know what’s going on in India? I’m hearing that they’ve really having the covid hit hard (though still less than 1% death rate). How much of a mask mandate are they following?

    2. There’s this person I follow on FB who’s been really Covid adverse (he keeps putting up “Journals of a Plague Year). A couple of weeks ago, he was encouraging people to get the vaccine, saying that he and his wife had it weeks before, and it was really freeing. Then two days after he posted that, his wife was in the hospital, in serious condition. I hope that she comes out of this well, and soon, but part of me can’t help wondering if the vaccine contributed to her problem.

    1. Re.1 – nothing solid. Some sources claim that because India was so generous with anti-virals last year, which kept numbers of infections down, they now have a resistant strain. I have a feeling that it’s something else, perhaps low food supplies or a bad influenza or other problems that have weakened a lot of the population, and this is the result. That is, if it really is as bad as claimed, which . . . I cannot get decent numbers. They are all over the place, from “500,000 cases per day” to “500,000 deaths per day” [really? YGTBSM] to “once you get away from the cities it’s not that lethal” but no numbers.

      1. OK, found some moderately trustworthy numbers – India is having the same death rate as other countries – around one percent for all sick patients, higher in those with underlying conditions, lower in non-overweight, non-diabetic, young people. The total number of sick is high, because the population is high and very cramped in the major urban areas. But the percentages are the same as the global average. So it’s a media thing, beating up on India.

        1. “So it’s a media thing, beating up on India.”

          Gee, that’s hard to believe. Oh wait! From the Washington Pissed:

          Modi’s pandemic choice: Protect his image or protect India. He chose himself.
          … wave by January. Then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government abandoned its caution and, in a series…
          Sumit Ganguly · Apr 28, 2021

          In India’s devastating coronavirus surge, anger at Modi grows
          …agricultural market, has been a Modi supporter for years. He thought Modi handled the first wave of the …
          Joanna Slater and Niha Masih · Asia · Apr 29, 2021

          India cases up as scientists appeal to Modi to release data
          …Indian scientists appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to publicly release virus data that would allow …
          · Apr 30, 2021

          Will voters hold Modi to account for India’s covid-19 crisis? Don’t bet on it.
          …polling suggests that Modi’s popularity was hardly dented by those events. Modi’s control of information…
          Milan Vaishnav · Global Opinions · Apr 30, 2021

          Modi’s party loses key state election amid pandemic vote; India sees record deaths
          … for the surge in cases. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held several massive campaign rallies in the past…
          Niha Masih · Asia · May 2, 2021

          Oh gee, I think I sense a pattern.
          ~

      2. OK, so I got some decent numbers and percentages. India has a very large population, so when 1% of the population falls ill and dies, the raw numbers look terrifying. But the overall percentage of the diagnosed population is the same for India as for most of the world – less than 1% of those under age 65 and without underlying health conditions die. Those with diabetes, overweight, low Vitamin D, COPD, et al have a higher percentage of people dying. The total number looks scary, because the total population is large. The percentages that seem probably all extrapolate to the same pattern as the rest of the world. (which is amazing, given the conditions in the big cities . . . )

        2. One % of India’s population would be over 13 million people.
          I just watched the end of a golf tournament and the MSM news came on immediately. Covid in India was front and center. Not much context in the story, just panic pictures like when we locked down for 2 weeks to flatten the curve.

          2. It’s one percent of those who are diagnosed, not one percent of the population. I apologize for not being clearer.

  31. Our Hostess was talking the other day about the incidence rate of certain subcultures in her circles…..

    I’d just like to say that if I were a hedgefund manager and had the choice between that and doing the Wallstreet Swan Dive, I’d jump.

    2. I haven’t been paying close attention to the Gamestop saga lately, except to note that the share price has been bouncing around the 140-190 range for a good while. What’s the latest?

      1. Liquidity has been falling almost daily. All of the background mechanisms of the regulators are shifting to keep the explosion from taking out too much.

        Mare tricks of Shitadel & Friends have been figured out: from the earliest of using deep-ITM options to hide FTDs, to the more recent one of routing sell orders normally, but fulfilling buy orders through their own pools to make the buy pressure not appear on the market.

        In short (heh): eventually their can kicking methods will get too expensive and kill them, or a catalyst will kill them.

        1. >> “In short (heh): eventually their can kicking methods will get too expensive and kill them, or a catalyst will kill them.”

          Hmm… If they keep pushing it until they go bankrupt, does that get them out of buying back our shares? I’m not planning on getting rich from this, but I did put a substantial amount of money into it and I’d at least like to break even.

          1. No. They get liquidated, and when the assets run out it moves up the chain of brokers and other entities until either all the positions are closed, or the DTCC asks the Fed to turn on the printer.

          2. If only we could spank all the naked short sellers with the same stick.

            Hey, I can dream. 😦
            ———————————
            Wing: ”Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?”

            Miles: “Where I come from, someone’s head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”

  32. Your misters example is dead on – it is almost exactly how the Rajaneeshee cult tampered with salad bars in the 1980s – with salmonella – to depress voter turnout in a zoning board election, the largest successful bioterrorism attack known in the US, with over 750 cases of disease documented.

    2. Pikers. The City of Flint Water Service Center can show them how *professionals* roll…

  34. This,
    “The ones that don’t are usually the wealthy ones (it’s no accident the most strident lefties are pampered females) or those who are too smart to think their way to reality,”
    brought to mind…

    From the December 1972 article in Commentary, “The New Politics & the Democrats” by Penn Kemble and Josh Muravchik which examined the events from 1968 to 1972 which changed the Democratic Party. The “New Politics” movement is the part of the New Left that infiltrated and took over the Democratic Party.

    “The fact is, however, that the purpose of the McGovern quotas was not to make the convention more representative of the Democratic electorate as a whole, but to favor the affluent liberals within the party and to diminish the influence of its lower-middle and working-class constituents.

    Those who take up the vocation of politics, as Max Weber insisted, first must have an extraordinary amount of free time. Such time is readily available to the suburban housewives and the subsidized students who have provided so many second-level leaders and foot soldiers to the New-Politics movement—and who, in practice, are the “women” and the “young” singled out by the McGovern quotas.”

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