It’s All Relative

338 thoughts on “It’s All Relative”

1. It’s all relative.

   Thomas Sowell has two questions to ask when judging whether something is “good” or “bad”:
   – Compared to what?
   – At what cost?

   There’s a third question I’m not remembering right now, but those two are the critical ones here. The thing to remember is “cost” is not just money but what that money represents which is other good things we could have if we didn’t spend the cost on this particular “thing.”

   All too often people make the comparison to some ideal of perfection that never has and never will exist in a real world of scarce (in the economic sense that there’s never enough to satisfy everyone who wants it) resources. This leads inevitably to continual dissatisfaction and usually a demand for “them” (with “them” usually being “government”) to “do something” about it.

   And so here we are.

   1. cost is way more than money or goods, though even mental wellness and stress eventually affect both.

      1. Of course it is. Suicide and overdose deaths are way up, though. Demographically, excess deaths from those are quite a bit higher than even the inflated numbers of CoViD deaths for the under 60 cohorts.

         1. And it looks likely there will be more excess deaths if this keeps up.

            https://victorygirlsblog.com/covid-unvaxxed-teen-boy-denied-medical-treatment/

            1. The worst medical personnel I have encountered over the years have been female NPs. Not female nurses, or doctors, or dentists, but NPs. Don’t know why.

               It was a female NP who told me she was going to not refill my metformin prescription because I never had a blood test that showed a pre-diabetic A1C level. As she handed me the lab results from the tests she ordered that showed me with a pre-diabetic A1C level…

               Fired that practice 2 minutes later. Found a new doctor within a week.

               1. Conversely my best was a male NP who figured out our brainless doctor was treating me for pneumonia when in fact it was a raging auto immune attack.

                  1. Our female NP was once a medic in Vietnam. She’s done well by us over the years.

                  2. Our female NP has done well by us. But then, she got her experience as a medic in Vietnam.
                     I still smile at the memory of how she handled our son’s decision to stop taking his antibiotics because he felt better. (Yes, the strep came back). He swore the needle she used to give him his antibiotics shot hit bone….
                     (So far as I know, he’s followed the instructions on his prescriptions exactly ever since).

               2. There was actually a Tumblr post on that recently.

                  https://lhaewiel.tumblr.com/post/665780840850145280/mean-girls-all-grow-up-to-be-nurses-mean

                  As in, a lot of people want to be seen as helpers, yet have power over vulnerable people’s lives so that they can be cruel when they feel like it and suffer no consequences.

                  1. *Facepalms* Did not know that would drop the whole post in….

                     1. Glad it did, since tumblr refuses to speak to me.

                        And yeah, I’ve noticed the little tin gods in these positions that allow it. It’s also a problem with female prison guards.

                  2. That’s a mentality I think we’ve all seen far too much of, especially in the age of the Great COVID Moral Panic.

                     1. Grrrr of agreement.

                  3. :lightbulb:
                     
                     It’s the predators-go-where-prey-is thing.

                     Pedophiles go where they have power over children, that sort….

                     1. Exactly! See certain Boy Scout leaders, church leaders, etc. Ugh. Where there is power, there will be people who get into that profession to abuse it.

                  4. Thinking on it– this isn’t THAT unusual, it was a Known Thing for serial killers to go into medicine.

                     This stuff is a level down from the active serial killers– more in line with the folks who still get caught, say, sterilizing folks against their will, or swapping out their treatment for one that is morally objectionable to them.
                     (I’ve got suspicions about the two kids recently hospitalized by “accidentally” getting the adult COVID jab instead of the flu shot they went in for.)

                     1. Someone ought to get fired for that at the very least.

                        1. Now I pray the young sadist I knew growing up (he used to kill praying mantises in front of me because he knew I liked them, so I mean it when I say “sadist”) is not a 60-something doctor somewhere.

                           1. We can hope. Ugh.

                        2. Realized very late last night, it’s also fraud.

                           I don’t like doctors saying “I will not treat people who haven’t done X,” but it is open.

                           This was entering a contract for medical treatment under false pretenses– “I will not give needed treatment unless something unrelated is also done.”

                           1. Hence why there should be lawsuits.

                     2. “Thinking on it– this isn’t THAT unusual, it was a Known Thing for serial killers to go into medicine.”

                        “When a doctor turns to crime, Watson, he is the worst of criminals. He has knowledge, and he has nerve.” — Sherlock Holmes, who had some insight into the criminal mind…..

                  5. Ahh, tumblr. There’s a lot of crazy there but I’ve also found some conservatives there as well.

            2. Straight from the CDC and FDA
               VAERS COVID adverse events.png
               If this does not copy correctly I’ll try to find a link.

               1. Above graphic which would not paste properly is contained in a blog post on the subject by our good buddy Peter Grant. Article is worth a read all by its own self, but the graphic shows thousands of adverse reactions to the vaccines based by type from mild to serious to death.
                  https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/10/you-know-whats-next-dont-you.html

                  1. 

               2. Yeah, I checked a summary of that out. Brrrr….

               3. And, to my knowledge, does /not/ contain the case that personally persuaded me that I have zero cause to ever bow to coercion on this thing.

         2. Watching from ground zero the effect on K-12 kids is enough to make me want to punch walls. The psychological problems are ENORMOUS. Like “the elemetary school kids are drinking” and “the middle schoolers are cutting/suicidal and hiding it from adults” and “the high schoolers have gotten so good at hiding their issues from adults that sometimes they don’t even realize how upset they are until they explode.”

            No forgiveness.

            1. My daughter had a very hard time last year with all-remote schooling, as in she wouldn’t do her homework, wouldn’t participate in class, and her grades dropped from As to Ds.

               This year she’s back in school, albeit all masked, and she’s doing so much better. We talked about it the other day, and it turns out she’s an “antisocial extrovert” like me — happy to be around people, but not necessarily to talk to them.

               We were talking about popular/nerd and jock/wimp dichotomies, and how I got bullied a lot in 7th grade (nerd + wimp), and she said that at least it seemed to be harder for girls to bully each other when all the faces were hidden.

         3. at least one of the local “Covid” deaths is actually O.D.

   2. Sowell’s 3rd question is “What hard evidence do you have?”

   3. And I forgot to click the clicky thing.

2. I was over the Covidiocy by oh, April? May?

   –
   Of last year? ‘Cause that’s when I got over it.

   I always knew the masks were a lie. Arbitrary ‘6 foot’ distancing was bullshit. Making 50 people stand in line outside a store in the rain so they wouldn’t catch ‘Teh Dread COVID’ standing in the checkout lines was demented.

   And yet it went on, and on, and ON. And the more obviously delusional it became, the harder they pushed it. The louder they denounced any mention of the Emperor’s bare ass.

   Hell, they’re still denying what has been obvious since last summer — the Chinese made this thing in the Wuhan lab, and it got loose. I don’t know if the initial release was accidental, but the flying thousands of disease carriers all over the world was definitely deliberate. It was the most outrageous act of biological warfare in history, carried out by the Chinese communist party. And nobody has even scolded them for it.

   Fauxi, the NIH and CDC have been telling us different lies every week for a year and a half. How does nobody see that?
   ———————————
   A well written Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last year and a half.

   1. Yes. Of last year.

      1. Right after pacific princess when we knew the risk

         1. yep

         2. It’s interesting to remember the days when we discussed how certainly China was underplaying it because of the vast number of cell phones canceled.

            I wondered if they died of other causes.

            1. I still suspect that the death rate was high.Their population skews old, they have a lot of respiratory issues, and really poor health care. Remember, they reported the death rates to be essentially zero.

               1. That doesn’t preclude the CCP using the virus as a pretext for murdering people they want to get rid of and blaming the virus for it.

   2. BTW it’s 3 feet distancing in Europe. AGAIN if 6 feet were necessary, they’d ALL be dead.

      1. Or what you’ve been saying about the homeless. If this really was the Andromeda Strain, they’d have been dropping like flies. Instead, they barely noticed. Maybe because they spend so much time outdoors and are chock-full of vitamin D?

         1. Yep. And negatory on vitamin D. med professionals tell me these people are in the worst possible shape. Apparently some illegal drugs work against good vitamin levels.

            1. But at least they aren’t taking “Horse Dewormer!”

               *wanders off to find his eyes*

               1. My kids ate HORSE FOOD this morning!

                  ::holds up big box of rolled oats::

                  1. You know…… this makes perfect sense.

                     If you think food comes from the grocery store, with no concept of ingredients, then there is no relation between [human stuff] and [horse stuff].

                     Similar to how dihydrogen monoxide is used in NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS!!1!!!one!!!

                  2. LOL

                  3. The Lefties are big on eating rabbit food… 😛

                     1. Great! Rabbit is delicious.

         2. The homeless aren’t affected because their blood pH is off from drinking sterno.

         3. For many of them their BAC is probably high enough to kill off invading viruses.

            1. Remember how the German head doctor said that drinking a lot would tend to kill off Coof when it was still in people’s throats. Your homeless idea could be true.

               1. doubt it. Seriously. They catch EVERYTHING ELSE.

                  1. Don’t you know that Fauci’s Folly does not follow any of the rules that all other contagious diseases do?

      2. remember reading long multi-disease research that was ongoing into CCPLungRot and had some data of it that had “infected and not expressing” – 18 inches was considered safe by their numbers, and if “expressing”, 6 yards/meters was not enough space if inside, and the longer both were within the same building the further and less safe it became (like shutting everyone into their apartments, and one family has it)
         Outside it was negligible risk unless there was contact. (Indy at WW2 channel got it from being passed Tax papers by someone who turned out to have it)

         1. It’s respiratory cholera: stagnant air contaminated by a really sick person or persons who has been there long enough to fill it full of the infectious agent.

      3. It was always 3 feet everywhere, but in around March 2020 some bright spark either in the US or UK government thought “if 3 feet is good, 6 feet is even better!” And that is the sum total of the “scientific” justification for the 6-foot/2-meter rule.

         1. It’s been admitted to be the outcome of a science fair project like straws

            1. iirc some 13 yr old girl had a science fair setup saying 6 feet/2 meters

               1. yep

            2. I had heard the 6ft distance was a leftover (basically old wives tale) from back in the early 20th century. It was a rule of thumb with no data to establish it from the period of the 1918 flu and then applied into the 20s and 30s with respect to TB. Given how often TB seemed to spread in that period I’d say it did darn little even then. Although TB is SERIOUSLY communicable, with a far lower viral load needed for infection than many things.

               1. Uhm, tuberculosis is bacterial.

                  1. Indeed TB is bacterial, which is why it briefly went under control as we got effective anti bacterial but before it started mutating. But it’s transmission was primarily by sputum (thus all the spitting fines you used to see) either spit out or coughed into the air as droplets. The 1918 flu was a flu so a virus, again spread via droplets or general airborne (e.g. exhaled as moisture in the air). The size of the infectious agent matters far less than the droplets containing it as the droplets even in the finest form are several orders of magnitude greater in mass and volume. As far as I can tell no one actually did the physical studies to say this droplet size transmits this far. No money in that, so the old standard that had been handed down for over 100 years of 6ft was good enough.

               2. Yeah, TB is bacterial.

                  Big danger here is bacteria.

                  Virus, we can stop movement by quarantining travelers.

                  Bacteria, you could in theory create typhoid mary type carriers, ship them to the US, and clear out a bunch of people thanks to masking.

                  Universities have undergrad populations, and we are fortunate that the university masking is probably mostly spreading relatively benign skin bacteria.

         2. Rather in the same vein as Orwell’s “4 legs are good 2 legs are better”, methinks.

      4. Obviously 3 feet is effective in Europe because the lethality of Covid is inversely proportional to the subject’s Obedience to Government Almighty. Obviously.

         1. 1 Metre thank you 🙂 ~39 of those nasty english inch things… 3′ 3″ . Likely mainly due to different old wives (well nurse/doctors) tales. With a little bit of money and time the experiment ought to be relatively simple to get a certain distance for a certain size/mass of drop in still air. Does anyone do good old simple science any more or is everyone gone pure Aristotle and depending on experts? Never mind I know the answer the SJW/Tranzi love them some credentialed experts. Heck I bet with some ugly math (2nd or 3rd order differential equations) and some droplet shape assumptions (assume a spherical friction-less cat, no droplet) you could probably make a 1/2 decent model in the modern world that would run on Raspberry Pi and give you a good estimate in a couple minutes (minus coding).

   3. A lot of us see that Fauci is lying, none of us seem to have the pull to do something about the… unprintable man.

      1. Which is the thing when it comes to so much of this Covidiocy, the people pushing it like him are pretty much untouchable thanks to their status among the government and media types.

         1. Hence why Jan 6 has them so frothing, I’d bet – it showed they might be touchable after all.

      2. Fauci very clearly blatantly committed perjury in his congressional testimony. He won’t be prosecuted because his perjury was committed in furtherance of the Democratic Party line, and they are the ones who would have to prosecute him.

         1. I fear you are correct.

      3. Fauci really does fall into the “face I would never tire of slapping” category.

         1. I like the treecat solution.

            1. Repeated treecat slaps, with the claws out. 😀

      4. [has strange vision of someone 3-D printing themselves a Fauxi]

   4. 6 foot? Of course not. A good sneeze will propel those contaminated droplets 7 yards. And that’s farther than conversational distance. Normal speaking is about 3 foot. But none of that is of value when you don’t know the contagiousness of the pathogen. How many copies of the virus do you need to have before it establishes itself clinically in the body? And if it sticks to your clothing and doesn’t degrade, and just brushing your hands on your cloths is enough to get you, then wearing a mask won’t help YOU; although it might keep the sick person from infecting your garb.

   5. It’s well known that China has a serious demographic problem, one they inflicted upon themselves with that insane one child policy they decreed on their people late in the 20th century. An entire generation pruned to the bone, skewed heavily male, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of girl babies aborted. Having realized their error the powers that be over there are trying to rectify their mistake. While covering it all up of course.
      One of the ancillary effects of past screwups is that they are now top heavy with older folks who are by nature a drain on the economy, production, and health care systems.
      Coincidentally (all here are familiar with coincidence aren’t we) an enhanced disease that targets the old and infirm gets accidentally released to the public and the world.
      What an unfortunate happenstance indeed.
      Conspiracy theorist? Me? Heaven forfend! Just remarking on a few quite possibly unrelated facts.

   6. Heck, analysis of 1918 masking revealed, in *1920* (if not earlier) that nothing was gained, and the masks contributed to losses.

      1. The doctors running the studies were sure the masks helped, they just wanted to find out how much. They were surprised and dismayed by what the numbers showed, but honest enough to report the results accurately.

         Unlike way too many of the ‘scientists’ and ‘doctors’ we’ve got today.
         ———————————
         “Politics perverts science. Scientists are rewarded not for finding and reporting the truth, but for telling those in charge of doling out the money whatever they want to hear. Play the approved tune and you get government grants, you get consulting fees, you get published. Make the wrong waves, and you don’t. Such measures do not produce good science, or good scientists.”

         1. They tried saying people were Doing It Wrong first, and various other very familiar sounding dodges.

            It…didn’t work.

            Poor Kellogg ended up having to write out the face-saving “well, the theory was TOTALLY right, just humans can’t actually breath through anything thick enough to really stop stuff.”

            1. Know any smokers? Have them blow smoke through the mask for a dramatic visual demonstration of the ineffectiveness of masks.

               Bear in mind that smoke particles are much larger than virus-carrying particles. That’s why you can SEE the smoke.
               ———————————
               “When someone does a foolish thing, you should say it is a foolish thing. They may still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.”

               1. They switch over to “particles of spit” and start posting meme-photos of gleeking.

               2. And yes, they will still latch back on to needing a minimum of two layers with padding in the middle for masks, AFTER saying it’s really spit particles they’re worried about.

      2. There was Kellogg WH. Influenza: a study of measures adopted for the control of the epidemic. California State Board of Health, Special bulletin no. 31. Sacramento (CA): California State Printing Office; 1919 — which has been spun as masks being minimally effective, rather than utterly useless, and carefully ignores that the “people weren’t doing it right” or “bad masks” was inconsistent with medical personnel showing the same patterns if illness– and also stuff like this which was written in response to …well, I think the nurses Expressed Displeasure at the idea they were too dumb to mask “correctly” with their lives on the line, rather than masks didn’t work.

         https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18010229/

3. More and more around here, nobody is requiring masks and few are wearing them. Even the Postal Service notices about wearing masks in the building are being ignored or have been removed.

   We can win this. At least in Indiana. And I imagine if our governor ever tries to lock us down again, he’s going to be in for a big fat f****** surprise.

   1. My local Post Office still has the “must wear” signs up, but I went there today to pick up a postage-due package and while I was the only unmasked person in the office part (those using the PO boxes in that area weren’t masked but there are no employees out there), I didn’t even get a strange look.
      Of course here in Florida, who would they call to enforce their mandate?
      A lot of businesses have signs “encouraging” patrons to wear masks but not many are so encouraged.

      The only places that really enforce the mask wearing here are the health care providers – which I try hard to avoid.

      1. Tucson – sign in the Frys (Krogers) store window says no masks needed for fully vaccinated. Then they have announcements over the Muzak that they “encourage” even those to wear masks.

         I have had some dirty looks from other (maskless) people when I mutter GFY or GTH just a bit too loud…

   2. In Western Washington State (Seattle, king county, etc.) Your local library staff will call the cops on you if you show up without a mask and refused to put one on. Also they’re rolling out vaccine passports.

4. Even here, in the very blue coast, nobody’s requiring masking in stores although most of the workers are masked. At work most of us drop the masks once seated at the computer, and just occasionally put it on for show if we walk around.

   1. I keep a tumbler of water and coffee for that reason. Want to muzzle up, fine. In a small room with lots of people, I can deal with a spitshield. But in an 8ft cube where there are one of us per row, bull.

   2. Oregon has the mask mandate, though there’s a loose correlation between customer mask usage and the inclination of the clientele to virtue signal. I see considerably more compliance/submission at the Fred Meyer than at Home Desperate or the big independent grocery store. Some smaller businesses, the employees blow off the mandate along with the customers.

      I think OR-OSHA decided to stop trying to harrass/enforce out here. A lot of that was due to successful court challenges against their ability to collect fines without legislative approval. EOs don’t count in that case. It can take a fight, though.

   3. Same here in Massachusetts. Workers masked, customers in general NOT masked with 10-20% persisting in the masks. Signs saying masking preferred are in general gone.

   4. Most of the places in NH are maskless. The more blue or prog-soc the area is, the more likely they are to surrender their rights. Healthcare is an exception. They are still rigidly masked.

5. I have a sister who wore a mask, gloves, eye protection and a tea towel on her head last Christmas family party.

   But I’m crazy because I think there might have been some shenanigans last election.

   1. A tea towel? DEAR LORD.

      1. Religious fetishes.

      2. Beacuase she was afraid Covid would cling to her hair? I don’t know. She looked like an insane homeless drifter, and she was upset my mask wasn’t covering my nose, because I like to breathe, and see through glasses that aren’t fogged up. She wants to host Thanksgiving this year but is concerned “I’m still not vaccinated.” I told her I’d come to her house wearing a tea towel on my head so I’d be safe. She was not amused. I wish I got a picture of her crazy getup at the Christmas party, and I’d caption it with the words “CNN. Not even once.”

         1. The same people are the ones who also believe the climate alarmism that the same people pushing the CCP virus alarmism push. The textbook example of Lenin’s useful idiots.

      3. Yeah, I’m afraid to ask how one of those protects from Winnie the Flu…

   2. She’s safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal?

      1. but still not a hoopy frood

      2. Only if the tea towel covers her eyes…

   3. How are people that terrified even able to go out in public?

      1. Good question, and it’s a big thing about the masks as courtesy appeasement mindset. The people who would make that big of a deal out of it, whether out of fear or just from being a bully, aren’t going to stay appeased by this so why not just dispense with the theater already?

   4. Well, invisible people have to do something to appear solid….

   5. She’s a tea-toweltler?

      1. Bad Ox! Carp!

6. And another thing. Why is the Gabby Petito murder case still everywhere the news? Yeah, I know, it’s tragic and all, I get that, but there have been 2,000 more murders since then. Don’t any of those deserve some coverage? They are all just as dead. Of course, almost all of them were in Democrat-ruled cities where a dozen random murders just means it’s Thursday, but still.

   1. she was semi-famous and cute. Though the famous part is not really needed when they need a random thing to take the minds off other things they’d rather you not notice.

      1. I have been wondering whether it is also that it is a FLORIDA story.

         I suppose one good thing has come of the massive resources put into it – several other families have gained closure for their missing loved ones. A LOT of bodies were found and identified during the intensive searches.

         1. iirc she was finally found due to another ewetoober channel who noticed they drove past the van when editing.

            1. Yep. But they were still searching for the boyfriend. So some of the “unimportant” ones were in Grand Teton, and some in the Everglades.

               1. I think I saw the found a body and effects in Florida that are his. At least I think so because I’ve paid little attention to it (mostly glancing at the Insty/PJ/Twitchy coverage headlines)

                  1. They found a skeleton and last report identified it as the BF through dental records.
                     Here’s hoping they confirm that with DNA.
                     Not that I’m the suspicious sort or anything like that.

                     1. Here’s hoping they confirm that with DNA.
                        Not that I’m the suspicious sort or anything like that.

                        –
                        You too?

                        What would it take to the plant personal items, skull, and have the appropriate “dental records” provided?

                        Seems a bit weird that all the time searching the remains are found where they were searching suddenly.

                        Although news is reporting that the skull (etc) have been put into the hands of a forensic archeologist.

                        1. I heard the spot was flooded until the water went down just a few days ago. That would make stuff harder to find.

                           Also more likely to be found by alligators. Which apparently didn’t happen.

                           This has been a weird F’n case all the way around.

                           1. If not found by alligators (um, really?), in flooded area in Florida, what stripped the bones, in 5 weeks, leaving little else? They do not have piranha in Florida waterways. The invading constrictor snakes wouldn’t do this (swallow him whole, yes but the snake would still be there digesting him). Not saying it isn’t possible as I don’t know the Florida fauna. But … sounds fishy to me. Also grant the PTP isn’t telling everything. But skeleton remains is more specific than not easily identified remains.

                           2. Dropping a body in the swamps for the alligators and other critters to eat the body is a long time tradition of certain groups/”professions”.

                           3. There have been apocryphal stories about piranhas in the canals in Miami for decades.

   2. TheThe news is likely talking about Petito for the same reason it was talking about Jodi Arias when Gosnell’s trial was taking place.

   3. Because the presumed suspect is white.

      Meanwhile, some black school shooter was just released on his own recog.

      1. Addendum: the prime suspect has been found dead, apparently having died some time ago.

         #UPDATE: On October 21, 2021, a comparison of dental records confirmed that the human remains found at the T. Mabry Carlton, Jr. Memorial Reserve and Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park are those of Brian Laundrie. @FBITampa pic.twitter.com/ZnzbXiibTM

         — FBI Denver (@FBIDenver) October 21, 2021

         1. Suicide, would be my first guess. Saves the expense of trials and imprisonment, at least.

            1. Per another article I saw somewhere, didn’t sound like it; sounded more like someone hid a body, badly. But we’ll see.

7. I think the Covidiocy is fading here in Texas, although there are plenty of people still wearing masks, or even double-masking. A lot of employees in grocery and retail stores are still masking – which I can kind of understand. They’re dealing every day, all day long, with people, inside facilities.
   It is grimly amusing to me how much the media that I do listen to are pushing the Covid vaccine – they are almost frantically shrill about it. The mass media has basically been scaring the snot out of people now for almost two years, and that has got to have made a mark, mentally, on them.

   1. Yep. There are a lot of people who will be scarred over all this. Media has made everyone into enemies and threats. That is not a conducive environment

   2. there is a decent study showing all the plastic shields between customers and cashiers actually was worse than not having them. The disrupted airflow caused better spread with the things in place.

      1. Oh, oh, I just had a really fun idea pop up– the swirling air flow was part of what made that so bad, so why not switch to curtains?

         That would actually stop spit-drops, there are non-obnoxious disinfectant options, and compared to getting smacked in the head by the plexiglass they’re very reasonable!

         1. Hard to see the customer through curtains .
            I did last tax season reception last year behind the Magic Plexiglas Shield of Protection. And yes, I called it that in front of the customers.

   3. Oh my God yes. Every other ad I see now has to be a “get your shots now!” ad.

      Either showing how getting the shot will make you a glamorous twenty something, or how if you don’t, your children will be caught in the “three times the case rate from summer!” wave, or the “we’re all in this together!” or, lately, the ones with middle aged white women shaped like pyramids talking up how they almost died from covid, so you should get the vaccine right now!

      1. (Laughed at ‘shaped like pyramids”)

   4. In the employees’ cases it may be orders from corporate, which is the case with the overlords who I work for even on the supply chain side. No medical exceptions of course and you have to do it even if you got the jab, too. Thankfully compliance is getting a bit sporadic there outside the areas where we know the top management and HR mask police are watching.

      1. That describes the employees where I work part time (home improvement/building materials). You gotta wear a mask, no exceptions. After I clock out, I’ll sometimes come back in a couple minutes later to get stuff. No mask. Nobody so much as notices. Except, perhaps, 20-something customers, double-masked. But they look at everyone with deep suspicion.

   5. The regional health people are saying, “Numbers are down BUT don’t let your guard down/get the shot/booster/boosted booster, please mask indoors, it’s still scary out!! Shot, get the shot, please, get the shot!” I’m heartily tired of it.

      1. So am I – honestly, the more they bang on, and on and on – the more adamantly I am opposed to get the d*mned shot/booster, and to wear the d*mned face diaper.
         Besides – my daughter and I both had the Covid – and pneumonia to go with it, and were sick as dogs for more than three weeks. Wee Jamie, the Grandson Unit was thoroughly exposed, and escaped with a few days of the sniffles and a day of an elevated temperature.
         The necessity of putting masks on preschoolers and giving them the d*mned shot completely escapes me.

         1. THIS

         2. Putting skin bacteria in their lungs is necessary for damaging their lungs.

            Shot wastes immune system resources, to get them sick from something else.

            1. Also, apparently kids are testing borderline retarded in great numbers, who were born at the beginning of this crap. Because apparently faces and expressions area necessary thing for baby development.

               1. SIL’s grandson (my grand nephew?) is just over a year old. When Niece and Hubby took him to a store, he’d regularly freak out upon seeing masked creatures. The good news is that my niece decided that her manufacturing engineering job was going to kill her or make her go insane, so she’s now a full time stay at home mom.

                  Things worked out to pull that off. Both of them owned houses, and they sold those and bought the current place before prices spiked. Grandparents on both sides are helping, too. Combined with a good job for Hubby, and it’s encouraging. That state isn’t totally crazy, either.

               2. Oh yeah, grand-nephew’s favorite birthday present was the set of Doctor Seuss books we sent him. Odds are we’re going to have another Odd as he grows up.

                  1. Do we have a source on the testing results?

               3. Not surprised. There’s a whole year of kids who are effectively faceblind because of this. You have to see faces to be able to learn to differentiate between them. Oh shit. THAT is why this government is pushing the masks. It reinforces the faceless drone syndrome. That’s just f*ing evil.

                  1. The alienation from people wearing face diapers reminds me of the episodes when my hearing was kaput. Otosclerosis made me mostly deaf, and the second ear to get fixed had two complete failures until the third attempt.

                     I got by with unconscious lipreading; if I lost my hearing now, yikes! OTOH, there are a lot of rebels against the mask mandate (#Teamheadsonpikes). I try to smile at the other rebels when I can.

               4. I suppose that’s one way to boost the future Democrat voting demographic.

         3. Daughter just got her ears pierced.

            It was a A Big Deal, her FIRST really BIG GIRL trip with mommy, and JUST her– she was heart set on getting it in one place.

            How much did I want to make this work? I did the figuring on how long I could last and brought my mask, had the really pretty princess one she was excited to get a few weeks ago (gift), and was being Very Positive.

            ….that one had MASKS REQUIRED signs all over, was empty and dark. She kind of hid behind me and suggested we try “the other place.”

            Which had the doors wide open, was full of light and color, and had four or five folks go through while we were in there. There may have been signs…. taped so you couldn’t see them with the doors thrown outwards. 😀
            The happy checkout girl had figured out how to poof her mask out but really obviously didn’t like it, and we spent over a hundred bucks in there, very happily. (There was also Very Angry Checkout Girl who was apparently supposed to be off that day, but their new hire had ditched and you have to have two folks.)

            We’re finishing up, and she tugs on my coat.
            “MOM! She didn’t make us wear a mask.” Cashier Girl’s eyes go WIDE, look around to see if anyone else was in the place*, and I tap daughter on the head.
            “Not nice to call attention to stuff like that, hon. We had it— remember how nobody could taste anything?– but that’s called ‘putting someone on the spot.’ It’s very rude unless someone’s going to get hurt, OK?” Could almost SEE the cashier girl’s tension releasing.

            * Only a lady younger than I am, with her maybe three month old girl. The baby earring had fallen out, she’d swapped it with her own and wanted to know if she could buy another set of the starter earrings to replace it. Neither of them were masked.

8. I recall that you were entirely over the covid scare before I was.

   Because I recall talking to someone, and mentioned you as someone who was influencing me in a more skeptical direction, that I wasn’t entirely confident in you, and weighing you against some of the other influences, etc.

   And, we have no idea what is going on in any complete way.

   Phantom limb syndrome, etc. When you are missing expected information, your brain can fill it in, perhaps from memory, perhaps from whole cloth.

   And lock down prevents or minimizes a lot of incidental human contact. Well, we were getting a lot of information through the incidental contacts.

   Even if things were saner, that lack would be throwing into question rote assumptions of political certainty. etc.

   I spent about ten years, ending a couple years prior to the lockdown, mostly running on a minimum of human contact. Sometimes below what was necessary for sanity, sometimes a little above.

   Now? Level of contact drops, and I can see my sanity decrease, from the lack of “I don’t actively hate you” that I was getting in that contact. Makes my paranoia and social issues a bit worse.

   1. Hmmm… I’m not over the dreaded covid scare. I never had it. It’s relatively easy to recognize junk science if you understand numbers- and we’ve known the numbers from the very beginning. Even two weeks to flatten the curve- were it to have actually been two weeks- was nonsense. The dreaded covid is a virus- and a virus is going to do what a virus is going to do.

      Went to Cheesecake Factory in CNY today- the first retail establishment I’ve been in (aside from some local stores and Mennonite run businesses) where the employees were unmasked. Told the hostess it was nice to see unmasked smiling faces. She agreed. Masking is for slaves- not free people.

      I find the “safety precautions” at my dentist to be annoying. Dentists and dental techs have always been in people’s faces. Anyone know of any dental office that’s ever been accused of spreading infectious diseases before all the new state mandated safety features that will now never go away? I don’t.

      1. Think further back, to when we didn’t have any numbers yet– when it was racist to not go to Chinese New Year because avoiding risks of infection is hateful, or something.

         1. Even when we didn’t have “hard” numbers yet, we knew there was something out there. And I still think to this day- as I thought back then- there was a release of multiple deadly things (maybe virus, maybe bacteria) from the Wuhan lab at the same time. The actual Chinese government reaction that we saw was overboard even for Commies- welding people into buildings, hosing down the streets and spraying the air with disinfectants- (which surely will have a long term negative health effect on those who breathed it in…), We saw videos from China, Italy, and Iran of people walking along and collapsing, dead, in the street. Areas of Italy and Iran with large numbers of Chinese workers… IMHO, the immediate deadlier things acted too rapidly and burned themselves out before they could spread too far. There are a lot who think the long term effects of covid have yet to appear. And the long term effects of the vaccine seem to be starting to appear- but numbers are still fuzzy.

            We don’t know yet what we don’t know. But I suspect that there are going to be serious effects from the vaccine. Already anecdotal stories of increased infant deaths born from vaccinated mothers. If true- if- they- the powers that be- won’t be able to hide it. They’re not going to like what happens next.

            1. This.

            2. The Italians are having big demonstrations against vaccine passports. As in, shutting down ports.

            3. Had not considered that it might have been a more general leak of multiple infectious agents, but yeah, that would explain a lot. The early Chinese panic in particular was way above and beyond anything justified by Covid even at its worst.

               Beware of doing the same inflation as the Covid death stats, and globbing together every death WITH vaccine as being OF vaccine. Not to mention taking every rumor as factual: if it’s so deadly, where are the piles of bodies in the streets? (The two named sources for such rumors that I backtracked… one was a chiropractor, and the other didn’t exist.)

         2. ^^. This ^^

9. the Amish and Mennonites, who certainly are not and have not been noted for their trust in Gov’t and Mega-Healthcare, held one of their big religious shindigs, where everyone shares a cup of wine iirc in April 2020 (not sure what it was. easter or something else).
   WuFlu was lurking about (one or several in the community were sick, and they knew it, and didn’t care or take any precautions) and they got it spread fast and whadayaknow? they had about the same death rate, serious illness and non-symptomatic cases as EVERYONE Else, and better than many places that did every Fauxi thing that was supposed to mitigate it.

   1. In the beforetimes the reason we had to do all this stuff was not to prevent Fauci’s Folly, but to spread it out so that the medical system didn’t get overwhelmed.

      That went about as well as you’d expect.

      1. “Two weeks to flatten the curve so we don’t have people dying of other stuff because the ER is overwhelmed and two million will diiiiieeeee” because that’s what the curve would be if 1918 had 2020s population.

         1. We need to remember that all the people who love the lockdowns we’re calling people who were concerned about the virus racists. The time to panic was February and March of 2020 when we didn’t know. After Diamond Princess we knew and should have been moving forward but they had begun to panic when the tech bros and Gates’s UofW ghouls had put out their model

            That’s what really burns my a$$ about Fauci. He was wrong in the beginning middle and end all in different ways and he’s a lying f-ck on top of it

            1. Considering how many people died of AIDS due to how Fauci handled it and everyone who has died from the lockdowns, and food scarcity this induced in other countries, etc., his kill number must approach those of a communist dictator.

               1. The HCQ and Ivermectin scam was and is a complete disgrace. Am Thinker article today covered the numbers for US, UK, India, Sweden and posited a similar death rate to India. Assuming all the deaths were from not with would have yielded 600k fewer deaths in US with early TREATMENT with HCQ and Ivermectin. Anyone associated with discouraging early treatment and discouraging their use should be charged with accessory to murder.
                  Biden, Fauci and his gang have so much blood on their hands we should be able to see it from space.

                  1. Better that a million people should die than let OrangeManBad benefit!

                     1. Orangeman was a direct threat to the Swamp Monsters because his independent wealth, and disregard for anything like a political ‘career’; insulated him from their usual sources of leverage. Small wonder they tried bringing him down with a false dossier containing ridiculous accusations like “golden showers”, or the entire fraud, waste and abuse of the Russia hoax.

               2. What I find hard to understand is why Fauci is still in his position. He should have been fired after his first 2 or 3 major public screwups.

                  1. “fired” is a funny way of spelling “tried and executed for willful mass murder.” (#teamheadsonpikes.)

                  2. Fired. Out of a large cannon. Into a very thick wall.

         2. Yeah, and now the hospitals are flooded with people who have other major healthcare issues as a result of avoiding the hospitals/hospitals refusing to schedule “elective” visits due to covid concerns. Proof the government and the healthcare industry do NOT understand supply chains when applied to patients.

      2. 2 weeks to flatten . . . and allow Whitless The Wonder Stasi and Cuomo the Not Quite as Fredo did the Gran and Gramps killing

         1. Thought experiment: Cuomo is tried for the murder of tens of thousands of people, is found guilty and sentenced to death. Execution by steamroller. Date set for two weeks after the sentencing.

            “Two weeks to flatten the Cuomo”.

            1. raffle off being the driver

               1. Can I use the texturizer/compactor instead? Those six inch studs make it more fun!

                  1. the Sheepsfoot is also an option, though harder to clean

                     1. Bah. Good high pressure hose will wash that right off.

                        1. the crunchy bits require a higher pressure than usual

   2. And there must be something to that since the Faceplant Deboonkers have been throwing up their missing context warnings there!

      1. the context being “This may contain actual facts relevant to this situation that may make you distrust the narrative!”

         1. Yep. Can’t have the proles thinking for themselves after all so have to throw up the “Deboonked!” flag.

10. I follow TikTok videos. TikTok isn’t as sophisticated as Youtube or Facebook so the videos stay up for a few days before being taken down. I’ve seen video of thousands upon thousands of people marching in the streets of Rome, Munich, and Melbourne. The Australian videos are horrific. The Aussies are not taking this lying down, though the brutal cops are doing their best to beat them into submission.

    I saw one video where an Australian police dog refused to attack protestors. His handler jerked him up on his leash, and ordered him forward, and the dog kept refusing, and he finally turned around and attacked the cop. I’ve never seen anything remotely like this, and it made me cry for this brave dog, the spirit that made this animal refuse to obey.

    Good dog. Hold the line.

    1. Do you have a link to that vid? I’d like to see it.

       1. Hopefully this will work. Tiktok is a very strange platform.

          @tomopintar6

          #GoSpring #police #dogs #protest #rally #vaccine #covid19 #dogking #europa #viral

          ♬ Let’s go – Official Sound Studio

          1. Nope, that didn’t work. Sorry. Search for “dog won’t attack guy who is protesting the vaccine.”

             1. Too bad. They’ll probably euthanize the dog.

                1. Alas, I thought that too.

          2. The link works. Well not the link, but the embed.

             As for the cop…. “You get what you f***ing deserve”.

          3. Thank you.

             I can’t see the comments, so I don’t know, but watching the k-9’s behavior, I am wondering if that is his regular handler. From what I saw, the k-9 is focusing on uniform from the start and looks very confused. It’s like the uniform has no clue how to handle the k-9.

    2. Evil detecting dog trope. Somehow the dog always knows…

       1. One of the comments I saw is that the dog is basically trained to go after aggression. (and so the turning around would be, well–Hey! I found it!) Couldn’t tell you if it was true, but it kinda makes sense–why would you even bother training the dog to take down someone who’s just standing around? People are usually capable of that.

          1. It matches up. Dog looks confused because there is nothing on its IFF that registers as a legitimate target.

             Then the cop gets angry and hits the dog. TARGET ACQUIRED.

             1. A K-9 Cop hitting his animal? What in the actual Hell? Sounds like that dude was NOT the standard Handler or just a total idiot. As Ian noted they are trained to respond to aggression, the handler by providing the aggression just said “Bite Me”. I’ve known both police and military dog handlers. They love their animals probably as much or more than they love any spouses or children. That’s just beyond the pale something is truly fubar in that situation.

                1. Suspect the dog’s handler refused the duty, at which point some untrained cop grabbed the leash and said, “Well, I’ll do it!”

                   1. After all, how hard could it be?

                      1. I rattled the story off to my husband in very bare-bones degree.

                         Said “the dog was looking confused, but wouldn’t attack anybody, so the idiot in uniform hit him-”
                         “Oh, jeeze. Got his target!”

                         This is a guy that has NEVER worked close up with police dogs, just basically familiar with base security, mostly knows drug-dogs, and HE knows better than that!

                   2. Then the dumb idiot got what he deserved. And yeah it is quite possible the animal will be euthanized as “dangerous”. The dude that did that is bound for the 9th circle of hell of Dante got it right. Circle of traitors for him. If they took the animal from its usual handler I bet the handler is somewhere between livid and worried sick over his companion/fellow officer.

                2. > A K-9 Cop hitting his animal? What in the actual Hell?

                   Pops up in the news from time to time. Some of them view the dog as just a tool, like a nightstick or a taser. They applied for a K-9 position because it’s higher status and generally comes with a pay increase and/or expenses allotment.

    3. Hpoefully the Aussie patriots can beat the brutal cops into submission. Perhaps they can track down a few of the brutal thugs and leave their severed heads on pikes.

       1. They removed the guns, that leaves methods which are far less clean and civilized.

          1. Find a few of the Native australians to show you how to make and use hunting/war boomerangs if any still know how. Maybe a riot helmet would save your noggin from one of those things but maybe not. Hits on limbs are either massive bruises or broken bones. I think the aborigines also use an atlatl (spear thrower) like thing although that would be harder to hide the projectile and those are hard to learn.

             1. Alternatively: living in the world’s greatest biological weapons production facility should give some ideas.

                Waking up with a dismembered animal in your bed carries a somewhat different result when instead of a horse it is a jellyfish.

                1. Yeah good luck catching a box jelly and living to tell about it… but there are red backs (cousin of New englands Black widow but less reticent and far more common) and all sorts of poisonous snakes. I sometimes wonder what the heck the Author was thinking of when he chose Australia’s wild life. Apparently even the dopey Koala can be dangerous due to sharp claws if you manage to tick one off.

       2. #teamheadsonpikes! International.

          1. #TeamHadsonspikes! ANZAC

    4. I notice the protestors were completely non-violent. Can’t say the same about the thugs in uniform.

11. I went to my favorite West Seattle restaurant last night because I wanted to go have a meal before they make everyone show their Ausweisen next week. It was almost back to pre-pandemic levels of busy: every table was full but two, people were sitting side-by-side (maskless) at every seat at the bar. The seating island between the bar and the row of booths was empty, and they didn’t have the freestanding tables set up like they used to, but that’s about as far as social distancing went.

    I have half a mind to drive up and poke my nose in at the same time next Thursday and see if and by how much people are voting with their feet against the passport regime.

    1. Funny. The wife and I noticed the same thing last night. Our local was back to normal for the first time. We’d been going whenever it was open all through but last night it was crowded and lively.

12. This is why German bonds have negative interest rates and US bonds are still selling: We suck, but we suck less than everyone else and the money has to go SOMEWHERE.
    I had to have explained to me, so the super-short version for anyone else who doesn’t understand how negative interest rates could possibly work: This is for seriously large amounts of money that peons such as ourselves will never see. If you’ve got $100 millions in cash, you can’t just leave it in a savings account. Big money finance just doesn’t work that way. It has to go somewhere. If you don’t want it tied up in something illiquid (say a giant stock purchase – or savings account because the bank did something with it), you want to be sure you’ll get it back and when you will get it back. If you loan it to some corporation, there is some risk that you will not get it back or there will be delays. The surety of getting it back on time is what makes the negative interest rates work: You can PLAN for the (relatively) small interest “loss” and know you will get (most of) the principle back when expected without having to worry about bankruptcy debt restructuring, etc…
    The US sells a YUGE amount of short term debt, but doesn’t do too well on the long term front, for just this reason: The term is short enough that the buyers are confident in getting their money back. The interest rate really doesn’t matter too much (it’s not irrelevant, but it’s not the primary factor).
    As always, reality is more complex than that, but that is not “wrong”, just incomplete.

    1. we really need to rid us of those who want us to suck more than everyone else

    2. The interest rates are a reasonable risk adjusted growth rate. Germany is going to decline while the US will still grow though slower than before

       Demographics mostly

       1. Did you see where Evergrande (or whoever) scraped up enough dollars to make a late payment and avoid default?

13. I live in the People’s Republic of California and people are only masking if they have to-i.e. going into businesses and such.

    I suspect that it’s more of a quiet non-compliance by most people than adolescent storming of the streets. And, even the people that are in the “trust the science” age range are not as compliant as people want.

    1. It really depends where in California you are. Everyone is masked indoors where I live. And I’d estimate that more than half of the people have their mask on the moment they get out of their car.

       I did see a toddler with no mask at the supermarket the other day. But that’s been it. The fact that I’m pointing it out should tell you how unusual it is.

14. This makes me happy:

    A Gadsden Flag.

    In Switzerland.

    In Switzerland, daily protests continue against their vaxx passport. pic.twitter.com/UbBZqpf8jm

    — Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) October 22, 2021

    1. *salutes* Welcome to it, friend!

    2. One of the replies: “Why is it that when people from other counties emulate American culture, they emulate the most embarrassing fringes within American culture?”

       Fair point. They are trusting that the politicians care, and it is no less embarrassing in them than it is for us.

       That’s what the reply meant, right?

    3. I remember the Hong Kongers carrying Americans flags touched my heart in a way that I knew I’d fight to the death for liberty.

    4. Our governor made a new version of that flag for Florida and I love it.

15. Yep I’m 83 and I take suitable Bad China Cold precautions, I avoid hospitals.

    Reading the local newspaper I saw that it notes 8 local Covid deaths in the last 4 days, not noting, of course of any contributing conditions such as cancer, syphilis, pneumonia or vehicle accident (Hey, the way covid deaths are recorded, any of those could be a real possibility, and I wish I was being facetious saying that.).

    The same article noted that in September covid was, nation wide, the leading cause of death of 35-54 year olds and second leading cause of death for all ages. Again, the way covid deaths are recorded that’s not at all surprising.

    Oh yea, I took one other Bad China Cold precaution, the paper with that article is in the wood stove with the kindling,

    1. I remember the ‘COVID19 deaths’ in Oregon that failed to list the bullet and knife holes as ‘contributing factors’.

    2. For all any one knows those “COVID” deaths were from the COVID shot, but within the two week window when the vaccinations “don’t count”

    3. I’m only a couple decades behind, and you’re a light for me to follow!

    4. Gotta love the way they pushed that Colin Powell died of complications due to COVID, when he actually was being treated for cancer that was killing him. COVID is the final straw, not the primary killer.

       1. And Colin Powell was fully vaccinated.

16. Last March, my son and I took a road trip from Duluth, Minnesota (where I-35 begins) to Laredo, Texas (where it ends) and were astonished how closely the deadliness of the Covid virus matched political boundaries. In this area, super deadly, mask and social distance and drive-through only; that area just a few miles away, wide open. Weird. Never knew viruses acted that way.

    Ramsey County, Minnesota, where the capital city is located, must be one of the super deadly areas. They just announced all new hires must be vaccinated, no exceptions. Existing employees must vax or test negative weekly plus mask and social distance. Even judges (who are elected officials) must mask and distance and vax or test negative or they will be removed from the bench. And the winter cold and flu season hasn’t even hit yet. Going to be terrifying, all those people dropping dead of Covid this winter (and a nuisance, plowing around their frozen bodies lying in the streets).

    Non-deadly states like Texas and Florida are looking better every day.

    1. All that has reinforced my desire to stay out of Big Cities (or university towns) here in MN.

17. Yesterday upon the stair
    I met a man who wasn’t there
    He wasn’t there again today
    I wish, I wish he’d go away

    When I came home last night at three
    The man was waiting there for me
    But when I looked around the hall
    I couldn’t see him there at all!
    Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
    Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door

    Last night I saw upon the stair
    A little man who wasn’t there
    He wasn’t there again today
    Oh, how I wish he’d go away

    “Antigonish” (1899)

18. If you get sick, get immediate treatment with one of many, many drugs that control it early on…

    So early in 2020 separate research papers came out showing WuFlu infection outcomes heavily correlated with Vitamin D & Zinc levels, and then two doctors on opposite sides of the country showed early treatment w/ HCQ + Zinc + antibiotic kept those infected out of the hospital.
    That’s when I decided to supplement zinc, keep spending time outdoors, and just live my life & not worry overmuch about COVID. I’ve been over it for this %$#& for about 18 months.
    By this point most other Floridians are too, and interestingly so is much of the upstate NY population, though there are still pockets of the fearful in spots like Lake Placid & Albany.

    1. Same same.
       I learned the importance of Vitamin D-magnesium-zinc, and the outpatient protocols will work just fine, thanks.

       Done. And moving away from commie-town (Seattle).

19. The US has the most blogs that discuss current events and politics. And it leads the world by like 95% in having us deplorables blogging in our pajamas. The rest of the world…

    Shows up on American blogs to scream at us for using American terms to talk about American stuff. 😀

    I know you’ve mentioned we have a lot more political blogs, but I just realized that the vast majority of ALL of the blogs I am familiar with are US based, or Americans living elsewhere. It seems like every blanking one of them gets, say, some twit from Germany scolding us for being American not because there are a lot of twits like that in Germany, but because they can’t really go to the blogs that don’t exist and get what they want. So they expect what is there to roughly fit their “this is normal” view.

    1. 1) Yes, I am thinking of some very specific examples,
       2) no I’m not going to list them because I DO NOT WANT TO DRAG TROUBLE INTO ANYONE’S LIVING ROOM.

       1. 2) no I’m not going to list them because I DO NOT WANT TO DRAG TROUBLE INTO ANYONE’S LIVING ROOM.

          On the other hand; it is often considered polite to bring snacks to a gathering.

          1. Which is why I’d even allude to it here. ^.^

          2. It’s not my fault you lot can skeletonize a troll in five minutes, okay? One tries. one does one’s best. (Sulks.)

             1. *whines*

                But the trolls have so little meat on them!

                1. Look, if they weren’t stupid, they wouldn’t try to troll us. I mean, they see all the little skeletons washed up beside the blog and they go “ooh. I’ll go play.”
                   AGAIN, if you guys didn’t skeletonize a troll in five minutes, you’d have more. I assumed you liked the place troll free. (Shrugs.)

                   1. But can we do in a troll faster than a herd of plastic flamingos can strip a T-Rex down to the bone? 😉

                      1. I was thinking than piranhas skeletonize a cow….

                         1. The piranhas don’t hang out here. They know the plastic flamingos will strip them to the bone.

                            The sea serpent in the minion pool is unpleasant, too.

                2. And they taste bad too.

                   1. The T, Rex or the piranha? I imagine piranha are bony and a bit gamey. The T. Rex? Tastes Like Chicken ! Look at the drumsticks on that thing. Though the wings leave much to be desired…

                      1. The trolls… they’re rubbery and loathsome…

                         1. …a bundle of greasy, gray-green garden hoses…

                            — from Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge

                            “Not make billy goat jokes!!”

                            1. Only with the current crop it’s “Not chant F*ck Joe Biden!!!!”

                         2. Can we feed the trolls to the piranha? They have excellent teeth and piranha are not known for their refined tastes.

                            1. Try the third door on the fourth floor. The one to the left.

                               The piranhas don’t show their scaly noses around here because the flamingos don’t approve, but the flamingoes won’t eat troll.

             2. One of the trolls you banned from here showed up (briefly) on Monster Hunter Nation. And got stomped on there, too. They really are dull.

                1. We used to get a much better class of troll, mind you…

                   1. kinda. But trolls with enough brain stem get scared off by you lot.

                      1. Or accidentally get themselves red pilled.

                         1. Wait, who was the troll that got red pilled?

                            1. I don’t know whether or not any of them have. But you’ve gotta admit that it’s a risk for anyone who comes around here to cause trouble, and has an actual functioning brain.

                               😛

                      2. I haven’t dropped a mootron bomb in aaaages. ♉

          3. One of the few bad Germany residents I’ve seen was that loony on esr’s blog who was salty about the Allied bombing of Germany, and apparently hadn’t thought much that the Battle of Britain might have contributed a wee bit to the breakdown in relations.

             1. I forgot about that nut.

             2. He sounds like the cousin of the guy at BCF who got mad about people always saying that Stalin was bad, and the USSR fought alone, and Stalin only did what he had to, and the west can’t condemn him . . . Yeah. I presented facts, he jumped all over me for something or the other. I see his screen code and ignore him. Vehemently ignore.

    2. Yep, I tend to get a few of those when I mention either Covid or politics. (Thus demonstrating Covid is a subgenre of politics, IMHO.)

       Especially the guys from Germany, you can give them facts until you’re blue in the face and it just goes – whoosh! – right past as they head for the next liberal talking point….

       1. Aaargh, I HATE it– “why are you guys so anti-science?”
          “[give a long line of well done studies from before it became political showing point]”
          “You must trust the science!!!”

          1. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

             *Nod* Exactly. It’s like none of them ever heard that the scientific method is a process of figuring out where you’re wrong, and that you’re never 100% sure you’re right!

       2. Although the one guy (I think?) that you had that was upset that Trump wasn’t micro-managing everything in a manner that would make Nanny Ogg proud, then started arguing terms based on what guys using the same name who took the title after the US started using president was pretty funny…..

          1. *Snrk* Indeed.

       3. When we were driving to Alaska we encountered a German tourist. He slipped away from his group to talk and the gist of it was, “You have no idea….it’s not safe to speak your mind…” He seemed relieved to be able even to say that much to a friendly audience.

          1. Poor guy, I sympathize.

    3. What might also be of interest is the inverse situation, where an immigrant to the US puts up a blog about stuff in the US in their native language.

       I don’t know how much traffic such a blog would get, though. By default the primary audiences would be others in the same community, and people still living in the old country.

    4. Off topic, but I especially love it when I’m watching a US home construction video on Youtube and the requisite number of Eurotwits (including Britons) feel the need to comment “you Americans are stupid and build trash disposable houses, here in Europe we build houses out of brick/concrete/stone [depending on country].”

       Well, for one thing, we didn’t chop down all our forests 500 years ago for firewood, so lumber is plentiful and inexpensive and pretty much ideal for building. Also, concrete (but also brick) is super carbon-intensive, and I thought you Euroweenies cared about that kind of thing. So, y’know, STFU.

       1. Also, we tend to move around all the time, so “a house that lasts forever” and is passed down through the family for generations isn’t that important to us. And, oh by the way, our population is still growing instead of stagnating, so we need lots of houses that aren’t massively expensive to build. So there. Nyah.

          1. Dammit. Plus: earthquakes. Now, Italy has earthquakes, but when they do, whole towns collapse and kill everyone. We prefer not to have that happen. Therefore, brick and stone are right out in large parts of America.

             1. Indeed. I grew up in California, notoriously prone to earthquakes. The safest house possible to ride out an earthquake in would be a single-story, balloon-frame building, which would give with the earthquake force and not collapse like a more rigid structure of stone or unreinforced brick.
                It’s a regional thing, I think – depending on the location, and the particular hazards. A conblock structure might be better off in tornado country. One built on tall pillars, as I saw in Beaufort and Savannah when I went to see my daughter graduate from Basic at Parris Island, would be proof against high water and a hurricane. (I think there were many such in old Beaufort which had been weathering hurricanes for at least two centuries.)
                I think most Brits and Euros simply do not realize how big the US is. Or that one builds regionally to shelter against whatever hazard is peculiar to the area.

             2. Do they give Japanese people grief for their paper himes? ‘Cos I’m thinking “hatin’ on ‘Murica” waa default position looking for an excuse.

                1. Dang. Now I want a Hime no Kami manga

                2. Yeah, that seems to be the most likely inference.

          2. THIS most of all.
             Also, honestly, even wood houses last pretty long. Also their concrete/stone/brick houses all leak like mothers.
             Not even joking. New houses. ALL LEAK.

             1. That’s why CBS (concrete block stucco) is the standard way to build houses in much of Florida. The stucco, along with good windows & weather stripping keeps the cool air in.

                1. The Fine Homebuilding Podcast guys think that there’s going to be a Stuccopocalypse in about ten years when all the bad stucco applied over the last forty years all decays at once. I gather that there’s traditional methods for stucco that lasted forever, and then there’s modern stucco that just traps water against the sheathing and rots.

                   1. yep.

                   2. Yes, stucco on sheathing (especially OSB) without sufficient gaps (to code is not enough) will be a big problem.
                      But I was talking about CBS homes – concrete that doesn’t leak. One story concrete block exterior walls covered with stucco. Stucco on wood is a different animal.

                2. …and Florida termites, which will happily eat pressure-treated wood. And MDF, masonite siding, and anything else remotely related to wood.

             2. There are of course wood structures meant to last. Post and beam builders consider 2-300 years reasonable, 500 possible. But even in the US that class of timber is rare/expensive anymore. And there are boatloads of late 18th and early 19th century homes floating around New England. Even a couple from the 17th Century (I can think of 2 and both are historic homes at this point). And there are places in the US where structural brick is de riguer (many spots along the Gulf coast) as they are more resistant to debris from hurricanes/tornadoes and the ever present termites (native and Formosan). When I was visiting Huntsville all the new construction was structural brick due primarily to termite issues (although they DO get impressive tornadoes too). Also Labor for brick is MUCH more expensive than good old wood frame construction. With most of the NE ALL union that makes a huge difference in cost. And the freeze/thaw cycles that New England has in spades are nasty to Concrete or mortar causing spalling and requiring repointing and repair. Wood lasts longer here as long as you keep it painted and avoid it becoming water soaked. Germany has some impressive cold spots, but they tend to go cold and stay cold, not flicker back and forth across freezing like late winter/Early spring in New England.

                1. Wood lasts longer here as long as you keep it painted and avoid it becoming water soaked.

                   Actually it’s not so much avoiding it becoming soaked as preventing it from drying again.

                   Old houses with no or limited insulation had plenty of vapor flow, so rain soaking from the outside would be dried by warm air from the inside. Later insulated and air-sealed houses don’t have that flow, so water that gets into the sheathing often just stays there and molds and/or rots. This is a larger problem with modern super-insulated and -air-sealed houses, so a lot of work has gone into creating air gaps between the sheathing and the siding to let bulk water that gets past the siding to run out, and air to circulate to carry away vapor drying out of the sheathing for any water that gets there.

                   One of the things that annoys me about the Fine Homebuilding crew is that, for all that they’ve been banging on about building science for the last twenty years, they still have no rules or formulas to follow. It’s all general principles and ad hoc pronoucements — “oh, if you’re in New England and you have too much exterior foam insulation, you’ll probably get some mold, but if you’re in the Southwest you probably can get away with it…” with no numbers ever attached to those “too much” or “probably” or “some” qualifiers.

       2. My response of “Because we’re better than you are, that’s why” is about the intellectual heft I can give to an idiot.
          Plus it makes me laugh.

       3. Gosh, and here I thought the International Building Code was, y’know, International.

          Surely they aren’t failing to build things to Code over in Euroland? /sarc

       4. They used to build timber houses in Europe until they cut all the timber down. The oldest portion of my mother’s family house goes back to the 1680’s and is mostly timber. the brick and stone sections mostly fell down but then much of the house was burned down at one point or another since Ireland’s history is not what you’d call peaceful.

          Most European houses have been built since the war and they’re drafty, cold, and damp. They’re also very badly built and fall down all the time. If you find an old Victorian that’s lasted til now it’ll likely last forever but that’s survivor bias and just another example of decadent European sneering BS.

          Taleb is right with his Lindy law, the longer something lasts the longer it will last. Most of the European houses won’t last as long as the US ones.

          1. Yep. Grandma’s house is okay. My mom’s house leaks like a sieve through the walls.

       5. Wood is also renewable, It is very easy to plant more trees so that they grow and you have more wood.

          1. Sort of yes. Also no. Need to have either private property rights or national preserves- enforced. The Mediterranean coast, ideal climate for tree growing is devoid of lumber sized trees. As soon as they get big enough to be worthwhile cutting down for firewood- they’re cut down. That’s one thing I notices in all my port visits there- no big trees.

             Maine is to a large part is privately owned tree farms.

             1. That’s a land/forest management by people issue; not a tree issue.

                1. Yes. And- they’re interrelated. One cannot be separated from the other. Where I lived in Maine (for one whole year) – pine trees were considered weeds… Where I live now in CNY- locust trees are weeds. I didn’t know tress had spikes until I moved here. and my yard is full of them.

                   1. The (unprintable for the length of a page in a family blog) Locust trees are an invasive species brought in sometime in the late 19th century (I think). Nastiest spiniest darned things the Author ever placed on this terrestrial ball. Too soft to burn or build with, Grow like weeds and throw runners out so they’re really kind of one massed object. They weren’t much of an issue in the early 20th century. That is until Dutch Elm Disease wiped out the Elms and Chestnut blight wiped out American Chestnut trees. With that giant hole placed in the ecology the frickin’ Locust trees surged into the empty niche annoying homeowners everywhere. Grow quickly to great heights and due to their soft wood and shallow roots are often the first things to pitch over and damage your home in a nor’easter. I imagine you can tell I hate the stupid things. Had two at the edge of my property that threatened my home and the neighbors. Had tree people in to deal with them about 2008. I still have to spend a weekend or two each spring cutting down the runners from the darned roots that were left and the ones on the other side of my neighbors property that are on town land.

    5. “Thank you Ivan/Li Fong/Smitty for your input. I appreciate your coming to my blog to scream how wrong I am; but then I know that your own country of Russia/China/UK doesn’t have protections for free speech. Which is why you don’t have any blogs like this in your own country.”

       LOL. Boilerplate it.

20. I’ve had a couple friends from New England cancel trips down to Florida as they keep on hearing how the bodies are piling up here. Normally sane intelligent people who are getting brainwashed into thinking I’m delusional for saying “come on in, the water’s fine!”

    1. I haven’t seen one body. Not. One.

       A couple from the isolation, personally, yes.

       1. The bodies are shoved in the mangrove roots, per tradition in the Keys. 🙂

          1. One of my mom friends (all rolling eyes) was like, “If we were dying at the rates they said, particularly the kids, I’d be driving over the dead bodies in carline.”

             1. Here we’ve thoroughly failed to do our part to keep the numbers up, as only something like 0.2% of the population has considerately dropped dead of the coof.

                https://ci.billings.mt.us/2928/Hospital-Resource-Capacity
                (scroll over to see available beds/ICU units stats; updated regularly)

                — On October 18th, 80% of those hospitalized for COVID-19 were unvaccinated while only 20% were fully vaccinated.
                — There are 2,473 beds across Montana hospitals, 454 (18%) are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients
                — There are 231 ICU rooms across all Montana hospitals, 116 (50%) of which are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients
                — There are 526 operable ventilators in the state of Montana, 62 (12%) of which are currently being used to treat COVID-19 patients

                [Billings Clinic is a big-ass state-of-the-art facility and probably gets more than its share of whatever bad cases of anything come along, just cuz it can handle ’em better]

                1. You should see the Florida statistics. Since looking for them is the only way you will–we’re doing so well the news has dropped us like a hot potato. Florida is only newsworthy when the numbers are up. When the numbers crash through the floor, hush hush, the plebs might get ideas. That they were right.

                   1. Well, as long as they can lie their way through bad-mouthing Florida, they can more easily ignore the leftist states that are killing their subjects.

                2. Prog-Socs, esp. Greenies, are just so inconsistent. You’d think they’d be TRYING to get more people to catch and die from COVID to reduce the “population pressure”.

                   1. If they got rid of the Undesirables who would they have to look down on and treat as proles? Although they do seem to be trying to import a better grade of prole from South American that is less prone to turn nasty…

          2. Ah yes. That would do it. 😉

             *SNRK*

             …Sorry, you just reminded me of a person who wrote a mystery supposed to be set in NW Florida, that even has the iconic Pensacola Beach sailfish sign on the front cover.

             Only it ends with a speedboat chase through a mangrove swamp.

             There are no mangroves in NW Florida, it’s too cold.

             …but I supposed a speedboat chase through the seagrass wouldn’t be as Dramatic. *G*

             1. Until you hit the first manatee and ripped the bottom out of your boat.

                1. Yep.

                2. Oh, the huge manatee! 😛

    2. I have extended family that moved back to Connecticut because Florida was “too lax” in its Covid rules.
       Now that they’ve gone, Florida has the lowest per capita infection rate of the contiguous states. Hawaii is just slightly lower. And the northeastern states are spiking.
       Yup, it’s a seasonal flu. Follows the same geographical/weather patterns. Every year the south will have small peaks in late winter & late summer & New England will peak big in late fall/early winter.

    3. Please keep them out of here.

       I’m in a fairly blue area, but even so, most people aren’t wearing masks. The people who do stand out. So hearing about draconian rules for behavior is really, really foreign to me. Florida is pretty far up on the weirdness scale, but these stories nake everyone else seem like the weirdos.

    4. Had an irritating conversation over a month ago with BIL, as he smugly sympathized about the “big spikes,” in our part of the country. He didn’t want to hear, “Funny, we’ve been all over and we haven’t noticed.”

    5. I’m driving down to Texas from NH in March for my brother’s wedding. I like traveling around the country, and I hate the airline industry and TSA Gestapo. Especially since they went full bore mask nuts on flights.

21. You always know what I need to hear when it comes to these matters, huh? Not that the things driving me crazy around here with regard to Covidiocy have been a secret, of course. That’s why the escape has to happen, though. I’m ready to be in a sane place.

22. In my own unnamed corner of North America I’m seeing an encouraging amount of mask-cheating lately.

23. Pingback: Communication breakdown, back now | Dio's Workshop

24. “mask between bites”

    Just did a round-trip on United, where their in-flight announcements included this crud (Alaska has drink napkins that say the same). I ignored it.

    So far as I can tell, that ‘refinement’ has no direct support in law, despite airlines claiming that it does. There is, in the Federal Register, regulation to require masks in general. There’s some argument that the agencies publishing the reg may not actually have the authority to do that, but that needs court resolution. (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10572)

    There is _also_ regulation that passengers must obey commands of the flight crew, even abusive interpretations. So, they can throw you off, ban you from their airline in the future, and other horrible over-reactions. Better not to fly if you can avoid it; flight attendants turning into Mean Girls is a sad development.

    I was looking forward to starting again to attend entertainment events; I currently have tickets to 3 things at the Hult Center in Eugene, OR, which I must get refunded. Since we bought them, the venue has implemented ‘papers, please’, and that is a line I will not cross. At least they volunteered to refund based on that change.

    (Being in my 70s, I am vaccinated; that’s between me and my doctor!)

    1. Hult Center is doing What?!?! Is this just the Hult Center?

       1. From their web site:
          “Starting September 1, 2021, all patrons must provide proof of vaccination or negative Covid test along with valid Government issued I.D. to attend performances.”

          F that noise.

          Outside of Oregon, this seems to be the case at NFL, NHL, and MLB venues; probably NBA as well, but I never care about them.

          1. valid Government issued I.D.
             –
             Interesting. Because, other than for driving, the Oregon Driver’s License isn’t considered “valid Government issued I.D.”

             1. But that’s Racist!!! Oh, wait, it’s only racist to demand ID to vote . . .

25. “….all the measures were tyrannical dick-waving and stomping for no reason whatsoever…”

    Tyrannical dick waving sounds like a mandatory trait of covidians and leftist politicians.

    1. I’ve been thinking of those measures as “tightening the cock-rings on their tyrant-boners,” starting with the May 1, 2020 Illinois masking edict of Karenfuehrer Pritzker.

26. “We could stop feeding them and watch them collapse. I suspect that will happen anyway, because it’s going to get worse here, before it gets better.”

    My worry is that the grain will be shipped to countries the current crop of people in charge approve of, before we realize they haven’t left enough for domestic needs.

    1. A la Romania.

       1. and then they get a romanian christmas gift.

          1. Nooses? Cool. I don’t know that Ceaucescu enjoyed his gift, but I bet the Romanians did.

             1. bullets, actually.

          2. Ceaucescu didn’t enjoy HIS Romanian Christmas gift, did he?

             1. I never read his complaint letter to the manager…

       2. “I’m dreaming of a Ceaușescu Christmas,
          with every vax mandate they write…..”

    2. Due to the shipping mess, I don’t think that’s a serious issue at this time. I admit that it could happen. But In order to get grain out of the country, you’d have to get it out of the ports…

       Now admittedly, the focus has been on stuff coming into the country. But if incoming ships aren’t getting unloaded, then there’s no outgoing ships with free cargo space to take the grain away. Plus, some of what I’m reading suggests that part of the logistical problem is that there’s no more space for cargo containers. So just getting the grain containers to the harbor where they can be loaded onto an outbound freighter might be a problem.

       1. If I’m not mistaken, grain is shipped in bulk haulers rather than container ships. Different ports, different mechanics, so not(as mush of) an issue. Still leaves the transportation *to* the ports as a potential issue

27. BTW, as I said I’m at an event with a preponderance of upper-middle-class white women. Some men, a very few ladies of African descent.
    Lots of “Pride,” yarn sets, dyed fiber, kits, etc. Irritating since I like rainbow stuff and might be mistaken for an “ally,” if I buy it.
    However, all is not lost. One vendor has an assortment of insulated metal cups and tumblers. Noted today that two of them had been tastefully decorated with, “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

28. Are there entrance requirements for #teamheadsonpikes, or can anyone join? If i prefer a Lucerne hammer, is that OK? It DOES still have a spike on it…

    1. To paraphrase a WWII slogan, “Keep ’em swingin’!”

    2. Lucerne hammer? Bah! All the best Landsknechts are using Bohemian Ear Spoons this year!

29. BTW, we’ve been traveling all summer. As far west as Nevada, east to North Carolina. No place was totally crazy, no place had bodies in the streets. Nowhere has been rigid in following “da rules,” except the place I am now. Churches have varied from all masked, to almost noone masked (that church was the most joyful and full of energy).
    I am so glad we’ve been away from most of the madness.

30. About three months ago I remarked to a close friend that Gov. DeSantis looked to be a solid candidate for either POTUS or vice in 24. He responded that he would never vote for him as his anti mask and mandate policies had endangered and possibly killed so many people in Florida.
    Yesterday it was reported that Florida has the lowest number of cases of covid in the US.
    Pointed this out to my friend and he apparently has no recollection that he ever made such a statement and even denied that he knew who I was talking about.
    Good friend, but sometimes he can be such an opinionated A-hole.

    1. > apparently has no recollection

       Same thing for a friend who had Clinton (Dollar Billy, not Hillary!) signs in his yard, and a Clinton bumper sticker. A few years later he not only denied ever having done that, he got angry when I kept needling him about it.

       People make mistakes. It happens. But trying to deny it ever happened just makes them look silly.

       1. Ah, but the idea is for enough of them to claim it never happened to make you doubt your own memory.

          1. 

31. no frenching strangers or qratuitous dick waving and stomping… great, you just ruined my plans for this weekend S.H. … I guess there must be something constructive to do around here. Maybe line the yard with pikes for the holidays hehheh

32. i got my shots back in Jan and Feb, and have carried my shot record in my shirt pocket, so that if needed, I can pull it out, hold it out in my left hand, and raise my right arm at 45 degrees, und zay “Hier ist mein papier, Herr/Frau OBERST!” Haven’t had to, yet…

    1. They’d just look at you funny. Hell, you could show ’em Balzacq’s pseudo-Nazi ‘Bafzination’ form and they still wouldn’t get it.

       1. That’s actually “Ausweis für Vakzination”, but Fraktur typefaces look weird. It should really be für Impfung”, as that’s the standard German word, but “Vakzination” is an allowable synonym that’s cognate with the English.

33. This sums up the HarrisBiden junta quite well:

    

34. c4c

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