The Lunatic Ball

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Other than Viva La Vida by cold play, I’ve recently been captured by “symptom of being human” by Shinedown.

I could write an entire post about how that song, unintentionally hooks in to various parts of my history, but this, right here:

I’ve never been the favorite, thought I’d seen it all
‘Til I got my invitation to the lunatic ball
And my friends are coming too
How ’bout you?

Dan and I were singing in the car on our last drive to see the older kids (Son and DIL) and on those lines, we looked at each other with a rueful half smile.

Because what have the last three years been, but an invitation to the lunatic ball? Bob the Registered, a regular here, who used to be a froll and is now disturbingly sane (When the world gets weird, the weird go pro, I guess.) says no American is quite sane right now. We’re all deeply wounded, and hanging out at the edges of sanity — and to the edges of sanity — by our fingertips.

I suppose there would have been some advantage to not ever having fit in with any group of opinion. To being considered crazy by “normal” people.

That was never where I was. Oh, I was considered crazy by most of my field when I came out of the political closet, but that’s because in my field, at least those who share their political opinions, Obama was a right winger, and frankly Stalin was a moderate right winger. In that landscape, anyone who came out and denied they believed in Holy Marx was insane. Because of course I’m imagining things, and Marx isn’t everywhere, and no one does Marxian literary analysis. And also, it’s the most useful thing ever, Marx is all true and was a genius economist and a prophet of our times, and I obviously understand nothing if I think he was wrong and crazy and had the economic intuition of a small rock. (Apologies to ALL rocks.)

But in general, in the normal landscape of the world, I knew I was a little more aware of politics than the average bear, and I hung my hate at (small l) libertarian, or if you prefer Constitutionalist Minarchist. Or if you prefer “will vote Republican under protest, because I really hate commies, but most Republicans are too statist for me.

Oh, I still hang out there, philosophically. I’m just not sure if anyone is hanging with me, or if I’m hanging separately.

In the last three years, alliances have shifted. I’m now forced to read Glen Greenwald seriously, even when I disagree with him. And that, btw, is the least surprising of the people I find myself agreeing with. There is considerably worse. I’m not even going to go into who suddenly makes sense and makes me go “arrooo?”

At the same time people I thought were sane and made sense… well, it’s more than three years right? A lot of them went insane with Trump’s election and suddenly think that we actually and for real elected a communist with 81 million votes, and that his being corrupted and sold out to China is fine.

They’re willing to see the country destroyed, as long as Trump doesn’t get another turn at the presidency because…. because…. because …. I don’t know. He eats steaks with ketchup. And he talks with a bad accent. And he doesn’t agree to the polite fiction that both sides are the same and the left are just misguided idealists.

Meanwhile…. the rest of us….

We’re still in shock they locked us down. We’re not, outside the deep blue enclaves, in shock that everyone went along with it, because outside the deep blue enclaves no one really went along with it fully. Except the very left, very old and very stupid, which were often the exact same person.

But we’re in shock they locked us down and even more in shock that — it was obvious — they thought they could keep it up forever. It was “the new normal.”

I mean we knew they were evil and stupid, but can anyone be THAT evil AND stupid?

And then … well, it’s not gotten better since then. The hits keep coming. The massively frauded election. The fact that every time we dig into any system — yes, there will be a post about student loans. I’m waiting for an insert from someone who saw this mess from another angle. Yes, you can disagree with me. But most of you aren’t seeing the whole thing, and the horrific down-system effects, which frankly even loan forgiveness can’t fix (though it can mitigate. And maybe that will be enough for the rest to unravel. I confess this is more a hope than a certainty.) — ANY SYSTEM it’s a morass of evil being done for evil reasons and for the purpose of enslaving humans to the diktats of an increasingly crazier and out of touch government.

We’re reeling from crazy to crazy, and further continuously shocked by the news we see and by…. how do we put this? How fast the most ridiculous and scandalous of them disappear.

No, I’m not talking about the Biden-scandal-dense-pack with everyone around them protecting them.

I’m talking about crazy sh*t that you read about and I read about, and then we forget, because there’s so much crazy and none of it makes any sense.

Remember the guy who blew himself up in an RV in downtown somewhere Christmas day 2 and a half years ago? What was with that?

There were enough red flags there for a May Day parade. There never was a resolution or any sense made of it. It just kind of sank out of the public consciousness.

What about all the mass shootings, which, this time for sure, are a White Supremacist attacking them poor people of color, and then when it’s revealed otherwise, they just disappear. Are never heard of or mentioned again.

What about that guy with the U-haul that apparently contained nothing but a confederate flag in chains (?!) who supposedly drove into the white house fence, but really was in a park across the street? The guy was, if I remember, a Pakistani exchange student. And the flag was carefully posed on the ground for pictures, in another “white supremacist attack”

And then it disappeared…..

Look, I come from a time where we knew the news lied, but if you studied them, you could sort of infer the truth of what was really going on. They weren’t…. or we thought they weren’t, made up out of whole cloth. Now…

This is the bad thing, you know, you look back, and suddenly you’re not sure. The entire landscape of your life is altered, and you start wondering if you’ve been a victim of a propaganda operation since birth, and one that doesn’t even make any sense. Unless…. And suddenly here come the strange bedfellows.

Like when this started I was willing to say all anti-vaxers were crazy, and vaccines were perfectly safe. But I saw how they pushed the covid-shot, one with almost completely unproven benefits and hidden risks, while denying natural immunity to do it. And now… I still think most vaccines are safe. If I ever — heaven forbid because the situation would almost always be bad — have the raising of an infant, I’ll still have him/her vaccinated. But I might look more closely at the timing and the vaccines, because well, they’re now requiring covid-vax for school, which is mental. So I can no longer assume good faith.

And while I still think Robert Kennedy Jr is insane (like most of his family) and most of his opposition to vaccines is insane, it’s hard to regain the certainty I had, when I know he’s telling the truth about Covid-19.

See, I used to be fairly sure I knew what was going on. All those conspiracy theorists on the right? “They’re going to put us in camps!” (I still think they’re crazy, but due to logistics, not for lack of crying.) and the ones on the left “Wars are a conspiracy of the army and the industrialists. They’re not necessary. They’re designed to kill the young so they keep power.” Obviously just insane peacenick, nonsense, right?

Um…. our government locked all of us under house arrest. Or tried to. And thought it could keep it up forever. AND the army-industrial complex tried to keep wars going/restart them when the upstart business man would end them. If it’s not to kill young males, you could have fooled me.

And while their grand designs of replacing the population won’t work (there aren’t enough people willing to come in, for various reasons. At most we all become a little less American, which can be recovered from) it’s not for lack of trying.

And the FBI? Really? not just “somewhat corrupt?”

And the news, all of them, completely detached from reality now?

I’m like a woman who wakes in the night, puts her foot down on the familiar rug, and suddenly rug and floor move under it.

I wander around trying to figure out what’s going on from…. what’s on sale and what’s missing at the grocery store. What is expensive and what’s cheap at craigslist and facebook marketplace. The experiences of friends and contacts.

Because no other form of information can be trusted. And maybe it was all lying all of my life.

Some realities remain. Communism is bad and can’t work. Not because the news say so (they don’t) but because it makes no sense for humans.

The future will be shaped by those who have kids.

And the larger the government the larger the corruption.

All the rest writhes and changes, and I spend a considerable portion of my time trying to figure out what’s real and what’s a distorted reflection.

Here, in the lunatic ball.

298 thoughts on “The Lunatic Ball”

  1. Image manipulation doesn’t help. Video manipulation certainly doesn’t help. And seriously, people sharing AI images without even doing the fae check, who are then surprised to find out it’s fake? They scare me, because they don’t appear to have even a little native skepticism to keep them safe. And they vote.

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      1. Heh. I wasn’t even thinking about the top image when I made the comment. There’s a “baby peacock” AI image that is so blatantly weird that it gets me that otherwise sane folk are sharing it around uncritically, and that’s what came to mind.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. Oh, it gets worse. There was a post on WUWT the other day, about a “scientific” paper coming out of MIT.

      The claim was, that by adding carbon black to your cement mix, then soaking it in potassium perchlorate after it cures, you create a “super capacitor.” They wanted to have their invention used to pour house foundations to store power from “renewable” energy.

      Needless to say, the people on the site promptly demolished it with extreme prejudice.

      The very scary part of this is that someone there got the idea to run the paper’s abstract (not the press release, which is always highly suspect, but the abstract) through an AI detector. Something like 93% probable that it was written by an AI. I haven’t followed up to see whether someone has run the paper itself through the same process – but there’s a good chance that it, too, came out of the bowels of ChatGPT or one of its cousins.

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      1. I’m not really up on mu chemistry, but I’m guessing that mix would actually create something mildly explosive?

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        2. The material itself wouldn’t be – combustible materials are sealed away from oxygen.

          The problems are many, if you want any kind of scale (even the ridiculously low 10 kilowatt-hours the authors claim possible). The main one is rebar – which any foundation must have, concrete being great under compression (vertical force), not good at all under tension (differences in the vertical force along the horizontal). That rebar will disintegrate with the potassium perchlorate being there (it’s a salt, thus a very strong oxidizer).

          Now, charged up capacitors can blow up. I’m not convinced that the whole mass would go up in a single blast – but the stored energy they are claiming possible is the equivalent of just under 10 kilograms of TNT. Not something I’d want laying around the house, much less in the foundations.

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          1. “Not something I’d want laying around the house, much less in the foundations”

            Pretty sure both your homeowners insurance and your neighbors will have concerns…..

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            1. With good reason! Actually, like many here in the Southwest, I prefer masonry construction. I could probably get that up to 15 kilos of explosive potential with the exterior walls.

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          2. “That rebar will disintegrate with the potassium perchlorate being there (it’s a salt, thus a very strong oxidizer).”

            So you’d have to use fiberglass (which I don’t know if it’s rated for anything but floors…) or coated rebar then, and make sure you dipped the ends of any cut pieces. Or would the perchlorate eat through your average Plasti-dip?

            It would still be a problem for the J bolts that attach the house to the foundation, of course.

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            1. It pretty much would, just slower. Buildings along the seashore have to use those materials – and still must include provisions to prevent saltwater incursions into the foundation. (And seawater is far less concentrated and corrosive than potassium perchlorate.)

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            2. Be careful combining functions. A foundation is a big inert long-life mass to stabilize a building.

              Making it non-inert has consequences.

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      2. FWIW, I’m not sure how accurate our AI-detecting AI is.
        Recent headline that OpenAI shutdown its AI Text Scanner for inaccuracy.
        Now, if you want to run conspiratorily off with that…
        Still doesn’t make the paper make sense.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Yup, that’s all kinds of bananas. You need structure and electrodes, etc for a capacitor. Also, while it wouldn’t be explosive, mixing something combustible with a perchlorate salt it a good way to make something awfully flammable (a mix of perchlorates and sugar is often used by amateur rocketry hobbyists as rocket fuel.). While being mixed with a bunch of inert cement would temper it quite a bit, it could create a “smoldering” reaction that would pulverize the concrete. Not to mention the perchlorates leaching out of the stuff would make any wood in contact with the stuff seriously combustible. And it would chew up steel rebar quite quickly….

        As far as the abstract being AI written, that may not be that big a deal. One of the things large-language-model AI is actually really good at, and useful for, is generating a short summary of a piece of text. It works particularly well with formulaic texts like scientific papers. Someone could have just used an AI-driven “summarize” feature to generate the abstract. If the paper itself fails the AI sniff test, however, that would be yet another in a long series of garbage scientific papers that have been an increasing bane on the world’s accumulation of knowledge. (look up “the reproducibility crisis” for some depressing reading on the subject)

        Changing subject to the incident(s) mentioned in the blog post, I’ve always wondered about that RV incident. Apparently the building it happened in front of was a major network hub for AT&T, and the guy responsible used to work for them. Was the guy just trying to get back at a disliked former employer? Did he know about something going on? Or did he just go crazy and do a crazy thing after soaking in the ambient atmosphere of crazy that seems to be permeating the world for the last few years.

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  2. I have to say your basic political stance and mine are the same, though I expect we could argue over the details, if we were in a place where arguing about politics was fun.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. You mean this isn’t that place?

      Seriously, though, same. Generally I just say I’m a libertarian, because most people know (or at least have a vague sense) what that is, and in a lot of ways, it’s not far off. But constitutional minarchist is the more accurate description. We need government, we need it to adhere to the Constitution, and we need said government to be as small and local as it can possibly be.

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      1. We need government, we need it to adhere to the Constitution, and we need said government to be as small and local as it can possibly be.

        Ing for President.

        Here’s an idea: redraw all the Bureau of Land Mgt and USACE district borders to overlap each other all over the place, then privatize each district separately and cut off its Federal funding (and it’s LEO powers to enforce the rules it comes come up with)? Now they have to get their jobs done as private companies competing with each other (and may the third-worst poet win).

        Ditto, Department of Education. Ditto Homeland Security (give the Coast Guard back to the War Department). Ditto Energy. Ditto HHS. Ditto BATF. Ditto FEMA. Ditto ….

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        1. “he Coast Guard back to the War Department”

          Coast Guard would go back to Treasury (that’s why they are called “revenue cutters”).

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  3. When I saw the title, I immediately thought of the “Idiot Ball” in fiction.

    IE The one in books/stories that cause intelligent characters to do stupid things (as required by the plot).

    So how many people (in the Real World) are grabbing the “Idiot Ball” as well as grabbing the “Lunatic Ball”? :twisted:

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Idiot stick

      Shovel blade or broom on one end.

      Idiot on the other.

      Major fixture of military life.

      High-tech Idiot stick = floor buffer.

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      1. Hey, I ran a floor buffer in college. Dumb people don’t get that job. One wrong twitch and you send a hundred pounds of steel and whirling energy into and through a wall. Friend of mine was an artist with that thing. I swear he could get corners.

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        1. I, too, can polish corners with an industrial buffer. One handed. Learned at the reception station in basic training, and dented many, many lockers and bed frames before I gained control.

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              3. Oh dear me, I can smell that nasty junk. I can see it resting like nasty pepto bismol in the lid of my boot grease can. Ugh. Thank goodness for anodized brass.

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            3. Of course we did. And we used razor blades to scrape the excess away from the sides of the hallway. No buildup allowed.

              We spit polished the halls with wet rags after the big buffer. Whee fun.

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        2. On the contrary. Folks who can’t be trusted with normal duties wind up buffing hallways. They can’t wander and are easily supervised.

          Granted, the higher functioning idiots get the buffer. Middling twits apply wax or mop. The utter dolts push brooms.

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          1. Hey, how about the troll in the janitor’s closet who spent all day wiping down the sink and rinsing mops?

            I had that job in Basic – easy gig.

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  4. ” If it’s not to kill young males, you could have fooled me.”

    The number of dead on our side is too small for that to be a plausible reason.

    On an unrelated note…

    I have a sense of things rapidly (but at the same time agonizingly slowly for those of us living through it) coming to a head. In particular, I’ve a fear that one or more of the states are going to openly defy the high court on gun control. And when the Supreme Court overturns the local law, the state(s) will in essence give the court the finger, and tell the court to pound sand. And if the Dems still control the White House, the Executive Branch will ignore this defiance toward the government.

    And when that happens, where does it leave the country? That I don’t know. The Left will have overthrown the legitimacy of the federal government, but will be too busy celebrating the “bold” stance on standing up to the “fascist” court that most won’t realize what a horrific thing they’ve done.

    Some will, but probably not nearly enough.

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    1. California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts have all ignored Bruen and / or passed laws since the decision that are in screaming defiance of it. In those states the 2nd Amendment is dead and even a Republican administration in 2025 won’t do anything about it. The strategy apparently is to pass a law, and fight in court. The process chews up years and if they lose they will just turn around and pass another law. The Democrats are already back to nullification and the Reader grieves for the Republic.

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      1. No, they have not told the court to pound sand yet. They’re currently claiming that the new laws are in accord with Bruen. The laws aren’t, of course. But until the high court actually issues a decision on some of the laws (a process that will take a while, since the court is pointedly not short-circuiting the usual appeals process – though they have issued at least one “stop dragging your feet” order to a lower court), that fiction will remain in place.

        The question is what happens after the high court overturns one or more of these new laws. At that point the state in question might engage in the actions that I’ve described. And that’s when the crisis would properly start.

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        1. But even in those states you have entire counties ignoring the state. Or if not the county the county sheriff. We were shocked after all the blathering from Salem over the new Oregon Gun Safety law, granted still suspended thanks to an east side county judge, but the federal one said it is valid (doesn’t change the suspension), how the county sheriffs have designed the new required coarse to purchase guns is also being used for concealed carry. They advertise this (when you go looking). (This is universal across all the county sheriffs.) Note, the class has always been required for concealed carry, at the same cost. It is to ensure you know the laws regarding carrying a gun whether you are conceal or open carrying. Didn’t change the cost to go to the Sheriff’s office to get finger printed, and a picture either. Haven’t done the in person handgun safety, yet, which is new. It presumes we have handguns to take meet a Sheriff at a gun range to show we can store, carry, load, fire, and unload, a handgun safely.

          Seriously. It took quite a while to find the right fit for me. I can do everything with the guns hubby and son use, except chamber a round to fire the gun. (Presumption is we can figure out somehow I can. Just haven’t.) Once someone else chambers the gun, firing it bloody hurts. But not being able to chamber the round brings up a safety problem. Once chambered I can’t unchamber it without firing. So, I do not use those guns at a range unless hubby or son are with me. Same with the revolvers we inherited from dad. Only there I can’t eject the bullet casings, shot or not. I can open the revolver, just can’t get the ejector to work. Hubby and son think it is the self loaded rounds because they have problems sometimes too. Naturally this is all theoretical since the boat accident and everything was lost in the pond.

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          1. $SPOUSE can’t do pistols for the same reason, but is OK with a revolver. When the project queue permits (way too many things need/want to be done by winter), we’re going for some range time. We don’t have enough land to do target practice, but we have friends who do…

            Our sheriff is the quiet sort, but seems like good people. He hasn’t made a big statement, but the little statements are right on.

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          2. Yes, many of the rural counties are all but telling their state capitols to pound sand. Of course, the state capitols are going to take this as a challenge, and I suspect that they’re already looking at ways to try and bring the rural counties to heel.

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            1. What is interesting is it isn’t just the rural counties. We’re in Lane County. In Eugene. Not exactly conservative central. Oh. There are more than a few of us. We are very much out vocalized.

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            3. In WA, they plan to send state cops, and they’ve basically invited trial lawyers to sue the sheriff over gun crimes.

              https://www.npr.org/2019/02/21/696400737/when-sheriffs-wont-enforce-the-law

              “In Washington state, the sheriffs’ autonomy is largely unquestioned. The only option for supporters of the new gun law is to call for the sheriffs to be voted out of office in the next election. The Democratic attorney general, Bob Ferguson, sent the sheriffs an open letter warning that they might be held liable — that is, sued by a private party — if their refusal to conduct background checks resulted in a gun crime.

              The Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, accused the sheriffs of “a futile kind of grandstanding,” and he told them to leave it to the courts to decide whether a law is constitutional. But he also tacitly acknowledged his lack of authority over them, by saying he will tell the State Patrol to enforce the law in counties where the sheriffs won’t.”

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              1. In Washington? Good luck.
                Most of their population is on the Left Coast, and they were one of the early adopters of the “recount the ballots until the Democrat wins” electoral method.

                The Dry Side usually gets screwed but good because of this.

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                1. Get local police, sheriff’s departments, and prosecutors to rigorously apply state law and local ordinances to all state agencies and agents of the state.

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                  1. That would be amusing to watch.

                    I do like the “citizen calls local police on arrogant fed” videos.

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          3. So many tragic boating accidents… Someday you’ll be able to walk from Toronto to Buffalo across Lake Ontario on a shoal of rusty firearms.

            Maybe try a .38 snubbie. A close female friend of mine was able to load, fire and eject casings with her little teeny girlie hands quite effectively. Added bonus, if you get a dud round you just pull the trigger again. She didn’t like the auto-loaders, too complicated.

            Also if the rounds are sticking in the cylinders, try a lighter bullet/less powerful loading. Less powder in the brass means they don’t bulge so much. Target bullet instead of +P hollow points.

            Or, if you -must- have the auto-loader, look into a Walther PPK or clone. FEG made a nice PPK clone. .380 caliber has less recoil than a 9mm and smaller grip, and you can hide it better.

            [yes I know .45 is better, but rule 1 of gun fights is “have a gun”. The euro-beanshooter tucked into your beltline beats the .45 you left in the car.]

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            1. Case in point: .38 cal wadcutters should be the mildest round from the factory, assuming that such rounds are available. They’d still put 148 grains of hate into a bad-guy’s body.

              FWIW, the KelTec P3AT has a very stiff recoil spring. It’s nice as a backup.

              I recall a woman of Chinese extraction with smallish hands who did really well with a 1911. FWIW, she had a ball at Gunsite in the early ’90s.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. The 1911 is an amazing weapon, no two ways about it. There’s a reason why it’s still popular after over a century.

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              2. The smaller the gun the stiffer the recoil spring so the harder to rack the slide to chamber a round (or eject an unfired one).

                That’s a Laws of Physics thing – energy is energy, and Newton’s Third dicates equal and opposite actions. The ammunition generates identical recoil energy regardless of the size of the device in which the ammunition is activated, small devices have less slide travel distance to absorb the energy so the recoil spring has to be stiffer (also less mass to absorb the energy generated, that’s a Newton Second issue).

                Try this for manual operation of the slide: Keeping the Device in Question pointed in The Safe Direction (always, unless specific circumstances of exigency dicate otherwise) while holding it in a firing grip with your Strong Hand (right hand dominance means your right is your dominant hand, reverse for lefties) and your Strong Hand index finger OUT of the trigger guard (keep it in The Register Position) bring it in close to your body (this means you will have to stand sideways to keep The Device pointed in The Safe Direction), with your Support Hand forearm against the left side of your abdomen put your Support Hand over the slide being careful to avoid any part of the hand going past the Dangerous End of The Device while keeping your Strong Hand index finger OUT of the trigger guard (The Register Position again), grasp the grip frame firmly with your Strong Hand and the slide with your Support Hand and PUNCH HARD with your Strong Hand.

                It is probable that those experiencing difficulty manually operating the slide will not have the manipulating strength to also operate the slide lock latch while also manually operating the slide; the way around this is to replace whatever magazine may be in The Device with an empty one which should allow the slide to lock open.

                Inability to easly manipulate the slide on a semi-automatic Device is caused by inadequacies in the muscle groups in the anterior and posterior forearm, bicep, tricep and deltoid muscles, and to a slightly lesser degree, the trapezius muscles. Training with weights is the recommended treatment.

                Why is this important? One may be faced with a Zero Alternative Situation in which the only Dangerous Device available is a semi-automatic Device and ability to successfully operate it may be required to avoid Subjugation or Cessation of Life. When the SHTF occurs is not the time to have wished one had taken the time to develop Dangerous Device operational skills.

                Substantial expenditure is not required to implement a weight training program; water weighs approximately one avoirdupois pound per pint, empty gallon milk jugs will hold slightly over eight pints. A simple Contraption can be constructed with a two-foot long closet rod (~1 3/8″ diameter wooden rod or dowel) drilled laterally in the center will acccept a length of string; tie the other end to a gallon milk jug, the string should be heavy enough to support ~10 pounds, and long enough to keep the jug off the floor while held in the hands with the back erect, arms extended and parallel to the floor (some experienced patients will notice that this is a homemade version of a rather expensive tool used by Occupational Therapists). Begin with one pint of water in the jug and roll the wooden rod forward until the jug contacts the rod, then roll the rod backward – do not let it spin in the hands – until the jug once again contacts the rod, then roll it forward again until the jug is at full length of the string. This completes One Repetition. If a beginner can complete one rep with one pint they will have accomplished Something of Note.

                Put The Contraption aside until the morrow. Repeat daily. When one rep become easier (“easier” not “easy”), go to two reps. When one achieves the ability to perform three reps, add another pint of water and begin again at one rep. Lather, rinse, repeat. When the capacity of the jug is exceeded, use heavier string and move to round weight plates (either Standard or Olympic weights work, the Standard ones will be cheaper, and come in 1 lb, 2 1/2, 5, 10, 25 and 45 lb increments; please let us know when you need the 25 pounders…).

                The Contraption can also be used to perform forward, and reverse forearm curls; roll up about half the string, add water to the jug, and commence with curls. With the string between the fingers and the arm vertical from shoulder to elbow, tricep curls can be accomplished. It will be noted that standing erect during these exercises forces simultaneous development of the back muscles, along with the glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps and calves. It is not a broad spectrum weight training program – see Mark Rippetoe’s book for that – but it will help . A Lot.

                Hand strength can be improved with all sort of expensive hand exercise equipment, or a simple tennis ball. A used tennis ball is fine; hold in the fingers – NOT in the palm of the hand like squeezing a lemon – and squeeze with the fingers until the fingers get tired. Then move the ball to the other hand and repeat. Start with every other day, after two weeks do it daily with each hand.

                Strength fitness is not a destination, it is a journey. Sometimes the road is rocky, it is always uphill, but the views from the overlooks on the way are spectacular. Not to mention, also potentially life saving.

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                1. grasp the grip frame firmly with your Strong Hand and the slide with your Support Hand and PUNCH HARD with your Strong Hand.
                  ……………..

                  Yes. Uses core, not just the arms.

                  It is probable that those experiencing difficulty manually operating the slide will not have the manipulating strength to also operate the slide lock latch while also manually operating the slide; the way around this is to replace whatever magazine may be in The Device with an empty one which should allow the slide to lock open.
                  …………………

                  True. Interesting hack. Removing the magazine works if you are having difficulty removing what is in the chamber without firing (baring request from law enforcement, this action is needed when a jam occurs). Problem is hack doesn’t work for loading from a magazine to start shooting. (The smaller .380 and 9mm don’t have safety switches.)

                  Inability to easly manipulate the slide on a semi-automatic Device is caused by inadequacies in the muscle groups in the anterior and posterior forearm, bicep, tricep and deltoid muscles, and to a slightly lesser degree, the trapezius muscles. Training with weights is the recommended treatment.
                  …………………..

                  While don’t know the names off all the muscles involved have been told all this. Working on it. Meanwhile have one I can use and practice firing with. Smaller option would be better for packing. But have that covered when we want to carry. Odds are I won’t.

                  Under “You want me to do What?” while handling a small service dog (4 on the floor – i.e. on ground, on leash)? Which means dangerous situations I am very likely picking her up to make us more mobile to move, while hubby handles what is going on (with bear spray and phew phew backup). If I have to move and prep to fire, not that coordinated (at almost 67, not even practicing will help). Where hubby wants me to have an option is when we split up which means I’m staying at the hotel or with the vehicle. Different situation then (different problem). Hubby will be handling the situation. I’m on deck if things have really gone to heck and back, and cannot retreat and threaten at the same time. OH and lots, and lots, of screaming.

                  Remember boat accident. So all this is theoretical. Luckily local fire ranges have practicing options.

                  Like

              1. Yas, canoes, so tippy you know.

                I have wondered (fruitlessly, because this is fricking Canada here) if the 5.7×28mm FN Five Seven would be a nice easy pistol to shoot. I’ve shot them out of an FN P90 a few times in Arizona (range rentals are AWESOME!!!) and the P90 has zero recoil. Like shooting a .22, really. (I want one. A lot. It’s such a great little gun.)

                Never got to shoot an FN Five Seven, but reports in the gun mags say they do all right.

                I did get to shoot a Desert Eagle .50 one time (the other end of the spectrum), and I must say that for a cannon it was quite pleasant to shoot. Recoil was eminently controllable, and it did not sting the hand like so many revolvers do. (.38 Airweight with full-power Speer Gold Dots. Ouch.) It is wide-by-large, even my giant ape hands were full.

                If I may suggest, a good shooting glove and some sports tape for the wrist and thumb will make range day much less painful. Maybe add a neoprene elbow sleeve to keep things tight and reduce the shock.

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                1. The S&W EZ is just the right recoil and shock. Can run through a few mags shooting it. Bonus I can handle it 100% on my own. Need to be taught how to clean it.

                  Thanks for the suggestions! I might be able to practice more with the smaller handguns.

                  Mom had a .38 Revolver. But youngest sister got that along with the smaller of the 3 bigger revolvers. I can barely hold the bigger two that we kept. Son inherits them, and everything, next. Other sister took the hunting rifles mom and dad used. Mom at 88 decided she needed the firearms out of the house. She could have sold them. But she and dad decided before he passed away who was getting what. Mom refused to deviate from that. Also given what is happening in Oregon and Washington, getting youngest sister the handguns she inherited across the state line before that became a problem is something we don’t have to worry about. (Not a problem yet. Don’t give them any ideas. Just paranoid.)

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. For what it’s worth, in new handguns, the Ruger LCR is the revolver that fits my wife’s hands. 38 special or 22 LR. The ones we have are double-action only. There might (maybe) one with an external hammer for single action use. I’m insufficiently caffeinated to try to look it up this morning. :)

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                    1. S&W EZ 9mm comes in two versions. One with two safety’s and one with none. Two safety’s, lever and in handle. Lever is up – safety on, or down – safety off. Handle safety must be depressed with the lever safety off, to actually fire. Not that it is ever going to be handled any differently than if we hadn’t gotten the safety. It is also not a small gun, 5″x6″. Like I said, smaller than the Glock 9mm. Can easily be carried in center section of this, with a spare magazine. Bonus. It is a purse, or fanny pack, and looks like one. Does not look like a concealed carry option. Double bonus I can carry it on my waist while carrying the Kurgo dog backpack kennel. (Haven’t had to use the kennel backpack to carry Pepper yet. But I got it because we’ve been in a situation where we needed it. One tired small pup and a standing room only packed bus. A lot easier if she’d been in the pack on my back instead of in my arms.)

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                2. Hypothetically, if I were a pistol owner, I’d go the other way. I’d deliberately go to the range when I’m tired and sore, sometimes. Why? Because Murphy was an optimist, and Critter 2.0™ will probably cause a problem when I’m tired and achy. If I can do OK to well when I’m hurting, then my odds of doing OK to “minute of bad guy” are much greater.

                  If I were a pistol owner. Hypothetically speaking. Coughcoughcough

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. In Canada we practice running away when we’re tired and sore.

                    Because it it literally worth it, in Canada, to let the goblins burn your entire house down rather than defend it with a flashlight, much less a firearm. Several recent cases of obvious and unquestionable self defense ended costing the -victim- more than their house and car. One of the victims was a protected minority too, so that says something.

                    American tourists considering a visit to the Great White North, take note.

                    In fact, my big flashlight was recently lost in a tragic boating accident. So sad. We held a little funeral-at-sea for it.

                    Like

              2. “Problem is hack doesn’t work for loading from a magazine to start shooting. “
                Yes, it does. Instert empty magazine, manually operate slide per previous instruction. Slide will lock open. Remove empty magazine, insert full magazine. Operate slide lock switch (if present) or use previous instructions to operate slide. Moving slide further open – against the stop – and releasing it will allow the slide to close, stripping a round from the full magazine and chambering it. Do NOT follow the slide closed with your support hand, doing so will cause a Failure To Return To Battery. Push the slide open, all the way to the stop THEN COMPLETELY RELEASE THE SLIDE.

                And, if I may, RE: the Support Dog. I understand how valuable pets are, especially a pet which one depends upon for psychological, or physical, aid. If conditions are such that they dictate putting one’s firearm into use to defend oneself, FORGET ABOUT THE DOG. Defend yourself, and whatever human may be depending on you, to whatever limit is necessary; that will require your complete and total concentration. Every damn bit of it and then some.

                If, when you and your humans are safe, and the situation secure, THEN you can worry about the dog. Not before. Trying to save the dog during the event will result in a severely negative outcome for you and your humans. It’s like when the oxygen masks drop from the overhead in a commercial airliner – parents MUST put their own mask on first, THEN address the child’s mask. Doing it in any other order may, and sometimes, will, leave the parent incapacitated from hypoxia and the child unmasked. The “parental reflex” will kill them both.

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          4. If finances allow, and OR actually allows guns to be sold – there’s some discussion on whether that might be an Issue in a bit – look at a Shield EZ in either .380 or 9mm. It’s actually hammer-fired and easy to manipulate the slide. I handled one at Bi-Mart down here in CG. I probably should just buy one.

            Northwest Arsenal has one in .380 you could try.

            I have yet to sell my wife on that. J-frame works for her.

            Like

            1. Yes. EZ 9mm. I have small hands. But the smaller guns hurt when they kick (.380 or 9mm, OTOH the big Glock 9mm hurts too), both palms and forearms (tendentious). Probably won’t notice when adrenaline is pumping. But as bad as not having the gun on you, not practicing with what you are carrying is just as bad.

              Um. Grin. Don’t laugh. You know of anywhere to pick up some .2535? We want to fire a few rounds through the 1894 Winchester inherited from great uncle through dad. BIL is looking for us too. Hubby has ordered it a couple of times but no go so far. Has a standing order for it at BiMart.

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              1. AmmoSeek suggests Flip Ammo in VA has it in stock – first 6 places said no. But 16 rounds for $95? Hokey Smokes!

                Sorry to hear about he tendonitis; friend in CA had to quit shooting because of that. OTOH, she gave me all her ammo, several K rounds.

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          5. There are pistols with tip-up barrels that do not require racking the slide to load. Taurus makes a few. With technique and practice, you can safely load them with one hand.

            If revolver cartridges are sticking, try a lower velocity / lower pressure load. If they hurt to fire, highly likely the wrong cartridge for you.

            I have bigtime arthritis, so I understand in spades.

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            2. revolver cartridges are sticking, try a lower velocity / lower pressure load.
              …………….

              Inherited revolvers and reloads. Yes, we think the reloads are a problem. Don’t remember dad ever having problems. But do remember I have never been able to eject the expended cartridges when dad taught me to shoot the revolvers as a preteen. They are very easy to fire if the hammer is back (very touchy trigger). Harder if hammer is not back but still will fire. We had the handguns all out to the range to verify working before handing off those that went to sister (other sister didn’t want any of the revolvers, just “her”, used to be mom’s, and dad’s hunting rifles). While sister and BIL supposedly are taking the family out to the range to work with a range master to learn to safely handle and fire. I doubt they will. It is more the history and story behind the inheritance that matters. If they do, and they tell us when and where, we may join them. Right now they have other priorities.

              Other priority. EllieJay, 23″ 9# 11ozs, Aug 8, 5:47 PM – First grandchild, mom’s 5th great-grandchild, our at least 11th (?) great-niece (well 4 are nephews, but point made. We really don’t know how many there are on hubby’s side. Although there we are possibly close to great-great level as oldest two are 21.)

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              1. Congrats on the new human. Live Long and prosper, and all that. 8 – )

                My handloads will easily fall out of a clean revolver. So will most low-velocity commercial loads for what I shoot.

                Assuming you are shooting a .38 or .357, find a box of commercial bullets that do -not- say “+P”, “Plus P”, or “Magnum”. Those are hot loads. Look for the lightest weight bullet, say a 110 grain or at most 125-130 grain. “Light” or “target”.

                Heavier guns eat more recoil through greater inertia. Tiny little light-alloy pocket-carry .357s are the gun of choice for the Maquis de Sade. You could not pay me to shoot one with the full power ammo.

                Assuming a swing out cylinder, raise the muzzle a bit and push the rod towards the rear. The empties should just fall/pop out. If this is difficult, the ammo may be too hot. or the chambers may be filthy with crud.

                Whatever you choose to shoot should be comfortable enough to fire 50 times in an hour of deliberate practice, without significant discomfort.

                Can discuss more if you are interested. I tend to go on and on about stuff in my areas of interest.

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                1. choose to shoot should be comfortable enough to fire 50 times in an hour of deliberate practice, without significant discomfort.
                  ……………….

                  That is what we are doing. The ammo budget is expensive. Sigh. We are getting some reloads from BIL. We give him the brass. Mostly shooting new. Only part that hurts with the S&W EZ is reloading the magazines (an they are EZ spring too). Do have that figured out so getting easier. Also need to decide on a range to join. The one “closest” is $480. ($240 for son. $240 for us.) The other range is about an extra 20 miles but they advertise “household” membership, which should include all 3 of us, but we still need to check it out.

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        2. Sorry, my ‘pound sand’ comment was a bit fanciful. But the point remains. Whatever legal fig leaf the state legislatures, executives and lower courts are putting on their nullification pigs, the Reader still sees it as nullification.

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          1. People celebrate when their local authorities say they will defy the opposition. Both sides have been playing that game.

            a) Despite the Feds/SCOTUS/AlienOverlords – Yes we -will- keep using race as a determining factor.

            1) Despite the Feds/SCOTUS/AlienOverlords – No we wont enforce a ban of gun type X.

            Both are “nullifications”.

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    2. It’s about selling hardware and services. The casualties are merely an externalized cost of doing business.

      On the shots, apparently during the 80’s drug manufacturers managed to get immunity from liability. That, however, rewards rushing out high risk shots, because the risk of failure is externalized.

      I suspect it has taken this long to impact, because it takes about 30-40 years to develop and cycle through a tech lead, and hence have the real final impact of developer culture/final approvals.

      The correlary is we can expect it to get exponentially worse for the next ten-twenty years until there is a major purge of nearly researcher who developed under the new zero-liability dogma.

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    3. That defiance of SCOTUS is already happening in some states. They are making a show of legislative legalism, but it is defiance in all but name.

      Same sort of shit the donks pulled with Jim Crow. Despite being told to knock it off, they just reworded the bullshit. Eisenhower sent the Army as a pointed reminder they were not to do that.

      Note that Kennedy withdrew them, and the donks reapplied segregation. It was part of the deal that nominated Kennedy. LBJ was another part.

      The donks are at it again.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Again, they have not explicitly told the high court to pound sand yet. The fact that they’re paying lip service means that they haven’t gone into open defiance quite yet. And they are paying lip service, because while the new laws explicitly violate the spirit of Bruen, they don’t explicitly violate the letter. They’re violating things identified in the supporting opinions (such as designating pretty much everywhere a “sanctuary” location) but weren’t addressed in the Bruen opinion itself. Bruen is largely a guideline. It’s a very good guideline, and lays things out in a manner that only an idiot could fail to understand. But it doesn’t sit down and explicitly block every last possible way that the anti-gun crowd could attempt an end run around it. So the various anti-gun state legislatures have decided to pretend to be idiots.

        And before one of you snarks it, not that kind of idiot.

        As I stated above, the real test will be when the high court overturns these new laws, and we see how the states react. If they work on new and different “idiot” laws, then we’ve dodged a figurative bullet. They’re still acknowledging the authority of the court, even if grudgingly. If they keep enforcing the laws anyway, then there’s a crisis.

        Also, we won’t have just guidelines for much longer. I suspect that when the next round of gun control cases (mostly the ones that got GVRed immediately following Bruen’s issuance and are working their way back through the courts) reach the high court, I suspect we’re going to start things start tightening up in ways that will heavily constrain the anti-gun crowd.

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        1. I suspect that when the next round of gun control cases (mostly the ones that got GVRed immediately following Bruen’s issuance and are working their way back through the courts) reach the high court, I suspect we’re going to start things start tightening up in ways that will heavily constrain the anti-gun crowd.

          From your keyboard to SCOTUS staff’s inbox!

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          1. The question is what you mean by nullification. Ordinarily, nullification means that the Executive Branch refuses to enforce a law. That doesn’t apply here because not enforcing gun control is what the court has ordered, and is also contrary to the wishes of the gun grabbers. If you mean that they’ll “nullify” the decisions by having the Feds refuse to even slap the wrists of the offending states, I already mentioned that as a possibility.

            And if you mean that they’ll get rid of the high court, I suspect that would remove more of the mask than they’re comfortable with right now.

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            1. The Reader takes a broader view of what constitutes nullification. The blatant disregard of the plain meaning of the Constitution in drafting (state legislatures) or signing legislation as well as the attempting by executive agencies to slide though the smallest perceived crack in interpretation constitute nullification in the 21st century. We need to call it what it is.

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        3. “As I stated above, the real test will be when the high court overturns these new laws, and we see how the states react. ”

          Which is why they are going after the Supreme Court on various fronts. Specifically including allowing mobs outside their homes.

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          1. And also all of the sudden talk about “improper” behavior by (conservative) justices, and attempts by Schumer to bully the court into giving watchdog ethical authority to a group under the control of the Legislative Branch.

            Liked by 1 person

    4. There’s an additional aspect here: the states are clearly playing for time, dragging out every case, in hopes of a personnel change at SCOTUS that will flip the general ratio from 5 Conservative to 4 Progressive to 5-4 the other way.

      Sadly, the likely health risk candidate for replacement is Justice Thomas, 75.

      Liked by 1 person

  5. The first people who should pay the price is not Bud Light, but the Main Stream Press. I don’t mean the vapid face of the news, no, the editors, writers, and their bosses all the way up to the CEO of the News Divisions. They deserve the Hangman’s Gallows, each and everyone of them. If we do ever get new Nuremberg trails those lying communist bastards should go first, then the crooked FBI, then the DOJ, then all the other communist scum. Finishing with everyone elected in the Democrat party, the Rino’s are Democrats as well. Well save Biden and Pelosi’s execution for Pay Per view to pay down the debt.

    P.S. We’ll give them the same show trials they gave the Jan 6 people. What goes around comes around.
    They really don’t have a choice anymore, Biden has to have Trump Killed or he bows out of the race.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s going to get very bumpy. And while the heart yearns for justice, if we follow your program, the USA is done forever or for a vry long time.
      All I can do is pray.

      Like

      1. If you look at what happened after the first Civil War there were plenty who did the same thing, on both sides. That is what partially caused the support for the KKK among the common people. Then there were the carpet baggers and robber barons who went down and raped economically what was left of the south that also influenced them, most weren’t in the KKK, but they turned a blind eye because of those real or just perceived injustices. And I did specify Nuremberg Type Trials.

        The animosity I have towards the press is solely rooted in the fact they are given special protection by the constitution. Special protections so they can protect the people, from the Government or powerful. Instead they have joined with Government, or at least one party, and not for the best wishes of the people. The same people I might add that they were given those special rights to protect, instead they wish to help enslave them. Were I king of the world, they would be given the NCAA version of the death penalty, two years, no News rooms or publishing of news of any kind, on any platform.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The sad thing about the press is that they Imagine That They Have This Special “Shield” but in spite some idiots on the Supreme Court, their “Special Shield” is held by the general public.

          Here’s the First Amendment Of Constitution.

          Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

          End Quote

          It doesn’t say “of the news media” but says “of the press” for IMO a very good reason.

          When, you study the history of the Printing Press, you’ll discover that governments (& other powerful groups) viewed the Printing Press as a Double-Edged Sword.

          It could be used to spread ideas & information that they liked but could be used to spread ideas, information and lies that they disliked.

          Most places in Europe licensed the ownership and usage of Printing Presses.

          If an owner of a Printing Press printed stuff that the Powers-That-Be disliked, the owner of the press would be forced out of business (or worse) even if the owner just printed “what he was hired to print”.

          IE the Powers-That-Be wanted to restrict the spread of Points-Of-View that they didn’t like, truthful or not.

          Privately owned Printing Presses in the American Colonies were used to spread various ideas including the idea of Independance from Britian.

          Newspapers were rare (if they actually existed) but privately owned Printing Presses were common.

          The writers of the Bill of Rights understood the value of the common printing press and understood that would-be tyrants would try to restrict their use.

          There have been plenty of cases where the Mass Media tried to restrict “who can call themselves news reporters”. So far the courts have struck down those attempts.

          The so-called “Freedom Of The Press” actually the “Freedom To Spread Your Ideas/Point of View”.

          IMO Sarah’s blog (and other blogs) are covered by both “Freedom Of Speech” and “Freedom Of The Press”.

          Hey! Where did this soapbox come from? :wink:

          Liked by 1 person

        2. The constitution does not actually do that, as Justice Kennedy spelled out in the Citizens United decision. When the First Amendment says, “the press,” it does not mean a particular industry, or profession; it means any citizen who has the ability to print things and distribute them. There is no special group that is specially trusted with those rights; they are rights of all human beings, or at least all citizens. Claims to the contrary are special interest pleading that has helped enable the news media to gain the powers that they have been abusing.

          Liked by 2 people

        3. I started leaving a comment and rewrote it three times…wait, now four…before deciding to scrap it.

          You know that saying, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?” Well, I can’t say anything nice about the press because there’s nothing nice to be said about the traitorous, human-shaped piles of excrement who report what passes for mainstream news — but the lack of anything nice to say isn’t stopping me (I mean, this is the internet).

          What has stopped me is that there’s no way to say what I’m thinking right now without veering into someplace I (we) really shouldn’t go.

          I’m standing here in the middle of this asylum because the lunatics decided to dance in what used to be MY space, and there’s nowhere else to go. I’m stuck here. I don’t see any way out. But they can’t make me do any goddam dancing.

          Liked by 1 person

        4. You do understand just how badly that stuff was exaggerated, yes? The “lost cause”? Same as they said “slaves is happy that way”.

          Propaganda from apologists for slavery.

          The south was a mess economicly until the Donks finally lost their stranglehold on politics. From the withdrawal of federal troops until the Republicans became competitive, the south was stuck in economic doldrums. From about 1980 forward, things changed.

          No saints in the GOP, either. But let’s not overlook just how badly the southern donks f-ed over the south with their antics. Until most of the plantation types died off, the south was becalmed in purgatory of their own making.

          California is proof that the donks didn’t learn one fucking thing from that obscenity. Just different planters intending different slavery “for everyone’s good”.

          Ugly but true.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. At which point, FDR took over. My grandparents voted Democrat until the day they died because of things like rural electrification.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. “Just different planters intending different slavery “for everyone’s good”.”

            Plantation = collective. Just a different recruiting process.

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    2. I have a dream…

      A gallows at the Lincoln Memorial. Bleachers lining the national mall. Vendors selling rotten vegetables, eggs, etc. (The tickets and vendors licenses pay a lot of the national debt, but the big money will be the lottery to pull the lever.)

      The Commie scum walk from the capitol steps on their final Long March, while the abused citizens express their displeasure.

      Like

        1. As long as we’re in this vein, why not go for simplicity and toss from the Washington Monument?

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  6. Snow skiing – much of the time my knees are bent, ready for anything. But at a certain point on the run I get to stand up straight and actually rest at high speed while my skis run down the hill.

    There is no rest on this run. It’s all knees bent, cliffs, sharp turns, hidden rocks, and never getting to rest. AND NEVER GETTING TO STOP AND FIGURE IT OUT.

    It’s like skiing the moguls at Steven’s Pass in the dark. For years.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Great analogy Kathy! I have that feeling a great deal. I have so little time to just stops and thinks. It seems everything is reactive. Sarah points out that we never seem to get answers on so many things and we are just moved along. I find that many of the folks I meet are on autopilot. If something does break through it is all “Wait, what” Then you have to try to explain the backstory in a way they wont get lost.

      And due to the complexity even remembering all the backstory is hard. Reading Gregg Jarret’s Witch Hunt and the fact that s much of what he writes about has been memory holed is really disturbing. No one faced any consequences. Terrifying.

      Heading into Mad Max territory.

      Like

    2. That would be Stevens Pass, no possessive apostrophe – and it is indeed a beautiful and challenging summit and slopes.

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  7. RFK, Jr., has an actual point about vaccines and autism, if you strip away the hysterical rhetoric and bashing, and it is simply this:

    In the late 1980s, the number of required vaccines for infants more than doubled overnight. (I think it effectively quadrupled, in fact.) And the new vaccines had less of a track record and less testing than the ones that went before.

    The number of children diagnosed as being on the spectrum also went up, beginning in the early 1990s.

    And anyone who suggests that correlation be investigated is condemned and smeared, while no investigation into whether it’s anything more than correlation has ever occurred.

    Dislike him or not, it’s not insane to point these facts out, nor to infer from the reputation-destruction campaigns against anyone who does point them out that something stinks about it.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Jerry Pournelle posted a hypothesis (on the Chaos Manor blog, don’t recall when) that getting the multiple vaccines at one time could trigger a cytokine storm. Spacing the gunk out and letting the body acclimate to the vax-of-the-week/day/month would likely have a better result.

        Of course, with the high number of vaccines, doing it that way might mean a person could be retiring and still getting the baby shots.

        BIL got a Covid booster at the same time as a flu shot. Not sure if that was the trigger for the pneumonia that killed him. Me, I’m taking a pass on flu shots for the while. I’ll reconsider when mRNA not-vaccines are outlawed.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Pfizer (of course) wants to go to an mRNA Flu shot now. If they get approval without the standard full testing, I might sound more like RFK or Jennie Whatsername

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    2. I think it’s the number of shots. People got excited over the results for polio and a couple of others that I’m drawing a blank on and went for diminishing returns. Forgetting that the body needs training on even germ fighting.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Entirely possible, but without doing the necessary studies and actually figuring it out, we’ll never know. And since anyone who dares question is destroyed and made a pariah… well, we’ll never know for sure.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. “Forgetting that the body needs training on even germ fighting.” I’m having a hard time figuring out what you mean by that, because vaccines (conventional vaccines, not the COVID shot which works differently) are training on germ fighting, and that’s why they work. They involve injecting a small amount of dead viruses, or weakened live viruses, so that the immune system gets to “learn” what that virus looks like and spool up specific defenses against that virus. And the result is a person who’s far better at fighting off those viruses, and doesn’t end up catching measles, or mumps, or rubella. Nowadays we forget how nasty some of those diseases were.

        I also want to mention something about the flu vaccine. I’ve seen many people over the years complain that the flu vaccine this year picked strains A, B, C, and D to vaccinate against, and then strain E ended up going around and making people sick, and the same thing tends to happen every year. Couldn’t those fools at the CDC (I’m paraphrasing) get it right just once? Well, look at it this way. The flu vaccine that was widely distributed and handed out for free was supposed to protect against strains A, B, C, and D — and in fact, strains A, B, C, and D did not spread widely this year. Next year the A, B, C, and D they picked will usually have been different strains (one or two might be the same), and then that year, again, the strains that were vaccinated against did not spread widely: a different strain, that was not vaccinated against, is what made most people sick. Doesn’t that demonstrate that the flu vaccine is being effective? (As to why they only pick four strains to vaccinate against, I assume the “obvious” solution of making a vaccine against twenty strains would have some problems, perhaps a much higher chance of the vaccine making you sick that could kill elderly people, but I don’t know the specifics of what those problems would be).

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        1. When you get a vaccine, a real vaccine, it stresses your immune system. Hopefully, for a very short while. Possibly, for longer than that. And sometimes, there are side effects.

          When you have multiple vaccines coming not months apart, but a month or three weeks apart, and the person getting the vaccination is a tiny baby or toddler… well, you’re kind of begging for something to happen that is a side effect or a long period of weakness.

          And of course, there’s nothing that says you can’t be allergic or sensitive to one of the vaccine’s non-active components, like chicken eggs, or to an active one, like human tissue cultures.

          In my family, we’re pretty okay with vaccines. But I also got vaccinated well before all this crazy multiplication of vaccines.

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          1. Not a month or even a week apart, three or four multi-vaccine injections in sixty seconds.
            Nine to twelve individual vaccines. In a tiny infant or even a toddler.

            And if you’re the sort of Really Stuborn parent who insists on getting them spaced, and brings the kid in for each, it’s still one shot with Measles, Mumps, AND Rubella. One shot with Diptheria, Tetenus, AND Pertussis. And so on and so forth.

            (Yes, I can’t spell. No, I don’t use auto-corrupt. They’re all phoneticly spelled, even if incorrect.)

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            1. We are now learning what it is like when Rubella, Measles, Whooping Cough, etc., happen. They have never been totally eradicated even in the US or Canada. Good enough to generally protect the vulnerable. Now untested illegally crossed migrants are coming in sick with these illnesses, making it more likely they spread.

              I mean. Both my son and I’ve had Whooping Cough (me twice, but then I had it before there was a vaccine), despite being currently vaccinated. It was not fun. (I have also had measles, rubella, and mumps, before vaccines were available. Not that I remember being sick.)

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Oh, crud. That is bad. Whooping cough vaccine used to really work… So is the vaccine bad, or are the new strains too different?

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                1. Immunity goes down over time, and of course it’s only as good as your immune system is running right now.

                  German measles was a really big worry during my pregnancies because we’re almost always in areas with a lot of recent illegals.

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                  1. German measles was a really big worry during my pregnancies
                    …………..

                    Should be. Cousin is all but blind and deaf because aunt caught German measles while pregnant. This would have been late ’50s. Probably from me. But I didn’t present as sick until back home from seeing aunt. That is what is so bad. Sick but no one knows until spots show.

                    Liked by 2 people

                2. Whooping cough vaccine used to really work… So is the vaccine bad, or are the new strains too different?
                  ………………

                  IDK. this was 22 years ago now. There was this “cold with a bad cough” going around the (large warehouse open) office. I caught it. Ten days later 12 year old son caught it. Him we took to the doctor (he was panicking on the “cough so hard you can’t breath”, and repeat). Diagnosis Whooping Cough. I know he was current on his vaccines, required for school. Mine? Clinic’s medical records on me said I was. Oh. I had the same “cough till it hurts not only clear down to the bottom of your lungs, but your toes, try to breath and trigger another coughing jag”, just being older and more knowledgeable I could get the coughing jags under control without help. While I was never diagnosed. Any bets that isn’t what I had? Oh. We coughed for weeks. I’ve mentioned this on other forums. Not more than a few people have stated since then that they have to be sure to get the DP vaccine every 3 to 5 years, or they repeatably catch Whooping Cough. Haven’t gotten it since then. But then not in a huge office anymore.

                  Like

                3. The pertussis vaccine used to be an attenuated live virus, which was more effective overall, but led to more full cases, therefore more dangerous. When they went to dead virus pieces for the vaccine, the accidental cases went away, but the effectiveness dropped below 90%. It was a case of “choose the best bad option” and they went with “the vaccine will not give you the disease.” It is the poorest-performing widespread vaccine.

                  Mind you, though they are giving vaccines for more diseases these days, they are smaller “pieces”—they pick one or two unique surface alleles for your immune system to target rather than the whole package, because training your immune system on the whole package is not only inefficient, it can train your immune system to target things that are not part of the disease, but which are part of healthy human cells. (Bad idea to deliberately induce autoimmune issues.) I think the numbers run something like 70+ alleles over a dozen vaccines rather than several hundred alleles over three or four vaccines.

                  I know four people who got pertussis despite being vaccinated. Three are from the same family, with known immune issues.

                  Like

          2. As a child, they had to special order a vaccine that was just “DP.” Diptheria/pertussis – but NOT tetanus. That was after I had a severe reaction, caused by the traces of equine proteins in the tetanus vaccine. (They long ago changed over to production with chicken eggs, which doesn’t give me a problem. Thank goodness; I’ve stepped on far too many rusty nails over the years.)

            Like

        2. I worked in a clinic the year (2006?) there was a shortage of flu shots. Experts predicted a horrible die-off. We rationed the shots to our sickest — we had 100 shots for 2500 patients. Some older folks said they’d had good lives, and to give their shot to a young person who needed it (courage!).

          But guess what? It turned out to be one of the mildest years ever. The only patients who died, 6 of them, were among the group that got the shots. Some of the others who ALWAYS got shots and ALWAYS got the flu anyway (“but it could have been much worse”) — never got sick at all that year!

          That was the crack in my cosmic egg. All those years of old folks claiming the flu shot gave them the flu — which I discounted — came back in sharp detail. Maybe they were right after all.

          Like

          1. My very first flu shot had me crawling to the bathroom to deal with flu symptoms. (Walking to the bathroom was NOT an option. Spiked a fever of 101 and lost another day of school.)

            It was a bit over 20 years before I took another. (I was getting ear surgery and anything that would reduce the chances of breaking the bone-prosthetic bond was called for. Too bad I didn’t draw a better surgeon. At least the third try in the left ear worked. Sigh.)

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            1. I didn’t get a flu shot last fall, and in December managed to get a convincing case of it. (Didn’t bother to get tested. Wasn’t going to change how we dealt with it.) That still hasn’t convinced me to get another shot.

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          3. I stopped even considering flu shots when the matching of the strain figures each year were routinely less than 50%. Viruses mutate. It’s what they do.

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            1. matching of the strain figures each year were routinely less than 50%. Viruses mutate. It’s what they do.

              Exactly. What the predictors do is watch what is going around in the areas where flu is “in season” elsewhere in the world. They make protections against those variants. By the time it is flu season here, either different variant, or the predicted flu mutates and might as well as be a different variant. Some times it doesn’t.

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          4. Guy I knew in Louisiana owned a gas station (the old Full Service kind), and dealing with people made him always seem to catch something. But whenever he got a flu shot, he’s get sick from the shot (mildly but flu-like), and then later it seemed the shot didn’t cover the strains running through the area and he’d then get the flu again, usually a bit worse.
            He stopped getting the flu shot, “If I’m gonna get sick from the shot and then still get the flu, I’ll just deal with getting sick once.” except most of the time once he stopped, he got sick less and often when he did it was milder.
            I’ve never gotten a flu shot in my life, and have only gotten the flu a few times.

            Like

            1. I suspect if someone went and asked military veterans, they’d be able to get a decent study sample for “how many stopped having the flu once they weren’t getting vaccinated every year.”

              I had it once after the Navy.

              It was worse than any flu I’d ever had.

              Wasn’t sick again until post-Thanksgiving 2019, when we all lost our sense of taste….

              Liked by 1 person

              1. He might benefit from the hit, considering how often they completely miss on the strains, that isn’t the full reason. Everyone is different, too (which comes as a shock to too many medicos and pols)

                Like

            3. Kind of a side note, I had to get a (fairly painful) cyst removed from my back today. I expected Lidocaine, but the shiny new variant added Epinephrine to the mix, apparently to reduce the chance of bleeding. (I’m on warfarin, so that might be a Good Thing.)

              The procedure went OK (til an hour or so later when the numbness wore off, but I expected that. Second rodeo for that problem), but driving home, I got rather sleepy. I wonder if I was experiencing the post-stimulus crash. OTOH, didn’t sleep worth a damn last night–it was hot in the house.

              I’m getting wary of drug mixes. OTOH, I’ve had Lidocaine with and without a highish pH buffer, and buffered Lidocaine causes a bit less flinching and/or scraping ones body off the ceiling.

              Liked by 1 person

        3. Five years ago, I got the multi-flavor pneumonia shot and ended up with a reaction, including a pneumonia-type spot on my lungs. (Somehow the clinic never recorded that I got that shot, so I have yet another thing to argue with my primary care doc. At least he STFU’d about the not-Vax after the bad news broke widely.)

          I’m giving a pass on the newer-and-cooler multi-multi-flavor pneumonia shot. I’d rather live.

          Liked by 1 person

        4. “I’m having a hard time figuring out what you mean by that,”

          Robin, there’s a growing body of research that says that if the environment you grow up in is over-sterilized, the immune system starts looking for something to fight, and it’s leading to a rise in allergic reactions and autoimmune disorders.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. See George Carlin’s ‘Fear Of Germs’ monologue. Here’s a quote:

            “Besides, what do you think you have an immune system for? It’s for killing germs! But it needs practice… it needs germs to practice on. So listen! If you kill all the germs around you, and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you’re not gonna be prepared. And never mind ordinary germs, what are you gonna do when some super virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit? I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do… you’re gonna get sick, you’re gonna die, and you’re gonna deserve it…”

            Our ancestors grew up surrounded by all sorts of germs. We’re adapted to that environment. Sterilizing our houses and sanitizing the children is unnatural. Their immune systems get out of balance. If your immune system doesn’t have germs to kill, it not only gets weak, it gets bored and starts going after things it shouldn’t. Asthma, pet allergies, food allergies, all sorts of weird stuff that didn’t used to be a problem have become widespread since the advent of modern germophobia.

            As with most things, moderation helps. Just keep the germs under control. Clean, but don’t sterilize. Wash, but don’t soak yourself in alcohol and chemicals.
            ———————————
            They got a building down in New York City called Whitehall Street where ya go and get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seeee-lected.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. I’m aware of that (and agree with it, which is why we don’t wipe down our kitchen counters with Lysol and so on), but don’t believe it’s connected to vaccines — which are designed to give the immune system something to fight.

            Like

            1. Absolutely…. but the fighting response will differ based on the surrounding environment, plus biochemistry. And That surrounding environment was different from when people our parents age started getting vaccines, just as it’s different for our kids.

              Bottom line: We need continuous long-term studies, and we’re finding out that no one is doing them. Meanwhile, we’re also finding out the people with a financial interest in continuing the current practice have proven they will lie and suppress any competing voices even if those voices are right.

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            2. Pets. Oh I clean and disinfect. No way am I getting anything “can eat off the floor” clean, more than a second or two. Son and I are allergic to bug bites. That is genetic. Does mean, now that I can, flea treatment is a hallelujah invention. Used to keep them under regular control, but not completely. Now it is complete, at least in the house, and cats and dog can’t bring them in from the yard. There are still mosquitoes and spiders.

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              1. “No way am I getting anything “can eat off the floor” clean”

                I’m sure your pets would tell you you’re there already…..

                Like

        5. For the flu shots, there is a very long process to get to the “in arms” stage. Its about 18 months. They are doing slightly better than guessing which strains will spread 18 months out. Flu is one slippery multfaced bug. They cannot predict which strains will peter out naturally. They mostly miss, but on average they seem to be doing better than nothing.

          Your -individual- needs and experience, of course, may vary widely.

          Or wildly in my case. Lol.

          But, there is some thought that the process of jinking everyone’s immune systems with various novel flu vaccine strains enhances our species overall ability (“herd immunity”) to fight various different novel real flu strains.

          Like

    3. “… no investigation into whether it’s anything more than correlation has ever occurred.” To the best of my knowledge, that’s false. The link between vaccines and autism has been investigated and found to be none. The cause of the increase in autism diagnoses is simply that more psychiatrists are willing to diagnose it in borderline cases, and that more things are recognized as being part of the spectrum. (E.g., ADHD, once thought to be its own thing, is now considered (at least by some) as part of the autism spectrum. Opinions differ on that one, but when you look at the increase of autism-spectrum diagnoses, you’d better double-check that they’re not lumping ADHD in, otherwise what you have is adding apples to oranges and thinking you have more apples than before).

      So there’s a good reason for condemning those people who try to get everyone scared about vaccines and autism: they are either ignorant enough they shouldn’t be offering opinions on the subject, or else they’re deliberately ignoring the contradictory evidence and should be pilloried as liars.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I should note that the COVID shot is qualitatively different from the others (for one, it’s not a vaccine). RFK Jr’s suspicion of vaccines that really are vaccines has led him, IMHO, to ignorantly suspect the COVID shot of having problems because he suspects all vaccines have problems. Which means, if I’m right about why he formed that opinion (which is, of course, nearly impossible to prove) that he’s right about the COVID shot by accident.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. The crazy person wandering the street, afraid everyone is out to kill him, may not be completely wrong when the serial killer moves in to the neighborhood.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. My opinion is that there may have been – note past tense – an actual relation. There are reputable studies that even trace amounts of heavy metals can damage early neurological development. So the mercury compound that used to be used as a preservative in several vaccines could be a cause for some autism.

        No longer the case, though, as mercury was taken out of the equation many years ago.

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      3. Guess you forgot the studies that showed higher rates of autism among vaccinated black boys, but not black girls, than among unvaxed. Genetics makes a difference, which is ignored in one-size-fits-all vaccination programs.

        Funny how communities than don’t vaccinate kids have profoundly and significantly lower rates of autism than groups who do.

        But Trust The Science. They would never lie about anything

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        2. Word of advice: if you claim that there are studies, then when I ask (less than an hour later) for a link where I can see those studies, and you don’t reply… the conclusion I draw is “those studies don’t actually exist.” I’m still on the fence whether you were making them up and got caught, or whether you genuinely believed that they exist but, when I asked for evidence and you went looking, found that you couldn’t find them. (In which case a simple “You know what, I’m having trouble finding the link, but here are what details I can remember so that you can have a starting point to go looking” response would have been appreciated.) The longer you go without responding, though, the more I incline towards “Liar, got caught, clammed up”. So if you care about my opinion of you, you may want to post some kind of answer to my request. (If you don’t care, that’s fine, nobody can care about the opinion of everybody on the Internet. I’m just informing you in case you do care about being thought a liar).

          Liked by 1 person

      4. Other way around; the studies that have been published saying that vaccines cause autism have been declared unsupported, although high functioning autism (which is much more commonly diagnosed and thus MUCH easier to put together a study on) has been shown to not have a strong correlation with vaccines.

        The most likely route for the correlation would involve vaccine reactions being misdiagnosed as severe autism…which is pretty hard to get folks to even consider, one because even though you sign a sheet with a list of possible side-effects, folks don’t like it if you quote from those, and two because it involves looking at what’s being diagnosed as autism, while they’re busy conflating the scary sort of autism and up into Rainman territory with “weird and not entirely social” type autism.

        Liked by 2 people

            1. I think this was a partial posted I’d written in response to the weed – schizophrenia connection, not the autism thing.

              My recollection was that the weed in the 1970s, and the stuff used for official federal level testing was nowhere near as strong as the modern stuff, but I hadn’t been able to run down any numbers on it.

              But I’d thought I’d cancelled the post, so I’m not sure how it ended up posting here. Word Press being Word press, I guess?

              Liked by 1 person

              1. The stuff folks smoked 100 years ago was barely different from rope hemp, at least at the high end of the market. (heh)

                Now? The stuff is orders of magnitude more potent. Rope hemp of 100 years ago would be considered 3.2 beer to a 2020s pothead.

                Similar boost was done to tobacco, although not nearly to the same magnitude. Turns out you can greatly boost the “impact” of tobacco via chemistry in processing. Thus why Copenhagen dip hits so much harder then those little packets of mild stuff. There is similar done for cigarettes. (I believe it is high PH (alkali) to free more of the active stuff.)

                Pot gets far less processing, so they had to hammer away at genetics to increase available THC. (“Impact”) The stuff today would likely justify some of the over-the-top nutzoid propaganda of “Reefer madness” if 2020s spliff was suddenly introduced in the 1920s. Some of that modern stuff makes some people batshit crazy.

                (Sure, some folks can “handle” it. Dont tell me you are “handling it” if use is chronic. Whatever “it” is.)

                Liked by 1 person

                1. I suspect it has been less of an issue with tobacco for the same reason it’s never been a big issue with caffeine: you really don’t need to keep upping the dose with either, so there’s no point in packing in lethal levels.

                  Like

      5. I have to go digging to find it again, but there was one, but it wasn’t the child’s vaccines. Rather it was the mother’s.

        As I recall there was a certain subset of autism caused by the mother’s immune system attacking some part of the infant’s brain, that turned out to be triggered by certain vaccines. As I recall it was tied to certain genes, so you could actually test for the possibility, and make sure to give the mother immune suppressors during her pregnancy to prevent the effect.

        I don’t know if that has been more widely investigated, but it would be an interesting question to resolve.

        I suspect part of the real problem is you can’t make a living off of negative results, so oddities like that don’t get investigated in depth.

        Liked by 1 person

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  11. I stopped believing the Government in 1980. LP available, if desired.

    I haven’t stopped participating; but I just don’t trust them at all. Not at all.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. There is considerably worse. I’m not even going to go into who suddenly makes sense and makes me go “arrooo?”

    :is now picturing Kenshin’s “Oro?”:

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  13. More on .mil floor buffers here. I did ten weeks at Ft Sam in 1986 for Combat Medical Specialist training. Had a suicide attempt (hanging from a latrine stall) on a Friday night, but we’d just tested out on CPR that afternoon. He survived. Ninety-some Article 15s were handed out in a 400-person unit. It was that sort of a place. The term Lunatic Ball would fit those times.

    But back to floor buffers- a couple cycles later a guy tried to kill himself with one. Quarters were 3-story barracks. He tied the end of buffer cord around his neck and threw the buffer out a window. The building was too short for the cord. Buffer got wrecked on impact. He was awarded another A15 for property destruction. Probably got a ticket out of the Army, also.

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  14. 1) its been this way for a long long time. Hell just look at my email or the 3 character mod name I use at Rant…
    2) Go back in time and watch 2 old movies. The first “The President’s Analyst” and the second “Three Days of the Condor”. Movies made by Hollywood but to the point with everything we have seen except the desire to kill all but 100 million people by the rich elites.

    Like

    1. It is amazing how many people want to be Bond villains.

      I mean, if you had money and power, you could throw parties, or give stuff away, or play pranks, or be a saint. Why be a Bond villain?

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Might puzzle your local building inspectors …

          Historical castles were pretty hard to heat; I’d really like to know what it costs to maintain Arundel Castle in Sussex. Arundel-sized is a bit overkill for less than a Duke.

          One can do a lot to reduce maintenance by investing in modern features during construction.

          Like

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  16. If the show trials, lawfare, election fraud, etc., don’t work to keep Trump (or indeed any non-RINO Republican) from winning, they will resort to outright murder. They have no intention of giving up power ever again.

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  17. Formerly known as Fort Hood

    Can’t feed its soldiers.

    That is -bad-. Can’t stress enough just how bad. That the commanding general hasn’t been relieved is a travesty.

    Hood has been known for a long time as dysfunctional and ridden with epic stupid crap. But this is “up to 11”.

    https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2023/08/09/the-army-cant-feed-its-soldiers-stationed-at-texas-ft-cavazos-and-thats-isnt-the-only-problem-there-n790138

    Liked by 1 person

  18. @SAH, ” And now… I still think most vaccines are safe. If I ever — heaven forbid because the situation would almost always be bad — have the raising of an infant, I’ll still have him/her vaccinated.”

    Heaven forbid in my case, too. Back in the early 80s when I was studying to be a doc (my jr. year, my physician father saw the writing on the wall and convinced me I would be nuts to opt into getting an MD and working for the government, so I went engineering) immunologists were pretty sure (and still are) that in order to be effective, an inoculation should be administered in pretty much the same way that the pathogen would. That is, a viremic disease (one where the disease is bloodborne, tetanus, for example) is likely to be effectively inoculized by a shot. At least for a time. But a largely non-viremic disease needs to be inoculized by the route it generally enters the body — a respiratory should be a nasal mist, for example, so the thing that generates the immune response does so the same way the pathogen itself will do so.

    Anyway, the upshot is that I would not hesitate to get shots for the kind of stuff we were inoculated against (though probably oral polio rather than shot), but I would take a long, hard look at the stuff since then. Chicken pox, probably, because there is no longer much of a chance to get exposed from neighbor kids. Some of the others, yeah, maybe not. Maybe not even measles, since we now know the serious cases are almost certainly a result of vitamin A deficiency.

    Tough time to be a parent. And not just because of vaccines.

    Like

    1. Also, to be fair, nowadays a lot of vaccines have been altered to include the grow on aborted tissue, etc…. it might not have bad effects, but it’s against my religion. So I’d need to go one by one.

      Like

      1. Good on you! Many these days don’t have the courage of their convictions. If there are those who don’t mind babies being killed to make vaccines, God love ’em, hope they are right. Millstones don’t sound like a whole lot of fun and if they are wrong, millstones are better than what awaits.

        Viral vectors have been used for quite a while to make childhood vaccines because it takes almost no original tissue to make trillions of copies of the vaccine molecule. It is safe? In all cases? Probably, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it, let alone my kids’ lives. We know that in some cases, it has not been safe. Do I trust any of the frauds who have been pushing the jab, this or any other, particularly when they stand to make a cut out of every jab? I suspect the way I worded it answers the question.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Chicken Pox vaccine. Grrrrr

      It came out and required just as kid started kindergarten. Did not get son the new vaccine. He’d already had the chicken pox at 14 months. Like me and my sisters he did not have a light case. I got pictures. Every step of the school system.

      “He’s not vaccinated for chicken pox.”
      “He had them at 14 months.”
      “You know a light enough case he can get them again.”
      Show picture.
      “Never mind.”

      He still has 2 not private area visible scars, 33 years later.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. We managed to get both ours infected in the early 2000s. No big deal. A pox or two. They both have a strong antigenic response, probably because their immune systems were strong, rather than just a weenie exposure, which is the usual susected cause of weak immunity.

        But unless we moved to somewhere there are lots of immigrants, it’s highly unlikely that would work now.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. @d, “He still has 2 not private area visible scars, 33 years later.”

        Missed this. I still have two that only my parents, a couple babysitters, my wife and my urologist have seen.

        So far as I know. There are parts of college I don’t remember…

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        1. Yes. He has a few on more private parts (tush) that I and dad and his doctor know about. Just I haven’t seen them now since he has been old enough to take his own baths/showers. The one near his left eye was particularly bad. Faint scar now. But still there.

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    3. “Chicken pox, probably, because there is no longer much of a chance to get exposed from neighbor kids. ”

      Shingles is also chicken pox. You do NOT want shingles.

      The real threat is that we’re seeing instances where medical personnel are administering clot shot either without telling the patient or telling them it’s something else. And it may BE something else, just mixed with clot shot.

      Like

          1. SIL has shingles outbreaks. And it is not once and done. It reoccurs. Multiple things can trigger it for individuals and not the same triggers for other individuals. She has bad enough outbreaks her doctor gave them a handicapped parking pass for when she has outbreaks. The original shingle vaccine couldn’t help if you’d already had outbreaks. The new vaccine does work after one has had outbreaks.

            My doctor wanted me to wait until the new vaccine was released. But the release kept being put off so he finally had me get it. The new vaccine has now released but he said to wait a few years since I’ve now had the original vaccine.

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            2. The new vaccine is also not produced with fetal cell lines– it’s an ethical option.

              Wish they’d get a similar one for chicken pox in kids if they actually want to get folks to get it. (…frankly, I’m starting to think it’s less about vaccine coverage and more about the pinch of incense.)

              Like

        2. Shingles is the actual virus lying dormant in the nerves, IIRC. Apparently as we get older, something wakes it up. The shingles vaccine is apparently a way to re-focus the immune system on killing it, Unless the chicken pox vax is a live virus vaccine, I’m not sure what the pathway is.

          Liked by 1 person

  19. “And while I still think Robert Kennedy Jr is insane (like most of his family) and most of his opposition to vaccines is insane, it’s hard to regain the certainty I had, when I know he’s telling the truth about Covid-19.”

    Robert Kennedy Jr. definitely is a fruitbat. He’s not telling the truth about the Covid-19 jab, it is that his appalling lunacy -in this one case- accidentally coincide with the facts.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. If you think a) US security services murdered prominent close relatives of yours b) you are seeking to become prominent while saying so and living in the US, either i) you are out of your mind ii) you think you have some sort of advantage.

      Someone asked for a second opinion on him, and I decided dangerously bad crazy.

      That, and what? Twenty, thirty bucks? Will buy you a cup of coffee.

      (I’m not exactly buying a lot of pre made coffee from restaurants these days, and I never knew what those prices were in the first place.)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I saw a comment the other day re: American politics to the effect that the commenter thought the country was infested with pedo rings in high places. They all act like twitchy groomers. Couldn’t really disagree with the sentiment.

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        1. Yeah.

          Bill’s habits were not unrelated to the job he did. Now, probably the rot among politicians and appointees was worse than just starting with him, but I kinda have doubts that the Clinton hollowing out of the Democratic Party did any sort of house cleaning.

          There is something really suspicious about a lot of these people.

          Liked by 2 people

  20. Guess you forgot the studies that showed higher rates of autism among vaccinated black boys, but not black girls, than among unvaxed. Genetics makes a difference, which is ignored in one-size-fits-all vaccination programs.

    Funny how communities than don’t vaccinate kids have profoundly and significantly lower rates of autism, asthma, allergies, and Guillain-Barre, than groups who do.

    But Trust The Science. They would never lie about anything

    Like

    1. As I said earlier when you posted this as a reply to my comment, could you give me a link to those studies? I’d like to check their methodology out for myself, see if it was good (and what the sample size is: a too-small sample size can get you all sorts of wrong results by accidentally including just one extra person with condition X in your control group or whatever, which turns into a difference in results that only looks statistically significant if you don’t know how small the sample size was).

      As for the lower rates of autism, etc., in those communities: is that among the surviving kids? Or the entire cohort of babies born, including those who don’t survive to adulthood? The choice of denominator can make a significant difference.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Okay then.
      Listen, buttercup, I’ve done my own research. And I’m very good at research. There are tons of reasons for more autism. The most important: People are having babies way later. I’m in an at-risk family: math bend gifted. It causes that. Younger son hit the edge of the spectrum HARD. Because I was over thirty. That’s okay.
      So — you think it’s all the vaccines. Run with it. Have fun.
      Me, I’m not an evangelist. I saw the difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated. You see 2/3 of my generation where I was born died before six from small pox. Including my little cousin, who was my age.
      The kids over school age, who were vaccinated? not a death.
      So, you keep on banging your little drum. First world problems, eh? And self-destroying.
      I will pay attention to any new vaccines and where they’re grown. The old stalwarts? If I have a kid I raise? (UNLIKELY) Again? I’ll be careful about it.
      HOWEVER, a friendly word: We’re a loud, disagreeing, disputing, discussing bunch.
      What we are not: Sanctimonious, repeatedly banging our religious drum (for a weird, new religion) in our preachy comments. Particularly as newbies.
      Be advised, please.

      Like

  21. Apropos to your post Sarah, here’s one I just saw at Spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/09/the-real-crisis-is-global-gaslighting/

    The occasion for the accusation of global gaslighting is the assertion that this is the hottest year on record, ever, and the UK newspaper The Evening Standard running a headline screaming “WHO WILL STOP THE BURNING?!”

    Of course it is obviously not the hottest year on record ever. All I need to do is look out the window to see that. My pond is full of water. Most years, the pond is empty by August and I’m mowing the grass where it used to be. This year there’s maybe three feet of water still in it.

    The author goes on to list other calamities that have somehow failed to materialize over the last 40 years or so.

    “Climate-change alarmists are wrong about everything. Not only are they wrong when they say today’s heatwaves are uniquely destructive. They were also wrong when they said the Great Barrier Reef was dying. They were wrong when they predicted a New Ice Age. They were wrong when they said a ‘population bomb’ was about to go off. They were wrong about ‘acid rain’. They were wrong about ‘deforestation’: in truth, 618,000 square kilometres of forest has been added to our planet each year since 1982.”

    I’ll add a couple more: we were supposed to have run out of oil by now, we were supposed to have run out of water by now, we were supposed to all be dead from nuclear winter by now, and the farms were all supposed to be nothing but sterile dust by now from “chemicals”.

    So yeah. We’ve been subjected to a never-ending litany of utter bullshit from friend and foe alike since I was born. It’s been running more/bigger/better/higher/deeper the whole time.

    The scam has pretty well run its course. So, naturally, the scammers are panicking. Them locking us down for WuFlu was a panic reaction. They feel their control slipping. People like me wondered about the safety of using an experimental genetic modification technology on the whole population at the same time. Instead of answering the questions they locked down Facebook, Google and Twitter.

    But also the crookedness has seeped down -deeply- into formerly respectable institutions. So now we are treated to things like cold fusion, room temperature super conductors, UFOs and I just read where some guys reached fusion ignition again. The UFOs and cold fusion we know are both scams,and it is beginning to look like the room temperature superconductor is a scam. So did those guys at the government lab -really- achieve fusion ignition again?

    Well, I heard about it the same place I heard about global warming, windmills, UFOs and cold fusion, so you know, it makes me wonder. All I’ve got is a press release. Luckily it doesn’t matter, fusion is still 20 years away just like its been since 1950, so no real impact on my life.

    Let Elon Musk announce a fusion reactor small enough to run a Tesla. Then I’ll pay attention.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s August, and I haven’t seen a single hot day this year. I define a hot day as ‘The thermometer outside my front window hits 90° F’

      One April a few years ago, most of the days were hot. The July day I poured my front steps 15 years ago it was 100° by 10 AM.

      It’s weather. It changes. Always has, always will. And I guess some shitheads will always try to make a big deal of it.
      ———————————
      “The Science Is Settled!!” we are told, again and again — but then ‘The Science!’ changes every week, and somehow it’s always exactly what the politicians need it to be.

      Like

        1. Last year was horrible in terms of heat. We were selling Cub Scout popcorn on Labor Day weekend when the temperature got over 115 degrees, which was, in fact, record temperatures for those days. Really not great.

          But overall this year? Not very many 100 degree stretches. And yeah, we’ve had them, but we ALWAYS have had them, but there was a big storm this winter that took out horrendous numbers of trees, so I suspect a lot of people are discovering the lack of shade.

          Like

          1. Per the weather forecast, Willamette Valley is hitting 100+ heat wave starting Saturday or Monday, depending on which forecast. Upto 106F. Well it is August. Normally there would have already been weeks where we can’t cool down the house overnight. It is a cycle that happens, 3 or 4 days of hot, can’t cool down the house at night, then weather breaks for a day, maybe two. Starting in May through September. This year mid-August before we’re seeing this. Also signs of an early fall.

            Like

    2. Comment yesterday on Twitter/X there was an undersea volcanic eruption last year which blew lots of water vapor into the atmosphere, suggesting any “heat wave,” was a transient consequence.
      OTOH, we’ve spent most of our summer in the upper tier of the US, and we’ve enjoyed a very pleasant, coolish summer. We’ve endured some hot weather, but it hasn’t lasted. So far, anyway.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I’m not familiar with Ian’s claim (not disputing it, just don’t know), but the laser ignition facility at Lawrence Livermore has been achieving ignition for years. The gotcha is that it’s been taking considerably more energy to get the ignition than the reaction gives back.

        Getting Yield > Input seems to be the 20 years-from-now hard point. It might have been 30 years when the Las Alamos museum was demonstrating a mockup of their magnetic confinement system. If plasma were aluminum foil, they would have had a winner. :) The crunched foil did look pretty cool. All this, around 1967.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Fusion researchers mislead in several ways: “hey, we just got ignition!” which has happened for decades; “hey we achieved breakeven!” not wallplug to electrical output, but generally for ICF it would be laser energy to fusion energy breakeven which isn’t even thermal breakeven. It’s done so they can keep enough money coming for the older guys to retire. In the book The Future of Fusion Energy they mention that a study commissioned by Nixon(?) concluded that $700billion was needed to bring fusion to fruition quickly. Lesser amounts could bring it in 30-50 years. Worldwide spending has always been a fraction of the “it will never happen” amount in the study.

          Future Of Fusion Energy, The https://a.co/d/6VfNTXO

          Like

        2. Look up a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor. Not too hard to build, and you can have a fusion reactor in your garage. It just won’t produce enough energy to sustain the reaction, much less generate excess energy.

          It works by using electrostatic force to confine the plasma. An inner grid with a strong negative charge attracts positive ions towards the center, while an outer positive grid pushes them in. Fusion can be achieved with voltages lower than the anode voltage in an old CRT color TV.

          Dr. Robert Bussard — yeah, that Dr. Bussard, as in the Bussard Ramjet — was working on a modified version, the Farnsworth-Hirsch-Bussard Polywell Fusor, which he thought had potential to be a practical energy source. His twist was to build a positively-charged coil structure to magnetically confine a cloud of electrons in the Fusor’s center, forming a virtual cathode to capture the ions. He was working on the 4th or 5th generation prototype when he died.

          Like

      2. They’re claiming a second break-even event, aka “ignition”.

        You can generate fusion with table-top equipment, but not ignition. So far, anyway. Love how they play with the wording, right?

        Like

    4. May and June were cool and wet, very cool and very, very wet. Slow moving dogs and people turned green on their north sides wet. Then We had some heat late in June, then back to thirty-year-average. Then “Oh gads August is here” heat. Which has mostly been cooler than three years ago, based on what I found in my day-books, comparing weather notes. (Mostly). We’re also more humid, but as much water is still filling the lakes? No surprise there.

      June is either “broiling under a stagnant ridge” or resigned kitty tone “oh goody. Hail and rain again. Joy.” July tends to be warm. August is broil, especially the last weeks when school has started. Then we get a big cold front, and temperatures go back to the low 90, and the second wet season starts. It’s not “global boiling.”

      I’ve noticed that some are attributing the CA floods and the TX-OK rain spike to the volcano. It could certainly be.

      Liked by 2 people

          1. The Canadian Federal government and the CBC were consistently claiming the Quebec and Ontario fires earlier this year were glowball warmening, EVEN AS ARSONISTS WERE BEING ARRESTED. Also the fires seemed to follow the road network rather closely and seemed to pop up with suspicious simultaneity. Like a terrorist attack.

            Yeah, all that smoke in NYC? Arson.

            Big fires this season in Greece, Spain, Portugal? Arson. Drone video of guys setting fires.

            Predicting that the fires in Hawaii will also be arson.

            Liked by 2 people

                1. It’s very interesting to me that there has been -nothing- in the news about the Quebec and Ontario fires since they were brought more-or-less under control. Not a single mention of the arsonists, charges, court appearances, nada.

                  Liked by 1 person

        2. To be honest, I’m almost surprised it hasn’t been said by now. But that might be a step too far even for the current video vultures, given that people are still in danger. Something about getting pummeled by bystanders for daring to bring ideology into a rescue/recovery.

          Like

  22. Don’t need to post as a comment, just would like to pass on info on a book I think is worthy as a reader with no ties that thinks its important. Thanks, RW.

    https://poloniainstitute.net/recommended/the-camp-of-the-sane-and-the-camp-of-the-saints-poland-and-the-erosion-of-western-sanity/

    https://www.snaphanen.dk/2021/03/22/the-camp-of-the-sane-and-the-camp-of-the-saints/

    https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/03/the-camp-of-the-sane-and-the-camp-of-the-saints-a-book-review/

    contact; info@campsane.com

    Like

    1. No Sale. We’ll treat Russia with less hostility when it stops being the crazy paranoid man of nations.
      The Soviet union was Russia wearing a multicultural, international mask.
      I’m not about to trust them to be different without the mask.
      you see, unlike most people, I HAVE studied history.
      Cute bit of Russian pleading, but no sale.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I look at the behavior of the Russian mob compared to the the other race-defined mobs, like the Sicilians, the Travelers, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Yakuza, etc.

        Comparing scumbag criminals to scumbag criminals, the Russians IMHO are the bottom of the barrel. They’re the “no atrocity too atrocious” types. They’re what you find when you’ve scraped all the way through the barrel and into the dirt underneath.

        This says a lot about modern Russia, given that the mob is pretty much running it.

        Liked by 2 people

  23. Anyone heard any more about the man the FBI shot dead yesterday in Provo? It was definitely an apply-the-24-hour-rule situation, but the early (and sympathetic) posts suggested an overreaction/encouraging the others sort of thing.
    In any case, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t, spout off about you and your sniper rifle on freakin’ Facebook. Which, according to early stories, is what bought this guy the attention of the fibbies.

    Like

    1. Generally it is a mistake to even comment on those things. What’s the secret squirrel network doing if not handing out red flags to every sympathetic comment?

      Like

      1. Or inventing them out of whole cloth, of course.

        It serves the enemy equally well if you are isolated and can’t trust anyone, after all.

        Liked by 2 people

  24. A lot of RFK, Jr’s hatred of most vaccines is misplaced. I’ve had a number of vaccinations as a military dependent and never saw an adverse reaction. Had the same and more while in the military myself.

    There is reason to be concerned as vaccines do play with the immune system of the subjects. Mercola, for example, has raised questions about them. However, given the diseases they prevent they are, on the whole a gift to the human race.

    The Covid Vaxx, however, is a much different kettle of fish. IMHO, mRNA vaccines will always be experimental. The first iterations were deadly and resulted in death within hours. The Covid Vaxx horror is not far removed from those iterations, and the manner in which it plays with the victim into which it is injected, will remain dangerous in the long term. Several friends took the Vaxx against advice and suffered the consequences. The most recent was a friend who was teaching at Western Carolina U who started having problems within a month after the booster. he was diagnosed with Myocarditis and has a resting heart rate of 40 BPM. He says he has little energy for anything. It’s no wonder to me.

    I refused the VAXX and was handed a lot of guff by my doctor for refusing the shot. He stopped about a year ago when the results started coming in. The data is undeniable and shows the people that pushed the Vaxx were simply criminals. They may have been so unwittingly, but there was plenty of info available that told of the danger of mRNA vaccines.

    By the by, Perchlorates are not stable. While I doubt the foundation treated with them would become unstable, the reaction with the concrete would render the foundation useless. As a capacitor it would be useless as well. Any moisture in the soil would allow for quick discharge of the capacitor, and that’s assuming the result of treating the concrete would result in a capacitor. Personally, I have my doubts.

    Like

  25. Comes to mind that I should clarify my reasons for thinking that all Americans are a bit more stressed, and a bit less sane.

    So, way back in the day, there was a very highly functioning autistic who told a joke ‘what if the autistics are actually the healthy ones, and normal people are unhealthy, and need to be fixed’. Told it well, and it was funny. Also, pretty much self evidentally false. Consider an autistic with zero social aptitude, who is non-verbal, and is simply super awesome at the mental skill of shape rotation. Consider a normal person who is so occupied with monkey games that they can not even do shape rotation, or any other sort of fancy mental task that has nothing to do with human behavior. The problem is that human social behavior can actually be hugely functional, and very favored by evolution. Men in a band need to be able to cooperate enough to kill men in other bands, and also enough to resist being killed by men in other bands.

    Okay, a lot of modern left behavior is toxic monkey games to the effect of not only being bad at object tasks, but also being wildly dysfunctional in anything but curated and managed groups.

    Still, most modern humans tend to need some sort of stuff going on with other people. Not very many really get very far with trying to develop a sesne of sanity that is not vulnerable to gaslighting, nor in trying to be functional without needing contact with other humans.

    Four things are important: 1. Who is my group? 2. How are they treating me? 3. How do I perceive the match or mismatch between my behavior and theirs? 4. What are the changes that I have about the information about these things?

    There’s an engineering philosophy that holds that all designs, and design methods have design flaws, but some flaws we don’t know about because the testing we did before did not expose them.

    The parallel thought in psychology might be that we have, based on past evidence normal functional, abnormal functional, and abnormal non-functional, but that even the most ‘normal’ functioning person is not that different from the person who is most obviously broken. Same stressors, but less intense plus better coping mechanisms having the effect of wildly different apparent outcomes.

    I’ve been trying to outline a more in depth summary, because it is more than just covid. But, covid hit everyone in a significant way. Everyone was some angry reaction to covid. It also changed our information inputs about other people. It also caused factional splits somewhat in left and right. These same mechanisms show up in some of the broader patterns. Also, effects on the rituals of inner magic that have such an effect on thought process.

    Some of this is working back from the behavior, and patterns of anger.

    I do think people who were well enough before are no longer equipped for the same level of functioning.

    Like

      1. Yeah, basically.

        But, not just the right by far.

        Covid alone sliced every nominal faction into some chunks, and there has been more than one such possible wisespread unmasking.

        Covid also made quite a bit of everyone angry or fearful about somethign, on top of /changing/ the information feed that everyone had on their contacts, and by that unsettling everyone.

        Someone may have thought that they had a plan with covid, but the whole thing was interestingly complicated, and I do not think that anyone could have predicted every consequence.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Their only ‘plan’ was to seize an opportunity to attack Orange Man Bad. He’d improved the economy, unemployment, the border, international diplomacy — hell, even crime was down. That all had to be turned upside-down because it was making Trump look good!

          So they wrecked the economy, obliterated thousands of small businesses, put millions out of work, imposed idiotic ‘mandates’… if thousands of doctors and nurses would rather lose their jobs than obey your ‘health mandates’ that should tell you something. Instead, politicians and bureaucrats were given free rein to play doctor while real doctors were blacklisted for pointing out the truth. Fauxi the lying lawn gnome was practically handed the keys to the country AFTER CAUSING THE ‘PANDEMIC’ IN THE FIRST PLACE!!

          And in the end it turned out to be the common f*king cold. About as deadly as the average seasonal flu. Which, mysteriously vanished. Not a single case in all of 2020. But still, four years after it started, they’re still trying to keep the COVID hysteria whipped up.
          ———————————
          A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last three years.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I -still- can’t believe the behavior of the public health authorities. I remain stunned by the sheer speed all those ex-cheerleaders and Head Girls went full freakin’ Nazi.

            The lies and the coverups? The extreme threats brought against licensed medical practitioners to shut up or else? The stupidity of them ditching 20 years of emergency planning to make something up on the spot?

            Also the way -all- the doctors just shut up. That was chilling. I know all the inside scoop, and I’m still shocked at them all. Really? All shut up and just watch them lie and lie and lie? Okay then. I guess I know what’s up, eh?

            Liked by 2 people

            1. There’s an interesting analysis about changes in training for medicine (keep them exhausted, and make the costs high), plus the loans.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. I remember when the University of Arizona changed the maximum hours hospital residents could be made to work over a suggestion they’d be held liable if one of the exhausted residents had a car accident on the way home. You make a guy work 24 hours, there’s an argument to be made that YOU are responsible for his condition in the car after he leaves work.

                Somebody made that argument to the University. They moved very quickly to cut resident hours. Amazing the response, really. Almost as if they had skin in the game.

                Like

        2. For me personally, I started out Covid being -terrified- that this was the for-real plague. School cancelled, stores shut, hospitals doing emergency expansion. I was spraying bleach on delivered packages and leaving them outside for hours. I had a pump sprayer by the front door full of bleach solution. I lost 15lbs in three weeks from straight up.

          But then I caught the actual WuFlu. And it was NOTHING. Not even a cold. One other family member caught it and had a bad case, pre-existing conddition. But thanks to Donald Trump I knew about HCQ. This all happened about when he made that speech. That sh1t worked. 5 hours to major symptom relief for sick family member. Five fricking hours. Full recovery. So I personally owe Don for that one.

          Then the Canadian government banned doctors from prescribing HCQ. Banned. Go to jail. Then they banned Ivermectin. You not only couldn’t prescribe it, you couldn’t get it. Vets, farm stores were banned from selling it. It was banned from import. You -still- can’t get it.

          I’ve seen the government in this country do some pretty stupid sh1t over the years. Really, I have. But I had never seen them do something deliberately -evil-. That was evil. Straight up. People died because they did that. No reason for it either. They banned medicines because of shitty politics.

          Then along came the jab. Having seen them do evil once already, right in front of my face, having seen them lie about masks both for and against, I looked into the jab pretty closely. So I found out they were lying about that too. Its not a vaccine. Its a permanent genetic modification to your frigging cells. I decided I wasn’t having it.

          Then they made the jab mandatory. You couldn’t cross the border, you couldn’t go to a hospital, you couldn’t do a lot of things without your jab passport.

          They made a covid jail that you were forcibly taken to if you showed up someplace without your jab passport. That’s a level of coercion never seen in Canada in my lifetime. Never seen outside of WWII, really.

          And at the same time all this was going on, the very same time, we had #BLM riots and marches in Canada. Remember that stuff? #BLM marchers don’t spread Covid. Pride marches don’t spread Covid. Antifa doesn’t spread Covid. Bums living in tents in the park and shooting up fentanyl on the frigging sidewalk don’t spread Covid.

          But Truckers spread Covid! And weird Mennonite churches spread Covid! And pissed off Normies spontaneously marching down Yonge St every single Saturday, week after week for six freaking months, they spread Covid.

          So yeah. I’d say that we ALL got a hockey stick to the head, telling us that we did not know who was in our group.

          All those busy government people helping out and looking out for Canada and Canadians? No! That’s not what they’re doing! That may -never- have been what they were doing.

          And now, knowing all that, knowing what the cat looks like now that its been out of the bag for three years, here we are. Waiting. Juuuust waiting to see…

          No kidding people are cranky. No kidding we’re not watching the news. The only time I watch the news is to find out what the lie is this week.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. What do you mean, no reason? Chloroquine and Ivermectin were safe, effective, common and cheap. Nobody was going to rake in billions if Teh Dread COVID could be cured so easily. Of course they had to be banned!
            ———————————
            They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. When they banned HCQ and Ivermectin, I was shocked. It’s like if you felt something wet, and you think it’s rain, then you look and someone is deliberately p1ssing on you. Exactly that.

              I still believed, way down in my ancient Hippy heart, that the government was working for the health and welfare of Canadians. I just thought they were quite stupid so they did it badly.

              But no. All along, -I- have been the stupid one.

              What they’ve really been doing is stealing. In Covid they moved from stealing by stealth to armed robbery, they got tired of being sneaky and stuck a gun in our face. They really did not care how many people died, they were going to have their way.

              It doesn’t really matter, because now we know that this is the condition of our country. The sheets are ripped off, we can SEE what they’re doing. But I do wonder at what point Canada went from a free country to a fascist police state. The 1960s? 1942 with the Japanese Internment? The First World War? 1867, with Confederation being the beginning of a criminal enterprise?

              Liked by 1 person

          3. Remember there was reason to think that China downplayed the deaths. The crematoriums were running full speed when they weren’t claiming enough deaths for that, and also vastly too many cell phones had been canceled in a society where you couldn’t live without one.

            There may still be reason. Either it hit China particularly hard, or they used it as a cover-up.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. The answer is “yes”. Because in China they do both at the same time, with a dash of corruption for spice. The knife is always hidden, even when they show it to you.

                But here we are, doing business with them. Thanks, Nixon.

                Liked by 1 person

            2. This is more what I’m talking about.

              People lying collapsed on the sidewalk, hospital staff in the “we built it in a day!” new Covid hospital wearing Raccoon City-level hazmat gear, the cell phone story, the crematorium story, that was all in OUR news while they were telling us to “social distance” and “dentist mask”.

              When you see that, you think “Oh, the Chinese authorities are trying to downplay the severity of the Plague so people don’t panic.” That’s why I was bleaching my delivery packages, in case it was worse than they were saying. In case they were lying in a “good cause” if you will.

              It never occurred to me that it could be the OTHER direction, that they were lying about how super bad the plague was so they could kill -more- people. But given what we know has been going on in China the last five years, and given that apartment building they left to burn because of ‘Covid regulations,’ they really could have used the Plague as cover to kill a whole bunch of people they didn’t like. And we will never know if that’s what they did or not.

              Kind of like how the Province of Quebec used it to clear out their old folks homes, and the State of NY did the same, and the Province of Ontario tried but ended up having the Army intervene and send medical staff in Toronto because old people were dying in their own poo in the halls of “retirement homes.” When you find out how they did bed assignments, they’d put one ‘sick infected’ with three more that ‘tested positive’ in a room. Aerosol virus, right?

              It pays to talk to nurses. They know things. Like bed assignments. Nobody is going to hang for it either. The perfect crime is the one done by the authorities who are just going along, following the regulations.

              You expect them to be stupid. You expect them to f- it up. You -don’t- expect them to use it as cover for something much, much worse. But there they are, doing it.

              Liked by 2 people

              1. I suspect COVID19 really was much worse in China than in the rest of the world, for 3 reasons:

                1. Widespread malnutrition, and vitamin deficiencies, especially vitamin D

                2. Poor health care support and lousy sanitation, due to pervasive corruption

                3. They spliced a local cold virus into the bat virus to get ‘gain of function’. A cold virus that had gotten really good at spreading in the Chinese population. Might that have made the resulting Franken-virus particularly infectious and severe to genetically Chinese people?

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. Not saying they did that part on purpose, it was already bred into the viruses they used.

                    They definitely did modify the bat virus to turn it into COVID19. A scientist who worked at the Wuhan bio-weapons lab escaped before she could be ‘disappeared’ and wrote up a whole paper on exactly how they cobbled the thing together.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. I believe you. A lot of it was confucionism, not science. Like adding the AIDs virus fragments in. they do nothing in that position, but under traditional Chinese medicine thought that made it extra bad.

                      Like

  26. A basic question: How many significant digits do I think my estimate of ‘all’ has?

    Three significant digits is .999 or 99.9%, or one in one thousand exceptions.

    I do not know how many digits my estimate has.

    I’m a bit of a hermit, and I’ve been avoiding the news.

    I /feel/ confident in ‘every’.

    However, objectively, I do not see where my confidence in measuring and modeling that could legitimately come from.

    At best, if we did a strict and thorough evaluation of my methods and sources, we might come to a conclusion that some finite number of significant digits can be justified by my method and sources.

    Like

  27. I originally wanted to argue with the statement that I was a former troll.

    I am contrarian, argumentative, and often tedious.

    Back when I calibrated a lot of expectations here, I was very angry compared to now. I also had and have some fringe opinions. I also have some mental issues, some for all or most of my life.

    I shared a lot of weird arguments, dark jokes, and some positions that genuinely came from a not well place.

    I also trolled some, often in what I perceived as a response to statements by others, and some times by an argument that I saw as paralleling theirs.

    Trolling is like comedy. A joke is a statement or two that doesn’t fit, and is meant to evoke laughter or amusement. A well done troll is a statement that part of the audience does not expect, that does not fit their expectations, and is meant to evoke outrage and provoke a loss of control. One element is that it is also calibrated to the venue, and to other parts of the audience. If the venue, the administrators, and the rest of the audience are also offended, they are not so offended that they lose control, or they have better self control, and do not ban the troll unless the troll has violated the rules previously posted.

    You kind of have two serious targets for trolling. One is newcomers, who are not used to the place being a bit rough at times. The second is newcomers who make it clear that they believe that they can offend others, but who are not themselves willing to accept being offended.

    The other targets are folks who are maybe offended, see it as normal roughhousing for the community, and maybe appreciate the cleverness of the argument, or the point that it makes.

    I have heavily shifted my behavior, for four reasons. 1. Even as angry as I am at covid, fraud, tyranny, and betrayals by ‘experts’, I am not feeling as helplessly angry as I was. 2. Trolling can require spending more time in negative emotion spaces, and I have less patience for inflicting that upon myself. 3. I think most people are finding self control a little harder, so judging how to troll is harder. It is easier to be unfair when trolling. 4. My expectations of what people need, or what the audience would most appreciate have shifted.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You might be working too hard Bob.

      Take it easy, keep your stockpiles topped up, do your physical fitness and your mental fitness exercises, all that maintenance stuff. Make some friends, hang out, chill out.

      We’re just waiting for them to put a foot out too far to draw back. The best way to do that is to Zen out. Chop wood, carry water, look at the moon.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Working too hard may be exactly what I finally self diagnosed earlier this week.

        Took steps to fixing also.

        Do not want to overdo things, but am hoping will fix some of my stuff.

        Liked by 1 person

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