A Glibertarians Exclusive: Listening Post, Part 4
Personal log entry: 25 May 2234, Mimas Listening Post
Last night, Golan Trev and Anna Simpko went down into the reactor space, opened up a shielded hatch, went in and closed it behind them. The compartment is now too hot to go in, but the monitor system picked it up, and now we not only know what happened to them but also that we can’t do any maintenance on the reactor until the compartment cools off – in two or three thousand years. When Commander Venko woke Chief Featre up and told him, he just nodded and closed the door to his cabin. A half-hour later, we heard the airlock cycle. Nobody bothered to go look. We knew what it was.
Five of us left. We can’t really do any actual, you know, listening post work with that many, so we’ve gone down to half-time monitoring in the command suite, 0900 – 2100. I’m taking odd-numbered days, Commander Venko, the even-numbered days. The Commander’s looking pretty ragged now, but I guess we all are. I’m avoiding the mirror in my cabin’s Necessary. No reason to make myself feel worse.
Oh, and that weird magnetic anomaly was back last night. I showed the data to Mord Delfino, but he didn’t have any idea. But then, he isn’t really at his best right now. None of us are.
Recorded 1348 hours station time, 25 May 2234, Chief Electronics Mate Bel Deveran, Coalition Navy
***
“The good news,” Commander Venko began the late-afternoon brief, “is that the reactor continues to work normally. The bad, if something does go wrong, we have nobody qualified to do repairs. So, let’s hope that nothing goes wrong.”
Behind him, on the main screen, stood the current roster:
Post CO: Lieutenant Commander Ion Venko
Post XO: Chief Electronics Mate Bel Deveran
Post Adjutant: Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Qul Abend
Astronomy: Astronomer’s Mate Fist Class Mord Delfino
Food Service: Steward’s Mate Second Class Rober Vorta
Maintenance: Vacant
“Tomorrow morning begins our half-schedule. I’ll take the first day, Chief Deveran, you can have the day after. We’ll alternate until… Well, we’ll alternate as long as circumstances allow. Are you in good shape to cover the rest of today’s shift, until 2100?”
“I am, sir,” Deveran replied.
“Good. Well, then… good. That should be sufficient. Dismissed, all.”
The ‘all’ rings a little hollow when there are only five of us left, Deveran mused.
An hour later, Deveran was sitting, morosely watching the readouts, and occasionally looking up at the great, multi-colored expanse of Saturn through the suite’s tempered glass ports. Qul Abend tapped on the hatch to the command suite and walked in.
The Chief Pharmacist’s Mate tried on a weak grin, which didn’t quite fit. “I’m going around talking to who’s left,” she explained. “I’m not a doctor, but I’m all we’ve got, so I’m trying to evaluate everyone’s psychological state.”
“OK,” Deveran nodded in agreement. “Makes sense, I guess. What shall I say? What other psychological state could I be in other than ‘rotton?’ I mean, look at the fix we’re in. Five of us now. The last five human beings in the universe. Five.”
“That’s fair,” Abend said. “But the Commander wants us to hang on as long as we can. And if someone else starts to crack…”
“Speaking of, how is the Commander doing?”
Abend frowned. “I’m not sure I should discuss that with you.”
“You’d better,” Deveran snapped. He spun his chair around to face the only medical person on the dwindling station staff. “In case you didn’t look at the roster the last few days, I’m the XO now. I’ve got to know the Commander’s mental state. If he goes…”
Deveran silently realized how much of the posts’ conversations ended in lingering pauses these days, and almost laughed. I’m not sure if we’re not saying things because they would hurt too much, or if we’re not saying them because it’s all so damn obvious, he told himself.
“He’s not good. Commander Venko’s an old Service guy, he knows how to maintain, but he’s not doing at all well. With every one of us that goes out the airlock, or into the reactor, or manages to find some other way to check out, well, a little bit of the Commander dies as well. It sure doesn’t help that he has family on Mars.”
“Had family on Mars, you mean. Lots of us had family, you know.”
“You had a wife and two kids, right?”
“That’s right. On Earth. I was just thinking about them.” Deveran leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I was just thinking about the day I got married.”
Abend sat down and motioned for Deveran to continue.
“I was sick for weeks before the wedding. Wonder sometimes if it was all in my head, but the wedding day, that fixed me right up. Seeing her in that white dress, with the bells ringing, my brother as best man standing there in his cheap suit, a stupid big grin on his dopey face… I had spent my sick leave writing poetry for Sara. That’s my wife, Sara. I gave the poems to her when we were in the tube on the way to Florida to go on our honeymoon. They were pretty bad. ‘Atrocious verse,’ she told me, ‘But beautiful sentiment.’ She kept them, as far as I know, until the end.”
“I’m sure she did,” Abend agreed.
Deveran was mortified to feel his eyes filling up with tears. “I sure loved her,” he choked out. “I really, really loved her. Even when I was out on duty, even out here on this shithole moon on the far edge of nowhere, I never really felt like we were really separated. And now, well, shit, it’s all gone. Everything’s gone, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.”
They sat in silence for long minutes, until the main console let out a beep. Deveran turned, looked at a meter as it rose, dipped, and rose again.
“What is it?” Abend asked.
“That magnetic anomaly again,” Deveran replied. “Damned if I know what’s causing it, but it’s been back three times since that impact yesterday.” He reached to tap the contact that would notify the Commander, but then didn’t. What possible difference does any of this make now? I’ll tell him in the morning brief.
Abend stood up. “I’d better go,” she said. “Still have to check on the others.”
She made to leave, then paused in the doorway. “I had family, too. Husband and a little boy. On Earth. I suppose they’re gone, now, too.”
“They all are,” Deveran said. “We’re all that’s left.”
“All that’s left,” Abend repeated. “All that’s left.”
She turned, walked out. The hatch slid silently shut behind her.
***
I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells
I’d taken the cure and had just gotten through
Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
Writing “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for you
Sara, Sara
Wherever we travel we’re never apart
Sara, Sara
Beautiful lady, so dear to my heart
Got to admit, I’m looking forward to whatever it is that is going to happen (per the anomaly foreshadowing), the grimness is grinding. Not a complaint, it is effective writing to induce that in the reader.
I thought all hatches were required to go “wooosh”.
Like an OSHA requirement.
Apropos
🙂
LOL I could watch that all day
Also apropos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ilm8PEJlQ
In space, nobody can hear hatches shut.
Really good stuff, Animal. I find myself hoping that there are actually people left, and that the magnetic anomaly is fucking up contact.
But I kind of know that that’s not true.
Rude!
I like it, the darkness is unrelenting.
I wonder how many people would check themselves out of the airlock in these conditions?
I would like to think that I would be brave enough to survive till the very last moment but realistically knowing that all my friends and loved ones are dead and knowing that there’s no hope for a change in the situation, I would airlock myself. I couldn’t control how everyone was wiped out or the current situation but I can control how I would go out.
I think I would hang on until I got hungry.
I don’t do well hungry.
One time my wife had to pick me up from work because my truck had no oil pressure.
I was starving by the time she got there. She asked me a question about the truck and I grumpily replied “I don’t know”
She said, “I don’t like you very much right now.”
I answered “I don’t like myself very much right now either.”
She bought me a t-shirt that said “I apologize for what I said when I was hungry.”
Took me almost a year after we were married to realize that the SU does not do well when she’s hungry. I was, of course, her first target.
You sound like a slow learner.
Nah, it just never occurred to me not to keep her well-fed (I’m the cook). Then one Saturday morning we had to be somewhere early, and I didn’t have time to make breakfast. Cuppa coffee and out the door. Totally new data point.
Yeah, I’ll never make that mistake again. I kept thinking “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”
That’s what my sister in law said about my brother when her and my wife were discussing how many things the men on my side of the family have in common.
Yeah, I’ve seen that shirt but it was spelled “hangry”.
How hot are my remaining crewmembers?
If this was Joss Whedon’s universe, they would be super hot but chances are, the women are at best average. On a side note, I had the biggest crush on Summer Glau. Like if I got stuck in space with her, even though we wouldn’t make, I would still be the happiest man in the universe.
Reminds me of the movie Passengers.
Guy wakes up on a hibernation ship by himself, and wakes a hot woman so he won’t be alone.
One of the dumbest movies I have ever seen.
Better than not waking her up, though, right?
Just remember… Terminator Summer Glau had to do what teenage John Conner told her to do.
That thing is ruined.
Yeah the first time I saw Summer Glau in the Terminator series… sigh…
I’m not sure. It would be tempting. But, and this may sound a bit terrible, but I’d venture there might want to be a part of me that would want to go on living until I had the opportunity to kill at least one of the f**kers that took everything I cared about from me.
“Row well, and live.”
I’m trying to figure out why a naturally occurring magnetic anomaly would be transient. If they were hit by an iron meteorite, that could create the anomaly, but wouldn’t it be stable?
A spinning object in which only being aligned with the poles causes the interference?
I doubt a meteorite continues to spin after it smacks into a moon.
*shrug*
waitimminit, I thought this was STEVE SMITH fan fiction
STEVE POLE AM ALWAYS SPINNING
Perhaps some sort of building effect like a geyser?
More like Abend over!
Deveran really should have just whipped it out.
It’s no-pants Friday!
OT:
Is this ominous?
Probably, but don’t scroll down, people wondering why there haven’t been indictments for Russia collusion or tearing down our democracy and inspiring insurrection.
they’ll get that wascally Trump some day!
One of the cleanup crews may have broken my helium line. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until they’re done to confirm.
I hate waiting.
Everyone’s voice is squeaky?
Just listen to hear if their voices start getting squeaky.
😀
Or if it’s a cryopump line start looking for condensing water vapor.
something something squeaky
The repair crew chief has a comically squeaky voice.
But the He line is intact — someone broke a wafer support in the chamber which is what was giving the low-flow indication.
Did it break because it was wafer-thin?
Like a mee-nt, purrrrrr-haps?
So what you’re saying is we were right?
I like the story Animal, looks like you have SciFi Monday covered,
Really enjoying these, notwithstanding the doom and gloom, Animal.
Thanks.
Paging RC Dean:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/11/08/the-goldwater-institute-is-hiring/
I saw that. Mental note made to contact them when I retire to see what kind of project work they might be willing to pay a reasonable amount for.
Just an anecdote:
Florian Dagoury, the World’s Top Static Freediver, Is Diagnosed with Myocarditis After Taking Pfizer Vax – May End His Career
Trivial Mitral regurgitation
That would be a leaky heart valve. I’m not a cardiologist, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t “just pass”.
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
it’s right there in the name. “Trivial.” NBD.
https://www.europereloaded.com/follow-the-silence-paper-proving-covid-19-vaccines-cause-myocarditis-is-removed-from-publication-without-explanation/
The clot-shots are known to cause myocarditis, especially in young males. The FDA added it to the package insert as a warning when they updated the EUA on Aug. 23, 2021 (and they simultaneously found “no cause for concern” while they amended to include that warning.) Their own Vaccine Safety Team held an emergency meeting about it and put out a slide showing how serious the problem is. It’s all being buried. People are dying – and will continue to do so because myocarditis has a 5-year mortality rate of 50%.
I thought the J&J was most problematic for women of child-bearing age – which is why I wasn’t too worried about it.
When I was in college, had a friend who would only buy cigarettes with the “may cause low birth weight in pregnant women” warning on them for similar reasons.
myocarditis has a 5-year mortality rate of 50%.
I’ve heard this statistic before, and I’ve wondered about it. My wife (a PT) explains that xxx-itis == inflammation and inflammation causes scar tissue. In a young person, scar tissue in or around the heart can prevent proper development as they grow, hence high mortality. In a grown person, is there the same mortality? Does the mortality vary with severity of the myocarditis? Or is it 50% in every demographic, regardless, after a DX of myocarditis?
Here is one of the (several) NCBI links I have on it to a paper. It does depend on the severity (of course), but the problem is that we don’t know how severe the myocarditis will be for any given individual will be. By the CDC’s safety committee, severe events are running anywhere from 10-100 times their “expected” cases.
Now look at the VAERS data and remember that it generally captures (at best) 1-10% of the adverse events out there.
“…VAERS data… captures…1-10% of the adverse events”
One thought I’ve had on this is that while in “normal” years the under-reporting rate is perhaps more trustworthy, I’d suggest that the past 18 months have skewed that rate in VAERS.
The reason I think this is that if the ~20k or so deaths in VAERS that seem to be directly linked to the COVID shots (if not directly attributable, correlation/causation and all that) thus far are underreported by a factor of 100, then we’re looking at 2 MILLION + deaths in that time, over and above other causes.
I don’t think this is the case. Not only would those kind of numbers be impossible to hide, but I’d argue that some people are more motivated to report than in years past.
Also, the vaccine paperwork that I’ve seen given the recipient the VAERS website URL to report into, which would seem to have a non-zero number of non-healthcare providers also reporting.
Anyway, I’m not arguing that it’s NOT underreported – I absolutely believe it is – I just question whether we can use the 10x-100x multiplier.
What that multiplier should be? I have no idea.
What should the multiplier be is a very good question. I don’t think its/hope it isn’t 10x – there just hasn’t been that much excess mortality (yet). But I have seen data showing significant non-COVID excess mortality in younger cohorts over the past year or so. Some of it is not the vaccines, but I think some it is. How much is the question, indeed. And, per the data on myocarditis mortality, much of it will be delayed for years.
Aye, such difficulty in parsing what we-know-it’s-corrupted-but-not-to-what-extent data.
The one thing that did jump out at me a couple month ago when I did a little longer scan on the VAERS deaths is that it seems the vaccines mostly (quickly) kill the same population the disease itself kills: the old and unhealthy.
How many the vaccines kill in other populations is the stickler that we may never truly know.
So much noise. So little signal.
I’d agree with that. I’m using the number that the CDC’s own expert produced when he did the study for the PHS on pharmacovigilance of VAERS. He said “less than 1%.”
Maybe many, many more people know and are reporting, but I know we’re not capturing everything. So what’s the multiple – as RC notes. Two? Three? Five? The numbers (with no multiple) have now surpassed all prior vaccines combined over the past 30 years.
That is my talking point with others.
Doesn’t matter what the actual under-reporting coefficient is. The point is that these shots have been directly linked with more deaths than ALL OTHER vaccines combined!
So even if someone wants to say that some of the VAERS reports are faked – which is probable in my opinion – they certainly aren’t all faked, and the data argue for an immediate recall and investigation.
I would guess 10x to be a lowball. There is an enormous amount of pressure on HCPs to not report adverse events for the Covid vaccine. Besides that pressure, medical schools have been thoroughly skin suited by the Left… there’s even a new wokeness section on the MCAT now alongside chem, bio, and physics. I also recall seeing something about the numbers in VAERS being altered once they started tracking too high, but I can’t confirm that.
I had chest pain for several hours about two weeks after receiving the J&J vaccine. Strong enough that I came in from working outside and wife stayed near ready to call an ambulance if got any worse. I’ve never had chest pain before and it seems like too much of a coincidence to not be vaccine related. That never made it into VAERS and I’m not sure I’m not the only one.
Short-term deaths are serious, but I’m much more concerned about long-term effects. What if tens of million experienced cardiac damage that makes them more susceptible to heart attacks over the next few decades.
My thought is that the number of events is vastly underreported, but the number of deaths is some multiplier much lower than that.
Obviously I have no way of proving this, but your anecdote (i.e., data point) bears this out. I think there are lots of “felt really weird in ways I haven’t ever before” out there, but no report made, as no harm, no foul.
My personal experience says it’s a lowball. In a case I’m familiar with which was almost absolutely a vaccine death, the doctor resisted even entertaining that thought. It can be reported outside of the medical system, but it’s a PITA.
the doctor resisted even entertaining that thought.
Youre not the only person I’ve heard say that about probable vaccine injuries/deaths. The fact is that none of the data is trustworthy and none of the experts are trustworthy. There’s enough of a signal to raise questions about safety and efficacy, and there are proposed mechanisms for why the safety and efficacy are how they are, but can’t really say much more than that with a straight face.
The idea of plowing ahead with a mandate in this information climate is a crime against humanity.
>>holding his breath for 10 minutes and 30 seconds
Yeah… the best I’ve ever done is swimming underwater the distance of a high school pool and holding my breath the entire way. Back when I ran 20+ miles a week.
I tried the same stunt recently and could only make it half the distance before my brain started screaming to get SOME AIR.
In high school I worked at a swimming pool. We frequently tried to see who could go the farthest. I could make it just over a length, but we had another lifeguard who could easily do 2. Of course he was on the swim team.
For my Boy Scout Swimming merit badge, we had to swim as far underwater as we could… I made it across the pool, but when I broke the surface I got an incredibly painful immediate headache and had to go lay down in a dark tent for 3 hours before it went away.
I have a lot of reasons for no getting the shot – it doesn’t work, I don’t need it, the risks outweigh the benefits, etc. The heart stuff is the one I really fear. That’s what kills men in my family, why I’m at the gym at least every other day and doing 30+ minutes of cardio.
At 55, if I get Myocarditis, I immediately go from healthy and active to an old invalid. And I probably never see 60.
Record low approval ratings and still dropping like a stone for Biden and worse for Harris. They don’t give a fuck what you think. They cheated their asses off to get in this time and they fully plan on doing it again. If their approval rating drops to zero they will still ‘win’. They will become more and more brazen in their totalitarianism. What really pisses me off is that even if the R’s get the house and senate next year they will do nothing about it. No checks, no impeachment. No trial.
“We have the largest voter fraud network in history” says Biden during the campaign.
Funny how I can’t find that video now. It appears to. have been scrubbed from the internet.
No kidding. I’m pretty sure I’ve voted in my last election. At least until the Great Divorce or Second American Revolution, anyway. I’m not legitimizing the ruling class and its uniparty again.
The problem with opting out is, what say do you have afterwards? Or is the plan to just float along with wherever the current goes?
We all float down here…
what say do you have afterwards
The same as any other member of the non-ruling class of the New American Republic. I see no prospect of being a member of the ruling class of any country, whether this one or whatever replaces it.
As a member of the non-ruling class of this country, I have no say.
Don’t worry, a ballot will still be cast with your name on it.
Disenfranchisement is what they’re after. Go the other way, become a poll watcher/election volunteer/etc.
Uniparty elections are inherently illegitimate. Being a poll watcher, etc. won’t change that.
Depending on how you define disenfranchisement, its either already here and has been for some time (is a vote for the uniparty really an exercise of the franchise?) or its the last thing they want (voting legitimizes their regime, so they absolutely want as many votes recorded as possible).
What say do we have now?
I’m not even talking about election irregularities.
If you have freedom as a defining principle, when have the election results been what you wanted?
You as in a generic person, not directed to juris specifically.
I considered deregistering but then I couldn’t sign ballot measures.
Then they’ve succeeded with the part of their plan to so discourage and demoralize Republican leaning voters that they stop voting. See Georgia Jan 2021.
While your one vote doesn’t matter, the votes of 2% or 3% do matter and allow the vote frauders an extra measure of safety.
Good. Maybe the GOP will die a particularly painful death as a result.
Letting the left consume the corrupt electoral system doesn’t strike me as “letting them win”. It strikes me as denying them legitimacy. You can’t un-skinsuit these institutions, but you can ignore them.
While your one vote doesn’t matter, the votes of 2% or 3% do matter
My thesis is that none of it matters. Our country is controlled by a ruling class that is unaffected by elections, and which governs through the administrative state, which is also unaffected by elections. The sole purpose of elections is to provide a facade of democratic legitimacy.
I like the way you put it better.
OT: I’m going to drag forward a reply I made to putridMeat on the last thread about vaccines, as well as two links regarding injuries, because I think they’re important in the current strangeness.
First regarding “conspiracy theories” of people doing evil shit.
Then read the timeline of significant events related to SARS research in that document.
The plan to do social distancing, broad based masking, and quick deploying vaccines was a product of the post-mortem they did on SARS in 03-04. How much of that was based on prior discussions, I dunno. All I know is what I read with my own two eyes from WHO documents published in 2004.
Second, here’s a site that’s been tracking every week’s VAERS data from the CDC. VAERS is the CDC’s own pharmacovigilance site. For a LONG time, people have been saying that the CDC needed to require active rather than passive pharmacovigilance. The Public Health Service hired a guy with a bunch of letters to do an analysis of VAERS in 2016 I think it was. His result was that VAERS data likely only captured about 1% of adverse events. I won’t link it here, because I think this is covered in the article that’s posting tomorrow, but I hope Urthona will come by for that discussion. The idea that the majority of people will “be fine” is a statement that’s too vague (in my opinion) to be of any value in discussion. The real question is how many people’s lives are we allowed to destroy using the “vaccines” for SARS-CoV2, which is in itself a pandemic ONLY among those with “2.9. or more” co-morbidities, by the CDC’s own data. (94% of the people who died in one particular week had (on average) 2.9 co-morbidities. Those are overwhelmingly the co-morbidities associated with chronic disease. i.e. Repeated, self-inflicted harms. In this case, govt-aided dietary harms that make people more susceptible to SARS-CoV2. This scamdemic is an absolute non-event for healthy people – this virus is even more selective than the flu, which gets healthy and young people in numbers that Covid19 doesn’t. So you’ll forgive me if I adopt the same stance as those on the other side: Zero deaths from forced vaccination is the only ethical acceptable lower limit.
Too many people are way too comfortable playing God with other people’s lives.
I’m all in with Ozymandias on this. One thing these mandates are doing beautifully, is one of their design goals: Even among us who nominally share feelings on personal freedom, it’s causing disagreements.
“Divide and Conquer”
“We have met the enemy, and we is it”
etc etc
Even with a couple dozen lawsuits stacked up, I don’t have an ounce of faith in the courts to do the right thing and declare this illegal mandate, illegal.
I’ve noticed my own company, which came out requiring the jab for all by the Dec 8, hasn’t said a peep since the regime backpedaled to Jan 4th. I take that as a bad sign….
I’ve noticed my own company, which came out requiring the jab for all by the Dec 8, hasn’t said a peep since the regime backpedaled to Jan 4th. I take that as a bad sign…
You and me both, brother.
Yep — we just got a HR Q&A announced for Thursday and I damned well am going to bring that up with citation to the White House briefing where they announced it. You can’t claim the Feds are making you do it when the Feds already shifted that football — at least for a month.
They’ll just say the company needs to be in compliance by January or face fines so the December deadline stands to give a month to work through any issues.
Who are you, so wise in the ways of bureaucrats?
Yeah, I plan to follow on with “And given the 5th Circuit temporary stay and that this policy will put the company in a position of potentially causing irrevocable harm per that stay, and without a clear Federal mandate for this timeline — isn’t this putting the company in a potentially problematic legal position?”
‘It’s safe and effective. What harm? Besides we’ve got protection from OSHA and fed/state gov so no problematic legal position. If anything, we could be sued by our employees for failing to provide a safe workplace and knowingly letting the
Unclean continue to work here.’
They are not people. They are sociopaths. They lack the essential elements that makes one human.
As for ‘planned’ it depends on. your definition of ‘planned’. That they planned to disrupt society and wreck the economy I am certain. As totalitarians always do they would find a way to take advantage of that as things went along, and boy did they.
Fauci’s whole life has been about this moment. I remember the glee he could not contain in the early interviews with him. That is one sick fuck. There is a strong undercurrent of malthusianism beneath this dumpster fire.
If Biden can force vaccines for this cootie bug on us, what else can he do? Have diabetics arrested for eating glazed donuts? Ban red meat? Mandate masks even while we sleep in our own homes? Homes we are not likely to keep for long…he will likely turn the whole country into a panopticon if his handlers think they can get away with it.
Sorry, Suthen, I’m not willing to do to them what they do to others. I won’t deny them their humanity even while they deny mine.
They are not people. They are sociopaths. They lack the essential elements that makes one human.
I strongly disagree with this one. I’m not gonna dehumanize people for dehumanizing me. It just results in a descent to baser desires, namely the desire to bash the out-group’s head in with a rock.
That said, affirming their innate human dignity doesn’t mean being cowed by them or being submissive when they try to jab my kids.
I’ve used such arguments and the general retort is that these things don’t infect other people, therefore government would be overstepping if it mandated you not eat glazed donuts or harmed yourself in other ways that didn’t directly harm others. We all know, however, the slippery slope that these arguments are…”I don’t want to pay taxes to care for that unhealthy fat motorcycle rider when he or she needs medical care, therefore let’s mandate, etc. etc…..”
As the great Walter Williams said, that’s not a problem with medicine, that’s a problem with socializing medicine.
Probably butchered it, but you get the point.
Always pissed me off when I see displays for African American History he and Sowell are nowhere to be found.
“Always pissed me off when I see displays for African American History he and Sowell are nowhere to be found.”
They were wrong thinkers who left the plantation. I remember talking to a former acquaintance about Sowell and dude immediately dismissed Sowell as an Uncle Tom. Never read any of his books or articles, couldn’t really articulate a decent rebuttal to anything he said or believed but was sure that he was an Uncle Tom.
Another one is Fredrick Douglass.
I consider him somewhat of a personal hero*, but nobody knows who he is or what made him a great man.
*I was told in my company’s DEI training that you have to see someone of your race to emulate or you were doomed.
They only talk about pre-Civil War Douglass if they mention him. Post Civil War Douglass was too cozy with whitey.
Now do Robert Williams and his seminal work – Negroes With Guns. He has been virtually disappeared from the Civil Rights narrative.
I am not denying them anything. I am simply pointing it out. I worked with sociopaths for ten years in a mental health setting. They are rattlesnakes shaped like humans, but dont let your eyes fool you. If they had humanity I would be happy to point that out, but they dont.
fine, I’ll pull forward my response! Scrambles to find response after a 2-beer lunch….
I hate visiting techs forcing me to break my weekly 48 hour metabolic fast. With beer. Absolutely forced I tells.
I’m going to forgo trying to find the block qout buttons:
To clarify – I absolutely believe Fauci and Daszak and many others at NIH/CDS revolving door to pharma, have been doing shitty things intentionally for many years. There’s no doubt about that. They’ve been pursuing GoF research and intentionally lying about it. There’s potentially even a, known to them, bio-weapons aspect to it. But it can/is? be driven by the egomaniacal personality of the self styled elites like Fauci; he has a complex and has wanted his whole life to be the guy who saved humanity or had some huge impact. And I think that, coupled with a sense of how smart they are that nothing bad could ever happen, has likely driven a lot of his and his colleagues behavior. My only objection is that Fauci has been sitting around for 20 years thinking “I need to fund GoF research so that we can develop a ‘deadly’ disease and release it on humanity and thereby implement all these authoritarian practices an implement the Great Reset”. Will people, including him, take advantage of the situation and do just that? Yes. Was it planned? I don’t think so. He and his colleagues have been pursuing their own meglomania, hubris, and greed and it’s bitten them in the ass and they moved frantically to cover up their part in it.
I will read the linked document. After writing some code so I can pretend I did something useful today….
You’ll make a fine defense attorney, PM. I’m simply (over)reacting to what I see everyday as the (strawman) argument that basically claims I’m trying to cast Fauci as some Austin Powers like supervillain. It’s not really an argument so much as it is a way of pointing at my argument and saying, “Ohhhhh, look who thinks there are supervillains behind this!!” It strikes me as so disingenuous because it’s essentially the “HITLER!”-Godwin argument in drag.
The Founders well-knew that power corrupts and that is why they sought to diffuse and limit the accretion of it. Lord Acton wrote a treatise on the subject, but we only remember one quote. We act as if NO ONE could ever be evil enough to do what I’m suggesting, yet we’re all watching daily as people’s lives are ruined as a result of what we know are lies by Fauci and Co. I mean, we see him on TV lying under oath like its fucking cool to a US Senator. We have his emails showing he and Darszak lied about GOF. We know this has been going on for 2 decades. We know he stands to make millions personally. I mean, what else would it take for someone to finally admit the guy truly is an (at least) amoral, self-interested piece of shit who doesn’t care if you die?
How about Hillary? Is she really not as evil as she’s portrayed, too? She’s just misunderstood? And all of those years of having power hasn’t at all potentially corrupted her sense of morality? No?
You’ll make a fine defense attorney, PM.
Sir! I see no reason to insult me! Fisticuffs at dawn!
I agree. He’s an immoral self interested piece of shit who doesn’t care if you die. I mean the defense of him on his early mask reversal is basically that he was willing to lie to you and expose you to illness and death for ulterior motives. That’s the DEFENSE of him on masks, casting him in the best light. My main objection to your formulation, and forgive me if I’m mis-interpreting your position, is that he’s been planning for 20 years to engineer a virus so that it could be released and usher in the Great Reset. He’s a disingenuous, amoral, greedy, shit-stain of a person that deserves to be hanging from his heels on a lamp post. But he got there by just being an ‘immoral self interested piece of shit who doesn’t care if you die’ so long as he’s recognized as a great man who did great things and happened to get fabulously wealthy along the way.
Hillary Clinton – She’s not portrayed as evil, but she is. She is misunderstood, but only by those who think she’s a good person. I’m not sure which direction the arrow of causality goes vis “having power” vs. “corrupted [her] sense of morality”, but it’s immaterial. She is a bad person who should never be allowed near any position of power and should, in a just society, be in prison. But do I think she decided one day, cloaca and all, that she was going to visit evil on the world? No, I think she’s a greedy, power hungry piece of shit who doesn’t care that the pursuit of her wealth and power death and misery for others, and she’s perfectly willing to cross the line and make such death an misery happen intentionally to achieve her wealth and power goals.
I think the only ‘conflict’ I have with your position (as mis-representing as I may be), is that the goal of these people’s action has been the death and misery that results. I think that, mostly, that death an misery is a by-product of what they are pursuing which is their own self-aggrandizement. Perhaps their willingness to dismiss those outcomes to continue on that path means that it’s all semantics.
I guess there’s a very subtle point I’m having trouble articulating. I can envision a being, let’s call him Satan, whose GOAL is destruction and death and he will intentionally set off down the path to create that result. I think people like Fauci et al. (maybe Hillary, but she might be closer to actual Satan) set off down a path to self-aggrandizement and the death and destruction are a by-product that they did not consciously set out to create, but, at some point in their path became expected/necessary. Perhaps it’s a distinction without a difference and maybe is the true origin of religious exhortations against manifesting such behavior; Satan doesn’t cause evil, evil causes Satan.
[vows to have more 2-beer lunches, screw this whole keto thing]
Two martini lunches are more fun.
I started dinner with a martini last night – I couldn’t imaging having two and going back to work.
OH god, you remind me of the several, two bottles of wine lunches I had with 2 or 3 clients when I had a gig in London. The coding in the afternoon was a lot slower than the morning.
Nobody is the villain in their own story.
If you got an honest answer out of her, it would be something about having to make hard choices because people don’t know what’s best for them and why shouldn’t she do well when all those corrupt businessmen blah blah blah blah.
So who’s next? I have a bad feeling it might be Venko.
Abend, she is going around asking everyone about their mental state, so she is inundated with other people’s problems, but nobody asks her how she is doing.
Fun fact – ‘abend’ is short for ‘abnormal ending’ in mainframe software (and migrated to things like Novell Netware)
That’s the only frame of reference I know the term from.
It’s “evening” in German.
Thanks – that was tickling the back of my brain and I couldn’t drag it out.
I saw the name and made the CompSci association (370 assembler! Yeah! Who’s with me?! No one? … nevermind)
The rest of the names also seem a little odd to me. I wonder how many are supposed to be references, anagrams, etc.
Maybe they are really just algorithms in a computer simulation.
Hmm… good point.
Ozy, thanks for the link on the deadthread. Unfortunately, I don’t find [Dr.] David Martin credible. He claims in that paper that his business has been conducting essentially intelligence work for many years, when he appears to actually be (per his business website) some kind of financial weenie (and “Our Team” consists of him and him alone). That, and grandiose claims of “for humanity” are red flags for me.
As for your comment about pattern recognition – this is both a human blessing and a curse. We look for patterns (and the tiny bit of AI I was exposed to back in my grad school days discussed how impossibly hard visual processing is) and we see them, sometimes when there isn’t even a pattern actually there. The evolutionary cost of false pattern recognition tends to be low while the evolutionary value of correctly detecting a threat is very high – so we were biased by that to be really good at detecting patterns. We’re also pretty good at just creating them, and once we’ve created one, we have an investment in keeping and promoting it.
I’ve had to ponder where my faith lies, since I know it is an inherent part of being a human to have it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I very probably have an over-belief in rationality (I truly am a child of the Enlightenment), even as I can see that it doesn’t answer the problems/questions that elude rational means. Other people invest greater faith in other things, but ultimately with no more certainty than I have. What we have in common is that we are committed to particular patterns, and we probably can no more change that than we can change many other things about being human.
JI – All I get from you is the same thing – ad hominem. You never address the actual facts of anything he says. You don’t address the documents, the timelines, the filings, the actual substance, etc. Your only response has been “his style puts me off and I ground some resume inconsistencies, therefore bulllshit. Do you ever read any of the actual substance of what he’s saying and put the same level of diligence on THAT as you do the fact that he cals himself “doctor” while he’s only a PhD?
I have problems with the credibility from the start. And yes, that is a pattern-response, isn’t it? No, I’m not going to refute every bit of evidence he has carefully assembled into a pattern that another pattern-seeker will find irresistibly attractive. I’ve already laid the first problem in the pattern at your feet – he is talking about things he has no real knowledge of; he is not a scientist, so he’s not really giving a good account of the science in layman’s terms. He is not an intelligence analyst, but seems to have done a great deal of that work. His website says he is a rip-roaring success in the field of international intangible assets. One story or the other is not true about his business: either it is finance, as per the website, or it isn’t. Since I’m not sure which to believe, I won’t give full credibility to either.
You could say I’m looking at the pattern of everything I see about David Martin, and quite frankly, it screams phony to me. Now, it is entirely possible that I’m wrong. I won’t stand here and say that my opinion is unassailable. I just don’t honestly see the benefit, for me or you, of digging into enough detail to change one of our minds.
Ah. So, who gets to wear the sacred title of “scientist” by your definition? I guess I’m not a scientist, either. Should I stop questioning those who wear lab coats then?
There are some really weird gaps in my resume, too, some of which don’t add up. I guess that means what I wrote in my legal brief is all bullshit, no?
The problem isn’t that you won’t refute EVERY bit of evidence – it’s that you won’t even read it, JI. Be honest. You won’t refute ANY of it. You stopped because he’s a PhD who uses the term “Doctor” and rather than admit that’s the way you are, now you’re going to try to defend it. You still haven’t addressed a single substantive item. And since it appears you’re not going to, I’m about done. I’ve got work to do, but if you ever want to engage on this and do some reading and research, I’m happy to do so.
So, who gets to wear the sacred title of “scientist” by your definition?
First off, I don’t treat it as a sacred title. There are good scientists and bad ones. There are brilliant ones that can’t explain a fucking thing to you – that doesn’t diminish their brilliance. Then you get someone like Feynman (who as it turns out was kind of a shitty person).
OK, fair challenge – what particular point of his do you consider the single most damning? Let’s start there. I sure as hell don’t want to chase around points that if I can show he’s full of shit, you’d just slough off.
Nope, sorry, JI. You don’t get away scot free.
I’ve lived this issue for over 20 years. I’m sorry to pull the “expert” card on you, but comparatively speaking, you don’t know shit and I’ve literally written a book about the perfidy of people at DOD, FDA, and CDC. I’ve done the bureaucracy-fighting equivalent of swimming the English Channel a dozen or so times.
If you want to seriously participate in the conversation – or “debunk” me or him – then you can at least do a little reading of your own. What I see is a guy who simply believes what he wants to believe and has a lot of fairly obvious rationalizations and heuristics that stand in the way of learning something that might challenge what he (already) believes.
Do some homework and come talk to me. Otherwise, I’m not doing more of your work. I’m busy enough.
Right in the video he’s quoting from publicly available documents – it’s not like he’s just spouting off the cuff. He’s READING from public docs.
I call bullshit on that until I see evidence thereof.
Hmm, no footnote to reference this alleged report.
I believe he is accusing the CDC of bribing the patent decision authority? Or am I reading that wrong?
I can believe a lot about Fauci, but conspiring to commit terror on the global population?
One more question (a la Columbo) – how would you characterize his discussion of the law counselor? Would you consider him competent in that domain? I ask that because he seems to use some fairly loaded language that doesn’t sound all that lawyerly.
Strange. Remember the captain’s collection of Native American salt shakers? All but five of them have disappeared.
Did the European salt shakers come by looking for East Indian pepper mills and spread diseases?
Was the captain named U.N. Owen?
I never did meet Ulick’s wife Una.
Ready for some more riots?
Nia
@niaplatt2
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28m
Replying to
@stillgray
Grosskreutz was the third person who was shot. Rittenhouse had already killed two people. Grosskreutz had just witnessed Kyle killing one of those people. Neither of the people killed by Rittenhouse pointed a gun at him.
There are always apologists when something goes against the narrative.
Is that true? I could be mixing things up, but I thought the FBI surveillance video showed somebody (I thought maybe the first guy?) shooting at him.
Asshole #1 chased Rittenhouse into a darkened parking lot and cornered him. A third party fired a gun in very close proximity. Rittenhouse shot and killed Asshole #1.
Asshole #2 chased Rittenhouse down the street as Rittenhouse was running towards the police. Asshole #2 hit Rittenhouse on the head with a skateboard (a lethal weapon) and was then shot.
Asshole #3 also chased Rittenhouse and lunged for Rittenhouse’s rifle after Asshole #2 was shot. Asshole #3 further pointed a loaded pistol at Rittenhouse who then blew away Asshole #3’s bicep.
All three cases were legitimate self-defense based on the videos that I saw in the days after the event.
Yes, so the tweet is technically correct.
tweet is technically correct.
Right.
But, even in a state that requires you to flee before defending yourself, these were three clear cases of legitimate self-defense.
I agree 100%.
I put the tweet up as an example of the disingenuous arguments against self defense.
Good point, he was retreating.
that is some good shooting, especially under such a situation
Ever hear the phrase, “Good luck reinforces bad tactics?”
Rittenhouse should have that phrase tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.
My vengeful part is sad that #3’s brachial artery remained intact.
Yeah, but he gets to live with a lot of pain.
That guy was not injured, and I don’t believe the shot was actually aimed at Rittenhouse.
IIRC, first shooter was a third party, neither shot nor engaged by Ritt. Second gun pointer was Gage.
*makes note to self to refresh before commenting*
No. Not really.
Let’s say the jury has been propagandized/intimidated into convicting.
Any chance the new Gov. pardons him?
You never know, there could be someone on the jury that isn’t prone to intimidation. That at least creates a new trial.
New governor? The next gubernatorial election in Wisconsin is 2022. Last one was 2018.
Maybe whoever wins in 2022 will pardon him, but I guess it will depend on who wins. It looks like Evers, the incumbent whom I can’t see pardoning him, will seek another term.
Why do I keep crossing this up with Virginia?
Juror intimidation used to be a serious crime. Now people brag about it online.
It’s a reasonable presumption that he is a know-nothing blowhard, but it would be gratifying to see his threats properly investigated.
Y’know I think people should carry more guns, holstered open on the hip.
I mean at least back in the olden days you knew that some lip or some other stupid shit could catch you a slug.
I do it all the time outside of work.
Had to be real careful about insulting a man’s mule in those days. He might be easy going, but that mule — he might get the crazy idea you’re laughing at *him*….
I know there’s a debate about open v concealed carry, but I lean toward open myself.
I’m not ready to carry yet. Another round of training, and I probably will be.
No debate from me, carry however makes you comfortable.
In Virginia without a permit OC is the only option.
If I had the option to conceal I would still OC.
The problem with open carry, is you’re scaring off the minnows, while inviting the sharks to eat you.
I don’t currently own a gun but when I eventually do, I would rather it be concealed. For one thing I live in the People’s Republic of Illinois, so I don’t want to scare the normies with having a gun out in the open. Secondly, I don’t want anyone to know I have one on me.
If he gets acquitted be prepared for the, ‘This is what white supremacy looks like,” articles. The so called woke don’t concern themselves with evidence or due process.
They still believe “Hands up, don’t shoot”.
Here’s video of the case going down the drain.
The picture of the prosecutor’s reaction is pretty good too. Rittenhouse never should have been charged.
They might still get him on the first one. The person who shot at (in the direction of) Rittenhouse was not Rosenbaum who was the first person Rittenhouse shot.
I have a vague memory that Asshole #1 had something in his hand that was on fire while chasing Rittenhouse.
Regardless, Asshole #1 was chasing a guy with a rifle and then cornered the guy with the rifle. Stupid is a as Stupid does.
Asshole #1 was carrying a steel chain at some point. I’m not saying Rittenhouse wasn’t justified but juries can be weird sometimes. They might get him on the gun charge as well.
My recollection is that Rittenhouse was legally carrying a long arm under WI law, which allows 17 year olds to carry rifles that aren’t “short-barrelled”. Deer hunting FTW.
Not sure what other firearms charges they may have filed against him.
It doesn’t really matter so long as he reasonably believed that Rosenbaum was gonna beat the shit out of him or take his gun and shoot him. He’s also protected if he says that he thought the gunshot came from Rittenbaum and he returned fire in self defense.
So long as those beliefs are “reasonable” (in any non-political charged trial, they would be), then self-defense applies.
Maybe. It would be the compromise verdict, which is always tempting. Of course, he was fleeing under fire, and the first dead man was pursuing him. I think under the “reasonable fear” standard, he should get off.
I suppose the jury doesn’t get to hear from the 5 boys Rosenbaum raped.
No the jury doesn’t because it isn’t relevant to his actions that night. The video of him shouting “shoot me nigger” (to a white kid) is far more relevant.
It’s considered irrelevant. I still say the prosecution opened the door to the defense when the prosecution mentioned in opening statements that Rosenbaum was released from the hospital that day. The defense should be allowed to clarify what type of hospital he was released from.
Yeah. It’s irrelevant to the events of the night in question.
FreedomToons: The Legend of Kyle Rittenhouse.
Aw HAY-el nah:
Wypipo getting schooled on how to act towards their betters.
At one of my previous jobs, someone from HR thought I would be interested in being on this bullshit ass bullshit diversity committee. I shut that shit down immediately because for one thing it’s bullshit but also I was too loaded with work to do that bullshit.
Hard pass.
I think it’s pretty funny for Trump to call out RINOs – what exactly was he?
Even after he’s dead, people are still going to be “Trump this” and “Trump that,” aren’t they?
Yep. All-purpose boogeyman.
He’s the new Reagan. Every social ill will be blamed on him despite being a one termer and being hamstrung by the bureaucracy and Congress.
I’m sure Thatcher still gets a lot of blame in the UK for things.
She certainly does.
Snatching milk from beyond the grave.
Can someone show me a Republican that isn’t a RINO?
When the vast majority of the party is RINO, the definition of Republican would seem to change.
1st level: Rand Paul and Justin Amash?
2nd level: Mike Lee, Jim Jordan, Anthony Scalise, and maybe a couple more.
I think you’re right, the ones I listed are RINO’s, and the uniparty ones are the real Republicans.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus in NH? Almost all of them are libertarians.
Well, I guess that counts as a RINO in some Republicans’ minds.
DEG, did you enjoy the 2000 show?
I haven’t watched it yet, probably will this weekend.
Yes, it was a great time. I liked the Family Feud bit. “What conspiracy theory is your favorite?” “Which governor would you send to Gitmo?” and others.
Some drunk tried interrupting Michael Malice and got thrown out.
It is long, so make sure you have plenty of free time before starting the video.
I saw that one and was bemussed – is this part of his act? Watching the drunkard, half-nelson and he’s out quickly (who ever dude is that eventually dragged him out should consider a career out side of bouncing/security). But I would have hesitated because it seemed like something Malice would do intentionally!
At the time, I wasn’t certain.
I think Woods called the guy a heckler in his e-mail announcing the videos were up, so I’d say this wasn’t part of the act.
I think the core issue being touched upon is that being a Republican in general is pretty meaningless.
Yeah that’s a hard pass for me Brah. You want allies, go play Fortnite.
Stolen for future use.
Legitimate LOL. Because many cops, especially here in NJ, barely know one of firearm from the other.
Alec Baldwin calls for mandatory police presence to monitor weapon safety on sets following ‘Rust’ shooting
Does he think that will happen for free?
Isn’t Hollywood completely unionized? This might be a match made in heaven.
So, Alec Baldwin is calling for a solution to problems caused by….the irresponsibility and incompetence of people like Alec Baldwin. It’s like his message to himself is “You fu**ed up! You trusted me!”
I’m curious as to what people think of my thinking about this. My natural inclination is to agree with Sexton when he says:
But, I wonder, isn’t the key element there that “change” part? From what I can tell, Bowles “saw the light” only when she became a target of the woke mobs. But, at risk of bringing in a religious metaphor, forgiveness is usually predicated on repentance. Now, I’m not demanding Bowles eat locusts and dress in sack cloth or anything. But, if I’m going to take her seriously as someone commenting on the extremism of the left, I’d like to know where does she think the woke mobs are fundamentally at odds with her own thinking? What does she think she got wrong that empowered these people who were pretty much on board with her erstwhile political philosophy? If it’s all just “well, they’ve taken a good thing too far”, then I have trouble seeing her “conversion” as much more than a tactical decision.
I’m highly skeptical of the “reasonable left” these days. Their worldview is inherently unreasonable, and mere appeals to stop the insane zealotry done in furtherance of the unreasonable worldview is not enough.
It’s a tough one. Because a lot of the insane zealotry of the woke mobs is just the ideals and standards of much of the “reasonable left” put into practice. And if they can’t say where they fundamentally disagree with the woke mobs, then all they’re really looking for is for the world to endorse their contradictions.
I read something on this just this weekend on another device. Dude was way too longwinded and repetitive, but there were some good points in there. I’ll see if I can remember where I read it.
Ahh yes, here it was. Trigger warning: article way too long.
She and Weiss are good examples of how journalists who actually have a “reporter’s curiosity” are ostracized and driven out of the liberal media.
From my Jalopnik read today.
Mississauga Porch Pirate Fails Stealing A Package & Gets His Car Stuck In A Snow Bank
Dude gets caught and makes a break for it and high centers his little FWD car. I skipped to the end and yes the police do arrive.
Thanks man, that absolutely made my day brighter.
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/11/pennsylvania-will-let-schools-set-mask-rules-in-january-could-nj-be-next.html
You expect us to believe you this time? Fuck that guy.
Dude…2 weeks to flatten the curve.
Fuck Murphy. Fuck Wolf.