Winston’s Mom does links

by | Jul 31, 2020 | Daily Links | 455 comments

Let’s get this over with…

Shoot him in the fucking face!

Cry more, pussy.

Dry heat my ass.

So when do they start rounding them up?

Even I think that’s gross.

Oh dear

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said something remarkably stupid the other day. I know, I know: It’s probably harder to find a day on which DeSantis didn’t say something stupid than a day on which he did. But this particular piece of thickheadedness, I’d argue, helps us understand why America’s response to the coronavirus has been so disastrous compared with other wealthy nations.

Florida has, of course, become a COVID-19 epicenter, with soaring case totals and a daily death toll now consistently exceeding that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population. But DeSantis won’t contemplate any rollback of the state’s obviously premature reopening; he even refuses to close venues that are perfect coronavirus incubators.

You tried to compare apples to assholes for that:  “with soaring case totals and a daily death toll now consistently exceeding that of the whole European Union, which has 20 times its population.“  Lets compare on the timescale that includes both at their peak, using qualified data.  That is from the beginning of the year, so:

And you think Ronnie says dumb shit on a daily basis? Odd how the Florida number was readily available and I had to get out the calculator for the EU.

But whatever.  Don’t quit your day job, whatever the fuck that is.  I’m getting a cigarette and going to bed.

 

About The Author

Winston's Mom

Winston's Mom

Biological mother of Winston.

455 Comments

  1. Gender Traitor

    Mornin’, WM. Umm….how’s the kid?

    • PieInTheSky

      I blame the heat. Makin bitches crazy

      • Rhywun

        Only 71º this morning. Of course, the humidity is 98º. I guess there is always September when I can turn off my AC.

      • Rhywun

        98%, even.

      • Fourscore

        62 this morning but next week is looking like a couple mornings in the 40s. The bees are gonna need a sweater to go to work.

      • Rhywun

        Aw, poor things.

      • Not Adahn

        Yeah, the days are getting shorter fast, I can’t read outside at 21:00 anymore.

      • PieInTheSky

        35 degrees, 34% humidity, 7KPH wind, cloud cover 43%, RealFeel 37

      • Rhywun

        34% humidity

        Jelly.

      • R C Dean

        What’s 34% in American?

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        85 grains of water per pound of dry air in the case cited

  2. UnCivilServant

    The Running Man (film) is set in 2017. There were two glaring errors – No internet, and those cities were waaay to clean to be 2017 california.

    • Tejicano

      Find me a movie pre-1988 or so which shows a reasonable representation of the internet with not only information content but also the commercial aspect.

      • PieInTheSky

        I think the memes are also relevant

      • PieInTheSky

        got trumpy elected innit?

      • PieInTheSky

        yeah but what do you know?

      • Not Adahn

        Kek is going to smite you for that.

      • PieInTheSky

        well if you are so smart why are you not overlord of America yet?

      • UnCivilServant

        Smart people don’t get to run countries.

      • PieInTheSky

        True. Look at Hillary and Bernie.

      • AlexinCT

        Smart people avoid politics too. If I wanted to sell my soul to the devil, I would do it directly. Not by becoming a politician and going about it in a roundabout way.

      • gbob

        Demolition Man. Sly tries to use a kiosk and whatdoes he get? Porn boobies.

        Now I’m off to Taco Bell, and perhaps do a Murder Death Kill.

      • Negroni Please

        But how DO you use the three seashells?

      • AlexinCT

        Is “a Murder Death Kill” code for pissing out of your ass after eating Taco Hell shit?

      • Animal

        The only science fiction guy who kinda-sorta foresaw the internet was Isaac Asimov. In several stories (The Last Question, All the Troubles Of the World) he postulated a world-wide computer called Multivac. Every home and business had terminals where they could ask Multivac questions, and get replies printed on a paper card. (!)

        Nobody else in the sci-fi world, as far as I’m aware, saw the internet coming.

      • PieInTheSky

        Yeah I consider Asimov not even close tbh. The multivac he imagined had nothing to do with computers and internet.

        I am unsure of what to think of Neuromancer and the like…

      • Negroni Please

        Damn you Pie

      • Overt

        I was going to call out Neuromancer. Other than everything being VR, he called out that all the world’s data would be networked and available. And that was 1984.

        Also, I know it BARELY misses the mark, but published in 1990 (so presumably written in the 80s), Earth got a lot of internet technologies correct- from WWW, to automated daemons crawling for information, to hacking and the like. It likely was inspired heavily by Gibson and Sterling.

        The Moon is a Harsh Mistress discusses a linked network on the Moon. And Ender’s Game references an internet-like global network at the least like the mid 90s internet (USENET, EMAIL, WWW) where Ender’s brother and sister make themselves into intellectual icons.

      • Rhywun

        Arthur C. Clark had a global computer network in 1956.

      • Negroni Please

        No love for Gibson? He wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter in 1984, but coined the term cyberspace for a corporatized nightmare of interconnected computers

      • Nephilium

        Snow Crash written in 1992 included avatars and the like as well as a collapsed federal government, collapsed monetary units, and private enclaves. Oath of Fealty written in 1981 included characters with wireless connections to the network implanted in their heads used to pull up information as well as share a limited form of instant messaging that was likened to telepathy.

      • Negroni Please

        I blame snow crash for second life existing.

      • EvilSheldon

        There were quite a few others. Murray Leinster had a good one in his short story ‘A Logic Named Joe’.

      • Rhywun

        Excellent.

      • TARDIS

        Didn’t know that. Thanks!

      • PieInTheSky

        Now that i think about it the mote 8j gods eye was also closer than asimov. They had pocket computers thay retrieved info from the main dayabase and could also comunicate with them between people

      • Tejicano

        In 1985 I was sending e-mail to colleagues around the world and posing questions related to my work for information. I thought it was really cool and imagined what it would be like if I could send e-mail to people I was writing letters to back then.

        Terminator did a pretty good job when the Terminator touches the stick shift in a truck and immediately gets the schematics for the transmission and then understands how to shift and drive the truck.

        But the Amazon model of commerce doesn’t seem to have been covered – at least not very well – by science fiction.

        And social media and its implications was not forecast in any way by fiction writers back then.

      • Rhywun

        I don’t think any of us predicted what a shit-show social media was going to become even when those companies were launched.

      • Tejicano

        I think “Demolition Man” came close not in showing directly what the internet would be but in how society would be shaped in the end.

      • Agent Cooper

        E.M. Forster (not know for his sci-fi) kind of had something similar in this.

      • Jarflax

        Curmudgeon hat on. If your historical fiction is full of anachronisms and major historical events being wrong that MAY be a flaw(or it may not. If your story is actually entertaining and illuminates human behavior the fact that you move a King a century is not a problem); but science fiction is not historical fiction for the future and only really bad writers try to prognosticate, good ones imagine.

      • Mojeaux

        We had a discussion about that on Zoom a couple of weeks ago. The Hyperbole doesn’t care what the author does as long as he’s entertained. His viewpoint is that it’s the author’s world, it’s totally fictional anyway, so what does it matter if it hews to history or not?

        That discussion was fun. I had never thought about it from that point of view.

      • UnCivilServant

        Internal inconsistancy very rapidly removes me from a story and very rapidly evaporates any fun. The more questions I have from the meta rather than in-world speculation, the worse and worse my disconnect from the tale.

        “Doing whatever” very often results in a mess rather than a fun ride. If done well, the rules are seamless and invisible on a conscious layer, but you’ll know it when they’re missing or get broken.

      • Not Adahn

        Internal inconsistency is why you can’t ever have magic and technology together.

        Even the most meticulous attmepts to do so wind up with this. Either plot holes out the ying-yang or superpowered characters.

      • juris imprudent

        A busted link – now that is meta!

      • UnCivilServant

        I disagree.

        I have to, I’ve written four books in a genre where they run around together.

      • Not Adahn

        Then at least one major aspect of your world is either completely borked or unrealistic.

        Consider the lack of precious metals arbitrage and lack of premarital sex in the Harry Potterverse.

      • UnCivilServant

        The second is not the result of a magitech setting.

        And I don’t know the circumstances surrounding the first.

      • Jarflax

        Not shown is not the same as not happening.

      • R C Dean

        If at least 90% of your world building isn’t invisible, it can get tedious really fast.

        It’s been interesting getting a peek at UnCiv’s world building here, and then reading the books. He leaves a lot out, which is good.

      • Jarflax

        Internal inconsistency is bad imagining. You don’t have to match the real world to be consistent, you just have to follow your own rules once you create them. In other words, I agree with what you are saying but do not think it invalidates my point.

      • UnCivilServant

        I wasn’t even addressing your point. I was addressing Hyperbole’s purported position.

      • Mojeaux

        And MY point is that that is the way he reads and in the end, the reader is who matters.

        A storyteller may be the worst writer in the world, technically speaking, but if s/he keeps you engaged, nothing trumps that. The author did his/her work. Maybe not gracefully, but they did.

        Hype wants to care about the characters. He’s a character-driven reader.

      • UnCivilServant

        You may not consciously notice the rulebook in play, especially if the writer does their job right, but when it’s broken or absent, you will pretty quickly end up spending more time going “WTF was that?” than caring about the characters.

      • UnCivilServant

        I say this as someone whose writing method is “just let the characters go about their business”

      • Jarflax

        A storyteller may be the worst writer in the world, technically speaking, but if s/he keeps you engaged, nothing trumps that.

        Here’s a question; does the fact that you can say that sentence, and have it have meaning that can be understood, indicate a contradiction in our concept of what constitutes good writing?

        If a writer keeps their audience engaged and entertained haven’t they succeeded at their job? The goal isn’t (outside of very narrow circumstances) to write examples for a style guide; it is to entertain the reader. I struggle with this idea because I am attached to the idea of ‘standards’, and I have a list of modern writers I despise, but when I think about it I really cannot come up with an argument why Stephanie Meyers is a bad writer, and using the same standard say Faulkner or Hemingway, or even Shakespeare is a good one. Meyers entertained more people than The Sound and the Fury ever did, and while her grammatical errors were (presumably) less deliberate than Faulkner’s they were also less pervasive and intrusive. Her voice lacks flavor and is monotonous, again presumably not deliberately, but Hemingway deliberately wrote in a stripped down clipped voice. Her plots are bizarre and jarringly inane, so are many of Shakespeare’s plays when you strip out the beautiful language and baldly examine what is happening.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        There’s no accounting for taste.

        I don’t feel the need to justify what entertains me to anyone else. I know what does and doesn’t.

        That doesn’t apply when discussing the intellectual or moral value of said entertainment.

      • PieInTheSky

        Mr. Plinkett also makes links work

      • CPRM

        That link had AIDS! It happens sometimes with a skinny thread and drunks.

      • Mojeaux

        does the fact that you can say that sentence, and have it have meaning that can be understood, indicate a contradiction in our concept of what constitutes good writing?

        I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and I don’t really have an answer except:

        1. good technical writing, but no storytelling ability (Hemingway/Faulkner – IMO!!!!!)

        2. good technical writing, good storytelling ability (Rowling, Tom Wolfe)

        3. mediocre technical writing, but storytelling ability (Meyer, Rand)

        4. unskilled technical writing, no storytelling ability (can’t think of a commercial one)

        Shakespeare knew his audience and could make the unbelievable believable or at least ACCEPTED. See: Hamlet. “Play within a play” = ridiculous.

        Rowling knew her audience and had a story to tell. (Her acquiring editor did NOT know his audience [children] and almost passed until his kid read it, so he couldn’t do his job.)

        Meyer had a story to tell and tripped over her audience by accident.

        Now, this goes for oral storytelling also. Gma from Hell #1 was a helluva natural storyteller and her sister would write her very entertaining letters and they both make the most mundane things sound like an adventure.

        But then you get the people who want to tell stories and they do this: “But what you don’t know was…” and “Oh, wait, I forgot a part…” — Those people need a pencil and a piece of paper to sort their stories out.

        Then there are people who just ramble on with no point. Those I put in category #4. I could dig in my memory for some self-published authors like that, but it’s not that deep.

        ANYWAY.

        I do think unskilled technical writing and good storytelling can coexist. This is the point at which the reader sees and is irritated by the flaws but still wants to know what happens and plows through it to find out.

      • PieInTheSky

        If Only the hour for Zoom was better

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      But the Solid Gold dancers were spot on.

    • Idle Hands

      We don’t have any game show hosts on Richard Dawson’s level either.

  3. PieInTheSky

    408 deaths per million Euroweenies. – hei screw ya lady

    • Jarflax

      I think most of the time Americans use Euroweenie as a name for Western Europeans.

  4. PieInTheSky

    Cry more, pussy. – was the internet a bad idea

  5. PieInTheSky

    I talket to my friend in Dutchland and apparently, besides the usual like hot desking, the companies there are thinking up all sorts of combinations of office work and home work.

    One of them is something on a 6 week cycle that goes like this

    Go to the office 2 weeks including weekends

    Get a no work week

    3 weeks work from home

    rinse, repeat.

    Sounds weird. But it appeals to expats and people who want to live further away for the city. Share an apartment for the two weeks you come to work, then 4 weeks you don’t come. The idea is that the team occasional gets a longer period of working together in the same physical space.

    So. Thoughts?

    • Gustave Lytton

      If you were trying to figure out a work pattern that would be a perfect exposure and incubator, that would be pretty damn close short of working without ppe in a BSL-4.

      • PieInTheSky

        Yeah but then all people could quarantine afterwards. Though if the whole team gets sick who will work on the project. But I think they are also thinking about it after the covid thing is done. The general idea is that they pout a lot of money in it infrastructure during covid and they want to use it and also reduce office rent costs.

      • Overt

        Our company is doing something sort of similar. They are breaking us into 25% or 33% increments, depending on office accommodations, and we then have the option to be in the office every 2 – 3 weeks.

        Some of our teams are going 100% remote, but we are trying to get the rent budget rolled into Travel and Expenses so that we can host quarterly if not monthly 1 week offsites for planning.

  6. Tejicano

    “According to their website, they are actively recruiting “former infantry””

    Hmm.. Being former infantry myself I wonder how far that effort will get them.

    • PieInTheSky

      Being former infantry – not good enough at math to become a pilot?

      • Tejicano

        Infantry was my choice when I enlisted.

        After that I graduated with honors in mech. engineering.

      • Not Adahn

        I remember when a recruiter came by and asked one of the superstar HS seniors (4.0, Eagle Scout, starting QB, etc.) which MOS they were looking at and got the reply “Infantry. I want to KILL PEOPLE!”

      • PieInTheSky

        I would assume you kill more people being the guy who pushes the button to launch a cruise missile

      • Tejicano

        The missile kills them. You don’t.

      • Not Adahn

        Guns don’t kill people. Exsanguination kills people.

      • Tejicano

        Kinetic disruption of components of the central nervous system works for me.

      • EvilSheldon

        When most people say, “I want to kill people,” they really mean, “I want to shoot people, in battle.”

      • Drake

        When I signed up, Infantry had by far the longest waiting period for the Marines. I ended up agreeing to go in as a Field Radio Operator in a Reserve Infantry unit.

      • R C Dean

        Pie be salty this morning.

      • PieInTheSky

        That was a Starship Trooper (the movie not the book) joke

      • Sensei

        I thought so!

        It’s mentioned in the book as well although from memory much more obliquely.

      • PieInTheSky

        yes in a book he goes through many and at some point it is mentioned in passing. In the film Casper Van Dien is publicly humiliated for low math scores and he wasn’t to become a pilot to follow Denise Richards but his math prevents it

      • Not Adahn

        Would you like to know more?

  7. PieInTheSky

    Romania officially passed 50000 wuflu cases

    • Gustave Lytton

      Conveniently overlooked elephant in the coffin of a certain blood borne pathogen there.

  8. Not Adahn

    WM gets a bad late night client and it makes her ornery.

    • Rhywun

      It is a mystery.

      • AlexinCT

        I lost IQ points trying to go through that word salad…

      • PieInTheSky

        I think the article is reasonable given the subject matter

      • AlexinCT

        Yeah, marxist drivel just makes my head hurt and leaves me feeling like common sense is rarer than an element with an atomic weight over 350.

      • Jarflax

        The article is mocking the drivel.

    • Tejicano

      Basically it boils down to “we’re stupid and lazy so it’s easier to simply pronounce you ‘wrong’ and go from there”.

      • Not Adahn

        Eh. You can disagree with their premises, but it’s self-consistent. Most marxist-derived philosophies have decent logic, just horrible axioms.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        This

        It’s functionally a cult.

      • Q Continuum

        If you start from a shitty premise you can derive almost any conclusion you want.

        AKA: Garbage in, garbage out.

      • Overt

        Really? The labor theory of value is demonstrably falsifiable. That isn’t an axiom, it is a delusion wrapped in spoiled children sticking their fingers in their ears.

      • Not Adahn

        Ok, so I am not being sarcastic (for once) when I say this:

        Saying something is demonstrably false literally misses the point. Empiricism is not a consideration, and appealing to it is indicative of a failing on your part (form their point of view). Conflict Theory has a completely different paradigm when it comes to epistemology. Revolutionary truth is in fact, more important that bourgeois facts.

      • Not Adahn

        See if you can find Scott Alexander’s writeup of Conflict Theory v. Mistake Theory.

        But when two people don’t agree on metaphysics or epistemology, you’re right that there will be arguments by one tat are nonsensical to the other. The mistake is not realizing that it extends to the Conflict Theory side of things too.

      • R C Dean

        The ends validate the facts?

      • Not Adahn

        Of course.

      • Fatty Bolger

        “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

      • juris imprudent

        The problem for labor theory was always the numeraire, supposedly resolved by Saffra, for anyone that cares.

      • juris imprudent

        Sraffa, dammit

      • mindyourbusiness

        To quote RAH: Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig

    • Surly Knott

      That’s a good one. Thank you.

    • Jarflax

      That is, Dotson explains that when we look across identity groups, not only do we find a profound lack of “shared epistemic resources” by which people can come to understand things in the same way as one another

      So her argument is that Wwhitie stole all the knowing mine and thought forests, and now BIPOCs can’t ever learn?

    • beer league keeper

      According to the article, the Woke share some attributes with libertarians:

      1. They Think the System Is Rigged Against Them … anyone with unorthodox ideas has a tough go in the current system
      2. A Metaphysics of Discourses … how many times have you heard/read that “government gives us rights”?
      3. No True Disagreement … everyone who’s a communalist is really just fundamentally wrong, right?
      4. Guilt by Association with Racists … Team Blue = “party of slavery”, Team Red = “Orange Man Bad”
      5. They’re Too Tired … when is libertarianism EVER properly characterized by pundits/fans of either Team? I definitely get tired of telling people, “no, that’s not what I believe”

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They Think the System Is Rigged Against Them

        The system is rigged against everybody except those in power. I don’t feel special in that regard.

      • PieInTheSky

        Actually the basis of the thing is libertarians strongly believe in reason, logic, and objective fact so not even close to wokies.

        They Think the System Is Rigged Against Them – the political / social maybe. But no hard science,m engineering etc. THe wokies believe that is rigged to, A different belief entirely.

        everyone who’s a communalist is really just fundamentally wrong, right?- not unless they want to use force on those with different opinions. But communalists as you say are objectively wrong.

      • PieInTheSky

        Or let’s say I don’t believe wine-making is inherently antilibertarian. But it is inherently racist sexist and cisheteropatriarichal

      • Rhywun

        “The system” IS woke. They are the system now.

    • EvilSheldon

      He did kinda have the look.

  9. Rufus the Monocled

    Cook, Z’Berg, Bezos….

    To me it’s all the same shit. BLM, removing Facebook posts, supporting far left groups….whatever, it all swirls in the same pot as cancel culture. They all played their parts in their own way in the same way academics like Bret Weinstein helped to foster the insanity on campuses only to realize….oops!

    • Rhywun

      Cook might be a far-left idiot but at least he doesn’t actively censor like Zuck, Bezos, and that Google guy.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Bezos through WaPo?

      • Rhywun

        And of course Dorsey, who didn’t show up. (Good for him?)

    • PieInTheSky

      I will not click on images containing an airplane

    • Not Adahn

      Duh. All wypipo are anti-black. That’s what white means. Why don’t they even bother reading their own rulebook?

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Don’t Shoot Portland. Wall of Moms. Anti-Blackness.

      Jesus.

      • Rhywun

        People don’t realize how much Portland really is the center of “protest” culture in America.

      • juris imprudent

        And how overwhelmingly white the city is.

  10. Rebel Scum

    In a recent Facebook post (archive), they encouraged their followers to shoot Federal agents “in the face”.

    Feds should have already started popping the guys with the lasers that are blinding people.

    • Q Continuum

      Truly a mystery why a woman would get more attention for taking her clothes off than for her inane ramblings.

      • PieInTheSky

        rate the tits

      • Negroni Please

        2 out of 2

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        *golf clap*

      • Q Continuum

        Nice shape if a bit small for my tastes. Proportional areola and nicely colored nipple. 6.5/10.

      • TARDIS

        I can’t touch them, so 0.0.

      • Not Adahn

        Are you sure? How much did you offer?

      • Not Adahn

        Are you sure? How much did you offer?

      • banginglc1

        One comment for each boob?

  11. The Late P Brooks

    WIRED puts the knee pads on and gets to work

    Dr. Anthony Fauci’s new normal is less normal than anyone’s during this year of the coronavirus. As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—and perhaps the most widely trusted voice on the White House Coronavirus Task Force—he has been revered and reviled, sometimes by his own boss, President Donald Trump, the sixth president he has served under. Just in the past seven days, he threw out the first pitch of the baseball season and was featured on a Topps baseball card. A vaccine that his lab helped develop went into a Phase III trial, the last stage of human clinical testing. And Trump attacked him again, retweeting a charge that the meticulously honest Fauci serially “misled the American public.”

    Just another week for the scientist who has been fighting outbreaks since leading the government response on HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, and who now faces his biggest challenge in fighting both the worst pandemic of our lifetime and dealing with a president who doesn’t seem to have a coherent plan for fighting the virus. On Tuesday evening, Fauci found time to speak to WIRED about why the US has done so poorly in combating Covid-19, whether schools should open, and why no amount of abuse from Trump will make him leave his post. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

    ——-

    It seems that there’s a hostility towards science and evidence-based thinking. How much does that worry you?

    It does. Obviously, there is a bit of an anti-science trend in the United States, a pushing back on authority telling you what to do. Sometimes, in a good vein, that could be the independent spirit of the American people. That is part of our character. But on the other hand, it can work against you. And when you push back on someone telling you what to do, and you mix that with a trend of anti-authority, anti-science, then you get into trouble. Then you get into the situation we find ourselves now, where people are not acting in a way that is safeguarding their health.

    Toxic individualism and obdurate anti-science-ism will kill us all. Why won’t these people do as they’re told? I know what’s good for them.

    • Rhywun

      the meticulously honest Fauci

      ?

    • WTF

      Meticulously honest? The guy who months ago said masks are worthless, but now says he lied about that? The guy who said we needed to shut down for 15 days to flatten the curve so hospitals ween’t overwhelmed and now says that’s not the goal anymore and we need a vaccine to stop the spread? The guy who who dismisses multiple studies and lines of evidence showing the efficacy of hydroxychloroquin but wants to require vaccination with a new and rushed vaccine that he has a large financial interest in? That “meticulously honest” guy?

      And there are actually people stupid enough to believe his bullshit.

    • Idle Hands

      I swear to god I hate that fucking preening leprechaun more and more everyday.

  12. Rufus the Monocled

    Never mind Europe. Let’s look at some states the media pretends didn’t get hit:

    NJ; 1789
    NY: 1684
    MASS: 1247
    CONN: 1243

    13 other states pass it. Total average for USA: 469.

    And Florida outperforms those 17 states while having the second highest senior population in the country.

    And this piece of shit has a Masterclass? He’s an outright LIAR.

    • juris imprudent

      What do you think his Masterclass is in?

      • Rufus the Monocled

        A book?

  13. Rebel Scum

    Dry heat my ass.

    It’s ok if the air is dry as long as you are wet…You know, like in a pool where you can stay cool…

  14. The Late P Brooks

    But all this is beside the point. The reason we need to close gyms isn’t to protect the people working out; it’s to protect the other people they might infect. Even gym rats have families, friends and co-workers; the guy lifting weights might be OK, but the older adults who get sick because he spent time hanging out in a petri dish might well die.

    This should be obvious. Yet five months and almost 140,000 deaths into this pandemic, many Republicans still can’t or won’t grasp the point that choices have consequences beyond those to the individual who makes them.

    Take the insane resistance to wearing masks. Some of this is about insecure masculinity — people refusing to take the simplest, cheapest of precautions because they think it will make them look silly. Some of it is about culture wars: Liberals wear masks, so I won’t. But a lot of it is about fetishization of individual choice.

    Do we have a number, in parts per trillion, which designates the contagiousness of these crafty little cooties? Apparently, any exposure, no matter how slight or fleeting, is enough to put you on the agonizing roller coaster ride to the morgue.

    • Rhywun

      fetishization of individual choice

      And there it is.

      • Rebel Scum

        Bake the cake! Wear the mask!

    • Rhywun

      the older adults who get sick because he spent time hanging out in a petri dish might well die

      Maybe he doesn’t live with older adults. Or maybe – stay with he here – he promises not to hang out with any.

      • Q Continuum

        Or maybe, if he does live with them, they don’t care and have given him permission to go.

      • EvilSheldon

        Or maybe he doesn’t give a fuck, and won’t be held accountable for a bunch of strangers.

      • Q Continuum

        ^^^^LITURULLEE HITLEEEEEEER!!!! REEEEEEE!!!!!

      • WTF

        Or maybe, the people at-risk are responsible for managing their own safety, and all of society shouldn’t be shut down and people’s lives and livelihoods and civil rights and businesses shouldn’t be destroyed for a virus that is not dangerous to the vast majority.

      • EvilSheldon

        That’s a much less assholish way of framing my own thoughts.

    • juris imprudent

      Diamond Princess and USS T. Roosevelt indicate it isn’t near as contagious as every screaming asshole insists it is. Less than 20% infected in a petri dish, and half or so of the infected being asymptomatic.

      • Rhywun

        Amazing how quickly that got memory-holed.

    • ruodberht

      So locking down healthy people and forcing Covid patients into nursing homes is to….help the old people?

      M…hm.

    • R C Dean

      “The reason we need to close gyms isn’t to protect the people working out; it’s to protect the other people they might infect“

      I’m sure the scientist has been done to show how much of a risk this is, right? Or are we just imagining things, again.

      • Nephilium

        What? I’m sure there’s lots of obese people getting ready to sign up for a rigorous work out routine now, in these arduous times. They could catch the COVID and die.

      • Viking1865

        I’ve not seen a single study, even a garbage political one, pointing to spread from a gym. I did see one from Europe where they couldn’t trace any infections to the gym.

        Every single data point shows that this is spread by prolonged indoor contact with infected people. Everything else is “precautionary principle” bullshit.

    • mrfamous

      If there’s an expert on the things that go on in commercial gyms across the country, it’s absolutely got to be Paul Krugman. He’s swole as fuck

  15. The Late P Brooks

    The question of whether to dump raw sewage into a public lake isn’t something that should be left up to individual choice. And going to a gym or refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic is exactly like dumping sewage into a lake: It’s behavior that may be convenient for the people who engage in it, but it puts others at risk.

    Exactly like that. Lay off the paint thinner, Krugabe.

  16. banginglc1

    Well, crazy times. I close on the new house today. The old house has an offer, I countered, the counter expires at noon eastern. It’s my birthday. Found out the girlfriend is pregnant. And My uncle died last night.

    Cheers!

    • PieInTheSky

      that is a lot to take in

    • UnCivilServant

      Found out the girlfriend is pregnant.

      Is it at least your kid?

      • PieInTheSky

        It does not matter. Paternity is a product of white supremacist cisnormative heteropatriatrcy

      • banginglc1

        99% sure, we spent a lot of time together last month. And for some odd reason, I trust her. I don’t get it either.

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, then Congratulations on that.

    • banginglc1

      Oh . . .and she’s probably losing her job. Thanks Government response to Coronavirus!

    • Sean

      I’m unsure how to respond to that…

      ?

      *sends dick pic to banginglc1*

      • banginglc1

        dick pics are always the proper response.

      • Sean

        Seriously though, much congrats, sorry about your uncle, and I hope you have a happy birthday.

      • Q Continuum

        8============D

    • Not Adahn

      When is the naming rights auction?

      • banginglc1

        I had a friend who raffled off his child’s middle name. He had rules, such as no profanity, etc. “Brick” won and really did use it.

      • Not Adahn

        IIRC, Sloopy and Banjos only auctioned off Reason’s name. I don’t know what they got for it.

      • Swiss Servator

        Told their story was too local.

      • Sensei

        The rest of us got Glibertarians.

    • AlmightyJB

      Congrats on the house!

    • Rufus the Monocled

      2020 is so bizarre it’s surreal.

      Good luck. Congrats. Condolences.

    • Agent Cooper

      Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to? Or a CBS daytime soap?

      Congratulations and condolences to you.

      • Not Adahn

        Question for you:

        Is there a job too small for you to accept? I don’t want to be insulting, but I’d like to get some cardstock printed with the glibs logo to go under these

        if $50 is too little for the work, could you recommend some freeware I could use to try and do this project myself?

    • Mojeaux

      “Well, then I’m happy and sad for you.”

      • Tres Cool

        +1 Lazlo

    • DEG

      That’s a mixed bag.

      Good luck on the house. Happy Birthday! I hope the kid is yours. Sorry about your uncle.

    • banginglc1

      Dead thread update: The house is mine, all other updated remain unchanged

    • AlexinCT

      NOW MAKE ME A SAMMICH!

    • Fourscore

      “Orgasms: you’re doing them?”

  17. Rebel Scum

    Odd how the Florida number was readily available and I had to get out the calculator for the EU.

    Fake news by misdirection and omission.

    • AlexinCT

      Are dogs also being added to the death count in FLA by the media so they can hide how bad the blue North East handled this issue (by their measurements)?

      • Fourscore

        Can a Buddy get a mask?

    • Overt

      And remember- if we just wear masks, cower under our beds, and lock our grandparents in a tower for tw- thre- I mean FOUR wee- er Months, we can stop this virus and eradicate it. There will be nowhere to go. No stray populations of dogs and cats, travelers from other countries, or tent cities of homeless people happily ignoring your “sacrifice”.

      SCIENCE FTW!

  18. The Late P Brooks

    Doggy style’s okay, right?

    The Office of the New York City Sheriff, which has taken the lead on enforcing social distancing guidelines, is responding to tips from the public on parties believed to violate COVID-19 measures.

    One such tip led to authorities busting up what they say was a sex party of about 30 people in Midtown Manhattan on Friday. The person who allegedly coordinated the event is expected in court soon, authorities said. Deputies also upped enforcement in Queens earlier this month after they say crowds were seen drinking and partying along Steinway Street.

    ——-

    While there have been challenges to the COVID-19 emergency orders across the country, including a church in Nevada and bar owners in Texas, the restrictions imposed are justifiable from a legal standpoint, said Richard Briffault, a professor of state and local government law at Columbia Law School.

    Briffault said because there was a scientific basis behind limiting the size of gatherings the emergency orders should stand up in court unless there are allegations of targeted enforcement against certain groups of people.

    “These orders are pretty consistent with powers a governor or mayor has to take, steps to protect public health,” he told ABC News. “There is no fundamental right to party.”

    Your so-called rights?

    It’s just a fucking piece of paper!

    • Q Continuum

      “The person who allegedly coordinated the event is expected in court soon”

      wut

      • Not Adahn

        Oi m8! You gotta loicense for that orgy?

    • R C Dean

      “There is no fundamental right to party“

      Everything not required is prohibited.

      • Agent Cooper

        BEASTIE BOYS, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

    • Rhywun

      because there was a scientific basis behind limiting the size of gatherings the emergency orders should stand up in court

      Oh. OK, then.

      • mrfamous

        Eugenicists: “We tried that one before.”

      • WTF

        That’s not assuming the conclusion at all.

    • Nephilium

      Got it. 1984, not Brave New World.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Well if the party is peacefully assembled…then…yes, yes there is s fundamental right to it.

  19. Not Adahn

    Advice from Gun Glibs:

    I just picked up a 1911A1 clone, and I understand that the vast majority of feeding isssues come from bad ammo or bad magazines. Is there a good magazine maker that isn’t super pricey? I really don’t want to shell out for Wilson Combat mags. (As an aside I LOVE the fact that I can buy unlimited magazines for my CZ that work flawlessly and are $20. I’m hoping that there is an equivalent to MecGar for 1911s).

      • Not Adahn

        I am intrigued by the 10 rd.

      • Not Adahn

        Yeah, I hadn’t either, but I didn’t know if the many shooters here had experience with them. I also don’t know if Mec-Gar’s CZ and Beretta mags are so good because MG is a good manufacturer, or if those magazines are so well designed that anyone can make functional copies.

        I did notice that most of the custom shops offer tuned 1911 mags, so that made me think that they were perhaps a finicky design.

      • R C Dean

        I think they make a lot of OEM mags, too. I know they used to for Para Ordnance.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        They do. CZ, Sig, Beretta all use the same magazine, with the only dofference being the follower.

    • mexican sharpshooter

      Chip McCormick are as well regarded as Wilson among the 1911 aficionado types. Also cheaper.

      https://www.cmproducts.com/1911_c_26.html

      Their 10 round magazine however is said to be “competition only.” Thats what “they” say about Wilson’s 10 round mags too.

      • Not Adahn

        What does competition only mean?

      • mexican sharpshooter

        A 98% reliability rate instead if 99%. It’s probably just internet lore and fine to carry. I have before, when out hiking but there are people out there do have some trouble with 10 round magazines.

        Just a caveat to consider if you actually plan to carry it. If its just for fun then it won’t matter.

      • Not Adahn

        No, not carrying a 1911A1 except at for fun (including Wild Bunch) — especially not with an +3 round extended baseplate digging into my rubs.

      • TARDIS

        Thanks, MS.

      • mexican sharpshooter

        No thank you. The query prompted me to check my receipts to see how old my magazines are. It might be time to start rotating them out of service.

  20. R C Dean

    “has resulted in 90 percent of individuals trying to enter the country illegally being immediately deported.“

    So what are they doing with the other 10% who they catch “trying to enter the country illegally”?

    • LJW

      It’s an Infowars article so I assume they’re turning them gay with the frogs.

  21. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    Handful of names named in Ghislaine Maxwell unsealing

    “You know, I remember asking Jeffrey what’s Bill Clinton doing here [on the island],” Giuffre told the lawyer. According to a transcript of their conversation, Giuffre added that Epstein laughed off her question and said, “Well, he owes me a favor.”

    “He never told me what favors they were,” Giuffre said. “I never knew. I didn’t know if he was serious. It was just a joke.”

    Asked who else was present on the island with Epstein and Clinton, Giuffre answered Maxwell, someone named Emmy (presumably Maxwell’s former assistant Emmy Tayler), and two “young girls” from New York. Giuffre said Clinton and the other visitors stayed in villas separate from the main house. (While Giuffre does not implicate the former president in any wrongdoing, she does note orgies were routine on the island.)

    A second politician named in the documents was former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

    In a 2016 deposition, Giuffre said Maxwell sent her to New Mexico to give a “massage” to the Democratic governor. “When Ghislaine Maxwell used the words, ‘Go give a massage to Bill Richardson,’ where were you?” Maxwell’s lawyer asked.

    Other men to whom Giuffre claimed to have been trafficked include Prince Andrew, financier Glenn Dubin, model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz, and “another prince.” (Brunel, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz, and Dubin have all denied her claims.)

    • Q Continuum

      “Go give a massage to Bill Richardson”

      LOL. That guy is such a scumbag, I’d love for him to be caught in a sex abuse dragnet.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Sigh.

        Pitch time!

        A sitcom about two Democrat and Republican room mates. The Democrat is a lazy, uncooperative, rotten, corrupted, sexual deviant who does’t pay his share of the rent or chores always getting into all sorts of trouble the Republican has to bail him out of. The show would always end with someone giving a ‘what did you expect?’ look saying, ‘He’s a Democrat.’ /laugh track.

        Bob Hope would love it.

      • banginglc1

        I’d laugh, so it will never be made.

      • banginglc1

        When i was talking to my progressive cousin yesterday about our uncle dying, I joked, “shouldn’t you be happy? He finally going to be voting for democrats!”

      • UnCivilServant

        So the cousin wasn’t one of the uncle’s kids?

      • banginglc1

        No, I wouldn’t joke with those cousins like that . . . yet. I’ll let them grieve. I told the joke to my dad too though (it was his last brother), but he appreciates humor like that.

      • R C Dean

        “The Democrat is a lazy, uncooperative, rotten, corrupted, sexual deviant who does’t pay his share of the rent or chores always getting into all sorts of trouble“

        Meathead?

      • Agent Cooper

        But then they both spend the household into oblivion?

    • Idle Hands

      No way Bob Menendez name isn’t in there.

      • Negroni Please

        He has his own sex island. I think they call it the Dominican Republic.

    • banginglc1

      Why are so many people in power such scumbags? Can no one of honor or integrity make it in this world?

      Those were rhetorical.

    • Chipwooder

      the OMB horde is going to be mighty disappointed to learn that she said she never saw Trump on the island and never heard anything about him porking the young girls.

    • Tejicano

      Paraphrasing what I posted about this on the earlier thread – if this breaks open and a lot of these high-and-mighty go down hard that would be something I would count as a silver lining to this otherwise totally fcuked up year.

  22. Certified Public Asshat

    You won't have to worry about my tweets when I'm president.— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 30, 2020

    The thing is, tweets are stupid but ultimately harmless.

    • Q Continuum

      What’s sad is how many suburban Karen-types actually care more about Big Mean Trump’s tweets than Biden’s declining mental state and horrific policies.

      It’s nothing but style over substance.

    • juris imprudent

      Not entirely harmless – it is part of the social disintegration process. It’s a lot harder to have a physical social circle of absolute likemindedness.

    • Rhywun

      Of course not. He could tweet shit ten times crazier than anything Donald would come up with and nobody would give a fuck.

    • AlexinCT

      He will be posting pics of his dumps, that’s why…

      • banginglc1

        That’s probably more coherent than anything else he’ll say or do.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    I understand that the vast majority of feeding isssues come from bad ammo or bad magazines

    I had some feed problems early on. I pulled the barrel and slide off so I could really see what was going on, and the follower was too flat, causing the nose of the bullet to crash into the bottom of the ramp, instead of riding up it. After adjusting the follower to tip the round upwards a bit, the feed problem went away. This was with cheap SARCO mags.

    YMMV

    • Not Adahn

      Yeah, it only came with a single magazine, so I need to lay in a supply. I just don’t want to regret either over- or under-paying.

  24. AlexinCT

    I got in trouble yesterday at work because in a meeting where they told us our organization now had a new diversity officer to help us all be better corporate citizens, I pointed out that last century they used to call those people “Political Officers” (for those too young to remember, see U.S.S.R. Political Commissar entry at Wiki which is likely to be scrubbed of how evil these fucks really were). The funny thing was that the young HR asshat that had done the intro had no idea what I was referring to until someone pointed out what I was saying. They he was furious I called it right.

  25. The Late P Brooks

    I also deburred and polished the ramp.

    • ruodberht

      Hawt.

    • Negroni Please

      Euphemism?

    • Sean

      Euphemism spotted!

    • Q Continuum

      I see we’re not ever bothering with euphemisms anymore.

    • TARDIS

      Did you get a good launch off it?

    • Tejicano

      I hope that fixed all your feeding problems

  26. Tundra

    Good morning, you little minx!

    I do like my morning lynx with a little edge. It hones the rage and really gets me ready for the day.

    So thanks.

    The ZH article cracks me up a little. Even the pictures of these scary ‘far-left militia’ are pathetic. I can easily see that soy boy dressing up for the Renaissance Festival. Huzzah!

    Sad.

    I’m very sorry for the desert dwellers. We are in an amazing stretch of weather right now. Sunny, low humidity and perfect temps. I’ll have to remember this next February.

    I hope all of You People have a fantastic Friday and an even better weekend!

  27. Rebel Scum

    Good lord…

    “Never mind… I’ll be quiet” says Joe Biden after repeatedly failing to communicate with zoom meeting attendee & having zoom technology explained to him… awkward!

    • AlexinCT

      But he cares! Trumpalos and their Hitler don’t!

  28. Idle Hands

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/#5cd43ef535ea

    You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science

    “Research both sides and make up your own mind.” It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, it can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly. The techniques that most of us use to navigate most of our decisions in life — gathering information, evaluating it based on what we know, and choosing a course of action — can lead to spectacular failures when it comes to a scientific matter.

    The reason is simple: most of us, even those of us who are scientists ourselves, lack the relevant scientific expertise needed to adequately evaluate that research on our own. In our own fields, we are aware of the full suite of data, of how those puzzle pieces fit together, and what the frontiers of our knowledge is. When laypersons espouse opinions on those matters, it’s immediately clear to us where the gaps in their understanding are and where they’ve misled themselves in their reasoning. When they take up the arguments of a contrarian scientist, we recognize what they’re overlooking, misinterpreting, or omitting. Unless we start valuing the actual expertise that legitimate experts have spent lifetimes developing, “doing our own research” could lead to immeasurable, unnecessary suffering.

    hhahahahahahahahahahahgaspshahahahahahahahaha.

    • kbolino

      The Death of the Enlightenment, or

      Democracy Dies in Darkness

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That guy must be a joy to work with. What an insufferable asshole.

    • juris imprudent

      I am a high priest, I have spoken.

      • AlexinCT

        ^^^^THIS^^^^

        It is basically some top asshole wannabe telling the serfs to know their place…

        Fuck them all.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Except when it comes to researchers who have studied mask effectiveness for years and conclude they’e ineffective. Them they ignore.

      Or paediatricians who say it’s safe to open schools without protocols based on science. They ignore them too.

      What a bunch of retarded hacks.

      Yesterday I saw a report where younger adults aren’t buying into the coronavirus hysteria having little confidence in government and traditional media. The ones interviewed said they listen to what’s being said and then research it. Good. I was happy to hear that.

      Then came all the ‘experts’ but they can’t tell the difference between ‘fake news!’ and facts citing a McGill University study.

      Their arrogance knows no bounds. You must listen to media and government! Don’t question authority!

      Media IS fake news.

      If you’re a journalist wearing a mask, you’re an idiot.

      • Tundra

        I was at a well attended grad party last night. Zero masks. Happy people everywhere.

        It was refreshing.

      • Rhywun

        Nice knowing you.

      • Fourscore

        Good job, T. This was for your last kiddo at home or a friend of the last kiddo?

      • Tundra

        Friend of my daughter. Our party is tonight.

        We have several more this weekend, too.

        It’s nice to do normal things.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah I got into it on HCQ with a prog. The talking points are.

        1. FDA STUDIEZZZ……which were purposely gamed to produce the intended outcome.

        2. CRAZY DEMON SEMEN LADY…..ok well here’s a Yale epidemiologist who agrees.

        So I hit both of those, and then he just has nothing. He has run his program, and now has nothing but emotion.

        It’s a time when I miss the Old Left. The Old Left would have instinctively known that a cheap generic drug would be savaged by the corporate media and the regulatory captured government in favor of a brand new 1,000 dollar treatment. This New “Left” which sucks up to corporate and governmental power at every turn is deeply disturbing to me.

      • R C Dean

        “He has run his program, and now has nothing but emotion.“

        They aren’t called NPCs for nothing.

      • Idle Hands

        Another good example of this is the Herman Cain grave dancing with the comment “shoulda worn a mask” To which I’ve been retorting I thought masks only saved others and didn’t protect you? Or has the science changed? This fucking virus has melted everyone’s brains. The “science” changes every 48 hours and people just fucking pretend like nothing changed. Some of these rank and file liberals hate trump and republicans so much they would rather people die and the economy be completely smoldered than give them a political win. I just never thought they were that depraved till now.

      • Idle Hands

        It’s not just the political class but actual people who are loving the fact others are living in complete misery. It’s fucking sadistic.

      • hoof_in_mouth

        As a long-time anti-corporatist and anti-govt punk, it is really weird to have ended up in a place where the new left fellates and is supported by the corporations. It feels like being sold out.

      • Idle Hands

        The left has been a slave to corporate interests for as long as I’ve been politically aware.

    • Jarflax

      The problem I see now is not that doing your own research to get at the truth is a mistake. It is that it is effectively impossible in any ‘controversial’ area. There is so much BS, emotional conclusions supported by rationalization, and outright falsified data out there that short of dedicating a decade to mastering the subject and then doing your own experiments you can’t do it.

    • EvilSheldon

      If you can’t handle having your pronouncements questioned, then you’re not a scientist. You’re a priest.

    • Idle Hands

      Jesus that guy is fucking black pilled. All good points, but people have always been the same Cleese.

      • Idle Hands

        Also Cleese has some balls.

      • Not Adahn

        Money + close to death = DGAF

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s hilarious to listen to a reporter who’s used to putting celebrities on the defensive by bringing up old “indiscretions” get flummoxed by someone who honestly doesn’t care what you think because he considers you stupid for getting upset.

    • Drake

      I’ve never tried to cater my comedy to stupid people.

      He is great.

    • kbolino

      Why is the NPR reporter unable to pronounce his name properly? It’s Cleese not Cleeze.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        It’s from the NPR pronunciation guide which maximizes the intellectual, effete asshole mood they’re striving for.

    • CPRM

      My GOD! If I were a lefty the Hair’s voice would be the voice of NPR!

  29. Pope Jimbo

    This has to sting Lori Lightfoot too good to share virtual stage stage with Boy Mayor Minneapolis.

    Mayor Lori Lightfoot pulled out of a virtual roundtable hosted by Crain’s Chicago Business to avoid appearing on the same digital stage as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has been a lightning rod for criticism after the police killing of George Floyd, sources told the Tribune.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      She seems thin-skinned. I’ll give Frey credit for getting out in the middle of the mob that wanted to eat him alive even if I disagree with him.

      • Swiss Servator

        She was outraged when someone asked why, during the ultraconfinment, she has a personal hairdresser brought in to take care of her, while it was VERBOTTEN! for the rest of us to even say the word “barber”.

  30. Rufus the Monocled

    So was the NBA as insufferable as I’d imagine?

    I got a glimpse ‘just to see’ and moved on.

    • Tundra

      I missed SP’s poll last night, but I’m fucking done with all this bullshit. I am now approaching 90 days without television of any kind and even with hockey back, I don’t see that changing.

      I am no longer amused or entertained.

      • Not Adahn

        Umbrella Academy season 2 is starting, and The Boys follows closely behind.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Same exact thing happened to me. Screw all that. Watching baseball with no crowds is a sin. And those card board cut outs are just creepy.

        I don’t miss a single thing. Oh, fine. My wife and daughter saw an opening and insisted I watch 90 Day Fiance with them. I don’t mind that.

        As long as medical bureaucrats hang on to the keys of the Cadillac this will go on and on. Now we’re up to goggles to weak with masks. At some point, a mid-wit is gonna start asking questions.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Watching baseball with no crowds is a sin.

        Rays and Marlins the exception.

      • invisible finger

        Watching baseball with no crowds is Montreal.

      • Rhywun

        Looks like my Rangers have a ‘real’ game on tomorrow. Will look-see.

        I don’t even know what these games are. Do they count for… anything?

      • Tundra

        Play-in for the post season, I think.

        Again, I’m finding it impossible to GAF.

      • Rhywun

        Curious to find out how hard they will lard it up with woke bullshit.

    • juris imprudent

      Of course the NBA is taking a knee for social justice, they never got up from kneeling down to China.

      • Rhywun

        The hypocrisy is astonishing.

      • Viking1865

        They make about 500 million a year in China. I wonder how much money they will lose from going woke in the US.

  31. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Freaky Friday: Image Submittals For The Next Sugarfree Article

    Number 1

    Image 2

  32. The Late P Brooks

    The natives are getting restless uppity

    The revelation Wednesday that Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, a renegade lawmaker known for stalking the halls of Congress without a mask, tested positive for Covid-19 has unleashed a fusillade of anger on Capitol Hill — a sudden release of built-up tension over how the institution has dealt with the coronavirus pandemic within the confines of its own workplace.

    For months, the leaders of Congress have allowed lawmakers to enter the Capitol without being screened for the deadly virus, rejecting an offer from the White House to provide rapid testing while trusting that the thousands who work across the massive complex of offices, meeting rooms and hallways will behave responsibly.

    Now, legislative aides, chiefs of staff, press assistants, members of Congress, career workers and maintenance men and women are venting their fury with an institution that does not have uniform rules or masking requirements, does not mandate testing, is run with minimal oversight and must contend with a gaggle of lawmakers who doubt scientists and hold themselves out as experts on everything from disease hygiene to pharmacology.

    Congress is often buffeted by waves of popular discontent from voters, but what’s happened in recent days has the makings of a historical anomaly: The backlash is coming from the anonymous staff and members who make the place run day to day but are typically accustomed to being told to know their place and accepting that without complaint.

    ——-

    Reporters’ inboxes have exploded with complaints and tales of lax safety measures, careless bosses and a widespread feeling that their health was viewed as expendable.

    Many described feeling uncomfortable taking the very kinds of health steps recommended by public health experts, and feeling pressured to report to work in person despite the risks. Multiple aides said it was common to mock those wearing masks, or brush off concerns among staff members with specific health issues.

    Others recalled seeing aides avoid taking elevator rides with certain members out of fear of contracting the virus — an almost unheard-of reversal of the usual dynamics of power in a place teeming with ambition and hierarchy.

    “Our office has been required to be fully staffed since session resumed at the end of June (including an intern),” a scheduler for a House Republican member said. “While mask use isn’t banned, it’s also not encouraged, and has been derided on several occasions by the [chief of staff] and the member.”

    You could always go work at seven-eleven, you odious little buttlickers.

  33. TARDIS

    Number 1 is Hilary’s pussy.

    Image 2 is Joe Biden at his secret part time job hobby.

    • TARDIS

      Wow. I Brooks… right after Brooks.

  34. Rebel Scum

    America’s Mayor

    amNewYork
    @amNewYork

    Mayor Bill de Blasio helped paint a new Black Lives Matter mural in front of the Family Court on Jamaica Avenue in Queens Thursday afternoon.

    I am so glad that marxist political organization advertisements are what he cares about most as crime skyrockets in NYC (especially among the black lives that supposedly matter to him).

    • Rhywun

      His political career is almost over & peak “I don’t give a fuck” has taken over.

    • invisible finger

      Crime is the health of the city-state.

  35. Timeloose

    Nephilium,

    I read your posts about you and the punk community, so I though this would interest you.

    I have been discussing a large show that a promoter friend of mine was putting together for August in a drive-in style format. He was getting some great Ska acts together quite quickly that were going to make this a great show. At one point he had Fishbone, Pietasters, Mephiskapheles, Pilfers, and many others. At one point Living Color was going to play at the behest of Fishbone.

    Well it all got shot to shit due to Gov Wolf whipsawing the state back to near shut down and the bands themselves being spooked (cancelling) by the hype around the Rona cases going up in the south.

    So for now anyway the show is on hold, but it is still in the works for later in the year. We will see where it goes and if it gets activated i’ll share the details.

    • Nephilium

      Definitely interested.

    • Chipwooder

      Mephiskapheles……wow, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

      • Tres Cool

        I love bumblebee tuna.

      • gbob

        That damed bubmlebee tuna song. Its been stuck in my head since yesterday.

      • Timeloose

        I’ll pots the show details as they hopefully come together. It will be a East coast affair in NJ or likely NE PA.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Time to leave.

      • Tundra

        Yep.

        Enjoy your empty storefronts, idiots.

      • Chipwooder

        And then we’ll see the media wailing about “white flight”

    • Rebel Scum

      Hawt.

    • mrfamous

      Is there an address to send in marriage proposals?

    • DEG

      Would.

  36. The Late P Brooks

    When laypersons espouse opinions on those matters, it’s immediately clear to us where the gaps in their understanding are and where they’ve misled themselves in their reasoning. When they take up the arguments of a contrarian scientist, we recognize what they’re overlooking, misinterpreting, or omitting. Unless we start valuing the actual expertise that legitimate experts have spent lifetimes developing, “doing our own research” could lead to immeasurable, unnecessary suffering.

    YOU CAN”T PRINT THE BIBLE IN A LANGUAGE THE PEASANTS UNDERSTAND!
    WHAT IF THEY MAKE THEIR OWN INTERPRETATIONS OF GOD’S WORD?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Shorter asshole: Don’t make me defend my conclusions.

    • R C Dean

      “I hate wearing a mask. It makes my glasses fog up.”

      “Yeah, if you were infected, that would be the virus leaking out of your mask.”

      • Fourscore

        If you are not infected its just your brains leaking out. In either case, nothing to worry about

    • Negroni Please

      That is an excellent analogy. I will most certainly be using that in future arguments/rants

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      “contrarian scientist” versus “legitimate experts”

      And thus the line between believers and heathens has been drawn. Only one group holds your salvation.

      I miss the naturalist/scientist/philosopher model of the previous millennium.

      • Viking1865

        “Contrarian scientist Galileo Galilei defied the legitimate experts of the Roman Inquisition today as he stated, without evidence, that the Earth revolved around the sun.”

  37. Nephilium

    Alright all. Enjoy yourself. I’m off to an island.

    • Tundra

      Safe travels!

    • banginglc1

      I though Epstein’s island was shut down?

    • Rhywun
    • DEG

      Have fun!

    • UnCivilServant

      My price is higher than that.

      A lot higher.

      • Fourscore

        Get paid by the pound?

        Sarc/

    • Not Adahn

      In pounds sterling, huh?

      And I could make a bit more extorting the glib authors to NOT be reading their books while lounging. ‘Cause ain’t nobody wants to have that image in their mind.

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t think you want the unpleasantness that would lead to.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Back to Politico:

    And the return of hundreds of staffers has resurfaced a decades-old problem for the Capitol: More than 25 years after the Congressional Accountability Act passed in an attempt to reform the culture on Capitol Hill, it’s still an often brutal, unforgiving place to work.

    Part of the problem is the scattershot human resources system spread across the Capitol complex. There is no centralized HR department — each of the 535 lawmakers and senators is his or her own employer, with their own set of office policies and protocols.

    ——-

    But there isn’t some centralized database tracking staffer complaints or concerns, just like there isn’t a singular database to track potential coronavirus infections among the more than 20,000 workers who inhabit the Capitol complex, thousands of staffers and hundreds of lawmakers.

    Their fetish for central planning and control is boundless. If only we were all under the benevolent guidance of an all-knowing, all-seeing god dictator, our lives would be perfect.

    • Chipwooder

      Oh, the sheer brutality of it! Those poor, poor congressional staffers!

      • Not Adahn

        IIRC, being a congressional page can be a real pain in the ass.

      • Tres Cool

        Gerry Studds never used bookmarks. He just bent over his pages.

    • Idle Hands

      Fuck off. Why do these news articles read like these gov institutions and personnel is some unique experience as if at least 33% of the economy has been going to work in person all through this pandemic the entire time? It’s fucking embarrassing.

      • Viking1865

        It’s a fucking class war.

        Did you see the NYT wrote an article about how difficult it was for rich liberal Manhattanites to work from their houses in the Hamptons or in the mountains.

      • Idle Hands

        I get it I do. But this country is still really dependent on people physically making and doing things. At the end of the day that’s the backbone of any economy even a service one. I’m not trying to glorify the working class or anything but seriously at the end of the day sales have to matter at some point. These people are so far removed from how things works it’s unbelievable. Fucking elitist assholes are starting to make me sound like Marx and I hate it.

      • Q Continuum

        Lamenting millions of people forcible pushed out of work and into penury by absurd government regulation is the opposite of Marxism.

      • Idle Hands

        Talking mostly about my current seething class hatred, for the both the gov and the people who can “work from home” that are pushing for this retarded dystopia of possible dirt farming and cave dwelling.

    • Rhywun

      Why aren’t they just staying home? You know, like they want us to.

    • kbolino

      A central HR department for Congress sounds like a Democratic partisan’s wet dream. In some future world, it could be captured by another faction. Constant selective leaks with no accountability. Talk about subverting the democratic process.

    • Fourscore

      MN is truly the Nice State. Diversity and wealth both can be had. Some people just don’t get it.

  39. Idle Hands

    I just don’t understand how the hypocrisy of the George Floyd funerals, John Lewis funerals, and the politicians openly and flagrantly embracing the rules for thee but not for me hasn’t just completely red pilled everyone in this country. If this doesn’t do it nothing will. I mean I get not liking the republicans or trump and never voting for them believe me, but I just don’t see how anyone could be so rabidly partisan to see just the level of hypocrisy endemic in these pro lockdown and masks fuckers and defend any of this anymore.

    • Viking1865

      Your granpa’s funeral won’t boost black voter turnout, therefore it’s not necessary.

      • Fourscore

        MN is truly the Nice State. Diversity and wealth both can be had. Some people just don’t get it.

      • Pope Jimbo

        That is your answer for everything!

  40. kinnath

    Let us not forget the Bee.

    Biden Selects Aunt Jemima As Running Mate

    “She’s a clean, articulate woman of color, she’s a self-made businesswoman, and she’s a great listener,” Biden said as he unveiled his pick for vice president. “We were looking at two criteria for my VP: her race and her gender, and Jemima nailed both qualifications.”

  41. Semi-Spartan Dad

    I accidentally replied on an evening post about the NYT’s obsession with identifying race in their articles. The WSJ has one upped them. A few weeks ago, I read an article about one of these cars hitting protesters/rioters in some city. The recent journalist grad penning the article made sure to add “white” before the car in multiple places throughout the story….things like “the white vehicle slammed into the crowd.” It was so bizarre.

    I looked through a few other articles about other stories involving vehicles and noted the color of those vehicles were not provided. It’s a strange timeline we’re living in.

    • Rhywun

      Meh. The medium doesn’t really matter. It’s still GIGO.

    • invisible finger

      Also dead or dying are newspaper web sites, radio, and most TV news.

  42. Rebel Scum

    Not the Bee.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested Wednesday that Americans should consider wearing goggles or a face shield in order to prevent spreading or catching COVID-19.

    “If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton during an Instagram Live conversation on ABC News.

    When asked if we’re going to get to a point where eye protection is recommended, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases responded, “It might, if you really want perfect protection of the mucosal surfaces.”

    “You have mucosa in the nose, mucosa in the mouth, but you also have mucosa in the eye,” he continued. “Theoretically, you should protect all the mucosal surfaces. So if you have goggles or an eye shield you should use it.”

    Go. To. Hell.

    • Chipwooder

      That’s funny, I have seen a lot of video and photographs of Anthony Fauci in the last four months and not once have I seen him wearing goggles or a face shield. Most of the time, he’s not even wearing a mask.

    • grrizzly

      Masks today. Goggles tomorrow. Buttplugs next week.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Just spray everybody with a a truck bed lining.

      • invisible finger

        Zyklon-C?

    • creech

      “If you have John Glenn’s space suit, you should use it.”

      • UnCivilServant

        And reduce the resale value?! Never!

    • B.P.

      Cool. Now I’ll be able to identify the most pious of the true believers.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    E PLURIBUS UNUM

    A colorful Black Lives Matter mural was defaced this week, with vandals attempting to obscure “Black” with red, white and blue paint.
    The 140-foot mural is on the side of a building in downtown Spokane, Washington — sponsored in part by Terrain, a local arts nonprofit. Terrain, along with digital advertising agencies 14Four and Seven2, hired 16 artists to decorate and paint each letter in Black Lives Matter, according to CNN affiliate KXLY.

    To some, though, it was insulting. The mural, completed less than two weeks ago, was vandalized on Wednesday.

    But the community isn’t letting the negative response hinder the effort. A fundraiser to restore the mural has already raised more than $10,000.

    “It took dozens of people working with love to make this project happen, and only one or two filled with hate to deface it,” Terrain said in a statement posted to Facebook. “We outnumber them, but we can’t be still or silent.”

    Artist Nicholas Sironka designed and painted the “A” in “Black” of the mural, a letter that received the brunt of the white paint. He wasn’t surprised the mural had been vandalized, he told CNN.

    “I just feel that the whole Black Lives Matter now to me has more meaning, unity of purpose. Everybody is unified to one purpose and that is eradicating inequality and injustice and all those things put together,” he said.

    Kiantha Duncan, vice president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, said she had a visceral reaction to seeing the photos.

    “This is extremely scary,” Duncan said on local news station KHQ. “When the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ is enough to upset people in a city so badly that they, not only protest against it, but that they destroy the very words on the side of a building.”

    Now do swastikas

    • Chipwooder

      Painting over a mural? Sounds like peaceful protesting to me.

    • Rhywun

      Won’t someone please think of the Marxist-Leninists?!

    • Rebel Scum

      eradicating inequality

      How many millions more people need to be killed in order to achieve your communist utopia where everyone is equal?

      • UnCivilServant

        All of them. As long as two humans live, there will be inequality.

      • Gender Traitor

        All but one.
        /pedant

  44. DEG

    So what else do we know about this group? Well, they have generated some local press in which they were referred to as a “Leftist Peace Group”

    Peace Group? Orwell would be proud.

    Bezos voiced his own concerns and called social media in general a “nuance-destruction machine,” according to the video.

    “Nuance destruction machine.” I like that.

    Adams also praised the president for wearing a mask, citing a conversation with Americans he had in “Trump country” in Miami.

    “They told me to tell you, you look bad-ass in a face mask,” he said.

    One reporter questioned whether Americans should be wearing goggles to further protect themselves from the virus.

    Masks and goggles. Fucking theater.

    • invisible finger

      Mystery Science theater

    • Gender Traitor

      I wouldn’t mind being objectified a little bit. Just sayin’.

      • UnCivilServant

        Hold this plastic flower, you can be a vase for a few minutes.

        /deliberately missing the point

  45. Semi-Spartan Dad

    If anyone is having trouble finding in-stock firearms, I finally had success using https://gun.deals/.

    It still took some time and you have to move fast once you see availability. The model I got sold out in probably 20 minutes.

    • Not Adahn

      Target sports USA has 124gr 9mm in stock at $331/case.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    A fundraiser to restore the mural has already raised more than $10,000.

    And now the term “self-licking ice cream cone” is in my head.

  47. The Late P Brooks

    How many millions more people need to be killed in order to achieve your communist utopia where everyone is equal?

    Everyone is equal in a mass grave.

  48. PieInTheSky

    Speaking of bourbon in the 150 Lei Range in Romanian stores, I like wild turkey rare breed more than I liked Elijah Craig Small Batch

    • Swiss Servator

      That was NOT a Killdozer!

    • AlexinCT

      IBM Encrypts the homos!

      SAY WUT???

      • Rhywun

        More of Trump’s evil handiwork.

  49. Sensei

    So one of the requirements for a UK music award is that you actually are a citizen of the UK. Apparently that’s a problem.

    Pop singer Rina Sawayama ‘not British enough’ for U.K. music awards

    Naturally, the problem isn’t the fact that Japanese law precludes dual nationality. She’s eligible for UK citizenship she just doesn’t won’t renounce her Japanese citizenship. So the problem is all on the UK.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      WAAAAAAAHHHHH!

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      Check if you’re a British citizen based on whether you were:

      born in the UK or a British colony before 1 January 1983
      born in the UK between 1 January 1983 and 1 October 2000
      born in the UK between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006
      born in the UK on 30 April 2006 onwards
      born outside the UK or are stateless

      The regs on “subjects” are just as exhausting.

    • Rhywun

      Oh, go fuck yourself.

  50. Rebel Scum

    Driver Who Shot Protester In Austin Speaks Through Attorney

    “When Sgt. Perry turned on the Congress Avenue, several people started beating on his
    vehicle. An individual carrying an assault rifle, now known to be Garrett Foster, quickly approached the car and then motioned with the assault rifle for Mr. Perry to lower his window,” which the attorney says Perry did, thinking the gunman was a police officer.

    The attorney says Foster then began to raise his weapon, and Perry shot and fired. Perry drove a short distance away to safety while another protester shot at him. He then called police.

    The attorney’s statement says Perry “deeply sympathizes” with the Foster family but then concluded with a plea to the public:

    “We simply ask that anybody who might want to criticize Sgt. Perry’s actions,
    picture themselves trapped in a car as a masked stranger raises an assault rifle in their direction and reflect upon what they might have done if faced with the split second decision faced by Sgt. Perry that evening.”

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      Generic observation: open carry of a long arm looks a lot like what is called brandishing when we refer to (normally holstered) short arms. There will be a lot of misunderstandings, questionable arrests and prosecutions, to say nothing of frights and standoffs, before the culture decides how a reasonable man in these regards behaves. There is no American consensus on this; it’s as if John Q Public were negotiating good manners with newly arrived extraterrestrials.

      If the rifle is slung or on shoulder, that’s no big deal . . . to me. Start strutting around at patrol ready, and even my ears would go up; rush up to someone thus and uninvited, you get what you deserve.

      Others might have thought this through better than I; I only know that in some places we have de facto constitutional carry, where in others there is still a duty to retreat; there is zero consensus on these points. As for me, I continue to conceal and don’t rush people I don’t know.

      • Viking1865

        To me, a holstered pistol is the equivalent to a slung long arm. If you’re carrying a long arm, it best be slung. If it’s in your hands, it’s the equivalent of drawing a pistol from a holster. If you can’t afford a ten dollar sling, best leave it at home.

        A lot of the guys who have carried long arms at various right wing protests have taken to slinging them, magwell clear, with a flag or a sign stuck down the muzzle on a stick.

      • UnCivilServant

        “It’s been modified into a flag-firing murderstick!”

        /Journo

      • R C Dean

        Same here. Slung in front or back makes no difference. Hands on foregrip and stock = “drawn”. Stock to shoulder = threat.

      • Jarflax

        I am with you on this. I am very pro 2nd Amendment so I usually keep my mouth shut to not fuel the anti gun rhetoric but most people I see open carrying long guns seem to spend a lot of time with their hands on the gun, and that is not a great idea. Your right to defend yourself bumps up against other people’s right to defend themselves when you start displaying behaviors that look identical to “about to start firing” behaviors, and holding your gun at patrol ready, or hovering your hand over that 1911 on your hip, is kind of asking for misunderstandings. I know the tacticool of walking around like you are patrolling in Mogadishu is awesome, but how about don’t handle your weapon until it is time to use it?

      • Fatty Bolger

        I agree. If you’re holding it in your hands, it’s exactly like holding a pistol in your hands. Barrel facing forward is a firing position. Barrel straight down or up is less threatening, but still the same as holding an unholstered pistol. In a sling is equal to holstered.

    • R C Dean

      That’s consistent with the video and stills thatI have seen.

      Sounds like he shot through is own car window. I had wondered about that. I wonder how much hearing damage he got.

      • Sensei

        Yeah. Preferable to a bullet, however.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Raises a question on the selection of ammo. I’m guessing FMJ would be far preferable to hollow-point in that scenario.

      • R C Dean

        I suspect after the first round it doesn’t matter. Interesting case for having the first loaded round be FMJ.

      • EvilSheldon

        Automotive glass is tricky to shoot through. If you have the chance to test your carry ammo against it, you should.

        FMJ vs. JHP doesn’t matter much, from what I’ve seen. Bullet construction really comes into play with rifle bullets.

      • Viking1865

        ““When Sgt. Perry turned on the Congress Avenue, several people started beating on his vehicle. An individual carrying an assault rifle, now known to be Garrett Foster, quickly approached the car and then motioned with the assault rifle for Mr. Perry to lower his window,” which the attorney says Perry did, thinking the gunman was a police officer.”

        I’m wondering what he was carrying. Let’s get a good old fashioned WHAT PISTOL CALIBER IS MARGINALLY BETTER THAN THE OTHERS thread going.

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t care, as long as it wasn’t metric.

      • EvilSheldon

        I’m more interested in how he was carrying it.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Being the first to land a round is more important.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      KXAN spends quite a bit of time pointing out that both Uber and Lyft require drivers to be unarmed while they’re on the job, even if they’re in their own vehicle.

      Uber and Lyft don’t want to be considered liable in the case of a shooting.

      Personally, I think it’s an asshole move on their part to try to enforce that but I get why they stipulate it.

      • Viking1865

        ““This means that even in places where it is legal to carry a weapon, we ask that you do not carry a weapon on any Lyft property,” the website said.

        I’m not a lawyer of course, but my car doesn’t become Lyft property when I turn the app on. It’s still mine.

      • EvilSheldon

        Under my clothes is *my* property.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Why are there so few black catchers?

      They’re out there. They’re just on the down low.

    • Rhywun

      “there are about one-tenth as many Black catchers as there should be”

      Sorry. Not racist enough to give a shit.

      • CPRM

        Professional sports represent the pinnacle of all aspiring athletes, to think each position in every sport would travel along some imaginary corollary with demographic trends is idiotic. But, still she it persisted.

    • Jarflax

      I blame homophobia in the Black community. Pitching is accepted but catching is viewed as effeminate.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Catching is probably the worst position on the field. Is not having bad knees and a back racist?

    • B.P.

      Yeah? Well, the last left-handed catcher to play in MLB was in 1989, and he only played the position for three games.

      *looks around for something to light on fire*

      • CPRM

        I bet the stats on one handed pitchers like Jim Abbott don’t line up with demographic trends either.

    • invisible finger

      Nice to know that baseball prospectus is just as retarded as when I stopped reading it five years ago. “We need daily content! No matter how shitty it is we simply MUST put something out every day!”

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      I’ve always suspected that something akin to this is afoot, but, as integration in the SEC shows, competitive self-interests usually erodes racist dynamics; the last to learn loses.

      I’d also guess LatinXYZ catchers over-represent in MLB. As far as any implicit racial-intellectual bias (ala football quarterbacks), everyone seems perfectly happy with a Puerto Rican catcher. My own favorite catcher is a chessmaster, a dozen moves ahead of anyone in the game: watch his calling a hit before the pitcher even releases. Or watch Maldonado ruing a pitch call from the dugout he knows is a mistake.

      One of the happy residues I had hoped for was that baseball would lead in egalitarian notions and actualities. I prefer to be post-racial, but actually seeing everyone everywhere just carrying on competently also would be nice.

      Campy, of course, numbered amongst the early barrier breakers, catching for the Dodgers for a decade.

  51. CPRM

    While I was asleep yesterday Wisconsin’s tool of the teachers union governor signed a mask state wide mask order that goes into effect tomorrow. How come all of this shit has to be done RIGHT NOW! with no warning so far into this clusterfuck? Especially considering total death toll in the state is 928, lets compare that to some 2017 figures:

    WI Leading Causes of Death, 2017 Deaths Rate*** State Rank* U.S. Rate**
    1. Heart Disease 11,680 157.6 26th 165.0
    2. Cancer 11,318 153.2 28th (tie) 152.5
    3. Accidents 3,746 58.3 17th 49.4
    4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease 2,834 38.3 34th (tie) 40.9
    5. Stroke 2,513 33.5 38th 37.6
    6. Alzheimer’s disease 2,428 31.6 29th 31.0
    7. Diabetes 1,433 19.4 35th 21.5
    8. Flu/Pneumonia 974 12.9 39th 14.3
    9. Suicide 926 15.4 27th 14.0
    10. Kidney Disease 922 12.5 27th 13.0

    • mrfamous

      Didn’t he get slapped down on his executive orders? This should be unenforceable unless something changed in the courts.

      • CPRM

        That ruling was based on not being able to declare a state of emergency for more than 30 days without consulting the legislature…this is a NEW state of emergency, so Another 30 days, I guess.

    • Gender Traitor

      Dammit! It had actually crossed my mind to look into taking a little getaway in Lake Geneva. : (

      • CPRM

        Drive a couple hours north and you could visit my lake, IYNWIM ;).

  52. The Late P Brooks

    The neverending battle against fake science

    Two members of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have said scientific evidence does not support claims that hydroxychloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19, despite its touting by President Donald Trump.

    On Thursday, Katty Kay of BBC News asked Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to respond to claims by the president that hydroxychloroquine works against COVID-19. Earlier this week, Trump retweeted messages criticizing Fauci, and a video that made false claims, including that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID-19.

    Fauci said: “It’s not productive or helpful for me to be making judgments on right or wrong but what I can say is what I’ve said all along, that the overwhelming body of data from trials that were well run, randomized placebo controlled trials, indicate that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in treating coronavirus disease.”

    Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House task force, made similar comments on Fox & Friends on Thursday, the day that the Ohio Board of Pharmacists banned the use of the anti-malarial drug for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.

    Host Ainsley Earhardt asked Birx why the board banned the drug from being prescribed after Trump told reporters he believed it works in the early stages of the disease. Earhardt also cited anecdotal reports of doctors saying the drug was effective in their COVID-19 patients.

    Birx said: “Because science and medicine have always been full of accounts like this. And, that’s why you do randomized clinical trials to actually be able to compare patient to patient. Everything that you just reported on had no controls in those individual practices.” Controls in trials, or including people not getting a certain treatment in experiments, are important because they help to minimize bias in results when investigating if a drug does or doesn’t work.

    She said: “We know in the randomized controlled trials to date—and there’s been several of them—that there’s not evidence that it improves those patients’ outcomes. Whether they have mild, moderate disease or whether they’re seriously ill in the hospital.”

    Foremost experts! Shut up!

    • invisible finger

      At least Birx admits that science and medicine are two different things.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Now do masks.

    • invisible finger

      “Whether they have mild, moderate disease or whether they’re seriously ill in the hospital”

      Which are SEVERAL different levels of disease.

      Meaning SEVERAL controlled trials is not nearly enough – probably need in the realm of 60-70 trials to really know.

      Also, she is weaseling by using the word SEVERAL in the first place, and ALSO weaseling by completely leaving out the word ZINC.

      And since when is “medicine” so vehemently opposed to using long-accepted drugs for off-label uses?

    • R C Dean

      “there’s not evidence that it improves those patients’ outcomesL

      Henry Ford Heath System haz a sad.

      Now do the HCQ/zinc/antibiotic cocktail.

      • Fatty Bolger

        Has there been a single sizable RCT of the full cocktail? The ones I’ve seen are just HCQ or HCQ + Z-Pak.

      • R C Dean

        Not sure. I know of observational studies, but don’t know about full double blind studies. Much of the work is overseas.

    • B.P.

      “Katty Kay of BBC News…”

      That’s a better moniker than “Karen”.

      Or perhaps it’s a new children’s doll. Pull the string and listen to it prattle along endlessly in the Queen’s English.

  53. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Now a video of a dude trying to ignite himself and his house with non-existent safety precautions while handling gun powder.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de7xDMjAxZI

  54. The Late P Brooks

    a video of somebody with mad skillz?

    I had a friend in college who had been in the Navy, on a supply ship running from the Philippines to Viet Nam. He talked about the guys who landed helicopters on that boat. He said it was quite the show, when the seas were rough.