1
Actually... A few years back, I went to a health expo at the local hospital. They had a trainer machine for microsurgery, with little controls and two little manipulators. The task was to try to tie a tiny knot.
Well, most of the people were old ladies and did not get very far, and I could not even figure out how to start. But a young boy sat down and zwip, knot tied.
And that is when the surgeon explaining the machine took the kid and his grandma aside, and started explaining how he might have a future in microsurgery....
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sat Nov 13 22:03:31 2021 (sF8WE)
Simping Mishaps and Sodabags
My re-acclimation to bachelordom continues, with my home about 30% in order now, though the airing out of the house has been delayed by 2 days of rain and 40 degree weather. I have borrowed a tote box from work and have been filling it with books to practice lifting it, in preparation to my return to work Monday. I still can't run and talking is difficult but I'm otherwise fully functional.
Because of the rain , after my workout I spent the day scrolling through news sites, science and technology channels...and watching V-tubers. Because of deep character flaws on my part, I decided to 'gift 3 subs' to one of them. That is, gift 3 subscriptions randomly to the chat community. This digital equivalent to throwing change into the can of a street musician would be worthy of no note had I not committed some inexplicably act of PEBCAK which resulted in the Twitch page thanking me for gifting 31 subs to some wolf girl from Sweden.
"AAAUUUUGGHHH!"
I'm still not clear how I hit the 1.
That was the most ignominious loss of $154.69 that I've suffered in some time.
However the day was not a total loss.
Recognizing that staying inside is no protection from misfortune or my own idiocy, I went to the drugstore.
You see, today I had finally gotten my prescriptions transferred to the local drugstore, which was a surprisingly complex process that has taken 2 days. After that, being in possession of a coupon, I decided to go to KFC to get a bucket of chicken. This will last me several days and provide some respite from the kippers and miso soup I'm eating until I reenter the workforce on Monday. I don't drink much soda, especially post-stroke, but I decided to get a 2 liter bottle to go with the bird meat fried in hot grease & to add some variety to the unsweetened tea and water that I'm drinking, but mostly because it was on the coupon.
Again, none of this would be worthy of comment had they not informed me that they had no 2 liter bottles to sell.
Instead, they had the"half gallon bag of soda".
Wat?
Why?
Has Kentucky Fried Chicken been bought out by Canadians?
Without the Mountain Dew Bottle's green tint, this just looks like a KFC branded bag of piss. This does not strike me as appetizing. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? And while one half of a gallon is slightly less than 2 liters...this ain't nearly a half gallon. And it's in a fricking BAG! Why? What is happening to the world?
In other news. I've got cable and high speed internet again, so does anybody have any shows to recommend?
1
Hmmm, from the current season? I just finished the first 5 episodes of "Sekai Saikou no Ansatsusha, Isekai Kizoku ni Tensei suru" (World's greatest Assassin gets reincarnated as an aristocrat).The first episode was a cool actioner, but the rest is the kind of Isekai where the MC is reborn with his memories, and grows up with everything going according to plan. What the title doesn't reveal is the aristocratic family he's born into is a house of Assassins and healers, and the Goddess wants him to kill the world's hero. The animation is fairly good, and the tone swings from light to really dark in spots, so it's a bit on the mature side.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Nov 6 03:55:02 2021 (Ix1l6)
Voting Day Observations
As some of you know, I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the current elections in which, is, at the moment, the focus of a great deal of attention from national pundits as it is assumed to be a bellweather.
As they are constitutionally mandated to happen every other odd numbered year, Virginia's elections are not just 'off year' elections, they are double secret off-year elections.
Turnout tends to be even lower than the turnout in non-presidential federal elections we have on alternating even numbered years.
I've been voting since 1988, and I have NEVER seen a line at the polls stretching out into the rain on an off year, let alone a state election. That was the case this afternoon.
I was pleased to see that the dems had not removed all the Republican election signs from outside the polling place as is their habit. It IS possible that they were simply replaced, by Republican poll-workers but there was no pile of Republican election signs at the usual spot in my neighborhood.
To my surprise, Deanna Stanton, the Republican Candidate for the local house of delegates seat was just outside the "no campaigning line" actively greeting people in the parking lot and handing out sample ballots...which helped in identifying who to vote for for school board as school board elections and candidate positions are notoriously opaque and their party affiliation is , by law, not listed on the ballot.
In this blue district she has a snowballs chance in a blast furnace, but it was nice to see a Republican with pluck and verve making a go of it.
Despite much hyperventilation , and McCaullif's odious nature, I'm not optimistic.
Democrats are like tonail fungus in that when you get them in control of your government they are almost impossible to get rid of. They put in place laws district borders and pollworkers to ensure their perpetuation. They also have undeniable appeal to a segment of the electorate:
Enthusiasm is certainly very high in this blue city.
Still, it's good to see people care enough to vote in one of these off-year elections.
I'm not very optimistic, but in a couple of hours we'll know.
UPDATE: It's been a couple of hours...we know nothing. Mcauliffe did not concede and instead noted that they had lots of votes to count, before walking off the stage with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. In most definitely unrelated news, Fairfax, the most populous county in the state announced that they have had "difficulties" and won't know anything for a while. Youngkin has a comfortable lead that will soon be firm enough to establish how many votes will be needed to be found in Fairfax to catch up.
Neither is particularly anxious to make such a call, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm tired so I'm going to bed, and hope I'm not disappointed when I wake up.
UPDATE: McAuliffe conceded! Bill Clinton's bag-man and bundler, the guy who set Virginia on a path that has seen it circling the drain for the last 8 years, has finally thrown in the towel. There is a chance, however slim, of turning this around.
1
Ace has the flaming skull up. Looking good at this point.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Nov 2 20:45:37 2021 (PiXy!)
2
I am surprised that the Dems actually seem to care about being seen stealing elections this year, given they did not give a damn last year.
Ace did have a screen capture of a Usual Suspect, using the CNN exit poll, saying how 'only' 30% of Hispanics voting GOP is a good thing for the Democrats. I guess it is objectively true (It is, after all, proving that Hispanics are not overwhelming supporting the GOP.) but it should be very ominous to the Usual Suspects.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Nov 2 22:53:58 2021 (MuaLM)
After 2020, hindisght suggests that the Dems were cheating a /lot/. AS in, much more than you would expect from putting together the pieces around Segregation, additionally drawing conclusions about the consent decree, and considering the reputations of the big machine cities.
Old Dem logic seems to be that refusing to accept any losses queers the grift.
New Dem logic appeared very much to be a communist type 'we have the thousand year reich now, time to start murdering, and stop worrying about elections'.
Is this remnant old Dems, with enough pull now to try to return to the old con?
Not important?
A ruse to lull us for some other end game?
Waiting for Friday despite the concession?
The Dem in this race appears to be disciplined enough and loyal to the aprty enough to follow orders to accept a loss.
Maybe he simply doesn't have enough pull to wrangle what was wrangled for last time. Maybe last time was foreign influence, and said influence doesn't see this as worth caring about.
Biden is clearly someone Obama sees as a proxy. Is Virginia internal politics against the Clinton faction? Internal politics /inside/ the Clinton faction?
The basic issue, current regime is a gamble, and seems to have a lot of delusional thinking, and threats it cannot easily deliver on or bluffs. And the bluffs are important internally, if only to keep people not deeply implicated in the gamble from deciding the stakes are too rich and trying to defect.
Failing this steal would be a sign of weakness, and could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Of course, so could spendign too much to 'win' this one. The effers have got themselves into a game where they cannot calculate the failure point of things, and at the same time they are deeply convinced that they have a reliable predictive theory, and that it shows them winning.
So, I really dunno what just happened.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wed Nov 3 23:05:12 2021 (r9O5h)
4
Maybe we are seeing the effects of the Democrat Party/White House civil war - with at least five sides fully engaged - spilling out into real world effects. Although, that would support the 'Don't care that people know they are cheating anymore, no matter the scale" argument, so...
Posted by: cxt217 at Thu Nov 4 22:28:51 2021 (MuaLM)
Technology Ahead of It's Time
Many of you are familiar with Steve1989's YouTube channel. He collects and reviews survival rations and emergency kits, mostly military from various eras.
Steve's notoriety comes from the fact that, being a Florida-Man, he tries to eat the old ration kits if possible, and his deadpan commentary combined with childlike enthusiasm means hilarity frequently ensues. This is particularly true in the pre-1970s ration kits where at least some components are usually inedibly rancid resulting in his transcendental joy when he finds something like a partially edible K-Rat from 1943.
However that is not nearly as impressive as the video I blundered into today. Last year, he opened a U.S. survival ration from 1906. It consisted of three sets of vitamin fortified mystery beef, and three sets of chocolate.
While grim, the ration was completely edible after 114 years and held up MUCH better than much more recent rations. While the newer C-rats and MREs are no doubt vastly better for morale, the shelf life of the 1906 ration is unbeatable. This ration was a much more basic bit of sustenance, intended for in-extremis situations, and can be eaten cold or as a stew in one's mess kit. It is actually more advanced in some ways than the WW2 ration kits. The packaging involved is pretty sophisticated and elegant even by today's standards, and it actually has slightly more calories than a modern MRE in about 2/3 to half the volume.
On the debit side, it's...pemmican and chocolate, kinda grim, with no other menu options.
But it is not intended to be a general purpose meal, one had other options for that, like mobile canteens, rather this was intended for forced marches and traveling light for a few days.
And at least this one kept more than a century. It would be nice, in these interesting times, if these were still being produced. They are much more compact than the modern alternatives that are (dubiously) advertised as lasting a fifth as long.
It should be noted that this is a slightly more advanced and mechanically refined version of a British emergency ration from the 1890s, which inspired it. That one did not hold up quite as well, but even it was partially edible after 121 years.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Mon Nov 1 19:29:33 2021 (FmoZj)
9
Very glad to hear that you are home, even if things are stinky.
I highly recommend baking soda. Maybe even charcoal, or kitty litter with smell absorbing powers.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon Nov 1 21:33:35 2021 (sF8WE)
Posted by: The Old Man at Sun Oct 17 12:05:39 2021 (nDQLw)
4
No. I confess I've been rather self-focussed of late, but I've called a couple of times and called again after your comment. There is no word at this time. However the last time I spoke to him, things were on the up-swing. Also, he has limited windows for taking calls, so I'm not in panic mode ...yet.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Oct 21 20:18:03 2021 (sGvFd)
5Correction! I just talked to him. He's doing better. He is still in therapy but is being moved to a better facility. He is making progress. Accommodations are not 4star. Know that there has been recent good news, but I'm not at liberty to elaborate.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Oct 21 21:04:49 2021 (sGvFd)
6
Good to hear! Thanks for the update and I hope you continue to do better as well!
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thu Oct 21 22:36:28 2021 (vjTQl)
1
I'm way behind on that. Last time I pulled down a season I found out they're monitoring the torrents and sending nastygrams to ISPs. Definitely lessened my enthusiasm for the whole thing.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 10 22:54:07 2021 (Ix1l6)
2
Mauser, depends on your ISP. Spectrum doesn't, Comcast does.
I gather this is a decent-sized reason people use VPNs these days.
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Oct 11 08:29:39 2021 (oPg+d)
3
Comcast doesn't act on the DCMA nastygrams unless they get too many of them. But it's definitely a torrent monitoring service that the media owners hire. Comcast has actually been really good about not throttling or interfering with my access. Which is a huge change from Clearwire which would knock you down to sub-dialup speeds, but would carve out exceptions for YouTube and SpeedTest.net so they could pretend they weren't.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Oct 11 23:08:25 2021 (Ix1l6)
4
The speedtest exception is exactly why Netflix came out with fast.com
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Oct 12 17:22:46 2021 (Z0GF0)
U.S.S. Connecticut DamagedU.S.S. Connecticut, a Seawolf class nuclear submarine homeported in Bremerton, limped into Apra recently having sustained collision damage while submerged in the South China Sea sufficient to injure 11 of her crew.
There is no further information but damage to a U.S. submarine in the South China Sea does cause one to ponder.
1
Russians say it probably collided with a friendly sub, like a British, Australian, or South Korean.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Oct 11 09:53:31 2021 (LZ7Bg)
2
I hope that saying "haven't they let women on submarines now?" is a joke.
Naval personnel appears incredibly messed up, leaving some specialties with drastically too few trained people. And, given all the other decaying stenches coming off of the federal government, the dysfunction in getting enough people trained on certain bits of navigation equipment may be deliberate.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Oct 12 09:33:31 2021 (r9O5h)
3
The thing about a warship, especially a submarine, is that you really have depend on just a handful of people to keep the ship from making a permanent dive. You certainly cross-train to a certain extent, but there are limits to that compared to, say, an infantry company.
That being said, it is certainly quite possible - the Norwegians lost one of their five frigates due in no small part to general crew ineptitude, which was not helped by the Royal Norwegian Navy having made a big deal about diversity and inclusion prior to the event...Apparently to the exclusion of competence.
The more likely, and scary probability, is crew fatigue especially among the specialists. We seen this kind of thing appear in the Navy way too often in the last decade or so, with results ranging from bad, to very bad, to 'news hit the front page and people get relieved bad.'
I am withholding conclusions about what happened, because literally anything could happen even among submarines. It was only over a decade ago that a French and a British boomer collided underwater, apparently with each not realizing the other was there until impact. Heck, arguably the first underwater collision between submarines happened in the South China Sea, so something like this might be seen as par for the course.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Oct 12 19:53:12 2021 (MuaLM)
Excellence is Racism, Bigotry is Intellect
New York City has declared that they will eliminate their gifted and talented program. Mayor DeBlasio seems to think that getting rid of a means to enable bright kids to excel is striking a blow for equality.
Harrisson Bergeron call your office.
Neo has thoughts on the matter as an ex leftist and her take is always worth reading, but the thing that leapt out at me was the NYT articles subheading, which reads
The mayor unveiled a plan to replace the highly selective program, which has become a glaring symbol of segregation in New York City public schools,
Emphasis mine.
There are few more racist notions than those implying that the act of demanding excellence is somehow racist. The implication is, of course that black students are too dumb to possibly compete. This reinforces some of the most wicked and pernicious stereotypes of black inferiority and white supremacy.
This is one of the toxic fruits of the equity fixation the left has. White supremacists and "race realists" will point to current standardized test scores and make much the same point. However white supremacists and "race realists", repugnant and vile though they are, are not as stupid and logically challenged as DeBlasio and company in that they do not support putting people who DO NOT make the cut in various highly skilled positions for the sake of balance.
Both the avowedly racist, the "race realist" and woke falsely claiming not to be racist Brahmins come to the same racist argument albeit for different reasons.
This racist argument is ostensibly based on education data going back to about 1970, but the data is flawed. One of the advantages to being a southern history buff is that Sons of Confederate Veterans of all people is made up of history enthusiasts who look at the history of our misguided ancestors 'warts and all'. We've had this conversation with the racists who try to enter our spaces. You see, in the 1950's and early '60s African American students were, (despite the poorer physical condition of their schools) on a par with and not infrequently outscored white students on the standardized tests that were then required in the south to matriculate from primary school to junior high school and into high school. This was partly a product of the fact that African American families pushed their kids to learn in much the same way as Jewish and Asian families are thought to do today. Additionally, the segregation of the age, while certainly abominable, did mean that the Black teachers, were teaching black students and pushing them hard. One result of this can be seen by reading Letter From a Birmingham Jail by the late Dr. Martin Luther King. This historic document used to be required reading in the freshman year of high school. It was favored as a teaching tool not just because of its eloquence in expressing Dr. King's message of racial tolerance and human dignity, but because it teaches modern readers a lesson in cross referencing. King references, amongst other things, the Bhagavad Gita in reference to Gandhi's then recent struggles in India, and the whole thing is written at such a level that the text is, today considered too advanced for freshmen...in college. However, King wrote this for and got it published as a letter to the editor in an African American paper. It was written at, what was at the time, a SIXTH GRADE READING LEVEL..among black students in 1963.
The error all three groups of racists (the white supremacists, the "race realists" and the woke,) are making, is assuming that African American educational attainment of current year is a product of African American abilities in the cognitive space. Again, prior to the currently used data set that was NOT the case, but the older data sets were not well preserved , are not well researched outside of redneck history nerds and are not as readily reference-able online. The latter data set feels like it affirms the preexisting bigotries of all three groups of bigots quite well. The "Woke" in particular cannot abide the truth of prior African American academic excellence because the problems with present day African American academics are the result of catastrophic cultural changes that happened very rapidly and mostly after 1968, including, but not limited to, the devastation of black families through divorce and out of wedlock births leading to the sudden ubiquity of single motherhood in that community.
So the idea that asking for academic achievement is racist is deeply flawed, and if ones goal is greater African American participation at the higher levels of society, one should look at the root causes, which are cultural in nature and better handled through black churches and institutions and not through holding back others "so the poor blacks can catch up" which only serves to power up resentment, and reinforce the most evil and racist of stereotypes.
But this decision is worse than that.
We have, in the U.S.A. a toxic and aloof ruling class that has become very insular. Whereas in previous years it was filled largely with the best people of all walks of life who clawed their way to the top, it has become, since about 1970, much more stable, based on credentialism and patronage rather than raw merit. Ironically this happened just as the nation was becoming serious about removing racial obstacles to advance into the upper echelons of society.
That is another thing that is toxic about this decision:
It eliminates a way for outsiders to get into the elite schools that are necessary to enter the new aristocracy. These gifted and talented programs were a way for ANYONE of any race, who was smart enough, to move into the program, get out of terrible schools and move on to big name universities. Eliminating this rout not only slams the door in the face of poor kids, it removes competition from the children of the elite, making out pernicious ruling class even MORE self-perpetuating.
Finally there is a utilitarian argument for why this decision rests at the intersection of stupid and evil. It stops the practice of picking out our best and brightest and making them the best they can be. It stifles them, and does not allow them to meet their full potential.
How many Madame Curies, Einsteins, George Washington Carvers, Freeman Dysons, or Sequoyahs we are loosing because of this decision is unknowable, but if this decision stands it will be vast.
Finally, while equality under the law is a civic virtue and moral good, equality of outcome is the worst form of tyranny, and those who have tried to enforce the latter, have filled more graves than one might think possible.
The Khmer Rouge prized equity highly, and saw to it that people who had an educational advantage were not allowed to compete unfairly with those not so privileged.
University screw ups are going to cost the credentialed their cushy position of respect and 'respect'.
If you get a degree today, you get it hanging around with people who keep their mouths shut about gross stupidity and incompetence. Okay, maybe some fields at some private small colleges are different.
But, most of the faculty doing the 'skills training' are not obviously attentive to ways that the work they are trying to do is deeply undermined by the current environment. Some of them think they are being very clever in creating the current environment. The ones that thick they are clever are basically proof that the faculty in that field do not really understand what the bread and butter of their business is, ten or twenty years down the line.
Look at critical theory, and at mathematics, and the incompatibility that might have a mathematician conclude that critical theory is disproven by contradiction, and a critical theorist announce that mathematics is an artifact of and statement by entrenched power.
Anyone who actually qualifies as our actual best and brightest, who is around a tertiary school, and maybe also around an elite secondary schools, can work out that these places are deeply dysfunctional, and of limited utility in improving ability.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Oct 9 19:54:01 2021 (r9O5h)
Thoughts on China
Rudyard looks at some trends in Chinese History and their implications for the present.
I agree that the current dynamic is essentially a return to Legalism, but I think he underestimates how much communism has broken the trio of Chinese schools of thought by virtually eliminating the religious side of their life.
1
Thousands of years of Chinese history of massive bureaucratic states suffering organizational rot until setting everything on fire, metaphorically, is the only way to retire the previous understanding of what lies to tell to whom.
Because distance and number of bureaucrats in a reporting chain are both time, empires at that scale have certain characteristics.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Oct 9 12:31:02 2021 (r9O5h)
First World Problems
Comedy is dead. The news is dreadful and full of dire portents. However, if you have need to laugh at somebody, below the fold are the misadventures of some honkey ineptly trying to recover from the self inflicted hurdles of fatassery and mask mandates.
"So, there was this box, and being a catgirl, I got in it, as one does, and then I tossed bits of my bread at those chickens over there and suddenly they were over here, and and they got really friendly and then there were a lot in awkward spots and I don't dare to move and I've had to pee really bad for an hour so... HELP!" is by Tsukasa Masanaga. Support her on Skeb or buy her doujins at Melonbooks.
3
I know back in The Slow Times, before Pond Central had any broadband options (2007), my dialup was already experiencing problems choking down websites. "Best viewed with a speed of ..." messages were actually warnings for me.
And that was 14 years ago, think about the way the web has changed in that time. I can't imagine they've gotten more slow-friendly, or "slow" is a speed that would have been blazing fast back then.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Mon Oct 11 15:26:59 2021 (bHHXR)
A Different View
Styxhexxenhammer is, despitereports to the contrary, not Razorfist after having mellowed out by ingesting lots of weed. Razorfist, to the utter disbelief of some is NOT Styxhexxenhammer's Hyde-like alter ego who surfaces periodically as a result of a magic mushroom mishap.
They are, I am told, COMPLETELY different individuals.
So here is a totally different person's take on the Arizona audit.
Again, I think the implications of the findings are consequential and troubling, but of little immediate practical relevance. I think the damage has been done and the biggest danger is if people let themselves get demoralized by this.
1
No, there is an immediate practical difference.
There are actions that can and should be taken right away, where ever you are in America.
You need to be engaged with your local election officials, and your neighbors.
Unless you are in an industry that will blacklist you from talking about this stuff, and then you need to be thinking about getting out.
If your neighbors are basically sound, you can do things if your local election officials are not basically sound.
If your local election officials are basically sound, you can establish process/precedent that sees the true costs of electronic voting machines.
You need to pay close attention to how the officials think about electronics. The ideal isn't quite a tin foil hat nutter who does not believe in using cellphones, but skepticism of smartphones would be appropriate. You want people who understand that electronics are made by humans, and the function depends on how they are made.
If neither your neighbors nor your local election officials are sound, relocation would be ideal. Practically, relocating to a place where you could know that your neighbors are sound would be difficult.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Fri Oct 1 11:13:24 2021 (r9O5h)
2
Given that the party in party has discovered that election stealing is fairly easy to do, has major benefits, has a high success rate, and little to no penalties or disadvantages, I do not see how any sort of voter motivation will work. When you have something that works, you keep doing it until it does not.
They have already demonstrated that cheating tens of thousands of votes is doable and straight-forward.
It is only a matter of time (Might even be next year, certainly by 2024.) before they start cheating hundreds of thousands of votes.
I know you are trying to do the right thing trying to remind people to not get discouraged, but frankly, I think we might have gone past that.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Oct 1 14:49:01 2021 (MuaLM)
Dubious elections go back quite far, unless you suppose that the terrorism of Jim Crow resulted in those elections being free and fair despite the outright explicit electioneering. And the parties switched places my ass.
There are fifty state parties. Showing significant Democrat continuity in one, such as the one I have roots enough in understand the political history of, proves a lack of Democrat clean hands at the national level.
JFK essentially stole 1960. He had Southern states with enough EVs that the effect of terrorism in suppressing the Republican vote cannot be assumed minimal. (The so called Southern Strategy that modern Democrats complain about is merely the result of their corrupt asses being kicked out after people had time to realize that they really had been made to quit the terrorism, and that the ACW is a really long time ago.) JFK was not a lunatic of the modern grade, and his theft of the election was tolerable in comparison.
When you consider all of the little signs, Democrats may have been stealing Presidential elections under the modern scheme as far back as 1992, and the Democrat leadership definitely thought they had stolen 2008 and 2012. Consider the entitlement in 2000 and 2016. Consider the edge to Obama's race war nutjobbery. If he thought he had fairly won the white vote, why is he so insecure about whites?
It is not at all a coincidence that the Clintons came out of the Arkansas Democratic Party. They have no principled objection to white supremacist terrorism, or to election fraud.
The degree of knowing we have is simply a result of them deciding to 'fix' the 'mistakes' they made in 2016.
They've been doing stuff with political polls for a long time, media is disinformation, and there is an appearance that the courts were fixed. Courts may not have been fixed, but law faculty are in the university echo chamber, and don't understanding how badly they hurt credibility in the public eye, going on along with what the echo chamber insists.
Despite that, there is a path to addressing it that is not an active shooting war. 1. In red states, voter activism to force fair voting process on electoral officials. 2. Then, replacing establishment Republicans at the state level with actual trustworthy Republicans. 3. Then, getting actual things done with regard to legal system and university problems.
It is a great deal of work, and we may have a shooting war anyway. Opposition leadership is well and truely insane, and the folks who purport to lead or represent us are Quislings and Chamberlains.
Everything we can get done properly in a nominally red state is a tool for the wider propaganda war.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Oct 2 11:00:29 2021 (r9O5h)
Wow.
By no means a dispassionate analysis; but one that, between expletives, handily puts into perspective what was and what was not found. It also provides some historical context regarding senate race shenanigans in AZ that explain why conservative Arizonans were so hot about this thing.
There is more on this here and here and the current mainstream take on this....ignoring the elephant in the room...can be found here.
A few things.
This is 1 county. This is NOT going to decertify the 2020 election, at least any time in the next year or so.
Even if it turns out that Biden did not win this (and other states sufficient to swing the election)....and even though that does seem quite possible, this will not change anything. There is no constitutional process for fixing this. The election was certified. That's it. The end. A president can be impeached, but that replaces the president with the Vice-President, not the opposition in the last election. As gobsmackingly inept and malicious as Dull Joe's Bizarre Misadventure has been, Kackels Mc Karen is almost certainly going to be a step down for the country and it behooves us to delay that inevitable transition as long as possible.
This audit does lend credence to the notion that our election systems are seriously broken and need to be secured. Mail-in voting has always been exceedingly vulnerable to fraud and needs to be massively limited.
The very real possibility of screwed-up ballots aside, the total subversion of the media and tech landscape has "fortified" our elections for a decade, to the extent that they're not even hiding how rigged the system is, they're bragging about it. If there is to be any hope of voting our way out of our pickle, the out and out scam of mail in ballots will have to be ended.
But as important as pushing for reform, indeed even more so, is to not give up. The only reason I can come up with that the bizarre Time mea-culpa was published was wave in our faces that they could admit what we'd long suspected and do so without fear. The Time story was an expression of dominance intended to demoralize the right. Whatever horrid revelations come of this ongoing process it is imperative that everybody (who is legally entitled to) vote. Because if we beat them larger that the margin of fraud, we still can save the country, but if we throw our hands up in despair and say "What's the point?" all hope is lost and we will never carry the day again.
1
Given the current rate they are going, we will be talking about the theft hundreds of thousands of votes in each state in a few years, especially when the certain party controls the places where the votes are being counted.
They already demonstrated that they can do it with no consequences. I fail see why they would have any reason not to keep on going and push it.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Sep 26 23:37:31 2021 (MuaLM)
Blogging Via Dial-Up Sucks
On the other hand, finally being able to walk 4 miles without a cane is most gratifying.
I still can't run or jump, but I'm now going to out-patient Physical Therapy and have access to special equipment so I can work on that.
Furthermore, I walked past the school and blundered upon a gun store on the side of the road 2 miles distant and discovered 9mm ammunition for less than 50 cents a round. Walking back carrying the unexpected prize was harder, but it was satisfying.
The Levels of Quislingry are Being Exaggerated
One of the things that has been reported in the news is how the people of Australia have just followed the recently reinstated COVID restrictions without protest (save a few outliers) and enthusiastically begun snitching on any compatriots who diverge from the government mandates.
I decided to ask one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of On the Ground Sources in Australia about this and after gaining confirmation that opposition to the policy is quite broad was given the following reply from the utterly mysterious BCTOOTGSIA#000001......
The current protests are mostly construction workers that the state government abruptly put out of work.
Since it's a Labor government with close ties to the unions, they are desperately spinning it as anything other than jobless union members.
BCTOOTGSIA#000001 also recommended checking out two Twitter channels which have documentary footage of the large protests and the government response.
Melbourne has imposed draconian restrictions (which has been reported) and has undergone massive civil disobedience (which is not being widely noted, at least here in the U.S.). I should note that the results of the 15 days to flatten the curve have, in Melbourne been 235 days locked down and the highest daily case rate yet.
The main reason I post this is because the reporting from Australia has been largely unanimous in saying that Aussies are taking this lying down or even enthusiastically. That does not seem to be the case and it does a disservice to the Australians and only serves to demoralize the rest of us.
A special thanks to our totally anonymous man on the spot who is enduring deadly spiders, boxing kangaroos, IT woes, and a shortage of chicken nuggets while trying to survive in a cyberpunk dystopia.
In completely unrelated news you should check out Ambient Irony daily.
1
While Victoria is still going full Health Nazi, New South Wales plans to phase out almost all restrictions by December 1. No vaccine mandates, no vaccine passports, no checkins or contact tracing. Masks still expected to be required on public transport though, so I won't be doing that.
2
"Masks still expected to be required on public transport though, so I won't be doing that."
You monster, gratuitously contributing to glueball wormening!
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Sep 27 09:26:35 2021 (Z0GF0)
Some Good News!
Space-X's INSPIRATION-4 capsule, the first crewed, private, wholly civilian space mission to go into orbit, returned safely this evening.
The fate of of the Soyuz11 crew demands that we not be satisfied with merely observing the splashdown though....
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