An Important Correction!
On May 23 of 2022 this blog stated that this years flu vaccine was lacking in efficacy.
Upon receiving further information, it now appears that this is NOT, at least to the best of our knowledge actually the case.
Do not be dissuaded from your flu shot gentle readers!
It was the Moderna COVID19 vaccine and boosters that didn't work on my mutant weeb ass.
THE SUSPENSE IS OVER! I finally have the 'Rona!
I've been visited by Cronachan and contracted the Pinko-Pox, Chi-Com Cough, Whuhan-Bat-Soup-Death-Plague, Xi Syndrome, The Fauci Fever, The Bolshevik Bug, The Maoist Malady, Winnie the Flu, The 2020 Gain of Function Award!
"I feel like poop."
BUT, I'm, well...I'm off work for another week. Hopefully, I'll be able to do something besides cough and hurt for some of that time.
1
Get well soon Brickmuppet!
My sister-in-law just had it but made a quick recovery, hope you do too.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu May 26 23:18:28 2022 (PiXy!)
2
Get well soon. I would say "Wrap up warm," but you might be better off toasting in your normal indoors weather, since it is almost summer. Stay hydrated.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri May 27 12:34:52 2022 (cHUaN)
I knew this was coming, and had heard about rationing being set up in places like Spain and Egypt but I honestly thought we'd have 'till September or October.
1
Among other factors not include...Just how much grain supply that are either sitting on the fields waiting to be harvested, or sitting in the holds of bulk freighters enroute to their destination ports, were not counted so a group of lazy UN analysts could wake-up that morning in their 4 star hotel and realized that they had a report due later that afternoon?
Posted by: cxt217 at Mon May 23 16:23:53 2022 (MuaLM)
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Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are the minor Rogation Days, when every parish was supposed to go around the boundaries driving out demons, praying for the crops, and praying against various possible disasters. (And having nice drinks afterward.)
You also got to carry a cool dragon banner or Snapdragon float/puppet, symbolizing the Devil trying to stop you. On the third Rogation Day, the dragon banner or float got moved to the end of the procession in disgrace, symbolizing Christ's defeat of the Devil. And then the next day was Ascension Thursday, with feasting.
Rogation Days are celebrated in some rural parishes in the US, often with help from pickup trucks for the procession.
I think the last few years have made people more interested in praying against disasters.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue May 24 08:36:30 2022 (sF8WE)
3
Theoretically, I should be skeptical of world grain supply estimates, even if I didn't already suspect that the bureaucracy in question was full of knaves and morons.
The larger the aggregation, the more we should suspect estimates not usually made. Routine estimates are sometimes eventually adjusted so that the methodology actually produces useful results, but just as easily Goodheart's law makes them worse.
In practice, estimating use rate of food is partly a population estimate, and there are reasons to think population estimates may be wildly high.
I dunno what will happen. I would be a bit surprised if the globalist number diddlers have a correct idea.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue May 24 16:08:45 2022 (r9O5h)
Brickmuppet Blog no longer has any comment on any matters of importance as we enjoy having our toes attached to our feet and further enjoy wiggling them.
So we will henceforth be responsible model citizens of good character and maintain the most hygienic of thoughts.
We cannot , however be held responsible for any unfortunate opinions that might or might not be held by certain anime lolis that may or may not find their way into our posts.
I assure you, our most benevolent and credentialed overlords, that we are working on the matter.
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I notice that the Student Diversity Programs don't include any kind of White People's Alliance or anything equivalent. There's not even a Straight Pride group!
"Diversity"! Pft.
Posted by: jabrwok at Tue Feb 1 15:45:35 2022 (iyhH7)
Note that 1962 was a 'Year of the Tiger' as well, which, by the convoluted special pleading of astrology means that there are two tigers involved...which should give one pause...
Actually, astrology is complete bollocks, and we apologize for indulging it, but it gives us an excellent opportunity to make light of a potentially serious situation by posting cheesecake, for which we are are completely unrepentant.
The President has finally decided to go after them thar Robber Barons we do hear tell about....well some of the Robber Barons...well...he's taking on 'BIG MEAT'. (Buy and freeze your steaks now kids....there are bugs and tofu in our future)
The Arlington Education Association, the local teachers union, which, shockingly, represents teachers, but not just any teachers, teachers that teach kids how to read and write. This latter, somewhat redundant point, becomes relevant only because this organization that represents teachers, sent out this letter to parents...one of whom was the kind of saucy bitch who had actually taken a grammar class at some point...
...presumably a grammar class taught by different teachers.
This a few days old but I'd held out some hope that it was a misunderstanding. NYC is assigning COVID treatments based on race. (The problem with holding out hope is that it is more likely to get blown out of your hand.)
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"But a growing body of research proves [the new variant] is also much less likely to trigger severe disease."
Ahhh. So, expect to hear ever-more-strident shrieks about case numbers, while presumably steadily-dropping death rates get swept under the rug.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Jan 4 12:56:58 2022 (Z0GF0)
2
Rick C wins!
You win the award for being FIRST to post truth in the comments section! Collect your ban at the door, where you will be graciously relieved of you bank account and PayPal privileges, BUT THAT"S NOT ALL! You now have a lifetime membership with the No Fly List, you get more bans from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter! And you get to BE ON TV! CNN will come to your house and broadcast it's location to the world. Prepare your body for groupies son! Not only that, our dedicated phone tree and E-mail staff have just contacted your employer and obtained for you a PERMANENT VACATION!
Congratulations Rick C! And thank you for playing!
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Jan 4 15:42:00 2022 (5iiQK)
Russia is on balance, obviously in the wrong here, but Ukraine, while it has done nothing to warrant the egregious violations of its sovereignty that it has endured, IS a corrupt country that literally has NAZIs sitting in it's parliament.
This is a mess and I don't think anybody is fully appreciating the resolve of the other.
Ukraine is the heartland of Russian civilization and culture, which began with the Russ of Kiev. Russians, especially nationalists like Putin have an intense attachment to Ukraine. On the Ukrainian side, that bridge was burnt, with prejudice, by the Holodomor. So terrible were the Russian depredations of the Ukrainians that the Ukrainians in WW2 welcomed the fricking NAZIs in as liberators...it was so bad in the Ukraine that the NAZIs were a step up. This is why there are still NAZIs in Ukrainian politics.
The Russians have a huge amount to gain by an adventure in the Ukraine. Oil, a strategic buffer zone, the richest soil in the world and prestige foreign and domestic as well as the strong psychological need to reintegrate what they see as their prodigal brethren. They have taken the measure of the U.S. in the aftermath of the Afghanistan debacle and seem to have decided that there is no better time to do this, as they will NEVER have such diffident leadership in the US again.
Furthermore, Putin's position may not be as secure as is generally supposed. He is an autocrat who is ultimately answerable to the Russian Oligarchs and his position is dependent on appearing strong, both to them and the Russian people.
For its part, the U.S. in particular, after the Afganistan fiasco, feels it cannot back down again. Democrat talk a good game of being anti-war when not in office, but the only Democratic presidents that are not considered mediocre or outright failures are those that waged wars. They have a history of using the immense powers conferred on the government by war to consolidate their power by rounding up their political opposition and the only time this backfired on them meaningfully was in the aftermath of World War One. Plagued by multiple calamities, most of which are the products of their own ineptitude, the current administration needs a foreign policy victory, or, perhaps a short, victorious war. They see Russia as a broke corrupt nation that is a husk of its former self with a military that NATO even in its current military state could take in a conventional war. That assessment is not, strictly speaking, wrong, but the Russians most likely have some nasty surprises in store nevertheless. In any event the Russians, who have a vast tactical nuclear arsenal have made it clear that any intervention by western powers past the eastern border of Poland will be met with nuclear fires.
The U.S. and other Western powers seem to have dismissed tactical nukes as a real thing since about 1992. While Strategic forces of the U.S. and Russia, are basically at parity, The Russians have a vast advantage in low yield, short range weapons intended for battlefield use. All those points about Russia being a declining power mean that the equalizing effect of tactical nukes is very tempting, and indeed the Russians have made no secret of their willingness to use weapons in a battlefield situation to "calm things down".
The current administration, so heavy with theoreticians and academics likely can't really get their heads around this as a real thing. If the Russians pop a nuke and evaporate a number of NATO troops the reaction is not likely to be measured. Even if President Biden is removed by the 25th amendment, the Vice President is a quite incompetent courtesan who exhibits all the most toxic girl-boss behaviors of a particularly entitled upper middle-class debutante.
In any event, there are few things more dangerous than scared, insecure leaders who are backed into a corner, and whose political future depends on appearing tough.
Also: The Budapest Accords are a linchpin of nuclear nonproliferation. Ukraine gave up its nukes with the guarantee that it did not need them anymore. It has come to rue that decision. Other countries with nuclear capability, but no nuclear weapons are watching this situation closely. The EU and other NATO members, particularly France, (which, despite their reputation post WW2 are a world power that takes international norms VERY seriously) may well see the Budapest Accords as THE line in the sand, for if that commitment is abandoned, then Western (not just US) promises and guarantees will carry NO weight and for many countries in 'dangerous neighborhoods', not having high energy weapons will seem foolish.
The point is that the Russians can quite possibly push too far, underestimating what the west sees as being the true states, and the west is likely to not recognize the seriousness of the Russian resolve and willingness to 'go to the next level'.
I have a degree in History, but foreign policy is outside my bailiwick.
Thus, I have some questions going forward:
How binding ARE the Budapest Accords?
What is the press coverage and public attitude towards this mess REALLY like in Russia. I don't speak Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian nor do I read Cyrillic so I'm taking the word of western news outlets, which is rarely a path to wisdom.
How many "advisors" does the U.S. and other NATO countries have in the Ukraine?
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Dec 5 23:04:35 2021 (MuaLM)
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According to Rumiko Takahashi's "Mermaid Saga", if this soup is made with real mermaid flesh, and I eat it, I'll become immortal. And it's only $17.88? What a bargain!
Posted by: L. Beau Macaroni at Wed Dec 8 21:12:21 2021 (fieDC)
if you eat mermaid flesh willingly you are horribly deformed or die. IRC The immortality curse is for those who dietary choices were unwitting or forced. Disney is letting you know so you'll suffer.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Dec 10 13:44:20 2021 (5iiQK)
While We're Up
The blogs servers are in Sydney and are getting intermittently arrested for COVID violations. Having caught them between run-ins with the law I'll use this short window to post this, which is a fairly informative overview of the dumpster fire that is current events.
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The current black hole of a fiasco in Afghanistan is the S* storm that keeps getting upgraded in hurricane strength. It's amazing that we've now had the UK Parliament condemn Biden directly in the worst rebuke from the UK since the War of 1812, and the calls for his resignation are still only trickling in.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Fri Aug 20 12:30:31 2021 (ZiV6b)
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...the calls for his resignation are still only trickling in.
Tim Poole actually had a video that explains that, because if Joe departs for whatever reason, look who is the immediate replacement for him? Even among the Democrats, literally no major faction in the party want Kamala as the face of their party - a publisher might be willing to release a book of her sayings titled "I'm Talking,' but the power players in the party do not.
At this point, I say it is more likely that an unlikely chain of events put a Republican in the White House before the next election before I would think Joe leaves.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sat Aug 21 18:54:02 2021 (MuaLM)
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Might leave the PRC happy. They might be the ones really calling the shots.
Choosing to run Biden and Harris, basically letting the campaign be phoned in, may have resulted in an actual share of the vote as low as 10%.
Someone made the decision to 'nominate' Biden, and someone made the decision that Harris would be the running mate.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional political logic, they would have admitted Biden's neurological issues before the primary, and gone with their second best.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional
political logic, they would not have sock puppeted Biden into nominating Kam Harris.
If the Democrats were run by power players operating on conventional
political logic, they would have had Biden concede rather than tip their hand to the degree of fraud they could pull off.
There are a lot of elements here that look really weird if domestic rational actors are calling the shots. Yes, domestically we can scare up some pretty deranged madmen.
Either these are the stupidest people in the world, or something really unusual is going on.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Sat Aug 21 20:22:22 2021 (DHVaH)
The 100th anniversary of the Communist Party is a great celebration for the entire Chinese nation. The power of the state is largely based on the success of its politicians. China's ruling leaders are wise politicians, experienced military leaders, and talented diplomats.
Since 1921, the Chinese Communist Party has successfully ruled the state. Under her leadership, the country has become one of the leaders in the international arena. China is feared, respected and admired. This is a country which many are eager to surpass.
Caviar iPhone 12 Pro Centenary - smartphone design in honor of the great anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. Restrained and laconic, at the same time bright and full of strength - the appearance of the accessory successfully conveys the character of the party. The case is made of a lightweight composite material with shockproof properties in red and decorated with relief engraving, echoing the national geometric ornaments of China. Contrasting element - decorative frame, gold-plated of the highest standard, engraved with the emblem of the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China.
The design is presented in a limited edition of 68 pieces. The numbers 6 and 8 are sacred for China: 6 means luck and career success, and 8 means wealth and prosperity. The limited edition of the collection is engraved with a laser on the side of the smartphone: the name and serial number of the model are indicated.
No the CCP has NOT run China since 1921.
If you've got $25,370.00 and want to impress your progressive friends this ought to work better than an iPhone.
But beware, the bit about 6 and 8 is a superstition, something that the CCP will send you to a reeducation camp for perpetuating, but if you've got 25 grand to spend on a phone that indicates sufficient personal liquidity that one can afford the necessary bribes....at least until conditions change.
If she looses this she faces the real possibility of being convicted of Aggravated Crimes against Humanity,meaning in India she could face the death penalty.
Hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin may very well have been shelved for purely political reasons. That is certainly what it looks like with 20/20 hindsight from what is admittedly a layman's perspective. Given the timing of the discontinuation and the death toll , it does not seem unreasonable to this blogger that upwards of a million people may very well have died as a result of these drugs becoming gauche and being discontinued in the wake of Trump touting them .
I base this on the assumption that since both drugs were cheap and available, most people could have been given them had their use not have been proscribed. This is especially rue in places like India where they are in wide use for treating various tropical parasites.
A seven digit death toll is hardly the sole responsibility of one bureaucrat. There are many, many people amongst government, industry, the medical profession and those who curate social media who stifled the news that these drugs could have made all the difference.
One can hope that they will receive their due scrutiny and a just reward for their actions.
1
When this came up on another site I follow last week ago, there were several comments, of course speaking as if they were total fact and could not be denied, that Ivermectin was neither effective against Covid nor safe in that usage; that the studies were very problematic in their methodology, and the dosage they were using was toxic in itself. All of which may be true, or may not. But the whole "I are expert, how dare you question me, I'm not even going to bother wasting my time rebutting these claims properly and showing the data" does not help. It just further breaks confidence and association, where people are picking and choosing who to believe with no actual ability to get the real facts and arguments from both sides.
Posted by: David Eastman at Tue Jun 29 00:10:45 2021 (t/97R)
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A toxic dosage of Ivermectin, for a human, would be about a gallon or two of the stuff.
I mean, farmers routinely take apple-flavored doses meant for horses or cows, for worming, as an off-label use for various human ailments, instead of taking the human prescription pills. You could practically bathe in that stuff. It has been around for a hundred years and is very well understood.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Jun 29 10:53:58 2021 (sF8WE)
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That said.... Although most mammals can take huge amounts of Ivermectin, as often as you like, without any harm whatsoever, there are a very small number of humans and animals that just can't deal with Ivermectin in any quantity, however small. It is a genetic thing, and that is why you usually dose small the first time an individual human or animal takes the drug.
So anybody talking about Ivermectin toxicity is talking about the genetically unlucky few, not the vast majority who can bathe in it.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Jun 29 11:01:02 2021 (sF8WE)
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Yeah, I've been banging the drum lately on how more than one profession has shat the bed recently.
The fundamental test of an expert is whether J. Random Layman is better off working with them, or ignoring them, when it comes to the expert's specialty. If ignoring is always better, government licensure, legal mandates, doctorates in the specialty, 'professional' organizations, etc. cannot make someone an expert or a professional.
For me, the interesting element is the Indian Bar Association. It makes sense that a hypothetical conspiracy within the American Bar Association might not automatically extend to the Indian Bar Association.
It also makes sense that India might be a little bit more attentive to whether people are complicit in PRC information/biological warfare efforts.
Yeah, this will be very interesting.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Jun 29 12:30:12 2021 (6y7dz)
It also makes sense that India might be a little bit more attentive to whether people are complicit in PRC information/biological warfare efforts.
Also: a LOT of Indians died and are still doing so. Add to that that the Indian govt. seems to give a damn about that and you've got the groundwork for at least an attempt at accountability.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Jun 29 18:12:02 2021 (5iiQK)
People Sometimes Refer to Covid-19 as China's Chernobyl
Unfortunately, a developing situation in Guandong Province may be a better candidate for that dubious title.
It appears that a nuclear plant, partially owned by a French company, has, possibly, started leaking radioactivity. The French company, Framatome, has warned of an "imminent radiological threat†and their people seem to be....rather anxious.
China, on the other hand, says that nothing is wrong and that"Two reactors have since the start of commercial operations been operating according to nuclear safety rules and regulations… currently, regular monitoring data shows the Taishan station and its surrounding environment meet normal parameters,†as reported and translated by the Asahi Shinbun.
OTOH, another part of the CCP's response, according to EDF (Framatome's French parent company), has been to raise the allowed radiation readings so as not to cause any distressing alarms to go off.
But we don't really know WHAT is actually happening.
It's still possible that all these reports represent an over-reaction. The French are saying that there is no melt-down or anything of that nature, and, in any event, news reports of anything nuclear tend to be rather breathless.
However, the French (who are involved) and the Japanese (who are potentially downwind if it gets bad) seem to be quite concerned about the situation.
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If the communist government is in its late stages, local workers at foreign organized facilities may not be behaving in strictly sane ways. For the foreign company, a release is bad for their reputation and further earnings, and fixing it before it gets worse may mitigate some of the reputational damage. But, for the communist government, the incentives are different. Local deaths, now or later, are not a problem for them. Admitting to a problem is itself a real problem for them. That said, late stage communist regimes are too noisy to take any information too seriously.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue Jun 15 13:34:59 2021 (6y7dz)
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An interesting story that has been going around Taiwanese media over the last week is that the open arrival and departure of a USAF C-17 (At a military airbase, but in daylight and in public.) was for the purpose of extracting a high level defector from the mainland back to CONUS. While I doubt that is the case, the close timing of the C-17 and the French report (Which, it must be remembered, the US only knows because the French government heard it first from the company and approve it to be passed on.).
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Jun 16 17:48:09 2021 (4i7w0)
Eww
The city sewer has backed up into the downstairs bathroom.
Hours later, this is beyond my ability to clear.
The plumber was supposed to be here an hour ago.
I just got a text indicating he will be here "before 5" which is in 3 hours.
I am SOOOOO happy I paid the nominal fee for plumbing insurance.
Lamarckism, Big Data, Arrogance and the Path to Perdition
While conducting a search for "leaked Google memo" (as one does) I blundered into this video, which is allegedly an internal video that is, allegedly, required viewing among senior management.
As for the provenance, after uploading it to Bitchute, I successfully tracked it down to an article at The Verge which was published 19 months ago, so this is not breaking news, but it is really creepy.
Only eight minutes long, it starts off with a explanation of the sort of proto-evolutionary theories of a Frenchman named Lamarck, the mention of whom, if you are not in a history of science class, is generally a sign that things are about to go terribly pear shaped, because Lamark's theories are better known under the name Lysenkoism.
The video name drops a few other very smart people and at the 4 minute mark the video gets to subtly and then not so subtly creepy until by the end it looks like a manifesto of a supervillian organization or a cult.
It isn't just the business aspect of big data, (which is worrisome enough given the context of how a 3d printer is used here), it's the fact that the ideas put forth and the goals are profoundly anti individualistic and diametrically opposed to free speech.
Anyway.
Watch the whole thing.
But not before bed...because this is high octane nightmare fuel.
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Reminded of some fragments of song lyrics from a bizarre anime long ago that stuck in my head: "You know that they mean to hurt you, and you know that it means so much, but you don't even feel a thing..."
Sans context. But who can doubt what these creeps who salivate over Panopticon mean to do to us? Why do so many people react to a proposal to treat them as slaves or livestock as if it's something cool and exciting?
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Nov 25 12:29:13 2019 (K+Kza)
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Serial Experiments Lain, I think?
And you know I don't mean to hurt you
But you know that it means so much
And you don't even feel a thing
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Nov 27 14:58:23 2019 (Iwkd4)
This Seems Big Enough to Warrant More Coverage .
Many of you may have been vaguely aware of the fact that there was a big firefight involving El Chapo's sons and some cops. Indeed it got some coverage, albeit mostly by local news operations in border states.
However, if this post over at Claire Berlinski's place(via) is to be believed, then this is a major, major debacle that is indicative of the near collapse of the U.S.M. as a functioning country. According to Ms. Berlinski's correspondent, the battle involved...
0
...Heavy weaponry that would be familiar on any Iraqi, Syrian, or Yemeni battlefield was brought to bear. More and worse: custom-built armored vehicles, designed and built to make a Sahel-warfare technical look like an amateur’s weekend kit job, were rolled out for their combat debut. Most critically, all this hardware was manned by men with qualities the Mexican Army largely lacks: training, tactical proficiency, and motivation.
Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.
Emphasis is mine.
Mentioned later in the piece is the fact that the surrounded troops were ordered to surrender and turn over their quarry by the President of Mexico.
There has been a lot of ink and pixels spent on Mexico as a failed state, but if this report is true, then Mexico is heading for chaos like it hasn't seen since 1910-20. The Federales cannot control a state capital, the families of their troops cannot be protected, there are technicals running around with impunity and the president is literally surrendering to terrorists then this is it.
Mexico is falling apart.
Here's some footage from Mexico's Aztec News (without translation)...
...and there is a selection of footage here albeit from RT. Note that some of it is duplicated from above, but there's some that appears to be from the perspective of the Federales as well as the gangsters.
This is not an isolated incident. There are whole regions of Mexico that
are not under the control of the government and when the police try to
assert that control they are murderously rebuffed...
When
a convoy of Michoacan state police did make a rare appearance in El
Aguaje last Monday, they were ambushed and slaughtered by Jalisco cartel
gunmen. Thirteen state police officers were shot or burned to death in
their vehicles
This is a calamity of the first order and is especially of concern for
the U.S.A. as we are the next country over and a inviting target not
only for the waves of refugees, but the gangsters, paramilitaries and
crime bosses fomenting the chaos.
And yet, aside from some local news outfits in border states...I'm hearing very little discussion of this dreadfully consequential development.
1
It seems to me the only rational response by the federal government involves the equivalent of a mechanized infantry division descending on Chiapas with a rather permissive ROE. But their current president has a policy that explictly disavows anything of the sort. I can't see how this gets anything but worse, ending in a military takeover in the next decade or so.
Posted by: David at Mon Oct 21 23:51:11 2019 (wXI5i)
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Given that the last time there was an insurgency in Mexico (Actually in Chiapas, not Sinaloa.), the Mexican army only managed to effectively suppress it by launching a surprise offensive during a cease-fire and still had to maintain martial law in the region for years...And that was against garden variety guerrillas, as oppose to the proto-military force with a professional cadre that is currently running amok right now...I do not think the Mexican army as it is currently constituted would be able to do it, as oppose to, say, the Columbian Army following Plan Columbia.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Oct 22 17:45:14 2019 (LMsTt)
Good Lord
You might have known about the Gearbox Goons visiting YouTubers but after the lootboxes, that stuff turns out to be the least bad thing the company has been doing.
We need someone to do periodic welfare checks on Dev.
2
If a gaming studio sent goons to my house I'd shut the door as soon as they identified themselves and tell them they've got 5 seconds to get lost before I call the police.
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Sep 23 09:05:52 2019 (Iwkd4)
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Whelp, I was going to buy after the Epic exclusive timed out, but now I may well quit anything from them at all. Pity.
Posted by: DougO at Mon Sep 23 15:28:09 2019 (Xn+4s)
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Hmm, so how big a 'splody should it warrant? Maybe we should update the hurricane category system to how many megatons to disrupt.
On a more serious note, the idea never really made sense to me as hurricanes draw energy from higher temperature water, so adding more heat to the system just doesn't pass the sniff test for me. Even if you disrupt the wind wall in the eye, all that energy the storm has needs to go somewhere.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed Aug 28 09:37:31 2019 (jl9eJ)
2
Was interesting when the hurricane hit Hawaii a few years back - encountering the Big Island basically tore the bottom out of the eye of the storm (gotta love those sudden elevation changes). Whole thing went disorganized and broke up pretty soon after that. So it's at least POSSIBLE to disrupt a hurricane, not that I think the math works for nuking one.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Aug 28 14:27:02 2019 (v29Tn)
3
This was looked at seriously by Project Plowshare. It was determined to be a bad idea for reasons more compelling than "NUKE BOMB BAD". However, out of the box spitballing about how to stop a hurricane does not seem to be a damming indictment.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Aug 28 14:43:22 2019 (YUAc9)
Again, Twitter is BANNED in the PRC, meaning they are doing this not for some callous reason that might be justified from a purely fiduciary perspective.
Sooo...why would they do this?
I'm genuinely confused. all I can come up with is these...
A: Censorious evil is in their nature, they just can't help themselves. B: They are fanboys of totalitarianism, and want to show solidarity with anyone who oppresses the plebs. C: China is so deeply embedded in Western academia as well as media in general and holds particular influence over America's tech weasels that they can influence decisions even when they are nominally against interest. D: Twitter is attempting to get un-banned in China and is doing this to show that they can boot-lick with the best of Quislings.
And as I look over these possibilities, I note that they either someone operating on the emotional level of a high-school mean-girl, or the shallow, mustache-twirling motivations of a cartoon supervillain.
This bothers me. Even taking into account the obvious snark, the list begins to look like the paranoid rantings of a Bircher.
IN GENERAL, in the political realm, when people advocate for stupid/evil stuff, it's not because their worldview is that of Snidely Whiplash. There's often a flawed rationale, or some logic, based, perhaps in a different worldview. For instance, censors on the left and right wish to ban things that they feel are detrimental to society. This is a deeply flawed motivation because it's an instance where the "slippery slope" is not a fallacy (ie: where do you draw the line?) but there is, at least, an internal logic to this argument, that, while horribly flawed, is at least theoretically well intentioned.
I can't see a flawed but well intentioned argument here. I can see NO REASON, business or otherwise, that Twitter would do this at least not one that's isn't some variation of the uncharitable takes listed.
Either: 1: I'm missing something, or... 2: this happened because one or more selections from A through D is true.
I'm a Z-list blogger so 1 is on no great importance to anyone and is potentially correctable with more information.
2 however, is truly scary.
Absent some very unlikely new information* I'm going to stick by my initial assessment that this action is bad and wrong and actually evil.
However, I'm very interested to see if anyone can come up with a motivation for this action that could be reasonably defended as stupid but well-meaning.
If you have such suggestions, share them in the comments please.
*As an example of what might change my mind, if it turned out that all those accounts banned were actually being operated by Schaver's Detrimental Robots as part of a plan to enslave humanity by broadcasting their Ray Machine directly through computer monitors, well, then, it might be defensible. But that is...rather unlikely to be the case.
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