October 15, 2020
Worry.
Banality is below the fold. As a contrast to that, here is some cheesecake rendered by Jun (@navigavi).
He's taking commissions on Skeb.
more...
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October 14, 2020
I'm Going to Link to This
It's not really news.
It's not unexpected.
It's been known for a while.
But I'm gonna link to it.
Because doing so has become important.
Because I can.
I do this because this dog bites man story became very important to spread to the four winds this afternoon.
Unlike a lot of people who are seeing that this story sees the light of day, I'm not stunning and brave. I don't have to sit pondering the potential cost to my livelihood and social circle that speaking this truth will entail. I don't have to ask myself "Is it worth losing my site?" "Is THIS, where I make my stand? "Will it matter enough to make the cost I pay worthwhile?"
That calculus does not trouble me, as it does so many others, because I don't do Twitter and don't have a Facebook page. I blog at Mee.nu!
Because Mee.Nu is still free, in both senses of the word.
You should probably migrate your social media here.
UPDATE: Pixy, the administrator of Me.Nu has taken a break from his usual policy of being apolitical on his tech blog to opine upon this dumpster fire at length.
UPDATE 2: Sargon also got his channel locked in the series of purges that have happened the last 36 hours.
Watch on Bitchute
In fairness to YouTube, the company says that this ban was not related to his coverage of the NY Post Story. Rather, they say they banned him for a post from some months ago in which he decried the normalization of Pedophelia.
"Wait..WHAT!? That's their cover story!?"
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How to Play Chess
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Alright. I Do Not Want to Hear ONE Word About Pineapple and Ham....Ever Again
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Truly a Fine Example of a 2020 Headline
Uh...WHAT!?
I call bullshit.
I was skeptical too, so I looked for another source (with proper grammar) and found a report on the results of the experiment. That the results of an experiment which hasn't yet happened, but were reported on 3 years ago might prove that they've at least broken causality.
However, due to a silly, neurotic concern about using a 2017 article from The Onion as a source for a story about a 2020 science breakthrough, I dug a little deeper and found the awful truth.
"Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects [breadth and length] can exist in a third dimension [height], parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions.
"We predict that gravity can leak into extra dimensions, and if it does, then miniature black holes can be produced at the LHC.
"Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualised.
"This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science."This is not what we mean by parallel universes. What we mean is real universes in extra dimensions.
Further digging revealed stories about the LHC creating matter from light and making progress on the discovery of dark matter, but no imminent Isekai applications, or any evidence that Warhammer 40,000 might be prophecy.
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October 13, 2020
Now It's ALIENS Getting Involved in Our Elections.
As I am opposed to cattle mutilations and the destruction of crops, I guess I have no recourse but to vote for the angry cheeto.
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Overview of the Situation in Japan
Japan is locked down hard regarding international travel but they've been fairly laid back with regards to the lockdown on businesses. It's largely voluntary....aside from masks on mass transit, and there are various off and on travel restrictions in place.
Their economy is largely open now, though restaurants are suffering from what I've heard elsewhere. All in all, they seem to have been much more sensible than in many places in the U.S. They were both more cautious at the beginning when the situation looked very dire, and quickly relaxed the lockdown when it became obvious it was dangerous, but not as bad as initially feared. The state of emergency was lifted in May. Despite demographics trending quite old and this disease being lethal to the old, Japan's death rate is remarkably low.
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October 12, 2020
Blasphemer !
I was going to write something on this story, but Pixy found a video that sums up this dumpsterfire nicely.
Makes a not entirely applicable but still non-terrible intro to the previous post.
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It's Good to Learn the Mistakes of Others. It's Better Yet to Not Repeat Their Mistakes
Pete Zaitcev linked to this piece by Hillel Ofek in The New Atlantis that looks at why Islamic countries tend to have such a dearth of scientific achievement today, despite having been the undisputed world leaders in the sciences early on.
The article is well researched and informative. While my history degree did not have islamic society in particular as its main focus, this article certainly comports with what I have researched regarding the matter, and clarifies a few specifics regarding the ascendancy of a particular strain (denomination?) of Sunni thought that is generally considered to be the culprit, but as the article proposes, may well have simply accelerated existing trends within the civilization.
Honest critiques of "The Religion of Peace" are hard to come by in this day and age as they tend to be either the "woke" apologia frequently produced by todays very PC academia or the product of independent researchers who in response to that Islamophillic dynamic....overcompensate to say the least. It's a good article and I suggest you read it in full. Given today's publishing climate and academic realities I'd go so far as to call it brave.
However, the greatest relevance of the article to us today may not be what it says about another society's past, but the implied warnings it holds for our future.
While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact, the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, the ancient Chinese and Indian civilizations, both of which were at one time far more advanced than the West, did not produce the scientific revolution.
Humans have been humaning for as much as 300,000 years over those 30 millennia there have been flashes of brilliance and periods of innovation that gave us math geometry and the ability to do engineering feats build aqueducts to bring water 56 miles from Subbiaco to the Capitoline hill and many other innovations that are not to be sneezed at, but the massive cascading tsunami of knowledge building upon itself without regard to where new knowledge came from as long as it was testable, that we've enjoyed since the renaissance and enlightenment....well that's sort of thing has started a couple of places, but such golden ages always petered out after a decade or two, or were strangled in the crib by entrenched interests (as in China and Rome)...except for the two closely linked phenomenae of the Renaissance and Enlightenment begetting the industrial revolution. These bizarre bank shots involving a series of very specific, political, cultural, and religious conditions allowed for something that had not occurred in humanity over its many endeavors over a third of a million years. Using Thomas Newcomb as a completely arbitrary start for the industrial age, we've been in this happy state for about 300 years.
That's a thousandth of the time we know that humanity has walked the earth (and we can be reasonably sure the earliest known remains were not the earliest people). So, going into the past of humanity and picking any one year there is a one in a thousand chance that one will land in a world ruled by tyranny, oppression, superstition, backwardness, malthusian cycles of despair looming over lives brutish and short with little or no hope of it ever getting better. That's the norm....the median state of humanity...the direction in which history bends.
The idea that history and the universe inevitably bends towards progress is a product of 300 years of everything getting better every year. Between 1803 and 1903 we had gone from near feudal agrarian societies of subsistence farmers, to cars, electricity, and airplanes. 66 years later there were human footprints on the moon, shortly after that we were sending rock-&-roll, bagpipe music and porn to the STARS! It is easy to see how, given the short lifespans of humans, some saw this as an inevitable trend, but it is a divergence from the mean that represents only 1/1000th of humanities existence.
Western civilization, and those others that have used its insights to rekindle and build upon their own lost glories are not examples of the arc of history inevitably bending towards progress, they are an example of a middle finger raised against the very norms of the universe. Our societies are like a kayaker fighting heroically against the flow of a maelstrom threatening to drag us down to the foetid depths that humanity will reach by regressing to its mean.
And we've stopped paddling.
Returning to Ofek's article, look what was happening in Islamic universities at about the time that Europe was beginning to leapfrog Islamic civilization.
No one paid much attention to the work of Averroës after he was driven out of Spain to Morocco, for instance — that is, until Europeans rediscovered his work.
Sounds like Averroës got cancelled.
The things that made this wondrous aberration in which we live possible are under attack from multiple quarters. The so-called cancel culture used by the cultural enforcers of "wokeness" is becoming every bit as pernicious and stifling as the ash'erite courts in stifling anything outside the accepted norms. One of the reasons that Ofek points to the Ash'erite school for Islam's fall is the inability of the Islamic leadership to reconcile reason and faith, impericism and theology. Christianity explicitly allows for "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" in fact Christ himself (not a prophet or apostle) implored people to do so. There is a very distinct understanding in Christianity, that there is a separation between the secular and the sacred. (The cultural basis for the church /state separation so important to our progress). Sunni theology sees this as another example of how Christians are weak, and that Christianity is the religion of slaves.
Likewise, the secular religion that is so sweeping our ruling classes sees itself as fully integrated into the power structure and government, which its adherents see as weapons to be wielded against unbelievers. Certainly that is hyperbolic, but it does not seem to be far from the practical result. A twitter mob is little different from a sharia court, except that it cannot dispense an amputation or direct death penalty yet. It can ensure that someone who commits apostasy, or blasphemy against the received wisdom of those in charge, looses their ability to engage, their banking privileges, and their ability to live in peace. There were, of course, such blacklists, extortions and literal witchunts, in Europe, but given Europe's balkanized nature, one could leave and go somewhere else. Today, the long arm of the blue-check-stassi can reach you anywhere.
And it gets worse.
Unlike Islamic theology, which is based on the Koran, today's transgressions can change minute to minute on the whims of hash tags, and be fiendishly non-intuitive (did you know that understanding that astrology is bollocks is...SEXIST?)
The pernicious influence of Foucault, Derrida, Sarte' and others is attacking the very foundations upon which this civilizational edifice is built, and the implications are terrifying.
I'm not suggesting that there's going to be a collapse like the Greek dark age (where they literally forgot how to write and had to re-invent the alphabet) . Technologies are rarely lost. Even after the fall of Rome only a few closely held trade secrets like the chemical formula for the Roman's better concretes and the methods of hydraulic excavation were lost. The beau monde wine-moms are unlikely to discard the washing machines and microwave ovens that have liberated them from 300,000 years of domesticity. It's worse than that. You see the very technologies that make the Twittermob so effective can, as we've seen in China, enable a panopticon undreamed of in the worst nightmares of Orwell. That's a set of technologies that the beneficiaries of these toxic trends are unlikely to see fall by the wayside. Getting out from under such a system would be nigh impossible, not only because of its capabilities, but its stability. After all, freedom as we understand it has been an alien concept for the vast majority of 300,000 years.
We need to really embrace and promote the values of the enlightenment and push back against those who blame it for our ills. Because if we don't, we will not have cast off our chrysalis, and moved on to greater things in the stars, but, instead, like our many forebears we will regress to the mean...a bad place to be indeed.
This dynamic might have implications for the Fermi Paradox, but it has more urgency at the moment for us.
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Hippy-San 0n Boogie 2988
Styx has one of the more reasoned takes on the recent situation with a YouTuber (Boogie2988 ) who had a stalker show up at his house.
I'm not a fan of the YouTuber, but whatever one thinks of him, having a stalker is a dreadful thing, and having them show up at your house is absolutely terrifying, beyond the pale and not acceptable. Deadly force is authorized. However, Boogie's response was...sub-optimal. I've seen a lot of hot takes on this bit of drama over the last week but this one is notable for not being stupid.
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October 09, 2020
Monstergirl Doctor...Almost Over
Well, Monstergirl Doctor has really gone into wilds of nowhere.
Our female protag, putting up a fierce face.
There is a brief moment in episode 4 when one of the protagonoists literally trips over what appears to be the actual plot to the show, but that potentially interesting storyline is resolved in the same episode, mostly off camera. It then muddles along for several episodes with our male protagonist being either a predator, or autistic (or possibly both) and our female snake girl protagonist trying to drive through his thick skull the importance of communication with one's patients, or at least not intrusively examining one's female patients without discussing the matter first and getting consent. (good grief)
Dark secrets are revealed...and then thrown away and due to the lack of actual storytelling, background on the world and characters is provided occasionally by a giant exposition squid.
...and then This is a medical procedural set in a fantasy world and there has been some exploration of interesting ideas...and there are only three episodes left....so I may finish it...for the sake of completeness....but yeah at this point I'm taking a break and am going to have to say that the show has not lived up to its early potential.
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Asking the Important Questions That Have Nagged at us for Some Time
And come to think of it, yeah, our protagonist is not in a fetal position perpetually screaming for some reason. (Well...MOST of the time he's not)
Season 2 of Re: Zero seems to have come to an end, though the story is DEFINITELY not over. If you have not seen this show, do NOT start with season 2 go back and start with Episode 1-A of season one (which I discussed here back in....it's been four YEARS since this came out!).
This season, while lacking the breakneck pace of the first, is nevertheless exceptionally good, maintaining the gatling gut-punch tone but interspersing a good deal of character reflection, development and revelations about the overarching plot, which give the viewer a better understanding of who the heroes aren't.
This show is grimdark to the max but it has a thread of idealism running through it that keeps it from becoming nihilistic.
This season does not progress as far as the first by a long shot, the time that has passed is about what it would take to watch the whole season, and the characters are not far removed in time place or situation from where they were at the beginning of the season. The season finale, doesn't really FEEL like a finale, but there is a definate sensation of having gotten over a hump of sorts as the plot is moved forward tremendously and the story keeps one on the edge of one's seat.
This is a fantastic show, and I highly recommend it to any who have missed it.
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Chekov, Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn Look Down and Weep....
...at the chilling proof that they have, again, been unheeded.
BLM/Antifa rioters march into the suburbs of Wauwatosa (Watch on Bitchute)
There's a lot of talk in certain circles about Civil War, most of it profoundly ignorant, on many different levels. For one thing, such a horrid event would not be cathartic, or cleansing, but rather would be a dreadful terrifying, cancerous waste of lives. Second, the U.S. has never had a real civil war, . "The Civil War" was, in reality, a failed secession, with the secessionists not trying to take over the country, but leave it. While this is hardly more than a semantic point to some, it meant that there were clearly defined geographical boundaries, and an intuitive understanding of the definitions of victory and defeat.
What is shown in the video above is akin to a REAL civil war. The most applicable example of which might be the nightmare that befell Spain in the 1930s. I suggest you read about the Spanish Civil War....but not on a work night, for your sleep will be neither sound, nor in great quantity after you do so.
Other actual Civil Wars had far worse outcomes than even that nightmare.
The parallels to the seeming insanity of our own upper and upper middle classes with the the behavior of the minor nobility and upper middle class in the last days of Tsarist Russia are sobering to say the least. They are completely unwilling to criticize even this pandemonium, lest it threaten their political purity and social standing.
...and that was a thread I was going to expond upon until this morning, whence came news that a small group of smooth brains, allegedly opposed to the above suburban raiders had decided to play the left's game of Burn Loot and Murder....and then it became clear that...well not clear at all....'cause I have no IDEA who these numb-nuts are actually affiliated with. They certainly don't SEEM to be on team MAGA or team D.
However, I would argue that, on balance, this ugly plot is actually not as worrying as the video above. That is because an attack on a public figure has been thwarted (something we should be able to, in a bi-partisan fashion rejoice over). But the attacks on ordinary citizens in their homes...for the crime of being middle class...was not responded to until well after the fact.
In case your reading comprehension or my typing skills are lacking, I'm not suggesting that an assault on a public figure, even one as loathsome as Whitmer is in any way acceptable. I'm pointing out that, in a time of civil unrest, it is easier to protect a few politicians than the vast bulk of the unprotected populace from those who seek to do evil, and evil rarely attacks the most protected positions, leaving the citizenry to fend for themselves in this situation. And this situation is a very worrisome one indeed.
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October 08, 2020
I'm FREE! But Not As Free as I'd Like.
Last Tuesday I was...ill. I had a bad cold and a splitting headache on top of an active kidney stone. Going to work in a mask with a runny nose is unpleasant in the extreme, and given the anxieties I would cause my fellow employees as a snot-rocket, I called in. Wednesday I was sicker, with severe gastrointestinal distress a headache akin to having a wayward chestburster in my head and the cold had moved into my chest, but the coughs were dry.
Thus, I scheduled a test to see if I had indeed been visited by Coronachan. The test was on Friday and I was, therefore, under quarantine, until I got the results, which came in yesterday.
I failed the test.
No Wu-Flu for me.
This means no certificate of pestilence-proofedness to get me into the fast lane on planes or allow me to go to Japan or any of the other benefits that come with getting the Corona-coof . Dang.
OTOH I'm feeling much better and am not, you know, dead. Since I did have a certificate of not having Coroina YET, I was allowed to return to work today, which I VERY much needed to do having missed over a week of pay. However, 10 days in bed did nothing to get me into shape for lifting boxes during our peak season, which started last Wednesday.
I'm gonna lay down for a bit.
CoronaChan by Alart90
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October 07, 2020
A Hurricane Season Worthy of 2020
Is this the fifth to hit the gulf this year?
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October 05, 2020
Given the Current State of our Entertainment Industry
I have my overwhelming joy upon learning this slightly tempered....
...by a nagging curiosity regarding exactly how they will subvert our expectations.
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October 03, 2020
Insightful Commentary
Mark Hamill gives a thoughtful overview of the recent debate.
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The Vanishings Have Begun
more...
CoronaChan, was a You-Tube channel that aggregate news related to the current pandemic. Its mirror still exists on Bitchute.
Perhaps Ben referred to Taiwan as, you know, a country.
That's what happened two two Hololive V-tubers, Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato, who, in the course of a joint You-Tube livestream looked up their analytics online (a very common thing for V-Tubers and YouTubers to do), discussed where their viewers were, and, I gather thanked the residents of each country. A lot of their viewers are in Taiwan, and they mentioned and....
For those "inappropriate remarks", they have been suspended, by Hololive's parent company, Cover Corporation for at least three weeks.
There is coverage of this here, here, here, here and here...though it's anyone's guess how long those links will go somewhere.
The whole affair came as something of a shock, particularly since these are not small talents, Kiryu Coco is much bigger than one would think as as she's frequently the top super-chat earner on You-Tube in any given month. This made such waves that even American V-Tubers who avoid politics completely have taken a moment to mention it...and say "Taiwan".
It's telling that according to the ANN and Niche Gamer articles linked above that China's One China Policy was specifically mentioned in the Simplified Chinese version.
There has been a bit of backlash particularly about that latter discrepancy.
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I Hear Tell There Was Big News Yesterday....
...so I checked and I guess this was it.
Artist unknown....nay, Anonymous even.
In all seriousness, Trump getting the Wu-Flu is hardly a black swan, there being a pandemic and all, but the timing is such that it fosters maximum chaos.
If Trump succumbs to the virus it is too late to replace his name on the ballot, indeed people are already voting, so I'm not sure how that works. I checked...and I'm less than edified.
So go ahead and rant about 2020, where the headlines over the last month have been something out of an '80s cyberpunk novel, but with forest fires. However, remember that 4-chan has been around for 17 years....so it's not entirely 2020's fault.
But 2020 is obnoxious, so here is some gallows humor to help you face the day.
Video by Leolide
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September 30, 2020
Why I'm on Team Mask.
A LOT is being said by people I usually agree with and even look up to regarding the oppressive tyranny of having people wear masks, and how this is an unnecessary and useless annoyance, a violation of our civil rights and a sign of submission to a tyrannical state
I disagree.
If we're going to open up (and I think we should have done so before now) we need to do everything in our power to slow the transmission of this bug. It may be less lethal than it was earlier in the year due to improved treatments, but it is still very lethal to the elderly and the vulnerable.
While it is true that masks (other than N-95, N-99 and equivalent) provide very incomplete protection, they do provide some, and if everyone is wearing them their aggregate effect is substantial. We've seen this demonstrated in places like Japan, Korea and Singapore where they have been quite effective.
There is an anti-mask meme going around about a fellow using a chain link fence to stop mosquitoes. This is...flawed.
The virus itself is indeed tiny enough to avoid most facemask fibers, but is generally attached to water droplets and dust particles that are much less so, and thus a significant percentage of viri can be caught by less effective coverings. Also, the purpose of the mask is not necessarily to protect the wearer, but to prevent spread, with lower grade masks this is to prevent the wearer from transmitting the disease and thereby protect those most vulnerable. If an asymptomatic person and a vulnerable person nearby are both wearing masks, the chances of transmission to the vulnerable individual are significantly reduced.
A good analogy is the "Duck and cover!" drill that scared so many of us as children during the cold war. That desk we were hiding under (or a convenient ditch) was not going to provide any great protection against an atomic explosion. However, it was one of the few measures that was demonstrated to work...albeit on a macro scale. Ducking and covering, would, in a statistical sense increase ones chances of avoiding injury by an amount that was statistically significant in the aggregate. A, let's say, arbitrarily, 2 percent increase in chance of survival is of no great significance to an individual. However, in a nation of 300 million, that's six million more people alive than there would be otherwise. These macro trends are how public health decisions have to be made.
I find it amusing that the sneering douchebags who poo poo'd the duck and cover drills as futile are draconian about the masks, and those who understand the grim and desperate calculus behind the old cold war drills and who arm up and prepare for all manner of catastrophe, won't wear them.
Increasingly the retort to this from the right is the libertarian principle of "Why should I give a f**k about the vulnerable?...I don't like it...ain't gonna do it"
Well, there are counterarguments to that, but as a conservative, I'm unpersuasive by association, so I'll let Karl Kasarda, one of the more Libertarian Libertarians that have Libertarian'd on Gun Tube to explain almost exactly how I feel.
This is part of an unrelated Q&A session, if for some reason, it doesn't queue up to the right point, the relevant bit is at 39:50
He is kinda wrong about herd immunity being unachievable without a vaccine. In the early 1600's the Natives of North America achieved herd immunity to chicken pox without a vaccine, (but that was a sub optimal outcome for them). Now, the Chi-Com bat-soup-pestilence is nowhere near as dangerous a disease as that, but it has killed almost half as many people as flu1918 did in about one third the time.
Kasarda also at one point suggests that those not on team mask are sociopaths, but I don't think that is either helpful or even correct. I think most of them are just either autistically oblivious, or fed up with being pushed around. And in fairness, they do have some completely valid points that don't involve masks.
The lockdowns seemed like a good idea with the info that was available (particularly the calamity that was befalling Italy) at the time but the implementation in many locales WAS tyrannical.
The restrictions ARE likely to be a template for any oppressive measures to control the citizenry.
The masks ARE seen by certain of our leaders as a symbol of submission...one which they ditch as soon as they think the cameras are off.
The examples of political targeting with and selective enforcement of the restrictions ARE numerous.
Perhaps the most worrying trend was the snitch lines reminiscent of the East German Stassi. Furthermore, the prosecutions of protestors, in cars, wearing masks who only wanted to open their businesses, and Parishoners in cars, for violating lockdowns which was followed, by the initial waves of the still ongoing riots as not applicable to epidemiological precautions...which were being explicitly endorsed by the same health care providers who had pushed for the lockdowns...well that did not inspire confidence that restrictions are not politically motivated cruelty.
Finally, the devastation wrought on small businesses by the lockdowns and the hyper acceleration of worrying trends in retail and real estate by them have done nothing to alleviate the fears of those who feel (rightly to an extent) that the powers that be hate them and will miss no opportunities to screw with them.
Note though, that those valid points are about the clumsily targeted lockdowns and not the masks, which are lumped in with them by a beleaguered and miserable public.
However, if we are to continue to open up again I REALLY don't think that a mask is the hill to die upon. Indeed, to the extent that it mitigates the spread, it will prevent further devastating lockdowns by making them unnecessary and indefensible even to those who gain a sadistic pleasure in inflicting them upon us.
With regard to those smug nags who look down on those who chafe at the lockdowns as if they were impatient children, I think it was Pete who mentioned in the comments some months back that there are two Americas right now.
There are those like myself who are unaffected or making MORE money than usual, and those whose lives have been absolutely devastated by the lockdowns. I see little difference in empathy levels between the oblivious libertarians who refuse on "principle" the basic civic duty of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a disease and the contemptuous indifference that those who can continue their jobs via ZOOM have towards those who are loosing everything while those who hold the keys to power keep them imprisoned.
The minor annoyance of wearing a mask when in a store or using public transit seems like a small price to pay for ending both the economic and human nightmare, and seems like an easy way to give some protection to those who are most vulnerable to this gift from the CCP.
This being an election year, there are other practical, though less universally appreciated reasons to wear a mask as well; ones that don't actually involve giving a hoot about anyone else. The vulnerable are largely old people and if they die of the Wu-Flu before November 3rd they will surely (as the dead are wont to do) end up voting Democratic.
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