Suddenly™

Two more cases of Pfizocarditis:

One

Two

"Of course, 20- and 30-year-olds die of cardiomegaly and heart attacks all the time," said No Doctor Ever.

 

Sunday Music: Head Over Heels

 First of three hit singles from Go-Gos album #3, from the heart of 1984.

_____

Administrivia: It's also 1984 hereabouts, as apparently the rains have drowned local internet service. If I couldn't bootleg time at work, this post wouldn't even have gotten up today. We switched to music posts on Sundays because it's unfailingly the lightest day for blog traffic.

Regular posting resumes whenever TPTB decide that such service is any sort of priority for them. Which it apparently wasn't all day today.

And the weather-guessers predict three more days of monsoons starting tonight or tomorrow.

Public School Chimp Out: White Feather Awarded

h/t Gateway Pundit

Apparently the battery was in response to 6'6" 270-pound 17-year-old Dindu having his  Nintendo game taken away by a teacher's aide during class. Rex Kramer's timeless comment  comes to mind:

Our concern over the incident, troubling but hardly noteworthy in the grand scheme of zoology that passes as public schooling this century, is the immediate incident response. Or rather, the lack thereof. We hereby award -50 points to the alleged Marine Corps SNCO who strolled up to the assault in progress with zero sense of urgency, then tenderly ministered to the emotionally distraught Dindu, including allowing him to renew his assault after the first go-around, rather than applying a briskly executed arm bar, choking the living fuck out of the future lifetime felon and ward of the FL state penitentiary system, and then kicking him in the balls both hard and enough times that he'd never have any possibility of reproducing offspring. The latter would have been within Marine Corps policy. Sauntering over and daintily and tepidly shooing the criminal away are decidedly not.

If he'd hurled himself at that miscreant, he'd have gotten uncountable offers to replace any damaged parts of his uniform, at minimum. Instead, people should send him endless boxes of tampons. Maybe courtesy of the school's ROTC detachment?

Way to go, Staff Sergeant Chickenshit Bitchface Pussypants. 

The sailor in the Village People was more butch than you. Now we know who's recruiting at the gay bars these days, and why recruiters nationwide in all the military services can't make their quotas.

If we were Commandant for so much as thirty seconds, convening your court martial under Article 134 for dishonoring the entire Marine Corps would be our first official act this morning. Finishing out your enlistment as a private and scrubbing bilges non-stop in the interim between that day and your separation ought to about cover a fitting punishment, until the day you're marched off your terminal duty station the same way they kicked Chuck Connors out off of his cavalry post for cowardice in the opening of Branded. Ideally, with a firm kick in the ass just before the gate slams behind you. Generally, when people see someone so thoroughly shit on a Marine uniform, they expect them to be from Hollywood, not MCRD.

If you're not going to act like a Marine at all times, including during recruiting or NJROTC duty, at least have the courtesy to wear your best lingerie to school, not Dress Blue Charlies. In a just world, you'd be shunned until separated, and put on permanent guard mount on the most remote post available, for your own protection. How you ever fooled promotion boards is a mystery for the ages, and we still have a healthy suspicion that you'll be discovered to be a civilian imposter guilty of stolen valor, rather than an actual member of any U.S. military service. We expect better conduct from the Merchant Marine, for pity's sake.

Consider your white feather officially awarded, and well-deserved.

And we can only hope ours is neither the first nor last notice, civilian or official, you receive for your half-assed weakling performance in this incident.

And if the Marine Corps is too pussified to outright bust you down to E-1 and separate you from service, they could at least save face by issuing you a skirt. That way, you'd only be an embarrassment to female Marines. Who would kick your ass as well.

UPDATE:

People claiming to know the defendant say he's mentally handicapped, and "this wasn't his fault".

Okay, fair enough.

He's not legally responsible for his violent outbursts, because mental incapacity.

We'll grant all that unreservedly, arguendo.

That just means that any and every legal, medical, and/or educational professional(s), who put a mentally incompetent person the size of an NFL tackle into mainstream high school, which is neither intended, nor staffed and trained, to handle sudden violent behavior from any such person, as this incident illustrates with stark clarity, are the ones legally and morally culpable for setting up such a jackassical occurrence in the first place. 

The answer is simple: put Baby Huey in a mental facility for those subject to violent behavior, revoke the professional certifications of everyone who set up this recockulous situation in the first place, and charge them for both criminal negligence and civil liability, to the fullest extent of the law.

Baby Huey may not be, in any binding legal sense, responsible for the incident.

But the asshole professionals, with licenses and letters after their names, who created this ticking time bomb, ARE ENTIRELY RESPONSIBLE.

And they should pay for it with their careers, their fortunes, and their personal liberty.

There is no legal doctrine that allows someone to plant a human time bomb, and then escape culpability when exactly that bomb - entirely predictably - blows up, like this incident illustrates.

And SSgt. Chickenshit Bitchface Pussypants is still a total piece of shit for not intervening more forcefully under the circumstances. The mores of the civilian world have Jack and Shit to do with what's in play here. He shit on the uniform he wore, all of his fellow Marines, and the entire organization, with his bitch-ass non-response. Zero tolerance for such pussies. Even if he knew all the facts coming out, he's still a gutless coward, for all the reasons previously stated. When a 270 pound thug, of whatever mental competency, is beating on an unconscious woman barely more than a third his size, this isn't a job for a social worker. It's the time and place to step in and resolve the situation with alacrity and overwhelming force. And when it counted, and someone was helpless, and he had the chance to step up and be a Marine, he pussed completely out.

He should be told to pack his shit, and stand by to be ejected from the Corps. Whatever actually happens, for the rest of his sorry existence, he's an ex-Marine. And that's a shame nothing can scrub out.

Happy Birthday, Vlad

Signed, Everyone!

 

On Negotiating With Terrorists

The same people pissing in their boots about nuclear war with Putin now are the first ones who "can't imagine" why neither Britain nor America ever stood up to Hitler until it was too late to stop WWII, because they'd have seen through that appeasement and isolationist malarkey right off.

Uh huh. And I have a bridge for sale, cheap. 

We faced down a potential nuclear war every day with every Russian leader from Stalin to Gorbachev, inclusive. It turns out they didn't want to eat a mouthful of shit and ashes for the next millennium either. If you're going to talk geopolitics with grown-ups, start off by growing a spine and a sack. Some of us have seen this game played most of our lives, Baby Ducks. And the Ostrich Strategy doesn't play. 

Told You So Dept.

Of course those laws don't work.
They knew that before they passed them.
It's always been all about control. Not solving problems.

Make Better Choices

 h/t daily timewaster

This Is A Gold Mine, Comedically and Militarily

 h/t Angus

Watch the whole thing.

The three minutes' summary at the end, starting at about 16:49ff, is world-class military analysis.

It's what a Pentagon briefing on Ukraine would sound like. If you outsourced the speech-writing to Dave Chapelle, Bill Burr, and Ricky Gervais. And had Brendan Gleeson (Mad Eye Moody) read it.

I'm sorry I haven't found this guy earlier, but Angus has mined a solid brick of 24k gold here.

_____

Oh, and while we're on the subject:

Like we told you, months and months ago, and time and again since then.

Computer Training On My Day Off! Oh Goodie!!

 

I may change my stance on euthanasia before the end of the day.

UPDATE: Survived without killing the trainers. Barely.

And it was a gigantic waste of time, as they were showing the software on a too-blurry-to-read projector screen, and the actual software installed for training was on a laptop too small to see the actual working screen, which also lacked the same functions, so I literally could have watched a YouTube podcast at home, in my pajamas, and learned more in 20 minutes' time, than I did wasting most of a day going to this training session. People who do flight training at home with Microsoft Flight Simulator and self-purchased controls are miles ahead of this bargain-basement approach to "training".

There are two absolute truths about EMRs (Electronic Medical Records):

1) Everyone in the medical field is certain that their version of EMR is the worst one ever inflicted on mortal man.

2) They are all correct.

So, in a few weeks, we will switch from the old kludgy, klunky p.o.s., to a shiny new electronic total p.o.s. (apparently on the theory that a steaming fresh turd is better than an old dried out one), and patient care will slow to a crawl for days to weeks while we find out all the things the IT bozos didn't think of that crash it, total chaos and panic will ensue, a blue cloud of profanity will form over the hospital system's various branches, and then we'll settle down to our newest p.o.s., and slowly beat it into submission. We hope.

Every month they will go back to paper charting (always on the night shift) for several hours, while IT finds all the old bugs in the software, kills them, and installs new ones at a 2:1 ratio, slowing the system's responses even further, which will be followed by "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." for several more years, as we try mightily not to kill someone because of a charting problem that we complained about pointlessly for years, whereupon some huckster will sell the corporation a brand new total p.o.s. that still f**ks everything up sideways, with a rusty chainsaw. And never, not once, just as in all of recorded medical history, will anyone involved in programming ask so much as a single doctor, nurse, tech, or clerical weenie for as little as a single word of advice or request on the next p.o.s. they install, and the software abortions will continue, world without end, amen.

{Somebody could literally have thrown $20M at Bill Gates one time, and said "Make us a better medical charting mousetrap." And he would have farmed it out to people less stupid than the current nationwide crop of @$$holes, and he would have gotten it done. But it would have suckage points, and would be improved, year by year, and in a few years, every hospital in the country would use it, it would have metric fucktons of outside add-ons and tech support, and it would be the equivalent of Google, YouTube, Amazon, or Twitter. He'd have another billion dollars, and no one anywhere would have to waste time re-inventing the wheel every couple of years, forever. But where's the fun in that, right?}

Thanks to Obozo and his dipshit minions at HHS, everyone has now spent literal billions on these fucktarded craptastic disasterpieces, which interfere with patient care, slow delivery of it, and force all actual practitioners to spend 2 hours treating the computer program for every 20 minutes they spend on actual patient care. At this rate, a new nurse now will only be able to treat 2-3 patients a shift by the time they retire, and need a master's degree in computer science to do their jobs, the exact opposite of the UPS clipboard that they can and do teach high school dropouts how to use in a couple of hours.

Back in the day, I noted that UPS tracked a $5 package with a $5,000 clipboard, while we took care of $50,000 patients with 50¢ worth of paper and pen. That was absolutely backwards.

The promise of EMRs was that they would be portable, accessible, and compatible. The reality is that they are an abomination, less secure than hiding the patient's medical records under their pillowcase, none of them talk to each other, and patients in Turd World countries where pen and paper charting is the norm get better hands-on care than patients anywhere a computer chart is in use.

But we moved from 18th century charting to the space-age all right. With programs from the 1960s, during the Apollo era. Totally not kidding about that. It's a wonder the software wasn't mailed to us on 8" floppies or magnetic tape reels. (Actually, for all I know, that's exactly how it was sent.) A dozen years later, it's only gotten worse, every single time a change is made.

Thank your congressweasels and the illegal alien Kenyan.

There is nothing whatsoever on the entire planet in all of world history that government cannot royally fuck up simply by looking at it or touching it.

Reminder: The Vehicle FAK

 

Somebody's patient, somewhere, may have blown out a varicose vein at work, managed to spurt out two units (a liter) of blood while driving to the hospital, had it immediately repaired by the ED MD on duty, and then, apparently stable, have then actually gone into mild shock, passing out, and requiring fluid resuscitation with half a gallon of normal saline, and required a hospital admission, for "just a little bleeding".

If that were my patient, I - of course - couldn't talk about it because of HIPPA laws. But there's always the possibility it happened somewhere.

Which is why keeping at a minimum some QuikClot, a roll of Coban, an ACE or Israeli bandage wrap for a pressure dressing, and a CAT-T tourniquet or equivalent, in a small and handy vehicle first aid kit isn't just a random option.

You may not be interested in trauma, combat medicine, or bleeding control, but that doesn't mean trauma isn't interested in you. Failure to plan is planning to fail.

This was "just a little ruptured vein". That wouldn't stop.
This patient didn't get to the hospital. But they made it to the morgue.
Leaks - ANY leaks - in your meatsuit can be terminal.

Unless you want to roll the dice on passing out in your car at freeway speeds, injuring yourself and possibly other people, and ending up in shock in Main Trauma all busted to hell, after the equivalent of a pinhole in a minor superficial vein turned into Demolition Derby. All because "you thought you could make it to the ER okay on your own", right up until things got hazy, and your car went all spinny and flippy and perhaps explodey.

Don't want to deal with the hassle of having that kind of stuff near to hand, anywhere, anytime?

No problem. Suture self.

Help Wanted

h/t daily timewaster 

And Now, A Word From Your Overlords

 

Sunday Music: Midnight Train To Georgia

You will never hear us talking about "Black History Month", and we've heard enough about the midnight train in Ohio. Today is time for pure timeless soul, with Gladys Knight & The Pips doing their massive hit, released in August of '73, and hitting Number One before Halloween.

 

Another Award

We love a happy ending!

We also herewith award the random horse catcher with appropriate honors:

"For conspicuous jackassery and stupidity in a public place, by trespassing on private lands and interference with a hunt, Random Limey Jackass is herewith awarded the FAFO Medal (non-fatal class), for learning a lesson about jumping horses and gravity which could be learned in no better way. Well done, you stupid bastard. Hopefully next time, the dogs will attack you too."

USMC 1, DARPA 0

 If you haven't seen this yet, you need to:

"You can't be three steps ahead of someone who doesn't know where they're going."

Truer words were never spoken.

In the classic tale of this genre, 10 Marines were put in a locked room covered in 3 feet of sand with 10 crowbars, and the Marines were told to test the crowbars to see if they were "Marine-proof"..

When they opened the room an hour later, 2 of the crowbars were twisted together inseparably,  5 of the crowbars were broken, and 3 of them were missing.

Digging Out The Rot

 h/t Wilder

When the minister asked her "Do you take this man...?"
the bride meant it. For everything he had.

Last Wednesday at Wilder's site, he made the point that the right spouse is the recipe for "Winning!" in the game of life. And that's absolutely 5-star gold-plated advice. Then he made a modest proposal at the end of his post:

I’ll say this again – my Gen X road was easier than the Zoomer and Millennial kids.  A young man faces women that are hostile.  That turns him into a man that’s not prepared.  If I might make a modest proposal, let’s bring back shame for women.  And let’s bring back pride for men.

It was in reference to stopping part of the ongoing cultural rot. But as I told him there, it won't work that easily.

Bringing back shame, alone, won't cut it.

If you're bringing back public stocks, pillories, the lash, scarlet letters, head-shaving, and Committees of Vigilance, we can talk.

No, seriously.

Okay, not going to do that? Slackers.

Here's a far easier one: Outlaw no-fault divorce. Ban it outright. Marriage is forever, unless abandonment, abuse, infidelity, or prison step in. And abuse isn't "leaving the toilet seat up", or "buying the wrong brand of corn", or the 3000 silly-ass reasons 50% of married women hork up on command like your cat with a furball, the minute something better comes along, as they leave skidmarks out of their vows and down to the county clerk's office.

Too harsh? We'll water it down even farther.

You can still bail the hell out for nothing, and anything.

But the bank account gets split down the middle the day you file, they toss a coin (literally) to award child custody, the other spouse (of either sex) has to pay a nationwide-fixed amount per child until they turn 18 - no more, and no less - and whenever a marriage is dissolved, neither partner gets to keep anything. No alimony for either partner. Alimony is indentured servitude, and outlawed as such by the 13th Amendment. Any property from before the marriage reverts to its prior owner. Any joint property is liquidated, the partners split 90% of it right down the middle, and the state (or the lawyers) get the other 10%, and that's the end of it. Any state found to be awarding custody to 51% or more of either sex in any year forfeits all tax revenues for that year, and the receipts from same to be divided equally between the 49% wronged.

Oh, and one other thing: abortion requires the consent of the father. No unanimous decision? No unilateral choice. It took two of you to make a baby, so now it takes two of you to abort it, if you're married.

But as another sop to those who cannot keep their legs crossed until marriage, if you keep the kid borne outside marriage against the consent of the father, you - the mother - are also awarded sole financial responsibility for that child's upkeep until its majority. By law. Your body, your choice? Your bill. You can keep any child; you cannot keep any man's wallet. If you bore the child out of wedlock, you made that choice. Now you get to own it, and the bill comes due every mealtime, for decades. And no public child support. We won't need shame when bastardy comes with a financial disincentive. Again.

"Wah! That's not fair to kids!" Make better choices. Uncle is not your Sugar Daddy either. But if you're still worried, you have to name the father in all cases. Still no welfare. All choices are now bilateral. Fair is fair. Now both parties to baby-making have to make better choices. Can't come up with the father's name? It's all on you, sweetheart.

Kids then are no longer bargaining chips, marriages are no longer for-profit institutions for exes and divorce lawyers, and husbands and fathers are no longer cash cows for milking on the feminazi ranch.

Don't like that? Suck it. Welcome to real equality.

It shouldn't be any great hurdle for all those Strong and Brave™ women in society we keep hearing about to know that when they get married, they're choosing a partner for life, not buying a mealticket for life, and the incorporation cannot be dissolved lightly, nor inequitably.

Extra side-benefit?

With virtually no lottery payday worth having in most divorce cases, and only at-fault divorces being litigated, the blood-sucking divorce lawyer industry dries up and blows away, overnight.

Then a lot of lawyers would have to get honest jobs, like used car sales, working in porn, or playing piano in a brothel.

Without those changes, marriage is dead, even if married folks don't know it yet. Take away all the financial incentives for childbirth and abortion, as well as for divorce, infidelity, abuse, etc., and you can have the civilization your grandparents had. Do it not, and things continue to spiral into the ground, gloriously aflame. As they are.

JW also wrote "It's amazing to see the number of criminals with no fathers in their lives." 

Know what's not amazing?

To see the number of fathers with no criminals in their lives.

Stop treating husbands and fathers as disposable items, as if they were tissues, and civilization thrives.

Divorce and abortion have treated husbands, fathers, and children as illegal aliens in their own culture, with no rights whatsoever. That has to be undone, drastically and in haste, if civilization is to survive.

Nothing less will suffice.

Why This Keeps Happening

Exclusive Press Conference With The Geniuses In Charge of the Palestine OH Response

 

First Groper Bonehead, and Tranny Secretary Buttplug, reporting for duty!

Another Day, Another Defenestration

As the Russian bureaucracy devolves into a life-imitates-art and much-less-funny Monty Python sketch, news today that another Putin-linked top Russian defense official has died of Failure To Fly, this time in St. Peterburg.

Marina Yankina, aged 58, Head of Financial Supply of Russia's Western Military District (which includes most of Russia's border with Ukraine), had gone from ordinary worker to head of her department in only the last five years, before suddenly deciding to take an impromptu flying lesson from 160' up. Various sources have claimed a number of excuses for her last flight, none of which, miraculously, seem to include the FSB pushing her out the window. Why she chose to open the window on a balmy 28° degree F. day, when there were perfectly good busses and trains to step in front of on the ground at street level, remains a mystery.

Russia hasn't had this many people from the Defense Ministry crash to earth in a year since Khrushchev ran their space program. But what the hey, any major country could have 10, 15, or even 20 defense officials all fall out of windows in any one year span, amirite? It's just bad luck.

Whatever the reasons for her plunge, yet again, while the worst place to be for Russians is in an army trench on the Ukraine front, the second worst casualty rate continues to be suffered by anyone in Putin's defense establishment.

At least if they all moved to the ground floor, they could commit suicide the old-fashioned way in Russia: seven or ten bullets to the back of the head, or toasting bread with an electric toaster while taking a hot bath.

UPDATE: Per comments below, this was possibly because someone grifted 70% of the funds for the AA defense forces in that district. Regardless of whether Yankina tried to fly to Neverneverland because she was a co-conspirator, or a whistleblower, the main point is still this: 70% of the funds allocated to equip AA forces in the Western Military District (the district supplying the bulk of the fighting forces in this year-long military debacle) didn't get where it was intended, and never made it to the pointy end of the stick for air and missile defense. Which may explain the randomly exploding bits and bobs throughout Russia proper for some months, going back to last spring. Perhaps it also explains the spectacularly underwhelming performance Vlad's drunken bumpkins have put on for the world since last February if Peter and Paul had to be robbed, and they've run out of other people's money to prosecute this invasion "Special Military Operation". And maybe even helps explain the perpetual delays in the as-yet-to-be-unleashed, someday, possibly, maybe Russian Summer Fall Winter (Spring?) Counter-Offensive, if they keep having to send more money, because the Russian stagecoaches keep turning up robbed before they arrive at the fort.

One can but hope no one sends any mystery balloons over Russia; might be that no one would notice. Bummer.

Time for a popcorn and soda run.

But hey: Massive byzantine corruption and graft? In RUSSIA?!? Who knew???

One Good Turn Deserves Another

Monday, Borepatch posted the above fantastic, epic, and soon-to-be-classic meme-poem.

Hold my beer, Dr. Seuss and ChatGPT.

Today, I told him that if he (or anyone else, for that matter) ever prints that in book form with proper Seussian illustrations, I'll take a case.

Why, you may ask?

This Is All Your Own Fault, You Know

 h/t WRSA and Chief Nose Wetter

Apparently, too many folks in Flyover Country, from Ohio to New Hamster (oh, and some slop-over in Canuckistan; sorry, eh?), haven't been getting their boosters and dying of Suddenly™ fast enough to suit TPTB, so they've switched to more active measures to thin the herd.

Mighty white of them.

It's always predictable what happens when government has your best interests at heart, isn't it?

Just for giggles, nota bene that the vast bulk of that crap is hanging in the air below 2500m, i.e. at less than 8,000'. Most of it a lot lower. IOW, it's pretty well hugging the ground, not going up high and dispersing. All the way to Canada. PA, yes; but upstate NYFS and Vermont are getting heavily rogered by this. This isn't just the Ohio River Valley. It's the Allegheny. The Oswego. The Oneida. The Hudson. The St. Lawrence Seaway all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Niagara Falls. Lake Erie. Lake Ontario. Along with hundreds of miles of lesser rivers, creeks, canals, lakes, and ponds.

I hope everyone is updating their "WHO and WHERE" lists as appropriate.

O, Clucking Bell

Or at least, words that rhyme with that.

Senile Senators Dubin and Grahamnesty propose DREAM Act that would give 2M Illegal Aliens Amnesty

Because Lindsay Grahamnesty is spring-loaded to the "Fuck Americans" setting, and we didn't learn enough about this kind of jackassery when we got 11M illegal aliens instead of the 2M "estimated" by Reagan's disastrous IRCA in '86.

Apparently the Dead RINO Party still hasn't figured out that until you build a impenetrable wall from coast to coast, and ship the 30,000,000 illegals already lounging here back wherever-the-fuck they came from, the idea is a non-starter.

And would you fucktards who keep knee-jerking for Grahamnesty in South Carolina PLEASE kick his stupid old ass TFOut of the Senate, FOREVER?? Kentucktards already re-saddled us with Bitch McConjob for another six years, so help a country out, yo.

It's bad enough that he's an idiot, but now he's practically bending over in the Senate Chamber in naught but a pair of lacy panties, with a red and white bullseye embroidered over his fundament, right below the words "Will put out for amnesty".

If this is what a bare (R) majority in that moribund pustulent corpus gets us, having Russia lob a nuke onto it is far from the worst thing that could happen, and rather more a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Pardon, Your Slip Is Showing...

 

Persistence

"VICTORY! Maybe Someday..." "in a pig's ass!"

 

This Might Be Why Your Junk Hurts

 

In response to one of yesterday's posts, commenter Fido offered up, in apparent rebuttal, the abstract of an Oz/Kiwi study on PubMed, comparing effectiveness of cloth versus medical masks for personal protection. We held off posting it only until we had a chance to devote the requisite time to giving it a once-over. The results did not turn out the way we suspect Fido had hoped.

Natzsofast, Guido.

Ground rules:

1) This no personal slam on Fido. I don't know him, but I'm spotting him that he was offering what he thought was "Scientific Proof!" as a legitimate debate data point, in good faith.

2) The slam here is on the total jackasses and frauds deliberately foisting such ass-generated codswallop on the public, for any purpose other than pure comedy relief.

3) That point established, pray, go and read our reply in detail.

4) First and foremost, and apart from what we wrote, both cloth and medical-grade masks are NOT (and never were) intended to provide any protection to the person wearing the gorram things, they're worn to prevent the wearer's slobber droplets from infecting other people, since Joseph Lister was a practicing surgeon in Victorian England 150 years ago (which you'd think even the stupid bastards in Oz and Kiwistan would have been taught at some point in their obviously wasted years of formal education). So anyone studying which masks provide better protection, when comparing masks never intended to provide any wearers ANY protection whatsoever is simply a world-class fucktarded moron, with delusions of functional intelligence. This is like testing t-shirts and cotton underpants to see how much protection they provide in a motorcycle crash: so far beyond pointlessly stupid one cannot be seen from the other even from space. (If this is news to you, apply a tourniquet to your wedding tackle at once.)

5) "Studies" of this caliber of babbling baboonery is exactly why bloggers like Silicon Graybeard remind us nearly annually that anything between 70% and 95% of all studies published are total non-reproduceable bullshit (he'll have the exact number handier than I do, I'm sure), and why that's so to an even higher percentage where Covidiots and their Covidiocy are concerned.

6) If you didn't read a given study, and/or cannot grasp in a couple of minutes where it probably veered off into lunch for Biff Tannen, you probably shouldn't be jumping up and down and pointing to one, linking to any, or blogging any collection of them as "meta-studies".

Another tragic victim of junk science "studies"

7) As we noted in comments previous to our reply to Fido, "meta-studies" are like polling the fans at a basketball game - and the guys selling beer outside, and  the parking lot attendants not even following the game, and random hockey fans in some other county or state or province - on who's winning the game; as opposed to actually, y'know, looking at the scoreboard for the correct answer. It's what you do when you have grant money, but have blown it on pizza and beer, and are too lazy or stupid to do actual frontiers-of-science original research, because that's too hard, and they got their MD, MPH, or Ph.D. credentials online, from Jamaica or Zambia. Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters weren't entirely fictional characters.

Any Day Now™

 

(AMSTERDAM: Moscow Times) "An elite Russian naval infantry unit made up of mostly mobilized troops has suffered a crushing defeat near the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, Russian media reported Monday, citing one of the survivors. 

The 5,000-strong 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade has been “nearly destroyed” after it lost up to 300 marines per day in Russia's assault on the coal-mining town, according to comments by the Ukrainian defense forces to Politico on Sunday.

A surviving marine who spoke with the 7x7 regional news site said the losses were so severe that one landing assault company had only eight men remaining, while many others were taken prisoner.

“Those who survived were said to be deserters,” the unnamed marine was quoted as saying, estimating the brigade’s losses at 500 or more men killed.

Citing his commander, the marine told 7x7 that the brigade — nearly 90% of whom were recently mobilized soldiers — did not expect to return to Russia alive or unscathed."

Relax, Put-tards: I'm sure the Moscow sources are totally lying about this latest Russian "victory". We'll all get to see how things go when Russia launches its next offensive, which launch schedule makes NASA look reliable by comparison.

Personally, I refrain from further comment, except to echo this classic Tom Hanks response to a similarly shattering turn of events:

Don't Fight The Last War

"Masks Don't Work!"

If that sounds like you, you're demonstrably a scientific moron. The claim is as asinine as claiming rocks don't work when used by sea otters or raccoons, or that wrenches don't work on lug nuts. You sound like an idiot for saying it, because you are one, and the question is beyond further rational dispute.

What is also absolutely true, is that masking policy, or indeed any policy that depends to any degree on personal compliance with masking, or any other non-compulsory thing, is doomed to abject failure. (We take a moment to remind the "Aesop got COVID wrong!" fucktards that we warned you about this problem only about three years ago, before we, or 99.9999% of you, had even met someone with COVID.)

Whether TPTB were too stupid to know this outcome, or deliberately ignored it for their evil ends is immaterial. Because either way, they tried it, and as foreseen, it failed most miserably. (You can debate whether this was coincidence or design; frankly, IDGAF).

The end result is, it failed colossally.

So ask yourself: in your experience on this planet, does failure make TPTB grow more reflective and considerate of common sense? Or do they usually double down on Teh Stoopid? Take your time answering.

So knowing that, and looking at the inexorable accelerating descent into draconian megalomania by your would-be overlords, maybe do yourself a yuuuuuge favor, take your finger off the pause button to blast Twisted Sister  and  The Who at 130 dB, and stop trying to fight and win The Second War Of The Mask.

It isn't coming.

O, hell no it isn't.

As I noted in reply to one of the intelligent comments to yesterday's post, that's not the way to bet. The oligarchy is crazy and stupid, but they're clever, and not entirely clueless.

How does DotGov always respond when you don't measure up to their expectations? With sweetness and light, and tenderly wooing you back into the fold?

But with you, next time, they're going to say, mock-reasonably,

"Hey, sorry buddy, we tried the soft approach last time, and let you wander hither and yon with your slipshod and haphazard pseudo-compliance with wearing face diapers, but this time the gloves are coming off. We're simply locking your infected asses in your houses for the duration. Line up for your test."

And, in news that sucks if it's news to you, that approach has flawless and bombproof medical and legal pedigree that stretches unbroken back to the Roman republic, or even earlier.

Refusing face diapers won't be an option next time around, bucko.

And there's GOING to be a "next time".

They like how it felt, and they're going to shoot up a bigger dose of that high the next time they get the chance. Even if they have to make the chance. I deal with addicts every day. Ask me how I know.

So whether by blind luck and happenstance, or deliberate design, TPTB have now seen a pandemic, any pandemic, as a nifty way for them and their cronies to get around that Constitution thingie, and start some serious population control, both temporary and permanent, and even better than an existential war.

Potentially or demonstrably actually sick?

GTFBack into your plague-den house, until further effing notice, on pain of getting tossed into Pandemic Chateau d'If . And Edmund Dantes or The Man In The Iron Mask had a better shot at freedom by tunneling out than you ever will once that happens.

So you'd better start wrapping your head around that, planning and equipping for contingencies, to get around not getting quarantined, and/or not getting rounded up for breaking quarantines, the best way you know how.

#Anonymous Commenter fast track

Paging Otto

 

Le sigh. 

Today we look at something a lot of people think they understand, point out the glaring flaw in their reasoning, and deliver poo-flinging amounts of butthurt upon them. For them, the apocalypse. For us, any day ending in "y".

Some people keep wanting to be right on something, and it truly pains us. Like sucking on lemons would. We'd rather not do it, because there's no sweetness to be found. But sometimes we just cut up the lemons, and let other people suck it. This would be that time.

You may have seen this little bucket of codswallop. Usually as the preface for a "See?!? We Wuz Right! MASK DON'T WORK! ELEVENTY!" article trying to justify their weak grasp of middle school science.

There are at least two problems with that line of jackkassery :

1) In neither that study, nor in any of the 20 40 60 78(!) studies cited does anyone say "Masks Don't Work". Not as such, nor anything close to that.

2) That's not what they were even studying, nor even attempting to study.

So what does the study cited actually say?

I know this is a novel approach for people who swallowed the "Masks Don't Work" horseshit hook, line, and sinker, but let's excerpt the following quote from the actual study summation:

Author's Conclusions

"The high risk of bias in the trials {that would be the exact 78 studies everyone who never read them is huffing and puffing about - A.}, variation in outcome measurement {meaning endless apples-to-oranges fallacious equivalencies -A.},and relatively low adherence with the interventions {meaning no one wore their f**king masks neither properly, nor most of the time, exactly like we told you they wouldn't, ever} during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions."

In other words, 

"We took your grant money, and spent most of it on hookers and blow, because after looking at all this endless horsesh*t passing for scientific study, we still cannot make head nor tails out of any of it." 

But wait! There's more!

"The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited..."

In other words,

"We'd have more confidence in a study of the best traps to catch a Bigfoot, if it had been conducted by the Seven Dwarves, and verified by the Tooth Fairy."

Saving the best for last:

"There is a need for large, well-designed RCTs [randomised controlled trials] addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness..."

In other words,

"None of these studies was large enough for statistical significance, they were all poorly designed, they were neither randomised, nor were other variables controlled for, nor did any of them examine actual effectiveness, let alone in multiple settings nor populations, nor did any of them control for the fact that people didn't follow any of the imaginary controls, so we really have no idea what effect that had on the dubious results obtained, and quite frankly, they would all be more authoritative if they'd sacrificed a goat, or read chicken entrails and tea leaves before stating their pre-ordained conclusions. We're sorry we even bothered, because what we found was pure bullshit, masquerading as prime rib and sirloin." 

The study authors have just told you, point-blank, that their study wasn't worth a bag of warm piss, and that they wish they'd found any relevant, accurate, and valid studies to look at, but since all they had to work with was horseshit, they decided to bake horseshit pie.

We pray you, stop eating the pie.

What doesn't the study say, anywhere, with any level of confidence higher than "This is probably total bullshit, and liable to be the exact opposite of reality"...?

It doesn't say, anywhere, explicitly nor by implication, that Masks Don't Work.

Which is nonetheless what multiple sites keep cock-a-doodle-dooing over, as if just the opposite were true.

If you're going to get off the helicopter and walk into the tail rotor, you'll have your reward rather promptly.

There's been, AFAIK, one actual study of whether or not masks work to reduce the spread of virus, with a statistically valid sample, and scrupulous methodology.

We'll keep citing it until the penny drops even with the midwits in the crowd:

Efficacy of face masks.

That's the only actual study of mask effectiveness in the last 5 years of which we are aware.

The 78 studies looked at weren't looking at that, which is why they set out neither to prove nor disprove that proposition.

Because they were studies not of mask effectiveness, but of masking policy effectiveness.

♫ One of these things, is not like the other one...♫

Masks work. 100x to 1000x better than wearing nothing. You could look it up.

But masking policies? Abysmal failure.

Because people are quite simply total fucktards.

You want to cite the "study" that's the basis for numerous "Masks Don't Work! See, We Told you So!" posts? That's nothing but psycho-ceramics: the study of crackpots.

But you want to tell us trying to convince the majority of the population to do something sensible, and do it circumspectly, correctly, and scrupulously, has less than a snowball's chance in Hell of working?

We told YOU that very thing, right on this blog, nearly three years ago.

Still feeling butthurt? There's an app for that.

Sunday Music: Something Stupid

Covered many times by multiple artists, including a splendid version by Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman, the best version is still this 1967 track by Frank Sinatra, and his daughter Nancy, who took it to four weeks at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100. Now you've got your soundtrack for St. Valentine's Day.

Bad Idea File?

 

Have It Your Way

 h/t daily timewaster

Total days, lifetime, we've ever spent shoveling snow: Zero.

Don't be a hater.

Why We Call Him Gabbin' Nuisance

 

Gov. Moonbeam's jackassical successor, Nancy Baltimoron's nephew Gabbin' Nuisance, has been dragged, kicking and screaming while wetting his pants, into admitting that a strict scrutiny of Califrutopia's draconian firearms restrictions in accordance with Bruen will outright sh*tcan the lot, starting with "may issue" CCW permitting schemes (which actually mean "No way in hell!" in the most libtarded counties), then taking down the unconstitutional serial "assault" weapons bans enacted here since 1989, and then probably taking down the 10+ rd. mag cap ban.

All that will leave, once the rulings are dropped from Judge Saint of Benitez (graven on stone tablets!), will be to first dismantle the jackassical pistol "approved" list, which keeps 90% of all pistols manufactured worldwide unable to be sold inside the state, except to LEO Only Ones. And then the requirement to register ammunition purchases, which will similarly be unlikely to stand, as they demonstrably have had no impact except to make ammo for legal purchasers scarcer, and onerously harder to obtain. And they're on the menu too.

Gabbin was practically in tears at the Admission Of The Obvious press conference. So much for his presidential ambitions, in a country that's still not 70% Democommunist.

The day all that becomes a bad memory cannot come soon enough, and if those rulings proceed and fulfill all of Nuisance's worst fears, the rest of the country can have a drink, on Califrutopia.

With 10% of the country set to return, in the very near future, to being able to buy anydamnthing they want to at the gun stores again, I'd suggest going long on weapon-maker and ammunition-maker stocks. This is the best thing to happen to Califrutopia since plug-and-play AR-15 lowers and bullet buttons.

Attention To Orders:

 h/t Cold Fury

"For conspicuous stupidity and dumbassery, the Medals and Decorations Branch hereby awards the FAFO Medal to Elias Armstrong, age 12 of  Denver CO. While engaged at the time in the theft of a vehicle, ARMSTRONG was confronted by a superior armed force, in this case, the OWNER of said vehicle, and a furious gunfight between the parties ensued. ARMSTRONG was stricken by gunfire, and died in short order of his wounds. The Secretary of Community Policing takes great pleasure, therefore, in awarding ARMSTRONG with the FAFO Medal. As he expired in the escapade, he is further authorized to affix the Gold Star Device, denoting a fatal FAFO award."

"Having expired amidst criminal conduct, he is eligible for and concurrently awarded the Trayvon Campaign Ribbon."

"Finally, as he thankfully expired without any offspring, his exploits will be forwarded to the Darwin Awards authorities, for further consideration of additional honors or awards.

ARMSTRONG exemplifies the highest expectations of his family, the Dindu tribe, the BurnLootMurder militia, and the entire Diversity Bean Movement.

Hand...SALUTE!"

 

NOT the awardee. Just a pic of the only salute he deserves.

Any complaints about this post, or the blog, may be submitted in triplicate here.

R.I.P. Burt Bacharach

 

Yeah, he wrote a song or two. Or three.

Only eight Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy, and three Oscars to show for it.

And a string of hits from the 1960s to the 1990s. No small number sung by Dionne Warwick.

At home, in Los Angeles, aged 94 years.

What a talent. What a life.