Latest From CA

WRSA: 

It does indeed appear as expected. To which progress we add hearty encouragement:

About WRSA : UPDATED

As we offered sincere congrats at the blog's (brief) return, we offer our heartfelt condolences to CA, currently fighting it out with software that falls over and crashes with more frequency and predictability than even Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants the Ist.

It's got to suck to go through, but the struggle continues, and we hope it concludes well for the site's permanent return.

UPDATE: Read Cold Fury host Mike Hendrix's comment, cf. this announcement at his site,

And CA's first entry.

TL;DR: WRSA is now hosted at Cold Fury until further notice. Pass the word.

None of us is stronger than all of us.

Welcome Back

While we know CA has long maintained alternate comms and outlets, we take the time today to welcome the restored WRSA website back among the land of the living. Which is also apropos of the day. Just a coincidence, we're sure.

There's a New (Old) Outlaw In Town

You just can't keep a good criminal down:

Big Country Expat has broken out of Goolag Prison!

Ssssssshhhhhh! Don't tell anyone. Bookmark the site.

You're welcome.

Have you seen this man?

Anything But...

h/t C.W. 

If C.W.'s daily timewaster blog isn't a regular stop, you're missing out.

His weekly Friday Open Road post alone is worth the price of admission.

I don't know where he finds his pics, of everything under the sun. But I know where I find them: at his blog.

Cold Fury Cross-post

 

From Big Country Expat at Cold Fury:

Ok Y’all

All bullshitting aside.

Mikes in the Critical Care/ICU. I’m waiting to find out -where- exactly.

(FOLLOW UP: DO NOT BLOW UP THE HOSPITAL WITH PHONE CALLS AND SHEEEE-IT)
Hit me up if’n you have wants needs questions and I’ll do my best as the ‘gatekeeper’ to keep y’all up to date. Currently, they got him in Caromont Regional Medical Center. In lieu of flowers and other assorted phaggotry, donate at the GoFundMe I set up for him. Ladies, Nude pics and such will be forwarded as deemed appropriately, as well as panties and other such ‘morale boosting’ stuff.

I just got word that my brother-from-another-mother Mike Hendrix, late of the famed rockabilly band The Belmont Playboys and more recently of the Blog “Cold Fury” http://coldfury.com/ has gotten seriously hemmed up medically speaking. Last Thursday after a slightly prolonged absence from his blog, I reached out to him to find out WTF was going on and I heard back that he’d come down with a nasty case of food poisoning.

Since then, apparently something faaar MOR serious happened.

His brother (actual) Jeff called me tonight as I left one of my more ‘colorful messages’ on his phone (in possession currently by his sainted lil ole Lady Mom) who apparently when she recovered from my diatribe, had Jeff call me to fill me in on what’s up.

Essentially Mike’s seriously fucked up.

Food Poisoning turned out to be a MAD infection. His diabeetus didn’t help the issue, so they had to lop off his foot, then his leg, as the infection was/is spreading. They’re fixin’ to make it even MOR stumpy as the infection still isn’t under control. He’s in critical/ICU level condition, but NOT COVID related thank the Gods.

So, My brother-from-another-mother, henceforth now known as “Peg-Leg Mikey” is gonna have some serious medical bills and life altering needs. So hence Ye Olde GoFundMe Fundraiser.

I’m starting the ball rolling with the remainder of my ‘raising Christmas’ fund, and ask you please to help in any way, shape or form. Mike is damned fine people and has entertained people from all walks of life, either musically or through his magnificent acerbic writing and wit.

As they say, step up and help a brother out.
Spread the Word gang. Mike needs us and has never asked for anything.

The Go-Fund-Me is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mike-of-cold-fury-and-the-belmont-playboys

I Remain The Intrepid Reporter,
Worried as all get-the-hell-out
Big Country

Black Friday Bargain

One exemplar from their upload list.

[Dear Racist Racetards: The term "Black Friday" has Jack and Sh*t to do with anything racial. It's the sale day/weekend that is intended to help retailers get their financial books "into the black" i.e. finally turn a profit. Explaining this became necessary once the 40 IQ kids were left in charge of Social Justice, which date is defined as "ever", on any calendar in existence. ] 

For about a year now, on YouTube and multiple other platforms, a few people working as "S2 Underground" have been posting videos once to twice a week, from about two minutes to two hours in length, on intel, counter-intel, and preparedness intel and updates.

They aren't five-star, but the guys behind them clearly know what they're taking about, and have obviously "been there, and done that". Which puts them in front of 90% of YouTube "experts" on anything.

If we had a quibble or three, it's that we wish someone would teach people how to do YouTube videos, starting with "Stop 'umming' and 'uhhing': write a script, rehearse it, and tighten it the f**k up." and moving on to "It's a video, FFS: Don't tell me, show me. Better yet, show me while you tell me." IOW, this is audio-visual presentation. If you're wasting either verbiage or visuals, you're shortchanging your audience by 50%, at minimum.

I would take a salary of $1/yr to consult on this, but most people just bumble along and get better with time.

That aside, the information and concepts they cover, they clearly do from solid knowledge of the subject matter, and you'd have to be a pretty slick operator not to learn something from what they're passing along. (And fully expecting YouTube to eventually hose them out of existence, they're doing it redundantly, on multiple platforms.)

Proving, yet again, they know a good bit about WTF they're talking about.

They have about 90 or so videos up. Some have been overtaken by time, but a lot of the "How To" efforts remain relevant, and you could go from know-nothing to know-a-lot with the investment of some time on their upload list. Topics range from livestreamed intel updates to "5 Minute Tradecraft" to food preparedness. If you can't find something they can help you with, or get you thinking about that you hadn't mentally worked through, you're either not trying very hard, or you're already a soopergenius.

We commend their channel to your watch list, and wish them continued success, and diligent improvement in their offerings. They're worth your time, and to date, your subscription to YouTube continues to cost $0.

Re: Wilder's Site

 

He related some minor site issues, which ought to be resolved presently.

Don't panic. You'll be hip-deep in Pez, puns, and bikini model graphs before you know it. But we're sure he appreciates the concern.

UPDATE 10/20/21 @ 0845EDT: Back Up.

Bloglist Update

We've followed TPopp on his YouTube Redonkulas channel for literal years. Apparently he's added a blogsite version/link.

Added.

Retired SF MSG/Team Daddy. Good Popp is informative. Bad Popp is funny as f**k. He's also right about 95% of the time about anything in his wheelhouse. And it's a biiiiig wheelhouse.

Go. Watch. Learn. Obligatory Beverage Alert: Not responsible for coffee or carbonated beverage burn to your nostrils if you disregard this warning.

And if you want to enter a timehole, go back to his earliest videos on YouTube, and work your way forward through the ones that interest you.

FYI: It doesn't update. Drop in from time to time, and see what he's added.

To Whom It May Concern...

 

Defensive Training Group blog is back on its feet, at least for the time being.

And it should be something you've already done, but you should be making copies of anything on the intarwebz you think may be useful, as it may not be a forever thing.

E.g., any 200 or so US military manuals free for the asking, other than bandwidth.

The savvy will also put them on thumb drives, then hie thenceward to a copy shop and make hard copies.

The really savvy have already done so, and are now putting the whole library on thumb drives to hand out to others who may find them useful. And fear nothing about copyrights; you paid for them with your tax dollars, and they're yours and everyones', by right and by law. People charging more than the cost of printing and shipping are simply living on the margin best described by P.T. Barnum, relating to "one born every minute".

If you haven't done any of this, it's a good time to get busy.

Defensive Training Group Blog Deplatformed

 

Wordpress continue the kulakization of free speech. DTG has been TOS'ed off the internet, some time during the last 12 hours.

If we go down here, be of good cheer.

This is but a side show.

The main act is about to raise the curtain.

See to yourselves, and your own business.

Oh, BTW, you are archiving and printing hard copies of anything you feel is important, aren't you...?

By the by, I picked up an ancient military teletype for almost nothing over the weekend.

Have to see if I can get it to work one of these days...

Keep The Change, Ya Filthy Animals

We love this guy. This is the third year he's glitter-bombed porch pirates, and he product improves every year. He totally qualifies for the term "Evil Genius", except he's actually a Good Genius.

Important safety tip for criminals: never piss off a former JPL engineer with money and time on his hands. You'll become internet-famous, but not in a good way, and it won't go well for you.

The only way to make this any better would be if law enforcement was waiting outside after the package was discarded, with a warrant and handcuffs. With a "gotcha" cam TV news crew right behind the cops, as the perp is frog-marched into custody, and actually criminally charged.

Maybe they can work on the TV show syndication proposal for v4.0, next year.

I'd call the producers of COPS, if I were this guy's agent.

Iron Sharpens Iron; Nothing Sharpens Mud

I don't have to troll around looking for arguments. Just spouting common sense and reality means they find me regardless.

Case in point:

B, over at Middle Of The Right, put up a post. (And I still read people who I disagree with, or who have disagreed with me, because there's always a chance they'll come around, or I will learn something I didn't know, and they absolutely have a perspective that's outside my cranium, which is kind of the point of the internet.)

A thought:

 So Menards (and Home Depot) both were early adopters of the "Mask Mandate"...here where I live in Indiana, months before the state-wide requirements for masks came into effect,,..

But they don't disinfect ANYTHING.

Not carts, not credit card machines, nothing.

The Virus is transmitted via touch and via airborne at a similar rate...

Yet again, we have the requirement for masks, but nothing else. Much like in a restaurant, or a bar, where one is dangerous when walking to and from the table (or the bathroom) but not when eating or drinking.....

The local grocery stores, all of them, including Wal-Mart, DO at least make the attempt to sanitize the carts and other common touch surfaces. 

Much like the TSA, it is all Theater. 

He's gotten touchy before, but against hope, I responded:

Checking temperatures is theater. Absolutely.

Masking works. (I'm open to counter-argument: just provide the names of the first world hospitals that don't require masks in general surgery, and in fact actually prohibit them, and you win.)

Failure to disinfect: that's just stupid laziness.
Gilligan FTW, Example #3042.

But unfortunately, it's the idea of not being able to cough and sneeze his germs all over random strangers that's apparently the point at issue for him, so full of the bile that led to the last go-around, here's his snappy comeback.

Aesop: Show me evidence that they work, and I'll believe you. If they were effective, we should have stopped this disease already as most mask mandates have been in effect for about 10 cycles of infection....there should be little or no cases if masking the population was an effective deterrent to the spread.

So go ahead, prove it. Or shut up.

Your history shows you are big on talk, but not much else. 

Look, Stud, put your dick away. It's just not that big. And certainly nothing to wave about.

(We'll ignore the 47 Straw Man Fallacies you set up there, ignoring things like spread among relatives, where no masking occurs, as though you'd never heard of it. Taking you to task for errors that obvious is just kicking retarded kids, which is why I didn't get personal in my original reply. But you wanted to dance, so I'll call the tune this time.) 

In fact, I agreed with a lot of what you wrote. You got some things right. Huzzah!

But when you throw out little tard-bombs like that last line, you're pogo-sticking in a minefield of explosive poo bombs, and asking not to get any on you.

It's not all theater.

 

"Always avoid 'always'. Never say 'never'." - Rhetoric 101 

But with reality vs. theater, evidently you can't tell the one from the other.

Sorry to have to be the one who pointed it out, but there it is.

And where I disagreed with you, I didn't come after you and insult you, and instead gave you a pathway to demonstrate your superior grasp of this. You elected to fling diaper spackle instead. Color me shocked.

Instead of acknowledging the proof you demanded, which was already pointed out in my response, and then declining to name any hospital that bans masks in surgery "because they don't work", as requested, you skipped to the Triple Dog Dare. Why would anyone offer you more proof when you can't grasp the obvious, that's been around as common knowledge since your grandfather wasn't even a gleam in your great-grandfather's eye?

You decided to get all butthurt, as seems to be your bent, because you didn't get 100%.

My only response to that is the same one I got in school:

"You want 100% scores? Study harder."

This ain't rocket surgery, but you have to make an effort.

But for B's edification, here's the response to him that I won't bother to post on his blog, because it'll never see daylight:

You win. Pasteur was wrong. So was Lister. Semmelweis too.  

Wait, no they weren't.

Here's the critical flaw in your reasoning, from just that reply:

"If they [masks] were effective, we should have stopped this disease already as most mask mandates have been in effect for about 10 cycles of infection." 

Let's change a few small words and phrases, and see if it gets clear for you:

"If [gun laws] were effective, we should have stopped this [gun crime] already as most [gun control] mandates have been in effect for about 10 [years]." 

You're arguing like the guy who thinks passing a law = 100% compliance, because everybody obeys the law, always, at all times and places. Like they don't ever. 

People run red lights 100 times a day. Should we get rid of stoplights, because they don't work, and they're inconvenient? Laws against murder have been in effect since Hammurabi, and yet people still murder each other. Using your "logic" shouldn't we get rid of murder laws too?? Because they obviously don't work! 

And then, knowing people don't obey laws, and having undone your own underlying rationale for why mask mandates should have worked, you argue against yourself, to throw out all mask laws, because people are people. 

All I'm suggesting is that you take a breath, and pick one side or the other. 

Do masks work? 150 years of medical history says yes.
I haven't been everywhere, and I've only worked in 30-40 or so of the 6000 hospitals in this country, for most of three decades, and not in such a cosmopolitan venue as Indiana. So something world-class may have gotten by me that you alone have figured out, unlike hospitals in Rome, Paris, London, NYFC, Tokyo, or anyplace else, going back to when Victoria was a young Queen of England. So I can believe your skepticism and scientific acumen, or my lying eyes. 

You're not going to win on that point, ever, because it's counter-factual.  

Does the lack of perfect 100% compliance mean that the law (or any law) is of no value? That idea is pure hogwash. Perfection is not the standard, and never was. 

People are Gilligans. Not every single one of them, but it only takes one Gilligan to keep the castaways stranded for the entire run of the show. 

Funny on a '60s sitcom; in real life, amidst a pandemic, not so much. 

The Gilligans have been driving this pandemic since Day One. 

You probably get the concept that "We have to win every day; the terrorists only have to get lucky once." 

That's how virus propagation works too.

So, given that 50% or so of those with this infection are asymptomatic, and can never be detected as infectious (except by testing, daily, 330M people in this country, which we haven't come close to accomplishing even given 10 months), do you figure the better way is to pretend this infection doesn't exist, and throw out all restrictions? Or is it to ask you to make the superhuman sacrifice of wearing a mask in public among people, and keep the flying germs from your coughs and sneezes to yourself amidst everyone else, instead of flinging them outwards 10-30 feet at 100-300MPH? 

We only do two things in the hospital, 95% of the time: wear a mask, and wash our hands. And lo and behold, doctors and nurses aren't dropping like flies from Kung Flu, anywhere, despite working literally inches from people with full-blown COVID for 12-hour shifts, for the last 10 months. 

That's your proof. 

Is there hokum and security theater going on?
Hell YES, by the metric fuckton!
Are some evil nitwits arrogating totally unconstitutional authority and powers they don't have to themselves?
Hell YES!!  

Does it piss me off too?  

HELL YES!!!

Go after that pointless nonsense, and I'll march in your parade and subscribe to your newsletter.

Just please stop throwing out the baby with the bathwater simply because it's a minor inconvenience to put a mask on in public places, amidst other people. 

Somebody telling you that you need to wear a mask all by yourself, 20 miles out of town, alone, is a farking moron.
Somebody telling me they don't want to wear one at the supermarket at noon on Saturday "because masks don't work" is an even bigger one. 

Both statements are absolutely true.

And that, B., is the difference between simple pugnacious gainsaying, and making the point.

But your response serves me right for thinking you were ready to change your spots, and be reasonable and rational. Sorry to have troubled your single thought. No, really. But might I suggest that next time, you try two or three thoughts, all at once. The exercise with the increased weight will do your mind well. Not to mention, your blog.

But lest you feel cheated, I made something for you in shop class.

Ol' Remus

We note via comments here that Ol' Remus, of The Woodpile Report, may have passed away from a recently diagnosed cancer.

We have no way to confirm this news, hope it isn't so, and if that be the case, regret the error.
Whether it be true or no, we remain saddened at the ongoing silence of his blog.

He seemed to us - and, we suspect, to many others - a delightful and well-informed gentleman, sophisticated yet down-home sensible, who kindly took notice of this blog in its relative infancy, and found our offerings notable enough to link to and/or feature there, on many occasions.

Words cannot express our thanks for his attentions, but we hold back nothing in stating that anytime our own brain droppings online merited inclusion on his weekly page, we felt like a kid who had hit a home run or brought home a report card of As.

Whatever the cause of his absence online, we feel ourselves, and the rest of the world, to be much the poorer for the silence left in its stead, and are second to none in our regard for the wisdom formerly free by the week at his site.

And our only solace, if he has indeed left this earth, is the hope of an afterlife, where an online acquaintance might be continued someday, face to face, and where he and his recently departed wife are even now reunited.

Breaking: WRSA Pulled?!

If we hear anything solid, we'll post it here.

I have backchannel com out, awaiting reply.
Anyone else gets RT info, not RUMINT, feel free to leave it.

UPDATE:
From The Man himself:

"WRSA nuked by WP for TOS violations.

This is the new RP.

Pass the word please."

New Rally Point:
WRSA

 

Still no word on what popped their weasel, and made Wordpress blow a gasket and nuke the entire site from orbit.

 

UPDATE II:

 

That Would Be Called An "Indicator"

One of the early goals of all Red revolutions is the seizure or destruction of all information distribution outlets.

There is only one truth to the Communist: that day's party line.

Woe unto those who do not adhere.

The second iteration of the Western Rifle Shooters Association (WRSA) blog, hosted by Wordpress, was nuked today.

While it is a loss, it was a deliberate sacrifice of a player to increase situational awareness.

The Reds are on the move.

The prize is the former United States of America.

The Red cares not about race, except to the extent it can and is used to befog the naive about the Party's real goals.

WRSA was, first and always, a freedom advocacy site.

It was shot out of the saddle today by an arm of the Communist enemy propaganda machine.

Their attack did not kill WRSA.

Nor did it kill a single one of its followers.

The totalitarian bastards really can't stop the signal.

Take heart, not just in this tiny skirmish but in the overall struggle to save the West, from WRSA's final masthead:

"This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

― Winston Churchill

Forward.
- Concerned American

Dear Kenny,

"Poor Aesop - this fucks up his whole cha-cha, doesn't it? 

While Los Angeles County has reported a total of 13,816 coronavirus cases, early results from an antibody study conducted with the University of Southern California shows that hundreds of thousands more could have had COVID-19 in the past, officials announced Monday."

Sorry to disappoint you, but not so much.
How science actually works is a wee bit different than you think.
So first, let's talk about this survey :

First, the Good:
They actually allegedly controlled for age, something the Stanford survey notably didn't do. When you let subjects select themselves, instead of picking them randomly, you fuck up any validity of the conclusions. So this time, someone appears to have gone to all the lectures in their statistics classes.

Now, the Bad:
The sample size is way too small.
883 people gets you wild inaccuracy, which is why even KTLA could figure it out, and soft-sell the point that the sample is b.s.
Don't believe me, work it out for yourself online for free.
No math skillz required, which means even Common Core math grads could do this.
If you wanted 99% accuracy (considering major economic and medical consequences hang on decisions made) and you want to minimize the margin of error at ±3%, for a population the size of Los Angeles County (10M in the County proper, or 12,4447,000 people in the metro area, btw), you'd need 1842 people in your sample.
Anything less is statistically invalid. (That means it's functionally bullshit.)
A sample size as small as was actually used gets you only about 90% accuracy, which is fine for determining whether someone wants your brand of laundry detergent, but not even accurate enough for presidential polling, let alone life-and-death public health decisions.

It gets worse from there.
The survey guesstimates that the population already infected just in L.A. County could be 221,000 people - plus or minus 100%. When you have a survey that would pass the sniff test, let alone peer review, you don't issue a result that widely disparate. If they'd split the middle, called the infected percentage 4.2%, i.e. 330,000 people ±110,000, any illiterate bumpkin could tell you were pulling guesses out of your ass.
Like this survey, and the Stanford survey, both did.

The Ugly:
No one has demonstrated, or even alleged, that the test used in these surveys is specific for Kung Flu (SARS-Cov-2), as opposed to any or all coronaviruses, including those that cause the common cold. So for all anyone knows at this point (because none of this happy horseshit has been scientifically vetted), they could be proving that 2-5% of L.A. was exposed to one of the cold viruses this year, and not Kung Flu at all.
Whoops.

But we'll forget all that, and go with this, even though it's basically boob bait happygas by any rational point of view, and pretend it's true, for about a minute.

So 4% of the county's been exposed enough to grow antibodies. Okay.
So opening things up means the other 96% will or might now get exposed.
So in the worst case, 100% of the county gets it, 97% of them are fine, and you only kill off 25 times as many people as have died so far.

So L.A. County could get up to 16,650 deaths (surpassing NYFC!) instead of their current 666 deaths (lucky number!). Let's sign up for that, since it's worked out so well in Brooklyn and Queens.

That took me about 5 minutes to type up and explain to you, or anyone else, even someone with only a grade school understanding and no professional acquaintance with how medical statistics works. Because I've studied that, and done it IRL, and you probably didn't. I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express, or just hear it from someone, I've had to go out and actually do it. Design an entire survey, sample results, and collate the data. From time to time, I still do, as part of my job. I'm sure there are things you do, or have done, as part of your job, that make you similarly familiar with what's reality, and what's bullshit. Silicon Graybeard is an engineer. If he talks about machining things, or radio waves, or Ham radio, or all sorts of really technical sciencey shit I have a vague familiarity with, I figure he knows what he's talking about. Phil over at Busted Knuckles refurbs transmissions and shop machines, so if he's talking about that, I know he's probably got a handle on that. Even Angus McThag, for another example, has probably forgotten more about auto repair than I'll ever know, or have to, so I would tread very lightly before I assumed he was full of shit if he was talking about an engine rebuild.

But as soon as medical knowledge comes up, every swinging Richard in creation thinks they know this shit cold, because they watched CNN for 15 seconds, or heard the radio news burp out two lines that sounds smarter than they are. I lost track of how many people on movie and TV sets, whose expertise on camera exposure or set lighting or truck driving I would never question, suddenly became Harvard Medical School board certified cardiologists - right over my damned shoulder - the minute I, the only licensed medical professional around,  was talking with a patient on set about their chest pain. Everybody in creation thinks he's Dr. Fucking Kildare, because they watched an episode of House, Scrubs, or ER.

It doesn't work like that.

I know what I know, and I study a helluva lot more than just what I do for a living. Triply so before I burp it out in a post online, because, like anyone, I don't want to be wrong, or mislead someone where their life could be at stake. I work as a Registered Nurse, and I specialize in emergency nursing. I carry a dozen specific certifications required to work in that discipline, which means I know a helluva lot about everything, because that's what I see. Every age, every complaint, every sub-specialty. My patients range from 0 minutes old to 109 years old, so far in my career. And I'll cheerfully admit to being only smarter than average in the field, and still learning new things every damned day. As I regularly tell people at work, after doing nursing for 25 years, and the ER for 20, I'm starting to get the hang of it. And that's only in two of the busiest ERs on the planet, and another one or two dozen smaller ones. I've been doing trauma and disaster medicine since before nursing school, back to when Daddy Bush was president.

And unlike the bloviating fucktards who should know WTF they're talking about WRT this virus, but don't, I've already taken care of at least a few dozen Kung Flu patients, whereas most of the jackholes in question (bozos like Anthony Fauci, two-time winner of the Chip Diller "All Is well! Remain calm!" Award) haven't been at a patient's bedside in twenty years, so I have just a wee bit more skin in the game when it comes to understanding this virus, and getting it right.

If you want my full C.V., I'll happy provide it. I know the things I know, and it sure as hell encompasses a metric fuckton of things far beyond just nursing, many (most, in fact) that have nothing to do with how I make my living, because I did a lot of things before I got my nursing license, but unlike any number of loudmouth anonymous keyboard trolls, I'll dispute anything on earth with facts to back it up, instead of just blowing out assgas. I put up with shit on my blog about as well as you do on yours, and comments here are turned off now not because I can't stand to be disagreed with, but because I now don't have to do diaper patrol on people too chickenshit to sign their handle, own their bullshit, and take the heat when they step all over their dicks, without getting all butthurt and personally offended for being called on it.

If you'd like a detailed fisking of the rest of the erroneous bullshit (which, let's be honest, was pretty much all of it) in your latest blogpost about me, we can go back and do that too, and I can post the links and quotes to show you where your memory of what I said has not even a vague acquaintance with the facts of what I actually did say. But I don't think you want to go there, because you'd look even worse when we looked at the videotape, and examined the posts in question.

If you want to ignore how bad the Kung Flu pandemic is, and will probably continue be, that's your business: suture self. You and anyone else has complete personal freedom to be as big a jackass as they care to be, on that and many other topics, and it's no skin off my ass whatsoever. But you don't get to have your own facts about it, and grasping at every half-assed survey, with Jack and Shit to back up its validity, isn't going to serve you well in the long run. That's a nickel's worth of free advice, but the consequences of your actions are all yours. Well, except for anyone else you infect because you didn't know you'd gotten it.

But if you choose to talk shit on the internet, and troll from your blog, you can expect I'll happily repay you back, and leave your credibility the worse for wear.

"He's now predicting widespread death and destruction over the beervirus.
Time is proving him wrong."

Srsly? Ignoring the fact that I've predicted no such wild thing, we'll hit 50K dead from this virus in a few days (which is an entire worst-case flu season, except in just six weeks), the stock market lost $11.5TRILLION (some people would consider $11,500,000,000,000.00 a lot of money...), 20M people are now unemployed, hundreds of thousands of businesses, even major ones, may ultimately fail, and the entire planet is sliding into worldwide economic depression, which will take years to overcome, and yet you figure I 've overplayed my hand on this?

You're a funny guy (your "Shit I post on Facebook" is screamingly keyboard-alert level comedy), you've lived in CA, so you aren't knee-jerk shit-talking when you bash the idiocy that goes in Califrutopia 24/7/365, you find a lot of stuff on the big wide Internet I'd miss, and you aggregate a lot of things from more places than I'd care to visit, much of it interesting and entertaining, at an internet cost to visitors like me of exactly $0. So my sincere thanks for the free ice cream.

But when you figure I'm fair game for thoughtless slander, because your memory is too hazy to get things right, you can step right off and go fuck yourself. I expect you'd feel the same way if the situation was reversed and I'd spent the time to call you out and start making shit up, and if you say not, then you're a hypocrite as well as a jackass. That either applies, or it doesn't, so you can decide which end of that stick you want to own.
 
Maybe stick to what you know, can find out, or analyze and prove. And maybe worry less about me, and more about how much you don't know about how much you don't know.

Lest We Forget

Felt vaguely uneasy today. Then we remembered why.

To Absent Companions.

See you on Fiddler's Green, Kevin.

Since It Keeps Coming Up...

Some folks, on multiple threads,  apparently think I somehow missed Robert L. Gore's most recent essay.

Au contraire, mes amis.

RLG is a bright guy, and writes well and thoughtfully, better than me without question, and most days and times, but this example is none of those things. Sorry, but I said that out loud.
Tantrum and screed is not reasoned polemic, kids.

As if I didn't post a response to this two days ago, elsewhere.

"Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence, i.e. that a temporary quarantine will become a decades-long boondoggle.

Reductio ad absurdum Fallacy, 20 yard penalty and loss of possession.

And I observe FTR that people crying about something that’s not yet three weeks old as though it will go on endlessly are children who were never spanked, sent to bed without their supper, or told to wait for any form of gratification.

Most of us grew out of that phase of “right now is forever” tantruming somewhere around 1st grade, though the “this minute is forever” argument is sometimes heard as late as adolescence:

."

{FTR: "I'll never get off this planet" transitions to

lightspeed to Alderaan in about 30 minutes of

cinema time. QED

I don't pick examples randomly.}

RLG's personal response to that engendered a further response from me:

"You figure that stay-at-home declarations now for a current pandemic, which is knocking off upwards of 1K persons/day here, and more each day, will automagically become as open-ended and everlasting as the Patriot Act because…why, exactly?

Because that’s what we did in [2009], when Obozo had Swine Flu to pin this on?
Because Wilson did that with Spanish Flu in 1918?
Because of all the other presidents that declared perpetual martial law in every outbreak of bubonic plague in the U.S. before antibiotics?
And all those other times that happened too: smallpox, cholera, typhus, yellow fever, malaria, mumps, measles, polio?
Wait…none of that ever happened…??
Not even once???

So, what’s changed in the last 12 or 102 or 245 years to make you think we’d go for that now, since we didn’t then, ever?

I think one of these things is not like the other, not least of which because at a non-infinite point in time, probably within this calendar year (and perhaps much earlier), people would not and will not sit home and starve, or politely await handouts from the unquestioned benificence of Uncle Government, let alone do so in perpetuity, despite the current pandemic, and will express their further displeasure rather more kinetically than verbally.

You evidently disagree, or think that such response is a trifling thing.

I’m educable.
Please, show your work.

Particularly when 8 states are still under no such order, and some of them have been under one for less than 3 days.

I’ve been telling people since January this was going to be worse than “just the flu”, and the lunatards here are still in denial with people dropping in NYFC every 5 minutes, and I’m the Chicken Little; but you’ve got us giving up the republic hand over fist forever in less time than William Henry Harrison served as POTUS, on your say-so, and that’s revealed truth for the ages?

{Bonus for readers here:


Common Core grads: POTUS for precisely 31 days. You could look it up.™
Also one of my favorite presidents, for the same reason.

}
























You’ve written some good stuff, but I don’t think you could make that fly with a genie and a magic carpet."

-----

Have at it, in case my responses to RLG weren't clear enough.
Comments are open.
Anyone opening from the 5-year-old's complaint that "Now is forever" will be on the first course of the menu, labeled "appetizers".
The weapons of choice in this duel will be flammenwerfers, at 10 paces.
Asbestos underpants are cheerfully recommended.
No prisoners will be taken.
Zero fucks will be given.

If you cannot point to the time a U.S. president declared endless martial law in response to a disease outbreak in your opening salvo, best you stay home, and not saddle up for this Children's Crusade.

Never  ╪ Now.
Now ╪ Forever.

Cleverly, the English language solved these difficult logical concepts by having different words for each of them.
Consult a dictionary in case this wasn't made clear to you in the normal scope of your K-12 educational experiences.

For Wirecutter

h/t Daily Timewaster (who never is)

Possibly caused because Ronald Weasley is now old enough to get a pint.

Achievment Unlocked: Prank Package Demigod

A year ago, the dude created the original glitter bomb package.
Went on Kimmel for April Fool's. Twice.
Now he's spent a year improving Glitter Bomb, and has launched  v2.0.

We bow in sincere admiration. Enjoy.