Sunday Music: Suddenly

Beautiful Top 20 hit love song duet from Xanadu, sung in 1980 by the now recently and sadly departed Olivia Newton-John, and Cliff Richard. Also the chorus that pops unbidden into my head every time I hear about another person dropping, dead or crippled, of Suddenly™, which Not-A-Vaxx is probably going to kill many multiples of persons more than the original strain of virus ever did, and cripple or sterilize even more. In the dictionary under Kill Shot. Today's Sunday Music is dedicated to the tens of thousands of Suddenly™ victims so far, and the millions more yet to come. What a brave new world.

Oxygen Thieves

 

This is my shocked face.

Breaking News: Admitting The Obvious

(WASHINGTON DC) Amidst the backdrop of a record-breaking fourteen failed attempts to elect a House Speaker beloved of the chamber of commerce bought-and-paid-for hacks making their party what it is today, before finally settling for the newest king of mediocrity, knowledgeable GOP sources leaked news that the RNC has gone ahead and changed party mascots. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they stated "It's time for a new look. We're dropping the elephant as outdated and near extinction, and our new mascot is what we're all about: ancient, near-sighted, lumbering, fearsome, destructive, dangerous to anything moving, and an evolutionary dead end. This choice fits exactly who we are, and have been for quite some time."

Other sources were conflicted, stating the change is only an interim mascot choice, as talks are already underway to adopt the pentagram-wearing horned goat on Beelzebub's throne as the final mascot, for when the Dems and Repubs finally announce publicly the permanent and formal formation of the Uniparty, sometime in the next few years. "We're just waiting for the Antichrist to reveal himself. Then we can rid the country of these destructive internecine party fights forever," stated gin-soaked hag Pelosi, in between swigs from a box of Boone's Farm Strawberry Delight.

Somewhere Near D.C.

Be Still, My Beating Heart

 

Finally! Entertaining Sportsball

Much funnier than watching Moscow try to take Kiev, and almost as funny as watching Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants try to form coherent sentences without crapping himself.

And for all the punditry that claims "conservatives" never conserved anything: HTF do you expect them to do that, when there are apparently only 20 of them out of 222 nominal Republicans in the House? (And that's probably a high-water mark in the last 50 years.)

BTW, we note in passing, there is no requirement anywhere whatsoever that the Speaker of the House be a sitting congressweasel. Which means, just for giggles, that the Republicants (not a typo) could, if they so chose, elect President Donald J. Trump to the post, and there's fuck-all anyone else could do about it. He would thus preside over the entire run of the 118th Congress in the House of Representatives, assign committee seats, decide what bills moved forward for voting, etc., yet without a vote himself on any bills.

Just for the comedy factor, it'd be a YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE win, while emphasizing the smallness and ineptitude of Emperor Poopypants to serve as the selected Fraudulent.

Just saying.

2023 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

"You asked for this lecture, and you're going to get it, good and hard.
These are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have other ones."

Ladies and gentlemen, faculty, students, and friends of Huxley College,

When 2022 dawned just a short year ago, like the janitor watching the cattle train pull in at the Chicago stockyards, we had no idea what a colossal load of reprocessed hay and grass was about to descend upon us from every direction.

So rather than waste your time recounting the byproducts that even the finest steaks and ribs left behind last year, we focus our attention on the things you need to keep in mind, rather than the sorts of things that come and go faster than your retirement savings.

One

You need water to stay alive. A cup will buy you a couple of hours. A canteen might get you through a day. And a barrel might help you see the end of the month. If you want to live longer than a month, you're going to need more than that, and a way to get all you need, for as long as you'd like to live. And you're going to find out all too soon that a tap to city supplies equals exactly nothing when things get tough. And they're going to get tough. And then they're going to get even tougher.  When they do, it's too late to look for someplace to drill a well. Stop waiting.

Two

"Man shall not live by bread alone." He won't live without anything to eat for very long either. Inflation, real inflation, on food, is running about 100% over pre-COVID days' prices. That's right, about 100%. There are some exceptions. Take advantage of them, while you can, and stock up. In several places. Find someplace to put some away. Then put away some more. Then more than that. It still won't be enough, but it will buy you enough time to avoid the panic, avoid crowds, and come up with another plan. And if you haven't got it together by then, don't worry. Your problems will all be over in about 40 days. The chances are, if your ancestors hadn't gotten enough to eat, you wouldn't be here. Learn from that.

Three

A place of safety, all yours, that provides continual water and food isn't a luxury. It's a vital necessity. People living with modern conveniences and distribution have ignored that for a century. They're about to get the sort of reminder on that score that sets civilization back every thousand years or so. You're here because your ancestors made wise choices. Whether you become an ancestor will depend upon you doing the same.

Four

War. Famine. Disease. Death. Those are the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Unlike in the Bible, the above order is also how they appear IRL, as a rule. You've got  them all pawing up dust in the barn right now. Get busy before they come out of the stall and go for a stroll. The past few years have seen the total abdication, by modern medicine, of any pretense of following the Hippocratic Oath (and to which they'd only paid lip service for a generation anyhow) or ethics anything like it. That means you're entering the era where you are your own doctor, nurse, and paramedic. This lesson is graded pass/fail. Fail means someone dies. Maybe you, maybe a loved one. Knowledge, tools, and medicines are relatively cheap, for the moment. They'll become priceless in the blink of an eye, and five minutes late means failure.

Five

Precious metals are money. Fiatbux are finely engraved toilet paper. Since ever. Keep enough actual greenbacks (a few months' worth of expenses), because while they still work, they'll solve a host of minor problems time and again. Until they don't. After that, it's precious metals, period. 

In order of value, those are

Lead and brass: This comes in plain paper boxes, and olive drab cans. Unless you're drowning or on fire, you don't have enough of that. And it should go without saying, you need the heavy metal and training to send that precious metal in the direction of those who most desperately deserve it. This last is covered by the Rittenhouse Theorem Of Precious Metal Distribution: two to the chest, and one to the head.

Silver and gold: Old circulating coinage is the most handy. Silver for everyday usage, and gold for a compact store of value. And once again, all you can get still won't be enough, but it can be a great help. Like eggs and baskets, don't keep everything all in one place.

Six

Timeless knowledge, skills, and experiential hands-on training. That means you need a library that doesn't live in digital ones and zeros. And the experience to put things into practice, instead of learning to do them five minutes after it's too late. Get self-sufficient now, while there's no penalty for coming up short. Sure, get all the things you can while you can get them, but learn how to work around not having them or how to come up with the alternatives from the last generation, or from a century or two before, say, electricity. People who are jacks- (and jills-) of-all-trades will be resilient, useful, marketable, and likely to last a lot longer than specialists with no practical skills will, in any place and time. Let alone any number of possible futures even as little as a year hence.

And while you're training your minds, and your hands, get up off your fat sofas and lounge chairs and train your bodies. 

Seven

How far can you walk in a day? Draw a circle that big around where you are, or will be. Keep in touch farther than that, and keep an eye on the horizon, in every way possible. But get used to the idea that anything beyond a day's walk is far less important to you and yours than what lies inside that distance. The people most likely to make trouble for you are inside that day's walk-sized circle. Including all the trouble in the world. Aliens from space aren't likely to vex you nearly as much as any mob of idiots from less than five miles from where you're sitting in front of the computer or TV screen each night.

The same is true of the people that can help you the most. If they're inside that circle, those are 3AM friends. People aren't going to come flying in to save you on air cavalry gunships from the next county or state over. But the friend or neighbor two plots over, or a block down, is much more valuable.

Not least of which because you can't have too much of everything, but if you and twenty friends each have too much of something, chances are each of you will have too much of something different. Now you've got people to trade and barter with, and everyone makes out better with every deal. Then, and now. (Bonus: there's no sales or income tax on trading a jar of jam to someone else for a dozen eggs or a quart of milk, nor trading charging up somebody's batteries for an oil filter or a fuel pump, or any ten thousand other things you could think of.)

Last

To even keep the above is going to be exceedingly hard to do. It was so for your parents and great-grandparents when all they had to worry about was the weather.

It is overwhelmingly likely that you're going to have to fight to have and keep that. And we don't mean bloody noses and silly buggers at the playground.

You're going to have to be willing to face killing and dying. Theirs, and yours. Until you're sick of it. And then, some more. And probably, even more than that. You should ponder the full meaning and import of words like insurgency, underground, and auxiliary, chiefly because you are liable to have far more firsthand experience with them, and all applicable lessons regarding them, in the coming days than anyone has ever had in the last generation or two.

The list of, and numbers of, those who are already ready and willing to take everything - including life itself - away from you and yours is growing by the tens of thousands, every single day. The proof of the pudding is they aren't even shy any longer about telling you outright, in public, even to your face, exactly that. Trust them.

And God help you, if you aren't ready and willing to take them out at the drop of a hat, the minute they so much as twitch a muscle forward on their plans, yet again, you won't have to worry about later on. "The quick and the dead" isn't just a poetic phrase. Be the former, or you'll default to the latter.

Those issues are the subjects upon which we at Huxley College commend to your higher education, with the firm hope that you will willingly and cheerfully apply yourselves, in order to achieve the restoration of the civilization and liberty some of us are yet old enough to fondly remember as being the birthright of free men everywhere, and throughout all time.

May it be so again. 

No one else is coming to save you. (They never were.) 

You're going to have to save yourselves. Godspeed.

"Any Day Now...": Delusional Psychosis, Part 313

 

Pro Tip: "delusional" ≠ "people smarter than you
with better analysis and more accurate sources"

Case in point:

19th Ward chicago: "Today there is propaganda, some of it so absurd that it is laughable."

He's absolutely right about laughable propaganda, but not in the way he thinks.

E.g.:

"Until recently, Putin left the Ukraine alone except for the Donbass area."

And the guy who wrote that, sourced at the OP, is calling those who disagree with his crackpot analysis "delusional"? It is to laugh.

Other than illegally seizing Crimea outright in 2014 (because he could) amidst the chaos of the Ukrainian uprising, and then immediately afterwards doubling down, and sending Spetsnaz and airborne troops into the Donbas in wholesale batches, minimally camouflaged in civilian clothes, and then claiming they were "popular uprisings" against Kiev, Putin left Ukraine alone.

Which would be like saying that "Except for seizing California and Texas, and annexing them back into Mexico, Mexico has left the United States alone."

Anyone who can support that level of psychosis can rationalize anything.

"the newspaper's delusional writers claim that Russian attacks are no longer effective as Ukraine's Western allies have shored up Ukraine's air defenses. Why then is half of Ukraine without electric power?"

This is like me saying I have a credit card, and then you asking me why my tires are flat.

One statement has nothing to do with the other, and ignores the obvious.

For the terminally clueless, I'd go out on a limb and say it's because before Ukraine's Western allies shored up their air defenses, Russian saturation missile attacks, with only 25% effectiveness at the height of the bombardments, still managed to knock out a lot of Ukrainian power grid infrastructure. In other news for the criminally stupid, water is wet, and fire burns.

Thus half of Ukraine is without power because prior Russian strikes hit electrical infrastructure that's hard to replace (the fragility of the world's power grids has only been covered in Ukraine's specific case, and for the U.S., about a million times in the last ten years, from Hell to breakfast by everyone in creation), and necessary replacement parts are available from a very limited number of sources. Much of which is Russian itself. Gee, let me think why it's still dark in the areas of the Ukraine where Russia has landed drone and missile strikes...

Meanwhile, that effort has affected Ukraine's battlefield campaigns...how, exactly?

Talk turkey, not b.s.: Is the front moving towards Kiev, or towards Moscow?

And in which direction has it been moving, inexorably, since late August?

Get back to us, and tell us who's really being delusional.

How it ends remains an open question (Retards, Pay Attention: Russia nominally has 10 times the military and resources of Ukraine, and yet, they continue to flail endlessly to no good result), but failure to acknowledge the currently obvious situation is the textbook definition of outright insanity.

You want to argue Russia will make a comeback? That's fine. 

First, explain why they need to, and on the way there, own up to their serial failures to date.

Then explain how they've learned from their colossal blunders thus far, and made needed reforms, and from what bodily orifice they're suddenly going to pull a military that's powerful, competent, motivated, and intelligently led, rather than a bunch of drunken buffoons led by prevaricating nitwits who keep falling out of windows, or shooting themselves in the head six or seven times, back at HQ.

That would be a fascinating read, if it's not all fairytales running on pure hopeium.

Russia's going to win? Already won?? Show your work.

Buuuuut, that necessarily requires an explanation of why they're still they're if they've already won, why they're moving towards Moscow and not Kiev if they're "winning", or barely breaking even, why they keep scraping the bottom of the barrel for more conscripts and convicts if they're slaughtering the Ukrainians in job lots, and owning up to everything that's gotten them where they are, which is back-pedalling towards the Rodina in haste, leaving their dead and wounded behind in droves, and how they're going to pull off this hitherto impossible military triumph in order to get where you think they're going to get.

I repeat: Show. Your. Work.

I get that Emperor Poopypants egged this on to cover his clan's criminal corruption there. I get that you think Zelensky's just as crooked. (But undeniably, whatever else he is, he isn't Putin's bitch, unlike every prior Ukrainian leader since 1990, and that's what rankled Putin the most.) I'll even give you a pass on your delusion that Putin's anything but a jumped up KGB thug and mass-murderer with delusions of grandeur. That's nice, but I don't give a fuck about any of that in this context, and it has no bearing on the topic under discussion. IDGAS about what you fondly wish would happen, I care about objective reality. If thinking is hard for you, this is where you're going to trip on your dick, and step all over it with sharp cleated spikes.

Bluff and bluster in service of your narrative is just so much bullshit and spin. Try facts. Verifiable sources. Actual data. If only for the novelty. Hyperbole and horseshit in equal measure is selling in Moscow at ₱2/metric fuckton. Actual evidence is pretty thin on the ground, largely because it's non-existent. Bring us a Bigfoot carcass, or a unicorn skull, and we can talk this out like grownups.

Can't do that? (And that would be the entire Rootin' For Putin contingent, web-wide, since March of last year to date, just to be accurate.) Letter grade of F. Obviously.

The narrative from the Rootin' For Putin side since August has been "Any day now, Russia is going to do...something!"

It's January. It's been 300+ days already. In seven weeks, this will be a full year of military debacle for Russia. 

For a war Putin was going to win in three days.

And for nearly half of which, Russia's military has been in full-scale retreat. And still no "something".

Russia's been the Black Knight to Ukraine's King Arthur in this conflict for ten months. Sorry, but there it is. Suck on it.

Please explain how you can be "winning", and yet take 10,000% longer than initial expectations. The rough equivalent would be WW II lasting until the year 2345. I'll wait while you work that out.

Just saying.

FTR, We'll leave this topic alone when people stop spewing bullshit with snowblowers.

Sunday Music: Name

 Beautiful song. Instant classic. Double platinum #5 hit. Still haunting 28 years later. 

Going, Going, ...

We've been enjoying the holiday season hereabouts, as well as working our regular job for most of the actual holidays. Tonight will be no exception. Hence a lot of periods of late where we've been content to coast, rhetorically speaking. Sure, we'd like to offer up something substantial to wrap up the year, but let's face it: it's been a craptastic year in nearly every way, and summarizing 2022 could be done more than justice simply by micing up the porcelain fixtures in the lavatory of any decent chili contest, and hit the nail squarely on the head by broadcasting the auditory highlights thereof. We are sure we are not alone in expressing our happiness at seeing the back end of 2022 finally going by in the parade of years.

There's also the fact that we've already put out 599 posts this year (counting this one), the second highest tally we've recorded in any year since launching this blog fourteen years ago, so we certainly haven't been slacking off in product. Based on views and comments, the shrieking poo-flinging anonymous baboon contingent notwithstanding, we think we've done more than our fair share for the year.

We'd rather save our efforts for when something moves us appropriately, the better for your humble scribe, and you our readers, to enjoy a holiday weekend. We may offer something more substantial after the calendar page turns, once we have more time for reflective contemplation. But for the moment, we are content to wish all concerned a Happy New Year, with hopes that it will turn out to be better for everyone than 2022 was, rather than worse. Time will tell about that all too soon.

We only hope that we have informed, entertained, or encouraged you from time to time this past year, and possibly given you something to think about that you wouldn't have otherwise done, and simply thank you all for dropping by this year, while aspiring to remain worthy of your visits next year.

Chicka-chicka!

Strong Message Follows

h/t Peter

Sounds like somebody forgot they lost a war over this. We hope they bandage their wedding tackle before they bleed to death. Or, not.

Wakanda Logic

F**k Off, Hoser!

 

As If...

 h/t WRSA

Touché.

And given a choice between "laundered" and "cleansed", just as with chocolate and vanilla, steak and lobster, or blondes and brunettes, most people would answer "Both, please."

Real-World Tips For Underground Partisans

 

Once again, Retard Trigger Warning: This is not a Ukraine post. It's a "What works in the real world" post. If you still can't figure that out despite the warning, you're not tall enough for the internet, and should go back to your PlayStation. Or, more likely, your barnyard animal See-N-Say.

Sunday Music: Merry Christmas

 

Chinese Craftsmanship Is An Oxymoron

Apparently, the culture that invented gunpowder and paper, and built the Great Wall, cannot grasp the concept of putting cord-locks on drawstrings. Even though they make the cord-locks too.

The list of other items with drawstrings upon which this bit of exorbitantly-priced high-tech do not appear is staggeringly long, even though the technology has existed since the 1970s.

Fortunately, I have a solution. For the exorbitant price of 25¢ extra@, I now own several pairs of sweatpants that will no longer self-deploy to the floor when I'm working out outside. For which providence, my neighbors and random automobile travelers on my route offer their thanks. 

It's a pity no one in China every had this sort of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup chocolate-and-peanut butter epiphany, and did it themselves, all on their own. Maybe in 50 or 100 years...

Imagine their shock in a couple of more centuries, when they perfect the concept of dipping the fraying ends of drawstring, paracord, shoelaces, etc. into Plasti-dip, too! Which, FFS, can even be found at China Inc.'s Horror Freight retail chain. 's magical mystery, clearly.

Common sense is a super power, I tell ya.

Worse Than You Imagine

 h/t WRSA

Today, CA gave you this:

The reality is far worse:

What's in your wallet? Finely-engraved toilet paper, in most cases.

Useful & Useless Kit

Moron Alert: This is not a Ukraine post. 

When things go sporky anywhere, these lessons will remain important. Especially in any situation where Uncle Sugar isn't flying in pizzas, porn, and beer by the metric fuckton to keep the troops happy. Learn a lesson.

Once An Eagle

Official Trademark Registered

...from the Dept. Of Calling A Spade A Spade

 

Sunday Music: Somebody's Baby

 

Jackson Browne's biggest hit, launched to the top of the charts by being on the soundtrack to Fast Times At Ridgemont High in 1982.

Vlad Wisdom

 

Just In Time For Christmas

My sincere thanks to you all.

1978 Flashback

 

Settled Science

 Mr. Garibaldi nails it. RTWT

Amen.

Mood attire.

If I lived in a Constitutional Carry state like AZ, I would not wear this t-shirt. It's how I would carry an actual Beretta 92 during December. It's only fair.

And no, Gun Karens, no one would take it away from me, because of the loaded MP-5 on a three-point sling.

And even if they did take it:

Oops. No bullets.

If you're going to go with something, commit all the way, right?

Whatever you pick, we wish all Happy Christmas viewing. I'd watch this, but I've got the entire 1st season of Reacher  to binge-watch instead.

Yippie Ki Yay.

'Tis The Season

 

I avoid pretty thoroughly any forays into retail establishments during December on general principle (the principle that I hate hordes of clueless knuckleheads), but the occasional trip has reminded me that the bellringers for Satan's Army are out, as if we forgot their announcements last year that they hate white people.

Feel free to copy the above, and print them out, to drop in the kettle, until the point sinks home with the woketards from last year, who were lightly tapped on the wrists, but maintain their employment with Satan's Army.

When SA fires them for cause, renounces their communist drivel, and shouts both those things from the rooftops, I will relent. Not before.

And The Beat Goes On...

 

Sunday Music: Shambala

Classic psychedelic groovy tune from 1973, released by two artists nearly simultaneously, which Three Dog Night, despite releasing it second, took to Number 3 before B.W. Stevenson, who released it first, could make it his own hit.

The Jokes Write Themselves

 

Any Minute Now - Day 274

 

And Now A Word From The Sponsors

 h/t WRSA

Elections have consequences. Especially fake ones.

Retard Science Pt. II: The 672' Tall Elephant In The Room

h/t Not Telling You, out of sheer pity 

Shooting Fish In A Barrel Dept.:

Hamfistedly fucktarded. QED

Look, kids, I get that science is hard. There's logic, math, and shit, right? But this is embarrassingly bad, and stupid.

First of all, as anyone who ever used a microscope knows, 25x is what you use to look at coins, stamps, currency, etc. And the mask in question, at 25x, would be a solid blue wall. Not a trawl net for whales.

That's a picture of a blue fishing net, FFS, or a volleyball net, not a picture of a surgical mask. If I had a standard microscope with a photographic function, I'd take the pic myself, just to prove it to you.

But here's a polyester surgical mask, at something like 500X, under an electron microscope.

Notice how this, at probably 20x greater magnification than the meme fraud, doesn't look anything like the pic of some guy's aunt's knitted afghan. That should be a cluebat.

Secondly, to be fair to the autists out there, that alleged (and recockulously so) "virus" in the picture is pure hokum and horseshit. Take a look at the lower right corner of the image. That horizontal white line is a scale bar, alleging a measurement of 2mm.

Using a standard ruler and calibrated eyeballs, that makes the "virus" in question in that picture something close to .28 millimeters, or 28,000 nanometers, across. Why this will become important will be explained presently. The scale of the fraud could best be explained by imagining an African bull elephant that was portrayed as being 672 ft. tall.

[UPDATE: My mistake. I dropped a zero. 0.28 mm would be 280 micrometers, or 280,000 nanometers, not 28,000. So that elephant would actually have to be 6,720' tall. That's an elephant over a mile tall. That's how recockulously huge that faked "virus" is. Entirely my fault for whipping up the math just before bed time. Mea culpa. But I still caught the math error before anyone else did, albeit four days later, including ahead of all the brave anonymous trolls. Pthththththththbt. :P]

For reference, St. Louis' Gateway Arch is only 630' tall.

So...anybody hereabouts seen any 672' tall elephants lately?

If anyone thinks they could even see a virus, which measures 20-500 nm (that's 2-50 10,000,000ths of a meter, or between 0.00000078 and 0.0000195 inches across) at a paltry 25x magnification, I've got a bridge for sale, cheap.

You could look it up.

More to the point, if you think viruses travel dry, like powdered cocoa, rather than encapsulated in huge globs of saliva, which the average surgical mask stops from flying outwards at between 100 times and 1000 times better than wearing nothing, I can get you a prime deal on beachfront property in South Dakota.

For reference, here's a picture of a human hair measuring 75 µm (micrometers) across, at 1000X magnification, taken by a scanning electron microscope. It's about the size of any of the fibers in the bundles in that actual mask pic above.

That would be 75,000 nanometers, i.e. you'd need to string 150 of the most monstrous viruses there are, end-to-end, like a pearl necklace, to reach the same width of that one hair, which means any one of them would need to be blown up another 200 times, for a combined total magnification of 200,000X, just to see one virus in a photo at the same size as that hair follicle.

Light microscopes (the kind that use simple light, that most of you think of as a microscope), are limited to a resolution of about 1000X.

The most advanced scanning electron microscopes can see fuzzy pictures of atoms, at magnifications of 10,000,000X.

Atoms of oxygen, scandium, and praseodymium at 10,000,000X.
Image © Cornell University

What passes for common sense and basic scientific understanding these days wouldn't have passed middle school health class a generation ago.

Whoever made the original meme, and the picture it's based on is a total fucktard, and is bullshitting the gullible at world-class levels. And the gullible are swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. Don't be That Guy.

And it only took me about 4 mouseclicks and three trips to the calculator app to work this out, in about a minute and a half. And maybe twice that to type this reply.

The enstupidization of the nation hasn't got far to go before the average IQ is on par with fungi. But it doesn't have to be this way.

And for the Common Core Posse, nota bene this has nothing to with masking pros and cons. As we pointed out in comments the last time, we already covered in blistering detail how and why masks work, but masking wouldn't ever work, years ago.

BONUS: Two years later, even the Babylon Bee has figured out this problem.

This is simply a plea for people who don't know what they're spreading on the net, to STFU until they actually know what they're talking about, if only to spare their dicks more cleat marks. This stuff isn't hard to find, if you make the effort.

If you can't be bothered, then as Will Rogers said, "Never pass up a good opportunity to shut up."

Or at the very least, be like Timmy:

Just Saying

When You're Retarded, Everything Sounds Like "Science"

 h/t 90 Miles From Tyranny

This kind of idiocy is why we're doomed:

Not even N95 masks work to stop COVID.

Which then links to an article from the Brown Underpants Institute pimping some cockamamie horsesh*t purporting to support the same recockulous contention.

Which finally links to the actual study, concocted by midwits, and published by actual halfwits, in the Annals Of Internal Medicine.

You can read the study yourself.

For the TL;DR crowd, allow me to summarize.

One group was people who sometimes have access to N95 masks.

The control group did not.

Lo and behold, the rate of COVID among both groups is roughly equal.

Therefore, N95s offer no additional protection.

QED, if you were one of the two co-stars of Dumb and Dumber.

What they didn't do was study people who wore N95 masks 24/7, even while sleeping.

They didn't study the function of N95 masks themselves.

They studied people who sometimes had access to N95 masks.

Natzsofast, Guido.

Let's put it another way.

Suppose you wanted to test whether parachutes work better than nothing.

But you didn't drop 50 people suitably equipped with a parachute, versus throwing 50 random convicts wearing just boxer shorts out of a perfectly good airplane at 10,000', and compare the results for each group to determine whether parachutes worked as advertised. Oh, no, bucko. That would be too easy.

What you did instead, was study people in the 82nd Airborne Division, who sometimes had access to parachutes.

And then compare the death rate to, say, the 1st Armored Division, who don't.

If somebody in the 82nd Airborne dies in a car crash, it's those fucking worthless parachutes.

Fell off a cliff, without a chute? Those damned worthless parachutes.

Shot by a jealous husband? Another parachute fail.

Died from drinking to the point of respiratory arrest, on a three day liberty in Fayetteville? Those damned parachutes again.

Drilled into your head with a hammer drill and a 1" bit? Parachutes don't work for you, either.

Stop me when the penny drops for you.

That's the sort of grant-funded gold-plated fucktard-driven "research" the shit-for-brains editorial staff at AOIM printed, with a straight face.

FFS, those mouth-breathing shitheads even told you they were this transparently stupid right up front. This is like scooping baby shit out of a diaper, and putting sliced bananas next to it and whipped cream on top at Baskin Robbins, and telling you it's ice cream.

And you eating it.

And then someone with no idea how actual science works reads the headline, which tickles their confirmation bias like a lesbian's vibrator running on plutonium, and we're off to the races.

Hint For The 80-IQ Booger Eaters

You can't test something by looking at the results among people who aren't using it 24/7/365.

If you want to test seatbelts, you test them by people wearing them versus people not wearing them, while they're actually driving.

You do not lump in the deaths of all people from 187 other causes, compared to people who ride busses with no seatbelts, and use them to prove seatbelts don't work.

This is so fucktardedly simple it's embarrassing to even need to mention it, but the general IQ, let alone science sensibility, has sunk so far, it's like taking the "Remove Shirt Before Ironing" warning, and making it a class for college credit.

And it's now percolated up to people in the blogosphere with less sense about that than God gave a jackass.

That whoever pimped this wasn't taken out behind the building and shot, or tarred and feathered, is why society as you know it is doomed, and that includes people so jaw-droppingly stupid as to reprint it at face value.

For the Pedantically Stupid (You know who you are):

It may have escaped your notice, but this is not an argument for or against the efficacy of any mask for any purpose. It's an argument against bullshit being perpetrated as science, and average idiots too stupid to tell the two apart.

But thanks a pantload in advance for proving why it needed to be addressed, thanks to your Common Core education, as any number of anonymous comments are likely to prove beyond all doubt.

Warning Shot

h/t WRSA

Word to your mother.

Thoughts: 

1) RTWT.

2) Military community? Near Ft. Bragg? And the brass still approved of a drag show? Gee, the targeted nature of the response suggests that someone involved, perhaps some sort of "quiet professionals", might maybe have a wee bit of familiarity with the CARVER matrix. As YOU should.

3) Padraig's "The South" should be understood to be pretty much any rural area "south" of Canada, anywhere from eastern Washington State, and down about as southerly as Key West.

4) The incident further suggests that if a repeat performance is attempted, the next time, the transformers that get shot won't be the ones mounted on telephone poles.

5) But they might be the ones found hanging from telephone poles afterwards.

UPDATE: A) Read the comments hereafter.

B) Note the WRSA follow-up, as the draconian response by TPTB in that county achieves exactly the sort of radicalization they'd like to tamp down.

Well-played, Deputy Fife, et al. You reach for that one bullet, and see what happens Right Of Bang. It will not turn out the way you might have hoped.

Popcorn and drinks inbound.

Sunday Music: Number One

 

Today's pick comes to you from prolific no-hit wonder Chaz Jankel, courtesy of the soundtrack to 1985's Real Genius. Totally 80s.

Dear Fran,

 Re: The Question

It's nobody's first choice. But it's the only choice that's going to work.

You get the liberty you'll fight for. No more, and no less.

Best It's Been All Year