“A staggering fifth of countries globally are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing due to a decline in biodiversity and related beneficial services,” said Swiss Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurers and a linchpin of the global insurance industry.
“If the ecosystem service decline goes on [in countries at risk], you would see then scarcities unfolding even more strongly, up to tipping points,” said Oliver Schelske, lead author of the research.
Jeffrey Bohn, Swiss Re’s chief research officer, said: “This is the first index to our knowledge that pulls together indicators of biodiversity and ecosystems to cross-compare around the world, and then specifically link back to the economies of those locations.”
The index was designed to help insurers assess ecosystem risks when setting premiums for businesses but Bohn said it could have a wider use as it “allows businesses and governments to factor biodiversity and ecosystems into their economic decision-making”.
…………………………………………..
The Swiss Re index is built on 10 key ecosystem services identified by the world’s scientists and uses scientific data to map the state of these services at a resolution of one square kilometre across the world’s land. The services include provision of clean water and air, food, timber, pollination, fertile soil, erosion control, and coastal protection, as well as a measure of habitat intactness.
Those countries with more than 30% of their area found to have fragile ecosystems were deemed to be at risk of those ecosystems collapsing. Just one in seven countries had intact ecosystems covering more than 30% of their country area.
Among the G20 leading economies, South Africa and Australia were seen as being most at risk, with China 7th, the US 9th and the UK 16th.
Those loopy left wing environmentalists are always screaming that the sky is falling. Anybody with an ounce of intelligence just ignores them.
upcoming generations that are diverse and happy about it and not religious will drive a stake through the R stool of warmongers, bigots and fundamentalists. They can’t continue to be competitive and keep advocating for that coalition.
I agree with the second part of that statement, but not the first. The California Republicans over the past couple of decades are illustrative. Faced with a rising percentage of the population that was Hispanic there were voices within the party who called for widening the coalition to remain viable. Instead the party leadership went all in on an anti-Hispanic crusade. Did it make sense if they wanted to remain competitive? Of course not. But the Republican Party made itself a safe space for racists and they gradually took over control of the party. In what world would those people have said, “Maybe we were wrong about the brown people and should give some of them positions of authority within the party”? So the open minded people left the party, leaving a higher and higher percentage of racists and lunatics. And they are no longer competitive, but have the satisfaction of remaining true to their beliefs.
There was an article in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun about how the state Republican Party, who have seen a reduction in their overall numbers in the the State Congress from viable a couple of decades ago (or less) to a two to one disadvantage today. What is their response? To elect even more conservative leaders to the party. To replace the angry old white guys with angrier old white guys.
There is no law of nature or politics that mandates Parties have to remain viable. In California the two party system has been replaced by multiple factions fighting it out in a single party. If the Republican Party survives long enough there it may be reduced so much in size and effectiveness that some enterprising group can take it over and repurpose it to suit their ends. But it at that point only the name will remain.
As the readers of the comment section here probably know by now, I consider the modern Republican Party to be an active harm to the country and to have been so for years. People who feel this way trace the fall back to different events and like them I have my own pet crossroads. One of them is the Reagan era and the embrace of the pretty lie. I won’t litigate that issue here, but one of the lessons I took from it was to constantly check a politician’s statements against their actions. Do they proclaim noble principles? Sure. But do they ever act according to those principles when they conflict with their overall agenda?
Case in point. Here in Maryland our Governor is Republican. He’s not a wingnut and is far from a Trumper, but nonetheless he is fundamentally about preserving the existing power structure and catering to big business, and even where he has an opening to do the right thing he still has to contend with his base of lunatics and losers who will brook no deviation from the party line. And what is that party line with respect to opening public accommodations in the face of the coronavirus? That people should be allowed to make their own choices. That government shouldn’t be dictating what level of risk an individual can accept. That an informed citizenry will make better decisions than faceless bureaucrats. Sounds wonderful (if you don’t think about it more than a millisecond). But if they actually believed this, they would make every effort to make sure the public had all the information they need to make such decisions. And in MD, the state has asked that all Covid statistics be reported to them and they act as the coordinator and filter for that information and they have decided that they will withhold information about individual schools and whether they are experiencing an outbreak or not. They are re-opening the schools in November but putting in a policy of coverup in preparation for that. (The Catholic schools, some of them already open, are almost inevitably covering up and the State supports them in that.)
So are the Republicans just parroting pretty lies when they talk about the wisdom of an informed citizenry? Yes. By their very actions, yes.
@MarkedMan: That government shouldn’t be dictating what level of risk an individual can accept.
I have no problem with that, except for the fact that the risk isn’t limited to the individual. They put others at risk with their irresponsible actions, and not just their families but random strangers they stand in line with at the grocery store.
Reyna lost her job during the pandemic; she can no longer pay for their rent or food and wants to return to her homeland. But in order to be permitted to leave the UAE she must first serve a jail sentence for having sex outside marriage, which is illegal under the country’s Islamic laws.
A UAE-based official confirmed to the Guardian there are several thousand cases of migrant mothers with children born outside marriage in the country.
Reyna’s son – the evidence of her crime – is stateless, since his birth has not been registered. This means that he has no access to healthcare, including vaccinations.
“It’s hard here. I have no money, no visa. If I was alone I could go home. But I can’t. The problem is the baby,” says Reyna, 30.
Her request for imprisonment was denied. To minimise the spread of Covid-19 in UAE jails, the country has reduced the number of those being incarcerated during the pandemic. This has left unmarried migrant mothers stranded in the Gulf country because they are still required to serve a jail sentence – at some point – before they are allowed to leave.
“For unmarried mothers, the authorities will not readily forgive the ‘love crime’. The mothers have to be punished,” says Barney Almazar, an attorney at Gulf Law who also provides free legal aid to migrant workers.
I’m sure the fathers have to be punished as well.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. Sometimes I just crack me up.
@Gustopher: It’s the same reason that those Nigerian spam letters are so obviously fake. Those who are stupid enough to fall for them are much, much easier to get money out of.
Those who post to stuff from ZeroHedge are, ah, what was the term? Oh yes….Useful Idiots.
In a stunning rebuke of the “science” and the “doctors” and leftist politicians and career bureaucrats in the US and across much of The West, The Epoch Times’ Evan Pentchoukov reports that…
From there it is just quoting things out of context that are themselves quoting things out of context. And, of course, it is written by “Tyler Durden”.
@Jen:
It’s hard to find any legitimate news sources that are willing to furnish the kind of full-throttle adoration of Trump his supporters demand. That’s why they depend on a bunch of crackpot blogs (The Gateway Pundit, The Conservative Tree House, American Greatness) for their “news.”
I find the reports coming out that the California GOP has set up fake (and illegal) ballot drop-off boxes completely alarming. Shouldn’t someone be in handcuffs by now over this? It’s literally illegal. This is vote-tampering.
@Keef:
Oh, you’re Drew, aren’t you? Sneaking back in under a different name to peddle zero hedge. Again. Still. Like anyone with a functioning brain cares?
It is no more possible to “follow the science” at Zerohedge than it is to keep up with the Kardashians at Physics Review B. But then you knew that.
BTW, still waiting for you to admit that you were completely wrong about whether there were countries out there that had contained the virus much better than the US has. Nobody’s going to mistake you for someone arguing in good faith until you can admit when you were clearly, objectively, laughably wrong about a key “fact” underpinning your argument.
You might advise them to go with a ballista rather than a trebuchet. It’s easier to build, easier to vary the amount of force, and doesn’t throw the candy as high. It’s also easier to aim.
Seems an appropriate time to re-emphasize Zerohedge is basically a Russian propaganda outlet and those who disseminate it are helping America’s adversaries.
@Jen: Republicans have been blathering for months about “voter fraud” and since there really isn’t any to speak of they have taken it upon themselves to create some.
Basically, it quotes David Nabarro of WHO as saying that lockdowns should not be the primary method of combating the pandemic. Instead, countries should rely more on, in Nabarro’s words (from an article the Zerohedge piece conveniently neglects to link to): “physical distancing, proper face-masking, hand/cough/surface hygiene, self-isolating when ill and shielding those most at risk. There should be no exceptions anywhere.”
In other words, Nabarro is arguing for deemphasizing lockdowns in favor of a range of safety measures that Zerohedge has argued vociferously against. I only had to do a quick search on the website to find many examples of pieces by “Tyler Durden” attacking masks, social distancing, and the rest.
This is straight out of the playbook of creationists: take some quote from an expert arguing against the relative importance of one element of the science, treat it as a repudiation of the entire science, and ignore the fact that the very same analysis upholds everything they deny.
@Keef:
Well, normally I’m a fairly patient person, ready to engage on the basis of reasoned argument, assuming good faith, and a rational comparison of evidence presented
But it’s Monday, cold and wet, and I’m feeling a bit cranky.
So, do you ever stop to bloody well THINK about what you read?
Zerohedge does not have a good reputation for objectivity, to put it mildly.
It only need a little effort to put this sly article in context.
The WHO envoy cited is speaking in the context of firstly the inconsistency, chaotic messaging, and prioritising PR over policy that has gone on in the UK lately.
Like many others he has advocated for a long period that the best policy is tho ramp up testing to the point where it can provide near-real time response to a whole-population on demand system, and that in turn can inform tracing systems to isolate infected individuals and potentially infected contacts.
Spread mitigation can be managed by masking, distancing and other sanitary measures.
And local “hotspots” can be contained by local isolation “mini lockdowns” if need be.
This is all eminently sensible, and Dr Nabarro is advocating what almost all medical experts support.
The problem is, that the UK, and the US, and quite a few others, have wasted (pissed away, in fact) the time since (arguably) January and (certainly) March and failed miserably to set up the test/trace/intervene systems needed.
The “firebreak” of the earlier lockdown has not been used effectively, and this has led to in the UK the government dithering and arguing and almost falling to pieces due to the looming necessity of imposing a second lockdown.
Another point: the article refers to the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Eminent names indeed:
Dr Johnny Bananas
Professor Cominic Dummings
Dr Hey Macarena
Professor Ita Rôle Italy Pudding
Professor Notaf Uckingclue
And many others of their peers in the world of medical science.
Not to mention that this “Declaration” was organised by the American Institute for Economic Research, one of the Koch Foundations “think tanks” which also has something of a track record, shall we say.
Quite a similar template seems to have been used to that of recruiting “dissenting” scientists to downplay climate change, challenge smoking links to disease and similar dubious operations.
I find the reports coming out that the California GOP has set up fake (and illegal) ballot drop-off boxes completely alarming. Shouldn’t someone be in handcuffs by now over this? It’s literally illegal. This is vote-tampering.
As best I can tell from the stories I’ve found at reputable sites, what seems to be going on is a combination of:
1. Setting up what would be perfectly legal ballot-harvesting collection points, but failing to follow the correct procedures to make them legal.
2. Distributing lists of collection points that list the GOP-placed boxes but not all of the official government collection boxes, and not mentioning that the GOP-placed ones are not official.
3. Possibly labeling the unofficial boxes in a misleading manner.
“The correct procedures” hinge on each voter having to specify a person who will turn in their ballot for them. People who just drop the ballot in the unofficial box have not voted legally.
I suspect that this will play out with lots of claims of honest mistake — they’ve already started with the “but this is exactly what the Democrats have been doing for years” — and the boxes will either go away or get made official. What happens to the improper ballots already collected… who knows?
There’s an R party in Cali? I’m being facetious or course, but if nationally, the R’s want to shrink to Cali and Mass, R’s proportion of the electorate, let them. They’d never control the House or Presidency again, though the Senate is possible. After all there is still a Socialist Workers Party in the US and they meet in a broom closet.
Our political future and leadership would be much better if the practical center of American politics was somewhere between Joe Manchin and AOC, than we are today. Let the R’s be a racist, nationalist horde that is somewhere around 25% of the populous.
It’s hard to achieve what they want: a means to be safe from COVID-19, which lets them live their lives as though there were no pandemic ravaging the world’s population, and which cannot even include minor inconveniences like masks or distancing.
It’s so much easier to pretend there’s no pandemic. Even if you die form it, at least you weren’t inconvenienced.
@Michael Reynolds:
They were sloppy.
In the past they have curated their deniers.
This time they foolishly used an open form and caught a mild dose of Brits taking the piss.
I’d also like to bring up something that’s barely related: over the years I’ve been fascinated by the fact that so many right-wingers are fans of the book and/or movie Fight Club, often treating Tyler Durden like a modern prophet. This is interesting to me for a few reasons. First, Durden’s philosophy is explicitly anticapitalist. But more to the point, the story was not endorsing Durden’s movement, it was more of an Animal Farm-esque fable about how revolutionaries become everything they claim to despise about the system they aim to overthrow. Durden is the psychopathic cult leader of a terrorist group. The writer and director have made this very clear in interviews. Yet you wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve encountered who think Durden is someone worth emulating.
There are also striking similarities between Durden’s group and neo-Nazis, despite there being no obvious references to racist beliefs. They’re almost entirely white. They shave their heads like skinheads. There’s the scene where Durden terrorizes an Asian store clerk. They think of themselves as secretly infiltrating normal society in preparation for the revolution. They’re also kind of a precursor to today’s incels and men’s-rights folks.
Speaking of COVID-19, one stat I follow daily is new cases ins a 7-day moving average from the Johns Hopkins tracker. It gives you a sense of which countries are controlling the virus.
India saw a large sustained increase, but it’s been trending down for the past 15 days or so. Clearly they are doing something that’s working (if the data is reliable and they do enough tests, which we can’t tell from the graphs).
Also clearly, many countries that had imposed some control are losing it or have lost it. Namely Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. they are either approaching the peaks from last spring, or have surpassed them already.
We need to do much better next pandemic, and there will be one, and it might be worse than this one. One thing governments should os, all over the world, is build up large stockpiles of reusable N95 respirators, which can then be distributed to the population when needed. Cloth and other types of masks are all well and good, but they merely slow down the spread. This might serve for COVID-19 but only because we have nothing else. Suppose the next pandemic has a mortality rate of 15%. Would we be fine with merely slowing the spread?
We also need to do better against the seasonal flu. I know much effort is taken today, but we can improve. For one thing, N95 masks would be a good thing for more vulnerable people to wear. They could also be mandated for service workers who have close contact with the public, such as doctors, nurses, hair stylists, waiters, etc.
Another thing is to see how effective the messenger RNA vaccines are, like the ones Moderna and Pfizer are trialing now. They appear to take very little time to develop. Perhaps the technique can be used to make polyvalent vaccines against several flu strains at once, or to make a vaccine for each of the more likely strains.
I bring up the flu because it appears to be a long-neglected issue, even if the mortality rate is low. Besides, it would rob future deniers of the claim that any deadly disease is “no worse than the flu” (to be replaced by “no worse than the Trump virus” no doubt).
Thankfully death rates remain low, but if the hospital intensive care capacity maxes out, another week will see that spiking as well.
Dammit.
The first peak was unavoidable perhaps.
But this; nine months, nine sodding months, to build the testing/tracing system we need, wasted.
There should be blood for this.
Also clearly, many countries that had imposed some control are losing it or have lost it. Namely Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. they are either approaching the peaks from last spring, or have surpassed them already.
Actually, the way I read this (scrolling to the per capita charts),
Germany and Italy are currently doing much better than U.S. in rolling average of current new cases, while France and especially Netherlands and Belgium are doing much worse.
U.S. has several times as many new cases as Germany, while Belgium and Netherlands have several times as many per capita as U.S.
So culture as government policy really matter, you can see similar wide ranges comparing various U.S states.
build up large stockpiles of reusable N95 respirators,
For the most part, all the N95 masks I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot) are reusable. Basically, filter media tends to improve with respect to penetration with use, but resistance goes up (i.e. it becomes harder to breathe through). So as long as the mask is not too difficult to breathe through, you should be good. There is a risk in that the outside of the mask could become contaminated and when you touch it you transfer the virus to your hand. One way to overcome this is to have three masks and circulate through them, since the virus doesn’t last on most sufaces past three days. Alternatively, if you’ve got a sous vide rig, you could shrink wrap a mask in plastic and put it in with a weight on top and give it 160 degrees F for a half an hour.
Germany and Italy are currently doing much better than U.S. in rolling average of current new cases, while France and especially Netherlands and Belgium are doing much worse.
I thought doing worse than America would be much harder.
I mentioned a few weeks back an ep of Podcast19 (538’s podcast on the pandemic), that the Dutch were not wearing masks outside of public transportation, though they did social distance. Now we may be seeing the consequences.
Maintaining distance is hard even when everyone’s trying. even those trying forget and fall into old habits. And many who do wear masks, wear them incorrectly, or use masks with outflow valves which spread as much SARS-CoV-2 as those not wearing masks.
This virus is so hard to contain, that even countries using the right policies find it hard to keep a lid on it. those who have bad policies naturally see increased numbers of cases.
Given the prominence of Zero Hedge, and the use of “Tyler Durden” for years there, including the image of Brad Pitt, I wonder why they haven’t been hit with a cease and desist by either the author or the folks behind the movie.
Yeah, a shocking number of people thought Archie Bunker was the hero of “All in the Family”, too.
Yup–that’s an excellent analogy. The difference is that I’m not sure the writer and director of Fight Club were consciously aiming to depict right-wingers–positively or otherwise. Durden’s group can’t be easily pigeonholed into a conventional political conception, yet from a distance it does resemble in some ways a radical-right group, and the film itself is kind of in the tradition of movies about violent disillusioned white men, like Taxi Driver or Falling Down, except instead of the lone-wolf idea it makes an entire group built around these hangups.
For the most part, all the N95 masks I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot) are reusable.
I’m giving the matter much thought.
A coworker gave me a KN95 mask (that’s the Chinese N95 standard, or so I gather), and told me he leans it by spraying Lysol on it. I’ve used it once, and then put it in a drawer at home.
I can get a 10 pack of KN95 masks from a local store, for about $30. That’s too much money for a disposable product, but if I can reuse them several times each, it might be worth the expense. They provide much more protection for the wearer than the disposable masks we get at work.
If they can be used 10 times each, that’s 100 days. Divided by 6 days a week I usually wear masks, that’s 3 1/2 months, or until mid-February. About when mass vaccination should get going.
To be honest, I thought that just as hand sanitizer has returned in large numbers to the stores (they no longer place limits on how many one can buy at one time), that we would see N95 masks as well. but this hasn’t been the case.
We all know something is really off and weird and a bit scary in America now.
But any nation that invented punkin chunkin is pretty sane in my book.
A giant air cannon designed to fling a pumpkin as high and far as possible.
Why? some ask.
Because it is stupid and fun and cathartic. Because you can.
We’ve hit a rough patch these last few years, and 2020 has been particularly horrible, but chin up – we’ll be okay.
I have been to the lumberjack festival up in Hayward. They have the most gloriously insane competitions. Scampering up trees. Sawing with both hand- and chain-. Log rolling. Axe throwing. It is marvelous.
Another thing I love is the snowmobile contests where you go fast as you can onto open water. Use momentum and surface tension to go as far out as possible before sinking. Go fast and hold on as long as possible. It ludicrously stupid and infantile and I love it.
We’re stupid but not complete idiots. We got this. We invented punkin chunkin.
On a lighter note, for the 74th (or something) consecutive year, Trump has been snubbed by not receiving a single Nobel Prize, now that the Prize in Economics has been handed out.
Fine repayment by those ungrateful Swedes for wrecking the world’s bestest economy evah!
I suspect that’s Drew coming in under a VPN. (He was banned right? For terminal banality.)
He was disinvited to the party, yes. And it would not surprise me if it is him again.
There is a weird pathology with some of the more trolly commenters who are banned–they just can’t help themselves from coming back. They tell the main authors that they are hacks and that the commenters are all worthless, yet they keep coming back.
My contribution to this important list doesn’t seem to be extant any longer. Purdue University once had a contest to see who could bring a barbeque grill full of charcoal briquets to fully alight fastest. Nuclear reactors were not allowed.
@Kylopod: Incel/Men’s Rights types take in the superficial picture of Fight Club, with no awareness that it’s satirizing toxic masculinity as well as consumer culture.
@de stijl: Heh, that reminds me of the catapult made by inhabitants at Senior House at M.I.T. that was able to throw a refrigerator onto the President’s lawn…and then be dismantled and hidden by the time the Campus Police showed up.
Supposedly the Board of Trustees of M.I.T. was more interested in the engineering specifics than the complaint from the President….
Having saluted Whitey Ford the other day, a shout out today for a great 2d baseman Joe Morgan. Actually one of the few Hall of Famers I got to see in person at Riverfront in Cincinnati.
a shout out today for a great 2d baseman Joe Morgan
Truly an inner-circle HOF player, apparently a wonderful human being, and perhaps the worst major-network baseball analyst of all time.
When the analytics revolution came, Joe Morgan stayed on the barricades until he was overrun and trampled, then continued to bite the ankles of the victors for as long as anyone would let him near a microphone. Fire Joe Morgan! was one of the first successful grass-roots movements in the baseball analytics community to actually get major media coverage. The irony, of course, is that Morgan was the epitome of a player whose amazing value was driven by the things statheads love (on base percentage, extra-base power, seeing a lot of pitches, taking extra bases efficiently) and not by the things that he himself valued (stolen bases, not making errors, making contact, being agressive, bunting well).
But that’s all irrelevant now. Rest in peace, Joe.
Yeah, the book is even more explicitly about the commodification of masculinity and the emptiness of consumerism.
I’ve made a comment here before about the Far Right co-opting language from 1984, written by a self-described democratic socialist; Fight Club, written by a gay man inspired by Camus and Foucault; and The Matrix, written by two trans siblings heavily influenced by just about every Leftist, Continental philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century.
@OzarkHillbilly: One of my friends was involved in one of the Green Building hacks. Those of us at S.I.P.B. ended up doing more, erm, computer-related hacks.
Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place reminds us that in 2016 the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona added seats to their state Supreme Courts so they could appoint Republican cronies. I’m sure we all remember the outrage of their fellow Republicans at these court packing schemes and the thorough coverage of this violation of norms in the supposedly liberal MSM. Oh wait. As Sullivan points out it’s a dog-bites-man story when Republicans do it.
Sort of like how people go up to Oliver Stone and say “Gordon Gecko inspired me to go into finance!”
A related example: The speech by “Blake” from Glengarry Glen Ross has been cited by some people in sales as a good motivational speech, providing a harsh but much-needed life lesson. (There was a Cracked article a while back defending this point of view.) Mamet himself has said that’s the opposite of what he intended, and it should be very clear that the movie, if you actually pay attention, seems to argue quite clearly that the speech wasn’t just immoral, it was also bad advice on a practical level and helped hasten the men’s self-destruction.
@Teve: I first saw Fight Club around the time it came out, but then some years later we studied it for a course. Afterward, I went to the imdb discussion board for the film, and I ended up in one of my weirdest and most memorable encounters with online trolls. There was this one commenter who claimed to be a professor of psychology, though his spelling and grammar were atrocious, and he made certain claims that didn’t sound to me like what a real psychologist would say (for example, he seemed to think DID was a form of schizophrenia). He was extremely rude toward those with differing interpretations of the film, and he attacked all the laymen (which he spelled “laimen”) who didn’t have his expertise. I called BS on some of his claims, and I implied I suspected one of the other commenters (allegedly a female) was just a sockpuppet of his.
It turned out this fellow had established himself as a sort of ruler of the premises, with a mob of followers he called his Space Monkeys (just like in the film) he would sic on any commenter he claimed was a “troll.” So he started a new thread imploring them all to attack me. (One comment I remember to this day–I’m not remotely making this up–“Kylopod is stupid and his logic is stupid and the reason he is stupid is because the opposite of smart is Kylopod.”) Afterward, he praised the wittiness of these comments.
Heh, that reminds me of the catapult made by inhabitants at Senior House at M.I.T. that was able to throw a refrigerator onto the President’s lawn…and then be dismantled and hidden by the time the Campus Police showed up.
When I was working at a factory back in my younger days, one of the mangers related a story about Mitsubishi (I think; it was a Japanese car manufacturer). Retooling the line (going from one model to another) would shut down the line for several days. One of the big-wigs said he wanted a way to get it down “to single hours”–meaning less than 10 hours. It was misheard as “to a single hour”.
The completely redesigned the production line so that for retooling, each section was offline for 45 minutes. So while the entire process took a full day, there was only a 45 minute loss of production (which moved down the assembly line between the end of one model and the start of the next).
Massive engineering and efficiency feat–because of a misheard statement.
@Kathy: @Kathy: I wear my N95 or KN95 masks months – until the straps break. Much more than 10x each. Next time a strap breaks I’ll put it on the fixture here and test it (the tests are destructive) but I’m willing to bet that it will test just fine.
Lysol is probably not a good idea. The way the filter works is by having a random 3D mesh of fibers that the particles can adhere to. Just speculation, but getting that too wet might cause the fibers to clump or stick together. And it is unlikely that it would truly permeate the mask anyway, since one of its functions is to prevent moisture from penetrating.
I come home, take the mask off and hang it on the doorknob or put it on my car dashboard (to get the UV rays), wash my hands and then the next time I need one I use a different mask. That way they get 3 days in between and any C19 virus should be degraded. If you’ve got 10 masks you can cycle through them, giving you 10 days or more in between uses and making it unnecessary to sterilize in any other way.
A good way to think about the difference between an N95 mask and a surgical mask (by which I mean those flat, pleated ones) is like this: a well secured N95 mask is primarily about filtering while also preventing liquid penetration as well as any surgical mask, while that surgical mask is primarily about stopping liquids and has some filtering capability, but a good amount of air will just go around the media.
@Mu Yixiao: reminds me of the famous story about the mathematician George Dantzig. He was a grad student at UC Berkeley and one day he showed up to his grad statistics class late. He saw two problems on the board and assumed they were homework problems, and wrote them down and started working on them. A few days later he apologized to the professor because the homework was taking longer than usual. After a few weeks he solved both problems.
Well they weren’t homework problems. The professor had written them on the board as examples of two famous unsolved problems in statistics. Later when he was having trouble coming up with ideas for a doctoral thesis, the professor said we’ll just write up those two solutions and call those your thesis.
I had a bad sales manager who quoted frequently from that speech, he was pretty invested in it and didn’t take the hint as to what really was meant. Wasn’t long before he was shown the door.
Nice try. Intellectually weak and dishonest. Its not quoting zerohedge. Its quoting scientists as reported by zerohedge. (Since your groupthink sources will not)
But your MO is clear. You care nothing about science, unless it agrees with your POV. Rather, you care about appeal to authority, as long as it agrees with you.
Meanwhile, back in the real world. “Peaceful” protesters pull down a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
WaPo, via Microsoft news, reports that Senator Lee–currently infected with Covid-19 IIRC–appeared at today’s Amy Coney Island hearing not wearing a mask.
I can’t remember the quote that applies–“something people something something.” Arrrrgh! My memory is failing with my ability to GAF about the “other people (especially conservatives/Republicans) and Covid-19” conundrum. [sigh…]
Sahil Kupar of NBC News is live-tweeting the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. He summarizes it as follow:
Sahil Kapur
@sahilkapur
Replying to
@sahilkapur
It’s clear what the two sides want to focus on at the Amy Coney Barrett hearing:
• Every Democrat has brought up the ACA lawsuit headed to the Supreme Court
• Most Republicans have brought up her large family and Catholic faith + denounced judicial activism
As an example of the latter, he tweets:
Sahil Kapur
@sahilkapur
·
3h
Joni Ernst is up, focusing her speech heavily on religion, saying Amy Coney Barrett’s opponents keep “attacking your faith and your precious family… attacking you as a mom and a woman of faith.” (Only Republicans have brought up her Catholicism at this hearing.)
I have never worked sales. The concept is alien. I did check-out at a grocery and clerked at a convenience store, but that was different. People came to me and said I want to buy this here is my money.
When salesfolk came to us selling hardware or software tools, I never wanted to talk to the salespeople, but to the engineers.
This will increase productivity by blahbiddyblah percent.
How exactly? Give me an engineer to talk to.
We bought a data integration tool that sucked so hard. They brought on people to try to make it work. They brought in a guy whose primary job was to assuage my boss that that this all fixable – give us two weeks. The on – site folks were top notch, but the product was just fatally flawed.
Turns out the director was getting a kick-back. He was also getting a kick-back from another consulting company he had hired. Oh, and openly having an affair with his assistant.
That project crashed hard. But at least Mr. Mercenary Director got his ass handed to him hard and got blacklisted in the industry.
The wrap-up analysis actually was quite good and useful though.
Nice try. Intellectually weak and dishonest. Its not quoting zerohedge. Its quoting scientists as reported by zerohedge. (Since your groupthink sources will not)
@@JohnSf and @I addressed the specific quotes in the article, we examined the original source for the quotes and explained why they were quoted misleadingly in the Zerohedge piece. You just took the selective quotations in the Zerohedge piece as the final word on what was actually said and didn’t bother to explore further. What were you saying again about groupthink?
@Kylopod: That seems to be a common problem at business schools. The final chapter of my Master’s thesis starts by quoting an article from Bud Schulberg having been invited to speak to a group of graduating Business students at Wharton (I think) and discovering that they invited him because they had thought What Makes Sammy Run was a lesson in how to conduct business and had taken Sammy Glick as their role model.
I’ll still look up how to clean/sterilize N95 masks online, no offense. But I’ll probably order the masks today. There’s a Home Depot very near my apartment.
Nice try. Intellectually weak and dishonest. Its not quoting zerohedge. Its quoting scientists as reported by zerohedge. (Since your groupthink sources will not)
Zerohedge is selectively quoting Epoch Times (a bizarre source on its own) which is selectively quoting reputable people.
Multiple levels of selective quoting.
But your MO is clear. You care nothing about science, unless it agrees with your POV. Rather, you care about appeal to authority, as long as it agrees with you.
I laugh at anyone who brings bad information to the table. Like you, hedgemonger. There’s no value in having a discussion with known liars.
@keef:
What in the hell is the connection between Zerohedges’ selective-to-the-point-of-dishonesty quotations of Dr Nabarro, and its citations of a highly dubious “Declaration”, and the actions of some vandals in Portland?
Seriously, this is a complete and utter non sequitur.
…you care about appeal to authority, as long as it agrees with you.
1) Pot, meet kettle
2) Actually, as a conservative (for a very arbitrary value of “conservative”) I think appeal to authority can have a certain, umm, appeal as a quick and dirty go-to.
As long as you remember, reality has the final say. (“Nullius in verba” and “eppur si muove” doncha know)
At the time of the savings and loan bank scandal, a friend was working on his MBA. He was older than most of the students and also from the non-profit sector, rather than business. We met one evening for drinks after his class and he regaled me with funny anecdotes from the class as his peers attempted to justify the fraud. Given that this was Minneapolis, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that some of those MBA candidates ended up at Wells Fargo.
Hot Air is not the real world. It is such nonsense that the filter on my corporate laptop won’t even let it through, and it let through the zerohedge (but not Epoch Times…).
Come on, hedgemonger, try to use reputable sources.
Another baseball hall of Famer has passed away. That makes 6 since last March. The others- Lou Brock, Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, and Bob Gibson. Now it was Joe Morgan.
Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, part of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and one of the best second basemen to don a glove, has died, the Reds said in a statement. He celebrated his 77th birthday last month.
According to the San Francisco Giants, where he also played, the two-time World Series champ died Sunday at his home in Danville, California, a 30-minute drive east of the Oakland high school where he played as a teen.
“The Reds family is heartbroken. Joe was a giant in the game and was adored by the fans in this city,” team CEO Bob Castellini said. “As a cornerstone on one of the greatest teams in baseball history, his contributions to this franchise will live forever.”
MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred called Morgan “a symbol of all around excellence” and said he one of the game’s best-ever “five-tool players,” meaning he excelled at hitting, hitting hard, running, fielding and throwing.
The 10-time All-Star was inducted into the Reds’ Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the National Baseball Hall of Fame three years later. He also served as vice chairman of the Hall’s board of directors from 2000 until his death.
Eight seasons, eight All-Star honors
Though he played for numerous teams, including the Giants, Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies and Oakland As, he is best known for his time alongside Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench and “Hit King” Pete Rose in Cincinnati.
Because of its dominance in the 1970s, the team was nicknamed the Big Red Machine. The Reds won the National League West in five of Morgan’s eight seasons with the squad and went on to snare World Series titles in 1975 and 1976. Morgan was named National League MVP in both seasons.
The Reds retired his No. 8 jersey in 1998.
Morgan’s heyday was with the Reds, but he first played for the Houston Astros. A pivotal moment in his career may have been him getting injured in the 24-inning 1-0 game between the Astros and New York Mets in April 1968. Morgan missed almost all of the rest of the season. Up till then Morgan’s defensive play had been erratic but afterwards he became a gold glover. Coincidence? Who know but Morgan was the best all-around 2nd baseman* in the 1970’s. RIP Joe.
*- Rod Carew was a better hitter but his glove work at 2nd was never more than average.
A quick search online indicates vaporized hydrogen peroxide, dry heat, and ultraviolet light.
The first is not possible to do at home. the second I could do in my oven easily enough, but I’m sure the bands for placing the mask on one’s ears would melt or burn, even at a mere 70 C. UV through the UV filtering windshield, I wonder. You can’t block all UV and retain a transparent substance, and the exposure could last for several days.
All this info derives from hospital methods of sanitizing N95 masks, and warns not to reuse more than 5 times. At the same time, this concerns hospital ER and COVID-19 treatment areas exposed to SARS-CoV-2, meaning in large amounts for extended periods. In daily use at the office and the supermarket, the exposure is sure to be far lower.
You may recall I said last month there were three cases of COVID-19 at the office. One of them kept coming in between his test and the result, meaning he was positive when the sample was taken two days before the results came in. And he passed it to no one else (he wears a mask).
So it would seem the measures in place do work. However, I’m concerned over all he Covidiots who don’t wear masks, and whom I know meet with clients, suppliers, and go out to restaurants and who knows where else outside of working hours. I think any extra protection I cna get is sensible at this point.
I was busy beavering away at designing the front end that no one ever used even once. (It was a fun problem to work though – it was fun to work with star schemas and Sybase IQ)
Dude in the next cube over actually did a useful thing. Plus he was smart enough to go home at 5 pm. I wasn’t and burnt myself out.
There is a very high likelihood I encountered your friend’s amoral classmates. WF went south fast after Kovacevich left.
In no way can I say that all MBAs are stupid assholes, but the propensity is shockingly high. A lot of them are brainiacs – incredibly dense, arrogant, self-assured brainiacs.
Whereas Morgan was one of the best hitters ever, full stop. Best 2B born in the 20th century, top 20 among all position players.
I was going to get frosty and salty about his glove, but you are mostly right.
Not really. Best modern estimates have Morgan as very slightly above average defensively, Carew slightly below average. (More than slightly at 2B, made up for by being a good 1B.)
Morgan is an innermost circle HOF; Carew is deserving but a couple of notches down.
Almost 10hrs in the voting line and still haven’t voted. I know many across the nation are probably experiencing this as well. Hang in there! I’m right here wit cha’ll.
I wonder if any of the people exposed to trump’s own SARS-CoV-2 contamination can sue him for endangering their lives, even if they didn’t contract COVID-19 from him (and of course those who did, including federal employees employed at the White House).
If they can so sue, would they be able to compel Trump to say when he tested positive and/or when he first developed symptoms? How about those around him who also know?
Next, from the NYT’s stories on Trump’s tax records, there seems to be ample reason to suspect campaign finance violations and several improprieties. I’d advise the next Treasury Secretary to form a task force to audit Trump’s returns from 2015 to 2020. I mean a thorough audit, going through everything with a microscope.
As regards expanding the Supreme Court, there is a path that makes logical sense and does not look like shamelessly packing the court. Simply put, there aren’t enough federal judges, which leads to less than satisfactory outcomes in all things from immigration hearings to lawsuits to criminal trials.
If the Democrats take the Senate, it would be criminal of them not to draft a bill to expand the number of federal judges, and on the same logic expand the number of seats at the Court. Sure, the GOP would try to do the same, but there won’t be as sever a shortage of judges for them to exploit. The optics would be totally different.
If the Democrats don’t take the Senate, or at least tie 50-50, Biden won’t be able to do much in his first term.
Some local reporting from the Portland Mercury about the toppling of statues last night:
On the evening before Columbus Day—which Portland renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2015—hundreds of people gathered in the pouring rain to stand for indigenous rights. Protesters marched and prayed, while some toppled statues and broke windows throughout downtown. In the days leading up to the protest, a number of flyers on social media called the event “Indigenous Peoples’ Day of Rage.”
[…]
The ire drawn by the Roosevelt’s statue is perhaps easiest to understand due to Roosevelt’s continuance of Dawes Act which broke up indigenous lands. The words “Dakota 38” were painted on the podium of the Abraham Lincoln statue, calling attention to Lincoln’s suppression of the 1862 Dakota Uprising which saw 38 Dakota hanged on the same day. That event remains the largest mass execution in US history.
Say what you will about the protests or the statues, or the dead Dakota from over a hundred fifty years ago, or the centuries of mistreatment of Native Americans, this is good reporting that puts it into context.
If you don’t know that there are Native American activists turning out that day, singing their little Native American songs, you would have an impression of random stupid violence. Here people were kind enough to tag Lincoln’s statue with the motive, and the local press reported it.
And then the article points out the unbridled tragedy and stupidity of other acts of destruction.
According to Kerry Tymchuk, the director of the Oregon Historical Society, people stole one item from the museum: a quilt stitched in the 1970s by 15 Black women in Portland to commemorate the United States Bicentennial, with each square depicting a moment in African American history. Tymchuk said the quilt was discovered several blocks away Monday morning, “very wet.”
The Oregon Historical Society had recently published their quarterly magazine on the subject of the white supremacist history of Oregon (I’m surprised they were able to fit it in a single quarterly…)
Was the historical society attacked by white supremacists under cover of other protests? Or did an unruly crowd of protesters then attack a museum that was literally telling the story the protesters wanted to draw attention to? I have no idea, but if we were satisfied with Hedgemonger’s Hot Air shit, I think we would never know to even ask the question.
——
For the record, I think hanging 48 Dakotas in effigy next to the Lincoln statue would have been a much more powerful and effective statement. Or take a few liberties and go with painted versions of chalk outlines. Or just the names of the dead.
For some Republicans, the optics of “we did this because we had the power to” is good. They would not be dissuaded from doing anything because of the optics.
Even if we don’t pack the court, they might do it anyway if the existing court doesn’t bring back the feudal system fast enough.
I’ve never seen the movie, but as someone with sales experience, I can sort of see that as a goal.
Salespeople work on commission. If you don’t close you don’t get paid.
In a good company, the sales person gets a “long-tail” commission. They keep getting some income for a period that the client stays with the company. This benefits both the salesman (more income) and the company (continued income) and encourages the salesperson to present long-term deals that benefit both the company and the client.
In a bad company, everyone just cares about the “quick buck”. That makes a lot of money for everyone in the (very) short term, but puts the company out of business rather promptly.
if “Always be closing” means “always be bringing in long-term clients we can build an ongoing relationship with”, then it’s a very good philosophy. If it means “Get all the money you can now”, then it’s self-destructive.
Antiabortion groups say they stand behind Trump’s use of a drug tested on cells derived from an aborted fetus because the president ‘was not involved with that abortion’
In related news, PETA announced that they stand behind Trump’s eating foie gras because the president was not involved in force-feeding that goose.
@Mu Yixiao: Georgia does have mail-in absentee voting, and it looks (from the state website anyway) like there aren’t a lot of restrictions.
It should be noted that in the Buckhead part of Atlanta ( where live lots of well-off white people) the wait to vote today was about 15 minutes. It’s only in the majority-minority areas where the waits are multiple hours.
The disparity would be actionable in court, had SCOTUS not gutted the Voting Rights Act. But as it stands, the state government is free to do all it wants to suppress the black vote.
It probably won’t surprise anyone that Trump supporters are anti-democratic authoritarians, but here’s some more evidence.
A new book by a psychology professor and a former lawyer in the Nixon White House argues that Trump has tapped into a current of authoritarianism in the American electorate, one that’s bubbled just below the surface for years. In “Authoritarian Nightmare,” Bob Altemeyer and John W. Dean marshal data from a previously unpublished nationwide survey showing a striking desire for strong authoritarian leadership among Republican voters.
They also find shockingly high levels of anti-democratic beliefs and prejudicial attitudes among Trump backers, especially those who support the president strongly.
[…]
Many fervent Trump supporters, Altemeyer and Dean write, “are submissive, fearful, and longing for a mighty leader who will protect them from life’s threats. They divide the world into friend and foe, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former.”
@Kathy: Yeah,I wrecked a mask trying to use my oven. Not accurate enough at those low temperatures. The sous vide did the trick though, although I left it in for a couple of hours instead of thirty minutes.
When I first started playing with sous vide I discovered that there were people eating rare pork and rare poultry claiming that you don’t have to reach the “safe” temperatures as long as you go long enough. And, much to my surprise I found an FDA chart listing how long meat needs to be at certain temperatures to be safe and it turns out you can cook any meat at 125 degrees for a few hours and it’s safe. But on the other hand the very idea of eating rare chicken makes me gag.
Many fervent Trump supporters, Altemeyer and Dean write, “are submissive, fearful, and longing for a mighty leader who will protect them from life’s threats. They divide the world into friend and foe, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former.”
Futile as it may be, I feel obligated to point out that this describes the current Trumper on this thread perfectly.
These Trumpers are just dropping in here to blather and get a rise from the evil liberals, and then they run off and fantasize about how much their big man would approve of them if he only knew. It’s an act of masturbation and what the commentariat here say or think doesn’t even enter into it. They want attention, that’s all, and every reply feeds this need. The contents of the replies don’t matter in the slightest.
Asking honestly: Does GA not have a vote-by-mail option? Election Day is 3 weeks off. Why are people standing in line for hours?
They probably figured that there wouldn’t be a lot of people at early voting. I plan on voting as soon as Florida allows it in 10 days, and I’m not expecting there to be long lines. Hopefully I won’t be surprised.
@MarkedMan: yeah it’s really a function of time and temp. But I sous vide everything to at least 135° because I don’t like the gooey textures lower temps produce. And 135 is medium rare for a steak so it works out fine. 😀
@MarkedMan: Pork that hasn’t been cooked to oblivion is wonderful. And now that pork processors are self-inspecting, I’d want my pork cooked longer however it is cooked.
Sous vide means it has a chance of still being tasty.
@Mu Yixiao: “Election Day is 3 weeks off. Why are people standing in line for hours?”
BECAUSE THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR AND SOS HAVE MADE IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR PEOPLE IN DEMOCRATIC-LEANING NEIGHBORHOODS TO VOTE.
Sorry to shout, but if you’ve missed the endless conversation about this going on for the last THREE YEARS, at some point it’s got to be because you don’t want to hear.
The other day I was reading for a couple of hours.
I leaned back and drank some tea. A super quick thought went through my head:
I should re-charge
The problem was that I was reading a book. A regular soft cover book with no USB port available.
It’s crazy how your brain adapts to new things.
I had a good laugh at my own expense and folly. Laughing at yourself is a good thing.
The headline of the day-
Covid-19: China’s Qingdao to test nine million in five days
Fifth of countries at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds
Those loopy left wing environmentalists are always screaming that the sky is falling. Anybody with an ounce of intelligence just ignores them.
Bringing a comment over from yesterday’s open forum:
@Sleeping Dog:
I agree with the second part of that statement, but not the first. The California Republicans over the past couple of decades are illustrative. Faced with a rising percentage of the population that was Hispanic there were voices within the party who called for widening the coalition to remain viable. Instead the party leadership went all in on an anti-Hispanic crusade. Did it make sense if they wanted to remain competitive? Of course not. But the Republican Party made itself a safe space for racists and they gradually took over control of the party. In what world would those people have said, “Maybe we were wrong about the brown people and should give some of them positions of authority within the party”? So the open minded people left the party, leaving a higher and higher percentage of racists and lunatics. And they are no longer competitive, but have the satisfaction of remaining true to their beliefs.
There was an article in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun about how the state Republican Party, who have seen a reduction in their overall numbers in the the State Congress from viable a couple of decades ago (or less) to a two to one disadvantage today. What is their response? To elect even more conservative leaders to the party. To replace the angry old white guys with angrier old white guys.
There is no law of nature or politics that mandates Parties have to remain viable. In California the two party system has been replaced by multiple factions fighting it out in a single party. If the Republican Party survives long enough there it may be reduced so much in size and effectiveness that some enterprising group can take it over and repurpose it to suit their ends. But it at that point only the name will remain.
Kudos to him but I have to ask, why stop at one punch?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Even though Trump is eminently punchable, I’d love to know why Granddad did so.
Today is Thanksgiving in Canada, and as Americans I think we can guess what they’re most thankful for today.
As the readers of the comment section here probably know by now, I consider the modern Republican Party to be an active harm to the country and to have been so for years. People who feel this way trace the fall back to different events and like them I have my own pet crossroads. One of them is the Reagan era and the embrace of the pretty lie. I won’t litigate that issue here, but one of the lessons I took from it was to constantly check a politician’s statements against their actions. Do they proclaim noble principles? Sure. But do they ever act according to those principles when they conflict with their overall agenda?
Case in point. Here in Maryland our Governor is Republican. He’s not a wingnut and is far from a Trumper, but nonetheless he is fundamentally about preserving the existing power structure and catering to big business, and even where he has an opening to do the right thing he still has to contend with his base of lunatics and losers who will brook no deviation from the party line. And what is that party line with respect to opening public accommodations in the face of the coronavirus? That people should be allowed to make their own choices. That government shouldn’t be dictating what level of risk an individual can accept. That an informed citizenry will make better decisions than faceless bureaucrats. Sounds wonderful (if you don’t think about it more than a millisecond). But if they actually believed this, they would make every effort to make sure the public had all the information they need to make such decisions. And in MD, the state has asked that all Covid statistics be reported to them and they act as the coordinator and filter for that information and they have decided that they will withhold information about individual schools and whether they are experiencing an outbreak or not. They are re-opening the schools in November but putting in a policy of coverup in preparation for that. (The Catholic schools, some of them already open, are almost inevitably covering up and the State supports them in that.)
So are the Republicans just parroting pretty lies when they talk about the wisdom of an informed citizenry? Yes. By their very actions, yes.
Follow the science
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/who-flip-flops-urges-world-leaders-stop-using-lockdowns-fight-covid-contagion
I have no problem with that, except for the fact that the risk isn’t limited to the individual. They put others at risk with their irresponsible actions, and not just their families but random strangers they stand in line with at the grocery store.
I’m sure the fathers have to be punished as well.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. Sometimes I just crack me up.
Pretty effing nifty: These Plastic Objects Can Talk to Computers Without Electronics or Batteries
Internet Of Broken Things Jumps The Shark With IoT Chastity Penis Lock That Can Be Hacked
The lede: “Say it with me now: not every last thing needs to be connected to the internet.”
Why do the stupidest people always end up posting zerohedge?
@Gustopher: It’s the same reason that those Nigerian spam letters are so obviously fake. Those who are stupid enough to fall for them are much, much easier to get money out of.
Those who post to stuff from ZeroHedge are, ah, what was the term? Oh yes….Useful Idiots.
@Gustopher:
I suspect that’s Drew coming in under a VPN. (He was banned right? For terminal banality.)
I see my plea to reference legitimate news sources has gone unheeded. C’est la vie…
Oh god, it’s zerohedge quoting… Epoch Times.
From there it is just quoting things out of context that are themselves quoting things out of context. And, of course, it is written by “Tyler Durden”.
@Jen:
It’s hard to find any legitimate news sources that are willing to furnish the kind of full-throttle adoration of Trump his supporters demand. That’s why they depend on a bunch of crackpot blogs (The Gateway Pundit, The Conservative Tree House, American Greatness) for their “news.”
I find the reports coming out that the California GOP has set up fake (and illegal) ballot drop-off boxes completely alarming. Shouldn’t someone be in handcuffs by now over this? It’s literally illegal. This is vote-tampering.
@Keef:
Oh, you’re Drew, aren’t you? Sneaking back in under a different name to peddle zero hedge. Again. Still. Like anyone with a functioning brain cares?
@Keef:
It is no more possible to “follow the science” at Zerohedge than it is to keep up with the Kardashians at Physics Review B. But then you knew that.
BTW, still waiting for you to admit that you were completely wrong about whether there were countries out there that had contained the virus much better than the US has. Nobody’s going to mistake you for someone arguing in good faith until you can admit when you were clearly, objectively, laughably wrong about a key “fact” underpinning your argument.
Ported over from Fauci thread for @Michael Reynolds:
You might advise them to go with a ballista rather than a trebuchet. It’s easier to build, easier to vary the amount of force, and doesn’t throw the candy as high. It’s also easier to aim.
It is not, however, nearly as freaking cool.
Seems an appropriate time to re-emphasize Zerohedge is basically a Russian propaganda outlet and those who disseminate it are helping America’s adversaries.
@Jen: Republicans have been blathering for months about “voter fraud” and since there really isn’t any to speak of they have taken it upon themselves to create some.
I’ve examined keef’s link so you don’t have to.
Basically, it quotes David Nabarro of WHO as saying that lockdowns should not be the primary method of combating the pandemic. Instead, countries should rely more on, in Nabarro’s words (from an article the Zerohedge piece conveniently neglects to link to): “physical distancing, proper face-masking, hand/cough/surface hygiene, self-isolating when ill and shielding those most at risk. There should be no exceptions anywhere.”
In other words, Nabarro is arguing for deemphasizing lockdowns in favor of a range of safety measures that Zerohedge has argued vociferously against. I only had to do a quick search on the website to find many examples of pieces by “Tyler Durden” attacking masks, social distancing, and the rest.
This is straight out of the playbook of creationists: take some quote from an expert arguing against the relative importance of one element of the science, treat it as a repudiation of the entire science, and ignore the fact that the very same analysis upholds everything they deny.
@Keef:
Well, normally I’m a fairly patient person, ready to engage on the basis of reasoned argument, assuming good faith, and a rational comparison of evidence presented
But it’s Monday, cold and wet, and I’m feeling a bit cranky.
So, do you ever stop to bloody well THINK about what you read?
Zerohedge does not have a good reputation for objectivity, to put it mildly.
It only need a little effort to put this sly article in context.
The WHO envoy cited is speaking in the context of firstly the inconsistency, chaotic messaging, and prioritising PR over policy that has gone on in the UK lately.
Like many others he has advocated for a long period that the best policy is tho ramp up testing to the point where it can provide near-real time response to a whole-population on demand system, and that in turn can inform tracing systems to isolate infected individuals and potentially infected contacts.
Spread mitigation can be managed by masking, distancing and other sanitary measures.
And local “hotspots” can be contained by local isolation “mini lockdowns” if need be.
This is all eminently sensible, and Dr Nabarro is advocating what almost all medical experts support.
The problem is, that the UK, and the US, and quite a few others, have wasted (pissed away, in fact) the time since (arguably) January and (certainly) March and failed miserably to set up the test/trace/intervene systems needed.
The “firebreak” of the earlier lockdown has not been used effectively, and this has led to in the UK the government dithering and arguing and almost falling to pieces due to the looming necessity of imposing a second lockdown.
Another point: the article refers to the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Eminent names indeed:
And many others of their peers in the world of medical science.
Not to mention that this “Declaration” was organised by the American Institute for Economic Research, one of the Koch Foundations “think tanks” which also has something of a track record, shall we say.
Quite a similar template seems to have been used to that of recruiting “dissenting” scientists to downplay climate change, challenge smoking links to disease and similar dubious operations.
@Jen:
As best I can tell from the stories I’ve found at reputable sites, what seems to be going on is a combination of:
1. Setting up what would be perfectly legal ballot-harvesting collection points, but failing to follow the correct procedures to make them legal.
2. Distributing lists of collection points that list the GOP-placed boxes but not all of the official government collection boxes, and not mentioning that the GOP-placed ones are not official.
3. Possibly labeling the unofficial boxes in a misleading manner.
“The correct procedures” hinge on each voter having to specify a person who will turn in their ballot for them. People who just drop the ballot in the unofficial box have not voted legally.
I suspect that this will play out with lots of claims of honest mistake — they’ve already started with the “but this is exactly what the Democrats have been doing for years” — and the boxes will either go away or get made official. What happens to the improper ballots already collected… who knows?
@MarkedMan:
There’s an R party in Cali? I’m being facetious or course, but if nationally, the R’s want to shrink to Cali and Mass, R’s proportion of the electorate, let them. They’d never control the House or Presidency again, though the Senate is possible. After all there is still a Socialist Workers Party in the US and they meet in a broom closet.
Our political future and leadership would be much better if the practical center of American politics was somewhere between Joe Manchin and AOC, than we are today. Let the R’s be a racist, nationalist horde that is somewhere around 25% of the populous.
@Kylopod:
@JohnSf:
It’s hard to achieve what they want: a means to be safe from COVID-19, which lets them live their lives as though there were no pandemic ravaging the world’s population, and which cannot even include minor inconveniences like masks or distancing.
It’s so much easier to pretend there’s no pandemic. Even if you die form it, at least you weren’t inconvenienced.
@JohnSf:
Hey, Macarena has obvious expertise in things which are contagious. Like beats.
@Michael Reynolds:
They were sloppy.
In the past they have curated their deniers.
This time they foolishly used an open form and caught a mild dose of Brits taking the piss.
I’d also like to bring up something that’s barely related: over the years I’ve been fascinated by the fact that so many right-wingers are fans of the book and/or movie Fight Club, often treating Tyler Durden like a modern prophet. This is interesting to me for a few reasons. First, Durden’s philosophy is explicitly anticapitalist. But more to the point, the story was not endorsing Durden’s movement, it was more of an Animal Farm-esque fable about how revolutionaries become everything they claim to despise about the system they aim to overthrow. Durden is the psychopathic cult leader of a terrorist group. The writer and director have made this very clear in interviews. Yet you wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve encountered who think Durden is someone worth emulating.
There are also striking similarities between Durden’s group and neo-Nazis, despite there being no obvious references to racist beliefs. They’re almost entirely white. They shave their heads like skinheads. There’s the scene where Durden terrorizes an Asian store clerk. They think of themselves as secretly infiltrating normal society in preparation for the revolution. They’re also kind of a precursor to today’s incels and men’s-rights folks.
Speaking of COVID-19, one stat I follow daily is new cases ins a 7-day moving average from the Johns Hopkins tracker. It gives you a sense of which countries are controlling the virus.
India saw a large sustained increase, but it’s been trending down for the past 15 days or so. Clearly they are doing something that’s working (if the data is reliable and they do enough tests, which we can’t tell from the graphs).
Also clearly, many countries that had imposed some control are losing it or have lost it. Namely Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. they are either approaching the peaks from last spring, or have surpassed them already.
We need to do much better next pandemic, and there will be one, and it might be worse than this one. One thing governments should os, all over the world, is build up large stockpiles of reusable N95 respirators, which can then be distributed to the population when needed. Cloth and other types of masks are all well and good, but they merely slow down the spread. This might serve for COVID-19 but only because we have nothing else. Suppose the next pandemic has a mortality rate of 15%. Would we be fine with merely slowing the spread?
We also need to do better against the seasonal flu. I know much effort is taken today, but we can improve. For one thing, N95 masks would be a good thing for more vulnerable people to wear. They could also be mandated for service workers who have close contact with the public, such as doctors, nurses, hair stylists, waiters, etc.
Another thing is to see how effective the messenger RNA vaccines are, like the ones Moderna and Pfizer are trialing now. They appear to take very little time to develop. Perhaps the technique can be used to make polyvalent vaccines against several flu strains at once, or to make a vaccine for each of the more likely strains.
I bring up the flu because it appears to be a long-neglected issue, even if the mortality rate is low. Besides, it would rob future deniers of the claim that any deadly disease is “no worse than the flu” (to be replaced by “no worse than the Trump virus” no doubt).
@Kathy:
Sometimes I really hate being right about something.
About a fortnight ago I said, re. the surging UK positive test numbers:
And today:
Thankfully death rates remain low, but if the hospital intensive care capacity maxes out, another week will see that spiking as well.
Dammit.
The first peak was unavoidable perhaps.
But this; nine months, nine sodding months, to build the testing/tracing system we need, wasted.
There should be blood for this.
Pretty good evidence that ‘keef’ is Drew is Guarneri is whatever other name he comes up with: http://theglitteringeye.com/why-containment-couldnt-work/#comment-731801
Great, now I’m in mod for reasons I cannot even guess.
@Kathy:
Actually, the way I read this (scrolling to the per capita charts),
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
Germany and Italy are currently doing much better than U.S. in rolling average of current new cases, while France and especially Netherlands and Belgium are doing much worse.
U.S. has several times as many new cases as Germany, while Belgium and Netherlands have several times as many per capita as U.S.
So culture as government policy really matter, you can see similar wide ranges comparing various U.S states.
@Kylopod:
Yeah, a shocking number of people thought Archie Bunker was the hero of “All in the Family”, too.
@Kathy:
For the most part, all the N95 masks I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot) are reusable. Basically, filter media tends to improve with respect to penetration with use, but resistance goes up (i.e. it becomes harder to breathe through). So as long as the mask is not too difficult to breathe through, you should be good. There is a risk in that the outside of the mask could become contaminated and when you touch it you transfer the virus to your hand. One way to overcome this is to have three masks and circulate through them, since the virus doesn’t last on most sufaces past three days. Alternatively, if you’ve got a sous vide rig, you could shrink wrap a mask in plastic and put it in with a weight on top and give it 160 degrees F for a half an hour.
@charon:
I thought doing worse than America would be much harder.
I mentioned a few weeks back an ep of Podcast19 (538’s podcast on the pandemic), that the Dutch were not wearing masks outside of public transportation, though they did social distance. Now we may be seeing the consequences.
Maintaining distance is hard even when everyone’s trying. even those trying forget and fall into old habits. And many who do wear masks, wear them incorrectly, or use masks with outflow valves which spread as much SARS-CoV-2 as those not wearing masks.
This virus is so hard to contain, that even countries using the right policies find it hard to keep a lid on it. those who have bad policies naturally see increased numbers of cases.
A vaccine can’t come fast enough.
Given the prominence of Zero Hedge, and the use of “Tyler Durden” for years there, including the image of Brad Pitt, I wonder why they haven’t been hit with a cease and desist by either the author or the folks behind the movie.
@DrDaveT:
Yup–that’s an excellent analogy. The difference is that I’m not sure the writer and director of Fight Club were consciously aiming to depict right-wingers–positively or otherwise. Durden’s group can’t be easily pigeonholed into a conventional political conception, yet from a distance it does resemble in some ways a radical-right group, and the film itself is kind of in the tradition of movies about violent disillusioned white men, like Taxi Driver or Falling Down, except instead of the lone-wolf idea it makes an entire group built around these hangups.
@Kylopod: Sure, he was an anticapitalist terrorist and bizarre men’s rights activist, but he was cool. And it was a good movie.
Next you’re going to be saying that J.D. from Heathers is not a good role model.
@DrDaveT:
There were people who laughed at Archie Bunker. And there were people who laughed with Archie Bunker.
@Gustopher:
Or that Khan isn’t the hero in Star Trek. C’mon.
@DrDaveT:
A running gag in “How I Met Your Mother” was that Barney Stinson thought all the movie villains were the heroes.
@MarkedMan:
I’m giving the matter much thought.
A coworker gave me a KN95 mask (that’s the Chinese N95 standard, or so I gather), and told me he leans it by spraying Lysol on it. I’ve used it once, and then put it in a drawer at home.
I can get a 10 pack of KN95 masks from a local store, for about $30. That’s too much money for a disposable product, but if I can reuse them several times each, it might be worth the expense. They provide much more protection for the wearer than the disposable masks we get at work.
If they can be used 10 times each, that’s 100 days. Divided by 6 days a week I usually wear masks, that’s 3 1/2 months, or until mid-February. About when mass vaccination should get going.
To be honest, I thought that just as hand sanitizer has returned in large numbers to the stores (they no longer place limits on how many one can buy at one time), that we would see N95 masks as well. but this hasn’t been the case.
@Gustopher:
Finance blog Zero Hedge was banned from Twitter for Wuhan coronavirus misinformation. It’s not the first time the publication has raised eyebrows.
@Mikey:
We all know something is really off and weird and a bit scary in America now.
But any nation that invented punkin chunkin is pretty sane in my book.
A giant air cannon designed to fling a pumpkin as high and far as possible.
Why? some ask.
Because it is stupid and fun and cathartic. Because you can.
We’ve hit a rough patch these last few years, and 2020 has been particularly horrible, but chin up – we’ll be okay.
I have been to the lumberjack festival up in Hayward. They have the most gloriously insane competitions. Scampering up trees. Sawing with both hand- and chain-. Log rolling. Axe throwing. It is marvelous.
Another thing I love is the snowmobile contests where you go fast as you can onto open water. Use momentum and surface tension to go as far out as possible before sinking. Go fast and hold on as long as possible. It ludicrously stupid and infantile and I love it.
We’re stupid but not complete idiots. We got this. We invented punkin chunkin.
On a lighter note, for the 74th (or something) consecutive year, Trump has been snubbed by not receiving a single Nobel Prize, now that the Prize in Economics has been handed out.
Fine repayment by those ungrateful Swedes for wrecking the world’s bestest economy evah!
@de stijl:
Yeah… but you have to come down south to participate in the cow-chip throwing championships.
@Mu Yixiao:
Or come to England and participate on the Cheese Rolling Chase
@Michael Reynolds: The G-word got you.
@JohnSF:
Fuck no!
I’ve seen that before. I prefer to have all my limbs intact.
Besides… that’s a waste of cheese.
@sam:
He was disinvited to the party, yes. And it would not surprise me if it is him again.
There is a weird pathology with some of the more trolly commenters who are banned–they just can’t help themselves from coming back. They tell the main authors that they are hacks and that the commenters are all worthless, yet they keep coming back.
My contribution to this important list doesn’t seem to be extant any longer. Purdue University once had a contest to see who could bring a barbeque grill full of charcoal briquets to fully alight fastest. Nuclear reactors were not allowed.
Did find this wonderful youtube however:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM
lighting a BBQ with liquid oxygen
@Steven L. Taylor:
If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, do you mean that he uttered the name of a banned commenter? I’ve had that happen before.
@Kylopod: Incel/Men’s Rights types take in the superficial picture of Fight Club, with no awareness that it’s satirizing toxic masculinity as well as consumer culture.
everyone misunderstands the point of fight club
@de stijl: Heh, that reminds me of the catapult made by inhabitants at Senior House at M.I.T. that was able to throw a refrigerator onto the President’s lawn…and then be dismantled and hidden by the time the Campus Police showed up.
Supposedly the Board of Trustees of M.I.T. was more interested in the engineering specifics than the complaint from the President….
Good times.
@Kylopod:
Sort of like how people go up to Oliver Stone and say “Gordon Gecko inspired me to go into finance!”
Having saluted Whitey Ford the other day, a shout out today for a great 2d baseman Joe Morgan. Actually one of the few Hall of Famers I got to see in person at Riverfront in Cincinnati.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I agree that it makes perfect sense to block any post referring to Kenny G. (Oops, I’ll bet this one gets stuck in moderation as well…)
@grumpy realist: MIT pranks are the best: Hackers’ delight: A history of MIT pranks and hacks Some of them are legendary.
@JohnMcC:
Truly an inner-circle HOF player, apparently a wonderful human being, and perhaps the worst major-network baseball analyst of all time.
When the analytics revolution came, Joe Morgan stayed on the barricades until he was overrun and trampled, then continued to bite the ankles of the victors for as long as anyone would let him near a microphone. Fire Joe Morgan! was one of the first successful grass-roots movements in the baseball analytics community to actually get major media coverage. The irony, of course, is that Morgan was the epitome of a player whose amazing value was driven by the things statheads love (on base percentage, extra-base power, seeing a lot of pitches, taking extra bases efficiently) and not by the things that he himself valued (stolen bases, not making errors, making contact, being agressive, bunting well).
But that’s all irrelevant now. Rest in peace, Joe.
@Kylopod:
You are making me think too hard about a movie I like quite a bit.
It’s uncomfortable.
If I woke up in a different place in a different time would I still be me?
@Kylopod:
Yeah, the book is even more explicitly about the commodification of masculinity and the emptiness of consumerism.
I’ve made a comment here before about the Far Right co-opting language from 1984, written by a self-described democratic socialist; Fight Club, written by a gay man inspired by Camus and Foucault; and The Matrix, written by two trans siblings heavily influenced by just about every Leftist, Continental philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century.
@OzarkHillbilly: One of my friends was involved in one of the Green Building hacks. Those of us at S.I.P.B. ended up doing more, erm, computer-related hacks.
As said, good times…..
Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place reminds us that in 2016 the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona added seats to their state Supreme Courts so they could appoint Republican cronies. I’m sure we all remember the outrage of their fellow Republicans at these court packing schemes and the thorough coverage of this violation of norms in the supposedly liberal MSM. Oh wait. As Sullivan points out it’s a dog-bites-man story when Republicans do it.
@Teve:
A related example: The speech by “Blake” from Glengarry Glen Ross has been cited by some people in sales as a good motivational speech, providing a harsh but much-needed life lesson. (There was a Cracked article a while back defending this point of view.) Mamet himself has said that’s the opposite of what he intended, and it should be very clear that the movie, if you actually pay attention, seems to argue quite clearly that the speech wasn’t just immoral, it was also bad advice on a practical level and helped hasten the men’s self-destruction.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Ah, of course.
@Teve: I first saw Fight Club around the time it came out, but then some years later we studied it for a course. Afterward, I went to the imdb discussion board for the film, and I ended up in one of my weirdest and most memorable encounters with online trolls. There was this one commenter who claimed to be a professor of psychology, though his spelling and grammar were atrocious, and he made certain claims that didn’t sound to me like what a real psychologist would say (for example, he seemed to think DID was a form of schizophrenia). He was extremely rude toward those with differing interpretations of the film, and he attacked all the laymen (which he spelled “laimen”) who didn’t have his expertise. I called BS on some of his claims, and I implied I suspected one of the other commenters (allegedly a female) was just a sockpuppet of his.
It turned out this fellow had established himself as a sort of ruler of the premises, with a mob of followers he called his Space Monkeys (just like in the film) he would sic on any commenter he claimed was a “troll.” So he started a new thread imploring them all to attack me. (One comment I remember to this day–I’m not remotely making this up–“Kylopod is stupid and his logic is stupid and the reason he is stupid is because the opposite of smart is Kylopod.”) Afterward, he praised the wittiness of these comments.
@grumpy realist:
When I was working at a factory back in my younger days, one of the mangers related a story about Mitsubishi (I think; it was a Japanese car manufacturer). Retooling the line (going from one model to another) would shut down the line for several days. One of the big-wigs said he wanted a way to get it down “to single hours”–meaning less than 10 hours. It was misheard as “to a single hour”.
The completely redesigned the production line so that for retooling, each section was offline for 45 minutes. So while the entire process took a full day, there was only a 45 minute loss of production (which moved down the assembly line between the end of one model and the start of the next).
Massive engineering and efficiency feat–because of a misheard statement.
I mentored a young man straight out of a Calvinist college in Chicago.
Married at 22.
He was a cool cat. Too serious 90% of the time, but when he relaxed, he was a super cool person.
Called him my little space monkey. Whapped him on back of his head. Tiny whap. Nothing to get HR involved in.
His wife and he probably thought I was a blasphemer and a heretic, but he was a great person.
He had the smarts and charisma to climb high.
Luke, I hope life treated you well. Fly high, my little space monkey.
@Kathy: @Kathy: I wear my N95 or KN95 masks months – until the straps break. Much more than 10x each. Next time a strap breaks I’ll put it on the fixture here and test it (the tests are destructive) but I’m willing to bet that it will test just fine.
Lysol is probably not a good idea. The way the filter works is by having a random 3D mesh of fibers that the particles can adhere to. Just speculation, but getting that too wet might cause the fibers to clump or stick together. And it is unlikely that it would truly permeate the mask anyway, since one of its functions is to prevent moisture from penetrating.
I come home, take the mask off and hang it on the doorknob or put it on my car dashboard (to get the UV rays), wash my hands and then the next time I need one I use a different mask. That way they get 3 days in between and any C19 virus should be degraded. If you’ve got 10 masks you can cycle through them, giving you 10 days or more in between uses and making it unnecessary to sterilize in any other way.
A good way to think about the difference between an N95 mask and a surgical mask (by which I mean those flat, pleated ones) is like this: a well secured N95 mask is primarily about filtering while also preventing liquid penetration as well as any surgical mask, while that surgical mask is primarily about stopping liquids and has some filtering capability, but a good amount of air will just go around the media.
@Mu Yixiao: reminds me of the famous story about the mathematician George Dantzig. He was a grad student at UC Berkeley and one day he showed up to his grad statistics class late. He saw two problems on the board and assumed they were homework problems, and wrote them down and started working on them. A few days later he apologized to the professor because the homework was taking longer than usual. After a few weeks he solved both problems.
Well they weren’t homework problems. The professor had written them on the board as examples of two famous unsolved problems in statistics. Later when he was having trouble coming up with ideas for a doctoral thesis, the professor said we’ll just write up those two solutions and call those your thesis.
Roberta McCain, John McCain’s mother, dies at 108
RIP
@Kylopod:
I had a bad sales manager who quoted frequently from that speech, he was pretty invested in it and didn’t take the hint as to what really was meant. Wasn’t long before he was shown the door.
@Gustopher:
Nice try. Intellectually weak and dishonest. Its not quoting zerohedge. Its quoting scientists as reported by zerohedge. (Since your groupthink sources will not)
But your MO is clear. You care nothing about science, unless it agrees with your POV. Rather, you care about appeal to authority, as long as it agrees with you.
Meanwhile, back in the real world. “Peaceful” protesters pull down a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/10/12/rioters-portland-tear-statue-abraham-lincoln/
Back to the romper room crowd.
@keef:
Look at you. Poor, lonely man. ‘I hate this club, and I hate you all!’ Now please let me in. Pleeeeease.
WaPo, via Microsoft news, reports that Senator Lee–currently infected with Covid-19 IIRC–appeared at today’s Amy Coney Island hearing not wearing a mask.
I can’t remember the quote that applies–“something people something something.” Arrrrgh! My memory is failing with my ability to GAF about the “other people (especially conservatives/Republicans) and Covid-19” conundrum. [sigh…]
Sahil Kupar of NBC News is live-tweeting the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. He summarizes it as follow:
As an example of the latter, he tweets:
@Kylopod:
Always be closing.
I have never worked sales. The concept is alien. I did check-out at a grocery and clerked at a convenience store, but that was different. People came to me and said I want to buy this here is my money.
When salesfolk came to us selling hardware or software tools, I never wanted to talk to the salespeople, but to the engineers.
This will increase productivity by blahbiddyblah percent.
How exactly? Give me an engineer to talk to.
We bought a data integration tool that sucked so hard. They brought on people to try to make it work. They brought in a guy whose primary job was to assuage my boss that that this all fixable – give us two weeks. The on – site folks were top notch, but the product was just fatally flawed.
Turns out the director was getting a kick-back. He was also getting a kick-back from another consulting company he had hired. Oh, and openly having an affair with his assistant.
That project crashed hard. But at least Mr. Mercenary Director got his ass handed to him hard and got blacklisted in the industry.
The wrap-up analysis actually was quite good and useful though.
@keef:
@@JohnSf and @I addressed the specific quotes in the article, we examined the original source for the quotes and explained why they were quoted misleadingly in the Zerohedge piece. You just took the selective quotations in the Zerohedge piece as the final word on what was actually said and didn’t bother to explore further. What were you saying again about groupthink?
This cartoon is on point, including direct quotes from the Trump campaign Facebook page.
@Kylopod: That seems to be a common problem at business schools. The final chapter of my Master’s thesis starts by quoting an article from Bud Schulberg having been invited to speak to a group of graduating Business students at Wharton (I think) and discovering that they invited him because they had thought What Makes Sammy Run was a lesson in how to conduct business and had taken Sammy Glick as their role model.
Grifters gonna grift, I guess.
@MarkedMan:
Thanks, that was very helpful.
I’ll still look up how to clean/sterilize N95 masks online, no offense. But I’ll probably order the masks today. There’s a Home Depot very near my apartment.
The mostest unkindest cut of all:
@sam:
She and her hubby gave up their precarious position in the lower ranks of Manhattan cafe society to ally with Daddy.
@keef:
Zerohedge is selectively quoting Epoch Times (a bizarre source on its own) which is selectively quoting reputable people.
Multiple levels of selective quoting.
I laugh at anyone who brings bad information to the table. Like you, hedgemonger. There’s no value in having a discussion with known liars.
@keef:
What in the hell is the connection between Zerohedges’ selective-to-the-point-of-dishonesty quotations of Dr Nabarro, and its citations of a highly dubious “Declaration”, and the actions of some vandals in Portland?
Seriously, this is a complete and utter non sequitur.
1) Pot, meet kettle
2) Actually, as a conservative (for a very arbitrary value of “conservative”) I think appeal to authority can have a certain, umm, appeal as a quick and dirty go-to.
As long as you remember, reality has the final say. (“Nullius in verba” and “eppur si muove” doncha know)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
At the time of the savings and loan bank scandal, a friend was working on his MBA. He was older than most of the students and also from the non-profit sector, rather than business. We met one evening for drinks after his class and he regaled me with funny anecdotes from the class as his peers attempted to justify the fraud. Given that this was Minneapolis, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that some of those MBA candidates ended up at Wells Fargo.
@keef:
Hot Air is not the real world. It is such nonsense that the filter on my corporate laptop won’t even let it through, and it let through the zerohedge (but not Epoch Times…).
Come on, hedgemonger, try to use reputable sources.
Another baseball hall of Famer has passed away. That makes 6 since last March. The others- Lou Brock, Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford, and Bob Gibson. Now it was Joe Morgan.
Morgan’s heyday was with the Reds, but he first played for the Houston Astros. A pivotal moment in his career may have been him getting injured in the 24-inning 1-0 game between the Astros and New York Mets in April 1968. Morgan missed almost all of the rest of the season. Up till then Morgan’s defensive play had been erratic but afterwards he became a gold glover. Coincidence? Who know but Morgan was the best all-around 2nd baseman* in the 1970’s. RIP Joe.
*- Rod Carew was a better hitter but his glove work at 2nd was never more than average.
@MarkedMan:
A quick search online indicates vaporized hydrogen peroxide, dry heat, and ultraviolet light.
The first is not possible to do at home. the second I could do in my oven easily enough, but I’m sure the bands for placing the mask on one’s ears would melt or burn, even at a mere 70 C. UV through the UV filtering windshield, I wonder. You can’t block all UV and retain a transparent substance, and the exposure could last for several days.
All this info derives from hospital methods of sanitizing N95 masks, and warns not to reuse more than 5 times. At the same time, this concerns hospital ER and COVID-19 treatment areas exposed to SARS-CoV-2, meaning in large amounts for extended periods. In daily use at the office and the supermarket, the exposure is sure to be far lower.
You may recall I said last month there were three cases of COVID-19 at the office. One of them kept coming in between his test and the result, meaning he was positive when the sample was taken two days before the results came in. And he passed it to no one else (he wears a mask).
So it would seem the measures in place do work. However, I’m concerned over all he Covidiots who don’t wear masks, and whom I know meet with clients, suppliers, and go out to restaurants and who knows where else outside of working hours. I think any extra protection I cna get is sensible at this point.
@de stijl:
We actually got integration to work eventually.
Old school guy using COBOL did it in a month.
I was busy beavering away at designing the front end that no one ever used even once. (It was a fun problem to work though – it was fun to work with star schemas and Sybase IQ)
Dude in the next cube over actually did a useful thing. Plus he was smart enough to go home at 5 pm. I wasn’t and burnt myself out.
@Sleeping Dog:
There is a very high likelihood I encountered your friend’s amoral classmates. WF went south fast after Kovacevich left.
In no way can I say that all MBAs are stupid assholes, but the propensity is shockingly high. A lot of them are brainiacs – incredibly dense, arrogant, self-assured brainiacs.
@Bill:
Carew was one of the best slap hitters ever.
I was going to get frosty and salty about his glove, but you are mostly right.
I apologize for the things I almost said.
@de stijl:
Whereas Morgan was one of the best hitters ever, full stop. Best 2B born in the 20th century, top 20 among all position players.
Not really. Best modern estimates have Morgan as very slightly above average defensively, Carew slightly below average. (More than slightly at 2B, made up for by being a good 1B.)
Morgan is an innermost circle HOF; Carew is deserving but a couple of notches down.
@keef:
I’d rather be in the Romper Room than actively participating in an enemy’s effort to damage the country I’ve spent my entire adult life defending.
Now fuck off, traitor.
Atlanta GA:
Antiabortion groups say they stand behind Trump’s use of a drug tested on cells derived from an aborted fetus because the president ‘was not involved with that abortion’
I wonder if any of the people exposed to trump’s own SARS-CoV-2 contamination can sue him for endangering their lives, even if they didn’t contract COVID-19 from him (and of course those who did, including federal employees employed at the White House).
If they can so sue, would they be able to compel Trump to say when he tested positive and/or when he first developed symptoms? How about those around him who also know?
Next, from the NYT’s stories on Trump’s tax records, there seems to be ample reason to suspect campaign finance violations and several improprieties. I’d advise the next Treasury Secretary to form a task force to audit Trump’s returns from 2015 to 2020. I mean a thorough audit, going through everything with a microscope.
As regards expanding the Supreme Court, there is a path that makes logical sense and does not look like shamelessly packing the court. Simply put, there aren’t enough federal judges, which leads to less than satisfactory outcomes in all things from immigration hearings to lawsuits to criminal trials.
If the Democrats take the Senate, it would be criminal of them not to draft a bill to expand the number of federal judges, and on the same logic expand the number of seats at the Court. Sure, the GOP would try to do the same, but there won’t be as sever a shortage of judges for them to exploit. The optics would be totally different.
If the Democrats don’t take the Senate, or at least tie 50-50, Biden won’t be able to do much in his first term.
@keef: You really are a nitwit, you know. Absolutely no understanding of what truth is, or reality. Or interest in sticking to such.
Anyone who thinks that ZeroHedge has anything worth printing is the sort of idiot who will lose all his money very very quickly.
what it’s like losing parents to Qanon
Some local reporting from the Portland Mercury about the toppling of statues last night:
Say what you will about the protests or the statues, or the dead Dakota from over a hundred fifty years ago, or the centuries of mistreatment of Native Americans, this is good reporting that puts it into context.
If you don’t know that there are Native American activists turning out that day, singing their little Native American songs, you would have an impression of random stupid violence. Here people were kind enough to tag Lincoln’s statue with the motive, and the local press reported it.
And then the article points out the unbridled tragedy and stupidity of other acts of destruction.
The Oregon Historical Society had recently published their quarterly magazine on the subject of the white supremacist history of Oregon (I’m surprised they were able to fit it in a single quarterly…)
Was the historical society attacked by white supremacists under cover of other protests? Or did an unruly crowd of protesters then attack a museum that was literally telling the story the protesters wanted to draw attention to? I have no idea, but if we were satisfied with Hedgemonger’s Hot Air shit, I think we would never know to even ask the question.
——
For the record, I think hanging 48 Dakotas in effigy next to the Lincoln statue would have been a much more powerful and effective statement. Or take a few liberties and go with painted versions of chalk outlines. Or just the names of the dead.
@Kathy:
For some Republicans, the optics of “we did this because we had the power to” is good. They would not be dissuaded from doing anything because of the optics.
Even if we don’t pack the court, they might do it anyway if the existing court doesn’t bring back the feudal system fast enough.
@de stijl:
I’ve never seen the movie, but as someone with sales experience, I can sort of see that as a goal.
Salespeople work on commission. If you don’t close you don’t get paid.
In a good company, the sales person gets a “long-tail” commission. They keep getting some income for a period that the client stays with the company. This benefits both the salesman (more income) and the company (continued income) and encourages the salesperson to present long-term deals that benefit both the company and the client.
In a bad company, everyone just cares about the “quick buck”. That makes a lot of money for everyone in the (very) short term, but puts the company out of business rather promptly.
if “Always be closing” means “always be bringing in long-term clients we can build an ongoing relationship with”, then it’s a very good philosophy. If it means “Get all the money you can now”, then it’s self-destructive.
@Teve:
Asking honestly: Does GA not have a vote-by-mail option? Election Day is 3 weeks off. Why are people standing in line for hours?
@Teve:
In related news, PETA announced that they stand behind Trump’s eating foie gras because the president was not involved in force-feeding that goose.
@Mu Yixiao: Georgia does have mail-in absentee voting, and it looks (from the state website anyway) like there aren’t a lot of restrictions.
It should be noted that in the Buckhead part of Atlanta ( where live lots of well-off white people) the wait to vote today was about 15 minutes. It’s only in the majority-minority areas where the waits are multiple hours.
The disparity would be actionable in court, had SCOTUS not gutted the Voting Rights Act. But as it stands, the state government is free to do all it wants to suppress the black vote.
It probably won’t surprise anyone that Trump supporters are anti-democratic authoritarians, but here’s some more evidence.
So they’re snowflakes. I’m not surprised.
@Kathy: Yeah,I wrecked a mask trying to use my oven. Not accurate enough at those low temperatures. The sous vide did the trick though, although I left it in for a couple of hours instead of thirty minutes.
When I first started playing with sous vide I discovered that there were people eating rare pork and rare poultry claiming that you don’t have to reach the “safe” temperatures as long as you go long enough. And, much to my surprise I found an FDA chart listing how long meat needs to be at certain temperatures to be safe and it turns out you can cook any meat at 125 degrees for a few hours and it’s safe. But on the other hand the very idea of eating rare chicken makes me gag.
@Mikey:
Futile as it may be, I feel obligated to point out that this describes the current Trumper on this thread perfectly.
These Trumpers are just dropping in here to blather and get a rise from the evil liberals, and then they run off and fantasize about how much their big man would approve of them if he only knew. It’s an act of masturbation and what the commentariat here say or think doesn’t even enter into it. They want attention, that’s all, and every reply feeds this need. The contents of the replies don’t matter in the slightest.
@Mu Yixiao:
They probably figured that there wouldn’t be a lot of people at early voting. I plan on voting as soon as Florida allows it in 10 days, and I’m not expecting there to be long lines. Hopefully I won’t be surprised.
@Mikey: I saw some research years ago that suggested the number one predictor of voting Republican was a high score on the authoritarianism axis.
@MarkedMan: yeah it’s really a function of time and temp. But I sous vide everything to at least 135° because I don’t like the gooey textures lower temps produce. And 135 is medium rare for a steak so it works out fine. 😀
@MarkedMan: Pork that hasn’t been cooked to oblivion is wonderful. And now that pork processors are self-inspecting, I’d want my pork cooked longer however it is cooked.
Sous vide means it has a chance of still being tasty.
I bet the Lincoln project had fun putting together this ad, because I had fun watching it.
@Mu Yixiao: “Election Day is 3 weeks off. Why are people standing in line for hours?”
BECAUSE THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR AND SOS HAVE MADE IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR PEOPLE IN DEMOCRATIC-LEANING NEIGHBORHOODS TO VOTE.
Sorry to shout, but if you’ve missed the endless conversation about this going on for the last THREE YEARS, at some point it’s got to be because you don’t want to hear.