This would be printed on it:
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:
1542: The Earth is the center of the universe.
1643: There is a substance, the philosopher’s stone, that's capable of turning base metals like mercury into gold. (As believed by idiots like Isaac Newton)
1700: Depleting phlogiston will put out a fire.
1715: Luminiferous aether is the medium necessary for the propagation of light.
1820: The science of phrenology can determine character and intelligence because bumps on the head are indicative of individual temperaments.
So that's the shirt but to be clear, no, I'm not trying to spark a discussion about vaccines. They can be good but have side effects like any medicine so the idea is just for the stupid shirt.
Okay, instabones, which is fine and expected. But let me clarify, following the science means remembering how science works: verifiable and reproducable results and correction of wrong past theories. This is actually a very PRO science idea.
If somebody thinks science can never be wrong they don't understand how science works, and evaluating how wrong answers were arrived at in the past is CRITICAL to the procedure.
Science: the faithless faith. (And that’s a good thing.)-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 [2 fries]' list of scary things found here Operation_20Honey_20Bee [pertinax, Jul 11 2024] FactCheck: Will Britain have a Muslim majority by 2050? https://www.channel...im-majority-by-2050doesn't look like it. [Loris, Jul 11 2024] Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 https://www.ons.gov...andwales/census2021 [Loris, Jul 11 2024] My hero communicating about a controversial subject. https://www.youtube...watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-oThis is what I'd aspire to do. Would I? Probably not, but that's why this guy has communication skills that dwarf mine. [doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024] Yes, this looks like the perfect place to spread a disease. https://www.voanews...arkets/6187635.htmlBut that does't necessarily mean the person who spread it got it from one of the products being sold there. [doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024] Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate https://www.astralc...ok-review-rootclaimBeeeg discussion of the two main competing Covid origin theories [Loris, Jul 12 2024] "Make it difficult enough and they lose their ideological bullshit and get vaccinated."" https://www.youtube...watch?v=XMTYBPqIM-IHe's an evil prick of a man. Ha! Literally. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 13 2024] “I am the science.” https://www.nationa...i-i-am-the-science/That’s not what science is. [doctorremulac3, Jul 13 2024] Free you minds, the rest will follow https://medium.com/...swords-ffcd1901d1b1 [theircompetitor, Jul 15 2024] This isn't a problem for women's rights... https://www.alamy.c...image231170175.html [doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024] THIS is a problem for women's rights! https://www.vanityf...de-the-hive-podcastYea, one's real and one's not, but still... [doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024] Iran before the Islamic revolution. https://rarehistori...-revolution-photos/My favorite is the one showing all young women at college, free to chose their mode of dress. [doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024] 'Plandemic' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlandemicOrigin & source. [DrBob, Jul 17 2024] 'Pharmacunts' https://is-a-cunt.com/2019/01/insomnia/I couldn't find an exact origin for this but the above, from Jan 2019, is the oldest useage that I could find. It's a blog article about insomnia. [DrBob, Jul 17 2024] Criticisms of Coronavirus Response https://duckduckgo......2022-12-31&ia=webSearch for articles, between Oct 2019 & Dec 2022, criticising govt policies on Coronavirus. [DrBob, Jul 17 2024] Important to remember... https://www.faceboo...t=a.660093452829719all humanity shares this trait. [doctorremulac3, Jul 17 2024] My bible https://en.wikipedi...i/The_True_BelieverFor whatever it's worth, I have no interesting in converting anybody. [doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024] My other bible https://en.wikipedi...ineteen_Eighty-FourRead both of these in my pre teen years when I was wondering how things work in life, the universe and everything. The Hitchhiker's Guide hadn't come out yet. [doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024] The picture that formed my view on being an obedient citizen and doing what the leadership class tells you to. https://www.indepen...trains-9247056.htmlWould I have done what my overlords told me to and get on that train? Most likely. My hope is that now, understanding what this picture signifies, I not only wouldn't obey, I'd risk my wellbeing to warn others, even if they hated me for it. I would hope I'd be strong enough. I'm not saying covid shots are equivalent to death camps, I'm saying abandoning critical thinking is a slippery slope. If somebody tells you not to question authority, never listen to them again. Except to know what their up to. [doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024] At 2:50, that’s basically me. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tcc2ltIjNU0The guy on the right. [doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024] Truth as I see it. https://www.faceboo...e=3&mibextid=6yaNxA [doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024] Remember this "widely accepted science"? https://www.vectors...ics-vector-27065254The food pyramid? This should be at the top of that shirt. [doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024] Asking what caused covid is just a distraction. https://www.youtube...watch?v=y05eFDQnSfELet's not bicker and argue about who killed who. [doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024] October 2021, ONS report on deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccine https://blog.ons.go...a-covid-19-vaccine/ [DrBob, Jul 26 2024] January 2022, ONS report on deaths caused by COVID-19 https://blog.ons.go...-highly-misleading/ [DrBob, Jul 26 2024] Leeds, City of Culture Festival 2023 https://leeds2023.co.uk/programme/ [DrBob, Jul 26 2024] Philosophy https://www.youtube...watch?v=l9SqQNgDrgg [doctorremulac3, Jul 28 2024] T-Shirt rough outline https://www.dropbox...ml&st=32ee8fgn&dl=0I'd add more appropriate art and spelling. [doctorremulac3, Aug 06 2024] Stupid [+] T-shirt with printed text on [-] Net score [ ]-- pocmloc, Jul 08 2024 Cheerfully accepted.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 (not my bones, I decided to think about it first)
//... let me clarify, following the science means remembering how science works: verifiable and reproducable results and correction of wrong past theories. This is actually a very PRO science idea.//
Perhaps the problem with this is that this message is easily misconstrued.
The thing about science is... yes, scientists (and others) will sometimes believe things which aren't the correct, but science is the tool they use to become less wrong.
The first case in the list is the year before Copernicus published his improved model. I haven't checked the dates on the others, but presumably they're along the same lines. Given that, maybe you could repeat the first line at the bottom, but in a different order: THE SCIENCE FOLLOWS-- Loris, Jul 08 2024 Yea, I had proposed this to somebody who said "This is gonna brand you an anti-vaxxer since the "follow the science" term has become very politicized, but eh, what the heck.
I actually expected more bones frankly. But to be clear, my understanding of science is my belief system, but it's all best guess.
For instance, I'm not 100% sure I'm not a simulation that doesn't know he's a simulation. I'd have a lot of questions, like "Who programmed this thing and why?" but all things considered I'm going with the most likely scenario that I'm a decendent of monkey like folks that discovered how to best utilize the opposing thumb to make pointy sticks then pretty much in the next couple of years walked on the Moon.
That being said going under any other assumption is a waste of time.
And surprised nobody pointed out the comparison to various religions in terms of percentage of right calls on stuff. I'm not anti faith by any means but I think we can all come together and say that's a wrap on Osiris or Poseidon.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 I think you need both the "wrong" as you have, then the corrected/better version next to it (along with the when & maybe who). Maybe columns titled ' Once We "Knew" ', ' Then We Learned ' or something..?-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 08 2024 Make it positive, I like that.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 Don't forget ptomaine; it was a very important toxin in the 1950s, which did not actually exist.-- pertinax, Jul 08 2024 Ptomaine poisoning isn't real? I don't know anything about it but I thought it was a real thing.
Huh, says "Formerly thought to cause poisoning."
Then some other sites say it's real. Da hell? Okay, maybe I am in a simulation and you pushed the "ptomaine confusion" button.
Got me.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 08 2024 I prefer George Box’s famous line, “All models are wrong, some are useful” which speaks to the same truth.
Science is a process for picking better mental models.
Sometimes the old models continue to serve a purpose, even after they’re proven wrong.
Bohr’s atomic model still explains most classic chemistry (and a fair amount of radioactivity) without getting all weird and delving into bra-ket notation.
Similarly, most engineering majors (with jobs on this planet) will do well to stick with Newton, even after his theories were trashed by Einstein, Schrodinger & co.-- zen_tom, Jul 08 2024 I think that science is totally awesome and the only way for humanity to proceed.
That said, we all just saw how easily it can be used as propaganda we are not allowed to question.
That needs to stop now.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 09 2024 If you make it, I will buy [+]-- 21 Quest, Jul 09 2024 We need baseball caps with,[Make Science Altruistic Again]on them.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 09 2024 //pushed the "ptomaine confusion" button//
Sorry, thought that was "snooze". There are too many apps on this thing.-- pertinax, Jul 09 2024 If I do it I'll send you a link 21.
If I've got some kind of a code for a free one I'll post it here.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 09 2024 Follow up shirt idea that might make another bone storm:
"I tried to follow the science but got confused. Then I followed the money and that cleared things up."
"What's that rumbling noise?"
"Bone storm a-comin' pardner. Big one this time."
"Should I hide under a table or put a bag on my head?"
"If you want."-- doctorremulac3, Jul 09 2024 A t-shirt that says Follow the Scientists would be much more interesting-- theircompetitor, Jul 09 2024 Yes, "Follow The Scientists" with a picture of a scientist looking guy looking back over their shoulder with a concerned look on their face, I'd actually buy that.
Or a "Follow The Science" shirt with an arrow pointing down to the crotch region like a shirt you'd wear out clubbing? Night clubbing, not clubbing people.
Underwear that says "Follow The Science" would be novel. I mean the original idea is for stupid things written on clothes so this would fit.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 09 2024 "I'm a scientist. If you see me running, try to keep up!"-- 21 Quest, Jul 09 2024 ^ I like this one, [21].
Previously, the only reason I would run is to chase the guy who just stole my chocolate.
Presently, there are new climate-disruption reasons to run*, like tsunamis and horriblecanes.
*'Run' includes and is not limited to: drive, bike, kayak, surf.-- Sgt Teacup, Jul 09 2024 Yea, that's a good one.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 10 2024 Speaking of propaganda, how are our UK members enjoying Diversity Equity and Inclusion?Did any of you think you'd become a minority in your own countries in the span of a couple of years because of the elite globalist agenda?Do any of you still think I'm just an anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist nut-job?
...or are you ready to listen and stop silencing me with your intuition lacking labels?
It's going to take a lot more work now to put things back to rights than if we'd all pulled together at the start of the attack on all of western culture but we can still pull this shit off.
You just need to pull your heads from your asses first.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 11 2024 In your list of scary things in the linked "honey bee" idea, [2 fries], where you do think Diversity Equity and Inclusion belongs? Is it somewhere near the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse (actual fatalities: zero), or somewhere near COVID 19 (actual fatalities: somewhere in the low millions, probably), or is it somewhere in between?-- pertinax, Jul 11 2024 //Speaking of propaganda, how are our UK members enjoying Diversity Equity and Inclusion?// Seems to be going okay, thanks for asking.
//Did any of you think you'd become a minority in your own countries in the span of a couple of years because of the elite globalist agenda?// No, but then we... kind of haven't? The government website says "82% of people in England and Wales are white, and 18% belong to a black, Asian, mixed or other ethnic group (2021 Census data)." I don't think that's changed very much. If the population of the UK is 70 million, that would imply over 57 million were 'white' (whatever that means). Therefore for white to be a minority now we'd need over 45 million non-white immigrants over the last three years (i.e. 15 million a year) Or or about 44 million white emigrants, or some combination. I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed if that sort of thing happened. Instead, net migration is rather less than a million per annum. Random search result quote: "Net migration was unusually high in 2023, at 685,000". Populist politicians hate migration, and for the last few years the tories and brexiteers have been working to reduce it with the strategy of making life in the UK as shit as possible for everyone. Enough people got fed up enough of that to kick them out recently. Or did you mean a minority group like male? I think men have always been a minority, most places.
//Do any of you still think I'm just an anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist nut-job?// In broad strokes - I don't think you're an across-the-board anti-vaxxer. But you were strongly anti-covid vaccine, for no good reason. You've not done much to disabuse me of that impression.-- Loris, Jul 11 2024 The current population has nothing to do with future demographics, what's the birth rate of muslims vs non muslims in England? Asking, I don't know. But if one group has twice the birth rate they're the majority, maybe not today but at some point in the future.
Hate to say follow the... something or another, but...
But I don't know what the birth rate is for various groups in England so I don't know. But I do know there's been this thing I'll call "reverse colonialism" where to get foreigners to do the work, they used to go to their countries and take their tea, now they just bring those former colonials into their country to do the busy work and everybody's happy. Hey, works for me.
Now the deal is, if those immigrants have twice the birthrate, that's their country eventually, there's no argument there.
But I don't know the numbers and not really interested frankly, England's business is their business. Do you have any numbers about that stuff Loris? Like I said, I don't.
I will add, if there's a line indicating one group with with a double birth rate is pointing towards a majority in 50 or 100 years, birthrates might change so might be hard to predict with 100% accuracy.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 Okay, did the math myself. Given the initial conditions where a majority group is 90% of the population with a birth rate of 1.5, and the minority group is 10% of the population with a birth rate of 3, it would take approximately 150 years for the minority group to become the majority.
Those are just out of thin air numbers, but the math for that theoretical should be accurate. Double that time, in 300 years the former majority population is down to being 10%. That is if nothing changes, but evolution is always with us. If one group is weak they get replaced, science isn't sentimental about such things. It is what it is.
Which is fine, this is not a new development, it's been going on since before there were trees.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 //The current population has nothing to do with future demographics, what's the birth rate of muslims vs non muslims in England? Asking, I don't know. But if one group has twice the birth rate they're the majority, maybe not today but at some point in the future.//
That seems like a different question, doc. But I think it's probably less of a concern than the tabloids would have you believe. A quick search found an article from 2013 treating the question as you posed it. (link: Will Britain have a Muslim majority by 2050?) That is, assuming religion is strongly hereditary. The answer they come to is - no. Muslim birthrates are higher, especially among recent immigrants, but seem to go down with time.
But that's old, and not the whole story. So also linked, census 2021 data for the religion question. The largest number of replies was for Christian, 27.5 million, and rapidly decreasing. The fastest growing religion in the UK (over the preceding 10 years) was "no religion" - up by 8 million to 22.2 million. The fraction answering as Muslim was up from 2.7 to 3.9 million. There are also a small fraction of Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Sikh and other religion replies totalling 2.7 million.
I guess that means there's a chance I'll be in with the majority option in a few decades.-- Loris, Jul 11 2024 //Will Britain have a Muslim majority by 2050?) That is, assuming religion is strongly hereditary. The answer they come to is - no. Muslim birthrates are higher, especially among recent immigrants, but seem to go down with time.//
Okay, seems legit and I had speculated that birth rates change. But like I said, I'm very much into keeping my nose out of other country's business. For instance I have very strong feelings about Brexit: None of my friggin'... you can fill in the rest.
I'll say only I wish England and Europe well, that's where my ancestors came from. But I'll also point out they all said "Fuck this place, I'm risking it all to get the fuck out of here."
That's them, not me. I love Europe and Europeans have been very kind to me.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 Now as far as the vaccine, I find if there's a situation that we need to address, we sometimes get given a menu of what we can fight about that does't include the stuff I want to address.
China engaged in gain of function research in a sloppy, badly run lab and killed tens of millions of people, can we finally agree about that? Then we're given the thing we're okay to argue about, the vaccine.
I've used the fireworks factory analogy.
Fauchi was a guy who researched fireworks. Then Obama, the governor of that state at the time outlawed research into fireworks, so he went to a meth lab in another state where it was legal but the people at that meth lab, while having the skills to be able to handle the chemicals involved to research these fireworks were sketchy to say the least. So he gives them all this money for fireworks research and the whole city blows up and wildfires start spreading across the whole state killing tens of thousands of people.
So I get told by Fauchi "Are you pro fireproof helmet or not? Are you a fireproof helmet denier?" and I'm like "Can we not change the subject? We need to stop future cities from blowing up!" Fauchi says "I did not pay them to blow up the city!" and I'm like "Did you fund them blowing up the city inadvertently?" and he's like "Fireproof helmet denier!!"
Aaaaand scene. Nobody's talking about gain of function research, just what they've been told to talk about, and know what? That's the way they like it.
Even if this was caused by a pangolin getting a little frisky with a bat, gain of function research is real, it is dangerous and it does need to be addressed. But try to open dialog about that about that you get called a fireproof hat deni... I mean vax denier.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 //But you were strongly anti-covid vaccine, for no good reason.//
I had very good reasons.They changed the wording of the definition for Vaccine in order to implement mandates to force everyone to take the jab. That was the first red flag.Fauci is a con man.All of the talking monkeys on this planet decided to do the same crap across the board and that never happens.There was no where near enough time to have been tested properly, meaning that the trials were inflicted on the public, by force.You were all being brain washed while insisting that I was the nut job.
And my gut was screaming at me that I was right while everybody else was wrong and the more pressure that was applied to make me conform only strengthened that gut feeling.
You are rubes and I am not.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 11 2024 //China engaged in gain of function research in a sloppy, badly run lab and killed tens of millions of people, can we finally agree about that?// I dispute this, most scientists in the field don't believe it, otherwise uninvolved but intelligent people who listened to a debate tended to think the evidence was against it. So no, we can't agree that.
I mean, I can agree that: Investigating gain-of-function of /pathogenic traits specifically/ is risky at the best of times and at the very least should be heavily regulated everywhere. (In fact it's banned outright in many places, and I'm okay with that.) Running a sloppy, badly run lab is also a bad idea, regardless. Most places that can also get you in trouble. Something going wrong and killing any number of people is bad, let alone tens of millions.
So apart from the question of whether or not it happened, I think we broadly agree.-- Loris, Jul 11 2024 Okay, but I'll throw this out, hell of a coincidence that a lab studying bat virus mutation is located 20 miles away from a wet market that killed tens of millions of people with a bat virus mutation. Do coincidences happen? Yea. Then the cover story from China being the "I didn't steal the cookies from the cookie jar, I wasn't even in the kitchen that day. I was in the living room. And if I wasn't in the living room. I was in the library with professor Plumb with a pipe wrench." The said it was from the wet market, from an American bioweapons research lab and from various farms hundreds of miles away. So okay, might not have known themselves, but multiple mutually exclusive explanations kind of cancel out the absolute veracity of the party giving the explanation.
But I do the Venn diagram thing. We can agree that gain of function research, like atmospheric nuclear warhead testing should be carefully controlled somehow. Good enough for me.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 //I had very good reasons.// Dude those are terrible reasons.
//They changed the wording of the definition for Vaccine in order to implement mandates to force everyone to take the jab. That was the first red flag.// Oh really? So a modification of an out-of-date definition which scientists thought was eminently reasonable, in a country which isn't my country or yours, and wasn't involved in several of the covid vaccines... /that's/ your smoking gun?
//Fauci is a con man.// Don't think it's true, but don't care for essentially the same reasons as above.
//All of the talking monkeys on this planet decided to do the same crap across the board and that never happens.// Saying things like this makes you look more like a nutter, not less.
//There was no where near enough time to have been tested properly, meaning that the trials were inflicted on the public, by force.// This has been investigated thoroughly and debunked. We've talked about it before. The various western covid vaccines had expedited trials, yes. Because that was important. They were tested on volunteers (over several stages), like many vaccines before them. They had surprisingly fast development, because science. Much of the ground-work had been done, because forward-thinking people were worried about the possibility of a pandemic. Complaining about that makes you look like a divot.
//You were all being brain washed while insisting that I was the nut job.// Keep wearing the tinfoil.-- Loris, Jul 11 2024 Okay well, so much for discussing this civilly.
I'm putting up a video of my hero showing ME, not anybody else, ME how to address controversial differences of opinion.
Again, this is just what I aspire to do with conflict, not suggesting this for anybody else.
My dad knew this guy by the way.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 Holy shit you guys. I leave you alone for a few days...-- 21 Quest, Jul 11 2024 For what it's worth, I'll offer some insight into the anti-covid vax mentality that so far hasn't been explained very well. Let me start with a few aspects of this vaccine and its rollout that differ notably from the vaccines of the past: 1) previous vaccines were made by well meaning scientists like Jonas Salk, who released his patents to the public domain so nobody could profit exorbitantly by getting a monopoly on them. That is absolutely not the case with the Covid vaccines. Moderna has actually sued other manufacturers for patent infringement for making and offering it for less money. Where there is an unchecked profit motive, shortcuts have ALWAYS been taken in pharmaceuticals, which brings us to 2) immunity from lawsuits. Some of the companies manufacturing FDA approved Covid vaccines, like Johnson & Johnson, have been sued multiple times for KNOWINGLY peddling products that caused cancer and other problems like birth defects, and they did that WITHOUT immunity from lawsuits. What do you think they're capable of with that liability removed? What data are they knowingly withholding now, knowing they can't be sued later? 3) Our governments have referred to people like Fauci as "experts" who we must listen to, and yet those very same people have, I believe, disqualified themselves AS experts by acknowledging that Covid 19 is unlike ANY other virus they had ever encountered. 4) The liberal champions of the Covid 19 vaccine, like Kamala Harris, outed themselves as biased partisans when they said things like "If Trump says take this vaccine, I won't take it and you shouldn't either."-- 21 Quest, Jul 11 2024 Yup.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 Thank you for keeping my certifications for a voice that still help. Things are worse. One day...7 calls by that I mean texts.
My husband doesn't know what to do. Weve' tried the few tools we have. Blocked doesn't happen, cops said until they're is proof thees accusation aren't acceptable.
Just don't forget one of yours is being held captive. Unable to call relatives or friends, Christine Hale ikn Greenfield, Ma.-- blissmiss, Jul 11 2024 I'm not sure what your issue is Blissy but if you're receiving unwanted messages on your phone you can just get another number. And are you saying when you try to call people they're not picking up or the calls aren't going through?
Whatever the case, maybe go to your cellphone provider and tell them there's some issue you're having and you wish to get a new number, phone or whatever.
And keep us posted, we're concerned about you.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 // a minority in your own countries in the span of a couple of years// //elite globalist agenda// //attack on all of western culture// //pull your heads from your asses // //You are rubes and I am not.//
//Okay well, so much for discussing this civilly. //
[Loris] has been super civil, to be fair, and given the video, it's clear they're playing the Steve Jobs role, in the face of small-minded and ill-informed opinion from the floor.
And just to say, [Loris] thankyou for speaking up and making the case for reason in the face of hysteria and abuse, there's a lot of us who prefer not to engage with this kind of trolling, but we are out here, albeit quietly, having learnt that engaging just isn't possible or a worthwhile-use-of-time with people who either don't want, or are just incapable of parsing reasoned argument.
On a wider note, you know those old uncles or friends who increasingly go fucking batshit crazy on social media, whose increasingly embarrassing output you carefully end up trying to limit spilling over into your day-to-day friends and colleagues feeds and timelines? Regarding the hatred, my Muslim friends and neighbours, my children's friends at school, and their teachers would be deeply saddened and distressed by some of views expressed here. And so am I, frankly.
That seems to be what the Halfbakery has been doing for the last few years. I still love it, from my personal hey-day, many years back, but it's increasingly becoming difficult to associate with given the extreme and frankly delusional opinions being openly expressed here. I can't make anyone stop expressing themselves as they might choose to do so, but I am starting to wonder whether it's something I can continue to be associated with.
I would not encourage my children to visit this site, given the tone, and demeanour that all too often crops up here. That's in stark contrast to how I would have felt maybe 10, 15 years ago.
Maybe it's part of a tectonic shift in the wider culture; to accept division, hatred and racism without standing up to it like our ancestors did back in World War II, but I wasn't brought up like that, and I don't accept that kind of nonsense, even if it is fashionable and popular these days. It's just not right, ethically. But freedom of speech, fill your boots. There are many of us for whom those kinds of views are disturbing, disgusting, and leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
Those who indulge and allow themselves to wallow in the kind of hatred that obsesses over how white a population might be in the next 150 years, are usually pathetic, deluded, or both.
To be fair, it's often the latter, and in this instance, having got to know you [2fries] over the years, I suspect it's a case of temporary delusion - there are a lot of people buying the global far-right nationalist agenda right now. It is after all very well funded (far more than any equivalent point of view might be) and has a very wide and international reach. Back in the days of the Third Reich, there was a similar acceptance of those kinds of ideas, and there were socio-economic reasons for that, as has been very well documented in the history books. And sure, some of the socio-economic conditions that existed then, very much are around the place now. The times have changed, and the names of the enemies have somewhat rotated, but it's still the same thing. People are worn out, and looking for easy solutions/scape-goats. And there are plenty of folks ready to leverage that opportunity.
Thankfully, in the UK, much of that has been diffused by the shittest of Brexit outcomes. The populists pushed it through, their paramilitaries literally assassinated politicians, and thugs used to roam the places where democratic power existed, creating an environment of fear and violence. As a nation, we've lost prestige and leverage across the world, lost billions in earnings, our trade has dwindled, and some sectors been entirely decimated. As a people, we've rescinded so many hard-won rights and freedoms, and came as close to a fully authoritarian dystopia as we ever have since the end of the war.
It is demonstrably clear, and well accepted by the people of the UK that populism just isn't a sensible way of running things. It's open to corruption, and the types of people who rise up the ranks in a populist regime are normally selected for their loyalty, rather than for their ideas, or competence. What you end up with, is what we suffered from directly, a mix of authoritarian loons, self-interested chancers and hopeless morons. No way to run a country. And thankfully, albeit after billions of pounds of damage, lost opportunity and corruption, much of the divisive, propaganda-driven culture war nonsense that propped up that cancerous regime, will hopefully become a thing of the past.
The Conservative party, having courted the flame of populism, and been utterly consumed by it, will have to try and survive. But it's telling that this centuries-old, post-Whig institution couldn't maintain itself under the weight of the lies and opportunism that the door of populist ideology tempted them with. Fantasy dissolves in contact with reality, however well funded it might be. That's just a natural fact. It's just a shame we had to go through 8 damaging years, undoing a generation of hard-won rights, power and prestige to realise that fact as a nation.-- zen_tom, Jul 11 2024 What’s populism? The will of the majority that the minority elites don’t like or something? Is it democracy only with bad people? Are the majority of people bad where you are? I have questions, seems like the will of the people is a weird thing to decry as bad, I personally think majority rule under a set of rules like you have under a constitutional republic is a pretty good deal.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 unless you're for a constitutional system where certain laws are prohibited even if they're popular-- theircompetitor, Jul 11 2024 //Dude those are terrible reasons.//
And yet I was right to trust my gut even with all of humanity in my face about it, willingly giving up their own rights as long as the un-vaccinated remained second class citizen pariahs.
The majority are a panicky bunch of lemmings looking for a cliff.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 11 2024 Now 2fries, let’s be fair, vaccines and tests weren’t mandatory for everyone, like the millions of voter base changing and wage lowering illegal immigrants. Those only applied to us lowly working citizens who are utterly despised by the elites.
Said it before and I’ll say it again, mark my words. Someday the very word “freedom” itself will be referred to with a disdainful sneer as a “buzzword” or “dog whistle” to be spoken only by the hated majority of the population. The despised working and middle classes who even after generations of systematic oppression by the elites fail to obediently bow to the whims of their self appointed overlords.
They’re not even trying to hide their distain for the people anymore. Them and their obedient followers actually have a derogatory term for the majority of the population and any desire they might have for self determination. “Populism”-- doctorremulac3, Jul 11 2024 No doubt the Germans when they elected the source of Gowdin's law they all exclaimed to themselves with glee "Let's vote for the bad guy who wants to make us the pariahs of the world. He's a passionate speaker and seems to have a great plan to lift us out of ruin." That was what populism can do in the hands of bent men.
The problem with populism is that it is fickle and lacks rational continuity or conscious purposeful governmental strategy in a competitive world. Just take a peek at the top Google search trends for any given day if you deny it.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 So if the people are too evil and stupid to be allowed self determination why allow them any form of democracy at all? Eliminate democracy and put the good guys in charge permanently like Mao, Stalin, PolPot and Castro did.
But you make a good point, whenever you put the people in charge of their own destiny they elect Hitler. Name one time the people elected a leader that WASN’T Hitler. You can’t because democracy doesn’t work, people are all evil and must be controlled by their self appointed superiors. Follow the science.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 You actively try to avoid internet populism by coming here and hanging out in this obscure little elitist corner for thinking types and go all gaga over especially accomplished members who have done impressive things. Would you put Maxwell or Loris or Dr Bob or 8th in the same camp as Castro and Pol Pot and Stalin?
Leaders aren't evil by necessity any more than people wearing red MAGA hats.
Dr. Fauci is just America's Maxwell.
That's all.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 (Pretend like you understood a word he just said.)
Hmm, yes, very interesting.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Take the L, doc.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 Assume you’re trying to be insulting because you’re losing the argument but you’re not doing very good in that department either.
If you’re trying to get out of the debate by going ad hominem, that’s fine, I understand, but at least try to make more sense with that than you did with your debate points.
That being said, I think big boys should be able to discuss the challenges we face, even disagreeing at times without resorting to childish hate spewing.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 ZT, did you read my comment? If not, please do. I'm curious if you think I come across as delusional there, and why? I've always considered myself quite open to debate and to having my mind changed by convincing arguments. Look back at my comments and posts since I first arrived at the Bakery, and you can see how my positions on many topics have shifted, and I'm usually the first to openly SAY things like "you're right, I hadn't considered that."
So if I look at myself through as objective a lens at it is possible to look at oneself through, it seems perfectly fair and well considered to call myself a rational thinker. If you think I'm wrong about any of the points I've raised, by all means, tell me HOW I got it wrong. Let's have this conversation, man!-- 21 Quest, Jul 12 2024 "Dr Fauci is America's Maxwell."
Do you imagine Maxwell stating up front that something we're all concerned about isn't like anything he's ever encountered before, then having the temerity to begin suggesting things to our leaders that they "must do" to solve the problem, after having just admitted he doesn't know anything about it? I should think that after the 3rd time he reversed his own guidance, we'd take him down off the pulpit with a shepherd's crook if need be and tell him to stuff it.-- 21 Quest, Jul 12 2024 //So if the people are too evil and stupid to be allowed self determination why allow them any form of democracy at all? Eliminate democracy and put the good guys in charge permanently like Mao, Stalin, PolPot and Castro did.//
As I've said for many years, we need to try the only form of government never tried.Minarchy.An elected monarch chained as a servant, unable to amass power, wanting as little as possible influence in his or her subjects lives because it is all just fucking drama.
So you enhance the infrastructure, you protect your people, you massively undo the bureaucracy, and you let people live their lives without tyranny.
How that one altruistic man or woman gains such a position is anyone's guess.Only one head for the dragon though. We all know what happens with a hydra.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 12 2024 I thought I made it clear, [dr] I'll repeat. You're not alone in your sentiment, as lofty a liberal scion as the NY Times has started writing about populism more often, and with less of a cleaver.
Having said that, you (I would presume based on previous interactions) understand the value of the Constitution, and would typically be in a column reminding us that we're in a Republic, and not a "democracy" (if I'm wrong I'm happy to be corrected).
The problem with populism is that it seeks simple, oversimplified answers to complex problems -- from both the left and the right -- and is too dismissive of constitutional protections (in the case of our country -- in others, there may be no such protections) -- in favor of populist goals.
The fact that elections provide an outlet valve and reduce revolts and revolutions does not imply that the population is genius. Nor do electing dictators imply that people are idiots. By definition, the IQ of the overall population is 100. It's average. And people and mobs are easily swayed -- again, I'll remind you this is why we do have the separation of powers and the Constitution -- to prevent arbitrary majority rule -- whereas populism seeks to eliminate such barriers in favor of "obvious" solutions.
Rhetorical and semantic arguments can be fun as far as they go, but yes, obviously people will not always make the best choices, and be swayed by -- let's call it marketing. That does not immediately imply that the opponents of populism mean the masses must be controlled -- instead, it means that the excesses of the moment must be controlled - -and the rationale for that is exactly the rationale behind having a constitution and separation of powers. That is what eliminated the Alien and Sedition Act -- an obvious law in post revolutionary America. That is what ultimately collapsed the McCarthy hearings and the so called Red Scare. etc. I think we'd both agree that it's a better idea to put limits on such excesses, rather than hope that elections get you out in the end -- that, as is painfully obvious from history, does not always happen.
Now -- it is possible to be so "globalist" that you delude yourself out of existence. In pursuit of diversity, atonement for colonialism, and the rest, the left has been unable to process that some populations (in their plurality and in some cases majority) do not want to be assimilated into the peaceful communion of nations, or have at the very least very stubborn leaderships that refuse it. The lesson of movies like Independence Day, with the famous (or infamos) "I want you to die" is lost on them. And that, when added to the crash of 2008, is the primary explanation for what's led to the recent rise in populism and what is happening now both in Europe and the States. The left is off the reservation searching for examples of gender fluidity in nature, the right is in their bunker buying ammunition and canned foods.
No worries, the end of scarcity is coming and it'll all be moot by 2040 or so.-- theircompetitor, Jul 12 2024 Sure. And nuclear fusion is just around the corner. Just another 10-15 or so years. The tiresome 'we're a republic, not a democracy' thing isn't a serious argument anymore, but a right-wing trope on the level of 'I drive a truck, not a vehicle...'
Doc, I think my argument against populism was pretty clear. Populism is just a wave that any manipulative putz can ride to power. You'd be respected more if you made an effort try and understand the basics.
And 21Q, Max wasn't a policy decision maker, and in all honesty, Dr. Fauci is no politician either, which is why the reaction to his recommendations took him by such surprise. But I can't fathom Max undercutting the science of a respected colleague with some half-assed conspiracy. Show me the damn context of what he said first.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 I'm not sure you read what I said Ray, as I'm obviously trying to explain something in the context of limiting the powers of the electorate. What was the reason to attack the discussion as a trope? Allergies?
The end of scarcity is coming, I've predicted it for a while now (really a while) and LLMs are just the early glimpse. I'm solidly in the Kurzweil camp, and he has not been wrong yet, he might be ten years early-- theircompetitor, Jul 12 2024 Yes, I read what you said. It's such a trope that you see it on Twitter as a meme. The obvios point is that a constitutional republic is a form of democracy, so the argument boils down to semantics. The rest of it I have no comment on.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 //Populism is just a wave that any manipulative putz can ride to power. You'd be respected more if you made an effort try and understand the basics.//
Can you imagine if we attempted to engineer other systems with this tribal hate nonsense? Instead of addressing specific problems, there's only one problem: "those guys". Instead of ideas to solve the problem throw out buzz words, tags and insults. "racist", "populist" "right wing".
Person who wants to address a system with issues: "What are the goals and the challenges we face? What systems can we implement to address these? With great specificity, what is the problem and what are some possible solutions? Let's start with something we all agree on, we need electricity, how do we do that? How about 4th generation standardized nuclear power plants?"
Ray: "Racist, populist, right wing, manipulative putz! And nuclear fusion isn't coming any time soon."
Person who just wants to address a system with issues: "4th generation nuclear power plants are fission reactors, not fusion reactors. But okay, you didn't know that, that's fine, you do now so let's move forward. Let's try the economy, maybe we don't print money for never ending global wars that achieve nothing but wealth for the military industrial complex not to mention the lives lost in never ending pointless conflicts."
Ray: "Racist, populist, right wing, manipulative putz! Tool of Putin!"
Person who wants to address a system with issues: "Hmm, okay, let's lower the bar a bit. How about building a road. Can we build a road?"
Ray: "Racist, populist, right wing, manipulative putz! We need to throw Maga in education camps and put a small ruling elite in charge of everything. Once we get rid of "those guys" the roads will build themselves."
Person who wants to address a system with issues: "Hmm. Think I'll look at funny cat videos."
I also notice a great tendency of some to prattle on about their "feelings" like they have any place in the equation. "I'm so mad, I'm so tired of, I'm exhausted by... I'm disgusted, angry, enraged etc." Emotional reaction metrics have nothing to do with logic, in fact, if anything there's an inverse you might be able to find here. The more emotional somebody is the less logical they are.
TC I was addressing Ray's hate rants, not your thoughtful and interesting comments. I do believe we're largely on the same page, but with regards to a society's people being in charge of their destiny, it's like a kid. Let them make mistakes and learn from them, within a set of guidelines and rules of course. I believe the problem is with the arrogant self appointed elite that create these power bases that only the most evil will be able to ascend to. Not talking about you, talking about those at the top who wield the power. You're just a citizen like me trying to do the best we can.
I don't want a government that monitors everything you do, has no core respect for the people, enslaves them with never ending debt by selling snake-oil solutions to our problems then turns us against each other Ray style to keep us busy while they rip us off. Ask Ray what my views are on the issues, he'd have to tell you he has no idea. He couldn't speak to one specific view I have because he doesn't know them, and doesn't care to know them. He's just been told to hate me because I'm... fill in the buzz word.
I don't trust the ruling class. And if the majority of the population is in control of their destiny, I feel that sensibility will win out in the long run. If a country decides to take over the world, then gets nuclear weapons dropped on it, ask the population if they want to try that again. Ask the average Japanese person of they want to hoist the Rising Sun Flag again, the one with the 16 strips representing the spread of the Japanese empire. They'd look at you like you were nuts because they've learned. I believe civilizations run by the people, IN GENERAL move forwards. It's when you get the elites who hate the population when you get problems.
But thank you for showing how disagreements can be civil and even interesting. That's the kind of conversation worth having. Ray, take a lesson from TC.
I personally have great hope for the future. We've come this far and I think amazing times ahead are possible. I don't believe the people are disgusting proles to be controlled by their superiors, I think most people are good, it's the elites who are the problem. Like the song says "When you ask them how much should we give, they only answer more! More! More!" The common man is about making the most of their time here on Earth, providing for their family and loved ones and trying to do what's best for their neighborhood, city, state and country, and doing so in peace with the rest of the world.
My opinion anyway.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Hey 'person who wants to address a system with issues,' is this you?
//So if the people are too evil and stupid to be allowed self determination why allow them any form of democracy at all? Eliminate democracy and put the good guys in charge permanently like Mao, Stalin, PolPot and Castro did.//
Reductionistic and obtuse. You give as well as you get. In the two decades or so of your being here your tone hasn't changed that much. So take a lesson from, well, just about everyone who's boned your shit.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 And there you go. Nothing about the issues, right to the mindless hate.
Thank you for making my point.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Back to big boy talk, some of the Lab Leak Deniers have said that there's no way this virus could have been created in a lab, it's mutation to a zoonotic virus is clearly only possible in a wet market, not a lab.
So what process is possible in a wet market that can't be duplicated in a lab? Putting a bat and a pangolin side by side? Pretty sure with the right equipment, properly trained scientists and just the right procedure, you can put a bat next to a pangolin in a lab.
Now to be clear, I'm not 100% sure about this, but at some point you've just got to go with "most likely". Yes, it's possible that it's a coincidence that this virus came out of a wet market 20 miles away from a lab doing gain of function research on bat viruses, but the idea that it couldn't come from the lab because you can't duplicate what happened in that wet market in a lab, which is ludicrous, raises suspicion that since they're at least lying about that, maybe they'd lie about screwing up so bad they killed tens of millions of people.
There's also a telling straw man argument that because the epicenter of the main outbreak was the wet market it couldn't come from a lab implying that somebody who was infected at the lab wouldn't most likely spread it at an adjacent area where hundreds if not thousands of people were crammed together face to face such as they were in that wet market. They're not mutually exclusive, on the contrary. If a lab leak were to occur, the main way the infection would propagate would be at the nearest place where people are crowded together that a lab worker might go to. Lab workers go to wet markets. So do doctors, airline pilots, engineers, farmers etc. (see link)
And I'm perfectly happy to be shown I'm wrong, that's what science is, it's about self correction when new information is available but the greatest impediment to this process is assigning some "us vs them" tribal metric to the issue because then it stops discussion, evaluation from various perspectives and silences people who don't feel their facts would be listened to anyway because of the "them vs us" mentality prevalent with these things. The rage and insults start coming out and that's it, end of discussion.
So to be clear, my main reason to suspect a lab leak is the lying and bad cover stories including saying it was from a wet market, and an American bioweapons lab, and a farm from some other province, and that you can't duplicate the transmission that happens in a wet market in a lab, and that since the epicenter is the wet market it couldn't be from somebody getting infected at the lab 20 miles away then visiting that wet market to spread the infection by being crowded together face to face with hundreds of people. Plus the scathing safety report that lab got previously and Fauci lying about specifics of his group's involvement that came out later in texts.
Why all the lies?
Anyway, I know this tribal stuff is comforting, but it really doesn't serve us very well.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 And never one acknowledgement of your own tribality. Trench warfare.
Let's see. We want to build a virus lab. Where might be a good place to put it? Antarctica? No, probably not advantageous. Maybe putting the lab in a place where viruses are known to be not that far away makes sense.
I see lots of accusations but not much backing it up. Anyway, I got better things to do.
And now zen tom is basically leaving, too. Good job.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 What tribe do I belong to? What are my views on education, women's reproductive rights, taxes, freedom of speech, the climate, drugs and crime, homelessness, arms control and non proliferation, unions, worker's rights, freedom of and from religion?
Name one.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Don't know. Don't care. Not the point.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 Exactly. At least you're honest about that. For tribalists, the point isn't the issues, it's all about the hate. Keeps things nice and simple.
Have a nice day.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Takes one to know one, asshole. When you feel like not reducing my points to absurdism you know where to find me.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 //Back to big boy talk, some of the Lab Leak Deniers have said that there's no way this virus could have been created in a lab, it's mutation to a zoonotic virus is clearly only possible in a wet market, not a lab.//
I don't think anyone is saying this. No-one sensible, in any case.
//So what process is possible in a wet market that can't be duplicated in a lab? Putting a bat and a pangolin side by side? Pretty sure with the right equipment, properly trained scientists and just the right procedure, you can put a bat next to a pangolin in a lab.//
I have a feeling we talked about this a little bit before. I think what you're referring to is actually an argument over how plausible it is that a virus (with the specific genomic sequence of the original covid-19 strain) would generated in the environment (that is, the racoon-dog farms, bushmeat system, wet markets etc) versus how plausible it is that the same sequence would be constructed in a laboratory experiment. This a rather involved, technical argument and not something you should expect to be straightforward to understand as a layperson. I mean - I've spent a significant amount of time working in a relatively related field, so I'm familiar with many of the basic concepts. And yet, I wouldn't say I was qualified to make a claim that, say, the novel spike whatnot was an obvious thing to try, and this is the obvious way to make it do what it does. There are several distinct issues. Firstly, lots of things are obvious in retrospect. But also, something which looks like it would be easy and straightforward from the outside may not be a realistic way of doing it when it actually comes to doing it - that is, it may overlook some important constraint.
That said, the crucial insight is that the viral evolution 'in the wild' is different to the way viruses would be generated in a lab experiment. If you put a bat next to a pangolin, say - almost all the time, nothing particularly important will happen! This is why the first wet-market to exist didn't immediately doom us all. The origin of a novel virus is a relatively rare event. It's only when you have a million different animal interactions and lots of scope for infection that you've got a significant chance of something happening. In a lab, on the other hand, scientists can create specific sequences to test. So the question is - does the covid-19 sequence look like it evolved naturally, or does it look like someone could have designed it?
Does that make sense, Doc? I could talk more about it, but if you're not actually interested in considering the nuance of it, it's not worth my time.
Also, I should say, thank you zen_tom - I did appreciate your comment.-- Loris, Jul 12 2024 Ray, you're the asshole. Don't ever post on my ideas again and I'll never post on yours.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 I'm sure if you did a blind poll of all of the current and past members of the bakery you'd find out who people tend to despise here and who tried their patience the most.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 Go away Ray.
Loris, yes, that does make sense, but my question is simple, I don't think nuance enters into it.
And respectfully, that seems to me like another straw man argument: If it happened in a lab, it has to be specifically using techniques like spike protein insertion, creation of pseudoviruses and engineered viral vectors, (stuff I don't have the beginning of a clue about) but at some point can't you just have a simple scenario where you have the exact same situation at a lab that you'd have at a wet market? Both places have those animals in close proximity. Some to eat, some to study, but there's no defined difference in how they might come into contact with each other right?
So my question is, what process that happened in a wet market can't be duplicated in a lab, even accidentally?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Just trying to get you to actually fucking change before even more leave. But it seems like you'll never let Charlie Brown kick the ball.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 Who started calling names? Want me to list them?
And what I really don't understand, why would you want to obsessively interact with somebody you don't like? Would you follow somebody you don't like around at a party and keep nagging them to join your club?
Let's just go our separate ways. You be you, I'll be me.
Okay?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Not. The. Fucking. Point.-- RayfordSteele, Jul 12 2024 Well I have no idea what the point is so let's leave it at that. You don't think about me, I won't think about you.
Okay?
Have a nice day.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Doc, it's not a straw man argument. I think it's pretty important that you understand this distinction. If you don't, you're simply not going to understand the discussion.
It's a question of scale.
Could a bat and a pangolin be put side-by-side in a lab? Yes, obviously. There's no question it's theoretically possible.
Would it, though? Well, if that was the experiment, yes. Let's suppose someone's doing that in a lab. For the sake of argument, let's suppose they want to do it /a lot/. This is what they want to optimise for. How much can they actually do it? Well, how much space do they have for bats and pangolins? They are space and supply limited. Keeping animals, even in 'factory farm' conditions is somewhat space-intensive. So, they would need extensive breeding facilities. There are probably /some/. But how big is this hypothetical facility? How does it compare to the wet-market's supply system?
But not only that. Usually in an animal lab, you want to your experimental animals to be very similar, and free from random other diseases. Otherwise, those variables tend to mess up your carefully crafted experiment. This generally means you need more space to keep groups or individuals isolated. But not this hypothetical experiment! You want the opposite! As much variation as possible! And as many different diseases as possible! Quite why you'd want to do this 'experiment' eludes me. But if you did, I would argue that an indoor, centre-of-town research lab is probably not the appropriate venue. Especially not if you're going to need to hide all the evidence later.
In a more realistic scenario, labs are just not the place for this. The simple fact is - the Chinese animals-for-food system as a whole has many orders of magnitude more capacity for this sort of animal mixing.
If you think animals rubbing up against each other is probably how covid originated, you should probably expect Covid to have originated where that happened routinely - that is, the wet-market and its supply routes, rather than where it could theoretically have happened a little bit - if someone was sloppy or went out of their way to do it for no obvious reason.-- Loris, Jul 12 2024 Okay, that's a new point for me and I thank you for that.
If I understand you correctly you're adding the metric of "scale", the wet market having lots and lots of animals increasing that interaction and possibility of cross infection. That's a good point.
So let me ask this: What's the scale of the animals being brought to the lab vs the wet market? It's my understanding that live animals are commonly sold at wet markets which historically has been a way to not need refrigeration as you would with meat so yes, as you said, probably some pretty big scale here.
Is there a chance that lab animals might be bought from that same supply chain? I know if I needed a live pangolin for my lab I'd probably just go to the same supplier as the wet market a few miles away.
Now this is just speculation, I have no idea and I'm just asking. To be clear, the main cause for suspicion on my part is the un-truths and multiple explanations that have come out, that while not discounting the lab leak outright, certainly seem motivated to steer us away from that conclusion.
The source of the information has to be considered and it it were a lab leak, there would be very great motivation to cover that up.
But whatever happened, thank you for being civil. I was reticent about putting this idea up because it's a pretty divisive issue but if we can't discuss differences without resorting to name calling what chance of figuring out stuff do we have? Free and open communication, even debate is pretty much the cornerstone of a free society.
So did I get what you were saying with regards to scale and its corresponding likelihood of cross species infection?
I'll cut to the chase and say that if that is the case, maybe infected animals were brought in unknowingly and when samples were taken for research that were unknowingly harboring infection they might have been treated without the care that's necessary when dealing with viruses like this.
And again, I don't know, but this was a horrible event and I think we should really be working on it never happening again. Hell, I'm all for the shutting down of the wildlife food trade that they've enacted, but I'd also like to see some pretty strict measures regarding gain of function research, even if this wasn't a result of that.
I agree with Obama on that second thing. If we have to do it, let's regulate it every bit as much as we would working on nuclear bombs or any other potentially genocidal technologies no?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Hey, wasn't there a movie "Andromeda Strain" where an interstellar virus hit the Earth and they built some isolated facility to deal with it? Can we enact laws to mandate that at least? Again, even if it wasn't a lab leak, lab leaks have occurred in the past and can occur in the future. Maybe we use this as a wakeup call for prevention of other possible global pandemic vectors. Then we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
Okay, maybe that's asking too much but still, I don't see a downside with really, really, really strict regulation of this, and any potentially deadly technology.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 I hadn't really taken much interest in this idea but, now that RayfordSteele has stroked my ego in such an alluring way, I'll chip in with what passes for my thoughts. The idea is OK-ish as an idea for a t-shirt but as a jab at science it fails, really, because it misunderstands what science is. Science is mostly failure. That's the point of it. To try & understand nature & reality by proposing theories based on observations of the universe around us & then testing those theories to destruction. Hopefully in order to find some form of truth. So your "all the times that science was wrong" shot misses the target by a very wide margin indeed. //the main cause for suspicion on my part is the un-truths and multiple explanations that have come out// This is a reasonable position to take, as far as it goes, but you need to quote sources so that people can properly challenge them (I use 'challenge' in the sense of having a proper debate about them). As far as I am aware (& I really haven't gone into this in any great detail because I think it is all completely irrelevant), the truth of the matter on the origin of COVID is still unproven & so, as is the manner of human beings, people have made up any number of explanations based on their own biases & to suit their own agendas. Speaking as a committed vegetarian (or is that a vegetarian who should be committed?), it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it originated from some meat market in China, or the USA or Russia or India or anywhere else in the world. And the same applies to government run laboratories the world over. The specific source, as I said, is irrelevant. It was eventually going to happen somewhere, somewhen. Scientists (remember them?) have been warning about it for decades. The real issue is the way we treat & interact with our fellow residents of planet earth & until that changes this kind of thing will continue to occur. We cannot truly call ourselves civilised until then. Regarding opinions that some (I include myself here*) might find distasteful. I have no objection to people expressing them because, unless they are given a forum to be aired, they cannot be properly challenged (that word again). Of course this has the danger that the people who dislike seeing those opinions may walk away instead of constantly & continually using facts (properly sourced, of course) to show them up as false beliefs. Walking away from the debate just leaves the field open to a vocal minority of the misinformed. People whose fears can be stoked up by the unscrupulous for the furtherance of their own agendas. That is what populism is. It is not the will of the majority, it is the megaphone for ignorance. Nobody voted the Bohemian Corporal into power. He was made Chancellor, when his popularity was in decline & he had lost an election, by a coalition of an ageing President & cynical industrialists who wanted to keep the socialists out. They all thought that he would be their puppet. They were so very wrong. And so many people died because of it. That's the real history. * //Did any of you think you'd become a minority in your own countries in the span of a couple of years because of the elite globalist agenda?// As a white, male, atheist I think I can confidently say that I have been a minority in my own country all of my adult life. I couldn't give a damn what religious fairy story people choose to believe in. It's all bollocks as far as I am concerned & trying to stir up conflict about whose fairy story is the real truth would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragically awful.-- DrBob, Jul 12 2024 //The idea is OK-ish as an idea for a t-shirt but as a jab at science it fails, really, because it misunderstands what science is.//
Well science IS being wrong and then correcting it, embracing the mistakes and missteps, not hiding them. Let's talk about when it came up with wrong assessments of our world, find out why they were wrong and adjust so it doesn't happen again.
Like I said, it's the faithless faith. A true scientist is always open to changing their mind upon being given new facts without emotion or bias.
I believe in science because, frankly, it's not a belief, it's a methodology.
I tried to address this with the joke statement: "There is a substance, the philosopher’s stone, that's capable of turning base metals like mercury into gold. (As believed by idiots like Isaac Newton)"
Point being, you don't get closer to science god status that the Newt, but even he was wrong once. If he can be wrong, maybe I can be wrong too?
Nothing more comforting to me at least, that I can be wrong about anything. Once you take that red pill, find out you were wrong about something and it wasn't so bad, in fact it was wonderful because you achieved some clarity on something you didn't have previously, you're never going back.
Now I know there's the social ranking thing, smart people up here, dumb people down here, but I really couldn't care less about that. I can be right, I can be wrong, but I don't learn anything from being right. So I'm not going to stop asking questions. Especially if I'm told to. Don't look behind that door? Sorry, might not have cared before but I'm opening it now.
So again, I believe in science because it's not a belief. It's a methodology.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 Yeah. But your t-shirt (in effect) says "Aha! Science is/was wrong!" & uses snapshots in time to pretend that there is no ongoing process &, by implication, that all science is to be treated with suspicion (as opposed to open-minded scepticism). That is the same mental journey that anti-vaxers have travelled in order to arrive at the conclusion that science should be rejected in favour of a good dose of prayer. If you replaced the "FOLLOW THE SCIENCE" wording with something along the lines of "THINGS THAT SCIENCE DISPROVED", it would give the t-shirt a whole different tone. The bit that I would disagree with is the "without emotion or bias" bit. That isn't really possible in a normal human being (of which scientists are a subset). It is necessary, therefore, for the rest of us to take those factors in to account when assessing scientific conclusions.-- DrBob, Jul 12 2024 What [zen_tom] said. There’s a lot of very self-assured proselytising on the Halfbakery now which didn’t really exist here a few years ago, which has an implied message that a failure to wholeheartedly embrace a particular worldview brands you as an idiot or a pawn of ‘establishment’ forces. I see no value in engaging with this sort of argument.-- hippo, Jul 12 2024 (Dr Bob) Couldn't agree more.
Cheerfully changed: "while keeping in mind the great scientist Earnst Mach's (spelling?) revelation. Your point of reference affects your perspective and view of the situation and needs to be calculated into the final hypothesis. If you're human you're gonna have to factor that in.
Good point.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 //I see no value in engaging with this sort of argument.// I sympathise & although it may not provide value for you, what about for somebody else who will only read it as an unchalleged viewpoint if you do not, at least, respond. It's a bit like fleeing the field. Without challenge to such things the halfbakery becomes just another intellectual wasteland instead of a place for fun & interesting ideas. Of course, a good moderator would delete this & every other comment that strays into political debate rather than addressing the idea as formulated. :)-- DrBob, Jul 12 2024 Okay, let's all hug it out and move on.
(Those aren't tears, I've got allergies dammit!)-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 //So let me ask this: What's the scale of the animals being brought to the lab vs the wet market? It's my understanding that live animals are commonly sold at wet markets which historically has been a way to not need refrigeration as you would with meat so yes, as you said, probably some pretty big scale here.//
I don't know. I'm sure it would be possible to do some sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation. What assumptions do you want for the lab, though? Maximum theoretical capacity? I honestly think in practice the number of pangolins in the lab would be zero, or if not, very close to it. And probably not a huge number of bats - I wouldn't be surprised if the official number was also zero, or very low - the actual bats being sampled for viruses in the field, and not infected in the lab. A critical factor only loosely related to capacity is throughput. If you have a lot of animals but they're all really isolated and you never bring in any new stock, the viruses you have in the population are all you ever have (along with evolved derivatives, of course). Although of course you could introduce new viruses you'd found elsewhere I suppose. So it kind of depends on quite how insane you think the process was. And of course the worse it was, the harder it would be to cover up from that later investigation. You do also need to fit in research labs somewhere, in amongst your insane factory farm.
//Is there a chance that lab animals might be bought from that same supply chain? I know if I needed a live pangolin for my lab I'd probably just go to the same supplier as the wet market a few miles away.//
Again, I don't know. Pangolins aren't routinely used for lab work; they're not exactly a model animal. But yes, it's possible. But in the theoretical case where the only reason the lab 'leaked' the virus was because they imported it from the wet-market, it's arguably not really a lab leak at all.
//Now this is just speculation, I have no idea and I'm just asking. To be clear, the main cause for suspicion on my part is the un-truths and multiple explanations that have come out, that while not discounting the lab leak outright, certainly seem motivated to steer us away from that conclusion.
The source of the information has to be considered and it it were a lab leak, there would be very great motivation to cover that up.//
Well, okay. I do understand that the way the Chinese went about things throughout the pandemic looks suspicious. But I think that's more of a case of a culture of trying to suppress things which look bad in general.
I mean, remember that they went through a phase of denying there was an outbreak at all.
And also, they were pretty actively denying various things about the wet market. I'll post a choice quote from an article I've linked before (and linked here, too.):
::The southwest corner [of the wet-market] is where most of the wildlife was being sold. Rumor said that included a stall with raccoon-dogs, an animal which is generally teeming with weird coronaviruses, and is a plausible intermediate host between humans and bats:
China said this rumor was false and refused to release any information. Scientists were finally able to confirm the existence of the raccoon-dog shop in the funniest possible way: a virologist had visited Wuhan in 2014, saw the awful conditions in the shop, and took a picture as an example of the kind of place that a future pandemic might start.::-- Loris, Jul 12 2024 Aha! The raccoon dog! Just as I suspected!-- doctorremulac3, Jul 12 2024 //Of course, a good moderator would delete this & every other comment that strays into political debate rather than addressing the idea as formulated. :)// - fair point: it’s a bit of a loophole that, while ideas are sometimes deleted, individual comments aren’t. It allows people to put forward OK ideas (although of course ‘a t-shirt with a slogan on it’ is hardly original) and then to bang on about whatever nonsense they want to in the comments-- hippo, Jul 12 2024 //That is the same mental journey that anti-vaxers have travelled in order to arrive at the conclusion that science should be rejected in favour of a good dose of prayer.//
Yeah... No.
I belong to no faith and I have never prayed.I just know a con when I'm being subjected to one.I love science but this does not blind me to the fact that when it is not allowed to be questioned it means that no true scientist is at the helm.
Fauci on record stating that "We'll just make life hard for people until they comply." is not science.
You've been conned into thinking every antivaxxer hates science the same way you were conned into repeatedly allowing pharmacunts to inject you with untested medications which do not meet the previous definition of the word 'vaccine'.
Keep your slimy labels off of me.I am anti 'non-vaccine' because I was raised by a con man and gained immunity at a young age.
No prayers needed.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 12 2024 // Fauci on record stating that "We'll just make life hard for people until they comply." is not science. // Some context would be nice. When did he say it? Under what circumstances? To whom? Is that the full quote or has it been conveniently downsized to suit someone's political agenda? As I understand it (and I'm in the UK so I don't really follow the minutiae of US politics), Fauci was a scientific advisor, not someone with actual power. He could make recommendations or suggest policy options but enactment of policy was down to your elected politicians wasn't it? At least, that is how it works in the UK. //You've been conned into thinking every antivaxxer hates science the same way you were conned into repeatedly allowing pharmacunts to inject you with untested medications which do not meet the previous definition of the word 'vaccine'.// You are making a mighty big assumption there. Perhaps you should stick to actual facts rather than throwing out insults. // Keep your slimy labels off of me.// You shouldn't be so defensive. I never mentioned you. Any labels that you have, you took upon yourself. //I was raised by a con man and gained immunity at a young age// In truth, I don't know anything about your background. But is it perhaps possible that you learned, at a young age, to never trust anybody. If so then you should know that that's not the same thing as wisdom.-- DrBob, Jul 13 2024 In law the accused perpetrator of a crime probably wouldn’t be called as an expert unbiased witness on whether or not a crime was committed.
Sometime we use other logic tools to figure things out.
But just like I’m saying it’s not 100% that it’s from a lab, I will agree with Fauci on this point: it’s not 100% than it’s from a wet market or other point of origin and NOT from a lab either.
If you disagree with the latter point take it up with him, not me.
By the way, notice how I made my point without insulting anybody? I think that strengthens a point.
- It’s okay to speculate
- It’s okay to be wrong
- It’s okay to disagree
- The first person to start calling names is the bad guy
- Don’t be the bad guy-- doctorremulac3, Jul 13 2024 // Fauci on record stating that "We'll just make life hard for people until they comply." is not science. // Some context would be nice. When did he say it? Under what circumstances? To whom? Is that the full quote or has it been conveniently downsized to suit someone's political agenda? As I understand it (and I'm in the UK so I don't really follow the minutiae of US politics), Fauci was a scientific advisor, not someone with actual power. He could make recommendations or suggest policy options but enactment of policy was down to your elected politicians wasn't it? At least, that is how it works in the UK.//
Oh his actual quote is a lot longer and more damning than what I paraphrased from his inquiry.See for your self. It'll only take a minute of your time.[link]
//You've been conned into thinking every antivaxxer hates science the same way you were conned into repeatedly allowing pharmacunts to inject you with untested medications which do not meet the previous definition of the word 'vaccine'.// ////You are making a mighty big assumption there. Perhaps you should stick to actual facts rather than throwing out insults.////
If you consider me pointing out that the majority, (yourself included as I take it you did get the jab), are the victims of a confidence job as an insult, then it explains a great deal about why us unvaccinated haven't received even so much as an apology for the shit we've been put through for being right.
// Keep your slimy labels off of me.// ////You shouldn't be so defensive. I never mentioned you. Any labels that you have, you took upon yourself.////
Did you not say all antivaxxers thought processes denounced science for prayer?
//In truth, I don't know anything about your background. But is it perhaps possible that you learned, at a young age, to never trust anybody. If so then you should know that that's not the same thing as wisdom.//
I trust many people. That trust has been earned, not freely given to an authority I am not allowed to question.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 13 2024 I thank this idea profusely, as it had just made me realize, four years post Covid start and god knows how many annotations in -- and this despite being paid for writing now, and loving puns -- that this the sentence was derived from "follow the signs"-- theircompetitor, Jul 13 2024 Maybe it should be “follow the scent”.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 13 2024 //See for your self// OK, I did. That sounded like two different recordings spliced together. There is a distinct change of sound after the first sentence. But I am no expert on sound recording so I may well be wrong. Regardless of that, his reply to the senator's question (for the brief moment that he was able to respond) was to point out that his comments were taken out of context. So what was on the rest of the recording? To be clear, I am not here to defend Fauci. I know almost nothing about the guy, but I also know a con job when I see it. // If you consider...[etc]// Again, you make a statement based on unfounded assumptions. And don't play coy at this late stage, 2fries. The insult was in the obscenity that you used, as you well know. Own it. //did you not say all antivaxxers thought processes denounced science for prayer? // No, I didn't. Try reading the actual words. //trust has been earned, not freely given to an authority I am not allowed to question// And yet here you are, questioning it.-- DrBob, Jul 13 2024 //OK, I did. That sounded like two different recordings spliced together. There is a distinct change of sound after the first sentence. But I am no expert on sound recording so I may well be wrong. Regardless of that, his reply to the senator's question (for the brief moment that he was able to respond) was to point out that his comments were taken out of context. So what was on the rest of the recording? To be clear, I am not here to defend Fauci. I know almost nothing about the guy, but I also know a con job when I see it.//
You sure about that?The full hearing can be found easily enough, I just tried to whittle it down to a snippet so that at least some folks might take a look at the thought processes of the pro-vaccination origination crowd.In what reality could Faucis' statement about applying pressure to force the jab be misconstrued? What context exonerates such blatant lack of give-a-shit for his fellow man? He's on somebody else's payroll thinking he was going to come out on top and now he gets to be the fall guy......just how the people actually pulling the strings intended.
// If you consider...[etc]// ////Again, you make a statement based on unfounded assumptions. And don't play coy at this late stage, 2fries. The insult was in the obscenity that you used, as you well know. Own it.////
To which obscenity do you refer? I gather it was somewhere in the ...[etc.]// part, so let's look at what you omitted in your reply;"me pointing out that the majority, (yourself included as I take it you did get the jab), are the victims of a confidence job as an insult, then it explains a great deal about why us unvaccinated haven't received even so much as an apology for the shit we've been put through for being right."
I see no obscenity there. Please be more specific so I can either rebut or confirm your alluded to obscenity otherwise there is no way for me to know what the hell you are talking about.
//did you not say all antivaxxers thought processes denounced science for prayer? // No, I didn't. Try reading the actual words.//
Okay, here's the actual words;"That is the same mental journey that anti-vaxers have travelled in order to arrive at the conclusion that science should be rejected in favour of a good dose of prayer."
So, I used the words thought processes while you used the words mental journey. I used the word denounced while you used the word rejected. I used for prayer while you used in favour of a good dose of prayer.
So, break out a thesaurus... was that my journey? I don't think so.
//trust has been earned, not freely given to an authority I am not allowed to question// ////And yet here you are, questioning it.////
I never stopped.The rest of you did though didn't you?Many of you caved at the slightest suggestion of pressure and turned into uber-Karens bent on excluding anyone in your lives who fell into the category of unvaccinated as untouchable.
Well...
... that was 'me'.
Now, y'all really shouldn't have gone and done that, but more than that, those who conceived of and implemented this plandemic shit-fest really REALLY should have known better and now they will pay ten-fold for what they've done and by extension so will anyone else on-board with their agenda.
It's going to collapse like a house of cards.
As just one man there is very little I can do to avert what is about to befall, but you will learn that I am as right in this as I was right to resist you all, and I hope at least a few of you heed my words so that you might still survive what the asswipes have planned next.
The plandemic was just a feeling-out of humanity to see just how far we could be pushed.
Turns out to be a whole lot of Jello... and not much steel.
You all need to come to terms with that fact.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 13 2024 //In your list of scary things in the linked "honey bee" idea, [2 fries], where you do think Diversity Equity and Inclusion belongs?//
Sorry [pertinax] I missed that first time 'round.
I guess my answer is that we will have to wait and see how many currently sovereign nations considered colonial suddenly become Islamic and adopt Sharia law.
The death tolls on all sides will be extreme.How extreme depends entirely on the level of give-a-shit of those currently sovereign nations in question.
So... probably somewhat higher than covid.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 14 2024 Not a fan of sharia law myself, don’t care what they do in their own countries, but I’m struck by the fact that the same people virtue signaling their support for women and gays support ushering in anti women, anti gay sharia law by changing the demographics of what will formally be a progressive society. In those transformed areas it’s already been done.
But it’s not about morality, it’s about a power shift, and in place of logic you have blind rage. Look back at this post when I tried to bring up specific issues. The totalitarian I was debating just came out and admitted that the issues have nothing to do with how the issues should be decided. It’s not how, what or why, only who. It’s “Our side, right or wrong. Shut up and know your place!”
To which I reply:
No. Not now, not ever.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 14 2024 An Irish comedian made me laugh the other day. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here;
I don't really get white privilege. I'm from Ireland. We were starving. We grew potatoes... ...we ate them.
We didn't go somewhere else to fetch people to pick them for us.That would be rude.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 15 2024 Just read through all the comments here, and it all goes to show how much the focus of the halfbakery has been distorted by a few posters into their own ranting platform in the annotations. As a victim of bullying here myself, it's easy to see why others are deterred from posting and the bakery becomes punctuated with personal insults using terms like "vomit spewing hatred" Dial it down please or face a continuing new ideas desert with one poster trying to dominate everything. For my part, I'll check back in a week and see if calmness has prevailed. The halfbakery shouldn't be a platform that mirrors America's dysfunctional politics. Take some drugs, look at some good art (Donald Judd for example) listen to Joni Mitchell (I suggest "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"), press restart and chill.-- xenzag, Jul 15 2024 //The full hearing can be found easily enough// But not the full recording. //In what reality could Faucis' statement about applying pressure to force the jab be misconstrued?// This one, apparently. I don't care for his remarks either, if that's any consolation. But I understand that a scientist put in a desperate situation, where thousands are dying every day and with his political masters pressuring him for a solution, might put forward some fairly desperate alternatives when he is being frustrated by what he clearly thinks of as petty politics. I agree when you call him a fall guy. Someone who has been set up to take the blame whilst the people who made the real decisions, the politicians, wash their hands of it (an ironic turn of phrase if ever there was one). //To which obscenity do you refer?// Don't be obtuse, 2fries. This one... //you were conned into repeatedly allowing pharmacunts to inject you// //Okay, here's the actual words;// Yeah, once again you turn a blind eye to what's important. There's an important word that you missed out of all that. Why are you so afraid of making an honest reply to my point? // I never stopped. The rest of you did though didn't you?// You can't have it both ways. Either you are not allowed to question things or you are. Which is it? As for the rest of 'us'. You have no idea what we do or do not do because you clearly don't pay attention to what we say. //The plandemic was just a feeling-out of humanity to see just how far we could be pushed. // Any pandemic 'planning' that took place was for responding to an emergency situation & it was mostly exposed as being hopelessly inadequate.-- DrBob, Jul 15 2024 //Take some drugs// — xenzag, Jul 15 2024
Boy, that would explain a lot.
Dr Bob and 2 fries, thank you for being civil and being adult enough to understand the difference between a debate or disagreement and a fight.
I don't know if they have debate classes in school anymore but I'm hoping the next generation can at least be taught what I was, that the FIRST person who goes ad hominem or calls names officially loses the debate. (However, after somebody takes it low you can't be expected to not retort on their level, because defense is moral, offense is immoral.)
I also learned from my ghetto upbringing that the biggest bullies were actually the biggest pussies when you stood up to them and once you kicked their ass they were the first to claim victim status. Remember your 6 Bs: “Biggest bullies be being biggest bitches”. Evidently that wasn't confined to my hometown that would later be known as "the murder capital of the world". Bullies claiming they're the ones being bullied after they started it and the victim stood up to them and fought back can be found everywhere.
It's up to good people to do their best to stand up to oppression, make their voices heard and do their best to preserve the relatively free society that was handed to them, and there's a reason why the very first amendment refers to that.
Everybody here needs to be free to speak their mind. Period.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 15 2024 I just noticed this line from Rayford: //In the two decades or so of your being here your tone hasn't changed that much.//
That would indicate to ME that Doc Rem isn't the reason people have started leaving in recent years then. He's always been here, and he's been fairly consistent, so the idea that he is now responsible for scaring Bakers off doesn't quite hold up to the scientific method, does it? The difference is that the more liberal minded Bakers have grown intolerant of what USED to make this such a wonderful place: tolerance, debate, and acceptance that there are some who disagree with us.-- 21 Quest, Jul 15 2024 Yup.
I think it started when we lost Max and 8th, who were pretty strong defenders of common sense, Max being pretty progressive for lack of a better term, but by no means a dictatorial leftist, not even close, I'd say about 90% in parallel with my views, right or wrong. Him and 8th were absolutely brilliant. We'd have differences of opinions but it was always productive and fun. It was after they crossed the rainbow bridge that we really started to see this fascist effort to drive people away who didn't conform to a particular leftist point of view.
Then the whole Trump obsession thing really got under way. The main perp of that came out and admitted they just loved making people angry, basically being a bully. At some point people got sick of it REGARDLESS of their views on Donald Trump. You don't have to be a fan OR hater of Trump to not want to hear about him constantly.
But even if it wasn't just Trump Trump Trump Trump rants, ANY never ending subject being repeated over and over and over and over is gonna drive people away. I don't care if it's somebody who never shuts up about how they like chocolate chip ice cream, it's like "Yea, we get it already, can we talk about something else?".
So anyway, it might not be the friendliest place, haters gonna hate, bullies gonna bully, but there are some good people here and it's still a great platform to register and publish ideas and there are still some good discussions that come around from time to time. Those are still wonderful.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 15 2024 Whoa TC! That's badass!! (link)-- doctorremulac3, Jul 15 2024 Thx [dr] is where I channel most of my creative energy now-- theircompetitor, Jul 16 2024 You object to my oh so subtle euphemism of the word pharmacunt?Do you work for Pfizer?If not what do you care what terms I sling. Are you not an adult?
// I never stopped. The rest of you did though didn't you?//
////You can't have it both ways. Either you are not allowed to question things or you are. Which is it? As for the rest of 'us'. You have no idea what we do or do not do because you clearly don't pay attention to what we say.////
We?
See, I think its the other way around, so I will ask you another question;
Were those fully qualified but dissenting doctors, nurses, and scientists who lost their careers over noncompliance allowed to question authority during the plandemic?
Forget about me, I'm just a random hard-ass.
What about them?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 Were they allowed to question "the science"?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 What happened to them when they dared to?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 //You object to my oh so subtle euphemism// I didn't say so. Although I do. But that wasn't my point, was it. Stop avoiding the subject, 2fries. Also, I don't think that word means what you think it means. Here, I'll help you out... From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition euphemism noun 1. A mild, indirect, or vague term for one that is considered harsh, blunt, or offensive. 2. The use of such terms. 3. A figure in which a harsh or indelicate word or expression is softened; a way of describing an offensive thing by an inoffensive expression; a mild name for something disagreeable. //what do you care what terms I sling// I care because using your made-up words like 'plandemic' & 'pharmacunts' is an attempt to establish your unfounded theory as the truth. You can't win the argument by sticking to the facts so you are attempting to change the language so that it seems like there is a new truth. You should read some George Orwell to find out where that sort of thing leads you. //Forget about me// No. This whole debate is all about you. You were complaining that you weren't allowed to question authority & that is demonstrably untrue. So now you attempt to deflect attention by shifting the focus onto other peoples' troubles with their employers. Why can't you just concede the point that, actually, nobody (certainly nobody on this website) is preventing you from voicing your opinions & concerns and then move on? Is it really that difficult? Really? Or is it that what you actually want is for your opinion to go unchallenged & for other people to just fall in line with it?-- DrBob, Jul 16 2024 In calculating the likely fatalities from Diversity Equity and Inclusion, [2 fries], you seem to be making a big intuitive leap from DEI (which is supposed to include, among other things, better opportunities for women and sexual minorities) to //suddenly become Islamic and adopt Sharia law//, which does not tend in that direction.
Would you like to explain why those two things are equivalent?-- pertinax, Jul 16 2024 I'm seeing the debate being largely two against one so I'll take the stage on the side of 2 fries just for balance or at least be sort of a moderator because frankly I'm getting a little confused about where everybody stands.
The things that I see are needing to be addressed are the propriety of: how Covid was handled, DEI and its effects on industry and society and mass immigration of cultures that have mores antithetical to woman and gays.
My views on Covid are pretty clear, Fauchi and his cohorts are now on record covering up facts about their involvement with the pandemic. In evaluating culpability for the genesis of this thing, they now have to be suspect and at the same time have their evaluations discounted as being that of proven liars. Does that mean they caused it? Not 100% necessarily. Maybe they're just stupid enough to come across the scene of a murder they didn't cause, then pick up the murder weapon and hide it for some reason, but that act alone's gonna put them on my suspect list.
DEI. This one's a little more simple. We've got metrics we could evaluate if we were allowed to, but before even doing that we can throw out some math. If you abandon a meritocracy based task assignment system and replace it with one where you need an exact corresponding lineup of workers based on the group you're hiring from, there will be impact on the quality of the chosen team. Nothing to do with race or gender, once you've eliminated merit as being the only determinant, you're not getting as much merit. Period. That's not debatable. You replace merit with needing a particular amount of people with the letter T in their name, merit's gonna suffer. "Sorry Peet, yes, you have the best resume, but the T needs to be at the beginning of your name, not the end." Apply DEI to sports and tell me which teams are going to win. You know the answer. And the skills in sports are different than the skills in building and maintaining other systems like keeping airplanes flying how?
The Martin Luther King doctrine that people shouldn't be judged by the color of their skin used to be widely agreed to by consensus of the people. That was eliminated by the un-elected, self appointed ruling class without any debate or evaluation, suddenly the color of the skin is the MAIN way we're to be judged. Oddly enough, this began right after protest groups from the left (Occupy Wall Street) and the right (The Tea Party Movement) came out with a shared goal of standing up to the debt slavery money industry. Hmm, how convenient, now we're just fighting each other about what the elites tell us it's okay to fight about like good little serfs. And when you become openly racist by saying "Let's lower the bar for... you know... THOSE people." this neo-segregationist policy needs to be talked about. Got a group that's having a hard time? Let's get them educated, let's build strong family units in their communities. Let's eliminate telling them it's cool to take drugs, be in a violent gang or call their women bitches and hoes. Having grown up in a black community I'm gonna give myself a little more merit than some 5th generation rich Harvard trained socialist on how to handle this stuff. Looking down at a black community from a private jet at 25,000 feet doesn't constitute having experienced the black community.
I'll just address the elite's preferred relationship with "people of color" with this little one act play.
"Ms Peloci, ma'm, the kitchen is cleaned as you told me to, may I go home now?"
"Yes Maria, that'll be fine, just don't forget to clean under the sink next time."
Aaaaand... scene.
As far as the idea that importing Sharia law into one's culture is not going to have an impact on that societies rules and cultural ethics with regard to women's and gay's rights, is there disagreement on that? See links about approved sharia women's attire and the dire warning from the creators of "The Handmaid's Tail", who I assume are the same people who support massive sharia importation.
Anyway, Doc and Pert, if I saw either of you guys alone on stage debating against two other guys, I'd probably take your side of the stage just for balance. (So you just like debating for debate's sake?) Yea, just my wiring I guess. Two against one makes me uncomfortable. And I'm not 100% in agreement on everything, obviously I think "Operation Honey Bee" isn't a problem, I missed where that was criticized but respectfully disagree, fully allowing that, yes, any technology can be misused. But hey, even that should be discussed.
Civil debate is good. Actually good isn't the right word. It's the core element of a functional civilization so carry on.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024 zzzzzzzzz longer sleep needed....-- xenzag, Jul 16 2024 You're right, it's your nap-time. Grownups are talking here.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024 I know the definition of euphemism [DrBob], that's why I placed the 'oh so subtle' in front of it.Sar-chasm: The use of irony to mock or convey contempt.
//what do you care what terms I sling// ////I care because using your made-up words like 'plandemic' & 'pharmacunts' is an attempt to establish your unfounded theory as the truth. You can't win the argument by sticking to the facts so you are attempting to change the language so that it seems like there is a new truth.////
There's only one truth and it will out, with or without my term-coining. I find it funny though how the terms I coin seem to stick.
//Forget about me// ////No. This whole debate is all about you. You were complaining that you weren't allowed to question authority & that is demonstrably untrue.//
'Nobody' was allowed to question authority for several years.That I did so anyway just shows my contempt for authority abusing power.
//// So now you attempt to deflect attention by shifting the focus onto other peoples' troubles with their employers. Why can't you just concede the point that, actually, nobody (certainly nobody on this website) is preventing you from voicing your opinions & concerns and then move on? Is it really that difficult? Really? Or is it that what you actually want is for your opinion to go unchallenged & for other people to just fall in line with it?////
You forget just how many times since Carona virus was announced that someone or other implored [jutta] to silence me, and you don't answer questions.What happened to any qualified individual that dissented?You don't want to touch that question with a ten foot pole.The question is not misdirection. It is the entire point.
//In calculating the likely fatalities from Diversity Equity and Inclusion, [2 fries], you seem to be making a big intuitive leap from DEI (which is supposed to include, among other things, better opportunities for women and sexual minorities) to //suddenly become Islamic and adopt Sharia law//, which does not tend in that direction.
Would you like to explain why those two things are equivalent?//
Well... first off making big intuitive leaps is kind of what I do.Secondly DEI is a smoke screen being used as part of a multi-pronged attack whereby the use of cultural guilt allows a massive invasion of those with absolutely no tolerance whatsoever, and since 'you' must tolerate them while they destroy the very fabric of our societies, with queers screaming on the side of those who would chuck them from a window, it's a rolling snowball of shit.Politicians are doing everything in their power to make it so that non-citizens are allowed to vote as they flood across borders in ever increasing numbers and any idiot can see the end result of such policies... but it's full steam ahead as we all get culturally enriched to death.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 How do those families who struggled to legally enter western societies feel about this immigration free-for-all?Their tax dollars also given directly to those who contribute nothing?There is talk of many areas pushing for legislation to make it compulsory for anyone with a spare room in their home to house illegal immigrants.
So, is it diverse?or is it divest?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 //DEI is a smoke screen being used as part of a multi-pronged attack whereby the use of cultural guilt allows a massive invasion of those with absolutely no tolerance whatsoever, and since 'you' must tolerate them while they destroy the very fabric of our societies, with queers screaming on the side of those who would chuck them from a window, it's a rolling snowball of shit.//
Sorry [2fries] but this is outright wrong.
There is no conspiratorial "multi-pronged" attack.
Nobody has cultural guilt. And if they did, it's not through some kind of conspiracy to achieve some as-yet-unspecificed threat, as perpetrated by some as-yet-unspecified cabal of "elites" or spooky "thems".
To assume that *an entire culture* have //absolutely no tolerance whatsoever// is clearly absurd, not to mention deeply misinformed and dangerous.
Similarly, the assertion that //they destroy the very fabric of our societies// is completely fantastical. Not even wrong. Completely made up. Maybe not by you, but certainly it's this bogus and ill-evidenced narrative that only does the work of Bin Ladin and the types of cronies who wanted to sow those seeds of division back at the turn of the Millennium. It's rhetoric like that which is precisely what they wanted to trigger. Why? Because they were sick of how effectively the West was influencing their societies, westernising them. How? Because all the good living, liberal, commerce-minded immigrants who'd lived and assimilated in the west were sending home money, culture and change.
My Muslim neighbours are nice, and kind people. Their kids go to the same school as my kids. We swap gifts at Christmas and Eid. We talk over the garden fence about how the grass is growing, or how fast our kids are growing. They really don't present as the scheming, creeping evil that you seem to believe them to be. That's not from far left politicking, that's just from day-to-day, direct experience.
My Muslim colleagues over the last 25 years have all tended to be pleasant, honourable and kind people. I've sat in canteens with them and shared meals, discussions about football, cricket, programming, food and politics. Their points of view are as varied as you'd expect to find in any community.
To stereotype a whole people, race or culture like this is horrifyingly wrong. I don't believe you to be a bad person, [2fries], but wherever you're getting your second-hand opinions from, it's frankly not a source that reflects reality.
The Sharia law thing. Not a thing. Yes, Muslim communities will use Sharia councils to help sort out differences - in a fairly recent government paper, evidence suggested that far from imposing stereotypical hate and throwing gays out of windows, as you'd imagine listening to some voices here, 90% of the cases held in those communities that volunteered to be so serviced, were from women seeking divorces. Meanwhile, you'll be comforted to know that in the UK, the only law that exists is that which has been handed down through parliamentary process and well-preserved texts from over the last 1000 years or so. Sharia law has no jurisdiction anywhere official.
Islam is just like any other religion, and it's followers no different from followers of any other religion. That's from my personal experience, not facebook, or InfoWars or Breitbart or anywhere with an axed to grind. Seeing those axes publically ground, be so far from the truth (remember the "no go areas" bollocks that went round American right-wing media?) that it's laughable - or would be if it wasn't so fucking dangerous and immoral.
Here in the UK, we don't have what I suppose used to be called "affirmative action" - I don't know if that's still a thing in the US or not. But here, there are no quotas, and contrary to the straw-man that [remulac] paints, there is no hiring based on diversity over merit - indeed, doing so is explicitly illegal. The person who has the best qualifications is legally entitled to land the job, given a field of candidates, and to make a discriminatory decision based on any of the protected characteristics (race, age, sex, alignment?) is subject to legal problems. You *can* discriminate on experience, skill and ability, and are legally bound to do so. So to suggest that (at least in the UK) DEI is anything other than a way of encouraging all people to feel welcome and not subject to the kind of ill-informed hate quoted above, is just a nice and proper thing to do.
So it's hard to know how and where to counter these kinds of views, they are clearly, and objectively not rooted in any kind of fact, and they are really easily spread around by an aligned group of paid for media groups and lobbyists - I don't know why that is, or for what gain there is in grooming an audience to believe this kind of stuff, but it is wrong, unhelpful and beneath all of us. Just a little fact-check here and there should help stave off the worst of the crazy and save all of us a lot of time.
//Politicians are doing everything in their power to make it so that non-citizens are allowed to vote// Ahh, so maybe this is the reason these right-wing talking points are being contrived - I guess demonising the people coming in, by highlighting their voting rights would be a way to turn a rational issue into one of identity, and from there, to groom people into feeling emotional about this kind of invented stuff.
That's where I am at the moment, those people who are getting irate about the birth-rates of Muslims, and worrying about cultures being wiped out; but who aren't for example equally moved by the birth-rates in Amish, Mormon or Mennonite communities (these having perhaps birth-rates 6x higher than the wider average), each of whom have their own distinct cultures, community law/policing practices and are arguably more insular (perhaps in some communities than others) than the brown-peril that's being bandied about with abandon here, might ask themselves why such a difference of agitation exists. Why aren't we getting agitated about a birth-rate driven Amish takeover of the Northeast for example in the next 150 years? *
So it's this, and to be honest, pretty much only this that I take issue with - not interested in the vax debate from 4 years ago. It's over. Not interested in how you are self-identifying as a counter-culture non-mainstream person, good for you. But I do take issue with the kind of lazy thinking and hate-fuelled prejudice that we're seeing here. It isn't acceptable in tolerant society.
Final observation on the continuing shit tone - this little exchange //Grownups are talking here.// vs //this little one act play......Aaaaand... scene.// Your vignettes [remulac] do add colour, but I've got to say they're not very persuasive. Do you do the voices? They may help you communicate the types of stereotypes and mental-shortcuts you're using to construct your arguments, but it is ironic/hypocritical/funny to suggest that kind of argument (i.e. a story that you've made up in your head and then acted out/scripted here) is the sort of thing a "grownup" would employ in a sensible discussion (if that's what's going on here, sensible isn't top of the list of adjectives I'd apply here). Again, not to take sides, but just giving you the benefit of independent observation. Unless you said that ironically for the banter, in which case apologies I must have missed the warmth or humour. My 2 cents but that seems to have come across as nasty and rude.
Now you may feel that I'm just being nasty and rude, in fact I've no doubt you'll want to outline your feelings in that direction. You might think I'm calling you stupid or using long words that you don't want to look up (I'm really not) And you're free to do and feel anyway you want, of course. But what I've written here has (I think) been measured, fair and balanced, and based on the facts as they're presented here. If anyone feels victimised or bullied, as a result of what I've written here, then sorry, but that is ultimately your issue not mine.
Oh and [21Quest] re // I'm curious if you think I come across as delusional there// I don't think you came over as delusional at all, my earlier comments were focused on [2fries] continued misinformed prejudice, and to some extent, [remulac]'s bad-faith debating style. I've always thought you were open minded, thoughtful and rational - nothing you've written here has made me change my mind about that.
* apart from of course, the patently obvious reason that it's utter nonsense to do so for this, or any kind of arbitrarily divisive populative metric.-- zen_tom, Jul 16 2024 Very rambling, didn’t really make a point: 1 1/2 stars. ( just to be nice)-- doctorremulac3, Jul 16 2024 [zen tom] I'm just going to talk off the cuff.
I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Muslims in general are fine folk, just like most Christians, Hindus and any other religion you can name. I know because I rub shoulders with these people daily here in Canada.Those folks came here with a certain expectation of standard of living, and a certain understanding that assimilation would take time and they adapted.
They do not shoot cartoonists for poking fun at their culture.
That is not the case with illegal immigration.It is not the case with Universities being ground to a halt.It's not the case with our politicians selling out to a woke globalist agenda.
There's an awful lot of money being flung around at things which don't seem to have any return on investment.That's never a thing.So what return do you think will come from all of this funding?
That you want to wash your hands of things from just four short years ago surprises me.
Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 16 2024 //making big intuitive leaps is kind of what I do//
Yes. And in this case, I suspect that someone is messing with your intuition.
You have already shown understanding that, of the many scary stories that we all encounter, some are fake, some are real, and some are real-ish but exaggerated. The only difference of substance between the different people in this thread is the question of which stories fall into which categories.
There's good evidence that DEI is a bad idea, but the reason why it's a bad idea is that it's the consequence of at least two quite different agendas that are in conflict with each other, and not of one multi-pronged attack against everyone. If you're interested, I could talk some more about the history, but I don't want to bore everyone. Anyway, I would put DEI in the category of things that are real, but whose threat is exaggerated (so, a bit like the Y2K bug).
Meanwhile, I would put sharia law in western countries as something that might happen, but probably won't, and it's not really connected with DEI. Again, I could talk through the experiences that's based on if you like.-- pertinax, Jul 17 2024 This is going to take a while to catch up on, but ON the subject of DEI I'll leave these two cents: I've heard it said, and said often, that ethnic diversity is an inherently beneficial thing, due to the variety of attitudes and ways of thinking held by folks from different walks of life. Where proponents of forced diversity lose me is when they start talking specifically about racial diversity. You could have a group composed of Irish, British, Bulgarians, Russians Australians, and white South Africans and that isn't diverse enough to count as DEI, why? Because their SKIN TONE isn't diverse. And yet, the same proponents of DEI will in another conversation insist that there is NO difference between folks of different skin tones, that the difference is purely skin deep. And while I understand the moral argument they're trying to make, they have sacrificed the claim to being about "the science" when they do this. If race is purely morphological, ie skin deep, then it cannot offer any inherent benefits... and if there are real differences, then it stands to reason that some might disagree on how beneficial they are. You can't have that both ways, I'm sorry. This is an issue where science and ethics part ways from each other, and it has to be approached differently. How DO we approach it? Fuck if I know guys.-- 21 Quest, Jul 17 2024 I'd say judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, we already solved this one. When did that get overturned? Did I miss the vote?
Again, sometimes if you follow the science and get a very different bottom line than that of the self anointed leaders of society, follow the money and you'll get your answer. Or more appropriately, follow the quest for power and control.
Divide and conquer is an old expression for a reason. It works. And those same people who say bringing back racism is the solution would probably stand against the reasons I listed to help marginalized communities, help them do the same things successful communities do. Building strong families, education, work ethic, stay away from drugs and crime, stop telling kids that guys like Snoop Dog are role models.
Taking away the pride of achievement from the people of color who earned their positions by having people assume they're just DEI hires is another bonus control mechanism to keep them down.
Free education for everybody using new AI technology is a good start to address the issue of disparate incomes and living standards in different communities, using a skin color chart to determine who gets a particular job is not.
And have you ever talked to a DEI supporter about racial issues? They think DEI is necessary because the people it's designed to help are inferior, they come right out and say it. They don't use that exact word but everything they say very clearly alludes to it. It's disgusting.
How about we further fund education for marginalized communities by shutting down useless government agencies and stopping the funding of never ending wars?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 17 2024 I usually advise going by the color of their money.-- theircompetitor, Jul 17 2024 Well that's one thing we can all agree on, money definately transcends everything else. THAT is a definate point of generally agreed to consensus.
Isn't it nice when we can all agree on something?
And as far as different races and religions, we all share one thing. The link says it all.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 17 2024 // I find it funny though how the terms I coin seem to stick.// You did not coin either phrase. 'Plandemic' is the name of a 2020 conspiracy theory film. One that has been thoroughly debunked. 'Pharmacunts' was a tougher find but has been in use since at least 2019. So you 'coined' neither phrase (links above). I will grant that you were the first person to use them on this website. That was easy enough to find out because you are, as of writing, still the only person to use them. January 2021 seems to be your earliest use for 'Plandemic'. 'Pharmacunts' you first used on this idea. The only exceptions I could find were people who were directly quoting you in a response. So they might stick in *your* mind but nobody else here seems to care for them. // 'Nobody' was allowed to question authority for several years.// I did a quick web search (it took me about 30 seconds) for the period Oct 2019 (the outbreak started in Nov 2019, I believe) to Dec 2022 & there are dozens of published documents criticising or questioning the COVID policies of many governments & health organisations. I have provided a helpful link for your perusal. And, of course, this doesn't include non-published criticisms such as workplace meetings, conversations between colleagues or debates in parliament/the senate etc. So again, your claim is demonstrably untrue. //That I did so anyway just shows my contempt for authority abusing power.// Maybe. But it also shows that you live in a democracy where freedom of speech is still valued & allowed. //You forget just how many times since Carona virus was announced that someone or other implored [jutta] to silence me// I don't forget. I haven't paid it any attention & I don't care to either. What people ask for is not nearly as important as what actually happens. You need to distinguish between the two because here you are still. Allowed to say whatever you please & unfettered by censorship. Even if what you (and I) are saying has almost (but not quite) nothing to do with the idea at hand or the purpose of the website. //you don't answer questions.// On the contrary, if you go back through the thread you will see that I have addressed every issue (I think) that you have raised barring that last one. Just because you didn't like the answers doesn't mean I didn't address your point. It would be nice if you would do the same for me instead of trying to steer the subject in a different direction. //What happened to any qualified individual that dissented? You don't want to touch that question with a ten foot pole. The question is not misdirection. It is the entire point.// It may be *your* point but it wasn't anything to do with the issue under discussion, which was (in case you've forgotten) your claim that you were not allowed to question authority. Not anyone else. You. However, if you want my take on it, I am happy to oblige. I haven't looked into individual cases in any detail at all but I'll take your word for it that some people have been dismissed for 'Non-compliance' & address the matter on general principles. That is a very specific charge & does not mean that they weren't allowed to query or question authority (although in some kinds of jobs I accept that they may have been advised not to do so in public or outside of what was considered the 'proper' forum). It means that they failed to carry out the job or duty that they were employed to do in accordance with the guidance or instruction that they had been issued with. They may have been justified, they may not. They may even be proven to be justified for doing so at some later date. But standing on your principles is not a consequence-free position to take. When you do that you know (or ought to know) that you are putting your employment at risk. If they were not doing what they were employed to do in the way they were told to do it, then why would any organisation, in any business whatsoever, continue to employ them? That is one of the perils of working for someone else's organisation rather than taking on the risk of self-employment. Perhaps it's helpful if we turn it around for a moment & focus on the patients. If you were a seriously ill COVID patient in hospital & were faced with the option of being treated by someone who complies with approved medical guidance & someone who doesn't, which one would you choose? Or, if you were running a hospital & discovered that a member of staff was not complying with standard medical guidance, what would you do? What do you think the consequences would be for you & your organisation if patients died & it was discovered that your staff, for whom you were responsible, were not complying with standard medical procedures?-- DrBob, Jul 17 2024 Seriously, [DrBob], don't you know any cyberchondriacs?
I don't want to speak for any one else, and I gladly ran out and got all but the last booster.
But the notion of the side that is typically for "choice" and controlling your own body, and as we drift lefter and lefter euthanasia, and allowing minors to live in a fantasy world (I'm a lion) -- it is rich that in this case, mandates, not allowing to travel, not allowing to enter a building, getting pushed out of the military, aggressively engaging social media -- and it really does not stop -- this is the one thing that was perfectly ok.
I mean I wish -- I wish -- we could do a double blind quantum experiment, and the vaccines were released a month before Trump's election, as opposed to, and quite obviously on purpose, a week after. And let's pretend for a minute that he had won reelection.
I have zero doubt -- zero -- that it would be the people on the left that would be attacking them.
Because the real virus is a meme, and many of us, perhaps all of us, are infected.-- theircompetitor, Jul 17 2024 I'd never heard the phrase before you mentioned it, tc. But now my vocabulary has been expanded by one word!-- DrBob, Jul 17 2024 Also, reading back through, I completely missed the posting by blissmiss. Is anyone in a position to contact the authorities in Greenfield, Ma to check that she is OK?-- DrBob, Jul 17 2024 omg-- theircompetitor, Jul 17 2024 I had actually called the police regarding another post where she sounded distressed and gave her address. They went to her house and I believe they dealt with the situation, she said she was okay after their visit so I'm hoping she's okay now. I'm still concerned but I don't know where to reach her other than through here.
Blissy we're concerned about you. Please give us an update.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 17 2024 Shit I missed that too. [bliss] I don't have your cabin built yet but you know where to go if you need to.
If you can't get away I can hop across the border.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 17 2024 //I suspect that someone is messing with your intuition.//
That would be like me telling you someone is messing with your mathematics. You'd already know that. I wager my gut feelings against waiting for all the data any day of the week.That process is too slow to counter effectively. Cumbersome, weak, with many chinks to be exploited.
My gut doesn't scream at me very often. When it does I listen, and I look at what I am shown.
I don't like it any more than you do, and probably substantially less as it is not you gut which screams, but honestly...
...I'm just trying to warn you guys about the things I see in my head. They tend to happen.Who knows. It's a multi-verse. Maybe my little pebble in the pond ripples something different to what I've been shown making me look like the biggest idiot of all time.Nothing would make me happier.Experience has taught me that this is unlikely.
That's my only stance. I have no agenda.
I'm afraid we must agree to disagree on the DEI front. I feel it was quite premeditated and implemented. Hallmarks of the fall of an empire. I've got no problem with letting your freak-flag-fly, but the shit being shoved down the throats of parents about their rights over their own children crosses WAY over too many lines."Everything" must be tolerated including a tsunami of people breaking the law to enter a country and they're to not only be given lodging, food, and the dole... but also the right to vote so that when they outnumber you, your democracy becomes theirs.
That's the bottom line.Islam is a religion of conquest. Sharia law for all of Earth is the only thing which zealots will allow.
I am not Islam-o-phobic as that would connote an un-rational fear.No, I am Islam-o-terrified.Pay a tax to not be Muslim?Not to be crass but I sometimes get snippets of audio to go along with the mostly visual intuitive inputs I am subjected to and, "Try that shit north of the 49'th parallel" just popped into my head.and, something to do with winter, and good friggin luck... or something like that.I don't know it's all random. I just know what I see in my head and hope that I am wrong.
//Meanwhile, I would put sharia law in western countries as something that might happen, but probably won't, and it's not really connected with DEI. Again, I could talk through the experiences that's based on if you like.//
Of course. I have only my own perspective to draw from. That perspective happens to be jumping into other people's heads to figure them out, but sometimes the machinery needs a whack.
\\You did not coin either phrase.\\
They were both new to me. Maybe, like ideas, when their time is due they just appear.
//// 'Nobody' was allowed to question authority for several years.// I did a quick web search (it took me about 30 seconds) for the period Oct 2019 (the outbreak started in Nov 2019, I believe) to Dec 2022 & there are dozens of published documents criticising or questioning the COVID policies of many governments & health organisations. I have provided a helpful link for your perusal. And, of course, this doesn't include non-published criticisms such as workplace meetings, conversations between colleagues or debates in parliament/the senate etc. So again, your claim is demonstrably untrue.//
M'yes, so... do those qualified health care professionals all have their jobs back or not?
////That I did so anyway just shows my contempt for authority abusing power.//// //Maybe. But it also shows that you live in a democracy where freedom of speech is still valued & allowed.//
YES!Given my druthers it will bloody well stay that way...
//You forget just how many times since Carona virus was announced that someone or other implored [jutta] to silence me//
////I don't forget. I haven't paid it any attention & I don't care to either. What people ask for is not nearly as important as what actually happens. You need to distinguish between the two because here you are still. Allowed to say whatever you please & unfettered by censorship. Even if what you (and I) are saying has almost (but not quite) nothing to do with the idea at hand or the purpose of the website.////
Maybe you should pay attention, I am certainly not here at your whim. You'd have censored me long ago.
//Perhaps it's helpful if we turn it around for a moment & focus on the patients. If you were a seriously ill COVID patient in hospital & were faced with the option of being treated by someone who complies with approved medical guidance & someone who doesn't, which one would you choose?
Or, if you were running a hospital & discovered that a member of staff was not complying with standard medical guidance, what would you do? What do you think the consequences would be for you & your organisation if patients died & it was discovered that your staff, for whom you were responsible, were not complying with standard medical procedures?//
I would choose the medical practitioner who would put their career on the line in order to "first do no harm".Those medical professionals who stuck to that even though it meant their jobs...
...that's who I want as my doctor and nurse.
Not some diversity hired conformist.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 18 2024 Am I alone?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 18 2024 //Am I alone?//
No. We're here too. It's just that we don't agree with you. But that's not the same as being alone.-- pertinax, Jul 18 2024 To be fair, that's not a true assessment pert. When you say "we" there are only some that don't agree with him but some do on several of his points. There's several Venn diagram overlaps with others on several of his views.
I've listed my issues, takes, etc and many are similar to 2 fries. So no 2 fries, you're not alone in your views. I'd also take the bun to bone ratio factor into consideration. This is critical of people who have declared science just another religion led by self appointed hight priests to be blindly followed by unquestioning believers which is the exact opposite of what science is. Blind allegiance to anybody who would actually declare "I am the science" is one of the things you have a problem with and it's got some support from others. Looks like about half and half for that idea which is a good outcome for a democratic process.
So again, you're not alone in your views buddy. And I'll point out, even if you were? Good for you for being man enough to be a lone voice, takes guts and I respect that.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 18 2024 //when their time is due they just appear// They didn't 'just appear'. 'Plandemic', at least (as I made clear above), was created by people to propagate a conspiracy theory that has been proven false. //M'yes,..//,//YES!// That looks suspiciously like you are conceding the point. Or is this all written in your sarcasm font? //do those qualified health care professionals all have their jobs back or not?// It's not relevant to the point I was making but I very much doubt it. If for no other reason than that they will have been replaced by someone else. Even if that was not the case, why would someone re-hire a person that they had fired for non-compliance? I would guess & hope, given that most of them probably need to earn a living, that they have moved on to other jobs. //Maybe you should pay attention, I am certainly not here at your whim.// Another diversionary tactic to avoid answering the question. I never claimed that you were & it would be ludicrous to do so. // You'd have censored me long ago. // If you really believe that then you are the one who hasn't been paying attention. //I would choose the medical practitioner who would put their career on the line in order to "first do no harm".// That's a fair position but doesn't answer either of my questions. //Not some diversity hired conformist.// Why bring diversity into the conversation? It has nothing to do with this idea or anything that I have said. Far from having 'no agenda', as you claimed further up the thread, it does seem to be diversity that is pressing your buttons. You brought it gratuitously into the thread with one of your earlier annos (in response to yourself, I might add), although it had nothing to do with the original idea or even any of the comments that preceded it. Now you have mentioned it again even though it has nothing to do with the point at hand.-- DrBob, Jul 18 2024 It's a multi pronged attack.Focusing on only one prong at a time is... wait for it,pointless.
<later edit> I want to add back in what you omitted from my previous statement.
//M'yes, so... do those qualified health care professionals all have their jobs back or not?
YES! Given my druthers it will bloody well stay that way...//<later edit>
What's my agenda then [DrBob]?
Sure maybe plandemic and pharmacunts were coined by somebody before me, but they were coined by me independently and I claim them as my own.So there!
You just like arguing, and I don't.I say my piece.People tear it apart like sharks and then they make up their own minds.Thing is, someday you're going to look back and say to yourself;"That son of a bitch. He fucking had it pegged."
I do not like the things I am forced to see in my head.Few of you seem to like being informed of them also, so that is at least something we have in common.
I see these things nonetheless......and then they happen.So when it comes to debating the pedantics of what I say, why don't you just get off my back and wait and see?
It won't be long now.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 18 2024 God, as hard as I try I am SO not ready yet.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 18 2024 Please prove me wrong.
Please.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 19 2024 //Please prove me wrong. //
What standard of proof would you accept?-- pertinax, Jul 19 2024 I'm still a little unsure on where the opposing side is on this.
So which story have we settled on? That the pandemic was a natural event that just happened in a Wuhan wet market 40 miles from the lab (story 1) it was imported from frozen foods from other Asian countries (story 2) it came from researchers investigating 8 different coronavirus strains in bats in the wild (story 3) or that it came from a bioweapons research lab in Fort Derick in the US? (story4).
I know one crazy conspiracy theorist who said in 2021 he was (this is a quote) "not convinced" the virus originated naturally. That was a shift from a year earlier, when he thought it most likely Covid had spread from animals to humans naturally.
But he's clearly a nutjob, his name is... Andy Faruchi or something. I'll go back and check. So I might have spelled his name wrong but that is an exact quote from him.
But the main thing that causes me to say that anybody who says they KNOW the origin of this thing for sure is lying, is the bizarre idea that natural zoonotic transmission can't happen in a lab, that story bolstered by the straw man argument that there are only a few ways for this to be created and this particular strain doesn't bear the markings of those few ways they'd be created in a lab.
That's a false dichotomy. If it can happen in a wet market it can happen in a lab, and if they're taking viral samples and messing around with them, forget about what they're doing with them, if there's poor hygiene practice going on, that's your most likely point of zoonotic transmission, period. You've got somebody poking around a pangolin's nose with a swab, and they're not wearing a mask, and they scratch their nose, that's not just a possible point of origin, that's a very likely point of origin. Add that the coincidence of the origin point being at one of the main gathering points where an infected lab worker would go to do the things all those damn lab workers do, buy food, and that coincidence is data you're gonna have to factor in.
Then you look at the WHO group that went to the lab in China, was shown the post outbreak modified lab, got their "facts" from Chinese officials and then gave it a clean bill of health, in contrast to the very bad review of safety this lab got previously. Then at least one member of that trusted WHO group that investigated the lab under close supervision of the Chinese in charge of that lab came out later and said that was not a believable report and that more study needed to be done.
I believe using common sense deductive reasoning that this was most likely a lab leak and at the very least, I agree with Adam Foucharoony or whatever his name is that it's a distinct possibility and likely enough that for me, it needs to be treated as the most probable point of origin and dealt with as such.
And here's the creepy part, I can't find anything on the internet where people are theorizing that it was from the lab AND the wet market, there's this false mutually exclusive thing going on. "It's either or", which is again, suspicious nonsense and a false dichotomy.
Why can't I find that? Did I just come up with this thing myself? How come there's no "Lab origin / Wuhan wet market propagation theory" being discussed? If that's my theory I want a really nice tinfoil hat award. Which should be a thing.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 For consideration, here's some history of lab vs wet market outbreaks.
LAB LEAKS:
Pandemics caused by lab leaks are extremely rare, and there are no widely recognized pandemics definitively attributed to lab leaks. However, there have been notable incidents where pathogens have escaped from laboratories and caused outbreaks, although these incidents were typically localized and did not lead to global pandemics. Some examples include:
H1N1 Influenza (1977): The re-emergence of the H1N1 influenza virus in 1977, also known as the "Russian flu," is suspected to have been caused by a lab release. Genetic analyses indicated that the virus was almost identical to strains from the 1950s, suggesting it might have come from a laboratory setting rather than natural evolution.
SARS (2003-2004): There were several instances of laboratory-acquired SARS infections after the initial outbreak had been contained. For example, in 2004, lab workers in Beijing contracted SARS due to lapses in biosafety procedures, leading to a small number of secondary cases.
Marburg Virus (1967): The first recorded outbreak of Marburg virus disease occurred in Germany and Yugoslavia among laboratory workers exposed to infected monkeys imported for research. This outbreak resulted in several infections and deaths but was contained locally.
Smallpox (1978): A smallpox outbreak in Birmingham, UK, was traced back to a laboratory where the virus was being studied. One person died, and another was infected but survived. This incident underscored the importance of stringent biosafety measures in labs handling dangerous pathogens.
Anthrax (1979): In Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), USSR, an accidental release of anthrax spores from a military microbiology facility led to an outbreak, killing at least 66 people. The incident was initially covered up by the Soviet government but was later confirmed as a lab accident.
These examples highlight the potential risks associated with laboratory research on dangerous pathogens. While these incidents did not lead to pandemics, they underscore the importance of rigorous biosafety and biosecurity measures to prevent accidental releases and ensure public safety.
WET MARKETS:
Wet markets have been implicated in the emergence of several significant infectious disease outbreaks, although not all of these have reached pandemic proportions. Here are some notable examples:
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) - 2002-2003:
Origin: The SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) was first identified in Guangdong province, China. It is believed to have jumped from civet cats, which were sold in wet markets, to humans. Spread: The virus caused a global outbreak, infecting over 8,000 people and causing nearly 800 deaths. The outbreak was eventually contained through public health measures. Avian Influenza (Bird Flu):
H5N1 (1997, 2003-present): The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has been linked to live poultry markets in Asia. The virus primarily infects birds but can occasionally infect humans, often with severe outcomes. It has not caused a pandemic but remains a concern due to its high mortality rate in humans. H7N9 (2013-present): Another strain of avian influenza, H7N9, emerged in China and has been associated with live bird markets. Like H5N1, it has caused serious illness in humans but has not led to sustained human-to-human transmission. COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019):
Origin: The exact origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, is still under investigation. Early cases were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, which also sold live wild animals. It is hypothesized that the virus may have jumped from an animal host to humans, possibly involving an intermediate species. Spread: COVID-19 quickly spread globally, resulting in a pandemic with millions of cases and deaths worldwide. Nipah Virus (1998-1999):
Origin: Nipah virus emerged in Malaysia and was linked to pigs, with bats identified as the natural reservoir. The outbreak is believed to have been facilitated by close contact between pigs and bats in agricultural settings and markets. Spread: The virus caused severe respiratory illness in pigs and encephalitis in humans, leading to over 100 deaths. While the outbreak was contained, Nipah virus remains a concern due to its potential for high mortality and limited human-to-human transmission. Wet markets, especially those selling live animals, can facilitate the transmission of zoonotic diseases due to the close proximity of various animal species and humans. This environment can create opportunities for viruses to jump from animals to humans, potentially leading to new infectious disease outbreaks. The role of wet markets in the emergence of diseases like SARS and COVID-19 highlights the need for improved regulations and biosecurity measures to prevent future zoonotic spillovers.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 //It's a multi pronged attack.// Just because people question your logic, that doesn't make it an attack. //What's my agenda then [DrBob]?// Well you tell me. You are the one that keeps trying to change the subject & introduce irrelevant topics. // Sure maybe plandemic and pharmacunts were coined by somebody before me// Well at least we can move on from that now. //You just like arguing, and I don't.// If, by 'arguing' you mean debating the point at hand then yes, that clearly seems to be true. //I say my piece. People tear it apart like sharks// Well this is a website for discussing ideas. Open to everyone in the world to read & respond to. Saying your piece on such a forum is bound to encourage responses. That's the whole point of the place. //So when it comes to debating the pedantics of what I say, why don't you just get off my back and wait and see?// That's a bit rich, 2fries. Read back through the thread. It was actually you who got on my back when you responded to my anno by making accusations about my character & motivations & misquoting what I had said. Then, when I responded, you started introducing false narratives into the conversation in order to avoid having to admit that you were wrong. //I do not like the things I am forced to see in my head. Few of you seem to like being informed of them also..// Again I think that you are wrong &, to be clear here, the next part of what I am going to write is entirely my own viewpoint. This whole website is about people putting in writing what they see in their head so that their ideas & the issues arising from them can be discussed in an open, fun &, hopefully, honest way. But it is not a forum for general political, social or scientific debate except in as far as it pertains to the original idea. The bakesperson is pretty laisez-faire regarding what people post on her website, for which we should all be grateful. But that generosity shouldn't be abused by posting anything you like regardless of whether it is relevant or not (although we are all prone to meandering a bit at times) & neither should you use it to make accusations about other members lives, motivations or character about which you know absolutely nothing outside of what they post here or elsewhere. So, if you want to post something here that is relevant, I (& I hope others) am more than happy to debate its merits with you. Finally, in a rhetorical flourish which I hope everyone will applaud wildly, I'd like to bring this debate tenuously back to somewhere in the vicinity of the original idea that was posted & my original criticism of it. Intuition can be a valuable tool, in life generally as much as in science. We all use it on occasion. But it's only a first step. It needs to be backed up with facts if you want it to at least be taken seriously. Repeating it over & over, changing the spelling of words, inventing new words or sticking your fingers in your ears & shouting 'La, la, la' does not make it true. In science, once you formulate a theory it has to be tested & proven with facts. And sometimes (as the t-shirt idea points out) a theory that was considered proven is subsequently disproven by new research & new facts. You said that you love science & that makes me happy. But you only seem to do the 'theory' part. That's all fine & dandy. We all have different aptitudes, abilities & enthusiasms. But you cannot cry foul when you publish your theory for the whole world to read, inviting others to do the work that you haven't & they use facts to point out the flaws in it. It's all part of the same process. Tbh, for me it's a big part of what makes the 'bakery fun.I do not delude myself that I will or have changed anyone's views with anything that I have posted on this website. Either now or in the past (although I have occasionally changed my own in the course of looking up background for an idea). But what I do hope is to persuade you to either adopt a more critical approach to your thinking or, if that's not your thing, become more tolerant of others that do. You may turn out to be right, you may be wrong, but in either event your case will be more convincing to all those billions of people out in the world that you have published your opinion to.-- DrBob, Jul 19 2024 [applause] Make 'Alfbakery Meaningful Again!
[remulac] I don't think anyone's particularly stoked on whether Covid started off in a lab or not, including Fauci (given what he's been quoted saying when asked that precise question “I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t,” Fauci said, when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the theory that the virus may have leaked from a lab in China in 2019.)
Given that by the time people started dying of Covid globally and putting pressure on health-systems, its origin story wouldn't have added to the practical methods and approaches of dealing with the problem. Other than encouraging better lab security/practice (which would be a good thing all round, we can all agree) I'd be interested in identifying whether or not that particular issue makes a material difference?
At the time, it was a bit of a distraction. The reason people didn't want to talk about it was because there was a serious problem to deal with and worrying people unnecessarily about something that had no practical use (at least in the short term) seemed like a distraction.
To round this off, looks like DEI's got nothing to do with anything, Lab-leakage, while interesting, has no practical impact on handling the historic Covid problem, the many millions of vaccinated people remain alive, well and largely happy today, so at least in the short term, we're good on all that. All freedoms have been returned, now the emergency is over, and we've even agreed that there are many perfectly pleasant Muslims who a) aren't taking over, and b) have generally got nothing to do with any of this.
What's left? I think we're done.-- zen_tom, Jul 19 2024 So asking what caused a pandemic that killed seven million people is a distraction.
Okay, I do think we're done here.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 No, I said it *was* a distraction (past-tense), given that the answer wouldn't have helped address the very real and present issues that were abound at the time. That's what I wrote up there ^^^ reasonably clearly, I thought.
Now (present tense), it's an interesting side-note, but not all that exciting a one, and one that doesn't seem to be very controversial.
To put it in a more narrative framing, if we're on the Titanic, and the boat is sinking, pardon me for not wanting to get into a debate about what country the Iceberg came from, that particular conversation might be more helpful to postpone until after we've secured an appropriate lifeboat.-- zen_tom, Jul 19 2024 //But the main thing that causes me to say that anybody who says they KNOW the origin of this thing for sure is lying, is the bizarre idea that natural zoonotic transmission can't happen in a lab, that story bolstered by the straw man argument that there are only a few ways for this to be created and this particular strain doesn't bear the markings of those few ways they'd be created in a lab.//
1) Why do you keep emphasising this? I mean, who is it on here who is saying they KNOW the origin of Covid for sure? Do you just need someone to agree with you? I mean - someone who is not me, because I'm pretty sure I agreed already.
2) Why are you still worrying about natural zoonotic transmission in a lab? It's /of course/ theoretically possible. And your list of lab outbreaks includes one 'new' disease from a lab escape by essentially this method (Marburg Virus). I think that's interesting, actually, and want to come back to that later. But I want to say more on this specific point, which includes the next part of your comment:
//That's a false dichotomy. If it can happen in a wet market it can happen in a lab, and if they're taking viral samples and messing around with them, forget about what they're doing with them, if there's poor hygiene practice going on, that's your most likely point of zoonotic transmission, period. You've got somebody poking around a pangolin's nose with a swab, and they're not wearing a mask, and they scratch their nose, that's not just a possible point of origin, that's a very likely point of origin. Add that the coincidence of the origin point being at one of the main gathering points where an infected lab worker would go to do the things all those damn lab workers do, buy food, and that coincidence is data you're gonna have to factor in.//
I'd like to break this down carefully. Why? Well, sometimes people moderately familiar with a field will hear a concern and make reassuring noises that it's not a worry... and maybe you hear that and think they're being patronising and stupid. But that's because they know something which you don't - which moves their concerns elsewhere. That is, really, you ought to be worrying about something else! For example, I heard about an organisation which tried to help people with Aerophobia (an extreme fear of flying). Apparently, it was very common among these people to worry that the wings might fall down. And the first thing they did was explain that this wasn't something to worry about. The wings provide lift for the whole plane, so if anything, they'd fall /up/.
So it is, in this case.
In the specific case of Covid, I don't think pangolins would have been involved in a lab leak. The lab was working on bat viruses, so it would have been bats they were 'poking around in'. And (my impression is) they probably weren't doing much with actual wild bats in the lab. They'd have primarily been doing that in the caves where the bats lived, and bringing samples back. Viruses in the samples might be grown up in lab culture (bottles of cells, basically) or propagated in individual bats from a small breeding colony of bats. Either way, lab-workers could still be infected with 'wild' viruses. I don't want to minimise the risk of that - it's certainly not zero - but if it's 'just' a wild virus which happened to get tracked to Wuhan by a lab-worker, then... well, that's dumb, obviously, but it would probably have happened through the other, much more significant route of people catching and eating bats for food and medicine (or if not that then just natural exposure of people in the wild) sooner or later. But - this is generally not what people are talking about when they argue about a lab leak. They're talking about intentionally modified viruses. Hence the discussion over whether the spike protein had a genetically modified site in it.
//Then you look at the WHO group that went to the lab in China, was shown the post outbreak modified lab, got their "facts" from Chinese officials and then gave it a clean bill of health, in contrast to the very bad review of safety this lab got previously. Then at least one member of that trusted WHO group that investigated the lab under close supervision of the Chinese in charge of that lab came out later and said that was not a believable report and that more study needed to be done. I believe using common sense deductive reasoning that this was most likely a lab leak and at the very least, I agree with [Anthony Fauci] that it's a distinct possibility and likely enough that for me, it needs to be treated as the most probable point of origin and dealt with as such.//
I think you need to be super-careful about making the leap from "they're covering something up" to "they're guilty of everything". It's actually not that unusual for people to cover up minor infractions. It might not be good or smart, but lots of people do it e.g. when their job is on the line. And more so in China, where it's the political culture.
//And here's the creepy part, I can't find anything on the internet where people are theorizing that it was from the lab AND the wet market, there's this false mutually exclusive thing going on. "It's either or", which is again, suspicious nonsense and a false dichotomy. Why can't I find that? Did I just come up with this thing myself? How come there's no "Lab origin / Wuhan wet market propagation theory" being discussed? If that's my theory I want a really nice tinfoil hat award. Which should be a thing.//
As in - a lab worker gets infected at work, then goes to the wet market? I guess you didn't read the article I linked, and strongly recommended you to read (rootclaim lab leak debate), then. I think it covers most of what you're asking about. Here's a choice quote: ::There was no real “super-spreader event” at the wet market. There was a slow burn - one case the first day, a few more the next day, a few more the day after that. It’s hard to see how a single visit from an infected lab worker could do that. So the only way it could possibly be a lab leak is if the lab leaked sometime in late November, infected exactly one lab worker, that worker went straight to the wet market, infected a vendor, then went home, quarantined, recovered, and all other cases were downstream of that first infected wet market vendor. This is unparsimonious.::
Okay, so I said I wanted to talk about a lab leak you mentioned for Marburg Virus. That's kind of interesting, because it was a 'new' disease - this was the first recorded outbreak.
But the thing is - there's this recognised effect where one place has a really good screening system, and they discover something - and then it's assumed to have originated there. Often it gets named after the town or whatever, with bad consequences for them. For example, Schmallenberg virus was discovered in Schmallenberg. Did it originate there? Almost certainly not. It was all over the place, they were just the first to document it.
Similarly, Marburg Virus was imported to Europe with some Ugandan monkeys. These were lab escapes, sure. But following this discovery, outbreaks have been confirmed in various places in Africa. If places in Africa had had better research facilities, it would probably have been connected to previous outbreaks there.
Also, I'd like to note that the labs in Frankfurt and Belgrade weren't working on viruses as such - they were creating infrastructure for testing of vaccines. If you flat out object to animals being used by labs because of safety risks, you should probably maintain at least an equivalent concern for all facilities other than labs. (A number of regulations to animal transport already exist, I support them.)-- Loris, Jul 19 2024 Again, we’re talking about frequency of interaction that didn’t work with the other proposal. A sick bat interacting with lots of people but a sick lab technician not. Then a vendor getting infected by the lab tech being improbable for some reason.
There seems to be a motivation behind the “happy joy joy nobody’s fault” explanation. That in itself makes other possibilities suspect. I’m going with Fouchi on this one.
As far as my proposed solution, as I’ve said before, if there’s any chance it came from a lab let’s take the opportunity to enhance safety measures. Not sure what the downside to that is.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 Thought experiment: deadly pandemic comes out of an another wet market in another province that’s adjacent to another virus research lab that’s working on the exact same animals that are at the wet market. Do we say “We’ve covered this already.” or start to factor in probability of multiple lab adjacent wet market disasters?
Thought experiment only.
I’m guessing this adjusts towards lab leak so you’re probably taking that proximity thing into consideration to some extent. And if we’re considering frequency of coincidence, as in how often an infectious bat comes into contact with a victim, the coincidence of the mega rare lab leak with the mega rare wet market leak has a place somewhere in that overall evaluation too no?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 Speaking of frequency, in a country with a billion plus people, how many bats and pangolins have been eaten over the years? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? How many were infected with various viruses? That adds to the coincidence factor.
And I know, coincidences DO happen without a cause/effect link, but these all have to be considered.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 19 2024 //Again, we’re talking about frequency of interaction that didn’t work with the other proposal. A sick bat interacting with lots of people but a sick lab technician not. Then a vendor getting infected by the lab tech being improbable for some reason.//
It looks like you're skipping over one of my points - you were complaining that no-one was discussing the possibility of cross-infection between the lab and the wet-market on the internet, and here was just such a thing. If you actually want to understand what the quote is saying, you could do worse than go and read the article.
//There seems to be a motivation behind the “happy joy joy nobody’s fault” explanation.//
I once watched an episode of CSI:New York where they were investigating the murder of a construction worker at a construction site. It transpired at the end that he'd been killed by a falling block of ice from a passing airplane. And the investigators were like "oh well, never mind then, no crime here." And I was like, fuck off, that's manslaughter and criminal negligence, and you should be prosecuting the plane company. Their planes have a lethal fault which needs to be corrected.
Which is to say, I'd blame China for failing to have or enforce appropriate hygiene and animal cruelty laws to the wet-market. Sometimes things just happen. But in this case, it's pretty clear negligence. Which is just the sort of thing they'd want to cover up (even as they scrambled to apply the rules they already had).
//As far as my proposed solution, as I’ve said before, if there’s any chance it came from a lab let’s take the opportunity to enhance safety measures. Not sure what the downside to that is.//
Countries in the West already have pretty serious safety standards. I once had a tour of a facility - I don't remember which - where the guide pointed out a massive building, maybe 2 or 3 stories high, said it was new build for... well, category 3 or 4 work. And then impressed on us that a whole floor of it, IIRC about half of what we could see, was taken up by plant - that is, machinery - to service the labs. The thing is, if you make it much more onerous to work in compliance with the law, it either won't be done at all, or it'll be done by avoiding the constraints. So the downside of that would be either being unable to do any research on the most severe human pathogens, or having that work outsourced to countries with more lax safety measures.
//Thought experiment: deadly pandemic comes out of an another wet market in another province that’s adjacent to another virus research lab that’s working on the exact same animals that are at the wet market. Do we say “We’ve covered this already.” or start to factor in probability of multiple lab adjacent wet market disasters?//
I believe I essentially did this already, when I pointed out there are biosafety research labs in most cities (that was in the USA, but still). It does make it much less of a coincidence when you consider that, and also that we haven't actually confirmed whether the animals were 'the exact same'. If you think 'bat' narrows it down - sure it does, but not much. Bats are about 20% of all mammal species. And - do you actually, /really/ want to dissuade researchers from looking at disease arising in the places diseases tend to arise? Because if you want that, it's easily achievable. It even saves money! But then, when the next outbreak arises, we won't have any clue where it arose, how, or what to do about it.
Converse experiment : Imagine that there are outbreaks of disease all over the place, but they often only get identified when they reach a population centre large enough to have a research centre.-- Loris, Jul 19 2024 [DrBob] I'm not the one with my fingers in my ears.
If I had waited for full data before making life changing decisions I would be dead or mangled more times than I can remember. Intuition is all I have ever had.
So far in this little game of 2fries Vs The World I was born into, 2fries is kicking ass.Like I said, just wait a little while and you'll see. Even the shit I said about DEI being just another attack on western societies will prove out.
...and this all started with you saying that the mental journey of the unvaccinated went from science to prayer.
That is false.
How calling out slimy labels somehow disparages your character is another matter.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 20 2024 So doc, what's the bottom line? We can't do anything about it? Seven million dead? Oh well? Too bad so sad? We've regulated nuclear testing, I'd further regulate bioweapons and gain of function research too. If there's no point in having laws because people will just break them then the concept of civilization itself is just a tinfoil hat theory.
And I'm struck by the fact that all the anger from this isn't directed at the people who caused the death of seven million people, it's directed at those who might be reticent about taking a vaccine. Not from you, but jokes have been made about their well deserved death and serious scenarios have been raised here about how we should decide who should live and who should die depending on their views about bodily sovereignty.
But tell you what, if this was a natural pandemic and not created in a lab, seeing the power to bring a tectonic shift to the entire planet with a little microorganism, they're sure as hell working on it now.
If I wanted to control as much of the planet as possible I'd absolutely have a serious program to have this in my toolbox if needed.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 20 2024 Ooh, how about, "The-Science" is not Science.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 20 2024 //What standard of proof would you accept?//
All of western society not going to hell in a hand basket during the coming decade.We are needed. The rest of the planet doesn't think so because colonialism equals evil descendants, but we are needed anyway.
You can't be racist against white people.This just seems to be a given thing known by everybody today.
Merit, not diversity is the only way forward.The content of one's character not the colour of one's skin is being done away with, starting with whatever is considered colonial...
...even the Irish for fuck sake. The least colonial white folks I can think of are soon going to be Islamic.
This Bearen'stain' Bear reality is completely whacked.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 20 2024 //So doc, what's the bottom line? We can't do anything about it? Seven million dead? Oh well? Too bad so sad? We've regulated nuclear testing, I'd further regulate bioweapons and gain of function research too. If there's no point in having laws because people will just break them then the concept of civilization itself is just a tinfoil hat theory.//
I guess you're asking me rather than DrBob - confused me for a moment. You must realise that you could theoretically break basically any law you like, provided you have the physical ability to do so. The only thing stopping you is your brain holding you back. Either because of the potential consequences for yourself, or because you are civilised, and think the law is a good thing. There are a number of technologies which could be a great boon to the world which have been regulated beyond the point where they can be economically realised. While it's often arguably a good idea to be cautious initially, the system as a whole often has such an inertia that after something has been decided, it becomes fixed in place. Examples I would pick are : genetically modified crops in Europe, and nuclear power. Germany in particular shagged itself with laws blocking the latter in recent history.
The basic point is that it's possible for laws to be /too/ punitive. If the underlying issue is that the legal system is patchy, or some places are not enforcing laws they actually have, then adding more laws to regulate the already law-abiding will do nothing but harm.
//And I'm struck by the fact that all the anger from this isn't directed at the people who caused the death of seven million people, it's directed at those who might be reticent about taking a vaccine. Not from you, but jokes have been made about their well deserved death and serious scenarios have been raised here about how we should decide who should live and who should die depending on their views about bodily sovereignty.//
To me, who to blame for something can be a secondary concern. I mean, I do think that sometimes things happen which are nobody's fault. If nobody can foresee something, then it's just bad luck. In some circumstances, even if actually it looks like blame could be assigned, it may not actually be the best thing for society. Having an investigation and learning lessons for next time is often a thing. So in this instance, apparently the wet-market was breaking local laws, but a blind eye was turned to it. And virologists knew how risky that site was specifically for years beforehand. Maybe heads should roll (and perhaps they have). But learning lessons and making changes would be better. It's more important to avoid future pandemics than punish a few scape-goats.
I agree that bodily sovereignty is a difficult subject. Some people are obviously conflicted on this.
//But tell you what, if this was a natural pandemic and not created in a lab, seeing the power to bring a tectonic shift to the entire planet with a little microorganism, they're sure as hell working on it now.//
Well, maybe. But that's already against international law. And it also doesn't seem that smart. The problem with bio-weapons is they're inherently uncontrollable. Are there any countries in the world which are meaningfully better off in absolute terms for the covid pandemic? I don't think there are - but if so, I guess they're the ones to watch.-- Loris, Jul 20 2024 Yes, my bad. Loris, not doc.
So if we're criticizing how people reacted to this, how about the people who criticized shutting down travel from China as being racist, the politician who went to Chinatown in SF and getting face to face with the people there to show she's not racist and saying everybody else should do the same? Telling the proles not to go to restaurants or get their hair done when they all did just that whenever they felt like it? Then when called on it they just said they were important, the serfs weren't.
I think during a crisis it's fair to judge the people by how they act. If somebody grabs a baby and throws it of the lifeboat because they need a little more room to be comfortable in their seat we can assume some things about them.
So I think we've covered this subject, running out of new debate points. I think this was probably a lab leak, you and others disagree. Okay, but I don't like the way it was handled and I do think it exposed many of the leaders of my country for being the scum that they are.
Which is the oddest Venn diagram of all, pretty much everybody agrees that some of our politicians are scum, but there's only disagreement about which ones.
That needs a Venn diagram subset name in itself. Paradoxal Venn Diagram? It would work with a "conversation" I had with somebody here. He called me an asshole and I said "You're the asshole." <--- (brilliant comeback) That's a Paradoxal Venn Diagram. We both agreed that one of us was an asshole.
Think I'll throw that idea up. Get some other conversation going maybe. This one's pretty much covered I think.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 20 2024 But on the off chance that this thread will never die, are there other science controversies we can debate? This one's getting redundant. Food pyramid? Flat Earth? Anyone? Beuller?-- doctorremulac3, Jul 20 2024 //All of western society not going to hell in a hand basket//
That's a good test, but of the wrong thing: what if the world really *is* going go hell - or, at least, to purgatory - over the next few decades ... but for *different reasons*, not the ones you think? What would you accept as proof of that?-- pertinax, Jul 21 2024 You don't know the reasons I think, only my observations of the symptoms of collapse, so having it not go to hell, or purgatory, at all is about the only proof that will do.Until then, I've got a lot of work to do.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 21 2024 Fair enough.-- pertinax, Jul 22 2024 //If I had waited for full data before making life changing decisions I would be dead or mangled more times than I can remember. Intuition is all I have ever had.// That's fine in a life threatening situation where delay is likely to result in personal injury. But it doesn't cut it when you are trying to persuade others about your opinions. //Like I said, just wait a little while and you'll see. Even the shit I said about DEI being just another attack on western societies will prove out.// 'Just trust me' isn't really a very persuasive argument, is it? //...and this all started with you saying that the mental journey of the unvaccinated went from science to prayer. That is false.// You are correct. It is false. However it is also not what I wrote. Try re-reading it. //How calling out slimy labels somehow disparages your character is another matter.// It doesn't, but that is not all that you wrote, is it? Once again you are using selective editing to pretend that the facts are different to reality. So far you have misrepresented what I wrote, selectively edited annos to exclude inconvenient sections, introduced irrelevant subjects into the debate as a diversion, tried to disparage my character & that of people who disagree with you, cried foul because people have dared to question your opinion & played the 'just trust me' card. That con-man that you mentioned you were raised by seems to have done a pretty good job of teaching you the tricks of the trade.-- DrBob, Jul 23 2024 Yes, well, since there is no proof for gut feelings other than hind-sight, like I said, you'll have to wait and see.What I know for certain is that I am not worried about keeling over from blood-clots based on which flavour of jab I got conned into allowing past my bodily autonomy.
On a side note, I see that the city of Leeds is culturally enriching along nicely...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 23 2024 //Yes, well, since there is no proof for gut feelings other than hind-sight, like I said, you'll have to wait and see.// Which is just another way of admitting that you have no evidence whatsoever for what you are saying. //What I know for certain is that I am not worried about keeling over from blood-clots based on which flavour of jab I got conned into allowing past my bodily autonomy.// Well bravo for you. I would suggest that you are far more likely to keel over from the effects of the COVID-19 virus itself though. Just check the stats like I did (links provided). I am sure that there are equivalent ones for North America that you can easily look up. //On a side note, I see that the city of Leeds is culturally enriching along nicely...// I can only assume that you are referring to the highly successful Leeds, City of Culture festival from last year (link provided). I am surprised, but pleased, that you are taking an interest in Art & Culture.-- DrBob, Jul 26 2024 //Which is just another way of admitting that you have no evidence whatsoever for what you are saying.//?
I've never denied it.I have only my own con-dar to go by.
// bodily autonomy.// Well bravo for you. I would suggest that you are far more likely to keel over from the effects of the COVID-19 virus itself though. Just check the stats like I did (links provided). I am sure that there are equivalent ones for North America that you can easily look up.
I caught Covid twice.I was already self isolated though. I didn't miss a day of work, don't get me wrong, I should have not been working, but... I am my own boss, and I saw no reason to stop production. My immune system remains intact.
//On a side note, I see that the city of Leeds is culturally enriching along nicely...// I can only assume that you are referring to the highly successful Leeds, City of Culture festival from last year (link provided). I am surprised, but pleased, that you are taking an interest in Art & Culture.
M'yes...
...quite.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 27 2024 You all learned physics.
I was forced to learn metaphysics.
...
Not really sure how to reconcile those two.
Some help would not be rejected.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 27 2024 Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" has a good stab at that. But it's *really* hard work.-- pertinax, Jul 28 2024 I've studied philosophy extensively so I consider myself an expert.
You too can learn advanced philosophy from the same source I did. Takes a minute of your time but well worth it. (link)-- doctorremulac3, Jul 28 2024 'That' was an awesome link.I'm not talking about philosophy though. I'm talking about things which, until I find scientific explanations for them, I may as well assign the designation of magic.
This world has been trying to kill me since I was two weeks old, I got pneumonia in both lungs and the doctors said I wouldn't make it, when discharged my mother slipped on ice and I was flung beneath the tires of a moving car and came out the back end without a scratch.It never stopped. I've come within whiskers of death every single year of my life including this one, but that's not magic, that's just feeling and weaving through a multi-verse.
There's an awful lot of dead 'me's' out there.
More than that though, I've seen and done so many things that have absolutely no explanation and I would chalk them up to delusion if I had been alone in witnessing them.
I'm gonna give you sharks one of them and you can do with it what you will:
My boss and I had to install carpet in a pool hall. Normally this would be a glue down job but for whatever reason the clients wanted under-pad and stretched carpet.I remember that the length of the building was 72 ft. so we got 4x4 posts and rented a carpet stretcher which bent in half on the first go. So he called every other installer in our area and we did a carpet-kick chain gang to stretch that much length.To do this we had to remove the steel and glass doors and lean them up out of the way, so......I am on my hands and knees tucking carpet under one of the metal thresholds maybe 30 or 40 ft away from where we leaned the doors against a wall. One of the installers who showed up to help had his wife and kids with him. His 3 year old climbs up one of these doors and pulls it over on himself.He's going to die.I can't do anything about it, I'm too far away but I'm the only one seeing what's going on. This is my fault. I put that door there.My last thought was; "I can't..." and then I was standing over the kid as the door came down on me.Everybody there saw me not move and yet it took several men to get that door off of us.
<shrugs>
That's just one little story. It's been a lifetime of weird shit like that.I think that there is a multiverse.
I think that some of us can... navigate it.Meaning that most can not.
Those who can not have no place in positions of leadership.Why would I follow the blind?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 29 2024 True story.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 29 2024 //Those who can not have no place in positions of leadership.//
That's an interesting twist. So, if there are two candidates for office, and one of them says "Vote for me, I can do magic", and the other one says "I can't do magic, but here is my plan for dealing with these problems", you're going to vote for the first one?-- pertinax, Jul 29 2024 Wait, 2 fries, so you ran over the prevent the door from falling on him and it fell on you? I'm a bit confused about what happened.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2024 //That's an interesting twist. So, if there are two candidates for office, and one of them says "Vote for me, I can do magic", and the other one says "I can't do magic, but here is my plan for dealing with these problems", you're going to vote for the first one?//The blind leading the blind needs to stop.
At some point in the future those who can navigate the multiverse will be separated from those who can not. Yes.
//Wait, 2 fries, so you ran over the prevent the door from falling on him and it fell on you? I'm a bit confused about what happened.//
I was too far away to help him....and then suddenly I was not too far away, I was exactly where I needed to be, from like 30 or 40 ft away from where I was kneeling at the time.
Yes, I know how it sounds, and how much I've opened myself to ridicule......but I swear it on my eyesight.
If any of you are able to conceive of the notion that I might not be full of shit and can put yourselves in my shoes, then you might understand where I'm coming from.That's just one story.
I've spent more than two decades letting you folks get to know me before laying this shit on you all.
There's the lyrics of a recent song that sums it up quite nicely;
''I don't want the world to see me,'cause I don't think that they'd understand.When everything's made to be broken,I just want you to know who I am."-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 30 2024 Hey bro, don't stress, I know this site has a lot of friction sometimes but look at all the buns you've gotten over the years. Lots of people like lots of your views, it's okay that sometimes there's a lot of head butting going on, it's human nature.-- doctorremulac3, Jul 31 2024 <late edit> You deleted things I responded to. <back to original script>
You think I care about buns?...
Before '04 I had several ideas in the top fifty on this site. Many of them made it into reality. The votes all went bye-bye.I didn't though.Accolades are only fleetingly gratifying. I have no need of them. If there have been past pats on the back for a job well done, they were before the age of seven and I have no recollection of them.
The story I told you is true.There are many others.
You don't have to believe my stories in order to determine what my reaction to the bullshit I see going down around me is going to be, knowing for certain that I am myself know that I am telling the truth.
Y'all had best get your shit together.
I used to be just an isolated phenomenon but now I'm getting bullshit on a world-wide scale.That's a bad idea m'kay...
You impact my life...You've left a path for me to affect yours. That's the rule. Don't fuck with me and I have no way to fuck with you, why would I want to?...but that's not what's been happening, and...
...that 'other me' is about to karmically-school some of these 'your rights are ours for the taking', pieces of shit pretending to serve the public, who dared to step on the rights I was born with and will continue to defend.
Anybody fucking around in order to just find out should probably stop fucking around right about now......or not.Finding out is fun too.
"I" just want peace.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 02 2024 Sorry to highjack your posting to convey that, it just... seemed like the place and the time.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 02 2024 Well I hope you’re doing okay buddy, I know these are stressful times for everybody, but it’s important to take a step back and take care of yourself from time to time.
Or like I said, you could simplify your life like mine and become a Libertarian. Then you don’t have to worry about who likes you and who hates you anymore since everyone on both sides of the aisle hate you equally. Makes life simple. It really is actually kind of relaxing in a weird way.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 03 2024 I'm doing fine.I saw this shit coming and had decades to prepare. I'll stand my ground.
I'm worried about you lot.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 06 2024 Put all that on the back like the dates on a band tour T-shirt, put the three "wise" monkeys on the front, give them face masks, but have one wearing two as ear muffs and another wearing his as a blindfold, they can each have a little plaster on their arms and an empty syringe plunger fully depressed discarded on the floor by their feet ..
Maybe they can be wearing T-shirts with property of Wuhan Institute of Virology printed on them over an image of a Guinee pig.
[Ponders what might be added to that little diorama to represent climate alarmism and modern 'gender theory' .. etc]-- Skewed, Aug 06 2024 I was actually thinking of doing that but with pics of either the scientists behind it or some graphic representation of the theory. A flat Earth at the center of the universe is easy enough, phrenology would just show the head with the lines on it but phlogiston might be a little challenging.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 06 2024 random, halfbakery