Hi! I'm Debby Downer!

• Not-pleasant but short & remarkable tweet sequence; read through 'good night.'

• Not-pleasant overview of cultural trends.

Good now to remember, verifiable with three minutes of Googling, that America has (within the lifetimes of many if not all reading these words) seen much more violence than it's suffering in 2020.

And back in '70, political leaders seemed nearly as repellent.

Neat review of Douthat by Theil.

Weirdly, the New York Times columnist seems to have written a book affirming the precise themes of the Silicon Valley titan's speeches over the last ten years. Not-weirdly, Thiel approves of the work.

Thiel is a really, really interesting man, who has done some remarkable things… Some of which we ought not be entirely pleased about.

• Pleasant factoid.

• Two pleasant moods in a row.

Checking the candy isn't a big thing and should be done. Crazy people do exist. And thankfully their 'clever schemes' aren't so clever. If the candy has tape holding it closed then don't eat it. A more realistic concern is elderly people in your neighborhood. Granny may mean well but M&Ms from the 1920s are well past their sell by date. I've never come across a razor blade in an apple but I have had nice old folks handing out candy that belonged in a museum.

"Sell by date" wouldn't be good enough for some picky people...

From the makers of M&Ms, according to columnist Derrick Z. Jackson:

"Normally, the candy that is consumed at this time of the year is made in early August or September."

Correction - Jackson was quoting.

And back in '70, political leaders seemed nearly as repellent.

And there were bombings every week. Hundreds in a year.

That was before anyone would notice and get the FBI to ask why you were buying 100 lbs of fertilizer.

R.I.P. Sean Connery, 90.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824

I dug him.

When I was little boy, I'd watch him cavorting with all those gorgeous women, dashing through all those exotic settings, and roaring around in all those fancy cars. And I'd get nearly drunk on lustrous melodies, as good as McCartney at his best.

Didn't take too long, maybe fifth grade (well before Diamonds) that I realized that it was a cheaply-composed fantasy, and those things didn't really happen.

Then I grew up and essentially all the good ones DID.

Also, the single shot of 16mm footage of a volcanic eruption inserted into the destruction sequence of the canonical "underground lair" is as offensive as any of the off-the-charts sexism in YOLT.

And yet: there are some scary parallels. ~ from a link by Crid at October 30, 2020 11:43 PM

Indeed there are, but not the ones most people think. That was an interesting article.

Most of those folks bellowing that Trump parallels Hitler have no idea of the circumstances underlying Hitler's rise to power - the swirling violence of Weimar politics, open hostility to capitalism on both sides, the dissolution of the country's political middle, and the inherent weakness of parliamentary democracy as a governing structure.

Nor do they seem to understand that Hitler was never a committed National Socialist, but saw in it a path to power. Hitler used the party as a means of gaining office and violently purged the party when party leaders' insistence on adherence to the original tenets of National Socialism threatened his then-tenuous hold on power.

Coney, I think you're forgetting one little thing....

On Friday, Trump said something mean about someone! On Twitter!

Apocalypse at hand. Hold the ones you love closely. Nothing lasts forever. Tell Toni Tenille I always hated her music. Everyone dies. Remember the Bond movies, the years in San Francisco, and the slope of a woman's breast... All is lost...

To Hell with all of it.

To wit- A story I linked last week is largely bullshit. See: https://mobile.twitter.com/CHSommers/status/1322537673723138050

If I'd bothered to look at the writer's name, I'd have remembered.

What is it that Zuckerberg says to Congress at moments like this? Oh yeah... "We have to do better." And then he walks away, because his customers aren't paying for the service and he's legally Untouchable. So I got that goin' for me.

Diamonds Are Forever. But Connery isn't.

I loved him in all the early Bond films -- he was by far my favorite of all the actors who played 007 -- but my favorite role of his was in the absolutely brilliant and gripping The Man Who Would Be King as Daniel Dravot, along with fellow fortune seeker Peachy Carnahan (played by Michael Caine.)

I am NOT switching teams. Ben should wear a mask, and Momof4 should avoid small rooms with lots of people talking or shouting or singing for hours with minimal ventilation.

And all of us should wash our hands.

But I'm starting to see the other side of the argument:

This shit

is

out of control.

…And although government has indisputably fucked up the response to SARS-CoV-2, it's not a government problem: It's a species problem. I don't want people to wear masks because government tells them to, I want them to wear masks because epi-fucking-demiology tells them to. (I didn't say it would make you —or any other particular person— safe; I said wear a mask around other people, especially indoors, and stay out of each other's breezes no matter what.)

Nonetheless, this podcast with Lionel Shriver included some handsomely bitter truth.

(There are two commercials, but you can download it and skip 'em.)

United airlines made my husband take off his (unvented) N95 and replace it with a regular one, in order to board his flight this am.

It was never about our safety.

Crid, what does Zuckerberg have to do with soccer?

(I can't read The Atlantic right now - too much else to do, and my access is limited anyway.)

It's out of control here, too

https://covid-19-schweiz.bagapps.ch/fr-2.html
Slide the slider in the top right to see most recent data

They're turning people from hospitals if they're too old now.

It will be amazing when Crid decides to stop lying. And being an asshat. But of course monkeys will fly out of my butt before any of that happens.

"But I'm starting to see the other side of the argument"

In what sense?

I mean, I heard some journalist ask a Trump supporter, recently: "would you wear a mask if Trump said to do it?"

The response: "of course!"

What "argument" is there?

...but I have had nice old folks handing out candy that belonged in a museum. ~ Ben at October 31, 2020 6:57 AM

As a child, I had great aunts who would offer us a piece of hard candy from a bowl filled with candy so old it had fused into one enormous piece. We'd take turns trying to break off a piece, less for the candy than for the bragging rights in a feat of strength.

"Normally, the candy that is consumed at this time of the year is made in early August or September." ~ quoted by Lenona at October 31, 2020 8:03 AM

Correction: The candy that is intended to be consumed at this time of year is made in early August or September. There are no candy police going around to make sure that the candy being handed out on Halloween is from that time frame.

I once got a chocolate bar for Halloween that I had never seen the brand for. The bar inside was white with little black speckles. It was so old the chocolate had more or less evaporated and left a wax shell behind.

Either way parents should be policing what their kids eat. It is part of being a parent. People who let their kids eat two pounds of sugar because of a holiday are not good parents and their kids are unlikely to become functional adults.

As for people never giving away 'medicinal' candy, that just isn't true. Usually it is an innocent mistake. They just grabbed a bag of lollipops and didn't notice they were the 'special' ones. Other times they are high and people who are high do stupid stuff. But a quick google will show that yes some kids do get hospitalized every year due to marijuana edibles. It isn't a lot. And most of them got the drugs from their own home. But it does rarely happen.

Which is a good argument for statistics literacy. Your child is over 50x more likely to die from drowning than from THC. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it is a significant concern.

> What "argument" is there?

A lot of it's in the podcast; a few humbling statistics, and the recognition that we can't skip school, close down the economy, and tell children not to play with each other or touch each other or have any fun or even do any work for some unknown number of years. The churches have been shamelessly kneecapped; this is despicable. (The governor of Michigan is so horny to brutally enforce her whims, she's essentially masturbating at her desk. Nobody says anything.)

Some of us, in February & March, had hoped that the clumsy handling and sluggish response to Covid by government across the board (and around the globe) might teach people exactly how fucked up we've become in terms of economics and industrial policy.

It hasn't happened. There were a hundred sane things that the executives and legislatures, federal and state, could have done to make us safer and maintain the creation of wealth for ordinary people… They've done none of them. Instead, they're forcing their citizens to borrow ruinous amounts of cash FROM THEMSELVES with no opportunity to commence repayment, as if this should make us grateful to them for their generosity. (Understand that: Pelosi is SERIOUSLY proud of herself.)

Pandemics are a life-on-Earth problem, not a government problem. Americans, not less than people in much less liberty around the planet, have been assuming the Big Boys will take care of this. They can't, they won't and their reprehensible fecklessness continues unabated.

You should listen to the podcast, even if you disagree with every word (Toby Young has never impressed me, either); and for the record, Covid deaths are now at or approaching the lethality of the Hong Kong flu.


> what does Zuckerberg have
> to do with soccer?

He's endlessly forgiving of his own mistakes, because who can truly hold him to account?

> monkeys will fly out
> of my butt

Surprising no one.

Carlton.

The governor of Michigan is so horny to brutally enforce her whims, she's essentially masturbating at her desk. ~ Crid at November 1, 2020 10:49 PM

This is how tyranny begins, not for the revolution, but for the betterment of society and the good of all. She's not "enforc[ing] her whims," she's protecting everyone; it's for their own good. The road to Hell....

Pandemics are a life-on-Earth problem, not a government problem. ~ Crid at November 1, 2020 10:49 PM

We may never get "control" of the pandemic. We may, however, get control of our reaction to it.

In the days of polio, people went to work, to market, to school etc. in the middle of an outbreak. They had to. Society was selectively shut down. People kept the children inside and away from each other as much as they could and got on with their lives.

For COVID, we may have to adopt a similar stoicism. It's out there and we'll have to adjust to it. We may develop a vaccine soon, but we may not. Even if we do develop one, there will be anti-vaxxers who will insist on avoiding it; and anti-Trumpers who will insist it's tainted because it was developed on his watch.

Since COVID is related to influenza, one vaccine may not be enough. We may have to use an annual cycle of vaccines developed for specific strains.

It took years to develop a vaccine to polio. Of course, part of the delay in that development was understanding that polio was caused by a virus.

We're led to believe it was the government that "cured" polio when it was a mostly-private effort. FDR helped found the March of Dimes as president, but it was a private organization.

In developing his vaccine, Salk went against "the consensus of scientists" who insisted a vaccine could only be developed with live viruses. Salk used a killed virus for his vaccine.

Frustrated with the long delays in developing a live-virus vaccine, the March of Dimes put its funding behind Salk's killed virus theory. With that funding, Salk eventually developed a vaccine. He left it un-patented to speed production and distribution. Within a short time after testing, most of the world's children had been vaccinated.

Albert Sabin later developed a live-virus oral vaccine which would eventually supplant Salk's. To test it, Sabin went to the only country with a large and relatively isolated population that had not been touched by Salk's vaccinations, the USSR. Eventually, WHO declared Sabin's vaccine the preferred one, for ease of distribution and use.

Today, we have no sense of history, so we demand an immediate solution. We don't understand that plagues and pandemics have been factors in human existence since there have been humans on this planet.

We've been spoiled by our own success against Nature. We think of plagues and pandemics as immediately curable and castigate the authorities when they're not - after all, we "cured" polio, whooping cough, and rubella instantly, right?

Newsflash, a vaccine is not a cure, it's a preventative. If we develop a vaccine for COVID-19, that's all it will be, a preventative.

Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky

That is why my local police chief has to go. The guy before him had been in the job too long and was taking bribes, so I had to vote against that. But the new guy doesn't seem to care what rules he is enforcing. Just that he gets to push people around, so he needs to go too. It's kinda funny because he doesn't even tart it up with 'protecting the people' and all that jazz. And no particular ideological bent either. Guy just wants to push people around and harass random people.

On the covid stuff we already have a second strain running around the nation. Next year there will be a third and maybe even a fourth. With no control over our southern border keeping it out of the US isn't possible.