Apneaman is one of the brightest lights illuminating the handful of blogs that discuss reality. Unfortunately he does not have his own blog and so his unique insights are usually buried in a sea of less significant comments.
We were discussing here new evidence that the virus was engineered and Apneaman wrote a comment that deserved it’s own post, so I promoted it here.
From day 1ish, I never saw a problem with the possibility of it coming from a lab & that it was toyed with (gain of function). Why? Because unlike 99%+ of the population, I have had an interest in & done a shit load of reading the last 35 years on infectious diseases, history, science & their effects on societies, armies & humans. A bunch of it covers the modern era including bio warfare research, gain of function, thousands of incidences of lab accidents & escapes, criminal experimentation by gov, whistle blowing & a steady stream of scientists warning that gain of function + sloppy-reckless lab practices has the potential to cause a catastrophe & the same if used as a weapon. IMO, it appeared there was circumstantial evidence & cause for further investigation, but always remembering that circumstantial evidence is not ‘proof’ – just ask those hundreds of poor bastards that were convicted of a serious crime based on circumstantial evidence only to be set free 10-40 years later based on DNA proof of their innocence. A lot of humans don’t seem to know the difference & lately some highly intelligent ones that did know the difference between proof & circumstantial evidence seem to have lost the ability to make that distinction. Another thing I’m always remembering is Carl Sagan’s rule that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
I don’t find the claim the virus came from a lab to be extraordinary for reasons I already mentioned.
I do consider that other claim, ‘Plandemic’ extraordinary & hugely suspicious given the parties pimping it & the pretext for it.
The vast majority of Plandemic pimps are western, white, male & conservative with the majority of them being American & there is big conservative money, political-business, funding much of the ‘grassroots movements’ (astroturfing) & leaders (shills) – like Anti-maskers fer freedum-liberty-patriotism-family values-the children-the troops-Mom-&-warm cuddly puppies.org
Most of these same people: conspiracy generators, politicians, think tanks, PR & image management firms & legion of true believer useful idiots have been denying & poisoning the water with: Climate change, industry pollution, consumer pollution, human population, mass extinction, any & all limits to growth with extra effort on energy denial. Many of them are hardcore/want violence racists too. They’ve been doing it for months, years to decades. What’s different this time is seeing doomers, who have previously debunked & dismissed these denier ideologues, join them for plandemic that is framed & sold with the same amateurish jumping to conclusions, cherry picking, false comparison et al logical fallacies, rhetoric, fear fear fear, spin & falsehoods as they’ve used to attack anyone or thing that challenges their dogma.
I find the pretext for plandemic, steal our freedom by enacting control measures, to be very shaky. It’s debatable if most of us are or have ever been free to begin with & to put it correctly it’s enacting MORE control measures on top of the stack they’ve been enacting since we were born & immediately assigned a number. Some of us even had our prints (foot) taken, like a person charged with a crime, before we left the hospital. In recent years parents willing give the authorities their kids DNA. Ya know, in case they get abducted (mega lotto odds).
Again it’s the same denier crew of (mostly) Americans moaning about loss of freedom & I say it’s a delusion about freedoms they never had. The major difference between now & then is they can watch & record more of what we do more of the time & corporations gather as much data as BIG GOV & share it with them. Sometimes the gov, like the California DMV sell their/your data to marketing businesses.
Many say if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about, but free people should not have to hide things from their gov that they do that don’t hurt others. But they still need to & do.
Back in the day, if the FBI suspected you of being a communist they would follow you, open a file on you. Check your bank records, library books, etc. They did the same thing to civil rights & anti war (Vietnam) activists in the 60’s & 70’s. & many others who crossed Power’s lines. They never stopped. Now everything is on a hard drive in gargantuan Gov and/or Corp server farms. So where’s the freedom? You’re free from being tagged & watched as long as you stay between the lines power has laid down as acceptable – go to our schools & follow our rules & we will allow you to drive a car, consume approved goods (alcohol & cigarettes OK, weed & Cocaine NO WAY). If you are born in the right class & posses enough intelligence & discipline you can choose among a variety of better paying employment & status options. You can vote, but not/never commie or socialist/never against the interests of BAU & Power.
No doubt tptb are using the pandemic as cover to hasten their surveillance-police state plans, long in the works. Plandemic pimps are trying to spin it as some freedom losing tipping point when it’s BAU. Just a progression of what’s been happening for over a century – using the new tech for surveillance & control. The progression is usually at a slow crawl, but never let a good crisis go to waste has been in the rulers play-book since day 1. There is no singular freedom losing event, there never has been one & trying to find one is equivalent to looking for a transition species. Missing links are for narrative seekers – looking for something that don’t exist to play a part in a primitive emotionally satisfying story. This is what humans do to make sense & deal. It’s a form of control.
I don’t have proof that there was no plandemic, but the onus is not on me, it’s not impossible, but all I’ve seen is bad evidence & twice as much emotion & dogma. If I was to believe most of what this largely right-wing American conspiracy denier crew believes then I’d be believing everything bad that happens in history that happens to challenge their ideology, didn’t just happen – IT WAS PLANNED (always by their nemesis – “The Left). To believe what they do is to believe in the mother of all coincidences, not to mention a level of self centeredness, self flattery & tribal specialness that makes them the neo chosen ones. What irony coming from conspiracists who claim most not to believe in coincidences. Ever notice they don’t have any conspiracy that exclusively fucks over the left? They’ve never been targeted? Only the right? Great underdog narrative that.
Although Russia Gate was mostly horse shit & the left is just as bad with their own dogma protecting denial & lies, Trump is a piece of shit & leading his crew into fascism. Not because the left says so, but because Trump is a piece of shit & leading his crew into fascism. It’s obvious. The left looks to be 1 or 2 steps behind in unleashing a US cultural revolution Mao style. I guess they need the white house. Looks like a lose lose situation to me. We’ll likely catch some spill over. It happens when the house next door is a meth lab & goes BOOM!
I’m with Carlin in that what people call freedoms & rights are just temporary privileges. I lmao at the American denier conspiracy crew because they were not just silent on what is probably the biggest plebs freedom losing piece of legislation in their country’s history, ‘Citizens United’, but many of them even supported it, which is kinda like a black slave 300 years ago cheering on the forging of his chains. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) & The Patriot Act are two other freedom stealing pieces of legislation they were also all but silent on or supported. These were all enacted in the 21st century, but were on the drawing board in the 20th.
un-Denial 
Typo : like Anti-maskers fer freedum.
LikeLike
Don’t ordinarily reply to myself but realized almost immediately upon clicking “submit” that it now looks deliberate. Sigh.
LikeLike
LOL, I cycled through the same thoughts when I read it.
LikeLike
I’ve yet to fully read (and write about) it, but it looks like epidemiologist Rob Wallace may have written an interesting piece on the “putative lab origins of the outbreak.” It’s behind a Patreon paywall, but you can sign up for a mere $1 / month.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/blind-40838190
LikeLike
Plandemics have been war-gamed for decades and places like Ft. Detrick have been working on the agents like weaponized Anthrax for just as long. National labs continue to develop them and with advancing biotechnology can churn them out rather quickly. According to the Li-Meng Yan report the core virus of SARS-Cov-2 is very similar to one found in Chinese military labs.
“The genomic sequence of SARS-Cov-2 is suspiciously similar to that of a bat coronavirus discovered by military laboratories in the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing, China) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (Nanjing, China). “
file:///C:/Users/borg/AppData/Local/Temp/The_Yan_Report.pdf
Perhaps the war-gaming showed that the Chinese economy would recover quickly under authoritarian control while the economy of the United States would be devastated, especially if the world’s PPE were concentrated in China prior to the event. The only response by the United States was “Don’t wear masks, they don’t work” to be followed by “Wear masks, they work.” The fear instilled by a very contagious and stealthy virus with a relatively low death rate is perhaps more damaging to an economy than one with a higher death rate. As Trump was battering the Chinese (and international corporations) with tariffs, perhaps they needed to provide a shot across the bow. I’m sure there are much worse agents that can accidentally find their way into circulation. But then again, it all could have been an accident, and that’s what makes it the perfect weapon. In any case the World Economic Forum has introduced a fix for the world’s citizenry and Western corporations (that sold out the middle-class of the United States years ago by investing in China). They will no longer have to worry about their investments becoming worthless through the acts of nationalist leaders as Global Corp. slowly erases all international boundaries.
LikeLike
In the absence of evidence I lean to the simplest explanation which is the scientists at the Wuhan lab (with possible funding from the US) were seeking fame and fortune by trying to find a vaccine for current and future similar viruses and a mistake resulted in a leak. But you might be right that it was malevolent. Smart people are unpicking the puzzle, hopefully we’ll know the truth soon.
p.s. James, I’m sorry your comments are held for moderation. I suspect it’s because you do not provide an email to identify yourself so WordPress thinks you are a first time poster. If you enter a dummy email I think your comments will be published immediately.
LikeLike
What scenarios haven’t been war-gamed for decades? The US taxpayer has funded tens to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of war games & contingent plans & such. The US is not the only country that’s been doing it although they’ve probably burned the most treasure on it. Hell the Rand Corporation alone has probably run every game & contingent plan any human can think up. That’s war gamed, but what’s real & documented are thousands of lab accidents, accidental escapes & reckless lab practices. So one war-game trumps that reality?
Since there’s millions of white papers & documents describing all this stuff what are the chances that they have covered every major nefarious event that can possibly happen?
It’s a set up because everything’s been covered. That’s what the people at Rand Corp, Military intelligence & a thousand other places do for their entire careers for the last 4-5 generations. The advancing tech adds complexity & make more of it & faster. It’s like an all you can eat buffet for the conspiracist in who’s world accidents, incompetence – human error itself do not exist. Everything is planed. Nothing is systemic because humans are in complete control of all the complex systems they’ve spawned.
If there’s a Carrington Event & afterwards someone digs up 35 Gov documents about the possibility of the Chinese or Russians exploding a nuke at altitude over the lower 48 to get similar effect, within 5 mins the accusation & conspiracies will start. Someone ‘predicted’ it.
Among the 31 flavours of climate deniers there are a few million CO2 climate deniers who believe based on their interpretation of publicly available HAARP documents, speculation paranoia & ignorance.
Indeed coincidences such as you mentioned can & do look suspicious to many, but suspicion is not proof. It’s a starting point of an investigation. Proper investigations are thorough & take time. How long did it take for that slick ‘Plandemic’ ‘documentary’ to come out? Was it 5 or 7 minutes? Where’s the suspicion about that? Who funded it? How can a nefarious plot of such magnitude have so few experts come forth? Seems to be a number of them steeping up on the claim it came from a lab & with evidence to boot.
Maybe Plandemic is true, but to date it fits the template of a few hundred other American spawned right-wing conspiracies.
As I mentioned before, when you chase it down you always end up with the same core group of people & special interests. Same as with team left USA. Russiagate, BLM, Woke etc are either conspiracies or astroturfing or infiltrated & funded by power all to whip up the sheep & use them in their never ending power play. Two side of the same coin. Since America’s #1 export product is conspiracy theories, it stands to reason that any reasonable person is going to demand a rock solid case before looking at it otherwise every waking moment they had would be spent reading the endless conspiracy claims & watching marathon 4 3/4 hour conspiracy documentaries. I have free time, but I have little interest spending it on this.
Like they say in Missouri, Show Me. Show me the case as if the investigation is finished and you’re ready to take it & your reputation to court. Evidence & suspicion are not the same as proof. If one day it is proved, I’ll say, hey look at that. They did do it those dirty dogs. What difference will it make? None to my life & none to where the humans are headed. I image for some it’ll be an emotional victory, short lived like all the rest for the restless insatiable apes.
LikeLike
“Although Russia Gate was mostly horse shit & the left is just as bad ……..The left looks to be 1 or 2 steps behind in unleashing a US cultural revolution Mao style.”
No, Russia Gate was not and is not horse shit. This was confirmed by the recent bipartisan Senate select committee on intelligence. More will emerge in future years regarding the degree to which Russia has had compromising information on Trump, his family and close associates.
The Left is more complicated than the present GOP/Right. It has the far lefties, ie the anti Israel and the Defund the Police crowds. It has the centrists a la Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons, Biden and others. But it also has the Progressives who are somewhere between. They are those who support Bernie Sanders and all the necessary social and political reforms he has advocated for over the years. And Sanders is no cultural Marxist by any means, although he may call himself a Democratic Socialist. He just wants what many of the following countries already have – the democracies of Scandinavia, (most of whom have monarchs in residence), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, France, Germany and a few others. ie, such things as universal health care, a more representative electoral system, an expanded welfare system with things like paid maternity leave, an increase in the federal minimum wage and greater workplace democracy, more affordable tertiary education, criminal justice reform (including the decriminalisation of marijuana) and a greater emphasis on the environment, especially a re-commitment to global action on climate change and much greater funding for renewable energy.
Do you doubt the sincerity of Sanders and his supporters, most of whom are young and who will increasingly push for these things within the Democratic Party? Biden will not be able to ignore them. He has already committed himself to a number of these reforms. Just look at the official policy positions on the websites of the two Parties. No, despite its faults and the disappointments of the past, the Democratic Party is nothing like the GOP and nowhere near as bad. The latter is more than ever a Party whose whole raison d’être is to look after the interests of the elites and the corporations.
LikeLike
Link about RussiaGate confirmation?
Do you also think Bernie and Tulsi are Russian spies? If not, why not? The MSM asserted they are so why do you pick and choose what to believe?
You say dems are not as bad as Trump. What do you base that on?
For example Obama started 5 wars and Trump 0. Why is that better?
Obama expanded oil production and opened the most areas for oil and gas exploration. Is that better?
One last thing. Instead of looking at what Biden promises, why don’t you look at his track record. I see no reason he would change his policies.
Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to listen to sweet lullabies instead of actually checking out facts?
LikeLike
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf August 2020
Aren’t you aware of the wind back of so many regulations which protect ordinary Americans (and the environment) which have occurred under the Trump Administration? The cancellation of these laws ( including things like Nixon’s Clean Air Act!) have been at the urging of the big corporations whose only concern is to make more money. These wind backs and cancellations can be checked out on the Federal Register.
Aren’t you aware of the massive reduction in funding for so many Govt agencies – the FDA, the CDC, the EPA etc etc, plus huge cuts to public education, health and welfare services ( even food stamps!)? Whilst at the same time Trump has substantially increased the already bloated military budget and has given huge tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations. Where have you been? Watching Fox News I guess?
And, if you are a follower of this site, I’d like to ask if you believe in man made climate change? Given the threat that it poses to the world, Trump’s withdrawal from any mitigation attempts, in fact his total denial that there is a problem, is arguably his greatest sin of all.
LikeLike
Great display of binary thinking. You somehow are under the impression that I support Trump because I pointed out how bad the democrats. This is very common in US at the moment and it’s very depressing.
Orange man bad! does not answer any of my questions. Of course Trump is a populist so like the majority of americans he doesn’t care about the environment and he is willing to sell your children’s lives for some gain right now.
I notice though that you ignored absolutely everything I said. What makes you think that the democrats are any better in any way? I pointed out a couple of similarities but somehow you could not see them.
Good luck with your denial. Oh, and don’t forget to call me a Russian agent – it’s the next step after being accused of watching Fox News.
LikeLike
“For example Obama started 5 wars and Trump 0. Why is that better?”
Obama didn’t start original wars, he launched attack campaigns amid existing conflicts. Had Trump inherited the same situations he’d have likely engaged more. He set up a number of attacks, one of which was seen as cold blooded (Suleimani) but I wasn’t opposed to it. He also came dangerously close to triggering Iran over the nuclear deal, and rolling dice with North Korea (I’ll grant that his style matched their leader’s and may have done some good). But giving the impression that Obama was a relative warmonger is bogus.
“Obama expanded oil production and opened the most areas for oil and gas exploration. Is that better?”
Don’t you see that Trump is pushing fossil fuels far more than Obama or even Bush? He ran much of his campaign on that promise, with a crippled EPA to fast-track projects, like the recent decision on ANWR. Scott Pruitt was only forced out of the EPA for financial recklessness, not environmental rollbacks. Trump is as anti-environment as it gets w/fossil fuels. His bright spot to me is his opposition to Big Wind, though he lies about some of the impacts, like “cancer.”
Obama was the king of wind power growth, extending the PTC to vastly increase its sprawl on landscapes, and he enabled crass laws like eagle-take permits. That looks like the Democrats’ ongoing environmental legacy, as Biden has spoken of 60,000 more turbines on top of America’s current ~65,000 oil-built eyesores. Still, many of the actual projects are built by GOP types, e.g. the Texas wind boom.
LikeLike
This is just the most recent. I could spend a week dropping links with evidence exposing Russia-gate for the absurd fraud it is, but it won’t make a dent in the conviction of 95% of the American neo left. Neo, because they have long abandoned their traditional base.
Dark web voter database report casts new doubts on Russian election hack narrative
“A new report showing that US state-level voter databases were publicly available calls into question the narrative that Russian intelligence “targeted” US state election-related websites in 2016.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/13/dark-web-voter-data-russian-election-hack-narrative/
Yup, US authorities are real sticklers about protecting their citizens private information.
The California DMV Is Making $50M a Year Selling Drivers’ Personal Information
A document obtained by Motherboard shows how DMVs sell peoples’ names, addresses, and other personal information to generate revenue.
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/evjekz/the-california-dmv-is-making-dollar50m-a-year-selling-drivers-personal-information
Supporting US Democrats is the same as supporting US Republicans. You’re supporting a system that is set up to fuck over an ever growing number of working Americans, so an ever shrinking number of sick cunts can’t pour another billion a month into that bottomless pit they call their soul. It gets harder & harder to empathise with people who continue to support their psychopathic owners.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with you that there is something fundamentally wrong with your system. No system is perfect or corruption free of course. But the US has always held itself out as a most desirable democracy and upholder of human rights etc. etc. If Trump is re-elected, the Supreme Court and other federal courts will be in the hands of the pro corporates (and possibly the religious right) for years to come. The political and social system will become more of an oligarchy that it already is. I’m not enamoured of Biden by any means, but at least with the Democrats (and the Progessives) the US may have a chance to save itself.
I’m just so glad that I don’t live there.
LikeLike
I did not read through the whole rant but I got the gist of it. I would like to focus on 2 aspects of denial that shows how easy it is for all of us to be blind to our limitations.
1) “Trump is a piece of shit that is leading his crew to fascism”.
The first part is an emotional outburst and as such describes the opinion of the writer. I tend to agree on an emotional level but there is no reason given for it.
The second part is interesting. At a time when the deep state (expressed by giant corporations, FBI, CIA, mass-media etc) is trying to pull a color revolution in US using the brainwashed rich kids as their shock troops, the author blames the lame duck president as leading the country to fascism. Denial plays a giant role here – if you find yourself align with most of the rich and powerful, you either are rich and powerful or just a dupe.
What are the things that Trump does that are fascist? He increased the military spending (with the full support of the dems), he continues to put immigrants in cages (practice started/expanded by Obama).
Militarization of police started long before Trump and I think he is trying to pull back. I could go on but I doubt any rationale can pass through the emotional wall created by the propaganda.
2) About the virus.
Is the virus engineered? Who cares? I noticed that even on this blog the discussion is driven by the propaganda spewed by the mass media. Facts and statistics are ignored for emotionally loaded arguments.
I would suggest to everyone to look for “excess deaths” and “average age of death for covid” which are numbers that are much harder to massage than the cloudy “infection rates”.
It turns out that the coronavirus is a fast spreading cold-like virus with high infection rates but low mortality. It barely affects people under 50 ( usually about 1/100,000 deaths) and most of its victims are people that would have died in the following six months.
I won’t bother with links and quotations – any search with the keywords above will reveal mainstream sources.
What I would like to hear is why the huge propaganda machines of MSM and govt turned covid into such a disaster? I wish I knew and there are basically no places online that would even allow that conversation
Well, back to regular programming I guess.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whoosh…….that’s the sound of my sarcasm, mocking & brand of humour going over your head.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” Donald Trump, 2018.
Trump stated at a press conference that he, as President, has absolute power. He has also said that he may not accept a Biden victory. He has urged his supporters to vote twice. Many other things over the last 4 years. The guy is a fascist alright.
( As well as an unparalleled liar, a draft dodging narcissist and a “fu**ing moron”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“ It turns out that the coronavirus is a fast spreading cold-like virus with high infection rates but low mortality. It barely affects people under 50 ( usually about 1/100,000 deaths) and most of its victims are people that would have died in the following six months.”
You are correct, but the authorities didn’t know that earlier on. It could have turned out to be like a more contagious version of SARS and MERS that took out a lot of younger people. There are many unusual things about this virus and it has been a huge learning curve for scientists. (and , like other commentators here, I tend to think that it was man made, and probably released accidentally). Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
But the reason why there have been lockdowns and the virus has been treated as a “disaster” is that huge numbers of elderly and immuno compromised people ending up in hospital, can easily overwhelm the health system, with absolutely no beds at all left for other health emergencies, let alone elective surgeries. Maybe the frail elderly should have been left to die in their nursing homes? I’m sure that has happened in many cases. The other thing is that more people with Covid ending up in hospital ( even younger people who generally survive) means more financial strain on the health care budget and more health care workers continually exposed on a daily basis to this virus. There have been many doctors and nurses worldwide who have died as a result.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debt is fascinating. There’s always more to learn. Thanks to Harry McGibbs for finding this excellent article.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4374107-ugly-math-why-treasury-market-implode-time-now
LikeLiked by 2 people
Worrying stuff. Sounds like he is predicting hyperinflation ahead – on necessities anyway. The best financial investment at the moment looks like long term food storage and some water tanks. (don’t forget the dog and cat food ! 😊)
LikeLike
I agree about food and water being the top priorities. Next think about the things you really need to survive that are not made in your country.
LikeLike
In the Comments section, Norman Pagett (author of The End of More) tried to make the connection between energy, money and debt. The author of the article had no idea what Norman was talking about. Explaining the debt/energy connection isn’t easy to a financial audience, or any audience that hasn’t been following this and other blogs. It takes a while to wrap one’s head around this concept.
LikeLike
Maybe. Most people would probably agree with you. I disagree.
The energy/debt connection is not that complicated. Most people don’t understand it because they don’t want to understand it. To understand it means they must also accept the reality of human overshoot and the inevitability of collapse.
I think it’s more evidence in support of Varki’s MORT theory.
LikeLike
Quote: “…the left is just as bad with their own dogma protecting denial & lies…”
As I’ve noted here before, among those lies is the effort to scapegoat cops for just doing their jobs 95% of the time. It’s dangerous to the police and society to frame them as the problem, rather than criminals. The media feeds the lie by cherry-picking stories where blacks are harmed by police, despite roughly 500 whites killed by cops each year in America for non-racist reasons. Said reasons are invariably cops fearing for their lives while struggling with violent felons. Random deaths will always occur, and dramatic exceptions like George Floyd are not the rule.
Earlier, the supposed sage, Apneaman, could only respond with a leftist insult: “False Progress, your very presence is polluting this blog. Y’all self absorbed, white trash, poor me I’m the victim, degenerates deserve to burn. …..and you will.” (Posted on 6/12/20 by someone who paints criminals as victims of cops, not their own behaviors. I immediately saw that this guy was a denier of human nature across racial lines.)
The latest example of why I keep bringing this up is two deputies shot for revenge in Compton, CA. The 2016 Dallas, TX massacre (5 dead cops) was a similar case, driven by BLM race-baiting. If you’re really about un-denial, you can’t practice it selectively or use the “we’re all brothers” angle to avoid offending ethnic criminals.
Am I saying this blog is insincere? Yes, if it doesn’t pursue negative fallout from all forms of denial. Multiculturalism is failing in both America and Europe, and its main symptom is high crime rates among non-whites, often fleeing nations with endemic crime. Once they arrive in foreign lands, their criminal attitudes are suddenly whites’ fault, if not in the present, by virtue of historical insults.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Spoken by someone under the false assumption that policing is the most dangerous job in the universe. Thanks Hollywood & other propaganda.
The 34 deadliest jobs in America
Police and sheriff’s patrol officers #16
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-2018-7#16-police-and-sheriffs-patrol-officers-19
I run into easily triggered US political extremists, left & right, like you all the time who obviously only take note of the parts of my comments that are critical of their cherished beliefs. I’ve been ‘accused’ of being a conservatard, big oil shill, fascist, etc by left-wing nuts all the time for comments I make that run counter to their dogma. It’s like y’all have a big black redacting marker hardwired into your brain that inks out any & all of my many comments that criticize the US left or the oft repeated fact that I’m not American & don’t support any political party in your country or mine. Further, regardless of the topic y’all always steer everything back to whatever current political point is occupying your primitive tribal brains at the moment – what the hell has US policing have to do with the Plandemic? Not the first time you’ve brought it up. Apparently, it’s of great importance to you. So you’re an authoritarian & system justifier. So write a stand alone post about how awesome cops are & all the reasons they should be above the law, they’re supposedly serving, under any & all circumstances because their jobs are hard-N-stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I read your rant the piece that stuck in my mind was the bipartisan support for Citizens United, NDAA, and The Patriot Act.
Shouldn’t this be the focus of both left and right citizens?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Watch the logical fallacies! Policing needn’t be “the most dangerous job in the universe” for cops to fear for their lives on a daily basis. You’re changing the subject because you can’t accept that blacks should be held accountable for their many crimes.
This is just one big city: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homicides-data-tracker-htmlstory.html
2020’s insane riots stem from the lie that cops are blacks’ biggest enemies. I’m close enough to Portland (drive through 2-3 times a month) to see these mindless thugs and their damage firsthand. It’s depressing to think that people support them for terrorizing police and depriving good people of 911 service over the past few months. I can’t think of a time when I’ve cared less about the rights of criminals of all colors.
LikeLike
No way dude! Häagen-Dazs is way more better than Ben & Jerry’s.
LikeLike
Since you can’t form cogent arguments on this topic, here’s some help: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=portland+police+speak+protests
LikeLike
“Not the first time you’ve brought it up. Apparently, it’s of great importance to you. So you’re an authoritarian & system justifier.”
P.S. Reasonable adults understand that societies with no law enforcement don’t last. Crime never goes away entirely without opposing forces. Calling necessary law enforcement “authoritarian” is something Antifa does. Anarchy only works for anarchists.
LikeLike
False Progress, I agree with many of your comments here. I generally support the Police, who carry out a critical function in our society. And I am a Democratic supporter. Unfortunately the extremes on both sides of politics bring those sides into disrepute. Many of these extremists don’t even belong to any political parties. They are full of anger and just want to vent. They put forward very simple ‘solutions’ to complex problems. They tend to be simplistic and binary thinkers. In fact there is a widespread tendency generally to divide the political world into left and right, ‘libtards’ and ‘neocons’. It’s certainly dividing the US (and elsewhere at the moment.)
At a time when humanity needs to get together and focus on the planetary ecocide that is happening and the unfolding catastrophe of climate change .
LikeLike
I can’t argue with that, but the Left has lost its mind by flipping the script to make criminals into the good guys. I consider it a more important issue than COVID-19, even if I’m crashing the main content of the article. This will be the last thread I do this in!
As for humanity getting together, I don’t see evidence of tribal camps even trying these days, and average I.Q.s aren’t up to a solution.
LikeLike
This guy seems to have put a lot of effort into assembling data to confirm what we here intuitively know to be true, that is there will be no BAU transition away from fossil energy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A good analysis. One for the techno optimists to read methinks.
LikeLike
Climate change denialist given top role at major U.S. science agency
“A controversial researcher who rejects climate science was hired by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for a senior position, in a move suggesting the Trump administration is asserting growing influence over the study of rising temperatures.
David Legates, a geography professor at the University of Delaware, has a long history of questioning fundamental climate science and has suggested that an outcome of burning fossil fuels would be a more habitable planet for humans.
He was hired as deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for observation and prediction, according to a report by NPR.
The move marks an escalation within the Trump administration to undermine the agency’s ability to warn the public of climate risks, observers said.”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/climate-change-denialist-given-top-role-major-us-science-agency
Northern Hemisphere just had its hottest summer on record
August 2020 ended as 2nd hottest for the globe
https://www.noaa.gov/news/northern-hemisphere-just-had-its-hottest-summer-on-record
Gotta get NOAA staffed with Trump Tard Denier Puppets before another year of AGW jacked records & disasters comes around & HAMMERS the fuck out of the country & people some more. Like denying it matters. When your house is gone due to the most recent AGW jacked, record smashing: wildfire, hurricane, derecho, rain bomb, flood, etc, denying the biggest factor changes nothing.
Climate denial is mandatory tribal signalling for team right. Since CC is so far gone, acknowledging the new reality, while simultaneously minimizing it, is allowable for some tribe right members under certain conditions, but don’t take it too far lest ye be excommunicated.
Even Putin has come around because he’s clued in that CC denial has out lived it’s political usefulness. Since Vlad ‘came out’ it’s made no difference to the Russian gas & oil industry. Because the only thing that has slowed fossil fuel extraction & use is the economics. A billion+ dollars a year for decades, blown on climate denial propaganda. Possibly one of the all time misallocation of resources. If they never spent even 1 denial dime, the difference in atmospheric concentrations of PPM CO2, PPB methane & PPB nitrous oxide (via fertilizer made from fossil fuel) would likely be the same or close to it.
A big part of the denial industrial complex strategy is to pit FF’s against libtard alt energy – why do you think the denier puppets revile Elon Musk more than Judas Iscariot? The Alt-right made Elon the Alt-energy whipping boy. It’s a false dilemma since current alt energy tech only makes up a small fraction of electrical generation & electricity only make up about 20% of total world energy use. It was never a choice between FF’s & alt energy. The real choice was always between your current FF powered lifestyle & a mass human die-back & major reduction in lifestyle, which is no choice at all. More importantly, their false dilemma is predicated on the faulty assumption that humans are capable of giving their evolutionary programming & the MPP the finger.
I could understand big FF’s fear of alt energy tech back in the 90’s when there was less known, but by the mid 2000’s it was clear that the tech was no threat to them for the foreseeable future.
If there ever is any energy tech that can come close to or beat FF’s, especially for transportation, it’s yet to be invented. A new tech that beats or comes close is the only thing that could get humans to voluntarily give up FF’s.
So the question is why would they blow tens of billions when neither tech, nor consumer choice has show itself to be a threat to them?
LikeLike
Tim Watkins today explains yet another reason we’re screwed.
Doubly so given we’re not even able to whisper the word “overshoot” in polite company.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/09/17/not-the-answer-we-asked-for/
LikeLike
“Apneaman is one of the brightest lights illuminating the handful of blogs that discuss reality”
Shall we all try discussing the taste of salt? You do see the problem right?
LikeLike
I deny there’s any problem.
LikeLike
Having read Apneaman’s excellent criticism of the conspiratorial mindset of so many humans, particularly that of millions of Disunited States Americans, a second time . . . it rings ever more soundly of truth and reality for me. His writing having upset both right and left wing tribal idiots who’ve commented on it here just adds further cogency to his reasoning. Tribal idiots will NEVER understand their idiocy, in fact I’m sure they’ll have a freaking field day after I post this one, and they’re single-issue trolling is a waste of everyone’s time here (or anywhere, for that matter).
It’s clear that humans have never, and will never, agree on what reality “is”. Nor will we ever be able to agree on what is denial and what isn’t, or who is in denial and who isn’t. Person/Group One: “You’re in denial about [issue/concern/problem]!” Person/Group Two: “No, I’m/we’re not, you are!” Ad fucking nauseum through infinity, or MUCH more likely, to an imminent extinction. I wish facts, truth, and the principles required to benefit as many as possible (i.e. the common good and justice for all) could still be agreed on by most human beings. But it can’t and it never could.
At this moment in time, my worldview is very much a combination of Rob’s (here at un-Denial) and James’ (Megacancer). A combination of MORT and what I’ll presumptuously refer to as The Tech Cell Dissipative Megacancer. Through their exceptional efforts (reading, critical thinking, writing, dialogue with other humans, more reading, more critical thinking, more writing . . .) they’ve pierced some core truths of the reality of existence for homo sapiens. But a trillion thoughts and replies at either of their blogs will not find any consensus with either of their theories. They’re essential for those persons validly, and valiantly, trying to understand our reality, but never will a consensus develop on them, as many people commenting at their blogs just vomit their conspiratorial, deluded, single-issue bullshit as they’re incapable of seeing the forest for the trees.
As I mentioned several posts ago, my current position is that the best any of us can do now is to enjoy the beauty (mostly the non-human world, what little’s left of it) that remains, to play a role in reducing avoidable suffering when possible, and try ever more diligently to understand reality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for the kind words and for providing me with some sane company.
I do think there is one reality but I fully agree with you that humans will never agree on what it is because we evolved to give priority to the belief’s of our tribe. It’s sad given we’re the only species with the intellectual, scientific, and mathematical tools necessary to assess reality.
Perhaps one of the things that makes me strange is that I’ve never felt like I belong to any tribe.
I would probably continue to write about what I think our reality is even if not a single person read this blog, and even if not a single person agreed with me, because it provides me satisfaction and sanity to articulate what I think is really going on when I’m surrounded by people that either don’t care, don’t have a clue, or deny it.
I agree with your advice and am trying to enjoy nature as much as possible while I’m still able.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I never really expect a consensus either. Scientists at MIT see the universe as a computer. Brain scientists see it as a neural network. Religious people see it as heaven. You could spend a lifetime arguing with only a single person and not make much progress. I think I would like to spend the remainder of my time “on the beach” watching the energy of the sun moving the waves and wind and people even as many of the animals disappear, the humans grow lethargic and cars stop rolling. It’s somewhat comforting to at least have an idea as to what’s going on. I might have to wait for a few feet of sea level rise before I can afford a place with a view.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I second the last three comments above. I’m in my mid seventies and I’ve studied the issues for a long time. It’s hard to feel that anything can be done. So I try to appreciate the natural beauty around me, my friends and family. I’ve tried to talk to them about the issues, but I think it’s just too unsettling for them to embrace these issues. You can call it denial on their part, but how much do people really want to go out of their comfort zone.
LikeLike
To everyone engaged in left vs. right political discussions here, please stop.
There are a million places on the web that love to fan those flames. Not here.
Apneaman’s post discussed politics but he did so to criticize everyone.
My position is that there is not a single political party anywhere in the world that is not deeply in denial of everything that matters.
If you find a political party that acknowledges reality, most importantly human overshoot, I would love to discuss their politics here.
This is a warning that I am going to start deleting what I consider to be political comments.
LikeLike
I haven’t been able to bring myself to vote the last few years. The democrats (a now extinct minor party in Australia politics) used to have a population policy. The fact that they know longer exist is rather telling.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sadly, the Greens here in Australia, don’t have a population policy either. They are no longer the party for the environment that they once were.
LikeLike
They err in other specific ways, too: https://arena.gov.au/renewable-energy/wind/ (welcome to a warmer AND uglier world)
LikeLike
When I was a senior executive in several companies, and before I became aware, I voted for which ever party was farthest to the right. After waking up, I voted for the Green party for a few years until I realized that they are as deeply in denial as the other parties. Now I do not vote. I will vote again when a party adds overshoot harm reduction to their policies.
LikeLike
Have a look at the policy platforms of the Greens and other parties. Some do actually have “overshoot harm reduction” policies in various environmental areas. The parties are definitely not all the same, or equally in denial. Whilst the policies may be inadequate to save our planet in the long run, perhaps they can at least delay environmental collapse. Meanwhile, if you fail to vote for the lesser of the two (or more) evils, and the worst one wins, enormous damage, perhaps irreparable damage, can be inflicted in a short period of time.
Compare for example the decision by the current Federal administration to allow drilling in the Artic compared to Obama’s moratorium. Which do you prefer?
LikeLike
I think the Artic moratorium and other environmental regulations are irrelevant to protecting the environment unless we reduce the population and/or demand for resources. When there are oil shortages the Artic will be drilled regardless of who is in power, assuming of course an economic collapse does not make us too poor to exploit high cost reserves. When there is not enough natural gas to heat homes, the forests will be cut down for fire wood, regardless of laws.
I dislike political discussions because they’re just noise unless we get the population and demand down.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The birth rate has significantly slowed in all places except Africa. Even Bangladesh now averages 2 children per couple . The birth rate needs to get to 1 child or less of course, but I don’t see that happening for quite a while. Even most western countries do not have sustainable populations, therefore, imo, immigration needs to be significantly reduced.
What we need is a virus to render 4 out of 5 women and men infertile. Although, even then, consumption rates might only fall slowly – all those childless couples would be off jetting around everywhere and indulging themselves.
So, the only real ‘solution’ to the overpopulation problem I think, might be another pandemic – of the Black Death kind.
LikeLike
There are many people who long for the return of Saint Obama. None more so than the ones who make up the US fracking industry.
Those Were The Days…..
America’s biggest oil boom came under Obama
https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/21/investing/trump-energy-plan-obama-oil-boom/index.html
Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’
“Mr. Obama told the audience at a gala for Rice University’s Baker Institute that he was “extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords” before saying “I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy.”
“You wouldn’t always know it ,but it went up every year I was president,” he said to applause. “That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas that was me, people.”
“This wasn’t the first time Mr. Obama has claimed credit for the boom, which saw oil production grow by 88 percent during his two terms.”
https://apnews.com/5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2
LikeLike
Yes, sadly Obama left a lot to be desired. And he should have taken more positive action in the first 2 years of his Presidency. But he was far less ‘evil’ , imo, than the great orange asshole. Biden will probably be the same. The American population, sadly, weren’t ready for Bernie. Not perfect by any means, but if ever there was a last chance for hope, he was it.
I guess, ultimately, the American people are to blame…
LikeLike
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/talkin-bout-a-revolution-revisited/?fbclid=IwAR1mVXxvEObi89dsLt0VqKVIGs5xHvWe4dklYczr9lqcJ9yEpwIHXXsdkeQ
Mike just reposted this and I thought of this conversation. Nothing that we don’t know but rather fitting.
LikeLike
Thank you. I’m not enamored by the capitalism bad – other ism’s better arguments.
There are two MUCH bigger problems that have nothing to do with ism’s.
First, we do not have policies to constrain our population to be in balance with renewable and non-renewable resources.
Second, our fractional reserve debt backed monetary system, which every “ism” in the world uses, requires infinite growth on a finite planet, or it blows up.
Capitalism can be good in that it rewards people for work hard, risk taking, and innovation. On the other hand, capitalism can be bad, because in the absence of wise taxation policies, it creates a socially destabilizing wealth gap, which is bad for everyone.
Personally I’d like to live in a capitalist society that has decided that the wealth gap between richest and poorest shall not exceed some reasonable multiple like say 100x, and that taxes away excess wealth and applies the funds to long term infrastructure that benefits everyone, and that has a full reserve energy backed monetary system that forces the size of the economy to stay in sync with available resources, and that manages its population such that it is never in a state of overshoot.
LikeLike
I find it interesting that you seem to have sincere respect for nature, yet voted for a party notorious for not respecting it. Were you literally all about money at one point? Kind of like an ex-smoker?
I’ve always been aware that right-wingers were not the good guys, but have realized that the Left, with its landscape-ruination mandate (aka “clean energy”) is the other side of the same coin. That’s why things look so bleak now. Strong attempts to point this out, like “Planet of the Humans,” are constantly fading from view.
LikeLike
I think most people vote in a manner consistent with the MPP, namely for whomever offers the best chance of increasing their personal wealth. I remember when Clinton beat Bush with “it’s the economy stupid”. Issues like the environment do not sway elections unless promising to do something meaningful will damage the economy, in which case you’ll lose, as happened to the Canadian Liberals in 2008 when they ran with a climate change platform.
LikeLike
I can’t disagree with that generic explanation, but I’m wondering if something specific changed YOUR worldview, and over what period of time. Did you accumulate more money than you needed and decided it didn’t buy total happiness? That seems to happen to Hollywood environmentalists; not implying you’re in that category.
In my 50s now, I became this way slowly over several decades, always coming from an environmental angle and not chasing wealth (never earned more than $60k USD). Dealing with too many materialistic women was a factor all along! The tipping point was witnessing so much new landscape destruction and seeing the same excuses for it as mining and drilling.
LikeLike
I crashed from the stress of being in a very difficult position during the acquisition of my employer, took a sabbatical and studied what was going on in the world, first peak oil, then climate change, then overshoot, then why everyone including myself before the crash, denies everything that matters.
LikeLike
If governments, political parties and powerful vested interests are in denial about overshoot, ecocide and climate change, and take no remedial action, then any discussion about it, is, by its very nature, “political”.
(But I agree at least that the discussion should be limited to these environmental matters, rather than getting side tracked into race relations etc.)
LikeLike
I remember thinking J.C. was a whack job, then I came to trust him.
Today he discounted the Yan paper. Two 2 days ago he spent over an hour explaining why the authors and their theory were credible, and that the paper was a big step forward in explaining the virus. That’s way too big a swing in 2 days.
Whack job it is. Unsubscribed.
LikeLike
TikTok has been in the news a lot lately. Went there for the first time today to see what all the fuss is about. Wow, we are so doomed.
LikeLike
The 2011 book, ‘The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945 ‘ reads like a case study in denial & dogma of the better part of an entire nation and is yet another historical example of doomed humans doubling down on denial as their end draws near.
Review: History — The End, by Ian Kershaw
“Ian Kershaw’s latest book attempts “to understand better how and why the Nazi regime could hold out for so long.” The question has more than academic importance. More people – soldiers and civilians – died in the 10 months covered by this study than in the previous 4½ years of war, and they died horribly – firebombed, shot on death marches from empty concentration camps, killed senselessly by Nazi officials a few hours before they themselves fled the arrival of the Allies.
Germany became, as Kershaw writes, “an immense charnel house in the last months of the Third Reich,” and that story, the rare account of a modern state determined to fight to the last, constitutes the greatest achievement of this remarkable book. Kershaw tells the story of the mass murder and homicidal suicide of Hitler’s Reich in its final days with a mastery of detail so compelling that I could not put it down.”
“The portrait of these madmen, still talking of Germany as a “culture nation” too valuable to be defeated, is one of Kershaw’s finest achievements.
Terror, which became madder and more arbitrary as the regime began to collapse, accounts for part of the hold that Hitler had on the German people, but Kershaw shows that it cannot account for the continuing slavish devotion and obedience. The state bureaucracy functioned to the last. I remember the pay slip issued for SS-Obergruppenführer und General of the Waffen-SS Karl Wolff, with all the deductions and contributions neatly typed, which I saw in the Berlin Document Centre. It was dated May 3, 1945. The Russians had already taken Berlin, a city almost entirely destroyed, and this junior clerical assistant carried out the duties of an orderly state until the end.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-end-by-ian-kershaw/article555011/
“The fact that the regime did hold out to the end – and that the war ended only when Germany was militarily battered into submission, its economy destroyed, its cities in ruins, the country occupied by foreign powers – is historically an extreme rarity. Wars between states in the modern era have usually ended in some kind of negotiated settlement. The ruling elites of a state facing military defeat have generally sued for peace at some point, and eventually, under some duress, reached a territorial agreement, however disadvantageous. The end of the First World War fitted this pattern. The end of the Second was completely different. The rulers of Germany in 1945, knowing the war was lost and complete destruction beckoned, were nevertheless prepared to fight on until their country was practically obliterated.”
“Given the level of repression, together with the immense dislocation in the last months, a revolution from below, as at the end of the First World War, was an impossibility. But terror cannot completely explain the regime’s capacity to fight on. It was not terror that drove on the regime’s elites. Terror does not explain the behaviour of the regime’s ‘paladins’ – both those who shared Hitler’s Götterdämmerung mentality and were ready to see Germany go down in flames, and the far greater number of those seeking to save their own skins. It does not explain the continued functioning of a government bureaucracy, both at central and local levels. Not least, it does not explain the Wehrmacht’s readiness – at any rate the readiness of the Wehrmacht leadership – to continue the fight. Nor, finally, does terror explain the behaviour of those in the regime at different levels prepared to use terror to the very last, even when it served no further rational purpose.
Although after the end of the Cold War the ‘totalitarianism’ theorem underwent something of a renaissance,16 its emphasis upon terror and repression in controlling the ‘total society’ has never regained the ground it held in the early post-war era as an interpretation of the behaviour of ordinary Germans during the Third Reich. On the contrary: recent research has increasingly tended to place the emphasis upon the enthusiastic support of the German people for the Nazi regime, and their willing collaboration and complicity in policies that led to war and genocide.17 ‘One question remains,’ a German writer remarked. ‘What was it actually that drove us to follow [Hitler] into the abyss like the children in the story of the Pied Piper? The puzzle is not Adolf Hitler. We are the puzzle.’18 Such a comment, leaving aside the suggestion of bamboozlement, presumes an essential unity, down to the end, between leader and led.
Whereas the emphasis used to be placed on society and regime in conflict – essentially presuming a tyranny over a mainly reluctant but coerced people – this has shifted to a society in harness with the aims of the regime, largely in tune with and supportive of its racist and expansionist policies, fully behind its war effort.”
– Introduction, The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945
https://b-ok.cc/book/1193476/b54f88
There’s still plenty of denial in Germany & elsewhere by the descendants of Germans of that era. ‘It was Hitler & the Nazis what done it, not Opa & Oma. Tell yourself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very interesting. I’ve never given much thought to the last 10 months of Nazi Germany but it does seem strange when explained.
I think Hitler got into power because the majority of the middle class supported him because they were pissed off about losing most of their wealth to the Weimar hyperinflation. This is why I’m so worried about current central bank policies. It’s much better for everyone to get poorer slowly together than to blow up the money system.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There are multiple reasons. Some are even true in whole or part. Others, like the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh (not comparatively) & ‘stabbed in the back’, are bunk. Some nations & peoples seem to be exceptionally arrogant, stubborn & stupid while simultaneously producing a handful of brilliant people & achievements. Or maybe because of it – riding the coattails effect?
Perhaps there’s a genetic component to the exceptionalist delusion.
“With an estimated size of approximately 44.2 million in 2018, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the United States Census Bureau in its American Community Survey. German Americans account for about one third of the total ethnic German population in the world.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
LikeLike
No doubt there was also some wealth inequality/envy at play. Germany envied the British global empire.
LikeLike
The Siberian Times always provides the most awesomely Doomy photos.
A large new ‘hole’ appears in Gydan tundra, following record-warm Arctic summer – 17 September 2020
“Recently there have been accounts of 17 large crater-like funnels mainly on the Yamal peninsula caused by methane build-ups in thawing permafrost and initially it seemed the giant slump in Gydan had a similar origin.
Shabalin said: ‘Perhaps a funnel with some gases emerged, which is increasingly common throughout the tundra zone of Russia, and we caught the moment when it was filled with thawed soil.’
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/giant-new-hole-appears-in-russian-arctic-200-metres-in-diameter-and-20-metres-deep/
‘My name is Gaia, Mother of Mothers;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I saw that photo the other day and posted it on my FB site. Not that it will make any difference to the mindset of most people who see it. “Oh, that’s interesting….”
LikeLike
Doug Nolan explains why central banks are stuck between a rock and a hard place…
http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2020/09/weekly-commentary-revisiting-coin-in.html
LikeLike
Some nice new videos by Jan Smelik on greenwashing.
h/t Gail Tverberg
LikeLike
Making America great big…
https://desdemonadespair.net/2020/09/u-s-adult-obesity-rate-tops-40-percent-highest-ever-recorded-obesity-is-single-highest-risk-factor-in-covid-19-mortality-thats-extremely-alarming-in-terms-of-it.html
LikeLike
It’s bad, but the article makes no sense. Mississippi has the highest rate at just under 41% and the national rate is 42%. Is that data comparing apples to apples?
LikeLike
You’re right, it is confusing. This might explain it.
LikeLike
I monitor which books are most popular on torrent sites for a clue into public sentiment.
How to Grow Your Food by Jon Clift and 1984 by George Orwell were near the top of the list in August.
LikeLike
A Hunger for Certainty
Your brain craves certainty and avoids uncertainty like it’s pain
“One of the more useful insights that emerged for me from five years of interviewing neuroscientists was an understanding of the brain’s own goals. When I began to see what it is the brain seems to want, many aspects of the world started to make much more sense.
There are five goals that seem to be very important to the brain (not including the basic goal of keeping you alive, and physical goals like maintaining food and water etc.) These five goals form a framework I call the SCARF model. Last week I wrote about one of these goals in a post on Status. This week I will write about the need for certainty. It turns out your brain craves certainty in a similar way, and using similar circuits, for how we crave food, sex and other primary rewards. Information is rewarding.
A sense of uncertainty about the future generates a strong threat or ‘alert’ response in your limbic system. Your brain detects something is wrong, and your ability to focus on other issues diminishes. Your brain doesn’t like uncertainty – it’s like a type of pain, something to be avoided. Certainty on the other hand feels rewarding, and we tend to steer toward it, even when it might be better for us to remain uncertain.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/your-brain-work/200910/hunger-certainty
LikeLiked by 1 person
Matt Taibbi on the effects of Varki’s MORT theory, without knowing that’s what he’s talking about.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era-00f
LikeLike
Kurt Cobb on our new normal.
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-new-normal-has-been-postponed-and.html
LikeLike
Long time lurker on this site. Lurking down island from you in Nanaimo. First time having something to add to the discussion, we seem to have a lot of the same opinions and view a lot of the same sites. Richard Heinberg mentions Varki and Browders Denial theory in the second part of this article. https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-329-avalanche Doom or denial: Is there another path?
LikeLike
Hi Doug, welcome. It’s nice to know there’s someone nearby that sees the same things. I know no one in the Comox Valley that shares my views.
It’s rare to see Varki’s MORT theory mentioned anywhere, which is very strange given that MORT explains so much about human uniqueness and the insanity we swim in. I speculate that denial of denial is the strongest form of denial.
I read Heinberg’s essay when he published it and left this comment on his site:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-07-24/doom-or-denial-is-there-another-path/#comment-5013791804
Notice that there is not a single comment about the profundity of Varki’s theory. Everyone seems to have missed the most important thing that Heinberg said. I even wonder if Heinberg really understood the implications of what he was writing.
LikeLike
A new limerick today from BenjaminTheDonkey.
https://benjaminthedonkey-limericksofdoom.blogspot.com/2020/09/might-makes-right.html
LikeLike
“The vast majority of Plandemic pimps are western, white, male & conservative with the majority of them being American & there is big conservative money, political-business, funding much of the ‘grassroots movements’ (astroturfing) & leaders (shills) “
A Chinese virologist claimed the coronavirus was ‘intentionally’ released. Turns out, she works for a group led by Steve Bannon.
“But a closer look at Yan and her coauthors’ work shows they’re affiliated with a pair of nonprofits based in New York City, the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, that were led by the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon before his arrest in August.
Neither organization has any history of publishing scientific or medical research, and the new paper has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists.”
https://news.yahoo.com/chinese-virologist-claimed-coronavirus-intentionally-150200793.html
LikeLike
But but but J.C. spent over an hour confirming the authors were credible and explaining the paper line by line and then concluding it made the best case to date for the Wuhan lab origin. Then 2 days later J.C. tossed the paper in the trash. I damaged my credibility with a family member by vouching for J.C. and the paper. J.C.’s a fucking whack job.
LikeLike
I’m confused. What do you think is the origin of the virus?
LikeLike
It’s zoonotic, so from stupid insatiable apes killing, chopping, burning, stripping, paving/asking for it.
If it was proven to be tweaked & jacked in a lab, it would come as no surprise.
I DON’T KNOW – the 3 hardest words to say.
Not that hard. If one wishes to be as intellectually honest as possible then make friends with I DON’T KNOW.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. I don’t know either.
LikeLike
Most experts think that bats are the natural hosts of Covid-19. According to some virologists the raccoon dog is the most likely intermediate (transient) host for transmission of to humans, as raccoon dogs are widely bred in China in fur farming. Raccoon dogs can carry many viruses, such as rabies, and introduction of the raccoon dog to Europe is thought to have brought with it infected ticks that introduced the Asian tick-borne meningoencephalitis virus.
There are too many raccoon dogs on this planet because of fur farming and of course too many humans, These problems are concentrated in China. Perhaps this is the origin of the virus. Just my 2 cents.
LikeLike
Thanks yes, A few experts also think the bat virus was collected in the wild and then studied and enhanced in the Wuhan lab.
LikeLike
Today was the first day in quite a few that we didn’t have heavy smoke from the meth lab in our basement so I went for a hike in Strathcona Park’s Paradise Meadows.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Alice Friedemann today looks at the relationship between peak oil, mineral availability, and EV’s.
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/ev-cars-and-utility-scale-energy-storage-batteries-are-not-likely-to-materialize/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tim Morgan’s essay today is mostly about genetic reality denial, but he doesn’t know that’s his topic.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/09/21/181-the-castaways-dilemma-part-one/
LikeLike
Tim Morgan on whether population growth can restart economic growth as some economists believe.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/09/21/181-the-castaways-dilemma-part-one/#comment-21843
LikeLike
“‘conventional’ interpretation cannot recognise.” That’s an overly kind way of calling economists fucking retards.
I like mine raw, like sushi.
Speaking of raw honesty, I was struck by it moments ago on r/collapse….
Coping
Need Hope (self.collapse)
submitted 39 minutes ago by julioorange
Where can I find articles and studies that show us doing the right thing, even in the face of so much shit. I’ve been on pair with environmental news amongst other current events and I just can’t take it. Where can I see hope, where can I see that good things are still bring done?
Sorry for being vague.
Desperate, but honest. This poor SOB is begging for some spin to help induce denial or mass minimization. Honestly asking for help lying to himself.
Kid needs a pint of Hans Rosling & a couple of Steve Pinker shooters to calm down right quick.
LikeLike
LOL!
One of the wonders of the world is how stupid economists are about their own area of expertise. There are dim electrical engineers, but all of us understand the basics of voltage and current. Economists understand neither money nor wealth. It’s fucking unbelievable. I can’t explain it without Varki’s MORT theory.
With regard to that desperate SOB, you’ll probably say I’m out of my mind but I feel gratitude every day for plentiful tasty food, a small but warm and dry home, and a regular walk in nature. Today I split firewood at the farm I help. My muscles are sore but it feels good.
LikeLike
The Fragile World Hypothesis: Complexity, Fragility, and Systemic Existential Risk
Highlights
Complex systems are often fragile, and interrelationships make collapses and cascading failures, increasingly dangerous.
There is a possible class of existential risk from systemic fragility, related to Bostrom’s Vulnerable World Hypothesis.
A new “inevitable technological fragility” hypothesis is proposed, specifying how collapse could be unavoidable.
The hypothesis is a speculation, rather than an expectation, and the conditions under which it is true are explored.
Introduction
“The risk of humanity’s possible extinction could take various forms, from diseases to runaway climate change to asteroid strikes. It is widely agreed that either extinction or global catastrophic risks leading to most humans dying would be bad, even if the exact relative importance of avoiding extinction is unclear. Schubert, Caviola, and Faber (2019) It does seem to be the case, however, that technology or other modern developments are far more likely to cause human extinction than natural events. Snyder-Beattie, Ord, and Bonsall (2019)”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328720300604
IMO the humans are a ‘natural event’. Someday, long after we’re gone, alien scientists will come to earth & study it. Our short stay here will be represented by a wafer thin stratum that they’ll name the ‘Anthropocene Minimum’. A term they’ll also use to mock our intelligence when they pencil us into the Fermi’s Paradox Big Book.
Homo sapiens – 300,000 year run with 99% of their impact represented at the very top of the stratum (1945-2025-??).
LikeLike
“from diseases to runaway climate change to asteroid strikes”
Articles like this almost never mention the only risk that has 100% certainty: non-renewable resource depletion. Let’s talk about everything except the one thing that’s certain, and the one thing we can’t do anything about, except breed less. Reality denial in full view.
I watched this video today on the solid rocket boosters used by the Space Shuttle. It made me think about complexity and how amazing it is that some clever monkeys did not blow up the Shuttle many more times.
LikeLike
“the one thing we can’t do anything about, except breed less.”
Overpopulation is baked in & so is the remedy (die-back).
I don’t see breeding less as a choice. Survival & reproduction are what life does. Evolution & the MPP are non negotiable.
Ever stop & contemplate why population control is the #1 taboo subject? The few scientists who have attempted to feature it (eg:Paul Erlich) were/are attacked & ridiculed as neo eugenicists (Nazis, Commies, misanthropists) & fatalists.
Erlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ book came out in 1968 & the topic is just as taboo today & possibly even more so.
How many other once taboo topics from that time are now openly discussed? How about homosexuality which was considered a mental illness and only removed from The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973-74. Now LGBTQ is corporatized & mainstream. Netflix even has a LGBTQ subgenera drop down, but no War subgenera (on a streaming site full of war movies & TV shows no less).
Child molesters & rapists, including the enabling Catholic church, were a taboo topic in 68, but it’s a wide open subject today, but population control is still a fringe & risky subject that could cost one professionally & socially. Artists, via film, music, graphic comics, etc are pretty much the only profession who regularly bring it up (same as it ever was & shall be with taboo).
I say the humans have as much choice in most things as I have in when & why my next erection will happen (it’ll probably go unused like most of them have).
Much denial (and frustration) is born of the great human illusion of choice.
For one to believe in freewill & choice, first they must believe ‘the self” is also not an illusion. Who or what else would be making these supposed choices if not the self?
LikeLike
George Mobus popped up to say hello today…
https://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2020/09/autumnal-equinox-greetings.html
LikeLike
Another limerick from BenjaminTheDonkey today…
https://benjaminthedonkey-limericksofdoom.blogspot.com/2020/09/humans-uniquely.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
B the D knows how to deal.
LikeLike
Mac10 with his take on denial today…
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/09/feels-like-fall-2008.html
LikeLike
The Dying Russians
Between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5% — a rate unheard of in Europe since World War II.
“The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.
Back in the United States after a trip to Russia, I cried on a friend’s shoulder. I was finding all this death not simply painful but impossible to process. “It’s not like there is a war on,” I said.
“But there is,” said my friend, a somewhat older and much wiser reporter than I. “This is what civil war actually looks like. “It’s not when everybody starts running around with guns. It’s when everybody starts dying.”
“Gone, too, was the radiant future: communist slogans were replaced with capitalist advertising that didn’t speak to the masses, who were in no position to over-consume. For those over forty, the message of the new era was that no one—not even the builders of an imaginary future—needed them anymore.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-dying-russians?utm_source=pocket-newtab
‘Deaths Of Despair’ Examines The Steady Erosion Of U.S. Working-Class Life
“For white Americans between 45 and 54, average life expectancy was no longer increasing; in fact, it was actually declining — in a pattern seen almost nowhere else on Earth. If increases in life expectancy had continued at the same rate, some 600,000 more Americans would now be alive, Case and Deaton write.
This reversal has come almost entirely among white Americans without a four-year college degree, who make up 38 percent of the U.S. working-age population. “Something is making life worse, especially for less educated whites,” Case and Deaton write.
Much of the decline stems from higher rates of suicide, opioid overdoses and alcohol-related illnesses — the “deaths of despair” that Case and Deaton refer to. Americans “are drinking themselves to death, or poisoning themselves with drugs, or shooting or hanging themselves.”
They’re also no longer making progress against heart disease, due to higher rates of obesity and tobacco use. While U.S. smoking rates have declined precipitously over the years, they remain stubbornly high in states such as Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee. Smoking rates are actually rising among middle-aged white women who lack a Bachelor’s degree.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817687042/deaths-of-despair-examines-the-steady-erosion-of-u-s-working-class-life
Create the right conditions & the neo ‘useless eaters’ will kill themselves regardless of communist or capitalist ideology because nothing is more important/necessary to the hyper social naked ape as belonging. Having no place in their society is a living death.
If the ever growing legions of no longer useful slaves rise up & slaughter the overlords & their henchmen (instead of each other), file it under self defence. 100% justified here on planet meat grinder.
LikeLiked by 1 person