Amerika

~~~

I will be on Culture War Radio tonight at 9 PM CST.

We will probably discuss a variety of things, including the paradox of civilization in Leftist thought:

The only way out of our tribal information and thought bubbles, is to break down our beliefs about the world and each other that keep us separated. A “liberal” perspective does that by asking that we take a step back and reconsider most of our assumptions, except for these two:

1) No One Gets the Final Say On What Is True

2) No One Has Personal Authority

These rules make us equal in determining what’s true and reasonable. They are the building blocks of science and reasoning. They require that we prove to each other what should constitute fact and what kind of arguments are justified. Over time, we build upon agreements to establish what we thereafter consider to be a shared source of knowledge, but nothing is beyond future revision.

Like all things Leftist, it ignores the question of order above that of the individual and in doing so, cedes that order to the lowest common human denominator. Even more, it relies on the idea of “objective” truth, something that I entirely reject, just like the idea of pure subjectivity (“free will”).

It follows the notion of individualism, which takes many forms, including:

“… the most fundamental right of self-determination is the individual’s right to live his life as he chooses, as long as he does not violate any other person’s right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. In other words, the core principle underlying any free society is the right of self-ownership. The individual is not the property of the state, any collective group, or any other individual. Without this principle, freedom is unsustainable in the long run.”

First note: we have set up a false target here, or at least a surrogate, in that we are talking about “freedom” and not “good.” Second, we notice immediately that this is a formula for atomization and granularization, prohibiting not just civilization, but culture. When each is dedicated to himself, shared activities become voluntary only, which means lowest common denominator since people will choose only what benefits, flatters, or pleases the individual, and most people are short-term thinkers of limited scope.

Even more, we have to accept that “freedom” is a paradoxical notion like “equality”:

“Those people not wearing masks in public are violating the fundamental right (right to life and health) of other citizens,” observed the bench, also comprising justices RS Reddy and MR Shah.

We could only have “freedom” if we each lived on our own planets and had no interactions with each other. The point of society is that we give up some freedoms found in nature in exchange for some benefits. Wearing masks makes sense if it limits the virus, and if the virus is a threat, and if some better option does not exist. That option does exist: the Vietnam plan, which aggressively contact-traced people and forced them to stay home. This limits the freedom of some to an extreme degree because they are dangerous, and leaves untouched the “freedom” of others. Or should we, as is common in traditionalism, talk instead about paired duties and privileges? Hierarchy solves the question of legalized anarchy a.k.a. “freedom” and legalized parasitism a.k.a. “equality.”

Perhaps the lesson of the twenty-first century is that we can no longer rely on tokens to be reality. There are no universal truths, values, or communications, just like there is no shared human reality where things can be proven and established for all time. If God is watching, He knows, but He (or my preferred formula, the gods) knows this as an individual; the rest of us are not magically receiving these transmissions, although socially speaking, we like to think that there is an “objective” reality of this nature. More accurately, there is an external reality which is consistent, but the moment we put it into tokens, we are thinking in terms of those tokens, which are a narrower set of data than reality itself. This means that we gradually lead ourselves away from the accurate and into neurotic analysis of those tokens, whether freedom, equality, tolerance, pacifism, compromise, or even basic utilitarianism. Humanity self-deceives by its focus on social values, like the perception of a shared mental space which is “objective,” instead of focusing on the only objective tendency we can find, which is that humans observe according to their abilities, experience, and degree of honesty, creating token-perceptions which are both objective and subjective, and these can never be shared, only gestured at with appearances, words, symbols, and the perception of shared feeling. We are alone; we can only work together toward goals, not in deference to some shared hive-mind. Nihil omnis est.

~~~

• Leaked files expose mass infiltration of UK firms by Chinese Communist Party
  

  While there is no evidence that anyone on the party membership list has spied for China – and many sign up simply to boost their career prospects – experts say it defies credulity that some are not involved in espionage. Responding to the findings, an alliance of 30 MPs last night said they would be tabling an urgent question about the issue in the Commons.

  It turns out that this also reveals the systematic nature of Communist intrusion into the West:

  “Communist party branches have been set up inside western companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members – who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to the Chairman, the president himself,” she said.

  “Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies”.

  Grab your copy of the database here.

  Sure is funny that this leak happened right now. drinks tea

• Top Indian official blames country being ‘too much of a democracy’ for slowing down reforms
  

  “So tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context, we are too much of a democracy. For the first time, the government has had the courage and the determination to carry out very hard-headed reforms across sectors… mining, coal, labour, agriculture… these are very, very difficult reforms” video of the event shows Mr Kant as saying.

  “You needed a huge amount of political determination and administrative will to carry out these reforms which are being done.”

  Democracy rewards fear of optics. People do only what is inoffensive, which means that decay persists when changes are relatively easy and would prevent it.

• African leopards: iconic big cats survive mounting threats
  

  What is known is the multitude of threats facing leopards — the same human factors pushing many other African wildlife species closer to extinction: habitat loss and fragmentation, prey depletion, human-wildlife conflict, and the illegal wildlife trade. It is believed that between 1970 and 2005, leopard populations in West and East Africa fell over 50 percent due to decreases in prey base. It is also estimated that in the last three generations alone (about 22 years), the leopard population has fallen over 30 percent. Humans are putting an incredible strain on leopards.

  A recent study found that in overexploited leopard populations (those in which humans caused over half of the deaths), the killing of males upset the social structure and led to greater inbreeding — threatening the genetic makeup of the offspring. When adult males are no longer present to force younger males to disperse, the young males stay close. Then, siblings are more likely to mate, and the gene pool, in turn, is more likely to suffer, leaving leopards more susceptible to genetic defects and illnesses.

  This is how you kill off a population: reduce its range, forcing it into inbreeding. No wonder the Left/China want immigration, overpopulation, consumerism, high taxes, and other ways of killing off normal life. They want to kill you off and replace you with mixed-race NPCs.

• Drug Reverses Age-Related Mental Decline Within Days
  

  “The data suggest that the aged brain has not permanently lost essential cognitive capacities, as was commonly assumed, but rather that these cognitive resources are still there but have been somehow blocked, trapped by a vicious cycle of cellular stress,” added Peter Walter, PhD, a professor in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “Our work with ISRIB demonstrates a way to break that cycle and restore cognitive abilities that had become walled off over time.”

  Most people, if faced with immortality, would kill themselves out of terror. What will they do with another twenty years? Probably television.

• Five key genes linked to severe COVID-19 found, suggesting drug targets
  

  The genes – called IFNAR2, TYK2, OAS1, DPP9 and CCR2 – partially explain why some people become desperately sick with COVID-19, while others are not affected, Baillie said.

  Instead of COVID tests, we need to genetically sequence this wasteland and send away the non-WASPs.

• Tasmanian devils claw their way back from extinction
  

  Spreading from animal to animal when they bite each other, the transmissible cancer has killed most of the devils in Tasmania, their only home for millennia. Some researchers saw extinction as inevitable. Now, a new study suggests the remaining 40,000 devils have reached a détente with the cancer. Until recently it was spreading exponentially, like the pandemic coronavirus among humans in many parts of the world. But geneticists calculate that each infected devil now transmits tumor cells to just one—or fewer—other devils. Along with two other recent studies, the findings hint that changes in behavior—and possibly the emergence of less virulent tumor cells—may be taming the cancer’s spread, and that desperate efforts to breed the devils in captivity may not be needed.

  Similarly, we can turn this world around, and make humanity change from failure into good guys.

• Giuliani doubles down on Jewish Soros comments, saying the philanthropist uses Judaism as ‘a shield and a sword’
  

  Informed that many American Jews are secular but still identify as Jewish, Giuliani quipped that he was “just confused on the definition and using a religion you don’t seem to accept as a shield and a sword against all criticism. If he’s an atheist he rejects the religion but accepts the ethnicity, is that it?”

  You can only have loyalty to your group; your group is defined by what makes you most unique. In a pluralistic society, then, everyone has dual loyalties.

  • Christians
  • Scientologists
  • Irish
  • Southern Europeans
  • Eastern Europeans
  • Asians
  • Africans
  • Semites (Arabs/Jews)
  • Multinational corporations
  • Leftists (Communists, Democrats, Libertarians, Anarchists)
  • New Agers
  • Prosperity Gospel people

  The only nation that is not actively self-destructing is the one that has a single race, ethnicity, cultural religion, and shared goal.

• ‘Autoantibodies’ may be driving severe Covid cases, study shows
  

  The scientists compared immune responses in patients and uninfected people and discovered scores of aberrant antibodies in the former.These blocked antiviral defences, wiped out helpful immune cells, and attacked the body on multiple fronts, from the brain, blood vessels and liver to connective tissue and the gastrointestinal tract.

  We called it “COVAIDS” for a reason, not just because it was overhyped just like AIDS was, but because it is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune diseases seem to consist of viral infections that dupe the body into attacking parts of itself. Usually the solution is to strengthen the immune system, paradoxically, but medicine tends to favor suppressing it, which means that the “cured” person just dies of cancer later.

• Details revealed of secret deal that gave Chinese spies free rein in Switzerland
  

  Unlike more than 50 similar deals Switzerland has signed with other countries, it was never published by the government and was not even publicly acknowledged until August.

  Compromise this vast requires decades of investment not in spying per se, but in buying politicians, bureaucrats, experts, and academes. Wonder how many summer homes were funded by China. Do you see the high cost of diversity yet? With the death of culture comes the death of social trust, at which point you might as well sell out your nation, since it has sold you out already.

• Grooming gangs continuing to abuse children in northern England, victims and campaigners warn
  

  Whistle-blower and former detective at Greater Manchester Police, Maggie Oliver, has told Sky News that she’s helped 2,000 victims in the last year alone who have been “fobbed off by the authorities”.

  Pluralism proves to be an illusion. If you place different groups in the same society, they compete for dominance of the power structure (and without one, they erase each other with genocide). This means that diversity means war, and rape is a weapon of war. Expect that we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg.

• University of Evansville admin proposes cutting quarter of the faculty, nixing 17 majors
  

  The music, electrical engineering and computer science, and philosophy and religion departments would be terminated under the proposal, along with their 12 associated majors.

  Colleges have become certification farms and since college degrees now carry the weight that high school degrees did in the 1980s, the goal has become easy majors that can graduate people quickly while they work nominal jobs. With the decline in Chinese and other foreign students, the giant free money chain that kept universities going has disappeared, so they are cutting back to only offer the majors that crank through easy diplomas.

• Mexican experts find 119 more skulls on Aztec ‘trophy rack’
  

  A five-year dig under old buildings near Mexico City’s Templo Mayor Aztec ruins has so far found a total of 603 skulls. They are believed to date to between 1486 and 1502.

  This was late in the Aztec empire, during its decline. Normally, the Aztec and Maya cultures practiced eugenics by sacrificing the deformed, retarded, insane, and idiotic. This let those families say goodbye to these little genetic boo-boos by giving them a socially revered status as sacrifice. Only the priests knew the truth, which was kill the weak.

• Bangladesh is moving Rohingyas to a remote island (archive
  

  If the relocation brings more attention to the Rohingyas’ plight, that might be a silver lining, speculates John Quinley of Fortify Rights, an advocacy group. “Bangladesh is right, calling out the international community for not pushing hard enough on Myanmar,” he says.

  Diversity not working anywhere. Groups which are not of the majority need to be relocated. No one wants them, since they know that diversity means instability.

• Professor’s claim China’s friends ‘at the top’ influence US policy goes viral after Donald Trump and Fox News seize on it
  

  He said the Chinese government’s friends are mostly investors in Wall Street, who have “had a very profound influence over America‘s domestic and foreign affairs since the 1970s”.

  Back in the 1970s, the moron MBAs who always prefer more warm bodies to informed consumers decided that China was the future, and both invested and allowed themselves to be bought. When we get the list of these people, we will need to cancel their citizenships and exile them to China, where they will become the Kung Pao “Chicken.”

• China boosts nuclear strike capability in face of growing rivalry with US, report says
  

  The Chinese military has increased the number of ballistic missile brigades by around a third in the past three years to enhance its nuclear strike capabilities amid escalating tensions with the US, a report has concluded.

  Cold War times again!

• Poll shows Northern Ireland majority against united Ireland
  

  A majority of voters in Northern Ireland would oppose the region leaving the United Kingdom to form a united Ireland if a referendum were held tomorrow, according to a poll published by the Belfast Telegraph newspaper on Tuesday.

  Funny how these articles leave out the ethnic dimension. Northern Ireland is dominated by the Scots-Irish, or ethnic Scots, and they do not want union with the ethnic Irish, who they view as a lesser group. In the meantime, American Scots-Irish frequently identify as Irish and then wonder why people start speaking slowly in monosyllables to them.

• Angela Merkel calls for creation of European health union
  

  “We strive for a strategically positioned European healthcare industry which will, in full respect of the member states’ responsibility for their social security and healthcare systems, upgrade the European dimension of healthcare and reduce EU dependency,” the text of the initiative read.

  Bureaucrats, like MBAs, operate by method alone and have no goals other than a temporary increase in popularity or shareholder value. Consequently, they always centralize and standardize in order to eliminate complaints and increase control. This then backfires by expanding the range of cases, creating a lower new lowest common denominator. Repeat until you hit third-world style subsistence status.

• AMA: Racism is a threat to public health
  

  “As physicians and leaders in medicine, we are committed to optimal health for all, and are working to ensure all people and communities reach their full health potential,” Dr. Edwards said. “Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation.”

  Everything Leftists touch becomes a vehicle for racism. This decision allows governments to justify interning “racists” and forcing them into therapy to change their ways, probably with psychoactive drugs.

• Google CEO Apologizes, Vows To Restore Trust After Black Scientist’s Ouster
  

  Pichai went on to say that Google needs to accept responsibility for a prominent Black female leader leaving Google on bad terms.

  Under individualism, it becomes the duty of the collective to intervene any time someone experiences a bad outcome, even if by their own actions. Otherwise, the optics look bad and the herd revolts, destroying whoever is in power. Mob-rule may be the most insane form of government yet but, because it avoids tackling real problems, it is allowed to fully decay before people notice that their society has been stolen from them by incompetents.

• Calls to boycott all Chinese-owned companies in Australia grow
  

  But now, attention has turned to other “Australian” companies that are fully or partially controlled by foreign interests.

  Targeting collaborators will quickly force out the companies that China has compromised. If that happens, China will find it very hard to buy new allies and control the West as apparently it has for decades.

• Supply Chains and Demand
  

  The COVID-19 crisis has revealed that interconnectedness brings benefits as well as risks to us all. In order to address some of these risks, supply chains will need to be rethought, with more emphasis put on supplier diversification, domestic production, and stockpiling.

  Globalism dies now that we have seen national interests come into conflict with one another. The idea of a global village makes sense only if we share the same goal, like worldwide Leftism, but as people defect from being ruled by the Left/China Axis, the internationalist dream collapses yet again as it did after WW1.

• World carbon dioxide emissions drop 7% in pandemic-hit 2020
  

  The Global Carbon Project, an authoritative group of dozens of international scientists who track emissions, calculated that the world will have put 37 billion U.S. tons (34 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide in the air in 2020. That’s down from 40.1 billion US tons (36.4 billion metric tons) in 2019, according a study published Thursday in the journal Earth System Science Data.

  Only seven percent? This means that the problem is our number of people, not our activities which can be stopped by lockdown, poverty, and world socialism.

• What Is Your Time Worth?
  

  But Lyft’s data has information on the actual decisions that people make about how they value their time. If Lyft makes you wait five minutes more for your ride, will you take it? What if it charges you more for a shorter wait? Lyft has an interest in answering these questions because it wants to fine-tune their pricing strategy to make the most money.

  What about hours on the job, time spent filling out paperwork and waiting at the DMV, hours blown on commuting, and the endless time involved in finding and configuring gadgets that a hostile industry makes deliberately obsolete? At even a low per-hour price, it becomes more efficient to live on a homestead and spend less time on job and society, and more on family, friends, culture, community, religion, and self.

• Michigan court says companies don’t have to serve customers who are gay
  

  State Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray in a summary judgement this week ruled that Michigan’s definitive anti-discrimination law, the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976 (ELCRA), doesn’t include protections for sexual orientation. The same ruling found that it does, however, protect based on gender identity.

  This is their way of ramping up the drive to include homosexuals, women, and transgenders in the affirmative action program. Soon, all but a few employees will be affirmative action hires, everything will cost a ton of money in order to support those people, and the non-political employees will do all the work, not have families, and die young.

• Goldman escalates diversity push at portfolio companies; activists want more
  

  After pushing companies in its investment portfolio to include at least one woman director since 2019, Goldman Sachs next year wants boards to have a second director from an under-represented background, Catherine Winner, head of stewardship efforts for the $1.8 trillion unit, said in an interview.

  For that second spot, Goldman’s definition of diversity includes gender identity, sexual orientation and under-represented race and ethnic groups, and a board with two white women would meet the standard.

  More affirmative action, probably prompted by China. They look forward to attacking a society where most of the employees are selected for their race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, and few of them do anything effectively.

• Decomposing mink in Denmark ‘may have contaminated groundwater’
  

  Decomposing mink buried in mass graves in Denmark after being culled because of coronavirus fears may have contaminated the groundwater, local radio has reported, as parliament announced a commission to investigate the government’s actions.

  Recap:

  1. We do not actually need mink; this is a luxury product featured most commonly in rap videos.
  2. We are in a state of panic because of COVID-19, mainly because we do not trust our health authorities, governments, or most importantly, fellow citizens. When diversity destroys organic culture, only absolute fools have loyalty to anything but themselves; atomization spreads like a virus.
  3. We react with stupid extremity and cruelty by simply killing all of the mink instead of seeing which ones survive, producing COVID-19-resistant mink.
  4. We find that in our panic, and at the hands of our nervous optics-terrified bureaucrats, a decision was made to “do it quickly” rather than do it right, so now millions of rotting mink are putrefying the water supply.

  Democracy is an obese, hypertensive, diabetic, and generally unhealthy patient who now thinks someone has COVID-coughed on him. The real cause of his forthcoming death originates long ago in the conditions before his infection. That is what scares us about COVID-19; it is not that nature designed a killer virus, but that we have become weak through the loss of natural abilities as we adapt instead of bureaucratic-social-consumer society, and now nature has come to present the bill.

• Co-op facial recognition trial raises privacy concerns
  

  The system, from start-up Facewatch, alerts workers if someone enters the store who had a past record of “theft or anti-social behaviour”.

  The great secret of technology is that our laws have nothing to do with how it is used. If it can be used, it will be, and if we make it illegal, someone else will take over and get ahead using it, no matter how inhumane or insane it is. The same idiots who wanted us to throw aside nuclear weapons so that we could be conquered by those who did not abolish their thermonuclear programs now want us to pledge not to use facial recognition technology. However, whichever store uses it will be able to sell prices at a lower cost as it gradually filters out all of the shoplifters, drunks, and other assorted riff-raff. Soon you are going to pay your bill with a facial photograph. If they catch you shoplifting, they will not call the law; they will just list you in the ejection database. There will be no appeals. The only way around this is to cease our complex legal systems and start ejecting criminals from our society, at which point we can go back to organic culture and trust-based systems. However, doing so will kick off a race and class war, so instead democracy and bureaucracy will punt as usual, which means that you will have to get used to facial recognition in stores. In fact, since no laws really cover this yet, it is probably already there.

  There was a speed metal band from the 1980s, name long forgotten, who had lyrics like this reconstruction:

  The killer is coming; he is coming for you
  He knows how you think and where you will hide
  He knows how you panic and what you will do
  In your fortress of mind he is already inside
  As death approaches, there is nothing to do

  The song had a dreamlike, detached quality with almost warm melodies, creating a sense of inexorable acceptance and through that, implicit but not demonstrated hopelessness. The original was almost certainly better than what I have placed here, but modern citizens are slowly awakening to the fact that the killer is unstoppable, and he comes in the form of technology, civilization breakdown, and race war. If an LA Riots style event happens, even that AR-15 you have will not do much. When seventy guys charge your front door, you might get twenty of them if you are Rambo on nootropics, but even then, the remaining fifty will have fun beating you to death, raping your family, killing them, and taking everything you have, especially your fancy gun collection. Accelerationists BTFO as usual.

• Cambridge University votes to safeguard free speech
  

  The academics, headed by reader in philosophy Arif Ahmed, put forward an amendment saying that free speech should operate without “fear of intolerance”.

  This was backed by Professor Ross Anderson who argued that requiring “respect” would undermine the “freedom to question”, with academics being afraid to examine controversial views in case they were reported for being disrespectful to the opinions of others.

  “It’s our duty to tolerate colleagues even when they say things that we consider foolish, when we find their views offensive we should point that out politely. We should not be running to the vice chancellor asking him to censor them,” said Prof Anderson.

  You can have freedom of speech if you have only one ethnic group. The instant you have multiple groups, freedom of speech becomes a weapon between the groups. Our society is both egalitarian and pluralistic, which means that it prohibits attacks on lower groups only, which means that anyone can say whatever nasties they want about the rich, White, male, beautiful, high-IQ, and so on with impunity.

• Texas lawmaker plans to file bill calling for referendum on secession from US
  

  “The federal government is out of control and does not represent the values of Texans. That is why I am committing to file legislation this session that will allow a referendum to give Texans a vote for the State of Texas to reassert its status as an independent nation,” Biedermann said.

  A bit overdue, if anything. Secession means no American superpower, so China wins that way, too, but when socialists take over the nation, all you can do is escape. However, if Texas does not then immediately ditch all the federal entitlements programs, it will drown in illegal immigrants.

• Noise and Light Pollution From Humans Alter Bird Reproduction
  

  Bird populations have declined by about 30 percent in the last few decades. Scientists and land managers seeking to understand what caused the decline and reverse the trend had largely overlooked the effects of noise and light pollution, until recent studies suggested that these stressors could harm certain types of birds.

  No doubt they are not the only species affected. Living in the country where the skies are really dark and the nights really silent has some advantages. No wonder people are fleeing to the exurbs, which like all commuter towns, are pretty quiet after six.

~~~

~~~

• U.S. blacklists Chinese crime boss, others in anti-corruption sanctions
  

  The statement said Wan was a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a largely ceremonial advisory body – a claim refuted by Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

  Turns out the Chinese collaborate with Mexican cartels already:

  Still, U.S. law enforcement officials told Reuters that Chinese “money brokers” such as Gan represent one of the most worrisome new threats in their war on drugs. They say small cells of Chinese criminals have upended the way narcotics cash is laundered and are displacing the Mexican and Colombian money men that have long dominated the trade.

  It would end up being very interesting if Chinese money was funding Mexican cartels who then laundered their drug money by paying it as bribes. After all, Democrats (and Aldrich Ames) prefer cash in suitcases, not check form.

• Antibiotics created superbug at poultry farms in China, study finds
  

  Almost every strain of E coli – which can cause severe food poisoning – found at some farms in Shandong province had become resistant to multiple drugs because of the high levels of antibiotics being used.

  Humans do not like to think about time, but it affects all that we do. A miracle method today will be counteracted by nature tomorrow; a high-selling product today will be a thin-margin utility tomorrow. We have developed nothing for many years, only refining the knowledge of the past, and now we are paying as the counteractions and business cycle declines hit us. Modern society has been hit and it is going down.

• Pompeo unloads on US universities for China ties
  

  Pompeo took aim at universities across the U.S., claiming they refused to address the Trump administration’s concerns about China’s attempts to influence students and academics. He specifically called out the president of MIT, alleging he refused to host Pompeo’s speech, and a senior official at the University of Washington over a case involving a Chinese student.

  Follow the money. In the grand tradition of Asiatic tyrants, China demands obedience before you get access to its markets or its students. This means that anyone doing significant business with China is compromised and hostile, and we are going to have to send them all to Venezuela.

• Joe Biden’s son Hunter says he is under investigation over taxes
  

  The investigation is being conducted by federal prosecutors in Delaware. US media quote sources saying it relates to business dealings with foreign countries including China.

  Team Biden allowed this to be released; why? Trump was going to release it first, so they decided to downplay the story so that “China” was not in the headline.

• PFAS Chemical Associated With Severe Covid-19
  

  PFBA is one of a class of industrial compounds, often called “forever chemicals,” that has come to contaminate soil, water, and food around the world. It has been presented as relatively safe because it stays in human blood for much less time than some of the other compounds in the class and is a shorter molecule. Both traits are thought to be indications of its innocuousness. PFBA, which was created by 3M, is based on a four-carbon chain and is gone from human blood in a matter of days.

  Laboratory thinking, like B/A tests, involves looking at a situation before an intervention and measuring a factor afterwards. This often misses the secondary effects. What do we do when all of our modern miracles turn out toxic?

• EU-wide ban would save nature from 500,000 tonnes of microplastics
  

  The agency has proposed a microplastics ban on products such as cosmetics, cleaning and laundry products, fertilisers, plant protection products and seed coatings, but adding the largest single source of emissions – turf pitches – to the list implies a significantly higher total cost, it concluded.

  One would find it hard to oppose this. More significantly, perhaps, we should look at synthetic fibers and the plastic packaging that inevitably becomes strewn across the landscape. Could we cut back on plastics? The only people who benefit from really cheap things are “the poor.” They would suffer, perhaps. Then again, suffering a little up front and not dying of cancers in a world without wildlife might not be so bad.

• Japan taps AI to boost birth rate slump
  

  Around half of the nation’s 47 prefectures offer matchmaking services and some of them have already introduced AI systems, according to the Cabinet Office.

  Another distraction for idiots by bureaucrats. The problem is that people are miserable and alienated, not that they cannot find each other. They have no hope because modern society is so ugly and time-consuming.

• Human-made materials now equal weight of all life on Earth
  

  While the mass of Earth’s life forms stands at about 1.1 trillion metric tons (1.2 trillion U.S. tons) and has not changed much in recent years, the so-called “anthropogenic mass” of artificial materials is growing exponentially. The mass of everything people have built and made, from concrete pavements and glass-and-metal skyscrapers to plastic bottles, clothes, and computers, is now roughly equal to the mass of living things on Earth and could surpass that this year, according to research published today in Nature.

  Slow clap. The signs of us reaching a tipping point are all around us.

• Global ‘elite’ will need to slash high-carbon lifestyles
  

  The world’s wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN.

  The global top 10% of income earners use around 45% of all the energy consumed for land transport and around 75% of all the energy for aviation, compared with just 10% and 5% respectively for the poorest 50% of households, the report says.

  Foregoing one long-haul international return flight could reduce your personal footprint by almost two tonnes of CO2.

  In other words, people from wealthy nations fly and drive more. We could reduce this radically by ending commuting, which would require getting rid of the rotted inner cities and replacing them with functional apartment housing for non-impoverished people. Trump was on that trip years ago. When people drive less, they burn less gasoline and produce less pollution.

• More than a month after the election, YouTube decides to crack down on misinformation on results
  

  Alphabet-owned YouTube said Wednesday it will begin removing content that falsely alleges widespread fraud or errors surrounding the 2020 presidential election, more than a month after the polls closed and Joe Biden was declared the projected winner.

  Obey the party line, or we censor you. Very Chinese.

• Musk, Bezos Space Race Gets a Boost From Anti-Poverty Tax Break
  

  “It would be a gross misuse of scarce resources to be subsidizing billionaires to go out into space when there are people struggling with real problems here on earth,” said Brett Theodos, a community development expert who has studied the program for the Urban Institute.

  On the contrary, it makes more sense to fund new things that to keep throwing money into the abyss of perpetual and intransigent poverty.

• ‘This is not science fiction,’ say scientists pushing for ‘neuro-rights’
  

  Five rights would guard the brain against abuse from new technologies – rights to identity, free will and mental privacy along with the right of equal access to brain augmentation advances and protection from algorithmic bias, the group says.

  Protection for algorithmic bias will translate into forcing algorithms to stop noticing demographic patterns, like “poor people steal more” and “different races have different average IQs.”

• Rio Tinto should pay restitution for sacred Aboriginal caves blast
  

  “The ultimate cause of the destruction of the caves was that insufficient value has been placed on the preservation of Indigenous culture and heritage — a living culture with a timeless heritage,” the inquiry found. “That must change.”

  Actual change would be recognizing that only one ethnic group can exist per society, and sending the “Aboriginals” back to India.

• Germany blocks Chinese takeover of satellite firm on security concerns
  

  A German economy ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on company names, but said the cabinet had authorized the ministry in a closed-door meeting to screen and block a foreign investment by a non-European investor on the grounds that the step could pose a threat to national security.

  Slowly the West realizes that the Chinese have put backdoors into everything. Remember Mark Zuckerberg taping over his laptop camera and the widely-disputed (therefore, probably true) story of the Chinese spy chips on server motherboards?

• Decoupling from China rejected by Biden team
  

  “Trying to fully decouple, as some have suggested, from China … is unrealistic and ultimately counterproductive,” Blinken said at an event hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce during the election campaign. “It would be a mistake.”

  This is why Chinese hardware and Chinese dollars helped steal the election.

• Prime time: Amazon is now Earth’s biggest advertiser
  

  Ad Age World’s Largest Advertisers has a new leader: Amazon, whose advertising and promotion spending soared 34% to $11 billion in 2019 as net sales surged 20% to $281 billion.

  Big companies benefit from high regulations. They can ignore them and pay the fines later. In the meantime, their smaller competition all get destroyed.

• Engaging in self-control on a daily basis improves the capacity for self-control.
  

  A diverse community sample was followed for 4 months while they engaged in daily practice of a self-chosen self-control behavior. Consistent with our hypothesis, regular practice led to an improvement of medium effect size in self-control capacity. Critically, the level of improvement was dependent on the actual times of practice during a specific interval, and largely independent from beliefs about self-control or self-efficacy. We conclude that “just doing” self-control is the underlying mechanism of increased capacity for self-control.

  This will be a theme for the twenty-first century: inner motivation toward good, instead of external control to limit bad (something that allows bad to thrive and therefore, eliminates the good).

• Mexico: López Obrador says pandemic lockdowns are the tactic of dictators
  

  The comments came as López Obrador once again fended off questions about why he almost never wears a face mask, saying it was a question of liberty.

  The Mexican leader said pandemic measures that limit people’s movements are “fashionable among authorities … who want to show they are heavy-handed, dictatorship.”

  “A lot of them are letting their authoritarian instincts show,” he said, adding “the fundamental thing is to guarantee liberty.”

  This fellow got a lot more based after assuming power and seeing what a mess things really were. Youthful idealism gives way to a determined focus on the basics of sane existence.

• EU pushes for ‘right to disconnect’ from work at home
  

  “After months of teleworking, many workers are now suffering from negative side effects such as isolation, fatigue, depression, burnout, muscular or eye illnesses,” said Saliba, adding: “The pressure to always be reachable, always available, is mounting, resulting in unpaid overtime and burnout.”

  When we are all merely economic units, we are easily replaced, and the system runs us ragged with busy-work so our middle managers look good and “productivity” appears to be up. That way the stock sells for more, the taxes rise, and we can keep affording the free stuff from government.

• Feds accuse Facebook of discriminating against Americans in hiring
  

  The Trump administration is accusing Facebook of discriminating against U.S. workers in favor of foreigners with special visas to fill more than 2,600 high-paying jobs.

  Of course they are. They control the foreigners through their visas, and have no such hold over Americans. Companies think they want slaves, mainly because management is bad because they are promoted for appearances and not long-term quality, and then wonder why corporations are so malevolent and simultaneously incompetent at every level.

• COVID patient with sepsis makes ‘remarkable’ recovery following megadose of vitamin C
  

  The man was given an initial dose of 30 grams of sodium ascorbate (vitamin C) over 30 minutes, then a maintenance dose of 30 grams over six and a half hours.

  “This is the equivalent of 5,000 oranges pumping through his veins,” Professor Bellomo said.

  We are re-learning medicine, after rejecting the commonsense in favor of more profitable solutions that made doctors more powerful.

• Chinese step up attempts to influence Biden team

  Ignore headline, read meat:

  During the same think tank discussion on Wednesday, John Demers, chief of the justice department’s national security division, said hundreds of Chinese researchers with ties to their country’s military had been identified by FBI investigators over the summer.

  He told the discussion that after the FBI conducted dozens of interviews with other individuals, “more than 1,000 PLA-affiliated Chinese researchers left the country”.

  Trump has been conducting a purge of foreign agents. This forces a number of things, including for the Chinese to move their networks and assets in order to reorganize them. That makes them visible, to those who know what to observe.

• Twitter expands hate speech rules to include race, ethnicity
  

  Twitter Inc on Wednesday expanded its policy barring hateful speech to include “language that dehumanizes people on the basis of race, ethnicity and national origin,” it said in a statement.

  Welcome to pluralism, where you cannot criticize other groups, no matter what they do. Sure seems like diversity is coming apart awful fast.

• Nasdaq Proposes Board-Diversity Rule for Listed Companies
  

  The exchange operator filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require listed companies to have at least one woman on their boards, in addition to a director from an underrepresented minority or one who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Companies that don’t meet the standard would be required to explain why not.

  More Communism from business. Why? They intend to rule the New World Order, whether through dollars or ideology. They may also be feeling pressure from the community organizers.

• Nike’s diversity advert causing a backlash in Japan
  

  “Many Japanese do not like to be told by outside voices to change their ways,” said Morley Robertson, a Japanese-American journalist.

  No one should trust outside voices; they will tell you to do what will make you weaker. That way, they are relatively stronger. Relative measurements, however, do not take into account the whole of the system, which means that the strong become weaker through this process, causing them to seize control and then fail, like China or the Soviets.

• Doctors could soon be prescribing you spend more time outdoors as part of new pilot program
  

  “A couple of years ago, there was a fairly major meta-analysis published that looked at a number of different diseases, like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, pre-term births, mental health outcomes, and they analyzed all this and linked it to the amount of nature time and green space that people were exposed to or spend time in – and what it found was that spending time in nature significantly reduced their risk of a lot of these different diseases.”

  It turns out that living and working in warehouse environments does nobody any favors.

• Revised citizenship test is harder, more conservative and may worsen backlogs, experts say
  

  In one of the final moves culminating four years of controversial immigration policies under President Donald Trump’s administration, the government is giving a new test that is lengthier, includes topics not covered previously and requires new applicants to correctly answer twice as many questions as the previous test.

  How dare we insist that people who come here learn something about the place…

• This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.
  

  Some enterprises in Japan are very, very old. The secret of their success? They simply don’t follow the rules which according to modern-day economists are “crucial” for being economically successful: They don’t try to expand their business, they don’t invest their profits, they don’t form strategic alliances, they don’t diversify their product range. Some of them are in business for more than 1,000 years.

  It turns out that just producing something valuable at a decent price ends up well. However, the business stays small, and this is only possible within high-trust, mono-ethnic societies, so of course the “experts” (Communists) oppose it!

• China Moves to Surpass US in Economics, Technology, Diplomacy and Military, Report Says
  

  “China is using its growing power to revise the international order, and place itself at the top of a new global hierarchy,” she said in remarks delivered Tuesday to mark the report’s public release.

  Everybody wants to rule the world.

• Historic landscape immortalised by 19th century master is set to be ‘concreted over’ by developers
  

  It has prompted fears that an area with a unique history including King Alfred’s battle with the Danes and the development of the Spitfire fighter plane could end up being ‘concreted over’.

  Why do they need more homes? To house the immigrants or those fleeing them. Why do they need immigrants? To work and be taxed to pay for the benefits already owed, mainly because working and being taxed killed off the native population. Why not just cut entitlements? The voters will complain that something is being “stolen” from them. Democracy is parasitism, it turns out.

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