Happy New Years '23


Posted On: Saturday - December 31st 2022 10:16PM MST
In Topics: 
  Music  Holiday from Stupidity



Last year's Peak Stupidity New Years' Eve post, Happy New Year- 2022 - can it GET any worse? was referring to the new Omicron strain of the Kung Flu. (The video embedded therein is something else!)

We could talk about other ways things will get worse in '23, or we could look on the bright side, as John Derbyshire does, noting that things are always worse somewhere else. He writes Happy New Year, America!—At Least We’re Not Canada, Or Britain.

It's not Thanksgiving though. Things are not going to change for the better anytime real soon, so we need to all prepare. Peak Stupidity should have more prepper posts. That's New Year's Resolution # 1 then.

Thanks to all of our readers for spending the time here in '22, and even more so our commenters.



U2 is not my favorite band based on their political views. This is one of my favorite songs by them though.

Comments:
Bring Out Your Dead
Tuesday - January 3rd 2023 3:14AM MST
PS: A little more police-state humor...

https://i.ibb.co/Kwt3N8V/Police-are-like-chocolate.jpg

Moderator
Monday - January 2nd 2023 9:48PM MST
PS: "Dayam it feels good being a deplorable kulak untermenschen unperson." It really does sometimes, Mr. Cracka.

It's not that I want to get in arguments, but defying this whole Totalitarian thing has had no downside for me, emotionally, and not physically or career-wise, even, though I wasn't sure on the latter about a year ago.

"And to argue the panickers into their dark and panic-filled cabinets and coners of the internet and make sure they rest there an don't say much any more..." Dieter, Ron Unz is one who won't off his history of panic on this. I don't read Greg Cochran*, and, as for Mr. Sailer, he will never admit he was far too panicky on this, but he has backed off on it. He doesn't even call anti-vax-mandaters "scared of needles" anymore. (I believe that was just to needle us.) He may have learned from his LOCKDOWN support to be cautious, especially when he is a sports fan, after all, and must know about these occasionally young athletes keeling over...

" But why do gain of function research at all? (Other than for bioweapons/biowarfare purposes)" Yep, I think you answered your own question there - ONLY for bioweapons research.

Mr. Smith, I also LOVED that picture. It brings back the quandary that I've had in my mind for a few years of where we will end up in this country.

Thanks for all the excellent comments under this post! You all are probably wondering when's the next one. I have something like 10 or 15 more posts in mind right now, but I've got to get my mind in gear again. As pretty much all of you likely gathered, I got hung up on the Ron Unz thread today. It was pretty civil, I gotta say. That includes Mr. Unz too, with no real insults from him. I hope he's OK...


* Recently read "Ten Thousand Year Explosion" though.
The Alarmist
Monday - January 2nd 2023 9:13PM MST
PS

A little police-state humor for you all ...

https://i0.wp.com/westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/image00000323.jpg?w=1080&ssl=1

There’s a good reason for the Electoral College ...

https://i0.wp.com/westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image00000045.jpg?w=1080&ssl=1
The Alarmist
Monday - January 2nd 2023 9:09PM MST
PS

Whether or not Germany has enough hospital beds is an interesting question of fact yet to be conclusively answered, but what can be stated as absolute fact is that public authorities in Germany used the excuse of keeping hospitalizations for COVID from overwhelming the hospital capacity to justify lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions that restricted the freedom of movement and comfort of German citizens for far longer than was reasonable, long after evidence suggested the NPIs were wholly unfit for purpose.

The leaders of the EU, particularly Germany, are WEF stooges who buy into “saving” the climate by reducing industrial and agriculture as well as human demands on the environment. What they fail to realize is that killing industry in Europe will, in the long run, not be matched by the USA, regardless of what the official Biden regime says about anything environmental. It is the local and regional bank-owned Federal Reserve against the ECB, and the ECB is getting hammered by US Fed interest rates at the same time that EU businesses and takented workers are looking to a still somewhat functioning US economy as a possible lifeboat to escape a sinking SS Europa foundering on the iceberg known as the war on Russia.

The US will fight Russia to the last Ukie and last European, and the US babks will cast aside the Biden regime when it is clearly of no further use.
Adam Smith
Monday - January 2nd 2023 5:39PM MST
PS: Greetings, Dieter, Alarmist,

Good to know that the ascii art works for you too, Dieter. Thanks!

"I'd say you go too far in claiming that the Covid story is not about the virus at all."

Yeah, I worded that less eloquently than I should have. I think plenty of people were scared of the virus. (and why not? Their TV's told them to be afraid! It was possibly* the largest trauma based mind control operation in human history.) But I also believe that the politicians and policy makers who were pushing the panic were not doing so out of any genuine fear of a virus or any genuine care for the people whose lives would be affected by their policies. For example, did Justin Trudeau push vaccine passports and attack the truckers and their supporters because he cared for the health of average Canadians, or was it just a good opportunity to embrace his inner tyrant? (I suppose I'll never know, but I have my suspicions.)(It is pretty wild how so many people promoted and welcomed totalitarian policies over a glorified flu virus.)

"A gain of function product, - possibly set free accidentally..." Possibly set free on purpose? This is something that understandably scares people. But why do gain of function research at all? (Other than for bioweapons/biowarfare purposes) In a sane and more civilized world there would be no gain of function research. (or war for that matter! So wasteful. So unnecessary. But I digress...)

"Cut back pharma ads for news shows to zero... This is unhealthy..." = Agree!

"Wokism as a soft form of totalitarianism was stronger before Covid than it is now..." = Also Agree! I think they over played their hand and now more people are pushing back. (I think promoting transgenderism for children and mutilating some of them is gong to be problematic in a few years when this fad finishes running it's course. It's already encountering some resistance.)

I agree with Mr. Alarmist. "The COVID scam is nothing more than political cover to tidy up the massive public ponzi schemes of the last century by essentially eliminating by various means the people to whom those benefits and debts are owed." I think it also created an opportunity to experiment with some serious divide and conquer style social engineering while enacting some unpopular policies that most normal people would never have accepted absent the trauma based mass hypnosis/mass formation psychosis.

From the fraudulent "Covid" statistics, the fraudulent tests, the economic incentives for hospitals to tag anyone and everything as a covid case, the CDC dictated death protocols that were seemingly designed for maximum carnage, to the $39,000 to ventilate (often killing) patients, the dancing nurses on tiktok, the useless hygene theater, the stickers on the floor, the so called "lockdowns", the heavy handed censorship, etc. ad nauseam... It still amazes me that so many people completely lost their minds over a celebrity flu virus.

A quick question about the de-industrialization of Germany...

What are the overlords thinking? What is their goal here? Do they really believe that destroying German industry will prop up the petro-dollar just a little longer? Do they simply hate Germans that much? Are they truly so stupid that they don't realize what they are doing? Are they really just evil and have no choice but to destroy things? What is the purpose of decimating the German middle class and (potentially) impoverishing millions of people? I just don't get it.

* possibly, probably, likely, certainly?

Anyway... Thank you both for your thoughtful comments and such.

Cheers to a great evening!

Dieter Kief
Monday - January 2nd 2023 5:22PM MST
PS
Germany is drowned in hospital beds. - More than 2x (!) the numbers of - - - Denmark. But much more than Switzerland too. Thsi stuff is complicated, Alarmist, and by far not the best idea is to overstimate the hospital bed numbers.

As the tirelessly active anti-panic twitterer and book author, economist Stefan Homburg shows in detail, there was not once (!) a shortage of hospital beds in Germany during all of the pandemic.
The problem was not so much to understand what's up - there were some people who managed to do this early on (Michael Levitt, Alex Washurne, Hail-to-You - - - - Anders Tegnell & Johan Giesecke, Knut wittkowski, Wolfgang Wodarg - - - - the problem was to get the public's and the official's ears & hearts. - And to argue the panickers into their dark and panic-filled cabinets and coners of the internet and make sure they rest there an don't say much any more: Like Ron Unz, Stever Sailer, Greg Cochran et. al. (James Thompson!) - who all did not get what's up then even though they were not bought by the industry and are not exactly what you would call dumb either (this is the ideal crowd for the Gigerenzer lections!).
Big YT Be A Cracka
Monday - January 2nd 2023 4:19PM MST
PS Dayam it feels good being a deplorable kulak untermenschen unperson.
Why be anything else.
Contribute nothing to a society that wants you gone.
Prepare for reckless battle or get to the safe place.
Don't waste time with the COV-LARP cultists who have found something for the hole in their soul.
They are the harbinger of doom, shun them.
The Alarmist
Monday - January 2nd 2023 2:10PM MST
PS

The Corona panic was based around statistics distorted to make it look far more serious than it actually was. Scientists knew very early in the game rgar the IFR was no worse than a middling-to-bad influenza year, and even then, mis-used testing produces “cases” and “fatalities” that only tangentially linked them to the SARS-Cov2 virus, e.g. motorcycle fatality attributed to COVID because the decedent tested positive, hospitalization of man with broken arm attributed to COVID. The governments of the world saw China lock down hard, which it did because it was under bio-attack, and they said, “You can do that? Hey, hold my beer” while they gave it a try in the “Freedumb” loving West. It was all a pump-n-dump scam... boost the “cases” and “deaths,” and let the games begin.

As for Germany, it had 2,400 clinics in 1991, down to 1,400 today, and there is now discussion to reduce that to 600 under the guise of only having facilities with suitably qualified facilities and staffing. IOW, reduce the capacity for care to improve the quality of care. Utter BS to cover the government’s lie that it will provide all needed healthcare to the German public.

They can’t afford to even try to maintain Germany’s current levels of healthcare while they keep their “promises” to the Ukies and assist the USA in its de-industrialization of Germany and the EU.The Ampel-Koalition have sold out the German people for “higher causes.” The only serious German politician, other than the recently jailed AfD members, is the Leftist Sahra Wagenknecht, who consistently during the “pandemic” pointed to the problem of the lack of beds being entirely attributable to the ongoing programme to cut beds and qualified staff and equipment.

The COVID scam is nothing more than political cover to tidy up the massive public ponzi schemes of the last century by essentially eliminating by various means the people to whom those benfits and debts are owed.
Dieter Kief
Monday - January 2nd 2023 1:33AM MST
PS

The photo with the summer mist is beautiful Adam, thanks! - Your asci art is visible quite nicely here too! Thx. for that too!

I'd say you go too far in claiming that the Covid story is not about the virus at all.

I mean: A gain of function product, - possibly set free accidentally (see the linked article above) - this is something that scares people. On the other hand: To live in any kind of society means to trade in security for being controlled. The burning question is always: To what degree? - And in which hindsight? - This then means the question is multi-faceted. To cut it down to one aspect brings more overview - and less accuracy.

What the public discourse of these complex sets of Covid questions is concerned, Matt Taibbi put it best in his great Munk-debate talk: "The story is the Boss" is the basic norm of decent journalism.

If I look at this detail: The right answer to the reporting norms: I see one fix to be made in the US: Cut back pharma ads for news shows to zero - as is the case in Europe by and large. At the moment, those ads bring 70% of the income of the mainstream US news shows. - This is clearly unhealthy so to speak.

I don't want to repeat what I wrote about the Klaus Schwab complex. But I stand firmly by my claims in this regard.
I was  pleased to see that eugyppius and a few other bloggers and twitterati say that too now.
So - as so often: I don't want to underestimate the positive developments, hehe.

Twitter has made a large leap forward - as have some US states and namely Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Italy approaching Sweden with the best Covid results overall so far: Economically, socially, psychologically, medically and politically. Btw.: All experts working with Ron Desantis on his way to Swedish levels of achievements in the Covid field agree that Covid was not least a medical problem.

Wokism as a soft form of totalitarianism was stronger before Covid than it is now, if I see this right: Another reason to be glad!
My sermon ends with a Christian remark: Christianity is not least about the necessity to forgive - and be forgiven. As with many aspectsof this - - - - tradition (see Arno Borst: Not least: Mönche am Bodensee (Monks at the Lake of Konstanz, hehe).
Btw.: We did  spend Christmas with the poor and needy in a moving four hour celebration - including a Church service coffee, songs (active common singning actually) and a festive dinner.

Again: Happy New Year, Peakers!
Adam Smith
Sunday - January 1st 2023 7:00PM MST
PS: Greetings, everyone,

Thanks for the feedback on the ascii art, Messrs. Hail and Moderator. (Pleased to hear it works on other browsers/systems.)

"If Mr. Smith wants to do that one, he's got 3 weeks still."
Lol... I might just have time to make a proper bunny that's blogworks friendly.

"Corona Panic was never about protecting anyone from the virus..."
Agreed. Corona Panic was always about seeing how much totalitarianism different regions of the empire would accept while covering for the cyclical implosion of the global ponzi scheme economy. If not for the Canadian truckers they'd still be pushing "Vaccine Passports" and other such nonsense.

"We should be grateful that most governmental officials’ natural bent toward psycopathy is still largely mitigated by their innate stupidity."
-Thank God for small favors!

Glad to hear you had a nice day in the woods, Dieter. And that you had great light and great luck with your photos!
(Our neighbor snapped this photo from the back yard and sent it to Mrs. Smith some time ago. Just saw it the other day while upgrading her phone...)

https://i.ibb.co/G9cV8T8/Backyard.jpg

The exif data tells me she took this picture at 6:24am on July 25, 2019. (That's what the morning fog in the holler looks like.)

Messrs. Hail and Moderator, I replied to your comments under post 2481 yesterday. Many thanks for your warm wishes.

I agree with Mr. Blanc. All the best for 2023 for all Peakers!

Hope 2023 is a great year for everyone!
Happy New Year!

Adam Smith
Sunday - January 1st 2023 6:17PM MST
PS: Greetings, Mr. Hail...

... (␀ (␀
... (= '.')
.. o(_") ")

....()__()
=(^.^)=
@(")_(")


( )_( )
(•_•)
_/_>☯

(I tried making a nicer rabbit, but blogworks does goofy things with the spacing. The bigger bunny looks a little anemic in the comment window. He should look like this...)

https://i.ibb.co/JnsMrwP/Bunny.jpg

Too bad you didn't ask for a Wojak...


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Happy New Year!

Dieter Kief
Sunday - January 1st 2023 5:40PM MST
PS
Mr. Hail I am a great admirer of Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer. And the good Professor says, this social side of our medical problems is hard to grasp!
 
It's not that we see this emerging with Covid. We saw this kinds of problems with lots of other medical insights before. One of the most spectacular ones was the tuberculosis-crisis in the early 20th century. I - HA! HA! think that everybody trying to at least in retrospect understand what went down then would be almost infinitesimally better off IF he would put some energy into reading the Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain. I've written this before on Mr. Hail's blog but what the heck:It is a great story. Not least one of justice and social tensions and - - - - -privileges of the rich blue blooded & famous: who were able to let their tuberculosis be treated way up in the Swiss Alps in posh clinics (I saw one of the mountains today from our house, where one of those famous clinics was situated. The tuberculosis cures were extremely costly, mind you. - And what did a careful reconstruction of the boss of the Swiss National Heritage Museum in Zürich - one nice man by the name of Christoph Mörgeli, a professor also - - -well: What this professor found out was: That the enormous medical apparatus,established high up in the Swiss Alps, as I said: Did do absolutely nothing to cure the rich & super-rich patients. I mean: They did exorbitantly expensive lots: But none of them did any good. None!

So I come back to Molière and his Imaginary Invalid.
It is an anthropological constant: we are leaning towards medical/illness-panic. And it changes forms over time. But the technical environment in which the panic appears is not fundamental for it. It is at its core a human thing which gets modified by technical means, no doubt about that! But the core is not technical, its - - - - - human. That's why the (truly few) happy few can read Molière's Imaginary Invalid as a play about  - - - - Us! And the Magic Mountain too. I don't know what to add, because I've spent so many hours in the woods today, that when I try to look inside my head for further information, all that pops up are trees / bushes / mushrooms, branches, grass, lichen too. My wife says I've been lucky today with my photos! - Winter light was great!

Ahh - maybe doom will catch us with his bony hands, as Andrew Anglin and lots of others predict. But as long as that has not definitely happened, I'll just  - - - - keep on keepin' on - like a bird that flew...

One of the best texts about the basic problems with the understanding of medical / medicine/illnesses problems stems from Dr. Stephen Rushworth - - - I've mentioned this Swedish doc before too. What he says, in one sentence, is: Doctors are outstandingly bad when it comes to the social side of medicine, because they are so dependent on their personal relationships with their patients.

Therefore; a big takeaway line from Covid is not about the technical environment, but about the - paradoxical fact - - that we should not listen too much to doctors, as soon as the social side of medical questions arises. I've tried that sentence at a few instances so far and succeeded best, maybe even here. Elsewhere these thoughts did not find really open ears. What I also learned is that many people don't want to talk too much about medical stuff in public, because being ill turns out to be the last resort of intimacy for many a poor soul, in our times not only of the miracles & wonders, but also of pornhub and swinger-cl
The Alarmist
Sunday - January 1st 2023 5:25PM MST
PS

Corona Panic was never about protecting anyone from the virus: It was entirely about messaging and bending data to convince the midwits of the world to be very afraid and to let ... even beg the governments of the world to do whatever it took to make them safe, which is about as misplaced trust as we could get. COVID was as good an example of the confluence of stupidity and evil as we could get.

We should be grateful that most governmental officials’ natural bent toward psycopathy is still largely mitigated by their innate stupidity.
Moderator
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:58PM MST
PS: "Being that Peak Stupidity has a sub-theme of things Chinese at times, can you pull a "rabbit" out of your ascii-art hat?

2023 is the "year of the rabbit.""

If Mr. Smith wants to do that one, he's got 3 weeks still.
Moderator
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:45PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, Instapundit linked to an article on this just a while ago too:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/12/31/2044253/the-shameful-open-secret-behind-southwests-failure-software-shortcomings
Moderator
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:44PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, I forgot to write you back on this yesterday. Two or 3 people somewhat in the know say it was SouthWest's old ratty scheduling software that caused the recent meltdown. This is software that schedules the flight and cabin crews. There were enough pilots to fly and enough flight attendants to work, but they were not only in the wrong places, nobody was officially aware (via the software that keeps track of flight, duty, and rest time limits) of who was to do what. This is not the first time something like this has happened, but at other airlines.

Their boss back in '03, from what one guy told me, was the last to put much money into the old system, and they've been trying to work with it since then. Rules have gotten more complicated, and the company has grown since then. It finally gave way.

I would not at all be surprised, though, if I were to learn Indian IT people were involved, IN INDIA.
Moderator
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:37PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, thanks for the Kunstler quote. I think he is wrong about Barry Obama, though. He is just as much a puppet as the rest, but they let him act like a big shot still because he's black and all.

Thanks for your good wishes, Mr. Blanc. Perhaps if our enemies lose, we will have a chance to win in the long run.

Adam, I can view your New Years grid just fine. Thanks.

Mr. Hail, by "technological", do you mean computer "TECH", as in the smart phones' and social media's inundation of society?
Moderator
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:32PM MST
PS: I'm glad your neck of the wood is a good place to be, Mr. Kief. I'd like to know what you thought of Mr. Derbyshire's post and/or that Andrew Anglin one on Germany, if you've read either. The latter was a lot of hyperbolic tweeting.

Regarding Mr. Washburne, I don't think he's any genius. He got that doubling time correct (or more correct), as he did his analysis with more rigor and less political bias. Good for him that he made money off the stupidity of others. (Like the State governments do with the education lotteries.)

Well, you read my post. He still comes off as arrogant and as a control freak (a little bit of the latter, anyway).
Hail
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:07PM MST
PS

RE: Adam Smith's ascii HAPPY NEW YEAR.

I see it well.

Being that Peak Stupidity has a sub-theme of things Chinese at times, can you pull a "rabbit" out of your ascii-art hat?

2023 is the "year of the rabbit."
Hail
Sunday - January 1st 2023 4:04PM MST
PS

Mr Kief wrote:

"Alex Washburne's article is not least great, because - as you pointed out, Mod.: His anti-panic/ factually correct analysis of the Covid problem was so simple. Clear & simple: What more could we wish for in an explanation?!"

My response:

What I think Alex Washburne gets wrong is that he fails to forcefully identify the Panic as a new social force which was both "allowed for," AND "driven by," the new technological hyper-digital ecosystem.

The most interesting features of the Panic -- of how the Panic formed, how it sustained, and how the many children-of-the-revolution were able to thrive in the world -- were technological, not medical.

Other interesting features were social and political and cultural, but I would say the Panic and all its many effects and the various revolutions that came with it (some still with us into 2023) was primarily allowed by, AND CAUSED BY, the technological.

All of these things (technological, social, political, cultural) overlap, of course. But none of them really need the medical side. In this sense at least, the people who say "there was no virus" are right in spirit (if not in fact).

This is the great puzzle or the great mystery of the Corona-Panic. We don't understand what we're dealing with, this hyper-technologized digitized world. We are in seas without any kind of chart.

The Panic wasn't because of some disastrous series of mistakes by experts and enthusiastic amateurs and other observers (followed by informational-thugs suppressing those few people who avoided the disastrous mistakes), though it's easy to see it that way--and simple observation would suggest that is what it was. For me that understanding of the Corona-Panic fails to appreciate the bigger phenomenon, something scarier than just a two-year period of people getting a flu-virus wrong wrong wrong. The Corona-Panic is one of the evil branches, the technological-ideological conditions may be the full tree.
Adam Smith
Sunday - January 1st 2023 3:37PM MST
PS: Good evening, everyone,

Not sure my alternate text worked on anyone else's end, but this is what it looked like on my end...

https://i.ibb.co/pvt1fvT/Happy-New-Year.png

Adam Smith
Sunday - January 1st 2023 3:33PM MST
PS: Happy New Year!

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Hail
Sunday - January 1st 2023 3:32PM MST
PS

Of interest:

"Forecast 2023 — Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand"

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2023-get-out-of-the-way-if-you-cant-lend-a-hand/

(Coming in at a lean 5,750 words.)

________

(quote from James Howard Kunstler's "forecast 2023")

It’s hard to contemplate 2023 without spiraling into nausea, tachycardia, and cold sweat. But it is an inescapable duty here to lay out the probabilities ahead. I’ve been doing this forecast thing for some years now, and, of course, I am often wrong, so take some solace in that and relax. Maybe the new year will be all unicorns, rainbows, talking gerbils, and candied violets.

2022 sure was a cold shower. The long emergency I talk so much about finally got up to cruising speed, with the ectoplasmic “Joe Biden” revving our country into economic, political, and cultural collapse — a hat-trick of calamity — and he did it more swiftly and directly than any emperor managed in late-day Rome, with policies and actions 180-degrees contra to America’s public interest — cheered on by a thinking class that had obviously lost its consensual mind.

Was the governing strategy simply to do the opposite of what the loathed and detested Mr. Trump would do? Could it be that simple or that automatic? The thinking class’s eyes have a zombified glaze these days. It’s obvious, you might agree, that “Joe Biden” is not in charge of anything, really. He’s an animatronic figure programmed to read a teleprompter and not much else. Half the time, he can’t even find his way off-stage after doing that one trick. The claque pulling his strings just may be the crew you see around him (you know, WYSIWYG): Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and company. Ms. Rice has kept herself completely hidden backstage at the White House for two years. Nobody ever hears about her or sees her. Weird, a little bit, for the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Or else, are there puppeteers deeper in the shadows, say, “JB’s” former boss Barack Obama, Der Schwabenklaus and his WEF retinue, Bill Gates and other tech billionaires, the “systemically important” bankers, George Soros…? Or some coven of super-elite warlocks we’d never heard of? The US leadership dynamic is truly mystifying and has been for two whole years. Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point. And now onto the shape of things to come…

___________

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2023-get-out-of-the-way-if-you-cant-lend-a-hand/
Historic Clown Shoe Czar
Sunday - January 1st 2023 12:33PM MST
PS Let the vans down by the river memes and that was awesome flow!
Saw one about the hammering Depape and about fell over with laughter.
Plus people can't tell if you are mocking or wildly entertained.
MBlanc46
Sunday - January 1st 2023 11:52AM MST
PS Things will get much worse before they even have a chance of getting better. We might not win, but our enemies will surely lose. All the best for 2023 for all Peakers
Dieter Kief
Sunday - January 1st 2023 3:10AM MST
PS
Hey - I'm grateful to live in the German south! - Great to be alive here & now! - Holy cow! I'm even glad to be far away from Florida! - How sweet the winter fog this morning on the lake, with beautiful 1000+ year old Überlingen smiling back from the oppodsing shooreline! - Haha! - Thanks Mod. for a bumpy & insightful & fun ride with your site in 2022! . Happy new year everybody! Over Christmas I was with family and friends and - - - offline, hehe.

Leftovers: Alex Washburne's article is not least great, because - as you pointed out, Mod.: His anti-panic/ factually correct analysis of the Covid problem was so simple. Clear & simple: What more could we wish for in an explanation?! - The rate with which Covid doubled had not been correct: Three instead of six days: That was the core insight that helped him to draw the line between panic/ confusion/ overreactions here - - - - and  - - - - becoming rich there. - That was his own personal - - haha! take-away. Investment panickers did not get that either, btw.

One meta-thought about this stuff: A reason, why it was so hard for the rest of the country (= the world...) to follow Alex Washburne's insights was - this is my hypothesis: Feel free to contradict me here - ok here it goes: Alex's thesis was: .C.o.u.n.t.e.r.-.i.n.t.u.i.t.i.v.e. This type of insights is especially hard to communicate (remember Gerd Gigrenzer - Risk Savy! - the book Adam linked here - - - you do -Ah ha! - Then you're on my track here: For reasons that are - to this day -not understood - - - our brains resist this type of insights spontaneously (automatically).

The counterintuitive central insight about Co-19 of Alex Washburne was: It replicated much faster than anyone assumed (all other models (!!!) were based on  - - - and therefore less harmful.

If I'd live two lives (mine and a parallel one), I would make an interview with professor Gerd Gigerenzer about exactly this question. In my real life: I post my thoughts in the hinterest little corners of the internet... In the last few weeks even on twitter (ca. 1000 tweets so far)...Resonance: Extremly limited to - - - a handful of Covid-freaks and a few professionals/experts in this field. - I invite everybody to have  a look, if you please!

Ok - these are my actual fragments - the pieces of the broken mirror (one of the greatest existential metaphors Mick Jagger (in a little & quite charming book by Ann Leibovitz about their 1975 tour***) came up with.
***I was on assignment myself to shoot the official rehearsal concert of this tour in Ludwigshafen/Rhine for the posh Swiss magazine PoP. I've kept the badge - and a handful of slides (most of them I just sent away to the magazine - and the Swiss publisher dumped them when they sold it - you always win some - and some you lose...).


Btw.: The conviction that he IS a genius grew upon me over the years and did not stop. If that goes on like that, I might once state right away that, yes: Mr. Jagger is a genius. - Or else, I will be dead before that happens. AHA!: I do have the epitaph ready for Mr. Jagger, just in case he'd die before me - - - in the form of one of my most beloved (own!) photographies  - - - since 1992. "I ham pripaired!!"

This is a great little article (under 10 000 words, hehe) about the origins o Covid - it spreaded silently from summer 2019 on.

The Evidence COVID-19 Was Spreading Silently Around the World in Late 2019 – The Daily Sceptic
Moderator
Saturday - December 31st 2022 10:40PM MST
PS: I've read that one before, Alarmist. If you're still up, you must be in the free State of Florida. Happy New year!
The Alarmist
Saturday - December 31st 2022 10:26PM MST
PS

Be grateful we’re not Ukranians... or Germans... or Brits... or....

It is dangerous to be America’s enemy; it is fatal to be America’s friend.
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