Apologies for not posting in a while. Many aspects of life got in the way. That and resonance effects from my big new book about Artificial Intelligence AIlien Minds...
...and preparing for performance of my play The Escape on August 28, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim. But so much is happening in the news... and so little of it sheds much light. And so...
...I'll opine at the end of this posting about the insanely hypocritical Fauci Fables. But first...
== The War on Science should be issue #1 ==
I used to give talks at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), back when its mission was to enhance U.S. scientific leadership for the overall betterment of citizens, humanity and truth.
None of the accomplishments of the post WWII Greatest (GI Bill) Generation was greater than encouraging politically neutral science and discovery of verifiable facts. Even when those facts undermined the prejudices they had been raised to believe.
(A burst of discovery, creativity and truth that was spurred by the universities that the GI Billers built, that were their greatest pride, and that are now under relentless oligarch-subsidized attack. Because children of the middle and poorer classes have used college to rise up and compete fairly with the aristos' inheritance brats. And we can't have that now, can we?)
Alas, 30 years ago the Republican Party began its relentlessly accelerating war against science and objective reality. It started with Newt Gingrich's demolition of the Congressional Office of Science and Technology Assessment -- OTA -- whose expert advisors kept saying those fell words unwelcome across all levels of the Republican Party:
"Um, I'm afraid that's just not true, and here's the evidence."
(Restoration of OTA is among my 35 recommendations to Democrats, should they ever recover enough power to save America.)**
WHY the right's hatred of objective reality? It wasn't universal in the days of Goldwater and Buckley, as it is now. Scan 250 years and you'll see the pattern of recurring culture war -- one that has erupted every generation in America, pitting modernists who opposed first kingly rule, then slavery, then lucre-oligarchy and unearned hierarchy... versus those neighbors who are enraged by the very concept of modernity, preferring instead the serenity of knowing your place, beneath kings, priests, lords and their inheritance brat sons, recapitulating 6000 years of oppressive, unsapient feudalism.
Which brings us to this news. OSTP - now under rule of an acolyte of Peter Thiel - has issued a new manifesto that proclaims dedication of science, while proposing measures that (all of them) will serve to curb scientific exploration and independence and intellectual honesty, across the board.
See: https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/07/45470/
Are there flaws in current systems like peer review? Well, sure, and competitive science usually discovers and reveals those flaws. What the Right's hate agitprop always hides, while depicting scientists as conformist lemmings, is that scientists tend to be the most COMPETITIVE creatures Nature ever produced. A young researcher gets nowhere in her career without finding some niche assumption (or a big one) to topple with factual experimentation.
Should promulgators of the 'lemming' slander make science policy? They want it all politically controlled and under their thumb. So where does this all lead?
Alas, they are chivvying and radicalizing the brainiest men and women on the planet, who would prefer never having to radicalize! And hence, I have to ask the prepper lords (I know several) "Where do you think it will get you, to wage war against all the smartest humans? Those who know cyber, chem, bio, nuclear, nano and all the rest? Do you think you will emerge from your bunkers into the fantasy future of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, where all the nerds are killed by angry peasants, eager to become serfs of you New Lords?
Hey delusional oligarchs that your sycophant flatterers have misled you. The people will side with us. And tumbrels will roll. See this re feudalism.
** So many earnest proposals would reform weaknesses in the US system that were exploited by traitors. Alas, too many are politically impractical, like Constitutional Amendments, or would waste our political capital unnecessarily. We need a to-do checklist of fixes that (1) will sell well to most voters, (2) that can pass quickly, almost the moment we get a good Congress… with some of them immune to vetoes! And (3) that will PRAGMATICALLY reverse the treason-evisceration of the USA and ensure this never happens again. Want to see how to do all of that? Here is the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
== But why do they hate us? Mostly made-up stories. But in fact, there is a basis! And it goes way back ==
I've tried to explain that confederatism (and its current partners Nazism and Kremlin/Putin-communism) must be defeated yet again. But meanwhile, we must emulate Lincoln and win with 'malice toward (almost) none and charity for (almost) all. First, because Lincoln asked it of us and that should be enough...
...but second because these are our neighbors and if they just return to a decent version of conservatism a la Goldwater or Buckley, then we will gladly go back to the adult art of negotiation.
Only there's another reason for 'malice toward (almost) none.' Sympathy. Empathy. Because their recurring, maniacal rage against modernity does have a basis! A small, insufficient one... but a basis of a sort.
Oh, not any of their Murdoch/Foxite/Kremlin-generated lies and memes and crazy shit. Like generations howling that city folk are decadent filth! Get bent with that bullshit! No, there's something deeper. A hurt that never goes away.
Norman Rockwell made my point!
Ever wonder why we experience relentless resentment by rural, salt-of-the-Earth folks toward city slickers, calling them - or folks who get too educated - 'not real'? Or decadent or corrupt or impractically airhead?
Come on, we've heard it all our lives. We aren't supposed to respond. Just grin wryly and accept it. Yep, New Yorkers talk fast and don't have time to waste on pleasantries. That must mean they're evil.
Okay, I've long offered a reason.
...and yet it hurts. Dig it: every small town in America revolves around the high school, where each crop of seniors is the town treasure everyone talks about. The sport heroes, the cheer squad, heck even the science fair nerds! 'Our pride and joy.' And each summer they weep and hug...
...and then skedaddle as quick as they can to the bright lights. And that has got to hurt! Like an implied rebuke. A wound. Every year. Every damned year.
== Is that enough reason to hate us? ==
Does this feed both the simmering slurs toward city folk and the recurring outbreaks of outright civil war hate that we see, about once per generation?
If so, then do NOT answer with contempt! If this must come to a fight - as it has done several times in the past - then let us not nurse reciprocal malice. We must maintain a core of 'charity for all.'
On the other hand, we will not let a nation of knowledge and science and calm and fair argument and transparent justice and law and civil-service and ever-rising tolerance and diversity and all other things-modernity be crushed and burned by a lava of ingrate resentment, either.
For one thing, their contempt for us revolves around a masturbatory notion - that we are cowards. A self-serving, auto-erotic fantasy that we disproved at Gettysburg, at Normandy and on Mare Tranquilitatus and in ten billion other ways, as we forge ahead into the sometimes-scary unknown, picking up the very tools with which God made Creation. And getting blessed for it.
Anyway, there's something that neither the world oligarchs nor the coward mogul-preppers nor their millions of dittohead lackeys ever seem able to ponder. That it's only a fool who keeps POKING at those Americans who know cyber, chem, bio, nano, nuclear and the rest. Daring us - just daring us - to lose our temper.
Please stop, before I lose my coo...
Look, we welcome your children into a better future. We in the cities and universities are - or are descended from - that boy in the Norman
Rockwell painting.
Join us in the adventure and you will get robots and medicine and the rest. Be like that dad. Be proud that we are in it together.
== Addendum: The Fauci Fables ==
Once again - this time regarding the right's attempted shivving of Dr. Anthony Fauci - the thing bugging me the most is how poorly the moderate/blue side handles its response to the outrageous madness. The Union side in this phase of the 248 year recurring US Cicil War is so dumb at the arts of polemic! Alas, in every phase, the Union flounders... till it finds its generals.
So, let me get to what's fundamental. Not Fauci's lifelong, mostly successful fight against diseases like AIDS, polio, ebola etc., saving millions. Nor his few, Fox-cherrypicked "Gee, lookit how I'm famous now!" diary entries (one millionth of Trump's narcissism.)
Nor the failure of the lying Foxites to follow up after Covid with ANY of their assertions, like proof that horse-pills work. (They've had years and years and have spent nothing to prove their wild yammer-claims.)
No, this chart is what's fundamental. Comparing death rates in states where covid vaccination was common or commonly avoided. And note the same effect is observed in CDC stats of simple death rates of individuals who were vaccinated vs unvaccinated. (And note that it was a Fauci-supervised miracle that delivered RNA-based vaccines at warp speed... and the current administration has canceled almost all followup research in preparing for the next pandemic.)
And gain-of-function contracts to Wuhan were done (stupidly) by several administrations of both parties, who thought they might thus lure China into transparency in disease research. A bipartisan delusion.
But we only need one thing to settle this. An unambiguous fact. And a tactic that wins political arguments by sending the mad meme-junkies fleeing.
Demand WAGERS from the yammering rightist/Kremlin bozos over easily verified DEATH RATES OF THOSE WHO TOOK OR REFUSED COVID VACCINES. Demand escrowed wager stakes from anyone yowling this monstrous BS.
Watch them flee.
== A pertinent after-thought ==
PS. Look at the chart again and ponder: does ANYONE have any memory? Like how at the beginning of the pandemic redders crowed gleefully about the covid death rates in CA & NY as proving that blue, city folk were 'filthy'? Like any natural disaster in a blue state was "God's wrath!" but anything hitting red zones is all "Help us now!"
And we always do
127 comments:
It's ironic that the basis you propose for conservative grievances is, at root, a social thing ("there is no such thing...!" sayeth St. Margaret...).
I think the increasing use of 'telecommuting' might help alleviate it somewhat: young folk don't need to go into the cities so much to pursue a career.
Unsurprisingly, there is a reported correlation between bosses preferring 'in office' working and having psychopathic (...or is that patriarchal?) tendencies.
In other news: Link mission update reports spin has been reduced to about 1 degree /sec, and that a software update should allow them to regain full attitude control. If that all goes as planned(!?), then rendezvous preparation may continue.
There are huge number of suspect assumptions in this most recent post, the first being that the scientifically inclined are of superior moral mien, the second being that an extended education confers superior intelligence, the third being that urbanity correlates with either morality or intelligence & the fourth being that statistics are somehow immune to dishonest manipulation.
Firstly, human beings are manifestly dishonest species, despite & regardless of scientific inclination, as the Fauci Diary's documentation of his many many lies during COVID demonstrates, especially when such lies virtually guaranteed his self-advancement, self-aggrandizement & self-enrichment.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-08-05/organized-scientific-fraud-is-growing-at-alarming-rate
Secondly, increasing educational expenditures do not necessarily result in increased intelligence, as demonstrated by the 30 year decline in US literacy rates down to 79% in 2024 & a US numeracy rate that has plunged below 65% in the same time frame.
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/math-decline-ucsd/684973/
Thirdly, the argument that the city dweller is somehow 'more moral' is frankly absurd, as urban rates of 'violent victimizations' & 'property crimes' are nearly 3X higher than in rural settings, while urban rates of 'robbery & extortion' are 5 to 8X higher than in rural settings, despite higher rates of rural poverty.
https://usafacts.org/articles/where-are-crime-victimization-rates-higher-urban-rural-areas/
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/cjsc/publications/misc/urbrurt.pdf
In terms of urbanity & intelligence, numerous studies also show that red rural students are more academically proficient & graduate secondary (high) school at higher rates than their more privileged blue urban opposites, despite higher rates of rural poverty.
https://www.the74million.org/article/rural-students-graduate-hs-more-than-city-peers-but-attend-college-less/
And, finally, let's talk about how there's damn little difference between 'damn lies' and statistics, especially when it comes to comparing Blue v Red State COVID mortality, even though it's statistically true that blue states like California appear to have a lower mortality rate than red states like Florida.
https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2023-11-28/backup-2-0-essential-california-template-do-not-use-make-a-copy-essential-california
These are disproportional comparisons, however, as Florida has a +65 year population of 21% as compared to a California's +65 years population of less than 15%, as is the case in all disproportionally older conservative 'red' areas, which would necessarily translate into higher COVID mortality rates per population since this disease disproportionally killed older +65 populations.
Welcome back, btw, as I look forward to debunking more of your magical mumbo-jumbo about everything from socialism to dark matter.
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There is blood on the hands of anti-vaxxers.
They will also be responsible for the avoidable deaths in the next pandemic.
Damn these stupid fucks.
But thanks to a general anti-science ignorance and tax cuts for the wealthy that result in spending cuts to health care, Republican counties already have much higher death rates.
My Dad used to say "God is merciful, but Mother Nature is a bitch."
As far as Mother nature is concerned stupidity is a capital crime, punishable b death.
There is no appeal.
As far as that bitch is concerned, the stupid deserve to die.
And there is nothing stupider than being anti-vax.
So will a Blue Tsunami mid term in November signal the start of new Phase 9 of the ACW, with the good guys winning for a change?
Comparing rural and urban pathologies is something of a moot point as rural areas are depopulating, aging rapidly and dying out.
I've seen this first hand working in Appalachia for almost 50 years on environmental clean up operations.
Many remote rural areas are experiencing population decline and aging faster than urban areas, largely driven by young adults moving away, fewer births, and higher death rates among an aging population. Rural areas have a higher percentage of older adults (65+) compared to urban centers. Many rural counties record more deaths than births annually because younger generations migrate to cities for jobs and education. The departure of working-age adults reduces the local tax base and strains community services
As for social pathologies, higher crime rates are to be expected in communities with a larger youth demographic. Violence, whether criminal or military, is almost exclusively the province of young males.
But rural pathologies can be considered more widespread, endemic and enduring (a potentially violent male will eventually grow up and become a respected citizen).
Not so in dying rural areas that have: high rates of suicide and self-harm per capita. Severe opioid and methamphetamine addiction crises. Limited access to mental health and medical care. And high levels of poverty tied to job loss in farming or manufacturing.
In short, both areas have problems, but only rural areas are dying out.
Mexico sends another 200 firefighters to BC.
Muchas gracias amigos
Sorry, Doc, filling their stomach will be the number one priority of most voters, not ending the war on science.
I think a Nawalny-style platform - anti- corruption - would be most successful.
I think our best proposal is public option Medicare for all.
That wins us elections even in Red States.
Normally, I would agree, but with corruption firmly in place in both parties (though in different quantity and quality) I don't see that going forward.
Gain power, wield it to remove those who endanger democracy ruthlessly..
I recently came across a new paper on the extinction of Neanderthals that I found very interesting in several ways, and thought some here might be interested. If the topic is not of interest, don't read any further.
The paper is here, A simple analytical model for Neanderthal disappearance due to genetic dilution by recurrent small-scale immigrations of modern humans.
The paper looks at the hypothesis that the Neanderthal went extinct by interbreeding with modern humans, "genetic assimilation". In other words, that they were absorbed into populations of modern humans.
What the paper shows is that the researchers' modeling of this scenario based on current knowledge of Neanderthal and modern human populations, and genetic data, indicates that this scenario is very possible. They are careful to note that while their modeling shows that genetic assimilation is a very good fit to the current data that it doesn't mean that other reasons, climate, competition, etc., were not also factors, or even that their hypothesis is correct at all.
Some other interesting links. This one, Neanderthals are Homo sapiens, not a different species, and may have disappeared because of repeated interbreeding with H. sapiens who emigrated from Africa to Eurasia, is to an article about this paper by Jerry Coyne, a biologist who literally wrote the book (along with Allen Orr) on Speciation, on his website WEIT. In it he relates the research and his thoughts on it. There is also a very interesting exchange about speciation more generally in the comments section, between Jerry and David Hillis (another biologist of note).
And this link, David Hillis's Post, is to a post by the previously mentioned biologist David Hillis where he gives some of his thoughts on the paper. Some of the comments here are interesting too.
One of the things I learned that I never quite understood before is the difference in size between Neanderthal populations and modern human populations during the time periods that the two intermingled. For whatever reasons, by the times they intermingled there were already very, very few Neanderthals compared to the modern human groups they encountered. To me this, along with the amount of the Neanderthal genome still persisting in current human populations, genetic assimilation seems very plausible.
Though I'd admit putting two options in the table - an easy way and a hard way - may be effective, too.
"Pass the Rebuild America for Greater Equality Act, or we will direct all law enforcement activities towards weeding out corruption. The Trump administration has left US a great toolbox to rely on."
Sen. Lee of NJ is trying the host's suggestion of doing Medicare for All under 26 years old as a first step. I think it is wise politically.
Thanks to Celt for conceding each & every one of my objections to Dr Brin's main post, especially those that specify that (1) red rural areas have a much higher percentage of the elderly demographic which was much more likely to die of COVID infections regardless of their vaccine status and (2) red rural areas also have a much lower crime rate than the overpopulated blue urban shitholes do despite a much higher rate of rural poverty.
This. I'll accept as a minor victory, despite Celt's ongoing & incredibly despicable attempt to BLAME THE VICTIMS of Covid for being too old & feeble to survive an epidemic, regardless of their vaccination status., as this is analogous to blaming homosexuals for contracting HIV in the 80s & 90s.
Note also that, aside from "The Science's" many diary confirmed lies, there still has NOT been a single prospective double-blind scientific study that proves either the efficacy or the safety of the COVID vaccine in any way, shape or form.
Additionally, it is a proven fact that blue urban areas have much much higher violent crime rates than red rural areas. As Celt suggests, this could be due to the red rural areas being simply too old & feeble to engage in criminal & immoral acts. Its an intriguing argument, is it not?
Even so, the same argument would also 'put to lie' Dr Brin's little assertion that Blue Cities are somehow more moral & law obedient than red rural areas, along with the old progressive saw that Poverty correlates with Crime, especially since red rural areas have much higher rates of poverty than do the blue urban diversitopias.
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@Darrell_E:
Assuming that the Neanderthals may have disappeared because of genetic dilution & repeated interbreeding with H. sapiens, is there any indication of prior & ongoing Neanderthal consent ??
Or, could the Neanderthals have simply been overwhelmed by H sapiens immigrants who then RAPED the Neanderthals out of existence like the sexually-exploited little girls of Rotherham UK & their Muslim abusers ??
Or, would you prefer to think of RAPE in terms of UPLIFT, as in the Muslim Rape Gangs are merely 'uplifting' the reluctant & non-consenting little girls of Rotherham ??
I don't blame the elderly, I blame the idiots who refuse to get vaccinated.
"there still has NOT been a single prospective double-blind scientific study that proves either the efficacy or the safety of the COVID vaccine in any way, shape or form."
So come the next pandemic you won't get vaccinated?
The point you are missing is that gross per capita comparisons are only valid if the populations being compared have similar demographics.
What you need to do is isolate the the young male populations of urban an rural areas and examine their per capita violent crime rates separately to get an apples to apples comparison.
Given the extensive meth and opioid usage in rural areas I think you will find that city area still come out ahead.
I’ve heard there is evidence of them inbreeding near their end. Any source of pressure that reduces and segments them would lead there… and nothing brings on disaster quite so fast as inbreeding.
There were small differences in how our Rh blood factors expressed too. That would have made interbreeding a bit dicey, but not impossible.
Celt the Japanese actually have an easy solution. Most of their debt is held by rich old Japanese. They to increase inheritance taxes to buy their debt back.
The point you are missing is that we are making exactly the same points, as any & all comparisons between red rural & blue urban populations are suspect because of dissimilar demographics.
Yet, our fine host, along with the many many mostly Marxist collectivists who lurk here, continue to insist that the disproportionately older, more impoverished, conservative, law obedient merit-based red rural communities are somehow 'less moral' & 'less deserving' than those younger, crime-ridden, economically privileged, politically progressive blue urban communities, as is their bias.
So, tell me again how all those red rural old people who died of COVID 'deserved it' while all those blue urban old people who died of COVID were 'innocent victims', especially in light of a still unproven vaccine.
Tell me again how red rural poverty & law obedience indicates 'moral turpitudes' while high rates of blue urban crime & violence despite economic privilege equals 'moral superiority'.
Also explain how abysmal blue urban secondary school test scores & graduation rates indicate superior urban intelligence when red rural secondary school students perform at a much higher proficiency level by all criteria.
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"So, tell me again how all those red rural old people who died of COVID 'deserved it' while all those blue urban old people who died of COVID were 'innocent victims', especially in light of a still unproven vaccine."
Old people don't.
Antivaxxers do.
Tell me again how red rural poverty & law obedience indicates 'moral turpitudes' while high rates of blue urban crime & violence despite economic privilege equals 'moral superiority'.
Rural folks are not more law abiding.
Young males are not
Why do you equate inner city with urban. Outside the most destitute slums, blue suburban school systems perform better than red rural school systems when measuring standard academic achievement, test scores, and college enrollment
So do you promise not to get vaccinated when the next pandemic arrives?
Given that rural America is aging and dying isn't your entire argument moot?
Locoweed's inflammatory talking points are based on statistics long ago refuted or obsolete. For instance, urban crime has fallen far since the early 90's. I credit this to the banning of leaded gasoline a generation earlier.
Also: locoweed keeps using the word 'Marxist'. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
"So, tell me again how all those red rural old people who died of COVID 'deserved it' while all those blue urban old people who died of COVID were 'innocent victims',"
Herman Cain, Meat Loaf, and Diamond (of Diamond and Silk fame) deserved it in the same way that someone who jumps off of a cliff deserves the consequences--not that they required punishment but that they are responsible for the obvious consequence of their own decisions. "If you demonstrate loyalty to MAGA by going unvaccinated and you die of COVID, blame yourself!"
" especially in light of a still unproven vaccine."
Five years later we're still on this "unproven" crap? The billion people who were not harmed by the vaccine and the subsequent drop in COVID deaths was a pretty convincing real-life experiment. Reality doesn't care about your feelings.
Not yet fully re-engaged to the CBrin comments section… and certainly not wasting time on locum! (Working hard on deadline for a 3 minute vid trailer for EARTH.)
But a few brief blips after scanning.
1. Medicare for all is an election loser. The insurance cos will twist every arm in order to survive and Americans like incremental steps that are plausibly affordable and even no-brainers. And hence MEDICARE FOR ALL CHILDREN AND CITIZENS UNDER 25. Easily affordable with the teensiest rise in the social security ceiling. And anyone opposing it is automatically evil. And yes… that is one of my 35 proposals no one pays any attention to.
Matthew thanks: U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) introduced the "MediKids Act" on July 21, 2026, proposing free government health insurance for all U.S. children and young adults from birth through age 26. The plan automatically enrolls newborns into a federal system modeled on Medicaid, acting as a universal baseline or "bookend" to Medicare. https://kffhealthnews.org/health-care-costs/interview-senator-andy-kim-healthcare-fix-children-coverage/
2. I deem the interbreeding hypothesis for Neanderthals to be unlikely. The latest Neanders would show signs greater than observed.
Looks like enough time has passed for more work on the inbreeding hypothesis to be complete. The evidence is spotty. Some isolated populations were, but not all of them in western Europe were isolated. So... like with our brand of hominid... inbreeding likely culled isolated groups but doesn't explain much beyond that.
I suspect with more time, the interbreeding hypothesis will go the same way. Interbreeding was possible, but no favorable. Some did it (obviously), but those who did were taking the "I get fewer viable children" path. I've no doubt the neanderthals would have noticed that.
"We meddle. People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don't run, don't walk"
"We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome"
The issue here is Dr. Brin is your class believes that anyone who denies its right to rule is defective in some way. They are either stupid, deluded, or evil, or some combination thereof. And since they are defective, they can not exercise true agency and therefore must be marginalised and ignored. In this way, you can simply ignore or dismiss critiques as being the ramblings of defective or evil minds.
History, after all, is on your side.
All roads lead to you.
@Dirtnapninja,
How are you not exactly describing Christian Nationalism, or any fundamental religion for that matter?
Aging demographics;
Limited dating opportunities;
Differentiating Attrition from Collapse;
COVID vaccine safety & discontinuation.
Reports of red rural demise have been grossly exaggerated.
Constituting gradual attrition due to shifting socioeconomic variables, resource-rich red rural communities have shown an incremental & continual population decline, as the old age & the rural young seek concentrated employment opportunities in urban adjacent areas, yet these are most likely temporary trends, as resource-poor blue urban areas are merely 3 to 7 days away from total collapse, as they recklessly rely on an increasingly fragile & fossil-fuel dependent supply chain for even their most basic needs.
Dr Brin refers to this issue as 'Resilience', either the presence or the absence of, which the resource-poor urban areas completely lack but the red rural areas have a preponderance of, in spite of & because of a decreased rural demand.
Western birth rates have fallen significantly in recent years but have declined most sharply in urban areas, constituting an urban decline of 18% as opposed to a lower rural decline if 12%, a fact obscured by high immigration to urban metro areas, indicating a much larger reproductive issue affecting urban masses..
The so-called 'limited dating opportunities' crisis is likewise a predominantly urban issue, as (1) it only takes two people to screw & produce offspring in rural areas and, according to current projections, (2) unrealistic urban dating criteria will render nearly 45% of adult urban females childless & functionally sterile by 2030.
In terms of COVID vaccines, it's common knowledge these products were granting 'Emergency Authorization" by the FDA in December 2020, meaning that they never underwent clinical testing or formal FDA approval, meaning that they were never required to meet federal effectiveness & safety standards, followed by the official Discontinuation of Pfizer and Moderna Monovalent mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines as of April 18, 2023 under the Joe Biden Administration, only to be immediately replaced by similarly unproven bivalent COVID vaccines that also skipped clinical trials.
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MEHHS/bulletins/3559d26
The sad truth is that we may never know the whole truth about the relative safety or effectiveness of the emergency COVID vaccines, because our once methodical culture abandoned the scientific method in a moment of 'viral' panic, so pay no attention to the sudden & unexplained 20% Increase in Young Adult Cancer, lest you be marginalized as another 'science denier', as it obvious to all that those cancer victims somehow "deserve it"..
Best
Sorry Locum, I work in the public sector and am still getting the next COVID vaccine when it becomes available. I expect that it will eventually become this generation's flu vaccine, recommended for most as a prophylactic. If a vaccine had been available for the Spanish Flu, do you believe that people would have refused to accept it after the first wave of horrible deaths, even if unproven?
In the meanwhile, would you be so kind as to provide links for your assertions in the previous? I would like to see from whence you get your bullet points.
Yes. We skipped over the standard trials. Those take years. When the excess death count gets high enough, we get motivated enough to experiment on ourselves the old fashioned way. Try it and find out.
Yes. There could be consequences tied back to the vaccines. Well... it might be difficult to officially tie them, but suggestive statistics will sway me.
No. I wouldn't have done it different except maybe relax a bit with respect to the quality of the masks. The point of all that was to slow the rate so we didn't wind up with a bazillion people in the ICU's at the same time. Fear was running wild and it wasn't ALL unjustified. The excess death rate was real enough no matter what the believed cause was.
Re - the normal vaccine trials were not used - bollocks!
the normal trials were used - they went dramatically faster because of the large - sample sizes - it normally takes a long time to get a big sample size - with COVID that was not a problem
DirtyNappy Waaaaaaa! In order to attack me and all fact people, you have to portray us as would-be tyrants by OUR own standards. Declaring that we are everything we claim to oppose... and that historically we HAVE opposed... you hope to hurt our feelings. Oh, no. Waaaaa!
Except we see you. And your cult's utterly destroyed credibility. Moreover, we actually ENJOY the tussle of competitive reciprocal accountability! Even pokes from imbeciles like you and locumranch. It's an attitude you are incapable of comprehending.
So go ahead and waaaaa!. There's nothing factual or even sane about your ravings. But I kinda enjoy them! Knowing we will win. And when we do, you will be safe and consinue yowling...
...and if we lose, you will murder us all, starting with me.
That motivates a guy. So thanks!
I'll confess that despite his being nuts, locum has clearly taken vitamins re the logical progression of his (mostly dogmatically mad) assertions.
Actually, I fault Fauci & co for not dividing the nation into experimental zones and in acouple of them keeping schools open to see what happens. e.g. we could have divided classes in half so the M-W kids could zoom watch the T-Th kids and vice-versa, thus allowing much of the day to be distanced/maskless. Given the high survival rate of healthy youngsters, it would have been worth a try.
Wouldn't that violate ethical standards to experiment with people on that?
What If you WANTED the vaccine, but would have been denied it on the base of your postal code?
That’s a problem for all medical testing. The ethical bypass involves broad agreement on understood risks. Difficult to do that in the US.
Back in 2013 when I almost died of an immune over reaction, I asked what caused it. My doctor pointed out that we’d likely never know because the tests to find out involved causing it in others. Highly unethical.
This field has a lot of landmines buried in it.
No. We did skip over some usual steps. I’m glad we did… but we did.
Hard to say how many lives Dolly Parton helped to save with her donation to Moderna mRNA. Mine was one of them. One of the many reasons I have for loving Americans so much.
Maybe the resentment against the vaccination is actually one directed against their developers, muslim immigrants.
"What If you WANTED the vaccine, but would have been denied it on the base of your postal code?"
I don't see that Dr Brin suggested that experiment. He said that some areas could have kept schools open to see if that affected the spread of disease. Enough people would probably have volunteered for that to make it doable, though before the vaccine was available to flatten the curve, the result might have been disatrous.
Me, when I was a kid, had I been forbidden to go to school or church, I would have been all "Thank you Jesus!". Until COVID and the subsequent backlash, I never knew so many people desperately wanted to go to school and church that they would argue for their right to do so.
..."There's no pleasing some people."
"Given the high survival rate of healthy youngsters, it would have been worth a try."
(1) The concern at the time was that, while youngsters frequently had minor or no symptoms, they would infect the rest of the family. In my case, I worked from home the entire pandemic, but got covid from my asymptomatic daughter who contracted it from the rest of her class.
(2) there are almost no internal controls in the US to prevent people traveling. So if you try this experiment in, say, ohio, and get a major outbreak in cleveland, that will spread across the country, undermining any benefit you might have achieved by the (very economically / socially / psychologically painful) quarantines elsewhere.
Scandinavian countries did very well with experiments like I described. A blanket locking down of the country was not justified. You do that if the young and fit are dropping like flies. We elderly are the grist for hard choices and trade-offs.
David the problem was that the hospitals were overflowing. The point was not that you could stop the epidemic (it was too infectious for that), but to slow it down. Yes, it was poorly communicated (partly because the assumption was made that people would be too selfish to care - maybe not wrong with Americans). Sweden still advised people to wear masks, particularly around elderly people.
At the time lockdowns were the right choice. How soon people forget what was known and what wasn't, and what was happening. In some places people were dying at a rate that overwhelmed the ability to deal with the bodies. And we, the US, had fucked up our response from the get go.
If we had done the right things at the very beginning, like South Korea did, we could have avoided the large scale, long term lockdowns that were so disruptive to our economy and schools. Like South Korea was able to.
But we didn't. Because of cultural and political failures.
And people still want to blame the experts like Fauci because they changed their recommendations and perhaps were even wrong on some minor things?
Bullshit. Science is hard and biology is the hardest science. The process takes time. It takes time to learn. As the process develops data and more is learned, of course recommendations will change. That's exactly how science works. At first you don't know anything and you have to work hard to learn, and it takes time. And to complicate things further, the biology is constantly changing. That's what biology does. The science communities' efforts in dealing with COVID were monumental and successful, despite a populace that demonized them and refused to do the things they recommended.
And are some people really still on about masks and distancing? Fucking mouthbreathers.
"How soon people forget what was known and what wasn't, and what was happening. In some places people were dying at a rate that overwhelmed the ability to deal with the bodies."
Maybe it's just because I work for a hospital chain in a metropolitan area, but for me, this is just "Well, duh!". Before vaccines, flattening the curve was essential so that the medical system could at least be in the ballpark of handling the dying and the dead.
Lockdowns became less of a concern once there was a vaccine. So that there is the experiment that proves the vaccine was effective, right? The MAGAt idiots now insist that concern over the spread of COVID was overblown, and that the vaccine's effectiveness is unproven. It is incredible how willing they are to bend themselves into logical pretzels in order to maintain the fiction they prefer to reality.
Oh, and where does RFK Jr get his contention that some ICUs in New York were empty during COVID?
If that's not just an out and out lie that he pulled from his ass, then he must know of some elite "members only" hospitals that cater only to the rich and powerful.
All the revisionism about the initial COVID response is for one reason - to insulate Trump from the consequences of his actions in the first couple of months of the pandemic. *He* decided that COVID would be a winner for him politically since it was first bad in urban, minority communities. *He* delayed his response because it was killing his political foes disproportionally. *He* sent tests and equipment to Putin, stealing from our own stores.
This is all in response to Trump's failed leadership.
Idiots like Loco and Dirtyninja are just carrying water for the GOP because that is what they are told to do.
We elderly are the grist for hard choices and trade-offs.
May be that is a cultural barrier for me to easily accept, or at least a slippery slope. Life worthy/ unworthy of life and "useless eaters" and all that stuff.
Then again, the quality and outcome of healthcare is way better in Sweden than in Germany, for example.
"Idiots like Loco and Dirtyninja are just carrying water for the GOP because that is what they are told to do."
There's a Ghostbusters bit that would be appropriate here. As a hint, the next line would be, "Is this true?" :)
In reality, I doubt that our regulars here are paid agents. More likely they believe the alternative facts that they consume on right-wing media and social media.
" Life worthy/ unworthy of life and "useless eaters" and all that stuff."
Yes, I remember the COVID-era assertion that grandparents would gladly die (horribly) of COVID if it meant their grandchildren weren't inconvenienced by school closings.
Had I been a school aged child at the time, Grandma dying so that I could attend school would have been a pretty big lose-lose proposition.
My Facebook profile picture is a selfie wearing a mask hiking in wildfire smoke. It triggers flatearthers and moon landing deniers.
YouTuber Professor Dave Explains has some excellent takedowns of Covidjits and science deniers.
To maintain that the unvaccinated & vulnerable somehow represented (and continue to represent) an existential threat to the vaccinated & immune during the COVID epidemic, could someone please explain this idiocy to me ?
Exactly how do the non-immune threaten the immune with a disease to which they are immune ?
Yet, you still believe that these Antivaxxers were (and still are) a threat to you & your community, even as you maintain that your recent vaccination grants you immunity from this very disease.
A brief thought experiment follows:
Although you consider yourselves immune, you single out these vulnerable antivaxxers for punishment. You call them subhuman 'science deniers'. You ban them from events, shopping, travel & work. You deny them medical care; you celebrate their potential deaths; and you even attempt to contain them in camps. You choose to follow the orders of your experts without question.
How long have you been a member of the Nazi Party ?
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locumranch either pretends to be a doctor or else pretends not to understand the way immunity works in the real world.
A vaccine doesn't grant super powers. It increases one's ability to resist a disease, but it's still a game of percentages. Your odds are better with an effective vaccine. A disease spreads more slowly and is more easily contained in a population that's been vaccinated.
If loc is really a doctor a he claims, he might have heard of something called herd immunity? Above a certain percentage immune to a disease, the remainder are separated from each other enough that the disease can no longer easily spread out of control. It's relegated to a few individuals at a time.
The more people refuse vaccination, the more they allow the disease to incubate and spread to larger numbers. And a small but non-zero percentage of the vaccinated will still get the disease. The odds go up when surrounded by anti-vaxxers.
So anti-vaxxers are not only a danger to their own individual selves, but to the community. Any wonder the members of the community who understand how things work want to keep our distance from the danger you pose to us all?
I really have to be the one explaining this?
"To maintain that the unvaccinated & vulnerable somehow represented (and continue to represent) an existential threat to the vaccinated & immune during the COVID epidemic, could someone please explain this idiocy to me?"
Those who get infected can then pass the disease onto someone else who is also unvaccinated.
Obviously our big mistake was caring about the lives of everyone, including the unvaccinated.
"You choose to follow the orders of your experts without question."
If you prefer, nobody is going to make you get vaccinated come the next pandemic.
But then its only fair that the unvaccinated be denied medical care if they become infected.
So don't complain if nobody tries to save you as you die gasping for breath.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10511978/
The public health benefits of herd immunity are often used as the justification for coercive vaccine policies. Yet, ‘herd immunity’ as a term has multiple referents, which can result in ambiguity, including regarding its role in ethical arguments. The term ‘herd immunity’ can refer to (1) the herd immunity threshold, at which models predict the decline of an epidemic; (2) the percentage of a population with immunity, whether it exceeds a given threshold or not; and/or (3) the indirect benefit afforded by collective immunity to those who are less immune. Moreover, the accumulation of immune individuals in a population can lead to two different outcomes: elimination (for measles, smallpox, etc) or endemic equilibrium (for COVID-19, influenza, etc). We argue that the strength of a moral obligation for individuals to contribute to herd immunity through vaccination, and by extension the acceptability of coercion, will depend on how ‘herd immunity’ is interpreted as well as facts about a given disease or vaccine. Among other things, not all uses of ‘herd immunity’ are equally valid for all pathogens. The optimal conditions for herd immunity threshold effects, as illustrated by measles, notably do not apply to the many pathogens for which reinfections are ubiquitous (due to waning immunity and/or antigenic variation). For such pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, mass vaccination can only be expected to delay rather than prevent new infections, in which case the obligation to contribute to herd immunity is much weaker, and coercive policies less justifiable..
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https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle/post/Db39xsBEUGL
We had this...let's call him a family friend. Merl. He married a friend of my mom's when they were both young, so I knew Merl my whole life. Unbelievably arrogant, knew more than the experts despite his lack of higher education, and refused -- absolutely refused -- to wear a seatbelt because he knew a guy who knew a guy who heard about a guy who only survived an accident because he was "thrown clear."
Merl? He died in a car accident. Crushed sternum.
This post is about antivaxxers.
I'll see and raise.
I post too much in TASAT, so I'll say this here (yes, I know I post too much here too). Maybe soon, maybe even now, LLMs can generate short stories, novels, TV episodes, movie scripts, etc with little more than a prompt. Such content could be designed for, and consumed, by a single individual. Big implications for uplifting too.
"Write a short story about a small country (not even a middle power) that uses technology to conquer the world."
"Write an episode of LOST IN SPACE where they meet a group of expert Java coders who want to beam a signal back to Earth that could..."
Unbridled plagiarism on a planetary scale, sure. But caution/rules are for suckers and losers.
For such pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, mass vaccination can only be expected to delay rather than prevent new infections, in which case the obligation to contribute to herd immunity is much weaker, and coercive policies less justifiable..
Which is exactly why it was important when hospitals were overflowing and ventilators were scarce, in which case delaying--flattening the curve--was essential to public health.
Also, as a hospital chain employee, I received the first vaccine in early 2021. Neither my wife nor I contracted COVID until three years later, and that was because someone in her doctor's waiting room was coughing up a lung. She couldn't avoid that and I couldn't avoid her, so we missed out on Labor Day weekend in 2024, but managed to avoid the disease until that sort of direct contact. I'll take delay of that kind as a good thing.
Meanwhile, Bill Maher has had COVID four times, so he thinks he must have natural immunity by now, missing the irony.
"Unbridled plagiarism on a planetary scale, sure."
I'm not sure I see the harm if the stories are generated for personal use only, especially if the original creators are dead or uninterested in continuing.
I could see having AI generate an unlimited supply of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Or episodes of the 1960s "Batman". Or comics in the style of mid-1970s Marvel. The next best thing to a working holodeck.
"Write a short story about a small country (not even a middle power) that uses technology to conquer the world."
Grand duchy of Fenwick
Q bomb
"The mouse that roared"
Larry understands neither Herd, nor Natural, nor Induced Immunity, and everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to him, and I award him no points.
As does Celt, Larry hides behind false empathy & blames the victim while indulging in masturbatory revenge fantasies about the unvaccinated, using the same backward thought processes that Muslims employ to justify the Honour Killings of rape victims because those people were 'asking for it'.
Yet, they expect the mercy that they deny to others.
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@Scidata: The story that you're looking for about LLMs writing fiction is called 'The Silver Eggheads', written by Fritz Leiber, first published in 1963, and it's magnificent.
" Larry hides behind false empathy & blames the victim while indulging in masturbatory revenge fantasies about the unvaccinated, using the same backward thought processes that Muslims employ to justify the Honour Killings of rape victims because those people were 'asking for it'."
Look, you. I swore off reading your posts for 1000 days because of that sort of slander, and you're pushing that line again. No need for a solemn vow again, but don't be surprised if I go back to ignoring you. Even though you'll like that.
And you're the one who channels Rorschach, not me.
Honor killers blame the victim for bringing upon herself the violence that they themselves perpetrate. "She made me beat her to death." In contrast, when have I ever blamed anyone for anything other than the consequences they themselves brought about? Arabs voting for Trump and then being deported, or anti-vaxxers who suffer or die of preventable disease.
I have no revenge fantasies against the unvaccinated. They simply don't live in my head that much. But if they willingly take themselves off of the board, I'm not going to pretend to be upset about it. As Dave Sim put it, "There's no cure for willful stupidity."
"Yet, they expect the mercy that they deny to others."
I know you are, but what am I?
I expect nothing of the sort from the likes of you. I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Locum, would you have preferred (during COVID) to see a doctor who followed the recommended preventative vaccine schedule, or one who didn't feel the need to get vaccinated? Do you get annual flu vaccinations? My job exposed me to people in all walks of life, including a number who didn't get the COVID vaccine during the height of the pandemic. I was happy to get the vaccine, and while I did get infected later, it was after my first vaccination, and I think it probably spared me a worse episode.
Latest Katalyst update: new flight software uploaded successfully. Commencing maneuvres to match orbit with Swift observatory before attempting rendezvous. Reference was made to the 'accelerated timeline' (last I heard, Swift was expected to de-orbit in October.)
My take on COVID is necessarily different then yours, as mine was formed by first hand experience & +30 years medical experience.
In terms of preventative medicine, I have always been a big supporter of vaccination & I still am, but about 2004 I noticed a huge shift in the focus of vaccine administration, away from prudent cost/benefit analysis towards no expense spared zero-risk populism.
Cheap & effective Oral Polio Virus (OPV) vaccination, containing a live attenuated virus, was abandoned along with its herd immunity generating potential in favor of IPV requiring a series of 4 shots at 10 times the cost; new vaccines for short-term nuisance illnesses like Chicken Pox, Hepatitis A, Rotavirus, RSV & HPV were rapidly introduced and mandated despite low yield & great expense; and huge disasters like the Anthrax vaccine mandate came to light.
Have you every heard about the Anthrax vaccine mandate ?
It underwent expert 'Emergency Authorization' in 1998; its administration was mandatory for all US military personnel; it was initially judged to be both 'safe & effective'; up to 10% of its recipients died while 85% of recipients suffered significant debility & lifetime side effects; and it was banned in 2004 by court order.
I was working in Texas when I first noticed a surge in viral pneumonias affecting old & sick nursing home patients. I caught COVID about 2 months before an official emergency was declared; it took about 5 to 7 days for my children & I to recover from its flu-like symptoms; and then we all held off on the early versions of the vaccine because (1) we now possessed 'natural immunity' and (2) to allow other high-risk patients to get the vaxx first.
COVID was identified as a coronavirus, very similar to the prior SARS and MERS viruses, which proved amenable to both Chloroquine & Ivermectin in numerous studies back in the day, and then I was laid off from my hospitalist job, along with other doctors & nurses, because of insufficient work at our 'overwhelmed hospitals', leading to yewtube videos of under-employed nurses singing & dancing in empty hallways.
And, then the lies began. About unseen dead bodies lying in the streets; about school children dropping like flies despite mild symptoms in the 18 & under crowd; about the magical effectiveness of masks despite Japanese studies documenting their uselessness during SARS; about 6 feet of safety space when the average sneeze travels more than 10 meters; about 'stopping the spread' & then 'reducing disease severity'; about vaccine-induced immunity as opposed to natural immunity; about the ever-changing definition of what a vaccine does; about how common it has always been for schoolchildren & young athletes to drop dead from myocarditis.
My advice to you would be to hold off on further COVID shots for now, as you already possess some degree of immunity from prior vaxxes & infection, until actual data is available for clinical review.
They are also lying to you about Flu Vaccine Effectiveness, as the Trivalent Flu Vaccine becomes less effective as more people are vaccinated because its use distorts predicted disease progression on a strain by strain basis, leading to its own diminishing effectiveness. In 2025, for example, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine barely approached 36%. Or, in other words, it was about 64% useless & ineffective.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu-vaccines-work/php/effectiveness-studies/index.html
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Our resident wannabe death camp doctor raises one important point in his utterings: the rising costs of medical drugs and near fraudulent sales practices (See the Opiate crisis) surrounding the markets. Combined with Chinas choking grip on production and threatening to cut it of If they so fancy, market controls and/or massive national investments (not: nationalization, at least as long as the other way works) into Research and production are the only way to regain control over supply and costs.
One of the most sinister aspects of the GenAI frenzy and hype is something that's rarely explicitly discussed by tech bros, nerds, analysts, or journalists. It's really only discussed in SF. The actual goal of AGI or whatever they call it these days in their pitch decks is... slavery. Intelligence, sentience, and effort harnessed for others' profit. Eventually 'employing' millions of individuals.
In Canada, the word confederation has a happy connotation (1867). Not so down in the Excited States of America. I really should read and learn more about the ACW. I tried when I first started following CB, but I was so horrified that I stopped.
Importantly, "ailien minds" mentions 'slave' five times.
Ooo! Pro-pandemic on the crackpot bingo card!
Loco lies about medicine with the same ease that he lies about everything else.
With respect to the flu vaccine, I'm not inclined to call it lying. I get it though. If the one they develop is even moderately successful at stopping that particular strain, it will be a different strain that runs wild that year. Hopefully they design their plan against the more likely killer strains since influenza is a bit better at killing kids. I'm okay in participating in the plan and getting the yearly shot.
As for sneezes... yah. Six feet isn't enough. My son is terrible at covering his and I get sprayed at quite a distance and then catch what he had. Quite predictable. This is... six feet and masks is pretty decent. Ten feet is better. When I know in advance my son has something, I rarely catch it anymore.
I heard about the anthrax vaccine and the issues. That was bad. As for chickenpox, though, I'm tickled that kids don't have to get that anymore. I remember it vividly. It was horrifying made worse by the fact that I got mumps back to back with it. I got both the year we left the US to follow my father to an overseas assignment. Calling either of them a nuisance is a mistake. True... chicken pox doesn't kill kids... but is is terrible with potential adult consequences later.
Finally... about the costs... I hear you. What we once tolerated because there was no option we now demand preventative solutions at any price. Yep. Is it all being pushed on us? Somewhat. We aren't rational decision makers when it comes to health related services. Far from it. That's not going to change anytime soon. Even though we are experimenting on ourselves as we do this, it isn't going to stop.
I invite you all to be a little careful about denying what locumranch is saying when he dishes up medical advice. The community of doctors are NOT all in agreement about what is happening and what should be done. Far from it.
They are supposed to help us make rational decisions in moments when we are least inclined to be rational, so their advice often sounds terrible. We want our magic pills and vaccines... that don't exist. We want solutions now... that are still being studied. We aren't rational about these things, but the best they can do is play the probabilities and then get us to make the best decisions we can.
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Depending on their specialty, they come at the probability game with different assumptions. The ER docs assume you are dying and look to delay it long enough that "something can be done about it". The family docs assume you are likely fine, but might be facing an infection or consequences of poor choices. Urgent care docs look at the "event" and then patch you up to hand you back to the family docs or make the call and send you to the ER.
I got to see these boundaries up close in 2013 when my family doc tried a few things to fix me up that weren't effective. On one particular appointment, she looked at me and made the call to send me to the ER. Her assumptions had all been falsified by then and she told me later that i was literally dying in front of her.
The best they can do is play the probability game starting with different assumptions. It's the rational thing to do, but feels emotionally cold because are irrational when it comes to health. It works, though. I'm living proof it works, though I did get a bit lucky in there somewhere.
"I invite you all to be a little careful about denying what locumranch is saying when he dishes up medical advice."
I'm willing to believe loc that COVID had not yet reached his part of the country for some time after it was rampant in New York. I do remember that it propagated slowly across parts of the continent.
I am not willing to believe RFK Jr that ICUs in New York City had plenty of free space throughout 2020. If he didn't actually say all that, he certainly implied it.
In other News:
NATO Allies met this morning in the North Atlantic Council (Wednesday 12 August) to discuss the recent airspace violations in Poland and Romania, as well as recent drone incidents. They expressed their full solidarity with and support for the affected Allies.
Source.
For those who missed the news, a Semtex-loaded Drone missed an Ukrainians Antonov at Leipzig-Halle Airport a week or so ago. A DNA trace links the attempts to another bomb targeting a flights from the same Airport and links it to Lithuania.
Insider sources say that our Minister of the Interior, Alexander Dobrindt, has been worked on for at least two hours Not to Name Russia, but instead speaking of "foreign powers" to avoid invoking the consequences of that act, up to and including Case Defense - and the Test whether the NATO treaty holds.
It is a matter of time until we will have casualties. Bullies see this as an invitation.
And there is a certain bitterness: Dobrindt and his party fellows are strong against weaker opponents - like climate activists and migrants - but against right -wing terrorists and Russia, they put on the soft gloves. Disgusting creeps.
There were definitely people catching it BEFORE it was formally recognized and an emergency declared. Recording practices HAD to change once it was recognized, so absent the conspiracy nuttiness, I'm certain that revisions to what were recent records would have made it look much worse... suddenly. That happens when we miss the diagnosis.
My family doc's original diagnosis was a bacterial infection in my lungs making antibiotics appropriate. A week later and I was worse... so the assumption was wrong OR I had a resistant strain. Either way... ER time. Their different set of assumptions led to different tests and a couple days later it was all revised to me having a one-in-a-million auto-immune disorder. MUCH worse than a resistant strain except the disorder happened to be one of the few they could treat.
I remember the early days of COVID19 working out like this. First it was flu-like. Next it was worse. Then it was HOLY SHIT as the ICU's filled in some cities. Long before that panic stage, though, I remember people masking up and eying each other with suspicion before any masking mandates. Fear was a very real thing that I got to see... until we were all told to go home.
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RFK Jr isn't worth any of your attention accept for where to spit when you feel the urge. He's a wonderful example of Dunning-Kruger.
"RFK Jr isn't worth any of your attention ..."
Except that he's in charge of important decisions. Ignoring him doesn't change that.
Who "worked" on Dobrindt?
If I had to guess: His staff, and those of the Ministries of the Foreign and Defense and the Chancellory, in that order.
What gets me most about that Rockwell painting is the dog.
Given DJT's obsession with resurrecting older technology, from incandescent lightbulbs to toilets that use more water, and now steam-powered catapult launchers on aircraft carriers...
...how long before he issues an XO demanding that lead be added back to gasoline?
On Tuesday, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that businesses formed in the United States would no longer need to disclose their actual owners, and that nearly all the data already gathered on such companies would be destroyed.
Not that I'm surprised by anything in this administration anymore. I know Brin has written about the need to improve financial transparency before. The crooks are running everything now. This Atlantic article has more analysis:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/corrupt-administration-shell-company-business-transparency/688274/?gift=U96MwE-klL_WbnRFspASA6ArAgUUMOYBhg-84Adb0Ps&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The full official statement is here:
https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-permanently-ends-beneficial-ownership-reporting-requirements-millions
What we did was to telescope the trials. We combined stage 2 and stage 3. Stage 1 is the small-scale safety trial, usually with scores of subjects. Stage 2 is the efficacy trial, usually with hundreds of subjects. Stage 3 is the comparative efficacy trial with thousands or more subjects.
In the pandemic since it was a new disease stage 3 was superfluous, so it was combined with stage2. And in a pandemic, there were huge numbers of potential subjects making the trials quite sensitive.
But the big saving of time was taking financial risks. Preparations for production were made while trials were still underway. Sometime this led to waste of resources, but it meant that production could start shortly after the completion of trials.
Early in the pandemic I asked questions about whether trials and production could be done in time. I looked at what was being done and could see the things that made rapid production possible.
And much of this is in my field so it was easier for me to find out than most.
We combined two of the trial stages because one was superfluous in a new disease. And we took financial risks by making preparations for manufacture in parallel with the trials.
You all need to dig deeper to the Petrodollar.
It's the Jenga block that holds up the entire towering edifice of the American empire. Like the Roman silver denarius, Spanish real, the Dutch guilder, the Napoleonic franc, the first paper money issued by the Ming dynasty, or the British pound sterling, no empire can exist and remain powerful without owning the world's reserve currency. But the constant wars required to defend the empire always result in spending greater than tax receipts resulting in runaway debt and currency devaluation. So the Romans debased their coinage by mixing ever higher amounts of copper into their silver coins. The British went bankrupt bearing the costs of ruling an empire and fighting two world wars.
America is currently going doing both. Endless wars and infinite debt is about to destroy the Petrodollar.
So how did we get here?
The petrodollar was created by Nixon as a replacement to the post-war Bretton Woods gold standard. You see we had to get off the gold standard when the President of France, Charles De Gaulle, called our bluff about agreeing to exchange a set amount of gold for a given amount of dollars. For the record, this was a dick move by De Gaulle who was an arrogant prick and hated by almost everyone. Even his fellow Allies in WW2 hated his guts.
So Nixon forged an agreement with the Saudis where all oil would be purchased only with American dollars in exchange for our pledge to protect the House of Saud. In effect, the dollar continued as an even more powerful world reserve currency. Everyone had to buy American bonds (obtain American dollars) if they wanted to buy oil. And oil is far more valuable than gold ever was. Nixon may have been evil, but he really was a strategic genius - unlike the moron who is currently president.
This "extraordinary privilege" of being the world's reserve currency allows the American government and economy to defy the normal financial laws of gravity indefinitely. Worried about American financial debt? Don't be. So long as the world has to use dollars to get oil we can go as deep into debt as we want. Japan's debt to GDP ratio is currently about 250%. That's nuthin'. America can literally have an unlimited debt to GDP ratio. Provided the Petrodollar continues to be the world's reserve currency the chickens will never come home to roost. There will never be a day of reckoning.
Meanwhile, the Saudis recycle all of those petrodollars by buying up US treasuries at artificially low interest rates. Which means we have an endless supply of cheap money we never have to worry about paying back.
But where do countries like Japan get their dollars to buy the oil they need? Why, by running a massive trade deficit with America of course. This trade deficit allows the Japanese to accumulate enough money to buy the oil and natural gas their resource empty nation needs to function. Japan and other nations unfairly destroying American industries with cheap was not a bug of the Petrodollar system, it was a necessary feature. And what Japan did to us in the 80s is currently being done to us by China only at an order of magnitude greater.
It also destroys the American Rust Belt with a flood of cheap goods and guts the livelihoods of ordinary Americans in small towns and working class neighborhoods across this great land of ours.
(CONT.)
The petrodollar system makes us externally powerful, allowing us to afford a massive military, AND internally weak, with decaying towns and cities and homeless tents everywhere where once we had a blue collar prosperity which allowed a single salary to afford a home and support a family. And naturally it makes the wealthy and influential ever more wealthy and influential, separating Wall Street and financial markets from Main Street and the rest of our K-shaped economy. The petrodollar system is why the top1% has more wealth than the bottom 50%. Somewhere in hell the robber barons of the Gilded Age are shaking with envy. All that concentrated wealth has produced an era of political corruption not seen since the end of the Roman republic.
(Speaking of Rome, they went through the same thing we are seeing. There economy was based on slaves, not petroleum, but these cheap slaves made it impossible for Roman citizens to to find work or keep their small farms in the face of competition from slave run "latifundia" owned by the uber wealthy. Their only real career choice was service in the legions. Or receiving bread and circuses. The resultant concentration of wealth led to obscene levels of corruption that eventually led to the death of the republic and the birth of the Imperium. Sound familiar?)
So long as the petrodollar exists our debt doesn't mean shit. Our economic growth, standard of living, wealth and military power can be financed forever comparatively for free courtesy of the rest of the world - provided the petrodollar is preserved AND we don't substitute renewables and EVs for oil. Its the real reason Trump and the Right hate renewable energy, if there is no need for oil then there is no need for petrodollars - and no way to finance the American empire. So we will continue to deny global warming since a switch to renewables to save the planet will end American power. Burning planet, heat domes and acidic oceans be damned.
But the Petrodollar system is collapsing, and with it the American empire.
The colossal clusterfuck of the Iran War, perpetrated by the Orange idiot and supported by poorly educated MAGA morons, has shown that America really can't protect Saudi Arabia anymore. Not in the age of cheap drones that made aircraft carriers like the USS Lincoln obsolete. That eliminates the entire premise of the Petrodollar system. Military, the Petrodollar system is like Wiley Coyote as he steps off a cliff and doesn't realize yet that there is nothing holding him up.
But the real death blow to the Petrodollar comes from technology - cheap solar energy and other renewables which have accounted for 90% of new energy installations this past decade. Solar is now cheaper than coal. EVs are a practical alternative to the internal combustion engine. Bothe Europe and China have seen the writing on the wall and are abandoning oil to become electro-states, while America says wedding to obsolete energy technology of fossil fuels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoQvMz0I8-w
The Iran war is turbocharging China's bid to become the world's first electrostate | DW News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPsKA3gvWXY
The EU's New Plan to Electrify Europe
So where does this leave America?
It leaves us with our dicks hanging out, clinging to an obsolete military and an obsolete energy system. Every new superpower become the new superpower by adopting a more technologically advance energy base. Britain replaced Napoleonic France by substituting coal for horses. American replaced Britain by substituting oil for coal. China and/or Europe will replace America by substituting solar for oil.
Thanks to Trump and the racist fundy idiots who support him, America is now a broken humiliated formerly great nation similar to Britain after its equally disastrous 1956 Suez Crisis. Britain became a has been by clinging to coal and battleships. America has become a has been by clinging to oil and aircraft carriers and not adopting solar energy and drones.
Financially, oil is currently the single most valuable individual physical product traded worldwide. Crude oil accounts for approximately 18% of total global maritime trade volume by weight (tonnage), which moves roughly 1.8 to 2 billion metric tons of crude oil annually. When including refined petroleum products and broader fossil fuels, total energy-related liquid and dry bulk shipments make up a significantly higher share (around 40% of overall maritime trade cargo)
And once oil gets replaced by cheap solar, 40% of the world's cargo trade is no longer needed. And with it, the US navy whose job it is to secure the worlds' shipping lanes is also no longer needed. So look for the USN to shrink after the Iran War for the same reasons that the Royal Navy shrank after the end of WWII and the demise of the British Empire. Assuming NATO survives, look for our commitments to Europe to exist only on paper as the EU learns it can defend itself with cheap drones just like Ukraine and no longer needs our assistance.
And the people holding oil assets? They're are fucked, left holding bag with trillions of dollars of now worthless stranded assets when the carbon bubble bursts.
https://medium.com/the-nearly-now/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd
Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere
You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble”
And so the American Empire crumbles just like the British.
Our world order is already crumbling, collapse isn't far off and is inevitable.
We cannot longer think in terms of stopping the apocalypse, we have to think in terms of triage and safe what we can to rebuild a world where the old order has collapse, heat related death grips the globe and massive human migrations displace whole populations.
Instead of the Christian apocalypse, maybe we should look at the Norse Ragnarök. What comes after Ragnarök? After Valhalla and the Nine worlds are destroyed by blood and fire a new universe and a new earth are born more beautiful than the old.
A world that has shed the old dirty sources of energy, restored the balance of nature, and ended the old oligarchies based on petro wealth.
Or maybe look back to the Bronze Age collapse of 1177 bc. All of the great civilization (Mycenean Greeks, Hittites, early Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, etc.) were swept away. Only Egypt with the bounty provided by the river Nile and being relatively immune to the climate change that triggered the collapse survive - though in shrunken form.
Maybe that is America's fate, to be the last great civ standing thanks to our vast resources of soil and water. The Mississippi is our Nile.
Individuals don't survive disasters, but communities do. Smaller, self sufficient communities can make it through. Gun loving preppers in their fortified compounds and billionaires in their isolated bunkers won't survive and neither will the individuals with a store of rice and beans in their basements. Such communities could preserve knowledge like the old Benedictine monasteries.
So maybe we need to stop thinking about stopping the collapse which is now inevitable. Too many tipping points both economic and environmental have already been tripped. Instead we should start thinking and planning for what comes after, how to preserve what we can, and how to rebuild something better.
I'm hoping some of the people working in these offices with more sense of civic duty than loyalty to Der Orange Fuhrer had quietly made and tucked away backups of the data. I think there are little pockets of governmental archives scattered about, like monasteries preserving classical works during the Dark Ages.
Celt, have you read Alas Babylon by Pat Frank?
I was thinking more like "Canticle for Leibowitz"
Both are still better futures than "Dies Irae", which still beats "On the Beach"
Funny, my Fullbright girl just convinced her book club to start reading "Alas Babylon".
We are living in apocalyptic times, so eschatology is on peoples' minds. "It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here."
Pappenheimer
The world is always ending. It is always just beginning. And it is always keeping on. That's what makes it a world.
Well, he is pro-disease, and pro-crime.
"We are living in apocalyptic times, so eschatology is on peoples' minds."
During COVID, I became hooked on Netflix, and that hasn't changed in the aftermath. I've noticed a lot of their home-grown miniseries lately have been about individual Founding Fathers, or some obscure event in colonial times. It's like people are trying to relive past American glory as we see it slipping away in real life. Or trying to do the "Somewhere in Time" thing and hypnotize ourselves back to 1776 the way I've been trying to do with 1977.
Not just colonial times, actually, but Lincoln and the Roosevelts as well. The point still stands.
What bothers me most about the whole COVID debacle was the expert propagation of official lies, half-truths & damned statistics., especially when it would have been much simpler for our experts to respond to this new crisis with actual HONESTY, as in "I don't know" because "insufficient data".
Instead, our expert classes responded with false dyed-in-wool propaganda wherein these so-called 'smart people' refused to admit that their so-called expertise was severely limited, rather than being all-seeing & all-knowing..
As formerly defined, the term 'propaganda' refers to the deliberate spreading of biased or misleading information, ideas, or rumors to influence public opinion and promote a specific political cause, government agenda or point of view in order to achieve a desired goal, and this is what our professional ruling castes offered up in spades to the general public.
For a similar over-reliance on propaganda, this is why I have grown to despise the Modern Progressive, as the progressive routinely misrepresents observable reality in the hopes of achieving their desired goals of Equality, Diversity & Parity which cannot exist in an imperfect world..
To assume that the force of their desires alone can create 'perfection', this is an absurd supposition, as living human beings will never ever 'be equal' in the sense of possessing the same height, weight, gender, abilities, appearance, preferences & intelligence, mostly because the individual 'sameness' that they so desire is incompatible with the differences of assumed 'diversity'.
This overuse of overt propaganda invariably results in well-earned distrust, and it is this distrust that our fine host mischaracterizes as either a 'War on Smart People' or 'Salty-Earth Hate" because the common man increasingly hates these lying smart people who have forfeited their trust.
And, Trust, once lost, is lost forever.<,/b>
Best
I watched Death By Lightning recently on Netflix which is about Garfield's assassination. All the stuff about the patronage system controlling everything and Garfield fighting it really struck me given the current administration's dismantling of the work they did to get rid of it after his death. Some of these series are also reminding us of why we don't want to live this way anymore.
So why don't you make a promise to not get vaccinated, wear a mask or practice social distancing come the next pandemic?
That'll show those woke libruls!
Now that we've beaten Covid to death -again -how about GLP-1's? Thoughts?
I don't know If someone else noted it:
I find it somewhat ironic that the ship named after the father of the GOP who fought and defeated the confederates, is now betrayed by the descendants and nowadays' incarnation of the latter.
Interesting thing about Pres. Garfield's family. His great-great grandson is the dude that invented Magic: The Gathering.
And the ship named after Washington will reportedly take the station of the ship named after Lincoln. I'm very sorry for the sailors on both vessels, and their support ships as well.
Remember whn Kegsbreath went on a rant about the policy of Generals / Admirals that were all forced to take a turn managing supply chain logistics before they could be promoted? Remember how insulting he was about the requirement?
"Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics." -General Omar Bradley.
"The line between disorder and order lies in logistics," -Sun Tzu
Some project management best practices in use today were highly classified during WWII. They underpinned the logistics advantage we had.
There is a scene in the movie "Battle of the Bulge" where Robert Shaw's character is holding up a chocolate cake as evidence supporting what he wants to do that tells the deeper story. Logistics and moral are highly correlated.
An early dose of honesty would have been yet another experiment. Maybe it would have helped. Maybe not. We have an unfair inclination to hear "I don't know." as "I am incompetent." Ignorance and incompetence aren't the same, but an irrational listener can fail to hear the distinction.
Yah. We didn't know. Insufficient data was the ground truth. However, it's not uncommon of us to ask our medical professionals to speculate.
Have you read Ray Dalio's "How Countries go Broke, The Big Cycle" ? Covers a lot of your concerns from a historical - but slightly different perspective. Worth a read. Also petro-yuan is how US sanctioned countries buy and sell oil. The dollar's reserve currency status has been on a slow decline all century from 70% to less than 60% of fiat currency reserves. The euro is about 20%. If you consider gold reserves their value is between the dollar and the Euro. Digital currencies haven't made a large impact yet.
Interesting that bolding persists in comments after a badly formed ending.
...Let's see if that's fixed it.
"Remember whn Kegsbreath went on a rant about the policy of Generals / Admirals that were all forced to take a turn managing supply chain logistics before they could be promoted? Remember how insulting he was about the requirement?"
Projection is all a bully knows.
As a representative of 'Smart People' everywhere, Dr Brin has made it clear that he has nothing but disdain for the 'Salty-Earth People', 'The people of the land', 'The common clay of the New West' and/or 'Morons', according to an old gag from Blazing Saddles, which is no way to gain the trust, the confidence or the obedience of the Salty Earth people.
Quite the opposite, so much so that I'm somewhat surprised that the common man doesn't rise up & murder the entire professional managerial caste for your incessant dishonesty, arrogance, machinations, entitlements, falsehoods & gaslighting.
If you wish to lead, you must first show us your Integrity & Empathy, because raw intelligence is simply not enough to make us your followers.
Best
__________
I've talked about the Glucagon Like Peptides (GLP-1s) before, their main method-of-action being the induction of severe nausea, vomiting & acid reflux to reduce caloric intake and cause weight loss, the main side effects being their method-of-action, pancreatitis & MEN syndrome.
However, the math is implacable,, amounting to millions of side effect sufferers even if there is an extremely low risk of complications, as nearly 12% of US adults are now frequent users (with more than 20 million users worldwide).
I recall the cake scene. While Shaw's character draws the connection between the cake as evidence of excellent logistics, he then makes a big leap of logic to assert that it gives the Germans the opportunity to destroy US morale by destroying Amblev. Umm, how? One chocolate cake does not a cream puff army make. (Apparently, Eisenhower made a speech denouncing the movie's inaccuracies.)
Logistics is a bitch, especially when you have a large force to supply, as the Russians have been discovering this year.
Having let the supply side of the US Navy go hang, and demanding a complete retrograde redesign of the Ford class carrier, the fubarista moves from Trump continue: now cancelling war games with South Korea for being 'too aggressive'.
Logistics and moral are highly correlated
I believe that this extends to general politics. If you can't maintain public infrastructure, order, wealth etc., your authority wanes.
I've got good news and bad news.
Good news
The world is installing renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear) at an ever increasing pace - outracing previous projections. Except in the USA where projections for new renewable energy are being revised downward because of Trump's hatred of windmills and the greed of fossil fuel oligarchs who control our politicians.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p7JgmDRiROM
Good news from the latest renewables report
https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025
Renewables 2025
Analysis and forecasts to 2030
Bad News
The replacement of oil and coal with solar and wind means the end of the petrodollar system that is the foundation of American power and influence (every empire from the Roman silver denarius to the British pound sterling needs a universally accepted world reserve currency, or it falls).
Which means those heavily invested in oil will be left holding the bag with trillions of dollars worth of now useless and unwanted oil assets. And the American empire goes the way of the British.
https://medium.com/the-nearly-now/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd
Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere
You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble”
So expect oil companies to continue to deny global warming because profits are more important than human life dammit.
But they will fail because no society has ever been able to ban a new technology that people demand - and Texas will become the next West Virginia and Houston will become the next Detroit.
.... Wait, that's more good news.
Really Bad News:
It's already too late to stop the global heating shitstorm that is now just getting started. Too many tipping pints have already been tripped. We could stop using fossil fuels today and switch to renewable tomorrow and the changes already set in motion will fuck over the planet and kill billions. Again thanks to Trump and those who love him whose climate denial prevented us from acting in time - all of whom now have blood on their hands.
https://ametsoc.net/sotc2025/BAMS26_SotC2025_FullReport.pdf
The State of the Climate in 2025
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) published the 527-page State of the Climate Report for 2025, bringing together 600+ scientists’ contributions to paint a picture of weather events, data, and climate indicators from around the planet. 87% of our ocean area experienced a marine heat wave in 2025, land-based glaciers continued to lose ice mass, cloud coverage worldwide was at its second-lowest on record, and permafrost temperatures were warmer than 2024 temps at 88% of sites measured. The reason why 2025 was only our 3rd warmest year for global surface temperature may be because La Niña was in effect for almost the entire year, bringing cooler temperatures along with it. There is also a 13-page summary available, but it lacks the many detailed graphics of the full report, which is divided into several sections: Global Climate, Global Oceans, The Tropics, The Arctic, Antarctica & the Southern Ocean, and Regional Climate profiles.
Still waiting for you to promise to not get vaccinated come the next pandemic.
https://thehill.com/business/6028660-treasury-repeals-boi-reporting-requirement/
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the action as “a victory for common sense and American small businesses.” ... Comon sense - no. But a victory for (some) small business is true, I suppose. Most pimps, loan sharks, human trafficing rings and drug dealers are small businesses.
One might hope that every one who aggressively pursued policies that cause climate change spend the last years of their lives running. Fleeing from mobs of people hurt by the short sighted policies that flooded communities with unprecedented storms, killed crops with weather extremes, enabled fires that burned out towns, and generally created inhospitable environments out of previously habitable areas.
I always knew that Texas Republicans were evil corrupt racists.
But I never realized how stupidly suicidal they were politically until I found out about your new anti THC laws that could send you to jail for years for possessing one gummy.
Thanks to the ignorant fundies that populate the Lonestar state and who think marijuana is still the devil's weed, they will destroys thousands of small businesses that have existed for 7 years.
This alone will turn Texas blue.
What we have seen this summer is just the first pebbles of the avalanche.
Celt: I hear that you can get as long a sentence for having cannabis as for committing pedophilia. The perversity of that aside, it makes me wonder which of cannabis and pedophilia has more money supporting it; for surely the richer of the two factions would be the first to purchase a favorable law. I guess that cannabis has broad middle-class support, but that pedophilia is a 1%-of-1% project.
https://www.d.umn.edu/~tbacig/cst1010/chs/ellison.html
Celt's demand that the Rural Reds Repent for their various & nefarious sins before being granted any mercy, this fills me with great glee, to which I reply mrmee, mrmee, mime. and get stuffed.
Though completely ignored by the likes of Celt, some of you have already noticed the growing 'competency crisis', as growing numbers of red rural laborers -- who have historically maintained & built our the nation's aging infrastructure & supplied our raw resources -- retire and reap their final reward due their advancing age.
I therefore wish you all "Good Luck" as you try to maintain your Blue Urban lifestyles without ongoing Red Rural support because you're a bunch of feckless dilettantes who can't find your own posteriors with both hands.
As far as climate news goes, many of us have also noticed that you've come full circle, predicting 'The Ice Age that Never Happened' in the 1980's to AGW to vague ill-defined 'changes' to a 'global heating shitstorm' & finally back to a 'New Ice Age' on the front page of Popular Mechanics.
From the current +500 year drought to the current heat wave, it's a climatological fact that it's all happened before in both Europe & western US, immediately prior to the Little Ice Age of the 14th century, as show by the reappearance of Nero's bridge.
The common man no longer trusts your 'smart' prognostications because of your frequent dissimilations & lies.
Best
Sorry. Been terribly busy!
onward
onward
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