oromagi

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@Lemming

It's the first time Asimov really lays out the 3 laws which then frames so many future great deduction scenes in the Robot series

Created:

4 years ago

0

Posted in:

Robot SPD 13 was near enough to be seen in detail now. His graceful, streamlined body threw out blazing highlights as he loped with easy speed across the broken ground. His name was derived from his serial initials, of course, but it was apt, nevertheless, for the SPD models were among the fastest robots turned out by the United States Robot & Mechanical Men Corp.

“Hey, Speedy,” howled Donovan, and waved a frantic hand.

“Speedy!” shouted Powell. “Come here!”

The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily — more bythe efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell.

They were close enough now to notice that Speedy’s gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch — and then, as Powell waved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact headset radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw them.

Speedy hopped to a halt and remained standing for a moment with just a tiny, unsteady weave, as though he were swaying in a light wind.

Powell yelled: “All right, Speedy. Come here, boy.”

Whereupon Speedy’s robot voice sounded in Powell’s earphones for the first time.

It said: “Hot dog, let’s play games. You catch me and I catch you; no love can cut our knife in two.

For I’m Little Buttercup, sweet Little Buttercup. Whoops!” Turning on his heel, he sped off in the direction from which he had come, with a speed and fury that kicked up gouts of baked dust. And his last words as he receded into the distance were, “There grew a little flower ‘neath a great oak tree,” followed by a curious metallic clicking that might have been a robotic equivalent of a hiccup.

Donovan said weakly: “Where did he pick up the Gilbert and Sullivan?

Say, Greg, he... he’s drunk or something.”

“If you hadn’t told me,” was the bitter response, “I’d never realize it. Let’s get back to the cliff. I’m roasting.”

It was Powell who broke the desperate silence.

“In the first place,” he said, “Speedy isn’t drunk — not in the human sense — because he’s a robot, and robots don’t get drunk. However, there’s something wrong with him which is the robotic equivalent of drunkenness”

“To me, he’s drunk,” stated Donovan, emphatically, “and all I know is that he thinks we’re playing games. And we’re not. It’s a matter of life and very gruesome death.”

“All right. Don’t hurry me. A robot’s only a robot. Once we find out what’s wrong with him, we can fix it and go on.”

“Once,” said Donovan, sourly.

Powell ignored him. “Speedy is perfectly adapted to normal Mercurian environment. But this region” — and his arm swept wide — “is definitely abnormal. There’s our clue. Now where do these crystals come from? They might have formed from a slowly cooling liquid; but where would you get liquid so hot that it would cool in Mercury’s sun?”

“Volcanic action,” suggested Donovan, instantly, and Powell’s body tensed.

“Out of the mouths of sucklings,” he said in a small, strange voice and remained very still for five minutes.

Then, he said, “Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?”

Donovan was taken aback. “Well damn it — I don’t know. I just told him to get it.”

“Yes, I know, but how? Try to remember the exact words.”

“I said... uh... I said: ‘Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it — that’s all. What more did you want me to say?”

“You didn’t put any urgency into the order, did you?”

“What for? It was pure routine.”

Powell sighed. “Well, it can’t be helped now— but we’re in a fine fix.” He had dismounted from his robot, and was sitting, back against the cliff. Donovan joined him and they linked arms: In the distance the burning sunlight seemed to wait cat-and-mouse for them, and just next them, the two giant robots w ere invisible but for the dull red of their photoelectric eyes that stared down at them, unblinking, unwavering and unconcerned.

Unconcerned! As was all this poisonous Mercury, as large in jinx as it was small in size.

Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: “Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics— the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.” In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point.

“We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“Right!”

“Two,” continued Powell, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

“Right”

“And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

“Right! Now where are we?”

“Exactly at the explanation. The conflict between the various rules is ironed out by the different positronic potentials in the brain. We’ll say that a robot is walking into danger and knows it. The automatic potential that Rule 3 sets up turns him back. But suppose you order him to walk into that danger. In that case, Rule 2 sets up a counterpotential higher than the previous one and the robot follows orders at the risk of existence.”

“Well, I know that. What about it?”

“Let’s take Speedy’s case. Speedy is one of the latest models, extremely specialized, and as expensive as a battleship. It’s not a thing to be lightly destroyed”

“So?”

“So Rule 3 has been strengthened — that was specifically mentioned, by the way, in the advance notices on the SPD models — so that his allergy to danger is unusually high.

At the same time, when you sent him out after the selenium, you gave him his order casually and without special emphasis, so that the Rule 2 potential set-up was rather weak. Now, hold on; I’m just stating facts.”

“All right, go ahead. I think I get it.”

“You see how it works, don’t you? There’s some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and at a certain distance from it the Rule 3 potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule 2 potential, unusually low to start with.”

Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. “ And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule 3 drives himback and Rule 2 drives him forward –”

“So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he’ll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround.” Then, more thoughtfully: “And that, by the way, is what makes him drunk. At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I’m not a robot specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he’s lost control of just those parts of his voluntary mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty.”

“But what’s the danger? If we knew what he was running from –”?

“You suggested it. Volcanic action. Somewhere right above the selenium pool is a seepage of gas from the bowels of Mercury. Sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide — and carbon monoxide. Lots of it and at this temperature.”

Donovan gulped audibly. “Carbon monoxide plus iron gives the volatile iron carbonyl.”

“And a robot,” added Powell, “is essentially iron.” Then, grimly: “There’s nothing like deduction. We’ve determined everything about our problem but the solution. We can’t get the selenium ourselves. It’s still too far. We can’t send these robot horses, because they can’t go themselves, and they can’t carry us fast enough to keep us from crisping. And we can’t catch Speedy, because the dope thinks we’re playing games, and he can run sixty miles to our four.”

“If one of us goes,” began Donovan, tentatively, “and comes back cooked, there’ll still be the other.”

“Yes,” came the sarcastic reply, “it would be a most tender sacrifice — except that a person would be in no condition to give orders before he ever reached the pool, and I don’t think the robots would ever turn back to the cliff without orders. Figure it out! We’re two or three miles from the pool — call it two —the robot travels at four miles an hour; and we can last twenty minutes in our suits. It isn’t only the heat, remember. Solar radiation out here in the ultraviolet and below is poison.”

“Um-m-m,” said Donovan, “ten minutes short.”

“As good as an eternity. And another thing, in order for Rule 3 potential to have stopped Speedy where it did, there must be an appreciable amount of carbon monoxide in the metal-vapor atmosphere—and there must be an appreciable corrosive action therefore. He’s been out hoursnow — and how do we know when a knee joint, for instance, won’t be thrown out of kilter and keel him over. It’s not only a question of thinking — we’ve got to think fast!”

Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence!

Donovan broke it, voice trembling in an effort to keep itself emotionless. He said: “As long as we can’t increase Rule 2 potential by giving further orders, how about working the other way? If we increase the danger, we increase Rule 3 potential and drive him backward.”

Powell’s visiplate had turned toward him in a silent question.

“You see,” came the cautious explanation, “all we need to do to drive him out of his rut is to increase the concentration of carbon monoxide in his vi cinity. Well, back at the Station there’s a complete analytical laboratory.”

“Naturally,” assented Powell. “It’s a Mining Station.”

“All right. There must be pounds of oxalic acid for calcium precipitations.”

“Holy space! Mike, you’re a genius.”

Issac Asimov, I, Robot

Created:

4 years ago

1

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Trans-genders should compete as separate categories

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@fauxlaw

Well, chromosomes are genetic information found in most living cells and not thoughts at all.

with or without the American franchise, the thinking ought to include sports competition with like-thinking people

so would you endorse whites only sports leagues for like-thinking white supremacists?

Created:

4 years ago

0

Posted in:

Trans-genders should compete as separate categories

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@fauxlaw

--> @oromagi
Wiki. Such a valuable source. Well, your source's source for that 1:58 ratio is the U.N., not exactly what I would call unbiased science.

In fact, my source is Fausto-Sterling's landmark "Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality"

Your valid number of physically sexual ambiguity is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866176/, which places that ratio at 1:2000 to 1:4500.

That number defines INTERSEX exclusively by phenotype: " internal and external genital structures" but that population is not the population for which I'm concerned since most people with physically discernible organs of both sexes are likely aware of the challenges athletic apartheid by gender represents. I am including (for obvious reasons) folks with conditions such as

Klinefelter’s syndrome
Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (& Late-Onset Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia)
Sex Chromosome Aneuploidies (& other non-XX and non-XY aneuploldie)
Vaginal Agenesis

That is, people who might very well not suspect that they are not entirely male or female and no doctor would diagnose as intersex except after genetic testing, which testing seems to be the inevitable trial used for establishing genders for the purpose of gender separation (as the Olympics do). These people are far more commonplace than the phenotypal hermaphoditism to which you refer and would likely never be aware of their condition except for having to prove their gender genetically for the state's satisfaction and classification. Where does the state draw the line? Are we heading for a world where a successful gymnast is told she has XY chromosomes and must compete with the men? Or a quarterback is told that his XX chromosomes disqualify him from the game of football?

Come on, let's deal with science instead of agenda.

My assumption is that the difficulties of gender differences keep most trans folks well away from most forms of physical demonstration. I am aware of a only a very few recent and highly anecdotal cases but I don't see any science that confirms any advantage consistent enough to justify your suggested apartheid or the 35 state bills now enforcing discrimination well ahead of that science.

Please be sure to make clear whether your plan applies to public policy in schools (where who wins is not a consideration next to the benefits of inclusive participation and the promotion of exercise for everybody) or private enterprise (where you'll be injecting state prejudices into business policies where no state interference is wanted or warranted).

My agenda is the extension of the American franchise to all, especially for the protection of the oppressed minorities- the outsiders and the underdogs who are traditionally kicked to the curb and offered separate but "equal" accommodation . What is your agenda?

Created:

4 years ago

0

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Are JWs christians?

I'm quite certain the Jesus I read about would not have much cared whether people believed he was part of any trinity or whether he was a figurative son of God or a literal son of God. Jesus would have called that focusing on the wrong shit.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan makes clear that the Samaritan was a good neighbor who would inherit eternal life- even though he was not baptized and not Christian or even a Jew and the uncharitable priest and Levite were not good neighbors even though they were Jews in good standing. Focus on your acts and piety and purity of intention and care not how other people worship or what they get right or wrong about the nature of Jesus and God. When judgement comes, philosophy and sect will count for nothing- only your own adherence to your own faith and your acts of charity towards others of every faith will be judged.

Created:

4 years ago

3

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Jordan Peterson

A dominance hierarchy, formerly and colloquially called a pecking order, is a type of social hierarchy that arises when members of animal social groups interact, creating a ranking system. In mammals, a dominant individual is sometimes called an alpha.

vs.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal"

You can believe in one or the other but you can't believe in both of theses things.

Created:

4 years ago

2

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Are UFO’s a Government Conspiracy?

ABC:

UPCOMING UFO REPORT to CONGRESS CREATING LOTS of BUZZ

CONGRESS WILL RECEIVE an INTELLIGENCE REPORT on UFOs in LATE JUNE

Later this month, U.S. intelligence agencies will present to Congress a highly-anticipated unclassified report about what they know about UFOs, or as the Pentagon now calls them, Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).

However, the jury is still out on whether the report will contain the answers that UFO enthusiasts are looking for: that recent military encounters with UAPs may be proof of contacts with extraterrestrial life.

The preparation of the report marks a milestone as interest in UFOs has taken off in recent years following the Navy's release of once-classified videos of encounters that fighter pilots had in 2004 and 2014 with UAPs.

The videos raised interest not only with UFO enthusiasts, but also among members of Congress eager to learn if the UAPs captured in the videos represent advanced technological threats from foreign adversaries.

Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, then-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, succeeded in including language in the Intelligence Authorization Act late in 2020 that required the intelligence community to prepare for the committee a detailed unclassified report on UAPs.

A spokesperson for Rubio told ABC News that the report is due to be submitted to Congress on June 29, which is the date that marks the 180-day deadline required by the legislation when it went into effect on Jan. 1.

"Men and women we have entrusted with the defense of our country are reporting encounters with unidentified aircraft with superior capabilities," Rubio said in a statement provided to ABC News. "We cannot allow the stigma of UFOs to keep us from seriously investigating this. The forthcoming report is one step in that process, but it will not be the last."

The report is being prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the UAP Task Force, an organization stood up by the Pentagon last September to look at the U.S. military's encounters with UAPs.

"We're providing context and information that we have on these phenomena and our focus is on, again, on supporting the DNI's efforts to produce this report," John Kirby, the Pentagon's top spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.

Though it will be an unclassified report, it is possible that its contents will not satisfy UFO enthusiasts anxious to learn if the encounters are contacts with extraterrestrials simply because it will be an intelligence report.

"The protection of methodologies is an important part of how the UAP Task Force operates," a Pentagon official told ABC News. "This is an intelligence-driven effort, and in intelligence matters, you always try to protect the sources and methods used in order to prevent potential adversaries from getting an idea of how we learn things."

And the report will rely on more than just eyewitness recollections of their encounters, it will be focused on the data collected by the highly sensitive sensors used by the U.S. military to detect adversaries.

"This is a data-driven examination of UAPs," the Pentagon official told ABC News. "The more data we have, the better we are able to identify what these UAPs are."

For scientists, the report's focus on data is key to helping determine what is happening in the videos.

"Those derived data products, right, they can give us trajectories, they have any way of getting ideas of like masses and densities," Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, an affiliated professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason University, told ABC News.

"So if you can figure out where they are in 3-D space and figure out where they are, how they are maneuvering and if you can figure out their mass and figure out the forces that are involved, then that can give you some hints at the technology that you're looking at there," he added.

"The fact that you see something, and is doing something that you don't understand, doesn't mean oh, let's jump to a wild conclusion, it means let's get the data that we can, let's put it all together and let's get an understanding of what we're dealing with, because either it's ours, or it's not ours," said Oluseyi. "And if it's not ours, then we need to really understand what's going on."

Whether the report is able to offer up those answers remains to be seen, but for some UFO enthusiasts, what matters most is that the report is a reality.

"The fact that the report even exists or is going to exist is the biggest thing for me," Jeremy Corbell, a documentary filmmaker and UFO enthusiast, said in an interview.

Recently, Corbell has released new videos that the Pentagon has confirmed were taken by the Navy and are being reviewed by the UAP Task Force as part of its investigation.

"I think it's a huge step forward to the general confirmation of the existence of these physical machines that do fly with impunity, within our restricted airspace," he said. "This is not a subject of question. This is not a subject of doubt, our public has been told and proof has been given, and that's not coming just from people like me, that's coming from our own government."

"So the fact this report is existing shows that representative government works, that Congress and Senate and Senate Intelligence Committee and everybody involved. These mechanisms are proceeding forward with getting answers for the American public," Corbell said.

While Corbell does not expect the intelligence report to be "robust" in acknowledging a potential UFO cover-up, he also does not expect it to be "a whitewash" and will validate what Navy pilots witnessed in their encounters.

"It's going to at least pay homage to that and say we need more understanding of this, and that is a huge step forward," he said.

"If it goes further, I'm a happy camper," he said. "But I think it's going to be a preliminary confirmation to the American and global public about the UFO presence on planet Earth. And I feel like this subject will require more investigation and more transparency."

A national security analyst agrees the UAP's require further investigation but out of concerns that they might indicate new technologies that could pose potential security risks.

"These objects appear to exceed our military capabilities," said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. ""We need to determine who this is and what capabilities they possess. It is never a good thing to discover you are vastly behind in technology."

"From a national security perspective, we cannot presume benevolence," he added. "Whether terrestrial in origin or not."

Created:

4 years ago

0

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Bsh1 => wylted

=

Hyperion => satyr

Created:

4 years ago

1

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Jordan Peterson

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@sadolite

for instance a 38 year old very attractive single mom with two kids who is successful in business and wealthy, cant figure out why successful, wealthy never married single alpha males have no interest in them.

Alpha implies an expectation of dominance (supremacy) that the American Civil Rights movement rejected some 70 years ago. I am 100% confident that no woman of any age or income who is self-assured enough to succeed in business and family wants to surrender her autonomy to some jerk calling himself the "alpha" - which generally means his mom cooks his meals and does his laundry for him and now he's looking a replacement mother rather than a partnership. No self-respecting man or woman wants the hassle of putting up with an "alpha" male.

Created:

4 years ago

2

Posted in:

Are UFO’s a Government Conspiracy?

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@Reece101

I think the answer is yes but not in the way that you mean.

First of all, as zed points out, there's a lot of conflation of unidentified flying objects with spacecraft, which is absurd.

There is no evidence of any non-Terran life, period.
Just because an object is unidentified does not that hostile or covert sentient must be at work.

We fail to identify objects on the ground every day and never assume that some mysterious force is the cause.

There is very little to motivate proper investigation of such events.

People who want to believe in mysterious causes are unmotivated to investigate asiduously because they don't want their bubbles popped.
People who are skeptical of mysterious causes are unmotivated to investigate because the truth is usually dull and profitless. All of the profit is in the believing.

My outlook is informed by my father, who had Fox Mulder's job for a few years investigating UFO sightings for Air Force Intelligence. His experience was that the overwhelming majority of reports reflected a lot of wide-eyed overcredulity or deliberate misrepresentation and that the few cases that warranted investigation came down to misperceptions of commonplace events or US projects trying to maintain some secrecy.

My father expressed his frustration with his commanding officer- an AIr Force colonel who was the most fanatical true believer in aliens within the task force and who commonly suppressed conventional explanations and actively promoted kooky speculation.

I've heard similar reports about several generations of Air Force UFO teams- competent investigators led by exceedingly biased and irrational commanders. I suspect that this model is deliberately pursued to achieve a desired result- accurate reports that are seldom publicized.

My outlook is similarly informed by my own investigations into the phenomenon of cattle mutilations which is outline in this debate

https://www.debateart.com/debates/1498-cattle-mutilations-are-mostly-explained-by-natural-biological-phenomenon

the TL;DR being that many local entities- police, journalists, ranchers, politicians have conspired together for 50 years to promote the idea of alien interference in order
to bring in millions of dollars in insurance claim money that would otherwise count as uninsured losses in these poor counties.

Newspaper coverage of UFOs has always leaned towards the woo side because UFO's sell papers and ordinary explanations do not.

Take a look at the 60 Minutes piece that kicked off the latest round of speculation- not a single skeptical opinion was brought in to counter all that speculation and anecdote.

The two tapes that included readings- altitude, angle of declination, speed, windspeed, etc were quickly debunked by a few skeptics doing some basic trigonometry to show that the objects depicted were much closer the it appears, making the objects much smaller then assumed and in both cases, making the object's speed the same as estimated wind speed- these objects were floating on the wind- mylar weather balloons, most likely.

I think that the USFG learned as early as the 1950's that there a few downsides to letting people think that there are mysterious enemy threats in the skies over America.

A sense of threat keeps citizens watchful and concerned
Interest and concern translates into public support for a bolstored Air Force and military generally,

which translates into budget increases without needing a lot of justification

So yes, I think there is a conspiracy but that its mostly just to keep Americans worried about potent, mysterious outsiders which allows US Armed Forces to play sentinel and shield versus an invisible (and therefore inexpensive and easy to defeat) enemy.

Created:

4 years ago

1

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THUMB WAR [1]- PRO: INDIVIDUALISM and/or UNCONVENTIONAL DEBATE FORMATS

bump

Created:

4 years ago

0

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@badger

--> @oromagi
Might be your best post yet.

I thought you might respond to that.

Created:

4 years ago

1

Posted in:

Trans-genders should compete as separate categories

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@fauxlaw

About one in every 58 people are born intersex- with some biological traits of both genders. That's at least three times as prevalent as transgendered people or about as commonplace as being born with red hair.

Traditionally, these folks have been allowed to participate in sports without any sort of gender test but it seems likely that any test designed to catch and exclude trans athletes (as is being implemented at the Olympics this summer) has a good chance of revealing this more commonplace characteristic to a large population of young men and women who otherwise might have lived their whole lives unaware of their sexual differentness. What do you do with the asymptomatic men who discover on gameday that they have female chromosomal patterns? The incident rate will likely far outnumber transgendered athletes but on what legal or scientific basis can we enforce athletic apartheid for trans folks without also excluding this much larger group?

Generally speaking, I oppose any gender apartheid in schools because the stated justification for athletics in schools is the promotion of exercise and good sportsmanship- which is better done by inclusionary practices irrespective of unfair advantages and healthier for everybody all round. Large and wealthy schools enjoy considerable advantages over smaller and poorer schools and beyond some statewide divisions we nevertheless allow those advantages to prevail in athletics.

Private athletic enterprises can and should set their own standards without state interference. Likewise, international sports have their own independent governing bodies that can make their own calls. However, since I am confident that the prevalence of trans and intersex athletes in any sport is insufficient to sustain popular competition at any level, the inevitable net effect of any public policy implementation in alignment with fauxlaw's suggestion will be a sad athletic apartheid unworthy of any sincerely democratic populace. Better to live with the rare unfair advantage then to give in to our fears of the different and new.

Created:

4 years ago

1

Posted in:

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.
Huck Finn.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

-Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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4 years ago

0

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@Bones

Wylted was just a classic troll. His purpose on this site was not to make friends, or exchange information and opinion, or to self-improve his debate skill. His purpose was to provoke strong negative emotions. This made him a fun wildcard in games of Mafia which is why Lunatic wants him to return but fairly counterproductive to most sincere efforts on this site. So, one month, he'd claim to be a 50 something white man who enjoyed raping underaged blacks girls and the next month he'd create a new alt and pretend to be an underaged black girl who enjoyed older white men. The point was to see how many people fell for his (pretty amateurish) ruses and watch them freak out. The point was also to get caught- like those compulsive masturbators who keep risking increasingly public and well lit places to wank until finally they're jacking off on some airport runway, forcing authorities to shut them down. I don't think any of Wylted's content was banned particularly and most people tolerated his antics. What got him banned was creating a lot of fake ids.

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4 years ago

5

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A rolled-up solar panel

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@fauxlaw

....and of course it, they are much less effective in consistently cloudy places. When invading London or San Francisco, stick to generators.

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4 years ago

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A rolled-up solar panel

Not if you're stationed out at a FOB for 30 days. The least useful part of it is that you have to remember to keep changing the angle towards the sun every hour to get a max charge.

Created:

4 years ago

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Jordan Peterson

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@sadolite

--> @oromagi
I am quoting Peterson on stats and statics because no one challenged his claims.

What stats and statistics? Can you link? I challenged a couple of Peterson's claims in POST#13

You can play semantics with my interpretations, but it doesn't change the message or perspective.

Let's recall your interpretation was:

"Woman age like milk and men age like fine wine is what I would use to describe is philosophy."

I'm not playing at semantics when I interpret your comment to mean that women are rottent.

Knowyourmeme.com advises:

Origin

The earliest known usage comes from the 2006 Jeff Dunham comedy special Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, which aired on April 11th, 2006. In one part with the puppet Walter, Dunham performs the following dialog:

Jeff Dunham: She's a lovely lady.
Walter: She's getting old.
Jeff Dunham: Well, women age like… like fine wine.
Walter: She's aging like milk!

On November 12th, 2008, Jeff Dunham published the clip on his verified YouTube page. The post received more than 4.2 million views in less than 13 years.

Spread

On July 20th, 2009, user @DReckless1 posted the earliest usage of the phrase on Twitter. They wrote, "watching Smallville. Tori Spelling has aged like milk".

The phrase continued to spread online. For example, on January 14th, 2015, Irish Times video game critic Joe Griffin described the video game Duke Nukem 34: Megaton Edition, "The gameplay has aged like wine in this retro re-release, but the title character has aged like milk."

On September 6th, 2018, Redditor Idontgiveafuc launched the /r/agedlikemilk subreddit. The subreddit's description reads, "A subreddit dedicated to all those things in media and elsewhere that didn’t stand the test of time, at all." The subreddit has amassed more than 697,000 subscribers in less than three years.

Three years later, on January 19th, 2021, Urban Dictionary user BokuWasBoingo defined the phrase, "A phrase that looks fine, but years later becomes basically irrelevant"

wehuntedthemanmoth.com reports that the phrase is particularly used by members of the explicitly misogynist MGTOW movement.

THE CLAIM: Women age like milk, men age like wine.

This central claim of this meme — that men age better than women — is a favorite folk belief of the modern Man Going His Own Way, and MGTOW memers like to illustrate this point with photos of the two main stars of the 1986 movie Top Gun — Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis — from the movie itself and as they look today, more than 30 years later.

In order to properly assess this claim, you’d need a representative sample of people of various ages and a reasonably objective way to judge their relative attractiveness.

What we’ve got instead is a sample of two, and the person doing the judging is the sort of dude who sits around making MGTOW memes in his spare time. Not only is the sample way too small to be statistically significant, but it’s also wildly unrepresentative, given that one of the two subjects is Tom Cruise, a genetic freak who doesn’t appear to age. Normally you’d throw him out of any data sampling as an outlier.

Using him to represent how men, on average, age makes about as much sense as using, say, Helen Mirren as your example of how women, on average, age.

Tom Cruise, like Helen Mirren, is a decidedly non-representative data point.

You don’t even have to expand your data set very much to see just how unrepresentative Cruise is. All you have to do is to look at some current pics of some of the other male stars from Top Gun. Anthony Edwards today, Val Kilmer, now 59, is fighting freaking cancer, which is a motherfucker.

The point is: different men age differently, and very few of them — even Hollywood stars — age as gracefully as Tom Cruise.

So that’s the men. What about Kelly McGillis, who’s now 61? Well, in the recent picture in the meme above she certainly doesn’t look much like curdled milk to me. I mean, sure, she doesn’t look like she did in Top Gun, but if THIS is your example of a 60-year-old who’s aged badly you seriously need your eyes (or your brain) checked.

But again, basing your aging expectations on Hollywood stars is a bit ridiculous. The real world tends to be a bit less less glamorous.. Some age gracefully, some not so much, and I’m pretty sure it has little to do with their gender.

VERDICT: The meme maker’s claim is unsubstaintiated, due to small and unrepresentative sample size and blatant misreading of the data. And the only thing the chart proves is that the chart maker should probably be on some registry somewhere.

You may be left wondering how gracefully MGTOWs themselves age. Well, I don’t have a representative sample to work off of, but I do have some anecdotal evidence in the form of the video below, showing an assortment of mostly middle-aged Men’s Rights Activists and MGTOWs enjoying themselves at a retreat organized by A Voice for Men.

Though this video practically reeks of alcohol, I have to say I’m not seeing a lot of fine wine here.

Now growing old gracelessly isn’t a crime or a moral failing; how you look at any age is really no one’s business but your own. But MGTOWs like to throw a lot of stones, and it appears that in this case, as in so many others, their homes are made of pure glass.

I'm pretty sure Jordan Peterson would rather not be summed up using a MGTOW meme.

Created:

4 years ago

2

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Jordan Peterson

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@FLRW

Why Women Fall for Pirates and Vampires - Prof. Jordan Peterson

Well, even Julius Caesar fell for a pirate once.

Created:

4 years ago

3

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A rolled-up solar panel

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@fauxlaw

In fact, Marines have been using portable solar panels in Afghanistan for more than 10 years. Modern militaries have been using portable solar on deployment for more than 30 years. US Marines who used the technology say it helps in three main ways:

Fewer Supply Convoys -- With less need for fuel and batteries, fewer trucks are exposed to possible attacks on the road.
Quieter Is Safer -- Units that rely on diesel generators to keep equipment running at night could go quiet while running on batteries, making them harder for the enemy to find.
Efficiency -- The foldable solar blankets are light and don't take up much space. That should help patrols' mobility, and save space for other supplies -- like ammunition, as one sergeant says.

For establishing a forward operating base with a small footprint, portable solar blankets are way way better than shleping loud generators and heavy batteries into the field. As a Rocky Mountain skier and hiker, I have relied on such tech for years to charge my GPS and even indulge in a hot shower.

Created:

4 years ago

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@Bones

I don't think mods have ever killed a debate based "what we debate." I have debated lots of provocative topics including

i chunged me moond, iz am a fascist nazi now heil hitler kill jews yay

Kyke is my favorite word

and

Sombody slap my fat titties

and never fielded a complaint from Mods

What will get a debate killed is debating under an alternate identity (as wylted did many times) or even debating both sides using different ids (as the author of the above titles tried)

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4 years ago

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Why no history/mythohistory section on Dart?

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@fauxlaw

--> @Nevets
It’s already covered by the several other subjects listed, by our own designation of “history of xxx”. One can easily reference a history of Sports, for example, in the Sports topic.

Ok, so where would you put a topic such as

INACCURACIES and ASSUMPTIONS DRAWN from the BAYEUX TAPESTRY's "Harold Rex Interfectus Est" ?

or

DISCERNING SCALES of ROMAN IMPERIAL SILVER SMELTING from ARCTIC ICE CORE SAMPLES?

or

THE PRACTICALITIES of AGINCOURT: HOW STICKS and DAGGERS BROUGHT DOWN FULLY ARMORED MOUNTED KNIGHTS ?

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4 years ago

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And where else did he have to go then, except home?

The breeze pressed softly against his cheek and then died.

He struck another match and dropped it. It landed in a small pool of gasoline

and the gas caught. The flames were blue. They spread out delicately, a kind of

corona with the burned match stub at its center. Trashcan watched for a moment,

paralyzed with fascination, and then he stepped quickly to the stairs that circled

around the tank to the bottom, looking back over his shoulder. He could see the

pumping machinery through a heat haze now, flickering back and forth like a

mirage. The blue flames, no more than two inches high, spread toward the

machinery and toward the open pipe in a widening semicircle. The bug’s

struggles had ended. It was nothing but a blackened husk.

I could let that happen to me.

But he didn’t seem to want to. It seemed, vaguely, that there might be another

purpose in his life now, something very grand and great. So he felt a touch of

fear and he began to descend the steps on the run, his shoes clanging, his hand

slipping quickly over the steep, rust-pitted railing.

Down and down, circling, wondering how long until the vapor hanging

around the mouth of the outflow pipe would catch, how long before heat great

enough for ignition would rush down the pipe’s throat and into the tank’s belly.

Hair flying back from his forehead, a terrified grin pasted to his face, the wind

roaring in his ears, he rushed down. Now he was halfway, racing past the letters

CH, letters twenty feet high and lime green against the white of the tank. Down

and down, and if his flying feet stuttered or caught on anything, he would tumble

like the gascan had tumbled, his bones breaking like dead branches.

The ground came closer, the white gravel circles around the tanks, the green

grass beyond the gravel. The cars in the parking lot began to regain their normal

size. And still he seemed to be floating, floating in a dream, and he would never

reach the bottom, only run and run and get nowhere. He was next to a bomb and

the fuse was lit.

From far overhead there came a sudden bang, like a five-inch Fourth of July

firecracker. There was a dim clang, and then something whirred past him. It was

part of the outflow pipe, he saw with a sharp and almost delicious fear. It was

totally black and twisted into a new and excitingly senseless shape by the heat.

He placed one hand on the railing and vaulted over, hearing something snap in

his wrist. Sickening pain flowed up his arm to the elbow. He dropped the last

twenty-five feet, landed on the gravel, and went sprawling. The gravel scraped

skin from his forearms, but he hardly felt it. He was full of moaning, grinning

panic now, and the day seemed very bright.

Trashcan Man scrambled up, craning his head around and back, sending his

gaze up even as he began to run again. The top of this middle tank had grown

yellow hair, and the hair was growing at an amazing rate. The whole thing could

blow at any second.

He ran, his right hand flopping on its broken wrist. He leaped over the parking

lot curb, and his feet slapped on asphalt. Now he was across the parking lot, his

shadow trailing at his feet, and now he was running straight down the wide

gravel access road and bolting through the half-open gate and back onto

Highway 130. He ran straight across it and flung himself into the ditch on the far

side, landing on a soft bed of dead leaves and wet moss, his arms wrapped

around his head, the breath tearing in and out of his lungs like stabbing

jackknives.

The oiltank blew. Not

WHAMM!

but

KA-WHAP!,

a sound so huge, yet at the

same time so short and guttural, that he felt his eardrums actually press in and

his eyeballs press out as the air somehow changed. A second explosion followed,

then a third, and Trashcan writhed on the dead leaves and grinned and screamed

soundlessly. He sat up, holding his hands over his ears, and sudden wind struck

him and slapped him flat with such power that he might have been no more than

a piece of litter.

The young saplings behind him bent over backward and their leaves made a

frantic whirring sound, like the pennants over a used car lot on a windy day. One

or two snapped with small cracking sounds, as if someone was shooting a target

pistol. Burning pieces of the tank started to fall on the other side of the road,

some actually on the road. They hit with a clanging noise, the rivets still hanging

in some of the chunks of metal, twisted and black, as the outflow pipe had been.

KA-WHAMMM!

Trashcan sat up again and saw a gigantic firetree beyond the Cheery Oil

parking lot. Black smoke was billowing from its top, rising straight to an

amazing height before the wind could disrupt it and rafter it away. You couldn’t

look at it without squinting your eyes almost shut and now there was radiant heat

baking across the road at him, tightening his skin, making it feel shiny. His eyes

were gushing water in protest. Another burning chunk of metal, this one better

than seven feet across at its widest and shaped like a diamond, fell out of the sky,

landed in the ditch twenty feet to his left, and the dry leaves on top of the wet

moss were instantly ablaze.

KA-WHAMM-KA-WHAMM!

If he stayed here he would go up in a jigging, screaming blaze of spontaneous

combustion. He scrambled to his feet and began to run along the shoulder of the

highway in the direction of Gary, the breath getting hotter and hotter in his lungs.

The air had begun to taste like heavy metal. Presently he began to feel his hair to

see if he had started burning. The sweet stench of gasoline filled the air, seeming

to coat him. Hot wind ripped his clothes. He felt like something trying to escape

from a microwave oven. The road doubled before his watering eyes, then

trebled.

There was another coughing roar as rising air pressure caused the Cheery Oil

Company office building to implode. Scimitars of glass whickered through the

air. Chunks of concrete and cinderblock rained out of the sky and hailed on the

road. A whizzing piece of steel about the size of a quarter and the thickness of a

Mars Bar sliced through Trashcan’s shirtsleeve and made a thin scrape on his

skin. A piece big enough to have turned his head to guava jelly struck in front of

his feet and then bounded away, leaving a good-sized crater behind. Then he was

beyond the fallout zone, still running, the blood beating in his head as if his very

brain had been sprayed with #2 heating oil and then set ablaze.

KA-WHAMM!

That was another one of the tanks, and the air resistance in front of him

seemed to disappear and a large warm hand pushed him firmly from behind, a

hand that fitted every contour of his body from heels to head; it shoved him

forward with his toes barely touching the road, and now his face bore the

terrified, pants-wetting grin of someone who has been attached to the world’s

biggest kite in a high cap of wind and let loose to fly, fly, baby, up into the sky

until the wind goes somewhere else, leaving him to scream all the way down in a

helpless power-dive.

From behind a perfect fusillade of explosions, God’s ammunition dump going

up in the flames of righteousness, Satan storming heaven, his artillery captain a

fiercely grinning fool with red, flayed cheeks, Trashcan Man by name, never to

be Donald Merwin Elbert again.

Sights jittering by: cars wrecked off the road, Mr. Strang’s blue mailbox with

the flag up, a dead dog with its legs up, a powerline down in a cornfield.

The hand was not pushing him quite so hard now. Resistance had come back

in front. Trash risked a glance back over his shoulder and saw that the knoll

where the oil tanks had stood was a mass of fire. Everything was burning. The

road itself seemed to be on fire back there, and he could see the summer trees

going up like torches.

He ran another quarter mile, then dropped into a puffing, blowing, shambling

walk. A mile farther on he rested, looking back, smelling the glad smell of

burning. With no firetrucks and firefighters to put it out, it would go whatever

way the wind took it. It might burn for months. Powtanville would go and the

fireline would march south, destroying houses, villages, farms, crops, meadows,

forests. It might get as far south as Terre Haute, and it would burn that place he

had been in. It might burn farther! In fact—

His eyes turned north again, toward Gary. He could see the town now, its great

stacks standing quiet and blameless, like strokes of chalk on a light blue

blackboard. Chicago beyond that. How many oil tanks? How many gas stations?

How many trains standing silent on sidings, full of lp gas and flammable

fertilizer? How many slums, as dry as kindling? How many cities beyond Gary

and Chicago?

There was a whole country ripe for burning under the summer sun.

Grinning, Trashcan Man got to his feet and began to walk. His skin was

already going lobster red. He didn’t feel it, although that night it would keep him

awake in a kind of exaltation. There were bigger and better fires ahead. His eyes

were soft and joyful and utterly crazy. They were the eyes of a man who has

discovered the great axle of his destiny and has laid his hands upon it.

-Stephen King, The Stand

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4 years ago

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At the concrete building marked: ENTRY, the Presteign entourage stopped before a sign that read: YOU ARE ENDANGERING YOUR LIFE IF YOU ENTER THESE PREMISES UNLAWFULLY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Visitor badges were distributed to the party, and even Presteign of Presteign received a badge. He dutifully pinned it on for he well knew what the result of entry without such a protective badge would be. The entourage continued, winding its way through pits until it arrived at O-3 where the pit-mouth was decorated with bunting in the Presteign colors, and a small grandstand had been erected.

Presteign was welcomed and, in turn, greeted his various officials. The Presteign band struck up tie clan song, bright and brassy, but one of the instruments appeared to have gone insane. It struck a brazen note that blared louder and louder until it engulfed the entire band and the surprised exclamations. Only then did Presteign realize that it was not an instrument sounding, but the shipyard alarm.

An intruder was in the yard, someone not wearing an identification or visitor's badge. The radar field of the protection system was tripped and the alarm sounded. Through the raucous bellow of the alarm, Presteign could hear a multitude of 'Pops' as the yard guards jaunted from the grandstand and took positions around the square mile of concrete field. His own Jaunte-Watch closed in around him, looking wary and alert.

A voice began blaring on the P.A., co-ordinating defense.

'UNKNOWN IN YARD. UNKNOWN IN YARD AT E FOR EDWARD NINE. B FOR EDWARD NINE MOVING WEST ON FOOT.'

'Someone must have broken in,' Black Rod shouted.

'I'm aware of that,' Presteign answered calmly.

'He must be a stranger if he's not jaunting in here.'

'I am aware of that also.'

'UNKNOWN APPROACHING D FOR DAVID FIVE. D FOR DAVID FIVE. STILL ON FOOT. D FOR DAVID FIVE ALERT.'

'What in God's name is he up to?' Black Rod exclaimed.

'You are aware of my rule, sir,' Presteign said coldly. 'No associate of the Presteign clan may take the name of the Divinity in vain. You forget yourself.'

'UNKNOWN NOW APPROACHING C FOR CHARLEY FIVE. NOW APPROACHING C FOR CHARLEY FIVE.'

Black Rod touched Presteign's arm. 'He's coming this way, Presteign. Will you take cover, please?'

'I will not.'

'Presteign, there have been assassination attempts before. Three of them. If -'

'How do I get to the top of this stand?'

'Presteign!'

'Help me up.' Aided by Black Rod, still protesting hysterically, Presteign climbed to the top of the grandstand to watch the power of the Presteign clan in action against danger. Below he could see workmen in white jumpers swarming out of the pits to watch the excitement. Guards were appearing as they jaunted from distant sectors towards the focal point of the action.

'UNKNOWN MOVING SOUTH TOWARDS B FOR BARER THREE. B FOR BARER THREE.'

Presteign watched the B-3 pit. A figure appeared, dashing swiftly towards the pit, veering, dodging, bulling forward. It was a giant man in hospital blues with a wild thatch of black hair and a distorted face that appeared, in the distance, to be painted in livid colors. His clothes were streaming smoke as the protective induction field of the defense system heated him to burning, and the bright glimmer of flames appeared at his neck, elbows and knees.

'B FOR BARER THREE ALERT. B FOB BARER THREE CLOSE IN.' There were shouts and a distant rattle of shots; the pneumatic whine of scope guns. Half a dozen workmen in white leaped for the intruder. He scattered them like nine-pins and drove on and on towards B-3 where the nose of Vorga showed. His clothes burst into flame and he was a firebrand driving through workmen and guards, pivoting, bludgeoning, boring forward implacably.

Suddenly he stopped, reached inside his flaming jacket and withdrew a black canister. With the convulsive gesture of an animal writhing in death-throes, he bit the end of the canister and hurled it, straight and true on a high arc towards Vorga. The next instant he was struck down.

'EXPLOSIVE. TAKE COVER. EXPLOSIVE. TAKE COVER. COVER.'

'Presteign!' Black Rod squawked.

Presteign shook him off and watched the canister curve up and then down towards the nose of Vorga, spinning and glinting in the cold sunlight. At the edge of the pit it was caught by the anti-grav beam and flicked upwards as by a giant invisible thumbnail. Up and up it whirled, fifty, seventy, a hundred feet. Then there was a blinding flash, and an instant later a titanic clap of thunder that smote ears and jarred teeth and bone.

Presteign picked himself up and descended the grandstand to the launching podium. He placed his finger on the launching button of the Presteign Princess.

'Bring me that man, if he's still alive,' he said to Black Rod. He pressed the button. 'I christen thee . . . the Presteign Power,' he called in triumph.

-Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

Created:

4 years ago

0

Posted in:

Jordan Peterson

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@badger

"untapped well of vital instinct" is about as succinctly put an expression of the idea as I might hope

Created:

4 years ago

1

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This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV scene iii

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4 years ago

1

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"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

"Hark ye yet again- the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn- living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards- the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone. Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!- Aye, aye! thy silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."

"God keep me!- keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Created:

4 years ago

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Ever since the middle night the great assault had gone on. The drums rolled.To the north and to the south company upon company of the enemy pressed to thewalls. There came great beasts, like moving houses in the red and fitful light,the mûmakil of the Haraddragging through the lanes amid the fires huge towers and engines. Yet theirCaptain cared not greatly what they did or how many might be slain: theirpurpose was only to test the strength of the defence and to keep the men ofGondor busy in many places. It was against the Gate that he would throw hisheaviest weight. Very strong it might be, wrought of steel and iron, and guardedwith towers and bastions of indomitable stone, yet it was the key, the weakestpoint in all that high and impenetrable wall.

The drums rolled louder. Fires leaped up. Great engines crawled across thefield; and in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet inlength, swinging on mighty chains. Long had it been forging in the dark smithiesof Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in thelikeness of a ravening wolf; on it spells of ruin lay. Grond they named it, inmemory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old. Great beasts drew it, Orcssurrounded it, and behind walked mountain-trolls to wield it.

But about the Gate resistance still was stout, and there the knights of DolAmroth and the hardiest of the garrison stood at bay. Shot and dart fell thick;siege-towers crashed or blazed suddenly like torches. All before the walls oneither side of the Gate the ground was choked with wreck and with bodies of theslain; yet still driven as by a madness more and more came up.

Grond crawled on. Upon its housing no fire would catch; and though now andagain some great beast that hauled it would go mad and spread stamping ruinamong the orcs innumerable that guarded it, their bodies were cast aside fromits path and others took their place.

Grond crawled on. The drums rolled wildly. Over the hills of slain a hideousshape appeared: a horseman, tall, hooded, cloaked in black. Slowly, tramplingthe fallen, he rode forth, heeding no longer any dart. He halted and held up along pale sword. And as he did so a great fear fell on all, defender and foealike; and the hands of men drooped to their sides, and no bow sang. For amoment all was still.

The drums rolled and rattled. With a vast rush Grond was hurled forward byhuge hands. It reached the Gate. It swung. A deep boom rumbled through the Citylike thunder running in the clouds. But the doors of iron and posts of steelwithstood the stroke.

Then the Black Captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadfulvoice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend bothheart and stone.

Thrice he cried. Thrice the great ram boomed. And suddenly upon the laststroke the Gate of Gondor broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burstasunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in rivenfragments to the ground.

In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the firesbeyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of theNazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, andall fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate,sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of theearth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image inRath Dínen.

‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Goback to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness thatawaits you and your Master. Go!’

The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; andyet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and themantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadlylaughter.

‘Old fool!’ he said. ‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Deathwhen you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’ And with that he lifted high hissword and flames ran down the blade.

Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyardof the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing ofwizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above theshadows of death was coming with the dawn.

And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns,horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the Northwildly blowing.

Rohan had come at last.

-JRR Tolkein, The Return of the King

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So I wasn't supposed to think! To hell with him. Just a flunkey, a northern redneck, a Yankee cracker! I mixed the paint thoroughly, then brushed it smoothly on one of the pieces of board, careful that the brush strokes were uniform.

Struggling to remove an especially difficult cover, I wondered if the same Liberty paint was used on the campus, or if this "Optic White" was something made exclusively for the government. Perhaps it was of a better quality, a special mix. And in my mind I could see the brightly trimmed and freshly decorated campus buildings as they appeared on spring mornings -- after the fall painting and the light winter snows, with a cloud riding over and a darting bird above -- framed by the trees and encircling vines. The buildings had always seemed more impressive because they were the only buildings to receive regular paintings; usually, the nearby houses and cabins were left untouched to become the dull grained gray of weathered wood. AndI remembered how the splinters in some of the boards were raised from thegrain by the wind, the sun and the rain until the clapboards shone with a satiny, silvery, silver-fish sheen. Like Trueblood's cabin, or the Golden Day . .. The Golden Day had once been painted white; now its paint was flaking away with the years, the scratch of a finger being enough to send it showering down. Damn that Golden Day! But it was strange how life connected up; because I had carried Mr. Norton to the old rundown building with rotting paint, I was here. If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a sequence in a feverish dream . . . I was so deep in reverie that I failed to hear Kimbro approa

ch.

"How's it coming?" he said, standing with hands on hips.

"All right, sir."

"Let's see," he said, selecting a sample and running his thumb across the board. "That's it, as white as George Washington's Sunday-go-to-meetin' wig and as sound as the all-mighty dollar! That's paint!" he said proudly.

"That's paint that'll cover just about anything!"

He looked as though I had expressed a doubt and I hurried to say, "It's certainly white all right."

Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man

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https://www.debateart.com/debates/1740-anyone-reading-this-debate-should-help-or-create-a-future-super-artificial-intelligence

I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time.

― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

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Jordan Peterson

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@badger

What about global warming denial then? Where's the instinctive, collective recognition of immediate and global need there?

Overpopulation is the major cause of global warming. What's more likely to reduce our overproduction of greenhouse gases globally then the rapid decline of demand? COVID-19 restrictions reduced daily carbon emission by about 17% in 2020. Likewise, prioritizing healthy children over economic growth (as every biological imperative and moral philosophy demands but as has never been attempted in the history of mankind) would heavily reduce the carbon impacts of our compulsive consumerism.

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Jordan Peterson

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@Lemming

Personally, I can't see the world population as a sign to 'stop having children, but that countries should have 'more children than their competitors, while making sure that they don't overpopulate themselves. That it's better to export your people and culture, than import other's people and culture. That conflict is inevitable.
But likely I'm too pessimistic and tribalistic.

This is an old and outdated model. Rome spent centuries exporting its people and culture around the Mediterranean only to discover Roman improvements turned into larger barbarian populations that eventually consumed their empire. Likewise, the Muslim caliphates exported people and culture for a few centuries before the improved populations imploded their borders. Likewise, the Hans and Mongols. Europe exported people and culture around the world in the 18th and 19th centuries and now represents a significantly smaller portion of the world population than when they began. In the 20th Century, the US exported vaccines, and Haber-Bosch and electricity, internal combustion engines, etc only to end the Century with half a percentage point less share in the population. Yes conflicts are inevitable as empires shrink but conflicts don't do much to decrease overpopulation. Afghanistan may have known little more than constant war and hunger and unemployment since 1980 but the Afghani population has tripled over those 40 years. The one reliable aspect of any Syrian refugee camp is the incredible numbers of newborn babies. When economies destabilize, the last hope for a comfortable retirement is the overproduction of children. We need a new model- of, by, and for mothers across the world that preserves a stable economy and ensures some degree of comfort and long life for each generation in spite of smaller new generations to uphold that economy.

'have the parts for something, I think people usually want to 'use said part

I'm a gay man who enjoys the company of a large number of highly successful lesbian executives, only one of whom ever had any interest in motherhood. I realize that's hardly a representative population but I know many straight women, too even in my immediate family who had zero interest in motherhood at any point in their lives. I don't think that's just an unrepresentative selection, I think women are transforming their role in human society on an evolutionary scale. As Jimmy Carter often says, the greatest source of misery in the world is that so many women are not free. Give women autonomy and women will naturally, instinctively solve a host of the challenges the world now faces.

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Jordan Peterson

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@sadolite

Any of you familiar with Jordan Peterson?

In fact, I credit coal with introducing me to Peterson as a subject of popular controversy.

If so what kind of opinions do you have of his lectures regarding men and women and what their differences are and what each brings to the table in a relationship when they are younger and then get older.

I think Peterson and I agree that the family and quality child-rearing ought to be raised as higher individual, community, and national priorities than economic growth or military dominance. We disagree that returning to a more traditional role for women as the gender responsible for baby-making is the best venue for promoting that priority.

Peterson is focusing on individual responsibility and individual mental health but I think women are instinctively, collectively recognizing the immediate and global need to reduce human overpopulation. At least for the next few generations, we are looking for significantly less than replacement population and that means that no women should feel an obligation to motherhood. Jordan says he's never met a mentally healthy woman who didn't eventually want to give birth but I call that a sexist delusion.

I think we need to expand community participation in child-raising following the Scandinavian models- lots of family paid leave, cheap and plentiful childcare, free healthcare for children, big increases in public education- all to the benefit ofincreasingly fewer children. I don't think Peterson is wrong to say that there is a certain amount of biological imperative that must be respected but the old barefoot and pregnant model fails to meet the present revolutionary biological imperative to decrease population size. Peterson and I would probably agree that I'm looking at a bigger picture than he- who is more concerned with individual than social welfare.

I think he is spot on. It goes without saying most women will disagree but the statistics do not lie and are irrefutable.

I think you'd have to submit some of those irrefutable statistics in this forum before convincing anybody.

Woman age like milk and men age like fine wine is what I would use to describe is philosophy.

I think Peterson would be offended by your characterization of his philosophy. Can you give us a Peterson quote that matches this sort of nasty sexism? I agree with Peterson when he calls Trumpism a Fascist reaction to Feminism (although I'd add that Trumpism is also a Fascist reaction to the civil rights movement and the decline of white power generally.) I think Peterson is thinking of misinterpretations like this when he bemoans the promotion of his philosophy as right-wing thinking. Peterson identifies as a classically Liberal Conservative in the British tradition, which tradition abhors the demotion of whole groups of humans to the status of rotten (like old milk).

Women are born with inherent value and men are not.

I read Peterson talking a lot about the inherent value of every human but I've never seen him separate that value according to gender. This will definitely need a direct quote to justify.

Women control sex and birthing, men control relationships.

Again, I'd like to see a direct quote.

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Why no history/mythohistory section on Dart?

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@Nevets

I agree that there should be a HISTORY forum. I am fine with mythohistory being included under the HISTORY heading.

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The future value argument

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@Benjamin

In fact, I would call the future value argument the primary drive and motivation of all living things. The defining aspect of life is reproduction and all reproduction is an assertion that the next generation of life has future value. If one does not buy the future value argument then the most efficient and moral resolution of life's burden is a self-conversion to an inanimate state.

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The 2045 Technological Singularity Prediction.

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@Reece101

I am quite skeptical that such an event is possible.

https://www.debateart.com/debates/2037-artificial-intelligence-on-balance-is-biased-against-african-americans

CPU capacity is not some magic spell that conjures autonomy, desire, the will and compulsion to dominate. Those are human drives that we frankly have almost no understanding about. Just because a machine can store data and calculate equations beyond human capacity does not mean that an id and ego and suddenly manifest to plot. Those are aspects of the human animal no hardware can replicate and for which no non-human animal displays any capacity. Some disordered human minds desire to dominate the human race and find few fellow humans with which to share their guilty compulsion so they project that compulsion onto imaginary sentiences in order to warrant their guilt and keep it company- angry gods and evil robots.

There is no such thing as an inanimate object that decides. If a computer seems uncontrolled it is because a human has programmed (intentionally or not) that machine to appear to be uncontrolled. If we focus on first governing our darkest compulsions and then on prioritizing an intelligence explosion in our own, underutilized but magnificent brains, I guarantee that we need never fear the basilisk of singularity.

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@Dr.Franklin

-As you said, these articles were written in the spring, I was ok with short term spring lockdowns in order for the medical supplies to get ready, it does make sense with faster recovery rates would come from a lockdown with that original purpose, but as the lockdown continued and the medical techniques only got better, I doubt the lockdown was associated with higher recovery rates now,

Read your own literature. Lockdowns improved recovery rates because it helped prevent transmissions, which kept hospitals from getting overrun. If you believe lockdowns made for faster recovery rates last spring there is no reason to suppose the same measures did not provide the same benefits in the following fall and winter.

for transmission, the fact that a lockdown is the primary culprit of low transmission is a lie, the paper isn't making the claim itself,rather its citing a study referring to hong kong that found that practices like quarantine, social distancing, and border restrictions led to lower transmission.(which is true), Hong Kong actually avoided a lockdown thus there is no relation. The paper also only mentions "public health measures" and isn't particularly pro-lockdown.

primary culprit is awkward wording. Your paper says, "This suggests that full lockdown.... may lessen the peak of transmission" Your paper is clearly making that claim and not referring to Cowling, et al. (that earlier Hong Kong study)

First, preprints are actually really reliable and credible-https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/do-preprints-improve-peer-review-little-one-study-suggests

Well, that's just nuts. Although most legitimate scholarly and scientific papers do spend some time in pre-print- particularly if the findings are controversial or sensational or commercial, literally any findings can be (and in the age of fake news, are) put out there as preprints. A preprint means that it has not yet been peer reviewed and published which means that the findings have not yet been vetted as legit- that's why the papers actually have that warning at the top saying don't treat this as reliable and credible. Scientists can't cite preprints in their CVs or grant applications, etc. because it doesn't count until its published. Sometimes, all it means is that somebody paid $25 to make a lie look more credible. The longer a preprint goes unpublished (and for early COVID studies, a year is a super long time) the less likely it contains any data worth knowing.

In the case of the paper that says we can achieve COVID immunity at 17% infection, that guy is never going to get published because we know that's false. In the case of the paper that says English people started staying home a week or two before the first lockdown became official- that's probably true but there's nothing scientific or suprising about his claim, its just a fairly pedestrian observation one could pick up from a newspaper.

The most important thing is the fact is that Germany's lockdowns did not aid the end of the covid spread. The paper is merely suggesting a reason why, I dont know much about herd immunity so i cant comment on that, no matter the cause, the facts remain

That's not a fact, that is a claim made by Christof Kuhbandner, et al. He is specifically refuting

Dehning, et al, Inferring change points in the spread of COVID-19 reveals the effectiveness of interventions

which did get published in Science Magazine and finds a well defined correspondence between the lockdown in Germany and the subsidence of cases.

Kuhbandner does this again with

Flaxman, et al. Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe

(which finds that COVID restrictions were the essential factor in curbing the spread of disease across Europe)

which was published in Nature.

A little research shows that Kuhbandner is a psychologist challenging epidemiologists and mathematicians in their fields of expertise and outside of his own.
Kuhbandner's methodology seems superficially whack, like making the incubation period 5 days when most scientists say the incubation period is 2-14 days and inferring herd immunity based on the single unrepresentative example of the Diamond Princess Cruise Liner. Can't we assume that COVID spread through Europe rather differently than it did through a luxury liner?
Kuhbandner can't find a publisher for his ideas while the people who he says are wrong are getting peer reviewed and published in some of the most prestigious venues possible for scientific papers.

That is the value of relying on peer reviewed, published science over non-peer reviewed, non-published claims- a lot of people have cross checked those claims, a lot of people have a reputational stake in that science. Kuhbandner's stake in his claims may be no more than the $25 he paid for the pre-print. He certainly doesn't seem to have invested much in research. That's why Kuhbander's paper has a warning at the top that says don't report this as legit.

the conclusion isnt pulled from march 24 itself,

I didn't say it was. I said "This paper's conclusion are drawn from data prior to Mar 24, 2020 and so studied less than 1/10th of 1% of all 5 million UK cases."

Again, this guy couldn't get published either.

now obviously his prediction of how covid played out was wrong(granted, the heavy majority of predictions were)but it does contain data about patterns and lockdowns. His observation is correct, he just though that after the initial wave, there would not be another wave in the fall.

Which even biology majors in college were predicting because that's how all the other coronaviruses (such as the common cold) work.

The barrington declaration is certainly interesting with some good points and bad points but thats not the subject

It is the central point, in fact. Libertarian economists loudly broadcasting epidemiological recommendations as if they had any credibility on the subject is exactly the kind of disinformation campaign that has folks like you so badly deluded about the value of COVID restricitions.

Second, covid isnt harmless but it does make sense that more testing = more cases found, right?

No it is totally greedy bullshit cranked out for the same gullible folks that bought his diet books and vitamin supplements. Telling naive and credulous people that coronavirus is harmless just to make a buck when the disease is actually the leading cause of death in much of the world is immoral in the extreme. It may not be a crime but scumbags like Cummins certainly deserve the torture of everlasting damnation that's coming to them. I would strongly discourage you from linking to his website in future.

Can I also just say that we've moved the goalposts quite a bit? We started with all COVID restrictions are silly but you have conceded now that some lockdowns were useful in the early part of the pandemic so your position is obviously more nuanced than "all restrictions are silly" in spite of your earlier posts. You're focused on lockdowns but masks and social distancing and quarantines and border closures and work from home, etc are also all restrictions which you are obliged to demonstrate as "silly" or else explain which restrictions are silly and which are not.

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https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1.-LANCET-LOCKDOWN-NO-MORTALITY-BENEFIT-A-country-level-analysis-measuring-the-impact-of-government-actions.pdf

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@Dr.Franklin

Thanks for the fulsome reply, Dr.Franklin.

Importantly, all four of your studies date from last spring, at best tracking less than 3% of total US infections. That is, your conclusion is drawn from papers speculating about what might happen while my data is drawn from what did happen, the actual event.

"“[F]ull lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”

Taken out of context. Here is that same data in context:

"It was determined that viral transmission declined when social distancing and other measures were implemented. In our study, an increasing number of days to border closures was associated with a higher caseload, and more restrictive public health measures (such as a full lockdown compared to partial or curfew only measures) were associated with an increase in the number of recovered cases per million population. These findings suggest that more restrictive public health practices may indeed be associated with less transmission and better outcomes. However, in our analysis, full lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.

The government policy of full lockdowns (vs. partial or curfews only) was strongly associated with recovery rates (RR=2.47; 95%CI: 1.08–5.64). Similarly, the number of days to any border closure was associated with the number of cases per million (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). This suggests that full lockdowns and early border closures may lessen the peak of transmission, and thus prevent health system overcapacity, which would facilitate increased recovery rates."

That is, your study found that while lockdowns did not impact the percentage of infected who got very sick and died (why would it?), lockdowns did very effectively reduce the overall number of cases which kept healthcare from being overwhelmed and so lockdowns were strongly associated faster recovery rates, LESS transmission and better outcomes overall. Even a year ago, this paper was strongly promoting the benefits of a full lockdown.

https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Dehning_et_al_Science_15_May_2020_eabb9789_Inferring_change_points_in_the_spread_of_COVID-19_reveals_the_effectiveness_of_interventions_/12362645

NOTE the warning at the top of this paper:

"Preprints are early versions of research articles that have not been peer reviewed. They should not be regarded as conclusive and should not be reported in news media as established information."

A year later, this paper is still not published but the paper's primary speculation, that herd immunity from coronavirus can be achieved when 17%-20% of the population is infected has been resoundingly disproved by actual events and doesn't seem to comprehend how herd immunity actually works. How would 1 person in 5 break the chain of transmission? Kuhbandner, et al. based that speculation on Diamond Princess cruise, although the fact that so many of the crew got infected compared to relatively few passengers ought to serve more as evidence that isolating passengers was an important protective measure.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02090

Another pre-print. That is, no body of scientists has yet been willing to call this paper good science.

Important: e-prints posted on arXiv are not peer-reviewed by arXiv; they should not be relied upon without context to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information without consulting multiple experts in the field.

So this paper makes no inference regarding the effectiveness of lockdowns, but suggests that the public was already self-quarantining and so reducing infection rates before the lockdowns began- which does not seem unreasonable supposition.

This paper's conclusion are drawn from data prior to Mar 24, 2020 and so studied less than 1/10th of 1% of all 5 million UK cases.

https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/6.-PREPRINT-LOCKDOWN-ADDED-LITTLE-OR-NOTHING-PROF-BEN-ISRAEL.pdf

So here is a non-scientist predicting in mid-April of 2020 that the coronavirus just naturally plays itself out after 70 days and will no longer be a problem by mid-May. What actually happened was that the number of total cases more than doubled from 2 million to 4.5 million. One year later the disease has not played itself out and in fact continues to mutate into increasingly tough variants. There are now 171 million cases and that number will continue to increase for the next couple of years. This speculation was thoroughly discredited more than one year ago.

https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/

The American Institute for Economic Research is best known for the Great Barrington Declaration of last October which called on governments to halt all prevention and vaccination programs and allow herd immunity to solve the epidemic which statement was almost universally condemned by healthcare professionals, noting that libertarian economists are not healthcare experts. The US's leading infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci called the declaration "total nonsense" and "unscientific."

fatemperor/Ivor Cummins was an engineer promoting Keto diets before coining the term CASEDEMIC last summer, which is shorthand for a theory that COVID-19 is entirely harmless and the only reason we are tracking increased infections is due to increased testing, which theory scientists dismiss as conspiracy mongering and disinformation.

I should point out that while your evidence is thoroughly discredited, each submission contradicts the others. Did public panic do more to prevent the disease's spread than lockdowns or did the disease just die out after 70 days? Is COVID actually harmless or is herd immunity achieved at 17% infection rates? It is as if you don't care whether your sources are consistent or in agreement, just so long as the scientific consensus is brought into question, no matter how disreputable or obviously wrong the claimant.

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@FLRW

--> @Dr.Franklin
Here is another one. A Colorado sheriff's deputy died from COVID-19 complications shortly after sharing a string of anti-vaccination posts on his social media, according to MailOnline.
Daniel 'Duke' Trujillo, 33, died on Wednesday with his family by his side, Denver's Sheriff Department said on Twitter.
Three weeks before his death, Trujillo had updated his Facebook profile picture to include a border that read, "I have an immune system," the MailOnline said.

In fact, we have lost 2 anti-vax sheriff's deputies in the past month with others sick or hospitalized. One of the leading local radio hosts promoting anti-vax rhetoric, Steffan Tubbs was hospitalized with COVID last night.

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@Dr.Franklin

--> @FLRW
statistically speaking, states with restrictions arent doing better

It will probably take a few years to collate the correlations in great detail but the preliminary data is undeniable- states with more restrictions suffered fewer coronavirus cases.

The present standard for comparing differences in US State restrictions comes from the Variation in US states’ responses to COVID-19 working paper at Oxford's Blavatnik School in the UK which has been applying a 1-100 stringency index number to government responses worldwide for the purpose of side-by-side comparison. Let's compare Oxford's ranking to the May 5th NY Times estimates of number of COVID cases per 100,000.

Oxford ranked North Dakota as the state with the least stringent restrictions in the US over the course of the last year and North Dakota was also the worst hit state in the Union.

50th North Dakota — 14,165 covid cases per 100,000 population

South Dakota had the second least stringent restrictions and had the 3rd most Coronavirus cases

48th South Dakota — 13,901 per 100,000

Utah was the third least restrictive and the 4th worst state for COVID

Oklahoma and Wisconsin were 4th and 5th least and suffered the 11th and 10th worst pandemics respectively.

That is quite decisive. The other end of the scale is just as clear.

Oxford ranks Vermont as the state with the most stringent pandemic restrictions and Vermont suffered the second least number of cases per capita.

1st Vermont — 3,717 per 100,000

while the second most restrictive state had the least number of cases of any state

Hawaii — 2,340 per 100,000

Oregon was 3rd most restrictive and had the 3rd best case numbers

Oregon — 4,448 per 100,000

Washington State and Washington DC were the 4th and 5th most restrictive and the 5th and 6th least cases per capita respectively.

The top 3 least restrictive states were in the top four worst outcomes

The top 3 most restrictive states were also the top three best outcomes

Of the ten least restrictive states, ND, SD, UT, OK, WI, AL, IA, TX, SC, NH, 8 are in the 16 worst outbreaks.

Of the ten most restrictive states, VT, HI, WA, DC, NY, NM, NC, CT, MA, CA 9 were in the 17 best results and all were in the top 25.

One in 7 people got sick in North Dakota, the least restrictive state.

One in 27 people got sick in Vermont, the most restrictive state.

I'm sure a statistician would be more cautious but I call that significant correlation- you were about four times more likely to catch COVID in the states with the least restrictions than you were in the states with most restrictions. Yes, we should probably wait a couple of years until all the numbers are crunched but I'm ready to say

that Dr.Franklin's unevidenced claim:

statistically speaking, states with restrictions arent doing better

is utter horseshit and the opposite of a fairly obvious conclusion.

Statistically speaking, states with more restrictions fared significantly better than states with fewer restrictions.

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@sadolite

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say all of them are a 10 on the silly scale because every single protocol regarding a pandemic has been broken 100,000 times over. It was all for nothing for that reason alone.

If sadolite's reasoning here has any validity then it must follow that every law that has been broken 100,000 times is maximally silly. So for example, "Thou shalt not kill" must be a very, very silly law because that law has been broken millions of time and the Ten Commandments were all for nothing. Likewise, all laws prohibiting homicide are pointless because those laws are regularly broken.

Any real viral scientist is just shaking their heads in disgust as their profession is now a complete joke. They allowed politics to take over their real science. They have 0 credibility anymore based on their own documented standards regarding pandemics before covid was even a thought.

I see no evidence that virologists were generally guilty of allowing politics to take over science. For the most part, virologists accurately predicted the course of the disease and effectively communicated the means of prevention. That many people ignored their advice in no way reflects on the professionalism of the experts. I think history will note that virologists rose to the challenge of COVID-19 by producing a highly effective vaccine in less than a year- a feat unmatched in the annals of Virology to the everlasting credit of molecular biologists and the global cooperation fostered by those worthies.

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@zedvictor4

There was a woman over here, who went about hospitals protesting against the fake virus....And you've guessed it........Covid-19 killed her.

Specifics?

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