sjwalter

There was not a second of doubt that the emails were legitimate. Here's proof: the Biden campaign and Hunter himself never denied they were real. As well, while nobody in the mainstream bothered calling any of the people in the emails, Taibbi DID. They were obviously real the moment there was no denial. Because if they were just fabricated, denial would be the first public response.

According to the founder of Wikipedia, yes, Wikipedia has been captured by leftist interests.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/26/wikipedia-co-found...

What about the hundreds of pics of Hunter smoking crack in a bathrobe? What about the emails wherein Hunter describes in some detail his influence peddling operation? "10% for the big guy." Everyone focusing on Hunter's nudes are eliding the real story that Twitter buried. That is, the hard evidence that Biden is corrupt.

Asymptomatic spread is not nearly as prevalent as originally feared.

Also, those who do not get symptoms (that is, most who catch covid) do not spread the virus in general, which is why it's now called "presymptomatic" spread.

> Yes the vaccine does improve outcomes BUT the hospitalization rate for unvaccinated people is still lower with Omicron than previous variants.

Why "BUT"? Shouldn't the second part be, uh, a good thing?

There always are. Average hospital staffing and resource levels mean at its minimum ICUs are at ~78% capacity. Come low vitamin-D season, January or February, most ICUs hit capacity every year.

Google doesn't run its data centers at 5% capacity for the same reasons ICUs don't.

> I am in no way saying masks don't work, in fact I think that they do.

This is still so hilarious to me. It's pretty obvious that some masks work, that is, n95 or whatever actual respirator masks. It's pretty obvious that other masks don't work at all, that is, 99.99% of masks worn by the public at large.

Sure, but hospitals are run at a level to hit peak capacity at the point when vitamin D deficiency peaks.

Here's LA County using overflow tents in 2018 because the flu season was particularly bad: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-flu-demand-2018...

So it's not like this is some new threat. "2 weeks to flatten the curve" came along with some understanding that hospitals would increase their resources. Instead, in many states, they've spent more time working out which unvaccinated staff to fire and how than they have increasing staffing levels.

Wild.

Here I am thankful that Montana recently reduced regulations and made it so small dairies can supply raw milk directly to customers without any inspection from a state or federal agency, so now my family drinks local, fresh, raw milk for the same price as organic UHT crap.

Germans can't get anything but this UHT stuff?

Can you explain what you mean with the German milk market? You can't buy fresh milk anymore?

I never said violence.

It's like this: I'm originally from Ontario. Every year, a few drunk teenagers drown while boating. It's a big tragedy, and I'd hate it if it happened to my kids.

Now, Ontario's politicians respond predictably to this, every year: A call for more safety. This comes in the form of stricter regulations and more enforcement. Now what it means is that whenever my family and I take the boat out for a spin, more than half the time we're stopped by police boats who have to check yes, we have our safety gear, no we haven't been drinking, no that's not pot you smell.

And yet, a few teenagers die drinking while boating that same year.

We'll never live in a zero-risk world, and what I desire is an acceptance of that.

My kids ride dirtbikes and hang out with livestock and shoot guns. They do all manner of dangerous things. More kids and more people should all do this and stop living in some dreamworld where the government makes them safe.

> This will mean more ...

One thing particularly strange about climate change alarmists is that they are just so damn sure of all these horrible outcomes that are absolutely sure to happen.

You're forecasting, dude. You don't have a crystal ball. Yet your statements, and those of all the alarmists, are those of the totally cocksure.

I live near Glacier National Park. In the early 2000s, some climate change model predicted the glaciers would be gone by 2020. All the entrance signs were modified to state this to every single visitor: Enjoy 'em while they last, friends, but climate change will render these glaciers puddles by just 2020!

Well, come 2020, the glaciers are still right there. A bit smaller. But also nowhere near gone.

Failed predictions and shrill screeching forecasting failures stack up over and over from all the alarmists and yet still they, as you do here, fail to have any humility, any sense that, hey, maybe you don't know it's the end of the world for sure.

I think that's part of the problem. I think we're already living in incredibly safe times, and a focus on even more safety and security is what's causing some good chunk of the malaise we're all experiencing.

I want my kids to increasingly face more insecurity and unsafety. This way they become more and more resilient and able to deal with the future without me.

Matt Taibi was on Joe Rogan a few days ago and during the interview Joe related a story about one of his Israeli friends. Joe went over to his friend's home for dinner, and hung out with his family, and the entire time the friend and his wife and kids were dancing and singing and celebrating, for no particular reason.

Joe asked why are you Israeli's so happy? The friend said that when you live in Israel, you live under the perpetual notion that a rocket strike will kill you at any moment. So you don't need a momento mori, you have death hanging over your head at every moment, so every moment is imbued with a heightened preciousness, so you engage happiness as much as possible, whenever possible.

I wish the modern, globally-homogenized mass culture that washes over us enjoyed this kind of apocalyptic thinking, rather than the dour, annoying "omg the ghgs!" crap we've got.

> Humans also generally agree that progressive taxation is a good idea.

Fairly bold assertion. I'd say most humans don't even really know what progressive taxation means.

> Rich people should pay more to fund the government.

A static tax regime (i.e., taxes calculated by a simple fixed percentage of wealth or income) leads to the same outcome. E.g., in a 10% fixed tax regime, someone making $10k/a pays $1k in tax and another person making $1mm pays $100k in tax, meeting your desire to have the rich pay more--no progressive taxation required.

One of the tricks Robert Moses had when he was basically building modern NYC was he had on staff a top-notch crew capable of the end-to-end implementation of whatever project proposal he came up with. Designers, engineers, project managers, accountants, even down to the guys digging the holes.

Not sure what happened and why cities stopped having all these capabilities on staff (seems obvious that e.g. NYC will eternally need a huge amount of people like this).

And omicron arose in vaccinated people and traveled the world in the respiratory tracts of the fully vaxxed.

They're only arbitrary and pointless if you believe the goal is public health.

Imagine seeing what's going on in eg Australia and still thinking this is about a virus!

Why does vaccine-based immunity lack the durability of natural immunity?

So that's not quite true. The CDC provides the estimate you're talking about which is what my post originally cites (~146mm Americans infected). That's their estimate based on the much smaller number of positive tests and hospitalizations, using their models about how many cases are missed by surveillance.

A bit under half of Americans have already caught covid.

Even without vaccines, that means nearly half of Americans already have natural immunity which is vastly superior to vaccine immunity.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

The doctors here in Montana I've talked to about it are not exactly advertising it but are unvaccinated and have recommended to me to avoid the vaccine and one intimated it's insane to vaccinate children.

So that's not the case with all doctors.

Then again, I'm fit, healthy, great diet, low stress, eat well, lots of sunlight. Covid poses less risk to me than driving, my kids it doesn't rise to the level of conscious thought.

Covid's over here.

So silly. "Comply with us or you lose your job" is only semantics away from "forced". Especially galling since:

a) Many frontline workers have superior natural immunity anyway.

b) We're in a pandemic and this nuclear option ensures we have fewer healthcare workers, not more ("fewer workers to make the curve more impactful!")

c) Not a year ago these were our heros and saviours, and now they're villains for failing to comply. LOL

Uh, wat?

Every single study done on the topic shows that natural immunity (not innate immunity) is vastly superior and more durable and more robust than vaccine immunity. Here's a study from the prestigious publication Cell: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

What are you talking about?

This case in Butte is somewhat better than usual because BP is actually footing the remediation bill.

More typical is having the taxpayers foot the bill, like with the fascinating example of Giant Mine, 5km outside of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories. Some 200 kilotonnes of arsenic trioxide were created as byproducts of the mining process, enough arsenic dust to kill off every human and animal on earth. Once the company (and the company that bought the company) that mined the gold went belly up, the government is stuck footing the bill for remediation.

The remediation plan is to indefinitely freeze, using compressors like used for hockey rinks, the arsenic underground. An eternal, ongoing operation, costing >$1bn, costing more in present-day dollars than gold was even extracted from the mine, in order to avoid the arsenic seeping into the groundwater.

Kind of hilarious the implicit bet on a stable society that this remediation plan entails.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Mine

Depends on the animals.

My cows are fed exclusively grass, right to finishing.

My pigs and chickens are fed mixes of locally-sourced corn, oats, barley, peas, and lentils from organic growers. And they supplement with grasses and broadleafs because we raise 'em on pasture.

Well-raised, environmentally reasonably-fed animals cost lots of money.

Meat is basically the healthiest thing people can eat.

If you just take the pasture-raised cows alone, the grass grows itself and large herbivores are a natural part of the environment here--the environment and its polyculture would be harmed by their removal.

When have factories ever made healthful food?

How many animals does a 30 acre soy field kill?

Have you ever seen how many foals are chewed up in a combine?

IMO much more ethical to directly kill an animal vs. indirectly destroy its habitat or kill it accidentally (and then fail to use the carcass).

This is one of the problems with the mainstream obsession about climate change.

The environmental destruction wrought by gigantic, inhumanely scaled monocrop farming is direct, immediate, obvious, and worthy of huge mobilization to resolve.

Instead, we hear, as you say here, that if the carbon emissions are low, it's Great For The Environment!

I've tried it. It doesn't taste terrible. It's clearly not meat, however.

I'm biased (chicken farmer), but to me it seems quite strange to think that some highly-processed factory-produced meatlike substance could ever come close to matching the nutritive quality of well-raised and processed meat.

Factories are in general not well-known for producing healthful food.