Love Me!
When this posts I should be somewhere in Arkansas or maybe even Texas. Important matters call me South.
This week is about the moon doing what the moon does — flitting around and changing things. It starts off aligned with Mercury and Jupiter, indicating a time of political scandals. In other predicitons, there will be rainfall in Washington state. By the end of the week, everything will have changed to a much more tangled configuration:
-Mercury shifts into alignment with the sun and Mars
-The Earth-Moon system rotates to bring it into another/different alignment with Mercury and Jupiter than existed warlier in the week.
This clarifies that the political scandal alluded to earlier is a domestic affair, quite possibly involving a hot tub or a hot beverage. In addition there will be news of the military on its home soil.
When I wake up, we’ll play fetch, ok?
Hail Aries! Your turn in the sun is enhanced by Venus, so enjoy the lovin’. The moon and Mars are in Gemini, so expect more military types to be backstabbling little bitches. The Moon sweeps from there into Virgo over the course of the week, that means I should plan my return trip with my precious cargo for the 24th and 25th.
Precious cargo
Pisces: 8 of Cups – The decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence, honor, modesty.
Aries: 7 of Cups – Fairy favors, images of reflection, sentiment, imagination, things seen in the glass of contemplation; some attainment in these degrees, but nothing permanent or substantial
Taurus: Temperance – Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.
Gemini: Page of Swords reversed – Authority, overseeing, secret service, vigilance, spying, examination — the evils side of these
Cancer: 10 of Coins reversed – Chance, fatality, loss, robbery, games of hazard, gift, dowry, pension.
Leo: Queen of Swords reversed – Malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.
Virgo: The Fool reversed – Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.
Libra: The Devil – Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality
Scorpio: 8 of Swords – Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.
Sagittarius: Blank –
Capricorn: 5 of Coins reversed – Disorder, chaos, ruin, discord, profligacy.
Aquarius: 9 of Cups reversed – Truth, loyalty, liberty, mistakes, imperfections
This crate is ok. My ball fits.
I hope you enjoy this week as much as I’m planning to.
I’m not fat, I’m fluffy!
Maybe Vanity, screw the rest
Nice puppies, when they grow, yikes
Sagittarius: Blank –
I’ll take it.
Maximum Effort!
Gemini – yikes
Seriously.
IM WATCHING YOU!!
ALSO WATCHING YOU
Meeeh, could be worse.
Probably, probably, negative, probably, absolutely, probably, never.
Puppies!
Scorpio: 8 of Swords – Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.
and I’m waking up Republicans and teaching them all about that deficit thingy – JRB46
So how cool is this: https://www.ruv.is
Þðuyrusþræ to you too!
Google Translate totally choked on that one. (Did manage to identify that it was Icelandic, though . . . )
That’s because it’s not a word. Just a hodgepodge of letters thrown together.
Like real Icelandic.
I imagine Obama is absolutely pissed off by this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/opinion/joe-biden-barack-obama.html?smid=url-share
I bet he is.
Good. He deserves being bashed. Biden, however, doesn’t deserve the thorough ball fondling he’s gets.
It’s pretty repulsive that they compare the size of stimulus packages like it’s a dick measuring contest. Who wasted the most taxpayer dollars gets you on the progressive Mt. Rushmore.
Obama repeatedly boasted about the record number of people living on some form of public assistance.
Boasted of it publicly, like he didn’t even realize how bad that sounds. “We’ve got a record number of you lot destitute and begging for a government handout!”
But Julia loved her some Big Brother.
I seem to remember an Econtalk episode where the guest noted that there was a high correlation between the number of deaths in wars and the perceived greatness of the president.
Malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.
Accurate.
I like the dog pictures.
From the last thread, Don wrote about John Wayne:
who strutted in uniform on screen after flouncing about USC and went on to somehow avoid all these very important wars he believed in.
Wayne applied to the Naval Academy before USC, but the Naval Academy rejected him. When the Second World War started Wayne was 34 and had a family deferment for the draft. He tried to get his family deferment junked and enlist, but his studio (Republic if I remember correctly) threatened him with a lawsuit and pulled some strings with the government to prevent Wayne from joining the military. That doesn’t sound like “avoiding” war to me.
As if Wayne would have been allowed to enlist and serve as a nameless infantryman, rather than getting assigned to some morale tour or officer desk billet.
I doubt the military would have made him a grunt. I see nothing in Wayne’s actions to support a claim of him “avoiding” war.
Certainly not any more than the vast vast bulk of Americans (85%+) who never served a day in uniform during WWII.
Jimmy Stewart enlisted in the Army in 1941 and eventually flew B-24s over Berlin.
Eddie Albert did his part – from leWik
and before his film career….
Someone’s never seen Brother Rat, which dates from 1938.
I’m guessing he would have been assigned to the Motion Picture Unit before being reassigned to whatever.
he’s the greatest American ever!
Not what I said, but, I’m not going to feed the troll.
Hey, no, really: I’m jerking off to Green Berets right now.
So glad a generation got to see the world.
To be fair, The Green Berets and Wake Of The Red Witch are the only two Wayne movies I like.
Trouble Along the Way and Brannigan are a lot of fun.
Green Berets for me is ruined by the presence of George Takei, who proved himself to be a mewling little bitch afterward. The shooting of GB took a few weeks longer than expected, so Roddenberry & crew hired Walter Koenig. Takei got all huffy and butthurt about it. He also never slacked off of a chance to crap on Shatner. Even if Shatner was as bad as Takei claimed, be a professional, asshole, not a professional asshole.
Takei is counterbalanced by the always lovely Jack Soo. Also, Aldo Ray plays Sgt. Muldoon. Ray was Navy Frogman in WWII, he helped clear the way of obstacles at Iwo Jima.
Jack Soo was great in Barney Miller. It sounds like they were getting double duty out of Ray – actor & technical consultant.
Good God, man!
Cutest puppy ever! Congratulations!
I can console my dark heart with rumination on the destruction that an adorable little puppy is wont to deliver, things chewed or shit/pissed on.
Aries: 7 of Cups – Fairy favors, images of reflection, sentiment, imagination, things seen in the glass of contemplation; some attainment in these degrees
Sounds reasonably promising.
but nothing permanent or substantial
So much for hoping for an edit button.
Needs moar pics.
Puppy breath! Awww.
And those sharp little puppy teeth!
So awesome.
Scorpio: 8 of Swords – Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny; also sickness.
Why you do me like this? I’m on a 10 day mandatory quarantine for work. So far no symptoms, but I guess I’ll just go ahead and die anyway.
Ewww! You got exposed to a Known Case of the Cooties?!?
I hope you pull through and that your time off is paid.
Thanks! Yeah, had the audacity to go out with some friends and one of the guys in the group picked it up and tested positive last week. No one else in our group has tested positive and the wife and I are still waiting on our lab results.
I’m personally not too concerned; my buddy is doing fine, his case is so mild he confused it with allergies. For me, unless something rapidly changes, I’ll get to enjoy a few relaxing days of WFH.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/03/gun-waiting-periods-remain-rare-in-the-us-but-more-states-are-starting-to-consider-them.html
*sigh*
If Georgia had required him to wait before getting a gun, lawmakers and advocates say, he might not have acted on his impulse.
Go fuck yourselves.
Waiting periods are required in just 10 states and the District of Columbia
I was surprised to discover Florida was one of them.
Or maybe he would have burned the building like the Happy Land killer.
I thought his impulse racist hatred – that goes away if wait 2-3 days?
My “studies suggest” that people are assholes – particularly those with the insatiable desire to control other people.
I would like to cite your studies in my ongoing research.
And the ratchet continues to tighten. When I picked up my FFL last week, the guy forgot to ask me until I was walking out if I had purchased a pistol in the past 30 days. Looks like VA reinstated the 1 pistol a month rule.
Buying a gun is easier than buying a book though from what I hear.
How many states require a voting registration permit first to be able register to vote?
“Students Demand Action”
Okay..,
“Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality”
How is this possible? Mrs. Q is still out of commission.
VZ is making a $10M donation (to whatever) for supposedly combatting this BS wave of antiAsian violence. The corporate grifters that gained power last year are going to milk this latest. Will Antifa hijack it as well for their latest rioting excuse?
VZ? von Zoolander?
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/892939181
A used M&P. Over $1,200 so far.
FFS.
A bit of a community beg here:
I’ve got a friend who wants to know why I’m of the opinion that masking up has done little to nothing to decrease the spread of COVID. While I have my own list of links, there’s not as much as I’d like, and doing Google searches of stuff I know is out there but can’t seem to find is getting frustrating, particularly since I can recall some of it from other sources and I’m becoming suspicious of Google’s search algorithms and potential filtering.
Anyone got links they’d like to share? I’m not so much interested in contrary opinions since they’re like assholes, and my friend has a hard time noticing in his favoured sources that they’re mostly opinions as well. The recent CDC study (reported on within the last 10 days?) seems to be a real sticking point for a lot of people, and of course the legacy media has already enshrined it as a bullet-proof demonstration of how wonderful masks are. I’m also having a really hard time getting him (or anyone else) to note that, in meta-studies, various types of masks, self-reporting and lack of rigour are combining into one great mass of “hot buttered dogshit” (as I believe the commenter Mr. Famous [?] once mentioned) that’s more confusing than enlightening, but via sleight-of-hand can be presented as “evidence” that masking “works.”
Any enacting of my woefully inadequate labour greatly appreciated.
It’s a sign of your white privilege that you would even try to put that emotional labor on me.
homebrew is best:
ask your friend to tell you which three states are handling this correctly
then go to the divoc91 site and take a screen shot of the curves for deaths per capita
then simply show your friend that their favorite states are all well within the herd, nothing special whatsoever
TOTAL deaths per capita
I’ve certainly shown him that, approximately one week after Alberta instituted its own mask mandate (August 1st, 2020), cases started inexorably rising, following Farr’s Law, and didn’t start to decrease until well after Christmas.
This was waved away. le sigh
Bama cases have plummeted since the superspreader celebrations of their latest football triumph
see also: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
That tells you all you need to know about your friend. No matter of faith can be moved despite the abundance of evidence (to the contrary).
Eh, I’m willing to do it for no other reason than to increase his discomfort level. If I can start the brain-worm, it may bear fruit someday.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to be his friend, ’cause I’m an adult. ;-)
I think you’re risking the friendship ratcheting up the discomfort, but either way, you do you.
JI: actually, he solicited the info from me in an e-mail last night. When we met on Friday he also thanked me for pointing him at Ground News, which is a news aggregator site that’s trying an interesting experiment with IDing the biases of news stories from differing sources and declaring whether a particular story coverage is a “blind spot” for either the right or the left:
https://ground.news/
Little steps. I’ll take whatever I can get.
Does this help? From oldest to newest: https://lockdownsceptics.org/masks-how-effective-are-they/
It’s certainly a start, but the latest update to that article is almost a year old already. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This Scott Atlas piece has some links to information about masks and their ineffectiveness. The whole piece is good, but the section of most interest to you starts with “Regarding universal masks:”.
Thanks mang!
This is the best recent roundup I can find:
https://www.aier.org/article/the-cdcs-mask-mandate-study-debunked/
Helps that the article’s written by a Ph.D. in Epidemiology.
Robc: “chess.com update. Two nights ago I got to 1100 ELO for the first time. Link to game is below, it is also the first time I have beaten anyone ranked over 1100. I was playing black. After 45 years or so of floundering around at this game, I am happy with the progress I have made last 60 days. Playing live games against real people of approximately equal strength helps.”
I’m whittling out a trophy to mail to CHS and hereby unilaterally anoint him reining GlibMaster for chess. I really only made one mistake against him, but he made fewer.
Don’t like it? Walk.
The boss of Australian airline Qantas has told the BBC that “governments are going to insist” on vaccines for international travellers.
Coronavirus vaccines are seen as crucial to reviving an industry that saw worldwide passenger numbers fall 75.6% last year.
Chief executive Alan Joyce said many governments were talking about vaccination as “a condition of entry”.
Even if they weren’t, he thought the airline should enforce its own policy.
“We have a duty of care to our passengers and to our crew, to say that everybody in that aircraft needs to be safe,” Mr Joyce said.
He believes that would justify changing the terms and conditions on which tickets are booked.
You owe it to your fellow man. Assuage his fear. Cater to his paranoid hypochondria.
The puppy! You are killing me man. I want one.
How did yesterday go? I couldn’t watch because Facebook.
Any enacting of my woefully inadequate labour greatly appreciated.
It sounds like your friend is impervious to anything which contradicts his well established opinion.
There are several graphs out there which seem to effectively shatter any illusion of correlation between mask mandates and effect.
Links to those graphs? Sorry. You can probably find one at AIER.
If your friend is in any way open to rational argument, AIER is where I’d urge him to go.
Covid update:
One week ago, the wife started having sinus headaches and severe fatigue. No other symptoms.
She had no reason to suspect covid, but then two of the ladies in her quilting circle tested positive. So, the wife was tested on Tuesday and came back positive. She developed a fever (102 deg) overnight, but that went away by Wednesday with a bit of Advil.
As of today, the sinus headaches and fatigue are gone. She has only a minor cough as things break up in her chest.
So it appears she is in the clear.
Totally unrelated. We have been taking Zinc since last summer and doubled up when her friends tested positive. She started drinking tonic water soon after she tested positive. Amazon delivered a quinine supplement (Cinchona Officinalis Bark) on Thursday.
Not that no right-thinking person could conclude that quinine and zinc would have any beneficial effects on covid.
I have no symptom at all.
sounds like good news; be well
?
GASP!
ASYMPTOMATIC SPREADER!
YOU’RE WORSE THAN TYPHOID MARY!
😉
Its not the quinine, its the gin keeping your BAC @ 80 proof. Duh.
Anecdotal experience- 2 employees at work were out (mandatory) with the vid. #1 is a 50s-something black guy, that has the whole list of comorbidities: heavy, Type-1 diabetic, high blood pressure, asthma/COPD, and kidney problems. Guy #2 is a late 40s white dude, evidently in decent health but also Type-1 diabetic. Both contracted it from their wives- one works as a grocery cashier, the other works in a hospital.
Guy #1 (who I expected was going to be in the hospital) never had a single symptom. Not so much as a sniffle. His wife had flu-like symptoms for a couple days but she got getter.
Guy #2 said he had an ass-kicking flu-like something that laid him up for a week, but he got over it, too. Both wives were sick as hell.
Seems there’s not any rhyme or reason to who it hits, or how it hits.
No gin involved.
My wife’s mother’s cousin died of Covid last week. She was 80 and didn’t bother going to the hospital because under her country’s glorious socialized medicine they wouldn’t treat her.
My cousin and her husband died of Covid last July.
He worked in a prison and brought it home. They stayed at home sick for a week before seeking treatment. By then they went straight to the hospital.
A week later, my niece signed the papers to pull the plug on both of them the same day.
This is a non-trivial issue.
Damn. Sorry man.
BEAM – I made up a spreadsheet that might help you out, here are some highlights:
State Cases Deaths 2021 Pop. Death Rate
New Jersey 844,563 24,103 8,874,520 0.27%
New York 1,765,755 49,047 19,300,000 0.25%
Connecticut 296,691 7,833 3,552,820 0.22%
South Dakota 115,522 1,919 896,581 0.21%
North Dakota 101,518 1,462 770,026 0.19%
Michigan 687,820 16,862 9,992,430 0.17%
Illinois 1,218,473 21,039 12,569,300 0.17%
Florida 1,999,257 32,668 21,944,600 0.15%
California 3,516,862 54,892 39,613,500 0.14%
Hawaii 28,509 451 1,406,430 0.03%
Let me know if you want the whole thing.
Sources:
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/states
Ah crap, it threw our my formatting.
I sent similar figures to my mom this morning.
In honor of my toothless cousins, would you take a look at MS again?
Mississippi 302,316 6,947 2,966,410 0.23%
That’s (L to R) Cases, Death, State Population, Death Rate
Thanks, d00d!
The formatting should be better on this:
State ********** Cases ***** Deaths ******** 2021 Pop. ** Death Rate
New Jersey ***** 844,563 **** 24,103 ******* 8,874,520 **** 0.27%
New York ***** 1,765,755 *** 49,047 ****** 19,300,000 **** 0.25%
Connecticut **** 296,691 **** 7,833 ******* 3,552,820 **** 0.22%
South Dakota ** 115,522 ***** 1,919 ********* 896,581 **** 0.21%
North Dakota ** 101,518 ***** 1,462 ********* 770,026 **** 0.19%
Michigan ****** 687,820 **** 16,862 ******* 9,992,430 **** 0.17%
Illinois ****** 1,218,473 **** 21,039 ****** 12,569,300 **** 0.17%
Florida ****** 1,999,257 **** 32,668 ****** 21,944,600 **** 0.15%
California **** 3,516,862 **** 54,892 ****** 39,613,500 **** 0.14%
Hawaii ********* 28,509 ******* 451 ****** 1,406,430 **** 0.03%
And for Don,
Mississippi *****302,316 ****** 6,947 ****** 2,966,410 **** 0.23%