I got a late start today because breakfast wasn’t until 8. On the bright side I was able to load up on calories with eggs, pork products, pastries, cheese, juice and a cappuccino. By 9 I was loaded up and back on the road for a ride of 82 km with 1600 meters of climbing with the highlight being a stop in San Gimignano.
After retracing the 5 km detour from my hotel to the course, the trail turned on to singletrack through the underbrush and some gardens before emerging at the town of Colle di Val d’Elsa. Cutting diagonally across the main square the route took us up some steep cobbled switchbacks to the ridge where the old town was located. Arriving to the top by foot I discovered that there was an elevator that we could have taken. Oh well, too late.
The route went through the Palazzo Campana, built in the 16th Century by an advisor to the Medici family, before turning right to ride along the city walls. Near the top of the hill the route zig zagged back into town and eventually onto the road through Porta Nuova. These narrow winding roads serve to confuse invading hordes of barbarians and cyclists alike. Who dressed funnier and who smelled worse, the cyclists or the barbarian invaders? It’s a tossup.
After riding through a surprisingly large residential area we were back on to gravel roads through the forest leading down to a creek crossing. I contemplated riding across, but discretion is the better part of valor, so I dismounted and hopped across the rocks instead.
Leaving the forest we rode a short time on asphalt before a sharp left turn took us on to more gravel and the 7 km climb up to San Gimignano. Soon the towers of the town came into view and foot traffic from pilgrims on the Via Francigena became heavier. Through the gate I leaned my bike against the wall and filled my bottles at the fountain before walking up to the main square. There was a long line at the shop that claims it has the best gelato in the world, so I went to a neighboring shop that also claims to have the best gelato in the world. I can’t judge whose was better, but I didn’t have to wait a long time in the hot sun, so I think I made the right choice.
Gelato in hand I retreated to the cool air of an alcove off the main square where a group of seniors sat in cheap chairs smoking cigars and watching the tourists go by. On the one hand that looks like a fun way to spend a day if you’re an old guy. On the other hand, it looks kind of boring.
After finishing my gelato I figured it was time to get some real food, so I got a slice of pizza a Coke and returned to my bike, hoping it would still be there given that I had lost my lock a couple days before. For better or worse it was still there, so after finishing my food I remounted and headed out of town.
Out of town we made our way back onto gravel roads with Tuscan cypress lining the sides before plunging down a steep hill toward the valley floor. Just past some stables I had to stop to let some equestrians pass. I didn’t want to spook the horses. One of the riders said in an American accent, “Better get some speed. You’ve got a big climb ahead.” It was about 400m of climbing. I don’t think the momentum is going to help me much.
About halfway up the climb we were back onto asphalt and after a couple of 20% pitches we rolled into the small town of Gambassi Terme, where I stopped to fill up my bottles several times. The route then wound around on some side streets before rejoining the main road out of town. An African walking the other way said “Hot”. Indeed I was, thank you very much. The weather was too, somewhere in the mid 90s in Freedom units.
The road reached the top of the ridge and it felt like the climb should be over, but it just kept going and going. Finally 5 km later we did reach the top and I joined some others resting in the shade to cool down. But what would really cool me down would be a nice fast descent. The big climb of the day was over, so I could relax the rest of the way, or so I thought.
Halfway down the descent I decided to pull into a bar to rehydrate. I knew that towns were few and far between for the rest of the day, so it was best to fill up the bottles again and get a soda as well. There I chatted with a cyclist from Slovenia who was not doing the Tuscany Trail, but instead was riding across Italy. He was surprised to find an American who knew where Slovenia was and who had even been there.
We were joined by a couple from southern Italy. The man lit up a cigarette and commented that he had a long way to ride to his next stop in Montecatini Val di Cecina, but worst of all, it’s a lot of climbing. I thought to myself, “That’s where I’m going. But he must be wrong. We’ve done the big climb of the day. Must be something funny in those cigarettes.”
Time to move on. Continuing down the descent the road turned onto gravel again to head down into the valley. The roads were no longer the smooth gravel of the Strade Bianche. They were getting chunkier and rougher. My left hand started developing a blister exacerbated by the fact that my gloves never dried out due to sweat. I guess my left hand just isn’t as calloused as my right.
After crossing the creek at the bottom of the valley we started a 100m climb before exiting onto a nice smooth asphalt road. Only 25k to go and the road is smooth as silk. I should be at the base camp in no time. But then a feeling of dread set in. At no time in this ride have they let us ride 25k of asphalt. This must be a trick. And what was that guy saying about a lot more climbing today?
Sure enough the road turned left onto a 100m climb on loose, chunky gravel. It was slow going and hot. About halfway up there was a farm house selling refreshments, but I pushed on as the sun was getting lower in the sky.
After a fun, fast descent we got back onto an asphalt road, but soon the moment I had feared happened. The hill popped up on my bike computer. 300m of climbing over the next 5k. Not terribly steep, but long, and I was getting low on water. How had I fooled myself into thinking there was just one big climb of the day and that I had finished it? I mean, the finishing town has “Monte” in its name. It’s a hilltop town, and the thing about those towns is that they are at the tops of hills. It turns out that the mapping app listed the biggest climb of the day as two separate smaller climbs, so when previewing the ride for the day, my mind only registered one big climb. Lesson learned.
About halfway up the climb we returned to the asphalt road, which was a welcome respite. We also were on the shady side of the ridge so the temperature became a little more comfortable dropping into the high 80s. I was running short on water and was relieved to see and hear a fountain up ahead, but unfortunately the sign said it wasn’t potable. I was tempted to risk it, but decided I could make it to the town.
The road twisted around a couple steep switchbacks. Riders were growing ever more silent, and some got off and pushed their bikes. Finally I made it to the town square which was swarming with recovering cyclists. First stop was the bar to buy a 1.5 liter bottle of water and then sit down in the shade in the square to drink it down. Rehydrated, I returned to the bar to buy a slice of pizza for later. I didn’t care what was on it. I just needed food, and I wasn’t sure what if any food would be at the base camp, which was about a mile out of town. I then went to the small grocery store to buy a couple of bananas. I had seen a couple earlier in the day with fresh fruit in their bike bags, which made me realize I didn’t have to eat crap the entire ride.
The ride to the base camp required another 100 meters of climbing, which was somewhat demoralizing, but there was little choice but to keep pushing. Finally past the mining museum, the town had been home to copper mining, we pulled up to the soccer field which was the base camp for the night. After setting up my tent I headed for the showers in the visitor’s locker room. While a previous camp only had cold water, this one only had hot water. Luckily it wasn’t too hot.
All washed up, it was time to eat the food I had purchased. Unfortunately the pizza had anchovies, which didn’t appeal to me after the slice had been sitting in the warm weather. I gagged down what I could and then noticed that there was a snack bar selling beer and hot dogs. Preferring the lips and assholes in a hot dog to anchovies, I tossed the pizza and headed to the snack bar.
Though it wasn’t quite dark yet it was time for bed. Tomorrow was the last day, and I had to finish at a reasonable time and disassemble my bike so we could drive to our next destination at some hot springs. But that’s for the next episode.
From the title I am now going to conclude that you have changed into something other than Lycra
Maybe it was a senior moment.
He got a Cease & Desist from the Lycra company.
Steve Smith does not CEASE AND DESIST!
Nude biking is a thing now.
Portlandians love them some Steve Smith. Steve make sojourn to naked PDX ride for the bikes. Steve ride Bikes hard!
Nude biking was a thing when I bought Queen’s Jazz album.
You only need an inch out for the bikes. No need to drop trow.
“Confessions of a Middle Ages Man Who Is No Longer in Lycra” would have been too long a title.
This morning there was discussion of TransWomen in sport, particularly a brother of an Olympic athlete who is dominating in womens track now that he is she.
Well…
Remember Brian Scalbrini? The 44 year old former NBA end of bench guy who demonstrated the vast gap between bad NBA players and non-nba D1 level players?
Well…. apparently they did it with WNBA players and some good middle school players. Nothing like that massive team in the video above, but very good guards.
Here is how it went. (And yes, these guys look and act like the little kids they are)
https://youtu.be/Z6rq9csIQ4U?is=RNnyTH75Ja94LxBR
Forgot to include the video above
https://youtube.com/shorts/yKtR52lbRyQ
Middle school team has front line of 6’10”, 6’8, 6’7″
All with handle, athleticism and shooting range.
No WNBA squad is running with that.
what sort of mutant growth hormone are they feeding these kids?
Exactly what I said!!
Something has changed with athletes. This dude is 5’10.
I remember when Spud Webb dunked at 5’7″ and we were all amazed that he could do a reverse off the bounce.
Now?
https://youtu.be/qBe2fgGFXtE
Under both legs, pike position? At 5’10”??
Vertical leap that is over 50″??? Jordan supposedly had the highest ever at the NBA combine at 48, and people doubt that.
I think it’s cultural. Some people train and prepare and eat. And then you have certain schools that basically look for freaks and offer them freebies to come because even school sports has become this weird and kind of creepy thing where parents hope their kid is a lottery ticket and you have these coaches who fancy themselves *insert great coach in x sport here* in the making.
And underneath all this you have kids lifting weights and training and taking supplements as knowledge of those things along with access has spread.
When I was younger, no kids in my pop warner team were lifting weights that I knew of. Just a bunch of kids who paid a little fee to join a team. Moved to Florida and ended up on a mostly black team weirdly enough. Most of the kids sucked, but a couple were already way into weight training in middle school. Then high school yea weights were pretty standard by that point with a pretty nice gym.
But all that is only getting more extreme with time and in more “marginalized” communities it’s probably more likely their offspring will make it big in the NFL than just becoming a doctor or something.
This must have been the summer to visit Italy. I was in Bologna and Florence in mid July. Hot as hell.
BTW Bologna is the ideal Italian city to visit in the summer as every sidewalk is covered in porticos.
Sounds brutal, the mental part is not easy. I remember on our 10 mile humps(hikes) with full packs sometimes our CO would take us past the barracks and just keep going. Some of the younger Marines , thinking that was the end had a hard time getting their energy back up.
I’m sure that was a good decision.
Disinfo conspiracy
Some scientists, including Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at Dartmouth College, are concerned Sen. Paul’s ongoing focus on the pandemic’s origins, particularly Fauci’s personal notes, may erode public trust in research.
She believes the goal is “to sow distrust in science and scientists,” Goodrum said to NPR on Monday from the American Society for Virology meeting in Minneapolis.
She says many virologists are concerned that funding cuts and the ongoing tension regarding the pandemic’s origins are already hindering research focused on preventing the next pandemic.
“We are less safe. We are less prepared for a pandemic right now than we were in 2019,” says Goodrum. “And this is terrifying to all of us.”
We can’t have these know-nothing grandstanders looking over our shoulders and checking our work. It’s an outrage.
I can tell you that what eroded my trust in researchers (not research) was the fact that they *lied* to me about their research.
*Lied*.
As a trained research scientist, this was so beyond my overton window it caused vertigo.
This wasnt something small. It was incredibly important.
And they LIED.
They told us that they examined the gene sequence and it was absolutely not from the lab. 100%.
So I believed them.
Then come to find out, most of the people who said that never looked at any sequence, the ones who did said it DID likely come from the lab, and Nobody looked at the sequences from the lab.
They lied. Flat out. At Fauci’s direction.
This is why trust is broken.
Bonus obvious lie: the cloth and paper masks.
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000’s, many studies were done on this in Asian countries where wearing these masks is common in public places, like on trains.
Shockingly, the research consistently showed that these masks have *zero* effect on upper respiratory viruses.
I say shockingly because that doesnt make any damned sense. It has to have at least *some* effect, right?
Nope. None at all. There may have even been a Chochrane review article about it.
And yet….
Everyone lined up behind wearing the mask (and 6 foot separation, made up out of whole cloth).
Even Dr Steven Novella of Science Based Medicine fame. I name-check him because he is the one who told me about the research into cloth and paper masks for spread of upper respiratory infections like Flu – years before Covid.
So I know he was lying, because he is the one who told me about it in the first place.
Unreal.
I never imagined that people would lie like that. Not these people. Not about scientific research. Not when it really matters.
Faking research results, even a little bit, is career ending. Just cleaning up a northern blot with photoshop has been scandalous.
No… you guys broke the trust. Not Trump. Not the media. Not misinformation. You guys did that.
eroded my trust in researchers (not research) was the fact that they *lied*
This right here. Not just about their research, but lie – perhaps too strong a word; willfully ignorant – to themselves, colleagues, and funding agencies just to make sure the filthy lucre keeps flowing.
The sheer entitled audacity of these people is… hard to fathom. Rand Paul asking questions doesn’t sow distrust in science. Your answers, behavior, aversion to accountability and transparency, manipulation of data, and outright deception – that’s what fosters distrust, not exactly in science (though it certainly will if we keep getting gas-lit that this is what science looks like, welfare for the entitled and credentialed) but how you are grifting off the back of science.
Fuck off with your concern trolling you disingenuous hack. You had no concern about the corruption of science so long as the dollars kept flowing by whatever means necessary.
I absolutely don’t think lie is going too far at all for many of these people. There were credible researchers with long lists of credentials who said this probably came from a lab and questioned pretty much every aspect of what was being pushed mainstream. They weren’t hacks, but they were instantly swarmed and all attempts made to silence them without outright incarcerating them in a dark hole somewhere.
At the very least Fauci and his immediate contacts 100% knew everything.
Amazing details, thanks Cyto.
I had no idea that all of it was even worse than I suspected.
Cyto is on fire and it’s where this place is at its best when someone with an area of expertise can offer an opinion on something like this in depth.
It was crazy how a century of research on masks in the West and a consensus that they did nothing for respiratory viruses and the CDC initially saying yea masks did nothing to within a few weeks masks were the answer and even questioning that was grounds for expulsion from polite society.
The masks were 100% about being able to say they were doing something no matter how ineffective. They were obviously lying when they changed course based on nothing, and we have confirmation from emails that yes Fauci knew they were at best magic totems to ward off the virus.
don’t think lie is going too far at all for many of these people
Largely agree on the COVID-19 front directly, especially with Fauci and e.g. Christian Andersen who flat out lied as revealed by comparing personal communication both before and after the “proximal origin” paper to his public statements.
I was more talking about the general state of science, not just in the field of virology, and the squealing like stuck pigs when the feeding trough is threatened. And not just squealing, but sanctimonious, entitled squealing.
I don’t think a lot of them are lying per se. But this environment of science awash in federal funding and the need to expand and maintain your position at a University or federal agency encourages that entitled and sanctimonious elitism, that’s how the empire is sustained. And scientists are brought up in that milieu, educated and indoctrinated that this is how things work (because they have for so long…) It’s very hard to buck that or question the institution when your paycheck flows from the existence of those institutions. Much easier to subsume the cognitive dissonance and convince yourself that any attack or questioning of the institutions that provide you with a, in most cases despite protestations, a very good living is a direct attack on the very institution of science. It simultaneously allows you to protect your own interest while occupying the moral high ground of a crusader fighting for all that is right against the ignorant, barbarians. That’s a heady concoction that most can’t resist.
I haven’t listened to Tom Woods in awhile, but he had a guest once that had written a book on how much more effective science was when it was in the hands of the private sector.
I never got around to buying the book, wish I had, it sounded fascinating.
I have little doubt the private sector gets more bang for its buck, but it tends to be more targeted in how it spends R&D. The government is a giant slush fund that benefits a few contractors and every university and college. The line gets blurry as to what gets attributed to government and what is done by private institutions when the money is all intermingled, but commies don’t care about that. You took a dollar from the government? Government did that.
Just through sheer volume the government produces some gains.
Adding to the problem was circling the wagons around Fauci and the others. I see the same thing in academia: people think academics are under attack and because of that, they need to defend everyone against all charges. Instead of calling out the BS merchants.
It’s kind of comparable to cops/thin blue line.
tends to be more targeted in how it spends R&D.
That’s the rub and, in my opinion, the steel-man argument for funding of fundamental research. It’s hard to see what benefit might come out it, but it may be immense. The problem is that some limited funding of basic research with no obvious immediate payoff, very rapidly becomes a slush fund for the marginally bright border collie who fancies themselves a scientist, and like any bureaucracy, will protect itself, expand, and demand more.
At the very least, there has to be some humility and self-awareness of your value. Too many in the ‘science’ bureaucracy think that their intelligence (and credentials – a sort of intellectual labor theory of value) itself makes them deserving of great reward, regardless of the actual value produced by their intelligence.
“personal notes”
On his government-issued machine.
Try harder, DNC.
If facing honest questions erodes trust in whatever it is you do, it’s not honest scientific research to begin with.
There’s been almost no defense of Fauci in terms of he doesn’t lie. The arguments I’ve seen defending him come cloaked in caveats that basically admit he did in fact lie. Repeatedly. He just supposedly had noble reasons for doing so in hard times. And that he would have been caught in more had he answered to this witch hunt.
Modern science is a quasi religion more than actual science. I can’t believe it was always this bad, though maybe it was because people are people. But they don’t even pretend to believe the core concepts that are behind the scientific process and the philosophy of science.
Fauci is being defended because of politics. Because the wound is still fresh for so many rubes and true believers who while they may quietly admit shit got fucked up, they don’t want to own their part in it and admit they were misled. And the “scientists” defending Fauci just want the lucre to keep flowing.
Fauci is very connected and still holds power in retirement. And not just a symbol of the establishment’s incompetence masquerading behind a veil of expertise.
No, they don’t.
Article talks about a bunch of scientists twisting “the science” to arrive at their desired outcome which is the complete destruction of the US economy.
We wouldn’t be talking about Fauci if Trump wasn’t so shit-brained for making Fauci his front man. But the ol’ germ-phobe couldn’t play his part in settling the public down, so he had The Science speak for him. [Oh, and it was the Trump admin that overlooked the Obama halt on banning gain of function research. I haven’t watched the whole spectacle but I haven’t heard Sen. Paul bring that up either.]
I think a lot of libertarians and even conservatives are proud of scientific progress and interested themselves in various fields or even have worked in them directly. It was long acknowledged that the ‘soft” social sciences were putting out bad work. Then it expanded out to climatology. But ok, it’s just this one kind of niche, but there’s still really great research being done by honest nerds who just care about truth in the hard sciences.
And that’s becoming an increasingly more difficult position to hold. At least to the same degree. Covid was the big push there.
It’s like how your GOP voting Dad was slavishly pro-federal law enforcement, but now talks about conspiracies involving the FBI and CIA on the daily to undermine Trump. It’s all over online in mainstream boomer outlets now.
These institutions discredit themselves.
Realistically, I don’t think Trump had the ability to calm much of the country down. Especially the ones who at that time had the loudest microphones. They despised him to the point where they refused to even take his vaccine just months before calling for it being mandatory when Biden took office.
There was tremendous pressure to do *something* and it needed a credible face. Trump probably didn’t know much of anything about Fauci at first. Far more intelligent and thoughtful presidents than Trump would have struggled to deal with that situation let alone in one to where people like us would be happy with the outcome.
Kamala during the VP debate:”I’m not taking a Trump vaccine.”
Surprised she didn’t get whiplash after the election.
….honest nerds who just care about truth in the hard sciences.
And that’s becoming an increasingly more difficult position to hold. At least to the same degree.
You are part of the priesthood. If you question that priest in his field of expertise, maybe someone will start to question you. Maybe ask uncomfortable questions about YOUR funding. Maybe will start thinking YOU don’t really know what you’re talking about it either. That’s a dangerous road to go down. You consider yourself one of the intellectual elites; if questioning of the intellectual elites is allowed or even, god forbid, encouraged, that might reflect back on YOU!
Science requires skepticism, confrontation, willingness to be left out in the cold. Most people practicing ‘science’ as imagined by the media and the public – they have the credential and the lab coat after all – are not scientists, even if they started out that way.
Realistically, I don’t think Trump had the ability to calm much of the country down.
No he doesn’t, and the fucking country shouldn’t need Big Daddy Government to do that. But that’s who the fuck America is now, so we all get to suffer for their endless stupidity.
What JI said. The buck stops with Trump. He could have sidelined the little sociopath (and his spook sidekick Birx) any time he wanted. He had no end of solid people telling the truth – Atlas, Bhattarachya, etc etc that he could have gone with.
But he fucked up his responsibility in all this massively. Mostly because it was an election year. How’d that work out for you, Donald?
Help me understand this. Let’s say 100% of the health science community had said “Covid 19 came from a lab release (accidental or on purpose) and not from some random Chinese guy eating an infected bat at a wet market.” How would that knowledge have impacted the panicked drive to wear masks, stand 6′ apart, close businesses and schools, demand vaccination, and all the other theatre that was imposed on the American people?
For starters, that knowledge leads straight back to Fauci and his GOF activities, and would have taken him off the board. He was the driver of much of the panic and the entire lockdown strategy. There’s a reason he put so much effort into selling the lie that it wasn’t from the lab.
So, would we have done better without Fauci driving the train? No one can know, but it seems likely.
I’m not so much defending Trump as pointing out how deeply flawed he actually is as a political leader. Especially one leading a revolt against the establishment. He has been and always will be little more than a giant fuck you and pretty iffy in any other respect.
But the left and their media cronies would oppose anything he had done. We see it with the vaccine that they became the champions of when he lost, but less memorable was mocking him for closing down travel to China as yet another sign of authoritarianism and xenophobia.
Somewhere out there there is an alternate timeline where Trump did everything the blue governors did at the federal level and the left viciously attacks him for it at every turn. They shaped their own response entirely off Trump’s, and Trump shaped his out of fear of how his critics would react. His natural inclination probably would have been heavy handed I suspect, but the tone was set early that they were going to play up the tyrant card. Some members of his cabinet who realized the economic impact could have said whatever.
He’s not that intelligent and relies on instinct to get by more than any actual knowledge or principles. His instincts failed him during Covid because he became reactive to the enemies rather than being the one who was steering the direction of conversation.
But no matter what I don’t think we would have gotten whatever a libertarian response to this mess would have looked like from him and I don’t think he survives *any* course he takes. They wanted him out. That and only that was the priority.
There’s what Dean said. But if the American people found out the government was involved, it’d have probably made a heavy handed response guided by some expert ruling class more difficult. Hysteria may have also gone higher as people would have pictured some doomsday scenario. Can’t say.
But you know honesty itself matters too. Not to mention holding the culprits accountable.
If Jay Bhattacharya had been in charge then it wouldn’t have been called a pandemic.
“We are less prepared for a pandemic right now than we were in 2019”
Well, we had perfectly good pandemic/disaster response plans in 2019. Which were all thrown away at the behest of Fauci and his Karen Army. We were less prepared for a pandemic in 2020 than we were in 2019.
If anyone has learned anything*, the Fauci/CCP response has been ashcanned and those plans are back on the shelf ready to be deployed. Meaning we are, in fact, just as prepared for a pandemic as we were in 2019.
*seems doubtful
In a report issued in June 2025, the World Health Organization stated: “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host.”
An intermediate host like a petri dish?
The “evidence” that they are relying on is specious at best.
They claim “case closed” because they did a swab of a post at a wet market and found Covid DNA along with 2 different animals. In trace amounts for all 3.
Really! You found touch DNA of 2 animals in a giant room filled with animals and people infected with Covid.
So…. zoonotic.
Nobody is actually that dumb.
That is intentionally misleading.
Well…
The Chinese developed the shit and throw a ton of money around in “science” at Western universities. Or at least specifically America’s. I’m going to guess Europe’s too. They were highly connected and funded by the West and it’s most powerful bureaucrats like Fauci. And I’m sure there’s strong desire to get back to doing what they were doing if it even stopped to begin with.
Every incentive is to sweep this under the rug.
And that’s before we even touch the whole idea this was done intentionally. Because that’s hardly as crazy as it sounds and there’s at least some evidence that some people knew shit was coming before hand. But yea, there’s clearly no smoking gun and just circumstantial smoke from this or that direction.
Somehow, a bat virus evolved so that it didn’t infect bats anymore, but did infect humans. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
It was blindingly obvious, even before we knew that Wuhan had been working on the exact modification with furin cleavage sites that COVID showed, that it came from Wuhan. It’s a coronavirus that is worse than anything seen before, that broke out literally within sight of a lab researching coronaviruses. I never doubted from Day One that it was from the lab, and I am frankly surprised that anyone did.
You know who else had and elevator to the top of a ridge?
Duluthians in the early 1900s?
https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/thing/duluth-incline-railway
Louis Malle?
Trondheimians?
https://visittrondheim.no/en/activities-attractions/outdoor-adventures/biking/trampe-bicycle-lift/
I rode in some guy’s elevator in Bavaria. Pretty damn small. Von Stauffenberg and the guy should have rode in it together and maybe history would be different.
Willy Wonka?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvIiBUBe-g
Yinzers?
The Swiss really know how to put the fun in funiculars.
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000’s, many studies were done on this in Asian countries where wearing these masks is common in public places, like on trains.
I always assumed those masks were more for particulate smog (the kind you can write your name in after it settles on surfaces) than for germs.
wearing these masks is common in public places, like on trains.
Even more so, in clinical and surgical settings. There was no impact on the transmission of airborne respiratory virus – and that’s not why they are used. They are used to prevent fluid transmission either from or to. Further, even N95 showed no significant impact on respiratory viruses even in a clinical setting, exactly where they are more likely to be properly fitted and handled. Yet as far as I’m aware, there were no previous studies demonstrating any efficacy of N95 over surgical prevent respiratory virus transmission. Mechanistically, I can see a time window effect with viral load, maybe takes a few minutes longer to get an infectious viral load, but when tested in the real world, even that potentially benefit was not actually realized.
But there was no shortage of credentialed ‘scientists’ willing to lie about it. But sure, it’s Rand Paul asking you questions that fosters distrust.
The Priests are never to be questioned!
As usual, the problem isn’t the behavior of those scientists, the problem is someone calling attention to it.
My guess is that they were worn to protect against smog — this was stated many times in the past. Someone decided it was a great opportunity to see if there were any other benefits — such as reducing the transmission of respiratory illnesses. The result was they don’t help with illnesses. That doesn’t change the benefits of filtering out particulates from smoggy air.
The Japanese are very certain the masks help prevent transmission of the cold and flu.
It seemed to be more of a city person thing in Okinawa, but COVID made my mother in law scared to go out without one.*
*One more reason I hate those smarmy bastards.
When I lived in NYC all the East Asians, especially females, wore masks all winter long. Before the plagues it was already a cultural affectation.
that’s not why they are used. They are used to prevent fluid transmission either from or to.
To block sneezes/coughs? That makes sense For germs…
Exactly. No just ‘explicit sneezes/coughs’, just general droplet transmission. You don’t want the Drs mucous to be dripping or floating down into a wound or a patients mouth. And the Dr. doesn’t want the patients mucous or blood or… in his mouth or nose either.
That said, if I recall some of the studies – I read them a while ago during this nonsense – even that, e.g. reduction of bacterial infection, was not statistically significant in N95 vs surgical vs nothing. Which is not necessarily surprising in a clinical setting as there are probably so many avenues of transmission in that setting you don’t have a lot lever arm. But you still don’t want to drip or be dripped on.
Putrid is right – the surgical mask thing is for droplets.
And there were studies done on whether wearing surgical masks had an effect on infections from surgeries. The answer was no, they do not. Believe it or not, its skin flakes and the like that present a risk of these infections. Wearing the little surgical hat did more than masks.
I guess my left hand just isn’t as calloused as my right.
ISWYDT
You don’t want to see what years of Firsting does to hands. Or genitalia.
On the topic of cognitive dissonance, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of literary critics on Youtube. I’m find a large number who admit that modern fiction sucks, but buck back hard on the notion that wokeness is playing a large part in it. Because their politics won’t allow them to is my hunch.
They end up quibbling over the definition of woke and what it refers to and what constitutes to it as if publishers haven’t basically been out in the open that they don’t care about stories from white men anymore. A story itself can be just shitty but non-woke, and if the person who wrote it was picked to be published (or direct or write a movie) based on criteria such as genitalia or race it’s still the woke doing the thing.
The white writers are sometimes the ones who most obviously infuse it into their stories because it’s how they keep getting published. They have to actively and convincingly show they have the right politics.
Same shit as the movie sphere, basically.
As someone who pays very little attention to Dave Rubin, it’s kind of creepy how obsessed the left is with him. Like he’s a nobody on the right if you can even call him right wing. But the heretics are worse than the non-believers. Always and forever.
Now I have to look this person up.
Don’t you think it’s the same for right ringers obsessing over fringe leftists?
I think the fringe of the left has more say than Rubin on anything, but Rubin’s really not even Republican. He started as a leftie and followed the kind of Sargon path to becoming a non-leftie if memory serves me correctly. He was one of them, but fell out of lockstep and found himself shunned and cast out into the right.
I can’t think of too many comparable conservatives. I mean, it’d be like the right freaking out over the token conservative at the NYT’s or Post pretending to be principally opposed Trump. Or maybe the Lincoln fucks. Are they even still around?
But Rubin has a very active subreddit dedicated to him where it’s just lefties going apeshit over everything he says and it’s like who the fuck even cares?
Rhywun-
Thanks for the Manhattan Contrarian article. I can’t tell you how surprising it was.
Because it was not in the least surprising.
He is a rare “follow”. Always interesting stuff from him – and from the perspective of a dissident of sorts New Yorker.
Paging kinnath!
These Drivers Are Taking Extreme Measures to Avoid New Car Technology
Brett Doyle maintains a meticulous spreadsheet of the latest automotive tech—electronic door handles, massive touch screens, cruise control that automatically goes with the flow of traffic.
It isn’t detailing his dream car. It’s his worst nightmare.
“I don’t want any of that,” said the computer scientist living in St. Louis, who sees the technology as a pile of problems waiting to happen.
Doyle is part of a vocal minority fighting the auto industry’s obsession with packing new technology into cars. Call them curmudgeonly roadblocks to progress, or the last beacons of sanity on the road. Either way, they’re pushing back.
I’d love to see a list of how many of those things are driven by regulation & then market forces.
e.g., you have to have a screen, since you have to have a backup camera now. Once you have a screen, why spend more money on physical radio controls, etc.
Yes. I like the current crop of 3 wheelers because they have none of those things. Minimal regulations. If I hadn’t just bought a house and built a pool, this would be in my garage:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/278170163279
When I rent cars for work they have this, every time I used it it would make me sleepy.
Yup. The 2019 Rogue was the last new vehicle we bought. The base “S” model didn’t have the spyware built into it that the higher trim levels had. I didn’t know that at the time. So, it was dumb luck I suppose.
We now have 5 vehicles from model years 2006, 2013, 2017, 2017, and 2019. I figure we can put 100K to 150K more miles on each of those vehicles before they give out. That will cover our needs for the next 20 years or so.
If we live longer than that, we’ll have to hope that one or two of them is still running.
I don’t plan to buy another vehicle, ever, at this point.
I have vehicles that are 1999, 2006, 2007, and 2013. I’ve said it before, but I’ll pay a bunch of money to have an older model stripped down to the steel and completely overhauled before I buy a bunch of software on wheels. I rent cars a lot due to travel, and the experience is generally… Do Not Want.
But the ol’ germ-phobe couldn’t play his part in settling the public down, so he had The Science speak for him.
As I recall, in the beginning Trump was roundly denounced and vilified for not taking the plague seriously enough.
In 2019/2020, Trump was roundly denounced and vilified for taking a dump in the morning. But he was viewed as unbeatable for re-election until the plague hit. That’s why the Dems nominated Biden – he was a sacrificial candidate.
And (sorry, JI) he still would have won in spite of his incompetent response to COVID, if it wasn’t for widespread cheating facilitated by COVID panic.
that urinal note wasn’t very specific.
I take it that it doubled as a foot washing station.
So this just happened, speaking of Europe.
A lot to unpack, including Donald and the bald guy suddenly being BFFs.
My take: now that World Cup Fever has really hit every corner of the globe, it could be marketed and presented a lot better. Wider TV coverage would be a good start. Nothing he proposes is inherently bad.
I managed to escape it without even wearing a mask.
My initial hot take is agreement. And as mentioned in the article, the poor countries of Africa and Asia will be all over this.
OTOH, European soccer fandom and to some extent management leans heavily left. They hate money, capitalism, and most importantly, Literally Hitler. And they kind of run FIFA even though “every country” supposedly has a vote.
money*
By which I mean money in the wrong hands, natch.
I did not want to say “Commies gonna commie” but that applies to the whiny Eurotards here.
Is it really Thursday? Fuck.
/pours more Crown
Do I need to kick off an ad-hoc Zoom tonight for you?
Even as the price of a new car soars—now hovering around $50,000—automakers argue buyers are getting more bang for their buck, including more safety and entertainment tech features.
Stop it.
You’re killing me.
Similar logic to Cash for Clunkers. Why would anyone want to buy a $5000 used car, when they could get a $5000 discount on a $40,000 NEW car? It’s a no brainer!
“Your alternative is to have products in 2026 that don’t have state-of-the-art technology,” said Chris Lemley, president of the Sentry Auto Group dealerships outside of Boston.
The horror.
The HORROR.
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid
Fuck Chris Lemley
Kindly Increase System Sophistication
I love when news pulls quotes of people with a financial incentive to make those statements. Like, no shit.
this would be in my garage:
I’d rather have a 1967 Baja bug than whatever the hell that thing is.
egghead bitchfight
The off-screen drama surrounding Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version of the Odyssey stepped up a gear overnight, as the novelist Joyce Carol Oates sought to defend the film-maker from an attack by classicist Emily Wilson.
Writing on X, Oates took issue with the style as well as the rhetoric of Wilson’s essay published earlier this week in the London Review of Books, in which the academic, who published a landmark translation of Homer’s epic poem in 2017, wrote that Nolan’s film lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth” and had “nothing convincing to say”.
“Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner,” said Oates, “this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of Maga folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.
“One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful and respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.”
That MAGA slap was a low blow. Such a towering cultural icon couldn’t come up with something more literary and yet deeply hurtful?
Hey, I hate everyone involved here! Can they die in a fire together?
J.C.O. is still alive?
She added: “The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has a convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
Brutal.
What is it with these women reviewers moaning and groaning about the lack of sex in this movie?
NEEDZ MOAR MINOTAURZ!
Curse you for making me click on a fucking Guardian link just to confirm that the ridiculous quote is not, in fact, made up.
JFC
It does have a one-eyed monster in it.
You know who else has a one-eyed monster?