No Excuses

It’s a war between a nuclear power backed by the US military and a defenseless population with barely an army, no navy and no Air Force. Drawing any kind of equivalencies here is pretty ridiculous. Hamas gains legitimacy in Gaza because its people are pretty much living in an open air prison. People who are afforded zero dignity and barely any international support turning to an extremist group offering protection is sadly not surprising.

New Gojira album is a 10/10. A single album with this many bangers should not be allowed. Amazonia -> The Sphinx -> Hold On The opening riff for the Sphinx is just *chefs kiss* amazing.

You can look at data from Israel which pretty clearly shows that even the mutant strains are not spreading in a population with ~55% vaccination rate. Even the UK data shows this, and they have lower rate of fully vaccinated people. Spare me the “don’t say anything”. Around this time last year, you were arguing with me that masks don’t work (and in fact may actually cause disease LOL) and data isn’t there to support masking (both points were wrong, but that didn’t stop you).

Understandable, and that’s his MO. He fudges his credentials and over-exaggerates his expertise. Ultimately, the problem with him is that he’s mostly interested in making things go viral, with little regard for the accuracy or truthfulness of what he’s saying. His ongoing social media efforts are basically a sad attempt at keeping vaccinated people scared of COVID. My cynical take is that he knows that the end of the pandemic through mass vaccinations is also the end for what brought him social media clout.

https://undark.org/2020/11/25/complicated-rise-of-eric-feigl-ding

Eric Feigl-Ding is not an epidemiologist. He’s a clout chaser, who has a background in nutrition and somehow spun a loose connection with Harvard into convincing people he’s an expert in virology. He’s pretty much the Alex Berenson of left wing COVID fear porn.

It’s time

Bitcoin tanking on a day when there’s data released on greater-than-expected inflation is pretty funny.

Why? Considering two things: 1. We are coming out of a pandemic, during which consumption went down, leading to pent up demand upon reopening. 2. Quite a generous expansion of UI benefits, that kept most people without jobs afloat (poverty actually going down following UI benefit expansions).

There’s a supply crunch in many commodity areas and a demand boom with reopenings. Why are people surprised that consumer prices are going up?

Yup, generally was a good idea to mask outdoors if someone was talking, singing, shouting etc in close proximity for a prolonged time. But going for a walk in the park, etc, we knew by Fall was safe. Even less need to worry now outdoors if you’re vaccinated. Talk, sing, dance do whatever. The unvaccinated want to roll the dice for death or Long COVID, more power to them. But I’ve resumed life back to normal, indoors and outdoors.

Outdoor mask wearing was unnecessary even when people weren’t vaccinated. You won’t be catching COVID from people in ventilated, open outdoor spaces.

File this under policy actions that accomplish nothing. This is virtue signaling by the administration with negligible impact on global vaccine distribution. The choke point to vaccine production is supply chains and manufacturing capacity.

Forgetting to cancel your subscriptions on time is not an indictment of the existing financial system. Plus, this is super easy to reverse. I’ve done it like four times already this year and spent no more than 5 minutes total. Lol

The downside is that if you lose your keys, or god forbid, fall for a scam, you’re straight out of luck with cryptocurrencies. Banks in the US offer a layer of protection through reversibility of transactions. The security side of cryptocurrencies isn’t really solving a pressing issue in US finance. I can see the upside for people in developing and authoritarian nations, where confiscation of financial assets by corrupt leaders/institutions is an issue, but it’s not a relevant issue in developed nations.