It's ironic that atheists like Sam Harris were the most susceptible to the new covid religion. Completely deranged and trying to force their new religion on everyone. Ready to kick people out of society and willing to force their sacraments by force if they could.
You are on to something here. I am an atheist, but never fell for the panic and the hype. However, most of my "rational" non-religious friends bought the scam, exhibiting a herd-like behavior that shocked me. On the other hand, my traditional Christian friends were much less likely to conform, and if they did, it was only for a short time. Something about the need for a "religion" to make sense out of chaos. I wish I understood better.
I think the cause is different attitudes toward fear. As a Christian, the Bible commands me over and over to "trust God and fear not" as God is in control. It's not optional, I'm not allowed to live my life in fear, doing so indicates my lack of faith. The more committed the Christian (by that I mean committed to living a biblical lifestyle as opposed to mouthing platitudes), the much less susceptible people were to fear-based propaganda and psychological manipulation.
I don't know many atheists so I can really comment on that, but I do know plenty of agnostics. Not only did they not reject fear, but many of them reveled in it and seemed to embrace it. Masking (a visible sign of fear) was seen as virtuous. Viewing others as little more than disease vectors (akin to mosquitos), and every human interaction as a potential death sentence, became the norm. They let fear take control of their lives as they had no moral code that stigmatized such behavior, in fact the opposite was the case as it was celebrated in the media and public health.
The fear was of death. When you believe you just go "poof" and this life is the only thing you have, of course anything that might shorten this life would be quite fearful. As a Christian, I know there is a life after this one. Death is not the end but the beginning - I can't fear something that will lead to a much better place.
So true. I felt the only sane thing was to not be afraid and pray to be able to live like that. It was a slog, but eventually I shed my corona fears... only to then have to carry the burden of their fear and its limitations on them for the next three years. Haha!
I also was shocked that the atheists were highly compliant with getting vaccinated. It became their god, lol. In my state the Christians were also much less likely to conform, but those that did get vaccinated accepted those of us who didn’t, atheist or not. The atheists- not so accepting of us unvaxxed. Didn’t make me religious, but did make me respect those those who are.
My observation is that compliance was very mixed. I know quite a few who disdain religion of any sort, and they were frighteningly conformist to the covid dictates. I also know of devoutly religious people who were similarly compliant. No rhyme or reason as far as I can see. Maybe it comes down to individuals and how they think, critically or non-critically.
Maybe part of the reason for intellectual types, as well as secular types, being more likely to buy into Covidianism is the fact that they pin whatever belief system they have more on science and technology than a higher power. The irony is that it has turned into a pseudo-religion.
I say this as an atheist myself. I used to admire Sam Harris, but this was a big disappointment.
I think it was Chesterton who said, "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't then believe in nothing, but rather *anything*." This was, of course, an observations in the aggregate--plenty of folks like yourself, and I also know plenty of traditional Christians who bought fully into the fear porn--but as a large-scale statistical observation I think it holds out.
Few there are who can pull off an entirely rational, mechanistic world view. Heck, even Hawking couldn't to it -- see the ending paragraphs of his preface to A Brief History Of Time.
I agree but then why did so few churches fight these measures? One church in Cali went all the way to the Supremes and won. Clearly, freedom of religion/due process/the takings clause all violated and very little oppo
If you look at church attendance over the past few years, I bet churches that pushed BLM, the clotshots and war in the Ukraine have seen their attendance numbers drop. And vice versa for the churches that ignored or resisted the psyops campaigns.
You'd be right. In the Catholic Church, which kowtowed to the government and Francis, those parishes that shut down, masked and vaxxed drove many of their parishioners to online masses. Guess what happened? The traditional latin mass churches were the ones streaming and many people said "what? there is a church that is still open? I've never seen this type of mass before and the homilies talk about God, Jesus and saving your soul." I was one of those who left my old woke parish and went to the TLM parish. The new parish is growing so fast it has plans to build a new church. The old parishes are dying and selling their churches to become mosques.
Same here. What's interesting is that the so called inclusive parishes can be more rigid that the TLM ones which on the face if it should not be. The focus is more on worship rather than each other.
Romans 13 requires Christians to submit to civil authorities unless doing so would violate God's word. It's fine to challenge measures in court but we can't just ignore laws (or public health edicts for that matter) we don't like without a clear biblical precedent.
I know that my church joined the legal fight on all of this stuff but we did minimum legal compliance until they were overturned (i.e. the indoor service ban, we met outdoors until the Supreme Court ruling) or rescinded (mask mandate). My pastor could not find a biblical rationale that would permit outright defiance and I think he made the right call.
However, many pastors went way beyond minimal legal compliance and pushed jabs in the church, segregated by vaxxed/unvaxxed, and kept masks in place after mandates were dropped. It's the same old story, they desired approval in the eyes of man rather than God.
My pastor just preached an excellent sermon yesterday on this very subject. Yes, Romans 13 does say we are to be subject to governing authorities. But as my pastor pointed out, that authority is not absolute, and our ultimate authority is from God. My pastor apologized for complying with those authorities. and not following God's word ( Hebrews 10:25 ). Many of us fell for it initially, myself included, but not anymore and never again.
I would add that there are plenty of biblical examples of God's people not adhering to the government's authority....Daniel in the OT is one that comes to mind. And if our founding fathers, most of deep faith, had decided that biblically they would not be able to find a rationale to fight for independence, we would not have a country. Rather it is amazing how Providence led to our defeat of the British.
No argument, but there must be a clear biblical rationale for defying the state, and not a tortured case. I can't rob a liquor store as a pretext to collect money to give to widows and the crippled (as the Bible tells me to do).
The bible is clear we are to submit to civil authority unless:
1) That authority requires we do things that God's word forbids or
2) That authority forbids things that God's word requires
Either we live by the Bible (the whole counsel of God) or we don't. We can't make excuses why some passages don't apply to us without a clear biblical rationale. Clearly Hebrews 10 is a strong case that churches should not have closed (point #2 above) and I suspect many Bible-believing churches won't do it again. At least I pray they won't. But I do think most pastors that closed the church for a short period (emphasis on *short*) thought they were acting in accordance with the word.
Bottom line though is that there were plenty of churches that went way beyond what the state required and clearly acted in an unbiblical fashion. Many fomented a state of fear within their congregation (in defiance of God's word). There were churches that were online only for a year or more (Hebrews 10)! Vax passports and vax/unvax sections in a church again directly defies the word regarding causing division within the body. Having a vax clinic within the church (as many did) is beyond my comprehension to explain other than outright catering to the world.
Our church is back to being full again on Sunday which truly is a joy to see. I don't think that's happening to the churches that surrendered to the spirit of the age.
Go reread Romans 13 my friend. There is no exemption toward leaders you judge as ungodly. That kind of thinking can be used to rationalize any sort of unlawful behavior.
As I wrote above, there are only two exceptions:
1) That authority requires we do things that God's word forbids or
2) That authority forbids things that God's word requires
They are God's servants only in the sense that they were put in place by God (Romans 13:1) God has allowed many evil rulers. Nero for example being one of the most evil, who tortured, killed and persecuted many thousands of believers.
We have to look at the context of all those verses (Romans 13:1-7 ). I'm sure our founding fathers thought King George III to be "ungodly" as you say. I'm glad they did resort to "unlawful" behavior as I mentioned previously or we would not have a United States of America!
God's purpose in putting the authorities in place has much to do with keeping order in society which is why the later verses say, "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." (v. 4)
Above all, we are to obey God, not man, as Peter and the apostles did. (Acts 4:19-20 and 5:29)
I’ve read it. We can agree to disagree. I think our “leaders” on the national/international level don’t believe in the God of the bible. They are satanic.
In Australia the churches just all lay down and died. Inflicted TV church on us and Zoom! The Anglican and catholic in my dioceses didn't make a distinction between vaxxed and unvaxxed .
We still have a bemasked woman who reads the Bible in a mask, sits and talks to us till her coffee comes with a mask on then puts it back. Lots of Christians were convinced that we love each other by putting the foul things on and then getting injected with a dangerous substance. Others were more thoughtful and rejected the vaccine but not the mask.
this is a salient point. generally in my circle - the more religious -> the less likely to be "vaccinated" and prostrate before the almighty $cience
i think a lot of the same reasons why religion was an anathema to communism are surfacing again as religion is being, let's say subverted, so it doesn't stand in the way of the retarded technocracy that's getting pushed on us all
Where I live Vancouver ,the masking is now a holy ritual for many .It will never go away .In all locations ,where human interaction is the norm ,masking is close to 100 % .It's not only the masking that is very ,very insulting and harmful ,but in all places where a customer has to talk to a clerk ,there is a plastic wall with small openings to put money through .So far the covid whyrusses have not found the openings ,in the wall . Some month ago my wife even contacted a transaction at a store through the key hole just to buy food .She gave the order to someone on the other side of the door ,through the key hole .She was told to stand six feet back ,as the store clerk put the order on the concrete outside the door ,for her to pick it up .The store is closed now ,for good .
That’s a whacky story. ...I also live in Vancouver , but haven’t noticed mass-masking still in effect. Except parts of Richmond where it was fashionable pre-CoVert19. Today I picked up my wife from the ferry and she was the only masked person. She can’t stand how everyone just smells like laundry soap all the time now. I notice it too, though I’m. It sensitive. Still, I’d rather smell cigarettes, which I kind of miss
It is precisely BECAUSE of his lack of meaningful personal sacraments that Sam and others like him applied their zealous theories externally, projecting a sublimated religious experience onto would-be atheists also lacking in meaningful rituals. Behind every meaningless ritual is a blind quest for its opposite. Hence the misplacements
😂😂Yes, Sam H literally blew an orange gasket, so completely caught me off guard, he lost all reason and faculties. I don't think he nor most of the, eh '81 million'🤔🤔🙃 others will wake tf up. Looks like they've gone overboard in shark infested waters
The atheists needed some system of belief at this time of perceived crisis. And like many newcomers to religion they couldn't understand why everyone else didn't get on board. And because their religion didn't truly work, they imagined it was because we weren't conforming. Whereas in Christianity, we believe for ourselves.
It's funny we reached a place where both sides are baffled how the other group has not died yet. Granted the vaccinated are getting taken out by SADS, but the rate is a lot lower than I expected it to be based on how the shots function. Our immune system is amazing even against big pharma disasters.
Lets not be so hasty ,After ten years and looking back we will have a much more accurate picture as to the harm of the injected venoms in billions of people .Some Doctors report ,that the jabs harm the immune system ,exposing the injected to all kinds of illness .The same goes for cancer patience under treatment and often in remission .Just two doors over from my apartment a 47 year old lady had cancer for two years and in remission .My wife told me they where big believers in vaxxing and masking .She died 3 month ago .I read that some Doctors say if cancer is present and than take shots and boosters the cancer will run amok killing the victim in a short time .
z28.310 It is not only the shots that harm and often kill .The treatment in hospitals is many times more deadly .If entering a hospital with flu like issues ,you get a covid test ,that is mostly false ,but taken as gospel in there .Than you will be isolated ,sedated treated with remdesivir and ventilated .The outcome of that treatment results in 85 to 90 % in death for the patient ,with a huge $ payoff for the hospital .The death certificate will say dyed of covid .,when in fact he or she was murdered . My brother went in there with a flu and was dead 6 days later ,of that kind of treatment .
I’ll have to try that line...my ENT was in shock and dismay asking why I wasn’t. Few physicians know what goes into new drug approval processes let alone what is NOT required for an EUA product.
Oh yes. I've been saying that this is like a religion for a long time. If you are a devout believer, no amount of discussion will convince you to desert your faith. Praise be to Covid.
Bill ,it is meant to make you feel small and helpless in front of the almighty magic provider .I always wonder if a Doctor does not know or does not want to know that masking is harmful ,how many other harmful acts will he order ? I only have to go there to renew the med for hypertension and I hate it .I would like to give him a peace of my mind ,but then I will not get that renewal .
Actually, I think they want their patients to “feel safe” so as not to lose their customer base. So they require masks most likely knowing full well they don’t work.
Here in WA state it was an (unconstitutional) government mandate until very recently. I asked my brother-in-law (a physician) if he saw much pushback against it from his peers. "No", he replied, "doctors are used to doing what they are told."
A sacrament being an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, that's exactly what masks are. They are a badge that says to the faithful "I am careful, and therefore safe". One is supposed to infer certain things otherwise invisible, by seeing someone wearing a mask
Yup. How many people here work in surgical ORs? Nurses, doctors, techs?
So, if they don't work, and it's known they don't work in ORs, why do they wear them? Anyone?
Is it to inspire trust and confidence in patients and the public at large? No.
They wear them because if they sneeze or cough the mask keeps snot and phlem (and sometimes even vomit, yup, it happens) out of the patients open chest or gut or whatever other body part the surgeon has cut open. They don't wear them because of respiratory aerosols.
My mother in law was a surgical nurse for 30 years. 😉
The studies show that there is no difference in post-surgery infection with masks in the OR or with no masks in the OR. If sneezing or coughing without the masks happened enough to increase the rate of infection, 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙗𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙨. It isn't. If anything, there is a slight bias toward lower infection rates in the non-masked population. Given that the impact of masks on performance is non-negligible, while the impact on infection rates are negligible, requiring masks in the OR is not supported by the statistics.
I don't know how many times I saw pro-mask people ask, during this whole COVID debacle, how [any given anti-masker] would feel if their surgeon showed up to operate on them without a mask. It's just assumed by many members of the public that it would be horrifying to see a surgeon unmasked... and there's your answer why masks are still worn.
I always answered that I would be reassured. It would be nice to know that they were allowed to "follow the science," rather than basing policy on tradition that has been disproven.
So what? I never said a word about masks preventing infection. That isn't why they wear them.
And during the entire time we had mandates I NEVER wore a mask. So yeah. Don't make me repeat the tired old joke about what happens when people assume things.
I hear that a lot. But consider this: Have you ever seen anyone sneeze or cough into a face diaper? Neither have I. When the urge strikes, the wearer inevitably removes the mask, and grabs a tissue, paper towel, or buries his head against his sleeve, sneezes, and then replaces the mask.
"They wear them because if they sneeze or cough the mask keeps snot and phlem (and sometimes even vomit, yup, it happens) out of the patients open chest or gut or whatever other body part the surgeon has cut open"
And maybe they do, but the benefit part is *reduction in post-operative infection* and that's precisely what this study review showed an absence of.
That’s not the main reason masks are worn by surgical staff. It’s to prevent bodily fluids (blood, feces, etc.) from the patient from getting into the nose and mouth of the staff. My daughter is a surgical RN, plus I’ve read many studies on this.
Even if that were true it still has NOTHING to do with masks being worn in operating rooms to keep from exposing patients to respiratory aerisols. Which is my only point.
Mar 27, 2023·edited Mar 27, 2023Liked by eugyppius
They just won't give it up. They won't stop. Science? Logic? Experience? They won't stop unless & until cessation of masking is blessed by the Grand High Exalted State Officials.
My father's visit last week to the podiatrist demonstrated that the office staff remains masked and will do so until granted absolution on or about May 11.
This is the date that the Demented President of the USA has decreed the "pandemic" will end--all evidence that masking was unnecessary be damned.
I supposed I should be grateful that patients and those in the waiting room no longer are commanded to wear face diapers. That edict was lifted two months ago. However, the waiting room chairs remain six feet apart, and there are no "germ-y" magazines for entertainment by those who deliver elderly parents for podiatry services.
I'm willing to bet that at least one or two of the podiatrist office staff will remain masked after May 11.
By the way, the plexiglass "shields" remain in place around the office staff's desks. I'm certain those will never disappear.
I moved my body at the reception desk of my clinic and the whole plexi contraption fell to the floor and broke. Oops. My bad. Yes. I deliberately did it. Sorry/not sorry. I’m prepared to do it at other places now.
It seems the plexiglass walls in all places of human contact will outlast the wall of china .In stores they leave an opening in the wall to put the money through .On the customer side the whyrusses are swarming as thick as a hailstorm .On the other side of the wall no whyruss has ever been detected .So you see in the covid religion miracles do happen .
I spent a fair bit of time visiting doctor's offices and hospitals and labs earlier this year. Every time I got into an exam room I would tell the staff that they did not need to wear a mask on my account. With only one exception, they were happy to remove them. This includes doctors.
It’s beyond ludicrous, at some of the medical clinics.nonsensical in the extreme. By the way, at the end of a February my daughter was in the ICU at an Arizona hospital. No masking by any of the nursing staff, no masking by the physicians who visited her, no masking required of visitors.
The mask has been attributed magical properties similar to a talisman, as I've written about. It became a magical forcefield for the most ardent of believers. It gave the user abilities beyond that just from the 'vid.
In many places now, at least what I hear/see in Latin America, is that it's mainly for ugly people or the socially awkward - those that just want to 'blend in' and be anonymous in their city.
For criminals it makes sense .but too often I see two year olds beside their parents on sidewalks wearing masks .Are the two year olds criminals in training .???
Daylight Savings Time is emblematic of the institutional sclerosis afflicting Western civilization. Everyone hates it. Everyone knows it's pointless. Everyone wishes we could just stop. There's absolutely no reason we can't all just agree to stop.
Here’s the (highly annoying) conversation I have with family & friends each year: Me: I hate Daylight Saving Time. Them: I like it; it gives me an extra hour of daylight! Me: Um, no…the Earth and the Sun are still rotating the same way; there is no extra hour of light just because the clocks are changed. Them: Yes, there is! Me: Never mind.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. In the fall you get to sleep in an extra hour. But in the spring you have that hour taken back. People don't seem to notice this, and anyhow it's on a Sunday which doesn't matter to most people.
Before anybody jumps down my throat, this is a separate argument from the "extra hour of daylight" thing.
From what I understand in pre-industrial times they were not set time zones but the advent of trains schedules and such precipitated the need for consistent time keeping and those schedules. Daylight saving time it is a mixed bag of good and ills, IMHO.
But overall, we have adjusted clocks rather than changing start and end times of various activities such as work start times at school start times. If if you’ve ever moved from one region to another. You may not realize that areas are impacted differently by daylight saving time. For example, in New York City on the longest days of the year in June the sun rises at around 5:25 AM daylight saving time which is 4:25 AM standard time (ugh). Whereas in Miami which is in the same time zone, observed a sunrise around 6:30 AM daylight saving time or 5:30 AM standard time. Many states want to opt for all year “daylight saving time” schedules. This, of course has the effect of making the “evening” start later would mean the day break would be later and more people would be commuting in the dark in the morning, including school children. What is really needed is a paradigm shift whereby we don’t change the clock but we adjust schedules for the season.
Both set time zones and DST are products of industrialization was what I was attempting to convey. Both were attempts to standardize time keeping, albeit for different purposes.
In simple terms it may seem easier for everyone to change a clock (a top down approach) than it is for everyone to adjust their schedules for the season (bottom up). For example, if schools changed start times based on the seasons, that impacts working parents whose schedules are not similarly adjusted.
The time change twice a year sucks for a couple of weeks, but a permanent change to either ST or DST is not without unpleasant consequences. In the Northeastern US you would have either very early sunrises in the summer in the former, or very late one in winter in the later. In places like Miami, the sun would rise at around 8 am in the month of December if it were to switch to permanent DST as the state wishes to do.
Man, you're coping really hard to justify this nonsense.
There's nothing in industrialization that demands DST, and there are zero benefits to it. Earlier sunrises are offset by earlier sunsets. Plenty of places don't use it and they do just fine.
Universal masking was required so that they could have a "plausible" explanation (at least for the unsuspecting rubes) respecting why colds and influenza had "disappeared" for 2+ years.
"What happened to colds and flu?"
"Oh it must be the masks everyone is wearing."
(I actually overheard this conversation between a couple of people who were wearing masks)
The reality is colds and flu hadn't gone anywhere, they were simply being re-branded as "Covid", in a large part due to ambiguity in PCR testing. This of course was by design, all in the interest of preserving the illusion of a pandemic.
It's not necessary to posit that the PCR tests assign flus and colds as Covid. I think a lot of reasonable people would recognise that the PCRs were overused and run at high Ct which led to "case" inflation, and that PCRs are not a sensible or economic mass screening tool.
There's a good previous post on this substack on viral interference which is a more parsimonious explanation for the disappearance of flu, and also appears far more consistent with the available evidence
Watch one of Jonathan Couey's presentations where he talks about the characteristics (N-protein, RNA polymerase) that are conserved throughout the entire family of coronaviruses. Then it becomes obvious that there is substantial mix of PCR false positives, BOTH from high Ct and also from non SARS2 coronaviruses.
It really is hard to put the mask genie back in the bottle. Still seeing a minority of people wearing them in public places, driving alone or otherwise outdoors alone. It’s pitiful but if someone thinks it is a lucky charm, have at it (while the same courtesy to choose was not extended to those of us who refused). Most remarkable of all is that it is many medical facilities who know better, that to this day are virtually the only business entity demanding that everyone kowtow to the idiocy while everything else from venues, shops, restaurants, businesses are completely mask-free
'Most remarkable of all is that it is many medical facilities who know better' this is because hospital administrators aren't generally intelligent people. The doctors don't run the place. I still think that most of the doctors are just weak but not stupid and greedy, the stupidity and greed is situated at the top in the administrators who should be working at the dollar store but instead are making millions to destroy our health care.
As I wrote many times the so called health care facilities ,hospitals are the most dangerous places one can enter ..much more dangerous than even the jabs .In hospitals if flu is suspected ,a fraudulent test is done for covid ,that most likely turns out positive .There will be isolation ,sedation ,remdesivir and ventilators ,that is about 90 % deadly .My brother died of that treatment in six days .Lets remember most people die in hospitals ,,why is that $$$$$
It's a bit like a forest fire: The forest floor is abnormally dry, some moron throws away his cigarette and then the whole place burns down. But if the moron hadn't done it, a day later some other idiot holding a barbecue would've been responsible.
When a crisis happens, people are desperate to feel as if they can have some sort of influence on it. Masking would have happened regardless of the direct ignition source. People desperately wanted this and the scientists were supposed to come up with reasons to justify it, hence why Zeynep largely focused on the "message" sent by wearing masks.
The real luck we have is that these people retreated from the poorly fitting cloth to the N95s, before now moving to respirators (soon including goggles too, as you can get infected through your eyes). The poorly fitting cloth was turning into a fashion item among women of childbearing age, if they had held the line and continued arguing this really does something substantial if everyone does it, it would have become an irreversible cultural shift.
Well, this certainly never was a fashion item for ME. But remember all those surveys that told us that people who masked were perceived as more intelligent, more good-looking, more caring and empathic and so on? I am not sure if the newspapers simply made this up or if the covidian bubble really thought so.
I'm surprised that diaper wearing was not mandated so far ,especially for women ,since there are more entry points for the ever present whyrusses .The pores in the skin are all open for invasion .Thankfully the Faussi guy did not mandate that we must all tar and feather all our skin so the virus can;t get in through our pores .
Let this be our reminder that just because taking off one's shoes before entering a home is sensible, courteous and a harmless hygienic custom, other customs found in the same places might *not* be equally sensible, courteous and harmless.
Mar 27, 2023·edited Mar 27, 2023Liked by eugyppius
Rain occurs when atmospheric water vapor forms clouds around cloud condensation nuclei (i.e.- particulates). When people dance, they literally kick up dust into the sky. Add a fire in the middle and that creates a channel of hot air that can carry the lightest of the dust particulates to great heights. The sound of drumming and singing may even have a slight additive effect to this. All of this is a feasible explanation for raindancing actually working.
Ba'al means Lord in the sense "master", and was a storm god, as well as a fertility god. The notion that Ba'al was somehow an evil or hostile deity is due to christians continuing the mislabeling of deities by the early jews and other proto-semiticpeoples, once they adopted monotheism and remade the truly ancient deity El into their one god.
If the climate cultists would be praying to ancient gods from that region, Mot fits the bill much better.
Yep, there's a LOT of smudged borders & cross pollination of the mystical between the early "Israelites" and the Canaanite, Mesopotamian, Chaldean (etc), from what I gather (although I pretend NO polished expertise in the subject). There are pre-Abrahamic precedents for many "biblical" characters, occurrences and concepts. But is there ANY fully "correct", A-Z, singular assessment for all these often contentious and disputed historicities, symbolisms, linguistics, (etc), I gotta say: I DOUBT it very much. The expression
of ONE, singular, eloquent and erudite point about "this" or "that" point, person, or issue oftens lulls the reader into a false state of security and faith in the "teacher", even IF the "teacher" was all but ignorant of the given subject BUT FOR their ONE well learned little fact. So, to me, it doesn't REALLY matter whether one uses one or another of (for example) the names
Apollyon, Apophis, Typhon, Abaddon: I KNOW that they're talking about the withering, destructive, "dark" aspect of the Sun, and that all of the above denote the SAME force, or impulse in nature, from their own particular cultural and national vantage point.
I don't NEED necessarily to know WHICH of them FIRST conceptualised & then deified which
energy in nature, when, to catch the basic "gist" of an idea. eg: there is likely an unending reservoir of knowledge an Egyptologist could tell me about the God Set, but I could at LEAST tell HIM what the "physical" symptoms of manifestation are when one invokes the energy of Set in ritual, and pulses with that malignant midnight magick.
The notion that the different gods of different peoples represent culturally different interpretations of the same deities is due to modern pop-cultural osmosis. It's a misunderstanding, simply.
Loke, Anansi and Coyote are not different interpretations of the meta-concept of a "trickster spirit". That's completely wrong, and due to anthropologists sorting different deities in different groups in books catalouging them, solely for simplicity's sake originally.
That two deities share characteristics does not make them the same any more than you and me both having fingers makes us the same. Gods are not representations of basic concepts or principles; that's a fin de siècle interpretation rooted in Jungian mysticism, theosophy and Freudian psychology, both of them having the scientific firmness of jelly.
Gods are who and what they are. Some require and demand worship and obeisance and belly-crawling like the god of Abraham, some are rather indifferent and are simply to be acknowledged, and some can be bargained with, and some expect and respect humans standing up straight and saying "Nuh uh, /you/ move!".
It says very much about a culture and an individual both what their oiginal religion looked like. It gives you a clue what to expect from them. Consider Abraham: no germanic, nordic, fenno-ugric, rus, slav, gaelic or celtic god would ever dare demand and order such a despicable deed as was demanded of Abraham, nor would any one man or woman of those peoples ever bend knee and try to do the deed.
They were free: the three branches of Abrahamites, then as now, are slaves.
Sad, but true: as evidenced by the recent Commonwealth games sinister pomp and circumstance. A big ole Moloch bull 🐂, with all the dancers bowing to it, and a scarlet clad woman atop it, just to overtly link it to the beast in Revelation TOO. PLUS- didn't these moronic climate catastrophizing A-holes also produce a "Ten Commandments" of climate catastrophizing/ eco-zeal as well??! Sickening, godless vermin.
Anyone measured the increase in particulates at altitude above a rain dance? My guess? Zero. Fire creates channel of hot air for maybe 30 ft. Affect at altitude? Zero. But this is exactly the kind of logic that supports masking.
NASA estimates that between 4 and 12 percent of wildfires, the very largest ones, have plume heights that reach the free troposphere. So, while I am certainly not denying that it is possible to start a fire that will cause pyronimbus clouds, or even the very cool and terrifying pyrotornado, that is sort of outside of the 'rainmaker' ritual which was the context of the post. The assumption that I made was that we were discussing typical rainmaker rituals, and yes the thermals could conceivably reach several hundred feet, depending on air stability and other considerations I feel that my point stands. Wood burning fires do not produce significant thermal updraft unless you are talking about massive wildfires.
The average height of the troposphere is 43,000 ft.
"[Cumulus] clouds usually form at altitudes between 1,000 and 5,000ft, though often temperature rises after formation lead to an increase in cloud base height. These clouds are generally formed by air rising as a result of surface heating and may occasionally produce light showers." ~ University of Manchester, Centre for Atmospheric Science.
"Each year, over one hundred million tons of Saharan dust gets blown across the Atlantic, some of it reaching as far as the Amazon River Basin."
"Cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), also known as cloud seeds, are small particles typically 0.2 µm, or one hundredth the size of a cloud droplet."
"Sand Type
Dry Density (g/cm3)
Sand, 1.52
Sandy Loam, 1.44
Silt Loam, 1.28
Clay Loam, 1.28
Loam, 1.36
Clay, 1.20
Concrete, 2.40"
Therefore, the weight of these various particulates that could act as nucleation sites is well below one-thousandth of a gram (and would likely even be subject to electromagnetic/electrostatic forces); so it seems to me that an updraft from a large enough fire could easily propel a good number of these 1,000 ft into the air.
Anecdotally, I've helped clear brush and had a very large fire (~20' in diameter) burning for several hours and a light rain started (not predicted by the weather channel); certainly not claiming scientific proof on this.
Do I think raindancing works every time ? Unlikely. Do I think it's ethnocentric to assume our ancestors from less than 100 generations ago would be unintelligent enough to keep doing something if there was really no merit in it ? Possibly (as we even see today), but that doesn't mean I won't give them the benefit of the doubt.
The key is a 'large enough fire'. There is no doubt that fires can cause rain, it is called a pyronimbus cloud. But a woodfire that can do that is burning a whole forest it isn't something that you are having a party around.
I think the issue is not ethnocentrism but ideocentrism, you assume that unless this causes rain by a physical process, which it unquestionably does not, that it has no purpose, which seems to ignore the role of ritual in human society. Unfortunately, as we are all proving we don't understand ritual, that is why masking and shunning are so powerful, because we don't understand their significance, their cause, or their effect. We have been duped into thinking that we are 'advanced' and we are actually exactly the same as raindancers who also didn't understand what they were doing. However, we can learn from experience. It is time to parse the rituals that we have been a part of, albeit reluctantly a part of, and understand what has happened to us, before we find ourselves in the grips of the next round of superstition.
"You assume that unless this causes rain by a physical process, which it unquestionably does not, that it has no purpose, which seems to ignore the role of ritual in human society." ~ I tend to consider most ritual is cargo cult in nature. Why do we bring in Christmas Trees in December ? Perhaps it was originally a way to provide oxygen and negative air ions in an otherwise enclosed environment. I'm not yet convinced fires of sufficient size (i.e.- larger than a campfire and smaller than a forest fire) won't make it rain. Thanks for your correspondence, nonetheless, interesting as it is.
The human brain can't stop finding patterns in anything presented to it. And the Leftist brain can't stop finding ways to implement totalitarianism in anything presented to it.
I did that very thing seeing a new doctor, a young woman. I asked her if she believed wearing a mask helped prevent the spread of respiratory borne viruses. She replied, "Oh, yes, I got really sick with Covid." I said to her, "That's not what I asked you" and I repeated the question. She quickly replied, "Oh yes, absolutely". I told her ,"Thank you, you've answered my question". I will never see that doctor again. She never removed her mask the whole time and I could never even see what she looked like. At least she didn't ask me to put on a mask, though the mask police who took my vitals said I couldn't see the doctor without one. They told me, "It's the law". Ha!
However, as I have to cycle to the train station tomorrow morning and it’s been raining heavily here in Belgium, I may just do a rain dance in reverse, in order to grab a spot of dryness.
And while I know it will do nothing, it evokes that other great dictum of Covidiocy: When faced with a choice between doing something they know won’t work and doing nothing, policymakers will always choose the former.
Mar 27, 2023·edited Mar 27, 2023Liked by eugyppius
I went to the small clinic here in the village this morning. Regulars were not masked but the doctor was. It also turned out to be a very unfriendly one, starting to scold me soon as she saw my face. Tomorrow they do bloodwork and that will probably be the last they see of me. The paperwork asked my pronouns. I should have left rightaway. But I was eager to get help (which they could not provide, I got to see a specialist. For a clogged ear)
I am absolutely astounded by the ingenuity of the argument that we should all mask up because Mongolia did and they only had one case. Ok.
Write that book, Eugyppius. I am sick to my heart of all the stupidity and probably won't manage to get through it for fear of throwing up constantly while reading, but I promise I will buy multiple copies and flood my friends with them.
The mask is the second highest sacrament of the covidian religion. (The primary sacrament being, of course, the jab.)
It's ironic that atheists like Sam Harris were the most susceptible to the new covid religion. Completely deranged and trying to force their new religion on everyone. Ready to kick people out of society and willing to force their sacraments by force if they could.
You are on to something here. I am an atheist, but never fell for the panic and the hype. However, most of my "rational" non-religious friends bought the scam, exhibiting a herd-like behavior that shocked me. On the other hand, my traditional Christian friends were much less likely to conform, and if they did, it was only for a short time. Something about the need for a "religion" to make sense out of chaos. I wish I understood better.
I think the cause is different attitudes toward fear. As a Christian, the Bible commands me over and over to "trust God and fear not" as God is in control. It's not optional, I'm not allowed to live my life in fear, doing so indicates my lack of faith. The more committed the Christian (by that I mean committed to living a biblical lifestyle as opposed to mouthing platitudes), the much less susceptible people were to fear-based propaganda and psychological manipulation.
I don't know many atheists so I can really comment on that, but I do know plenty of agnostics. Not only did they not reject fear, but many of them reveled in it and seemed to embrace it. Masking (a visible sign of fear) was seen as virtuous. Viewing others as little more than disease vectors (akin to mosquitos), and every human interaction as a potential death sentence, became the norm. They let fear take control of their lives as they had no moral code that stigmatized such behavior, in fact the opposite was the case as it was celebrated in the media and public health.
The fear was of death. When you believe you just go "poof" and this life is the only thing you have, of course anything that might shorten this life would be quite fearful. As a Christian, I know there is a life after this one. Death is not the end but the beginning - I can't fear something that will lead to a much better place.
However, some pastors submitted to fear and told people (over Zoom) to stay home and mask up.
So true. I felt the only sane thing was to not be afraid and pray to be able to live like that. It was a slog, but eventually I shed my corona fears... only to then have to carry the burden of their fear and its limitations on them for the next three years. Haha!
Now do climate change. It’s obviously a “religion “.
I also was shocked that the atheists were highly compliant with getting vaccinated. It became their god, lol. In my state the Christians were also much less likely to conform, but those that did get vaccinated accepted those of us who didn’t, atheist or not. The atheists- not so accepting of us unvaxxed. Didn’t make me religious, but did make me respect those those who are.
And I would say the opposite, it was my Christian friends who were most compliant and unquestioning. Deeply troubling and so hard to make sense of.
My observation is that compliance was very mixed. I know quite a few who disdain religion of any sort, and they were frighteningly conformist to the covid dictates. I also know of devoutly religious people who were similarly compliant. No rhyme or reason as far as I can see. Maybe it comes down to individuals and how they think, critically or non-critically.
Maybe part of the reason for intellectual types, as well as secular types, being more likely to buy into Covidianism is the fact that they pin whatever belief system they have more on science and technology than a higher power. The irony is that it has turned into a pseudo-religion.
I say this as an atheist myself. I used to admire Sam Harris, but this was a big disappointment.
Right on. Keeping one's intellectual independence in this atmosphere has been challenging.
Read Asche's work on conformity.
I am a Christian by it's most basic tenets. I hold no I'll will toward anyone, person, place, or subject.
Am certainly tired of so-called intelligentsia proclaiming their superiority of thought and reason.
Am sick and tired of being blamed by so-called feminists because I am my own person
And most vehement feminists are complete morons
I think it was Chesterton who said, "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't then believe in nothing, but rather *anything*." This was, of course, an observations in the aggregate--plenty of folks like yourself, and I also know plenty of traditional Christians who bought fully into the fear porn--but as a large-scale statistical observation I think it holds out.
Few there are who can pull off an entirely rational, mechanistic world view. Heck, even Hawking couldn't to it -- see the ending paragraphs of his preface to A Brief History Of Time.
Same here -- not religious and didn't buy into the Covid panic. The Venn diagram overlap between these two categories is small indeed.
I agree but then why did so few churches fight these measures? One church in Cali went all the way to the Supremes and won. Clearly, freedom of religion/due process/the takings clause all violated and very little oppo
If you look at church attendance over the past few years, I bet churches that pushed BLM, the clotshots and war in the Ukraine have seen their attendance numbers drop. And vice versa for the churches that ignored or resisted the psyops campaigns.
You'd be right. In the Catholic Church, which kowtowed to the government and Francis, those parishes that shut down, masked and vaxxed drove many of their parishioners to online masses. Guess what happened? The traditional latin mass churches were the ones streaming and many people said "what? there is a church that is still open? I've never seen this type of mass before and the homilies talk about God, Jesus and saving your soul." I was one of those who left my old woke parish and went to the TLM parish. The new parish is growing so fast it has plans to build a new church. The old parishes are dying and selling their churches to become mosques.
Same here. What's interesting is that the so called inclusive parishes can be more rigid that the TLM ones which on the face if it should not be. The focus is more on worship rather than each other.
Romans 13 requires Christians to submit to civil authorities unless doing so would violate God's word. It's fine to challenge measures in court but we can't just ignore laws (or public health edicts for that matter) we don't like without a clear biblical precedent.
I know that my church joined the legal fight on all of this stuff but we did minimum legal compliance until they were overturned (i.e. the indoor service ban, we met outdoors until the Supreme Court ruling) or rescinded (mask mandate). My pastor could not find a biblical rationale that would permit outright defiance and I think he made the right call.
However, many pastors went way beyond minimal legal compliance and pushed jabs in the church, segregated by vaxxed/unvaxxed, and kept masks in place after mandates were dropped. It's the same old story, they desired approval in the eyes of man rather than God.
My pastor just preached an excellent sermon yesterday on this very subject. Yes, Romans 13 does say we are to be subject to governing authorities. But as my pastor pointed out, that authority is not absolute, and our ultimate authority is from God. My pastor apologized for complying with those authorities. and not following God's word ( Hebrews 10:25 ). Many of us fell for it initially, myself included, but not anymore and never again.
I would add that there are plenty of biblical examples of God's people not adhering to the government's authority....Daniel in the OT is one that comes to mind. And if our founding fathers, most of deep faith, had decided that biblically they would not be able to find a rationale to fight for independence, we would not have a country. Rather it is amazing how Providence led to our defeat of the British.
No argument, but there must be a clear biblical rationale for defying the state, and not a tortured case. I can't rob a liquor store as a pretext to collect money to give to widows and the crippled (as the Bible tells me to do).
The bible is clear we are to submit to civil authority unless:
1) That authority requires we do things that God's word forbids or
2) That authority forbids things that God's word requires
Either we live by the Bible (the whole counsel of God) or we don't. We can't make excuses why some passages don't apply to us without a clear biblical rationale. Clearly Hebrews 10 is a strong case that churches should not have closed (point #2 above) and I suspect many Bible-believing churches won't do it again. At least I pray they won't. But I do think most pastors that closed the church for a short period (emphasis on *short*) thought they were acting in accordance with the word.
Bottom line though is that there were plenty of churches that went way beyond what the state required and clearly acted in an unbiblical fashion. Many fomented a state of fear within their congregation (in defiance of God's word). There were churches that were online only for a year or more (Hebrews 10)! Vax passports and vax/unvax sections in a church again directly defies the word regarding causing division within the body. Having a vax clinic within the church (as many did) is beyond my comprehension to explain other than outright catering to the world.
Our church is back to being full again on Sunday which truly is a joy to see. I don't think that's happening to the churches that surrendered to the spirit of the age.
Let me guess, a 501C3 church?
Beat me to it, totally agree
Jeff - I don't think I've ever disagreed with one of your comments.
But I do here. Christians and The Church have a responsibility to stand up to evil.
Was evil not occurring?
We sure as hell *can*, and indeed *should*, ignore and oppose public health edicts and other government mandates that are ultra vires.
You are assuming (as per Romans 13) that the powers that be are God’s servants. They are not. We should not obey them.
Go reread Romans 13 my friend. There is no exemption toward leaders you judge as ungodly. That kind of thinking can be used to rationalize any sort of unlawful behavior.
As I wrote above, there are only two exceptions:
1) That authority requires we do things that God's word forbids or
2) That authority forbids things that God's word requires
They are God's servants only in the sense that they were put in place by God (Romans 13:1) God has allowed many evil rulers. Nero for example being one of the most evil, who tortured, killed and persecuted many thousands of believers.
We have to look at the context of all those verses (Romans 13:1-7 ). I'm sure our founding fathers thought King George III to be "ungodly" as you say. I'm glad they did resort to "unlawful" behavior as I mentioned previously or we would not have a United States of America!
God's purpose in putting the authorities in place has much to do with keeping order in society which is why the later verses say, "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." (v. 4)
Above all, we are to obey God, not man, as Peter and the apostles did. (Acts 4:19-20 and 5:29)
I’ve read it. We can agree to disagree. I think our “leaders” on the national/international level don’t believe in the God of the bible. They are satanic.
In Australia the churches just all lay down and died. Inflicted TV church on us and Zoom! The Anglican and catholic in my dioceses didn't make a distinction between vaxxed and unvaxxed .
We still have a bemasked woman who reads the Bible in a mask, sits and talks to us till her coffee comes with a mask on then puts it back. Lots of Christians were convinced that we love each other by putting the foul things on and then getting injected with a dangerous substance. Others were more thoughtful and rejected the vaccine but not the mask.
I purposely ignore mask monsters. They are furniture.
Who said churches were religion? Many, especially today, are just a means to generate revenue.
this is a salient point. generally in my circle - the more religious -> the less likely to be "vaccinated" and prostrate before the almighty $cience
i think a lot of the same reasons why religion was an anathema to communism are surfacing again as religion is being, let's say subverted, so it doesn't stand in the way of the retarded technocracy that's getting pushed on us all
Where I live Vancouver ,the masking is now a holy ritual for many .It will never go away .In all locations ,where human interaction is the norm ,masking is close to 100 % .It's not only the masking that is very ,very insulting and harmful ,but in all places where a customer has to talk to a clerk ,there is a plastic wall with small openings to put money through .So far the covid whyrusses have not found the openings ,in the wall . Some month ago my wife even contacted a transaction at a store through the key hole just to buy food .She gave the order to someone on the other side of the door ,through the key hole .She was told to stand six feet back ,as the store clerk put the order on the concrete outside the door ,for her to pick it up .The store is closed now ,for good .
That’s a whacky story. ...I also live in Vancouver , but haven’t noticed mass-masking still in effect. Except parts of Richmond where it was fashionable pre-CoVert19. Today I picked up my wife from the ferry and she was the only masked person. She can’t stand how everyone just smells like laundry soap all the time now. I notice it too, though I’m. It sensitive. Still, I’d rather smell cigarettes, which I kind of miss
I wrote that masking is now a holy ritual for many,which it still is .Mass masking is not practiced at this time
,until the next virus or global warming scam .
It is precisely BECAUSE of his lack of meaningful personal sacraments that Sam and others like him applied their zealous theories externally, projecting a sublimated religious experience onto would-be atheists also lacking in meaningful rituals. Behind every meaningless ritual is a blind quest for its opposite. Hence the misplacements
Yeah he sold himself as the ultimate rational thinker but he's frankly a fucking arsehole. Tribalist and debased.
😂😂Yes, Sam H literally blew an orange gasket, so completely caught me off guard, he lost all reason and faculties. I don't think he nor most of the, eh '81 million'🤔🤔🙃 others will wake tf up. Looks like they've gone overboard in shark infested waters
The atheists needed some system of belief at this time of perceived crisis. And like many newcomers to religion they couldn't understand why everyone else didn't get on board. And because their religion didn't truly work, they imagined it was because we weren't conforming. Whereas in Christianity, we believe for ourselves.
Agreed.
I ran into some friends I hadn't seen since before the pandemic...
All jabbed and quadruple boosted, and they regarded me with abject horror, when I admitted I have not had a single jab.
Kinda funny, actually.
It's funny we reached a place where both sides are baffled how the other group has not died yet. Granted the vaccinated are getting taken out by SADS, but the rate is a lot lower than I expected it to be based on how the shots function. Our immune system is amazing even against big pharma disasters.
Lets not be so hasty ,After ten years and looking back we will have a much more accurate picture as to the harm of the injected venoms in billions of people .Some Doctors report ,that the jabs harm the immune system ,exposing the injected to all kinds of illness .The same goes for cancer patience under treatment and often in remission .Just two doors over from my apartment a 47 year old lady had cancer for two years and in remission .My wife told me they where big believers in vaxxing and masking .She died 3 month ago .I read that some Doctors say if cancer is present and than take shots and boosters the cancer will run amok killing the victim in a short time .
z28.310 It is not only the shots that harm and often kill .The treatment in hospitals is many times more deadly .If entering a hospital with flu like issues ,you get a covid test ,that is mostly false ,but taken as gospel in there .Than you will be isolated ,sedated treated with remdesivir and ventilated .The outcome of that treatment results in 85 to 90 % in death for the patient ,with a huge $ payoff for the hospital .The death certificate will say dyed of covid .,when in fact he or she was murdered . My brother went in there with a flu and was dead 6 days later ,of that kind of treatment .
That’s horrible and I’ve heard it from others. Am so sorry for your loss…
"I'm not dead yet."
My response to people who are horrified at my unjabbed status.
I’ll have to try that line...my ENT was in shock and dismay asking why I wasn’t. Few physicians know what goes into new drug approval processes let alone what is NOT required for an EUA product.
Great response!
Don't know about you, but I'm approaching 70, and my immune system is fine...
As I get older, the filter on what I say is non-existent.
Oh yes. I've been saying that this is like a religion for a long time. If you are a devout believer, no amount of discussion will convince you to desert your faith. Praise be to Covid.
I would suggest a religion has concepts beyond the physical present, whereas Covid stuff is very much of the moment.
Many physicians' offices still require masks for entry, although I have no idea why.
Bill ,it is meant to make you feel small and helpless in front of the almighty magic provider .I always wonder if a Doctor does not know or does not want to know that masking is harmful ,how many other harmful acts will he order ? I only have to go there to renew the med for hypertension and I hate it .I would like to give him a peace of my mind ,but then I will not get that renewal .
Actually, I think they want their patients to “feel safe” so as not to lose their customer base. So they require masks most likely knowing full well they don’t work.
Here in WA state it was an (unconstitutional) government mandate until very recently. I asked my brother-in-law (a physician) if he saw much pushback against it from his peers. "No", he replied, "doctors are used to doing what they are told."
“We’re doomed.” I think that in cartoon voice, but it’s sadly pretty serious isn’t it?
VA denies medical care to veterans not wearing a mask.
A sacrament being an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, that's exactly what masks are. They are a badge that says to the faithful "I am careful, and therefore safe". One is supposed to infer certain things otherwise invisible, by seeing someone wearing a mask
Fact is, they don't even work in surgery.
Yup. How many people here work in surgical ORs? Nurses, doctors, techs?
So, if they don't work, and it's known they don't work in ORs, why do they wear them? Anyone?
Is it to inspire trust and confidence in patients and the public at large? No.
They wear them because if they sneeze or cough the mask keeps snot and phlem (and sometimes even vomit, yup, it happens) out of the patients open chest or gut or whatever other body part the surgeon has cut open. They don't wear them because of respiratory aerosols.
My mother in law was a surgical nurse for 30 years. 😉
They wear them because they are told to.
The studies show that there is no difference in post-surgery infection with masks in the OR or with no masks in the OR. If sneezing or coughing without the masks happened enough to increase the rate of infection, 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙗𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙨. It isn't. If anything, there is a slight bias toward lower infection rates in the non-masked population. Given that the impact of masks on performance is non-negligible, while the impact on infection rates are negligible, requiring masks in the OR is not supported by the statistics.
I don't know how many times I saw pro-mask people ask, during this whole COVID debacle, how [any given anti-masker] would feel if their surgeon showed up to operate on them without a mask. It's just assumed by many members of the public that it would be horrifying to see a surgeon unmasked... and there's your answer why masks are still worn.
I always answered that I would be reassured. It would be nice to know that they were allowed to "follow the science," rather than basing policy on tradition that has been disproven.
So what? I never said a word about masks preventing infection. That isn't why they wear them.
And during the entire time we had mandates I NEVER wore a mask. So yeah. Don't make me repeat the tired old joke about what happens when people assume things.
I hear that a lot. But consider this: Have you ever seen anyone sneeze or cough into a face diaper? Neither have I. When the urge strikes, the wearer inevitably removes the mask, and grabs a tissue, paper towel, or buries his head against his sleeve, sneezes, and then replaces the mask.
Not in an operating room they don't!
Can confirm.
Danno ,the same goes for farting .
Maybe want to reconsider even that much purported efficacy.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1853618/
Not sure what you mean.
He means there's essentially no evidence of even the benefits you claim.
I didn't claim any benefits.
I quote:
"They wear them because if they sneeze or cough the mask keeps snot and phlem (and sometimes even vomit, yup, it happens) out of the patients open chest or gut or whatever other body part the surgeon has cut open"
And maybe they do, but the benefit part is *reduction in post-operative infection* and that's precisely what this study review showed an absence of.
That’s not the main reason masks are worn by surgical staff. It’s to prevent bodily fluids (blood, feces, etc.) from the patient from getting into the nose and mouth of the staff. My daughter is a surgical RN, plus I’ve read many studies on this.
Even if that were true it still has NOTHING to do with masks being worn in operating rooms to keep from exposing patients to respiratory aerisols. Which is my only point.
They just won't give it up. They won't stop. Science? Logic? Experience? They won't stop unless & until cessation of masking is blessed by the Grand High Exalted State Officials.
My father's visit last week to the podiatrist demonstrated that the office staff remains masked and will do so until granted absolution on or about May 11.
This is the date that the Demented President of the USA has decreed the "pandemic" will end--all evidence that masking was unnecessary be damned.
I supposed I should be grateful that patients and those in the waiting room no longer are commanded to wear face diapers. That edict was lifted two months ago. However, the waiting room chairs remain six feet apart, and there are no "germ-y" magazines for entertainment by those who deliver elderly parents for podiatry services.
I'm willing to bet that at least one or two of the podiatrist office staff will remain masked after May 11.
By the way, the plexiglass "shields" remain in place around the office staff's desks. I'm certain those will never disappear.
I moved my body at the reception desk of my clinic and the whole plexi contraption fell to the floor and broke. Oops. My bad. Yes. I deliberately did it. Sorry/not sorry. I’m prepared to do it at other places now.
In a time of Darkness and despair, a hero Comes forth A force for good in a world gone bad, tearing down plex a glass hate Shields one at a time.
😇
You’re the hero we need.
🤣🤣🤣
LOLOLOL. Good for you. Onery!...;)
Great idea! I haven’t done that, but I do keep asking businesses to please remove them.
It seems the plexiglass walls in all places of human contact will outlast the wall of china .In stores they leave an opening in the wall to put the money through .On the customer side the whyrusses are swarming as thick as a hailstorm .On the other side of the wall no whyruss has ever been detected .So you see in the covid religion miracles do happen .
I spent a fair bit of time visiting doctor's offices and hospitals and labs earlier this year. Every time I got into an exam room I would tell the staff that they did not need to wear a mask on my account. With only one exception, they were happy to remove them. This includes doctors.
It’s beyond ludicrous, at some of the medical clinics.nonsensical in the extreme. By the way, at the end of a February my daughter was in the ICU at an Arizona hospital. No masking by any of the nursing staff, no masking by the physicians who visited her, no masking required of visitors.
The mask has been attributed magical properties similar to a talisman, as I've written about. It became a magical forcefield for the most ardent of believers. It gave the user abilities beyond that just from the 'vid.
In many places now, at least what I hear/see in Latin America, is that it's mainly for ugly people or the socially awkward - those that just want to 'blend in' and be anonymous in their city.
NYC criminals love wearing a mask.
Fun fact: It was illegal to wear a mask in public in NY until the Assembly repealed the law in 2020.
But it was always legal to wear your mask inside out and upside down .
For criminals it makes sense .but too often I see two year olds beside their parents on sidewalks wearing masks .Are the two year olds criminals in training .???
Their parents are child abusers.
All 2 year olds are criminals. It's our job as parents to reform them.
Daylight Savings Time is emblematic of the institutional sclerosis afflicting Western civilization. Everyone hates it. Everyone knows it's pointless. Everyone wishes we could just stop. There's absolutely no reason we can't all just agree to stop.
And yet, it continues.
"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government solution." Milton Friedman
Here’s the (highly annoying) conversation I have with family & friends each year: Me: I hate Daylight Saving Time. Them: I like it; it gives me an extra hour of daylight! Me: Um, no…the Earth and the Sun are still rotating the same way; there is no extra hour of light just because the clocks are changed. Them: Yes, there is! Me: Never mind.
I imagine talking to them about masks or the jab, is an even greater excercise in futility.
It's all so tiresome.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. In the fall you get to sleep in an extra hour. But in the spring you have that hour taken back. People don't seem to notice this, and anyhow it's on a Sunday which doesn't matter to most people.
Before anybody jumps down my throat, this is a separate argument from the "extra hour of daylight" thing.
From what I understand in pre-industrial times they were not set time zones but the advent of trains schedules and such precipitated the need for consistent time keeping and those schedules. Daylight saving time it is a mixed bag of good and ills, IMHO.
But overall, we have adjusted clocks rather than changing start and end times of various activities such as work start times at school start times. If if you’ve ever moved from one region to another. You may not realize that areas are impacted differently by daylight saving time. For example, in New York City on the longest days of the year in June the sun rises at around 5:25 AM daylight saving time which is 4:25 AM standard time (ugh). Whereas in Miami which is in the same time zone, observed a sunrise around 6:30 AM daylight saving time or 5:30 AM standard time. Many states want to opt for all year “daylight saving time” schedules. This, of course has the effect of making the “evening” start later would mean the day break would be later and more people would be commuting in the dark in the morning, including school children. What is really needed is a paradigm shift whereby we don’t change the clock but we adjust schedules for the season.
Indeed, railway schedules motivated the invention of time zones. Before this noon was locally defined as the moment at which the Sun reached zenith.
That, however, has very little to do with DST.
Both set time zones and DST are products of industrialization was what I was attempting to convey. Both were attempts to standardize time keeping, albeit for different purposes.
In simple terms it may seem easier for everyone to change a clock (a top down approach) than it is for everyone to adjust their schedules for the season (bottom up). For example, if schools changed start times based on the seasons, that impacts working parents whose schedules are not similarly adjusted.
The time change twice a year sucks for a couple of weeks, but a permanent change to either ST or DST is not without unpleasant consequences. In the Northeastern US you would have either very early sunrises in the summer in the former, or very late one in winter in the later. In places like Miami, the sun would rise at around 8 am in the month of December if it were to switch to permanent DST as the state wishes to do.
Man, you're coping really hard to justify this nonsense.
There's nothing in industrialization that demands DST, and there are zero benefits to it. Earlier sunrises are offset by earlier sunsets. Plenty of places don't use it and they do just fine.
I agree that AZ and HI, for example, do not observe it and are fine.
People are going to bitch about it either way is my point.
I feel like if we stopped doing it, in a couple years no one would even remember end therefore, no one would be bitching about it.
I can't see what's the problem with having sunrise and sunset follow the natural seasonal pattern. Where's the need to change everybody's schedules?
Saving not savings
Problem solved, then. Thanks (… or should I say, thank)
Lol
"Daylight Saving Time," "Daylight Savings Time," they're both clumsy as hell
So stupid. How can you save daylight?
GK I wish you would not write that ,it reminds me again of my emti wallet .
Universal masking was required so that they could have a "plausible" explanation (at least for the unsuspecting rubes) respecting why colds and influenza had "disappeared" for 2+ years.
"What happened to colds and flu?"
"Oh it must be the masks everyone is wearing."
(I actually overheard this conversation between a couple of people who were wearing masks)
The reality is colds and flu hadn't gone anywhere, they were simply being re-branded as "Covid", in a large part due to ambiguity in PCR testing. This of course was by design, all in the interest of preserving the illusion of a pandemic.
It's not necessary to posit that the PCR tests assign flus and colds as Covid. I think a lot of reasonable people would recognise that the PCRs were overused and run at high Ct which led to "case" inflation, and that PCRs are not a sensible or economic mass screening tool.
There's a good previous post on this substack on viral interference which is a more parsimonious explanation for the disappearance of flu, and also appears far more consistent with the available evidence
...except that they do.
Watch one of Jonathan Couey's presentations where he talks about the characteristics (N-protein, RNA polymerase) that are conserved throughout the entire family of coronaviruses. Then it becomes obvious that there is substantial mix of PCR false positives, BOTH from high Ct and also from non SARS2 coronaviruses.
It really is hard to put the mask genie back in the bottle. Still seeing a minority of people wearing them in public places, driving alone or otherwise outdoors alone. It’s pitiful but if someone thinks it is a lucky charm, have at it (while the same courtesy to choose was not extended to those of us who refused). Most remarkable of all is that it is many medical facilities who know better, that to this day are virtually the only business entity demanding that everyone kowtow to the idiocy while everything else from venues, shops, restaurants, businesses are completely mask-free
'Most remarkable of all is that it is many medical facilities who know better' this is because hospital administrators aren't generally intelligent people. The doctors don't run the place. I still think that most of the doctors are just weak but not stupid and greedy, the stupidity and greed is situated at the top in the administrators who should be working at the dollar store but instead are making millions to destroy our health care.
I actually think there are a lot of doctors who are stupid & greedy, certainly cowardly
The administrators are just tyrants that love control.
As I wrote many times the so called health care facilities ,hospitals are the most dangerous places one can enter ..much more dangerous than even the jabs .In hospitals if flu is suspected ,a fraudulent test is done for covid ,that most likely turns out positive .There will be isolation ,sedation ,remdesivir and ventilators ,that is about 90 % deadly .My brother died of that treatment in six days .Lets remember most people die in hospitals ,,why is that $$$$$
I can pick out the Biden voters.
It's a bit like a forest fire: The forest floor is abnormally dry, some moron throws away his cigarette and then the whole place burns down. But if the moron hadn't done it, a day later some other idiot holding a barbecue would've been responsible.
When a crisis happens, people are desperate to feel as if they can have some sort of influence on it. Masking would have happened regardless of the direct ignition source. People desperately wanted this and the scientists were supposed to come up with reasons to justify it, hence why Zeynep largely focused on the "message" sent by wearing masks.
The real luck we have is that these people retreated from the poorly fitting cloth to the N95s, before now moving to respirators (soon including goggles too, as you can get infected through your eyes). The poorly fitting cloth was turning into a fashion item among women of childbearing age, if they had held the line and continued arguing this really does something substantial if everyone does it, it would have become an irreversible cultural shift.
Well, this certainly never was a fashion item for ME. But remember all those surveys that told us that people who masked were perceived as more intelligent, more good-looking, more caring and empathic and so on? I am not sure if the newspapers simply made this up or if the covidian bubble really thought so.
I have a lovely pair of handmade paisley pattern face coverings sent to me as a gift from a female relative.
I'll be able to pass them on to my grandchildren as a memento of the pandemic, because they remain in a pristine and unused condition
I send all my bowl movements to the world hell organisation W.H.O. for testing and tasting to detect any new whyrusses
I'm surprised that diaper wearing was not mandated so far ,especially for women ,since there are more entry points for the ever present whyrusses .The pores in the skin are all open for invasion .Thankfully the Faussi guy did not mandate that we must all tar and feather all our skin so the virus can;t get in through our pores .
Let this be our reminder that just because taking off one's shoes before entering a home is sensible, courteous and a harmless hygienic custom, other customs found in the same places might *not* be equally sensible, courteous and harmless.
Never eat the whole hog. Just the good parts.
SCA ,The nose the ears and the tail are the best parts of the hog .Did you ever hear of mountain oysters ??
I have indeed, and confess without shame to being very discriminatory in the types of organ meats I will eat. Them oysters ain't on my list.
Rain occurs when atmospheric water vapor forms clouds around cloud condensation nuclei (i.e.- particulates). When people dance, they literally kick up dust into the sky. Add a fire in the middle and that creates a channel of hot air that can carry the lightest of the dust particulates to great heights. The sound of drumming and singing may even have a slight additive effect to this. All of this is a feasible explanation for raindancing actually working.
LOL. I find the existence of a Rain God slightly more feasible.
Who do you think the climate cultists are praying to?
Baal was a rain god...his worship is alive and flourishing in the 21st century.
Ba'al means Lord in the sense "master", and was a storm god, as well as a fertility god. The notion that Ba'al was somehow an evil or hostile deity is due to christians continuing the mislabeling of deities by the early jews and other proto-semiticpeoples, once they adopted monotheism and remade the truly ancient deity El into their one god.
If the climate cultists would be praying to ancient gods from that region, Mot fits the bill much better.
Yep, there's a LOT of smudged borders & cross pollination of the mystical between the early "Israelites" and the Canaanite, Mesopotamian, Chaldean (etc), from what I gather (although I pretend NO polished expertise in the subject). There are pre-Abrahamic precedents for many "biblical" characters, occurrences and concepts. But is there ANY fully "correct", A-Z, singular assessment for all these often contentious and disputed historicities, symbolisms, linguistics, (etc), I gotta say: I DOUBT it very much. The expression
of ONE, singular, eloquent and erudite point about "this" or "that" point, person, or issue oftens lulls the reader into a false state of security and faith in the "teacher", even IF the "teacher" was all but ignorant of the given subject BUT FOR their ONE well learned little fact. So, to me, it doesn't REALLY matter whether one uses one or another of (for example) the names
Apollyon, Apophis, Typhon, Abaddon: I KNOW that they're talking about the withering, destructive, "dark" aspect of the Sun, and that all of the above denote the SAME force, or impulse in nature, from their own particular cultural and national vantage point.
I don't NEED necessarily to know WHICH of them FIRST conceptualised & then deified which
energy in nature, when, to catch the basic "gist" of an idea. eg: there is likely an unending reservoir of knowledge an Egyptologist could tell me about the God Set, but I could at LEAST tell HIM what the "physical" symptoms of manifestation are when one invokes the energy of Set in ritual, and pulses with that malignant midnight magick.
The notion that the different gods of different peoples represent culturally different interpretations of the same deities is due to modern pop-cultural osmosis. It's a misunderstanding, simply.
Loke, Anansi and Coyote are not different interpretations of the meta-concept of a "trickster spirit". That's completely wrong, and due to anthropologists sorting different deities in different groups in books catalouging them, solely for simplicity's sake originally.
That two deities share characteristics does not make them the same any more than you and me both having fingers makes us the same. Gods are not representations of basic concepts or principles; that's a fin de siècle interpretation rooted in Jungian mysticism, theosophy and Freudian psychology, both of them having the scientific firmness of jelly.
Gods are who and what they are. Some require and demand worship and obeisance and belly-crawling like the god of Abraham, some are rather indifferent and are simply to be acknowledged, and some can be bargained with, and some expect and respect humans standing up straight and saying "Nuh uh, /you/ move!".
It says very much about a culture and an individual both what their oiginal religion looked like. It gives you a clue what to expect from them. Consider Abraham: no germanic, nordic, fenno-ugric, rus, slav, gaelic or celtic god would ever dare demand and order such a despicable deed as was demanded of Abraham, nor would any one man or woman of those peoples ever bend knee and try to do the deed.
They were free: the three branches of Abrahamites, then as now, are slaves.
Sad, but true: as evidenced by the recent Commonwealth games sinister pomp and circumstance. A big ole Moloch bull 🐂, with all the dancers bowing to it, and a scarlet clad woman atop it, just to overtly link it to the beast in Revelation TOO. PLUS- didn't these moronic climate catastrophizing A-holes also produce a "Ten Commandments" of climate catastrophizing/ eco-zeal as well??! Sickening, godless vermin.
Why is that ?
It's harder to disprove.
Fair, although I haven't seen any disproof of my assertion.
I bet if you fleshed it out a bit you could get a grant to study it.
When Eric Ding rebrands himself as climate czar (from covid czar or security czar) he will post this unironically
Anyone measured the increase in particulates at altitude above a rain dance? My guess? Zero. Fire creates channel of hot air for maybe 30 ft. Affect at altitude? Zero. But this is exactly the kind of logic that supports masking.
Your own logic is assumptive. How big is the fire in your mind that creates a channel of hot air only reaching 30 ft. in height?
NASA estimates that between 4 and 12 percent of wildfires, the very largest ones, have plume heights that reach the free troposphere. So, while I am certainly not denying that it is possible to start a fire that will cause pyronimbus clouds, or even the very cool and terrifying pyrotornado, that is sort of outside of the 'rainmaker' ritual which was the context of the post. The assumption that I made was that we were discussing typical rainmaker rituals, and yes the thermals could conceivably reach several hundred feet, depending on air stability and other considerations I feel that my point stands. Wood burning fires do not produce significant thermal updraft unless you are talking about massive wildfires.
The average height of the troposphere is 43,000 ft.
"[Cumulus] clouds usually form at altitudes between 1,000 and 5,000ft, though often temperature rises after formation lead to an increase in cloud base height. These clouds are generally formed by air rising as a result of surface heating and may occasionally produce light showers." ~ University of Manchester, Centre for Atmospheric Science.
"Each year, over one hundred million tons of Saharan dust gets blown across the Atlantic, some of it reaching as far as the Amazon River Basin."
"Cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), also known as cloud seeds, are small particles typically 0.2 µm, or one hundredth the size of a cloud droplet."
"Sand Type
Dry Density (g/cm3)
Sand, 1.52
Sandy Loam, 1.44
Silt Loam, 1.28
Clay Loam, 1.28
Loam, 1.36
Clay, 1.20
Concrete, 2.40"
Therefore, the weight of these various particulates that could act as nucleation sites is well below one-thousandth of a gram (and would likely even be subject to electromagnetic/electrostatic forces); so it seems to me that an updraft from a large enough fire could easily propel a good number of these 1,000 ft into the air.
Anecdotally, I've helped clear brush and had a very large fire (~20' in diameter) burning for several hours and a light rain started (not predicted by the weather channel); certainly not claiming scientific proof on this.
Do I think raindancing works every time ? Unlikely. Do I think it's ethnocentric to assume our ancestors from less than 100 generations ago would be unintelligent enough to keep doing something if there was really no merit in it ? Possibly (as we even see today), but that doesn't mean I won't give them the benefit of the doubt.
The key is a 'large enough fire'. There is no doubt that fires can cause rain, it is called a pyronimbus cloud. But a woodfire that can do that is burning a whole forest it isn't something that you are having a party around.
I think the issue is not ethnocentrism but ideocentrism, you assume that unless this causes rain by a physical process, which it unquestionably does not, that it has no purpose, which seems to ignore the role of ritual in human society. Unfortunately, as we are all proving we don't understand ritual, that is why masking and shunning are so powerful, because we don't understand their significance, their cause, or their effect. We have been duped into thinking that we are 'advanced' and we are actually exactly the same as raindancers who also didn't understand what they were doing. However, we can learn from experience. It is time to parse the rituals that we have been a part of, albeit reluctantly a part of, and understand what has happened to us, before we find ourselves in the grips of the next round of superstition.
"You assume that unless this causes rain by a physical process, which it unquestionably does not, that it has no purpose, which seems to ignore the role of ritual in human society." ~ I tend to consider most ritual is cargo cult in nature. Why do we bring in Christmas Trees in December ? Perhaps it was originally a way to provide oxygen and negative air ions in an otherwise enclosed environment. I'm not yet convinced fires of sufficient size (i.e.- larger than a campfire and smaller than a forest fire) won't make it rain. Thanks for your correspondence, nonetheless, interesting as it is.
The human brain can't stop finding patterns in anything presented to it. And the Leftist brain can't stop finding ways to implement totalitarianism in anything presented to it.
How do you tell an Expert from an Idiot? Ask them if they believe that masks work.
Today’s (so-called) experts *are* idiots. For me, when someone is called an ‘expert’, I make sure to NOT follow any of their advice.
I did that very thing seeing a new doctor, a young woman. I asked her if she believed wearing a mask helped prevent the spread of respiratory borne viruses. She replied, "Oh, yes, I got really sick with Covid." I said to her, "That's not what I asked you" and I repeated the question. She quickly replied, "Oh yes, absolutely". I told her ,"Thank you, you've answered my question". I will never see that doctor again. She never removed her mask the whole time and I could never even see what she looked like. At least she didn't ask me to put on a mask, though the mask police who took my vitals said I couldn't see the doctor without one. They told me, "It's the law". Ha!
All very valid.
However, as I have to cycle to the train station tomorrow morning and it’s been raining heavily here in Belgium, I may just do a rain dance in reverse, in order to grab a spot of dryness.
And while I know it will do nothing, it evokes that other great dictum of Covidiocy: When faced with a choice between doing something they know won’t work and doing nothing, policymakers will always choose the former.
“Having to be seen to do something” is the source of many problems in our lives
I went to the small clinic here in the village this morning. Regulars were not masked but the doctor was. It also turned out to be a very unfriendly one, starting to scold me soon as she saw my face. Tomorrow they do bloodwork and that will probably be the last they see of me. The paperwork asked my pronouns. I should have left rightaway. But I was eager to get help (which they could not provide, I got to see a specialist. For a clogged ear)
I am absolutely astounded by the ingenuity of the argument that we should all mask up because Mongolia did and they only had one case. Ok.
Write that book, Eugyppius. I am sick to my heart of all the stupidity and probably won't manage to get through it for fear of throwing up constantly while reading, but I promise I will buy multiple copies and flood my friends with them.
I am writing. I think there may even be a German version.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for the muses to keep kissing you. :-)
"Pandemic policies were deeply, profoundly stupid, in a way that we have hardly come to terms with even now."
Just so. Similarly, the entire first world has become profoundly stupid. Which does not bode well for the first world.