39. The Basket
3.31.2023 The best of Rational Ground, Team Reality and many others...
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Note: I read a lot of Substacks each day. The Basket is intended to be a collection of the money quotes from the best of what I read. My goal is that you enjoy this service because it saves you time and quickly informs you. And my hope is that you find one or two articles that you click into because you want more.What you can find in this collection (these are my headlines, not the authors’):
Appetite For Faith-Based Films Growing by Olivia Reingold
US Treasury To Rescue Moderna by Mickey Z.
Three Improvements For The Next Health Crisis by Dr. Pierre Kory
War For The Soul Of A Species by el gato malo
Vax Efficacy Biases by Dr. Peter McCullough
SSRIs & Homicides by A Midwestern Doctor
How Chat GPT Will Change Medicine by Vinay Prasad
Escalating Cult Of Net Zero by John Sullivan
Masks & The Hard Of Hearing by Jennifer Sey
History Of “Flatten The Curve” by Brian Mowrey
Monovalent Contaminated With Plasmid DNA by Anandamide
Cancer Drug Sales Surge by Aussie17
Trans Invades KKG Sorority by The 21st Century Salonnière
Pfizer Suppressed Trial Testing by OpenVAET & Josh Guetzkow
mRNA Is The New Thalidomide by Dr Ah Kahn Syed
Woke’s Definition Of “Critical” by Wokal Distance
Trudeau’s “Canadian Content” Law by Rupa Subramanya
Sam Harris Sellout by Good Citizen
Track & Trace Boondoggle by Mr Law, Health and Technology, Norman Fenton & Martin Neil
Reparations Wont Work by Dr. Robert Malone
Appetite For Faith-Based Films Growing by Olivia Reingold
“People are hungry for goodness, people are hungry for change”—especially after the pandemic. “For a minute it looked like the world as we knew it was coming to an end, then what were the things that were important? I think it helped people refocus on family, faith—those sort of values.”
Ever since Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ brought in over $600 million at box offices worldwide in 2004, studio executives have been trying to resurrect its success.
Christians in Hollywood—no, not an oxymoron, just an endangered species—hope that its success means more Christian films will be greenlit.
“…you also have to be able to prove that you can make these films profitable to justify future investment. And Jesus Revolution really puts a fine point on that with its performance.”
US Treasury To Rescue Moderna by Mickey Z.
Last month, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the Moderna lawsuit, offering to take on liability for the company’s alleged patent infringement.
Such a move would result in the Treasury Department being responsible for potential damages from the suit, rather than Moderna itself.
Moderna reported $18.4 billion in revenue in 2021 and $19.2 billion in 2022, with the lucrative vaccine contract driving a huge increase from the roughly $800 million the company made in 2020.
Three Improvements For The Next Health Crisis by Dr. Pierre Kory
In three short years, many perspectives dismissed as “fringe” or “anti-science” in 2020 have become obvious and even mainstream. As a doctor whose livelihood has been threatened for challenging some of these points of view, these developments give me no pleasure.
Wherever else we may disagree, we must look to the future and prepare for the next public health emergency. Here are three places to start.
First, when a crisis hits, public health leaders should prioritize transparency and promote open debate.
Second, don’t pretend there is a silver bullet. Complex public health problems demand complex solutions — every time.
Third, policymakers must recognize that snap crisis decisions can leave people hurt.
Above all, the next public health emergency should be met with more humility and less arrogance. A once-in-a century crisis requires a spirit of open-mindedness.
War For The Soul Of A Species by el gato malo
people ask why i have such disdain for marxists and the fraudy post modern CRT, CGT, sandbox sandinista pseudo-intellectual evolutions thereof, and it really boils down to simple precepts:
this is the war of performative pretextual plunderers against virtue.
the war of the entitled against the makers.
the war of subjugation against agency.
the war of stultifying material and spiritual privation and against the abundance of same.
this is the war of the joyless upon the joyful.
and that makes it the war for the very soul of a species.
so it’s one you don’t want to lose.
Vax Efficacy Biases by Dr. Peter McCullough
background infection rates and cross-overs from unvaccinated to vaccinated early in the campaign were sources of bias that led to inflated vaccine efficacy.
There are two major determinants of hospitalization and death that have not been handled in every paper claiming the vaccines worked: 1) early treatment for COVID-19 at home that would prevent a hospitalization or death, 2) natural immunity from a prior infection.
vaccinated persons are so worried about COVID-19 they are the first to get on early treatment. Additionally, so many COVID-19 recovered were forced to take vaccines under the mandates, they work to make the “vaccinated” group look better in observational studies.
SSRIs & Homicides by A Midwestern Doctor
Prior to the Covid vaccinations, psychiatric medications were the mass-prescribed medication that had the worst risk-to-benefit ratio on the market. In addition to rarely providing benefits to patients, there is a wide range of severe complications that commonly result from psychiatric medications.
SSRI homicides are common, and a website exists that has compiled thousands upon thousands of documented occurrences. As far as I know (there are most likely a few exceptions), in all cases where a mass school shooting has happened, and it was possible to know the medical history of the shooter, the shooter was taking a psychiatric medication that was known for causing these behavioral changes.
SSRI caused violence was repeatedly detected in the clinical trials for these drugs, but covered up by both the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA. It only became known because lawsuits forced the manufactures to reveal it.
How Chat GPT Will Change Medicine by Vinay Prasad
Chat GPT will surely be used to be an affordable scribe or medical writer. Integration with EMR means Chat GPT will draft your clinic notes at the start of the encounter. The quality will quickly exceed that of medical students, residents and likely even fellows.
Medical writers will supervise Chat GPTs— and only the ones with the highest levels of content knowledge will survive. Most will need new jobs.
Most review articles will be written by Chat GPT. They will also be mostly read by Chat GPT, and users will ask the software to provide shorter summaries.
Chat GPT will permit more mediocre people to become doctors.
Currently, you can type the details of a case and Chat GPT can give treatment ideas. In the future, Chat GPT will extract details from the chart and make recommendations by itself.
only very clever doctors will be able to exceed the quality of these recommendations. Most doctors will actually do better — in the long run— by accepting Chat GPT recommendations
Escalating Cult Of Net Zero by John Sullivan
none of the lunacy of the past three years would have been possible without decades of increasing risk-aversion and a population primed with Long March neo-Marxist ideology.
The Net Zero agenda existed before the pandemic, but the febrile state of the national psyche described above has been massively amplified since 2020. The UK, in common with so many other countries around the world, really has now gone mad. If not rapidly reversed, the NZ lunacy will complete and make permanent the socio-economic destruction of the West. The financial cost to the UK would be something in the region of £2.5 Trillion, and the societal damage would be terminal.
For the UK to recover from this terminal illness, we are going to need a miracle. Those who understand the truly parlous state we are in need to unite in a single movement, find truly visionary leadership (a genuine team, not one individual), then work tirelessly to achieve political power in order to begin the task of mending our country and our world.
Masks & The Hard Of Hearing by Jennifer Sey
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but worth a try, if it saves one life!! is what the mask proponents might say. After insisting “the science” is clear. But I would argue that the onus is on the interventionists to prove it works (not clear) and that the benefits are greater than the harms — especially when there are obvious and significant costs for a wide range of people.
Despite the cries that anti-maskers are ableist, mask zealots have completely ignored the impact mask mandates have had on those with hearing loss. If you dared raise concerns, you might be accused of using the hard of hearing to further an anti-mask narrative, rather than simply considering — with empathy — how masking might impact those with hearing loss.
History Of “Flatten The Curve” by Brian Mowrey
as one who harbors a belief that a globalist deep state is the most likely culprit behind development of the virus and the vaccines for the same, the claim that any external entity was behind lockdowns and mask mandates doesn’t strike me as plausible.
The history of how “flatten the curve” emerged in (some corner of) elite media consciousness in late February still lacks an official account and seems mysterious in retrospect.
Zeynep’s preternaturally early articulation of “flatten the curve” — a phrase whose memetic potency did in fact seed the insanity of lockdowns in the West
Lockdowns were not imposed by Western governments, any more than witch trials. Governments were merely complying with the spontaneous, nearly universal demands of a coalition of credential-havers and a plurality of lay public germaphobes: Codify lockdowns, or cease to have authority as government. “Flatten the curve” had suddenly been declared the way to “manage” the virus; everyone was already doing “flatten the curve;” if corporate didn’t suddenly issue a “flatten the curve” policy then it would have been revealed that no one’s actually “in charge” of this giant, global Target.
Neither China nor Zeynep Tufekci are responsible for insinuating lockdowns into Western consciousness and politics.
Lockdowns occurred because they gave scared, (literally) non-essential Western professionals “something to do.”
Monovalent Contaminated With Plasmid DNA by Anandamide
We surveyed 8 vials from the same lot of Pfizer monovalent mRNA vaccines
8/8 monovalent vaccines sourced from a single case from a single lot of Pfizer monovalent vaccines all fail the EMA specification of 3030:1 RNA:DNA (330ng/mg DNA/RNA).
They are over the limit by an order of magnitude (18-70 fold).
The DNA contamination is very consistent and the vial to vial ratio of RNA:DNA is very consistent within the same lot of monovalent vaccines.
Cancer Drug Sales Surge by Aussie17
There is a surge in cancer rates, particularly in the last quarter of 2022, based on the evidence of in-market drug sales
Jakavi was launched in 2011 as the only approved oral medication for blood cancer myelofibrosis. In 2019 it received new indications in 2019, 2021 and December 2022. The 50% spike in sales during the 4th quarter of 2022 is notable. The new indication came on Dec 20, 2022, shouldn’t affect sales uplift by 50% from the prior quarter.
Ibrance (palbociclib) is a drug used to treat advanced or metastatic breast cancer launched in 2015…started to accelerate dramatically in the last two quarters.
Kisqali (ribociclib) is a newer drug launched in 2017 for metastatic breast cancer…went exponential (30%+ over the previous quarter) during the last quarter of 2022. There have been no new indications for Kisqali since 2018.
Trans Invades KKG Sorority by The 21st Century Salonnière
seven Jane Doe plaintiffs — present and former KKG members — are suing the sorority. They allege, among other things, that the 2018 guidance did not alter the bylaws, “and that the sorority has therefore breached its fiduciary duty toward its female members,” when in the wake of these changes, the KKG chapter at the University of Wyoming allowed its first “transwoman” to join.
despite the fact that [Dallin] Langford was not a woman, didn’t have the required GPA, didn’t make a good impression during rush, and many members didn’t want him as a member — Langford was admitted anyway.
The women are asking the court to “void Langford’s membership in the sorority and declare that men cannot be in the sorority under its existing governing documents” as well as monetary damages and attorneys’ fees.
Pfizer Suppressed Trial Testing by OpenVAET & Josh Guetzkow
We can therefore conclude that the “local test suppression” was a phenomenon concentrated on a few US sites. As we establish in a joined analysis of the efficacy population, it’s highly likely that local tests weren't performed - or recorded - when BNT162b2 subjects were suspected to have COVID-19, given the most significant over-representation of this population in the anomalies we noted
The pre-EUA difference is highly statistically significant. So in other words, prior to the EUA cut-off treatment subjects were less likely to have a central test done than placebo subjects. Unlike with local testing, there is no apparent innocent explanation for why the central testing rates increase after the EUA cut-off.
mRNA Is The New Thalidomide by Dr Ah Kahn Syed
Although thalidomide is famous for the limb abnormalities of the babies that survived, there was also a small increase in miscarriages which should have been a red flag for teratogenicity (fetal toxicity). The increase in miscarriages seen with the mRNA COVID vaccines is bigger than that seen with thalidomide.The normal miscarriage rate of a healthy population is somewhere around 5-6%.
For years, studies have been misrepresenting rates of 15-20% so that when new drugs are tested in pregnancy, a doubling of the miscarriage rate will fly under the radar.
In a properly matched comparative analysis between a contemporary published historical cohort of miscarriages and the early CDC (post-vaccine) data set there is a clear increase in the risk of miscarriage in the vaccinated group
if you wanted to hide a "raw" rate that was 10-14% instead of 5-6% you would say it matched "historical rates" whilst forgetting to declare that the historical rates were calculated with the higher rate method.
The real increase in miscarriage rate shown by the CDC data is dramatic - more than double - and should have immediately prompted cessation of administration of the COVID vaccines to pregnant women.
Woke’s Definition Of “Critical” by Wokal Distance
Why is it that the term “critical” takes such a central place Social Justice oriented literature, and what is going on when Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) oriented academics say they are being “critical?”
critical theory ends up being little more then cheap cynicism and subjective interpretation dressed up as intellectual rigor
There is the enlightenment liberal version of the term (as in “critical thinking”), and there is the way woke academic activists use the term “critical” (as in “critical theory”)
the critical thinker looks to verify that claims and assertions are *TRUE* rather than false, and does so using the tools of reason, logic, evidence, and rationality. The goal of critical thinking is to arrive at objective truth using rigorous methods
Critical Pedagogy comes loaded with a set of assumptions that are rooted in the neo-marxian literature on Critical Theory
Critical Theory is not concerned primarily with describing the world, Critical Theory is concerned with liberation from oppression
Critical Theory has a moral vision for society, and it uses that moral vision as the framework through which society is to be examined, analyzed, understood, and criticized. In other words, Traditional Theory wants to know why the world is the way it is, Critical Theory wants to know how to conform Society to it’s moral vision.
Critical Theory analyzes and examines ideas in terms of power and politics, not truth.
Wokeness does not think of truth as “a description of the world which corresponds to reality.” Rather, it believes that what is true is matter of who gets to decide what is true, and how they decide what is true…a statement becomes “true” because the people in society with the power to decide what is true have said a thing is true, and people accept this.
The Critical Theorist looks at claims to knowledge, truth, and facts and does not see propositions that need to be assessed on the basis of truth, but rather they see a series of claims that need to be assessed as the expressions of power of those who want to oppress others.
Trudeau’s “Canadian Content” Law by Rupa Subramanya
Canada’s Liberals insist the point of Bill C-11 is simply to update the 1991 Broadcasting Act, which regulates broadcasting of telecommunications in the country. The goal of the bill, according to a Ministry of Canadian Heritage statement, is to bring “online broadcasters under similar rules and regulations as our traditional broadcasters.”
In other words, streaming services and social media, like traditional television and radio stations, would have to ensure that at least 35 percent of the content they publish is Canadian content—or, in Canadian government speak, “Cancon.”
The bill is inching toward a final vote in the Canadian Senate as soon as next month. It’s expected to pass. If it does, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in an October blog post, the same creators the government says it wants to help will, in fact, be hurt.
Bottom line: had Bill C-11 been the law of the land back in early 2007, Justin Bieber would probably have encountered more Canadian viewers who didn’t want to watch him, many would have given him a thumbs-down, and YouTube would have limited the number of viewers who ultimately saw him.
Sam Harris Sellout by Good Citizen
Add to the long list of pretenders the ultimate smugger Ham Sarris. In the past few years, he has suffered very public meltdowns of Trump Derangement Syndrome, contending that “misinformation” and speech should be suppressed that is “dangerous” when a “dictator” like Trump comes to power under “dubious” circumstances.
Harris, who for years has proclaimed that “we must have difficult conversations about all subjects” refuses to accept any of the endless invitations by Brett to have a difficult conversation about Covid vaccines.
Sam claims “on that timeline…” (where we assumed a deadly virus was lurking everywhere) “…it was completely rational to want to get the Covid vaccine…” and that people had a “civic responsibility” to do so.
Except it was not at all in any timeline, in any simulation, at any point in the history of human life, under any circumstance a rational thing to do.
It was always irrational to trust Big Pharma corporations.
It was always irrational to trust the U.S. government on any issue.
It was always irrational to believe a single word uttered by corporate media mannequins whose salaries are paid by those Big Pharma corporations.
It was never rational to believe they could produce an effective “vaccine” in nine months for a coronavirus using an experimental mRNA technology.
Not only was all of that irrational to believe, but it was borderline batshit crazy. Unfortunately for millions of people, it was also a deadly narrative to believe.
Track & Trace Boondoggle by Mr Law, Health and Technology, Norman Fenton & Martin Neil
The entire test, track and trace infrastructure (including the apps) was expensive and ineffective, the impracticality of which had been demonstrated by us before the money was even budgeted.
The NHSx track and trace app was unequivocably an abject failure and embarassment for Baroness Harding and the UK Government.
When we factor in costs for the current financial year that are currently unreported by Commons, the estimated total expendature overseen by Baroness Harding falls between £35-37bn, but that doesn’t account for close-out costs for the hundreds of contracts still running, nor for decommissioning the entire test, track and trace infrastructure - all of which will edge it closer to £40bn
Reparations Wont Work by Dr. Robert Malone
The idea that giving financially distressed people large amounts of money in order to change their longterm financial situation is not viable. Emotional spending patterns tied with cultural norms of spending are not easy to break - throwing large sums in the hopes of wealth redistribution is not going to fix anything in the long run.
One of the main ideas behind reparations is redistributive wealth. That the income difference between black and white American is so vast, that this is a method to “even” the playing board. However, giving large sums of money from the government, which has collected this cash from one set of individuals to other individuals is essentially a tool of socialism. We have seen this playbook across the world and it never ends well.
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