The Basket
11.19.2022 The best of Rational Ground, Team Reality and many others...
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From: Woodhouse
Look at what’s happening here: Healthy, not-sick high schoolers (and their parents) are being compelled to make choice between taking an unnecessary medical test and attending their taxpayer-funded class.
No rationale is provided in the screenshot of a portion the email shared with me; however, the implication is that the students must protect Jill Biden & company from covid-19. In other words, the worst, most indefensible, most anti-child ethics of the pandemic response are still with us.
From: Damian
In light of the lack of evidence, the WHO merely recommend that governments “encourage the general public to wear masks” and the ECDC advise that the “use of masks in the community should be considered”. Note the tentative language. NPHET and Donnelly took “encourage” and “consider” and turned them into “force” and “compel”.
Because they had to - they had no evidence with which to convince people. They only had force with which to compel them.
From: el gato malo
there is nothing more opposed to the foundational american beliefs than collectivism because collectivism inherently constitutes the taking of liberty and subjugation of lives.
collectivism IS bossypants and so long as we leave it loose in all its coercive and compulsory glory, america will be broken and america will be at war with itself and america will be miserable.
the only real question is “is that even america?”
and i would argue that it is not.
that is a place called “america” on a map, but it is not a place where the idea of america that was once its vital marrow and integument any longer resides.
it’s a bad sequel written by hacks.
the idea of america lies in the individual, not in the collective.
it places the rights of each and all above the whims of the state and the demos.
if places life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at its center because THAT is why we are here and that is a thing that many have deemed worth dying for.
From: Brownstone Institute
All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principle actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart.
From: Anandamide
So what do we do with this information? Do we fight it harder with a Zero COVID like approach knowing the viroid is more mutagenic, smaller, has no protein coat, can travel through fungal networks and spores and infects many different kinds of plants?
I thought Zero COVID was an irrational. An intentional dismissal of any type of cost benefit analysis that all businesses need to constantly be evaluating. I think its even more unrealistic to think the cannabis industry will suddenly eliminate HpLVd when it was discovered in 1988 and its still here.
From: Jennifer Sey
To answer my own question of why do we believe these thieving crazies? I think it’s because we have an innate desire to believe in something. Something bigger than ourselves. And given the religion-sized hole in our ever-increasingly atheist hearts, we choose this garbage.
I say this as an atheist - religion is better.
My advice: if a CEO tries to convince you with cult-like enthusiasm and double speak (worse, if they sing it or recite lines of verse to convince you) that they are not just selling you stuff, but that they are changing the world - run. Do not pass go. Do not buy what they are selling. Run. Do not feature them on magazine covers. Do not get swept up in their line of bullshit. You will regret it.
From: Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD
If we are considering structural racism and educational inequalities, they also failed to weigh the known downsides of continued masking of children. Beyond the obvious fact that children seeing their friends smile and understanding them and as vectors of disease have value, research in this topic has already found children with hearing impairment to have impaired word recognition in settings with mask wearing. Even children without hearing impairment have been found to have reduced word identification particularly in a noisy environment when the speaker is masked. Face masks also appear to impair recognition of emotions, trustworthiness and perceived closeness and may “undermine the success of our social interactions.” These are drawbacks that need to be weighed… covid is for most children a small threat at this point and very far from the largest threats they face to their health and wellbeing.
Click Through to WSJ: Justin Hart
The White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, put the Constitution into an induced coma. Mr. Trump’s decision to adopt Chinese Communist Party tactics and close down the country gave license to states to amplify and extend these terrible policies, to governors to wield unprecedented executive powers, and to school districts to shut students out for months or even years.
Mr. Trump did very little to constrain this overreach. His dramatic Covid order shut down your business, barred your kids from school, denied you access to your church, your gym and your coffee shop.
From: Josh Stevenson
Looking at the absolute risks for males age 16-17, all doses past the initial dose 1 are a significant added risk, while providing almost no benefit. This is precisely what our paper found in 2021, that the majority of benefit of an immune naïve young male came from dose 1, while dose 2 provided very little additional protection.
For young men 18-24, every single dose for a naturally immune person, and any booster dose for already vaccinated male, is an additive risk.
From: Substack
The Bestseller badges are in keeping with our efforts to build a new media ecosystem based on respecting, rather than exploiting, people’s attention. We want to build a system that rewards deep relationships over viral content, and one that puts writers and readers in charge. This initiative fits with the same philosophy that led us to build other features—such as leaderboards and recommendations blurbs—that similarly help writers grow their readerships and revenue while retaining control over their own media empires.
From: Michael P Senger
From the earning of the money, to the donating of the money, to the positive press coverage, to the policies the process funded, at no point was there any good intent or positive outcome to any of it. The entire operation was pure, unadulterated evil.
This is the modern political machine in all its stark, inhuman nihilism. Once the machine is fed its priority, whether through fear, fraud, or outright corruption, then all its cogs snap into place—from the politicians and officials to the billionaires and journalists—and the only wrong a person can do is to oppose its priorities. The intent never mattered. The legality never mattered. The truth never mattered. The data never mattered. The results never mattered.
From: Libs of TikTok
Even more troubling to students and parents, WIAA eliminated aggrieved students and competing schools’ right to even question the participation of a trans student in female sports.
The rationale behind the changes was outlined in the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s 2021 Gender Diversity Toolkit where they inaccurately argue trans athletes on teams have “not been shown to diminish opportunities for others” and that there are “no competitive advantages.”
