Today a gay patient in his 30s showed up in the office. He is healthy and very athletic. He is a “boy” to another older gay man.
They travel the world and are into serious gay fetish play. Spanking, bondage, discipline etc.
Patient has had fever and chills and horrible headache for 3 days. A
reticulonodular rash has developed but no vesicles yet. They have been
playing in clubs, parties, and orgies in 4 major cities the past 2
weeks.
There are so many things in that diagnostic differential but of course monkeypox is right up there.
And of course NO TESTING IS AVAILABLE. I called all levels of health
department and even CDC today. The CDC is voice mail hell. Never talked
to a human. It took several hours for a health dept human but by then
the patient was already gone potentially spreading the wealth
everywhere. They are acting as if I was talking about the Martian Flu.
Again, we have known about this two months now, and it was like I was
asking for the Holy Grail. Testing? “I need to call so and so……not
sure…..but I’ll get right back to you……..”. And don’t get me started
about their handling of the quarantine.
I have no idea if he is really a case. Multiple tests are pending.
But not monkeypox. There is apparently no blood test for that. You have
to swab the vesicles. But what if we do not have vesicles yet? Or if a
patient may be past the vesicular stage? Crickets.
I would like to think there is a baseline competence. But that is too much an ask right now.
Again two months all over the news and this is what we have.
We are a completely unserious nation.
Remember that IM Doc is in a wealthy destination in Flyover.
Apparently the local public health officials not only think that
monkeypox is exclusively a gay STD, but also that they can’t have it
locally because there are no gay men in their part of the world. Did
they miss Brokeback Mountain? Or the private jet landing schedule?
On top of that, the local public health officials appear unable to
use a search engine. In fact, there are monkeypox tests, but as IM Doc
did correctly infer, they can’t be used before the vesicles stage, which
is 2-4+ days after lesions start forming. Oh, and monkeypox patients
are contagious as soon as they start having lesions and potentially also
during the prodome period, before rash starts.
dailymail | As distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx,
as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami, and as unique as the breakfast
tacos here in San Antonio - is your strength,' she said, mispronouncing
the word 'bodega.'
'We are not tacos.
Our heritage as Latinos is shaped by a variety of diasporas, cultures
and food traditions, and should not be reduced to a stereotype,' the
National Association of Hispanic Journalists said in response.
The gaffe came as President Biden's popularity among Latino voters continues to plummet.
According to a recent Quinnipiac opinion poll found that Biden's approval rating among young Hispanic voters is around 26%.
San
Antonio is home to one of the largest Latino communities in the United
States, with a population of nearly 1.5 million people that is 65
percent Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census data.
In April 2021, Biden made a similar gaffe
when she mispronounced the phrase: 'Si se puede' (Yes we can) to a group
of farmworkers in Delano, California.
During
the same speech on Monday, Biden also made reference to a recent visit
that she made to Uvalde, Texas in the wake of the May 2022 massacre at
Robb Elementary School.
She said: 'I
stood in front of those 21 crosses and touched the pictures of the
bright, beautiful faces that would never again laugh, or open birthday
presents, or tell their parents that they love them. And I knew that a
piece of Uvalde would always be a part of me.'
The
first lady also touted her husband's modest gun reform law saying that
the president 'will do everything he can to call on Congress to act,
including on measures to ban assault weapons and high capacity
magazines.'
Biden added: 'A ban on guns
that only belong on the battlefield. The right to make our own
decisions about our own bodies,' to rapturous applaus
technologyreview | Libertarian attempts to create autonomous mini-civilizations go back at least to the 1960s, but crypto is reinvigorating this old dream with a fresh infusion of cash and hype.
For an idea
of what a corporate-run Bitcoin City might be like, look to a
burgeoning project called Próspera, supported by the Free Private Cities
Foundation in Honduras. While it’s not explicitly billed as a crypto
community, a heavy emphasis on the crypto industry and the backing of
heavyweight Bitcoin investors place Próspera in the same ideological
milieu—a fusion of crypto evangelism and libertarian credos.
Próspera (Spanish for “prosperous”) occupies a small enclave on the
Honduran island of Roatán. The developers have been handed the chance to
model a society from scratch, including its own health, education,
policing, and social security systems.
Honduras amended its
constitution in 2013 to allow the creation of special economic zones
managed by corporations and operating largely outside the country’s
legal and regulatory oversight. The resulting enclaves are known in
English as Zones of Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs,
pronounced “zeh-dehs”).
The
decision was based on American economist Paul Romer’s proposal for
charter cities—a type of special economic zone in an existing state but
managed by another nation’s government. Considered one of his more outlandish ideas,
they reflect his theories about how to promote foreign investment and
alleviate inequality. Honduran ZEDEs are among the first tests of this
concept, though Romer has held talks with some other governments.
Romer
collaborated with the Honduran government at first, but they parted
ways following disagreements over how his idea was being implemented.
(Romer didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Próspera, which
broke ground in 2020, plans to implement ultra-low taxes, outsource
services typically managed by the public sector, establish an
“arbitration center” in place of a court, and charge an annual fee for
citizenship (either physical or e-residency) that involves signing a
“social contract” the company hopes will discourage misbehavior.
When
I visited the site in February, a central office was one of the few
completed buildings. There was no private Próspera police force, but on
the front desk was a number for Bulldog Security International, a
private security company engaged by hotels on the island that consider
the local police force inadequate. A pair of two-story buildings housed
office workers. The rest was largely a construction site, although a
residential tower block is underway.
A rendering of the future Próspera shows apartments that appear to
take inspiration from the shells of the island’s indigenous conch—soft
curves in pearly coral, cream, and glass. A strip of white sand
separates the apartment block from the gentle lap of the Caribbean Sea.
The
businesses most likely to be drawn here are those keen to escape
regulation in their own countries—Próspera’s chief of staff, Trey Goff,
highlights medical innovation, health tourism, and just about every
facet of the cryptocurrency industry.
“There’s an automatic
degree of overlap with the crypto industry and what we’re doing,” he
says. “Because they see themselves as at the forefront of financial
innovation, and we want to enable that.”
dailybeast | As families in this rural town prepare to bury the 19 children and two adults gunned down
in a brutal school massacre this week, they are left shell-shocked by
not only the devastation the gunman wrought, but by the revelation that,
as they see it, those who were sworn to protect and serve them did just
the opposite.
“While those babies were in there dying, they stood
there with their thumbs in their asses trying to figure out what to
do,” said Roger Garza, a friend of the family of teacher Irma Garcia, who was killed by the gunman as she tried to shield her fourth-grade students.
“I
mean don’t we pay them to rush in and protect people? Somebody needs to
be held accountable for this,” Garza told The Daily Beast.
“We were waiting outside and yelling about how we wanted to go in and
storm the classroom,” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter,
Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack. “I came running and the
police were in a panic trying to figure out what to do. Now we know
children, including my daughter, were dying in there. That is what
hurts. Knowing they could have maybe protected her and those other
kids.”
Cazares wants to know why they didn’t do anything; it is a question that everyone here is asking.
“While
those children sat in there with this madman, as many as 19 officers
had to think about what to do,” said Ignacio Perez, who was doing his
best to comfort Cazares. “I promise you these parents had a plan and
were ready to act on it. Where was the bravery? In those kids. That is
where it was.”
Amid the growing outrage over the botched police response,
authorities in Uvalde have reportedly called in reinforcements from
around the state to protect the local officers from potential threats.
The
additional cops, from various agencies in other jurisdictions, will
supplement Uvalde’s ranks for an unspecified period, and will also
provide security for the mayor, officials with the Texas Police Chiefs Association told CBS DFW.
In
the immediate aftermath of the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary, Gov.
Greg Abbott lauded the police response, insisting that officers had
acted heroically and saved numerous lives. But he lashed out angrily
when a different narrative later emerged, saying he was “livid” over
having been “misled.” Federal agents on the scene said no one seemed to be in charge, and at one point, agonized parents waiting outside considered rushing the school themselves.
One Uvalde cop claimed there “was almost a mutiny,” telling People magazine that he and his colleagues “felt like cowards” for not storming the building earlier.
notesfromdisgraceland |Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. (George Carlin)
Things don’t look encouraging when
observed at higher resolution. This is a graph of the IQ distribution.
The average IQ is around 100 with 68% of population residing inside the
two standard deviations range, between 85 and 115, which means that
about 16% are of deep sub-average intelligence. These numbers are fairly
robust across different countries in the developed world.
This distribution becomes particularly
alarming when applied to a large relatively non-oppressive country. In
the context of modern liberal societies, the synergy of stupidity, size,
and democracy reinforces the malignant potential of the stupidity of
the collective.
Transcription
of these numbers to America implies that about 53 million (16%) people
(entire population of France) are of sub-average intelligence, out of
which 7 million (entire Bulgaria) is seriously impaired. These people
are empowered to express their opinion and impose their will in the
ballot box.
By mobilizing the left side of the
distribution behind a single political movement – a maneuver that
represents a collectivization of mediocrity — makes them even stupider
by lowering their collective IQ further, and persuading them to believe
in pretty much anything. When their discontent is streamlined and
wrapped into a single narrative, in an electoral democratic system,
these 16-percenters can become a decisive factor[2].
Empowered by their malignant stupidity, such people are capable of
committing the most extreme atrocities as they have been throughout
human history.
Humanity cannot outgrow its own death drive
Intelligence is not a theoretical quantity, but represents a behavioral quality of creatures in an open environment. (Peter Sloterdijk)
Humans are generally intelligent, but this
individual intelligence fails to get collectivized. This has only
become worse with progress and the general trend of increasing
acceleration and addiction to speed. The long term has become so long
that it now exceeds our capacity for statistical prediction, but the
short-term has accelerated so much that snap decisions are the only
decisions ever made. The stakes have become higher – short-term survival
is no longer guaranteed, which leads to a shift of focus.
In the face of the urgency of short-term
survival, long-term foresight collapses. This defines the tradeoff — the
lower the odds of survival, the weaker the desires and capacities for
grasping the long-term. As the group size increases and individuality
fades away, collectivization inevitably leads to abdication of
responsibilities. This leads to collective myopia, which attracts its
membership and supports the group’s desire to grow. As a consequence, we
no longer engage in intergenerational projects — passing the baton to
the next generation is the best we can do (as a collective).
This removal of the long-term perspective,
its subversion, leaves power dominated by short-term forces, which
under the capricious conditions of the market forces requires adaptive, liquid or transient strategies as a basic skill set. At
a systemic level, change is taking the form of positive feedback. In
conditions of general info acceleration and hypercomplexity, as
conscious and rational will become unable to adjust to the trends, the
trends themselves become self-reinforcing (up to the point of collapse)[3].
For years now, the Right-wing populism of
the capitalist West has been tapping into the left side of the IQ
distribution. This has proven to be a very successful strategy for their
project. Unsurprisingly, in the most spectacular staging of abdication
of collective responsibility, thus cultivated populist movement became
the epicenter of insane resistance to simple measures of containment of
the COVID pandemic.
At
the core of the incoherent response to the pandemic – the spectacular
failure of adjusting to the most straightforward problem of self-defense
of the collective body – resides collective abdication of
responsibility. This was a simple test of common sense, accepting the
most basic measures any single human would normally have no problems
accepting, but which collectively encountered resistance on a large
scale (bordering on hysterical) causing, at the end, massive casualties,
financial and economic damages, and unnecessary complications and
extension of the pandemic. The resistance to alignment with simple and
logical adjustment to an existential threat is just another illustration
of the erosion of basic survival instincts caused by decades of
deliberate and programmatic anti-science project and glorification of
mediocrity.
In the world of infinite acceleration,
humanity is spontaneously converging towards a state of maximum
cognitive incompetence, a collective Dunning-Kruger effect. According to
the latest statistics, there are about 41 million Q-anon believers in
the United States.
However, this does not mean that
capitalist democracies carry exclusive blame for the degradation of
intellect and the rising rate of malignant stupidity. Rather, it is a
combination of human nature and the law of large numbers. As much as
Soviet-style communism pretended to have sought to divert the inevitable
self-destructiveness of capitalism, it merely reinvented different and
more efficient ways of self-destruction. A similar story goes with
fascism. Communism’s record of ecological misconduct, which has
penetrated deep into the territory of criminal, is just one of many
examples of its self-destructive overdrive. Its pretended ideological
attempts to be something else from what it really was were just failed
diversions that merely accelerated the inevitable.
newsweek | An official of the U.S.-led NATO alliance has told Newsweek
that the coalition did not notice what appeared to be a symbol
associated with Nazism on the uniform of a Ukrainian soldier featured in
a since-deleted photo on NATO's official Twitter account.
The
image, posted Tuesday to commemorate International Women's Day,
contained four images related to the current crisis in Ukraine, where a
Russian military incursion was set to enter its third week.
"All
women and girls must live free and equal. This international women's day
we think of the remarkable women of #Ukraine," NATO tweeted alongside a
Ukrainian flag emoji. "Their strength, bravery and resilience are
symbolic of the spirit of their nation #IWD2022."
The first of the four images included what appeared to be a Ukrainian
servicemember bearing a "Black Sun" on the chest area of her military
fatigues. The symbol, also known in German as "Schwarze Sonne" or
"Sonnenrad," is rooted in Nazi occultism and has been brandished by
far-right elements across the globe, including in Ukraine, where it is
featured on the official logo of the National Guard's Azov Regiment.
The image first appeared to be shared on social media on February 14
by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was later
syndicated by a number of outlets and agencies, and was featured
prominently on the front page of The Guardian the following
day. The symbol itself, however, is not readily visible, as it is nearly
the same color as the green camouflage of the soldier's uniform.
Shortly after NATO shared the image, the symbol was noted by a number of social media users and then taken down swiftly.
thesaker | So I am somewhat chagrined as I watch the speed at which this
U.S.-centered financialized system has de-dollarized over the span of
just a year or two. The basic theme of my Super Imperialism has
been how, for the past fifty years, the U.S. Treasury-bill standard has
channeled foreign savings to U.S. financial markets and banks, giving
Dollar Diplomacy a free ride. I thought that de-dollarization would be
led by China and Russia moving to take control of their economies to
avoid the kind of financial polarization that is imposing austerity on
the United States.[2]
But U.S. officials are forcing Russia, China and other nations not
locked into the U.S. orbit to see the writing on the wall and overcome
whatever hesitancy they had to de-dollarize.
I had expected that the end of the dollarized imperial economy would
come about by other countries breaking away. But that is not what has
happened. U.S. diplomats themselves have chosen to end international
dollarization, while helping Russia build up its own means of
self-reliant agricultural and industrial production. This global
fracture process actually has been going on for some years, starting
with the sanctions blocking America’s NATO allies and other economic
satellites from trading with Russia. For Russia, these sanctions had the
same effect that protective tariffs would have had.
Russia had remained too enthralled by free-market neoliberal ideology
to take steps to protect its own agriculture and industry. The United
States provided the help that was needed by imposing domestic
self-reliance on Russia. When the Baltic states obeyed American
sanctions and lost the Russian market for their cheese and other farm
products, Russia quickly created its own cheese and dairy sector – while
becoming the world’s leading grain exporter.
Russia is discovering (or is on the verge of discovering) that it
does not need U.S. dollars as backing for the ruble’s exchange rate. Its
central bank can create the rubles needed to pay domestic wages and
finance capital formation. The U.S. confiscations of its dollar and euro
reserves may finally lead Russia to end its adherence to neoliberal
monetary philosophy, as Sergei Glaziev has long been advocating, in
favor of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
The same dynamic of undercutting ostensible U.S aims has occurred
with U.S. sanctions against the leading Russian billionaires. The
neoliberal shock therapy and privatizations of the 1990s left Russian
kleptocrats with only one way to cash out on the assets they had grabbed
from the public domain. That was to incorporate their takings and sell
their shares in London and New York. Domestic savings had been wiped
out, and U.S. advisors persuaded Russia’s central bank not to create its
own ruble money.
The result was that Russia’s national oil, gas and mineral patrimony
was not used to finance a rationalization of Russian industry and
housing. Instead of the revenue from privatization being invested to
create new Russian means of protection, it was burned up on nouveau-riche
acquisitions of luxury British real estate, yachts and other global
flight-capital assets. But the effect of sanctions making the dollar,
sterling and euro holdings of Russian billionaires hostage has been to
make the City of London too risky a venue in which to hold their assets –
and for the wealthy of any other nation potentially subject to U.S.
sanctions. By imposing sanctions on the richest Russians closest to
Putin, U.S. officials hoped to induce them to oppose his breakaway from
the West, and thus to serve effectively as NATO agents-of-influence. But
for Russian billionaires, their own country is starting to look safest.
For many decades now, the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury have
fought against gold recovering its role in international reserves. But
how will India and Saudi Arabia view their dollar holdings as Biden and
Blinken try to strong-arm them into following the U.S. “rules-based
order” instead of their own national self-interest? The recent U.S.
dictates have left little alternative but to start protecting their own
political autonomy by converting dollar and euro holdings into gold as
an asset free from political liability of being held hostage to the
increasingly costly and disruptive U.S. demands.
U.S. diplomacy has rubbed Europe’s nose in its abject subservience by
telling its governments to have their companies dump their Russian
assets for pennies on the dollar after Russia’s foreign reserves were
blocked and the ruble’s exchange rate plunged. Blackstone, Goldman Sachs
and other U.S. investors moved quickly to buy up what Shell Oil and
other foreign companies were unloading.
Citizenship, Criticism, and Communism
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In the 1940s and ’50s, Americans engaged in an intense debate over the
content of school textbooks, particularly social studies texts. Fears of
communism a...
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...