The Computational Complexity Of A Single Biological Neuron

quanta |  Today, the most powerful artificial intelligence systems employ a type of machine learning called deep learning. Their algorithms learn by processing massive amounts of data through hidden layers of interconnected nodes, referred to as deep neural networks. As their name suggests, deep neural networks were inspired by the real neural networks in the brain, with the nodes modeled after real neurons — or, at least, after what neuroscientists knew about neurons back in the 1950s, when an influential neuron model called the perceptron was born. Since then, our understanding of the computational complexity of single neurons has dramatically expanded, so biological neurons are known to be more complex than artificial ones. But by how much?

To find out, David Beniaguev, Idan Segev and Michael London, all at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, trained an artificial deep neural network to mimic the computations of a simulated biological neuron. They showed that a deep neural network requires between five and eight layers of interconnected “neurons” to represent the complexity of one single biological neuron.

Even the authors did not anticipate such complexity. “I thought it would be simpler and smaller,” said Beniaguev. He expected that three or four layers would be enough to capture the computations performed within the cell.

Timothy Lillicrap, who designs decision-making algorithms at the Google-owned AI company DeepMind, said the new result suggests that it might be necessary to rethink the old tradition of loosely comparing a neuron in the brain to a neuron in the context of machine learning. “This paper really helps force the issue of thinking about that more carefully and grappling with to what extent you can make those analogies,” he said.

The most basic analogy between artificial and real neurons involves how they handle incoming information. Both kinds of neurons receive incoming signals and, based on that information, decide whether to send their own signal to other neurons. While artificial neurons rely on a simple calculation to make this decision, decades of research have shown that the process is far more complicated in biological neurons. Computational neuroscientists use an input-output function to model the relationship between the inputs received by a biological neuron’s long treelike branches, called dendrites, and the neuron’s decision to send out a signal.

This function is what the authors of the new work taught an artificial deep neural network to imitate in order to determine its complexity. They started by creating a massive simulation of the input-output function of a type of neuron with distinct trees of dendritic branches at its top and bottom, known as a pyramidal neuron, from a rat’s cortex. Then they fed the simulation into a deep neural network that had up to 256 artificial neurons in each layer. They continued increasing the number of layers until they achieved 99% accuracy at the millisecond level between the input and output of the simulated neuron. The deep neural network successfully predicted the behavior of the neuron’s input-output function with at least five — but no more than eight — artificial layers. In most of the networks, that equated to about 1,000 artificial neurons for just one biological neuron.

 

"Behavioral Genetics" "Social Science Genomics" - By Any Name - Race "Science" Still Turd-Frosting

newyorker |  Last summer, an anonymous intermediary proposed to Harris and Harden that they address their unresolved issues. Harden appeared on Harris’s podcast, and patiently explained why Murray’s speculation was dangerously out in front of the science. At the moment, technical and methodological challenges, as well as the persistent effects of an unequal environment, would make it impossible to conduct an experiment to test Murray’s idly incendiary hypotheses. She refused to grant that his provocations were innocent: “I don’t disagree with you about insisting on intellectual honesty, but I think of it as ‘both/and’—I think that that value is very important, but I also find it very important to listen to people when they say, ‘I’m worried about how this idea might be used to harm me or my family or my neighborhood or my group.’ ” (Harris declined to comment on the record for this piece.) As she once put it in an essay, “There is a middle ground between ‘let’s never talk about genes and pretend cognitive ability doesn’t exist’ and ‘let’s just ask some questions that pander to a virulent on-line community populated by racists with swastikas in their Twitter bios.’ ”

Harden is not alone in her drive to fulfill Turkheimer’s dream of a “psychometric left.” Dalton Conley and Jason Fletcher’s book, “The Genome Factor,” from 2017, outlines similar arguments, as does the sociologist Jeremy Freese. Last year, Fredrik deBoer published “The Cult of Smart,” which argues that the education-reform movement has been trammelled by its willful ignorance of genetic variation. Views associated with the “hereditarian left” have also been articulated by the psychiatrist and essayist Scott Alexander and the philosopher Peter Singer. Singer told me, of Harden, “Her ethical arguments are ones that I have held for quite a long time. If you ignore these things that contribute to inequality, or pretend they don’t exist, you make it more difficult to achieve the kind of society that you value.” He added, “There’s a politically correct left that’s still not open to these things.” Stuart Ritchie, an intelligence researcher, told me he thinks that Harden’s book might create its own audience: “There’s so much toxicity in this debate that it’ll take a long time to change people’s minds on it, if at all, but I think Paige’s book is just so clear in its explanation of the science.”

The nomenclature has given Harden pause, depending on the definition of “hereditarian,” which can connote more biodeterminist views, and the definition of “left”—deBoer is a communist, Alexander leans libertarian, and Harden described herself to me as a “Matthew 25:40 empiricist” (“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ ”). The political sensitivity of the subject has convinced many sympathetic economists, psychologists, and geneticists to keep their heads below the parapets of academia. As the population geneticist I spoke to put it to me, “Geneticists know how to talk about this stuff to each other, in part because we understand terms like ‘heritability,’ which we use in technical ways that don’t always fully overlap with their colloquial meanings, and in part because we’re charitable with each other, assume each other’s good faith—we know that our colleagues aren’t eugenicists. But we have no idea how to talk about it in public, and, while I don’t agree with everything she said, sometimes it feels like we’ve all been sitting around waiting for a book like Paige’s.”

Harden’s outspokenness has generated significant blowback from the left. On Twitter, she has been caricatured as a kind of ditzy bourgeois dilettante who gives succor to the viciousness of the alt-right. This March, after she expressed support for standardized testing—which she argues predicts student success above and beyond G.P.A. and can help increase low-income and minority representation—a parody account appeared under the handle @EugenicInc, with the name “Dr. Harden, Social Justice Through Eugenics!” and the bio “Not a determinist, but yes, genes cause everything. I just want to breed more Hilary Clinton’s for higher quality future people.” One tweet read, “In This House We Believe, Science is Real, Womens Rights are Human Rights, Black Lives Matter, News Isnt Fake, Some Kids Have Dumb-Dumb Genes!!!”

In 2018, she wrote an Op-Ed in the Times, arguing that progressives should embrace the potential of genetics to inform education policy. Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law, sociology, and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, strongly disagreed: “There’s just no way that genetic testing is going to lead to a restructuring of society in a just way in the future—we have a hundred years of evidence for what happens when social outcomes are attributed to genetic differences, and it is always to stigmatize, control, and punish the people predicted to have socially devalued traits.” Darity, the economist, told me that he doesn’t see how Harden can insist that differences within groups are genetic but that differences between them are not: “It’s a feint and a dodge for her to say, ‘Well, I’m only looking at variations across individuals.’ ”

There is a good precedent for this kind of concern. In “Blueprint,” Robert Plomin wrote that polygenic scores should be understood as “fortune tellers” that can “foretell our futures from birth.” Jared Taylor, a white-supremacist leader, argued that Plomin’s book should “destroy the basis for the entire egalitarian enterprise of the last 60 or so years.” He seized on Plomin’s claim that, for many outcomes, “environmental levers for change are not within our grasp.” Taylor wrote, “This is a devastating finding for the armies of academics and uplift artists who think every difference in outcome is society’s fault.” He continued, “And, although Blueprint includes nothing about race, the implications for ‘racial justice’ are just as colossal.” Harden has been merciless in her response to behavior geneticists whose disciplinary salesmanship—and perhaps worse—inadvertently indulges the extreme right. In her own review of Plomin’s book, she wrote, “Insisting that DNA matters is scientifically accurate; insisting that it is the only thing that matters is scientifically outlandish.” ​(Plomin told me that Harden misrepresented his intent. He added, “Good luck to Paige in convincing people who are engaged in the culture wars about this middle path she’s suggesting. . . . My view is it isn’t worth confronting people and arguing with them.”)

With the first review of Harden’s book, these dynamics played out on cue. Razib Khan, a conservative science blogger identified with the “human biodiversity” movement, wrote that he admired her presentation of the science but was put off by the book’s politics; though he notes that a colleague of his once heard Harden described as “Charles Murray in a skirt,” he clearly thinks the honorific was misplaced. “Alas, if you do not come to this work with Harden’s commitment to social justice, much of the non-scientific content will strike you as misguided, gratuitous and at times even unfair.” This did not prevent some on the Twitter left from expressing immediate disgust. Kevin Bird, who describes himself in his Twitter bio as a “radical scientist,” tweeted, “Personally, I wouldn’t be very happy if a race science guy thought my book was good.” Harden sighed when she recounted the exchange: “It’s always from both flanks. It felt like another miniature version of Harris on one side and Darity on the other.”

A LOOOOONG Ways To Go Sonny Boy, But At Least He's Barking In The Vicinity Of A Tree!

medium |  One of the clear indicators of non-equilibrium processes that scientists have studied in single celled organisms is a loss of what is called detailed balance. Detailed balance is simply the sense that time is neither running forwards or backwards. In other words, a process is just as likely to move from one state in phase space to another as back again.

Thus, the trajectories through phase space that exemplify non-equilibria are those that are distinctly future oriented. They have a memory of past, and they are irreversible or nearly so. And these are also what life depends upon.

Life is able to keep non-equilibrium processes in check however. When it gets out of control, you get cancer, unconstrained growth and out of control metabolic properties. It is as if life is trying to ride a bike down a steep path and cancer is when the bike starts to careen out of control down the slope. Because an out of control process will lead to complete disorder eventually, a tangled mess at the bottom where equilibrium, i.e., death, occurs, life must maintain itself at the brink between chaos and order, between a fast decent to one equilibrium and a stand still at another.

Despite all its vast array, perhaps this definition of life as non-equilibrium processes that maintain high probability trajectories in phase space while maintaining order for a long time will provide, if not a definition, at least a measure of how alive something is. Certainly passing on genetic encoding might be included for it is another measure of persistence.

Such an achievement might also have applications. It could provide us insight into how to build technology that is more “alive” and thus able to repair itself and stop from degrading in hostile environments. This could be useful for biotechnology including medical implants. It could also have applications for space based technologies, especially those that are designed to visit distant planets and act autonomously in unknown environments. The future may not be one of steel and glass and obviously artificial machines but one where biology meets technology and technology borrows the best of what it means to be alive in order to sustain itself. What a fascinating world that would be.

U.K. Ministry Of Defense: Human Augmentation Dawn Of A New Paradigm

gov.uk  |   The ability to enhance one’s physical, psychological or social capability has been a source of power throughout history, and warfare is the epitome of this dynamic.  The paradox of war is that humans are central to its conduct but are also the weakest link.  We want ‘war fighters’ – whether they be cyber specialists, drone pilots or infantry soldiers – to be stronger, faster, more intelligent, more resilient and more mobile to overcome the environment and the adversary.  We have designed increasingly complex technologies to enhance lethality, survivability and mobility.  As technology has become more sophisticated our thinking has become more focused on the machine rather than the person, but this needs to change if we are going to be effective in the future. 

Recent advances in the life sciences and related technologies have led to the emergence of the interdisciplinary field known as human augmentation which has the potential to disrupt every aspect of our lives.  The interdependencies and potential implications of human augmentation are so vast and complex that it is difficult to make sense of what it means for the future of society and Defence.  The aim of this strategic implications project is to take the first step in making sense of these potential changes to human capabilities.  It offers a conceptual model for thinking about human augmentation, its future direction and identifies key implications for Defence and its stakeholders.

Human augmentation will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behaviour and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines.  Future wars will be won, not by those with the most advanced technology, but by those who can most effectively integrate the unique capabilities of both people and machines.  The importance of human-machine teaming is widely acknowledged but it has been viewed from a techno-centric perspective.  Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle.

Thinking of the person as a platform and understanding our people at an individual level is fundamental to successful human augmentation.  Industrial Age warfare saw people as interchangeable components of military units or the material with which to operate the platforms – vehicles, aircraft and ships.  These platforms are routinely monitored and analysed but it is remarkable that our ability to understand our most critical capability – the human – is so under-researched.  Successful application of human augmentation demands a more sophisticated approach to understanding our people and their capabilities.  Defining the key elements of the ‘human platform’ – physical, psychological and social – provides a conceptual baseline to enable a multidisciplinary conversation.  

Physical performance is the capability to affect the physical environment and move within it.  Strength, dexterity, speed and endurance are key components and there is
often a trade-off between them.

Psychological performance comprises cognition, emotion and motivation.  Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses.  It includes processes such as attention, the formation of knowledge, long-term and working memory, reasoning, problem solving and decision-making.  Emotion describes the subjective human experience and is closely linked with motivation, which is the force that energises, activates and directs behaviour.

Social performance is the ability to perceive oneself as part of a group and the  readiness to act as part of the team.  It is founded on self-awareness and the ability to understand the behaviour of others.  It is tightly linked to communication skills, collaboration and trust.  The core tenet of social performance is group cohesion.

Human augmentation is not a shortcut – getting the basics of human physiology, biochemistry and psychology right is a prerequisite to human augmentation and will become more important in the future.  Research into human augmentation has shone a stark light on how little we know about how to do the basics well.  We need to do more to understand the precise effects of nutrition, sleep and hydration, and their relationship with other areas of the body to realise significant, yet untapped potential.  Technology that improves monitoring will make it possible to individually optimise sleep, nutrition and other factors to deliver transformational gains across an organisation at relatively low cost and limited ethical risk.

Human augmentation is not just tomorrow’s business, there are short-term and  long-term opportunities that require engagement today.  The following matrix illustrates the technical maturity and the magnitude of policy considerations of human augmentation technologies.  It shows that there are technologies that could be integrated today with manageable policy considerations.  The most transformative technologies (for example, genetics and brain interfaces) currently sit at a low level of technological maturity but we must be prepared for this to change quickly.  Bioinformatics and collection and analytics (encompassing sensors, artificial intelligence-enabled processing) are particularly important enablers for other human augmentation technologies and warrant focused research and development attention.

The Tangled History Of Mr.NA Neo-Vaccinoidal Therapeutics

nature |  By the late 2000s, several big pharmaceutical companies were entering the mRNA field. In 2008, for example, both Novartis and Shire established mRNA research units — the former (led by Geall) focused on vaccines, the latter (led by Heartlein) on therapeutics. BioNTech launched that year, and other start-ups soon entered the fray, bolstered by a 2012 decision by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to start funding industry researchers to study RNA vaccines and drugs. Moderna was one of the companies that built on this work and, by 2015, it had raised more than $1 billion on the promise of harnessing mRNA to induce cells in the body to make their own medicines — thereby fixing diseases caused by missing or defective proteins. When that plan faltered, Moderna, led by chief executive Stéphane Bancel, chose to prioritize a less ambitious target: making vaccines.

That initially disappointed many investors and onlookers, because a vaccine platform seemed to be less transformative and lucrative. By the beginning of 2020, Moderna had advanced nine mRNA vaccine candidates for infectious diseases into people for testing. None was a slam-dunk success. Just one had progressed to a larger-phase trial.

But when COVID-19 struck, Moderna was quick off the mark, creating a prototype vaccine within days of the virus’s genome sequence becoming available online. The company then collaborated with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to conduct mouse studies and launch human trials, all within less than ten weeks.

BioNTech, too, took an all-hands-on-deck approach. In March 2020, it partnered with New York-based drug company Pfizer, and clinical trials then moved at a record pace, going from first-in-human testing to emergency approval in less than eight months.

Both authorized vaccines use modified mRNA formulated in LNPs. Both also contain sequences that encode a form of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that adopts a shape more amenable to inducing protective immunity. Many experts say that the protein tweak, devised by NIAID vaccinologist Barney Graham and structural biologists Jason McLellan at the University of Texas at Austin and Andrew Ward at Scripps, is also a prize-worthy contribution, albeit one that is specific to coronavirus vaccines, not mRNA vaccination as a general platform.

Some of the furore in discussions of credit for mRNA discoveries relates to who holds lucrative patents. But much of the foundational intellectual property dates back to claims made in 1989 by Felgner, Malone and their colleagues at Vical (and in 1990 by Liljeström). These had only a 17-year term from the date of issue and so are now in the public domain.

Even the Karikó–Weissman patents, licensed to Cellscript and filed in 2006, will expire in the next five years. Industry insiders say this means that it will soon become very hard to patent broad claims about delivering mRNAs in lipid nanoparticles, although companies can reasonably patent particular sequences of mRNA — a form of the spike protein, say — or proprietary lipid formulations.

Firms are trying. Moderna, the dominant player in the mRNA vaccine field, which has experimental shots in clinical testing for influenza, cytomegalovirus and a range of other infectious diseases, got two patents last year covering the broad use of mRNA to produce secreted proteins. But multiple industry insiders told Nature they think these could be challengeable.

“We don’t feel there’s a lot that is patentable, and certainly not enforceable,” says Eric Marcusson, chief scientific officer of Providence Therapeutics, an mRNA vaccines company in Calgary, Canada.

 

Large-Scale Multiplex Genome Engineering

c-net |  You've heard of startups building computer chips, delivery drones and video chat apps. One called Colossal has a different goal: bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction by 2027 using CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing technology.

The plan isn't to re-create true woolly mammoths, but rather to bring their cold-adapted genetic traits, which include small ears and more body fat, to their elephant cousins, creating a hybrid that can wander the tundra where mammoths haven't been seen for 10,000 years. Colossal's co-founders are Chief Executive Ben Lamm, who started five companies before this, and George Church, a Harvard Medical School professor with deep CRISPR expertise. 

"Our true North Star is a successful restoration of the woolly mammoth, but also its successful rewilding into interbreeding herds in the Arctic," Lamm said. "We're now focusing on having our first calves in the next four to six years."

It's an interesting illustration of an imperative sweeping the tech world: Don't just make money, help the planet, too. Tesla's mission is to electrify transport to get rid of fossil fuels that hurt Earth. Bolt Threads wants to replace leather with a fungal fiber-based equivalent that's easier on the environment than animal agriculture. Colossal hopes its work will draw attention to biodiversity problems and ultimately help fix them.

Colossal has raised $15 million so far, led by investment firm Tulco. The startup's 19 employees work at its Dallas headquarters and in offices in Boston and Austin, Texas, and it's using its funds to hire more.

Artificial wombs and other technology spinoffs

Church said he expects spinoffs from the company's biotechnology and genetics work.

"The pipeline of large scale genome engineering techniques can be applied to many other applications beyond de-extinction, and therefore [are] most promising for commercialization," he said.

One technology ripe for commercialization is multiplex genome engineering, a technique Church helped develop that speeds genetic editing by making multiple changes to DNA at once.

Colossal also hopes to develop artificial wombs to grow its mammoth embryos. Just growing 10 woolly mammoths with surrogate elephant mothers isn't enough to get to the large-scale herds the company envisions.

At the foundation of Colossal's work is CRISPR. This technology, adapted from a method bacteria evolved to identify attacking viruses and chop up their DNA, is now a mainstay of genetic engineering, and Church has been involved since CRISPR's earliest days.

There are other ways Colossal hopes to help. Its gene editing technology could artificially add genetic diversity to species with only small surviving populations, Lamm said.

The Boutique Left Strikes Again..., (Thirsty BLM Biddies Big Mad Cause No Met Gala Invitation)

dailymail |   A huge crowd of protesters have gathered outside the 2021 Met Gala in Manhattan just as a host of A-listers arrive for the biggest night in the fashion calendar. 

Multiple arrest have been made as dozens of NYPD officers clashed with the BLM protesters outside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday. 

Police can be heard yelling at demonstrators lining the streets to 'Move back!' in cellphone footage of the event, while the protesters chant 'Black Lives Matter'. 

'The NYPD has a total financial allocation of $11 billion per year. This money goes towards racist policing that destroys Black and brown communities while people who are struggling do not get the resources they need. CARE, not COPS, is the answer,' the flyer read. 

It is still unclear how many protestors were arrested. 

The gala's theme this year is a celebration of the Costume Institute’s newest exhibition, 'In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.' The exhibit will open to the public in the Anna Wintour Costume Center on September 18th.   

The gala usually takes place on the first Monday in May, but was delayed due to Covid-19 fears until tonight. The 2020 event was cancelled entirely due to the pandemic.   

Antoinette Of Color Roasted For Stunting At The Met Gala...,

“We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met ... we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

— AOC at #MetGala pic.twitter.com/UZj22DjMl3

— The Recount (@therecount) September 14, 2021

greenwald  |  As AOC herself put it with her trademarked class consciousness, the very fact that she can attend the Met Gala while you cannot is proof of the potency of the left-wing movement she leads. Standing next to Aurora James, the designer of her dress, AOC revealed the underlying clandestine strategy of her subversive attendance: “We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met ... we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

In a separate exposition, AOC explained that her appearance at the Met Gala was such a watershed moment for working-class politics because it is vital that she not be confined to dreary poor and lower-middle class venues when spreading her fist-raising rebellion. Instead, she must endure the burden of carrying her cause to the world's richest and most privileged elite and the exclusive salons they occupy. Imagine being so unimaginative and myopic as to be unable to recognize and be grateful for AOC's inventive praxis.

The jealousy-driven attacks on AOC by her cultural inferiors were almost certainly driven by various forms of white supremacy, misogyny and colonialism, as AOC said of those who criticized her in 2018 for wearing an expensive designer dress (“women like me aren’t supposed to run for office”) as well as when she denounced the dismissive and condescending attitudes toward the Squad from Nancy Pelosi (“Nancy Pelosi has been ‘singling out’ freshman congresswomen of color”). Worse, Monday night's traumatic bullying of AOC obscured the far more important fact that, yet again, we saw elites prancing around in the middle of a pandemic maskless, while those paid hourly wages to serve them or desperately try to snap a photo of them were required to keep their pointless faces covered with cloth at all times.

COVID rules are now so convoluted that liberals are able to defend their leaders’ actions while not even pretending to make sense from a scientific or rational perspective. Many defended Newsom and Obama's maskless partying on the ground that it was all “outdoors,” even though both were actually inside tents and people had been shamed for months for taking their kids to deserted beaches rather than keeping them locked away at home. Liberals argue that it is fine for elites at Obama's party and the Met Gala to remain maskless since they are vaccinated, even as they defend the CDC's new mask directives for vaccinated people based on the view that vaccinated people still dangerously transmit the Delta variant to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. They will claim that it is fine for rich Democratic donors at Pelosi's party to sit on top of one other maskless because they are eating even though the video shows they have no food in front of them (they are waiting for the masked servants of color to bring their food) and even though shoveling food into one's open mouth does not actually create a wall of immunity against transmission of the virus from one's open-mouthed table neighbors. The Met Gala's red carpet is said to be “outdoors” even though it is surrounded by tent walls and other structures, and still leaving the question of why workers need to be masked in the same area.

But all of this stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic. One can locate in all of this jumbled and always-shifting rationale various forms of control, shaming, stigma and hierarchy, while The Science™ is nowhere to be found.

Ain't Nobody But The Designer Talm'bout Antoinette Of Color's Chick Fil-A Looking Dress...,

vanityfair  |  Everyone is talking about what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wearing—again. The New York Congresswoman donned a white gown for the Met gala on Monday night that read, “Tax the Rich” in red type. And, as often happens when AOC puts a finger on the cultural scale, everyone from Trumpworld zealots to New York Times writers chimed in to comment on it. 

“Cost per Ticket: $30,000,” tweeted Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “Virtue signaling to your base while partying—without a mask—with the people you claim to hate: Priceless.” Donald Trump Jr. struck a similar note, writing, “What makes @AOC a bigger fraud: the “tax the rich” dress while she’s hanging out with a bunch of wealthy leftwing elites or the lack of masks?” Tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the New York Post chimed in. “America’s No.1 champagne socialist,” read the headline of a Daily Mail piece claiming that Ocasio-Cortez “wanted to enjoy the limelight while trying to pass it off as a political protest.” 

Times fashion director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman wrote that “attending the $35,000-a-ticket” event in such a dress “is a complicated proposition,” adding in a follow-up tweet, “Just seems she might have wanted that money used for something other than an elite party ticket.” (Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s similarly statement-making dress prompted an entirely different reaction from Friedman.) 

“There’s no way I’d be doing this if it wasn’t with a woman of color and with the intent to grow the table and empower women that look like me,” she said in a press release circulated by a communications firm representing James. “Despite being held in New York City, the culture of the Met Gala is everything but. NYC is often synonymous with inclusivity, inviting millions of people from different walks of life to call this city home. The Met Gala, on the other hand, is seen as elite and inaccessible. I’m attending today because I want to change just that and spotlight women of color who are often not included during events like these.”

Ron Klain Was Supposed To Mastermind The Biden Pandemic Response...,

nakedcapitalism |  I see two themes running through his speech. The first is he is betting the house on vaccines. Forget masks, forget social-distancing, etc., just everybody has to get a vaccine. And I suspect that the reason why is the weakness of the Professional Managerial Class – it is measurable. Having people wear masks and other social measures is a bit fuzzy to get a handle on. But with vaccines, it is easy. You can put that info into an Excel chart as in ‘unvaccinated’, ‘first shot’, ‘second shot’, and of course a new row soon called ‘booster shot’. You can analyze those hard figures, play with them, break them down by region, age group, etc. – all the sorts of things that managers love to do. Mask-wearing? How do you measure that? Dunno. This PMC viewpoint is also why he did not thank all the doctors, nurses, first responders, etc in his speech like he should have. Managers want it to be all about them and not to share the credit.

 

The second theme is that he has decided to go full divisive. He has set up those unvaccinated to be the fall-guy for all that goes wrong with America dealing with the pandemic. If things blow up, it is not the fault of Biden and his regime – it is all the fault of the unvaccinated. The pandemic is still raging next year? It is all their fault. A new variant turns up that blows past these vaccines? It is still the fault of the unvaccinated. It is a signal and a blank cheque to turn loose the attack dogs on them by all right-thinking people. They are to be trolled and harassed and are to be banned from restaurants, parks, gas stations until they get vaccinated. You could never call Biden a Unity President. And when he says his plan is ‘protecting our economic recovery’ you wonder whose economy he is actually talking about. But keeping the schools open will only ensure that the pandemic still spreads as they will be the new vector for virus spread. Suffer the little children indeed.

 

As for why all this was not done back in January or July, it is simple. They never had a plan going into government. I have made the point before that even though the US was in the middle of a world-wide pandemic last year with bodies stacking up, there was no task force set up to work out what to do before he went into the Presidency as he had task forces set up for other matters. Think about that. The pandemic undermined the Trump Presidency and without it, Trump would probably still be President. But yet it was not thought worthy enough a subject to form a distinct task force by Biden and the Democrats. 

 

I’m not sure about that; see STAT here. I believe the thinking was that Mr. Ebola, Ron Klain, was tapped as Biden’s chief-of-staff exactly because of his presumed expertise in managing pandemics. Either Klain was over-rated, or he couldn’t manage Biden (meaning he was over-rated in a different way).  

Nice License You've Got There Doc, Be A Shame If Something Happened To It....,

tabletmag  |  Honest, continuous questioning and exploration of alternative paths are indispensable for good science. In the authoritarian (as opposed to participatory) version of public health, these activities were seen as treason and desertion. The dominant narrative became that “we are at war.” When at war, everyone has to follow orders. If a platoon is ordered to go right and some soldiers explore maneuvering to the left, they are shot as deserters. Scientific skepticism had to be shot, no questions asked. The orders were clear. 

Who gave these orders? Who decided that his or her opinion, expertise, and conflicts should be in charge? It was not a single person, not a crazy general or a despicable politician or a dictator, even if political interference in science did happen—massively so. It was all of us, a conglomerate that has no name and no face: a mesh and mess of half-cooked evidence; frenzied and partisan media promoting parachute journalism and pack coverage; the proliferation of pseudonymous and eponymous social media personas which led even serious scientists to become unrestrained, wild-beast avatars of themselves, spitting massive quantities of inanity and nonsense; poorly regulated industry and technology companies flexing their brain and marketing power; and common people afflicted by the protracted crisis. All swim in a mixture of some good intentions, some excellent thinking, and some splendid scientific successes, but also of conflicts, political polarization, fear, panic, hatred, divisiveness, fake news, censorship, inequalities, racism, and chronic and acute societal dysfunction.

Heated but healthy scientific debates are welcome. Serious critics are our greatest benefactors. John Tukey once said that the collective noun for a group of statisticians is a quarrel. This applies to other scientists, too. But “we are at war” led to a step beyond: This is a dirty war, one without dignity. Opponents were threatened, abused, and bullied by cancel culture campaigns in social media, hit stories in mainstream media, and bestsellers written by zealots. Statements were distorted, turned into straw men, and ridiculed. Wikipedia pages were vandalized. Reputations were systematically devastated and destroyed. Many brilliant scientists were abused and received threats during the pandemic, intended to make them and their families miserable.

Anonymous and pseudonymous abuse has a chilling effect; it is worse when the people doing the abusing are eponymous and respectable. The only viable responses to bigotry and hypocrisy are kindness, civility, empathy, and dignity. However, barring in-person communication, virtual living and social media in social isolation are poor conveyors of these virtues.

Politics had a deleterious influence on pandemic science. Anything any apolitical scientist said or wrote could be weaponized for political agendas. Tying public health interventions like masks and vaccines to a faction, political or otherwise, satisfies those devoted to that faction, but infuriates the opposing faction. This process undermines the wider adoption required for such interventions to be effective. Politics dressed up as public health not only injured science. It also shot down participatory public health where people are empowered, rather than obligated and humiliated.

A scientist cannot and should not try to change his or her data and inferences based on the current doctrine of political parties or the reading du jour of the social media thermometer. In an environment where traditional political divisions between left and right no longer seem to make much sense, data, sentences, and interpretations are taken out of context and weaponized. The same apolitical scientist could be attacked by left-wing commentators in one place and by alt-right commentators in another. Many excellent scientists have had to silence themselves in this chaos. Their self-censorship has been a major loss for scientific investigation and the public health effort. My heroes are the many well-intentioned scientists who were abused, smeared, and threatened during the pandemic. I respect all of them and suffer for what they went through, regardless of whether their scientific positions agreed or disagreed with mine. I suffer for and cherish even more those whose positions disagreed with mine.

 

There was absolutely no conspiracy or preplanning behind this hypercharged evolution. Simply, in times of crisis, the powerful thrive and the weak become more disadvantaged. Amid pandemic confusion, the powerful and the conflicted became more powerful and more conflicted, while millions of disadvantaged people have died and billions suffered.

I worry that science and its norms have shared the fate of the disadvantaged. It is a pity, because science can still help everyone. Science remains the best thing that can happen to humans, provided it can be both tolerant and tolerated.

Politics Pretending To Be Science

Evidence says it’s fantasy implying (((1] Politics))) and ((( 2] “The Science”))) are anything but:
(((2]))) follows (((1]))).

Those were political decisions to:

1] Deem vaccination as The Final Solution, back on Jan. 15, 2020 as “worth the risk” — over and above: equal, or more resource allocation to prevention and cure.

1a] Political decision to deem “it is out of the question” to provide any Emergency Use Authorization for treatments; while before-the-fact promising those to Moderna and Pfizer neo-vaccinoid manufacturers.

2] political decision to throw billions of dollars — not at prevention and cure, rather: billions and billions creating experimental vaccines.

3] political decisions to block and malign prevention and cure, to boot.

4] political decision to “warp speed” neo-vaccinoid.

5] political decision to block, using all means, treatments.

5a] political decision to censor and block the many warnings from spring 2020 forward, ongoing and continuing: potential dangerous consequences of mass neo-vaccinoid during pandemic, such as mutations run amok, deaths, injuries, permanent disabilities.

6] political decision to block treatment, to tell the sick, already in hospital: go home until you are so ill you need hospitalization; and provide the sick ZERO treatment.

And don’t say these things didn’t happen.

7] political decision to absolve neo-vaccinoid manufacturers of all liability

8] political decision to deny superior herd immunity, and deem neo-vaccinoid immunity superior

9] political decision to bully health care providers to shut your mouths and keep them shut about adverse neo-vaccinoid effects, once they were rolled out in USA circa mid December, 2020. To shut up or else.

And don’t say this is not happening, and continues.

10] Political decisions to use narrative: covid infections bad in 2020; covid infections OK in 2021 — provided you got neo-vaccinoided.

Don’t say this isn’t happening.

11] Political decision for Biden to call Xi and Putin tyrants while extra-constitutionally attempt to mandate businesses make their workers be neo-vaccinoided, or else.

12] political decision to have so-called covid tests run at 35+ cycles knowing full well results from this are garbage. . .

13] political decision to lower this cycling when the inevitable breakthrough cases began to proliferate

13a] political decision to hide data on breakthrough cases

14] political decision to count a death a ‘covid death’ on a death certificate without evidence that it be a death DUE TO covid

15] thus a political decision to inflate death counts, irrespective of “the science” and absent evidence [just as 35+ threshold political decision to inflate case counts, irrespective of science].

16] political decision to hide data on neo-vaccinoid injuries, deaths, to American public

17] political decision to threaten doctors that use and prescribe IVM and chloroquines to their patients; and now to ban doctors from treating their patients.

Don’t say these things did not happen.

18] political decision to claim Vaccine Effectiveness = 95% for mRNA shots.

19] political decision to hide the actual VE [approaching VE=ZERO].

20] political decision to deploy military grade propaganda pushing the political decisions and wrap them in veneer of “The Science.”

21] political decision to ban children from schools, and now mask them, and now neo-vaccinoid them despite fact: risks from these shots far far far outweigh benefits

It is one thing for us old folk to be worried for our own health and security and the like.

Another entirely to throw our kids to the wolves, knowing full well we are throwing them to the wolves.

And it was a political decision NOT TO mandate any neo-vaccinoid trials on the short term and long term effects of covid neo-vaccinoid on pregnant women! This is a political and a criminal decision, perhaps.

We have no idea the risks on this essential dimension; no trials on pregnant women [the CDC terminology is “pregnant persons”].

And no one put a gun to Fauci’s head when he stated: an attack on me is an attack on science.

This very sick man in charge of COVID USA.

No one put a gun to Walensky’s head when she stated: we have hope, we don’t have data.

She, in charge of CDC?!?!

“John Tukey once said that the collective noun for a group of statisticians is a quarrel. This applies to other scientists, too.”

Among the most eminent and knowledgeable MD and scientist in USA [and among the earliest in 2020 who was censored] recently discussed his take on the perfidy: the political decisions . . . and these, from and because which: men like him were attacked without reason. He dared critique the narratives created, the political narratives dressed up as science:

“But ‘we are at war’ led to a step beyond: This is a dirty war, one without dignity. Opponents were threatened, abused, and bullied by cancel culture campaigns in social media, hit stories in mainstream media, and bestsellers written by zealots. . . .Wikipedia pages were vandalized. Reputations were systematically devastated and destroyed. Many brilliant scientists were abused and received threats during the pandemic, intended to make them and their families miserable. . . .Politics dressed up as public health not only injured science. It also shot down participatory public health where people are empowered, rather than obligated and humiliated.”

Joy Ann Reid Big Clowned Yesterday..., Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah..., I'm Loving It!!!

3 lies in a row from huge news platforms. I cited my young child as why I didn’t want to travel. But notice how NONE of them mentioned that? Ask yourself why that was. pic.twitter.com/vQjorbKCCO

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021

 

The two white men sittin there nodding their heads cuz this uncle tomiana doing the work chile. How sad. https://t.co/4UviONyTHy

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021

AOC La Polla Loca...,

Israeli Health Minister: Vaccine Passports For Compliance And Coercion - Not Public Health

NEW - Israeli Ministry of Health (right) recorded saying to the Minister of Interior (left) "there is no medical or epidemiological justification for the Covid passport, it is only intended to pressure the unvaccinated to vaccinate".pic.twitter.com/c3oAOpZdEE

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 13, 2021

mako.co.il |  Anger among restaurateurs and pool operators following Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz's recording: In a recording released last night (Sunday) in the "Main Edition", the minister admitted that the green label is in some cases intended to put pressure on vaccine opponents, and is not always based on epidemiological motive. Restaurateurs and pool owners, to whom Horowitz specifically referred, claim to have known all along that they serve as "Pfizer sales promotions," and that there is no other reason to ban outdoor seating or the use of public pools. Some parents and medical officials have also expressed opposition to the use of the green label, especially on children.

"We were not surprised by the Health Minister's statement last night, it is quite clear to us that the Israeli government has made us Pfizer's sales promoters," Shai Berman, CEO of the Restaurant Association, told N12. Tens of percent in redemptions. "Unfortunately, the Israeli government has chosen to dump its water on us and we expect a constitutional committee to convene tomorrow to immediately repeal the green label, at least in everything related to outer spaces, for which there is no epidemiological basis for limiting a green label."

Nir Oz, chairman of the organization of swimming pools and sports centers, also did not like what he heard. "There is no doubt that we have become the executive arm of the Ministry of Health and the enforcement arm of the Israel Police," Oz claimed. We need to check who is not vaccinated and send home. We have become the black workers of law enforcement. "

"We are unable to raise our heads. And the health minister's call has revealed the truth we have been shouting about for months. The swimming pools and sports centers have been slammed and collapsed one by one in vain. It is already clear that there are no
infections in swimming pools."

There are those who understand Horowitz's rationale - but even that is not enough

Although business owners from other industries understood the importance of the green label in its role as a promoter of immunization, they argued that one way or another they should make sure that they deserve the appropriate compensation for any harm to activity. "As someone who has vaccinated myself, I believe that the solution to the corona crisis lies in vaccines, so I understand the rationale behind the Minister of Health's decision," Adv. Roi Cohen, president of Lahav, the Chamber of Independent and Business Organizations in Israel, told N12.

"At the same time, it should be understood that any such decision has a heavy economic significance that falls mainly on the self-employed and business owners in Israel. "The heat of summer and the holidays. Therefore, Lahav's demand on all 64 member organizations is to price any restriction that harms the business sector. Compensation for every character."

Yaron Sela, from the gym organization, added: "The health and fitness industry has long depended between heaven and earth in an impossible situation of uncertainty. Blaming one government office or another is irrelevant, the Corona plague is an ongoing event and the economic struggle must receive the attention of the government. "Just like the health deal. I met with Finance Minister Lieberman, who understands the incident. I am convinced that he will act correctly for the benefit of businesses that are harmed over time due to the corona crisis."

Parents angry: "Delusional to require children to be tested every day"

Even in the medical world there are those who claim that if the green mark is intended to increase immunization, there is no reason to apply it to children aged 12-3, who cannot be vaccinated and are required to perform corona tests daily. "The green mark is unnecessary. There is no other country in the world that requires a green mark in schools from the age of three onwards. This is a phenomenon that does not exist and is completely absurd," Prof. Shoshi Altuvia, a researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the Hebrew University and Hadassah Ein School of Medicine, told N12. -vineyard.

"We tell those who carry the green label that they are ostensibly protected, while in practice there is no protection and infection continues even among the vaccinated. This is not the practice all over the world and this is not a democratic state. On the move - the green mark today is meaningless and misses the mark. "

The current situation is particularly troubling for parents who are forced to check on their children frequently. Eric Kaplan, a father of four and chairman of the parents' leadership in Jerusalem, told N12: "If the purpose of the green label is to encourage immunization, it's a bit delusional that children of these ages are required to be tested every day. "Tests are important, which cannot be ignored, but ways must be found to enable as normal a life as possible."

Unlike Cornpop And lil'Fauci, Spectrum Health Is Listening To The Unvaccinated...,

detroitnews |  Spectrum Health will grant temporary exemptions from its employee vaccine mandate to individuals who can prove they have naturally acquired immunity to COVID-19. 

The west Michigan hospital system, which is in the process of merging with Southfield-based Beaumont Health, will grant an exemption to those who have a positive PCR or antigen test for COVID-19 plus a positive antibody test from within the past three months, the health system said in a statement Thursday.

The exemption, the first for a major health system in Michigan, was developed "as new research has emerged" on natural immunity.

"While we still recommend vaccination for people with prior COVID-19 infection, according to this new research, there is increasing evidence that natural infection affords protection from COVID-19 reinfection and severe symptoms for a period of time," the statement said. "Current studies are not clear on how long natural immunity protects from reinfection."

The policy could be updated if future evidence shows naturally acquired protection is waning or longer lasting, or if there is a validated antibody test result showing immunity, the statement said.

Spectrum announced in late July that it would require the COVID-19 vaccine within eight weeks of the Food and Drug Administration approving a vaccine, but noted it would consider some exemptions.

Those exemptions include religious exemptions and medical exemptions determined by a medical exemption committee. The hospital system's medial exemption committee recommended the health system allow for a temporary exemption for naturally acquired immunity based on available research, the statement said.

Time For Team Biden To Listen To The UnVaccinated

This thread from Dr. Strangetweet made this editor angry cry.

Going through the history of what Americans have done in the name of public health and why so many of us may not be too hip on any more mandates or rules or regulations to ‘protect us’ because we’re apparently too stupid to protect ourselves is absolutely infuriating.

You ever been so mad you cried?

Take a look:

We.

All.

Stayed.

Home.

BOOM.

Yup.

Awww yes, because apparently, you can’t catch COVID if you’re protesting or looting. The virus is super woke and stuff.

Fauci has changed his mind and his guidance more than anyone.

It didn’t work.

This this this!

YUP. WE FEEL THIS.

Maybe Team Biden should try listening to the ‘unvaccinated’ for once.

Lewis County Hospital To Stop Delivering Babies Because Forced Vaccination Caused 20 Nurses To Resign

Hospital administrators are firing nurses and screaming at the same time that hospitals are overflowing with unvaccinated patients? THIS clearly indicates a malevolent agenda to me.

Hospitals getting overwhelmed is a red herring.

Last year, hospitals and pubic health agencies stood up hundreds of beds at the Javits Center in weeks.

No one made use of any of this excess capacity.

It is not difficult to add emergency capacity in hotels, in parking lots, convention centers and elsewhere.

The excess capacity capability was amply demonstrated in 2020.

Since the preponderance of hospitalizations are the old and the sick, if there is to be a mandatory vaccination program it should be targetted toward the old and the sick.

Instead of the hundreds of billions going to feed the market cap of Big Pharma - maybe Cornpop could spend a fraction on treatments. It makes no sense to waste billions on jabs for those unlikely to land in the hospitals - like working people below the age of 50 and in reasonably good health.

Where hospitals are overwhelmed they are overwhelmed because they are designed to run ICU beds at maximum capacity. It has ALWAYS been common for ICUs to be “overrun “ at times. Having had parents who were old and sickly for years, I have stood in many a hallway with a parent on a stretcher waiting for a bed to open in the ICU.

Secondly, a hospital can only claim an open bed if that hospital has enough staff to use it. An ICU may have 30 beds and 18 patients, but cannot claim to have 12 open beds if the staff is not there to service those 12 beds. So that 19th patient is declined, and sent somewhere else. That 30 bed ICU is “full” at 18.

In my major medical city, we have seen the opening of 4 large, new hospitals in the last 5 years. What do you think that does to staffing in the older hospitals? This country has had a nursing shortage since my mom was a nurse in the 1970s. We always need more.

Every nurse knows that if he or she isn’t happy, there are 5 facilities begging for her services. I get postcards daily for offers in local hospitals, facilities, often offering thousands of dollars to sign on. It’s become a very transient career.

In the facility I work, the ONLY staff and residents that have tested positive for covid in the last 8 to 10 weeks are “fully vaccinated”. And the “unvaccinated” are tested 2 times a week. The “pandemic of the unvaccinated “ is a bald faced lie.

People need to be careful when they listen to “statistics” and realize that they are not always being told the whole picture. There is often a reason for that, a bigger agenda is at play.