The Research
and Technology Protection Program wants everyone to know that aliens ARE
real. The UFO’s on FLIR are totally NOT a subsurface maritime-launched
UAV. The US DOESN'T have those, but if they did, the Navy might want to
introduce them without
breaking the law on special access programs. Hypothetically, such limited hangouts could force adversaries to
re-think their combat doctrine, potentially delaying future offensives in the South
China Sea. There is nothing like spending a ton on wunderwaffen to
plant a kernel of doubt in your adversaries, and convince yourself that conflict is anything but a crapshoot.
The central dogma of molecular biology is “DNA makes RNA makes proteins" but a quick read
of this paper says different, and, the data are probably good. Moreover, Richard Young and Rudolf Jaenisch have been
pioneers in the later phase of modern molecular biology. Bottomline, you'd have to be a total fooking fool to get injected with any of that mRNA therapeutic goop. Strongly recommend downloading the pdf as the technical Karenwaffen is shitting its anti-vax implication panties about now and agitating for censorship of the paper.
biorxiv | Prolonged
SARS-CoV-2 RNA shedding and recurrence of PCR-positive tests have been
widely reported in patients after recovery, yet these patients most
commonly are non-infectious1–14.
Here we investigated the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs can be
reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome and that
transcription of the integrated sequences might account for PCR-positive
tests. In support of this hypothesis, we found chimeric transcripts
consisting of viral fused to cellular sequences in published data sets
of SARS-CoV-2 infected cultured cells and primary cells of patients,
consistent with the transcription of viral sequences integrated into the
genome. To experimentally corroborate the possibility of viral
retro-integration, we describe evidence that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs can be
reverse transcribed in human cells by reverse transcriptase (RT) from
LINE-1 elements or by HIV-1 RT, and that these DNA sequences can be
integrated into the cell genome and subsequently be transcribed. Human
endogenous LINE-1 expression was induced upon SARS-CoV-2 infection or by
cytokine exposure in cultured cells, suggesting a molecular mechanism
for SARS-CoV-2 retro-integration in patients. This novel feature of
SARS-CoV-2 infection may explain why patients can continue to produce
viral RNA after recovery and suggests a new aspect of RNA virus
replication.
Introduction
Continuous
or recurrent positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests have been reported in
patients weeks or months after recovery from an initial infection1–14. Although bona fide re-infection of SARS-CoV-2 after recovery has been reported lately15,
cohort-based studies with strict quarantine on subjects recovered from
COVID-19 suggested “re-positive” cases were not caused by re-infection16,17. Furthermore, no replication-competent virus was isolated or spread from these PCR-positive patients1–3,5,6,12.
The cause for such prolonged and recurrent viral RNA production is
unknown. As positive-stranded RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 and other
beta-coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS employ an RNA-dependent
RNA polymerase to replicate their genomic RNA and transcribe their
sub-genomic RNAs18–20.
One possibility is that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs could be reverse-transcribed
and integrated into the human genome, and transcription of the
integrated DNA copies could be responsible for positive PCR tests.
Endogenous
reverse transcriptase (RT) activity has been observed in human cells,
and the products of reverse transcription have been shown to become
integrated into the genome21,22. For example, APP
transcripts have been shown to be reverse-transcribed by endogenous RT,
with resultant APP fragments integrated into the genome of neurons and
transcribed22.
Human LINE-1 elements (~17% of the human genome), a type of autonomous
retrotransposons, are a potential source of endogenous RT, able to
retro-transpose themselves and other non-autonomous elements such as Alu21,23.
Results
Expression
of viral-cellular chimeric transcripts in infected cultured and in
patient-derived cells is consistent with genomic integration of viral
sequences
To investigate the possibility of viral
integration into virus infected cells we analyzed published RNA-Seq data
from SARS-CoV-2-infected cells for evidence of chimeric transcripts,
which would be indicative of viral integration into the genome and
expression. Examination of these data sets 24–30 (Fig. S1a-b) revealed a substantial number of host-viral chimeric reads (Fig. 1a-c, S1c).
These occurred in multiple sample types, including cells and organoids
from lung/heart/brain/stomach tissues, as well as BALF cells directly
isolated from COVID-19 patients (Fig. 1c). Chimeric read abundance was positively correlated with viral RNA level across the sample types (Fig. 1c).
Chimeric reads generally accounted for 0.004% - 0.14% of total
SARS-CoV-2 reads across the samples, with a 69.24% maximal number of
reads in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid cells derived from severe COVID19
patients and near no chimeric reads from patient blood buffy coat cells
(corresponding to almost no total SARS-CoV-2 reads). A majority of
chimeric junctions mapped to SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) sequence (Fig. 1d-e). This is consistent with the finding that nucleocapsid (N) RNA is the most abundant SARS-CoV-2 sub-genomic RNA31,
and thus is most likely to be a target for reverse transcription and
integration. These analyses support the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 RNA
may retro-integrate into the genome of infected cells resulting in the
production of chimeric viral-cellular transcripts.
nakedcapitalism |As the use of vaccine passports snowballs around the world, concerns about their potential reach and implications are growing.
Vaccine passports (or passes or certificates) are being rushed
through around the world, including in places where most people have not
even been able to get a vaccine yet. They are being touted as a way of
jump-starting the global economy by providing a means for people to
prove their vaccinated status, allowing them to travel, shop, go to the
gym, attend sporting and cultural events and conduct other indoor
activities. Countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore have
already introduced vaccine passports in the last couple of months.
Of course, the use of the word “passport” is deceptive. “Passport”
implies a document endorsed by a state that establishes citizenship and
guarantees diplomatic protection. A traditional passport does not
require the bearer to participate in a vaccine program, although
immunity certificates have existed for diseases such as Yellow Fever.
Another difference is that a vaccine passport is likely to come in the
form of a digital document. The potential scope of its application is
also far broader than that of a normal passport. It could be required
not only to establish identity and vaccine status at national borders
but also to travel, access public buildings and basic services within
one’s own country of residence.
In countries that already have an established national health
service, such as the UK and Israel, the vaccine passport has been
mandated at state level. In the US tech and health-care companies are
firmly in the driving seat. At least 17 alternative programs are
currently under development. As for the EU, it has proposed
issuing “digital green certificates” that would allow EU residents to
travel freely across the 27-nation bloc by the summer as long as they
have been vaccinated, tested negative for COVID-19 or recovered from the
disease. It’s worth noting that the EU has been studying the feasibility of creating a common EU vaccination card since early 2019.
International Initiatives
There are also initiatives taking place internationally such as the
Smart Vaccination Certificate Working Group, whose partners include WHO,
UNICEF, ITU and the European Commission. The group “is focused on
establishing key specifications, standards and a trust framework for a
digital vaccination certificate to facilitate implementation of
effective and interoperable digital solutions that support COVID-19
vaccine delivery and monitoring, with intended applicability to other
vaccines.”
Another initiative is the CommonPass digital health app being
developed by the Commons Project Foundation (CPJ), which was founded by
the Rockefeller Foundation and is supported by the World Economic Forum.
The CommonPass is both a framework and an app that “will allow
individuals to access their lab results and vaccination records, and
consent to have that information used to validate their COVID status
without revealing any other underlying personal health information.”
Then there’s ID2020, a nongovernmental organization that advocates
for digital IDs for the billion undocumented people worldwide and
under-served groups like refugees. In 2019, ID2020 launched a new
digital identity program in collaboration with the government of Bangladesh and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). It is now involved in the Good Health Pass Collaborative,
“an open, inclusive, cross-sector initiative, bringing together leading
companies and organizations from the technology, health, and travel
sectors”.
Pause for Thought
Some of these initiatives are already being piloted by companies,
including airlines, and local or regional authorities. All Nippons
Airways has started a
test of the CommonPass on its flights from Tokyo Haneda to New York.
Last week New York unveiled its Excelsior pass, which is based on
technology from IBM. Other states are likely to follow suit. France has
also just completed a month-long trial of a health passport app for Air France passengers travelling to Martninique and Guadeloupe.
The speed at which these initiatives are being rushed out should give
pause for thought. Just as with contact tracing apps, the rollout is
haphazard and rife with conflicts of interest. The technology is
unproven and the privacy issues are glaring. Below are seven reasons why
I believe vaccine passports should worry us. Perhaps you can think of
more.
dailymail | Black reporter LOCKED OUT of Twitter for criticizing BLM founder's
$1.4 million home purchase blasts big tech for making movement a 'sacred
cow despite its financial grift'
Patrisse Cullors, 37, has bought an expansive property in Topanga Canyon
The district in which the BLM founder will now live is 88% white and 1.8% black
Critics accused her of abandoning her social justice and activist roots
Sports journalist Jason Whitlock was among those remarking on her purchase
Twitter on Friday locked him out of his account in response to his tweet
Whitlock told DailyMail.com he remains blocked by the social media network
Twitter is demanding he delete his tweet linking to a celebrity real estate blog
Whitlock says he remains 'in Twitter jail, because I won't post bail'
The action is the latest draconian step in censorship by the Silicon Valley firm
vanityfair | No wonder we’ve entered a new era in Silicon Valley, with the tech elite
having their own period of sex, drugs, and rock and roll—often without
the rock, the roll, or even the sex. Last year, a number of rich
founders began experimenting with microdosing drugs to make it through
the day, as two people with knowledge of these habits have told me, by
taking tiny amounts of MDMA and LSD, and a long list of psilocybin
mushrooms to help take the edge off, but not so much that you’re seeing
tie-dyed dolphins or 3D cartoon characters chasing you down Market
Street. For Musk, the pressures of being at the top led the board of
Tesla to worry about the founder’s use of Ambien to get to sleep each
night after the “excruciating” toll running Tesla had taken on him.
Some have even begun building their own microdosing
labs, hiring chemists and pharmaceutical scientists to make bespoke
batches of hallucinogens to pop like Skittles when reality gets a little
too real. During the pandemic, I’ve heard of founders going to far-off
places to experiment with ayahuasca, peyote, and the new drug of choice,
dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a synthetic drug that one person told me was
“like doing 10 years of psychotherapy in five minutes.”
Then there’s the body hacking, which first made its way into the mainstream in 1984 by way of the sci-fi subculture novel Neuromancer
but has since leapt off the page and into Palo Alto, where everyone
seems to want to outdo their cohorts by pushing their bodies to
extremes. You’ve got the Dorseys of the world bragging about how little
they eat each day, the Zuckerbergs boasting of killing their own food,
and an army of nerds now wearing every tracking device imaginable—from
rings that follow your sleep to real-time sugar monitoring devices you
inject into your arm—and then experimenting with all forms of starvation
and sleep habits to show how in control they are of their bodies.
There’s intermittent fasting, working under infrared heat lamps,
calculating ketones, and working with “DIY surgeons” to implant magnets
and microchips.
“I think this is
all a result of a complete detachment from authenticity by these tech
founders. They present a version of themselves that isn’t real, and
then, when they look in the mirror, they see how inauthentic they really
are, and the only way they can handle the illusion they’ve created is
through drugs,” said one Silicon Valley insider who often spends time
with the biohacking-obsessed ultrarich. “It’s all synthetic and it’s all
an illusion.” The pandemic only heightened this, with people slipping
into more extreme activities in their quest for control.
One
Silicon Valley founder who sold his company to Google years ago told me
that the year that followed the sale—when he had gone from an average
American worrying about paying rent each month to seeing seven zeros at
the end of his bank account—was one of the most miserable times of his
life. “You think it’s going to solve all these problems,” the founder
told me, “but it just creates so many more issues, both psychologically
and existentially. You don’t know what to do with yourself anymore.” For
Hsieh, the only thing he could do was run away from his demons and the
reality in which he found himself imprisoned.
buzzfeed | For more than a year, India’s government first cut off and then throttled internet access to Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir after unilaterally withdrawing the disputed region’s autonomy. Facebook executives reportedly shielded
members of India’s ruling party from the platform’s hate speech rules
to protect the company’s business interests. Right-wing trolls have used
social media platforms to harass women who they say offended their religious sensibility. Hindu nationalists have repeatedly taken offense to original shows that Netflix and Amazon have produced, claiming that the platforms were offending Hindu gods and promoting “love jihad,” a conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of converting Hindu women. In 2020, rioters used Facebook Live to incite violence in Delhi. Last month, India’s government threatened to jail Twitter executives
for not complying with an order to block hundreds of accounts, many of
which were critical of the government, and Delhi police briefly threw a young climate activist in jail after charging her with sedition for editing a Google Doc.
I
love tech. But watching it intersect with a Hindu nationalist
government trying to crush dissent, choke a free press, and destroy a
nation’s secular ethos doesn’t feel like something I bought a ticket to.
Writing about technology from India now feels like having a front-row
seat to the country’s rapid slide into authoritarianism. “It’s like
watching a train wreck while you’re inside the train,” I Slacked my boss
in November.
In the physical world, it seemed like things were spiraling
out of control. At the end of 2019, protests about the controversial new
citizenship law roiled the nation. In January 2020, masked goons unleashed violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, whose students and staff are frequently branded by the ruling party as “anti-national.” Soon after, communal riots rocked New Delhi, the city I live in. More than 50 people died. But still, millions of Indians could freely voice their opinions online, at least when the government didn’t shut down their internet.
This February, it felt like the walls finally closed in. In the final week of that month, India’s government imposed draconian rules
that gave it the last word over what social media platforms will leave
up, what streaming services will show, and what news websites will
publish. It might also require messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal
to break their encryption so that it can track who texted whom.
Social media companies are now required
to take down anything the government deems problematic within three
days, and anything that law enforcement is unhappy with within 36 hours.
Platforms must also hand over people’s information to law enforcement
agencies if they ask for it. If the platforms fail to comply, their
local staff can be prosecuted, and companies could lose their protection
from being held liable for content that people post.
If
anyone in India takes offense to any scene in any show or any movie on
any streaming service, they can file a complaint. If a service doesn’t
respond or give a satisfactory explanation, the person who complained
can appeal to the federal government, which can then compel services to
censor, edit, or take down the content.
robbreport | It might be an exaggeration to say BioViva
CEO Liz Parrish believes death is optional, but for her, Asprey’s goal
of living to 180 shows a distinct lack of ambition. “If you can reach
homeostasis in the body,” Parrish says, “where it’s regenerating itself
just a little bit faster than it’s degrading, then what do you die of?
An accident or natural disaster, probably. There’s no expiration date at
90 or 100 years old.”
Tall, blond and fit, Parrish cuts a strikingly youthful figure at
49—one that might convince you to order whatever she’s having. But, like
Asprey, she has received criticism from the longevity research
community for becoming “patient zero” in her own experimental drug
trial, aimed at halting aging at the cellular level. In 2015, Parrish
underwent telomerase and follistatin gene therapies in Bogotá,
Colombia. The procedures involved receiving around a hundred injections
of a cocktail of genes and a virus modified to deliver those new genes
into her body’s cells. The objective was to prevent age-related muscle
loss and lengthen her telomeres: the “caps” at the end of our
chromosomes. Scientists have identified their unraveling as not only a
marker of aging but also a potential cause of age-related decline.
Parrish told the media about her clandestine experiment and has
published periodic updates on her condition in the five years since, and
she reports that she has indeed increased her muscle mass and
lengthened her telomeres. Parrish’s punk-rock approach stems from her
conviction that the medical-research community—both the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) and researchers who aren’t business-minded—is
moving too slowly, with too much red tape, when it comes to advancing
aging therapeutics. But gene therapy is a relatively new area of
medicine that brings with it a host of new risks, including cancer,
severe immune reactions and infections caused by the viral vector used
to deliver the drug.
Parrish downplays such worries. “There may be risks,” she tells Robb Report.
“But the known risk is that you’re 100 percent likely to die. So you
have to decide for yourself if the potential benefit outweighs that.”
Humans have always aspired to find the fountain of youth, so people
might be skeptical about the fact that anti-aging technologies are
working now,” says British investor and businessman Jim Mellon. “But the
fact is that this is finally happening, and we need to seize the
moment.” Mellon cofounded Juvenescence,
a three-year-old pharmaceutical company that’s investing in multiple
technologies simultaneously to increase the odds of bringing winning
products to market.
Mellon, 63, has made his fortune betting on well-timed investment
opportunities, and he predicts that a new “stock-market mania” for life
extension is just around the corner. “This is like the internet dial-up
phase of longevity biotech,” he enthuses. “If you’d invested in the
internet in the very early days, you’d be one of the richest people on
the planet. We’re at that stage now, so the opportunity for investors is
huge.” According to a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, he’s not
wrong: The market for technologies to increase human life span is
projected to grow sixfold to $610 billion in just the next five years.
oftwominds | Those who lived through The Cultural Revolution are reticent about revealing their experiences.
Even in the privacy of their homes in the U.S., their voices become hushed and their
reluctance to give voice to their experiences is evident.
The unifying thread in my view is the accused belonged to some "counter-revolutionary" elite
--or they were living vestiges of a pre-revolutionary elite (children of the landlord class,
professors, etc.)--and it was now open season on all elites, presumed or real.
What generates such spontaneous, self-organizing violence on a national scale?
My conclusion is that cultural revolutions result from the suppression of legitimate
political expression and the failure of the regime to meet its lofty idealistic goals.
Cultural revolutions are an expression of disappointment and frustration with corruption and
the lack of progress in improving everyday life, frustrations that have no outlet in a
regime of self-serving elites who view dissent as treason and/or blasphemy.
By 1966, China's progress since 1949 had been at best uneven, and at worst catastrophic:
the Great Leap Forward caused the deaths of millions due to malnutrition and starvation,
and other centrally planned programs were equally disastrous for the masses.
Given the quick demise of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom movement of open expression,
young people realized there was no avenue for dissent within the Party, and no way to express
their frustration with the Party's failure to fulfil its idealistic goals and promises.
When there is no relief valve in the pressure cooker, it's eventually released in a
Cultural Revolution that unleashes all the bottled-up frustrations on elites which are
deemed politically vulnerable. These frustrations have no outlet politically because they're
threatening to the status quo.
All these repressed emotions will find some release and expression, and whatever avenues are
blocked by authorities will channel the frustrations into whatever is still open.
A Cultural Revolution takes the diversity of individuals and identities and reduces them into
an abstraction which gives the masses permission to criticize the abstract class that "deserves"
whatever rough justice is being delivered by the Cultural Revolution.
As the book review excerpt noted, the definition of who deserves long overdue justice shifts
with the emergent winds, and so those at the head of the Revolution might find themselves
identified as an illegitimate elite that must be unseated.
I submit that these conditions exist in the U.S.: the systemic failure of the status quo to
deliver on idealized promises and the repression of dissent outside "approved" (i.e.
unthreatening to the status quo) boundaries.
What elite can be criticized without drawing the full repressive powers of the central state?
What elite will it be politically acceptable to criticize? I submit that "the wealthy" are
just such an abstract elite.
To protect itself, a repressive status quo implicitly signals that the masses can release their
ire on an abstract elite with indistinct boundaries--a process that will divert the public anger,
leaving the Powers That Be still in charge.
But just as in China's Cultural Revolution, central authorities will quickly lose control
of conditions on the ground. They will maintain the illusion of control even as events spiral
ever farther from their control. The falcon will no longer hear the falconer.
CTH | The Big Tech ministry of COVID compliance has again removed
scientific discussion that runs counter to the approved narrative
presented by the ideological community. In this article we explain
why….
…”COVID Compliance is Infrastructure“
Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable discussion with panel experts
from world-renowned doctors and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford
and Harvard. However, the panel debated the efficacy of masks on
children and that apparently was considered too contrarian for the Big
Tech control agents.
(Via NBC)
– […] The video of DeSantis’ roundtable discussion last month at the
state Capitol in Tallahassee was removed on Wednesday because it
violated the social media platform’s standards, YouTube spokesperson
Elena Hernandez said.
[…] “YouTube has clear policies around Covid-19 medical misinformation
to support the health and safety of our users,” Hernandez said in a
statement. “We removed AIER’s video because it included content that
contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities
regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19.”
[…] DeSantis’s press secretary Cody
McCloud called YouTube’s move “another blatant example of Big Tech
attempting to silence those who disagree with their woke corporate
agenda.”
“YouTube claimed they
removed the video because ‘it contradicts the consensus of local and
global health authorities,’ yet this roundtable was led by
world-renowned doctors and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford, and
Harvard, all of whom are eminently qualified to speak on the global
health crisis,” McCloud said. “Good public health policy should include a
variety of scientific and technical expertise, and YouTube’s decision
to remove this video suppresses productive dialogue of these complex
issues.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of
Stanford University, one of the scientists on the panel, said this “was a
policy forum, in which it is appropriate to consider both the benefits
and costs of a policy (child masking) when making judgments and
recommendations.” (read more)
CTH warned since last summer of the ramifications if a leftist group
used COVID-19 to expand federal power over peoples lives and
livelihoods. In January JoeBama’s team unleashed a series of TEN EXECUTIVE ORDERS fully weaponizing the opportunity. Their need to control the public behavior requires them to control public information.
(2) Executive order on COVID school safety,
weaponized the Dept of Education. Leverages federal funds, grants.
Supports the education labor union effort. Exactly as expected.
(4) Executive order using National Health Crisis
as a security threat. Weaponizing the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the
Secretary of Homeland Security.
(5) Executive order taking over National Guard.
The domestic terrorists need a category within the health emergency.
The isolation and detainment camps need security. “Support of Operations
or Missions to Prevent and Respond to the Spread of COVID-19. (a) The
Secretary of Defense shall, to the maximum extent feasible and
consistent with mission requirements (including geographic proximity),
request pursuant to 32 U.S.C. 502(f) that all State and territorial
governors order National Guard forces to perform duty to fulfill mission
assignments.”
(6) Executive order taking control of travel.
“The Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services
(HHS), the Secretary of Transportation (including through the
Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)), the
Secretary of Homeland Security (including through the Administrator of
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Commandant of
the United States Coast Guard).
Social changes under the guise of COVID-19 mitigation, are the entry
point for the goals and aspirations of the political left on a national
and global scale. COVID-19 is a virus, but also a very important
political weapon, and we are about to discover exactly what the purpose of the hype
is all about. What follows will help understand; and when you encounter
the fear it will help to reconcile what people cannot figure out.
I. Glenn Cohen: A digital health pass, sometimes
referred to as a vaccine passport, is essentially a way of digitally
recording that someone has had a vaccination, and then details about the
date of vaccination, and potentially the kind of vaccine they were
given, to the extent relevant. It might be something created by a
governmental authority, or might be something created in the private
sector.
CR: How can these digital health passes help us get to a new normal?
Jana Shaw: Vaccine passports, or digital health
passes, let others know that you are safe and that you are keeping
others safe by getting vaccinated. Places that require digital health
passes are making sure everyone there is safe.
Lawrence O. Gostin: Essentially, the goal is to try to return to as normal as possible, as safely as we can, and as soon as we can.
And so the idea of a digital health pass is to make sure that
everyone in a given space is protected, and also has a diminished
potential for spreading the infection to others.
CR: Can you describe some of the scientific challenges associated with implementing digital health passes?
JS: There are numerous challenges to creating digital health passes.
Length of protection is one of them. However, that can be easily
addressed by including the date of vaccination. As we get more
information on length of protection from vaccination, vaccine passports
can be then used accordingly.
Another limitation is that the efficacy of various COVID-19 vaccines
differs. However, we recognize that the efficacy differs against
developing symptomatic disease, and all authorized vaccines are very effective against serious illness.
In addition, as we monitor the emergence of variants of concern,
there have been reports of decreased vaccine efficacy among certain
vaccines. However, that currently is being addressed by vaccine
manufacturers. They are developing vaccines that target the emergent
variants to ensure that their vaccines will continue to be effective as
variants evade vaccine-induced immunity.
We could not really talk about challenges and not talk about access
to vaccination. Universal access to vaccines has to be ensured before
digital health passes are rolled out, to mitigate the risk of
transmission and the risk of creating an equity divide for those who are
not vaccinated.
Seriously - Am I The Only Cat Fixated On This LOW HANGING SARS-CoV2 FRUIT?!?!?!
thescientist |Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease
researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week
(November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a
virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in
horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could
infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the
team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine.
The
results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind
and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other
coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to
people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work,
known as gain-of-function research. “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody
could predict the trajectory,” Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the
Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.
In October 2013, the US government put a stop to
all federal funding for gain-of-function studies, with particular
concern rising about influenza, SARS, and Middle East respiratory
syndrome (MERS). “NIH [National Institutes of Health] has funded such
studies because they help define the fundamental nature of
human-pathogen interactions, enable the assessment of the pandemic
potential of emerging infectious agents, and inform public health and
preparedness efforts,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement at the time. “These studies, however, also entail biosafety and biosecurity risks, which need to be understood better.”
Baric’s
study on the SHC014-chimeric coronavirus began before the moratorium
was announced, and the NIH allowed it to proceed during a review
process, which eventually led to the conclusion that the work did not
fall under the new restrictions, Baric told Nature. But some researchers, like Wain-Hobson, disagree with that decision.
The
debate comes down to how informative the results are. “The only impact
of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk,”
Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers
University, told Nature.
But Baric and others argued the
study’s importance. “[The results] move this virus from a candidate
emerging pathogen to a clear and present danger,” Peter Daszak,
president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which samples viruses from animals
and people in emerging-diseases hotspots across the globe, told Nature.
nakedcapitalism | The important characteristic (of Russia and China) is that banking and finance are public
functions.
In modern (Anglo-Judeo-American) geopolitics, “democratic” means financialized. It
is still, as Aristotle described, pre-oligarchic. But this dynamic is
creditor-driven. And creditors not only control the supply of money and
credit, but also the legal system governing creditor privileges
(“rights”) to appropriate the assets and income of their debtors.
This financial dimension is the main characteristic neglected by modern
political theory and popular language. It is important to stress that
the antonym of “democracy” is not well described by pejorative words
such as “autocracy” or other journalistic terms.
There is no single term
for a socialist state in which banking and debt laws are public
utilities. But some term needs to be proposed – and “enlightened
despotism” or “philosopher-king” state sound anachronistic. Or perhaps
de-financialized state, social-credit state (problems with the SocCred
movement), or social-creditor state.
off-guardian | Environmentalist Vandana Shiva has described on numerous occasions
how the Gates Foundation through its ‘Ag One’ initiative is pushing for
one type of agriculture for the whole world. A top-down approach
regardless of what farmers or the public need or want. The strategy
includes digital farming, in which farmers are monitored and mined for
their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them.
Along with Bill Gates, this is very much the agrifood model that
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and
Cargill have in mind. The tech giants recent entry into the sector will
increasingly lead to a mutually beneficial integration between the
companies that supply products to farmers (pesticides, seeds,
fertilisers, tractors, drones, etc) and those that control the flow of
data (on soil, weather, pests, weeds, land use, consumer preferences,
etc) and have access to digital (cloud) infrastructure. A system based
on corporate concentration and centralisation.
Those farmers who remain in the system will become passive recipients
of corporate directives and products on farms owned by the Gates
Foundation (now one of the largest owners of farmland in the US),
agribusiness and financial institutions/speculators.
The three pieces of farm legislation in India (passed by parliament
but on hold) are essential for laying the foundation for this model of
agriculture. The legislation is The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce
(Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Farmers (Empowerment and
Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act and The
Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act.
The foreign and home-grown (Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani)
billionaires who have pushed for these laws require a system of contract
farming dominated by their big tech, big agribusiness and big retail
interests. Smallholder peasant agriculture is regarded as an impediment
to what they require: industrial-scale farms where driverless tractors,
drones and genetically engineered seeds are the norm and all data
pertaining to land, water, weather, seeds and soils is controlled by
them.
It is unfortunate that prominent journalists and media outlets in
India are celebrating the legislation and have attempted to
unjustifiably discredit farmers who are protesting. It is also worrying
that key figures like Dr Ramesh Chand, a member of NITI (National
Institute for Transforming India) Ayog, recently stated that the
legislation is necessary.
When these figures attack farmers or promote the farm acts, what they
are really doing is cheerleading for the destruction of local markets
and independent small-scale enterprises, whether farmers, hawkers, food
processers or mom and pop corner stores. And by implication, they are
helping to ensure that India is surrendering control over its food.
They are doing the bidding of the Gates Foundation and the global
agrifood corporations which also want India to eradicate its buffer food
stocks. Some of the very corporations which will then control stocks
that India would purchase with foreign exchange holdings. At that stage,
any notion of sovereign statehood would be bankrupt as India’s food
needs would be dependent on attracting foreign exchange reserves via
foreign direct investment or borrowing.
This would represent the ultimate betrayal of India’s farmers and
democracy as well as the final surrender of food security and food
sovereignty to unaccountable global traders and corporations.
The farm legislation is regressive and will eventually lead to the
country relying on outside forces to feed its population. This, in an
increasingly volatile world prone to conflict, public health scares,
unregulated land and commodity speculation and price shocks.
cam.ac.uk | We have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050: that’s what climate scientists tell us, it’s what social protesters are asking for and it’s now the law in the UK. But we aren’t on track. For twenty years we’ve been trying to solve the problem with new or breakthrough technologies that supply energy and allow industry to keep growing, so we don’t have to change our lifestyles. But although some exciting new technology options are being developed, it will take a long time to deploy them, and they won’t be operating at scale within thirty years.
Meanwhile, our cars are getting heavier, we’re flying more each year and we heat our homes to higher temperatures. We all know that this makes no sense, but it’s difficult to start discussing how we really want to address climate change while we keep hoping that new technologies will take the problem away.
In response, this report starts from today’s technologies: if we really want to reach zero emissions in thirty years time, what does that involve? Most of what we most enjoy - spending time together as families or communities, leisure, sport, creativity - can continue and grow unhindered. We need to switch to using electricity as our only form of energy and if we continue today’s impressive rates of growth in non-emitting generation, we’ll only have to cut our use of energy to 60% of today’s levels. We can achieve this with incremental changes to the way we use energy: we can drive smaller cars and take the train when possible, use efficient electric heat-pumps to keep warm and buy buildings, vehicles and equipment that are better designed and last much longer.
The two big challenges we face with an all electric future are flying and shipping. Although there are lots of new ideas about electric planes, they won’t be operating at commercial scales within 30 years, so zero emissions means that for some period, we’ll all stop using aeroplanes. Shipping is more challenging: although there are a few military ships run by nuclear reactors, we currently don’t have any large electric merchant ships, but we depend strongly on shipping for imported food and goods.
In addition, obeying the law of our Climate Change Act requires that we stop doing anything that causes emissions regardless of its energy source. This requires that we stop eating beef and lamb - ruminants who release methane as they digest grass - and already many people have started to switch to more vegetarian diets. However the most difficult problem is cement: making cement releases emissions regardless of how it’s powered, there are currently no alternative options available at scale, and we don’t know how to install new renewables or make new energy efficient buildings without it.
We need to discuss these challenges as a society. Making progress on climate change requires that the three key groups of players - government, businesses and individuals - work together, rather than waiting for the other two to act first. But until we face up to the fact that breakthrough technologies won’t arrive fast enough, we can’t even begin having the right discussion.
Committing to zero emissions creates tremendous opportunities: there will be huge growth in the use and conversion of electricity for travel, warmth and in industry; growth in new zero emissions diets; growth in materials production, manufacturing and construction compatible with zero emissions; growth in leisure and domestic travel; growth in businesses that help us to use energy efficiently and to conserve the value in materials.
Bringing about this change, and exploring the opportunities it creates requires three things to happen together: as individuals we need to be part of the process, exploring the changes in lifestyle we prefer in order to make zero emission a reality. Protest is no longer enough - we must together discuss the way we want the solution to develop; the government needs to treat this as a delivery challenge - just like we did with the London Olympics, on-time and on-budget; the emitting businesses that must close cannot be allowed to delay action, but meanwhile the authors of this report are funded by the government to work across industry to support the transition to growth compatible with zero emissions.
Breakthrough technologies will be important in the future but we cannot depend on them to reach our zero emissions target in 2050. Instead this report sets an agenda for a long-overdue public conversation across the whole of UK society about how we really want to achieve Absolute Zero within thirty years
newsweek | The Spanish firm Grifols helped set off a kerfuffle last year when
it, along with other firms, offered nearly double the going price for
blood donations for a COVID-19 treatment trial. Brigham Young University
in Idaho had to threaten some enterprising students with suspension to
keep them from intentionally trying to contract COVID-19. The trial
failed, however, and now the Barcelona-based firm is hoping to extract
something far more valuable from the plasma of young volunteers: a set
of microscopic molecules that could reverse the process of aging itself.
Earlier this year, Grifols closed on a $146 million-deal to buy Alkahest, a company founded by Stanford University
neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, who, along with Saul Villeda, revealed
in scientific papers published in 2011 and 2014 that the blood from
young mice had seemingly miraculous restorative effects on the brains of
elderly mice. The discovery adds to a hot area of inquiry called
geroscience that "seeks to understand molecular and cellular mechanisms
that make aging a major risk factor and driver of common chronic
conditions and diseases of older adulthood," according to the National
Institutes of Health. In the last six years, Alkahest has identified
more than 8,000 proteins in the blood that show potential promise as
therapies. Its efforts and those of Grifols have resulted in at least
six phase 2 trials completed or underway to treat a wide range of
age-related diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Alkahest
and a growing number of other geroscience health startups signal a
change in thinking about some of the most intractable diseases facing
humankind. Rather than focusing solely on the etiology of individual
diseases like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's and arthritis—or, for
that matter, COVID-19—geroscientists are trying to understand how these
diseases relate to the single largest risk factor of all: human aging.
Their goal is to hack the process of aging itself and, in the process,
delay or stave off the onset of many of the diseases most associated
with growing old.
The idea that aging and illness go hand and hand is, of course,
nothing new. What's new is the newfound confidence of scientists that
"aging" can be measured, reverse-engineered and controlled.
Until
recently, "people working on diseases did not think that aging was
modifiable," says Felipe Sierra, who recently retired as director of the
Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging, a part of
the NIH. "That is actually what many medical books say: The main risk
factor for cardiovascular disease is aging, but we cannot change aging
so let's talk about cholesterol and obesity. For Alzheimer's, aging is
the main risk factor—but let's talk about the buildup in the brain of
beta-amyloid proteins. Now that is beginning to change."
medicalbag | Some say that CountessElizabeth Báthory, considered by many to be the world’s worst female serial killer, was the true inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
After all, legend has it that she bathed in the blood of at least 650
servant girls she had tortured and killed. She was said to be so evil
that villagers kept their daughters in hiding for fear that Elizabeth
would take them. Her gruesome activities even earned her such names as
“the Infamous Lady” and “the Blood Countess.” This is her story.
Erzsébet Báthory, more commonly known in the Western world as
Elizabeth, was born in 1560 to one of the most powerful Protestant
families in Hungary at the time. She was the daughter of Baron George
Báthory and Baroness Anna Báthory, who were both Báthorys by birth.
Possibly stemming from inbreeding within her family, it is said that
from an early age Elizabeth suffered from seizures, loss of control,
and fits of rage. As a child, she witnessed the brutal punishments
handed out by her family’s officers on their estates; one anecdote
describes a gypsy accused of theft who was sewn up in the belly of a
dying horse and left to die. Her family tree certainly included some
disturbed kin as well. One of her uncles taught her Satanism, and she
learned about sadomasochism from her aunt.
Elizabeth was married by the time she was 15 years old to Count
Ferenc Nádasdy, a soldier who would go on to lead the armies of Hungary
against Ottoman forces threatening Central Europe. After her marriage,
the countess became the mistress of the Nádasdy estate, where the
couple earned a reputation as harsh masters. Building upon her own
cruelty, it is believed that Ferenc showed her some of his own ways of
punishing his servants. After 10 years, Elizabeth gave birth to 3
daughters and a son.
Although the count participated in his wife’s torture activities, it
wasn’t until the death of her husband in the early 1600s that
Elizabeth’s true evil came to fruition. She eventually moved to one of
her castles at Čachtice in northwest Hungary (now Slovakia) and began
surrounding herself with a cohort of servants to help her with her
torture practices. Legend has it that one day an attendant girl was
brushing Elizabeth’s hair when she accidentally pulled too hard and it
tugged on a snag in her hair. The countess erupted in anger, jumping up
and striking the girl with the back of her hand. The strike was so
hard that it made the girl bleed and some of that blood was left on
Elizabeth’s hand. Later that night, Elizabeth noticed that the skin on
her hand where the blood had been looked more youthful than she had
seen it in many years. This gave her the idea that if such a small
amount of blood could make her hand look so young, then more could
restore youthfulness to her whole body. It’s said that this is when the
madness began and Elizabeth started to bathe in the blood of virgin
girls.
Young women began to disappear from villages near and far, as well as
children. Unhappy girls were lured to the castle with the prospect that
they would find work there but were never seen again. When they
arrived, they were locked up in a cellar as they awaited torture.
Elizabeth carried out much of the torture herself, often beating the
girls to death. Sometimes she would sew a girl’s mouth shut, force her
to eat her own flesh, or burn her genitals. When she was too sick to
get out of bed to beat them, Elizabeth would order her servants to
bring up a girl to her quarters where she would bite their faces and
shoulders. In other instances, she would stick needles underneath the
girl’s fingertips before cutting off the fingers of those who tried to
take them out. Soon Elizabeth began to run out of young women, because
she had either already taken them, or the villagers had started to hide
their daughters out of fear that she would take them. This is when the
countess began to resort to noble girls, a decision that would
ultimately lead to her demise.
lifespan | Back in 2005, Drs. Irina and Michael
Conboy showed that joining the circulatory systems of young and old mice
together in a procedure called parabiosis could rejuvenate aged tissues
and reverse some aspects of aging in old mice.
Following this discovery, many
researchers concluded that there must be something special in young
blood that was able to spur rejuvenation in aged animals, and various
companies have been trying to find out what. Indeed, we recently
reported that researchers were apparently successful in halving the epigenetic age of old rats by treating them with Elixir, a proprietary mix of pro-youthful factors normally found in young blood.
However, a question still remains: was
the rejuvenation the result of there being something beneficial in the
young blood, or is it more a case of dilution of the harmful factors
present in old blood?
Today, we want to spotlight a new study
by Drs. Irina and Michael Conboy, which again lends more weight to the
idea that the rejuvenation is most likely due to a dilution of pro-aging
factors in old blood rather than there being any special sauce in young
blood [1].
During the study, the research team
discovered that by replacing half of the blood plasma in old mice with a
saline and albumin mixture, the albumin replacing the lost protein that
was removed when the original old blood plasma was taken, they could
achieve a similar or even greater rejuvenation effect in brain, liver,
and muscle tissues as joining two mice together through parabiosis or
giving old mice young blood.
We had the opportunity to interview Drs.
Irina and Michael Conboy about this new discovery and to see if we
could get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding aged blood
rejuvenation.
Steve: This recent paper builds on the
2015 paper of TGF beta, but it goes even further back to the days when
you guys had a lab next door to Amy Wagers and Tony Wyss-Coray and you
all shared the techniques, including the parabiosis technique.
Irina: Yes. Actually, I would like also
to thank you, Elena, and the whole organization for highlighting our
work and giving us an opportunity to speak in interviews.
Steve: You are very welcome. So, is this
dilution? Is it what you put in that’s more important, is it what you
take out, or is it both? I personally think that the evidence strongly
suggests that it’s more what you take out, but that doesn’t necessarily
mean that there isn’t good stuff in young blood.
Irina: Since our 2005 heterochronic
parabiosis paper, many people jumped into this boat of young blood,
thinking that the reason for rejuvenation is that there are less young
factors in an old animal and we provided them. Meanwhile, all our work
even leading to that paper suggested the opposite outcome: that there
are excessive factors in old blood that are actually good proteins; for
example, TGF beta. You cannot live without TGF beta. But, when people
age, the levels of this protein become elevated, and they start doing
counterproductive things for tissue repair, induce inflammation,
increase fibrosis, and prevent proliferation of tissue stem cells. That
was our point of view for the past 15 years, and every single paper that
we published since was putting forward the general idea that it is not
the young blood, it is the old blood that needs thought and attention.
michaelochurch | In a society like ours, the upper and
lower classes have more in common with each other than either has with
the middle class. The upper and lower classes “live like animals”, but
for very different reasons. The upper classes are empowered to engage
their primal, base urges; the lower classes are pummeled with fear on a
daily basis and regress to animalism not out of moral paucity but in
order to survive. People in the lower class live lives that are consumed
entirely by money, because they lack the means of a dignified life.
Those in the upper class, likewise, experience a life dominated by
money, because maintaining injustices favorable to oneself is hard work.
So, even though the motivations are different (fear at the bottom,
greed at the top) the lower and upper classes are united in what the
middle class perceives as “crass materialism” and, therefore, have
strikingly similar cultures. Their lives are run by that thing called
“money” toward which the middle classes pretend– and it is very much
pretend– to be ambivalent about. The middle classes are sheltered, until
the cultural protection, on which their semi-privileged status depends,
runs out.
The
“middle-est” of the middle class is the Gentry. Here we’re talking
about people who dislike pawnbrokers and stock traders alike, who appear
to lead a society from the front while its real owners lead it from the
shadows. This said, I have my doubts on the matter of there being one,
singular Gentry. I would argue that corporate middle management, the
clergy, the political establishments of both major U.S. political
parties, TED-talk onanist “thought leaders” and media personalities, and
even Instagram “influencers” could all be called Gentries; in no
obvious or formal way do these groups have much to do with one another.
Only in one thing are they united: by the middle 2010s it became clear
that both the Elite (bourgeoisie) and Labor (self-aaware proletariat)
were fed up with all these Gentries. Starting around 2013, an
anti-Gentry hategasm consumed the United States, and as a member of said
(former) Gentry I can’t say we didn’t deserve it.
Technology, I believe, is a major cause of
this. Silicon Valley began as a 1970s Gentry paradise; by 2010, it had
become a monument to Elite excess, arrogance, and malefaction. Modern
technology has given today’s employers an oppressive power the Stasi and
KGB only dreamt of. The American Gentry was a PR wing for capitalism
when it needed to win hearts and minds; but with today’s technological
weaponry, the rich no longer see a need to be well-liked by those they
rule.
For a concrete example, compare the “old
style” bureaucratic, paperwork corporation of the midcentury and the
“new style” technological one, in which workers are tracked, often
unawares, down to minutes. The old-style companies were hierarchical and
feudalistic but, by giving middle managers the ability to protect their
underlings, ran on a certain sense of reciprocated loyalty– a social
contract, if you will– that no longer exists. The worker agreed not to
undermine, humiliate, or sabotage his manager; the manager, in turn,
agreed to represent the worker as an asset to the company even when said
worker had a below-average year. All you had to do in the old-style
company was be liked (or, at least, not be despised) by your boss. If
your boss liked you, you got promoted. If your boss hated you, you got
fired. If you were anywhere from about 3.00 to 6.99 on his emotional
spectrum, you moved diagonally or laterally, your boss repping you as a
6.75/10 “in search of a better fit” so you moved along quickly and
peaceably. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked better than what
came afterward.
I’ve worked in the software industry long
enough to know that software engineers are the most socially clueless
people on earth. I’ve often heard them debate “the right” metrics to use
to track software productivity. My advice to them is: Always fight
metrics. Sabotage the readings, or blackmail a higher-up by catfishing
as a 15-year-old girl, or call in a union that’ll drop a pipe on that
shit. Always, always, always fight a metric that management wishes to
impose on you, because while a metric can hurt you (by flagging you as a
low performer) it will never help you. In the old-style
company, automated surveillance was impossible and performance was
largely inscrutable and only loyalty mattered– your career was based on
your boss’s opinion of you. It only took one thing to get a promotion:
be liked by your boss. In the new-style company, devised by management
consultants and software peddlers with evil intentions, getting a
promotion requires you to pass the metrics and be liked by your
boss. In the old-style company, you could get fired if your boss
really, really hated you. (As I said, if he merely disliked you, he’d
rep you as a solid performer “in search of a better fit” so you could
transfer peacefully, and you’d get to try again with a new boss.) In the
new-style company, you can get fired because your boss hates you or because
you fail the metrics. The “user story points” that product managers
insist are not an individual performance measure (and absolutely are, by
the way) are evidence that only the prosecution may use. This is
terrible for workers. There are new ways to fail and get fired; the
route to success is constricted by an increase in the number of targets
that must be hit. The old-style hierarchical company, at least, had
simple rules: be loyal to your boss. Having been a middle manager, I can
also say that the new-style company is humiliating for us– we can’t
protect our reports. You have to “demand accountability from” people,
but you can’t really do anything to help them.
This,
I think, gives us a metaphor for the American Gentry’s failure. Middle
managers who cannot protect their subordinates from the company’s more
evil instincts (such as the instinct to fire everyone and hire
replacements 5 percent cheaper) have no reason to expect true loyalty.
They become superfluous performance cops and taskmasters, and even if
they are personally liked, their roles are justifiably hated (including
by those who have to perform them.)
indiepf | What I’ve called the Labor, Gentry, and Elite “ladders” can more
easily be described as “infrastructures”. For Labor, this infrastructure
is largely physical and the relevant connection is knowing how to use
that physical device or space, and getting people to trust a person to
competently use (without owning, because that’s out of the question for
most) these resources. For the Gentry, it’s an “invisible graph” of
knowledge and education and “interestingness”, comprised largely of
ideas. For the Elite, it’s a tight, exclusive network centered on social
connections, power, and dominance. People can be connected to more than
one of these infrastructures, but people usually bind more tightly to
the one of higher status, except when at the transitional ranks (G4 and
E4) which tend to punt people who don’t ascend after some time. The
overwhelmingly high likelihood is that a person is aligned most strongly
to one and only one of these structures. The values are too conflicting
for a person not to pick one horse or the other.
I’ve argued that the ladders connect at a two-rung difference, with
L2 ~ G4, L1 ~ G3, G2 ~ E4, and G1 ~ E3. These are “social equivalencies”
that don’t involve a change in social status, so they’re the easiest to
transitions to make (in both directions). They represent a transfer
from one form of capital to another. A skilled laborer (L2) who begins
taking night courses (G4) is using time to get an education rather than
more money. Likewise, one who moves from the high gentry (G2) to a
90-hour-per-week job in private wealth management (E4) is applying her
refined intellectual skills and knowledge to serving the rich, in the
hope of making the connections to become one of them.
That said, these ladders often come into conflict. The most relevant
one to most of my readers will be the conflict between the Gentry and
the Elite. The Gentry tends to be left-libertarian and values
creativity, individual autonomy, and free expression. The Elite tends
toward center-right authoritarianism and corporate conformity, and it
views creativity as dangerous (except when applied to hiding financial
risks or justifying illegal wars). The Gentry believes that it is the deserving elite and the face of the future, and that it can use culture to engineer a future in which its values are
elite; while the upper tier of the Elite finds the Gentry pretentious,
repugnant, self-indulgent, and subversive. The relationship between the
Gentry and Elite is incredibly contentious. It’s a cosmic, ubiquitous
war between the past and the future.
Between the Gentry and Labor, there is an attitude of distrust. The
Elite has been running a divide-and-conquer strategy between these two
categories for decades. This works because the Elite understands (and
can ape) the culture of the Gentry, but has something in common with
Labor that sets the categories apart from the Gentry: a conception of workas a theater for masculine dominance.
This is something that the Elite and Labor both believe in– the
visceral strength and importance of the alpha-male in high-stakes
gambling settings such as most modern work– but that the Gentry would
rather deny. Gender is a major part of the Elite’s strategy in turning
Labor against the Gentry: make the Gentry look effeminate.
That’s why “feminist” is practically a racial slur, despite the world
desperately needing attention to women’s political equality, health and
well-being (that is, feminism).
The Elite also uses the Underclass in a different process: the Elite
wants Labor think the Gentry intends to conspire with the Underclass to
dismantle Labor values and elevate these “obviously undeserving” people
to, at least, the status of Labor if not promoted above them. They
exploit fear in Labor. One might invoke racism and the “Southern
strategy” in politics as an example of this, but the racial part is
incidental. The Elite don’t care whether it’s blacks or Latinos or
“illigals” or red-haired people or homosexuals (most of whom are not
part of the Underclass) that are being used to frighten Labor into
opposing and disliking the Gentry; they just know that the device works
and that it has pretty much always worked.
The relationship between the Gentry and Elite is one of open rivalry,
and that between the Gentry and Labor is one of distrust. What about
Labor and the Elite? That one is not symmetric. The Elite exploit and
despise Labor as a class comprised mostly of “useful idiots”. How does
Labor see the Elite? They don’t. The Elite has managed to convince Labor
that the Gentry (who are open about their cultural elitism, while the
Elite hides its social and economic elitism) is the actual “liberal
elite” responsible for Labor’s misery over the past 30 years. In effect,
the Elite has constructed an “infinity pool” where the Elite appears to
be a hyper-successful extension of Labor, lumping these two disparate
ladders into an “us” and placing the Gentry and Underclass into “them”.
thehill |Morgan Freeman says if you trust him, you'll take his advice and get vaccinated against COVID-19.
"I'm
not a doctor, but I trust science. And I’m told that, for some reason,
people trust me," the "Vanquish" star says in a public service
announcement released Monday by the arts advocacy group The Creative
Coalition.
Freeman, 83, has played God in multiple films and is a popular choice for narrating documentaries and science specials.
“So here I am to say I trust science and I got the vaccine," he tells viewers in the PSA.
"If you trust me, you’ll get the vaccine," Freeman adds.
Morgan, I don't trust you as far as I could spit on you. First, there's your recent Russiagate foolishness and phukkery:
And then, there's that deeply disturbing personal failing from several years ago when your nasty old ass was simultaneously on those blue pills and your own step grand daughter!!! Now, low-information, short-memory, IQ-75 may have forgotten what you were up to, but these liminal views of consensus reality CANNOT UNSEE what they have seen:
Rejuvenation Pills
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No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be
careful here. Immortal doesnt include youth or return to youth. Immorbid
means you s...
Death of the Author — at the Hands of Cthulhu
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In 1967, French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of
“The Death of the Author,” arguing that the meaning of a text is divorced
from au...
9/29 again
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"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
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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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
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 ...
