losthighway wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:49 pm Goddamn are there ever so many secret handshake, dog whistle, Nazi/white supremacist symbols to keep up with. I'd never even heard of that one before. Another way to spot a douche. Thanks.

No problem. If someone knows a good one-stop resource for this sort of thing - I'd love to learn more myself. The best I know of is the SPLC's Extremist Files, which is fine but not the most searchable.

jason from volo wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:59 pm

losthighway wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:50 am filibuster

I absolutely do not think it is a good idea to mess with the filibuster. As I alluded to previously, I have a really, really bad feeling about 2024 and the republicans having control of everything. It *WILL* bite the democrats in the ass if they get rid of it.

I know that Sinema and Manchin are on many people's shit lists, but I hope they hold firm and kill the discussion before it even gets to a vote.

Yeah, I dislike most things about Manchin, but he might be right about the filibuster. The best argument I've heard to the contrary is removing it is the only way to pass voting rights legislation, since that would not be a budget thing, and the dems will already use up the fleeting chance for reconciliation on the infrastructure effort. Without disposing of the filibuster, they can't pass voting rights, without passing voting rights all of the voter supression in various states, along with gerrymandering might push the GOP into a longterm position of power.

But generally, yeah. Gut the filibuster and it will be used against you at a later date.

jason from volo wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:48 pmRepublicans were claiming last year that there was evidence that COVID was potentially leaked from a lab. Social media *actively* censored people from reposting that information at that time, I am guessing because they thought (due to the sources) that it was nothing but a conspiracy theory. Fast forward a year later, and... look at that... now apparently the theory holds weight. And now China has had a year or so to further bury the evidence.

Why ANYONE trusts the government of the People's Republic of China is completely beyond me.

We'll probably never know what really happened.

Having spent the last three days reading up on this, I'll put down some thoughts here so I can leave it aside for a moment.

I don't know which claims from Republicans you are referring to, but the most incriminating thing so far seems to be that US intel report which says three WIV workers were sick in sep 2019, but doesn't even say what they were sick with. If that's the best they've got, then there's no evidence right now and there certainly wasn't back then.

The WHO investigation has been criticized for being too brief, for not having people specialized in lab security, and for being too conciliatory and not thorough enough. I suppose all these are valid, I would have to look deeper into it. I would also have to know more about how the Chinese gov operates in cases like this (how trustworthy are the statements the WIV scientists made to the WHO investigators?, etc.).

According to this AP article, internal leaks show that after the virus genome had been sequenced, the Chinese gov ordered all samples destroyed or removed from the labs, and forbade publishing of the genome. This doesn't really make sense if a lab leak happened which they have been trying to cover up.

Honestly I can't understand why the lab leak theory has become such a meme, because the behaviour of the Chinese gov in the initial days and weeks of the pandemic - being so slow to sound alarms, refusing to give out information, etc. etc. - are damning enough. If we want to find out where their blame lies in this, why not concentrate efforts on this end?

Either way, I see no indication of any particular trust in the Chinese gov. It looks like the WHO were just doing a diplomatic balancing act in the initial stage. Whether they could have been more persistent I don't know. The Chinese gov are peddling their own fanciful theories of the virus origins, but none of the scientists, even those closely tied to WIV, seem to care about them.

Anyway, thanks jason for prompting me to investigate some of this shit.

There is no reason to think that China is being forthright at any point, so the impulse to distrust their information is understandable. Initially, The Right seemed to want to demonize all Chinese people, and the Left reflexively defended the racism they detected from there. Then, boom! Another culture war was begun, which kept everyone chasing each other instead of the truth.

But in the end, I don’t expect any Government to be transparent about a leak one way or another, especially given this current outcome. So I’m not gonna spend a lot of time worrying about it and will focus on what we can do now (since it looks like even those of us who can be vaxxed are gonna be masking up in a couple weeks) and let the news arrive what caused the whole deal.

jason from volo wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:27 pmhttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/corona ... e2S7ddPhw4

This was a fun read. I can't decide if it's very weasely or just very confused.

Initially I was just irked by the use of "sources". What sources? Do they work in the lab? Are they in the Chinese gov? Are they CIA agents? I don't read that much news but I think normally when anonymous sources are cited it's like one paragraph and it's used to buttress other sources. Here they essentially base the entire article on these "sources", who also make quite elaborate claims.

But it gets worse.

First of all, what does this headline suggest? That the virus originated in the lab, of course. The first words you read are "Sources tell Fox News that the belief is now is that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab". But keep reading and it says:

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

So hold on: There is nothing suggesting a lab origin at all?! It says right there the virus was transferred from a bat to a human. I suppose the novel thing is that the first one infected according to this info was a worker at WIV, from whom it subsequently would have spread.

Go back and read the headline again - ah I see what you did there. It says outbreak originated, not the virus. Except in the first paragraph it says "coronavirus originated". Misprint? They then point out twice that the outbreak/virus originated "not as a bioweapon". Uh no of course it wasn't a bioweapon if the virus was transferred from a bat. So why the hell are you writing it??

At this point the article is just wrecked. There is literally no story here.

The only scenario that somehow could make sense of this is if a bat infected one of the WIV workers, this virus happened to be of the same strain as one that was already being studied at the lab, the scientists found this out once they had sequenced the genome, and the Chinese gov did this massive hushup because they thought the virus had leaked from the lab. That would be fucking hilarious.

American Gothic wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:52 amThe Left do understand the power of Symbolism, and being obsessed with Power for themselves of course
they feel the need to control that aspect of society.

Sure I want power. Power to change society in the direction I think is beneficial. You do too.

The most basic way to do this is thru social pressure, and it's amazing how well they have been able to use the WOKE
agenda to ferment the Change that they see as positive, regardless of what others might think or feel about it.

Living in a society among other people, different ideas on what society is supposed to be like will come up against each other, and people fight it out. Basic stuff.

It's not "regardless of what other people feel" either - I care a lot about what other people feel, since there are a lot of people on whose behalf and in concert with I try to enact the changes I want to see.

American Gothic wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:20 pm

kokorodoko wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:03 am
Sure I want power. Power to change society in the direction I think is beneficial. You do too.

What if certain policies or governance actually hurt many regular people? your fellow Americans.
Price of gas artificially inflated, price of basic cheese at Smart and Final up in last 6 months, wages deliberately driven down by flooding the labor market with illegals.
LGBTQ adoption is low on most people's priority.

If they hurt people, we can assess how and why and work out some better solution or some way to alleviate the harm, maybe.
(I'm not American btw. But Americans are still my fellows, of course.)

LGBTQ adoption is a higher priority for LGBTQ people, I would guess. And being low on the list of priorities is not the same thing as being harmful.

Why does Administration allow off topic Spamming on Kraka's thread, but he get's singled out for Topical sharing using the basic forum tools available to all who post?

Because he has in the past shown himself to be more interested in trolling and goofing off than in engaging in discussion and being challenged, I would guess.

jason from volo wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 5:10 pm ^ I agree, especially after rereading it, it’s not an article of substance.

Should stuff like this be subjected to censorship, though, just because the sources are potentially suspect?

Kinda just wish people were in general more intelligent so social media wouldn’t have to feel obligated to filter out (what they think is) misinformation. Every now and then, as I implied earlier, one of these articles has something at least worth keeping an eye on.

This is a good read, from the only western scientist working at the Wuhan lab.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... speaks-out

There's this processed cheese at Trader Joe's called Green Goddess Gouda. It's basically un-aged process gouda with green goddess herbs mixed in. Kinda weird for sure, but I added little cubes of it to a batch of Hawaiian mac salad that I made to go with some teriyaki chicken and yaki-tori beef and it was pretty good in that capacity.

Geiginni wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:54 pm There's this processed cheese at Trader Joe's called Green Goddess Gouda. It's basically un-aged process gouda with green goddess herbs mixed in. Kinda weird for sure, but I added little cubes of it to a batch of Hawaiian mac salad that I made to go with some teriyaki chicken and yaki-tori beef and it was pretty good in that capacity.

Fascinating. Green Goddess dressing had a near cult-like status amongst some of the women in my family years ago. I can't remember the taste well enough to picture it in gouda form, but I'm curious.

Also, what is Hawaiian mac salad? Pasta salad with ham?