Don't mind me, I'm just talking to myself

Twitter and Facebook both better start policing their subscribers for violations of their respective TOSes, otherwise sane people should start to boycott their services. Maybe if they start feeling the pain of their intransigence, they’ll start to behave like model citizens instead of right-wing provocateurs. The fringe far right isn’t the only people having their “rights” abrogated. And since when is it OK to openly display military weapons in a protest? Where were the fascist police when the fringe protested the stay-at-home orders? We all know the reason there was no show of force is that half the crowd was police officers. Fuck all the Nazis!

From an email I got: At his hearing before the Republican-controlled Senate, Dr. Fauci took questions about the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.   But GOP Senator Rand Paul used the opportunity to make his question to Fauci personal  --  saying the doctor needs to have more “humility” and isn’t the “end-all” when it comes to public health advice.   Fauci responded  --  even though Paul had only given him 32 seconds to do so  --  by saying, “I have never made myself out to be the end-all...I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence.”   For Trump and Republicans, that kind of attitude is apparently the height of arrogance. But Fauci maintained that his core message in testimony was to warn that carelessness in re-opening might result in a new wave of outbreaks across the nation.   Fauci’s trying to protect America, but Republicans d...

I just read an article on Wired.com about a writer who switched from Mac OS to widows. This is his conclusion: So I look at that price tag and I take stock. Just how much do my annoyances add up to? How much time have I wasted fixing stupid Windows glitches that don't exist in macOS? How much do I miss programs like Carbon Copy Cloner? Hell, how much do I miss Finder, which works a million times better than Windows’ dreaded File Explorer? But four grand? That still feels outrageous. Ultimately, I don't really want to switch back to Mac. I want the world to change. For Windows to be more cohesive and polished and to get rid of all the weird gremlins in the machine. For developers to make programs for Windows that are as good—and as reliable—as those they make for macOS. I’d keep this hardware if I could, but I don’t have the time or patience to try to Hackintosh it into running macOS. Fortunately, I don’t have to make my decision right now. But if Apple really has begun t...

The discussion forum on Duolingo is a distorted view of the user community. I tried to post a reply to a new user, this was the contents. No, this app is a piece of ****. You don’t learn grammar. The Spoken lessons are practically incomprehensible, the woman mumbles and slurs her words so you can’t tell what she’s saying. I just spent 20 minutes working on a 5 minute lesson and finally gave up in anger and frustration. Don’t waste your time or effort on this app. They won’t even let me post the reply, talk about muzzling honest opinions.

From an email I got: During a visit to a medical equipment distribution facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump said this about healthcare workers:   "They're running into death just like soldiers running into bullets...it's an incredible thing to see. It's a beautiful thing to see."   We can assure you that there is nothing beautiful about healthcare workers dying.   There is nothing beautiful about developing pneumonia, being intubated, and dying in isolation without friends or loved ones to say goodbye It’s obvious to sentient creatures that Donald Trump is woefully incompetent to be a leader. Between the despicable comments he makes, to evading the draft during Vietnam in collusion with a fake doctor (his bone spurs were a abject lie). I feel that all those draft evaders should be denied access to the political system, between not allowing them to vote or hold political offices.

Well, I’ve been using Duolingo for a few months, and my first impressions still hold. It’s not a very good way to learn a language. It depends on rote memorization, doesn’t proactively teach you grammar, has no vocabulary lists. The only way they even teach grammar is to get something wrong, then they condescendingly inform you of the grammar rules for, in my case, Spanish. Like they even taught you that in the first place. They don’t teach sentence structure, verbs, conjugation of verbs, nothing. It’s just a really shitty tool. Especially don’t spend the money on Pro level, you get nothing extra out of it, except no ads. I don’t know why they think teaching a language as a competitive thing is a good idea, you’re always competing against other learners. Oh, an by the way, if you sign up for 5 minute lessons, that’s a misleading come on. I just spent 16 minutes doing my “5 minute” lesson. And at least 40% of lessons last at least 8 minutes. All for a measly 10 “points” in their compe...

Well, according to my Twitter feed: A study from Stanford University that tested 5,603 MLB employees for COVID-19 antibodies found just 60 positive cases, lead researcher Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told The Athletic. He later added that the majority of those who tested positive were "asymptomatic or had mild symptoms." That basically means, given that practically nobody’s immune to Covid19, that the pandemic is just beginning and any normalization is going to cause a dramatic increase in infections. The 200,000 a day inCrease in infections sounds a more than a little conservative. Hope the right-wing death bringers are happy. It would follow that most of those tested that were positive were asymptomatic or had mild cases. That’s what we’ve seen so far. Only approximately 10% get severe symptoms, and 20-30% of those die from complications. Science piles on science and the naysayers just are just exposed as the evil, ignorant bastards that they are.

Well, another article from the New York Times On Politics newsletter, Monday May 11: A  Pew Research Center survey  released on Friday found that 63 percent of Democrats nationwide said they thought the news media’s coverage of the outbreak had been generally helpful. But just 27 percent of Republicans agreed, including a meager 22 percent of conservative Republicans. It seems to be no surprise that right-wingers don’t find the news to be helpful. After, all the news they get is from Fox Propaganda. And right-wingers always have had a problem with telling the truth. So, it follows that everyone else must be lying, too.

In another of a series of bad articles, Reason.com has struck again in an article about ending the lockdown, the article says: "If you're swimming more than 6 feet away from people, you're probably reasonably safe,"  Michael Buchmeier, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, Irvine,  told   The Guardian . "The virus is very sensitive to ultraviolet light and very sensitive to heating. It's not likely to survive in heat and sunlight."  Of course, this guy is just blowing smoke out his ass. A real scientific study undertaken in France says that the Coronavirus needs 150 degree heat for 30-45 minutes to kill it. And regular sunlight doesn’t have enough concentrated UV light to harm the virus. Of course, the study might be flawed, but I’d bet that there’s more truth in the study than some no name professor from a third rate university.

The New York Times talking about The Orange Nazi: His appointment of people with bona fide conservative credentials is a big part of his pitch for re-election. In other words, the Orange Nazi’s aim is to appoint radically far-right ideologues to a position which is “supposed“ to be an impartial judge. That’s what members of the Federalist Society aren’t. Judges, especially the ones in appellate positions, are all political hacks with no regard for the Constitution. Corruption is rampant in the Judiciary in this banana republic, the USA.

Well, more evidence that Trump supporters are either evil or extremely uneducated. From the New York Times On Politics briefing: In the tristate area, the virus’s epicenter, about four in five respondents to a  Quinnipiac University poll  released this week said they worried that a family member might become seriously ill from the virus. And more than six in 10 in the poll said they personally knew someone who had tested positive for it. Medical experts — and the experiences of other countries that have been relatively successful at containing the virus — indicate that short of a vaccine, the best hope for a healthy return to economic activity lies in widespread access to testing. But 75 percent of respondents in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut said in the Quinnipiac poll that they thought more testing would be needed in order for it to become safe for their state to begin lifting stay-at-home orders. Reflective of national polling, 71 perce...