nikhil.io

“You know I wrote this in… when I was looking at the mirror, right?”

“I’m serious.”

All 14 years of the show in a comic by Danby Draws:

I still remember Giuliani’s stature and gravitas 20 years ago, when I arrived in this country. How the mighty have fallen. It’s almost as if The Orange Sphere of Shit corrupts all those who enter it. And comically so in the case of America’s Mayor.

Rick Wilson, the GOP political consultant who credits Giuliani with making his career, says he will defend to his dying breath the Giuliani of 9/11, but he adds, “It’s a cliché that if you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become villains.”

As Giuliani’s friends have slipped away over the years, some have been replaced by people who the Rudy of 35 years ago would have put in prison.

[…] What emerges is a portrait of a man who was given a hero’s mantle, but it rested on flawed shoulders. Even the aftermath of September 11th, the defining point of Giuliani’s life, held the seeds of his undoing, as he has spent two decades alternatively exploiting and trying to get back to that transcendent moment when all of America embraced him. And yet, time and again, he has been undone by his all-too-human failings.

I was rather dismayed to find out that there were no more episodes of “Grill Talk” with the leader of one of the worst companies on the planet¹. I wonder if the PR team that thought it was a good idea to show the ‘casual and human’ side of their ethically bankrupt CEO are still with the company.

Here’s a condensed version by umami. It is one of my favorite creepy things on the internet ♥️

1. Disclaimer: I’m on Instagram, have an Oculus, and cannot get my family off WhatsApp. I console myself by noting that I’m never on Facebook itself and that all these companies were acquisitions whose souls haven’t been polluted by Facebook (yet… and as if that matters because it doesn’t.)↩︎

“For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” [Tim Cook] said. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.”

[…] “For now, let me simply say that I look forward to seeing your faces,” he said in closing. “I know I’m not alone in missing the hum of activity, the energy, creativity and collaboration of our in-person meetings and the sense of community we’ve all built.”

“Come back or get fired. We didn’t build this giant spaceship for nothing. And how’s our overpaid middle-management supposed to micro-manage you?”

Watched with LD. Nuclear apocalypse via submarines. At least as exciting as “The Hunt for Red October”. Watch on the largest screen you have and with a good sound system. The premise and last half hour were (I hope) pure flights of fancy. Excellent stuff by Francois Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Kassovitz as Alfost¹.

1. Which Wikipedia notes is not a name: “It is an acronym designating the admiral commanding the SSBN fleet of the French Navy. It stands for AmiraL commandant la Force Océanique STratégique.”↩︎

Neil Panchal on substituting shitty, ineffective, and expensive consumer-grade items with their industrial and military grade equivalents. Emphases mine:

The average consumer is an idiot, so the bean counters keep milking them. Let’s stick RGB lights in what used to be the BMW, you know the ultimate driving machine. The entire consumer market is rotten. TV? It’s going to come with smart apps. Get one from NEC that’s meant for commercial use.

The average consumer wants this stuff. It sells. They want pizzaz over functionality and durability. They want shiny stuff in a bigger box.

The Onion is reality. I don’t think corporations/businesses are to blame. We’re not voting with our wallets and instead regressing into buying more fricking touch screens. The average consumer is extremely ill-informed, sometimes that’s due to the lack of time, but more often than not, it’s due diligence.

The industrial, military and commercial market doesn’t mess around. They want to purchase equipment that works reliably and performs to a specification. It’s professional and their livelihood depends on it. It sort of self filters the entire market. Shitty things drop off the radar due to poor sales.

While I don’t think I’d serve guests beer in “ASTM Specification E960, Type II”-compliant beakers¹, I will certainly try out things like this cleaner, for example.

1. For I wouldn’t have any friends left if I did that.↩︎

I love Oliver beyond words. Here’s another happy doggy.

Update: Here’s another Big Happy Guy

Hikaru Dorodango means “Shining Mudcake”. Start with a lump of mud and end with a highly polished sphere. Absolutely amazing. Here’s a short NatGeo video about Bruce Gardner, an artist who makes a lot of these. He says it took him 30 tries to make his first perfect one.

May 2018

The Trump Administration disbands the White House pandemic response team.

July 2019

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency left the post, and the Trump Administration eliminated the role.

Oct. 2019

“Currently, there are insufficient funding sources designated for the federal government to use in response to a severe influenza pandemic.” [Source: The results of a Department of Health and Human Services 2019 influenza pandemic simulation]

Jan. 22, 2020

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

Jan. 24, 2020

Trump praises China’s handling of the coronavirus: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Jan. 28, 2020

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency…This is going to be the roughest thing you face” Trump’s National Security Advisor to Trump

Jan. 30, 2020

“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil… This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.” [Memo from Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro]

Feb. 2, 2020

“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

Feb. 7, 2020

“It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu… This is deadly stuff” [Trump in a private interview with Bob Woodward from The Washington Post made public on Sept. 9, 2020]

Feb. 10, 2020

“I think the virus is going to be—it’s going to be fine.”

Feb. 10, 2020

“Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

Feb. 24, 2020

“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Feb. 25, 2020

“CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

Feb. 25, 2020

“I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

Feb. 26, 2020

“The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

Feb. 26, 2020

“We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

Feb. 26, 2020

“Well, we’re testing everybody that we need to test. And we’re finding very little problem. Very little problem.”

Feb. 26, 2020

“This is a flu. This is like a flu.”

Feb. 27, 2020

“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Feb. 27, 2020

“The ineptness with which the Trump Administration approached this problem is not only serious, it can be deadly if not changed in the approach.” – Rep. Lloyd Doggett [During a hearing, Rep. Doggett questions HHS Sec. Azar on Trump’s refusal to take this virus seriously, warning about mask and test shortages]

Feb. 28, 2020

“We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

March 2, 2020

“You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?” [Trump to health officials who answered “No.”]

March 2, 2020

“A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”

March 4, 2020

“Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it’s very mild.”

March 4, 2020

“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

March 5, 2020

“I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”

March 5, 2020

“The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

March 6, 2020

“I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

March 6, 2020

“You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”

March 6, 2020

“Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful… the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

March 6, 2020

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

March 6, 2020

“I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

March 7, 2020

"No, I’m not concerned at all.

March 8, 2020

“We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”

March 9, 2020

During a news conference, White House officials said the U.S. will have tested one million people that week and thereafter would complete 4 million tests per week. By the end of the week, the CDC had only completed a paltry 4,000 tests.

March 10, 2020

“Just stay calm. It will go away.”

March 11, 2020

The World Health Organization categorizes the coronavirus as a pandemic due to its alarming spread and severity.

March 11, 2020

“It goes away…It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.”

March 12, 2020

“The system is not really geared to what we need right now…That is a failing. Let’s admit it.” [Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to Congress]

March 12, 2020

“You know, you see what’s going on. And so I just wanted that to stop as it pertains to the United States. And that’s what we’ve done. We’ve stopped it.”

March 13, 2020

“I don’t take responsibility at all.”

March 13, 2020

The Atlantic reports that less than 14,000 tests have been done in the ten weeks since the Administration had first been notified of the virus, though Mike Pence had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time.

March 14, 2020

“I’d rate it a ten,” [Trump’s rating of his coronavirus response]

March 15, 2020

“Relax”

March 15, 2020

“This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”

March 16, 2020

“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment-try getting it yourselves,”

March 17, 2020

“The only thing we haven’t done well is get good press.”

March 17, 2020

“I felt like it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

March 19, 2020

I intended “to always play it down.” [Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9]

March 20, 2020

“I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.” [Response to reporter’s question: “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”]

March 22, 2020

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”

March 24, 2020

“I’m also hopeful to have Americans working again by that Easter - that beautiful Easter day.”

March 24, 2020

“We’ve never closed down the country for the flu,” Trump said. “So you say to yourself, what is this all about?”

March 24, 2020

“They have to treat us well, also. They can’t say, ‘Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.’”

March 25, 2020

“The faster we go back, the better it’s going to be.”

March 26, 2020

The United States becomes the country with the most confirmed coronavirus cases. A title it keeps for the remainder of Trump’s time in office.

March 26, 2020

“Congratulations AMERICA!” [On Senate passage of third relief bill]

March 26, 2020

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

March 26, 2020

“We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor from — you know who I’m talking about — from Michigan,”

March 27, 2020

“I love Michigan, one of the reasons we are doing such a GREAT job for them during this horrible Pandemic. Yet your Governor, Gretchen “Half” Whitmer is way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue. Likes blaming everyone for her own ineptitude!”

March 27, 2020

“Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him…”

March 27, 2020

“I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job.”

March 27, 2020

“We’re doing a great job for the state of Washington and I think the Governor…he’s constantly chirping and I guess complaining would be a nice way of saying it.”

March 29, 2020

“Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000?”

March 29, 2020

“Unfortunately the enemy is death. It’s death. A lot of people are dying. So it’s very unpleasant.”

March 30, 2020

“Stay calm, it will go away. You know it – you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory.”

March 30, 2020

“I think New York should be fine, based on the numbers that we see, they should have more than enough. I mean, I’m hearing stories that they’re not used or they’re not used right.”

March 30, 2020

“I haven’t heard about testing in weeks. We’re testing more than any other nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests…But I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”

March 30, 2020

“We inherited a broken test — the whole thing was broken.”

March 31, 2020

“…it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.”

April 1, 2020

“They have to treat us well, also. They can’t say, 'Oh, gee, we should get this, we should get that.” [Trump’s response to governors who were pleading for medical gear and ventilators to treat surging coronavirus hospitalizations]

April 2, 2020

“Massive amounts of medical supplies… are being delivered directly to states…Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). The complainers should have been stocked up and ready long before this crisis hit.”

April 2, 2020

“…the Federal Government is merely a back-up for state governments.”

April 3, 2020

“I’m feeling good. I just don’t want to be doing – somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t. Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

April 5, 2020

“FEMA, the military — what they’ve done is a miracle…And you should be thanking them for what they’ve done, not always asking wise-guy questions.” [Trump’s response to a reporter when asked about slow government response to coronavirus]

April 6, 2020

“LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!”

April 6, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 10,000

April 7, 2020

“So, you know, things are happening. It’s a – it’s – I haven’t seen bad. I’ve not seen bad.”

April 7, 2020

“You are not going to die from this pill…I really think it’s a great thing to try.” [Trump promoting Hydroxychloroquine, not FDA approved to treat coronavirus]

April 7, 2020

“That was a flu. OK. So you could say that I said it was a flu, or you could say the flu is nothing to – sneeze at,” [Regarding Spanish Flu]

April 8, 2020

“I read about it maybe a day, two days ago… It was a recommendation that he had, I think he told certain people on the staff, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t see it.” [Trump referring to Peter Navarro’s January warning]

April 9, 2020

“I couldn’t have done it any better,” [When asked if his coronavirus response could have been better]

April 11, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 20,000

April 13, 2020

“But I guess I’m doing OK, because, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the President of the United States, despite the things that are said.”

April 14, 2020

“Enough!” [When a reporter questioned his claim that his authority as president is “total”]

April 14, 2020

“[w]hen somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”

April 15, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 30,000

April 15, 2020

As Trump focuses on reopening, a leaked CDC and FEMA report warns of “significant risk of resurgence of the virus” with phased reopening.

April 19, 2020

“Now we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people [dead from the coronavirus]”

April 20, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 40,000

April 22, 2020

“If [coronavirus] comes back though, it won’t be coming back in the form that it was, it will be coming back in smaller doses that we can contain…it’s also possible it doesn’t come back at all.”

April 23, 2020

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

April 23, 2020

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn’t been checked but you’re gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way…”

April 23, 2020

“You see states are starting to open up now, and it’s very exciting to see,”

April 23, 2020

Over 26 million jobless claims have been filed

April 24, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 50,000

April 26, 2020

“The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am the hardest working President in history.”

April 27, 2020

“I can’t imagine why,” [Trump’s response to the influx in poison control calls about disinfectant]

April 29, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 60,000

April 29, 2020

“It’s gonna go away, this is going to go away.”

May 3, 2020

“Look, we’re going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people,”

May 5, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 70,000

May 5, 2020

Consumer debt hits an all-time high

May 5, 2020

“Well run States should not be bailing out poorly run States, using CoronaVirus as the excuse!”

May 5, 2020

“I always felt 60, 65, 70, as horrible as that is. I mean, you’re talking about filling up Yankee Stadium with death! So I thought it was horrible. But it’s probably going to be somewhat higher than that,”

May 5, 2020

“There’ll be more death, that the virus will pass, with or without a vaccine. And I think we’re doing very well on the vaccines but, with or without a vaccine, it’s going to pass, and we’re going to be back to normal,”

May 5, 2020

“I don’t want to be Mr. Gloom-and-Doom. It’s a very bad subject… I’m not looking to tell the American people when nobody really knows what’s happening yet, ‘Oh, this is going to be so tragic.’”

May 6, 2020

The Brookings Institution reports that children were “experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times” and “40.9 percent of mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food insecurity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Republicans block proposals to expand food stamps.

May 6, 2020

“Sporadic for you, but not sporadic for a lot of other people.” [Trump’s response to a nurse telling him that equipment supply has been “sporadic”]

May 7, 2020

Over 33 million jobless claims have been filed

May 8, 2020

“This is going to go away without a vaccine. It is going to go away. We are not going to see it again.”

May 9, 2020

“This is going to go away without a vaccine.”

May 11, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 80,000

May 11, 2020

“Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!”

May 11, 2020

“We have met the moment and we have prevailed,”

May 14, 2020

“Could be that testing’s, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated.”

May 14, 2020

“Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? Because we do more testing,”

May 15, 2020

"Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back. And we’re starting the process. In many cases, they don’t have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it.

May 16, 2020

“We’ve done a GREAT job on Covid response, making all Governors look good, some fantastic (and that’s OK), but the Lamestream Media doesn’t want to go with that narrative, and the Do Nothing Dems talking point is to say only bad about “Trump”. I made everybody look good, but me!”

May 18, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 90,000

May 19, 2020

“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing… Because it means our testing is much better. I view it as a badge of honor, really, it’s a badge of honor.”

May 21, 2020

USA Today reports that home mortgage delinquencies surged by 1.6 million in April, the largest single-month jump in history.

May 22, 2020

Over 38 million jobless claims have been filed

May 27, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 100,000

May 29, 2020

“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization”

June 6, 20202

U.S death toll passes 110,000

June 6, 2020

“Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country…This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.” [Trump referring to George Floyd, who was murdered on May 25, 2020.]

June 15, 2020

“At some point this stuff goes away and it’s going away.”

June 17, 2020

“It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”

June 18, 2020

“And it is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.”

June 20, 2020

“Testing is a double-edged sword… When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, so I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”

June 22, 2020

U.S death toll passes 120,000

June 23, 2020

“Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!”

June 23, 2020

“It’s going away,”

June 25, 2020

“The number of ChinaVirus cases goes up, because of GREAT TESTING, while the number of deaths (mortality rate), goes way down. The Fake News doesn’t like telling you that!”

June 25, 2020

“Coronavirus deaths are way down. Mortality rate is one of the lowest in the World. Our Economy is roaring back and will NOT be shut down. “Embers” or flare ups will be put out, as necessary!”

June 30, 2020

The U.S. has just 4% of the global population, but 25% of global coronavirus cases and the second-highest death rate per capita.

July 1, 2020

“I think we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus.” “I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of disappear, I hope.”

July 6, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 130,000

July 7, 2020

“I think we are in a good place.”

July 7, 2020

The president predicted that in the next two to four weeks, “I think we’re going to be in very good shape.”

July 8, 2020

“In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November election, but it is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”

July 8, 2020

“I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking school [sic] to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!”

July 18, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 140,000

July 19, 2020

“I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world”

July 19, 2020

“Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day”

“They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test”

July 21, 2020

“You will never hear this on the Fake News concerning the China Virus, but by comparison to most other countries, who are suffering greatly, we are doing very well - and we have done things that few other countries could have done!”

July 27, 2020

“America will develop a vaccine very soon, and we will defeat the virus. We will have it delivered in record time.”

July 28, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 150,000

July 28, 2020

“He’s got this high approval rating. So why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect – and the administration – with respect to the virus?” (Trump referring to Anthony Fauci)

Aug. 1, 2020

“Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases,” (Donald Trump in a retweet of Anthony Fauci saying the U.S. has seen more cases than European countries because it only shut down a fraction of its economy amid the pandemic)

Aug. 3, 2020

“I think we are doing very well and I think … as well as any nation,”

Aug. 3, 2020

“They are dying. That’s true. And you — it is what it is.”

Aug. 3, 2020

“OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!!”

Aug. 3, 2020

“Right now I think it’s under control.”

Aug. 3, 2020

“You know, there are those that say you can test too much, you do know that.”

Aug. 4, 2020

“…we have among the lowest numbers.” - White House Press Briefing

Aug. 5, 2020

“If you look at children, children are almost - and I would almost say definitely - but almost immune from this disease.”

Aug. 5, 2020

“We’re supplying the world now with ventilators. You go back four months, we didn’t have any.” - Fox and Friends

Aug. 5, 2020

“It will go away like things go away”

Aug. 6, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 160,000

Aug. 12, 2020

U.S. reports the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in one day since mid-May

Aug. 16, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 170,000

Aug. 19, 2020

New York Times report reveals that in December 2020 that Trump yelled, “You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases…I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting,” at Jared Kushner during an August 19, 2020 meeting.

Aug. 22, 2020

“Many doctors and studies disagree with this!” (Donald Trump in a quote tweet of a Twitter moment stating that the FDA is revoking hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment, as they are “unlikely to be effective”)

Aug. 22, 2020

“The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!”

Aug. 23, 2020

The President claims that ballot drop boxes are a “voter security disaster” and a “big fraud,” “possible for a person to vote multiple times” and that they aren’t “Covid sanitized.”

Aug. 26, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 180,000

Aug. 31, 2020

“We’ve done a great job in Covid but we don’t get the credit.”

Aug. 31, 2020

Over Six million Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Sept. 4, 2020

There will be a vaccine “before the end of the year and maybe even before Nov. 1. I think we can probably have it sometime in October.”

Sept. 9, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 190,000

Sept. 10, 2020

“I really do believe that we are rounding the corner. The vaccines are right there”

Sept. 10, 2020

“This is nobody’s fault but China.”

Sept. 10, 2020

“We’ve possibly done the best job”

Sept. 10, 2020

“We have rounded the final turn”

Sept. 10, 2020

“I think that we’ve probably done the best job of any country”

Sept. 14, 2020

Trump was asked if he is afraid of Coronavirus risk at his rallies: “I’m on a stage, it’s very far away, so I’m not at all concerned.”

Sept. 16, 2020

“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level I don’t think anybody in the world would be at.”

Sept. 16, 2020

Reporter: “[The head of the CDC] said that the vaccine for the general public wouldn’t be available until next Summer or maybe even early fall. Are you comfortable with that timeline?” Trump: “I think he made a mistake when he said that. That’s just incorrect information.”

Sept. 19, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 200,000

Sept. 21, 2020

“Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. But [the virus] affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools everybody, open your schools.”

Sept. 21, 2020

“We’re rounding the corner,” “With or without a vaccine. They hate when I say that but that’s the way it is. … We’ve done a phenomenal job. Not just a good job, a phenomenal job. Other than public relations, but that’s because I have fake news. On public relations, I give myself a D. On the job itself, we take an A+.”

Sept. 21, 2020

“In some states, thousands of people — nobody young. Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows? Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools everybody, open your schools.”

Sept. 23, 2020

“I think we’re rounding the turn very much.”

Sept. 28, 2020

"And I say, and I’ll say it all the time: We’re rounding the corner. And, very importantly, vaccines are coming, but we’re rounding the corner regardless. But vaccines are coming, and they’re coming fast. "

Sept. 29, 2020

"Well, so far we have had no problem whatsoever. " [Trump referring to the thousands of people attending his rallies]

October 2, 2020

Trump and the First Lady test positive for Coronavirus. More than a dozen White House staff and aides test positive shortly thereafter.

Oct. 5, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 210,000

Oct. 5, 2020

“Don’t be afraid of Covid.”

Oct. 6, 2020

“Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu, Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!” [Source: Trump Tweet and Facebook Post, both were taken down]

Oct. 10, 2020

“But it’s going to disappear; it is disappearing.”

Oct. 11, 2020

“…We have done a “phenomenal” job, according to certain governors. Many people agree…And now come the Vaccines & Cures, long ahead of projections!”

Oct. 12, 2020

“Under my leadership, we’re delivering a safe vaccine and a rapid recovery like nobody can even believe. And if you look at our upward path, no country in the world has recovered the way we’ve recovered economically or otherwise, not even close.”

Oct. 12, 2020

“I went through it. Now, they say I’m immune. I can feel—I feel so powerful.”

Oct. 12, 2020

“When this first came out, if we didn’t do a good job, they predicted 2.2 million people would die, we’re 210,000. We shouldn’t be at, one, it’s China’s fault. They allowed this to happen.”

Oct. 15, 2020

“Excess mortality, we’re a winner on the excess mortality. And what we’ve done has been amazing. And we have done an amazing job. And it’s rounding the corner and we have the vaccines coming, and we have the therapies coming.”

Oct. 18, 2020

“He’ll listen to the scientists… If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression instead — we’re like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.” [Trump referring to Biden]

Oct. 19, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 220,000

Oct. 19, 2020

“People are saying whatever. Just leave us alone. They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots…Fauci is a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years.”

Oct. 19, 2020

“They are getting tired of the pandemic, aren’t they? You turn on CNN, that’s all they cover. ‘Covid, Covid, Pandemic, Covid, Covid.’ You know why? They’re trying to talk everybody out of voting. People aren’t buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards.”

Oct. 20, 2020

Politico reports that The White House is considering slashing millions of dollars for coronavirus relief, HIV treatment, screenings for newborns and other programs in Democratic-led cities that President Donald Trump has deemed “anarchist jurisdictions.”

Oct. 22, 2020

“We are rounding the turn (on coronavirus). We are rounding the corner.”

Oct. 24, 2020

"Turn on television: ‘covid, covid, covid, covid, covid.’ A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it — ‘covid, covid, covid, covid,’ “By the way, on November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore.”

Oct. 26, 2020

“Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high. On November 4th., the topic will totally change. VOTE!”

Oct. 26, 2020

“We have made tremendous progress with the China Virus, but the Fake News refuses to talk about it this close to the Election. COVID, COVID, COVID is being used by them, in total coordination, in order to change our great early election numbers. Should be an election law violation!”

Oct. 27, 2020

“So they brought it down now, immunity, from life to four months. And you know now with them, you can’t watch anything else. You turn on… COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. Well, we have a spike in cases. You ever notice, they don’t use the word death. They use the word cases, cases. Like, “Barron Trump is a case.” He has sniffles. He was sniffling. One Kleenex, that’s all he needed. One, and he was better. But he’s a case”

Oct. 27, 2020

“November 4th. On November 4th, you’ll hear, “It’s getting better. It’s getting better.” You watch. No, no, they’re doing heavy COVID because they want to scare people, and people get it.” [Trump referring to news media]

Oct. 28, 2020

“Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people.”

Oct. 30, 2020

“More Testing equals more Cases. We have the best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!”

Oct. 30, 2020

Nine million Americans have now been infected by the coronavirus.

Oct. 30, 2020

“Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid,” and so “when in doubt choose Covid.”

Nov. 1, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 230,000

Nov. 1, 2020

“Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy! There will be NO LOCKDOWNS. The great American Comeback is underway!!!”

Nov. 2, 2020

“Joe Biden is promising to delay the vaccine and turn America into a prison state—locking you in your home while letting far-left rioters roam free. The Biden Lockdown will mean no school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no Fourth of July”

Nov. 2, 2020

“We have more Cases because we have more Testing!”

Nov. 9, 2020

“If Joe Biden were President, you wouldn’t have the Vaccine for another four years, nor would the @US_FDA have ever approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives”

Nov. 10, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 240,000

Nov. 11, 2020

U.S. hits a record 140,000 COVID-19 cases per day

November 11, 2020

Texas hits 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases

Nov. 18, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 250,000

Nov. 19, 2020

Last Coronavirus Task Force press briefing under the Trump Administration.

Nov. 24, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 260,000

Dec. 2, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 270,000

Dec. 7, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 280,000

Dec. 8, 2020

“Before Operation Warp Speed, the typical time [for vaccine approval] could be infinity.”

Dec. 8, 2020

Trump continues holding White House holiday parties despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to limit indoor gatherings and curtain travel amid the spike in virus infections. Masks are not required, according to guests.

Dec. 9, 2020

3,103 U.S. COVID-19 deaths in one day

Dec. 10, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 290,000

Dec. 14, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 300,000

Dec. 17, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 310,000

Dec. 22, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 320,000

Dec. 22, 2020

“Distribution of both vaccines is going very smoothly. Amazing how many people are being vaccinated, record numbers. Our Country, and indeed the World, will soon see the great miracle of what the Trump Administration has accomplished. They said it couldn’t be done!!!”

Dec. 25, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 330,000

Dec. 30, 2020

As recently as mid-December, the Trump administration touted an ambitious goal: 20 million COVID-19 vaccinations by the year’s end. A CDC tracker shows only about 2 million people have been vaccinated so far.

Dec. 31, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 340,000

Dec. 31, 2020

Trump tweets, “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!”

Dec. 31, 2020

HHS awards a contract to a private firm to review COVID-19 tests in an attempt to bypass scientists at the FDA.

January 1, 2020

U.S. surpasses 20 million confirmed COVID-19 cases

January 3, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 350,000

January 3, 2020

“Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work. Gee, could this just be more Fake News?”

January 3, 2020

“The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!” Fauci responds, "“The deaths are real deaths. All you need to do is go out into the trenches…”

January 3, 2020

Trump tweets, “The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the Federal Government far faster than they can be administered!”

January 4, 2020

CDC reports that 4.6 million people have been vaccinated.

January 6, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 360,000

January 6, 2020

Trump mob storms Congress. Officials reported at least 3,963 new coronavirus deaths in the US, a new single-day record.

January 9, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 370,000

January 12, 2020

HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced that the federal government would begin releasing vaccine doses that had been held in reserve for second shots, but no such reserve existed. His false announcement raised false hopes among state and local officials.

January 13, 2020

U.S. death toll passes 380,000

January 14, 2020

The Trump administration promised to have 20 million people given their first shot by the end of 2020. Two weeks later, they have administered just over 11 million.

January 15, 2020

12 million doses of vaccine administered.

January 16, 2020

U.S. death tool passes 390,000

January 18, 2020

Washington Post reports that emergency PPP loans were provided for organizations that spread misinformation about coronavirus and vaccination.

January 20, 2020

Each day in January, covid-19 killed an average of 3,100 people in the United States — one every 28 seconds.

January 20, 2021

Trump’s term in office saw over 25 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, over 400,000 of which resulted in death.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn into office.

Source

The Alt-History YouTuber Whatifalthist decided to dip his toes into real history again and made a YouTube video in which he supposedly breaks down his top 11 historical misconceptions, in which he says a section entitled “7: All of Pre-Colonial Africa.” As a massive enthusiast of pre-colonial Subsaharan African history, I decided I’d take a look at this section, I thought it would be interesting to take a look, but what I saw was very disappointing.

He starts by making the claim that Africa was not a monolith and that the development of urbanized societies was not consistent throughout the continent.

Africa was simultaneously primitive and advanced. You could find places like Tanzania where 100 year ago, 60% of the land was uninhabitable due to disease, and the rest was inhabited by illiterate iron age societies.

Now, this section is true in a hyper-literal sense. However, the problem is that this statement also applied to pretty much the entire world in the pre-modern age. Every continent has large swathes of land that are either unoccupied or inhabited by peoples who could be considered “illiterate iron age societies” by Whatifalthist’s standards. In short, the presence of nonliterate societies is in no way unique to Subsaharan Africa.

Then, he posts the cursed map. I don’t even know where to begin with everything wrong with this image. Supposedly displaying levels of development (whatever that means) before colonization, the map is riddled with atrocious errors.

Maybe the worst error in the map is Somalia, which he labels in its entirety as “nomadic goat herders.” Anyone with a passing knowledge of Somali history will know how inaccurate this is. Throughout the late middle ages and early modern period, Southern Somalia was dominated by the Ajuraan sultanate, a centralized and literate state. While much of rural Ajuraan was inhabited by nomadic pastoralists, these pastoralists were subject to the rule and whims of the urban elites who ruled over the region. Mogadishu was one of the most influential ports on the Indian Ocean throughout the medieval and early modern periods. In modern Eastern-Ethiopia, the Somali Adal sultanate was another example of a literate, centralized, urban state in the Eastern horn of Africa. Ok, maybe he was only referring to Somalia in the era immediately before European colonization. Well, even then, it’s still inaccurate, as there were plenty of urbanized and literate societies in 19th and early 20th century Somalia. In fact, the Geledi sultanate during its apex was at one point even capable of extracting regular tribute payments from the Sultan of Oman. (Read about this in Kevin Shillington’s History of Africa, 2005).

He also insulting labels the regions of Nigeria and Ghana as “urban illiterate peoples.” This is especially untrue in southern Nigeria, considering that the region literally developed a unique script for writing in late antiquity that remained in use until the late medieval period. Northern Nigeria being labelled as illiterate is equally insulting. The region, which was dominated by various Hausa city-states until united by the Sokoto Caliphate, had a long-standing tradition of literacy and literary education. Despite this, Whatifalthist arbitrarily labels half the region as illiterate and the other half as “jungle farmers”, whatever that means. In modern Ghana, on the other hand, there existed a state called the Ashanti kingdom. How widespread literacy was within Ashantiland in the precolonial era is not well documented. However, during the British invasion of the empire’s capital at Kumasi, the British note that the royal palace possessed an impressive collection of foreign and domestically produced books. They then proceeded to blow it up. I’d also like to mention that he arbitrarily designates several advanced, urban, and, in some cases, literate West African states in the West African forest region (such as Oyo and Akwamu) as “jungle farmers.”

He also questionably labels the Swahili coast as “illiterate cattle herders”, and just blots out Madagascar for some reason, which was inhabited by multiple advanced, literate states prior to colonization.

Now, with the cursed map out of the way, I want to get onto the next part of the video that bothered me. Whatifalthist makes some questionable statements in the section in between, but nothing major, and actually makes some good points in pointing out that many of the larger, more centralized states in Western Africa were just as advanced as those in any other part of the world. However, he then goes on to say this:

“However, as institutions went, they were quite primitive. No African state had a strong intellectual tradition, almost all were caste societies without any real ability for social advancement. You never saw parliaments, scientific revolutions, or cultural movements that spread to the rest of the world coming out of Subsaharan Africa.”

Just about everything in this statement is incredibly wrong, so I’ll break it down one piece at a time.

“No subsaharan African state had a strong intellectual tradition”

This is grossly untrue. The most famous example of intellectual traditions in West Africa comes from the scholarly lineages of Timbuktu, but intellectual traditions in the region were far more widespread than just Timbuktu, with Kano and Gao also serving as important intellectual centers of theology, philosophy, and natural sciences.. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, there is a longstanding intellectual tradition which based itself primarily in the country’s many Christian monasteries. Because of this monastic tradition, Ethiopia has possesses some of the oldest and best preserved manuscripts of anywhere in the world.

“Almost all were caste societies without any real ability for social advancement.”

Keep in mind, this was true in pretty much every settled society until relatively recently. Even then, the concept that pre-colonial African societies were any more hierarchically rigid than their contemporaries in Europe and Asia is questionable at best. Arguably the most meritocratic civilization of antiquity, Aksum, was located in East Africa. Frumentius, the first bishop of Aksum and the first abuna of the Aksumite church, first came to Aksum as a slave. The same is true for Abraha, who was elevated from slave to royal advisor and eventually was given a generalship, which he then used to carve out his own independent kingdom in modern Yemen. These are, admittedly, extreme and unusual examples. Like in the rest of the world, if you were born in the lower classes in pre-colonial Africa, you’d probably die in the lower classes. This was not necessarily true all the time though. In the Ashanti kingdom, a common subject who acquired great amounts of wealth or showcased prowess on the battlefield could be granted the title of Obirempon (big man), by the Asantehene.

You never saw parliaments

Yes you did. Just for one example, the Ashanti kingdom possessed an institution called the Kotoko council, a council of nobles, elders, priests, and aristocrats.This institution is pretty similar to the House of Lords in Great Britain, and possessed real power, often overruling decisions made by the Asantehene (Ashanti King).

“You never saw scientific revolutions.”

I’m not sure what exactly he means by “scientific revolution”, but there were certainly numerous examples of scientific advancements made in Subsaharan Africa, some of which even had wide-ranging impacts on regions outside of the continent. The medical technique of innoculation is maybe the most well known. While inoculation techniques existed in East Asia and the Near East for a long time, the technique of smallpox inoculation was first introduced to the United States through an Akan slave from modern-day Ghana named Onesimus. This may be only one example (others exist), but it’s enough to disprove the absolute.

“Africa had no cultural movements that spread to the rest of the world.”

Because of the peculiar way it’s phrased, I’m not sure exactly what he meant by this. I assume he means that African culture has had little impact on the rest of the world. If this is indeed what he meant, it is not true. I can counter this with simply one word: music.

In the next part of the video, Whatifalthist switches gears to move away from making embarrassingly untrue statements about African societies and instead moves on to discussing colonialism and the slave trade.

“Also, another thing people forget about pre-colonial Africa is that Europeans weren’t the only colonizers. The Muslims operated the largest slave trade in history out of here. Traders operating in the Central DRC had far higher death-rates than the Europeans. The Omanis controlled the whole East Coast of Africa and the Egyptians had conquered everything down to the Congo by the Early 19th century.”

So, I looked really hard for figures on the death-rates of African slaves captured by Arabian slavers in the 19th century, and couldn’t find any reliable figures. Any scholarly census of either the transatlantic or Arab slave trades will note the unreliability of their estimates. Frankly, the statement that “the Islamic slave trade was the largest slave trade in history” sounds like something he pulled out of his ass. Based on the estimates we do have, the Arab slave trade is significantly smaller than the transatlantic slave trade even when you take into account that the latter lasted significantly longer. Regardless, is it really necessary to engage in slavery olympics? Slavery is bad no matter who does it. Now, I would have enjoyed it if the YouTuber in question actually went into more details about the tragic but interesting history of slavery in East Africa, such as the wars between the Afro-Arab slaver Tippu Tip and the Belgians in the 19th century, the history of clove plantations in the Swahili coast, etc. But, instead, he indulges in whataboutisms and dives no further.

The root of the problem with the video are its sources

At the end of each section, Whatifalthist lists his sources used on the section. Once I saw what they were, it immediately became clear to me what the problem was. His sources are “The Tree of Culture”, a book written by anthropologist Ralph Linton, and “Conquests and Cultures” by economist Thomas Sowell.

The Tree of Culture is not a book about African history, but rather an anthropological study on the origin of human cultures. To my knowledge, the book is largely considered good, if outdated (it was written in the early 50s), as Linton was a respected academic who laid out a detailed methodology. However, keep in mind, it is not a book about African history, but an anthropological study that dedicates only a few chapters to Africa. No disrespect to Linton, his work is undeniably formative in the field of anthropology. I’m sure Linton himself would not be happy if people read this book and walked away with the impression that it was remotely close to offering a full, detailed picture of African history.

Sowell’s book is similarly not a book on African history, but is better described as Sowell’s academic manifesto for his philosophical conceptions of race and culture. Ok, neat, but considering that the book only dedicates a portion of its contents to Africa and that most of that is generalities of geography and culture, not history, it’s not appropriate to cite as a source on African history.

This is ultimately the problem with the video. Instead of engaging in true research with sources on African history, Whatifalthist instead engaged in research with anthropological vagueries and filled in the historical blanks with his own preconceptions and stereotypes.

TL;DR: I did not like the video. I can’t speak for the rest of it, but the parts about Africa were really bad.

Sorry for the typo in the title

Thanks for the gold and platinum! Much appreciated.

Citations (in order of their appearance in the post):

• Cassanelli, Lee V. Pastoral Power: The Ajuraan in History and Tradition.” The Shaping of Somali Society, 1982. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512806663-007.
• Chaudhuri, K. N. Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Mukhtar, Mohamed Haji. “Adal Sultanate.” The Encyclopedia of Empire, 2016, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe145.
• Luling, Virginia. Somali Sultanate: the Geledi City-State over 150 Years. London: HAAN, 2002.
• Nwosu, Maik. “In the Name of the Sign: The Nsibidi Script as the * Language and Literature of the Crossroads.” Semiotica 2010, no. 182 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2010.061.
• Mohammed, Hassan Salah El. Lore of the Traditional Malam: Material * Culture of Literacy and Ethnography of Writing among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria, 1990.
• Lloyd, Alan. The Drums of Kumasi: the Story of the Ashanti Wars. London: Panther Book, 1965.
• Kane, Ousmane. Beyond Timbuktu: an Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
• Bausi, Alessandro. “Cataloguing Ethiopic Manuscripts: Update and Overview on Ongoing Work.” Accessed March 22, 2021. https://www.csmc.* uni-hamburg.de/publications/conference-contributions/files/bausi-text.pdf.
• McCaskie, T. C. State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Brown, Thomas H. “The African Connection.” JAMA 260, no. 15, 1988.
  https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1988.03410150095037.
• Berlin, Edward A., and Edward A. Berlin. Ragtime: a Musical and Cultural History. University of California Press, 2002.
• “The Mediterranean Islamic Slave Trade out of Africa: A Tentative Census.” Slave Trades, 1500–1800, 2016, 35–70. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315243016-8.
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Uprooted Millions. Accessed March 22, 2021. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-trans-atlantic-slave-trade-uprooted-millions/ar-AAG3WvO.

One of the most disheartening charts I’ve seen about the current hyperpartisan political climate. We fear each other so much more.

– Source

I suppose all’s fine and dandy if you’re in news or social media and are spiritually obligated to deliver Value™ to stakeholders via those almighty engagement metrics that do nothing more than sow rancor among people who have a lot more in common than they’re led to believe. All Facebook does is hold a mirror up to society. All the news media does is report. Ethics and responsibility are for the Value™-illiterate. The only thing that matters, as the society and country you and your children live in devours itself, is making gobs of cash.

Value™ must be delivered to stakeholders at any and all cost 🏏

This is one of the most seriously badass representations of Shakti I’ve seen in a while.

The goddess is shown seated on obsessed boy (Corpse or Preta). The corpse is placed on a pedestal. The deity has a skeletal body, veins can be seen clearly. Its face is ferocious and wrathful; eyes are popping out with open mouth and frown on face. This may be influenced by the concept of Yogeshvari as third eye shown prominently over the forehead. The hair stands are erected (urdhvakesha) which look like fire flames (jvalakesha) (Rao 1989). The hairs are tied firmly with a snake and skull. On the right side of headgear a small hand in abhayamudra is depicted; same feature can be seen on left but it is an eroded condition. The goddess is wearing a skull garland, mundamala consist of 44 skulls and sarpakundalas in ears. A snake encircling around the neck. The deity is shown wearing a bajubandh made by the design of snake, Same ornaments are replicated at wrist and ankle. It is an artistic excellence where snake is shown holding its own tail in mouth which has formed a beautiful circle. The deity is shown wearing ornate mekhala. The parikara of the image is ornate depicting the elephant skin in low relief. The representations of pair of owls carrying garland is shown on portion of elephant’s ear on a left side. The depiction of peacock, bell and conch shell can be observed on a right side. The depiction of devotee is seen beside the right foot of the deity. The devotee is shown sitting in vajrasana has a prominent headgear with circular karnakundalas. It is holding a sword in its right arm shown wearing an ornate bajubandha and keyur. The devotee is in namaskarmudra, head is shown slightly raised upwards watching a divine appearance of the goddess. The five jackals are shown fetching flesh from corpse which is beneath of the deity. The small female attendant (11.5 cm) of the goddess is shown on a left side of the pedestal below the left foot of the corpse. This female attendance replicates the main goddess shown in skeletal form holding dagger and kapala in right and left hand respectively.

Here’s some Buzzword Bingo based on these words by the same company.

• accelerate
• accountability
• action items
• actionable
• aggregator
• agile
• algorithm
• alignment
• analytics
• at the end of the day
• B2B/B2C
• bandwidth
• below the fold
• best of breed
• best practices
• beta
• big data
• bleeding edge
• blueprint
• boil the ocean
• bottom line
• bounce rate
• brand evangelist
• bricks and clicks
• bring to the party
• bring to the table
• brogrammer
• BYOD
• change agent
• clickthrough
• close the loop
• codify
• collaboration
• collateral
• come to Jesus
• content strategy
• convergence
• coopetition
• create value
• credibility
• cross the chasm
• cross-platform
• cross-pollinate
• crowdfund
• crowdsource
• curate
• cutting-edge
• data mining
• deep dive
• design pattern
• digital divide
• digital natives
• discovery
• disruptive
• diversity
• DNA
• do more with less
• dot-bomb
• downsizing
• drink the Kool Aid
• DRM
• e-commerce hairball
• eat your own dog food
• emerging
• empathy
• enable
• end-to-end
• engagement
• engaging
• enterprise
• entitled
• epic
• evangelist
• exit strategy
• eyeballs
• face time
• fail fast
• fail forward
• fanboy
• finalize
• first or best
• flat
• flow
• freemium
• funded
• funnel
• fusion
• game changer
• gameify
• gamification
• glamour metrics
• globalization
• green
• groupthink
• growth hack
• guru
• headlights
• heads down
• herding cats
• high level
• holistic
• homerun
• html5
• hyperlocal
• i _______
• iconic
• ideation
• ignite
• immersive
• impact
• impressions
• in the weeds
• infographic
• innovate
• integrated
• IoT
• jellyfish
• knee deep
• lean
• lean in
• let’s shake it and see what falls off
• let’s socialize this
• let’s table that
• level up
• leverage
• like _______ for _______
• lizard brain
• long tail
• low hanging fruit
• make it pop
• make the logo bigger
• maker
• marketing funnel
• mashup
• milestone
• mindshare
• mobile-first
• modernity
• monetize
• moving forward
• multi-channel
• multi-level
• MVP
• netiquette
• next gen
• next level
• ninja
• no but, yes if
• offshoring
• on the runway
• open the kimono
• operationalize
• opportunity
• optimize
• organic
• out of pocket
• outside the box
• outsourcing
• over the top
• paradigm shift
• patent pending design
• peeling the onion
• ping
• pipeline
• pivot
• pop
• portal
• proactive
• productize
• proof of concept
• public facing
• pull the trigger
• push the envelope
• put it in the parking lot
• qualified leads
• quick-win
• reach out
• Ready. Fire. Aim.
• real time
• rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
• reimagining
• reinvent the wheel
• responsive
• revolutionize
• rich
• rightshoring
• rightsizing
• rockstar
• ROI
• run it up the flagpole
• scalability
• scratch your own itch
• scrum
• sea change
• seamless
• SEM
• SEO
• sexy
• shift
• sizzle
• slam dunk
• social currency
• social media
• social media expert
• social proof
• soft launch
• solution
• stakeholder
• standup
• startup
• stealth mode
• stealth startup
• sticky
• storytelling
• strategery
• strategy
• sustainability
• sweat your assets
• synergy
• take it offline
• team building
• tee off
• the cloud
• the mayor of _________
• thought leader
• tiger team
• tollgate
• top of mind
• touch base
• touchpoints
• transgenerate
• transparent
• trickthrough
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2217 Time Zone V (EST) 7 Nov. 1970–NTC-- “Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10:17 P. M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must.

The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty–five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile.

Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “at four cents a word. I write confession stories.”

If he felt nasty, he would wait for somebody to make something of it. He had a lethal style of infighting, like a female cop—reason I wanted him. Not the only one.

He had a load on, and his face showed that he despised people more than usual. Silently I poured a double shot of Old Underwear and left the bottle. He drank it, poured another.

I wiped the bar top. “How’s the ‘Unmarried Mother’ racket?”

His fingers tightened on the glass and he seemed about to throw it at me; I felt for the sap under the bar. In temporal manipulation you try to figure everything, but there are so many factors that you never take needless risks.

I saw him relax that tiny amount they teach you to watch for in the Bureau’s training school. “Sorry,” I said. “Just asking, ‘How’s business?’ Make it ‘How’s the weather?’”

He looked sour. “Business is okay. I write 'em, they print 'em, I eat.”

I poured myself one, leaned toward him. “Matter of fact,” I said, “you write a nice stick—I’ve sampled a few. You have an amazingly sure touch with the woman’s angle.”

It was a slip I had to risk; he never admitted what pen–names he used. But he was boiled enough to pick up only the last: “‘Woman’s angle!’” he repeated with a snort. “Yeah, I know the woman’s angle. I should.”

“So?” I said doubtfully. “Sisters?”

“No. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Now, now,” I answered mildly, “bartenders and psychiatrists learn that nothing is stranger than truth. Why, son, if you heard the stories I do—well, you’d make yourself rich. Incredible.”

“You don’t know what ‘incredible’ means!”

“So? Nothing astonishes me. I’ve always heard worse.” He snorted again. “Want to bet the rest of the bottle?”

“I’ll bet a full bottle.” I placed one on the bar.

“Well—” I signaled my other bartender to handle the trade. We were at the far end, a single–stool space that I kept private by loading the bar top by it with jars of pickled eggs and other clutter. A few were at the other end watching the fights and somebody was playing the juke box—private as a bed where we were.

“Okay,” he began, “to start with, I’m a bastard.”

“No distinction around here,” I said.

“I mean it,” he snapped. “My parents weren’t married.”

“Still no distinction,” I insisted. “Neither were mine.”

“When—” He stopped, gave me the first warm look I ever saw on him. “You mean that?”

“I do. A one–hundred–percent bastard. In fact,” I added, “no one in my family ever marries. All bastards.”

“Oh, that.” I showed it to him. “It just looks like a wedding ring; I wear it to keep women off.” It is an antique I bought in 1985 from a fellow operative—he had fetched it from pre–Christian Crete. “The Worm Ouroboros… the World Snake that eats its own tail, forever without end. A symbol of the Great Paradox.”

He barely glanced at it. “If you’re really a bastard, you know how it feels. When I was a little girl—”

“Wups!” I said. “Did I hear you correctly?”

“Who’s telling this story? When I was a little girl—Look, ever hear of Christine Jorgenson? Or Roberta Cowell?”

“Uh, sex–change cases? You’re trying to tell me—”

“Don’t interrupt or swelp me, I won’t talk. I was a foundling, left at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945 when I was a month old. When I was a little girl, I envied kids with parents. Then, when I learned about sex—and, believe me, Pop, you learn fast in an orphanage—”

“I know”

“—I made a solemn vow that any kid of mine would have both a pop and a mom. It kept me ‘pure,’ quite a feat in that vicinity—I had to learn to fight to manage it. Then I got older and realized I stood darn little chance of getting married—for the same reason I hadn’t been adopted.” He scowled. “I was horse–faced and buck–toothed, flat–chested and straight–haired.”

“You don’t look any worse than I do.”

“Who cares how a barkeep looks? Or a writer? But people wanting to adopt pick little blue–eyed golden–haired morons. Later on, the boys want bulging breasts, a cute face, and an Oh–you–wonderful–male manner.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t compete. So I decided to join the W.E.N.C.H.E.S.”

“Eh?”

“Women’s Emergency National Corps, Hospitality & Entertainment Section, what they now call ‘Space Angels’—Auxiliary Nursing Group, Extraterrestrial Legions.'”

I knew both terms, once I had them chronized. We use still a third name, it’s that elite military service corps: Women’s Hospitality Order Refortifying & Encouraging Spacemen. Vocabulary shift is the worst hurdle in time–jumps—did you know that a ‘service station’ once served oil fractions? Once on an assignment in the Churchill Era, a woman said to me, ‘Meet me at the service station next door’—which is not what it sounds; a ‘service station’ (then) wouldn’t have a bed in it.

He went on: "It was when they first admitted you can’t send men into space for months and years and not relieve the tension. You remember how the wowsers screamed?—that improved my chance, since volunteers were scarce. A gal had to be respectable, preferably virgin (they liked to train them from scratch), above average mentally, and stable emotionally. But most volunteers were old hookers, or neurotics who would crack up ten days off Earth. So I didn’t need looks; if they accepted me, they would fix my buck teeth, put a wave in my hair, teach me to walk and dance and how to listen to a man pleasingly, and everything else—plus training for the prime duties. They would even use plastic surgery if it would help—nothing too good for our Boys.

"Best yet, they made sure you didn’t get pregnant during your enlistment—and you were almost certain to marry at the end of your hitch. Same way today, A.N.G.E.L.S. marry spacers—they talk the language.

"When I was eighteen I was placed as a ‘mother’s helper’. This family simply wanted a cheap servant, but I didn’t mind as I couldn’t enlist till I was twenty–one. I did housework and went to night school—pretending to continue my high school typing and shorthand but going to a charm class instead, to better my chances for enlistment.

“Then I met this city slicker with his hundred–dollar bills.” He scowled. "The no–good actually did have a wad of hundred–dollar bills. He showed me one night, told me to help myself.

"But I didn’t. I liked him. He was the first man I ever met who was nice to me without trying games with me. I quit night school to see him oftener. It was the happiest time of my life.

“Then one night in the park the games began.”

He stopped. I said, “And then?”

“And then nothing! I never saw him again. He walked me home and told me he loved me—and kissed me good—night and never came back.” He looked grim. “If I could find him, I’d kill him!”

“Well,” I sympathized, “I know how you feel. But killing him—just for doing what comes naturally—hmm… Did you struggle?”

“Huh? What’s that got to do with it?”

“Quite a bit. Maybe he deserves a couple of broken arms for running out on you, but—”

"He deserves worse than that! Wait till you hear. Somehow I kept anyone from suspecting and decided it was all for the best. I hadn’t really loved him and probably would never love anybody—and I was more eager to join the W.E.N.C.H.E.S. than ever. I wasn’t disqualified, they didn’t insist on virgins. I cheered up.

“It wasn’t until my skirts got tight that I realized.”

“Pregnant?”

"He had me higher 'n a kite! Those skinflints I lived with ignored it as long as I could work—then kicked me out, and the orphanage wouldn’t take me back. I landed in a charity ward surrounded by other big bellies and trotted bedpans until my time came.

"One night I found myself on an operating table, with a nurse saying, ‘Relax. Now breathe deeply.’

"I woke up in bed, numb from the chest down. My surgeon came in. ‘How do you feel?’ he says cheerfully.

"‘Like a mummy.’

"‘Naturally. You’re wrapped like one and full of dope to keep you numb. You’ll get well—but a Cesarean isn’t a hangnail.’

"‘Cesarean’ I said. ‘Doc—did I lose the baby?’

"‘Oh, no. Your baby’s fine.’

"Oh. Boy or girl?

"‘A healthy little girl. Five pounds, three ounces.’

"I relaxed. It’s something, to have made a baby. I told myself I would go somewhere and tack ‘Mrs.’ on my name and let the kid think her papa was dead—no orphanage for my kid!

"But the surgeon was talking. ‘Tell me, uh—’ He avoided my name. ‘did you ever think your glandular setup was odd?’

"I said, ‘Huh? Of course not. What are you driving at?’

"He hesitated. 'I’ll give you this in one dose, then a hypo to let you sleep off your jitters. You’ll have ‘em.’

"‘Why?’ I demanded.

"‘Ever hear of that Scottish physician who was female until she was thirty five? —then had surgery and became legally and medically a man? Got married. All okay.’

"‘What’s that got to do with me?’

"‘That’s what I’m saying. You’re a man.’

"I tried to sit up. ‘What?’

"‘Take it easy. When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.’ He put a hand on me. ‘Don’t worry. You’re young, your bones will readjust, we’ll watch your glandular balance—and make a fine young man out of you.’

"I started to cry. ‘What about my baby?’

"‘Well, you can’t nurse her, you haven’t milk enough for a kitten. If I were you, I wouldn’t see her—put her up for adoption.’

"‘No!’

"He shrugged. ‘The choice is yours; you’re her mother—well, her parent. But don’t worry now; we’ll get you well first.’

“Next day they let me see the kid and I saw her daily—trying to get used to her. I had never seen a brand–new baby and had no idea how awful they look—my daughter looked like an orange monkey. My feelings changed to cold determination to do right by her. But four weeks later that didn’t mean anything.”

“Eh?”

“She was snatched.”

“‘Snatched?’”

The Unmarried Mother almost knocked over the bottle we had bet. “Kidnapped—stolen from the hospital nursery!” He breathed hard. “How’s that for taking the last a man’s got to live for?”

“A bad deal,” I agreed. “Let’s pour you another. No clues?”

“Nothing the police could trace. Somebody came to see her, claimed to be her uncle. While the nurse had her back turned, he walked out with her.”

“Description?”

“Just a man, with a face–shaped face, like yours or mine.” He frowned. “I think it was the baby’s father. The nurse swore it was an older man but he probably used makeup. Who else would swipe my baby? Childless women pull such stunts—but whoever heard of a man doing it?”

“What happened to you then?”

“Eleven more months of that grim place and three operations. In four months I started to grow a beard; before I was out I was shaving regularly… and no longer doubted that I was male.” He grinned wryly. “I was staring down nurses necklines.”

“Well,” I said, “seems to me you came through okay. Here you are, a normal man, making good money, no real troubles. And the life of a female is not an easy one.”

He glared at me. “A lot you know about it!”

“So?”

“Ever hear the expression ‘a ruined woman’?”

“Mmm, years ago. Doesn’t mean much today.”

“I was as ruined as a woman can be; that bum really ruined me—I was no longer a woman… and I didn’t know how to be a man.”

“Takes getting used to, I suppose.”

"You have no idea. I don’t mean learning how to dress, or not walking into the wrong rest room; I learned those in the hospital. But how could I live? What job could I get? Hell, I couldn’t even drive a car. I didn’t know a trade; I couldn’t do manual labor—too much scar tissue, too tender.

"I hated him for having ruined me for the W.E.N.C.H.E.S., too, but I didn’t know how much until I tried to join the Space Corps instead. One look at my belly and I was marked unfit for military service. The medical officer spent time on me just from curiosity; he had read about my case.

"So I changed my name and came to New York. I got by as a fry cook, then rented a typewriter and set myself up as a public stenographer—what a laugh! In four months I typed four letters and one manuscript. The manuscript was for Real Life Tales and a waste of paper, but the goof who wrote it sold it.

“Which gave me an idea; I bought a stack of confession magazines and studied them.” He looked cynical. “Now you know how I get the authentic woman’s angle on an unmarried–mother story… through the only version I haven’t sold—the true one. Do I win the bottle?”

I pushed it toward him. I was upset myself, but there was work to do. I said, “Son, you still want to lay hands on that so–and–so?”

His eyes lighted up—a feral gleam.

“Hold it!” I said. “You wouldn’t kill him?”

He chuckled nastily. “Try me.”

“Take it easy. I know more about it than you think I do. I can help you. I know where he is.”

He reached across the bar. “Where is he?”

I said softly, “Let go my shirt, sonny—or you’ll land in the alley and we’ll tell the cops you fainted.” I showed him the sap.

He let go. “Sorry. But where is he?” He looked at me. “And how do you know so much?”

“All in good time. There are records—hospital records, orphanage records, medical records. The matron of your orphanage was Mrs. Fetherage—right? She was followed by Mrs. Gruenstein—right? Your name, as a girl, was ‘Jane’—right? And you didn’t tell me any of this—right?”

I had him baffled and a bit scared. “What’s this? You trying to make trouble for me?”

“No indeed. I’ve your welfare at heart. I can put this character in your lap. You do to him as you see fit—and I guarantee that you’ll get away with it. But I don’t think you’ll kill him. You’d be nuts to—and you aren’t nuts. Not quite.”

He brushed it aside. “Cut the noise. Where is he?” I poured him a short one; he was drunk, but anger was offsetting it. “Not so fast. I do something for you—you do something for me.”

“Uh… what?”

“You don’t like your work. What would you say to high pay, steady work, unlimited expense account, your own boss on the job, and lots of variety and adventure?”

He stared. “I’d say, ‘Get those goddam reindeer off my roof!’ Shove it, Pop—there’s no such job.”

“Okay, put it this way: I hand him to you, you settle with him, then try my job. If it’s not all I claim—well, I can’t hold you.”

He was wavering; the last drink did it. “When d’yuh d’liver 'im?” he said thickly.

He shoved out his hand. “It’s a deal!”

“If it’s a deal—right now!”

I nodded to my assistant to watch both ends, noted the time—2300—started to duck through the gate under the bar—when the juke box blared out: “I’m My Own Grandpaw!” The service man had orders to load it with Americana and classics because I couldn’t stomach the ‘music’ of 1970, but I hadn’t known that tape was in it. I called out, “Shut that off! Give the customer his money back.” I added, “Storeroom, back in a moment,” and headed there with my Unmarried Mother following.

It was down the passage across from the johns, a steel door to which no one but my day manager and myself had a key; inside was a door to an inner room to which only I had a key. We went there.

He looked blearily around at windowless walls. “Where is he?”

“Right away.” I opened a case, the only thing in the room; it was a U. S. F. F. Coordinates Transformer Field Kit, series 1992, Mod. II—a beauty, no moving parts, weight twenty–three kilos fully charged, and shaped to pass as a suitcase. I had adjusted it precisely earlier that day; all I had to do was to shake out the metal net which limits the transformation field.

Which I did. “What’s that?” he demanded.

“Time machine,” I said and tossed the net over us.

“Hey!” he yelled and stepped back. There is a technique to this; the net has to be thrown so that the subject will instinctively step back onto the metal mesh, then you close the net with both of you inside completely—else you might leave shoe soles behind or a piece of foot, or scoop up a slice of floor. But that’s all the skill it takes. Some agents con a subject into the net; I tell the truth and use that instant of utter astonishment to flip the switch. Which I did.

1030–VI–3 April 1963—Cleveland, Ohio–Apex Bldg.: “Hey!” he repeated. “Take this damn thing off!”

“Sorry”, I apologized and did so, stuffed the net into the case, closed it. “You said you wanted to find him.”

“But—you said that was a time machine!”

I pointed out a window. “Does that look like November? Or New York?” While he was gawking at new buds and spring weather, I reopened the case, took out a packet of hundred–dollar bills, checked that the numbers and signatures were compatible with 1963. The Temporal Bureau doesn’t care how much you spend (it costs nothing) but they don’t like unnecessary anachronisms. Too many mistakes, and a general court–martial will exile you for a year in a nasty period, say 1974 with its strict rationing and forced labor. I never make such mistakes; the money was okay.

He turned around and said, “What happened?”

“He’s here. Go outside and take him. Here’s expense money.” I shoved it at him and added, “Settle him, then I’ll pick you up.”

Hundred–dollar bills have a hypnotic effect on a person not used to them. He was thumbing them unbelievingly as I eased him into the hall, locked him out. The next jump was easy, a small shift in era.

7100–VI–10 March 1964—Cleveland–Apex Bldg.: There was a notice under the door saying that my lease expired next week; otherwise the room looked as it had a moment before. Outside, trees were bare and snow threatened; I hurried, stopping only for contemporary money and a coat, hat, and topcoat I had left there when I leased the room. I hired a car, went to the hospital. It took twenty minutes to bore the nursery attendant to the point where I could swipe the baby without being noticed. We went back to the Apex Building. This dial setting was more involved, as the building did not yet exist in 1945. But I had precalculated it.

0100–VI–20 Sept. 1945—Cleveland–Skyview Motel: Field kit, baby, and I arrived in a motel outside town. Earlier I had registered as “Gregory Johnson, Warren, Ohio,” so we arrived in a room with curtains closed, windows locked, and doors bolted, and the floor cleared to allow for waver as the machine hunts. You can get a nasty bruise from a chair where it shouldn’t be—not the chair, of course, but backlash from the field.

No trouble. Jane was sleeping soundly; I carried her out, put her in a grocery box on the seat of a car I had provided earlier, drove to the orphanage, put her on the steps, drove two blocks to a ‘service station’ (the petroleum–products sort) and phoned the orphanage, drove back in time to see them taking the box inside, kept going and abandoned the car near the motel—walked to it and jumped forward to the Apex Building in 1963.

2200–VI–24 April 1963—Cleveland–Apex Bldg.: I had cut the time rather fine—temporal accuracy depends on span, except on return to zero. If I had it right, Jane was discovering, out in the park this balmy spring night, that she wasn’t quite as nice a girl as she had thought. I grabbed a taxi to the home of those skinflints, had the hackie wait around a comer while I lurked in shadows.

Presently I spotted them down the street, arms around each other. He took her up on the porch and made a long job of kissing her good–night—longer than I thought. Then she went in and he came down the walk, turned away. I slid into step and hooked an arm in his. “That’s all, son,” I announced quietly. “I’m back to pick you up.”

“You!” He gasped and caught his breath.

“Me. Now you know who he is—and after you think it over you’ll know who you are… and if you think hard enough, you’ll figure out who the baby is… and who I am.”

He didn’t answer, he was badly shaken. It’s a shock to have it proved to you that you can’t resist seducing yourself. I took him to the Apex Building and we jumped again.

2300–VIII, 12 Aug. 1985–Sub Rockies Base: I woke the duty sergeant, showed my I. D., told the sergeant to bed my companion down with a happy pill and recruit him in the morning. The sergeant looked sour, but rank is rank, regardless of era; he did what I said—thinking, no doubt, that the next time we met he might be the colonel and I the sergeant. Which can happen in our corps. “What name?” he asked.

I wrote it out. He raised his eyebrows. “Like so, eh? Hmm—”

“You just do your job, Sergeant.” I turned to my companion.

“Son, your troubles are over. You’re about to start the best job a man ever held—and you’ll do well. I know.”

“That you will!” agreed the sergeant. “Look at me—born in 1917—still around, still young, still enjoying life.” I went back to the jump room, set everything on preselected zero.

2301–V–7 Nov. 1970–NYC—“Pop’s Place”: I came out of the storeroom carrying a fifth of Drambuie to account for the minute I had been gone. My assistant was arguing with the customer who had been playing “I’m My Own Grand–paw!” I said, “Oh, let him play it, then unplug it.” I was very tired.

It’s rough, but somebody must do it, and it’s very hard to recruit anyone in the later years, since the Mistake of 1972. Can you think of a better source than to pick people all fouled up where they are and give them well–paid, interesting (even though dangerous) work in a necessary cause? Everybody knows now why the Fizzle War of 1963 fizzled. The bomb with New York’s number on it didn’t go off, a hundred other things didn’t go as planned—all arranged by the likes of me.

But not the Mistake of '72; that one is not our fault—and can’t be undone; there’s no paradox to resolve. A thing either is, or it isn’t, now and forever amen. But there won’t be another like it; an order dated ‘1992’ takes precedence any year.

I closed five minutes early, leaving a letter in the cash register telling my day manager that I was accepting his offer to buy me out, to see my lawyer as I was leaving on a long vacation. The Bureau might or might not pick up his payments, but they want things left tidy. I went to the room in the back of the storeroom and forward to 1993.

2200–VII-- 12 Jan 1993–Sub Rockies Annex–HQ Temporal DOL: I checked in with the duty officer and went to my quarters, intending to sleep for a week. I had fetched the bottle we bet (after all, I won it) and took a drink before I wrote my report. It tasted foul, and I wondered why I had ever liked Old Underwear. But it was better than nothing; I don’t like to be cold sober, I think too much. But I don’t really hit the bottle either; other people have snakes—I have people.

I dictated my report; forty recruitments all okayed by the Psych Bureau—counting my own, which I knew would be okayed. I was here, wasn’t I? Then I taped a request for assignment to operations; I was sick of recruiting. I dropped both in the slot and headed for bed. My eye fell on ‘The By–Laws of Time,’ over my bed:

• Never Do Yesterday What Should Be Done Tomorrow.
• If at Last You Do Succeed, Never Try Again.
• A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion.
• A Paradox May Be Paradoctored.
• It Is Earlier When You Think.
• Ancestors Are Just People.
• Even Jove Nods.

They didn’t inspire me the way they had when I was a recruit; thirty subjective–years of time–jumping wears you down. I undressed, and when I got down to the hide I looked at my belly. A Cesarean leaves a big scar, but I’m so hairy now that I don’t notice it unless I look for it.

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.

The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?

I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.

So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.

You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.

I miss you dreadfully!

The answer to “Do the Patriots who bemoaned the purported ‘cancellation’ of Dr. Seuss know what he would’ve drawn about their party right now?” should be obvious to anyone who isn’t untethered from reality.

Update

Sarah Churchwell examines the sordid origins of “America First” (Cached)

You know, the one where Evil Liberals partnered with Soros and Hillary and flew in 40,000 ballots (and not more) from China (or thereabouts) to Maricopa County in Arizona (and nowhere else.) So the only way to make sure the ballots are authentic is to stick them under a microscope and look for bamboo fibers because… you know… Kung-Fu Panda? Asians? Bamboo?

From an article in The Guardian:

[…] “I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people,” Brakey said on Wednesday. “They’re not gonna find bamboo … If they do, I think we need to know, don’t you?”

I don’t think anyone’s getting unhinged in that party anymore, Mr. Brakey.

One of the people who spread the lie about China dumping ballots, according to Slate, was Javon Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, who is reportedly assisting with the Maricopa county audit. Though it’s not clear in what capacity Pulitzer is assisting, Brakey told reporters on Tuesday that the machines capturing the microscopic images of the ballots were linked to Pulitzer. “This guy is nuts,” he said. “He’s a fraudster … It’s ridiculous that we’re doing some of this.”

Then why do you keep doing it?

The county has hired a firm called “Cyber Ninjas” to perform the audit. Because it’s the late 90’s and we just allow teenagers to give ‘cool’ names to companies. Like most entities in the World of Orange, they’re exceedingly good at their job, just like all the top-notch attorneys on the Elite Strike-Force Team 💯

[Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug] Logan’s “Stop the Steal” antics extend beyond social media. He is listed as an expert witness in a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Michigan. Logan was also the author of a document called “Election Fraud Facts & Details” that Sidney Powell, the conservative attorney who is now embroiled in a defamation lawsuit concerning her election conspiracy theories, shared on her website. In the document, he props up the Venezuela narrative and a similarly absurd and debunked theory regarding Chinese investment in the voting machine manufacturer Dominion.

[…] Election experts noted that the company has already made rookie mistakes. For instance, Arizona Republic reporter Jen Fifield spotted auditors using blue pens, which is not best practice since there is a risk of altering the vote on a ballot. The state’s own election process manual prohibits anything but red pens from being used. When Fifield brought the issue up with Logan, she says he was unaware that the blue ink could be a problem and seemed unsure overall about the correct procedure. A judge later ordered the removal of all black and blue pens from the facility where the recount is taking place. The Brennan Center for Justice, a legal think tank associated with New York University, also sent a letter to the Department of Justice last week alleging that Cyber Ninjas has not been following basic security practices like locking doors to the facility holding the ballots and preventing unauthorized individuals from entering.

For more ineptitude, here’s an account from Jennifer Morrell at The Washington Post (cached)

I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed up the process.

Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers only recounted if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether it was 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to go back and recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.

I also observed other auditors working on a “forensic paper audit,” flagging ballots as “suspicious” for a variety of reasons. One was presidential selection: If someone thought the voter’s choice looked as though it was marked by a machine, they flagged it as “anomalous.” Another was “missing security markers.” (It’s virtually impossible for a ballot to be missing its security markers, since voting equipment is designed to reject ballots without them.) The third was paper weight — the forensics tables had scales for weighing ballots, though I never saw anyone use them — and texture. Volunteers scrutinized ballots for, of all things, bamboo fibers. Only later, after the shift, did I learn that this was connected to a conspiracy theory that fake ballots had been flown in from South Korea.

The fourth reason was folding. The auditors reasoned that only absentee voters would fold their ballots; an in-person, Election Day voter would take a flat ballot, mark it in the booth and submit it, perfectly pristine. I almost had to laugh: In my experience, voters will fold ballots every which way, no matter where they vote or what the ballot instructs them to do. Chalk it up to privacy concerns or individual quirks — but no experienced elections official would call that suspicious.

[…] Their equipment worried me more than their wild theorizing. At the forensics tables, auditors took a photo of each ballot using a camera suspended by a frame, then passed the ballot to someone operating a lightbox with four microscope cameras attached. This was a huge deviation from the norm. Usually, all equipment that election officials use to handle a ballot — from creating to scanning to tallying it — has been federally tested and certified; often, states will conduct further tests before their jurisdictions accept the machines. It jarred me to see volunteers using this untested, uncertified equipment on ballots, claiming that the images would be used at some point in the future for an electronic re-tally.

[…] What I saw in Arizona shook me. If the process wraps up and Cyber Ninjas puts together some kind of report, that report will almost certainly claim that there were issues with Maricopa County’s ballots. After all, Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan has publicly voiced his wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. But the real problem is the so-called audit itself.

The Best People, folks ♥️

[…] I think late 50’s he was asked once “Why are you wasting your time with CND demonstrations when you could be working on logic and philosophy and doing something of lasting significance?” And his answer wasn’t bad. He said “If I’m not out there demonstrating, there won’t be anyone around to read the logic and philosophy.” And that’s a pretty good response.

“Happiness”

“MAN”

Watched because I’m a sucker for any movie that calls itself a ‘thriller’. A case-study in nepotism. She shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a camera. Good God.

Vijay Yelakanti considers Lakshmi as one of the best female actors of this generation. While he was directing her for a commercial, she had apparently given him 10 different expressions.

Well, Vijay, let’s just say I didn’t see any.

One of the best black comedies I’ve seen. Amazing attention to detail. Watched with LD. Reese Witherspoon was just perfect. Indeed, it was a breakthrough role for which she won a bunch of awards. Learned that Jessica Campbell who was also perfect as the angsty Tammy Metzler sadly passed away in January this year 😔

I love these paintings by Arturo Garcia. I saw them in Denver. They’re from a series called Tatanka - The Spirit of the Land.

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

Can’t y’all just take a joke?

Reddit user and evident Mark Wood fan @kanyay-west put together this list of England’s All-Time Cricketing Best when asked “What’s your country’s all time ODI XI?” I’ve reproduced it here and formatted it for clarity. I laughed a lot to this and am a rather silly person 🙏♥️

---

1. Mark Wood
2. Mark Wood
3. Mark Wood
4. Mark Wood (Captain)
5. Mark Wood
6. Mark Wood
7. Mark Wood (Wicket-Keeper)
8. Mark Wood
9. Mark Wood
10. Mark Wood
11. Mark Wood

---

From 2016 but still very relevant apropos conservatism and isolationism.

A group of stringrays is called a fever (my head: “So that’s where that album name came from!”) This is what they look like:

By Charles Barsotti a sage of a cartoonist, who drew a lot of dog cartoons ♥️ 🐶 over his long life.

Whenever I get discouraged and want to quit something, I remember the words of my then 3 year-old after she puked carrots all over the living room floor: “I’m gonna need more carrots.”

Now write down “You’re gonna need more carrots” on a sticky and look at it from time to time ♥️

With the trailing comma and sorted properties/imports/arguments/whatever. Makes symbols easy to scan from top-to-bottom and looks like this in Python:

from constants import (
    EXIT_CODE_ARTICLE_ROOT_NOT_FOUND,
    EXIT_CODE_NOT_A_GIT_REPOSITORY,
    EXIT_CODE_NOT_AN_ABSOLUTE_PATH,
    MARKDOWN_EXTENSION_CONFIG,
    MARKDOWN_EXTENSIONS,
    MARKDOWN_FILE_EXTENSION,
    MAX_NUMBER_OF_WORKERS,
    PATHS_TO_REMOVE,
)

In which universe are these shittier alternatives considered readable or maintainable?

from constants import (MAX_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_RESULTS,
                       MAX_CHARS_SURROUNDING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT,
                       MAX_SEARCH_RESULTS, MIN_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_TERM,
                       SEARCH_INDEX_PATH)

or

from constants import (MAX_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_RESULTS,
                       MAX_CHARS_SURROUNDING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT,
                       MAX_SEARCH_RESULTS,
                       MIN_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_TERM,
                       SEARCH_INDEX_PATH)

or

from constants import (
    MAX_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_RESULTS, MAX_CHARS_SURROUNDING_SEARCH_HIGHLIGHT,
    MAX_SEARCH_RESULTS, MIN_CHARS_IN_SEARCH_TERM, SEARCH_INDEX_PATH)

That’s for Python and the modes are from the excellent isort’s docs. I am glad that Prettier does VHI by default (although you have to specify the trailing-comma and object properties are not sorted.)

See also: K&R is the One True Indentation Style

This is for children under 13. Because children over 13 engage with Social Media in very healthy and fruitful ways.

“They are also simply too young to navigate the complexities of what they encounter online, including inappropriate content and online relationships where other users, including predators, can cloak their identities using the anonymity of the internet,” the letter reads.

[…] “Without a doubt, this is a dangerous idea that risks the safety of our children and puts them directly in harm’s way,” New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said in a statement Monday. “There are too many concerns to let Facebook move forward with this ill-conceived idea, which is why we are calling on the company to abandon its launch of Instagram Kids. We must continue to ensure the health and wellness of our next generation and beyond.”

What AG James fails to understand is that cradle-to-grave engagement greatly enhances Shareholder Value. This is the only thing in the world that matters. Here’s the Plastic Shithead Overlord who runs the sordid business:

“I think helping people stay connected with friends and learn about different content online is broadly positive,” Zuckerberg said. “There are clearly issues that need to be thought through and worked out, including how parents can control the experience of kids, especially of kids under the age of 13 but I think that something like this could be quite helpful for a lot of people.”

And why should Value be affected by the few tens of thousands of children who may not enjoy the the “broadly positive” effects of our product which has issues to be worked out?

You see, Value cannot (and should not) be shackled by the kind of careful research and measured approach that considers a target audience’s well-being. If such research by the so-called-experts establishes that our venture is, indeed, harmful to children, it will (and ought to be) brushed aside against their remonstrations. All Facebook does is “hold a mirror up to society”¹ and extract Value from whatever it finds ♥️

A shithouse company run by terrible human beings. But I hear the compensation is… *chef’s kiss*.

1. I’ve heard this lovely sentiment from quite a few Facebook employees.↩︎

[…] it’s not okay to block old browsers, but it’s a waste of time to support them 100%.

I have accepted that Shitkraken won’t end for a while.

Giuliani’s attorney, son, and allies like convicted former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik have urged Trump aides to dip into his massive war chest to help cover the former New York City mayor’s mounting lawyer bills after Giuliani’s home was raided by the FBI last week […]

The pleas from Giuliani’s supporters come after Trump refused to pay his former lawyer for his work on his election legal challenges. Trump “balked” at paying Giuliani after his associate sent a bill for $20,000 for a day of his work and told aides he did not want Giuliani to receive “any payment,” according to the report. Trump ultimately agreed to reimburse Giuliani $200,000 for expenses but has “stridently refused to pay” Giuliani’s fees.

The notoriously stingy former president bombarded supporters with fundraising appeals after his election loss, raising some $250 million to ostensibly fund his legal battle. But Trump spent a tiny fraction on actual legal costs as his many court challenges were quickly rejected by dozens of federal judges, including ones he appointed. Now, Giuliani’s allies are asking Trump to use the quarter-billion he raised with the Republican National Committee to help pay Giuliani’s costs in the federal probe and defamation lawsuits.

In the Yam’s defense, I wouldn’t want to pay for a 1.5% success rate either. In the Strike-Force Leader’s defense, I don’t think he could’ve seen this coming.

I didn’t want to post anything more about this seemingly interminable saga of ineptitude and batshittery. But I am a collector of various things. And collectors value completeness. So here we go.

An Ex-Member of the “Elite Strike-Force Team” says “reasonable people” wouldn’t really believe her bullshit so please don’t sue her for a billion and change:

Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell asked a federal court to dismiss a roughly $1.3 billion defamation suit filed against her by Dominion Voting Systems, arguing that her claims the company’s voting machines rigged the election for Joe Biden represented her opinion, not statements of fact.

[…] In its Monday motion, Ms. Powell’s legal team argued that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process."

The Fearless Leader of the verysame “Elite Strike-Force Team” is in some trouble:

Federal agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the Manhattan apartment and office of Rudy Giuliani, his attorney said, advancing a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors that has been underway for more than two years.

Giuliani […] has been the focus of an investigation concerning his activities in Ukraine, including whether he conducted illegal lobbying for Ukrainian officials while he pursued an investigation linked to Trump’s primary political rival, President Joe Biden, CNN has reported.

[…] Giuliani is also facing other legal exposure for his role in the 2020 election. The election technology company Dominon sued Giuliani in January for defamation after he spread baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud on his podcast and during TV appearances.

[…] Guiliani is also likely to face scrutiny from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating Trump’s efforts to influence Georgia’s election results. […] One area Willis is exploring: whether Giuliani may have violated the law by making false statements about voting in Georgia in front of the state legislature, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

As this article notes: The man hadn’t practised law since 1992, “basically he’s a novice” at state election law, and is considered a “gift to legal ethics professors that just keeps on giving” because “Charging astronomical rates for work–especially work for which the attorney does not have deep expertise or ability—is an ethics violation.” Probably a good thing, then, that he most likely hasn’t been paid for his expertise.

The Best People ♥️

Update

Rudy Giuliani’s press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, between a dildo store and a crematorium, is still appropriate because Rudy is somewhere between fucked and dead.

Because the only thing that matters is delivering Value to shareholders. (cached)

Incidentally, and to the “huh” of many Value-illiterate people, defending totalitarian governments is exactly how one gives “people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

And as a staunch Free Market Conservative, I don’t really worry about sales (cached). May the market do its thing (cached), just like St. Reagan said it would.

by Josh Comeau. Saving here to refer to later. Here’s another by Manuel Matuzovic. It features a lot more OG tags and a most clever way to cut the mustard apropos modern browsers. Saved here.

A most dangerous Easter Egg by Microsoft, known only to the most elite of hackers.

Octopus kaurna lacks chromatophores like other octopuses. So it just burrows instead 😍🐙. It’s the only known octopus to bury itself completely like this.

The process begins with the octopus using its siphon to inject water into the sand, creating quicksand-like conditions which enable burrowing. Then, it uses its arms to burrow into the sand. Two arms will be extended to the surface, creating a ventilation shaft. At the same time, O. kaurna will use mucus to stabilize the shape of the burrow. Finally, the octopus will retract its two arms and push out loose sand with its siphon, creating a mucus-lined, ventilated burrow to rest in.

She’s “voluptuous”

She’s a “piece of ass”.

“Perhaps I’d be dating her”.

She has “the best body”.

“If I weren’t happily married…”

“Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?”

“She’s hot”.

They have “sex [in common]".

Expressing shock that a gay Apprentice contestant wasn’t attracted to her.

Also of note: A teen pageant contestant complained to Ivanka in 1997 about Trump barging into the dressing rooms while the competitors were changing clothes. Ivanka’s response: “Yeah, he does that.”

And listen to the 2016 testimony of Jane Doe, who claims Trump raped her when she was 13 at one of Jeffrey Epstein’s parties. Doe says that Trump communicated to the recruiter that he was interested in her because she was wearing a blonde wig and reminded him of his daughter.

Update: More family values for a Christian nation ✨:

“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that once led John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter,” Taylor writes.

“Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man.’”

The OG “roaring rampage of revenge.” Watched with LD. Endlessly creative and I imagine way ahead of its time. “Oh so that’s what Tarantino was paying homage to.” 🙏

Are Galangal, Kaffir Lime Leaves, and Lemongrass. According to Pailin Chongchitnant, whose YouTube channel I enjoy greatly.

There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is wisdom, and effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. The curious thing is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Almost every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter.

Rabies. It’s exceptionally common, but people just don’t run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.

Let me paint you a picture.

You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the “rage” stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.

Except you’re asleep, and he’s a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don’t even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.

Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won’t even tell you if you’ve got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you’ve ever been vaccinated.)

You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.

The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.

It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache… Or maybe you get a slight headache?

At this point, you’re already dead. There is no cure.

(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done - see below).

There’s no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.

Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you’re symptomatic, it’s over. You’re dead.

So what does that look like?

Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You’re fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain… Where your “pons” is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.

Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn’t occur to you that you don’t know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.

As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it’s a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they’ll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.

You’re twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what’s going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It’s around this time the hydrophobia starts.

You’re horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can’t drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You’re thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that’s futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.

You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you’re having trouble remembering things, especially family.

You’re alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you “drink something” and crying. And it’s only been about a week since that little headache that you’ve completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.

Eventually, you slip into the “dumb rabies” phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You’re all but unaware of what’s around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it’s all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven’t really slept for about 72 hours.

Then you die. Always, you die.

And there’s not one… fucking… thing… anyone can do for you.

Then there’s the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.

So yeah, rabies scares the shit out of me. And it’s fucking EVERYWHERE. (Source: Spent a lot of time working with rabies. Would still get my vaccinations if I could afford them.)

---

Each time this gets reposted, there is a TON of misinformation that follows by people who simply don’t know, or have heard “information” from others who were ill informed:

Only x number of people have died in the U.S. in the past x years. Rabies is really rare.

Yes, deaths from rabies are rare in the United States, in the neighborhood of 2-3 per year. This does not mean rabies is rare. The reason that mortality is so rare in the U.S. is due to a very aggressive treatment protocol of all bite cases in the United States: If you are bitten, and you cannot identify the animal that bit you, or the animal were to die shortly after biting you, you will get post exposure treatment. That is the protocol.

Post exposure is very effective (almost 100%) if done before you become symptomatic. It involves a series of immunoglobulin shots - many of which are at the site of the bite - as well as the vaccine given over the span of a month. (Fun fact - if you’re vaccinated for rabies, you may be able to be an immunoglobulin donor!)

It’s not nearly as bad as was rumored when I was a kid. Something about getting shots in the stomach. Nothing like that.

In countries without good treatment protocols rabies is rampant. India alone sees 20,000 deaths from rabies PER YEAR.

The “why did nobody die of rabies in the past if it’s so dangerous?” argument.

There were entire epidemics of rabies in the past, so much so that suicide or murder of those suspected to have rabies were common.

In North America, the first case of human death by rabies wasn’t reported until 1768. This is because Rabies does not appear to be native to North America, and it spread very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that until the mid 1990’s, it was assumed that Canada and Northern New York didn’t have rabies at all. This changed when I was personally one of the first to send in a positive rabies specimen - a raccoon - which helped spawn a cooperative U.S. / Canada rabies bait drop some time between 1995 and 1997 (my memory’s shot).

Unfortunately, it was too late. Rabies had already crossed into Canada.

There are still however some countries (notably, Australia, where everything ELSE is trying to kill you) that still does not have Rabies.

Lots of people have survived rabies using the Milwaukee Protocol.

False. ONE woman did, and she is still recovering to this day (some 16+ years later). There’s also the possibility that she only survived due to either a genetic immunity, or possibly even was inadvertently “vaccinated” some other way. All other treatments ultimately failed, even the others that were reported as successes eventually succumbed to the virus. Almost all of the attributed “survivors” actually received post-exposure treatment before becoming symptomatic and many of THEM died anyway.

Bats don’t have rabies all that often. This is just a scare tactic.

False. To date, 6% of bats that have been “captured” or come into contact with humans were rabid.. This number is a lot higher when you consider that it equates to one in seventeen bats. If the bat is allowing you to catch/touch it, the odds that there’s a problem are simply too high to ignore.

You have to get the treatment within 72 hours, or it won’t work anyway.

False. The rabies virus travels via nervous system, and can take several years to reach the brain depending on the path it takes. If you’ve been exposed, it’s NEVER too late to get the treatment, and just because you didn’t die in a week does not mean you’re safe. A case of a guy incubating the virus for 8 years.

At least I live in Australia!

No.

Please, please, PLEASE stop posting bad information every time this comes up. Rabies is not something to be shrugged off. And sadly, this kind of misinformation killed a 6 year old just this Sunday. Stop it.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff with the TV Eras. So creative! Slightly disappointing in how an intriguing and promising Twilight Zone-like plot was resolved via a good old Marvel laser shootout¹. Can’t wait to read an analysis of how it was a ‘triumphant exploration of Grief’ (which it really was.)

1. Or whatever. Energy Beam. Aura Projection. I don’t know.↩︎

I absolutely love this otherworldly work by Maria Svarbova (Wiki, Web, Insta.) GN thought they looked like stills from a Wes Anderson short film.

Though capitalism has had a longer lease of life than some of us would’ve predicted or that many of our ancestors of the socialist movement did predict or allow, it still produces the fax machine and the microchip and still able to lower its costs and still able to flatten its distribution curve very well. It’s central contradiction remains the same; It produces publicly, it produces socially, it conscripts and it mobilizes and educates whole new work forces of people, it has an enormous transforming liberating effect in that respect but it appropriates privately. The resources and the natural abilities are held in common, the earth belongs to us all. You can’t buy your child a place at a school with better ozone. You can’t pretend that the world is other than what it is which is one and human and natural and in common. Though capitalism must do that because it must make us all work until the point when the social product is to be shared. When suddenly the appropriation is private and suddenly Donald Trump outvotes any congressman you can name and anyone with a vote because of the ownership of capital and its that effect, that annexation of what we all do and must do — the influence of labor and intelligence and creativity on nature; the same air, the same water that we must breathe and drink. That means that we may not have long in which to make this critique of the system sing again and relevant again and incisive again.

Somoza called himself “president”. The Sandinistas called him a “dictator”. They called themselves “freedom fighters”. He called them “Commie terrorists”. So they kicked him out then they were in charge. Ronald Reagan called them “Commie oppressors” and he sent in the Contras, whom he called “freedom fighters” and they called “mercenary terrorists.”

So basically, what you’re called depends largely on who’s doing the talking because hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse. They didn’t like what they saw, so they changed it to make it sound better. Just like in these personal ads. It sounds great; but it’s all lies.

A Russian mobster, a Cuban spy and a smooth operator from Miami scheme to sell a Soviet submarine to a Colombian drug cartel for $35 million.

Everything leading up to this sale is crazier than the tagline above. What a ride.