Idiots Out Walking Around - III
At the Iowa Statehouse. Via State Senator Joe Bolkcom. Installments One and Two (the latter features the verysame “Informed Choice” idiots.) More on this tantrum by The Register.
At the Iowa Statehouse. Via State Senator Joe Bolkcom. Installments One and Two (the latter features the verysame “Informed Choice” idiots.) More on this tantrum by The Register.
Taken completely out of context, for the letter itself is a lot of bro-y “locker room talk.”
My mind is dried up, exhausted. I’m disgusted to be back in this damned country where you see the sun in the sky about as often as a diamond in a pig’s asshole.
And especially when you simply don’t have any say in the matter:
If you rarely drive on snow, just pretend you’re taking your grandma to church. There’s a platter of biscuits and 2 gallons of sweet tea in glass jars in the back seat. She’s wearing a new dress and holding a crock pot full of gravy.
Informed Choice Iowa is a group that “unites Iowans seeking to preserve their medical freedoms.” They are “pro-science” folk that count “ex-vaxxers”, “selective vaxxers”, “non-vaxxers”, and “vaxxers” among their members. I’m guessing that this list doesn’t include a single practicing physician.
And here’s them celebrating their freedoms, by which they mean a blatant disregard for the science they claim to love and the Iowans they claim to serve. Need confirmation but I hear that eating at least two tubes of toothpaste is on the agenda for their next idiot congregation.
Here’s a local news story about this superspreader event.
Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said.
Because political victories, not cases or deaths, should inform and ‘validate’ one’s strategy when dealing with a raging pandemic.
A lovely campus map of UIowa in 1930 (source unknown.)
See also: The time-tested stratagem of going La La La La La. Here’s the entire conference.
is a simple and aptly-named COVID tracker that uses data from Johns Hopkins. As of September 1st 2020, my state of Iowa is #1 (woohoo!) with a 7-day infection rate of 261/100,000 people (“there might be 2 to 6 times as many recent infections”) and an R0 rate of 1.7. “Over the past 30 days, 246 people in Iowa have died of Covid-19. If Iowa remains on its current trajectory, expect to see more than three times as many deaths from Covid-19 over the next 30 days.” That’ll show 'em.
Yep. And the tweet was in the context of school openings, but college towns like Ames and Iowa City, are no exceptions (like she continues.) I say we continue to doubt the science, exercise absolutely no discipline in the interest of the economy (because the Communist Kiwis maintain zero interest in restoring theirs as quickly as possible), yell at people who wear masks, fight Big Government telling us what to do, expect maturity and restraint from children and teenagers, have no bloody plan, defend our effete leaders who institute weak policies that are too little and too late, control the numbers and the narrative, and just continue to be awesome ♥️ That’ll show 'em. We’re only beginning to get tired of winning folks.
Q: Why make art? What do you find by doing it? What does it get you?
Serra: I always wanted an alternative existence. And by that I mean I wanted to do something where I could study my own sentiments and experiences. And I found that I can do that in relation to making things and making art in particular. And I did that since I was a kid it was a place I always could go to that I could concentrate and deal with the problems that I thought were of interest to me. And if I was clear enough about what it was that I was probing,
and stayed with the premise of I was probing, it was possible that it could also be clear to someone else, and it was important that it not be something that somebody else has done.I think one of the things art does is that it asks you to perceive what it is on its own level […] I think works of art engage, possibly, an ‘internal memory bank’ that isn’t linear and it can make you see the outside reality in that way also.
That’s from a recording at the SF MoMA. I first heard of him after moving to Des Moines and seeing his “Five Plate Pentagon” at our beautiful sculpture park.
Image Source: DSM Public Art Foundation
DarkSiteFinder is a map of light pollution around the world.
The maintainer explains why he doesn’t use the Bortle Scale. In Iowa, Lake Sugema and The Whiterock Conservancy appear to be the ‘best’ places to see some (more) stars.
Expression | Real Distance |
---|---|
Next door | 1 - 2 miles |
Right up the road | 5 - 10 miles |
Up North | 15 - 100 miles |
A couple miles | 10 - 20 miles |
Not too far | 20 - 50 minutes |
A little ways | Over an hour |
A pretty good drive | 2 hours+ |
Drive down there | Literally any direction |
Can attest 😆. Via.
Ankeny or Saudi Arabia? If you had to choose one to live in, which would you pick?
Depends. One is full of religious wackos, and the other one is in a desert.
Kei Nomiyama and Radim Schreiber take otherworldly photos of fireflies (and other things)
The latter will be at the Des Moines Botanical Center exhibiting his “Firefly Experience”