Follow The Science

But seriously, folks, from the Grauniad, 18th December...

...because making the Worst Conceivable Case the New Normal is the New Normal.

Merry One

 

Merry Christmas one and all, and a New Year.

The lovely tree carving is in Lesnes Abbey Wood and no, I can't make out what yt ys faying either.

Blau Schuyte Cruises - Sailing Away

 

A happy Winter Solstice to all our reader on this 646th day since sailing.

We hope you will enjoy the next 646 days just as much, under the conn of our irreplaceable Helmspersons.

Unerwünscht

 

Hornstein, Burgenland, Austria 1938

Gelsenkirchen, Westphalia, Germany 2021

Cooking the Books

 

In the Soviet Union on Sea it would be incredible if anything were to appear that appeared credible, so this paper may be something of a wonderment:

Despite this apparent evidence to support vaccine effectiveness-at least for the older age groups-on closer inspection of this data, this conclusion is cast into doubt because of a range of fundamental inconsistencies and anomalies in the data. Whatever the explanations for the observed data, it is clear that it is both unreliable and misleading [...] we believe the most likely explanations are systemic miscategorisation of deaths between the different categories of unvaccinated and vaccinated; delayed or non-reporting of vaccinations; systemic underestimation of the proportion of unvaccinated; and/or incorrect population selection for Covid deaths.

Latest statistics on England mortality data suggest systematic mis-categorisation of vaccine status and uncertain effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccination, Martin Neil & Norman Fenton, Dec 2021

But... cui bono? Does anyone actually think they will benefit from the Rush to Totalitarianism, in anything but the shortest term? That it will end for the better which starts from a welter of falsity?

Cosplay for Pleasure and Profit

Faux Aboriginal seems to be a thing in 2021 and here is the latest, one Carrie Bourassa, recently of the University of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Institute of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health.

A (one assumes genuine) Métis colleague, Caroline Tate, comments that

early on in Bourassa’s career, she only identified as Métis. But more recently, Tait said, Bourassa began claiming to also be Anishinaabe and Tlingit. Tait said she also began dressing in more stereotypically Indigenous ways, saying the TEDx Talk was a perfect example.

“Everybody cheers and claps, and it’s beautiful,” said Tait. “It is the performance that we all want from Indigenous people — this performance of being the stoic, spiritual, culturally attached person [with] which we can identify because we’ve seen them in Disney movies.”

The inflation of claims (why limit yourself to one tribe when you can pig on an assortment?) and the inability of the multitude to distinguish between Real and Disney seem to be common themes.

The statement in her defence issued by an anonymous "Team Bourassa" is a treasure trove.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Canada's Legislation Bill C-15: the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act confirms and legally supports her to Self- identify as an Indigenous Person.

These laws obviously do not apply only to the indigenously indigenous, any carpetbagger or charlatan can claim their protection, else what are laws for?

As a result, many people now question the U of S’ ability to protect faculty members whose credibility is challenged and called into question by their peers.

Calling out a fraud is damaging to the whole Institution.

This poses multiple and multidimensional threats to ALL Indigenous persons globally.

Calling out a fraud is damaging to the whole Planet.

the discussion appears to be setting precedence for quantum criteria for Nationhood.

With quantum criteria (only important people know how to use these words) the Unenlightened seem to be insisting that Indigenous Peoples need to have at least a smidgen of actual Indigenous about them!

NOTE: This statement was prepared by an Indigenous collective who chose anonymity at this time, to minimize additional backlash and punitive action in the forms of lateral violence towards themselves and Dr. Bourassa. Lateral violence is a learned behaviour as a result of internalised colonialism and patriarchal methods of governing and developing a society.

Calling out a fraud is, er, well, some kind of Totally Bad Thing.

Independent - Stunning and Brave

 

Kenosha WI is nearly 4,000 miles from London UK, the events in question only happened 64 weeks ago, and the entire process from arrest to acquittal has been shrouded in silence and obscurity. Hats off, then, to the Independent for the bold claim that KR "shot three black men", which is certainly more True than the mere facts suggest, facts that in this case have anyway been so hard to ascertain.

Wokist-Leninism is already showing signs of flagging Over The Pond as decent people of all sorts take against it. How wearying then that our own Great and Good should be starting up with it, in the sort of complacent and incompetent manner that is the hallmark of our Governing Classes.

The Imperial War Museum's farcical Woke Remembrance Day is a case in point, and apologising for it lazy and ridiculous: obviously anyone who objects to the farce Must Be A Hitler and should be doxxed, threatened and browbeaten into silence.

As for the "apology"

We do, however, recognise that Remembrance Sunday at IWM London, with the meaning it holds for different people, was not the moment to share this particular iteration of Breaking the Silence

iteration : we are Pooh-Bahs; we speak fluent Important.

meaning it holds for different people : there are still some pitiful muppets out there who think this is about remembrance of those who died in the service of their country.

not the moment to share : as Therapeuts we are not, of course, asserting but sharing - inevitably there will be pitiful muppets out there for whom this is not yet the appropriate time. WE WILL BE BACK.

CRAP26

 

Pictured today: the Tuvalu Minister for Sponging complains that slush fund levels are not rising fast enough.

Using remotely sensed data, change is analysed over the past four decades, a period when local sea level has risen at twice the global average (~3.90 ± 0.4 mm.yr−1). Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls. Island change has lacked uniformity with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. Results challenge perceptions of island loss, showing islands are dynamic features that will persist as sites for habitation over the next century, presenting alternate opportunities for adaptation that embrace the heterogeneity of island types and their dynamics.

Patterns of Island Change, Nature Communications February 2018

Illustration: a gang of Tuvaluan Polar Bear Supremacists lynch a Penguin. This is why there are no longer any Penguins on the atolls.

The Tuvalu Pavilion at CON26.

Ripper Was Right

 

I looked over the Steele Dossier when it was first made public, I think in early 2017.

It read like a twelve-year-old's attempt at a Super Spy Secret Squirrel Totally Top Secret Super Secret Secret. So obviously a fake that it was impossible to believe anyone would Take It Seriously for more than the news cycle it took to mayfly away.

After four and a half years (so far) of Everybody Taking It Seriously I begin to realise that Ripper Was Right and fluoridation a menace that has infantilised hundreds of millions, who have grown bigger, older and flabbier while remaining mentally on the verge of pubescence.

RIP General, and Thank You For Your Service. Next time I'm in Arlington VA I will be sure to lay a wreath.

Yes, I know he's a product of the imagination but of an adult and intelligent imagination, which makes him almost concrete amidst the smog of Unreal through which the Fluoridated labour day after day.

Readers: but you... how did you evade Fluoridation... the water supply...

Blogista: as a lifelong alcoholic I have never let it pass my lips

Readers: or...

Blogista: toothpaste, no.

Narrenschiff

What is that grinding, Captain o Captain

What is that grinding, grinding, grinding?

Kapitän: why, it is our Narrenschiff riding onto the rocks under full sail, skyrakers and moonrakers and all.

What is that rending, Captain o Captain

What is that rend

Kapitän: oh do shut up you sely folys.

Who are you to call us sely folys?

Kapitän: ahem

I am the firste fole of all the hole nauy

To kepe the pompe, the helme and eke the sayle

For this is my mynde, this one pleasoure haue I

Of bokes to haue grete plenty and aparayle

I take no wysdome by them: nor yet auayle

Nor them preceyue nat: And then I them despyse

Thus am I a foole and all that sewe that guyse

That in this shyp the chefe place I gouerne

By this wyde see with folys wanderynge

The cause is playne, and easy to dyscerne

Styll am I besy bokes assemblynge

For to haue plenty it is a plesaunt thynge

In my conceyt and to haue them ay in honde

But what they mene do I nat vnderstonde

Das Narrenschiff, Sebastian Brandt 1494

The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde, translation by Alexander Barclay 1509

Library Review Process

There is a book burning in Ontario in 2019 organised by the regional school board. The ashes are used to fertilise an Inclusivity Tree.

2021 and Book Burning Project Partner and Totally Ethnic Native Indigenous Urban Aboriginal Suzy Kies appears to be an imposter:

Readers: What? Not a Totally Ethnic Native Indigenous Urban Aboriginal? Well, stap me vitals.

Blogista: Could've knocked me sideways with a feather.

Readers: I mean, you just have to say "Suzy Kies" and a Maliseet Laporte (who are Innu) Wbanaki Confederacy Turtle Clan Abenaki Montagnais-Naskape provenance immediately springs to mind.

As with so many news stories these days, there are more levels of insanity in all this than I have the means to trowel through single-handed. I am old enough to remember the phrase "political correctness gone mad" as referring to a single and simple aberration. The prolific manifolds of modern lunacy require teams and seasons in the field.

One item sticks out from the rest as a particularly rich find. The Board Spokesperson declares that

these revelations have prompted us to rethink our library review process...

Illustration: a typical Library Review Process pictured today. It may need rethinking.

The Empirical Strikes Back

It seems like only eighteen days ago that this Prune voiced the demands of the US State Department, the UN Security Council, the EU and all the Clown Assemblies of the Clowniverse...

Additionally

the UN Security Council issued a joint press statement earlier today

calling for a new government that is

united  - 100% Taliban

inclusive - of the Pashtun Taliban

and representative - of the Pashtun Taliban

including with the full and

full and meaningful representation of women - zero is plenty of nothing and the meaning is unmistakable

The Cabinet includes senior Ministers with ties to al Qaeda and ISIS. which is exceedingly inclusive because, of course, neither of these organisations exist in Afghanistan and won't be getting a secure base for their further adventures.

In other news, the world ended in 2013 so none of this is happening anyway. Phew.

Update: the State Department is upset at continuing irruptions of Actual into the Maccosphere:

The State Department on Tuesday expressed concerns over the makeup of the new interim Afghan government announced by the Taliban, including the lack of female leaders and the past actions of some of those appointed to top posts.

The bit I like is

the U.S. “will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words"

aaaaand having Judged, do what exactly? Phrases like "oh yeah, you and whose army?" come to mind.

The Theory is Incontestable; the Actual is Due to Arrive Shortly

Classes on Conceptual Art for post-Taliban Afghan women...

In this article Cockburn of the Spectator (or this to avoid the firewall) talks about seeing, at 0:31, the moment the American mission failed in Afghanistan. Yet the Arabella (or it may be, Perdita or Clarissa) in the clip is undoubtedly British, and there is no shortage of this type anywhere in the western world. This is a systemic, a structural, cake and arse party.

It is the cretinous explication of Duchamp's "toilet", delivered with ironclad certainty, which shows why the West is doomed.

Those who cannot see the hard object just beyond the end of their noses that the unenlightened call Reality, are forced to collide with it.

Stalin unleashed a class of Functionaries who, armed only with the Short Course and a pistol, were to transform this Reality into a by-the-book Utopia. Our own New Functionaries (yes, you, Arabella) and the Pooh-Bahs who urge them on are failing just as surely and thoroughly.

Miracle of Deliverance

 

Wherever in the world we deploy our troops henceforth, the populace will gladly support and work with us, knowing that when we leave them to be murdered we will have lifted the local strays to safety.

Clown History

Two British clowns from the Parallel Clown Universe Cornucopia demonstrate that its effluvia are not limited to the North American Continent. In this podcast, Axis Sally, they are in conversation with an American pseudo-academic whose special subject is, ironically, propaganda.

I have added "Enough To make A Cat Laugh" indicators at the Bolix Points.

[35:19] Axis Sally: so we are now in the US, you know, insurrectionists 😸 invaded the Capitol building on January 6th of this year

Clown: yes, we watched that, yes

Axis Sally: there’s an effort on the part of Congress to convene a commission to investigate it and a lot of people don’t want to investigate it cos they wanna pretend it never happened 😸, you know it’s basically treason to invade the Capitol 😸 and try to, you know there were efforts to assassinate members of Congress 😸

Clown: well funnily enough we did a podcast just after that to talk about it and to talk about what it looked like from here, at a distance […], how does this compare to the rise of fascism in Germany 😸, well, one of the ways it compares is that, that attempted, because we called it a putsch 😸, cos that’s what it certainly looked like 😸, that putsch was far more successful than anything Hitler ever attempted 😸 when he was in putsch mode because they actually, they got into the Capitol building, they disrupted the democratic process entirely successfully 😸, not for very long but successfully, disrupted a General Election 😸 and, and regarded themselves as patriots - it looks exactly like the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich 😸 except far more successful 😸 you know, because what didn't happen was what happened in Munich where the police lined up and shot them, because they were insurrectionists.

The clowns are "historian" James Holland and "comedian" Al Murray. Vicious clowns at that, to judge from the last utterance.

Notes for genuine historians:

• the FBI have since determined the obvious, that the riot was not a putsch or insurrection; 
• the "General Election" referred to is the Presidential Election on November 3rd 2020 while the riot that allegedly disrupted it took place on January 6th 2021, 65 days later.

James Holland says: hey history pickers, here's Hitler waiting to putsch the Beer Hall in Munich - the Beer Hall! Bit of a clue in the name, because democratic processes don't happen in Beer Halls! The lad was just pinin' for a stein and couldn't wait for opening time! Us historians pick up on stuff like this so's you don't have to!

Al "sadly, not Bill" Murray says: common dog, innit, I mean who'd try to effect regime change in a bison hat? Stands to reason, Hitler was just gaggin' for a noggin! So there we have it, OrangeManBad a fascist putsch, Adolf a mostly peaceful beer call! When it comes to pure orange evil, no contest!

Towards a Parallel Clown Universe Theory

Additionally

the UN Security Council issued a joint press statement earlier today

calling for a new government that is

united

inclusive

and representative

including with the full and

full and meaningful representation of women.

This manifestation, and others like it in the last few months, could never have occurred in the universe I inhabit. Therefore I conclude that I am experiencing the incursion of a parallel, and Clown, universe into the one I think of as Reality.

I wish it would go away.

LOL

 

Have to admit I have no idea what an LGBTi is, thought there used to be a + in there but that must have been in the olden days. Anyway, they can stop playing alphabetti spaghetti now and get on with burning all those files.

Riding High in April Shot Down in July

I’ve learned that all the fame, notoriety, and money in the world is meaningless.

TV and Twitter, Your Honor, mean nothing.

Everyone wants to ride in the limo with you, but few want to ride with you on the bus.

If we are to understand "bus" metaphorically as "two-and-a-half-year prison sentence", then yes, I'd rather be a solid citizen literally waiting twenty minutes at Shepherd's Bush Bus Station for the 316 to Quex Road than a crook lawyer looking at a deuce and a half in chokey.

 

TV and Twitter mean nothing? Who'd'a'thunkit?

Just for the lulz...

 

Interlude

A l'appetit d'une putain

Fault-il que je mette dehors

Ce qui me doibt nourrir le corps

Pour ung trou qui n'est jamais plain?

Je tien celuy bien inhumain

Qui pour telz faitz fait ces effors

A l'appetit d'une putain.

Pour quoy je concluz pour certain

Que par telz tours puans et ors

Il se rend du nombre des mors

Que veult continuer ce train

A l'appetit d'une putain.

Marcel Schwob; Le Parnasse Satyrique du Quinzième Siècle (1905) p54

Journal of the Plague Year, Month 15

 

A fun day out for all the family on the Freedom March through London this Saturday. 

A welcome break in the fog of lunacy that has settled, placid and persistent, over these Isles.

Empathy

 

Old, mouldering, forgotten...

                                                        I can sooooo relate.

Plus ça Change

 

January 2019

June 2021

St Helier Hospital waiting for eye tests, vol ii of Kotkin's biography of Stalin, Lyttleton's analysis of Mussolini's rise to power, coffee and coffee.

Something about St Helier, eye tests, totalitarian power struggles - and coffee - that just seem to chime together.

Do You Have Difficulty Maintaining an Insurrection?

 

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our Democracy and after this we're gonna walk down - and I'll be there with you - we're gonna walk down, we're gonna walk down, any one you want but I think right here, we're gonna walk down to the Capitol

and we're gonna cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and Women - and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you'll never take back our country by showing weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.

We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building

Mainstream Media: If we cut the next bit nobody will ever know about the next bit and they'll think it's all totally insurrectiony and 9/11y, we'll have to tell them that, obviously, over and over and over and over or they won't think that, obviously

to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard

The scum who have floated to the top of the tank trying sooo hard to rupture the tank; the superfluous imagining themselves the essential (q.v. illus. iv)...

Those are the hills of Heaven, my love, where you will never win

An urge took me to hear some Steeleye Span. I haven't listened to any since the drink became my only love, and I lost my innocence.

A few days on, four CDs have arrived: Below the Salt; Parcel of Rogues; Now We Are Six and Commoners Crown.

The debit is a longing for the young man of four decades ago, the sharp sense of loss and incapacity. The benefit of sobriety and second childhood is that I have some innocence again.

If th'Span ain't your groove, hep cat, the Thai Elephant Orchestra are bloody good value.

I Metz A Man With Seven Lies

 I doubt that Cade Metz ever actually read Slate Star Codex

The allure of the ideas within Silicon Valley is what made Scott Alexander, who had also written under his given name, Scott Siskind, and his blog essential reading.

But in late June of last year, when I approached Mr. Siskind to discuss the blog, it vanished.

read, as in ran his eyes along the rows of dragon's teeth moving his lips as he went: it was well above his mental pay grade. But the "it vanished" is grossly disingenuous, as it was this same Cade Metz who destroyed Slate Star Codex by threatening to name the author, which the author was in no position to allow

If I write about your blog in the NYT, I'm going to have to name you, because inedritig tegrinti engetrintid

Integrity? Please don't write about it then.

Just waste the fucking blog or I'll doxx you anyway, see?

These days Scott Alexander is going strong as Astral Codex Ten and Cade Metz is despised unusually widely even for an NYT flunky.

But this latest curl of Cade to appear in the Gray Outhouse Lady points up that the Wokist-Leninists, that flock of talentless, spiteful, babyish journos, academics, pols, grifters, social media tyros... depend for their power and influence more than any on the mos maiorum, the rule of law, the Constitution, the same they are so eager to demolish when they want to get whatever trash they're wanting after AND GET IT NOW.

The Wokist-Leninist Klown Kar is careering off to wherever graveyard it may be heading for: the powerful are watching for what they may gain from this demolition

Fake Deployment

 

Readers: Oh noes, Trump's PanzerArmee of North Virginia is rolling across the Rappahannock...

Herr Generalblogberst: No it isn't, even Armeeabteilung Steiner at the Battle of Berlin wasn't that much of a delusion.

Readers: But if it's completely imaginary, why are 25,000 National Guard and 4,000 US Marshals and thousands of police needed to garrison Washington, and the FBI to sift out disloyal elements and all the Hitlers...

Blogistorian: I think this is known as Fake Deployment. I wonder if it counts as passive-aggressive, if so the biggest such force in world history. Look out for the First US Gaslight insignia and shoulder patches.

Over the Pond and Far Away

 

The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered.

"Are there any adults - any grownups with you?"

William Golding, Lord of the Flies, ch12, 1954

Mistaken Identity

Obviously a Warrior's bison* headdress, and sported by a d00d from Arizona as it happens, so why is Curtis Yarvin going on about a "Viking pillage of the Senate", "Harald Hardrada and his merry men" &c?

A waggish mis-waggery? Curtis is Contemptuous

To be brutally frank, this is one of the problems with cheap history. People think they have a sense of history, when the oldest book they’ve read is something published in 2017 that explains the Byzantine Empire in terms of “Game of Thrones.” Maybe we need to ban the History Channel, until we can figure out what’s going on.

so one must assume he knows what he doesn't know what he's talking about.

*a bison has a beard, a buffalo does not, as almost everybody has pointed out.

Anyhow and meanwhile, there's this fascist coup (no, not the one advertised) going down and nobody much seems to care. Smiling and waving and looking so fine...

Will the old clown be allowed even to survive Inauguration Day? State of OrangeManBad declared, Martial Lawlessness...

Onwards and Upwards

A happy and prosperous New Year to all my reader

Reader: not me, haven't looked in for yonks

Blogista: well, to ME then