so, the bad kitty looked at this and said “i am literally amazed that half of humanity manages to get itself dressed in the morning.”
it’s rare i find myself saying that señor malo is being too generous, but i think maybe looking at this guy, even the getting dressed part looks like it was probably a pretty close call...
The extra layer of irony for COVID is that the most "educated" people have been the dumbest. Consistently the most fearful and wrong, lacking all rationality and numerical literacy. My next post will dig into this Ivy League Karent apparatchik phenomenon. Having seen it all from deep behind enemy lines, I can tell you that the emperor truly has no clothes.
3 years at Oxford Uni, then some years working in the town made it clear to me that some of the smartest academics were also some of the stupidest people I had ever encountered.
The NYT comment section is the 9th circle of hell. If forced at gunpoint to choose between living in a gulag with NYT commenters and getting waterboarded, I'd go with the latter.
My working theory, before I found the (remarkably objective) comments in these substacks, is, "before you enter any comments section on the Internet, make sure your shots are up-to-date, and wear a cup." If you can find one of those Stillsuits from Dune, all the better!
This isn't surprising really and let me explain why it shouldn't be.
People who aren't "well educated" tend not to trust teachers or what they are being taught. These are probably the smartest people in our society, because they are right.
I'm "well educated". You know what that means? It means that most of what I learned up until 25 was from experts, and doctors, and authorities, which I trusted implicitly, because I was too ignorant to catch their mistakes, and they rarely made them in front of me, because - well, they were teaching me. Everybody told me how smart I was too!
And it wasn't until I left academia that I realized how little I knew. And when I went to work, that was REALLY humiliating because I was in "HIGH TECH" and things move fast there. Still, I tended to trust "authorities", until they started getting things wrong in my field - particularly journalists. Authors in my field were the worst, 1/2 the time their books were 5 even 10 years out of date.
Then I realized most "journalists" that wrote about my field, were just PR people who were producing fluff pieces for a product or a company.
Then the (2nd) Iraq war was being pushed, and I could see plenty of people explaining why binLaden couldn't work with Hussein, and why Hussein would kill him before he would work with him. And then I really went down the rabbit hole. Every "news" article on the Internet had a place for comments back then, but oddly sometimes posts wouldn't show up later on. Did I post it there? Maybe I just couldn't find it. Maybe I didn't submit? It didn't always happen.
I found out the US was best buddies with Hussein when he was at war with Iran, and that the US overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953, in Operation Ajax, and that the CIA setup a very oppressive government and secret police called SAVAK that was savage, to the extent only religious lunatics dared stand up to it. And that the US lost control of it in 1979 in the Iranian hostage crisis. You could learn SO MUCH from the comment section, of course, lots of people posting who were clueless partisan lunatics - but I could sort out the wheat from the chaff.
And I kept going down the rabbit holes, until I realized my government lies, and lies a lot! That we aren't taught any real history. I was catching my government in real time propaganda, and I still persisted - MAYBE journalists just kept making errors, and didn't know? I mean, their JOB was to know, but they didn't know. Well comments were on all news articles then and no matter how many people corrected the "journalists" the stories were never corrected. In fact, the same exact wrong things were repeated over and over again.
By then I was very suspicious, maybe our "mainstream media" was just bullshit? Maybe they were lying all the time, and just producing propaganda, and purposely steering clear of real news stories? I voiced this thought to a few people, oh, I was just being silly and paranoid. You couldn't expect a journalist to be as smart as well educated me after all.
How could smart people be fooled so easily? Lots of people just didn't pay attention to the news directly, yet it reached them. They heard it from other people, mentioned in entertainment shows, caught it in blurbs in news as well. We have a very sophisticated propaganda system in reality. Still, was I overly suspicious?
No. Russian Collusion and polls that didn't have overlapping error bounds settled that. Those were obvious lies. Easily checked. The Steele Dossier could just be checked by looking at Trump's visa requests. You can't have legitimate polls that CONSISTENTLY don't overlap in the margin of error and the pollsters knew that, but the talking heads didn't. Numbers were just made up. Polls are designed to influence opinion, not to gauge it.
Our media is completely propaganda, we have no authorities that are honest and truthful, and a lot of people are JUST figuring that out. I think a LOT of people are just figuring this out - and they aren't stupid. People who still trust the system, they've been propagandized for life. They are far from stupid, but they have a LOT of cognitive dissonance in them. Glad to be rid of that.
I'm in an engineering technical discipline, you can PROVE when I'm wrong. Try that with something like biology, or business management, or something that is a "soft" science of any sort. I'm in Silly Con Valley, I knew maybe 4 people who think this pandemic is vastly over-blown and our authorities are not only contradicting themselves constantly, but are just feeding us bullshit.
I see your point but there are also a lot of really stupid not college educated people as well.
In general we made it cool to be teachers pets and compliant automatons. Higher education or no-if you are committed to following along because “they” say so you abandon the ability to think for yourself.
I often wonder what makes some of us more inclined to resist that authority than others? I remember when I was in middle school I just stopped asking for permission to go to the bathroom. If I had to go-I went. I felt it was beneath me to have to ask permission! I mean, what a crock!
But-in true teenage fashion sometimes I just got tired of being in class and I would get up and leave and go for a walk or find somewhere quiet to have a minute and then I’d go back before class ended to get my stuff.
What wired me to be that way? I honestly do not know. My mom is a public school teacher!
In my state when mask mandates were in effect and fines and jail threatened I just didn’t wear one. I made my piece with the potential consequences. I was always kind and confident and rarely experienced any negative reactions, and when I did they were mild.
If you just act with confidence and kindness it’s amazing what you can get away with.
In any case. I just wanted to point out a lot of really stupid uneducated people are a part of the problem right now as well. The worst mask nazi at my work was not college educated.
I think it comes down to those who want to be popular, and care about being in the “in” group. They have no principles, character, or morals. They sway with the wind. Drives me nuts.
A lot of my friends who were aggressively homophobic when we were in hs are now the same that are aggressively promoting trans delusions. (Or they were last I saw on fb a year ago). I always have maintained its sinful but was adamant that wasn’t a reason to stop being friends or kind to someone-I would say the same today.
My “friends” from high school based their beliefs on the current popular opinions, and they continue to do so. Finger in the air always trying to gauge the wind direction.
I think - no, I know people are easily propagandized. My cousin is a lot like me in my attitudes and his hypothesis is that people need to be part of an "in group", and that normally falls into political party - which is why 30 years ago the "liberals" were against "the man" are now loving the intelligence agencies - because that's what the party is doing. They just follow.
People just trust, they're gullible maybe they are ignorant? Maybe both.
"Stupid" people are everywhere, but I really think it amounts to self confidence and the desire to be in "the tribe". 10,000 years ago if you alienated yourself from the tribe, you were pretty much dead. You HAD to comply, we've been bred for submission for centuries.
I've been punished by 1/2 the people I know for identifying that George W. Bush was lying about a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq - there's NEVER an apology when you are shown to be correct. I was then punished by another 1/2 of the people I knew for saying Obama was just as bad as Bush because he bombed Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. I frequently run into "liberals" that think Obama didn't even start any new war. There's no principles to most people.
But it was Trump that REALLY showed me what is in people. The media screamed he was racist, a Russian spy, corrupt, a rapist, a sexist, a conman, this, that whatever - and people just believed it, and they were apoplectic that I didn't despise him like they did. He tried to end the Syrian war, he tried to end the KOREAN WAR, he tried to deescalate tensions with Russia, he tried to end the Afghanistan war, but most importantly, he was the first president since Carter who wouldn't start a new war. War is just legalized murder. It's necessary at times, but hasn't been in my lifetime, and I'm 50.
I don't think "stupid" people tend to really be stupid. This is just our naive viewpoint of it. I think many people are like "well, I'm no expert in epidemiology and Fauci is called an expert, I should listen to whatever he says, even if he contradicts himself from week to week - after all, I don't know!" They are the same in regard to foreign policy, their political opinions, domestic policy. Nobody has any civic duty today. They feel they are so ignorant, that they can't make an independent assessment, and they are afraid to lest they be seen as "stupid" or "ignorant". There's NOTHING wrong with being ignorant, if I'm wrong, I'm happy to have them explain it to me, but they CAN'T explain it to me - that shows THEIR ignorance. They just get angry, they certainly don't want to discuss it. If I attempt to discuss it, it's because I'm misinformed, I'm a conspiracy nut, I'm gullible - but they won't explain how I'm misinformed, what I'm wrong about, how I've been tricked.
I'm in Silicon Valley in "High Tech". I thought people were smart, independent thinkers here. My last bits of belief in this, are now gone. Out of dozens of people I know well enough to discuss politics with, there's 3 I think are actually independent thinkers, and they aren't really - they're just conservatives but at least they recognize that George W. Bush was awful.
It's terribly arrogant to say, but sometimes I feel I'm sentient, and the vast majority of people around me are not - they are just on auto-pilot. It's isolating. Most people have put in as much thought about why the US went to war in country X as my dogs have.
I now avoid friendships with people who don't demonstrate principles over loyalty to an ideology. I just can't take it anymore. I can't deal with people having an opinion, that isn't their opinion.
We invented the goddamned Internet for a very specific reason, we were going to destroy propaganda, and allow unfettered democratic access to information. We did that. I have talked to Ukrainians, a Libyan (briefly), Egyptians, Iranians, Iraqis (very briefly), Russians, Turks, Italians, Germans, people from all over the world. Through them I have a good idea of what is going on. I am a startlingly rare person that bothers to do this and this is why we made this system.
My business partner is an MIT graduate that thinks the US bombed Syria to stop a civil war. We didn't, we bombed it because Genie Energy made an agreement with Israel to mine oil resources from the Golan Heights, and Russia has a base in Tartus. It's just the lie of the democrats that any mass murdering is done "for humanitarian reasons", and that when the republicans are in the oval office it's "to protect the nation". How can they not see this?
This "pandemic" is almost a comfort to me. I can finally see clearly who is just gullible and a complete follower, and who practices independent thinking. I can spot them by who is wearing a mask while I'm out for a walk on a sunny day. I can see by who is showing up to work instead of working from home. Who walks into traffic to avoid me because I'm not wearing a mask.
It's pathetic, but now I can finally see who is who. There's so few people here that think outside of their job. It's astounding.
Great comments, Richard. You're experiencing what many of us are going through. I have become borderline nihilistic because my belief system has been challenged to its very core.
I went to college and law school but I don't consider myself to be "highly educated." I'll admit that I don't really know what that means as I continue to see otherwise intelligent and credentialed people continuing to be deeply invested in the narrative.
To me, the masks and COVID symbolism have become as ritualistic as Mao's Revolutionary Guards clutching their 'Little Red Book' or the Khmer Rouge in their kramas beating school teachers to death because their educated status was deemed to challenge party orthodoxy.
Your comment about the internet is very telling. It's amazing that a technology once deemed as essential to the liberation of the human mind has now become an essential tool in its enslavement.
While you are correct that far too many "educated" folks bought The Narrative™ hook, line, sinker, and double-masked N95, it is maybe not true that they have generally been the dumbest. I read somewhere that the two biggest groups opposing vaccine mandates are urban doctors and rural citizens. (That may not be true, but I believe a few folks at NASA got canned for saying no to the jab.) So, yes and no, on the background of the inhabitants of Karentopia. Granted, most of those inhabitants are members of the Zoom class though, which is not quite the same as educated, despite it being roughly equivalent to "educated enough to know better."
If we can just convince them three masks is best, we can just help them suffocate themselves.....
(Ok ok I know you guys have seen me preach forgiveness.... and I do, but I have to join in the laughter tonight, the CMS mandate is depressing me. I’m a HC worker. The OSHA stuff is great but CMS is not. )
I don’t think it’s the final word! I read the case that was decided upon was the injunction, not the merits of the mandate and that another case may yet make its way before SCOTUS.
Sounds like a long shot, but God does great work with long shots.
Keep praying!!
My hubs is a fed. So I feel you. My part time retail gig is safe-his full time career is not. If I’d had to pick I would’ve preferred his be safe. But we are trusting in the lord.
Thanks. Means a lot. Same back at you. Probably just means God wants me to be challenged. Hey without all this stupidity, I would know a lot less about biology. Seriously, I’ve learned a lot. Unfortunately I also learned a lot about stupidity, mass formation and politics (I’m so sorry I think I just repeated myself three times, those are all the same right?).
Agree. I think you’ll find a lot of stupid people inhabiting both the educated and uneducated groups. The more frustrating behavior from those that are “educated” is their smug condescending belief that they are so much smarter than those they disagree with-to the point that they should get to tell others how to live.
They’re insufferable. The uneducated automatons are at least not quite so condescending in their stupidity.
College degrees are not earned anymore so much as they are paid for. I say this as a college grad who saw this in real time.
There was a famous Greek philosopher-I can’t remember if it was Aristotle or Socrates or someone else-who refused to accept payment for teaching because he knew if he did the rich people would want their children to go but would expect a rubber stamp essentially in return. He knew you couldn’t “buy” education.
This! Yes! We have come to expect the most ridiculous and and counter logic response to covid etc from our esteemed college professors and those that never question them.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
“Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
“But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from “After Ten Years” in “Letters and Papers from Prison” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.
Also a good one: “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
My file is called Incurable Ignorance. Another quote:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
All of us can see the stupid if we look at MSM right now.
It was iterated by Justices Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor this week. No I’m not vilifying them without reason. Each of these Justices made remarks that can, at best, be classified as willful ignorance: Sotomayor with 30x the rate of children that are truly in the hospital, i.e. an egregious error (3,342 is the correct number, she said “100,000”), Kagan with a quote that shows she thinks the shots will prevent transmission of disease, this “proving” the false necessity of vaccinating the healthcare workers (me, by the way), and Breyer saying the vaccinated are “afraid” to go to work for fear of the unvaccinated. The latter being stupid, albeit not quite untruthful.
These uninformed, possibly malicious but certainly stupid remarks directly impact my life.
To Margaret Anna Alice especially but all who want to know: I loved your reminder that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and is, as Bonhoffer said, the source of internal liberation. Remember this man literally wrote from Prison. He had and still has the right to speak truth in our current time as he did in his time. For those that do not understand why we Christians see “fear” of God as a blessing, we are speaking of reverence for His holiness. Holiness is a concept hard to comprehend in our daily lives. He is set apart, pure, untouchable, the Creator. We reverence him. It places his authority above our own or anyone else’s. It says, as Bonhoffer did, you can torture me, maim me, imprison me, hate me, deny me liberty.... yet still will I worship God and bow before Him, not you.
Pray for me please. I can write all that but the Justices just took my 30 year HC career away. All but. And I’m not high income. And I’m not young. And I partially (fortunately not much but...) support elderly aging parents . I’m one of the lowlies. A friend reminded me Jesus is still in the boat with me....
Which seems to beg the question, what is "stupidity"? Wilful ignorance? Dogmatism? As an aside, I am currently reading Eric Metaxas's excellent Bonhoeffer biography.
As a retired veterinarian, I used to wonder daily how some people, who could not figure out how to take care of a pet, could manage to raise children without killing them. I assumed they had help.
Either you don't have a pet or you don't have kids.
When you get a "family pet for the kids to take care of", it's YOUR pet. The kids won't take care of it.
Kids are the worst possible owners for a pet as well. They haven't developed a parental instinct, they think that 10 or 15 years is a FOREVER long time. Kids change TREMENDOUSLY in just a few years, they get bored with the pet, their personality changes. The pet ages quickly. The kids have no experience in being a teacher either.
Kids are terrible pet owners, no matter what they say. If you get a dog, you're being really cruel to leave it up to your children to raise no matter what angels you think the little thoughtless bastards are. Trust me on this, I did dog rescue.
Selection pressure drives evolution. What you see is the effect of the welfare state removing most of that pressure. There once was a bird called the dodo, and it lived in the best of all possible worlds...
Just got back from a hike in the hills in Pacifica, Ca. Saw one other guy on the trail and he pulled up his mask as we went by...people here are SO brainwashed.
People in my area are mostly in high tech so you’d assume they aren’t brainless. But I see many out alone, walking dogs, mask full on, What?????? No this wasn’t last year sadly. This was 3 days ago. Even sadder? I drive by elementary school ever morning. I literally screamed this morning (new cars have great sound deafening 😀): “take that — mask OFF your poor sweet children”. I’m sure they are simply brainwashed now to think it’s appropriate. The adults too wear masks, while walking their OWN children down an open air street, no one near them. Not everyone thank you Jesus,but many. That was also this week.
Yup, I was blocks away from a middle school being let out today and ALL the kids walking home either in groups or alone, kept their masks on. I’m devastated for them. But the masking has gone gangbusters again. Everyone one the sidewalks, even alone in cars. The worst was a DAD riding a bike with his two little children also riding…in masks. I just can’t stand it. And then I see a headline that the administration wants to send us all ‘good masks.’ 🤢🤮
How many people didn't get the memo put out well over a year ago that surface transmission of the Cough IT 1984 was negligible? I figure around the same number of people who missed the memo that the offensive, vulgar, filthy, useless, worthless Fauci Diaper is/was also negligible!!
I'm a dietitian who, despite my education and hospital training, has been questioning the true motives of the government, pharmaceutical companies, and health care industries for about ten years now. After a full decade of worrying that maybe I'm too cynical, I have recently come to the grim conclusion that I have not nearly been cynical enough.
Now I can't decide if the story of COVID is actually about to break or if I just have a decade-long, head-start on my friends and family.
Recently, my friends were openly mocking CDC guidelines, which I guess was briefly en vogue on Instagram a couple of weeks ago. Minutes after reading off the funniest memes, they started talking about people they know who had "breakthrough" cases.
My friend said, "Well, thank god they were vaccinated and boosted, or else it could have been a lot worse!" I jokingly replied, "According to who? The CDC?!" thinking I had a unique opportunity to join them in mocking The Narrative. I received only dirty stares and awkward silence in response.
So, long story short, I don't know where else to ask this: Is there any evidence that vaccines reduce COVID severity? I can't imagine how it would be possible we have that kind of data given the... well, everything.
Thanks for any clarity on this. This community makes me feel less alone.
It seems that the "less severity" in the vaccinated is an assumption because why else would there be a "vaccine". No data required for the stupid, ignorant, or otherwise non-thinking human.
I don't trust any of the data collection. One metric I've been using (which is admittedly anecdotal) is celebrities that are dying.
Herman Cain is the only famous person I know that, officially, died of sars-cov2-19. He had a lot of problems though, many comorbidities.
Hank Aaron is dead (he was old), Bab Saget just recently died, Lisa Shaw died, a few people in US sports have "retired" suddenly with heart conditions, many football players in Europe have died of heart attacks.
There were about 300,000 deaths attributed to the virus killing them last year, and about 500,000 this year and now vaccines are available. That's suspicious. It's not being hyped every second of the day either, of course Trump isn't president and of course, the virus has had more time to spread.
The anti-Hitler German general Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord had a somewhat jaundiced view of his fellow officers. I think it applies well to our health bureaucrats, all too many of whom fit the "stupid and hardworking" category.
I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
Humans???? what are they???? I'm living among ALIENS from what I can gather. King among the ALIENS are those wearing a surgical mask while they drive alone on the back roads in Australia.
I saw a woman doing a beach yoga class in Florida wearing a mask. One in person in a group of about 200. I think that adequately represents the proportion of these loud obnoxious idiots to regular thinking people. They are just so much louder now.
I was at a road race this past Saturday. I happened to sit at a table with a young woman, who had just run a five-miler in brutal temperatures--as had we all--pulling her mask up and down between bites of bagel or banana. It took all my self-control to not ask her, "What the absolute...?"
I have always thought most people not stupid. Today, in a small town in MT (less than 9000 people), I saw 3 people on the street in masks. I can promise you that these people did not pass 3 other people. Which made me think that maybe the masks are a good way to identify stupid people in advance. It sort of depressed me. I liked it better when I assumed the best of people.
We don't really know the context, which could make this photo make sense. Perhaps he's spraying linseed oil as a weather protectant for the wood and doesn't want to breath in the spray 🤔😜
"California OSHA guidance states that employers should require employees to clean and disinfect their personal work areas and provide employees with the necessary cleaning products to do so. The guidance recommends that employers use cleaning products that are approved for use against COVID-19." Dude is just following orders. Befehle sind befehle
What is ironically stupid is how so many people thinking they are really smart were, in actuality stupid, while the not so intelligent, those of us who realize our intellectual limitations, asked questions because we did not know the answers and, when we did not get an answer that made sense we mistrusted and continued to question while those smart people inferred we were stupid.....circular logic is a 'thing'.....
Why all the chaos of the last two years? Blame politicians/media if you want, but they can only do what they do when the people allow it......and this covidian in the picture, and others like him, is the source of their power
Hey now...maybe he's just trying to remain anonymous. After all, he probably gets recognized by thousands of Baywatch fans EVERY day! That's probably Axe body spray in that pesticide sprayer. :)
I was thinking the same thing and willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. It could be stain, and he's masked to prevent inhaling/ingesting it?
Runner up, at least: An elementary principal in Dallas, TX yesterday announced over the PA that teachers were not to allow students on the playground equipment because it had not been sanitized.
Wow! Just when I thought I'd seen it all. This is what happens when people attend public school and get their "continuing education" from corporate and social media.
not so much stupidity as willful ignorance, which is worse, because there's shame and guilt underneath which makes them work harder to justify their behavior.
I'm streaming the Test Match (cricket!) in Hobart, Tasmania. Island's been locked down most of the Covid times. Glorious clean air, it's near the sea, so breezy. Extraordinary how many pods are wearing masks.
I have to admit that at the very beginning I did some stupid things. One member of my family was in a delicate situation and we did not want to take any risk.
the next stage is to blame food and supply shortages on unvaxxed people and "domestic terrorists" when really its the federal reserve and treasury created inflation
That’s already happened. At least those of us posting “malicious” tweets like I posted to Albert Bourla (you know that little guy at Pfizer who today or yesterday, commenting on Novak Djokovic’s trying to get into Australia for Tennis open). Bourla denigrated Djokovic’s natural immunity saying the vaccines has better protection ( feel free to fact check me his comment was atrocious), I tweeted brownstone.org’s 146 natural immunity studies proof along with “I guess you didn’t pass biology 101 in college”.
I will possibly be deplatformed but my, it was so fun.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin
"Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation."
~ George Carlin
All too true.
The extra layer of irony for COVID is that the most "educated" people have been the dumbest. Consistently the most fearful and wrong, lacking all rationality and numerical literacy. My next post will dig into this Ivy League Karent apparatchik phenomenon. Having seen it all from deep behind enemy lines, I can tell you that the emperor truly has no clothes.
Seeing this within the academic setting is stunning. I will never be able to see these people again in the same light.
I work in education and every day I mourn the reality that these are the people in charge of our children 7 hours a day.
Too much book knowledge seems to kill off the real smartness, the coping smartness. Even the Tao Te Ching, being 2000 or so years old, knew that.
3 years at Oxford Uni, then some years working in the town made it clear to me that some of the smartest academics were also some of the stupidest people I had ever encountered.
Happily for them, the Uni looks after them
Case in point: The comments in the NYT regarding todays Scotus ruling on vaccine mandates.
The NYT comment section is the 9th circle of hell. If forced at gunpoint to choose between living in a gulag with NYT commenters and getting waterboarded, I'd go with the latter.
My working theory, before I found the (remarkably objective) comments in these substacks, is, "before you enter any comments section on the Internet, make sure your shots are up-to-date, and wear a cup." If you can find one of those Stillsuits from Dune, all the better!
This isn't surprising really and let me explain why it shouldn't be.
People who aren't "well educated" tend not to trust teachers or what they are being taught. These are probably the smartest people in our society, because they are right.
I'm "well educated". You know what that means? It means that most of what I learned up until 25 was from experts, and doctors, and authorities, which I trusted implicitly, because I was too ignorant to catch their mistakes, and they rarely made them in front of me, because - well, they were teaching me. Everybody told me how smart I was too!
And it wasn't until I left academia that I realized how little I knew. And when I went to work, that was REALLY humiliating because I was in "HIGH TECH" and things move fast there. Still, I tended to trust "authorities", until they started getting things wrong in my field - particularly journalists. Authors in my field were the worst, 1/2 the time their books were 5 even 10 years out of date.
Then I realized most "journalists" that wrote about my field, were just PR people who were producing fluff pieces for a product or a company.
Then the (2nd) Iraq war was being pushed, and I could see plenty of people explaining why binLaden couldn't work with Hussein, and why Hussein would kill him before he would work with him. And then I really went down the rabbit hole. Every "news" article on the Internet had a place for comments back then, but oddly sometimes posts wouldn't show up later on. Did I post it there? Maybe I just couldn't find it. Maybe I didn't submit? It didn't always happen.
I found out the US was best buddies with Hussein when he was at war with Iran, and that the US overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953, in Operation Ajax, and that the CIA setup a very oppressive government and secret police called SAVAK that was savage, to the extent only religious lunatics dared stand up to it. And that the US lost control of it in 1979 in the Iranian hostage crisis. You could learn SO MUCH from the comment section, of course, lots of people posting who were clueless partisan lunatics - but I could sort out the wheat from the chaff.
And I kept going down the rabbit holes, until I realized my government lies, and lies a lot! That we aren't taught any real history. I was catching my government in real time propaganda, and I still persisted - MAYBE journalists just kept making errors, and didn't know? I mean, their JOB was to know, but they didn't know. Well comments were on all news articles then and no matter how many people corrected the "journalists" the stories were never corrected. In fact, the same exact wrong things were repeated over and over again.
By then I was very suspicious, maybe our "mainstream media" was just bullshit? Maybe they were lying all the time, and just producing propaganda, and purposely steering clear of real news stories? I voiced this thought to a few people, oh, I was just being silly and paranoid. You couldn't expect a journalist to be as smart as well educated me after all.
How could smart people be fooled so easily? Lots of people just didn't pay attention to the news directly, yet it reached them. They heard it from other people, mentioned in entertainment shows, caught it in blurbs in news as well. We have a very sophisticated propaganda system in reality. Still, was I overly suspicious?
No. Russian Collusion and polls that didn't have overlapping error bounds settled that. Those were obvious lies. Easily checked. The Steele Dossier could just be checked by looking at Trump's visa requests. You can't have legitimate polls that CONSISTENTLY don't overlap in the margin of error and the pollsters knew that, but the talking heads didn't. Numbers were just made up. Polls are designed to influence opinion, not to gauge it.
Our media is completely propaganda, we have no authorities that are honest and truthful, and a lot of people are JUST figuring that out. I think a LOT of people are just figuring this out - and they aren't stupid. People who still trust the system, they've been propagandized for life. They are far from stupid, but they have a LOT of cognitive dissonance in them. Glad to be rid of that.
I'm in an engineering technical discipline, you can PROVE when I'm wrong. Try that with something like biology, or business management, or something that is a "soft" science of any sort. I'm in Silly Con Valley, I knew maybe 4 people who think this pandemic is vastly over-blown and our authorities are not only contradicting themselves constantly, but are just feeding us bullshit.
I see your point but there are also a lot of really stupid not college educated people as well.
In general we made it cool to be teachers pets and compliant automatons. Higher education or no-if you are committed to following along because “they” say so you abandon the ability to think for yourself.
I often wonder what makes some of us more inclined to resist that authority than others? I remember when I was in middle school I just stopped asking for permission to go to the bathroom. If I had to go-I went. I felt it was beneath me to have to ask permission! I mean, what a crock!
But-in true teenage fashion sometimes I just got tired of being in class and I would get up and leave and go for a walk or find somewhere quiet to have a minute and then I’d go back before class ended to get my stuff.
What wired me to be that way? I honestly do not know. My mom is a public school teacher!
In my state when mask mandates were in effect and fines and jail threatened I just didn’t wear one. I made my piece with the potential consequences. I was always kind and confident and rarely experienced any negative reactions, and when I did they were mild.
If you just act with confidence and kindness it’s amazing what you can get away with.
In any case. I just wanted to point out a lot of really stupid uneducated people are a part of the problem right now as well. The worst mask nazi at my work was not college educated.
I think it comes down to those who want to be popular, and care about being in the “in” group. They have no principles, character, or morals. They sway with the wind. Drives me nuts.
A lot of my friends who were aggressively homophobic when we were in hs are now the same that are aggressively promoting trans delusions. (Or they were last I saw on fb a year ago). I always have maintained its sinful but was adamant that wasn’t a reason to stop being friends or kind to someone-I would say the same today.
My “friends” from high school based their beliefs on the current popular opinions, and they continue to do so. Finger in the air always trying to gauge the wind direction.
I think - no, I know people are easily propagandized. My cousin is a lot like me in my attitudes and his hypothesis is that people need to be part of an "in group", and that normally falls into political party - which is why 30 years ago the "liberals" were against "the man" are now loving the intelligence agencies - because that's what the party is doing. They just follow.
People just trust, they're gullible maybe they are ignorant? Maybe both.
"Stupid" people are everywhere, but I really think it amounts to self confidence and the desire to be in "the tribe". 10,000 years ago if you alienated yourself from the tribe, you were pretty much dead. You HAD to comply, we've been bred for submission for centuries.
I've been punished by 1/2 the people I know for identifying that George W. Bush was lying about a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq - there's NEVER an apology when you are shown to be correct. I was then punished by another 1/2 of the people I knew for saying Obama was just as bad as Bush because he bombed Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. I frequently run into "liberals" that think Obama didn't even start any new war. There's no principles to most people.
But it was Trump that REALLY showed me what is in people. The media screamed he was racist, a Russian spy, corrupt, a rapist, a sexist, a conman, this, that whatever - and people just believed it, and they were apoplectic that I didn't despise him like they did. He tried to end the Syrian war, he tried to end the KOREAN WAR, he tried to deescalate tensions with Russia, he tried to end the Afghanistan war, but most importantly, he was the first president since Carter who wouldn't start a new war. War is just legalized murder. It's necessary at times, but hasn't been in my lifetime, and I'm 50.
I don't think "stupid" people tend to really be stupid. This is just our naive viewpoint of it. I think many people are like "well, I'm no expert in epidemiology and Fauci is called an expert, I should listen to whatever he says, even if he contradicts himself from week to week - after all, I don't know!" They are the same in regard to foreign policy, their political opinions, domestic policy. Nobody has any civic duty today. They feel they are so ignorant, that they can't make an independent assessment, and they are afraid to lest they be seen as "stupid" or "ignorant". There's NOTHING wrong with being ignorant, if I'm wrong, I'm happy to have them explain it to me, but they CAN'T explain it to me - that shows THEIR ignorance. They just get angry, they certainly don't want to discuss it. If I attempt to discuss it, it's because I'm misinformed, I'm a conspiracy nut, I'm gullible - but they won't explain how I'm misinformed, what I'm wrong about, how I've been tricked.
I'm in Silicon Valley in "High Tech". I thought people were smart, independent thinkers here. My last bits of belief in this, are now gone. Out of dozens of people I know well enough to discuss politics with, there's 3 I think are actually independent thinkers, and they aren't really - they're just conservatives but at least they recognize that George W. Bush was awful.
It's terribly arrogant to say, but sometimes I feel I'm sentient, and the vast majority of people around me are not - they are just on auto-pilot. It's isolating. Most people have put in as much thought about why the US went to war in country X as my dogs have.
I now avoid friendships with people who don't demonstrate principles over loyalty to an ideology. I just can't take it anymore. I can't deal with people having an opinion, that isn't their opinion.
We invented the goddamned Internet for a very specific reason, we were going to destroy propaganda, and allow unfettered democratic access to information. We did that. I have talked to Ukrainians, a Libyan (briefly), Egyptians, Iranians, Iraqis (very briefly), Russians, Turks, Italians, Germans, people from all over the world. Through them I have a good idea of what is going on. I am a startlingly rare person that bothers to do this and this is why we made this system.
My business partner is an MIT graduate that thinks the US bombed Syria to stop a civil war. We didn't, we bombed it because Genie Energy made an agreement with Israel to mine oil resources from the Golan Heights, and Russia has a base in Tartus. It's just the lie of the democrats that any mass murdering is done "for humanitarian reasons", and that when the republicans are in the oval office it's "to protect the nation". How can they not see this?
This "pandemic" is almost a comfort to me. I can finally see clearly who is just gullible and a complete follower, and who practices independent thinking. I can spot them by who is wearing a mask while I'm out for a walk on a sunny day. I can see by who is showing up to work instead of working from home. Who walks into traffic to avoid me because I'm not wearing a mask.
It's pathetic, but now I can finally see who is who. There's so few people here that think outside of their job. It's astounding.
Great comments, Richard. You're experiencing what many of us are going through. I have become borderline nihilistic because my belief system has been challenged to its very core.
I went to college and law school but I don't consider myself to be "highly educated." I'll admit that I don't really know what that means as I continue to see otherwise intelligent and credentialed people continuing to be deeply invested in the narrative.
To me, the masks and COVID symbolism have become as ritualistic as Mao's Revolutionary Guards clutching their 'Little Red Book' or the Khmer Rouge in their kramas beating school teachers to death because their educated status was deemed to challenge party orthodoxy.
Your comment about the internet is very telling. It's amazing that a technology once deemed as essential to the liberation of the human mind has now become an essential tool in its enslavement.
Boom. You couldn't have said it more clearly. I live behind enemy lines, too. It's utterly unbearable. University twats.
While you are correct that far too many "educated" folks bought The Narrative™ hook, line, sinker, and double-masked N95, it is maybe not true that they have generally been the dumbest. I read somewhere that the two biggest groups opposing vaccine mandates are urban doctors and rural citizens. (That may not be true, but I believe a few folks at NASA got canned for saying no to the jab.) So, yes and no, on the background of the inhabitants of Karentopia. Granted, most of those inhabitants are members of the Zoom class though, which is not quite the same as educated, despite it being roughly equivalent to "educated enough to know better."
If we can just convince them three masks is best, we can just help them suffocate themselves.....
(Ok ok I know you guys have seen me preach forgiveness.... and I do, but I have to join in the laughter tonight, the CMS mandate is depressing me. I’m a HC worker. The OSHA stuff is great but CMS is not. )
Three masks is pathetically inadequate. They need to wear eleventy!!!!
On your eleventy-first birthday, especially! Proudmasks and Covaidsblowers!
I dunno, except for Fauci, I think we can elimate most with 3....
I don’t think it’s the final word! I read the case that was decided upon was the injunction, not the merits of the mandate and that another case may yet make its way before SCOTUS.
Sounds like a long shot, but God does great work with long shots.
Keep praying!!
My hubs is a fed. So I feel you. My part time retail gig is safe-his full time career is not. If I’d had to pick I would’ve preferred his be safe. But we are trusting in the lord.
Thanks. Means a lot. Same back at you. Probably just means God wants me to be challenged. Hey without all this stupidity, I would know a lot less about biology. Seriously, I’ve learned a lot. Unfortunately I also learned a lot about stupidity, mass formation and politics (I’m so sorry I think I just repeated myself three times, those are all the same right?).
Agree. I think you’ll find a lot of stupid people inhabiting both the educated and uneducated groups. The more frustrating behavior from those that are “educated” is their smug condescending belief that they are so much smarter than those they disagree with-to the point that they should get to tell others how to live.
They’re insufferable. The uneducated automatons are at least not quite so condescending in their stupidity.
When I realized there was such a thing as, "the arrogance of certainty" it changed my approach to truth. Your point is well taken!
We're talking about neil ferguson and the general slant of higher education. Yes vaccine hesitancy registered high with phds and the undereducated.
They’re best described as midwits.
I think that's the point - it's only 25%. There's a lot of psychology involved with who 'sees' and who doesn't, it seems to me.
College degrees are not earned anymore so much as they are paid for. I say this as a college grad who saw this in real time.
There was a famous Greek philosopher-I can’t remember if it was Aristotle or Socrates or someone else-who refused to accept payment for teaching because he knew if he did the rich people would want their children to go but would expect a rubber stamp essentially in return. He knew you couldn’t “buy” education.
mass formation
So true! I'm so astounded. I ask myself are they that stupid? That easily manipulated? Or just downright evil? I can't reconcile what I see.
This! Yes! We have come to expect the most ridiculous and and counter logic response to covid etc from our esteemed college professors and those that never question them.
Amen to that
Bonhoeffer on stupidity:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
“Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
“But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from “After Ten Years” in “Letters and Papers from Prison” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It is only difficult for the others.
It is the same when you are stupid.
Also, Thomas Sowell: "You cannot reason a person out of a position he didn't reason himself into."
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
~ Thomas Sowell
Sowell is a national treasure.
Also a good one: “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
😆👍
;)
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
-Karl Popper
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
-Mark Twain
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.”
–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“The masses have been reduced to the psychological level of adolescent white girls.”
–Steve Sailer
“In the end, how do you come to agreement with someone who is a lunatic and condemns you for thinking straight? And why would you do so?
–Unknown Commenter
Fabulous. These are going straight into my Stupidity file.
My file is called Incurable Ignorance. Another quote:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
―Carl Sagan
Which is a foreboding thought given the current situation. People don't want to feel they have been bamboozled.
“Incurable Ignorance”—brilliant!
I hope you will post them later on !
Very likely :-)
I will put a towel ready for the laughter tears LOL
🤣🤣🤣
Love the Twain quote, but sadly it appears spurious:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/12/23/fooled/
Oh no, how disappointing! It’s such a handy quote, too. I had to update my first essay citing it accordingly.
"Don't argue with a stupid person. They will beat you on experience alone."
😂
All of us can see the stupid if we look at MSM right now.
It was iterated by Justices Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor this week. No I’m not vilifying them without reason. Each of these Justices made remarks that can, at best, be classified as willful ignorance: Sotomayor with 30x the rate of children that are truly in the hospital, i.e. an egregious error (3,342 is the correct number, she said “100,000”), Kagan with a quote that shows she thinks the shots will prevent transmission of disease, this “proving” the false necessity of vaccinating the healthcare workers (me, by the way), and Breyer saying the vaccinated are “afraid” to go to work for fear of the unvaccinated. The latter being stupid, albeit not quite untruthful.
These uninformed, possibly malicious but certainly stupid remarks directly impact my life.
To Margaret Anna Alice especially but all who want to know: I loved your reminder that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and is, as Bonhoffer said, the source of internal liberation. Remember this man literally wrote from Prison. He had and still has the right to speak truth in our current time as he did in his time. For those that do not understand why we Christians see “fear” of God as a blessing, we are speaking of reverence for His holiness. Holiness is a concept hard to comprehend in our daily lives. He is set apart, pure, untouchable, the Creator. We reverence him. It places his authority above our own or anyone else’s. It says, as Bonhoffer did, you can torture me, maim me, imprison me, hate me, deny me liberty.... yet still will I worship God and bow before Him, not you.
🤗💗🙌
Pray for me please. I can write all that but the Justices just took my 30 year HC career away. All but. And I’m not high income. And I’m not young. And I partially (fortunately not much but...) support elderly aging parents . I’m one of the lowlies. A friend reminded me Jesus is still in the boat with me....
🙏🏼
Which seems to beg the question, what is "stupidity"? Wilful ignorance? Dogmatism? As an aside, I am currently reading Eric Metaxas's excellent Bonhoeffer biography.
Fauci?
Chris Green, a wonderful theologian is doing an Advent series on his Speakeasy Theology podcast here on Substack. That series is for subscribers only.
Can you condense that into a tweet?
😆 This could do:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.”
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
(Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.)
~ Friedrich Schiller, The Maid of Orleans
Love Bonhofer
someone should tell him, one swim in the sea and he'll be exposed to about 10k different viruses
well a former friend biologist told me years ago that we are surrounded by viruses and germs, but kept on wearing a mask until a few months ago.
hahaha. i guess he didnt know that viruses feed off bacteria. odd that
As a retired veterinarian, I used to wonder daily how some people, who could not figure out how to take care of a pet, could manage to raise children without killing them. I assumed they had help.
Those children of the people who could not take care of a pet? Yeah that is one of them as an adult featured in the picture.
They didn't kill them - they f*@ked them up so badly they are not capable of logical thought.
Either you don't have a pet or you don't have kids.
When you get a "family pet for the kids to take care of", it's YOUR pet. The kids won't take care of it.
Kids are the worst possible owners for a pet as well. They haven't developed a parental instinct, they think that 10 or 15 years is a FOREVER long time. Kids change TREMENDOUSLY in just a few years, they get bored with the pet, their personality changes. The pet ages quickly. The kids have no experience in being a teacher either.
Kids are terrible pet owners, no matter what they say. If you get a dog, you're being really cruel to leave it up to your children to raise no matter what angels you think the little thoughtless bastards are. Trust me on this, I did dog rescue.
Selection pressure drives evolution. What you see is the effect of the welfare state removing most of that pressure. There once was a bird called the dodo, and it lived in the best of all possible worlds...
Just got back from a hike in the hills in Pacifica, Ca. Saw one other guy on the trail and he pulled up his mask as we went by...people here are SO brainwashed.
People in my area are mostly in high tech so you’d assume they aren’t brainless. But I see many out alone, walking dogs, mask full on, What?????? No this wasn’t last year sadly. This was 3 days ago. Even sadder? I drive by elementary school ever morning. I literally screamed this morning (new cars have great sound deafening 😀): “take that — mask OFF your poor sweet children”. I’m sure they are simply brainwashed now to think it’s appropriate. The adults too wear masks, while walking their OWN children down an open air street, no one near them. Not everyone thank you Jesus,but many. That was also this week.
Yup, I was blocks away from a middle school being let out today and ALL the kids walking home either in groups or alone, kept their masks on. I’m devastated for them. But the masking has gone gangbusters again. Everyone one the sidewalks, even alone in cars. The worst was a DAD riding a bike with his two little children also riding…in masks. I just can’t stand it. And then I see a headline that the administration wants to send us all ‘good masks.’ 🤢🤮
and people will fall in line to be "good" citizens and wear the "good masks"!
How many people didn't get the memo put out well over a year ago that surface transmission of the Cough IT 1984 was negligible? I figure around the same number of people who missed the memo that the offensive, vulgar, filthy, useless, worthless Fauci Diaper is/was also negligible!!
I'm a dietitian who, despite my education and hospital training, has been questioning the true motives of the government, pharmaceutical companies, and health care industries for about ten years now. After a full decade of worrying that maybe I'm too cynical, I have recently come to the grim conclusion that I have not nearly been cynical enough.
Now I can't decide if the story of COVID is actually about to break or if I just have a decade-long, head-start on my friends and family.
Recently, my friends were openly mocking CDC guidelines, which I guess was briefly en vogue on Instagram a couple of weeks ago. Minutes after reading off the funniest memes, they started talking about people they know who had "breakthrough" cases.
My friend said, "Well, thank god they were vaccinated and boosted, or else it could have been a lot worse!" I jokingly replied, "According to who? The CDC?!" thinking I had a unique opportunity to join them in mocking The Narrative. I received only dirty stares and awkward silence in response.
So, long story short, I don't know where else to ask this: Is there any evidence that vaccines reduce COVID severity? I can't imagine how it would be possible we have that kind of data given the... well, everything.
Thanks for any clarity on this. This community makes me feel less alone.
It seems that the "less severity" in the vaccinated is an assumption because why else would there be a "vaccine". No data required for the stupid, ignorant, or otherwise non-thinking human.
I don't trust any of the data collection. One metric I've been using (which is admittedly anecdotal) is celebrities that are dying.
Herman Cain is the only famous person I know that, officially, died of sars-cov2-19. He had a lot of problems though, many comorbidities.
Hank Aaron is dead (he was old), Bab Saget just recently died, Lisa Shaw died, a few people in US sports have "retired" suddenly with heart conditions, many football players in Europe have died of heart attacks.
There were about 300,000 deaths attributed to the virus killing them last year, and about 500,000 this year and now vaccines are available. That's suspicious. It's not being hyped every second of the day either, of course Trump isn't president and of course, the virus has had more time to spread.
I also do not trust the government, at all.
I haven't come across what our society worships as 'evidence' yet. Anecdotally, I have in the bucket loads.
The anti-Hitler German general Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord had a somewhat jaundiced view of his fellow officers. I think it applies well to our health bureaucrats, all too many of whom fit the "stupid and hardworking" category.
I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
Humans???? what are they???? I'm living among ALIENS from what I can gather. King among the ALIENS are those wearing a surgical mask while they drive alone on the back roads in Australia.
I saw a woman doing a beach yoga class in Florida wearing a mask. One in person in a group of about 200. I think that adequately represents the proportion of these loud obnoxious idiots to regular thinking people. They are just so much louder now.
I was at a road race this past Saturday. I happened to sit at a table with a young woman, who had just run a five-miler in brutal temperatures--as had we all--pulling her mask up and down between bites of bagel or banana. It took all my self-control to not ask her, "What the absolute...?"
She's probably on Tinder, though. I wonder what those hookups are like?
Geez
I keep wondering if they’ll just suffocate themselves.
I have always thought most people not stupid. Today, in a small town in MT (less than 9000 people), I saw 3 people on the street in masks. I can promise you that these people did not pass 3 other people. Which made me think that maybe the masks are a good way to identify stupid people in advance. It sort of depressed me. I liked it better when I assumed the best of people.
Differentiate between "stupid people" and "gullible / ignorant people". Your confusing those.
We don't really know the context, which could make this photo make sense. Perhaps he's spraying linseed oil as a weather protectant for the wood and doesn't want to breath in the spray 🤔😜
don't spoil the joke now LOL
"California OSHA guidance states that employers should require employees to clean and disinfect their personal work areas and provide employees with the necessary cleaning products to do so. The guidance recommends that employers use cleaning products that are approved for use against COVID-19." Dude is just following orders. Befehle sind befehle
Probably better to not breathe in that toxic spay then...
I saw the picture, read your first sentence, and said to myself, "Pretty sure that guy can't even do the getting dressed part on his own."
Then I read your second sentence...
I prefer getting a shopping cart from outdoors, where it's sterilized by sunlight
What is ironically stupid is how so many people thinking they are really smart were, in actuality stupid, while the not so intelligent, those of us who realize our intellectual limitations, asked questions because we did not know the answers and, when we did not get an answer that made sense we mistrusted and continued to question while those smart people inferred we were stupid.....circular logic is a 'thing'.....
Nicely expounded.
In his defense, I would probably wear a mask too when spraying chemicals.
Why all the chaos of the last two years? Blame politicians/media if you want, but they can only do what they do when the people allow it......and this covidian in the picture, and others like him, is the source of their power
He won’t be saving me.
A little more humor to celebrate the SCOTUS decision. H/t to Mike Rowe. https://imgflip.com/i/616h7e
I want to put that on a billboard soooo badly.
Wouldn't that be amazing?!
Has to be Australia.
Clearly he?she? has never heard of ultraviolet light from big lamp in sky belong Jesus and ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’.
Disinfecting with sunlight is just a conspiracy theory spread by Trump to appeal to antivaxx racists.
😁
Hey now...maybe he's just trying to remain anonymous. After all, he probably gets recognized by thousands of Baywatch fans EVERY day! That's probably Axe body spray in that pesticide sprayer. :)
As my husband is fond of saying "they're lucky to tie their shoes in the morning."
Maybe they’re putting stain on the wood?
I was thinking the same thing and willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. It could be stain, and he's masked to prevent inhaling/ingesting it?
Pretty stupid to be spraying oil or stain on a chair on the sand in the wind anyway imo.
We could collect “portraits of stupidity”
A few days ago I started reading this booklet. See for yourself. It states that the virus (which was, according to Dr Martin already present in the environment) only carries a poison into the body. Very interesting, and so plausible I think this might be right. https://www.globalresearch.ca/our-species-genetically-modified-witnessing-humanity-march-toward-extinction-viruses-friends-not-foes/5763670
Runner up, at least: An elementary principal in Dallas, TX yesterday announced over the PA that teachers were not to allow students on the playground equipment because it had not been sanitized.
Wow! Just when I thought I'd seen it all. This is what happens when people attend public school and get their "continuing education" from corporate and social media.
i agree about the fashion sense. but not having any idea of what the guy is spraying, i say that maybe the mask could be doing some actual good here.
See THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
by Carlo M. https://web.archive.org/web/20130216132858/http://www.cantrip.org/stupidity.html
Unbelievable breaking news in archeology.
The Romans suffered from a Fauci-like character who also was exposed as a phallus with a god complex.
https://twitter.com/archaeologyart/status/1481544078168936452/photo/1
Nothing new under the sun.
Looking at his hair, its all blowing back into his face and then gets trapped in his mask. Pure brilliance.
Ok but what the heck is going on in this picture even?
not so much stupidity as willful ignorance, which is worse, because there's shame and guilt underneath which makes them work harder to justify their behavior.
Oh, the virus...me thinks an unpublicized side effect of catching it is you become "Bat Sh** Crazy" , literally.
Are you certain that it's the virus, not the injection? My wife and I both recovered (easily) from the bug, and don't seem any crazier can before.
Just press the button and you will get a pellet. Good boy.
Djokovic might ‘excite anti-vaxxers’. An update on what’s going on down under.
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/djokovic-might-excite-anti-vaxxers
Just goes to prove you "can't fix stupid"!
I'm streaming the Test Match (cricket!) in Hobart, Tasmania. Island's been locked down most of the Covid times. Glorious clean air, it's near the sea, so breezy. Extraordinary how many pods are wearing masks.
My momma always says, stupid is, what stupid does
Lotsa brane surgeons work as lifeguards to get through school.
Chunky lifeguard.
Oh, Toi-Mites? Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk.
He just wanted to avoid the fumes while cleaning off the zinc oxide the last guy smeared all over the chair.
After all, no one wants to get greasy white stuff all over his best tank top.
Great pic. lol
I have said it more than once. It is trite to say. Yes, I will most assuredly say it lots more times.
It's over. Get the lights on the your way out. Damn.
I have to admit that at the very beginning I did some stupid things. One member of my family was in a delicate situation and we did not want to take any risk.
So we followed several rules, just in case.
I think we all did for some period of time. But we were also skeptical from day one
Now we need to pay attention to the predictive programming for the possible next stage: Get Ready For The Next One The Next Plandemic: Smallpox, Marburg, or both? https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-next-one
the next stage is to blame food and supply shortages on unvaxxed people and "domestic terrorists" when really its the federal reserve and treasury created inflation
Will the unvaxxed be considered domestic terrorists? I would not be surprised
That’s already happened. At least those of us posting “malicious” tweets like I posted to Albert Bourla (you know that little guy at Pfizer who today or yesterday, commenting on Novak Djokovic’s trying to get into Australia for Tennis open). Bourla denigrated Djokovic’s natural immunity saying the vaccines has better protection ( feel free to fact check me his comment was atrocious), I tweeted brownstone.org’s 146 natural immunity studies proof along with “I guess you didn’t pass biology 101 in college”.
I will possibly be deplatformed but my, it was so fun.
The blaming is a given, "Divide and concur"
Did it happen in the states that the waiters cleaned every chair between one patron and the next one?
he seems kinda chunky to be a lifeguard. Okay maybe he is just the chair sanitizer hahahhaha
Where is this New York? or California