Random Rant Thread

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The easiest way to remind yourself of the pressing social issues of today is to watch/listen to MLK interviews as a ritual every year. He had already laid out all the socio-economic issues back then.

No American political figures in the 20th century have stayed more relevant than MLK. I wonder how many Americans truly understand the significance and ever-lasting relevance of that man.

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I always thought Gavin Newsom (California Governor) was extremely irritating.

I mean, this guy was married to careerist nymphomaniac creep Kimberley Guilfoyle (Donald Jr.'s girlfriend now, the North Korean Propaganda Lady of Trumpland), and talks as if an electronic device was attached to his dick when he has to make excuses.

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You were APPOINTED, you piece of shit. That's the definition of "easy way."

Just piss off, two-time loser.

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That is why I specifically said there was a *Tejanos problem* in Texas.

Texan Dems will have to address the huge Tejanos problem. Most of the Latino Texans in my region are more in line with Arizonans and New Mexicans, but those rural Tejanos in particular went almost all in for Trump.

80% of the election analyses on Texas that I've seen/read didn't seem to understand this at all. I'm not even in the US now, but it didn't take much for me to figure that out. Again, why are people so lazy?

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I whole-heartedly agree.

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At the end of the day, those who don't give a fuck deserve whatever is coming to them. If the report that 2 in 5 Americans will do "normal Thanksgiving" this year - many flights have been added due to the last-minute booking surge - is more or less true, fine. That's their answer. We have a broken society here. Extremely impatient, and extremely selfish.

Good luck. I'm not even sure who I'm saying this to, but, you know, good luck.

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OK, I don't want to do this, because like I said, people pay waaaaaay too much attention to Sweden. I shouldn't do what I preach against.

But there are still so many Sweden fanboys for god-knows-why. I thought that since the country has been struggling hard with the second wave now, like most other countries, those fanboys would die down gradually as it pretty conclusively proved that Tegnell's assumption was, you know, flawed, to put it mildly.

I was wrong.

Their mantra now is "Excess Mortality!", because apparently all-cause mortality in Sweden this year at this point is actually slightly below the "5-year average."

You see, there are lots of these morons especially in the UK and US, who have no idea what they're talking about.

This is the correct way to understand Swedish excess mortality and its trend.



Look at the slope. Not many countries have such an impressive mortality slope over the last few decades. Beautiful.

And you're not qualified to talk about statistics if you don't understand why the arbitrary "5-year average" is completely meaningless for this chart. If you have any clue, you'd know that gray line is all that matters.

And you see that "5k excess deaths?" Those are not my words, but the Swedish government's! It's by far the worst in Scandinavia, and so was the GDP decline in Q2 despite no lockdown (-8.3%).

Almost none of the "Excess Mortality!" morons are Swedish. That's why they don't care about the details and just go with the laziest crap like "Excess Mortality!"

Leave Sweden alone, please. 

And I can guarantee you that if your country ever tried the "Swedish model," you will be Covid-fucked like the end of the world. In all likelihood your country is not even remotely as socially cohesive as Sweden. Few countries are.

Math-challenged fools should stay home and play a video game or something instead of clowning around with dumb arguments.

[K1power]

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The top attorney who represents the US president seriously argued in a press conference that there was a "software algorithm" installed by the "international left" to flip millions of Trump votes for Biden, but it "broke down" because of the overwhelming number of votes for Trump, and that's what happened in some of the states that Trump won (e.g. Florida), implying that Biden would've won those states too if the "algorithm" hadn't "broken down."

I mean, I know. The sheer absurdity and childishness of the claim is mind-boggling, but what really stands out there for me personally is how those cavemen and cavewoman (this lawyer is she - a Texan twit named Sidney Powell) understand "algorithm."

They think of it as some kind of a little gremlin frantically pushing buttons in the basement or something. "Oh Gosh, the Trump votes are so overwhelming, and I can't deal with this any moooooooorrreeeeee!!!"

Needless to say, that's not how it works. You'd have to *deliberately* program it that way for the "algorithm" to "break down" like that.

This is not particularly unique with "software." Technology has been used throughout history as this mysterious black box to scare people with for political purposes, because it does take some knowledge and skills to understand how it works, and most people don't have time and energy for that.

And in all likelihood, Sydney Powell doesn't have a single clue about how an "algorithm" actually works either. America is the country that gave us most of the IT infrastructure that we use today. Yet no Republicans can tell her that she's talking nonsense. Of course she wouldn't listen anyway, but I can assure you that not a single Republican has bothered to do it.

Anyway, this is just beyond sad. I'm talking to non-Americans here, as a warning. We had the Russiagate, and now this. Total rabbit hole.

And... I don't know. I just want to apologize to you on... whoever's behalf.

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As for Rudy Giuliani, need I say more? People who are somehow shocked! I'm telling you, SHOCKED! now are such marks.

I had been telling them for more than 15 years.

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"I tell you what's at the bottom of it: If you can convince the lowest white man he is better than the best colored man, he won't notice you picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -L. B. Johnson (36th US president)

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This thread seems reasonable and all, and it is in many ways (I'm saying this as someone who has David Frum on their worst people in the world list), but there's one fatal flaw in his assumption.

It's wrong to compare the US to countries like Germany and the Netherlands, let alone New Zealand or Denmark.

No. The US is far more politically comparable to countries like Brazil and India. Huge diverse, chaotic countries.

You can actually throw in Russia too.

It's pretty obvious. But Americans don't think that way due to their pride as a "wealthy Western democracy" - hell, even as THE "wealthy Western democracy."

The US simply isn't one in reality, and that's not because Americans are somehow inferior to Western Europeans or anything like that. America is just... America. It's just VERY different from countries like Germany and the Netherlands. There's VERY little in common between them, and that of course has a lot to do with their respective histories and political traditions.

And most importantly, it's simply very difficult to "democratically govern" such a large, diverse, chaotic country as the United States of America. I know I sound like a Chinese communist party prick, but it's true. The question is whether you should give up because of that. My position is that you shouldn't.

It's a given that every US election is a complete fucking mess, usually even worse than Brazil's. The US is not a typical "wealthy Western democracy" at all. Americans will continue to believe that, but the rest of the world doesn't have to, because it's not true.

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And that, incidentally, is why it's absolutely absurd for the US to even flirt with the "Swedish model."

We are talking about THE most socially cohesive country in Europe. The US is almost the opposite of that, with the population more than 30 times that of Sweden's.

Sometimes you REALLY should know your place.

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I will do it here instead of that Twitter thread.

In my case, it's what a Japanese doctor said in one of those trashy TV shows - what the Japanese call "wide show" where the host and guests talk about a wide range of topics such as celeb gossips, murder cases, international incidents, political scandals etc. - in a surprisingly blunt way. I saw the show on the day when I got back to Japan from Europe, around the beginning of March. He said:

"You will get this virus eventually. All of you, all of us. It's just the question of when, and how. But we should try to minimize the damage."

All the other guests were almost frozen like, "Whoa, are you serious?" He was probably talking out of his ass (He's just a doctor) without much evidence, but almost immediately after he said that, I started feeling the symptoms. And the rest is history. A few days later I was isolated in a room at the local hospital with my laptop with wi-fi and a TV on the wall.

I thought the virus was going to be a major problem this year one way or another, and that's why I was masked up at the airports and on the flights the whole time in late February. But that doctor's words have stuck with me ever since.

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Pfizer is submitting their vaccines for emergency authorization in the US, EU, Canada, Japan, UK and Australia today.

It's beginning.