Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

The fact of the matter about op-ed pieces is that even a good writer doesn't have a thing to say that is worth reading every single week, let alone the average ones.

And newspapers only hire average-at-best ones.

[miscmisc]

As someone who had some personal experience with Donald Trump, I'm telling you that he's not a joker. He's super funny, yes, but that's just him being a natural comedian. He's often not even aware that he's very funny.

Anyway, he's not a joker. His presidency wasn't some avant garde performance art. He was deadly serious about the whole thing, and still is. And in most likelihood he believes 85% of all the bullshit.

His political toxicity won't be gone just like that. It won't go away if you just keep looking away.

[miscmisc]

Even after all the shit people completely shitting on this planet all over the place, Tony Blair is still the worst person on this planet, and also the truly worst person on this planet is still Rupert Murdoch.

Just wanted to get that quite clear here.

[miscmisc]

Jesus Christ.

I fucking miss the original QAnon shaman, that guy from Arizona, if this fucking joke is his successor.

Typical, though. Even bad stuff regresses into even worse shit these days. It's just a bottomless world.

[miscmisc]

It's amazing that even today more than 80% of the things that people outside Germany consider to be "German" are 100% Prussian.

It's a unique case of such a monotonous peripheral region leaving an ever-lasting influence, and perhaps scar too.

[miscmisc]

Those hyper-MAGA "protesters" at the Capitol are the least of our Trump problems. Those tiny minorities would be doing equally stupid and wrong things without Donald Trump ever entering politics. But precisely because of that there are 450,243 cameramen around one flag-waving MAGA woman, trying so hard to sell the glamorous Existential Fascist Threat narrative to us.

Then they proceed to bash Joe Biden for Afghanistan to show to Republican reptiles, the true Trumpian threat to the nation, that the press are "fair and balanced."

It's total idiocy.

[miscmisc]

Every dumb opinion in this world consists of either the fallacy of composition or post hoc ergo propter hoc or some combination of both.

You only need to get familiar with these two famous fallacies to become a good dumb opinion detector, and avoid making one yourself.

[miscmisc]

You've lost 1 out of 333 people due to Covid-19, yet your (full) vaccination rate is barely 15%, despite the ample supply.

Of course I'm talking about Bulgaria, again. It's the 6th worst country in terms of Covid deaths, after Peru, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Macedonia (OK, "Northern" Macedonia, you Greek prick), and Montenegro.

Bosnia & Herzegovina's vaccination rate is even worse, but the country has had a massive supply problem, on top of the inherent administrative problems. Bulgaria should have none of these problems.

I mean, I think it's almost appropriate to label the entire country as anti-vaxx at this point. It's that kind of a figure.

I perfectly understand Russia's low rate because, you know, it's Russians, but Bulgaria belongs in a different league of vaccine hesitancy, a total Major League status.

And I have no idea why.

[miscmisc]

If you are annoyed by fools who keep saying states like Florida and Texas haven't done that badly on Covid given the NE states like New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have higher deaths per capita, tell them:

1) A large portion of Covid deaths in the NE occurred in the initial wave, in March-May 2020. Meanwhile, both Florida and Texas managed to have it very easy in the initial wave, since it started in the US mostly as Europeans spreading it widely in the NE through New York.

2) We managed to effectively cut the death rate by half by August 2020 thanks to the improvement in treatment. The doctors and nurses had very little idea as to how to treat Covid patients in the initial wave, where there were lots of trials and errors going on, which unfortunately let a lot of savable lives go in the NE.

3) 55% of the Covid deaths in Florida and Texas happened this year. After the vaccination started.

4) I repeat: 55 fucking percent of the Covid deaths in Florida and Texas occurred this fucking year, well after the vaccination campaign started, when we already had the fucking monoclonal antibody treatment established.

Along with the likes of Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota etc. (you see the pattern), these two big states are Covid failures on fucking steroids. And given the resources and technologies available to the US health care system in general, they are of course magnificent world-class failures, easily worse than the likes of Argentina and Montenegro.

Sure, Peru, Hungary, Bulgaria and so on had it worse. So?

[miscmisc]

The days when Israel and the UK were the Vaccination Champions are long gone, which many people seem unaware of. A LOT of countries have passed them now.

Now, you should also remember that Israel and to a lesser extent the UK are much less aged than most of those European countries that have passed them. Most children haven't been vaccinated yet anywhere, and older people tend to have much less vaccine hesitancy. The combination of these two facts explains it to some degree.

But we are not talking about some global competition here. The question is what percentage of the population are protected, including children, in terms of which neither Israel nor the UK are champions anymore.

[miscmisc]

I know I'm Monday-morning-quarterback-ing here, but what the fuck was the point of the Canadian election? All the money and energy spent, for basically nothing.

It's madness that almost 65% of Canadian votes are either left or center-left, yet the result is THAT. Plurality voting is a total shitcake isn't it.

It's hilarious that conservatives are saying it was "rigged." The system is rigged FOR them if anything. They would be nowhere near the power in a sane system. Reminds you of the conservatives in a certain neighboring country.

[miscmisc]

We should and totally can kill coal/gas/oil once and for all. It's actually surprisingly easy to replace them with clean energy now.

www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-INET-working-paper.pdf

Even beyond the issue of climate change, scientifically speaking coal/gas/oil is an absurdly inefficient source of energy. At this point in our scientific knowledge and development, we should feel embarrassed that we still rely so much on that garbage. We should know better.

[miscmisc]

Aaaaaaand, coal is dead, lol.

We'll have to see whether he will destroy the domestic coal industry too, but this is yuge.

[miscmisc]

If you are still using Facebook after all the things that have been revealed over the years, you are not with us. You are with the terrorists, really. What is wrong with you? If your parents insist that you log on, disown them.

[miscmisc]

Which means there are certainly more than six, obviously.

One thing about British conservative politicians is that they lie incredibly nonchalantly. Often it's much, much harder to tell than with American conservative politicians.