Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 104

[ecosophia]

As we wrap up the second year of these open posts, it's pretty clear that the official narrative is cracking as the toll of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines rises steadily and the vaccines themselves demonstrate their total uselessness at preventing Covid infection or transmission. It's still important to keep watch over the mis-, mal- and nonfeasance of our self-proclaimed health gruppenfuehrers, and the disastrous results of the Covid mania, but I think it's also time to begin thinking about what might be possible as the existing medical industry reels under the impact of its own self-inflicted injuries. 

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[(Anonymous)]

The really frustrating ones are the times I put in the exact words, and the search engine insists on searching for something else. The internet is fast losing the utility it had, and I rather suspect that this is going to drive some massive changes very shortly.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[methylethyl]

Exactly! I went looking for auxiliary discussion for a book I'm reading, called *Psaltic Method*. Psaltic as in Psalms. The searchbox kept fishing up "Plastic Method" results. GAH!!! Still found what I was looking for eventually, but only on YT's in-house search, and of course the results are all video which is my least-favorite format. Like, no, just because 95% of people typing those particular letters actually mean "plastic", doesn't mean I typed it wrong!

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, it was great back in the day when it told you it was doing this, and gave you the option to tell it you meant what you typed. That was a nice piece of functionality, and frankly the fact it's gone is a red flag that something has gone very, very wrong in Silicon Valley.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[(Anonymous)]

Never forget the big search engines make their money by using and selling their users' data. Silicon Valley got its ultra big money start post WW2 with Dept of Defense cash with ultra-secret contracts to build guidance computers for rockets and missiles by using the new solid state chips printed on silicon wafers which can withstand the vibrations of launch and high atmospheric radiation. Then, those chips got used to control the satellites placed in orbit. Now much of the biggest money at companies like Apple, Facebook and Google comes from the same kind of super secret government and interlocking corporate contracts which fuel the current information control and electronic business wars.

I loved the early internet in the 1990's when it was still mostly used just in academe and government agencies. Overwhelmingly a non-profit service or infrastructure like interstate highways with no tolls. In the mid-1980's I'd used a private Silly Valley company's international email and file sharing system and DARPA's unclassified public portal designed for librarians. The only public search engines available at my graduate university in the early 1990's were from universities in Minnesota and Illinois. The Illinois one became Netscape. Watched the founders of Yahoo!, Google and Facebook fire up their companies, AOL in the D.C. area, and saw each founder essentially sell out to the highest bidders. For example, finding out a few years ago all of Facebook's servers were run by a retired (wink) US Navy "admiral" was interesting. It's a rare online services company leader who will not sell their soul for cash if the price is right convinced they are doing the "patriotic" thing but really just to make their bank accounts bigger at the end of the day.

W.R.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[drhooves]

The search engines have taken the "Playground Pusher" approach to maintaining their popularity. Get you hooked when the results are useful, then morph into what the tech companies want. I like using the Russian search engine Yandex, though it can be cumbersome.

What's happened to the public libraries is nothing short of tragic. I've moved around quite a bit in the last 40 years, and I can't believe the level to which libraries have been molded into the exact same vanilla content everywhere. Definitely as wicked with the non-digital censorship as compared to what's taken place online....

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[thinking_turtle]

I can't believe the level to which libraries have been molded into the exact same vanilla content everywhere. Same here in The Netherlands. I joined the library last year to take a look. No controversial books whatsoever, not even on demand. None of the books would look amiss with a Coca-Cola advertisement in them. Absolutely nauseating. People know it too-- the readership declines every year.

The librarian said there is a national central committee that decides which books are appropriate. That explains the uniformity in Dutch libraries.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[(Anonymous)]

I too have lost respect for libraries.

I used to feel very warmly towards public libraries, but have become increasingly turned off. Not just because it's harder and harder to find anything that isn't bland "approved content" , but because I increasingly can't stand librarians. I've had contact several people in my personal life who hold Master of Library Sciences (MLS) degrees and work as librarians or archivists, and every one of them - Every. Single One. - is a woke, activist liberal who complains about having to stock books they don't agree with, and who complains about the ignorant masses who come into their branches looking for wrong-think authors. Every one of them is intellectually snobby and condescending. Librarians are increasingly putting me off libraries.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[methylethyl]

Yes, this. All of it.

I have such fond memories of roaming the library like it was native turf. My parents volunteered for the ESL program, so we practically lived there-- the librarians all knew us, knew what we liked to read, would set aside new books they thought we'd like, most of them were really cool people, and we were such reliably voracious readers, that the children's librarians would sometimes let my sisters pre-read stuff that wasn't on the shelf yet, and report back to them on whether it belonged in YA or jfic.

It makes me deeply sad that my kids will not ever have that kind of relationship with the local public library. We're still there a lot, but... frankly the librarians creep me out and I don't want them around my kids unsupervised. And most of the good books we find lately are coming from the library shop where they sell discards and donations.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[transcriberb]

Alas, I say the same.

Re: Unfiltered search engines?

[frittermywig]

Your assessment of librarians matches my experience. Public librarians no longer see themselves as servants of their own community; they are missionaries whose role is to bring Woke truth to the recalcitrant, heathenish, simpletons they're sent to minister to. To update an old adage about cultural cluelessness we might say, "only mad dogs and librarians go out in the noonday sun."