Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think Less’s Adder point wasn’t about US style mandates. Pretty sure he meant Adder’s statements that we should have done what China did.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I do not understand the first sentence?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Someone (Hank?) was posting about having pasta with canned tuna in Italy, so I thought I'd share the bruschetta recipe I made tonight, courtesy of a wine class I'm in.

2 cups white beans (you can use canned -- I cooked them the night before)
3/4 cup canned mackerel
1/2 small red onion, chopped finely
1/3 cup Sicilian olives, chopped finely
juice of one lemon
3 tbspns parsley
1/4 cup EVOO
salt
pepper

Mix most ingredients. Add EVOO and season, and put in the fridge for 2 hours. Take out 30 minutes before serving. Slice and toast a baguette, and spoon onto toasted slices. Drizzle with more EVOO and salt and pepper to taste.

Goes well with a 2017 Amarotti Trebbiano, if you can find it.

eta: Hardest thing about the recipe was finding canned mackerel.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Thanks. I'm going to a pot luck at Penske's tomorrow and I'll bring this! Oh, one thing though, I'm pretty sure he isn't going to serve 2017 Amarotti Trebbiano. How would it go with box Chianti?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We've got a restaurant in Boston that specializes in canned fish. Cans from all over.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My mother in law would tell you “We've got" is redundant. I mean, she is dead, so she won't. But she would have.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Which word in "masks work, but mandates do not" eluded your sofistic failure? Or are you using "compliance" as code for "mandate?"

LessinManchester (UK) inSF.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Is China's mandate going to work?

Lessin(ManchesterUK)inSF

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I am missing your point. Both can be true, and the fact that mandates don't work is also true.

Lessin(Manchester)SF

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Prohibition may have prevented some people from getting alcohol some of the time, but a mandate short of locking everyone up (Hi Adder!) to prevent home brewing, would have required a panopticon of state surveillance to prevent it.

LessinManchester.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

What does "work" mean? Halt the pandemic? Save a bunch of lives? No and yes, respectively.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The best bruschetta I've ever had is a porchetta bruschetta with mozzerella. Porchetta is one of god's most perfect foods, and to throw it on top of good bread with melted cheese on top is just showing off.

When my brother gets back to me I'll post the porchetta recipe.

ETA: https://chewtown.com/2015/08/italian...an-roast-pork/

This is the porchetta we made. It’s unbelievably good.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Ending all civilization, yes, would save Covid deaths. It's one thing where you're talking about 2,000 deaths a day as in the beginning of the pandemic with no vaccines or treatments.

While I believe every life is precious, there are so many different levels of mitigation that are available between full out "let er rip" and "anyone leaving the house goes to the camp."

We are talking about Shanghai residents seeing pillowcases full of pets clubbed to death and people locked in their houses eating elmer's glue.

There's so little critical thinking. Everything is a pure binary view: Closed or open. On or off. If it doesn't stop everything, better to do nothing.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Everyone in hazmat suits inside plastic bubbles, with special valves for eating and drinking and catheters for urination. It will save lives.. Cameras in every home to prevent domestic violence. IT will save lives. Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great, if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.

LessinLeeds

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The nice thing about having a life is I can live pretty well hanging out here in Greedy Manse with all my people around me and those who want to see me coming and talking on the back deck and have very little risk.

I feel for the people whose life is dependent on pub crawls with people they barely know or who think being able to eat at a restaurant is positively essential to their life. Yeah, we all like a wee dram, but I'd much rather pour a little here and watch the hawks hunt than order it in some darkened hole, and restaurants are great, but delivery means I can eat while watching a sunset rather than in a noisy crowded place.

I really hope these people can get themselves a life.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Like I said, there are so many degrees of risk mitigation between total lockdown and pub crawls.

And here, we are a hawk-free zone, or at least I pay the crows enough in organic grapes to keep the hawks busy.

Big war going on outside today from 4:30-8:30 AM. Asshole Cooper showed up, looking to tag a few squirrels or birds but the crows were on his ass. They sit right next to each other like The Kurgan does to Macloud. Then once they run him off, they show up on my lawn looking for peanuts and grapes.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I'm a big fan of the cooper hawk nesting in the field next to us, really keeps the mice and voles down. I also got to see it snag a song-bird midflight, which was kind of cool.

We have a cooper fledging now that spends a lot of time hopping around our yard and climbing the trees one hop at a time. I know it will be flying away soon, but right now it's pretty cool.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

That's a facile assessment for a respected Times reporter. It is true that a mandate short of locking everyone up will not preclude spread. But it will decrease and slow spread. It will also knock down viral load being spread. If one is infected with a smaller viral load, he has a better chance of not acquiring or being able to fight off covid. If he gets hit with a faceful of virus from a pack of non-maskers on an elevator or in a subway, he's going to have a more intense infection.

TL;DR: What looks revelatory is upon closer inspection making the perfect the enemy of the good. Or otherwise rotated, an argument in the absolute on an issue entirely of degree.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

On this point, I agree with you. One has to weigh costs and benefits. And the extremists (people who'd defend China's Monty Pythonesque response to the disease, even at this late stage) are as guilty of making the perfect the enemy of the good as are those who'd argue mask mandates didn't work.

It's a little different, but I think I've made the point here before. Some people believe all must be done no matter the costs to preserve even a statistically small number of lives that might be lost if certain risks are not avoided. Others believe that such risk avoidance should be weighed against the burden it puts on the rest of us.

The safety standard for products is never "Must not under even the most unusual circumstances ever contribute to a death or injury." Rather, its always based on what's reasonable. What can a manufacturer do without making production impossibly expensive, thus precluding everyone else from enjoying a product that will not harm the overwhelming majority of users?

There's also an element of virtue-seeking in the extreme risk avoidance crowd. (Not virtue signalling, which is a different thing.) People like the idea that they are on the side of saving lives damn the costs. Who doesn't agree with that notion... in a vacuum? But we don't live in a vacuum. So trying to be the most virtuous causes people like Adder to take laughable positions, like defending China. It's not wrong. It's actually quite decent. It's also wildly unrealistic. And a product of addiction. Once one starts on the continuum of virtue-seeking, there's nowhere to go but up. What can one do? Settle for being less virtuous than he might be? Nope. Can't do that. There's always another peak of virtuousness to be ascended. (I guess sainthood is the top.)

The virtue seeking also become the sworn enemies of the Defiant (the Trump mobs of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, for whom the ever unrealized peak of self-actualization is refusing to cooperate with any effort to protect others, no mater how reasonable). When the two groups meet, you get an idiot wind hurricane (yes, that's a nod to Dylan) that spins around the sane of us in its center.

Ignore it. Live your life respectfully and sanely. If it doesn't get your eyes, it disappears.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You are wordier than I, but of course it is a classic example of security v. liberty, with the cost-benefit-analysis that goes with that, with Adder being a totalitarian whom Pol Pot would have been glad to call friend. He is wrong; it is not decent.

LessinLeeds

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think the rule that seeking comfort over liberty entitles one to neither without can be violated without being indecent. A person can fall into that sort of dangerous thinking for the best of reasons. Road to hell is often paved with good intentions.

"We must do something!" "We can control this!" Mania sets in, and then hubris, and all sanity goes out the window. We're idiots. Everything's a fucking pendulum. I guess it's a bug in our system. Politicians and policymakers get slammed more for not having done something than for having done too much.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

When we weigh costs and benefits, let's remember two things. The first is, having to wear a mask just isn't that much of a cost, no matter how much some people bitch about it, and no matter how much some people become emotionally committed to the idea that it's intolerable. Certainly not compared to the costs of dying of COVID, or getting long COVID, or having a friend or relative die of COVID, or having to work in a hospital caring for COVID, etc. The second is, when you don't wear a mask, you not only expose yourself to some additional risk, you also expose other people. Many people seem incapable of acknowledging or weighing that risk, in some cases because they're ignorant but in many cases because they are assholes. Not wearing a mask is a little like dumping garbage on your own lawn and saying, "it's my property so I'll decide whether it looks good," but it's also like dumping garbage on your neighbors' lawns and saying, "fuck all of you."

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

So close, you just missed the analogy. It's not about dumping garbage on your neighbor's lawn, it's about tossing your bed pan's contents out the window in a crowded city. I mean, it's inconvenient to do anything else, but one thing you can be sure of, is the shit will land on someone else, not you, so fuck 'em.

The conflation of mask mandates and lockdowns shows us where we are in this. Are we really comparing Pol Pot to wearing a little mask?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I think we are comparing pol pot to the Shanghai lockdowns.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A better analogy is farting in an elevator. Which I am more inclined to do when I am wearing an N95 on the elevator and others aren't.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Why won't my image load?

https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/65051

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Ah, yes, that Mass Genocide everyone survived.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Umm, you described your life now in the country. Icky posted a Twitter feed of a man in Shanghai. There are differences. I can’t imagine living under the Shanghai restrictions- can you?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Is Adder actually defending the Chinese approach, or is the board unanimously against it?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I’ll let adder answer.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

See, here's the problem: Complete and total lockdown works . . . for a bit. Then things reopen, then people get infected again and it starts all over. So the only way to keep cases at zero is to keep people locked down forever. And clubbing all the pets to death.

And fucking cooper took a swipe at a few squirrels today right in front of me and the crows. Startled him and then the crows took off after him. Gonna cost me another trip to Whole Foods for grapes.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I had a couple friends living under the Shanghai restrictions, and they are damn happy to be free of them. They both thought the hardest part was the initial adjustment, especially arranging for food, which was difficult. Post-adjustment, they got their jobs done, they survived, but it wasn't pleasant. They were very stir crazy.

Yes, I can imagine living under the Shanghai restrictions. I wouldn't enjoy it, but its not Mauripol. And it's certainly not Cambodia under Pol Pot. But no one has ever suggested that heavy a lockdown here.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Fuck the squirrels. Team Cooper here.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Strong picking on the weak ain’t a good look. I’m here to help the little guy.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

We put our xmas wreath on our back porch after the holidays. For a few years a pair of mourning doves built their nest in the wreath. One day I saw a squirrel jump into the nest and eat a little baby bird. Fuck squirrels.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Why I do everything possible to keep the peace. I did see cooper grab one of those doves literally a foot from me once. I feel bad for them, slow, not bright.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I remember watching Planet Earth when the wolves were chasing the caribou. There were thousands of caribou and three wolves...and people were rooting for the caribou. Don't root for the species that is flourishing -- root for the underdog. Same with hawks. There are a billion squirrels (dropping stuff all over my patio). Let the few hawks eat one or two.

Also, squirrels are assholes. Possums are the animal you want.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Reconcile this with how you always mock Adder?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Wait, are the hawks I'm seeing actually Cooper's and not Red Tails?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Coopers and Red Tails are both around here and easy to mistake. The Red Tails are significantly bigger.

We see almost no squirrels where we are, and just a few chipmunks. Between our Coopers, our Bobcats and Fisher Cats, and our Owls, the squirrel population is way less than when we were in the burbs. But what we have are mice and voles. Those suckers hide better. So we make a habit of finding and overturning or opening up their nests so the predators can do their thing.