I must say one of the best things of the internet is YouTube. You just never know what you can find there.
Back in ’73, I was a teenager too young to drive sitting in the car on the flight line at Andrews AFB waiting for my father. I unexpectedly witnessed this:
I only saw it live and never saw a recording until a couple of days ago when it was pitched to me by YouTube. There was also a new F-15 showing off. I had never seen either one live before at that time as they were not yet in service. It was a really a cool thing for young aviation enthusiast. It was not open to the public so I expect the universe of teenage boys that saw it close up is probably pretty small.
I really didn’t need a visual reminder of Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and the other examples of Carcharodon washingtoniensis.
reaction:
Coming soon to the new woke utopia: wearable computers integrated into a system of mass surveillance and social credit. Sarcasm was the last barrier, but I’m intrigued by the possibility of snarky sexbots. (I make it a rule to look for the silver lining.)
Free association, what can’t it do? Ozzy Man’s video also reminded me of the summer of 2001– when the news cycle was dominated by two obsessions. The first was the disappearance of Chandra Levy in Rock Creek Park in May, followed by steamy revelations of her affair with Gary Condit, a Member of the House from CA. The second was ongoing coverage of shark attacks on U.S. beaches, to the point that 2001 was called the “Summer of the Shark.” “The Summer of the Shark has since been remembered as an example of tabloid television perpetuating a story with no real merit beyond its ability to draw ratings.”
Then came 9/11, and the slow-summer-news-day items abruptly disappeared. Twenty years on, few people remember Chandra Levy, and COVID-19 lockdowns keep the Chads and Karens away from oceanside beaches.
Judge Ahab (Emmet Sullivan of General Flynn infamy) strikes again. This time at immigration, illegal immigration that is.
Deine papieren, bitte!: King County WA imposes proof of vaccination requirement for restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. starting October 25. They say they’ll “review” the order… in six months!!
Meanwhile (but of course!) thousands of illegals are pouring across the Texas border (many of them from Haiti– your guess is as good as mine as to how they got to Mexico) without vaxx passports or even masks, let alone standard international passports. Perhaps Newsom will invite them to join him for dinner at the French Laundry, where he doesn’t need to wear a mask– or King Jay can host them at his favorite Olympia watering hole.
Bryan Lovely,
I’ve been vaccination “carded” twice. Though both were private entities going by their own initiative. I’m waiting for the requirement to show proof of a third booster shot, which I don’t want. It isn’t a very good vaccine at this point in time. Admit it. Fix it. Don’t triple and quadruple down on mediocre.
News from Moderna says that they believe a Moderna booster shot may be necessary. They’ve measured something like a 30% reduction in efficacy over a 13 month time period, relative to the 2 or 3 month post injection interval. (So a time delta of 10 or 11 months?) I think Moderna has been proven to be the best, though the differences are not huge. But they won’t let Pfizer have all the new cash to themselves.
Chases Eagles
That’s a cool video. I did not know this until recently, but the F-14 is the swing-wing model, the one in the video, and the F-15 does not have a swing-wing. I always thought they were the same except for the tail hook and beefier landing gear.
Years ago I was on travel to a meeting being held at some east coast Navy base. So I drove my rental car through a check-point gate and was driving a circuitous road on base when I heard this noise. I actually pulled over stopped so I could watch two V-22 Ospreys come cruising in low, convert to vertical mode and hover, and then land. So cool.
TommyJay–
Tiny signs of sanity, maybe possibly: FDA panel rejects Pfizer 3rd shot for over-65s and high-risk patients, but not for anybody else.
Poll Question: What are the chances somebody with COVID must be hospitalized? Correct answer: 1% – 5% (The CDC must have much more precise numbers than this. If only they’d tell us.)
10% of Dems get it correct, whereas 26% of Republicans get it correct. That’s the most favorable interpretation for Republicans. Another maybe more fair interpretation would be to say 24% of Dems are in the correct ball-park, whereas 41% of Republicans are. There is still a big relative gap, but not as big.
The bad news is that the people who way overestimate the risk are heavily represented in the Dem, Republican, and Independent groups, though the GOP is the smallest with 51%. 69% of Dems are way over the fear cliff.
The GOP also has 1% or 2% more people who are COVID deniers.
Bryan,
Yes I saw that. Damn. If I were only a couple years younger. Ha.
I also heard some TV verbiage that someone (anonymous?) in the FDA said they were being pressured by the White House. I thought only Trump subverted science like that! Wait for confirmation on that one.
With regard to the booster, those of us who received the Johnson vaxx are hanging fire.
The other vaxxes are not recommended and there’s no decision whether we should get a second Johnson shot or a booster Johnson that doesn’t exist yet.
huxley,
I hear the Biden admin. is selling free monoclonal antibody treatments like hot cakes. So that’s always an option.
Remembering our previous exchange; get the antibody test! Spend the $10. C’mon man.
I’m being 100% serious now. If I had tested positive for natural covid antibodies, I would feel extremely reassured. But personally I have zero reason to think I was ever infected.
The U.S. medical community (or the Pfizer propagandists) wants you to believe that the vaccination &/or booster shot is better protection than recovered immunity. The slender reed they are leaning on is that the quantity of vaccination antibodies is often greater than the quantity of recovered antibodies. But they are ignoring the quality of the antibodies.
An ace virologist I heard a couple months ago flatly stated that the quality of natural antibodies is much better than the vaccine induced ones. He explained the former respond to the entirety of the viral shell, whereas the vax ones only respond to the spike protein. What if the spike is now mutated?
And if you got a little sick with the Delta variant, that might be even better than some having some natural Alpha antibodies.
Chases Eagles
I wrote software for the F-14 nav systems and knew the chief test pilot. Fun times for a recent college grad. My friend survived this crash:
I’m keen on the antibodies test, but my procrastination gland got inflamed.
Chases Eagles
Attached is a simulation and contains lots of information about the crash. Looks like my memory machine is a bit (a bit!!) off. My friend was in the back seat and went out first.
Longer, but nicely done (ignore spelling and grammar)
I was instructing an F-18 pilot at the time. I asked him, “How the hell did the pilot & RIO survive the ejection?” He said that if you are flying supersonic (he said it is extremely rare that they get permission to waste fuel at that rate) and you pull back on the throttles sharply, it is like driving a sportscar at 100 mph and then slamming on the brakes. He said you can lose 200 knots in a 2 or 3 seconds (paraphrasing).
TommyJay:
I did get a diet and exercise program going. I can now wear some shirts which had become noticeably tight.
It’s a sort of fun diet. You eat four small meals of protein, beans and veggies a day — no sugar, flour, starch, etc. Then once a week, it’s Cheat Day and you can eat ANYTHING! The idea is that by spiking your blood sugar, your metabolism won’t downshift.
It works for me. I lost 20# in 3 1/2 months several years ago — a little over a pound per week — without feeling crummy. It’s not a crazy diet like living on only beef, salt and water as Jordan Peterson claims to. (Brrr!)
Zaphod:
So that’s what the Chinese miracle looks like! According to the next article on that page the outbreak in Putian started thus:
___________________________________
The patient had been quarantined in Xiamen for 14 days after arrival and tested negative three times after returning to Putian.
___________________________________
I guess that’s rare. But geez.
Ouch. France recalls its ambassador to the U.S. !! I think they are really really pissed.
Remember Obama’s rhetoric about driving the car into the ditch? The “car” being the state or condition of the United States. Yup. The car is in the ditch and the ditch is full of water.
JD Keene,
I guess that you are about 10-12 years ahead of when I got my start in aerospace. I would say that I was a recent grad at the time but I wasn’t. I had dropped out and had made a pretty big mess of my life when I lucked into a job on the space program. They were good times. The stuff we did was cool.
… tested negative three times … Gads.
Look on the bright side. Of the thousands of Haitian refugees flooding into the U.S. at least 0.2% of them have been vaccinated. Woo Hoo!
Good on you huxley and the weight loss. I need some too, though I’ll skip the details.
@Huxley:
I’m really curious to see what Winter looks like here and in China Proper.
One of the most egregious local Quislings who had two Sinovac shots very publicly went out and got a Pfizer booster shot the other day. There might be a push coming to get the local China Uber Alles brigade (~30% population mainly the very old and the demographic swamping operation mainland immigrants) to take a Pfizer booster because these are the ones who opted for Sinovac. Government has been giving people a choice of Pfizer of Sinovac ever since vaccinations started.
Whether or not Sinovac is worse at stopping Delta or not or whether a third Sinovac or other Mainland vax option booster on top of the two preceding ones will help to stomp Delta in China during the coming winter remains to be seen.
@JD Keene:
Glorious days back when some MBA Bugxirson hadn’t yet dreamed of outsourcing avionics software to a sweatshop in Hyderabad. 737 Max anyone?
What did you program it in? Those days were a bit pre-Ada, no?
Zaphod:
Well, winter will be the test to see if the vaccines and acquired immunity will make a difference.
Maybe China, Hong Kong and Taiwan can keep a lid on Covid, but I doubt the rest of the world can.
Keep pushing the vaxx for those willing, but start opening things up for children and young people. They are mostly invulnerable. Let them lead the population to herd immunity.
We are only beginning to understand the damage done to the young with all these Covid restrictions. Set them free!
@Huxley:
I’m firmly in the ‘Let Her (Delta) Rip!’ Camp at this point for the US and Rest of the West. Everyone has had time to make their choices about whether to get the jab or not. Especially don’t want to see some greedy and nasty attempt to vaccinate young children for a whole bunch of reasons.
No policy changes in PRC until after the Winter Olympics early next year. There’s some speculation that they’ll let nature take its course after that’s wrapped. I can think of a very good way to pull this off: just successfully invade Taiwan. Everything else will be background noise. Geriatrics expiring from an excess of patriotic joy. Epic.
Gosh Zaphod, that sounds like fun. Maybe after polishing off Taiwan they can reenact the killing of the scholars and destruction of the libraries in 212 and 213 BC.
They did that already back when you were a kid. Got antibodies now. Xi and his entire cohort of Princelings saw their families and friends decimated by Mao’s megalomaniacal madness. To not grok this is to fundamentally misunderstand his thinking.
Best worry about *your* upcoming Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.
Besides you have plenty of ‘Scholars’ who need burying and burning. Unless you want to wait around for them to do that to you. Your call.
@JimNorCal:
It’s also about Section 8 and making it impossible for non-Ruling Elite Whites to hide from the joys of Diversity.
A lot of it is driven by anti-White racial animus.
@TommyJay:
Make no mistake. China’s rulers are Machiavellian Assholes. They’re just not the Cartoon Assholes you get fed by your Ruling Clown Show Assholes == Media, Think Tanks, Ivies, FedGov, etc.
There is no Reality in which you don’t get to be governed by Assholes. Or were Checks and Balances invented for a government of Fairy Godmothers?
If you’re thinking up China Failure Modes (and it’s fun, sure) you’re almost certainly going to get them all wrong because even your supposed Dissident Right is mostly operating with many of the same fundamental ****unexamined**** axioms as the GloboHomo Establishment — i.e. Open Societies Always Win. Totalitarianism Always Loses. And plenty more of these. There’s simply zero evidence one way or the other. Propaganda Victories in C20 don’t really count here as proof.
The PRC will hit an ice-berg one day… Inevitable. Every society ends up hoist by its own petard of Contradictions.
But you can bet dollars to donuts it won’t run aground on any shoals mapped out by Western ‘Experts’ — who would do better to focus on righting their own leaky boats.
PS: I’d hate to see my 2nd favorite weekend getaway location, Taiwan, be ruined by Mainlanders. I’ve got the usual natural sympathy with underdogs (provided they’re not total slum dogs — which the Taiwanese are not!) . Having said that, the best thing for the world right now would be a quick win for China over Taiwan before the USA made a gigantic cluster#$%^ of a debacle which would make the Afghan Own Goal look like a walk in the park. This is not a hill to die on.
A man’s gotta know his limitations.
Empires, too.
Cool map below showing how trade patterns have changed between the year 2000 and 2020.
My humble suggestion is to ignore the commentary and comments. Some of it is OK, but there’s always too much wishful thinking and Cope-ium (the Right seems addicted to this medication) in them.
There’s really only one thing to take home: The West and triply-so the USA needs to learn how to make things again. At scale. If that means autarky(*), temporary scarcities, and putting some MBAs and Bankers up against the wall, pour encourager les autres, so be it. There is no other way.
* Lolbertarians, Rothbardians, and Friends please step outside. Vlad awaits you. Don’t worry, we’d like you to stick around. On sticks.
Zaphod
BAL, Basic Assembler Language
Tiny computers! Good times.
Today, ‘tis all life in the rear view mirror
JimNorCal —
The slightly saner progressive candidate for Seattle Mayor says he’s against abolishing SFR zoning in Seatttle.
Of course, he’s slightly saner, so that means the completely insane candidate will win in a landslide and SFR will go out the window.
(He’s actually kind of interesting, in that he’s mixed-race black/Japanese, and so has obvious sympathies with both communities instead of an interest in screwing over one or the other.)
@BryanLovely:
“(He’s actually kind of interesting, in that he’s mixed-race black/Japanese, and so has obvious sympathies with both communities instead of an interest in screwing over one or the other.)”
Well, we should be thankful for small mercies.
But he might be OK with screwing over you who are (presumably) neither?
@JD Keene:
“BAL, Basic Assembler Language
Tiny computers! Good times.”
Hard core! Kudos!
Wow. Basic Assembler. Unusual.
My progression was from Fortran and PLC through 10 other useless language, to a reluctant convert to early C, and then an avid fan of ANSI C. I did write some C++ but only to access the wonderful Std. Math Lib. Crap like Foundation classes were too much for me or I was getting too old.
Zaphod,
It is amazing to me that China was on the cutting edge of human civilization for a couple millennia, and then f’d it all up by burning libraries and being technologically backward in the 18th and 19th century. Oh, but the glories of the Warring States Period. Those were the good old days. It’s like some exemplar for the Klingon culture on Star Trek.
You can say they that already did the destruction in the Mao period, but of course, that debacle was imported from the West, unlike the library burning event. And now they imported rampant debt fueled economic progress from the West too. I’m expecting a bank melt down there, but I won’t be surprised if they’re smart enough to dodge that somehow.
I don’t disagree greatly with you. I don’t see anything standing in the way of Taiwan being subsumed into the PRC. I could be full of it on this next point, but I also would not be surprised if the merger happened without a shot fired. That is, Taiwan accepts the inevitable.
Gotta run for awhile. Today is repair work day.
@ TommyJay > “My progression was from Fortran and PLC through 10 other useless language”
I only made it through about 3 useless languages (they looked like a good idea at the time), did some work in a local-shop-made assembler, and a couple of other novel proprietary languages, including the founding iteration of Novell Data Systems, which floundered drastically before Ray Noorda took over and made it competitive.
I must say one of the best things of the internet is YouTube. You just never know what you can find there.
Back in ’73, I was a teenager too young to drive sitting in the car on the flight line at Andrews AFB waiting for my father. I unexpectedly witnessed this:
https://youtu.be/G-mrFcsw-Ew?t=835
I only saw it live and never saw a recording until a couple of days ago when it was pitched to me by YouTube. There was also a new F-15 showing off. I had never seen either one live before at that time as they were not yet in service. It was a really a cool thing for young aviation enthusiast. It was not open to the public so I expect the universe of teenage boys that saw it close up is probably pretty small.
I really didn’t need a visual reminder of Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and the other examples of Carcharodon washingtoniensis.
link:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/sentiment-analysis
title:
How Computers Can Finally Detect Sarcasm
reaction:
Coming soon to the new woke utopia: wearable computers integrated into a system of mass surveillance and social credit. Sarcasm was the last barrier, but I’m intrigued by the possibility of snarky sexbots. (I make it a rule to look for the silver lining.)
Free association, what can’t it do? Ozzy Man’s video also reminded me of the summer of 2001– when the news cycle was dominated by two obsessions. The first was the disappearance of Chandra Levy in Rock Creek Park in May, followed by steamy revelations of her affair with Gary Condit, a Member of the House from CA. The second was ongoing coverage of shark attacks on U.S. beaches, to the point that 2001 was called the “Summer of the Shark.” “The Summer of the Shark has since been remembered as an example of tabloid television perpetuating a story with no real merit beyond its ability to draw ratings.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_the_Shark
Then came 9/11, and the slow-summer-news-day items abruptly disappeared. Twenty years on, few people remember Chandra Levy, and COVID-19 lockdowns keep the Chads and Karens away from oceanside beaches.
Judge Ahab (Emmet Sullivan of General Flynn infamy) strikes again. This time at immigration, illegal immigration that is.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/09/17/federal-court-ruling-just-made-the-border-crisis-infinitely-worse-n1479449
Deine papieren, bitte!: King County WA imposes proof of vaccination requirement for restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. starting October 25. They say they’ll “review” the order… in six months!!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-king-countys-vaccine-or-test-requirement/
Bryan Lovely–
Meanwhile (but of course!) thousands of illegals are pouring across the Texas border (many of them from Haiti– your guess is as good as mine as to how they got to Mexico) without vaxx passports or even masks, let alone standard international passports. Perhaps Newsom will invite them to join him for dinner at the French Laundry, where he doesn’t need to wear a mask– or King Jay can host them at his favorite Olympia watering hole.
https://twitter.com/capeandcowell/status/1438849071343669248
Bryan Lovely,
I’ve been vaccination “carded” twice. Though both were private entities going by their own initiative. I’m waiting for the requirement to show proof of a third booster shot, which I don’t want. It isn’t a very good vaccine at this point in time. Admit it. Fix it. Don’t triple and quadruple down on mediocre.
News from Moderna says that they believe a Moderna booster shot may be necessary. They’ve measured something like a 30% reduction in efficacy over a 13 month time period, relative to the 2 or 3 month post injection interval. (So a time delta of 10 or 11 months?) I think Moderna has been proven to be the best, though the differences are not huge. But they won’t let Pfizer have all the new cash to themselves.
Chases Eagles
That’s a cool video. I did not know this until recently, but the F-14 is the swing-wing model, the one in the video, and the F-15 does not have a swing-wing. I always thought they were the same except for the tail hook and beefier landing gear.
Years ago I was on travel to a meeting being held at some east coast Navy base. So I drove my rental car through a check-point gate and was driving a circuitous road on base when I heard this noise. I actually pulled over stopped so I could watch two V-22 Ospreys come cruising in low, convert to vertical mode and hover, and then land. So cool.
TommyJay–
Tiny signs of sanity, maybe possibly: FDA panel rejects Pfizer 3rd shot for over-65s and high-risk patients, but not for anybody else.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/fda-panel-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-booster
Sorry, I got that backwards: FDA panel APPROVES Pfizer 3rd shot for over-65s etc. (but disapproves it for under-65s).
Somebody mentioned this Bill Maher story already,
Maher: ‘Liberal Media’ Must Take ‘Responsibility’ for Scaring People about COVID, People in Blue States ‘Afraid to Go Out’
But I was really curious to see the exact poll numbers which are available on Twitter.
Poll Question: What are the chances somebody with COVID must be hospitalized? Correct answer: 1% – 5% (The CDC must have much more precise numbers than this. If only they’d tell us.)
10% of Dems get it correct, whereas 26% of Republicans get it correct. That’s the most favorable interpretation for Republicans. Another maybe more fair interpretation would be to say 24% of Dems are in the correct ball-park, whereas 41% of Republicans are. There is still a big relative gap, but not as big.
The bad news is that the people who way overestimate the risk are heavily represented in the Dem, Republican, and Independent groups, though the GOP is the smallest with 51%. 69% of Dems are way over the fear cliff.
The GOP also has 1% or 2% more people who are COVID deniers.
Bryan,
Yes I saw that. Damn. If I were only a couple years younger. Ha.
I also heard some TV verbiage that someone (anonymous?) in the FDA said they were being pressured by the White House. I thought only Trump subverted science like that! Wait for confirmation on that one.
With regard to the booster, those of us who received the Johnson vaxx are hanging fire.
The other vaxxes are not recommended and there’s no decision whether we should get a second Johnson shot or a booster Johnson that doesn’t exist yet.
huxley,
I hear the Biden admin. is selling free monoclonal antibody treatments like hot cakes. So that’s always an option.
Remembering our previous exchange; get the antibody test! Spend the $10. C’mon man.
I’m being 100% serious now. If I had tested positive for natural covid antibodies, I would feel extremely reassured. But personally I have zero reason to think I was ever infected.
The U.S. medical community (or the Pfizer propagandists) wants you to believe that the vaccination &/or booster shot is better protection than recovered immunity. The slender reed they are leaning on is that the quantity of vaccination antibodies is often greater than the quantity of recovered antibodies. But they are ignoring the quality of the antibodies.
An ace virologist I heard a couple months ago flatly stated that the quality of natural antibodies is much better than the vaccine induced ones. He explained the former respond to the entirety of the viral shell, whereas the vax ones only respond to the spike protein. What if the spike is now mutated?
And if you got a little sick with the Delta variant, that might be even better than some having some natural Alpha antibodies.
Chases Eagles
I wrote software for the F-14 nav systems and knew the chief test pilot. Fun times for a recent college grad. My friend survived this crash:
https://youtu.be/qfM5FxnWPm4
You can see him eject: he was the second one out.
TommyJay:
I’m keen on the antibodies test, but my procrastination gland got inflamed.
Chases Eagles
Attached is a simulation and contains lots of information about the crash. Looks like my memory machine is a bit (a bit!!) off. My friend was in the back seat and went out first.
Longer, but nicely done (ignore spelling and grammar)
https://youtu.be/LTmvA1XhSd8
huxley,
I hear you. I’m in home repair hell this summer. Procrastination is the order of the day, most days.
Random China Covid Stuff:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3149187/china-delta-means-staying-closer-home-holidays
Fujian Province is off the Bucket List for Golden Week.
I remember this F-14 supersonic flyby, explosion, and ejection. It was watercooler talk at work. The video is not great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y7-58xQXfM
I was instructing an F-18 pilot at the time. I asked him, “How the hell did the pilot & RIO survive the ejection?” He said that if you are flying supersonic (he said it is extremely rare that they get permission to waste fuel at that rate) and you pull back on the throttles sharply, it is like driving a sportscar at 100 mph and then slamming on the brakes. He said you can lose 200 knots in a 2 or 3 seconds (paraphrasing).
TommyJay:
I did get a diet and exercise program going. I can now wear some shirts which had become noticeably tight.
It’s a sort of fun diet. You eat four small meals of protein, beans and veggies a day — no sugar, flour, starch, etc. Then once a week, it’s Cheat Day and you can eat ANYTHING! The idea is that by spiking your blood sugar, your metabolism won’t downshift.
https://www.shortform.com/blog/4-hour-body-diet/
It works for me. I lost 20# in 3 1/2 months several years ago — a little over a pound per week — without feeling crummy. It’s not a crazy diet like living on only beef, salt and water as Jordan Peterson claims to. (Brrr!)
Zaphod:
So that’s what the Chinese miracle looks like! According to the next article on that page the outbreak in Putian started thus:
___________________________________
The patient had been quarantined in Xiamen for 14 days after arrival and tested negative three times after returning to Putian.
___________________________________
I guess that’s rare. But geez.
Ouch. France recalls its ambassador to the U.S. !! I think they are really really pissed.
Remember Obama’s rhetoric about driving the car into the ditch? The “car” being the state or condition of the United States. Yup. The car is in the ditch and the ditch is full of water.
JD Keene,
I guess that you are about 10-12 years ahead of when I got my start in aerospace. I would say that I was a recent grad at the time but I wasn’t. I had dropped out and had made a pretty big mess of my life when I lucked into a job on the space program. They were good times. The stuff we did was cool.
… tested negative three times … Gads.
Look on the bright side. Of the thousands of Haitian refugees flooding into the U.S. at least 0.2% of them have been vaccinated. Woo Hoo!
Good on you huxley and the weight loss. I need some too, though I’ll skip the details.
@Huxley:
I’m really curious to see what Winter looks like here and in China Proper.
One of the most egregious local Quislings who had two Sinovac shots very publicly went out and got a Pfizer booster shot the other day. There might be a push coming to get the local China Uber Alles brigade (~30% population mainly the very old and the demographic swamping operation mainland immigrants) to take a Pfizer booster because these are the ones who opted for Sinovac. Government has been giving people a choice of Pfizer of Sinovac ever since vaccinations started.
Whether or not Sinovac is worse at stopping Delta or not or whether a third Sinovac or other Mainland vax option booster on top of the two preceding ones will help to stomp Delta in China during the coming winter remains to be seen.
@JD Keene:
Glorious days back when some MBA Bugxirson hadn’t yet dreamed of outsourcing avionics software to a sweatshop in Hyderabad. 737 Max anyone?
What did you program it in? Those days were a bit pre-Ada, no?
Zaphod:
Well, winter will be the test to see if the vaccines and acquired immunity will make a difference.
Maybe China, Hong Kong and Taiwan can keep a lid on Covid, but I doubt the rest of the world can.
Keep pushing the vaxx for those willing, but start opening things up for children and young people. They are mostly invulnerable. Let them lead the population to herd immunity.
We are only beginning to understand the damage done to the young with all these Covid restrictions. Set them free!
@Huxley:
I’m firmly in the ‘Let Her (Delta) Rip!’ Camp at this point for the US and Rest of the West. Everyone has had time to make their choices about whether to get the jab or not. Especially don’t want to see some greedy and nasty attempt to vaccinate young children for a whole bunch of reasons.
No policy changes in PRC until after the Winter Olympics early next year. There’s some speculation that they’ll let nature take its course after that’s wrapped. I can think of a very good way to pull this off: just successfully invade Taiwan. Everything else will be background noise. Geriatrics expiring from an excess of patriotic joy. Epic.
Gosh Zaphod, that sounds like fun. Maybe after polishing off Taiwan they can reenact the killing of the scholars and destruction of the libraries in 212 and 213 BC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars
Then we can all party like it’s the year 999.
Crossposting:
They say it’s for affordability. But trust me, it’s for global warming.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/16/gov-newsom-abolishes-single-family-zoning-in-california/
SFR zone kaput.
You will live packed together. We will take away your car. You will ride busses and trains.
And … you will like it
@TommyJay:
They did that already back when you were a kid. Got antibodies now. Xi and his entire cohort of Princelings saw their families and friends decimated by Mao’s megalomaniacal madness. To not grok this is to fundamentally misunderstand his thinking.
Best worry about *your* upcoming Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.
Besides you have plenty of ‘Scholars’ who need burying and burning. Unless you want to wait around for them to do that to you. Your call.
@JimNorCal:
It’s also about Section 8 and making it impossible for non-Ruling Elite Whites to hide from the joys of Diversity.
A lot of it is driven by anti-White racial animus.
@TommyJay:
Make no mistake. China’s rulers are Machiavellian Assholes. They’re just not the Cartoon Assholes you get fed by your Ruling Clown Show Assholes == Media, Think Tanks, Ivies, FedGov, etc.
There is no Reality in which you don’t get to be governed by Assholes. Or were Checks and Balances invented for a government of Fairy Godmothers?
If you’re thinking up China Failure Modes (and it’s fun, sure) you’re almost certainly going to get them all wrong because even your supposed Dissident Right is mostly operating with many of the same fundamental ****unexamined**** axioms as the GloboHomo Establishment — i.e. Open Societies Always Win. Totalitarianism Always Loses. And plenty more of these. There’s simply zero evidence one way or the other. Propaganda Victories in C20 don’t really count here as proof.
The PRC will hit an ice-berg one day… Inevitable. Every society ends up hoist by its own petard of Contradictions.
But you can bet dollars to donuts it won’t run aground on any shoals mapped out by Western ‘Experts’ — who would do better to focus on righting their own leaky boats.
PS: I’d hate to see my 2nd favorite weekend getaway location, Taiwan, be ruined by Mainlanders. I’ve got the usual natural sympathy with underdogs (provided they’re not total slum dogs — which the Taiwanese are not!) . Having said that, the best thing for the world right now would be a quick win for China over Taiwan before the USA made a gigantic cluster#$%^ of a debacle which would make the Afghan Own Goal look like a walk in the park. This is not a hill to die on.
A man’s gotta know his limitations.
Empires, too.
Cool map below showing how trade patterns have changed between the year 2000 and 2020.
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-most-terrifying-map-in-world.html
My humble suggestion is to ignore the commentary and comments. Some of it is OK, but there’s always too much wishful thinking and Cope-ium (the Right seems addicted to this medication) in them.
There’s really only one thing to take home: The West and triply-so the USA needs to learn how to make things again. At scale. If that means autarky(*), temporary scarcities, and putting some MBAs and Bankers up against the wall, pour encourager les autres, so be it. There is no other way.
* Lolbertarians, Rothbardians, and Friends please step outside. Vlad awaits you. Don’t worry, we’d like you to stick around. On sticks.
Zaphod
BAL, Basic Assembler Language
Tiny computers! Good times.
Today, ‘tis all life in the rear view mirror
JimNorCal —
The slightly saner progressive candidate for Seattle Mayor says he’s against abolishing SFR zoning in Seatttle.
Of course, he’s slightly saner, so that means the completely insane candidate will win in a landslide and SFR will go out the window.
(He’s actually kind of interesting, in that he’s mixed-race black/Japanese, and so has obvious sympathies with both communities instead of an interest in screwing over one or the other.)
@BryanLovely:
“(He’s actually kind of interesting, in that he’s mixed-race black/Japanese, and so has obvious sympathies with both communities instead of an interest in screwing over one or the other.)”
Well, we should be thankful for small mercies.
But he might be OK with screwing over you who are (presumably) neither?
@JD Keene:
“BAL, Basic Assembler Language
Tiny computers! Good times.”
Hard core! Kudos!
Wow. Basic Assembler. Unusual.
My progression was from Fortran and PLC through 10 other useless language, to a reluctant convert to early C, and then an avid fan of ANSI C. I did write some C++ but only to access the wonderful Std. Math Lib. Crap like Foundation classes were too much for me or I was getting too old.
Zaphod,
It is amazing to me that China was on the cutting edge of human civilization for a couple millennia, and then f’d it all up by burning libraries and being technologically backward in the 18th and 19th century. Oh, but the glories of the Warring States Period. Those were the good old days. It’s like some exemplar for the Klingon culture on Star Trek.
You can say they that already did the destruction in the Mao period, but of course, that debacle was imported from the West, unlike the library burning event. And now they imported rampant debt fueled economic progress from the West too. I’m expecting a bank melt down there, but I won’t be surprised if they’re smart enough to dodge that somehow.
I don’t disagree greatly with you. I don’t see anything standing in the way of Taiwan being subsumed into the PRC. I could be full of it on this next point, but I also would not be surprised if the merger happened without a shot fired. That is, Taiwan accepts the inevitable.
Gotta run for awhile. Today is repair work day.
@ TommyJay > “My progression was from Fortran and PLC through 10 other useless language”
I only made it through about 3 useless languages (they looked like a good idea at the time), did some work in a local-shop-made assembler, and a couple of other novel proprietary languages, including the founding iteration of Novell Data Systems, which floundered drastically before Ray Noorda took over and made it competitive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell
My t-shirt says “FORTRAN jock: I speak in GO TOs”