Author: condor

At Well-Before-Christmas — The Ugandan (Elected) President Has “Jumped” Long-Approved WHO Guidelines, For Declaring Ebola Outbreak… Arrested.

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I would expect U Minn’s CIDRAP — as well as WHO’s Ebola Situation Reporting may have more on this tomorrow — once back at work on Monday.

And, as ever, I will hope for the very best here — that no new cases emerge, between now and the latest 42 day clock running out. By my hand count, the earliest real science might declare an all clear would be December 26, 2022.

[Candidly, I worry a bit that Uganda’s health minister has been ordered not to disclose any new patient cases.] In any event, the government there has (as of yesterday local time) now lifted all travel and gathering restrictions in all districts previously under lock-down orders. This in turn means there will be lots of holiday travel and festivities in restaurants, and bars.

As I say, I will hope for the best — but this seems mostly a political calculation (by an official facing elections) — not a purely-science based one. Here’s Reuters on it:

…Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni lifted all Ebola-related movement restrictions on Saturday, saying the East African country had made progress in curbing the deadly disease.

[Ed. nota bene — “progress” is a standard well-short of the actual scientific evidence-derived marker.]

Museveni rescinded restrictions on the disease’s epicentre in the district of Mubende, which logged 66 cases and 29 deaths, and in the Kassanda region with 49 cases and 21 deaths.

“Currently, there is no transmission, no contact under follow-up, no patients in the isolation facilities, and we are progressing well with the count down,” Museveni said in a statement….

Let us hope that epidemic biology doesn’t do what it is well-known to do: mutate — evolve and rise again. Let us hope, here at near Christmas. Dammit.

नमस्ते

Hey! Steve Hayward! Like Tangerine — No One Takes YOU Seriously, Any More… Either.

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It is more than a little revealing, that Hayward (who claims to be a sophisticate in the realm of political thought) thinks postulating that Trump might have meant/intended his NFT “printer go brrr” issuance was, in fact… a stunt… is proof of anything remotely positive, about him or the GOP.

Again, this idea that he might have pocketed as much as $5 million from deranged idiots, by issuing over five times the number of NFTs he said, in his written offer, he would cap them at (~50,000 — instead of 10,000), and that he may be trading in them, even now… strikes me as only slightly below SBF level fraud (that would be old fashioned ’34 Act securities fraud by market manipulation, under the seminal Howey Supremes’ decision). But truly, Steve, I don’t care if you… praise it.

[It is on brand for Powerline as well, to do so. Hey, maybe Powerline could raise (I don’t know…) around $10,000 — by running its own NFT scam, Steve. Kewl.]

At bottom, the main bit of lunacy here is that Steve praises fleecing Trump’s his own frothy right morons, to at least marginally improve Tangerine’s chances at a 2024 GOP nomination — while (since cash is not — as Steve admits — an unlimited commodity inside GOP donors’ circles, any longer!) reducing the cash DeSantis may be able to raise… cannot be good for the future of any Republicans, in any way.

But Steve is a suck-up, as ever — to any dumb idea — that might get him some trickle down cash.

So there you have it.

Hilarious.

John Claimed He’d Boycotted NFL Watching; Also Whines About Pulitzers… Yawn.

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In the long list of prevarications from Hinderaker, this one is truly minor — but hilarious. Long ago, during the time of Tangerine, when Collin Kapaernick took a knee, and eventually, more players supported him than spoke out against him, leading the league to change anthem rules for players… John swore he was boycotting the NFL. Forever.

Today, in a purported “never give up!” column, he clearly watched almost all of the Vikes / Colts thriller.

Never give up — except on a silly ineffectual boycott of America’s favorite game. I guess, eh, John?

The second column of the morning finds Hinderaker complaining about newspaper corrections pages. [This guy really needs to find a… hobby!]

In any event, he thrice mentions Tangerine / Russia connections, suggesting that the Pulitzers are ”corrupt”.

But oddly, he forgets to even mention that Tangerine hisself has filed suit against the Pulitzer Prize organization, and the journalists who’ve won its award… saying (preposterously!) that he was libeled, and defamed by the Awards, since some of the winners reported on his 2016 collusion with Russian backed oligarchs.

That’s because John knows Trump — and everything about him is… DOA, now.

Except maybe for the advance reservation of a Triple XXXL orange jumpsuit, and 20 X 15 concrete walled condo, for him… at about 2025.

It will take the form of any of about seven separate felony sprees, from tax frauds, to stolen top secret U.S. documents — to charity and securities frauds… or financial statements lies to banks (i.e., bank fraud).

We love it!

Out, now — and grinning — at the silly, irrelevant old fool at a gun range on a Sunday morning. The fool, Hinderaker.

Hinderaker Claims Jet Tail Data / Location Data Is Private. He Is Wrong.

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John’s entire rant is based on a false premise: Jet locations, at least jets registered and titled in the US… are public record real time data.

It all won’t matter too much, though because it is likely Musk is NOT in for the long haul at Twitter.

Musk’s larger Tesla holders and board of directors (the latter, by fiduciary duty, and the former by blunt capitalism) are going to force his hand, here.

So again, Hinderaker thinks bannings are good… so long as only (what he errantly imagines)… as leftists… are banned.

What a dolt.

Hinderaker Seems Unaware That Reparations Are Law In My City… And People Are Paying Top Dollar To Move Here…

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Tonight, John does some egregiously bad math to suggest that LA will die, or Angelenos will move away to Minnesota (I guess), if the city undertakes reparations ordinances.

In my city, once pot became legal, the excess revenue was earmarked in at least part, for reparations. Checks have been mailed. It is already working here — nearly first in the nation, are we.

And to put the lie to John’s ill-informed conjecture, people of all hues are literally clambering to move here: with a world class university, ample parks, crystal clear lake waters, gorgeous summers along wooded bike trails… [and yes, a few brutal winter months — months to hide by the fireplace, in down booties]… all of this converges, to make this a very desirable city on the North Shore.

So desirable, that some middle income families (of all colors, and gay or straight) are being priced out… and that problem is being tackled with other initiatives.

But here there are dozens of entire blocks that boast (and can prove) every second or third house is no more than three or four direct lineal descendant generations from having been enslaved in the South (Mississippi, primarily)… but now count civic leaders, teachers, and business owners among the long term residents.

So Hinderaker is 100% wrong on the facts. But that’s no surprise. Our city’s program is designed to return at least some of the generational wealth robbed by the men running plantations — stolen from forced laborers.

It does so by investing in housing improvements, for people living here, long term. Many of their great grandparents came in the migration after the Civil War.

We owe them.

So shut it, John.

If All Went Well, Goddard Should Hear Back From The Speedy, Lithe Parker Solar Craft, Tomorrow By Radio: Dip No. Fourteen, Completed!

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As our home star approaches its eleven year “solar max” cycle wave peak… lil’ Parker will have endured very active solar flares — and radiation bursts, on this fourteeth dip near the outer edges of the local solar coronasphere. She is now moving at a speed that (if she were flying over Earth) she could go from New York to Tokyo in under two minutes.

We expect she will ping back, in absolutely perfect health tomorrow, having begun this dip on December 6th… and reached her closest approach point on the morning of the 11th… but we won’t know for certain until she passes out of radio silence, and re-orients her high gain antenna and dish toward home, and Earth. So we will wait, for the morning, to come:

…During the spacecraft’s previous close encounter with the Sun on Sept. 5, it flew through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections in recorded history. As the Sun’s activity continues to increase on its approach toward solar maximum – the period of greatest activity during the Sun’s 11-year cycle – scientists expect Parker to fly through and observe more exciting phenomena from its unprecedented vantage point.

“It’s a very exciting time to have a spacecraft flying so close to the Sun and observing its activity,” said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The first part of the mission was during the solar cycle minimum, when we learned so much about the relatively quiet conditions in the solar atmosphere. Now Parker Solar Probe embarks on a renewed journey where the Sun is more active. Every close encounter opens up new opportunities to understand better how the Sun works and how it affects us here on Earth and beyond.”

The spacecraft entered the encounter in good health, with all systems operating normally. Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to check back in with mission operators at Johns Hopkins APL – where it was also designed and built – on Dec. 17….

Now you know, with about two new inches of fluff on the ground here, already… looking like. . . Christmas, indeed (for just one more slumber). Smile….

नमस्ते

At ISS, Soyuz Module Is Spraying Coolant Into Space… YIKES.

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To be clear: none of the crew members are in any danger, but this is… disconcerting.

This Soyuz unit was to be… the ride, back home.

Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin were supposed to spacewalk today. But no more.

The spacewalk was immediately canceled, as the team assesses whether to adjust the orbit, and seek internal patching — or an EVA to stop the leak. From NASA then, a bit — this morning:

…Ground teams at Mission Control in Moscow continue to assess a coolant leak detected from the aft end of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the International Space Station. As a result, the planned Dec.14 Roscosmos spacewalk was canceled to allow time to evaluate the fluid and potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action following the ongoing analysis. The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak….

The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft carried NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin into space after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan on Sept. 21….

Do keep a good thought, here. Onward — and do be excellent to one another. . . even as New Orleans cleans up from outbreaks of tornados… again… stay safe.

नमस्ते

Here’s A Gem: Johnson Admits He Is… “Inbred”. Hilarious.

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After describing his maternal grandparents as speaking Yiddish, from time to time, after immigrating to the US from their native Russia… Scott says that his grandparents made him feel… (wait for it!) “unwelcome” in doing so. Yikes. Many, many adults have ways of keeping certain subjects muted in front of smaller ears / called “tall talk”.

But Scott Johnson… even waxed paranoid, around his own grandparents. So it is a scant surprise that he is… paranoid about immigrants, generally.

He wrote this very morning that immigrants lack “our”(!?) values (a generalization, without any limiting descriptors — to include all in favor of wider immigration) — that they “mean to break down our inbred loyalties….”

I don’t even need to pause for a moment, to wonder who he feels his “our” people are, here.

I may easily surmise that answer. It is obvious.

But it is… deeply ironic — that he refers to himself… as “inbred“.

That is precisely why the diversity immigration brings… is desirable.

To avoid the problems of… inbreeding. And Scott’s time-after-time “reasoning” would suggest… he is indeed Exhibit A, for the proposition that there are real, deleterious effects, from… such inbreeding.

So…I’ll just laugh… at this embittered old loon.

John Hinderaker: “Twitter’s Old Boss Now Sounds Like Us; We Like Him Now.”

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The middle school clique-ishness of all the “Powerline bloggers’ arguments” is… quite droll.

Tonight, Hinderaker suddenly feels Jack Dorsey has integrity, and smarts. Why? Because Dorsey says it may have been a mistake to shadow ban some accounts.

So… when it’s about making maximal ad revenue — John thinks Jack was “smart” to “admit” a mistake (one he will definitively never have to pay for, since he’s sold all his shares to Musk at ~$44 billion)… now that all agree (finally!) what happened was 100% lawful (that’s Hinderaker’s own admission of… defeat).

And rather than mention Tangerine’s now copiously documented (from Mark Meadow’s own text streams) leadership of the 01.06.21 insurrection, John whines anew… that it (Jack’s decision-making) was all so… unfair and mean, to the Orange Dotard.

Just hilarious.

Meanwhile Tangerine hisself has filed suit against the Pulitzer Prize organization, and the journalists who’ve won its award… saying (preposterously!) that he was libeled, and defamed by the Awards, since some of the winners reported on his 2016 collusion with Russian backed oligarchs.

But that, I suppose, is par for the course, if you’re a guy who thinks the answer to losing the 2020 election by over eight million popular votes… is to expressly and repeatedly call (in a public address style written document, no less!) for the shredding of the Constitution.

So, as I say — I am likely to stop noting that the boys are all ‘a froth, in the future over a former preznit’s — now turned 100% snowflake’s… fee-fees.

Out.