RainCaster
RainCaster's JournalDFT's leadership on religion
https://twitter.com/CatMitchs/status/1291515398853021697Memes- it is what it is
Somebody asked a few days ago for memes on this topic. I've made a few, others please chime in with your as well.
Some of these images may require more eye bleach than others...
Another band steps into BLM territory- Midnight Oil
Remember "Beds are Burning"? Well, the band is back 18 years later and still supporting aboriginal causes. They even mention how the BLM movement has come to Oz.
Link
Midnight Oil amplify Uluru Statement with first new song in 18 years
Gadigal Land, named for the traditional owners of a large swath of Sydney, is flagged as "a provocative recount of what happened in this place, and elsewhere in Australia, since 1788".
...
"Clearly this mini-album has ended up being timely in ways nobody could have anticipated as the Black Lives Matter movement surges globally and renews local focus on Aboriginal deaths in custody," said Sony Music Australia, which has pledged to match the artists' contribution to Indigenous rights lobbying organisations.
NZ: How to win an election during a pandemic
Here's a lesson for DFT- he screwed up. If you want to be popular in your country, lock it down tight. Don't deny the virus, fight it.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/what-victoria-can-learn-from-new-zealand-s-drastic-lockdown-20200803-p55i5n.html
What Victoria can learn from New Zealand's drastic lockdown
I gave my daughter a smile yesterday
She had a rough week.
First, her beloved little car died. Terminal.
She borrowed my super quiet Lexus LS and got a speeding ticket.
Then her last grandparent died.
So on Saturday I took her out to begin car shopping. She had a note book with a list of all the cars that were interesting to her. It turned out that she fell in love with a shuttle car that we used to go from lot to lot. It will be all prepped & ready for her tomorrow evening. She's very excited.
Pandemic math
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/When I look at this link right now, it says that 4.3 million people in the US have contracted CV19. Remember that number.
Of that 4.3 million, just over 2 million have recovered. That leaves 2.3 million who might still be able to recover.
However. If the fatality rate remains the same, we will see another 170,000 US citizens will die. And that is only limited because this assumption sys that no additional people will catch the horrid virus. Sadly, our current government hasn't a damn clue, so we know that number will rise unabated.
Think for a moment. By the November election, we will be at the 320,000 dead count. From the Trump Virus. What will your reaction be?
We lost another Biden voter yesterday
My mother-in-law passed away last night, after a mercifully short battle with cancer at the age of 84. She was looking forward to voting in the election this fall, and supported Hillary in 2016. She lived in a very red corner of our blue state, and was part of an underground network of those renegades who would dare to recycle, reuse and compost since long before it was fashionable. Yes, she was on every Democratic mailing list possible- NAACP, SPLC, DNC, Hillary, Biden, McGrath, and many others. That means that she gave generously to all who worked towards a better country. She supported Barack, and had more pictures of him on her refrigerator that she had of her many grandchildren.
She is now reunited with her husband, son and mother. I will miss her, she was a fine human being and a great example to all who knew her.
Late edit:
Thank you to all who responded today. You have all been so kind. You have reaffirmed why I am here and supporting our party. I do indeed, feel honored to have been a part of her family and to have known her as long as I have. I'm looking forward to many more with all her extensive family, especially my wonderful wife. I will support her as best I can during this heartbreaking time.
WaPo: Republicans want to save themselves -- but only if the price is low
An interesting article listing how the GOP is rapidly losing all its influence and how it will need to pass a stimulus bill that includes lots of provisions only the Dems love. It makes me so sad. (NOT!)
You can hear the whiffs of desperation seep into their statements. The New York Times quotes Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.): “I want more briefings but, more importantly, I want the whole White House to start acting like a team on a mission to tackle a real problem. [Peter] Navarro’s Larry, Moe and Curly junior-high slap fight this week is yet another way to undermine public confidence that these guys grasp that tens of thousands of Americans have died and tens of millions are out of work.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) knows his bargaining power in talks with the House is drying up. He must pass a bill, and a substantial one at that. “The spiraling pandemic and the increasingly virulent politics around Washington’s handling of the novel coronavirus are raising the pressure on Senate Republicans as they try to craft a fresh coronavirus relief package," The Post reports. “As the Senate returns this week for a three-week sprint before the August break, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is facing competing demands from President Trump and Republican senators, including some who are up for reelection in states hit hard by the virus and are coming under withering attacks by Democratic challengers over the pandemic.”
Republicans insist that liability protection for employers be included in the stimulus package, but if the House holds firm, will Republicans have the nerve to vote down a stimulus package? I am guessing they won’t. They are not about to let the weekly $600 federal add-on to unemployment insurance benefits lapse. They do not want to face the wrath of their state governments, police, firefighters, teachers and other government workers back home if they do not agree to hundreds of billions in new federal funding. McConnell made a grave error in not striking a deal months ago. Now, as the virus surges and Trump’s standing collapses, he is in a far worse position to extract concessions from the House.
...
Republicans’ self-created plight reminds me of the book title “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die.” In this case, Republicans all want to get reelected; they simply do not want to do the things they need to do — incurring Trump’s wrath along the way — to get to political heaven.
Answered a long questionnaire from the Census today
This is the third one in a week. Mostly about my feelings about the economy and the virus. I let the have it - and filled out the free form box at the end with a very honest and picturesque description of our pResident and my opinions of his skills.
Anyone else ever got these?
A New Understanding of Herd Immunity
A lengthy and interesting article from the Atlantic. (not behind their normal paywall)
This is a very interesting discussion of the predictive mathematics behind virus spread and herd immunity. The author brings up an interesting point about the initial death spike killing off the weakest in a community. I hadn't thought about that, but he never mentions the second wave that we are currently experiencing which is brought on by the stupidest in society. That aside, it's a lengthy and fascinating article.
So he started experimenting with differential equations, trying to make predictions based on patterns in data on past temperatures and pressures. One day, while testing his system, he repeated a simulation with a few decimals rounded off in the data. To his surprise, a radically different future emerged.
He called this finding “the butterfly effect.” In a complex model, where each day’s weather influences the next day’s, a tweak in initial conditions can have wild downstream consequences. The butterfly effect became central to the emerging field of chaos theory, which has since been applied to economics, sociology, and many other subjects, in attempts to deconstruct complex phenomena. That field is now helping predict the future of the pandemic—in particular, how it ends.
Chaos theory applies neatly to the spread of the coronavirus, in that seemingly tiny decisions or differences in reaction speed can have inordinate consequences. Effects can seem random when, in fact, they trace to discrete decisions made long prior. For example, the United States has surpassed 125,000 deaths from COVID-19. Having suppressed the virus early, South Korea has had only 289. Vietnam’s toll sits at zero. Even when differences from place to place appear random, or too dramatic to pin entirely on a failed national response, they are not.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHome country: USA
Current location: Left Coast
Member since: Mon Oct 10, 2016, 06:19 PM
Number of posts: 11,797