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That Explosive Book: Dr. Mary L. Trump Explains Donald Trump

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This is an angry rant. You’ve been forewarned. 

My social circle, friends and acquaintances, tend to come from all walks of life. Different backgrounds, attitudes and belief systems. Probably due to my family circumstances and upbringing, I’ve always been used to having all sorts of opposing ideas around me. I feel that life would become terribly dull if I were to be surrounded only by people who agree with me. I learn quite a lot by having discussions, or just listening to, people whose philosophies are partially or entirely against mine. I need to be able to see things from the point of view of the Trump supporter and the anti-vaxxer, because I end up seeing valuable facts in their side of story that I wouldn’t see otherwise. Being used to this practise, means that it’s not easy to piss me off even if I’m listening to an opinion that I personally find outrageous.

But… this has limits. And now, I’m angry. Very, very angry.

One very clear boundary to my patience is when someone’s misguided actions are directly endangering the lives of other people. And it makes me so sad, so sorry and so bitter when I see people I like, people I care about and have respect for, people among my friends and acquaintances, do exactly that. It’s been painful watching some of your opinions and actions on social media. It’s hurtful on a personal level.

I’ve been watching you post pictures and videos of you dismissing the lockdown protocols in different parts of the world. Breaking quarantine. Not giving a f*ck about social distancing. Being proud of finding your way to some nice quiet corder of nature, conveniently failing to mention the public transportation you used to get there. You who are wearing a shirt saying that you’re young and healthy and not afraid of anything. You who are protesting in groups, expressing loudly that the government is taking away your human rights or freedom by telling you to stay at home. How out of touch with the reality are you? Do you realise that facts are still facts even if it’s the government voicing them?

Anti-establishment anarchism, political activism and all these misunderstood labels you’re proudly putting on yourself, have no connection to your selfish, childish, thoughtless actions. Lockdown, social distancing and all the related protocols are not about you or your political opinion. I’m sorry to have to inform you of this, but the Corona virus doesn’t give a sod about your bloody political opinion.

This is about whether your grandmother will have the freedom to visit her doctor without the possibility of dying of Covid 19 constantly looming above her head. This is about whether your colleague with asthma will survive this bloody situation. This is about families having the freedom to visit each other again, families that might currently be stuck, away from each-other, in different parts of the world. This is about establishing regulations that would allow people to go back to their jobs before their lives are completely ruined and the economy of their country is damaged beyond repair. This is about putting a leash on this disaster before it causes even more ruin that it already has. This is a matter of survival. Do you understand that your delusion of fighting for your freedom, is practically taking away everyone else’s? Who gives you the right to destroy the lives and freedom of everyone else? Or do you perhaps think that freedom is a word that only applies to you?

What irks me even more is that you, my dear “rebellious” friends, all happen to live in parts of the world with governments that generally aren’t known as oppressive regimes. You do not have a first clue what it is to live under an actual oppressive regime, take it from someone who has. And this is definitely no time for you to play out your fantasies of political justice heroism. Human rights are constantly shredded to bits around the world and you act like having to stay at home during a pandemic is the thing to go to war for? You’re clearly not interested in the well being of the society, only in your own personal interests. Oh, and the police wouldn’t have to force you to stay at home or respect social distancing if your own sense of logic and responsibility had taken over the task.

Of course if you happen to have any interest in facts, the web is full of legitimate scientific information showing you exactly why you’re expected to follow these pandemic protocols. And if that’s too much effort for you, there’s even a ton of initiatives by people who try to, among other things, explain things as simply as possible so you don’t have to work too hard. Like this page here for instance: staythefuckhome.com

And while you’ve been busy worrying about your “freedom” [to spread the virus?], the world’s been finding out more and more about the effects of this virus, and what it can actually do to the human body. Does any of that happen to interest you by any chance? Here’s just a couple of interesting examples:

COVID-19: also a systemic endotheliitis

SARS‐CoV-2 in COVID-19 patients is likely to infect the brain

Have a look around the web and I’m sure you’ll see a ton more informative articles on the bloody capabilities of this virus, as well as the global statistics of the damage it’s doing. And while you’re at it, please have a look at the charts on this page depicting the correlations between Covid deaths and age / preexisting conditions.

A mortality perspective on COVID-19: Time, location, and age

In China, more than 50 percent of COVID-19 deaths have been people who are over 70 years old even though most COVID-19 cases are being contracted by people below 70. Young people have interpreted this as an indication that they do not need to worry about the virus, while old people are being warned to take extreme caution. It is true that young people have a smaller chance than old people of dying from COVID-19, but they have a smaller chance of dying of almost any other health risk as well. In China, the age at which people died from COVID-19 was very similar to the age at which people died normally (Figure 4). And there are already signs that the age profile of deaths in China may not be the same as the age profile elsewhere, so it is useful for people of all ages to take extreme care.

Putting all of the above together, does it seem to you like your age and level of health is going to make you magically impervious to the effects of the virus? Does it seem like it would be possible to just isolate a “risk group” and let everyone else do as they wish? And even if that would have somehow made sense, do you really want to take away the freedom of every old or ill person permanently and just let the pandemic agony to continue?

So you want to talk about freedom? Here’s the freedom I want. I want the freedom to not be stuck in this miserable situation any longer than I have to. I want the freedom to go back to some semblance of a normal life. These are the freedoms you’re taking away from me, by helping the virus spread. Shame on you.

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  • Filed under: Covid 19, Politics, Rant
  • Recently I’ve been seeing more and more commentary around the web calling Greta Thunberg “misguided”. Seeing how ridiculously busy my past year has been, I knew far less about Greta Thunberg and her message than I would have liked. When I read people saying she was misguided, my first thought [probably the bias of my background] was that perhaps she’s making claims that are not scientifically sound. However after spending a bit of time listening to what she has to say, so far I’ve not heard anything that doesn’t match the science and the facts. So then I wondered, why all the harsh judgement?

    That’s when I realised people have a problem with her approach. She’s loud, bold, and panic inducing. She says what no one wants to hear, and she doesn’t sugarcoat the situation. She is slapping our collective faces real hard, and for a lot of people, especially the politician type, this is just not something they enjoy. And since her facts can’t be questioned, her approach and persona receive all the assault.

    And then more recently I’ve been seeing increasing attempts at character assassination in the form of absurd nonsense like this.

    When I saw this thing yesterday, I finally lost my cool….. why? Really? Must you? Why are we so quick to turn off our bloody brains? This comparison is like trying to make a case against water because oxygen is more important.  These two young people are each doing something very important, very necessary, and very different from each other. But on the other hand there’s an almost symbiotic relationship between what they’re doing, that whoever came up with this shortsighted  infographic isn’t taking into account at all.

    Boyan Slat has come up with a solution for an incredibly large problem. He’s doing something amazing to save our oceans. And yes, it’s definitely a problem how little attention he’s receiving, it’s bloody embarrassing. In fact he’s one of the several scientists / technologists who are doing a lot for the environment, without receiving proper recognition for their work. And is that a surprise? There’s a growing list of environmental concerns and quite a few of these are by now getting completely out of hand, and our human society still acts like these are imaginary issues that are never going to touch our lives. We are acting like the problems don’t exist, is it any wonder we’re ignoring the people trying to solve them?

    And this, my dear people who are calling Greta “misguided”, is why we bloody well need people like her! We are slumbering, and she is the WAKE UP CALL!! Boyan Slat is changing a world that is in deep deep trouble, and we are not paying attention to any side of that equation. Then when Greta calls us out for it, we call her misguided? What the hell people? If this was still some 200 years ago and we had time for niceties and refinements of speech, then maybe there would be a little bit of point in saying panic wouldn’t help. But holy hell, our sodding house is ON FIRE!! It’s time for panic like it’s never been before! Issues like climate change, deforestation, soil pollution etc, are no longer future concerns! Our very generation is already grappling, and soon will grapple much worse, with the consequences of all of these! And then you fault Greta Thunberg for panicking? My god, at this point if you’re not panicking you’re simply out of touch.

    Boyan Slat is creating solutions, but that’s not enough. We need a lot more Boyan Slats. We need a lot more of a spotlight on the environmental issues, which requires a lot more awareness in our human society. We need to be woken up and educated. That’s what Greta Thunberg and people like her are trying to do, so don’t you dare question the importance of their work. If you think Greta Thunberg is “misguided” for trying to get us to panic, maybe you need to wake up and smell the bloody coffee.

    Image from Time

    For what is probably the 10th time in the past 24 hours, I’ve just been asked what I think of the current Trudeau brown-face scandal. And every time I get asked about this I want to scream: are we all losing our minds? How did this become a thing?

    At times in the past I’ve been accused of being too “politically correct”. Simple fact is that I just don’t like disrespect or lack of tolerance towards anyone’s culture, race, gender, religion, etc…. But at the same time I’m also a huge fan of balance and common sense. What we seem to have completely lost on this topic of black / brown / what-have-you face.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am perfectly familiar with the historical significance of black-face, and as a brown person who’s had to deal with her own share of racism in this world, I do very well get where all the rage and frustration comes from. I think it makes perfect sense to say, “you shouldn’t wear black make-up to mock the ethnicity”. But Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ… now we are labeling a man racist because he dressed as Aladdin to an Arabian Nights themed costume party? What in the actual hell? Why is he apologising for this??

    Every historical tragedy, every memorable fuck-up our humankind has created, has some historical imagery and elements surrounding it. If we were to start banning every element present at our past mistakes, what will we be still allowed to do? Actually hey, think about it, guns for instance have been responsible for a lot more tragedy than black makeup. How come guns have not been declared offensive and banned as yet? Hmm? Ask yourself, is this really about respect and tolerance? Or is it about finding some easy place to put the blame, to make ourselves feel better, since the actual issue of racism and xenophobia is just too big to do something real about?

    As a brown person still grappling with racism today, I think people should be allowed to dress as Aladdin to their hearts’ desire. My black friends seems to not see what the issue would be with wearing dark makeup if you’re dressing up as Michael Jackson. And when a few years ago I dressed up as a Japanese anime character for a Halloween party, I wore makeup to change my skin tone and I don’t think my Japanese friend who accompanied me was offended one bit [were you Kyoko?]. Yes, the black- face history is complicated and one should be very careful of the image one creates. But celebrating another culture or ethnicity is exactly what our bloody divided world actually needs. In fact perhaps if more people would immerse themselves for a day in a character of another culture, maybe we’d have less xenophobia going around.


    If you can’t see the difference between the content of this picture, and dressing up as Michael Jackson, you have a problem. A big one. This kind of thinking can’t be allowed to take over. We can’t allow our past mistakes to open even more gaps between us. Going too far today won’t change the past, it will just create us more tragedies today….

    Iranian Hackers & Baidu??!

    So this is pretty bizarre to me! How exactly does this make any sense? At first, these folks disabled Twitter which has turned into a major communication tool in Iran [and so it’s understandable why they want it gone!], and then they mess with Baidu, which is a major Chinese search engine. And of course the Iranian government has no problems with China. So what? Are these guys are just going about it randomly now??

    “Hackers calling themselves the “Iranian Cyber Army” paralysed China’s biggest search engine this morning, sparking a bizarre online battle as Chinese hackers apparently retaliated by targeting Iranian sites. Last month the group attacked Twitter, which has been used by Iranian opposition supporters. But Beijing and Tehran are allies and it was not immediately obvious why hackers targeted Baidu, which commands over 60% of the search market in China.”

    Iranian’ hackers paralyse Chinese search engine Baidu | Technology | guardian.co.uk

    Bitter Sweet…

    A couple of nice cartoons I bumped into a few times today and yesterday.

    Cartoon_578302aBy Morten Morland

    or_ill_tweet
    By Walt Handelsman

  • 1 Comment
  • Filed under: Comics, Funny, Iran, Politics, Web
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