Facebook down: 2 data points UPDATE

 

Data point 1:  See chart for scope of Facebook outage.

Data point 2:  Facebook employees not able to badge their way into their own building.  This points to internal systems being down.

UPDATE:  Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at the network monitoring company Kentik, said someone at Facebook caused an update to be made to the company’s BGP records, which resulted in the company’s system taking away the map telling the world’s computers how to find its various online properties.    (Speculation follows:  Malicious or accidental internal mayhem?)

What's next, world? The unexpected.

So many cans have been kicked down the road that the unexpected is becoming the most likely next event.  As a pile of sand is built higher and higher, eventually a single grain of sand at an unpredicted location will trigger the landslide.

One of those kicked cans is massive public debt financed against the unborn's earning power. (Taxation without representation).

The focus on covid vaccinations will shift suddenly when "fuck Joe Biden"chants  or indifference to health authorities or an attack on Taiwan or a supreme court ruling or a sudden change of rulers in the US tips the balance.

Or consequences of hacking FACEBOOK and friends?    1.5 billion customers' data on offer for $5000.

Coffee: Ode and Odium

 From the preface to "Uncommon Grounds,:The History of Coffee and How it Trasnformed Our World"

"This is the beverage of the friends of God".

China wants U.S. out of play before tackling Taiwan. But it gets worse.

 From Richard Fernandez:

(China) lacks the amphibious capacity to land the 30-plus brigades it will need to overcome the island’s defense. China does not appear to be currently investing in the equipment likely required for a direct assault on Taiwan.   ..... to overcome 22 defending brigades, the buildup could not easily be concealed, and there should be no surprises. ... Beijing’s current naval build implies that the prerequisite for taking Taipei is neutralizing the U.S. navy. ... the CCP thinks Washington must “fall” before Taipei can be stormed. .. the key to encirclement’s success is Washington’s reaction. So, while 77 Chinese combat aircraft have provocatively intruded into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, their real purpose is to beat like rain on the windows of the Oval Office to attract the attention of the man within. ....Looming large over the scene is the perception that China is becoming more dangerous because it is a declining power. As the American Enterprise Institute put it, based on a recent piece in Foreign Policy, “The United States needs to prepare for a major war, not because its rival is rising but because of the opposite.” ..

Alex Lo of the South China Morning Post poses the question: “Suppose both China and the US are in decline …?     I ask our wise political scientists: if both superpowers are in decline or have peaked, are they more or less likely to go at each other’s throats? Well, judging by the aforementioned discussions, if both sides are in decline, wouldn’t both be the problem?

More significant detail and links are in the source article by Fernandez.
His "Wretchard the Cat"  twitter feed is rewarding to follow also.

UPDATE:  Over 150 military flights outside the 12 nautical miles line but within the Air Defense Identification zone have now taken place in October with 52 October 4th alone.  12 nautical miles is scarcely one minute of flying time for a warplane.

UPDATE: Chinese state media (Global TImes) call Taiwan "an evil force the mainland must crush" and defend the intrusions on Taiwanese air space as training to "familiarize itself with battlefield conditions". 

UPDATE:  Maybe Taiwan has nuclear weapons (neutron bombs).   This hasn't been in the news but would give Xi pause.

Does Taiwan have nuclear weapons?
While Taiwan has pursued several programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, there has never been public acknowledgement the island nation has such devices. Reportedly, Taiwan began working to build a nuclear weapon after China’s first nuclear test in 1964. Though it reportedly produced plutonium for the program during the 1970s, the official story line is that U.S. ultimately pressured Taipei to officially halt the research in 1976. Other reports indicate nuclear research continued in secret into the 1980s.
Still, many believe Taiwan has quietly built a stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads that, if used, would give China serious pause and could help repel a People’s Liberation Army seaborne invasion. The late Sam Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb, told journalists that Taiwan had a stockpile of such weapons and that he had personally briefed the Taiwan military staff on their use. The neutron bomb, developed in the 1970s and 80s, is a controversial device that disperses massive amounts of radiation in a limited target area without the blast of a traditional weapon.

Out: Ivermectin In: Mulnupiravir Different, right?

 Merck was making Ivermectin and now is promoting wonder covid drug, Molnupiravir with a similar molecular interface.    Convince me that instead of repurposing Ivermectin, Merck is promoting an expensive simulacrum that the hypocrites in the public sphere can embrace without admitting wrongdoing while the patent holder makes a ton of money.

Merck had the patent on Ivermectin until 1996.

"The price is high".   This is a feature, not a bug, in the current spending environment.

Mandatory workplace vaccinations: A White House Stunt

"The president announced nearly a month ago that businesses need to mandate vaccines for their employees or submit them to weekly testing. We looked. It’s been a month. None of this paperwork has been filed with OSHA to make that happen.  Was this a stunt?
Are you seeing companies follow through even without the legal mandate filed?"

Asked by Margaret Brennan of Fauci.

Fauci "deflects" and doesn't answer.

Climate, weather, whatever: Antarctic froze good and hard

 Coldest winter on record "down south" in Anarctica. 

Have you ever thought about how to measure the temperature of the world and to detect a tenth of a degree change in it?
Click through to the ventusky map to get a sense of the variance and take a look at the options that vary from a few centimeters above the surface to turbulent kilometers above the surface, most of it measured from instruments more than a 100 km high in the sky.   There are almost no ground stations above the arctic circle now.

Worth waiting for the right test and the right vaccine product.

Eventually covid vaccines may be safe and testing useful.
The latest step forward is a 3 minute breath test that detects covid-19 and variants.
The breathalyser is fast, non-intrusive and duplicates PCR tests results "100%".
Missing is how the rate of false positives compares.

Reported in Medical Press.
Linked here by a blogger who has had lots of vaccinations but is troubled by the under-reported hazards of the current covid jabs.

 From the Babylon Bee:  Nation in mourning.

Peptide drops that replicate and sometimes concentrate nucleic acids: Missing link in evolution of life on earth

“The origin of molecular assemblies that proliferate from small molecules has remained a mystery for about a hundred years since the advent of the chemical evolution scenario. It has been the missing link between chemistry and biology in the origin of life.   ...  Researchers .set out to recreate this kind of self-propagating protocell in the lab. They started by combining amino acid derivatives to create a new small molecule that was primed to self-assemble into primitive cells. They added this mix to water at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure,...   The molecules condensed into peptides, which then formed droplets suspended in the water. When more amino acids were added – as might occur in nature – the droplets not only grew in size, but began to divide. ....  Most intriguingly, some of the droplets concentrated nucleic acids – macromolecules that can carry genetic information. Those droplets that did so were more likely to survive in the environment".

What's not to like:  A replicative process that preserves and even concentrates high value information.

Information from Muneyuki Matsuo posted at Newatlas.com

Vaccine not working as advertised. Or is it worse than that?

 Senator Kennedy is making political points today but is he wrong?
The chart is what it is.
The three observations are what they are.
The unavoidable conclusion:  The vaccine is somewhat ineffective against a virus that keeps redesigning itself to get past the things that are trying to kill it.
The avoidable conclusion but one that can't be fully ruled out:  The vaccines are promoting the development of hardier viruses which results in additional illness and additional death.

Link here:
The three points:  The population is over 60% vaccinated.  Deaths had dropped significantly before the vaccine was introduced.  Cases and deaths have surged since the introduction of the vaccine.

Remember, CDC just sneak-edited the definition of "Vaccine".   Formerly a vaccine stimulated the immune system to develop immunity.  Now it just stimulates the immune system.  

Fatties: You are next! "Please scan your BMI passport to enter".

One app to rule them all is where we are heading.
Government wants to be that app.

Everyone will have to be on the net and you'll have a connected device whether you want one or not, in order to be granted civil freedom.
The vaccine passport perfectly advances the master app.

Your medical information bleeds into the public sphere.

Your whereabouts are trackable and it's for your own good.
China just got a headstart on Canada with social scores and staged permissions to travel by plane or bus.

Everything said about getting the jab works just as well for flagging fatties 
and shrinking liberties.

"Please scan your BMI passport to enter".
Restricting your rights as a citizen until your BMI is in the approved range is for your own good and for the good of your family and will save billions of health dollars.
If you try to enter a restaurant, your behaviour could be flagged by GPS as easily as by scanned passport.
If you want to enter a gym, no problem.

It's for your own good.   A lot of people agree with the idea that fat people should be told very firmly they have to lose weight,  since their weight is a burden on society and generally they got fat by their own choices.

Why am I picking on fatties?  Because I hear Covid-19 conversations that ask why the jab is so important for kids and people with natural or acquired immunity when obese people who are high risk for diabetes and many other expensive disabilities are not being shamed.  Our culture loves to promote the goodness of healthy kale and jogging and fitbits and slenderness.   The 20-30% who have Basal Metabolism Indexes in the obese range are a natural target.

So, fatties, you are next.

'The first rule of political sexuality' applies to Canada's 2021 election

"The Conservative philosophy is to “‘hunt where the ducks are,’ which is to say, tack ever further to the left.” The result is no duck for dinner. In shunting a traditionally right-of-center party into the left’s impregnable bailiwick in an effort to pilfer votes, O’Toole ensured his party’s defeat. He never understood the first rule of political sexuality, that that you must first love your own before attempting to seduce your adversaries.

(Trudeau)was re-elected, an event that could be viewed not only as a political farce but equally as a withering indictment of an irresponsible and profoundly myopic electorate."

From Solway at pjmedia.com 

Vaccination Passport: Passport to Poverty

Thanks to the ill-advised vaccination passport mandate, here's what i won't be spending:

One retired guy, unvaccinated, who is now a second-class citizen, will delete over $30,000 from the BC economy in the year ahead.  Health officer Bonnie Henry is neither a scientist nor an economist.  The unintended consequences of shrinking our personal and family freedoms for guessed-at collective benefits will damage our beautiful province.

 

 

Codevilla on war and international affairs: Groups are who they are, want what they want, and do what they do.

 From "Advice to War Presidents" by Angelo Codevilla who passed away this week:

"This book .. looks at international affairs as the interaction of individuals and groups
who are what they are, want what they want, and do what they do. 
It is about the consequences of forgetting common-sense definitions: 
that diplomacy is mere communication,
that international intercourse requires a positive imbalance of means over ends,
that allies are available in inverse proportion to the need for them,
and that war is the avenue to peace via the gateway of the enemy's death or submission."

"No amount of wishing can
abstract from fact that we are one variety or another of Sinotic or North African or Negroid or European,
or break the molds in which our civilizations cast us,
cancel the categories that our relgions have stamped on our minds,
make tasteful the things that have revolted us since childhood,
lessen our tribal averisons and affections,
or reduce the relevance of the regimes in which we live.
Our statesmen deny the relevance of diffferences - of other people's loves and hates, calcualations and intrigues - treating all as if they were not foreign at all." 

Quotes available in the free sample download in Kindle. 

How the virus works in restaurants

 

Sourced

"Leveraging the advantages of our sex differences".

 Today's quote:

"The modern world is out of sync with our ancient brains and bodies. We evolved to live in clans, but today most people don't even know their neighbors' names. Survival in our earliest societies depended on leveraging the advantages of our sex differences, but today even the concept of biological sex is increasingly dismissed as offensive. The cognitive dissonance spawned by trying to live in a society we're not built for is killing us."

My underline there. I'd rewrite the last sentence:  "Cognitive dissonance is spawned by trying to live in a society we're not built for.".   A source for sex-behavioural-differences-as-specialization-for-evolutionary-advantage is the linked book.

CDC data (attached) show Covid deaths are almost off the radar.

CDC's own data shows that actual deaths from Covid-19 have dropped so low they are almost off the radar.     

This update is so different from the fear porn still propagating in the media.