The Anti-Vax Bandwagon is STILL Going!?

 "Harvard Immunologist to Legislators: Unvaccinated Children Pose ZERO Risk to Anyone"

Errm, no. Yiiiikes.

That article is swimming in fallacies of rhetoric and context. There's a huge difference between longstanding herd-safety vaccinations and those specific edge-case vaccines which are (or were) on the forefront of vaccine research (i.e. very much works in progress) - yet this article only discusses the latter despite making sweeping assertions about the former.

I've read a lot of Obukhanych's research, and—her more infamous public appearances notwithstanding—the actual science underlying most of her "outreach" amounts to a couple of distinct points which are almost universally, if not always deliberately, misinterpreted and/or misrepresented. Most notably, none of them actually support or otherwise provide evidence for the anti-vax rhetoric stirred up by/in the (often for-profit) media in which she is often cited. Those points being:

— First, synthetic vaccination, in general, is an imperfect substitute for naturally-acquired immunity. This is factual common knowledge and generally uncontested in medical science.

— Second, because any given infectious disease evolves parallel to its hosts' immunity over time (but almost always evolves more efficiently than its hosts'), iterative, short-term vaccination is likely to lead to more severe long-term problems as disease evolution steadily outpaces the cutting edge of human disease science. This is also factual common knowledge.

Note, too, that with the exception of the now well-known flaws in the aP vaccine (which, despite that, is still better than nothing), the vaccines cited in this article are conspicuously absent their corresponding real-world data and context, such as: why a vaccine for a disease exists in the first place (referring to once-fatal and relatively commonplace diseases which, thanks to vaccines for them, now are not); why non-mandatory vaccines (particularly for cancer-comorbid viruses) might still be wise in populations demonstrating an above 50% rate of early-life infection; etc. There's a reason that those largely edge-case vaccines in particular are cited here, while the rest are not:

If one takes the aforementioned points completely out of context, it's easy to distort them into alleged or perceived "evidence" against vaccination - but that critical qualification obfuscates the real meat and potatoes of the issue (as is generally the intention). Here's the bulk of the important context, then, that's again-conspicuously absent from media employing that strategy to prop up that sort of rhetoric: when vaccinated individuals are exposed to a dangerous disease, they are demonstrably much, much, MUCH more likely to survive it, much more likely to avoid ever contracting it in the first place, and, if they do, their symptoms are almost always much less compromising to their short- and long-term health. Additionally, if infected, the body is able to fight off the disease much more quickly - which means everyone else in proximity is also much safer as a function of reduced exposure. Of course no solution is 100% consistent - but when the median rate of desirable outcomes within the expected range of possible outcomes is in the very high 90th percentile, that's clearly a success in big-picture terms.

Furthermore, when the alternative to even the most imperfect and inelegant solution is... a very high (or even simply non-negligible) risk of death... one can argue that there's not really much of a choice. Sure, human immunity as a whole might be better served in the long run if we were to simply allow ourselves to become infected with as many full-blown deadly diseases as possible - but in that case, "humanity as a whole" will only include the survivors, and the difference between that result and what we have now is far from negligible. Understandably and, in my opinion, justifiably, giving that up is not a price that most are willing to pay - and that pragmatism is the compromise that is vaccines.

Swedish "vaccine ban" social media BS

Oh man, just... no. First of all, this "news" was almost exclusively reported by fringe clickbait media outlets - such as redice. There's a reason for that: the actual news in Sweden is that the government simply decided not to enforce the compulsory vaccination of its citizens, on the grounds that it conflicted with pre-existing constitutional rights. There's no "ban." The mandate to vaccinate still exists in law, because it's still totally sensible; they just aren't enforcing it. It's very likely that the language will be rewritten in the coming years to implement sensible penalties for abstainers, because abstainers are ignorant, and because perpetuating ignorance about critical social healthcare tends to lead to a lot of people becoming unhealthy and/or dying for absolutely no good reason. Not nearly as sensational when you put it like that. There was no citing of health concerns, etc., only acknowledgement that side effects to vaccines exist and that that their citizens should have the option of over-reacting to them because of something false they saw on Facebook. (They're progressive like that). That particular blatant falsehood can be chocked up to "creative embellishment" by the apparently exclusively non-journalistic entities that came out of the woodwork to "report" it - along with other examples of comic anti-brilliance, such as citing "sodium chloride" (aka COMMON SALT) as a "toxic, unhealthy chemical" additive.

The entire theoretical purpose of any society is to mandate sensible minor compromises for the objectively greater benefit of the majority. That aforementioned free—useful—education to which Swedes have access is also an important contextual omission from the headlines and stories circulating. History, science, and common sense are actually taught in schools there. So, while they may now officially not be legally required to do so, I strongly suspect they're generally extremely likely to continue to vaccinate their children... ya know, so their children can continue to NOT die from/be-maimed-by/end-up-horribly-disfigured-by some truly fucking awful, completely preventable diseases. Here in the states, on the other hand, we're "free" to let measles and mumps outbreaks run rampant thanks in no small part to a not nearly small-enough minority of anti-vaxxers - who are still numerous enough to put a significant dent in herd immunity, putting not only their own kids at risk, but everyone else's, too.

There should be fewer/better additives developed to stabilize and preserve vaccines, sure - but even the oldest, most toxic vaccine to ever see widespread use would still do far less damage even in its outlying worse-cases than would a minute or two of inhaling secondhand cigarette smoke. This entire issue is sensationalist bullshit. Nobody is entitled to an unchallenged public opinion when said opinion contradicts fact, reason, and even common-fucking-sense!

There, I'm done. A tall glass of reason with a thick tmesis sandwich is a balm in this age of insanity.

Oh, just shoot me

VIDEO: Bulletproof / Stormproof safe rooms for schools  

The unfortunate reality is that security gimmicks won't keep children safe at school. It would simply accelerate the evolution of this society's school-massacre paradigm. Realistically, the net result would be to make more children less-safe, faster. Anyone can break through bulletproofing (especially, but not just glass) with $30 and a visit to a hardware store - or, with the same budget, cook up a nice IED, or enough poison gas to fill a school, etc etc.

A fundamental truth of security is that preparation supersedes the incidental. Anyone who resolves to kill a ton of people can find a way around incidental obstacles just by knowing they exist ahead of time. The bottom line is that there's no way to keep anyone safe as long as there are people willing to do whatever it takes to kill them, and that's regardless of how many easy options are or aren't available to do so. Guns, for instance, aren't even close to the most efficient way of killing a lot of people right now - they're just one of the most visible thanks to popular media, and thus the most immediate option given the general population's non-existent attention span. We are lucky that murderers are still using guns, frankly. When that changes—and it will, if social trends continue—so will the methodology, along with the scale of the body count.

No matter how much or how comprehensive physical and technological security is or becomes, the only way to truly prevent crime is to balance the social expression whose inevitable remainder is always crime. Crime is just a social waste product that a majority of people are either too dumb or too greedy to recycle properly before it gets out of hand.

... But that process is neither simple, nor profitable. So. *shrug*

Sarcasm à la carte

Oh, maaaaan. What is the world coming to?

If we can't even collectively agree that it's fine to kill unwanted babies just for funsies, how the hell are we supposed to eventually achieve the ultimate consensus that it's fine to kill unwanted adults - including quite a few for potentially-legitimate reasons!? We need legalized distant-post-term abortion, yesterday!

— No amount of Las Vegas country music festival hijinks will suffice!

And—this is just a nitpick, but—this also puts a serious damper on our plans to selectively breed out human flaws in lieu of leaving it to "natural selection" - which, bear in mind, is, like, tooooootally composed of an inordinate overpopulation of frat boiz and club gurrrrrls-zah.

How to get anything you want from anyone

How to get anything you want, from anyone:

1) Shed any preconception of morality, ethics, or other rules of conduct.

Accept that humans don't deserve your respect until they give you cause to think otherwise. The only relevant consideration in your choice of interactions with others is how they can or can't benefit you. People are just simple calculators and meat in fleshy suits; consider and use them as such. Should one break rank and demonstrate an objectively valuable and uncommon consciousness, only then should you consider its potential merits as a living thing.

2) Give up your instinctual devotion to truth, logic, and all rationality.

Understand that 99/100 people are more than happy to live entirely in delusions, and that of those, easily 9/10 of them live with an unshakable belief that those delusions are exactly what they really want. By their 20s, most people have given up all attachment to objective reality. In order to interact on their level, you must at least understand this pathology. They only need to be managed.

3) Take nothing personally.

To the idiot masses, you are simply a figment of their imagined reality in a somewhat more tangible form. Your only potential value to these morons is in the form of an essential object in their existing delusions; your actual objective value or worth as a human being is categorically vestigial to the psychology of human society - so you must learn to understand that these fleshbags aren't actually ever interacting with you at all. To take offense is illogical.

4) Manipulate.

Learn the landscapes, characters and ideas central to their delusions, study the simple repetitive patterns of their interactions and the subsequently shallow, boring behavioral routines that result - then insert yourself as one of the controlling ideas. Lie. When they believe you, insinuate your lie further into their delusion, until you control its direction.

That is all there is to this.

— and that is, frankly, about all there is in general.

Ugh. Hipsters.

YES: It's important to develop the ability to recognize projection in others.

BUT: Not all criticism (or otherwise perceived negativity) fits into that category. Oversimplifying interactions that make you feel anything but good—to the point that you perceive them as irrelevant or in some way incorrect—is the start of a cycle of self-absorption and ignorance.

I'm an Optimist.

I'm an optimist.

I have faith that boundless global stupidity will iterate endlessly through an infinite matrix of possible behavioral modalities, and that one of those outcomes will periodically result in a human civilization wherein the supermajority is comprised of intelligent—rather than impossibly-moronic—individuals.

Granted, only 1 in several billion-billion-billion of these freak outlier civilizations will persist beyond the next few iterations of stupidity that inevitably follow, but when that special one rolls around... there will definitely be no Facebook, Miley Cyrus, or USA.

Warms me wee fuckin' heart, that does.

When dumb women try to make dumber jokes about testicles:

Aw, that's cute. 

Who knew Manspreading would grow up to become the oblivious punchline to its own joke?! You're just gettin' soooo biggggg! I bet you don't even know how big and dumb you are, you big ol' dumb-dumb! Ohhhhhh goochy-goochy-goo! 

 Whooooo's mama's little Femrony!?
—*gasp!*— 

OH! It's YOU!

This researcher observes no hope

Day 11596: Subjects remain proud, content prisoners of own shadows. Near perfect positive correlation of ignorance : bias : noise persists. 

New species of irony encountered: references to "Alternative Facts." Phenomenon commonly occurs in the form of citation by intellectually stunted, emotionally agitated individual as a means of attempting to justify own arbitrary, rationally indefensible and usually fallacious agenda. Point of origin can be traced to political event; initial response to inciting event was likely intended to be clever and/or profound, but was contaminated by hipster origins. 

Human females still exclusively possess and control all significant social powers, but their cognitive dissonance loops continue to deteriorate into increasingly violent hysteria fueled by ever-grander community-enforced delusions of powerlessness. Psychopathological coefficient unsustainable within humankind's existing self- and group-coping framework; violent reversal (and subsequent re-reversal, and so on) of circumstance appears inevitable, affirming predictions by all known historical sources.

All that is needed.... is psychological inertia.

Almost nobody comprehends the nature and significance of sense of agency to net perception. For instance: you're an idiot, and you do something stupid. You know that you chose to behave stupidly; your brain created, stored and connected memory of that stupid choice to its subsequent reality, and as a result you are conscious of the validity of that direct correlation. This mechanism, in fact, is fundamental to the very idea of "knowing" anything. Given the right circumstances and a modicum of potential for intelligence, eventually you could learn from such a mistake.

BUT, if you take your sense of agency out of the equation, the entire perception of events always changes. Say that—instead of making an obviously idiotic choice like before—in another case you get drunk, black out, and do exactly the same stupid thing mentioned earlier. You wake up, and... what? Here's what: in this case, your brain lacks logical proof of your responsibility for the inevitable circumstances derived from your behavior - and, ultimately, you don't feel that responsibility. That's where the problem really starts, because you actually are responsible. You simply lack the data necessary to draw that conclusion intuitively, and, because you probably live in the 21st century, you almost certainly also lack the intellectual discipline necessary to arrive at that conclusion retrospectively.

Here's the fun part that nobody will take seriously because it makes 'em feel "icky": even assuming a 50% higher incidence of male>female rape than female>male (which is completely arbitrary and made up, just to make the point all the more obvious to those who need to feel that they can see the fence before being educated about its non-existence), and arbitrarily expanding the calculable margin of error to +/- 25% for good measure (especially given the abundance of sources from which contaminated data is inevitably going to be drawn and the margin of error inherent in calculating them, etc etc), easily 80% or more of "rape" in this country... isn't. I'm not speaking about semantics or nuance of language, here; I mean that it plainly, logically, factually could not be rape - even if we concede to the (imperfect) current vernacular definition of the term. Ignorance of agency is not the same as lack of agency; only the specific context of extreme impairment can create the disparity of comprehension necessary to allow for such mischaracterization. Objectively speaking, rape cannot be rape in the absence of involuntary physical or chemical coercion, but that's hardly a subject to which the collective intellect of our present civilization can even begin to aspire - so I suppose the scientific reality of the event itself will have to remain a nebulous hipster conundrum for the... next century, probably. Everybody is just so excited to be a victim in this day and age! *shrug*

That's fine by me, frankly, because even more interesting to me is the net psychopathological footprint of the false belief and subsequent delusion-reinforcement experienced by believed-victims combined with the unjust ostracism and subsequent cognitive-dissonance load experienced by rape-accusees following alleged rapes, given that the vast majority of such crimes are strictly false. No data exists upon which one could draw a useful conclusion on the matter, but if I were to go with my intuition, I'd wager that the net burden of all of this ignorance on our society is not at all insignificant. Maybe, a few decades from now, more than a handful of people will be mature enough to discuss it. Until then, innocent men and women will continue to be convicted of crimes that weren't actually commited by anyone, because they weren't actually crimes - and, nearly as awful, the normal process of learning from one's obvious mistakes will continue to be circumvented as a matter of popular entertainment, and the subsequent psychopathological saturation will hang heavily from the intellectual ceiling of our societies. Even the inaction of good people is unnecessary for "evil" to prevail... it simply requires enough psychological inertia.

Hrm. Fascinating. We're almost certainly all doomed. Cheers, then!

At what value of delusion does 0=1? Show your work.

Ya know how sometimes you have to wait for people to completely finish whatever bizarre nonsense they're doing/saying so you can find out if there's supposed to be a deliberate punchline or if it's just their god-awful personality showing?
 
— yeahhh, nah, me neither. Those 90s were good times, though.

There exists a point on the spectrum of human behavior beyond which lack of substance is so overwhelmingly characteristic that it inherits all of the inferred attributes of first order substance. Fuck murder; irony of that caliber should be the capital crime. No wonder our dictionary is becoming more unintelligible and backwards every day.

It's all downright pathological -_- 

(But, hey, on the bright side, if there are cultural anthropologists in our theoretical future, their work involving our time period will be really easy!)

On a completely unrelated note:

What manner of nincomfuckery is THIS!?

We live in a society that tolerates an economy in which an isolated minority profits from net waste despite and to spite the poor majority. 

Much about our lives is like a shitty Tom Clancy novel... but with no hero.
 Haaahaha!

I hope we're just being idiots - 
because, if not, we are insane.

Well, I suppose it's that time of the quadrennial again

Honestly, all the outrage at Bad Option A becoming president is completely misguided. Your concern SHOULD begin with the fact that the election result was an inevitability - not simply predictable, but knowable.

Here's the real reason you should be upset: a supermajority of Americans store their primary behavioral motivators in personal ideological containers that are so simple, narrow and uniform that it is absolutely trivial to reduce the net sum of their behavioral potential to a finite array of constants with only minimal and highly-predictable remainders. Knowing this information, any entity with the necessary financial resources and public access (i.e. any corporate government sponsor in this example) can easily design an effective behavioral-control campaign toward whatever purpose is desired (i.e. the election of a specific candidate).

– or, as another example: embedding the majority of the population in a constant battle with each other/the government/private corporations for basic needs, while denying access to useful education and nearly every other possible tangible resource that could otherwise facilitate useful progress toward socioeconomic balance. A grossly insufficient number of Americans are afforded—allowed—the proper tools for cultivation of the intelligence and knowledge necessary to make stronger, objectively-better rational decisions for their best interests - so they don't.

This is by design. THIS is why you should be upset!

These same designers are the only entities with the *actual* power to choose who becomes president. This entire sandbox is entirely full of shit, and nothing else - and you, and your neighbors and friends and family, are still content to play in it, clinging to irrational threads of hope that one of those turds will spontaneously become a diamond and that its twinkle will someday lead you by the hand to a promised land where wishes can survive in reality.

America gets exactly the politicians it deserves. Social evolution is long overdue in this country, and—believe it or not—not even the most fervent devotion to stagnation is ever going to move it along.

'Mericuhhhh, FUCK YA!**

"The United States military today obliterated the small Oregon city of (city name) with a surgical nuclear strike, liberating the surrounding stateside from an outbreak of chicken pox in which at least seven children were confirmed to have demonstrated ongoing visible symptoms of viral extremism, the fear of which had held at least three of the city's twenty-four districts hostage for nearly as many days. Notable among those targets destroyed were at least eighteen primary schools that were flagged as key viro-terrorism training camps by the National Strategic Defense Algorithm, along with two public pools and the entire local franchise of fast-food restaurateur/viro-terrorism mastermind Colonel Sanders. Our White House correspondent reports that government officials have declined to issue a formal press release on these events due to the, quote, "Negligible scope of environmental fallout and minimal civilian casualties of what was an absolutely necessary and ultimately very minor military action that claimed barely four million human lives in total," but one Oval Office staff source—unauthorized to officially comment—has assured us that the President is very thankful for the continued sacrifice and commitment of the American people to a virus-free global society. We'll have more on this for you later, and while we're at it - have YOU vacuumed lately? A quirky new product from everybody's favorite national defense contractor, Roomba, has been sweeping the market this week, and by golly, we are just absolutely blown away - isn't that right, Steve? Tune in to Steve and myself again at 7 for more exclusives, only here on CNFNOXANBCOMGWTF911BBQ."

It's only a matter of time before the "terrorists" of the future are going to include viruses. You got a cold? Uh uh, not in my democracy, motherfucker - get dead, terrorist!

 'MERICUH! Mindless victory AT ANY COST!!!



**Not to be mistaken for "YEAH!"

Local weather tis a tit bit nipply these days

"Weekend rally opposes laws
requiring women to cover their breasts"

 http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article97710507.html

It's about time somebody started advocating for non-sexual nudity in public. I can't tell you how often us guys NEED to manually adjust our genitals in public due to the oppressive & sexist matriarchy's anti-male-seat agenda - and, frankly, it's just not comfortable to try to do that with clothing on. The right to sit comfortably anywhere—even in places or on surfaces that do not accommodate sitting—is just as important as the right to feed a baby anywhere—even in places or in situations in which no sane human would be eating or feeding anything. We shouldn't have to suffer outrageous indignities just to respect the arbitrary social graces of an establishment that only wants to marginalize and enslave us! Now, we can rest assured that we have female compatriots who truly understand and will fight for our rights alongside us as we fight for theirs alongside them.

Nay, you say? Well, if women can't control their eyes when there are naked penises around them then that's their own problem and they should seek professional psychological help - and other assorted rhetoric as appropriate.

Can I Get a Double Standard, Please? – With Extra Extra Standard?

Hello, ladies! Bad news... following a cursory examination of basic human history and a modicum of observation of humans in their natural habitat, it turns out that your vagina is the "patriarchy."

Now, first, I'd like to acknowledge that I understand the psychological fuckery responsible for gross imbalances in social power - such as the endemic employment of completely incompetent, unqualified, uneducated, unintelligent, psychologically-unstable, socially-toxic melodramatic gossipy women in (all departments of) (all) businesses everywhere.

— yeahhhh... actually, just this once, my sick joke has no punchline.

Females, please note the following important fact that requires your attention: the social power pendulum has been firmly lodged between your labia for as long as human civilization has existed. In today's world, it might as well be implanted in your uterus for the foreseeable future. You own it. You control it. Your vagina is its one and only master. You are the only sex that possesses any actual power over any kind of actual subjugation. Modern humans—male and females alike!—are so overwhelmed by your defacto ownership of all things that they have collectively decided not to even pretend to try to moderate even your most insane arbitrary behaviors. Yes, it's true - in many countries, men don't respect you much; it may have something to do with your longstanding implicit marginalization of their identities, livelihoods, lives and genetic perpetuity since time immemorial... or perhaps it's just because you've never respected them, either... or it might just be a symptom of the fact that all humans are assholes regardless of gender, with a side of Newton's Third Law of social mechanics thrown in to keep things extra-difficult for the dumb-dumbs to follow. But... guess what!? It doesn't matter, becaaaaaause repression is nonequivalent to powerlessness. In fact, the two aren't even vaguely correlated! 

AMAAAAAAZING!

Feminism is moronic.
Feminists are morons.
I don't resent my powerlessness as a human male, but I simply cannot abide females possessed of such stupendous idiocy that they actually believe they're oppressed by anything other than modern marketing or an ironic sense of social entitlement.

Why couldn't it have been "Pokemon THINK!?" WHY?!?!

I Hand Out Intellectual Life Savers Like Candy

Our country's social climate of compassionate and unconditional acceptance is growing stronger every day... at least for and of those ideas which neither require nor aspire to any sort of introspection, criticism, analysis or otherwise rational accountability. It warms my sarcastic little heart, it does!

Nevertheless—despite all of the blind/desperate/hollow warm-fuzzies happily contracted by an awful lot of folks these days—aggressive discrimination has never been more prevalent, fervent or insidious than it is today... but probably not in the way that you think. Social persecution is not dead, nor is it in decline, but nor does it remotely resemble any of the countless convenient nth-otomies both inspired and imagined by the mundane moronism of the masses. The behavior has overwhelmingly migrated to a focus on subtler, quieter targets - a more general demographic, for to more comfortably deride the "others" of a more fundamental disparity:

Today, "those who can't be bothered to learn" have happily taken up the mantle of enthusiastic persecutors of  "those who know and/or know better."

No matter how many thousands of opinions you might solicit from a pool of countless strangers about any one of a thousand incendiary cultural topics, nearly every person will have one behavior in common: they'll all balk at the mere notion of accepting the factual wisdom of anyone more intelligent than themselves. It's human nature to resist new knowledge absent the context of subjective experience, of course - but so is casually shitting on the ground wherever you happen to be sitting or standing when the urge strikes you... and, presumably, we invented toilets for a reason that might pass for such. Likewise, keen tools suitable for the precise measurement of reason itself are just as common as—and significantly less expensive than—our royal porcelain thrones. Everyone is capable of better; no person willing to shit in a bathroom has any good excuse for intellectual complacency.

The INTELLIGENT are now, by far, the most endangered and marginalized minority of modern times. Perhaps one's personal political, sexual, emotional, avoidant, dissonant and delusional proclivities are not the most significant issues facing our civilization at this moment. Perhaps there is a much scarier, more pressing problem of far greater consequence with which we should concern ourselves: it really, truly, does not matter at all who/what/when/where/how a person does, doesn't do, thinks, doesn't think, wants, doesn't want, believes, eats, wears, fucks, or even—god help them—reads on Facebook... if a person is content to be an IDIOT forever.

— to top things off with a twist of terrible local irony, is it possible that the imminent violent collapse of our own representative democracy in this country might actually be—*gasp!*—truly representative of some fundamental social phenomenon? Our founding fathers didn't fail to anticipate a Tyranny of the Apathetic – did they?

Huh... *shrug.* Google doesn't know.

... well, back to Pokemon GO!

Excuse Me, But I Believe...

Oh, Snap! I See What I Did There

Social Media Wisdom

Bought a One-Day Membership to Club DGAF

Spent an hour writing a few brilliant, provocative paragraphs about the social obstacles facing modern science and scientists, and about the lack of awareness grinding important science to a halt in the modern day –

– upon reflecting for 2.8 seconds, realized that I couldn't possibly find the bottom of that steaming pile of irony, much less lead any of you to it because... oh, wait, more irony –

– gave up, remembered nobody gives a shit about giving a shit anyway, and just wrote this instead to spite all of you intellectual-cave-dwelling motherfuckers.

Merry everyday, apaths. You're welcome, fuck you, and I am sick of looking at all of your asses crawling backwards. Rot, screaming, buried alive in sinkholes, forever and ever,

<3
Jim