The Death of Twitter

Twitter has become synonymous with censorship. Facebook is running a close second. Both services have been called to testify before congress and it’s quite possible that one or both have lied under oath. Both services enjoy (Non-Publication) status and both are now drawing the ire of the Senate and some members of the House.

“Lucy, You got some splainin to do!”

Recently due to Twitter’s incessant shadow-banning of Conservative people expressing opinions that are not in lockstep with the established narratives, (Orange man bad. Protests peaceful, etc.) Folks are seeking other alternatives. Their most recent permanent banning of Congressional Candidate Laura Loomer (R) FL, and attempt to prevent the Trump campaign from using their service. has created an exodus from Twitter.

This has been amusing to watch. As conservative voices leave, the leftists find they’re bored with Twitter. After all, if you want to have a conversation, you don’t necessarily want to have it with yourself in an echo chamber.

I still have one Twitter account open, mostly so that I can watch the implosion. Okay, I also look at some of the nude images that are posted daily. Which is funny because supposedly those images are against the Twitter TOS, given that they often show full penetrative sex acts of various stripes.

It’s funny in many ways that saying, “abortion is murder” may get you banned, but images or video of a restrained woman being forced to submit to orally, anally, and vaginally to three men at the same time is okay.

Saying something like, “putting prepubescent children onto hormone therapies to change their gender, is wrong.” will get your account suspended for a while.

If you ask Twitter why, they’ll tell you that you violated the TOS (Terms of Service) by posting hate speech. While at the same time representatives of CAIR can specifically state that they hate all Jews, and call upon the faithful to murder Jews whenever and wherever they can. Similarly BLM and ANTIFA can outright say, “Kill White People”

It’s this kind of one sided enforcement that has driven conservatives specifically, and even moderates away from the platform. Either you’re really all about free speech or you’re not. More people are realizing that Twitter is not about free speech or equality and while they may have been at one time… That time has passed.

There was an article yesterday describing Twitter’s consideration of a subscription model. Several days prior another article noted that Twitter’s earnings were down. That same article also noted that Twitter’s new user count appeared to be fairly consistent while the number of actual users appeared to be dropping.

There is even some feeling that Twitter is attempting to skew the election. I don’t know if there’s actual evidence, or if it’s just hearsay. I can only opine that from personal experience and observation; Twitter is highly biased toward Democrats & Liberals, and against Republicans & Conservatives.

Over at Parler, (another social media platform) they’re having a tough time keeping up with new subscribers and their site is occasionally showing the strain of hundreds of thousands of new users weekly.

Parler, is pretty free and you can say what you like. There are limits of course. Threatening to kill someone will get you booted. But other than egregious things that you shouldn’t put out on a public forum anyway, Parler doesn’t seem interested in silencing the free exchange of ideas, regardless of whose ideas are being espoused.

It’s very much the digital equivalent of carrying your soapbox to the local park and announcing your ideas.

Oddly, there are a lot of liberal lefties showing up on Parler too. (I guess they got tired of screaming in an echo chamber on Twitter.) The conservatives and liberals on Parler do interact.

The liberal left screams about Trump, Abortion, Transrights, or whatever, on Parler and sometimes they’re challenged but most of the time they’re blocked, not by Parler, but by individual users who have no desire to deal with the ranting. Most conservatives and moderates have heard it all before anyway and aren’t likely to change their minds.

Again, similar to the soapbox in the park. No-one is forcing you to stand there in the park listening to the rantings of someone you think is a lunatic. Once you’ve heard enough, you walk away. Walking away is the physical equivalent of blocking someone.

I’ve blocked a number of individuals who were rude, demanded that I validate their position when clearly I didn’t, or who were simply disagreeable to talk to. I’m sure that I’ve been blocked by others, in a similar fashion and for similar reasons.

After all, you gentle reader, know that I’m an acquired taste.

The funny thing is that the liberals are upset when no-one pays them attention and more upset that Parler refuses to take their side in silencing views that they disagree with.

I’ve been watching the diversity of users drop on Twitter and suspect that it will go the way of MySpace or the old computer BBS systems. After all, without at least a little disagreement all conversations get stale and pointless.

I welcome Twitter’s death. It’s time for the little bluebird to crash headlong into the nearest skyscraper.

There was a time when Twitter was open and free. But then some people started getting butt-hurt that they got to read things they found offensive. That started the whole censorship train on Twitter and has brought us to Twitter’s graveside.

Facebook will probably experience something similar in due time. Even Parler at some point will probably follow the same arc. I hope not, but I won’t be surprised.

For the moment, I’m enjoying that Twitter is suffering. I look forward to them declaring insolvency the layoffs, and Jack Dorsey making impassioned pleas for his users to return.

Good things about the Coronavirus Pandemic

Aside from the news media screaming, “Death and despair” 24/7, there may be some good to come out of all this.

It’s probably too soon… But hey, I could drop dead tomorrow!

1. Corporate America has been forced to admit that working from home is viable. Going forward perhaps they’ll go “Green” and keep workers, working from home.

2. People have realized that health care is important and perhaps they’ll force politicians to follow through with a better version of health care that is affordable for everyone that also doesn’t allow pricing to continue to spiral out of control. Why does the same drug cost $10 a pill here and .01 in a third world country? What’s the real damn cost? Big pharmaceutical giants I’m looking at you!

3. Everyone is seeing just how easily despotic rulers can rise and how difficult it is to regain rights once those rights are taken away. Governor Whitmer I’m looking at you! BTW thank you for showing in just a few short weeks, the arc of a despotic cycle. Now hopefully America will use your rise and fall as a lens through which all politicians will be viewed.

4. Traffic is, for the time being a thing of the past. Speeding tickets in LA are increasingly written for speeds in excess of 100 mph. Funny how that works isn’t it?

5. The air is cleaner. So obviously if there weren’t as many people forced to drive to and from work, air pollution wouldn’t be as much of a problem… Duh!

6. The oil companies have seen their future. Yep there will still be a demand for oil but not at obscene prices, and if we continue to work from home you might want to sell off your oil stocks.

7. Antisocial behavior is suddenly fashionable. Who could’ve seen that coming?

8. People have more time to actually learn about little things, like their kids, and their community, instead of running all the time like bats out of hell.

9. For once, the Government is actually giving tax dollars back. At the same time it’s learning that the American People aren’t pleased with their government and haven’t been for a long time.

10. The Government is learning that they can still be functional with a lot less people actively working. I guess Trump laying off and consolidating various departments wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

11. People are re-learning that common sense might actually be beneficial. Planning for disaster, washing your hands, staying away from others if you’re sick, not depending on the government to be your savior, etc.

12. We’ve seen our vulnerabilities laid bare. We can’t have the convenience of super cheap disposable products without being vulnerable to losing access to those products at a moment’s notice. It’s time to start bringing jobs and industry back to our shores and this time, let’s do it with thought. We don’t have to trash the country just because we have manufacturing here. We have the opportunity to build better factories and better manufacturing processes that are less (or not) damaging to the local environment.

13. Everyone may be realizing that unlimited immigration legal or otherwise might not be such a great idea. I’m going to be interested to see how that plays out going forward.

14. Censorship is most definitely alive and well in America. Folks are hopefully realizing that Facebook & Twitter are not the best places to get information. If humanity is really lucky both of those corporations will come to a crashing end. I’m even hopeful that all of the news media will get a rework and re-establish some journalistic integrity. Then they’ll be using their first amendment rights properly, by just reporting what happened instead of every piece being an Op/Ed.

Lately things around the house have been breaking…

Most of the things have been plumbing related, which I hate.

The most recent breakdown came as a bit of a surprise. My primary NAS drive has decided to take a dump. 

We use this drive to serve up movies, and store important documents. It’s also used as a share point for things that I help the other half with, music, videos, web sites, etc.

I’ve been noticing little things lately when accessing the drive, but didn’t really think much about it. In retrospect the drive was telling me something was wrong.

As the issues and errors accumulated I started re-evaluating the entire storage method. After doing a lot of research, I’ve decided to go with a RAID array.

The unit i’ve settled on is relatively inexpensive, but seems to provide a lot of bang for the buck.

Configuring it will take some time and the unit may have a steep learning curve. The advantage is that I’ll have 16TB of storage when it’s fully configured and that storage provides 2 hot swappable drives.

That means that up to two drives could fail and the entire 16TB would still be recoverable.

My current situation is a single drive and I have no idea how much data I’ll be able to recover.

What I’m doing may be overkill but I’d like to not have to worry about it for the next 5 years.

I’m also leaning more toward doing gig work and having a ton of space to work with would be a big convenience.

I expect to be locked into some form of digital prison for at least the next week while I bring this puppy online.

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?”

“That’s what is to be a slave.” – Roy Batty Blade Runner.

Now we’ve all had a taste of it. What have we learned?

The vast majority of people in the USA haven’t actually been slaves. Yet there are a lot of folks who’d like to enslave us all. These people don’t care what your skin color is. They want you enslaved in a system. Their System.

These are the people that want you to be dependent on their largess. They offer bright baubles of technology, healthcare, entertainment, etc. then make us feel “less than” if we’re unable to afford those baubles.

They offer us a daily dose of fear via the news, & commercials. “More terrifying moments of unrest today in Minneapolis. The President today said, ‘insert daily out of context statement here‘ does this statement mean the end of America? See our report at 11. Suffering from Kidney Failure? Are you going to die? Try our new drug, if you can’t afford it (The implication is your insurance is bad, or you don’t make enough and are therefore ‘less than’) contact us and we’ll help pay your bill.”

They keep us apart by instilling mistrust in each other. “It’s white oppression, it’s black criminality. It’s racist, that person is a Nazi. Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, wear a mask as a symbol of solidarity, You should wear a mask because you never know who might be carrying a virus. Black Lives Matter=Good speech, All Lives Matter=Bad speech, ACAB (All cops are bastards), Why are the police not stopping this looting?”

With each new presidential administration, there are people who are “Right” and people who are “Wrong” the actual facts of the administration’s accomplishments or failures notwithstanding. The “Right” and the “Wrong” people flip based on how the media presents a particular narrative.

In simplest terms, we’re always being manipulated by headlines, soundbites, and glamorous ads showing us things that a great many of us can’t afford. The ads implicitly extol the virtue of working harder to make more money so that we can afford these pretty things. The thing lots of people miss is that all of us working harder, generates more tax revenue that in turn, fuels the system.

The same system that locks us in our homes, costs us jobs, and vilifies individuals who after doing the math, decide that feeding their families is worth the risk.

That same system almost deifies individuals in protests that devolve into rioting and looting. It makes a sick kind of sense. Either situation creates an “Enemy” that can be pointed to, now or in the future, to maintain the cultural division.

As long as the American people are fearful and divided, the powerful can do as they please in plain sight. Who will question the national guard being brought in to quell riots? Who will question another lockdown because of a spike in Covid-19 cases?

Social Media was supposed to help level the playing field allowing people to communicate with each other directly, expressing thoughts and beliefs freely without bias, other than those biases the people brought with them.

As Social Media blossomed, controls were put into place to silence dissent. Those controls started out innocently to prevent blatant racist and hate from spilling unbidden onto computer screens. Those controls quickly escalated into full blown censorship.

The implied reason for that censorship is that “average people” are unable (too immature, or too stupid) to process dissenting opinions without experiencing angst. Therefore it is assumed they need to be protected from free thought, instead of exercising the freedom of simply choosing not to view items which are offensive to them.

Mind you, what one may find offensive, others may find informative. With censorship instituted on social media no-one has to decide, and everyone is once again placed in a bubble of docile safety and conformity.

Safe, in that bubble, they’re not troubled by dissenting opinion and not forced to think for themselves or form their own opinions. The narrative of those in control is preserved and the correct “Group Think” is doled out 200 characters at a time, by sanctioned influencers.

How are sanctioned influencers picked? They’re approved by Twitter checkmarks and number of followers. An influencer with a large number of followers and a check mark is seen as someone “In the know“. They remain a blessed influencer as long as they maintain the appropriate narrative.

However if an influencer goes off the reservation or someone speaking counter to the narrative, (There are always a few allowed, to maintain the illusion of Facebook or Twitter’s impartiality,) becomes troublesome. Their follower count mysteriously decrements. Their coveted Twitter Checkmark is removed, they end up in “Twitter Jail” or their messages simply vanish, and finally they are banned outright. These people still have online presences, they’re just on other platforms with lower brand recognition.

Platforms like GAB aren’t allowed to post their applications on Google Play or the Apple App store. Other platforms like Parler are allowed to have Play Store or Apple App store presences for the time being.

This speaks to the tight integration between Google, Apple, and the group, or groups controlling the narrative. Not only are specific people exiled from Twitter and Facebook, their ability to be seen by the masses is limited by the corporations who provide the dominate operating systems for smart devices as well.

Isn’t it odd that nudity, violence, and graphic sex is allowed on a platform like Twitter and freedom of political messages is not? Even odder is that Apple and Google provide access to an application which can present these images while at the same time denying access to alternate applications which are largely politically conservative in nature. The only difference being that Twitter filters out comments that present dissenting political opinion?

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that is never supposed to happen in a free society?

Happy 4th of July Weekend

Covid4thI guess it’s a happy one.

It seems hypocritical to celebrate given that it feels like our freedoms are being curtailed with breathtaking speed.

(Notice I said “Feels”) After all we’re all about our feelings these days, not actual facts.

Celebrate? What celebrations? No friends visiting, family gatherings forbidden, beaches closed, but the Governor’s winery is Open.

You know, the guy that’s been telling us how to live our lives…

Empty beachWe’re hiding in our homes, or behind our masks, rumors abound of “Peaceful Protests” a.k.a. “riots” in public places on the 4th and for what? 

So that we survive to walk open-eyed into servitude to various philosophies that are built on lies?

COVID gonna kill us all

There are several studies from reputable publications suggesting that the PCR test to detect COVID-19 isn’t accurate and in fact can’t be accurate because to date, no lab has fully isolated the COVID-19 RNA. Therefore there is no “Gold” standard against which to measure the efficacy of the PCR test for detecting COVID-19 in the first place.

Covid 19There are other reports of Nurses sending in unused COVID-19 swabs with fictitious names  and having those swabs come back as positive.

Yet another man made an appointment to get a test, then didn’t keep the appointment. A week later he received a letter saying that he’d tested positive.

(Hello? This is the psychic testing network. What to know if you have COVID? One moment let me consult my crystal ball.)

Yet other nurses are reporting nationwide that a patient in hospital may be tested daily for COViD-19 and that each of those tests is counted as a new case rather than a diagnostic test for an existing patient.

There’s a significant uptick in “positive” cases but no data on if the people coming up “positive” are actually sick or if they just have the antigens present in their blood, for ANY coronavirus.

With the doubt cast on the validity of testing there’s no way to actually have any real statistics. Are the deaths and hospitalizations increasing at the same breakneck pace?

You’d expect those numbers to be climbing at similar rates. If they’re not, then something is seriously flawed in the data.

Hydroxycloroquine has been shown to be effective in 2 new studies, If given within 5 days of the onset of symptoms and if the full Zilinski protocol is followed. So Hydroxycloroquine is not, as the media and others have painted it, fatal when used appropriately and under proper supervision.

When reading the protocols (and I have) for several of the studies that were terminated due to poor outcomes, (a.k.a. fatalities,) the initial doses of Hydroxycloroquine were nearing toxic levels as documented by the CDC, FDA, and WHO. The patients in question were already so sick they were on ventilators, and so weak the absolute last thing the needed was a near fatal dose of Hydroxycloroquine alone. It’s my general opinion that those people were murdered by their attending physicians.

Let’s see, wait for a 3500.00 new treatment, or spend 250.00 for something that actually works? Sign me up for the latter if I get sick. I’ll put my faith in a drug that has its origins documented for 400 years, and that has a track record of safe use by America for 67 years, thank you very much.

At least one additional study reaffirms the connection between vitamin D deficiency and more severe cases of COVID-19. But you’re supposed to stay in your home where you aren’t exposed to sunlight which triggers your body to manufacture vitamin D. 

Yep, no family gatherings on the 4th cause COVID’s gonna get ya. Even though most 4th of July gatherings are held outside and UV light from the Sun tends to kill many germs / viruses while giving you a golden tan and allowing your body to make vitamin D.

If you work inside all day as part of your job, you probably should be taking a supplement anyway. This link between worse cases of COVID-19 and vitamin D deficiency was noted early on but it’s not yet clear why there’s a connection.

America is systemically racist

RacismGeorge Floyd was killed. The proper authorities immediately began an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the mans death and subsequently arrested the officers involved. 

That’s not racist. That’s justice, a little thing called due process. Something upon which our justice system is founded.

If America was as racist as portrayed then George Floyd would have been left on the pavement and the officers would have driven away and not be facing criminal charges.

Law Enforcement Today published an article on June 26, 2020 that does a good job of collecting multiple reports. LETs article is somewhat biased toward law enforcement however, if you go to the underlying links including The Washington Posts database you’ll find some interesting data.

By WaPos own statistics there are more white males killed by police than black males.

There is a disproportionate number of black male involvement with police per capita when compared to whites. That should be looked at objectively and investigated with an open mind. The question to be asked there is, why? 

Are black males more likely to commit crimes, if so then why? Is more police attention focused on black men? Are there other underlying factors such as bias or poverty driven petty crime? 

After reading several of the reports I think LETs article is mostly correct in its assessment that police are not hunting black people down.

Even the National Academy of Sciences report isn’t clear on the issue of racial bias in police interactions. 

I think that yes, racism still exists in America but I don’t think it’s systemic as portrayed. I also don’t think demonizing the police force serves any purpose except to reenforce what racism there is.

In the past weeks, I’ve come to believe that racists come in all colors. It’s time that everyone started calling it out regardless of who’s saying something racist.

BLM leaders calling for an end to racism by the slaughter of white people is just as racist as the KKK calling for the slaughter of black people. There is no difference, both statements are racist on their face. Social media platforms, or businesses censoring people who say All lives matter but allowing people of color to say kill white people is closer to systemic racism than anything I’ve seen in 40 years.

Defunding police forces isn’t the solution.

Riots

Protests are Peaceful

The video footage speaks for itself. Burning, looting, and destruction of property is not a protest, and the violence we’ve seen is anything but peaceful.

Given the coordinated pickups and drop-offs of looters during the so called peaceful protests it’s obvious that what we were witnessing was nothing more than a crime spree sanctioned by various public officials.

Masks are gonna save us

Probably not. Even N95 masks wont stop the virus. They may stop aerosolized virus in spit but only if worn properly. A loose bandana isn’t going to do shit.

See that’s the problem for me.  If you’re going to tell us masks save lives then you really need to specify which masks save lives.

Imesh.jpeg saw a guy who was allowed to wear an open mesh mask into a store with no questions asked. You could obviously see his mouth and nose and that there wasn’t a damn thing to obstruct a sneeze or cough. No-one said a word.

He was, after all, wearing a mask.

Oregon had a city that said everyone wear masks, except the black folks.

Seems that the city was worried about racial profiling so they initially exempted black folks from wearing a mask.

The city council was doubly racist. The color of your skin (white) determined that you had to wear a mask and they further demonstrated their racism in thinking that a black man wearing a mask would scare people.

GuyfawkesmaskBy the current logic, I could wear a halloween mask and be in compliance with mask ordinances. It’s not about efficacy, it’s about The Mask

If you’re sick, yeah, wear a mask. If you’re visiting immunocompromised people, the old, & infirm, or high risk groups, yeah, wear a mask. 

Conflating wearing masks as a sign of social responsibility or patriotism is manipulation.

Masks separate us, they isolate us, they’re used to silence us, they communicate to the world, that we’re not going to ask questions.

ANTIFA is Anti Fascist 

German LogoUh nope!

ANTIFA is exactly what it claims to be against. They’d do the brown shirts of 1935 NAZI Germany proud.

They are a terrorist organization and need to be imprisoned. They seek to undermine or overthrow the government of the United States of America.

They are an insurgent force and should be dealt with as such.

We’re entering a New Normal

The dumbest statement ever propagated. Every day is a new normal. 

This is a nothing statement designed to inculcate compliance with authority. The trouble is, what authority?

The authority of the mob? The “Karens” pointing at people that are not wearing masks? The doctors who keep changing their minds? The politicians that flipflop almost daily in their edicts?

The statement is more properly COMPLY!

Which by an interesting coincidence is exactly what we fought against to win our independence.

4thfireworks1.jpegRemember that, this Fourth of July.

Where are we heading? Whatever that destination is, make sure that it’s where we as a Nation want to be.

We have the choice, it’s always been ours.

We can chose to do better and walk together as a nation towards a better future for all of us, or we can allow petty divisions to destroy us.

We choose. We’re in control. 

The sooner we remember this, the better.

Happy 4th of July.