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.

Sometimes the simplest things… You know what’s next.

The other half has an old Mac. The poor thing has been a trooper considering it’s age.

Looking at the newer machines, making a big purchase right now is out of the question.

So I started looking at upgrade options. Surprisingly I found that the hard disk could be replaced with an SSD and that the memory in the machine could be doubled for a couple hundred dollars. Between the drive and the memory, we should be able to get another few years out of this old workhorse.

With that in mind I placed the order and 2 days later the parts showed up.

This morning I pulled the old machine apart and had no trouble installing the new memory and new hard drive. As I was buttoning things up I thought, “That was easy!”

Uh huh, Jinxed myself!

After buttoning everything up I tried to access the nifty Mac network utility to reload the OS. I was able to get to the utility. After answering a couple of questions, the utility started, then told me that the OS wasn’t available. Gee THANKS APPLE!

Now I’ve got a computer that should be fast as hell and no OS. I booted the machine from a bootable memory stick that had the appropriate operating system on it. (Yeah, I tend to have some redundancy.) The system booted, I clicked on the installer, and it started just fine. Again I answered the questions and directed the installer to install the OS on the brand new 1TB internal hard disk.

The system takes off, executes a format of the internal HD then reboots as expected. Things went south from there. The reboot damaged the OS on the memory stick and in the process told me that the OS image (Downloaded from Apple about 2 years ago, and used several times to install the OS,) was invalid or possibly corrupt.

Great! I can’t even install from my rainy day backup.

Now what?

Uh, maybe I’ll just use the TimeCapsule backup.

Nope, Backups 1 – 5 are corrupt.

I do still have the original bootable disk in an external enclosure. The computer is still workable booting from that external disk. But a 1TB internal SSD isn’t being used.

I try booting to the recovery partition. It works, but I still can’t install the OS from Apple.

This leaves me two choices. Do a complete backup from the original disk to another USB disk, then restore from that backup. Or I can try to sequence through the other backups on the Timecapsule hoping to find one that works.

I choose the latter, and remarkably seem to have found a backup that is intact. So I start the restore process.

Currently the restore is reporting 32 hours remaining. Let’s hope it works Otherwise I’m down to only one option which will probably take just as much time. USB 2 is painfully slow, although even with the 1GB speeds of my internal network, apparently network restore is also painfully slow.

Sometimes, the most straightforward things with computers turn into the most complicated.

In this case I’d tell Apple that if you’re going to say in a dialog box that the computer will either install its original OS or the most current version of the OS that is available…

DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO DO!

Giving someone the illusion that you’re going to support a system, is worse than saying that you’re not going to support that system. In the first situation your user figures, “No Problem” in the other case the user can make alternate arrangements as long as you don’t as part of some bullshit “verification” process destroy the alternative.

I’m not amused that I’ve lost a whole day to a simple 15 minute job.


1 AM update. The restore from the Time Capsule backup failed about 8PM. Digging around on the internet gave me an interesting option. It seemed I could use Apple’s Disk Utility to clone the existing drive to the 1TB SSD.

Well, what the heck did I have to lose at this point?

Boot from the recovery partition on the 1 TB SSD. (Yeah, that got installed properly thank goodness) Pull up Disk Utility from the recovery partition. select the destination drive. Select “recover” from the edit menu, select the source and hit enter.

A few hours later… I’m awakened by a familiar ding. Click the “Done’ button, select the start disk and Eureka! There is now a bootable usable operating system on the new drive.

I’m going back to bed… this has been a royal pain in the ass. Next up, deleting the corrupted backup from the Time Capsule and replacing it with something usable.

But I’ll do that tomorrow, my brain won’t even allow more than the contemplation of such an exercise tonight.

I don’t know if this is a good idea

There’ve been a lot of articles recently, about Google and Apple collaborating on a Coronavirus tracking application

At first glance, you think, “good,” that will make it easier for health officials to figure out how to stay ahead of outbreaks.

It would, but at a price to your privacy.

We have only Apple and Google’s assurances that the information won’t be misused. Implicit in this software solution is the belief that when the Coronavirus emergency is over that the tracking information, indeed the application itself will be of no further use. The assumption is that the application can be deleted and tracking will by default, be turned off. How do we know that & how can we verify that this is true?

I could see an application such as Google and Apple are working on, morphing into a general “Health” application wherein a wide variety of diseases are tracked. As I understand the Coronavirus aspect if you test positive for Coronavirus and enter your diagnosis into the application, then your movements are plotted. Local health officials can then watch the spread of Coronavirus throughout a community presumably because other people will also be entering their diagnosis too.

This raises some questions for me. If one person whose positive, visits an area and other people get sick is that person liable? Could they be prosecuted or sued? Should they be? I’m sure that due to the fear promulgated by media, politicians, and rumor. The initial response would be YES!!!

But let’s step back a bit. Would the answer be the same if the application was tracking hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, Influenza, herpes, HIV, measles, or chicken-pox? These diseases present health departments with challenges to tracking and treatment. In fact these diseases are more of a health hazard than Coronavirus may prove to be.

Even if you think this is a good idea, what happens as the application evolves? Do you really want your phone telling the health department or law enforcement that you not only have the clap, but that you visited a particular massage parlor? How about your phone automatically warning others around you that you’re a pariah, because you’ve got the flu or that one of your kids has chicken-pox?

In an extreme scenario; do you want to have to verify and report to authorities that you’re going to have sex with an individual?

The application could in fact give that kind of power to an authoritarian regime. Phone A was in close proximity to Phone B for 43 minutes in a hotel that rents by the hour on this date. This was an unauthorized sexual event, warrants have been issued for the participants arrest.

Oh we say that could never happen. Yet, we have evidence of widespread surveillance by departments within our own government, of average people.

We’ve seen maps of cell phone data showing that people en-mass can be tracked going about their daily business. There is evidence to suggest that specific individuals can be isolated from the mass of data without too much effort or specialized tools.

During this pandemic, we’ve seen cell phone maps used by the New York Times to paint some areas of the country as “Non compliant in the lockdown” because the cell phones were traveling more than X miles from their point of origin.

The fact that the area of the country the New York Times called out, was a rural area and the nearest grocery stores were 15 to 20 miles away was conveniently omitted from that article when it first appeared. The Times, isn’t a government entity, nor are they involved in public health, but it demonstrates just how easily data can be misused.

This got me wondering… Just how much information is my phone, my smart watch, my computer, my ipad, even my car sending and to whom? The next question is, “If I turn these systems off, how much do I degrade the operation of my devices?

I was shocked when I pulled up the privacy setting in my phone.

Privacy

Almost every application is requesting access to location data.

Some of these applications make sense, Maps, Workout, AAA, and Airline applications. 

Others, such as time tracking applications that will automatically start running when you get to work make sense. The apple wallet application asking for location data makes sense so that it can lookup and associate your charges.

Other Applications don’t make as much sense. Why does my bluetooth enabled thermometer application need to know where I was when I took my temperature? Why does an insurance application want to know where I am when I’m accessing it? Who cares where I was when I made a voice memo? Why does Wallgreens want to know where I am?  These applications I can deny access on. But am I really prohibiting them from getting that information?.

There are dating applications that say they won’t operate at all unless they have access to location data. This is to narrow the search parameters to local parties. Okay, then why do I get hit on from people 6000 miles away? Suppose I don’t want to use the cruising part of the app? 

But it gets even more interesting when you dig deeper into system services, and significant locations. Yeah, I hadn’t told the system not to track my location. On the one hand the benefit is that your phone will keep track of where you parked your car. But does that data go anywhere? Or is that data simply used locally on the phone? 

Answers to these questions are ambiguous. Obviously the phone itself is transmitting it’s unique ID to the cellular provider. But what of the other data? 

I can tell the applications that they are denied cellular data services but does that mean that when the phone re-connects to the internet via WiFi at my home these application will send what they’ve recorded as a long data burst? Does denying cellular data access actually protect me from being tracked?

I’m suspicious of any government agency having easy access to my location. At the same time I recognize that the convenience afforded me by my cell phone is very cloying and that there’s a trade-off for convenience versus privacy.

There’s a cellular service called Patriotmobile.com part of their pitch is that they’ll help support Patriotic things and that they don’t sell your data. Okay fine, but if I have applications that are giving the data away, their service really doesn’t help.

That leaves using a VPN all the time. This solution is okay but I’ve had more than one situation where the VPN interfered with connectivity and created a less than convenient user experience. This is particularly true when the application updates.

I’ve got two VPN applications, One is part of my antivirus solution and the other is one that owns all their servers. I prefer the second one since the data isn’t just flowing through whatever server may be available.

After a while, I’d done all I could and opted to just turn off all the devices for a while. It’s clear that all of our technology has gotten away from us and significantly eroded our privacy. 

Unfortunately, I can’t come up with any solution about regaining my privacy short of a VPN solution all the time. But even then, while using a VPN you’re not actually in very much control of what Apps running on your phone may be doing. They could still send the actual location data via the VPN.  I’m going to have to think about this some more.

I can say I’m not going to opt in to the Apple/Google contact tracking application. The potential for abuse of that data is simply too big for my tastes.