- H.G. Wells' Dystopic Vision Comes Alive With The Great Reset Agenda
H.G. Wells’ Dystopic Vision Comes Alive With The Great Reset Agenda
Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
In the Time Machine, society one million years in the future has evolved into two separate species called Morlocks and Eloi. The Morlocks represent the ugly dirty producers who by this future age, all live under ground and run the world’s manufacturing. The Eloi are the effect of the inbreeding of the elite, who by this time are simple-minded, Aryan, above-ground dwellers living in idleness and consuming only what the Morlocks produce. What was the trade off?
The Morlocks periodically rise above ground in hunting parties to kidnap and eat unsuspecting Eloi in this symbiotically vicious circle of life.
This famous story was written by a young British writer in 1893 whose ideas and pioneering work in shaping new techniques of cultural warfare which profoundly affected the next 130 years of human history. These ideas led to the innovation of novel techniques of “predictive programming”, and to mass psychological warfare. In contrast to the optimistic views of mankind and the future potential envisioned by the great science fiction writer Jules Verne earlier, Wells’ misanthropic tales had the intended effect of reducing the creative potential and love of humanity that Verne’s work awoke.
To restate the technique more clearly: By shaping society’s imagination of the future, and embedding existential/nihilistic outcomes within his plotlines, Wells realized that the entire zeitgeist of humanity could be affected on a profound level than simple conscious reason would permit. Since he robed his poison in the cloth of “fiction” the minds of those receiving his stories would find their critical thinking faculties disengaged and would simply take in all trojan horses embedded in the stories into their unconsciousness. This has been an insight used for over a century by social engineers and intelligence agencies whose aim has always been the willing enslavement of all people of the earth.
While he is best known for such fiction works as The War of the Worlds, The World Set Free, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Morrow, and The Time Machine, Wells’ lesser-known non-fiction writings like The Open Conspiracy, The New World Order, The Outline of History, The Science of Life and The World Brain served as guiding strategic blueprints for the entire 20th century war against sovereign nation states and the very idea of a society built on the premise of mankind made in the image of God.
Thomas Huxley’s Revolution
The members of the London-centered oligarchy to which Wells had devoted himself at an early age had found themselves stuck in a rut by the turn of the 19th century. These inbred families and retainers who managed the dying British Empire had long been encrusted by the vices of decadence by the time a young man of low breeding and high talent arose amidst the London-ghettos treating syphilis patients as a surgeon’s assistant. This young surgeon’s name was Thomas Huxley.
Huxley possessed a sardonic wit, a deep misanthropy, and an intelligence that were soon discovered by powerful patrons, and by his mid-20’s, this young man found himself a rising star in Britain’s Royal Academy of Science. Here he quickly became a leading creative force, shaping Britain’s powerful X Club, serving as Darwin’s bulldog promoting popular debates featuring himself against literalist members of the clergy. In these debates he argued for Darwin’s chaos-bound interpretation of evolution. He also founded Nature magazine as a propaganda instrument which has been used to enforce scientific consensus favorable to a world empire to this very day.
Huxley chose his opponents carefully, ensuring that he could easily and publicly obliterate the arguments of simple-minded Anglican clergy, and thus convince all onlookers that the only choice they had to account for the evolution of new species was either literal Biblical creationism or his brand of Darwinian evolution. The many alternative scientific theories of the 19th century (such as those found in the works of Karl Ernst von Baer, Georges Cuvier, Lamarck and James D. Dana) which accounted for both the evolution of species, and the harmonics of all parts to a whole, as well as creative leaps were forgotten amidst this false dichotomy which this author unpacked in a recent interview.
Wells Picks up Huxley’s Torch
During his later years, Huxley mentored a young H.G. Wells, together with a whole generation of new imperial practitioners of the arts of social engineering (and social Darwinism). This social engineering soon took the form of Galton’s eugenics quickly becoming an accepted science practiced across the western world.
Wells was himself the son of a lowly gardener, but, like Huxley, exhibited a strong misanthropic wit, passion and creativity lacking in the high nobility, and he was thus raised from the lower ranks of society into the order of oligarchical management by the 1890s. During this moment of vast potential- and – it cannot be restated enough- the oligarchical order that had grown overconfident during the 200+ years of hegemony were petrified to see the nations of the earth rapidly breaking free from this hegemony thanks to the under the international spread of Lincoln’s American System across Germany, Russia, Japan, South America, France, Canada and even China with Sun Yat-sen’s 1911 republican revolution.
As outlined in Cynthia Chung’s ‘Why Russia Saved the USA’, the oligarchy just no longer seemed to have the creative vitality and sophistication required to snuff out these revolutionary flames.
Wells described this problem in the following terms:
“The undeniable contraction of the British outlook in the opening decade of the new century is one that has exercised my mind very greatly… Gradually, the belief in the possible world leadership of England had been deflated by the economic development of America and the militant boldness of Germany. The long reign of Queen Victoria, so prosperous, progressive and effortless, had produced habits of political indolence and cheap assurance. As a people we had got out of training, and when the challenge of these new rivals became open, it took our breath away at once. We did not know how to meet it…”
The science of population control advanced by Huxley, Galton, Wells, Mackinder, Milner and Bertrand Russell was the basis for a new scientific priesthood and “world government” that would put a stop to the startling disequilibrium unleashed by the electric spread of sovereign nation states, protectionism and commitment to scientific and technological progress.
Fabians, Round Tablers and Coefficients: New Think Tanks Emerge
H.G Wells, Russell and other early social engineers of this new priesthood organized themselves in several interconnected think tanks known as 1) the Fabian Society of Sidney and Beatrice Webb which operated through the London School of Economics, 2) the Round Table Movement begun by the fortunes left to posterity by the racist diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes which also gave rise to the Rhodes Trust, and Rhodes Scholarship programs established to indoctrinate young talent in the halls of Oxford, and finally 3) the Co-Efficients Club of London. As noted by Georgetown Professor Carol Quigley, in his 1981 The Anglo-American Establishment, membership in all three organizations was virtually interchangeable.
Wells described the rise of these original think tanks and documented the inner elite’s inability to meet the challenge of the times saying:
“Our ruling class, protected in its advantages by a universal snobbery was broad-minded, easy going and profoundly lazy… Our liberalism was no longer a larger enterprise, it had become a generous indolence. But minds were waking up to this. Over our table at St Ermin’s Hotel wrangle Maxse, Bellairs, Hewins, Amery and Mackinder, all stung by the small but humiliating tale of disasters in the South African war, all sensitive to the threat of business recession, and all profoundly alarmed by the naval and military aggressiveness of Germany.”
Fearful of the prospect of a US-Russia-China alliance outlined in depth by Fabian/Roundtable members Halford Mackinder and Lord Alfred Milner, the solution was simple: kick over the chess board and get everyone to just slaughter each other. Accounts of the British imperial efforts to orchestrate this war have been told in many locations, but none as efficiently as the 2008 documentary 1932: Speak Not of Parties.
In the wake of the destruction which left 9 million dead on all sides and ruined countless lives, Wells, Russell and the Milner Roundtable became leading voices for world government under the League of Nations (c. 1919) advocating “enlightened cosmopolitanism” to replace the era of “selfish nation states”.
The Battle For World Government
A decade after its founding, the League was less successful than Wells and his co-thinkers would have liked, with nationalists from around the world recognizing the evil hand of empire lurking behind the apparent language of “liberal values and world peace”. Sun Yat-sen, among many others was among the anti-Wellsian voices and warned his fellow Chinese in 1924 not to fall into this trap saying:
“The nations which are employing imperialism to conquer others and which are trying to maintain their own favored positions as sovereign lords of the whole world are advocating cosmopolitanism [aka: global governance/globalization -ed] and want the world to join them… Nationalism is that precious possession by which humanity maintains its existence. If nationalism decays, then when cosmopolitanism flourishes we will be unable to survive and will be eliminated”.
In response to this patriotic resistance across the world, a new strategy had to be concocted. This took the form of H.G. Welles’ 1928 The Open Conspiracy: Blueprint for a World Revolution. This little-known book served as a guiding blueprint for the next century of imperial grand strategy calling for a new world religion and social order. According to Wells:
“The old faiths have become unconvincing, unsubstantial and insincere, and though there are clear intimations of a new faith in the world, it still awaits embodiment in formulae and organizations that will bring it into effective reaction upon human affairs as a whole.”
In his book, Welles outlines the need for a new scientific gospel to supersede the Judeo-Christian faiths of the western world. This new gospel consisted of a series of tomes which he and his colleague Julian Huxley composed, entitled: 1) The Outline of History (1920) where Wells re-wrote all of history wishing this analysis to replace the book of Genesis, 2)The Science of Life (1930), co-written with Sir Julian Huxley (Thomas Huxley’s Grandson who continued the family tradition along with Aldous), and 3) The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932).
Part of this immense project to create a new coherent synthetic religion to re-organize humanity involved a re-packaging of a Darwinism that was falling out of favor with many scientists of the 1920’s. They recognized its failure to account for obvious features of nature such as directionality in evolution, spirit, intention, ideas and design.
This re-packaging took the form of the “New Evolutionary Synthesis” which attempted to save Darwin’s theory and its eugenic corollaries using Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s doctrine of the “Omega Man”. De Chardin’s system synthesized the foundation of Darwinian assumptions with an acknowledgment of evolutionary directionality, the possibility of spirit, and the existence of mind as a force of nature. The destructive slight of hand used by Chardin was that all of these “transcendent” features of design- spirit, mind, reason, etc.- were: 1) bound to a finite future point of no change which dominated and guided all apparent change in living space time, and 2) binding the world of mind and spirit to the forces of the material world. The Chardin-Huxley-Wells remix kept Darwin’s laws relevant and kept science compatible with imperial modes of social organization.
Outlining the aims of The Open Conspiracy, Wells writes: “Firstly, the entirely provisional nature of all existing governments, and the entirely provisional nature therefore, of all loyalties associated therewith; Secondly, the supreme importance of population control in human biology and the possibility it affords us of a release from the pressure of the struggle for existence on ourselves; and Thirdly, the urgent necessity of protective resistance against the present traditional drift towards war.”
By 1933, the planned Bankers’ Dictatorship, meant to solve the four years’ long great depression and organized during the months-long London Conference, was on the verge of being sabotaged by the recently-elected American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was then that Wells published a new manifesto in the form of a fiction book called ‘Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution’. This book (soon made into a Hollywood movie), served as an early tool of mass predictive programming showcasing a world destroyed by decades of global war, pandemic, and anarchy- all caused by… sovereign nation states.
The “solution” to these dark ages took the form of a masonic society of social engineers who descended from planes (Wells’ ‘Benevolent Dictatorship of the Air’) to restore order under a world government. Wells had his main character (a social psychologist) state “while the World Council was fighting for and directing and carrying on the unified World State, the Educational Control was remoulding mankind”. The social psychologists managing the World Government were “becoming the whole literature, philosophy and general thought of the world… the reasoning soul in the body of the race.”
The greatest problem to overcome, stated Wells, was “the variability of mental resistance to direction and limits set by nature to the ideal of an acquiescent cooperative world.”
Wells’ hero, Gustav de Windt, was “pre-occupied by his gigantic schemes for world organization, had treated the ‘spirit of opposition’ as purely evil, as a vice to be guarded against, as a trouble in the machinery which was to be minimized as completely as possible.”
In 1932, Wells gave an Oxford speech championing a global order run by liberal fascists saying: “I am asking for liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis”. This was not paradoxical when one realizes that the rise of fascism was never a “nationalist” phenomenon as popular history books have asserted for decades but rather was the artificial consequence of a supranational financier-oligarchy from above who wished to use “enforcers” to bend their societies to a higher will.
The World Brain
By the time World War II began, Wells’ ideas had evolved new insidious components that later gave rise to such mechanisms as Wikipedia and Twitter in the form of “The World Brain” (19937) where Wells calls for reducing the English language to a “basic English” of 850 accepted words which would make up a world language. In this book, Wells states that “thinkers of the forward-looking type whose ideas we are now considering, are beginning to realize that the most hopeful line for the development of our racial intelligence lies rather in the direction of creating a new world organ for the collection, indexing, summarizing and release of knowledge, than in any further tinkering with the highly conservative and resistant university system, local, national and traditional in texture, which already exits. These innovators, who may be dreamers today, but who hope to become very active organizers tomorrow, project a unified, if not centralized, world organ to pull the mind of the world together.”
By 1940, Wells wrote the The New World Order which again amplified his message. In writing this, he coordinated his efforts with the many Fabians and Rhodes Scholars who had infiltrated western foreign policy establishments in order to shape the the war, but more importantly, the post-war global structure. These were the networks that hated Franklin Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Harry Hopkins and other genuine “New Dealers” who wanted nothing more than to destroy colonialism once and for all in the wake of the war.
Wells insists that the “new age of brotherhood” that must guide the new United Nations must not tolerate sovereign nation states as FDR dreamed (and as was formally enshrined in the UN Charter) but must rather be guided by his caste of social engineers pulling the levers of production and consumption within a system of mass “collectivization” saying:
“Collectivisation means the handling of the common affairs of mankind by a common control responsible to the whole community. It means the suppression of go-as-you-please in social and economic affairs just as much as in international affairs. It means the frank abolition of profit-seeking and of every device by which human beings contrive to be parasitic on their fellow man. It is the practical realisation of the brotherhood of man through a common control”.
If Wells’ outlines look similar to those ideas recently made public by the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, then don’t be surprised.
Wells’ Death and the Continuity of a Bad Idea
With Wells’ 1946 death, other Fabians and social engineers continued his work during the Cold War. One of the leading figures here being Wells’ associate, Lord Bertrand Russell, who wrote in his 1952 The Impact of Science on Society:
“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education’. Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema and the radio play an increasing part… it may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the state with money and equipment.”
“The subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First that the influence of home is obstructive. Second that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Thirdly verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”
Although the bodies of Wells, Russell and Huxley have long since rotted away, their rotten ideas continue to animate their disciples like Sir Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Lord Malloch-Brown (whose disturbing celebration of the Coronavirus as a golden opportunity to finally restructure civilization) should concern any thinking citizen. The idea of a “Great Reset” expounded by these modern mouthpieces of history’s bad ideas signals nothing more than a new Dark Age which should turn the stomach of any moral being.
It is here useful to hold the words of Kissinger in mind who had channeled the spectre of Wells telling a group of technocrats in Evian, France in 1992:
“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/26/2020 – 00:00 - Indian Call Center Scams $14 Million From Americans In Elaborate Scheme
Indian Call Center Scams $14 Million From Americans In Elaborate Scheme
Sometimes we have to question the intelligence of Americans. It’s no secret that unhealthy lifestyles and eating mounds of junk food can impair brain function. With that being said, intelligence is lacking for some Americans as thousands were recently swindled out of millions of dollars by a scammy Indian call center.
According to the NYTimes, an Indian call center in Peera Garhi, west of Delhi, tricked victims into believing their bank accounts were frozen as part of an elaborate drug investigation. As many as 4,500 victims were told, they had to transfer money to the scammers or risk serious jail time.
On Dec. 17, as many as 50 people from the call center were arrested. Authorities alleged the employees learned American accents and pretended to be officials of various American law enforcement agencies.
Delhi Police Cybercrime Unit shows police arresting a group suspected of conducting an international scam at a call center in Delhi. Source: NYT Investigators said the victims were given an ultimatum: Face jail time or take an “alternative dispute resolution” to avoid criminal charges.
Over two years, the call center bilked more than $14 million from gullible Americans who “were asked to buy Bitcoins or Google gift cards worth all the money in their accounts,” said Anyesh Roy, a police officer in New Delhi. The monies were then transferred to what the victims thought was a “safe government wallet” but were actually accounts tied to the call center.
The South China Morning Post said the “call center even had a human resources policy offering graded salary scales, bonuses for Christmas and for those who could get people to capitulate fast, as well as paid holidays.”
The stupidity of some Americans makes you wonder if IQ rates in the country are dropping?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 23:20 - 8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Claus & The Christmas Tradition
8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Claus & The Christmas Tradition
As we pass the winter solstice, so begins our end of year rituals. Ritual celebrations convoluted over time, only to fit in with the society today. The traditions of our popular culture (Christmas, New Years, etc.) actually find their roots in early Pagan ceremonies that guide us to the closing of a chapter, to be reborn in a new year. The cultural Zeitgeist tells a story that during Christmas time we celebrate the birth of Jesus, however we are actually following astrological patterns, celebrating the balance with seasonal cycles and the precession of the equinox. This is the finite choreography of the stars, and the winter solstice is special occurrence that allows dreams to manifest in the year ahead.
While studying the origins of Christmas, specifically in relation to the Santa mythos – there has been a lot that seems to be lost in the ground that the “root” of the story takes place in. Many people have studied this, and it’s been revealed that the origin of Santa is actually the spirit of the Kamchadales and the Koryak Shaman from Siberia. These Shaman wore red clothing, with white accents in homage to the Fly Agaric mushroom. This hallucinogenic mushroom can be found beneath only specific trees, like the fir or pine, which they understood as the Tree of Life. The Mushrooms are the literal “fruit” of those trees, and grow from the roots. The Shaman would collect these fruits, and bring them to the homes of the tribe. They would dry them over the fire, or hang them on the pine tree inside their homes. This specific mushroom played an important role in their end of the year rituals, because astrologically there is something consistent and special happening. The energetic vortex of the winter solstice provided a gift that allowed humanity to connect with a higher power to gain insight.
These traditions were passed down, and found their way into the rituals of civilized societies like Denmark and Great Britain. With that, they lost an integral piece of the puzzle that was the soul of these rituals.
Mankind tends to seek a better definition, even if the root of the story is lost beneath the soil. So, eventually we find an opportunity to anthropomorphize the spirit of the shaman, which is where St. Nicholas comes into play. Jolly old St. Nick is the patron saint of the weary traveler, and the poor. This is one of the most important parts of the story, because with St. Nick, there is the importance of “making a list”, which is actually a Pagan ritual that will allow the manifestation of intention. This tradition was brought to Great Britain by the druids. Children are powerful, and using their energy to perpetuate something negative like capitalist gains, only further degrades our current society. The secret is not to make a list of material things that we desire – which is absolutely perpetuated by consumerism – but make a list of needs met with good intention. Whether for the self, of the better of humanity or the environment, it is important to understand what it is you truly need.
St. Nicholas also embodied the ethos of “giving to others in need”. This is the most significant part of the interpretation of this mythology. As the Shaman gave the psychedelic experience to those stuck in their homes during Siberian winters…this awoke their spirit, and gave them an understanding that could never be explained. It’s a sacred experience, and it was ritualized. St. Nicholas on the other hand, took what he could, and gave it to the poor. That is the tradition we need to perpetuate. It’s not about family gifting. It’s truly about spreading joy, and bringing joy.
While this time of year can be daunting due to the cold, it is a time for reflection, hibernation, empathy and gratitude. The darkness of winter, only brings forth the light of the spring…your intentions during the dark of winter should lay in positive actions, that will bring forth a positive future. In keeping to the concept of Karma – you reap what you sow. It’s a time of year, where we plant the seed of our intentions, into the soil of the universe. Life is beautiful, and it’s the season to reflect and embrace it. Give what you can, and the universe will respond positively in the year that follows.
1. Arctic shamans gave out mushrooms on the winter solstice.
According to the theory, the legend of Santa derives from shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions who dropped into locals’ teepeelike homes with a bag full of hallucinogenic mushrooms as presents in late December, Rush said.
“As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago, these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collectAmanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice,” Rush told LiveScience in an email. “Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story.”
2. Mushrooms, like gifts, are found beneath pine trees.
The Amanita muscaria mushroom, which is deep red with white flecks
That’s just one of the symbolic connections between the Amanita muscaria mushroom and the iconography of Christmas, according to several historians and ethnomycologists, or people who study fungi’s influence on human societies. Of course, not all scientists agree that the Santa story is tied to a hallucinogen. [Trippy Tales: History of Magic Mushrooms & Other Hallucinogens]
In his book “Mushrooms and Mankind” (The Book Tree, 2003) the late author James Arthur points out that Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric, lives throughout the Northern Hemisphere under conifers and birch trees, with which the fungi — which are deep red with white flecks — have a symbiotic relationship. This partially explains the practice of the Christmas tree, and the placement of bright red-and-white presents underneath it, which look like Amanita mushrooms, he wrote.
“Why do people bring pine trees into their houses at the winter solstice, placing brightly colored (red-and-white) packages under their boughs, as gifts to show their love for each other …?” he wrote. “It is because, underneath the pine bough is the exact location where one would find this ‘Most Sacred’ substance, the Amanita muscaria, in the wild.” (Note: Do not eat these mushrooms, as they can be poisonous.)
3. Reindeer were shaman “spirit animals.”
Reindeer are common in Siberia and northern Europe, and seek out these hallucinogenic fungi, as the area’s human inhabitants have also been known to do. Donald Pfister, a Harvard University biologist who studies fungi, suggests that Siberian tribesmen who ingested fly agaric may have hallucinated that the grazing reindeer were flying.
“At first glance, one thinks it’s ridiculous, but it’s not,” said Carl Ruck, a professor of classics at Boston University. “Whoever heard of reindeer flying? I think it’s becoming general knowledge that Santa is taking a ‘trip’ with his reindeer.”
Were Santa and his reindeer on a magic mushroom-induced trip?
“Amongst the Siberian shamans, you have an animal spirit you can journey with in your vision quest,” Ruck continued. “And reindeer are common and familiar to people in eastern Siberia.”
4. Shamans dressed like … Santa Claus.
These shamans “also have a tradition of dressing up like the [mushroom] … they dress up in red suits with white spots,” Ruck said.
5. Mushrooms abound in Christmas iconography.
Tree ornaments shaped like Amanita mushrooms and other depictions of the fungi are also prevalent in Christmas decorations throughout the world, particularly in Scandinavia and northern Europe, Pfister pointed out. That said, Pfister made it clear that the connection between modern-day Christmas and the ancestral practice of eating mushrooms is a coincidence, and he doesn’t know about any direct link.
6. Rudolph’s nose resembles a bright-red mushroom.
Ruck points to Rudolph as another example of the mushroom imagery resurfacing: His nose looks exactly like a red mushroom. “It’s amazing that a reindeer with a red-mushroom nose is at the head, leading the others,” he said.
Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon St. Nicholas, a fourth-century saint known for his generosity, as the story goes.
There is little debate about the consumption of mushrooms by Arctic and Siberian tribespeople and shamans, but the connection to Christmas traditions is more tenuous, or “mysterious,” as Ruck put it.
7. “A Visit from St. Nicholas” may have borrowed from shaman rituals.
Many of the modern details of the modern-day American Santa Claus come from the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (which later became famous as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”). The poem is credited to Clement Clarke Moore, an aristocratic academic who lived in New York City.
The origins of Moore’s vision are unclear, although Arthur, Rush and Ruck all think the poet probably drew from northern European motifs that derive from Siberian or Arctic shamanic traditions. At the very least, Arthur wrote, Santa’s sleigh and reindeer are probably references to various related northern European mythology. For example, the Norse god Thor (known in German as Donner) flew in a chariot drawn by two goats, which have been replaced in the modern retelling by Santa’s reindeer, Arthur wrote.
Reindeer, which aren’t usually known to fly.
Other historians were unaware of a connection between Santa and shamans or magic mushrooms, including Stephen Nissenbaum, who wrote a book about the origins of Christmas traditions, and Penne Restad, of the University of Texas at Austin, both of whom were contacted by LiveScience.
8. Santa is from the Arctic.
One historian, Ronald Hutton, told NPR that the theory of a mushroom-Santa connection is flawed. “If you look at the evidence of Siberian shamanism, which I’ve done,” Hutton said, “you find that shamans didn’t travel by sleigh, didn’t usually deal with reindeer spirits, very rarely took the mushrooms to get trances, didn’t have red-and-white clothes.”
But Rush and Ruck disagree, saying shamans did deal with reindeer spirits and the ingestion of mushrooms is well documented. Siberian shamans did wear red deer pelts, but the coloring of Santa’s garb is mainly meant to mirror the coloring of Amanita mushrooms, Rush added. As for sleighs, the point isn’t the exact mode of travel, but that the “trip” involves transportation to a different, celestial realm, Rush said. Sometimes people would also drink the urine of the shaman or the reindeer, as the hallucinogenic compounds are excreted this way, without some of the harmful chemicals present in the fungi (which are broken down by the shaman or the reindeer), Rush said.
“People who know about shamanism accept this story,” Ruck said. “Is there any other reason that Santa lives in the North Pole? It is a tradition that can be traced back to Siberia.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 22:40 - Southern Border Migration Slumps In COVID Year
Southern Border Migration Slumps In COVID Year
2019 was a year that changed the face of migration on the U.S. Southwestern border, but so was 2020.
While in the previous year, the number of border apprehensions skyrocketed and record numbers of families arrived mainly from Central America, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz points out that the COVID-19 pandemic cut border crossings back down to 2018 levels with the number of families reaching a low.
You will find more infographics at Statista
While in 2019, Non-Mexicans outnumbered Mexicans 4:1 at the Southern border, this trend was reversed in 2020 with more Mexicans apprehended once again, as records from Customs and Border Protection show.
Because many of the new arrivals from Central America had been applying for asylum, the Trump administration in 2019 overhauled its application process, making many asylum seekers wait in camps on the Mexican side without assistance. These changes were implemented after another system overhaul – the separation of families in U.S. custody and the tendency to release fewer immigration detainees on bail – had caused chaotic scenes at detention centers and an international outcry.
Historically, Mexicans made up the largest share of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. but have been more successful at finding work in Mexico, where the economy is improving and workers are more sought after while the country’s population ages. As more asylum seekers and less work migrants arrived, the U.S. also slashed the number of refugees it accepts annually to the historic low of 18,000 and in the COVID year of 2020 admitted a record-low number of just around 3,000 asylum seekers.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 22:00 - Is Your New TCL HDTV (Made In China) A Security Risk?
Is Your New TCL HDTV (Made In China) A Security Risk?
Authored by Stephen Silver via 19fortyfive.com,
There’s been a huge amount of concern this year about the security implications of technology that originates in China or is owned by Chinese companies. That was, after all, at the heart of the fight by the Trump Administration to ban the popular social networking app TikTok, or at least to force a sale of it. The U.S. government has also cracked down on the manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and the omnibus/coronavirus rescue package recently passed by Congress even included $1.9 billion to help companies remove equipment from those two companies.
Recently, a pair of security researchers raised the alarm about another Chinese tech company, the TV manufacturer TCL, which makes some of the most popular televisions available in the U.S.
The website of the researcher and hacker known as Sick Codes, in a blog post in November, pointed out “extraordinary vulnerabilities” in TCL’s Android TVs.
“Near the end of September, while conducting research into low-end Android boxes, I came across a number of serious flaws in the way in which these devices were being designed,” the post said.
“Without delving into the nuances of each device, all of the Smart TV products are Android-based.”
The researcher discovered that they could easily access the entire file system of the devices.
“Why would an Android device need a web server running on a non-standard port?” he asked.
“What kind of manufacturer publishes the whole file system of a device?”
Sick Codes was later joined in his work by another researcher named John Jackson, and in October the two of them both notified TCL which, after a delay in response, said they would patch the issue.
In an interview with Tom’s Guide, Sick Codes sent a URL that provided “full access to the file system of a TCL smart TV in Zambia,” and the writer was able to browse the directories of that person’s TV.
And in another interview with Security Ledger, Sick Codes said that “anybody on an adjacent network can browse the TV’s file system and download any file they want.”
TCL issued a statement to the media, as reported by Tom’s Guide:
“TCL was recently notified by an independent security researcher of two vulnerabilities in Android TV models,” the statement said.
“Once TCL received notification, the company quickly took steps to investigate, thoroughly test, develop patches, and implement a plan to send updates to resolve the matter. Updating devices and applications to enhance security is a regular occurrence in the technology industry, and these updates should be distributed to all affected Android TV models in the coming days.”
“Going forward, we are putting processes in place to better react to discoveries by 3rd parties [and] performing additional training for our customer service agents on escalation procedures on these issues as well as establishing a direct reporting system online,” TCL said further, in a statement to PC Mag.
It’s worth pointing out, as stated by Sick Codes in the comments to the original post, that the issue they pinpointed only applies to TCL’s Android TVs, and not to its Roku TVs, which are the majority of what TCL sells in North America. In fact, TCL only brought Android TVs to the North American market for the first time in July.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security released a new report called “Data Security Business Advisory: Risks and Considerations for Businesses Using Data Services and Equipment from Firms Linked to the People’s Republic of China.”
TCL is not mentioned in the report, nor are televisions.
“The PRC’s data collection actions result in numerous risks to U.S. businesses and customers, including: the theft of trade secrets, of intellectual property, and of other confidential business information; violations of U.S. export control laws; violations of U.S. privacy laws; breaches of contractual provisions and terms of service; security and privacy risks to customers and employees; risk of PRC surveillance and tracking of regime critics; and reputational harm to U.S. businesses,” the report said
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 21:20 - Here We Go Again: Boeing 737 Max Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Failure
Here We Go Again: Boeing 737 Max Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Failure
Last month, commercial flights with Boeing 737 Max jetliners resumed after a 20-month worldwide grounding, following two deadly accidents.
Now we’re finding out, weeks later, after the Max was cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to return to the skies safely, an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 Max suffered engine issues during flight.
According to Aviation24.be, an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX (registered C-FSNQ) was on a test flight after storage from Marana Pinal, Arizona, to Montreal, Canada, when the incident occurred. Luckily, the aircraft had no passengers and only three crew members.
Engine issues shortly developed after the plane took off. The crew noticed the “left engine had low hydraulic pressure,” said Aviation24.be. Then more complications developed with the aircraft:
“The crew and airline dispatch/engineering controllers initially decided to continue to Montreal but the crew received an indication of a fuel imbalance from the left-hand wing and shut the left hand engine down,” said the aviation website.
The crew was forced to declare a “PAN-PAN” emergency, meaning the plane was in severe jeopardy and had to divert from its pre-planned flight route and land in Tucson.
The incident took place on Dec. 22, according to Aviation24.be.
Flightradar24 provides a flight playback of the incident.
Even with the FAA ordered updates to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an automated flight system that controls the plane and was responsible for the two deadly crashes, these planes have been sitting for nearly two years, and inactivity could lead to other issues.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 20:40 - Our Upside-Down Post-Election World
Our Upside-Down Post-Election World
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via RealClearPolitics.com,
After Nov. 3, the meaning of some words and concepts abruptly changed. Have you noticed how new realities have replaced old ones?
Media cross-examination of the president is now an out-of-date idea. The time for gotcha questions has come and gone.
Why ask a president whether he is a traitor or a crook when you can focus on his favorite flavor of milkshake or compliment him on his socks?
The old pre-election truth was that new vaccines take years to develop. The new postelection truth is that it’s no big deal to bring out new vaccines in nine months.
Impeaching a first-term president after his first midterm election — on a strictly partisan vote, for political reasons other than the Constitution’s “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” — is now a terrible idea.
Worse would be to appoint a special counsel to harass a president on unfounded charges of collusion with China. An even scarier notion would be a conservative dream team of partisan lawyers hounding President Joe Biden — using a 22-month, $40 million blank check.
It would be unprofessional for university psychologists and physicians from a distance to diagnose, in pop fashion, the mental faculties of a President Biden.
Certainly, there would never be talk about Department of Justice officials contemplating wearing a wire as part of an entrapment scheme to remove a President Biden through the 25th Amendment. That would almost constitute a coup attempt.
Almost as bad would be for the holdover FBI director to start “memorializing” his private conversations with Joe Biden on FBI devices. He might then leak such memos to the press — just in case he were to be fired for secretly investigating Biden for “Chinese collusion” and then lying about such a probe.
What happened to the Logan Act? Not long ago it was assumed to be a critically needed guardrail. Wouldn’t it now ensure that presidential transition team members were not calling foreign leaders while Donald Trump is still president? How has it suddenly become a defunct, ossified relic?
Leaking classified material would be about the worst thing government officials could do. Imagine if a Trump holdover, burrowed into the new Biden administration, released a transcript of Biden’s private conversations with the Mexican president or the Australian prime minister.
Such a breach of trust would be almost as bad as a turncoat anti-Biden mole seeking to resist presidential directives. Imagine if this anonymous staffer were given an op-ed in the New York Tines to claim that a cadre of old-time Democrats were shocked by Biden’s cognitive decline and resisting his directives.
Is extending security clearances to former high-level officials turned cable-TV pundits still a bad idea? Who would wish to see, for instance, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe issuing warnings each night on Fox News? With a wink-and-nod hat tip to his “confidential sources,” Ratcliffe could spin conspiracy theories that Biden is facing bombshell disclosures about his family misadventures with the Chinese.
Is it still important that we keep the tradition of retired high-ranking military officers — all subject to the requirements of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — not disparaging the president? Who would want former Pentagon officials, some of them serving on the boards of military contractors, warning us that Biden should be removed because of cognitive challenges? Certainly, generals and admirals should not compare a President Biden’s policies to those of Mussolini or the Nazis.
At least “dark money” no longer exists. The old idea of right-wing billionaires pouring money into candidates’ political campaigns was supposedly a dangerous practice. It would be far more civic-minded for left-wing billionaires to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of nonpartisan state bureaucracies entrusted with guaranteeing the sanctity of national elections.
And apparently after, not before, an election is the proper time to announce critically important news.
Like the rollout of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine?
Like a $900 billion stimulus package?
Like a revised upward Fannie Mae report on the economy?
Like the ties between a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee and a suspected Chinese spy?
Like a federal investigation of Joe Biden’s son and his possible profiteering with rich Chinese elites affiliated with China’s government?
To keep track of our brave new American world is easy.
Just consider everything said to be bad by the “Animal Farm” media before Nov. 3 as now good. And remember that everything said to be good two months ago is now actually bad.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 20:00 - "Breakthrough" – IBM And Fujifilm Develop New Magnetic Tape With 580TB Capacity
“Breakthrough” – IBM And Fujifilm Develop New Magnetic Tape With 580TB Capacity
The world currently produces 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily due to the internet of things, the emergence of 4K/8K videos, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence and automation. By 2025, worldwide data could soar to 175 zettabytes, representing 61% annual growth.
Thanks to the virus pandemic, the rapid digitization of the economy sparking a massive push in remote working among corporations have also resulted in a massive increase in data storage.
So, where is all this data being stored?
More than 500 hyperscale data centers are scattered across the world, storing an estimated 547 exabytes with an estimated 151 facilities currently under development.
According to IBM, there is only “one technology can handle that the massive growth of digital data, keep it protected from cybercrime attacks and is archiving data for some of the largest hyperscale data centers in the world is a technology more than 60 years old – magnetic tape.”
Magnetic Tape’s Layer Structure
More than a decade ago, IBM partnered with Fujifilm to advance the technology in magnetic tape. What they developed is a new tape that can store huge amounts of critical data.
The new tape can achieve a storage capacity of 317 gigabytes per square inch, which means a single tape is capable of storing 580 terabytes of data.
Putting 580 terabytes into perspective for readers, it’s “equivalent to 786,977 CDs stacked 944 meters high, which is taller than Burj Kalifa, the world’s tallest building. That’s a colossal amount of data! All fitting on a tape cartridge on the palm of your hand,” said IBM.
The “breakthrough,” aimed at advancing decades-old technology, came when researchers from both companies develop a brand new tape with Strontium Ferrite instead of using Barium Ferrite, which has been used to create the tape for years. Strontium Ferrite offers the potential for higher density storage in the same amount of tape.
The Evolution Of The Magnetic Tape
IBM concludes that this new milestone will allow tape drives to handle the massive growth of digital data which is just in time for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 19:20 - May This Year Bring Less Gifts And Far More Christmas
May This Year Bring Less Gifts And Far More Christmas
Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
May this year bring to all more Christmas and less of the junk we have all come to know as gift giving. This time of year I find the mind-numbing barrage from stuff that peddlers are rushing to fill any need I can imagine overwhelming. These needs appear to be both real and imagined, I’m even asked to reach out and consider, and speculate, on the needs and desires that others might have. Over the years our lives have become so crammed with material goods, our drawers and closets are now chucked full of the trendy apparel of last season, exercise equipment, knick-knacks, and electronic equipment. For some people, the place where they live is about to explode unless they move to a larger house or rent a storage unit.
Even The Grinch Knows This
Many garages across America are so full of this stuff cars can no-longer be parked inside. Neurotic people with overactive pack-rat syndrome literally destroy their quality of life with clutter and junk. This stuff will often sit in one place for years while they can’t find a chair to sit in or a clean tabletop on which to eat. Ads like – “get it all” or “have it all,” live on the cutting edge, buy all of these high-powered models, and “put your life in the zone.” fill our lives. This new-fangled electronic gizmo does it all and more, look at the artwork, let it wash over you, surround you, and cover you up. Check out that car, is it not perfect? Wouldn’t driving it make life a zen-like experience – got to have it, no payment for 90 days.
This has resulted in consumers getting caught up in the game of finding the perfect patio furniture and buying it to use it twice. It then sits on our deck only to fade in the sun over the next three years. Never before has man had so much, but it’s far from enough. The idea things will be “swell” and life downright peachy only after you fill it with the right kind of stuff is a slippery slope. The fact is for some people they will never be able to get enough. The one thing we can count on is that tomorrow the new models arrive, better and sleeker with even more options!
Great are the efforts we make to fill our needs with material objects in an effort to achieve happiness. We rush around creating video and digital images in a desire to preserve those precious moments. We capture so many images that we forget to download, view, and print them. We now have the ability to collect and store vast quantities of information and data, much of which is never processed or utilized. Poor quality or obsolete data entered into our system downgrades the output to one of, “garbage in – garbage out.”
It seems the ads filling our Sunday paper and mailboxes weighs ten pounds, the ads, the ads, the ads. What store is that? Never heard of it? They are all the same, junk, junk, junk, buy me some happiness!! It is only natural to be drawn to nice things but new is merely a point in time and not a reflection on quality or utility value. We have so much junk we can’t find the item we need or want, so we are forced to buy a replacement until we find where it was placed. You know it’s true – yes, you are guilty, so are we all.
The fact there is a lot more to life than stuffing your face with too much food and running around trying to find things to buy. This is made clear by the picture appearing to the right. Life is about more than buying and spending. So many people are not as fortunate as we that have been born in America and we should count our blessings and good fortune. When all is said and done it is more likely the most precious moments in our lives will center around people rather than things. We should never forget that trying to do the right thing for our fellow man is an important part of being alive.
We have even been convinced that we should not leave our house or office without a bottle of water, if it were not for bottled water, we would all be dead. Bottled water was a three hundred billion dollar industry last year. Oh, how our needs have grown. Well, all I really need is a lamp, an ashtray and well maybe a yogurt maker. That’ all I need! Using a line by the songwriter-singer Jimmy Buffet, I want to go where the women and water are free. All this means that for many of us it is time to take a deep breath and forget about material things. This might make a lot more room for us to remember what is really important, people and family.
Merry Christmas to All!!
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 18:40 - GoDaddy Phished Its Own Employees Under The Guise Of Giving Them A $650 Holiday Bonus
GoDaddy Phished Its Own Employees Under The Guise Of Giving Them A $650 Holiday Bonus
Roughly 500 GoDaddy employees failed a company-wide phishing test this month that was disguised as a message that they would be receiving a $650 holiday bonus.
Yes, you’re reading that right: GoDaddy purposely emailed its employees during a year in which the U.S. economy went into recession, promising them $650 for the holidays, as a test to see if they would click certain links embedded in emails.
The e-mail came from an address called “happyholiday@godaddy.com“, the e-mail read: “Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus! To ensure that you receive your one-time bonus in time for the Holidays, please select your location and fill in the details by Friday, December 18th.”
But instead of a bonus, those who thought they were getting extra cash instead got the following message two days later: “You’re getting this email because you failed our recent phishing test. You will need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.”
The e-mail came from a GoDaddy domain name and bore the GoDaddy logo. The company says that “roughly 500” people clicked on the link and “failed the test”, according to The Copper Courier.
While the test is similar to ones that other companies use to gauge how susceptible their employees are to phishing attacks, the holiday theme and promise of money during a tough year makes these tests, in particular, a little – well…uncool.
While the company refused requests from media about the incident, the Courier says that “three GoDaddy employees” forwarded the e-mails to the press. We’re guessing the company is going to have to make a statement – or least make these people whole after completing their new training – before the “woke” mob decides to “cancel” their GoDaddy services this holiday season.
GoDaddy is likely on its guard after suffering a data breach either this year where 28,000 customers saw their accounts compromised. The company had “record customer growth” for the year, but still wound up laying off or reassigning “hundreds of employees” due to the pandemic.
All told, sounds like a great place to work. Happy Holidays, GoDaddy team!
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 18:00 - Mises Explains The Santa Claus Principle
Mises Explains The Santa Claus Principle
Authored by Ludwig von Mises via The Mises Institute,
[From “The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund” in Human Action, chap. 36.]
The idea underlying all interventionist policies is that the higher income and wealth of the more affluent part of the population is a fund which can be freely used for the improvement of the conditions of the less prosperous. The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution. Every measure is ultimately justified by declaring that it is fair to curb the rich for the benefit of the poor.
In the field of public finance progressive taxation of incomes and estates is the most characteristic manifestation of this doctrine. Tax the rich and spend the revenue for the improvement of the condition of the poor, is the principle of contemporary budgets. In the field of industrial relations shortening the hours of work, raising wages, and a thousand other measures are recommended under the assumption that they favor the employee and burden the employer. Every issue of government and community affairs is dealt with exclusively from the point of view of this principle.
An illustrative example is provided by the methods applied in the operation of nationalized and municipalized enterprises. These enterprises very often result in financial failure; their accounts regularly show losses burdening the state or the city treasury. It is of no use to investigate whether the deficits are due to the notorious inefficiency of the public conduct of business enterprises or, at least partly, to the inadequacy of the prices at which the commodities or services are sold to the customers. What matters more is the fact that the taxpayers must cover these deficits. The interventionists fully approve of this arrangement. They passionately reject the two other possible solutions: selling the enterprises to private entrepreneurs or raising the prices charged to the customers to such a height that no further deficit remains. The first of these proposals is in their eyes manifestly reactionary because the inevitable trend of history is toward more and more socialization. The second is deemed “antisocial” because it places a heavier load upon the consuming masses. It is fairer to make the taxpayers, i.e., the wealthy citizens, bear the burden. Their ability to pay is greater than that of the average people riding the nationalized railroads and the municipalized subways, trolleys, and busses. To ask that such public utilities should be self-supporting, is, say the interventionists, a relic of the old-fashioned ideas of orthodox finance. One might as well aim at making the roads and the public schools self-supporting.
It is not necessary to argue with the advocates of this deficit policy. It is obvious that recourse to this ability-to-pay principle depends on the existence of such incomes and fortunes as can still be taxed away. It can no longer be resorted to once these extra funds have been exhausted by taxes and other interventionist measures.
This is precisely the present state of affairs in most of the European countries. The United States has not yet gone so far; but if the actual trend of its economic policies is not radically altered very soon, it will be in the same condition in a few years.
For the sake of argument we may disregard all the other consequences which the full triumph of the ability-to-pay principle must bring about and concentrate upon its financial aspects.
The interventionist in advocating additional public expenditure is not aware of the fact that the funds available are limited. He does not realize that increasing expenditure in one department enjoins restricting it in other departments. In his opinion there is plenty of money available. The income and wealth of the rich can be freely tapped. In recommending a greater allowance for the schools he simply stresses the point that it would be a good thing to spend more for education. He does not venture to prove that to raise the budgetary allowance for schools is more expedient than to raise that of another department, e.g., that of health. It never occurs to him that grave arguments could be advanced in favor of restricting public spending and lowering the burden of taxation. The champions of cuts in the budget are in his eyes merely the defenders of the manifestly unfair class interests of the rich.
With the present height of income and inheritance tax rates, this reserve fund out of which the interventionists seek to cover all public expenditure is rapidly shrinking. It has practically disappeared altogether in most European countries. In the United States the recent advances in tax rates produced only negligible revenue results beyond what would be produced by a progression which stopped at much lower rates. High surtax rates for the rich are very popular with interventionist dilettantes and demagogues, but they secure only modest additions to the revenue.1 From day to day it becomes more obvious that large-scale additions to the amount of public expenditure cannot be financed by “soaking the rich,” but that the burden must be carried by the masses. The traditional tax policy of the age of interventionism, its glorified devices of progressive taxation and lavish spending, have been carried to a point at which their absurdity can no longer be concealed. The notorious principle that, whereas private expenditures depend on the size of income available, public revenues must be regulated according to expenditures, refutes itself. Henceforth, governments will have to realize that one dollar cannot be spent twice, and that the various items of government expenditure are in conflict with one another. Every penny of additional government spending will have to be collected from precisely those people who hitherto have been intent upon shifting the main burden to other groups. Those anxious to get subsidies will have to foot the bill themselves for the subsidies. The deficits of publicly owned and operated enterprises will be charged to the bulk of the population.
The situation in the employer-employee nexus will be analogous. The popular doctrine contends that wage earners are reaping “social gains” at the expense of the unearned income of the exploiting classes. The strikers, it is said, do not strike against the consumers but against “management.” There is no reason to raise the prices of products when labor costs are increased; the difference must be borne by employers. But when more and more of the share of the entrepreneurs and capitalists is absorbed by taxes, higher wage rates, and other “social gains” of employees, and by price ceilings, nothing remains for such a buffer function. Then it becomes evident that every wage raise, with its whole momentum, must affect the prices of the products and that the social gains of each group fully correspond to the social losses of the other groups. Every strike becomes, even in the short run and not only in the long run, a strike against the rest of the people.
An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole doctrine of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off. The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 17:20 - Musk Ponders Starlink IPO After Admitting It's "Impossible" For Tesla To Go Private
Musk Ponders Starlink IPO After Admitting It’s “Impossible” For Tesla To Go Private
My, how the tables have turned…
The very same Tesla bulls that were perpetually looking for a buyout or take-private offer for the company years ago can now officially check that “bull case” off their list. In addition to CEO Elon Musk revealing that Apple had snubbed Tesla last week – and in addition to analysts starting to consider Apple’s entrance into self-driving cars as a legitimate bear case – it appears that Musk has given up on “going private”.
Musk said on Twitter late this week that it would be “impossible” to take the company private. “Tesla public company duties are a much bigger factor, but going private is impossible now (sigh),” he wrote in response to a hilarious Tweet that referred to Musk as the best capital allocator of our generation. “Engineering, design & general company operations absorb vast majority of my mind & are the fundamental limitation on doing more.”
Engineering, design & general company operations absorb vast majority of my mind & are the fundamental limitation on doing more.
Capital allocation is important, but low CPU load. Tesla public company duties are a much bigger factor, but going private is impossible now (sigh).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2020
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As Tesla continues to move further onto Wall Street’s “Main Stage”, the company could wind up seeing headwinds it didn’t experience during its totally unbelievable run over the last year.
We already noted that its inclusion in the S&P 500 could wind up putting pressure on the stock as a result of heightened liquidity. Now, the company’s absurd valuation seems to be helping stack up more negative catalysts than positive ones.
So, how can Musk
keep the ponzi scheme goingtake the next step in building value? By IPOing yet another one of his unprofitable businesses! Musk has already started to allude to taking Starlink public “once the revenue growth is reasonably predictable”, he wrote on Twitter on Thursday.It will most likely make sense for Starlink to go public once the revenue growth is reasonably predictable
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2020
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Of course, it’s no mistake that Musk mentions revenue and not net income. After all, if Tesla proved one thing over the last 18 months, it’s that fundamentals of any sort don’t matter anymore. And if the Central Banks have helped prove one thing over the last several years it’s that revenue apparently means worlds more than net income or cash generation ever will.
Paging Benjamin Graham…
Regardless, we also pointed out that the law of large numbers isn’t just zapping Tesla, it could also wind up backfiring on Tesla-uber bull Cathie Wood over at ARK Funds, as we noted last week.
And make no mistake – once all the logical fallacies that were once considered to be Tesla bull cases peel back, one by one, soon Tesla will only have its fundamentals to cling to. And we’re not sure that’s going to provide the “gamma squeeze”-style returns that such “visionaries” as Cathie Wood and Ross Gerber have gotten used to.
The saga continues…
Merry Christmas & happy holidays! 🎁 pic.twitter.com/uk6NSPwR9R
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 16:40 - California Doctor Fired After Writing Letter Criticizing Lockdown Orders
California Doctor Fired After Writing Letter Criticizing Lockdown Orders
Authored by Kipp Jones via The Western Journal,
A doctor in Northern California has been fired from his job after he co-authored a letter that questioned the science behind his county’s lockdown order.
Dr. Michael deBoisblanc was working as the trauma medical director for John Muir Health in Contra Costa County, California, until last Friday, after he questioned the scientific basis for again locking down citizens of the area.
KNTV reported that deBoisblanc wrote a letter to the county health director and board of supervisors voicing his concern regarding the continued lockdown policies prior to his dismissal.
The former medical director spoke from his own experience as a parent, expressing his apprehension that Bay Area students were not being allowed to attend in-person classes, according to KTVU-TV.
Along with doctors Pete Mazolewski and Brian Hopkins, deBoisblanc wrote that there were “deep concerns regarding more lockdown measures.”
“The science is clear,” the letter continued, “that more lockdowns lead to much more non COVID morbidity and mortality.”
“Public policy is being based on erroneous assumptions,” it added.
The trauma physician said “we’re worried some of the actions the county and government is taking can definitely have negative impacts on the public health,” according to KTVU.
DeBoisblanc’s letter seemed to ruffle the feathers of those at the county health department and other San Francisco Bay area officials.
John Gioia, the District 1 Supervisor for Contra Costa County, defended the California lockdown, which is based largely on a reported shortage of hospital beds.
“All of these orders have been based on strong science and good data,” Gioia said.
“They are citing data that our health department believes is not reflective of accurate current thinking [in the letter].”
But another area leader said that more transparency is needed from health officials during the pandemic.
“That only engenders trust and leads people to understand why we’re making these decisions and why we need them to behave in certain ways,” San Francisco District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney said.
DeBoisblanc seemingly had merely sought for clear answers regarding those affected by lockdowns, including embattled small business owners.
“We felt these were important questions that the people who are affected by these measures deserved answers to,” he said.
But deBoisblanc has now been moved to the back of California’s large unemployment line.
His employment at the hospital in Walnut Creek was terminated last week with little explanation from superiors.
“The Medical Director of Trauma and Regional Transfer Services is a contracted position and, after careful consideration, John Muir Health is not continuing with Dr. deBoisblanc in that position,” a statement issued by John Muir Health read.
Dr. deBoisblanc spoke to Fox News on Wednesday regarding his termination of employment, as well as the lockdown’s effects on school children who are being kept out of classrooms.
“All the data that I am aware of, looking at children and the virus, shows that it’s safe,” he told the network.
“There are many other states now that have months of track records showing that it’s safe for their kids to go back to school.
“And the state of California and the county is just not making that possible.”
The doctor also defended restaurants and small businesses, which have been intensely struggling during the pandemic.
“These are restaurants that are just trying to survive, and keep their doors open,” he said.
“It’s been very difficult for them.”
DeBoisblanc later revealed that he was not fired from his job solely because of the letter, but he said it was “clearly related to the letter.”
The California Department of Public Health announced a regional stay-at-home order on Dec. 3, which urged most residents of the state to stay home during the Christmas month, citing the shortage of hospital beds and rising number of cases. Contra Costa Health Services echoed this request in a media release on Dec. 16.
“Due to the dwindling supply of hospital beds for patients who need intensive care in the Bay Area, the state will apply a regional stay-at-home order across the nine-county region to slow the spread of COVID-19 and prevent the region’s hospitals from becoming overwhelmed,” the release stated.
“Now more than ever, Contra Costa Health Services (CCHS) urges everyone who lives or works in the county to follow the health advice within the law to keep themselves and their loved ones safe during the holiday season.”
The order, among other recommendations, urged people to avoid “in-person gatherings with people who do not live in your household, especially indoors.”
Despite his termination, deBoisblanc had only kind words for health care workers at his former hospital attempting to navigate the difficulties of the pandemic.
“That’s a great hospital, they are doing amazing things,” he told Fox.
“The doctors and nurses there taking care of COVID patients are risking their health every day. They just got the first round of the vaccine. And let me tell you, it’s a big relief for them.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 16:00 - Roger Stone Announces $25M Lawsuit Against DOJ, Mueller, Comey, Barr And Brennan
Roger Stone Announces $25M Lawsuit Against DOJ, Mueller, Comey, Barr And Brennan
Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone announced on Friday that he will be filing a $25 million lawsuit against the department of Justice, along with former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and several other individuals, according to the Washington Examiner.
Stone was arrested in a 2019 pre-dawn raid (which CNN was alerted to in advance) and sentenced to 40 months in prison before President Trump commuted it in July, leaving stone with a fine and supervised release. Trump granted Stone a full presidential pardon on Wednesday.
“The terms of my pardon allow me to sue the Department of Justice, Robert Mueller, James Comey, John Brennan, Rod Rosenstein, Josnathan [sic] Kravis, Aaron ‘Fat Ass’ Zelinsky Jeannie Rhee and Michael Morando,” stone wrote on Parler. “My lawyers will be filing formal complaints for prosecutorial misconduct’s with DOJ office of professional responsibility at the same time I file a 25 million dollar lawsuit against the DOJ and each of these individuals personally.”
Stone was found guilty of five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its own Russia investigation regarding his outreach to WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign, one count that he “corruptly influenced, obstructed, and impeded” the congressional investigation, and one count for attempting to “corruptly persuade” the congressional testimony of radio show host Randy Credico.
…
Also pardoned Wednesday were Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner’s father. On Tuesday, George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, also charged in connection with Mueller’s Russia investigation, were granted full pardons. –Washington Examiner
“I have an enormous debt of gratitude to God almighty for giving the president the strength and the courage to recognize that my prosecution was a completely, politically motivated witch hunt and my trial was a Soviet-style show trial,” Stone said Wednesday evening, adding on Parler that he will add former Attorney General Bill Barr to the lawsuit – and that he would “handle his cross-examination personally.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 15:20 - Dreaming Of A Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants Or Needs
Dreaming Of A Christmas Without Stuff Nobody Wants Or Needs
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Freeing ourselves of unwanted/unneeded gift-giving is not just heresy in a debt-funded consumerist economy… it is tantamount to treason.
Did you see the new “gotta-have” coffee-pod flavors this Christmas? Crayfish, Spanish Moss, Pumpkin Spicy Radish and Jungle Rot. Yowza, it doesn’t get any better than this…
Future archeologists will marvel not just at the enormous quantity of stuff left by our late-oil-boom frenzy of consumption but by the peculiar concentrations of never-used stuff in closets, basements and strange (possibly religious in nature) immense structures comprised of endless rows of small rooms crammed to the ceiling with stuff without any apparent utility or value.
When can we finally admit that Christmas gift-giving no longer serves any purpose other than the purchase of vast quantities of stuff nobody wants or needs? Generations ago, before everyone could buy whatever they wanted on credit, Christmas was the one time when some portion of the savings that had been painfully accumulated by sacrifice would be doled out for small gifts, typically a consumable treat, modest toys for children or a necessity.
Compare that tradition with today’s frantic frenzy to find something new that recipients don’t need or want and retailers’ equally frantic search for new markets: your gerbil doesn’t have a plush new bed? Shame on you! Imagine its anguish when everyone else is surrounded by piles of shredded wrapping paper and your poor pet didn’t get a single present… where’s your Christmas spirit (and credit card)?.
The most appreciated gift you can give is a suggestion to end the obligation to exchange gifts. To state the honest truth–we don’t want or need anything else, and don’t have space for anything else, thank you–is a gift few are willing to risk saying, but everyone heaves a sigh of relief when one brave person asks to be relieved of the burden of buying another mountain of stuff nobody wants or needs.
There is a long tradition of consumable homemade gifts–Christmas cookies, fruitcake, etc.–that awaits rediscovery.
Freeing ourselves of unwanted/unneeded gift-giving is not just heresy in a debt-funded consumerist economy–it is tantamount to treason. (The lines from an old Errol Flynn movie come to mind: “You speak treason!” “Fluently.”) But why should an honest appraisal qualify as both heresy and treason?
The honest truth is hearts don’t leap with joy at receiving another unwanted, unneeded thing; hearts sink at the task of moving the gift into some corner of the already-stuffed closet or donating it. What was the point of all this costly frenzy again? To keep a debt-dependent consumer economy from imploding? Is that what Christmas has become?
What’s scarce isn’t more stuff. What’s scarce is time, reflection and the generosity of spirit. We’re so busy loading the conveyor belt of unwanted, unneeded stuff in and out of our homes that we have no time to actually spend on what is valuable.
But here, try this new coffee-pod flavor, miso-kumquat-kimchee, I got you the bulk quantity at Costco, you’re gonna love it.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 14:40 - Where Analysts Are Most Optimistic And Pessimistic On Company Ratings For 2021
Where Analysts Are Most Optimistic And Pessimistic On Company Ratings For 2021
With the end of the year just days away, Factset looked at where sellside analysts are most optimistic and pessimistic in their ratings for S&P 500 stocks for 2021, and also how have their views changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?
As Factset’s John Butters summarizes, there are a total of 10,361 ratings on stocks in the S&P 500. Of these 10,361 ratings, 53.6% are Buy ratings, 39.6% are Hold ratings, and 6.8% are Sell ratings.
Curiously, at the sector level, analysts are most optimistic on the one sector that has been most beaten down in 2020 – Energy (62%) – followed by Health Care (60%), and Information Technology (59%) as these three sectors have highest percentages of Buy ratings. On the other hand, analysts are most pessimistic about the Real Estate (46%), Consumer Staples (47%), and Financials (48%) sectors, as these three sectors have the lowest percentages of Buy ratings. The Real Estate (46%) and Financials (46%) sectors also have the highest percentages of Hold ratings, while the Consumer Staples (10%) sector also have the highest percentage of Sell ratings.
Based on the percentage of Buy ratings on S&P 500 stocks, it is interesting to note that analysts are more optimistic on S&P 500 stocks today compared to the start of the 2020 (before the impact of COVID-19), and with the S&P500 trading above 3,700 – an all time high. On December 31, 50.6% of ratings on S&P 500 stocks were Buy ratings, compared to 53.6% today. Nine sectors have a higher percentage of Buy ratings today compared to the start of the year, led by the Utilities (to 51% from 42%) and Consumer Staples (to 47% from 39%) sectors. On the other hand, just two sectors have a lower percentage of Buy ratings today compared to the start of the year: Communication Services (to 55% from 60%) and Energy (to 62% from 66%).
However, there has been little change at the sector level in terms of ranking by Buy ratings. The same four sectors (Energy, Communication Services, Health Care, and Information Technology) that had the highest percentages of Buy ratings at the start of the year (before COVID-19) also have the highest percentages of Buy ratings today. Three of the four sectors (Consumer Staples, Financials, and Real Estate) that had the lowest percentages of Buy ratings at the start of the year also have the lowest percentages of Buy ratings today.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 14:00 - Leaked Docs Reveal How China's 'Army Of Paid Internet Trolls' Helped Censor COVID-19
Leaked Docs Reveal How China’s ‘Army Of Paid Internet Trolls’ Helped Censor COVID-19
Authored by Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, The New York Times, and Jeff Kao via ProPublica (emphasis ours)
In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.
The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.
Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.
They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”
Special instructions were issued to manage anger over Dr. Li’s death.
The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.
At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.
Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip. It takes an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology made by private contractors, the constant monitoring of digital news outlets and social media platforms — and, presumably, lots of money.
It is much more than simply flipping a switch to block certain unwelcome ideas, images or pieces of news.
China’s curbs on information about the outbreak started in early January, before the novel coronavirus had even been identified definitively, the documents show. When infections started spreading rapidly a few weeks later, the authorities clamped down on anything that cast China’s response in too “negative” a light.
The United States and other countries have for months accused China of trying to hide the extent of the outbreak in its early stages. It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health calamity. But the documents indicate that Chinese officials tried to steer the narrative not only to prevent panic and debunk damaging falsehoods domestically. They also wanted to make the virus look less severe — and the authorities more capable — as the rest of the world was watching.
The documents include more than 3,200 directives and 1,800 memos and other files from the offices of the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, in the eastern city of Hangzhou. They also include internal files and computer code from a Chinese company, Urun Big Data Services, that makes software used by local governments to monitor internet discussion and manage armies of online commenters.
The documents were shared with The Times and ProPublica by a hacker group that calls itself CCP Unmasked, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The Times and ProPublica independently verified the authenticity of many of the documents, some of which had been obtained separately by China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls.
The CAC and Urun did not respond to requests for comment.
“China has a politically weaponized system of censorship; it is refined, organized, coordinated and supported by the state’s resources,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times. “It’s not just for deleting something. They also have a powerful apparatus to construct a narrative and aim it at any target with huge scale.”
“This is a huge thing,” he added. “No other country has that.”
Controlling a Narrative
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, created the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2014 to centralize the management of internet censorship and propaganda as well as other aspects of digital policy. Today, the agency reports to the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee, a sign of its importance to the leadership.
The CAC’s coronavirus controls began in the first week of January. An agency directive ordered news websites to use only government-published material and not to draw any parallels with the deadly SARS outbreak in China and elsewhere that began in 2002, even as the World Health Organization was noting the similarities.
At the start of February, a high-level meeting led by Xi called for tighter management of digital media, and the CAC’s offices across the country swung into action. A directive in Zhejiang Province, whose capital is Hangzhou, said the agency should not only control the message within China, but also seek to “actively influence international opinion.”
Agency workers began receiving links to virus-related articles that they were to promote on local news aggregators and social media. Directives specified which links should be featured on news sites’ home screens, how many hours they should remain online and even which headlines should appear in boldface.
Online reports should play up the heroic efforts by local medical workers dispatched to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first reported, as well as the vital contributions of Communist Party members, the agency’s orders said.
Headlines should steer clear of the words “incurable” and “fatal,” one directive said, “to avoid causing societal panic.” When covering restrictions on movement and travel, the word “lockdown” should not be used, said another. Multiple directives emphasized that “negative” news about the virus was not to be promoted.
When a prison officer in Zhejiang who lied about his travels caused an outbreak among the inmates, the CAC asked local offices to monitor the case closely because it “could easily attract attention from overseas.”
Officials ordered the news media to downplay the crisis.
News outlets were told not to play up reports on donations and purchases of medical supplies from abroad. The concern, according to agency directives, was that such reports could cause a backlash overseas and disrupt China’s procurement efforts, which were pulling in vast amounts of personal protective equipment as the virus spread abroad.
“Avoid giving the false impression that our fight against the epidemic relies on foreign donations,” one directive said.
CAC workers flagged some on-the-ground videos for purging, including several that appear to show bodies exposed in public places. Other clips that were flagged appear to show people yelling angrily inside a hospital, workers hauling a corpse out of an apartment and a quarantined child crying for her mother. The videos’ authenticity could not be confirmed.
The agency asked local branches to craft ideas for “fun at home” content to “ease the anxieties of web users.” In one Hangzhou district, workers described a “witty and humorous” guitar ditty they had promoted. It went, “I never thought it would be true to say: To support your country, just sleep all day.”
Then came a bigger test.
“Severe Crackdown“
The death of Li, the doctor in Wuhan, loosed a geyser of emotion that threatened to tear Chinese social media out from under the CAC’s control.
It did not help when the agency’s gag order leaked onto Weibo, a popular Twitter-like platform, fueling further anger. Thousands of people flooded Li’s Weibo account with comments.
The agency had little choice but to permit expressions of grief, though only to a point. If anyone was sensationalizing the story to generate online traffic, their account should be dealt with “severely,” one directive said.
The day after Li’s death, a directive included a sample of material that was deemed to be “taking advantage of this incident to stir up public opinion”: a video interview in which Li’s mother reminisces tearfully about her son.
The scrutiny did not let up in the days that followed. “Pay particular attention to posts with pictures of candles, people wearing masks, an entirely black image or other efforts to escalate or hype the incident,” read an agency directive to local offices.
Larger numbers of online memorials began to disappear. The police detained several people who formed groups to archive deleted posts.
In Hangzhou, propaganda workers on round-the-clock shifts wrote up reports describing how they were ensuring people saw nothing that contradicted the soothing message from the Communist Party: that it had the virus firmly under control.
Officials in one district reported that workers in their employ had posted online comments that were read more than 40,000 times, “effectively eliminating city residents’ panic.” Workers in another county boasted of their “severe crackdown” on what they called rumors: 16 people had been investigated by the police, 14 given warnings and two detained. One district said it had 1,500 “cybersoldiers” monitoring closed chat groups on WeChat, the popular social app.
Researchers have estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in China work part-time to post comments and share content that reinforces state ideology. Many of them are low-level employees at government departments and party organizations. Universities have recruited students and teachers for the task. Local governments have held training sessions for them.
Local officials turned to informants and trolls to control opinion.
Engineers of the Troll
Government departments in China have a variety of specialized software at their disposal to shape what the public sees online.
One maker of such software, Urun, has won at least two dozen contracts with local agencies and state-owned enterprises since 2016, government procurement records show. According to an analysis of computer code and documents from Urun, the company’s products can track online trends, coordinate censorship activity and manage fake social media accounts for posting comments.
One Urun software system gives government workers a slick, easy-to-use interface for quickly adding likes to posts. Managers can use the system to assign specific tasks to commenters. The software can also track how many tasks a commenter has completed and how much that person should be paid.
According to one document describing the software, commenters in the southern city of Guangzhou are paid $25 for an original post of longer than 400 characters. Flagging a negative comment for deletion earns them 40 cents. Reposts are worth one cent apiece.
Urun makes a smartphone app that streamlines their work. They receive tasks within the app, post the requisite comments from their personal social media accounts, then upload a screenshot, ostensibly to certify that the task was completed.
The company also makes video game-like software that helps train commenters, documents show. The software splits a group of users into two teams, one red and one blue, and pits them against each other to see which can produce more popular posts.
Other Urun code is designed to monitor Chinese social media for “harmful information.” Workers can use keywords to find posts that mention sensitive topics, such as “incidents involving leadership” or “national political affairs.” They can also manually tag posts for further review.
In Hangzhou, officials appear to have used Urun software to scan the Chinese internet for keywords like “virus” and “pneumonia” in conjunction with place names, according to company data.
A Great Sea of Placidity
By the end of February, the emotional wallop of Li’s death seemed to be fading. CAC workers around Hangzhou continued to scan the internet for anything that might perturb the great sea of placidity.
One city district noted that web users were worried about how their neighborhoods were handling the trash left by people who were returning from out of town and potentially carrying the virus. Another district observed concerns about whether schools were taking adequate safety measures as students returned.
On March 12, the agency’s Hangzhou office issued a memo to all branches about new national rules for internet platforms. Local offices should set up special teams for conducting daily inspections of local websites, the memo said. Those found to have violations should be “promptly supervised and rectified.”
The Hangzhou CAC had already been keeping a quarterly scorecard for evaluating how well local platforms were managing their content. Each site started the quarter with 100 points. Points were deducted for failing to adequately police posts or comments. Points might also be added for standout performances.
In the first quarter of 2020, two local websites lost 10 points each for “publishing illegal information related to the epidemic,” that quarter’s score report said. A government portal received an extra two points for “participating actively in opinion guidance” during the outbreak.
Over time, the CAC offices’ reports returned to monitoring topics unrelated to the virus: noisy construction projects keeping people awake at night, heavy rains causing flooding in a train station.
Then, in late May, the offices received startling news: Confidential public-opinion analysis reports had somehow been published online. The agency ordered offices to purge internal reports — particularly, it said, those analyzing sentiment surrounding the epidemic.
The offices wrote back in their usual dry bureaucratese, vowing to “prevent such data from leaking out on the internet and causing a serious adverse impact to society.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 13:20 - UK's Largest Testing Lab Suffers COVID-19 Outbreak According To Whistleblower
UK’s Largest Testing Lab Suffers COVID-19 Outbreak According To Whistleblower
The UK’s largest COVID-19 testing lab has suffered outbreaks in three out of its four scientific testing teams, after what one worker claims were repeated breaches of safety protocols.
Photo via Sky News While the total number of infected are unknown, approximately 20 out of 70 people in one of the teams at the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Laboratory are currently isolating according to the whistleblower.
Sky News reports that the outbreak has put considerable strain on the lab, which has been tasked with processing 70,000 tests per day from across the country – yet hasn’t been able to achieve that number despite 12-hour shifts and “cramped working conditions.“
Staff working in the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab. Credit: CEO Tony Cox @The_Soup_Dragon “The whole thing’s a joke,” said the worker.
The lab worker also raised concerns about the safety of the lab, saying that rules put in place to keep staff safe were being broken in order to meet targets – a claim the Department of Health and Social Care denied.
…
The lab worker said that new recruits had been sitting in the canteen while they waited for their test results.
According to the lab worker, one new warehouse staff member received a positive test result after they had sat in the canteen during a period when a whole lab team had been in there for a break. –Sky News
According to the whistleblower, a ‘bubble system’ was implemented to keep staff separate, following a recommendation from the Health and Safety Executive – yet, it’s not being respected as workers move between groups and risk further cross-contamination. There has also been mixing in the building’s lobbies and at the canteen.
This may be the inevitable outcome when an unprecedented effort to process thousands of tests per day collides with reality. We wonder if testing accuracy has also suffered?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 12:40 - BBC Publishes Cringe Guide For "Talking To Conspiracy Theorist Relatives" At Christmas
BBC Publishes Cringe Guide For “Talking To Conspiracy Theorist Relatives” At Christmas
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
The British Broadcasting Corporation, the bastion of all that is proper and right, has published a handy Christmas guide for how to talk down to relatives who believe in nasty ‘conspiracy theories’, and it’s a huge sack full of cringe.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson effectively cancelled Christmas for a third of the UK, and is now threatening to lockdown the entire country on Boxing Day.
That is not enough for the woke state broadcaster, however, which clearly feels it needs to instruct Brit NPCs on how to debunk the dangerous disinformation being spread by their unmutual uncles and disharmonious descendants.
“How should you talk to friends and relatives who believe conspiracy theories?” The BBC headline reads.
“You’re dreading the moment. As your uncle passes the roast potatoes, he casually mentions that a coronavirus vaccine will be used to inject microchips into our bodies to track us,” the ‘five point guide’ outlines, adding “Or maybe it’s that point when a friend, after a couple of pints, starts talking about how Covid-19 ‘doesn’t exist’.”
“Or when pudding is ruined as a long-lost cousin starts spinning lurid tales about QAnon and elite Satanists eating babies.”
Cringe.
Ok, so what does one do in this horrible situation, oh mighty and wise Big BBC Brother?
“Keep calm; don’t be dismissive; encourage critical thinking; ask questions; don’t expect immediate results.”
Eh? So don’t immediately shut them down as a dangerous conspiracy theorist who spreads fake news? Just retain that thought in your head while you deeply patronise them with your received BBC approved spoon-fed opinion.
OK then.
Perhaps chase them down the street screeching questions about why they are not wearing a face mask? Probably a good tactic.
Next tip?
“People who believe conspiracy theories often say: “I do my own research.”
Well, how dare they believe something not published by the BBC. How bloody awful.
“The problem is that their research tends to consist of watching fringe YouTube videos, following random people on Facebook, and cherry-picking evidence from biased Twitter account.”
So we take away their social media accounts then, right?
“Your aim is not to make them less curious or sceptical, but to change what they are curious about, or sceptical of.”
Ah, OK. Direct them to the BBC website then?
Any more tips, oh corporate board of directors earning millions per year from scalping old ladies by pretending they have to pay you to own a TV?
“Focus on those who are pushing these ideas, and what they might be getting,” says Claire Wardle. “For instance, financial gain by selling health supplements, or reputational gain in building a following.”
Yeah, those evil conspiracy theorists, making a living AND selling vitamins that are good for your health.
What’s next
GandalfBBC?“Conspiracy theories tend to be simple, powerful stories that explain the world. Reality is complex and messy, which is harder for our brains to process.”
Ouch, thinking hurts too much. Got it.
Wait, so pedos don’t run the world then?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 12/25/2020 – 12:05
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