solarfed

In case you haven't noticed, conversations here and on my blog can get pretty strange sometimes. Yesterday was no exception. On the weekly Covid open post, we ended up discussing the way that Franklin the Turtle (an iconic Canadian children's book character) has been picked up gleefully by the meme artists of the populist right and used in ways well designed to get howls of outrage from Canada's liberal elite. The obligatory comment about evil reptilian overlords duly appeared, and it occurred to me just how unfair it is that we blame reptiles for the behavior of, say, Bill Gates. 

When I was a kid I used to keep pet snakes and lizards, so I'm fairly familiar with the behavior of reptiles. My experience is that, unlike certain plutocrats we all could name, they're not malevolent, power-mad, or crazed with insatiable greed.  If you keep them well fed with mealyworms, they curl up under the heat lamp and doze off, radiating a sort of sluggish squamous bliss.  I suppose we could try making Gates eat half his body weight in mealyworms, then stick him under a heat lamp and see if the same thing happens, but I have my doubts. 

The whole "evil reptilian overlords" business, for that matter, comes from British sports reporter turned conspiracy theorist David Ickes. I get the impression that he spent too many late nights watching reruns of that dubious 1980s SF show V -- the source of the poster on the right -- in which evil reptilians from space disguised themselves as human beings and took over the world. (That's basically the theme of Icke's books.)  Since I'm not a fan of either the TV show or Icke's uncredited rewrites of it, I'd like to suggest that it's time to spare reptiles the utter ignominy of being associated with Bill Gates or any of the other usual suspects, and ask the natural question that comes to mind...

Just what are Gates et al.? 

(Or, if you want to be a little less conspiratorial about it all, what sort of life forms do they resemble?)

I'll look forward to your suggestions in the comment thread. My theory, at least for the moment, is that they're evil space opossums. Opossums like trash, right? (When I encounter one, it's usually raiding a trash can.)  The most obvious product of the people we're discussing, and the system over which they preside, is the mass production of trash. (When was the last time Microsoft released a product that wasn't total trash?)  They're all marsupial supremacists, I tell you...

In that jocular vein, I throw the comment thread open to researchers into the alien biology of kleptocrats. 

We are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; new revelations are leaking out about just how bad the Covid vaccines are for human health; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button. 

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.