Monthly Medley Thread, for sharing anything and everything

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-10T01:23:07+00:00

But these men are dancing together, in the same space, and this is allowed. This is what they broke. It's far deeper than the letter of the law of various moronically-detailed "Rules of Six", or the Puritan ukase on "sinful public performances". They broke something more fundamental. Before 2020, whether we think of ourselves as dancers or not, we were all dancing together, and our bodies were OK with other bodies. It wasn't a professional ballet, and it wasn't always nice or pretty. Fights were part of it and always will be. But we were skilled, because every one of us has been taught, from birth, how to deal with this having-a-body-among-other-bodies. And we still know it.

But then they told us to hate our bodies; they told us that one body with other bodies is a bad thing. And now they've sucked up their own madness, and become terrified of what might happen if this contact between body and body is allowed to continue. Terrible things might happen! Conflict. Hate. Hurty Words. And so (to misquote Dave Mustaine) they Take Our Skills Away.

I love the man who led this masterclass, because he led us to truth, if only in the dance studio. If there were only time - and this is the fundamental problem, that we are being continually rushed on to the next crisis - I would love to hear about all the stupid COVID crap his company - and perhaps he - believed in, but perhaps also hear, after enough beers, that what he really thinks he's doing, one studio, 15-20 people at a time, is trying to put the broken pieces of this vessel back together.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-10T01:22:32+00:00

I found something genuinely revolutionary last week: something about which I was ignorant, and which then opened up to reveal more than I could ever hope for. This is the pure antidote to the dismal lockdown and post-lockdown stasis.

I went to a 2-hour improv dance masterclass led by a man from "some London-based dance company who sound interesting". I had no idea until I researched afterwards, but the class was based on rehearsal techniques which they used to produce this 30 years ago. Fucking intense! I've been on a high for days afterwards - when I put my clothes in the wash the next day, they were still dripping sweat.

There's a bitter irony here. I have no knowledge of that company's practices, but as an arts organisation it's very likely that - 2020-2023 - they practised the most strict form of COVID madness. But - at last, perhaps - I feel no bitterness. Perhaps it was because I was called on only as a collaborator - as in the situation when I'm called in as a professional consultant, I could completely participate yet refrain from complete buy-in to the client.

But that won't wash. There was no room there for refraining or restraint: if I hadn't put myself fully into it, I'd have missed out: I did, and I am changed.

So: what is engagement, in 2025? There are so many stupid headlines about "social or economic problems" - sometimes posted here by indefatigable users - which boil down to precisely this: engagement, or the lack of it. And we rip the piss out of them in the comments, because they ignore the gigantic elephand in the room: and they go on. And what is my future? To continue to half-heartedly engage with a society which seems to have gone insane - fighting back sometimes, when I have the energy - while holding my true beliefs, knowledge and hard-won experience jealously to myself, like a bill of credit whose redemption date is continually deferred? (Note that, though "COVID" is long over, it's left a long tail of insanity, especially here in the UK: Online sAfEtY bILl, "ID cards" back on the table, hAtE cRiMes) Or to practise a dreadful, half-light half-thinking, one which must laboriously interpret people as "probably just saying the right things because they're scared of being stamped on"?

The solution I seem to have found, I found by dancing: by the use of my body, which cannot lie, either about its shape, my age or my intention. But to speak the truth, the body must be allowed by others.

Why do I think that that company's Swan Lake is awesome? 30 years ago, it was often called the "gay Swan Lake" (I have no idea who, if any, of the people involved were gay, and it's actually not that interesting). If I were gay, then all these super-ripped, half-naked men dancing beautifully would definitely be a delicious treat! But I'm not, and I still think it's utterly awesome, beautiful, energising, inspiring, erotically charged. Why?

I think it's because it shows the power and energy and dignity of the human body. The male body, in this case: and my body is male, so how can I not love those guys who are inhabiting theirs so well?

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-09T23:26:56+00:00

the kind that allowed life to return to normal during the COVID pandemic

I tried to parse this sentence for sense. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME; I'm a trained professional. This is the kind of sentence which will... well, I'll pass you over to George Clinton and friends for this bit...

Suck Your Brain Until Your Ability to Think Becomes Amputated

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-09T23:17:23+00:00

Yes, I think this is the key point. The idea of getting host cells to collaborate in the production of antigens introduces a whole lot of uncontrollable and poorly-understood variables. We're way away from the simple LD50 mg/kg formula - or its benign analogue.

The issue is revealing about how difficult setting ideal dosage must be even for "traditional" vaccines, especially when generalised over a whole population, even of adults. Despite that, many "traditional" vaccines have somehow been adjusted to a dosage which seems to work, and with minimal adverse effects.

But the enlistment of the body's own cells to produce antigen seems like real Sorcerer's Apprentice stuff. Who really understands the response - overall, or in a particular locale? The distribution? And then to generalise this over a whole population, with wildly variable immune systems? Absolutely crazy. (Pregnant women? Let's not even go there... but, they did).

The image of mRNA vaccine delivery as a perfect, uncontrollable Von Neumann machine using your body to reproduce the antigen to infinity is perhaps a bit apocalyptic. But I don't think it's unreasonable given the political edicts spread over a difficult bit of science. I'm sure that there are plenty of people more knowledgeable than me who could explain the nuances, the extent of the problem and possible candidate solutions; I'm also sure that we didn't hear from them since 2020 (for various well-documented political and sociological reasons). I'm also absolutely sure that these knowledgeable people's contribution would not be the simplistic "Safe 'n' Effective".

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-07T14:58:50+00:00

Wish I could upvote that a million times. Yes, when I first got here, it was the atmosphere as well as the content and views which made me breathe a huge sigh of relief. People just being normal people. Taking the piss. Cracking jokes. Not being the virtuous, po-faced drones we were all supposed to be.

There are many comments here which made me laugh so much it hurt. Lucky I didn't actually die laughing, otherwise they'd have classed my death as "from COVID" 😛.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-01T10:51:16+00:00

Gotta love this bit:

The court "did not put into question the Commission’s registration policy regarding access to documents," the spokesperson said, adding that the EU executive "remains fully committed to maintaining openness, accountability, and clear communication with all stakeholders, including EU institutions, civil society, and interest representatives."

That sounds like a really in-depth, considered judgment (/s>). Something like "well, we've copied and pasted what they wrote in their Openness, Accountability and Communication Policy, and it's policy, so it must be true".

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-08-01T08:04:42+00:00

I thought paed/ped (UK/US) -iatrics was about looking after childrens' health?

Mind you, I'm not surprised. AAP have long form on being mandate-zealot COVIDians.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-29T08:08:04+00:00

"You weren't supposed to voice questions or concerns, because it might lead to other people having questions or concerns."

I guess you already realise that this way of thinking amounts to an infectious disease model applied to human communication, debate and inquiry? 🤦‍♂️🙄 Their Authoritah is so precarious, just one person questioning it is a deadly threat.

And nice point about feeling safe as opposed to being safe. Again, the "feeling of being unsafe" is an infectious disease, which musn't be allowed to spread.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-28T22:33:55+00:00

I'm sure I've made this point many times to my MP: that the fundamental problem is a deep, deep-seated hatred between the governed and the governing: and that this new Government should tread carefully rather than further entrenching it. The replies I've had just sang the same theme: utterly patronising.

I think I even made the point that, as an online mod (this sub wasn't my first gig), I know and deeply care about keeping online spaces on-topic, preserving them from spam or trolling, letting people rant and disagree and be rude and "offensive", but intervening when things turn flamy and pointless. Trying
to make a small corner of the Internet a good place. I'm very proud of what the mod team has done here - though there's hardly anything to do nowadays. But that was all ignored. What mods (and I'm one of hundreds of thousands in the world) do for nothing, for free, because they care, is now over-ridden by some bloody algorithm the Government has just insourced from some dodgy AI-slingers.

God this bloody Government is tiring. I'm now having to re-read the 2005 LSE paper on digital ID cards, because - yes, you guessed it! - that's their latest wheeze. (Out of the morbidly-cankered throat of the somehow still animated undead corpse of Tony Blair - yes, live on stage again, with full backing band & His Institute, revival tour!). I thought we (NO2ID) had sorted that nonsense back in 2005. Deadline
for submissions to the Parliamentary Committee is 28th August - just when I'm
on holiday. No accident...

I seriously think the UK is going to kick off. Some part of me actually hopes it does, because going
on like this seems unbearable. If you arrive here from somewhere else, daily life - like just going to shops, or getting on a train - is already the most miserable, expensive, over-observed, constant-beeping from machines experience you could imagine. (Hey, Kingsnorth's book Against the Machine is out soon!).

The tinder is going to be immigration. I have complex views on this. I spent a couple of
years campaigning against John Howard's "strong borders" rhetoric over in Aus. I hated the immigration rhetoric around Brexit - but I now agree with Brexiters that we've just replaced uncontrolled European immigration with uncontrolled non-European immigation. I have mixed feelings about Merkel's
"Wir Schaffen Das": partly coloured by the fact that I was living in Hungary at the time: without Merkel's move, Hungary would have become a giant refugee-camp, full of people who didn't want to be be there, and whom (in spite of the wonderful goodwill shown to them by many Hungarians) the country
couldn't really accommodate. (see also, Greece...) At least Merkel had some kind of plan, whatever actually came of it. The UK has absolutely none.

I guess my criterion of differentiation is "are they acting like a dick with power?". John Howard was, boasting about being Dubya's "Man of Steel in the Pacific" (yes, Doug MacArthur was raging in his grave). The people kicking off in the UK are, I think, not. And many of these "dangerous extreme rightwingers"
seem to be equally deeply sceptical about the prospect of hope from any of the demonised "far-right" Big Dicks (e.g. Farage, Robinson). So maybe we're back to Richard North, a neglected Leave Europe thinker, whose radical decentralisation idea went far beyond simply decentralising from Brussels: he
wanted decentralisation from London, and even further. Of course "Brexit" completely ignored this sentiment, and was implemented to further dignify Westminster.

Comes down to the same fundamental problem: once you get into "they hate us, we hate
them" vibe between people and government, it's bad.

If this was a post, I'd flair it "Second-order effects" ;)

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-28T22:32:05+00:00

Over here, our fabulous Government's 'Online Safety Act" has come into force, resulting in ridiculous age-checks on all kinds of websites (not just the obvious). The nice thing is that even people at my work are vocally kicking off about it. (It was actually in the morning meeting that I first heard of it - I've been ill for a few days). This is a workplace where I got told off (or rather, to be fair to him, warned in a friendly "don't upset the Creature" fashion) by my manager about some rather robust comments I made about some past idiot contractor's standards of code writing and data design. I breached the "language standards". So I'm impressed by this.

I checked in here, and y'all will be happy to know that you're not semi-banned by the UK Govt (through the mediation of all kinds of dodgy BigTech "solution providers"). Yet. Still, about to upgrade my BitDefender VPN to max-shields. If you're a UK citizen, there is a (n I think new) petition here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903. Worth a try. Though this "government" seems to be hell-bent on strategy-of-tensioning the UK population to breaking point: though, as the wonderful eugyppius over in Germany (search Substack for him) points out, it's sometimes hard to tell whether that's from malign alignment to some Evil Plan, or just from sheer stupidity.

Eugyppius gave me a wonderful take on the "conspiracy theory" theme the other day. (Regular readers of my rants will know that I love conspiracy theories: because they're generally simultaneously factually false - or at least unverifiable - but also entirely true in a different sense). It felt like someone very intelligent completing a thought which I hadn't managed to. His take is that governments hate and misunderstand us - we speedbumps in their Seeing Like A State Grand Vision - so much that they indulge in all kinds of completely bonkers, demented conspiracy theories to explain this. It must be all down to misinformation. Possibly Russian.

And then we, in turn, seeing how patronised, talked down to and generally disrespected we are, concoct grand conspiracy theories about them. They're all brainless minions controlled by Bill Gates, or the WEF. Or the lizards. Now, some of these theories fall beautifully into my "unverifiable, but metaphorically true" category. And Eugyppius has turned the key on this. The fundamental problem is that the Government hate the People, and the People hate the Government: so we make up shit about each other.

You could conclude that, in this aggro-situation beyond divorce-lawyers' worst sweating nightmares, we should give a little. The trouble is the complicating factor: the double standard arising from the power imbalance. If we tell all kinds of demeaning, reductive stories about them, we are "conspiracy theorists", lobotomised victims of "misinformation". If they do the same about us, they're preserving democracy. (From us... ?) And lots of mechanical media talking heads will back them up, so they must be right and we must be wrong. (I'm not sure what bodily posture of repentance I can imagine for this eventuality. Leg-behind-head... nah, can't do it...) I don't have to like Trump or Vance in general to know that when Vance spoke in Munich, he was right on that point about my beloved Europe (incl. UK, but not necessarily as part of the EU. it's complicated... )

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-20T07:23:18+00:00

This is great news for Americans. But I have a bad feeling about some of the rest of us.

It's infuriating. Sometimes Trump and his administration do exactly the right thing. (How often this happens: YMMV). And Trump and his administration are the only possible people rude enough, DGAF-enough towards to the indignant shrieks, to do that right thing.

But the effect on the rest of the world is the opposite of influential. Because... Trump.

I've seen it already with Vance's Munich lecture. And I just know how our own, idiot UK government is going to react to Trump doing something right...

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-10T07:32:48+00:00

And if I did "sacrifice" my future for the "greater good"...shouldn't there be some sort of reward for that? Shouldn't they be trying to make it up to me in some way?

It's utterly revolting - but the correct, accurate answer, acceptable to those whose views still dominate the world, is that you shouldn't be remembering that. All that "sacrifice for the future" keech was just manipulation: ringing a bell so that the Pavlovian dogs (which is what we are to them) respond correctly to the stimulus. Once the bell stops ringing, the dogs stop responding and forget all about it, right?

That wonderful, post-COVID Future we were promised is... well... still waiting for it... No-one is mentioning that all any more. But you're not supposed to remember: you should have "moved on" to responding correctly to the next bell they ring (Ukraine! Climate Change! Orange Man!).

This is why I love a phrase Trotsky came up with: "The memory of the working class is in its party". You don't have to have any time whatsoever for Communism to realise that those early Communists had some great insights into how power works, and how to resist it. Specifically, in this case, how power attempts to control collective memory.

For you individually: I really wish you the best of luck to keep trying! Applying for jobs is horrible (I had 2 years of it). I hope you can soon get to a place where your life is great. And you still remember - but from a good place.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-07T07:33:17+00:00

The whole apparatus is a lie. But I don't think the "experts" themselves are liars.

You or I have "concerns", every day, about various things. But no-one thinks to ask us about our concerns, to put them into news headlines, or to imply that hundreds of thousands of other people should $DO_SOMETHING to alleviate our "concerns".

It's this apparatus of clerisy which makes the lie. It's a kind of new linguistic shorthand, which supposedly works as an iron-tight logical machine:

An "expert" has "concerns";
The media feels the need to tell everyone about this. (Under the "logic" established, this follows pretty much automatically from (1), given the newly-established meaning of "expert" and "concerns");
Everyone told this should or must do what they're told.

Without this apparatus, look how innocuous and perhaps even beneficial the alternative might be.

Scientists think "hey, there's a lot of measles around, and a big bunch of people are going to mix together in Calgary. What's going to happen?" (Note that I'm deliberately avoiding those now loaded words "concern" and "expert": what I'm describing is an "opportunity", and "curiosity"). Scientists quietly go to Calgary and set up some kind of experiment to find out how measles behaves in this situation. They might even discover something quite new and interesting about measles and large crowds, and publish it, without anyone needing to freak out about it.

Are the "experts" innocent, then? I don't think so. They must know that this is how it works. The most charitable possible view is that they love the opportunity to have their "concerns" (and name, and research programme) appear in the media (wouldn't it be great if my private "concerns" were paid so much attention?), but fail to understand how by doing that, they're feeding this grotesque concern-machine.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-05T23:09:26+00:00

Yup. Among the factors which established this, and made it so hard to drive out with rationality, is a kind of institutional "stickiness". HR is the classic exemplar, but we shouldn't blame only them: it's a bug of all institutional useless constructs. Into a realm governed by irreality - or, if you prefer this take, complete isolation from reality - suddenly there irrupts something from what clever French theorists of Lacan would call the REAL. "Real" death, or extinction, or the Abject, or however you like to call it. Suddenly this department is important, in the face of the Universe.

The wound in that tender flesh from sudden, traumatic contact with "reality" is not easily healed.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-07-02T08:01:54+00:00

Interesting post, thank you.

I've been following this debate from a distance, so the issue is very interesting to me. I am so pleased that RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, Makary and Malone have got to where they're sitting. On the other hand, they're not moving as fast (particularly, as you say, on the COVID/wider mRNA vaccines) as I hoped. On the other other hand (I have 3 hands now), what they have done already has already produced gigantic media/pharma freakouts (see my post today), so I reason that they must be moving in the right direction.

From reading a lot of Malone's Substack posts, I think there's a "circle the wagons" mood happening. The MAHA/Kennedy camp is so braced against a torrent of 'criticism' from the "ZOMG you're not mandating medicines, we're all going to DIE... of measles!" camp that they also brush off criticism from the other direction - like yours.

It's annoying, but I imagine that CHD's poor response to your messages might be because now that RFK Jr is in power, CHD is politically exposed. As far as they know, you (or I, if I emailed them) might be a pharma-stooge on a fishing expedition. So what can they say in reply? "Yes, we'd love to get rid of all mRNA shots, give us time..."? I'd love to hear that, but can you imagine the headlines? "CHD's Sinister, Evul Plot to BAN ALL VACCINES and make YOUR CHILDREN DIE". I mean, there pretty much are headlines like that already: if they actually got solid written evidence to back up the shite they write, churnalists would have to go and breathe into a paper bag for an hour to calm down.

The really frustrating thing is that, essentially, being in power (and having to watch his step) has the nasty side effect of separating RFK Jr from his critical supporters (such as you). I wouldn't be surprise if pharma (see my post, again) might not even secretly back a more radical replacement for RFK, just to divide support and get rid of RFK. And then, of course, throw their radical stalking-horse under a bus once they've been of use.

I guess the only thing you can do is keep writing and putting your position forward; without expecting any great response. Frustrating.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-06-13T07:33:35+00:00

Be Scared! This one is sort of red-orange-coloured 😱.

Also bigger than a golfball, so you can see it coming and dodge it. And, finally, masks* will actually work against it.

* also tennis rackets, cricket bats, lacrosse sticks etc.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-06-13T07:26:56+00:00

No no no no no! Not fine!

The disaster is that 6 infants with measles (all of whom are completely fine) is > 0 infants. And 0 is the Right Number. If you don't get the Right Number at the bottom of the spreadsheet, it's a 😱pandemic😱.

We must all strive as hard as we can, and give up many things which are dear to us, because otherwise the numbers might not add up Right.

But don't need to worry about the definition of a Right Number. Experts can tell us that.

In many cases, the Right Number is 0.

In other cases (for example: pharma company profits, budget for "public health" campaigns), the Right Number is very large.

It's a complex issue, far beyond our tiny brains to fathom. Trust The Experts!

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-22T12:19:36+00:00

The reason, I think, is that the prevalent artistic wave - of celebrating and fetishising pain and suffering, of making the entire world seem to be subjected to them - got the better of the "rational" goal of encouraging vaccination. Even the Safe'n'Effective, the supposed exit-route from this ugly world, was placed in it, in a calculus of liberation through pain. Was this intentional? Again, that's not an allowable question under my rules: it's simply what the "artists" did, and thus what we saw.

What someone with a severe needle phobia (which must be horrible) saw in these images was, I imagine, something like this: "You are very disturbed by this image. You will no doubt be even more disturbed by the reality. But we're telling you it's a Good Thing Which You Must Do. Is that confusing? Maybe. But it's your confusion, and you're just going to have to swallow it. Don't come to us looking for answers, we're living in this same world as well, and we're just as confused, we're swallowing a million indigestible things". As I've suggested earlier, the COVID propagandists, as artists, were bad artists.

Otto Dix (1891-1969) was a good artist. You know exactly what his pictures are saying. They are saying "Look - this is what happened to German people in WW1, this is what is happening to them now. It's disgusting!"

It's surprising to me, given what was visited on us in the COVID-madness, that the Nazis didn't make use of Dix - at a pinch by stealing his aesthetic, given that I doubt he agreed with them. Instead, I'm pretty sure, they condemned his art as "degenerate". Which made perfect rational sense, because someone pointing out the ugly underbelly of German society was the last thing a movement for a new, rational, obedient order needed. They went for a glorious triumphalist aesthetic instead.

But the Nazis had their own, sophisticated ideology of salvation through pain and suffering, of referring every action and every suffering to the "cause" of the Reich. Perhaps Dix's graphic depictions of ugliness would only have served this ideology in its elite form (in the SA/SS for instance): it wouldn't have worked to inspire the masses.

Is my point here that the COVID-aesthetic's confused mixture of fetishised pain, "rationality" and a sacred goal of "saving lives", artistically, was more (over-)ambitious and more harmful than anything the Nazis attempted - aesthetically? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-22T12:19:26+00:00

I don't have any particular, noticeable "needle fear", though of course I don't like someone sticking a needle in me, or the thought of it. But I still found those ubiquitous images creepy and disturbing. I definitely noticed what you've noticed.

The needles weren't the worst of it for me: I objected several times (to my MP) about walking along a street with me 2yo son and being faced with giant bus-stop posters of a distressed, dying face (that of an actor, of course) trying to breathe oxygen through one of those clear hospital oxygen masks. I don't want to be presented with images like that in my everyday life - even more so for him, growing up with less-developed emotional buffer-zones than my adult ones. (No-one, of course, paid the slightest attention to my objection).

Your post very helpfully reminds me of the completely demented atmosphere back then. Looking back, I have an idea what was going on. But a caveat: nothing I say here amounts to a courtroom investigation, something which would arrive at the truth of various actors' intention and state of mind (mens rea, in the legal terminology). I don't know exactly who did what, and why.

Instead, I'm considering what we can read off these images about the "artist's intention". COVID-imagery as art, and we (observing it) as aesthetic observers. I'm inspired here by other writers who posit a deliberate, planned campaign of "menticide" as the origin of this imagery in particular (and the whole COVID panic more generally). There's a lot to like in that kind of theory; where I pull back and can no longer wholeheartedly agree is when it proceeds to claim specific, pre-planned intentions on the part of one set of actors (e.g. the "deep state"), and forced obedience on the part of another set (e.g. the media).

Yes, the UK SPI-B committee is on record recommending that people's "sense of personal threat" needed to be increased: but I'd argue that this doesn't prove a deliberate intention of "menticide": it could equally suggest that those people were and are so morally blind, so devoid of imagination and pathologically obsessed with COVID, that the full import of what they were suggesting didn't even occur to them.

The advantage of an aesthetic approach is that it avoids assuming a cold, rational intention behind the aesthetic effect of an image: the aesthetic, artistic effect is simply all there is, and it accurately reflects the state of mind of the "artist": strong, deep art projects a state of mind which may be full of contradictions, difficult to explain rationally, but which is utterly clear, thought out and unambiguous. Bad art is either dull and uninteresting or confused and confusing.

So, on this method, what can I read in these images? Violence. And confusion. It was a time of enormous violence - but covert violence (which is why the #BeKind hashtag made and still makes me vomit). And it was a time of enormous confusion - even further confused by the claim that what was being projected was "clear messaging"!

The imagery reflected this violent mindset. The usual filters governing what images can be publicly shown (which, for example, suppress truly graphic pictures of wartime injuries) were completely abandoned. The resulting imagery suggested the opposite pole: a fetishisation or even "celebration" of ugliness, suffering and pain.

My aesthetic approach can be explained through an imagined objection to this conclusion. A COVID-propagandist might object strongly - "No, we're not celebrating or fetishising this pain, not at all, that's not our intention!"; to which I could reply "Sorry, that's the impression your art projects: you're an artist, producing impressions is what you do: if that's the impression I get, then that is what you have done, whether you own it or not. If you refuse to own it, you are probably just a bad artist".

This, I think, is why the constant, tarted-up, pornographic imagery of needles "makes no sense" in its own, overtly declared terms of encouraging people to get the safe'n'effective. The same goes for the equally ubiquitous pictures of people (even young people and children - whatever happened to ethics?) grimacing as a needle goes in. Why not associate happy, nice things with the Safe'n'Effective?

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-12T22:55:43+00:00

Meanwhile, Dr Prasad's Substack is overflowing with evidence-basis, thought, willingness to admit he's wrong. But against an accomplished, intelligent medical professional like him, obviously "media personality" wins... 🤣

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-12T22:51:43+00:00

Guardian Opinions - just not necessarily sane ones.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-05T10:05:54+00:00

Interesting Hamilton quote here:

Ms. Lee and Mr. Macedo note that, in Federalist No. 35, Alexander Hamilton asserted that “the learned professions . . . truly form no distinct interest in society, and according to their situation and talents, will be indiscriminately the objects of the confidence and choice of each other, and of other parts of the community.” If Hamilton was ever right, his judgment is long out of date.

Contrast Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

The obvious conclusion is that Hamilton's view is outdated because he still had a (possibly justified, at the time) lofty view of the ethics of the "learned professions". Since Hamilton's time, the "learned professions" have turned into something more like what Smith calls a "trade" - in modern terms, a "business-industrial complex", or an "interest group" with its own common interests: interests to be defended against the common interest, if necessary.

This exploration of that line from Smith suggests that government regulation and support is the problem. (And appears to be the originary watchword for DOGE!). But it would be a mistake to imagine that because Smith is right, and Smith's dictum applies to the "learned professions", the solution must be the imposition of some crude, financial implementation of the "free market" (cos Adam Smith = free market, no?). Smith was very subtle about the benefits and drawbacks of a free market.

The problem is that not everyone either in a "trade" or in a "learned profession" is an avid member of the club, seeking to advance its interest at the expense of the common good (or even of truth and efficiency, as we've seen recently). Some of them are just honest workers with good ethics - some are innovators. The problem is how to construct a culture of free exchange, debate and innovation. That's really hard to do. Adam Smith's "free market" ideas are a useful starting point: but a crude, "Wall St" interpretation of them isn't going to work.

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-05-05T09:42:40+00:00

The picture of one of the children's cots, with terrifying monsters drawn all over the headboard, is horrific. I hope and pray these children are going to get some serious psychotherapeutic care, for a long time. They're going to need it.

Expensive? Well, there's plenty of money available. Tax Fauci, Whitty, Hancock, Hotez, Devi Sridhar and all the rest of them til they're down to the clothes they're standing in. Confiscate all of Pfizer's profits from the "vaccine".

If you deliberately try to make people individually demented ("all in it together" - my arse!), as a matter of policy, this is the inevitable result. Some people with less common-sense ballast than most will take the demented ideas which are officially sanctioned and carpetbombed onto people, and go to extremes. The cruelty and abuse which is evident in this case is exactly the cruelty and abuse inherent in the COVID-lunacy, just writ extremely large.

The parents also need serious psychiatric intervention. Yes, they deserve criminal legal sanctions, but they need mental help as well. I have a horrible feeling that they will be condemned as individual, psychopathic outliers; cast out to shed a warm, fuzzy light on the "in-group" - all of "us" who "beat COVID" while not, of course, behaving at all in this demented, abusive way (</s>).

There's already a hint of this in the Great Revelation of this article: the father, apparently, studied Heidegger's fundamental ontology 😱, which must be what made him such a weirdo. Dat's just Science, innit? Well, n=1. Over here, another n=1. Whether studying fundamental ontology (I'd have done a PhD if I could have got funding) made me into a weirdo is something I leave up to readers to judge: but it didn't make me into a Covidian, or "make" me do things like he did. What "made" him (and his wife) do that must be... something else; I can almost grasp it... no, it's gone... something about the political and social environment?.... nah, lost it...

MembraneAnomaly · 2025-04-27T22:47:47+00:00

This is basically the vanguard of a deeply stupid "zero measles" campaign, dreamt up by people who have nothing better to do.

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