December 31, 2021

The higher power can be non-religious, like Love. Love yourself, love others, let love sustain you.

When you feel you "need" a drink, but don't want it or shouldn't have it according to whatever regimen you have chosen, ...

... help yourself then by thinking of love: those you love, love for the wonderful parts of yourself, care for the not-so-wonderful parts (which get better with time), love for the good you accomplish, love for friends, love for country, love for humanity, ...

... love for a bird chirping in the morning.


Don't not-drink as an "obligation" or as a discipline. Don't not-drink because of the negatives which you are well aware of. Don't kick yourself. You've kicked yourself enough.

Not-drink for the positives of not drinking. Not-drink because when you don't drink you have more capacity to give and receive love.

If you fail and have a drink you don't want, that's okay. It's not really failing. Thomas Edison tried a thousand ways to make an electric light bulb and they all failed. When asked by a reporter, he said he was happy because now he knew a thousand ways not to do.

Don't worry about failing. Celebrate the successes of love as they occur and call them to mind from time to time.

December 28, 2021

mRNA vaccines in development for years before Covid. They just replicated the snippet & put it in

So the clinical trials were accelerated, but not by much. And not because of tRump's efforts.


But, critically important, tRump had no workable vaccination plan in place when he left office.



So if anyone gives you BS about "experimental not-a-vaccine" don't accept it and give them the truth and tell them to do some "basic research, duh", i.e. look it up. Anti-vaxxers are very proud of their pitiful attempts at "research".

December 14, 2021

I felt that about Barr at the time he resigned. Jan 6 was in the future but being talked about

People like me well outside of DC knew something was in the wind. There was chatter on RW sites.

Before the election:



Tweet by tRump Dec 19:








emphasis added:

December 14, 2021

The military had multiple reasons to stay out. Esper was fired Nov 9, 2020 for defying tRump in summ

Esper had refused to deploy military on the streets in the summer of 2020, knowing that tRump would only be using it as a prop for his election campaign and using it as a way to create more polarization, hoping "the Left" would go apeshit nuts to create the chaos of "american carnage" that tRump was always making so that he "alone could fix it."

General Milley made it clear at the time and again nearer the election and after that the US military would not intervene on any side in political partisan conflict.

By Nov 9 it was clear that tRump had lost and so Plan A was to pressurize and extort the needed Electoral College votes by hook (threats), book (lawyering), and crook (fraudits). Plan B was to create chaos Jan 6 to stall the EC vote count in Congress and create an antifa-trumpanzee armageddon in Washington and other locations around the country. Antifa wisely kept the f away.

Plan B required Esper out of the way.



There was the practice rally Dec 12th that included speakers calling for tRump to invoke the Insurrection Act. It was a test skirmish that saw Proud Boys fighting antifa.



Why January 6th rather than say Jan 14th or Dec 30? We know the answer. And so do the seditionists.

December 14, 2021

And Dog came down and smote the Gaudy Cone at Pine Eleven for the Lie Factory's sins. . . . nt

December 12, 2021

Note: you are on about the capitalism-psychology theory of games, not the mathematical one

Capitalism-psychology because it is the art and science of manipulating reward (as you say) for profit. I began by writing psycho-capitalism and almost kept it because in extremis, capitalism is kinda psychotic.

The math one is in its simplest form that there are three types of games: zero-sum, positive-sum, and negative-sum.

Democrats and progressives want the country to work together to make the game positive sum.

RepubliCons think it has to be a zero sum game (somebody's gain is their loss) and so they fight for themselves, their families and their groups (always defending privilege) against the "other". This of course makes the game negative sum if it becomes widespread. "Hands offa MY stack, Jack."


The invisible hand of capitalism requires enlightened self-interest for the rising tide to lift all boats.

December 6, 2021

There's your entry

Every time talk/posts turn political, drop Biden's latest act of decency and just let it sit there. Don't defend it. If he attacks it, repeat it, perhaps in simpler terms, once. Like the deaf girl and the Kennedy Center Honors.

If he drops his guard and says something like, well I guess Biden is more decent than tRump, then he'll qualify it with "sometimes". Just say "You can generally say the same about Ds and Rs." And let it sit there.

Good luck! I don't know. I don't know what would work. Just a goofy idea.

December 5, 2021

If we take that as an absolute then

It would invalidate vaccine mandates and requirements.

So, ying-yang with two dots, and all that, there are very few absolutes, and this is not one of them.

Then we have to ask how and where to draw the line.

I think it becomes a question of public good and innocent victims.

A pregnancy is between a woman and a lover, partner, if there is one and potentially a doctor. The woman gets the veto. It is firstmost and foremost a private matter.

Pandemic contagious illness is a public matter. It could not be farther from a private matter. As a practical matter, the inconvenience and potential side effects (including possibly death) are miniscule in comparison to the side effects of the uncontrolled virus. Even when weighted by rates and severities.

Believing in outlandish theories, as a group, does not give group members the right to infect other people. That in particular means no right to evade the vaccines and carry on regardless.

Their (and our) right to our own bodies is limited because our bodies can invade other bodies (metaphorically) via replicated viruses.

There is an old saying "Your right to swing a fist ends where my nose begins." Failing to take common counter measures against spreading the virus (masks, vaccines) is like swinging a fist. And you can't put all the onus on the nose; the virus is always most effectively stopped inside and at the body replicating and expelling it.

December 4, 2021

Barrett's adopted children taken from Haiti because US children not needy enough?

Or because it is effectively easier to (metaphorically) buy children there?

I don't doubt she has a good part of her heart, because she has as a fact adopted three children. But the rest of it, bless her heart, is at best clouded with some hypocrisy and possible motivations that make you scratch your head.



That's consistent with adopting from a foreign country. Fewer complications from the grieving mother, then or in later years.

{emphasis added:}


Wow.

December 4, 2021

In theory & prob should be goal, prosecution is even-handed regardless of the case.

Agressiveness, or rather assiduousness, should be a linear function of the severity of the crime: increasing severity gets increasing assiduousness. "/əˈsɪdʒ.u.əs.nəs/ the quality of showing great care and attention to detail: the assiduousness of his care for her. She approached her job with a rare assiduousness." I think assiduousness is more desirable than aggressiveness which can lead to affairs like the Richard Jewell persecution, when under public pressure cases get warped.

In practice, especially with elected prosecutorial positions, prosecution is going to reflect to some degree the public interest. However, public interest is democratic and is itself a function of the public's chaotically reasoned assessment of the severity. So public interest has a good correlation with the severity of the crime, even when confounding factors like color range come into play.

Those and other confounding factors are a third input to the function that outputs prosecutorial assiduousness.

Public_interest = democracy_function (severity, experience, chaotic_confounding_factors);
Prosecutorial_Assiduousness = government_function (severity, public_interest, confounding_factors);

Severity is key, public interest is democratic and correlated with severity, confounding factors are those which tend to confuse, cloud, and warp the function.

(More generally, the biggest confounding factor to democracy functions and government functions are the profit driven media and self-centered aspects of capitalism, respectively. "But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain)