Category Archives: Death Of Common Sense

Officially, the United States has over 963,000 deaths from COVID so far. That’s a very conservative number, due in large part to states such as Florida very deliberately undercounting COVID deaths. The actual number is almost certainly more than twice that.

And yet, almost every state has gotten rid of most mask mandates, except for possibly in hospitals and on public transportation. Businesses can still put their own mask mandates in place, but few if any will.

“The pandemic is over!” Bullshit. Anyone who thinks that is a fucking idiot. In the US, while the numbers from the “fourth wave” caused by the Omicron variant are decreasing, we still have something like 1,500+ deaths a day.

A! DAY! 1500!

Boy, we freaked out of our minds over 2,977 deaths on 9/11, didn’t we? But now we’re losing that many of our family and neighbors every 48 hours and no one cares.

What brings this to the forefront and has me so pissed off tonight?

The grocery store yesterday morning.

After over two years of almost 100% compliance with masking requirements, things changed in an instant with the lifting of the mask mandates. It’s been a week or so and last week there were still mostly folks all wearing masks, one or two not, but this week? It’s over folks. Even here in blue California where the loudmouth idiots protesting masks and vaccines were a vocal but very tiny minority, this week the masks came off.

Maybe half of those in the store (besides the employees) were masked. Maybe.

Next week I expect it to be less. And less the following week.

Okay. Whatever. I will continue to wear a mask at all times indoors in any public place, but that’s just me. And a small minority of other sane folks.

For the politicians and those at the CDC who caved to the insane rantings of the vocal minority, I have a question:

Now that you’ve let go of the reins and gone to useless “recommendations” to stay masked, what are you going to do when the numbers start climbing exponentially again?

The genie’s out of the bottle. Pandora’s box has been opened. There’s no going back.

When we’re back to infection rates and hospitalization rates and death rates that make the fourth wave look like a picnic (and remember, we’re STILL at rates that would have horrified us during the first wave), how do you re-start mask mandates and get any compliance whatsoever?

Herd immunity? Never going to happen.

At some point enough people will die, and the health care system will be overwhelmed enough to collapse, and the morons still won’t wear masks, but enough of them will die slow, horrible deaths so that the rest of us can get on with our lives and do what we need to do to stop this.

Until then…

Hey, y’all! You know all of those tips and suggestions that you get about internet security and safety that you’ve been ignoring about 99% of the time?

Now’s the time to take every one of them incredibly seriously 24/7/365. The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! And you can bet your ass that they’ll be scattering spam and phishing and ransomware out there like cluster bombs. Touch one of those by accident and you’ll be extremely messed up for a long, long time.

So remember:

NEVER open an email of any kind unless you know who it’s from. Hopefully you’ve got a spam filter that these malware laced little threats get put as a first line of defense. If so, assume that everything in there is in there for a reason. And even if something slips through to your regular email box, be suspicious of everything.

NEVER go to a site based on clickbait. C’mon, folks! Be smarter than that! Why do you really care for two seconds about Kanye or Taylor or Beyonce at all to begin with? You all know what these things look like. With what’s going on in the world right now, one of these days real soon now it’s going to take you not to a mindless site filled with vacuous celebrity drivel but instead to something that’s going to lock your computer and erase everything on it.

It seems obvious but I know folks who have fallen for it recently – NO ONE WITH THE IRS, FBI, POLICE, CIA, M6, YOUR BOSS, OR ANYONE ELSE IS COMING TO COLLECT A BILL WHICH YOU CAN ONLY PAY OFF IN GIFT CARDS. Okay, so this isn’t necessarily part of a Russian World War III plot, but you’re more likely to get one that almost kinda sorta looks like it might be legit in the near future. IT’S A SCAM!!! Trust me, if the IRS is going to come after you, you’ll get something legal IN THE MAIL. If the police or FBI want you, they’ll just kick your door in. If it’s a creditor, they may make your life a living hell, but they won’t be paid in gift cards.

Make sure you have a good anti-virus program, make sure it’s running, and make sure that its definitions are current.

Make sure you have a full backup of your computer and make sure that it’s offline and not going to get locked and/or corrupted at the same time your computer does. Better yet, get three external hard drives (hell, you can get 10+ terabytes for about $130, and drives over 20Tb are now available) and make three backup sets. Keep one at home (NOT plugged into the computer), have one nearby but not at home (can you store it at work? can you and a friend swap holding onto each other’s?), and have one way off somewhere (do you have a family member in another state?) where it can’t be touched.

As the above proves – BE PARANOID!

My computer holds tens of thousands of photos, video, financial documents, not to mention all of the entertainment content (music, videos, publications, books, and so on) that I’ve purchased over decades. One mistake, one idle moment of curiosity instead of paranoia, and I’ll be staring at a screen with that laughing skull thing that Jeff Goldblum had on the alien mother ship in “Independence Day” while forty years of content goes away.

I would be seriously pissed for the rest of my life about that. (When our car got broken into in Montreal and my briefcase stolen back in 2004 they took a couple of memory cards full of photos that I’ll never get back again and I’m still pissed!) I choose paranoia instead.

Actually, it’s not paranoia – there really, REALLY are folks out there who are and will be trying to mess up my life like that. And yours. And everyone else’s if they can. It’s random, it’s evil, but it’s happening.

It’s war. Literally.

Be smart, be prepared.

And start yesterday.

I’ve recently mentioned those who, beyond all concept of common sense, believe the Earth to in fact be flat.

How do you explain this?

Image from Flight Aware

That plane is flying a straight line to a very good first approximation. It’s the shortest route between Los Angeles and Seoul, while accounting for things like Russian air space and North Korea.

If, from this view, the “shortest route” would be pretty much due west from LAX, passing just north of Hawaii, then why would the airlines routinely fly from LAX, up the US and Canadian west coast, along Alaska, crossing the Aleutian Islands, down the Russian coast, and across Japan? Given that the price of gas is by far the number one variable in the profitability or viability of modern airlines, do you really think they would do this on every single flight for every single airline, just to keep up the conspiracy and illusion that the Earth is flat?

If you won’t believe or trust science and math, then just follow the money.