December 7, 2021

7:12 a.m. — the temperature was 10° — I bundled up well and got this photo of a bit of light in the heavy clouds.

IMG_8516D

55 comments:

rhhardin said...

Glenn Loury takes up a direction I suggested here just a few days ago, that assuming genetic differences leading to bad black behavior actually takes black embarrassment out of the picture rather than increasing black embarrassment.

youtube clip (12 minutes)

a teaser clip for the full show coming next weekend.

gilbar said...

Omarova nomination to be top banking regulator being withdrawn
What Sort of World, Are We Living In?
we can't even make a marxist (that believes theft is property) into our top banking regulator

wildswan said...

I've been trying to understand my Covid risk of death. To that end, I went through several iterations of the Milwaukee Medical Examiners site, looking at "natural deaths." Here's what I found. The best way to think of the death risk is to divide the people who die into four categories - sick and vaxxed, sick and not vaxxed, not sick and not vaxxed, not sick and vaxxed. If you look at the numbers, you see that those with major illnesses are most likely to die - 133 with a major illness died v. 5 with no other disease. Within this division you can see that the vast majority dying (87) have two major diseases and are not vaccinated. This is the difference vaccination makes. Moreover, no healthy vaccinated person under 95 died in the time frame while 8 healthy, unvaccinated people died. Again, vaccination makes a difference.
These statistics cover all ages and races. If you delve into the statistics online you further observe that the many of the younger people dying are morbidly obese or have cirrhosis or have cancer, though Covid is the cause of death.
And you see that obesity especially means more than age or race in terms of risk.
Now since being obese or having diseases related to being overweight such as diabetes and hypertension is present as a factor in so many Covid deaths at all ages it seems to me that keeping people moving rather than locking them down should be a goal. It seems to me that we need protection against obesity more than anything else.
There are other conclusions to be drawn. But anybody can go online and look at the Medical Examiner records here or in Chicago and see what is their actual risk in their own area. Particularly note the risk to a healthy vaxxed person.





There were 140 Covid deaths in the period.
87 people who died had no vax and had two major diseases besides Covid such as diabetes and heart disease
28 people who died were vaxxed and had two major diseases besides Covid such as diabetes and heart disease
13 people who died had no vax and had a major disease besides Covid such as diabetes or heart disease
5 people who died were vaxxed and had a major disease besides Covid such as diabetes and heart disease
8 people who died who had no vax and no other major cause of death but Covid.
1 person died at 95 who was vaxxed and had no other major cause of death but Covid.
https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/Medical-Examiner/Public-Data
Dec 6, 10am-October 23, 2021 Milwaukee




Mike of Snoqualmie said...

It must be nice to be an official thief:

Cops seize $106,000 from a woman with a layover at Dallas Love Field.

I'm sure $90,000 will arrive make it into the Dallas Police Chief's safe.

Lewis said...

I think no one writes music for films like they used, from Dmitry Tomik through Bernard Herman (why do I always thing of Humbert Humbert with him!?) to Elmore Bernstein (no relation) - all exciles from the disastrous mittleeuropa attampt at 'goodness' or 'excelence' or 'honour' or just effing music. To feel that full orchastra upon you, as a child,, was what I suppose the ones who 'rattled there pearls' knew but , often, I imagine, didn't 'feel'? I think 'real' music, if you wish, of the 20 centuary, both the 'music hall' and the 'Classical', is written for films, the rest being garbage. Think of Ennio Moricane. Think of Jaws or Psycho. Of Marnie. Now that was 'modern' music. Think of Gone With the Wind and how everyone was driven, with the red river, into everybodies arms. Not anymore. We're tin deaf listening to nothing.

Kai Akker said...

When I was in high school, an assigned book was the pretty well-known A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. I remember liking it well enough.

Bear with me.... : ). My wife joined a book club in our new hometown in which that was the first book of the new "season," September, I believe.

So it was lying around and I picked it up the other day and thought, why not read it again 500 years after I first read it. I am finding it quite gripping. The principal dramatic event occurs in the summer session of their private school, "Devon." in the summer of 1942.

You may recall the movie of that title. Summer of '42, that is. Young man has torrid affair with lonely wife (of a GI? I forget, but must have been). No relation to book.

The Dole obituary items reference the summer of 1942 because that was when he felt it incumbent on him to enlist, despite not wanting to interrupt a pretty good college life. That was precisely the feeling of the Exeter students in the book; they were rising seniors and did not quite relate to war.

So as I find my way back into A Separate Peace, which I look forward to reading each evening, I have been struck by these coincidences.

That's all! Just had to tell somebody. It was a critical and memorable time, even though we have lost touch with most of the reasons that would be so. The novel is copyright 1959, so it took Knowles a while to process all that, too.

Lewis said...

Hovel.

Not a night to be seen:
The curtain, what’s left,
The dwindling, seeming circuit
Of autumn’s coming cold:

As this page may testify
Bought at a lower rate
Peace from oblivion of love.

That invented horizon
Aimed to or turned from
The test I failed at.

Scraped sense in the ditch of words
Till the line, a borrowed light,
Illumines what memory
Imagined as love.

And yet the illusion real,
You the ghosted thought,
Muse of this hovel.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I lost my bragging rights about cold (I am in NH), when sons # 3 and 4 moved to Nome and Tromso, respectively.

Lewis said...

Poet.


                      .I.

That poet could not know
A time like this
And yet he cursed his day
Better than this.

Is time then a falling slide,
Poet and knave bruised
On a dumb rocky mountain side?
Then what we have we lose.

Still, what has been has been:
That from beauties flesh was born
Some marvellous, flesh tearing form
Still finds its somewhere reflective dream.


                     .II.

Or do we but count the corn,
Watch the rats’ numberless dawn,
Hear the room tying rain,
See ragged faces painless pain?

We always do that,
The prisoner and the rat
Eyeing their despair;
Or in the day
Where in we might say
“Here is the wrong, stupid lair.”

It’s hard to keep eye fixed ahead
When there’s but counting of the dead.



                     .III.

“Enough fools for us all!” Democrats say:
Thus they have built their day –
To confound the strong and the good
Idiots for a guard they’ve stood
Sweating, breaking out loud.

What poet can pierce that crowd?
                     .IV.

Over the hill more might be seen:
You watch the Tower beaten in dream
You who see the living die.

Over that crowd beaten eye
There’s but the canopy of lead:
Let the dead bury the dead.

Andrew said...

Kai,
Thanks for sharing those coincidences. I've always loved that novel (A Seperate Peace). I first read it in high school, and I've read it twice since. It's such a simple story, but has an elemental power. The image that stays with me is the character who has mental issues (can't remember his name), describing the incident at the tree, an the parts of an engine consecutively moving, surrounded by machine gun fire. Some books just kind of "work" for me, and that novel is one of them.

Lewis said...

When I was 15

gadfly said...

When then-President Donald Trump was infected with COVID-19 in September 2020, the disease weakened him to the point where he couldn't carry his briefcase, according to a new book from his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

As Trump prepared to depart the White House on October 2, 2020 to board Marine One en route to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, he laid his briefcase on the floor and apologized to Meadows for being unable to carry it, as Meadows details in "The Chief's Chief."

"I'm sorry," Trump reportedly said at the time, according to Meadows. "I-I just can't carry that out there."


So sorry, but a search of Google images shows no photo where Donald Trump has ever carried a briefcase - that what his security does. So now we know why Meadows is unwilling to testify to the Jan 6 Committee under oath and why Trump calls the Meadows book (as he calls almost everything he doesn't like) "Fake News."

Lewis said...

I think, unless I write, I'm dead. Hence...

farmgirl said...

Hovel/Poet
A tribute- fitting of the day
4ever remember

That is, I think, the thinnest of ice-

Lewis said...

Kai Akker, I don't know the book but I know the feeling, I think. To look back...Are we all getting very old, stiff in our limbs, our brain cells stuck in in the jelly that it is? Are our souls so tired of this stupid life and the stupid people they're ready to fly? I guess so. Not all of us - you, for instance, have an earthbound reason to be here - children and grandchildren etc. That is why 'nostalgia' can be 'bad'. One becomes cranky and 'old'. I assume that's not you but I know it's me!

Lewis said...

Nice one farmgirl

BG said...

Blogger Mike of Snoqualmie said...
It must be nice to be an official thief:

Cops seize $106,000 from a woman with a layover at Dallas Love Field.

I'm sure $90,000 will arrive make it into the Dallas Police Chief's safe.


Obviously she should have turned the cash into a cashier's check. (Or whatever they do these days.)

Blogger Kai Akker said...
You may recall the movie of that title. Summer of '42, that is. Young man has torrid affair with lonely wife (of a GI? I forget, but must have been).


I will always remember that movie. First date with my first real boyfriend. The woman had just received word that her husband was KIA, that's when young man and the woman went from friends to..."I need comfort..." The boyfriend dumped me after six weeks for chick who "put out" more than I would. I was devastated for a very long time. (First love kind of thing.) Saw a photo of him just a few years ago...put on quite a few pounds. His wife needs to avoid COVID big time.

wildswan said...

Who can describe how an American Stasi would operate and how it would be like and unlike The Lives of Others?

gadfly said...

wildswan said...
There were 140 Covid deaths in the period.
87 people who died had no vax and had two major diseases besides Covid such as diabetes and heart disease


Cartographic deaths should never be discounted but diabetes kills only 5 people in every 1000 who contract the condition, so including the insulin-deprived patients in any statistical discounting of the 812,000 US Covid deaths is misleading - actually silly.

Type II, which represents 90+% of all diabetes, can now be totally controlled with a pill and, of course, so can SARS-CoV-2 with a vaccine stick. So bail out of the useless stats and get stuck.

BG said...

This was an interesting read:

https://greene.house.gov/unusually-cruel (Click on Read the Report, bottom left of page.)

Right now it's hard to process my emotions about what is going on there.

gilbar said...

wildswan, thanx for compiling those numbers, you make a pretty persuasive case
That i should go back to my daily walks (and lose some weight)

Lewis said...

farmgirl, for you

The sound of the rain
In the buckets
That you swam in.

Bender said...

Let's talk "@SherylLewellen," the young pretty blonde woman who first tweeted out that farce of a "white supremacist" march as a dangerous thing. Except that her image was computer created and the Twitter address later came back to the Patriot Front, with lots of leftist followers, before it was suspended.

https://twitter.com/jarvis_best/status/1467586508269899777

Caroline said...

So I started to watch the new Benedict Cumberpatch western on Netflix, the power of a dog, I think. I lasted around 45 minutes. Montana is beautifully shot. I’ll give it that. He plays a seasoned cattle rancher with a mean streak. I hung around to see where this might be going. Its like they made a movie focusing on the twisted, degenerate nemesis played by Walter Brennan or burl ives, instead of Jimmy stewart or Gregory peck. I turned it off when it seemed headed for Brokeback Mountain— the later years. Luckily I caught the tail end of Shop Around the Corner, and got a little cleansing Jimmy Stewart before turning in. It’s like Hollywood wants to kill whatever is good, true or beautiful. We are some sick puppies in 2021.

Drago said...

The Poor Man's *** ***** gadfly: "and why Trump calls the Meadows book (as he calls almost everything he doesn't like) "Fake News."

Interesting note, gadfly STILL believes in the hoax dossier, hoax russia russia russia collusion, hoax secret server comms between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank, hoax Trump money laundering for russkis, and (insert 100+ other hoaxes here).

All things that Trump didn't "like", because they were obvious lies, and thus title "fake news", because, well, duh, they were and are.

Next up for gadfly: Why Trump is actually responsible for Alec Baldwin shooting some gal in the face at point blank range and why its wrong for Trump to label such news "fake news" simply because he doesn't like the lie.

gadfly said...

Oh no! A conservative group, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found “no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” in 2020. No voting machine problems, no "ballot dumping," but there were 130 reported instances of registered felons voting and 42 reported ballots from deceased voters. Yes indeed, Joe Biden got more votes in the Badger State than our past ex-President.

Joe Smith said...

'So bail out of the useless stats and get stuck.'

How can anyone spend their entire life being such a pussy?

I've had two shots and I'm done for now.

I spend about zero time thinking about covid unless some pussy brings it up.

People need to get fucking lives...

AZ Bob said...

George Orwell's estate approved retelling "1984" from woman's point of view.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

--1984, George Orwell

farmgirl said...

Lewis-
Resist the temptations of those whispers in your ear
They are not encouraging the release of a weary soul, only the condemnation of it.
We are all better for your resistance-
It gives us courage.
Truth will prevail

Caroline: I did the same w/Home 4Christmas. A Norwegian movie- I don’t mind subtitles. It’s all about the sex- which is too bad b/c I really liked the character. Pretty girl. I just got tired of the egocentric, heathen living…

wildswan said...

"gilbar said...
wildswan, thanx for compiling those numbers, you make a pretty persuasive case
That i should go back to my daily walks (and lose some weight)"

That's my point really. The stats from CDC go by age and race but that isn't a dynamic way to look at the problem. The question is who dies - which, of course, takes in the question of who gets sickest. The people dying in the great majority of cases have several major conditions. Having several dangerous conditions is more commonly true of older people which is why so many are dying but it is also true of some younger people. The true threat seems based on how many existing, systemic conditions you have when you catch Covid, not your age or race. Once you see this, the element of randomness in Covid disappears and you can assess risk. A healthy 78-year old is much safer than a morbidly obese 34-year-old just as an alert driver is much safer than a drunk driver - age and race aren't in it. Public policy should reflect this. Masks and lockdowns should be reconsidered in the light of the actual danger to the general population. Anybody can look at the stats for their own county and assess their risk. (I looked at Cook County also to see if the Milwaukee sample held but I used Milwaukee because Wisconsin has one of the best death-to-case ratios in the country. The stats aren't messed up by the level of care.)

BUMBLE BEE said...

I started rereading 1984 but I couldn't help but seeing it all around me. Had to set it down.
I totally enjoyed this example of mania Listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f5QLLH0sS0

BUMBLE BEE said...

Crazy!
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/11/an-open-letter-to-the-students-of-archbishop-riordan-high-school

Lucien said...

This week’s “Blocked and Reported” podcast deals at length with the fact that the shooting of Jacob Blake appears justified based on the reports of two investigations into the event, and also speculates about how and why the media got things wrong.

gilbar said...

so, gladfly?
i assume that you WANT people to discount any and all of your "facts"?

i mean that's Why you NEVER
a) provide a source link
b) even provide a source
I'm assuming that you WANT people to think of you, as a moronic f*ck?

Kai Akker said...

--- I will always remember that movie. First date with my first real boyfriend. The woman had just received word that her husband was KIA, that's when young man and the woman went from friends to..."I need comfort..." [BG]

Aha, yes, that makes better sense; thanks for the plot clarification.

The first summer of war for modern America, that's what tied those three separate stories together.

I wonder if the pandemic has been serving a purpose or purposes anywhere nearly as significant.

Lewis said...

farmgirl, thanks

The moon
In a pool
That I swam in!

Lewis said...

farmgirl, it's only because my roof is leaking!

BudBrown said...

10'? Brrr. I guess it makes it easier achieving cold neutrality.

Gerda Sprinchorn said...

Thanks wildswan! That was a lot of work and very informative.

Gerda Sprinchorn said...

Caroline said:

So I started to watch the new Benedict Cumberpatch western on Netflix, the power of a dog, I think. I lasted around 45 minutes.

Did Cumberbatch's accent strike you as odd? Like it wasn't really from anywhere specific? Like a Brit trying to do a generic western accent?

Also, it was shot in New Zealand.

Lewis said...

Poor, naked wretches, where so e’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?

King Lear Act III, Scene IV, Lines 28-32.

Lewis said...

The street II.

Now and then a curtain flits and a stare
At second or third floor windows opposite,
Half inquisitive of hotel happenings,
Half irritated by mock grandeur,
Brute noise this particular Victorian,
Part empty site displays. It’s the habit
Of some drawn up to face, across the nightly peace
Of no mans land, the street, dull combatants
On each side: Perhaps poverty separates you
From the pub downstairs, a certain angst
About the pull of popular haunts,
Getting more than your fair share of inarticulate friends.
A chance modern law decides
Dividing speech and the neighbourhood,
Forming false battles, situating
Between you and it a televisual screen,
Your thought on some Heaven
Where face to face we met,
Your eyes on some dark glass of a window.
You’re seen, the curtains drawn.

It’s something to be remarked upon,
Odd how every night it is done
Not only by you but repeated
Down the street, each side a sentinel,
If not throwing sticks in a fire, then
Looking out to see who’s watching who,
Catching the nightly skirmishes that,
With not uncommon frequency, continue
To punctuate a phoney war. Now and then
That irregular exchange of cigarettes
Or your side strikes the light, mine offers the fag.
Usually, though, askers are causalities
Rejected by us both, mostly ignored,
Often sleeping somewhere out of sight,
Under a bridge or whatever bomb shelter
Accident has devised, they roll in slumber
Tight into a plastic bag or the damp,
Soggy cardboard once used to wrap our guns,
Tanks, communications, surveillance units.

It is to be remarked upon how little
I see of you, how quickly you disappear,
How suspicious of you and I this neutral,
Unneutral status makes us: Together
Manufactured means of war – now we test them out.

But I’m bored of killing, it’s become such a
Common exercise – I wish you’d sign a truce.

Lewis said...

The street II.

Now and then a curtain flits and a stare
At second or third floor windows opposite,
Half inquisitive of hotel happenings,
Half irritated by mock grandeur,
Brute noise this particular Victorian,
Part empty site displays. It’s the habit
Of some drawn up to face, across the nightly peace
Of no mans land, the street, dull combatants
On each side: Perhaps poverty separates you
From the pub downstairs, a certain angst
About the pull of popular haunts,
Getting more than your fair share of inarticulate friends.
A chance modern law decides
Dividing speech and the neighbourhood,
Forming false battles, situating
Between you and it a televisual screen,
Your thought on some Heaven
Where face to face we met,
Your eyes on some dark glass of a window.
You’re seen, the curtains drawn.

It’s something to be remarked upon,
Odd how every night it is done
Not only by you but repeated
Down the street, each side a sentinel,
If not throwing sticks in a fire, then
Looking out to see who’s watching who,
Catching the nightly skirmishes that,
With not uncommon frequency, continue
To punctuate a phoney war. Now and then
That irregular exchange of cigarettes
Or your side strikes the light, mine offers the cig.
Usually, though, askers are causalities
Rejected by us both, mostly ignored,
Often sleeping somewhere out of sight,
Under a bridge or whatever bomb shelter
Accident has devised, they roll in slumber
Tight into a plastic bag or the damp,
Soggy cardboard once used to wrap our guns,
Tanks, communications, surveillance units.

It is to be remarked upon how little
I see of you, how quickly you disappear,
How suspicious of you and I this neutral,
Unneutral status makes us: Together
Manufactured means of war – now we test them out.

But I’m bored of killing, it’s become such a
Common exercise – I wish you’d sign a truce.

Chris Lopes said...

"Oh no! A conservative group, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found “no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” in 2020."

The report also says " it is almost certain' that 'the number of votes that did not comply with existing legal requirements exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory.'". If you are going to use a report to mock people you see as your interiors, you might want to be sure it doesn't contain anything that might contradict your thesis. If you don't, it's the "inferiors" who end up laughing.

Lewis said...

The street II.

Now and then a curtain flits and a stare
At second or third floor windows opposite,
Half inquisitive of hotel happenings,
Half irritated by mock grandeur,
Brute noise this particular Victorian,
Part empty site displays. It’s the habit
Of some drawn up to face, across the nightly peace
Of no mans land, the street, dull combatants
On each side: Perhaps poverty separates you
From the pub downstairs, a certain angst
About the pull of popular haunts,
Getting more than your fair share of inarticulate friends.
A chance modern law decides
Dividing speech and the neighbourhood,
Forming false battles, situating
Between you and it a televisual screen,
Your thought on some Heaven
Where face to face we met,
Your eyes on some dark glass of a window.
You’re seen, the curtains drawn.

It’s something to be remarked upon,
Odd how every night it is done
Not only by you but repeated
Down the street, each side a sentinel,
If not throwing sticks in a fire, then
Looking out to see who’s watching who,
Catching the nightly skirmishes that,
With not uncommon frequency, continue
To punctuate a phoney war. Now and then
That irregular exchange of cigarettes
Or your side strikes the light, mine offers the cig.
Usually, though, askers are causalities
Rejected by us both, mostly ignored,
Often sleeping somewhere out of sight,
Under a bridge or whatever bomb shelter
Accident has devised, they roll in slumber
Tight into a plastic bag or the damp,
Soggy cardboard once used to wrap our guns,
Tanks, communications, surveillance units.

It is to be remarked upon how little
I see of you, how quickly you disappear,
How suspicious of you and I this neutral,
Unneutral status makes us: Together
Manufactured means of war – now we test them out.

But I’m bored of killing, it’s become such a
Common exercise – I wish you’d sign a truce.

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4


I think you're beautiful.

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQciegmLPAo&list=RDMM&index=5

Lewis said...

Are you going to get of the repeats?

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6fQP9EiMaE

Lewis said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbFQEcpJ3A

The same

Lewis said...

I, f#ckoff bastards, write music like nothing. Do you know when everything is beautiful. It works. Rasberry beret.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbFQEcpJ3A

Lewis said...

How do you stop wanting women, when, by defenition, you are a cig? Or, rather, the other way, assuming one 'likes' men, how can one lie to women? I think of Prince. Very difficult.

Lewis said...

I know what he feels - both male and female, small - he wants what we all want - affirmation. But that can't happen, until you grow taller.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG3VcCAlUgE&list=PLrwXzbX3SWnu1H2yesZA0-28anAKGK6ZE&index=4

Lewis said...

Martina, she was beautiful:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laY0PncoSqk

Lewis said...

Never Again.

That night we were cold,
Flame licking frosted endeavours,
Borrowing the warmth of strangers,
Songs whipped among frailty
Almost with rhythm of heart,
A few frozen sparrows twittered,
You smiled politeness, I said:
“How do you do? How do you do?”

Then:
Sudden catch of a fevered glance,
I panicked, spilled the tea,
Scolded the mutterings,
Eched an awkward pleasure.
Late, I took my leave,
Came never again.