Wrong failure
Headline from "Skeptical" Inquirer:

Psychics Oddly Did Not See a Pandemic Coming

Wrong point. The epidemic is nothing special. It happens every year with one type of respiratory virus or another. It kills people who are ready to die from one pathogen or another.

The fortune-tellers can't be blamed for failing to warn us about an annual event, because it's nothing unusual or special. When dying people die from one brand of virus instead of another brand of virus, it's not news.

What the psychics failed to see is the total holocaust "justified" by the annual epidemic.

Or did they? I don't know, and don't feel like spending time on the question, but it's a question worth asking. Run through Youtube astrologers during 2019 and see if they converge on a prediction of total tyranny starting in Feb 2020.

After a quick glance at my favorite rapturite, I can see that the survey would be difficult and time-consuming. Psychics are ALWAYS predicting one type of apocalypse or another, and they're right in a general way. Deepstate has been forcing a chronic apocalypse since 1975, with periodic acute phases. This year's acute phase is the worst yet, with worse still to come after we briefly and partially "recover" from this phase. That's how psychopaths work. Unless we rid the world of psychopaths, we're all dead fairly soon.

Answering this question would require a lot of detailed listening and checking of captions to find the exact timing and shape of the prediction, and then to see if many psychics converged on that exact timing and shape.

Overall I'd rather trust astrologers than paid "scientists". Repeating from 2017:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

How do you know which side of a "debate" is good?



"Scientists" jail you for questioning "science".

Astrologers don't jail you for questioning astrology.


MDs force you to follow orders by withholding life-sustaining prescriptions. (In any other context this would be called extortion.)

Alternative healers don't force you to do anything.


Social "scientists" design and operate torture chambers.

Psychics and faith healers don't.


Non-smokers jail you for smoking in the wrong place, which is pretty much every place.

Smokers don't jail you for not smoking.


Bankers jail you for using cash.

Goldbugs don't jail you for using debit cards.


Globalists bomb you for questioning the Empire.

Localists don't bomb you for being a globalist.


The non-jailing and non-bombing and non-interventionist side of each debate is good. The jailing side is bad. Jailoleth.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

This year I need to add a new Jailoleth to the list, except it's not really a pair.

Epidemiologists jail and starve healthy normal people, and release criminals from all rules and laws.

.... But there isn't a well-formed opposing vector, as with the previous alternations. There isn't a named or defined 'alt-epidemiologist'.

Ordinary people with ordinary scientific literacy have been trying to counteract the epidemiologists, but we don't have a Guild or a Title or a Profession. We're just lovers of reality and lovers of LIFE, trying to defend real science and LIFE from all the Guilds and Titles and Professions who have unanimously joined the holocaust.

Labels: Asked better than answered, Leth

  ¶ 10:59 PM

  Huge point-missing
Interesting article on demography by Marcus Roberts at Mercatornet. (This isn't exactly AI point-missing, but MercatorNet is closely related to the websites I usually hammer for AI.)

Roberts notes that most of the major powers are aging fast and not reproducing. Normal people get calmer with age. Prison wardens and cops have always understood this, and have focused their attention on males under 30.

So the major powers SHOULD become calmer with age. But obviously USA is becoming more and more belligerent toward foreign countries and ESPECIALLY toward its own people. China has always tended toward internal slaughter, with several major episodes in the last century. Now Russia has suddenly rejoined the internal slaughter club, after 20 years of remarkable sanity and courage by Putin.

The youngest nations, mainly in Africa and South America, are NOT belligerent. Some of them have problems with internal strife and revolutions, but none of them are making external war.

Roberts misses a couple of HUGE points.

However, whether this ageing phenomenon will also make either China or Russia less belligerent is harder to predict. While the USA, as a democratic nation, may be constrained by its population’s wishes, as well as by its requirement to provide increasing funds for the electorally powerful “grey vote”, similar constraints do not apply as strongly to Beijing or Moscow.

"Democracy" is an utterly empty word. It never had any meaning. "Elections" never have the slightest effect. We use "Democracy" as a weapon against foreign countries we want to obliterate. We call them "authoritarian", and bomb them down to bedrock in order to "make them safe for Democracy". We've been doing this since 1890, except for the brief blessed lucid interval** from Harding through FDR. We're never "constrained by the public's wishes." On nearly all important issues, 2/3 of the public disagrees with the constant government policy of total obliteration. Only 1/3 enjoy mass murder, because they foolishly imagine that they are "on the same team" as the murderers.

And the grey vote is another empty myth. This is part of the old Tocqueville 47% Largesse ratshit. The government doesn't work that way. In recent decades Congress has cut SS benefits, and started taxing the benefits, with no hesitation. Congress DIDN'T raise the cap on earnings for YOUNG people who are still paying into the system. Raising the cap would offend the top 0.01% of rich fuckheads, so it can't possibly happen.

Psychopathic fuckheads have all the power regardless of age.

Most of the top psychopaths are way over 70. Trump, Soros, Hillary, Biden, Adelson, Bolton, Buffett, all the Federal blackrobes, all the leaders in Congress. Younger psychopaths are serving as governors and mayors and "public health" officials. They're just as bloodthirsty as the older psychopaths, but they're not currently in a position to influence foreign wars. When they finally move into the top positions, they will continue to obliterate everything.

= = = = =

** Also 20 years of internal and external peace. From 1921 to 1941 we were minding our own business and trying to improve our own nation. Just like Putin from 2000 to 2020. Is this a natural constant? Is there a natural timer on belligerent nations that rings an alarm and throws a war switch after 20 years of peace?

Labels: 2/3, AI point-missing, Asked better than answered

  ¶ 12:01 AM

  Observations worth exploring
A wonderful essay on ALL the senses including olfaction, found in an 1893 publication by Perkins School for the Blind. The piece by John Vars starts on p 25 of this PDF.

I'll quote a bit of it. The whole thing is eminently worth reading.

This echo spoken of by Mr. Perry is always present, though it is unnoticed by those who depend upon their sight for observation, except in a very quiet street or at night when it is very still. But to us who depend upon it for a knowledge of our surroundings it becomes not only very perceptible, but very communicative as well.

Through it we learn what the average man learns through his eye. The kind of echo given back by the fence or wall beside which we are walking tells us whether it is composed of wood, iron, or stone. By means of this echo we are also able to tell the style of wall or fence which we are passing, — that is, if it is of wood, we can tell whether it is built of matched boards or whether it is a slat fence; and, if it be of iron, whether the bars are perpendicular, as in a picket fence or whether they run horizontally, as in a gas pipe fence. It also indicates to us the height of a fence or wall, which we can tell quite accurately until it exceeds that of our own stature.

Unlike most writing from that era, Vars's observations hold up after recent findings in neurology and acoustics. In fact neurology might do well to explore some of those fine distinctions. Especially the vertical measurements, since it's generally assumed that bilateral localization doesn't work well in the vertical dimension.


Carver.

Look about you.
Take hold of the things that are here.
Talk to them.
Let them talk to you.

Labels: Asked better than answered, Carver

  ¶ 7:34 AM

  Better question
Supposedly an easier way to solve quadratic equations.

I can see the logic of the method, and I'm always in favor of understanding a situation deeply enough that you don't need to memorize a formula.

But in this case the derivation is harder to remember than the formula. There are a couple of counterintuitive steps that defeat the purpose of non-memorized understanding.

Bigger question: Do we ever NEED to solve quadratic equations? I've been doing bookkeeping and electronics and graphics for 50 years, using quite a bit of math, and often using the basic manipulations of algebra. I've never needed to solve a quadratic equation.

I use lots of squares and square-roots, in the context of RMS or reactance or polar to rect conversion. Those processes don't turn into quadratic equations. In the slide-rule era they could be solved with trig functions, and in the computer era they can be programmed directly.

Labels: Asked better than answered

  ¶ 12:45 AM