(Above Otero County Commission at the beginning of the day making the pledge of allegiance.)
The Otero County Commission had a long day of discussions and reports today and then they landed upon the issues with the 2020 Election. They voted to eliminate voting machines in the county!
TGP reported this morning on today’s petition to eliminate using voting machines in the county.
After a day of discussions, the Otero Commission voted on the three following items.
The commission voted to pass all three of the above motions.
These commissioners were fearless. The more flack they got the more they knew they were over the target. They wanted every legal vote to count.
“We do all want the same thing. We all want a fair election”
“If we don’t find out what’s going on, we’ll never know.”
Wow, these commissioners were great.
Here is the actual vote by the commissioners:
Major hat tips to Attorney David Clements and his wife Erin Clements and all those in New Mexico who helped make free and fair elections a thing of the future in this county.
Prior to COVID Mania, Novavax and its competitors had never brought a product to market
The rubber stamp.
On Tuesday, the FDA’s advisory committee — a concoction of massively corrupt individuals who entertain a plethora of conflicts of pharmaceutical interests — unanimously voted to clear Novavax’s COVID injection on the path to FDA emergency use authorization.
This “expert” panel, which again and again has presented a green light for mRNA injections for young children, has concluded that Novavax’s product is a worthy COVID vaccine. Why? Because they say so.
Should the Maryland-based company receive FDA clearance, they will become the 4th company in the U.S. — and the first since February 2021 — to enter the COVID vaccine government gravy train.
Don’t expect Novavax to be the cure for a coronavirus that you were looking for. There’s several reasons why you should expect this product to work as poorly as the rest of them.
Novavax was designed for the original COVID strain
The Novavax COVID-19 shot was designed in early 2020 and has not been updated to combat any current variants. This is also true for the Pfizer and Moderna shots, which were designed on an mRNA platform, and never updated.
Novavax is not a “traditional” vaccine
Perhaps the most prevalent marketing behind Novavax advances the claim that the product is a more traditional vaccine, akin to an inactivated vaccine that is associated with a Flu shot.
This idea is presented to the public with the hopes that “vaccine hesitant” individuals will take Novavax shots instead of the ostensible more edgy mRNA shots.
But in reality, the Novavax shot does not contain the traditional inactivated virus. It is usually defined as a subunit protein shot.
It’s not mRNA, but it’s also not traditional or “normal” in the sense that most understand.
Novavax has never brought a product to market
Similar to their competitors in Moderna and BioNTech, Novavax has never brought a product to market. That didn’t stop the government from investing $1.6 billion in taxpayer funds in the company.
In its 33 year history, Novavax has attempted to bring a handful of products to market, including Ebola and Flu vaccines, but the company never succeeded prior to COVID Mania. They have zero track record of success, safety, and/or efficacious products.
The Novavax shot, like mRNA COVID injections, has a demonstrated increased risk for heart inflammation
Myocarditis was observed in several of the trial participants within 2 weeks of injection.
Stat News reports: “Five of the cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in the Novavax trial were reported within two weeks of vaccination. One case may have been caused by Covid, not the vaccine, but there were no clear alternative explanations for the other cases. Four cases of heart inflammation occurred in young men.”
Myocarditis is not just a Novavax side effect. It remains a major issue among the experimental mRNA injections sold by Pfizer and Moderna.
Much to the delight of depraved Pfizer and Moderna executives, if the myocarditis narrative can stick to Novavax, it could sink their potential market share. After the FDA advisory committee published their concerns, the stock market reacted negatively to Novavax, despite the green light for an FDA emergency use authorization.
Novavax and the FDA panel has already acknowledged that two doses of the Novavax shot will not be enough to “protect” people from a coronavirus. Therefore, repeated boosting is already being discussed as a probable path forward for this latest pharmaceutical.
There is no trial data on Omicron variant
The shot was developed over two years ago, and it has not been tested for Omicron. The FDA said in a statement:
“Relevant data to assess effectiveness of NVX-CoV2373 (Novavax shot) against the Omicron variant and sublineages, including observational data from use in other countries where the vaccine has been deployed, are currently unavailable.”
And yet, the stellar advisory committee approved it anyway.
As Forbes reports, even Novavax has acknowledged that the shot may not work as well for the mutation that is actually present today in 2022. The report says:
“Novavax said its vaccine showed ‘cross-reactive immune response’ against omicron and other coronavirus variants, though it noted that the neutralizing response for the omicron variant was four times lower than for the original coronavirus.”
Not a cure.
The Novavax shot has been approved in several countries already and their inhabitants have not become immune from COVID-19 or cured of a disease.
Although there are dozens of different COVID “vaccines” available throughout the world, none have demonstrated a discernible difference in outcomes. In reality, this is just another questionable pharmaceutical product that joins the endless and continuing list of questionable pharmaceutical products on the market.
What a surprise: Rebekah Jones, once hailed as a “whistleblower” for claiming Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis had fudged the state’s COVID-19 numbers, has been revealed as a complete fraud.
Rebekah Jones “data scientist” that WAS the left’s darling in FLA.
A report released last week by the Florida Department of Health Office of Inspector General exonerated DeSantis on the allegations and found nothing to back up Jones’ allegations that she’d been pressured to alter COVID-19 case and death counts. In fact, the people the inspector general’s office talked to couldn’t even make sense out of the allegations, considering Jones didn’t have access to the raw coronavirus data.
(In spite of this, the mainstream media is hardly handling the report with the same breathlessness they handled the accusations against DeSantis — and for obvious reasons.
According to an editorial published Friday by The Wall Street Journal, (!) the inspector general found no evidence to support Jones’ claims.
“Based upon an analysis of the available evidence, there is insufficient evidence to clearly support a violation of a law, rule, or policy, as described by the complainant,” the report stated.
The governor’s office argued that Jones was fired from her job for “insubordination” and “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”
Jones’ original allegations were that she had been ordered to tidy up COVID numbers to support the state’s reopening in the spring of 2020. In addition, she claimed the governor had retaliated against her by having the Florida Department of Law Enforcement execute a search warrant against her in December 2020, arguing DeSantis had “sent the Gestapo” to keep her quiet.
Police say the raid involved a data breach that was traced back to Jones’ home IP address. She’s been hit with a felony charge for downloading confidential health department data. She has pleaded innocent.
According to the Journal, the inspector general’s office talked to over a dozen individuals who worked with Jones as part of its investigation, including her superiors — and not a single one supported her allegations of fudged data.
While she told some of her co-workers that she was told to alter COVID data in the system, the report said they didn’t buy her allegations. That wasn’t just because of her inherent unreliability but because of the fact she didn’t have access to the pertinent data. Instead, she was in charge of handling the state’s online dashboard, not the raw data.
“If the complainant or other DOH staff were to have falsified COVID-19 data on the dashboard, the dashboard would then not have matched the data in the corresponding final daily report,” the report said.
“Such a discrepancy would have been detectable by [Bureau of Epidemiology] staff conducting data quality assurance, as well as other parties, both within and outside the DOH, including but not limited to [county health departments], local governments, researchers, the press/media, and the general public.”
Instead, the report stated the inspector general’s office “found no evidence that the DOH misrepresented or otherwise misled the public regarding how positivity rates were calculated,” according to the report.
“The definitions for overall and new case positivity were provided on the Data Definition sheet and Health Metrics Overview, which were both linked to the dashboard, and were consistent with testimonial evidence obtained by the OIG.”
The report appeared last week to nary a peep in the same media outlets that loved her back in the febrile days of the early pandemic.
As The Daily Caller noted, Jones was a frequent guest on Joy Reid’s MSNBC’s show and made at least five appearances on former CNN host Chris Cuomo’s old show. (No lack of sad irony there; Cuomo’s brother Andrew, the erstwhile governor of New York, was forced out of office over sexual harassment allegations, but also faced accusations of covering up COVID deaths in the state’s nursing homes.)
The headlines in liberal media outlets were similarly effusive — calling Jones a “scientist” to buttress her standing, like Jones was filling test tubes with potential coronavirus vaccines when she wasn’t trying to expose fraud in the Florida government. But even CNN has been honest enough to qualify that as “data scientist.”
NPR, May 19, 2020: “Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data.” South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Dec. 10, 2020: “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup.” HuffPo, Dec. 17, 2020: “Florida Scientist Vows To Speak COVID-19 ‘Truth To Power’ Despite Police Raid.” Cosmopolitan, March 11, 2021: “Rebekah Jones Tried To Warn Us About COVID-19. How Her Freedom Is On The Line.”
No evidence for any of it. None. Goose egg. Zero-point-zero.
Rebekah Jones was a darling of the mainstream media if just because her wild-eyed conspiracy theories about covering up COVID data could be wielded as a cudgel against Ron DeSantis and others considered a threat to progressives.
As always, the allegations appear on page one; the truth on page 17 — if it appears at all. She’s served her purpose.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that breakthrough Covid-19 infections in April was worse in boosted Americans compared to the vaccinated but not boosted.
According to the data analyzed by far-left CBS, the week of April 23 showed that boosted Americans are catching COVID-19 at nearly double the rate of those who have not been boosted. But claimed the unvaccinated remain the highest group.
The unvaccinated rate is a bit misleading as CDC includes those with 1 dose and even 2 doses under 14 days. In the UK, they separate those with zero doses from those who received the vaccination. They categorized it as follows: Unvaccinated, within 21 days of first dose, 21 days or more after first dose, within 21 days of second dose, and 21 days or more after second dose.
The reality is the jabs, initial or boosters, do not prevent infection or transmission of the virus. During Omicron and Delta waves, it was the vaccinated population who were severely infected.
This April, an analysis of CDC data by The Epoch Times reveals that the most vaccinated areas of the United States are experiencing the highest numbers of covid cases – and it’s not just by a little bit. The infection rate is significantly higher than in the areas where vaccine compliance is lowest.
In other words – the data indicates that, at best, the vaccines don’t work; and at worst, they are contributing to the spread of the virus.
According to The Epoch Times analysis, the Covid infection rate in US counties that have a vaccination rate of 62-95% is 23% higher than the Counties that have a vaccination rate of just 11-40%.
The data showed that the least vaccinated counties tended to be on the smaller side, with an average population of around 20,000 – much less than the 330,000 average among the most vaccinated counties.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a recent data from over 5,000 Walgreens stores, the unvaccinated have the lowest incidence of COVID.
The unvaccinated show an 18% COVID rate. This is lower than those with 3 doses of the vaccine who have a 19.2 COVID rate.
Those with three doses, with their last dose taken over five months ago, have the highest COVID rate at 31.3%.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Ronda Churchill/Getty Images)
By Nick Koutsobinas for Newsmax | Saturday, 04 June 2022
During a Friday press conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called a win the decision by the Special Olympics to reverse the mandate that otherwise would have required thousands of athletes competing in the games to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
On Friday, the Special Olympics issued a statement detailing that it would lift its mandate as directed by state officials on May 27 “based upon the Florida Department of Health’s interpretation of Florida law.”
According to Politico, this year’s Special Olympics USA Games will kick off Sunday and wrap up on June 12. Initially, the Florida Department of Health sent a letter to Special Olympics International threatening a $27.5 million fine on Thursday if the organization sought a vaccine requirement. A copy of the letter indicated that the Special Olympics had asked 5,500 people to provide proof of vaccination upon entry to the 2022 USA Special Olympics Games, which violates a state ban requiring proof of vaccination.
“[Special Olympics International] was unable to bring the event into compliance for the benefit of their delegates,” the letter read. “And reinstate all who were denied access based on proof of vaccination.”
DeSantis called the decision to reverse the requirement a win for thousands of athletes.
“What connection that has to competing,” DeSantis said of COVID-19 vaccines, “I don’t understand. We’ve never seen something wielded like this vaccine to try to marginalize disfavored people.
“And a lot of these Special Olympians have also had COVID by now. Most people have had it by now.”
Florida called the Special Olympics International committee for their “prove you’ve been jabbed or go home” policy. The committee blinked.
Special Olympics, Inc. (SOI) announced on June 2, 2022, that it is lifting the vaccine requirement for delegation members attending the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games being held in Orlando, Florida, June 5-12, as required by state of Florida officialson May 27, based upon the Florida Department of Health’s interpretation of Florida law.
Delegates who were registered for the Games but were unable to participate due to the prior vaccine requirement, now have the option to attend. SOI, Special Olympics North America, and the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games Local Organizing Committee are making best efforts to accommodate eligible individuals.
We look forward to welcoming thousands of Special Olympics athletes, families, and fans to an extraordinary 2022 USA Games.
If there is this big a discrepancy in a single county’s votes, is it emblematic of the entire state’s voting records problems?
DeKalb County, GA — The DeKalb County Voter Registration and Elections Office on June 1 released the results of a hand count in the District 2 DeKalb County Commission race.
The results should be considered preliminary.
VRE originally reported the June 21 runoff was between Orson and Alexander. After a week of review, Lauren Alexander and Michelle Long Spears will go head-to-head in the runoff on June 21.
District 2 results of hand count reported on June 1
District 2 results reported on May 24
Note – five additional precincts impacted by a redistricting error are reflected on a second report, which is below and should be added with the first set of votes reported on May 24.
In a press release, DeKalb VRE Executive Director Keisha Smith said she felt the hand count produced an accurate result.
“The goal of the hand count was to obtain accurate results of the County Commission District 2 race, and I am confident we have achieved that objective thanks largely in part to the diligence of our staff who worked extended hours across the holiday weekend,” Smith said. We are committed to getting these tabulations right, but wanted to ensure that preliminary and unofficial results were posted as soon as practicable.”
The press release does not explain the large discrepancy between the machine count on Election Night and the subsequent hand count. It also doesn’t explain the appearance of 2,810 more votes cast than were initially reported. Spears’ total increased by 3,620. Orson’s total decreased by 1,298. Alexander’s total increased by 355.
Spears said she is turning her attention to the runoff.
“Thank you to the DeKalb Elections Board and Director Smith for revealing the corrected unofficial results of the DeKalb County Commission District 2 race,” Spears said. “I am thrilled to be in the runoff and my team is gearing up immediately. Since my opponent has been in the runoff for over a week now, we are already at a critical disadvantage in informing voters that I led the race in the Democratic Primary with over 43% of the vote — and now it is important for our team to focus on getting voters back to the polls to elect me as their next D2 Commissioner.”
Alexander said she’s also focusing on the runoff but wondered about the shifts in the vote totals.
“This is my first time experiencing an election as a candidate. Like I’m sure many other people are, I am surprised by the significant change in the reported totals from the hand count in comparison to what had previously been published by DeKalb Elections,” she said. “I am continuing to monitor the situation and will await further news about this election. It remains important to me that every vote is counted with accuracy and reflects the voters will. Due to the limited time between now and the runoff election date, I need to continue to be prepared for the runoff as we await certification, I continue to support full transparency about this election and the ensuing tabulation of results.”
Orson said his campaign is “reviewing the latest information” provided by DeKalb VRE, and he is considering his options.
“There are serious questions as to the administration of the election and computation of the results,” he said. “The idea that problems related to the programming of the voting machines and the calculation of votes could not ultimately taint every aspect of the process, including the production of the paper ballots, defies belief. We will continue to review our options, keeping at the forefront that any decision should work to foster the integrity and trustworthiness of our electoral process.”
DeKalb VRE at first declined to release results of the hand count of paper ballots, which election workers finished at 12:30 a.m. on May 31, citing questions about the accuracy of the count.
Decaturish filed a formal records request for the immediate release of this information with an explanation about why election officials feel the hand tally count is inaccurate, or provide a legal justification for withholding the information.
The DeKalb County Elections Board on Tuesday, May 31, declined to certify the results of the May 24 primary. Certification could occur as early as Friday at 5 p.m.
Initially, it was expected that the board would certify the results of the May 24 primary on May 31. But the board decided to delay certification until this Friday.
Had Spears not raised questions on Election Night, it’s unclear whether the result would be in doubt at all. Some precincts were reporting she received zero votes – including her own precinct. Spears took pictures of the precinct-level results and showed them to Decaturish on Monday during day two of the hand count. Her supporters, including commissioners Jeff Rader and Ted Terry, began publicly raising questions about what happened.
Here’s what known so far about the circumstances that caused the incorrect result on election night:
Don Broussard dropped out of the race for the DeKalb Commission District 2 seat. That withdrawal caused a mistake in the programming of the precinct scanner and led to inaccurate vote counts for two candidates. The SOS office also said the text of one Republican Party question was not properly appearing during early voting, and five precincts in DeKalb were redistricted into the county commission District 2 race, but those precincts had not been updated to reflect that change.
Those issues resulted in the creation of new databases for the May 24 election. The databases map out ballot styles and precincts for voters.
It’s not clear whether the county conducted all the proper logic and accuracy testing necessary once those new databases were created. It’s also unclear whether other elections were affected by the creation of the new databases.
Elections Board Vice Chair Nancy Jester asked for the results of all the logic and accuracy tests of machines after changes were made.
“My concern when asked as a board member to certify this election: I should feel confident about the District 2 election because we’re doing this hand count,” Jester said during a May 31 Elections Board meeting. “What I don’t know is the … unknowns in any other race.”
Jester said on June 1 that she is awaiting more data and she still has questions.
“I have no disagreement with anybody who says let’s take a harder look at any of these races,” she said. “I needed to be provided with more precinct by precinct data. What are the implications of any of the issues we’ve been looking at for any other races? I don’t know.:
“For what it’s worth, I have no specific reason to doubt the results of the BOE 2 race,” she wrote on Facebook. “I have reviewed who was strongest in each precinct, and the geographic patterns mostly match what you would expect. I also believe it was always the case that Candice McKinley and I were the strongest two candidates. So, a runoff between the two of us is not surprising. However, I would not object to a recount of our race, if that is what is needed to restore confidence in our elections process.”
Here is the full press release from DeKalb Voter Registration and Elections:
After multiple days of hand counting of ballots, DeKalb County Voter Registration and Elections (DeKalb VRE) has completed initial efforts to count the ballots cast in the DeKalb County District 2 Commission race.
Issues related to initial election results prompted DeKalb VRE, in coordination with the Georgia Secretary of State, to take necessary steps to identify accurate results of the Commission District 2 contest.
These unofficial results preliminarily show that Lauren Alexander received 4,737 votes, Marshall Orson received 3,928 votes, and Michelle Long Spears received 6,651 votes. Donald Broussard, who officially withdrew from the contest, received 133 votes.
Final results are being tabulated and reconciled, and will be announced when that process is completed.
These unofficial and incomplete results were announced on June 1, 2022 following hand counting efforts. All District 2 candidates were emailed preliminary tabulations from the hand count and unofficial and preliminary precinct-specific data will be uploaded to the State’s election system promptly.
During the DeKalb Board of Registration and Election’s (BRE) Specially Called meeting on May 31, the appointed body voted to postpone certifying the complete election results. DeKalb BRE set a Specially Called Meeting for Friday, June 3, 2022, at 5 p.m. to consider certifying the May 24 election results.
During the hand counting of ballots, three-person teams visually and verbally confirmed the candidate choice on the ballots cast in the District 2 Democratic primary contest.
“The goal of the hand count was to obtain accurate results of the County Commission District 2 race and I am confident we have achieved that objective thanks largely in part to the diligence of our staff who worked extended hours across the holiday weekend,” DeKalb VRE Executive Director Keisha Smith said. We are committed to getting these tabulations right, but wanted to ensure that preliminary and unofficial results were posted as soon as practicable.”
One has to wonder why this got by the officials on election night. A candidate getting ZERO VOTES in her own precinct? Not even she voted for herself?
As the article indicates, had not Spears not questioned the tallies from election night, would they have ever done a hand count?
For those who don’t know: Atlanta sits partly in DeKalb county.
DeKalb County -where Atlanta is the most populous city, despite being mostly in Fulton County. DeKalb contains roughly 10% of the city of Atlanta. DeKalb is primarily a suburban county.
Biden repeatedly and falsely claims, ‘You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed’
By Jessica Chasmar and others | Fox News
President Biden has revived a pro-gun control talking point in the wake of the Uvalde mass school shooting that has been repeatedly debunked throughout the years.
Biden told reporters on Memorial Day that the Second Amendment didn’t allow for the ownership of cannons when it was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791.
President Joe Biden said the previous Thursday that “no amendment is absolute” while discussing the Second Amendment and repeated a debunked claim that cannons were prohibited when the amendment was passed.
“There’s no violation of the Second Amendment right,” Biden said in New York City while discussing background checks and other ways to address gun crime. “We talk like. There’s no amendment that’s absolute. When the amendment was passed it didn’t say anybody can own a gun, any kind of gun, and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed so there’s no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons. But that’s another issue.”
“The Second Amendment was never absolute,” he said Monday, according to a White House transcript. “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.”
Biden has repeated the claim at least five times during his presidency, despite it earning him “Four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post in 2021 and a “False” label from Politifact on three separate occasionsdating back to May 2020.
Biden made the claim again just last week after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
“The Second Amendment is not absolute,” he said during a signing of his police reform executive order. “When it was passed, you couldn’t own a — you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. It’s just — there’s always been limitations.”
“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own,” he said in June 2021, White House transcripts show. “You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
The Second Amendment as it is written does not limit who can “keep and bear arms” or what kind of arms people can keep and bear.
Federal gun regulation didn’t come until over 140 years after the Second Amendment was introduced.
The Constitution does, however, give Congress the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” which were government licenses that allowed civilians to attack and detain vessels of countries at war with the U.S., The Washington Post pointed out in 2021.
“Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle,” The Post reported at the time.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Some readers might think this is a relatively inconsequential flub. But we disagree. Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objective. The president’s push for more gun restrictions is an important part of his political platform, so he undercuts his cause when he cites faux facts.
Moreover, Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.
“Joe Biden is saying the quiet part out loud,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted. “I stand ready to defend Texas against any infringement of our Second Amendment his failed administration will throw at us. #2A”
“Someone didn’t read the Second Amendment,” Fox News contributor Dan Bongino’s website, the Bongino Report, posted along with an article stating that Biden’s comments should “terrify” gun owners.
“It was a lie in 2020,” Townhall’s Spencer Brown tweeted. “It was a lie in 2021. It’s still a lie today. Despite being fact checked by PolitiFact and WaPo, Biden keeps lying to the American people as he attempts to undermine the Second Amendment.”
In Biden’s speech, he also drew ire from conservatives by claiming that a “Glock with 40 rounds” is a “weapon of war.”
REUTERS/Bing Guan
“Biden is the worst gun grabber in decades,” author J.D. Vance, who is running for Senate in Ohio as a Republican, tweeted. “Between this and the illegal ATF database, he’s declared war on the Second Amendment.”
The urban centers are the first to be discovered in the region, challenging archaeological dogma.
Freda Kreier for Nature.com
Researchers uncovered ancient urban centers on forested mounds in the Bolivian Amazon Basin.Credit: Roland Seitre/Nature Picture Library
Mysterious mounds in the southwest corner of the Amazon Basin were once the site of ancient urban settlements, scientists have discovered. Using a remote-sensing technology to map the terrain from the air, they found that, starting about 1,500 years ago, ancient Amazonians built and lived in densely populated centers, featuring 22-meter-tall earthen pyramids, that were encircled by kilometers of elevated roadways.
The complexity of these settlements is “mind blowing”, says team member Heiko Prümers, an archaeologist at the German Archaeological Institute headquartered in Berlin.
“This is the first clear evidence that there were urban societies in this part of the Amazon Basin,” says Jonas Gregorio de Souza, an archaeologist at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. The study adds to a growing body of research indicating that the Amazon — long thought to have been pristine wilderness before the arrival of Europeans — was home to advanced societies well before that. The discovery was published on 25 May in Nature1.
A shift in thinking
Humans have lived in the Amazon Basin — a vast river-drainage system roughly the size of the continental United States — for around 10,000 years. Researchers thought that before the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century, all Amazonians lived in small, nomadic tribes that had little impact on the world around them. And although early European visitors described a landscape filled with towns and villages, later explorers were unable to find these sites.
Source: Ref. 1
By the twentieth century, archaeologists had yet to confirm the rumors, and argued that the Amazon’s nutrient-poor soil was unable to support large-scale agriculture, and that it would have prevented tropical civilizations — similar to those found in central America and southeast Asia — from arising in the Amazon. By the 2000s, however, archaeological opinion was beginning to shift. Some researchers suggested2 that unusually high concentrations of domesticated plants, along with patches of unusually nutrient-rich soil that could have been created by people, might indicate that ancient Amazonians had indeed shaped their environment.
The hypothesis gained steam when, in 2018, archaeologists reported3 hundreds of large, geometric mounds that had been uncovered because of deforestation in the southern Amazon rain forest. These structures hinted at ancient organized societies capable of thriving in one location for years — but direct evidence of settlements was lacking.
In 1999, Prümers began studying a set of mounds in the Bolivian part of the Amazon Basin, outside the thick rain forest. There, a multitude of tree-covered mounds rise above a lowland area that floods during the rainy season.
Previous digs had revealed that these ‘forest islands’ contained traces of human habitation, including the remains of the mysterious Casarabe culture, which appeared around AD 500. During one excavation, Prümers and his colleagues realized that they had found what looked like a wall, indicating that a permanent settlement had once occupied the area. The researchers also found graves, platforms and other indications of a complex society. But dense vegetation made it difficult for them to use conventional methods to survey the site.
What lies beneath
By the 2010s, a technique called lidar — a remote-sensing technology that uses lasers to generate a 3D image of the ground below — had come into vogue with archaeologists. In 2012, a lidar survey of a valley in Honduras helped lead to the rediscovery of an ancient pre-Columbian city rumored to exist in the area. The jungle had completely overtaken the settlement since it was abandoned in the fifteenth century, making it all but impossible to see from the air without lidar.
Prümers and his colleagues took advantage of lidar in 2019, when they flew a helicopter equipped with the technology over six areas near sites confirmed to have been occupied by the Casarabe people. The team got more than it bargained for, with lidar revealing the size and shape of 26 settlements, including 11 the researchers hadn’t been looking for — a monumental task that would have taken 400 years to survey by conventional means, Prümers says.
Two of the urban centers each covered an area of more than 100 hectares — three times the size of Vatican City. The lidar images revealed walled compounds with broad terraces rising 6 meters above the ground. Conical pyramids made of earth towered above one end of the terraces (see ‘The settlement beneath’). People probably lived in the areas around the terraces and traveled along the causeways that connected the sites to one another.
“We have this image of Amazonia as a green desert,” Prümers says. But given that civilizations rose and thrived in other tropical areas, he notes, “Why shouldn’t something like that exist here?”
Mysteries remain
Why these settlements were abandoned after 900 years is still a mystery. Radiocarbon dating has revealed that the Casarabe disappeared around 1400.
Prümers points out that lidar images revealed reservoirs in the settlements, perhaps indicating that this part of the world wasn’t always wet — an environmental shift that might have driven people away. However, consistent pollen records reveal4 that maize (corn) was grown in the area continuously for thousands of years, indicating sustainable agricultural practices.
At the very least, the discovery of long-lost Amazonian societies “changes the general perspective people have of Amazonian archaeology”, says Eduardo Neves, an archaeologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Present-day logging and farming in the Amazon Basin are almost certainly destroying important archaeological sites that have yet to be discovered, he says, but a growing interest in Amazonian archaeology could lead to the protection of vulnerable places.
These discoveries also counter the narrative that Indigenous peoples were passive inhabitants of the Amazon Basin before the arrival of Europeans. “The people who lived there changed the landscape forever,” Neves says.
Updates & Corrections
Correction 26 May 2022: An earlier version of this story said that there are hundreds of tree-covered mounds rising above a lowland area in the Bolivian Amazon. Some estimates suggest there are many more than that.
References
Prümers, H., Betancourt, C. J., Iriarte, J., Robinson, M. & Schaich, M. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04780-4 (2022). Article Google Scholar
Neves, E. G. & Heckenberger, M. J. Annu. Rev. Anthropol.48, 371–388 (2019). Article Google Scholar
If you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. People these days are just trying too hard. The key to finding happiness is to stop looking for it.
When you’re raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking, “Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?” No, you’re out for blood. You inhabit and live the anger. You are the anger.
And then it’s gone. Hopefully before the cops arrive.
Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain, but rather something you inhabit. It is temporary1. Always.
What this implies is that finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy X and be happy. Learn Y and be happy. But you can’t buy happiness and you can’t achieve happiness. It just is—once you get other parts of your life in order.
Happiness Is Not the Same as Pleasure
Tony Montana didn’t seem too happy.
When most people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: good food, more sex, more time for TV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full body massages, losing 10 pounds, becoming more popular, and so on.
But while pleasure is great, it’s not the same as happiness2. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not cause it. Ask any drug addict how their pursuit of pleasure turned out. Ask an adulterer who shattered her family and lost her children whether pleasure ultimately made her happy. Ask a man who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure made him feel.
Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run3. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what’s marketed to us. It’s what we fixate on. It’s what we use to numb and distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary, isn’t sufficient4. There’s something more.
Finding Happiness Does Not Require Lowering One’s Expectations
A popular narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier because we’re all narcissistic and grew up being told that we’re special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have Facebook constantly telling us how amazing everyone else’s lives are, but not our own, so we all feel like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the age of 23.
Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.
For instance, a friend of mine recently started a high-risk business venture. He dried up most of his savings trying to make it work and failed. Today, he’s happier than ever for his experience. It taught him many lessons about what he wanted and didn’t want in life and it eventually led him to his current job, which he loves. He’s able to look back and be proud that he went for it because otherwise, he would have always wondered “what if?” and that would have made him unhappier than any failure would have.
The failure to meet our own expectations is not antithetical to happiness, and I’d actually argue that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is actually a fundamental building block for happiness5,6.
If you thought you were going to make $100,000 and drive a Porsche immediately out of college, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you confused your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting you in the face will be one of the best lessons life ever gives you.
The “lower expectations” argument falls victim to the same old mindset: that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a $100,000 salary. It’s working to reach a $100,000 salary, and then working for a $200,000 salary, and so on.
So, I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Let the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that’s how something amazing grows, through the cracks.
Happiness Is Not the Same as Positivity
Chances are you know someone who always appears to be insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or situation. Chances are this is actually one of the most dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.
It’s a simple reality: shit happens. Things go wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions arise. And that’s fine. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in one’s life.
The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way which aligns with your values.
Simple example: A value of mine is to pursue non-violence. Therefore, when I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I also make a point to not punch them in the face. Radical idea, I know. (But I absolutely will throw a socket wrench at the neighbor’s kids. Try me.)
There’s a lot of people out there who subscribe to the “always be positive” ideology. These people should be avoided just as much as someone who thinks the world is an endless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that you’re always happy, no matter what, then you need a reality check.
I think part of the allure of obsessive positivity is the way in which we’re marketed to. I think part of it is being subjected to happy, smiley people on television constantly. I think part of it is that some people in the self-help industry want you to feel like there’s something wrong with you all the time.
Which brings me to what actually drives happiness….
Happiness Is the Process of Becoming Your Ideal Self
Completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends and struggling to make money makes us happier than buying a new computer.
And the funny thing is that all three of the activities above are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations and potentially failing to always meet them. Yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair, yet once we’ve done them we look back and get misty-eyed about them.
Why?
Because it’s these sorts of activities that allow us to become our ideal selves. It’s the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sad at weddings. It’s why some are excited to work and others hate parties. The traits they’re inhabiting don’t align with their ideal selves.
The end results don’t define our ideal selves. It’s not finishing the marathon that makes us happy; it’s achieving a difficult long-term goal that does. It’s not having an awesome kid to show off that makes us happy; it’s knowing that you gave yourself up to the growth of another human being that is special. It’s not the prestige and money from the new business that makes you happy, it’s the process of overcoming all odds with people you care about.
And this is the reason that tryingto be happy inevitably will make you unhappy. Because to try to be happy implies that you are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to be. After all, if you were acting out your ideal self, then you wouldn’t feel the need to try to be happy.
Cue statements about “finding happiness within,” and “knowing that you’re enough.” It’s not that happiness itselfis in you, it’s that happiness occurs when you decide topursue what’s in you.
And this is why happiness is so fleeting. Anyone who has set out major life goals for themselves only to achieve them and realize that they feel the same relative amounts of happiness/unhappiness knows that happiness always feels like it’s around the corner, just waiting for you to show up. No matter where you are in life, you will always perceive there to be one more thing you need to do to be especially happy7. But it too, will be a mirage.
And that’s because our ideal self is always just around that corner, always three steps ahead of us. We dream of being a musician and when we’re a musician, we dream of writing a film score, and when write a film score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn’t that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that we’re consistently moving towards them, day after day, month after month, year after year. The plateaus will come and go, and we’ll continue following our ideal self down the path of our lives.
And with that, with regards to finding happiness, it seems the best advice is also the simplest: Imagine who you want to be and then step towards it8. Dream big and then do something. Anything9. The simple act of moving at all will change how you feel about the entire process and serve to inspire you further.
Let go of the imagined result—it’s not necessary. The fantasy and the dream are merely tools to get you off your ass. It doesn’t matter if they come true or not. Live, man. Just live. Stop trying to be happy and just be.
Footnotes
Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66(1), 799–823.↵
A ‘growth’ mindset, as found by psychologist Carol Dweck, encourages accepting failure as a part of the process and has been linked with better academic achievement and improved work outcomes↵
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Don’t let attention and glory be your main motivators in life. If you can’t find pleasure in the simple or the mundane, then you won’t find it anywhere.
There’s a paradox that is stumping psychologists right now and it’s this: Over the past 50+ years, despite the standard of living rising dramatically in the western world, happiness has stayed level, while mental illnesses, anxiety disorders, narcissism, and depression have all gone up.
When you study marketing, the first thing you learn is that fear sells. If you make a person feel inadequate or inferior, they will shut up and buy something in order to feel better. A capitalist system markets to everyone constantly, therefore it promotes a society where people constantly feel inadequate and inferior.
It’s funny, a lot of people who travel to the third-world claim that people are “happier” there. They often follow it up with some banal statement about materialism and how we’d all be so much happier if we knew how to live with less.
This is completely wrong.
Poor people in developing societies aren’t happier, they’re simply less anxious and less stressed. People in the developing world don’t care how many friends you have or if you bought the latest hot item or not. They’re much more family- and community-oriented. They’re also more socially accepting and less socially anxious simply because they have to be. It’s how they survive. When you take hyper-individualistic westerners — especially ones who have killed themselves at a desk job to make a ton of money — when they’re exposed to this, they perceive it as being a “happier” or “healthier” way of life. In some ways, it is. But at the same time, it’s exactly what our system gave up to gain its abundance of material wealth.
The philosopher Alain de Botton has written about this in his book Status Anxiety. In centuries past, he says, people knew where they fit into the social order. If you were born a peasant, you knew you were a peasant. If you were born a lord, you knew you were a lord. There was no mobility or opportunity, and so there was no stress about getting ahead. You weren’t responsible for your birthright, so you accepted it and moved on.
But in a meritocratic society, something changes. In a meritocracy, if you’re poor, or you gain success and then lose it, it’s not an accident. It’s worse. It’s your fault.You’re the failure. You’re the one who lost everything. And this causes people to live shackled with a constant fear of inadequacy; all the world’s hustle and bustle motivated by a baseline status anxiety.
De Botton doesn’t argue that feudal societies or poor societies were somehow better. He simply makes the point that when a society goes from feudal and destitute to meritocratic and wealthy, the price its people pay for that increased standard of living and social mobility is an increase in stress and anxiety.
After all, the greater the opportunity one has, the greater the anxiety of somehow squandering it. Thus, we stress: we need to make better grades, to get a better job, to date more attractive people, to have cooler hobbies, to make more friends, to be more liked and more popular. Simply being content with what we have isn’t good enough anymore. In fact, for some it’s tantamount to giving up.
Today we live with more information than any other point in human history. According to Google, the internet produces as much information every two years as the rest of all of human history combined. And all of that information is theoretically instantly accessible by us all. It’s truly amazing.
But when you combine a capitalist system with an infinite flow of information, a side effect is a population who is reminded of the infinite amount of ways that it’s not good enough.
In the early 1900s, a phrase became popular, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” It described the pernicious effect of consumerism. The neighbors got a new car, so now we feel like we need a new car. Your brother-in-law landed seasons tickets to the local baseball team, so now you need season tickets. Your coworker just booked a trip to China, so now you need to travel somewhere exotic.
Now, most of us aren’t douchey enough to feel these types of envy consciously. But unfortunately the “Keeping up with the Joneses” afflicts us all, whether we realize it or not. As humans, we are unconsciously measuring ourselves up against one another constantly. It unfortunately plays a large part in how we define ourselves, whether we want it to or not.
Now imagine that there are two million Joneses to keep up with, and suddenly you have the internet.
This isn’t an argument against capitalism. And it’s definitely not an argument against the internet. I’m simply making observations and stating facts. In today’s world, it is impossible to not be reminded of how somebody, somewhere, is doing something that is much cooler than you, and be reminded of it constantly.
In a bitter irony, through open-sourcing information, the internet has also open-sourced inadequacy and insecurity.
One example: The whole “Make Money from Home, Travel the World” thing that Tim Ferriss started over a decade ago. Truth be told, it’s an extreme lifestyle that is probably not emotionally sustainable in the long-term, and likely doesn’t suit most people’s personalities. Most people who give it a go end up giving it up after a few years, including Ferriss himself.
Yet if you look around online, you’d think the concept cures cancer or something. I have probably half a dozen people who pop onto my Facebook newsfeed all the time going on about the merits of creating your own career path, following your passion, building a personal brand, living off the grid, doing something crazy and then blogging about it. Ironically, I think many of the people saying this stuff are still living at home with their parents and not making any money. It’s almost like they’re trying to convince themselves more than anyone else.
Everybody I know who actually lives this way generally shuts up about it because they find talking about it too much alienates people back home. Being special is nice, but that’s not where our real needs get met. It’s not a sufficient metric for our overall well-being.
If everyone quit their desk job and tried to monetize a blog about quilting or created an app that counts how many times you pass gas each day, the economy would come to a standstill. Some people are wired to be loners and eccentrics. And others are wired for routine. Some enjoy taking risks. Some like stability.
There’s something admirable about finding satisfaction in the simple, everyday pleasures of life, and it’s becoming harder and harder to do. We’re bombarded every day: here’s the brave soldier who saved a school bus full of kids with nothing but a crowbar and fishing line; here’s the 30-something billionaire who is going to cure aging so we can all live forever; here’s the 12-year-old who can play Stravinksy’s Rite of Spring on seven different instruments with her feet.
The implication is always the same: What have YOU done lately?
Oh, you flossed today? Way to go, you lazy sack of shit. Now let me just retweet that real quick.
If you can’t find pleasure in the simple or the mundane, then you won’t find pleasure anywhere.
As they say, wherever you go, there you are. Being special isn’t so special. You will still feel frustrated. You will still feel lonely. You will still feel like you could have done more.
Don’t sell yourself out for the sake of attention and false glory. Not that attention and glory are wrong, but they should not be prime motivators that drive your life.
Instead, focus on simplicity. On nuance. Slow down. Breathe. Smile. You don’t need to prove anything to anybody. Including yourself. Think about that for a minute and let it sink in:
You don’t have to prove anything to anybody, including yourself.
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Chances are you know someone who always appears to be insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or situation. Chances are this is actually one of the most dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.
