Author: Phoenix

Categories
Elections Politics

Hand count in District 2 DeKalb Commission race changes runoff picture Hmm…

JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

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.:

Whitney McGinniss, who is supposed to face Candice McKinley in the June 21 runoff for DeKalb School Board District 2, said she would not be opposed to recounting the results of her race so people could have confidence in the outcome.

“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.

Original Article here

DeKalb County results page

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption

Biden keeps repeating false Second Amendment claim, despite repeated fact checks

Joe doing what he does best. Geller Report-WP
Joe just can’t get a break.

Biden repeatedly and falsely claims, ‘You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed’

By Jessica Chasmar and others | Fox News

Categories
Science

‘Mind blowing’ ancient settlements uncovered in the Amazon

Section of the mighty Amazon River

The urban centers are the first to be discovered in the region, challenging archaeological dogma.

Freda Kreier for Nature.com

Aerial view of a forest islet in the Llanos de Moxos, Santa Ana del Yacuma, Beni, Bolivia.

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.

The settlement beneath: Arial image of a site in Bolivia showing an ancient urban centre beneath dense vegetation.

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

  1. 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

  2. Neves, E. G. & Heckenberger, M. J. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 48, 371–388 (2019). Article  Google Scholar

  3. de Souza, J. G. et al. Nature Commun. 9, 1125 (2018).Article  Google Scholar

  4. Carson, J. F. et al. Holocene 25, 1285–1300 (2015).Article  Google Scholar

Download references

 

Categories
Life Reprints from others.

Stop Trying to Be Happy! — Mark Manson

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

Finding happiness: Tony Montana didn't seem too happy.
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

The key to finding happiness: not a fake smileChances 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.

Or maybe it’s just that we’re lazy, and like anything else, we want the result without actually having to do the hard work for it.

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 trying to 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 itself is in you, it’s that happiness occurs when you decide to pursue 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.

The Key to Finding Happiness Map

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.

Got Emotional Baggage?

We all let our emotions get the best of us from time to time.
We all act without thinking and regret it later.

We all do stupid shit.

Some of us more than others.

Footnotes

  1. Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66(1), 799–823.↵
  2. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: An introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), 1–11.↵
  3. Boven, L. V., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1193–1202.↵
  4. Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2009). Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being. In E. Diener (Ed.), The Science of Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener (pp. 103–118). Springer Netherlands.↵
  5. 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↵
  6. Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.↵
  7. Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., Aaker, J. L., & Garbinsky, E. N. (2013). Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(6), 505–516.↵
  8. Dr. John Sharp, a psychiatrist at Harvard and certified smart cookie, advocates for ‘rewriting’ your life story in his TED talk.↵
  9. Some helpful places to start are books on habit change like Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.↵

Categories
Opinion Science

Being Special Isn’t So Special -Mark Manson

Want your specialness recognized? Pay $79.99 for a "guaranteed" magic spell.

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.

I’m special. I’m unique. I’m doing something different. Look at me. I’m different, right?

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.

Categories
Faked news How funny is this?

Nancy Pelosi Draws Up Articles Of Impeachment Against The Pope

May 25th, 2022 – BabylonBee

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After being denied communion in her home city of San Francisco, House Speaker Pelosi has retaliated against the insult by introducing articles of impeachment against Pope Francis.

“Denying me the Eucharist is a high crime. It’s not even the Pope’s job to deny communion to anyone,” said Pelosi to gathered reporters in Washington. “Who does he think he is? He’s gone mad with power! It is, therefore, my solemn Constitutional duty to draft articles of impeachment to be sent to the Senate so Pope Francis can be tried for his crimes.”

In the ensuing investigation, Congress found the Pope may have engaged in a quid pro quo, offering access to the Eucharist in exchange for not being a corrupt politician who advocates for the legal slaughter of millions of innocent babies. Political pundits are already calling on the Pope to step down if the charge is true.

“I do this with a very heavy heart, but it’s the right thing to do,” said Pelosi while fidgeting with her dentures. “Good morning, Sunday morning.”

When pressed as to whether Congress actually has the authority to impeach a pope, Pelosi responded that “we have to impeach him first in order to find out whether we can do it.”

This is satire that is too close to reality for comfort.

Categories
Child Abuse How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Sexual Abuse

Get Woke, Go Broke: State Farm Exec Makes Panicked Promise as Trans Support Blows Up in Company’s Face

By Jack Davis  May 25, 2022 at 9:55am

Facing an uproar for its support of the transgender agenda, State Farm Insurance says it is dropping its alliance with a transgender group that wanted to supply indoctrination materials aimed at children to schools and libraries.

State Farm had said it would support a group called GenderCool, which was targeting children as young as 5 with books titled “Being Transgender,” “Being Inclusive” and “Being Non-Binary.”

On Monday, the conservative group Consumers’ Research responded with a video titled “Like a Creepy Neighbor.”

“State Farm tells us they’re a good neighbor,” the narrator begins. “But would a good neighbor target five-year-olds for conversations about sexual identity? That’s what State Farm is doing.”

On Tuesday, State Farm surrendered.

State Farm spokesman Roszell Gadson told The Washington Post that the partnership ended after it had “been the subject of news and customer inquiries.”

“Conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents,” Gadson said in a statement. “We don’t support required curriculum in schools on this topic. We support organizations providing resources for parents to have these conversations. We no longer support the program allowing for distribution of books in schools.”

“As a result, we have made the decision we will no longer be affiliated with the organization,” the company said on its website.

According to a report from RedState, Rand Harbert, State Farm executive vice president and chief agency, sales and marketing officer, sent out a voice message to agents and others about the book project.

The outlet, citing a transcript it obtained, reported that Harbert said, “First and foremost, I want you to hear directly from me that we made a mistake with our involvement in this program — and we’re sorry. As soon as we fully understood the issue Monday morning, the first decision we made was to cease our involvement with this organization.

“Let me be clear, our position is that conversations with children about gender and identity need to happen at home.”

Harbert then made it appear as though State Farm was not fully aware of to whom it was giving money and what would be done with the cash.

“As much as we would like to be aware of every program and involved in every decision, it’s simply not possible as most of these gifts are small. In this case, it was $40,000,” Harbert said, according to RedState.

“However, we recognize even small decisions can have a big impact, and we’re taking the necessary steps, so nothing like this happens again,” he said.

RedState also reported that a source at State Farm’s corporate offices said all of its philanthropic ventures are being reviewed.

The outlet described conversations it had with agents whose names were not used.

“We’re an insurance company who’s known to be conservative,” one agent from the Midwest was quoted as saying. “That is why this is so shocking. I can assure you (I’m on a private Facebook page for agents only at 4,000 members) that 99 percent of us are beyond pissed.”

“A big ‘why’ that was circling among agents and in private Facebook groups Monday night was: ‘How in the world was something like this green-lighted and not run by agents’ groups for vetting?’” RedState quoted another agent as saying.

“No way this would have ever been green-lighted had this been run by agents.”

Categories
COVID How sick is this?

New Study Finds mRNA Vaccines Actually Hurt Long-Term Immunity to Covid Compared to the Unvaccinated

COVID-19 vaccine maker says it's time to jab up.

A new study conducted by scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Moderna Inc. showed that mRNA vaccines hurt the long-term immunity to Covid-19 after contracting infection compared to unvaccinated people.

Researchers performed a placebo-controlled vaccine efficacy trial published at medRxiv last month, to evaluate anti-nucleocapsid antibody (anti-N Ab) seropositivity in Moderna vaccine efficacy after Covid-19 infection.

“To evaluate for evidence of prior infection in a person with a history of COVID-19 vaccination, a test that specifically evaluates anti-N should be used. Past infection is best determined by serologic testing that indicates the presence of anti-N antibody,” according to the CDC.

The study analyzed data from 1,789 participants (1,298 placebo recipients and 491 vaccine recipients) with Covid-19 infection at 99 sites in the US during the blinded phase (through March 2021).

The study concludes that anti-nucleocapsid antibody (anti-N Abs) may have lower sensitivity in patients vaccinated with Moderna who become infected. The study also mentioned that the anti-N Ab response in unvaccinated persons has been reported to be durable, with half-life estimates ranging from 68 to 283 days.

Among the participants with confirmed Covid-19 illness, only 21 out of 52 (40%) of people who received the Moderna shots had antibodies compared to the placebo recipients, 605 out 648 (93%).

Alex Berenson posted an in-depth analysis on his Substack:

Unvaccinated people are much more likely to develop broad antibody immunity after Covid infections than people who have received mRNA shots, a new study shows.

Researchers already knew that many vaccinated people do not gain antibodies to the entire coronavirus after they are infected with Covid.

 

Unvaccinated people nearly always gain antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, which covers the virus’s core of RNA, as well as its spike protein, which allows the virus to attack our cells. Vaccinated people often lack those anti-nucleocapsid antibodies and only have spike protein antibodies.

 

The researchers examined the development of anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in people who had been part of Moderna’s clinical trial and were infected with Covid. As they expected, the scientists found that the vaccinated people were far less likely to develop the anti-nucleocapsid antibodies. Only 40 percent of people who received the shots had antibodies, compared to 93 percent of those who did not.

 

But they then went a step further. Because the infected people had been in the trial, their viral loads had been precisely measured when they were found to have Covid. So the researchers were able to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people who had the same amounts of virus in their blood.

 

Once again, they found that unvaccinated people were far more likely to develop anti-nucleocapsid antibodies than the jabbed. An unvaccinated person with a mild infection had a 71 percent chance of mounting an immune response that included those antibodies. A vaccinated person had about a 15 percent chance.

 

The chart that should worry the vaccinated: the yellow line shows the odds that an unvaccinated person will develop anti-nucleocapsid antibodies to Sars-Cov-2, stratified by viral load. The blue line shows the same odds for a person who received an mRNA shot.

An unvaccinated person has an almost 60 percent chance of developing antibodies even with an extremely mild infection; a vaccinated person needs almost 100,000 times as much virus in his blood to have the same chance.

As the Gateway Pundit previously reported, a new report released earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that unvaccinated people who recovered from COVID-19 were better protected than those who were vaccinated and not previously infected during the recent delta surge.

The researchers evaluated the data from 1.1 million Covid-19 cases among adults in California and New York (which account for 18% of the U.S. population) from May 30 to Nov. 20, 2021.

“When looking at the summer and fall of 2021, when Delta became predominant in this country, however, surviving a previous infection now provided greater protection,” CDC epidemiologist Benjamin Silk said.

The study confirmed something that we’ve known for a long time that “natural immunity” acquired through previous infection of COVID is more potent than experimental vaccines.

Here is the abstract from the above referenced study:

Abstract

Importance The performance of immunoassays for determining past SARS-CoV-2 infection, which were developed in unvaccinated individuals, has not been assessed in vaccinated individuals.

Objective To evaluate anti-nucleocapsid antibody (anti-N Ab) seropositivity in mRNA-1273 vaccine efficacy trial participants after SARS-CoV-2 infection during the trial’s blinded phase.

Design Nested analysis in a Phase 3 randomized, placebo-controlled vaccine efficacy trial. Nasopharyngeal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing were taken from all participants on Day 1 and Day 29 (vaccination days), and during symptom-prompted illness visits. Serum samples from Days 1, 29, 57, and the Participant Decision Visit (PDV, when participants were informed of treatment assignment, median day 149) were tested for anti-N Abs.

Setting Multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial at 99 sites in the US.

Participants Trial participants were ≥ 18 years old with no known history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and at appreciable risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or high risk of severe Covid-19. Nested sub-study consists of participants with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the blinded phase of the trial.

Intervention Two mRNA-1273 (Moderna) or Placebo injections, 28 days apart.

Main Outcome and Measure Detection of serum anti-N Abs by the Elecsys (Roche) immunoassay in samples taken at the PDV from participants with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the blinded phase. The hypothesis tested was that mRNA-1273 recipients have different anti-N Ab seroconversion and/or seroreversion profiles after SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared to placebo recipients. The hypothesis was formed during data collection; all main analyses were pre-specified before being conducted.

Results We analyzed data from 1,789 participants (1,298 placebo recipients and 491 vaccine recipients) with SARS-CoV-2 infection during the blinded phase (through March 2021). Among participants with PCR-confirmed Covid-19 illness, seroconversion to anti-N Abs at a median follow up of 53 days post diagnosis occurred in 21/52 (40%) of the mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients vs. 605/648 (93%) of the placebo recipients (p < 0.001). Higher SARS-CoV-2 viral copies at diagnosis was associated with a higher likelihood of anti-N Ab seropositivity (odds ratio 1.90 per 1-log increase; 95% confidence interval 1.59, 2.28).

Conclusions and Relevance As a marker of recent infection, anti-N Abs may have lower sensitivity in mRNA-1273-vaccinated persons who become infected. Vaccination status should be considered when interpreting seroprevalence and seropositivity data based solely on anti-N Ab testing

Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04470427

Question Does prior mRNA-1273 vaccination influence anti-nucleocapsid antibody seroconversion and/or seroreversion after SARS-CoV-2 infection?

Findings Among participants in the mRNA-1273 vaccine efficacy trial with PCR-confirmed Covid-19, anti-nucleocapsid antibody seroconversion at the time of study unblinding (median 53 days post diagnosis and 149 days post enrollment) occurred in 40% of the mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients vs. 93% of the placebo recipients, a significant difference. Higher SARS-CoV-2 viral copy number upon diagnosis was associated with a greater chance of anti-nucleocapsid antibody seropositivity (odds ratio 1.90 per 1-log increase; 95% confidence interval 1.59, 2.28). All infections analyzed occurred prior to the circulation of delta and omicron viral variants.

Meaning Conclusions about the prevalence and incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in vaccinated persons based on anti-nucleocapsid antibody assays need to be weighed in the context of these results.

Funding Statement

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through grants UM1AI068635 (to H.E.J.), UM1AI068614 (to L.C.), 3UM1Al148575-01S2 (to H.M.E.S.), and UM1AI069412 (to L.R.B.). The mRNA-1273-P301 study is sponsored by Moderna, Inc. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Faked news Leftist Virtue(!)

Whiny Jankowicz Says Americans Criticizing Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board Are “Endangering Our National Security”

Can you believe this loon?

Biden’s ousted disinformation czar on Friday whined about conservatives who criticized the DHS’s ‘Ministry of Truth.’

Earlier this week, the Biden Regime announced it is ‘pausing’ the Department of Homeland Security’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ after conservative media hammered the lunatic Marxist chosen to run the Orwellian agency.

Nina Jankowicz, the far-left lunatic chosen to lead the DHS’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board,’ resigned on Wednesday.

Now Jankowicz is attacking Americans for exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the so-called ‘disinformation board.’

Jankowicz claimed conservatives are putting the US’s national security at risk.

“The Disinformation Governance Board was the victim of disinformation,” Jankowicz said. “Disinformation is false information spread with malign intent and clearly there was a malign intent on some actors in the media and in politics…”

[Critics] completely mischaracterized its mission and frankly, this childish behavior is endangering our national security now,” Jankowicz added.

Even Whitney –who died in February, 2012 — currently has more brains  than this loon does.

 

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Biden Pandemic Corruption COVID Drugs Science

That OTHER Global COVID Summit

COVID-19 vaccine maker says it's time to jab up.

17,000 physicians and medical scientists make a plea to restore scientific integrity and end the national emergency

While global bureaucrats were meeting on May 12, 2022 at a summit hosted by President Biden to discuss how to “turn vaccines into vaccinations,” and how to increase demand for unwanted injections, another COVID summit was taking place.

The alternate summit focused on some big questions: Why have patients been denied life-saving medical treatments? Why are we not researching the damage being caused by the injections? Why are medical professionals still being censored by media companies, Big Tech and their own institutions?

The group known as the Global COVID Summit represents 17,000 physicians and medical scientists from all over the world who have signed on to a declaration based on the following ten foundational principles:

1.    We declare and the data confirm that the COVID-19 experimental genetic therapy injections must end.

2.    We declare doctors should not be blocked from providing life-saving medical treatment.

3.    We declare the state of national emergency, which facilitates corruption and extends the pandemic, should be immediately terminated.

4.    We declare medical privacy should never again be violated, and all travel and social restrictions must cease.

5.    We declare masks are not and have never been effective protection against an airborne respiratory virus in the community setting.

6.    We declare funding and research must be established for vaccination damage, death and suffering.

7.    We declare no opportunity should be denied, including education, career, military service or medical treatment, over unwillingness to take an injection.

8.    We declare that first amendment violations and medical censorship by government, technology and media companies should cease, and the Bill of Rights be upheld.

9.    We declare that Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca, and their enablers, withheld and willfully omitted safety and effectiveness information from patients and physicians, and should be immediately indicted for fraud.

10.  We declare government and medical agencies must be held accountable.

Read more and watch the entire summit here or watch an in-depth interview with some of the Global COVID Summit doctors here.

With dozens of previously healthy young athletes literally dropping dead after getting jabbed, and hundreds of people seriously ill after getting jabbed, the Biden regime has now approved it for children — statistically the LEAST likely to contract Covid-19 — as young as FIVE years old.

WHY?