My Ethics professor freshman year (so, 1991-1992) was approximately one jillion years old and he explained to us that the term that was used during his childhood/adolescence was "morons".
And we've reached the point where "moron" is a term that the one wacky morning DJ calls the other wacky morning DJ when they're arguing about sports or something.
It's not even a particularly venomous insult anymore.
I don't know that he's lying. I'm sure that he believes everything he's saying, just as he believed that there was a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank.
Please do not take my saying you shouldn't trust him as me saying that he is not earnest.
The report said "COVID-19-like symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections".
And so we're merely in a place where we don't know, we just know that these guys came back with symptoms that could have been lots of things and it was pre-outbreak so, of course!, they didn't test for it.
The only notable thing about the report at all is that it wasn't released until just recently.
I do wish we got more into what the specific symptoms were... that way we could differentiate between something that causes lack of taste for a while versus, say, the common cold.
Ah, I remember the "Covid is just a bad cold" argument. It's always nice to see it again.
As for whether the report is "important", well, that's not a term we've seen defined quite yet. I might use the term "evidence that covid was at the games in question" but, if pressed, I'd have to admit that it was not proof.
We have plenty of evidence. What we don't have is a smoking gun piece of evidence or "proof".
You can usually see that with the dance where someone asks for evidence and then, when it's provided, they say "that's not conclusive!" or "that's not *PROOF*!"
They were required by law to release the report in 2022. The report, for some reason, was not released until this year.
"Did they try?"
Perhaps they were inept. Perhaps they forgot. Perhaps the person who was supposed to do it was a Trumpist who refused to get the shot and then died of Covid.
"Have you ever seen a report like this before for any sort of event?"
No, I have not. Perhaps those other reports were supposed to have been released but weren't for one reason or another.
I have not made any assumptions about the report, just the whole "this was supposed to have been released but wasn't" assumption.
I don't have a conclusion yet, but I am looking forward for the day that new evidence comes out that doesn't inspire "you're just looking for evidence that confirms your biases!" defenses.
Maybe an intelligence agency will come out and say "our intelligence indicated the marketplace but our report was squashed".
Then you can see who points out that intelligence agencies are not scientific agencies.
I have an 80" tv in my own basement and I sit about 5 feet away from it.
I have seen maybe three movies on it. Countless video games, though.
If you would have told 8-year-old me this, I would have boggled. "Wow! Are the Star Wars sequels out?!?!?"
"Oh, yeah. Six of them. Three sequels, three prequels."
"Do you watch Star Wars movies in your basement?"
"No."
2 weeks ago
If I had any money, I might invest it in Ubisoft. It broke under the 10-Euros barrier and there is going to be a stockholder revolt. It's fallen to a 12 year low and Tencent is going to push a hardcore back-to-basics gameplan for the company.
Or, of course, it could tailspin and we should panic because we're all going to die.
He talks about a couple of the headlines at the WaPo: "Trump calls tariff plans 'a very beautiful thing'" and "As the markets dropped, the president putted".
He points out that it's easy to imagine the editor thinking "that'll show him" as this was posted.
He also points out that after several decades of this sort of thing, "from an evolutionary game theoretical standpoint it's also selecting for an opposition that is just completely indifferent to ambient social pressure".
And... yeah. That's one thing that seems to be borne out by looking at the demographics of the voters of 2024. This is what happens when people start being sufficiently indifferent to ambient social pressure.
One of the reviews of Nosferatu I read opened with the John Waters quote "I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie."
Well, during Nosferatu, my bud and I wouldn't shut up about the cinematography. Oooh! Look at that shot! Wow! Look at *THAT* one!
He also did the sound system up with multiple speakers in the basement and the soundbar up front and... wowsers. I'm not sure how much better it would have been to see it in a theater. I know that it's smaller than the difference between a normal screen and IMAX used to be.
Theaters had best figure out *SOMETHING* because, lemme tell ya, watching something (anything) on the basement television has a lot less mental/emotional overhead than what is required to put on shoes and get in the car and drive to the place and talk to at least one stranger.
And that's without getting into the difference in the price of chicken fingers at both places.
When we got tickets to A Working Man, the theater was mostly sold out. The only rows that had two seats next to each other (with a bro seat on either side) were the front rom and the back row.
We got tickets for the back row.
The other night, I watched Nosferatu on my broski's 85" television in his basement that we were sitting about 8-10 feet away from.
The field of vision real estate taken up by the screens was comparable. And, during Nosferatu, we could pause.
Part of the problem is that the Conservative Party is (usually) the Stupid Party.
There's a point at which "moral agency" kicks in and it's above a certain line and sufficiently stupid people are below it... and, in a group, you tend to get even stupider.
While I tend to agree that weed would make a movie better (at least it did back in 1992), I'm not sure how the ingestion would work. Edibles, from what I have heard, take a while to kick in and you can't really titrate the experience like you can with a joint. If it is smoking that they're going to be doing, the movie houses will have to get one of their rooms rebranded as a Cigar Bar (or just have a courtyard, I guess).
If my memory is accurate, it's also the case where the most pleasant buzz to watch a movie would be categorized as "comfortable". And, by "comfortable", I mean "shouldn't drive". So you're going to need a DD.
Which, I suppose, the movie theaters could push for... "bring a friend", I guess. But being the guy who isn't stoned with one (or more) stoned dudes is... well, maybe they could set it up and give a free ticket to the DD. Or a free soft drink.
As for cellphone-friendly viewings... ugh. There are a couple dozen reasons that I don't go to the theater that often and cellphones are among them. But if there's a cellphone showing, maybe it can be in a theater next to a non-surfing showing.
Of course, most of the responses to the tweet of this article were of the form "maybe make good movies?" but, as I look at the landscape, I see that Minecraft broke $150 million over the weekend and so that's probably not on the table either.
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My Ethics professor freshman year (so, 1991-1992) was approximately one jillion years old and he explained to us that the term that was used during his childhood/adolescence was "morons".
And we've reached the point where "moron" is a term that the one wacky morning DJ calls the other wacky morning DJ when they're arguing about sports or something.
It's not even a particularly venomous insult anymore.
There's a thread up on the sidebar about this!
Someone created a masterpiece using Yakko's World song.
I knew about this document, but it's very interesting to hear that there might be more.
Who likes conspiracy theories?
CIA files reveal search for Hitler in South America 10 years after his suicide as Argentina prepares to release classified docs on Nazi fugitives
You know, if Argentina releases those documents as retaliation for the tariffs, we may have found the absolute funniest outcome to all of this.
Doubly so, if one of the judges in charge of the case rules that alternative evidence is inadmissable.
I don't know that he's lying. I'm sure that he believes everything he's saying, just as he believed that there was a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank.
Please do not take my saying you shouldn't trust him as me saying that he is not earnest.
I'm sure he's earnest as hell.
If you trust anything that Beauchamp says, I've got a bridge between Gaza and the West Bank to sell you.
"Those conspiracy theorists are crazy! Besides, this is evidence for *MY* position!"
The report said "COVID-19-like symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections".
And so we're merely in a place where we don't know, we just know that these guys came back with symptoms that could have been lots of things and it was pre-outbreak so, of course!, they didn't test for it.
The only notable thing about the report at all is that it wasn't released until just recently.
I do wish we got more into what the specific symptoms were... that way we could differentiate between something that causes lack of taste for a while versus, say, the common cold.
I'm not the one who introduced the term "cold" to the conversation.
You remember that, right?
Ah, I remember the "Covid is just a bad cold" argument. It's always nice to see it again.
As for whether the report is "important", well, that's not a term we've seen defined quite yet. I might use the term "evidence that covid was at the games in question" but, if pressed, I'd have to admit that it was not proof.
Eh, in my mind, there is not definitive proof either way.
But nor was there when one of the options was prevented from being talked about.
I'm guessing (since I can't get through the paywall) that they're talking about further analysis of the same data discussed in this BBC report.
And, yeah. I gotta admit: That's pretty good evidence.
That said, I don't see it as sufficient to squash discussions of alternatives. Nor would I have in 2021.
So maybe this report wasn't required to be released to the public.
I can see why it wasn't, then.
Being a nothingburger.
We have plenty of evidence. What we don't have is a smoking gun piece of evidence or "proof".
You can usually see that with the dance where someone asks for evidence and then, when it's provided, they say "that's not conclusive!" or "that's not *PROOF*!"
They were required by law to release the report in 2022. The report, for some reason, was not released until this year.
"Did they try?"
Perhaps they were inept. Perhaps they forgot. Perhaps the person who was supposed to do it was a Trumpist who refused to get the shot and then died of Covid.
"Have you ever seen a report like this before for any sort of event?"
No, I have not. Perhaps those other reports were supposed to have been released but weren't for one reason or another.
I have not made any assumptions about the report, just the whole "this was supposed to have been released but wasn't" assumption.
I don't have a conclusion yet, but I am looking forward for the day that new evidence comes out that doesn't inspire "you're just looking for evidence that confirms your biases!" defenses.
Maybe an intelligence agency will come out and say "our intelligence indicated the marketplace but our report was squashed".
Then you can see who points out that intelligence agencies are not scientific agencies.
Yeah, it makes sense that the government would try to keep this hidden, given all of the people looking for evidence of a conspiracy.
If you don't like the article, don't read the article. It is no skin off of my nose.
Just read the Report. There's a link to that too.
Huh, the Free Beacon got their hands on the 2022 report that says that seven U.S. servicemembers contracted COVID-19-like symptoms in Wuhan in October 2019.
They've got a link to the report itself.
This seems to be evidence that the virus was circulating prior to December 2019. Huh.
86 inches. $800 dollars.
That's less than ten bucks an inch!!!
I have an 80" tv in my own basement and I sit about 5 feet away from it.
I have seen maybe three movies on it. Countless video games, though.
If you would have told 8-year-old me this, I would have boggled. "Wow! Are the Star Wars sequels out?!?!?"
"Oh, yeah. Six of them. Three sequels, three prequels."
"Do you watch Star Wars movies in your basement?"
"No."
If I had any money, I might invest it in Ubisoft. It broke under the 10-Euros barrier and there is going to be a stockholder revolt. It's fallen to a 12 year low and Tencent is going to push a hardcore back-to-basics gameplan for the company.
Or, of course, it could tailspin and we should panic because we're all going to die.
(The above is not investment advice.)
Eigen's got a good thread.
He talks about a couple of the headlines at the WaPo: "Trump calls tariff plans 'a very beautiful thing'" and "As the markets dropped, the president putted".
He points out that it's easy to imagine the editor thinking "that'll show him" as this was posted.
He also points out that after several decades of this sort of thing, "from an evolutionary game theoretical standpoint it's also selecting for an opposition that is just completely indifferent to ambient social pressure".
And... yeah. That's one thing that seems to be borne out by looking at the demographics of the voters of 2024. This is what happens when people start being sufficiently indifferent to ambient social pressure.
One of the reviews of Nosferatu I read opened with the John Waters quote "I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie."
Well, during Nosferatu, my bud and I wouldn't shut up about the cinematography. Oooh! Look at that shot! Wow! Look at *THAT* one!
He also did the sound system up with multiple speakers in the basement and the soundbar up front and... wowsers. I'm not sure how much better it would have been to see it in a theater. I know that it's smaller than the difference between a normal screen and IMAX used to be.
Theaters had best figure out *SOMETHING* because, lemme tell ya, watching something (anything) on the basement television has a lot less mental/emotional overhead than what is required to put on shoes and get in the car and drive to the place and talk to at least one stranger.
And that's without getting into the difference in the price of chicken fingers at both places.
When we got tickets to A Working Man, the theater was mostly sold out. The only rows that had two seats next to each other (with a bro seat on either side) were the front rom and the back row.
We got tickets for the back row.
The other night, I watched Nosferatu on my broski's 85" television in his basement that we were sitting about 8-10 feet away from.
The field of vision real estate taken up by the screens was comparable. And, during Nosferatu, we could pause.
Part of the problem is that the Conservative Party is (usually) the Stupid Party.
There's a point at which "moral agency" kicks in and it's above a certain line and sufficiently stupid people are below it... and, in a group, you tend to get even stupider.
From Variety: Texting, Weed and Sing-Alongs: Four Radical Ideas for Bringing New Audiences to Movie Theaters
While I tend to agree that weed would make a movie better (at least it did back in 1992), I'm not sure how the ingestion would work. Edibles, from what I have heard, take a while to kick in and you can't really titrate the experience like you can with a joint. If it is smoking that they're going to be doing, the movie houses will have to get one of their rooms rebranded as a Cigar Bar (or just have a courtyard, I guess).
If my memory is accurate, it's also the case where the most pleasant buzz to watch a movie would be categorized as "comfortable". And, by "comfortable", I mean "shouldn't drive". So you're going to need a DD.
Which, I suppose, the movie theaters could push for... "bring a friend", I guess. But being the guy who isn't stoned with one (or more) stoned dudes is... well, maybe they could set it up and give a free ticket to the DD. Or a free soft drink.
As for cellphone-friendly viewings... ugh. There are a couple dozen reasons that I don't go to the theater that often and cellphones are among them. But if there's a cellphone showing, maybe it can be in a theater next to a non-surfing showing.
Of course, most of the responses to the tweet of this article were of the form "maybe make good movies?" but, as I look at the landscape, I see that Minecraft broke $150 million over the weekend and so that's probably not on the table either.