Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Joe Biden, July 4 Grinch, would now like to get his hands on your selfies

Apparently, someone in the White House came up with the idea of calling on the public to send in their Fourth of July celebration selfies based on what’s done during professional baseball games, where people put selfies on Twitter with a certain hashtag, (in San Diego, it’s #FriarFaithful) and then either see them retweeted by the sports organization to its huge followership and/or projected on one of the giant stadium screens during a live game. These things are fun, and everybody does them, I certainly have.

In Biden’s case, they’re less fun based on two realities — one is that Biden is going to use them to reap political hay for himself and his party, while his social media big tech allies are likely to use them for data-mining purposes. No thanks.

Can you imagine an evil schoolmaster issuing an either/or ultimatum and not getting what he wanted, and then asking you after he’s just threatened you for your selfies? Would definitely look creepy.

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THE TROUBLED HISTORY OF JOEL OSTEEN

Churches have always been tasked with bringing the word of God to the masses. Megachurches are the logical endpoint of that line of thought, and there are few churches more mega than Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. As the Indianapolis Star tells us, Osteen is a charismatic televangelist who took over the non-denominational Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, from his father, John. Young Joel was initially reluctant to join the family business, but his Southern Baptist dad managed to persuade him to give preaching a go in 1999 … and passed away just six days later, leaving Osteen in charge. 

And take charge he did. By 2003, Lakewood Church moved its operations to the Compaq Center, the former home of Houston Rockets. The massive arena church started hosting televised services, through which Osteen reaches millions of viewers on a weekly basis. These days, Lakewood Church boasts over 40,000 members. Osteen also tours the nation with his “A Night of Hope” worship events, and has written several best-selling books.

Now, the world has seen more than its share of televangelists who have been anything but holy. Compared to some of them, Osteen has managed to keep himself relatively free of scandals and suspicious antics. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone considers him to be squeaky clean. Osteen certainly has plenty of critics, who have been quick to point out that the powerful preacher man is not without his controversies. Today, we’ll take a look at the troubled history of Joel Osteen.

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The Great Big ‘Delta’ Scariant

Why the Delta scare?

As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal. And then eventually it mostly disappears. Many voices claim that Delta will be with us for a very long time, but we should be so lucky. It’s way more likely that it will soon be followed by a next variant that will in turn become dominant. And more contagious and less lethal.

And no, that’s not because of unvaccinated people, or at least there’s no logic in that. If most people are not vaccinated, the virus has no reason to mutate. If many people are, it does. So this CNN piece is suspect. Vaccinated people are potential variant factories, just as much, if and when the vaccines used don’t stop them from being infectious, as the present vaccines don’t, far as we know.

Unvaccinated People Are “Variant Factories,” Infectious Diseases Expert

Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They’re also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say. That’s because the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person. “Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday. “The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.”

“Even more serious”? Well, yes, it can become more contagious, but then it loses lethality. Maybe that’s what we want. Maybe we want a virus that everyone can be infected by, and build resistance to, without serious consequences. Maybe that’s even what we should aim for. And also, maybe that’s what we already have, with survival rates of 99.99% among most people.

And maybe, just maybe, a one-dimensional “solution” in the shape of an experimental vaccine is the worst response of all. Because it doesn’t protect from anything other than more severe disease, while unleashing potential adverse effects for decades to come in the inoculated. Maybe one dimension simply doesn’t cut it. Maybe we should not refuse to prevent people from becoming infected, or to treat them in the early stages of the disease.

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National Geographic Says 4th of July Fireworks Are Racist Because Smoke Disproportionately Affects Black People

National Geographic posted an unhinged and unscientific tweet on Independence Day saying fireworks are racist because they affect communities of color.

What complete BS.

This is what can be described as “scientism” and NOT “science.”
There is absolutely no proof to support this theory.

In fact, in cities like St. Louis and New York City, minorities shoot off guns on New Year’s Eve and the 4th of July. This is much more dangerous than sniffing fireworks smoke for a night.

The junk scientists behind this nonsense also did not take into consideration the thousands of communities, including rural towns, where fireworks are a 4th of July tradition. The people there are not affected by the smoke for some reason.

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Senior San Francisco Official Compares Those who Complain about Surging Crime and Looting to KKK Members

Kate Chatfield, a senior director in District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office, compared those who complain about crime and protecting their wives and family to KKK members.

This was after Neiman Marcus store was looted on Monday.

Kate Chatfield compared those who complain and worry about the San Francisco crime surge to those who produced the KKK film “Birth of a Nation” that was given a viewing in Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s White House.

This is today’s Democrat Party. This is where it leads — always.

Kate Chatfield later set her Twitter account to “private.”

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Hackers Scrape 90,000 GETTR User Emails, Surprising No One

Hackers were able to scrape the email addresses and other data of more than 90,000 GETTR users.

On Tuesday, a user of a notorious hacking forum posted a database that they claimed was a scrape of all users of GETTR, the new social media platform launched last week by Trump’s former spokesman Jason Miller, who pitched it as an alternative to “cancel culture.” The data seen by Motherboard includes email addresses, usernames, status, and location. 

One of the people whose email is in the database confirmed to Motherboard that they are indeed registered to GETTR. Motherboard also verified the database by attempting to create an account with three email addresses that appear in the database. When doing that, the site displayed the message: “The email is taken,” suggesting it’s already registered. 

It’s unclear if the database contains the usernames and email addresses of all users on the site. 

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Sobriety for dollars: California lawmakers move to pay meth addicts to stay clean

California lawmakers are closer to sending Gov. Gavin Newsom legislation that would offer money for people addicted to methamphetamines to stay in treatment.

Senate Bill 110 would make contingency management, a therapy centered around positive reinforcement, a legal form of treatment in California that would be paid for by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

In the case of people suffering from meth addictions, they would be given incentives to attend treatment or pass drug tests.

Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) said in June that President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking evidence-based solutions to the nation’s drug crisis.

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An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics

An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.

Maté is one of the very few left-wing journalists who reported skeptically on Russiagate and who questioned the U.S. Government’s narrative about the civil war in Syria, including by traveling to war-torn parts of that country to do so. He won the 2019 Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award for his work debunking Russiagate. Yet with a one-minute rant from their insulated studio, Uygur baselessly branded Maté as someone who is “paid by the Russians” while Kasparian asserted that he “seemed” to be working for Assad and other dictators — a potentially reputation-destroying smear for a journalist and one that can be quite dangerous for a reporter who, like Maté, works on the ground in war zones.

The conflict engendered by those grotesque fabrications escalated significantly when Kasparian sent a private Twitter message to one of Maté’s defenders, Jimmy Dore, in which she threatened to accuse Dore of #MeToo-type sexual harassment from when they worked together seven years earlier. Kasparian made clear that her intent to publicly vilify Dore as a sexual harasser would serve as punishment for his criticisms of The Young Turks. Dore then revealed Kasparian’s threat on his program, and days later, Kasparian made good on her threat by accusing Dore of sexual harassment back in 2014.

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Florida Man Files Lawsuit Against CDC’s Mask Mandate in Supreme Court

A Florida man who frequently files on planes asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mask requirements for public transportation, decrying the regulation as unconstitutional.

Lucas Wall appealed to the court on Tuesday and named the CDC, President Joe Biden, and other federal agencies as defendants in the case. Previously, he filed a lawsuit against seven airlines and alleged they engaged in discrimination against fliers who cannot wear face masks due to medical reasons.

“This Court has issued at least five emergency injunctive orders in the past seven months unequivocally holding that governments may not restrict First Amendment rights even in the name of fighting a pandemic,” Wall wrote in his Tuesday petition. Now, he wants the court to rule on whether other constitutional rights “can’t be suspended by the federal defendants because of COVID-19.”

Wall was ejected from the Orlando International Airport last month because he wasn’t wearing a mask, according to reports and video footage he posted online. In his previous lawsuit, Wall said he has a generalized anxiety disorder that makes it not possible to follow what he called an “improper, illegal, and unconstitutional” mandate on mask-wearing.

When he was ejected from the airport, Wall told Transportation Security Administration agents: “I refuse to comply with that,” reported the Washington Examiner, citing his video.

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