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.

More than 150 Minnesota businesses vow to defy governor’s shutdown order

A coalition of small-business owners in Minnesota say they plan to reopen early, before an order from the state’s governor to stay closed expires. 

Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed an executive order last month closing bars and restaurants in an effort to curb the number of coronavirus cases in the state. The order is set to expire Friday, but a group of approximately 160 businesses has banded together, urging one another to reopen early, some as soon as Wednesday. 

“The financial part of it sucks,” Lisa Monet Zarza, who owns a bar in Lakeville, told the Star Tribune. “But it’s more than just that. We donate catering, support youth sports, the police and the Rotary. It’s hurting the fabric of the community.”

Keep reading

Police Launch Investigation Into Death of Vaccine Safety Advocate Brandy Vaughn

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Monday announced it is investigating the sudden death of Brandy Vaughn, a well-known Pharma whistleblower and advocate for vaccine safety, who died Dec. 7.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said in a statement that investigators won’t determine the cause of Vaughn’s death until the completion of a pending toxicology screening, a process that normally takes 4 – 6 weeks.

Brandy’s death was originally reported as resulting from gallbladder complications. But many of her friends and co-activists in the vaccine safety movement suspect foul play. Those suspicions have gained traction due to a wave of mysterious deaths — many of them violent —among alternative and integrative medical doctors in recent years. In response to this trend, Brandy made a Facebook post almost exactly a year before her death in which she said, “If something were to happen to me, I have arranged for a close group of my friends … to hire a team of private investigators to figure out all the details …”

Keep reading

Americans Are in Full Revolt Against Pandemic Lockdowns

Echoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned city residents this week to prepare for a “full shutdown” as part of ongoing efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. The two elected officials better not hold their breath waiting for compliance. Evidence from around the country shows that many Americans are thoroughly sick of impoverishing, socially isolating lockdown orders, and are revolting against the often-hypocritical politicians who issue them.

“The governor said in a New York Times interview over the weekend that we should prepare for the possibility of a full shutdown. I agree with that,” Mayor de Blasio told interviewers on December 14. “We need to recognize that that may be coming and we’ve got to get ready for that now, because we cannot let this virus keep growing.”

The mayor commented following Cuomo’s ban on indoor dining at New York City restaurants. That was issued a week after Staten Island residents cheered bar owner Daniel Presti, who was arrested for defying pandemic restrictions. Days later, Presti ran his car into a sheriff’s deputy who sought to rearrest him for continuing to serve patrons. Both of the deputy’s legs were broken.

While Presti’s level of violent resistance against lockdowns is much too extreme, he’s not alone in his opposition. From coast to coast, businesses and individuals are ignoring restrictive rules that threaten their livelihoods, stifle social contact, and threaten to strangle the necessary interactions of everyday life.

“Another shutdown just isn’t an option for us,” the Seven Sirens Brewing Company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, announced last week on its Facebook page. “We, and thousands of other small businesses throughout the country simply will not survive. […] After speaking with our bank, staff members, families, attorneys, and local government officials…we have decided we will not comply with future shutdown mandates. We will continue to operate with the same, proven-safe measures we implemented 5 months ago.”

Keep reading

Another “Pre-Crime” AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It’s Published

We previously have covered the many weighty claims made by the progenitors of A.I. algorithms who claim that their technology can stop crime before it happens. Similar predictive A.I. is increasingly being used to stop the spread of misinformation, disinformation and general “fake news” by analyzing trends in behavior and language used across social media.

However, as we’ve also covered, these systems have more often that not failed quite spectacularly, as many artificial intelligence experts and mathematicians have highlighted. One expert in particular — Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, at the University of Sydney, Australia — noted that from what he has seen so far, these systems are “no better at telling the future than a crystal ball.”

Please keep this in mind as you look at the latest lofty pronouncements from the University of Sheffield below. Nevertheless, we should also be aware that — similar their real-world counterparts in street-level pre-crime — these systems most likely will be rolled out across social media (if they haven’t been already) regardless, until further exposure of their inherent flaws, biases and their own disinformation is revealed.

Keep reading

You can’t sue Pfizer or Moderna if you have severe Covid vaccine side effects. The government likely won’t compensate you for damages either

If you experience severe side effects after getting a Covid vaccine, lawyers tell CNBC there is basically no one to blame in a U.S. court of law. 

The federal government has granted companies like Pfizer and Moderna immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines.

“It is very rare for a blanket immunity law to be passed,” said Rogge Dunn, a Dallas labor and employment attorney. “Pharmaceutical companies typically aren’t offered much liability protection under the law.“

You also can’t sue the Food and Drug Administration for authorizing a vaccine for emergency use, nor can you hold your employer accountable if they mandate inoculation as a condition of employment.

Congress created a fund specifically to help cover lost wages and out-of-pocket medical expenses for people who have been irreparably harmed by a “covered countermeasure,” such as a vaccine. But it is difficult to use and rarely pays. Attorneys say it has compensated less than 6% of the claims filed in the last decade.

Keep reading

COVID & The Rise Of Cage-Keeper Democracy

The Covid pandemic this year has profoundly transformed the relationship of government to American citizens. Constitutional leashes have been obliterated as state and local politicians and officials have issued endless decrees that were vastly more effective at destroying freedom than at curbing a virus. And the Biden administration may soon take further leaps towards making our political system into a Cage Keeper Democracy where citizens’ ballots merely designate who will place them under house arrest. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito aptly declared last month, “The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” But the sheer extent of this rollback has been missed by many activists who seem to have little or no concern about what has happened to average Americans. Pop singer Fiona Apple recently called for a mass release of jail inmates and urged people to sympathize with those behind bars: “Anybody out there could find 1 or 2 instances in their lives when they felt a little bit alone, afraid, disbelieved, forgotten about. Magnify that by an unimaginable amount. And ask why you’re not doing something.”

Stalin reputedly said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. The same is apparently true when politicians destroy millions of people’s freedom – it is a mere statistic that progressive minds dismiss. 

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned all unnecessary “travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.” The mayor offered no evidence that people strolling on sidewalks or parks spurred a tsunami of Covid cases. Garcetti also “ordered all residents living in the city ‘to remain in their homes’ forcing businesses that require in-person attendance to shut down.” Perhaps as a contingency in case Trump does something especially ornery, Garcetti’s order exempted “participating in an in-person outdoor protest while wearing a face covering, maintaining social distancing, and observing the Los Angeles County Protocol for Public Demonstrations.” Intercept reporter Lee Fang noted that the order also contained an exemption for people who work in “‘music, film and television production’ and private golf courses that follow state guidelines can stay open.”

Politicians around the nation are issuing decrees that look like they were designed by angst-stricken focus groups. Governor Ralph Northam dictated last week that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m, with narrow exceptions for people traveling to work and for people suffering medical emergencies (nice public relations brushstroke on that one). If Northam has the right to ban people leaving their homes for 5 hours a day, then why would he not have a right to lock everyone up 24/7 until everyone gets a mandatory vaccine? Virginian Republican legislative leaders said Northam’s edict “smacks of martial law” and was “blatantly unconstitutional.” But there was no criticism of the edict from liberal mainstays such as the Washington Post. On the other hand, if Northam issued the midnight curfew to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, he would have been vilified by progressives across the nation.

Covid restrictions are supposedly justified based on evidence of specific ways that the virus is transmitted. But the contact tracing in many parts of the nation has collapsed as the surge in cases has buried bureaucratic efforts to track down the source of infections.

But politicians are increasingly banning activities and businesses regardless of what the data reveals. District of Columbia contact tracing data attributes less than one percent of Covid cases to gyms and fitness activities but last week Mayor Muriel Bowser still banned high school sports and shut down indoor fitness classes.

Keep reading

Researchers Warn Some Covid-19 Vaccines Could Increase Risk Of HIV Infection

Some of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development could increase the risk of acquiring HIV, warned a group of researchers in the The Lancet medical journal Monday, potentially leading to an increase in infections as vaccines are rolled out to vulnerable populations around the world. 

Keep reading