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.

To Deny the “Lab Leak” COVID Theory, the NYT and WPost Use Dubious and Conflicted Sources

That COVID-19 infected humanity due to a zoonotic leap from a “wet market” in Wuhan — rather than a leak from a lab in the same Chinese city — was declared unquestionable truth at the start of the pandemic. For a full year, anyone dissenting from this narrative was deemed so irresponsible that they were banned from large social media platforms, accused of spreading “disinformation.” No debate about COVID’s origins was permitted. It had been settled by The Science™. Every rational person who believed in science, by definition, immediately accepted at the start of the pandemic that COVID made a natural leap from bats or pangolins; that it may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan which just so happens to gather, study and manipulate novel coronaviruses in bats was officially declared a deranged conspiracy theory.

The reason this consensus was so quickly consecrated was that a group of more than two dozen scientists published a letter in the prestigious science journal Lancet in February, 2020 — while very little was known about SARS-CoV-2 — didactically declaring “that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” The possibility that COVID leaked from the Wuhan lab was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory,” the by-product of “rumours and misinformation” which, they strongly implied, was an unfair and possibly racist attack on “the science and health professionals of China.”

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Britain may outlaw catcalling

Pestering women on the street and in bars could soon become an offense as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women against violence.

Loopholes in current laws mean there is no specific offense for sexually harassing women verbally in the street.

Now a Government-commissioned review will next week call for public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offences, reports The Telegraph.

The proposed change is part of a push to outlaw “public sexual harassment”.

However, calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime will be rejected — as it’s thought it be ineffective, according to sources.

A Whitehall source told the paper: “The Law Commission is not going to class misogyny as a hate crime because it would be ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.

“But it will call for a public sexual harassment offence which doesn’t currently exist.

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Government watchdog agency can’t figure out where 20% of federal election grant funding went

An audit by the Government Accountability Office could not account for a significant portion of Election Assistance Commission grants provide to states to assist with voting last year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After Congress approved the CARES Act, which was designed as a pandemic relief measure, the commission received $400 million in grants, but thus far, the GAO has only accounted for $326 million of that money, meaning the watchdog agency does not know where or how roughly 20 percent of that money was spent, according to a November report.

Republicans in the House first voiced concerns about the election grants in September 2020 in relation to an item of expenditure in California. According to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the GAO’s analysis and findings provide validation for Republicans’ concerns that the problems are not limited to a single state.

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China moon rover to investigate cube-shaped ‘mystery house’ object

The Yutu-2 rover is on a roll. It’s been exploring the far side of the moon since early 2019, as part of China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander mission. It now has its eyes set on a strange-looking cube-shaped object it spotted in the distance.  

Andrew Jones, a journalist who covers the Chinese space program for SpaceNews and Space.com, highlighted a new rover update in a series of tweets Friday. The nickname for the cube-shaped object translates to “mystery house.” 

The rover team is planning to drive over and get a closer look at the object.

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House Democrats Block GOP Effort to Codify Parents’ Bill of Rights

Parental oversight of their kids’ education shouldn’t be a complicated or divisive issue, but — as statewide elections in Virginia last month showed — parents’ rights have become a partisan wedge as Democrats seek to keep America’s families from having a role in what their children are learning.

To preserve parents’ ability to keep tabs on what’s going on in schools and protect their ability to get critical information about the people to whom they entrust their children, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy drafted the Parents’ Bill of Rights with Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Julia Letlow (R-LA), Burgess Owens (R-UT), and Jim Banks (R-IN).

The House GOP’s proposal is simple: Parents should have the right to review their school’s curriculum and reading materials, to be heard, to see school budget and spending, to protect their child’s privacy, and to be updated on any violent activity at school.

While the ideas in the Parents’ Bill of Rights are straightforward and seemingly common sense, Democrats don’t want such rights protected under federal law. So, House Republicans led by Rep. Letlow put Democrats’ opposition to parental rights into the congressional record.

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United Kingdom Offers Government Employees Time Off To Attend Free Crystal Healing Sessions

Civil servants in the Westminster government are being offered crystal healing sessions, well-being events, and other “hocus pocus bollocks,” allegedly all paid for by the taxpayer.

First publicised and uncovered by the British politics blog, Guido Fawkes, British civil servants working in Westminster are currently offered a number of strange free courses to attend throughout the week, giving them the opportunity to skip work to attend these sessions.

The schedule for November 3 included a 9 a.m. “counselling session” for any ethnic minorities, a two-day “well-being event” entitled “it’s all about me,” and an interactive session at 12 p.m. entitled “reshaping negative thoughts and language into positive affirmations.”

Guido highlighted probably the most insane event of them all, which was “a beginners guide to crystal healing and deep relaxation,” which took place at 2 p.m. The programme invited the government employees to learn about the “benefits of crystals,” and then engage in a “deep relaxation” session. Speaking to Guido, a government minister slammed the sessions as being “hocus pocus bollocks,” and something that you’d expect to find in Los Angeles, “not in Whitehall!”

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