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.

Neck gaiters may actually increase COVID-19 transmission, study finds

The U.S. hit another grim milestone on Monday with more than 5 million Americans now infected with the coronavirus. Although there is a push to increase testing and develop a vaccine, experts continue to suggest that if all Americans wore masks, the pandemic could be brought under control “within weeks.” In the spirit of that mission, a new study published in Science Advances is shedding light on which masks are most effective — and which may actually be hurting the effort to curb COVID-19.

The analysis, carried out by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, relied on an “optimal measurement method” that uses a laser beam and cellphone camera to track the number of droplets that emerged from an individual while he or she wore a mask. Of the 14 masks, the two that proved least effective were a bandanna and what the researchers refer to as a neck fleece, also known as a neck gaiter.

The most secure mask, the N95, led to a droplet transmission of below 0.1 percent. But handmade cotton and polypropylene masks, some of which were made from apron material, proved beneficial, showing a droplet transmission ranging from 10 to 40 percent. One mask, which was knitted, released a higher number of droplets, with up to 60 percent droplet transmission. But none of the masks compared with the neck fleece, which had 110 percent droplet transmission (10 percent higher than not wearing a mask).

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After Multiple Ft. Hood Soldiers Murdered, 2 More Soldiers Arrested in Child Trafficking Sting

The Fort Hood military base in Texas has come under extreme scrutiny in recent months, as numerous dead soldiers were found on or around the base. This week, the base was in the news again after two Fort Hood soldiers were caught up in a child trafficking bust. The soldiers were among nine Texas residents who were arrested during a two-day child sex trafficking sting in Killeen, the city where the base is located.

“The overall goal of this joint effort was to locate and arrest subjects who were willing to make overt efforts to pay minors to engage in sexual acts,” police spokeswoman Ofelia Miramontez said, according to KWTX.

Miramontez said that social media exchanges between the men running the organization and undercover agents showed that they knowingly traded money, drugs, and alcohol “for sexual acts with girls they believed were 15 or 16 years of age.”

The men arrested include Anthony 25-year-old, Xavier Antwon of Fort Hood, 40-year-old Javier Perez, of Austin, 21-year-old Brian Harley Flynn, of Temple, 25-year-old Brandon Anthony Lee, of Killeen, 42-year-old Dustin Edward Johnson, of Lott, 30-year-old Timmy Jones Jr., of Fort Hood, 39-year-old Shaun Paul Moore, of Kempner, 28-year-old Rakeem Jamal Nelson, of Killeen, and 32-year-old Pierre Jean, of Killeen.

This news comes on the heels of another sex trafficking bust that took place last month in which 6 Fort Hood soldiers were arrested in a sex trafficking sting. It also comes after a string of suspicious and outright violent and gruesome deaths of soldiers.

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New Epstein flight logs show Trump flew on his plane in 1997

In 1997, now-President Trump flew on a plane belonging to jet-setting financier Jeffrey Epstein, joining the recently accused child sex trafficker on a trip from Palm Beach, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, court documents unsealed Friday revealed.

Dozens of pages of flight logs were ordered released today by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit along with 2,000 pages of other court records connected to the defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s on-again-off-again girlfriend and longtime associate whom Giuffre has accused of helping Epstein abuse her and other women when Giuffre was underage.

The 14-page indictment against Epstein from July alleges he sexually exploited dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, among other locations, between 2002 and 2005 and perhaps beyond. Some of the victims were allegedly as young as 14 at the time the alleged crimes occurred.

The new flight manifests show Trump joining Epstein, Epstein’s brother Mark, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others on the flight from Palm Beach International Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport on Jan. 5, 1997, supporting Mark Epstein’s previous recollection of Trump flying on Epstein’s jet.

Trump and Epstein were neighbors and friends in Palm Beach in the 1990s, though they eventually had a falling out. Trump claimed in July he was “never a fan” of Epstein, but in 2002 described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do — and many of them are on the younger side.” Trump’s Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney for Southern Florida involved in cutting a sweetheart deal for Epstein in 2008, resigned in the wake of Epstein’s recent arrest.

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Holistic Doctor and Partner Found Dead: Cops Say Murder-Suicide

According to the local news, Dr. James Greg Bonham, 63, was a respected member of the Irmo area of Lexington County. He and his longtime companion Lisa Marie McCartha, 46, were both found deceased in their home. Their bodies were discovered after McCartha’s sister got concerned when she and her mother were unable to reach McCartha for almost a week, which was very unusual.

On Wednesday, July 29, their mother went to the home herself to check on her daughter but was unable to get anyone to come to the door. She became more worried and expressed that to McCartha’s sister.

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Michelle Obama slips up, says COVID is an opportunity to change ‘how wealth is distributed’

During Wednesday’s episode of her new podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama slipped up and appeared to reveal the Left’s true agenda behind the coronavirus pandemic. While talking to journalist Michele Norris, Obama said that the coronavirus pandemic was actually an opportunity to think about “how wealth is distributed” to lower-income essential workers.

“There’s kind of a new COVID vocabulary, isn’t it,” Norris said to start off the conversation. “There are also words that have always had some meaning, but that take on different meaning now, the word hero, the word essential.”

“I think we will forever think about the word ‘essential’ in a different way,” she added. “And, when we were told to stay home, they got up, got dressed, and went out into the world, risking their lives, to drive garbage trucks, to work in warehouses, to work in grocery stores, to work in hospitals. Often doing invisible, but yes, essential work, and I struggle with it because I’m not sure that we treat them like they’re essential.”

Obama immediately took this and ran with it with her response, showing once again that Democrats have no intention of letting this crisis go to waste.

“And that’s something that we need to, that’s a part of that reflection, that we need to do, you know. With ourselves, and, and as a community,” the former First Lady said. “And we have to think about that, in terms of how wealth is distributed.”

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‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system – a vaccine.

But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

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Teachers Openly Fret That Parents Might Hear Them Brainwashing Children, Call Parents ‘Dangerous’

In one of the creepiest yet most revealing Twitter threads ever to be posted on the platform, a teacher recently fretted out loud that virtual classes might allow parents to hear him brainwashing their kids. Matthew R. Kay, an educator and author of a book on “how to lead meaningful race conversations in the classroom,” worried that “conservative parents” would be able to interfere with the “messy work” of indoctrinating children into critical race theory, gender theory, and other left-wing dogmas.

Here’s the entire thread, which has since been set to private:

So, this fall, virtual class discussion will have many potential spectators — parents, siblings, etc. — in the same room. We’ll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse. What does this do for our equity/inclusion work? 

How much have students depended on the (somewhat) secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability? How many of us have installed some version of “what happens here stays here” to help this? 

While conversation about race are in my wheelhouse, and remain a concern in this no-walls environment — I am most intrigued by the damage that “helicopter/snowplow” parents can do in the host conversations about gender/sexuality. And while “conservative” parents are my chief concern — I know that the damage can come from the left too. If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kid’s racism or homophobia or transphobia — how much do we want their classmates’ parents piling on?

It’s important to note that while some teachers responded to Kay’s comments with the appropriate level of horror and disgust, many others chimed in to share their own strategies for brainwashing during a pandemic. One teacher said she’d also been “thinking about” the problem Kay described, and had decided that she’d ask students about their preferred pronouns via survey — though she still worries that “caregivers” might see it and learn something about their children that they weren’t supposed to know. 

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