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.

Coronavirus Fact-Check #6: Does wearing a mask do anything?

On May 21st, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article titled Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era, which states:

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.

And as recently as last week, Dr April Baller of World Health Organization said:

“If you do not have any respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough or runny nose, you do not need to wear a mask,”

The common counter-argument to this point is that masks don’t prevent you from getting sick, but rather prevent you from spreading it if you’re infected.

However that is disputed by a paper published just last month, but based on research conducted in late 2019 (before the Covid outbreak),
which found that [my emphasis]:

Disposable medical masks are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids. There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

In fact, not only is there substantial evidence masks will not prevent you getting sick, there is some evidence they could actually be counter-productive.

A trial of cloth masks in 2015 found that:

Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in an increased risk of infection.

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The Forward reports that U.S. presidents signed secret agreements with Israel to cover up Israeli nuclear weapons

The Forward reports today that U.S. presidents have signed secret documents that “Israelis saw as an American commitment not to ask them to give up their undeclared nuclear arsenal.”

According to its website, the Forward is “the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet today.”

When Helen Thomas asked President Obama at his first presidential press conference whether any country in the Middle East had nuclear weapons, he evaded the question (video here). Finally in 2015, in a move ignored by most U.S. media, the Pentagon finally publicly admitted that Israel has nuclear weapons.

While the Israel lobby promotes fears about a possible Iranian nuclear program (U.S, intelligence agencies have found no evidence that this exists), U.S. media and politicans turn a blind eye to Israel. Numerous groups have tried to raise the issue.

An American thinktank, Institute for Research: Middle East Policies (IRMEP) has filed a “39-page federal lawsuit challenging the secrecy of a gag order that forbids all U.S. government agency employees and contractors from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons program.”

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NYT’s Nikole Hannah-Jones Confirms She Called Europeans ‘Barbaric Devils,’ Linked Africa to Aztec Temples

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times reporter famous for her work on the paper’s “1619 Project,” confirmed Wednesday that she wrote a 1995 letter labeling white people as “bloodsuckers” and “barbaric devils” — with a caveat that she does not “hate them.”

Hannah-Jones admitted that she wrote a letter to the editor in Notre Dame’s student newspaper The Observer while accusing columnist Andrew Sullivan of attempting to “cancel” her by sharing a Federalist article that first unveiled the incendiary writing.

“Andrew Sullivan tried to use a letter to the editor I wrote when I was 19 to get me ‘canceled,’” Hannah-Jones wrote on social media. “He has attacked and trolled every prominent Black writer,” she continued, then shared a screenshot of Sullivan posting the Federalist’s article and linking the views espoused in the letter to the Times’ Pulitzer-winning “1619 Project.”

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Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

 A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts.

On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack.

“We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool.

In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules.

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