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.

Covid-19 Vaccines With ‘Minor Side Effects’ Could Still Be Pretty Bad

On Monday, vaccine researchers from Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced results from a “Phase 1/2 trial,” suggesting their product might be able to generate immunity without causing serious harm. Similar, but smaller-scale results, were posted just last week for another candidate vaccine produced by the biotech firm Moderna, in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

As both these groups and others push ahead into the final phase of testing, it’s vital that the public has a clear and balanced understanding of this work—one that cuts through all the marketing and hype. But we’re not off to a good start. The evidence so far suggests that we’re getting blinkered by these groups’ PR, and so seduced by stories of their amazing speed that we’re losing track of everything else. In particular, neither the mainstream media nor the medical press has given much attention to the two vaccines’ potential downsides—in particular, their risk of nasty adverse effects, even if they’re not life-threatening. This sort of puffery doesn’t only help to build a false impression; it may also dry the tinder for the future spread of vaccine fear-mongering.

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Marco Rubio Doubles Down on UFOs

What the hell? Doesn’t Senator Marco Rubio know that talking about UFOs will destroy his political career?

Or maybe he knows enough about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to bet his chance for higher office on its reality.

Calling for investigations, based on a potential national security threat, and defending the policy concisely in a public interview, Rubio has set himself center-stage in the large drama that is playing out these days.

Rubio has set himself center-stage in the large drama that is playing out these days.

He wants to be seen as someone trying to lead us to the truth and keep us safe. He seems sincere when he talks about it.

Remember that Rubio wanted to be President in 2016 and still does. That means he’s thinking about a 2024 run right now.

He’s a smart man. He knows he has to think strategically and that boldness is a virtue. He has almost certainly received a classified briefing by the Office of Naval Intelligence on this issue. He may not know everything but he knows something.

He has bet his political fortune on UAP being the real deal. He’s all in and that just changed the game again.

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Did Roy Den Hollander also kill fellow Men’s Rights lawyer Marc Angelucci? Signs point to “yes”

Was Men’s Rights attorney Roy Den Hollander, who on Sunday night gunned down a federal judge’s husband and son, also the man who shot fellow Men’s Rights lawyer Marc Angelucci dead a little over a week ago?

It’s looking a lot like it. Let’s consider some of the facts of the case as they are now emerging.

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A Taxonomy of Fear

We live in a time of personal timorousness and collective mercilessness.

There might seem to be a contradiction between being fearful and fearless, between weighing every word you say and attacking others with abandon. But as more and more topics become too risky to discuss outside of the prevailing orthodoxies, it makes sense to constantly self-censor, feeling unbound only when part of a denunciatory pack.

Institutions that are supposed to be guardians of free expression—academia and journalism in particular—are becoming enforcers of conformity. Campuses have bureaucracies that routinely undermine free speech and due process. Now, these practices are breaching the ivy wall. They are coming to a high school or corporate HR office near you.

The cultural rules around hot button issues are ever-expanding. It’s as if a daily script went out describing what’s acceptable, and those who flub a line—or don’t even know a script exists—are rarely given the benefit of the doubt, no matter how benign their intent. Naturally, people are deciding the best course is to shut up. It makes sense to be part of the silenced majority when the price you pay for an errant tweet or remark can be the end of your livelihood.

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Trump triggers outrage for giving best wishes to Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking accomplice

At Tuesday’s coronavirus news conference, President Donald Trump was asked to comment on Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite arrested as an alleged accomplice to deceased wealth manager Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking operation. He replied, “I wish her well.”

Commenters on social media were not impressed with this response.

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AS TRUMP THREATENS SECRET POLICE DEPLOYMENT NATIONWIDE, DEMOCRATS DEBATE EXPANDING SURVEILLANCE POWERS AND NEW MONEY FOR DHS

THE ROGUE DEPLOYMENT of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration’s vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security. In March, a sweeping set of government authorities to monitor people in the United States expired, and Congress continues to debate what limits should be put on such powers before reauthorizing them. And the House is debating its next DHS funding bill, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing leadership not to bring it up for a vote given Trump’s abuse of power and DHS agents’ role in a Portland arrest. 

House Democratic leaders, however, are considering lumping in DHS funding with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that the CPC is urging leadership either to not bring up the bill at all or to break it off from Labor-HHS and allow for a separate vote.

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Senior FBI Intel Analyst Admitted To Viewing Porn Of Girls As Young As 9 Years Old

A senior FBI intelligence analyst admitted during a polygraph test that he viewed child pornography of girls as young as nine years old, according to a report of the investigation obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The analyst, who is not identified in the report, was fired from the FBI, but the Justice Department and its child exploitation unit declined to file criminal charges against him.

The report goes into greater detail about the investigation into the analyst than did a summary of the probe released by the Justice Department’s inspector general in April.

That summary said that the supervisory intelligence analyst (SIA) admitted to viewing and downloading child pornography several years earlier, but did not give any other details about the nature of the content.

The investigative report, which the DCNF obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, paints a more disturbing picture of the analyst’s activities.

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