The Atlas Asylum of absurd/ignorant posts IX

[Hammy]

Jimmy Dore is probably the best reporter out there right now.

[Hammy]

2700 deaths today. Very bad.

On the plus side we're now 2 weeks out from the probable peak in cases, so hopefully the deaths are peaking soon.

2800 deaths today and yesterday was revised to 3100 which is the most since last winter. Very bad.

That number could be 300,000 and this forum still wouldn't change its mind, it's that entitled and spoiled and dead set on "return to normal". It's even starting to borrow old Trump talking points, demanding the end of testing and saying that hospitalizations and deaths are inflated, insinuating that there is a conspiracy in the hospitals to label unrelated things as COVID.

[Hammy]

A new study indicates the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron may cause severe disease at the level of prior variants. It's already shown to be more contagious than Omicron (BA.1) and will eventually become the dominant variant. You guys thought the end-of-pandemic party was on, well, it might already be over! I thought we wouldn't see another surge until the end of the year but if this study holds, we may see another one within a few months!

compucomp needs banned from the covid thread, he's been showing increasingly deranged amount o glee over any possibility of the pandemic dragging on or getting worse, which is bordering on wishing death and harm to others.

Your side has insulted and trolled me in all kinds of ways over this issue, surely you can handle a bit of trolling from me, don't dish it out if you can't take it.

You take joy in the suffering of others and clearly need to be elsewhere.

Get out of here with that nonsense, you can't even be bothered to put on a mask for the good of public health and to alleviate the suffering of others and you're trying to pontificate at me? Really?

He says this to the most vocal forever masker on the forum.

[Hammy]

tucker is the only sane voice in late-night media right now

[Hammy]

Why in the world are we still testing people?  End this madness already!

Suddenly doing things that are the most basic common sense--testing people for infections so they can treat it, and isolating those infected so they don't spread it--has become this deranged moral outrage.

[Hammy]

Defamation/libel/slander laws should not exist, nor should copyright. They are infringements on free speech.

[Hammy]

Defamation/libel/slander laws should not exist, nor should copyright. They are infringements on free speech.

Pulling anything from pieman is unfairly low-hanging fruit. Posters like him are why the ignore button was created

The ignore button should be removed and these posters should be shamed without mercy for their insanity.

[Hammy]

You have to be somewhat careful attacking him because I believe he is on the spectrum. Not that that excuses his stupid statements, but in his case there is a reason for why much of what he says comes off odd.

[Hammy]

Almost like the whole thing was a partisan scam all along.

It's not. Republicans were offered a seat at the table, but almost all of them refused.

January 6th is one of the worst things to happen to American democracy in our entire history. It requires investigation. Republicans are cowards, though, and don't want to inspire the anger of Donald Trump, which is also why most of them didn't vote for his conviction.

I know that you know this, so it's surprising to see you degrade it.

It was worse than The Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 COMBINED.

basic reading comprehension failure

[Hammy]

All BLM and 1/6 protestors should be pardoned.

LOL no. Much of the BLM rioting was straight up terrorism.

Why bother having words when people render them void of any real meaning

[Hammy]

Ah, where the Dem obsession with "insurrection" comes back to bite them in the a$$.

Putting that in scare quotes is a sign that this country is terminally f—ked. Genuinely disturbing how readily people have forgotten or stopped caring that a very real insurrection/coup was attempted and came far too close to succeeding. Nothing else — not this, not BLM protests, nothing — is comparable. Not in this country’s history, anyway. It was completely unprecedented and it’s chilling how people are shrugging it off and mocking those rightfully concerned about it and the implications for the future of our democracy now.

No, Jan. 6 was not a "very real insurrection/coup". It was a grassroots unarmed protest fired on by police without warning. People have protested election results for years, you could even say it's an American tradition. The main difference is that this one actually inconvenienced our dear political elites for one afternoon, rather than the regular yokels like us who usually get inconvenienced by protests. Ashli Babbitt wasn't some Patrick Henry. She was just some psychologically disturbed political activist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Honestly I would be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little bit worried that Trump would try to pull something over in late 2020, but it never happened. Most slides into dictatorships or authoritarian governments happen because the would-be-dictator is actually popular. Trump in his first term never had that going for him. I do think America's slide into authoritarianism is a real danger, and even likely this century, but it will most likely happen under conditions where the President is a popular figure with elite backing.

[Hammy]

I don’t think serious people are doubting that COVID is bad. The trouble is, mitigation measures are bad too, whether you want to admit it or not. Wearing a mask makes work considerably more cumbersome, which has all sorts of mental health consequences. Staying home, reducing human contact, isolating… these come at horrible personal costs, not to mention economic ones. Economic costs lead to further personal ones, so it just ends up that we are in a terrible spiralling situation.

So when you have these two competing truths, one of them has to win out. Considering the sheer transmissibility of COVID, the reality that health measures are not really that effective, and the fact that this virus will NEVER go away, I think it’s clear that we just need to move on.

If you don’t want to be wearing a mask in three years, there’s no reason to wear one now. The pandemic will be the same.

I completely agree with you.

And I had the exact same opinion as you two years ago. It is clear shut downs were a mistake.

They made perfect sense when no vaccine was available and we knew little of the virus. The problem is there was no global cooperation or uniform enforcement at the time where it would've mattered the most. The problem is people are still operating under the false assumption that covid can somehow be eradicated like earlier viruses that were far less transmissible and existed in a time with far less global travel, and in an environment where half the population refuses to vaccinate.

One doesn't have to pretend they were a bad idea at the time to acknowledge they're a bad idea now when the situation is radically different.

I am starting to notice a correlation between high quality masks and losing mental ability. I noticed I make crazier posts after I wear a n95 mask in certain situations.. and we all see Scarlet has lost her mind.

Perhaps the lack of oxygen makes n95 trade offs of protection from respiratory viruses not worth it. Especially in Colorado and Utah.

I wear an N95 any time I go to an indoor location (sometimes with a KN95 over it to keep it in place if I'm in a place, like a doctors office, where I have less control how long I'm at a location) so this makes sense. The problem is more you two represent opposite extreme ends of the covid hysteria scale.

Double masking is for science skeptics. I quadruple mask even at home to feel good about myself and tell myself I’m on the right side of history

This post kills brain cells of all who lays eyes on it.

[Hammy]

Go to church.

Worst advice in this kind of thread. Weekly hour-long lectures about why you're going to hell are not helpful for people with anxiety and depression

That I'm seen as ignorant or absurd by you is quite reassuring of my own sanity.

[Hammy]

No one celebrates depression, anxiety disorder

There's a whole segment of society that prides themselves on being antisocial

Uh, where? It’s not plastered all over social media and culture condemns antisocial people as being weird. And if you’re not for antisocial people, you’re not called a bigot either.

It’s funny. You can get in the army for being trans and believing you are the opposite sex- but have a history of anxiety, or depression? Nope.

Well let's see...Cowardice and desertion are generally punishable by death, the actions that lead that can be triggered by, oh right, anxiety and depression!

Being trans is not in itself debilitating and is part of your identity, and most of the poor mental health outcomes stem from imposed societal norms, effectively forcing you to be somebody you're not. If for instance you forcibly transitioned somebody who isn't trans (or even so much force them to live as a separate gender), you'd get an identical mental health outcome as somebody who is trans who is living in opposition to their identity. Hell, even people who aren't trans being forced to live a life their parents choose for them can lead to the exact same situation if it isn't one they desire.

By contrast, anxiety and depression are very debilitating, and often completely independent of outside circumstances (though there can be external triggers)

If you suffer depression, that's going to lead to clouded thinking on the battlefield or strategizing, or physically unable to carry out your duties (for instance I have bipolar, during depressive episodes it feels impossible to wake in any sort of timely manner.)

If you have anxiety, you're very likely to have a panic attack in the middle of battle, which is often what leads to desertion. Not to mention, what if you're captured, you'll be easier to break. In effect you can end up inadvertently becoming a liability.

And being trans has never ever been linked to suicide, depression, anxiety or doesn’t have any comorbidities with other disorders?

I think you’re an anti mental illness bigot who just has a soft spot for one mental illness, given your tone. You’re essentially saying that a person who has anxiety disorder is: Not loyal, and a coward.

[Hammy]

Everyone stop paying off your credit cards!  Maybe we can get him to forgive those next.

[Hammy]

https://twitter.com/TB_Times/status/1582395896615956480?s=20&t=gI4aFtcXVkh-1...

If Police want to restore their reputation, they should resign rather than enforcing these stupid laws.

No, they should arrest DeSantis for his crimes against democracy and the USA.

bruh at least our country has religious freedom and actually declared Independence.

[Hammy]

This narrative that Hillary was a weak candidate/campaigner needs to stop. It wasn’t her fault she lost, it was the Democratic base’s. If they couldn’t be bothered to Pokémon Go To The Polls, that was their problem.

[Hammy]

I guess Dems will be voting for Trump. They hate the Constitution too.

[Hammy]

No. You don't beat authoritarians by becoming an authoritarian.

This sounds like unilateral disarmament

[Hammy]

I imagine people are just going to stop covering this.

There's a case to be made that covering this incentivizes the sort of people who would commit mass shootings. They want attention, and that's one way to get it. I'm not saying I agree, but there's a case to be made.

Also, why won't other countries just send in the troops?

Also, the more I think about it, the more I think this country deserves gun violence. Most people don't seem to care enough to do what must be done to stop it.

This is genuinely one of the most disturbing posts anybody has ever made on this forum

[Hammy]

The 14th amendment argument is the subject of a court case, not a Senate vote. If Biden goes there, it appears that it will be an uphill battle. The point made is that defaulting on debt is not the same as denying its validity (which would be like renouncing your mortgage and thereby increasing the equity in your home.

Here is a squib on the subject.

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/15/the-eternal-recurrence-of-debt-ceiling-debates/

The sad thing here is that the editorial farts of half wit Reason magazine contributors will have more influence on the Supreme Court’s thinking than any actual legal argument.

Let them. Let Barret, Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito, and diddler singlehandedly destroy the financial backbone of Western Civilization.

Dems are clearly more concerned with allowing terrible things to happen so they can blame the other side, than they are preventing them so people's lives aren't ruined