Terrorism in the EU from 2006-2019 - the myth of the "danger" of the "far right"

In Terrorism in the EU in 2017, I analysed statistics from Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, on the motivations of failed, foiled and completed terrorist attacks in the EU, and showed that the moral panic about the "far right" was unwarranted, since they accounted for very few terrorist attacks in the EU.

After almost 2 years, I thought it was time for an update: I have dug up the 2018 and 2019 statistics, published by Europol in June (European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend report (TE-SAT) 2020), and they continue to show that right wing terrorism is much, much less significant than left wing and jihadist terrorism, which begs the question of why we continue to obsess so much about it:

In 2019, only 6 out of 119 attacks (5%) had a right wing motivation. This compares to jihadists at 21 (18%) and left wingers at 26 (22%).
(note that the relative magnitudes of the 3 motivations in 2017 and 2018 were similar to 2019, so the data appear to be quite stable)

One can't even claim that right wing terrorists are more dangerous because they are greater in number; if you look at conviction and acquittal data, the disparity becomes even more stark:

In 2019, there were 5 convictions and acquittals in the EU for right wing terrorism, out of a total of 520. This was under 1% of all convictions and acquittals. This contrasts with 362 jihadist (70%), 98 separatist (19%) and 48 left wing (9%) convictions and acquittals.

TE-SAT 2018 and TE-SAT 2019 don't provide a breakdown of convictions and acquittals for 2017 and 2018 respectively, but the texts suggest that the relative magnitudes of jihadist, left and right wing terrorism are the same as for 2019.

Of course, you'd have no idea about this if you only read the mainstream media.

For example, a April 3 2019 article in the New York Times Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections (published, incidentally, just after my original analysis) tries to make it sound like Europe has a very bad white extremist problem.

The Washington Post beats the same drum, with a June 5 2020 article, As Trump vows crackdown on ‘antifa,’ growth of right-wing extremism frustrates Europeans, claiming pretty much the same thing.

We can't even excuse the media by saying that right wingers were a bigger threat in previous years and the journalists were just using older data.

Europol data on attacks from 2006-2012 and 2015-2016 also reflect that right wingers were a distant fourth behind separatist, jihadist/religious/islamist (the terminology isn't consistent) and left wing terrorism (though the ranking of the other 3 changes, in 2009 and 2011 there were marginally more right wing attacks than religious/islamist ones and in 2006 right wingers and islamists tied). There were even years with 0 right wing attacks.

And no, it's not that right winger were a bigger threat in 2013 and 2014 - data on attacks from 2013-2014 doesn't break them down properly, but from the arrest data we can clearly see that separatist, left wing and religiously inspired terrorists were a much bigger threat, which is consistent with attack data in every other year.

Presumably, it is more important to be morally right than factually correct, and since the "right wing" is bad, demonising them with fake news is a good thing.

Misunderstanding the character of an emergency

B: Today my father complained about how his old phone is not compatible with app that is suddenly mandatory by the state if he wants to leave his town without getting a fine.

*Lisa Simpson on stage meme: If you let politicians break the law in an emergency, they will create an emergency in order to break the law*

Me: So why don't we have more emergencies?

C: shhh, don’t ask them real questions!

D: why do you think they constantly declare everything a "state of emergency"?

Me: There were no non-foreign sanctions related emergencies declared in the US between October 24 2010 and February 15 2019 List of national emergencies in the United States - Wikipedia

Before that the US had no new emergencies declared (again excluding sanctions) from May 2004 to Oct 2009

A: you put "national" in there purposefully.
I know full well various states have declared weather related state of emergencies every year.
The executive powers they are using to do this do not need a "national emergency" to implement control. A state level emergency would suffice. This is specifically why my governor keeps extending the state level "state of emergency", because he would not be granted the emergency powers under the State law unless he did so, regardless of a declaration of a national emergency at the Federal level.

The problem is, most people aren't going to challenge something that might be an executive overreach if it only lasted a few days.
You could probably go back and find executive orders that might be unconstitutional under state of emergency if they were actually challenged, but there is little point to waste the money when it would take months to litigate and would be moot upon being resolved (and many judges may just dismiss the cases specifically because the challenge is moot AFTER the emergency is over).

The difference with COVID is that it is specifically demonstrating the overreach when you are dealing with emergencies that last for months. If anything, this is the perfect time to challenge executive actions to clear up what is and isn't allowed under declarations of emergency.

Me: what state are you in?
and do you think your state government is more tyrannical than the federal one?

A: the Federal one isn't closing down businesses and forcing fines on People.
That's all happened at the State and city level.

Me: you haven't answered what state you're in

A: it has no relevance on the debate.
If I state California, New York, New Mexico, or Texas, would it really make a difference?
What would you cite to make that relevant?

you can easily do a Google search for "[insert name of governor] extends state of emergency" and find they are all doing it in each of the states I mentioned.

Me: you claim states declare emergencies to gain power

Yet the fact is that it's rare for states to declare emergencies

So evidently this power has not been abused historically

so would you say that world war II did not merit a state of emergency that lasted 4ish years and that this emergency was an excuse to grab power?

A: please actually focus on what I actually stated.
Emergency powers are ripe with constitutional violations. Most are ignored because most only last a few days.
This overreach is only challenged in such situations as Covid.

I don't care if it's a few days or a few months, this situation is making it clear what actions are clear violations of the constitution and reining in executive authority.

Me: if you won't state what you think would justify an extended state of emergency, that suggests you think nothing would. And most people would disagree with that

A: so you believe a state of emergency should give the ability to violate the constitution?
Not once did I state that I said the State of Emergency itself is unconstitutional. I stated there are many examples of executive orders that are unconstitutional implemented under the state of emergency.

Me: erm. A state of emergency is literally to allow you to do things you can't normally.

What is a national emergency? Here are 8 things to know

A: they still cannot violate the constitution, unless you think the history of Japanese Internment is okay.

Me: actually,

States of Emergencies: Part IHarvard Law Review | ( Introduction The fight against COVID-19 has led many countries, including liberal democracies, to take extraordinary measures that would undoubtedly be constitutionally problematic in normal times. Around the world, we have witnessed entire countries being locked-down, with mass surveillance of cellphones, suspended religious services, restricted travel, and military-enforced curfews. While these measures are widely supported by...)

"Over 90 percent of constitutions in force today include emergency clauses that allow the government to step outside of the ordinary constitutional framework and to take actions that would not otherwise be permitted"

A: at this point, you're just saying it's fine to load people on trains.
I'm literally ending this discussion with you.
If you believe in unlimited executive authority with no checks and balances, just go to hell.
You are an absolute moron.

 

Ahh, Americans and their quaint ideas about "tyranny".

Pre-'Colonial' Slavery in the Muslim World

"The Qur'an gives no countenance to the idea that there are superior and inferior races and that the latter are foredoomed to a subordinate status; the overwhelming majority of Muslim jurists and theologians share this rejection. There are some early traditions, and early juridical opinions and rulings citing them, which assign a privileged status to the Arabs, as against other peoples within the Islamic community. The Caliph `Umar is even quoted, improbably, as saying that no Arab could he owned. Some pagan Arabs were in fact enslaved by the early caliphs and even by the Prophet himself, and the idea of Arab exemption from the normal rules regarding enslavement was not approved by later jurists.

Such an opinion did indeed reflect the social realities in the early centuries of the Islamic Empire, created by Arab conquests. By the ninth century, however, this privileged status had for all practical purposes ended... At no time did Muslim theologians or jurists accept the idea that there may be races of mankind predisposed by nature or foredoomed by Providence to the condition of slavery.

Such ideas were, however, known from the heritage of antiquity and found echoes in Muslim writings, the more so when they began to correspond to the changing realities of Muslim society. Aristotle, in his discussion of slavery, had observed that while some are by nature free, others are by nature slaves. For such, the condition of slavery is both 'beneficial and just,' and a war undertaken to reduce them to that condition is a just war.

This idea, along with others from the same source, was taken up and echoed by a few Muslim Aristotelians. Thus the tenth-century philosopher al-Farabi lists, among the categories of just war, one the purpose of which is to subjugate and enslave those whose 'best and most advantageous status in the world is to serve and be slaves' and who nevertheless refuse to accept slavery.' The idea of natural slavery is mentioned, though not developed, by some other Aristotelian philosophers. Al-'Amiri, for example, follows Aristotle in comparing the natural superiority of master to slave with the equally natural superiority of man to woman.

Aristotle does not specify which races he has in mind, merely observing that barbarians are more slavish (doulikoteroi) than Greeks, and Asiatics more so than Europeans. That, according to Aristotle, is why they are willing to submit to despotic government-that is, one that rules them as a master (despotes) rules his slaves. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, some Muslim philosophers were more specific. The great physician and philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) notes as part of God's providential wisdom that he had placed, in regions of great heat or great cold, peoples who were by their very nature slaves, and incapable of higher things-"for there must be masters and slaves." Such were the Turks and their neighbors in the North and the blacks in Africa. Similar judgments were pronounced by his contemporary, the Ismaili theologian Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. 1021), who was chief of missions of the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo. In a philosophical work, he dismisses "the Turks, Zanj, Berbers, and their like" as "by their nature" without interest in the pursuit of intellectual knowledge and without desire to understand religious truth.

By this time, the great majority of Muslim slaves were either Turks or blacks, and Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery, brought up to date, provided a convenient justification of their enslavement.

Another attempt to justify the enslavement of a whole race, this time in religious rather than philosophical terms and restricted to the dark-skinned people of Africa, is the Muslim adaptation of the biblical story of the curse of Ham. In the biblical version (Genesis 9:1-27) the curse is servitude, not blackness, and it falls on Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, and not on his other sons, including Kush, later seen as ancestor of the blacks. The rationale of the story is obvious-the slaves of the Israelites were their near kinsmen the Canaanites, and a religious (i.e., ideological) justification was required for their enslavement, hence the story of the curse of Canaan. The slaves of the Arabs were not Canaanites but blacks-so the curse was transferred to them, and blackness added to servitude as part of the hereditary burden. This story, though widespread, was by no means universally accepted. Ibn Khaldun and some other Arab writers reject it as absurd, and attribute blackness to climatic and geographical factors. The idea, however, that blackness and slavery are somehow associated, as expressed in this story, was derived less from tradition than from reality

Such ideas have no place in the writings of Muslim jurists, who unanimously reject the enslavement of free Muslims, of whatever race or origin. Nor did the total identification of blackness with slavery, which occurred in North and South America, ever take place in the Muslim world. There were always white slaves as well as black ones, and free blacks as well as slaves. Nevertheless, the identification of blackness with certain forms of slavery went very far-and in later centuries white slaves grew increasingly rare.

Already in medieval times it became customary to use different words for black and white slaves. White slaves were normally called mamluk, an Arabic word meaning "owned," while black slaves were called 'abd. "' In time, the word 'abd ceased to be used of any but black slaves and eventually, in many Arabic dialects, simply came to mean a black man, whether slave or free. This transition from a social to an ethnic meaning is thus the reverse of the semantic development of our own word "slave," which began as the designation of an ethnic group and became a social term. In Western Islam-in North Africa and Spain-the word khadim, "servant" (dialectal form, khadem) is often specialized to mean "black slave," "slave woman," or "concubine."

It is not only in terminology that black and white slaves were distinguished. For one thing, white slaves, especially females, were more expensive; for another, black slaves were far more severely restricted in their social and occupational mobility...

Even religious groups with what some would call radical and progressive ideals seem to have accepted the slavery of the black man as natural. Thus, in the eleventh century we are told that the Carmathians established a kind of republic in eastern Arabia, abolished many of the prescriptions regarding persons and property which conventional Islam imposed-and had a force of thirty thousand black slaves to do the rough work.

Jurists occasionally discuss the status of black Muslim slaves. Muslim law unequivocally forbids the enslavement of free Muslims of whatever race, and was usually obeyed in this. There is, however, evidence that the law was not always strictly enforced to protect Muslim captives from black Africa. A fatwa (legal ruling) in a collection of such rulings by Spanish and North African authorities, compiled by a fifteenth-century Moroccan jurist, Ahmad alWansharisi, is instructive. The question to be decided is whether Ethiopian (i.e., black) slaves professing monotheism and observing religious practices could lawfully be bought and sold. The law is clear. An unbeliever may be enslaved, a Muslim may not; but the adoption of Islam by an unbeliever after his enslavement does not automatically set him free. Slavery, says the fatwa, is a condition arising from current or previous unbelief and persists after conversion, the owner of the slave retaining full property rights. If a group is known to have been converted to Islam, then the taking of slaves from this group is forbidden. However, the existence of a doubt as to whether conversion took place before or after enslavement does not invalidate the ownership or sale of the slave. It is significant that the writer of the fatwa discusses the question in relation to black slaves, that he is at some pains to insist that Islam does not necessarily involve freedom, and that he gives the benefit of the doubt not to the slave but to the slaveowner. The problem was clearly not academic. Other sources preserve complaints by black Muslim rulers about "holy wars" launched against them to take captives and by jurists-usually black jurists-at the enslavement of free, black Muslims contrary to law.

The question was discussed at some length by an African jurist, Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu (1556-1627)...

Ahmad Baba's answers, however, make it clear that many Muslim blacks were in fact being illegally enslaved, and he frankly faces the difficulty of distinguishing between lawful and unlawful slaves...

That this ruling was of little practical effect is shown by a later discussion of the illegal enslavement of black Muslims by the nineteenth-century Moroccan historian Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1834-97). Writing within the context of traditional society, he is nevertheless clearly affected by the new anti-slavery ideas current at the time. Al-Nasiri recognizes the legality of the institution of slavery in Muslim law but is appalled by its application. He complains in particular of "a manifest and shocking calamity widespread and established since of old in the lands of the Maghrib-the unlimited enslavement of the blacks, and the importation of many droves of them every year, for sale in the town and country markets of the Maghrib, where men traffic in them like beasts, or worse." This abuse is so old and so deep-rooted, says alNasiri, that "many of the common people believe that the cause of their enslavement in Holy Law is that they are black of color and imported from those parts."...

Despite such arguments and despite the decrees in favor of emancipation by Ahmad Bey of Tunis, the enslavement of blacks and their export to the Mediterranean lands and the Middle East continued and was defended by the increasingly flimsy argument that blacks were idolators and therefore that warfare against them was jihad, or holy war, and the captives were legally liable to enslavement. Since, for a conscientious Muslim, only a jihad could supply legally valid slaves, it was necessary to call every slave raid a jihad. One can understand the anger and anguish of a good Muslim like al-Nasiri.

White slaves were rarely used for rough labor and filled higher positions in domestic and administrative employment...

The importation of black slaves into the central Islamic lands, which began at the time of the conquest, continued without interruption until the nineteenth century and in some areas into the twentieth...

Between white and black slaves-even where the latter were numerous and powerful-there was for a long time one crucial distinction. Whereas white slaves could become generals, provincial governors, sovereigns, and founders of dynasties, this hardly ever happened with black slaves in the central Islamic lands. In Muslim India, a number of soldiers of African slave origin rose to high office, some even becoming rulers. Elsewhere, their opportunities for advancement were very limited. Only one of them ever became the ruler of a Muslim country outside the black zone-the famous Nubian eunuch Abu'l-Misk Kaffir, "Musky Camphor," who in the tenth century became regent of Egypt (and a very capable one). Historians clearly regarded this as remarkable, and the great Arab poet al-Mutanabbi found in Kaffir's blackness a worthy object of satirical abuse. In one of his most famous poems, he bitterly attacks the master of Egypt...

The same limitation of opportunity applies to the emancipated slave. The emancipated white slave was free from any kind of restriction; the emancipated black slave was at most times and places rarely able to rise above the lowest levels. In Umayyad times, we still hear of black poets and singers achieving some sort of social standing, even though they complain of discrimination. In later times, the black poet as a figure in Arabic literature disappears and none of any consequence are reported from the mid-eighth century onward. A few religious figures-saints and scholars-are said to have had black ancestry, but these again are exceptional. What is more important is that the black is almost entirely missing from the positions of wealth, power, and privilege. Medieval authors sometimes attribute this want of achievement by black slaves and freedmen to lack of capacity. The modern observer will recognize the effects of lack of opportunity"

 

Strange, we are told that race and racism were invented by White European colonialists to justify and facilitate colonialism.

Of course, we are also told that colonialism is a uniquely white phenomenon.

Covid hysteria: "How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?"

I've seen this shared a few times, and finally got annoyed enough to write a response:

How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?

Franklin Veaux

 

This time, re-posted by the aptly named "Insufferably Intolerant Science Nerd"

 

Original post:

"[Edit Nov 10, 2020: See new information at the end]

There are two problems with this question.

1. It neglects the law of large numbers; and
2. It assumes that one of two things happen: you die or you’re 100% fine.

The US has a population of 328,200,000. If one percent of the population dies, that’s 3,282,000 people dead.

Three million people dead would monkey wrench the economy no matter what. That more than doubles the number of annual deaths all at once.

The second bit is people keep talking about deaths. Deaths, deaths, deaths. Only one percent die! Just one percent! One is a small number! No big deal, right?

What about the people who survive?

For every one person who dies:

• 19 more require hospitalization.
• 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives.
• 10 will have permanent lung damage.
• 3 will have strokes.
• 2 will have neurological damage that leads to chronic weakness and loss of coordination.
• 2 will have neurological damage that leads to loss of cognitive function.

So now all of a sudden, that “but it’s only 1% fatal!” becomes:

• 3,282,000 people dead.
• 62,358,000 hospitalized.
• 59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage.
• 32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage.
• 9,846,000 people with strokes.
• 6,564,000 people with muscle weakness.
• 6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.

That's the thing that the folks who keep going on about “only 1% dead, what’s the big deal?” don’t get.

The choice is not “ruin the economy to save 1%.” If we reopen the economy, it will be destroyed anyway. The US economy cannot survive everyone getting COVID-19.

Edited to add:

Wow, this answer has really blown up. Many people are asking about the sources, so here’s the basic rundown:

This model assumes that the question’s hypothetical is correct and the fatality rate is 1%. It also assumes for the sake of argument 100% infection. (In reality, of course, neither of these is a perfect match to reality. The infection rate will never hit 100%, but the fatality rate in a widespread infection is likely to be greater than 1%, because health care services will be overwhelmed.)

The statistics I used in this answer were compiled from a number of different sources. I spent quite a bit of time writing the answer. Unfortunately, I don’t have my search history in front of me, so I’ll attempt to re-compile them.

Some of the sources include:

What we know (so far) about the long-term health effects of Covid-19

Physicians have also reported an increase in inflammation of and damage to the heart muscle in Covid-19 patients. One study published in March found that out of 416 hospitalized Covid-19 patients, 19% showed signs of heart damage.

               Another study from Wuhan published in January found 12% of Covid-19 patients showed                       signs of cardiovascular damage. Other studies have since found evidence of myocarditis,                     inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause scarring, and heart failure in Covid-19 patients.

Now, physicians warn that Covid-19 survivors may experience long-lasting cardiac damage and cardiovascular problems, which could increase their risk for heart attack and stroke. Doctors also warn Covid-19 could worsen existing heart problems.

What We Know About the Long-Term Effects of COVID-19

“Some of the data that we’re getting now from the China studies, one study that was just published in JAMA Neurology showed that 36.4 percent of patients had neurologic issues,” said Dr. Sheri Dewan, neurosurgeon at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Illinois. “One of the review articles that came out at the end of February discussed the possibility of virus traveling into the olfactory neurons, through the olfactory bulb, and into the brain.”

Lifelong Lung Damage: A Serious COVID-19 Complication

“Holes in the lung likely refers to an entity that has been dubbed ‘post-COVID fibrosis,’ otherwise known as post-ARDS [acute respiratory distress syndrome] fibrosis,” said Dr. Lori Shah, transplant pulmonologist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

            ARDS occurs when fluid builds up in tiny air sacs in the lungs called alveoli. This reduces                     oxygen in the bloodstream and deprives the organs of oxygen which can lead to organ failure.

            Post-COVID fibrosis, according to Shah, is defined as lung damage that’s irreversible and can                 result in severe functional limitations from patients, such as cough, shortness of breath, and                     need for oxygen. […]

              According to The Lancet, in a piece titled, “Pulmonary fibrosis secondary to COVID-19: A                   call to arms?,” the first series of hospitalized patients in Wuhan, China showed that 26 percent required intensive care and 61 percent of that subset developed ARDS.

What we know (so far) about the long-term health effects of Covid-19

Physicians report that patients hospitalized for Covid-19 are experiencing high rates of blood clots that can cause strokes, heart attacks, lung blockages, and other complications, Parshley reports.

For instance, physicians are seeing an uptick in strokes among young patients with Covid-19.

The blood clots also can travel to other organs, leading to ongoing health problems. For instance, pulmonary embolisms, which occur when the clots block circulation to the lungs, can cause ongoing "functional limitations," like fatigue, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and discomfort when performing physical activity, Parshley reports. Similarly, blood clots in the kidneys can cause renal failure, which can cause life-long complications.

Heart damage

Physicians have also reported an increase in inflammation of and damage to the heart muscle in Covid-19 patients. One study published in March found that out of 416 hospitalized Covid-19 patients, 19% showed signs of heart damage.

               Another study from Wuhan published in January found 12% of Covid-19 patients showed                       signs of cardiovascular damage. Other studies have since found evidence of myocarditis,                     inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause scarring, and heart failure in Covid-19 patients.

Now, physicians warn that Covid-19 survivors may experience long-lasting cardiac damage and cardiovascular problems, which could increase their risk for heart attack and stroke. Doctors also warn Covid-19 could worsen existing heart problems.

The numbers in this answer were made from extrapolations about percentages of COVID-19 long-term effects reported in a range of studies on Google Scholar, assuming a hypothetical 100% US infection rate and a 1% fatality rate. Of course, in reality, a high infection rate would cause the mortality and comorbidity rates to skyrocket, so if anything, these numbers are conservative.

Wear your damn masks, people."

 

Response:

There's massive selection bias going on here

All the linked studies are of people who were hospitalised and are not reflective of the general population who get covid, the vast majority of whom have mild symptoms or are even asymptomatic. Even in February, 81% of cases were found to be mild - and this is just for people with symptoms. The CDC's current best estimate is that 40% of infections are asymptomatic.

So let us examine one of the hysterical claims, that 18% of those infected with covid "will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives" (based on 1% mortality and "for every one person who dies... 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives".

This is presumably based on the first linked paper, "Association of Cardiac Injury with Mortality in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19 in Wuhan, China", which reports that "cardiac injury occured in 19.7% of patients during hospitalization". For simplicity, let's assume that cardiac injury is permanent and that results from that one hospital can be extrapolated to the general population.

Another paper, Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: a model-based analysis estimated that even among those aged over 80, only 14.8% of those infected with covid would require hospitalization (for those aged 70-79 it was only 7.9% - and it got way lower for those even younger).

Since both papers (on cardiac injury and hospitalization) are based on Chinese data, we can use China's median age of 38 to do our calculations. Rounding up, we can take the hospitalization rate of 0.443% for age 40-49 (note: the median age of the US is also 38, though obviously comorbidities will mean Americans will suffer more from covid than Chinese - even absent factors like pre-existing immunity and the BCG).

So based on Chinese data, we'd expect 0.087% of those who get covid to have "permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives". In other words, out of every 10,000 people who get covid, less than 9 will have "permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives" (assuming no re-infection).

To put it another way, if you get covid, your odds of "permanent heart damage for the rest of your life" are 1 in 1,150. In contrast, in the US in 2018, your odds of *dying* from a motor-vehicle crash are 1 in 106. So maybe the US should shut down the country over car crashes. And this assumes that everyone will get covid - a paper by Neil Ferguson et al estimated that only 81% of the US and British populations would be infected over the course of the pandemic. When you consider that Ferguson was behind the discredited Imperial College model that wildly over-exaggerated covid cases, and has repeatedly over-estimated risks in the past, we are confident in treating 81% as an upper bound. So the true odds of covid complications would be even lower.

Furthermore, covid has become less serious as the epidemic has progressed as we become better at treating it and the virus seems to be mutating to become less deadly; naturally long term side effects would diminish too

Plus even ignoring this, 1% as a mortality rate was exaggerated: even as of 9 Sep, the estimated IFR (infection fertility ratio - taking into account all cases) for covid was significantly lower than 1%

Here is a peer reviewed paper published by the WHO and authored by John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor who's worked in medicine and epidemiology

 

Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data

"Results I included 61 studies (74 estimates) and eight preliminary national estimates. Seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.02% to 53.40%. Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 1.63%, corrected values from 0.00% to 1.54%. Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%."

This was based on papers published as of 9 Sep

Perhaps one might still try to object, claiming that if the health care system were overwhelmed, not just would death rates rise but also long term disabilities. Yet, note that the same paper with data on hospitalization rates by age also noted that the estimated IFR for mainland China was 0.66% - based on data between Jan 1 and Feb 11, where 74% of deaths occured in Wuhan. During much of that period, hospitals in Wuhan were overwhelmed, so the 0.66% IFR already accounts for some of that effect.

More specifically, another paper, Early epidemiological assessment of the transmission potential and virulence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan City, China, January–February, 2020, modelled the time-delay adjusted IFR for Wuhan by day and even at its highest (presumably corresponding to when hospitals were most overwhelmed), the upper estimate never exceeded 0.5%.

 

Note too that covid is not unusual in having long term side effects - seasonal influenza is linked to elevated heart attack and stroke risk, as well as pneumonia and even disability.

To say nothing of how the RCTs tell us that there is poor evidence for masks, but that is another story.

On the USSR's space "firsts" and the Space Industry today

For those who glorify Soviet achievements to belittle American ones:

"Ugh this again..

USSR was all about getting the title of being first, no matter how superficial the achievement, and how dangerous the approach, and sometimes, hiding the truth about it until decades later.  

First artificial satellite was achieved by the USSR. It did pretty much nothing but beep, and its orbit decayed quite quickly.  

USA's first artificial satellite orbited for years, carried a science payload and discovered the Van Allen radiation.  

The outright first animal intentionally put into in space was Rhesus monkey aboard a German V2 operated by the USA.  

First animal into orbit was achieved with a dog by the USSR, which died due to a cooling system failure.  

USA's first animal put into orbit was a chimpanzee that survived and landed.  

The first man in space was Yuri Gagarin of the USSR, but he was forced to eject prior to landing, and under the terms agreed meant his mission was technically a failure. This was kept secret by the USSR for decades.  

The first American in space landed successfully with his capsule.  

First woman in space was a clear USSR "first" that they were targeting. The USA had a policy of only accepting military test pilots, of which there were no women.  

The first space walk was demonstrated by the USSR, but it came close to disaster as the cosmonaut couldn't reenter the spacecraft due to his suit inflating due to the pressure differential, and had to bleed out air in order to be able to squeeze back into the hatch.  

USA's first space walk went without such problems, and quickly overtook the USSR in pioneering how spacewalks would be performed, and how to do useful work. It also claims the first untethered spacewalk.  

First orbital rendezvous was claimed by the USSR, but was achieved merely by launching two rockets at the right time. The two space craft were kilometres apart, and had no way of getting close to each other, or no knowledge of how to do it.  

The first rendezvous performed by the USA used orbital mechanics and deliberate manoeuvres to have two Gemini spacecraft find each other, fly in formation, and then go their separate ways.  

The first docking was achieved by the USA during the Gemini program.  

First docking for the purposes of crew transfer between two spacecraft was achieved by the USSR. The crew transfer was done via external spacewalk, and served in claiming another first. The re-entry nearly ended in complete disaster and had a hard landing.  

USA's first docking and crew transfer was achieved between an internally pressurised corridor during Apollo 9.  

First picture of the far side of the moon was achieved by the USSR, and is a very low quality image. Shortly after the USA began a complete mapping survey of the entire lunar surface.  

The first lunar return sample was achieved by the USSR, but was effectively a few grams of dust. The USA returned tonnes of different kinds of individually selected moon rock.  

The USSR lunar landing mission consisted of an external spacewalk to transfer a single cosmonaut to a tiny one man lander with just enough provisions to make some boot prints before trying to get back home. Again, just to be able to claim a first.  

The USA lunar landing mission***s*** thrived on the moon, taking down two astronauts and resulted in them being to stay on the surface for days, and even drive around on it in a car.  

Once the USSR lost the moon race, they instantly lost all interest in it, and focused on creating a space station.  

There's a familiar pattern to all of this. The USSR did the very minimum, often at the expense of safety to meet an arbitrary goal as soon as possible. The USA's failures and mishaps were all in the public eye. The USSR's were mostly kept secret.  

Both nations knew landing on the moon was going to be the finish line. The USA got there first, and didn't just hit the finish line gasping and wheezing as the USSR would have been, but came through it in complete comfort and style, before doing it a few more times with greater and greater challenges for good measure.  

Since NASA lost its original purpose (beat the Russians to the moon) it has lost its way a bit, but companies like SpaceX have actually managed to make the *point* of the space race better than Apollo did. The original space race was supposed to demonstrate private enterprise and the American way of life vs centralised government control, but the Apollo program wasn't private enterprise, and was under direct government control.  

SpaceX, Blue Origin, RocketLab and others are the true demonstration of commercial spaceflight, where the government agency NASA now just becomes a customer to private launch and even spacecraft providers.  

The USA won in the 60's, and it's absolutely winning now versus anything Russia or Europe is building with public funds."

New blog picture - 21st November 2020

"I love your "Malaysian Accent", can you say it again?"
"几够力一下有没有"

Description: Meme from Dexter's Laboratory (original scene - omelette du fromage [sic])

Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson & The Abdication Crisis

Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson & The Abdication Crisis | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

"‘Wallace Simpson made the very elementary mistake of believing that the king had a similar power to the American President. Unfortunately, so did Edward VIII. He believed that he was going to be able to take over the country and more or less run it on the lines he wanted to. He was called the most modernistic man alive by one of his admirers. And also very interesting is that he wants to take over BBC itself. He, at a dinner party one day, he said with robust good humour, that he would fix the question of BBC’s independence. It would be the last thing he did before he went.’

‘Was this just delusion or did he have any grounds for believing that the monarchy either possessed or could regain this sort of power?’

‘Well, something I found out about Edward VIII was that one of his private secretaries Lord Wigram believed that he was actually mentally ill, and put procedures in place for him to be certified if needs be. It was thought they might have had a second George III on their hands. So although posterity hasn't generally agreed with Wigram, there was a sense that I suppose if you look at it now, we’d probably give him some sort of delusion, narcissistic personality disorder or something like that, because he had these insane delusions of grandeur. Okay, he was King Emperor, which is a bit better than most of us going to get’...

‘Initially, there was no great spark between the two of them, but she became part of his social orbit. By the beginning of 1934, he was as obsessed by her as it'd be possible for a human being to be with another one. And there’s two ways of looking at this. The first way of looking at this is he was a deeply lonely man who for the first time in his life had actually met somebody who took him for what he was, rather than being something else. And that's the romantic way of looking at it’...

‘The person rather than the prospective crown?’

‘Absolutely. But she wrote in her autobiography that she had been the first to penetrate his inner loneliness. But without wishing to be crude, I think she penetrated something else entirely. And I think that what it was with Edward was that he was a masochist of the highest, indeed most submissive nature. And a lot of the contemporary accounts of their behavior together, suggested that she took a dominant role far, far beyond what you would have expected, and that he, the King of England was only too happy to appear pathetic and submissive in front of her... of course was always a feature of BDSM relationships, that the submissive partner is encouraged to give something up to prove their adoration to their dom. So why not, if you be King of England, do the most submissive thing of all, give up your friend for your mistress?’...

He would seem to be a trance. Over and over again, it's that specific phrase people used. He was in a trance like state, in a dreamlike state. And he would keep on sentence like, she is the most wonderful woman in the world. Nothing else exists except for her. And you start to think to yourself, what did she done to him? How has she bewitched him? What was her hold over him?

Because he showered her with most extraordinary amounts of money. I mean, even before he became king, he was giving her gifts so worth, well over a hundred thousand pounds a year which was, so so many times the average income as to be absolutely fantastical. But you have to ask what was she like?

And if you see the letters that she was writing to her aunt, and indeed her letters, which she wrote to Ernest Simpson after divorce, you do see a different side of her to the femme fatale of legend. You see a much more human figure and a much more frightened figure. One thing I want to bring out through the book was that she wasn't this ogre which people have often described her as. Yes, she was somebody who enjoyed the finer things in life. Yes, she certainly had mild insecurity. But I think to her credit, when she saw the game was up, she tried desperately to stop Edward leaving the throne. And she really did try to stop the abdication. And he wouldn’t. And because of that, I think that she was stuck with him forever. And I don't believe that the long marriage afterwards was a testament to how deeply in love they were, because the pictures that you see of them, especially later in life, look like they’re vampires emerging into sunlight for the first time...

The time that she spent in China, there's been a lot of discussion about the so called Shanghai dossier, which was said to have been something where she essentially went to the Sing Sing [sp?]  houses, which would be upmarket brothels and learned various arts. And of course, the sexual arts are one thing, but what we’re more interested in these Sing Sing houses, was actually teaching women to get men to become obsessed by them. Because obviously, the nature of how these things work in Shanghai and in these other Chinese cities, was that you would have Westerners especially, would become kind of completely enraptured by the courtesans, and they would do anything for them, and the courtesans would deny them release until they show themselves worthy"

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Cuban Missile Crisis

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Cuban Missile Crisis | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra

"One of the things that had happened before the Cuban Missile Crisis was that the Kennedy administration developed contingency plans to attack Cuba. The origins of this planning go back to the Eisenhower years. But those plans were updated during the Kennedy presidency. Now, it's not easy to gauge the significance of them. The US has contingency plans for everything. I think as one historian once put it, you know, they probably have contingency plans for, you know, what would we do if we invade Canada? These things are not likely to happen...

John Kennedy had this reputation in the White House as being a sort of intellectual, a cultured man, a sophisticated man. He's very intelligent, educated, but that really wasn't him. It was his wife who was very cultured and sophisticated. And in fact, John Kennedy's fav, favorite literature, his favorite novels were the James Bond stories. He loved the James Bond stories. And, and he met Ian Fleming. During the 1960 campaign, he was in Washington. And the author of the James Bond stories, Ian Fleming was in a car driving down the street with someone who knew Kennedy and the car stopped, and that's when Kennedy was introduced to Ian Fleming. And Fleming was invited to dinner that night.

So this extraordinary, extraordinary event or episode during the 1960 presidential campaign where you have a Presidential Candidate John Kennedy, talking to the author of James Bond and soliciting his advice on how to handle Castro. He says to Fleming, you know, how would you handle Castro? How would you get rid of him? And Fleming comes out with all of these extraordinary stories, or policy suggestions like right out of a James Bond novel or film as to how to get rid of Castro.

Two months into his presidency, Kennedy is asked by a magazine to name his top 10 favorite books. One of them is a James Bond book. And actually at that point, the sales of James Bond books skyrocket. I mean, Fleming should have paid Kennedy royalties, in part of the extraordinary popularity of James Bond is due to Kennedy's endorsement of them. What's interesting is, of course, it turns into a film franchise. What's the first film? Doctor No. With Sean Connery and Ursula Andress. And what’s Dr No about? It's about a Cold War crisis in the Caribbean with a sort of despot Dr No who is building sort of rockets...

‘If it is a US invasion of the island, I want you to respond by carrying out a nuclear attack. It seems incredible. But that is what Castro said to Khruschev. If Kennedy invades, you must start a nuclear war. I think the general assumption is that this increased Khrushchev's sense that the crisis was spiraling out of control, and that he better bring about a peaceful settlement of the crisis quickly.

As for the ending of the crisis, Castro was furious. He was absolutely enraged. We have an account of this. He basically felt like he'd been betrayed by Khruschev, that Khruschev had been weak, he basically saw it as humiliation. So in terms of how, you know, the Cuban leadership responded, Castro responded, it was with unrestrained fury, rage and a sense of sense, a sense of humiliation. And just in a practical sense, Castro did think I mean, the early part of his government, he was concerned that the US was going to overthrow him and his rule of Cuba would prove to be ephemeral, short lived. Once the missiles were deployed, that increased Castro's sense that his regime was secure. So the removal of the nuclear missiles, I think, increased a sense of vulnerability.’...

'In 1975, the US Senate carried out an investigation. A committee in the US Senate carried out an investigation into alleged assassination attempts by the CIA against various foreign leaders, including Castro. What the investigation established was that at least eight assassination plots had been devised by the CIA to kill Castro, many of them during the Kennedy years. Now we're not certain, absolutely certain that [Kennedy] knew about them, or was it the CIA doing on its own initiative? And this is because of a practice known as plausible deniability. If a President was briefed about an assassination attempt, this was never written down, so that the President's knowledge was plausibly deniable'"

"War Plan Red was one of the color-coded war plans created by the United States Department of War in the late 1920s and the early 1930s to estimate the requirements for a hypothetical war with the United Kingdom."

Links - 20th November 2020

How Rahm Emanuel Would Run the World (Ep. 415) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "LEVITT: My own hypothesis is that we’ve done a really bad job in this country at making people data-literate. And our school systems haven’t focused on data; they haven’t kept up with the advances in thinking and computing over the last 50 years. And I think we’re paying the price in this epidemic because many public servants and many policymakers aren’t trained to think in the right way about data science and models. What’s your reaction to that?
EMANUEL: Well, this is rare for an Emanuel. I haven’t thought about that, so I don’t know. But usually we have answers before we have questions. My knee-jerk answer is: I’m not sure everybody should be walking around being a data scientist. That’s what data scientists are for... everybody goes, “Oh, just follow the scientists.” Well, I come from a medical family. My dad— how many times my dad asked for a second opinion? There’s a reason you ask for a second opinions. The science— I hate this analogy when everybody goes, “Oh, just follow the science.” Well, the science isn’t clear! We’re chasing information and it’s moving in real time as we’re making judgments. And that’s where you’re going to need just making a judgment. In the storm of a crisis, you’re making informed, educated guesses. And the emphasis is on the word, “guess,” not “informed” or “educated.”...
You’d have to be idealistic enough to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and then tough enough to get it done. And if you look at successful presidents in history, neither one tips the scales too far one way or the other. They have both of those skill sets. And you look at all the ones that never make it, they usually tip one way or the other...
You got to help the president evaluate all the options. President Kennedy used to say, “To govern is to choose between bad and worse.” And the judgment you need is to figure out which one is bad and which one is worse."

Timothy Sly's answer to My mother-in-law leaves the butter out on the counter 24/7 for days. I am certain this is a health hazard. Is it a health hazard or perfectly safe? - Quora - "Perfectly safe. In warm weather the butter may melt, but whether you use it melted (as for frying shrimp) or refrigerate it again, it is SAFE. After a longer period of time, the surface may take on a slightly oxidised taste (like soap or cardboard). This is a quality issue and has NO basis in health.
[Added edit] Butter is between 86%-93% butterfat. the remainder is moisture and salt. This means all of the salt is in the small amount of water. Bacteria do not live or multiply in either fat or very salty water. That is why butter is so safe."

Justin Coates - "We need to remake 300 from the Persian perspective where it’s a bunch of cultured monotheists coming to liberate a nation ruled by slave-owning, baby-murdering, pedophile pagans. Same ending obviously, except it’s depicted as a tragedy where a bunch of backwater dipshits who think their shit-awful society is the height of civilization eventually get steam rolled by an empire that will go on to be one of the greatest in history."

Steve Horwitz - "From the comments, James Hanley wins Facebook for the time being:
"Some of us are free enough to enjoy playing at being oppressed.""
Comments: "How history is taught over the past 20 years:
The world divides into two groups, the powerful and the oppressed. The powerful are bad and the oppressed are good.
How rich liberal arts majors react:
I am oppressed and therefore good!"

Yaakov Markel - "We need to pay teachers the way we pay athletes. What a beautiful world that would make."
"If we paid teachers how we paid athletes, it’d be based on ticket sales and there would be an extremely small number of elite super-teachers that’d rise to the very pinnacle of the field......while everyone else pretty much remained unpaid hobbyists. 🤷‍♂️"
Comment (elsewhere): "So, 1% of them gets millions, while 99% of them get paid less than min wage, and gets cut after 3 years?"

Roo stays at home 🦅️🇨🇦🇭🇰🇺🇲 on Twitter - "Don'tcall yourself a feminist ifyou don't stan the British monarchy"

Moment boy, 9, weeps with joy as he tucks into his first McDonald's after months of lockdown - "This is the heartwarming moment a nine-year-old autistic boy broke down in tears after his mother brought him his first McDonald's since the start of lockdown... McNuggets with fries and ice cream was Adam's favourite meal.She also said that her son has sensory sensitivity and mild autism that caused his 'overreaction.'"

SFF community reeling after Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter accuses her of abuse - "The world of science fiction and fantasy is in shock, following news that the daughter of the bestselling late fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley has accused her mother of abusing her as a child.Authors such as John Scalzi, G Willow Wilson and Jim Hines have reacted to the allegations against a woman who had been regarded a pillar of the SFF community with horror... "The first time she molested me, I was three. The last time, I was 12, and able to walk away … She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually. I am not her only victim, nor were her only victims girls." Greyland is the daughter of Bradley and Walter Breen, who was jailed for child molestation and died in prison. Greyland wrote in her email to Moen: "I put Walter in jail for molesting one boy ... Walter was a serial rapist with many, many, many victims (I named 22 to the cops) but Marion was far, far worse." SFF fans are reeling at the news. Bradley, who died in 1999, has been a celebrated author, beloved for her take on the Arthurian legend, The Mists of Avalon, which told the story from the perspectives of the women behind the throne, and for the Darkover stories. Set on a planet colonised by humans, the world of Darkover has continued in anthologies written by other authors... "I'm proud of those stories. I believe the Sword & Sorceress series was important, and I'm grateful to Bradley for creating it. I believe her magazine helped a lot of new writers, and her books helped countless readers. All of which makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic."Greyland, writing to the Guardian via email, said that she had not spoken out before "because I thought that my mother's fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women's rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives.  I didn't want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut""
Looks like it's not just male feminists who turn out to be creepy abusers

Re-reading feminist author Marion Zimmer Bradley in the wake of sexual assault allegations - The Washington Post - "Answers like these throw passages from “The Mists of Avalon” into a new and disturbing light. Take one passage about a Beltane ritual. Zimmer Bradley writes that “The little blue-painted girl who had borne the fertilizing blood was drawn down into the arms of a sinewy old hunter, and Morgaine saw her briefly struggle and cry out, go down under his body, her legs opening to the irresistible force of nature in them.”Without the context of Zimmer Bradley’s personal history, it is possible to read this sentence as a description of an ancient religious practice that is unsettling both in its depiction of an altered state and behavior that contemporary readers would not find acceptable. In the context of her testimony, and an article she wrote about sensual relationships between older and much younger women in literature, we lose the reassurance that the author shares our moral and ethical presumptions.Similarly, Breen justified his attacks on young boys by comparing them to sexual relationships between men that crossed significant age gaps in ancient Greece. Knowing that, and reaching  the point in “The Mists of Avalon” when a young King Arthur compares the men who will become the knights of his round table to Alexander the Great’s closest companions makes that allusion seem less like a bit of cultural ephemera, and more like a queasy signal, placed there for those who know to look for it... Zimmer Bradley’s descriptions of the awakening of sexual desire, the devastating power of sexual assault and the psychic damage wrought by constricting women’s roles in society remain beautiful and evocative in ways that much contemporary pop culture could learn from. Many of her characters are young women, married in their teens, and Zimmer Bradley handles their shifting thoughts about their husbands, their roles as wives and their nascent sexuality with care and consideration. She sustains a sprawling narrative with a huge, intergenerational cast of characters over almost 900 pages. And her main character, Morgaine, is a tremendous accomplishment.How, then, to reckon with the masterful public work and the allegedly monstrous private life? Zimmer Bradley’s contradictions raise an unnerving but important proposition. Survivors can offer tremendous insight into pain and transcendence. But so can the people who committed or facilitated depredations against them."

Watch - Discover - "TikToker Cleans Out Astonishingly Dirty Computers
Watch these oddly satisfying TikToks of a guy cleaning out dirty computers "

Pregnant Wife Finds Second Wife for Husband, Says She Can’t Bear Seeing Him Uncared For - "The strange arrangement happened in Shah Alam, Malaysia after Khuzatul Atiqah got pregnant. The young woman saw that her husband, Samuel Dzul, was always tired after a busy day at work but still had to do chores and make her feel better as she was having a difficult pregnancy."

Alan Dillman's answer to I heard employment in Canada is not at will. Is this not a deterrent for companies to setup offices in Canada? - Quora - "Canadian business owners often hold different values than American business owners and managers.In fact, I have had several employers say things like “You don’t work for me, you work with me”, or “We work together”. One owner/employer didn’t even have his title on his business cards. All our cards had the company name, our name, and a contact number for each. No hierarchy or titles... I might be employed by someone, but I work for me. That is how business owners see it too. They work for themselves, and understand that we do too."

Yuna: "The Biggest Racism and Discrimination I Had was from My Own Race" - "The pride of Malaysia’s up-and-coming singer Yuna has been taking the heat for having hugged fame rapper Usher during a live performance of the track, ‘Crush’ during The Roots Picnic 2016 gig in Philadelphia, USA, last month... 'Isn’t it weird, the biggest racism and discrimination that I’ve ever faced, was never from the Americans – it was from my own race.There I’ve said it. They call me ‘perempuan sampah’ and tell me to ”might as well go naked’. The worst, hurtful & sexist things I’ve ever had thrown to me, were from the lips of the Malays'"
Damn white supremacy!

Walter Ulbricht - Wikipedia - "When Khrushchev approved the building of a wall as a means to resolve this situation, Ulbricht threw himself into the project with abandon. Delegating different tasks in the process while maintaining overall supervision and careful control of the project, Ulbricht managed to keep secret the purchase of vast amounts of building materials, including barbed wire, concrete pillars, timber, and mesh wire. On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the Berlin Wall, only two months after Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans ("Nobody has the intention of building a wall"), thereby mentioning the word "wall" for the very first time. Ulbricht deployed GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight."

Why Do Cats Like Boxes? - ""Cats like boxes because they are cryptic animals; they like to hide," Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told Business Insider. "And a box gives them a place of safety and security.""

Cold hands, cold heart. - "So my boss once robbed a museum to prove a point and honestly, I think she is my new role model... Many years ago, my boss was working at this museum and they had these original Churchill documents on display. These documents are worth millions of dollars… The only thing separating the public from these documents was a sheet of glass secured with 4 philips head screws. Seriously. No security guards in the room, no cameras, just an easily removable piece of glass.My boss pointed out the security concern, but she wasn’t taken seriously, so she took matters into her own hands.She bought a ticket and  pretended to be a guest. She entered through the main entrance with a huge drill clearly visible on her belt, went straight to the documents and opened the case with the drill. (While  wearing gloves,) she removed the documents, put them in a folder, reattached the glass, and walked out the main exit.  Literally no one even questioned her.She immediately went around to the back of the museum, entered using the staff entrance and went straight to her boss’s office.  She dropped the folder on his desk and said “I just stole these in 15 minutes“Once he was done being mad at her, he listened and the museum increased security."

I,Hypocrite - Posts - "The Past, the present, the future. Consult her now! ON matters of... love, marriage... Closed due to unforseen pandemic"