@joshrogin It's a virus. What are you going to do? Put it on trial? Researching the origin of the virus makes for good soap opera, but it's already here, isn't it? Go ahead and research it, but our collective effort should be focused on how to deal with clear and present, current threats.
@joshrogin *IF* there was a lab leak, there's no telling where it leaked, and Nature is more than capable of cooking up a virus as dangerous as any weapon dreamed up by mankind. How do you trace aerosol pathways from over a year ago? You don't.
@joshrogin The labs are a *human stop-gap* for a *natural remedy* to heal the destructive encroachment of mankind. They create catalogues of dangerous pathogens in Nature, then recommend methods of containment, but YOU CAN'T CONTAIN NATURE. Assuming that you can is hubris.
@MichaelRapaport@nbcsnl I didn't watch @elonmusk and I won't. Tesla isn't interested in saving the environment. They're destroying it. Elon's not looking for solutions. He wants control. He's lying about his company's beneficent intentions, which has acquired large government contracts.
@MichaelRapaport@nbcsnl@elonmusk@elonmusk wants to be the next Henry Ford: goose step, protocols and all. How many Nazis do you think preached "compassionate conservatism?" The only reason he described Dogecoin as a hustle is to distract from the fact that all of cryptocoin is a hustle.
@MichaelRapaport@nbcsnl@elonmusk The only value in cryptocurrency is its anonymity and selective illegality. Cryptocurrency was designed to evade government regulatory agencies. Every dollar invested in cryptocoin enables human captivity, domestic terrorism and and drug trafficking.
A not-so communal quote from Friedrich Engels . . .
"Drink is the only thing which makes the Irishman’s life worth having, drink and his cheery care-free temperament; so he revels in drink to the point of the most bestial drunkenness . . .
. . . The southern facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which paces him little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness."
I once engaged in a deeply philosophical conversation with a Liberal, Indian royal whose education was financed by Honda. He taught machines to recognize human faces.
At one point he defended Oppenheimer by saying, "Well, he suffered significant psychological stress due to pronounced criticism."
@mattyglesias If people are "sniping" you, it's probably because Liberal anti-science propaganda is only a pale shade morally less repugnant than fascist anti-science propaganda.
@mattyglesias "Allow me to repeat that in case you didn’t catch it the first time: the structure that HIV uses to evade the human immune system, COVID uses to evade humanity’s defense systems."
@mattyglesias "COVID is a deadly, aerosolized pathogen that approaches an infection rate on par with measles that generates one new mutation per mammalian host every two weeks."
This narrative of "'the Rapture" is charged with mythos, making it highly attractive to a people deprived of mythos and community, which includes most people on planet Earth, but it hinges on magical thinking.
The Shakers referred to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Prior to the Civil War, 9 out of 10 Shakers left the society to re-join "the World's people," and these Utopian Reformers discussed a Cooperative Commonwealth.
The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth was only discussed as an inevitability by the Shakers because they couldn't conceive of a world where people give up on such a project. The Cooperative Commonwealth was always meant to be built by humankind; not delivered on a platter after tragedy.