It has, but who do I get to vent to about it?
The kid's section in my bookstore has the same damn thing. Biographies of RBG, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, fucking Brandon.....
Anything on Trump? Scalia? Clarence Thomas? Nope!
I think technically a parasite is a larger organism than a virus.
But it wouldn't be the first drug to have more than one application. Viagra wasn't designed to give men hard ons.
There are better people that me to do it. I recommend listening / reading Dr. Vladimir (Zev) Zelenko. He's the one I heard it from, I believe.
I got into an argument over the weekend with a guy who said he works in the hospital, maybe a physician, scoffed when I told him my doctor proscribes IVM and HCQ like she's a quack.
On Ivermectin he kept asking "you know what it is?"
"An anti-parasitical."
"Yes. How does an anti-parasitical stop a virus?"
My mother got to the same block.
I mentioned that Ivermectin and HCQ, along with Zinc, make a passage for Zinc to enter the cell and inhibit cell replication. Of course, the next step is how zinc in a cell inhibit cell replication, but I'm glad I can remember that far.
Does it really matter, though? If a medicine man knew a certain leaf or berry would cure an illness, maybe he has a story that it's blessed by the Earth Mother or what not. Does it matter? He saw that it works, he remembers that it works, and he uses it.
So... if I play a female avatar on World of Warcraft... because I want to, or because I'm trans, or because I'd just rather be looking at the ass of a female toon instead of a male toon for three hours a night....
I didn't think it was a big deal...
But the trans push is to make people more comfortable with the idea of inhabiting a female avatar once the internet goes virtual and we're able to experience physical sensations from our three dimensional toon? And not feel weird about it?
I seriously hate this amount of stupid.
Too bad he didn't run for governor instead of Schwarteneggar....
Have the two of them ever been in a movie together?
Jordan Peterson was much more forthright with his regret.
You ever watch a movie and kind of half space out and feel like you missed the plot? That's what No Country For Old Men did for me. I mean.... the death of Brolin's character was so abrupt, I couldn't even figure out it happened. I was rewinding the VCR (hint on how long ago it was) and thinking: "He's dead? I didn't see him get shot..."
That's interesting interpretation that even Churgyn couldn't quite live up to being fully depraved so the Two-Face coin flip was sort of his attempt at a saving grace.
What other Cohen movie... Fargo. That would be a fun one to see again, though I think the morality is much more clear cut. A small sin leading to bigger ones. Pinocchio, basically.
One movie that I like for the trick it plays on the viewer... it's not a great movie, and I think Roger Ebert mocked the ending... Jakob the Liar, where Robin Williams is a Jew under Nazi occupation and starts making up stories (claiming he heard them on the radio) to give hope to the other inhabitants. At the end, Williams' character is shot and the ghetto is evacuated to the death camps. And Williams' final voice over was: "They went to the camps. None were ever seen again. Or.... no, I think they were rescued by the Americans, along with some Jazz singers." Once again, putting a lie to make the audience more comfortable, the same way he did in the movie.
I think the essence of a Serious Man has to do with the protagonist's one actual decision: Whether to accept the bribe and pass the student, or whether to pass on the bribe and face the consequences of the student's parents suing him for theft or slander.
The last thing you see him do is change the grade from an F to a C, and he immediately gets a call from his physician with a serious tone about his X-rays.
The story of Job is to settle a disagreement between G-d and Satan, as to whether morality is a byproduct of comfort, or if suffering will cause morality to go out the window.
It's a good question.
I've read accounts of Holocaust survivors... I think it was Primo Levi, but I'm not sure. He said the experience of suffering in the concentration camps made some men into saints and other men into monsters. And others who just floated in between.
I think Job passed the challenge. The protagonist in Serious Man didn't. But the entire movie, all the trials he suffered, was just to see if it would influence this one decision on the grade.
I didn't care much for Old Country for old Men. Maybe I just didn't get it. The creep was just too... I mean, I get how he worshipped chance. "Call the coin." The other guy's widow refuses to play along and reminds him he has agency.
The holiday of Purim.... Purim means "lots." Haman, being an enemy of the Jews and a descendant of the Amalekites, was of an antithetical mindset to G-d. Which is to say, he believed in randomness. Kind of like the modern Atheist mindset. "There is no morality, there is no order, the universe happened by chance, Evolution has no guiding principle -- it happened by chance, and we are no more remarkable than a fish that just evolved a different way."
So how did Haman pick the date for the destruction of the Jews? He used chance. He flipped a coin. Or rolled dice. But the term the Bible uses is that he cast lots.
Which is the same as the creep in No Country for Old Men.
I haven't really been able to derive much out of that movie beyond that.
But are we still allowed to own anything?
An interesting tidbit about the Seder scene is except for the big actor, nobody else involved in that scene is a professional actor. But if you've been to seders... they all sound real. (Especially the line: "hurry up, I'm hungry. I heard that all the time).
Another very good film by the Cohen Brothers is "A Serious Man." My wife and I planned to watch 20 minutes of that before going for a run. We ended up spellbound the entire time.
It's sort of a modern (well, 1950s more like) rendition of the book of Job. The protagonist gets advice, in the middle of his nightmare of bad luck, from three different Rabbis, all of which fail to satisfy him. Interestingly enough, the three Rabbis are of all different ages: Young, middle aged, and elderly.
There's one memorable line to the middle aged Rabbi's advice which is: "G-d doesn't owe us answers. G-d doesn't owe us anything. The obligation is in the other direction."
I could find that scene for you too... let's see....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Kq75MY4mo
I took a quick look at Caravaggio. Good art. But yeah, the personal and the art ... it's a function. A person can be deep, but that doesn't make them good. Is Bill Cosby worse than anyone else in Hollywood? Are there famous men who used women in Hollywood, even against their will? Is the ocean wet? I think Cosby got people mad because of the pound cake speech. That they couldn't tolerate.
I haven't seen Crimes and Misdemeanors in sometime, but the Seder scene is one of those that you just remember.
It's a truism that a morally flawed, even reprehensible person, can still make deep and moving pieces of art. Perhaps their vices informed them on some of the depths people can fall to.
(Of course, some of his movie are dumb slapstick. My favorite is Bullets over Broadway. In fact.... Bullets over Broadway directly challenges the relationship between artistic talent and morality. The most talented artist in the movie is also completely amoral --- hysterically so)
When I saw Ghost of the Darkness I saw the exact problem Goldman wrote about in his book. Douglas's character was cool in his first scene, but just wouldn't go away until you got sick of him.
Heh, I was kinda itching to make my little analogy.
Yeah, if the gun explodes when you're firing it, the company should be liable.
If your gun is stolen and the thief shoots someone with it, the thief is liable, not the company.
But if a Pfiezer can kill you with a poison jab and get off, why shouldn't the gun manufacturer get off when the gun explodes and takes your hand with it?
Yeah, I don't think Bibi was much for stopping it. I'm really not as up to date on the nuts and bolts of Israeli politics. But Bennet sprinting to Covidstan.
Patterson... I remember that name. William Goldman, famous screenwriter (Misery, Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid among others) wrote a movie called the Ghost and the Darkness, about two man eating lions that interrupted the construction of the British railroad across Africa, and Patterson was instrumental in shooting these two lions.
The legend was good but the movie is mediocre at best due to shenanigans between the actors and the movie studios. (Kevin Costner accepted the row, but the studio wanted to ask Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise said no, Costner found this insulting and quit, Michael Douglas got involved and he was okay as a producer but decided to act as well and wrecked things.... big mess.).
Good point... very good point.
Yeah there was.... there was another Rabbi, who described eating... he had four scenarios of eating a steak.
The first is you just ate, but the steak smells good. So you take a page from the Romans, make yourself vomit, and then eat the steak.
Second is you're hungry. You enjoy the steak.
The third and the fourth ... I can't remember the difference. But you're at your child's wedding and steak is on the menu.
Nothing was really wrong with the second.
The first one lowers you to a level BENEATH animals.
The third one elevates the meal to something higher.
That first possibility, vomiting to make space for more food -- it's an interesting concept that man can slip beneath animals.
I was horrified the first time I heard of the crime of being kind to a poor person, getting them to sign some paper for your charity.... and then murdering them a week later. Because you had them sign a life insurance policy, with you as the beneficiary.
I found that horrific because no animal would do that. Would an animal kill for food or fear or anger or do rape because... just because? Yeah, sure. But no animal ever made another animal sign a life insurance policy before killing them. That's a crime that requires the human gifts, the human intellect, to even conceive of.
When I heard someone describe that, my next sentence was literally: "That's why G-d flooded the world".
I can by that there is a type of karma... that you do get what you put out, one way or the other.
It's probably ... you know, I'm gonna link to it anyway just because this scene is on my mind a lot. Yes, Woody Allen is a creep. But this scene has everyone represented: The person who genuinely believes in G-d. The person that goes through the motions but doesn't believe. The person who thinks highly of the one that has faith. And the person who's a total nihilistic cynic who thinks that if you can get away with doing the evil, you're free. But I think the energy comes back to you.
How does it lead to blame the victim?
And for the record, when I got the answer, my reaction was: "That's just too esoteric for me."
Whatever this war is, it's between regular people and the elites. And the elites overlap. There's no difference between them anymore. It's like when they say World War One was a family squabble, because a lot of the kings and heads of state of Europes were cousins of each other. They would actually meet at family reunions, yuck it up, change uniforms and take pictures as a joke. While their country's citizenry were blowing each other's brains out.
So yeah. Average Jew can be incensed at the leadership of Israel.
Average catholic probably holds this creepy Pope in a very low regard.
Average American sees the presidency was stolen and the whole country sold to China.
Average Canadian sees the same crap with Trudeau.
Average Australian, average New Zealander, woke up one morning and found the country turned to a fascist state.
And all the elites giggling to themselves as they set us up white against black, vaccinated against unvaccinated, and every other bullshit fight they can start so we don't look at them.
There was a certain question an atheist once posed to me. I gave him an answer. Then checked my answer years later with a Chabbadic Rabbi and a Conservative Rabbi. My question and the answers don't matter much, but the Chabbadic Rabbi, as part of his answer, said that this part of the creation is filled with base, low energy. Part of our purpose in life is to elevate and sanctify that energy into something higher, something holy. As one example, that's why you take an everyday event, like eating. Even animals eat. But when you say a Bracha, or a prayer, a thanks to G-d before you eat, you turn the base act of eating into something holy, something of high, spiritual energy. And it's through many little acts of this kind that we eventually will elevate the lower energies of this world.
So if the Satan or darkness seems to have its way in the world, my guess is that the world is mired in low energies, and we have to individually elevate it a little bit to raise the overall energy to something positive.
I know I could probably find it on my own... and if you tell me to, fair enough.
But can you find me a medical reference that identifies viruses as parasites?