fishy smell

unkategorisch

Fish is the food that rather should not smell when you eat it. Which is a matter of timing depending on temperature those marine animal cadavers are kept in. I wonder if there will be dead fish around Downing Street. Probably not: The UK CCTV network is pretty dense. Easy to send the responsible parties the staggering clean up bill.

Trump, Touch, Bar

unkategorisch

What used to describe fears of New Yorker partygoers last century describes today a random and odd coincidence: While Trump was President Apple Laptops were so shitty, that they featured a pointless touchbar and totally gave up on the idea ,that power cable should be unable to yank your device into the abyss when somebody stumbles over it.

There are signs that both Touchbar and Trump are history soon.

Dann mal weiter so – bis November ’23

unkategorisch

Wenn wir im Tempo der letzten 3 Wochen weiter impfen (55,166 im Durchschnitt), dann sind wir in Deutschland schon Ende 2023 damit fertig*. Hoffen wir mal lieber das bis dahin keine wirklich fiesen Mutationen auftreten. Allgemein heisst es ja, dass Mutationen (ganz im Virusinteresse) eher weniger schädlich für den Wirt sind. Aber verlassen möchte ich mich darauf nicht. Solange vor seinem aus dem Verkehr ziehen der Wirt genug Übertragungen stattfinden lies ist es dem Virus schnurz wie viele davon überleben.

*Der Einfachhalt halber von 70% Herdenimunität ausgegangen. Und so getan als ob eine Impfung ausreicht.

Been Best

unkategorisch

Unlike other people in her family FLOTUS still has her Twitter. So she would like to let us know just how wonderful her Be Best campaign has been. If her twitter attention goes over well with her husband, who got recently deprived from such perks, can only be guessed.

The video she had created is 3:30 long. It is long. It feels long. Just because you can operate editing software does not make you an editor. Just as there is (was?) the happy ukulele selling us tech stuff and services there is the happy piano, Einaudi reduced to the meaninglessness of Clayderman, that wants to give us an upbeat vibe.

But no, the video is not for us. It is a memento for Melania. That is probably why it is so long: It shows her in PR events. I would not be surprised if it would be a complete chronic of her time as a First Lady. She has staff that does this kind of thing. So having a summary in the end of the project is just what you do.

In light of the previous causes that started innocent enough with the renovation of the White House by Jacqueline Be Best is pretty dismal. Sure, Nancy Reagan didn’t get rid of drugs either. Turns out just saying no somehow was not enough. As it turned out drugs seemingly don’t adhere to “no means no” either.

The problem with Be Best is that is PR only. It does not even make an attempt to suggest how cyber bullying could be reduced for the youth. Just like with Nancy it starts with language: Just ask somebody who is younger then lets say 35 what “Cyber” means. Most people will think of Elons truck. Maybe Melanie is against electrical vehicles being part of Americas must cultured event: Trucks getting dirty.

Or maybe she somehow and magically and inconclusively succeeded behind the scenes: Was it maybe her campaign that got her husband banned from Twitter? Kids bully kids. That is horrible. It was. Middle school is hell for most people. Various reasons. Other pupils are a big part of it. Schools and society mostly ignore that problem. They leave people in between childhood and adulthood alone.

Historically that wasn’t always the case. Definitions of child / adult vary. Most traditional cultures have initiation rites. Groups of people often have in general. If group means overall population then coming of age is the event that triggers acceptance in society. The gauntlet to be passed makes belonging binary. Bad for handicapped humans, or others that might not pass muster. Good for those that do: Usually it is not easy to loose social acceptance at a whim. Middle School is not that caring. Nobody is ever hip enough. Very few go without fear day in day out into the maelstrom of other hormonally confused homo sapiens.

Modern society does not have much to offer here: The market will make you happy? Just grow up and you get to consume a shitload of stuff, then you will be happy? Or: Do as your elders have done. Have values based on a world when people cared about what an oxen was and what it could do for you and yours. Just have ‘traditional values’. Which ones? From which time?

Be that as it may: Be Best didn’t help. It do jack shit. But much like its figure head we all stop caring a long time ago.

Air exports

unkategorisch

By far the biggest ‘export’ that leaves Long Beach bound to China last you year, was, well nothing. 2020 was a tumultuous year for logistics. Numbers for Americas largest pacific port were no exception. A total of 3,998,340 TEUs arrived, while 1,475,888 TEUs set sail towards the middle kingdom.

In other words just 37% of all containers going to China had something in them. The others were as useful as returning your empty bottles to the recycling station.

Farmers still can’t get their American grown stuff over to the other side. It seems that it is not worth the wait for the food exports to be put into the (large) cans. It appears to be more lucrative to send the empty boxes back asap.

In the same time the Trump administration directed government agencies to minimize procurements from China yesterday. It is the chips in things that makes them nervous. My guess is that a certain level of the administration has been working on things like this for a while, planning to put them into action in the usual orchestrated fashion. But they rather dump them into the public sphere now then to hand them over.

John Sullivan

media politics

Found him! The Capitol Mob was a bad scene. Really bad PR for Trumpists: A bunch of weirdos all with Trump flags, zip ties, all sorts of nonsense. But now, finally, those who think that Trump is good have finally found the culprit: John Sullivan. He was among the idiots on January 6th. And he is not a “Patriot”. Brown skinned even. For those who are willing to believe that the election was stolen it is also clear now that all thing bad were just his work. And probably lots of other ‘antifa’ people that their sleuthing and hearsay will “find”. Just as their pole watches (their spellings, not mine) found lots of evidence for voter fraud, they will find that Jan 6th was a BLM/antifa project all along. You know: No real patriot (or True Scottsman) would do the things of January 6th.

And you just need a kernel, an grain to grow a crystal of lies around it. For many people it actually will be that January 6th was the work of John Sullivan. Together with a bunch of other people, who just happen to be elusive to the cameras of ‘the media’. The next thing in the big reframing will be a term for that day, those events. A new name that has this ridiculous blame shift somehow in it. And that is catchy too. It will take the whole narrative and put it on its head. Flat earth is always there to make any other Internet created story look less ridiculous in comparison.

And lots of people will believe it. They are deeper in this kind of delusion than one would fear.

Geimpft und dann gestorben.

unkategorisch

Ja. Gerade gestern verstarb ein Mensch eine Stunde nach einer Corona Impfung. Bis gestern wurden in Deutschland 207.992 Menschen geimpft weil sie über 80 Jahre alt waren. Wenn man die Altersterblichkeit im Kontext der Bevölkerungszusammensetzung dann kann man rechnen das die Chance zu versterben bei 4000 zu 1 liegt wenn man dann erstmal 80 oder älter ist. Corona und seinen Einfluss lassen wir da jetzt einmal weg. (2008 waren 34% der 395.000 verstorbenen Männer und 64% der 450.000 verstorbenen Frauen octogenarian, also ca. 422.000). Gestern wurden 78.116 Menschen geimpft. Ca 40.000 nach alters indikation. Statistisch würde man mit 10 Toten rechnen. Aber der Tot kommt meist ja nicht so unverhofft.

Auch wenn sich das viele wohl wünschen …

Die Uhr läuft. Das Impfdebakel reift.

unkategorisch

Mit B.1.1.7 ist genauso wenig zu spaßen wie mit B.1.351. Egal ob das Virus nun in England oder Südafrika mutierte: Es erzeugt eine neue Dynamik deren genaues Ausmass niemand wirklich vorhersagen kann. Erst Anfang April 2020 begannen die Zahlen in Deutschland zurückzugehen. Wieviel dabei dem Lockdown und wieviel dem Wetter geschuldet werden kann ist nicht klar. Die täglichen Infektionszahlen scheinen um 20.000 herum zu schweben. Es wird stetig betont dass diese “wegen der Feiertage” nicht belastbar seien. Mitte Januar ist dieses Argument ein bisschen wie der letzte Partygast der für sich und den Gastgeber den Plattenspieler um 5 Uhr bedient, während die anderen Gäste um 3 Uhr gingen.

Schon Ende letzten Jahres wurde viel Aufhebens um die Impfung gemacht. Es wurde immer wieder betont dass es ja ein Unternehmen in Mainz war dass das schnellste Vakzin erfunden habe. Biontech wurde mit 375 Millionen von der Bundesregierung gefördert. In den USA wurden 1.25 million Dosen an einem Tag verimpft. In Deutschland waren es 60858. Für jede deutsche Impfungen macht man also in Amerika ungefähr 20. Wenn man die 4 mal größere Bevölkerungszahl auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks in Betracht sieht, dann sind wir hier immer noch 5 mal so langsam.

Das ist schon ein ganz anderes Bild als im Sommer letzten Jahres. Deutschland dachte damals, man habe das schon im Griff. Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. Aktuell meint man in der niedersächischen Impfhotline das man dann am 1. February vielleicht Termine machen können.

you, Big Tech, China

unkategorisch

Both the Big Tech and China are widely being hated. With varying degrees of intensity. Changing over time, and in different levels from person to person.

Neither on a direct personal level nor via any indicators I came across any signs that people themselves would change their ways of doing things based on their feelings towards Google, Xi and everything around them.

People spend more time than ever on their phones (assembled in China, running on services provided by Big Tech).

The “Trade War” that Trump attempted left China with a growing economy and global influence.

There is lip service by politicians around the globe. All the while Bezzos and Musk jockey for the pole position of riches.

And people do, what they do. Giving their money and attention to China and Big Tech. While being upset about it in the same time. And hardly anybody notices.

1.25 million vaccine shots in a single day

unkategorisch

Seems that the US is making great headway. They did well by buying lots of Biontech/Pfizer last July. Right now some populists do really well if it comes to vaccinations: Trump, Johnson and Netanyahu all lead the pack. A diverse set of reasons. But still worth noticing. Also interesting how it does not want to fit into the narrative that “those guys” (for the record: I am not fond of any of them either) are more like science-ignoring idiots. Well, they knew how to pick a winner if it comes to vaccinations. RNA vaccines – even though conceptually sound – were not proven. They had no track record.

One could speculate to find reasons. None of these could be conclusively proven or disproven. It could be that the populists fucked up spring so badly that they were in the most dire need for a miracle. They could think that social measures would further the other side of the aisle, so they would try to avoid them at all costs. Or they don’t have ‘experts’ around them that are just mid level people. Those that could not imagine that RNA based vaccines would work.

Who knows.

It is great that Israel, the UK and the US do so well in terms of vaccinations. Acquiring immunity via an actual infection is rather risky. Cov-parties never became a think like Pox-parties. For good reasons.