Harrison Danneskjold

I don't know. It was a back-of-the-napkin sort of calculation I did (although I did mention where I got those numbers from, including the one I just made up at random) and to be completely honest part of me was just excited to do such a calculation again, after such a long time. I haven't gotten the chance to really "chew on" the PDF you linked to as thoroughly as I'd like to. I was surprised to hear that there have already been a few orbital collisions (which really shouldn't happen if my math was correct). I'm not surprised that NASA thinks this is a big problem that needs immediate action; they've been trying to justify their continued existence in whatever ways they can ever since we landed on the moon. Still, I haven't gotten a chance to look into it more deeply yet, and although they are struggling to find reasons why we should keep funding them I'd be very loathe to call anyone at NASA a liar. You don't get into that organization without fully mastering several intellectual virtues simultaneously. So I'll be very interested in seeing how it shakes out from there. Thank you!

And there is a reason I've been referring to "sanity" so much lately. If you believe that this last election was rigged specifically by a secret cabal of child-eating Satanic pedophiles, or that "microaggressions" like complimenting someone's hairstyle have anything to do with racism, or that the California wildfires were caused by Jewish space-lasers (which just sound awesome), or that Doctor Seuss or COVID have anything to do with racism, or that there's a vast underground complex beneath DisneyWorld where abducted children are taken to be sacrificed to Satan, or that vaccines could cause autism or do anything other than give immunity to certain diseases, or that a disease with such a laughably low fatality rate could ever have been designed to be a weapon, then your standards of rationality have not been lowered; they're just gone. You have officially departed from the planet that I live on and are just making unintelligible noises. And let's give ourselves some credit here, as Objectivists: the insanity going on here, on this forum, is nothing like what's going on in our wider society. I think we deserve a pat on the back for that. I'm not quite sure what to do with the fact that so many of the people around me seem to be going insane. But calling it what it is and making a clear distinction between what makes sense for rational people to question, and which questions are just nuts, seems like a good starting point to me. It's exactly what I would've urged Jeff Bezos to do about miss Chanin Kelly-Rae if I'd known about her at the time and if Jeff Bezos could've been bothered to notice my existence. 😆

@dream_weaver do you remember which lecture it was which mentioned the Indian Head textile company?

Affirmative action laws? You're right; they can't. There is no way to prove whether people get hired based on competence or on race and the best we can do is penalize anyone who lacks a sufficient number of diversity hires. The laws against lynchings and racial segregation, though, I believe we are enforcing just fine. Black people living in modern America have nothing special to complain about that the rest of us don't also have to deal with. And from the article MisterSwig linked to: That's not racism. Far from being racism, that just sounds like these peoples' coworkers were trying to be friendly. "What's wrong, Joe? Are you having a bad day?" he asked with MURDER IN HIS EYES!!! Apparently calling any individual person with brown skin stupid and inarticulate is what "racism" means now. What I'm getting from this article is that Jeff Bezos' mistake here was failing to announce to the world that these people are insane and he's not going to tolerate them. That would've been the appropriate response. And I'm sorry if anyone reading this believes that asking about the expressions on your coworkers faces or calling a stupid individual stupid is racism, but if you are one such person then you need to go home and rethink your life. How did it go from that to Amazon declaring "the treatment of Blacks in this country" a top priority?

So Chanin Kelly-Rae is a professional Black and Amazon's big mistake was hiring her in the first place.

Off the top of my head I would say lies; yes. Do you know of any definite cases (with confirmed diagnoses) of anyone catching it twice? If so then by what mechanism could such a thing be possible? There would have to be some reason why this particular virus doesn't have to obey the same laws that every other one does. If people were being reinfected (particularly after vaccination) then there should be a flurry of new research to try and square that with what we thought we knew about the immune system. But I'm pretty sure that if you dig into any such stories you'll find that there is no such wild new flurry of research because the Wuhan Flu is not magic; you've simply been lied to.

The one about the "treatment of black people in this country" being unacceptable was what really confused me. Did we reimplement Jim Crow at some point and I just missed it? Because I thought the "treatment of black people in this country" by law must be at least as good, if not better (as in affirmative action) than the treatment of anyone else. Furthermore at least the minimum wage and climate change could theoretically have something to do with Amazon's bottom line. I personally wouldn't buy the argument that climate change is but that argument could be made in all honesty. And yeah - since Amazon pays a minimum of $15 an hour to every single employee that one is a no-brainer. But racism??? I guess that's what Amazon is for, though. Not the sheer volumes of profit it makes but these social issues which I'm sure it'll be just as effective at fixing.

It sounds like you might be trying to whitewash what I'm actually saying. It's kind of flattering that such would be your response (thank you) but I really do mean that the exclusive purpose of a company should be to make money. I distinctly remember listening to a lecture of Rand's at one point in which she mentioned some textile company called Indian Head, and quoted its CEO as saying (roughly): 'The purpose of this company is to maximize the wealth of its shareholders; not to make the best textiles or the best customer service or anything else. Those things might be necessary means towards the end of our stock value but means and ends must never be confused.' That's what I'm arguing for. Now, to say that the goal of a company is profit is not to say that it must also be the highest goal of its employees, suppliers, customers or CEO; if any of those individuals held chasing profit as their highest goal then I'd consider it a psychological problem of some sort. A company is not an individual, though; it's a team of individuals who work together to make money. And to say that profit is the team's only goal is to say that whenever its members are "on the clock" they must be focused on the pursuit of that one goal; no different from what it means to say that the purpose of a basketball team is to maximize points or that the purpose of an orchestra is to create beautiful music. Such goals will inevitably create lesser subgoals which are necessary in order to consistently reach them. Orchestra members should usually take good care of their instruments, just as factory workers should usually take good care of their equipment (and each other) - but only so far as they actually serve that higher goal. In situations where that goal calls for something else they must be abandoned (such as by overclocking a machine or smashing a guitar to bits). And again, whoever owns a company is and should be free to set whatever goals they think it should have (including zany things like raising the minimum wage, enforcing preferred pronouns and even "being less white"). None of it should be a crime. But the further removed it is from the pursuit of profits the less honest of a goal it is and the less moral it becomes to work for or deal with that company. You wouldn't work for an allegedly non-profit organization that secretly funnelled buckets and buckets of profit to its leaders. Don't deal with allegedly for-profit companies that operate in fact as political advocacy groups. Or with bands which have no interest in music, for that matter, or with "scientists" who have no interest in truth.

Well, yeah, if peoples' peaceful movement across an imaginary line ever constitutes a threat to our very survival then of course we should prevent it. I keep trying to think of a way that could be the case (assuming the immigrants are, in fact, peaceful) but I don't think I can. I often crack jokes about people who're afraid of maskless, naked faces but being afraid of the movement of fully-clothed people you can't even see is a much better one. I think an O'ist society would probably be sturdier than that!

"Omission" sounds good. A private company can't censor people (that would require force) but they can omit certain bits of information from the discussion, which is exactly what many companies did with the specific intent of helping Biden win. It worked, too. Hopefully the consequences of that little gimmick won't have to involve anyone except its perpetrators. Although if you miss a book its price will suddenly skyrocket. I never thought I'd see the day when Doctor Seuss's mediocre ramblings would be traded in back alleys like drugs, but far more expensive.

They won't for however long Biden remains their useful buddy. I'm not holding my breath.

If only! I miss the days when that's what a company was for. It was a cleaner and more honest way of doing business. I think the problem today is that these companies are in fact being run by emotionalist moralizers with pitchforks. The owner standing outside their store with a sign that reads "unbelievers unwelcome" would be a much more apt comparison. Amazon has a webpage on "our positions" under "about us" which says, among other things: I'm not saying it should be illegal for Jeff Bezos to hold these opinions or to make as big and beautiful a website as he wants to about them - just as it should be totally legal for any shopkeeper to put a giant sign in front of his store with whatever opinions he wants to share. I am saying that I sure as Hell would not buy from a shop that had an atheist-bashing sign in front of it and am not doing business with Amazon for the same reason. If you want to use your private company as a soapbox from which to say extremely non-business-related things (or prevent others from sharing their own opinions on your property) then I'd better agree with what you're saying or else I'm not gonna fund your personal soapbox. You might ask yourself whether it makes sense to do business on such ideological terms and no; I don't think it does. That's why I miss the time when companies didn't play these stupid games or pretend that they had any higher purpose than profit. Ironically I guess I'm calling for those of us who are still sane to develop a bit of our own cancel culture, in the hopes of getting back down to business.

I'd like to mention that whether or not the election was "stolen" really depends on what you mean by that. I haven't seen good evidence of widespread, outright fraud. I've looked into it and it does not seem like that happened. However, quite a few major media companies (as well as Facebook and Twitter) have outright admitted that they were slanting things in Biden's favor, most notably with regard to Hunter Biden's laptop. Ten percent of Biden's voters would not have voted for him if they'd ever heard of Hunter Biden's shenanigans - only they didn't. When the New York Times attempted to actually cover that story the rest of their peers did their very best to ignore and bury it. Twitter even pulled the story down and prohibited any mention of it on their platform. That is neither fraud nor censorship. These were all private companies who chose to omit information which would've been pertinent to the voters, and several million of them chose to vote for Biden because they weren't given that information and didn't take any proactive steps to find it out themselves. None of that is in question. None of it is or should be criminal (which is why I personally don't use the word "stolen") but it was grossly immoral, especially for media companies for whom information is supposed to be their business. A reporter who doesn't care to report on the truth is like a scientist who doesn't care to discover it: in a perfect world, unemployable. The answer is not to try and prevent such private evils from happening again with any new laws, but for anyone who's upset about it (and not unjustifiably) to have some boycotts of their own. Any competing media company that actually functioned in its intended manner would be another great place to start.

We do. That is how the human immunological system works. Not every question has to be postponed until we can apply some sort of statistical analysis to it; if what we teach in high school biology classes is correct then we do know that is absolutely true. The facts we're talking about here are ones I learned from watching the Magic School Bus almost three decades ago. There's nothing new or controversial about it: Once you've had a disease and recovered from it your body will remember how to build the antibodies to fight it if you ever catch it again. It's actually being a bit too generous to call it high-school biology stuff, on second thought; my nine-year-old is fully capable of explaining how it works (also because of the Magic School Bus). In the state of Minnesota there is a requirement to wear a mask while alone at work, regardless of what you're doing or your proximity to another living soul, which your employer is expected to enforce on you. Why are you acting like we don't know how vaccines or natural immunity work? We do. I refuse to believe that you don't personally know it, too (you certainly sound like you passed high school too and I would bet it involved something about human biology) - what reason do you have for questioning what you damn well know already? You know that you know this!!!!! The Wuhan Flu is not magic! It is no different from any other dumb virus! It really does have to obey all the same laws as the rest of the universe (laws which we actually do know quite a bit about already); I promise! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system I am sorry about this.

When they are free to choose rationally, yes. But there's a reciprocal sort of vicious cycle between censorship, coercion and irrationality, just as there is between freedom and rationality. I'm not saying that a private company's choice of whom to platform could constitute censorship (it can't) but perhaps we need another term for what it actually is. It's not as bad as literal censorship and we are all still free to do business with companies we don't consider evil (as Parler is an excellent example of) but I do think the actions of some of these companies are evil and certainly not good for a free and open dialogue. Take all the money Amazon donated to Black Lives Matter during the height of their rioting (I believe it was upwards of one billion dollars). Does anyone think a single penny of it went towards anything useful or good? I certainly don't. And although it was their right to donate whatever money they have to whomever or whatever they choose, giving it to BLM was such an irresponsible call that I'm choosing it as my example of "corporate evil" (if you will). Again, this isn't to say that anyone should try and take those choices away from any corporation of any size; only that we as consumers should probably start paying more attention to such choices when deciding who we'd like to do business with. That's basically how Amy Peikoff framed Amazon's underhanded attempt to destroy Parler and there's not much else I can add to it. Are you familiar with Project Veritas? I only watch their stuff occasionally (and a few of the claims they've made seem only weakly supported by their reporting of the actual evidence for them) but they did a very illuminating bit about Facebook last year which I think would totally substantiate that claim, if we assume that YouTube is being run in a similar way. That is an assumption. It seems like a good one to me, but it might be wrong. But to return to Marilyn Manson's (s)Ain't video, if THAT doesn't trigger their moderating algorithm (or person) then whatever is doing the moderating simply is not interested in the filth, smut, personal abuse, swearing, or any other non-partisan concept of "cleanliness" one could think to invoke. YouTube is obviously not cleaning up the same sorts of refuse that they claim to be. I guess all of that is, itself, also pretty speculative. But it seems like a step in the right direction. --- Of all the companies I'm gonna have to minimize my own business with I think I'll miss Coca-Cola by far the most. I've been drinking it every day for so long that I'm not sure I remember how to live without it. But they recently forced all their employees to attend some thing about "being less white" and I can only assume they were referring to their customer base. And is there anything more white than a ginger? I think not.

Interesting that Marilyn Manson's music video for (s)Ain't is still there but not this. I won't post any link (it actually is pretty obscene) but images of Marilyn Manson snorting what looks like cocaine, cutting himself in a bathtub and having actual sex on camera do not violate the TOS while "academic cancel culture" apparently does. It also appears that none of the people responsible know that declaring something forbidden is the single best way to make the entire internet go and look at that thing. Speaking of which - where can we go to find this thing that's even spicier than Marilyn Manson?

I really disagree for the same reasons I laid out earlier: https://covid19risktools.com:8443/riskcalculator Requiring a mask in all situations for someone who actually has the Wuhan Flu is like requiring a condom at all times on a person who has AIDS. The context of their own choices, and the individual choices of anyone for whom that would be relevant, are not relevant to our central planners; they simply must have one. Requiring a mask in all situations for everyone, whether or not they have the disease (or are vaccinated or immune or secretly immortal or any conceivable thing) is like requiring a condom on everybody, at all times, because AIDS exists somewhere on Earth. Doing so for AIDS would be much more understandable since AIDS is in fact a death sentence. For the vast majority of the people who could physically contract this disease its consequences would be "a pretty bad cold; not much fun". Even the OP who personally had it is fine now. He said that it was extremely unpleasant but that it's over and I'd like to add that since he's immune now, there is no god damn reason for him to continue to wear a face-condom! I cannot understate the extent of my disagreement with your statement! And the specific reason is because you used the word "require". I don't take the risks of this disease at all seriously and I do think the masks are stupid. I think these are basically the correct opinions and I do have reasons for them. Nonetheless, though, if you came up and asked me politely to put on my mask (particularly if you are an old person) then I would do it. I'd still think it was stupid and I might say so, but as long as you used the words "please" and "thank you" I'd do it anyway, just because that's how I was raised. But when you use the word "require" you can go straight to Hell. We can agree on that, though. I'd really love it if we could wipe this virus out entirely at some point. It wouldn't have to serve any higher purpose; I just think it's one species we could be proud of having driven to extinction. Thank you. I will be leaving this Hellhole eventually; hopefully it's before the next big scare. Everything we just went through will happen again, though. It's not like viruses stop evolving just because it's 2021 (and they aren't even the scariest kinds of things we might discover in the future) nor is it like anyone learned anything from what happened. Hopefully I'll be in a better location whenever it does recur.

Truth be told, almost every single aspect of today's political landscape both frightens and angers me. And if that's not what you feel about it then I don't think you're actually paying attention to it. Maybe that's for the better (for your own psychological health); I really meant it when I said that my blood pressure is gonna kill me long before the Wuhan Flu does. But bear in mind that I have been paying probably too much attention to this subject when I say that we would be in a far better place today if a few more people had found the courage to pick such fights, last year, than actually did. Including my self.

I don't know, exactly. At least a $1000 fine (which will never be paid) and certainly many other nasty things. That's not what I'm thinking of; what I'm worried about are the consequences of silently allowing all these things to be done to me. Although I violated the lockdowns the first time I did so in secret. None of my arguments were heard by anyone except my coworkers and family; I maintained the appearance of obedience. In retrospect I think I was also being one more part of the problem; not part of the solution. I am ashamed that I didn't make a scene over the first lockdown and I truly do hope its consequences will not be as severe as I suspect they might be. It's not something I've thought all the way through, to the root, but if it ever happens again I intend to pick some very public fights over it. That's why I do not wear any mask at all right now. I'm still waiting for someone to crack down on me about it - and if and when they do then I'll fight them, too. I'm far more scared of the consequences of my own obedience.

When Minnesota locked down I entered into a several-week-long debate with the employer I had at the time and ultimately convinced her (or just annoyed her to the point of giving in; it wasn't quite clear) that there are certain laws which should be violated on principle, and that the lockdown was one of them. Although I've changed my employment since then I have not changed my mind about it. If they try locking Minnesota down again I will set up a fucking lemonade stand in the most public place I can. MASKLESS. To Hell with the immediate consequences; there are some things you simply must find a way to fight. PS: The sidewalk in front of Tim Walz's house would be the perfect spot to make that sort of a scene. Let that "person" look me in the eye and witness the functioning of his own ideas on his own front lawn, for once.

I personally suspect that our society will continue bearing punishment for the past year's sins for many decades to come. I do not know all the different forms that punishment will take, but if nothing more comes of it than an excess of suicides and mental disturbances then we will have been damn lucky.

Exactly. I don't remember which lecture it was but I distinctly remember a lecture by Peikoff in which he explained that nothing which is forced can be a value, because to "value" something involves a certain mental process ("mind" being the opposite of "force") of understanding and appreciating that thing, without which it cannot be considered "valuable" to the individual who doesn't actually value it. The example he gave involved forcing a young man to become a doctor (which would in fact be his true calling) despite his irrational (but truly and deeply held) conviction that he was meant to paint. It didn't take him long to show how forcing him into his ideal career path would make him resent and hate it, which would discourage him from paying close attention to his own work, which would eventually sap away whatever talent he had ever had for it; ultimately and necessarily leaving him as an embittered quack. Huddling in our homes and only venturing outside to collect our welfare handouts is not living; it's just not-dying. That most of us were forced by government fiat to do so for almost a year (and some parts of America might stay that way for a second year) - well, it seems certain to be at least a major contributing factor in our brand new suicide rates. We should count ourselves lucky if that's all that comes of this.

What; the kids who learned that going outside and being carefree will cause old people to die, that they aren't in charge of their own decisions (the nanny-state is) and that anything they ever work to accomplish could be destroyed at any moment with the flick of some bureaucrat's pen? I'm sure they'll grow up to be the good little footsoldiers we obviously want them to be. I mean ... "STAY HOME TO HELP US SAVE LIVES IF YOU GO OUT YOU CAN SPREAD IT PEOPLE WILL DIE!" Great message for the kids. Can't imagine any unfortunate consequences of plastering those signs all over the UK. Actually, I can just picture one such kid on a therapist's couch in about twenty years trying to figure out why they have a crippling phobia of going outside, but maybe that'll be considered normal at that point anyway.

Yes, there is, which is why I don't consider the social darwinist perspective to be a serious point. The way everyone seems to be framing this is that my quality of life is at odds with the survival of the very old, which is why the reflexive "can't we just let them die" response does appeal to me at times. But they wouldn't be at odds if one could invoke any semblance of individual rights (which would allow the very old to take care of themselves while letting me do the same). But they're all part of the same overarching thing. The chin diapers are simply the most concrete aspect (and, yes, by far the least offensive) of it all. As for my employer - according to the state of Minnesota they'll be fined $1000 if they don't force me to wear a mask, but my own has made it clear that he won't pay that fine if it ever comes up; I will. Which is a risk I'm happy to take! That's why I keep using the word "fascism" - that's what forcing a corporation to do the government's dirty work for them means. The little Napoleons involved (like Tim Walz) don't even have the balls to enforce their own rules; they have to rope perfectly innocent third parties into doing it for them. If it was only a private matter of insurance costs then that wouldn't be an issue either. Since it is yet another outrageous law I am violating it on principle and look forward to the possibility of expressing why in a courtroom, if it ever comes to that.