Divemedic

More censorship coming

Time to remind people about censorship and the ability to blog. If you have seen this offer before, or if you aren’t interested in blogging, don’t bother reading this.

Congress is still threatening more censorship. The left not just going after blogs and social media- they are going after podcasts as well. The powers that be intend to shut down all media that is not state approved. See this report here.

I was trying to listen to conservative talk radio on Sirius and on Blaze TV, but the hosts are refusing to admit that the election was bogus, but saying “we will get them next time.” Conservative talk has been brought to heel and has been told what they can and cannot say. Alternative media like bloggers are all that is left of the free press.

There is still room to share this server. The cost to host a blog on this server is $25 per month, billed quarterly. My IT support team charges a small fee to import the contents of your blog to this server. I have domains that are included in the price, or we can get you a custom domain. The only rule that I have is: no porn sites. I am not interested in having porn on my site for two reasons: they are resource hogs (both storage space and bandwidth) and I don’t feel like having to expend my own time and energy defending porn distributors.

Even if you don’t contact me, find an alternative server now, or your blogs and podcasts may be gone forever. An XML backup is no longer sufficient, as Blogger and WordPress no longer support migration by XML. If your blog is cancelled, there may be no way to recover it.

If interested in having your blog hosted here, the email is Divemedic@sectorocho.com.

By Divemedic, ago

Las Vegas is woke

One of the reasons why Vegas is going broke is that its politicians have decided to be woke. When we were there in July, all bars were closed unless they were also restaurants. I don’t know why, but Democrats (who claim to the the party of science) seem to believe that I can catch COVID if I have a sandwich and a beer while in a bar, but I can’t catch it if I have a couple of Margaritas and some chips while sitting in a restaurant.

Anyway, the Clark county commission has voted to change the name of Las Vegas’ McCarran airport (LAS) to the Harry Reid airport. Apparently, this is because MCCarron, who was a Nevada Senator from 1933 to 1954, was instrumental in bringing aviation to the state, but had racist beliefs when viewed through the lens of today’s standards.

I guess Harry Reid gets a pass for saying that Obama was a great candidate for President because he was just “black enough” as a “light-skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

By Divemedic, ago

NOLA shooting followup

More facts have come to light on the shooting that I posted about yesterday. The shooter was a 27 year old man who had a criminal history. The two victims who were killed were a store clerk, and what appears to be a female customer who was simply in the unfortunate position of being the backstop for the customers who were shooting at the killer.

The two who were wounded were the brother of the mass shooting criminal, and another customer of the store.

The shooter had a criminal record:

The family of the shooter claims that he dindo nuffin.

By Divemedic, ago

Answer to this week’s logic problem

So the answer to this week’s logic problem: There would be the same number of boys as girls.

Here is the explanation:

This is a common misconception. It is the same misconception that makes gamblers believe that a certain number is “due.” As they say, the dice have no memory. For example:

Let’s say that 1 million couples have a child in round one. Half will have boys, half girls. So now there are 500K each of boys and girls.

The couples with girls must stop, the 500,000 with only boys are required to try again. So the 500,000 couples who had boys in round one have children, again half are boys and half girls. So now there are 750,000 each boys and girls.

The third round, the parents who had a girl stop, the 250,000 parents who don’t yet have a girl try again. So now another 125,000 boys are born, as are 125,000 girls. So now the running count is 875,000 boys, and 875,000 girls.

So as this progresses, the ratio will always be 50/50.

By Divemedic, ago

Your fault

There is a New York Times story that talks about how some Texas utility consumers faced 5 digit bills during the recent storm. They are painting the utility as being greedy, and the state government as inept, because of the steep rise in costs.

Of course, I have a different opinion. The culprit here is consumers and their lack of understanding of fundamental economics. Texas has a largely unregulated, pure supply and demand system. One provider, Gridly, charges consumers a flat $9.99 monthly fee and allows consumers to pay the wholesale rate for electricity. This results in cheap electric bills in normal times.

During abnormal times, like a blizzard or hurricane, wholesale prices skyrocket as utility providers shutdown because of the disaster and what power is left comes at higher prices due to its scarcity. That is supply and demand at work. Gridly even warned its customers that the prices were going to increase, and advised them to switch to another provider.

Many didn’t, for whatever reason. The power for them stayed on, but at prices that were up to 100 times more than normal. They claim that they could see the bill climbing, but could do nothing about it. Bullshit.

Turn off the breakers.

You ALWAYS have choices. You were told to switch providers, and you didn’t. You knew the prices were climbing, and knew you could turn off the power, but you didn’t.

Instead, you complain about “price gouging” AFTER the fact, and demand that mommy and daddy government come bail you out of the results of your own bad choices. Everyone warned you, and you ignored the warnings.

So now the government will likely pass laws preventing this from happening again. All this means is that companies like Gridly who were able to keep the lights on during a disaster, thus giving people an option (admittedly a higher priced option), will not be there next time.

By Divemedic, ago

Logic Problem

Kamala Harris finally lives her dream and winds up becoming the President of the United States. She decides that the US will be better off if there were more women, so she signs an executive order:

Henceforth, all child bearing couples will be required to keep having children until they have a girl. To prevent overpopulation, once they do have a girl, they must stop having children.

Here is the riddle: After 20 years of this policy, what will be the ratio of boys to girls under the age of 18 in America?

By Divemedic, ago

Follow the science

A comment on my COVID post from the 17th makes me want to explain some science so we can all understand why the COVID rates are dropping. When a PCR test is done, the lab is looking for the genetic material of the specific organism that is being tested for. The test detects the presence of a virus if you are infected at the time of the test. The test could also detect fragments of virus even after you are no longer infected. The PCR test is the “gold standard” test for diagnosing COVID-19 because it’s the most accurate and reliable test. That, however, doesn’t mean that the PCR test can’t be fiddled with.

For those of you who have knowledge on this subject, you will see that I am greatly simplifying this material. Please bear with me and understand that I am trying to make a complex subject easy to understand.

When any lab test is done, there is a threshold value that is set, so that any quantity that is detected above that value is indicative of a “positive” result. In order for a PCR test to detect genetic material, the levels of genetic material in the sample must be “amplified” to make small amounts of material detectable, sort of like turning up the “gain” on an amplifier.

Just like in an amplifier, when you turn up the gain, the background noise gets amplified as well as the information that you are looking for. If you turn it up high enough, you get a “positive” result even though the amounts of genetic material are so small that the person isn’t able to infect anyone, and doesn’t even have symptoms.

This amplification is called Cycle Threshold. Cycle threshold (Ct or Cq) is the number of times (cycles) a sample has to be amplified before the genetic material of the virus can be detected. A low Ct value indicates a strong viral load because it took less amplification to detect the virus. A high Ct value indicates a weak viral load because the sample had to be amplified many more cycles to detect it.

So why does this matter? It means our government has been using the rise in the number of PCR positives to influence and determine policy when “the science” suggests that using PCR positives to determine how the pandemic is advancing is impossible without clinical context. What’s worse, is these PCR tests are hyper sensitive because they record positive results for samples that have a cycle threshold of 35 to 40.

In fact, most of the high COVID case levels were due to the Ct being set at a very high level, to the point that most of the signal was noise. Then on January 20, an hour after Biden was sworn in, the WHO sent out a memo telling labs to use a much lower Ct.

So surprise, surprise, now COVID infections are down 68% from December. Joe Biden is a miracle worker and has fixed all of the damage caused by the “former occupant” as Joe likes to refer to him.

By Divemedic, ago