Quote of the day—Andrew Kerr

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The state of Washington told Black Lives Matter in early January that it must “immediately cease” fundraising in the state because of the charity’s lack of financial transparency, but it has ignored the order, according to records obtained by the Washington Examiner .

The Washington Secretary of State Corporations and Charities Division notified BLM in a Jan. 5 letter that it could face fines up to $2,000 for each donation it solicits and receives from Washington residents until it submits records detailing its financial activities . Despite the notice, BLM has continued to accept contributions from the state’s residents as recently as Monday evening.

Andrew Kerr
February 1, 2022
BLM fundraises in Washington despite order to ‘immediately cease’
[If the Governor Inslee administration fails to hold BLM responsible for these violations it will make their allegiance with evil clear to everyone. As it is the democrat voters give their own politicians a lot of slack. I don’t think they will do that for BLM on this issue.—Joe]

Update: I wrote the above on February 2nd before finding this article early on February 3rd:

Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.

…

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita previously said BLM’s refusal to answer basic questions about its finances and operations fits a common and disturbing pattern.

“It appears that the house of cards may be falling, and this happens eventually with nearly every scam, scheme, or illegal enterprise,” Rokita, a Republican, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I see patterns that scams kind of universally take: failure to provide board members, failure to provide even executive directors, failure to make your filings available. It all leads to suspicion.”

I did not expect that. I expected BLM would continue fundraising until people were actually arrested.

Quote of the day—Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue

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What started as a temporary means to protect the community from unknown risks of a virus has turned into a circus of mandates that no longer make sense to any rational person. Enough is enough. People all over our great State who live, work, and worship in New Orleans are united in this effort to take back control of their lives and families.

Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue
February 1, 2022
New Orleans Mayor Sued Over COVID-19 Vaccine Passports
[I’m interested to see the result of this. The entire State of Washington has a mask mandate, could such a lawsuit be successful in Washington?

Here is the legal basis in Rodrigue’s lawsuit:

This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief challenging Defendants’ issuance and enforcement of mandates for vaccination and mask usage in the City of New Orleans in violation of individual constitutional liberties and the separation of powers. First, the vaccinate-or-test mandate violates La. Const. art, I, § 5 by infringing on the fundamental right to privacy with overly broad restricts lacking no accommodation for religious objections, personal or philosophical choice, natural immunity, medical contraindications, or the wide range of factors influencing the severity of the disease process. Second, the vaccinate-or-test mandate denies equal protection under La. Const. art. 1, § 3 by classifying persons based on vaccination status and threatening to punish the exercise of a fundamental right in order to coerce compliance. Third, the mask mandate is unconstitutionally vague and overly broad, and thus fails due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2. Fourth the third-party enforcement provisions offend due process under La. Const. art. 1, § 2 by unlawfully conscripting private persons into the role of public enforcement officers under the threat of criminal and regulatory sanctions and the denial of municipal services. Finally, the Mayor’s emergency orders violate the separation of powers under the State constitution and the City Charter by purporting to enact law without legislative authorization.

I found this interesting and may mean such a lawsuit in other jurisdictions would fail even if this one succeeds:

Louisiana’s constitutional right to privacy “is one of the most conspicuous instances in which our citizens have chosen a higher standard of individual liberty than that afforded by the jurisprudence interpreting the federal constitution.”

…

The right to privacy under Article I, § 5 includes “the right to decide whether to obtain or reject medical treatment.”

And, of course, the city will drag their feet for months or years and try to make the case moot before it can be decided.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Downtown Seattle Association

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For far too long our city has essentially ceded Third and Pike to criminal enterprises and it’s time to put these people out of business. We need urgent action to get rid of the illegal activity in this area before more people are hurt and more lives are impacted.

Downtown Seattle Association
January 19, 2022
Notorious Seattle intersection in spotlight after recent shootings
[This is on what Barb and I call “Mug Me Street”.

On Second Street just south of Pike, a little over a block away, is a Target store. The shoplifters hit them multiple times a day and the local communists admire the thieves:

John Ray Lomack is a prolific shoplifter who is charged with brazenly stealing a 70″ television from Target. It was all caught on video surveillance. Kreig thought it was pretty cool.

“You gotta admire the boldness of walking out with a box the size of a smart car,” Kreig wrote.

After learning Lomack was released on his own personal recognizance, despite his nearly four-decades worth of criminal behavior, Kreig offered to buy light-on-crime Judge Kuljinder Dhillon a drink. Then she implies low-income and poor people are criminals and that Target will survive, so it’s no big deal.

We are going through the same transformation as was witnessed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Labradar update

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As I mentioned a month ago I and many others have have problems with the Labradar smart phone app connecting to their chronograph.

My old phone worked with the app. That phone died and my new phone, a Galaxy S21 5G, would not make the Bluetooth connection. I purchased a few relatively cheap ($30->$90.00) phones for testing. The Nokia 2.1 – Android 9.0 Pie (Go Edition) actually worked most of the time. I have no plans to put a SIM card in it and use it as a real phone. It’s just an remote control accessory for the chronograph.

Last Thursday I received an email from Labradar:announcing (highlighting added):

The new Labradar App for iPhones/iPads and Androids is now available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store*. New features include.

  • Improved Bluetooth connectivity
  • Create notes for each shot and series
  • Add weather conditions
  • Create custom names for each series
  • Ke can be displayed in Joules and Ft.lb
  • Export files via email in CSV format
  • Create a custom name for your LabRadar
  • Quick entry of bullet weight for Power Factor calculations

Great. I’ll bet I wasted my money on the phone as a remote control, right?

Wrong. My Galaxy S21 still won’t connect. To be fair, they did say, “improved”, not “fully functional”. The Nokia 2.1 now works all the time instead of just most of the time. It is an improvement.

Quote of the day—LJ Buccieri @LjBuccieri

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Image

LJ Buccieri @LjBuccieri
Tweeted on January 18, 2022
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

I find it very telling she went straight to the insult rather than even attempting a rational and/or factual argument. Once you accept that then the obliviousness of women carrying guns is entirely consistent with the assessment of “totally clueless”.

H/T to In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]

Statistics experiment results

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As I requested last weekend people gave me some numbers regarding how many people they knew in the following categories:

  1. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  2. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  3. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in death.
  4. Had COVID-19 which which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  5. Had COVID-19 which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  6. Had COVID-19 which resulted in death.

The raw numbers and simple statistics are:

Question 1 2 3 4 5 6
Vaccine COVID-19
ER/Hosp | Long Term | Death | ER/Hosp | Long Term | Death
1 0 0 1 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 0
  0 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 0 1 0 0
1 2 0 1 3 0
0 0 0 0 2 0
  0 1 0 1 0 2
0 0 0 0 0 1
60 0 4 1 2 0
0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0
3 0 2 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 2
0 0 0 0 0 2
0 0 0 1 0 1
2 2 0 0 0 0
0 2 0 3 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1
0 0 1 1 0 1
0 1 0 0 0 2
1 5 0 2 2 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 1
1 0 0 1 0 0
Total 71 14 7 17 16 16
Mean 2.54 0.50 0.25 0.61 0.57 0.57
Std Dev 11.29 1.11 0.84 0.74 0.84 0.74

We have an outlier in row 9. A 60 when the mean is 2.54 (including the outlier!). This is nearly 5.1 standard deviations above the mean. If this sample were part of the same population as the rest of the samples the odds of that happening by chance are about 1 in 5.6 million. I considered keeping this row anyway and ascribe the greater numbers to a much greater set of people known. But the ratios are nowhere close to another other samples. So, for the following discussion I’m going exclude that row. You can easily modify any conclusions on your own if you want to include that row.

This gives us the following simple statistics:

Totals: 11 14 3 16 14 16
Mean 0.41 0.52 0.11 0.59 0.52 0.59
Std Dev 0.80 1.12 0.42 0.75 0.80 0.75

There is still one “vaccine” death report with a 4.46 standard deviation which one could argue is an outlier but I’m leaving it in. The numbers we are dealing with are just so small that things may look odd when they really aren’t.

At least 76% of the U.S. population, just under 250,000,000 people, has had at least one dose of one of the vaccines.

Our sample is 27 people. A rough rule of thumb is that people knows about 600 people. I think that is a bit high but let’s go for it since it is based on some evidence as opposed to my gut feel from a collection of other sources (sociological issues develop when the groups get larger than about 200). But knowing 600 is different than having a tribe of 600.

With this information our 27 reports represents about 16,200 people.

This means that the odds of dying from COVID-19 is about 16 / 16,200 or 0.099%. This is not the odds of dying once you were infected. This is the odds of dying after living through two years of the pandemic and taking whatever precautions, including vaccinations, these people engaged in.

The odds of dying from the “vaccine” is about 3 / 12,312 or 0.024%. This set of people deliberately exposed themselves to this risk which is about 1/5 the risk of dying if they were to continuing using whatever precautions to avoid being infected and dying of COVID. But these numbers are too small to have much reliability. A difference of just one less or one more changes the odds to 0.016% or 0.032%. Even the higher number is less than one third the risk of a COVID death.

This does not take into account the apparent higher risk of vaccination for young people and the higher risk of COVID death for old people and other risk factors such as obesity, etc. At some point on the curves we are likely to see the tradeoffs cross over. It is easy to imagine that a young healthy person has a higher risk of death from the vaccine than from taking some precautions and risking a COVID infection and death. Also not taken into account is the probable higher vaccination rate in those with higher risk factors.

For the long term adverse effects the odds are worse for the “vaccine” than COVID. They are 14 / 16,200 versus 14 / 12,312 or 0.086% versus 0.113%. The same caveats as in the death rates apply.

The ER/hospitalization rates are 16 / 16,200 and 11 / 12,312 or 0.099% and 0.089%. Or for our sample size, essentially the same.

My conclusions from this is that the average risk of death from COVID is significantly greater than the average risk of death from the “vaccines”. The average long term adverse effects (known at this time) are a little higher.

I have had the two Moderna shots early last year and the booster shot 10 days ago. The side effects for the first two shots were a sore arm for several days, and chills, fever and low energy for one day. The booster effect were a slightly sore arm and slightly lower energy for one day. Barb’s experience with Pfizer were essentially the same for the first two and somewhat greater than mine for the booster a couple months ago. I’m confident we made the right decisions for us. Our risk of death is now much lower and we escaped the known adverse effects of the shots.

Make the best decision you can for yourself.

Of course is it California

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This was in the package with a recent purchase I made:

image

One might be inclined to give someone a pass on this if it were a label on something like a household cleaner with a pleasant smell. Or maybe even your gun oil. But I don’t think you would arrive at the actual produce even with a game of twenty questions.

It is a cell phone holster:

image

How many trees will be cut down, how much electricity will be used in the creation of those paper inserts, how much landfill space will be used, to save zero people from consuming the cell phone holster and causing a birth defect or have other reproductive harm? Anyone stupid enough to eat that piece of plastic is going to be too stupid to read and remember what the warning was about.

Of course it is California. It is not about saving lives. It is about exerting control and demoralizing the populace.

Getting woke?

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This is interesting:

Voters overwhelmingly believe “fake news” is a problem, and a majority agree with former President Donald Trump that the media have become “the enemy of the people.”

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t agree, including 23% who Strongly Disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Is this a different type of “woke” spreading across the nation?

We live in interesting times.

Simplistic thinking

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When I read stuff like this it is like I’m reading something written by an eight grader:

It’s Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income in Washington State

With basic incomes, more people are able to afford food and housing, pay off debt, get full-time jobs, save for emergencies, and get the physical and mental health support they need. Cash payments dramatically improve the lives of our neighbors and communities. That’s a source of hope. Unfortunately, the very need for GBI also reveals just how many of us are close to losing everything; even people working multiple jobs that offer little security for workers.

There is no hint of appreciation for the glaring problems of costs, fraud, and demotivation. I was reminded of what I posted about The Communist Manifesto:

Assumptions critical to the reasoning which followed were unsupported and, at least to my present day perspective, either blatantly wrong or highly suspect. Even conceding the authors their assumptions without contest the conclusions reached with such confidence were as unstable as any house of cards.

And yet, these people, with such simplistic thinking, are making progress.

No thank you

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Via email from Gerald F.:

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system – a vaccine.

But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

And what is the morality of forcing others to adhere to a version of morality different than their firmly held belief?

And of course some (most?) would refuse which the author suggests isn’t that big of an obstacle (apparently oblivious to the practical problems of dosage, secrecy, and costs with this sort of scale):

administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply

And if you follow the link you will discover the “moral reasoning” of the author is somewhat twisted (highlighting added):

My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

I find it very telling the author values “utility” and “equality”. And dares to suggest a covert program of forced “bioenhancement” is consistent with “liberty” and “autonomy”.

No thank you.

I want an underground bunker in Idaho.

Quote of the day—dittybopper

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The only real difference between Communism and Naziism is that when you point out the millions who were killed by the Nazis, no one ever says “Well, real Naziism has never been tried”.

dittybopper
January 29, 2022
Comment to Quote of the day—The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
[There are many other differences of interest to historians, sociologists, and psychologists. But in terms of what you need to know to make appropriate decisions in response to them this is correct.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB

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There have been no “failures”. To fail it must first exist. Which country’s population has managed to free themselves and create a class-free society where the PEOPLE collectively owned the natural resources, industries etc? Most people don’t know what socialism / communism is.

The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[If it has never existed then all the millions of people who died in the failed attempts surely must be considered “a clue”. But that they persist tells us one, or both, of two things:

  1. They are totally without a clue.
  2. Killing tens or hundreds of millions of people is intentional.

Therefore, if they persist, we should just say, “No!” until we run out of ammo, then affix bayonets and continue with hand-to-hand.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

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The political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths, the emotionally unstable, etc., and this attraction is forming a mob that can be easily exploited by the establishment.

Brandon Smith
January 13, 2022
For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy
[There is more than a little truth in this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justice Sonia Sotomayor

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the issue is [in] no other constitutional right do we condition on permitting different jurisdictions to pass different regulations…

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
November 3, 2021
What Will the U.S. Supreme Court Decide?
[With Justice Sotomayor pointing out the error of their ways it is no wonder New York is taking defensive action.—Joe]

Avoiding SCOTUS

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It worked last time so New York state is again trying to avoid showing up before SCOTUS:

Turning Any Second Amendment Victory Into Defeat

Now, in 2022, we are witnessing a similar strategy. The Democrat anti-gun politicians have begun to introduce bills in anticipation of the possible 2022 SCOTUS decision. They have a plan to circumvent any SCOUS ordered requirements to replace current laws with  “shall issue” firearms carry laws.

On Jan. 10, Rep. Jo Ann Simon introduced A08684, a bill prohibiting “firearms in certain locations, including but not limited to all forms of public transportation, large gatherings and food and drink establishments,” in the New York Assembly. If the politicians can deny law-abiding citizens the right to carry firearms almost anywhere, a Right-to-Carry permit becomes just a useless piece of paper.  Law abiding citizens are still left defenseless, while lawsuits abound and attorneys keep laughing all the way to the bank.

They probably are going to make New York “shall issue” but with so many places off limits to people who carry that you have the “right’” to carry in name only. Sort of like making it illegal to have a gun store within five miles of a school (as President Obama suggested). No town or city in the U.S. would have been allowed to have a gun store within the city limits.

These people need to be prosecuted.

Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson

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Our journey toward systems collapse isn’t due to an earthquake, climate change, a nuclear war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, most of our maladies are self-inflicted. They’re the direct result of woke ideologies..

Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?
[If you want to include unsustainable social programs as “woke ideologies” then I could see that being true enough that I wouldn’t quibble with him about it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Stilettos & Shotguns (@thereal_SnS)

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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but there is no such thing as freedom with strict oversight.

Stilettos & Shotguns (@thereal_SnS)
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Nate McMurray @Nate_McMurray

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It’ll be OK. You’ll focus on some other inanimate object to channel your masculinity

Nate McMurray @Nate_McMurray
Tweeted on January 12, 2022
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Typical. When they lose the civil rights argument they resort to childish insults.—Joe]

What are you thinking?

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I’ve been busy recently and haven’t posted some things I wanted to weeks ago. It has come to the point I’m irritated so much that I have to say it. I’m withholding names to protect the guilty. Please don’t take offense if you decide I’m talking about you. I could be, but just because I am does not mean that I am going to shun you or am deliberately shaming you. That’s not my intent.

I’m pretty open minded about a lot of things. Reality is hard. I know that. Can we still keep things friendly even though I think you might have a circuit or two crosswired in your brain?

God? Gods? Pro-Life? Pro-Choice? I can probably argue four or more different sides to each of those questions and be reasonably convincing to the average person even though I am pretty sure which is the correct answer. Believe what you want as long as you don’t insist everyone conform to your beliefs and as far as I’m concerned we’re all good.

There are things which are less certain. Some of the UFOs (currently called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena–UAPs) are alien craft? Global warming/cooling/climate-change? The 2021 presidential election was totally rigged? Bitcoin will replace the U.S. Dollar in the next ‘N’ years? Bitcoin is a great/terrible investment? I just don’t know. I suspect the general public does not have enough information to determine an answer with a high degree of certainty to any of these questions. Again, I can probably be convincing to the average person no matter which side I wanted to take.

There are other things which are more clear cut. Actual moon landing or faked? Flat earth or spherical? 9/11 was an inside job? Sorry. You don’t get any slack from me if you start trying to convince me we don’t actually have satellites in orbit or that because steel doesn’t melt at burning jet fuel temperatures the WTC collapses had explosive help.

Let’s think about the claim all test animals for the mRNA “vaccines”* died. I first heard this several months ago and went looking for the research papers. It turns out that, at least in the papers I saw, this was true! Damning evidence, right? No.The animals died because the researchers performed necropsies on all of them. The results, that I saw in the papers I read, were that everything looked normal.

It is as if someone was trolling the general population to see how many people would draw the incorrect conclusion from factual data. Good joke! I actually laughed at the cleverness. But why would anyone persist in believing that even if they didn’t find the research papers and read them? Think about it some!

Suppose all, or even 10% of the test animals, died from the mRNA vaccine. How many researchers are going to go before their human subject testing review board** (sample of what is involved here) and say, “All the test animals died. We are going to test it on humans next.”?

Sure, there are people that think people are a plague on the earth and all humans (except perhaps others like them who are sufficient “woke”) should be exterminated. They don’t convince tens of thousands of other people to work on their project, get billions of dollars to produce and deliver their product without someone getting cold feet about the prospects and delivering overwhelming evidence to the general public of the impending doom of half the human population. Even small religious cults have people leaving and telling the dark stories from the inside.

After giving this a little thought, if you actually believe the whole mRNA “vaccines” are “Going to kill 100s of thousands (or more)” and people knew this all along, I have to ask, “Really? What are you thinking? How do determine truth from falsity? What color is the sky in your universe?”

You want to talk about VAERS data? Okay. Let’s talk about it.

You might claim there is a huge increase in adverse reactions to mRNA “vaccines” compared to all other vaccines. Yup, it’s right there for everyone to see. But, there are some things to take into account before you reach valid conclusions. Unless you received a COVID-19 immunization you probably did not know people who received the “vaccine” were encouraged to sign up to receive and fill out a survey every day for a week, then once a week for several weeks, then another after a few months. They would send a text message to (IIRC) the CDC. Then they would receive text messages with links to the surveys. They would be asked how they were feeling. They were encouraged to report even very mild stuff, like a headache or muscle stiffness. Anything that might be considered an “adverse reaction”.

Suppose, they had a headache or some stiff muscles a month later; was it because they drank a little bit too much the previous evening or were hunched over the reloading bench all afternoon? Or was it because of the vaccine? They didn’t ask about those possibilities. The CDC just wanted the “adverse reaction”. I expect the noise was to be filtered out by looking for correlation with reports from other people at week ‘N’. To the best of my knowledge this has never been done with other vaccines. If you are looking at the raw data, without the noise filtering, you are going to see a lot of noise. And the number of reports are going to be much larger than with other vaccines because maybe 100x more people received the COVID-19 shots than your normal flu, MMR, and/or tetanus vaccinations. This combined with the encouragement and easy reporting of trivial “adverse reactions” results in the raw numbers being huge.

I’ve heard things to the effect of “Bill Gates is behind it and he is evil.” Gates was ruthless as a business man. I would have had serious moral qualms doing many of the things he did to competitors. He was good to his employees. When I worked at Microsoft I had numerous people who know him far better than I do say things to the effect that he would be more than fair to employees in situations where he had no obligation to be so. I’ve know people who talked to Melinda Gates about the work done by the Gates Foundation. I know people who worked on the Gates house and had long term personal contact with Bill and Melinda. I know one woman who went on a date with him. I know a woman who volunteered at the same charity has Bill’s mother and worked with her frequently. None of them even hinted at any dark side with him or his family. He was sometimes a little odd, but this was in a geeky rather than evil genius or creepy way.

Could Gates be bankrolling the deliberate extermination of millions? The odds are extremely low. He couldn’t hire enough guards or pay them enough money to keep the angry mobs at bay once it was discovered. He is not stupid. He is not suicidal. I believe the Gates Foundation really is intended to make the world a better place for humans. There is no intent to make the world a better place without humans. It is inconsistent with everything I know about him, his family, and the foundation. I think there is enough public information for anyone to arrive at a similar conclusion without many reservations.

Do I agree with all his politics and projects? No, but I think they are well intentioned even if they are misguided or flat out wrong.

On a different tangent maybe we can work out some answers on our own without relying on information from questionable sources like random podcasts, YouTube videos, word of month, memes, and worst of all, the CDC and other government sources.

Let’s run a little statistics experiment. In the comments or by sending me an email tell me how many people you have personally met*** which meet one or more the following criteria:

  1. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  2. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  3. Had a reaction to a mRNA “vaccine” which resulted in death.
  4. Had COVID-19 which which resulted in an ER visit and/or hospitalization.
  5. Had COVID-19 which resulted in long term (two or more months) adverse effects.
  6. Had COVID-19 which resulted in death.

Don’t double report anyone. For example, if the person died don’t also report them as having long term adverse effects.

Here are my answers:

  • One person for item 1.
  • One person for item 4. (Added on 1/25/2022 after I remembered someone else).
  • One person for item 5.
  • One person for item 6.

Please be honest. “Stuffing the ballot box” isn’t going to change anything beyond a tiny corner of Joe’s world. And, almost for certain, the statistics will point you out as being a liar.

Next weekend I’ll collect the data and make a short report. My guess is that this little experiment will be more “interesting” than most people think it would be.

* Quoted as a deliberate concession because I don’t think that point is particularly important one way or the other.

** I had to do this for one project I worked on. I was gathering anonymous data from computers about the movement of the mouse. I was not gathering any information about what applications they were using or even if they clicked the mouse. I only collected timestamps and the position of the mouse at that time. It took weeks and answering lots of questions to get approval.

*** This needs to be carefully defined to get valid results. Consider “personally met” as meaning you were, at least once, in the same room/location as them and there is a good chance they would remember you as well as you remembering them. My brother’s niece, on his wife side of the family, who I have never met, having serious complications from COVID-19 linger after a year doesn’t count.

Boomershoot country in the winter

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Last weekend I visited the Boomershoot site to get the weather station (see also here, it seems I always have to work on it in January) and webcam working again. The webcam had been down since November 8th and the weather station went down on December 31st.

I figured there was a good chance the power went down. The power supply is two deep cycle batteries charged by two solar panels and in the winter there is a risk of not enough solar to keep the batteries charged. The math says it should be enough as along as the batteries are not at end of life. But the batteries are getting old.

I took my 2 KW generator and a battery charger and arrived at my new gun range a little before 4:00 PM. It looks a lot different with 20+ inches of snow over it:

20220115_155958

After taking a few pictures there I drove to the driveway at the Boomershoot site. As I expected the driveway was impassable. I loaded up the toboggan I borrowed from Brother Doug and went out to the shooting line where the weather station is:

20220115_162943

I opened up the underground “vault” where the batteries, charge controller, ethernet switch, and power supplies are:

image

I measured the battery voltage. The 12 Volt batteries only had 3.7 Volts. That’s not good. That’s a real problem.

I hooked up the charger and generator and the smart charger quickly brought the voltage up to six volts and went into “maintenance” mode. Crap! It thinks these are six Volt batteries rather than 12 Volt. There was no manual switch to convince it to charge to 12 V.

I went back to my car and found the direct battery charging cable for the generator. I almost left this home because I didn’t think I would need it as I had brought the smart charger. I’m so glad I brought it.

Back at the shooting line I hooked up the direct cable and in a few minutes got the voltage up to about 10 Volts where the smart charge, with a power cycle, became convinced these were 12 Volt batteries.

It was getting dark but there was a nice sunset fading away:

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The next morning I came back to refill the gas tank and check the charge on the batteries. Things were a bit frosty:

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The charger said the batteries were fully charged. That’s not good. These two batteries should have a combined 400 Amp Hours of storage. The charger puts out a maximum of 12 Amps. After being on the charger for about 16.5 hours that is a maximum of about 200 Amp Hours of charge (including the consumption from the electronics and contribution from the solar panels that morning).

For all I know they could have stopped accepting charge after eight hours. There was nothing I could do about it. The only solution is new batteries. And I do not want to do that in the winter. The batteries are just too heavy to make the trip on the toboggan and be lowered into the “vault” with all the snow making access difficult. I’ll go back in a month or two and recharge them.

I couldn’t get the webcam to come back online. It is dead. I confirmed that after bringing it home. It doesn’t even turn on the ethernet switch lights. It seems to be a frequent occurrence at this site. I suspect low voltage to be a contributor. I have a new webcam but I forgot to take it with me. I’m thinking I will make another trip to Idaho in late February and put up the new web cam and charge the batteries then.

I will be spending some time on site a week or two before Boomershoot 2022 (April 29th –> May 1st, sign up here!). I’ll install new batteries, get the local Wi-Fi working, etc. then.