Mark Sumner
@Devilstower
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Author, journalist, old guy.
St. Louis
Joined March 2009
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#ปิ่นภักดิ์EP10
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TLP THE SECRET OF RING
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Musk’s open promotion of antisemitism at this time helps to confirm what I already knew: It’s long after time to leave this place.
@Devilstower
@mstdn
.social
@devilstower
.bsky.social
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21 years ago, one guy, in England, put explosives in his shoes and tried to light them with a match. No one was harmed. For two decades, every single flight in America required you to take your shoes off. No one rioted. 960K people have died from COVID-19 in 2 years. Wear a mask.
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Those of you who have watched The Sandman may not realize that the epidemic mentioned early on in the show, where over a million people were affected by a strange sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, was a real thing. …
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Hi, there. I'm a gun owner. I have in my house, right at this moment: 2 pistols, 2 rifles, and 3 shotguns. Which is a lot, especially considering that my wife has never touched any of them. I'd like to talk to you about why America's obsession with AR-15s is just so damn odd. …
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McCain will never face another election. Never gain or lose a committee chairmanship. What he does now tells you who he really is.
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ActBlue has now collected $83M since Biden's endorsement of Harris. It's going to easily exceed $100M before 24 hours have passed. This absolutely blows away Trump's $52M haul following his conviction --- and Kamala Harris didn't even have to commit a crime.
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In the letters released by Trump attorney John Eastman, there is a point at which the whole scheme to launch a coup against the United States government starts to falter because they can't find a notary public on New Years Eve. This is not a joke. …
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AZ had over 20,000 new cases of COVID on Friday, and the state has officially requested President Biden send military paramedics to help with overflowing hospitals. Donald Trump is having a mask-free rally there today.
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I’ve never had any kind of reaction to a vaccine. Not Covid. Not flu. Etc. but today I had the first dose of the shingles vaccine and … Oof. Should come with a “prepare to be hit by a truck” warning.
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I've just been informed that some people find the term "anti-vaxxer" to be offensive. From now on I will use the more technically accurate term of "child-murdering fuckwad."
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Since Ron DeSantis is running yet another victory lap on a track paved with the bodies of 32,000 Floridians -- that we know of -- it's worth taking a quick at what really happened in his state before Republicans crown him corona king. 1/15 …
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Republicans singled out the insulin price cap—a vital, life-saving measure for which there is no rational objection—and blocked its inclusion in the bill, expressly to “deny Democrats a victory” at a cost of American lives. The ultimate expression of politics over all else.
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It didn’t all happen overnight. The first cases were diagnosed in 1917, and the incredibly odd disease continued to turn up in nations around the world over the following decade. Over 500,000 people are thought to have died from the disease over that period …
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But of course, everyone has reason to care about AR-15s now. And to worry about people who are SO DAMN SCARED that they paid out large sums to buy a machine designed for nothing else but killing people. In large numbers. Quickly.
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But dying wasn’t what really marked out the strangeness of the disease. Many of those affected were trapped in a kind of half-life, neither fully awake nor wholly asleep. They could get up and walk, if assisted. But without intervention would sit silently for days. …
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Oh, and I left out that Encephalitis lethargica had its own sequelae: a worldwide increase in Parkinsonism. This was not a kind disease, whatever its origin.
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Wind power isn't failing in Texas. In fact, it may be the only part of the system still working BETTER than designed. Let's take a look at why the Lone Star State is chilling in the dark. … 1/24 (and yes, I know that's a lot)
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The cause of this disease is still unknown. Because it overlapped the massive flu pandemic, many have suspected that lethargica might be a “sequelae,” an after effect of infection by the 1918 flu virus. This theory has fallen out of favor lately, but remains a possibility. …
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Like COVID-19, we largely think of flu as a respiratory disease. However, like COVID-19, flu actually effects a number of organs and systems. A sharp increase in heart attacks coming years, and even decades, later, have been connected to the 1918 flu. …
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In absolutely no sense is this pandemic over. As schools start up in America, everyone seems to be, sadly, shockingly, unforgivably left to make their own decisions. Just remember, what we do now will be with us into the next century.
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In the last few years, deer didn't suddenly become smarter. Rabbits didn't stage an uprising. Woodchucks didn't discover flack jackets. What did happen was a national epidemic of fear, one that allowed expansion of new category: rifles for hunting people. …
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What kind of sequelae will COVID-19 generate, and how will they effect not just individual lives, but our socioeconomic future? Absolutely no one knows. What we do know is that 210,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 *this year*. Millions are experiencing long COVID. …
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In addition, just as with COVID-19, “long flu” was common. Many people took years to recuperate from their encounter with that flu. Many never did. Again, there are patterns of poverty that are detectable as a direct result. …
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DeSantis pushing REGEN-COV rather than vaccine, but:
- All three infusion sites in Florida working 24/7, could treat 4% of COVID patients in the state.
- Treating all cases would cost >$400M *per day*.
- It would still save fewer lives than if they had been vaccinated.
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There is even evidence of decreased life expectancy among children born to infected parents. That’s on top of the millions of infants who died as a direct result. The associated health issues generated economic patterns that could still be detected over 50 years later. …
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Which means that in the last two decades millions of Americans now purchased guns that really aren't much good for anything other than shooting millions of other Americans. And that "America's favorite rife" is a gun few gun owners cared about until very recently. …
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That they can simultaneously be sitting there dictating a case that they know to be false to justify OVERTHROWING THE GOVERNMENT, then become fixated on how it needs a notary seal, is so Right Now in America that it may just kill me.
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@AmarAmarasingam
St. Amant is a treatment center for those who have developmental disabilities or autism. The thought of a nine-year-old child going into darkness, confused, afraid, and abandoned by parents who would rather wave flags at their truck rally has me crying at my desk.
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@AaronKatersky
@TxDPS
@ABC
@JoshMargolin
How many times did the Uvalde police tell people "If you don't cooperate, you'll look guilty and charges will be worse."
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That 3M or so annual demand for plinkers, deer rifles, shotguns, and target pistols is still there, as it always has been. It's just that now it's topped by 6M+ a year in AR-15s and ugly Glock-style pistols (guns for hunting people, pocket edition). …
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For those of you hankin' for some really sick irony, the feature speaker at the upcoming NRA Leadership Forum is Florida Governor Rick Scott.
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When people talk about the AR-15 as "America's favorite rifle," what they leave out is that this is an extremely recent phenomenon. Go back a couple of decades, and these guns were a tiny percentage of gun sales. Even for gun owners, they were kind of a rarely seen item. …
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Adolf Hitler, a long time fan of art and spiffy boots, arrived in Paris on June 23, 1940 with at least one mission: to encourage tourism.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who has idolized law enforcement since he was young, arrived in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, with at least one mission: to play the role of police officer and medic. The night would end with him fatally shooting two men and wounding another.
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The New York Times has replaced The National Inquirer as the place that catches and kills stories for Trump. Congratulations, Mr. Sulzberger, you’re the new David Pecker.
While the New York Times chose to highlight Hillary's emails on the front page in 2016, there's not a mention that Trump's PAC copied classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago onto an unsecure laptop. These are the editorial decisions that matter.
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These are people who have just produced a stack of documents for Trump to sign, that they are going to feed to Clarence Thomas, in hopes that Thomas will provide language they can use to overturn the voting results in Georgia. But, dammit, they need a notary. …
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It’s amazing. Anyone else makes the slightest mistake, it’s a bombshell. But no matter what Trump says, people line up to tell you “well, what he really meant was…”.
I'm not one to defend Trump, but I disagree w/the many claiming that Trump said there would be no more elections if he wins. I hear him more as just saying he'll do such a fantastic job he'll save the country so the stakes of future elections will be a lot lower.
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It wasn't until 2005 that sales of AR-15 style rifles, from all manufacturers, exceeded 100K in a year. By 2008, they had jumped to 300K. In 2012, they exceeded 1M. They topped 1.5M just one year later. The AR-15 *became* "America's favorite rifle" in just a few years. …
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For decades--as far back as the ATF hands out statistics on the web site--Americans bought about 3 million firearms a year. Which seems like a lot. These aren't paper napkins. They're not disposable. Every gun I own is over 40 years-old. One of the shotguns was made in 1908. …
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An AR-15 is worse, and a lot more costly, for shooting at targets than a .22. You certainly can't use it on small game. When it comes to deer, or elk, or antelope, it's not nearly so good as guns purpose built to knock down those targets. For decades, most gun owners agreed. …
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Around 2008, the number of new guns bought each year started going up rapidly. After decades at around 3M a year, it jumped to 5, then 6, then 8, then 10. What happened? What happened was a whole new category of gun. …
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Guns like the AR-15 were out there, of course. I saw plenty of ads in my Sports Afield or Field & Stream when I was a kid (and I'm old). I just never knew what the hell I would do with one. They were expensive to buy, expensive to shoot, and kind of useless. …
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One Trump attorney proposes a "Presidential trip to the UPS store." Then they begin discussing whether it is possible for a notary to notarize over Zoom. …
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Up until around 2008, the majority of rifles sold fell into one of two categories: .22 rimfire 'plinkers' used for holing paper targets or hunting small game, and larger centerfire 'deer rifles' used for pretty anything bigger than a ground hog. Many were lever or bolt action. …
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If you had invested $10,000 in Trump’s stock the day Mike Crispi posted this, you’d have $2,337 today. Stay mesmerized, MAGA.
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As Jimmy Carter got rid of most of assets during his campaign, his income dropped from $136,926 in 1975 to $54,934 in 1976. Because of lingering investment credits, and $4,507 in charitable contributions, he owed $0 in taxes.
Carter sent the federal government $6,000 anyway.
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Starting in March, 2020, county medical examiners were ordered to stop revealing the numbers or cause of death, and instead told to report their information only to the state. The list of deaths was then hidden from the public. 6/15 …
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The idea that viruses tend to become milder over time keeps popping up. I know it's a comforting thought -- the idea that if we just wait long enough, COVID-19 will become just "the cold." But it's a very, very dangerous idea. And completely untrue. …
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Everyone who ever wrote a science fiction novel or movie around the theme of "aliens invade and humanity unites to fight them" needs a rethink. We just had that scenario. A good portion of people chose Team Alien.
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This may be the most astounding graphic of the pandemic. Despite hitting densely populated coastal states with high levels of international travel first, the rates there have marched steadily down. Meanwhile ...
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Florida's numbers deliberately omitted people who died in the state, so long as they were not officially Florida residents. Deaths of "snowbirds" who got sick in Florida, were hospitalized in Florida, and died in Florida were not included. How many? We don't know. 14/15 …
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Anyway, Fox will blame it on wind power, assisted by "experts" like Rick Perry, who spent Monday complaining that America needs to rely more on “compact fusion reactors.”
Maybe we could also get some dilithium crystals. I hear they’re good. 24/24
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But there is something that really should be earning DeSantis the admiration of Republicans everywhere. Because, while New York nursing home numbers may be getting national attention, the truth is *we have not a #$%ing clue* about what actually happened in Florida. 4/15 …
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In April, there was a strange spike in “pneumonia deaths” in Florida—a spike that existed nowhere else. Right from the beginning, Florida was having an absolutely unique experience in which COVID-19 was less deadly than anywhere else in the nation. 7/15 …
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New York was utterly blindsided by COVID-19 due to lack of federal leadership and unavailable tests. Cases went from 200 a day to 5,000 a day in a single week.
What happened to NY was a tragedy. What’s happening now in TX, FL, and AZ, is a crime.
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In May, data scientist Dr. Rebekah Jones was fired from maintaining the public dashboard she created for Florida after she was told to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.” 8/ 15 …
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Wind is not the problem. As Ars Technica pointed out on Monday, wind in Texas is currently working at OVER 100% of its projected capacity. The real problem is: Texas electrical grid is working exactly as designed. Because the profits are better this way. … 5/24
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So hand Ron DeSantis a gold medal for deception, because there's little doubt he did it better than anyone else. When it comes to the pandemic ... Sure, give DeSantis a participation trophy. After all, he didn't do as bad as Greg Abbott or Kristi Noem. So far. 15/15
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By then, the state’s medical examiners were up in arms over the differences of the record number of "pneumonia" cases being reported. They called DeSantis numbers “a sham” and said the numbers were "full of holes." 9/15 …
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In response to the armed raid of Jones' home--in which the computers used for her dashboard were carried away--a lifelong Republican attorney appointed to a state position by DeSantis resigned while calling for "public access to truthful data." 12/15 …
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Meanwhile, Politico opened a tin of their finest boot polish to insist DeSantis "won the pandemic" because "Florida has fared no worse…than other states." Meaning that Florida did worse than CA, or OR, or WA, and 200% worse than ME or VT, but hey, they edged out Texas! 3/15 …
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In June, Dr. Jones created her own website after tweeting claims that that DeSantis’ government was covering up increasing hospitalization rates and had manually deleted at least 1,200 cases of COVID-19 to justify reopening for the July 4 holiday. 10/15 …
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Attacks on Dr. Jones continued through the year, culminated in a December raid on her home after she had the gall to contact other state officials and ask them to tell the truth about what was happening. 11/15 …
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Through all of this it also became clear that Florida not only failed to take any responsibility for COVID-19 cases acquired as DeSantis turned the state into an ongoing super spreader event, they weren't even counting people from other states who DIED there. 13/15 …
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On Thursday, America was graced with a gloating op-ed from DeSantis in the Wall Street Journal explaining how "the elites" (i.e. everyone who ever took high school biology) were wrong to be concerned about invisible things that supposedly cause disease. 2/15 …
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The whole idea that diseases mutate to cause less harm over time is simply an excuse to stop trying. Wearing a mask is literally the simplest, lowest demand thing you can do to block transmission and protect your family, your friends, and everyone else. Wear a damn mask.
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A couple of add-ons. First, it's been pointed out that Rebekah Jones, despite being identified as "Dr" in earlier reporting, actually just has a masters in data science. As someone with (checks wall) a masters in data science, I don't think this makes her less of an authority. …
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Going into the pandemic, Florida had a system that mirrored that of many states: at the county level, medical examiners tallied both the numbers and the cause of deaths. This information was made available to the public and sent to the state. 5/15 …
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Second, it appears that Florida has been reporting some non-resident deaths for at least some portion of the pandemic period. However, these numbers have been reported separately and not rolled into the state's overall toll (if they had, FL would move up a spot deaths/pop).
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So, what went wrong on Monday? It wasn’t “frozen turbines,” no matter what Fox News says. Wind is more than keeping up with its share of the projected load. This doesn’t seem like a great day to climb a 300’ tower to work on a turbine (brrrrrr). But that’s not the issue. … 15/24
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Trump's speech in Arizona will actually be the keystone of a multiday event. Other talks include "It’s the COVID-19 Protocols That Are Mass Murdering COVID-19 Patients" and "Jesus is King & Donald Trump is the REAL president of the United States."
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Operation Warp Speed did not invest in the Pfizer vaccine, which proved effective and was the first available.
Its largest investment ($2.1B) was in in Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline. Their vaccine also has a major distinction : It doesn’t work.
The head of OWS owns $10M in GSK stock.
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Fox News and assorted guests have spent the last two days railing about how the problem is Texas’ use of wind energy and blaming "frozen turbines" for the blackout. If only Texas relied on burning more coal / oil / gas / witches / liberals, then surely all would be well! … 4/24
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Wind is SO cheap that producing power from wind turbines is less than the cost of operating a coal-fired power plant. Someone could build coal plants for free, give them to the utilities, and just running them would still cost more than buying wind turbines from scratch. … 13/24
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Texas is facing the collapse of a badly overloaded system, leading to extended outages, simply because that’s the way the system is designed to work. The incentive in Texas is to provide for exactly as much power as needed, and not one hamster-wheel-driven watt more. … 11/24
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The record cold comes because climate change has destabilized the systems that normally spin cold air around the North Pole. Now that system wobbles like a spinning top in the last unsteady stages before collapse. This week, that wobble is tilted toward the central U.S. … 3/24
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Put it all together, and: Demand far exceeded supply, prices went through the roof, and the grid itself failed as the big boy equivalent of breakers tripped everywhere. If Texas had robust connections to other grids, it might have stabilized. That's not ERCOT's design. … 22/24
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What's wrong with the electrical system in Texas is there’s simply not enough of it. As demand has increased, more capacity has been added, but only enough to keep things at that ragged edge. Because that’s the most profitable point for everyone in this pocket-market. … 19/24
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If any of this—purposely constrained market, free floating prices subject to wild changes, consumers facing blackouts—rings a little bell at the back of your head, there’s also this: Enron got its start dabbling in these markets from it’s Houston, TX HQ in the 1980s. … 10/24
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How did wind come into it? That’s also profits. Texas doesn’t have over 10,700 wind turbines because Texans decided they liked the look, or because there was a sudden inspiration to “go green.” Texas has wind power because wind power is so insanely cheap. … 12/24
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What will happen now? Probably not much. Producers could add additional capacity (if they do, that capacity will almost certainly come from more wind). But don’t expect much. Because if they add power too quickly, there will be excess capacity. And low profits. … 23/24
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I think there’s no option after tonight. CNN has to step aside.
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Peak demand is usually found in summer, when it's 100 outside and every Texan wants it to be 70 inside. So the system is designed to overcome that 30 degree difference. Right now, people are trying to make their homes 70, and the temperature is 10. … 20/24
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Texas' coal plants are also underperforming. It’s not clear why, but as someone with 30+ years in the industry, I have suspicions: Did utilities pay extra to treat the coal with antifreeze so that it comes out of train cars more readily in extreme weather? I bet not. … 18/24
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@elonmusk
Both “politically correct” and “woke” are attempts to put a negative label on being considerate and showing respect for the concerns of others. No sale.
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@MattGertz
Well, Seattle and Portland have already been destroyed so many times. It’s nice to see a little variety.
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Everyone needs to see this. Mask mandates are enormously effective. Shockingly effective. Effective before vaccines were available. Effective in conjunction with vaccines. Effective through the delta wave. Wear a mask, and support mask mandates.
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Consumers in Texas don't really buy electricity. They buy a sort of “electricity insurance,” one in which providers contract to provide them power at a semi-fixed price (that's well above median market cost). This, like medial insurance, creates another level for profit. … 8/24
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Texas’ odd grid goes back to World War II, when a group of Texas utilities created a Texas-only system that barely brushed other states. That was further codified in the 1970s, when the ERCOT took charge and began tinkering with a formula to “incentivize” utilities. … 6/24
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There’s just not enough power out there to overcome the temperature gradient they're facing. Making it worse is that homes in Texas are generally designed around the idea of keeping heat out, rather than holding it in. … 21/24
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The killer at the heart of Trump's ultra-racist ad was set free by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio "for reasons unknown" despite being held on repeat drug charges and having already been deported.
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Part of the issue comes down to that other item at the top of Texas’ power mix — natural gas. In cold weather, natural gas is in demand because it can be used directly for home heating. That’s not just driving up the price of gas, but also limiting it’s availability. … 16/24
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@ZoeSchiffer
This would be the same guy who just told everyone no more working from home, and demanded they all return to the office. I can only assume this is so he can install the chains and handcuffs to each desk, along with the bathroom cameras.
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Children who were gassed in Syria might have been sitting safely in kindergartens in OH, or MI, or PA except for lies told about refugees.
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The real story of Cambridge Analytica is that Robert and Rebekah Mercer funded the design and development of a “psychological warfare mindfuck tool” that would take military-style disinformation campaigns and ramp them up using big data and social media to attack America.
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The system of pipelines that carry the gas around is also built to match a certain level of demand. Pipelines are expensive. Companies don’t build them “just in case.” High prices and limited availability mean that Texas gas plants are underperforming. That's part one. … 17/24
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