SoylentNews

If I ever seen a win-win.

After releasing the specs and pricing for Nvidia's new Ampere series GPU's, it didn't take long for a bitchfest to ensue.

I have this YouTube link for all the people who would like to get a chuckle at the expense (literally) of the people who bought an Nvidia 2080 TI for $1,200.

‘Thank you everybody. (applause)
Back at home in the United States, the newspapers are saying that I came here today to speak to about 5,000 Nazis. And tomorrow they’re gonna report that, yes, I was here and spoke to maybe 3-5,000 Nazis. And I look at this crowd and I see the opposite of Nazism. I see people who love democracy, people who want open government, people who want leaders that aren’t gonna lie to them, people who want leaders who won’t make up arbitrary rules and regulations to orchestrate obedience in the population. We want health officials who don’t have financial entanglements with the pharmaceutical industry, who are working for us and not Big Pharma. We want officials who care about our children’s health and not about pharmaceutical profits or government control. I look at this crowd – I see all the flags of Europe, I see people of every color, I see people from every nation, every religion all caring about human dignity, about children’s health, about political freedom — this is the opposite of Nazism! (applause)
Governments LOVE pandemics. They love pandemics for the same reason they love war. Because it gives them the ability to impose controls on the population that the population would otherwise NEVER accept – the great institutions and mechanisms for orchestrating and imposing obedience. Now, I’ll tell you something – it’s a mystery to me that all of these big important people like Bill Gates and Tony Fauci have been planning and thinking about this pandemic for decades, planning it so that we would all be safe when the pandemic finally came. And yet, now that it’s here, they don’t seem to know what they’re talking about. They seem to be making it up as they go along. They’re inventing numbers. They cannot tell you what the Case Fatality Rate for Covid is – that’s basic. They cannot give us a PCR test that actually works. They don’t have… They have to change the definition of Covid on the death certificates constantly to make it look more and more dangerous. But one thing that they’re good at is pumping up FEAR.
75 years ago, Hermann Goering testified at the Nuremberg Trials and he was asked ‘how did you make the German people go along with all this?’ He said it’s an easy thing. It’s not anything to do with Nazism. It has to do with human nature. You can do this in a Nazi regime, you can do it in a socialist regime, you can do it in a communist regime, you can do it in a monarchy and a democracy. The only thing that a government needs to make people into slaves is fear. And if you can figure out something to make them scared, you can get them to do anything that you want.
50 years ago, my uncle John Kennedy came to this city – he came here to Berlin because Berlin was the frontline against global totalitarianism. And today again, Berlin is the frontline against global totalitarianism. My uncle came here – he proudly said to the people of Germany, Ich bin ein Berliner. And today, all those of us who are here today can proudly say once again, Ich bin ein Berliner. Because you are the frontline against totalitarianism.
I’m going to say one more thing. They haven’t done a very good job about protecting public health. But they’ve done a very good job at using the quarantine to bring 5G into all of our communities. And to begin the process of shifting us all to a digital currency, which is the beginning of slavery. Because if they control your bank account, they control your behaviour. And we all see these advertisements on television saying 5G is coming to your community. It’s gonna be a great thing for all of you, it’s gonna change your lives, it’s gonna make all of your lives so much better. And it’s very convincing I have to say because I look at those ads and I think it’s great, I can hardly wait til it gets here. And because I’m going to be able to download a video game in 6 seconds instead of 16 seconds. And is that why they’re spending 5 trillion dollars on 5G? No. The reason is, for surveillance and data-harvesting. It’s not for you and me. It’s for Bill Gates, it’s for Mark Zuckerberg and Jeffrey Bezos. And all of the other billionaires. Bill Gates says that his satellite fleet will be able to look at every square inch of the planet 24 hours a day. But that’s only the beginning. He’ll also be able to follow you on all of your smart devices, through biometric facial recognition, through your GPS. You think that Alexa is working for you? She isn’t working for you. She’s working for Bill Gates [edit: it's Bezos, not that it matters] spying on you.
And the pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elites who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth from all of us to a handful of billionaires to make themselves rich by impoverishing the rest of us. And the only thing between them and our children is this crowd that has come to Berlin! We’re telling them today you are not going to take away our freedom, you are not going to poison our children, we are going to demand our democracy back.
Thank you all very much for fighting!’ (applause)

source https://www.marktaliano.net/robert-f-kennedy-jr-fighting-against-global-totalitarianism-in-berlin-video-the-liberty-beacon/

EDIT: the Goering citation is famous: "Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

interviewer: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Göring: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

direct report from a friend in berlin says about 2 million attendees. Let's say it's overstated by 50%. That is still a long way from 5000. Remember this next time you base your opinion off mainstream media.

Well, I made it to Buffalo. It's been a little less than two weeks, and for the most part I really like the city. It's miles better than Erie, the public transit is amazing if somewhat pricier, and it's nice to see buildings more than 2 stories tall again.

There are some seriously bad parts of this city, of course. I refuse to go east of Main Street if at all possible, and will not get off the bus on Niagara Street between the 1000 block and its intersection with Vulcan Street near Tonawanda. The South Side is also said to be rather dangerous. But people tell me where I'm renting is "the ghetto" too and it doesn't feel that way at all, so...? Honestly, after some of the places I lived in NYC, it feels like a vacation home. If anything, it actually feels like a very small version of some of my old haunts in the Bronx, compressed way down and with houses instead of apartment complexes. Oh, and no #4 elevated subway, but eh.

I got an Instant Pot and OMG, this thing is a miracle worker. Steel cut oats every morning if I want them? Done. All kinds of soups, curries, and chillis? Done, and I'm making a nice one whose recipe I'll share a bit later if anyone wants. Its best trick for my purposes is being able to cook dried beans and/or mote pelado (giant white hominy) from scratch in an hour - 40 minutes plus time to come to pressure and 10 minutes' natural release before hitting the unsealing valve.

All in all, this is a definite step up over Erie. I never realized how slow and dumb that place was by comparison until moving back here. And while it's no Milwaukee, in many ways I like it better than Milwaukee (and Madison), seeing as I come from NYC to begin with. It feels more familiar, even down to the architecture. Some of the apartment buildings remind me of NYC so much it physically hurts to look at them, even.

In light of many recent developments, some of which Subsentient summarized in his latest journal, I'm thinking I may be too late to make it to Canada. But I can look down the street and just about see the Peace Bridge on a clear day or with a pair of binoculars. So if all hell breaks loose, I may very well just pack my backpack and ask for asylum at the border. I'm getting death premonitions again, so thick and fast they're an unending stream and it's becoming difficult to sleep or breathe properly. But if I do die because of what's coming, it won't be for lack of effort or planning or execution of said plans on my part; I will simply, like so many millions and millions of others, have simply gotten unlucky.

Wish me good luck. What's probably coming is a nightmare...

This is fiasco that hasn't ended yet.

I decided I wanted to retrofit two of my laptops with WiFi 6. I ordered two of these intel AX200 WiFi 6 cards from eBAY on Tuesday, Mar 31, 2020. They arrived May 4th.

I went to install one, and unbeknownst to me the new cards are M.2 NGFF form factor. My laptops have Mini PCI-Express slots! So I ordered two of these NGFF to Mini PCI-Express converter cards on Tuesday, Jan 21, 2020. After over two months of waiting, I had my niece order me two more from Amazon (for about $7.00 each) with her Amazon Prime account.

I go out to check the mail that week. BOTH the Chinese cards and the Amazon cards arrived the same day! DOH!

So I install the card and go to hook up the Wi-Fi antennas. (It just keeps getting better.) The Wi-Fi antenna ports are different! The Mini PCI-Express cards use MHF4 ports and the M.2 NGFF cards use IPEX ports that are smaller.

After massive ammounts of research and Googling to try to find out what the ports were called. I ordered two sets of these MHF4 to IPEX antenna connectors. I'm sure this will be another month or two to arrive.

By the time I get these laptops retrofitted WiFi-7 will probably be out!

I hope this helps anyone thinking about retrofitting their Mini PCI-express port laptops with WiFi 6 cards.

Just...read this LOL https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/matt-gaetz-mocked-coronavirus-wearing-223948359.html

Gaetz is a special kind of childish moron even for the Trump administration, and Lady Karma really could not have picked a better target to shit thin shit all over. I hope this guy's wetting himself every time his throat itches. Maybe pickling himself in booze-a-hol will help a bit...though, note to Mr. Gaetz, the recipe calls for isopropyl alcohol and glycerin, and it's topical, not oral.

...okay, there are two people karma could choose that would be even better: Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Pence is for me at the top of this list, since his willful inaction and religious whackaloonery precipitated an HIV crisis in Indiana so severe the federal government had to intervene. Drowning slowly in his own lung exudate would be a fitting and very poetic fate for him...and don't worry, after he's done it'll only take a few minutes in Hellfire before it's all evaporated out!

Trump being taken down by the virus he keeps calling a hoax and blaming on the Democrats (?!) would be perfect too. He's in his 70s, overweight as hell (if he's 239 pounds, I'm Callista Flockheart!), apparently doesn't sleep much, and subsists on a steady regimen of Diet Coke, covfefe, and hamberders. Oh, and well-done steak with ketchup, the nekulturny bastard.

But the best part of this? CPAC. This happened at CPAC, the epicenter of coronavirus trolling. I can't think of anything more fitting than CPAC turning into the major vector of coronavirus spread, and taking down the most deserving people in the nation. Of course they'll get the best treatment on earth--they have Medicare for All, after all, and on our dime!--but even if it doesn't kill these three waterheads, I'll still laugh myself hoarse.

The absolute best outcome would be if this virus ends the Trump administration, specifically because of their utter malicious incompetence in handling it. Let us not forget Trump's practice of hiring worthless yes-men has hollowed out the Cabinet and many federal agencies, not to mention he's explicitly gutted the CDC and specifically the pandemic response team. I can't think of a more poetically-just outcome of their willful mishandling of this pandemic than having it destroy them.

We live in interesting times indeed. Sweet Lady Karma, I wish you good hunting...

Feel free to flame away, everyone. I give fewer fucks than Deadpool barebacking a rabid honey badger well into the third day of a cocaine-and-PCP bender.

This one goes out to all the dogmatic "all regulation is bad hurr hurr" types we're infested with.

The single argument I see them falling back on when backed into a corner is something along the lines of "Yeah, well, X Y and Z regulations have been set up and perverted, so regulation itself is a threat and inherently bad!"

This is...I don't think there is a way to express in English how completely, utterly, boneheadedly, cynically, self-servingly, sneeringly, willfully wrong this is. No one with three sparking neurons would say this for its own sake. And what *that* means is that the people who *do* say this are using it as a flimsy dogmatic excuse to push their idiotic economic agendas.

Let me make this absolutely clear: this argument is the precise equivalent of saying "Well, cancer cells can turn off cell-cycle checkpoints like p53, so replication regulation mechanisms are bad for living things!" or "Yeah, well look what happens to human DNA when a retrovirus gets ahold of it. Cell division is anti-life!"

It is *exactly* the same argument, just made in context of the body politic rather than the body simpliciter. Anyone who makes this argument is a fool, a rube, a tool of the elite who no doubt don't even know they exist and would not thank them for their pathetic grovelling bootlicking.

In other words, KHallow (though we have others on this site infected with the disease). And yes, this is a call-out. Suck it up. I will never understand what drives people to kiss the boot that's stomping their skulls into a fine paste...though I fear it may be something as simple as "I suffer but $GROUP_I_HATE suffers more."

I heard on the news today that over one billion dollars in gift cards will go unused from the holidays!

This totally blew my mind (should have gifted cash). So I have a few questsions:

Have you ever given a gift card? Did the person use it?

Have you ever received a gift card? Did you use it? Have you received gift cards that you've used and some that you have not?

What do you think about gift cards? Have you ever re-gifted a gift card? Why not gift cash?

Think about the billion dollar waste the next time you think about giving a gift card!

I looked at this chart on www.tarblock.com and did some math.   Here are the percentages of:

Total Particulate Matter (all the shitty particles in the smoke)
CO (carbon monoxide)
Water
Nicotine
Tar

With a Tarblocker compared to a cigarette without a tarblocker.

Total Particulate Matter
2.55681818181818%

Carbon Monoxide
5.44117647058824%

Water
2.10084033613445%

Nicotine
3.65591397849462% (This is the bummer!  With a tarblocker you only get 3.6% of the nicotine of a cigarette without a tarblocker.)

Tar
2.65734265734266%

Too bad it takes out so much nicotine (that's what we're after right?). I welcome and look forward to any comments about these statistics.