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Florida breaks daily COVID-19 record again with nearly 25K cases

Florida reported just shy of 25,000 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC listed Florida with 24,869 cases for that day, the state’s most since the start of the pandemic.

Florida’s weekly coronavirus metrics report is expected to come out Friday showing an eighth consecutive week with an upward trend in new cases.

The CDC reports a 7-day moving average of 21,210 new cases in Florida, with over 20,000 cases in six of the past eight days.

Broward County, Florida, educators died within about 24 hours from Covid-19 complications

The week before classes begin, four educators in Broward County, Florida, have died within about 24 hours of each other from Covid-19 related complications, local education officials said.

Three teachers and a teaching assistant died from Covid-19-related complications within the span between Monday night and Wednesday morning, the president of the Broward Teachers Union, Anna Fusco, told CNN.

At least three of the educators were unvaccinated

[...] The teachers' deaths come just days before classes start in Broward County, among the country's largest school districts, and as coronavirus cases surge in Florida and other states, driven by the Delta variant and low vaccination rates.

(don't shoot the messanger)

I hope people will protect themselves by getting vaccinated.

I hope people will protect others by wearing masks.

I hope failed policies will be reconsidered.

I wish people would think of others.

_{And I want a large fries with that.}

Today I noticed an interesting comment:

aristarchus is not able to respond to any comments on this Fine Journal, due to a mod-bombing attack by parties unknown who mod everything -1 Redundant. If you wish to actually engage aristarchus, and debate the issue of millionaire and billionaire funding of on-line debate, I suggest you follow him, and mod relevant comments as "under-rated", to counteract the modbombing currently taking place. Alternatively, you could donate to the Runaway1956 remedial education fund, but we are not sure that will have any effect.

Let me say, I'm not surprised this has happened. For some weeks now, I have noticed that aristarchus's comments are being modded redundant, offtopic, troll, flamebait and overrated maliciously. It's not just a few comments, it's most of them, and particularly on comments on his own journal entries regarding Critical Race Theory.

It's just not cricket, as the saying goes. In fact, it's bullying, and it demeans the entire site. For some of us, we come to this site for the quality of the science and technology stories and the insight and information that many of the sites users bring in their journals and in their comments attached to journals and stories.

There are a few people whose insight and contribution I particularly value and enjoy, and they can be controversial and seem to attract a lot of unjustified and emotional downmods due to the blunt and sometimes unpalatable but valid points. I usually get 10 mod points a day and I try to dish them out positively, often redressing the balance where someone has been, in my opinion, unfairly downmodded, and I sometimes reserve a couple for downmodding the occasional blatantly racist/aggressive/mean/offensive troll or ignoramus.

I will now enter into a long, rambling story about my own personal experience and perspective of what's gone on in society and on the Internet in the last half decade or so.

There has been something called the "Dark Enlightenment," an oxymoron, and to me sounds like a deliberate and concerted effort using a drip-feed of propaganda to encourage intolerance, hate, race hate, xenophobia, greed, bigotry and so on.

There has been the rise of the Alt-Wrong phenomenon. I seem to remember it being a small lunatic fringe of angry bigots with far-right political views, a hatred of the poor, weak, sick, foreign, female, brown etc. who were over-reacting to the fear of Islamic terrorism.

The monster grew. Political regimes and wealthy oligarchs fed it with cash, propaganda and keyboard warriors to further their aims, to create chaos and uncertainty, to divide previously friendly groups of people, to attempt to destabilise once-mighty countries. Investigative journalists have documented this. It's not a conspiracy theory.

In 2016 it got the UK Brexit and it got Donald Trump elected as US President. Trump courted the Alt-Wrong vote, and there was an attempted insurrection in the USA this January.

The spread of propaganda and disinformation, disseminated and constantly reinforced by the anonymous keyboard warriors, often with a suspiciously Slavic turn of phrase, kept the momentum up. I remember myself back in 2016 prior to and just after the Brexit vote, being trolled by various anonymous accounts, with simplistic but emphatic rhetoric, straight out of a George Orwell book.

These Alt-Wrong types like to be rebellious just for the sake of it, for "freedom." That means they often go out of their way not only to not "believe in" science like Climate Change, but to constantly drip-feed their ignorance and spite to the rest of us. They even deny that COVID can be very serious and even deadly, and that vaccines against it actually work, reducing the incidence and severity of infections. We even had a "theory" that COVID was coming from 5G phone masts. And then along came the Jewish Space Lasers.

The Alt-Wrong snowflakes are precious and they will be heard. They demand that we listen to their lies, ignorance and bigotry. As far as I'm concerned, they can shout it as much as they like, but I don't have to listen. I don't owe them that any more than the world owes me or them a living. However, they cry and whine about Cancel Culture and No Platforming. My fingers are in my ears and I am singing "la la la la la." So there,

As we all know around here, Aristarchus is a philosopher and champion of education and liberal values. He adds greatly to many discussions as well as providing a very valuable and informative journal. His contributions can be a bit prickly, particularly for some of the further-to-the-right snowflakes, as we can see from their strong negative emotional responses. Some of his prickly comments, while truthful, insightful, informative, entertaining and educational, would attract a -1, flamebait or troll moderation.

I think Aristarchus is being hounded and bullied by the Alt-Wrong. He's being Cancelled and No Platformed. They've modded him down maliciously and prolifically to the point that he can't even engage in discussion on his own journal. The Alt-Wrong have run out of arguments and so are resorting to good, old-fashioned intimidation. Where have we seen this before?

It would be a great pity to lose our original resident Greek philosopher. They say a fool and his money are easily parted. I subscribe to this site. I expect standards of decency and fairness to be upheld.

For me, this site gives me great science and technology news, a place to vent my frustrations in words, to discuss and to ask questions to get the insight and wisdom of strangers I otherwise would not have the opportunity to meet. I fear that, for me, Soylent News might not be providing these things for much longer. I'm sad and disappointed.

#freearistarchus

So-called conservatives (they are no such thing, they're destructive reactionary radicals) in this country seem almost mystifying if you try and analyze their words, actions, and the concordance between them. It's easy to look at what a self-defeating Ouroboros they've made of themselves and throw up your hands and go "they're fucking nuts, don't even bother."

Thing is, though, this is a case of overanalysis. Number one, they're not crazy, they're evil. And number two, they're much simpler to understand than most people think, precisely because they *don't* think. Briefly, all "conservative" "thought" can be broken down to 2 processes:

1) The purpose of the law is to restrict but not protect the outgroup, and to protect but not restrict the ingroup/tribe. The law is not and never was about equality. You may lie and cheat in any way necessary to ensure that this is so.

2) Every accusation a "conservative" makes is either projection, confession, or both. That is, when a "conservative" starts shrieking about "those damn liberals doing X!" what it means is that X is something said "conservative:" 1) is doing, 2) wishes to do, 3) has done, and/or 4) is planning to do. Voter fraud? Yes, the GOP does it. Yes, the GOP did it. "Killing babies?" Yyyyyyeah, look at what states and what parties fall where on the idea of social safety nets.

Point 2 also ties back into point 1 in that the GOP as an institution and its "conservative" constituency do not demand accountability of their own, only their opponents. Their outrage over any given scandal stems purely from tribalism: "Only MY tribe can do that! When someone else does it it's wrong!"

Is this a little overbroad? Maybe, but it's close enough that it explains well over 90 or 95% of "conservative" (mis)behavior in my estimation. I used to be very wary of trying to generalize and stereotype like this, but like Angelica Pickles said, "if the shoe hurts, wear it." Keep these two truths in mind and basically everything the GOP and its voters say and do begins to make a twisted, horrifying kind of sense, in that "it's not at all logical but in context it makes sense."

I haven’t been writing very much this year, although I do have a few things I’m working on, like this post. Instead, I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve mentioned Obama’s fat book with small type here a while back. I re-read a few I already had, like Dune, and discovered that with Amazon Prime you not only get “free” TV and movies, you get a free to read library.
        One of the “free” (covered in the monthly cost) books was Neal Stephenson’s Cryptomonicon, which suffered from a flaw that caused my Voyage to Earth story to be rejected by F&SF: the beginning didn’t grab the junior editor. I fixed it by adding another story that did start well, what Lester del Rey called a “fix-up”. He would turn a bunch of short stories he couldn’t sell into a novel.
        I didn’t read much of the Stephenson book; after two chapters you should have a better idea of what the book is about than the book’s title hinted at, but a lot of you have recommended some of his books. I found Andy Wier’s Randomize; if I’d had to pay for it I would have been pissed, as it was a short story, not a novel. A very good short story, but three bucks for a single story when you get half a dozen, in print, from F&SF for seven is a ripoff. Beware buying Amazon ebooks!
        Then I found a book by someone I never heard of, Douglas Phillips. Wikipedia hadn’t heard of him, either, although there are others with the same name, none of whom are writers. The book was titled Quantum Space, and the book itself was as nerdy as its title. It was the science fiction equivalent of David Allan Coe’s The Perfect Country Song, with about every SF meme there is.
        Unlike Stephenson’s book, it grabbed me right away. Written in 2017 it is set in our current dystopian future, the one 20th century writers never foresaw, although the story isn’t dystopian. It starts with three astronauts in a Soyuz on their way home from the ISS, then cuts to a Russian watching for its contrail. He sees the contrail, then a bright blue flash and a loud bang, and the contrail stops. Russia has lost three astronauts, one of whom is an American.
        Later we find that they’re not just lost in outer space, but in quantum space. In this bit of fiction (with an afterword that explains the real from the imaginary), when they found the Higgs Bosun in 2012, they found that string theory was accurate, and Europe and the US have classified the information. It’s explained why, but I’m leaving no spoilers except for the space aliens hinted at early in the book.
        There are physicists, FBI agents, evil rich people giving China classified information, the military, the LHC and the collider at Fermilab (where much of the story takes place). It’s pretty much action-packed all the way through; it would make a great movie, although some of the dialogue seems like padding. Of course, I’ve never seen a movie that matched the book exactly; The Running Man shared almost nothing with the book, but The Green Mile was very close in most respects.
        Someone who knew nothing about quarks and gluons and the other particles that make up matter and energy would actually learn something reading this. There’s an illustration of the “Standard Model” with its different flavors of quarks, neutrinos, and other particles. There’s no graviton, as we haven’t found it, but in the story the aliens (who are far advanced from us) have.
        It was an excellent read, with a lot of twists and turns and surprises. I highly recommend it. It’s free to read if you have Amazon Prime or a local library card.

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. A day well known for bringing good luck to everyone!

I think Friday 13th will bring us all fantastical good luck tomorrow!

It will be especially lucky for Donald Trump. Tomorrow is the day that Mike Lindell (My Pillow) will reveal his evidence that the election was stolen in a massive conspiracy hack that he and his cyber nitwits ninjas alone could uncover! After this, tomorrow the Supreme Court will vote 9 to 0 to throw out the 2020 election, and they will reinstate Trump as rightful president.

It will be good luck for the entire planet.

Sanity will be restored.

The news media can be outlawed.

The entire planet will worship Trump as he rightfully deserves.

It will be wonderful I tell you!

Lyndon B. Johnson hospital in Houston, Texas.
Hunt County Regional Medical in Greenville , Texas
Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas
Brevard County Hospital, Florida
Scripps Encinitas, (south) California

One would think they learn something, but clearly the one is wrong.

---

This just in: Florida’s Death Toll Now Exceeds DeSantis’ Margin of Victory

Jeffrey Clark, Trump-appointed DOJ official, claimed Chinese thermostats changed votes in 2020 election, reports say

Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official appointed by former President Donald Trump, told senior officials that China used thermostats to change ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
...
Clark claimed hackers had evidence that “a Dominion machine accessed the Internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to China.”

He said he hoped to use information gathered by US intelligence to determine whether the thermometers could make digital contact with voting machines in the United States.

The emails were obtained by the House Oversight Committee and first reported by ABC News.

Several days later, Donoghue vehemently shot down his request, ABC News reported.

“There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this,” Donoghue said. “While it maybe true that the Department ‘is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President’ (something we typically would not state publicly) the investigations that I am aware of relate to suspicions of misconduct that are of such a small scale that they simply would not impact the outcome of the Presidential Election.”

Normally, a non-story. People die all the time of flu or car accidents (yuuuuge grin).
It's the stor... sorry, it's the narrative of those left behind that's more interesting. So here it goes.

Texas Republican leader dies of COVID-19 five days after anti-vaccination post

A Texas Republican leader who was hospitalized with COVID-19 died Wednesday, just days after he shared a post on social media questioning the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine.
...
The county Republican Party said in its Facebook post that Apley’s death was “a tragedy,” and called on supporters to “please pray for Melissa and Reid and their family.”

“God remains in control although this is yet another tough one to swallow,” the organization added.

Aren't you glad someone verified and can confirm God is still in control? Inshallah

From the ABA Journal. Rather than a news source that might be considered too political.

Federal magistrate judge sanctions lawyers for election suit that was 'one enormous conspiracy theory'

A federal magistrate judge has imposed sanctions on lawyers who challenged 2020 election methods in an opinion that criticized their “woeful lack of investigation” into the law and the facts.

U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter of the District of Colorado ordered lawyers Gary Fielder and Ernest Walker to pay attorney fees to cover the cost of their opponents’ motions to dismiss the lawsuit and to oppose an amended complaint, Law.com reports.

In an Aug. 3 order, Neureiter said the lawsuit “is one enormous conspiracy theory.”

[....] The alleged conspirators included governors and election officials in four states, a voting technology company, Facebook and a nonprofit seeking more secure and inclusive elections. The suit sought $160 billion in damages, which “is greater than the annual GDP of Hungary,” Neureiter said.

[....] “Albeit disorganized and fantastical, the complaint’s allegations are extraordinarily serious and, if accepted as true by large numbers of people, are the stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”

Affidavits filed with the suit repeat a generalized fear and suspicion that the system is rigged, and democracy no longer works, Neureiter said. Those affidavits demonstrate that plaintiffs had no firsthand knowledge of election fraud, he said.

Neureiter said the plaintiffs did not have standing, and the suit failed to address “the conspicuous personal jurisdictional problems raised by suing, in federal court in Colorado, state government officials from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan.” The proposed amended complaint did not eliminate the problems, which would be obvious to any “first-year civil procedure student,” Neureiter said.

[....] “It appears that plaintiffs’ counsel’s process for formulating the factual allegations in this lawsuit was to compile all the allegations from all the lawsuits and media reports relating to alleged election fraud (and only the ones asserting fraud, not the ones refuting fraud), put it in one massive complaint, then file it and ‘see what happens,’”

See also:
Pro-Trump Attorneys Sanctioned In Colorado Over Election Lawsuit — ‘One Enormous Conspiracy Theory,’ Judge Fumes

Lawyers sanctioned for 'conspiracy theory' election fraud lawsuit

The states, Dominion, Facebook and the nonprofit are set to estimate their legal expenses by later this month so the judge can determine sanction payment amounts.

I hope this is just the beginning for those 60 ridiculous baseless lawsuits in the hands of over 80 judges, that were quickly dismissed. Some of those judges were Republicans. Some appointed by Trump.

When the purpose of the lawsuits is just so you can claim in the news that the lawsuits exist, then the plaintiffs or their lawyers should have to pay everyone else's (including taxpayers') legal bills to defend this nonsensical farce about the election being stolen. Without any evidence. But with lots of conspiracy theories. Italian satellites. Dead dictators.

I'm sure this isn't anywhere close to the last of it.

The actual order is here. (as PDF)

Update more links
2 Lawyers Ordered to Pay Legal Fees for Dominion Voting Systems, Others in Election Suit