#claims to have covid though we have some other suspicions

[justinssportscorner]

Emily Stewart at Vox:

The first time I found myself wondering what the deal was with Aaron Rodgers was when his brother Jordan appeared on season 12 of The Bachelorette, which aired back in 2016. The quarterback skipped the all-important family visit, raising some questions, but instead of glossing over it, the show insisted on leaving an open seat at the table where he could have been. Reality TV’s gonna reality TV, I guess. Before that, in my world, Rodgers had simply been my team’s star quarterback, the one who took us to a Super Bowl victory in 2011. I do not claim to be the world’s biggest football knower, but when you grow up in Wisconsin, you sort of have no choice but to love the Green Bay Packers. Sundays in the Badger State are for two things: church and the Pack … and also beer and cheese, so, like, four. (As an aside, the Packers are the NFL’s only publicly owned team, another reason to love them.)

Family dynamics can be hard, I thought at the time, and really it was none of my business. But at the very least it seemed a little sad to think Rodgers was estranged from his family, and I did wonder why. Cut to about eight years later, and the quiet suspicion that maybe Aaron Rodgers is a bit strange has morphed into a very public, very loud conversation, now that we know, well, a whole lot more. Rodgers didn’t get the Covid-19 vaccine and misled people about it by saying he was “immunized.” He’s talked openly about getting into psychedelics and doing whatever a “darkness retreat” is. He’s had a string of relatively short-lived public romantic relationships, which is normal and fine, though his last girlfriend was maybe a witch? He regularly spouts conspiracy theories about Covid and vaccines and UFOs, among other items, and is chummy with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaxxer and presidential candidate. Last year, he challenged Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce to a debate about vaccines that was also supposed to include RFK Jr. and Dr. Anthony Fauci. Kelce declined.

Much of this oddball activity and commentary has taken place on The Pat McAfee Show, where Rodgers appears for “Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays.” Disney reportedly paid $85 million for a licensing deal to air the daily sports talk show on ESPN, which it owns. The Pat McAfee Show was the setting of the latest “Aaron Rodgers said what now?” incident, when on January 2 he basically implied that ABC late-night talk show host — and also a high-paid Disney employee — Jimmy Kimmel is a pedophile. It’s been a whole thing, with back-and-forth between Rodgers and Kimmel and ESPN and Disney, for days. Kimmel called Rodgers a “hamster-brained man” and threatened to sue him. An ESPN exec called Rodgers’ comments “dumb.” Rodgers refused to say sorry and responded that the exec’s comments weren’t “helping.” None of it was. [...]

The Jimmy Kimmel dustup is really just the latest in a stream of ??? what is up with this man

So, let’s get back to the Kimmel thing. In early January, Rodgers suggested the comedian had ties to the disgraced financier and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Referring to a since-released set of court filings about Epstein that have been branded the “Epstein list,” Rodgers said, “there’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, that are really hoping that doesn’t come out.” There’s previously never been any speculation that Kimmel had ties to Epstein — but he has been trading barbs with Rodgers for a while, focused on the athlete’s anti-vaccination stance. Kimmel was not thrilled at Rodgers’s little Epstein theory. He clarified on Twitter/X he never had any contact with Epstein, said the remarks had put his family in danger, and threatened to sue. Kimmel also did a monologue about the sports star. Rodgers responded on McAfee. He said he was glad Kimmel wasn’t on the Epstein list and isn’t “stupid enough” to actually accuse someone of pedophilia without evidence. Rodgers didn’t apologize, but he did offer up a strange but fairly accurate self-assessment. “I’m not a super political person, okay? Do whatever you want. Conspiracy theorist? That’s fine, because if you look at the track record of conspiracy theorists in the last few years, they’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” he said. And then he complained about the media and cancel culture and said he does not “give a shit” about what people say about him, which … sure. Finally, on Wednesday, January 10, McAfee said that Aaron Rodgers would no longer be appearing on his show for the rest of the NFL season. He said the show was “very lucky” to get a chance to talk to Rodgers and that he’s obviously a “massive piece of the NFL story” and acknowledged “some of his thoughts and opinions … do piss off a lot of people.” McAfee sounded relieved to be away from the drama. “I’m pumped that that is no longer going to be every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last few weeks of my life,” he said.

NFL star QB Aaron Rodgers has been getting into hot water in recent years, and it's because of his off-field activities such as trafficking in COVID conspiracies and anti-vaxxer nonsense. At least some of these were said on The Pat McAfee Show, where he is a regular guest.

[darkdansdarkestdays]

I was as embarrassed by Donald Trump's: "OH yeah....you BET we have evidence of widespread voter fraud that swung the election...ALL KINDS of evidence....and, we're gonna be revealing it, uh, real soon. Trust me." fucking bullshit (and, sadly, this false claim was FAR from the worst of his behavior) Yes, it's true that the Democrats AND the mainstream media are corrupt scumbags who intentionally promulgated "Russia gate" bullshit for the entirety of Trump's presidency to the detriment of the country, but that does not give Trump, a SITTING PRESIDENT, AT THE TIME, any sort of license to engage in the same awful behavior--which, due to his position, posed a much greater threat. Here is the truth about 2020: There WERE irregularities, there WAS some proof of voter fraud (as there is in every election) nowhere near enough evidence was found to overturn results, order a revote, disregard electoral tallies, etc....not even close. ON THE OTHER HAND: This oft repeated claim by the left and media which states that the 2020 election was "the most secure, most difficult to defraud, in history" is fucking nonsense. When much of the protocol for voter identification, vote by mail, etc was relaxed due to covid (changes which, by and large, have not been reversed) OF COURSE it made it easier for voter fraud to occur....that doesn't mean anyone proved that it happened,though. My question is, why this universal push by nearly EVERY media outlet to throw in the words "disproven" or "untrue" before mentioning Trumpers' election fraud claims. The fact is the media cannot prove that the 2020 election tallies were "the most accurate, fraud free in history" any more than Trump can prove the election was "stolen." And, frankly, although both sides are being irresponsible, selfish, and unpatriotic to the max, it is actually more likely that Trump is correct than the left...

but, again, there's no way to definitively prove either claim. So, as statesmen more concerned about their country than their egos, the proper move is to shut the fuck up, and move on until such a time as you truly DO uncover some sort of proof of your suspicions. Don't fall into the trap of assigning blame for this behavior to the right, entirely, or mostly, though...the facts simply do not support this. Furthermore, the more I observe statewide elections--especially in certain places (ahem! Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan....looking in your direction, slick) the more probable it appears that, at some point, massive election fraud will, in fact be proven to have taken place. (Katie fucking Hobbs....Who the fuck would vote for that fucking....ehh, nevermind....let's just say that every single poll showed Lake ahead, at least by a couple of points, some much more, for a full 2 weeks prior to election day, and I find it difficult to believe that anyone was, at all, impressed with any part of Hobbs as a candidate or public servant. So, will Trump, Lake, and others act like jackasses for the next year, AT LEAST, repeatedly claiming "facts" that are not proven, and demanding remedies that are neither legal nor proper? You bet they will....will it bug the fuck out of everyone, particularly those on the left? Sure. Would the left have behaved any better,though? No way, and, honestly, I won't be shocked if, at some point, some of Lake's claims are shown to be right on the money. If you doubt, for a second, that the left]'s behavior on this subject is not equally absurd, I remind you of....Hillary Clinton (the only candidate in recent times actually PROVEN to have benefited from unfair play in an election--just ask Bernie Sanders--and her absolute joke of a "why I lost" explanation that blames everyone but herself...it truly was a tremendous reminder and explanation of why people tend to dislike and mistrust her so strongly, Stacie Abrams (in addition to being a far better candidate is more entertaining, and far more politically gifted, not to mention, SOOO much more likable than HRC it is a question DNC officials should, honestly, configure, a method of asking respondents in another way than the direct: Who, between Clinton and Abrams is m ire likeable?" Typicam respondent: What, are you fuckin' joking, lady? Gee, I dunno, who is more attractive, Bernie Sanders or fuckin' that broad who is honba perform at the convention...ya know?" "Katy Perry?" "Yeah her....it's THAT DUMB of a question. Look man, i gotta go. The Bachelor is on, but....i don't know. She still beats Trump, i think. So....ya know? Blessings." Abrams just lost the Georgia governor's race again.Speaking of"Dangerous anti-election deniers," I am eagerly awaiting her response. Say what you want about her--she is a character. Are these candidates accused of "threatening democracy?" Whether you are on the right or left, the best thing you can do is start ignoring the mainstream media....the problem, at that point, becomes, finding a source to NOT ignore.

[letterboxd]

In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

Follow Dom on Letterboxd

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Closing down criticism: No.10's campaign to silence the outrage over covid

By Jonathan Lis

A glance at some of the newspaper front pages gives us a sense of what's happening. "Boris leads £6bn global race for vaccine," Monday's Express suggested. The Sun entitled its exclusive prime ministerial interview: "Baby gave me will to live." The bottom two-thirds of the Mail on Sunday featured a photograph of Boris Johnson's newborn son with the headline: "He's got Daddy's hair!"

In other news, the UK has overtaken Italy, the former poster-child of this catastrophe, and now registers the second-highest death toll in the world. A reader from literally anywhere else in the world would think we had lost our minds.

All this, of course, forms part of a careful communications and PR strategy. It consists of three distinct strands.

The first is the outright manipulation of statistics and facts. The last few weeks have seen an emphasis on numbers. That is, to a large extent, necessary. We need to know how many people are being tested, how many are dying and how much equipment we have to treat patients and protect those caring for them.

But on all counts, the government has dissembled. After Johnson's early promise of 250,000 daily tests was quietly abandoned, health secretary Matt Hancock plucked the number of 100,000 seemingly at random. When that seemed doomed to fail, ministers started to claim it was not about the number of tests but the capacity. Then, in order to reach the target by April 30th, the government included the unprocessed kits it had simply mailed out. Since then, the numbers of daily tests have dipped sharply – as though the entire focus had not been on testing at all, but meeting an arbitrary number on an arbitrary date and making sure it became a government success story.

Mortality statistics have also come under suspicion. Numbers have arrived days or weeks late, and for several weeks deaths in care homes were not included at all. Owing to a lack of testing, it is likely that thousands more people have died than are included in the statistics. The Financial Times estimates that the real mortality figure is a staggering 20,000 higher than the official one.

Then there's personal protective equipment. Panorama revealed that the government counted a pair of gloves as two items rather than one in order to make its activity seem more impressive.

With over 100 frontline workers dead, many of whom had openly complained about their lack of protection, we might consider this a major scandal – yet the government seems to treat it as 'one of those things', as though it hadn't known pandemics existed and hadn't in fact simulated one as recently as 2016. The second big element of the strategy is to deflect blame. At first this focused on the public, who carried the can for not understanding the government's entirely contradictory messaging.

Now it is almost exclusively targeted at the media. The government responded to a Sunday Times exposé by correcting claims the paper had not made. It sought to discredit the damning Panorama programme by pointing out that the featured medical staff were Labour supporters, as though it made any difference either way. And when the Guardian dared to question the presence of the prime minister's chief adviser Dominic Cummings on the government's independent science panel, Downing Street simply gloated about the public's lack of confidence in the media.

And as it lashed out, a stream of commentators have lambasted the media for questioning our leaders' response at all. At the very moment the government most needs to be held to account, scrutiny has been rebranded as sabotage.

The third and most important strand is language itself. Johnson's words betrayed his complacency from the very start. His Greenwich speech in February, which came after the lockdown in Wuhan, derided the "panic...that [goes] beyond what is medically rational". A few weeks later he boasted about shaking hands with covid patients, and in a private meeting dubbed ventilator procurement "Operation Last Gasp". The virus was at best a throwaway joke and at worst a tedious distraction. For Johnson, governing is entertaining and this was not part of the bill.

Language has since taken on a more important role. Key to this is the focus on war. At the start of the crisis Johnson vowed to "defeat the enemy", then last week decried the "unexpected and invisible mugger". The problem is this isn't a war, and if it was, the enemy should have been expected and we should have been prepared for it. This is not about short-term heroism but years of hard work.

But of course the cynicism goes far deeper. Sometimes it seems the most significant battle is against information itself. Taking its cue from Brexit, the government has deployed a succession of empty phrases and slogans to promote its accomplishments. 'Take back control' and 'get Brexit done' have become 'ramping up testing' and 'following the science'. The scale of the virus, we are constantly told, could not have been foreseen, as though ministers simply hadn't heard about the earlier disasters in China and Italy. The purpose of these slogans seems clear enough: to rot our brains and keep us quiet.

The most insidious weapon of language is to conceal the reality under our noses. On Thursday Johnson had the audacity to declare that "we have so far succeeded in the first and most important task we set ourselves as a nation – to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world". In reality, the UK accounts for less than one in a hundred of the world's population and one in eight of its deaths. Our death toll is now eclipsed only by the United States. The government can wave its hands, point elsewhere and cloak inadequacy as competence, but cannot change the truth of how it failed.

The fundamental problem is the government defines success less by what it does than how it communicates. Ministers do not need to flatten the curve so much as flatten the criticism. In the intersection of exceptionalism and misinformation, it can boast of false achievements and project real blame.

Ultimately we will hear any number of distractions, distortions and dead cats to cover up a single question: why a rich country gifted with time and resources became completely overwhelmed when so many of its counterparts did not.

[the-awkward-outlaw]

A New Adventure - Pt. 7

A Slow Burn 

I think the title speaks for itself... We’ll see how long I can manage it! (I predict not very long at all)

Masterlist 

Read on AO3

It’s been a week since the big earthquake. You read that there’s been over 200 documented aftershocks. Most have been under the 2.5 range, meaning they’re barely noticeable without equipment. However, there were some above 4.1, meaning they were enough to frighten you and Arthur. 

As you predicted after spending the first night with him, nothing between you and him has been the same. In a good way though. 

Arthur was an ideal gentleman that night. Of course, you expected nothing less from him. He was the last man you needed to worry about. 

The morning after the quake, you woke up to an empty bed. He walked in about five minutes later with a cup of coffee for you to drink in bed. 

There was a tense, awkward silence. You weren’t quite sure what to say to him. “That was great, I hope we do that again”? No. “Thanks for letting me sleep all packed against you”? Worse. 

He broke the silence by explaining there’d only been a few small aftershocks. 

“Guess… guess we need to talk. About last night,” he’d said. 

“Guess we do. I… I understand if you prefer to sleep in the other bed.” 

He smiled and looked away. “Well, I was thinkin’... it was nice… to uh, not be alone for once. I didn’t expect to sleep last night with all the rumblin’, but… I slept surprisingly well.” 

You couldn’t but smile back at him. “Me too. Thank you, Arthur. I don’t think I would’ve coped if you weren’t here.” 

He surprised you yet again by gently grabbing your hand and squeezing it. 

Since then, the two of you have been more touchy with one another. Not in any sexual or romantic ways of course, but just the small bump here and there, and the occasional hand holding. He’s also taken to sitting on the same couch as you, as though he likes the physical closeness. 

You’ve always had a suspicion, even when you only knew him from the gang, that Arthur was secretly touch starved. His behavior now only solidifies that. 

You aren’t overly touchy, but you find yourself making an exception for Arthur. 

More and more, you want to ask him to be your boyfriend. You can’t tell if he likes you in that way though. However, it’s not just the complexity of his situation that prevents you from asking him. It’s only a matter of time before he figures out you’re not worth his energy. 

The thought breaks your heart, but you decide to enjoy his company while you still have it. 

Lately you’ve been testing how he reacts to you, to see if maybe there is something between the two of you. 

One night, you’d walked up behind him while he was sat on the couch and brushes the back of his shoulder, claiming his shirt was laying in an odd position. This was a downright lie of course, but you noticed the back of his neck burned red after your touch. 

Ever since that night after the earthquake too, he’s been more flustered around you. Not that you’ve been any different. It’s almost impossible to look him in the face without blushing. 

There’s still lots of aftershocks from the quake. 

After the first night, you thought Arthur would spend the nights with you in your bed. However, he chose to sleep in his own bed but said you were welcome to bother him should anything happen. 

This bummed you out. Perhaps he didn’t like you in that way. Maybe he blushed whenever anybody touched him. It’s not like he was used to it, afterall. 

Your feelings towards him have become confused and indecipherable even at times. You still love him as the sarcastic, tough, secretly sensitive outlaw protagonist from the video game you love, and you still have a raging crush on him as a person. However, why waste your time and energy on loving him that way if the feelings aren’t returned? 

You’re rather draggy today, a combination of poor sleep and the fact that you cried yourself to sleep. It wasn’t just the constant stress of the aftershocks. Your depression and doubt had gotten the better of you last night. 

All you could think of was how no one seemed to want to stick around you, that you were just a giant waste of everyone’s time. That Arthur would be far better off if he’d been discovered by someone else. 

You didn’t even consider the fact that without you, Arthur would probably be in a horrible place. Either back in the game and dying/dead or in a mental hospital being treated for an illness he didn’t have. 

The only thing your brain could focus on was that, just like everyone else in your life, Arthur would leave too. After all, your dad’s dead, taken from you by force. Your mother is too occupied on herself to give you the time of day. Your only sister, whom you’ve never been close with, lives in a different state. You don’t have any friends. You’re just one of those people that exists to take up space. It was not a good place to be. 

Arthur knew from early in the day that you aren’t yourself, that you’re far more quiet than usual. You lack your usual excitement towards Sage as you prepare to feed her is gone.

“You okay?” Arthur says, sipping his coffee. 

“What?” you say, completely lost in your head. 

“I said ‘you okay?’”

“O-oh. Yeah, I’m fine.” 

You decided this morning that you need to shelve your attractions to Arthur. He doesn’t like you in that way, in fact he’d be a fool to. But for your own mental health, you need to take a step back. 

Part of you wishes you’d never asked him to spend that night in your bed. It’s made things so much more complicated. If only you’d been strong enough to handle the night alone. 

“You don’t seem fine,” Arthur says, pulling you back out of your head. Damn it doesn’t help he’s wearing nothing but his union suit and his jeans, so you can see the definition of his body fairly well. “Ya seem… I don’t know, sad for some reason. Just kinda down.” 

Tears begin to well at the bottom of your eyes. Of course. You’ve been trying so hard to keep yourself together, but the moment someone asks if you’re fine, you have to break down. You turn away and wipe your eyes so Arthur won’t see. 

“I’m fine, Arthur. Like I said. Do yourself a favor and… don’t worry about me.” 

You turn back to Sage’s food. Poor dog, she’s been patiently waiting for a while now. 

Suddenly there’s a hand on your shoulder. 

“But I do worry about ya, Y/N. Y’know, you done so much for me. I know I been a… a burden.” 

“You ain’t been-” you start. 

“No, I have been. Please, let me… let me finish. I know you’ve had a lot of stress. From what I can gather about your time is that it’s hard. In different ways then my time was hard. This world moves so fast, I can hardly keep up with it and I barely have a part in it. I know it ain’t easy on anyone, even you. Then I come along, make things harder. Know my meds have been expensive. Then these earthquakes. Please, let me help you for once.” 

“You’ve helped me, Arthur,” you say, feeling incredibly embarrassed. “I mean, you got all that money for me when this COVID crap hit.” 

“Sure, but… Please, Y/N. Lemme help ya.” 

That’s all it takes and you’re breaking down in front of him. God, he must find you pathetic. It’s no secret he’s got a short fuse and doesn’t often have the patience to deal with emotional people. With his background, he has to be tough and it must be easy for him to find you weak. 

“Please, Arthur,” you beg. “Please don’t worry about me. It’s fine, I can deal with this on my own. Besides, you have your own stuff to worry about.” You wipe your tears, unable to muster the courage to look at him. 

A finger goes under your chin and lifts your head up gently so you have to look at him. Instead of the anger or annoyance you expected, you see pity and worry. 

“Ain’t got a whole lot other than you to worry about, sweetheart. I just wanna help ya.” 

“I… I can’t,” you whisper. How can you tell this man that you’re growing to love him more than any other person. He can’t know, and you wouldn’t even know how to begin to tell him. 

“Why not?” he asks. 

You swallow and look away. “Because you wouldn’t understand, Arthur. You and I… we’re nothing alike. We’re cut from different molds. I wouldn’t begin to wrap my head around the burdens on your shoulders, so I don’t expect you to understand mine.” 

“Try me,” he says with a small smile. 

He leads you over to the couch and sits you down on it. His eyes are soft and gentle, but he doesn’t press you to talk immediately. After he hands you a tissue, you decide it’s safe to at least tell him some of the things you’re feeling. 

“Arthur I… I know you know how it feels to just not live anymore. What it’s like to long for death. Well, I… I guess I been feeling that a lot lately. I just… I don’t matter to anyone.” 

You sniff and wipe your eyes again. He opens his mouth to speak but you cut him off. “And please don’t give me that trope of ‘there’s people who care, blah blah blah’ because I don’t see them.” 

You tell him about your past experiences with people and why you prefer being alone and how you expect you’ll die alone. 

“People just don’t like me, Arthur. Everyone figures it out in the end that I’m just not worth being around. There’s not a single person in this world whose life I’ve affected.” 

“Then I guess it don’t matter that I owe you my life.” 

You look up at him, your eyes wide. He scoots a little closer. 

“Y/N, who cares if ya don’t make a difference in this world? Most people don’t. Most people are barely remembered five minutes after their deaths except for those they were close to. Trust me, you’ve no idea the effect your death would have and there’s no way for you to know, just like the rest of us. And please don’t say you don’t matter to no one, because… you matter to me.” 

He takes your hand and squeezes it softly. Instead of feeling the affectionate flutter of your heart you expected to feel, you feel a soft tenderness and surge of friendship towards Arthur. It’s this moment you realize that he’s the one person you can trust to tell anything to. Already you feel better. 

“Thank you, Arthur,” you say, squeezing his hand back. “You’re a good man.” 

“Nah, I ain't. You don’t know the things I done.” 

“I know some of them. Bu you’re a good man to me.” 

[nicepicsworld]

Donald Trump opens investigation into China coronavirus lab conspiracy | World | News

DONALD Trump is conducting an investigation into whether COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from a laboratory in Wuhan, the President has confirmed. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Donald Trump said his government was doing a very ‘thorough examination’ into what had happened. However, when asked if he had raised the subject in conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said: “I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory.“I just don’t want to discuss it. It’s inappropriate right now.” The US intelligence community believed that the Wuhan lab may have accidentally developed the strain while working on bat diseases. On the NBC show yesterday, US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper spoke about the researchers findings so far.He said: “This is something we've been watching closely now for some time.”Results have so been “inconclusive”, he said.Another US official was quoted as saying: “It's a possibility, though not the most likely possibility.”Yesterday, in his latest press conference the President reiterated that he was ‘not happy with China’ or the World Health Organisation for how they had handled their response to the virus.He said: “I spoke to and this could have been shut down a long time ago, and they knew it, and we couldn’t get in, and in all fairness World Health couldn’t get in.“And this is why I wish they took a different stance. They took a verypathetic stance and a very weak stance.“They didn’t report what was happening inside of China.”Suspicions that China has not been transparent about the outbreak has grown in recent days, with the President expressing scepticism about China’s previously declared death figure of about 3,000.France’s Emmanuel Macron has said there is no evidence the new coronavirus is the work of a research laboratory in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.However, researchers in the UK and United States and other countries are looking at all possibilities to establish the source of the deadly virus.President Trump has been a vocal critic of both China and the WHO, and has even gone as far as halting the United States’ payments to the organisation.He has repeatedly claimed the outbreak could have been contained at its source and spared lives, had the UN health agency done a better job investigating reports coming out of China.According to the agency’s website, America contributed nearly $900 million (£711 million) to the WHO’s most recent yearly budget.The death toll from COVID-19 has hit 37,000 in America, with more than 708,000 infected with the disease. Read the full article

[shirlleycoyle]

Health Conspiracy Theorists Hate Living In the World They Helped Create

“Anyone who refuses to be injected with experimental poisons will be prohibited from travel, education, and work,” Larry Cook declared recently on a fringe social media site. “No, this is not a synopsis for a new horror movie. This is our current reality.”

Cook is an anti-vaccine activist and a QAnon fan; he was one of the single biggest sources of anti-vaccine misinformation on Facebook before his banning in November. As usual, he was, on a broad level, wrong: People who refuse COVID-19 vaccines are not necessarily going to be prohibited from “travel, education and work,” nor are those vaccines “experimental poisons.” But Cook was correct in one way: He and other conspiracy theorist “health freedom” advocates are closer than they were before to living in a world they would find to be a nightmarish dystopia. What none of them have acknowledged, though, is that their relentless flood of misinformation helped us get here. By fighting the most common-sense public health measures at every turn, the health conspiracy theorists helped create a climate where more restrictive ones are looking more and more necessary. 

For years, Cook and a host of other people who make a living selling vaccine skepticism, snake oil, and a heaping dose of anti-government suspicion have traded on the idea that someday vaccines will be mandatory and the government will track citizens or control our entry into public spaces. (Cook’s Facebook group, before it was deleted, was called “Stop Mandatory Vaccination.”) Today, as the country and the world continue to try to get control of the coronavirus pandemic, some of those ideas are being discussed—albeit not quite in the nightmarish ways the health conspiracy theorists envisioned.

Vaccine passports will not be introduced on a federal level. New York is so far the only state to introduce a standardized proof of vaccination, the Excelsior Pass, which will be used to gain entry to places like Madison Square Garden, though more states may follow suit. While they haven’t yet, businesses like airlines and schools could very much decide to require proof of vaccination. The Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905 that states can enforce mandatory vaccination laws. And many countries are only reopening to American travelers if they’re fully vaccinated. Some of the same dynamics are playing out outside of the United States: in the United Kingdom, the BBC reported, organizers of large-scale trial events are being harassed and threatened by anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown protesters for requiring attendees to show a negative COVID test. The demonstrators believe, without evidence, that the events are a trial balloon for an eventual vaccine passport.

The fact that these discussions and restrictions are happening at all is also proof of how far and fast anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-science ideas spread during the pandemic. Public health experts said last week that community or “herd” immunity against COVID-19  will likely never be achieved in the United States, due to a virulent combination of more transmissible variants and persistent vaccine hesitancy across broad swaths of the country. The best we can do, instead, is live with COVID-19 as a hopefully manageable but ongoing threat. Meanwhile, an article in the medical publication PLOS-One found that several major strands of COVID denalism have gained a foothold worldwide, including the idea that COVID was “planned,” that it was deliberately engineered “bioweapon,” and that wearing a mask to protect against it can cause “hypoxia” or other health problems. (There is no proof of any of those things.) I have a Google Alert set up for the names of a few prominent anti-vaccine advocates, and nearly every day, I see the ideas of one of them, the disgraced scientist Judy Mikovits, being cited in letters to the editor in small newspapers across the country as a reason not to trust COVID vaccines or as a justification for not wearing a mask, which she frequently and falsely claims will make you sick.

There was little chance that any of the most virulent anti-vaccine COVID denialists would ever buy into basic public health measures, of course. Most of them had decided from the beginning that the virus spelled the end of humanity, and pivoted their messaging and business models accordingly. In January 2020, when COVID had killed just under 100 people worldwide, Mike Adams was already making a dark prediction. “It’s over for humanity,” he declared, speaking to Alex Jones and the InfoWars audience. “There will only be lone survivors. The strategy must now shift. You can be a survivor. We can help you survive.” 

Having given up pretty quickly on humanity, Adams, who runs a conspiracy site called Natural News and has dubbed himself The Health Ranger, re-dedicated himself to making sure his audience are “lone survivors” by providing the worst possible information about both COVID-19 and potential treatments for it. He’s decried what he calls “worthless Communist masks,” for example, while relentlessly promoting debunked treatments like hydroxychloroquine. Larry Cook, too, fought against masks: In June 2020 he wrote that he had filed complaints with the FBI and the Department of Justice and sent a letter to then-President Trump over Los Angeles’ requirement to wear a mask in public places: “If you do not want to be forcibly masked and treated like a slave under the color of law, I highly recommend you file a complaint as well,” he wrote. 

Now that vaccines are being broadly administered, the health conspiracy theorists are, naturally, fighting those too, using a broad mix of fear-mongering tactics. One of the more recent is falsely claiming that people who have been vaccinated are “shedding” either COVID or something more exotic and dangerous, in a move that author and Conspirituality host Matthew Remski dubbed “Reverse Contagion Anxiety.” (Most infamously, this led to a Miami school declaring that it will refuse to hire vaccinated teachers; most amusingly, some anti-maskers are now declaring themselves ready to mask up to protect themselves from the vaccinated.) 

While it’s extreme, in a way, none of this is new: Anti-mask protests took place during the 1918 flu pandemic, of course. More broadly, the United States has a long history of groups who insist that any community-level action against public health problems is an infringement on human liberty. That attitude creates disastrous—or at least extremely stupid—results.

Take, for instance, the water fluoridation debate. The anti-Communist John Birch Society in the 1950s, was either, depending on who you talk to, morbidly afraid that Communists would contaminate the drinking water supply of the United States through fluoride, or merely opposed any fluoride being added to the water because it believed it was an impingement on the rights of Americans to choose what medication they took. As a result of its efforts, and those of other anti-fluoride groups, what would have been a basic public health measure turned into a pitched 75-year battle that’s still being fought one municipal water district at time. (For what it’s worth, the John Birch Society denies today that it ever opposed fluoridation on Communist mind control grounds, writing on its website, “While the JBS doesn’t agree with water fluoridation because it is a form of government mass medication of citizens in violation of their individual right to choose which medicines they ingest, it was never opposed as a mind-control plot.”) 

And even before COVID, we’ve seen this same pattern before much more recently: The suspicion and refusal of basic public health measures leading an increasingly strict government response, thus heightening the original underlying suspicion. In 2018 and 2019, two severe measles outbreaks among New York’s Orthodox Jewish communities, one in Brooklyn and one in Rockland County in upstate New York, led to a series of increasingly heightened government actions. But public health officials were battling against a disinformation campaign by Orthodox anti-vaccine activists, and when measles continued to spread, unvaccinated children were briefly banned from being in public in Rockland County March 2019. The ban was overturned by the New York State Supreme Court, but by then, bigger anti-vaccine activists had alighted on the state’s Orthodox community. (Anti-vaccine celebrity Del Bigtree, for instance, pinned a yellow Star of David on himself in a speech, and then sent out a press release to make sure no one had missed it.) While the measles outbreak subsided, anti-vaccine suspicions—fueled, in part, by the memory of the government restrictions—have continued, and remain a factor in how Orthodox communities have responded to COVID vaccines.

Today, the audiences of “health freedom” and anti-vaccine advocates are constantly told that they only need to do what will ensure the survival of themselves and their families. In a neat trick, that attitude also allows virtually all of these people to make money: Cook has started a new social network for COVID vaccine “refusers,” as he calls them, and is marketing numerous supplements there. (One of them claims to provide “Better sleep, less stuttering, better eye tracking, better bowels, anger dissipated, better mood and better speech,” which is certainly a collection of things.) Mikovits has appeared at numerous anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown conferences across the country this year, as has anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s also made headlines internationally, appearing at an enormous anti-lockdown protest in Berlin; later in the day, some 300 of the demonstrators were arrested after attempting to storm the Reichstag. 

The conferences themselves have become a burgeoning industry in the U.S., with names like “Truth Over Fear,” held this past weekend by a fringe media personality and meant as a response to a Vatican-led health conference at which Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared, or the “Health and Freedom Conference” in Oklahoma, which drew thousands of people into a cramped indoor space to hear COVID conspiracy theories and declamations on liberty from pro-Trump figures like Lin Wood. The author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, meanwhile, appeared this past week at a conference in Michigan dubbed “United We Stand for Freedom,” and has become a much-lauded figure in the anti-vaccine world over the past few months. (Her anti-vaccine beliefs have managed to paper over the last time she was in the news, for making a series of staggering errors in a 2019 book that led to its release being canceled.)

The "Health Ranger" Mike Adams promotes pine needle tea as a cure for the fake phenomenon of "vaccine shedding." Screenshot via Brighteon

The claims of vaccine “shedding,” too, have predictably led to new products being marketed, new bids for a little more market share. In a recent article, Mike Adams claimed that pine needle tea could help protect against the so-called shedding, while another popular health conspiracy theorist, Sayer Ji of the site Green Med Info, at the end of an apocalyptic video about vaccine shedding, urged people not to “freak out,” but simply to subscribe to all his content to stay informed. “Tell 100 of your friends,” he urged, to create “a grassroots army of health-loving, freedom-loving individuals.” Another popular anti-vaccine influencer named Ashley Everly, who claims to be a “freelance toxicologist” and who has more than 80,000 followers on Instagram, has been disseminating unconfirmed reports of “shedding” injuries for weeks, while urging her followers to download an anti-vaccine guide she’s written and subscribe to her Patreon. 

Dr. Lee Merritt presents her view that the COVID-19 pandemic is "stealth warfare" at the Truth Over Fear conference. Screenshot via Truth Over Fear.

There’s evidence that some of the people promoting the shedding theories are ultimately trying to funnel their audiences towards even more bizarre and toxic ideas. America’s Frontline Doctors has promoted the “shedding” theory; it's an extremely questionable group of physicians and backers who had an alarming hold on both the Trump White House and have more recently been influencing state-level politics. At a small fringe health conference this weekend, Dr. Lee Merritt, a member of the group, claimed that the pandemic is a form of “uncharacteristic, unrestricted stealth warfare” and approvingly quoted infamous British conspiracy theorist David Icke in claiming that everyone who controls the world could fit in one room with “room left over.” (Icke is frequently and credibly accused of anti-Semitism, often implying that the people in that room are “Rothschild” Jews, as he puts it. He also believes that most world leaders belong to a race of evil and omnipotent 12-foot lizard beings.) “This isn’t just about a virus,” she told her audience, in a taped lecture. “There’s no set battlefield … your warfare extends to your own brain, and that’s what a lot of this right now is a psychological operation.” 

It’s tempting to think that these fringe figures are only talking to themselves and their pre-existing audiences. But an article published in Nature in May 2020 found that anti-vaccination clusters of Facebook users were more likely to “become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network,” as the authors put it, while pro-vaccine viewpoints were more peripheral. There’s good evidence, in other words, that for people who were already dubious about vaccines—or perhaps, things like the efficacy of masks or social distancing—exposure to bad information proved to be a kind of tipping point. 

But the frenzied level of fear and paranoia that the health conspiracy theorists are stoking is affecting some of them, too. Recently, Everly, the "toxicologist,” began claiming that she, too, is suffering symptoms that she believes are the result of being around vaccinated people and might need to post less content on social media. 

“Hopefully with a bit of time ‘away,’ (not completely) I can jump back into this,” she wrote. “Every now and then I get a bit overwhelmed and start to burn out.” 

Most of the health conspiracy theorists, though, seem energized by the new hellish dystopia that they believe they’re living in. By exhorting their audiences not to get vaccinated, social distance, adhere to contact tracing or take even the most minor of public health steps, they helped get us to this hellish place, but they won’t necessarily be the ones who suffer. Instead, as Adams exhorted back in January 2020, they’ll be focused on being the “lone survivors”—and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. 

Health Conspiracy Theorists Hate Living In the World They Helped Create syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/04/15/chelsea-clinton-dogs-facebook-to-ditch-tucker-carlson-over-vaccine-questions-despite-his-pro-vax-stance/

Chelsea Clinton dogs Facebook to ditch Tucker Carlson over vaccine questions, despite his pro-vax stance

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of ex-president Bill and presidential failure Hillary, seems to be dipping her toes into the family business, as she renewed her demands for Trump-supporting white males to get vaccinated immediately.

No, Clinton’s not climbing aboard the sinking ship of American politics – not yet, at least – but she is enthusiastically embracing censorship and taking ideas out of context to turn them into wrongthink.

Her target this week was Tucker Carlson, the popular Fox News host who has remained at the top of the charts even as other cable chnnaels took major ratings hits in the aftermath of ex-president Donald Trump’s departure from the Oval Office. Carlson committed the unforgivable sin of questioning some of the Covid-19 vaccines, many of which are suffering multiple bumps in their rollout.

“If the vaccine is effective, there is no reason for people who have received the vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact,” Carlson during his show on Tuesday night, echoing many Americans who rushed out to get the jab – only to realize that nothing would change for them, raising questions about why they got the jab in the first place.

“Maybe [the vaccine] doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that,” Carlson said, referring to the sudden halt to the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday. The jab’s continued distribution was blocked after six women who took the jab ended up with rare blood clots, a phenomenon that has also cropped up in Europe.

Carlson’s posting had become the most popular on the internet by Wednesday, which upset Clinton after her mother’s former foreign policy spokesman brought it to her attention.

In December, @facebook banned claims about #covid19 vaccines “that have been debunked by public health experts.” And yet ⬇️. Especially troubling given Republican men are currently most likely to say they’re not interested in being vaccinated. https://t.co/NHWwn8vQ31

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) April 14, 2021

Clinton was especially concerned “Republican men are currently more likely to say they’re not interested in being vaccinated,” she tweeted, adding that Facebook had “banned claims about [Covid-19] vaccines ‘that have been debunked by public health experts’.” 

Biden administration’s top medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has also come out against Carlson, even though the Fox host has repeatedly insisted he is pro-vaccine (and indeed claimed he was merely concerned about why the J&J shot had been recalled so rapidly).

If anything, Carlson said, he was inclined to trust pharmaceutical companies “too much, so when they said this stuff works, we never questioned it.”

We assumed they had detailed studies showing that it does work. We still think that. The only reason we are asking the question is because the people in charge are acting like it doesn’t work.

Both of Chelsea’s parents were filmed receiving the jab last month. However, despite the former First Daughter’s repeated demands that Trump get the vaccine in public in order to encourage his apparently-reluctant supporters to rush to their local pharmacy – or her announcement on Sunday that she plans to launch a “health-focused podcast” there has been no indication she has had the shot herself.

That has not stopped Clinton from repeatedly demanding “white males” drop their suspicion about the new pharmaceutical compounds, no matter what their reasons might be for refusing.

Former President Donald Trump took credit for Operation Warp Speed, which saw the US government pour billions of dollars into multiple pharmaceutical companies with the aim of rushing the shots to market before the 2020 election. The first of them, Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA-based jab, was finally unveiled to the public less than a week after Joe Biden declared victory in the election.

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