A burger for breakfast and breaking a 30 hour fast. FlipSide, Rawai, Phuket. That’s Tony across the table. The owner of this and three other restaurants. Brit expat, here for 35 years now. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken I called it a Lead Balloon from day 1 Cool Truth When you do not have a principled bone in your body I very much tend to agreement, though I do so kinda…
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My Random Quick Takes #5 (Memorial Day)
The comment thread is 100% dumb as doornails ignorance. I posted a comment.
Anyone have any awareness of Farr’s Law?
In epidemiological and virological terms, it means that viruses naturally become more benign over time. This is congruent with Natural Selection theory. And it’s confirmed over and over in observation.
There is Antigenic DRIFT and SHIFT. Drift is new variants. This demonstrates that the virus is doing its natural thing to make itself more fit. That means, it becomes more easily transmissible while also becoming more benign so people shrug it off and go about their lives spreading it.
The most successful at this are rhinoviruses and the 4 other coronaviruses we call the common cold.
Shift is what happens when a single host is infected with two viruses and they combine RNA to become an entirely new strain less recognizable to memory T-cells. This is what causes the big ones.
But we still don’t know that about this one. Latest is, man-made is having a serious look taken. Before that, birds and pigs were the culprits with Influenza A.
None of this is controversial, BTW. Standard textbook stuff.
You really must have to wonder who comprises her 37.1K followers.
How do you get that many followers being a Chick Undermining Natural Traditions?
Now, OSHO, first two minutes.
Never more true and certain since it was written about 80 years ago
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the population alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. — H.L. Mencken
Put Me Over 10,000 Subscribers
Dealing With The Blog Members
Hey Members,
This email is only to the few hundred of you, but the Membership is growing daily.
There are two things on my mind this morning. Since you’re already a member let me just get right to it. You can handle it.
- I’d like to send out a quick email as an alert for each new blog post to Members, which I can do in minutes for pennies, but I don’t know whether that’s helpful or a nuisance. Please email me if you have a feeling about it one way or the other.
- The problem with #1 is that a portion of my posts are for all members, a portion for paid members only. I have said and affirm that there is never a problem with being a free-content member. I will always create free content for members but because the paid ranks are increasing nicely, if I send notices, then then those here for the free content might take the notices as a constant sales pitch. Yea, I know, part of that is “the cost of free,” but I want to keep my pledge that you’re not a lower-class citizen or something. So, integrate that in any feedback.
The final thing is something I’ve been chewing on for a few years. Since 2015, I’ve been temporarily blocked on Facebook over 30 times, and after the first 2 or 3, they are 30-days each, locked out. Kinda makes it difficult to grow a Social Media presence to advance other endeavors like this membership blog with that sort of continual kneecapping. Twitter even outright deleted my account out of the blue one day a few months ago. It had 7,000 legit followers, real readers or sometimes check-in peeps of this blog.
And Facebook did the same to the Free The Animal Page.
I’ve since started over with both, feel free to like, follow, whatever:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NikoleyRichard
FTA Page: https://www.facebook.com/richardnikoleyfta
Anyway, the deal is that I have wanted to use the blog instead, but, I know well it’s not the same for Social Media users, increasingly what I call Virtue Media; I think you know what I mean…and there’s a blog post in there, easy.
To get to the point because you’re Members, I’ve been experimenting with putting 95% of the stuff I would post on Virtue Media, on the blog, instead.
Tagline: All the stuff I would have posted on Social Media but didn’t, because it’s Social Media and creating content for any of them is lame.
I’m working on #5 now. What I do is simply keep a draft post for WordPress open in a tab, and when I feel the urge to Retweet, Share, screen clip and New Post with commentary, I do it there, instead.
One dozen per post. When I get to 12 of My Random Quick Takes, I publish it.
Think of it this way: that’s 48 “Facebook Posts” in 4 days, and virtually zero chance of being blocked again by FB. I can call Kamala Harris a “Chick Undermining Natural Traditions” and not catch a ban.
But, the tradeoff is that no more is there that that dynamic of Like, Love, Hate, Cry, or Laugh reactions, or comments. And hey, I’m the last guy in the world who should be deriding addiction to that.
I feel like “wow, this is not a dopamine hit AT ALL!”
Kinda boring, really, but then I read over one of those posts and I just kinda like it.
And another advantage. It stays up forever, and is always easy to find. In addition to the search function that’s not driven by ad-revenue, you can easily go to any issue like this:
https://www.freetheanimal.com/2021/05/my-random-quick-takes-[#].html
Just paste that URL in your browser and replace the [#] with the issue number.
Again, happy for any feedback.
If you would like to become a member and join a few hundred others who get the kid gloves treatment, there’s an app for that.
Or, perhaps you just stumbled in here, aren’t sure, but maybe want to keep looking. Then, join the other 10,000 subscribers to The Non-Pestering Newsletter.
My Random Quick Takes #4
This is Crazy Good In December of 2019 I sent off a testosterone test kit to EverlyWell. Just curious, just shy of 59 years old. Got a result, 85 pg/mL. It was in the green, so didn’t think much about it except that it’s in the lower half of the normal range which annoys me. I moved to Thailand right at the same time, mid-Jan, 2020, but the only lifestyle changes were that I was certainly getting out more, more sunshine, more frequent fasting, and more sex. In Thailand, you can purchase the prescription hardon drugs at any pharmacy and…