Quick Hits

Rolling Stone magazine promotes furry culture for children because why wouldn't they.

Jen's daughter is nine years old, with shoulder-length brown hair and darting, fearful eyes. She’s anxious and withdrawn, and her mother says she doesn't get asked to go on play dates very often. When she speaks to people she doesn't know, she keeps a careful distance, like she's trying to decide whether or not to pet a tarantula at a zoo exhibit.

But then Jen’s daughter becomes Emily the deer. She has a pink head with zebra stripes, white tufts of fur, and giant, ink-black antlers. In an instant, she goes from withdrawn to animated and gregarious. "She'll put her head on and go play and join the other kids," Jen tells me, as we watch her daughter chatting gaily with other sundry woodland creatures.

Emily and Jen have just attended a meet-and-greet for furries who are influencers on TikTok, the hugely popular lip-syncing app used primarily by teens. The pair have driven about an hour from their home in the Chicago suburbs to attend Midwest FurFest, an annual convention for people who are involved with the furry community, a stigmatized, highly misunderstood subculture for people who identify with anthropomorphized animals. Although the common conception is that the culture is inherently sexualized, the reality is that being a furry means different things to different people: some furries like drawing character art, while others enjoy dressing up in fursuits (full-body costumes) or creating their own fursonas (animal characters).

Emily (due to privacy concerns, most furries will be identified here by their fursonas) is one of a growing number of Gen Z members joining the fandom, despite some of the stigmas and misconceptions that have propagated around it.

Well, Rolling Stone is writing about this positively, but of course it's social media -- Chinese platform TikTok specifically here -- that's actually evangelizing this to children.

I'm not sure if we have to worry about children reading Rolling Stone. I'm not sure we have to worry about anyone reading Rolling Stone.

Worrying about Rolling Stone feels a lot like worrying about Vikings. They had their day, but... that day is long passed.

Meanwhile, Twitter has no problem with furries offering to "rap" with, presumably, kids, about "whatever."

Keeping count of the "Noble Lies" our "public health guardians" have told: This one might not bother a lot of you, as it delayed the imposition of boosters on it, but it was a lie as they understood it when they told it.

See, they believed that all Americans should have the booster as soon as possible.

But they lied about that. They claimed that only Americans over 65 years old or those with serious medical conditions should have it.

Why would the vaccine-and-booster-crazy "health authorities" tell that lie?

Because they wanted to divert the vaccine-making production capacity to the rest of the world.

Yeah I know a lot of you think the boosters are ass but remember: as far as their thinking went, they were killing Americans to save foreigners, and they were lying to make this happen.

And lying about what "The Science" said to make this all go down easy.

The United States' COVID pandemic performance is among the worst in the world -- particularly given our unparalleled advantages. We lead the planet in confirmed infections and deaths, and while India probably has had more of both that went uncounted, that's cold comfort when its population is more than four times larger than ours.

One reason for this tragic failure is the dishonesty of American public health bureaucrats. They have repeatedly lied to the public, playing politics with the pandemic, and in the process undermined both the fight against COVID-19 and confidence in their own credibility. Their deception almost certainly got people killed, and it continues to do so this month, as the Omicron variant spreads and booster shots go unused.

After noting Fauci's well-known (by conservatives, anyway) lies about cloth mask and herd immunity levels, he notes that the "public health authorities" are still was addicted to lying for "the greater good:"

A year later, other public health officials seem to have replicated Fauci's deception on the subject of booster shots -- and the consequences here may be graver still. By August of this year, the Biden administration was extremely alarmed about reports of waning immunity among the vaccinated, and in September, officials started plans to recommend booster shots to all adults.

But key bureaucrats and scientists dragged their feet...

After noting the arguments against recommending boosters to everyone aren't very persuasive -- and, indeed, eventually boosters were recommended (mandated, actually!) for everyone -- he points out the reason the arguments never rang true: because they were always lies.

Perhaps these arguments aren't compelling because they aren't honest. A more plausible motivation comes through in August comments from infectious disease specialist Celine Gounder, who was a pandemic adviser for Biden. "It's really inequitable and it's not in our interest because you're leaving much of the world unprotected, where you're going to have the emergence of other variants," she told Politico, pushing to send vaccine supplies overseas instead of giving boosters to Americans. "I feel like this is very short-term thinking. It's very individualistic, nationalist thinking."

This makes much more sense. Just like Fauci told a noble lie to conserve PPE, officials overseeing booster decisions almost certainly fudged the science in the service of an ulterior motive: getting vaccines to poorer countries.

One can have that goal, of course, but note, as usual, the public isn't allowed to debate this: they just tell us lies that "The Science" says it's not time yet for boosters as they divert vaccine production to Africa. Then, when they've produced enough vaccine for Africa, they say, "The Science is now telling us that everyone in America should have a booster."

This is why I call them "The Science Priests:" They're always going into a hidden room in the back of the temple to commune with The Science Gods, who give them secret wisdom, which they then tell us about.

They tell us what The Science Gods demand of us this week.

And when we question, "Wait, did the Science Gods really tell you that, or are you just making this all up to get us to do what you want us to do?!," they accuse us of blasphemy.

The Science Priests sure do talk a lot in secret. For example, a group of "public health experts" begged the CEO of Pfizer to delay the vaccine until after the election.

Gee, I wonder why.

Glenn Reynolds: We need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate covid lies, and hold the covid liars responsible.

Despite a blanket denial from Anthony Fauci, it turns out that "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan lab that seems to have produced the fatal coronavirus was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by one Anthony Fauci.

And as economist Garett Jones recently pointed out, a group of "public health" scientists encouraged Pfizer to delay the release of its COVID vaccine until after the election -- which it did. As even Democratic pollster/pundit Nate Silver commented, "I doubt the same letter would have been sent had 2020 not been an election year or had a Democrat been in office." Yeah, so do I.

Economist Tyler Cowen reflected, "No, this was not a conspiracy in the strictest, most intentional sense (it didn't need to be!), but it did kill thousands of people and manipulate our politics."

He's right. If vaccines save lives, then delaying the release of a vaccine by months cost lives. To "manipulate our politics."

Thousands of people could have died due to the politicization of public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. There needs to be an investigation into the mistakes made by public health officials.

It’s time for a rigorous investigation -- perhaps a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with subpoena power -- to get to the bottom of how our public-health authorities have mismanaged this pandemic. There's certainly no chance that the existing establishment will do so.

Jim Jordan has promised to investigate Fauci if Republican win the House, but the days of Strongly Worded Letters and Snarky Questions at Committee are over.

That bullshit doesn't work and I won't continue pretending it does.

"The top investigation -- which I think will primarily be done on the Oversight Committee -- is on Fauci and the gain of function and the lab leak, which is the most likely scenario how we got this virus," Jordan told Alex Marlow on the Breitbart Daily News podcast on Monday. "That's kind of oversight you're supposed to do, not this crazy January 6 political attack that they're doing."

"If the Democrats go down this road of kicking Republicans off committees, trying to put a good man in prison, like Mark Meadows -- they shouldn't do this stuff -- but if they're going to, if they're going to cross this bridge, if it's good enough for one side, it should apply to the other as well," Jordan added.

And what do you do when he lies and refuses to turn over documents? As Eric Holder did repeatedly?

You recommend charges to a Biden prosecutor -- who decides not to prosecute.

You're worried about all the condoms winding up in the ocean...?

Well then baby, have I got some great news for you...!

Teach women not to dress up as elves:

posted by Ace at 04:48 PM

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