So we are back to the second week of Story Time installment of this “satirical blog”. I invite you to share your own, as there is nothing better than looking back onto your own life stories and thinking “how in the f*** did this happen to me? At least I can tell the grand kids and be a cool grandpa!”
So, to set a scene. It is late 90’s, I am a freshly graduated civil engineer with a top-4 finish from a top-3 engineering school in the US. In my class of ~50 graduates, I am one of two who decided to go down and dirty and join a construction company, rather than a design house. First job was one of the many developments in the Orlando, Florida entertainment district – Disney, Universal, Sea World, you name it. It was booming, and I wasn’t the one to pass an opportunity of the lifetime. So I signed the papers, got the top starting salary in my class (36,300 p.a., gooooooood money) and was off.
Day 1 I report, get ushered around, shown the lay of the land, introduced virtually to the team, via an org chart, express interest in meeting the project manager, and am told: it is THE PROJECT MANAGER! You do not speak to him, he is not aware of your presence, avert your eyes if he is in the room, for he is the Lord!
The best I could do was the Site Superintendent, with whom we later had lots of fun playing poker. But on that first day, I got to meet Jim* (all names are changed because it is customary, and they are all dead, so as not to hurt feelings).
So, I am walked into Jim’s office. Jim was the kinda guy who smoked the cheapest, nastiest, stinkiest cigars, because he claimed that the workers will smell the smoke 15 minutes beforehand, and 30 minutes after, so they will work harder thinking he was still around. Jim looks at me, and asks, what is your name, son? I answer. He asks, where did you go to uni? I answer. Then he asks, do you jerk off? I am stunned, being the wet behind the ears professional, but respond yes. He says, good, at least I know you are not a god damn liar! End of the conversation, off I go to work.
Once you are in the wider workforce, there are other hazing techniques. Hey, Mark, go get me a 2×4 stretcher! (2 inch x 4 inch being a standard measure of wood) – fell for that one. Hey, Mark, go to Home Depot (USA version of Bunnings) and get me a 5 gallon bucket of green slack, but don’t get the blue one – fell for that, too. Hey, Mark, go get me a 12 inch raping tool – got clued in on that one – joke being you are sent all around the site from one foreman to the next, who are all in on it, until you get to Bill*, a midget with a beard so thick, all you can see is his eyes and nose, and he unzips. Fun!
Next job, we had George*. George was an ex-Hells Angels bikie, 6’4″ (tall), 300 pounds (big), 5 kids, 4 teeth. Did a 12-year stint in federal prison for running guns across state lines. Nicest guy, if you got the balls to get to know him, which I did, and we had a lot of fun bikie runs from Orlando to Daytona, but that is another story. So George finally figured out what causes kids, and got a vasectomy. And it didn’t go as well as planned. George being George, he let some boys on site know about the procedure, and when he got back he was sore for some time. So he got a nickname, which stuck, as Cowboy George, because he was shooting blanks. He was pissed at first, but in a few years got to embrace his new nickname.
So by now you get to see the fun stuff that went on in the Florida construction world, and the interactions between us.
Which brings us to the story. I linked the official newspaper article so you don’t think I am making this all up.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1998-04-22-9804220645-story.html
On another job we had this guy, Jim (James officially, to us known as Jim) Wheeler (real name – see the link). Yet, what the newspaper doesn’t tell you, is the best part.
You see, Jim was the sort of a guy who always had his best intentions at heart, but always managed to fuck it up. We all know those people. Jim would go on a bender on a Tuesday night, and be at the job site at 6:30 in the morning behind a front-end loader to do what needed to be done to get the crews going.
Now, I have been at the wheel of that machine, and it requires full concentration sober. And Jim was truly upset if he got pulled from behind the wheel and got put on the shovel or sent home, because all he wanted to do was to contribute. Jim loved his job, he loved his crew, it was most of his life. Aye, he cherished his job!
So one day Jim, for whatever reason, could not reconcile his bank accounts. This resulted in a bank calling for a repossession of his car, which was duly towed, leaving Jim with no means to get to and from work. Jim decided that the best way for him to make sure he was at work in the morning was to sleep in a 60 inch pipe stored on site, which he managed for a week or so.
He got found out by the Site Superintendent, who was the God’s voice on Earth (see above), and was told that it wasn’t going to cut it. So Jim made his way to his home base (~45min drive from the site), and decided to get his car back!
His car was financed through a local bank, so Jim thought that his local branch of the bank would have the loan papers there. Again, he wanted to be able to get back to work, that was his motivation! He did not know, or did not think that the actual papers were held in some sort of office a thousand miles away. So Jim walks into the bank, goes to the teller, and demands his loan papers back. He has a Snickers bar in a paper bag to make his point. The teller shits themselves and explains to Jim that the papers ain’t there. So Jim says, give me all your cash, and walks out. Cops can’t find him. Jim vanishes! But he reports to work.
A few weeks after, as the cash has dried out, Jim goes back. To the same bank. To the same branch. With a Snickers bar in the paper bag. Robs them again, and walks out again. Cops are looking, but can’t find the robber.
Later in the day they get him. Jim went to the local bottle shop, got whatever he got, got drunk and passed out in a public park on a bench. Local patrol picked him up with a paper bag stuffed with cash.
Jim got 20 years in federal prison for two bank robberies.
Geert Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany.
“In the summary appended, I am sharing my informed predictions on the health impact these pandemics will entail in different subgroups of a highly vaccinated population. While these new pandemics are developing, the super C-19 pandemic I’ve been warning about is coming our way soon. In highly vaccinated countries, it will definitely overhaul the pandemics mentioned above. This is because massive replacement of ‘natural infection-acquired’ immunity to SC-2 by ‘imperfect’ vaccine-induced immunity is now driving the evolution of the C-19 pandemic in highly vaccinated countries. This will not be the case in poorly vaccinated countries where natural immunity has been largely preserved and the population is often much younger (e.g., African countries).”
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/the-immuno-epidemiological-consequences-of-the-mass-vaccination-experiment-summary
Here is the technical non-layman version:
Immuno-epidemiologic ramifications of the C-19 mass vaccination experiment: Individual and global health consequences
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/immuno-epidemiologic-ramifications-of-the-c-19-mass-vaccination-experiment-individual-and-global-health-consequences
“It will also no longer be possible to vaccinate children with other live attenuated childhood vaccines once they’ve gotten the Covid-19 shot for these vaccines could now cause severe disease. So, the C-19 vaccine could be a death sentence for a young child!”
Why do you think they are pushing this so hard, especially for the kids.
Because they don’t want an unvaccinated control group to be able to compare the coming outbreaks to.
Huh, thought Geert was just another grifter in the Andrew Wakefield mould.
https://www.houstonpress.com/news/a-possible-new-anti-vaccine-scam-is-on-the-rise-11591162
From the article
looks like his crime has been speaking out against groupthink.
aside from that, seems like he was generally more right than wrong – lots of variants, vaccinated people are indeed carriers, virus is indeed largely immune from vaccine….
More problematic is the paragraphs that follow:
If one appears to have a poor grasp of the basic underlying science, it doesn’t matter whether one is more right than wrong, as this is more likely to be due to chance as opposed to having a superior explanatory model.
but senor Gouda, that article merely claims that he has a poor grasp on the science. It’s an ad hominem smear piece.
why should we prefer ramussen’s views to VDB’s? The only thing that article points to is “credentialism”. Ramussen published some papers recently.
one could say in the 1930s that Wittgenstein should be ignored, because he hasn’t published a paper for 15 years…. and that would clearly be a mistake. Same goes for believing the well-credentialed modellers … https://www.ezfka.com/2021/12/22/new-doherty-institute-modelling-shows-1-trillion-australians-will-die-of-omicron-if-boosters-not-mandated-immediately/
anyhow, while I don’t have enough science in me to have a personal technical view on how this is more likely to work, if VDB has been more right than wrong so far, and the credentialed folks have been more wrong than right (as seems to be the case), then it seems to me the question of who has the better grasp on the underlying science is probably still open.
Apart from how similar leaky vaccines drove the virulence and pathology of Marek’s disease, which is exactly how it worked.
The more virulent strains that evolved are only dangerous to UNvaccinated chickens though
Nobody can predict which way THAT might break in humans.
the narrative was slanted to create fear that unvaccinated are going to be fucked. So far, that’s not been the case.
but it’s quite possible that it will turn out that way.
so you’re going to remain unvaccinated while the experience with Marek’s disease has shown you are likely to get fucked by increasingly virulent COvid-19 ?
It seems to me you just change your reasoning to suit your pre-determined course of action or feelings
Nobody can avoid that completely. But I do try to be impartial.
the thumbnail sketch of my thinking is:
so there is no case to take one of the original faulty vaccines.
as to potential future variants of covid (evolutions? …releases…?) a separate assessment will need to be made. Same for future vaccines.
you seem to be heavily defending Prof vanden Bosche
He has no relevant qualifications, and the theory he has posited you have decided to disregard anyway?
Everyone here has very strong cognitive biases
You all desperately want vaccines to be a disaster for humanity, when the reality is probably more towards the middle
Similarly, they previously wanted the government to be “printing money” because asset prices were going up (instead of it just being an irrational bubble)
Then when asset prices started falling, they pretended all this money was never printed it was obviously a bubble, and that a collapse in house prices was inevitable
You’ve got about 3 separate ideas in your post. so I’ll comment briefly.
the Bosch:
The ‘xxines
“Asset prices falling after money has been printed, therefore money printing didn’t contribute to price rises” is a silly position for a bunch of reasons, including
a similar fallacy might be “the ground is not wet, so it has never rained”
The unvaxxed may get fucked by more virulent covid because you sheep keep putting this useless shit into yourself. Is that how it works?
yes
i mean if i was an evil mastermind, that’s exactly what I would do
Release a fairly benign virus, get everyone to panic, use this as an excuse to increase autocratic powers, and give the grateful masses a “vaccine”
Then deliver a new (or evolve) a virus, which is actually protected against by the former “vaccine”
That way I would kill off all the rebellious disagreeable types, and leave just the malleable sheep
Geez, thank Gawd I’m not a chicken then.
Following multiple generations of viruses and chickens.
Chickens life spans are far shorter than humans. If there were 30 yr old unvaccinated chickens that had been exposed to Marie’s disease 30yrs years ago and gained natural immunity, they would still be better off than freshly vaccinated chickens.
If that proves true then the unvaccinated can always run out and get vaccinated or unlike chickens simply stay home and avoid crowds lol.
But you can’t ever get it out of your system.
https://citizensparty.org.au/media-releases/nuclear-most-expensive-form-energy
Pollies wouldn’t lie to us would they?
We were so poor, we could only afford the 2 colour one.
luxury, the 2 colour pen… we were lucky if we had a no-colour pen so we did not have to use our blood to write
😉
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iEIApUNVBKg
We were so poor, we had to chuck rocks at each other for fun. Mum would hit us for playing with our food.
Speaking about “cool stories”…
University dropout buys apartment without parental help, EZFKA housing crisis aborted.
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/harry-22-just-bought-a-705k-apartment-without-help-from-his-parents-20220707-p5azv4
He is a would-be investor:
Also the “as interest rates rose he noticed…” is largely a lie – he bought in MAY – after the very first rate rise.
so the messaging in the article seems to be:
😃
Are they wrong though ?
Not wrong. Elizabeth Bay would be rock solid long term investment for a young person if they can afford it, in my opinion
they bloke will probably be out by now!
still, it’s a pretty tough sentence for a snickers bar in a paper bag, hey?
if he had done robbed a convenience store that way, do you think he’d still get 20 years? Or is this harsh punishment part of the broader framework set up to give banks a special coddled and privileged status?
Bank robbery by Snickers Bar not once but twice probably deserves some kind of an award!
Back then, yes.
These days they charge the guy working there with murder when he defends himself
Shit like that make’s me wonder about some of the more out there theories mentioned here.
Lol – another body just floated to the surface. Blockchain.com just announced a $270m loss due to 3AC
More to come
Lol
That’s awesome!