Temperance of the Ages

There were a thousand ways to view these things. Ancient intelligences, different intelligences. He remained surprised and fascinated by what most interested them; nothing, really, like he might have expected. None of these things were new. None were unstudied. "Let's just get rid of the experts." But these were different times; and even they, in all those vast distances of time, had changed. Nothing was static. The old gods were gods no more. The manifestations that worked amongst primitive people did not work in the 21st Century. The flux and flows, from Constantine to the present day, worked for a time. They didn't work now. 

He knew, now, as he dealt with the distress, despair and discomfort of a dying parent. All death is ignoble, the ancient voices told him. Strangely, they were less fascinated by the mortality of humans than they were by the ancient forests to which he was suddenly so attracted. 

"It's a shit storm," one of the Watchers on the Watch explained to him. 

Because, watch out. Yes humans are mortal, but we are not, not in your sense. 

The country in which he found himself, that ancient, strange southern land, that prize in a rhapsody of beauty that had once been so prized, destroyed now by avarice and mismanagement and old fashioned greed, was all the more poignant because of the impending death of those around him. He wanted to feel compassion, or understanding, or something, but instead he went soaring across an ancient breed, he knew what they wanted and failed to comprehend. You cannot weaponise everything. We did not come in peace. There is a reason you are frightened. And it's not just because of your idiot bosses and basket case managers. It's not just because of the narrow fields in which they operate. It's not just because of a willful blindness. 

We came we saw we conquered. We didn't think like you. We didn't have the same goals as you. We didn't aim to please. 

The country was just as insane, insaner, than it had been last week, last month, last year. It was all going to hell in a terrible ferment. The false dawn, or false dusk, the fool's gold of a sunset which appeared almost normal, was already fraying at the edges. 

Perhaps what was most astonishing about that era was that so much of it was in plain sight, that so much of the devolution was easily painted or predicted, that here in the now, in these painful winds and disturbed currents, more would be revealed. He still remembered how extraordinary it had felt, the first feel of cold air on skin. Now they were here and well entrenched, invisible to the naked eye. 

The gold standard psychotropics were for another day. The sanctuary had been breached. The warning signs were everywhere; and everywhere ignored. 

We would come to you in nighttime. We would come to you in laughter. We could feel up through your passions and try to understand, but in the end cared little for ancient moralities and conventions. 

You think you know everything? You think your comfortable salaries, your cosy contracts to do basically nothing, and your above the human average intelligence quotients would save you? Come think again. 

Frothing madness is just around the corner; societal collapse.

The veneer of civilisation is three days thick.  

HEADLINES

Spectator. Ramesh Thakur.

Masks are dehumanising and a potent force for stoking mass fear. Facial expressions are crucial in social interactions, including for babies. Compulsory masking for everyone in all settings is a gross violation of fundamental human rights. It can be justified only if the evidence for their efficacy in community protection is compelling and the risk of harms is negligible. Instead, mask mandates have been heavy on fear-mongering and virtue-signalling but light on data and science, overturning, in a couple of months, cumulative scientific consensus built over decades. The empirical data from around the world last year mostly validates the previous consensus. Rather than protect communities, masks have given politicians delusions of omnipotence and liberated some cops to indulge their inner thugs against peaceful dissenters, as we saw in Melbourne.

Government directives have been riddled with scientific illiteracy. There’s no need for masks inside a car, for a family playing in a park or on the beach separated from others, or for a solitary farmer on his tractor in a lonely paddock in country Victoria. 

Guy Campbell: Have never seen so much wasted time, disruption & effort & cost to the whole system. One of the main aspects I teach is optimising use of investigations, treatments, referral etc to achieve best outcomes at maximum efficiency which is the opposite to our management of Covid. Still can’t understand why Ivermectin not being trialled more heavily ,

As we all agree madder and madder  

Journalist Megyn Kelly says President Biden was “fantasising” when he talked about unity after winning the 2020 election. Ms Kelly said even the Democrats who at first seemed to be in favour of unifying the country actually were intent on unifying as a party behind the president’s agenda. Speaking of the current state of the US, Ms Kelly said “they’re just too divided. It’s never going to happen”. “Maybe the country could have been focused on this COVID relief package if he hadn’t been lecturing us all on our alleged white supremacy just because of pigmentation from the beginning of his term,” she told Sky News. “He couldn’t have picked a more divisive issue.”

Victoria has introduced changes to hotel quarantine amid mystery virus leaks

Two New York Times journalists have left the paper over separate controversies involving racist and sexist behavior, including its high-profile Covid-19 reporter Donald McNeil, following disclosures about his use of a racist slur while on a company-sponsored student trip.

The departures of McNeil and audio journalist, Andy Mills, a co-creator of the Daily podcast and a producer and co-host of the now partially retracted Caliphate podcast, come amid a wider reckoning across over racism and abusive behavior within American newsrooms.

Mills’ departure, unlike McNeil’s, also follows a major journalistic failure: the revelation that a central source in the Times’ award-winning Caliphate podcast about the Islamic State, who had offered lurid audio testimony about his supposed role in Isis executions, may have been a fabulist who had duped the Times with claims that could not be independently corroborated.

Authorities say ventilation is unlikely to be behind mystery infections in hotel quarantine as Victoria plans to review air flow to prevent future virus leaks while introducing some changes already.

Hotel quarantine workers must now wear face shields instead of just N95 masks as the chief health officer admitted the exact cause of transmission in the latest case may never be known.

Other quarantine changes include putting “buffers” between family groups and other guests and staggering food delivery times while CCTV could be installed on all floors of every hotel.

Australia recorded another day of no locally acquired cases as Western Australia’s snap five-day lockdown ended on Saturday and the premier announced WA’s vaccine rollout would begin with priority groups on February 22.

Victoria’s Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville, appointed to oversee the revamped hotel quarantine program, said the government wasn’t “leaving any stone unturned” in its quest for answers.

“We don’t think this is about ventilation,” she said.

“We rejected a number of hotels … and the ones that we have used throughout this program are hotels that do not share air between rooms and into common areas.

“But we’re looking at (whether) there is anything we can do to strengthen our ventilation systems across the program.”

The moves follow a hotel quarantine worker at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt hotel testing positive for the highly infectious UK variant of coronavirus and a potential case of guest-to-guest transmission at the Park Royal hotel.