The Ridiculous Mask

Things are in flux as they always are. No habit or fashion ever remains in vogue for long before there's a change, and this goes as much for mask wearing as anything else. This means that any message we send out regarding the state of the world must also change, or else loose its power to impress, amuse and entertain.

When mask wearing was a new and novel idea, promoted as a precautionary measure and entirely voluntary, I refused to wear it. As it became more and more mandatory, I came up with more and more outrageous ways to wear it. I eventually adapted a Dandy-thug style. Then I toned it down a bit as people became less fanatic. And now I've found another way to wear my mask, more in line with the fact that people are waking up to the idiocy of the mandate.

I wear my mask folded double so that it never covers both mouth and nose. I sometimes wear it under my chin. I sometimes wear it over my mouth with both chin and nose exposed, and I sometimes wear it over my nose with my mouth and chin exposed. This last option looks ridiculous, and has the effect of confusing people. They don't know how to react. They are used to masks worn properly, under the chin or just below the nose. Never do they come across someone wearing the mask above their nose.

When I feel in a particularly good mood, I move my mask about with my finger. I wear it under my chin for a while. I move it up to hide my mouth when I feel that's appropriate, and I move it up above my nose when I feel like taking the Mickey out of someone. This is especially tempting when I see prim and proper Faucists coming down the other way. Let them see for themselves how ridiculous the whole thing is!

I haven't been stopped in the street for my improper mask wearing ever since I adopted my current Dandy-thug dress code. However, if anyone stops me, I will no longer aim to scare them. I will instead push my double-folded mask up above my nose. Then, when they object, I'll pull it off my nose and across my mouth instead. I'll make a ridiculous show of it before I continue my walk.

Dandy-thug dress code

Strategic Positioning

I got a reply from Mr Cork to my latest e-mail. It was even shorter than his first reply, but with an invitation to meet after summer, and with a link to a manual on sustainable forestry in PDF format. He also asked for more information about my fund, which confused me somewhat, since there's not that much more for me to add to what I already told him. However, I read into this that he might want to see something a little more substantial than what I can come up with. I'm a small fish, and it's a bit of a miracle that he's spending any time on me at all.

I need to come up with things that may be of value to Mr Cork beyond my limited means. Ideally, I should give him some leads into Norway, and luckily for me, I know of two people in Norway who are of the same calibre as Mr Cork. These people may not be directly interested in business in Portugal, but they are well connected and talkative. If sufficiently impressed, they will talk warmly about Mr Cork to their friends in Norway.

I first found it odd that Mr Cork sent me a manual on sustainable forestry. I had signalled an interest in passive ownership of land, and the manual is not aimed at that at all. It promotes active ownership, bio-diversity, and eco-tourism as healthy alternatives to the corporate plantation model. But this too is a message. I got a feeling that Mr Cork wants people to come in and buy land, and develop it with eco-tourism in mind. He can then sell his less productive land and focus more on harvesting and maintenance services. If done correctly, there should be a win-win situation. Foreign owners reap the profits from tourism while Mr Cork retains the cash flow from the cork with less hassle and expenses related to the upkeep of land.

Done correctly, a well kept forest will produce wildlife suitable for safaris and private hunting. Families can come to Portugal to get an experience similar to Africa. The wildlife is different, but the landscape is much the same. Furthermore, Portugal has a rich history and heritage. There's always a castle or town in the area worth a visit.

It's easy to see the potential in this. A person like me can buy a relatively small farm with a herb garden, fruit trees, and a few hectares of land nestled inside a larger forest owned by Mr Cork. The farm acts as a hub for eco-tourism. Some agreement is made between the farmer and Mr Cork, in which his land is used for safaris and hunts against a fee. Mr Cork can also step in with cash to buy jeeps and the like for the safari part of the business.

My guess is that Mr Cork has this and several other possibilities in mind. The trick is then for me to come up with sensible and realistic possibilities to match whatever he comes up with. I need to work on my contacts in Norway without being pushy or intrusive, and I've started this process by adding some relevant people to my Facebook friends list. I've also sent a message to one of my contacts, asking him if he's still interested in a trip to Portugal, once the plague is behind us.

The idea is to alert people to my existence so that they don't get too surprised if I message them about something related to Portugal this fall. The intensity of this depends on how remote they are from me. Relevant friends living here in Porto, will be invited over for dinner to talk cork and tourism. Relevant immediate family, like my son who's a chef at a restaurant in Norway, will get a phone call or two from me. More peripheral people will get a friend request, friendly message, or whatever makes sense.

Cork oak forest

By Berrocal1950 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Cloaks and Daggers

When it comes to politics, no-one ever knows what exactly is going on. There's no single entity in charge. It's all a continuous battle for control. However, this doesn't mean that it's impossible to get an overall idea of what's happening below the surface.

My impression is that the generals are making moves to stop and reverse some of the more outrageous things going on at the moment, and that this will be done trough a purge of certain voices.

Seen in this perspective, this latest story related to Fauci's book is revealing. Read superficially, we get the impression that people high up in Amazon and Barns and Noble have decided to pull his book due to waning popularity. But the fact that both companies came to the this conclusion at more or less the same time indicate coordination. There's also unexplained circumstances related to leaked e-mails and change in narrative related to the Wuhan bio-lab.

Someone is putting their weight behind things under the surface, and it would not surprise me if the top brass in Amazon and Barns and Noble got a call or two from high level military personnel, highlighting the dangers of being too closely associated with traitors. They may even have ended their conversations with a friendly invitation to join them for a helicopter ride above the Pacific where things can be discussed more candidly and without any danger of eavesdropping.

If I'm right about the generals, we should see more of this type of reversal going forward. Stories will change, and people will fall out of favour. While the military may itself make some arrests at the end of their purge, it may never be necessary to be that explicit. The purge may in its entirety go the way of Fauci, and the casual observer will merely register a change in sentiment, without ever suspecting the role of the military.

The mask of the beast

Peer Pressure

One of my wife's brothers got his vaccine shot as soon as he had the chance. His wife got vaccinated as well, and now he's calling my wife pretty much every day, asking her when she's going to get her shot.

Exasperated with her brother, my wife asked me what I made of it, and it occurred to me then that my brother in law isn't calling my wife because of some deep conviction on his side, or because of a genuine concern for my wife's health. Rather, he's calling her because he is himself uncertain about the wisdom in what he's done. What he wants is a confirmation from his sister that he did the right thing. He wants my wife to take the shot so that he can feel the safety that comes from knowing he's not alone.

This is the same psychology that's behind investment advice coming from friends and family, often at parties and family gatherings. The ones insisting that Bitcoin is a great investment are in fact desperately insecure about their decision. They have only a vague understanding of what they've gotten themselves into, and seek to boos their confidence by getting others involved as well. It's the safety in numbers logic of the masses.

Thinking back to when I used to talk passionately about my investments to friends and family, I realize in retrospect that this psychology was what drove me. Now that I'm more secure in my investments, I don't have the same urge to talk about them. I share my opinion with people when they ask, but I no longer push any specific advice. When I feel an urge to think things through, I write my thoughts down on this blog, and leave it at that. Similarly, when I hear people like my son talk passionately about one thing or another, I don't argue for or against what he's saying. I share my overall view and strategy, and leave it at that.

When it comes to big decisions related to our health, financial or otherwise, there's only one way to go about it. We have to think these things through ourselves, and to do this we need an overall strategy. We need to trust in something, and my personal conclusion is that financial decisions are best done based on long term trends, and that lifestyle and health issues are best done in harmony with God, aka nature.

Family

Doing an Emerson on Facebook

Scrolling my Facebook wall the other day, I was reminded of how hopeless it is to convince people of anything through argument. In a world as politically divided as ours, just about any issue becomes a matter of faith.

This is especially true with the vaccine which has become something of an obsession on both sides. My unvaccinated friend shared a critical post that showed up on my wall. A few weeks back a vaccinated friend posted enthusiastically about being vaccinated. In both cases, half the readership think them idiots, and the other half agree. Apart from that, nothing is achieved.

After scrolling past my anti-vaccine friend, I came upon a post by my pro-vaccine friend. Her post had nothing to do with vaccines. Rather, she was posting about a practical problem related to her balcony. She has a lot of potted plants, and doesn't know where to put them.

The comments weren't very helpful. One guy suggested she buy a house with a garden, and another guy told her to cut down on the number of plants. Both comments were thinly veiled insults, suggesting she's whimsical and short on money. However, I saw a solution to her problem similar to what we've done on our balcony. She should invest in two or three large plastic buckets with drainage holes. She can then plant some relatively large plants in the buckets, and surround them with her pots. That would make for a dense and lush display lined up along one side of her balcony.

I made this comment, and as I did so I couldn't help thinking of Emerson and his advice on how to deal with people during times of extreme political division. Rather than making a fuss about the political issues of the day, focus on practical matters, preferably related to nature. That's where God hides in plain sight. That's where we can make a real impact.

I'm sure my friend has categorized me as a fierce and slightly nutty right-wing conspiracy theorist who she'd normally detest. However, my comment was constructive and to the point. She thanked me for the advice, and I think she'll follows up on it. I'm sure the results will be to her liking, which would make me slightly less nutty in her opinion. But more importantly, she'd get a green and welcoming balcony where nature talks directly to her. That's always comforting, and may be especially comforting should she one day regret her decision to take the vaccine.

Nature is incredibly resilient, and will find a way to fight the vaccine's side effects in much the same way it has found a way to fight the virus itself. Hidden among her flowers, she'll pick up on this message. Even if she doesn't get ill with side effects, she'll end up more self reliant and trusting in nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

By User:Scewing derivative work: 2009 - Ralph_Waldo_Emerson_ca1857.jpg, Public Domain, Link

The Seychelles is the Most Vaccinated Nation on Earth

No nation on Earth has a higher percentage of its population vaccinated against the plague than the Seychelles, yet the number of cases there are surging. With about 75% of its population fully vaccinated, we would expect herd immunity to have set in by now, but that's not the case. Fully vaccinated people are not only getting sick, they are transmitting the disease as well. Keeping in mind that fully vaccinated individuals are less rigorously tested than unvaccinated people, the facts are even grimmer than the media admits.

Based on current testing procedures, the vaccinated population is reported to be less sick both in number and severity. However, the reality of things are likely otherwise. There's no reason to trust the official numbers due to the difference in testing practices. The vaccinated may well be more ill than the unvaccinated, like they were in Wisconsin where the fully vaccinated got five times sicker than the unvaccinated. Furthermore, the outbreak in the Seychelles fits the story of the plague ridden sportsmen where young healthy individuals who would normally not get very sick, get so ill that they had to stay home.

The official narrative is now shifting away from the idea that vaccines give close to total protection. Instead, we're told that it's better to be vaccinated than unvaccinated. We're also told that it's the unvaccinated that keep us from controlling this disease. But the day is drawing near when reality and narrative comes into conflict with each other. We're approaching a turning point, when the average person knows more people sick with the vaccine than they know of unvaccinated people being ill. When that happens, only those truly lost to propaganda will trust the official narrative and the vaccine we're told to take.

Smallpox vaccine

By Photo Credit: James Gathany Content Providers(s): CDC - This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #2674. Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers. Deutsch | English | македонски | slovenščina | +/−, Public Domain, Link

Narrative and Counter-Narrative

I've cut down on my Facebook use this year. However, every now and again I scroll down a few pages to see what people are up to. When I did this yesterday, I came across a curious post where one of my more remote friends claimed that he had an adverse reaction to being in close proximity with a couple of vaccinated friends. He got a bruise on his thigh and a migraine. Furthermore, he claimed that this was the second time he had this experience after hanging out with vaccinated friends.

I don't have much faith in this guy's claims, but I find it interesting enough to put on my list of things to look for. If I come across other such accounts, I'll give it more credit. But for now, I'm not going to take this report seriously, not least because we have my mother in law over for lunch every Sunday, and none of us have gotten any adverse reaction from her presence despite the fact that she's fully vaccinated while the rest of us aren't.

What's more interesting than the claim itself is the dynamics behind this latest scare. It mirrors a similar claim made by the vaccinated; that unvaccinated people are a danger to them. This claim is similarly difficult to believe, because a vaccine is supposed to protect those who take it. However, it's not difficult to find stories in which large number of vaccinated people have gotten sick from being in contact with unvaccinated people. It really does look like the vaccine fails to protect the vaccinated. But if that is so, why take it? The logic then turns collectivist. It will be effective, but only when everyone is fully vaccinated. We must all take the vaccine out of solidarity to everybody else.

With this kind of flimsy logic used in the official narrative, it's easy to concoct a counter-narrative in which the same logic is reversed and rehashed. The fact that misinformation like the bio-weapon theory is no longer misinformation makes this all the easier. The counter-narrative cannot be dismissed as easily as it would have if the narrative was more credible. The narrative is flawed, and demonstrably deceptive, so why believe it over the counter-narrative?

We are now faced with two opposing narratives, both founded on speculations and flimsy logic. One directs us towards lockdowns, mask-mandates and vaccines. The other directs us towards a rejection of this, and in particular the vaccine. For now, the vaccine narrative has the upper hand. However, there may come a day when the counter-narrative becomes dominant. People may become reluctant to be in the vicinity of those who are vaccinated, and that's when it will be clear to all that the decision to get the vaccine is a decision that cannot be undone. Once vaccinated, we cannot become unvaccinated, and that in itself should be cause for concern, especially with so much propaganda flying back and forth.

Great plague of London

By unknwn - http://theloveforhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/plague_380x529_712060a.jpg, Public Domain, Link