Cool visuals of SpaceX Dragon nighttime splashdown 11:56pm off Panama City, Florida Saturday, May 1, 2021

Time from undock from ISS to splashdown was fewer than seven hours.

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Racist FDA is going to ban menthol cigarettes

I never thought I'd admit that there is, in fact, systemic racism in America, but there it is.

What's next, fried chicken and watermelon?

Story.

Ain't it great to be a Democrat?

Ann Coulter's best tweet ever

 

"America is an idea, not a place, not a people" is the BIG LIE mantra of neo-conservatism and libertarianism. 

If that's true, one should be able to explain it, write it down, teach it, and put it into practice successfully anywhere. No need to come here for it.

And of course it isn't just an idea. Millions come here and never come to learn it anymore. Millions more aren't taught it in school anymore, and don't see it in practice at home anymore.

That's why the country is a mess.

A famous Italian-American once had it figured out, as I, a German-American, once had it figured out. He starts in, in earnest, at about minute ten:

Ice-Out in Nenana Alaska happened and I didn't even realize it

When I checked the Nenana Ice Cam yesterday the Tripod was still standing on the ice, but I didn't realize the event was already over.

It seems the ice broke up just enough to allow the Tripod to move a short distance to trip the clock in the tower it is attached to by a long cable.

The hitch was most of the ice was still in the river, and the Tripod evidently flowed upstream only just a little, which is to the right on the screen, and very odd. Normally it flows downstream, obviously.

I should have realized something was up because the flag rope was down, lying on the ice.

When I checked a few hours later the Tripod was gone and the water was flowing and I realized I had missed it as the ice cam page had the message:

THE ICE OFFICIALLY BROKE AND THE CLOCK STOPPED ON APRIL 30TH, 2021 AT 12:50 PM AST. THE 2021 JACKPOT IS $233,591.00 

Should have looked for that message the first time.

The Washington Times had the story here.

So add another Ice-Out to the period April 30-May 7 when the vast majority of them have occurred anyway since 1917. The National Weather Service pretty much nailed it predicting April 29-May 5.

Hard to go wrong with that in any year, to be honest.

In the just 5 months since Joe Biden won the mail-in vote, the purchasing power of the dollar has already declined by 1.56%

 

The Great War, depression, gold confiscation, dollar devaluation, fiat money, More War, and inflationary monetary policy all have done a real number on the dollar long before this, so it's understandable if no one really notices anymore. 

We're witnessing a seemingly infinite division in a race to the bottom. 

Meanwhile in Apocalypse Watch, strong earthquake activity was muted in 2019-2020, but the first four months of 2021 have been busy

 

That Obama guy did an outstanding job of screwing up health insurance, and raising the price of hamburger, and Biden isn't far behind him

 

Hamburger in this data series averages $4.04/lb in March 2021.

141 pages of vaccine horror stories

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uS4krGJX-7sa8fuRlH7mhod-Xa5ZBsXU/view

The longer the pandemic continues, the more it looks to be a seasonal, 2-hump phenomenon

 

The Africa graph is the most compelling, since it represents the "control continent" where there has been the least human intervention to shape the progress of the disease in comparison with developed world places like Europe and North America.

But even Israel shows the phenomenon, as do California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. Early attempts to keep the virus at bay reduced the size of hump one, here more, here less, depending on the varying local containment efforts and the varying degree to which people complied with them.

Homo proponit, sed coronavirus disponit.

COVID-19 globally isn't over by a long shot, unfortunately

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit the 570k mark

 

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US are up 27% Mar 16-Apr 22, 2021

 

The face when you thought you tuned in to the oldies station but got the chucklehead playing Rush Limbaugh reruns instead

 

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Even calling NASA's helicopter on Mars a helicopter is a gross exaggeration: It's a frickin' drone and doesn't even have room for Buzz Lightyear

Dimensions: Fuselage (body): 5.4 in × 7.7 in × 6.4 in

Someone should tell NASA Mars helicopter team that a Wright Brothers moment requires a HUMAN piloting a PLANE

NASA scores Wright Brothers moment with first helicopter flight on Mars :

"The twin-rotor whirligig's debut on the Red Planet marked a 21st-century Wright Brothers moment for NASA . . .. NASA engineers affixed a tiny swath of wing fabric from the original Wright flyer under Ingenuity's solar panel before sending it on its way to Mars."

Nothing captures the ridiculous character of the present exaggerated age better than this celebration over a 3-meter helicopter flight on Mars

 

                                                                                                         Dare Mighty Things!

US COVID-19 update Mar 20 - Apr 17, 2021

Hospitalized Mar 20: 33164

                     Apr 17: 39090

                     +18%

Case positivity rate Mar 20: 4.5%

                                Apr 13: 7.6%

                                +69%

Daily new deaths per million Mar 20: 3.13

                                               Apr 17:  2.17

                                               -31%

Daily new deaths Mar 20: 1038

                             Apr 17:   719

                             -31%

But . . .

The bi-weekly change in confirmed deaths was dropping much faster on Mar 23, 37.15%, than it is on Apr 17, 7.4%. Indeed, the Mar 23 low was a retest of the 2020 low from last June 2 at 33.6%, after the initial outbreak of the pandemic subsided. It is itself the new low in the series.

There's been a dramatic slow down in the drop of bi-weekly change. The measure has itself been consistently rising since the advent of spring.

 

That doesn't make any sense in an environment in which increased vaccination, which is supposed to reduce severity of illness and therefore hospitalization and death, is occurring.

Share fully vaccinated Mar 20: 12.9%

                                     Apr 17: 24.7%

                                     +91%

Hospitalizations are clearly up, and deaths are falling but at a much slower rate than they were falling when there was much less vaccination, and colder weather, in the country.

Warmer weather is supposed to mean improving conditions. People get outside and get fresh air and Vitamin D, reducing spread of the infection. That's the theory anyway.

But the data say otherwise.

Daily new confirmed cases per million hit an interim low of 162.17 on Mar 14, and retested that on Mar 23 at 162.12. As of Apr 16 the figure is 211.77, up 31%. Those levels are nothing to write home about. ~100 per million, as in September 2020, would be.

This virus has a mind of its own. 

Homo proponit, sed SARS-CoV-2 disponit.

LOL, US C19 case positivity has risen to 7.6% from 7.0% in a week, but now some experts are moving the goalposts saying positivity doesn't matter anymore, hospitalizations do

 

All righty then!

C19 hospitalizations are up 2.5k over the period.

It still amazes me that I actually thought in March 2020 that the US and South Korea would travel similar pandemic trajectories

South Korea is an open society. It's not a lie like China.

Just look at this outcome. 

We are so pathetic.

LOL, Drudge is still running the show after all

"His clients, many Jews like Madoff and Jewish charities, said they didn’t know."

Seasonality: It's uncanny how C19 daily new cases seem to have bottomed around astronomical spring, March 20th

 

Hospitalizations, currently at 37,933, also seem to have done the same thing.

The National Weather Service predicts Ice-Out for the Tanana River at Nenana will be at the usual time, with river ice normal depth after big cold snap in February and March into April

 

C19 case growth in South America and Asia is out of control, still on the rise in North America with the US case positivity rate soaring

 

The US case positivity rate should concern everyone. It's up over 60% since mid March to 7%. Epidemics are considered out of control at 10%.

The irony is full vaccination in the US is up a nearly identical percentage since mid March.

We continue to hear this is a race against cases, which came down by themselves dramatically without vaccinations, and now are rising quite smartly with them.

This should not be happening if the vaccines work.

The Israelis have released preliminary results of a study showing outsized C19 breakthrough cases of the South African variant in patients who received the Pfizer vaccine, calling into question Pfizer's own claims about this. 

Michigan has rapidly turned into a COVID-19 basket case

Michigan is increasingly failing to cope with COVID-19.

It's now Number One for daily new cases per 100k of population in the 7, 14, and 30 day measures.

And in the last 7 days Michigan now ranks Number One for daily new cases period, beating out New York.

Amazingly, Michigan is now Number Two in the nation for C19 hospitalizations.

A month ago, on Mar 9, it wasn't even in the top 14 for hospitalizations.

As recently as Mar 22 it was ninth.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths reach 560k, big backfill in Oklahoma this week added momentum

 

Ice-Out for The Nenana Ice Classic is going to be delayed, but it's too late to buy your ticket anyway

All-time April low could fall in Alaskan city :

"A cold snap this extreme in April hasn’t been experienced in the Fairbanks area since 1911, when three consecutive record lows were set from April 9-11," Duff said. Two of these record lows are likely to be challenged during the latest cold wave, including Thursday night’s record of minus 16 F and Friday night’s record of minus 32 F.

Nenana Ice Classic 2021 

Hey! Where's the rope on that thing?

Earliest Ice-Out ever since 1917 was April 14 (2019).

Meanwhile my basic thesis is that this C19 epidemic continues to spread because 62% of men and 40% of women don't wash after using the loo

The data come from the largest study ever done on hand-washing years ago. You will find similar results in other smaller studies.

Do YOU always wash your hands after going to the loo? 62% of men and 40% of women admit they don't bother 

So that's roughly 51% of the population walking around NOT doing the most basic thing they should be doing under normal circumstances.

That agrees remarkably well with the Nature study on mask-wearing, which found that there is only 49% compliance.

Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States: 

"the national average for self-reported mask wearing was 49% as of 21 September 2020"

I'm assuming it's much less than 49% however, because this data is from self-reporting, not observation.

Be that as it may, the main point is that with nearly half of a given population failing on basic hygiene, it's ridiculous to assume that those same people during a pandemic are going to comply with the litany of things which need to be done to stop the spread of the disease. 

You can't get them to wash their hands after using the loo, let alone wear a mask, wear a mask properly, social distance, quarantine themselves when exposed, quarantine themselves when sick, and on and on.

Results have indeed varied from state to state.

Michigan is a great example. We locked down hard at the beginning, closed everything, wore masks, yada yada yada, and suppressed the epidemic quite well until we couldn't stand it anymore. It caught up with us anyway.

And now the UK variant is giving it to us good and hard this spring. 

People gonna people. Virus gonna virus.

Michigan's graph of new confirmed cases for the whole history of the C19 epidemic shows it is a seasonal phenomenon

 

Michigan's reaction to the initial outbreak was a freakout, a lockdown which suppressed the outbreak.

As the epidemic has evolved, however, along with the response, it is clear that a spring, fall, spring pattern has developed.

The fall outbreak subsided on its own, before the introduction of the mass vaccination effort.

And cases since then are rising dramatically now, despite the vaccines.

The hospitalization graph shows the same thing.

Michigan is into its third wave of hospitalizations for coronavirus infection and has moved up to fourth in the nation for current hospitalizations for the disease