My iMac is now fully restored. Hundreds of files started disappearing in many folders. I restored a few missing files and they disappeared again in the next few hours. These spontaneous mass deletions were happening for 2 days before I noticed it. An anti-virus program said no viruses. An apple rep and a friend who repairs Apple computers said beware of problems stemming from the use of iCloud Drive. I am using auto-update on OS, but the latest (Ventura 13.2) hadn't kicked in yet..
Bottom line is that I am perfectly good now and the problem has stopped. I rotate 3 separate external drives for my backups. I also put all of my data into Dropbox Professional which has an excellent "rewind" feature that comes with diagnostic charts that let you see where and when activity is happening, also allowing selective or global restore. To make sure there were no remaining vestiges of the problem, I ended up tearing down my machine to bare metal and building it back with brand new OS, manually updating the most recent safe-seeming backup, then restoring 2.5TB of data. Then the tedious task of installing and configuring a dozen apps. I also disabled iCloud Drive. Take-aways: A) Big problems can occasionally happen even with an Apple computer. B) This was a major problem and I was prepared with ample backups, C) Dropbox Professional is worth every penny, and D) Constantly back up your computer with Time Machine, an incredibly sophisticated and easy to use program!
Tonight I tried to watch two shows on Rumble.com, but all I could see was this:
This might simply be an innocent technical issue. I hope so. When I see the entire network go down, however, I am concerned. Is this the result of an attack on Rumble.com? I hope that things get fixed and that we are advised about what happened and why. In the meantime, I find myself thinking about this article by EFF:
I'm very much aware that if the Internet Hosts decided that they would exclude certain types of information, many websites, such as mine would disappear. That is one vulnerability of many. Here are the others:
Speech on the Internet requires a series of intermediaries to reach its audience. Each intermediary is vulnerable to some degree to pressure from those who want to silence the speaker. Even though the Internet is decentralized and distributed, "weak links" in this chain can operate as choke points to accomplish widespread censorship.
The Internet has delivered on its promise of low-cost, distributed, and potentially anonymous speech. Reporters file reports instantly, citizens tweet their insights from the ground, bloggers publish to millions for free, and revolutions are organized on social networks. But the same systems that make all of this possible are dangerously vulnerable to chokeholds that are just as cheap, efficient, and effective, and that are growing in popularity. To protect the vibrant ecosystem of the Internet, it's crucial to understand how weaknesses in the chain of intermediaries between you and your audience can threaten speech.
Each of the links above represents a link in the chain of intermediaries that directly facilitate or indirectly support speech on the Internet.
Shadow Regulations are voluntary agreements between companies (sometimes described as codes, principles, standards, or guidelines) to regulate your use of the Internet, often without your knowledge.
I don't like the fact that I have so little control and that my website could be quickly erased but for the willingness of all of these entities the cut backroom deals with each other, but that is a sad fact.
I have now seen enough to regret that that I had two COVID vaccines and a booster. I accepted these jabs because I trusted the public health authorities. I will not accept any more boosters. I am not alone. In the past six months, I have spoken to at least six friends who vote Democrat--all but one of them told me that they will not accept any more boosters and that they are concerned about risks associated with the vaccines.
I follow about ten well credentialed doctors online, including Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCoullough, who raise these concerns and many others. I've seen highly disturbing evidence that many smart doctors have been shut out of the conversation for three years (and they continue to be kept out of the conversation on legacy news outlets). We did not have a real or meaningful national conversation on the risks of these vaccines compared to the risks of COVID regarding many age groups. I saw the Great Barrington Declaration disparaged for mere political reasons, not medical. Our public health authorities told us that the vaccines were extremely safe, but now I'm not convinced of that.
Our public health authorities told us many things with the utmost confidence that have now been proven untrue. And although this is anecdotal, I've seen far too many videos of young healthy people collapsing, many of them dying. Over the past several years, I saw many numbers regarding the COVID risk of death that failed to break out the numbers of those who were obese, elderly and with comorbidities, failing to separate those from those of us who are healthy or young. I found out that many hospitals were conflating death with COVID with death from COVID, thereby inflating COVID death numbers.
Prior to vaccination, I was in very good health prior to getting vaccinated, very unlikely to die of COVID, even unvaccinated. I had an adverse reaction after my 2nd vaccination and it continues to affect me (inflamed toes). I know that I was also at some risk of harm from COVID, but as I write this, I believe we have been manipulated and lied to in many ways and that I have no meaningful way to be assured whether I was at more risk of harm from the vaccine than from the disease. Maybe someday we will know for sure.
The historically wretched track record of Big Pharma for lying to us in order to make $ multiplies my concern and frustration. Everyone will have their own opinion on this topic. I'm not suggesting to anyone else what they should do, but no more boosters for me.
The evidence comes from the original double-blind, randomised control trials, that led to the approval of both Pfizer and Moderna by regulators worldwide. Malhotra explains, ‘In a reanalysis of the original trials with the Wuhan strain, eminent scientists essentially found you were more likely to suffer a serious adverse event – for example hospitalisation, disability, or a life-changing event – than you were to be hospitalised with Covid. That means, in essence, the mRNA vaccine should likely never, ever have been approved for anybody in the first place.’
1. They will need to pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands.
2. Do you really want to shut down all the restaurants that use gas to cook, including my favorite little stir fry take-out place at the end of my block.
It seems to me that many nonbelievers have forgotten—or never knew—what it is like to suffer an unhappy collision with scientific rationality. We are open to good evidence and sound argument as a matter of principle, and are generally willing to follow wherever they may lead. Certain of us have made careers out of bemoaning the failure of religious people to adopt this same attitude.
However, I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon “the fireplace delusion.” . . .
Here is what we know from a scientific point of view: There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.
A staggering new report coauthored by Professor David Vine at the Watson Institute at Brown University conservatively estimates that 37 million people, equivalent to the entire population of Canada, have been forced to flee their home country, or have become internally displaced within it by nearly two decades of unending US imperialist war. The analysis, published by the Costs of War Project, sought to quantify for the first time the number of people displaced by the United States military operations since President George W. Bush declared a “global war on terror” in September 2001 following the still unexplained attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon.
Professor Vine and his coauthors note that the 37 million estimated displaced is a “very conservative estimate,” with the real number of people displaced since September 2001, “closer to 48-59 million.” That is as much as, or more than, all of the displaced persons in World War II and therefore more than any other war in the last century. It is difficult to articulate the levels of misery, poverty, hardship, strife, pain and death visited upon entire societies and endured by millions of people.
The latest Costs of War report focused on eight countries that have been subjected to major US military operations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
. . . The authors estimate that 9.2 million people in Iraq and 7.1 million in Syria have been displaced respectively, in both cases roughly 37 percent of the prewar population. . . .Somalia, where US forces have been operating since 2002, has the highest percentage of displaced persons with 46 percent of the country or nearly 4.2 million people displaced.
Throughout the “war on terror,” the authors estimate between 770,000 and 801,000 civilians and combatants on all sides have died in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen since US forces began military operations in those countries. The number of “indirect deaths,” that is, those who weren’t confirmed killed by military weaponry, but died due to lack of healthcare, infrastructure, or food as a result of US military operations, embargoes and blockades may exceed 3.1 million, although the authors noted that credible estimates range in excess of 12 million.
Hello, I invite you to subscribe to Dangerous Intersection by entering your email below. You will have the option to receive emails notifying you of new posts once per week or more often.
