Halloween Is Nothing Special When Every Day Is Terrifying

So many stories today, so little time. Let’s just jump right into it. Starting in zero-covid-crazy China, we pull this from the “Be careful what you wish for” category:

The article mentions that at least the trapped parkgoers will have the rides running and accessible while they’re inside. Which makes me think of the WORKERS who are trapped inside as well — are they just forced to work as if everything’s normal while they’re also trapped?

These snap lockdowns are taking place all over China, leading to a fairly hefty decline in China’s GDP. Earlier I wrote about how China was using covid passes as a form of dissention control. Perhaps that’s at the heart of these new lockdowns — or maybe the leaders are just too attached to their plans.

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In the least surprising thing that has ever happened, ever:

Rare but expected!

Meanwhile:

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More revelations about the government’s policing of ‘misinformation’ on social media were published by The Intercept today, and it’s a GREAT rundown of what we’ve learned over the last couple years:

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that these are the exact issues that ‘private companies’ were banning users for speaking about. Private companies can do what they want! And sometimes that meaning banning speech, like just happened to famous hyperbolist Steven Crowder.

This is happening so often that’s it hard to keep track, but maybe it’s ALSO been going on longer than we realize………

I’m going to reach DEEEEEEEP into the memory hole and bring up something that most of you probably forgot about:

Fresh on the heels of an epic smackdown that should have ended the political career of Kamala Harris, searches for Tulsi Gabbard were exploding across the country. Just as Surfer Tulsi was about to crest a huge wave, her ad account was suspended:

“Of course it’s just an honest mistake!” Google cried. “THOSE PEKSY AUTOMATED SYSTEMS, you know how they are!” (Sounds exactly like Twitter and Facebook when walking back ‘bad’ bans)

Tulsi ultimately lost her lawsuit, which attacked Google from a First Amendment perspective. At the time, I thought this strategy was a mistake because the First Amendment is very specific to government restrictions on speech. (I thought the better attack was breach of contract — it should be OBVIOUS that a Democratic candidate is going to see ‘unusual activity’ just after an early debate and Google should have been ready for that) However, it looks like Tulsi may have been the first (or one of the first) to be harmed because of her 2020-related political speech — and it may have been a First Amendment violation after all.

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The Paul Pelosi story keeps getting weirder and weirder.

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I don’t want to spend too much time piling onto Emily Oster today, but I DO want to spend A LITTLE time piling onto Emily Oster today. Her article in The Atlantic has already been ripped to pieces by bad cat and eugyppius (and on Twitter), but I do want to highlight one line:

Luck had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. The official data at official covid websites has ALWAYS contradicted the official narrative. Always. The issue is that people like Emily (who claims to be “Unapologetically Data-Driven”) didn’t actually go and look at that data themselves (or didn’t understand it when they did).

Edit: Covid superstar AJ Kay has also weighed in, and it’s a doozy.

But even if people like Emily WERE correct on the data, they would have STILL mishandled the response — science can tell us what a risk is (or can when it’s honest), but it CANNOT tell us if that risk is acceptable for us personally. Removing the rights of your fellow citizens because YOU are scared is never virtuous. Her entire article reminds me of this scene:

Emily is not the one who gets to declare a tie.