We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

Not only is it impossible to find the climate change satire in Mr. McKay’s movie that he claims is there. Alas, there’s no market for parodying the aspects most in need of parody. Millions of us have grown too comfortable pronouncing ourselves passionate about a problem we don’t bother to understand. Our politicians have stopped asking whether policies advanced in the name of climate change (e.g., electric cars) would actually have an effect on climate change. A certain kind of Harvard left-winger won’t countenance any proposal that doesn’t also fight capitalism, racism and patriarchy. A cadre of scientists make a profession of believing whatever the media needs them to believe. They are easily recognized because they employ the modifier “existential” for a climate problem that doesn’t actually threaten human existence. In this sense, “Don’t Look Up” fails not on its own terms, but on the terms its director foists on it, because no movie would be brave enough to take on the shibboleths that have subsumed the climate debate.

Holman W Jenkins Jnr, Wall Street Journal ($) He is referring to the Netflix film Don’t Look Up.

Samizdata quote of the day

The covid measures do to the social fabric what the spike protein does to the long fibered heart muscle tissue.

– A remark in a private conversation with a German gentleman

Oh but that’s different…

If big corporations or lobbyists or foreign organisations give money to politicians twitter is outraged; if charities push political agendas and are substantially funded by those – plus by catering to an officialdom whose agenda they form a reliable claque for… crickets.

Guy Herbert

Samizdata quote of the day

Censors have a fantasy that if they get rid of all the Berensons and Mercolas and Malones, and rein in people like Joe Rogan, that all the holdouts will suddenly rush to get vaccinated. The opposite is true. If you wipe out critics, people will immediately default to higher levels of suspicion. They will now be sure there’s something wrong with the vaccine. If you want to convince audiences, you have to allow everyone to talk, even the ones you disagree with. You have to make a better case. The Substack people, thank God, still get this, but the censor’s disease of thinking there are shortcuts to trust is spreading.

Matt Taibbi

Samizdata quote of the day

“Political correctness is a moral atrocity and an infallible symptom of social and cultural rot, in essence, of a reluctance to confront reality and a manifestation of the unholy terror of plain honesty. It instils a fear in ordinary folk of calling things by their right names, of speaking truth, of even of telling jokes that might offend some sensitive soul or of uttering something that seems to violate yet another in a burgeoning tally of social taboos. The result is that a culture that hides from itself cannot expect to hide from its enemies. And America, probably the most litigious country on the planet, is in the grip of this mortal disease.”

David Solway, Notes From a Derelict Culture, page 228.

Samizdata quote of the day

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

– Martin Luther King

Over the last two years, I’ve discovered a lot of ‘anti-statists’ I’d have once been certain I would count on when things got tough, turned out to be timid souls with feet of clay.

Samizdata quote of the year

Student mocks insane adults:

“Thank you for teaching students that our own mental health is much less important than making triple vaccinated adults feel safe. […] Thank you for teaching us that we should never question authority or think critically.”

Found on Twitter.

Unboostered Brits infected and dying at higher rates than unvaccinated

In fact, the UKHSA have given us a great gift, in that they finally provide separate case and severe outcome statistics for the triple-vaccinated and the double vaccinated, allowing us to compare rates across all three groups. They don’t do that themselves, of course, but no matter. We can use the raw numbers and rates from last week’s report to derive the total number of double and triple vaccinated, and the rates in this week’s report to derive the triple vaccinated population. A little subtraction then gives us a decent estimate of how many double but not triple vaccinated people there are in each age bracket.

Eugyppius

I strongly recommend reading the entire article.

Samizdata quote of the day

“It is not simply scandalous that civil servants and advisers had fun while none of us could; it is scandalous that they were the ones who imposed those rules on us and are yet to apologise for them.”

Marie Le Conte

Samizdata quote of the day

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King, another of those dangerous, probably anti-social individualists who thought people’s moral agency and capacity for self-responsibility was more important than their skin colour.

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US, for those outside the US who weren’t aware.

Samizdata quote of the day

The vaccine doesn’t protect you from the virus, the vaccine protects you from the government.

Roué le Jour

Taking a hammer to the narrative

You slandered colleagues who did not surrender to you, you turned the people against each other, divided society and polarised the discourse. You branded, without any scientific basis, people who chose not to get vaccinated as enemies of the public and as spreaders of disease. You promote, in an unprecedented way, a draconian policy of discrimination, denial of rights and selection of people, including children, for their medical choice. A selection that lacks any epidemiological justification.

When you compare the destructive policies you are pursuing with the sane policies of some other countries – you can clearly see that the destruction you have caused has only added victims beyond the vulnerable to the virus. The economy you ruined, the unemployment you caused, and the children whose education you destroyed are the surplus victims as a result of your own actions only.

– Professor Ehud Qimron, Head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University (original text here)