Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Ruthless people

Covid, like Climate Change, is run by people who are required, at high levels, to lie and then lie, and then lie some more. At lower levels, it is only necessary to avoid thinking, and to believe.

But the lies have to stick, that is, people cannot be allowed to disbelieve the propaganda. Punishments have to be in place to discipline anyone who observes, thinks, and speaks out. Such people are, in the eyes of the people behind the hoax, dangerous.

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Book talk

Anna Karenina

‘I shall get angry with Ivan the coachman in the same way, shall dispute in the same way, shall inopportunely express my thoughts; there will still be a wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people; even my wife I shall blame for my own fears and shall repent it. My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.’

I decided going into ankle surgery and a period of disability that I would attempt to read what is considered one of the greatest works of fiction of all time, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. How would I know if it is the greatest? I cannot know any such thing, as I have not read enough of the classics. I should have more periods of disability, as a friend of ours in Bozeman, a wonderfully serene man and a Jewish physician, not only read Don Quixote, but when we knew him, was rereading it. There is something there. We have a copy upstairs, and I am tempted to give it a go.

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Wokism and other stuff

This is just a compendium of small matters that together amount to … a small matter.

Are you alive?

I am 72. I cannot believe how much time has passed, how my childhood is now so far away, and how various events in my life which I thought significant are now ‘distant’. I am not yet old in any sense other than the body does not keep up with the mind. When I went under the knife for surgery on my ankle, they gathered information on me, other surgeries, personal habits, all that stuff, and most importantly, what drugs am I taking? The answer: None. I take an occasional sleeping pill, but that is rare and mostly I don’t even think of it as I fall asleep at night. Other than that … nada. The reaction I got from the young lady at the orthopedic center, who does this for a living and whose clientele are mostly older folks like me … “amazing!”

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A beautiful scam by Viasat

We take satellite TV from Viasat, our only choice. No one else can deliver a signal to us, and our former TV carrier, Centurylink, went to hell on us, claiming its equipment is too old to adequately serve rural customers. This is a situation that has affected customers all over its Western base.

By and large, Viasat is just adequate. Relying as it does on satellites in geosynchronous orbit (and I know, some say satellites do not exist – I remain unconvinced) at 22,236 miles above the planet, there is a natural signal delay. We first noticed this as our phone signal, which we had connected to the Viasat router, was unusable because of a talk over delay. Same with our cell phones, so we 1) had to go back to Centurylink for land line service, adding $50 monthly to our cost of service from Viasat, and 2) had to turn off our cell phone reliance on the Viasat signal too, using T-Mobile and its weak signal to the house for cell service. In the end we were overpaying Viasat for services they could not deliver. But we had no choice other than to go bare or return to DirectTV and their overpriced service, wanting us to purchase 60+ channels when we only watch one or two. That business model is either dead or dying but they refuse to let it go.

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Psychiatry: a useless profession

I do not have a lot of faith in the profession of psychiatry. I am familiar with the work of Jung, and only somewhat with Freud, and I regard them both as brilliant men and trailblazers. Freud came to the conclusion that children abused before the age of five would not remember that abuse even as it affected them for life. I think that is a brilliant insight.

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is taken from the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition. I am somewhat confident that it is a real thing, and in fact have a been exposed to it both at work and in my personal life. However, psychiatrists are pill dispensers first, diagnosticians second, and the DSM contains hundreds of disorders that have been voted on by members of the profession. I don’t buy that, don’t buy any of it, don’t imagine that there is ADD or defiant personality disorder or anything else. There are just people in pain.

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Gas stoves targeted

We are lucky in our neighborhood to have a natural gas line serving all of our houses. Most people living in the foothills use propane, and while it too is convenient, we never have to worry about that huge hit they take when it is time to fill a 500 gallon tank. Natural gas is clean, giving off less in the way of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, SO2 and NO2. Oh, and it also gives off CO2, the much maligned but beneficial byproduct of all fossil fuels.

And, part of my retirement plan was to buy an interest in some natural gas wells. I used to hold a working interest in maybe twenty wells, but sold them all due to what I felt was overexposure to risk. These wells cost tens of thousands of dollars to plug, and things like replacement of tubing strings are expensive propositions. I was under-capitalized. So I sold the “working interest” portion of the wells, keeping much smaller (and risk free) royalty interests. Prices were depressed at that time,  so I took opportunity and made a fair offer to purchase a one-third interest in two very stable wells with projected lives exceeding 70 years. That is much longer than my projected life, and a very good deal for our grandchildren.

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Unexpected wisdom

I enjoy the works of C.J. Box, a writer who lives in Wyoming and has given us the character Joe Pickett.

Pickett is a game warden, and has never wanted to do anything else. He is also a man who, knowingly or not, thrives on the idea that people automatically underestimate him. He does not look for trouble, but trouble finds him, and in Box’s world, this trouble manifests in an endless assortment of villains that find their way to the wilderness of northern Wyoming. Pickett is not Rambo, and does not automatically come out on top of his engagements with these assorted bad guys. He suffers, gets lost, makes mistakes, gets shot and loses one truck and horse after another, only surviving by some sort of native intelligence that pushes him to do something that allows him to, in the end, survive and to be with his wife, Marybeth, and daughters Sheridan and Lucy.

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Ivermectin

I do not know what ivermectin is or what it does. I could go read up on it, but think I can glean enough without knowing details. It was effective against many things from worms to other parasites to Lyme’s disease to influenza and the common cold. It is the latter two that suggests to me that Anthony Fauci, WHO, FDA, CDC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation worked behind the scenes to prevent its use and limit its supplies.

There was a reason. I suggest that there is no such thing as “Covid 19,” and the existence of viruses, for anyone who knows how to read and to think properly, can easily be dismissed. The reason why ivermectin was practically outlawed was that it is effective against influenza and colds. I do not know why, but suspect zinc is involved. It is useful, but not important to know these things.

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Them runbacks


Did anyone notice suspiciously weak tackling and pursuit efforts in the two runbacks for touchdowns for the Buffalo Bills yesterday? Or is it just me?

By the way, on October 20, 2019, Micah Hyde returned a Miami Dolphins onside kick 45 yards for a touchdown. That is what the ‘3 years ‘3 months’ refers to.

See below fold for more photos, courtesy of Ab via Twitter. They went all out with the ’33’s.

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