The way that poor dog was shivering I expected to see him getting beat with a crow bar.

Well shiver me timbers!

this is a fine example of what a year locked up does to a body.

sure. willing to listen to the p o s s i b i l i t y of corona being manufactured, but have some hard evidence. please. in a country billions +, origins of swine, bird, and ABC123 lettered viruses - it's not unreasonable to expect a lab to be located in a region where the pandemic started.

as it is, not versed in immunology (nor psychology or 'why are the following me') so rely on those who know (and don't have stock in Alcoa). that and the experiences of a lifetime being ginned up preparing for the next life-altering bug.

herpes, aids, penicillin-resistant gonorrhea/syphilis/chlamydia/TB, cjd, zika, lyme, west nile, ebola or the plethora of viruses, of eastern origins, that could become the next Spanish Flu.*

all those diseases have natural origins.

so, yeah. this pandemic wasn't a surprise. no more than Hurricane Katrina (why did they build that bridge over Lake Pontchartrain) or why the ere-orange administration left a 'play book' for Virus X.

it was foreseen, it happened, and could happen again. much more likely another flaming arrow from natures' quiver. (shivers given via a quiver?)

Occam's razor, in essence (should have led w/that).


* even new strains of hepatitis caused waves for a while and there was a bit of time, a virus in the NW USA was akin to airborne aids but disappear as quickly as it came and schistosomiasis has come closer to our shores - - - AND NOW -https://www.livescience.com/mystery-brain-disease-cluster-canada.html that hopefully isn't the precursor to zombie-itis.

I remember reading that paper in the early 00s and loving it. The bombshell for me was that at about 4:47 in the video he says he thinks Ken actually did do what I assumed the paper was joking about, which I'll admit sent a little shiver down my spine.

The only limit would have been Ken's forward thinking on how complex the self-updating aspect would be. Once it passes a certain threshold , iirc, it's essentially unstoppable. Below a certain threshold it would probably already have been found.

I wonder if they make it "shiver" free when it screeches on the slate.

This film still gives me shivers.
The originals teleporter scene gave me a lifetime of nightmares.
The concept gave me a lifetime of inspiration though!

I think it was right on the rails. I live in Houston, was fortunate to have come through Harvey with little damage, and spent hours helping folks get out of the small boats that were rescuing people from their water filled homes. The reporting from the various news agencies was on TV pretty much 24/7. But they don't get it... sure, people outside of the situation want to know what's going on, but some of the most inane, redundant, pointless and heartless questions in the world come out of the mouths of these reporters who feel they need to just keep on talking. On more than one occasion, we had to tell reporters to get the fuck out of the way so we could do our work instead of pausing to allow them to conduct an interview. In a situation like this, where people have lost EVERYTHING they own except for the clothes they have on, and have spent hours scared, cold and not knowing if anyone is coming to rescue them, how the fuck can anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size think it's a story that wants to be retold in front of a camera? We helped little kids out of boats, with their parents coming along a few boats behind, and reporters walking up to these shivering, scared kids to ask them about any pets they might have left behind or been unable to rescue - to get them to cry. That's inhuman. If it were me, I would've shoved that microphone down that stupid woman's throat. This isn't reporting, it sensationalizing. But I guess we wouldn't expect less from CNN. These people aren't reporters our journalists, they are pond scum.

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

That sound he made of the sound of the event that they measured sends shivers down my spine. When I brokethrough to the "other side" that was the sound I heard and it felt like being sucked through a blackhole with an unimaginable force that broke reality completely apart and into a new one.

I wouldn't say all DLC is bad, some of it is fine and is pretty much just the modern term for expansion pack. I thought most of the Skyrim DLC was fine (except Hearth Fires I can download way better player palaces than what you could build with that), and a lot of the Borderlands 1 and 2 stuff was decent as well. Horse armor aside, Shivering Isles for Elder Scrolls Oblivion pretty awesome too.

This shit gives me shivers. Unreal. Yet so real.

You know how the pressures in life can cause people to do crazy things? And if a person does too many crazy things, then that person is crazy. Sometimes you can do things to keep from going crazy, like drinkin', or havin' sex; but, if the craziness goes too far, sometimes the only thing left to do is to cut out that part of the brain that makes you crazy.

That kind of brain surgery is called a frontal lobotomy. Maybe this song will help you understand what I mean.

"Jimmy and I were brothers.
We went down different paths.
Jimmy always listened to my mother,
And me, I never like to take a bath.

"As we grew and tumbled through adulthood
The pressure caused emotional drain.
So now I'm slowly dying in the bottle
And Jimmy has to live with half a brain.

"Yes, me, I've got a bottle in front of me,
And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy.
Just different ways to kill the pain t"he same.

"But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
Than have to have a frontal lobotomy.
I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane.

"Jimmy let his troubles drive him crazy.
He never tried to drown it in a drink.
I know that drinking makes my thinking hazy,
But at least I still have brains enough to think.

"Jimmy's got a brain that isn't stable.
He doesn't have the sense to say his name.
I'm sorry that his doctor was unable
To remove the proper portion of his brain.

"Yes, me, I've got a bottle in front of me,
And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy.
Just different ways to kill the pain the same.

"But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
Than have to have a frontal lobotomy.
I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane.

"Funny how the world works.
People can be real jerks.
Some prefer the tension over booze.

"Either way it ends the same.
Hard to beat the living game.
Might as well enjoy it while you lose.

"When I need a drink I start to shiver
And Jimmy always viewed it with concern.
But I'd rather have cirrhosis of the liver
Than an intellect that's second to a fern.

"I wonder if old Jimmy's gonna hear it
When I tell him that his logic wasn't sound.
They'll dose him up on lots of evil spirits
When they take him to the psychiatric grounds.

"Yes, me, I've got a bottle in front of me,
And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy.
Just different ways to kill the pain the same.

"But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
Than have to have a frontal lobotomy.
I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane.
I might be drunk, but at least I'm not insane!"

(Dr. Rock (from the Dr. Demento show) - I'd Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me (Than A Frontal Lobotomy))

I'd rather see that than a spider [shiver]

Pure quality by John, as usual.

There are a few points I'd like to add, in order of appearance.

5:10 – Greek default or Grexit could be manageable by the rest of the EZ, economically. Italy looks a bit shaky and Spain still looks like shit, so things could spiral out of control, but chances would be better now than they were in, say, 2010.

However, Grexit would be a political nightmare. EZ membership is supposed to be irreversible, so Grexit would reduce the Euro from a common currency to a peg when viewed from the outside. That's open season on the rest of the PIIGS. If Greek then rebounds, other people might very well decide to give Germany the finger and leave as well. If Greece fails, you have a NATO member turn into a failed state, which not only gives NATO the shivers, but also buries any notion of solidarity within the EU. This union survives because of the promises it makes, which include increasing standards of living and solidarity among different peoples. Without it, we're left with... what exactly?

And nevermind the humanitarian catastrophe taking part in Greece. We've conditioned ourselves to block out the pain and suffering of people in Africa. We even manage to shrug at the cesspool of corruption that is Kosovo. But if we do that to Greece as well, what little moral authority Europe might still have left would be gone then.

5:32 – The last payment Greece received was in August, long before Syriza took over. The previous government was in disagreement with the Troika and therefore transfers were frozen.

5:57 – Troika payments are required to service previous debt obligations. They are separate from what the Greek banks require to maintain their liquidity. That would be Emergency Liquidiy Assistance (ELA) from the ECB, which is a different thing entirely, even though it comes from a member of the Troika.

The ECB is bound by law to maintain and ensure the stability of the banking system(s) within the EZ. If a bank runs into liquidity problems, support is provided by the national bank of the respective country, which funnels funds from the ECB to the troubled bank. That's ELA, and a limit on ELA is a limit on the amount of funds that banks can draw from through this process. If an illiquid bank is cut off from ELA, it goes belly up. Bad idea.

Some argue that the ECB should not provide ELA to those Greek banks anymore, since they are insolvent, and ECB rules forbid ELA to insolvent banks. But as Varoufakis said, even the ECB's own Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) department, which is the new banking oversight, declares the four large Greek banks to be solvent. So there is no reason for the ECB to cut ELA to Greek banks. It's all political, and the ECB is designed to be outside of politics. That's also a reason why its membership in the Troika is so controversial.

The political argument for cutting off ELA is that Germany et al. are on the hook for the total amount should Greece itself go belly up. Somewhere along the line, someone made the glorious decision to install the ECB as a currency issuer without providing it with the attributes of a regular currency issuer. If the Bank of Japan or the Bank of England racks up losses, noone cares. They issue their own currency, they cannot go bankrupt, whatever debt they have in their books is irrelevant, for this discussion anyways. But the ECB has to balance its books, it has to receive funds from its members to balance losses, and in proportion to their economic size.

They made sure that politicians can scare the demos by pointing out how they have to foot the bill for this shit, even though it's the one entity where debt truly doesn't matter at all.

By the way, the funds that Greece is hoping to acquire are meant, primarily, for two purposes: making debt payments and to provide financial room to convert ECB(?) debt into EFSF debt (4% interest down to 1%). That's all. No spending.

6:54 – "Printing" money is generating demand out of thin air. There is a shortage of demand throughout the entire continent. So yeah, if the folks at the ECB could type in a few numbers, that would be swell.

Even Germany has a shortage of demand. We are merely hiding it behind the €200b+ of demand that we steal from other countries, i.e. our current account surplus. But the infrastructure and investment spending over here is at all time lows. We'd need an additional €200b+ just to get the infrastructure back to the state it was in a decade ago.

There is no productivity growth in Europe. The UK actually lost a lot of productivity by its introduction of zero hour jobs and other forms of slavery. Without sufficient demand, there is no need to improve production capacities – they can't even sell what they could produce right now.

Wow! *shiver*