There are now only two kinds of people extant in the US. Let's call them Goofus and Gallant.
Goofus is currently vandalizing cemeteries and demanding that policemen carry ice cream cones instead of batons. Goofus doesn't know how he got that way, but he's constitutionally incapable of voluntarily cooperating with Western Civilization in any way, at least if he's told not to by his peers. He has no idea where his peers get their ideas. He thinks everyone but his peers are sheeple and deserve any ignominy he can heap on them. He'll lie, cheat, or steal at the drop of the hat, but he won't call it that. He'll use any form of justification necessary to go along with his friends. The sophistry might come first, or after the fact, but he's striking a blow for freedom all day, every day, by illegally downloading movies or burning a nunnery or anything in between. It's his opponents who are lawbreakers, even though they're not breaking any laws. They're not cool, and that's that.
Gallant, on the other hand, is constitutionally incapable of openly breaking any law. Gallant is wearing a surgical mask while driving alone in his car because dems the rules. No matter how stupid the rules are, he'll queue up to follow them. He's angry all the time about the laws, because they're in complete opposition to how he wants the world to be ordered. But the rule of law is at the top of his totem pole, and that's that. Every once in a while a Gallant hairdresser opens up her shop during a Goofus shitshow lockdown, and is exalted for her bravery, but one toe in the pool is not swimming.
Gallant thinks Goofus is off the hook right now, because cities are being burned to the ground, but Goofus really isn't. Goofus is performing in a very calibrated political Kabuki play, planned for him by people unseen. If you really took all the Goofuses off the hook, you'd see an army of Lavrentia Berias right quick. They're timid by nature but they're the people who run death camps if they get the chance.
Goofus accuses Gallant of being off the hook all the time, but of course that's silly. Gallant might be a combat veteran or a biker or a lumberjack or something similar. If he was off the hook you'd get Carthage, not placards waved outside the state capitol. Gallant is armed to the teeth, but he never shoots anybody because there's rules against that. He mutters about it under his breath constantly, but the total tonnage of nonsense he'll endure before losing his cool is nearly infinite. Nearly. It would take more than some defaced statue dedicated to a general who lost to get him to stop sorting his recyclables, never mind take to the barricades. Conservative presidents keep putting Gallants on the Supreme Court who say dems the rules so we have to follow them, no matter how nutty the rules are, for instance.
No one's going to ring a bell and tell Gallant the rules don't matter any more so let it rip on Goofus. No one is going to ring a bell and tell Goofus to make a frontal assault on Gallant, which would look like a synchronized swimmer turned welterweight punching Mike Tyson at the weigh in. Goofus thinks he has the upper hand right now because no one's stopping him, but he's being humored, nothing more. His minders are using him to get the upper hand. That's a different thing entirely. They'll get as far as they can with this nonsense, but eventually things will strike a new Overton equilibrium. Gallant will put up with kneeling to see his football game, and maybe notice a decided lack of stars and bars on race cars next year. He'll try to follow the new, very weird rules as best he can. Goofus will go back to handing out flyers from card tables in the park while normal people avert their eyes and scurry past.
Let's examine today's news items through the Goofus and Gallant prism:
Shopify goes after Amazon with new Walmart deal
On Monday, Walmart said it will open its online marketplace, which reaches 120 million monthly visitors, to Shopify's more than 1 million business clients. That means Walmart shoppers will be able to find goods from some Shopify merchants.
Goofus would rather die than shop at Walmart. Goofus loves the proletariat. It's people he can't stand, and people shop at Walmart. Gallant's wife shops on Etsy and at Costco because have you seen the way the proletariat dresses?
Google bans website ZeroHedge from its ad platform over comments on protest articles
After publication of this story, Google backtracked Tuesday, clarifying that The Federalist had been warned about policy violations but still had time to address them. It now has three days to remove the violations before a ban goes into effect.
This is what Goofus' handlers are up to. Zero Hedge is low hanging fruit. Gallant works at the Federalist and is busy doing whatever Google tells them to. How else could they afford season tickets to the kneeling sessions at the Washington Indigenous Downtrodden People football games?
You Can Now Buy Spot the Robot Dog—If You’ve Got $74,500
The robot is meant to be a flexible platform: Boston Dynamics has spent many years refining the hardware and software that give the robot incredible mobility, but attachments will help qualify Spot for specific jobs. A software development kit allows operators to further customize how the robot behaves and senses its world, incorporating computer vision models, for instance, to detect certain landmarks around a job site.
Goofus will continue binge-watching Westworld and wait for a robot girlfriend. Gallant has a Belgian Malinois that cost half that.
Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organisations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer. The company said it plans to make the feature available to all US users over the next few weeks and will offer it in other countries this autumn.
Everyone who works at Facebook is a Goofus and will gleefully charge Gallant for Trump ads that never get shown to anyone.
Dexamethasone reduces death in hospitalised patients with severe respiratory complications of COVID-19
Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, one of the Chief Investigators, said, ‘Since the appearance of COVID-19 six months ago, the search has been on for treatments that can improve survival, particularly in the sickest patients. These preliminary results from the RECOVERY trial are very clear – dexamethasone reduces the risk of death among patients with severe respiratory complications.
Goofus doesn't care as long as it's not quinine. Gallant doesn't care because he keeps his parents away from nursing homes run by Andrew Cuomo.
US: Company provided subpar steel for Navy submarine hulls
The foundry’s director of metallurgy, Elaine Thomas, 66, of Auburn, Washington, was charged criminally with one count of major fraud against the United States. Thomas, who worked in various capacities at the lab for 40 years, was due to make an initial appearance in federal court June 30. Her attorney, John Carpenter, declined to comment.
Goofus hopes the subs sink anyway. Gallant wants his money back. Submariners would like to take Elaine for a shakedown cruise. Strapped to the hull.
Scientists Edited Human Embryos in the Lab, and It Was a Disaster
Biologist Kathy Niakan and her team at the Francis Crick Institute wanted to better understand the role of a particular gene in the earliest stages of human development. So, using CRISPR, they deleted that gene in human embryos that had been donated for research. When they analyzed the edited embryos and compared them to ones that hadn’t been edited, they found something troubling: Around half of the edited embryos contained major unintended edits.
As long as human embryos are destroyed, Goofus is happy. Gallant's ex-wife donated the embryos.
Youtube’s Bitcoin Scam Problem Appears To Be Getting Worse
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a Youtube live stream that was clearly faked. It claimed Elon Musk was giving away 5000 BTC (roughly $47 million as of June 16, 2020). I flagged it as a Bitcoin scam and I assume the feed went down once a moderator saw the flag. Then the weird part happened.
Youtube’s algorithm, knowing my interest in blockchain technology and my brush with a “giveaway” now recommends subsequent scams as they go live.
Goofus works at Google and is too busy policing Zero Hedge to police YouTube scams. All of Gallant's money is tied up in ammo bought at Cabela's with cash so he's safe.
Diluting blood plasma rejuvenates tissue, reverses aging in mice
In the study, the team found that replacing half of the blood plasma of old mice with a mixture of saline and albumin — where the albumin simply replaces protein that was lost when the original blood plasma was removed — has the same or stronger rejuvenation effects on the brain, liver and muscle than pairing with young mice or young blood exchange.
Goofus is thirty-three years old and dresses like a toddler. Old age never enters his mind, except to vote for Bernie so he can collect Social Security before he graduates college. Gallant loses so much blood at his construction job that this treatment would be superfluous.
Antitrust: Commission opens investigations into Apple's App Store rules
The European Commission has opened formal antitrust investigations to assess whether Apple's rules for app developers on the distribution of apps via the App Store violate EU competition rules. The investigations concern in particular the mandatory use of Apple's own proprietary in-app purchase system and restrictions on the ability of developers to inform iPhone and iPad users of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities outside of apps.
Goofus adores Apple and the EU in equal measure, so his head might explode. Gallant has heard of Europe, but isn't quite sure if it's a real place or not, so he doesn't care one way or the other.
Have a gallant Wednesday, everyone!
