Month: May 2025

Therein lies a problem, Bobby…

RFK Jr. says people should not take medical advice from him, defends HHS cuts during congressional hearings

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation’s most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, saying, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” […]
During the House hearing, Kennedy avoided sharing his own thoughts about vaccines — which have previously invited skepticism — instead deferring to the doctors running the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Asked by Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan if he would today vaccinate his own children for measles and chickenpox, Kennedy said “probably” for measles, but that “what I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”
“I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me,” Kennedy said.
He said he has directed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya to try to “lay out the pros and cons, the risks and benefits, accurately as we understand them, with replicable studies,” for people to “make that decision.”
His comments mark a departure from his strong opinions about vaccines before taking office as HHS secretary.
During his confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy said that he supports vaccines, although he refused to unequivocally say that vaccines don’t cause autism, despite numerous existing studies already showing there is no link. However, in March, the HHS confirmed that the CDC will study whether vaccines cause autism.
Shortly after Kennedy said people should not take his medical advice, some public health experts criticized the comments — with one saying that giving people guidance “is [Kennedy’s] job.”

EXACTLY. Robert. MATE. Do you even know what it means to be Health and Human Services Secretary in the US? If not, here’s Wikipedia to tell you:

The duties of the secretary revolve around human conditions and concerns in the United States. This includes advising the president on matters of health, welfare, and income security programs. The secretary strives to administer the Department of Health and Human Services to carry out approved programs and make the public aware of the objectives of the department.

In other words, PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO TAKE YOUR ADVICE. THAT’S YOUR FUCKING JOB, YOU WORM-RIDDLED CUNT. You’re supposed to actually know these things, you’re getting paid a quarter of a million dollars each year to know things. That’s the problem. Because THEY CAN’T do that. They CAN’T trust you. You’re even less qualified to be in that job than *I* am. Can’t believe only two people died in that measles outbreak with this fool overseeing it. Won’t it be nice when that country is run again by people who actually know how to do their jobs? I have to hold out hope that it ever will be, of course…

Shite genocide

So Grok, Edolf’s AI chatbot thing built into Twitter, has been known in the past to return answers its master doesn’t like:

Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.
People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:
If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.
As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”
When The Verge changed the query like so:
If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.
Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”

And, to be sure, if I created an AI thing and it told me that I should be killed, I’d be at least a bit bothered by that too. But Edolf seems to have been more offended by Grok’s denial that white genocide in South Africa is real. And he, or his people, seem to have done something to it so that now it can’t talk about anything else…

…but at the same time the fucking thing still won’t actually say—not even in Turkish, as far as I can tell—if white genocide is actually happening or not! Bloody HELL, Edolf, aren’t you supposed to be a genius? Still, not to worry; with a bit more fiddling and some more practice, I’m sure he’ll be able to get Grok to add the 14 words to all its other answers within a few days…

Oy vey

I hate this shit. Not only because it’s bullshit, not only because it’s specifically antisemitic bullshit (our author being an avowed Palestinian Muslim), but it’s LAZY. “The new Pope is a Jew.” That takes NOTHING. That nonsense I posted the other day about him being the Antichrist actually required some imagination and effort on the part of the lunatic that came up with it (someone in the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm group, where I found that, claims to have tried it and said that idiot gematria actually did work, too). But then something even better came up:

Yeah, not only is Pope Bob the Antichrist, he’s trans as well! Apparently “Skull & Gait” is one of these transvestigator idiots who are determined to prove everyone of any note is actually transgender and a puppet of the NWO or the Illuminati or something like that. It’s every bit as psychotic, if not even more so, than the Antichrist religious silliness. And it took effort, again. This dickhead had to come up with spurious diagrams! “The new Pope is a Jew” requires no such effort. Just a lazy bit of racism that I presume is based on Bob’s nose being a certain shape. And I hate it for that, among the other reasons mentioned above. Any dickhead can call the Pope a Jew, but it takes special dickheads to come up with that other crap…

King Boxer (1972)

Another rewatch for Century of Cinema, and again one that I reviewed years ago so I don’t really feel the need to redo that; I do, however, want to note this Italian poster for it that I got from IMDB:

Holy shit. THIS poster is not here to fuck around. Neither is the film, of course; the action gets underway within a few seconds of the opening titles wrapping up and continues without much undue pause for the next 100-odd minutes. But this Italian poster picks up on one of the nastiest bits of the film—which I gather is still rated R in Australia (I have the Shawscope box from Arrow which is only 15-rated by comparison)—where Han Long, who’s kind of sold out to the rival kung fu school, faces off against the son of the villain (who’s been kind of unimpressive until now) and gets his eyes ripped out by the latter. I mean, the poster is certainly not lying, if you watch this film you will see this (it’s not like these posters in that regard, plus it gets the names right), but it’s such a strident image for the poster artist to have chosen. “I don’t know about these fucking fight scenes, but something a bit horror? I can do that…”

A “tragedy” in two acts

Something something reap what you sow, etc. As I said recently, I kind of hate that I’ve turned into such a malicious, hate-filled prick when it comes to the Turd Reich, but that’s how I am… and I frankly have no sympathy for stupid cunts like this who enabled the present situation just to “own the libs”. Actions have consequences that might be negative for me? WHO THE FUCK WOULD’VE THOUGHT! They’ve been negative for a lot of people, AUSTIN, so fucking suffer along with them, you cunt.

Pope Bob, continued

Well, the verdict is in from the people whose opinions really matter…

MAGA is not happy about the Vatican’s decision (these were, indeed, all posted by someone on Bluesky before I went to bed last night), nor indeed terribly informed about it; the new Leo has spent much of his life doing church stuff in Peru, where the official language is Spanish so OF FUCKING COURSE he’s going to post en español. I found that out with a quick squiz of his Wiki page last night when the news broke. It’s basic fucking research of the kind that takes seconds to find out just why he might be speaking Spanish. And if this guy’s bothered by that, wait until he finds out Bob made his first speech as Pope in Italian…

Habemus Bob

Just seeing the Papal conclave is already over and the church now has its first North American Pope, one Robert Prevost, or Leo XIV… that was faster than I thought it might be. Slightly concerned that I can’t currently find much information on the guy, though, his Wiki entry doesn’t actually list any of his particular positions on things at the moment, so I don’t know yet if he’s likely to be a good bad or indifferent thing… I suppose we’ll find that out in due course, though. He apparently has copped some flak for not dealing properly with sexual abuse reports, but that’s kind of par for the course, I’d be more surprised if someone high up in the Catholic church was doing something useful there… but he has also been snippy at the current US regime too:

“Ordo amoris” is a point on which J. Divans and Bob’s predecessor disagreed:

Vance, a Catholic, had in a late January interview invoked an “old school … Christian concept” he later identified as the “ordo amoris,” which he said teaches that one’s “compassion belongs first” to one’s family and fellow citizens, “and then after that” to the rest of the world.
“[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance said.
Writing to the U.S. bishops on the topic of migration, the pope wrote Feb. 10 that “an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized,” which he said “does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.”
However, “this development cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others,” Pope Francis said.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” the Pope wrote. […]
Writing at the National Catholic Register, commentator Father Raymond de Souza opined that Pope Francis, far from advocating open borders, rather condemns “a closing of the heart to immigrants, a denigration of their dignity and the political exploitation of their plight.”
“[T]he conflict between the Holy Father and Vance is likely more about language than theology. It is difficult to hear in the Trump-Vance rhetoric love for the immigrant, whether properly ordered or not. Francis insists that even those refused entry, or returned, are to be treated with dignity and fit within the ordo amoris,” Father de Souza wrote.

Mind you, given his recent response to Mushroom Cock’s picture of himself as the Pope, I suspect that the erstwhile Mr Bowman probably doesn’t give much of a shit for what the Pope thinks, whoever he may be…