DEEP SCRATCH

Tag: Coronavirus

  • The Medium Is The Message: That Rogan Spotify Thing.

    (I wrote this on February 2nd, but left it here as a draft. In just a few days, both Joe Rogan and Russel Brand are trending on social media. The latest is that Donald Trump came out in support of Rogan, and Spotify CEO Daniel Elk doubled down on his support for Rogan’s Podcast. Neil Young has doubled down on his message to delete spotify and support creative artists. Here’s my take on it all.)

    “In our communication age, misinformation is the problem. Ditch the misinformers. Find a good clean place to support with your monthly checks. You have the real power. Use it.”

    —Neil Young.


    In sync with the major trends on social media, over the last week I’ve been tweeting and dropping a few one liners about the latest Joe Rogan Spotify story, but I feel it deserves a longer, edited overview to explain what I think and why. I confess, this scrawl is a personal rant in parts, but it also includes parts that reference terse and well balanced critiques of Spotify and other digital monopolies. Thanks in part to Cory Doctorow for being the clearest authority on the impact of digital media, and previously addressing the Joe Rogan Spotify deal in mid 2020, and to Matt Stoller for same sharpness and sense for constructive critique.       

    Yes, I’ve watched JR podcasts, multiple dozens of them over a protracted period of time since it launched over a decade ago. In particular, I was drawn to those featuring Doug Stanhope (who originally inspired Joe Rogan back in 2003) and Bill Burr, and other comedians, though I often feel deflated after listening to Joe’s shows, compared to the laugh out loud funny originals of Doug and Bill, to my taste buds. I’ve watched the Alex Jones car crash interviews and the Elon Musk smoke out, I watched the Oliver Stone interview, I watched David Choe, Paul Stamets, Lex Fridman, Bernie Sanders, Brian Muraresku, Jordan Peterson (help) and now I come to think of it, yeah, a lot of other dudes, mostly dudes chatting dude stuff: Secret Cults, Hidden Mysteries, DMT Magic, Lost Civilizations, Deep State, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Covid Conspiracies and other cliches. What’s not to laugh at, what’s funny?   

    Yet, personally I’ve never got the swift kick from Rogan’s podcasts that I detected some others around me seemed to be getting. It’s probably me, it has to be me, maybe I’m spoiled? Or is JR just not sharp? Am I expecting too much from popular Podcasters and Youtube celebrities? Same goes for Russel Brand, sadly, a descent into solipsism. I’m expecting much better and feel let down when I listen. It causes me to think, he ain’t processed any Karl Popper but he harps on about George Soros. I sense a third rate comedy, over stretched, too long and over-marketed, too much focus on subscribe and likes, a MAGMA MAFIA method? Furthermore, most but not all of these monopolists defend against criticism with that old chestnut, “I’m not a scientist or a doctor, I just want to talk to interesting people.” Yeah, right. And then there’s media monopoly which damages independent Podcast culture and independent music culture and erodes our trust in science.  

    Again, look, please, dear reader, don’t get me wrong, Spotify helps millions of songs reach billions of ears, music, that sacred beautiful powerful art that I’ve spent half my life studying and playing and promoting. Yes, we all benefit from hearing it. And please, listen to what you like. The deeper issue is not JR’s content, it’s about the business practice and strategy of Spotify and it’s detrimental effect on independent art and creativity. Mega rich and powerful media entities like Spotify sponsor huge events and festivals, but which financially benefit the tiny top tier of bands and performers, another kick in the maracas.   

    I do not receive any payment for my work uploaded to Spotify, I never use it. Most of my artist friends who do, also receive next to zip. It’s a bad deal for the majority, for 99.9% of artists on the platform, and yes, Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer, Tidal, Sony, TimeWarner, Universal aren’t much better. Cory Doctorow writes: “Spotify has been on an extraordinary, acquisition-and exclusivity-driven spending spree, buying 15 companies, and doing deals like this one with Rogan.”


    Support Independent Music Culture

    Add to this the fact I’m a DJ and vinyl lover, self inflicting physical injuries so as to continue occasionally getting the chance to set up and play records in a new way, striving to play a spectrum of music and do justice to the term disc jockey, hands on. I buy records and have done for over 30 years. I’ve spent tens of thousands of Pounds and hours listening, mixing, compiling music, and often zero payment. I don’t want sympathy. I want you to support the others struggling and bring hope in remaining fiercely independent to some lucky few out there now ready to give it everything.     

    In 2022, I’m rewarded for my 25 years service to music, both as a DJ and recording artist, by copyright infringement notices on Youtube (sometimes for my own works) and audio censoring on Twitch, and stipulations about what is and is not a DJ mix, or radio DJ mix, or a remix, depending on what platform and/or territory: Soundcloud / Mixcloud etc. My point is that I paid money for physical records, I’ve supported local record shops, independent labels, artists, small venues and clubs, for three decades across the United States, Holland and the UK. What better record of integrity than a record of playing records with integrity? I’m lucky in many respects, I’ve had breaks and gigs and releases and some very fine co-conspirators, god help the next generations coming up who have to navigate these shark infested digital waters. 

    The question remains, how, HOW do we better evaluate art and artists in 2022? How can we support independent artists to do what they love and keep it local and make it pay and give a glimmer of hope that some fortunate few may make a living off art? Blockchain, I hear you say, Spotify, I hear you chant, surely it’s not social media or bust? It’s either Facebook or no luck, if you want to promote your indie project? The elephants in the room are for-profit digital music monopolies, and variations on media monopolies. Is it hard cash and hard throttling of the competition based on numbers favoured by shareholders, internet spiraling down into a click-bait moneyball analytica con.

    “taking something from the federated, open, competitive web and sticking it inside a walled garden. It’s the App Store strategy, the Facebook strategy, the AOL strategy, the MSN strategy.”

    Cory Doctorow, 2020.

    MAGMA MAFIA

    Yes, I often moan about what goes viral but does not fit my own quality control. It’s tricky to avoid embittered whataboutism, and yes, artists can bring out the best and worst in purists. As the saying goes, a jack of all trades is a jack of no trades. But let’s not forget the good advice from Karl Popper, Marshall McLuhan and Robert Anton Wilson. A pinch of pluralism, multi model-agnosticism enriches the communication and experience of negotiating culture through the lens of art.      

    Besides the great thinkers and legendary artists and musicians, there’s the great unknowns, those millions of musicians and bands and performers who are aching to be seen and noticed, acknowledged. They deserve that break, that chance. Yet, pre and now post (ish) pandemic, artists have faced the colossal five headed beast MAGMA (Meta Amazon Google Microsoft Apple) and the new digital landscape where your latest work can get shared and played around the world a million times before you can afford to pay for a large coffee with the profits, after the skimming and scheming of the MAGMA posse. Cory adds, “Why does Wall Street like this? because acquisition-driven growth is a great way to establish a monopoly in which rents are extracted from suppliers and customers to the benefit of shareholders.”   

    Spotify is reported to be worth around 58 Billion USD. Joe Rogan was paid 100,000,000 by Spotify for a deal. Am I missing the part where Joe Rogan sets up 100 independent record labels, or opens a series of community music studio’s, or radio studio’s, starts indie record labels, supports local art music scenes? With 100,000,000 Joe could really help make a cultural impact on music, specifically, because that’s what Spotify does right, music culture? How ss a podcast like a musical composition, how is it different?

    Specifically, who benefits financially most from the JR Podcast boost? Jordan Peterson? Elon Musk, Alex Jones, Daniel Elk, Jeff Bezos, MAGMA? Is it those who lean into the intellectual dark web, have books and book tours and films and albums? Or the up-coming creatives, future Podcasters and musicians? And what about other super wealthy billionaires, why don’t they support indie music culture and put their money where they’re yacht is? Governments? Aren’t they also supposed to be here, having this conversation about funding and support and helping musicians and labels and venues and festivals burst back into life again, safely, the regenesis of culture? The discussion and action should tackle the root of the problem: paywalls and digital monopolies, and freeing creatives, leveling up with the big guys, and preventing cannibalism.    Why is there so little support for local and independent artists and groups and bands and labels, journalists, writers, why not give them equal air-time with deep-state conspiracies and spurious pseudo-science?  

    When compared with the relatively speaking, waffle, on whatever political hot potato is in the oven that week, independent art and culture and music get very little air-time and that’s a shame. Coincidently, it’s similar to the strategy of Spotify and most other digital beasts, algorithms deciding what song to play next, or what fringe subject to exploit for maximum click bait. Vice media also comes to mind here. And sadly, the listeners don’t seem to mind, in a world where vinyl DJ’s are a thing of the past. It’s a digital matrix multiverse, I suppose, and we’re all trapped here behind a paywall like an imprisoned Tron. 

    Look, watch Joe Rogan and do the dance if you like, I really don’t care. This best critique is not about the specific details of his content, it’s the deal with Spotify and support of digital monopolies, while claiming to stand and speak for freedom and just a bit of a chat. I hope for a deeper conversation about digital monopolies (big tech?) which demonstrably, JR, Russel Brand and Jordan Peterson, my three punching bags, have problems getting to grips with at times, perhaps because they depend on others to do the monopolizing for them: Spotify, Google-Youtube, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta. We need to talk about this on a neutral platform, if one exists? Bring back public assembly!

    I’ve Seen The Stylus And The Damage Done. 

    Today, I supported an independent second hand record shop, I purchased physical discs that hold musical information and can be further manipulated with innovative hand movements if so desired. The digital platform monopolies and their main promoters don’t understand this or care. As Bruce Sterling summarized: whatever happens to musicians will happen to us all eventually.  Support your local record store, library, band, artist, label. Boycott the main offenders, if you really want to fight, put your attention where your mouth is.   

    The repeated, demonstrable lack of a clear ability to communicate scientifically about science is not entertainment. If saying, “I’m not a scientist” gives you a license to not at least attempt to communicate like a scientist (climbing toward an operationalist language that defines the instruments used to take measurements,) that’s a shame. See: Neurological relativity. I’m going off course again.

    JR’s coverage and selection of guests during the Sars 2 CoronaVirus pandemic, speaking about the Virus and the Vaccine and the Lab Leak turned me even further away from him, and changed my slight revulsion of the bald wrestling MC into something else, darker and even less funny and seemingly pandering to what’s best described as the Intellectual dark web, as floppy of a term that maybe. I thought JR’s video about Covid and Ivermectin and throwing the kitchen sink cocktail was irresponsible at best, outright dangerous at worst, but it sure got some traction and mileage on the old social media, just like Trump’s equally irresponsible proclamations.

    I fear that we’ve come to a dark-side digital meritocracy without the need for any helping hidden hand, no need for a nefarious secret cabal to insist we display our social tokens (like and subscribe?), instead of being led by a totalitarian dictator, the faithful and vulnerable follow happily singing of “Freedom” behind the likes of JR, RB and JP, believing they truly care about us, our independent voices and our creative community more than they care for book sales and tours, and paywall payouts. 

    Break The Monopolies. 

    Support local artists and with luck they with help you speak and communicate and gain agency in your society by means of cultural transformation, towards a new better place where every town and city can have it’s independent journalists and podcasters and media platforms, where we can all embrace these digital simulations beamed at our senses 24/7 for what they actually are: media monopoly games for a shrinking few MAGMA players. 

    Naturally I’m also wrong, hopefully less than 51% of the time. I’m not saying these podcasts or books or videos should be censored, but I am saying that a market monopoly on the means to communication, when combined with hazardous health advice, is an explosive recipe. Popular figures have a growing responsibility to study science, logic, reason and suspend their judgment and check their prejudice, in a post Q-anon world. With increased size and popularity comes added responsibility, climate awareness, mental health awareness and MAGMA monopoly awareness.      

    I support Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, and others that challenge the media monopoly of Spotify. I’m not onside with some third rate edgy material that might get banned on some other platform because it’s toxic or harmful. I’m siding with beautiful music and a lifetime’s dedication to the artform, that’s where my heart is at. Plus, to me, the crazy horse sense of removing music based on their revulsion to edgy toxic misinformation, so effectively boycotting their label and/or platform, shows a degree of integrity lacking across entertainment media in 2022. 

    Platform/Label, what’s the difference besides the pay? I concede that Neil and Joni are rich and famous enough to get away with such a boycott, but they did it, and I can’t see clearly how they benefit from this, which suggests to me they’re sincere. JR is not sincere from where I’m sitting. He should have me on his show, I’d love to serve up a roast, he can invite Jordan Peterson and Russel Brand too. Let’s go. As long as I can have my band with me to demonstrate what we say and how we say it, how we play it. I’ve no need to delete Spotify, I’ve never used it and always stood for independent homegrown culture.    


    “It was Marx who said one capitalist will kill many other capitalists, that the system begins to consume itself.

    Michael Parenti, Democracy Now, 2009.


    –Steven Pratt
    DJ / Drummer / Writer
    #DeepScratch
    #SquintinQuarantino  #SteveFly

    02/02/22 (edited 04/02/22)

  • A Synergetic Approach To Coronavirus Treatments


    Here’s my comment to a video by Dr. John Campbell I strongly recommend.

    My 5c. Thanks John and Rob. Great to hear praise for synergistic approach: whole systems behaviour opposed to over-focus on isolated parts, plus reflecting the hippocratic oath to primarily protect the patient. Amen to that. This reminds me of the complexities of the entourage effect, the whole is more than…the sum of its parts. Synergy may also help us grok the unintuitive details about T-cells that can protect, and/or T-cells that suppress, and/or T-cells that facilitate the immune system response…depending. It seems to me, if I understand correctly, that the Omicron mutation (in step with natural evolution of corona viruses and previous pandemics) now stays in the mucosal area (throat, nose, mouth) and so is less likely to travel deeper into lower airways and cause severe disease. Good news. Future intelligent strategies may include early treatment (drugs) to keep virus in the mucosal zone, plus consider longer periods between vaccines. Robust research (independent of manufacturers) on both mRNA vs. classical (Adenovirus vaccines) is required, and effects of unregulated amounts of antigen. Finally, these findings need to be communicated and implemented in public body health programs.  

    John Campbell, Youtube Channel.

  • RAW Science / Obedience / Covid – RAW Semantics

    This dazzling blog by RAW Semantics gets to the nitty-gritty of the current wave of misunderstanding and false equivalence concerning Robert Anton Wilson memes and Covid-19. Thanks for the clarity and multiple pronged analysis of the facts.

    There you have scientific progress framed by RAW as anti-obedience, anti-authority. And I feel sure the development of vaccines falls under Bob’s perspective of science as a progressive, liberating force. In fact, he appears quite explicit on this point – eg when he mentions the smallpox vaccine. Here’s one example:

    ‘a great deal of what I admire and appreciate in existence has been the result of human invention and ingenuity, such as pure mathematics and certain music and a few dozen paintings and poems and “cold inhuman technology” (as ecology mystics call it) that abolished bubonic plague in the last century and allowed me to walk again after I had polio twice and recently (in 1976) abolished smallpox’ – RAW, Natural Law.

    https://rawsemantics.home.blog/2022/01/06/raw-science-obedience-covid/

  • Response Ability – An Open Letter To Thinkers

    For myself, I am interested in science and in philosophy only because I want to learn something about the riddle of the world in which we live, and the riddle of man’s knowledge of that world. And I believe that only a revival of interest in these riddles can save the sciences and philosophy from an obscurantist faith in the expert’s special skill and in his personal knowledge and authority.–Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 

    As a musician, DJ and writer I wish to project my voice and state my case for responsible artists who may feel similar sentiments concerning the easing of Covid restrictions in the face of rising Covid infections, unknown mutations, long Covid complications and the possible damage to our chances of properly opening up again gradually, returning to an open culture of packed dancefloors, busy festivals and care-free events due to the virus being eradicated, not just temporarily suppressed at manageable levels, completely eradicated! #CoronaSlayer        

    The ability to respond is a measure of responsibility in some sense. I’ve responded to the Covid-19 global pandemic to the best of my abilities, through poems, prose, raps, video and music, while physically maintaining a masked-up, socially distanced and clean-hands regime. I could have done more, but what I have done is mostly available at my blog, free to browse. I’ve a Patreon project, exchanging creativity in the form of books, albums, radio shows, video, for some financial support. Most of what I create is shared freely with no expectation of reward. That’s what we do. 

    I’ve been unwavering in my support for the national lockdowns, Fire-breakers and vaccination programs, for Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology as opposed to ideology. I’ve openly shared my contempt for Q-anon conspiracies, dullard claims that “Covid is a hoax”, and those critters I lovingly call Branch Covidians, a term I borrowed from the author Bruno Argento. I’ve posted searing critiques of the Trump/Johnson/Balsanaro axis of Branch Govidians and conclude that right leaning governments care for profit and power, not the health and safety of their subjects. They have proven to be irresponsible, repeatedly, unable to respond adequately in the interest of public health and safety. This lack of responsibility reaches beyond the left/right paradigm and predates Covid-19, which amplified and highlighted the problems and injustices facing most social democracies.

    Yes, I agree that large international pharmaceutical corporations have been profiting off other people’s misery for decades, much like other sectors: finance, banking, military and fossil fuel companies, benefiting from unrestricted international finance capitalism (the free market). However, profits aside, I don’t believe the Covid-19 vaccines are intended to do anything but give humans a stronger immunity to the Coronavirus. I’ve seen no evidence for hostile activities besides those associated with pandemic capitalism and the underground chumocracy network, led by Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and David Cameron.  

    One way to help distinguish Branch Covidians and Govidians from response-able measures is to consider if the information under review is faith-based or research based. Not to mean that an atheist can’t be a Branch Covidian, it’s not about belief in god but about absolute certainty or absolute belief in anything. Any research based scientist working in the 21st century works in the language of probabilities and with luck communicates likewise, avoiding absolute pronouncements, leaving that to the political, religious and cult leaders. Research based science and thinking is open to new data, progressive, plural, inclusive, and we can all agree that uncertainty is on the increase. We desperately require research based scientists and a nuanced language of communication, cautiously optimistic, to move forwards together safely. Riddle me this, what happened to baby steps? 

    You’re welcome, naturally, to practice as much faith-based activity as you like, but please don’t inflict the results of your faith-based activity on all of us, in particular during a global health crisis as we tackle a novel mutating virus that cares little for faith. If estimates are correct, more than 85% of the world’s population believe in some almighty divine power, so it follows that they’re in dire need of updating techniques of prayer? Covid-19 has not gone away, as many faith-based political leaders have claimed over and over again, on the contrary the virus has mutated and strengthened, feeding off the general stupidity of for-profit governments and broken health care systems overseen by unfit faith-based nervous systems. Centralized government, centralized power and selfish objectives have led to a much worse pandemic across the planet, there’s countless examples of too little too late, opening up too soon, and our faith based leaders seem unable to learn from their mistakes, while sadly, voters continue to support their faith-based leaders, it appears that currently faith and shoddy belief win elections. 

    If critical thinking, the philosophy of science, scientific methodology and the hard sciences were deemed vital for a healthy, secure and well informed society, why would the government cut spending and access to programs that teach these skills and systems of research based knowledge? In the UK, Brexit has already encouraged the exodus of countless research scientists and health professionals. Nations with faith-based, opposed to research based systems of government are doomed to repeat their dumb mistakes with their fingers crossed [insert prayer emoji]     

    As the disunited Kingdom approaches July 19th and the removal of any mandated Covid restrictions, I must hammer out my opposition to this policy and make it known why I object to a sudden, all-at-once dropping of social protections, and extend these sentiments to Holland and other countries who may pay the price of yet another full lockdown due to opening up too fast while also miss-reading the cultural landscape so as to be wholly ineffective at communication with their subjects, youth in particular. Where’s the world beating advertising geni and behavioural science whizz kids, with their superpowers of persuasion and coercion, where’s the influential secret agents or influencers? At least Mark Rutte can apologise to the Dutch people for his mistakes, Boris Johnson, like Donald Trump is completely incapable of admitting mistakes, impervious to the shame and guilt most human beings feel when they’ve made a mistake that’s led to suffering. This is what happens when you invite liars and sycophants into the highest positions of power. I object to the herd immunity (mass infection) strategy and I always have done, since I noticed the tendency of those who promote it to be leaning right and leaning faith-based thinking. “Let it rip” is the catchy slogan that succinctly sums up irresponsibility in 2021.

    So what is to be done? Like many of you out there reading this, I suspect you’ve also encountered entrenched views and opinions, frustrated by the inability to get through to friends and family, let alone representatives and government officials. The spectrum is wide and growing, from flat earther’s and 5G mast burners to Yogi’s and MCs there’s seemingly, to me, no walk of life not touched by this schism between faith and research concerning Covid and how to respond. I think you’ll agree, the majority of those with vaccine hesitancy and a slightly wonky view of biology are not bad people carrying malice intent, they are our friends and loved ones. It seems to me that a small but wide reaching network of dedicated faith-based thinkers are being encouraged and assisted in propagating their alternative views by political forces interested in destabilization and populism. I’d hope that the anti-vaccine groups and those on the fence also notice the subtle differences between those who support restrictions, lockdowns, masks, social distancing due to care for vulnerable people (not for profit) from the minority of oligarchs who dream of a totalitarian system of government and wish to keep the population in quarantine indefinitely.

    Yes, I admit, I’m guilty of losing my center at times, especially when writing as Squintin Quarantino, serving up Covid punks, plague DJs and MCs cold. But this is a purposeful antagonism, aiming to set the scene for an open debate/battle between poets, rappers, preachers and politicians, all in the spirit of sporting competition and intellectual, witty combat. This is what all governments refuse to acknowledge, that art and creativity is a forum for democracy, a furtive ground where the gloves can come off and the language can explode in all directions, for the sporting entertainment and enlightenment of the society. That said, I regret some of the bombastic and mocking tone of some rhymes and aspire to a clearer, research based form of verse, able to hold history, scientific facts, statistics and epic drama. The work continues. Stay tuned.  

    Here today, in this letter I’m drawing attention to the fact that I’ve puffed and huffed and pouted and made weird noises to encourage feedback, opened myself up for critique and stood my ground when it comes to the goal of slaying coronavirus with eternal vigilance. The reckless decision to remove all Covid restrictions in the UK (and Holland) is another kick in the teeth to research based, science based thinking. The government is overriding the scientific consensus, demonstrating they are in league with Branch Covidians by way of their faith-based approach to public health. So it goes. 

    Be responsible around others, it might rub off.

    An additional problem that needs to be addressed is that of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Tackling these difficult circumstances will require that we work together–14th Dali Lama.

    –Steve Fly a.k.a Squnitin Quarantino
    Amsterdam
    https://www.patreon.com/stevefly         

               

  • Squintin Quarantino – Third Coming

    Third Coming
    Can you hear the clapping, my gums flappin’
    Moronic juicy rhymes keep the songs sap in
    Religion double tappin’ state talk crappin’
    Corona virus wave, another victory lappin
    Third coming
    Crowned for Easter
    Profit from misery is a sign of the beast (er)
    Baste the turkey with Brexit, the piss, Boris teks it
    You vote for rabid dogs and Brexit you get sick
    The virus, Zuck text it, fuck facebook and hex twit
    Take you bitcoin and shove it up your arse slit
    Who work for it, masses of energy, you tit
    No wonder Elon want Bitcoin to hit the ceiling
    Lao Tzu, Hegel and Machiavelli thieving
    Layers of capital, players and neigh sayers
    No socialist agenda to help or pay us
    Third coming
    Business class ass still got a thumb in
    Free ride capital, greedy market slummin’
    Mean motherfuckers own the means to living
    And I keep moaning, remaining, reframing
    Hot under the tongue, breath aiming flaming
    Wildfires
    From coast to coast
    Dumbos spread the virus like its jam on toast
    And my petty rhymes don’t even begin to roast
    Most the guests at the park who insult the host
    The planet’s not ours to save
    Greed stings like aftershave
    A curse on plague DJs who play the plague rave
    Greeting the third wave, go live in your cave
    Third coming
    In the air tonight like a song
    And I’m using a dolphin as a wake-shift bong
    You can thank Boris Trump Putin and Ping
    For the super spread of capital mutations this spring
    There’s a way out, forward, just look
    For the mutualist syndicalist anarchist book
    It may take a while, more destruction and bile
    We must crawl mile after mile after mile
    Eat that third shit sandwich and smile
    I know, my once tasty raps may seem vile
    Some raps snap like a crocodile
    Some traverse the Ganjes and Nile
    I’ve mysteries and manuals on file
    Spit a botticelli mosaic on your floor tile
    Suck satan off kitchen foil
    Cook up spies until they ready boiled
    Memories well oiled
    Serpent’s tooth and tail coiled
    Bed and pants soiled
    Poems loyal, dialed, dyed and royal real
    A bargain bop bonanza, a steel
    A wing on the third rail, another on the wheel
    Third coming
    Yower’ all-grow-ridim can’t latch me
    This patch is quilted with hatched ste
    Setting head fires with match key
    Game set seal, Adamski
    Born inwards Lee
    Burrows down to Gordon Brown’s downfall
    Gordon Bennet wrote it, I just float a bit
    Encircle, we mote it bee line for bass face distance sting
    Third Coming
    Ouch, like a corkwynder to our chops
    Like people without masks buying bog roll in shops
    Britain top of the pops
    But the band eating slops
    The Queen still banking and reaping our crops
    My flipper it flops, the bit penny drops
    From heaven or hell, or Giza cheops
    Capitals zit pops, death toll hit tops
    Exceptionally sexless brexit means worse off
    Oh well, so let’s make a mockery
    Come see my garden pond, deck chairs and rockery
    I fancy pigeons in my flockery
    Writs sound odd like socks, hurry
    In a global pandemic I’m sick like McFlurry
    Furry like mink
    Stinky like skunk
    Tuned up on Sun Ra and Thelonious Monk
    Third coming
    Like a trilogy
    We say three and in dutch it’s drie
    Wonton soup and cantaloupe with brie
    That predictive techx cunht catch flea
    Mimic my octopus, high me, fly me
    Word coming back from the grave
    Forgiveness, NHS not Jesus saves
    Eton enclaves and PPE chums
    Suck up resources and steal the last crumbs
    Tory Brexit death march to distant drums
    Oh diddums, it’s only a life
    Only a son, daughter, mother, father, husband or wife   
    Put down the knife, pick up the pen
    Write it out kids, let us begin
    Hideous crimes by this lying gangerino
    Pale when compared with Squintin Quarantino

      

  • A Pangolin Prayer – For World Pangolin Day 2021

    Exactly one year ago, I posted a blog for World Pangolin Day 2020, calling attention to the illegal Pangolin trade and the awful exotic animal market demand. Since then, I’ve spent time reading what I can find about Pangolin physiology and immunology, and progress in the challenging quest to discover the origins–and plot a prehistory of Sars Cov-2.

    Recent studies from the reputable, Francis Crick Institute, have raised the probability that the Pangolin is an intermediary species, or viral bridge between Bat Coronaviruses and Sars Cov-2 in Humans.

    Further research on the Bat Pangolin Human (cross-species transmission) plus recent papers on Mink mutations, and the flurry of new studies on the Human variants (the so called Kent/UK variant, South African Variant and the Brazilian variant) are all worthy of study. Sure, it’s a heavy load to digest. I can’t pretend to understand all of the findings, however one thing is crystal clear to me since February 2020, unless all nations review their relationships with animals and farming practice and the climate, immediately, novel pandemics will continue. I agree with Sujit:    
    “A post-pandemic historiography will surely be interdisciplinary, with critical, philosophical and collaborative engagement with scientists.–Sujit Sivasundaram, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717365/

    I urge you all to read the captivating, brilliant paper by Sujit Sivasundaram, a most detailed and broad, respectful overview of this remarkable creature and it’s reverence in traditional Chinese culture. Yes, go ahead, study the Pangolin in the context of virology and immunology and the possible–zoonotic leap–but also try to take a moment to consider their bigger picture, the pre-history culture, language art and folklore of these creatures. This context is important for discussions with any who claim Sars Cov-2 was made in, or escaped from a laboratory. Nobody has 100% certainty on the origins of the Sars Cov-2, however, like most things in history it’s down to a complex of origins.

    Something that struck me, when reading Sujit’s paper, is the respectful chant that the Pangolin poachers said aloud before killing one. This reflects other aboriginal and indigenous native people’s hunting traditions and prayer. In each, some kind of offering in word or deed or symbol is directed to that living thing which is killed to sustain them and their tribe. I consider the chant as a kind of–Lords Prayer–but in this case to the Pangolin gods, keep in mind that the traditional Chinese Pangolin poachers infused their chants with humour and puzzling poetic ambiguity. Here’s updated reverent chant for 2021, although I don’t intend to kill and eat any Pangolin.

    Pangolin Prayer
    Oh Pangolin, dear Pangolin
    I don’t want your meat
    Let’s walk under starlight
    Through mountains dancing feet
    Oh Pangolin, sweet Pangolin
    All horny and well armed
    Scales for immunity
    Balanced, unharmed
    Kaballavā, mulkodhu
    valdaranayā, æyā
    Forgive us lord Pangolin
    Please accept this prayer

    Perhaps we can extend these chants and poems (don’t call em’ roasts or toasts) to Bats and to Mink? Join me at my patreon project and help mutate these sacred chants into full blown audio/visual variants/odes.

    –Steve Fly

    “Despite the best efforts of scientists to understand the mechanisms through which this virus originated across species, the role of the historian is also critical in understanding the ‘spill-over’ of diseases, for the transference of zoonotic diseases now occurs more rapidly because of the way humans have altered nature over centuries. The mammalian orders that carry the vast majority of zoonotic diseases are rodents, bats and primates. Among the anthropogenic drivers of this transmission are human domestication of animals, human encroachment into habitats high in wildlife biodiversity, and the hunting of wild animals.18 Additionally, large-scale industrial farming is a problem because it produces genetically similar populations across which disease can spread quickly.” — Sujit, The Human, The Animal and the Prehistory of COVID-19.

    The question remains on how the pangolins became infected initially. Could it have been in their natural Southeast Asian environment, before being captured? The discovery of a new virus close to SARS-CoV-2 in bats in Cambodia supports this hypothesis, as Rhinolophus bats and pangolins can meet, at least occasionally, in caves in Southeast Asia. This strengthens the hypothesis that pangolin trafficking is responsible for multiple exports of SARS-CoV-2-like viruses to China.–https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/virus-similar-covid-19-was-present-cambodia-early-2010-177739

    “For much of last year it spread quietly, then a cluster of patients infected with the virus carrying a H69/V70 deletion appeared in Denmark. This mutation was appearing in a version of the virus that was being passed from mink on farms to humans. While analysis showed the virus had mutated slightly to become more infectious to the animals, some early data suggested it was also less sensitive to antibodies contained in the blood serum of patients who had recovered from Covid-19.–https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210127-covid-19-variants-how-mutations-are-changing-the-pandemic

    “The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis)and the Chinese pangolin(Manis pentadactyla),a scaly anteater, occupy ancient and important niches in the biologically diverse ecosystems of Chinese folk cosmology. Both animals are believed to have mysterious magical power and high medicinal value, and both are now under state protection.–https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wr4f1

    “In Chinese legend pangolins are said to travel all around the world underground, and in the Cantonese language the name for pangolins translates to “the animal that digs through the mountain,” or “Chun-shua-cap,” which translates to “scaly hill-borer.”–http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/chinese-pangolin/

  • Dutch English American Exceptionalism

    Dutch gov. Collapses from a benefit scandal (they hounded families, a disproportionate of non-white, to pay back benefit money they’d been paid). Meanwhile in the UK, where the gov. are complicit in 100’000 deaths, profit off misery and defraud hungry children out of food, or in the USA, where a compulsive liar and racist led for four years, neither US or UK heads step down, the opposite, they get bonuses and extra work. Who could have guessed such a “benefits” scandal would collapse the Dutch gov? My conclusion, the DEA (Dutch English American) put wealth before health and peddle lies for personal gain. Some politicians feel a sense of shame, others build a cult of personality.

    Now, let’s start that rebuilding truth in our community and society stuff, and scrutinize these vultures who claim to help us. Journalists? Support nurses and teachers, local trades-people, the vulnerable, homeless, disabled, elderly. Health care, not health ‘don’t’ care. Maybe consider special efforts to track.trace isolate and rehabilitate hate groups, branch Covidian’s and disinformation outlets. Spies? Finally, employ artists to help fight the 2021 culture war or else suffer the consequences of a crooked gov, enabled by a limp media, gagged and in the pocket of the same gov. interests: behavioural design and marketing unrestricted international finance capitalism. As somebody who has experienced the pitfalls of the Dutch benefit system, and cursed it often, I think it serves Rutte and his mob right to fall victim to a racist benefit scandal. If the cap fits.

    I sincerely hope that what comes to replace it this summer (2021 Dutch Election)  will be devoid of far-right populist elements that destroy economies, democracies, cultures and the climate, if they are allowed to take root. We need a new 2021 socialism, we need the opposite of fascism. I’m here for the fight, for Europe, for the planet.

    –Steve Fly
    Amsterdam

  • Squintin Quarantino: Mink Differently

    Pontoon…that’s twenty twenty one
    Put yer’ mask on, big task ahead son
    SQ Raps, with zoonotic curses
    A pox on capitalists, flock of bats in these verses
    Swoop down with sonor into your town
    James Brown on the speakers (get up, get down)
    The message I got and medium hold it
    Warped my mind, cosmos enfolded (tongue molded)
    My joint hold it
    That weed, sold it, green like Kermit,
    supreme vermin, sermon turnin’
    R-number determine the respect that you earnin’ (Zero?)
    …I’m showing concernin’
    Shut the fucking zoos and the schools, get learnin’

    I look in mirror, and tap the sink
    Double tap my head, think mcfly think
    These rhymes on pages, unpublished gauges
    For Le’ Mink I beg forgiveness from gods and sages
    Animal trade brings a shit parade
    Unless, in a lab, you think the virus made 
    They farmed fur and fucked with the wrong mink
    They picked the wrong Pangolin, wrong day, wrong drink
    Now humanity caged, we all enraged (klink klink)
    Klink klink
    You put Mink and Pangolin and Bats in cages
    Farm anything that walks, now the virus engages
    Pelts and coats and eyebrows and soup
    These mistakes not so man-kind, the guilty group (shot the coup)
    You eat Bat Pangolin soup you die
    You farm mink in squalour, boxed in you pay
    Their natural habitat is 7 miles wide
    They nurse their young on milk, down their burrow, inside
    Netherlands, Denmark and US breed em’
    Kill them, skin them, sell them and bleed them
    Gone done it now, since pig sheep and cow
    Back to bite you in the ass, better fast write a vow
    The wrong Pangolin and bat-mink farms
    The wrong politician and brats test our calms
    When the wrong human spread the wrong virus
    Cull in Denmark, our fault (I’d fire us)
    Like a bat out of hell you’ll be mourning till’ the morning comes
    I’m not surprised, got a gravestone on my drums
    Pull your mind out the slums (hums)
    Rise up with empathy, let it go, plums
    Covid dumbos suck like a thousand jumbos
    Wishful thinking, booze, god, where the mind goes
    Rhymes runnin’ like yer’ nose in a snot green garden
    Overflow hose with this prose keg yer’ pardon

    Practically shut the Zoo, we haven’t any clue
    How far up David Icke’s Rabbit hole do you have to goo
    Until you smell the bull poo, I ask you?
    Study mammals, the variants, tell parents
    Mammalian pathology and Mink/Pangolin physiology
    Check my methodology, questions, juss’ holla G.
    You believe a bio-flu made in a lab just for you
    Why shut a zoo when it’s Bill Gates crew in Wu
    Antivaxx anti-lockdown virus madness crew, fuck you
    I spit compassion for Mink, you just share sick stink
    Common sense and decency on the brink
    National health crisis, you’re brainwashed like Isis
    Killing just as many, your poor mum dad or granny
    Boris Johnson is a pure fanny
    These dead-pan notes are not funny
    Far right thugs and Facebook groups
    Conmen and victims, all fodder for troops
    Caught in the cross-fire, a zoonotic virus
    I put my hands in the air, but nobody would hire us, they fire us!
    Check the papyrus
    2020 vision I got it
    Published in March, I got a fly in my bonnet
    This is no sonnet but if you sun it you get it
    Vitamin DJ, TJ hooka’ beat smell it
    Don’t forget stay fit, still dance and move your feet
    Be discreet with your raps don’t write all caps
    I’m like a Pangolin army walkin’ through cat-flaps
    Flapping chops, cutting drops, wearing a bat bra singing four-tops
    Turvey, squirrely surely shirley, upside down inside from scurvy
    These liars unnerve me, chumocracy dirty
    I’ve been saying this since I was twenty or thirty
    Always wash your hands before eating at the canteeno’
    The virus invisible, I’m Squintin Quarantino

    They put animals and people in cages
    Profited from misery throughout ages
    Confuse health message as illness rages
    The tabloid right wing news-reaper pages
    Have I got news for you
    This shit started in a make-shift wet zoo in Wu
    The chinese contained it, but some tourists plained it
    And some tourists plained it, and some tourists plained it
    Skiers and first-world upper-class dummies
    Picked up corona for a ride to their cities
    Those living in crown cuckoo land, can’t understand what’s new
    A new virus, previously unknown and that much is true
    Faith salespeople and cheats pounce like vultures
    I make word sculptures, music and cultures
    You turn natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe
    By not taking the scientific consensus seriously
    Toilet papers hordes and 5G nutspiracy, embarrass me, callous me?
    Qanon, wake up son, they’re lying about who’s lying
    I’m flowing here trying to keep from sighing
    Singing not crying, walking not flying 
    There’s no denying, right wing leaders cause more dying
    Look at New Zealand and Wuhan, which communist buying?
    First world white capitalist faith-based disaster
    Exceptionalism, conceit makes the virus spread faster
    All the Trump Bolsonaro Bozo incompetence
    Is reflected in numbers, the death and mere pitence
    Largest military and best health care facilities
    Can’t be used to help the people because their for-profit utilities
    Public funds into private purses
    What are you stupid or something, can’t understand these verses
    You’ve been robbed, raped, thraiped and tortured
    They stole the land, the trees, the air from our orchard
    And although its awkward we must walk forward
    For word brings hope and a rant helps my veggies steam
    Environment a melting ice-cream, it doth seem, ripped at the seam
    Tripped over the dream back to the future nightmare
    But I’m awake, ready for the fight, who’s up and out there?
    I’m here training in my yellow submarino’
    Staring at Faceblock, Squintin Quarantino

    –Squintin Quarantino

    See 2020: Squintin Quarantino

  • The Fat Emperor Wears No Mask


    Emperor – the sovereign or supreme male monarch of an empire. Tsar, Czar, Kaiser, Fuhrer. a.k.a: Unscientific delusion of divine authority.

    Chief Covid skeptic, Ivor “Fat Czar” Cummins replied to me on twitter with: “go back to your drums, unscientific steve,” which is funny and helped me to better clarify my position and criticism.

    I, Steve Fly, a.k.a Unscientific Steve, do not make claims of the real absolute truth, or to know about the only real reality. I do not…claim empirical truth in my work and I don’t claim supreme sovereign power, I’m no Bloated Kaiser and hope to distinguish myself–right here–from that gang, or those in support of his cult of personality. After playing some killer’ chops in ⅞ time and my usual warm up paradiddles, ruffs, diddles, doubles, singles, triples and konnakol rhythmic exercises I powered-up my senses, and I now sense well marketed faith-based ideology, cloaked in the language of critical thinking, ala’ some threads of Qanonsense: do your own research, followed by….”meanwhile, I have the only truth, Ive’ all the keys to reality, follow me, subscribe! Check my book if you wanna’ live.” 

    To my tobacco stained taste buds, Ivor Cummins and his devout devotees and followers are tripped up by the promotional and marketing campaigns that surf on trumpeting claims to practice science, yet communicate in a language of faith-based, superstition, leaning toward medieval dull platitudes. Cummins repeatedly claims the “Real Truth, Real Data and Real Reality.” Why is he shouting so much, his background in corporate marketing coming through? Scientists with integrity don’t have to shout like the Fat Emperor, or shouldn’t have too either. They progress through corroborated evidence, e.g: masks work, social distancing and lockdowns work and vaccines work. This reflects the status quo according to the science. Masks, lockdowns and vaccines are true in a practical sense because they work, demonstrably, it’s foundational physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics. The big T Truth Cummins claims is weak, his Emperor status is untestable, alike the majority of dogmatic conclusions garnered from selected works, that in themselves hold merit. A popular corporate marketing technique used by populists in 2020.

    I’m with Karl Popper on this, “Hypotheses cannot be proven to be true, they can only be falsified.” And here’s Ivor, claiming big T Truth and big R Reality, with worrying wafts of the great awakening and reset tumbling up my sensitive nostrils. Ivor(y) Tower Ivor, claims to know all about the thousands of experiments and papers and studies to conveniently fit his consistent general premise: masks don’t work, anti-lockdown doesn’t make a difference, and vaccines are not to be trusted. He’s cherry picking his guests like how an Emperor packs his court, to support his public puzzlement, putting the juicy pieces together on his podcast, spouting unfounded conclusions.

    My advice is, if he wants his followers and critics and the scientific worldwide community to take him seriously, then he should drop the messiah complex and consistent dogmatic faith-based claims of supreme sovereignty. If Ivor were a satirist I’d give the Fat Emperor brand a thumbs up, pretty funny joke, but he’s not, he claims empirical absolute truth and sells his brand, based on a logical fallacy, to his devout followers. He’s right about fats and sugar though. Oh, I get it, Fat Emperor, to mean he’s the sovereign supreme white male monarch of Fatburgs?  

    Burp….Kisht-ti-coo / kisht-ti-coo / kisht-ti-con

    –Unscientific Steve.  

    p.s In the tradition of Popper, in some sense I’m strengthening the opposing arguments above, if the devout believers could get down off their high horse and look the facts in the face. Please, take a peek at this paper on Science and Pseudo Science, get up in the game. 
    https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/pseudo-science/

  • An Open Letter To The Dutch Government, Health Ministry And Farm Ministry.

    “Europe has an estimated 2750 mink farms and produces more than 27 million pelts per year.–Marion Koopmans.

    Close the fur farms now, gesloten!
    Track trace and isolate every single mink mutation immediately
    Why have you not closed the farms and culled the Mink?
    Based on what is happening in Denmark
    What happened in May in Holland!
    Why are ANY mink farms open? How, why?
    Who’s responsible
    Who’s irresponsible?
    Ms. Schouten can you hear me?

    Why are so many awful Mink farms here
    In the first place?
    Why does Holland lead Mink trade
    To supply demand for China?
    How do you allow it in the first place
    Before the Mink-Human Covid
    Chimera outbreak?

    I’m outraged at the Dutch government and
    Health authority and Farm Ministry for a lack of
    Responsibility toward this. Protect the people?

    Do you understand the danger here?
    Besides the cruel trade in itself
    You could be helping Covid19 mutate and
    Spread, a mutation that may not be
    Suppressed by the vaccine
    Herd immunity is out the window again.

    Your unwillingness to act until Spring 2021
    Reflects on your selfish collective failure, again.
    Your inability to mandate masks
    Has led to more death
    Self inflated exceptionalism endangers all.

    Note, Mink are traded LEGALLY in Holland
    For their pelts, you monsters condone this?
    What kind of slave-trade mentality?

    I’m angry not because you’re irresponsible 
    Toward the health of your Dutch subjects, but
    That the mutating virus could spread
    To the rest of the planet. We just don’t know.
    But YOU claim to know better, Mr. Rutte. 

    “Despite enhanced biosecurity, early warning surveillance and immediate culling of infected farms, transmission occurred between mink farms in three big transmission clusters with unknown modes of transmission.”B. Oude Munnink.

    –Thelonious Mink.

    P.s I’d be willing to work with responsible individuals toward helping solve this massive public health crisis. Starting with a team to begin lobbying for the culling and closure, permanently, of all Mink farms anywhere! But I’ll probably end up working at Feebo. Oh well, happy holidays. 

    “Legislation is being prepared to close all mink farms early on in 2021. This is stated in a letter to Parliament dated 11 November.” – https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Research-Institutes/Bioveterinary-Research/show-bvr/COVID-19-detected-on-two-mink-farms.htm

    From Dutch News: “So far farm minister Carola Schouten has resisted calls for a mass cull of all mink on Dutch fur farms, even though scientists said in September that at least 66 fur farm workers and their family members have been infected with coronavirus. The team used genome sequencing to trace the spread of the virus between mink, cats and humans and found that 66 people and 11 cats all had a ‘mink variety’ of the virus.”

    https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/11/dutch-mink-farms-in-spotlight-again-after-mutant-covid-virus-found-in-denmark/

    “Mink belong to the Mustelidae family, which includes ferrets that have been used as an animal model owing to their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.6 Efficient transmission between ferrets has been shown in experimental infections, with spread to naive animals through direct contact but also through indirect airborne spread.7 According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Europe has an estimated 2750 mink farms and produces more than 27 million pelts per year. As farmed minks are kept in large groups and housed in pens in wire cages with bedding that generates a lot of dust, there is ample opportunity for transmission once the virus is introduced on the farms. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30912-9/fulltext

    Despite enhanced biosecurity, early warning surveillance and immediate culling of infected farms, transmission occurred between mink farms in three big transmission clusters with unknown modes of transmission. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the tested mink farm residents, employees and/or contacts had evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Where whole genomes were available, these persons were infected with strains with an animal sequence signature, providing evidence of animal to human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within mink farms.
    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/11/09/science.abe5901