Weekly Crystallizations #114

Weekly sensemaking update

Hey there,

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekly Crystallizations, a weekly newsletter where I highlight tweets (and occasional Telegram messages) from people making sense of what’s going on in the world today!

Personal update

In my rush to push out last week’s edition I completely forgot to wish you all a happy new year. So here’s a belated happy new year!

COVID

The new variant, XBB.1.5 is a recombinant variant and not more immune evasive than its parent. The reason it's surging now is because it's immune-escape advantage, until now, had come with a ACE2 binding disadvantage. The latest mutation it has picked up ameliorates that. How that translates into virulence (i.e. becoming sick) is not clear yet.

Bloom Lab @jbloom_lab

I wanted to summarize what is known about the new XBB.1.5 variant of SARS-CoV-2, which is starting to generate a lot of interest. (There are no new scientific results in this thread, it simply aggregates previously reported results for those not following topic closely.)

Gomez Addams @tradsperger

Hospital admissions in New York State for SARS2. Doesn't look like the pandemic is about to end.

Eric Topol @EricTopol

All we know about the XBB.1.5 variant summarized here a week ago erictopol.substack.com/p/a-new-varian… We’ve not seen such rapid growth of a variant since Omicron BA.1 a year ago. Total US XBB last week = 18% of cases. Northeast now ~75% XBB.1.5. Perhaps CDC and media will finally take note

erictopol.substack.comA new variant alertThe XBB.1.5 variant is on a growth spurt in the United States

Good summary of some of the latest evidence in support of Geert van den Bossche's claims that mass vaccination during a pandemic causes variants to emerge.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr @RobertKennedyJr

The author of an op-ed published this week in the Wall Street Journal suggested COVID-19 vaccines could be fueling new variants — a theory posited as far back as August 2021 by vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche.

childrenshealthdefense.orgWSJ Latest to Suggest COVID Vaccines May Be Fueling New VariantsThe author of an op-ed published this week in the Wall Street Journal suggested COVID-19 vaccines could be fueling new variants — a theory posited as far back as August 2021 by vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche.

Russo-Ukrainian War

@JudgeNap interviews ex CIA Officer Jack Devine

jessems @jessems

• "We should not be meddling internally in Russia. It will backfire and we won't be good at it." • "There is no end game until Putin goes. The Russian people need to get rid of him" • "I think they [Ukraine] will get the Crimea [back]."

Branko Marcetic @BMarchetich

Roberts, convincingly IMO, argues Putin decided a war now would be less disastrous than a war later, when Ukraine's status as an unofficial NATO outpost'd be better established. This is very much what's going through the heads of Chinese leadership on Taiwan: invade now, or...

Some paraphrased notes on the Duran podcast's "Makeyevka. Neocons will push to escalate, will Russia stay the course?"

jessems @jessems

Only one patriot missile system is going to be delivered and only in 2024. This is an indication that some people in the US are showing restraint. The pentagon as concerns that their arms are getting depleted.

Western nations are starting to experience blowback for pumping military aid into Ukraine.

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast

Rogozin: "Please give the shrapnel cut out of my spine by surgeons to Emmanuel Macron. And also tell him that no one will escape responsibility for the war crimes of France, the United States, Britain, Germany and other NATO countries in Donbass."

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast

Missile strike in Druzhkovka (south of Kramatorsk) caught live on French TV. Some sources are saying that the indoor arena that was hit was used as temporary barracks by the Ukrainian army, but as of now that's not confirmed.

It's hard to know what the casualty figures are on each side. This slip and edit seemed telling though. 100,000 Ukrainian troops KIA. Some sources claims that figure is higher.

MintPress News @MintPressNews

This week, Ursula von der Leyen, an EU official, released and deleted a video where she said that Ukraine had lost 100,000 troops, unconfirmed data that Ukraine claims is classified. She later re-released a video with the casualty estimate edited out.

Qui bono?

Bashkarma🌏 @Karmabash

After the Nord Stream pipelines have been successfully exploded and damaged Germany receives the first shipment of LNG gas from US ☝️⬇️

Maria Dubovikova @politblogme

Chinese art.

https://t.me/s/RWApodcast/294

As Western nations continue to ramp up military support for Ukraine, hints of blowback are starting to emerge.

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast

It says so in the letter: the shrapnel comes from a French CAESAR artillery system.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en

Russian Dmitriy Rogozin, big supporter of war, was wounded when he celebrated his birthday on temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories. Rogozin sent a piece of shrapnel from his body to be passed to Emmanuel Macron. Your thoughts, why Macron, and not anyone else? https://t.co/rxwxv5vBFq

Twitter

Edward Snowden @Snowden

The US gov, through the FBI, had the censorship units at major internet platforms on speed dial. Public figures that claimed such a year ago were cast out of polite society as lunatics. When it is now established to be true, the same polite people now shrug: "Trust the ruler."

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

24.They eventually settled on an industry call via Signal. In an impressive display of operational security, Chan circulated private numbers of each company’s chief moderation officer in a Word Doc marked “Signal Phone Numbers,” subject-lined, “List of Numbers.” https://t.co/5pTq7sfshh

Crypto

Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong

5/ Blockchains are not going to be open ledgers forever. Just like the internet moved from HTTP to HTTPS as the default, blockchains are going to move to more private transactions over time, and this is a good thing for consumer protection. We should encourage it, not hinder it.

AI

Ethan Mollick @emollick

The first full semester in a post-ChatGPT world is about to start. And while instructors have reasons to be worry about the downside of AI, it has tremendous potential as well. We have a paper showing some of these benefits, with exercises you can assign. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

AI generated images

NAT @nat_sharpe_

monster truck buddhism h/t @visakanv @slatestarcodex

Stable Diffusion 🎨 AI Art @DiffusionPics

Log #15 - Origin of the Meme, Rome 46 BC. #AIArt #StableDiffusion2 / #StableDiffusion #DreamStudio

swyx 🇸🇬 @swyx

ChatGPT’s current killer app isn’t search, therapy, doing math, controlling browsers, emulating a virtual machine, or any of that other cherrypicked examples that come with huge disclaimers. It’s a lot more quotidian: Reformatting information from any format X to any format Y.

Marques Brownlee @MKBHD

ChatGPT coming to Bing DALL-E coming to Bing I never thought I’d say this, but… bring on the Bing comeback

AI Breakfast @AiBreakfast

🚨 Breaking news from the land of paywalls: Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, plans to integrate ChatGPT into Bing search by March 2023. Microsoft already has plans in place for a DALLE-2 integration through “Bing Image Creator” as seen here: https://t.co/XsBpzx5SiN

We might end up with Woke Safetyist Western AI and Non-Western AIs

Roko.Eth @RokoMijic

Do you see where we are heading?

Mahesh Vikram Hegde 🇮🇳 @mvmeet

ChatGPT is a chatbot launched by OpenAI ChatGPT is allowed to comment on Hindu deities But it is not permitted to speak on Isl@m & Christi@nity Amazing hatred towards Hinduism! https://t.co/ev0LTrhPU6

Vaccine injuries

For several months now I've been claiming here and on Twitter that it seems that awareness for vaccine injuries is now hitting mainstream awareness.

Dr Aseem Malhotra @DrAseemMalhotra

BREAKING: ‘Critics claim covid jabs are causing heart problems - do they have proof?’ YES- MORE THAN ENOUGH! Feature article in todays Telegraph 🔥 We’ve finally broken British mainstream news 👊👊👊 telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness…

Numerous countries are observing alarming levels of excess deaths, and some people have been implicating the vaccines.

Dutch state television report that for the first time since 1900 more people have died than were born.

NOS Teletekst @Teletekst

Meer sterfte dan geboortes in 2022

Professors in Japan hypothesizing on vaccine-caused deaths

aussie17 @_aussie17

1. The DAM is breaking in Japan, two more professors speaking out against the vaccine Prof. Masanaka Nagao from Hiroshima University School of Medicine “We believe the vax is related to immune abnormalities”

Scorching monologue by an Australian senator on vaccine injuries.

Cynthia McKinney PhD @cynthiamckinney

Australian Senator Reveals Forced Mandates Were Supported By Politicians That Didn't Even Read the Documents that Revealed Problems With the COVID Jabs . . .

rumble.comAustralian Senator Gerard Rennick’s Amazing Vax Rant Leaves Opposition Parties Angry

A hypothesis why sudden deaths are occurring.

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH™ @P_McCulloughMD

This paper mechanistically explains why sudden deaths are occurring at two times: 1) 3 to 6 AM in sleep, 2) during sports. Both times there is a surge in catecholamines. #courageousdiscourse open.substack.com/pub/petermccul…

DrDarrellDeMello @DarrellMello

@LTCTheresaLong https://t.co/Iyrqa2v8aA This is probably the reason why people are dying suddenly after the vaccine *adrenergic myocarditis or catecholamine-mediated stress cardiomyopathy* (i.e. heart muscle injury caused by catecholamines).

The explanation could be more mundane. There does seem to be a clear correlation between waste water virus levels and excess deaths. Hinting at a causal relationship between COVID and excess deaths.

Maarten Keulemans @mkeulemans

4. Dat sluit ook aan bij deze diepzinnige waarneming 👇: de oversterfte (blauw) volgt nauwgezet de hoeveelheid virus in het riool (wit).

Another counter point: At times it seems that there's not even agreement on an increase in deaths / cardiac issues.

Medlife Crisis (Rohin) @MedCrisis

If the COVID vaccine caused coronary arteries to narrow – as you claim – we would have seen an enormous spike in acute coronary syndromes (heart attacks). I am a full time NHS cardiologist, like you once were. This has not happened. There are no data to show this.

I suspect all of this translates into there being a real signal, implicating the vaccinations, but it not being nearly as bad as some are making it out to be. But certainly worse than the corporate media is letting on.

Misc

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

Did you know Chinese electric vehicles already have a 18.7% market share in Europe? And even though this market share ranks second only to Germany, they're just getting started. We're actually on the eve of a massive expansion of Chinese car firms in Europe.

Balaji @balajis

Any human who becomes famous enough will eventually become the target of personal attacks. But a virtual influencer like Lil Miquela has a much reduced attack surface, particularly if their screenwriter is pseudonymous. More hit points than any human. virtualhumans.org/article/the-mo…

James Neill - 😷💙 🇪🇺🇮🇪🇬🇧🔶 @jneill

🚨 Hospital bed occupancy now at 96.9% ‼️ It has NEVER been so high. Absolute numbers of beds on the left hand axis. % occupancy on the right hand side. Source: england.nhs.uk/statistics/sta…

Tony Tassell @TonyTassell

Some telling charts in this FT piece on why the NHS in its worst ever crisis? ft.com/content/b59311…

eugyppius @eugyppius1

Symptomatic respiratory infections (from all viral pathogens) appear to be capped at ca. 10% of the population. Whenever infections hit that ceiling, they collapse suddenly afterwards. This is happening right now.

Marc Andreessen @pmarca

A case study for the importance of online anonymity.

Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson

To reiterate: I face public disgrace, mandatory political re-education, disciplinary hearing and potential loss of my clinical licensing for agreeing with @PierrePoilievre and criticizing our standing PM @JustinTrudeau

Jason Cohen @asmartbear

Just because your plans are written as mission -> vision -> strategy -> roadmap -> execution, doesn't mean that's the order you invent/write those things. Often you start with drafts and ping-pong as your ideas are refined through the intersection with reality.

Andrew Anglin @WorldWarWang

World War III is lining up to be countries that fly the rainbow flag versus countries that do not.

Pew Research Global @pewglobal

In the last five years, there has been a remarkable increase in the share of citizens across different countries who say cyberattacks from other countries are a major threat pewrsr.ch/3VM2XnC

Noah Carl @NoahCarl90

@KirkegaardEmil According to this review paper published last August, "available data do not enable us to conclude that human semen quality is deteriorating worldwide or in the Western world, but that a trend is observed in some specific areas".

nature.comSpatiotemporal trends in human semen quality - Nature Reviews UrologySeveral studies over the past few decades have suggested that sperm quality varies by geographical region and might be subject to a temporal decline worldwide. However, the data supporting these conclusions have come from studies of various methodologies and heterogeneous populations, making them un…

Science Is Strategic @scienceisstrat1

Apple’s decoupling with China - The beginning of a hugely consequential development (1/2) Cc: @paulg @ElbridgeColby @Noahpinion @erikbryn

Samo Burja @SamoBurja

In 2020, only Amazon and Google spent more on R&D than Huawei, China’s privately-held tech and telecom giant. U.S. sanctions have halted the company’s global growth, but will not destroy it. Subscribers can read the new Bismarck Brief here: brief.bismarckanalysis.com/p/huawei-will-… 1/n

Art

Federico Italiano @FedeItaliano76

Kolesnikoff's trees go beyond mere realistic representation—although they are undoubtedly realistic—they are a modality of being, a commentary on the invisible

Visakan Veerasamy ⛵️ @visakanv

I love these oil painting cityscapes by Jeremy Mann, they take my breath away every time. When you make art, I think it's always useful to ask the question, "What is it about this medium that lets me do something I can't do with any other medium?" Jeremy has this figured out