Horsepox

 

OK, that does it. Close it down, now!

See also here:

AI creates 16 new viruses 

Trojans

 

Overheard on the web: "We finally found the solution to the Fermi paradox". Note that the AI is called Evil! Intelligent design, anyone? 

AI creates 16 new viruses from scratch

A pox on both your houses?

 

Credit: Alain6963

Mariamman is the Hindu goddess of smallpox. She was worshipped to cure smallpox or avert smallpox outbreaks. Why? Because she was believed to cause them! 

Did worship of Mariamman stop smallpox? No. Modern science stopped smallpox by simply eradicating the smallpox virus. I´m sure materialist atheists might draw certain conclusions from this.

But let´s assume the spirit-world is real. Maybe Mariamman is "real" in some sense. What does *that* tell us? Say about the character of the spirit-world...

Trump will save us from Ebola!

 

Just unleash the power of poly-crisis late capitalism and give us another RNA vaccine, Don! I´m sure your supporters (and RFK Jr) won´t mind at all, LOL.

Sick humor?

 

Why is everyone so afraid of an Ebola pandemic all of a sudden? I´m sure Trump can handle the situation, just like he did the last time, by rushing through the development of a new vaccine, HA HA HA.

Besides, the Donald is really SAINT GERMAIN IN THE FLESH!!! 

Waiting for the virus

 

- Well, don´t look at me, I din do nuthin! 

Far right gadfly Richard Spencer on X muses about the hanta situation.

>>>  

When I think about Covid, I feel that the pandemic happened only yesterday ... and thirty years ago! Obviously, not too many years have gone by, but we've moved past that era's politics and culture to a point that it feels like it might as well have occurred in the '90s.

"Wokeness" is over, at least as a flamboyant public spectacle. And most of the Right has moved passed the bizarre paranoia of that period. Both sides have "forgotten everything and learned nothing!" to misquote Talleyrand. That is, they have not overcome their past mistakes and are likely to double-down if given the opportunity. The Hantavirus seems serious enough ... but I won't opine on whether or not this will develop into a worldwide pandemic and panic. It might very well blow over. What I do know is this: First, if we suffer TWO "once in a century" pandemics, then it is fair to begin asking questions about the "collapse of complex societies." In other words, the world is breaking down due to its own inner logic. Global travel and modern medicine's ability to keep old and sick people alive for extended periods is building up connected kindling for a major catastrophe. We won't suffer a collapse in spite of post-modernity; we will suffer a collapse because of it! Second, as bad as Covid was, a Hantavirus pandemic will totally break Americans' brains. We will see insane conspiracy theorizing and public disorder that will make the Covid period seem like a walk in the park. Interesting times...

>>>

The pandemic next time?

 

Should we be worried about the hanta virus? A bit spooky that not even isolated island such as Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha are entirely safe. The Canary Islands don´t count. 

I assume it´s contained now? 

It´s life, Jim, but not as we know it

 

Some bacteria have "devolved" to a point where they are scarcely even alive anymore, while some viruses (known as giant viruses) seem to be very much alive, at least compared to other viruses! The boundary between living and non-living is getting...messy. 

Is anyone surprised?  

We may have a problem

 

Credit: Shree Ganesh 

Something called the Nipah virus is spreading in South Asia. There is no known cure or antidote, and the lethality is 57%. Or perhaps between 40% and 75%. So if the virus spreads internationally, it could potentially kill over half of the world´s population. 

Oh. 

Thank god, there is no indication that this will happen. The international spread, that is. Until next time? 

Walk and block

 

Overheard on the interwebs: there is a conspiracy theory that not only do viruses don´t cause disease, they don´t actually exist at all?!

Eh?

On the strange idea that viruses don´t exist 

At least he believes in evolution

 

- Yes, I attained herd immunity in 2025!

It seems RFK Jr doesn´t have jurisdiction over agriculture, but he seems to be lobbying hard for his somewhat peculiar approach anyway. Well, at least he believes in evolution through natural selection! So does Mother Nature, I´m afraid...

Peculiar fact: none of the articles seem to contain interviews with the chicken farmers. What do *they* say about this situation?   

RFK Jr wants bird flue to spread on poultry farms

RFK Jr says let bird flu go through farms

Look at the viral sequences

 

The most chilling statement from the previous blog post (quoting Wikipedia): "It has been estimated that in material from humans, between 40 and 90% of viral sequences are from dark matter. Human blood contains over three thousand different DNA sequences which cannot yet be identified."

We literally don´t know what´s inside our own bodies?! Reeeeee...

Look at the enigmatic taxa

 

Therefore God? Some crazy stuff from Wikipedia... 

>>>Parakaryon myojinensis, also known as the Myojin parakaryote, is a highly unusual species of single-celled organism known only from a single specimen, described in 2012. It has features of both prokaryotes and eukaryotes but is apparently distinct from either group, making it unique among organisms discovered thus far. It is the sole species in the genus Parakaryon.

>>>It is not clear whether P. myojinensis can or should be classified as an eukaryote or a prokaryote, the two categories to which all other cellular life belongs. Adding to the difficulties of classification, only one instance of this organism has been discovered to date, and so scientists have been unable to study it further.

Parakaryon

>>>Biological dark matter is an informal term for unclassified or poorly understood genetic material. This genetic material may refer to genetic material produced by unclassified microorganisms. By extension, biological dark matter may also refer to the un-isolated microorganisms whose existence can only be inferred from the genetic material that they produce. Some of the genetic material may not fall under the three existing domains of life: Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryota; thus, it has been suggested that a possible fourth domain of life may yet be discovered, although other explanations are also probable.

>>>Sequences that are believed to be derived from unknown microbes are referred to as the microbial dark matter, the dark virome, or dark matter fungi. Such sequences are not rare. It has been estimated that in material from humans, between 40 and 90% of viral sequences are from dark matter. Human blood contains over three thousand different DNA sequences which cannot yet be identified. A mycological study from 2023 found that dark matter fungi seem to dominate the fungal kingdom. 

Biological dark matter

>>>A shadow biosphere is the hypothesis of a hypothetical microbial biosphere of Earth that would use radically different biochemical and molecular processes from that of currently known life. Although life on Earth is relatively well studied, if a shadow biosphere exists, it may still remain unnoticed because the exploration of the microbial world targets primarily the biochemistry of the macro-organisms.

>>>Existence of a shadow biosphere could mean that life has independently evolved on Earth more than once, which means that microorganisms may exist on Earth which have no evolutionary connection with any other known form of life. It is suggested that if an alternate form of microbial life on Earth is discovered, the odds are good that life is also common elsewhere in the universe.

Shadow biosphere

Btw, I wrote about this kind of stuff before, cuz of course I did:

Dark biodiversity

The vaxx dilemma

 

Libertarian gadfly Richard Hanania´s pro-vaxx article was published in August 2023. 

He recently started promoting it again on X, probably due to reports that more Americans than usual get hospitalized or die of the flue due to vaccine-hesitancy. Also, less children are getting inoculated against measles. Some people have started to fear measle epidemics. And no, Hanania doesn´t like a certain RFK Jr. Interestingly, on X he accuses the new head of the HHS of being a stooge for agri-business!

I´m not a great fanboy of Hanania, who often comes across as something of a troll. Thus, he claims to be a Palestinian while supporting the Israeli far-right?! Still, an interesting contribution. Make of this content what you wish.  

Vaccines and the Tightrope of Progress

It´s a crazy, crazy, crazy world

 

- Yes, killer squirrels. I mean, come on...

Some random science articles from the site "Live Science".

Did the wildfires drive them mad, I wonder?  

Killer squirrels in California public park

Everything was better before Christianity. No, wait...

Decapitated woman found in Irish bog

This has apparently been debunked. Well, I hope...

Cats caught bird flue from their owners

Do we even know what´s in our very own cosmic backyard?!

Oort cloud finally confirmed?

A second Kuiper belt?

Does the Donald really want Greenland? And how far above the sea is Mar-a-Lago exactly?  

Greenland´s ice shelf will collapse next century

And finally, an old classic...

What if a meteorite had not wiped out the dinosaurs?

The Consensus Machine

 

Sabine H continues dropping truth bomb after truth bomb. Regardless of what you think of the vaxx, she is right that science (of course) isn´t based on "consensus". Einstein said it best. When somebody published a book titled "800 scientists against Einstein", he quipped "if I´m wrong, it only takes one"!  

Peanuts

 

Since when are Trump supporters animal rights activists? Exactly. 

This is probably irony, similar to when the gorilla Harambe became an Alt Right mascot back in 2016.

But who knows, maybe the really hardcore anti-government/militia types are also rabid rabies denialists? Dude, of course you can´t just take an animal from the wild and have it in your house?!

Peanut the squirrel 

De galna hundarna

 

Erdogan-regimen gör äntligen något nyttigt...

Miljontals hundar i Turkiet kan avlivas

Reverse teleology

 

Overheard on YouTube: There is a speculation (speculation, I say) that viruses were originally alive, but then evolved (devolved?) into the non-living entities they are today. Thus, natural selection can turn the living into the non-living, making evolution go backwards?! Can evolution cancel itself??? 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

The myth of the smallpox goddess

 

The closest thing to Shitala´s "Tantric" form
I could prompt the prude AI to generate 

“Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India. The Healing Power of Sitala” is a 2015 book by Fabrizio M Ferrari, a scholar of religion based in the UK. I bought the book on a clearance sale (no academic pricing!), read a few chapters and skimmed the rest. Polemical exchanges between Ferrari and the more mainline scholars he is critiquing could be interesting and, perhaps, entertaining. I noticed that the work is used as a text book in religious studies departments in Sweden.

All across northern India, people worship a goddess known as Shitala or Sheetala (as I would render her name given the limitations of my Latin alphabet computer). However, during his extensive field trips around India, Ferrari noticed something peculiar. The “scholarly” view of Shitala is that she is a wrathful and terrifying deity, a “smallpox goddess” who demands worship and punishes those who refuses with the dreaded disease. Since smallpox is eradicated, presumably she now attacks people with other infections! However, this is *not* how most people in India actually see Shitala. Quite the contrary, the Cold Mother is always worshipped as a benign protectress, principally of women and children, from disease (including smallpox before 1979) and other kinds of misfortune. In some parts of India, she isn´t associated with disease-related topics at all, but is rather worshipped as a fertility goddess. Both poor villagers (whose worship of the deity can be pretty wild) and the urban gentry look upon Shitala as a mild-mannered mother goddess, not as a psychotic ghoul spreading deadly illness.

Something´s clearly up, and this book is the result of Ferrari´s reflections on the Shitala problematique.

The original form of Shitala was strikingly “Tantric” and wild. The goddess was depicted as a white-skinned and “sky-clad” (nude) young woman with big breasts and disheveled hair (the similarity with a male Shaiva ascetic is striking). She was riding on an ass (a wild donkey), considered an unclean and borderline evil animal in India. Later versions of Shitala were more civilized, with the goddess wearing a red sari and a golden tiara. Ferrari believes that while most deities and spirits associated with asses/donkeys are indeed inauspicious, Shitala is one of the few exceptions. Her riding the ass is symbolically a victory *over* evil and inauspiciousness, not an identification with it. Her other attributes include a pitcher filled with water (symbolizing her power to “cool” diseases), a broom (to get rid of impurities) and a winnower (perhaps suggesting an origin among poor peasants).

Beginning in the 17^th century, Bengali poets composed a number of Shitalamangalkavyas, stories in which Shitala played a decidedly sinister role. Excerpts known as Shitalapalas were staged in theatrical form and became popular. The “official” view of the goddess as capricious and brutal comes from these poems and theater plays. Indeed, Shitala is associated with a number of unsavory characters in these stories, including blood demons and what not! These stories have been taken at face value by many Westerners as descriptions of actual religious beliefs, when they are really literary fiction. Ferrari believe that the Shitalamangalkavyas give voice to the class prejudices of the privileged poets who wrote them. The point of these narratives is to describe the village folk and their religion as stupid and superstitious. It´s a form of very primitive bhakti based on fear: the peasants worship Shitala only after she has afflicted them with smallpox (which she then cures). However, even the underprivileged themselves find these tales entertaining, often due to the inclusion of ghouls, vampires and what not. The author makes a comparison to modern zombie flicks!

When India was a British dependency, the colonial power drew all the wrong conclusions from worship of Shitala during outbreaks of smallpox. This was especially the case after the British banned variolation in favor of smallpox vaccines. Variolation (a crude form of smallpox “vaccination”) continued to be carried out despite the ban. The colonial authorities often blamed outbreaks of smallpox on variolation. The practice was combined with puja (worship service) to none other than Shitala. Since the British authorities interpreted Shitala as a dangerous “smallpox goddess”, they concluded that the Hindus were in thrall to a dangerous superstition and rejected modern vaccines out of fear of offending her. This attitude was taken over by the secular health authorities after Indian independence, and inculcated into foreign doctors and WHO officials who participated in India´s vaccination campaigns. Scholars also believe in this negative version, and still today – generations after smallpox have been eradicated – the Cold Lady is still depicted as a personification of smallpox in learned literature. Rampant Orientalism?

Maybe. However, I noticed when reading/skimming this volume that even Ferrari mentions a couple of examples when Shitala *is* considered dangerous. At village level, she is often seen as one of “seven sisters”, a collection of goddesses who apparently are dangerous and capricious unless properly worshipped. He describes a Tantric temple, in which the auspicious Shitala is surrounded by decidedly wilder deities (and the inevitable mortuary iconography). Finally, he seems to suggest that the south Indian, specifically Tamil, goddess Mariyamman is a smallpox goddess for real, inflicting diseases on people who refuse to pay her homage. Mariyamman is known in northern India thanks to Tamil migrant workers and is often identified with…guess who…Shitala. So perhaps there is more to explore here?

An interesting chapter deal with the folk worship of Shitala. The author visited a temple where the most popular Shitala festival started with a virtual stampede during which the crowd jostled for the best places inside the temple grounds. A long string of goat sacrifices followed (the animals were beheaded) and the blood offered to the goddess. Hijras played a prominent role during the ritual. Hijras are self-castrated biologically male transgenders, usually regarded as a third gender, but considered “male” for the duration of the sacrificial ritual (only males can offer goats to Shitala). The best and most expensive goat is usually offered by the local hijra community. During the festival, young women can be possessed by the goddess, act as if mad, and angrily denounce males (sometimes including family members or husbands). While many males naturally fear or dislike such behavior, others are sexually aroused by it (the male onlookers didn´t realize that Ferrari speaks Bengali and hence understood their lewd remarks). Worship of Mariyamman is even wilder. It can include piercing rituals, including piercing of cheeks and tongues with arrows and spears?! Apparently, these festivals are often sensationalized in the Indian media.

The last chapter of “Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India” deal with the gentrification of Shitala. Usually regarded as a “folk” or “village” goddess, her worship is spreading upward on the social ladder. This leads to inevitable changes. The middle class, animal rights activists and Vaishnavas frown on the animal sacrifices described earlier. Shitala has therefore gotten new looks. She has become more similar to Lakshmi, rides a dignified white ass that looks almost like a horse, and is associated with Hanuman (although somewhat contradictorily also with Bhairava). Another strategy is to make Shitala more similar to Durga, since the festival of this goddess is popular all over India. In this form, she is no longer associated with disease at all.

Concluding remark: yes, religions change, our perceptions of the gods and goddesses change, as well, suggesting either that they don´t exist or that their myths and legends can´t be taken as literal truth. But you knew that already. So here I end.