I just can’t catch a break. For once, I decided to take the flu vaccine and it turns out to give you the bloody flu:

A large-scale prospective cohort study from the Cleveland Clinic has delivered a shocking verdict on this year’s influenza vaccine: not only was it ineffective, but it was also associated with increased risk of infection. Led by Dr. Nabin Shrestha, the study tracked over 53,000 employees during the 2024–2025 respiratory viral season to assess whether the influenza vaccine offered protection against laboratory-confirmed influenza infections. The results raise serious questions about this season’s flu vaccine and the broader assumptions behind annual mandates.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/landmark-cleveland-clinic-study-finds-flu-vaccine-ineffectiveand-possibly-harmfulfor-working-adults-in-2024-2025-season-84b3b608

I did wonder why all the people at work were suddenly getting the actual flu.

I was one of the judges at a graduate research showcase today. All research projects were great. There was a police officer from Indiana who studies the use of drones in policing and a doctor from Tanzania who does research on antibiotic resistance.

And then there was a guy who does linguistics. It’s not what is called linguistics anywhere else on the planet but in North America linguistics is a whole other thing.

“14,29% of subjects in my study said they prefer this method of language learning,” said the graduate researcher meaningfully.

“And how many people total did you have in the study?” I asked.

“Seven!” reported the researcher happily.

I had to pinch my thigh so hard to avoid laughing that I now have a bruise.

I will never fully understand Americans. On the one hand, it’s utterly unacceptable to ask any questions relating to money. OK, I figure, private information isn’t a good subject of inquiry, fine. But now I’m discovering that it’s considered perfectly fine to ask what kind of surgery one got and keep insisting even after one makes it clear that this is an unwelcome question.

Why is it even an interesting subject? People my age will always have something going on health wise. (Except one reader of this blog who enjoys extreme good health, and how wonderful that is). There’s always optometrist exams, or that old sports injury that’s acting up. All sorts of stuff.

People have been really pushy, including some people I’ve talked to half a dozen times in my whole life.

I don’t know if this exists but the mere possibility fills me with terror:

Planned obsolescence. I saw a ridiculously overpriced Bosch washing machine that had to have an Internet connection to your WiFi and a cloud account to run a simple rise cycle. Absolutely nuts.

— Eric the Just (@ErictheCatholic) April 7, 2025

I’m not referring to the old washer, of course, but to the new one that is connected to a cloud. That stuff freaks me out royally.

Another thing I hate passionately are subscriptions. I saw online that there’s now an app that finds the subscriptions you long forgot about and helps you cancel them. Why we agreed to the fishy, dishonest subscription model in everything is incomprehensible. It’s a money drain on customers that gives us zero value.

Why was the government funding the hobbies of Catholic bishops? Aren’t we supposed to have a separation of church and state? I’m not Catholic. Why should my taxes fund Catholic programs?

No disrespect at all to Catholics but I would be equally opposed to taking the money of Catholic, Protestant or atheist taxpayers and  putting them towards Orthodox initiatives. How is it decided, anyway, whose denomination gets funded and at what rate?

Conservatives are so terrified that liberals will call them racist that they will lionize any non-white lefty grifter to prove they aren’t. We will never stop being enslaved by the pathologies of the twentieth century until we move on from our fixation on racism.

I have entered the final stretch of writing my book. Final doesn’t mean short but there’s finally an end in sight. Writing a book is done in such small (compared to the whole) increments that it’s hard not to feel like it will never be completed. Now, however, I’m sure it will be completed.

In the meantime, what should we talk about? What interesting subjects have not been covered yet? Suggestions welcome and encouraged.

The Luigi Show went to commercial break, everybody switched channels

they'll be back

— Tredegar (@frosty_tredegar) April 7, 2025

This is very well observed. The same people who cheered the murder of a pharma CEO have now turned into Reaganite free-marketeers.

“The markets don’t like this!” say yesterday’s Democratic Socialists who have now embraced anthropomorphizing the market.

HBO aired a 45 minute episode of Last Week Tonight, in which John Oliver argued that men have only limited or no advantage over women in sports, and men winning in women's sports almost never happens, on the same evening that a women's pool final was contested between two men pic.twitter.com/X5L7Ilk6ER

— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) April 7, 2025

I agree. Men have no physical advantage over women. Men are women are physically equally strong. This means that rape victims – which are overwhelmingly women – are all liars. Rape doesn’t exist.

Or does it?

Either men are physically stronger than women, or they aren’t. If they aren’t, rape doesn’t exist.

I’m refusing all requests from the press to talk about the collapse at my university. The only reason I’m refusing is because the union asked the membership to do that. The union has its own press strategy, the leadership says, and please to let them unfold it.

I’m putting a lot of trust in the union here. Let’s hope it doesn’t sell us out.

I don’t know, am I being dumb trusting the union as much as I do?