Voting for System Change

#1 and #1

Recent reports of the IPCC have made it clear that neither Business as Usual (the path we are taking mostly, especially in the USA) nor modest efforts at decarbonization that have been seen globally (more in Europe and China than USA, especially under Trump) since the first IPCC report, are going to hinder the global climate catastrophe that is headed our way.  Such a catastrophe could end billions of human lives and cause untold destruction.  What's needed to prevent this now is fundamental System Change.

The exact kind of System Change required isn't spelled out.  But it's clear that one thing needs to go.  And not just for the climate, even more so for it's own sake, and that is Global Military Conflict.

This Global Military Conflict is driven more than anything else by Western Imperialism, which is primarily US and Israeli Imperialism.  Since Israeli Imperialism depends on US Imperialism, I'll refer to this as USrael Imperialism.

That actually is the #1 thing in the world which has to be changed.  Humanity could be vaporized in an instant with Nuclear War.  Our highest priority should be avoiding that.  Then comes the System Change required to spare us from catastrophic climate change, which is virtually impossible without #1 anyway.  #1 is where it has to start.

So, it turns out, the #1 and #2 most important things that need to be stopped in the world today are both USreal Imperialism.  It's #1 and #1.

Since Imperialism is an integral part of western Capitalism, and we live in an oligarchy which primarily answers to that Capitalism, it's no surprise that our nearly useless elections provide no direct way of ending it.  Both mainstream parties support USreal Imperialism to the hilt.  Just as George Carlin once quipped, "If voting made any real difference, we wouldn't be allowed to do it."  I don't entirely agree with Carlin on this, but allowing for artistic license, it's close enough, as I shall demonstrate below.  We won't get where we need to go by voting "strategically" for a lesser evil, nor a greater evil either of course.

The Bahktiari Professor

Back in 2005 I met a retired professor from California.  He often self identified as Iranian but it turned out he was actually from a seasonally migrating tribe that lives within the territory of Iran known as the Bahktiari.  

At my monthly movie and discussion party I showed a documentary about the Bahktiari which he came to discuss with us.

At the time, all of my party atendees were enraged by George W Bush's War on Iraq.  The professor said to me:

You live in a Democracy.  Therefore, the war in Iraq is Your Responsibility.

I disputed this claim.  Firstly with the argument that the American public was led into this war with the lies of George W. Bush.  If George W. Bush had not been elected President, we likely would not be having this war.  I voted against GWB.  Therefore, I am not responsible for his having been elected President.  Secondly, I participated in two very large protests preceding the war.  It should not be pinned on me.

It's true, I could have done more to try to stop it.  I could have lit myself on fire in Washington DC.  But such things have not proven effective either.  I did about all a person could be reasonably expected to do.  Therefore, I am not responsible for it.

He was not convinced.

The Election of 2024

I could not have made this argument in 2023 as President Biden was supporting the Israeli War Machine in its genocide on Palestinians in Gaza.  Because, in fact, I had voted for President Biden in 2020.  I was very angry at Trump.  (I am even more angry--disgusted really--with Trump now.)

For 2024, there was no viable Democratic Primary process because Biden had (then) decided to re-run.  Not until the clock for Primaries had run out was it announced that Biden would not run again.  Instead, he chose Kamala Harris, and the Democratic National Convention simply ratified that choice, without any further input from voters or local conventions.

This deprived voters and alternative candidates to discuss the issues involved, including the Genocide in Gaza.  I believe this must have been the plan all along, to suppress open debate of the Biden's policies especially toward Israel (give them all the weapons they want).  Afterwards, Kamala Harris could have, she had every opportunity but chose not to, distance herself from this Biden's policy in even the slightest way.  It is now believed by many including those who have studied the election results in swing states, that Genocide in Gaza was one issue that cost Harris the Election.  (There was also an second issue wrt Inflation, which many analysts concluded was largely mistaken...there had been inflation previously, resulting from Covid and other things, but as a result of judicious Fed management and other things the last year's inflation rate had come way down...but voters typically can't make such fine distinctions, and in 2024 there was nothing more that could have been done about it--except for ending the wars and the excess military budget.  But distancing herself at least a little from the Gaza Genocide was one thing that Harris could have easily done, that is she could have done it if she was not owned and operated by AIPAC Zionists.)

I was infuriated at the effectively cancelled Primary process and disgusted by Biden's full support of the Genocide in Gaza and Harris's promise to continue supporting the Genocide.  While it's true I did not expect Trump to be any better, I did not vote for Trump either.  I voted for a decent human being, Cornel West, who would not have supported the Genocide.  If I had to do it over again, I would have chose the PSL candidate Claudia De La Cruz since the PSL was more organized than West's adhoc committee and I now know I agree with PSL positions on more issues, including the US provoked War in Ukraine, better than with Cornel West.  PSL is a true anti-Imperialist party whose victory could bring us to solving our top issues #1 and #1.

Harris has been the number one Democratic Party recipient of funds from AIPAC, receiving over $9 million.  By comparison, Lindsay Graham was cheap, he only got $1 million, and Trump is the king of them all, receiving over $230 million.  Of all the Democratic Party hopefuls for 2028, only two candidates, AOC and Ro Khanna, have received $0 and Ro has signed a pledge.  (I think Ro has more spine than AOC and is the best Democratic Party candidate for 2028.)

Democratic friends, however, take my non-vote for Harris as making me responsible for Trump.  They sometimes see some of the faults with Democratic Party candidates (btw, Biden's history as Senator is almost too awful to recount, he pushed for the "Crime" bill of 1994, the banking deregulations of the late 90's, the War in Iraq, and many other bad things...and his Presidency was fairly undistinguished also in that every time there was a partisan issue, he let Republicans walk away with victories rather than apply LBJ like pressure to members of his own party...this was true even when Democrats had technical majorities in both houses...the only thing we "got" from Biden was basically the Infrastructure Bill, which has resulted in huge highway construction near me that seems excessive and outdated and does not actually solve local transportation problems either, and I plan to continue taking surface streets rather then the new intimidating multilevel freeways near me even when the construction is completed) but always say we must in effect vote for the lesser evil to prevent the greater evil from winning.

I have addressed these issues on both sides in earlier posts.  I strongly argued for voting for Biden in 2020 largely on the strategic voting lesser evilism basis.  I argued these same points among left groups I was a member or organizer in, after Biden had (somewhat curiously) defeated Bernie.  But by 2024, Biden's genocidal record, which Harris vowed to continue, had reached the point of too much evil for me to accept anymore.  And apparently many others felt the same way.  I believe there is such a point of no return, where Principled and Disciplinary voting is absolutely required, and that Biden/Harris had reached it.

Reasons for Voting

Voting is a relatively easy thing to do.  I don't see it solving any of the most serious problems we face (see #1 and #1 above, in particular).  But still it's worth doing, because it's relatively easy to do, might change things enough to be worthwhile anyway, and it is one important way we can express ourselves politically.  It gives us a lot to talk about with other people too (which, ultimately, I think is the most important thing it does).

So lets go through these reasons.  The first thing people think of is that voting is our "opportunity" to change our leadership, our future, etc:

"Strategically" Electing a Government official

The only vote you could cast that changes the actual outcome of an election would be the deciding vote.  This would mean that if you had not cast your vote, the votes would be evenly split, and your one vote would tip the difference over to one side.

The probability of casting a deciding vote is astronomically small.  Many very smart mathematicians have worked on this issue using different assumptions and come up with different results.  Not being mathematicians, we can look at their results as bounding the high and the low probabilities.  The low probability is 1 in 10 raised to the 2,569 power, ie, far far far less than one in a google (10 raised to the 100 power).  The high probability analysis calculated that an "average" voter in a particular US presidential election (the one US citizens obsess most about), not knowing what state you are in or the politics in that state, would have a 1 in 60 million chance, which is something like 4 / N where N is the total number of voters.  I do know what state I live in (Texas) and that it is virtually certain to remain voting Republican for the forseeable future.

A fair minded study of these different results using only "random voting" assumptions puts the probability for an arbitrary simple election between 1 / N and 1/50N (for an election where the challenger has a 1% chance of winning) and that is if it is not already a foregone conclusion.   That means if there are 10 million voters, like a statewide election in Texas, with a highly skewed electorate, your highest probability of casting a deciding vote is less than 1/500 million.

https://www.tobyord.com/writing/decisive-vote

The above writer also pays tribute to the "intuitive" estimate, which I used in an earlier essay (from some other set based mathematical analysis, though it came up with the intuitive answer by some coincidence) and that is 1/N for N voters.  He concludes that 1/N is accurate for a race in which both candidates have an equal chance of winning. That would be true, for example, in Swing States where the election may be decided by a small number votes.  However, in most cases, 1/N will be an overestimate of your probability of actually making a change in an electoral result.

If you are unsatisfied by these probabilities, you can also check the results after an election, and I'm very confident you will always see that your vote made no consequential difference in who got elected.  You can point this out to your friends, though it is not likely that will satisfy them, because most people are so mathematically illiterate.  All this strategic voting stuff is really performative posturing dressed up as consequentialist.  

Strategic "lesser evil" voting is really just capitulation, essentially lining up for slaughter by the ruling class which mostly controls the selection of candidates, and reminiscent of a cartoon I once saw showing Austrians lining up under watchful Nazis to vote for unification, with the one and only choice on the ballot saying "Yes, give me a good kick in the pants."

And even these low probabilities don't include the full effect of ideological rigidities.  In the state where I live, Texas, it is basically a foregone conclusion that, for the foreseeable future, Republicans will win in any statewide election for national office, especially US President.*  A large majority of Texas voters are lifelong Republicans, and that is not likely to change in the next election.  Therefore we are back to looking at a probability of your vote changing the outcome which is far less than one in a google.

(*Even if the time of the world came to hand and the 64 disks of a tower of hanoi moved to another pole, and Democrats won the electors for US President in Texas, by that time many other states would have tipped first, making the Texas contribution of electors irrelevant to the final win.)

So voting with an intent to change the particular elected official, assuming you considered that important, is basically not worth doing, unless you live in a swing state, where it is only barely worth doing.

Furthermore, with regards to the paramount issues of our time,  #1 and #1, it would make not make any difference at all because neither a Democrat nor a Republican would be likely to enact the System Change we so desperately need.  And this may be true on a range of lesser issues as well, though I am not claiming, as some do, in general, that it makes no difference at all who is elected.  There may be differences that you or I might consider very important, but your chance of changing even that result is still astronomically small.

Principled and Disciplinary Voting

While it is virtually impossible to change the outcome of an election with your one vote, it may be possible for a large number of dissatisfied voters to cause their own party to lose an election, and we might well infer that was what happened in 2024.  Disciplining your party for pre-selecting awful candidates is one important thing you can do, and it's basically cost free in states where the other party is almost certainly going to win anyway.  In this case, if you are even the slightest bit unhappy with the candidate of the major party you dislike less, you should always vote for the third party candidate who most satisfies you, even if they have no chance of winning.  If the candidate is on the ballot it will show up in the results, and the larger the third party vote for such candidates the more it will irritate your party leaders possibly to the point of doing things better next time, though I wouldn't count on that.  Sufficient discipline is the only way things could be changed to be even measurably on the System Change dimension through electoral politics.  More likely, complete Collapse (which is what I consider most likely of all) or Revolution will be required.  But rather than wait for those things, vote to discipline your lesser hated party, as well as your more hated one.

Expressing yourself, making new friends, and building a new Party

This is the simplest version of voting, and how I would explain voting, especially to someone who is not satisfied with the candidates of either major party.  VOTE FOR WHOEVER YOU WANT MOST.   The rest is details, really.  

I personally came to this conclusion when I was about 14 years old, but then got sucked into political parties and all their nonsense.  When I was 14 years old, I correctly reasoned that if everyone chose to vote for whoever they wanted most, politicians would be more and more forced to go that way.  If people voted "strategically," that is for the lesser evils, politicians would become more and more decoupled from popular opinions and simply go the way of the powers that be, the ruling class, oligarchs, etc.  What I didn't think of then was that furthermore people would tend to reshape their opinions in the ways they HAD voted.  This is all exactly what has happened in my lifetime, as the Overton Window has shifted more and more rightwards.  When I was a small child, we still had a New Deal Democrat, JFK, who refused imperial military intervention in Cuba, was planning to shut down the cold war CIA operation in Vietnam, who proposed the Civil Rights Act (which he was killed before delivering), was seriously trying to stop Israel from getting (mostly stealing) the bomb, and was generally trying to resolve the Cold War diplomatically rather than "winning" it.  JFK was assassinated by a US/Israeli* intelligence/mob conspiracy before doing much of that and replaced by a President who killed millions in Southeast Asia in a vain "Cold War" attempt to prevent their political independence, and he let Israel get the bomb and carry out an epic aggression that foreclosed the possibility of a sovereign Palestinian State while not even giving Israel a slap on the wrist for killing US troops in the process.  In 2020-2024 we had a Democratic Party President, Genocide Joe, who refused an early easy settlement of the murderous and very dangerous US provoked proxy war in Ukraine and instead supported it with over a hundred billion dollars of destructive weapons and US intelligence, and fully supported Israel's Genocide in Gaza--sending Israel whatever they wanted to get the job done.  He was anything but visionary and let the Republican Party win on many issues, breaking promises to save Roe v Wade, etc.  This was largely the result of Democrats voting "strategically" time and time again in prior decades for lesser evils "in order to win."  Republicans had more spine, sometimes refused to vote except for what they wanted (or at least made a big show of it), and ultimately got what they wanted, to the horror of all thinking people.

(*It was famed Israeli Nuke whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu who revealed that Israel had also been behind the assassination of JFK.  He did so after being released from prison in Israel, and the good conspiracy theorists have incorporated this into their theories ever since, if not before.)

But do vote, because it feels good to express your true feelings, and this is the one and only opportunities most people have to make such a statement in a way that can get some widespread attention.  If you happen to vote for a listed candidate, your vote will show up in some (but not all) reports.  It will be seen by some people, especially those who are deeply into politics, everywhere.  It will get mindshare beyond your close circle of friends.

Expressing your true feelings is also a way to find your true friends, and new ones, though you might lose a lot of others.  It's a way to build a new party (I'm not holding my breath, but it's the only way System Change could arise through the electoral process).  I was going to make other categories for those ideas, but they don't really mean anything unless you are expressing your true feelings anyway.  If you care about Palestinians, you might ask a Palestinian what they think about your voting choices.  Almost certainly they would prefer you not vote for a Zionist of either Democrat or Republican parties (for an example, see Sam Hussieni, an American Palestinian Christian who constantly rails against lesser evilism, and is now running as an independent candidate) and even if that results in a greater evil winning now, because for them, a lesser evil is still very evil.  Most of the destruction in Gaza occurred under a "lesser evil" Democrat President.  By the time we got Trump most of the physical damage in Gaza (if not death) was already done.

Expressing your true feelings diplomatically is generally the best path forwards in life.  (Voting is an inherently "diplomatic" process.) Continuously suppressing your true feelings is the path to madness, like the state we have now reached in USA.

I never say such things as "both parties are the same" or "don't bother to vote."  Though never in our most important priority for saving human life on this planet, #1 and #1, where both parties are so similar they might as well be the same, there are still some differences between the two mainstream parties we might find significant.  I might or might not choose to vote for Democrats in lower races if they haven't as erred as disgustingly as Biden and Harris did.  I never say such things as "All Democrats are Evil" either.  I really liked Greg Casar, my current US Rep, and before him Lloyd Doggett, and my new likely Rep Joaquin Castro seems to be improving in that direction.  (Republicans have gerrymandered my district time and time again sometimes giving me less good choices.)  I often like Ro Khanna and AOC, and I'd likely vote for either one as President.  In some cases, I view my vote as a bargaining chip, which I'm going to keep in the air, feeling the movement thereof, until the moment I vote.  If they have pissed me off recently, I'll vote Green to get even.  (Sadly, PSL isn't big enough to run in many races, or I might vote for them all the time, as they do really represent "what I want."). But generally I don't like the fact that Greens do say things which I never say about Democrats.  And often they aren't really Socialists either, though they often propose Social Democratic programs, and oppose USrael Imperialism.  Greens in other countries such as UK and Germany are terrible, just as committed to Western Imperialism (and coddling Israel and suppressing anti-Zionism) as other parties, if not more so.

If voting basically doesn't change the results, donating small amounts to politicians doesn't either.  I've done some intuitive analysis to come up with the idea that it costs between $100 and $1000 to change one vote.  And it barely matters anyway.  And if you donate anything you will endlessly be texted and emailed by other candidates and causes begging you for money.  I wish I never had.  I donated to Bernie and had some fun with the Bernie movement, such as a Bernie appearance and door knocking with a friend, but it all came to naught as Bernie capitulated early to the mainstream candidates in both 2016 and 2020 and insisted his followers vote for those mainstream candidates.  Now I learn that Bernie is a Liberal Zionist who insists we must "defend" Israel, can't imagine the apartheid/genocide state not existing and blames the Genocide on Netanyahu.  (The drive towards Genocide didn't start with Netanyahu.  It started with the First Zionist Conference in 1897, which established the clear goal of removing non-Jews from Palestine as was defended by Zionists in many later writings, and continued from and through the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and beyond.  The Gaza Genocide of 2023 and beyond under Netanyahu is simply the Final Solution phase of Zionism.) Bernie has shut down pro Palestinian protestors at his rallies.

Links

I am repeating this link from above because it is important to read to get an overview of the mathematical analysis of casting a decisive vote as well as the best and most readable single analysis I've ever seen.  This essay by Toby Ord also gives a good history of previous analyses and provides many further links to them.

https://www.tobyord.com/writing/decisive-vote

You might be able to read some of the following paid post by Patrick Lawrence, who argues entirely on ethical principles rather than including the mathematics as I do.  I agree with him his primary case and conclusion and many of my non-mathematical arguments are similar to his.  Here or elsewhere he also says that Biden was one of the worst Presidents ever.  I don't quite agree with that, I think Trump and GWB were worse, though I'd put Biden in the lowest group, and it's a very low bar now anyway.  I wouldn't expect Harris to be any better than Biden was.  I suspect Harris would have been drawn into war with Iran just like Trump, because of all her Zionist backing, friends, and history.  And she might have backed the US Provoked Proxy War in Ukraine even more than Trump, possibly to the horror of us all.

https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/the-evils-of-lesser-evilism

Abby Martin and Chris Hedges discuss the terrible environmental record of the US military.  And not only that, US militarism forces other military to do likewise.  And finally, the whole military system is for propping up the endless fossil fuel capitalist imperialist system we have, essentially making the points I try to make in the opening section #1 and #1.  Meanwhile Democrats are doing nothing to demand we dismantle this whole system.  Not even Bernie Sanders or AOC.  We need to go beyond the box if humanity is to survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKtDJcDPvjc

Transcript with links at Substack

https://substack.com/home/post/p-209018121

Endless Drain Repairs and Excavations

 I've written about my disturbing experiences with under house drain repairs and the excavations they require here:

https://brickpoolhouse.blogspot.com/2026/08/drain-repairs-will-endlessly-drain-your.html

Cancelling Subscriptions, Recurring Charges, Etc

 It's damn hard to cancel subscriptions, recurring charges, etc.  And they accumulate like barnacles so fast your ship begins sinking.  I used to get these things when I felt strongly that I liked something, but long after I've lost interest the charges keep accumulating.  So I try not to, anymore

Yesterday I spent 25 minutes on the phone cancelling (I hope) an Angie's List subscription I had started in 2009 and didn't even know I still had.  I hadn't "logged in" in over 10 years.  When I called, they asked me for an email address which apparently wasn't a current one nor was it any of the ones I remembered.  Finally, I got to the right person who prompted me with the correct domain, then I could remember.  I also wanted a refund for the $47 annual subscription charge, which they said I would get in 3-7 days.  I didn't bother to tell them I had just canceled the credit card too, but I think I should still get the refund, ultimately, from a check from the credit card company because I also had a balance of points, which I had credited back to the card (that was the only "cash" option) so I now have a "negative" balance on the card already (which means they owe me money) and should therefore be sending me a check anyway in about 30 days.  We shall see.  I may have to call Angie's List again and ask if they will send me a check.  I would have never known I was still subscribing to Angie's List had I not called to cancel my credit card, then they told me about the charge (and I immediately paid it).  The card was set to automatically pay the minimum payment every month from my checking account, and I cancelled the last recurring charge I knew about a few months ago.  I might have to call the credit card company again too.  I hate making these calls.

I had just gone through an exercise of cancelling all my paid substack subscriptions.  It's not that I don't like them, it's that I now have to make a $640/mo payment on a home repairs loan (up from $540 for the past 1 1/2 years) and I now need to shake all the couch cushions as hard as I can.

But then, Kit Klarenberg sent me an email that my subscription was about to go away.  Conveniently, the message had a button "Click here to renew."  I hadn't been to visit Klarenberg's substack page (which is so well disguised you wouldn't know it's on Substack except from the domain) in months, so I thought clicking that button would bring me to his page and I could just ignore or cancel the renewal when I got there.  So I clicked on it, and immediately it brought me to his page with a box thanking me for renewing (but giving me no option to cancel that renewal).  I navigated around Klarenberg's page, then I navigated around my Substack home page, and could find no options to cancel any paid subscriptions.

So I asked Google, and it said "Go to your Substack Settings page and find the subscription you want to cancel"  But there was no tab named "Settings" on Substack.  There is a tab called Profile, which is a dozen pages long with endless options, but none of them related to Subscriptions.

Finally I went back to Google and read the help more carefully.  In fact, you don't log into Substack to make any changes, you must log into a separate URL called "Substack Settings". Conveniently, Google provided a link to that, then I could follow their instructions and get the subscription cancelled again before it auto renews tomorrow.

This time, Google had the correct answer, but often in the past the instructions on Google for doing something seem related to some older version of whatever and have nothing to do with the way it is now.  It seems to be that websites with paid subscriptions are constantly re-designing their interfaces so whatever prior knowledge you may have about cancelling subscriptions, or possible Google instructions to do so, are now out-of-date and it's nearly impossible to find the place where you can cancel subscriptions without help.

Fauci and the Lab Leak and Pandemic Handling

This is difficult to write about and think about because the politics around it are completely warped.  But I will try.

Republicans hate Fauci because:

1) Fauci insisted COVID-19 was a serious emergency that demanded serious measures including lockdowns and masking.  And sometimes Republicans believe that not only were mRNA vaccines ineffective against the the virus, they caused all the excess deaths from a virus that otherwise would merely have been a mild flu.  Republicans are wrong about these things.  

2) Some Republicans think Fauci was responsible for the creation of the very deadly COVID-19 pandemic (which contradicts the first part, so many Republicans don't get this far).  There may be some truth here because it is quite possible that Fauci helped set the ball in motion which ultimately led to COVID-19.

Democrats love Fauci because:

1) Fauci insisted that COVID-19 was serious (it was, of course) and demanded serious measures like masking and lockdowns (it did).  Democrats are entirely correct about this but often fail to see the issues in points 2 and 3.

2) Fauci epitomizes "Science" (but "science" is also people with self-interests and blind spots, and science is sometimes wrong).  That Democrats often reflexively side with Science, Medicine, and Law arises from a bias towards the PMC.  All these things are best understood critically.  (But this does not mean falling in line with cranks and charlatans either, we must be even more critical of them.)

3) The belief that there is no "scientific" reason to believe the Lab Leak Hypothesis (but the Lab Leak Hypothesis has not been disproven either, despite great efforts to do so, and many serious people believe it.  Fauci himself initially believed that the Wuhan Meat Market was only an "amplifier" of the pandemic which originated elsewhere, and Fauci this day continues to admit that that it is not impossible that the pandemic originated from a "lab leak"...which meant that someone in a lab first caught the disease from GOF boosted specimens they were working on).

Given that we just had a Senate Hearing in which Fauci refused to answer 100 questions about COVID-19 it might be interesting to see what all of those questions were.  But instead, the media and every source I can find is more interested in the politics of Fauci invoking the Fifth Ammendment when he was pardoned by Biden for activities starting in 2014.  I have not even found (yet) the questions asked in official Senate documents released to the public.

COVID-19 ORIGINS

Gain of Function (GOF) research on several risky viruses was banned in 2014, but the ban was lifted in 2017 because of "stricter oversight."

But starting in 2014, the NIH funded the EcoHealth alliance to study viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).  This appears to have been to evade the ban on GOF.  The research in Wuhan continued despite the ban up to the origins of COVID-19 and possibly beyond.

Because this research was being done in China, it was not affected by the ban on doing this research in the US, and also the later "stricter oversight" applied to doing it in the US.

It is known that WIV was doing research on Coronaviruses that could be characterized as GOF research (though perhaps not by certain definitions of that) in a BSL-2 laboratory (inadequate for the task and outside US oversight) at the time COVID-19 was released.  Therefore, a lab leak from WIV remains a highly plausible origin of COVID-19, and several US intelligence agencies (FBI, DOE, and CIA) concluded as early as 2021 (with low to medium confidence) that COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak and they maintain these conclusions to this day.  The Lab Leak Hypothesis is not a crazy "Conspiracy Theory" believed only by kooks no matter how much some media and scientists say that it is.

We don't actually have enough detail to prove the Lab Leak Hypothesis because China has never allowed anyone else to see critical information about what WIV was doing in 2019, which itself is suspicious, because if this information were not incriminating they would have no reason to hide anything.  It is also known that several people involved in this research at WIV got seriously ill around the time in question.

Some, typically MAGA, believe that COVID-19 was a Chinese plot, but US involvement in funding similar research in Wuhan somewhat weakens that idea, as well as the fact that China itself was the first to have to deal with COVID-19 and lost lives and considerable resources because of it.  There have been others suggesting it was a US plot, and COVID-19 was simply "planted" in Wuhan to disrupt China, but once again the US suffered even more from COVID-19 so if it was a plot it was surely very inept.  These ideas that COVID-19 was a plot are examples of crazy conspiracy theories, but they should not be confused with the Lab Leak Hypothesis.

There have been panels of scientists (mostly virologists with vested interests at hand) who concluded the COVID-19 origin was not likely lab leak based on technical details about the virus and the Wuhan Meat Market, but those conclusions are not air tight, so a lab leak still remains plausible.  It should be noted that no "smoking gun" was ever found at the Meat Market or elsewhere.  No evidence of COVID-19 has ever been found in the wild, as has sometimes been done before with other pandemics.  All we know is that people in Wuhan were apparently the first to get it (though we can't be entirely sure of that either).  And, perhaps not coincidentally, Wuhan had the WIV which had been doing GOF research on coronaviruses.  That is a remarkable fact, actually.  Meanwhile, the animals alleged (but never found) to be part of a zoonotic transfer were a considerable distance away.  Why did COVID-19 not start there, among the people living near or capturing these animals?

Early on in the investigation of the origins of COVID-19, some scientists claimed that the structure of the virus could not have developed naturally, it clearly looked like a result of GOF genetic splicing.  Much of the research claiming zoonotic origin of COVID debunks that notion.  But it does not prove that COVID could not have been created by GOF research.

Fauci denies that this particular Coronavirus research being done at WIV in 2019 was funded by NIH, and he is correct.  However, previous research of that nature WAS funded by NIH through EcoHealth Alliance.  What WIV was likely doing in 2019 (and this is what Jeffrey Sachs, who led one task force investigating COVID origins said in 2021) was unfunded research in the anticipation of funding.  Like Dr Sachs, I have worked in science and I know this is how labs operate.  A cynic could even believe the real research is the "unfunded research," and when the funding finally arrives that research is now virtually complete, and the funding is then mainly used to start research seeking the next funding opportunity, in effect being the "unfunded research" for that.  Sachs himself, after leading a panel of scientists investigating COVID origins, came to believe in the Lab Leak hypothesis and has said so in papers and interviews.   He looks primarily to the fact that China has refused to give the details on the research being done at WIV in 2019 as evidence of a coverup.  Those who believe in Zoonotic Transfer have the sort of racist view that the Chinese are always this way.

Funded or not, the research which may have originated COVID-19 was done in a lab that had previously received NIH funding for doing very similar research, and they might have anticipated funding getting funding for that research too eventually.  If it hadn't been for the initial NIH funding, they might not have been doing that kind of research.

Because of the risks, and the ban on GOF research in the US, the NIH should not have been funding EcoHealth alliance to do the GOF research in China.  Fauci was head of the Infectious Diseases Institute of NIH, and he also reportedly had direct personal involvement in getting EcoHealth funded to do this research in contravention of the US ban.  Therefore Fauci himself helped initiate the research program which may have ultimately produced and leaked COVID-19.  Because Biden pardoned Fauci for all his activities going back to 2014 Fauci cannot be prosecuted for this.  He may have violated US laws, and, if the Lab Leak Hypothesis is true, he might bear considerable moral responsibility for COVID-19.

If I may, let me add one more personal observation.  People who are paranoid about germs do not go into research in Virology.  People who are paranoid about germs avoid going near Virology Departments.  Virologists tend to downplay the risks of the research they are sometimes doing, as they would almost have to do in order to do this research, and overplay the benefits.  It is not clear to this day that GOF research on viruses has done anything useful.  Vaccines, for example, are not devised using GOF research.  I first heard about GOF research in 2011 (in a Virology Department presentation btw) and I was immediately scared about it.  I've also toured a BSL-4 lab (very impressive) and a BSL-2 lab (not where I'd want to work on anything dangerous).

Pandemic Handling

Finally there is one small issue about pandemic handling that also involves Fauci, but has been so warped by the politics we can't get straight answers.  Many Republicans and especially MAGA are still convinced today that masks are useless (often along with the unfounded notion that COVID-19 was fake, and the mRNA Covid vaccines caused all the deaths).  This is bad, very bad.  But even Trump himself got the vaccine which his Operation Warpspeed had helped create more effectively than otherwise.  Though Democrats often dispute that Operation Warpspeed made the vaccine available more quickly, it specifically helped fund development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine, which proved to be among the most effective or even the most effective, and if the independently funded Pfizer vaccine work had failed to be useful it might have taken far longer to get a useful vaccine without the Moderna one.  As it turned out, both vaccines became available at about the same time, sometimes giving the public a choice, and most likely cranking out shots more quickly than if it had been left to Pfizer alone.

Early in the pandemic, Fauci (and others) emphasized the importance of hand washing (which is relatively unimportant in the transmission of COVID-19 and many other infectious respiratory diseases) and did not tell the public that masking was a good idea.  This was not good.  (This attitude was and still is common among doctors--including my own PCP at the time--and even in hospitals.)  Later, when it was finally advised that masking was important, the public was prevented from getting highly effective N95 masks and instead told to use simple cloth masks, which are not highly effective and generally protect others more than oneself.  I see this as a grave error.  Instead, all measures possible should have been taken to ensure an adequate supply of N95 masks both for professionals and the general public.  There should have been an earlier Operation Warp Speed for making N95 masks as well as vaccines, and/or lifting sanctions to enable buying them from China.  I myself would never have appreciated N95 masks unless I had a friend touting them and giving some away.  Even today people wear lesser masks without much thought.  The government now recommends people use N95 masks in risky situations but has never made a big deal about it, as big as the deal to use cloth masks was during the peak days of COVID-19, so many people have never heard about it.

Interesting links

(I've only I'd kept track of them since 2020, I'd have a long list)

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-has-hidden-almost-40-million-in-pentagon-funding/

https://organicconsumers.org/peter-show-me-money-daszak-pulls-big-bucks-through-ecohealth-alliance-risky-virus-research/

Jesus and "The Teacher of RIghteousness"

The story of Jesus recounted in the Christian Gospels could not have happened.  At the time of Jesus, the Romans were in full control of the region, through their prefects and the client king Herod they had elevated to the throne after defeating the Hasmoneans.  The Romans were meticulous record keepers, and they recorded none of the key stories in Gospel, including Massacre of the Innocents, the supposed crowds of Jesus' followers in Jerusalem, the judgement of Pontius Pilate, and the Crucifixion.  If these things had happened, the Romans would have recorded them, and they didn't.  So, these stories are all fiction, and they were likely invented by The Apostle Paul, and his followers, who founded a religion based on Jesus' resurrection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bWIY04BsAg

Paul's inventions came after the historically true assassination of James, the so called "brother of Jesus," who had a popular sect in Jerusalem that came to odds with the High Priest Ananus ben Ananus who ordered James's assassination.  Paul was a hanger in the court of King Herod Agrippa II who intended to marry someone there, and he claimed he witnessed the assassination of James, which is quite possible.  He certainly heard of it not long after.

But Paul's invention of Jesus didn't come from nothing.  He was aware of much that had been happening before the assassination of James.  He was surely aware of key ideas from James's sect, which had been becoming too popular for the likes of Ananus.  He may have talked with James, which is what the Gospels say, and even been a part of James's sect until James's death, after which Paul went his own way with these ideas.

Those ideas likely involved the teachings of a figure earlier than Jesus, The Teacher of Righteousness, the key figure in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The Teacher was a much earlier figure, from either the first or second centuries BCE.  Millennialism was a primary feature of these teachings (also reflected in some of the Gospels) that the coming of God was at hand in about 40 years, and when that didn't happen many turned away his sect but others changed the story.  The Teacher was persecuted by "The Wicked Priest" in Jerusalem who is unnamed and historians can only speculate which one he is.  The Teacher was ultimately put to death by unnamed authorities.  This may or may not have been before the Romans defeated the Hasmoneans and replaced them with a client king, King Herod.

But along with the Millennialism, The Teacher taught some if not many of the virtues which would be familiar to Christians.  The followers of The Teacher, the Essenes, were a communal sect foreshadowing the later communal sects of Christianity.  This brings to mind The Sermon on the Mount, and in fact the Beatitudes have a striking resemblance to some of the teachings in the Dead Sea scrolls (eg, blessed are the poor in spirit), though the caves where they were found is some distance from the site traditionally believed to be where Jesus is said to have given the Sermon (near the Sea of Galilee).

One historian tried to advance the theory that The Teacher was Jesus, and this has never been very well accepted because the dates are so far apart.  But this is not what I am saying.   I am saying that The Teacher was likely part of the inspiration for the story of Jesus, which was an fictional invention of Paul and his followers.  The Teacher was probably also an inspiration for the sect of James, though James's teaching might have been quite different from Paul's and likely lacked key parts of Christianity like the Resurrection and the notion that Jesus was God.  Jewish Christianity which is said to have been the continuation of James's sect also lacks the idea that Jesus was God, merely an important human teacher, and Islam incorporates that view.

King Herod Agrippa II held that the assassination of James was illegal and Ananus was deposed.  Not long afterward, the Revolts were begun with Ananus as a key leader, and lasted for years until the Romans sacked Jerusalem (including destroying the Second Temple).  

The Romans seem to have sided with the followers of James in that even when Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem after the later Bar Kochba revolt, Jewish Christians were not.  Jewish Christians understood themselves to be fundamentally Jewish and followers of the Torah, as well as the teachings of Jesus, though they were excluded from both Judaism and Christianity centuries later, and many converted to Islam after that.

Passwords and other securanoia

 My security minded friend sent me another article today on how I should be securing my security cameras from unwanted watchers.  I replied thusly:

I keep inside cameras turned off when I'm not on vacation, and care little about the others.

I do not pay for monthly services and use my own local storage cards on my digital cameras.*

My analog cameras have a local hard drive for storage, and are all outside, but do have internet access except when the app sometimes mysteriously requires a password I can't remember.

My biggest problem is remembering passwords.  

Passwords and endless security measures I do not want cause me more grief than anything else and I hate being forced to change them or use passkeys or other additional security measures.  I can usually deal with two factor identification but sometimes it causes problems too.  I've always been ultimately able to access my credit accounts but always worry that at some critical moment I won't be able to.  I have never been subjected to identity theft and have never lost money to any kind of theft.  Once I lost my physical card and was able to cancel all the charges I didn't make, and another time I was billed for something I didn't order or receive but was able to get that cancelled too.  I have been ordering things online since 1996 and more than anyone else I know and sometimes directly from small companies.  I think more people are taken in by fishing scams that say you are being charged for something you didn't order, than are actually being charged for things they didn't order.

I worry more about losing access to things and quite often I've been unable to access my cameras remotely because the apps for the digital and analog cameras will unexpectedly require me to remember a password.  Keeping track of all my passwords has been very difficult even with a book dedicated to that.

I keep my computer hard drives unencrypted because my final plan is that all my creative works be accessible to my heirs and/or the general public rather than lost forever, but Apple keeps trying to force me, against my wishes, to encrypt them, which would mean they could be lost forever just for that reason.

No matter how many times I tell iCloud that Chrome on my Desktop Mac is a "trusted device" it never remembers that, and forces me to go through the Passkey/Password/2 factor identification dialogs every time I want to access my photos.  I then have to be very careful not to be sent down the Passkey rathole.  I presume this is a form of desktop warfare, and I think much securanoia is just that.  It's not really about keeping me secure, it's about forcing me to use some particular set of apps.

Passkey seems like the most dangerous thing of all because if I were to use Passkey for everything and I lost that, I'd lose access to everything.

*I did once enable monthly services.  That was on my November trip last year to California when I wanted to monitor my cats.  The AI on the monthly service plan never seemed to identify cat presence outside correctly and wasn't useful in finding what happened to my oldest cat a day after I left home that killed him.  I tried using my phone but quickly gave up.  By the time I got home and was prepared to more seriously use check it out from the comfort of my computer with a big screen, the data had 'expired' because it was older than the days allotted.  The only thing I was able to do was remove, save, and download all the data from my SD card on the outside camera which on which the raw video was still available.  But I found it's basically watch 24 hours of video and figure out what happened.  I can hardly do it for 10 minutes at a stretch.  So it was a waste of money to enable the monthly services for online AI, and it's not worth it to me to plug my existing 24 hours of video into a generic AI to figure it out.

Karim Khan

About the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that Karim Khan's replacement will drop the ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.*  And that will be telling, since it was both Israel and US who have been pushing to get Khan removed ever since his warrant for Netanyahu, and Marco Rubio even said beforehand that the administration had was taking actions to get him removed.

(*And not Putin.)

Here's the most definitive report I've been able to find on the actual acts Khan is accused of actually doing (you have to really dig to find this):

https://apnews.com/article/international-criminal-court-un-misconduct-accusations-a275e676e074c00d34c769c8bbdf69d7

A later report from 2026 reports Khan was cleared by a 3 judge panel of any relevant misconduct:

https://apnews.com/article/icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-investigation-united-nations-4f01c8ce5259dc726a565ce9a7f0a37b

This often gets referred to elsewhere as rape (I don't think it rises to that) or sexual harassment (it could qualify for that, but I generally question the concept and the standard ultimately applied by IOS which is the appearance of impropriety which is a terrible slippery slope, along with the concept imbalance of power which generally ignores the often superior powers that women have).

1.  He is alleged to have asked her to lie with her on a hotel bed (she did so) and ultimately he "touched her sexually" (elsewhere it is clarified: her breasts).

2.  He is alleged to have asked her to go on vacations with her (I'd dismiss this as completely unimportant).  She apparently did not, in this case she would have had to say yes for it to happen.  It was reported she was often reluctant to say no because of the imbalance of power.

3.  He is alleged to have put his hand in her pocket (I would say, this is no big deal, though perhaps not completely unimportant, and we don't know the precise context).

4.  He knocked on her door for 10 minutes at 3 am wanting to talk with her.  (It should be remembered that she was a very close aide who made many work related trips with him). I would call this completely unimportant to the charges.

Two items that are borderline seamy, and two that are completely unimportant.  Of which we know nothing about the antecedents--things she may have said or done.  We more or less know the context: she was his closest aide on important trips.  

And we are not at all talking about what would unequivocally be regarded as sexual acts.

IOW, it is not the Khan did not stop doing things when he was told not to (ie no means no).  It is rather that he did not first obtain affirmative permission for doing a couple of things that may have appeared improper and two others that were not unreasonable under plausible circumstances.  Or that he could not have obtained suitable permission by any means because of the alleged "imbalance of power."  (I feel that both of these latter qualifications may be regarded as anti-sex.  Why cannot any two adults come to have sexual relations by mutual consent?  And in many if not most cases, men are virtually required to be the initiator.  That is the way mammalian sex works.).  It is telling that many of Khans greatest detractors are Israeli defenders, and Israelis have a long history of documented violent and forcible rape against Palestinians, and in those cases no means nothing.  We see this kind of beyond hypocrisy frequently among those who are the most obsessed and uncritical about things like sexual harassment.

And for these alleged misdemeanors, the warrants against the greatest criminal of our era will be dropped.  And meanwhile, the vast documented rapes by Epstein clients go uninvestigated and the vast documented rapes in Israeli prisons are accepted, demanded and even celebrated by Israelis.  The Gaza genocide and pogroms in the West Bank continue.

Now Khan could NOT be described as any kind of leftist.  He was a Tory from the UK who only issued the warrant against Netanyahu (and failed to do so for many others who might have qualified for conducting genocide) under a lot of pressure, possibly even including the pressure from the initial secret inquiry into his alleged sexual harassment which had already started.  He had previously and more quickly issued a warrant for Putin (which in my mind is specious).

Also, FWIW, Khan is a married Muslim (married to a UN civil rights investigator) with two daughters.  And himself a judge of considerable stature.

The aide who was allegedly harassed did not make these things public (which was when they really took off).  She refrained from doing so possibly because she was in favor of the warrants against Netanyahu.  It was two of her "friends" who heard about the matter who made it public.

This raises many possible ideas as to the context and antecedents of the alleged sexual harassment.  

Nowhere in the public discussion are the things she may have done prior to the alleged acts in question.

Journalist Patrick Lawrence calls this affair (leading to the likely dropping of warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant) a "Descent into Lawlessness"

https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/further-into-lawlessness

Ultimately Khan was sacked not by a judicial process but by a political one, by the Assembly of States Parties, which was no doubt (see Rubio's comment) heavily lobbied, bribed, and or coerced by the US (which has observer status) into making the vote against Khan.  After actual judges had investigated the affair and concluded there was no there there.

Commentator Craig Murray has concerns about the affair but keeps hedging that we don't know the facts.  The problem with this copout is that we do know the allegations and even they are pretty weak tea.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/07/narratives-of-moral-conflict-karim-khan-and-delcy-rodriguez/

Murray's article may be far more interesting in his defense of Delcy Rodriguez who is now often demonized on the left for selling out.  He also uniquely points out that Venezuela is actually getting the money from oil sales, less a relatively small US fee, and of course with no control over where the oil is going, which is a violation of sovereignty.  He has been to Venezuela and talked to top officials.  Ironically, according to Murray, Venezuela is getting the money from oil sales far more quickly than when China was handling the process.

Left to Right Peace and Freedom Coalition

I've been very skeptical of all these Left to Right Coalition proposals.  Sam Husseini's is the best I've seen.  As far as he goes, I'd support it.  He  stands for peace (not defined well here but elsewhere it's clear he would end support for Israel and other wars and imperialism), equal rights for all*, and freedom of speech, universal healthcare, tax the rich, restrain corporations, and protect the environment (also left undefined and I worry about it).

https://husseini.substack.com/p/the-need-for-a-radical-center-party?utm_source=publication-search

He dodges Immigration saying it would not be an issue if we stopped imperial wars and meddling AND the "War on Drugs" (war on poor people and democracy actually).

That being said, there are "far" left orgs I'd support too, the best of these currently is PSL (unmentioned by Husseini, and he laughs at Cornel West who I voted for last time...but wouldn't next time).  PSL even got their Presidential candidates onto the Texas ballot (which West did not).

*He leaves unmentioned sex change bathroom and sports rights and minor sex change rights.

MakePlaylist Version 1.100 now online

I have now uploaded MakePlaylist version 1.100 to SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/makeplaylist/

This is the version I have used to demonstrate that MakePlaylist is what I call a Lossless Information Procedure.  Even the smallest increase in data or data quality is reflected in the output data quality.  To do so it needs to generate millions of virtual playlists, which required considerable internal streamlining (what I've called Cyclotron mode) to be practical.  It also has an option to test what I call Paradoxical Information Procedures, for which some increases in data or data quality can cause less output data quality, ie, going backwards.  I discuss these types of information processing in an earlier post (which now needs a bit of updating to include the latest results obtained with 1.100 before it was finally uploaded, not to mention general editing, but the post is still basically correct):

https://verydeepleft.blogspot.com/2026/06/paradoxical-and-other-information.html

I need to get back to making other improvements to MakePlaylist for it's intended purpose of actually making playlists.  But eventually I also plan to add a mode to demonstrate Truncating Information Procedures which curiously requires adding more random numbers.  The Paradoxical type is achieved with simple data loss, which I think has far reaching implications.  And improve on the results and show they hold up for other conditions (which to some degree I have already done but not written up yet).

Sick People Should Stay Home

 I hate it when people go to concerts, movies, other social activities, and work when they are sick with respiratory ailments, carelessly spreading their germs to others.  It happens all too much, and I can trace every respiratory illness I've had (like the flu then pneumonia that almost killed me last month) to one or more such people.  I vowed never to remain near such a sick person, even at the cost of embarrassment.  Yesterday there was a person repetitively coughing and loudly sniffling with rattles right behind me at a concert.  It started just before the music director gave his intro.  I waited that out and as soon as he stopped I made my way out of the very tight row of people to a space in the corner of the hall where there were hardly any people (and nobody apparently sick).  I didn't quite get there before the music started.  I'm also going to remember to bring a mask to every concert etc in case I am delayed or trapped.  And generally not sit in the middle of front sections again because that really makes it hard to escape.  If there had been assigned seats, I'd have to go talk to an usher.  Many people give excuses like "it's just allergies" when they may have low grade infections caused by mycoplasma like walking pneumonia which are easily treated with antibiotics (which some doctors don't do).   I've been to places where nearly everyone was coughing with the chesty cough indicative of walking pneumonia, and sure enough I  caught it there, lasted a couple weeks until I got an antibiotic then went away quickly. Conditions like COPD lead people to easily pick up (and spread) other diseases, and are still disturbing to others.  It may be appropriate for people who cough a lot to wear masks in public as a precaution.  I pay attention to when I cough and rarely do so when I am healthy.  If it happens during social activities I turn away or cover my mouth.

Albert Einstein on Capitalism

Perfect synopsis.

“Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.

This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.

Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

— Albert Einstein

Calcium

[Not intended as medical advice, see your doctor for that.  I don't know your situation at all, which may preclude some of the ideas here, especially if you are or will be taking any kind of medication.  Likewise, see a Nutritionist for nutritional advice targeted to you.  As always, my posts are intended to be thought provoking, but never the fully edited final word on anything.  I am not an encyclopedia and I don't have time to go back and fix everything I've written as new information comes in.]

Back in 2017, a friend of mine in her 50's got osteoporosis and started a treatment program.  For a few years she had to take Fosamax, which helps make weak bones more rigid but also can make them more brittle than normal if you take it too long.  The best thing is to reach the point where you don't need Fosamax any more in a few years and from then on get the proper nutrients every day for normal bone remodeling which will, over time, restore full bone normality.  Fosamax is a band-aid you don't want to keep wearing.

This made me start thinking about my bones and took a look at the Recommended Daily Allowance for Calcium.  I was shocked to see that it was 1,000mg for adults and 1200 mg for seniors.  I thought I was getting plenty of calcium from (then) 2 cups yogurt, but that was less than half of the RDA.  And not much else in my diet had calcium.  My multivitamin didn't add much.  So, I started supplementing calcium with a single 330-500 mg Calcium/Magnesium tablet every day to fill the gap.

Visiting my sister and brother-in-law in 2019, my attorney brother-in-law noticed my supplements, and gave me a scathing critique.  "You should not be supplementing calcium," he said.   "You'll get atherosclerosis.  You'll get kidney stones."

I replied, "You only get those things if you are out-of-balance somehow.  Meeting your minimum daily calcium requirement is not out-of-balance, it's in balance."  I could not change his mind at all.  He was highly opposed to supplements almost in principle (as it seems many doctors I've known have been).

I was very concerned about him that since he is lactose intolerant and avoids dairy altogether (except 2 cups of special ice cream with lactase for lactose intolerant people) he was not getting enough calcium.  And my sister too, who did have small pieces of cheese with her salads but less ice cream.  They were both already in their 70's and starting to look like they were rapidly shrinking.  I've tried and tried to get my sister to consider supplementing calcium but it's never happened so far.  She'd have to face her husband's disapproval for one thing.  And for another, she doesn't like to do anything technical, like calculating the calcium supplementation required, preferring to leave everything technical to her husband.

Nine years later now they both look extremely shrunken.  My sister has constant neck and back pain and her neck has become flexible.  Her two upper front teeth simply broke off one day and she had to get a partial dental.  The shrinking is not just in statue but in depth.

Everywhere I go I see elderly people who look like they do now.  I doubt any of them are getting enough calcium.  Few seem to even be aware that seniors need more calcium than adults and how much that is.  (BTW, this is a well known fact that most US seniors are not getting enough calcium.)

Retrospectively I now blame lack of calcium for my short stature.  In freshman year of high school, a friend of mine convinced me that drinking milk was for babies, and I quit doing so.  I really didn't have other significant sources of calcium in my diet then.  I didn't regularly eat yogurt or ice cream.  That was surely bad advice.

*****

Doing this can get a little more complicated than people might like.  You should not take simply take supplements having the RDA for calcium.  You need to figure out the gap between your diet and the recommended amount for your age, and then fill just that gap.  You don't want to get too more more calcium than the RDA because then you could get kidney stones, etc.  

But there is some slack here.  You can have somewhat more than the RDA without issues, so long as you stay below the upper limits.  It's when you go past the upper limits that you could get the kidney stones, etc.  The upper limits are a bit more complicated since they vary for young people, pregnant mothers, adults below 51, and adults above 51.  For non-pregnant adults under 51 the upper limit is 2500mg and for adults over 51 it is 2000mg.  Thus the range for eldery people is the most narrow: from 1200mg recommended to 2000 mg upper limit.

It's not really hard to do, though it takes a little time and arithmetic.  Nowadays you can simply ask your favorite search engine for the calcium in any kind and quantity of food.  You could probably even get it to add up the calcium in a long list of foods that constitutes what you eat in a given day.  I do the adding up myself.

Better than using a search engine is actually looking at the Nutrition Facts on any labeled product.  Then you get the exact numbers for the specific products you are eating (though lots of fresh foods are not so labeled--there you need to use the search engine).

I wrote everything down on an index card with columns for calcium, protein, and sodium.  It's a worthwhile exercise to do at least once, I wish I had the time to do it every day.

I don't recommend the example below as an ideal diet for anyone, even me.  I'm more interested in showing the method of adding up the calcium including everything.  This just happens to be what I ate yesterday when I was keeping track of everything, everything that went into my mouth.

It might seem like "too much" peanut butter but you may notice that the total saturated fat is still fairly low because no eggs, little nuts, little meat, and no red meat, at least yesterday.  Anyway the most recent research seems to show that dairy and peanut butter saturated fats are actually somewhat protective, but the saturated fat dogmas haven't been updated to reflect this.  I like natural peanut butter (nothing other than peanuts and salt so you have to stir it) because it's convenient and almost as much protein as eggs.   Yesterday I didn't get any of the most dangerous saturated fats, those from red meats, but sometimes I do have 3-4 oz lean steak instead of chicken, which still wouldn't be very much.  I've also switched since writing this to snacking with regular or low sodium Ezekiel bread, I only have regular bread (usually the whole wheat variety) for breakfast.

I have never had a bad A1C measurement but recently I've become very focused on keeping it low because I believe it is actually the number one factor in heart and other diseases for elderly people.***  You will note that there's very little sugar in my diet now.  I do use orange juice but only in the very tiniest amount for flavoring.  I eat a tiny bit of sugar and a tiny piece of chocolate.  I need the artificially flavored electrolyte drinks right now because I have diarrhea from taking an antibiotic.**  I didn't have any fruit mainly because that's not compatible with current diarrhea.  Normally I'd eat a fresh apple or banana.  On nutrition focused friend of mine thinks its pointless to eat fruit at all but I find the fiber beneficial.

Food / Calcium

1 oz Orange Juice (mixed with no sugar Citrucel) 2 mg

4 large slices Dave's White Bread            80 mg

4 tablespoons all natural peanut butter     36 mg

7/8 cup Chobani Nonfat Greek Yogurt    225 mg

1 scoop whey isolate                                105 mg

Centrum for Men 50+                               210 mg

2 Ultima Electrolyte Drinks                     94 mg

3 oz cooked chicken breast                       10 mg

3 oz Protein Pasta                                      0 mg

8oz can no salt added green beans            40 mg

2/3 11.5oz can low sodium V8.                33 mg

2 Tbsps Olive Oil                                        2 mg

1 Tbsp Heavy Cream                                   10 mg

7 cups RO water (coffee, mixes, ice)           7 mg

(Local Tap Water would be 105-140 mg)

1/2 cup Low Sodium Marinara Sauce.        20 mg

1/5 oz (one tiny square*) Chocolate w nuts  4 mg

3/4 tsp Sugar (in whey drink)                       0 mg

Before calcium powder: 876 mg calcium

1 tsp Calcium/Magnesium powder            267 mg

Total Calcium: 1143 mg

I was a bit below calcium target, but not far.   I was a bit too conservative when measuring out the Calcium/Magnesium powder.  I didn't actually know how the numbers were going to work out.  Going forwards, I think I may use the 1 1/2 tsp suggested amount.

That powder was my calcium supplement yesterday (sometimes I take a 333mg pill instead, which would have put me just slightly over 1200 mg).  But I'll explain below why I think the powder is better than nearly all the pills.

The total 'supplements' contribution to my calcium was 567 mg (multivitamin, electrolyte drinks, calcium/magnesium powder).  Almost half.  And that's in spite of eating slightly more than the standard serving of yogurt and about as much calcium as most people in US eat.

I love to have a spaghetti dinner every day and I think that's fine with exact portion control (pasta is weighed on my scale) protein pasta and low sodium marinara.  Pasta itself is zero sodium (and I put no salt in the water) which helps stay within optimal sodium. I do aim to cut back the extra two pieces of regular bread and peanut butter but it was the only snack I had available to go with my whey drink in the afternoon yesterday.  Today I had the low sodium Ezekiel bread with the lightest rub of peanut butter possible.  Going forwards, I plan to use low sodium Ezekiel Bread for snacking, with less peanut butter, and so reduce the daily peanut butter to 3 tablespoons or less.

Good calcium supplements (including pills and powders) are are sold with Magnesium included because you need to have calcium and magnesium in balance.  The recommended balance for calcium:magnesium is 2:1, so many pills have this exact ratio.

But it actually doesn't make sense if most of your other calcium comes from dairy, because dairy products are 10:1, the supplement should try to bring that back into balance.  So a 1:1 calcium magnesium supplement powder makes sense for me whose other calcium comes mostly from dairy.

The 1:1 Calcium Magnesium powder I get (NOW) is also made with citrates, which are more easily absorbed than the calcium supplements made with carbonates.  Most calcium magnesium pills are made with carbonates.   Adding it to my whey isolate drink makes it seem less watery and more like milk.

(* It wasn't long enough ago that I couldn't help myself but to eat a whole 3.5 oz bar of chocolate every day.  My recent near death experience with pneumonia and dehydration has made me a different and better behaving person now, and hopefully from here on.)

(** The day I started taking electrolytes the situation dramatically improved.  It's as if part of the problem was the interplay between the anal and urinal sphincters, which are connected, and of course are connected to the nervous system and all of its electrolytes.  My antibiotic lists no food or supplement interactions but out of an abundance of caution I apply a 4 hour spacing rule used for others, no supplements within 4 hours of taking the pill, before or after.) 

(*** From NIH published research I've read, the biggest risk factor for heart disease in elderly is in insulin resistance, aka type 2 diabetes, not in fats****, anyway.  The saturated fat dogmas haven't been updated to reflect this.  Lots of my thin elderly friends on lowfat diets are still taking statins, which I wonder about, then stuffing themselves with candy.  I think they should be more focused on insulin resistance, as I am.  I quit taking statins when I retired and could do my own low fat cooking instead of eating at Chinese buffets and steak bars every day. When that happened, I started noticing that statins made me feel weak  My doctor wanted me to continue statins anyway, perhaps a different one, looking at my BMI category, she said my LDL was still a few points short of target.  I don't think BMI reflects my stocky and above-average muscular body style correctly, I see Percent Body Fat, as I get on my biometric scale, a better indication of how much excess fat I have, which is as I understand it the relevant factor for heart disease.  I have always done better on percent body fat than BMI, and as of right now I am no longer even "obese".  Right now I can't seem to find the very impressive NIH published research I read last year on insulin resistance vs hyperlipidemia that put insulin resistance on top for elderly people while discounting hyperlipidemia a lot, but there is much research and writing that makes a similar case that can be easily found, such as https://www.optimalwellnessmd.com/blog/uncategorized/atherosclerosis-is-it-due-to-lipids-insulin-or-inflammation which mentions many studies.)

(****It bugs me no end that most people have come to regard low density lipoproteins (the entities, not the LDL relative blood measurement) as diseased.  In truth, low density lipoproteins are the essential lubricant the body needs like an engine needs motor oil.  You could not live without them.  High density lipoproteins are like the oil additive that keep it flowing smoothly under different conditions.  You can have too high HDL--when it keeps the low density lipoproteins from doing their job.  Not that you need to eat saturated fats, the body can synthesize LDL's.)

Here is another (Vegan) POV on calcium.  They claim the US RDA are inflated because of high sodium and animal protein diet.  May be some truth to that, if your sodium is lower and your animal protein* is lower it not be necessary to achieve US RDA but 300mg or so lower.  (This is still more than many Americans, especially seniors, get.). (*"animal protein includes dairy, which is probably the #1 dietary source for most people, including me. If you're Vegan and not consuming dairy, you will almost certainly have to supplement even if you follow their lowered recommendations.  Vegan recommendations also therefore do not apply to people like me, even though I use relatively little meat, I still seek high protein which increases the need for calcium.  So the Vegan POV does not apply to me and I'm back to RDA.)

https://www.vegancanada.org/news/article/2020/01/23/misleading-calcium-recommendation.html?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=18597142512&gbraid=0AAAAAC2laoEA6W5grs7fEVO0TycsLLRLX&gclid=Cj0KCQjwr4jSBhCSARIsAOX1E-Iq_SgorrjeBbbfbP3oh2iB5ATOWisbL-ufLmJ7iQPrAGFlD7lKPLcaAnNpEALw_wcB

Another caveat is that one shouldn't have more than 500 mg calcium at one meal.  My plan of having yogurt plus multivitamin (totaling about 500 mg) in the morning, then whey drink with calcium supplement (totaling about 500 mg) in the afternoon or evening already does that.

Truthfully, I was much less careful about the total amount of calcium back when I argued with my brother-in-law in 2019.  That argument got me to start thinking about how the supplements add to natural sources so I only need to supplement the gap, and so I've been more careful about supplementation since then.