2017 chevy volt reduced propulsion recall

hey yall so i just recently bought a 2012 chevy volt w 148k miles, i've received the propulsion message about 6 times, it does drive funny however from my research it is not worrysome unless accompanied with an engine warning light which it is not. the pervious owner provided me with the service records from his time with the car, he had it from 85k-145k, he had recently replaced the 12v and from my research the becm is not a problem w 1st gen, so im at a loss on what to do. i dont want to ignore the problem. the dealership will get it in and do a diagnostic for $100 & see what they can tell me but do you guys have any idea whats going on?

short version:
​
the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 motherboard causes my 5950x cpu to underperform in all core usage by 300 mhz. this is A LOT! this is 8% missing clock speed.
instead of trying to fix the problem, asus support lies and gaslights me to the point where they try to get me to believe, that this broken behavior is perfectly normal.
going so far as to say a cinebench r20 score of 9300 (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) is an acceptable score for a 5950x. (IT IS NOT!)
​
reasons for this long detailed post to exist:

1. goal why this post got made is to create public pressure on asus to FIX the problem with their motherboard as support fully ignored this issue.
2. goal is to warn people to avoid asus as a brand completely if at all possible.

​
asus forum link about this issue and the support hell experience:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/gaming-motherboards/asus-x570-e-gaming-wifi-ii-is-broken-reducing-5950x-cpu-clocks/m-p/932777#M1265
____________
​
whole long version in mostly chronological order:

1. asus shipped a broken motherboard, that causes a cpu to underperform.

losing around 300 mhz all core clock (picture 2 https://imgbox.com/HLIF7td4 )
and 6% -ish missing benchmark performance. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
my clock speed: 3600-3625 mhz
my cinebench r20 score: 9539.78 (10 run average, low chip temperature)
reviewer clock speed 3925-3950 mhz
reviewer cinebench r20 score average 10146
missing clock speed: 325 mhz (8%)
missing cinebench score: 606 (6%)
​

1. latest bios (4404 and 4602) reduces performance further by around 1% in benchmarks compared to bios 0309.
   
2. customer contacts asus support
   
3. i provide asus with all my data, which includes pictures of test runs running cpu-z, hwinfo64, etc…. I also include a spreadsheet of reviewer scores (picture 4 spreadsheet https://imgbox.com/IlktIZSa ) and a hardware unboxed screenshot showing their clockspeeds during cinebench r20 as a perfect comparison.
   

link to hardware unboxed review showing their stock score of 10157 and all core clock speed of 3925-3950 mhz in cinebench r20:
https://odysee.com/@HardwareUnboxed:2/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-benchmark-review:1?t=295
​

1. asus support claims to have replicated the issue and forwarded the issue to their higher technical team. (picture 5 https://imgbox.com/v3bfB0FW )
   
2. the asus support gaslighting begins:
   

asus support claims, that a 300 mhz reduced all core clock is due to “system specification difference” compared to professional reviewers.
this follows with asus telling me to overclock my cpu with enabling PBO (precision boost overdrive) and changing certain vrm settings alongside with it. (picture 6 https://imgbox.com/0YSIxISr )
​

1. lots of asus support hell.

this included several people giving the same advice of overclocking my cpu after I specifically said, that this not a solution and not desired.
support keeps “reseting”. this means, that I talk to a new person, who then takes days to forward the issue to someone else, who then might as said earlier give nonsense “advice”. (e.g. : overclock your computer)
​

1. asus lying about 5950x performance:

asus support tells me, that the expected score variance of a 5950x is 9300-9800 points in cinebench r20. (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) this is a LIE! (trying to gaslight a customer here)
the variance of 5950x scores from professional reviewers was between 9801-10522.
9801 is already an outlier from the asus crosshair viii formula from overclock3d’s review compared to other reviewer scores.
medium score of 5950x reviews is: 10146.
my score is: 9600.6 (0309 bios) 9539.8 (4404 bios)
​
so I am missing 6% cinebench score and as mentioned in the title 300 mhz all core clock!!!!
the score is worse by a lot than the worst reviewer score.
the clock and score difference is WAY bigger than could get contributed to silicon lottery differences.
so either my motherboard is broken or my cpu is broken.
​

1. asus claims, that they were not able to reproduce the issue now (picture 7 https://imgbox.com/bqbDotHB ), despite claiming, that they replicated the issue earlier.

remember, that asus now claims at the same time for the same issue, that they:
A: reproduced the issue of missing clock speed and performance
B: the score and clocks are perfectly fine and as expected
C: they were not able to reproduce the issue
now you might have noticed, that A, B and C can’t be true at the same time , but asus support doesn’t care and will actually give inherently contradictory statements.
it is absurd and insulting!
​

1. asus keeps going back and forth between having recreated the issue and claiming, that they did nothing and need basic questions answered first.

even when I asked extremely directly whether they did reproduce the issue, asus REFUSED to give me an answer to even that later on!
so the logical step after their latest nonsense claims and avoiding answering is to ask them specifically for the cinebench scores and clocks, that they saw in their claimed test runs.
​

1. guess what…

asus REFUSES to provide their 5950x score results on this motherboard as well as clock speeds after asking them multiple times for this most basic information.
​

1. asus goes on to claim, that my score (and thus clocks) are perfectly fine. (picture 8 https://imgbox.com/ymyaqcxw ) (gaslighting again)

they then LIE and claim, that the reviewers had PBO enabled. (picture 9 https://imgbox.com/5dZnvr29 )
remember: reviewer cinebench r20 score average is 10146.44 my score is 9539.78. both stock.
​
important to know here, that I linked pictures of hardware unboxed running cinebench r20 earlier.
this shows the cpu running at STOCK tdc limit, which is 95 amps.
that not being enough I also send asus a spreadsheet of professional reviewer scores, the boards they used and links to the reviews. NONE of them used PBO of course. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
​
asus literally is trying to tell me here, that 2+2 = 5!
I send them pictures before, that showed, that 2 + 2 =4 (hardware unboxed picture with stock settings running getting 10k+ cinebench r20 score for example)
​
NO asus, go screw yourself! 2+2 =/= 5!
your freaking board is broken and your garbage support can try to lie to me and try to gaslight me as much as they want, this won’t change the facts!
​
this is where it ended at the time.
asus support clearly refused to provide any actual support.
they refused to be honest to a customer on whether or not they recreated the issue.
they continuously lied to me the customer for many many emails over and over again.
they tried to gaslight me to get me to believe, that professional reviewers had PBO enabled to get those stock scores (10146.44 average) and that a 9300-9800 cinebench r20 score is the expected range for a 5950x cpu!
​
there was no budging. that was the line they were drawing.
a straight middle finger to the customer, who spend 370 euros on one of their garbage products. :/
​
this is the experience you can expect to get from asus products or worse.
see section
“examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:”
below for examples of “worse”
​
maybe this big post with lots of evidence will be enough to get asus to fix their broken product, but who knows.
either way, please let this post be a warning, to avoid asus products if at all possible!
​
and for anyone from asus reading this:
fix your broken garbage hardware! and replace the hardware, that can’t get fixed through software!
​
_______end of the WHOLE LONG VERSION here________
​
some more stuff still follows for anyone interested, but feel free to ignore those and thank you for reading and hopefully sharing the information about garbage broken asus hardware and the horrible, lying and gaslighting asus support.
​
1: how asus should address the problem
2: relevant specs of my system
3: benchmarking information, as in how i benchmarked
4: examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems
_____
1. how asus should address the problem:
public validation:
DO actual validation of the issue and share the data through screenshots publicly here on the asus forum:
get 2 5950x cpus 1. being revision/stepping B0, the other being B2. it could be, that the issue is isolated to the B2 stepping, but i doubt it. but hey this is what proper validation looks like and asus has the chips FOR SURE.
run them in the asus crosshair viii hero wifi with the bios version reviewers used like bios 2311 and the latest bios (this board performed properly for reviewers), then test both of those cpus in the ASUS X570-E Gaming WIFI II with 0309 and 4602 bios.
if the board is fine, then the scores should give the almost identical clocks and scores and the scores should be around or above 10k in cinebench r20 and there should be NO regression in scores when updating to a newer bios.
and i would know, that my cpu is broken and i can contact amd for a replacement. (very very unlikely to be the case)
​
if the x570-e gaming wifi 2 is broken, then it will show a massive drop in scores and clocks as i suspect is the case.
again, post all pictures with hwinfo64 open as a response here in the asus forum thread i created.
​
assuming it is the board, which is VERY likely, then the following must be done:
​
work on a fix, which is likely an easy bios fix and then share the fix with a public bios update.
so you grab your bios developers, look at the bios of the asus crosshair viii hero wifi board with bios 2311 and compare it to the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2.
take whatever is broken in the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 bios and replace it/fix it with the crosshair viii hero wifi bios code with adjustments of course for the x570-e board.
do the same with asus motherboards, that have the same or similar issue. this person has the same or similar issue of missing clock speed/ performance on the asus rog strix x570-i gaming for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xFaCVOFST0&t=311s
so I’m not alone here btw!
if the issue is NOT software based, but hardware based and there is no software fix possible, then REPLACE MY BOARD WITH A WORKING ONE!
and do the same for everyone else with this garbage broken board.
____________________
​
2. relevant specs of my system:
motherboard: asus X570-E Gaming WIFI II
cpu: 5950x (stepping: 2, revision VRM-B2 according to cpu-z)
bios tested: 4602 (latest), 4404 and 0309 (first bios)
psu: evga p6 750 watt (seasonic built unit)
os: spyware 10 (windows 10) 2 different versions tested and windows 7
_____
​

1. some benchmarking information, for anyone wondering about my data gathering:

all testing was done with 10 runs and very controlled. no other program running, no screen recording software running, etc… any big outlier due to for example spyware 10 (windows 10) background garbage going on was dropped from the averages.
lots of bios and software testing was done.
any test, where a screenshot was taken is of course discarded from the score data. (that’s the reason 2 scores in picture 2 are blacked out)
and ambient temp controlled as well as i could.
​
examples of testing i did:
with and without chipset driver, different chipset driver versions. windows 7 (score gets lower, but clocks stay the same) and 2 spyware 10 versions.
lots and lots of bios settings, which includes disabling any possible asus garbage, that could cause issues and changing core current telemetry offset up and down.
i tried everything i could think of, before contacting asus support basically and i did very strong data collection to present them with the best, most accurate data i could reproduce.
if you have any question about how horrible asus support is, or details of the data, please feel free to ask me. i’ll gladly answer them if i can
​
4. examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:
this is for anyone thinking, that my experience with this one product is rare.
the 3 examples given include the biggest asus forum thread with the most views and comments ever (asus x570 dark hero not starting up) and straight up fire risk and thus risk of life, that also didn’t get properly addressed for over 8 months (asus z690 hero) :
​
1 asus x570 dark hero NOT starting up at times:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/previous-forum/asus-dark-hero-startup-issue/m-p/813987
record asus forum post with most responses and most views. asus did NOTHING to address this problem and was returning boards unchanged, or is exchanging boards and the replacement gets the same issue in a few months at best. asus refuses to share the result of their investigation. (speculation: to avoid a recall) this issue also effects other motherboards btw….
​
2 asus x670 boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY&list=PLsuVSmND84Qv-dOEYb8uImC6Jc27gZG8x&index=2
sending 1.4 volts at the soc.
burning through chips and motherboards too or degrading the cpu permanently.
putting on WARRANTY VOID disclaimers on beta bioses, that were created to stop further degrading or burning through chips by limiting the soc voltage theoretically to 1.30 volts soc as per amd guidance.
it wasn’t actually fixed at the time with beta bioses as it was still far above 1.30 volts for soc voltage.
so asus set out a statement to void your warranty, when you update a bios to one, that should protect your hardware actually, but at the same time, that beta bios, that had ONE JOB! didn’t even do that!!
lots of manufacturers had too high soc voltages, not just asus, but asus was the highest and asus handled it BY FAR the worst way.
​
3 asus z690 hero fire and risk of life issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ktO-WdlyQ
no full proper recall done for over 8 months.
for a FIRE RISK, you do a PROPER recall, because people could die.
asus did NOT do so.
to be clear here, PEOPLE COULD HAVE DIED!, because asus didn’t do a proper recall for this level of issue. that is the level that asus is at!
_____________
​
so that was all then, hope anyone who made it here and read everything is going to have a lovely life free from asus support hell.
​
THE END!

short version:
​
the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 motherboard causes my 5950x cpu to underperform in all core usage by 300 mhz. this is A LOT! this is 8% missing clock speed.
instead of trying to fix the problem, asus support lies and gaslights me to the point where they try to get me to believe, that this broken behavior is perfectly normal.
going so far as to say a cinebench r20 score of 9300 (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) is an acceptable score for a 5950x. (IT IS NOT!)
​
reasons for this long detailed post to exist:

1. goal why this post got made is to create public pressure on asus to FIX the problem with their motherboard as support fully ignored this issue.
   
2. goal is to warn people to avoid asus as a brand completely if at all possible.
   

​
asus forum link about this issue and the support hell experience:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/gaming-motherboards/asus-x570-e-gaming-wifi-ii-is-broken-reducing-5950x-cpu-clocks/m-p/932777#M1265
____________
​
whole long version in mostly chronological order:

1. asus shipped a broken motherboard, that causes a cpu to underperform.

losing around 300 mhz all core clock (picture 2 https://imgbox.com/HLIF7td4 )
and 6% -ish missing benchmark performance. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
my clock speed: 3600-3625 mhz
my cinebench r20 score: 9539.78 (10 run average, low chip temperature)
reviewer clock speed 3925-3950 mhz
reviewer cinebench r20 score average 10146
missing clock speed: 325 mhz (8%)
missing cinebench score: 606 (6%)
​

1. latest bios (4404 and 4602) reduces performance further by around 1% in benchmarks compared to bios 0309.
   
2. customer contacts asus support
   
3. i provide asus with all my data, which includes pictures of test runs running cpu-z, hwinfo64, etc…. I also include a spreadsheet of reviewer scores (picture 4 spreadsheet https://imgbox.com/IlktIZSa ) and a hardware unboxed screenshot showing their clockspeeds during cinebench r20 as a perfect comparison.
   

link to hardware unboxed review showing their stock score of 10157 and all core clock speed of 3925-3950 mhz in cinebench r20:
https://odysee.com/@HardwareUnboxed:2/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-benchmark-review:1?t=295
​

1. asus support claims to have replicated the issue and forwarded the issue to their higher technical team. (picture 5 https://imgbox.com/v3bfB0FW )
   
2. the asus support gaslighting begins:
   

asus support claims, that a 300 mhz reduced all core clock is due to “system specification difference” compared to professional reviewers.
this follows with asus telling me to overclock my cpu with enabling PBO (precision boost overdrive) and changing certain vrm settings alongside with it. (picture 6 https://imgbox.com/0YSIxISr )
​

1. lots of asus support hell.

this included several people giving the same advice of overclocking my cpu after I specifically said, that this not a solution and not desired.
support keeps “reseting”. this means, that I talk to a new person, who then takes days to forward the issue to someone else, who then might as said earlier give nonsense “advice”. (e.g. : overclock your computer)
​

1. asus lying about 5950x performance:

asus support tells me, that the expected score variance of a 5950x is 9300-9800 points in cinebench r20. (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) this is a LIE! (trying to gaslight a customer here)
the variance of 5950x scores from professional reviewers was between 9801-10522.
9801 is already an outlier from the asus crosshair viii formula from overclock3d’s review compared to other reviewer scores.
medium score of 5950x reviews is: 10146.
my score is: 9600.6 (0309 bios) 9539.8 (4404 bios)
​
so I am missing 6% cinebench score and as mentioned in the title 300 mhz all core clock!!!!
the score is worse by a lot than the worst reviewer score.
the clock and score difference is WAY bigger than could get contributed to silicon lottery differences.
so either my motherboard is broken or my cpu is broken.
​

1. asus claims, that they were not able to reproduce the issue now (picture 7 https://imgbox.com/bqbDotHB ), despite claiming, that they replicated the issue earlier.

remember, that asus now claims at the same time for the same issue, that they:
A: reproduced the issue of missing clock speed and performance
B: the score and clocks are perfectly fine and as expected
C: they were not able to reproduce the issue
now you might have noticed, that A, B and C can’t be true at the same time , but asus support doesn’t care and will actually give inherently contradictory statements.
it is absurd and insulting!
​

1. asus keeps going back and forth between having recreated the issue and claiming, that they did nothing and need basic questions answered first.

even when I asked extremely directly whether they did reproduce the issue, asus REFUSED to give me an answer to even that later on!
so the logical step after their latest nonsense claims and avoiding answering is to ask them specifically for the cinebench scores and clocks, that they saw in their claimed test runs.
​

1. guess what… :D

asus REFUSES to provide their 5950x score results on this motherboard as well as clock speeds after asking them multiple times for this most basic information.
​

1. asus goes on to claim, that my score (and thus clocks) are perfectly fine. (picture 8 https://imgbox.com/ymyaqcxw ) (gaslighting again)

they then LIE and claim, that the reviewers had PBO enabled. (picture 9 https://imgbox.com/5dZnvr29 )
remember: reviewer cinebench r20 score average is 10146.44 my score is 9539.78. both stock.
​
important to know here, that I linked pictures of hardware unboxed running cinebench r20 earlier.
this shows the cpu running at STOCK tdc limit, which is 95 amps.
that not being enough I also send asus a spreadsheet of professional reviewer scores, the boards they used and links to the reviews. NONE of them used PBO of course. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
​
asus literally is trying to tell me here, that 2+2 = 5!
I send them pictures before, that showed, that 2 + 2 =4 (hardware unboxed picture with stock settings running getting 10k+ cinebench r20 score for example)
​
NO asus, go screw yourself! 2+2 =/= 5!
your freaking board is broken and your garbage support can try to lie to me and try to gaslight me as much as they want, this won’t change the facts!
​
this is where it ended at the time.
asus support clearly refused to provide any actual support.
they refused to be honest to a customer on whether or not they recreated the issue.
they continuously lied to me the customer for many many emails over and over again.
they tried to gaslight me to get me to believe, that professional reviewers had PBO enabled to get those stock scores (10146.44 average) and that a 9300-9800 cinebench r20 score is the expected range for a 5950x cpu!
​
there was no budging. that was the line they were drawing.
a straight middle finger to the customer, who spend 370 euros on one of their garbage products. :/
​
this is the experience you can expect to get from asus products or worse.
see section
“examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:”
below for examples of “worse”
​
maybe this big post with lots of evidence will be enough to get asus to fix their broken product, but who knows.
either way, please let this post be a warning, to avoid asus products if at all possible!
​
and for anyone from asus reading this:
fix your broken garbage hardware! and replace the hardware, that can’t get fixed through software!
​
_______end of the WHOLE LONG VERSION here________
​
some more stuff still follows for anyone interested, but feel free to ignore those and thank you for reading and hopefully sharing the information about garbage broken asus hardware and the horrible, lying and gaslighting asus support.
​
1: how asus should address the problem
2: relevant specs of my system
3: benchmarking information, as in how i benchmarked
4: examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems
_____
1. how asus should address the problem:
public validation:
DO actual validation of the issue and share the data through screenshots publicly here on the asus forum:
get 2 5950x cpus 1. being revision/stepping B0, the other being B2. it could be, that the issue is isolated to the B2 stepping, but i doubt it. but hey this is what proper validation looks like and asus has the chips FOR SURE.
run them in the asus crosshair viii hero wifi with the bios version reviewers used like bios 2311 and the latest bios (this board performed properly for reviewers), then test both of those cpus in the ASUS X570-E Gaming WIFI II with 0309 and 4602 bios.
if the board is fine, then the scores should give the almost identical clocks and scores and the scores should be around or above 10k in cinebench r20 and there should be NO regression in scores when updating to a newer bios.
and i would know, that my cpu is broken and i can contact amd for a replacement. (very very unlikely to be the case)
​
if the x570-e gaming wifi 2 is broken, then it will show a massive drop in scores and clocks as i suspect is the case.
again, post all pictures with hwinfo64 open as a response here in the asus forum thread i created.
​
assuming it is the board, which is VERY likely, then the following must be done:
​
work on a fix, which is likely an easy bios fix and then share the fix with a public bios update.
so you grab your bios developers, look at the bios of the asus crosshair viii hero wifi board with bios 2311 and compare it to the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2.
take whatever is broken in the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 bios and replace it/fix it with the crosshair viii hero wifi bios code with adjustments of course for the x570-e board.
do the same with asus motherboards, that have the same or similar issue. this person has the same or similar issue of missing clock speed/ performance on the asus rog strix x570-i gaming for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xFaCVOFST0&t=311s
so I’m not alone here btw!
if the issue is NOT software based, but hardware based and there is no software fix possible, then REPLACE MY BOARD WITH A WORKING ONE!
and do the same for everyone else with this garbage broken board.
____________________
​
2. relevant specs of my system:
motherboard: asus X570-E Gaming WIFI II
cpu: 5950x (stepping: 2, revision VRM-B2 according to cpu-z)
bios tested: 4602 (latest), 4404 and 0309 (first bios)
psu: evga p6 750 watt (seasonic built unit)
os: spyware 10 (windows 10) 2 different versions tested and windows 7
_____
​

1. some benchmarking information, for anyone wondering about my data gathering:

all testing was done with 10 runs and very controlled. no other program running, no screen recording software running, etc… any big outlier due to for example spyware 10 (windows 10) background garbage going on was dropped from the averages.
lots of bios and software testing was done.
any test, where a screenshot was taken is of course discarded from the score data. (that’s the reason 2 scores in picture 2 are blacked out)
and ambient temp controlled as well as i could.
​
examples of testing i did:
with and without chipset driver, different chipset driver versions. windows 7 (score gets lower, but clocks stay the same) and 2 spyware 10 versions.
lots and lots of bios settings, which includes disabling any possible asus garbage, that could cause issues and changing core current telemetry offset up and down.
i tried everything i could think of, before contacting asus support basically and i did very strong data collection to present them with the best, most accurate data i could reproduce.
if you have any question about how horrible asus support is, or details of the data, please feel free to ask me. i’ll gladly answer them if i can
​
4. examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:
this is for anyone thinking, that my experience with this one product is rare.
the 3 examples given include the biggest asus forum thread with the most views and comments ever (asus x570 dark hero not starting up) and straight up fire risk and thus risk of life, that also didn’t get properly addressed for over 8 months (asus z690 hero) :
​
1 asus x570 dark hero NOT starting up at times:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/previous-forum/asus-dark-hero-startup-issue/m-p/813987
record asus forum post with most responses and most views. asus did NOTHING to address this problem and was returning boards unchanged, or is exchanging boards and the replacement gets the same issue in a few months at best. asus refuses to share the result of their investigation. (speculation: to avoid a recall) this issue also effects other motherboards btw….
​
2 asus x670 boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY&list=PLsuVSmND84Qv-dOEYb8uImC6Jc27gZG8x&index=2
sending 1.4 volts at the soc.
burning through chips and motherboards too or degrading the cpu permanently.
putting on WARRANTY VOID disclaimers on beta bioses, that were created to stop further degrading or burning through chips by limiting the soc voltage theoretically to 1.30 volts soc as per amd guidance.
it wasn’t actually fixed at the time with beta bioses as it was still far above 1.30 volts for soc voltage.
so asus set out a statement to void your warranty, when you update a bios to one, that should protect your hardware actually, but at the same time, that beta bios, that had ONE JOB! didn’t even do that!!
lots of manufacturers had too high soc voltages, not just asus, but asus was the highest and asus handled it BY FAR the worst way.
​
3 asus z690 hero fire and risk of life issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ktO-WdlyQ
no full proper recall done for over 8 months.
for a FIRE RISK, you do a PROPER recall, because people could die.
asus did NOT do so.
to be clear here, PEOPLE COULD HAVE DIED!, because asus didn’t do a proper recall for this level of issue. that is the level that asus is at!
_____________
​
so that was all then, hope anyone who made it here and read everything is going to have a lovely life free from asus support hell. :D
​
THE END!

short version:
​
the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 motherboard causes my 5950x cpu to underperform in all core usage by 300 mhz. this is A LOT! this is 8% missing clock speed.
instead of trying to fix the problem, asus support lies and gaslights me to the point where they try to get me to believe, that this broken behavior is perfectly normal.
going so far as to say a cinebench r20 score of 9300 (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) is an acceptable score for a 5950x. (IT IS NOT!)
​
reasons for this long detailed post to exist:

1. goal why this post got made is to create public pressure on asus to FIX the problem with their motherboard as support fully ignored this issue.
   
2. goal is to warn people to avoid asus as a brand completely if at all possible.
   

​
asus forum link about this issue and the support hell experience:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/gaming-motherboards/asus-x570-e-gaming-wifi-ii-is-broken-reducing-5950x-cpu-clocks/m-p/932777#M1265
____________
​
whole long version in mostly chronological order:

1. asus shipped a broken motherboard, that causes a cpu to underperform.

losing around 300 mhz all core clock (picture 2 https://imgbox.com/HLIF7td4 )
and 6% -ish missing benchmark performance. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
my clock speed: 3600-3625 mhz
my cinebench r20 score: 9539.78 (10 run average, low chip temperature)
reviewer clock speed 3925-3950 mhz
reviewer cinebench r20 score average 10146
missing clock speed: 325 mhz (8%)
missing cinebench score: 606 (6%)
​

1. latest bios (4404 and 4602) reduces performance further by around 1% in benchmarks compared to bios 0309.
   
2. customer contacts asus support
   
3. i provide asus with all my data, which includes pictures of test runs running cpu-z, hwinfo64, etc…. I also include a spreadsheet of reviewer scores (picture 4 spreadsheet https://imgbox.com/IlktIZSa ) and a hardware unboxed screenshot showing their clockspeeds during cinebench r20 as a perfect comparison.
   

link to hardware unboxed review showing their stock score of 10157 and all core clock speed of 3925-3950 mhz in cinebench r20:
https://odysee.com/@HardwareUnboxed:2/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-benchmark-review:1?t=295
​

1. asus support claims to have replicated the issue and forwarded the issue to their higher technical team. (picture 5 https://imgbox.com/v3bfB0FW )
   
2. the asus support gaslighting begins:
   

asus support claims, that a 300 mhz reduced all core clock is due to “system specification difference” compared to professional reviewers.
this follows with asus telling me to overclock my cpu with enabling PBO (precision boost overdrive) and changing certain vrm settings alongside with it. (picture 6 https://imgbox.com/0YSIxISr )
​

1. lots of asus support hell.

this included several people giving the same advice of overclocking my cpu after I specifically said, that this not a solution and not desired.
support keeps “reseting”. this means, that I talk to a new person, who then takes days to forward the issue to someone else, who then might as said earlier give nonsense “advice”. (e.g. : overclock your computer)
​

1. asus lying about 5950x performance:

asus support tells me, that the expected score variance of a 5950x is 9300-9800 points in cinebench r20. (picture 1 https://imgbox.com/K4Mmeg64 ) this is a LIE! (trying to gaslight a customer here)
the variance of 5950x scores from professional reviewers was between 9801-10522.
9801 is already an outlier from the asus crosshair viii formula from overclock3d’s review compared to other reviewer scores.
medium score of 5950x reviews is: 10146.
my score is: 9600.6 (0309 bios) 9539.8 (4404 bios)
​
so I am missing 6% cinebench score and as mentioned in the title 300 mhz all core clock!!!!
the score is worse by a lot than the worst reviewer score.
the clock and score difference is WAY bigger than could get contributed to silicon lottery differences.
so either my motherboard is broken or my cpu is broken.
​

1. asus claims, that they were not able to reproduce the issue now (picture 7 https://imgbox.com/bqbDotHB ), despite claiming, that they replicated the issue earlier.

remember, that asus now claims at the same time for the same issue, that they:
A: reproduced the issue of missing clock speed and performance
B: the score and clocks are perfectly fine and as expected
C: they were not able to reproduce the issue
now you might have noticed, that A, B and C can’t be true at the same time , but asus support doesn’t care and will actually give inherently contradictory statements.
it is absurd and insulting!
​

1. asus keeps going back and forth between having recreated the issue and claiming, that they did nothing and need basic questions answered first.

even when I asked extremely directly whether they did reproduce the issue, asus REFUSED to give me an answer to even that later on!
so the logical step after their latest nonsense claims and avoiding answering is to ask them specifically for the cinebench scores and clocks, that they saw in their claimed test runs.
​

1. guess what…

asus REFUSES to provide their 5950x score results on this motherboard as well as clock speeds after asking them multiple times for this most basic information.
​

1. asus goes on to claim, that my score (and thus clocks) are perfectly fine. (picture 8 https://imgbox.com/ymyaqcxw ) (gaslighting again)

they then LIE and claim, that the reviewers had PBO enabled. (picture 9 https://imgbox.com/5dZnvr29 )
remember: reviewer cinebench r20 score average is 10146.44 my score is 9539.78. both stock.
​
important to know here, that I linked pictures of hardware unboxed running cinebench r20 earlier.
this shows the cpu running at STOCK tdc limit, which is 95 amps.
that not being enough I also send asus a spreadsheet of professional reviewer scores, the boards they used and links to the reviews. NONE of them used PBO of course. (picture 3 https://imgbox.com/zPK6D7x1 )
​
asus literally is trying to tell me here, that 2+2 = 5!
I send them pictures before, that showed, that 2 + 2 =4 (hardware unboxed picture with stock settings running getting 10k+ cinebench r20 score for example)
​
NO asus, go screw yourself! 2+2 =/= 5!
your freaking board is broken and your garbage support can try to lie to me and try to gaslight me as much as they want, this won’t change the facts!
​
this is where it ended at the time.
asus support clearly refused to provide any actual support.
they refused to be honest to a customer on whether or not they recreated the issue.
they continuously lied to me the customer for many many emails over and over again.
they tried to gaslight me to get me to believe, that professional reviewers had PBO enabled to get those stock scores (10146.44 average) and that a 9300-9800 cinebench r20 score is the expected range for a 5950x cpu!
​
there was no budging. that was the line they were drawing.
a straight middle finger to the customer, who spend 370 euros on one of their garbage products. :/
​
this is the experience you can expect to get from asus products or worse.
see section
“examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:”
below for examples of “worse”
​
maybe this big post with lots of evidence will be enough to get asus to fix their broken product, but who knows.
either way, please let this post be a warning, to avoid asus products if at all possible!
​
and for anyone from asus reading this:
fix your broken garbage hardware! and replace the hardware, that can’t get fixed through software!
​
_______end of the WHOLE LONG VERSION here________
​
some more stuff still follows for anyone interested, but feel free to ignore those and thank you for reading and hopefully sharing the information about garbage broken asus hardware and the horrible, lying and gaslighting asus support.
​
1: how asus should address the problem
2: relevant specs of my system
3: benchmarking information, as in how i benchmarked
4: examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems
_____
1. how asus should address the problem:
public validation:
DO actual validation of the issue and share the data through screenshots publicly here on the asus forum:
get 2 5950x cpus 1. being revision/stepping B0, the other being B2. it could be, that the issue is isolated to the B2 stepping, but i doubt it. but hey this is what proper validation looks like and asus has the chips FOR SURE.
run them in the asus crosshair viii hero wifi with the bios version reviewers used like bios 2311 and the latest bios (this board performed properly for reviewers), then test both of those cpus in the ASUS X570-E Gaming WIFI II with 0309 and 4602 bios.
if the board is fine, then the scores should give the almost identical clocks and scores and the scores should be around or above 10k in cinebench r20 and there should be NO regression in scores when updating to a newer bios.
and i would know, that my cpu is broken and i can contact amd for a replacement. (very very unlikely to be the case)
​
if the x570-e gaming wifi 2 is broken, then it will show a massive drop in scores and clocks as i suspect is the case.
again, post all pictures with hwinfo64 open as a response here in the asus forum thread i created.
​
assuming it is the board, which is VERY likely, then the following must be done:
​
work on a fix, which is likely an easy bios fix and then share the fix with a public bios update.
so you grab your bios developers, look at the bios of the asus crosshair viii hero wifi board with bios 2311 and compare it to the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2.
take whatever is broken in the asus x570-e gaming wifi 2 bios and replace it/fix it with the crosshair viii hero wifi bios code with adjustments of course for the x570-e board.
do the same with asus motherboards, that have the same or similar issue. this person has the same or similar issue of missing clock speed/ performance on the asus rog strix x570-i gaming for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xFaCVOFST0&t=311s
so I’m not alone here btw!
if the issue is NOT software based, but hardware based and there is no software fix possible, then REPLACE MY BOARD WITH A WORKING ONE!
and do the same for everyone else with this garbage broken board.
____________________
​
2. relevant specs of my system:
motherboard: asus X570-E Gaming WIFI II
cpu: 5950x (stepping: 2, revision VRM-B2 according to cpu-z)
bios tested: 4602 (latest), 4404 and 0309 (first bios)
psu: evga p6 750 watt (seasonic built unit)
os: spyware 10 (windows 10) 2 different versions tested and windows 7
_____
​

1. some benchmarking information, for anyone wondering about my data gathering:

all testing was done with 10 runs and very controlled. no other program running, no screen recording software running, etc… any big outlier due to for example spyware 10 (windows 10) background garbage going on was dropped from the averages.
lots of bios and software testing was done.
any test, where a screenshot was taken is of course discarded from the score data. (that’s the reason 2 scores in picture 2 are blacked out)
and ambient temp controlled as well as i could.
​
examples of testing i did:
with and without chipset driver, different chipset driver versions. windows 7 (score gets lower, but clocks stay the same) and 2 spyware 10 versions.
lots and lots of bios settings, which includes disabling any possible asus garbage, that could cause issues and changing core current telemetry offset up and down.
i tried everything i could think of, before contacting asus support basically and i did very strong data collection to present them with the best, most accurate data i could reproduce.
if you have any question about how horrible asus support is, or details of the data, please feel free to ask me. i’ll gladly answer them if i can
​
4. examples of other MAJOR asus motherboard problems:
this is for anyone thinking, that my experience with this one product is rare.
the 3 examples given include the biggest asus forum thread with the most views and comments ever (asus x570 dark hero not starting up) and straight up fire risk and thus risk of life, that also didn’t get properly addressed for over 8 months (asus z690 hero) :
​
1 asus x570 dark hero NOT starting up at times:
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/previous-forum/asus-dark-hero-startup-issue/m-p/813987
record asus forum post with most responses and most views. asus did NOTHING to address this problem and was returning boards unchanged, or is exchanging boards and the replacement gets the same issue in a few months at best. asus refuses to share the result of their investigation. (speculation: to avoid a recall) this issue also effects other motherboards btw….
​
2 asus x670 boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY&list=PLsuVSmND84Qv-dOEYb8uImC6Jc27gZG8x&index=2
sending 1.4 volts at the soc.
burning through chips and motherboards too or degrading the cpu permanently.
putting on WARRANTY VOID disclaimers on beta bioses, that were created to stop further degrading or burning through chips by limiting the soc voltage theoretically to 1.30 volts soc as per amd guidance.
it wasn’t actually fixed at the time with beta bioses as it was still far above 1.30 volts for soc voltage.
so asus set out a statement to void your warranty, when you update a bios to one, that should protect your hardware actually, but at the same time, that beta bios, that had ONE JOB! didn’t even do that!!
lots of manufacturers had too high soc voltages, not just asus, but asus was the highest and asus handled it BY FAR the worst way.
​
3 asus z690 hero fire and risk of life issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ktO-WdlyQ
no full proper recall done for over 8 months.
for a FIRE RISK, you do a PROPER recall, because people could die.
asus did NOT do so.
to be clear here, PEOPLE COULD HAVE DIED!, because asus didn’t do a proper recall for this level of issue. that is the level that asus is at!
_____________
​
so that was all then, hope anyone who made it here and read everything is going to have a lovely life free from asus support hell.
​
THE END!

Hello everyone,
Last January, I purchased a CX-60. As it is still difficult to find user reviews of this model, I took the time to write this review in the hope that it can be helpful to you if you are considering buying this car. I hope that my experience can answer some of your questions and assist you in your decision-making process.
Exterior Design (4/5)
The design is particularly successful. The car has a sleek look and gives the impression of being in motion even when stationary, just as the designers promised during the design phase. It has nothing to envy compared to its competitors, such as the Audi Q5. Although I'm not a big fan of black rims, I must admit that they blend harmoniously with the Takumi package on this model. The black accents on the rims, tinted windows, and mirrors create a visual signature that doesn't go unnoticed. Unlike most models, it stands out more in person than in photos, especially in terms of size. It is truly massive. For comparison, it is longer and taller than an Audi Q5. When you see it for the first time, the "wow" effect is guaranteed. However, the rear of the vehicle is less expressive and does not do justice to the front and side views. Fortunately, the quad exhaust at the back helps maintain the sporty character of the model.
Interior Design (5/5)
The interior layout is clean, simple, and modern. It features a large central screen, a minimally customizable driver display, and a head-up display integrated directly on the windshield. This efficiency will surely appeal to those who struggle with screens everywhere displaying unnecessary information. Similarly, you cannot customize the ambient lighting in the evening. The lights are fixed, in a neutral color, and the adjustment only offers 3 intensities. It may not be to everyone's liking, but personally, I find it liberating to be free from countless customization possibilities that always leave a sense of dissatisfaction. As for the materials, they come in understated colors and durable textures, both in terms of aesthetics and longevity (at least for now, time will tell). The center console is impressively wide and gives a sense of space rarely felt in vehicles of similar size. When driving this car, you feel like you're aboard a large American SUV like the Suburban or Ford Explorer. Unfortunately, there are not many storage compartments. The huge center console only offers a tiny compartment that can hold a few small items and keys at most. The door pockets are also very low and not very practical.
Ergonomics (4/5)
The cabin offers generous space for all occupants, including the rear seats where even adults over 1.80m tall have ample legroom. The seats, which are rather firm and have limited adjustments, can be surprising at first, especially if you're coming from a vehicle with a multitude of settings. In the first few days, I experienced sharp back pain, especially since the car lacks flexibility as I'll mention later. After three weeks of adjustment, the pain disappeared, and I even noticed an improvement in my posture. In my previous vehicle, my seat was so comfortable, like a sofa, but now I realize it was bad for my back. Inside this car, with its comfort inspired by Japanese tatami mats, I ultimately feel better, less slouched, and more alert. The trunk offers significant capacity, especially compared to similar models. However, it doesn't have a dual compartment or a sub-trunk to store charging cables. The tailgate rises very high, over 3 meters. It struggles to lock in place when encountering resistance, which can damage it from the first uses. I recommend adjusting it by pressing the closing button while it's opening, to lock it at the desired height, and holding down that button for 5 seconds (until you hear a series of beeps) to limit the opening range.
Technologies and Equipment (3/5)
The connectivity is quite comprehensive, although Apple CarPlay suffers from some instability and unexplained bugs (random disconnections, unexpected cuts, slowdowns, random automatic connection). Wireless charging also sometimes poses a problem. It works randomly and seems to generate a lot of heat on the phone. When not in use, an error message keeps flashing, indicating that no phone is being charged.
As for driving aids, the lane-keeping system works very well, although it is not autonomous. If you don't have your hands on the wheel, the car behaves like a billiard ball, bouncing from one lane to another. However, if it deviates from its trajectory because you're not attentive enough, it will alert you and secure the car by making a steering correction. It's very reassuring and always activated at the right time. Moreover, it's even a valuable aid on high-speed winding turns, on certain departmental roads. Other vehicles end up cutting through the turns or having to slow down excessively, while you effortlessly stay precisely in your lane.
I was very disappointed with the cruise control, which is not adaptive. Later, I discovered that it is an option that is disabled in the software since all the necessary sensors are already present. You can confirm this through ActiveSense, which provides a complete view of surrounding vehicles. So, I wanted to add this option later, willing to bear the cost, but Mazda doesn't allow it. This strategy, or lack of a sales strategy, is surprising.
The temperature management inside the car is surprising. Without changing the temperature settings in automatic mode, during a long drive, there is a yo-yo effect that is difficult to explain. One moment, it feels quite cool, and a few minutes later, it becomes too hot. I wonder if it's related to the external brightness because on a hot spring day, the air conditioning temperature suddenly rose when the sky suddenly became overcast. However, it was still hot outside. I think there's an overly reactive adaptive mode at play.
The remote car management is quite good. It's possible to activate the heating or air conditioning, which will run for a maximum of 30 minutes before shutting off and sending a notification to your phone. You can extend it if you have a good signal. The car surprisingly receives a signal in unexpected places, even in underground parking lots where my phone has no network. This remote temperature mode is ideal for defrosting the car or leaving a dog inside during cold weather or in the summer when the temperature rises quickly in a closed and parked car. I've tested it in extreme cold and hot seasonal temperatures, and it works very well so far. Of course, it consumes a lot of energy, but you can't have everything without a trade-off. It's suitable for occasional use. The rest of the remote features include locking the car, checking tire pressure, consulting the range, and receiving alerts if the alarm is triggered, which is very reassuring. It's also possible to locate the car precisely. It's a shame that we can't access the cameras, as in other fully electric models.
It's not clear in the vehicle manual, but to deactivate the alarm, you need to press the alarm button on the remote right after locking the car. The indicator will blink 4 times, and then it will be turned off. It's better to do it before leaving your dog alone, or else the alarm will be triggered if the dog moves inside the vehicle.
Performance and Driving Dynamics (4/5)
I own the 327-horsepower PHEV model: 200 horsepower from the atmospheric gasoline engine and 127 horsepower from the electric motor. Although the low-end power is reduced with an atmospheric engine, the electric motor more than makes up for it with its responsiveness and instant torque. Despite its weight, the car is very agile. It even outperforms some more powerful or lighter petrol-powered cars in terms of acceleration. Of course, such models regain the advantage in corners, but not in straight lines. The acceleration is impressive, although the road noise insulation somewhat dampens the sensation. Other vehicles seem almost stationary when you step on the accelerator.
I was initially disappointed with the braking performance, which was less impressive than in my previous vehicle. However, by pressing the pedal harder and adjusting the regenerative braking to the maximum, I managed to get used to it.
The handling is remarkable. Although it's not a sports car capable of maintaining very high speeds in corners, it still surpasses similar-sized competing models. Thanks to the four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, the turning angle and trajectory in corners are impressive for a car of this size. One of the drawbacks of the vehicle lies in the stiffness of the suspension. Despite the excellent noise isolation, you feel the road imperfections more than you would expect when driving an SUV. Even at low speeds, speed bumps are very uncomfortable and cause items in the trunk to bounce around. Mazda seems to have made this choice to prevent the relatively high car from swaying in corners and reduce the risk of rollovers at high speeds. Adaptive suspension could have solved this problem. However, considering the pricing position against the competition, I understand why the brand overlooked this aspect. Moreover, after 3000 km, I noticed that the suspension has become slightly softer, improving comfort to some extent.
Energy Efficiency and Range (2/5)
The consumption and hybridization aspects encompass the majority of the vehicle's drawbacks. The car discharges quickly, and the actual range is much lower than what the manufacturer claims. Like many owners, I also face a discharge issue when the car is parked. It loses about 30% of charge in 24 hours (and even drains the 12-volt starter battery - as if the headlights were left on). This problem is due to software that prevents the car from entering sleep mode. I have already taken my vehicle to Mazda for reprogramming, and I will have to do it again soon because the issue is still unresolved (now I lose 15% in 24 hours). This problem is not part of the manufacturer's recalls, but many owners are affected. Dealing with a less established manufacturer, this can quickly become a headache. I had to go through many steps and cancel orders for other CX-60s for my company before being taken into consideration by the after-sales service. During my third call, Mazda France assistance even replied to me that they are not Audi. The message is quite clear.
Beyond this specific issue, the management of hybridization lacks customization and seems suitable for a specific use case only. If you live in a house, always have the car plugged in, and regularly make short trips, this plug-in hybrid is suitable. However, if you cannot plug it in daily or if you regularly drive more than 50 km round trip, you might be disappointed. Especially considering the consumption of this car in electric mode, it is often more expensive to charge it than to refuel with gasoline. The cost per 100 km is 2 to 4 times higher at current energy prices. Personally, I opted for the hybrid due to the tax incentives and benefits, but I also wanted to take advantage of remote heating and air conditioning options, especially when I have to leave my dog in the car for a few minutes. Since I cannot recharge it daily in the parking lot of my building, it would be desirable to be able to keep a charged battery and drive in combustion engine mode, but no mode truly allows that. It is possible to choose to recharge the car while driving, consuming approximately 13 liters per 100 km, but you cannot choose to drive solely on the combustion engine without using the high-capacity battery. The sport mode comes close, but the gears are shifted at high RPM, making the driving experience jerky and particularly noisy, and the battery is used as soon as you accelerate a bit (to activate the 137-horsepower motor). An exclusively combustion engine mode would have been relevant, similar to the exclusively electric mode. Furthermore, recharging the battery while driving doesn't work correctly. The recharge is very fast, much faster than when it's connected to 7 kW chargers. However, the displayed percentage does not correspond to the actual charge, which explains why it continues to recharge beyond the set percentage. For example, if you're at 30% and ask the car to recharge up to 50% while driving, it will work at a high rate until it reaches 50%. In normal mode, it will stop recharging the battery, but will continue operating at a high rate to not drop below 50%. So, you end up consuming more without reason, with the engine noise constantly high, which is quite unpleasant. In sport mode, it will continue recharging the battery above 50% without any limit. However, once the car is stopped and restarted, you'll notice that you weren't at 50%, but rather at 35%. The fast recharge was, therefore, fictitious. The problem is that this is a first for Mazda in terms of technology, and no one there is able to provide answers on this matter. The garage I visit explains that Mazda is highly centralized and communicates very little in terms of engineering with the garages. It is, therefore, common for a problem to persist for several months (or more) before being addressed at the technical management level in Japan and then transmitted to local dealerships. However, when deciding to market a technologically immature car, it would be wise to establish a continuous improvement process based on user feedback. In fact, on forums, we can see that Japanese users receive preferential treatment compared to the rest of the world. In conclusion, the battery of this car, which needs to be recharged at a high cost, is only useful for the first 40 kilometers. So, you spend over 3 hours recharging a battery at an exorbitant rate for only 25 or 30 minutes of driving without using gasoline. One might wonder if it's simply a trick to equip professionals, allowing them to benefit from incentives and reduced tax on company vehicles (the primary reason for my purchase). I think many people will never plug it in.
Cost and Value for Money (4/5)
The value for money of this model is indeed very interesting when compared to vehicles of the same standing from other brands, such as Audi. For example, an Audi Q5 offers a similar level but with an additional cost of €25,000. For the same price as a Mazda CX-60, you would only get a Q3 from Audi, which is clearly not comparable. However, it is important to note that the depreciation of this vehicle could be significant, and it might even become difficult to resell it in a few years. This is also true for all plug-in hybrid models. Therefore, I would recommend this model, provided that you negotiate the price well or opt for a lease (the offers are very attractive, and personally, I chose this payment method). The PHEV configuration of the vehicle is suitable for individuals who have daily access to a charging point and have diverse travel needs, ranging from short to long trips. Before the increase in electricity prices, the cost per 100 km was slightly more advantageous compared to gasoline, but today it is the opposite (except when charging from a domestic socket).
Conclusion
I am delighted with this car considering the price at which I acquired it. The positioning is unbeatable, and there are good deals to be made to drive this luxury sports SUV at the price of a "regular" SUV. With a domestic electric socket, choosing the plug-in hybrid is a good middle ground. It's just a shame that the hybrid management is not more refined. Perhaps future updates will address these teething problems.

I'm in the market for a second car for my family. We currently have a RAV4 which suits our needs, but we've decided to replace my old car with something more reliable.
Budget around $23k
Top priorities are reliability and fuel efficiency.
We have a garage, so plugging in a car every night would not be an issue so I've been looking at EVs and PHEVs. I think we could save a solid $70/month in fuel costs compared to the RAV4 with an EV.
So I'm thinking we can get a used 2nd gen Chevy Volt around $15k, but I hear about BECM reliability issues.
Or go full EV with a $22k 2020 Bolt EV. Or 2017 Bolt EV Premier around $23k. This also doesn't have any real maintenance costs.
All the Priuses for $20k seem to be 2017 and the fuel savings wouldn't be as good as the Bolt EV. But it's easy to trust Toyota with reliability.
Are there any other cars I should look at?
We could also simply use $5k cash and buy a very high mileage gen 2 Prius but I want something more reliable than a 20 year old high mileage car even if there are millions of examples of 300k mile Priuses.

please read the article in full here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air
​
The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones” where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis.
by Lylla Younes, Ava Kofman, Al Shaw and Lisa Song, with additional reporting by Maya Miller, photography by Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica Nov. 2, 2021, 5 a.m. EDT
Leer en español.
From the urban sprawl of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to a level the federal government considers unacceptable.
Some of these hot spots of toxic air are infamous. An 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in Louisiana that’s thronged with oil refineries and chemical plants has earned the nickname Cancer Alley. Many other such areas remain unknown, even to residents breathing in the contaminated air.
Until now.
ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. Using advanced data processing software and a modeling tool developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, we mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals from thousands of sources of hazardous air pollution across the country between 2014 and 2018. The result is an unparalleled view of how toxic air blooms around industrial facilities and spreads into nearby neighborhoods.
📷 The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.
At the map’s intimate scale, it’s possible to see up close how a massive chemical plant near a high school in Port Neches, Texas, laces the air with benzene, an aromatic gas that can cause leukemia. Or how a manufacturing facility in New Castle, Delaware, for years blanketed a day care playground with ethylene oxide, a highly toxic chemical that can lead to lymphoma and breast cancer. Our analysis found that ethylene oxide is the biggest contributor to excess industrial cancer risk from air pollutants nationwide. Corporations across the United States, but especially in Texas and Louisiana, manufacture the colorless, odorless gas, which lingers in the air for months and is highly mutagenic, meaning it can alter DNA.
In all, ProPublica identified more than a thousand hot spots of cancer-causing air. They are not equally distributed across the country. A quarter of the 20 hot spots with the highest levels of excess risk are in Texas, and almost all of them are in Southern states known for having weaker environmental regulations. Census tracts where the majority of residents are people of color experience about 40% more cancer-causing industrial air pollution on average than tracts where the residents are mostly white. In predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk from toxic air pollution is more than double that of majority-white tracts.
After reviewing ProPublica’s map, Wayne Davis, an environmental scientist formerly with the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said, “The public is going to learn that EPA allows a hell of a lot of pollution to occur that the public does not think is occurring.”
Our analysis comes at a critical juncture for the fate of America’s air. After decades of improvement, air quality has, by some metrics, begun to decline. In the last four years, the Trump administration rolled back more than a hundred environmental protections, including two dozen air pollution and emissions policies.
The EPA says it “strives to protect the greatest number of people possible” from an excess cancer risk worse than 1 in a million. That risk level means that if a million people in an area are continuously exposed to toxic air pollutants over a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of cancer on top of those from other risks people already face. According to ProPublica’s analysis, 74 million Americans — more than a fifth of the population — are being exposed to estimated levels of risk higher than this.
EPA policy sets the upper limit of acceptable excess cancer risk at 1 in 10,000 — 100 times more than the EPA’s more aspirational goal and a level of exposure that numerous experts told ProPublica is too high. ProPublica found that an estimated 256,000 people are being exposed to risks beyond this threshold and that an estimated 43,000 people are being subjected to at least triple this level of risk. Still, the EPA sees crossing its risk threshold as more of a warning sign than a mandate for action: The law doesn’t require the agency to penalize polluters that, alone or in combination, raise the cancer risk in an area above the acceptable level.
In response to ProPublica’s findings, Joe Goffman, acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in an emailed statement, “Toxic air emissions from industrial facilities are a problem that must be addressed.” Under President Joe Biden’s administration, “the EPA has reinvigorated its commitment to protect public health from toxic air emissions from industrial facilities — especially in communities that have already suffered disproportionately from air pollution and other environmental burdens.”
ProPublica’s reporting exposes flaws with EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act, a landmark law that dramatically reduced air pollution across America but provided less protection to those who live closest to industrial polluters.
The 1970 law resulted in outdoor air quality standards for a handful of widespread “criteria” pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which could be traced to exhaust pipes and smokestacks all over the country and were proven to aggravate asthma and lead to early deaths. But 187 other dangerous chemicals, now known as hazardous air pollutants or air toxics, never got this level of attention. At the time, the science demonstrating the harms of these compounds, which primarily impact people in neighborhoods that border industrial facilities — so-called fence line communities — was still in its early stages. The EPA did not receive enough funding to set the same strict limits, and industry lobbying weakened the agency’s emerging regulations.
In 1990, Congress settled on a different approach to regulating air toxics. Since then, the EPA has made companies install equipment to reduce their pollution and studied the remaining emissions to see if they pose an unacceptable health risk.
The way the agency assesses this risk vastly underestimates residents’ exposure, according to our analysis. Instead of looking at how cancer risk adds up when polluters are clustered together in a neighborhood, the EPA examines certain types of facilities and equipment in isolation. When the agency studies refineries, for example, it ignores a community’s exposure to pollution from nearby metal foundries or shipyards.
Matthew Tejada, director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, told ProPublica that tackling hot spots of toxic air will require “working back through 50 years of environmental regulation in the United States, and unpacking and untying a whole series of knots.”
Top Polluters
T​​he cancer-causing air emissions from these five corporations cover more populated square miles than the emissions from any other companies, according to our analysis.

• The Dow Chemical Company
• Huntsman Corp.
• Eastman Chemical Co.
• BASF
• LyondellBasell Industries

Most of these companies did not comment; Eastman said, “Not all risk is due to industrial activity, however, we continue to do our part to reduce risk and emissions to ensure the safety of our local community.”
“The environmental regulatory system wasn’t set up to deal with these things,” he said. “All of the parts of the system have to be re-thought to address hot spots or places where we know there’s a disproportionate burden.”
The Clean Air Act rarely requires industry or the EPA to monitor for air toxics, leaving residents near these plants chronically uninformed about what they’re breathing in. And when companies report their emissions to the EPA, they’re allowed to estimate them using flawed formulas and monitoring methods.
“These fence line communities are sacrifice zones,” said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics. “Before there was climate denial, there was cancer denial. We release millions of pounds of carcinogens into our air, water and food and act mystified when people start getting sick.”
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please read the full article here:
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The cancer risks from industrial pollution can be compounded by factors like age, diet, genetic predisposition and exposure to radiation; the knock-on effect of inhaling toxic air for decades might, for example, mean the difference between merely having a family history of breast cancer and actually developing the disease yourself. While the cancer and asthma rates in Houston’s Harris County are comparable with those in the rest of the state, Texas officials have identified cancer clusters in several of the city’s neighborhoods.
Large swaths of the Greater Houston area make up the third-biggest hot spot of cancer-causing air in the country, according to our analysis, after Louisiana’s Cancer Alley and an area around Port Arthur, Texas, which is on the Louisiana border. For many homes closest to the fence lines of petrochemical plants in cities like La Porte and Port Neches, Texas, the estimated excess risk of cancer ranges from three to six times the level that the EPA considers acceptable.
But because of the way that the EPA underestimates risk, the true dangers of living in a toxic hot spot are often invisible to regulators and residents.
The agency breaks things down into the smallest possible categories “to avoid addressing what we call cumulative risk,” said John Walke, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who formerly worked as an EPA lawyer advising the Office of Air and Radiation. “But our bodies do not parse out air pollution according to rule labels or industrial equipment or industrial source categories.” The cancer risk from each facility or type of equipment may be at levels the agency considers “acceptable,” but taken together, the potential harms can be substantial.
The EPA initially sent ProPublica a statement saying that it “ensures that risks from individual source categories are acceptable and that the standards provide an ample margin of safety to protect public health.”
In another statement sent after an interview, the agency added, “We understand that communities often confront multiple sources of toxic air pollution and face cumulative risks greater than the risk from a single source.” The EPA added that it was working both to better harness the science on cumulative risks and “to better understand risks for communities who are overburdened by numerous sources of multiple pollutants.”
Madison can’t help but notice that when her family travels, K’ryah’s asthma improves. “The first chance I get, I’m moving far away from Texas and never looking back,” she said. “I love being outside. I love seeing the stars. I don’t want to feel like someone is pumping gas onto our front porch.”
The locations of the hot spots identified by ProPublica are anything but random. Industrial giants tend to favor areas that confer strategic advantages: On the Gulf Coast, for instance, oil rigs abound, so it’s more convenient to build refineries along the shoreline. Corporations also favor places where land is cheap and regulations are few.
Under federal law, the EPA delegates the majority of its enforcement powers to state and local authorities, which means that the environmental protections afforded to Americans vary widely between states. Texas, which is home to some of the largest hot spots in the nation, has notoriously lax regulations.
Between 2008 and 2018, lawmakers cut funding for state pollution-control programs by 35% while boosting the state’s overall budget by 41%, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group founded by former EPA staffers. A Texas Tribune story from 2017 found that during the prior year, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had levied fines in fewer than 1% of the cases in which polluters exceeded emission limits. Even when penalties are issued, many polluters see these fines as part of the cost of doing business, said Craig Johnston, a former lawyer at the EPA and a professor of environmental law at Lewis and Clark Law School.
Gary Rasp, a TCEQ spokesperson, told ProPublica that the agency “has taken actions to monitor, mitigate, and improve the air quality in fence line communities.” The agency runs dozens of stationary air toxics monitors across the state, he added, and “by continuously evaluating air monitoring data, which is more accurate than modeling, TCEQ can identify issues.” The agency also inspects industrial facilities and “has an active enforcement program, referring particularly egregious cases to the Texas Office of the Attorney General.”
That the people living inside these hot spots are disproportionately Black is not a coincidence. Our findings build on decades of evidence demonstrating that pollution is segregated: People of color are exposed to far greater levels of air pollution than whites — a pattern that persists across income levels. These disparities are rooted in racist real estate practices like redlining and the designation of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color as mixed residential-industrial zones. In cities like Houston, for example, all-white zoning boards targeted Black neighborhoods for the siting of noxious facilities, like landfills, incinerators and garbage dumps. Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, has called the practice “PIBBY” or “Place In Blacks’ Back Yard” — a spin on the acronym “NIMBY” (“Not In My Back Yard”).
📷 How We Created the Most Detailed Map Ever of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution
Many of the neighborhoods that border chemical plants are low-income and lack the same resources, access to health care and political capital that wealthier neighborhoods can bring to fights against intrusive commercial activities. In places like Baytown, working-class people depend on the very companies that sicken them to earn a living. Over the years, the shadow of industry can permanently impair not just a neighborhood’s health but also its economic prospects and property values, fueling a cycle of disinvestment. “Industries rely on having these sinks — these sacrifice zones — for polluting,” said Ana Baptista, an environmental policy professor at The New School. “That political calculus has kept in place a regulatory system that allows for the continued concentration of industry. We sacrifice these low-income, African American, Indigenous communities for the economic benefit of the region or state or country.”
Tejada, the EPA’s director of environmental justice, said that the Biden administration and the EPA are focused on confronting these disparities. “These places didn’t happen by accident. The disproportionality of the impacts that they face, the generations of disinvestment and lack of access are not coincidences. These places were created. And it is the responsibility of everyone, including the government — chiefly the government — to do something about it.”
The federal government has long had the information it would need to take on these hot spots. The EPA collects emissions data from more than 20,000 industrial facilities across the country and has even developed its own state-of-the-art tool — the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators model — to estimate the impact of toxic emissions on human health. The model, known as RSEI, was designed to help regulators and lawmakers pinpoint where to target further air-monitoring efforts, data-quality inspections or, if necessary, enforcement actions. Researchers and journalists have used this model for various investigations over the years, including this one.
And yet the agency’s own use of its powerful modeling tool has been limited. There’s been a lack of funding for and a dearth of interest in RSEI’s more ambitious applications, according to several former and current EPA employees. Wayne Davis, the former EPA scientist, managed the RSEI program under the Trump administration. He said that some of his supervisors were hesitant about publishing information that would directly implicate a facility. “They always told us, ‘Don’t make a big deal of it, don’t market it, and hopefully you’ll continue to get funding next year.’ They didn’t want to make anything public that would raise questions about why the EPA hadn’t done anything to regulate that facility.”
Nicolaas Bouwes, a former senior analyst at the EPA and a chief architect of the RSEI model, recalled the occasional battle to get colleagues to accept the screening tool, let alone share its findings with the public. “There’s often been pushback from having this rich data sheet too readily available because it could make headlines,” he said. “What I find annoying is that the EPA has the same information at their disposal and they don’t use it. If ProPublica can do this, so can the EPA.”
In its statement, the EPA said that it plans to improve its approach for sharing air toxics data faster and more regularly with the public. “EPA has not published calculated cancer risks using RSEI modeled results,” it continued. “RSEI results are not designed as a substitute for more comprehensive, inclusive, or site specific risk assessments,” but as a potential starting point that should only be used “to identify situations of potential concern that may warrant further investigation.”
Indeed, our map works as a screening tool, not as a site-specific risk assessment. It cannot be used to tie individual cancer cases to emissions from specific industrial facilities, but it can be used to diagnose what the EPA calls “situations of potential concern.”
Our analysis arrives as America faces new threats to its air quality. The downstream effects of climate change, like warmer temperatures and massive wildfires, have created more smoke and smog. The Trump administration diluted, scuttled or reversed dozens of air pollution protections — actions estimated to lead to thousands of additional premature deaths. In 2018, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt created a massive air toxics loophole when he rolled back a key provision of the Clean Air Act, known as “Once In, Always In,” allowing thousands of large polluters to relax their use of pollution-controlling equipment.
Biden has yet to close this loophole, but he has signaled plans to alleviate the disproportionate impacts borne by the people who live in these hot spots. Within his first few days in office, he established two White House councils to address environmental injustice. And in March, Congress confirmed his appointment of EPA administrator Michael Regan, who has directed the agency to strengthen its enforcement of violations “in communities overburdened by pollution.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air
Over the years, Sullivan Ramirez herself has struggled with nerve degeneration and scleroderma, a rare condition that involves the tightening of the skin and connective tissues. While it can be difficult to link specific cases of disease to pollution exposure, the evidence in Mossville has accumulated: In a 1998 health survey conducted by the University of Texas, 84% of Mossville residents reported having headaches, dizziness, tremors and seizures. An EPA study from the same year found that the average level of dioxins in the blood of Mossville residents was dangerously high — triple that of the general U.S. population. Even small amounts of dioxin, one of the most poisonous chemicals released by facilities, can cause developmental problems, damage the immune system and lead to cancer. A 2007 report found that the types of dioxin compounds in the blood of Mossville residents matched those emitted by local industrial facilities.
In an emailed statement, Sasol noted that its property buyout stemmed from direct requests from Mossville residents and that the company offered owners more than the appraised value of their homes. “Sasol and its predecessor have produced or handled chemicals at our Lake Charles complex for more than 60 years. We understand the science and have controls in place to ensure our operations are safe, protective of the environment, compliant with regulations and sustainable over the long term,” wrote Sarah Hughes, a spokesperson for Sasol. “Sasol is proud of our engagement with our neighbors in Mossville and the positive impact it has had on many of its residents.”
📷 Can Air Pollution Cause Cancer? What You Need to Know About the Risks.
Sullivan Ramirez is wary of too much talk. She knows that the new administration has promised something more for communities like hers, but she doesn’t want to get her hopes up. The presentations from captains of industry, the listening sessions with earnest bureaucrats, the proposals from slick attorneys, the promises tossed off by politicians — over the years, she’s heard it all.
The people of Mossville are right to be skeptical, the EPA’s Tejada acknowledged. “I would be skeptical if I was from Mossville,” he added. “They should be skeptical until we actually show up and do the things that they’ve been asking us to do for a long time. But there’s now a level of commitment to actually tangling with these issues in a really serious, substantive way.”
After years of activism in Mossville, Sullivan Ramirez moved to Lake Charles, just a short drive away. But she worries the industrial sprawl will one day overtake her new home. To Sullivan Ramirez, Mossville is “the key” — a warning of what the future holds for America’s other hot spots if business continues as usual.
“This is the 21st century,” she said. “The act of polluting our lands and robbing our communities — when will enough be enough?”
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please read this article in full here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/toxmap-poison-in-the-air

I’m currently looking at a black premier 2017 ~180k mile Chevy Volt listed for 11k (now for 9.4k). Battery has been dealer replaced in early 2022, but the vehicle has high miles. I don’t know much about these cars, but I’ve always thought they where cool and the ideal plug in hybrid implementation.
What should I be concerned about at that mileage? How much can I expect it to serve me problem free? $11k does sound a too high for the mileage, even though it has a new battery.
Looking for advice before I see the vehicle, thanks!
Edit: Mode year is 2017 and car is driven ~170 miles round trip. CA car. Has ACC, leather, heated back seats, etc. Battery was replaced last year. Battery conditioning system replaced this year Jan. ICE engine has ~80k miles on it based on the app. Car is cosmetically very clean inside and out. Final offer was $9.5k to match dealer trade in offer.

2017 Bolt owner here. I had the battery replacement done back in October around winter time and the range got a noticeably worse. I thought "well this is obviously because of winter" but the longer I sat on it the more worried I got.
Well, it's spring now, and the battery clearly isn't giving me 66 kWh of juice at full charge. I believe I calculated my battery health at 86%, which seems ridiculous to me for a six month old battery with it's thermals being actively managed. I'm starting to think that at the appointment to replace the battery they installed the software which was limiting the capacity by 10%. It is my understanding that this was a temporary measure taken to stop battery fires, and that once the battery was replaced the dealership would install software allowing a full charge.
I asked the dealership to check this today when I was in for a different recall and

1. They refused to check the software status
2. They told me that Chevy wants the battery to be permanently reduced in capacity so that the car will last longer.

I think they are giving me hot garbage, but what do you all think? I can't figure out whether or not my software version of 14.5.0 is actually the most up to date.
TL;DR: Software on model year 2017 is 14.5.0. Suspect it is putting artificial cap on range. How to update?

Not that tech savvy and my first ever post on here. I just bought a comma 3 and LP harness for my 2017 Chevy Volt, is there anything else that I need?

Purchased used 2017 Premier in October 2021. Activated My Chevy app and had remote start, diagnostics, EV map range, etc.
Went to dealership a few weeks ago for seatbelt recall and software update.
Checked app last night and the home screen still shows vehicle w/correct VIN, but nothing else except for link to subscribe to OnStar services.
I thought 10 years was norm for older model year?.
Did software update mess something up or did it legit expire?
Edit: I logged out and reinstalled the app with no change.
Thanks.

Hello all!
I bought a 2017 Chevy volt, PHEV with premium trim, no accidents, with cash for KBB price about a month ago. A week after I bought the car, I got a surprise interview for a new job and have just relocated to Philadelphia. Because of parking, higher insurance, and typical car fees, this car now is going to cost me $5000 a year to live in a city where I will barely need to drive it anymore. Now I’m trying to choose an apartment to rent, and it would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to factor in a place with convenient parking.
I’m thinking of selling it independently, and I’d like to sell it for a similar price as I paid to effectively wash out the whole purchase. Is such a thing possible without a substantial sunk cost?

So we bought our second Bolt yesterday, a 2017 Bolt LT. Went to activate Onstar for the basic chevrolet connection that's free. They would not activate without a paid tier, so the new one will remain unlinked to an Onstar account it seems. Maybe this will reduce the amount of Data Onstar and Chevy are able to collect on me at least.
This also illustrates why I am so against the removal of Android Auto. GM and Onstar have repeatedly demonstrated they are incapable of offering services at a price point that makes sense for the average consumer.

Hi,
I plan on potentially playing through New Vegas once I'm finished with FF7 and I'm looking for some recommendations for some mods to best stabilize the game. I haven't played through Fallout New Vegas since 2017 and I skipped quite a bit of the dialogue when I did. So, even though I've technically finished the game, I don't feel that I know much about the game's story (or, at least, I've forgotten much of it). I've heard a lot of goods things about the story and would like to replay it to explore it. And I also didn't own any of the DLC at the time, so I'll be able to explore them this time around as well.
Essentially, what I'm looking for is how I might best stabilize the game. I recall a lot of bugs and crashing when I played through it last. I'm wanting to know the bare minimum mods that you'd recommend for a near-vanilla experience. I want to reduce the bugs and crashing without delving into the endless rabbit-hole of modding. However, what I'd really like to accomplish is the near-vanilla experience I had with Morrowind last summer using only OpenMW, the official DLC and plugins, and a DLC delayer. Just the absolute bare-necessities.
Also, while I'm at it, is there any advice or tips you'd give me as someone who's played the game and is re-exploring it several years later so they can have the best experience?
Thanks

The 12 volt battery in my 2017 volt finally died after 6+ years so I had to get a new one today. One battery store (Batteris Plus) said that I would have to get it registered at the dealership. The other place (O'Riley) didn't mention anything about it. Looking online I don't see anything about it for this car. I bought the battery from O'Riley, installed it, and its working just fine.
Anyone know if I need to register the new battery? This is usually done in cars that have a more advanced battery voltage regulator system that changes how much current it delivers to the battery over its lifetime to adjust for how it changes over time. If the 2017 volt has such a system, then theoretically not registering the battery might reduce its life time

I see a used 2017 at a nearby dealership. Single-owner, 50K miles, $19K USD. Carfax is clean.
On the Carfax maintenance report, it says the 'transmission/computer module' was replaced in 2020 at 26K miles. Would that have been the BCEM? From what I've read, that seemed to go bad for most folks around 50K miles.
Is there anywhere I can check on-line to see if the BCEM has already been replaced in a particular Volt, like some sort of Chevy website?

Litecoin (LTC) is the second oldest of the existing cryptocurrencies, originally created as a slightly modified copy (fork) of bitcoin by developer Charlie Lee. Like bitcoin, Litecoin runs on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm in which the verification of transactions on the blockchain is supported by miners in exchange for a reward in the form of new coins. Each new block of transactions is added to the Litecoin blockchain on average every 2.5 minutes compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency has risen in price by 20% since the beginning of May, and this was influenced by several factors. The sharp increase in Bitcoin fees forced users to look for a cheaper alternative for payments, and against this background, the number of coin transfers reached record levels.
After the hype around the new BRC-20 token trade provoked a strong jump in commissions and delays in confirming transactions with bitcoin, Litecoin became more attractive for both ordinary users and traders. At press time, LTC is trading at $91.5 and the coin has a market cap of around $6.7 billion, making it the 11th largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap.
The coin received support from those who invested in it before the event known as halving, when the reward received by the miners is reduced in order to limit the supply of coins. The Litecoin halving is expected to happen in late July or early August. Halvings also take place in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that use its code as the basis for their own, such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Zcash (ZEC). It seems that this time the approach of halving has become the main growth driver for LTC. In addition, not so long ago, the first transaction was made in the Litecoin network through the Lightning Network protocol. The integration of the Lightning Network has increased the scalability of the coin’s blockchain by at least ten times (Lightning Network is a payment protocol originally created for Bitcoin, but also deployed in some other Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin. It allows conduct instant transactions between wallets and services that technically support it, and is proposed as one of the most well-known solutions to the cryptocurrency scalability problem).
“From a fundamental point of view, the coin is happy: it is clear that the project is developing and is not going to stagnate or degrade like many other altcoins,” notes Konstantinas Sizovas, CFO of the ASTL investment project, “the current round of growth is largely due to the appearance of LTC-20 standard tokens on blockchain Litecoin, which are similar to the BRC-20 of bitcoin. Investors expect from LTC-20 the same wave of growth in popularity as the BRC-20, and following the influx of liquidity into tokens, both activity and demand for LTC itself will increase. The fact that such a forecast is real can be seen from the statistics of processed transactions - their daily number has reached an absolute maximum."
Another factor in the growth of the LTC price, according to our observations, was the use of the coin as an analogue of bitcoin for transfers against the backdrop of an increase in commissions in the latter's blockchain. A similar thing already happened in 2017, when, due to a sharp increase in transaction fees on the Bitcoin network, users preferred to use other coins for transfers. “At that time, many people bought litecoins and replenished their accounts on crypto exchanges, where they immediately exchanged them for BTC and then traded bitcoin,” Sizovas recalls. “That is, it was a tool for fast and cheap transactions.” Litecoin has established itself as a reliable cryptocurrency, "surviving more than one recession and crypto winter." It is architecturally similar to Bitcoin, has a high level of decentralization, is beneficial for miners, provides fast and cheap transactions, and generally shows low volatility compared to other altcoins. These "simple qualities" will be valued by crypto market participants for a long time to come, our expert believes.
"Bitcoin is called "digital gold" and Litecoin is called "digital silver"," Sizovas adds. in the top. The coin will be able to stay relevant for the same reason that bitcoin will keep it. It will be great for both short-term trading and investment." After the halving, Litecoin can grow 1.5-2 times on the horizon of three months. If the entire crypto market goes up against the backdrop of Bitcoin halving, then LTC “will easily triple in price from the current level,” the expert believes. In terms of technical analysis, the coin found its support level and rebounded from it. Other indicators indicate the activity of short-term traders. The coin was able to again pass the level of 200 MA (Moving Average) and gain a foothold above it.
Historically, Litecoin is the first to enter a bull market, the yfi expert notes. For this reason, in November 2022, after the fall of the crypto market, LTC began to grow before Bitcoin and other crypto assets. In the short term, in his opinion, we should expect a local rollback, as the coin has been rising in price for five days in a row. A "healthy correction" would be a stop in the $87.50-90 zone. Price "needs to rest before a major move". According to the expert's observations, there is quite a strong resistance at the level of $100. In the medium term, the asset will be able to pass this level, and the price of the coin will go to the $120-130 zone. The main thing in this case is to gain a foothold above $100.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners’ holdings have fallen by more than 2,000 BTC over the last 24-hour period, suggesting that miners who help secure the blockchain and receive blockchain rewards in return have dumped $55 million worth of Bitcoin into the Bitcoin market. The sale of BTC came at a time when the price of the flagship cryptocurrency fell from around $29,000 to a low above the $26,500 mark it is currently and appears to be recovering from. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $26,850 after bouncing off a key support level of $26,490, where blockchain data shows more than 474,000 BTC have been deployed across 845,000 addresses in total.
A break below this key level could trigger a correction to $24,1000 or $23,190, based on blockchain data shared with IntoTheBlock. When it comes to its upward momentum, BTC is facing stiff resistance between the $28,180 and $28,990 levels, where 1.24 million addresses bought 973,220 BTC. Blockchain data also showed that there has been a recent surge in acquisitions by the so-called "whales" of the cryptocurrency world. These deep-pocketed organizations are known for holding between 1,000 and 10,000 bitcoins, and they have amassed a $2.32 billion worth of crypto giant in a period of just over a month. A similar BTC accumulation trend earlier this year was followed by a 34% price increase for the digital currency. Whales hoarding tokens can both signal market confidence and drive up the price of crypto by helping to reduce the supply available on exchanges.
Generally speaking, Bitcoin adoption has continued to rise over the past few months, with the total number of unique addresses holding at least one BTC hitting a new high, surpassing the one million mark. The new record was set on May 12 and shows growing interest in the flagship cryptocurrency as accumulation continues. At the time of writing, the number of addresses holding one whole BTC, often referred to as "wholecoiner" addresses, has grown to 1,000,527. On February 2, the number crossed the 800,000 mark.
One of the legitimate forms of investment is, for example, the ASTL investment project, which allows investors to have the opportunity to directly invest fiat and cryptocurrency assets in a stable passive income that obviously exceeds inflationary expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking and confiscation. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors - an investment in the development of the real sector of a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies, with a fairly high ROI (up to 14% annually) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) and the possibility of a full return on investment through the subsequent sale of accrued ASTL tokens on leading crypto exchanges. Details can be found at https://astl.world.

Litecoin (LTC) is the second oldest of the existing cryptocurrencies, originally created as a slightly modified copy (fork) of bitcoin by developer Charlie Lee. Like bitcoin, Litecoin runs on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm in which the verification of transactions on the blockchain is supported by miners in exchange for a reward in the form of new coins. Each new block of transactions is added to the Litecoin blockchain on average every 2.5 minutes compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency has risen in price by 20% since the beginning of May, and this was influenced by several factors. The sharp increase in Bitcoin fees forced users to look for a cheaper alternative for payments, and against this background, the number of coin transfers reached record levels.
After the hype around the new BRC-20 token trade provoked a strong jump in commissions and delays in confirming transactions with bitcoin, Litecoin became more attractive for both ordinary users and traders. At press time, LTC is trading at $91.5 and the coin has a market cap of around $6.7 billion, making it the 11th largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap.
The coin received support from those who invested in it before the event known as halving, when the reward received by the miners is reduced in order to limit the supply of coins. The Litecoin halving is expected to happen in late July or early August. Halvings also take place in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that use its code as the basis for their own, such as Bitcoin (BTC) or Zcash (ZEC). It seems that this time the approach of halving has become the main growth driver for LTC. In addition, not so long ago, the first transaction was made in the Litecoin network through the Lightning Network protocol. The integration of the Lightning Network has increased the scalability of the coin’s blockchain by at least ten times (Lightning Network is a payment protocol originally created for Bitcoin, but also deployed in some other Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin. It allows conduct instant transactions between wallets and services that technically support it, and is proposed as one of the most well-known solutions to the cryptocurrency scalability problem).
“From a fundamental point of view, the coin is happy: it is clear that the project is developing and is not going to stagnate or degrade like many other altcoins,” notes Konstantinas Sizovas, CFO of the ASTL investment project, “the current round of growth is largely due to the appearance of LTC-20 standard tokens on blockchain Litecoin, which are similar to the BRC-20 of bitcoin. Investors expect from LTC-20 the same wave of growth in popularity as the BRC-20, and following the influx of liquidity into tokens, both activity and demand for LTC itself will increase. The fact that such a forecast is real can be seen from the statistics of processed transactions - their daily number has reached an absolute maximum."
Another factor in the growth of the LTC price, according to our observations, was the use of the coin as an analogue of bitcoin for transfers against the backdrop of an increase in commissions in the latter's blockchain. A similar thing already happened in 2017, when, due to a sharp increase in transaction fees on the Bitcoin network, users preferred to use other coins for transfers. “At that time, many people bought litecoins and replenished their accounts on crypto exchanges, where they immediately exchanged them for BTC and then traded bitcoin,” Sizovas recalls. “That is, it was a tool for fast and cheap transactions.” Litecoin has established itself as a reliable cryptocurrency, "surviving more than one recession and crypto winter." It is architecturally similar to Bitcoin, has a high level of decentralization, is beneficial for miners, provides fast and cheap transactions, and generally shows low volatility compared to other altcoins. These "simple qualities" will be valued by crypto market participants for a long time to come, our expert believes.
"Bitcoin is called "digital gold" and Litecoin is called "digital silver"," Sizovas adds. in the top. The coin will be able to stay relevant for the same reason that bitcoin will keep it. It will be great for both short-term trading and investment." After the halving, Litecoin can grow 1.5-2 times on the horizon of three months. If the entire crypto market goes up against the backdrop of Bitcoin halving, then LTC “will easily triple in price from the current level,” the expert believes. In terms of technical analysis, the coin found its support level and rebounded from it. Other indicators indicate the activity of short-term traders. The coin was able to again pass the level of 200 MA (Moving Average) and gain a foothold above it.
Historically, Litecoin is the first to enter a bull market, the yfi expert notes. For this reason, in November 2022, after the fall of the crypto market, LTC began to grow before Bitcoin and other crypto assets. In the short term, in his opinion, we should expect a local rollback, as the coin has been rising in price for five days in a row. A "healthy correction" would be a stop in the $87.50-90 zone. Price "needs to rest before a major move". According to the expert's observations, there is quite a strong resistance at the level of $100. In the medium term, the asset will be able to pass this level, and the price of the coin will go to the $120-130 zone. The main thing in this case is to gain a foothold above $100.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners’ holdings have fallen by more than 2,000 BTC over the last 24-hour period, suggesting that miners who help secure the blockchain and receive blockchain rewards in return have dumped $55 million worth of Bitcoin into the Bitcoin market. The sale of BTC came at a time when the price of the flagship cryptocurrency fell from around $29,000 to a low above the $26,500 mark it is currently and appears to be recovering from. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $26,850 after bouncing off a key support level of $26,490, where blockchain data shows more than 474,000 BTC have been deployed across 845,000 addresses in total.
A break below this key level could trigger a correction to $24,1000 or $23,190, based on blockchain data shared with IntoTheBlock. When it comes to its upward momentum, BTC is facing stiff resistance between the $28,180 and $28,990 levels, where 1.24 million addresses bought 973,220 BTC. Blockchain data also showed that there has been a recent surge in acquisitions by the so-called "whales" of the cryptocurrency world. These deep-pocketed organizations are known for holding between 1,000 and 10,000 bitcoins, and they have amassed a $2.32 billion worth of crypto giant in a period of just over a month. A similar BTC accumulation trend earlier this year was followed by a 34% price increase for the digital currency. Whales hoarding tokens can both signal market confidence and drive up the price of crypto by helping to reduce the supply available on exchanges.
Generally speaking, Bitcoin adoption has continued to rise over the past few months, with the total number of unique addresses holding at least one BTC hitting a new high, surpassing the one million mark. The new record was set on May 12 and shows growing interest in the flagship cryptocurrency as accumulation continues. At the time of writing, the number of addresses holding one whole BTC, often referred to as "wholecoiner" addresses, has grown to 1,000,527. On February 2, the number crossed the 800,000 mark.
One of the legitimate forms of investment is, for example, the ASTL investment project, which allows investors to have the opportunity to directly invest fiat and cryptocurrency assets in a stable passive income that obviously exceeds inflationary expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking and confiscation. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors - an investment in the development of the real sector of a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies, with a fairly high ROI (up to 14% annually) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) and the possibility of a full return on investment through the subsequent sale of accrued ASTL tokens on leading crypto exchanges. Details can be found at https://astl.world.

I was opposed to the Covid madness from the beginning. Like everyone else I was disturbed when I saw the (apparently staged) videos of people dropping dead in the streets of China, but it only took a few months to realize that this was no “pandemic of the century.”
It was quietly admitted that Covid-19 had an IFR of 0.2 percent, and that the overwhelming majority of victims were literally older than average life expectancy. Up here in Canada the average age of death allegedly from Covid-19 was 82. I use the word “allegedly” because as most of you are aware, the WHO initiated a bizarre recommendation whereby anyone who died within a month of testing positive with a PCR test was labeled a “Covid death.” Died of brain cancer but tested positive with PCR after being admitted to the hospital? You died of Covid-19. Pneumonia? That's Covid-19.
Sweden provided us with a control group. They had no significant excess mortality even at the height of the “pandemic.” Dr. Michael Yeadon — a controversial figure to put it mildly — recently suggested that the whole debate about whether the virus came from a lab or not is “misdirection.” The real scandal, he claims, is that Covid-19 was nothing more than a bad flu season.
Yeadon suggests that there was never any “pandemic” at all. Could this be true? Well it all depends on how we define the word “pandemic.” A remarkable fact of which virtually no one (including most doctors) is aware is that the World Health Organization changed the definition of "pandemic" in 2008. They eliminated the qualification, "with enormous numbers of deaths and illness."
According to the initial alarmist predictions by Gates-funded institutions, Covid-19 would indeed have qualified as a pandemic as per the original definition of the term — “experts” were claiming that about 3 percent of the population would die — but once it was known that that the IFR was 0.2 percent, “Covid-19” should have been relegated to the status of “bad flu season.” I realize this is very difficult for people to come to terms with, but I would encourage skeptics to look at the excess mortality data out of Sweden.
There was no correction. The media and public “health” agencies continued to pretend as though the initial alarmist predictions were correct, and the rest is history. They breathlessly reported on new alleged “cases” of the dread virus (using flawed PCR tests), and thus came to function as virtual terrorist organizations. At one point, the NY Times even reported that the PCR test was deeply flawed, but that was memory-holed; they then went on to pretend as though the tests were accurate.
A common claim is that “masks don’t work.” This is false. Yes it’s true that they have no positive effect on the transmission of respiratory viruses (as was known prior to Covid-19; there were about a dozen peer-reviewed randomized controlled trials demonstrating as much), but masks were crucial to the scam. They kept people in a state of perpetual anxiety. People needed to be reminded that there was supposedly a “pandemic” going on, otherwise they might have wondered why the government was forcing small businesses to shut down and trillions of dollars transferred to the ruling class — the largest transfer of wealth in history.
There are some people who believe that “Covid-19” doesn’t even exist, that it was an entirely made-up phenomenon (did the flu really “disappear” for two years? Really?), but I don’t think it’s necessary to go that far. I have no problem with the idea that there was/is a virus labeled “Covid-19” and that it came from a lab. The real issue here is that it did not rise to the level of a “pandemic,” according to the original definition of the term. If we believe, as I do, that this whole thing was deliberately orchestrated, then it would make sense that its authors would not want to put themselves in actual danger.
[We are now living in a truly Orwellian society. The term Orwellian gets thrown around a lot but it really does apply here: we are now living in a society where the definitions of words are routinely changed to accommodate new, manufactured realities — witness the changing definitions of “vaccine,” “herd immunity” etc.]
But what about all those overflowing hospitals? Well this again was an illusion. It’s not that ICU’s weren’t overflowing — they were — it’s that this happens during every flu season. This problem has become more acute over time due to an aging population. You can find articles in the Canadian media from 2019, 2018, 2017 etc. lamenting the fact that ICU’s are overflowing during winter. Overflow facilities were created around the world in response to Covid-19 — and all of them ended up going unused.
If you’re still convinced that Covid-19 was the “pandemic of the century,” I would refer you to my own province of British Columbia. B.C. did not engage in lockdowns (though did engage in forced masking, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports). Someone did an FOIA request regarding hospital admissions and ICU admissions. What the documents revealed is that — just like Sweden — there was no significant increase. There was a minor uptick, but even that could be explained by the increase in suicides/drug overdoses and a brutal heatwave in the summer of 2020.
Was Covid-19 a public health catastrophe? Yes. But it wasn’t because of some virus, it was because of the response by governments.
In the first world we saw marked increases in poverty, mental illness, obesity, suicides, homicides, domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, and so on and so forth. Childhood education was severely impaired; countless people lost their small businesses and homes; health care itself was wrecked due to delayed cancer screenings etc.; friends and families were torn apart due to vicious propaganda about the “unvaccinated.” Elderly people were forced to die alone.
The greatest crime, however, was what occurred in the global south. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2020: “the coronavirus pandemic has thrown between 88 million and 114 million people into extreme poverty, according to World Bank’s biennial estimates of global poverty.” That was in 2020. Those numbers have now increased by at least fifty percent, according to Oxfam.
Leftists websites highlighted these numbers, without acknowledging their actual cause. Like the Wall Street Journal, they attributed all of this to “the pandemic.” No, it wasn’t “the pandemic,” it was the response to the alleged pandemic.
That brings us to another interesting question: how in the world did the ruling class manage to get leftists — indeed radical leftists — to go along with all this? Many professional leftists saw Covid-19 as an opportunity — just like the ruling class. They thought: what if this catastrophe could compel us to create a more just and caring society? — where governments actually take care of the poor and the sick and the elderly? What if union members went on strike and shut down the supply chains, thereby exposing the precarity of the ruling class? Thus the bulk of their analysis tended in that direction: governments aren’t doing enough. For the typical leftist this meant providing more resources for the poor — but what it translated into was more masks, more lockdowns, more vaccine mandates, more poverty, more starvation. Most environmentalists were exposed as total hypocrites: masks are causing massive pollution in the oceans and killing bird populations around the world.
There’s another, uglier aspect to the broader left’s response: bigotry and negative partisanship. Christian Parenti does a very good job of explaining the partisanship angle in his article How the organized left got covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy. He begins:

It is hard to destroy your own cause and feel righteous while doing so, yet the American left has done it. After more than two centuries at the vanguard of the struggle for freedom, the American left, broadly defined, executed a volte face and embraced anti-working-class policies marketed as purely technical public health measures.

Analyzing the left’s response to Covid-19 would require a whole other post, but it points to serious problems. I think a lot of it stems from the increasing separation — which has occurred over decades — between the “left” and the working class, largely due to the destruction of unions. This in turn led to a shift in the center of gravity: instead of “the left” being concentrated among ordinary workers it became concentrated in the universities. A gender studies professor who earns $150,000 a year is evidently far more concerned about demanding that people use the term “Latinx” than the real material concerns of the working class. This has also led to intense bigotry against uneducated rural people. Since most of said people are Christians they are apparently de facto dumb, ignorant, anti-science deplorables. Wealth liberals imagine: WE are the good guys. WE are the educated, enlightened ones. WE are the woke.
The average leftist would be absolutely horrified to learn of what their actions caused during Covid-19. They thought they were the good guys, fighting for workers and the poor. Yet they were complicit in a crime of epic proportions. Denial is an understandable response. Thus I’ve been met with the reply, “well it’s true that lockdowns drove over a hundred million people into extreme poverty and starvation, but if we didn’t do anything it would have been even worse.” No. There is no evidence for that, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary. The countries that engaged in the strictest lockdowns (eg Peru) ended up faring significantly worse than countries that did nothing at all — even in terms of deaths by the dread virus itself.
What about the vaccine mandates? Did they help? Nope.

“Expert opinion was wrong: we cannot conclude that vaccination regimes and NPI [non- pharmaceutical intervention] regimes reduced caseloads. Indeed, at best, NPI’s and vaccinations had no effect on caseloads, but there are strong signals in the data indicating that NPI’s and vaccinations increased caseloads.” Leading cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough concluded that there is “no clinical benefit” to the “vaccines.” Later he went even further, suggesting that these “vaccines” are “not safe for human use.”

All sorts of trickery has been employed in service of promoting the experimental MRNA serums. So much so that it would be impossible to analyze in this post. As cynical about power as I was prior to Covid-19, I didn’t realize that human beings were capable of engaging in this level of coordinated deception.
The left used to have a principled stance on forced or coerced medical procedures. Back in the day the ACLU wrote an eloquent and convincing paper arguing that coerced medical procedures invariably end up harming public health.
“American history contains vivid reminders that grafting the values of law enforcement and national security onto public health is both ineffective and dangerous. Too often, fears aroused by disease and epidemics have justified abuses of state power. Highly discriminatory and forcible vaccination and quarantine measures adopted in response to outbreaks of the plague and smallpox over the past century have consistently accelerated rather than slowed the spread of disease, while fomenting public distrust and, in some cases, riots.”
Yet during Covid-19 the ACLU did a volte face and argued in favor of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. It is quite possible that their leadership was literally bribed. Here is Aaron Matte (sitting in for Jimmy Dore) discussing the should-be-massive-scandal that “civil rights” organizations were literally given cash-payouts by Pfizer to promote mandates.
I should point out that my critique of the “left” here is directed primarily at the “professional” left. The average leftist is not a Democrat, and obviously the vast majority of leftists worldwide are not Democrats since they aren’t American. The only western country on the planet to embrace a somewhat sane approach to the “pandemic” was Sweden, ruled over by leftist social democrats (what Americans would consider radical leftists). Jeremy Corbyn in Britain opposed vaccine mandates, as did scores of unions around the world. In France, the communists and the far right joined forces to defeat vaccine mandates. The Canadian trucker protest and its supporters — despite being portrayed by the media as “far right wing Trumpists” — included many leftists and radical leftists (such as myself). Most of my friends (again, mostly radical leftists) rejected the Covid madness. Many Marxists/socialists/anarchists have written compelling critiques of the emerging biofascist security state. Here is a terrific website documenting their important work. Nevertheless, we must concede that the North American left as a whole got this one wrong — badly. It should be a wake-up call. It absolutely cannot be swept under the rug.
And now to the question of whether Covidians should be given amnesty.
Covid-19 hysteria tore apart families, friends, entire communities. Largely due to the faux-vaccine mandates and passports. This was an epic crime in itself. But as noted, the response to Covid-19 went far beyond that; when we look at the third world, we can plausibly make the argument that lockdowns were one of the greatest crimes in human history. It’s difficult for the average well-to-do liberal to understand this because for them, Covid-19 restrictions amounted to having to wear a mask when they went grocery shopping. Some of them even enjoyed the experience, getting to work from home and not having to deal with toxic office politics. They sincerely thought they were helping people. But then again, so did the Nazis.
I don’t think it wise to condemn every single person who bought into the hysteria. Indeed it would be foolish to do so since the majority of the population fell victim to the scam. Unless you’re Pol Pot you can’t try to punish the majority, nor would that help anyone. During the hysteria I voluntarily declined to attend family functions because all of my family members knew I had not taken the “vaccine” and I anticipated getting into all sorts of emotional arguments and saying things I couldn’t take back.
The average person who bought into the madness and propounded often-vicious ideas during the “pandemic” needs to be forgiven. People tend not to behave rationally or ethically when they are frightened, and what we call “Covid-19” was perhaps the greatest propaganda campaign in history. But it’s a two-way street. Covidians need to, at bare minimum, recognize their profound error and apologize to the people they harmed.
It’s unfortunate that most people will not admit error on serious issues unless compelled or shamed into doing so. I get it: it’s not fun being wrong even on trivial issues, let alone something of this magnitude. I just watched the debate on the JFK Presidency/assassination between Aaron Good and Michael Tracey. I kept thinking to myself, “C’mon Michael, just admit you got this one wrong,” but of course he refused to do so; he just kept digging himself in deeper and deeper and deeper until he looked like a fool. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things in my life, and it’s always painful to admit. It’s embarrassing. But an error on this scale can’t be brushed aside.
We have this idea that admitting error is akin to admitting you’re an idiot or a bad person or something, but that’s not remotely true. We’re all fallible and we all mistakes. We’ve all at one time embraced some seemingly plausible idea that later turned out to be nonsense. If anything, admitting error is a sign of character: it demonstrates that you are willing to grow. I really don’t like Harry Truman, but he had this wonderful quote where he said something like, “admitting you were wrong is only showing that you are more wise today than you were yesterday.” I wish more public intellectuals would embrace that ethos. Dissident intellectuals are particularly stubborn because they are constantly being attacked by the establishment under false pretenses, and on top of that they view their opinions as their identity, so when they DO get something wrong they are about a thousand times less likely (than the average person) to admit it.
Now imagine being a doctor. I don’t envy the poor saps. Doctors are the closest things we have to priests in our society — since “science” has replaced “God” we all look to them for eternal (well, extended) life. But like the Catholic priests of old, doctors have a higher authority — in this case not the Vatican but “public health” authorities. One of the things most people don’t understand about doctors is that they don’t sit around all day reading the latest scientific papers. They are extremely busy people, and they tend to trust what “health authorities” tell them. When you combine that with a psychopath like Anthony Fauci being in charge you can see how easily the whole scheme can go badly awry. Remember that the majority of doctors in the early 20th century supported the eugenics movement, which in turn was financed by the great capitalists of the era — the Rockefellers, the Morgans etc. (in point of fact those “great” capitalist families are probably still in charge, they’ve just “diversified” their assets, so they don’t appear on th=e Forbes 500 list. See Michael Parenti’s thought-provoking article The Super-rich are out of sight).
[As a side note, has anyone here heard of Dr. Harold Shipman? He was one of the most prolific serial killers in history yet hardly anyone has heard of him. This is because he wasn’t a sexual pervert and his crimes were unexciting. He killed old people via lethal injections. Thing is, these old people would have died in probably six months or so anyway, that’s how he got away with it for so long. Shipman got off on the idea of power over life and death. He wanted to be the one to pull the trigger; it made him feel godlike. Like the coward he was, he hanged himself in his cell before trial. Well, Anthony Fauci makes Shipman look like a fucking choir boy. The man has oceans of blood on his hands. Anyone who doubts this should read RFK Jr.’s book “The Real Anthony Fauci”. Worse than that is that Fauci has a painting of himself on his office wall. Really?
Getting back to the original point — why haven’t Covidians apologized or attempted to make some sort of amends given that they have been proven wrong about everything. Well part of the problem is that the Ukraine war happened immediately after the Canadian trucker protest. So the woke virtue signalers simply switched from one crisis to the other in order to signify their virtue. Viva Ukraine! Etc.
The healing is not going to come from the corporate media. You’re not going to wake up one day and see Anderson Cooper saying, “Oops, turns out we got the whole Covid-19 thing catastrophically wrong. And BTW we functioned as a virtual terrorist organization for the past three years.” It’s not going to happen.
Healing needs to come via interpersonal relationships. Covidians need to acknowledge that they behaved terribly, and make amends.
I don’t think we should lay the blame at the average person’s foot, any more than we would lay the blame for Nazi Germany on the average German (and for those who consider that an uncouth comparison, consider that the justification for rounding up Jews/Roma etc. and placing them in camps was that they were “spreading disease” [Typhoid, specifically] and were therefore a “public health menace.” You can actually watch documentaries made by the Nazis at the time outlining this idea in detail).
So to sum up: I think the average Covidian (ie the majority of the population) should be forgiven. Even if you have an Old-Testament conception of justice it would simply be impossible to hold that many people to account, and it wouldn’t be fair anyway. I think we need a truth and reconciliation committee.
That does not, however, extend to the architects of this atrocity. People like Bill Gates and the folks at DARPA. These people need to be tried for crimes against humanity. NO AMNESTY for these criminals. They are literally on par with the worst human beings in history, up to and including the likes of Adolph Hitler.
But what about your local health authority? What about numb-nut politicians like Justin Trudeau?
When I talk about these issues with family members — even those who agree with me — they end up saying about local health authorities, “well, those people were probably just misguided. They thought they were protecting people’s health.”
Were they? The answer is no. The Great Barrington Declaration — which now has almost a million signatures by doctors and other health professionals — was signed in the summer of 2020. It was already apparent by then what lockdowns would look like.
Here is yet another fallacy: public health officials are misguided fools who are trying their best. Even though a person like myself can do an internet search and learn what’s actually going on, these poor health professionals are at the mercy of their advisors. No, no, no. These people are careerists; they are politicians first, doctors second; in fact, being a doctor who cares for people and looks out for their health is probably about ten thousandth on their list of priorities. They want to earn a lot of money and advance their careers. Every once in a while a principled doctor may become a top health authority, but I suspect that is exceedingly rare.
Was it possible for these “health authorities” to predict the absolute health calamity that their measures would inflict? The answer is yes. And that’s why they deserve no amnesty.
“As former UN Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur has documented in scrupulous detail, the harms that lockdowns would cause were all well-known and reported at the time they were first adopted as policy in early 2020. These included accurate estimates of mass deaths due to delayed medical operations, a mental health crisis, drug overdoses, an economic recession, global poverty, hunger, and starvation.” Full article is worth reading.
As for the “vaccinate” mandates and passports, every single person who was in a position of authority who mandated these toxic injections needs to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
A lot of people have suggested that the the big Pharma reps known as “public health authorities” should receive the Nuremberg treatment. After all, these people engaged in the greatest ever violation of medical ethics, and the greatest ever violation of the Nuremberg code. But I’ve always been extremely reluctant to embrace the idea of capital punishment. It’s not that some people don’t deserve it, it’s that the we can’t trust cops and judges to be honest.
A fitting punishment: Let Anthony Fauci spend the rest of his life cleaning up medical waste. Let Dick Cheney spend the rest of his life de-activating land mines. And so on.
As for the rest of us, we need to heal. But this process can’t come from the minority who recognized what was going on, it needs to come from the Covidians.
This isn’t simply a matter of healing. The WHO continues to draft new totalitarian measures for the “next pandemic.” It worked so well last time, why not try it again?
As Christian Parenti points out at the end of his article:

Just as disturbing is the fact that populations around the globe have been conditioned to accept new and unprecedented levels of repression if it comes wrapped in bio-medical justifications. From now on, political elites and pharmaceutical profiteers will be eager to re-engage rule by pandemic.