There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Linkee-poo will you please say hello to the folks that I know, tell them it won't be long

"Asked how Americans can honor veterans and commemorate D-Day, Cruise underscores civic responsibility… 'I want [people] to appreciate what history has done for them and what it has done for this country,' Cruise says. 'Sacrifice is not just done by the World War II generation… Show some citizenship.'" So say we all.

"Who doesn’t love a good mystery, eh? In the book publishing biz, in North America at least, we use that term for a specific story format: murder mystery. However, mystery is a broader concept. It covers anything that is secret, unexplained or unknown." Donald Maas on mystery.

Hint to concoms everywhere, turn the goddamn fans to "on" in the rooms. "Ever wonder why you get so sleepy during conference talks? Turns out lots of conference venues aren't well-ventilated, causing CO2 to rise to levels that cause drowsiness (>1000ppm)." (Grokked from Annalee Flower Horne)

"Using the ALMA observatory, scientists have detected a previously undocumented band of cool gas wrapped around the black hole at the core of our galaxy."

A signal in the diamond rough. "A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent… As its Enbrel deliberations (about pursuing this clinically) ended early last year, Pfizer was getting out of Alzheimer’s research… Meanwhile, Enbrel has reached the end of its patent life. Profits are dwindling as generic competition emerges, diminishing financial incentives for further research into Enbrel and other drugs in its class." Even if it wasn't the (Grokked from Xopher Halftongue)

"This article originally stated that the price of Acthar had gone 'from just $40 in 2000 to over $40,000 today.' A spokesperson for Mallinckrodt emailed to request a correction that Acthar actually costs $38,892 today. Gizmodo regrets the error. We also regret that every last one of these guys isn’t in prison yet." (Grokked from Joshua Parker)

"New research shows fatal falls have nearly tripled in older Americans in recent years, rising to more than 25,000 deaths yearly… The findings highlight the importance of fall prevention. A separate study bolsters evidence that programs focusing on improving muscle strength and balance can help achieve that goal." Right now in healthcare we do screenings for "falls risks". And if you meet the criteria, that's another wrist band, and then we do all we can to make sure you're not in a position to fall. This, IMHO, then advances the chance the patient will fall later and instead should be met with increased care to stabilize the patient if they feel well enough to stand (many aren't) and with physical therapy to help them keep strong and retain their balance skills.

"If you’re a Windows user who has yet to update your operating system after the discovery of the Bluekeep vulnerability a few weeks ago, then maybe a warning from the NSA will be enough to spur you on." Update the damn systems.

How go the Trade Wars? "Mexico has benefited from the US-China trade war — but Trump could change that." I just hope he doesn't shoot the rest of us in the foot to do it.

"The Trump administration announced a plan Wednesday to expand access even further to protected federal lands for hunting and fishing. The plan seeks to increase access across 1.4 million acres of public land in 74 national wildlife refuges and 15 national fish hatcheries." Because of course he wants to. I'm sure Junior has complained that he can't hunt elephants here in the Good Ol' USA because we have restricted hunting in wildlife refuges, or something like that.

"A Texas high school teacher may lose her job after tweeting to President Donald Trump that her school had been 'taken over' by 'illegal students from Mexico.'" Well, that wasn't the only thing she did. And then there's this… "But according to district documents, she told an investigator she didn't know her tweets to President Trump were public." (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)

"He says spam calls are the No. 1 consumer complaint and a top priority for the agency. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has demanded that all U.S phone carriers install new technology to authenticate real calls and flag potential spam by the end of this year." If I were more cynical I would probably think Chairman Pai lost some money to spammers and that's why he's actually doing something.

You might need to put on personal protective gear before reading this. "Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife." He's for guns, for raping and killing your wife, anti-feminism and whole bunch of other bullshit. You'd think he might be running in the GOP, but he's not. He's running as an independent or a "quasi-neoreactionary libertarian". I'd like to say this guy is a hoaxer just trying to get us all in an uproar, but nope. He's serious. And this isn't his first run (but it is his first run at the state level, previously he threatened the president and was sent to jail making him a felon, and unqualified to run except at the federal level. Now with restoring rights to felons, he has a chance to run for state office. I doubt he'll make it far, and this is mostly just to say this is how low we've sunk in politics, that whackaloons like this think they can get elected. (Grokked from Justine Larbalestier)

"'I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,' Pelosi said, according to multiple Democratic sources familiar with the meeting. Instead of impeachment, Pelosi still prefers to see Trump defeated at the ballot box and then prosecuted for his alleged crimes, according to the sources." Speaker Pelosi is waiting for popular support of impeachment to materialize before beginning, but isn't doing much to drive that support. Chairman Nadler is doing the same investigations he would if this were an impeachment investigation. Which leads us to the weird place of "impeachment by another name." And now there is the idea being floated to hold impeachment hearings and come to an official rebuke from the House, but not refer it to the Senate unless enough GOP senators signal they would vote to remove the president.

"Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reversed course and now says the House of Representatives should open an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump -- and that he has told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi… The inquiry's paramount objective would be to 'give the American people a view of what's going on,' he added." And that's how you'll get to that majority support. And if it's done well, GOP senators who wouldn't even consider removing the president will look complicit (I mean, they already do, but not to the general public who really doesn't follow politics all that closely).

"Like his predecessors, Trump will pay homage to the 160,000 American and Allied troops who landed on D-Day, altering the course of World War II. But in a break with past U.S. presidents, he is unlikely to use his remarks in France to embrace institutions such as NATO that rose out of the ashes of the fighting."

"Chinese leader Xi Jinping described Russian President Vladimir Putin as his 'best friend' as the two met in Moscow on Wednesday at a time when U.S. relations with both countries are increasingly strained." Like it was almost part of the plan.

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