Still dealing with the backlog from taking Friday off. Still alligators as far as the eye can see.
"More than 2 million Americans with heart conditions report that they have used marijuana, but many questions remain about the drug’s effects on the heart, according to a review published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology… What is known, however, is that the drug can interact with common heart medications, including statins and blood thinners, potentially putting patients at risk, the review said." Funny how all these "herbals" (and I hate using that term with marijuana) are all first deemed to be "inactive" and basically placebos, and then once they're in general use all of a sudden "ZOMG, drug interactions!" I'm not saying it's not a concern, I'm just noting the pattern of dismissal and then "it's a problem!" In this case, "marijuana has no legitimate medical use" and now it's "OMG, it's doing all these things 'enhancing' drug's effects" (or weed has this affect, but if you take other drugs you're now double dosing).
"A newly-discovered part of our immune system could be harnessed to treat all cancers, say scientists… The Cardiff University team discovered a method of killing prostate, breast, lung and other cancers in lab tests." Not the first time this has been promised. This is more a fishing expedition for funding and investment.
"Architects, builders, and sustainability advocates are all abuzz over a new building material they say could substantially reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the building sector, slash the waste, pollution, and costs associated with construction, and create a more physically, psychologically, and aesthetically healthy built environment… The material is known as, uh, wood." Well, it's engineered lumber, not dimensional lumber. And this tech has been around for some time (I remember reading about it in the early 2010s). Or, to coin a phrase, fancy plywood. What they don't tell you in the article is about the heat and pressure treatment that happens with this lumber. Now the big revolution will be to actually make sustainable harvested forests (something we don't quite have yet).
"In cities around the country, if you want to understand the history of a neighborhood, you might want to do the same thing you'd do to measure human health: Check its temperature… That's what a group of researchers did, and they found that neighborhoods with higher temperatures were often the same ones subjected to discriminatory, race-based housing practices nearly a century ago." Yes, Virginia, racism does have environmental impacts as well.
"Loaded onto a SpaceX recovery ship, the Crew Dragon capsule that performed a successful in-flight abort test Sunday over Florida’s Space Coast pulled into Port Canaveral hours later after being retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean." One more hurdle for crewed flight crossed.
"Global stocks dropped on Tuesday as investors braced for coronavirus to spread as hundreds of millions of people travel across Asia to celebrate Chinese New Year this weekend." Just as a comparison, our Thanksgiving and Christmas sees about 75 million people on the road. Chinese New Year travel involves billions of people.
"A deadly virus emanating from China helped bring this year’s global risk rally to a halt on Tuesday, hammering Asian equities and helping drag both European stocks and U.S. futures lower."
"What's worrying the Davos crowd."
"Apple Inc dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company’s iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters."
"A California man 'intentionally rammed' his vehicle into a car carrying six teenage boys, killing three and injuring the others, before driving off, authorities said."
"Hundreds of migrants who waded across a river on Mexico's southern border have been stopped from entering the country on their way to the US… The security forces fired tear gas to force the migrants back and rounded up those who managed to make it across." Our policies as enforced by other governments.
"A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the top law enforcement officer in the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges that multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private island, some as recently as 2018, aided by a web of shell companies to carry out and conceal his crimes." (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"Weeks before the first votes of the 2020 presidential election, Americans report a high level of concern about how secure that election will be and worry about the perils of disinformation, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll." By design. Funny how they don't breakdown the disinformation by party affiliation (in the article, I'm still looking at the raw data).
And a specific callout in that data by other news media, "More than half of Americans think that the president has personally encouraged foreign nations to interfere in the U.S. election system, according to a new poll."
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to give House impeachment managers and President Donald Trump's legal team each 24 hours divided over two days for their opening arguments in the Senate's impeachment trial, a move that indicates Senate Republicans are pushing to finish the trial as quickly as possible -- ahead of the President's February 4 State of the Union address." Which were not exactly the rules of the Clinton Impeachment Trial.
"Starr is best known for leading an investigation into President Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern during the 1990s… In 2016, almost two decades after Starr investigated the Clinton scandal, Starr was fired from his job as president of Baylor University, accused of ignoring sexual assault issues on campus." The company you keep.
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