"The 2021 World Fantasy Awards Winners."
"Archaeologists have uncovered a room at a villa just outside Pompeii containing beds and other objects that shed light on the living conditions of slaves in the ancient Roman city buried by a volcanic eruption… The room, in an excellent state of preservation, contains three wooden beds and a series of other objects including amphorae, ceramic pitchers and a chamber pot."
"There was so little water this year that farmers who use water from the Dolores River to irrigate their fields got a fraction of what they usually get. Those farmers are forced to gamble on a future that's becoming less and less likely to predict."
"That's the global climate change goal world leaders agreed to strive for. By limiting the planet's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100, the hope is to stave off severe climate disruptions that could exacerbate hunger, conflict and drought worldwide." That's pretty much a pipe dream now.
"And no wonder nurses are walking away from a profession they loved. As we show up time and again to fight against all odds to save lives, we are frustrated by those who have rejected clear data-driven guidance in this preventable fourth wave of the pandemic. Day after day, we lose patients who didn’t have to die. More than 90 percent of people hospitalized for COVID are not vaccinated. Those unnecessary losses take an indescribable emotional toll on nurses. And our grief is compounded by abuse. Once, we were honored as heroes. Now, we are mistrusted, insulted and even attacked. We have been pushed beyond the brink. This cannot continue." Now ask about how they feel about hospital administration and management competency. Go on. I dare you.
"A federal appeals court on Saturday temporarily halted the Biden administration's vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers… The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay of the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration that those workers be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or face mask requirements and weekly tests."
"'Sesame Street' puppet Big Bird announced his coronavirus vaccination on Twitter – and drew fire from conservatives such as Ted Cruz, who dismissed the vaccine pitch as 'government propaganda.'" Conservatives are now at war with Sesame Street.
"It's highly unlikely that the United States, let alone the world, will be able to completely eliminate the coronavirus that causes Covid-19… But there will come a day when it's no longer a pandemic, when cases are no longer out of control and hospitals aren't at great risk of overflowing with patients. Many experts predict the spread of coronavirus will look and feel more like seasonal influenza."
"The U.S. lifted restrictions Monday on travel from a long list of countries including Mexico, Canada and most of Europe, allowing tourists to make long-delayed trips and family members to reconnect with loved ones after more than a year and a half apart because of the pandemic."
"'It's all very curious, like, huh, you know, when this particular option went away and your profits went up nearly 80% from the more expensive drug,' he says… Then, in September, Endo told the FDA it stopped making Vantas for good… When Endo investigated its Vantas manufacturing problem, it wasn't able to find 'a suitable corrective action that resolves the issue,' Zoumas Lubeski says." Funny how a lot of these cheaper (and sometimes more effecting) pharmaceutical alternatives have suddenly become unavailable in the past 2 decades.
"A Polish hospital has said that doctors and midwives did everything they could to save the lives of a pregnant woman and her foetus in a case that has put the spotlight on the country’s new stricter abortion law… The 30-year-old woman died of septic shock in her 22nd week of pregnancy. Doctors did not perform an abortion, even though her foetus was lacking amniotic fluid, according to a lawyer for the family." The cost of the anti-abortion movement. (Grokked from Tania)
"Staff shortages have long been a challenge for prison agencies, given the low pay and grueling nature of the work. But the coronavirus pandemic — and its impact on the labor market — has pushed many corrections systems into crisis. Officers are retiring and quitting in droves, while officials struggle to recruit new employees. And some prisons whose prisioner populations dropped during the pandemic have seen their numbers rise again, exacerbating the problem." And they focus on the fears of contracting COVID from a mostly unvaccinated population, and the vaccine mandate in the very next paragraph.
"Houston's Astroworld Festival is now considered one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history… Eight people are dead and many more injured after the crowd surged as the festival's headliner, Travis Scott, performed Friday night. Scott launched his Astroworld Festival in 2018."
"Polish authorities accused Belarus of trying to spark a major confrontation on Monday as footage on social media showed hundreds of migrants walking towards the Polish border."
"The failed assassination attempt against Iraq’s prime minister at his residence on Sunday has ratcheted up tensions following last month’s parliamentary elections, in which the Iran-backed militias were the biggest losers."
"The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in a case involving an FBI undercover operation at a mosque in California. Area Muslims are suing the FBI over a nearly year-long surveillance program that, at least publicly, yielded no results and proved a huge embarrassment to the bureau."
"A teenager who went missing in the US has been found after she used hand signals that went viral on TikTok to show she was in danger… The girl had been reported missing by her parents in North Carolina on Tuesday morning, and was spotted inside a car in Kentucky two days later."
"But by Saturday morning, Biden could not contain his ebullience, celebrating a major legislative victory: a long-stalled $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill had passed with bipartisan support." It's infrastructure week everyone!
"Voting rights advocates are urgently warning that the absence of federal voting rights protections is having a devastating impact on representation for communities of color, erasing decades of hard-fought gains for once-disenfranchised groups and preventing fast-changing demographics from leading to a shift in political power, particularly in the South."
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