An Astonishing Exhibition Shows How Ancient Mesopotamians Not Only Worshiped, But Respected, Women artnet
Canada will soon allow medically assisted dying for mental illness. Has there been enough time to get it right? The Globe and Mail
Poverty’s toll on mental health Urban Institute
Avoiding the “Great Filter”: Extraterrestrial Life and Humanity’s Future in the Universe arxiv.org
A coup for poo: why the world’s first faecal transplant approval matters The Guardian
Climate/Environment
Gas giant’s $3.2b effort to bury carbon pollution is failing The Sydney Morning Herald
Imperialist powers abandon climate pledges at COP 27 summit WSWS
The truth about eco-fascism: Environmentalism has been hijacked by the technocrats Unherd
#COP27 is a gigantic ego fest of hypocrites who strut around telling us plebs how to save the planet while they fly into Egypt on private jet for a virtue signalling jamboree sponsored by Coca-Cola who produce 120 billion plastic bottles a year – 99% made from fossil fuels. pic.twitter.com/EqmiUk0it6
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 11, 2022
The news about climate change is often depressing. So can news about what’s working to address climate change make a difference? In this study, @Tong_L132 and I show it can. #envcomm #solutionsjournalism pic.twitter.com/KJOlbPbBFe
— Kathryn Thier (@KathrynTRex) November 12, 2022
Water
Another water quality effort is washed away in Iowa The Gazette
#COVID-19
A potent, broadly protective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern Nature
Beijing, Tianjin provide aerosolized vaccine as booster shots, latest move to combat Omicron flare-ups Global Times
Respiratory syncytial virus after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic — what next? Nature “The non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs; such as masking, ‘stay at home’ guidance and social distancing) that were introduced to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 have had a marked effect on RSV circulation, with a significant reduction in RSV cases … The lack of RSV circulation in the population during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic might also have resulted in reduced transfer of passive immunity from mothers to their infants.”
Yeah, I know, I get it.
We don’t want to know. https://t.co/LObkiqyIPh
— Noor Bari (@NjbBari3) November 12, 2022
Remember all those people who were so concerned about the children that they made up all sorts of bullshit about how masking “harms” kids? These are the same people who do not give a rat’s ass if there are not enough beds or staff for kids at your local hospital right now.
— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD 🏴☠️ (@TheAngryEpi) November 12, 2022
India
India to double trade with Russia RT (Rev Kev)
Syraqistan
Istanbul explosion: 6 killed in suspected terror attack DW
UPDATE, Istanbul attack:
• Turkey detains the woman that left the bomb and 20+ suspects per Interior Minister Soylu
• Soylu: PKK and its Syrian affiliate PYD is responsible
• Soylu blames the US gov’t for the attack— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) November 14, 2022
Turkey turns up pressure on allies in Syria Al-Monitor
If NATO Opposes Aggression, Why Does it Support Turkish Crimes Against the Kurds? Current Affairs
Russia: Progress being made to reopen Turkiye airspace to Russian flights to Syria Middle East Monitor
Turkey lays ground for possible diplomatic rapprochement with Syria The Cradle
The Case for Keeping U.S. Troops in Syria Foreign Affairs
Netanyahu returns, but Israel’s political and military landscape has changed The Cradle (Chuck L)
Old Blighty
Why is the UK struggling more than other countries? BBC (Kevin W)
Revealed: the £30bn cost of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget The Guardian
Raw deal: discontent is rising as water companies pump sewage into UK watersThe Guardian
China?
The United States, China, and great power competition in the Middle East Responsible Statecraft
U.S. doubles down on ASEAN aid to counter China Nikkei Asia
Yellen says price cap on Russian oil will benefit China Reuters
Russia’s Lavrov says West seeking to militarise southeast Asia Reuters
New Not-So-Cold War
As Ukraine Retakes Kherson, U.S. Looks to Diplomacy Before Winter Slows Momentum WSJ “The U.S. and some of its allies are concerned that their stockpiles of weaponry, including some ammunition, are being depleted at an unsustainable rate.”
No end in view for Ukraine war Indian Punchline
Ukraine Building Concrete Walls To Shut Out Belarus OilPrice
UN envoy admits fabricating claim of Viagra-fueled rape as ‘Russian military strategy’ Alex Rubinstein
***
Strikes flare in Europe as cost of living spirals Hurriyet Daily News
Ukraine minister urges ASEAN bloc to stop Russia’s ‘hunger games’ Al Jazeera
Fashion Industry Gets Torn by Europe’s Soaring Energy Bills WSJ
Ukraine’s war economy: businesses cling on as Russia damages power supplies FT
I want an audit of where every single penny has gone in funding to Ukraine.
Everyone is ok with that, right?
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 13, 2022
Biden Administration
Control of the House remains on a knife’s edge. Here’s how it could break. Politico
On Nov 11, 2020, a member of Biden’s covid advisory board suggested a 4-6 week shutdown to slow spread before vaccines were available. He quickly walked back the idea and shortly after Biden publicly opposed it. During the next four months, over 250,000 Americans died of covid. pic.twitter.com/Jxsy1XnpoP
— wsbgnl (@wsbgnl) November 13, 2022
2024
Trump set to officially launch 2024 comeback bid AFP
Super PAC emerges to encourage DeSantis to run for president Tampa Bay Times
GOP Clown Car
Imperial Collapse Watch
Only tiny fraction of US military aircraft met mission capable rate goals in FY21 Breaking Defense
Groves of Academe
Once I asked Fields how come so many American academics misread her work. She’s not like reading Butler or Spivak. Her writing is very clear. She said it’s hard to get people to look at something they are standing on. https://t.co/RgQhPXwewV
— Sam Haselby (@samhaselby) November 12, 2022
Class Warfare
The power pendulum is swinging back to employers, isn’t it? TechCrunch
They Want to Kill Libraries: The Last Place in America Where You Are a Person, Not a Customer Cory Doctorow, Medium
Inflation/Supply Chain
GoFreight raises $28M to become the “Shopify of freight forwarding” TechCrunch
Guillotine Watch
A worker at a foundry in Illinois died after falling into molten iron, but if the required safety guards were installed, they’d still be alive. The foundry is owned by Caterpillar, one of the largest companies in the world.
The proposed penalty is only $145k. pic.twitter.com/KNpwXY4dEp
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) November 10, 2022
The Bezzle
Prosecution Futures – The Downfall Of FTX And Everything Crypto Moon of Alabama (with a shoutout to NC)
Ukraine Partners With FTX, Everstake to Launch New Crypto Donation Website Coindesk (Acacia)
Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown’s first hearing next session should be on crypto and it should be titled “I Fucking Told You So” and it should be two hours of Saule Omarova cursing at the Senators who opposed her nomination to the OCC because she wanted to regulate crypto.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) November 13, 2022
This is the firm that (along with Armanino) did the audited financials on FTX. If only there were signs that something was amiss.
Honestly, if I were a Sequoia LP I would redeem for cause. pic.twitter.com/vA9pybD7mr
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory) November 13, 2022
Elizabeth Holmes Asks Judge to Please Be Nice to Her Gizmodo
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
126 comments
Comments are closed.
Working link for “Raw deal: discontent is rising as water companies pump sewage into UK waters’ article at-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/13/raw-deal-discontent-is-rising-as-water-companies-pump-sewage-into-uk-waters
Where’s Dr. John Snow when you need him?
Goooooooood Mooooooooooourning Fiatnam!
The young grunts in the platoon continually were pressing the lever and money kept coming out in increasing amounts by seemingly only the pressure of a few digits, and then one day the lever still worked, but reinforcements were AWOL.
“A worker at a foundry in Illinois died after falling into molten iron”
This reminds me of the laughable scene in Terminator 2, where the terminator sinks into molten iron. Of course it is impossible for a human being to fall “into” molten iron, because iron is much heavier than the human body. You will simply lie on top of the molten iron.
Thanks, I didn’t think that the visual from that story could get worse
Sorry YuShan, but this is sooo wrong. If you’d like a technical explanation of bouyancy and all that, the info is readily available, but this is too disgusting for my taste. I’ll leave it to you to experiment with not floating in molten iron.
But the Terminator was made out of metal. The whole point is that it looked like a human but wasn’t. And besides, who wouldn’t like to see Arnie sinking into molten iron?
…he’s by far my favorite arty ex-pat Austrian strongman leader
Other users have noted the T-1000 was liquid metal, so quite probably very dense – sure, the CGI was cheesy, but then again, the movie is 30 years old.
The following part where Arnie’s T-800 has Sarah lower him into the molten steel is density-implausible – even with the metal endoskeleton, the bulk of the T-800 is human tissue – but I believe it’s called “dramatic license”.
In Terminator 3 there’s a scene where a burly firefighter tries to move Arnie’s presumed-dead body and notes how incredibly heavy it is.
T1000 is not mostly tissue. A layer of skin covered the heavy metal machine.
Jesus, can we move on?
‘This is the firm that (along with Armanino) did the audited financials on FTX. If only there were signs that something was amiss.’
The babes look hot but honestly, who could have expected anything like this to happen with FTX and its auditors? I mean, there were no red flags-
https://twitter.com/qcapital2020/status/1590890188527796224
I am trying to figure the greater irony in the above. That FTX had issued audited financials, or that the auditing firm had any competence whatsoever in performing the duties of auditing. Since auditing generally means, maybe asking a few hard questions ?
Go long the stupid, it always burn.
…i’d heard the auditing firm was ZZZZ Best in the business
I find very little to criticize of our gracious hosts at NC… but I sure wish the link to the Prager-Metis CPA Closing Party Dollhouse had been posted Saturday or Sunday morning 😕
Yeah, telling us about parties after the fact is just cruel. So much for that “we really like you” digest email.
Or maybe it was nsfw for upstater?
NSFW on a Sunday? Work on a Sunday? Next you’ll be telling us that Divine was a Puritan.
To be fair, I give kudos to the person that wrote the algo to name all these entities. Well done.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhVWTjKWAAEyk15?format=jpg&name=large
I love that line coming off the bottom of Gary Wang. 100% to Cottongrove, 10% to Alameda Research LLC (DE). It’s like a regular potlatch in here.
Was regulator Gensler asleep at the switch or “helping out”, sorta like Holder and the subprime scam? Foaming the runway for something? / ;)
(At least W put the head Enron crooks and Worldcom crooks in jail with real jail time. And they were his buddies. I’ll give him that.)
According to Stoller, Gensler was prevented from regulating.
Sure, sure. / ;)
Tiptoe through the window
By the withdrawal window, that is where I’ll be
Come tiptoe through the tulips with me
Oh, tiptoe from the garden
By the garden of the money tree
And tiptoe through the tulips with me
Knee deep in moolah we’ll stray
We’ll keep the statesiders away
And if I Bahamian you in the garden, in the moonlight
Will there be a fee for me
And tiptoe through the tulips for recovery
Maybe the manna you strayed will be the forever delayed
And when they dismiss you in the garden in the moonlight
Will you Bahamian with me and tiptoe through the tulips for a draconian fee?
Tiptoe Through The Tulips, by Tiny Tim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQQKVKjifQ
Tiny Tim was a dedicated musicologist. Among the important music he rescued from obscurity was the prescient The Other Side, written by William (Bill) Dorsey, a landscape painter who wrote some other songs for the Monkees. (For those who came in late, Tiny Tim released this track in 1968.)
Here’s the relevant excerpt from Dorsey’s biography:
«William’s father, Herbert Dorsey Jr., was a Harvard-educated meteorologist who participated in the Byrd expedition to the Antarctic in the late 1930s. He was among the first exploration party to winter at the South Pole. An island was discovered by Herbert during his exploration that bears the Dorsey name. In addition, his father became the first American to drive a dog sled team over the Greenland ice cap in the 1940s.»
Impressive!
I always had a falsetto opinion about Tim…
To tie in the Bahamas and this bubble of essentially limited edition 1’s & 0’s, the whole cryptocurrency craze so reminded me of the Franklin Mint and the multitude of what were termed ‘non-circulating legal tender’ coins they issued in limited edition for countries mostly in the Caribbean, with Bahamas being one of their biggies.
50 years ago the Franklin Mint issued 34,789 1972 Bahamas proof coin sets for around $40, and it included 4 silver coins containing nearly 3 ounces of silver (at the time the melt value was $10 for the 4 coins) in the 9 coin set.
Why anybody would want or desire a Bahamas proof set might have something to do with the beautiful designs of the coins, or the idea that what if everybody in the world wanted one, well surely they would go up in value and they did for awhile, but then reverted to the melt-down value as to worth, so there was a silver lining, and half a century later said proof set is worth $60.
There could only be 21 million limited edition Bitcoins, which is about 600x as many 1972 Bahama proof coin sets were minted in the heyday of the Franklin Mint coin bubble, but in the latter’s defense… there is still something there, there.
https://www.northernillinoiscoin.com/1972-bahamas-proof-set/
As an amateur coin collector for about 65 years now, I always find your knowledgeable and encyclopedic numismatic insights and anecdotes quite fascinating. Personally, I consider many of the finest coins to be works of art.
Thanks for the accolades… it was an interesting life chasing down aged metal discs where my prey was hardly ever larger than a couple inches in circumference, and yet what I long for is the wide scoping big picture-think Ansel Adams.
There is some amazing beauty on so many older coins, and I stopped collecting them when I was maybe 14 as I think I preferred to just be a conduit, an arbitrage provocateur.
They are little works of art…
No day was ever the same in my business life and I thrived on the haphazardness in a world that was disconnected before this contraption came along.
When I started travelling all over the world, you’d see that in Australia in the 80’s that they prided themselves on their very strict grading-which often was a grade or sometimes a few grades stricter than North American standards.
There was also the fact that most every coin was worth more in the country it came from than elsewhere, what good is a perfect XF-AU 1916 double die Buffalo Nickel if you’re in New Zealand where at the time there was absolutely no market whatsoever for American coins?
Zigzaw it all over and certain coins would turn up in odd places, and like that proverbial box of chocolates, you never knew what you were gonna find, but you had to be there, couldn’t do it remote control from afar, all hands on.
I saw variances of that all over the first world where I plied my trade in the early days, and coming from old money you were in essence time-travelling.
One last coin story:
Circa 1975 an elderly NZ couple come into an Auckland coin store to sell a few things and they’d been in the states in 1914 in the midwest and of all things they brought back to NZ was a brand new roll of 1914-D Lincoln Cents, each of the 50 now worth around $5k to $10k each.
Most every high end uncirculated 1914-D in existence comes from that 1 roll.
That last story is the stuff of legends. That’s amazing that.
On Mesopotamian (and note the Iranian) women: “The centerpiece of the exhibition is a stunning golden headdress archaeologists found in the tomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, identified only by her own name, not in relation to a male relative or husband.”
Dazzling indeed. What’s more dazzling, though, is that at the Penn Museum in Philly, there is a set of display cases with remains of the forty to fifty people who were killed at her burial. Some kind of hammer was used to smash in the back of their heads. And you can then admire Puabi’s jewelry.
So: Power. Power is something to contemplate. Once I figured out what went on with Queen Puabi, I began having some doubts about people wanting to discover an equality of misuse of power and praise said equality of abuse. Four thousand years later, Madeleine Albright (reincarnation of Puabi?) wasn’t all that concerned about the thousands of dead.
Surely regents don’t stop needing an entourage just because they’re dead? Their slaves and their court, in their role as the regent’s bodily limbs, were bound to accompany them and render care forever. At least, that’s how they were believed to have seen it.
I would call that custom, force, maybe spectacle, but not necessarily power. Unless they could have been manumitted without causing an incident or crisis, it was their duty to follow the rest of the Queen’s body into the afterlife. I don’t think that’s the message the PMC wants to get from it, but it would be better than some Janet Jackson diva phantasy.
To differ, if I may; the ability to induce someone to end their life prematurely is indisputably Power, with a capitol ‘P’. Talk about “voting against one’s self interests.”
The ‘tell’ for me, (no pun intended,) is that I find no mention of the names of any of the ritually deceased servitors.
This Queen Puabi sounds like a classic PMC (Professional Mesopotamian Class.) Even back then, it was all in the messaging.
Yes, but at least they died for glory of a woman. /S
Ancient peoples are always interpreted according to contemporary prejudices, but at least in the past there was an awareness of this and good scholarship meant trying to understand the ancients on their own terms.
But it seems that nowadays this has been thrown out the door and museums and galleries are incapable of avoiding the most obvious traps of interpreting the past in the light of the most up to date prejudices. Its utterly ridiculous to interpret those statues in the manner set out in that article, and I hope that at least to some degree the writers are aware of this. I’m not sure which is worse, that scholars are taking such a shallow view of the past, or that they are aware that things are vastly more complex, but feel that its impossible to communicate this to a modern audience.
Worst example of this was the championing of “genetic diversity of migrants” in Norse settlements. One commenter correctly replied on that article: “congratulations, you discovered the Viking slave trade.”
PMC morons have never read Herbert Butterfield’s ‘whig interpretation of history’ and would memory hole it if they did.
It’s disgraceful that my state (CA) can no longer count ballots in a timely fashion. Some races are still showing return percentage around 35 and most in the 50s. This used to be attributed to the state’s extensive use of mail-in, however, we see this option used successfully in other states.
I’m not a fan of the initiative process but I would vote for any proposition that limited the time for counting to a week at most. I don’t care how this would be enabled, I just want the process done. Kind of like how they were done in the pre-digital Era.
I find it ironic that the fate of My Kevin (since ’07) as potential speaker lies largely with votes cast in Godzone still to be tabulated.
Forget it. Arizona is even more embarrassing and they only have four million registered voters or so. But you are right how this only happens with all this digital crap. You think that some intrepid reporters will go through the archives and find out how long it took to count votes pre-digital? (crickets)
Arizona counters are paid employees, not volunteer. No procedures or funds are there to adjust for the shift in popularity towards mail in ballots and (my preference) mail in ballots dropped off at polling centers on Election Day. I’ve done it that way since Lambert called my attention to the obvious wisdom of hand marked, hand counted paper ballots here at NC forever-ago, when election integrity was still a left thing. The Dem shill who knocked on my door to get out the vote approved, and said he was telling everybody else to do it that way, too. I guess that means there must be something wrong with it.
Biggest upside IMO is that a strong post-election day count makes it harder for potential hackers to figure the numbers. Unfortunately the practice also feeds the voter fraud Fox narrative.
I don’t mind waiting a few days for the inevitable — not nearly as much as I despise the Blue Republicans and Whack Monarchist Peter Thiel Palin-ite Weather Girls I had to choose from at the top of the tickets.
Here in Tucson, I voted by mail.
And, true confession, I left parts of my ballot blank.
Mark Kelly vs. Blake Masters for Senate? Nope to both of them. Blanked that part of my ballot.
Katie Hobbs vs. Kari Lake for AZ governor? Please. In a state with more than 6 million people, this is the best we can do? Blanked that part of my ballot too.
In addition to being such a recalcitrant voter, I also has a strong aversion to people walking up to the door at the Arizona Slim Ranch, knocking on the door, and trying to influence my politics. They’re my politics, people. Leave ’em alone.
Well, I was glad to see that my mail-in ballot included one of those “I Voted” stickers. I put it on my front security door and boom! What a canvasser deterrent!
That sticker stayed up until last Tuesday.
Now, I have no clue about the status of my ballot, but I do have a question: How much under voting is going on? I’d be willing to bet that I’m not the only one who’s blanking the ballot when the choices are, oh, subpar.
Even if it would not be ‘counted,’ a “None of the Above” option would be useful from a statistical perspective. If used properly, the amount of voter discontent could then be quantified and used to figure out the “true” legitimacy of any political “winner.”
Which is why that will never, ever happen.”
Nevada has a “none of these candidates” option for voters.
Thanks. I didn’t know that. Is it teased out in the publically displayed vote figures?
[I remember reading of the early days after the “Fall of the Soviet Union” where a “None of the Above” was included in every ballot and that line often won.]
For Nevada, see: https://www.polyas.com/election-glossary/nota
I see that Nevada is the only American State with that option on the ballot. Such is not available at the Federal elections level.
Federalism in all it’s refulgence!
Thus far, “none of these candidates” has received 1.2% of the vote in the Nevada senate race and 1.4% of the vote in the Nevada governor race.
Hmmm… Thinking out loud here. Do the “NOTA” numbers track or oppose the voting percentage? That would be interesting.
Thank you for going the extra mile here.
Not sure if its real so do your own research, but its be wierd if the longest delayed votes skewed harder.
I remember some leaky pipes in atl two years back for sure though.
Amechania,
Fulton County in the ATL area has a long history of having voting problems. Maybe all accidental. Try a 30 or 40 year search.
Slim, you can easily check your ballot status with the Pima County Elections Department.
Here’s a link:
https://www.recorder.pima.gov/VoterStats/BallotInfo
I personally think that Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs are much better choices for Arizona. Hobbs in particular will stop a ton of crap coming out of the state legislature.
As for under voting, once the official canvass comes out, you can check the numbers in total for each candidate versus the total number of voters.
I checked my ballot status. Thanks for the link, dday.
For some reason, my ballot has been sent up north to Phoenix.
The horse image is a balm. NC is one of the few media that carry news about the US BLM’s pogrom against allegedly protected, free roaming horses and burros. Thanks. Venceremos.
Agree – beautiful picture. and ‘pogrom’ is the word for the BLM carnage,
‘conservation’ my Aunt Fanny
Having lived in areas that were never too close to BLM and now being in Las Vegas, I was quite disheartened to learn that BLM sold thousands of acres to developers that bordered Red Rock conversion area. Now thousands of homes being built in an area that is quite short on water. All about mismanagement and greed.
And now many of those builders are going bankrupt without finishing their houses.
Raccoon City here we come!
The volcano in the background is Concepción on the NIcaraguan island of Ometepe, which is located in Lago Concepción, the largest body of fresh water between the Great Lakes and Titicaca in Bolivia/Peru. The great volcano comes into view from the highway that runs from Peñas Blancas at the border with Costa Rica until it reaches Rivas. From San Jorge you can catch ferries to take you to Ometepe, when the wind isn’t blowing too hard.
Correction: Lago Cocibolca, not Concepción.
Loud mouthed vulgarian and narcissism enthusiast is set to announce a 2024 election bid for the US Presidency, who holds these elections at every four year interval.
Insert your own narcissist and very loud as*hole of your own choice. Headlines may read Trump, but hey this is America so we have plenty of narcissism to share !
My chosen election motto: Reality no more after 2024. The Jackpot is nigh!
Am I the only one enjoying the Peripheral on Amazon? Is it a guilty pleasure?
It’s my understanding that delays in the third book are about Trump completely upending Gibson’s near future story-line.
> Am I the only one enjoying the Peripheral on Amazon? Is it a guilty pleasure?
What’s your take? Is it as good as the book?
I really like the idea that Trump made Gibson do a rewrite of his third book; Clinton’s loss, IIRC, forced him to rewrite the second. He wasn’t the only one!
I have only watched the first two episodes of The Peripheral and have enjoyed them very much. They are close to the book, which I appreciate. Note that I have not gone back to the book to compare dialogue or other things.
I found the book confusing at first and had to puzzle out the story line as I went along. Understanding the story from the start could be helping me enjoy the TV version.
Nonetheless I cancelled Amazon Prime after realising they were only revealing the new episodes week by week, or maybe more slowly. I only stream one service at a time. Amazon for a month or two until my wife and I have exhausted our interest, then cancel, Netflix for a couple of months then cancel, then Crave for a couple of months, etc.
>What’s your take? Is it as good as the book?
Half a tier below, which makes it a home run by Amazon standards. Moretz is outstanding, as are Jack Reynor as Burton and Gary Carr as Wilf. Both worlds are compelling, so there’s really no drop off as I get bounced between the two narratives.
It’s slightly easier to follow than the book without feeling at all dumbed down. And that trademark Amazon tedium is mercifully absent. So far I’ve been moved or deeply satisfied each episode, usually more than once. Burton’s face to face with Corbell Picket in 3 (2?) was especially gratifying.
It is good indeed. There are some simplifications in the movie, with the Met Police officer lady totally out of picture, but is above the cut.
Also, Andor is the best Star Wars universe product so far. Not surprising since is the prequel to the Rogue One movie, which in my opinion is the best Star Wars movie yet produced.
As concerns the “coup for poo”;
I remember reading William Nolan’s “The Making of a Surgeon” when I was young, wherein he describes medical residents misguided interpretation of a doctors off hand comment to indicate the need for transfer of healthy microbiome content to a sick patient.
I don’t recall if Nolan was one of the residents who actually affected this “transfer”, but in short, they collect a stool sample from a healthy patient in another ward and separated the solid content and had the sick person drink the fluid.
The results were ok as I recall, but those involved were reprimanded and required to write a report on their actions, which of course highlighted the great care taken in ‘processing’ the material in question.
Anyway, Australia’s approval of the process may be a ‘first’ but it’s not the first time this has been used in medicine.
Still got that book as it is a favourite of mine. It was a resident and when Nolan found out, he hit the roof, especially when he found out that the stool had just been mixed into chocolate milk. Within 24 hours, the Chief of Surgery found out and and tore strips off all involved. The guy that did it said that it was taken in a sterile container, put into a sterile saline solution, centrifuged and then only the surface fluid given to her. The Chief knew the guys was lying his face off but needed a story to tell the medical superintendent. The resident was dropped from the program at the end of that year. But like you say, this practice is not anything new. That book was relating events from New York’s Bellvue Hospital back in the late 50s and early 60s.
Yes, wonderful book!
Thanks for fleshing out my recollection.
I wonder, did Galen or Asclepius practice this? Or other ancients unnamed and unknown, long before “modern medicine?” How about in China, African locales?
Seems like this would be a likely thing for any medical practitioner of any discipline or age to at least consider.
https://www.amazon.com/Lets-Talk-Shit-Digestion-Transplants/dp/0578684705 This is an interesting book on the subject of fecal transplants and the author was generous as a guest on drbeen_medical (YouTube) on 22 May of this year.
” in fact, it’s the first time a faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) has been given regulatory approval anywhere in the world.”
I looked into this a few years ago and FMT was approved for resistant strains of Dif-C here in the states. As far as I could tell that approval was cancelled with the start of Covid-19 though I haven’t read up on it lately. As the one link explains there is a large community of DIYers with a mountain of anecdotal stories on successes, failures, and side effects. With hundreds, even thousands of different critters in our guts, each churning out different chemicals it only stands to reason that some of those chemicals should affect various other functions of our bodies.
However, putting on my tin-foil hat I have to wonder if the great resistance to more research and testing in this area is due to the broader medical community finding more financial benefit in treating symptoms than in curing patients.
I’ve heard that one of the benefits of eating yogurt is the fact that yogurt is a very dominant bacteria and eventually it will become the main part of your microbiome.
This is curious since my Mom had a “fecal transplant” done four or five years ago in an American medical facility, I believe in Missouri. She had been having real problems arising from treatments for diverticulitis.
See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4795814/
It is finally going mainstream.
Clinical trials: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05373784
FMT is a “thing” in American medical practice already.
My girlfriend got the C diff and could shit clear across the street. Bought an old blender at the thrift store and mixed up one of my fine samples which was inserted with use of a duchy bag. Total cost was something like twelve dollars. If I had taken her to Phoenix and the Mayo it would have been a little more I think. They were offering $50 for stool samples. We did the procedure for five days and complete recovery. She never did pay me for my turds which was ok better than her with C diff.
Signs in China vis à vis Covid are quite worrying, and it’s looking strongly possible that dynamic zero covid is being wound down to something even leakier.
I understand that the central government also foists the costs of the dynamic zero strategy onto the regional governments (testing etc), which is of course insane.
It is a situation to keep an eye on. The CPC remains fairly inscrutable and it’s hard to know what they’re thinking but none of the policy signals of the past week have been encouraging at all. They still have many rules etc, and there are still significant regions that remain barely impacted at all by Covid, but everything is looser now, and they are well and truly in whac-a-mole mode and unlike the previous outbreaks so far in 2022, there isn’t really a sense that this situation will be brought under control. The question is whether China can competently transition to “low covid”, if that is indeed their aim, but I think this would be hubristic; the virus is formidable and highly transmissible – and standard of masking and airborne awareness in China remains quite poor. While they can be expected to try and hide the virus’ impact (from their own population and the wider world), particularly deaths, China undergoing its first meaningful Covid wave en masse in 2023 would have an unignorable impact on the world economy (supply chains etc.), you would think.
Yes, they seem to be trying to have their cake and eat it so to speak. There is little doubt but that there is enormous pressure behind the scenes to loosen things up, many business sectors are under enormous strain (for a number of reasons of course).
Plus, the very decentralised nature of Chinese implementation of top down directives almost invariably leads to what can appear to outsiders as very contradictory policies, even though everyone is supposedly following the lead from Beijing.
I suspect that they hope then can keep infection under a sort of dynamic equilibrium in the more ‘open’ cities, where constant re infection from outside looks inevitable, while keeping it away from the industrial heartlands through strict internal travel controls. But i doubt that its sustainable in the long term.
Full Text & Analysis: China’s 20 measures to optimize COVID controls
Yes, but they can say whatever they like, the simple reality is that the virus plays by its own rules. I think PK’s assessment is pretty much the sum of it, but we’re in “wait and see” territory, really.
“An Astonishing Exhibition Shows How Ancient Mesopotamians Not Only Worshiped, But Respected, Women”
As a thought experiment, wouldn’t it have been interesting if the Judeo-Christian values system never took hold and how it was older values like that from Mesopotamia that became ascendant? I seem to recall reading an article talking about a female deity that was worshiped by women in the middle east that was eventually suppressed because, you know, Monotheism. Certainly world history would have been radically altered in ways that I can only begin to imagine. At the very least, it would make an intriguing alternate-history novel.
Monotheism had a rough start in Egypt as I recall.
The first pharaoh to introduce monotheistic belief, Akhenaten, ended up being ‘canceled’ as I recall.
He was King Tut’s dad I think.
He was. And Queen Nefertiti was his mother-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefertiti
It’s been decades since I dabbled in exegetic, but I do recall that in older versions of Old Testament (or Torah?) in some places the feminine form of God is used, and sometimes even plural, and a point was being made that at least some parts of it were way older than male/ monotheistic interpretation.
Could be wrong, though. As I said, it was a long time ago, I even lost interest long time ago.
Thomas Mann has done tremendous preparation work for his magnificent “Joseph and his brothers” and describes with great detail and artistic sensibility this monotheistic view that is more subtle than appears – I was reading somewhere that Judaism is more lax on this than it looks.
But Joseph and his brothers is a masterpiece, long, but a treat.
Who Cooked the Last Supper? A Women’s History of the World was a book from one of my daughter’s anthropology courses that I really enjoyed reading. Fascinating stuff!
I’m just finishing up on this documentary; it’s an hour and 28 minutes long. It struck me as one right up the NC commentariat’s alley. Let us know what you think.
‘The Silent Killer of the Middle Class: Tax Evasion’ (youtube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt6O3US9IE4
‘Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸
@RepMTG
I want an audit of where every single penny has gone in funding to Ukraine.
Everyone is ok with that, right?’
How is it that Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people gets to outflank the Squad and the rest of the Progressives from the left? She may or may not have meant it but it does reflect traditional Republican values.
Maybe because MTG is a much better representative of the people than the squad. Why would that be so impossible to believe?
The way it’s supposed to work is that you look at what politicians say and do and vote for them if they say and do stuff you agree with. (When tptb try to convince you to do something else btw, it’s called gaslighting.)
At this point, calling the squad “progressive” or expecting its members to support “progressivism” is just self-deluded willful blindness.
I must admit we in the Palinstinian Movement were all strung out on heroine when she nabbed second place in the inter-murals, but have gotten on board the Greene Dream Team, and truth be told the high doesn’t last nearly as long.
I don’t like a lot of her positions, but have to admit this is not the first time I have had to high five her in my mind.
The first time is the most disconcerting.
RE: Republicans Blew the Senate. Who’s Really to Blame? Slate
So, apparently, Laxalt, Masters, Oz, Bolduc and even Herschel Walker are soooooo bad that “voters” chose the status quo of 8% inflation, the possibility of nuclear war over who runs the Donbass, millions of illegals flooding over the border, explosions of crime and homelessness, increasingly unaffordable “healthcare” and college, and the possibility of a dispute with China over changing which party “controls” the senate because Trump endorsed those candidates?
Not to mention the current relentless obsession with insisting that men dressed as women keep the country “strong.”
Yeah, I don’t believe it.
Oz was such an obvious carpetbagger I’m not sure he can be lumped with the others.
Incumbents should be looking for new jobs, and I don’t know why they aren’t.
That said, I have real problems believing anybody would vote for the candidates from either party so I am gobsmacked overall by the naivety exhibited in all the results. That makes my not believing the results suspect.
Seems like both parties have turned to lesser evilism as their theme. Maybe the Dem base is simply more afraid.
Repubs could have turned up the heat by re-running LBJ’s daisy ad but with a Biden sound alike doing the countdown. Might have gotten me to the polls.
Sadly, given no other options, I stirred the horse-paste into my coffee rather than drink the bleach.
Again.
Masters is truly Fasc.
Slim here. As mentioned previously, I am a born-and-raised Pennsylvanian.
Suffice it to say that we Keystoners don’t take kindly to carpetbaggers.
OTOH, when it came to Oz vs. Fetterman, I would have been a ballot blanker.
Sorry, but not sorry. Fetterman should have withdrawn after his stroke. He needs to be in rehab, not the United States Senate.
It can be argued that the US Senate is rehab. Take old, worn out theories of Aristocracy, Bimetallism, Eugenics, and the rest and ‘rehabilitate’ them to allow them to do their work.
His staying in the race and playing for the pity vote was, IMNSHO, tremendously disrespectful to the people of PA. Of course the senate doesn’t seem to have much respect for itself, what with criminals and grifters everywhere you look. Expensive waste of space if you ask me.
He will be fine. Weekend at Bernie’s is more than enough for the role. Vote your conscience until the party bosses tell you to take one for the team, then play the villain until further notice. EZ-peasey, even with a day job recovering from disability.
That wasn’t an endorsement of Fetterman, just a statement about Oz having an additional and very obvious black mark beyond being a Republican that Trump liked, one that would have been disqualifying for most voters regardless.
I am sorry about Fetterman’s stroke, and not just because it should have thrown him off the ballot. I was really curious to see how he would handle being in the Senate. Now his absorption into the blob is pretty much a given.
And I am of the belief that we need mandatory retirement for age and severe disability in both Houses. So I would be kicking him out anyway.
Perhaps the candidates you mentioned didn’t exactly say “man of the people” and concern about 8 percent inflation. Myself, I think there’s a big populist opportunity available for any politician who chooses to go there. And a cast including TV stars and sports heroes apparently wasn’t enough.
Fair enough on your “man of the people” point. But what those candidates did represent is “different” or “change in course,” and with the current state of the economy, it’s impossible for me to believe that changing course didn’t resonate in even one of those contests.
As Pat notes, Oz was a carpetbagger. But what was Fetterman? Well, whatever he was before his stroke, now he’s just a cognitively impaired, guaranteed dem vote in the senate. There’ll be no persuasive white papers, stirring floor speeches, reasoned legislative debate or penetrating committee hearing questions coming from the Fetterman half of the PA delegation to the world’s greatest deliberative body.
The dem senate “majority” now consists of two independents who refuse to call themselves dems, two cognitively impaired senators–Feinstein and Fetterman–and, depending on what happens in Georgia, a universally reviled zero of a vp to cast the tie-breaking vote. Add in a cognitively impaired dem “president,” and any contention that the “people” have “chosen” the democrat way is a pathetic joke.
Here are12 minutes of Jimmy Dore reminding everyone of why the dems must remain in charge at all costs, including brain damage. To paraphrase, the democrats can screw the people like republicans never could, because everyone knows the dems are so nice and the repubs are so (Trumpianly) rotten. (See clinton / nafta etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6rG36z0Eo
Ukrainian Wall – It is the same trap that Poland fell into at the start of WW2. Given that the Germans had taken over Czechoslovakia one bite at at time, they don’t want to leave any of their territory exposed to a quick grab.
So like the Poles, they are going with the idea of defending every foot of their territory. Which means that they are going to be very spread out, with a lot of troops not really where they are needed.
That article said that they had fortified about three kilometers of that border. That leaves only 1,081 kilometers left to go.
Re Doctorow/Medium–nothing like another tired Nazi trope to defend libraries that are really under threat from those iPhones that his fellow Dems are so fond of. We did have a local Republican attack our library for materials that may or may not have been in the children’s section, but it seems to have landed with a thud even as that “safe space” sticker on the entrance suggests the librarians themselves see a moat of Woke as their best defense against the barbarian horde.
The truth is that here in redville our library is popular if sagging in door count due to competition from the internet that I and others turn to for information and even for book loans via ereader. It’s the internet that we must protect and that the Dems themselves seem ominously zealous to censor. Meanwhile the library itself will remain popular as a kind of public forum for meetings and children’s story hour for the moms. There are even paper books for those who still read them.
Doctorow is full of $hit. Typical liberal willful myopia. It’s no surprise to learn that the Right and their masters want to kill public libraries but the Wokels have left the library doors, and many other doors, wide open to the machinations of the Right.
Matt Walsh, amongst others, is feeding this fuel into his locomotive of reactionary fervor. He’s building a head of steam. His home state of Tennessee is clamping down with a current bill that criminalizes fetishists performing for children. It will go way overboard of course, ensnaring a lot of innocent people who have nothing to do with the insanity.
It’s all about power grabs, all around. The pendulum is pushed waaay too far to one side, then comes crashing back waaay too far in the other direction. I’m inclined to believe that this is the point; the bottom line is greater social control by whatever Team Purple sub-group is in power.
Libraries are a community blessing. I have often seen both the homeless and students, especially the poorer ones, use the library to keep warm, to use the internet and type, and even check out books to read. It is still something that is popular and very useful to the bottom ninety percent of the people. It has also been a free speech with the librarians being strong privacy advocates as well.
Of course, that is all anathema to our leaders in both parties. The fanatical libertarians, the police state, the anti smut and pro censorship ninnies, the opponents of civil rights all hate it. Plus, it is the one place where I can see the local homeless population, the undocumented, the poor, and the upper middle class all there at the same time and being civil. It is like the post office and so it must be destroyed.
Strikes flare in Europe as cost of living spirals
Bad news for Europe as well as the U.S. as the northeast imports diesel from this refinery.
EXCLUSIVE: Staff at BP Rotterdam refinery to strike
Dateline: Cairo
I snuck into COP27 under the cover of blight with hardly a care oh, not even the clerk at the gas station wanted to see my credentials even though we both knew our tenuous existence was based on the levees surrounding us holding up and so far-so good.
An odd choice, a place that has lost almost 90% of it’s population in a century, but maybe that’s it, we depopulate the world and in combination with using less, we save ourselves from ourselves and the nightmare City of Eden as prophesied by Dickens.
But lets face it, that steamboat has sailed…
That wouldn’t have been Cairo, Illinois, would it?
When I inquired about getting a guide to see Giza, they mentioned there was a cafe that had gizzards on the menu.
At least it had a river. Same river also has a Memphis complete with fake pyramid and Graceland. Take that Egypt.
Yay! Neil Gaiman took that idea and ran with it in his “American Gods.”
You should have gone to the American Embassy there and asked to see the ‘Commercial Attache.’ He, she, or it, would have had some handy dandy maps to any scale you like ready to hand of any part of the country.
COVID is sooooo…. over, at least New York state thinks so:
State to auction off supplies from decommissioned Covid-19 care facilities
No point in being prepared, especially if we can get 10 cents on the dollar for this stuff.
Saw 3 more black bears yesterday-a mom and 2 cubs all jet black in color, probably the same ones i’d seen last week, but i’m adding them to the year’s total of 19 sightings so far.
They were a few hundred yards away from the road in the back of a big open field with oak trees on the periphery, kinda frolicking.
p.s.
Been on a few hikes @ 3k to 5k in the past week with friends and we all remarked about how huge the acorns are @ that altitude compared to other years, a plus for the bruins.
Without the crown, they resemble bullets to me, the offspring of a live oak looking like a 30mm, to give you an idea.
Re BBC “Why is the UK struggling more than other countries?”
ctrl-f ‘brexit’
— crickets —
For the first time in a long time I was listening to BBC Radio for a few hours over the weekend, and I found it striking how the ‘B’ word could not be mentioned while discussing the economy.
And I do find it remarkable that the UK is well and truly into a recession, but it hardly got much of a mention in my browse of the weekend newspapers. This is not a situation where the UK is just first into a downturn, with the implication that it will be first out of the other side. The economy is in really serious structural problems, with no real options available to either the BoE or the government. By early to mid 2023 its hard to see anything but cascading bad news.
Sounds like the CIA director’s visit to Turkey may be about more than just gas pipelines. Egads, how many NATO allies can suffer these mysterious attacks before the value of its security guarantees is questioned?
I wonder if any ASEAN leader asked the whiny Kuleba from Ukraine whether he also advocates for Russia’s ability to sell its grain on the world market to stave off hunger. Who’s really playing the hunger games here?
So this stuff is always fascinating.
The Kilogram Is Dead. Long Live the Kilogram!
Time Is Running Out for the Leap Second
The closest I ever got to any of this is using the ntpd daemon on Linux systems to ensure the clock is relatively accurate and to adjust for drift. Home computers don’t really have the most accurate time pieces. The daemon keeps track of local drift relative to the official time on time servers, which last I looked came from academic institutions and laboratories, perhaps these very same sites that also participate in maintaining accurate time worldwide.
You can buy serious hardware for this purpose:
Unsurprisingly, from further investigation, it looks like Orolia offers stuff that’s particularly useful for military applications. What else is new?
I love the juxtaposition of headlines “Canada will soon allow medically assisted dying for mental illness” and “Poverty’s toll on mental health”
“Avoiding the ‘Great Filter’ …”
This paper repeats an oft recited litany of the standard disasters used to explain the
seeming lack of alien civilizations detected by the SETI efforts and their kin [longer lists
of filters have been cataloged elsewhere.] : nuclear war, disease natural or designed, an AI
Singularity, asteroid or comet impacts, climate change. The standard appeals for Humanity to
pull together to surmount these filters follows their review, concluding with an
inspirational thought. We can expect the sun will last few billion years more leaving “Time
enough for humanity to finally make other stars our home.”
There is one filter — unmentioned — that I believe might explain the difficulties
detecting alien civilizations. The Earth chanced to store a portion of the sun’s energy into
a readily extracted, portable, energy dense form, over millions of years. I wonder how many
alien civilizations were gifted similar legacies of energy wealth. I believe a detectable
alien civilization must have discovered its own legacy of stored energy.
Humankind has succeeded in using up the greater part of its energy wealth in just a few
centuries. To paraphrase a line from a favorite movie: “The light that burns twice as bright
burns half as long – and Humankind has burned so very, very brightly.” SETI is searching for
us, our mirror civilization. I suspect a distant alien civilization would have to burn very,
very brightly for Humankind to detect its presence. But like Humankind such bright shiners
would all too quickly burn their candle to the pan. In a little more than two centuries
Humankind has wantonly consumed the greater part of its all too exhaustible energy legacy.
Our two centuries of burning brightly is a momentary flash in vast expanse of time extending
over billions of years. Unless an alien civilization discovers some way to obtain a rich
and continuous source of useful inexhaustible energy, and wantonly consumes that energy,
similar to the way Humankind is wantonly consuming its all too exhaustible legacy of energy
wealth SETI must look for those rare flashes of energy coincident with our own momentary
flash.
Aside from some problems with speed limits in space, I am afraid the paper’s optimistic
dream of Humankind finding a place in the stars will require a lot energy. I am not sure how
or where Humankind will discover that new energy resource. I hope there is some such
cornucopia to be discovered but even so, I worry that the Science or its discovery requires
large amounts of energy, for its support and for its tools and toys. Our candle is burning
so very very brightly.
Agree with you that “running out of fuel” is a possible filter, and one that seems particularly relevant to us. However, we use most of our non-renewable energy consumption to a) move things, b) heat and cool things, c) light things. This is done to support our chosen lifestyles, not to power science per se.
The paper seems to be a rehash of the Fermi paradox which the famous physicist tossed out there 70 or so years ago.
>Canada will soon allow medically assisted dying for mental illness. Has there been enough time to get it right? The Globe and Mail
Okay, since no one here so far seems willing to dip a toe into these treacherous waters, I will start with a well-known quote from Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus):
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.”
Here in my neck of the woods we now have the somewhat euphemistically-named MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). It is legal, government-approved, used regularly, and from all reports seems a welcome—if I can use that word–addition to our healthcare system. No protesters in front of the legislature, no screaming about that feared “slippery slope” into mass euthanasia of the disabled, the elderly, and the terminally ill.
Now, as far as the mentally ill go, that’s a tougher nut to crack. I can only speak personally on that. As a person who has dealt with anxiety and depression most of my life (and resorted to non-medical treatments for them) I think that medically-assisted suicide for problems that might be otherwise insoluble (loneliness, infirmities, chronic pain, ineffective therapies, etc.) is perfectly acceptable given the express permission of the patient.
If one is suffering emotionally and physically (but not terminal) and unable to get help because of the medical profession’s almost sadistic reluctance to prescribe pain-killers and the anti-anxiety benzodiazepines (the danger of addiction, ya know, you should walk more, think good thoughts, get some talk therapy, all the bromides), then MAID should be an option.
As an otherwise healthy 70-year-old, excepting the anxiety and depression, I know I would find comfort in knowing that it was available.
Thank you Mildred. What you say is reasonable.
OTOH, I can never ever trust our capitalist kleptocracy heath care system to be truly committed to anyone’s health. Yet we have no other choice when we need care.
I’m sure plantation owners hired some doctors to provide care to their slaves at times. I imagine such help was accepted with foreboding.
Your last analogy is flawed. Slaves on a Southern Plantation were, first and foremost, an economic investment. Just like the other “beasts of burden” being used, the physical health of these “economic investments,” (thus the extensive ‘othering’ of the actual Terran human souls within those economic units,) was important enough to warrant medical intervention. Today, supplying medical care to chattel slaves would be treated as a business expense and a tax write off.
As Skippy commented the other day, it would fall into the category of “unenlightened self interest.”
Stay safe. Make no decision in haste.
I would as well, and I’m a healthy 59.
“Offering” help in suicide while doing everything, but making it easier to actually live seems suspect to me. I don’t know—can’t give decent, or for Americans any, healthcare, add hunger, homelessness, overwork or no work, only “illegal” drugs for succor, being treated as if you are garbage with the expectation that it will never end—this is seems like the plan for getting rid of the surplus population. I might, maybe, somehow, support suicide, if everything else was offered, but we all know that will not happen.
I resist the idea they are trying to kills us, (whoever they are). The idea is becoming harder to brush off as nonsense when I read about the new “help” being offered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIEEwgljX34
Join in on the Chorus.