July 2, 2021

Fibromyalgia Could Actually Be an Autoimmune Disorder, Mouse Study Suggests

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is one of the most common chronic pain conditions out there, yet we still know shockingly little about it.

For decades, the debilitating condition - marked by widespread pain and fatigue - has been vastly understudied, and while it's commonly thought to originate in the brain, no one really knows how fibromyalgia starts or what can be done to treat it. Some physicians maintain it doesn't even exist, and many patients report feeling gaslit by the medical community.

New research on mice has now found further evidence that fibromyalgia is not only real, but may involve an autoimmune response as a driver for the illness.

https://www.sciencealert.com/mouse-study-suggests-fibromyalgia-really-is-an-autoimmune-disorder

This is great news, now they need to find a marker for it. Once they can assign numbers in a lab test to something, they finally admit it's real and start looking for treatment.

July 1, 2021

NY DA Vance/Grand Jury Set to Indict Trump Organization & Trump's CFO Allen Weisselberg Tomorrow

June 29, 2021

How Protected Are You With Just One Dose of a COVID-19 Vaccine? Here Are Some Stats

More than 179 million Americans and more than 44 million Britons have received their first dose of a two-shot COVID-19 vaccine.

The US has authorized vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, while the UK has authorized Pfizer's shot as well as one made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. Both countries have authorized Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, which is a single dose.

https://www.sciencealert.com/these-stats-show-you-why-you-really-should-get-both-shots-of-the-available-vaccines

The article gives hard stats for the most widely distributed vaccines. The second shot of the mRNA vaccines makes sure the immune system will remember the bug in the future.

June 25, 2021

Scientists hail stunning 'Dragon Man' discovery

"In terms of fossils in the last million years, this is one of the most important yet discovered," he told BBC News.

"What you have here is a separate branch of humanity that is not on its way to becoming Homo sapiens (our species), but represents a long-separate lineage which evolved in the region for several hundred thousand years and eventually went extinct."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57432104

Long and worthwhile article. One guess for which there is a lot of circumstantial evidence is that we might finally know what the Denisovans looked like.

June 25, 2021

Florida Officials: 4 Dead, 159 Unaccounted For In Surfside Condo Collapse

Posted for new information on the number of missing and how long it will take to find the cause:

June 17, 2021

Beau of the Fifth Column: So you think you want a revolution

This is one of his best yet.

Some cosplaying dimwit must've been at his favorite watering hole last night.

June 8, 2021

Better'n dynamite

This is an old video but new to me, an ungainly looking but incredibly creative way to douse oil well blowout fires and probably a lot safer and more predictable than blowing them out with high explosives.

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June 4, 2021

Facebook Plans to End Hands-Off Approach to Politicians' Posts

Source: New York Times

une 3, 2021Updated 9:27 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook plans to announce on Friday that it will no longer keep posts by politicians up on its site by default if their speech breaks its rules, said two people with knowledge of the company’s plans, reversing how it has allowed posts from political figures to remain untouched on the social network.

The change, which is tied to Facebook’s decision to bar former President Donald J. Trump from its site, is a retreat from a policy introduced less than two years ago, when the company said speech from politicians was newsworthy and should not be policed.

Under the change, politicians’ posts will no longer be presumed newsworthy, said the people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Politicians will be subject to Facebook’s content guidelines that prohibit harassment, discrimination or other harmful speech, they said.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/technology/facebook-politicians-posts.html

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Baby steps, baby steps, but this is certainly progress. There's a lot more cleaning up that needs to be done.

June 3, 2021

Martha Argerich is about to turn 80. Here is part of her story

She is under recorded, one reason I came fairly late to the party, but she does have a large You Tube presence:

This was recorded when she was a weel lass of 71. She's still got her chops.

June 2, 2021

Glenn Kirschner on Dumdum's "reinstatement"

Oh, yeah, he needs a Federal solution and I think there will be one, it will just take a while. Building a case takes a very long time, especially those against former leaders. It took 30 years to get Pinochet. The little fishies get swallowed first.

I also think Dumdum's going to be grifting until he is dead, at which point his idiot children will try to take over.