Minnesota research unveils breakthrough sperm blocker

Trump's USAID freeze will seriously hurt US farmers that sell them grain

I hope my RW uncles that run thousands of acres of cropland in central Minnesota are sweating bullets right now.

https://www.startribune.com/usaid-shuttering-cargill-chs-contracts/601218218

I promised my wife I wouldn't talk politics on Facebook any longer

No arguing, no posting political news articles, nothing. That's what 95% of my time on Facebook is!

Even posting how I was happy I bought my Mexican made pickup before the tariffs added $8000 to it's price, with no mention of Trump by name, got me the side eye from her.

But here's the thing: her and her family are Puerto Rican, and despite being US citizens by birth, they're scared. Scared enough that she worries my posts will somehow attract the wrong kind of attention the longer the Trump administration goes on.

So as much as I want to post things I know my RW family members will see and get pissed off over, I have to bite my tongue. It's so incredibly frustrating, but I don't want to cause my wife any more stress, so I do as she asks. Figured I could vent here just once, at least.

The future of AI is even more fossil fuels

Mega data centers are coming to Minnesota. Their power needs are staggering.

If Trump tariffs Denmark over Greenland, your cheese, yogurt and sour cream will get more expensive

You see, Denmark produces and exports large amounts of frozen dairy cultures, the living bacteria that dairy companies (like the one I work for) use to turn milk into yogurt, cheese and sour cream. Chr Hansen, for example, is a culture producing giant in the dairy industry, and a major supplier for our facility in the upper Midwest.

I just pointed this out today to my boss, the QA Lab Manager, after reading about Trump's latest verbal diarrhea in the newspaper in our break room. I chuckled a bit inside, as I know he's conservative and most likely voted for Trump. To his credit though, he's a genuinely good boss and isn't batshit crazy MAGA at least.

Tomorrow they're going to be discussing this with our R&D team and our supply procurement manager. Different products are tailored to very specific culture blends, so you can't just substitute other manufacturers willy-nilly. On occasions where operators accidentally used the wrong pouches, the product never turned out right and had to be junked. And, you need to order in advance to get what you need, sometimes with lead times of several months.

Good scenario, we can get a different supplier. Bad scenario, we need to pay a lot more for cultures and pass on the cost to Americans. Worst case scenario, we have to shut down certain product lines because we can't even get the necessary cultures.

Bloomberg: Green Hydrogen Prices Will Remain Stubbornly High for Decades

Just a Reminder That RFK Jr. Thinks Poppers Cause AIDS

Planning my 2025 garden with tariffs and deportations in mind?

I was just freezing the last of my sweet peppers, and started to think how Trump's tariffs and immigration deportations would affect what's on store shelves next year. If he does everything he promised to do, a lot of fresh produce will be hard to find or expensive a year from now. I'm in Minnesota, so if I want vegetables for half the year, they're either imported, canned or frozen.

So, I'm going through my typical crops with that in mind. I already grow 1000 sq ft of garden, but I can easily double or triple that. I can can a lot more produce. I can grow a lot more peppers and freeze them. I have a dehydrator I rarely use, but I might fire that up a lot more. Squash vines can be planted between my apples, pears, peaches and plums, freeing up garden space. Hell, winter squash can be planted everywhere in my yard, and what we can't eat, the chickens will devour all winter.

The state land near me is filled with wild grapes I can make jelly out of just like Grandma did. It also has huge patches of puffball mushrooms that are edible when young. It's too crowded to hunt there during shotgun deer season, but archery season is long and less pressure. Crossbows are legal, aren't expensive anymore, and easier to shoot than bows. And Minnesota allows both spring and fall turkey season. I haven't shot anything bigger than rabbits in the past 5 yr, but might take it up again.

Anyone else making similar plans, or is my doomsday prepper mentality spiralling out of control again? What vegetables are you prioritizing?

Incoming Trump admin is eyeing new immigrant detention centers near major U.S. cities

Source: NBC

The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump's promised mass deportation plan, two sources familiar with the planning told NBC News.

The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.S., the sources said.

The plan would also include restarting the policy of detaining parents with their children, known as family detention, which immigration advocates have criticized and the Biden administration stopped in 2021, the sources said.

So far, people working on the plans with the Trump transition team are assessing which of the facilities the Biden administration closed could be reopened, taking account of available space in county jails and assessing which areas might need temporary facilities to detain migrants as part of the deportation effort.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna179843