San Francisco banned flavored vapes in 2018 in an attempt to stem the tide of young people vaping.

The ban is a success with young people turning to more organic and natural choices such as cigarettes made with American tobacco. The cigarette industry is seeing a 30% increase in sales as a result of the ban and San Francisco and the State of cCalifornia are seeing increased tax revenue as well.

Hopefully, a flavor ban can be enacted nationwide with similar results allowing the almost dormant tobacco industry to fight back against the vaping scourge.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2780248

I have an experiment for you. Take a football stadium. Cover the entire football field in tile. Put a small rug at the 50 yard line. Time how long it takes my bloody cat to throw up on the rug.

What post headlines would you like to see in 2022?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/briefing/vaccination-class-gap-us.html


It is common to hear about two different demographic groups that are hesitant to receive a Covid-19 vaccination: Republican voters and racial minorities, especially Black and Latino Americans.

The two groups seem to have different motivations. For Republicans, the attitude is connected to a general skepticism of government and science. For Black and Hispanic Americans, it appears to stem from the country’s legacy of providing substandard medical treatment, and sometimes doing outright harm, to minorities.

These ideas all have some truth to them. But they also can obscure the fact that many unvaccinated Republicans and minorities have something in common: They are working class. And there is a huge class gap in vaccination behavior.

As you can see, working-class members of every group are less likely to have received a vaccine and more likely to be skeptical. “No matter which of these groups we looked at, we see an education divide,” Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser surveys, told me. In some cases, different racial groups with the same education levels — like Black and white college graduates — look remarkably similar.



Class in study after study is a bigger divider in outcomes than race. Yet we focus on one when the science is telling us to focus on the other.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/24/obama-library-chicago-gentrification-fears

But the development, expected to break ground this fall, has not arrived without controversy. Over the last six years, the Obama Foundation, which will fund the OPC, and the city of Chicago have courted scrutiny from two groups: park preservationists upset at a private development being built on public land, and community organizers who fear that low-income Black neighbors will be displaced by rising rents and land speculation.

A major flashpoint has been affordable housing. A University of Illinois at Chicago study found that housing prices in the area rose between 2010 and 2017. “While rents vary, there is clear evidence of rising rents in newly renovated and new construction units, which the majority of current renters cannot afford,” researchers wrote.

Some residents and community organizers have spent years saying the city, the Obama Foundation and others should reach an agreement that sets jobs aside for locals, protects affordable housing and supports Black businesses.




There has been a trend in the idea that we cannot improve our housing stock because it will displace the neighborhood. Which both ignores the ever changing nature of cities as well as common sense and decency. This is particularly strange in a declining city like Chicago that is bleeding residents and has been for a while.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/24/china-ultramarathon-inquiry-launched-after-21-runners-die-in-cold-weather


In a report on Friday, the provincial meteorological bureau had issued warnings for “sudden heavy showers, hail, lightning, [and] sudden gale-force winds” across Gansu. State media reported temperatures plunging far below zero, pelting runners with rain, hail and sleet.

In response to the tragedy, China’s sports governing body ordered improvements in safety managements in national sport events, including detailed contingency plans for incidents and measures for emergency cancellations, saying there were “problems and deficiencies” in the management model for races.

Among the dead were elite runners, including the 31-year-old record-holder Liang Jing, who leaves behind a two-year-old daughter, and the Paralympian Huang Ganjun.

Liang had won a number of Chinese ultramarathons in recent years while Huang won the men’s hearing-impaired marathon at the 2019 National Paralympic Games.




Honestly, a wild story out of China. I guess it is hard to imagine an entire race freezing to death like this. Esp. top athletes.

For those who think Drag Queens were invented by a TV producer in the aughts. I give you one of my favorite pieces of trivia. A promotion by a major US company using a "female impersonator" in 1957.

Here is a report

And, because it was 1957, Ford decided to have two media previews, one for male reporters and one for their wives. In the former, the Edsel was driven around a stunt course as if it were in a Hollywood blockbuster — at one point an Edsel almost flipped.


Gates mentions in his blog that the women's event, a fashion show, was one of his favorite passages in the story because the host was revealed to be a "female impersonator" (i.e. a man in drag), which was not only bizarre but, as Gates says, "would have been scandalous for a major American corporation in 1957.

Here is the link https://www.businessinsider.com/lessons-from-the-failure-of-the-ford-edsel-2015-9

and here is the product

?quality=90&auto=webp


The Ford Edsel.

My fiance went back to her home town to care for her ailing father. There she met a guy who runs an organic bakery and is raising his four year old son on his own. Apparently he is teaching my fiance how to bake bread and the true meaning of Christmas.

Should I be concerned?

https://www.rochesterfirst.com/new-york-state/watch-live-gov-cuomo-updates-new-yorkers-on-pandemic-from-radio-city-music-hall/


NEW YORK CITY (WROC) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a coronavirus briefing Monday from Radio Music City Hall in New York City where he announced new metrics, the state’s decision on CDC guidance change for masking, reopening updates, and more.


The new guidance still calls for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters but will help clear the way for reopening workplaces, schools, and other venues — even removing the need for masks or social distancing for those who are fully vaccinated. The CDC will also no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors in crowds.


“We took a couple of days to analyze what it would be,” Gov. Cuomo said. “We aligned it with our guidance, we’re announcing that today. We’re then giving vendors, local government notice today. It goes into effect Wednesday, so they have a day to make adjustments. I’m sure they’ll say it’s too fast, they need more than a day, but that’s where we are.”



Hopefully, this will speed up the opening of museums and other cultural institutions in New York. It might also speed up Broadway coming back online which the city desperately needs.