#articles

[halorvic]

Public health didn’t die when RFK Jr. became Trump’s Health Secretary. It was already on life support, hamstrung by a siege mentality, turf wars, and an erosion of its connection to science.

[...]

In 1846, maternal deaths at the Vienna General Hospital were dramatically higher in the doctors’ ward than the midwives’ ward. The difference was staggering: 11.4 per cent of patients seen by doctors died, compared to just 2.7 per cent of those seen by midwives. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that doctors were going directly from autopsies to deliveries without washing their hands. He introduced a handwashing protocol. The next year, mortality fell to just 1.27 per cent. The evidence was clear. But Semmelweis was ridiculed and rejected by the medical establishment of his time. His career, and then his mental health, suffered greatly. In 1865, he was committed to an asylum. He was beaten to death by attendants while trying to escape. His story isn’t a metaphor. It’s a mirror. Ignoring inconvenient scientific truths is a longstanding, dangerous pattern. So, why is medicine still like this? The answer lies in structural flaws in medical decision-making. 

[...]

Five years ago, on April 3, 2020, the world’s top bioaerosol scientists warned the WHO that COVID was transmitted in infectious aerosols, tiny particles that drift in the air like smoke. They were right. And they were shouted down. The WHO’s guidance for managing the novel pathogen, SARS-CoV-2, rejected the latest science along with lessons learned from mistakes made twenty years earlier with SARS-CoV-1. In an instant, decades of evidence were brushed aside. The refusal to “follow the science” on airborne transmission may well be one of the deadliest mistakes ever made. It wasted our best chance to stop the pandemic before it got started. Excess deaths are already estimated to exceed 25 million, and are still climbing. Millions of years of human life and something in the ballpark of a trillion dollars per year are still being lost to long COVID — in the OECD alone. This exemplifies a recurring pattern of similar institutional failures, in which medical decision-making rejects outside expertise, replacing it with opaque processes biased towards inaction, that often seem strangely consistent with the personal opinions of those involved.

[shamebats]

Krajewski, at 56, one of the youngest cardinals in the world, said it was what Jesus would have done. And it was not the first time the Polish cardinal has made the news with his sometimes unorthodox ways of distributing the pope’s charities. Last year, he clambered down a manhole, broke a police seal, and re-connected electrical circuit breakers to restore electricity to hundreds of homeless people, many of them immigrants, living in an occupied building in Rome.

As much as I hate the church, this guy sounds rad.

[world-of-wales]

NEWS -

As per reporting in the DM,

The Prince and Princess Wales will celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary next week, staying in an isolated self-catering cottage for two on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

WillCat are visiting the Scottish Isles as part of a two-day visit to highlight their resilient local communities, as well as the wild natural beauty of the region.

As per a source :

The couple are both more at home in the countryside than anywhere else, making it the perfect way, for them to also celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

The couple have endured what William described as a 'brutal' year, making their time away even more precious.

The source explained that,

The tourism industry contributes 'significantly to the economy of the Isles', & that the Prince and Princess are looking forward to 'showing their support for the islands with their stay'.

The main aim of the visit is :

For The Duke and Duchess, this visit is all about the power of communities, and highlighting that by building stronger and better-connected communities we can perhaps build a steady path to more loving and compassionate society. What we will see on their visit to the Inner Hebrides is that we can learn powerful lessons from ways of life on Mull and Iona, specifically about how we reconnect with each other. The simpler way of life that these island communities enjoy, steeped in nature and built on strong person to person connections, offers a powerful model for transforming our own health and wellbeing, and in turn the communities within which we live.

[acti-veg]

Last week, the US Department of Agriculture announced sweeping plans to increase slaughter line speeds at pork and poultry plants — a move that could further endanger workers who already process animals at a breakneck pace and suffer high levels of injury.

For decades, the meat industry has been pushing to both speed up slaughter lines and replace federal inspectors with company employees, wishes that the USDA — under both Republican and Democratic administrations — have granted to varying degrees. Now, the Trump administration plans to give the industry perhaps its biggest win on the issue yet, which worker safety advocates say will make one of the most dangerous jobs in America even worse.

[soracities]

absolutely enraptured rn

[briery]

The four species of lynx; from top-left, clockwise: Eurasian lynx (L. lynx), Iberian lynx (L. pardinus), bobcat (L. rufus), Canada lynx (L. canadensis).

[skeith-platinumprincess]

Yuzu Pays $2.4 Million to End Nintendo Lawsuit

[wachinyeya]

https://ktla.com/news/california/goats-unleashed-by-san-manuel-tribe-as-part-of-fire-prevention-strategy/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaJJAE-Kl55wk4vm1cYc0zjGRUEv8w6ps0HX0z-rxwwa7YXnTDCsgIU2vs_aem_0djT-2NoD-E87Ic6UeeqGw

Firefighting goats have been deployed by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to protect tribal land and neighboring property from potentially devastating brush fires.

The goats are unleashed by the San Manuel Fire Department to eat up dry brush and grass that would normally be ideal fuel for fires — a recent fire was actually partially stopped once it reached an area cleared by the caprine crew earlier this year.

The herd, officials said, is about 400-strong and is made up of generations of goat families.

On Tuesday, the goats were treated to a feast of fruit before being sent on their brush-eating mission.

The goats will spend the next several months trimming and thinning out vegetation on the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Reservation and nearby properties in San Bernardino.

Tribal officials said the brush that covers the hillsides in and around San Manuel property is thriving and diverse, boosted by the recent history-making rainy season. The plant life is an ideal food source because goats prefer food that’s at their eye level.

The Tribe has used goats as a natural, environmentally friendly fire preventative tool since 2019; the plants get trimmed in a sustainable fashion, which allows them to survive and recover naturally overtime unlike most chemical sprays.

Tribal officials called the practice an extension of the Tribe’s “culture of lands stewardship.”

“Caring for the land is a sacred duty of the Tribe,” said Lynn Valbuena, chairwoman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. “Stewardship is a responsibility given to our people by the Creator. No matter who owns the land.”

San Bernardino County residents shouldn’t be surprised to see the goats in the mountains fulfilling this divine task from now through the end of fire season.

[foldbaron]

Another short Business Insider article dropped today where the cast finally answers the question of whether they're stepping back from CR.

The answer is a hard no. "We've had 10 amazing years — and it should be clear and known and declared that we're not going anywhere. We've got tons more to do," Travis Willingham, Critical Role's CEO, said. "I don't think we could hang up the towel even if we wanted to. I think we're all addicted, so you're not going to see any of the founders go anywhere," Marisha Ray said.

-Liam already has ideas for his character for the next campaign and hopes that someday they get to do a far future science fiction world of Exandria.

-Marisha is already figuring out what the next cofounder-led project to hit their streaming platform, Beacon, will look like.

-They're going to keep bringing new faces into CR, but also new crews and new projects. "After 10 years, one of the most exciting things is the opportunity to give storytellers a new spotlight," Willingham said.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This is a salient argument for returning land stolen from indigenous people, written by a Caddo/Delaware writer who has spent over a decade as a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. Our current situation with public lands at risk is yet another example where "we the people" have shown that we cannot be responsible for something so precious, and so the status quo cannot continue. The Landback movement--returning land to indigenous ownership--is one viable solution that has multiple potential benefits.

It's not just the land that has been grossly mishandled, but the rights and lives of indigenous people, too. The article states "It’s been argued that the United States violated every Indian treaty it signed. When a treaty is broken, much like when a home is repossessed, the property exchanged should be returned to its original owner for breach of contract." Landback is one way in which indigenous people are trying to get back at least a little of what has been violently stolen from them over the past few centuries.

Does it mean giving up control? Of course. But with current trends, we don't exactly have a lot of control when state or federal governments decide to allow clearcutting or strip mining on public lands. Will some places be closed off to the public if they end up back in indigenous hands? Perhaps, but at least they wouldn't be forcing the rest of us onto reservations, from which we were not allowed to stray. That's a more merciful treatment than they received.

Even if the general public were no longer allowed on a given piece of land, we would still benefit from its restoration and sustainable stewardship, through cleaner air and water, better biodiversity, and ecosystems allowed to return to more complex states over time. Moreover, indigenous communities would stand to benefit financially from the substantial tourism and other recreational activities on current public lands. Responsible management could balance access to popular sites with minimizing wear and tear, while ecologically fragile or culturally sensitive places could be off-limits.

Why not let something old become something new again, and see if we all fare better for it?

[acti-veg]

The Greenwashing of Leather and Wool

There is a great deal of money being put into the greenwashing of animal products, particularly leather and wool, and the purposeful erasure of any alternatives except for plastic.

Animal agriculture industries have been accused of using the same tactics as big oil corporations to sow doubt and downplay their own role in the climate crisis. It is frustrating to see this kind of corporate propaganda repeated so gleefully by so-called leftists in progressive spaces.

Here are three articles I’ve written in an attempt to counter this misinformation. Hopefully you can save these to help you respond to anyone peddling these industry myths later, and then maybe we can talk about literally anything else…

[jstor]

The editors at JSTOR Daily have compiled all of their favorite articles for Black History Month!

Peruse the articles to explore historical contributions from Black Americans and the African diaspora at large–supported by scholarship from JSTOR.

[ahappyphjl]

“i feel part of that community” phil i will cry

[cold-black-and-infinite]

He's just like me for real

Nine Inch Nails | Promo from The Guardian (1999)