needles

With the new mask guidelines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Thursday, the COVID-19 pandemic feels like it’s nearing an end for many of us. I get my second Moderna shot next week, at which point my transformation into the little-known Batman supervillain Blood Clottus will be complete. (Okay, just...

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  • May 14, 2021

Today is the day I stopped stalling. My BMI is on the cusp of “overweight,” and other than an overweening fondness for nondairy cheeses made from a mysterious hodgepodge of plant oils, space ingredients (dark matter for sure, and perhaps a soupçon of tauntaun smegma), and hipster smugness, I don’t have...

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  • April 19, 2021

By way of a baffling and contradictory threat in explaining his position, Senator Mitch McConnell, in his best southern drawl, warned “Co-cola” to not be “stupid.” Addressing a gaggle of reporters in Kentucky,  McConnell said, “It’s quite stupid to jump in the middle of a highly controversial issue,” he went...

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  • April 7, 2021

“We have to be aware that climate change and biodiversity loss are stress factors for ecosystems, for humans, for animals, and for the microbiome. Our research shows that if the different axes of the disease pyramid are destabilized, new infectious diseases can be expected, including for humans.” Dirk Schmeller, Université de...

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  • June 30, 2020

Even if a small fraction of the Arctic seafloor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re fucked. Climatologist Jason Box, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland We all have our hands full at the moment, with multiple catastrophes occurring at once. Before scrolling past the headline of this diary, I implore...

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  • June 21, 2020

Even if a small fraction of the Arctic seafloor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re fucked. Climatologist Jason Box, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland We all have our hands full at the moment, with multiple catastrophes occurring at once. Before scrolling past the headline of this diary, I implore...

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  • June 21, 2020

Is there anything more ironic than the “party of personal responsibility” nominating and electing Donald Trump? He accepts responsibility for nothing. To wit: REPORTER: “You just said there are a tremendous number of ventilators that we have, but for weeks hospitals have been warning about a critical shortage that they...

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  • March 18, 2020

There were those who warned us about Dr. Robert Redfield when Trump appointed him to the be director of the CDC, and the coronavirus pandemic and the American governments abysmal response to it are proving Redfield’s critics right.  However, Redfield has been able to keep his head down and not...

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  • March 8, 2020

This explains the CDC cuts, some of the incompetence and delays, plus why Redfield tends to let Anthony Fauci correct Trump’s lies. x This is the head of the CDC. He backed Trump up on blaming Obama today for lack of testing kits for Coronavirus. I smelled something fishy and...

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  • March 6, 2020

He wakes up at dawn and peeks out the window, looking for the heron feeding at the fishpond in the first light. No heron yet today.  He starts the espresso machine, but cannot make coffee fast enough to clear out almost seven decades of fog from his head. He sighs...

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  • November 22, 2019

People need to be in the street.  People need to be demanding action not words from legislators and we need to start impeachment precedings from any one and any party that will not bring OUR rights of pursuit of happiness and the right to life, liberty and justice to a...

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  • August 4, 2019