Outgoing NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has been widely criticized for seeming and acting out of touch with New Yorkers. And during his final weeks in Gracie Mansion, the intensely unpopular Democratic candidate may unwittingly handicap the already struggling NYC jail Riker’s Island.
To wit, the AP reports that hundreds of city department of corrections’ workers might soon be fired after missing a Tuesday deadline to either get vaccinated or see their waiver approved. The city’s DoC reported 77% of its staff had gotten at least one vaccine dose as of 1700ET on Monday. That’s the lowest rate of any city agency, meaning about 1,900 employees have yet to comply with the mandate or apply for the waiver.
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Joe Biden has been president for more than ten months, and the Omicron variant has only been news for a few days. But somehow, Politico energetically found a way to blame Omicron infections on Donald Trump! Health reporter Erin Banco found conveniently anonymous experts to slam Trump (no partisan or ideological affiliations attached, so clean).
With a loss of health care workers from stress, burnout, and vaccine mandates, hospitals are scrambling to keep beds open and retain licensed health professionals.
Unfortunately, national professional associations are threatening licensed health professionals with disciplinary action or loss of licensure for questioning recommendations from government agencies, especially the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A recent position statement released by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and supported by seven other major nursing associations and organizations is a symptom of a new virus— intellectual conformity.
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Why Fox Stopped Talking About Trump (P9litico) Maybe because he isn’t President any more? And Fox’s business model isn’t based on complaining about Trump?
One of the distinguishing features of authoritarian societies is the language becomes lifeless and dull. At the same time, the public space is filled with the language of the authoritarian ruling system. The people at the top give long arid speeches and their propaganda organs fill the spaces in between with official noise. Fidel Castro would give speeches that lasted half a day. Stalin would deliver long harangues to the Party Congress for no other reason than to fill the room with words.
In America, this started to creep in after the Cold War. Bill Clinton would give long speeches that were cognitively meaningless. The word “emote” came into common usage at this time as his speeches were like the “feelies” in the Huxley novel Brave New World. They were not intended to stimulate your mind, but rather to anesthetize it so you could experience the raw emotion being conveyed. His most memorable words are those from his rare confessions of guilt.
Obama took it further by delivering nonsense speeches that were not just devoid of meaning, but an assault on the concept of meaning. His language was an assault on the mind, an effort to destroy reason. Instead, the listener was supposed to abandon his senses and float along on the warm thermals of passive happiness. His fans swore he was a great speaker, but they never quoted him. To quote the great man would invite questioning the great man and that was not permitted.
Plastics, part of modern life, are useful but can pose a significant challenge to the environment and may also constitute a health concern. Indeed, exposure to plastic-associated chemicals, such as base chemical bisphenol A and phthalate plasticizers, can increase the risk of human cardiovascular disease. What underlying mechanisms cause this, however, remain elusive.
A team led by Changcheng Zhou, a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, now raises the hopes of solving the mystery. In a mouse study, the researchers found a phthalate — a chemical used to make plastics more durable — led to increased plasma cholesterol levels.
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China has finished construction on an experimental thorium reactor that could greatly expand the number of people who can benefit from clean nuclear energy.
Fission basics: Nuclear power plants split atoms of fuel through a process called “fission.” This produces energy that can then be converted into electricity.
Nuclear power is more reliable than wind and solar, and the fission process doesn’t produce any climate-harming carbon emissions, making nuclear energy a potentially key weapon in the battle against climate change.
The challenge: Today, there are more than 400 nuclear power plants in operation across the globe, and the vast majority use uranium as a fuel and water to cool and moderate the fission process — but there are downsides to the status quo.
While uranium is about as common as tin, less than 1% of mined uranium is a specific kind that can undergo fission (uranium-235) — a process called “enrichment” is needed to increase uranium-235 levels in the mined metal, and it’s both complicated and expensive.??
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Groundbreaking research from Australian scientists has revealed a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease, the devastating condition that affects 5.8 million Americans. Using mouse models, the researchers built upon previous knowledge of beta-amyloid protein, already known to play a role in Alzheimer’s. They discovered how this toxic protein leaks through the blood-brain barrier to causes degenerative damage to brain cells.
According to Medical News Today, the findings have been called a “breakthrough,” and could lead to preventive strategies to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or slow its progression.
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Texas’ Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the grandson of former president George H. W. Bush, announced on Monday that the state’s General Land Office (GLO) had reached an agreement with the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to build Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s border wall.
A release announcing the agreement said construction of the wall would begin in Starr County, an area that sits along a portion of the border near the southern tip of Texas. The land being utilized for this portion of the wall is a farm tract owned by the GLO, the release said.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Greg Abbott Gets Texas Border Wall Deal Amid Warning of Approaching Migrant Caravans
