Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Plot Against Healthcare (NY Times Column)
So it's looking as if Republicans won't manage to kill health care on the sly. And that means that we can expect one final push at outright repeal - a push that will succeed if Republicans hold the House.
Paul Krugman: "Oh, What a Stupid Trade War (Very Slightly Wonkish)" (NY Times Blog)
We do want to know whether the Trump trade war is going to be directly expansionary or contractionary - that is, whether it would add or subtract jobs holding monetary policy constant, even though we know monetary policy won't be constant. And the answer, almost surely, is that this trade war will actually be a job-killer, not a job-creator, for two reasons.
Mary Beard: Exams again (TLS)
I hate exams (though I probably hate the alternatives more). And different versions of that hatred come through the different perspectives (basically examiner vs examinee). I still remember the feeling of sitting the damn things, and the awful sense that one could never reflect on the written page all the work and thought one had done (I have to say that I now think, from the other side, that one can tell the difference between those who are writing all they know and those who are selecting from a wide range of stuff .. though it never felt like that at the time).
Mary Beard: Black Safari (TLS)
Its theme is a safari to Britain by a group of four black African explorers and anthropologists (plus a couple of local British helpers/bearers/guides) to darkest Lancashire, 'the Black Man's Grave', in an attempt to locate the centre of Britain 'whose whereabouts are still to be determined'.
Andrew Tobias: Hiccups and Hangovers
It turns out there is a cure for hiccups … so write this down where you won't forget it: Heavily salt a large lime wedge (like a quarter of a lime, with a "line of salt" on top, like you see lines of coke in the movies) and chomp deeply into it, swallowing all the salty juice. No more hiccups. You're welcome.
Mark Harris: "Midnight Cowboy: On the Fringe" (Criterion)
A wordless sequence in which he wanders along Forty-Second Street, eyes the other handsome cowboy-hatted hustlers, and realizes that he's a dime a dozen; a scene in which he eats saltines off a diner table because they're free; a shot in a stairwell in which he and Ratso nervously groom themselves before going into a party all feel as if Schlesinger, roving through a real city at a real moment, simply discovered the right characters to follow.
Andrew Hallam: Finding The Courage To Break From An Unhealthy Norm (AssetBuilder)
"I've never been happier," says Moses. "I have much more free time. I'm surrounded by friends, family and the beauty of nature. I don't even have a television, so I don't see advertisers convincing me to 'buy, buy, buy'."
Andrew Hallam: Research Says Money Can Buy You Happiness (AssetBuilder)
Dunn and Norton also say that if we do treat ourselves, we should pay for it ahead of time. For example, assume that you decided to treat yourself at a spa. If you pay for it in advance, studies show that we get more excited as we wait for the big day. We also enjoy things more when we know that they've been paid for.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Aircraft Hangars
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE WONDERS OF OUR UNIVERSE!
'INSULTING AND UNACCEPTABLE'
PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A SICK SUM-BITCH!
PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A SICK SUM-BITCH! PART TWO.
AUTO FELLATIO!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Butterfly season has been pretty much a bust this year - so far.
There's a lot of leaf damage, but have only found 2 caterpillars, and both of them were picked off by hornets.
Greenwich Firm Acquires
Necco Candy
Less than a week after reports of the sale of the New England Confectionery Co. to an Ohio candy giant, the Metropoulos family announced the formation of Sweetheart Candy in Greenwich to take over the bankrupt Necco.
Necco, the Revere, Mass.-based maker of Necco wafers and heart-shaped Sweetheart candies inscribed with sweet nothings, had been up for auction in federal bankruptcy court in Massachusetts. Spangler Candy had emerged last week as the winning bidder but did not conclude the deal, with the family of billionaire Dean Metropoulos declaring Friday its $17.3 million bid had landed it the Necco brand and operations.
Dean Metropoulos led the acquisition and initial public offering of Hostess Brands, bringing the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs back from the dead. He had previously reinvigorated brands like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Bumble Bee, Ghirardelli, Chef Boyardee, Vlasic and Perrier Jouet, among 80 entities in which he and his family have invested.
Spangler had bid $18.8 million for Necco, with the Bryan, Ohio-based company having several well-known brands including Dum Dums and Saf-T-Pops lollipops and Smarties hard candy. A Spangler spokesperson told Hearst Connecticut Media its deal fell apart after Necco was unable to meet multiple unspecified conditions Spangler had sought in its original purchase agreement.
Necco was formed in 1901 through the roll-up of several Boston-area candy makers, with its brands today including Candy Buttons; Clark Bar, Sky Bar and Haviland Thin Mints chocolates; Mary Jane and Squirrel Nut Zippers chews; and Slap Stix caramel pops.
Necco Candy
Points To Right-Wing Hypocrisy
Chelsea Clinton
"Feckless c--t," the fiery insult that comedian Samantha Bee flung at first daughter Ivanka Trump on Wednesday night, rankled many conservatives who said Bee crossed a line.
The White House said her show, "Full Frontal," was not "fit for broadcast." President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Pussy Grabber) demanded to know on Friday why TBS would not fire Bee. But at least one observer saw hypocrisy in all the backlash.
Oliver Willis, a writer at the progressive news site Shareblue, unearthed a 1994 interview in which musician Ted Nugent used the same c-word to refer to then-first lady Hillary Clinton. To show how Nugent's offensive language has done nothing to impact his standing with Republicans, Willis tweeted a recent photo of Nugent shaking hands with Trump alongside the 24-year-old quote. He referred to the backlash as "fake outrage."
The tweet caught the eye of Chelsea Clinton.
"You probably can't use the term 'toxic cunt' in your magazine, but that's what she is. Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country," Nugent said. "This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro."
Chelsea Clinton
Detected A Particle
Physics Experiment
Scientists have produced the firmest evidence yet of so-called sterile neutrinos, mysterious particles that pass through matter without interacting with it at all.
The first hints these elusive particles turned up decades ago. But after years of dedicated searches, scientists have been unable to find any other evidence for them, with many experiments contradicting those old results. These new results now leave scientists with two robust experiments that seem to demonstrate the existence of sterile neutrinos, even as other experiments continue to suggest sterile neutrinos don't exist at all.
That means there's something strange happening in the universe that is making humanity's most cutting-edge physics experiments contradict one another.
Back in the mid-1990s, the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND), an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, found evidence of a mysterious new particle: a "sterile neutrino" that passes through matter without interacting with it. But that result couldn't be replicated; other experiments simply couldn't find any trace of the hidden particle. So the result was set aside.
Now, MiniBooNE - a follow-up experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located near Chicago - has picked up the hidden particle's scent again. A new paper posted to the preprint server arXiv offers such a compelling enough the missing neutrino to make physicists sit up and notice.
Physics Experiment
Discuss Staging Protest
Google Employees
A small group of Google employees, in response to a company contract with a Pentagon-backed program called Maven, have discussed the idea of staging a protest at a conference in July. Employees fear that the project, which provides artificial intelligence tools to the military, could be used in fatal drone strikes.
The protest, as discussed in preliminary exchanges over Google's internal communications platform, would take place at a Google Cloud conference in San Francisco, according to messages obtained by HuffPost and an interview with an employee.
More than a dozen Google employees have resigned over the project, according to Gizmodo, and thousands of employees have signed a letter protesting it.
Now Google employees are debating showing resistance in a more active way, through a potential demonstration.
Discussions regarding the possibility of a protest took place this week on an internal thread devoted to criticism of Maven. The thread, called "maven conscientious objectors," includes hundreds of employees, but only a small percentage of those were active in the discussion.
Google Employees
Disease Rates Surge
Black-Lung
As a young man, Barry Shrewsbury dug coal in the West Virginia mines and spent his time off hunting and fishing in the rolling hills. Now, at 62, he struggles to breathe and accomplish basic tasks such as shopping and showering, and relies on a federal fund for ex-miners with black lung disease to pay for an oxygen tank and doctor visits.
"The benefits are a lifeline," Shrewsbury said between labored breaths after a treatment at the Bluestone Health Center, an industrial-style building set against a leafy landscape in Princeton, West Virginia.
That lifeline is threatened. The Black Lung Disability Trust Fund is at risk of insolvency due to soaring debt and a slashing of coal-company contributions through a tax cut scheduled for the end of the year, according to a report the U.S. Government Accountability Office plans to publish soon, two sources briefed on the study told Reuters.
That shortfall - which comes as black lung rates hit highs not seen in decades - could force the fund to restrict benefits or shift some of the financial burden to taxpayers, the sources said on condition of anonymity. The fund currently provides medical coverage and monthly payments for living expenses to more than 15,000 people, according to a Congressional report published this year.
The coal industry, meanwhile, is lobbying Congress to ensure the scheduled tax reduction goes forward, arguing the payments have already been too high at a difficult time for mining companies and that the fund has been abused by undeserving applicants.
Black-Lung
Science Advisers Vote
EPA
The board of scientists that advises the Environmental Protection Agency, including members recently appointed by Administrator Scott Pruitt, voted unanimously on Thursday to review the agency's proposal to limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulations, saying the policy requires more scrutiny from the scientific community.
The Science Advisory Board (SAB) voted to back the recommendation of a smaller workgroup, which found that the agency should have sought the expert advice of the board before undertaking a policy that would significantly change how the agency uses scientific research.
"Although the proposed rule cites several valuable publications that support enhanced transparency, the precise design of the rule appears to have been developed without a public process for soliciting input from the scientific community," said the group's memo, which the board backed unanimously.
The panel also voted to review a number of other proposed EPA regulations, including the repeal of the Clean Power Plan and changes to vehicle emission standards, which could freeze requirements at 2020 levels through 2026.
Under the EPA's April proposal to "end secret science," the agency will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential public health and industry data. The measure was billed by Pruitt as a way to boost scientific transparency for the benefit of the industries the EPA regulates.
EPA
Google Blasted
California Republicans
Republicans blasted Google after the search engine briefly identified "Nazism" as one of the tenets of the California Republican party.
People searching for more information on the party were, for a time, greeted by a squib summarising information that included the word "Nazism" under an "ideology" section.
The characterisation quickly drew a backlash from conservatives. Rep Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, California's highest-ranking Republican in Congress, tweeted that the term's inclusion was a "disgrace", adding a "#StoptheBias" hashtag.
Google said the misinformation did not come from "manual changes" made by one of its employees, faulting "vandalism" of a Wikipedia page that the search engine then picked up.
Wikipedia said in a statement that volunteer editors corrected the lapse, adding that "when we learn about an error on Wikipedia, we're grateful: it gives us an opportunity to correct the record".
California Republicans
New Research Looks at Pacific Coast
Ancient Humans
Humans have always been good at spreading out and covering ground, but we can't tackle every obstacle in our path. Giant ice sheets that spread for miles in every direction, for example, tend to stop all but the most adventurous of us quite efficiently-and they likely shaped the path humans took to first enter North America from Asia.
Scientists have been pondering two possible routes for decades. One crawls along the Pacific Coast, weaving between the islands of southern Alaska; the other slips between two giant ice sheets, much further east and inland. In order to help figure out how plausible the first route is, a team of scientists wanted to measure how long ago ice sheets retreated from the coastline-and now they've done just that, as they report in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. The new research suggests the route would have been accessible about 17,000 years ago.
"We didn't know much about the ice sheet history along the Pacific coast," senior author Jason Briner, a glacial geologist at the University at Buffalo in New York, told Newsweek. The new work changes that, he said. "We figured out that the ice sheet went away and unblocked the Pacific route earlier than the middle of the continent," he added.
Briner and his colleagues used a technique for analyzing the chemical fingerprint of beryllium in the rock. That signature tells scientists when rock became uncovered, and that analysis on the Alaskan rocks told the team the ice had retreated about 17,000 years ago.
The team also built a timeline of animal bones discovered in a coastal cave, which had previously been studied by other scientists. It was apparently a favorite snacking spot for one or more critters, who carried pieces of animals there to munch away on. All those bones built up as a sort of cemetery, and thousands of years later, scientists have been able to pinpoint when those animals died.
Ancient Humans
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. Justin Timberlake; $3,227,648; $145.29.
2. Pink; $2,486,015; $134.15.
3. "Springsteen On Broadway"; $2,148,049; $507.87.
4. Metallica; $2,137,474; $104.51.
5. Luis Miguel; $1,813,959; $103.80.
6. Kendrick Lamar; $1,489,005; $88.86.
7. Romeo Santos; $1,400,474; $102.87.
8. Bon Jovi; $1,359,573; $97.84.
9. Blake Shelton; $997,285; $78.17.
10. The Killers; $989,802; $61.05.
11. Harry Styles; $905,938; $76.49.
12. Demi Lovato; $898,787; $75.36.
13. André Rieu; $897,483; $84.22.
14. Maluma; $831,624; $95.83.
15. Kid Rock; $810,702; $87.75.
16. Imagine Dragons; $799,708; $58.61.
17. Kevin Hart; $788,357; $74.48.
18. The Script; $707,233; $56.54.
19. Lana Del Rey; $669,761; $77.44.
20. Miranda Lambert; $582,071; $58.37.
Global Concert Tours
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