As if Pensacola News Journal: In a recently published research letter regarding emerging infectious diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Florida is witnessing an increase in leprosy cases lacking traditional risk factors and recommending that travel to Florida be considered when conducting leprosy contact tracing in any state. […] The number of reported leprosy cases across the country has doubled over the past decade, according to the CDC. Citing data from the National Hansen’s Disease Program, the CDC says there were 159 new cases reported in the U.S. in 2020. Nearly 70% of these new cases were reported in Florida, California, Louisiana, Hawaii, New York and Texas. Florida stands out in the report for two reasons: Central Florida alone accounted for nearly 20% of the total number of cases reported nationally and several new-case patients in central Florida demonstrated no clear evidence of zoonotic exposure or traditionally known risk factors. Not to panic. DeSantis is more of a threat. But not treatable with antibiotics.
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Why cultists are so loud and proud Lies and conspiracy theories are related, finds Marcel Danesi, a professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto. In a pattern that “goes back to antiquity,” populist leaders such as former President Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin “use language to develop a cult-like following.” Danesi offers a scientific explanation at Politico. Such leaders deploy “dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.” Here is an example of the result, live and in color, from the Trump rally Saturday in Erie Pennsylvania: Whoops. Danesi explains: The first step to manipulating the minds of the public, or really the precondition, is that listeners need to be in the right emotional state. In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty.That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear.
Catherine Tate's raucous, bridge-burning, anti-royal sitcom Queen of Oz brings the kind of fire that "The Thick of It" brought to politics.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Wil Wheaton/Star Trek, CM Punk/Elon Musk, Rick and Morty, Invincible, Doctor Who, Good Omens 2, and more!
The New York case, often downplayed as the weakest of four potential indictments against the ex-president, could be his biggest legal threat.
The post Stormy Daniels May Have the Last Word on Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
The New York case, often downplayed as the weakest of four potential indictments against the ex-president, could be his biggest legal threat.
The post Stormy Daniels May Have the Last Word on Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
A personal account of a Wall Street-fueled health insurance disaster.
The problem of evaluating models built for forecasting is that one cannot get around invariance. There must be a stable bridge that connects the past and pres. ent with the future … To evaluate invariance its domain should be considered. In other words, one has to investigate what the list of all relevant non-negligible potential […]
What was I doing 10 years ago? I thought I’d look through my photoarchive from 2013:
In my previous post on utilitarianism, I started with two crucial observations. First, utilitarianism is a political philosophy, dealing with the question of how the resources in a community should be distributed. It’s not a system of individual ethics Second, (this shouldn’t be necessary to state, but it is), there is no such thing as […]
Malaria’s not the only surprise comeback of 2023. Gold heists are still a thing: Police in Canada are investigating one of the largest gold heists in the country’s history, after more than C$20m ($15m; £12m) of the precious metal and other valuable goods were stolen from Toronto’s airport [this past April]. […] In a brazen pilferage, a “high-value container” disappeared while it was being transported to a cargo holding facility near Canada’s busiest airport. Authorities say the thieves gained access to the public side of a warehouse near Toronto Pearson International Airport that was unmanned by airport security. The theft, which is still under investigation, was an isolated and “very rare” incident, police say. While a heist of that magnitude is indeed rare, a look at Canadian history shows it’s not the first. The Toronto Pearson International Airport has often been used as a hub for gold mined in the province of Ontario, and in September 1952 it was the scene of a mysterious heist. Back then, Pearson was known by another name: Malton Airport.
Is it the Tale or Tail End? Coming to the end of my European journey I have waved goodbye to R&H and will follow them back to the outback in a few days. I am not sure what to make of my time away from Broken Hill and how …
This NY Times piece analyzes Trump’s long-standing habit of obstructing justice. The man who claims that everyone else is cheating has always been a cheater and a cover-up artist. He is completely unethical and immoral. By now you know the new charges in the superseding indictment. He tried to have the surveillance tapes destroyed and he worked to make sure his henchmen wouldn’t say anything. They did and now they are under federal indictment. Trump has always done this: “Demanding that evidence be destroyed is the most basic form of obstruction and is easy for a jury to understand,” said Mr. Goldstein, who is now a white-collar defense lawyer at the firm Cooley. “It is more straightforwardly criminal than the obstructive acts we detailed in the Mueller report,” he said. “And if proven, it makes it easier to show that Trump had criminal intent for the rest of the conduct described in the indictment.” The accusation about Mr.
This is interesting… Dance, Ron, dance. Megyn isn’t quick enough to throw back in his face the long-standing GOP view of small government and the private sector being completely independent from the state. His diversion from that ideology is very Trumpian: the only rule that corporations need to follow is that they must show total fealty to … him. There’s a word for that and it starts with F and ends with ism.
Trump discusses the surveillance tapes He’s at a loss on this one. His excuse is lamer than usual: “These were my tapes that we gave to them,” Trump told conservative radio host John Fredericks. “These were security tapes. We handed them over to them. … I’m not even sure what they’re saying.” That’s a non-sequitur. Yes, they were his tapes. It’s what he ordered his henchman to do with them that was criminal. The Department of Justice alleged that Trump and Nauta had asked De Oliveira to delete the footage from Mar-a-Lago, so the video would not get into the hands of a grand jury. The new court documents claimed De Oliveira and Nauta were captured on surveillance video moving boxes that may have contained documents with classified markings before DOJ and FBI officials visited the property to collect subpoenaed items. It also alleged that in June 2022, on the same day that the DOJ emailed Trump’s attorney another subpoena for surveillance video, De Oliveira had a private conversation with an employee in an audio closet during which he asked how long a server containing the video kept its footage.
In 2017, Pearls and Irritations had a half a million views. By the end of 2022 we had more than 5.3 million views and we have already surpassed 3.3 million views heading into the second half of 2023. We receive more than 400,000 monthly views, and frequently many more. Our voice and reach is expanding. Continue reading »
The Queensland government is vigorously promoting coal’s social licence. Heat waves are clearly linked to global warming. The war in Ukraine is destroying the environment as well as people. ‘Coal royalties help pay for the Cairns hospital expansion’ ‘Everyone benefits from coal royalties [and] this ensures Queenslanders are compensated fairly from the earnings mining companies Continue reading »
Australia must carefully monitor US domestic developments as a barometer of longer term risks to the reliability of our “great and powerful friend”, and to avoid being drawn into a US war against China. But the biggest lesson from the political polarisation in the US is that it is better to have lower overall economic Continue reading »
“One of the most extraordinary moments in politics in the last five years has been watching Anthony Albanese, notionally from the left of Labour, adopt, without any internal democracy within the Labor Party, without any public investigation of it, adopt wholeheartedly Scott Morrison’s AUKUS plans… It’s perhaps one of the most extraordinary betrayals of the Continue reading »
The appointment of Chris Barrett to head the Productivity Commission puts its Trade and Assistance Review under the spotlight. While it has become commonplace in recent years to ignore the PC’s regular evisceration of anything that smacks of market intervention, it has this year chosen to target the very policy platform on which the Albanese Continue reading »
Criticism of Kathryn Campbell’s appointment a year ago to a $900,000 a year job to assist with implementation of the AUKUS agreement is mostly based on hindsight following the adverse comments about her performance in DHS and DSS by the Robodebt Royal Commission. To be fair to those who made that decision, it is important Continue reading »