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So, to reiterate how this works, each Covid infection has a good chance of doing damage to your body, especially to your brain, cardiovascular system and to your immune system, which does not become stronger, but rather disregulated and weakened against future infections, not just of Covid but of other diseases.

This damage may not be symptomatic, in which case you don’t have “Long Covid”, but it’s real. Each time you get re-infected there is a chance of more damage, and I’m almost entirely certain, an increased risk of Long Covid.

Long Covid itself can be mild, or it can be crippling. Millions of people now can’t work as a result and others are suffering and less able to work or to enjoy their lives.

Whether or not we find beauty in rhetoric, its eloquence depends on its power to persuade.

Yesterday we had the wages data. Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released of the latest labour force data (May 18, 2023) – Labour Force, Australia – for April 2023. The April result is the second consecutive month that the data is weaker. Employment fell by 4.3 thousand, participation fell by 0.1 point, and…

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Experts on why trusting artificial intelligence to give us the truth is a foolish bargain.

The post AI Shouldn’t Decide What’s True appeared first on Nautilus.

It’s not reassuring A new Pew Poll on Americans’ views of vaccines after the COVID crisis is interesting. If you are following this story, click over to the whole thing. Here’s the upshot: Americans remain steadfast in their belief in the overall value of childhood vaccines, with no change over the last four years in the large majority who say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Still, the survey finds that alongside broad support for childhood vaccines there are signs of some concern – especially among those closest to the decision-making process of vaccinating children. Parents see the risks of MMR vaccines as a bit higher than other Americans, and about half of those with a young child ages 0 to 4 say the statement “I worry that not all of the childhood vaccines are necessary” describes their views at least somewhat well.

The Mifepristone case was argued before the 5th Circuit today and it went exactly as predicted: A panel of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — all Republican appointees — unapologetically carried water for the anti-abortion litigants Wednesday during oral arguments in a case where those litigants are trying to get an abortion pill, mifepristone, yanked from the market.  “When we celebrated Mother’s Day, did we celebrate an illness?” Judge James Ho, a Donald Trump appointee, snarked, regurgitating a false argument by the anti-abortion doctor plaintiffs that the Food and Drug Administration classified pregnancy as an illness to rush mifepristone through the approval process.  But perhaps the comedic peak of the arguments came when George W. Bush appointee Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod took time out to scold the lawyer for Danco, a manufacturer of mifepristone, for criticizing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the anti-abortion district court judge that handed down the first ruling in the case.

From speaking flowers to smart watches, we've been seeking to understand ourselves with data since the 19th century.

The post The Two-Century Quest to Quantify Our Senses appeared first on Nautilus.

Who could have predicted? What a lovely couple: Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has filed to divorce her husband of two decades, according to court records obtained Tuesday by The Daily Beast. The April 25 filing seeks to dissolve her marriage to Jayson Boebert, with whom she shares four sons. An affidavit of service, also obtained by The Daily Beast, indicate that Jayson Boebert appeared to be caught off guard by the court proceedings. He chased away a process server with an expletive-laden tirade and let his dogs loose when he was served with the divorce papers, the affidavit said. “Once he learned that he was being served with Dissolution of Marriage papers he was extremely angry,” the process server wrote. “I tried to hand him the documents but [he] did not take them. He started yelling and using profanities, and told me that I was trespassing, and that he was calling the Sheriff’s Office. I told him I was leaving the documents on the chair outside of the door, he closed the door then let the dogs out.” The document noted that Jayson was cleaning a gun and drinking a “tall glass of beer” when he was served.

For centuries, American evangelical Protestants have been obsessed with religious ‘revival.’ Fear of ostensible societal,...

Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, deputy prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles opened with an anecdote praising a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner. It was an interesting choice given the tax leaks scandal engulfing PwC, which is making headlines globally, and last week forced the resignation of its Australian CEO. But Marles was amongst Continue reading »

Interrogating the public record provides a fundamental challenge to the integrity of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR). It comes in the form of a reality which few wish to acknowledge: the captive Australian strategic imagination – a phenomenon of which Peter Dean, Head of the United States Study Centre at the University of Sydney and Continue reading »

Many contributors have exposed the blatant ethical corruption of recent journalism that presages combat with a rampaging China.  Just as before, now again, there are ‘interested’ parties more than happy to be the beneficiaries of the click-bait journalism on display. Eisenhower cautioned against complacency towards the military-industrial complex. To this we can nowadays add too Continue reading »

Rupert Murdoch has done incalculable harm to the democratic experiment throughout the AUKUS nations and beyond. In Victoria, his propaganda campaigns have made him the magnate who cried wolf. The state’s integrity infrastructure is in perilous condition but Newscorp’s constant invective against Labor governments, and Premier Dan Andrew’s government in particular, has made it more Continue reading »

Last Monday, Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek and Minister for Emergency Management Murray Watt announced an intended spending of $236 million to upgrade the nation’s flood warning gauge networks. This is welcome news, but it must also be recognised that for flood warning to be truly effective we will need to pay more attention Continue reading »

More Indonesians than Americans are likely to vote in key presidential elections next year. But Australia is focusing on distant North America, not adjacent Southeast Asia, the zone where the Titans could clash. India is the world’s largest democracy – population 1.3 billion. It’s growing so fast that it will soon overtake one-party China. Far Continue reading »

In a recent Guardian advert pleading for readers to hand over money to the paper, leading columnist Marina Hyde declared: ‘My absolute favourite thing about the Guardian is not being told what to write.’ Hyde – or Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams, as she prefers not to be known – was, in fact, making ‘the most Continue reading »

Tuesday’s primary races brought mixed results, with left candidates dominating in Pittsburgh and stalling in Philadelphia.

The post How Progressives Won — and Lost — in Purple Pennsylvania appeared first on The Intercept.

Florida’s economy is already paying the price @gilbertoalvolante May 16th update. No workers in Florida. ♬ original sound – gilbertoalvolante In a time of full employment, chasing immigrants out of your state may not be the smartest move: The videos from Florida aren’t hard to find: Dozens of clips of empty fields, abandoned construction sites, and scores of truck drivers calling for boycotts of the state have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok and Twitter over the last month. The common thread? Fear and frustration over the state’s newest anti-immigrant law, signed a week ago by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, which mandates that businesses with 25 or more employees verify the citizenship status of workers through the federal online portal E-Verify or face stronger penalties, among other new restrictions. The new law, which goes into effect on July 1, is the latest move by DeSantis to capitalize on immigration politics as he prepares for a likely but as-yet-unannounced 2024 presidential campaign.