Sunday, June 22
Science
Ron Magill/ Zoo Miami
Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even see a baby tortoise.
Goliath, the 135-year-old tortoise, became a father. Electricity was still a novel invention when Goliath was born, and it took until the age of AI for him to find a mate he was willing to breed with. Earlier this month, Zoo Miami welcomed the first Galápagos tortoise hatchling ever born there, a win for the species and for handlers who had been unsuccessfully introducing Goliath to female tortoises for years. With Sweet Pea, the hatchling’s near-centenarian mother, Goliath finally found his match. The zoo submitted the pair to the Guinness Book of World Records to officially make them “The Oldest First-Time Parents in History.”
Breakthrough HIV prevention drug gets FDA approval. This week, US regulators greenlit Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that was at least 96% effective at protecting against HIV infection in clinical trials. The current leading HIV prevention drug is a daily pill known as PrEP that’s 99% effective when taken on time every day, but its efficacy plummets if you skip doses. The convenience of Lenacapavir—which was Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” in 2024—could, in practice, make it more effective than PrEP if the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, broadens access. The drug is now available in the US…but right now it costs $28,000 per year.
Blood test could detect cancer three years earlier. Tumors shed genetic material that can show up in a person’s bloodstream months to years before they’re diagnosed with cancer, according to a new Johns Hopkins study. When analyzing the blood samples of 26 patients who were diagnosed with cancer within six months of blood collection, the researchers detected tumor DNA in eight people (or 31% of the time). The team also had three-year-old blood samples on hand for six of those eight people, and microscopic cancer mutations were detected in four of them. The discovery paves the way for early intervention at a time when tumors are “more likely to be curable,” one of the study’s authors said.—ML
Robert Reich
What's really going on
Friends,
The United States is now at war with Iran.
A single person — Donald J. Trump — has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and done it without the consent of Congress, our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people.
Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused.
I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Even if our president was a wise a judicious man, surrounded by thoughtful advisors with impeccable integrity and wisdom, this would be a highly dangerous move.
At A Glance
What summer was like the year you were born.
Watch this year's summer solstice event at Stonehenge.
Why humans only have 10 toes.
How the cicada's screech entered popular music.
The rare British language used as code in World War II.
The coolest small towns in the US.
Mapping the strongest-ever hurricanes in the Atlantic.
The origins and growth of Juneteenth.
Why bestie psychologists Freud and Jung broke up.
How to cope with post-vacation blues.
The features that make our voices unique.
Nine airplanes that transformed aviation.
Are hotels cheaper than Airbnbs?
How neurons flush waste during sleep.
In The NEWS
Summer officially begins with the start of the solstice.
The summer solstice marks the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing the longest day and shortest night of the year as the Earth's tilt positions the northern half most directly toward the sun. The word “solstice” comes from Latin, combining “sol” (sun) and “stitium” (pause or stop), representing the moment when the sun appears to pause before reversing direction. Learn more here.
Europe holds nuclear talks as Iran and Israel trade strikes.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said yesterday Iran will not consider diplomacy efforts over its nuclear program while under attack by Israel. The comments came after Araghchi and his European counterparts met in Geneva to reach a resolution that would prevent Iran from developing its nuclear weapons capabilities. Separately, Israel struck areas in western Iran, while Iran struck areas in southern Israel yesterday. See the latest updates on the conflict here.
Judge orders release of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil.
A federal judge ruled Friday the federal government failed to justify detaining Khalil, a former Columbia graduate and legal US resident who was arrested in early March over pro-Palestinian protests. The Trump administration has kept Khalil in a Louisiana ICE detention center as it seeks to deport him. While the judge has barred deportation based on his activism, he is allowing the administration to continue pursuing deportation based on allegations Khalil lied on his green card application.
UK lawmakers back bill allowing assisted death for terminally ill adults.
The House of Commons voted 314–291 Friday to approve a bill allowing terminally ill adults in England and Wales, who are over 18 and expected to live less than six months, to request assisted death. The bill now heads to the House of Lords, where its unelected members can review and suggest changes but have limited power to delay or amend bills approved by the elected House of Commons. If passed, the UK would join a handful of countries and some US states that have passed such laws.
World's largest digital camera to release first images Monday.
The world’s largest digital camera was installed in March at an observatory in Chile to capture 1,000 detailed images per night of the southern sky as part of a decade-long survey. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera is roughly the size of a small car and weighs over 6,000 pounds. It is also the world's highest resolution camera—roughly 400 ultra-high-definition televisions would be needed to display one of the camera's full-size photos. See how the camera works here (w/video).
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Discrimination in America
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Yes, I believe it is.
It is obvious that discrimination focuses on whites' treatment of blacks... but it is not so clear that discrimination can focus of black's treatment of whites as well.
Discrimination is a door that swings both ways, not just one way.
There are also examples of discrimination being white on white as well as black on black, although we don't really think of it like that... it may happen more within the race than between the races.
- We discriminate among the various religious groups, especially in the Baptist denomination.
- We discriminate among those that are educated and those who are not.
- We discriminate among those who are wealthy and those who are not.
- We discriminate among those who are obese and those who are not.
Discrimination is NOT JUST A BLACK/WHITE THING...
What amazes me about discrimination as it relates to races, it would appear, at least to me, that there is more hate in the black community against whites than there is in the white community against blacks.
Blacks create song lyrics that say... KILL WHITEY and I don't believe the same is true about white song lyrics.
The BLACK PANTHERS were a group that wanted to KILL ALL WHITES.
SLAVERY was a terrible concept and many of us wish that it had never happened, but slavery has been around almost since the beginning of time where the wealthy owned the poor. The USA should not have participated in slavery, but it did. Everything that the BLACKS HATE about the whites, comes from slavery.
- HOWEVER, light black dislike and discriminate against dark blacks... go figure?
- Some blacks think it is extra special to have a white wife... go figure?
- Some black churches preach killing the white man... go figure?
OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS here in the USA gives us the ability to say and write negatives thoughts about either race. Sometimes, those thoughts are classified as HATE SPEECH... oftentimes, they are not unless they are spoken by a white person.
As long as we have different kinds of people immigrating and living in the USA, we will have discrimination...
That may be a sad fact, but it a truthful one.
We Are Past the Event Horizon”: Controversial AI Visionary Says the Singularity is Here, and It’s Not What We Expected
Artificial intelligence may have crossed a technological threshold popularly known as “Singularity,” according to one expert who says we have surpassed the point where machines merely assist us, with intelligent machines now exceeding human capabilities.
The claims were made by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who in a recent blog post wrote that AI is already demonstrating intelligence that goes beyond what humans can do naturally, but that for now, things aren’t looking as strange as some might have expected once we reached this point.
Saturday, June 21
Green Energy Amusements
Over the last several years, there has been a push in this country, primarily from the Democrats, to END PETROLEUM CRUDE OIL and NATURAL GAS in favor of green energy:
- Electric Vehicles
- Solar Panels
- Windmills
- Hydro
While at the same time, there has been a movement to push for ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and HUMANOID ROBOTS...
For a while, all the experts said AI Humanoid Robots would not take JOBS but it they did, it would not happen before 2040.
NOW... those same experts are saying that AI Humanoid Robots will take millions of jobs in the next few years...
QUITE A BIG CHANGE...
Similarly, green energy experts that were convinced going green would SAVE THE PLANET... are now backed into the corner because of AI and Humanoid robots.
MEANING WHAT EXACTLY???
The energy requirement needed to SUSTAIN AI ALONE, can never be met by GREEN ENERGY...
Our current electric grid does not have the power to sustain 80-100% electric vehicle usage much less AI...
Did the Green Energy Folks not do their homework or their due diligence?
It makes one wonder that they DID NOT!!!
Surely these experts were smart enough to calculate ELECTRICAL USAGE of EVs and AI robots or just AI alone...
I mean, isn't that why we call them EXPERTS?
So, here is our DILEMMA...
Do we want to save the planet by using green energy?
<OR>
Do we want to save our minds by using AI?
Maybe we should pay attention to people with COMMON SENSE rather than EXPERTS...
Just a thought....
Ponderings
Who is the leader of the Democratic Party?
Tradition shares that the leader of either party is either the current or recently removed president. Following that logic, then Joe Biden is the current leader of the party. However, Joe Biden is currently mentally incapacitated... to say the least.
So, does this distinction fall on the shoulders of the Chair of the DNC... or the House Minority Leader... or the Senate Minority Leader???
Perhaps, the most outspoken member of the party like AOC???
Maybe the DNC's largest financial contributor?
In the 6 months after the election of 2024, it is clear that the Democratic Party had NO LEADER(s) nor do they have a PLAN OF ACTION to move forward except the following:
Fight Trump in the courts and in the media as much as possible and delay the:
- deportation of illegal immigrants
- reduction of government waste
- passing of tax cuts
- improvement of the economy
This is the same strategy that lost them the 2024 election and subsequently has caused several people as well as financial supporters to leave the party or substantially reduce their support and financial gifts.
The Democratic Party has turned into the party of the ELITE, the wealthy and privileged, and progressives that clearly want to move closer and closer to SOCIALISM.
If they really want to be the party of the American People then their FIRST PRIORITY is to push for a law that limits the number of terms a person of Congress can serve whether that person be in the House or Senate.
Term Limits will help this country IMPROVE more than taxing the wealthy, which should also be done by eliminating TAX SHELTERS...
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