Random News Items

[Tracker]

11 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xz3/a-defunct-video-hosting-site-is-flooding-normal-websites-with-hardcore-porn

That's

Quote

 just horrible. What is the URL?

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-flood-tv-reporter-fired-b1889202.html

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/26/court-orders-us-capitol-rioter-to-unlock-his-laptop-with-his-face/

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/26/court-orders-us-capitol-rioter-to-unlock-his-laptop-with-his-face/

time for him to face the music.

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbsa-strike-vote-border-1.6118764

Quote

Canada's reopening plans could be hindered as thousands of border officers gird themselves for potential strike action.

The two unions representing more than 8,500 Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) employees announced this morning that the majority of their members have given them a strike mandate.

That means they could begin strike action as soon as Aug. 6, mere days before Canada reopens the border to fully vaccinated U.S. residents, said the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Customs and Immigration Union (CIU) in a news release.

Many workers would be deemed essential, but the union said strike action could slow down commercial traffic at the border and ports of entry; hit international mail and parcel deliveries from Canada Post and other major shipping companies; and disrupt the collection of duties and taxes on goods entering Canada.

The unions' members — who have been without a contract since June 2018 — include border service officers at airports, land entry points, marine ports and commercial ports of entry; inland enforcement officers; intelligence officers; investigators; trade officers; hearings officers; and non-uniformed members.

Their essential services agreement allows for 2,600 members to take full strike action, while the essential workers can take work-to-rule actions in their workplace.

 

[Fred C Dobbs]

Quote

 

 

[Mark F]

 

"The United States will return to Iraq some 17,000 archaeological treasures dating back 4,000 years and looted in recent decades, an "unprecedented" restitution, the culture minister in Baghdad said Wednesday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi was set to take back the artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia on his aircraft, when he returns Thursday from Washington where he met US President Joe Biden.

"This is the largest return of antiquities to Iraq," said Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nazim, hailing it as "the result of months of efforts by the Iraqi authorities in conjunction with their embassy in Washington".

well done.

 

https://www.barrons.com/news/us-returns-to-iraq-treasure-trove-of-antiquities-baghdad-01627476907?tesla=y

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/residential-school-survivors-catholic-church-millions-1.6121678

Quote

The Roman Catholic Church spent millions of dollars that were supposed to go to residential school survivors on lawyers, administration, a private fundraising company and unapproved loans, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

The documents include a host of other revelations. They appear to contradict the Catholic Church's public claims about money paid to survivors.

"There are also a large number of serious accounting discrepancies that are alarming to Canada," states one document, a 53-page federal government "factum" summarizing the evidence in a 2015 court matter.

 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

Chinese billionaire Sun Dawu sentenced to 18 years in jail for crimes including "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and illegally occupying farmland, court says. https://nbcnews.to/2WziBdi

Texas deputy AG Reitz apologizes after calling Simone Biles a "national embarrassment." https://nbcnews.to/3BVzhvO

 

1 hour ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/residential-school-survivors-catholic-church-millions-1.6121678

 

Lawyers make 30% on both sides.

[bustamente]

Has anyone seen the numbers and wait time at Winnipeg's Er's and Uc's, I don't how to fix the heath care system and apparently the people in charge don't have a clue either

[Tracker]

10 hours ago, bustamente said:

Has anyone seen the numbers and wait time at Winnipeg's Er's and Uc's, I don't how to fix the heath care system and apparently the people in charge don't have a clue either

Not that difficult to fix, but it would require time, patience and money.

[JCon]

11 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Not that difficult to fix, but it would require time, patience and money.

The NDP have not yet committed to increase healthcare spending. They didn't in 2019, for sure. 

[Tracker]

7 minutes ago, JCon said:

The NDP have not yet committed to increase healthcare spending. They didn't in 2019, for sure. 

You don't put all your cards on the table until the hand is called.

[JCon]

3 minutes ago, Tracker said:

You don't put all your cards on the table until the hand is called.

They didn't during the previous election (2019) either. 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

13 hours ago, bustamente said:

Has anyone seen the numbers and wait time at Winnipeg's Er's and Uc's, I don't how to fix the heath care system and apparently the people in charge don't have a clue either

I've heard STB is bad but it kinda always was. It's the only real hospital this side of the Red.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/sask-man-charged-after-flying-helicopter-to-dairy-queen-to-buy-ice-cream-cake-rcmp-1.5542898

[Tracker]

Lawsuit says OAN touted a 'mathematician' to call the election rigged — but he's really a swing set installer
   
One week after Joe Biden was sworn in as President One America News (OAN) aired a segment featuring a man they introduced as an "expert mathematician" who claimed to have uncovered evidence of election rigging and that Donald Trump actually won re-election. That man, according to a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems Tuesday against the far right wing media outlet, is not an expert mathematician, but a swing set installer and convicted drug dealer.

Back on January 27 OAN hosted Ed Solomon, "who claimed to have found evidence within precinct-level reporting that the election was rigged by an algorithm," VICE reports. "The basis of Solomon's claim is that he found several precincts throughout the country reporting exactly the same results at various times throughout the vote tabulation process."

OAN host Christina Bobb asked Solomon what the statistical probability of such an occurrence might be.

"You can use the binomial probability formula, and the chance of that event happening is one over ten to an exponent so large there's not enough stars in the universe—there's not enough atoms in the universe to explain the number. It can't happen naturally," Solomon replied.

Lawsuit says OAN touted a 'mathematician' to call the election rigged — but he's really a swing set installer - Alternet.org

[Mark H.]

50 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Lawsuit says OAN touted a 'mathematician' to call the election rigged — but he's really a swing set installer
   
One week after Joe Biden was sworn in as President One America News (OAN) aired a segment featuring a man they introduced as an "expert mathematician" who claimed to have uncovered evidence of election rigging and that Donald Trump actually won re-election. That man, according to a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems Tuesday against the far right wing media outlet, is not an expert mathematician, but a swing set installer and convicted drug dealer.

Back on January 27 OAN hosted Ed Solomon, "who claimed to have found evidence within precinct-level reporting that the election was rigged by an algorithm," VICE reports. "The basis of Solomon's claim is that he found several precincts throughout the country reporting exactly the same results at various times throughout the vote tabulation process."

OAN host Christina Bobb asked Solomon what the statistical probability of such an occurrence might be.

"You can use the binomial probability formula, and the chance of that event happening is one over ten to an exponent so large there's not enough stars in the universe—there's not enough atoms in the universe to explain the number. It can't happen naturally," Solomon replied.

Lawsuit says OAN touted a 'mathematician' to call the election rigged — but he's really a swing set installer - Alternet.org

LOL. When the kids play touch football here - they have a play called 'infinity' which means someone is going deep. 

I prefer their interpretation...

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Mark H. said:

LOL. When the kids play touch football here - they have a play called 'infinity' which means someone is going deep. 

I prefer their interpretation...

.......and beyond.....

[Tracker]

Scientists Reversed Aging in Mouse Brains With Poo Transplants From Young Mice

In 1895, on turning 50, Elie Metchnikoff became increasingly anxious about aging. As a result, the Russian Nobel prize-winning scientist, and one of the founders of immunology, turned his attention away from immunology and towards gerontology – a term that he coined.

He was fascinated by the role that intestinal bacteria play in health and disease and suggested that people from parts of eastern Europe lived longer because they ate a lot of fermented foods containing lactic acid bacteria.

Although popular at the time, this theory linking gut microbes to healthy aging was largely ignored by scientists until relatively recently. We now recognize the importance that the trillions of bacteria, known as the gut microbiome, have in regulating health and disease.

Evidence has been accumulating for almost a decade that the microbiome composition changes with age. In 2012, research by my colleagues at University College Cork showed that diversity in the microbiome was linked to health outcomes in later life, including frailty.

But we still didn't know much about the effect of the microbiome on brain aging.

In 2017, we revisited Metchnikoff's ideas, putting them in the context of brain aging, and showed that aging induced changes in the microbiota and immune system, and was associated with cognitive decline and anxiety.  However, this study, like many in the field, only showed an association between aging and these factors. It did not prove that one thing caused the other.

In a subsequent study, we went a step further in showing that a microbiota-targeted diet enriched with the prebiotic inulin (a prebiotic feeds the beneficial bacteria in the gut) could lessen the effects of aging in the brains of middle-aged mice. Yet it still wasn't clear whether the microbiota itself caused the slowing of brain aging.

In our latest study, we show that by taking the microbiome from young mice and transplanting them into old mice, many of the effects of aging on learning and memory and immune impairments can be reversed. Using a maze, we showed that this fecal microbiota transplant from young to old mice led to the old mice finding a hidden platform faster.

The immune connection
Aging is associated with an increase in inflammation across all systems in the body, including the brain. It is clear that immune processes play a key role in brain aging, with a growing emphasis on the role of a specific immune cell, the microglia.

Ironically, these are the same class of cells that Metchnikoff visualized down the microscope, albeit in other tissues, in the late 1800s. We now also know that the activation of these cells is under constant regulation by the gut microbiome.

So the next part of the puzzle was to see if the negative effects of aging on immunity are also reversible by transplanting the microbiota from young mice to old. Indeed, a lot of the inflammation was lessened.

Finally, we showed that chemicals in a region of the brain involved in learning and memory (the hippocampus) were more like that of young mice following the microbiota transplant. Our results show conclusively that the microbiome is important for a healthy brain in old age.

Was Metchnikoff's step away from immunology premature in understanding the secrets of ageing? Indeed, the relative contribution of the immune changes seen in the mice receiving young microbiota to the overall rejuvenation effects deserves further study.

But two big questions remain. What are the exact mechanisms at play? And can we translate these remarkable findings to humans?
Working with a controlled situation of mice – which have very defined genetics, diets, and microbiome – is very different from looking at humans. We need to be careful to not over-interpret these findings. We are not advocating fecal transplants for people who want to rejuvenate their brain.

Instead, these studies point towards a future where there will be a focus on microbiota-targeted dietary or bacteria-based treatments that will promote optimum gut health and immunity in order to keep the brain young and healthy. Such strategies will be a more palatable elixir indeed.

Metchnikoff's overall tenets appear to be correct: protecting your gut microbes may be the secret to the fountain of youth. With advances in healthcare, longevity has markedly increased.

And although we cannot stop the march of time, we can develop treatments that will protect our brains from deterioration and we have more than a gut feeling targeting the microbiome may be one such way.

However, much work is still needed, though, to better understand how gut microbes are able to press rewind on some of the hallmarks of an aging brain.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://boingboing.net/2021/08/18/a-man-obsessed-with-guinness-world-records-balances-101-rolls-of-toilet-paper-on-his-head.html

[Tracker]

E.T., Phone Hell? Creationist Ken Ham Says Jesus Can’t Save Space Aliens
 

Creationist Ken Ham, who built a giant Noah’s Ark-themed attraction in Kentucky, said he doesn’t think there’s life outside of Earth.  And if such life existed, they shouldn’t expect any form of salvation from Jesus Christ.

“Jesus came to save us, not to another planet to save another race of beings,” Ham wrote on Twitter, adding that it’s clear “salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race,” aka human earthlings. 

On the bright side, however, Ham said they won’t need redemption anyway ... since they don’t exist. The Bible, according to his strict interpretation, says only Earth was made to be inhabited, “and the other celestial bodies were created for signs, seasons, days, and years,” he tweeted.

Ham was responding to a recent poll that found deeply religious Americans are less likely to believe in intelligent life outside of Earth. He has made similar comments before, writing in 2014, “Jesus did not become the ‘GodKlingon’ or the ‘GodMartian’! Only descendants of Adam can be saved.”

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/23/business/harvard-professor-predicted-covid-disinformation-web-heres-what-may-be-coming-next/

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://nbc-2.com/news/weird/2021/08/27/parents-ordered-to-pay-30441-after-getting-rid-of-sons-porn-collection/

Mom! Dad! They were first editions!

[FrostyWinnipeg]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/27/us/sirhan-sirhan-parole-rfk-assassination/index.html