herid @herid@qoto.org

We need public action to improve public health, now in the pandemic and permanently in our COVID-endemic future. These actions should include new rules for safe air in public spaces, continued support for vaccinations, and rules to require masking on transit. Perhaps our future will be brighter--a new longer-lasting vaccine may be developed--but betting on that hope is a bad bet. Protecting people and the economy from needless harm should be more vital than encouraging a false sense of security.

Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again

https://youtu.be/8Nzy1cfnKh4

This is the song that inspired the reference to Vera in Pink Flyod's The Wall.

#SongOfTheDay
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“Instead of pouring more money into militarized forces that brutalize, terrorize, and even murder, we should fund libraries, after-school programs, good jobs, and other investments proven to keep us safe.”

https://theintercept.com/2023/01/31/tyre-nichols-memphis-police/

INSANE: Ron #DeSantis wants #Florida residents to carry firearms without a permit. In Jan alone, there’s been 49 mass shootings and more than 3,400 gun deaths, including 138 dead children.

If Ron DeSantis gets what he wants, expect more dead Americans.

In 2013, before giving some math lectures in Lanzhou, Lisa and I visited Dunhuang and the eastern fringes of the Taklamakan Desert. In preparation for this trip I spent some time reading about the area. I greatly enjoyed Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road. It's an old, romantic book. Here is a passage from it, and some pictures from my trip.

(1/n)

Linda Rondstadt - Blue Bayou

https://youtu.be/Q98s8GyPw64

#SongOfTheDay
#FavoriteMusic 75/

https://t.me/Kyivpost_official/6265 ⚡️🇺🇦"Russia is preparing for maximum escalation, gathering all possible forces, conducting exercises and training." - Oleksiy Danilov said in an interview with the Sky News channel. He believes that Putin may try to launch a large-scale attack from the north, south and east, as happened on February 24, 2022, timing it on the anniversary of the war. #Ukraine #News #War #Russia

Hong Kong had nearly a full year to vaccinate its elderly population before the Omicron outbreak began. By February 2022, only 23% of the elderly age 80+ were fully vaccinated. Result: the highest number of Covid deaths per capita in the world while vaccines were widely available

BREAKING: 9 shot in a mass shooting in Lakeland, Fl

Easier today, Republicans introduced a bill removing all permit and training requirements to carry guns

Guadalupe Pineda - Historia De Un Amor

I absolutely love this song. and kudos to whoever paired the song with that video.

https://youtu.be/HzjE33U_gy8

#SongOfTheDay
#FavoriteMusic 73/

Shocking that a paper by a known anti-vaccine
activist, based on a badly designed self-report survey, made it through peer review to publication. Even as a qualitative researcher I can spot the design flaw in asking people "do you know anyone who died of the jab?" and then treating that as a fact to calculate the number of deaths caused by the vaccine.
It should be withdrawn.
#Covid #AntiVaxxers #PeerReview https://www.thedailybeast.com/springer-nature-investigates-after-anti-vax-professors-study-makes-it-to-journal

when you dine out right now

#anime #pandemic #covid

A few weeks ago @heidilifeldman wrote about the German Nazis coming to power:

“Today’s American Nazis are gaining the same kind of power the German Nazis did in the 1930s.”

And the #media parallels are also strong. The publisher of the Daily Mail in the 1930s was an explicit fascist, a member of a British fascist party. There is strong similarity to Murdoch and Wilks and Koch and Singer.

Political fascism hasn’t changed much—billionaires to dangerous lickspittles. https://www.notesfromcalicomanor.com/2023/01/07/todays-american-nazis-are-gaining-the-same-kind-of-power-the-german-nazis-did-in-the-1930s/

From around this time in 2019.
#Colbert
#ClimateChange

Ry Cooder - Crossroads

https://youtu.be/ITua-r0Ap0w

from the movie "Crossroads" which deserves to be better known if only because of a great soundtrack.

#SongOfTheDay
#FavoriteMusic 73/