Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org

‘Obvious Lie’: Georgia Republicans Slam RNC Official, Call Out Elon Musk For ‘False’ Video Claiming Immigrants Are Voting Illegally https://www.mediaite.com/politics/obvious-lie-georgia-republicans-slam-rnc-official-call-out-elon-musk-for-false-video-claiming-immigrants-are-voting-illegally/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

@briankrebs @zleap my general thoughts on money items: Learn yourself and don‘t listen to a banker or financial advisor. If he is any good, he would be so rich that he would not have to work giving advice. Case closed your honor.

It's probably a surprise to no one, but telescopes have a lot of reflective surfaces just begging for selfies! 🤳

This #SelfieSunday, take a browse through some of our recent favorites from our #RubinTeam 📸

About these selfies:
1: The CNRS-IN2P3 filter team in an LSST Camera filter
2: Selfie in the 144-megapixel detector of the Rubin Commissioning Camera
3: LSST Camera Team's Travis Lange in a camera filter
4: Rubin staff in the telescope's secondary mirror

Astronomers have just discovered the first known "Einstein zigzag."

Due to a rare, lucky cosmic alignment, the combined gravity of two galaxies bent light like spaghetti & split a distant quasar into six different images.

This six-part image could allow a very accurate measure of the expansion of the universe.

https://www.science.org/content/article/first-known-double-gravitational-lens-could-shed-light-universe-s-expansion #science #space #astronomy #physics

I would like to remind everybody where viruses mutate.

I feel like Dr. Seuss when I say: Do they mutate in the air? Do they mutate everywhere? Do they mutate on the ground? Do they mutate all around?

No.

They mutate within living creatures.

The host.

You are a living creature.

You are a host.

When you contract #Covid, you are potentially a Petri dish for such mutations.

It mutates a lot. It's a virus. That's its job; to survive and infect hosts.

You, yes you, are potentially a vector for transmission of a mutated version of the virus every time you get it.

This is the piece that nobody cares to understand.

These new variants come from people who get infected and spread it. They don't magically come from Narnia or a different dimension or trees. They come from people.

You are people.

If you get sick, you are potentially cooking up a mutation of the virus that will then go on and harm another person. Maybe dozens. Maybe thousands.

Is that fucking simple, but nobody pays attention to this. Nobody cares.

Yes, the only ways to stop transmission of this current virus includes doing things that you don't like to do:

Wear a well-fitted #N95 or higher respirator in the presence of others.

Ventilate and clean indoor air.

Monitor CO2.

Avoid potential super-spreader events.

Don't go out when you're possibly sick without wearing a good mask.

Don't assume you don't have the virus if you think or know you've been exposed. (Asymptomatic transmission is at least half of transmission these days.)

Don't be a petri dish. Please. Just don't.

#CovidIsNotOver #MaskUp #Ventilate

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but apparently it’s not obvious enough:

The effectiveness of a vaccine—even the effectiveness for you, personally—doesn’t just depend on you taking it. It depends on other people taking it. The more the better.

Epidemics are complex systems, with feedback effects. https://mas.to/@gleick/113493200280387680

Half-life Alyx is at a historical low price. If you're a VR gamer, this is a must play.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/half-life-alyx/info/

#videogames #vr #halflifeanniversary #halflifealyx

Can we stop hearing about how Musk was forced to pay billions for a platform that wasn’t “worth” that sum because advertisers, subscribers, blah blah blah. Musk bought the platform to use it for exactly the purposes he’s used it for, extremist right wing propaganda and organization, and to disrupt the spread of real time truth, news, and organization of resistance to government by tech billionaires and fascism. His backers paid for that reason. He didn’t “lose money”; he’ll see it returned ++.

We're going to have an absolute idiot with no medical experience responsible for National Health who's planning on firing Federal Heatlh workers nationwide.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

"Teen in critical condition with Canada's first presumptive human case of bird flu "- Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/teen-critical-condition-with-canadas-first-presumptive-human-case-bird-flu-2024-11-12/

#h5n1 #birdflu #trump #kennedy

@DaveWhittle

That will be Milky Way & Andromeda in 5 billion years.

#galaxies
#Andromeda
#MilkyWay

We’re launching this new apparel item as a symbol of resistance. Every shirt worn is a reminder that these lands are our lands, not a profit center for private interests. All proceeds support our work to safeguard public lands, watersheds, and wildlife from the grip of extractive industries and bad policies.

https://www.bonfire.com/store/wwp/

UK must keep trade open and EU close, Bank of England says

Britain should stand up for free trade and rebuild ties with the European Union as the global economy fragments, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said in a speech on Thursday (14 November) that cast an eye towards Donald Trump's White House return.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/uk-must-keep-trade-open-and-eu-close-bank-of-england-says/

Historically, presidential cabinet picks are background checked by the FBI
—but Donald Trump’s administration has instead opted to rely on private companies to examine his appointments,
a decision that could allow him to practically shoe-in some of his most controversial candidates.

Trump and his team are attempting to avoid a process that they believe is both excessively slow and intrusive, and which turns up dirt that could later be turned into political leverage by their opponents, according to sources that spoke with CNN.

The FBI has conducted the president’s background checks since the President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration,
providing critical security clearance to confirm that malicious foreign agents aren’t infiltrating the highest rungs of government.

But the decision to move away from traditional security expectations has the dual effect of helping the incoming administration circumvent a particularly grueling process
-- for a pool of candidates that are, by all means, dangerously bizarre and inexperienced.

His choice for director of national intelligence, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, regularly amplifies Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Her role would have her oversee 18 intelligence agencies, but critics
—even in the House Intelligence Committee
—have drawn attention to the danger of her nomination considering her particular affinity for foreign dictators like Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s pick for attorney general, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, has been the subject of several major controversies.
Perhaps most notably, he was the subject of a House ethics investigation that accused him of sex trafficking a minor,
and was also faced with a related investigation by the Justice Department.
(The conveniently timed appointment—and Gaetz’s subsequent resignation—had the added benefit of killing the House investigation into Gaetz’s alleged misconduct with women and minors.)

And Trump tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr
—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist with a wild history that included propping up dead bear cubs in New York City’s Central Park for fun
—to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
Last week, it was leaked that the administration did not believe Kennedy would pass the bar for a security clearance
—but that could all change with Trump’s decision to veer away from the federal standard.

National security experts in Washington believe that the decision to outsource the clearances is further evidence that Trump
—who has a known history of benefitingfrom Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
—“doesn’t want harmony.”
They “don’t want the FBI to coordinate a norm; they want to hammer the norm,” Dan Meyer, a national security attorney, told CNN.
https://newrepublic.com/post/188477/trump-skip-important-step-cabinet-vetting

The RNA technology that was used to develop most of the covid vaccines is driving an absolute revolution in medicine right now. A vaccine for malaria, the disease that has killed more people than anything else in history. Personalized vaccines for cancers — the list goes on and we're just getting started. Much of this development is locked up in commercial pharma companies — there are papers, of course but replicating them in practice, let alone continuing development, is very hard without active access to the team involved. It's also very expensive. A lot of that development money comes from the US government. Now, yes it's a problem that that funding is going to private companies that are ransoming patients for their life savings in exchange for life-saving medicine, but this is as much a regulatory problem as it is a structural one. As long as those teams exist, the possibilities of these tools exist also.

Having an American government that wants to actively dismantle vaccine-related research and eliminate its funding is an existential threat to humanity:

https://mas.to/@Fitnessfoundry/113484127007301813

"The museum has removed references to Martin Luther King Jr., Japanese internment, Native Americans, union organizers, and birth control, because presenting American history honestly would make Republicans upset. "

Do not yield in advance. This is a bow to the far-right as much as the block on the endorsement of Harris in the Washington Post.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/its-going-to-take-a-constant-fight-to-preserve-the-historical-record

#whitewashing #fascism #farright #history