Archive for January 11th, 2023
Two views of The Great Wave
What do you notice first? Look at the image for a while, then read this post.
New study links inflammation to decreased cognitive functioning in those with depression and obesity
Laura Staloch writes in PsyPost:
A new study from researchers in China attempts to understand the relationship between major depressive disorder, obesity, and cognitive functioning. Examining participant body mass, biological inflammation markers, major depressive disorder diagnosis, and processing speed revealed that the higher the body mass when diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), the slower the processing speed.
The cause of this result may be due to increased levels of three biomarkers implicated in the pro-inflammatory response: tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-8, and macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1β.
The new findings have been published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
According to the study’s authors, research suggests those with MDD have a 58% increased risk of subsequent obesity, and those labeled obese have a 55% increased risk of developing depression later. Additionally, both obesity and MDD have been implicated in slower or decreased cognitive functioning. As all three conditions, leave individuals vulnerable to other mental and physical diseases, Xiaofeng Lan and colleagues felt that better understanding the interplay of these factors would be a valuable contribution to the literature and future patient care.
Participant data was gathered from . . .
I include this in the “food” category because a good whole-food plant-based diet in anti-inflammatory and, because of its low caloric density compared to other lifestyle diets, it assists in weight loss. More information on the diet and how it treats chronic diseases can be found in the book How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease, by Michael Greger, MD.
A somber post: We’re Living Through the End of Civilization, and We Should Be Acting Like It
In OK Doomer Jessica Wildfire writes of what is now happening and what it portends for the future:
There’s no question anymore. This civilization is ending. You can relax. It’s not up for debate. It’s not a question of hope vs. doom.
It just is.
I’m writing this for a simple reason. The sooner everyone accepts the end of this civilization, the better. Humans don’t have to go extinct, but the way we’re living has to change. There’s no hope for this way of life, full of reckless consumption and convenience well beyond the planet’s means. The harder we fight, the more denial and delusional thinking we engage in, the worse we’re going to make it. Downplaying the truth has only made things worse. It makes everyone complacent. So, I’m going to explain things in the bluntest way possible.
First, let’s talk about Covid.
We have enough information about Covid to know we should’ve been taking it far more seriously. As one science writer shows in a thorough review of available research, we’re dealing with the most dangerous disease in modern history. It’s the most contagious virus scientists have ever seen. It does more damage than HIV, by hijacking our immune system and building reservoirs in virtually every organ in the body, from the brain to the liver. Viruses like HIV don’t cause severe illness at first. They cause mild illness. The true damage doesn’t become apparent until months later. Scientists know this now.
This virus has evolved beyond our antibody therapies and vaccines, and it’s even evolving beyond Paxlovid. As one study in Science says, “unselective use is expected to rapidly lead to emergence of drug resistance.” These are facts, and they don’t care how we feel about them. If anything, Covid wants everyone to keep living in fear of the truth. It loves our denial. This is going to be the worst year of the pandemic yet. Everyone’s tired, but we’re more vulnerable than ever. There are tools for us to make it through, but most humans aren’t interested.
Covid minimizers ask if we’re going to wear masks forever. Yes, we are. They’ve left us with absolutely no alternative.
Okay, let’s talk about the weather. A bomb cyclone followed by atmospheric rivers have dumped historic amounts of water on California over the last week. According to The New York Times, it’s going to cost at least $1 billion, and some sources estimate the damage will run far higher. The state already lost $18 billion in climate disasters last year. The flooding there is expected to go on for another week. More than 100,000 homes have been destroyed, and it’s hard to know how many people have fled. The heavy precipitation might replenish the snowpack, but at the expense of the state’s infrastructure.
What we’re seeing now has the potential to become a megaflood, something climate scientists predicted in Science last year. They discuss California’s Great Flood of 1861-1862, “characterized by weeks-long sequences of winter storms” that transformed parts of the state “into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length.” Their models predict these megafloods will happen much more often now, thanks to us. One happened in Pakistan last year.
We could be watching one now.
In the southwest, it’s the opposite problem. Entire lakes are drying up. States can’t make simple water conservation plans. The federal government has finally stepped in, but it could be too late. According to a story in The Washington Post, “The negotiations will ultimately have to weigh cuts in rapidly growing urban areas against those in farming communities that produce much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables.” Parts of Arizona were already relying on trucked water. Now even that’s going away. Affluent suburbanites are losing their minds. They’re spending thousands of dollars to drill wells to nowhere.
Neighborhoods, cities, and entire states have already started bickering over water. Last year they began to demand the federal government divert the Mississippi into the desert so they could build waterparks. Then to everyone’s shock, the Mississippi river itself dried up to the point that ships couldn’t pass. Saltwater started leaching into people’s drinking water in some areas.
Soon, these places won’t have water at all.
That already happened last summer. In cities like Monterrey, people were lucky if they could find buckets to collect water from trucks. Their taps were completely dry. According to a piece in Scientific American, American cities are increasingly failing to provide clean drinking water, even while they claim brown sludge “meets federal standards.” They’re under constant boil water notices.
These things aren’t front page news.
They should be.
In Utah, the Great Salt Lake has shriveled to 25 percent of its normal size. In a few years, residents will have to evacuate. According to Live Science, the lake “could be set to disappear within the next five years, exposing millions of people to the toxic dust trapped in the drying lake bed.” Why is the dust toxic?
It’s laced with arsenic.
If the state wants to save what’s left of the lake and avoid a humanitarian disaster, they have to . . .
Blockbuster NYTimes Story Accidentally Leaked Phone Numbers of Russian Soldiers Criticizing War
I noticed when Margaret Sullivan was Public Editor — the equivalent of ombudsman — of the NY Times, that neither editors nor reporters would admit they erred. Rarely there would be a single grudging admission, but mostly any criticism was brushed aside, even when the criticism pointed out a flagrant error.
And the Times maintains that attitude. Joseph Cox reports in Motherboard:
A blockbuster investigation from the New York Times in September, 2022, inadvertently exposed the apparent phone numbers of Russian soldiers as well as the apparent civilian family members they were speaking to, Motherboard has learned. Some of these people were providing a frank assessment of the ongoing Ukraine war, and blunt criticisms of their superiors including President Putin himself. The exposure potentially put the people at risk of reprisal from their own government and other third parties.
The news highlights not only the risks phones pose in wartime, but also the security hazards that can be posed by journalists handling leaked information. Last week, for example, dozens of Russian soldiers were killed in an attack by Ukrainian forces; the Kremlin said they were targeted based on cell phone data. “For Russian troops, cellphone use is a persistent, lethal danger,” the Times wrote.
When contacted by Motherboard, the Times initially said that it took steps to delete the metadata but failed to scrub several audio files. It said that the metadata was up for only a “few hours.”
“Before publication, we worked to remove identifying information from the story. We later learned that some buried metadata was live on the site for a few hours, and took prompt steps to remove it,” Charlie Stadtlander, director, external communications, newsroom, at the New York Times initially told Motherboard in a statement.
Motherboard then found that additional phone numbers and internal notes for fact checkers—which in some cases seemingly included not only the number of the apparent soldier but also the person they were speaking to, as well as their supposed relation—remained online in the article’s source code as of Wednesday afternoon, months after publication. When contacted again by Motherboard, the Times edited the piece to remove that metadata from the source code, and replace it with “null.”
In response to the second request for comment about the further exposure in the source code, Stadtlander provided a nearly identical statement that only removed the “few hours” section..
“Before publication, we worked to remove identifying information from the story. We later learned that some buried metadata was live on the site and took prompt steps to remove it,” Stadtlander wrote.
Motherboard found what appears to be multiple phone numbers in the source code.
Security experts told Motherboard the exposure is dangerous.
“This metadata error is a regrettable and entirely avoidable cockup on the part of the New York Times,” Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS, told Motherboard in an online chat. “The Times says it spent almost two months on translating the recordings—well, it should have spent another 20 minutes on scrubbing the metadata.”
In its investigation, the Times says it . . .
Tempeh Greens now made
A few days ago I posted a recipe that I intended to cook, and now I’ve cooked it. Above you see the ingredients listed below, with red beets (2) a new addition. I came across them while I was gathering the ingredients, and I thought, “Why not?”
From the earlier post, with minor additions to amounts and times revised (and thyme and chipotles omitted because I forgot; the two jalapeños do provide good warmth):
about 1.5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
about 10 oz diced tempeh (chickpea and rye)
3 BBQ onions chopped
6-8 mushrooms, sliced
2 jalapeños, quartered lengthwise and then chopped
5 dried tomatoes
7 cloves Russian red garlic
about 3-4″ ginger root
1 knob of fresh turmeric root
Sauté the above until mushrooms loosen up. Then add:
1 small bunch celery, chopped (I used all the celery in the photo)
about a dozen brussels sprouts, sliced thin
1 bunch red kale, chopped
Sauté some more. Then add:
pulp of 1 lemon
about 1-1.5 cups veggie broth (don’t want a soup, just enough for simmering)
about 2-3 tablespoons dried marjoram
about 2 teaspoons Spanish smoked hot paprika
a good amount of ground black pepper
tamari
Simmer for 15 minutes. Add
about 2 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves
Simmer 15 minutes more.
It tastes good. The beets were an excellent idea; they added a lot to the dish. Photo shows the finished dish.
Lead and cadmium in chocolate: A response to the report from Consumer Reports
WorldWideChocolate.com offers a rebuttal to the Consumer Reports article:
In December 2022, Consumer Reports (CR) published an article indicating 28 chocolate bars were tested, and many had “high” levels of cadmium and/or lead.
Some points to know, which will be covered in further detail below:
- CR is using California’s maximum allowable dose levels (MADL) as their baseline
- They do not explain this threshold, nor is this level based in science
- CR only focuses on chocolate
- There is no context of how other foods are common sources of dietary cadmium uptake
- CR does not cover how the human body removes toxic elements from your system
- Nor do they mention how chocolate supports these mechanisms
CR neglects to include any “big picture” relative view – merely chocolate + cadmium & lead. Plus, we need to interpret these results with data & science: . . .
Conservatives Clarify That They’re Pro-Boss, Not Pro-Market
Eric Levitz writes in Intelligencer in New York magazine:
Progressives have long held that the right’s economic theories are just elaborate rationalizations for funneling money to the elite. The argument goes like this: In any capitalist society, business owners and senior managers will inevitably have economic interests that run contrary to those of ordinary workers. The less firms have to spend on wages for common laborers, the more they can increase compensation for executives and dividends for investors. Similarly, the less income governments progressively redistribute, the higher the wealthy’s posttax earnings.
Economic elites therefore have a strong incentive to fund political movements that minimize the bargaining power of workers and the fiscal ambitions of governments. And given their outsize share of national income, the rich also have copious financial means to bankroll such political activities.
In a democracy, however, it is untenable for a political movement committed to benefiting the few at the expense of the many to identify as such. Rather, such a movement would need to manufacture theories for why policies that appear to serve the interests of a tiny elite actually serve those of society as a whole.
In practice, a pro-plutocracy movement would need a theoretical justification for why it is generally bad for governments to interfere with “free markets.” After all, ordinary workers can exert more influence over democratic governments than they can over private investors. When state officials make a decision about how to allocate a society’s scarce resources, the masses can reward or punish them in “one person, one vote” elections. When private investors make such decisions, however, they are rewarded or punished by markets in which, effectively, one dollar equals one vote. Thus, one would expect pro-plutocracy movements to sing paeans to the efficiency, creativity, and justice of free markets. They might produce economic models showing that workers are better off without state-mandated minimum wages or theories detailing the logistical impossibility of state economic planning or treatises celebrating the indispensability of competition for innovation.
But these ideas would all just be means to an end. The movement’s ultimate commitment wouldn’t be to maximizing innovation, open competition, or economic liberty but rather to advancing the invidious interests of elite business owners and bosses. Were the movement ever forced to choose between upholding free-market ideals and safeguarding class domination, it would abruptly dispense with the former. The inequality would be the point.
As an account of American conservatism, I think this narrative is a tad unfair (there are some genuine insights in right-wing economic theory and some libertarian intellectuals who genuinely oppose elite rent seeking). But in the wake of the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed ban on noncompete agreements, conservatives have been making a compelling case for the vulgar Marxist point of view.
Last week, the FTC proposed a rule that would ban companies from subjecting workers to noncompete agreements. Typically nestled into the small print of labor contracts, such agreements prohibit workers from leaving their employers to work for a competitor or start a rival business. Initially conceived as a means of preventing a firm’s high-level executives from smuggling trade secrets to a competitor, noncompetes have trickled down into every segment of the labor market. Fast-food workers have found themselves barred from taking jobs with rival chains. Manuel laborers hired to shovel dirt have been sued by their former employers for taking better jobs with competing firms. Guards earning minimum wage have been forbidden from taking another security position within a 100-mile radius of their employer at pain of paying their former bosses $100,000 for the liberty of working for someone else. In all, an estimated one-in-five U.S. workers — 30 million people — are bound by noncompete agreements.
Noncompete clauses are antithetical to many of the conservative movement’s purported values. The right has traditionally celebrated the virtues of open and competitive labor markets. “One important economic dimension of individual liberty is the right to sell one’s labor services without attenuation,” the economist Richard Vedder argued for the Cato Institute in 2010.
Conservatives have specifically argued that, as long as that right is protected, workers don’t need heavy-handed government policies to secure fair wages: If laborers accrue coveted skills and experience, then a competitive market will give them the necessary leverage to earn a wage commensurate with their productivity. Meanwhile, Republicans have long insisted that the rigors of free-market competition are uniquely conducive to innovation, which increases our society’s collective prosperity.
Noncompete agreements violate Vedder’s conception of individual liberty and nullify the right’s preferred mechanisms for raising wages and productivity. A worker bound by a noncompete agreement cannot sell their labor services to the highest bidder. Instead, they must accept whatever terms their employer offers, since that company effectively boasts a monopoly on their skills. This not only reduces the bargaining power of that individual worker, but of other workers throughout the economy: Each worker who stays in an underpaying job because they’re legally barred from taking another opportunity is occupying a job opening that would otherwise be available to someone else.
Research comparing wage rates in states that enforce noncompetes strictly with those that do not indicates that such agreements reduce workers’ incomes by between 3 and 4 percent, or more than $250 billion, every year.
At the same time, noncompetes undermine economic dynamism and entrepreneurship. Many of America’s most celebrated tech companies were founded by individuals who left incumbent firms to start their own businesses in the same sector. Studies have found that noncompetes do in fact suppress start-up formation. As FTC Commissioner Lina Khan articulates the problem in a recent New York Times op-ed, “How can a new business break into the market if all of the qualified workers are locked in? Or if the would-be founder is bound by a noncompete?”
If one assumes that the conservative movement is earnestly committed to safeguarding workers’ economic liberty, promoting competitive labor markets, and encouraging innovation, then you’d expect it to oppose noncompete agreements and, thus, support the FTC’s proposed ban.
On the other hand, if one stipulates that the right’s avowed love of free markets is purely instrumental and that its real economic commitment is to capitalist class domination, then you’d expect it to support noncompetes and oppose the FTC’s rule.
Many conservatives have taken the latter position.
Brian Albrecht, of the International Law and Economics Center, decried the FTC’s decision in a blog post. His reasoning is as follows: . . .
Continue reading. (no paywall)
A possible solution to debt-ceiling hostage-taking
Kevin Drum offers a promising solution to the perennial effort by the GOP to hold the debt-ceiling hostage to force as ransom passing measures the US public strongly opposes. (The GOP usually gets away with this because the mainstream media refers to “Congress” (rather than “Republicans”) as not raising the debt ceiling.)
From the post at the link:
Just ignore the debt ceiling and keep writing checks. That’s it. Get an OLC opinion stating that (a) the spending in question has already been legally appropriated, and (b) the Constitution says the debt of the United States “shall not be questioned.” Then tell Republicans to pound sand. The government will continue operating unless they go to court and get a judge to order the Treasury shut down.
Would they call this bluff? Going to . . .
B.C. sea sponge has COVID-blocking powers
An interesting report from the University of British Columbia:
UBC researchers have identified three compounds that prevent COVID-19 infection in human cells, derived from natural sources including a B.C. sea sponge.
The discovery paves the way for the development of new medicines for COVID-19 variants made from natural sources. And given nature’s abundance, there could be a wealth of new antivirals waiting to be discovered.
In a recent study, an international team of researchers led by UBC scientists investigated a catalogue of more than 350 compounds derived from natural sources including plants, fungi, and marine sponges in a bid to find new antiviral drugs that can be used to treat COVID-19 variants such as omicron. “This interdisciplinary research team is unraveling the important possibilities of biodiversity and natural resources and discovering nature-based solutions for global health challenges such as COVID-19,” said senior author Dr. François Jean, associate professor in the department of microbiology and immunology.
By bathing human lung cells in solutions made from these compounds and then infecting the cells with SARS-CoV-2, the researchers found 26 compounds that completely reduced viral infection in the cells. Three were effective in very small doses. “The advantage of these compounds is that they are targeting the cells, rather than the virus, blocking the virus from replicating and helping the cell to recover,” said co-first author Dr. Jimena Pérez-Vargas, a research associate in the department of microbiology and immunology. “Human cells evolve more slowly than viruses, so these compounds could work against future variants and other viruses such as influenza if they use the same mechanisms.”
The researchers used a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that . . .
Great lather, great razor, great shave
A pleasure of a shave. It’s hard to match the feel and performance of a good boar brush that’s well broken in, and this Omega 20102 is excellent (though I notice an errant bristle in the photo). Loading the brush with Declaration Grooming’s Bison formula shave soap was a snap, and the lather was so exceptional that tomorrow I’m going to use their Milksteak formula to compare because I don’t see right now how it could be better. The fragrance — yuzu, rose, and patchouli — was also a pleasure.
The iKon Shavecraft Short Comb is a remarkably fine little razor, very comfortable on the face (assuming the angle is good) and very efficient at removing stubble. The result this morning is much smoother than what I achieved yesterday, due I’m sure to the difference in blade sharpness, yesterday’s blade being well past the “best by” point.
Chatillon Lux’s aftershave lotion requires no assistance in the skincare department, and I’m enjoying both the fragrance and the smooth softness of my skin after applying it.
This is a coffee morning, and I do like the Clever Coffee dripper now that I’ve mastered the (simple) routine: start with water at around 200ºF and at time 0, pour a little over the grounds and then stop to allow the grounds to absorb the water. They do swell up a bit. At 30 seconds, pour in the rest of the water and cover the dripper. At 2 minutes, give the coffee in the dripper a gentle stir to mix in the floating grounds. At 3 min 30 seconds, put the dripper on my Joveo Temperfect mug and let the coffee drain into it. And here I am, about an hour and a half later, still with some coffee and it still at the perfect drinking temperature.
Comparing and contrasting Trump/Biden classified files at home
Charlie Savage has an excellent explainer in the NY Times (no paywall);
The disclosure that classified documents were found in a private office that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used before beginning his 2020 campaign has prompted comparisons to former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government records, which is the subject of a criminal investigation.
Based on what is publicly known so far, here is a closer look:
How are the situations similar?
At a basic level, both involve official files bearing classification markings that improperly accompanied Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden after they left office. Under the Presidential Records Act, White House records are supposed to go to the National Archives and Records Administration once an administration departs. Private citizens generally lack authorization to hold classified documents, and regulations require such files to be stored securely.
The Justice Department is scrutinizing both situations. In Mr. Trump’s case, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the investigation. In Mr. Biden’s case, Mr. Garland has assigned a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, John R. Lausch Jr., to conduct an initial investigation to help him determine whether to appoint a special counsel.
How are the situations different?
There are key gaps in the public record about both, but the available information suggests there were significant differences in how the documents came to light, their volume and — most important — how Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden responded. Mr. Trump and his aides resisted the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them all, while Mr. Biden’s lawyers reported the problem and the White House says it has fully cooperated. These apparent differences have consequential legal implications.
Where were the files?
In Mr. Trump’s case, several hundred government files marked as classified — along with thousands of unclassified documents and photos — ended up at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, after he left office. Some were in cartons in a locked storage closet, and the F.B.I. discovered others in Mr. Trump’s office, including in his desk, according to court filings.
In Mr. Biden’s case, the White House said in a statement on Monday that “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered in a locked closet at an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center. It added that Mr. Biden had periodically used the space after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 until he began his bid for the 2020 presidency.
How did the files get there?
As president, Mr. Trump is said to have periodically taken records from the Oval Office to the residential areas of the White House. During the chaos of his last days in office after he sought to cling to power, those files were apparently packed up with personal items like clothing and mementos and shipped to Mar-a-Lago.
It is not yet known how records from the Obama administration wound up at the Penn Biden Center. On Tuesday, Mr. Biden said that he took classified information seriously and that he was “surprised to learn that there were any government records there that were taken to that office.”
How did the problems come to light?
Very differently. . .
Continue reading. (no paywall)
Time-restricted Eating for Prevention and Management of Metabolic Diseases
The National Library of Medicine has an interesting and useful paper on what researchers have learned about the effects of when you eat. It’s worth reading.
I have been successful in stopping my food intake at 5:00pm. That did take some practice — that is, I had what many view as “failures” but I view as practice, the necessary missteps one makes in acquiring a new skill. But for months now, I easily end the day’s eating at 5:00 or even a little earlier. For the remainder of the day I drink iced tea or, lately, iced water with a few dashes of bitters.
After reading this article, I’ll now focus on setting a specific starting time. I have generally started the day’s eating latish, around 8:00am or 9:00am, but now I think I’ll make 9:00am the fixed start: nothing before 9:00.
My meal pattern has been: big breakfast, light lunch, moderate dinner. I’m switching that to big breakfast, moderate lunch, a snack for dinner. I’ll see how that goes. (Snack might be a bowl for fermented vegetables — I’m not going through one of the jars of Beets & Leeks — and half a roasted Stokes Purple® potato from the fridge. The slow digestion of resistant starch is effective at keeping hunger at bay.)
The whole paper is worth reading. Some key points:
Anti-COVID Secret Weapon
Lisa Jhung describes in Medscape a way to protect yourself against Covid. She writes:
If your patients vowed to start exercising this year, here’s another incentive to help them stick to their guns: They could protect themselves from potentially devastating COVID-19 outcomes like hospitalization and even death.
The evidence is piling up that physical activity can lower the risk of getting very sick from COVID. The CDC, based on a systematic review of the evidence, has reported that “physical activity is associated with a decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, while inactivity increases that risk.” Other research has linked regular physical activity with a lower risk of infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID.
The latest such study, from Kaiser Permanente, suggests that exercise in almost any amount can cut the risk of severe or fatal COVID even among high-risk patients like those with hypertension or cardiovascular disease.
“We found that every level of physical activity provided some level of protection,” says lead study author Deborah Rohm Young, PhD, director of the Division of Behavioral Research for Kaiser’s Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation. “Even a 10-minute walk [per] week is associated with better COVID-19 outcomes.”
The best outcomes were seen among “those who are consistently meeting our national guidelines of greater than 150 minutes a week of at least brisk walking,” she says. That’s 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week. However, “every bit is beneficial.”
Yet, 1 in 4 adults don’t get any physical activity outside of their jobs, according to the CDC. That matters as we move into January and COVID numbers trend up. As of press time, . . .
Making a bonsai: A Christmas-tree spruce
A very nice video on the details of bonsai work.
Later On 