Search the Community

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/why-worlds-tallest-jail-new-york-city-so-controversial

From Consumer Reports: Lead is a metal that can be bad for our health. Just like how too much candy can give you a tummy ache, too much lead in your body can make you feel sick. Think about Taylor Swift's glittery microphones; if they had lead in them, it could be harmful to her and her fans. Now, what would you do if your favourite snack had lead in it?

Fears are growing that the H5N1 outbreak among cattle in the United States could have been caused by contaminated animal feed. In contrast to Britain and Europe, American farmers are still allowed to feed cattle and other farm animals ground-up waste from other animals including birds. Dairy cows across six US states – and at least one farm worker – have become infected with the highly pathogenic virus, which has already killed millions of animals across the globe since 2021. The farm worker, who is thought to have been exposed via infected cattle in Texas, is only the second recorded human H5N1 case in the US. Since February, the US has investigated and discounted a further 8,000 possible exposures, according to Dr Joshua Mott, WHO senior advisor on influenza. The development is of concern because it allows the virus, which has killed millions of birds and wild mammals around the world, more opportunities to mutate. Experts fear that H5N1, which was only first detected in cows a few weeks ago, may have been transmitted through a type of cattle feed called "poultry litter" – a mix of poultry excreta, spilled feed, feathers, and other waste scraped from the floors of industrial chicken and turkey production plants. In the UK and EU, feeding cows proteins from other animals has been tightly regulated since the outbreak of BSE – or 'mad cow disease' – 30 years ago. Experts are unsure but fear it could be the poultry litter feed used in the US that has passed the virus to cattle. "In the US, the feeding of poultry litter to beef cows is a known factor in the cause of botulism in cattle, and is a risk in the case of H5N1,” said Dr Steve Van Winden, Associate Professor in Population Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College. Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist and fellow at the Pirbright Institute agreed: "This latest case wouldn't be the first time there have been concerns H5N1 could be moving through different mammals via contaminated feed,” citing the outbreak of avian flu in cats in Poland last year, which experts suspected might have been transmitted through mink byproducts used in raw cat food. The US cattle industry is worth over $100 billion and regulations covering animal standards there have long been controversial in Europe – most famously over the use of hormones in the rearing of cattle for meat.

They asked users to send their eclipse vids so they could show them on live tv and then this happened TW: NSFW

For interactive map, go here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13275073/Average-*****-sizes-world-revealed-interactive-map.html For full list, go here: https://www.worlddata.info/average-penissize.php

American "democracy" is a farce.

A lot going on in the labor movement and they’re only getting stronger, so much that I feel there should be a generalized megathread for posterity. So here it is. Welcome to the official home for discussion of all global labor movements. This is the thread to chat and document news and ongoing development in workers and class struggle, from strike action to unionizing, protest, bargaining, law, theory, and history. Please feel free to contribute in any way you can.

First time in American history this has happened

Developing story: This is rich coming from Ecuador considering how in 2012 it granted political asylum to Julian Assange in their London embassy… and neither the US or the UK invaded their embassy.

Possible mammal to mammal transmission does not mean well for the future- cow to human transmission under investigation CDC issues statements one man infected "mild symptoms" 52% mortality rate since 2022

Time is passing like a solar eclipse! We're officially three weeks away from the "Great North American Solar Eclipse" in which some lucky cities across the US, Mexico and Canada will be able to witness the Moon casting a shadow on Earth, blocking the Sun completely during a few minutes. Have you bought your eclipse glasses yet? Where will you be watching from? Post your pics when the day comes, on April 8! Cities with 100% sun coverage: Find out start times and sun coverage percentage of your city: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2024-april-8

🤦‍♀️This is America

Lobbyists for the world's biggest meat companies have lauded a better than expected outcome at COP28, which they say left them "excited" and "enthusiastic" for their industry's prospects. U.S. livestock bosses reflected on the conference's implication for their sector on a virtual panel, fresh from "sharing U.S agriculture's story" at the climate summit last December. Campaigners and climate scientists had hoped the summit – which was billed as a "Food COP" due to its focus on farming – would see governments agree to ambitious action to transform food systems in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement. But while more than 130 governments pledged to tackle agriculture's carbon footprint, a slew of announcements and initiatives failed to set binding targets, or to broach the question of reducing herds of ruminant livestock such as cattle and sheep, which are agriculture's largest driver of emissions. In the online discussion, which was hosted by the trade outlet FeedStuffs, meat lobbyists groups made it clear they saw COP28 as a win. The three representatives all said there had been widespread recognition at the Dubai summit that agriculture was a "solution" to climate change, despite livestock accounting for over 30 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions. Outcomes at the summit were characterised as "a far more positive outcome than we had anticipated" by Constance Cullman, the president of the Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA) – a US lobby group whose members include some of the world's biggest meat and animal feed producers. She added that this was the first time she had "felt that optimistic" after a "large international gathering like this one". Cullman also praised the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s Global Roadmap to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger, which she described as "music to our ears", stating that she particularly welcomed the report's emphasis on "production and efficiency" over "looking at reduced consumption of animal protein". Academics described the FAO report's failure to recommend cuts to meat-eating as "bewildering" in a March submission to the journal Nature Food. According to a March paper, which surveyed more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, meat and dairy production must be drastically reduced – and fast – to align with the Paris Agreement. The report concludes that global emissions from livestock production need to decline by 50 percent during the next six years, with "high-producing and consuming nations" taking the lead. The FAO told DeSmog in a statement that its roadmap took a "balanced" approach to animal agriculture, saying that its report had "acknowledged the importance of livestock for poor people in traditional agrifood systems" and referenced the need for dietary shifts. "We believe that some comments on the change in diets and the role of animal products in them are either misinformed because people have not properly read the Roadmap report, or deliberately disingenuous for the sake of feeding vested interests narratives,” it said. Another industry panellist, Eric Mittenthaler, had attended COP28 on behalf of lobby group the Meat Institute (formerly the North American Meat Institute, or NAMI). He stressed the importance of sharing the message that animal agriculture is necessary for nutrition and sustainability. The Meat Institute, which runs an initiative called the ProteinPACT, represents hundreds of corporations in the meat supply chain, including the meat sector's three largest companies, JBS, Cargill and Tyson, which together have emissions equal to oil majors Shell or BP. Sophie Nodzenski, a senior campaign strategist on food and agriculture at Greenpeace International, said it was "unsurprising" that industrial meat producers felt positively about COP28's outcomes "given that their interests essentially took the central stage there". The number of lobbyists for big meat and dairy companies tripled at COP28 as revealed by DeSmog and the Guardian, amid rising scrutiny of the food sector's climate impacts. Meanwhile, smallholders and family farmers at the summit saidthey felt "drowned out". "COP28 has rightly put the spotlight on the link between food production and the climate crisis, but the sheer number of Big Ag lobbyists present gave them an outsized influence,” Nodzenski said. Full article: https://www.desmog.com/2024/04/08/us-meat-lobby-celebrates-positive-outcome-cop28/

The Biden administration is poised to issue a proposal aimed at reducing or eliminating student loan balances for millions of borrowers, according to people familiar with the matter, marking President Biden's second attempt at large-scale loan forgiveness. The regulations, which are set to be issued as soon as next week, come after the Supreme Court last year overturned the administration's first debt cancellation plan, which would have wiped away up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year. Biden is planning to outline the broad strokes of the new proposal during a speech on Monday in Madison, Wis., where he is expected to tout his administration's wide-ranging efforts to chip away at the student debt burden facing more than 40 million Americans, the people said. A White House spokesman declined to comment. Administration officials expect that the final rule will be challenged in court, but they think they are on solid legal footing. The new approach, they argue, is more tailored because it outlines specific conditions for debt cancellation, a contrast with the more sweeping plan that was overturned by the Supreme Court. The administration used the Heroes Act to underpin Biden's first loan-forgiveness program. But the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had overstepped its authority by using the law, which allows the education secretary to modify student aid programs to respond to emergencies, to forgive loans for tens of millions of Americans. Source

The latest New York Times/Siena College national poll brought bad tidings for Democrats. The results showed 48% for Trump over Biden, who pulled in 43% of respondents — a major and telling five point lead. “That’s the largest lead Mr. Trump has ever had in a Times/Siena national poll. In fact, it’s the largest lead Mr. Trump has held in a Times/Siena or Times/CBS poll since first running for president in 2015,” writes Nate Cohnat NYT. It’s a significant blow for Biden as voters question the president’s decisions on immigration and his handling of the Hamas-Israel War in Gaza. Moreover, Biden faces a lack of support from voters in his own party, with many expressing doubt over whether he should be the party’s presidential nominee at all this November. Recently during the Michigan Democratic primary, over 100,000 Democrats in the state opted to vote for nobody rather cast support for the president. Michigan is an essential swing state in the upcoming election that Biden won last time by less than 150,000 votes in 2020.

Did she lie?

Grindr currently has a market cap of $1.9 billion and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GRND. Simply Wall Street noted a few days ago that the stock is up 63% in the last year.

These transfers are classified as sales, but very few of them meet that definition in the conventional sense. The vast majority are funded through State Department grants. Biden made just two of these publicly funded sales to Israel public, and the only reason he did is because he had to. Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) requires the president to notify Congress when a proposed arms sale exceeds a certain value. The notification threshold depends on the type of matériel (for “significant military equipment” it’s $14 million; for other military articles and services, $50 million; for military construction services, $200 million), but also the recipient. For NATO countries and South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Israel, the notification thresholds for these three categories are considerably higher ($25 million, $100 million, and $300 million, respectively). While Biden is loud and proud about arming Ukraine, he prefers to arm Israel in secret. The quantity of sales since October 7 is case in point. By spreading his military support for Israel across more than one hundred sales, Biden kept pretty much all of them “under threshold” per the AECA, thereby avoiding congressional and public scrutiny. Biden might have picked up this trick from his predecessor. Donald Trump exploited the same loophole to dodge oversight on arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose intense and indiscriminate bombing of Yemen at the time had created a direhumanitarian crisis. Keeping these transfers out of public view makes it easier for Biden to cast himself as Humanitarian of the Year in Gaza while going great lengths to help Israel destroy it. Biden’s series of food airdrops suggests he’s bravely trying to fix a catastrophe beyond his control. Administration officials perpetuate this narrative by insisting the president has no leverage over Israel. “There is a mistaken belief that the United States is able to dictate to other countries’ sovereign decisions,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller recently said. Full article: https://jacobin.com/2024/03/biden-weapons-israel-gaza-palestine