A Plague

 

On this day:

1514
Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.
1604
Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635
Founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1740
Dutch colonists and various slave groups begin massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.
1845
The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
1854
Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins. As does Tolstoy's career as a writer: “A disagreement that has not been solved by diplomacy will still less be solved by powder and blood.”
1919
Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

1936
Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
1940
World War II: Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.
1967
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969
In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24.
2006
North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.
2009
First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecraft as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. LCROSS set out to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole. On October 9, 2009, the vehicle’s spent Centaur upper stage impacted the crater Cabeus. Then the Shepherding Spacecraft descended through Centaur’s ejectate plume, collecting and relaying data before impacting the lunar surface six minutes later. It found water.


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"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible." -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author (b. 6 Oct 1950)

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Arline Goldbaum married Richard Feynman while she was in a sanitarium with TB. Can you imagine what she must have been like? She was also a beauty, and he was crazy about her. She died three years later. 

After her death, Feynman wrote her a letter, writing on the envelope, "Please excuse my not sending this, but I don't know your new address."

 
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick for a key housing post once likened wealthy homeowners to “cartels”


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A Plague

Smallpox is the only human disease to have been eradicated.

Smallpox is highly infectious and has no known cure. It has been found as early as 1350 BCE, with cases in Egyptian mummies. Its infectivity has made it a popular adjunct for engineered bioweapons.

The ancient practice of variolation (named for smallpox, also known as variola or ‘la variole’) was widely used in Asia and some parts of Africa.  Small amounts of material from smallpox sores were transferred to healthy people, resulting in milder illness and much lower mortality than natural infection. Some sources suggest people practiced variolation as early as 200 BCE.

Written accounts from the mid-1500s describe a form of variolation used in China known as insufflation, where smallpox scabs were dried, ground, and blown into the nostril using a pipe.

In India, similar practices used inoculation with a lancet or needle to transfer material from smallpox pustules to the skin of healthy children. Accounts from the 18th century suggest this technique dates back hundreds of years. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced the practice to Europe in 1721, after she observed the practice in the Ottoman Empire, where her husband was stationed as ambassador to Turkey. In the American colonies, after his slave Onesimus told him how it worked in 1716, Cotton Mather publicized it and argued for its use in response to a 1721 outbreak of smallpox in Massachusetts. John Adams and his wife used it on their children.

In 1796, hearing of local beliefs and practices in rural communities that cowpox protected against smallpox, Dr Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps with matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a local milkmaid. Later efforts to infect Phipps with smallpox failed, showing the idea worked. (The good doctor was experimenting on a child.)

Vaccination can apparently be a hard sell. Rumours circulated that it would turn people into cows.

Mandatory smallpox vaccination started in Britain and parts of the United States of America in the 1840s and 1850s, as well as in other parts of the world, leading to the establishment of the smallpox vaccination certificates required for travel. Despite over 2 million people dying every year, it took decades to achieve global unity in the fight against the disease. By the 1950s, advances in production techniques meant that heat-stable, freeze-dried smallpox vaccines could be stored without refrigeration.

In 1970, in West India, an outbreak led to a door-to-door search and vaccination program.

In 1980, with the virus limited to laboratory zoos, WHO declared smallpox officially eradicated.--much from a WHO paper

Plague

On this day:
1600
Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, receives its première performance in Florence, signifying the beginning of the Baroque Period

1777
American Revolutionary War: General Sir Henry Clinton leads British forces in the capture of Continental Army Hudson River defenses in the Battle of Forts Clinton and Montgomery.
1789
French Revolution: Louis XVI returns to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women on 5 October
1945
Baseball: Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat are ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. (His curse leads to 71 years of World Series failure for Chicago.)
1973
Egypt launches a coordinated attack with Syria against Israel, leading to the Yom Kippur War.
1981
Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat is assassinated.

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When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

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Buffett wrote an essay in 1999 on the new, exciting technology of the day: the internet. He noted that a technology can change the world, but that doesn't necessarily make it a smart investment.Using airplanes as an example, he explained that while air travel had fundamentally transformed society, 129 airline companies had filed for bankruptcy in the last 20 years. "The key to investing," Buffett explained, "is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage."

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Wall Street banks are pushing large law firms to cut fees, arguing that the business model that has enriched top lawyers for decades is not sustainable in an era of AI.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have told major law firms they want to set up new payment arrangements that would save them money.
“If the number of hours they’re working on a matter has come down because of AI . . . our expectation is for costs to come down significantly per transaction,” Adam Meshel, global head of legal at Citigroup, told the FT.

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A former head of Germany's foreign intelligence service was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion that he had passed state secrets to a foreign intelligence service, the federal prosecutor's office said.

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The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games two years ago. This year, Chicago finished the 2026 regular season 84-78, becoming the first team in MLB history to reach the postseason immediately after at least two consecutive 100-loss seasons—and the White Sox had actually lost 100 games three years in a row. 

This year, the White Sox swept the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, their first postseason series win since 2005. They are now 2-0 against Cleveland in their best of 5 playoff series.

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Plague

Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev wrote on Telegram that a resident, Darya Shipilova, "may have contracted a particularly dangerous infection," but did not specifically name pneumonic plague. That's like saying a swimmer died after being attacked "by a large fish" off a Florida beach.

Nearly 200 people have been placed under medical observation in Russia’s Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia over suspected exposure to plague, according to local media reports. One woman, Darya Shipilova, said by the Russians to be a lab researcher, has died. 

This is the pneumonic (pulmonary) presentation of the bubonic plague. In a Russian lab worker. The bubonic plague.

The Russians started their bioweapons program the year after they signed the U.N. resolution to ban them. They worked for years on gain-of-function of Ebola, Anthrax, and smallpox, and efforts to combine high infectivity (like chickenpox) with those more deadly. More recent efforts tried to develop organisms for which the usually reliable anti-infective agents did not work. These are vicious weapons, indiscriminate and usually brutal and fatal. And socially disruptive. Plague in the Middle Ages killed over 33% of Europe's population, with each recurring episode.

If we poor citizens need to be reminded, these are terrible weapons, but they are wielded by terrible people. War is bad enough, but these are cataclysmic in concept, aimed at men, women, and children for the purpose of civilization destruction.

Nor are our hands clean. The Chinese lab at Wuhan had American medical--MEDICAL--support and then, when the murderous genie was out of the bottle, they, i.e., we, joined the mendacious Chinese autocrats and lied about it to our citizens and the world.

If this kind of behaviour doesn't sour you on the promises of the average politician masquerading as an average guy with a good heart, it should. It should scare you witless. And you should scrutinize any power you cede to them. These people have nuclear weapons! And anyone who thinks that AI can be muzzled with "internal controls" is not paying attention. 

The danger of the virus, the bacteria, the weapon, or the software is real and frightening, but it all starts with humans who create them, aim them, and pull the trigger.

Rules, agreements among caring men, will not be enough.

Fauci versus Kennedy

 

On this day:

70
The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
1265
Second Barons’ War: Battle of Evesham – the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327
First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1704
War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1789
In France, members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1914
World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.
1964
American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964
Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

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"The US used to be a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it."--The French mission to the UN groping for some invisible-to-most moral high ground

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The heavy drone saturation on the battlefield has prevented either side from capturing any meaningful territory in years. What seems more impactful now are deep strikes: for Ukraine, mid- to long-range drone attacks on Russian logistics, supply routes, and energy infrastructure.--Business Insider field report from Ukraine

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Pirates:

Keller out for the year.

Valdez walked more than any other NL player since the All-Star Game

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Information leaked from DOD states the military hardware stores--particularly drones and missiles-- have been bled down to critical levels. Several news outlets published this. Had the average citizen revealed such information, would he be a spy? Are governmental and journalist personnel held to different standards?

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Fauci versus Kennedy 

Rival political positions have rarely had such tarnished champions. Fauci is now a hero for standing up to the Senate and taking the Fifth countless times, and Kennedy, recovering from a 'troubled past' for leading a very important government department eccentrically. Both have been symbolically publicly dueling, the former in a Senate hearing, the latter on Dana Bash's TV show.

Which of these sorcerer's apprentices is most admirable?

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking about the measles vaccine, said that “people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information and encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.”

But Kennedy also downplayed the safety of the vaccine and wrongly told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that measles outbreaks could be driven in part by people who have waning immunity from the vaccine.

There’s some dispute among experts about how much protection may wane, if at all. However, they all agree that in most cases, the vaccine confers lifelong immunity against the virus.

The current outbreak “is absolutely being driven and started by unvaccinated individuals,” said Dr. Michael Mina, chief scientific officer of the telehealth company eMed and an expert in the epidemiology, immunology and spread of infectious disease.

Even those who may have waning immunity will not transmit large amounts of virus, he said.

This is only the fifth year since 2000 that an outbreak has led to more than 100 cases and only the third year with more than 200 cases.

“The goal of a vaccine is to induce the immunity that is a consequence of natural infection without paying the price of natural infection,” Offit said.

The price of infection can be high: One in five unvaccinated people with measles will be hospitalized, 1 in 20 children with measles will develop pneumonia, and 1 in 1,000 children with measles will develop encephalitis or swelling of the brain.

One to three in 1,000 children who have measles will die from complications, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy also inaccurately said vaccine-induced immunity may not be passed through breast milk to nursing infants the way natural immunity is.

“He is wrong. Maternal antibody transfer is a key form of neonatal protection against infectious diseases,” said Dr. Lynn Yee, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. “Even when a mother had vaccination many years ago, antibodies still transfer.”

Kennedy also incorrectly described adverse events from the MMR vaccine, saying it “causes deaths every year. … It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes: encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

Measles infection can cause encephalitis and blindness, but only a handful of these kinds of illnesses related to vaccination have ever been reported.

A study in which the US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC reviewed reports from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, in addition to medical records, death certificates, and autopsy reports, did not find evidence to suggest “a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and death.”

Fauci's impact was far more reaching, and we know only the most glaring of inconsistencies. Still, it is quite obvious in his tenure as the nation's chief physician that neither hard science nor the public's health were very high on his priority list.

All this is in the setting of Fauci's recent testimony. And the Dems, with their Press PR department, are outraged. Articles and interviews compare Fauci, a man who has dedicated his life to public service, with Kennedy, who is, charitably, a nutball.

It's almost as if Fauci had not linked America to a lab run by autocratic sociopaths and facilitated the genetic engineering of a novel virus that then killed 15 million people in what, in most situations, would be a war crime, and we, the hapless American employers, would be accomplices.

Diagnosis vs Illness

On this day:

1536
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.
1568
Queen Elizabeth I of England orders the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots.
1649
An Act of Parliament declaring England a Commonwealth is passed by the Long Parliament. England would be a republic for the next eleven years.
1780
New England’s Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.
1848
Mexican-American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.
1961
Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).

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A report published two years ago by American think tank RAND Corporation, with close ties to the Pentagon, said China's defense industry had exported malfunctioning and defective military equipment in recent years — leaving countries short of what's needed for their security while also draining military budgets

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The big data planned economy is a paradox. Big data is the result of countless spontaneous actions by people in the market economy. If the planned economy is implemented so that every person follows government decrees, then big data itself will disappear!--Zhang

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Diagnosis vs Illness

The most important man in the West occupying the most important position in the West had, during his tenure, a common and easily diagnosed cancer which, by all modern scientific assumptions, was chronic and undiscovered.

There are many observations one could make here--most quite ugly--but this is a harder question than it appears.

Prostate cancer is common, and its incidence rises with age. It is biologically present in 30% of 50-65 year olds and 40% of men in their 70s. Its percentage in 80-year-olds is probably higher. The problem with prostate cancer is that it does not behave like a cancer; it just looks like one. And when it behaves like a cancer, it usually does so in slow motion.

The number of men who will benefit from active intervention for the disease is close to the number who will suffer serious consequences from the search for the disease. Most tread carefully in this area and usually do not search for the disease in men over 70.

It would be tempting to say that Biden's keepers were ignoring the man and polishing the shell. They probably were, but likely not in this instance.

Because It's There

Why are student loans more deserving of forgiveness than any other kind of debt?

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The overall union membership rate in the U.S. last year was a record-low 10 percent, and it was only 6 percent in the private sector.

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According to one survey, the number of children aged six to 17 diagnosed with gender dysphoria surged from roughly 15,000 to 42,000 in the years between 2017 and 2021 alone. The number of kids prescribed hormones to block puberty more than doubled.

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Because It's There

Rules and regulations no longer have to be based on traditional observation and testing. For one reason, it's just too hard. Imagine the rigor of proving an everyday exposure is good or bad for people.

So now we just make things up.

A Consumer Reports study in 2022 found that popular chocolate bars contained more than California’s recommended allowable doses of cadmium and lead. However, no research has linked eating chocolate to a higher risk of birth defects or metal toxicity.

But a regulatory agency will always fill a space.

Dandelion Chocolate said, “Cadmium is a naturally occurring component in soil, and many plants take it up as they absorb nutrients, which is how it gets into our cocoa beans. According to the CDC, cadmium is commonly found in vegetables, and in relatively high concentrations in leafy greens like spinach. The law won’t allow us to say much more about how the tiny trace amounts in our product will affect your health, but if you want to reduce your exposure to cadmium generally, you might consider eating fewer leafy greens.”

PRP

Maersk, the big shipper, expects the dangers of the Red Sea will cause them to lose up to two billion dollars this year.

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An officer whose gun went off inside a Columbia University building this week fired it accidentally as the police were removing pro-Palestinian protesters from the campus, the New York Police Department said on Thursday.
No one was injured during the shooting on Tuesday, and the bullet ended up in the frame of a wall a few feet away, the N.Y.P.D. said in a statement.  

Arbitrary chaos is just that--and has its risks.

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Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting U.S. troops, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger's junta to expel U.S. forces.

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More than a quarter of protesters arrested Tuesday at Columbia University and 60 percent of those arrested at the City College of New York had no connections to the institutions, according to data from the New York Police Department.

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PRP 

Platelets promote clotting, but they also contain growth factors that can trigger cell reproduction and stimulate tissue regeneration or healing in the treated area. Platelet-rich plasma is simply blood that contains more platelets than normal.

To create platelet-rich plasma, clinicians take a blood sample from the patient and place it into a centrifuge that rapidly spins the sample, separating out the other components of the blood from the platelets and concentrating them within the plasma. This therapy has become popular with athletes after injuries and in cosmetic procedures.

The mechanism behind PRP injections is not completely understood. That should be cautionary. Studies show that the increased concentration of growth factors in platelet-rich plasma may stimulate or speed up the healing process, shortening healing time for injuries, decreasing pain, and even encouraging hair growth. The working word there is "may."

Because the patient's own blood is being used, it is thought the procedure is innocuous. But, nothing is easy, nothing is safe, and, apparently, nothing is enforced.

Several people contracted human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through cosmetic needles after receiving facials at an unlicensed spa in New Mexico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Three women who received platelet-rich plasma (PRP) microneedling facials, also known as vampire facials, at the spa contracted HIV and an investigation pointed to the facials as the method of transmission, a new paper from CDC scientists states.  

Illness is Entertaining

The nation’s debt permanently crossed over to $34 trillion on Jan. 4.
The U.S. debt load is increasing by about $1 trillion nearly every 100 days.

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Pennsylvania progressive Rep. Summer Lee (Pittsburgh district) has bowed out of a speaking engagement with a Muslim group after intense backlash about other speakers’ antisemitic and homophobic comments.

Lee canceled her appearance at an event for the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim group. That's CAIR!

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Illness is Entertaining

Leah McSweeney, a former star of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City,” is suing Bravo, Andy Cohan, and anyone else within reach. The case centers on her alcoholism and her accusation that Bravo thought she was more interesting as a character drunk than sober. 

She joined the “Housewives of New York City” cast around the time she had relapsed after nine years of sobriety.

She became sober just before she started filming the show and has alleged that producers developed “artificially close relationships” with her through which they “cultivated a treasure trove of Ms. McSweeney’s dark secrets with intent to place her in situations known to exacerbate her alcohol use disorder and mental health disabilities because they thought that intentionally making these conditions worse would create good television.”

The complaint goes on to allege that producers frequently undermined Ms. McSweeney’s sobriety not only by encouraging her outright to drink but by “engaging in guerrilla-type psychological warfare intended to pressurize Ms. McSweeney into a psychological break and cause Ms. McSweeney to relapse.”

Forces of defense have arisen--there has been a lot of legal action around reality shows--but this story is particularly creepy. Maybe they think it's mainstreaming.