Open Thread

If you’re under that heat dome, be very careful for the next few days, since this is a potential wet bulb event (meaning that if you’re outside or out of air conditioning for more than a few hours it can cause permanent injury or even death).

The risk is greater if you’re under 15 or over 60, but everyone should be careful. Stay safe.

“All that you touch you change, all that you change changes you.” –Parable of the Sower.

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.” ― David Epstein, Range

“After all, what were seashells but empty coffins? What were starfish on the beach but bloated corpses, rotting in an alien environment?” –Nod by Adrian Barnes

——
The FDA recently approved several drugs for Dementia with the same mechanism and effects. The first one was Aduhelm/Aducanumab.

==Results===
Table 3 shows the primary and secondary results.

In 3 of 4 primary endpoint the drug corporation failed to find any statistical benefit.
The drug corporation failed to find any statistical benefit in 10 of 13 secondary endpoints.
Not a single of the 17 endpoints showed any clinical benefit whatsoever in the studies designed, performed and evaluated by the drug manufacturer.

==Flaws and review==
According to the FDA “the available data did not seem to provide sufficient evidence to support efficacy” they approved the drug anyways.
-The studies had “issues caused by the termination of these trials prematurely”
-The “data was re-anaylsed” after failing to find any benefit whatsoever on the first analysis.
-The studies were unblinded on purpose and on top of that the large drug side effects unblinded them as well.
“There was sporadic unblinding” and “functional unblinding”
-There were “contradictions to what was noted in the clinical outcome data”
-Considering there was 17 endpoints the data suffered from p-hacking which is where a large number of endpoints are envaulted in order to find a few with statistical benefits out of chance alone.

==Reported Negative effects==
Table 6 shows adverse events reported by the drug manufacturer.
The low and high dose caused brain bleeding, brain swelling, or brain inflammation in 24% and 45% of users respectively (coded as Amyloid-related imaging abnormalities).
Some other negative effects include falls, siderosis which causes brain damage, hearing loss, cancer, cardiovascular disease and a wide range of disease states.
That’s your FDA, medical community, and experts in action.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8491638/
——

A very small “6‐month randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled” study of the effects of MCT (coconut oil)
on Alzheimer’s disease. The study had an additional 6 month open-label extension as well.

Results:
“a clear dose‐dependent effect”
“Eighty percent remained stable or improved. Longer MCT exposure resulted in higher final MMSE and Cognigram® 1 scores.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8919247/
—-

A very small “randomized controlled clinical trial” looked at coconut oil in adults with metabolic syndrome.

Results: “significantly reduced serum levels of MDA , fasting insulin and HOMA-IR index, and increased serum TAC and QUICKI index compared to the control group.”
“consumption improved oxidative stress status and insulin resistance and had a promising effect”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37409587/

——
A very small prospective study testing coconut oil in those with Alzheimer’s (note: all else equal randomized is the highest quality followed by prospective).

“After intervention with coconut oil, improvements in episodic, temporal orientation, and semantic memory were observed”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30056419/
———
4 studies met criteria for inclusion regarding the effects of Coconut oil and cognitive function.

“the analysis revealed that all studies showed consistent results regarding the effects of CO on cognitive scores,”
“CO improved cognitive scores”

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9721/12/11/272
—–

“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?” ― George Carlin

“What we can’t change has to be a church, Paul. Get it?”– Nod by Adrian Barnes

“That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” ― George Carlin

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/20/economy/trump-too-many-holidays-economy

So Trump’s latest “Great Idea”, there are too many holidays and too many days the peons aren’t working 12 to 14 hours, “It hurts the economy!”

In the 1860s, Russia had only 240 working days and Germany 300 (that’s still over 2 months off in hard-working robot people Deutschland). https://germany.news-pravda.com/en/world/2025/04/14/40765.html

Since there are next to zero “progressives”, forget actual Leftys in the US political elites, since the 1970s (half a century ago!) when I was a teenager it has been a continual, uninterrupted push to the Right, to a more Social Darwinist society along the lines of medieval Britain. A small ruling class of billionaires and a horde of sickly, obedient peons with no health care, no rights is openly the goal, and most importantly no agency to change things.

Alan Moore is 6 years older than me, early Boomer, and he wrote about how fortunate he was in the timing of his birth, Nov. 1953. During WW II, to defeat the Bosch, Britain greatly improved the national diet (everybody got milk, some meat, not so in decades prior) because “the boys” being sent off to war were too weak and sickly to fight. They got good schooling too, even the poors relatively speaking did. Note how this is barely available now in the USA. He grew up healthy and smart, was able to create a very successful career in media: comics, literature, spoken word, music, etc.

The meanness of the Feudal mentality has returned full-scale under toxic, half-a-century old Neoliberalism. And the nominally (at one time, not even so as a pretense now) “left” US party is pushing an “Abundance Agenda”!! This is warmed-over Newt Gingrich social engineering (Newt denounced the Civil Rights movement as “social engineering” why should superior white people be made to live alongside and pretend to respect or give rights to non-whites, he asked?), in fact it goes back even further to Jack Kemp “Enterprise Zones”– give the blacks and Mexicans, immigrants, some dangerous jobs working with pollutants, child labor etc., that will give them (the ones who aren’t maimed or dead) a basic income that will keep them alive, indentured servitude, essentially.

Dubya tanked his 2nd term early when his “Opportunity Society” grift was rejected by even the Republican base. Who wants to have to work until their 80s, with Social Security etc. all gutted, 2 or 3 jobs just to survive? Add this to his failed wars and no wonder he exited office with 25% support. “Invest” in the stock market, that’s better than having Medicare or Social Security, right? FDR was an evil Commie, after all. And now the Dems recycle that as the “Abundance” agenda!- I guess its billionaire and PMC leaders have enough generational wealth that they won’t be working 70 hours a week . . .

The scumbag Race to the Bottom poet Jonathan Chait explains what “the opposition” is putting on offer– essentially no different than what Trump is. What a country!! https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/abundance-democrats-political-power/682929/

In the 1860’s, much like America’s South, Russia was still mostly agrarian and the serfs like the American slaves had just recently been emancipated but the ruling class saw to it by hook or crook that they were still de facto slaves despite emancipation. 1861 to 1917 was a time of reformation but by the hardest and must have seemed like to those opposing autocracy that it was one step forward and two steps back every step of the way, hence ultimately the revolution as the only way forward to break the cruel autocratic recalcitrance.

As such, much of the population of Russia were peasants and tied to the land where every day all day long was the work day. They had no time cards to punch but they were always on call because that’s the nature of farming.

It’s bizarre how we’ve come full circle. 1861 to 1917 was an incredible time in Russia. It truly was an apocalypse using the strictest definition of concept. World-altering. World-ending and world-beginning. Directionally, the people were rejecting autocracy and moving away from it. Today, directionally, it’s the opposite. People are embracing autocracy and moving towards it. A vote for Trump is/was a vote for autocracy.

In Figes’ book A People’s Tragedy, I just read the part where Stolypin was assassinated. It’s a mix of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. It transpired in a theater and it could have been a play in and of itself. It happened right in front of Nicholas II.

https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/the-reign-of-stolypin/

I feel compelled to cover four words for my fellow readers: running, repaired, overhauled, and service life extension.

*Running – in a state in which the thing functions just well enough for the next immediate user to operate it until they themselves must get it running for the next immediate.

*Repaired – in a state in which a very specific component is restored to functional but the overall system is “running”.

*Overhauled – in a state which many collections of components called “systems” are replaced, restored, and operating near-orginal condition.

*Service Life Extension – in a state which the life of a thing is extended beyond its limited service life through a series of upgrades.

Know these words because in life, in your community, in your job, in your nation etc… you are… at best… here to keep things “Running” and occasionally “Repair” them. You are not responsible for “Overhaul” and “Service Life Extensions” because those two require a group effort and a group investment. Do not take on a weight a burden for a set of words that don’t apply to the individual.

Anyhow take care, God bless, and have a good summer.

L&S, have to say I am surprised at your sudden attempt to present some level of expertise on Russian history given recent very Russophobic and bad-faith representations you have made here since your recent appearance. I’ll mention only the biggest 2, no need to beat a dead horse: 1. You claimed that Russia had lost up to 1,000,000 people (mostly soldiers, I guess? I assume the 13,000 Ukrainian Russian speakers dead under the shelling of Donetsk alone which forced Putin to start the SMO, eight years after he had allowed but not admitted the 4 independent Republics), which no respected or sane source would claim. 2. You claimed Russians are indifferent to the loss of ordinary people in wars in mass numbers, greatly contradicted by even establishment sources such as the NYT, which early on noted Putin’s cautious approach, not leveling Kiev (the Israeli model) since it is an important city in Russian history, etc.

I was not familiar with Figes, but see the book is well-reviewed, especially an Eric Hobsbawm review convinced me it’s worthwhile. But based on things you’ve said, you seem more like an Anne Applebaum (hard-core NeoCon) guy. If you don’t know Anne, she is a hard-core Zionist and Russia-hater, high up in the NatSec world. Her husband is the sometimes Polish PM, Sikorsky, who when Jake Sullivan bombed Nordstream immediately Tweeted a pick of the explosion/ methane release (the largest known in human history, btw, very destructive to the environment), “Thank you, USA!!” Then immediately deleted the Tweet, coz the Party line was that “Putin bombed his own pipeline.”

Anyway, you motivated me to dig out an old Applebomb article from Harper’s, Dec. 2016, on “The Rise and Fall of the Romanovs,” 2 books reviewed incl. a (very interesting topic, needless to say) review of Douglas Smith’s book on Rasputin’s role in the Royal family’s demise.

She loves to shag on the violence of the internecine battles of the Royal successors, such as Peter the Great displacing his rival brother. Needless to say, this unsavory stuff occurs across centuries of known history in multiple dynasties, going back at least to House of Atreus, in Sophocles’ tragedy a brother murders his nephew and feeds him to his competitor brother.

In 2016 she worked for the “Legatum Institute” “rule of law” Regime change front, and was hawking a book called “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-56.” She has no sympathies for countries in which the USA installed fascist family dictatorships, let’s just cite 2 obvious cases, the Shah in Iran (a kleptocrat who stole billions and tortured and murdered millions) or the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua– so kleptocratic that the rival ruling family, the Chamorros, joined the Sandinista rebels when he began stealing their properties.

The books covered are actually pretty good, but she misses no opportunities to portray Russians as backward, ignorant, “blind”, corrupt & ignorant, even at the top.

She correctly notes the 1881 foundation of the Okhrana Secret Police (decades behind their British rivals) and their involvement, likely, in producing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She craps all over Catherine the Great, kind of unusual given Catherine’s success in the hands of less prejudiced sources. She blames the Protocols (rightly) for the Holocaust of Central Europe “several decades later.” But with NO acknowledgement of who did it, the Germans, Poles, and Western Ukrainians, NOT the Russians who in fact prevented it as much as possible. Fascist propaganda always speaks of “Judeo-Bolshevism,” clearly anti-Semitic. (To be fair, Trotsky was hardly the only Jewish revolutionary leader in 1917.) Oh, an interesting revelation from the Rasputin-focused book: he advised Nicholas II not to enter World War I. Not stupid, evidently.

The Italian Jewish chemist Primo Levi was freed from Auschwitz by the Russian Army and loved them dearly. He wrote later about the General he saw who liberated them, very amusing, how the man was a “Giant”, bigger than the car he arrived in & very jolly,
according to Levi. Tony Blinken’s stepfather Samuel Pisar was freed from a camp by the Red Army. But li’l Antony still hates Russians and wants to exterminate them all, as well as the Palestinians. (Tony’s mom cuckolded his biological dad for the wealthy French Pisar, perhaps the source of Tony’s dead-eyed stare even before the millions of death he has advocated for and funded.)

I’ll close with AppleBomb’s final paragraph– “Like the Romanovs, the Bolsheviks took power among chaos, famine and destruction. And like the Romanovs, they continued to promote the hatred, fear, and envy that plague Russia to this day.” Black and white, “Russians are all evil and hateful”, but Germans aren’t Israelis aren’t, fascists aren’t (coz they work for US.) Look into Anne, she sounds just your speed. I bet she had regrets she didn’t make it to the Canadian parliament to give 2 standing ovations alongside Zelensky and Trudeau for the 98-year old Waffen SS war criminal Yaroslav Hunka, whose Himmler-formed unit slaughtered 4,000 mainly Jewish Poles and Ukrainians during WW II.

Oh, and Harper’s cover story for the same issue was a great Andrew Cockburn piece, “The New Red Scare: Reviving the Art of Threat Inflation” about the Russiagate lies of Trump’s first term, when the actual foreign power that helped Donald into the Oval Office was Israel. Gotta respect Harper’s range of different opinions.

Nuthatches are adorable. A couple of them used to be regulars at my bird feeder and it took a while for me even find out what they were. What a treat to have a nest right on your porch.

I have a squirrel that made a nest for himself on my juliet balcony a few months ago when it was still rainy and chilly. Now that it’s warm I think he must be sleeping in some nest he has in the trees where it would be cooler. Every day or two he comes back and perches on the balcony rail where I can see him. I keep a jar of chopped pecans by the door to the balcony. He knows that if I see him I will put a little snack out there for him. Ridiculous how cute he is.

yep – Trump bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. Now Israel is getting hit with multiple big missles.

The Breaking Points folks are already on it –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P2UQecejKI

I’m figuring Ian will have something to say about it the next time he posts.

The NaCap article posted a couple of paragraphs from Larry Johnson’s latest post at Sonar 21, but his full post includes lots of important information that the excerpt Yves included did not cover, so I am sharing it here –

https://sonar21.com/will-trumps-political-military-theater-widen-the-war/

Day two of several days of heaty weather. From the internet just now, Ann Arbor is
F 96/ 36 C and 53% humid. Also from the internet . . . by comparison, Windsor is
F 96/ 36 C too, with 54% humid.

Yesterday my dwelling unit reached 72 F inside. Today when I left my unit, it had reached 73 F. Pretty well insulated, not heating up too fast.

Today the outdoor temperature in Ann Arbor is 94 F and my indoor temperature has gone to 75 F. Since tomorrow should be over 90 again, we will see what my indoor temperature rises to.

By last night my indoor space had gone to 77 F . Today it is back down to 76 F.

Today outside showed the difference between “hot” and “heaty”. As soon as I got to the bus stop I was already sweating. The outdoor Temp is 87F , which is hot. But the humidity is 70%, which makes it heaty. Heatier than yesterday.

Nothing like what Mago described . . . 90 + and 100% humid and working over a high-powered heat source. That there is trial by heat.