DL Open Thread: Monday, November 25, 2024
Nancy Mace Has Done Us All A Favor–Inadvertently, Of Course. She has given Sarah McBride a platform to introduce herself and her message to the nation. We all know how good she is, now everybody else is finding out:
Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who made history this month as the first openly trans person elected to Congress, explained why Republicans aren’t fooling her in their attacks on the trans community Sunday.
“It is an attempt to distract from what they are actually doing. Every single time— every single time we hear them say the word ‘trans,’ look at what they’re doing with their right hand,” said McBride in an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, in her interview with McBride, brought up Democrats who have voiced concerns about trans youth playing sports before asking if she understood why some parents “feel uncomfortable or frustrated.”
McBride said the U.S. is “still entering” into a conversation around trans people and she’s talked with her Democratic colleagues that “span diversity of thought” on how to tackle a number of issues.
“But I think we are all united that every single American deserves equal rights, I think we are all united that attempts to attack a vulnerable community are not only mean spirited but really an attempt to misdirect,” she said.
“Because every single time we hear the incoming administration or Republicans in Congress talk about any vulnerable group in this country, we have to be clear that it is an attempt to distract.”
She later urged Americans to look at what Republicans are doing to “pick the pocket of American workers,” “fleece seniors” while privatizing Medicare and Social Security and making other moves to undermine workers.
We only send one. We sent our best.
They’re Lying To You About Ice Cream–It’s Good For You, They Just Don’t Know Why:
Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. Needless to say, the idea that a dessert loaded with saturated fat and sugar might actually be good for you raised some eyebrows at the nation’s most influential department of nutrition.
Earlier, the department chair, Frank Hu, had instructed Ardisson Korat to do some further digging: Could his research have been led astray by an artifact of chance, or a hidden source of bias, or a computational error? As Ardisson Korat spelled out on the day of his defense, his debunking efforts had been largely futile. The ice-cream signal was robust.
It was robust, and kind of hilarious. “I do sort of remember the vibe being like, Hahaha, this ice-cream thing won’t go away; that’s pretty funny,” recalled my tipster, who’d attended the presentation. This was obviously not what a budding nutrition expert or his super-credentialed committee members were hoping to discover. “He and his committee had done, like, every type of analysis—they had thrown every possible test at this finding to try to make it go away. And there was nothing they could do to make it go away.”
So, some ‘elite’ institutions buried the report and silenced its author. Makes me wonder whether ‘nutrition science’ is a science at all. Pretty cool story.
Where is RFK Jr. when we need him? Oh, that’s right. Me? I’m gonna Eet Mor Eyece Kreem.
The Literally-Toxic Tesla Work Environment. Hey, with Musk now the most-influential person in America, those work rules are going away:
Elon Musk, tapped to lead Donald Trump’s efforts to slash government spending and gut regulations, pushed employees to work hastily as Tesla piled up pollution violations, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal obtained emails from Texas regulators to Tesla that allege the MAGA billionaire’s electric carmaker dumped toxic pollutants near Austin, Texas—including untreated wastewater into the city’s sewer.
The Journal also obtained a whistleblower memo sent this year to the Environmental Protection Agency by an environmental-compliance staffer at Tesla’s Austin plant who wrote, “Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls.”
According to the documents obtained by the Journal, in 2022 Tesla dumped untreated wastewater filled with toxins from a 6-acre “evaporation” pond it built into the Austin sewage system without permission from local authorities. Employees at one point had found a dead deer in the pond, which contained sulfuric and nitric acids.
Earlier this year, Tesla was notified by local officials that it violated its municipal permit when it dumped more than 9,000 gallons of wastewater that was not correctly treated for pH, the Journal reported.
Every now and then, I read an obituary for someone I didn’t know but wished I had known. Such is the case with Alice Severance, who passed away on Saturday:
She spent eight years in Taiwan, raising her children and enjoying much laughter traveling through Southeast Asia with family and friends. She committed much of her life to deeply meaningful volunteer work, including serving on the board at the Community Services Center in Taiwan, caring for infants at a Taiwanese orphanage, mentoring students in Wilmington and Kennett, and working with ARC in Wilmington and a homeless shelter in Philadelphia. She was kindness embodied.
She was a strong woman who aspired to live her life by the last words of the Buddha, “Strive on with diligence.”
Everytime I read of someone like Alice, who made lives better for so many other people, I realize that I need to do better.
What do you want to talk about?
