We haven’t been on speaking terms for quite a while - but I finally decided to get a divorce - from Twitter / X The gross greed and intrusion into your life is unacceptable. But Twitter won’t let me absolutely end this relationship. The best they will allow users is temporary deactivation. 😑

This is so important, I’ll reiterate it. We must insure people know about this - and object to this legislation which likely will effectively turn NZ into an undemocratic, potentially very corrupt oligarchy/plutarchy. www.facebook.com/groups/47665...

Here is the link to where you can make a submission on the Fast Track Approvals bill. It is not showing up under the original post www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/mak...

⚠️ Secrecy shrouds one of the biggest political power grabs in New Zealand’s history. ⚠️ It will make govt expenditures at unprecedented high risk of various forms of corruption and crookedness. 🚩We have ONE day to respond to this.🚩 Please make a submission today. www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-dept...

GOOD FIRST STEP: The House just passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, a massive victory for #CivilRights & #CivilLiberties. This bill will ensure the government cannot use cash to avoid warrants and #privacy rules protecting Americans’ sensitive data.

One would think that a search on a platform would find words - whether in posts or about info or the names of accounts. Even a search for “Free Speech” came up with just a few accounts - and they seem focused on countering free speech. Are social media platforms just another propaganda outlet?

I did a search for “Free Thought” on Bluesky. I came up with nothing, nada, not a thing. Does this mean no one cares about free thought on Blue Sky, or is the search engine inadequate? It’s not like it was a complicated query.

A new study suggests that active Long Covid is accompanied by a blood protein signature marked by increased complement activation and thromboinflammation, including activated platelets and markers of red blood cell lysis. Tissue injury may also be complement-mediated www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Worrying rarely takes away tomorrow’s troubles; but it commonly takes away today’s joys and serenity. Consider the case of the Pastor’s Ass… 😉

Flight DL133 on 13 Feb between Amsterdam and Detroit was forced to return to Amsterdam when maggots in rotten fish, stowed away in the overhead hand luggage, started to creep out of the overhead bin, falling on passengers. 🤢 www.aviation24.be/airlines/del...

This terrific article hits on some of the major concerns arising over AI, such as 1. Job displacement 2. Privacy 3. Personal Autonomy 4. Autonomous weapons 5. Ethics of AI algorithms 6. AI, ethics and ‘moral responsibility’ (no accountability mentioned) There are many other issues of major concern

“Pure evil” – Dr. Mads Gilbert on Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s hospitals “This is the politics of elimination.” Dr. Gilbert condemns the unacceptable and heartless military strategy to attack, to kill occupants, and to dismantle Gaza’s civilian hospitals. www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/pure-evil-...

Intravenous (IV) administration of the antiplatelet agent tirofiban for 72 hours was associated with a reduction in early neurologic deterioration compared with oral aspirin therapy in patients with acute ischemic stroke, in the randomized TREND trial. www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Neurologic damage following acute viral infections may be attributed to an excessive immune response to the infection, according to a new study. www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Renal Cell Carcinoma Guidelines reference.medscape.com/viewarticle/... Medscape (which is for med professionals) requires an account to view the articles (which are produced by expert in various medical fields. It’s a highly respected free source of medical CME which has been around for decades)

The party of Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister, took the most seats in Pakistan’s election. www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/w... (Sorry, the full story is pay-walled, but worth following up. Dictatorships commonly drum up crimes, in order to attack, persecute and jail opposition leaders.)

A top US epidemiologist gave testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions last month 🚩 about the long COVID emergency 🚩 This has also been brought up in the UK Parliament. The fall-out from on-going covid is significant. thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...

Not wearing a mask during COVID-19 health emergency isn’t a free speech right, appeals court says. Common sense comparisons of laws are given. apnews.com/article/covi...

Viral protein fragments may unlock mystery behind serious COVID-19 outcomes. ‘Zombie’ virus fragments continue to cause inflammation after the virus is destroyed newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/vir...

FDA Revises Letter of Authorization for the Emergency Use Authorization for Paxlovid www.drugs.com/clinical_tri...

“Towards the eradication of medical diagnostic errors” This article by Dr. Eric Topol is alarming in 2 respects: 1. There are a lot of medical diagnostic errors (no surprise) 2. His answer to this appears to be AI (which isn’t that great either, performance-wise) open.substack.com/pub/erictopo...

COPD (Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis): From Diagnosis to Treatment (ref: Manual of Medicine) manualofmedicine.com/topics/pulmo...

737-9 MAX grounding (a timeline to 24 Jan 2024 from Flight Radar) www.flightradar24.com/blog/737-9-m... 24 Jan FAA Halted Boeing MAX Production Expansion to Improve Quality Control & Lays Out Extensive Inspection and Maintenance Process to Allow Boeing 737-9 MAX Aircraft to Return to Service

Locked-In Syndrome Is Predominant Outcome When Children Survive Drowning, Larger Study Confirms. Children with “locked-in syndrome,” unable to move or speak, are awake and fully aware of their surroundings. scienceblog.com/541981/locke...

Haleon Issues Voluntary Nationwide Recall of Robitussin Honey CF Max Day Adult and Robitussin Honey CF Max Nighttime Adult Products Due to Microbial Contamination www.drugs.com/fda/haleon-i...

MIT is advocating generative AI in education, while saying students should be thought to think🤨⁉️ Is AI really a nothing-burger and no more of an issue than the disruptive effects of calculators and the internet on education? What do you think about AI in the classroom? medium.com/open-learnin...

Censuses don’t deal with death. More accurate records of lifespan than “old bones” in more modern times are old church records of events such as births, marriages & deaths (precursors to state records); and the old “Bills of Mortality” (which cited the age and cause of death) which improved stats

~40,000 yrs ago, our Homo Sapien and Homo Neanderthal ancestors lived to an average age of 30. According to Our World in Data, by 1800 life expectancy on average was 40. It is in the last 100-150 yrs that life expectancy has increased. There are now increasing numbers who live to be 100 yrs old.

There are 4 commonly used terms in ageing research These are: 👉🏼Life Expectancy (LE) LE is often assoc with a specified time eg from birth (LE0), From 5 yrs old (LE5), from 20 (LE20) 👉🏼Longevity (living beyond group average) 👉🏼Lifespan (total length of life) 👉🏼Healthspan (period of healthy life)

Many people claim that clean air, clean water, lots of exercise and an organic diet cause you to live longer Is that true? Though our ancient ancestors had clean air and water, got lots of exercise and a 100% organic diet, on average their life expectancy was 30 yrs That’s because of other factors

Our Waiheke U3A Medical Science group will be focused on ageing this term I’ll pass on interesting articles I did the intro talk on life expectancy (by the numbers) from Neanderthals (~30 yrs) to modern man (~71 years, with wide variation) See OWID current stats ourworldindata.org/life-expecta...

An excellent article with tips on how and when to test for the current Covid variants.

❓Why has the Maori king of New Zealand called a national meeting of Maori?❓ The article by Aljazeera lays out the issues. The proposed changes might not look major - but they are major to Maori (due to Maori perspective and their interpretation of the Treaty). www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/...

FYI “All 737-9 MAX aircraft with door plugs will remain grounded pending the FAA’s review and final approval of an inspection and maintenance process that satisfies all FAA safety requirements.” (17 Jan 2024) Last timeline entry has the 18 Jan 2024 FAA report www.flightradar24.com/blog/737-9-m...

“MIT neuroscientists have found that the six anatomical layers of the mammalian brain cortex show distinct patterns of electrical activity which are consistent throughout the entire cortex and across several animal species, including humans.” scienceblog.com/541768/mit-s...

“Single black female seeks male companionship … “ To bring a smile to your day - a clever Singles ad, with a happy ending.

Is “Fast” (take-out meal) food a covert corporate euphemism for “Fat” food??? 😌😉 Contemplating modern euphemisms. Euphemism: “a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.”

As authoritarian extremists (right or left, [not all of them are politicians]) grasp or hang onto power, the world over - it’s important to remember that their first victims are usually - truth and free thought! Their modus operandi is usually information manipulation, propaganda and censorship.

Aren’t Zoom meetings a bit like talking to “the other side” at a seance or round a Ouija Board? 😉

Be Aware and Beware of growing Necropolitics (which is related to austerity). #Necropolitics is the use of social and political power to create inequitable health and living circumstances and opportunities - on the basis that certain groups are less deserving of the opportunity to survive.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (John Dalberg-Acton) Beware tyrants who seek to eliminate opposition, or act to eliminate and/or punish opposing views.

It isn’t that people don’t know they are being spied on by all manner of exploitative people. The public are brain-washed into thinking this doesn’t matter (even though it adversely affects our privacy and personal and financial security etc) and that we are powerless. 🚩 We need to change this! 🚩

“X” seems like such an inappropriate name for Twitter (which at one time was a great site to exchange the latest independent news, information and views; now its just another marketing and ad site). On the other hand, maybe “X” was a clue. [I wish more science and medical people would move here.]

American scientists planned to work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to engineer novel coronaviruses with the features of SARS-CoV-2, the year before the virus emerged from that city usrtk.org/covid-19-ori... This is not new news; but evidence that Gain of Function research must end 👉🏼globally

Without much doubt - agenda-driven search engine owner/manager policies and programmer biases seem likely responsible for the biased algorithms that push certain info to the front online search pages, and buries info that displeases them. The public is being wittingly and unwittingly brain-washed.

Here we go Why don’t the leading denizens of the surveillance-security-complex (government and ‘contractors’) acknowledge that their perpetual pushing for weak back doors in hardware and software to trawl data (including ordinary citizens’ data) for profit & power 👉🏼is a threat to national security

It is time the public not only demanded an end to secrecy (which seems primarily to hide dodgy activities, incompetence and corruption of politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies). Secrecy is the tool of thieves, fraudsters, and baddies of all sorts. It leads to crooked, unaccountable rulers.

Disturbing research in which researchers report that their study showed a SARS pangolin coronavirus 😳 caused 100% mortality in mice 😳 (including in a variant of mice tested by Zhengli Shi) - AND they are recommending more research into this deadly variant‼️ It’s mad! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

FYI 🧪🩺 A terrific infographic on blood and blood product transfusions, and transfusion reactions and their management (and suggestions of what to do if your patient refuses a transfusion but needs treatment), by Dr Nick Mark (from X site).

FYI 🧪🩺 A method to help differentiate between different types of shock - from “ICU Onepager” on the X site.