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pscot's JournalAustralia is burning
When will the Netherlands disappear?
OVERDIEPSE POLDER, Netherlands — The local phonebook in the Dutch area of Noordwaard is a record of a community that no longer exists: Lists of numbers for homes that have been demolished, leaving just square patches in the grass where their foundations stood.
Once a thriving farming area, Noordwaard is now an expanse of reedy marshlands in the southwest Netherlands, deliberately designed to flood in order to keep nearby Dutch cities dry. "Several years ago, when you came to that polder, big nice farms were there, acres with potatoes and onions," said Stan Fleerakkers, a dairy farmer who lives nearby. "Now when you drive there, there's nothing left of it."
The Noordwaard polder was one of 39 such areas selected for the Dutch government’s “Room for the River” program, in which land was given back to the water. It’s a modern reversal of the centuries-old practice of land reclamation by the famously low-lying country.
It’s also a snapshot of the future the country faces: With unprecedented sea level rise forecast as a result of climate change, the Dutch government is racing against the clock to figure out how to keep one of the world’s richest countries from disappearing into the North Sea.
https://www.politico.eu/article/when-will-the-netherlands-disappear-climate-change/
It Came From Something Awful by Dale Beran
"An insider's history of the website at the end of the world, which burst into politics and memed Donald Trump into the White House. The internet has transformed the ways we think and act, and by consequence, our politics. The most impactful recent political movements on the far left and right started with massive online collectives of teenagers. Strangely, both movements began on the same website: an anime imageboard called 4chan.org. It Came from Something Awful is the fascinating and bizarre story of 4chan and its profound effect on youth counterculture. Dale Beran has observed the website's shifting activities and interests since the beginning. 4chan is a microcosm of the internet itself--simultaneously at the vanguard of contemporary culture, politics, comedy and language, and a new low for all of the above. It was the original meme machine, mostly frequented by socially awkward and disenfranchised young men in search of a place to be alone together. During the recession of the late 2000's, the memes became political. 4chan was the online hub of a leftist hacker collective known as Anonymous and a prominent supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But within a few short years, the site's ideology spun on its axis; it became the birthplace and breeding ground of the alt-right. In It Came from Something Awful, Beran uses his insider's knowledge and natural storytelling ability to chronicle 4chan's strange journey from creating rage-comics to inciting riots to--according to some--memeing Donald Trump into the White House"-- Provided by publisher.
Here's a sneak preview of Rudy's rebuttal
At 2.54am on Tuesday, Rudy Giuliani texted Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn that the president’s “counter report” will come out at the same time as the redacted Mueller report and that it will be 34 or 35 pages. Originally, Rudy G had promised to deliver 140 pages of delicious, bodice-ripping, lib-owning content, but as this writer can tell you, there are only so many gifs, emojis and Venn diagrams you can put in a piece of writing before you start to look like you're just trying to fill the pages.
Speculation is wild about what will be in the Rudy Rebuttal but luckily for me, Julian Assange sent me an early copy on the condition that I publish it immediately (because that’s what you do when you're totally not a cut-out of the Russian government at all.)
...
Part one of the Rudy Rebuttal is the origin story of how the Rudy Rebuttal came to pass in the first place. Confusingly, part one also includes copies of Rudy’s first three pre-nuptials. There is some truly breathtaking prose in part one and if you don’t have a pet pig, the cut-out on page seven is basically chicken soup for the conservative soul.
Part two of the Rudy Rebuttal is a wide-ranging defense of all of Trump’s sketchiest stuff, including several porn-star payoffs not previously known about. It also includes an early autobiographical poem written by a young Donald J Trump in iambic pentameter. But by far the most illuminating section is the Snapchat story of Tiffany playing golf at Trump National in Florida.
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Part five of the Rudy Rebuttal is a copy of Rudy’s online dating profile for Christian singles. It includes a long second about his personal turn-offs, which include not being at least tangentially related to him.
(more)
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mueller-report-rudy-giuliani-trump-julian-assange-russia-investigation-a8875326.html
It is hard to imagine how so much of life could have been killed,
https://phys.org/news/2012-05-million-years-recover-mass-extinction.html#jCpThe end-Permian crisis, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, was triggered by a number of physical environmental shocks - global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia. These were enough to kill off 90 per cent of living things on land and in the sea.
....
Current research shows that the grim conditions continued in bursts for some five to six million years after the initial crisis, with repeated carbon and oxygen crises, warming and other ill effects.
Some groups of animals on the sea and land did recover quickly and began to rebuild their ecosystems, but they suffered further setbacks. Life had not really recovered in these early phases because permanent ecosystems were not established.
Professor Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol, said: "Life seemed to be getting back to normal when another crisis hit and set it back again. The carbon crises were repeated many times, and then finally conditions became normal again after five million years or so."
Frequency Therapeutics Announces Positive Phase 1/2 Data for Drug Candidate for Hearing Restoration
It's still early days, but this seems pretty interesting
WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Frequency Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotechnology company, today announced positive results from a Phase 1/2 safety trial to evaluate FX-322, an investigational drug candidate designed to facilitate hearing restoration. The trial assessed the safety of a single dose of FX-322 given by intratympanic administration in adult patients with stable sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) who had a medical history consistent with either chronic noise exposure or idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss. In the Phase 1/2 study, FX-322 was safe and well tolerated following a single intratympanic injection with no serious adverse events. In addition, improvements in hearing function, including audiometry and word scores, were observed in multiple FX-322 treated patients.
Frequency is excited to announce positive results from our Phase 1/2 safety study of FX-322 in adults with sensorineural #hearingloss. All safety endpoints were met and signs of functional hearing improvement were observed in multiple patients.
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“Hearing loss affects millions of people and current treatments are unable to restore hearing once it is lost,” said Susan Marenda King, M.D., a Neurotologist at the Ear Medical Group in San Antonio, TX and lead enroller in the clinical trial. “The study results for FX-322, which show signs of functional hearing improvement, are very promising and represent an exciting step toward a potential treatment for patients.”
“While the focus of this study was safety, we are excited to see initial results in sensorineural hearing restoration as there are currently no treatments to restore hearing for these patients,” said David L. Lucchino, President, Co-founder and CEO of Frequency. “Furthermore, this data provides support for our small-molecule-driven regenerative medicine platform, which has the opportunity to address numerous degenerative diseases.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190409005363/en/Frequency-Therapeutics-Announces-Positive-Phase-12-Data
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