In the 1960s, the FDA's approval of the birth control pill was seen as a catalyst for the sexual revolution. Women celebrated what seemed to be a newfound freedom to have sex, and children, on their own terms.

Six decades later, the pill and other forms of birth control provide the same freedom for many. We're learning, however, that the revolution came with a hidden dark side. From mental fog to pelvic pain, the pill can cause damaging physical and mental effects. What's worse, pressure from partners, family, friends, and society itself — any time women are told they "should" be on birth control — has socialized everyone to believe it's a woman's responsibility to prevent pregnancy.

In her ironically-titled book Just Get on the Pill, out this month, University of Oregon sociology professor Krystale E. Littlejohn shows how birth control hasn't been as empowering as society first hailed it to be, especially for marginalized populations.

Littlejohn's team interviewed 103 women in the San Francisco area between 2009 and 2011. All were unmarried (as unmarried women are the most likely to have an unintended pregnancy) and from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Some gave birth, others didn't. Some had undergone abortions. This research, affiliated with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley makes Just Get on the Pill an even more powerful read.

https://mashable.com/article/birth-control-just-get-on-the-pill
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While I do think her sample is laughably small, this is an interesting article and makes very valid points about BC being pushed as solely a "women's issue" when it clearly is NOT. Disclaimer: I was on the pill in the 1960s with absolutely no side effects at all, so I can't complain. Other methods? Not so much.....

Are mask mandates a form of Christian persecution? That’s the argument a California man is making after his two teens were sent home for violating their high school’s mask policy.

“The Bible says we’re made in the image of God and Satan tries to cover that up. A mask is a sign of oppression,” Gary Nelson told NBC News. And then it gets worse. He claimed that Muslims and Jews would have been accommodated but that the school administrators “feel safe” persecuting Christians.

These claims are laughable. Nothing in the Bible says you can’t wear masks. And you don’t see anti-masker Christians arguing against wearing clothing or hats or sunglasses. When these conservative Christians start mandating nudity, then they might have a claim about not covering up what God has created.

The Nelson family isn’t alone in making this absurd claim. A Catholic school in Lansing, Michigan, has sued the state over its mask mandate and claimed that “because God created us in His image, we are masking that image.” Last year, a Republican legislator in Ohio refused to wear a mask, arguing in a Facebook post that the U.S. was founded on “Judeo-Christian Principles” that include “we are all created in the image and likeness of God.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/covid-mask-vaccination-mandates-aren-t-christian-persecution-ncna1278067

Wild cockatoos have been observed using three types of tools as “cutlery” to extract seeds from tropical fruit.

Researchers made the discovery while studying Goffin’s cockatoos on the Tanimbar Islands, a remote archipelago in Indonesia.

The team noticed the behaviour in two wild cockatoos, who crafted tools from tree branches and used them to extract seed matter from sea mangoes, a tropical fruit.

The Goffin’s cockatoo, also known as the blushing cockatoo and the Tanimbar corella, is endemic to the archipelago but has also been introduced to Puerto Rico and Singapore.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/01/wild-cockatoos-observed-using-tools-as-cutlery-to-extract-seeds-from-tropical-fruit

An 11-month-old cougar was removed from a New York City apartment where it was being illegally kept as a pet, animal welfare officials said.

The owners of the 79lb (36kg) female surrendered the animal last Thursday, said Kelly Donithan, director of animal disaster response for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

The cougar, named Sasha, was taken to the Bronx Zoo for veterinary treatment. On Monday, officials transported it to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, where it will receive lifelong care.

HSUS coordinated the removal with zoo officials, New York police and the New York state department of environmental conservation. The New York police commissioner, Dermot Shea, said the case was under investigation.

Donithan was on scene with the cougar and facilitated transport.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/31/baby-cougar-rescued-from-new-york-city-apartment

Fox News is driving political violence in the US, a media watchdog warned, after the primetime host Tucker Carlson predicted “revolt” against the Biden administration.

In a Monday night monologue targeting the White House and military leaders over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Carlson demanded resignations. He also said: “When leaders refuse to hold themselves accountable over time, people revolt. That happens.

“We need to change course immediately and start acknowledging our mistakes. The people who made them need to start acknowledging them or else the consequences will be awful.”

Angelo Carusone, president and chief executive of Media Matters for America, a progressive group, said: “When there’s another big violent rightwing flashpoint that captures attention, way too many in media will wonder out loud: ‘How did this happen?’ ‘Were there the signs?’

“You don’t need to wade into the online fever-swamps to see the cauldron of extremism simmering. Fox News is ratcheting up heat and legitimising nightly.

“Fox News, not Facebook, will be the driver of the next insurrection. Plain and simple.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/31/fox-news-tucker-carlson-revolt-violence

All around the world, there seem to be signs that immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, doesn't last very long after you're vaccinated.

Israel is now having one of the world's worst COVID-19 surges about five months after vaccinating a majority of its population. And in the U.S., health officials are recommending a booster shot eight months after the original vaccine course.

So, how long does immunity last after two doses of the vaccine? Six months or so? And at that point, how much protection is left over?

It all depends on which type of immunity you're talking about, says immunologist Ali Ellebedy at Washington University in St. Louis. Six months after your vaccine, your body may be more ready to fight off the coronavirus than you might think.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/30/1032520934/immunity-to-covid-19-could-last-longer-than-youd-think
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Long but informative. Please read the whole thing before commenting! Otherwise it won't make sense

In early May, flames began to spread through a pine forest, consuming a dense carpet of leaves and underbrush. The burn was the definition of a "good fire," intentionally ignited to clear vegetation that could fuel future infernos.

It happened in the state leading the nation in controlled burns: Florida.

As Western states contend with increasingly catastrophic wildfires, some are looking to the Southeastern U.S., where prescribed fire is widespread thanks to policies put in place decades ago. From 1998 to 2018, 70% of all controlled burning in the country was in the Southeast.

While a continent apart, both regions have a similar need for fire. For thousands of years, forests and woodlands experienced regular burning, both sparked by lightning and used by Native American tribes, which prevented the build up of flammable growth. Without fire, the landscape is prone to intense, potentially devastating wildfires.

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1029821831/to-stop-extreme-wildfires-california-is-learning-from-florida
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Note: the Gatlinburg fires of 2016 were not "prescribed burns"!

Homesteads dotting a pastoral landscape, families living by lamplight and men in straw hats riding horse-drawn carriages -- the scenes in Jake Michaels' photographs could easily depict bygone times in the American Midwest. But not only do his pictures hail from the digital age, they were taken hundreds of miles away in Belize.
The tiny Central American country is home to around 12,000 of the world's most conservative Mennonites, a group of Christians that live in closed communities and shun modern technology including, in some cases, electricity. Dating back to 16th-century Europe, the Protestant sect's members have since moved around the world in search of isolated farmland, and to escape persecution or attempts to integrate them into wider society.
Belize's colonies date back to the late 1950s, when a group of over 3,000 Canadian Mennonites immigrated there from Mexico. Their arrival followed an agreement with the Belizean government, which offered them land, religious freedom and exemption from certain taxes (and, as committed pacifists, from military service).
In return, the country has enjoyed the fruits of their agriculture. Today, Mennonites dominate Belize's domestic poultry and dairy markets, despite representing less 4% of the population.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/belize-mennonites-jake-michaels/index.html
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I have one argument with a sentence in this article: "Belize's Mennonites have literacy rates significantly lower than the country's other ethnic groups, with just 5% completing formal secondary education." An 8th grade education does not equal illiteracy. Amish and conservative Mennonites are some of the biggest users of public libraries that I have met and the children are voracious readers even though their reading is somewhat censored.

On Saturday night, an entirely false claim about President Joe Biden went viral among conservatives on Twitter.

"Our heroes were returned to American soil and Dover AFB today. Nobody from the Biden White House attended," tweeted Buzz Patterson, a Republican congressional candidate in California.
Patterson's tweet -- posted before 11 p.m. on Saturday -- generated thousands of retweets. And similar claims were made by other conservatives with substantial Twitter followings.
Ryan Fournier, the Students for Trump co-founder who has more than 940,000 followers, tweeted a near-identical claim. Fournier's tweet specified that "not even the President of the United States" showed up at Dover, and it concluded: "Remember every moment of this."

Facts First: It's completely false that nobody from the Biden administration showed up at Dover Air Force Base to greet the remains of the 13 troops killed in a terror attack on Thursday outside Kabul's airport. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden -- along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other administration officials -- attended the dignified transfer at Dover on Sunday morning. The viral tweets accusing the Biden administration of being absent at Dover were posted hours before the remains actually arrived at the base.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/politics/fact-check-biden-dover-afghanistan-kabul/index.html
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Not to mention video evidence proving otherwise. But whatever.....

As Hurricane Ida roared ashore in Louisiana on Sunday, the storm's force was so strong it temporarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.

Ida's winds snapped trees and tore roofs off buildings as its floodwaters blocked roads and submerged cars. The Category 4 storm was expected to dump up to 2 feet of rain in some areas and bring up to 7 feet of storm surge. More than 1 million people in Louisiana were without power.

A U.S. Geological Survey gauge at Belle Chasse, south of New Orleans, detected the Mississippi's flow moving backward around midday Sunday because of the volume of water Ida whipped up.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ricky Boyette confirmed engineers detected a “negative flow” on the Mississippi River as a result of storm surge.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/08/30/mississippi-river-flowed-backward-due-strength-hurricane-ida/5647017001/
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I don't recall Katrina doing this, but I could be wrong.