RFK Jr.’s brain worm is not funny

I am not a fan of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He seems to be somewhat of a crank and his run for president seems to be a vanity project in order to push some of his outlandish views. But his revelation that he has a dead parasitic worm in his brain has created a media storm.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday detailed the medical abnormality he experienced in 2010 that he said was caused by a worm that entered his brain and then died, marking his first public explanation of the incident.

Kennedy said he recalls experiencing “brain fog” and “having trouble with word retrieval and short-term memory,” during that period in a podcast interview on “Pushing the Limits with Brian Shapiro.”

He was initially told by doctors that he had a tumor in his brain, and was planning to have it removed before he met with another doctor who looked at images of his brain and said it didn’t look like a tumor, Kennedy said.

While I completely oppose his candidacy, I am disturbed at how some are reacting to the news, treating it as a source of humor. People’s health problems can be a source of concern. Learning that one has a worm in one’s brain, even if it is dead, can be terrifying. While it can raise legitimate questions about whether they are capable of serving in the office, it is not funny and I wish people would stop treating it as such.

The competition between US and Chinese electric vehicle companies

President Joe Biden is ramping up the trade war with China by keeping the tariffs serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) placed on some Chinese products and adding new ones or increasing them. In particular he is expected to placed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs).

The Biden administration is getting ready to announce new tariffs on imports of goods from China — products like electric vehicles deemed to be policy priorities.

The announcement, which could come as early as next week, was confirmed by a source familiar with the tariff deliberations, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement of the decision.

The administration has been reviewing tariffs on Chinese goods since President Biden took office – steep duties on about $370 billion of imports from China each year, put in place by former President Donald Trump as one of his signature policy moves.

The Biden administration has decided to keep those Trump tariffs in place — and in addition, add a range of strategic items to the list. The decision was first reported by Bloomberg.

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How fountains worked in the days before electricity

When watching films that are set in a time before there was electricity, I would sometimes see public fountains and would idly wonder how they worked. I knew that they had to be driven by gravity, with the water coming from a source like a tower that was higher than the. fountain, the way that many of us still get water nowadays, from city water towers. But how did they fill the water towers in those days?

This article explains.

Ancient Rome received all of its water (according to Encarta, about 38 million gallons a day) through a system of aqueducts. All water flowed to the city by gravity, but because it was arriving from surrounding hills, it could be stored in large cisterns very similar in concept to today’s water towers (the main difference is that cisterns are filled from the top).

Water flowed from the cisterns either through pipes to individual houses or to public distribution points. Fountains served both decorative and functional purposes, since people could bring their buckets to the fountain to collect water. The cisterns provided the height needed to generate water pressure for the fountains to spray. As discussed in How Water Towers Work, a foot of height generates 0.43 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure, so a cistern does not have to be that tall to develop enough pressure to give a fountain a reasonable display.

The question that the article does not address is what happens to the water after it comes out of the fountain. It cannot be pumped back up without electricity or having people and animals haul it back up to a height. Did they just let it soak into the ground?

While those old fountains must have been nice to look at, they do seem to be a wasteful use of precious water that had come a long way using aqueducts, themselves a magnificent engineering feat.

Hard times for Trump allies

John Catsimatidis is a billionaire who is a Republican donor. He also owns a radio station WABC and Rudy Giuliani had a time slot on that show that he used to rant about his usual pet peeves. But WABC at some point warned him to stay away from topics like the 2020 election, possibly because of fears that his reckless spewing of conspiracy fantasies about the 2020 election being stolen because of rigged voting machines and software might get the station sued by Dominion and Smartmatic voting systems, the way he has been sued. He already is on the hook to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers.

But Giuliani did not heed the warnings and so the station has suspended his show.
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What the hell is wrong with the Catholic church?

You would think that by now people would have got used to the extent to which the Catholic church went to shield pedophile priests. But then comes along a story like this about a bombshell secret deposition that reveals the callous disregard the church had towards the victims of a priest while covering up his abuses, and even promoting him and allowing him to retire with full benefits.
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Kristi Noem’s disastrous book tour

As if her story about shooting her pet puppy Cricket was not bad enough, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is also under fire for a false story about meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Jordan Klepper weighs in.

In China, a zoo has apologized for dyeing two dogs black and white in order to fool visitors into making them think they were pandas. It struck me that this may be a good strategy for dogs to avoid Killer Noem.

Old bitter comedians

It has become common to hear well-known comedians bemoaning that they are no longer allowed to do the kind of comedy they want to do because audiences have become too touchy and sensitive and object to what they like to think of as ‘edgy’ comedy. People like Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Louis CK, and Dave Chappelle are among the most prominent whiners.

Now Monty Python’s John Cleese has also joined in, framing his complaint in the form of saying that people no longer understand irony.
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Tories reeling after local elections in the UK

Elections to local councils last week saw the Conservative party suffering huge losses. They won 515 seats, down by 397 form what they held before, while all the the parties gained seats. The Labour party was the biggest gainer, winning 1,158 seats, an increase of 232.

This does not augur well for the Conservatives in the next general elections which have to be held by January but are expected to be held a few months earlier, on a date of prime minister Rishi Sunak’s choosing. Public opinion polls have long indicated that they will be swept out of power after 14 continuous years of rule and these local elections cemented that view.

In general, a party that loses so badly might seek to replace its leader with someone new in the hope of turning its fortunes around. But it is not clear that this will happen to prime minister Rishi Sunal since there is not much time left before the general election and the party has recently had so much turmoil in its leadership that a fresh round of leadership fights is not something that they will relish.
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The depths of human depravity

I know that there are sadistic sociopaths out there who delight in the suffering of other people and animals. But despite that awareness, I am still capable of being shocked by the depths of depravity exhibited by some, like those involved in this story.

A British woman has pleaded guilty to being part of a global monkey torture network.

Holly LeGresley, 37, from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to an online chat group.

She was charged after an investigation by the BBC into the torture of monkeys overseas. The investigation exposed a global network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.

The BBC said LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey.

That people could even conceive of a scheme to torture and kill baby monkeys and then find people around to world willing to fund it just boggles my mind.