The eternal quest to delay or even conquer death has reached new levels of fascination in recent years,
spurred by a growing number of researchers studying the aging process
and major investments in the field from billionaires
including Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel and Sam Altman.
The anti-aging movement has also gotten a boost
— and a fair share of ridicule
— from extreme tales of rich immortality biohackers
such as Los Angeles multimillionaire #Bryan#Johnson, who claims that death is no longer inevitable.
The 46-year-old tech entrepreneur follows an audacious
$2-million-a-year “don’t die” plan
— downing shots of olive oil and protein-packed “nutty pudding”
and obsessively measuring his bodily functions down to the duration of his nighttime erections
— in an attempt to turn back his biological clock.
Lawmakers expensed millions in 2023 under new program that doesn’t require receipts
Matt Gaetz was the program’s top spender (of course).
More than 300 House lawmakers were reimbursed at least $5.2 million for food and lodging while on official business in Washington last year
under a new, taxpayer-funded program that does not require them to provide receipts.
The program, which kicked off last year after a House panel passed it with bipartisan support,
was intended to make it easier for lawmakers to cover the cost of maintaining separate homes in D.C. and their home districts.
But critics argue that its reliance on the honor system and lack of transparent record-keeping makes it ripe for abuse.
The reimbursement scheme’s lack of receipt requirements is a “ridiculous loophole,” said Craig Holman,
a lobbyist for the good government group Public Citizen.
“Clearly it becomes very difficult to tell whether or not it’s a legitimate payment and whether it’s proper,” Holman added.
The program has only a few strict rules: Lawmakers cannot be repaid for principal or interest on their mortgages, they can only get reimbursement for days they’re actually working or flying to D.C., and they can’t ask for more back than their actual expenses. They’re also subject to daily spending caps determined by the General Services Administration.
Members are “strongly encouraged,” but not required, to keep records of their expenses, according to guidance issued by the House Committee on Administration.
The world’s first
💥personalised mRNA cancer vaccine 💥for melanoma
🔥halves the risk of patients dying or the disease returning,
according to trial results that doctors described as “extremely impressive”.
#Melanoma affects more than 150,000 people a year globally, according to 2020 figures from World Cancer Research Fund International.
Patients who received the vaccine after having a stage three or four melanoma removed
had a 49% lower risk of dying or the disease recurring after three years.
A primary investigator on the study, oncologist Prof Georgina Long, said
the average risk of recurrence after surgery for the cohort of advanced cancer patients was 50%.
Democrats are anticipating a large chunk of their caucus to sit out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu'saddress to a #joint#session Congress.
Why it matters:
It would represent a significant repudiation of the Israeli prime minister amid persistent Democratic objections to how he has conducted the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu's 2015 speech to Congress, which was a major snub of the Obama administration, was skippedby 58 Democratic lawmakers.
Many Democrats this year argued against inviting Netanyahu in the first place, accusing Republicans of attempting to divide their party with the speech.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told Axios the #boycott "will be large" and that there are "a lot of people who are extremely upset he is coming here."
Jayapal said she has spoken to several lawmakers who went to Netanyahu's 2015 speech but said they will not attend this time.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the progressive ranking member of the House Rules Committee, told Axios he will not attend and said: "I wish it wasn't [happening]."
Several other progressives previously told Axios when the speech was first floated in March that they would sit it out.
Some Democrats who have tried to balance their support for Israel and their discomfort with how the war has been prosecuted are struggling with whether to attend, as Axios previously reported.
One House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a lot of members will "wait up until the very end to decide" whether they will attend, calling it a "very fluid, unpredictable situation."
The lawmaker said that whether there is a #ceasefire in Gaza by the time Netanyahu speaks will be the key factor, predicting anywhere from 50 to 100 Democrats will skip the speech if the war is still raging.
Another, senior House Democrat said it is "all being discussed" and that "a number [of Democrats] are going and #disrupting" the speech.
The other side: Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), a senior Progressive Caucus member, told Axios he is "hoping to have a conversation about it."
The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant.
When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems.
Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all
💥pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for bad things to get better. 💥
Their public spirit will be infinitely more urgent when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves
Billions in taxpayer dollars now go to religious schools via vouchers
The rapid expansion of state #voucher programs follows court decisions that have
💥eroded the separation between church and state.💥
School vouchers can be used at almost any private school, but the vast majority of the money is being directed to #religious#schools, according to a Washington Post examination of the nation’s largest voucher programs.
Vouchers, government money that covers education costs for families outside the public schools, vary by state
but offer up to $16,000 per student per year,
and in many cases fully cover the cost of tuition at private schools.
In some schools, a large share of the student body is benefiting from a voucher, meaning
a significant portion of the school’s funding is coming directly from the government.
The programs, popular with conservatives, are rapidly growing in GOP-run states,
with a total of 28 states plus D.C. operating some sort of voucher system.
Eight states created or expanded voucher programs last year,
and this year, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri have approved or expanded voucher-type programs.
As many as 180,000 people would gather to light candles in #Victoria#Park to remember June 4th 1989,
when China’s army brought a bloody end to weeks of peaceful pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
(China has never put a figure on the number who died in what it terms a counter-revolutionary incident.)
Hong Kong’s vigils became a symbol of #defiance of mainland authority
and an ardent evocation of the city’s #independence.
“It was magnificent,” says one resident. “We wanted to make [the massacre] known, not just in Hong Kong, but throughout the world.”
🔥 Organising such a vigil would be unthinkable now.
The commemoration was #banned in 2020, ostensibly because of covid-19.
Some 20,000 people gathered anyway.
The following month the central government in Beijing imposed a draconian national-security law on the territory,
a response to large pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The authorities have since snuffed out memories of Tiananmen.
Memorials have been removed.
The commemoration’s organisers have been jailed;
-- in March they lost a bid to overturn their conviction.
Wearing black or lighting candles near Victoria Park on June 4th may now be considered criminal activity.
This year, like the last, the park is filled with food trucks instead of candles.
Pro-Beijing groups have organised a carnival in the vigil’s stead.
Trump calls on the Supreme Court to annul his guilty verdict in election interference hush-money case
In a worrying sign for Trump,
a new ABC/IPSOS poll showed ⭐️50% of voters thought the verdict was correct,
nearly double the 27% proportion who believed it was wrong.
⭐️Nearly half of those polled, 49%, thought he should end his campaign – a step he is highly unlikely to take.
The figures were even starker among “double haters”
– voters who equally dislike Trump and president Joe Biden
– 🌟65% of whom supported the verdict, with two-thirds saying the former president should end his campaign.
Pollsters predict the cohort could be a critical component of the swing voter constituency they believe will determine the outcome in November.
By appealing to the supreme court to intervene in a case he insists is nakedly political,
Trump is reprising the legal strategy deployed in his defense against special counsel Jack Smith’s charges
relating to the 6 January 2021 mob attack on the US Capitol
in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in his favor.
The #Jan6 case is currently on hold while the nine justices consider claims by Trump’s lawyers that he had complete #immunity from prosecution for decisions taken while he was president.
But Trump's invocation of the court
– which has a six-to-three conservative majority after Trump’s judicial appointments while he was in the White House
– also comes as 💥 questions over the court's political #impartiality are at a peak💥... following revelations that a US flag was flown upside down at the home of Justice Samuel #Alito at the time of the January 6 riot.
The gesture is identical to that used by many participants in the attack as a symbol of protest against Biden’s victory.
A pair of Texas professors figured out that their female students have sex and, boy, they do not like it.
So now the philosophy professor and finance professor are suing for the right to punish their students who, outside of class, have abortions.
"Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not 'health care,'" University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield.
Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of "voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse," students should not be allowed time off to get abortions.
If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students.
Additionally, Bonevac asserts that he has a right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion, calling such women "criminals." https://www.salon.com/2024/06/03/texas-professors-to-fail-students-seek-abortions/
Fossils from an ice age “spa” reveal a cluster of hot springs kept trees alive in the frozen Alps
A “tree spa” created by hot springs in what is now the Czech Republic may have served as a refuge for plants
—and possibly animals
—during the last ice age,
when much of Europe was covered by ice, new fossil evidence suggests.
Clues that this hot spring oasis existed include fossilized leaf fragments, wood and pollen from temperate, or “warmth-loving,” species,
including oaks, lindens and ashes.
Such trees were thought to have survived the final phase of the last ice age,
called the last glacial maximum (LGM),
only in the relatively warm Mediterranean Basin.
But radiocarbon dating shows that many of the newly discovered fossils from the Vienna Basin region of the Czech Republic date to between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago
—the height of the LGM.
The researchers also found signs of hydrothermal activity in the area at that time.
This suggests that geothermal heat reached the tree roots in water from hot springs and likely kept those trees alive over thousands of years in an isolated pocket of warm forest that was hundreds of miles to the north of their Mediterranean cousins.
Biologists have debated for decades about the existence of glacial refugia, or areas where the climate remained temperate, in northern Europe during the LGM.
But “the precise locations of refugia and their impact on the present-day distribution and diversity of species is still under investigation,” wrote University of Oxford biologists Katherine Willis and Robert Whittaker in an article in Science in 2000.
The genetics of most warmth-loving trees in modern Europe don’t completely correspond to their Mediterranean strains, which suggests that such refugia must have existed where genetically different trees of those species survived.
But this is the first time that one has been found. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossils-from-an-ice-age-tree-spa-discovered/
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the #Senate will vote on a bill to protect a person's ability to access #contraceptives this Wednesday.
Why it matters:
The vote on the
⭐️Right to Contraception Act ⭐️
comes just ahead of the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down federal abortion rights protections and as Democrats highlight the matter as a key 2024 election issue.
Schumer wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter released Sunday: "Democrats will be putting reproductive freedoms front and center."
in his concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote
that the bench should reconsider
"all of this Court's substantive due process precedents,"
including those guaranteeing birth control access and marriage equality.
Schumer promised in the letter that there would be "more action" after next week's vote on the "Right to Contraception Act"
which is led by by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).
State of play:
Schumer noted since the Supreme Court's June 24, 2022 decision in the Dobbs case, that 🔥at least 20 states have imposed near-total bans or severe restrictions on abortion.🔥
"There's no question in the American people's minds that Republicans have brought our country to this point," Schumer wrote.
"And as Donald Trump reminded us recently, he is 'proudly the person responsible' for the annihilation of Roe v. Wade and the grotesque reversal of women's personal freedoms," he added.
"Democrats have been clear we will not stand for these attacks and we will fight to preserve reproductive freedoms.
That is why as we return from the Memorial Day state work period, Senate Democrats will be putting reproductive freedoms front and center."
🔸The bill would guarantee the legal right for individuals to get and use contraception and for health care providers to provide contraception, information, referrals and services related to contraception.
🔸It would also prohibit the federal government and any state from administering or enforcing any law, rule or regulation to prohibit or restrict the sale or use of contraception.
Five ways to respond to Alito’s contemptuous letter
-- Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
First, constitutional law guru and former impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) suggests a recusal demand directed at both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife, Virginia, supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
Second, an immediate Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Both of the Alitos could be called to testify under oath
Third, as Whitehouse urged, the Senate should put on the floor his Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act of 2023.
Fourth, Americans can and should engage in massive, peaceful demonstrations in defense of the rule of law
Finally, should Democrats win the White House and majorities in the House and Senate, no matter how narrow, the entire panoply of reforms and responses should be on the table. Those could include Alito’s impeachment (especially if he snubs a subpoena), a mandatory ethics code, Supreme Court term limits and court expansion. (If need be, Democrats would need to adjust the too-long abused filibuster to attend to the job of fixing a disgraced court.)
Trump in 2016: "She shouldn't be allowed to run...If she wins, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt."
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent.
Manchin had previously announced that he would not run for reelection for his Senate seat.
His change in party affiliation now means he can run as an independent for the Senate,
or even for governor of West Virginia,
where he’d take on Republican rival Jim Justice.
He has not announced plans to do either yet.
Right now, the move makes him the fourth independent in the Democratic Caucus.
@FaithinBones@cdarwin Disagree...What is likely to happen is that he will call in a favor, and have Justice campaign for him. He can easily get back in.
House Majority PAC, House Democrats' main super PAC, issued releases attributing the statement
"I Support Crime" to Biden-district Republicans.
It's a call-back to a series of NRCC releases earlier this month attributing the statement "I support Hamas" to Democrats who voted against forcing the transfer of munitions Israel