Category: Health / Healthcare / Illness / Vaccines
Me, neither-
Nice Time: Jimmy Carter Lives To Defeat The Guinea Worm!
He may have eradicated only the second disease since smallpox!
MARCIE JONES JUL 27, 2024
Good news!
Snippet:
TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.
…
So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.
When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK.
So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)
Elon Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Wilson slams his anti-LGBTQ+ comments as ‘ketamine-fueled haze’
(I ran across this on currentstatus.io . Also, Mr. Musk is a bigger ass yet than I already thought he was. Vivian Wilson, on the other hand, seems well adjusted.)
THREADS @VIVLLAINOUS; CRISTIANO BARNI/SHUTTERSTOCK
“I look pretty good for a dead bitch,” Wilson, a transgender woman, said of her biological father’s claims that gender-affirming care “killed” her.
JULY 25 2024 1:00 PM EST
Vivian Wilson is fact-checking own father after billionaire Elon Musk made bigoted comments about her gender.
The billionaire recently attacked gender-affirming care in an interview with conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson for conservative platform the Daily Wire, claiming that the life-saving treatment “killed” his daughter while repeatedly misgendering her.
Musk said that when his daughter wanted to begin transitioning, he “was essentially tricked into signing documents” before he “had really any understanding of what was going on.” He said that doctors told him his daughter “might commit suicide” if she was prevented from receiving care.
“I lost my son. They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason,” Musk said. “The reason it’s called ‘deadnaming’ is because, your son is dead. So my son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Wilson has since responded to Musk’s assertions on Threads, the rival to his platform Twitter/X, saying that her biological father’s claims are so blatantly false that she’s “just started to find it funny at this point.” “
“Calling me dead on a podcast with JORDAN PETERSON of all people while basically admitting you have zero reading comprehension by saying you were “tricked” into signing documents that you read over multiple times is basically a parody of itself,” she wrote. “Like it’s honestly camp-“
“I look pretty good for a dead bitch,” she added.
Wilson then debunked some of Musk’s other assertions about her, among them several homophobic stereotypes about her youth, including that she was a fan of musical theatre (she wasn’t) and picking out clothes for Musk to wear (she didn’t). Musk also claimed that Wilson was “born slightly autistic.”
“This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness,” Wilson wrote. “Obviously he can’t say that, so I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype f*g-ing along to use at his discretion. I think that says a lot about how he views queer people and children in general.”https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/C91xDGJSUX_/embed/
Wilson, 20, is one of six children (five living) Musk had with his first wife, model Justine Wilson. She filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April, 2022 to legally change her name and gender, citing the reason as “Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Wilson then shot back at her father’s claims that she is “not a girl,” telling Musk to “go touch some fucking grass.”
“As for if I’m not a woman… sure, Jan. Whatever you say. I’m legally recognized as a woman in the state of California and I don’t concern myself with the opinions of those who are below me,” she wrote. “Obviously Elon can’t say the same because in a ketamine-fueled haze, he’s desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him.”
https://www.advocate.com/elon-musk-trans-daughter-vivian-wilson
As a College Student, I Hope the Presidential Election Is a Wake-Up Call for Our Country
JUL 25, 2024, 10:00AM
I’ve become cynical in the last decade, but I am holding out hope that Vice President Kamala Harris can lead the country into a new chapter.
This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.
By now you’ve heard President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, which either puts the nation on a path to more progressive reform and the first woman president or catapults Donald Trump back into the White House.
As a college student, I am excited for the possibility of Harris winning the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and I’m eager to see who she chooses as her running mate. However, I am also terrified by the chaos because it has made the results of this presidential election so unclear, and the impact of the outcome will last longer than a four-year term.
This turn of events has to be a resounding wake-up call for our country. I was worried that choosing Biden to beat Trump in 2020 was putting a placeholder president in the White House, and one that wouldn’t offer much change. But I was wrong. And with Harris as the presumptive nominee, the country gets an even stronger advocate for reproductive rights.
Just look at her recent record:
- Co-sponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act in 2018
- Was among 13 senators in 2018 who brought forth the Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies (CARE) Act, which focused on reducing racial disparities in the maternal mortality rate
- In 2019, co-sponsored the EACH Woman Act—repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevented federal funds from being used to provide abortions.
By Monday evening, Harris had already amassed the endorsements of enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Delegates from more than half the states—including California, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—have already pledged their support. The rest are expected by the end of the week.
I’ve become very cynical in the past decade, but I am holding out hope that Harris can lead us into a new chapter. I am tired of choosing the best of the worst options when I stare down a ballot, and if she wins, a little of my faith in our country will be restored.
Harris would not only be the first woman president and the first Black and Asian woman president, but would open doors for more radical change. I’ve decided that we cannot be complacent with blind trust in the Democratic Party, nor paralyzed with fear of what another four years under Trump would bring. For the first time in my lifetime, the Harris nomination presents a real choice to move forward, and I hope the country takes it.
Let’s talk about shifting opinions on Project 2025….
Let’s talk about Trump’s nephew and healthcare….
South Korea confirms state benefits for gay couples | REUTERS
Stuff I saw on AP today
A few headlines of interest here, with snippets and links.
I got a great giggle when I saw this story last night. Imagine Republicans telling other Republicans they’re being too racist…
https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-attacks-johnson-hudson-76f8e90d24004e49449087787ac031a5
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies. (snip-more)
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Monthly headlines are turning into daily headlines:
Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture. (snip-more)
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Cuteness overload!
A 7-month-old tree kangaroo peeked out of its mom’s pouch at the Bronx Zoo and here is the video
The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head head out of its mom’s furry white pouch. (snip-click the Video hyperlink just above the title)
I Am
I am so incredibly tired. I am still suffering under the cold and yet have to set my alarms for 6 pm as then I have to give the cats their medications. I will talk later and do more comments. But I could barely eat half my supper / lunch. Night. Hugs. Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 