[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] French farmers have today started an 'indefinite' tractor siege of Paris, blocking off key routes after threatening to 'starve' the city – amid warnings the capital only has three days of food.
Tractors are clogging major roads bringing traffic to a grinding halt around the city with stacks of hay bales also used to block carriageways as part of a bitter on-running dispute over work conditions.
Meanwhile, the southern city of Toulouse has nearly been 'cut off' in the midst of similar protests in what will be a major test for France's youngest ever PM Gabriel Attal – just weeks after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron aged 34.
In recent weeks there has been a slew of protests in France, a major agricultural producer, by farmers angry about incomes, red tape and environmental policies they say undermine their ability to compete with other countries.
Protesting farmers started the operation by blocking the A13 highway to the west of the capital, the A4 to the east and the A6 on which hundreds of tractors rolled towards Paris from the south. The government in response has deployed some 15,000 police officers.
By mid-afternoon they appeared to have met their objective of establishing eight chokepoints on major roads into Paris, according to Sytadin, a traffic monitoring service.
'We need answers,' said Karine Duc, a farmer in the southwestern Lot-et-Garonne department as she joined a convoy of tractors heading for Paris. 'This is the final battle for farming. It's a question of survival,' she added.
A banner on a tractor in the convoy said: 'We will not die in silence.'
[Breitbart] Kicking off the "Siege of Paris" on Monday, thousands of farmers took to their tractors in a coordinated attempt to block off entrances to the French capital in protest against globalist green policies they say are destroying their ability to stay in business.
In an escalation of the latest example of popular uprisings that have come to define President Macron’s tenure in office, farmers descended in their tractors to shut down major highways leading into Paris on Monday following a week of similar protests throughout the country.
According to the Le Figaro newspaper, farmers successfully enacted blockades on eight major highways, with tractors lined up for tens of kilometres around the ring road surrounding Paris. In total 16 highways and 30 administrative departments around the city were impacted by the demonstrations on Monday, while separate farmer uprisings continued in at least 40 other locations throughout the country.
#1
"Come on, man! If we run out of food, we can just go to the grocery store and get more."
Once again, we see the war between the People of Words and the People of Things. I would explicate further, but there is insufficient room in the margins.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/30/2024 10:41 Comments ||
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#5
Les Halles of academe. Just made meself cry (okay, not literally) imagining a world in which bazillions of college kids had read Braudel instead of that MF.
[AFRICANEWS] Pope Francis ...Argentine liberation theologist, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was elected pope in 2013. Rather than setting up shop in Avignon, where he belongs, the first Jesuit Pope chose to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse instead of the papal apartments. He is big on climate change, against consumerism, and in favor of throwing a blanket over homosexual activity within the clergy. He's not real sure about the Resurrection, about Christ's divinity, and a few other things that would have gotten him burned at the stake a few hundred years ago, but he's hot for a certain South American Earth Mother Goddess... said in an interview published Monday (Jan. 29) that the case of the Church in Africa was "special," with regards to the extra-liturgical blessings proposed for same sex-couples. As in 'short bus' special?
He told Italian newspaper La Stampa that "homosexuality was something 'ugly' from a cultural point of view" for Africans. It's not for sophisticated Euros and South Americans, of course.
He was being asked about the opposition a document he supports has attracted. Particularly the rolling eyes and gagging noises. And the fingers warding off the mal'occhia evil eye.
Declaration Fiducia supplicans, published on December 18, opens the possibility of blessing couples whose situation is considered "irregular" in the Catholic church. Those include unmarried couples, divorced-and-remarried couples, and same-sex couples. Orthodox Christians consider divorce a sin. Being a sin, it can be forgiven. Heterodox Christians either look at it as unforgivable, or don't look at it at all, depending on day of the week and whether they're Marxists.
"The Gospel is to sanctify everyone [...]" "we are all sinners: why should we make a list of sinners who can enter the Church and a list of sinners who cannot be in the Church?," he asked. How very Orthodox of him.
#3
We are advised to "Love the sinner and hate the sin." I'm good with that.
The "In my face with your sin" types I will continue to hate.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/30/2024 8:16 Comments ||
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#4
#2 - “Gorlock the Destroyer”
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2024 8:40 Comments ||
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#5
Re #3: these days, if you don't love the sin, you are branded a homophobe.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/30/2024 10:36 Comments ||
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#6
Ref @1 above - 1st 9 are sub-Saharan Africa
Top 10 Countries with the Highest Birth Rate (per 1000 people, CIA World Factbook 2021 estimate)
Niger 46.86
Angola 41.42
Benin 40.72
Mali 40.54
Uganda 40.27
Chad 39.85
DRCongo 39.64
Somalia 37.71
South Sudan
37.07
Mozambique
36.94
[IS National News] Elon Musk, who owns Neuralink, says the project is intended to allow quadriplegics to move their limbs, and eventually to expand to controlling computers by thought.
The startup company Neuralink, which is owned by Elon Musk, has announced that it has successfully implanted a wireless chip in a human, as part of a test approved over the last year by the FDA.
The test subject’s identity was not publicized. The directors of Neuralink hope that with the help of the chip, which is to be connected to the company's computers, they will be able to identify illnesses and complex neurological processes, which will allow doctors to start treatment early. Musk wrote on X: “The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”
Neuralink has announced that it has begun a six-year test project, in which a robot will implant 64 wires thinner than a human hair across the part of the subject's brain that controls motor function. The directors claim that the wires will allow the chip to record and broadcast brain waves wirelessly to an application that can predict how the person intends to move.
BLUF: Scary headline not backed up by the report. Exceedingly rare and indirect. Not at all like the easy human-to-human spread of the common cold and the flu. Still, it’s useful to know.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Alzheimer's can spread between humans, a groundbreaking study revealed today.
Experts have found evidence of at least five people 'catching' the memory-robbing disorder from now-banned hormone treatments.
The patients were among 1,848 people injected with growth hormones riddled with toxic amyloid-beta protein 'seeds', or prions, as children.
All five came down with the same rare early-onset form of the devastating dementia condition.
Others who received the same treatment are now considered 'at risk'.
Between 1958 and 1985, abnormally short children in the UK and the US were given hormones harvested from cadavers to help spur their growth.
The technique was then banned and doctors instead used synthetic hormones after it emerged that some batches were contaminated with prions that led to a fatal and incurable brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). CJD itself is closely related to 'mad cow' disease.
Academics now believe other medical and surgical procedures might carry a risk of spreading Alzheimer's as prions — which accumulate in the brain and kill neurons —can survive hospital sterilisation methods.
As prions accumulate in the brain, the NHS says plaque deposits may appear in the brain. Abnormal build-ups of proteins in and around neurons is thought to be what causes Alzheimer's.
Professor John Collinge, of University College London, said action must be taken to prevent accidental transmission in the future.
He said: 'These patients were given a specific and long-discontinued medical treatment which involved injecting them with material now known to have been contaminated with disease-related proteins.
'We are now planning to look at ways of destroying prions from surgical equipment, as they can resist normal decontamination methods.'
Alzheimer's was previously believed to come in two forms — a 'sporadic' variant suffered by thousands of people over the age of 65, which is by far the most common, and a genetic early-onset type that runs in families.
The UCL scientists say they have now identified a third variant, which is slightly different from the others and very rare, which can be passed from one person to another.
Batches of the infected growth hormone were stored in a Department of Health archive as a dried powder.
UCL scientists were allowed to test the decades-old powder on mice and found it triggered the production of Alzheimer's-causing proteins.
However, Professor Collinge said the at-risk group is extremely small — made up of patients who have had certain neurosurgical procedures, tissue transplantation or organ donation.
He said: 'There is a risk group out there. Those who were given the infected growth hormone were all notified many years ago that they were at risk of developing CJD.
'There is now a possible risk of them developing Alzheimer's. But these risks are not possible to quantify at the moment.'
Researchers are currently monitoring the patients to study what is happening in their brains and catch any problems early.
Professor Collinge added: 'I should emphasise these are very rare occurrences. You can't "catch" Alzheimer's, it is not transmissible in the sense of a viral or bacterial infection.
'These rare transmission routes are where people have been accidentally injected with infected human tissue extracts, and the majority of this relates to medical procedures that are no longer used.
'From a public health point of view, this will probably affect a relatively small number of patients.'
SCIENTISTS CREATE BLOOD TEST FOR ALZHEIMER'S
A pinprick blood test has been developed which hopes to determine a person's chances of developing dementia in the future.
The home-test kit, developed by the charity FoodfortheBrain.org, measures blood sugar, vitamin D, omega-3 and B vitamin status, as potentially modifiable risks for dementia.
People will then be given a risk score and diet advice on how to reduce it, as part of a global prevention study.
The charity hopes to enrol a million people worldwide, making it the largest 'citizen science' global prevention initiative.
Founder Patrick Holford said: 'Alzheimer's is a preventable, but not reversible disease. Less than one in a hundred cases are directly caused by genes.
'Prevention is entirely possible if you can identify who is at risk early enough and encourage the right diet and lifestyle changes.'
Higher levels of omega-3, from foods such as oily fish, and the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D, have also been linked to a lower risk of the disease.
Participants will be asked to take an online cognitive function test before being sent the Dementia Risk Index functional Test to do at home, which measures the levels of each risk factor. Both test scores will then be analysed and tracked over time.
#6
Possibly 6 people (they're not sure) out of 1848 who may have been injected with adulterated drugs maybe 40 years ago. All subjects were already in unusual growth situations.
1 whole study.
Oooh, science.
Actually, Oooh, journalism.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2024 9:45 Comments ||
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[UniversityOfArizona] Ferrock uses the waste steel dust from industrial processes to create a cementlike material that is sustainable and stronger than conventional cement.
When he was a Ph.D. student in the University of Arizona Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science, David Stone won a student innovation competition with the invention of an eco-friendly substitute for Portland cement.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent for the UA invention in 2013, and today, in collaboration with Tech Launch Arizona, Stone has licensed the technology from the UA and is starting a company called Iron Shell to commercialize his invention.
The invention, called Ferrock, uses the waste steel dust from industrial processes to create a cement-like material that is sustainable, strong and environmentally superior to conventional cement. Cement is the binder in concrete, which also includes aggregate such as sand and gravel.
Along with turning a waste product that usually ends up in landfills into a useful product, Ferrock has another —perhaps even greater — environmental advantage. Annually, 4 billion metric tons of cement is made worldwide for use in concrete, and for every ton of cement manufactured, approximately one ton of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.
Conversely, Ferrock hardens only when exposed to high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which is absorbed and trapped, making it a carbon negative material. This greenhouse gas diffuses into the wet mixture and reacts with the iron, creating iron carbonate and becoming part of the material’s mineral matrix.
Lab testing shows that Ferrock is significantly stronger than Portland cement in compressive strength and several times stronger in flexural strength, meaning it can take more stress before bending and breaking. It also has superior resistance to cracking. Because hardening is caused by the rusting of iron dust, it is well-suited for use in salt water and other environments that are too corrosive for regular cement.
#4
The Romans didn't have 80,000 lb trucks and they salted their enemies' fields, not the roads.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/30/2024 8:58 Comments ||
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#5
Uh huh. Used steel dust. Pull the other one.
For corrosive environments, Type V cement is already used with limited water/cement ratio and limited Flyash (all hail Alaska Paul!) or slag.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2024 9:47 Comments ||
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#6
#4 The Germans roads carry freight too, but don't crumble as fast. They don't have the local road building graft that has two or three options of local 'providers' who redo stretches of road every decade (or less) or the local patronage system to hire those teams constantly out filling potholes.
Pliny wrote that the best maritime concrete was made from volcanic ash found in regions around the Gulf of Naples, especially from near the modern-day town of Pozzuoli. Its virtues became so well-known that ash with similar mineral characteristics—no matter where it was found in the world—has been dubbed pozzolan.
#12
In the previous century, I was woking in a machine shop. One of the inspectors heard that iron was a good additive for flower beds. So long about December he got a 5 gal pail of cast iron dust from the mills a took it home and dumped it in his flower bed.
Come Feb his wife is ready to plant flowers, and he has to rent a jackhammer to get the rusted layer out of his flowerbed.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2024 20:35 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] Kicking off the "Siege of Paris" on Monday, thousands of farmers took to their tractors in a coordinated attempt to block off entrances to the French capital in protest against globalist green policies they say are destroying their ability to stay in business.
...Argentine liberation theologist, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He was elected pope in 2013. Rather than setting up shop in Avignon, where he belongs, the first Jesuit Pope chose to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse instead of the papal apartments. He is big on climate change, against consumerism, and in favor of throwing a blanket over homosexual activity within the clergy. He's not real sure about the Resurrection, about Christ's divinity, and a few other things that would have gotten him burned at the stake a few hundred years ago, but he's hot for a certain South American Earth Mother Goddess...
