Tonight is Bummernacht - the end of the last day Frank refused to die, and the beginning of Zappan, which will culminate on the great man's birthday, December 21st.
HAPPY ZAPPADAN
TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE.
EXPECT MIRACLES
Dec 4, 2025
Today's PG
The Dirty Fuels Cartel - and other extraction businesses, plus building and development companies - are eagerly campaigning on "Permitting Reform". They've paid their PR guys millions to soften the message and make us believe they're doing it all "for the betterment of America!" They aren't.
⇩
Don't shit on my head and then expect me to say, "Thanks for the hat."
Dec 3, 2025
Bulwark Takes
You know you're in a really bad place when the most important profit center driving your business - and your business decisions - is the guy monitoring Trump's social media feeds.
Today's Belle
- Revenue dollars are up
- Unit volumes are down
- 12,000 people laid off in the last 5 weeks in Shipping, Warehousing, and Manufacturing
We're buying less, it's costing us more, and fewer people are working.
Pretty sure this is what the Analysts and Business Insiders call
"Heading in the wrong fucking direction"
Banning Brown People
... and some not-as-brown-but-Muslim-so-yeah-banned.
- Afghanistan
- Myanmar (aka Burma)
- Chad
- Republic of Congo
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Iran
- Libya
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Yemen
- Burundi
- Cuba
- Laos
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
- Turkmenistan
- Venezuela
Our "government" takes the horrific act of gun violence against a couple of National Guard troopers - who shouldn't have been there in the first fuckin' place - and use it to show the world further evidence that we're a country of Stupid Racist Assholes.
And I guess I don't have to bother referencing any of the other horrific acts of gun violence that happen every day, which hardly merit a mention by the Press Poodles.
Gun Violence Archive shows 381 mass shootings as of today, the 337th day of 2025.
Good News
Of course, news of the positive effects on the human brain probably won't mean much to people who are already pretty demented by their conspiracy fantasies.
Hope a little. Pray a little.
If these findings are confirmed, “then this would be groundbreaking for dementia,” an expert said.
A common vaccine meant to ward off shingles may be doing something even more extraordinary: protecting the brain.
Earlier this year, researchers reported that the shingles vaccine cuts the risk of developing dementia by 20 percent over a seven-year period.
A large follow-up study has found that shingles vaccination may protect against risks at different stages of dementia — including for people already diagnosed.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Cell, found that cognitively healthy people who received the vaccine were less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, an early symptomatic phase before dementia.AI Icon
Crucially, the study suggests that the shingles vaccine — two doses of which are recommended for adults 50 and older or those 19 and older with a weakened immune system — may help people who already have dementia. Those who got the vaccine were almost 30 percent less likely to die of dementia over nine years, suggesting the vaccine may be slowing the progression of the neurodegenerative syndrome.
“It appears to be protective along the spectrum or the trajectory of the disease,” said Anupam Jena, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital who reviewed the paper.
There are few effective treatments for dementia and no preventive measures outside lifestyle changes.
“These findings are promising because they suggest that something can be done,” said Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Obviously, the vaccine was not designed or optimized to prevent dementia, so this is sort of an incidental finding. In some ways, we are being lucky.”
The results have led to cautious excitement among researchers.
If these findings are confirmed, “then this would be groundbreaking for dementia,” said Maxime Taquet, an associate professor at the University of Oxford who has conducted research into shingles vaccination and dementia risk. “I think there’s no other word for it.”
Protection across the dementia spectrum
Research has linked common vaccines, including for shingles, to lower dementia risk.
For these observational studies, there is a “healthy vaccine bias,” said Ascherio, who wasn’t involved in the study. “People who get vaccines tend to be healthier in general than people who don’t” because they may have different health-related behaviors.
Because randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in medical research — aren’t often feasible in the real world, scientists who conducted the research published Tuesday took advantage of a historical quirk in how Wales rolled out its shingles vaccination program in 2013.
Only Welsh adults born on or after Sept. 2, 1933, were eligible for the vaccine. Those born right before were ineligible, meaning the public health policy effectively set up a “natural experiment” comparing two near-identical groups of people who either met the vaccine eligibility cutoff or missed it.
“The question then is: Where do you start with this vaccine during the disease course? And does it have benefits for those who already have the condition?” said Pascal Geldsetzer, an assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a senior author of the research.
The vaccine was not only associated with a 20 percent reduction of dementia diagnoses, but also a 3.1 percent reduction in diagnoses of mild cognitive impairment over nine years.
“It suggests that from a clinical public health perspective, we should be providing this potentially at early stages, maybe on a regular basis,” Geldsetzer said.
There doesn’t seem to be a time when it’s too late in the disease progression to derive benefits, he added.
Dementia, in its final stages, can lead to death.
During the nine-year follow-up period, almost half of the 14,350 individuals who had dementia in the study sample died of dementia, meaning it was recorded as the underlying cause on their death certificate.
“Bad dementia can lead you to aspirate and have respiratory arrest,” said Jena, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Bad dementia can lead you to be unable to care for yourself.”
The shingles vaccine decreased deaths due to dementia by 29.5 percent. Even when looking at all-cause mortality, the shingles vaccine was associated with a 22.7 percent reduction.
These results “suggest that there is a slowing of this degenerative process,” which seems to be “striking good luck that the vaccine designed for something else would slow a degenerative process,” Ascherio said.
The magnitude of the effects is “almost too good to be true,” said Taquet, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“If those effect sizes really pan out in randomized control trials, then this would be perhaps one of the best treatments we’ve had for dementia in a while, which is the reason why we need to be quite cautious with interpretation,” he said. “That’s why we need the randomized control trials, but I think they really provide the strongest possible push for randomized control trials.”
Shingles vaccines today, research tomorrow
There are study limitations that need to be worked out.
For one, the study looked at the older shingles vaccine using a weakened version of the live varicella-zoster herpes virus. That vaccine has been discontinued in the United States, as well as in the European Union and Australia, and has been replaced with the Shingrix vaccine, which is more effective at preventing shingles and may also be associated with a lower risk of dementia.
However, it’s unknown whether the newer vaccine is also associated with a reduced risk for mild cognitive impairment or death due to dementia, researchers said. Despite its strengths, and its being as close to a randomized controlled trial without being one, the study is still correlational and cannot get at causation.
Still, experts unanimously encourage eligible people to get the vaccine, which reduces the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus. The virus causes chicken pox in childhood and remains dormant in neuron clusters within the spinal cord. When reactivated in adulthood, the varicella-zoster virus manifests as shingles, which is characterized by a burning, painful rash and can sometimes cause lifelong chronic pain conditions or serious complications in a subset of people.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends two doses of a shingles vaccine for adults 50 and older or those 19 and older with a weakened immune system. But uptake has been relatively low: In 2022, 34.4 percent of eligible Americans, including those with weakened immune systems, had received at least one dose of a shingles vaccine in their lifetime.
In the meantime, researchers are pushing for randomized controlled trials as well as studies to understand why the vaccine is protective, which can teach us something fundamental about dementia and help develop better treatments.
“It’s very important that we understand what it is that we’re targeting, because it might allow us to design even more precise therapies,” said Taquet, who is considering running these studies.
Geldsetzer is working to raise money for a randomized controlled trial to directly test the older shingles vaccine on dementia risk, which he said should require less investment because it’s known to be safe and have other benefits.
There’s a lot of excitement to work on this from other researchers, he said, but he’s had no luck getting the money.
“They’d be thrilled to do this if there’s the funding to do so,” Geldsetzer said. “Just excitement unfortunately is not enough.”
Dec 2, 2025
Today's Robert
Some have become convinced of the absurdities, and are now committing the atrocities.
Franklin Fights Back
'Franklin' publisher slams Hegseth for his post of the turtle firing on drug boats
The publisher of the Franklin children's book series has rebuked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he posted a meme of the anthropomorphic turtle firing on drug boats.
Hegseth's social media post from Sunday shows the turtle, clad in tactical gear, standing on a helicopter and aiming a machine gun at one of several boats in the water below. It's designed to look like an edition of the children's book, but titled Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.
"For your Christmas wish list …" Hegseth wrote in the caption, as he faces growing scrutiny over the legality of a set of strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean in early September.
On Monday, Toronto-based publishing house Kids Can Press released a statement defending Franklin as a "beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy and inclusivity."
"We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent or unauthorized use of Franklin's name or image, which directly contradicts these values," it added.
Franklin, who usually wears a red neckerchief and baseball cap (not a ballistic helmet), has delighted kids since the debut of his book series in 1986 — with dozens of titles including Franklin Goes to School and Franklin Wants a Pet — and an animated TV series a decade later.
It is not clear why Hegseth — who is a father and stepfather of seven children — chose the turtle of all characters, though Franklin book covers have inspired some popular parodies in the past.
When asked for comment, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told NPR over email: "We doubt Franklin the Turtle wants to be inclusive of drug cartels… or laud the kindness and empathy of narco-terrorists."
A number of Democrats were quick to condemn the post, as well as the larger controversy behind it.
Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who has openly sparred with the Pentagon in recent weeks, told reporters that the meme is just one reason why the defense secretary should be fired, calling him "not a serious person."
Congress steps in as questions mount over who authorized a second strike at sea
"He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons and he's putting out … turtles with rocket-propelled grenades," Kelly said.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the floor Monday, called Hegseth a "national embarrassment" and described the Franklin meme as a "sick parody."
"Tweeting memes in the middle of a potential armed conflict is something no serious military leader would ever even think of doing," Schumer added. "The only thing this tweet accomplishes is to remind the whole world that Pete Hegseth is not up to the job."
Questions mount over September incident
Hegseth was already in the hot seat, facing bipartisan scrutiny and questions from Congress about what happened — and whether any war crimes were committed — on Sept. 2, when the U.S. carried out the first of over 20 strikes on alleged drug vessels.
U.S. officials have described their targets as "narcoterrorists" from Latin America, though they have not released information about who was on board those boats or evidence that they were ferrying drugs.
Trump administration officials originally described the first attack as a single strike on a Venezuelan vessel that killed 11 alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But in the ensuing weeks, as the U.S. has shared grainy videos of the growing number of strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, more questions and revelations emerged about the one that started it.
Last week, the Washington Post reported — and a source confirmed to NPR — that Hegseth gave a spoken directive to kill the surviving occupants of the boat with a second strike. Attacking "wounded, sick or shipwrecked" combatants violates the law of war, according to a Pentagon manual.
Hegseth denied those reports as "fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory," saying U.S. operations in the Caribbean are "lawful under both U.S. and international law … and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command."
But that didn't satisfy lawmakers, several of whom — on both sides of the aisle — raised concerns about a potential war crime. Over the weekend, both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees opened investigations into the incident.
Then, on Monday, the White House confirmed that there had been a second strike, but attributed the directive to another military leader.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Hegseth had authorized Adm. Mitch Bradley — who led Joint Special Operations Command at the time — to conduct the strikes, adding that Bradley "worked well within his authority and the law." Later that day, Hegseth tweeted in "100% support" of Bradley and his combat decisions.
But a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly has since disputed the White House's account, telling NPR's Tom Bowman that Hegseth issued the command for "two strikes to kill" and two additional strikes to "sink the boat."
For his part, President Trump has defended Hegseth but distanced himself from the incident. When asked by reporters on Sunday night whether he would be okay with Hegseth having ordered a second strike, Trump said, "He said he didn't do it, so I don't have to make that decision."
Adm. Bradley, who was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command a month after the incident, is scheduled to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers on Thursday.
But a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly has since disputed the White House's account, telling NPR's Tom Bowman that Hegseth issued the command for "two strikes to kill" and two additional strikes to "sink the boat."
For his part, President Trump has defended Hegseth but distanced himself from the incident. When asked by reporters on Sunday night whether he would be okay with Hegseth having ordered a second strike, Trump said, "He said he didn't do it, so I don't have to make that decision."
Adm. Bradley, who was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command a month after the incident, is scheduled to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers on Thursday.
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