This Should Be Fun

Flesh-Eating Screwworm

A screwworm larva is a parasitic, flesh-eating maggot of the screwworm fly (most notably the New World screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax). Unlike regular maggots that only eat dead tissue, screwworm larvae burrow into living flesh to feed. This causes severe, foul-smelling wounds that can be fatal to humans, pets, and livestock if left untreated.

So glad Elon took a nine pound sledge hammer to all the agencies that have kept us - and the whole fuckin' world - quite a bit safer than it used to be.

So glad we can look forward to years of remediating preventable shit, and more years of rebuilding the safeguards that put people in place who actually knew what the fuck they were doing.

The institutions and agencies that study things like New World Screwworms, aren't there as bullshit make-work opportunities for the nerds - they're there to help people stay healthy, and to keep the economy from imploding every time there's some weird shit that pops up and threatens some aspect of a very complex system.

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10. questions

Flesh-eating screwworm returns to U.S. after 60 years, threatening cattle herd

The case of New World screwworm was confirmed in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said late Wednesday.

A flesh-eating parasite that had been kept out of U.S. livestock for decades has been detected in Texas, threatening the nation’s cattle industry and food supply at a time when prices are already high.

The case of New World screwworm was confirmed in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, near the U.S.-Mexico border, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said late Wednesday.

The parasitic fly’s larvae feed exclusively on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals.

While the fly is capable of infecting humans and pets, such cases are rare and pose little risk to the broader public, according to experts.

The parasite does not pose a food safety threat, but a wider outbreak could still cost the livestock industry billions of dollars and put additional pressure on beef prices that are already at record highs.

The case is the first confirmed detection of New World screwworm in Texas since 1966, and is the only confirmed case identified in the country so far, said Rollins.

It follows months of warnings from U.S. and Texas agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders, as the pest steadily moved north through Mexico toward the American border.

“For months, the screwworm has advanced rapidly through Mexico in spite of the USDA’s existing gameplan,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said Wednesday, adding that “instead of using every available tool, USDA moved too slowly and relied solely on a partial solution that takes years to fully implement.”

Miller has also called on President Donald Trump to take direct control of the government’s response, and “throw every available federal resource at this threat before it becomes a full-blown agricultural disaster.”

Screwworm Livestock

The primary weapon against screwworm is a decades-old technique that has eliminated the parasite from the U.S. in the past — releasing sterilized male flies into affected areas. Since female flies generally mate only once, those that pair with sterile males are unable to produce offspring.

In a bid to contain the spread of the parasite, USDA said it has begun releasing sterile flies in the area and is investing heavily in new sterile flies production facilities in Texas.

It has also established a roughly 12-mile quarantine zone around the site and restricted the movement of warm-blooded animals, including livestock and pets to further strengthen the response.

State veterinarians are urging ranchers and pet owners inside the quarantine zone to follow movement restrictions while eradication efforts continue.

Rollins said the USDA is confident enough in its preparations that it believes “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

“Protecting our livestock industry is a national security issue of the utmost importance, and USDA is wasting no time in taking action,” said Dudley Hoskins, a USDA under secretary. “USDA invested heavily in the tools needed to eliminate NWS ever since cases started increasing in Central America and Mexico. The United States has defeated this pest before, and we will do it again.”

Unlike contagious livestock diseases, screwworm does not spread directly from animal to animal. Instead, female flies lay eggs in open wounds or body openings.

Once the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into living flesh and feed on tissue, potentially causing severe infections and death of livestock if left untreated.

The U.S. cattle herd is already at its lowest level in 75 years, with a major screwworm outbreak threatening to further reduce supplies and increase costs for ranchers and consumers alike.

The most recent human screwworm case in the U.S. was identified in Maryland last year after a traveler returned from El Salvador.

The person recovered, and federal health officials found no evidence that the parasite had spread to others.

The Texas Thing Again

The Why Of CBS

Rich is kinda telling us what we already know, but as usual, he's got a couple of extra points to put on it.

Aaron Parnas

"...in the middle of my negotiations..."? What negotiations?

The guy can't negotiate his way thru changing his own fuckin' diaper.

New Mexico Steps Up

First off, what the fuck is it with Deutsche Bank? They've been cited in connection with practically every shady/shitty deal since forever.

Rick tells the Deutsche Bank guy to fuck off:

New Mexico lawmakers issue first subpoenas in Epstein investigation

A bipartisan special committee of New Mexico lawmakers, which was created to probe the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch near Santa Fe, announced Monday that it will send out its first round of subpoenas.

The New Mexico Truth Commission is slated to send subpoenas to 14 entities, including agencies that have investigated Epstein in the past, such as the FBI and the New Mexico Department of Justice.

Subpoenas will also be issued to several entities that have been affiliated with Epstein, including Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase, as well as the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit scientific research institute that Epstein supported.

JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank declined comment. Santa Fe Institute did not immediately respond to The Hill’s requests for comment.

Any evidence showing someone committed a crime will be sent to the appropriate law enforcement agency, either in New Mexico or elsewhere, according to the commission.

Commission members said they are aiming to build “a complete documented record” examining allegations of sex trafficking and other misconduct connected to Epstein’s operations in New Mexico, as well as any institutional failures that allowed him to continue any misconduct in the state for years.

“We will name what happened, we will name who was responsible and we will do so with the evidentiary regard that survivors deserve and that the law requires,” state Rep. Andrea Reeb (R) said at a meeting at the New Mexico State Capitol. She is one of four lawmakers on the commission.

Earlier this year, authorities in New Mexico reopened their probe into alleged illegal activity that took place at the ranch previously owned by Epstein, located 30 miles from Santa Fe. Law enforcement also investigated allegations that two bodies were buried in the hills near the ranch.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez (D) has encouraged victims of Epstein to come forward as part of his office’s investigation into the ranch.

Tax Them Out Of Existence

A.I.

That sucking sound you may be hearing is the continuation of the process that plutocrats have been using and refining for 50 years to wildly boost productivity while Hoovering up all the profits (ie: siphoning off the lifeblood of the people who do the actual work).

We've all seen the charts. Where productivity has increased by 85%, corporate earnings have risen 3,800%, and the net worth of the executive class has increased 500% - while a growing majority of "the working class" has seen their total compensation dwindle to a point where most Americans now can barely afford subsistence.

Computerization really started to take hold in the early 70s, which coincided with the steady de-industrialization of the US economy. Productivity went way way up, but instead of rewarding the workforce or reinvesting in radical things like workforce development or capital improvements, companies (and their coin-operated politicians) put most of the profits in their pockets, or went abroad, looking for new opportunities for plunder.

I'll say it again: I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist. I think Capitalism is the closest analogy of how the biosphere works.

I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to maintain myself, plus provide the fuel I need to do the work necessary to go out and get my next meal. Basic Capitalism.

But god's not stupid enough to just let the thing run wild. So god gave us regulation.

• I need sugar to fuel my brain, but too much sugar will kill me, so I have a pancreas to squirt a little insulin into my bloodstream to keep me within specs.
• I have a hypothalamus to help me keep my core body temperature in the normal operating range of 96º to 101º Fahrenheit.
• There's a complex system of sensors and monitoring functions that regulates my heart rate, and my breathing, and my digestive functions, and and and.

Let the system run wild, and you live a very short, miserable existence. Regulate it properly, and the system provides a pathway for a long and healthy life that gives us a few real shots at being happy.

Unfettered Free Market Capitalism is a recreational drug that will kill us all. But hey - whoever dies with the most cash wins, right?

Fuck that shit. I'm not that guy anymore.

So this AI thing is being pimped as the latest and greatest boon for humankind - the thing that's going to make us all rich geniuses. It's not. It threatens to turn 99.9% of us into obedient servile human automatons unless we jump on it and regulate the fuck out of it.

Overheard

If I had a dollar for every time

I didn't know what was going on, I'd be like -

why am I getting all this money all the time?

Amanda's Tuesday

Take It, Abe

“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.”

Abraham Lincoln

by Barack Obama

There isn’t any dream beyond our reach, any obstacle that can stand in our way, when we recognize that our individual liberty is served, not negated, by pursuit of the common good

Most Americans know Abraham Lincoln as a marble giant, the Great Emancipator, the president who saved the Union. But it is perhaps more instructive, and more honest, to see him as he was in the decade before he rose to the White House: a Springfield lawyer who’d served just a single term in Congress.

Possibly in his law office, his feet on a cluttered desk, his sons playing around him, his clothes a bit too small to fit his uncommon frame, he put some thoughts on paper — for what purpose we do not know. “The legitimate object of government,” he wrote, “is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.”

It’s impossible to know for sure, but I suspect Lincoln’s conviction did not come from a belief that government always had the answer, or a failure to understand our individual rights and responsibilities.

Born in a log cabin of pioneer stock, Lincoln cleared a path through the woods as a boy, lost his mother and a sister to the rigors of frontier life, and taught himself everything he knew. He understood, perhaps better than anyone, what it means to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and how personal liberty and self-reliance are at the heart of the American experience.

But Lincoln also understood something else. He recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can — in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do.

Only a union could harness the courage of our pioneers to settle the American west, which is why he passed a Homestead Act giving a tract of land to anyone seeking a stake in our growing economy — though at great cost to Native peoples.

Only a union could foster the ingenuity of our farmers, which is why he set up land-grant colleges that taught them how to make the most of their land while giving their children an education that let them dream the American dream.

Only a union could speed our expansion and connect our coasts with a transcontinental railroad, and so, even in the midst of civil war, he built one.

Only a union could spur innovation and ignite America’s imagination on a national scale, which is why he established a national academy of sciences, believing we must, as he put it, add “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery…of new and useful things.”

And only a union could serve the hopes of every citizen — to knock down the barriers to opportunity and give each and every person the chance to pursue the American dream.

In hindsight, this notion may seem uncontroversial. Yet Lincoln knew, better than anyone, that our union was not, and is not, inevitable. He’d witnessed how, at crucial moments, our improbable experiment in self-government nearly flickered out — and he was determined to keep the flame of liberty alive.

When the outbreak of war halted construction of the new Capitol dome, Lincoln ordered that work resume. Critics accused him of diverting resources and manpower from the war effort. But Lincoln recognized that the dome was more than a construction project. “If people see the Capitol going on,” he replied, “it is a sign that we intend the Union shall go on.”

Lincoln’s efforts went well beyond the symbolic. Throughout the fiery trial of civil war, he felt compelled to make compromises — some of them distasteful — to preserve the fragile Union. Intent on keeping the border states from seceding, Lincoln rebuffed demands from some in his party for immediate nationwide emancipation and revoked a premature emancipation order issued by one of his generals in Missouri. When Lincoln ultimately issued his own Emancipation Proclamation, he conspicuously exempted the border states. “I hope to have God on my side,” he reportedly said, “but I must have Kentucky.”

Nor was Lincoln above infringing on civil liberties when he deemed it necessary, declaring martial law, suspending habeas corpus, and arresting suspected secessionists in states like Maryland and Missouri. This was the price, as he saw it, of holding together an unwieldy coalition that could defeat the Confederacy.

Over the course of the war, Lincoln’s understanding of the Union deepened and expanded. What began as a constitutional battle to preserve the nation as a legal entity became, in his mind, a moral struggle over what kind of country America would be.

That evolution came into focus at Gettysburg. When Lincoln arrived there in November 1863, the rolling fields still bore the scars of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on American soil. Workers had labored for ten days to clear the dead. Lincoln himself was exhausted and ill — “a ghastly color,” one of his cabinet secretaries observed. Edward Everett, one of the most celebrated orators in America, delivered a two-hour address. Then Lincoln rose and spoke for barely two minutes.

In just 272 short words, Lincoln transformed the meaning of the war and the Union itself.

No longer were the states mere parties to a contract, as he described them in his First Inaugural. The United States was now a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The sacrifices at Gettysburg had given the Union a moral purpose beyond itself, an “unfinished work” testing whether government of the people, by the people, for the people could survive at all.

Once Lincoln came to see the Union this way, triumph on the battlefield was not enough. If the nation was to endure, it would have to emerge from war true to the ideals for which so many had fought and died. By the time Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address near the war’s end, he would call on Americans to move forward without malice, realizing that a lasting union required not only victory, but restraint; not only strength, but a sense of shared obligation to one another.

Lincoln understood what George Washington understood when he led farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers to rise up against an empire. What Franklin D. Roosevelt understood when he lifted us out of the Great Depression, built an arsenal of democracy, and created the largest middle-class in history with the GI Bill. What Dwight D. Eisenhower understood when he created an interstate highway system that knit together cities and towns across the country. What John F. Kennedy understood when he sent us to the moon.

All these presidents recognized that America is — and always has been — more than a band of thirteen colonies, more than a bunch of Yankees and Confederates, more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America and there isn’t any dream beyond our reach, any obstacle that can stand in our way, when we recognize that our individual liberty is served, not negated, by pursuit of the common good.

More than anything, that’s what Abraham Lincoln taught us. That union is not simply a matter of law or accident of geography, but a moral commitment we make to our fellow citizens and to our shared future. That democracies endure not only because of constitutions or armies, but because free people choose, again and again, to bind their fates together. That only by maintaining a sense of shared sacrifice and responsibility — for ourselves and one another — can we do the work that must be done in this country. And that it is precisely when the climb is steepest that we relearn how to take the mountaintop, as one nation and one people.

That’s the very definition of what it means to be American. And together, that’s how we will do what Lincoln called on us to do, and “nobly save…the last best hope of earth.”