"I think misogyny plays a really big part in this... That a man will be a better woman than someone who was born a woman." Germaine Greer, 2015 pic.twitter.com/ChOvf9IBSF Women's Voices (@WomenReadWomen) August 29, 2022

Posie Parker AKA Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull is currently pulling her anti-transgender bandwagon through this sunburnt country: sweeping plains, ragged mountain ranges, drought and flooding rains, the lot. But rather than undertake, say, A provocative journey through the dark history Continue reading

<p>&

Its a desperate run to get everyone locked in.</p> <p>The post <a href= "https://gumshoenews.com/maria-zeee-on-digital-id/" rel= "nofollow">Maria Zeee on Digital ID</a> appeared first on <a href= "https://gumshoenews.com" rel="nofollow">Gumshoe News</a>.</p>

Australia does have a Public Interest Disclosure law that requires that we be told the truth about the COVID-19 casualties that occur each day.

POSTING  SHORT LINK: https://wp.me/p1n8TZ-389

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Nine Entertainment-owned papers have been talking up the prospects of Australia going to war with China while failing to declare that Nine chairman Peter Costello has made $millions in recent years lobbying []

KYIV, Ukraine Tetiana Vlaiko feels like an idiot. She is ashamed to speak to WhoWhatWhy about how the Russians took her 11-year-old daughter Lilia to Russian-occupied Crimea. She says that last October, the teachers at her daughters school in Kherson convinced her to send Lilia to what they called a summer camp.

It turned out to be a Russian re-education facility.

All the mothers at the school signed up. Probably, I could have said no, but the teachers kept saying that all kids are going, it is for free, and she will come back in two weeks, said 36-year-old Vlaiko.

Vlaiko said that she initially thought it would be good for her daughter to get away from Kherson for a short period. At the time, the city was under Russian control, and the Ukrainians were fighting to get the city back. Life there was dangerous. Vlaiko says there were rumors of Russian brutality and rape of people on the streets and a constant risk of shelling.  

Crimea was (and still is) also under Russian control, but it was safer than Kherson.

Lilia was supposed to be home on October 21. She didnt show up, and neither did any of her classmates.

I called the teachers when I realized she wasnt returning. I tried to find out what was happening, but they didnt answer, said Vlaiko, who explained that some teachers picked up the phone at the beginning and said they didnt know when or if the kids would return.

She told WhoWhatWhy that the school closed for good after the kids were taken.

At one point in late October, Vlaiko and other parents found the schools director, who told them the kids werent returning. She recalls him saying there was nothing he could do about it and that he was planning to leave Kherson and go to another Russian-controlled area. Vlaiko told WhoWhatWhy that he seemed very pro-Russian.

It became clear that they never intended to send my daughter back. I got crazy hysterical and was full of guilt, said Vlaiko.I should never have told her she could go. 

She didnt see her daughter again for almost four months.

Today, pregnant women are regularly asked about their mental wellbeing during their medical checkups, and such questioning continues during their postnatal visits to their pediatricians. The quickest assessment relies on the Whooley questions, a depression screening tool devised by Pfizer in 1993 shortly after its launch of Zoloft. It has just two questions:

During the past month, have you often been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless?

During the past month, have you often been bothered by little interest, or pleasure in doing things?

An answer of yes to one of the two questions yields a positive result requiring further evaluation. If a subsequent assessment determines that the woman is depressed, she may be treated for the condition, even though prior to the screening she might not have self-identified as suffering in this way.

In the United States, such perinatal screening is widely recommended. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG), the United States Preventative Services Task Force, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) all promote it as an evidence-based practice.

According to the AHRQ, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, it provides a proven benefit: Depression during pregnancy can raise the risk of having a lowbirthweight baby and premature birth. Screening pregnant women for depression enables health professionals to initiate services that can prevent later problems for both the mother and baby.

However, other national task forces, most notably in Canada and the U.K., have come to an opposite conclusion about the merits of perinatal screening. The U.K. National Screening Committee concluded in its 2019 review that there was not enough evidence that such screening programmes were of benefit to women and children, and that, in fact, they could do harm. False positives could lead to unnecessary treatment, and even if the screening correctly identified [women] with mental health problems, it could prove harmful to the majority, the committee wrote.......

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS, data analysis by Sophie Chou, ProPublica

This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Karl Paymah was on the clock.

A certified letter from the Rock Ridge Condominium Association in the Denver suburb of Aurora said he had 30 days to pay $1,515.45 in unpaid homeowners association dues and penalties or face foreclosure.

After receiving the letter on Dec. 23, 2021, Paymah said he tried to pay the balance through the HOAs website, as he had done in the past. But his account had been locked because it was turned over to the HOAs collections attorney, Tammy Alcock. Next, he called Rock Ridges management company, which he said told him to discuss the matter with Alcock. But there was no answer when he called her office three times that afternoon. The office of Alcock Law Group was closed for the holiday.

I cant pay. I cant pay through the portal. I cant pay with the management company. I cant pay with this attorney that theyre telling me to go through, Paymah, a retired NFL cornerback, recalled thinking. So Im just sitting there.

Watch Rocky Mountain PBSs Report (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Turning the account over to Alcock meant that the association was asserting its right under Colorado law to charge him for the attorney fees it was incurring, causing his debt to grow rapidly.

By early February, when Rock Ridge began moving forward with foreclosure, the legal process of taking the home from its owner, Paymahs debt had more than tripled to about $5,000, mostly because of legal costs.

Paymahs experience is a case study in how even a small dispute can quickly escalate into an expensive legal fight in Colorado, where state law empowers HOAs to initiate foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who owe money to them. As Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica have reported,...

 https://brownstone.org/articles/freedom-is-the-answer/

Always the preferred method.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic three years ago today, but experts disagree about how and when pandemics end.

Its been three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. So we know when the pandemic officially began. But what must happen for it to officially end? Who even makes the call?

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Senator Price makes a good point. https://fb.watch/jbBXn7gTCg/?mibextid=qC1gEa Penny Wong - still a mean piece of work.

Jill sees all! Albanese takes hypocrisy to a whole new level. #YouJustCouldntMakeThisStuffup #TopDumb *ping @mpsmithnews pic.twitter.com/4OpyWyyFhI JILL (@1Swinging_Voter) March 10, 2023

Albo and his photo ops #auspol pic.twitter.com/j5jGDUNALU KELLIEI SEE DUMB PEOPLE (@kelliekelly23) March 9, 2023

Ive written about B before. Shes a homeless woman I knew through my project. But heres a little reminder of her backstory:

B lost both her legs in a subway accident. When I met her, she was living in a medical homeless shelter and panhandling daily in a wheelchair. B has four kids who, for a while, were living with her ex. It was not a good scenario. Very long story short: The State eventually took the kids away from him and temporarily placed them with Bs mother.

As I got to know B, I genuinely cared for her as a friend. We both looked forward to chatting whenever Id bring packages full of supplies geared to fit her specific needs. I bore witness to Bs journey and encouraged her as she dealt with mean-spirited passers-by and with a mountain of obstacles, e.g. housing, child services, medical bureaucracy, lawyers, etc.

Theres one story about her I havent yet shared, so here goes

In a major expansion and overhaul of its navy, Australia is planning to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear powered submarines beginning in the next decade, Reuters and others are reporting. US as well as European officials have disclosed the future deal as part of a "landmark defense agreement between Washington, Canberra and London, four U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in a deal that would present a new challenge to China." Comment: Well, it's not so much a 'challenge' to China as it is a provocation, and further confirmation that the West is pathological in its plans to 'contain' the country. The impending agreement is seen as central to the relatively new AUKUS partnership, and the major sub deal is expected to be announced when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego Monday.

by G5

The next time you are fed, Russia is losing in Ukraine: start here.

NATO-US have suffered massive losses of both personnel and material. They are losing at the rate of twenty to one. As I have previously written concerning individual theatres and engagements.

When CIA Zelensky was shouting for tanks, he had already lost over 2,000 in the first few weeks of engagement in 2022.

Now...

Photo from Christianity.com

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

I am here to propose a Jubilee Year in 2026. We have thirty-three months to get it ready the rest of 2023, plus 24, and 25. Not long enough, but it will keep us focused on the positive.

A biblical jubilee year is one that occurs every 49 years and has to do with preserving the land. Thats not what Im proposing, though I did get my idea from that tradition.

What I want us to do is to focus on the future.  At the moment, its only an intellectual exercise. Lets inventory the good possibilities for human life. Sure, the bad stuff will also come into focus, as the counterpoint. But the project is intended to be positive. We are tired of horrors.

Searching

I dare nominate only my home country, the US, for a jubilee.  But its patent that this country interacts with many others. I shall make it a rule that the jubilee search for a better life in US cannot include taking advantage of other nations.

In the 1960s, when in college, I read Ruth Benedicts 1934 book, Patterns of Culture. She was in the pioneering group of anthropologists who visited primitive societies. When asked which societies are happy, she said the ones in which the reward for a...

4 months ago on the 9th November, there were 15,808 reported COVID-19 deaths, but as of the 3rd March 2023, i.e., 8 days ago, the last reported COVID-19 death toll was 19,459, which is an increase of 3,651 in the last 4 months.

What are workers? Are they human beings? Do they have only a bundle of muscles but, no brains? How do they feel and how do they think? Do they think at all? What do they face in their life in factories, in foundries and other shops, in assembly lines, in unions?

Workers answers to the questions above differ from the response the workers masters present. The factor that draws the delineating line is, in short, class position, which is often blurred while discussing issues of life and work, be it related to workplace or economic program, politics or social initiatives, charity, cooperative, ideology or culture.

Michael D. Yates, a labor organizer, discusses this issue in the chapter 1, Take this job and of his recently released book Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2022). The professor of labor economics begins the chapter with a statement, simple or complicated:

It would be astonishing if the more than 150 million child laborers in the world were happily employed. Or if the 800 million farmworkers globally were content with their circumstances.

The mainstream investigates: Child laborers happiness with employment? Isnt it an invalid question? The system takes away happiness of childhood from millions of children, and then, searches whether or not the child workers are happy? The system shackles millions of farmworkers into bondage, and then, searches whether or not the farmworkers are happy? The system enslaves millions of workers into a life without humane condition, and then, surveys whether or not the workers are content with their life? Isnt it a mockery by the system and its scholarship? Isnt it a crude trick to hide the systems cruelty and its scholarships identity in the payroll of the system?

Michael Yates tells about two workers: his father and Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (Warner Books, New York, 1991): Both spent good portions of their lives as factory workers, my father in a glassworks and Ben Hamper in an auto plant.

The description goes further: Both became factory workers because it was almost predetermined that they would. All their relatives and friends were factory hands.

Predetermined the powerful process or factor that determines the lives of millions of toilers in the world system of...

I find the Daily Telegraph's 'Lockdown Files' revelations about Matt Hancock's WhatsApp messages simultaneously reassuring and disturbing. Reassuring, because over the many months I analysed Covid related data for Lockdown Sceptics (as this site was then called) I often had periods of self-doubt. Official announcements by politicians and senior civil servants were so discordant with publicly available information, I assumed I must be missing something, or misinterpreting the figures. Worse, I worried about inadvertently misleading our readership. Recent revelations suggest that my analyses were roughly correct - I'm not claiming any credit because the answers were hiding in plain sight. Anyone with a modicum of common sense and a basic training in biological sciences could have seen it - and many did. On the other hand, the message trails are disturbing for what they tell us about the nature of decision making in government. It is easy to be misled by taking Hancock's adolescent...

Greg Brockman, cofounder of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, talks with Fast Company about criticisms over political bias, and the most exciting developments in AI.

Its been four months since OpenAI debuted its chatbot, ChatGPT, and so far the hype train shows no sign of slowing down. These days everyone from teachers to journalists to HR departments are experimenting with generative AI. But theres also been a wave of criticism over the tech, including some calling out the chatbot for generating answers with political biases.

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I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends, and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral revolution in journalism.

My own high point was when a judge in the Royal Courts of Justice leaned across his bench and growled at me: You are just a peripatetic Australian like Assange. My name was on a list of volunteers to stand bail for Julian, and this judge spotted me as the one who had reported his role in the notorious case of the expelled Chagos Islanders. Unintentionally, he delivered me a compliment.

I saw Julian in Belmarsh not long ago. We talked about books and the oppressive idiocy of the prison: the happy-clappy slogans on the walls, the petty punishments; they still wont let him use the gym. He must exercise alone in a cage-like area where there is sign that warns about keeping off the grass. But there is no grass. We laughed; for a brief moment, some things didnt seem too bad.

The laughter is a shield, of course. When the prison guards began to jangle their keys, as they like to do, indicating our time was up, he fell quiet. As I left the room he held his fist high and clenched as he always does. He is the embodiment of courage.

Those who are the antithesis of Julian: in whom courage is unheard of, along with principle and honour, stand between him and freedom. I am not referring to the Mafia regime in Washington whose pursuit of a good man is meant as a warning to us all, but rather to those who still claim to run a just democracy in Australia.

Anthony Albanese was mouthing his favourite platitude, enough is enough long before he was elected prime minister of Australia last year. He gave many of us precious hope, including Julians family. As prime minister he added weasel words about not sympathising with what Julian had done. Apparently we had to understand his need to cover his appropriated posteria in case Washington called him to order.

We knew it would take exceptional political if not moral courage for Albanese to stand up in the Australian Parliament the same Parliament that will disport itself before Joe Biden in May and say:

As prime minister, it is my governments responsibility to bring home an Australian citizen who is clearly the victim of a great, vindictive injustice: a man who has been persecuted for the kind of journalism that is a true public service, a man who has not lied, or deceived like so many of his counterfeit in the media, but has told people the truth about how the world is run.

I call on the United States, a courageous and moral Prime Minister Albanese might say, to wi...

A battle over how to protect the planet from overheating is heating up.

Academics are coming out of the woodwork, forming coalitions, issuing declarations. A subdued debate over the merits versus demerits of solar geoengineering (SRM) has been ongoing for years. Now battle lines are forming.

The SRM controversy is coming to a head, in part, because of a small two-person startup company named Make Sunsets launching weather balloons filled with reflective sulfur particles off the coast of Baja, California with the bold idea of testing whether it is realistic to reflect sun radiation back to outer space and thus help prevent overheating of the planet. Interestingly, they expect to profit by selling credits. As such, Make Sunsets has become a bit of a renegade actor serving as an unwelcomed catalyst for academics to come to grips with the issue. But looked at from another angle, its a welcomed catalyst for an issue that must be sorted out as soon as possible, regardless of Make Sunsets presence.

After all, the White House has already directed a study of SRM (solar radiation management). On October 13, 2022 the White House announced funding of a five-year research plan: One of the most controversial plans to fight climate change, utilizing technology to artificially modify the planets climate or in plain English geo-engineering by spraying fine aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away.

The White House Request for Input to a Five-Year Plan for Research on Climate Intervention itemized, as follows: The report shall include: (1) the definition of goals in relevant areas of scientific research; (2) capabilities required to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition; (3) climate impacts and the Earths radiation budget; and (4) the coordination of Federal research and investments to deliver this assessment to manage near-term climate risk and research in climate intervention.

Obviously, Make Sunsets has jumped the gun and rattled several significant cages, especially in the face of unanswered questions about the risks of artificially tinkering with the climate system. But, then again, is geo-engineering a by-product of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions, even if not by design? If yes, it implies that fossil fuel CO₂ unintentional geo-engineering should be viewed as the direct opposite of SRM. CO₂ traps heat. SRM reflects heat. This would mean that fossil fuel-generated CO₂ emissions demonstrate what geo-engineering can accomplish, which is an enormous planetary headache, if misdirected.

In 2021, in Sweden, Harvard Universitys outdoor Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment was halted on the spot by opposition forces. Their experiment was only aiming to test the behavior of stratospheric aerosols. Harvards failed attempt is a prime example of SRMs steep uphill battle to establish credibility.

Within the past se.......

New in PJ Media: Mitch McConnell has fallen at a hotel in Washington and is currently in the hospital. Two questions immediately spring to mind, neither of which have answers at this point: is this the end of the dreary McConnell era of establishment Republican Me-Tooism? And is there some karmic relationship between Mitchs fall []

READ MORE AT TOTT NEWS 

Australias central bank intends to analyse 14 different Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) use cases in collaboration with our Big Four banks.

Read More

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.... well.... finally! T.M. spotted this one and passed it along, and it's another one of those articles I've got to blog about and bring

The post PEER-REVIEWED AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF THE JABS: THEYRE NOT SAFE appeared first on The Giza Death Star.

Families of the victims have called for a renewed search after the findings of a US-based marine robotics company emerged. Malaysian authorities are being asked to launch a new search for flight MH370, nine years after it disappeared from radars over the South China Sea. The request comes after US marine robotics company Ocean Infinity claimed to have found new evidence of the plane's possible location. The Boeing 777 was en route from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing with 239 passengers on board on March 8, 2014, when it vanished from the grid less than an hour into its journey. For three years, Malaysia, China, and Australia searched for the plane in the Indian Ocean, where it was believed to have crashed, only to come up empty-handed. The search was officially called off in January 2017, with no conclusion made about what could have happened to the mystery flight.

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THIRD GENERATION Liverpool Plains farmer Rosemary Nankivell has been active for more than a decade trying to save the top NSW food bowl, the Liverpool Plains, and the surrounding Pilliga nature reserve and State Forest, from coal and coal seam gas mining. The campaign united farmers, environmentalists and the Gomeroi people to successfully stop proposed []

THE very first objects taken from Australia by the British are finally coming home.

When James Cook and his crew first made contact with Aboriginal people in 1770, the British soldiers took dozens of spears from their camps at Botany Bay. 

More than 250 years later, only four of those spears remain and they will soon be permanently returned to the Aboriginal community of La Perouse. 

The historic announcement was made last Thursday at Bare Island in Botany Bay, which is known as Kamay in the local Indigenous language. 

La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council chairwoman Noeleen Timbery described the return of the artefacts as unimaginable. 

These spears are the markers of when our shared history began, she said. 

Theyre important objects for all Australians, because they tell the story of what happened

TRADITIONAL Owners from Murujuga on Western Australias Burrup Peninsular have travelled across the continent to protest outside the Sydney office of Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. 

The protest follows a community campaign launch held in Redfern on February 26 where Murujuga Traditional Owners teamed up with Gadigal Traditional Owners to escalate their fight for better protection of sacred Murujuga rock art from ongoing industrial threats. 

Murujuga Traditional Custodians, along with local supporters and allies, addressed the media outside Ms Pliberseks office on March 2. 

We are here this morning on Gadigal Country to stand with Traditional custodians around the country in opposition to the Federal Government continuing to allow industry to desecrate our culture, our communities and our Country, Mardudhunera woman and former chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation Raelene Cooper said. 

The minister has just made international headlines announcing the World Heritage values of our sacred Murujuga rock art, but shes allowing Woodsides Burrup Hub to continue pumping out massive emissions

ABORIGINAL communities, service providers, public servants, elected officials, philanthropists, business leaders, activists, inspiration thinkers, academics and local community came together last week for ChangeFest 2023 in Lutruwita (Tasmania). 

More than 500 people attended. 

Ideas, inspiration and real examples of making positive social change, as well as obstacles and challenges were discussed during the three days. 

ChangeFest is dubbed a movement. It has grown from four Logan (southeast Queensland) organisations banding together to assist community-driven social change, celebrating grassroots leadership and practical partnerships. 

ChangeFest organisers observed the discomfort of First Nations leaders at the 2018 gathering and so, in a statement, agreed on the importance of putting First Nations first. 

There is now a strong emphasis on empowering First Nations people, and the gatherings are attracting lots of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation. 

National gatherings have since been held in

ALICE Springs Town Council has made the extraordinary decision to ban an annual community club Aussie rules football competition. 

The council last week was presented with a motion to follow- through on the proposal, which passed despite strong opposition raised by two other councillors. 

The successful motion means Alice Springs Town Council will withdraw its support for the Community Cup competition which has teams from remote Aboriginal communities in and around Central Australia travelling to Alice Springs for games each weekend during the football season. The council said its decision was based on the town experiencing high levels of social unrest. 

The move will impact the senior mens Alice Springs-based Central Australian Football League. The five teams in the CAFL rely on players from those communities which are now banned. 

The Community Cup is played on Sundays with the CAFL on Saturdays. Community footballers are permitted to play for their community teams while also playing in the CAFL

Lions mane mushrooms (Hericium erinaceus) have a long history in traditional medicine. A 2023 study¹ from the University of Queensland found an extract from the mushroom demonstrates the ability to promote neuron projections and connect those to other neurons.²

Lions mane mushrooms are named for their unique white and shaggy appearance that resembles a lion's mane. They are also known by several other names, including bearded tooth, monkey's head, bearded hedgehog, satyrs beard and pom pom mushroom.³ The mushroom traditionally grows on hardwood trees and has played a role in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Asian culture for centuries.

According to TCM practitioners, lions mane supports the liver, spleen, heart, kidney and lung function.⁴ Buddhist monks traditionally used lion's mane mushroom tea to enhance brain function and heighten focus. The Chinese began cultivating lion's mane mushrooms in 1988 to meet demand. Today it's becoming a popular functional food in Western cultures.

Lion's mane mushrooms tend to grow in a single clump of dangling spines.⁵ In the wild, the mushrooms appear in late summer and early fall on dead and dying hardwood trees. The young mushrooms are pure white and tend to turn yellow and brown as they age.

Lions Mane Mushrooms Dramatically Improve Brain Cell Growth

In recent years, fungi have attracted scientific exploration for the potential to improve cognitive function. Lions mane mushrooms have had a long reputation for mental health benefits, prompting a research team from the University of Queensland to delve deeper into how extracts from the mushroom may improve nerve growth and enhance memory.⁶

The researchers acknowledged the mushroom's ability to enhance peripheral nerve regeneration by targeting nerve growth factors. The hope was to identify bioactive compounds that could help regulate the growth of neurons.⁷ In the lab, the researchers purified biologically active compounds and tested them against cultured brain cells in a Petri dish. The cells were then evaluated under a super-resolution microscope.

According to study scientist Frdric Meunier, Ph.D., we found the mushroom extract and its active components largely increase the size of growth cones, which are particularly important for brain cells to sense their environment and establish new connections with other neurons...

What do we do if the lights go out in our community? Margaret Killjoy says the answer is simple. The Left must embrace preparedness culture.

A new study led by chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that wildfire smoke particles, which can remain in the stratosphere for a year, can cause chemical reactions that deplete the protective ozone layer. The findings occurred during the megafire in Australia in December 2019 to January 2020.

The study, published in the journal Nature, analyzed the atmospheric chemical composition over the Southern Hemisphere at mid-latitudes, including regions over Australia and New Zealand and parts of Africa and South America. 

The researchers noted that the wildfire smoke particles created chemical reactions in the stratosphere. They estimated that these reactions caused the megafire to contribute to a 3% to 5% depletion in the ozone in the area studied.

The study model also estimated that the wildfires impacted the ozone layer over Antarctica, widening the hole over the Antarctic by 2.5 million square kilometers by the end of 2020, or widening by 10% of its area in comparison to 2019.

The Australian fires of 2020 were really a wake-up call for the science community, Susan Solomon, study author and professor of environmental studies at M.I.T., said in a statement. The effect of wildfires was not previously accounted for in [projections of] ozone recovery. And I think that effect may depend on whether fires become more frequent and intense as the planet warms.

The wildfires analyzed in the study were the worst ever recorded in Australia, burning tens of millions of acres and emitting 1 million tons of smoke into the atmosphere, as M.I.T. reported.

Solomon and her colleagues previously identified a chemical reaction between chlorine-containing compounds, typically chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and fire aerosols that produced chlorine monoxide, which is known to deplete ozone. So the researchers came back to analyze molecules in the stratosphere following the megafire in Australia.

While the team found that wildfire smoke reactions with hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the stratosphere could deplete ozone, they suspect wildfire smoke could react to other chlorine-containing compounds in the atmosphere, especially wh...

PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.

 

Newly Discovered Enzyme Turns Air Into Electricity, Providing Clean Source of Energy (Maria)

The author writes, Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy. The finding, published [yesterday] in the journal Nature, reveals that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create an electrical current. This finding opens the way to create devices that literally make energy from thin air. The research team, led by Dr. Rhys Grinter, Ph.D. student Ashleigh Kropp, and Professor Chris Greening from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Melbourne, Australia, produced and analyzed a hydrogen-consuming enzyme from a common soil bacterium.

 

Trumps Threat of a Third-Party Run Is Undercut by Sore Loser Laws (Reader Steve)

The author writes, Donald Trump hates losing so much that he has suggested he will mount a third-party campaign if he doesnt win the Republican presidential nomination. But he cant win that way either, thanks to sore loser laws in six states he would need to return to the White House. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as Arkansas and Alabama, have laws that bar a candidate defeated in a major-party primary from running as an independent or on a third-party ticket in the general election. That would put Trump at the general-election starting gate with a deficit of 91 electoral votes of the 270 required to capture the White House.

 

Inside the Private and Confidential Conservative Group That Promises to Crush Liberal Dominance (Gerry)

The authors write, Leonard Leo, a.....