No indictments. What’s on your Bingo card, or your March Madness political wackitude bracket? I’m sticking with, “Whatever they scream loudest about, do more of.” And ouch, are they screaming.
All of our music breaks today will be played on a variety of hammered dulcimers from around the world. There are far more such instruments and national styles than we can survey here, so I encourage you to have a look around YouTube. If you like this, I can bring you an all-different selection another time.
Music originally from Ukraine—Shchedryk/(Ukrainian: Щедрик) /The Carol of the Bells
Слава Україні
Repellent Wrong-Wingers Revel in Revoltingness, Rush Rabidly to Ruin
Just a moment. We need some springtime cheering up first.
Happy Planting - Korean Hammered Dulcimer Duet 朝鲜扬琴二重奏《欢乐的插秧》(titles and narration in Chinese)
扬琴 means “foreign instrument”, in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
OK, then.
TFG Dog Whistled a physical attack on NY DA Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat in side-by-side photos, hoping for Implausible Deniability. Nope.
The Georgia legislature is trying to ram through a bill that would let the Governor fire any DA for any reason, although they pretend that it is to keep them from going off the rails.
DoJ Special Counsel Jack Smith, a seasoned war crimes prosecutor, has been ramping up the subpoenas, and winning over and over again in court to require the objects of those subpoenas to show up and testify truthfully.
Trump, Pence urge judge to reject special counsel bid to obtain former VP’s testimony
Haha, no.
Sources: Special counsel claims Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents, judge wrote
Judge approves ‘crime fraud exception’ in special counsel probe of Trump classified documents
When you see him coming, it’s too late.
Woo+!
Maybe.
In honor of this previously-seeming impossibility, I offer this traditional catalog of impossibilities that happen constantly.
Scarborough Fair | Pure Hammered Dulcimer | Joshua Messick
Note the passages combining struck and plucked notes.
Rachel Maddow was grieving on air on Monday about people who survived mass shootings, and now are reporters and news anchors trying to hold themselves together while telling us about more of them. One TV reporter’s main source was her daughter, in hiding inside a school with an active shooter.
Prevalence of mass shootings extends reach of gun violence across communities
Also the very few people who have been in or near TWO mass shootings, which the iron laws of probability warn us is going to become increasingly common, right up until we do something about it all.
Last Night’s Horrible Headlines
Bad news that is sometimes sort of good.
Idaho law could criminalize helping minors get abortions
The plan is to create a new crime to be called “abortion trafficking”, requiring minors wanting to travel out of state or get abortion medication for abortions to get parental consent. But what if a girl has been raped by her father or legal guardian? Chris Hayes wanted to know. This kind of interference with interstate travel has not been seen since the worst days of the Fugitive Slave Act, which let to the total destruction of the Whig Party, and the creation of the Republicans. I cannot cover all of the bills proposing to outlaw abortions in various draconian and heartless and science-denying ways, but there are various organizations that do.
Then there is the silver lining.
The Cut: Abortion Wins Elections
The fight to make reproductive rights the centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s 2024 agenda.
Chris continued,
Targeting [minors] brings this right up to the line of an obvious and flagrant assault on the Union. But remember, tactics that go just up to the line are the approach of the anti-abortion rights movement, right before they step over it.
Media Matters: New details in Dominion suit reveal damning evidence of deception in Fox News' 2020 election coverage
Media Matters has obtained a slide deck used at a March 21 hearing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
NBC News got the deck yesterday.
We now have a previously redacted e-mail from Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott which is far more damning than the cover-up admitted. She was reacting to a fact check of TFG’s bogus claims of election rigging.
Subject: Re: Fox News’ Eric Shawn Fact-Checks Trump ‘Dump’ Claims
This has to stop now.
This is bad business, and there clearly is a lack of undestanding what is happening in these shows.
The audience is furious, and we are just feeding them material.
Bad for business.
Chris Hayes commented
Believe me, there is much more where that came from.
We could easily take half the show unpacking it.
So much more, that you will have to read about it somewhere else. The anchors, staff, lawyers, Murdoch, Lindell…
Another e-mail from Scott:
The audience feels like we crapped on and we have damaged their trust and belief in us.
Ya think?
New military abortion policies allow for travel expenses, up to 3 weeks of leave
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is personally holding up 160 DoD promotions that normally pass in groups by unanimous consent over this policy. This will have ripple effects on readiness throughout all of the services. DoD predicts that 650 more general and flag officers will need promotions this year. Tuberville explains:
As of twelve days ago, y’all got the American taxpayer on the hook to pay for travel and time off, for elective abortions. And you did not make this with anybody in this room [a Senate hearing room] where Congress takes a vote.
I’m not going to let our military be politicized.
👆👆😂😂👆👆
Sen. Tuberville undermines U.S. military readiness with anti-abortion political stunt
Bernie UNLOADS On Starbucks Founder Howard Schultz At Senate Hearing
Sen. Bernie Sanders held nothing back.
"Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting camping in the modern history of our country," Sanders said. "That union busting campaign has been led by Howard Schultz, the multi-billionaire founder and director of Starbucks who is with us this morning only under the threat of subpoena."
Later, Sanders pressed Schultz: "Have you ever threatened, coerced, or intimidated a worker for supporting a union?"
Schultz wouldn't answer no. "I've had conversations that could’ve been interpreted in a different way than I intended..."
Democrats are denouncing Republicans in Congress as cowards. Sorry, no room for the whole story this morning. You will want to see Rep. Jamaal Bowman, formerly a middle-school principal, take some of them on.
I cannot reproduce all of the Bad News about Bad Boy Wrong-Winger pedophiles and other criminals getting arrested, indicted, and convicted that I have seen and passed on elsewhere recently. Their prevalence, and the lack of an equivalent among the more woke political cohorts, has been widely noted. You especially do not see drag queens done for pedophilia.
I have not seen any unseemly cackling about the latest shooter in Nashville, apparently a trans person targeting an abusive Christian private school that hse [sic] was forced to attend.
Nashville mass shooter appears to have been transgender
More information is coming out about the shooter’s interactions with others. Sorry, you’ll have to read about that elsewhere, too.
Trump touts Twitter poll from '@catturd2' showing him with a big lead over Ron DeSantis
Rachel Maddow reveled in this ultimate fake news story last Monday.
🐈🐈🐈🐈 18% DeSantis
💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 69% TFG
No, I wasn’t the one making that up.
Also former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testifying to the New York grand jury.
AMI removed Pecker as CEO in August 2020, keeping him on in the role of executive advisor. Simultaneously, the company was renamed a360Media in anticipation of a merger with another Chatham property, the logistics firm Accelerate 360.[19]
Palate Cleanser, with a Side of Brain Bleach
Cimbalom (hammered dulcimer) Performance by Georgia @ Stockholm
Yes, one can play any kind of music on a hammered dulcimer. Not just anyone can do it like this, however.
Regular Good News
Only a week of voting left until we can get Judge Janet in Wisconsin! Just in time to defend us against this:
Republicans propose bill to bar state employees from promoting or providing abortions
The “Taxpayer Abortion Subsidy Prevention” bill is meant to continue severing ties between taxpayer dollars and abortion services, according to the co-sponsorship memo being circulated by authors Sen. André Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Elijah Behnke (R-Oconto). It comes as debate continues between Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats over whether and how to amend the state’s 1849 ban, which only includes an exception for the life of the mother.
“We will be introducing legislation to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not utilized to subsidize abortions, either through the use of public employees or public facilities,” the co-sponsorship memo states.
NYT (Paywalled): Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer.
Vanuatu, a disaster-prone Pacific country, has secured United Nations approval to take that question to the International Court of Justice.
The resolution passed by consensus of all 193 UN members, including all of the biggest polluters. It likely will take 18 months for the ICJ to consider the case. Watch this space.
The following comes out of a week-long trip by VP Kamala Harris and 2nd Mentsh Doug Emhoff, with gleeful children, state dinners, tearful acknowledgements of history, and announcements on democracy, food security, and Global Warming actions. Others in the administration have visited African nations recently, and President Biden is scheduled to visit, too.
Good News Links
We had multiple lists of such links, which I have combined and sorted here. I will put this expanded list into the draft Potluck GNR in the Group queue, where all of our authors will have regular access to it.
Here I present one story from each. That’s a lot of Good News to take in, isn’t it?
Can Produce Prescription Programs Turn the Tide on Diet-Related Disease?
As the farm bill process ramps up and some hope to expand the use of Produce Rx programs, new research seeks to assess the impact of this “food as medicine” tactic.
Future Crunch Good News
More than 97% of people worldwide now have some level of immunity against COVID-19, either from infection or vaccination, or a combination of the two. Over 5.5 billion people, almost 70% of humanity, has been vaccinated, easily the largest, fastest and most successful campaign in the history of global public health. Think Global Health
The new World Happiness Report says there was a "globe-spanning surge of benevolence" during the pandemic, with acts like donating, volunteering and helping a stranger increasing by a quarter compared to pre-pandemic times. Contrary to dominant media narratives, the report also says that positive social connections and support in 2022 were twice as prevalent as loneliness.
Black Changemakers & Environmentalists Building a Better Future for All
A Veteran's Case for Implementing Military Gun Standards in Our Society
#1. Annual Weapons Qualification Test
#2. 100% Accountability for Securing Weapons
#3. Concealed and Open Carry Banned on Bases
Thousands of Native Plants Remain Unphotographed, But You Can Help Fill the Gaps for Scientists
Universal cancer immunotherapy may be possible through protein engineering
Scientists at ETH Zurich have made significant progress in developing a ready-to-use immunotherapy treatment for cancer. A synthetic protein modification can allow immune cells from any donor to be delivered to any patient without the risk of an adverse immunological reaction.
What Could Go Right? 99 good news stories
2022’s human rights victories, environmental wins, and health and development milestones
Alongside Math and Reading, Schools Are Now Teaching Happiness
With “gratitude necklaces” and “gardens of emotions,” mental wellbeing classes help young people with anxiety and confidence.
Jason Arday - what a beautiful story. 🎓
Diagnosed with autism and global development delay in his early years, Jason Arday was unable to speak until he was 11 years old and could not read or write until he was 18.
Aged 37, he has now become the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship at the University of Cambridge.
Read the full story on @bbcnews.
More Hammered Dulcimer
Chinese YANGQIN performance—four regional pieces plus modern compositions (Mandarin 揚琴/扬琴 (yángqín), originally written 洋琴. Liiterally "foreign musical instrument".)
Science! Math! Animals! Weirdness!
We just got the news of new aperiodic tilings by a single “einstein” tile, so I got the paper that gives the constructions and proofs, and I am half way through it.
An aperiodic monotile
Redshifts > 13, a new record. Hubble got up to a little over 10. The CMBR, from when the universe became transparent, is at 1100, and the Cosmic Neutrino Background at billions, from when what became our visible Universe was only a few lightyears across. We currently have no idea how to detect such low-energy neutrinos.
Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Surprising Finds
Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.
As ever, watch this spacetime.
No, even with warp drive, future explorers are not going to find an M-class planet with humanoid or god-like life once a week.
Guzmán M, Duarte MJ, Blázquez C, Ravina J, Rosa MC, Galve-Roperh I, et al. (July 2006). "A pilot clinical study of Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme". British Journal of Cancer. 95 (2): 197–203. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6603236. PMC 2360617. PMID 16804518.
Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other cannabinoids inhibit tumour growth and angiogenesis in animal models, so their potential application as antitumoral drugs has been suggested. However, the antitumoral effect of cannabinoids has never been tested in humans. Here we report the first clinical study aimed at assessing cannabinoid antitumoral action, specifically a pilot phase I trial in which nine patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme were administered THC intratumoraly. The patients had previously failed standard therapy (surgery and radiotherapy) and had clear evidence of tumour progression.
The primary end point of the study was to determine the safety of intracranial THC administration. We also evaluated THC action on the length of survival and various tumour-cell parameters. A dose escalation regimen for THC administration was assessed. Cannabinoid delivery was safe and could be achieved without overt psychoactive effects.
Median survival of the cohort from the beginning of cannabinoid administration was 24 weeks (95% confidence interval: 15–33). Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol inhibited tumour-cell proliferation in vitro and decreased tumour-cell Ki67 immunostaining when administered to two patients. The fair safety profile of THC, together with its possible antiproliferative action on tumour cells reported here and in other studies, may set the basis for future trials aimed at evaluating the potential antitumoral activity of cannabinoids.
Reefer Madness was revealed to be Reefer Derangement Syndrome a long time ago, and has stood in the way of medical research for far too long. Likewise, a wide range of psychedelics.
Hammered dulcimer! Beautiful instrument. Medieval Times Middle ages. Traditional Music.
Claude Bertand is the instrument maker and performer.
Funny or Cry
Actually, that’s precisely what they did. None of the contents were lost, but stockholders lost everything. There are all-new investors now, and a solid balance sheet with actual money, not just bonds that lost market value when interest rates soared.
Cartoon: The indictment(s) on the way
Hammered dulcimer --- A Galitsianer Tantsel
Hammered dulcimers and other similar instruments are traditionally played in Iraq, India, Iran, Southwest Asia, China, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia, Central Europe (Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland (particularly Appenzell), Austria and Bavaria), the Balkans, Eastern Europe (Ukraine and Belarus), and Scandinavia. The instrument is also played in the United Kingdom (Wales, East Anglia, Northumbria), and the US, where its traditional use in folk music saw a notable revival in the late 20th century.[2]
Wiktionary:
Dulcimer: Latin dulce melos (“sweet song”), from Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos, “melody, song”).
Hammered dulcimers come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and tunings, and are played with a wide variety of hammers.