US society has been undergoing a fractional distillation process for decades, separating segments of the population by shades of opinion and karma. Their segments are all at war with each other and the rest of us and reality itself, while our segments form a grand coalition that is bringing us all together and moving from strength to strength.
The fractional distillation of organic substances played an important role in the 9th-century works attributed to the Islamic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, as for example in the Kitāb al-Sabʿīn ('The Book of Seventy'), translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187) under the title Liber de septuaginta.[1] The Jabirian experiments with fractional distillation of animal and vegetable substances, and to a lesser degree also of mineral substances, formed the main topic of the De anima in arte alkimiae, an originally Arabic work falsely attributed to Avicenna that was translated into Latin and would go on to form the most important alchemical source for Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292).[2]
As the distillation proceeds, what is left at the bottom comes ever closer to purest and most corrosive oil of vitriol.
Oil of vitriol was an old name for concentrated sulfuric acid, which was historically obtained through the dry distillation (pyrolysis) of vitriols. The name, abbreviated to vitriol, continued to be used for this viscous liquid long after the minerals came to be termed "sulfates". The figurative term vitriolic in the sense of "harshly condemnatory" is derived from the corrosive nature of this substance.
Good News for Us
Op-ed: This Farm Bill Could Rein in Big Agriculture’s Lobbying Power
Including the new Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act in the upcoming farm bill would go a long way toward fixing the USDA’s commodity checkoff programs.
Plus, falling crime in America, school feeding programs in Africa, women's right in Croatia, the world's newest (and biggest) dark sky sanctuary, and rewilding in Japan and Scotland.
Restoring Hope for African Grey Parrots: A Celebration of World Rewilding Day
12 Good News Stories About Climate Change
-
The price of solar electricity has dropped 89% in 10 years
-
In a historic victory for climate change, a court ordered Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by the year 2030
-
A woman in Kenya opened a factory that turns plastic waste into bricks that are even stronger than concrete
-
Five years after they were destroyed by a tropical cyclone, coral reefs off of Fiji are alive again, filled with vibrant colors and fish
-
Greenland has officially stopped all new oil and gas exploration to fight climate change
-
Harvard University announced it will completely stop investing in fossil fuels
- New reflective streets in Los Angeles are helping cool down neighborhoods, reduce emissions, and keep people healthy
- For the first time, electric and hybrid vehicles outsold diesel vehicles in Europe
- YouTubers are raising $30 million to remove 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean
- Over 325 million people worldwide pledged to go plastic-free for the month of July
- The Empire State Building and 13 others are now exclusively powered by wind
- After years of work by activists, the Keystone XL oil pipeline permits were revoked
CAR-T Cell Therapy Achieves Near-Complete Tumor Regression in Brain Cancer After Five Days
Clinical trials for a novel treatment for patients with glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, have shown rapid success, with some patients experiencing a dramatic decline in tumor size just days after their first treatment course.
CAR-T cell therapy, or CAR-T for short, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and works by using a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer. It’s currently the most personalized way to treat the disease.
The "Trump Is A Strong Candidate" Bubble Is Bursting, Biden Leads in 6 Post-SOTU Polls
There is an unprecedented revolt against Trump inside the GOP - Pence, Romney, the Cheneys, it just goes on and on. Two former GOP Vice Presidents, a former Party nominee, the former chair of the RNC, dozens of senior government officials who worked for Trump…..we’ve never seen anything like what is happening inside the GOP now. These leaders are creating a powerful permission structure for other Rs and R-leaning independents to walk away from Trump, as they did in the battleground states in 2022. Last night the Biden campaign announced that six major fundraisers for Nikki Haley’s campaign had started raising money for Biden-Harris. The party is splintering, bigly.
A 17-year old discovered a new planet on third day of internship at NASA
The intern, Wolf Cukier, explained that he was looking for eclipsing binaries, a system where two stars circle each other, when he discovered an unusual pattern in the data. Upon further analysis, Cukier noticed that there was a planet in between orbiting around the two stars. The new planet – which is 6.9 times bigger than Earth – has been named TOI 1338 b.
The city where ‘the future has already arrived’
What will cities look like a decade from now? Utrecht offers clues as it takes green living to the next level.
I imagine the tabloid-fuelled frenzy that would ensue in Britain if one of its cities turned a six-lane road into a canal for pleasure boating and nature. Much uproar in Utrecht? “Not really,” Paul Manten, who led the project, tells me, as we stroll along the canal’s flower-strewn banks. “A few people who go everywhere by car didn’t like it.”
Many others saw it as righting a historic wrong. A canal flowed here from as early as 1122, when it was dug as a defence line for the city. It was controversially filled in with concrete in the 1960s, when the world went gung-ho for cars. Cue a referendum in 2002, when residents voted to bring the water back. Though Covid scuppered the long-awaited grand reopening in 2020, it also sparked a renaissance in active travel in other cities – a vindication for Utrecht, which, according to Manten, spent circa €1bn (£860m) restoring Catharijnesingel.
What Could Go Right? The Platinum Decade
Southeast Asia celebrates several public health accomplishments
Looking through, you can see the public health picture slowly coming to resemble that of the United States or the European Union, the concerns moving away from communicable diseases like polio or long-endemic ones like malaria toward cancer, for example, or the health risks associated with poor diet and obesity, and lifestyle choices like drinking and smoking.
What We’re Reading: Bike Lanes, Dam Debates and More
Common anesthetic is extremely effective in killing cancer cells, study finds
At the heart of this discovery lies the activation of a taste receptor known as T2R14 by lidocaine. This receptor, responsible for detecting bitterness, was found to be present in high concentrations within various cancer cells, especially those residing in the oral cavity and throat. The tantalizing possibility that lidocaine interacts with cancer cells through this receptor led researchers at the University of Pennsylvania to explore this hypothesis.
A coal billionaire is building the world’s biggest clean energy plant and it’s five times the size of Paris
Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He’s also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia’s second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements.
Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world’s biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes.
'Assume that I can' ad shows people with Down syndrome taking control of their lives
"Assume that I can live on my own. So I live on my own."
As Gov. Ron DeSantis tries to block the clean energy transition, University of Florida students are adopting Green New Deal measures and showing how public schools can lead on climate.
Who Is Beating Back Book Bans?
Amidst a rising tide of anti-LGBTQ book bans, activists, authors, and librarians are organizing to make sure LGBTQ stories are still heard.
Bad News for Them
Fox News [paywalled]: Trump unable to get $464M appeal bond to stop collection, attorneys say: 'Practical impossibility'
This has been reported on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC, and in The Hill, Politico, USA Today, Newsweek, Axios…
Trump is unable to make $464 million bond
Reuters: Trump eyeing Paul Manafort for 2024 campaign role, Washington Post reports
Because he only hires the crookedest crooks, you know. He learned that from Roy Cohn.
Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020, seven months after he was released to home confinement, sparing the long-time Republican operative from serving the bulk of his 7-1/2-year prison term for federal tax evasion and bank fraud.
‘His dream’s been weaponized into his nightmare’: how Martin Luther King Jr’s words have been co-opted
Vivek Ramaswamy harks back to King while making the case for dismantling critical race theory and DEI initiatives. (“What bothers the heck out of me is right when we’re close to that promised land … [we] then obsess about systemic racism and white guilt,” he told NBC earlier this month.) Ron DeSantis claims King would have been for book bans. (“He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character,” the Florida governor said while stumping for his Stop Woke Act in 2021, stressing a responsibility to “protect our people and our kids from some very pernicious ideologies”.) Nikki Haley, slow to concede the civil war’s origins in slavery, says she was inspired by the civil rights icon.
Supreme court had earlier allowed strict[draconian] law to take effect, letting state police arrest those suspected of crossing border illegally
Mar 20, 2024
After NBC News conducted an exit poll in Ohio, MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin reported that of Ohio Republican primary voters—who are typically the most committed party members—11% said they would vote for Biden in November and another 8% said they wouldn’t vote for either Trump or Biden.
That’s what they say now, not a guarantee of how they will vote in November, but Trump’s campaign is in big trouble.
Potential move could coincide with ex-president’s Monday deadline to find $454m bond needed to cover civil fraud judgment.
Not long after the letter landed, Donald Trump’s election campaign called for donations from 1 million of his backers, warning he could lose his New York properties.
“Keep your filthy hands off of Trump Tower!” reads a message to supporters from a joint fundraising committee that allocates the money it collects to his campaign and a separate political committee that has been paying Trump’s legal bills.
Science! Animals! Weirdness!
Funny or Fuggedaboudit
😂😂👉👉Toyota CEO: "Our NEW Hydrogen V8 Engine Will End The EV Industry!"👈👈😂😂
Closing, Um, Music
P.D.Q Bach--Songs from Shakespeare