This useful article 5 Amazon obscure settings you should change now, from of all places Fox News, has some good advice. I also think it has one error.
In #4 it says you can “stop Amazon from tracking your browsing” but in fact, if you go to the “Your Browsing History” page at Amazon, it appears to offer only to stop showing you your browsing history–it doesn’t actually say they’ll stop collecting it.
Even so, most or all of these steps are worth taking.
Like so many people I know, these days I spend too much time following the news. I am reminded of how, back in the mid ’80s when I visited Israel, everyone always seemed to be listening the radio — just in case something happened.
If Cohen really has flipped, then it’s likely a question of when not if Trump has to go.
If we have reached the beginning of the end, then now timing is everything. On the one hand it doesn’t yet seem likely that political opinion will congeal quickly enough to head off the Brett Kavanaugh nomination; once he’s in place the Supreme Court tilts a bit further in favor of the Imperial Presidency which might help Trump in some versions of a showdown. Conversely, so long as the nomination is in play, there is little chance Trump will fire Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or even the AG as everything will break loose; but so long as they are both in office there is no way to get rid of Mueller.
So the second worst-case scenario is Kavanaugh gets confirmed, and then Trump goes nuclear on the Special Counsel. I think that would lead to impeachment, but it would be ugly. (The worst case is of course that Trump actually goes nuclear on something.) Then of course there’s the whole set of issues around whether Pence is implicated too…
Enough. Here’s a bit of comic sort of relief.
Study: Eating Beef Jerky Might Be Linked to Manic Episodes in Some People.
Not from the Onion, but I had to check.
a strange pattern began popping up among people diagnosed with mania, a state of hyper excitement, arousal, and delusion frequently followed by periods of severe depression in people who have bipolar disorder. Compared to the control group, people with a manic episode reported eating more cured meats such as beef jerky. Overall, they found that people with a recent history of eating cured meat were three times more likely to be hospitalized for mania, even after adjusting for factors like age or socioeconomic status. The same pattern couldn’t be seen with any other type of food eaten.
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As for how jerky could be triggering mania, Yolken suspects it involves the microbial environment, or microbiome, of the gut. In a healthy person, the gut and brain regularly “talk” to one another through hormonal and nerve signals to keep the body regulated, the so-called gut-brain axis. In recent years, researchers have started to find that our gut microbiota is integral to keeping those airwaves clear. But if the gut microbiome is imbalanced (through changes in diet or antibiotics, for instance), that might set off a chain of events that wreaks havoc on both the brain and gut, often through chronic inflammation. This inflammation then might make people more susceptible to developing mental illness, or worsening its symptoms.
And indeed, when Yolken’s team looked at the guts of nitrate-fed rats, they found clear changes in the gut microbiome, in the form of an increase of certain kinds of bacteria, compared to normal rats. Those particular bacteria have previously been associated with behavior and cognition changes in animals. There was also evidence of minute molecular changes in the brain associated with mania in these rats, though Yolken cautioned that the results can’t prove that the gut changes led to the brain changes. They also can’t prove that nitrates are responsible for any similar changes in people.
Jerky is not my thing, but I wonder if the effect extends to cured meats like salami?
And of course the obvious question: Does Trump eat jerky?
I’m back from a three-week vacation that in part celebrated my being officially cured of a lengthy illness that more or less consumed the first eight of the last twelve months, and then had lingering effects that only recently went away. I’m told there’s an 80% chance the cure is permanent; if it isn’t, I get to do the wretched treatments over again (or they may invent something better by then).
Perhaps I’ll blog more?
Jotwell Blenderlaw