#emphasis added

The vast majority (99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US. According to the study, which is based on only a handful of carbon-intensive activities and is therefore probably a significant underestimate, the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal. The analysis, which is yet to be peer reviewed, includes CO2 from aircraft missions, tanks and fuel from other vehicles, as well as emissions generated by making and exploding the bombs, artillery and rockets. It does not include other planet-warming gases such as methane. Almost half the total CO2 emissions were down to US cargo planes flying military supplies to Israel. Hamas rockets fired into Israel during the same period generated about 713 tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to approximately 300 tonnes of coal – underscoring the asymmetry of each side’s war machinery.

[...]

David Boyd, the UN special rapporteur for human rights and the environment, said: “This research helps us understand the immense magnitude of military emissions – from preparing for war, carrying out war and rebuilding after war. Armed conflict pushes humanity even closer to the precipice of climate catastrophe, and is an idiotic way to spend our shrinking carbon budget.”

[...]

Ned, the pie-maker, could be getting ready to make more pies as Pushing Daisies creator, Bryan Fuller, says a third season is in the works.

While promoting his latest film, Dust Bunny, Fuller was asked about the possibility of the comedy-drama returning to TV screens, and he had good news.

“Absolutely,” Fuller told ComicBook recently about wanting to revisit Pushing Daisies. “We have a season three pitch, and the entire cast wants to come back, and we’re hoping we get to return to them. We just have to find somebody who wants to make it.”

Pushing Daisies was a mystery-fantasy series, produced by Warner Bros. Television, that premiered on ABC in October 2007 and ran for two seasons. The series starred Lee Pace as Ned, a pie-maker who had the power to bring the dead back to life.

Pace’s co-stars included Anna Friel as Chuck, Kristin Chenoweth as Olive Snook, Chi McBride as Emerson Cod, Swoosie Kurtz as Lili Charles, and Ellen Greene as Vivian Charles. The series also included flashbacks to young Ned who was played by Field Cate and a narration by Jim Dale.

During the same press tour for the Mads Mikkelsen-starring horror thriller film, Fuller reiterated working on a new season of Pushing Daisies, telling The Mary Sue, “We’re working on a Season 3, and the whole cast wants to come back. And, we’ve got a whole story. We’re trying to do another season this year.”

Pushing Daisies was nominated for several Emmy Awards over its two seasons, scoring 17 nominations and winning 7, including Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Chenoweth, among others.

Both seasons of Pushing Daisies are available to stream on HBO Max.

On the flip side of the previous argument, you also have people who think we live in a time where people who are comfortable being outspoken LGBTQ+ allies would also absolutely be comfortable coming out as LGBTQ+ themselves. But everyone’s journey is different, and the idea of quietly alluding to your sexuality in a way that other queer people will pick up on has always been a way to test the waters, or even just offer up a wink and a nod—and it still is.

Miley Cyrus recently joked about how obviously queer her fashion was when she was younger and already aware of her sexuality but not publicly out. Lil Nas X seemed surprised nobody figured out he was gay when he included rainbows on an album cover, famously tweeting, “deadass thought i made it obvious” as his way of coming out. When Dove Cameron came out, she immediately admitted she had "hinted about [her] sexuality for years while being afraid to spell it out for everybody.”

Queer flagging isn’t synonymous with harmful stereotypes that reinforce the gender binary; it’s not that obvious. In other words, if you aren’t picking up on it, it’s probably not for you. And just because you don’t see or connect with it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. As scarlettvicc writes in her Medium essay on the topic, “There are always occasions where coincidences happen, but to insist that this flagging does not exist only perpetuates the same erasure of queer people that created the need for flagging in the first place.”

~ Rachel Kiley Previous Next

"Three years into the pandemic, with the removal of almost all mitigation measures in most countries, it's clear the virus has hit the world very hard. So far, almost 681 million infections and more than 6.8 million deaths have been reported.

This is perhaps best visualised by its impact on life expectancy. There were sharp declines seen across the world in 2020 and 2021, reversing 70 years of largely uninterrupted progress.

The excess mortality driving this drop in life expectancy has continued. This includes in Australia, where over 20,000 more lives than the historical average are estimated to have been lost in 2022."...

"The indirect impacts on the health systems in rich and poor countries alike continue to be substantial. Disruptions to health services have led to increases in stillbirths, maternal mortality and postnatal depression.

Routine child immunisation coverage has decreased. Crucial malaria, tuberculosis and HIV programs have been disrupted.

A paper out this week highlights the severe impact of the pandemic on mental health globally.

Meanwhile, more evidence of long COVID has emerged around the world. At least 65 million people were estimated to be experiencing this debilitating syndrome by the end of 2022.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates 5-10 per cent of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, with symptoms persisting for more than three months.

That's between 550,000 and 1.1 million Australians, based on the more than 11 million cases reported so far."...

"We cannot assume there will be a natural exit to the pandemic, where the virus reaches some benign endemicity, a harmless presence in the background.

In fact, there is little indication anything like that is imminent.

In Australia, since the beginning of January, more than 235,000 COVID cases have been reported, almost as many as in 2020 and 2021 combined. Since the start of January, there have been 2,351 COVID-related deaths, more than twice as many as in the whole of 2020 and around the same as in the whole of 2021."...

"As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, we must not leave it up to the virus to fix itself.

The biggest lesson of the past three years is there's little chance that is going to work, at least without an intolerably high cost.

Nikolas Cruz bought the AR-15 that he used to kill 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because it was “cool-looking.” That’s what he told a Broward Sheriff’s detective, according to court documents.

It was cool-looking.

Cruz’s trial isn’t over yet. The prosecution has rested, and the defense is making its case against the death penalty, after his guilty plea. But even as the jury continues its heartbreaking job, one so agonizing it would be beyond the endurance of many, the AR-15-style gun marketed as “America’s rifle” continues to plague us all.

Cruz chose the same style of weapon as the shooter in Uvalde, the one in Las Vegas, the one at Pulse in Orlando, the one at Sandy Hook, the one in Buffalo, the one in Highland Park, Illinois. These are guns that trace their roots to the Vietnam War. They’re designed to kill lots of people and to look pretty much the same as ones used in the military.

It makes us numb, that list of shootings. But how many of us would still feel that way — could still feel that way — if we’d seen what the jurors in the Cruz trial have had to see? They don’t have the luxury of averting their eyes from the carnage. They can’t duck from the reality of what this country allows: Cruz purchased his weapon legally.

That has to change.

The graphic photos of human beings’ destruction — the tiny entrance wound, the gaping, obscene exit wound — were shielded from the public, considered too awful for most of us to contemplate. But the jurors deciding Cruz’s fate had to see them. Reporters covering the case also viewed them, including David Ovalle.

Ovalle is the Miami Herald’s veteran court reporter. He’s seen some of the worst things that humans can do to each other. But even he struggled to comprehend the horrific damage depicted in the photos.

“For me, the exit wounds were so jarring to view,” he said. “It’s hard to even describe them, because the descriptions of gaping wounds, ragged flesh and deep-red-colored holes just don’t do enough to convey the devastation caused by these weapons of war.”

He talked about one boy, shot eight times, with exit wounds on his forearm — “a massive hole of ragged flesh” — and one of his legs. And about a girl, lying on the floor in front of a classroom lectern, “her eyes wide open as if she’s in pain, her mouth slightly open.” The side of her head is missing, her brain pulverized by a high-velocity bullet.

None of us should have to know about the damage that high-velocity bullets can do. And yet, as the shootings continue, so many of us do.

‘Snowstorm’ of damage Medical examiners have offered more grim lessons during this trial. They told jurors that the bullets that AR-15-style weapons use are created to inflict massive internal damage. Forensic pathologists testified about how the bullets tore through flesh and hit bone, creating a “snow storm” of bullet fragments peppering the person’s insides, often fatally.

As former Broward chief medical examiner Craig Mallak described it, “It’s a very small bullet, but it’s moving at 3,000 feet per second. There’s so much energy with these bullets. It just tears skin, bones, organs.” It’s a path 20 times to 30 times the size of the actual bullet, he said.

He performed the autopsy on 14-year-old Cara Loughran, who suffered three wounds: one small entry wound to the left upper back and two gaping exit wounds in the upper chest.

One bullet entered the rib area of 14-year-old Alaina Petty. “After that, the bullet was fragmented into multiple fragments that perforated the lungs, liver, kidney and exits on the left lateral side of the torso,” Associate Medical Examiner Iouri Boiko testified.

Meadow Pollack’s wounds were catastrophic. The 18-year-old was shot seven times, one fracturing her spine. A bullet that grazed her opened a five-inch gash on her skull. It wasn’t a direct hit. But the energy of the bullet was so powerful, she had no chance.

Marketing works This style of weapon isn’t popular by accident — it’s marketing. The Washington Post recently published a story outlining how one of the manufacturers of AR-15-style rifles tried to run an ad during the Super Bowl, knowing the NFL would probably reject it but ready to launch accusations of censorship and hypocrisy. The ad was rejected. And the counterattack was “by far” the most successful marketing the company had ever had, one company exec said.

The United States banned assault weapons before, from 1994 until 2004. In that 10-year period, mass-shooting deaths were reduced, according to at least one study, published in 2019 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. In July, the House passed new assault-weapons ban legislation, largely along party lines. It’s unlikely to advance in the evenly split Senate, but at least it is some recognition that the Second Amendment doesn’t confer unlimited rights.

And there is support from the White House. President Biden, in a Pennsylvania speech on safer communities and gun control Tuesday, said the county “is awash in weapons of war.” Parents whose children died in the Uvalde shooting, he said, had to supply DNA for identification, “because the AR-15 just rips the body apart.”

Still-life horror Jurors in the Parkland case are doing what no one should have to do. Instead of shielding themselves from the dreadfulness of this mass shooting, they have to immerse themselves in it. They’ve listened to the anguished parents, siblings and friends. They’ve visited the still-life horror of Building 12 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, preserved since 2018 for the trial: dried pools of blood on the floor, overturned chairs, discarded headphones, a chess game still in the middle of play, broken glass that still crunches underfoot.

And they’ve seen those photos, the nightmarish pictures of slaughter four years ago on Valentine’s Day committed by someone who thought an AR-15 looked “cool.”

There have been so many shootings. We try to preserve our own sanity by turning away, afraid of having those images of blood and terror and viciousness branded into our consciousness forever.

In a letter to the president, 26 Republican attorneys general demanded the Biden administration withdraw its Department of Agriculture’s Title IX interpretation, which will take billions of dollars in National School Lunch Program funding away from schools that don’t let biological males use the girls' bathroom or compete in girls’ sports. The department's interpretation violated the Administrative Procedures Act, since it was issued as a memorandum rather than a proposed rule for the public to comment on, the attorneys general wrote.

The Biden administration has a history of going around the public when issuing policies, Matt Bowman, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Free Beacon. Before the Supreme Court blocked it in January, a mandate without public comment from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration required that workers at businesses with 100 or more employees get vaccinated or submit a negative COVID test weekly.

Gotta love the always-blatant NED

To further human rights and human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has awarded $8,758,300 to Uyghur groups since 2004, serving as the only institutional funder for Uyghur advocacy and human rights organizations.