Dragon's Den

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

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Some Thoughts on a Possible Big Primary Upset(s) in Colorado - TPM – Talking Points Memo

From now until the heat death of the universe, I want elected Democrats to beat the shit out of Republicans. No reaching across the aisle, no moving forward together. I want motherfucking consequences and impeachments and ruthlessness.

I want the Republican party, as it exists now and has existed for my entire lifetime, absolutely destroyed. I want every member of this administration put on trial for their endless crimes and corruption. I want the dirty SCOTUS 6 impeached. I want Thomas put on trial for corruption. 

Texts From Superheroes

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

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Trump’s New Leak in the Back Reflecting Pool Legend 

This is one of the truly insidious, deadly, and dangerous aspects of AI use in search results, and it’s entirely by design.

The oligarchs and tech fascists want to manipulate reality (or at least the public perception of reality) by substituting their ideological lies and false bullshit for actual facts. They tell the AI to ignore sources they don’t like, and to privilege those that they do, and this is what we get.

It’s *vital* that we teach kids (and reeducate adults, if necessary) to never use AI for this sort of information gathering. It’s so dangerous to let this happen without any pushback.