Continuing our unprecedented run of linking to good news, if not necessarily to good journalism, this Washington Post story about an increase in the number of indigenous Brazilian women running for office at every level of government is encouraging, the foundation in sorrow having led to determined movement.1
Somehow, though, the reporter elided Lula da Silva, a champion of indigenous peoples’ rights, from the story. Lula is running against current Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — who has made a point of instituting ruinous policies against indigenous peoples and their lands, and who does feature in the story — to win back his former office, and he holds a massive lead heading into today’s election.2
Lula is a trade unionist and an unabashed leftist. Could that have any bearing? We don’t know; it’s just weird.
We’re not sure this is good news other than for exasperated English-speaking tourists or business persons.3
In Japanese schools, English is a compulsory subject, but once students graduate it can be hard for them to find opportunities to use the language they’ve spent so many years learning.
Here to help with that is Shibuya-based company Cloud N Co., who’ve come up with the idea to open two bars in Japan — one in Osaka and one in Tokyo — where speaking English is compulsory.
Called Bar Sick! or “Sick!” for short, the new drinking holes are strictly English-speaking only, with staff consisting mostly of bilingual women in their 20s with native-level English conversation skills. Presumably, the name of the bar comes from the slang meaning of “sick”, referring to something that’s particularly great or impressive, rather than the literal meaning of the word.
No doubt lots of people will enjoy it, but “[t]he bars are set to operate on a time-based all-you-can-drink system, with patrons at the Tokyo location charged 3,000 yen (US$20.79) for 30 minutes and those at the Osaka location charged 1,500 yen for 30 minutes.
Serving well drinks rather than top shelf, we’re sure. Not that that makes it better.
Also from Japan but less adjacent to social destruction is this story about the country’s famed Tottori Sand Dunes, which involves a night-time augmented reality adventure.4
Using the latest AR goggles, participants will experience the perspective of an astronaut, from the first successful landing of Apollo 11 in 1969 to the futuristic concept world of a moon city, which – in accordance with the simulation’s theoretical story – will be built on the moon sometime in the near future.
The visuals which can be experienced through the goggles include both real life footage from past lunar expeditions, to adventures and concepts created digitally by artists and scientists at amulapo.
The leading story of the simulation will follow a team of astronauts (made up by the event participants) as they set out to complete the main mission of ‘Experiment A’.
The story is from November of last year, and we’ve not been able to learn whether the experiment has been extended, but here’s the original website of the company which created it.5 You'll probably want to translate it from the Japanese. It's cool.
Subsidized housing for doctors is one way to go, but we’re still thinking free medical school is better.6
“Something interesting to me was when a panelist mentioned that doctors in other areas are getting help with their mortgages to the tune of a $600,000, interest-free loan, to buy a house,” Schiff-Elfalan said.
Withy envisions a day when Hawaiʻi would adopt that model and expand on it. “Theoretically, if you move here and buy a house, you’re more likely to stay. Helping physicians and all healthcare providers purchase homes helps us retain them,” she said.
Doctors coming out of medical school without life-altering debt would be good too.
This is so cool.7
NASA's Jupiter-gazing spacecraft just got a rare closeup of an icy world.
The Juno probe made the closest pass in 22 years of Jupiter's icy moon Europa on Thursday (Sept. 29), providing the best view of the ocean world since the NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by it 2000.
Skimming just 219 miles (352 kilometers) above Europe's surface, the two-hour flyby was among the three closest-ever glimpses of the icy world. The last similar view that we received was on Jan. 3, 2000 with Galileo, officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California said in a statement.
NASA is launching a Europa-specific mission, the Europa Clipper, in 2024 if all goes well. If all goes likewise, that craft will be exploring the moon in much finer detail.
In other NASA news, they’re looking at ways to extend Hubble’s life span.8
NASA recently announced a new Space Act Agreement — or partnership — with SpaceX, and the Polaris Program, which will see the collaborators explore the potential of using a Dragon spacecraft to boost the Hubble Space Telescope’s degrading orbit.
They have a decade or so to work it out, assuming we haven’t all been incinerated by then. We have so many horrific ways to hurt one another.
Coffee is again good for you.9 A massive, long-term study in Australia shows clear benefits from moderate coffee consumption — not quite sure we understand that concept — in some cases including decaf.
Little information was available on the impact of different types of coffee on heart health. This prompted researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, to conduct a large observational study that would provide some insights into the role of caffeine on cardiovascular outcomes by comparing the impact of decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee.
The newly published findings indicate that instant, ground, and decaffeinated coffee, particularly at 2–3 cups a day, is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and death, and caffeinated coffee significantly reduces the risk of arrhythmia.
With only a modest reform of our daily habit, we could be even healthier!
Continuing on our Fantastic Voyage through the health care news, we’ve decided that we wish to be a Super-Ager, with a super-ager’s brain, although we acknowledge that that dinghy has likely left the dock.10
US scientists believe they may be closer to answering why certain elderly people retain rare cognitive ability comparable to people 30 years younger.
These elite "super-agers" have larger nerve cells in regions of the brain responsible for memory, new research in The Journal of Neuroscience shows.
The octogenarians may have been born that way, or their neurons grew more or shrank less with age than in others.
This isn’t precisely good news, more in the way of a minor victory against a rampaging behemoth, but, still, nevertheless.11 Blackstone is an asset management company that began buying residential real estate in the U.S. after the 2008 economic catastrophe, eventually owning hundreds of thousands of houses and apartments.
Blackstone sold their U.S. housing subsidiary a few years ago, and set their sights on Europe. When they got to Denmark they so pissed off the local tenants unions that the latter eventually succeeded in running the company out of Dodge.
[I]n July 2020, the Danish parliament passed what became informally known as the Blackstone Law, or Blackstone indgreb. “We were holding our breath until the very moment the law was passed and the ink was dry,” said Anders Svendsen, a lawyer for Denmark’s national tenants union. As well as preventing new landlords from raising the rent for five years, the legislation also prohibits landlords from offering tenants money to move out. (They must also upgrade a building’s energy efficiency before increasing the rent.) The law targets all landlords, pension funds and big investors. Blackstone was just the wedge that propped open the door. The tenants union even considered sending the company a bunch of flowers.
The rampage continues elsewhere, but other countries have taken note of the Danish success and are working out their own defenses.
More comfort music today, and comfort artists. Big Thief has been one of our favorite bands for a few years, and we’re listening again to their recent “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” album. We were unaware of King Princess until a week or two ago, but now we’re low-key fond of her “Cheap Queen” album.
That’s all we got, comrades. As always, we encourage you to head for the nearest Socialist re-education camp, as we wish to convert at least one of you miscreants before it’s too late.