I wish Arthur Scarsdale was running this economy! Coal emissions would be captured and converted. Russian gas line to Europe is subverted. Arthur said last century, England needs to investment in clean coal former jobs and national security.
I was poisoned by mercury in my mid-20s and it was easily one of the worst things I’ve ever had to endure. No matter how much food I ate, I was losing weight rapidly, because it sucks all of the nutrients out of your body. I was fatigued all the time and had narcolepsy. If I closed my eyes for a few seconds at any point I would sink into a sleep close to death. The effect on my brain was horrific as well. I could barely control my emotions, but at the same time, was dulled from experiencing any pleasure. Music, for example—one of my favorite things before and after—made me feel absolutely nothing for about 2 years. It took me years and years to slowly recover. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
It seemed to be from the mercury fillings in my teeth that I got when I was a kid, which were all cracked and chipping apart.
I still struggle to find much information, conspiracy websites excluded, that says this is even possible. At best it must be exceedingly rare. But I have no idea what else it could’ve been from, if not a slow accumulation from inhaling the vapor of my corroded fillings.
It got to the point where my mind was so foggy, I couldn’t think straight at all. When it was discovered that my mercury levels were high, I immediately stopped chewing hard foods and started drinking with a straw to bypass my teeth, until I could get them replaced with composites, and my mind cleared up within three days. I could actually feel the fog lifting.
After that I got much sicker, however, because mercury stores in your joints and when you begin to detox (after you are no longer being consistently exposed) it kicks up in your body and wreaks havoc on you.
Whatever the source, it was at least clear that I was free of it, and the only thing left was a looong recovery.
There is no way to speed up mercury detox, despite crank medicine claims such as “chelation therapy.” The only thing that fixes it is time and your natural excretion process.
I would say it took a full five years, with each one being just a little bit better than the last.
EDIT: It looks like chelation therapy might be legit. It was much more controversial 15 years ago. I could only find one doctor that would touch it, and he was 2 hours away, so I ended up writing it off as quack science.
I never went back to the doctor to get his opinion on the source after getting my toxicity results, because I was doing an enormous amount of research and realized there was literally nothing that he could do.
I will say that the staff at the dental office was quite indignant that they are perfectly safe though. I didn’t argue with them, just got the process done and got the hell out of there.
But the incredibly extensive amount of safety precautions needed during the removal process certainly seems to speak against them being harmless.
One of the best articles I have read on climate change., showing that there is an intelligent and balanced perspective on the subject between the ignorant know-nothing stance of Donald Trump and the hysterical, apocalyptic stance of Greta Thunberg. Climate change is something that definitely needs to be dealt with, but in a way that doesn't destroy the economy and all the progress that humankind has made. Focus on building a prosperous and climate-friendly future rather than revert to impoverished, pre-industrial past.
I will never understand the conservative obsession with Greta Thunberg. She's a very young woman who cares passionately about saving the planet, which on balance is at least a refreshing change from the nihilism and naked short-term self-interest we see everywhere these days. Yes, she's hysterical, like any child might be, but she's still just a child. I don't think anyone who takes the challenge of climate change seriously sees Greta as anything more than a person who raises awareness. She has no real political or economic power to put her ideas in place, which means comparisons between her and Trump - a man who actually wields vast amounts of political and economic power targeted at destroying the environment - are nonsensical. It's interesting how the right wing has made her into a lightning rod for affluent men to hate, similar to the bizarre conservative fixation on ancient George Soros.
haha..Jean Cauvin wrote and published The Institutes of the Christan Religion when he was same height as Greta Possibly even shorter than she is by now. So like, what hysteria is that?
It's not illegal. And it's perfectly possible to install it. But heat waves like this are so new for Paris (unlike, say, New York) that most apartments just don't have the really powerful kind of window-installed AC. More and more do, now. Back in the 90s literally none did, because you just didn't need it: At most there would be one or two days in the summer when you might think, "It would be good to have AC." Right now, it's clear the grid couldn't handle it if everyone had it. We already seem to be on the verge of brownouts and blackouts. (Yesterday my electricity flickered in a really ominous way.) But within ten years, I'm sure every apartment will have it.
Are you able to get a air conditioner window unit? Do they sell those in France? The heat there sounds horrible, why all old buildings with zinc roofs haven't been retrofitted with AC I can't imagine.
I have one of those portable, mini air-con units, which can cool one room--my bedroom--to a fairly pleasant level if the weather is only "hot," as opposed to "infernal." It makes the room cool enough that I can sleep, which is what I care about most. But this heat wave is so extreme that it's not nearly powerful enough. It does make the room survivable. I'm genuinely not sure whether a human being could survive a week of this kind of heat in this apartment otherwise--what's the maximum temperature the human body can withstand? I suspect my living room is on the verge of being deadly. My houseplants in that room died: I should have brought them to the bedroom. I opened a can of beans last night for dinner and realized I didn't need to put them in the microwave. They were already hot.
When it cools a bit, I'm going to look into getting a window unit and get an estimate. I'm certain they wouldn't let me put it in facing the courtyard, but I can't see why they'd object if I had one in the south-facing window. I just wonder how, exactly, you install it when you have the kind of windows I have. They're French windows (unsurprisingly). Or they're what English-speakers call French windows--here they're called "portes-fenêtres." The windows themselves are old, lovely glass and I'm definitely not allowed to have them replaced. There's got to be a way to install AC with windows like these, right? But how, I wonder?
Right now would be the worst time for me to get estimates or to have it installed. The price will be triple what it would be if I wait for cooler weather. But if it's not ridiculously expensive to do, I may do it this year. It's not ever going to get any cooler in the summer, right? And I don't want to go through another summer like this.
Claire, not exactly an expert on this, but you might also want to look into ordering or putting up a radiant barrier, typically aluminum, under the roof to reflect the heat back up upwards, since the zinc roof seems to be the primary culprit.
Also, when you fork out for air conditioning you could consider a heat pump. Somewhat pricier, but you also get warming in the winter. Plus it's more environmentally friendly!
What he is doing to the NASA science budget is depressing me beyond words. There actually is plenty to kill in NASA without doing much harm. But there are a variety of missions that are already in space and which are doing lots of good science and require fairly small amounts of money to pay for a few people on earth to keep them going, and he is killing those too. Just out of spite, seemingly.
It really does seem as if this plan is simply calculated to do the maximum amount of damage. But I don't think Trump believes it's harmful. I'm sure he really doesn't understand that technology has advanced since he formed the opinion that fossil fuels were the only reliable way to provide the kind of energy the world needs. And I'm sure anyone who tries to give him a long, complicated briefing about why this isn't so gets fired.
The real mystery is that the GOP is going along with this. I'm sure many of the GOP representatives who voted for this absolutely know better--and their districts and states are the ones who stand to lose the most.
i think El Trumpo's thought may have crystallized vis-à-vis fossil vs renewable in the same way yours has CB vis-à-vis vaccine research and all that surrounds heem. Never forget Original Antigenic Sin!
The GOP is relying on the sunk cost fallacy to make it too costly for people to change their minds.
For many, Trumpism is a part of their identity, their social life, and their very understanding of how to determine what is true. The cost of losing all that is so great, most who see it will choose to stay in the comforting lie. The slow death of poverty is the easier pill to swallow.
Why would Trump care if it's harmful? The man is 80 and not in great health. He's going to die fairly soon, at some level he knows this, so his only joy in life appears to be making people bend to his will. The stupider the ask is, the more Trump enjoys it because he's inflicting ever greater humiliation. But as you say, the real mystery are the people happy to put themselves in thrall to such a creature. Masochism?
#1 Claire, you saved Linus and probably the sibs as well...You're a Hero! (let's not fuss about pros & cons of gendered endings).
#2 I am totally in agreement with you as regards daily temperature readings in Fahrenheit vs Celsius (a.k.a.'Centigrade' as per my high school science class ca 1964), but I am officially an old guy. What's your excuse?
#3 Please don't be too hard on Greta Thunberg. Without committed eco-advocates like her, the polar ice would be shrink even faster than it is at present. Think of the penguins!!!
Besides, Greta's middle name is TinTin, who is a sort of everyman hero (kinda like you, Claire, rescuer-of-kittens). The world could use more Gretas, TinTins and Claires, and fewer Donald Trumps. One of him is plenty, imho.
"The bill kills the prospects for nuclear power, too. They want only the dirtiest and most polluting sources of energy. Why? What’s in this for Americans? It’s just perverse."
As you forwarded to us, "Would you rather have cheap energy, or stupid culture wars?"
But I'm curious about the nuclear power prospects, and my google-fu is failing me. I see everything from "this is a disaster for clean energy, including nuclear power" to "this is a win for any form of non-fossil-fuel energy that can stand on its own two feet, including nuclear power!" But not much on the specifics regarding nuclear power.
My information may not be up-to-date. I'm having google-fu problems too: I'm trying to figure out whether they amended the bill yesterday to take out the most onerous provisions, but I haven't yet found a clear and credible answer. The bill they received from the House killed the tax incentives for nuclear along with the renewables. (Biden's ADVANCE Act promoted nuclear expansion. The House draft would have *retroactively* changed tax policy on projects in active development and construction, stranding billions in private investment. It's insane that this plan came from a party that once styled itself as friendly to business.)
UPDATE: It seems they might have amended this. I see some people on Twitter claiming they've changed it so that nuclear will still be eligible for tax credits if they begin construction before 2034. But they haven't changed the requirement that construction satisfies convoluted, onerous rules requiring proof that not a single part of the plant was made in China. Many seem to think this will make them it difficult, if not impossible, to finance new plans; that may be an exaggeration, I haven't studied it carefully enough to be sure.
CNN reports they also removed a last-minute excise tax on wind and solar projects.
I think I'd best try to figure out what they did yesterday before trying to give you an authoritative answer. Give me a day, and let me know if you find a credible response to this question first. It's hugely important.
"The federally-owned TVA is the largest energy provider in the Tennessee Valley, covering around 10 million people. A large part of TVA's energy supply comes from nuclear power - we have three nuclear plants close to where I live. According to that report, TVA applied for a construction permit in May to build the nation's first mall modular reactor in Oak Ridge, TN. But guess what, TVA currently can't make any decisions because they do not have enough directors to approve projects due to Trump firing so many. Directors are appointed by the president and Trump most recently fired one of them because, ostensibly, they were a former chief of staff to Al Gore. Killing energy policy to own the libs, baby!"
The second is in subjunctive mood, which you’re stylish enough to prefer (at least when you’re not being baked like a potato in a zinc jacket), but which many don’t bother to use anymore. I think legal requirements are better expressed using it, though it may not count as “plain” English anymore.
The entire neighbourhood being involved in rescuing a cat that has fallen several floors and it trapped somewhere inside a building is the most Istanbul thing ever, if nothing else.
well CB, it seems there's a new femme aux chats in town. In Paris to be precise. She's expat, she's one of a kind, she's bawdy as all get out
https://open.substack.com/pub/nuisanceonlinedistributor/p/the-feline-behavior-report-part-one?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3pkhw
Temps in the 50's in the evening and very comfortable dew points on the way, Claire. Just in time for Independence Day. Enjoy.
Paris forecast.......
I wish Arthur Scarsdale was running this economy! Coal emissions would be captured and converted. Russian gas line to Europe is subverted. Arthur said last century, England needs to investment in clean coal former jobs and national security.
I was poisoned by mercury in my mid-20s and it was easily one of the worst things I’ve ever had to endure. No matter how much food I ate, I was losing weight rapidly, because it sucks all of the nutrients out of your body. I was fatigued all the time and had narcolepsy. If I closed my eyes for a few seconds at any point I would sink into a sleep close to death. The effect on my brain was horrific as well. I could barely control my emotions, but at the same time, was dulled from experiencing any pleasure. Music, for example—one of my favorite things before and after—made me feel absolutely nothing for about 2 years. It took me years and years to slowly recover. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
That's awful! How did that happen?
It seemed to be from the mercury fillings in my teeth that I got when I was a kid, which were all cracked and chipping apart.
I still struggle to find much information, conspiracy websites excluded, that says this is even possible. At best it must be exceedingly rare. But I have no idea what else it could’ve been from, if not a slow accumulation from inhaling the vapor of my corroded fillings.
It got to the point where my mind was so foggy, I couldn’t think straight at all. When it was discovered that my mercury levels were high, I immediately stopped chewing hard foods and started drinking with a straw to bypass my teeth, until I could get them replaced with composites, and my mind cleared up within three days. I could actually feel the fog lifting.
After that I got much sicker, however, because mercury stores in your joints and when you begin to detox (after you are no longer being consistently exposed) it kicks up in your body and wreaks havoc on you.
Whatever the source, it was at least clear that I was free of it, and the only thing left was a looong recovery.
There is no way to speed up mercury detox, despite crank medicine claims such as “chelation therapy.” The only thing that fixes it is time and your natural excretion process.
I would say it took a full five years, with each one being just a little bit better than the last.
EDIT: It looks like chelation therapy might be legit. It was much more controversial 15 years ago. I could only find one doctor that would touch it, and he was 2 hours away, so I ended up writing it off as quack science.
What a terrible, terrifying ordeal.
I never went back to the doctor to get his opinion on the source after getting my toxicity results, because I was doing an enormous amount of research and realized there was literally nothing that he could do.
I will say that the staff at the dental office was quite indignant that they are perfectly safe though. I didn’t argue with them, just got the process done and got the hell out of there.
But the incredibly extensive amount of safety precautions needed during the removal process certainly seems to speak against them being harmless.
Here is a list of 18 of them:
https://winaturaldentist.com/the-dangers-of-amalgam-fillings/#smart
One of the best articles I have read on climate change., showing that there is an intelligent and balanced perspective on the subject between the ignorant know-nothing stance of Donald Trump and the hysterical, apocalyptic stance of Greta Thunberg. Climate change is something that definitely needs to be dealt with, but in a way that doesn't destroy the economy and all the progress that humankind has made. Focus on building a prosperous and climate-friendly future rather than revert to impoverished, pre-industrial past.
Glad you thought so.
I will never understand the conservative obsession with Greta Thunberg. She's a very young woman who cares passionately about saving the planet, which on balance is at least a refreshing change from the nihilism and naked short-term self-interest we see everywhere these days. Yes, she's hysterical, like any child might be, but she's still just a child. I don't think anyone who takes the challenge of climate change seriously sees Greta as anything more than a person who raises awareness. She has no real political or economic power to put her ideas in place, which means comparisons between her and Trump - a man who actually wields vast amounts of political and economic power targeted at destroying the environment - are nonsensical. It's interesting how the right wing has made her into a lightning rod for affluent men to hate, similar to the bizarre conservative fixation on ancient George Soros.
haha..Jean Cauvin wrote and published The Institutes of the Christan Religion when he was same height as Greta Possibly even shorter than she is by now. So like, what hysteria is that?
She also tends to just go with whatever is attracting the most eye-balls right now - hence her recent adventures in trying to save Gaza.
Find me a youth that isn't trying to save the entire world all at once, given power. I get it even when I disagree.
I’ve read similar in Based in Paris, but I don’t get it. Truly. Is A/C illegal? Is it legally impossible to modify a Haussmann apartment? https://substack.com/@basedinparis/note/c-131298031
It's not illegal. And it's perfectly possible to install it. But heat waves like this are so new for Paris (unlike, say, New York) that most apartments just don't have the really powerful kind of window-installed AC. More and more do, now. Back in the 90s literally none did, because you just didn't need it: At most there would be one or two days in the summer when you might think, "It would be good to have AC." Right now, it's clear the grid couldn't handle it if everyone had it. We already seem to be on the verge of brownouts and blackouts. (Yesterday my electricity flickered in a really ominous way.) But within ten years, I'm sure every apartment will have it.
Are you able to get a air conditioner window unit? Do they sell those in France? The heat there sounds horrible, why all old buildings with zinc roofs haven't been retrofitted with AC I can't imagine.
I have one of those portable, mini air-con units, which can cool one room--my bedroom--to a fairly pleasant level if the weather is only "hot," as opposed to "infernal." It makes the room cool enough that I can sleep, which is what I care about most. But this heat wave is so extreme that it's not nearly powerful enough. It does make the room survivable. I'm genuinely not sure whether a human being could survive a week of this kind of heat in this apartment otherwise--what's the maximum temperature the human body can withstand? I suspect my living room is on the verge of being deadly. My houseplants in that room died: I should have brought them to the bedroom. I opened a can of beans last night for dinner and realized I didn't need to put them in the microwave. They were already hot.
When it cools a bit, I'm going to look into getting a window unit and get an estimate. I'm certain they wouldn't let me put it in facing the courtyard, but I can't see why they'd object if I had one in the south-facing window. I just wonder how, exactly, you install it when you have the kind of windows I have. They're French windows (unsurprisingly). Or they're what English-speakers call French windows--here they're called "portes-fenêtres." The windows themselves are old, lovely glass and I'm definitely not allowed to have them replaced. There's got to be a way to install AC with windows like these, right? But how, I wonder?
Right now would be the worst time for me to get estimates or to have it installed. The price will be triple what it would be if I wait for cooler weather. But if it's not ridiculously expensive to do, I may do it this year. It's not ever going to get any cooler in the summer, right? And I don't want to go through another summer like this.
Claire, not exactly an expert on this, but you might also want to look into ordering or putting up a radiant barrier, typically aluminum, under the roof to reflect the heat back up upwards, since the zinc roof seems to be the primary culprit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_barrier
Also, when you fork out for air conditioning you could consider a heat pump. Somewhat pricier, but you also get warming in the winter. Plus it's more environmentally friendly!
Claire, his fan club simply isn't interested in your facts.
Harming others is part of the rush, not a side effect.
What he is doing to the NASA science budget is depressing me beyond words. There actually is plenty to kill in NASA without doing much harm. But there are a variety of missions that are already in space and which are doing lots of good science and require fairly small amounts of money to pay for a few people on earth to keep them going, and he is killing those too. Just out of spite, seemingly.
I can't tell you how depressing I find all of this. He's killing everything that made America great. Everything good about us.
It really does seem as if this plan is simply calculated to do the maximum amount of damage. But I don't think Trump believes it's harmful. I'm sure he really doesn't understand that technology has advanced since he formed the opinion that fossil fuels were the only reliable way to provide the kind of energy the world needs. And I'm sure anyone who tries to give him a long, complicated briefing about why this isn't so gets fired.
The real mystery is that the GOP is going along with this. I'm sure many of the GOP representatives who voted for this absolutely know better--and their districts and states are the ones who stand to lose the most.
i think El Trumpo's thought may have crystallized vis-à-vis fossil vs renewable in the same way yours has CB vis-à-vis vaccine research and all that surrounds heem. Never forget Original Antigenic Sin!
The GOP is relying on the sunk cost fallacy to make it too costly for people to change their minds.
For many, Trumpism is a part of their identity, their social life, and their very understanding of how to determine what is true. The cost of losing all that is so great, most who see it will choose to stay in the comforting lie. The slow death of poverty is the easier pill to swallow.
Why would Trump care if it's harmful? The man is 80 and not in great health. He's going to die fairly soon, at some level he knows this, so his only joy in life appears to be making people bend to his will. The stupider the ask is, the more Trump enjoys it because he's inflicting ever greater humiliation. But as you say, the real mystery are the people happy to put themselves in thrall to such a creature. Masochism?
3 points.
#1 Claire, you saved Linus and probably the sibs as well...You're a Hero! (let's not fuss about pros & cons of gendered endings).
#2 I am totally in agreement with you as regards daily temperature readings in Fahrenheit vs Celsius (a.k.a.'Centigrade' as per my high school science class ca 1964), but I am officially an old guy. What's your excuse?
#3 Please don't be too hard on Greta Thunberg. Without committed eco-advocates like her, the polar ice would be shrink even faster than it is at present. Think of the penguins!!!
Besides, Greta's middle name is TinTin, who is a sort of everyman hero (kinda like you, Claire, rescuer-of-kittens). The world could use more Gretas, TinTins and Claires, and fewer Donald Trumps. One of him is plenty, imho.
"The bill kills the prospects for nuclear power, too. They want only the dirtiest and most polluting sources of energy. Why? What’s in this for Americans? It’s just perverse."
As you forwarded to us, "Would you rather have cheap energy, or stupid culture wars?"
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/would-you-rather-have-cheap-energy
But I'm curious about the nuclear power prospects, and my google-fu is failing me. I see everything from "this is a disaster for clean energy, including nuclear power" to "this is a win for any form of non-fossil-fuel energy that can stand on its own two feet, including nuclear power!" But not much on the specifics regarding nuclear power.
My information may not be up-to-date. I'm having google-fu problems too: I'm trying to figure out whether they amended the bill yesterday to take out the most onerous provisions, but I haven't yet found a clear and credible answer. The bill they received from the House killed the tax incentives for nuclear along with the renewables. (Biden's ADVANCE Act promoted nuclear expansion. The House draft would have *retroactively* changed tax policy on projects in active development and construction, stranding billions in private investment. It's insane that this plan came from a party that once styled itself as friendly to business.)
UPDATE: It seems they might have amended this. I see some people on Twitter claiming they've changed it so that nuclear will still be eligible for tax credits if they begin construction before 2034. But they haven't changed the requirement that construction satisfies convoluted, onerous rules requiring proof that not a single part of the plant was made in China. Many seem to think this will make them it difficult, if not impossible, to finance new plans; that may be an exaggeration, I haven't studied it carefully enough to be sure.
CNN reports they also removed a last-minute excise tax on wind and solar projects.
I think I'd best try to figure out what they did yesterday before trying to give you an authoritative answer. Give me a day, and let me know if you find a credible response to this question first. It's hugely important.
FWIW, I just came across this comment on Derek Johnson's Substack: https://derekthompson.substack.com/p/american-energy-policy-cannot-afford/comments
"You can take it a step further beyond just policy. Look no further than an article in my hometown newspaper yesterday: https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2025/jun/30/all-tva-nuclear-reactors-at-full-power-for-first/.
"The federally-owned TVA is the largest energy provider in the Tennessee Valley, covering around 10 million people. A large part of TVA's energy supply comes from nuclear power - we have three nuclear plants close to where I live. According to that report, TVA applied for a construction permit in May to build the nation's first mall modular reactor in Oak Ridge, TN. But guess what, TVA currently can't make any decisions because they do not have enough directors to approve projects due to Trump firing so many. Directors are appointed by the president and Trump most recently fired one of them because, ostensibly, they were a former chief of staff to Al Gore. Killing energy policy to own the libs, baby!"
In English, do we say:
"they haven't changed the requirement that construction satisfies;"
or
"they haven't changed the requirement that construction satisfy" ?
I've now tried both and repeated both in my head so many times that they both sound right. I think it's the second, no?
The second is in subjunctive mood, which you’re stylish enough to prefer (at least when you’re not being baked like a potato in a zinc jacket), but which many don’t bother to use anymore. I think legal requirements are better expressed using it, though it may not count as “plain” English anymore.
And to think, just last week I complained about having to pay FEMA such a large amount for my flood insurance. Yikes.
I just found myself leaving a similar insurance situation, and now I feel like somebody who flew out of LA the day before a bad earthquake...
The entire neighbourhood being involved in rescuing a cat that has fallen several floors and it trapped somewhere inside a building is the most Istanbul thing ever, if nothing else.
It really was.