endearing records, publishing and harm reduction emporium

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Suspending Erin Biba, a Jewish woman for this skeet is nasty work. Between this and intentionally misreading Link’s use of a meme as a threat, bsky mods are more than willing to ban based on the Spirit Of The Law for *some* posters but never Jesse Singal.

bsky.app/profile/aman...

the hardest part of living in Portland is having your house burn down every single night and then having to rebuild it during the day. the amount of money i spend just in drywall is insane.

WE ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS, JAY

WE ARE THE PEOPLE CREATING FREE CONTENT FOR YOUR GODDAMN COMPANY

WE ARE YOUR UNPAID LABOR, SO FUCKING LISTEN UP

Reupping this as Flyte's visas were declined and the band has to cancel their US tour thereby losing a lot of money. They've posted a pwyc fundraiser:

flyte.bandcamp.com/track/emily-...

Obviously a minor irritation in the current round of fascism but fuck...I was looking forward to this show...

YouTube video by Flyte - Topic Hurt People

Currently on high rotation in advance of their Vancouver show Monday…their last here was a lovely and engaging evening at the Wise Hall.

This album may be even better although 2021’s “This is really going to hurt” still remains the standard, just a near perfect album.

youtu.be/DO-3nnDuOIY

Thread 1

Weeds in a field backdropped by murky sun

Small rural church with the sun poking around the corner

Old weathered barn next to large green field and big blue sky

Hazy and dusty orange prairie sunset

Random photos my phone reminded me i took while in Saskatchewan 3 years ago for a funeral/saying goodbye to the family farm…

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

It's telling that J.K. Rowling singled out Emma Watson as the Harry Potter star to unleash her fury on, when Harry Potter himself, Dan Radcliffe, has spoken up more forcefully on trans rights.

Watson released a single statement in 2020 saying "[I] see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”

“there’s no real difference between an acetaminophen scaremonger like RFK Jr. and an anti-trans obsessive like J.K. Rowling. Neither are doctors, both have been poisoned by a steady stream of online propaganda and disinformation”

When science is thrown out the window, everyone suffers.

How a Zoomer Became Leader of the BC Green Party | The Tyee Inside the campaign that scored a victory for 25-year-old Emily Lowan.

“It was a lightning rod of hope. We brought in thousands of new members to this party, many of whom were completely disillusioned with politics.”

Emily Lowan’s victory is a sign that the climate movement still has the energy to capture voters. Hugh Chan writes. #bcpoli

How the world’s taste for soya is eating Brazil’s Amazon Cultivation of the crop has made a few wealthy but at a huge cost to untouched forest as it spreads across vast areas of former wilderness

The fact that this article on soy causing deforestation doesn't cover how all that soy is being used is a wild media failure. The vast majority (70-80%) is being fed to animals.

It's not the "world's taste for soya" it's the world's taste for meat.
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of 7 years by approximately one-fifth.

Just refreshing on potential mechanisms for shingles vax and came across this, perhaps an argument for publicly funding vaccination:

"we found that the zoster vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis by approximately 1/5th over a 7-yr follow-up"

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of 7 years by approximately one-fifth.

This from www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Our exploratory analyses on the effect mechanism that links zoster vaccination to dementia suggest that both a mechanism through reducing clinical and subclinical reactivations of VZV as well as a pathogen-independent immune mechanism are plausible"

Like there were enough reasons to get the shingles vaccine before. Have encountered 2 patients who lost vision due to shingles in my career, a few who experienced long term nerve pain and a large number who just had a really shitty week.

Vaccines and clean drinking water pay such huge public health dividends.…

Was aware of the shingles vaccine prevention of dementia link but flu, tdap and rsv vaccine benefits in dementia prevention are new to me. As Deborah says, get vaccinated.

Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions

“It is increasingly indefensible for news coverage of climate change not to make it clear that this crisis is driven by very specific human activities – primarily burning fossil fuels. And in second place is food, agriculture, forestry.”
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Slide on screen from Pacific Psychopharmacology Conference: From Metabolism to Motivation, Exploring the Role of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists in Treating Substance Use Disorders

Spending the day at Pacific Psychopharmacology Conference and excited to see the next presentation on GLP-1s and SUD.

Especially interesting as we might see generics in Canada soon.

Oakland launches an e-bike lending library There are now 50 electric bikes available for rent at the Fruitvale BART. It just takes a deposit and a modest fee.

This rules so hard. It's been a longstanding conviction of mine that the best way to convince people to replace car trips with ebike trips is by letting them try out an ebike for free.

Love the Oakland Public Library. oaklandside.org/2025/09/25/o...

Wheat paste poster that says the all the world is dying and the new world struggles to be born now is the time of monsters. There's a picture of Elmo

Morning walk

It feels like an insult to the notion of objective reality to invoke “experts” to weigh in on a numerical fact you can verify with a pocket calculator

One of my most educational follows, recommend highly and reposting as she’s now taking questions…

my friend's pregnant wife is now treating her headache with seed oils

screenshot of tweet from Jesse Singal dated September 18, 2025, where he links to said Economist piece & says: "Wrote up an important new study on childhood gender transition for The Economist. Almost 20% of fully transitioned kids changed their mind about their gender identity at least once in the next seven years. Expert opinion on what this means differs!"

...apparently he tweeted about it several days ago. it seems weird that The Economist purposely hid his name from readers. unless of course they knew that readers might already be aware of Jəsse's long history of bias on this issue...

screenshot of a The Economist post that reads: "A recent study found that children who transitioned young retained stable gender identities over time. But the fact that nearly a fifth of those in the group did not ought to give advocates of irreversible medical interventions pause". the byline of the linked to article says "a study finds that one in five who switch gender change their mind"

many ppl highlighting flaws in this article. but having fought in the "80% desistance" wars of the mid-2010s, I remember asking anti-trans activists if they'd be ok if 80% of youth were helped by gender-affirming care (flipping their argument). & they *never* answered. b/c they want *zero* trans ppl

Kirk’s ‘memorial’ getting a live coverage on The Guardian is a great example of how the right gets automatically framed as the default political movement to be ‘understood’ while the victims of that same movement never will never get the same amount of coverage

A new piece in @economist.com willfully misrepresents a recent paper on youth gender identity, contradicting the findings to impose a narrative of bias and fear.

@veraeikon.bsky.social covered the same paper for Assigned Media recently. Read her story here.

Photograph of John Lee Hooker with diagram of the evolution of the Blues. Black and white photograph. He’s wearing a suit and sitting at a table with a mug in front of him and notepad etc on table. Behind him is a chart diagram of the evolution of the Blues, connecting genres over time. Photograph by Clemens Kalischer, 1951.

John Lee Hooker with a diagram of the evolution of the Blues.