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Can You Go to Canada If You Have a DUI?
Almost 7 years ago, while going through some personal issues, I made a terrible mistake and ended up being convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) in the State of California. It was a dark period in my life, but I have moved on and learned my lesson. This spring, however, my intoxicated driving conviction […]
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Canada Adds Far-Right Groups to Terror Watch List for First Time
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
Canada has added far-right groups Blood and Honour and Combat 18 to its terror watch list.
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‘Mario Maker 2’ Is Brilliant, But I Hope Nintendo Doesn’t Fail the Community
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
Nintendo has, once again, built something to let players live out the fantasy of designing a Mario level, but questions linger on what they’ve learned from the first time around.
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Sandy Honig Shoots Outrageously Specific Stock Photos
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
For our latest photo issue, comedian and photographer Sandy Honig shot hilariously specific images for her ongoing series SandyStock.
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This Camera App Deletes Humans
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
Bye Bye Camera questions the meaning of humanity from a machine’s perspective.
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Bernie Sanders Just Launched a Twitch Channel
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
On Monday night, Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign launched a Twitch channel.
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Firefox Will Give You a Fake Browsing History to Fool Advertisers
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
Using the ‘Track THIS’ tool opens up 100 tabs at a time that will make you seem like a hypebeast, a filthy rich person, a doomsday prepper, or an influencer.
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Cardi B’s ‘Press’ Video Shows She’s Fully Controlling Her Narrative
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
The visual for her latest single comes just after she was indicted on felony charges for a strip club fight last year.
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Black Market T-Mobile Location Data Tied to Spot of a Triple Murder
Posted June 26, 2019 by Joseph Cox
In 2017, two bounty hunters and a fugitive died in a chaotic shoot-out. Shortly after their deaths, someone started tracking one of the bounty hunter’s phones.
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Canadians Can Now Order Shrooms From a Dispensary
Posted June 26, 2019 by Manisha Krishnan
Longtime cannabis activist Dana Larsen wants psychedelic mushrooms to be the next decriminalized drug.
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Researchers Demonstrate How U.S. Emergency Alert System Can Be Hijacked and Weaponized
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
With a pirate cell tower, it’s easy to send fake emergency alerts warning of a terrorist attack, nuclear bomb, or other disaster.
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#474 When someone who doesn’t like pizza crust gives you their pizza crust and even leaves a bit of cheese on it
Posted June 26, 2019 by Anonymous
Personally, I’m a crustless gentleman. Gimme that melty tip of of cheesy goodness, gimme that pepperoni with crispy edges, and then gimme another slice. Yes, for my money Belly Space Analysis dictates I’m better off grabbing another slice from the box rather than chomp away at the crust’s puffy blandness. So I gaze up at […]
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UCSF Adds Fossil Fuels To Industry Documents Library
Posted June 25, 2019 by John Mashey
Read time: 5 mins
Today, UCSF Library launched a new Fossil Fuel Industry Documents Archive featuring over 1,000 internal documents from the fossil fuel industry illustrating strategies to cast doubt on climate science and delay policy action. The documents were collected over two decades by the Climate Investigations Center.
UC San Francisco‘s Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a unique resource. It gathers and organizes internal documents from companies that privatize profits and socialize costs, risks or damage to health or environment.
Real science is often inconvenient for profits, so such companies spend money on politics, disinformation, doubt-creation and attacks on science and scientists, sometimes via “independent” think tanks or front groups often covered here on DeSmog.
UCSF has gotten tobacco documents for decades, but over the last few years has added Drug, Chemical and Food sections to the archive as well. Internal documents from lawsuits, whistleblowers and other sources can be quite valuable for exposing malfeasance, helping community action, backing legislation and supporting lawsuits. It is incredibly helpful to have one database of well-curated documents from multiple industries, as they use similar tactics often employed by some of the same people and organizations, as illustrated by personal experience below.
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#475 Guests who do the dishes even after you tell them not to
Posted June 25, 2019 by Anonymous
It’s dinner party night. Yes, sweaty and flushed, you run around baking bread and breaking eggs before that doorbell bing-bongs, the guests ping-pong, and everyone sits down to eat up your delicious homemade meal. Of course, you enjoy the dinner — you love it, it’s great — but you don’t really enjoy it. No, you’re running […]
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CEO of Major Shale Oil Company “Has Second Thoughts” on Fracking Rush, Wall Street Journal Reports
Posted June 24, 2019 by Sharon Kelly
Read time: 6 mins
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal featured a profile of Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, whose company is known among investors for its emphasis on drawing oil and gas from the Permian basin in Texas using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Back in 2014, Sheffield told Forbes that he expected Pioneer could produce a million barrels of oil a day from the Permian basin by 2024 – up from 45,000 barrels a day in 2011.
Now, Sheffield, who left the helm of Pioneer in 2016 and returned this February, says that those million-barrel-a-day plans are looking increasingly doubtful as the industry has struggled to prove to investors that it’s capable not only of producing enormous volumes of oil and gas, but that it can do so while booking profits rather than losses.
“We lost the growth investors,” Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield told the Journal. “Now we’ve got to attract a whole other set of investors.”
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12 Canadian photographers share the nature they love
Posted June 24, 2019 by Anonymous
Canada’s biodiversity is a cornerstone of our way of life. Now more than ever, we have to come together to protect our nature. People protect what they love, which is why Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is hosting the #OurNature photo contest, a celebration of Canada’s biodiversity. Enter before June 30, 2019 by sharing a photo of the nature you love on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #OurNature and tagging @canenvironment, and you could win a Parks Canada Discovery Pass!
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Douze photographes canadiens partagent la nature qu’ils adorent
Posted June 24, 2019 by Anonymous
La biodiversité du Canada est une pierre angulaire de notre mode de vie. Maintenant plus que jamais, nous devons allier nos efforts pour protéger la nature. Les gens protègent ce qu’ils aiment : c’est la raison pour laquelle Environnement et Changement climatique Canada (ECCC) a lancé le concours de photos #NotreNature, qui célèbre la biodiversité du Canada.
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Majority of Americans Know Fossil Fuel Companies Drive Climate Change, Should Pay for Damages
Posted June 24, 2019 by guest
Read time: 3 mins
By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Originally posted on Climate Liability News.
The majority of Americans say fossil fuel companies should pay for damage caused by climate change, according to a recent poll released by Yale University on Wednesday.
Researchers asked 5,131 Americans how much they think global warming is harming their local communities, who they think should be responsible for paying for the damages, and whether they support lawsuits to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for those costs.
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On Instagram, RD Working For Welch’s Implies That Drinking Welch’s Grape Juice Won’t Raise Your Blood Sugar (By @DylanMacKayPhD)
Posted June 24, 2019 by Yoni Freedhoff
Today’s guest post comes from Dylan MacKay. Dylan is a nutritional biochemist who has type 1 diabetes and when I saw RD Marie Spano’s Instagram post, I knew he would have both personal and professional thoughts to share and so I invited him to do so.
I don’t know what it is with grapes but they always seem to be raisin my ire…
I mean as a person with type 1 diabetes, a PhD in Human Nutritional Science, and who does diabetes research and occasionally clinical trials looking at glucose response, maybe I’m not the one to talk about this, but I just can’t not.
Recently a Welch’s (*cough* big grape juice) “nutrition advisor” posted the above nutrition translation travesty on Instagram.
This is really kind of surprised me because when I have low blood sugar I often drink grape juice, How am I still alive? I mean I can honestly say there are times grape juice may have saved my life (by raising my blood sugar). Yet you could potentially look at this Instagram post and fairly think
“drinking 100% juice made from polyphenol-rich fruit juice does not raise your blood sugar”
unlike apparently that bad candy or pop that raises your blood sugar.
That would be of course 100% wrong.
Polyphenols are not magic sugar blockers, otherwise we would be using them to treat diabetes and you would get serious gastrointestinal upset from eating berries and grapes. I feel like you don’t even really need to be an RD to see this messaging is bad (Seriously, Welch’s advisors, how much do you get paid for your credibility?). Especially on a social media platform, where someone might not scroll to the end of the associated comment and look at the “reference” provided.
Speaking of the reference used for this knowledge translation crime, it is for a review article called Impact of Dietary Polyphenols on Carbohydrate Metabolism and having reviewed it I can say it does not in support the claim in that post. Most of the article talks about animal or cell culture results that show polyphenols may impact glucose digestion or absorption, but there’s nothing in the article showing it stops it. It even concludes that
“To confirm the implications of polyphenol consumption for prevention of insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and eventually type 2 diabetes, human trials with well-defined diets, controlled study designs and clinically relevant endpoints… are needed.”
The closest thing in the article supporting the Instagram post is
“The shape of the plasma glucose curve with reduced concentrations in the early phase and a slightly elevated concentration in the later phase indicates delayed response due to berry consumption”
about a study done with 12 healthy participants looking at berry puree (rich in polyphenols). The polyphenols (or something else in the berries) changed the timing of the blood sugar elevation.
I suppose the Welch’s RD nutrition advisor might say
“well actually Dylan, changing the shape of the blood sugar elevation means it doesn’t actually raise blood sugar like candy”
and we could get into a long argument of how you define “like”. When people are arguing over minutia or semantics big food companies have won.
This type of nutrition misinformation advertising works because ultimately it is designed to ruin peoples’ trust in nutritional science and nutrition experts (especially RDs). If consumers are confused and can’t trust anything in nutrition, they are ripe for the next trend or fad or advertising claim. That is a good thing for companies, but a bad thing for people.
If you like grape juice, drink it, I sometimes do when I have low blood sugar (I have chugged maple syrup for that too so…), but know that grape juice will raise your blood sugar, and liquid calories, like those found from the 9 teaspoons of sugar per glass of grape juice, are an easy way to go over on your energy intake. Most of us are trying to avoid excess energy intake, so for that, in my opinion, you can’t beat water.
Dylan MacKay PhD is a nutritional biochemist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. He is also a Clinical Trialist at the George and Fay Yee Center for Healthcare Innovation. Dylan has a special interest in human clinical trials related to lifestyle and diabetes. He is originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland where he started his graduate studies at Memorial University.
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#476 Successfully biting off the last piece of the popsicle without it falling on the ground
Posted June 24, 2019 by Anonymous
Careful now. You started strong but now you’re down to the drippy ice-cold clump in the middle of the stick. You can’t reach it from the top, you can’t reach it from the bottom, and using your fingers or a fork is cheating. No, you’re going straight in and facing the big risk of a […]
The post #476 Successfully biting off the last piece of the popsicle without it falling on the ground appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.
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Cognitive Dissonance: Canada Declares a National Climate Emergency and Approves a Pipeline
Posted June 23, 2019 by guest
Read time: 5 mins
By Warren Mabee, Queen’s University, Ontario
On June 18, the government of Canada declared a national climate emergency. The next day, the same government approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX), which will be able to move almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to the Port of Burnaby in British Columbia.
If this seems like a contradiction, you are not alone.
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Former Shale Gas CEO Says Fracking Revolution Has Been “A Disaster” For Drillers, Investors
Posted June 23, 2019 by Sharon Kelly
Read time: 10 mins
Steve Schlotterbeck, who led drilling company EQT as it expanded to become the nation’s largest producer of natural gas in 2017, arrived at a petrochemical industry conference in Pittsburgh Friday morning with a blunt message about shale gas drilling and fracking.
“The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions,” Schlotterbeck, who left the helm of EQT last year, continued. “In fact, I’m not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”
“While hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits have accrued to hundreds of millions of people, the amount of shareholder value destruction registers in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “The industry is self-destructive.”
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Saturday Stories: Anti-Vax Conferences, Vulnerable Child Syndrome, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Posted June 22, 2019 by Yoni Freedhoff
Anna Merlan, in Jezebel, in what she learned getting kicked out of America’s biggest anti-vax conference.
Rachel Pearson, in The New Yorker, on vulnerable child syndrome
Jen Ortiz, in Cosmopolitan, with a fabulous profile of celebrity profiler and author of the book I ordered on my kindle yesterday Fleishman is in Trouble’s Taffy Brodesser-Akner
[And if you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, here’s my most recent piece for Medscape on what actually works for obesity at a population level (hint, it’s not shame, blame, or fear)]
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Landslides, loggers and bears: What it’s really like to be a tree planter
Posted June 22, 2019 by Anonymous
Greg Nolan (left) huddles under a makeshift tent on the remote west side of Williston Lake in northern British Columbia. The image was taken in June 1984, shortly after Nolan and his colleagues were stranded on the mountainside by their helicopter pilot after access had been cut off by a landslide. (Photo: Greg Nolan)
When you spend 27 years working in one of the toughest careers in Canada, doing something that can isolate, endanger and exhilarate you all at the same time, you’re bound to come out the other side with some tales to tell.
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Massachusetts Energy Secretary Engaged in Enbridge Facility Review While Negotiating Job With Project’s Consultant
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Read time: 5 mins
While still in office, Massachusetts’ former energy and environmental secretary Matthew Beaton, who recently left his post for the private sector, took part in discussions about a natural gas project involving his new employer, DeSmog has found.
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Thousands of Fossil Fuel ‘Observers’ Attended Climate Negotiations: UNFCCC Data 2005-2018 for COP1-COP24
Posted June 21, 2019 by guest
Read time: 12 mins
Originally posted on Climate Investigations Center.
The collection of Global Climate Coalition (GCC) documents we compiled and released this April reveal that the organization had a singular focus, slowing down or derailing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations process and “tracking” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), undermining the scientists’ message of urgency. In the GCC meeting minutes and press releases we see numerous interventions at the UN meetings along with strategies, budgets and debriefs.
So we decided it would be interesting to compile every fossil fuel company and trade group delegate who ever attended UNFCCC meetings. This research debuted in an Agence-France Press AFP piece and on Yahoo News this week during a UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.
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Your Wi-Fi router could be used to watch you breathe and monitor your heartbeat
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Your Wi-Fi router could be used to watch you in your home
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We’ve bred dogs to have expressive eyebrows that manipulate our emotions
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Dogs expressive eyebrows make us fall for their cute faces
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Do electric car batteries take more CO2 to make than they save?
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Do electric car batteries take more CO2 to make than they save?
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A face-eating parasite is devastating Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Darwin’s finches are being devastated by beak parasites
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AI is now learning to do things it hasn’t been taught
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
An AI learned numeracy while being trained for another task
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Do your genes smell bad? DNA shows what our noses know
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Honing in on why some people think beets taste and smell like dirt
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A research assistant named Spongebob? Sea sponges collect data for science
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Sea sponges are better than scientists at DNA collection
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Bonobo mothers act as wing-mums for their sons
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Bonobo mothers act as matchmakers for their sons
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The Once-Gweat Wabble of Wowdy Webels…
Posted June 21, 2019 by Balbulican
It’s been been a while since I checked in on my favourite “fearless source of news, opinion, and activism that you can’t find anywhere else”. I was therefore shocked – shocked! – to discover that the Rebel appears in the…
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#477 When the lawnmower starts on the first pull
Posted June 21, 2019 by Anonymous
Time for a trim. Yes, step into those grass-stained workboots, toss on a faded ballcap, and roll the rusty mower out of the wobbly tin shed. You’re about to spend an hour mindlessly chopping lawn so stare at those grass-covered wheels, duct-taped wires, and chippy paint patches before getting down to business. Now, if you’re […]
The post #477 When the lawnmower starts on the first pull appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.
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Congressional Dems Investigating Why Big Oil Is ‘Only Winner’ in Clean Car Standard Rollbacks
Posted June 20, 2019 by Ben Jervey
Read time: 4 mins
House Democrats in the Energy and Commerce Committee are actively investigating the oil industry’s role in shaping the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for cars and light duty trucks.
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A Democratic Think Tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, Is Promoting Pushback Against Climate Lawsuits
Posted June 20, 2019 by Anonymous
Read time: 7 mins
As part of a growing trend of lawsuits over climate change impacts, cities and states across the U.S. are seeking damages from oil, gas, and coal companies whose products drive the crisis and which for years evidently engaged in disinformation and denial campaigns to stall climate action.
Now the fossil fuel industry is pushing back, taking a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook to rein in that liability litigation, and getting help from an unexpected source.
Behind the scenes, politically affiliated groups are quietly providing support. One of the outfits promoting the efforts to counter the slew of climate lawsuits is none other than the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a center-left Washington, D.C.-based think tank with links to the Democratic party.
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Trump’s EPA Signs ‘Deadly’ Clean Power Plan Replacement
Posted June 20, 2019 by guest
Read time: 5 mins
By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.
Former coal lobbyist and Trump-appointed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a rule Wednesday that officially replaces the Obama-era Clean Power Planwith a new regulation that Wheeler said could lead to the opening of more coal plants, the Associated Press reported.
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Canada bans import and export of shark fins
Posted June 20, 2019 by Anonymous
Kim Elmslie, Campaign Director with Oceana Canada, and MP Fin Donnelly celebrate Canada’s ban on shark fin importation and exportation. Donnelly has been a leading voice in the fight for a ban on the trade, which sees some 73 million sharks killed for their fins each year. (Photo: Oceana Canada)
In a move ocean advocates are calling a “victory” for sharks, Canada has approved a long-awaited ban on the import and export of shark fins.
The ban is part of a raft of changes to the Fisheries Act, the legislation that regulates all fishing and fish habitat in Canada, which passed the Senate on Tuesday. The bill outlining the changes, C-68, must now receive royal assent before it becomes law.
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#478 Hearing an old song that reminds you of someone you love
Posted June 20, 2019 by Anonymous
The song starts up. Suddenly your brain flashes back to late nights lying on the faded corduroy couch with your first boyfriend. Scratchy records spin in the background, the TV flickers on mute, and you cuddle under thin blankets while everyone sleeps upstairs. The chorus builds up as you kiss in the shadows by the […]
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