Fash in the UK continue with their attempted pogroms. A hotel housing asylum seekers has been attacked and is currently surrounded, with police currently holding a line.
Keir Starmer has described the riots as “far right thuggery” and “racist rhetoric”, finally conceding that there might be some sort of anti-Muslim thing happening.
Edit: video of fascists trying to break into a hotel to attack asylum seekers
This paper was published in 2023, but is popping up on Twitter for me today - I hadn’t seen the evidence of a non-Chinese origin of the virus laid out so clearly before.
Genome analysis of Covid shows that the dominant strain of Covid that spread during the pandemic neither originated in China, or was the cause of the December 2019 epidemic in China (which was due to 2 other strains).
Based on the estimated tMRCA of the non-redundant global genomes, SARS-CoV-2 appears to have already been circulating globally for at least 10 months before its first discovery in Wuhan. Therefore, focusing only on the genomes in China would make it impossible to reveal the actual origin of the pandemic.
…
The tMRCAs of DL and DS were in September and October, respectively. Considering the ancient status of DS and DL compared with the status of GL, these results indicate that the three haplotypes were already separated before April 2019 and have evolved in parallel since then. In other words, GL that caused the global pandemic did not originate from the viral strains that caused the epidemic in China. The ancestor strains (DS0 and DL0) of DS and DL that gave birth to GL were already extinct before the outbreak of COVID-19; therefore, much more recent tMRCAs have been estimated by using only the current genome sequences.
…
In contrast to the time order in China, the tMRCA of GL was considerably earlier than that of the two older haplotypes in most regions of the world, including India, Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, the USA, and South America ( Fig. 4 ). The earliest tMRCA of GL was identified in India, which had a mean of May 9, 2019, followed by Africa, Europe, and the USA with tMRCAs in May to July, 2019, suggesting that GL had spread globally at least 6 months before its discovery.
EyupLovely pinpoints an itch I’ve had the last week - Kamala is a speed run of Starmerism:
The Americans are speedrunning 2020-23 Starmerism with the coconut tree lady. Same smugness, same guilt tripping about the danger of the alternative, same certainty, same denialism of everything they did as a prosecutor, same height. They don’t know it, but they are doing it.
In a second night of fascist street violence in the U.K., homes are being targeted alongside mosques.
Amongst the chants today, the Nazis were shouting “stop the boats”, a term used and encouraged by Keir Starmer’s election campaign.
Keith has achieved the lowest voteshare of a single party majority government in UK history, with his voteshare gains over 2019 accounted for by Scotland where the SNP imploded after a scandal. Cannot overstate how fragile their massive majority is, and is simply a freak outcome of the FPTP system.
Starmer has referenced a “changed Labour Party” 8 times in his victory speech so far. The man is utterly fucking haunted by Corbyn, he won a massive landslide but he’s still saying this shit
Edit: 11 times now
Naturally, Formula 1 is completely terrible and I should be sent to the gulag for still watching it since the 1990s out of childhood nostalgia, knowing full well it’s absolutely haram. But...
It’s pretty hilarious that Trump showed up at today’s race, hung out in McLaren’s garage, and then dubbed himself Lando Norris' lucky charm after his first ever win. What’s funnier is that Lando then said, “Donald is someone that you've got to have a lot of respect for in many ways,” which left fans upset that le epic bacon Twitch streaming driver would say such a thing 
Imagine being surprised that someone from one of the UK’s richest families, competing in a sport formerly managed by someone who praised Hitler for being “a man who got things done” and someone else whose father led the British Union of Fascists, would have right-wing sympathies 
Managed to post this in general mega instead of the news mega yesterday, but thought I’d repost here because it’s such sunny news:
- Influeza A is spiking in wastewater in Amarillo, in the middle of an area of very dense cattle factory farms
- There also appears to be a very recent steep uptick in Influenza A nationally
Meanwhile…
Only one human case linked to cattle has been confirmed to date, and symptoms were limited to conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye. But Russo and many other vets have heard anecdotes about workers who have pink eye and other symptoms—including fever, cough, and lethargy—and do not want to be tested or seen by doctors. James Lowe, a researcher who specializes in pig influenza viruses, says policies for monitoring exposed people vary greatly between states. “I believe there are probably lots of human cases,” he says, noting that most likely are asymptomatic.
— U.S. government in hot seat for response to growing cow flu outbreak
To quote from the first link I posted:
H5N1 is a strain of influenza A. It’s impossible to know at this time if this is what is driving this increase, but vigilance is warranted. Hopefully this is simply all a coincidence or just a statistical anomaly. I watch for early signals to monitor.
This could be nothing. But - we might be on the cusp of watching Joe Biden handle a new pandemic in a more dismissive way than Donald Trump, while liberals defend him. 
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Comrades. I will send myself to the gulag for this, but please excuse me. With the ongoing Katespiracy distraction that sadly has entered my brain, here’s my conspiracy theory as to what’s going on and how it could mean the end of the Royals 
- King Charles is dying of cancer, possibly within months
- Prince William is supposed to become king
- Kate wants to divorce William after an affair (or even worse, e.g. DV)
- The circumstances of the divorce would make William a deeply unpopular king and harm their reputation, possibly to the point of a majority rejecting the monarchy. Therefore, they’re trying to cover it up.
- The line of succession (lol) goes to their children, so if they skip William the UK would have to have a child monarch - again, harming the reputation of the monarchy to the point of the public questioning it.
- The line of succession then goes to Harry, who has been outcast from the Royal Family.
- The line of succession avoiding a child monarch then goes to….Prince Andrew
The end of the royal family would be so fucking funny, especially if it plays out this way
Someone on here mentioned the number, and I went to check as it seemed such a wild and disgusting fact.
In a grim piece of scorekeeping, Israel has stated that they have dropped over 6000 bombs on Gaza in 6 days, which means they are on track to exceed the number dropped on Afghanistan by the coalition in 2002. On an area smaller than Portland Oregon.
It is striking to me to see the differences in reaction to the last Trump victory in corporate tech land. I’m not at the same company, so there is variability, but the last time this happened there was a very clear sense of liberal outrage and despair, with company leadership speaking of how they will stand up for company values etc etc. This time, despite it being a “mission-led” company (lib code for conning its employees that it does social good), the message is simply “do not talk about politics”. The reaction of people is largely “let’s see what happens” or “it’s all out of my control anyway”. This time around, brunch isn’t gonna be cancelled folks.
Edit: I also wonder if once Thiel decides it’s time to get rid of our big wet boy, centrist wine libs will feel calmed by the emergence of President Vance.