Rich and Strange Aeons

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29/health/human-metapneumovirus-explainer-wellness/index.html

Discovered in 2001. Causes about as many cases and misery as influenza and RSV. Little known.

I ran across two "bad Catholics" links today. One on an alleged gay network within the Vatican (paging Dan Brown), the other on the founder of the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ, a priest who sexually abused his own children... children which he shouldn't have on account of being a priest. (By a mistress, not by a dead pre-priesthood wife.)

In unrelated, horror, a friend linked to this case of twisted suburbia, where two homes with back-to-back yards can reach each other via seven miles of roads. Comments note that such cul-de-sac design seems bad for evacuation or fire access: block one road and no one can get out.

Jumping yet again, we get carnivory in cows and deer and elephants and other supposedly dedicated herbivores (unlike the KFC-eating chickens I mentioned last year; chickens do eat insects after all.)

I am not a vegetarian. I'd like my meat to come from humanely treated animals but I'm not superdiligent about even that. I'm not unconflicted, I just kind of write it off with "meh, other issues, the natural world is arguably worse" and stuff like that. Nonetheless, when I see a post and comments totally mocking Pearce's Abolitionist Project, I get filled with rage.[1]

A study claims the evidence of sugar causing diabetes is pretty strong. There are truffles on my shelf I haven't eaten yet. I am conflicted.

Happy news! Former US prosecutors and DEA agents defending Colombian drug traffickers. At least it sounds happy, like "we had an attack of conscience", not "oooh, what big wallets you narcolords have".

Pretty funny though not reliable guide to the papal candidates.

Putting babies out to sleep in the freezing cold: child abuse or Nordic custom?

[1] Doubt it's possible is fine. Doubt that even if we thought we could, we'd be wise enough to do so well, is fine. A general suspicious of crazy-sounding extreme ideas is more than fine. "Ha ha he wants to abolish holocaust-loads of pain and suffering, what a doodyhead" or "But all the suffering makes things of beauty" are just terrible, IMO. Yeah, I know I risk hypocrisy here ("meat is tasty"). I'm fine with that for now, and while I poke at them I don't *laugh* mockingly at vegetarians.

Book on trauma research published despite military censors.