Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republicans in disarray!

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Open Thread: Brain Worms!

Late Night Open Thread: Brain Worms!

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new rfk junior campaign patch is a banger

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— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 3:42 PM

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire — “We Are Very Sorry To Hear About RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm And Mercury Poisoning”:

The New York Times took a deep dive on Tuesday into the medical history of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose raison d’etre as a presidential candidate is primarily based on crazy-assed Do Your Own Research vaccine denialism and the fact that the two major candidates are older than he is and, therefore, not up to the job, cognitively. Judging from the Times story, RFKJ needs to find himself some new raisons d’etre tout suite.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times… [A] doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head. The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.

Well, that sounds awful.

For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared. About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues. “I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested. He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Brainworms? Poisoned fish? Holy Lord, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?…

His medical history is now a legitimate topic for political discussion because he chose to engage in long-distance diagnoses of the president. Every one of his verbal stumbles and every moment of public forgetfulness is going to be counted against his fitness for office because that’s the field on which he’s chosen to compete. Personally now, I think he should stop with the YouTube calisthenics and the TikTok iron-pumping and accept the fact that he’s not that much younger than the president is.


<em>Brain Worms!</em> - STOCKPILE

Rolling Stone did its own research, happily for the rest of us hypochondriacs:

… According to Dr. Michael Wilson, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences who specializes in infectious disease, the worms are typically contained in the cysts that form around them.

“That’s a dramatic way to put it,” Wilson says of Kennedy’s claim that the worm found in his brain ate away a pocket for itself to chill in. “It’s not that they’re chewing up the brain and causing extensive damage. They tend to just sit there in their cyst.”

“For reasons we don’t understand, oftentimes, the worm will just kind of live in its cyst for a number of years and not cause any symptoms,” Wilson adds. “No seizures, nothing. And then finally, the immune system will recognize that it’s there, and then it’ll attack it and kill it.”

Once the worm is dead, the remains will often calcify, leaving a small spot — often only millimeters long — that is visible on brain scans. But the most common forms of neurological parasites don’t tunnel through your brain like a prospector looking to strike gold…

my "now completely free of worms in the brain" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) May 9, 2024 at 2:11 PM


 
BUT SERIOUSLY, folks…

if hannity thinks he needs to spend his time going after RFK, junworm, trump’s internals (or fox’s internals) may be a whole lot worse than we think

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE-O (@golikehellmachine.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 10:15 PM


Also, the Brain Worms!!! story knocked a certain endorsement off the front page…

The biggest shakeup of the 2024 presidential election so far: RFK Jr. gets an endorsement from Kevin Spacey, adding to his roster of canceled celebrity supporters.

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— a little peanut 🥜 (@milesklee.bsky.social) May 6, 2024 at 3:53 PM

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    Scout211

    The sad thing is that this all first came out during his long drawn out second divorce.  He claimed these disabilities caused him lose income because he was disabled.  Politico

     

    But in the 2012 divorce proceedings, the Times reported that he claimed numerous health ailments that affected his brain function and consequently his earning potential.

    . . .
    His divorce from Mary Richardson Kennedy, the mother of Kennedy’s four youngest children, was a drawn-out legal process, according to a 2015 unauthorized biography of the political scion by Jeffrey Oppenheimer. The divorce wasn’t finalized because Richardson Kennedy died by suicide in 2012.

    Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, allegedly visited Richardson Kennedy three days before her death, according to the book, to address finances in the divorce.

    “Kerry was said to have been putting intense pressure on Mary that night and in the weeks before to sign Bobby’s divorce settlement agreement, described as a ‘very bitter, harsh, and Draconian proposal,’ limiting Mary’s custody of her children and slashing her financial support,” Oppenheimer wrote.

    A friend of Mary’s told Oppenheimer that “Kerry had ‘hammered constantly’ at Mary to sign Bobby’s settlement and told her, ‘There’s not an endless pool of money; you’re making everybody broke.”

    Robert Kennedy also argued in the deposition that his earning potential was diminished by his health struggles, according to the Times, which he said were, in part, caused by mercury poison from a diet heavy on fish.

    The independent candidate recently told the Times that the physical symptoms of fogginess and memory loss that Kennedy claimed in the deposition had subsided.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Scout211:

    he claimed numerous health ailments that affected his brain function and consequently his earning potential.

    Making him the perfect Presidential candidate! Got it.

  6. 6.

    Ken

    I think I posted this earlier, but the best snark I’ve seen so far is: RFK Jr. is the only candidate talking about lobal worming.

  7. 7.

    SpaceUnit

    I don’t really have anything to contribute to this thread other than to admit that I love tunafish sandwiches more than I like breathing air, but that because of the mercury I hardly ever eat them anymore.  Goddammit.

    I guess we just can’t have nice things.

  9. 9.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    “this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?”

    How?

    He put the lime in the coconut,

    he drank ’em bot up

    he put the lime in the coconut,

    he drank ’em bot up

     

    He called Doctor! Is there nothing I can take

    He called Doctor! To relieve this bad headache.

    Now let me get this straight;

    you got a worm in your coco nut,

    you got a worm in your coco nut,

    you put a lime in your coconut,

    you drink both together

    put a lime in your coconut,

    and then you’ll feel better.

     

    TEQUILA!

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    I’m gonna put a great big “Citation Needed” on the excerpted claims about him being poisoned by mercury. Recall that he’s a notorious liar about vaccines and vaccine preservatives. And other things.

    STATNews.com (from 2017):

    When people misrepresent facts on the record, journalists are in a tough spot — especially when that information can be harmful.

    Which brings me to STAT’s recent interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., conducted by Helen Branswell. STAT wanted to interview Kennedy about his claim in January 2017 that Donald Trump would soon appoint him to head a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. Seven months had passed since Kennedy had made the claim and no announcement had been made. STAT wanted to find out where things stood.

    Branswell began her interview by asking Kennedy eight different times and in eight different ways where things stood on his commission. Each time, he failed to confirm or deny whether the White House was about to appoint him.

    That clearly wasn’t what Kennedy wanted to talk about. Instead, he wanted to talk about his belief that mercury in vaccines is poisoning America’s children and that no one in the federal government seems to care. By insisting that the interview be conducted in the question-and-answer format, Kennedy effectively tied STAT’s hands, which had to print what he said without editorial comment or opposing views.

    I feel compelled to oppose Kennedy’s claims.

    Related: An interview with Robert Kennedy Jr. on vaccines

    During the interview, Kennedy said that some babies were being injected with 25 micrograms of ethylmercury, which is part of a preservative called thimerosol that is used in multi-dose vials of influenza vaccine. He claimed that amount to be “100 times” greater than the amount considered to be safe.

    As an environmentalist, Kennedy should know that mercury is a natural part of the Earth’s crust. As a consequence, methylmercury (environmental mercury) is contained in water and anything made from water, like breast milk and infant formula. The human body eliminates ethylmercury from vaccines far more efficiently than it eliminates naturally occurring methylmercury.

    Babies typically ingest about 360 micrograms of methylmercury during the first 6 months of life, well before they will ever receive their first dose of influenza vaccine. If the 25 micrograms of ethylmercury in vaccines is 100 times greater than what Kennedy claimed is safe, then simply by living on Earth, by 6 months of age babies will have ingested an amount of mercury that is 1,440 times greater than Kennedy’s safety limit.

    According to Kennedy’s calculations, all of us are massively intoxicated with mercury. The only way to avoid this would be to move to another planet.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Some info from the Mayo Clinic about blood tests for mercury.

    Health.NY.gov on effects of mercury on the body, especially in children.

    Don’t trust known liars. About anything. Unless it can be independently verified.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Making him the perfect Presidential candidate!

    Well his brain does seem to be working below par. Well below, as in a rather negative fashion. Which may be why he thinks he’s presidential material, thus proving that it is constantly malfunctioning. Malfunctioning being the minimum, polite way to state the obvious.

  14. 14.

    West of the Cascades

    @Scout211: Kennedy is almost as repulsive a piece of shit as Trump is (Trump hasn’t driven any wives or ex-wives to suicide, that we know of).

  16. 16.

    Chris

    You see, their young enter through the ears, and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex.  This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion.  Later, as they grow, follows madness, paralysis, death…

  17. 17.

    JCJ

    @kalakal:  I saw an excerpt from The Daily Show where Desi Lydic was covering the RFK campaign and her brain had been taken over by worms.  Jordan Klepper asked if she was going to vote for RFK.  She replied, “no!  I’ve got worms for brains, not shit for brains!”

  19. 19.

    Lyrebird

    @SpaceUnit: there are some brands, like Safe Catch, that claim to have much lower mercury levels.  We have some friends with a kid who goes through phases of wanting the same thing every day for a stretch.  They like this brand. The flavor is definitely different than, say, Cento oil pack, but it’s pretty good.

  22. 22.

    JustRuss

    You might think “I’m too cognitively disabled to pay alimony, please vote for me for POTUS” was a joke, but…..

  25. 25.

    Carlo Graziani

    That must have been the most disappointed worm in the history of brain worm starvation-driven disgruntlement. “Aww, Maaan, even Joe Rogan’s brain would have served up better chow than this sorry shit…”

    Anyway, how exactly did he allow a pork parasite into his organism in the first place? Was he chowing down on raw feral pig so as to avoid USDA-FDA-CDC guidelines on meat to contaminate his nutritional regimen? How the fuck does a 100% aluminum-pated health conspiracist freak like RFK Jr. expose himself to species-barrier jumping pathogens like this, anyway?

    I bet you could make cows mad by serving them samples from his brain.

  26. 26.

    mrmoshpotato

    Can some explain how a horse’s ass can have brain worms?  I don’t understand.

  28. 28.

    wjca

    @JustRuss: You might think “I’m too cognitively disabled to pay alimony, please vote for me for POTUS” was a joke, but…..

    Picturing TIFG kicking himself for not thinking of it as a way to cut what it cost him to dump his earlier wives.

  31. 31.

    Fair Economist

    This is all great fun, but I suspect the only reason the NYT reported on this (you know it’s been sitting in their files forever) is because the polling indicates Brainworm Boy is pulling more support from Trump than Biden. We all know who the NY Times’ owner wants to win – he sure made it clear in 2016.

  32. 32.

    Jay

    @Carlo Graziani:

    the cycle is undercooked pork, live tapeworm,

    fecal matter with new eggs, (microscopic, sticky)

    no handwashing,

    contaminated surfaces or food,

    egg/s hatch, migrate to the bloodstream, can end up anywhere.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe

    Does he get taller during hot weather?
    //

  34. 34.

    Kristine

    @SpaceUnit: Here’s a Consumer Reports article about mercury levels in some grocery brands. Bumblebee has the least, and skipjack/light tuna has less than albacore because the fish used are smaller.

    Oddly enough, Wild Planet had more mercury overall than the cheaper grocery brands.

    Idk if you need to be subscribed to CR to read this article. If you’re interested, I think I can send you a copy.

  35. 35.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Jay: Sure, I understand that. But this is a guy who thinks that the mercury load in vaccines has near-lethal toxicity. And he’s not washing his hands and picking his nose while prepping pork shoulder steaks, which he eats rare? What frequency bands are his aluminum hat tuned to?

  38. 38.

    danielx

    I’m sure this has been said, but Kennedy’s various ailments explain so much about him.

    Edit: although it appears a lot of his general heinous fuckery is a natural trait.

  39. 39.

    Jay

    @Carlo Graziani:

    to get into the brain, blood or any organ outside of the intestine, one needs to ingest the eggs.

    So, minimum wage/undocumented cook eats undercooked pork. Gets a tapeworm.

    A week later, goes to the bathroom. Does not wash hands as the sink does not work/owner claims washing hands is wage theft/ etc.

    Cook plates up your plate, eggs are transferred to the plate,

    You touch plate, eat, wipe your mouth,

    eggs transferred.

  40. 40.

    Poe Larity

    Now I feel bad making fun of him.

    Just closed down a pop Dallas honky tonk venue at 11pm. wtf. Do I need to tuck you cowboys in? This is not your fathers DFW, in fact if dad could jump out of the coffin tonight he’d kick y’alls ass.

    My favorite late venue in uptown is the Kennedy Room, I guess I’m calling Uber. Serendipity?

  45. 45.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    @SpaceUnit: FWIW, my colleague and friend is literally the world’s foremost authority on the subject, and she’s not concerned about mercury levels in canned tuna.

    I also agree on the joys of a good tuna sandwich. With bibb lettuce, or even an occasional light pickle relish…my son is partial to tuna melts, but I haven’t been a convert thus far.

  46. 46.

    Chet Murthy

    @Prometheus Shrugged: I love tuna fish (heck, all fish) but I eat it rarely.  Maybe once a month.  B/c damn, I don’t want to be the one who eats the last tuna.  But boy I love that stuff.  As a side-effect, I buy (what I think is) really good stuff: Il Tonnino.   B/c when you eat it once a month, you’re a lot more price-insensitive than when you eat it a couple times a week.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @Chet Murthy

    AFAIK the FDA recommendations from some time back for tuna eating by pregnant women haven’t changed.

    No more than 4 times per month for light tuna, no more than 1 serving per month for albacore.

  48. 48.

    Yutsano

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​ I sent that to some drummer friends I know. I’ll update if I get any responses.

    Also: hi! I’m still alive! It’s just been another day where I have been so slammed that I can lurk mostly.

  49. 49.

    SpaceUnit

    @Prometheus Shrugged:

    Used to have a Blimpies by my office ( do they even exist anymore? )  I would get a tuna on an Italian roll with lettuce, tomato, black olives, and pickled peppers.  Also provolone cheese ( sounds weird but trust me on this ).

    Holy shit.

     

    ETA:  Not offices, Blimpies.  I know offices still exist.

  50. 50.

    Central Planning

    Alexandra Petri does a good job with the worm in her latest piece

    RFK Jr. has justified his candidacy by saying that people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the options presented to them and need a third choice. Well, I see that third choice and raise you a fourth choice: a candidate you can trust not to have any brain worms because that candidate is a brain worm. I am also not currently under indictment for any reason.

    So, good people of these United States, I exhort you: Ask not what this parasite can do for you. Ask what you can do for your parasite!

  51. 51.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    @SpaceUnit: Had this exact same Blimpie’s sandwich many times but on a roll and without the provolone (I do trust you, just never tried it)…Good times…This was in college in the 1980’s but Google tells me that Blimpie’s is still around.

  52. 52.

    Tony Jay

    I’ve seen this film before.

    Late night shift at the medical examiner’s lab. The kindly middle-aged ME looks up from the slides he’s examining with a troubled expression on his face. The phone rings.

      “Oh, hi honey. Kids okay? Yeah, I know, I know, I’ll be heading back soon. It’s just this case. After the candidate brought it all up again I dug out these old samples, something always bugged me about them. So I checked and, I still don’t get it. The worm lavae is dead, but the elevated levels of paramentaslavus molecules in the brain tissue would usually mean it was still consciously producing…”

      The ME gasps.

      “Honey, I’ll call you back.”

       He checks the slides again. When he looks up this time his face is pale, his eyes wide.

      “Oh my god. It wasn’t the worm that died.”

      RFK3 steps out of the shadows behind the ME. His facial wrinkles shift and retract to reveal row after row of crystalline teeth ringing a central maw.

      “You know too much, human.”

      RFK3 lunges. Cut to a campaign lunch with Hollywood backers. A famous actor is holding court.

      “And I said ‘Top or tail, it’s your party, Bryan. I only come for the veal.’ Everybody laughs. “You not enjoying the scallops, Bobby?” 

      RFK3 pushes his plate away.

      “Sorry, I ate late last night.”

      Cut

      

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    @SpaceUnit

    There’s apparently still a scattering of locations holding on, inside truck stops and the like,

    By 2011, there were only 739 stores left. We found reports of about 200 locations left in 2023. However, if you count the number of locations listed on the Blimpie app, there are only 85 left as of February 2024. That’s more than a 95% decrease in location numbers in a little over 20 years. Source

  55. 55.

    Chet Murthy

    @Tony Jay: Tony, i must confess that up until now i thought you were being a little extreme in your characterization of the Labour party.  But with this latest Tory defection, i see that you were spot on.  Spot on.  I felt I should say that to you, Because you were so so right.  What the fuck is Starmer thinking?

  56. 56.

    John Revolta

    @SpaceUnit: @Prometheus Shrugged: Had the same sandwich many times. I used to live around the corner from Blimpie Base #1, their original location in Hoboken! My favorite though was the Blimpie’s Best. I’d bring that bad boy home, take the top off with all the lettuce etc. and stick the bottom part under the broiler for a couple minutes………. damn. Best sub sandwich EVAR!!

  58. 58.

    prostratedragon

    Wanna watch something really good?

    Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation is a four-part documentary series that lays bare the story of how Chicago devised the nation’s most sweeping system of racially segregated housing—and how it diminished the lives of generations of Black families, creating the vast racial wealth gap that persists to this day.

    The term “redlining” came out of this experience — as does the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, first proposed by a multiracial group of Chicago housing activists. Should open some eyes everywhere.

  60. 60.

    John Revolta

    @NotMax: Sub sandwiches always remind me of an old Lenny Bruce routine

    Culture changes……….. you know how you have the big Italian sandwiches, you know, the foot-long sandwich on the French bread? Now, you see these signs in Los Angeles: Don’s Big Dago! Thirty-five cents! And they think nothing of that kind of a sign. Now I picture a poor guy, raised in Los Angeles- he goes to New York. Down to the Lower East Side, like Hester Street, Broome Street………… down to one of these scoongy little stands………and there’s the Brothers Nunzio:

    “Ayy, waddayawant?”

    “Can I have one of Don’s Big Dagoes?”

    “I’ll give ya Dagoes ya bastid!” POW!!

  61. 61.

    bjacques

    @Tony Jay:

    “The nethermost caverns,” wrote the mad Arab, “are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”

  64. 64.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @HumboldtBlue: That should be a great sight if the weather cooperates.  Last year they had a pretty good aurora in Mammoth and a few months earlier a photographer in Death Valley managed to shoot it low to the horizon(I was shooting a pano that same night* and did see an odd red glow to the north in my shots).

    *ETA: I was about 50 miles north west in the Owens Valley.

  65. 65.

    Tony Jay

    @Chet Murthy:

    I appreciate that. Thanks.

      What the fuck is Starmer thinking?

    What would Corbyn not do?

    What will offend and disgust the largest number of leftwing Labour voters?

    What will stop the people who have my balls in a vice due to my prior betrayals from squeezing?

    There are many reasons. All bad. But they all boil down to the Labour Right being angry and offended that the country rejected them in 2010 and the Party rejected them in 2015 and everyone is going to be made to eat shit and pretend to like it to punish them for that.

    On the actual Elphick defection. It’s not that he let her become a Labour MP – she’s not standing again, it could be presented as a PR victory with no wider implications, politics ain’t beanbag – but it’s the way he did it.

    He stood next to her and praised her for her ‘work’ on immigration. She’s one of the hardest Right extremist bloodgarglers out there. All STOP SMALL BOATS all the time. Anti-immigrant and border-crisis and ‘Send Them Back’ like the worst ‘70s era Powellite, and The Leader of the Labour Party just stood there in the run-in to a general election and personally validated the central plank of the Tory Party manifesto! Underlining how very, very bad the Labour Right are at any actual politics that doesn’t involve misusing bureaucratic tools to backstab opponents and rivals. And they actually thought this was a PR coup for them.

    I weep for this country. I really do.

  66. 66.

    TS

    The fox news piece appears to be trying to encourage democratic party supporters to vote for Kennedy while ensuring republicans he does not have policies they would agree with.

  67. 67.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: When I was pregnant I couldn’t be in the same room with a tuna sandwich, and I love them. I have heard a lot of other women say similar about fish in general, so I’m having trouble imagining it’s a big problem.

  68. 68.

    Tony Jay

    @bjacques:

    “And this is seriously your pitch for the VP slot?”

    “It is. The Worm must Rise. The Great Darkness must fall. Eternal torment for your souls.”

    “………”

    “Also we have a substantial other-dimensional donor base.”

    “Sold. Let me take you through.”

  70. 70.

    sab

    @Jay: My dad’s late lamented mackeral cat got tapeworms from eating squirrels. Another reason to keep cats indoors. As he got older he was less agile. The last squirrel he tried to kill really kicked his ass. He stopped squirrel hunting after that.

    OT: Avian flu kills cats. Another reason to keep your cat inside. The cat will get used to it eventually. Even our most wanderlust cat thinks stalking fellow cats indoors is as much fun as chasing chipmunks through car traffic.

  71. 71.

    Martin

    A Virginia school district is restoring the confederate names on two of their schools changed in 2020, citing a bunch of wingnut nonsense.

  73. 73.

    sab

    Since my 72 yo husband is not and never will be pregnant, I can allow him his weekly tuna steak. Yay!

  75. 75.

    WereBear

    @sab: Yes, we have a road in front and big critters in back, I don’t like their odds.

    Though I did get my tiny girl a cat backpack with a clear front. She’s enjoying it. But we can’t leave her territory, yet.

  77. 77.

    sab

    @sab: You already linked.

    My cats thoroughly agree. We have a sisal and carpeted cat tree in the upstairs hall that my husband hates and the cats love. They have already peeled off most of the carpet but the sisal is tougher than them.

    We had hoped to avoid tattered cat trees in the living room, so the cats tattered the chairs and the hutch. We should have known better.

    In the kitchen the cats work diligently on shredding the little stepladder. We leave it there for them. I need it to step up on, and we can live with the claw marks. We thought about throwing it away a few years ago and then realized our cats would be very upset.

  80. 80.

    sab

    @WereBear: Same for us. Road in front and 1000 acre metropark in back full of coyotes.

    We “stole” neighbors’ cat by opening the door and letting her in. They toss the cats out when they go to work at 5 a.m.  and let them back in when they get home at night. Their big orange guy is fine with that, but the little black panther was scared all day.

  81. 81.

    Chris T.

    @sab: The “kitty entrance” thing is the one I wish I’d caught onto sooner. There was a chair that one cat tore the crap out of the top of it, and I could never understand why until I saw him facing off against a raccoon outside the window there.

    (I eventually had that chair reupholstered in microfiber, and it’s in good shape now!)

    We have some ratty old scratching stuff in the living room, which helps, and our current crop of kitties are mostly sufficiently old and arthritic to be pretty delicate with scratching (with concomitant “old man / old lady” claw issues though).

  83. 83.

    sab

    @Chris T.: We got a stupid fake tree type cat tree for beside the front door. Bad mistake. Cats peed on it. They wanted a normal non-tree cat-tree.

  86. 86.

    sab

    I cannot convince husband that cats smell ammonia and think “foreign cat pee!!”, but they do. Clean the bathroom mirror with windex with ammonia and the cats will pee on the bathroom counter.

    Clean the bathroom mirror with rubbing alcohol and the cats will stay away.

    Does Febreeze have ammonia?

  87. 87.

    WereBear

    @sab: Now that the statute of limitations has passed, I have also “stolen” cats. I had prepared words if those neighbors showed up or called, but then never did need to use them.

    I did them a favor, too.

  88. 88.

    Jay

    @sab:

    Nope, but,

    it only masks ammonia smells, (probably for humans), it does not remove them.

    I have found that orange cleaners, (citrus oils) are the most effective way of removing urine scents, so that there is no more remarking or thinking that area is a litterbox.

  89. 89.

    Geminid

    @TS: That’s how I saw the Fox piece. A two-for, giving reasons for Trump voters not to vote for the guy while giving Biden voters reasons to vote for him. And maybe giving some hints to RFK Jr. as to what issues they would like him to emphasize.

  90. 90.

    sab

    I am so excited. If the clouds stay away (good luck with that in springtime Ohio)  we might actually see Northern lights tonight. #1 my bucket list.

    Even if I do see them, I would like to see Iceland anyway.

  91. 91.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @JCJ: I saw that bit. It’s hilarious! Honestly if he wanted to come back for one night a week I guess they had to let him but Klepper and Leidig are funnier than John Stewart these days. And I’m not a Stewart hater, it’s just that those two are great.

  92. 92.

    MagdaInBlack

    @prostratedragon: They have been discussing this on the WCPT 820 ( Chicago progressive talk) morning drive show.

    Eta: Bruce Orenstein was on yesterday, and Chris Jenkins last week.

  93. 93.

    Bugboy

    Brainworms? Poisoned fish?

    I saw elsewhere a doctor was suggesting it might be a pork tapeworm larva, but these two things are not necessarily unrelated.  There’s some kind of parasitic worm that lives in the tail region of certain predatory fish.  Educated anglers know about it, but no one ever said this guy was well educated.

  94. 94.

    Princess

    The evidence behind the story is from 2012. I guess the NYT sat on the story until they were sure Kennedy was harming Trump more than Biden. Might not matter though — I don’t think Kennedy’s supporters are the kind to trust or read the NYT.

  95. 95.

    prostratedragon

    @MagdaInBlack:  Glad to hear it. Should be widely known. And I see that WCPT streams through Radio Garden.

     

    @Poe Larity:  Wow. Back in the Jurassic there were years when I’d be heading out at 10.or 11.

  98. 98.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Princess: Trump was on a ranty rant about RFK jr on his truth social thing. I suspect their internal polling shows jr is taking votes from trump. Probably the anti-vax folks.

  100. 100.

    Ken

    @Michael Bersin: It’s a cult.

    Could be worse — instead of selling clocks and ashtrays with Trump’s photo, they could be running a GOTV effort from that storefront.

  102. 102.

    Denali5

    Has anyone seen the new Netflix documentary The AntiSocial Network? It explains a lot and doesn’t involve worms.

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