JTT

"Before Dr. Brian Christine was tapped to lead America’s public hantavirus response, he was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants, CNN reported Friday.

Christine currently serves as the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and as such is one of the top public health officials running the country’s infectious disease policy. Earlier this week, he told reporters in Nebraska that the agency’s response to the dangerous outbreak would be “grounded in science” and “grounded in transparency.”

Yet Christine’s resume seems far and away from that of a typical U.S. health official. While he has some public health experience under his belt, having served as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he has also espoused dangerous far-right beliefs and spread wellness conspiracy theories.

He rebuked coronavirus mandates and spread conspiracy theories about treatment plans that sowed doubt and division over the government’s public health response at the time. He has claimed that the pandemic was a part of a wider government plot to control people, and he skirted questions from the U.S. Senate as to whether or not he would recommend the Covid vaccine to his patients.

The 62-year-old admiral also hosted a YouTube series titled “Erection Connection,” a professional show for other urologists discussing erectile dysfunction..."

Laser weapons, advanced drone warfare, and nation states around the globe redefined by climate change: this is the world in 2084, envisioned by authors Jim Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman.

Both are veterans -- Ackerman, a former Marine, did five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan; Stavridis is a retired four-star admiral and a former supreme allied commander of NATO. Their novel 2084 is the third in a trilogy. They compare their work to cold war fiction like Dr. Strangelove -- stories that imagined disasters specifically so society would work to avoid them. In this episode, they unpack what dangers they see on the distant horizon.

"The campaign to restore the Everglades has received a boost with completion of a key project that returns the flow of water to 55,000 acres that had once been drained for development. Experts see it as a major step forward in bringing back South Florida’s River of Grass."

"Mark Carney is competent, well-spoken, and quietly running a neoliberal playbook. Against the backdrop of Trump's chaos, Canada's prime minister looks like a statesman—and that's precisely the problem. When the bar is subterranean, clearing it can mask a lot of sins. Airport privatization, fossil fuel expansion, public service cuts, and social transfers growing below inflation aren't the hallmarks of a progressive government. They're the hallmarks of a conservative one with better branding."