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How to keep your plants alive while you’re on vacation

Keeping your plants alive when you go on vacation is almost as stressful as packing for said vacation. How many pairs of shoes do I need? Do I need something fancy? Should I water the plants before I go? All questions that took me years (and a few sad plants) to answer.

As an avid indoor plant parent and traveler, one of the last things I do before heading off into the sunset is water my 15+ houseplants. The very last thing you’d want to see when you get home after all that sunshine and tequila are your plant babies wilted, yellowed — and worse still, dead.

Save yourself the shock and horror with these easy tried-and-true tips to keep your plants alive while you’re on vacation.

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1. Shower your plants

Before you head off for vacation, give your plants a good shower — literally. I bring all my plants to the shower or kitchen sink (during the day and never at night to avoid fungus), drench them until water runs out of the drainage holes, and then repeat for good measure (especially if the soil was super dry to begin with). Once the soil is thoroughly soaked, I let the pots drain out while I wipe down the leaves and then place the plants back onto their saucers or drip trays. The shower gives them all the water they need for a week or two, so by the time I come back from the beach, they’re still perky and happy.

For large plants that can’t be moved easily, I just water them normally until water drains out the bottom. Look for a watering can with a long, thin spout (to keep moisture off leaves) and a generous body (so you make less trips to the sink).

2. Use self-watering planters

If you’re going away for longer periods of time (or are prone to overwatering), self-watering planters are a great way to keep your babies happy. These are a few different types, but what I’ve had the most luck with are planters with an inner pot that sit on top of a water reservoir. The inner pot has extra drainage holes where you can thread rope to draw water from the reservoir up to the soil, keeping it at the right moisture level. Make sure to change the water when you get back from vacation to avoid breeding gnats and pests.

3. Or self-watering bulbs

These cute little bulbs slow-drip water into the soil to help keep it damp. Fill up the bulb with water, cover the spout with a tiny piece of a coffee filter, make a little hole in the soil away from any major roots, and then quickly stick the long spout in. Make sure the spout is deep within the soil so water can get at the root ball and it doesn’t release all the water too quickly. These are perfect for small to medium potted plants, but you can DIY the same concept with a wine bottle for large plants and trees. Just remember to keep a saucer or drip tray underneath to avoid any potential water damage.

4. Move plants to a shady area

Plants in direct sunlight will dry out faster than those in indirect sunlight, so whenever I leave for vacation, I move anything that’s by a window to a less sunnier area. I usually put them on a storage or bar cart so I can move them around easily — it also comes in handy when I have to cart them (pun intended) to the bathroom or kitchen to water them.

This post contains products independently chosen (and loved) by Food52 editors and writers. As an Amazon Associate and Skimlinks affiliate, Food52 earns a commission on qualifying purchases of the products we link to.

Why bother with burgers when you can have sloppy joe sliders?

Unpopular opinion: Burgers are overrated. If you’re making more than one, you’re going to be working with differing tastes and imperatives, and that’s just a recipe for disappointment. Making them for a crowd takes what feels like forever. And while eating a juicy, perfectly cooked hamburger can be a transcendent experience, how many of those experiences does one really get per summer?

Allow me, then, to make the case for sloppy joe’s. When was the last time you had one? My goodness, they’re delicious. They are also super easy to customize, quick to make and, as the name suggests, offer a welcome, almost wholesome casualness. If your ideas of sloppy joes are still tied to school cafeterias and Adam Sandler movies, it’s time you grabbed a big pile of napkins and rethought tonight’s dinner.

The origins of the sloppy are not entirely clear. Some say it’s a Cuban invention, a riff on ropa vieja. Others say it was born in Sioux City, Iowa in the early 20th century, when an enterprising restaurant cook added tomato sauce to the classic — and unfortunately named — loose meat sandwich. Decades later, the sloppy joe gained a new level of popularity with the introduction of the Manwich, a canned sauce that streamlined the cooking process. It also tweaked the flavor of the dish, thanks to the generous addition of corn syrup.

I didn’t grow up in a sloppy joe home. My grandmother was in charge of the meals, and while she admirably knocked out home cooked dinners seven days a week, she never considered “fun” an option in either the preparation or the consumption of food. My Aunt Peggy, on the other hand, had three sons, treated potato chips as a legitimate side dish and made Manwich-based sloppy joes regularly. Obviously, her house, with its freezer full of Otter Pops, was my favorite dining destination.

When my own kids were little, I read a Rachael Ray recipe for sloppy joes that immediately tugged at a deep, nostalgic place in my stomach. It was the mention of brown sugar that grabbed me. Maybe sloppies didn’t always have a kinship to barbecue, but modern generations have been raised with the expectation of that Manwich kick of sweetness. I have been making mine that way for my family for years now, and I have never once declared a sloppy joe night and not been met with unanimous joy. It’s basically meat sauce on a bun but with sugar; what’s not to love?

In his gorgeous “New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes” cookbook, Sam Sifton makes his with jalapeños and hot sauce; I make mine with a smoky pinch of chipotle powder and serve them on soft, buttery Parker House rolls. They’re great cooked with a spoonful of tapenade or diced mushrooms, and if you have any bacon fat in the fridge, swirl in a dollop at the end for an unbelievable flavor boost. Use your imagination to personalize yours — but you definitely can’t miss with a side of potato chips.

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Recipe: Sloppy Joe Sliders

Inspired by Rachael Ray and Sam Sifton

Serves 4, generously

Ingredients:

  • Olive oil
  • 1 pound of the ground meat of your choice (Beef is the classic but I like pork.)
  • 1/2 yellow onion, chopped (You can substitute your favorite allium, or use a mix of different kinds.)
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 1 stalk of celery, grated (You can buy all your vegetables precut, and even just get precut mirepoix mix and call it a day.)
  • Minced garlic if you feel like it
  • 1 15 ounce can of pureed tomatoes or 2 cups of your preferred tomato sauce 
  • 1 tablespoon of brown sugar (You can swap in whatever you’ve got on hand here — I’ve used honey and maple syrup in the past.)
  • Roughly one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, to taste
  • Optional: 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
  • A few pinches of spices you like — chipotle powder, cumin, Chinese five spice powder, etc.
  • Sea salt to taste, and a big grind of black pepper

Directions:

  1. Heat a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat and add a few glugs of oil.
  2. Add your vegetables and cook a few minutes, until softened.
  3. Add your meat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon and cook until it’s nicely browned, about five minutes.
  4. Add your tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, spices, tomato paste if using, and salt and pepper. Cook until everything is bubbling and thickened, a few minutes more. When you’re getting close, give it a taste — it may need more salt, more sugar, or a splash of vinegar to balance out the flavors. 
  5. Serve on split Parker House rolls or hamburger buns, preferably with popsicles for dessert.

Make it vegan! You can easily swap in your favorite ground beef substitute here, but I think it’s better to use drained, lightly smashed black beans.

More Quick & Dirty: 

What Congress’ first official report on the Capitol riot leaves unanswered

Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard from some of the police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob on January 6th and their stories have been poignant and quite sad. They clearly feel betrayed by the many elected officials who have publicly dismissed what happened as simply a bunch of rowdy tourists when the officers were the ones left to literally engage in hand-to-hand combat and put their lives on the line to keep those same officials safe that day.

Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell told CNN that he was beaten by a man with a flagpole, his hand was sliced open and he was sprayed with so much chemical poison that it soaked through his clothes and burned him for hours. But what bothered him the most was that the rioters called the police traitors and said, “we’re going to shoot you. We’re going to kill you. You’re choosing your paycheck over the country. You’re a disgrace!”

I suspect that’s not something those officers hear from the tourists coming through the building on a normal day. And it’s likely that some of the police officers had been Trump fans, unable to fathom that all those white people dressed in red, white and blue, waving the American and Trump flags would ever treat cops that way.

Before the recent Senate vote on the bipartisan January 6th Commission, the mother and partner of Officer Brian Sicknick who died on that day asked to speak with the GOP senators who were planning not to vote for the bill. She simply wanted to know how it happened. A few met with her, but none of them changed their minds — at the request of Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Despite an extremely fair bipartisan process that gave Republicans equal input and influence, the Republicans whined that the commission was “politicized” and expressed confidence that almost everything people need to know about that day was already known. Congressional investigations and prosecutions of the rioters, they argued, would take care of the rest. The Republicans filibustered the bill and it went down to defeat.

On Tuesday, the first of the “reports” they all insisted would tell the tale was released. It was a bipartisan investigation undertaken by the Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate Homeland Security and Rules committees to determine the scope of the security failures on that day. Those policemen who spoke up about the horror of that day must feel even worse than they did before. If this report is any indication, the official history of that day may very well make it appear that the primary responsibility for what happened lies with the police — not the rioters or the people who instigated it.

That is not to say that the failures the report illuminated weren’t serious. Salon’s Jon Skolnik summarized the most important findings:

[T]he Capitol Police’s intelligence division flagged various social media posts that plotted to breach the building. Police Chief Yogananda Pittman told congressional investigators that the unit reportedly brought them to the department’s “command staff,” but the material never arrived at the desks of higher-ups. This lack of communication persisted throughout the plan’s escalation on social media until the riot unfolded on January 6. 

The “full scope of known information” was never conveyed to Capitol Police “leadership, rank-and-file officers, or law enforcement partners.” The Intelligence Community apparently didn’t take it seriously either or, if they did, they didn’t pass on their concerns and there was no emergency authority so nobody knew which way to turn when reinforcements were required. The police simply weren’t prepared for a violent insurrection even though many of the Trump followers who were planning to swarm the Capitol that day were openly talking about perpetrating one.

It is a sobering report and does add some new detail to the story that we hadn’t heard before. But it leaves many more questions than it answers. After all, these insurrectionists didn’t just cook this up out of the blue. They felt they’d been given the order to do what they did and said so openly as they stormed the building. None of that is addressed by this investigation — and that’s because the Republicans on the committee refused to do it.

According to CNN, the language of the report was the subject of many negotiations in order to keep the timorous Republican senators on board. A committee aide told the network, “did we look at Trump’s role in the attack? The answer is no.” They couldn’t even use the word “insurrection” or mention the threats against Vice President Mike Pence in the body of the report. They were instead forced to leave Trump’s incitement against Pence to the appendix.

The report also didn’t look at the attempts behind the scenes to get the president to bring the insurrection under control, for obvious reasons: He thought it was terrific. As he told Fox News a couple of months ago:

“Right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in — they shouldn’t have done it — some of them went in, and they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know? They had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in, and they walked out.

And they certainly didn’t investigate what Trump knew and what he did before January 6th because it’s potentially even more damning. Francesca Chambers of McClatchy reported just days after the event:

The night before the president directed his supporters to converge on the Capitol, he considered announcing by tweet that he would march down Pennsylvania Avenue with them. But he decided against it out of concern that they would be blocked from approaching the federal building if he provided advance notice of their plans.

At the very least it’s clear that Trump didn’t want the police to be properly prepared for a huge crowd unexpectedly bearing down on the Capitol. One might even suspect he knew exactly what he was doing.

These are things the American people have a right to know about. If people inside the White House were telling reporters about it, they could certainly be compelled to speak under oath to a congressional committee or even a special counsel. The report issued this week, with its tippy-toeing around the big orange elephant in the room only makes it more obvious how necessary a serious probe really is. The work that’s going on in the states by Republicans to further subvert the electoral process along with the ongoing threat of right-wing extremist violence cannot be fully dealt with unless the American people have access to everything that led up to this moment.

The Democrats must keep hammering away at this regardless of the GOP’s desperate desire to pretend it never happened. If they don’t, there’s a very good chance it will happen again.

It’s not just your imagination — ticks are out of control this year

Not long ago, I went on a walk with some friends through a field near my house in upstate New York. When we stopped for a break, something moving on my pants caught my eye. There were about a dozen reddish-brown ticks crawling up my legs. I looked closer and found ticks tangled in my socks, latched on to the insides of my shoes, hanging by hooked legs to the backs of my knees. The big ones, American dog ticks, were easy to spot, but the little ones, blacklegged nymph ticks the size of poppy seeds, were harder to find. I was still pulling them off of me days later. 

Northeasterners are used to coexisting with ticks, but this season has felt unusually intense. An unofficial survey of my friends unearthed some horrifying anecdotes. A landscape designer said she had been bitten by more ticks this year than ever before. The owner of a local wine shop pulled a tick out of his hair at the Atlanta airport that had somehow managed to accompany him on the plane ride south. One guy is living with the (possibly permanent) trauma of finding a tick attached to his nipple. 

The anecdotal evidence for a busy tick year is corroborated by data, Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, said. It’s still too early in the season to say exactly how this year stacks up compared to previous years, but early returns indicate that there has been an explosion of ticks this spring. “All these people complaining of a horrendous year,” Ostfeld said, “they’re actually right.” 

The tick boom isn’t exclusive to the Northeast. Tom Mather, an entomologist at the University of Rhode Island and director of a tick awareness program called TickEncounter, said he’s seen an uptick in reports of American dog tick sightings and bites around the country this year. TickEncounter, which crowdsources tick data from people all over the U.S., shows American dog tick submissions were up 30 percent in April compared to March, about 10 or 15 percent higher than usual. “They’re having a good year so far,” Mather told Grist. 

Jean Tsao, an associate professor of disease ecology at Michigan State University, said she’s noticed more ticks this season, too. When she talks to colleagues in Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, and even Quebec, Canada, she hears the same story: “It’s a big year.”  

American dog ticks are big and noticeable, which is why, when people report encounters with ticks, Mather said, they’re often reporting dog ticks. In the Northeast, where the risk of tick-borne illness is extremely high, the most dangerous ticks out and about right now are tiny blacklegged ticks in the nymph stage, the second stage of the blacklegged tick’s three-stage, two-year life cycle. Nymphs typically emerge from hibernation in May, reach their peak around Memorial Day weekend, and stay highly active until July, right when Americans are heading out for some outdoor fun. 

“Nymphs are really hungry when they emerge,” Ostfeld said. “And they do look like they are at a peak this year.” That’s a big public health problem. Blacklegged nymphs carry Lyme disease, which can cause joint pain, weakness in limbs, and flulike symptoms in humans. And they’re even harder to see than adult blacklegged ticks. It doesn’t take long — about 36 to 48 hours — for an attached tick to infect a human host with Lyme. As a result, folks who contract Lyme usually experience symptom onset around this time of year. 

There are a number of reasons for this year’s tick boom, including climate change. Climate change is making the “shoulder seasons,” spring and fall, warmer, which means longer feeding seasons for ticks. And rising temperatures are making it possible for ticks to shift their ranges all over the U.S. The lone star tick, an aggressive tick whose bite can cause humans to develop a severe allergic reaction to red meat, has been steadily making its way north from the southern U.S. for several years. Warming winter temperatures could be giving ticks a boost too, Tsao said. “It definitely seems that a mild winter helps their survivorship,” she said. Urbanization and the fragmentation of forests also play a role, as do rodents and deer, which do a great job of picking up ticks in one place and dropping them off in another. 

The main reason blacklegged ticks are booming in the Northeast this year has to do with acorns, Ostfeld said. In 2019, oak trees unloaded a big crop of acorns onto forest floors across vast swaths of the Eastern Seaboard. The plethora of hardy tree nuts was a boon for rodents of all kinds — especially mice, which are major carriers of Lyme disease. Rodents survived well that winter and got a jump-start on spring breeding in 2020. When baby blacklegged ticks hatched that summer, they had no shortage of mice to feed on. A year later, those baby larval ticks are molting into nymph ticks — the ticks posing a risk to so many of us this summer.  

Climate change has an indirect effect on these big acorn years, or “masting events,” too, Ostfeld said. Research shows that oak trees are able to produce lots of acorns when they can photosynthesize and store a lot of carbon. Longer growing seasons, in addition to the warmer and wetter conditions we’re getting in the Northeast, help oaks do that. And storing carbon is even easier to do when atmospheric carbon is at record-high levels. “If it’s really warm and wet, the oak trees can come to a point where they can let loose with a large bumper crop of acorns sooner and probably a bigger bumper crop,” Ostfeld said. “So there is some evidence for a climate signal on the ability of oak trees to make bumper crops of acorns.” 

Some amount of global warming might be baked in, but tick-borne illnesses are not inevitable. When going outside, experts recommend wearing long, light-colored pants, teaming up with a buddy for daily tick checks, and avoiding tall grass when possible. I also recommend protecting your nipples at all times. 

Amid a pandemic, a health care algorithm shows promise and peril

Last spring, physicians like us were confused. Covid-19 was just starting its deadly journey around the world, afflicting our patients with severe lung infections, strokes, skin rashes, debilitating fatigue, and numerous other acute and chronic symptoms. Armed with outdated clinical intuitions, we were left disoriented by a disease shrouded in ambiguity.

In the midst of the uncertainty, Epic, a private electronic health record giant and a key purveyor of American health data, accelerated the deployment of a clinical prediction tool called the Deterioration Index. Built with a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning and in use at some hospitals prior to the pandemic, the index is designed to help physicians decide when to move a patient into or out of intensive care, and is influenced by factors like breathing rate and blood potassium level. Epic had been tinkering with the index for years but expanded its use during the pandemic. At hundreds of hospitals, including those in which we both work, a Deterioration Index score is prominently displayed on the chart of every patient admitted to the hospital.

The Deterioration Index is poised to upend a key cultural practice in medicine: triage. Loosely speaking, triage is an act of determining how sick a patient is at any given moment to prioritize treatment and limited resources. In the past, physicians have performed this task by rapidly interpreting a patient’s vital signs, physical exam findings, test results, and other data points, using heuristics learned through years of on-the-job medical training.

Ostensibly, the core assumption of the Deterioration Index is that traditional triage can be augmented, or perhaps replaced entirely, by machine learning and big data. Indeed, a study of 392 Covid-19 patients admitted to Michigan Medicine that the index was moderately successful at discriminating between low-risk patients and those who were at high-risk of being transferred to an ICU, getting placed on a ventilator, or dying while admitted to the hospital. But last year’s hurried rollout of the Deterioration Index also sets a worrisome precedent, and it illustrates the potential for such decision-support tools to propagate biases in medicine and change the ways in which doctors think about their patients.

The use of algorithms to support clinical decision making isn’t new. But historically, these tools have been put into use only after a rigorous peer review of the raw data and statistical analyses used to develop them. Epic’s Deterioration Index, on the other hand, remains proprietary despite its widespread deployment. Although physicians are provided with a list of the variables used to calculate the index and a rough estimate of each variable’s impact on the score, we aren’t allowed under the hood to evaluate the raw data and calculations.

Furthermore, the Deterioration Index was not independently validated or peer-reviewed before the tool was rapidly deployed to America’s largest health care systems. Even now, there have been, to our knowledge, only two peer-reviewed published studies of the index. The deployment of a largely untested proprietary algorithm into clinical practice — with minimal understanding of the potential unintended consequences for patients or clinicians — raises a host of issues.

It remains unclear, for instance, what biases may be encoded into the index. Medicine already has a fraught history with race and gender disparities and biases. Studies have shown that, among other injustices, physicians underestimate the pain of minority patients and are less likely to refer women to total knee replacement surgery when it is warranted. Some clinical scores, including calculations commonly used to assess kidney and lung function, have traditionally been adjusted based on a patient’s race — a practice that many in the medical community now oppose. Without direct access to the equations underlying Epic’s Deterioration Index, or further external inquiry, it is impossible to know whether the index incorporates such race-adjusted scores in its own algorithm, potentially propagating biases.

Introducing machine learning into the triage process could fundamentally alter the way we teach medicine. It has the potential to improve inpatient care by highlighting new links between clinical data and outcomes — links that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. But it could also over-sensitize young physicians to the specific tests and health factors that the algorithm deems important; it could compromise trainees’ ability to hone their own clinical intuition. In essence, physicians in training would be learning medicine on Epic’s terms.

Thankfully, there are safeguards that can be relatively painlessly put in place. In 2015, the international Equator Network created a 22-point Tripod checklist to guide the responsible development, validation, and improvement of clinical prediction tools like the Deterioration Index. For example, it asks tool developers to provide details on how risk groups were created, report performance measures with confidence intervals, and discuss limitations of validation studies. Private health data brokers like Epic should always be held to this standard.

Now that its Deterioration Index is already being used in clinical settings, Epic should immediately release for peer review the underlying equations and the anonymized datasets it used for its internal validation, so that doctors and health services researchers can better understand any potential implications they may have for health equity. There need to be clear communication channels to raise, discuss, and resolve any issues that emerge in peer review, including concerns about the score’s validity, prognostic value, bias, or unintended consequences. Companies like Epic should also engage more deliberately and openly with the physicians who use their algorithms; they should share information about the populations on which the algorithms were trained, the questions the algorithms are best equipped to answer, and the flaws the algorithms may carry. Caveats and warnings should be communicated clearly and quickly to all clinicians who use the indices.

The Covid-19 pandemic, having accelerated the widespread deployment of clinical prediction tools like the Deterioration Index, may herald a new coexistence between physicians and machines in the art of medicine. Now is the time to set the ground rules to ensure that this partnership helps us change medicine for the better, and not the worse.

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Vishal Khetpal, M.D., MSc is an internal medicine resident physician training in the Brown University Internal Medicine Program.

Nishant R. Shah, M.D., MPH is an assistant professor of medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and an assistant professor of health services, practice, and policy at the Brown University School of Public Health.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Bet you didn’t know all of these were stone fruits

Whether you’re wandering around in a farmers market or passing through a section of the grocery store, odds are you’ve seen the term “stone fruit” tossed around near the peaches and plums. You put your keen mind to the task and gather that the term is referencing a fruit (great start) with a, well, stone-like pit. Nailed it! But is there more to the concept? What is a stone fruit, exactly?

What is a stone fruit?

We’ve already gone over the obvious: Stone fruits are those with pits in the center. Officially, they’re fruits with a fleshy exterior known as the mesocarp (covered with a skin, or exocarp) that encases a stone or pit (the shell of which is a hardened endocarp with a seed inside). Also known as drupes, this category includes peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, apricots, and pluots.

Dates, mangoes, coconuts, green almonds, lychees, and olives are also technically classified as stone fruits, as are mulberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Their peak season is summer, roughly mid-May through mid- to late-August.

Wait, some berries are stone fruits?

Botanically speaking, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a berry is a fleshy fruit with multiple seeds, deriving “from a single ovary of an individual flower.” This category includes cranberries and blueberries, as well as bananas, grapes, tomatoes, and avocados, among others — but it does not include mulberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

While their name implies they are berries, mulberries, blackberries, and raspberries are actually aggregate fruits in the drupe or stone fruit family. Each mulberry, raspberry, or blackberry is a drupelet, or cluster of tiny drupes, each of which contains a single seed. (Strawberries are also aggregate fruit, but they’re achenes, not drupes—a story for another day.)

Can we break down clingstone vs. freestone fruit, too?

You’ll typically come across the terms “clingstone” and “freestone” with peaches. Unsurprisingly, they refer to whether the stone, or pit, stubbornly clings to the flesh or can be easily pulled out when the fruit is sliced open. According to the Peach Truck, clingstone peaches, which are in season from mid-May through early June, are great for eating but don’t hold up as well to freezing or canning; whereas freestones, available from mid-June to August, are great for anything: “You just slice the peach down the middle and pull it right off the pit.”

What’s this I hear about poisonous pits?

Technically, there is a dangerous chemical called amygdalin present in the seeds of stone fruits. According to the National Capital Poison Center, “poisoning can occur when the pit and seed are crushed or chewed before swallowing, releasing the amygdalin. Amygdalin is then converted by the body to cyanide.” Um, yikes?

Still, the cyanide factor has not stopped several chefs from playing around with the ingredient. Food52 co-founder Amanda Hesser wrote about apricot pit ice cream for The New York Times in 2000, after trying it at Blue Hill in Manhattan. According to Shirley O. Corriher, a biochemist and the author of “Cookwise,” whom Hesser interviewed for her piece, “It would take a lot of kernels to harm an adult.” If you’re interested in trying the recipe, we’ve got you covered. (Of course, if stone-fruit-pit ice cream isn’t your speed, simply eat the fruit flesh.)

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Recipe: Apricot Pit Ice Cream

Makes: one quart

Ingredients

  • 45 to 50 apricot pits (4 1/2 ounces)
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 7 egg yolks

Directions

  1. Wrap apricot pits in a heavy dish towel. On the floor or on a sturdy cutting board, crack pits open using a hammer or a meat mallet, exposing kernels. Watch your fingers.
  2. In a medium saucepan, combine apricot kernels and shells with milk and heavy cream. Bring to a boil; turn off heat and let cool. Chill overnight in refrigerator.
  3. The next day, bring the milk mixture to a boil again and strain through a fine sieve. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and the yolks until light and fluffy. Whisk about 1/2 cup hot milk into the egg mixture, and then whisk the egg mixture into the milk. Pour into a large saucepan, place over medium-low heat and, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, cook until thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from heat immediately. Let cool, and then strain.
  4. Pour into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer’s instructions.

Just a few of our favorite (sweet and savory!) stone fruit recipes

Playing Up Perfect Peaches

Bursting with Pleasant Plums

Highlighting Cheery Cherries

Full of Nifty Nectarines

Packed With Dreamy Dates

Starring Brilliant Blackberries and Radiant Raspberries

Featuring Magnificent Mangoes

We asked doctors when we’ll know if we need COVID-19 booster shots

It’s been nearly six months since the first person in the U.S., nurse Sandra Lindsay, received the COVID-19 vaccine. Since patient one, over one hundred million Americans have been vaccinated. Indeed, as of Tuesday, at least 63.8 percent of U.S. adults have received one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As vaccination rates increase, COVID-19 cases decline nationally, and the CDC continues to ease restrictions, more states and cities are fully re-opening. That means life in the United States is inching closer to “normal,” whatever that might mean post-pandemic.

Yet experts say that it is unclear if we are merely entering a brief respite, or if the pandemic is coming to its more permanent end. The reason? Researchers still don’t know how long immunity lasts for the vaccinated, and whether or not there will be a need for booster shots. 

The idea that the coronavirus may require a booster shot is not new. Even at the pandemic’s dawn, it was a possibility, as it is relatively common for a vaccine to require a later booster; tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough are among the pathogens whose vaccines require later boosters. 

A recent study of Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine found that it conferred an immunity that lasted at least 6 months. If immunity drops after a certain period, there may be a necessity for boosters. 

Yet there are other factors that affect the need for booster shots besides the duration of immunity: mutations, too, will change the equation.

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center, told Salon infectious disease experts are monitoring to see if fully vaccinated people get re-infected; and if so, how severe their cases are.

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“To me, that’s the threshold you would use,” Adalja said. “So you would follow people that have been vaccinated, looking for breakthrough infections and see are more severe breakthrough infections occurring at a certain duration? That’s when you can kind of make that determination whether or not they’re needed.”

Dr. Charles Chiu, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California–San Francisco, agreed with this threshold concept. Yet Chiu said that it’s too early to tell if we will need boosters at all, in part because not everyone in the U.S. is vaccinated.

“We will know that we need a booster when we start seeing an uptick in the number of infections in the vaccinated population, but right now it’s difficult to assess because we have significant portions of the population who are unvaccinated,” Chiu said. “If we get to, say, essentially herd immunity, we would know if need a booster by continuing to do surveillance of infection and monitoring for infections and [COVID-19] screenings.”

As Chiu alluded to, there is a debate over whether or not we will need booster shots at all. While Chiu said it’s perhaps “too early to tell,” he advised to be prepared for the possibility.

Besides boosters, seasonal vaccinations are a common practice among vaccines. Flu shots are offered once a year, and regularly updated to try to reflect the seasonal flu virus. Children who receive the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella, receive a first dose between 12 and 15 months of age and the second dose at 4 through 6 years of age. Not long ago, Salon interviewed infectious disease experts, Chiu included, who speculated that COVID-19 vaccines could be a seasonal shot.

Fortunately, the efficacy of the multiple COVID-19 vaccines have surprised many in the field and exceeded expectations. Yet immunity to COVID-19 doesn’t seem to last forever. 

“We know that immunity elicited by the vaccines will wane over time, and the question is how fast is it going to wane. But eventually it probably will wane in such a way that we will need a booster,” Chiu added. He noted there was another looming reason that a booster might be necessary: mutations. 

“The emergence of variants that can variably affect the effectiveness of the vaccine” may necessitate boosters, Chiu noted.

Adalja also said he believes it’s too early to say for sure. 

“It’s especially premature . . . it takes time to study people who’ve been fully vaccinated to see if they get breakthrough infections,” Adalja said. “I don’t think it will be in the near-term based on what we’re seeing on this data for the general population, and that might be different for immunocompromised patients or people that are at high risk.”

But not all infectious disease experts agree. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon she doesn’t think we will need boosters for four main reasons. First, Gandhi pointed to one study that found that people with mild COVID-19 infections produce a “good T cell response,” meaning that the immune system’s memory is strong.

The immune system produces both B and T cells in response to an infection; B cells produce antibodies and T cells specifically attack and kill pathogens. Following vaccinations for other infections, like measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and diphtheria, T cell immunity is long lasting, as Gandhi explained.

Many scientists suspect that T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will be just as durable (meaning long-lasting) as that of SARS 17 years ago. Gandhi pointed to a separate study on 12 people who were vaccinated with two Pfizer/BioNTech shots showing that the place where their memory B cells were stored in their lymph nodes increased in concentration over time — suggesting that even if antibodies fade, Memory B cells will linger for a while and be able to prevent against the original SARS-CoV-2.

But what about the variants?

“The antibody levels may be down against a specific variant, but your T cells that you produce from the vaccines produce multiple ‘epitopes’. . .  and there’s about 100 T cells that line up across the spike protein to help you fight the infection after vaccination,” Gandhi said.

“And so even if you have a variant that has 13 mutations, like the Delta variant which a lot of mutations, you’re still going to get that lineup of lots of T cells that combat some of those variants. So I do think T cell responses from vaccines will work against them.”

Hopefully, new variants will be a moot issue. Chiu said it could be possible to stop new variants from emerging, but that possibility hinges on the entire world being vaccinated. 

“One thing that has to be kept in mind is that still the rest of the world is largely not immune, and the rest of the world has not really been vaccinated,” Chiu said. “The reason why these variants emerge is because you have ongoing transmission, so until we’re able to curtail the pandemic globally, we’re going to continue to see the emergence of variants.”

Chiu emphasized this is a major concern, as it could influence the need for booster shots.

Notably, in some countries, booster shots are already being administered.  According to AP News, the United Arab Emirates is offering boosters to people who received the Sinopharm vaccine. Adalja said that doesn’t necessarily foreshadow what will happen in the United States.

“The Sinopharm has not published phase three clinical data, so we don’t have a good strong understanding of how efficacious it is,” Adalja said. “But what we do know is that both the Sinovac and Sinopharm seem to not work as well as Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson — so there may be some specific issues with that vaccine.”

No, Trump’s not delusional — it’s actually much worse than that

A growing and prevailing view is that Donald Trump has become delusional. His fixed and intractable obsession with his Big Lie is seen as proof of his psychosis. 

But Trump is not detached from reality at all. He knows exactly what he is doing. He knows the difference between truth and a lie — he just doesn’t care about that, if a lie gets him what he wants. He is devious, conniving and hell-bent on satisfying his needs, wants and desires at any cost. 

Trump’s “delusion” is simply a conspiracy theory that he thinks has gained the most traction with his millions of supporters. His “delusion” is purposeful and intentional: The election was stolen from him; he will be reinstated as president in August (or at some other time); he could run for speaker of the House in order to impeach President Biden; he is likely to run for president again in 2024. He holds onto his “delusion” because it has successfully kept him the cult leader of the aggrieved and the victimized. His “delusion” has made him the pied piper of the Republican Party.

Calling Trump psychotic misses the point. It creates an excuse for a man who deserves none. Trump is a fearful, vindictive, anti-American megalomaniac. It is this combination of features that accounts for his “condition” or “state” since leaving office on Jan. 20.

Trump is terrified because he is looking down the barrel of a long list of potential criminal charges. The empaneling of a grand jury in New York has intensified his worries. He thinks that if he is somehow returned to the presidency, he will be protected from the indictments against him. So he is seeking a way to have the November election reversed through “audits” and spreading the fiction that he will be reinstated to the presidency in August. This is not a delusion. It is the wishful thinking of a humiliated and disgraced ex-leader who, it turns out, may be a criminal as well.

Trump thrives on destroying people who have been disloyal to him. He is actively trying to tarnish the reputations of Republicans who have not supported him. Look who he hates now: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney — and the list goes on. His vindictiveness is a far cry from delusion. Who he hates can change instantly, depending on how he perceives the transaction of the moment. McConnell was almost his buddy at one time.

Trump proved he was anti-American by inciting the insurrection against our government on Jan. 6. He does not love democracy and does not care about the will of the people. He wants to be a dictator, pure and simple. Disregarding the Constitution and overthrowing our government are nothing to a man desperate for the continued taste of power, greed and adulation. Nothing about that is a delusion.

Trump is a megalomaniac who thinks he is smarter, richer and stronger than anyone else. Everything he says and does is aimed at fortifying his grandiose and superior persona. He never admits to a mistake. He never acknowledges a loss. He always doubles down on a position. He does not care a whit about the people of this country. Grifting others is his sport. Despite being impeached twice and losing the national election by 7 million votes, Trump marches on with his false self of grandiosity. That is not a delusion — it is his psychic machinery of self-preservation.

It is a mistake to consider Trump psychotic. That would be to assume that psychiatric medication might alleviate his delusional thinking. But medication cannot fix a psychopath with malignant narcissism. Medication cannot fix a manipulative and exploitative opportunist. Medication does not affect shamelessness and lack of a moral compass. Medication cannot make a self-serving “delusion” disappear.

Trump remains a grave risk to democracy. He will throw anyone and anything under the bus to save his own hide and to advance his personal power and greed. If democracy gets in the way, he is more than ready to smash it or flick it away. Do not forget his glee as he watched the attempted coup against our nation our on television. He thought Jan. 6 might be his de facto coronation as dictator. That was his plan all along. He is an authoritarian, not a psychotic.

How long will we continue to enable this dangerous ex-leader? How long will the GOP remain lost, wandering through the wilderness of his psychopathic mind? How long will democracy be on the chopping block? When will a new, fresh Republican leader come forward?

These are the pressing questions of the day. Not whether Donald Trump is delusional. He is not. He is something far worse.

Meme stocks and “chicken tendies”: Wendy’s stock skyrockets after a Reddit shout-out

Following a Reddit post about how Wendy’s is “literally the perfect stock,” Wendy’s Co. shares surged to an all-time high on Tuesday, making the fast-food company the first restaurant to get looped into the weird and wild world of “meme-stock” trading. 

The subreddit “r/WallStreetBets” gained international attention in January when many of its members, which at that point, totaled about 4.6 million users, rallied against Wall Street’s effort to drive Gamestop’s share price down by short selling the stock. 

As Salon’s Jon Skolnik reported, “These online investors –– many of whom are retail investors using commission-free trading apps like Robinhood –– managed to catapult Gamestop’s stock price by 1,500%, confounding market analysts and enraging institutional investors who bet on the company’s downfall.” 

Since then, the subreddit has gained nearly 6 million new members and found new (often ironic) darlings along the way, including Blackberry, Bed Bath & Beyond and AMC. However, on Monday, Reddit user Chillznday laid out their reasoning for why Wendy’s stock was an ideal investment. 

They cited the popularity of the chain’s seasonal strawberry chicken summer salad and Wendy’s social media presence — which is, in itself, largely composed of memes and has included occasional Twitter jabs at Gamestop. 

“Well this one is obvious but Wendy’s Chicken Tendies,” they wrote. “Literally the perfect stock for this sub.” Tendies, by the way, is both r/WallStreetBets shorthand for trading profits (as one Redditor wrote, “LEVERAGE YOUR HOUSE!!!! LETS GET THESE TENDIES!!!!”) and a reference to the chain’s chicken nuggets.

In response, shares of Wendy’s surged more than 25% in late afternoon trading Tuesday, and data from the Yolosocks.live website — which tracks real-time mentions on stocks within the subreddit chatroom — indicated that Wendy’s became the seventh-most discussed stock among users, up from a previous rank of 19.

However, many financial analysts have pointed out that Wendy’s stock is different from past “meme stocks” because, unlike Gamestop or AMC, it’s not a popular choice among short sellers because it’s currently experiencing steady growth and has been for the last five years. Additionally, Wendy’s U.S. same-store sales in the first quarter increased by 13.5%. 

And while many Redditors flocked to buy, some were still uncertain. As one user wrote, “I’m not investing in Wendy’s until they can consistently remember my extra bbq sauce pack for my nugnugs.”

Fox News refuses to run Capitol riot ad — but was it really political censorship?

Fox News has rejected an advertisement that features video clips of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, along with testimony from police officers who were attacked or injured while attempting to hold back fervent Trump supporters as they breached the doors of Congress. The ad was created by MeidasTouch, a liberal activist organization and PAC.

“We made a $184,854 TV buy with this ad on Fox News this week. Fox News just denied airing our ad,” the liberal organization tweeted on Sunday. 

The ad prominently features remarks from police officers who shared first-hand accounts of the historic assault on the Capitol five months ago, including criticism of Republican lawmakers for their watered-down condemnations of the attack. 

A Fox News spokesperson told Salon this isn’t the first time the network has turned down MeidasTouch advertisements. In an April feature story, which MeidasTouch has disputed, Rolling Stone reported, “It’s not hard to find examples of how MeidasTouch’s grandiose self-promotion doesn’t match reality.”  

Ben Meiselas, the co-founder of MeidasTouch, told Salon on Tuesday that he was confident Fox News had rejected the Capitol-themed ad because of its political content. 

“Fox is refusing to run the MeidasTouch ad because they are scared of it,” Meiselas wrote by email on Tuesday afternoon. “Fox is not news. It is an anti-Democratic fascist propaganda network whose repeated big lies killed hundreds of thousands of people during COVID and caused the January 6th insurrection. Fox has become the gatekeeper to the fascist echo chamber they created, and they don’t want to expose their viewers to truth. Fox wants to destroy our democracy.” 

Many liberals on Twitter appeared to agree that Fox News must have turned down the ad for political reasons, but CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter, an outspoken critic of Fox News, doesn’t fully buy that argument. In a recent media newsletter, Stelter wrote: “A liberal group, MeidasTouch, is crying foul because Fox has declined to air its TV ad about January 6. But let’s be honest — this seems like a bid for attention. Fox is within its rights to object to the messenger behind the ad, not the message.” 

On Monday night, MSNBC host Brian Williams aired a segment on the MeidasTouch controversy. 

CORRECTION: This article has been revised since its original publication to remove an imprecise description of the Rolling Stone article about MeidasTouch, and to clarify that MeidasTouch disputes many of the characterizations in that article.

Marjorie Taylor Greene says Dr. Anthony Fauci should be criminally charged over COVID-19 pandemic

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Tuesday disputed the science behind virus research because she does not believe in evolution.

Greene made the remarks while speaking to Steve Bannon on Real America’s Voice, where she argued that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be criminally charged over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Georgia Republican said that she opposed so-called “gain of function” research on viruses.

“That’s a bioweapon,” she charged. “So we need to be very clear about what was the intent of COVID-19 and these viruses that they experiment with like some sort of Dr. Frankenstein experiment.”

“I don’t buy it because I don’t believe in evolution,” the congresswoman said. “I don’t believe in that type of so-called science. I don’t believe in evolution. I believe in God.”

Greene added, “These viruses were not making people sick until they created them and made them into weaponized viruses to be able to attach to our cells and make us sick. This has caused so many people to die all over the world.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

Fox News contributor: Kamala Harris chosen as VP “based on gender and skin color” — not “expertise”

On Fox News Tuesday, contributor Katie Pavlich went after Vice President Kamala Harris, who is currently in the middle of a tour of Mexico and Central America to address the source of the migrant surge — a trip that many on the right have already declared a failure because Harris hasn’t posed for a photo-op at the southern border.

“This is what happens when you choose your vice president based on gender and skin color — not on talent and expertise,” said Pavlich in discussion with the hosts of “The Five.”

Pavlich, a regular commentator on Fox, has previously praised the Proud Boys as “peaceful” and argued that “police aren’t shooting innocent Black men” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

You can watch the video below via Twitter: 

Lindsey Graham wants to end temporary COVID benefits since members of his own family “ain’t working”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., revealed on Tuesday that members of his own family are refusing to go back to work because they are getting unemployment benefits.

At a Senate hearing, Graham asked Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Shalanda Young about the temporary COVID-19 unemployment benefits that are being provided by the federal government.

Young pointed out that the most recent jobs report found the lowest unemployment level since the pandemic began.

Graham interrupted to assert that the “enhanced unemployment benefit is deterring people from re-entering into the workforce.”

“There’s a lot of jobs out there that are unfilled and will never be filled until you change the benefit structure,” he said.

“I understand the logic,” Young replied. “But I’ve also not met Americans who would prefer not to work. There’s a dignity to work in this country.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of people in my family that ain’t working because they get it,” Graham laughed. “I’ll show you some in my family.”

“So the bottom line is I think there are people out there that are not bad people but they’re not going to work for $15/hour if they can make $23 unemployed,” he added. “That doesn’t make you a bad person. If you’re working for $15/hour that makes you almost a chump.”

Graham called the unemployment benefits a “real problem.”

“I think we incentivize people not to work because simply they make more money,” he opined. “I’m not blaming them, I’m blaming us.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube: 

That “Sweet Tooth” shocking twist is a critique of misguided eco-fascism

Netflix’s new dystopian fantasy series “Sweet Tooth” has sparked discussion about its blistering, not-so-subtle commentary on sustainability, disease, humanity, and power. The series, based on Jeff Lemire’s comic book of the same name, is unique from the typical dystopian story, presenting post-apocalyptic horrors amid a backdrop of stunningly beautiful nature shots. And it’s precisely this beauty that’s convinced some of the series’ characters to justify an apocalypse that’s wiped out vast swaths of the human population. “Nature is healing”…but at what cost?

The premise of “Sweet Tooth” is horrifying, fascinating and achingly familiar. A deadly virus called H5G9 arrives seemingly from out of nowhere, and at the same time, every baby being born is now a hybrid of a human and another animal. The pandemic and disruption in human births lead to what’s called the Great Crumble, after which nothing is the same, and society largely descends into lawlessness, all while nature thrives and becomes more beautiful than ever.

Gus (Christian Convery) is a hybrid deer boy – and the only hybrid who can talk – who sets out with a man named Jepperd (Nonso Anozie) on a quest to find Gus’ mother. Yet, Gus ends up discovering so much more. Throughout their travels, Gus must try to hide his identity as a hybrid from a militant group called the Last Men, who serve the mysterious General Abbott (Neil Sandilands) in his quest to capture and experiment on the vulnerable child hybrids. 

By the end of the season, we discover Abbotts’ ultimate goal is to create a cure to H5G9 that he can weaponize to choose who lives and who dies, with the help of Dr. Aditya Singh (Adeel Akhtar), whom he is holding hostage. And we discover something else: H5G9 and the hybrids didn’t come out of nowhere, as those who see these phenomena as nature’s retribution believe — instead, they appear to have been created in a lab, most likely by the woman Gus thought was his mother.

This stunning “Sweet Tooth” twist throws off all of its main protagonists: Gus questions who and what he truly is; his travel companion, Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), who leads a hybrid-saving group of warriors called the Animal Army, begins to rethink everything that once motivated her. Bear had made saving hybrids her life goal, believing they had come from nature to replace humanity and heal the Earth. 

No, nature is not healing by destroying us

Over the course of the series, many characters romanticize the apocalypse, and the rise of the hybrids and end of human births, as nature’s “punishment” for humanity’s mistreatment of the Earth. This thinking mirrors many real-life social media posts from early in the COVID-19 pandemic, offering beautiful shots of clean rivers, clear skies and empty roads, as a result of less human activity. These posts were often captioned with adages along the lines of “nature is healing.” Both on “Sweet Tooth” and in real life, this thinking veers close to eco-fascism, implying all of us are equally to blame for the destruction being inflicted on the planet, and climate catastrophe can be reined in by population control. 

This is, of course, provably false, ignoring vastly important inequalities by class and race in who is contributing most to climate change, and who is more likely to suffer the consequences of it. For most of the show, “Sweet Tooth” makes you think the characters who hold this point of view are onto something, that all of this devastation and the violent purging of mankind really is Earth’s natural way of healing itself — until the unsettling twist is revealed.

The plot twist seems to offer a sharp rebuke to the idea that humanity deserves to be punished, or that wiping out the population is a natural way to offset climate change. In “Sweet Tooth,” the pandemic and hybrid births didn’t happen naturally — they’re manmade and devastating.

Poverty, climate change, and human suffering aren’t the result of “overpopulation” — they’re a result of vastly unequal distribution of resources, stemming from capitalism and colonialism. The poorest half of the world’s population produces just 10% of all carbon emissions. The wealthiest 10% produce half of all emissions. The wealthiest 16% of the world population consume 80% of all natural resources. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. 

Yet, at the end of the day, it’s poor people of color who are hit the hardest by the climate catastrophe for which the wealthy and powerful are disproportionately responsible: Black communities are exposed to 56% more pollution than the amount of pollution caused by their consumption; Latinx communities are exposed to 63% more. Those who are most likely to suffer from poverty and the toxic impacts of climate change are those who consume the least — yet real-life eco-fascist idealogues, and those in the post-apocalyptic world of “Sweet Tooth,” have convinced themselves that all of humanity deserves to be equally punished. 

It’s also worth noting those who hold the misguided belief that climate catastrophe can be addressed by reducing the population are not necessarily evil, or overt eco-fascists. In the real world, many environmentalists and some reproductive rights advocates, often from white-led institutions, promote access to reproductive health care as a means to fight climate change. Yet, everyone should be supported in planning and building their family however they choose, and cracking down on oil corporations is more likely to address climate change than cracking down on pregnancies. Characters like Bear and the warriors of the Animal Army, or Gus’ original father figure, Pubba, are similarly misguided, doing all they can to protect the hybrids, while also believing the Great Crumble was justified.

“Sweet Tooth” also portrays the unfiltered reality of how the wealthy will do whatever it takes to protect themselves, and are desensitized to the tremendous violence required to maintain their way of living. When Dr. Singh’s wife Rani (Aliza Vellani) contracts H5G9, the couple must go to great lengths to hide her illness from their neighbors, who had formed a mob to kill anyone in their wealthy community who contracts the virus by setting them and their house on fire. In real life, wealthy households and corporations have often lived off harming the poor and vulnerable, exploiting their labor or polluting their living environments. With many of the lower classes wiped out by the Great Crumble, the wealthy instead begin to turn on each other.

“Sweet Tooth” isn’t the first time eco-fascist concepts have powerfully shaped film and television storylines. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s legendary big bad, Thanos, was arguably an eco-fascist himself, snapping his fingers to eviscerate half of all living things rather than equitably redistribute wealth, land and resources. But “Sweet Tooth” is especially compelling as many of us move toward some form of post-pandemic normalcy, raising questions about what new world awaits us after such tremendous, collective loss, and whether it’s at all possible for nature and humanity to heal and thrive together, not at the other’s expense.

“Loki” identifies the God of Mischief as gender-fluid in much-needed, MCU queer representation

Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are no strangers to Easter eggs, and they found a particularly exciting one in a new “Loki” teaser, ahead of the Disney+ series’ premiere on Wednesday. In the teaser, Loki’s sex is marked as “fluid,” all but confirming what many fans have been speculating about for years. Loki, after all, is a frequent shape-shifter, who has often assumed the form of women — including a female character called Lady Loki in the Marvel Comics.

The confirmation of a beloved MCU character’s gender fluidity is exciting, but still barely counts as visibility. It’s crucial for queer audiences to receive more meaningful representation than throwaway hints and glimpses. A real win would be Loki’s identity actually playing a role in the story, not unlike how Sam Wilson’s (Anthony Mackie) Blackness plays a decisive role in his experience becoming Captain America in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Now that the MCU is increasingly embracing the inextricable power of identity in any superhero story, why stop at “Loki”?

“Loki” will follow the adventures of titular character Loki (Tom Hiddleston), God of Mischief and brother of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), in the aftermath of Loki’s almost blink-and-you-miss-it storyline in “Avengers: Endgame.” 

After being killed by Thanos within the opening minutes of “Avengers: Infinity War,” the 2012 version of Loki escapes into the unknown when the Avengers travel back in time to the events of the first Avengers movie in pursuit of the infinity stones. While much of the storyline of “Loki” remains a mystery, Loki’s character will finally be developed independent of his relationship with Thor and the others, while giving MCU fans their first glimpse into the ever-expanding multiverse unleashed by “Endgame.”

Prior to this glimpse from the upcoming Disney+ series, the Marvel Comics have also alluded to Loki as gender fluid, and even pansexual. As Comicbook has reported, in “Original Sin 5.5” from 2014, Loki’s father Odin speaks of his children — Thor, Angela and Loki — by referring to them as, “My children. My son and my daughter and my child who is both.” In the graphic novel “Loki: Where Mischief Lies,” Loki is confirmed as gender fluid and pansexual.

In other words, this reveal from the upcoming show might not exactly be news to fans who also read the comics upon which the MCU is based — but it’s certainly an exciting departure from the MCU’s long history of cis-heteronormativity. The extent to which Loki’s gender and sexuality will play a role in the story of “Loki” remains unclear. After all, the form shown in the teaser could, in fact, really be just another Easter egg, which would be disappointing.

But some fans think Loki’s confirmed gender fluidity could carry deeper meaning in the MCU — especially since, as Teen Vogue reported, the series creator and executive producer, Michael Waldron, “liked” a tweet that said, “MCU Loki finally being [canonically] under the trans umbrella makes me as a trans person feel so valid. This is why representation is so important. Loki being genderfluid is a big step in the right direction for positive LGBTQ+ representation in popular media.”

The upcoming movie “Eternals” will also feature the MCU’s first gay superhero, and even its first LGBTQ onscreen kiss, this November. All of this, of course, is long overdue, but certainly refreshing news during Pride Month this June. And hopefully, these steps toward representation of queer characters and storylines can begin to make it up to longtime MCU fans who believed the relationship between original Captain America Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) was actually a love story, until the very end — or, dare I say, “till the end of the line.”

To his credit, Stan has expressed zero qualms about the idea of Barnes being gay or bisexual, as many fans have frequently proposed. In response to “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” fan theories that Barnes and Wilson had a romantic relationship, Stan told Variety last month, “I’m just happy that the relationship is embraced, and it should be embraced in whatever way or fashion that people desire and want it to be.”

“Loki” premieres the first of six episodes Wednesday, June 9 on Disney+. The series promises to be a fun and mischievous thrill ride through time, space, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large.

Barack Obama on GOP’s war against democracy: “Unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago”

Former President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN Monday that the Republican Party’s positions have become “unrecognizable and unacceptable” since he left office.

Obama said he was surprised that the “dark spirits” that rose during his time in office like “xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, [and] an antipathy toward Black and brown folks,” have taken over the Republican Party.

“I thought that there were enough guardrails institutionally that even after Trump was elected that you would have the so-called Republican establishement who would say, ‘Ok, you know, it’s a problem if the White House … doesn’t seem to be concerned about Russian meddling,’ or ‘It’s a problem if we have a president who’s saying that … Neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, there’s good people on both sides,'” Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The first Black president in U.S. history went on to admit that he was surprised that the Republican Party was “cowed into accepting” it.

“We have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago,” he said.

Obama said that some Republicans finally spoke out after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January and hunted for lawmakers through the halls of Congress, but many have since walked back their criticism of Trump and now there are “large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election.” Even Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who voted to impeach Trump and was booted from GOP leadership for her criticism, has backed the party’s efforts to restrict ballot access.

“Poof, suddenly everybody was back in line,” Obama said, adding that “I didn’t expect that there would be so few people who would say, ‘Well I don’t mind losing my office because this is too important, America’s too important, our democracy is too important.'”

It’s unclear why Obama believed that Republicans would criticize Trump’s rhetoric after he spent years pushing racist birther conspiracy theories en route to the GOP nomination and ultimately the White House. Trump has continued to exert his power over the party after getting more votes than any previous sitting president (despite losing the election) and raising unprecedented sums of money.

Obama during his two terms in office saw the rise of the Tea Party, which has since morphed into the powerful House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group that spent years pushing conspiracy theories about Benghazi and other would-be scandals. At the same time, Republican-led state legislatures pushed voter suppression efforts and drew illegal racial gerrymanders to solidify their grasp on power. After losing the 2020 presidential election amid record turnout, the GOP has introduced hundreds of bills that would make it harder to vote and, in some cases, allow elections to be overturned.

Obama said that Trump convinced his supporters of his lies but also placed blame on conservative media for echoing them to the Republican base.

“There are certain right-wing media venues … that monetize and capitalize on stoking the fear and resentment of a White population that is witnessing a changing America and seeing demographic changes,” he said, adding that these outlets “do everything they can to give people a sense that their way of life is threatened and that people are trying to take advantage of them.”

Instead of relying on trusted news sources, “you have 1,000 different venues,” he said, which has “contributed to that sense that we don’t have anything in common.”

“We occupy different worlds. And it becomes that much more difficult for us to hear each other, see each other,” he added.

Race is at the heart of the growing divisions because it is hard for white Americans to “be proud of this country” while at the same time accepting that “terrible stuff happened,” Obama argued.

“The vestiges of that linger and continue,” he said. “And the truth is that when I tried to tell that story, oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain.”

Despite growing divisions, the former president expressed optimism that things will improve.

“I’m still the hope and change guy,” he said. “My hope is that the tides will turn. But that does require each of us to understand that this experiment in democracy is not self-executing. It doesn’t happen just automatically.”

Watch part of Obama’s interview below:

Is “The Bachelor” franchise even salvageable now that Chris Harrison exited as host for good?

After months of speculation, on Tuesday, “Bachelor” producers officially announced long-time host Chris Harrison is permanently exiting the franchise. Harrison’s exit after 19 years of hosting one of the most equal-parts beloved and hated reality shows in the world follows an incident earlier this year, in which Harrison adamantly defended the past, racist actions of former “Bachelor” contestant and Season 25 winner Rachael Kirkconnell.

Yet, it’s worth asking whether Harrison’s exit is even enough at this point, and whether the “Bachelor” franchise, steeped in decades of white, cis, heteronormativity, is even salvageable. The incident with Harrison is just the tip of the iceberg, or to use the “Bachelor” parlance, a thorny rose among a bouquet of such roses over the years.

For those who didn’t follow the drama with Matt James’ season — the first season with a Black, biracial male lead — back in February, Kirkconnell was exposed for attending an antebellum-themed sorority event in 2018. Kirkconnell herself denounced her attendance, and even insisted that no one defend her, but Harrison couldn’t help himself. In a heated and cringe-inducing argument with Rachel Lindsay, the first Black “Bachelorette” from 2017, on her podcast, Harrison decried the “woke police” and told Lindsay that Kirkconnell’s attendance at the party was perfectly fine by the standards of 2018.

“Is it a good look in 2018 or is it not a good look in 2021, because there’s a big difference,” Harrison said. He added, “These girls got dressed and went to a party and had a great time. They were 18 years old. Does that make it okay? I don’t know, Rachel, you tell me . . . but where is this lens we’re holding up and was that lens available and were we all looking through it in 2018?”

Harrison also spoke at length about his sympathy for Kirkconnell: “This poor girl Rachael, who has just been thrown to the lions — I don’t how you are equipped when you have never done this before to be woke enough, to be eloquent enough, to be ready to handle this,” he said, “I’m not sure why we’re so ready to throw this poor woman in the river.” 

Sure, being exposed for past racist behavior might have put Kirkconnell in an uncomfortable situation — but rather than throwing her “in the river,” as Harrison put it, the call-out provided Kirkconnell the chance to work on herself, and learn about the very active, persistent forces of racism in which she had participated, intentionally or not.

An example of how this can provide for real-life reflection and learning is the recent controversy with “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” star Ellie Kemper having attended – and been crowned queen of a racist, sexist ball when she was 19. The actress apologized, owned up to her ignorance but also acknowledged the privilege that allowed her to benefit off of such harmful practices. Therefore, if Harrison wanted to feel sorry for or center anyone’s experience in the debacle – rather than a white woman who had participated in a racist tradition – he could have instead focused his energy on supporting those who remain oppressed by white supremacy to this day.

What followed the scandal was an “After the Final Rose,” post-season finale episode designed with obvious and deliberate caution for fragile white audiences, to whom the franchise has always catered. More time was spent discussing the supposed difference between behavior that is “racial,” whatever that even means, and behavior that is “racist,” than actual, candid introspection about the franchise’s enduring participation in white supremacy. 

And, of course, it’s not even the years of nearly all-white casting of contestants and leads, until Lindsay in 2017, Tayshia Adams in 2020, and Matt James this year. The more recent casting selections certainly wouldn’t have happened but for a widespread, anti-racist reckoning in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, last year. These are realities the “Bachelor” franchise never had any intention of considering or wading into when it was created; even now, it’s only vaguely scratched the surface of these issues because it became profitable and brand-saving to do so. 

Ultimately, no matter who is cast and who leads, the show will live up to its design as escapism for white people, who are privileged with the ability to escape at all, and sink into a television show about love and picturesque dates and fantasy destinations, in an enclosed, picture-perfect snow globe of a world. In this snow globe, racism, misogyny, police violence, poverty, bigotry, and the everyday brutality of the real world simply don’t exist — because the white audience to whom the show is catered is able to believe such a world can exist. The rest of us know better.

The Season 25 “After the Final Rose” episode perfectly captures the hollowness of the franchise’s recent attempts at an anti-racist remodeling job that remains designed for the white gaze. The special episode spent more time talking about the importance of forgiving racist white people than addressing structural racism, or the policies that uphold and enforce white supremacy, which go beyond a couple white individuals being problematic. The episode also treated anti-racist struggle as peace and singing kumbaya around a campfire, shielding its audiences from the everyday nature of racist violence, from the truth about why riots happen, from the exploitation inherent to making Black people like Lindsay, James, or Adams perform the labor of educating white people about racism, all while keeping white people comfortable.

“I don’t want to hear, ‘America doesn’t want to see it,'” Lindsay said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last year. “That’s been the problem with the Bachelor franchise — you keep doing what you think America wants to see and that’s why we haven’t seen people of color as leads. We’ve got to stop that cycle. I don’t care if it makes America uncomfortable. It’s our current reality.”

These are problems that one person — Chris Harrison — departing can’t fix. They’re problems that can’t be fixed with casting and recasting, or scripted, peacemaking conversations with problematic white people. They’re problems that can only begin to be fixed by meaningfully challenging its white audience, by making them uncomfortable, by pulling back the curtain on how love can’t happen in a vacuum from the real world and all its racist, classist, sexist, bigoted ugliness. To do so would be to blow up the entire franchise — and maybe that’s what we need.

We can end lead poisoning during this lifetime

Not too long ago, as a graduate student, I took a crash course in lead. I moved to Vermont from the Midwest to study the geochemistry of lead in soil, and because I needed samples for my project, my professor and I decided to test a 100-year-old house his family had bought. Houses of that age are poisonous onions; peel back the outer layers and you are likely to find leaded paint, which the federal government didn’t ban for residential use until 1978. Decades of wind and rain had scattered paint chips around the outside of the house. We twisted augers into the ground and came up with ten bags of soil while his wife painted the living room and his 6-year-old son played in his bedroom.

Back in the lab, I ground up a few tablespoons from a sample and analyzed the powder with an X-ray gun. The lead concentration was more than 25 times the limit the Environmental Protection Agency deems hazardous in soil. The proportion of lead-to-soil was near the proportion of chili powder in a good chili.

It was a scary reminder that despite all the protective behaviors we might knowingly adopt — be mindful when renovating an old home; wear a respirator at the firing range — lead is invisible and all around us. I was stunned to learn that lead arsenate, a pesticide that was applied for nearly a hundred years in American apple orchards, was likely contaminating soil in abandoned farm fields where I hoped to find tasty morels. Preliminary data suggest that the mushrooms sometimes absorb soil lead at levels that exceed the Food and Drug Administration’s limit for safe consumption.

Unfortunately, the last presidential administration missed an opportunity to meaningfully strengthen the out-of-date standards for contaminants like lead, and even loosened some restrictions. This is despite a steady stream of science linking lead to terrible health outcomes, especially for children, and gut-wrenching news items identifying more and more exposure pathways, such as the recent report of a House oversight subcommittee that found elevated lead in many common baby foods (even in some organic brands). 

While some petroleum-based contaminants decay over time, lead does not biodegrade to become less harmful, meaning it tends to stay in place. Despite our best intentions, removing lead-contaminated soil around each lead-painted home in the U.S. would involve landfilling valuable soil, costing nearly $10,000 per home. With 38 million homes estimated to harbor lead-based paint as of 2002 — a figure that is likely lower today, due to demolitions — getting rid of all lead-contaminated soil around houses would be an impossible task. And landfilling lead-contaminated soil doesn’t really end the problem. It just shifts the burden to a different area within range of a hazardous waste dump. Removing the topsoil where lead tends to accumulate also displaces a highly biodiverse part of the soil ecosystem. Although it gradually sinks deeper into the soil over time, if it doesn’t hitch a ride on a SpaceX rocket, lead is here to stay.

The most sustainable clean-up solutions for lead-contaminated soil involve simply planting shrubbery, so the soil is less likely to move — or be eaten by a two-year-old. Another alternative is to manipulate the behavior of the element by adding phosphate, which binds tightly to lead and makes it less likely to be absorbed by humans and other organisms.

Lead presents a tangle of complexities. Leaded pipes can safely carry tap water to a city’s homes for decades, or they can corrode and dissolve into the water supply when the treatment protocol is altered (as was the case in Flint, Michigan). Lead is tightly held by organic matter in topsoil, but traces in city dust still end up on playground equipment during dry summer months. Soil lead levels on remote mountaintops can rival those along busy highways, swept there by wind currents saturated with engine exhaust. In cities, lead’s distribution in soil is unpredictable — it might spike near a source of old paint but plunge to almost nothing a few meters away. Without expensive testing, even trained experts struggle to predict overall levels of lead contamination. Unlike with carbon monoxide, there is no cheap sensor you can install to alert you to potential exposure. People might obtain lead testing around their home with a portable X-ray gun before purchasing or remodeling a home, but sources of lead contamination can be diffuse, and in many cases exposure is only detected with a blood test after lead has been absorbed.

So we are left to rely on regulations to protect us. But even in progressive states where environmental regulations are strict, poisoning of soil and water is usually self-reported, or uncovered only after people are harmed. A Vermont official once told me the state’s rules around illegal dumping were like “asking a murderer to call 911 to report the murder.” And the fines, in any case, are usually a fraction of the profits.

Even the ancient Romans understood that lead was toxic, but industrial interests in the U.S. kept it from being regulated at the federal level for decades despite its dangers being known. And there were safer alternatives. Thomas Midgley Jr., a scientist at General Motors — who in the 1920s invented the lead gasoline additives used to prevent a then-common problem caused by uneven combustion in car engines called knocking — had previously engineered a plant-based additive capable of performing the same function. But this safer alternative was scrapped because it was unpatentable, condemning four decades of children to lead poisoning.

The specter of lead in the U.S. pales in comparison to the risks it poses in other countries. Small-scale lead recycling, common in developing countries, creates lead levels in soil and air that endanger whole communities. The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF estimates that one in three children globally is affected by poisonous levels of lead in their blood. Still used in batteries, solder, bullets, and airplane fuel, lead continues to wander around our communities like an evil ghost. Although it is efficiently recycled, a leaky recovery pipeline means it will continue to slip through the cracks and accumulate in our soil, water, air, food, and bodies unless we eliminate our reliance completely.

All of which is a strong argument for government intervention. Individual action is not enough: In the absence of our own ability to detect risk, we must rely on regulation and remediation of environmental hazards by elected officials and experts. The problem of lead is reminiscent of other big problems that bear down disproportionately on communities of color. Environmental justice groups led by Black and Indigenous activists have been advocating for lead-safe communities for decades, and the time for action is long past due.

Congress should expand and strengthen the federal law regulating toxic chemicals to incorporate the EPA’s finding that there is “no safe level” of lead exposure for children by banning lead in ammunition, solder, and imported goods. The FDA should strengthen existing recommendations for foodborne lead limits by converting them from guidelines into regulations. President Joe Biden should issue an executive order ending the country’s reliance on unregulated foreign battery recycling, a significant source of lead emissions, to address a major global environmental justice concern. Passage of the recently introduced Green New Deal for Cities would sustainably remediate sources of lead in urban areas, prioritizing communities of color and low-income communities. And perhaps it’s time to envision a Clean Soil Act, like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts mobilized by popular environmental advocacy in the 1960s and 70s, which could protect soil ecosystems and the health of people who live on them. 

Soil holds a long, unfailing memory. The lead by my former adviser’s house will remain, as will the lead that haunts so many other communities. It’s not going away on its own, and our leaders need to come to grips with that reality. 

* * *

Jenny Bower is a PhD candidate at the University of Vermont.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Merrick Garland’s DOJ is defending Donald Trump — again

The Biden Justice Department is still defending Donald Trump in a defamation suit brought against the former president by one of his rape acusers, E. Jean Carroll, arguing that Trump should not be held liable for making “crude remarks” against Carroll during his time in office. 

Carroll’s accusations date back to 2019, when the former Elle columnist formally accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. According to Carroll’s account, Trump threw her against a wall of a dressing room of a Manhattan department store, pulled off her clothing, and forced himself onto her. 

Trump has vehemently denied the journalist’s allegations, claiming that Carroll was “not his type.” He also released a public statement accusing Carroll of fabricating the accusations, prompting Carroll to file a defamation lawsuit against the former president. 

The suit was originally brought to a New York state court before Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr stepped in, sending the case to a federal court, where he established that Trump – as opposed to the federal government – was the defendant. Last October, Barr argued that Trump’s remarks about Carroll were not made in his personal interests but as part of his duties as a public employee – a distinction that would have broadly immunized him from defamation suits. 

“Given the president’s position in our constitutional structure, his role in communicating with the public is especially significant,” wrote Justice Department lawyers at the time, “the president’s statements fall within the scope of his employment for multiple reasons.”

Carroll’s legal team has argued that Trump’s comments fell way out of line with his official duties. “There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” her lawyers said in a court filing last year.

Last October, a federal judge shot down Barr’s attempt to influence the suit since the alleged assault occurred “several decades before [Trump] took office,” when the former president had “no relationship to the official business of the United States.” Trump, however, appealed the ruling to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, where the case now sits.

On Monday night, the Department of Justice, now led by Biden-appointed Attorney General Merrick B. Garland provided a first glimpse into its position on the suit, arguing that Trump was in fact operating within the ambit of his role as president when he accused Carroll of lying. 

“Elected public officials can — and often must — address allegations regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for office,” Justice Department attorneys claimed, adding, “Officials do not step outside the bounds of their office simply because they are addressing questions regarding allegations about their personal lives.”

The department continued: “Then-President Trump’s response to Ms. Carroll’s serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful. But this case does not concern whether Mr. Trump’s response was appropriate. Nor does it turn on the truthfulness of Ms. Carroll’s allegations.”

Carroll’s leading attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan, expressed surprise over the department’s position, saying that it was “truly shocking that the current Department of Justice would allow Donald Trump to get away with lying about it.”

“The undisputed facts demonstrate that President Trump was not acting in furtherance of any duties owed to any arguable employer when he made the statements at issue,” Kaplan continued. “His comments concerned an alleged sexual assault that took place several decades before he took office, and the allegations have no relationship to the official business of the United States. To conclude otherwise would require the Court to adopt a view that virtually everything the president does is within the public interest by virtue of his office.”

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to set a date for oral arguments in Trump’s appeal.

Right-wingers go nuts over “Kamala cookies” given to media on Air Force Two

Conservatives have found something new to be outraged over, and it’s got nothing to do with the Green New Deal or “cancel culture” or even critical race theory. It’s cookies. More specifically, cookies that were handed out to reporters aboard Air Force Two over the weekend, which were decorated with a likeness of Vice President Kamala Harris, albeit somewhat indistinctly. 

USA Today White House reporter Courtney Subramanian on Sunday evening tweeted a photo of a cookie with the caption, “VP made an OTR [off the record] visit to the back of the plane and delivered cookies decorated with the shape of her likeness as well as AF2.” 

Harris was of course making her first international trip as vice president, bound for Guatemala with a large media contingent aboard. 

Over the past two days, the outrage among right-wing pundits and former Trump advisors has continued to build ever more intense. Most notably, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, along with Trump advisers Jason Miller and Steve Cortes, right-wing Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and longtime NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, took shots at the baked goods — with other right-wing pundits claiming it was proof that Harris is a “narcissist.” 

According to a pool report filed by the USA Today reporter on Sunday, the Harris cookies were given to media personnel on the trip as a gift, they came from the Black-owned bakery Cake Wich Craft in Washington.  

“VPOTUS came to the back of the plane and spoke to press OTR for five minutes. She delivered cookies decorated with the shape of her likeness as well as of Air Force Two. The cookies were provided by Cupcake Dreams, a black-owned business in Washington, DC. The bakery owner’s name is Aleatra Dimitrijevski,” Subramanian wrote.  

“Planned in plain sight”: Why Donald Trump makes no attempt to hide his insurrectionist plots

On Tuesday morning, a new Senate report revealed even more of what is increasingly obvious: The January 6 Capitol insurrection was both surprisingly predictable and yet widely ignored by the people who had the power to stop it.

“The U.S. Capitol Police had specific intelligence that supporters of President Donald Trump planned to mount an armed invasion of the Capitol at least two weeks before the Jan. 6 riot,” the Washington Post reports, “but a series of omissions and miscommunications kept that information from reaching front-line officers targeted by the violence.” 

The report itself is incredibly bureaucratic and, being bipartisan, overly delicate with the fragile feelings of Republicans who continue to support Trump despite his overt incitement of the insurrection. But the most important and remarkable aspect of the report is how it lays out that Capitol intelligence officials downplayed the threat of violence, even though, to quote the report author Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., “The attack was, quite frankly, planned in plain sight.”

Intelligence officers had a huge amount of information about a planned attack because the insurrectionists were openly talking about it online and in great detail. But despite this, intelligence officials deemed the likelihood of an attack as “remote” and “improbable,” choosing instead to ignore right-wing militia types openly sharing maps and strategies for storming the building. There are a lot of theories as to why Capitol intelligence simply didn’t take the insurrectionists seriously, but it really may be as simple as this: Hiding in plain sight works — at least when it comes to white conservatives with terroristic inclinations.

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Most of us, including intelligence officials, reasonably expect that people engaging in a criminal conspiracy prefer to do so in secret. (Cue the scene from “The Wire” of Stringer Bell dressing down an underling for “taking notes on a criminal f–king conspiracy!”) But it appears that scheming right in the open was more effective for the Capitol insurrectionists precisely because it cut across the “common sense” expectation. All the guns and maps talk was easy for intelligence officials to write off as mere fantasy play-acting, instead of a serious plan. 

And really, is it any surprise that the Capitol insurrectionists pulled off the “hiding in plain sight” strategy? They were only following the lead of the chief instigator of the insurrection, Trump himself. For years, Trump successfully demonstrated that the best way to get away with crimes is to commit them loudly. From the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape to the flagrant public bribe-taking to giving Russian conspiracists instructions on camera to witness tampering on Twitter,  Trump realized that being bold about crimes and corruption keeps people from taking it seriously. 

The reason it worked is simple: Trump didn’t bother to hide his corruption. That lulled people into believing it couldn’t really be that bad. It was easy for Trump apologists to write it off as “jokes” or otherwise no big deal, because if it was serious, then he would take pains to hide it, right? It was only when Trump did take measures to hide his behavior — in the attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian president into falsifying evidence for a smear of Joe Biden — that his malfeasance finally got the attention it deserved. And it was all because that particular scandal fit our pre-existing notion that if it’s really a crime, the criminals try to hide what they’re doing. 

Trump used this “hiding in plain sight” strategy to organize and incite the January 6 insurrection.

In the days after the Capitol was stormed, the Just Security blog put together a comprehensive timeline of Trump’s year of incitement and what was remarkable is how open Trump was about what he was doing. He repeatedly heaped praise on right-wing militias that used threats of violence against public officials and Biden campaign staff. He started in early on the Big Lie, insisting for months ahead of the election that the only way he could lose is if it were stolen. He even used a presidential debate stage to issue instructions to the Proud Boys, telling them to be on “stand by” before he gave them the time and place for the storming in an infamous tweet reading, “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

The extremely public nature of Trump’s incitement, however, perversely gave congressional Republicans the cover they needed to claim he didn’t do the thing he obviously did. Repeatedly, Republicans insisted that Trump was merely speaking metaphorically and not literally with all his “fight” and “take back” language. That Trump didn’t hide or show shame aided this nonsense excuse, because it really is just that hard to believe that someone would be so bold and public about a criminal conspiracy. And because Trump left the detailed work of the insurrection to the people who organized it online — basically, crowdsourcing an insurrection — it allows Republicans to pretend that he wasn’t the ringleader. 

Many Stringer Bell jokes were made about how Trump and his cronies do their crimes right out in the public view and how supposedly foolish this was. But really, was it?

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Most of Trump’s cronies are walking around free. Trump openly and flagrantly attempted a coup, and he’s not only not in jail for it, but he’s still the de facto head of the Republican Party. Whenever anyone points out that he’s a literal seditionist, Republicans just shrug and pretend all of that violence and insurrection talk was just jokes and fantasies. Because of the politics of tip-toeing around Republican feelings, the Senate report focuses on “better planning, training and intelligence gathering,” according to the Washington Post, and “its contents steer clear of offering any assessment or conclusion about Trump’s responsibility for the riot.” That is unfortunate because while intelligence failures were a problem, the real reason the Capitol riot happened is because Trump was empowered by the GOP and right-wing media to spread his lies and incite violence without consequence. And that problem hasn’t been addressed in any meaningful way at all. If anything, it’s just gotten worse. Trump has been using the media to disseminate yet another date for his followers to take action — sometime in August — just as he targeted January 6. And he used a platform offered to him by the Republican party, a big speech at a North Carolina event, to continue stoking insurrections by claiming that Joe Biden’s electoral win was the “crime of the century.”

Putting more cops around the Capitol Building doesn’t address this larger issue. If there is more violence, it’s unlikely to target the Capitol, in no small part because Trump’s followers understand that it’s likely to be more secure than it was January 6. 

No, the real issue here is the “hiding in plain sight” problem.

Trump and his cronies have figured out how to use media and social media as a tool to crowdsource ideas for a fascistic takeover of the U.S. government. They throw out conspiracy theories and let the MAGAheads figure out the details for themselves about how to make it happen. It’s inefficient, sure. Many of the schemes that the red hats tease out online fail to manifest in person. Still, it allows Trump to keep his hands relatively clean because he gets to pretend he’s just spitballing instead of giving instructions. It’s on other people to work out the details, from the Republicans passing state laws to make it easier to steal elections to the red hats who have now been given a new date to fixate on as a possible next target. As long as people’s heads remain in the sand about what Trump is doing, the threat of more violence remains active. 

The 4 Basque-Pyrenees pantry essentials in my kitchen

Welcome to Asha Loupy‘s Pantry! In each installment of this series, a recipe developer will share with us the pantry items essential to their cooking. This month, we’re exploring four Basque-Pyrenees staples in Asha’s kitchen.

As a longtime home cook, former grocery buyer for a specialty food shop, and now recipe developer, my pantry remains much more well-traveled than I am — from Malaysian sambal and shrimp paste to Pragati turmeric from Andhra Pradesh, to Spanish extra-virgin olive oil and Basque peppers. The euphoria I was filled with at the first thought of sharing my pantry was quickly replaced by stomach-dropping dread — what region or country was I actually qualified to write about?

As the recipe editor for the equitable spice company Diaspora Co. and, well, my being brown, I felt that readers would want and expect to see an Indian pantry from me. Up until very recently, the work of BIPOC food writers — and the cuisines we could be an authority on — was tied very closely to the color of our skin. The scope of our work being reduced through a white lens to familial dishes and what we grew up eating. But here’s the thing: I didn’t grow up eating Bengali food, as my skin would suggest.

I was adopted from Calcutta, India, at 10 weeks old by my mom, and I grew up in Sacramento, California. My mom and I cooked a few Indian dishes like keema and aloo gobi, but they were in equal rotation with stir-fries, Santa Maria–style tri-tip, corn-salsa-stuffed tacos, French onion soup, and roast chicken. From a very young age, food and cooking captured my attention–I wanted to cook everything.

Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and Martin Yan graced my television on Saturday mornings instead of cartoons. When I was four, I asked my mom for “frootier” olive oil. I started writing my own cookbook before I could actually write full sentences. And I loved to talk (and talk, and talk!) about food with anyone who would listen. One of my favorite conversations was hearing my mom talk about her late grandmother, Jeanne-Marie, who immigrated from a small town in the Pyrenees to San Francisco in the 1920s. She was the cook to aspire to in our family.

At the ripe age of six, my eyes widened as my mom recounted the long, coursed meals Jeanne-Marie would serve — with the salad after the main, really!? Her leg of lamb was legendary, a thing of beauty, I was told. My tiny lips smacked as I tried to conjure the flavor of those succulent, garlic-studded, fatty slices of lamb. Jeanne-Marie would, apparently, even go to Golden Gate Park to forage for snails to make escargots (a “how-to” story I will admit is not on my list to write for any publications). From these stories, a seed was planted, and my love of French cooking — and ingredients — started to grow.

Many years later, I started working at Market Hall Foods, a specialty food shop in Oakland, Calif., and was introduced to a selection of French products hailing from the Basque Pyrenees. These ingredients from the southwestern corner of France, bordering Spain, brought me a taste of where my great-grandparents were from—where French and Spanish flavors blend into hearty, rustic, flavorful cooking.

Now, when I twist the lid off a jar of piment d’Espelette — a fruity, tomatoey Basque chili powder beloved for its mild, nuanced heat — and sprinkle the brick-red spice over lamb shanks, I think about Jeanne-Marie and her leg of lamb. As I sneak a spoonful of black cherry confit from the jar, my mind wanders to a simple dessert of ice cream topped with the condiment following the salad course. While I didn’t have the chance to taste my great-grandmother’s cooking, nor did I grow up eating purely French Basque food, these ingredients are threads that tie me to my family — I am thrilled to share a little piece of that with you.

My 4 Basque-Pyrenees Pantry Essentials

1. Piment D’Espelette

The Basque region of France is ripe with peppers, but there is one that is prized above them all: the famous piment d’Espelette. It is so prized that it even has an Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) designation (meaning it’s a traditional product protected by the government). To be labeled “piment d’Espelette” it must meet strict standards, from the varietal of seed used to grow the peppers, to where and how they are grown, and even how they are dried.

Espelette peppers can be found fresh in the French Basque Country, but are usually found in dried powdered form in kitchens across the region and stateside. Brick-red in color, piment d’Espelette has a delicate fruitiness with a medium heat level, a gentle spice that lingers on the tongue. The pepper powder is used both in cooking, like my Basque Braised Lamb Shanks With Espelette and as a finishing spice over prepared dishes.

2. Jambon De Bayonne (Bayonne Ham)

Jambon de Bayonne is a cured ham crafted in the Adour Bassin in the Pyrenees. Named after the port city of Bayonne, this beloved French ham is similar in style to Spanish jamón serrano or jamón ibérico and Italian prosciutto. This ham is so cherished that there is even a festival dedicated to jambon de Bayonne every year (in Bayonne, of course). Like piment d’Espelette, jambon de Bayonne is protected as a traditional ingredient by the government.

Jambon de Bayonne begins with local pigs that have been born and bred in the Adour Bassin. Fed on corn, the meat from these special animals is sweet, with an almost nutty fattiness. To make the ham, the legs are cured with salt from a saline spring in Salies-de-Béarn and aged for about nine months. The finished jambon is beautifully balanced — you’re first met with the delicate sweetness of the meat, which opens up to subtle notes of umami, and the pièce de résistance is the fat (oui, eat the fat!) that almost melts on your tongue, leaving the faintest flavor of hazelnuts.

Serve thin slices of jambon de Bayonne on their own before the meal or as part of a cheese and charcuterie board. You can also cook with this cured meat; try finely chopping it before adding to the base of soups and stews.

3. Sheep’s Milk Cheeses

France may be known for cheeses like Brie, Camembert, Roquefort, and Loire Valley goat cheeses, but the sheep’s milk cheeses of the Pyrenees and French Basque Country deserve a special place at the table—and on your cheese plates.

These aged sheep’s milk cheeses, like Ossau-Iraty and P’tit Basque, are semihard, with a natural rind and a supple, smooth texture. The flavor is reminiscent of browned butter and toasted, salted hazelnuts, with just a touch of fresh cream on the finish. Because sheep’s milk itself has a higher percentage of fat than cow’s or goat’s milk, the resulting cheeses are richer, with a sumptuous mouthfeel. The flavor depends on which season the milk is from — in the spring and summer months, the sheep have access to lots of natural flora in the rolling foothills of the Western Pyrenees, so you get pleasing notes of fresh hay and grass.

Basque-Pyrenees sheep’s milk cheeses make a wonderful addition to any cheese plate or board. They love just about any accoutrement, from confiture de cerises noires (Basque black cherries in syrup) and candied nuts to charcuterie like jambon de Bayonne, as well as pepper-forward condiments like piperade and sweet chile jelly made with Espelette peppers.

4. Cerises Noires (Black Cherries)

Cerises noires d’Itxassou are black cherries specifically grown near the French Basque town of Itxassou. Black cherry trees used to be prevalent in the area (my great-grandmother even used to hide in the cherry tree on her farm as a child). However, as time has passed, the number of cherry trees has dwindled in the area, making them even more prized and beloved. Made up of a few varieties of cherries, the cerises noires d’Itxassou are sweet and fragrant, with just enough tart acidity to balance their honeyed flavor.

You can find these French cherries fresh during the early summer months, but most often they are turned into a confiture (jam) with sugar and a touch of lemon juice, so they can be enjoyed all year long. Cerises noires are a traditional accompaniment to Ossau-Iraty cheese, as well as the star ingredient in one of Basque-Pyrenees’ most well-known baked goods: Gâteau Basque, a double-crusted tart filled with pastry cream and/or cherry jam.

Viewers stunned as Trump goes off on “insane” Fox Business rant

During a Fox Business interview with Stuart Varney on Monday, former President Donald Trump pushed a new conspiracy that Facebook paid hundreds of millions for “phony lockboxes” that accounted for “96 percent Biden votes,” adding that, “They were like just dumping ballots, it was a phony deal!”

Trump’s new baseless claim that Facebook paid to rig the election with fake ballots triggered immediate mockery and bemusement on social media.