403: forbidden

One of my discoveries in 2023 is that podcasts and low-visual-impact videos do have a niche in my life after all. So I've started listening to a bunch of "professor's side gig/hobby project" things when I'm doing other boring tasks. I'd still much rather read, but for stuff I don't need to remember in great detail, audio is good enough.

One of those academic's side projects is "What's Going On With Shipping", and right now, that's A Lot. Back in November, a group called the Houthi (the Iran-backed faction in the Yemeni civil war) declared they would blockade the narrows between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea against any commercial vessel "connected to Israel", and backed it up by seizing the Ray Shipping vessel Galaxy Leader, of which one of the beneficial owners is an Israeli. (Galaxy Leader's crew are still being held hostage.) So far, the targets have gone out to at least three degrees of separation in terms of who does business with / is owned by whom. Or the Houthi's intelligence gathering could just be shit. Not mutually exclusive.

The above has made not just the shipping companies themselves but also the providers of war risk insurance very skittish. So the big container ships, with their massive cargo value and associated cost to insure, have been diverting away from the Red Sea <-> Suez Canal <-> Mediterranean Sea section of route. Combine that with a drought throttling the Panama Canal (which is currently allowing 24 of the normal 38 ships per day to pass through) and moving cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is becoming a right pain in the ass. Slower, more expensive, and since part of the change is sudden, also disruptive to supply chains.

Those costs in shipping, insurance, and manufacturing delays are all passed on to us, the consumers. Prices go up, available product goes down, everything goes 'round and 'round.

( Current events: The ADL as a reactionary organization... at best. )

Irony is truly dead, and we have killed it.

The 1918 flu didn’t end in 1918. Here’s what its third year can teach us. Archived from the original.

Aside from doing what it says on the tin, archive.today is currently a handy way to circumvent paywalls on several news sites. Their operational (rather than front-page) URL jumps around periodically as a result. So if the archival link stops working, searching for the source address from the archive.today main page should still bring it up.

Generic drug manufacturer Ranbaxy had a massive fraud case blow up on them last week. The problem spans a wide array of product lines, from OTC medications to chemotherapy agents and anti-AIDS drugs. Bottom line? You don't want to be using their products. If you do, get 'em changed.

More information:
Siderea lays out the details better than I could, over on LJ.
Long list of Ranbaxy-made pharmaceuticals. (I mean long. The search function is your friend.)
How to ID a Ranbaxy mf'd drug from pharmacy label (US-specific).
Commentary at Metafilter.
Derek Lowe of In the Pipeline looks under a rock and finds Ranbaxy.

Please spread this information far and wide, especially to anyone in the medical field who you happen to know.

One of the nice things about doing tasks by hand rather than by labor-saving device, which I don't acknowledge often enough, is that it gives me the opportunity to think without physical restlessness distracting me. Today, while hand-washing the unfixed dye out of a new-ish tie-dyed shirt and skirt, I found myself thinking about the current economic situation in the U.S..

America is becoming less affluent. We as a nation no longer have the resources to try to be everything to everyone. What's more, this is an unprecedented opportunity. In deciding where our limited resources should be directed - what to save and what to leave by the wayside - we have the chance to put our money where our mouth is and really live our values, personally and collectively. It's something to consider, in the voting booth certainly, but also in the stores and when you see someone selling the Spare Change News or your local equivalent. Do my actions move this world closer to, or farther from, being one that I want to live in? It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but even drops add up over time.

Happy 189th Birthday! You may be gone from this world, but your name and accomplishments live on in memory.

Repeal signed into law today, permitting gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.

Finally.

Back in April, Tim Wise wrote an article titled What If the Tea Party Were Black?. I recently found out that it's become a music video. (Yeah, I know, only a month late. Video isn't generally my thing.) Props to everyone involved, and I hope it spreads farther than a written article could.

The Economist on wheat rust.

The NY times reports that 21 people were hospitalized earlier this month (of whom, 3 have since died) after attending a sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona. This event is an excellent example of the reasons behind my extreme distrust of the New Age movement. Most of the people involved are harmless... Except when they persuade others to do dangerously stupid things.