NPR

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Larry Flynt, Porn Mogul And ‘Hustler’ Founder, Dies At 78 : NPR

His truly gross pornography, says sex columnist Dan Savage, made Flynt a necessary outlier testing the principle of free speech. "At the same time, he helped create Supreme Court decisions that further enhanced and strengthened the First Amendment that protects us. So we should be grateful for Larry Flynt even if his output wasn't something you're interested in," he says. "And I'm certainly not."

America lost a great man, a true patriot with the death of Larry Flint. He will be missed. 

Face diapers 😷

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Running to the store this evening I saw somebody with a reusable, bleach white face mask. 😷 I guess that’s a literal face diaper, but at least it’s reusable and you can tell thanks to the bleach it’s clean. While I don’t think I’m into wearing a mask with a political message, I do think the color fabric designs by Lynne Jackson are amazing and they’re really comfortable for sure.

Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal – Wikipedia

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Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal – Wikipedia

The canal was primarily built as a sewage treatment scheme. Prior to its opening in 1900, sewage from the city of Chicago was dumped into the Chicago River and flowed into Lake Michigan. The city's drinking water supply was located offshore, and there were fears that the sewage could reach the intake and cause serious disease outbreaks. Since the sewer systems were already flowing into the river, the decision was made to dam the river and reverse its flow, thereby sending all the sewage inland where it could be treated before emptying it into the Des Plaines.

A secondary goal was to replace the shallow and narrow Illinois and Michigan Canal (I&M), which had originally connected Lake Michigan with the Mississippi starting in 1848. As part of the construction of the new canal, the entire route was built to allow much larger ships to navigate it. It is 202 feet (62 m) wide and 24 feet (7.3 m) deep, over three times the size of the I&M. The I&M became a secondary route with the new canal's opening and was shut down entirely with the creation of the Illinois Waterway network in 1933.

How Humans Try (And Fail) To Master Nature

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How Humans Try (And Fail) To Master Nature

2/9/21 by NPR

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/118933773
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-381444908/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2021/02/20210209_fa_fapodtues_1.mp3?awCollectionId=381444908&awEpisodeId=965879702&orgId=1&d=2898&p=381444908&story=965879702&t=podcast&e=965879702&size=46270737&ft=pod&f=381444908

‘New Yorker’ writer Elizabeth Kolbert talks about efforts to reverse some of the harm humans have done to the natural world. Her new book, ‘Under a White Sky,’ details visionary ideas, like scattering tiny particles into the stratosphere to block some sunlight and cool the planet. She also reports on current efforts, like the millions spent trying to control Asian carp imported to American rivers. “We’re now intervening to counter the effects of our own intervention,” Kolbert says. “I call it the control of the control of nature.” Kolbert is also author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book ‘The Sixth Extinction.’

TAKE AWAY THE VACCINE STICK

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TAKE AWAY THE VACCINE STICK

States and counties across the country are cracking down on health care providers that aren’t following strict Covid vaccine prioritization schedules. It’s an effort to make sure that those who are truly vulnerable — the elderly, health care workers — get first crack at the limited shots and that the well connected aren’t skipping ahead.

But the state crackdowns are boneheaded and will backfire, argue many public health experts. “It’s very rare that taking a punitive approach works in public health,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam today. “This is pure arrogance on the part of our political leaders.”

States should investigate outright fraud, but they should not punish providers making a good-faith effort to run a mass immunization campaign during a chaotic rollout, Gostin said. The punishments are slowing the vaccine rollout: The Georgia community with the raided clinic lost its biggest vaccine provider. New York providers have tossed precious unused doses for fear of facing penalties.