10 Interesting Things I Found on the Internet #58

Content Catnip

Enjoy a cold and refreshing glass of oblivion with this week’s selections…

The sea is a peace treaty between the star and poetry.

Alain Bosquet

Cat is driving home after a long day at work

There is something Hitchcock-esque about this driving cat, I think this was a scene from The Birds or Psycho, the cat has the same look of tense concentration. Via Deep Thot on Twitter.

Lo-fi hip-hop cosy mix

I like these mixes with softly lit anime background videos which add to the cosy ambient vibe.

Hasui Kawase’s serene glimpses into Japanese history

Hasui Kawase was born in Tokyo in 1883 and is regarded as one of the foremost landscape artists of the 20th Century. The son of a silk braid merchant, he studied Japanese-style painting with Kiyokata. His prints are based…

View original post 739 more words

Deadly infection linked to contaminated room spray sold at Walmart

cases of a serious, sometimes fatal infection called melioidosis that have bedeviled public health investigators for months appear to have been linked to an aromatherapy room spray sold at Walmart, a product recall notice issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission revealed Friday.

The product, Better Homes and Gardens Lavender and Chamomile Essential Oil Infused Aromatherapy Room Spray with Gemstones, was sold at 55 Walmart locations and on the company’s website from February to Oct. 21.

A statement from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention instructs people to stop using it immediately but not to throw the product away. It says people who have the product should double bag it in clear plastic bags, place it in a small box, and return it to Walmart, which has issued a recall.

The CDC statement also suggests that people who have used the product in the past 21 days who have symptoms consistent with melioidosis should seek medical care and tell the attending doctor about the aromatherapy spray exposure. People who have no symptoms but have used the spray in the past seven days should also see a doctor, who may prescribe antibiotics to prevent infection, the CDC said.

Source: Deadly infection linked to contaminated room spray sold at Walmart

Opinion | Angela Merkel’s Refugee Plan Worked – The New York Times

“With the passage of time,” Marton told me, Merkel “turned out to have chosen the absolutely right course for not only Germany but for the world.”

The refugee policy was what inspired Marton, a former ABC News bureau chief in Germany and the author of nine previous books, to write about Merkel in the first place. Marton is herself the daughter of refugees from Hungary, journalists who had been imprisoned by the Communist regime, and the granddaughter of victims of Auschwitz. (She’s also the widow of the famed diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whom she began dating when he was Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Germany.) Watching Merkel in the summer of 2015, said Marton, “I just thought wow, who is she, and how is she getting away with this?”

Part of the reason that Germans accepted — and in many cases celebrated — Merkel’s decision lies in their country’s unique relationship to its national history. Germany has made reckoning with the Holocaust central to its identity, and many citizens grabbed eagerly at this chance for redemption.

“When their trains pulled into the gleaming Munich station, exhausted men, women and children were greeted by a sea of signs that read, ‘Welcome to Germany,’ held aloft by cheering citizens lining the platforms,” wrote Marton. Volunteers converted schools and stores into dormitories. “Germans were more than happy — in fact, thrilled — to see themselves in the role of humanitarian saviors,” said Stelzenmüller.

But the refugees had more to offer Germany than a burnished self-image. In an aging country with a low birthrate, they were a useful addition to the work force. The economy, Stelzenmüller said, “was looking for labor before the pandemic, and so there was a real demand and presumably a willingness from the labor market and companies to help people. And of course we have a long experience, a decades-long practice, of on-the-job training that is seen as a model by other European countries and in fact by America.”

With Covid infections rising, the Tories are conducting a deadly social experiment | Andy Beckett | The Guardian

In Britain, the politics of Covid have been thought about and discussed almost entirely in party terms: the relative caution and competence of the SNP government in Scotland and its Labour counterpart in Wales; the recklessness and lethal mistakes of the Conservatives in England, and whether Labour can make the Tories pay for them. The pandemic has been seen as a potential turning point for all the main parties.

That it has not worked out like that – so far – has been a huge disappointment for the Conservatives’ enemies. But this focus on the parties has also been convenient for voters. Uncomfortable questions about whether our individual behaviour during the pandemic has matched our political values have not been asked.

These questions particularly matter now. Since Boris Johnson declared “freedom day” on 19 July, almost all the previous restrictions on everyday life in England under Covid have been removed. “Personal responsibility”, as Johnson and his ministers like to put it with a libertarian relish, has replaced emergency legislation as one of the main weapons against the virus. In effect, a giant experiment in individual ethics has been under way.

The results look increasingly alarming. In pubs, in shops, on public transport and in other enclosed spaces where the virus easily spreads, many people are acting as if the pandemic is over – or at least, over for them. Mask-wearing and social distancing have sometimes become so rare that to practise them feels embarrassing.

Source: With Covid infections rising, the Tories are conducting a deadly social experiment | Andy Beckett | The Guardian