🍣 Eater: The Midwest’s ‘Minnesota Sushi’ Is Having a Pop Culture Moment – “Turns out the combination of deli ham, dill pickle, and cream cheese (sometimes flavored with ranch seasoning or dill, but often plain), rolled up, cut up, and served on a toothpick, is better known as ‘Minnesota sushi,’ but it’s clear the dish seems to have a presence throughout the Midwest.”

Okay, so I stumbled across this “Minnesota sushi” thing today (spoiler, it’s just a ham roll), and I definitely remember eating these at holiday dinners when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure we didn’t make ours with pickles, though. Green onions, maybe?

⚕️ Vlogbrothers: So, I’ve got cancer – “Also, when I recorded this , I didn’t have my full schedule, but now I do. My first treatment begins… drumroll please, literally as this video goes live. So, there’s a very good chance that I’m reading the comments right now while getting my first round of chemotherapy. I’ve also gotten my PET/CT which showed that the cancer has not spread anywhere from its original location in my left armpit/chest area, which is very good news.”

Hank Green, who has done roughly about seven thousand amazing things on the internet and in real life, both by himself and with his brother John Green, told everyone via vlog this morning that he’s got Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He’s just getting started at treatment and it seems like his prognosis is good.

🏛️ CNBC: Republicans walk out of debt ceiling talks, say White House isn’t being ‘reasonable’ – “High-stakes talks over raising the debit limit abruptly came to a halt Friday on Capitol Hill, after Republican negotiators walked out of the room and blamed the White House for holding up discussions.”

“Reasonable.” 🙄🙄🙄 Yeah. I believe this crowd of Republicans is offering anything even remotely resembling “reasonable.” Sure.

Folks have been screaming for this since the pandemic started. The CDC is now making recommendations for better ventilation in buildings. They want you to aim for five air changes an hour, through MERV-13 filters. You can read all the recs here, but the air changes (which means swapping all the air in the building out) are a big deal and will make a huge difference in keeping people safe from airborne illnesses.

This isn’t a law or a new regulation yet or anything, as far as I can tell. It’s just, y’know. Highly recommended. Strongly suggested. That kind of thing.

🦤 Vox: Tucker Carlson’s show is back, and it’s on Twitter – “Two weeks after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s stunning firing from the channel, he seems to have figured out his next step: Twitter.”

Yeah. Fox canned Tucker Carlson, and he decided to take his show to Twitter. Yes, that Twitter. The Twitter that’s been overrun by Nazis and fascists. The one owned by Elon Musk that is slowly breaking down and dying by inches. In order to take his show there, Tucker Carlson had to break some kind of deal with Fox News that would have finished paying out his 25 million dollar contract.

Carlson was already rich AF, I’m sure. I think he’s from money to start with. So maybe 25 million dollars doesn’t mean anything to him. But Twitter is dying. There’s no argument about that – the only thing in question is how much longer it’ll keep staggering down the road.

The reason I point this out is that sometimes I’ll hear people say, “Oh, these Fox News pundits are doing a bit, they don’t really mean what they say, they’re just scamming scared old people, blahblahblah.” I’m sure there’s some of that going on, but you don’t give up 25 million dollars and drag your garbage show to a dying site because you’re doing a bit. You do that because you’re a True Believer.

Either that, or Carlson thinks he can jump in and plug the Alex Jones-shaped hole in the rightwing “news” ecosystem.

🦠 Scientific American: Long COVID Now Looks like a Neurological Disease, Helping Doctors to Focus Treatments – “‘I now think of COVID as a neurological disease as much as I think of it as a pulmonary disease, and that’s definitely true in long COVID,’ says William Pittman, a physician at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, who treats Ghormley and many similar patients.”

The article is chock full of interesting reading about COVID-19 and long COVID, but the main thing I took away from it is that we’re going to be dealing with the after effects of the COVID pandemic for decades.

🤥 CNN: George Santos pleads not guilty to 13 federal charges, including fraud and money laundering – “Rep. George Santos has pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges, including allegations of fraud related to Covid-19 unemployment benefits, misusing campaign funds and lying about his personal finances on House disclosure reports.”

I know you’ll be shocked to hear that an obvious con artist and liar was busted doing a bunch of crimes. Santos is claiming he won’t resign his seat and that he’ll still be running for re-election. He’s also calling this a witch hunt, because of course he is, we can thank Donald Trump for this dumb trend. There’s another thing we’ll be recovering from for decades.

💊 NPR: Advisers to the FDA back first over-the-counter birth control pill – “In a unanimous vote, 17-0, a panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the agency approve the first over-the-counter birth control pill.”

This is fantastic news! Also, I’m calling it now, some MAGA cultist in one of these women-hating red states will move to block this from happening somehow or pass some legislation outlawing it before the end of the month. Don’t forget: these people hate us and want us trapped in kitchens, barefoot and pregnant and out of options, beholden entirely to men for everything. They will do anything to achieve that.

Photo Credit: Tucker Carlson, by Gage Skidmore. Source. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

That East Palestine mess just keeps on rolling, doesn’t it? Jesus.

☢️ Truck carrying 40,000 pounds of toxic soil from East Palestine train derailment overturns on highway (NBC News) – “A truck carrying around 40,000 pounds of contaminated soil from the site of a train derailment in Ohio, which saw officials release toxic chemicals into the area to prevent an explosion, overturned on a highway this week, officials said.”

🦤 NPR becomes first major news organization to leave Twitter (The Verge) – “NPR has announced that it will no longer use Twitter to distribute its content after the social media platform began labeling the network as ‘US state-affiliated media,’ putting it in the same category as government mouthpiece publications like RT and China Daily. NPR is the first major news organization to pull from the platform and comes at a time when Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s relationship with the press is at a low point.” (Here’s NPR’s article about it.)

🏛️ Expelled Black lawmaker Pearson to return to Tennessee House (AP News) – “The second of two Black Democrats expelled from the Republican-led Tennessee House will return to the Legislature after a Memphis commission voted to reinstate him Wednesday, nearly a week after his banishment for supporting gun control protesters propelled him into the national spotlight.”

🍊 GOP Seeks To Shield Trump From All Future State Prosecutions (HuffPo) – “Now comes a proposal that Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) said would “prevent political prosecutions” by moving cases against former presidents from state jurisdiction to federal court, where judges are confirmed by the Senate, an institution reliably influenced by elected Republicans.”

🎥 Donald Glover Confirms His Involvement in the ‘Community’ Movie (Collider) – “It looks like Troy Barnes is making a comeback, as Donald Glover has revealed that he’ll be returning to his Community role in the upcoming film that will take place after the series’ final episode.”

🌎 The big reason why the U.S. is seeking the toughest-ever rules for vehicle emissions (NPR) – “The new standards are so strict that, according to the EPA’s estimates, up to 67% of new vehicles sold in 2032 may have to be electric in order for carmakers to be in compliance.”