Tag: UK

Coffee associated with lower mortality risk

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Maura Losch/Axios

Adults who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee daily were less likely to die during a seven-year follow-up period regardless of whether they added sugar, a study found.

Researchers used data from a previous questionnaire to evaluate the associations of consumption of sugar-sweetened, artificially sweetened, and unsweetened coffee with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. In the cohort, 171,616 participants from the U.K. with a mean age of 55.6 years and without known heart disease or cancer at baseline answered questions about diet and health to determine coffee consumption and were followed for seven years…

Compared with those who did not drink coffee, those who drank unsweetened coffee had lower risks for all-cause mortality after adjustment for lifestyle, sociodemographic, and clinical factors…adding 1 teaspoon of sugar resulted in even better numbers.

An accompanying editorial…noted…“Although we cannot definitively conclude that drinking coffee reduces mortality risk, the totality of the evidence does not suggest a need for most coffee drinkers—particularly those who drink it with no or modest amounts of sugar—to eliminate coffee,” the editorial concluded. “So drink up—but it would be prudent to avoid too many caramel macchiatos while more evidence brews.”

Since they didn’t incline towards artificial sweeteners increasing anything unhealthy, I’ll stick with the Truvia brand of Stevia, a natural ingredient I generally add to my 4th and final cuppa, every day. I don’t add sugar because who needs extra calories? Though I admit that 4th cuppa often gets an added teaspoon of pure unsweetened cocoa powder, as well.

Sea Dragon, a very big Sea Dragon

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The remains of a monstrous, 33-foot-long (10 meters) “sea dragon” that swam in the seas when dinosaurs were alive some 180 million years ago have been unearthed on a nature reserve in England. The behemoth is the biggest and most complete fossil of its kind ever discovered in the U.K.

“It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history,” excavation leader Dean Lomax, a paleontologist and visiting scientist at the University of Manchester…

Spend your recreation time at a nature reserve. Never can tell what you might find, eh? The two men who found this were out walking in the nature reserve…turned off-trail through the bottom of a drained lagoon. And there it was.

UK advancing the end of combustion engines

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Even an opportunist dolt like Boris gets it…

The United Kingdom will ban the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2030, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today. It will also ban the sale of new hybrid cars by 2035. Johnson made the announcement tonight as part of a new ten-point plan for a “green industrial revolution.”

This is the second time Johnson has moved up the deadline. The original plan was to stop sales of petrol and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040. Back in February, Johnson moved the target to 2035. He’s come under increasing pressure to crack down on gas-guzzling cars in order to meet the UK’s broader goal of eliminating emissions contributing to climate change by 2050…

Speeding up the transition to all electric vehicles puts the UK ahead of much of the pack when it comes to other governments’ pledges to phase out cars running on fossil fuels. France has a goal of ending the sale of new gas-guzzlers by 2040. California recently made a pledge to do so by 2035. Norway has a more ambitious goal of ending new sales by 2025…

The United States is governed by people who still think the Earth is flat. They are elected to office, again and again, by people who thank them for their “leadership”.

Bah, humbug!

It never ends…Storm Dennis follows Storm Clara

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Click to enlarge

Storm Dennis, one of the deepest low-pressure centres to have formed in recent years, has brought severe weather to Iceland and many western and central parts of the UK.

Some of the regions now being affected by Dennis were also hit by a preceding storm, Ciara, which brought stronger winds than Dennis but less rain. Nevertheless, rivers were already full and the ground saturated before Dennis’s arrival.

The military has been called in provide assistance in parts of northern England, where rivers have overflowed in recent days.

Click through and check out the photos. The worst waves haven’t hit land [yet?]. They’re up to 100 feet high.

10 years difference in Euro Parliament elections

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❝ I am honoured to have been elected as a Green party MEP. I can’t wait to get to work on behalf of all those who put their faith in me and in our movement’s vision of hope. We are truly building a common world, rooted in the aspirations of the young and set to deliver lasting change for all.

❝ Millions of citizens from Sheffield to Stuttgart have grown weary of the same old politics of tribal allegiances…Ten years after Yorkshire and the Humber sent a member of the BNP to the European parliament, we’ve elected a black, Muslim refugee standing for the Green party. Now isn’t that something?

❝ The election results from across Europe are bittersweet. Yes, they show that dark shadows of hatred continue to enshroud us – reminding us that xenophobia and hate are by no means a uniquely British problem. Yet we have also witnessed the mighty Green wave cascading through Europe and landing on our shores. We have seen the light of hope beaming not only on the distant horizon, but right here and now in front of us – where we comfortably beat the Tories in all parts of the country, with seven elected Green MEPs. Through this spirit of resistance, we are able to see clearly the path that will carry us to a kinder, fairer, more tolerant Britain and to a greener, more welcoming and more democratic Europe.

Good for you, brother. A significant portion of the American Left would self-identify as Green. Yet, time and again, we confront a one-time lurch into electoral politics by a seemingly isolated solo Green candidate. I don’t know if this is rooted in American impatience or what; but, this kind of effort rarely produces more than disappointment. Maybe our Euro brothers and sisters are accustomed to the building – and the role – of minor parties, Dunno.

I register as Democrat so I can participate in their primaries. That’s about it. Feels like the number of folks doing the same thing grows every year. Believe me, I’d much rather register as Green.

Facebook’s email dump in the UK

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❝ As expected, the UK Parliament has released a set of internal Facebook emails that were seized as part of its investigation into the company’s data-privacy practices. The 250-page document, which includes conversations between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other high-level executives, is a window into the social media giant’s ruthless thinking from 2012 to 2015 — a period of time when it was growing (and collecting user data) at an unstoppable rate…

❝ If Facebook was hoping to close the year without any more controversies, these internal documents certainly won’t help. They’re yet another example of the company’s old, ambitious motto to “move fast and break things,” one that it’s desperately trying to get away from.

Some of the folks I respect the most – like Om Malik – have wholly nuked their Facebook presence. The only reason I retain a site there is to maintain minimal contact with old friends and family back in New England and round about this tired planet. Frankly, I’m the worst in the world at actually staying in touch. I never get round to answering “how are you doin'” inquiries from folks I still love as comrades fighting bigotry and war. Hopefully, they remember I was always craptastic at that.