This Week's Must Reads - 31 July - 6 August 2023

A summary of this week's most interesting news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering new information and interesting articles. I then pick the most interesting topic and write about it but that leaves a lot of information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the best articles and information from this week. This weekly summary is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Climate Change Obsession Is a Real Mental Disorder. Alarmist stories about the weather, not the warm air itself, are behind the left’s anxiety and dread. If heat waves were as deadly as the press proclaims, Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning.

• Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says. Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC, said it's not helpful to imply that a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius is an existential threat to humanity. "If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change," he said.

• North Pole temperatures have fallen to freezing approximately two weeks early. This was the shortest summer in the North Pole on record.

Covid

• Rand Paul announces 'official criminal referral,' says email shows Fauci COVID testimony 'absolutely a lie'. Unredacted email 'directly contradicts' Fauci's testimony about gain-of-function research. Paul pointed to an email from February 2020 in which Fauci detailed a call with British medical researcher Jeremy Farrar, who was director of the Wellcome Trust at the time.

• Was the Covid Response a Coup by the Intelligence Community? From an early date, commentators have noted that the response to COVID had all the look and feel of a coup attempt. Thus, one overarching question always lingered over the response to COVID. How were officials able to implement such destructive, totalitarian policies across the Western world without intelligence authorities stepping in to stop them?

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Pandemic preparedness and the road to international fascism. The COVID-19 response, intended for a virus that overwhelmingly targeted the elderly, ignored norms of epidemic management and human rights to institute a regime of suppression, censorship, and coercion reminiscent of the power systems and governance that were previously condemned. Without pausing to examine the costs, the public health industry is developing international instruments and processes that will entrench these destructive practices in international law.

• Pandemic set back social and emotional growth of children in England, study finds. Half of youngsters from all economic backgrounds affected and especially those whose parents’ jobs were hit, says Institute for Fiscal Studies. Children from all economic backgrounds in England were affected, the research found, though those aged four to seven were significantly more likely to have suffered a deterioration in their skills than 12- to 15-year-olds.

• This pro-mask “study” is why you should NEVER “Trust the Science”. Last week it was reported that the Australian state of Victoria may be considering “permanent” facemask mandates to achieve “zero-Covid”. Essentially, they told their computer that masks prevent disease…and then said “ok, computer, since you now know masks prevent disease – what would happen if everybody wore them all the time?”

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Teamsters says U.S. trucking firm Yellow shuts operations, to file for bankruptcy. Cash-strapped U.S. trucking company Yellow has ceased operations and is filing for bankruptcy after failing to reorganize and refinance over a billion dollars in debt, the Teamsters Union said on Sunday. The company was the third-biggest U.S. trucker specializing in the less-than-truckload segment that combines shipments from different customers in the same trailer.

• Fitch downgrades US credit rating from AAA to AA+. The US government's credit rating has been downgraded following concerns over the state of the country's finances and its debt burden. Fitch, one of three major independent agencies that assess creditworthiness, cut the rating from the top level of AAA to a notch lower at AA+.

• UK YOY house price index.

• US weekly retail sales - YOY.

• Nasdaq versus Treasuries. When is the crocodile’s mouth going to snap shut? I suggest as soon as the big wigs get back from their summer holidays.

• Switzerland July manufacturing PMI 38.5 vs 44.0 expected. That's an extremely poor reading as Swiss manufacturing activity slumped heavily to start Q3. The reading is the lowest since April 2009 as production fell sharply alongside purchasing volume. That comes despite a fall in purchase prices and shorter delivery times. That's not a good sign at all.

• Shipping giant Maersk warns of sharp slowdown in global trade as it reports profit plunge. The world’s second-largest shipping company, often seen as a bellwether for global trade, posted a second-quarter profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $2.91 billion. This was well below the record $10.3 billion for the same quarter in 2022.

Health

• [2021] Bioethicist Suggests Re-Engineering Humans To Become Allergic To Meat. S. Matthew Liao is speaking about reducing humanity’s footprint on the planet. Liao says a major impact each of us can make is by limiting our meat. He then brings up the idea of altering one’s body to be allergic to all meat in order to help with our over consumption. An example is given of how a tick bite can cause alpha-gal allergy (red meat allergy.)

• CDC Warns Red Meat Allergy Caused By Ticks An 'Emerging Public Health Concern'. The CDC said that red meat allergies caused by certain types of ticks is an “emerging public health concern” after two studies found that the phenomenon is on the rise. Unlike deer ticks, the lone star tick has a smaller chance of transmitting Lyme disease. However, it can transmit a range of other diseases to people such as monocytotropic ehrlichiosis, tularemia, and southern tick-associated rash illness.

• New Research Validates Autism’s Link to Gut. Comprehensive study links clear patterns in gut bacteria profiles to autism, pointing to new treatments. “It provides further evidence that the microbiome is altered in autism and that it relates to alterations in biochemistry and that those alterations can affect GI [gastrointestinal] and neurological functioning,”.

• Horrifying numbers of Americans will not make it to old age. America tolerates rates of early death well beyond those of other rich countries. In the past 20 years, on economic measures, America has outperformed other rich countries. But on a more fundamental measure of wellness—how long people live—America is falling behind.

• Influence of food emulsifiers on cellular function and inflammation, a preliminary study. Emulsifiers are extensively used as food additives and their consumption is increasing in Western countries. These preliminary data support the concept that the increase of processed food consumption may be linked to the increase of IBD, and GI cancers. Indeed, EMs can induce an increase of migration and proliferation rate of colon cancer cells and cytokines release.

Politics

• Brits in Europe will require face and fingerprint scans under new EU checks for holidaymakers. Brits travelling to Europe will have to share health information and have their faces and fingerprints scanned from next summer under new rules introduced by Brussels.

• Evidence Of Biden Burisma Corruption Is Overwhelming. Devon Archer, a longtime business partner and close friend of Hunter Biden’s, told congressional investigators Monday that at a meeting in Dubai on Dec. 4, 2015, top executives of Ukrainian energy concern Burisma asked Hunter Biden and himself for help from D.C. At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden’s dad, Joe Biden, was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president as well as his point person on Ukraine.

• The FT says the Republicans have become the anti-science party.

• US Intelligence Has Been Manipulating Wikipedia For Over A Decade: Wiki Co-Founder. The co-founder of Wikipedia has revealed a bombshell concerning long-running suspicions of US intelligence interference and manipulation on the world's most well-known collaborative online encyclopedia.

Science

• Scientists Control Human DNA with Electricity in 'Leap Forward', Study Reports. Breakthrough research represents “the missing link that will enable wearables to control genes in the not-so-distant future,” researchers say. In a novel experiment, researchers were able to trigger insulin production in human cells by sending electrical currents through an “electrogenetic” interface that activates targeted genes.

• Most Massive Animal of All Time May Have Been Found in Peruvian Desert. The bones of a whale that lived 39 million years ago are seriously testing what we thought was possible for the size of vertebrates. Measurements of its bones suggest that its skeleton could have weighed two to three times that of the blue whale's.

• 'Electrified Cement' Could Turn The Foundations of Buildings Into Giant Batteries. MIT researchers have now found a way to turn cement and an ancient material into a giant supercapacitor. "The material is fascinating, because you have the most-used human made material in the world, cement, that is combined with carbon black, that is a well-known historical material – the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with it".

• Strange metamaterial with “fourth dimensional” properties leads to breakthrough in energy manipulation. Scientists who engineered a novel “fourth-dimensional” material say they have made a breakthrough discovery that allows the control of energy waves on certain surfaces, according to newly published research.

• Superconductor Breakthrough Findings Replicated, Twice, in Preliminary Testing. A tentative but less nebulous step toward superconductor-fueled electronics. Humanity may be in the throes of another breakthrough that's every bit as impactful as the invention of the transistor and the advent (and eventual vindication) of quantum computing.

• Remains found in China may belong to third human lineage. In their study, reported in Journal of Human Evolution, the group analyzed the fossilized jawbone, partial skull and some leg bones of a hominin dated to 300,000 years ago. The research team suggests that the unique features suggests a hybrid of modern human and ancient hominid.

Technology

• Worldcoin says will allow companies, governments to use its ID system. Co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Worldcoin launched last week, requiring users to give their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID and, in some countries, free cryptocurrency as part of plans to create a "identity and financial network".

• Google's 'mind-reading' AI can tell what music you listened to based on your brain signals. Artificial intelligence can produce music that sounds similar to tunes people were listening to as they had their brains scanned, a collaborative study from Google and Osaka University shows.

• A monumental UFO scandal is looming. The decades-long saga of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is barreling headlong toward one of two stunning conclusions. Either the U.S. government has mounted an extraordinary, decades-long coverup of UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering activities, or elements of the defense and intelligence establishment are engaging in a staggeringly brazen psychological disinformation campaign.

Ukraine

• Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war. While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners. Surrogates “have to be from poorer places than our clients,” explained the medical director of Kiev’s largest “baby factory.”

• Russophobia has no place in sport. Russian fencers are not to blame for the crimes of Vladimir Putin. A Ukrainian fencer was briefly banned from the World Fencing Championships last week after she refused to shake hands with her defeated Russian opponent. Olga Kharlan offered to tap blades with Anna Smirnova in Milan, but said she would ‘never shake hands’ with her.

Vaccines

• NIH-Funded Study Just Vaccinated A Human Using Genetically Modified Mosquitoes. A box full of genetically modified mosquitos successfully vaccinated a human against malaria in a trial funded by the National Institute of Health. The study involved about 200 hungry mosquitos biting a human subject’s arm. Human participants placed their arms directly over a small box full of the bloodsuckers. “We use the mosquitoes like they’re 1,000 small flying syringes,” said researcher Dr. Sean Murphy, as reported by NPR.

• Faulty COVID Study Claims Republicans Had 43% Higher Death Rate Due To "Vaccine Hesitancy". Leftists are abuzz this week on social media in light of a newly published study funded by Yale University suggesting that Republicans in Florida and Ohio died at a rate 43% higher than Democrats. This is proof, they claim, that Republicans were wrong about covid mandates and vaccinations and they are paying for it with their lives. Except, this is not reality.

• Swiss study finds that COVID vaccine heart injury up to 20 times more common than previously claimed. A new study has emerged that shows the incidence of myocarditis – a form of potentially fatal heart inflammation – affects up to 1 in 35 people who have received the mRNA COVID-19 injection – whilst markers which indicate heart injury were present in 1 in 20.