Divemedic

The Useless Generation

Just last week, I asked how people could afford to simply up and quit their jobs as a part of the great resignation. It seems as though the child tax credit was a big part of it, and now that credit has come to an end.

Yahoo brings to us a piece that explains how those who have quit their jobs are now complaining that the loss of the tax cut means that they have no money for bills, believing that the government should pay them to sit at home and do nothing but breed.

Roberts, who lives in Marks, Miss., left her job as an insurance agent at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when her employer wouldn’t let her work from home…”This tax credit is the only way we’ve kept food on the table,” said Roberts, who is raising a 5- and 7-year-old. “For a lot of the working poor, it gave us a chance to finally take a freaking breath and not stress so much about how the bills get paid every month.”

Imagine how easy it would be to pay your bills if you didn’t quit your job.

Back in Mississippi, Roberts – who took custody of her cousin’s grandchildren five years ago – says she’ll probably let her car insurance payments lapse so she can buy groceries. She has just $388 left in her bank account but feels lucky to own her house, which she says puts her in a much better position than many friends who are at risk of eviction or foreclosure.

This poor woman is stuck having to raise and provide for the grandkids of her cousin. I feel bad for her, but it isn’t the responsibility of the US taxpayer to give her money, simply because she has a sad backstory.

Who else is sad because they aren’t getting checks anymore?

In San Antonio, Nathaniel Miller and his wife used their monthly payments to buy gluten-free food, oat milk and diapers for their 1-year-old daughter, who has severe food allergies. Without it, he says his family of four will have to start using their savings to cover everyday expenses.

“We’re a one-income household, so that money has been a lifeline,” said Miller, 34, who works in communications. “Now that it’s gone, I don’t know where that extra money is going to come from. We have a little bit in savings, but savings deplete quickly. If anything else comes up, we’re kind of screwed.”

My wife and I both have jobs. Why doesn’t yours?

Caroline Nasella, a government attorney in Sacramento with 3- and 6-year-old daughters, said the extra $400 a month helped cover child-care costs and provided extra breathing room during the pandemic.

Or how about this woman:

Kelly McKernan, an artist and illustrator in Nashville, used her $250 monthly checks to cover mid-month bills and buy school clothes and winter boots for her second-grader. Her income has been cut in nearly half, to about $25,000, during the pandemic.

“Not having that money is already having a really big impact,” said McKernan, 35, who’s working on a graphic novel anthology with the rock band Evanescence and is looking for art teaching positions to make ends meet.

It’s good to know that my paycheck is cut in half by taxes so my tax money can be used by a woman to sit at home and work part time on a comic book about a rock band.

By Divemedic, ago

Methods

I get questions all of the time about sources:

  • How do you research Antifa? I want to do a similar profile in my area.
  • I think that XXX is wrong in your post.
  • Where did you hear about XXX, because I can’t find it.

Every single thing I post here I research to the best of my ability. Whenever possible, I link to my sources so readers can judge the information for themselves. Many manuals and books can be found on the training manuals page on this very site.

Aircraft tracks, sources, and destinations can be found on this excellent website.

I also have pretty good research and search engine skills. For example, I started the Florida Antifa Intel report by searching Google for “Florida Antifa”

Then I just followed the different search results and mined them for information. It took a few hours and a lot of note taking, but I was able to get quite a bit of information. You can also look for Social Media pages and get info that way.

By Divemedic, ago

mRNA Uberpost

Joe over at The View from North Central Idaho asks how mRNA works. Let me give a quick and simplified explanation of how DNA and mRNA work with each other. Let me reach way back to my undergrad classes on cellular and molecular biology to explain this a bit.

Please excuse me if I make minor errors. It’s been a few years since I took these classes. This is also a greatly simplified Cliff’s notes version of several semesters of college biology classes. Even though simplified, the subject is complex and will make for a bit of a long post.

DNA and RNA are nucleic acids. They are long, chainlike molecules that can encode information that allows the manufacture of proteins and are required for all life as we know it. Think of them like incredibly dense storage drives that hold all of the information needed to build a living organism. Everything from how tall you are, to what foods you like, to what subject you enjoy studying in school is affected by what is encoded in your DNA. Every trait that is you is saved on this biological hard drive. With the exception of identical twins, no two people have the same DNA.

DNA is a template from which RNA can be made. The process where RNA is created is called transcription. The entire process is controlled by enzymes called RNA polymerases and occurs in the cell’s nucleus. Since the nucleus in eukaryotes is enclosed in a membrane, the DNA cannot leave that nucleus, so messenger RNA needs to be created in order for a cell to manufacture proteins.

The RNA molecule that is produced is a near mirror image of whatever part of the DNA molecule was used as a template. When a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule is made, that mRNA molecule then leaves the nucleus of the cell and enters the portion of the cell where proteins are made. The process of using RNA to make a protein is called translation.

One of the basic tenets of biology is that this is a one way process. DNA makes RNA, but RNA cannot change or make DNA. There has been one exception to this: a virus.

A virus is not a living organism. A virus (to simplify things) is essentially just an RNA molecule wrapped in an envelope made of other molecules. By itself, it cannot do anything, not even reproduce. The way that a virus replicates is that the virus uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to replace a part of the host cell’s DNA with a copy of itself. That corrupted DNA then causes the cell to create copies of the virus, which then go on to infect other cells.

If this change to DNA happens in a reproductive cell, the change in DNA can be passed on to that organism’s offspring. If it doesn’t happen in a reproductive cell, it isn’t passed on. It was that simple when I went to college.

That was how things were believed to work until about a year and a half ago. Then scientists made a new discovery. There are circumstances where DNA can be modified by RNA molecules.

When a new cell needs to be made so that an organism can grow in size, or a cell is needed to replace a damaged one, a copy of the original cell’s DNA must be made. There are 14 polymerases which control this process in mammals.

When DNA is copied, there is a built in error correction system that allows mistakes in the copying process to be corrected. The enzyme that controls this process is called polymerase theta. Polymerase theta can correct errors and damage that occurs to DNA inside of the cell.

It turns out that polymerase theta also has the ability to take pieces of RNA and use those pieces to rewrite parts of the DNA. The paper describing this was just published in June. This is huge- for the first time ever, we now know that human cells can rewrite DNA using RNA as a template.

So to answer Joe’s question:

It sounds like the DNA of a plant is being modified so that the plant cells themselves manufacture mRNA vaccines. Thus, a person eating the plant will ingest mRNA that will act as a vaccine. I don’t think the mRNA in the plant will rewrite the DNA of the person who consumes it.

By Divemedic, ago