Musk’s move into hate, misinformation; Some local publications have a new owner – Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: December 12, 2022
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• Is the latest peak of COVID-19 peaking? Maybe… I doubt it, but maybe. Here are the latest results from Palm Springs sewage testing for SARS-CoV-2, conducted Dec. 5 and 6. Key takeaway: “The average number of copies (per litre) recorded at the city’s sewage treatment plant has decreased slightly. The previous week’s average of 1,084,851 copies/L rose to an average of 768,903 copies/L for December 5 and 6.” Unfortunately, the lab used by the city seems to only test BA variants, and did not emphasize BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 (which are actually BA.5 subvariants), so we don’t know how dominant they are here. They currently account for about 68% of cases nationwide.
• Several local publications are now under new ownership. From Gold Country Media“Gold Mountain California News Media Inc. has acquired 11 California titles from Brehm Communications Inc. (BCI). Six titles make up the Gold Country Media cluster, including the bi-weekly Auburn Journal and the weeklies Loomis News, Placer Herald, Roseville Press-Tribune, Lincoln News Messenger and Folsom Telegraph. The other five posts are in the San Bernardino Mountains and the nearby High Desert region. The group in the southern part of the state includes six weekly newspapers: The Big Bear Grizzly and Mountain News cover the resort and second home communities adjacent to Arrowhead Lake and Big Bear Lake. The group’s other titles — Hi-Desert Star, The Desert Trail and The Desert Mobile Home News — are aimed at residents of the Coachella Valley in the high desert just north of Palm Springs. … The new owners have newspaper assets across the United States and Canadaincluding the Marysville Appeal-Democrat, Lodi News-Sentinel and the recently acquired Grass Valley Union.
• Notice that this article didn’t say who owned Gold Mountain California News Media Inc.? The Sacramento Business Journal clarifies: “A company related to Alta Newspaper Group, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, which owns newspapers throughout California and Canadabought 11 other California newspapers from San Diego-based Brehm Communications Inc., which owned the local media group called Gold Country Media.
• The Palm Springs Post reports that AirBnB owners nationwide are seeing a drop in bookings, but that the figures remain strong locally, despite some individual complaints: “At the national level, the occupation of holiday rentals is indeed down, thanks to the explosion of new real estate advertisements increasing the offer. “The number of reservations is not decreasing. But we have 23% more listings in the US today than we did last year,” said Jamie Lane, vice president of research at AirDNA, a short-term rental analytics firm. “That means the number of reservations per available listing, or occupancy, is down quite steeply from the 2021 highs.” …Could a bust really happen in one of the country’s top holiday destinations? The answer is complicated. Across the Valley, AirDNA’s latest report shows thousands of active rentals with an average occupancy rate of 55.5%. That’s down from the typical peak spring season, when festivals such as Coachella and Stagecoach are in full swing, but similar to the fall and winter seasons of previous years. In Palm Springs, by far the most active short-term rental market, the most recent data available on the number of short-term rental permits shows permits were up about 11% year over year. ‘other. Despite this increase in allowed rentals, local occupancy remains almost the same as last year, according to AirDNA, at 63%. The average daily rate for a vacation rental has actually increased by 5%, from $570 last year to $601 this year..” Over $600 a night? Whore !
• Meanwhile, in Arizona, the outgoing governor is trying to build a border wall using…shipping containers? The Associated Press says: “Work crews routinely erected hundreds of double-stacked shipping containers topped with barbed wire along Arizona’s far eastern border with Mexico in a daring show of border enforcement by then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey even as he prepares to leave office. Until protesters slowed and then largely stopped work in recent days, Ducey pressed on objections from the US government, environmentalists and a new governor who called it a poor use of resources.. …Federal agencies told Arizona that construction on US land was illegal and ordered them to stop. Ducey responded on October 21 by suing federal officials for their objections, sending the dispute to court. Environmental groups say the containers could jeopardize natural water systems and endanger species. Take a look at the photo in this article…and explain to me how good these easy to climb things would be?
• Have you ever read a headline that sounds so ridiculous that you find it hard to believe, even if you trust the source? This was the case with this title (and subtitle) from ProPublica and me: “Inside Google’s quest to digitize troop tissue samples: The tech giant has long sought access to a priceless trove of veterans’ skin samples, tumor biopsies and bone slices. organs. DOD workers pushed back, raising ethical and legal concerns, but Google could still win.” It’s a complicated story, so I recommend reading it, but here are some details. It has to do with artificial intelligence: “Pathology experts call the (Joint Pathology Center) collection a national treasure, unique in its age, size and breadth. The archive contains over 31 million human tissue blocks and 55 million slides. Newer specimens are linked to detailed patient information, including pathologist annotations and case histories. And the repository contains many examples of “edge cases” – diseases so rare that many pathologists never see them. Google sought to gather so many identifying details about specimens and patients that repository executives feared it would compromise patient anonymity. The talks became so contentious in 2017 that JPC leaders halted them. … But Google hasn’t given up.” uh.
• And finally… I had a similar reaction to this headline from the Daily Mail: “Scientists genetically modify a tobacco plant to produce cocaine in its leaves.” Why?! An explanation, of sorts:Although cocaine is notoriously considered an illegal drug, it has also been used in doctors’ offices as a local anesthetic or to narrow blood vessels to stem bleeding. However, pharmaceutical companies are limited in how they can produce the drug., as the key steps in its biosynthesis have remained a mystery. Until now, scientists did not know how the precursor chemical MPOA is converted into part of the cocaine molecule, methylecgonone. In their paper, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the scientists finally discovered what was missing.
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