MedCram video on why some people with SARS-CoV-2 are more likely to have asymptomatic infections

 MedCram have a video Why Some People Might Never Get COVID looking at a study finding that people with the HLA-B*15:01 is significantly associated with asymptomatic infection.

Chocolate Bark

 Food Wishes Chocolate Bark

Bread in a Blender

 ChefSteps Bread in a Blender might be worth a try, if you have a good blender.

Rustic Pasta (or pasta I've never heard of)

 Sip and Feast's Single Best Pasta You've Probably Never Heard Of.

Ingredients

1 pound (454 grams) rigatoni or penne, paccheri, etc
¼ cup (54 grams) extra virgin olive oil
¾ pound (340 grams) bulk Italian sausage
1 pound (454 grams) cremini mushrooms - sliced
1 ounce (28 grams) dried porcini mushrooms reconstituted in hot water then squeezed out and chopped
1 medium onion - diced
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves - chopped
5 cloves garlic - sliced
¾ cup (170 grams) dry white wine
14 ounces (396 grams) crushed plum tomatoes
¾ cup (180 grams) heavy cream
½ cup (45 grams) Parmigiano Reggiano - grated
¼ cup flat-leaf parsley
2 cups (400 grams) reserved pasta water - will not need it all

Ragu with a Twist

 An interesting take on Ragu from Marion's Kitchen:

Fried Rice Recipies from Marion's Kitchen

 Two fried rice recipes from Marion's Kitchen:

Superfood fried rice

 

 

EPIC fried rice

Korean Pancakes

 Marion's Kitchen has a video on making Korean Vegetable Pancakes:

Carl Can Roon's hip mobility drills

On Brad Quake Riddell's YouTube channel Carl Van Roon demonstrates 5 Hip Mobility Drills You Need to Take Your Kicks to the Next Level.

 

Danielle Wood's keynote at the Jobs and Skills summit

Grattan Institute CEO Danielle Wood gave the keynote address at the Australian Government's Jobs and Skills summit. Here's the text: Think big: a new mission statement for Australia.

Gennaro Contaldo's Penne Arrabbiata

Penne Arrabbiata shows how to make Penne Arrabbiata.

How not to do push ups

 Tykato Fitness, who I believe is a physio, has a video STOP DOING PUSH UPS WRONG! (You Are Destroying Your Shoulder!).

And Antranik shows you how to do them correctly: How To Do Push Ups with Antranik.

Risotto Style Pasta Technique

 Ethan Chlebowski explains Why I (almost) always use the Risotto Style Pasta Technique.

 

Bob and Brad with more exercises for shoulder pain

 Bob and Brad have another video: Best Shoulder Pain Relief Exercises in 5 Minutes. Follow Me

Can squatting boost your brain power?

 According to a BBC report the answer appears to be yes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2IM0xzPv3Q

Some body weight home workouts

 These are from Wild Moose.

WORKOUT BACK IN HOME WITHOUT IRON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60HpcCu9Opo

Workout chest at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1GGg2WtCRo

WORKOUT TRICEPS IN HOME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq3i9zbuXEk

Tips on applying slicone

 Video with tips on applying silicone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiSy5HMb3_g

 

Garlic Chili Noodles

 Yeung Man Cooking suggests to SPICE UP YOUR WEEKLY MENU WITH THIS CRAZY DELISH GARLIC CHILI NOODLES RECIPE

 

 

 

Ingredients:
100g extra firm tofu
4-5 pieces garlic
small piece ginger
3 sticks green onion
3 tbsp avocado oil
3 tsp dark soy sauce
150g knife pare noodles
1 tbsp gochugaru
1 tbsp plantbased oyster sauce

Stephen Kotkin on Vladimir Putin and Despots

 In The Weakness of the Despot David Remnick interviews Stephen Kotkin on Putin, Russia, and the West.

Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.
I would even go further. I would say that NATO expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in NATO? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in NATO stiffened NATO’s spine.

....

Russia is a remarkable civilization: in the arts, music, literature, dance, film. In every sphere, it’s a profound, remarkable place––a whole civilization, more than just a country. At the same time, Russia feels that it has a “special place” in the world, a special mission. It’s Eastern Orthodox, not Western. And it wants to stand out as a great power. Its problem has always been not this sense of self or identity but the fact that its capabilities have never matched its aspirations. It’s always in a struggle to live up to these aspirations, but it can’t, because the West has always been more powerful.

....

The worst part of this dynamic in Russian history is the conflation of the Russian state with a personal ruler. Instead of getting the strong state that they want, to manage the gulf with the West and push and force Russia up to the highest level, they instead get a personalist regime. They get a dictatorship, which usually becomes a despotism.

....

We’re talking, at most, about six people, and certainly one person as the decision-maker. This is the thing about authoritarian regimes: they’re terrible at everything. They can’t feed their people. They can’t provide security for their people. They can’t educate their people. But they only have to be good at one thing to survive. If they can deny political alternatives, if they can force all opposition into exile or prison, they can survive, no matter how incompetent or corrupt or terrible they are.

....

You have to remember that these regimes practice something called “negative selection.” You’re going to promote people to be editors, and you’re going to hire writers, because they’re talented; you’re not afraid if they’re geniuses. But, in an authoritarian regime, that’s not what they do. They hire people who are a little bit, as they say in Russian, tupoi, not very bright. They hire them precisely because they won’t be too competent, too clever, to organize a coup against them. Putin surrounds himself with people who are maybe not the sharpest tools in the drawer on purpose.
That does two things. It enables him to feel more secure, through all his paranoia, that they’re not clever enough to take him down. But it also diminishes the power of the Russian state because you have a construction foreman who’s the defense minister [Sergei Shoigu], and he was feeding Putin all sorts of nonsense about what they were going to do in Ukraine. Negative selection does protect the leader, but it also undermines his regime.

Trump and Biden and Afghanistan

 Bess Levin writes that Trump Hopes No One Remembers He Pushed for a Full Afghanistan Withdrawal in June.

Ron Elving writes that Withdrawing From Afghanistan May Be The One Thing Biden And Trump Agree On.

Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley document the Timeline of U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Back in April Jason Hoffman and Devan Cole wrote Trump calls Afghanistan withdrawal 'a wonderful and positive thing to do' and criticizes Biden's timeline.

The fight over aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus

In The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill Megan Molteni has written an interesting article on the argument between aerosol scientists and the medical profession over whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be transmitted via aerosol or not.