#government publications

[nemfrog]

Fossilized dragonflies. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. 1953.

Internet Archive

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

On this day, November 7 in 1665, The London Gazette, the official government record for the United Kingdom, and the oldest continuously-published newspaper in the UK, was first published as The Oxford Gazette. It was published in Oxford because King Charles II and his court had removed themselves there to escape the Great Plague of London, and courtiers were unwilling to touch London newspapers for fear of contagion. As the plague subsided, the king, the court, and the journal returned to London where the newspaper was renamed The London Gazette on February 5, 1666.  

To commemorate the Gazette’s anniversary, we present our earliest issue of The London Gazette from March 17-20, 1683. For about the first 80 years of its existence, the newspaper was really just a news sheet, with its entire contents printed on a single leaf of paper, as can be seen here. This issue, which includes a proclamation of the king, several reports on the king’s travels, and an account of the conflict between the Venetians and the Turks, also includes a missing person announcement for a certain Edmond Halley, whose wife offers a 100 pound reward for news of him dead or alive. We don’t think, however, that this is the famed English astronomer Edmond Halley, who had married the year before and in that same year made his observations on the famous comet that bears his name.

View other Milestone Monday posts.

[stone-cold-groove]

Ah, good ol’ USDA Bulletin No. 77 - Family Food Stockpile for Survival.

[govpubsfinds]

“The story of the efforts to meet this earthquake threat begins decades earlier, when earth scientists first recognized that the Pacific Northwest contains a boundary between two of the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s surface ... Deciphering the geological past is one of the ways that earth scientists help to protect citizens of the United States from loss of life and property in the future.”

Note: This is a digitization of a print article and does not appear to be in PDF format. As such, screen reader availability may be limited for this article.

U.S. Geological Survey. Averting surprises in the Pacific Northwest. Brian F. Atwater ... [et al.]. (1996). Full text available via HathiTrust.

[ca-dmv-bot]

Customer: A'S MAMA, MY KIDS ALL HAVE "A" NAMES. DMV: ASS MAMA Verdict: ACCEPTED

[politijohn]

Source

[phantomrose96]

Thinking about Edward Elric as the Amestrian Military's specialest little unfireable boy

State alchemists can be fired for underperforming. We know this up front from the likes of Shou Tucker. And this makes a ton of sense from the homunculi's standpoint since the state alchemists are sacrifice candidates, and the homunculi would want to cull the weakest candidates and focus only on cultivating the strongest ones who stand the best chance of opening the portal.

........Then there's Edward. Who's already opened the portal.

There's no need to cultivate him. No gamble taken on whether he's good enough to open the portal. He passed the final test already. Graduated 4 semesters early.

And as such, has a free pass to do Absolute Fuck All.

And I'm imagining how funny this is from like an outside perspective.

Some newish state alchemist who'd only ever read up on the stories of Edward Elric, ready and excited to start their career of being paid handsomely with endless freedom to research and travel and do anything they want in the pursuit of science... surprised and confused to find themselves put on probation their first month for things like "ignoring orders." Which is, as best they had thought, a famous Edward Elric pastime.

Roy showing a slight bit of stress about his yearly state alchemist report, and Ed just snorting and rolling his eyes at Roy because every year HE just hastily does his on the train ride over (canon in the manga, a travesty it was left out of the anime) and it gets rubber stamped. Ed not realizing that other alchemists' reports get genuinely scrutinized and torn apart while Ed is free to turn in whatever absolute bullshit he thinks of 36 hours ahead of time. One year his report was about whether alchemy could be done via dance (conclusion: no it can't) and no one cared. Roy WANTS to tell Ed there's some kind of unknown favoritism around Ed making him literally bullet-proof but Roy has no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like he's just in denial and mad at how good Ed's train-reports are.

Guy from the Internal Amestrian Affairs sector who's responsible for auditing other internal military personel for any suspicious activity hitting about 1 million red flags for Edward Elric, issuing a STRONG and URGENT recommendation to suspend the alchemist pending further investigation into things like "literal bunk-buddies with two members of the Xingese royalty (enemy nation)" and "spent $10,000,000 of his stipend on a librarian to make her re-copy (what he seemed to interpret as?) military records in some extremely transparent effort to unearth state secrets (it was a recipe book but he was literally asking her about state secrets)" and "literally has never once obeyed an order, ever, not even once in his career, and is on public record having said 'I do not care about the goals and protections of the Amestrian Military. I am in fact only pursuing my own interests several of which are diametrically opposed to the safety and well-being of the governing body of Amestris'"

The issued recommendation is intercepted before it even reaches its intended desk. President Bradley himself has taken issue with it and denies it before a single set of eyes has seen it. The President's veto stamp is a terrifying hammer, used rarely, and it is now sitting on the auditor's desk.

The auditor sleeps with one eye open from then on out.

[macleod]

When public services are affordable and convenient, people will always choose those resources. They are not supposed to be a capitalistic profit-seeking initiative, they are developed for the benefit of the people, for a better life, just as government resources should be used. (tweet)

[cute-earth-orbiter]

[chimaerakitten]

Temeraire modern AU concepts don’t usually keep the treason even if they keep the dragons and an implied war and tbh that’s kind of a shame because “Laurence vs. the Twitter account Jane Roland forces him to use regularly to rehabilitate his image and tell his side of the story” would be a source of absolutely endless comedy methinks

[neurotypical-sonic]

I dont think anyone would be safe from sonic if they're damaging the enviroment. it would take people by suprise bc he's known as the World Hero, the Protector, and seeing on the news that some factory that was in no way shape or form connected to eggman was completely destroyed and all the evidence points to sonic. he doesnt even deny it when someone asks him, he just says "keep that shit away from mystic ruins" and runs off. "shouldnt he be held accountable?" some ask. good luck finding him

[nemfrog]

Tree rings. Response of sitka spruce and western hemlock to commercial thinning. 1985. Cover art.

Internet Archive

[reasonsforhope]

"Lead is a neurotoxin; it causes premature deaths and lifelong negative effects. It’s said “there is no safe level of lead exposure” — as far as we know, any lead causes damage, and it just gets worse the more exposure there is.

After a 20-year, worldwide campaign, in 2021 Algeria became the final country to end leaded gasoline in cars — something the US phased out in 1996. That should make a huge difference to environmental lead levels. But lots of sources remain, from car batteries to ceramics...

Bangladesh phased out leaded gasoline in the 1990s. But high blood lead levels have remained. Why? When researchers Stephen Luby and Jenny Forsyth, doing work in rural Bangladesh, tried to isolate the source, it turned out to be a surprising one: lead-adulterated turmeric.

Turmeric, a spice in common use for cooking in South Asia and beyond, is yellow, and adding a pigment made of lead chromate makes for bright, vibrant colors — and better sales. Buyers of the adulterated turmeric were slowly being poisoned...

But there’s also good news: A recent paper studying lead in turmeric in Bangladesh found that researchers and the Bangladeshi government appear to have driven lead out of the turmeric business in Bangladesh.

How Bangladesh got serious about lead poisoning

The researchers who’d isolated turmeric as the primary cause of high blood lead levels —working for the nonprofit International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh — went to meet with government officials. They collected samples nationwide and published a 2019 follow-up paper on the extent of the problem. Bangladesh’s Food Safety Authority got involved.

They settled on a two-part approach, starting with an education campaign to warn people about the dangers of lead. Once people had been warned that lead adulteration was illegal, they followed up with raids to analyze turmeric and fine sellers who were selling adulterated products.

They posted tens of thousands of fliers informing people about the risks of lead. They got coverage in the news. And then they swept through the markets with X-ray fluorescence analyzers, which detect lead. They seized contaminated products and fined sellers.

According to the study released earlier this month, this worked spectacularly well. “The proportion of market turmeric samples containing detectable lead decreased from 47 percent pre-intervention in 2019 to 0 percent in 2021,” the study found. And the vanishing of lead from turmeric had an immediate and dramatic effect on blood lead levels in the affected populations, too: “Blood lead levels dropped a median of 30 percent.”

The researchers who helped make that result happen are gearing up for similar campaigns in other areas where spices are adulterated.

The power of problem-solving

...When the Food Safety Authority showed up at the market and started issuing fines for lead adulteration, it stopped being a savvy business move to add lead. Purchasers who were accustomed to unnatural lead-colored turmeric learned how to recognize non-adulterated turmeric. And so lead went from ubiquitous to nearly nonexistent in the space of just a few years.

That’s a better world for everyone, from turmeric wholesalers to vulnerable kids — all purchased at a shockingly low price. The paper published this month concludes, “with credible information, appropriate technology, and good enough governance, the adulteration of spices can be stopped.”

There’s still a lot more to be done. India, like Bangladesh, has widespread adulteration of turmeric. And safety testing will have to remain vigilant to prevent lead in Bangladesh from creeping back into the spice supply.

But for all those caveats, it’s rare to see such fast, decisive action on a major health problem — and impressive to see it immediately rewarded with such a dramatic improvement in blood lead levels and health outcomes. It’s a reminder that things can change, and can change very quickly, as long as people care, and as long as they act."

-via Vox, September 20, 2023

[stone-cold-groove]

Construction of Boulder Dam prepared in collaboration with the Department of Interior Bureau of Reclamation - 1936.

[govpubsfinds]

Amy Klobuchar, US Senator from Minnesota, on January 6 2021, prior to recess: “January 6 is not typically a day of historical significance for our country. For centuries, this day is simply the day that we receive each State’s certified electoral votes, and it has come and gone without much fanfare.” 

Proceedings and Debates of the 117th Congress, First Session. Congressional Record 167, issue 4 (2021, January 6). Full text available at: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CREC-2021-01-06/summary

[ca-dmv-bot]

Customer: SHOE FETISH DMV: SHOE FETISH Verdict: ACCEPTED