There’ll be business in other states that fill that need, guaranteed. No niche of greed remains unfilled.
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I got some of my meds from Vanuatu when my scripts ran out & Canadia wasn’t an option.
Thanks, Vanuatu!
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Alright- but you can’t come to those very warm Maine beaches. 
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Florida can import if they like, it’s the export part that’s going to be the tricky one.
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(NYT) Record Drop in Crime Rate
In the chaotic early months of the Covid pandemic, when the U.S. was also going through the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, violent crime rose across the country. Murders in 2020 increased at the fastest rate since national statistics began in 1960. Other crimes, like shootings and car thefts, also increased.
The surge in violence left some experts worried that the U.S. might be entering another era of high crime, similar to that of the 1960s through the ’90s.
But the data over the past year has offered a much more optimistic picture. The number of murders in U.S. cities fell by more than 12 percent — which would be the biggest national decline on record. The spike that started in 2020 now looks more like a blip, and the murder rate is lower than it was during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. The recent data also suggests that the violent-crime rate in 2023 was near its lowest level in more than 50 years, as Jeff Asher, a crime analyst, wrote for his newsletter.
Source: Jeff Asher, F.B.I. Data is based on 99 cities; rate for 2023 is an estimate. By The New York Times
Fading shocks
To understand why murders and other crimes have declined, it’s useful to look at the likely causes of the increase: the pandemic and the fallout from Floyd’s killing by the police.
Covid, of course, upended American life in 2020 and 2021, including in ways that affected crime: Police officers stopped some forms of in-person contact, and more illness contributed to staffing shortages at police departments. Schools, which help keep teens out of trouble, shut down. Some social services and other anti-violence programs also had to scale back.
Covid does not explain everything. Many other countries did not report increases in their murder rates during the pandemic. Perhaps something unique to the U.S., such as its abundance of guns, made the country more vulnerable to the disruptions of Covid.
Regardless, the reality is this: During Covid, murders increased. As life has returned to normal, they have decreased.
The second explanation involves Floyd’s death. High-profile police killings typically strain relations between law enforcement and the public. This leads some officers to pull back from activities that can stop crime. More people become skeptical of working with the police to solve and prevent crimes. And as they lose trust in the police and the justice system, more Americans resort to their own means, including violence, to settle conflicts.
A similar phenomenon played out in the mid-2010s. Widely publicized police killings of Black men in Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; Chicago; and elsewhere strained relations between the police and their communities, and murders increased.
Back then, murders declined after a couple of years, as tensions eased and officials tried to repair police-community relations and improve policing. The same seems to have happened in the last couple of years.
Not the ’60s
This outcome was not inevitable. The crime surge that began in the early 1960s also seemed connected to societal unrest. But rather than quickly reversing, it continued for decades. One potential difference is that back then the causes were more spread out: the civil-rights unrest of the 1960s; federal scandals, like Watergate, that reduced trust in government in the ’70s; and the crack-cocaine epidemic in the ’80s.
Crime is a complicated topic, and an explanation that seems correct in one moment can look less certain after years of scrutiny. There are usually crosscurrents, too. Car thefts, for instance, have remained significantly higher in recent months than they were a few years ago.
Still, we know that murders in large U.S. cities fell rapidly last year, and most other forms of crime seem to have fallen as well.
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Thanks, Biden!
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Did you know that for a long time, Girl Scouts has openly included transgender and nonbinary individuals in its membership? I first learned of this three years ago while searching for a source for my annual Girl Scout cookie purchase. At that time, a wave of anti-trans sentiment was intensifying, prompting me to seek out transgender Girl Scouts from whom to order. One major benefit of their online ordering system is that it allows for trans girl scouts to sell their cookies with relative privacy and no contact between the scout and the purchaser when it comes to online orders.
My initial effort was a success, meeting the goals of every single scout featured on the page. The achievement felt wonderful during what seemed like one of the most severe legislative attacks on transgender children in recent memory. Unbeknownst to us, each subsequent year would bring greater such attacks. Since then, every year I’ve repeated this initiative, we’ve surpassed our previous sales, leading to coverage in multiple news stories.
It is that time of year again. I have reached out to the families on my list to gather girl scouts to purchase cookies from. Please consider choosing a trans girl scout to get your cookies from this year - the kids are under attack this year more than ever, so lets give them some joy.
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Other benefits might include reduced bathroom water usage and wastewater treatment requirements. 
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The seating insurgency began on Dec. 17, when Cal grad Mingwei Samuel moved a DIY bench to a downtown Berkeley bus stop after seeing a photo of a 64-year-old Northbrae resident with chronic pain sitting on a curb on Martin Luther King Jr. Way as he waited for a bus after grocery shopping. Samuel’sgoal was to help the
man and highlight the lack of infrastructure for public transit riders.
The benchings will continue until morale improves.” — Mingwei Samuel
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Spring 2024 begins just before Diana Ross’ 80th birthday:
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Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 started Sunday at noon Eastern time. After just over a day it’s already raised over $160k for Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Tuesday afternoon Eastern time history will be made as the first speedrun performed by a dog at a GDQ event (granted, remotely) will take place. PB (Peanut Butter) won’t be the first non-human speed runner at GDQ (TASBot has that record, I believe) but he will be the first canine runner.
Edited to add: Here’s the recording of Peanut Butter’s run (with one “That’s never happened before!” in it)
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Man designs and builds 3D printed telescope with his niece, now plans to build ten of them to lend out to school groups and others.
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Go Guelph!
The first and only time I’ve ever really looked through a telescope was at an observatory in Guelph. Seeing the stars through a telescope blew my 9 year old mind.
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I can’t think of a better New Year’s resolution than trying to be the human John Green believes us all capable of being.
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