How Long Will Hunter's Jurors Deliberate?

This One Question From Pew Says a Lot About Our Culture

Pharmaceutical company Moderna has announced that a combination vaccine it has been developing against flu and COVID-19 has performed well so far in Phase 3 trials. The data are yet to be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but the company says their combi vaccine has produced stronger immune responses than the already-licensed vaccines it was compared to.Moderna became a household name thanks to the success of its mRNA vaccine against COVID-19. Along with the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine, it remains a cornerstone of the public health response to the pandemic, with the architects of the technology behind them winning a Nobel Prize.While other vaccines played their part in gaining control of the spread of COVID, some – like the AstraZeneca vaccine – are now being withdrawn, while the mRNA vaccines continue to be updated to match the latest variants.But COVID-19 is not the only threat out there, and a number of research projects are currently looking to apply mRNA vaccines to other diseases, including cancer. When it comes to respiratory pathogens, a clear target would be influenza. There are around a billion cases of seasonal flu annually and hundreds of thousands of deaths, not to mention the ever-present Damocles’ sword of a possible future pandemic.Influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus behind COVID-19) share a tendency to mutate rapidly. That’s why regular booster shots are recommended for COVID and why the seasonal flu shot is updated every year. Moderna’s combi vaccine seeks to put both shots into one handy package.“Combination vaccines have the potential to reduce the burden of respiratory viruses on health systems and pharmacies, as well as offer people more convenient vaccination options that could improve compliance and provide stronger protection from seasonal illnesses,” said CEO Stéphane Bancel in a statement.The combi vaccine, called mRNA-1083, incorporates a candidate vaccine for seasonal flu (mRNA-1010) and Moderna’s latest COVID-19 vaccine (mRNA-1283). The Phase 3 clinical trial, which is still ongoing, has recruited two cohorts of approximately 4,000 adults each.The first cohort are all aged 65 and over. Participants have been randomly assigned to receive either mRNA-1083, or a combination of Moderna’s current COVID vaccine (Spikevax®) and a licensed flu vaccine called Fluzone HD®.The second cohort are aged between 50 and 64. In this group, participants have either received mRNA-1083 or a combination of Spikevax and a standard flu vaccine (Fluarix®).Moderna reports that the immune response elicited by mRNA-1083 was stronger than that produced by the separate vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and three different flu strains: H1N1, H3N2, and B/Victoria. mRNA-1083 was also found to be safe, and the majority of side effects experienced were mild and similar to those caused by the separate vaccines. The most common side effects were pain at the injection site, fatigue, muscle aches, and headache.Moderna now plans to present the data at a medical conference and hopes to publish the findings in a peer-reviewed journal.“Moderna is the only company with a positive Phase 3 flu and COVID combination vaccine,” said Bancel. “Building on the momentum of positive Phase 3 data across our respiratory portfolio, we continue to address significant unmet medical needs and advance public health.”

It’s all been popping off on the Oregon coastline as of late. Last week was no different, as a massive sunfish thought only to live in the Southern Hemisphere washed ashore in the north of the Beaver State.According to a Facebook post from the local Seaside Aquarium, the 7.3-foot (2.2-meter) fish was spotted on June 3 on the beach in Gearhart. As to be expected when a giant of the ocean appears on a quiet beach on a random Monday, word quickly got around on social media and visitors flocked to the site. IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Initially, it was suspected that the beached creature was an ocean sunfish (Mola mola), which are known to be the world’s heaviest bony fish. However, thanks to going somewhat viral, word of the fish had traveled thousands of miles away to New Zealand-based marine biologist Marianne Nyegaard.Upon seeing photos of the fish, Nyegaard suspected that it was a closely related, but different species called the hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta).This species was discovered by Nyegaard and a team of fellow researchers only relatively recently, only examined in person for the first time back in 2014. Despite being what you might think as noticeably big, it was the first time in 130 years a new species had been added to the Mola genus.“We retraced the steps of early naturalists and taxonomists to understand how such a large fish could have evaded discovery all this time,” said Nyegaard in a statement at the time. “Overall we felt science had been repeatedly tricked by this cheeky species, which is why we named it the Hoodwinker.”It was thought that the hoodwinker sunfish only occupied waters in the Southern Hemisphere, having previously been spotted off the coast of Australia, South Africa and southern Chile – rocking up on beach in Oregon would therefore be pretty unexpected. But given the sneaky nature of this sunfish, it could have been hiding in plain sight further north, disguised as its ocean sunfish cousin to the untrained eye.To confirm if this was the case in Gearhart, Nyegaard contacted the aquarium to see if they could take some samples for genetic testing. From these samples, measurements, and further photographs, the marine biologist confirmed it was indeed the hoodwinker.As well as suggesting that the range of the giant fish might be further than previously thought – it’s also been spotted in California and even as far north as Alaska – the specimen that washed up may also be the largest ever sampled.For those hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive creature, the aquarium stated that the fish “will probably remain for a few more days, maybe weeks as their tough skin makes it hard for scavengers to puncture.”

Google has achieved what few brands have, making their company name become the default verb for what their product does. Rather than saying "search it" it's common to say "Google it" even if the person you are talking to is the type who will Google it on Bing.Google didn't start out as Google. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first began the project, hosting it on Stanford servers in 1996, the search engine was known as "Backrub". This was because the search engine was focused on "backlinks" on the web, or how websites link to each other, telling them where information came from, what sites are trusted and on what topics, and attempting to rank them accordingly in search results. A year later, they thankfully realized the name needed a change, and so nearly 30 years on we do not have to ask people to Backrub topics they are woefully ignorant on. The name they settled on was Google.But what does "Google" mean? If you Google it on Google, the first result you are likely to come across (though search results are not the same for everybody) explains that it stands for "Global Organization of Oriented Group Language of Earth". This is, however, incorrect according to Google's own website, and people present at the name-changing sessions."Sean [Anderson] and Larry [Page] were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name – something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data," Stanford computer scientist David Koller explains. "Sean verbally suggested the word 'googolplex,' and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, "googol" (both words refer to specific large numbers)."Anderson Backrubbed (see how bad that name is?) the name to see if the domain name was available, and made a historic mistake."Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as 'google.com,' which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name 'google.com' for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration record dates from September 15, 1997)."Googol means 1 × 10100, or 1 followed by one hundred zeroes, and according to Google the term "reflects [Google's] mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web."[H/T: The Mirror]

Can the first letter of your name predict your profession and the city you live in? If that were the case, I should probably be a magician living in Milan – which, regrettably, I’m not. But, according to a recent study, I may be the outlier here, and our names really might influence our life choices.This is a phenomenon called nominative determinism – the idea that people tend to gravitate toward areas of work that fit their names. Examples of people with well-matched names and careers are numerous. For instance, weather presenter Sarah Blizzard, disaster management scholar Dr Bang, marine biologist Helen Scales, and nutrition and obesity researcher William Dietz.Previous research has suggested that we show a preference for letters in our own names, and that this preference may affect our decisions, such as our choice of profession or the city in which we live. However, plenty of other work has questioned the reliability of the effect, which is why researchers at the University of Utah sought to investigate whether or not it exists in the real world.“Nominative determinism would suggest that a person named Dennis is more likely to choose to be a dentist than, say, a lawyer, or that Dennis is more likely to choose to live in Denver than Cleveland,” they write in the study. To find out if this holds true, they used large language models trained on Common Crawl, Twitter, Google News, and Google Books to capture millions of occurrences of people’s names, their professions, and the cities they live in.They ended up with 3,410 names from the US Social Security Administration’s publicly available dataset, 508 professions, and 14,856 cities. First names were favored to eliminate reverse causality (e.g. people with the last name Disney working at the Walt Disney Company) and because they are less likely to change throughout a person’s life.After controlling for various factors, including gender, ethnicity, and the frequency of names and professions, the researchers report finding “consistent evidence of the relationship between people’s names and a preference for major life choices starting with the same letter as their first name.”This nominative determinism effect was consistent over the decades of the 20th century, although the pattern was found to be different for men and women.“While men show a consistent pattern of the nominative determinism effect across the decades for profession choices, women show a much lower effect in the early part of the 20th century, though as time progresses, the effect increases,” they write. This, the authors suggest, could reflect the increased freedom women were allowed in career selection as time went on.The study is limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data, meaning it only provides a snapshot of nominative determinism. However, it does seem to add some credence to its existence. Perhaps it’s time to book the flight to Italy and look into enrolling in magic school.The study is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In a shocking step backwards, whaling is set to continue in Iceland. The Icelandic government has announced today that the country’s last remaining whaling company, Hvalur hf., will be issued an annual license to kill 99 fin whales in the Greenland/West Iceland region, as well as 29 whales in the East Iceland/Faroe Islands region.Although the total quota allocation is 128 fin whales, only the 99 allocated for the Greenland/West Iceland region are targeted by Iceland’s last whaling company, while whales in the Faroes/East Iceland region have not been targeted in the past.“The world has been watching Iceland, waiting for its government to end whaling once and for all. While the numbers and quota period are significantly reduced, slaughtering 99 more whales makes no sense,” Patrick Ramage, Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said in a statement sent to IFLScience.“It’s hard to fathom how and why this green light to kill 99 fin whales is being given," added Ramage.Although Iceland holds an exemption to the moratorium, this is still globally considered an illegal activity.Sharon Livermore, IFAWMeasuring up to 25 meters (85 feet) in length, fin whales are the second-largest animal on earth in terms of length, second only to the blue whale. These majestic creatures can live up to 90 years old and have a cosmopolitan range across much of the world’s oceans. While animal welfare and conservation groups have expressed disappointment at the news, they note that this might not necessarily be the worst news possible. “A small quota might be a necessary evil. Effectively, the whaling law is such that if the minister does reject a quota request, then there's a possibility that the original quota of 264 fin whales could be carried over into the next season. In that respect, tactically, a small quota could actually work in the favour of the whales,” Sharon Livermore, Marine Conservation Program Director at the IFAW, told IFLScience. “Whilst the review of the whaling laws is going on, which is due this October, this could be the best approach politically to see the end of commercial whaling in Iceland once and for all,” said Livermore.In June 2023, Icelandic authorities stopped the year’s whaling season one day before it was supposed to start by suspending the hunting of fin whales until the end of summer. The snap decision came after a damning report published by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority suggested whaling often results in the animals suffering long, agonizing deaths, and may break the country's animal welfare laws.The government later lifted the ban towards the end of the season in August, resulting in just 24 fin whales being killed by Hvalur hf. Many hoped that this June, the Icelandic government would not reissue a whaling license to Hvalur hf., which would act as a final nail in the coffin of this dwindling industry.Alas, this was not the case. “The whaling issue in Iceland is all about power. Kristján Loftsson, who runs Hvalur hf., is an incredibly powerful and wealthy individual. That is the essence of why commercial whaling is [continuing],” Livermore explained. Public opinion has shifted in recent years, though. A recent survey found that 51 percent of Icelanders were opposed to the hunt, while 29 percent were in favor. People over 60 were most in favor and those aged 18 to 29 were most against it. Furthermore, demand for whale meat has been on the decline. Considering this change of heart, many are hoping that Iceland will impose harder laws to outlaw whaling later this year – but nothing is certain.“Globally, commercial whaling is banned, let's not forget that. Although Iceland holds an exemption to the moratorium, this is still globally considered an illegal activity. There are lots of reasons why, reputationally, Iceland should strengthen the laws and put a ban on it themselves once and for all,” Livermore concluded. 

A week after it began, the first of two criminal trials of President Biden’s son Hunter is now in the hands of the jury. A Media Research Center (MRC) analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening news coverage shows the broadcast networks have been far less interested in the felony trial of the Democratic President’s son than they were about the convoluted “hush money” case of Joe Biden’s GOP rival, Donald Trump, in New York City last month. Trump is a former President, so some gap in coverage should be expected, as is the fact that there was no way for the broadcast networks to hide the criminal trial of any President’s son, nor for them to avoid the cringeworthy details of drug use at the center of the charges. But our analysis shows the networks have done their best to keep the coverage to a minimum, and to avoid any discussion of the more serious legal allegations surrounding Hunter’s business dealings. And while TV coverage of Trump’s New York case often went out of its way to highlight the lurid and humiliating details, these networks have shown consistent sympathy towards an obviously dysfunctional First Family:   ♦ While the networks deluged viewers with repeated references to Trump’s “criminal,” “felony” trial, nearly half of all references to Hunter’s case (47%) omitted those charged terms. ♦ ABC never mentioned, while CBS and NBC spent mere seconds, on the host of other legal issues surrounding the President’s son. ♦ The evening newscasts spent a grand total of just 40 seconds talking about Hunter’s laptop, and never acknowledged that they had falsely suggested the laptop was part of a “Russian disinformation campaign” four years ago. ♦ Viewers heard just 71 seconds of coverage of Joe Biden’s pledge not to pardon his son, and no suggestion from the networks that the President might change his mind after the election. ♦ While the coverage included a lot of negative information about Hunter’s drug use, reporters also exhibited sympathy for the President’s “only surviving son” and the “excruciatingly painful” testimony he was forced to hear. Details: ■ Far less airtime than the Trump trial: In the nine days from June 2 (the night before jury selection began) through June 10 (when closing arguments in the case were delivered), ABC’s World News Tonight offered the least coverage: just 11 minutes, 44 seconds — barely half of what they devoted to the equivalent days of Trump’s trial in April (22 minutes, 42 seconds), when much of the coverage focused on the mundane bureaucracy of jury selection. Over the same time period, the NBC Nightly News spent 15 minutes, 20 seconds on Hunter’s trial while the CBS Evening News delivered 14 minutes, 59 seconds of coverage. All told, that’s still significantly less airtime (42 minutes, 1 second) than these same broadcasts spent on the first nine days of Trump’s trial: 67 minutes, 15 seconds. ■ Downplaying Hunter’s felony charges: Unlike in Trump’s trial, when the reporters deluged viewers with repeated references to Trump’s “criminal,” “felony” trial, the evening newscasts often employed gentler terms when describing the serious charges facing the President’s son. Out of 34 references to the case against Hunter Biden, only 18 of those (53%) included the actual words “felony” or “criminal.” The remaining 47% used deliberately softer phrases, such as “Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial” (ABC’s David Muir, June 4), his trial on “federal gun charges” (NBC’s Lester Holt, June 4), Biden’s “federal gun case” (CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, June 6), and simply “Hunter Biden’s gun trial” (NBC’s Holt, June 6). ■ Hiding Hunter’s other legal troubles: For years, Hunter Biden has been the focus of scrutiny because he’s inexplicably made millions in foreign business dealings. That’s why the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, has been investigating the President’s son for years (although he was only named as special counsel last August). And suspicions that these foreign paydays were part of an influence peddling scheme have been a main area of focus for the House impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. The networks have steadfastly avoided digging into this story, but with Hunter actually facing a criminal trial, a reasonable observer might expect the networks to spend at least a few minutes on the background that led to this moment. Yet even during the trial, the liberal media’s censorship continues: Since June 2, ABC has said nothing about any of the other legal cases facing Hunter, as if the gun case was his only problem. CBS and NBC offered a few seconds (17 seconds and 7 seconds, respectively) acknowledging that Hunter faces a second criminal trial for tax evasion this fall, but said nothing about the dubious methods Hunter employed to make the millions of dollars he’s charged with failing to pay taxes on. And only NBC’s Ryan Nobles noted, in an 8 second aside in his June 5 report, that “House Republicans say they’ll file a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against Hunter and James Biden for lying to Congress,” referring to their depositions before the House committee investigating the Bidens. ■ Laptop? What laptop? Back in October 2020, the networks — along with the rest of the liberal media establishment — suppressed the damning information found on Hunter Biden’s personal laptop, wrongly suggesting it was a “foreign intelligence operation” or a “Russian disinformation campaign.” But last week, contents from that laptop were introduced into evidence against Hunter Biden without the slightest suggestion from reporters that they had been (at best) partisan dupes when four years earlier they obligingly echoed the Biden campaign’s spin claiming the genuine laptop was merely a last-minute dirty trick. In their coverage of the trial, ABC’s World News Tonight (10 seconds) and NBC Nightly News (30 seconds) spent less than a minute identifying evidence as coming from “Hunter Biden’s laptop” without the slightest acknowledgment of the media’s sketchy history on the subject. “The prosecution entering Hunter Biden’s laptop as evidence,” ABC’s Muir blandly remarked on June 4. The CBS Evening News was even cagier, never once mentioning that the laptop was a source for key photos and archived messages. “Prosecutors showed the jury a series of photos of drugs allegedly used by Hunter Biden, and an image from a video of a shirtless Biden allegedly with drug paraphernalia,” CBS’s Scott MacFarlane relayed on June 5. Were those images from Hunter’s laptop? CBS never explained that to viewers. ■ No doubting Joe Biden’s pardon pledge: Interviewing the President in Europe for the anniversary of D-Day ABC’s David Muir asked Biden if he had “ruled out a pardon” for Hunter. “Yes,” Joe Biden replied, without any follow-up from Muir. Biden’s pardon pledge drew 31 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight, 30 seconds on NBC’s Nightly News, and a quick 10 seconds on the CBS Evening News. But legal experts such as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy suspect that pledge would be subject to change after the November election, especially if Hunter Biden receives a prison sentence. “If Biden loses the election, he could pardon Hunter before leaving office on January 20, 2025,” McCarthy wrote last week. “If he wins the election, he could wait on a pardon until a sentence of imprisonment is imposed, probably in the tax case sometime in February or March 2025.” That’s hardly unreasonable, especially given the frequent statements of support from Joe Biden towards his son. Yet none of the evening newscasts suggested that, once he’s faced voters for the last time, President Biden could short-circuit the jury and give his son the ultimate get-out-of-jail free card. ■ Feeling Hunter’s pain: Viewers certainly heard a lot of negative information about Hunter Biden’s drug use, including how one girlfriend testified he was “smoking crack every 20 minutes or so” (NBC, June 5), while his sister-in-law/girlfriend Hallie Biden said “she saw him with crack rocks the size of ping pong balls.” (NBC, June 6) But there was also an undercurrent of sympathy for Hunter and the rest of the Biden family that was utterly absent in the networks coverage of the Trump trial. All three networks emotionally referred to Hunter as Joe Biden’s “only surviving son,” as when CBS’s Norah O’Donnell on June 3 explained: “The President’s only surviving son is charged with three felony counts...” That same night on ABC, correspondent Terry Moran relayed: “Earlier today, President Biden released a statement standing by his only surviving son, saying in part ‘I have boundless love for my son.’” “Right now a jury deliberating the fate of Hunter Biden, the sole surviving son of the President,” fill-in anchor Tom Llamas announced June 10. And even as the testimony painted a damning portrait of Hunter as out of control, reporters found ways to empathize with the First Family. After NBC viewers heard a snippet from Hunter’s audio book on June 4, NBC’s Ryan Nobles noted the reaction: “First Lady Jill Biden, his wife Melissa and sister Ashley were in court, sitting together while the excerpts played, visibly shaken and embracing one another.” “It was a hard day for the Bidens in court,” Moran agreed on World News Tonight. “I can only imagine that this is probably excruciatingly painful for Hunter Biden,” CBS’s legal expert Tom Dupree worried on June 5. Then on June 7, ABC’s Moran mourned: “For Hunter Biden, it was a day of deeply personal, anguishing testimony.” Viewers heard no such concern for the feelings of President Trump or his family during his recent trial. The media’s kinder, gentler coverage of Hunter’s trial amounts to another election-year favor for Democrats, and it probably won’t be the last.

The 2020 election may seem like a distant memory, but as November 5 draws nearer, many are worried about repeated voter fraud. And they should be worried. Sara Gonzales points to a 2023 poll conducted by the Heartland Institute. According to the survey, “in the 2020 general election, more than one in five mail-in voters admitted to voting illegally.” If that wasn’t disturbing enough, the Heartland Institute just released another poll indicating that “approximately 44 million Americans would vote illegally in the 2024 election ‘to prevent [the] other side from winning.”’ Justin Haskins, director of the Socialism Research Center at the Heartland Institute, tells Sara that this recent poll included questions such as: “Would you change a friend or family member's ballot without their knowledge?” “Would you throw out a friend or family member’s ballot without them knowing about it?” And “Would you vote in two states?” Shockingly, “28% of voters said yes to at least one of those questions,” says Haskins. “That's an incredibly staggering number.” What is perhaps even more staggering, however, is that “it was basically equal – Republicans and Democrats.” What does this mean for the 2024 election? That's exactly what Sara and the Blaze Originals team investigate in the upcoming documentary "Voter Fraud Exposed: How Elections Can Be Stolen." Voter Fraud Exposed: How Elections Can Be Stolen | Official Trailer | Blaze Originals www.youtube.com According to Haskins, for Biden, who relied heavily on mail-in ballots in 2020, “even if the fraud is equal on both sides, it actually would benefit Biden significantly more because there's just way more mail-in ballots on his side." "All you would need is maybe 4%-5% of ballots to be thrown out – even if the fraud was equal for Democrats and Republicans – and Trump would have won, not Biden," he explains, adding, "it shows you how important a number like 28% is, and it also tells you how screwed up America is.” “If a quarter of people are saying, ‘Yeah, I'll cheat to win, I'll do anything to win,’ how can you have a republic?” he asks, noting that America is “in huge trouble.” To hear Sara’s thoughts and learn more about the upcoming Blaze Originals documentary in which she takes a close look at potential voter fraud in the 2024 election, watch the clip below. Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The demonstration coincided with a separate anti-Israel protest at the Union Square subway station, where a ‘Long Live October 7th’ banner was held.