Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Takeaway coffee cups release thousands of microplastic particles
Try using a stainless steel go-cup
To most of us, that cup feels harmless – just a convenient tool for caffeine delivery. However, if that cup is made of plastic, or has a thin plastic lining, there is a high chance it’s shedding thousands of tiny plastic fragments directly into your drink.
In Australia alone, we use a staggering 1.45 billion single-use hot beverage cups every year, along with roughly 890 million plastic lids. Globally, that number swells to an estimated 500 billion cups annually.
In new research I coauthored, published in Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics, we looked at how these cups behave when they get hot.
The message is clear: heat is a primary driver of microplastic release, and the material of your cup matters more than you might think.
What are microplastics?
Microplastics are fragments of plastic ranging from about 1 micrometer to 5 millimeters in size – roughly from a speck of dust to the size of a sesame seed. 
No plastics
They can be created when larger plastic items break down, or they can be released directly from products during normal use. These particles end up in our environment, our food, and eventually, our bodies.
Currently, we don’t have conclusive evidence on just how much of that microplastic remains in our bodies. Studies on this subject are highly prone to contamination and it’s really difficult to accurately measure the levels of such tiny particles in human tissue.
Furthermore, scientists are still piecing together what microplastics might mean for human health in the long term. More research is urgently needed, but in the meantime, it’s good to be aware of potential microplastic sources in our daily lives.
Rhode Islanders REALLY don't like Dan McKee
Two major polls released Monday and Tuesday show high dissatisfaction with McKee among likely voters
Two articles by Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current
University of New Hampshire poll shows Foulkes leading McKee 34% to 18%
The survey of 703 residents, including 364 likely Democratic primary voters, marks a new low in voters’ long running dissatisfaction with McKee. Less than one in five likely Democratic voters (including registered Democrats and independents) had a favorable view of the incumbent governor, while more than three-quarters viewed him unfavorably.
If asked to mark their primary ballots today — six months out from the September primary — 18% of likely Democratic voters would reelect McKee. Foulkes, a former CVS executive viewed as McKee’s main primary competitor, was the pick for 34% of likely primary voters. The margin of error overall was 3.7%, with a 5.1% margin of error for questions specific to likely Democratic voters.
The poll was conducted online between Feb. 12 and 16.
More bad news for McKee’s reelection prospects in latest AFL-CIO poll
Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew
Live longer and better: Get your shots
Check with your health care provider to see which shots you need to get
Let’s be clear: The primary reason to be vaccinated against shingles is that two shots provide at least 90% protection against a painful, blistering disease that a third of Americans will suffer in their lifetimes, one that can cause lingering nerve pain and other nasty long-term consequences.
The most important reason for older adults to be vaccinated against the respiratory infection RSV is that their risk of being hospitalized with it declines by almost 70% in the year they get the shot, and by nearly 60% over two years.
And the main reason to roll up a sleeve for an annual flu shot is that when people do get infected, it also reliably reduces the severity of illness, though its effectiveness varies by how well scientists have predicted which strain of influenza shows up.
But other reasons for older people to be vaccinated are emerging. They are known, in doctor-speak, as off-target benefits, meaning that the shots do good things beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to avert.
The list of off-target benefits is lengthening as “the research has accumulated and accelerated over the last 10 years,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Some of these protections have been established by years of data; others are the subjects of more recent research, and the payoff is not yet as clear. The first RSV vaccines, for example, became available only in 2023.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
If you criticized ICE or Trump on-line, Homeland Security wants your name and personal information
Trump regime wants to pursue those who commit Thought Crime
By Mario Trujillo, The Electronic Frontier Foundation
.webp)
In the past year, DHS has consistently targeted people
engaged in First Amendment activity. Among other things, the agency has issued
subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have
documented ICE's activities in their community, criticized the government, or
attended protests.
These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knows it.
When a handful of users challenged a few of them in court with
the help of ACLU affiliates in Northern California and Pennsylvania,
DHS withdrew them
rather than waiting for a decision.
These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knows it.
But it is difficult for the average user to fight back on
their own. Quashing a subpoena is a fast-moving process that requires lawyers
and resources. Not everyone can afford a lawyer on a moment’s notice, and
non-profits and pro-bono attorneys have already been stretched to near capacity
during the Trump administration.
That is why we, joined by the ACLU of Northern
California, have asked several large tech platforms to do more to protect their
users, including:
- Insist
on court intervention and an order before complying with a DHS subpoena,
because the agency has already proved that its legal process is often
unlawful and unconstitutional;
- Give
users as much notice as possible when they are the target of a subpoena,
so the user can seek help. While many companies have already made this promise,
there are high-profile examples of
it not happening—ultimately stripping users of their day in
court;
- Resist
gag orders that would prevent companies from notifying their users that
they are a target of a subpoena.
We sent the letter to Amazon, Apple, Discord, Google,
Meta, Microsoft, Reddit, SNAP, TikTok, and X.
Have some fun if you plan to watch Trump's speech.
Here's a punch list for things he's going to say:
Here's another one:
Humberto the Bomb Cyclone beats the Blizzard of '78's snowfall record
Next question: Will Trump approve request for federal assistance?
By Christopher Shea and Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
Stay off the roads (at least until noon today).
Snowed in for the duration (photo by Will Collette)
That was Gov. Dan McKee’s message to all Rhode Islanders as a nor’easter with “peak blizzard conditions” shut down the state Monday.
The National Weather Service office in Norton, Massachusetts, announced at 7 p.m. that total snow accumulation of 37.9 inches was at Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport in Warwick. Before Monday, the greatest single snowstorm on record was 28.6 inches on Feb. 6-7, 1978.
The daily snowfall of 35.5 inches broke the record one–day snowfall, which was 19.0 inches set during the blizzard of Jan. 8, 1996.
“I was around in the Blizzard of ’78 — this is a remarkable difference,” McKee told reporters gathered at the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency’s Cranston headquarters Monday afternoon. “This is the biggest snowstorm that we have ever seen.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: According to one website offering snow estimates by address, Humberto dumped two feet, eight inches of snow on my backyard. Cathy and I rode out the Blizzard of '78 in Providence and will no doubt ride this one out, too. - Will Collette
This New Blood Test Can Detect Cancer Before Tumors Appear
A new CRISPR-powered light sensor can detect the faintest whispers of cancer in a single drop of blood.
By Optica
Biomarkers such as proteins, fragments of DNA, or other
molecules can signal whether cancer is present, how it is progressing, or a
person’s level of risk. The challenge is that at the earliest stages of
disease, these molecules exist in very tiny amounts, making them difficult to
measure.
Trump opens New England's National Marine Monument to commercial fishing
Atlantic Ocean’s Only Sanctuary Gutted
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist
The Mad King has disemboweled protections for a marine
sanctuary some 130 miles southeast of the Cape Cod coast. His declaration is
moronically titled “Unleashing American Commercial Fishing in the Atlantic.” He
likely wants his Feb. 6 proclamation printed out and displayed on
fisher refrigerators throughout the region.
EDITOR'S NOTE: I couldn't remember ever seeing Trump
at the beach or on a boat. I searched and found almost all AI-fakes,
like the one above showing Trump at "Trump Gaza"
with Israel's leader Benyamin Netanyahu. There were
some old articles about Trump's interest in super-yachts,
but I found no photos of him on a boat. He hates
"windmills" because he hates how they look to him at
his golf resort in Scotland. - Will Collette
Commercial fishing off the New England coast has been an
industry for four centuries. It has led to the “overexploitation and eventual
collapse of species after species,” according to NOAA Fisheries. Atlantic halibut, haddock, ocean perch, and
yellowtail flounder are now all but commercially extinct. NOAA Fisheries has
also warned Atlantic cod, “resilient to years of overfishing,” could join the
ranks of species written off as commercially extinct.
In September 2016 President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument as
the first Atlantic Ocean monument. It remains, kind of, the only national
marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. There are four in the Pacific, kind of.
Similar to national marine sanctuaries, marine
national monuments are designated to protect biodiversity-rich ocean
areas. They are designated by presidential proclamation under the Antiquities
Act of 1906 to conserve pristine ecosystems, deep-sea habitats, and
sea life.
Monument rules prevent commercial fishing. Special interest
groups sued unsuccessfully to stop the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine
National Monument.
Less than four years later, in June 2020, the Mad King, then
self-serving in his first term, revoked the Obama-era commercial fishing
restrictions on the Atlantic monument in a nearly identical proclamation. President Biden then reversed the Mad King’s
proclamation with one of his own. Capt. Chaos has now reversed the reversal.
Monday, February 23, 2026
Even with only partial data for 2025, USA scores its worst rating ever for corruption, falling behind Uruguay
Making America Corrupt Again
by Philip
Mattera, director of the Corporate
Research Project of Good Jobs First for the Dirt Diggers Digest
.webp)
On a scale of zero to 100, Denmark gets a score of 89. Only
four other countries score above 80: Finland, Singapore, New Zealand, and
Norway. The United States, by contrast, drops to its lowest-ever score of 64,
with a ranking of 29th place. That puts it behind nations such
as the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Estonia.
This slide, which TI notes does not yet fully reflect 2025
developments, does not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying even
limited attention to the news. Along with practices such as cruelty to
suspected undocumented migrants and gunboat diplomacy, rising corruption has
been one of the hallmarks of Trump 2.0.
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