MTM 14

Today is Match Day, which is a good time to remind everyone that thousands of qualified doctors will not match to a residency program today because we don't have enough slots. This bottleneck is driving our doctor shortage.

@unusual_whales Yes let’s divulge our war strategy to the world including our enemy…😳

“President Trump went to war against Iran without explaining his strategy to the American people or the world. It now appears that he may not have had much of a strategy at all,” per NYT

@JavierBlas Yes the USS Tripoli and its companion vessels will arrive first as they departed near Japan. Perhaps as early as the end of next week. And Boxer will follow 10-14 days later.

Assuming the USS Boxer is heading to the Middle East, and considering that she only left San Diego two days ago, she won't be near the Persian Gulf until mid-April. If the reinforcements are intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, then the oil market faces a very long wait.

@AnishA_Moonka But not deciduous trees. Only evergreen varieties? Would an oil from one of these trees rubbed in the nostrils do the same thing?

Trees release invisible chemicals into the air to protect themselves from bugs and disease. Turns out those same chemicals also switch on your body's cancer-fighting cells. They're called natural killer cells. They're a type of white blood cell that patrols your bloodstream looking for cancer cells and virus-infected cells. When they find one, they punch a hole through its outer wall and inject proteins that force the cell to self-destruct from the inside. You're born with them. Unlike most of your immune system, they don't need to be "trained" on a specific threat first. They just attack anything that looks wrong. The 50% number in this tweet comes from Dr. Qing Li at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, who has been studying the effects of forests on the human body since 2004. His original 2007 study took 12 men on a 3-day, 2-night forest trip, walking two hours a day. Blood tests showed 11 of 12 had roughly 50% more cancer-killing cell activity afterward. A follow-up with 13 female nurses found the same thing. But the part the tweet leaves out: the boost didn't vanish when they went home. It lasted over 7 days in both groups, and in men, it was still detectable in blood work 30 days later. Li's conclusion is that one forest trip per month could keep these cells running at a higher level year-round. The obvious next question is whether it's the forest itself or just the vacation. Li tested this directly. A separate group took a city tourist trip with the same amount of walking. No boost to killer cells. No stress hormone drop. Zero effect. Then he ran an even more controlled test: 12 men stayed in a regular Tokyo hotel room for three nights while a humidifier pumped tree oil (from Japanese cypress) into the air overnight. Their killer cells still went up. Their stress hormones still dropped. That isolates the cause to those tree chemicals, called phytoncides. Pine, cedar, and cypress trees release the most. These chemicals were found in forest air but were nearly absent in city air. A 2021 lab study showed that one of these tree chemicals directly switches on killer cells and slows colon tumor growth in mice. The bigger picture connects these cells directly to cancer risk. An 11-year study published in The Lancet (one of the world's top medical journals) tracked 3,625 Japanese people and found that those with weaker natural killer cells developed cancer at significantly higher rates. A separate study screening for bowel cancer found that people with low killer cell levels were 7 times more likely to be diagnosed. Li's own research across all 47 regions of Japan showed that areas with less forest had higher cancer death rates for lung, breast, uterine, prostate, kidney, and colon cancers, even after accounting for differences in smoking rates and wealth. The caveats: Li's original studies used small groups (12 and 13 people), and the regional data show a pattern but don't directly prove that forests prevent cancer. No large-scale clinical trial has confirmed that yet. But the chain is consistent: trees release chemicals, those chemicals wake up the cells in your blood that kill cancer, the effect lasts weeks, not hours, and people with more active killer cells get cancer less often. Japan now has 65 government-certified Forest Therapy sites across the country, each tested and approved based on the physical effects they have on visitors.

@DeItaone @JackPosobiec They don’t seem to understand how this works.

IRAN UNWILLING TO TALK ABOUT OPENING HORMUZ WHILE UNDER ATTACK

@SlopHq Frequency, reliability and safety.

the thing that gets people on transit isn’t free fares it’s not having to check a schedule. a bus that costs $2 and comes every 6 minutes will outperform a free bus that comes every 30 minutes every single time. frequency is the product. the fare is a rounding error

@unusual_whales Trillion

Some 40 percent of the potential top 1 percent of Canadian earners have emigrated to the U.S. Read @CharlesLammam in @TheHubCanada: thehub.ca/2026/03/20/why…

@ajlamesa He’s dead. How is AP still quoting him as if he is breathing? He died in the ICU yesterday or day before. All these threats to civilian locations just demonstrates why they need to fall.

Iran threatens world tourism sites and says it is still building missiles 3 weeks into war apnews.com/article/iran-i…

@DrMakaryFDA Unless it is only used in China. 🙂

If a drug is already widely used in humans abroad, the FDA shouldn’t require routine testing in animals.

They will not be staying in power. The deal will not be with the Iranian mullahs. The deal with be with the gulf neighbors to have rights to part of Iran’s energy reserves and possibly territory for their support. Iran is demonstrating to the world why they must be brought to heel by their indiscriminate bombing. Attempting to blackmail their neighbors into defending them. So the question to the gulf states is how much longer do you want to tolerate the uncertainty of this unstable neighbor? We are 3/4 done do you want to help the effort and get the last mile done sooner or do you want to be on the receiving end of Iran’s violence? Stay in the last century or move forward to the next?

There is no foreseeable scenario where the newest ayatollah du jour ends up being reasonable and agrees to end the war on America’s terms. They’re attacking the Qatari energy infrastructure because it’s leverage; they don’t care if they cause a global energy crisis and tank economies from Belgium to South Korea. If that’s what it takes for them to stay in power, so be it.

Boo hoo. EU let US carry the ball in Ukraine for the first few years. EU was WARNED directly about allowing themselves to become dependent upon Russian gas supplies and they proceeded full speed ahead disabling their nuclear and with the green energy mirage. Russia was very clear attempting to add Ukraine to NATO was their bright red line. EU did not hear them. EU has not invested adequately in their own defense in DECADES.

In all the coverage of Trump’s tirades about Europeans it should be noted that they are dealing with a much longer, harder, bigger and more consequential war in their own backyard, in Ukraine – a war that they didn’t choose, and one that Trump’s war on Iran has made worse by enriching Russia.

This is exactly the problem. Looked at townhouses nearby my residence (I am not boomer but empty nest), and townhouse was only 150k less than house sale price after transaction costs. Taxes + HOA fee were same as the house taxes. Why would I downsize by more than half square footage and gain a whole lot more neighbor proximity vs my great level of privacy???

Baby boomers aren't selling their homes & why would they? They paid $120,000 for a home 25+ years ago, owe $0 & have $550k+ of equity. "Downsizing" means they'd need to buy something for $450k + take on a 6.5% loan. ...Many won't move & this will keep inventory low.

Have empathy for the victims, not those who inflict pain on others

@ajlamesa Let me know when you find one…

This is a huge problem, especially after the pandemic. We need to provide examples of existing programs that function surprisingly well and convince voters that new ones won't be vulnerable to fraud or dysfunction.

@gbrew24 Who says the marines cannot take the island without another month of bombing? Axios? Unnamed sources?

Two things: -US plan to take Kharg will only be feasible after another "month" of bombing. -the idea is to force Iran to capitulate by using Kharg as a bargaining chip; I have a pretty strong gut feeling that's not going to work. axios.com/2026/03/20/ira…

@DrewAltman Right because we should keep throwing terribly inflated premiums down the rat hole of the ACA with deductibles so high the average family pays thousands out of pocket before the insurance will pay for anything. Bad analogy man. ACA needs to be scrapped. Root & branch.

Simplest math ever. A 200 bill Iran war special appropriation = almost six years of extended ACA tax credits.

@neoavatara And what do you prescribe as a humane system?

He's not wrong. I support deporting illegal immigrants, especially criminals. But I said a year ago... You can do this stupidly, or do it humanely. They chose the former, and the public responded. A humane system would've been more accepted, and more successful.

This is unspeakably disgusting. Nevermind the vaccine issue, the fact that the government in power is allowing a single court judge to dictate federal public health policy and staffing is unconscionable. This is truly a new definition of Murphy’s law.