Silvia Foti's grandfather is a national hero in Lithuania. He also worked with the Nazis to kill Jews. His story has echoes across Eastern Europe

Your Honor is gripping melodrama

Past the midway point, it's unclear whether the Crave/Showtime series will explore ethics or just keep ramping up the plot

Could We Learn How to Talk to Trees (or Forests)?

The forest is the computer?

Just 1 in 10 companies expect all employees to return to the office

NBC News: “You spend more of your waking hours with your colleagues than you do with your family. A lot of people are ready to go back to the office once it’s safe.” Only about 1 in 10 companies expect all employees to return to their pre-pandemic work arrangements, according to a new survey. The National Association for Business Economics found that just 11 percent of survey respondents expect all staff members at their companies to return eventually. Around 65 percent of companies have allowed “most” or “all” of their staff members to work from home during the pandemic, and about half of respondents said they plan to continue the policies until the second half of the year. “For the most part, companies that are able to provide work-from-home are doing so and are continuing to do so,” said Andrew Challenger, vice president of the executive outplacement and coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Challenger said his conversations with human resources executives indicated a reluctance to mandate a return to the office while the virus is still circulating and parts of the country face surges. In some cases, local or state lockdowns, school and day care closings or restrictions on building capacities also limit employers’ options…”

HIT THEM IN THE POCKETBOOK: Israeli Groundbreaking Technology by Saffron Tech Challenges Iranian 1,000-Year Monopoly on the Lucrative $1B Saffron Market.

Saffron Tech, an Israeli wholly owned subsidiary of Seedo Corp. (OTCQB: SEDO), announced its technology for automated, year-round saffron growing, is challenging the global Iranian monopoly on saffron supply of 90-95% of world demand, which has been in place for the past 1,000 years!
The reason Iran was the dominant player in supplying 90-95% of world demand for Saffron lies in the fact it has natural conditions fit for the growing and production of saffron in traditional, labor intensive methods.
Saffron Tech, from Seedo Corp., is developing a technology that hopes to provide turnkey automated growing solutions for high-quality, high-yield saffron all year round. The company is in advanced stages of developing and testing its automated vertical farm for saffron growing, based on the company’s knowledge in plant biology and providing optimal conditions for each stage of the plant’s development to reach optimal product quality.

Saffron is usually sold by the gram because a pound of it can go for $1,500 or more.

How vitamins, steroids and potential antivirals might affect SARS-CoV-2.“Evidence is emerging that vitamin D—and possibly vitamins K and A—might help combat COVID-19.”

I think we’ll find that Covid-19, in its severe forms, is primarily a disease of the obese and vitamin-deficient

ANALYSIS: TRUE. GameStop rally is warning that market bubbles have gone mad.

GameStop is a video game retailer that has been priced at about $3 to $10 a share for much of the year. But in the past few days, individual investors have driven the share price above $300.
Many of these buyers are using Robinhood, an app that lets anyone trade stocks without a commission. Because of the pandemic, people have plenty of time on their hands, and are looking to make cash, and it’s fueled a spectacular rise in individual day trading.
Why are they buying GameStop? Well, some of the commentators on “WallStreetBets,” the Reddit message board driving the frenzy, believe it’s a good company.
But mostly they’re out to hurt the big guys.
Hedge funds love shorting stocks, a trading technique where you make money when stock prices go down. Companies often go belly up amid short selling “bear raids.” That’s why small investors hate hedge funds so much.
When word spread among Robinhood traders that GameStop was heavily shorted by the big guys, the tables were turned into a bull raid. They drove up the price, and all those bets that GameStop would decline in value failed. A “short squeeze” was on at a level sophisticated market players hadn’t seen in years.
At least one big hedge fund, Melvin Capital, needed a bailout as prices of GameStop spiked a gazillion percent in a matter of days. My trading sources say there will likely be other big players seeking money to stay alive.
Delicious, right? For those who think — not unwarrantedly — that the market is rigged against them, the Robinhood revolt is a wonderful bit of schadenfreude.
But nothing has changed about GameStop’s business. It’s still primarily a brick-and-mortar retailer in an electronic world. It’s certainly not worth $300 a share. So while Robinhood buyers who got in early made a good bit of money — at least on paper — the bubble will eventually burst, and the shares will likely fall back to earth again.
The problem is that GameStop isn’t the only stock this is happening to. Blackberry, makers of the handheld device you no longer use, and AMC, owners of movie theaters you no longer go to, are also looking like Apple on steroids.