Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Marsha P. Johnson, Bill Murray, Hamilton the Movie, CRISPR, and More: #GAYNRD DAILY #IOWA CAUCUS EDITION

PHOTO OF THE DAY Elizabeth Warren campaigning in Davenport, Iowa Saturday night.

IOWA holds its Democratic caucuses on Monday night, providing the first results of the Democratic primary.

Caucus locations around Iowa must be open by 6:30 pm CT and voters need to be in line by 7. Results should begin coming in Monday evening, though a victor may not be known until Tuesday.

The two-phase caucus process, via CNBC: “The first phase: Caucus participants may pick any candidate. The number of supporters each candidate has is then tallied up by state party officials as well as by representatives of each of the campaigns. The second phase: The number of candidates is whittled down. Presidential candidates who received less than 15% are considered nonviable. That means their supporters have two main options: pick a viable candidate to support or persuade enough supporters of other nonviable contenders to join their side to meet the 15% threshold.”

HAMILTON MOVIE IS COMING Disney pays $75 million for rights to movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway smash Hamilton: “Disney won the deal with a commitment for a wide global theatrical release for the two hour and 40 minute movie, which was shot two weeks before the original cast left.”

Disney presents:
Hamilton.
With The Original Broadway Cast.
Filmed onstage at The Richard Rodgers Theatre.
In A Theater Near You.
October 15, 2021.#Hamilfilm pic.twitter.com/z4ohfWXzi3

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) February 3, 2020

PORNHUB says searches for JLo and Shakira spiked following Super Bowl halftime performance. “Shortly after the game ended, U.S. traffic to Pornhub surged +12% higher than normal, representing a massive increase when you consider that 11pm is Pornhub’s peak traffic time in the United States. Searches for ‘Super Bowl’ and ‘Superbowl’ increased by over +5000%. Our statisticians found massive increases for anything related to cheerleaders like ‘football cheerleader’ and ‘cheerleader orgy’. Searches for ‘Demi Lovato’, who sang the national anthem, increased by +270%. The halftime show caused a +1401% increase in ‘Shakira’ searches and +381% for ‘Jennifer Lopez’. We also noted an increase in searches for ‘Latina’ and ‘Latina MILF’.

Watch the Halftime show below.

WHAT IS THE ELECTION NEEDLE?  A closer look at the New York Times election forecaster before the Iowa caucuses. “The needle is the Times’ live election night forecast. It combines initial election returns with other sources of data to estimate the final result of an election before all the votes have been counted.Before the election, we use polling data, census data and prior election results to come up with a baseline estimate for how every precinct or county will vote. As the results come in, we compare the actual returns with our baseline. We then adjust our expectations for the vote that’s left: If a candidate is running ahead of our pre-election expectations in the areas that are counted, we might assume that he or she is also poised to do better in the demographically similar areas that remain.”

The needle gives many readers the piece of information they want more than anything else on election night: It tells them who is on track to win the election. And when the needle doesn’t know, it tells them that, too. The needle works because incomplete election results are often deeply unrepresentative. In some races — including the Iowa caucuses — predominantly rural places tend to be the first ones to report votes. The raw vote count can be misleading evidence about who is actually in a better position to win, even after most votes have been reported.

CRISPR The Documentary Human Nature, executive produced by Dan Rather  and featuring Jennifer Doudna, Alto Charo, and more opens March 13th. Self described: “A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. Human Nature is a provocativeexploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the bioengineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship withnature? What will it mean for human evolution? To begin to answer these questions we must look back billions of years and peer into an uncertain future.”

TIME  has a feature story called ‘How Pete Buttigieg’s Sexuality Shaped His Campaign.’ They report: “As Pete Buttigieg travels across Iowa, he has taken to ending his speeches by reaching out his hand and letting his wedding ring glint under the lights. This is the point when Buttigieg talks about the first time he came here as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. “I was here in Iowa when this state changed what the country and the world thought was possible in American presidential politics,” he often says. “This state gave me permission to believe that someone like me could be wearing this wedding ring I’ve got on right now.” The ring flashes. The crowd cheers. This closing pitch is part of Buttigieg’s not-so-subtle effort to link his candidacy to the last young outsider to win Iowa and then the presidency, another disciplined intellectual who ran on hope and unity. But it’s also a hint at the broader emotional arc of how Buttigieg’s identity informs his central argument about grace and belonging: that America is flawed but forgivable, that her sins are venial but not mortal, and that bigotry can be melted by love.

Pete Buttigieg Town Hall in Cedar Rapids, IA on Feb. 1, 2020. Photo by September Dawn Bottoms for TIME.

MARSHA P. JOHNSON is getting a park. Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign Greater New York Gala, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced he will name the first New York State park after an LGBTQ person. He will direct the State Parks Commissioner to rename East River State Park — located in Brooklyn — after Marsha P. Johnson, a pioneer of the LGBTQ rights movement and a transgender woman of color.

HIV DRUG FAIL Another HIV vaccine strategy fails in large-scale study. According to Science magazine, “The failure-ridden search for a vaccine that can stop the AIDS virus has delivered yet another frustrating defeat. The HIV vaccine that had moved furthest along in human testing does not work, and the $104 million trial in South Africa evaluating it has been stopped early. “There’s absolutely no evidence of efficacy,” says Glenda Gray, who heads the study and is president of the South African Medical Research Council (MRC). “Years of work went into this. It’s a huge disappointment.”

The efficacy study, which began in October 2016, is known as HVTN 702. It enrolled 5407 sexually active, HIV-uninfected men and women between 18 and 35 years of age at 14 sites across the country. Researchers randomly assigned half of the participants to receive a pair of HIV vaccines used in a one-two punch called a prime boost, whereas the other half received placebo shots. The trial was supposed to last until July 2022. But on 23 January, an independent monitoring board that takes scheduled, sneak peaks at the data to evaluate safety and efficacy, informed Gray and the other leaders of the study that it was “futile” to continue. There were 129 infections in the vaccinated group and 123 in those who received the placebo. “I was catatonic,” Gray says.

BEST SUPER BOWL AD goes to Jeep and Bill Murray with their Groundhog Day spot. Groundhog Day, the classic 1993 comedy in which Bill Murray’s cantankerous weatherman is mysteriously forced to live the holiday in an infinite loop.  For the ad Murray and a few of his old castmates returned to this hellscape, to sell jeeps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnhzGUcENWo

OUR MAN ON MONDAY ✌???????? Happy Monday Gaymers ????✌????writes gamer Rock4Guac on Instagram,  “Starting out the week on the right foot sometimes feels soooooo important! what other day than Monday sets the mood for the week? And, what we do with our first 10 minutes of the day is easy to control. Hit snooze a couple times? check our phone??stretch??? how about meditation? ???????? Squeeks and I have been following some advise to listen to 10 minutes of guided meditation in the morning before checking any notifications, texts, or emails. It’s only been a couple days but I highly recommend it to those who maybe haven’t tried it before. Focusing so much of our efforts into our phones and how we are being seen by others distracts from the fact that we all need to be here and present for ourselves first.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8HUgy8hx07/?igshid=12jdhlr0bj17x