Well there's floodin' down in Texas, all the telephone lines are down. "'Major, catastrophic flooding is occurring across much of southeast Texas,' the National Weather Service says, warning that Tropical Depression Imelda is producing extreme rainfall. With more intense rain in the forecast, the agency says, some areas could see rain totals of 25 to 35 inches through Friday."
And here in NE Ohio… "With harvest season in full swing for farmers, small and large agricultural equipment could be on the road and some machinery is wider than the lanes, which makes passing difficult." Lots of minivans out here function as Amish taxis, and they're as annoying as the farm equipment and the buggies.
Also will just mention this past week the change in the trees has been noticeable. Leaves have been falling since August, but the color of the ones left went very yellow (meaning Chlorophyll is breaking down and photosynthesis is nearing it's end for the season).
"Three studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature found that these deadly tumors (high-grade gliomas) integrate themselves into the brain's electrical network and then hijack signals from healthy nerve cells to fuel their own growth." Fuck cancer.
"The more a neural pathway is used the stronger it becomes. Intrusive thoughts are the product; they're effectively messages triggered in the nervous system, usually by anxiety or trauma. The good news is, even though intrusive thoughts feel magnetic, because they are real physiological events, there are concrete things we can do to get 'unstuck.' Here are a few…" (Grokked from Anne Wheaton)
"The U.S. government will spend $3 million to find out if marijuana can relieve pain, but none of the money will be used to study the part of the plant that gets people high."
"In 2017, the abortion rate — which measures how common abortion is among women of childbearing age — dropped to 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down from 14.6 in 2014. That continues a downward trend since the peak in 1980 of 29.3." The birth rate is also down, suggesting lower pregnancy rates overall.
The void stares back into you. "Because of his work, Winter has dozens of such images lodged in his brain, and there's no telling what might activate a memory. ISIS atrocities interrupt dinner parties, casual conversations, peaceful moments with his daughter. Winter searched for information about how to process the graphic pictures swirling in his head, but he found almost nothing about potential trauma in his field."
"Raman’s team has developed a potential solution: a simple thermoelectric device that generates power when it’s exposed to the cold night sky. It’s made possible by a phenomenon called radiative sky cooling."
So, how are the actual canaries in this coal mine doing? "Nearly 3 billion fewer birds exist in North America today than in 1970… While scientists have known for decades that certain kinds of birds have struggled as humans (and bird-gobbling cats) encroach on their habitats, a new comprehensive tally shows the staggering extent of the loss. Nearly 1 in 3 birds — or 29 percent — has vanished in the last half century, researchers report September 19 in Science." We're boned. Oh, and… "But the study offers some hope. Populations of waterfowl, like mallard ducks and Canadian geese, have grown 56 percent since 1970." Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Archaeologists excavated part of the old city center of Yaroslavl, Russia, between 2005 and 2010 as part of an effort to restore its cathedral. During the digs, they discovered nine medieval mass graves holding the remains of at least 300 people, dating from the sack of the city by Mongols."
"Amazon will be stepping up its efforts to reduce its climate impact, CEO Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday. The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Michigan’s Rivian as part of this commitment, Bezos said. The commerce giant will seek to meet its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040 — 10 years earlier than is outlined by the United Nations Paris Agreement." (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
"But methane, another carbon-based compound, is emerging as a wild card in the climate-change equation. If CO2 has a warming effect akin to wrapping the planet in a sheet, the less-understood methane is more like a wool blanket." And methane levels are increasing, but we don't have a firm grasp on why and where it's all coming from (hint, as permafrost thaws, it releases methane trapped beneath). We're boned.
"The mission is known as the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate, or MOSAiC. Its overarching goal is to collect a vast trove of data that can help improve how the Arctic is represented in climate models." Getting frozen in for science.
"Researchers are discovering something unnerving about artificial intelligence. It's easy to fool - so easy, in fact, there's a whole field of study known as adversarial AI that actually aims to make artificial intelligence a little smarter." That's because it's not actually AI, it's machine learning which we are now calling AI (because we've waited so long for AI). And just like humans, machines will take shortcuts.
"The 2,246 medically preserved fetal remains were discovered days after Klopfer died earlier this month at the age of 79. Illinois officials are now turning the investigation over to the Indiana attorney general. Though he may have violated some Illinois laws related to how these remains should have been handled, officials there don't believe there's any role for prosecutors in Illinois since Klopfer has died." I expect we'll be hearing about this for decades (and the Right-to-Life movement will most certainly attempt to exploit with all their might).
"A crew member who survived the deadly Conception diving boat fire off the coast of California is suing the vessel's owners, saying the staff had not been properly trained." Someone's in a lot of trouble.
"'The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity,' Colt Defense LLC president and CEO Dennis Veilleux said in a statement on Thursday. 'Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future.'" Allow me to translate, "we made too many and didn't factor in Trump winning, also the legal liabilities are getting to great.
"The Education Department wrote in an Aug. 29 letter to the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies that the program disproportionately portrays 'the positive aspects of Islam.' The agency requested they amend the program by Sept. 22 or lose a grant they've been receiving for almost a decade, The Associated Press reported." Well, we can't have that now, can we. So much for free speech on campus. (Grokked from Saladin Ahmed)
How go the Trade Wars? "China's economy is grinding to its slowest levels of growth in decades… The country's second-quarter growth of 6.2% was the slowest rate seen since it began reporting quarterly figures. The preliminary third-quarter estimate of 6% to 6.5% is the slowest ever forecast."
"As the world's largest crude oil importer, China's heavy dependence on other countries for energy has influenced much of its foreign policy. Beijing is trying to reduce that dependence, but the needs of its growing economy and a trade war with the United States have put it in an awkward position. It's buying more Saudi oil than it has done for years."
"A FedEx pilot was recently detained by Chinese authorities in Guangzhou, a city in southern mainland China. It's the latest in an escalating conflict between the shipping company and the Chinese government."
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a major political setback on Thursday when his chief rival, Benny Gantz, rejected his offer to form a unity coalition together." Looks like it's either another national election, or Netanyahu being forced out.
The Army has met its recruitment goals this year, and many people are wondering why. "Army leadership gathered Tuesday to announce that they surpassed their recruiting goal for 2019, signing up more than 68,000 active duty soldiers before the end of the fiscal year, but the long wars in the Middle East weren’t exactly part of the sales pitch… 'One of the national crises right now is student loans, so $31,000 is [about] the average,' (Maj. Gen. Frank Muth) said. 'You can get out [of the Army] after four years, 100 percent paid for state college anywhere in the United States.'" (Grokked from Kelly Link)
"On Wednesday, just hours after farmers, laborers and children finished their day’s work of plucking pine nuts in the heavily forested area and lit bonfires near their tents, a U.S. drone hit the site, killing 30 civilians and injuring 40 others, according to three Afghan provincial officials." And this is why we're losing Afghanistan.
"The House on Thursday easily passed a stopgap spending measure to avert a shutdown at month’s end. But the hard part is just beginning… Democratic and Republican leaders will spend the next two months attempting to forge a lasting deal to fund the government involving all of the same political landmines that thrust Washington into a 35-day shutdown — and more." Same as it ever was.
"President Trump denied on Thursday he said anything inappropriate to a foreign leader, as reportedly alleged by a government whistle-blower… In a series of tweets, Trump called the report fake news." So it is true.
"The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., released on Thursday two letters the committee received regarding a whistleblower complaint that administration officials are withholding from Congress." Wow. It's coming to the breaking point where, after following the law and the procedures, the IG is now torn between job requirements. That's never a good place to put an employee and typically ends when the person in the hard place chooses honor, integrity, and the continued functioning of law over direct orders in a policy matter. That's when the Jenga tower of responsibilities falls and spreads damage far and wide. Essentially, you make whistleblowers of everybody. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)
Okay, now I'm wondering who hires the personal translators that whisper in the president's ear?
"(Former Sec. of State Rex) Tillerson said despite Israel’s closeness with the U.S., 'In dealing with Bibi, it’s always useful to carry a healthy amount of skepticism in your discussions with him,' recounting that Israel would share 'misinformation' to persuade the U.S. of something if necessary… 'They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that "We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys." We later exposed it to the president so he understood, "You’ve been played,"' said Tillerson. 'It bothers me that an ally that’s that close and important to us would do that to us.'" I'm sure they aren't the only ones. (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
"Overnight, Zhukov became the human face of a crackdown on political dissent that Amnesty International calls an 'unprecedented' attack on Russians' freedom of assembly and expression. At demonstrations ahead of Sept. 8 local elections, police beat dozens of protesters and detained hundreds." Waves to my Russian friends.
"Yet now comes another wrinkle to the story. Not only are red and blue America experiencing two different economies, but those economies are diverging fast. In fact, radical change is transforming the two parties’ economies in real time. Which is a key takeaway of a new data analysis—published today—that we developed with the Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Zitner and Dante Chinni." Huhn. There's some fast and lose correlations you could make of this, but most of them would be wrong. Brookings has a distinct liberal bent to their output, but the underlaying data is very interesting. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
"President Donald Trump is suing his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA and New York district attorney Cyrus Vance to attempt to stop his accounting records and tax returns from being sent to the local prosecutor, arguing he can't be prosecuted while in the White House." Just because he can't be prosecuted doesn't mean he can't be investigated. And it really isn't so much that he can't be prosecuted while sitting as president, it's just a policy that the DoJ won't pursue prosecution of a sitting president. However, nothing prevents investigations and prosecutions against Mazars USA, the accounting firm at the center of this.
"Senators thawed a long-frozen dispute over election security this week with an agreement to provide more funding ahead of Election Day next year — but not as much as some Democrats and outside activists say is necessary." After weakening the bill significantly, Mitch McConnell agrees to a vote.
No comments:
Post a Comment