"A powerful and deadly storm system is leaving a path of destruction from the Florida Panhandle to Virginia. There are at least four deaths from the storm, including a Tennessee teacher who was killed when a tree fell on a bus."
"NASA astronaut Christina Koch made the most of her first trip to the International Space Station by breaking the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and conducting the first all-female spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir." Congrats. I wait for the day that these things are not milestones, but regular occurrences.
"Astronomers just discovered a rare monster galaxy that grew rapidly in the universe's early days — and then went quiet surprisingly fast."
"It's some next-level skywatching: Scientists are using images captured by NASA's InSight lander to look for meteors on Mars… From a glance at the resulting images, the search seems straightforward: Countless streaks fill the sky. But squint a little, and the story turns out to be more quixotic. The images show mostly ghosts, the invisible made visible and the visible drowned out amid the illusions." Star gazing on Mars.
"NASA is at a critical juncture in its push to get people back to the moon by 2024, with key decisions expected within weeks." Sure. Sure.
"Hard drive manufacturer Seagate promises that HAMR—Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording—hard drives in 18TB and 20TB models will be available in retail channels in 2020." Using lasers to heat the magnetic material to develop platters that can store more in the same surface area… what will they think of next. Spherical chickens in a vacuum. With lasers. (Grokked from John)
"In the 1990s, web browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer competed bitterly to offer the snazziest new features and attract users. Today, the browser landscape looks totally different. For one thing, Chrome now dominates, controlling around two-thirds of the market on both desktop and mobile. Even more radical, though, is the recent competitive focus on privacy, a welcome change for anyone who's gotten sick of creepy ad tracking and data mismanagement. But as browsers increasingly diverge in their approaches, it's clear that not all privacy protections are created equal."
"The State Department continues to evacuate U.S. citizens from Wuhan, China, the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak that has now sickened more than 28,000 people and killed at least 565… The first airplane with repatriated U.S. citizens landed last week at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, California. All of the passengers are under federal quarantine orders for 14 days since they left Wuhan." Is it just me, or is this like "zombie virus" apocalypse type coverage? It's like we're expecting a future Bruce Willis to show up any time now.
"China grows isolated as airlines cancel more than 50,000 flights amid coronavirus epidemic."
"The world’s largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, an agricultural pesticide linked to brain damage in children, has announced that it will stop producing the chemical by the end of the year… The announcement on Thursday by Corteva, the corporation formed from a Dow Chemical and DuPont merger, comes after the Trump administration reversed regulatory plans to ban the pesticide and rejected the scientific conclusions of US government experts." Mostly because of declining sales, not because it causes brain damage. Last stage capitalism at work.
"Bill Moreau was vice president for sports medicine at the USOPC for 10 years. In an interview with NPR, Moreau says the USOPC still is not doing enough to prevent abuse, even though the issue has been in the public spotlight for more than three years because of the sexual abuse scandal involving former Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar."
"Bank accounts are a top target for hackers, and retirement accounts may not be far behind. Cybercriminals are moving toward retirement and loan accounts. Although the number of consumers affected by identity fraud has declined between 2017 and 2018, hackers are targeting new types of financial accounts — such as customer rewards programs and retirement plans, according to the 2019 Identity Fraud Study from Javelin Strategy & Research." Boogah boogah! Can't wait to hear how much that "credit watching" service costs.
How go the Trade Wars? "China on Thursday said it would halve additional tariffs levied against 1,717 U.S. goods last year, following the signing of a Phase 1 deal that brought a truce to a bruising trade war between the world’s two largest economies." Unfortunately this has more to do with coronavirus than the Phase 1 "deal" and they're not much of cuts to the rates. Apparently there is also a "disaster" clause in the Phase 1 agreement that will allow China to not purchase as much as they promised.
"The U.S. labor market revved up in January, with employers adding 225,000 jobs. That's well above the number forecasters were expecting. The unemployment rate inched up to 3.6%, near a 50-year low, according to a new report from the Labor Department… Employment growth for November and December was also revised upwards by a total of 7,000 jobs." Of course the devil is in the details.
The retail apocalypse continues unabated. "Macy’s will close roughly 125 stores, a fifth of its locations, over the next three years… After previously announcing that it would close 298 locations, Macy's said Tuesday that it will now shutter nearly 100 more."
"The White House announced Thursday evening that Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in an airstrike in Yemen." While killing terrorism's leaders is important, you don't defeat terrorists by taking heads. Especially when the collateral damage is great.
"A passenger plane in Syria was forced to re-route after it was almost hit by the country's missile defence system, Russia's defence ministry says… According to a statement quoted by Russian media, the plane was about to land in Damascus when Syrian anti-aircraft fire responded to an alleged Israeli attack early on Thursday."
"Mississippi's auditor says the former head of the state's welfare agency was part of a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme in which officials diverted public money away from needy families and toward their own personal projects, from business investments to a luxury rehab stay in California."
"Turkey expects Russia to stop the Syrian government’s attacks in the northwestern region of Idlib immediately, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, adding that Ankara needs to work with Moscow to resolve problems in the region." Good luck with that.
About the failures in Iowa… "Supporters of President Donald Trump flooded a hotline used by Iowa precinct chairs to report Democratic caucus results after the telephone number was posted online, worsening delays in the statewide tally, a top state Democrat told party leaders on a conference call Wednesday night." Just in case you might still think there was hope for a clean election.
"The Associated Press, which NPR and lots of other news organizations rely on to call winners and losers, said it will not be calling the race at this point, despite all votes being in, because of irregularities in the vote count."
"FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday that foreign disinformation efforts against the U.S. “never stopped” after Russian actors used them on social media platforms during the 2016 elections." Gee, ya think? And hostile governments have looked at the Russian operation and are also getting into the game. Also, it's a little ironic for this coming from the Hill, which is accused of it's own disinformation campaign in forcing Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch out of Ukraine.
"The Justice Department has begun reviewing a 10-month-old allegation by the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), that Erik Prince, an ally of President Donald Trump, repeatedly misled lawmakers during the panel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election." Ten-month delay in even responding to the letter from Congress.
"The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over '"evidence" of questionable origin' to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation." It's funny how fast Treasury has responded to these request regarding a private citizen. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)
An opinion piece… "The National Prayer Breakfast is a bipartisan event. It brings politicians and religious leaders together to seek common ground through a shared faith… But President Donald Trump showed at the Thursday morning breakfast that he lacks the spiritual compass and moral understanding to rise to such an occasion." I think they missed the actual religion and religious practices of the president.
"Less than 24 hours after formally being acquitted by the Senate, President Donald Trump riffed for over an hour from inside the White House -- a vengeful, angry, fact-challenged spew of score-settling that even for this most unorthodox of presidents was eye-opening in its tone and jaw-dropping in its boundary busting… 'It's a celebration,' Trump said of the event, attended by a 'who's who' of Republican politics, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, as well as the President's Cabinet and the legal team that defended him in the Senate trial."
"A day after his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump made celebratory remarks in the White House on Feb. 6, thanking many Republican politicians and repeating several false and misleading claims, many of which we’ve checked before… The president twisted the facts on the Russia investigation, former FBI officials, European contributions to Ukraine, the stock market, Medicare for All and drug prices." I think we all know where this is going.
Meanwhile, on Bullshit Mountain, "House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said Thursday that people who allegedly abused their power in an attempt to overturn the results of President Trump's election should be promptly sent to prison."
"A pledge to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine once the impeachment trial wraps is sparking divisions among Senate Republicans."
No comments:
Post a Comment