"The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July, researchers said on Thursday." We're boned.
"Even before Aug. 1 (the start of hurricane season), nine named storms had already formed – 'the most ever recorded since the satellite era began in 1966,' according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
"Just how much Lovecraft can be found in Lovecraft Country, the new HBO series based on the 2016 novel of the same title by Matt Ruff? Explicitly, not all that much, despite an opening fantasy sequence in which a monstrous, tentacled being who is very clearly Cthulhu, the most familiar… of Lovecraft’s 'elder gods,' is walloped to icky smithereens by Jackie Robinson, in a scene that surely would have driven Lovecraft himself mad with indignation." Some of what I love about modern Cthulhu stories is this very overturning of the racist themes in Lovecraft's work.
"Couple standing less than 600 meters from blast site survives Beirut explosion." What it's like to be (almost) in the middle of it.
"Two Georgia high school students said they were suspended from school this week for social media posts showing crowded hallways at North Paulding High School. Another picture of largely maskless students packed together in between classes, quickly went viral, sweeping the school, which is about an hour outside of Atlanta, and the students up in a national debate over the safety and wisdom of reopening schools for the new academic year in the middle of a pandemic."
"By Dec. 1, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 could reach nearly 300,000. That's the grim new projection from researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — one of the more prominent teams modeling the pandemic. The new forecast, released Thursday, projects that between now and December, 137,000 people will die on top of the roughly 160,000 who have died so far." Jazz hands.
So, yesterday I made a joke that DeWine bribed the test manager so he could get out of being on stage with Trump. "Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's second COVID-19 test came back negative Thursday evening… DeWine tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Thursday morning using a rapid test. That test was part of the protocol to greet President Donald Trump on the tarmac at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland." Not so funny this morning, is it? But as I've said before, the tests are for shit. But here's one thing about them, while I've seen dozens of false negative results, I have not yet seen a false positive. However I don't have much experience with the antigen test where he tested positive.
"President Donald Trump said Thursday that a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready before Election Day, contradicting the timeline that many health experts have said is realistic." Yeah, when pigs fly.
"Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, one of the leading horses in the vaccine race, has already made deals at between $32 and $37 per dose of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in agreements with some foreign countries, rattling consumer advocates, who fear an unfair deal for U.S. taxpayers."
"The United States needs as many as 100,000 contact tracers to fight the pandemic, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress in June. We need billions of dollars to fund them, public health leaders pleaded in April… But in August, with coronavirus cases increasing in more than half of states, America has neither the staff nor the resources to be able to trace the contacts of every new case — a key step in the COVID-19 public health response."
"Two weeks after President Trump signed an executive order "Lowering Drug Prices By Putting America First," the White House still hasn't released the text of the order. The unorthodox move is apparently a leverage play, an attempt to squeeze drug companies into offering concessions, but so far there's little indication Trump is getting the deal he was after."
"U.S. employers added 1.8 million jobs last month, as the unemployment rate dipped to 10.2%… The pace of hiring slowed from June, when employers added a record 4.8 million jobs. That suggests a long road back to full employment for the tens of millions of people who have been laid off during the coronavirus pandemic."
How go the Trade Wars? "US President Donald Trump has reimposed a 10% tariff on some Canadian aluminium products, saying it was done to protect US industry."
"Toyota’s profit plunged 74% in the last quarter as the coronavirus pandemic sank vehicle sales to about half of what the top Japanese automaker sold the previous year."
"A small-scale miner in Tanzania who had become an overnight millionaire over a month ago when he unearthed two of the biggest rough tanzanite gemstones ever found has struck it rich again, digging up a third stone weighing 13 pounds with an estimated value of $2 million. The three stones were discovered by Saninu Laizer."
"TikTok threatened legal action against an executive order issued by President Donald Trump that would ban the Chinese social media app from doing business with U.S. firms."
"The attorney general of New York took action Thursday to dissolve the National Rifle Association following an 18-month investigation that found evidence the powerful gun rights group is 'fraught with fraud and abuse.'" I love how the NRA's defense is "They're trying to take away your Second Amendment rights." Not, "we are not corrupt."
"Millions of struggling out-of-work Americans are in limbo after the additional $600 in weekly unemployment benefits expired at the end of July, leaving many fearful of how they will survive and pay their bills without the extra jobless aid."
"Amid escalating tensions with both North Korea and Iran, President Donald Trump's advisers hesitated to give him military options fearing the President might accidentally take the US to war and deliberately informed their counterparts in both countries that they did not know what the President would do next, multiple former administration officials tell me."
"A bug in Instagram's algorithm systemically shielded Donald Trump from negative hashtags without doing the same for rival Joe Biden, the company confirmed." The technical term for that but is a Mark Zuckerberg. It's an insidious little shit weasel of a problem. Also, I'm sure it's been noted by others, but Mark is starting to bear an amazing likeness to HP Lovecraft. Like he was going to play HP in a movie and forgot to take off the prosthetics.
Meanwhile, on Bullshit Mountain… "Some in the media have raised the idea of pushing off presidential debates as a mechanism to keep Democrat Joe Biden out of the spotlight, Fox News 'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz told 'Fox News Rundown.'" Notice how they conveniently ignore that 3 debates have been scheduled already and the only question is if there will be a fourth debate held early. I'll also note that if memory serves, in 2016 Clinton wanted another debate as well and the Trump campaign said no.
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