"Shields Up, Nichelle Nichols!" A GoFundMe to support Nichelle Nichols' legal battles against Gilbert Bell who has exploited her and is attempting to take her wealth.
"The National Hurricane Center is forecasting for two tropical systems to reach hurricane strength, with both sharing the Gulf of Mexico at the same time."
"Scientists are trying to understand how much plastic humans are pumping into the ocean and how long it sticks around. A study published this week says it may be much more than earlier estimates."
"The melting Greenland ice sheet is already one of the largest contributors to sea level rise. But now, scientists have confirmed that the region saw a record amount of ice melt last year — shattering previous records with 532 billion metric tons of ice lost." We're boned.
"A gigantic fleet of floating rocks, spewed up from an underwater volcano in the Pacific Ocean, floated across the waves for thousands of miles. Eventually, it made it all the way to Australia, then started on a new project: revitalising the world's largest (and very threatened) coral reef system."
"The International Space Station (ISS), in Earth orbit at hundreds of kilometres altitude, is not perfectly airtight. Every day, the cabin loses a minute amount of air, monitored carefully so that a liveable atmospheric pressure can be maintained, and to identify leaks… Now the latter has come to pass, just two years after the last leak. The rate of air loss on the station has risen above a level that can be explained by the normal ISS day-to-day, according to a NASA blog post."
"President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed California for its raging wildfires and threatened to withhold federal money, reprising his attacks from previous rounds of catastrophic blazes… 'I see again the forest fires are starting,' he said at a rally in swing-state Pennsylvania. 'They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.'" Our stable genius president, everybody.
"The message to vaccinate is not lost on Americans who are already calling their doctors and pharmacists to schedule a flu shot appointment before the start of the 2020-2021 season." It's a little too early right now, but yes, if you can you should get a flu shot. It also might be good to schedule it now (if you can).
"The White House is formally declaring teachers essential workers as part of their efforts to encourage schools around the country to reopen for in-person learning. The move is just the latest in the administration's aggressive campaign to pressure districts into bringing back students this fall -- and although the essential worker designation provides guidance for educators that is only voluntary, it calls on teachers to return to the classroom even after potential exposure." Funny how the majority of "essential workers" are often the least paid or given support.
"The answer, according to education experts, is simple: their options are limited. They can reopen, and impose safety measures to try and curb the spread of the virus, or they can continue to conduct remote learning only, and risk financial devastation." It's always about the money.
"'The expectation in the Great Recession was that it was going to last a very long time, so there weren’t many furloughs,' Hall said. Despite the pandemic, he said, 'Companies are hoping to get back in business pretty quickly.' Indeed, the number of furloughed workers has already dropped to 9 million in July, from 18 million in April." Raise your hand if you think that'll happen. "Yet furloughed workers are often never brought back, Sullivan said, and can put themselves at a disadvantage by staying on the sidelines."
"Earlier this week, both Uber and Lyft threatened to shut down in California as a result of a ruling that would force them to reclassify their drivers as employees. Lyft even announced that it would stop operations starting this Friday… The truth is, however, both companies have had nothing but time to comply with the law. The fact that they fought back, stalled, made excuses and are funding a ballot proposition that would undo worker rights, is a sign that these companies have no intention of following the rules or giving their drivers the benefits they deserve. They had their time, but they squandered it."
The continuing retail apocalypse… "Over a two-week span in early July, seven retailers, including The Paper Store, Brooks Brothers and Lucky Brand, filed for bankruptcy protection… J.Crew, Neiman Marcus and J.C. Penney and four other retailers had already filed in May. Lord & Taylor and the off-price shop Stein Mart led another wave that hit earlier this month. Some would say it has been a flood, but what’s coming could be a tsunami."
"Crowds rejoiced after a group of colonels seized power in Mali, a vast country stretching into the Sahara, where troops - including French soldiers and UN peacekeepers - are fighting jihadist groups, but not everyone is happy, writes West Africa analyst Paul Melly… But now Ecowas, the West African regional bloc to which Mali belongs, has laid down a firm line, with member heads of state issuing a call for Mr Keïta's reinstatement as president."
"Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's life is being put at risk by Russian doctors refusing to let him be moved from the Siberian hospital where he's being treated for suspected poisoning, his spokeswoman charged on Friday. A senior doctor at the facility claimed, meanwhile, that 'no poison' were found in Navalny's body, and their preliminary diagnosis was that the opposition leader had merely suffered from a sudden drop in blood sugar… Hospital officials have not allowed the harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin to be seen by his family or one of his own doctors who came to the facility."
"Along the way, the request set off legal and logistical alarms, raising questions about whether Pompeo is eligible for any sort of military housing… According to a memo obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared this week with POLITICO, a top Navy lawyer warned that the Pompeos’ initial request for housing was 'problematic' and raised 'factual, legal, fiscal and ethical' issues, not the least of which was whether he’d be displacing military officers already in line for the limited housing."
"Shortly after USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy issued a public statement saying he wanted to "avoid even the appearance" that any of his policies would slow down election mail, USPS instructed all maintenance managers around the country not to reconnect or reinstall any mail sorting machines they had already disconnected, according to emails obtained by Motherboard." Because it was all window dressing. They feel they've crippled the mail enough already.
"Memos are trickling down the United States Postal Service bureaucracy warning employees that they should not speak to the press and any customer asking lots of questions may be a journalist sneakily trying to get information out of them." You know you're winning when you have to tell your employees not to talk to anyone. Also these memos show a striking ignorance not just of how journalists work (because they're used to supporting "journalists" like James O'Keefe) and that most postal employees know their customers. When we had to send stories out by mail, the post office I used knew me on site, would make conversation and ask me how it was going. You may not know the postal employees in your local PO, but trust me when I say they know you.
"A federal judge has dismissed President Trump's latest attempt to block a subpoena for his tax records from the district attorney of Manhattan… Thursday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero came in response to a filing by the president's personal attorneys that sought to prevent Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance from obtaining eight years of his tax records. The president's legal team has argued that the subpoena to Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, is 'overbroad.'" And of course they have more objections.
"In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president's most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there… President Donald Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller led the meeting, and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen." So when they said they didn't know, or there wasn't a plan, they were lying. and of course they will deny it happened.
"Too often in politics, a woman’s gender or her race — or both — get used against her, forcing her to walk lines around tone, language, and ambition that men do not. This is particularly true for Black women who face myriad tropes used to diminish them in public life and on the campaign trail, like the 'Sapphire' stereotype known today as the 'angry Black woman,' or the biblical temptress Jezebel. All of which are clear examples of misogynoir — the unique brand of misogyny that Black women face because of the combination of their gender and race." I'll let you guess whom they're talking about.
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