There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Monday, March 1, 2021

Linkee-poo Monday March 1

"In separate experiments, scientists in the U.S., France, Germany and the Netherlands asked people simple questions while they slept. Sleepers would respond by moving their eyes or twitching their faces in a certain way to indicate their answers." This seems a little tea-leaf reading, but…

"The Demise and Potential Revival of the American Chestnut." Chestnuts are amazing trees and the wood is hella fabulous. As long as the nuts are not toxic, I support this GMO use. In all my hiking when I was younger (and which I miss), I've only encountered one adult chestnut tree (maybe 15-20 years old). It's not hard to find, but no, I'm not telling where it is (it's been over a decade since I saw it last).

What's old is new again. "It was the early 1900s, and the driver of this particular car was Thomas Edison. While electric cars weren't a novelty in the neighborhood, most of them relied on heavy and cumbersome lead-acid batteries. Edison had outfitted his car with a new type of battery that he hoped would soon be powering vehicles throughout the country: a nickel-iron battery. Building on the work of the Swedish inventor Ernst Waldemar Jungner, who first patented a nickel-iron battery in 1899, Edison sought to refine the battery for use in automobiles."

"As the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. appears to be turning a corner, another health crisis is brewing: Covid-19 survivors struggling to bounce back to their former selves… Of the more than 28 million Americans diagnosed with Covid-19, an estimated 10 to 30 percent — possibly as many as 8.4 million people — fall into the category commonly known as 'long-haulers.'" For one person I know, we've been discussing if they can get permanent disability.

"Minneapolis authorities are investing in six social media influencers, with a large local following, to help push their message and prevent riots during the murder trial of a fired police officer. On Friday, the Minneapolis City Council approved $1,181,500 for communication with the community during the trial." Imagine how much city governments could save if they just got rid of the "bad apple" officers.

"Senate Democrats will abandon plans to help raise workers’ pay through tax penalties and other economic incentives that some lawmakers had considered as an alternative for hiking the federal minimum wage, according to a person familiar with the matter… A handful of lawmakers last week floated a 'plan B' in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus bill that would have punished corporations that paid workers below a certain threshold." Yeah, that was a bad idea. I know It probably will not be passed this way, but you've gotta write a clean bill, set the minimum wage high ($15/hr is a rock bottom base here), and tag it to inflation. And then put on a full court press. Sell it hard to the public as, "This is necessary to pull people out of poverty." Come armed with the studies and examples that show it's not a business killer. Explain where the economy is right now (that most people who earn minimum wage are adults trying to raise families). And fight hard for it. Paint conservatives into a corner. Fight for it. You can generate political capital as you expend it for this.

"Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama voting to unionize won the backing of an important executive… Without naming the massive e-commerce company specifically, President Joe Biden said in a video posted late Sunday that he supports the organizing drive in Bessemer, Ala."

"Prince Philip was transferred Monday to a specialized London heart hospital to undergo testing and observation for a pre-existing heart condition as he continues treatment for an unspecified infection, Buckingham Palace said."

"A Paris court on Monday found French former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling and sentenced him to one year in prison and a two-year suspended sentence."

"A massive prison break in Haiti has resulted in the escape of hundreds of inmates and the deaths of at least 25 people, including the prison's director and a notorious Haitian gang leader named Arnel Joseph… The prison break occurred Thursday at the Croix-des-Bouquets Civil Prison in the capital of Port-au-Prince. As of late Friday, authorities had recaptured about 60 inmates and were still actively searching for more than 200 others, according to Haiti's secretary of state for communication, Frantz Exantus."

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of attacking an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman last week, a mysterious explosion that further spiked security concerns in the region."

"Dozens of students abducted from a school in northwest Nigeria last week have been rescued, the state government announced Saturday… Gov. Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger state said that 38 abductees, including several staff members, were rescued around 4 a.m. Bello met with the victims, all of whom were present at a press conference Saturday afternoon, except for one who was being treated at a local hospital for exhaustion."

"The release of a U.S. intelligence report finding that Saudi Arabia's crown prince had approved the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi is prompting calls for penalties against the man next in line to the Saudi throne."

"Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who survived a chemical poisoning last year that he called a Kremlin attempt to kill him, has begun serving his two-and-a-half-year sentence at a notorious penal camp… Navalny, who was removed from his Moscow jail cell Thursday, is being held at a detention facility in the prison in the Vladimir region, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the Russian capital, Alexey Melnikov, secretary of the civil oversight commission of Moscow, told Bloomberg."

"The largest power cooperative in Texas filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, citing a massive bill from the state's electricity grid operator following last month's winter storm that left millions of residents without power for days… Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc. filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, according to court documents reviewed by NPR."

"A six-month delay holding up the data that states use to draw their legislative districts is mangling plans for the 2022 elections, as states discuss postponing primaries and navigating legal deadlines for redistricting that some are now almost certain to miss… The Census Bureau announced in mid-February that redistricting data — the granular, block-level population counts that are used to draw equal-population political boundaries for state legislatures and the House of Representatives — would be released by Sept. 30 this year, well past the usual delivery date of March 31."

"An estimated 5.6 percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, according to a new Gallup report. That’s up from 4.5 percent in 2017, the last year polling on the issue was conducted by the organization." You mean as it becomes less and less of a stigma, and it's discussed in public, people are feeling less repressed in their social lives? Shocked, shocked I am… Yeah, there are a lot of closets where people hide themselves, or part of themselves.

"Facing mounting political pressure over allegations of sexual harassment, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that he would support the appointment of an independent special investigator to examine the claims against him. Cuomo also issued a number of statements on Sunday, including one in the evening apologizing and saying he 'never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm.'"

"The FBI said it is targeting a single assailant as it continues to investigate the death of U.S. Capitol police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries sustained in the Jan. 6 riot… A federal law enforcement source and another close to the investigation confirmed the news on Saturday."

"A State Department official for several years has been publicly calling for the establishment of Christian nation-states, warning that white people face 'elimination' and railing against Jews as well as Black Lives Matter and other social movements… Fritz Berggren, a mid-ranking Foreign Service officer, openly uses his name and image as he espouses these and other controversial views, according to a review of his online postings. Current and former State Department officials noted the connection to POLITICO in recent days." Sounds like someone is ready for retirement. Maybe a nice, padded cell.

"The Justice Department has charged a Texas man who was allegedly caught on video attacking a dozen police officers with a chemical spray during the Capitol insurrection, according to court records… Federal prosecutors say Daniel Caldwell, 49, used a chemical spray against a line of officers that were blocking rioters from entering the Capitol. It happened amid a massive melee with police, who used batons and pepper spray to fend off the crowd, according to footage of the incident that was cited in court filings."

"The Supreme Court takes up a court fight Tuesday over voting rights in the battleground state of Arizona, and the outcome may affect how the nation's courts resolve clashes over election laws in dozens of other states… The case also will be a test of one of the most important civil rights laws — the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court significantly scaled back in 2013."

"Sen. Rick Scott on Sunday declined to call the GOP the party of former President Donald Trump and acknowledged President Joe Biden was 'absolutely' the legitimate winner of the 2020 White House race… In an interview on 'Fox News Sunday,' Scott (R-Fla.) — the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — reiterated his message that 'the Republican civil war is canceled.'" Sounds like someone is still struggling with reality.

"With the first full day of the Conservative Political Action Conference underway, there's already an indisputable star: an outrageously golden statue of Donald Trump wearing shorts and flip-flops." Exodus 32.

"In a sprawling hour and a half keynote address closing out the Conservative Political Action Conference Sunday night, former President Donald Trump delivered a speech filled with many of the same false election fraud claims that he has repeated since losing the election to President Joe Biden in November… His false claims that the election was 'rigged' is what Democrats and many others have said led to the deadly Capitol attack carried out by his supporters not even two months ago, which led to his second impeachment."

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