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

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Linkee-poo Thursday April 22

"The rover on Tuesday successfully converted some of the plentiful carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen as a first test of its MOXIE instrument. The name MOXIE is short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment." Proof of technology.

"US pharmaceutical company Pfizer says it has identified counterfeit versions of its coronavirus vaccine in Mexico and Poland… The doses were seized by authorities in the two countries and confirmed by tests to be fake."

"The Baltimore factory contracted to make Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine was dirty, didn't follow proper manufacturing procedures and had poorly trained staff, resulting in contamination of material that was going to be put in the shots, U.S. regulators said Wednesday… The Food and Drug Administration released a statement and a 13-page report detailing findings from its recent inspection of the now-idle Emergent BioSciences factory."

"Calling all those who are sleep-deprived: We interrupt your yawns with an important announcement… If you're trying to get by on about six hours or less of sleep a night during the workweek, you're setting up your brain for future failure, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications." Stares in chronic sleep deprivation.

"More than 24 hours after a Black man was fatally shot by a North Carolina deputy, grieving loved ones and frustrated protesters awaited details to piece together what happened… Andrew Brown Jr. was killed early Wednesday morning in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, said Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten. The deputy was executing a search warrant, and he has since been placed on leave pending investigation, he said."

"The U.S. jobs market recovery accelerated its pace last week as fewer Americans headed to the unemployment line, the Labor Department reported Thursday… First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 547,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate for 603,000 and a new low for the Covid-19 pandemic era."

"Five years ago, older millennials were 40% poorer than previous generations were at the same stage of life. That wealth gap has shrunk in recent years, but it’s still too soon to tell if obstacles such as student loan debt burdens, rising living expenses and the effects of the Covid pandemic will push this generation permanently off course." For various values of "previous generations." Like when you exclude Gen X. "Looking back five years, in 2016 the average older millennial was 32, earning a median income of $57,500 and had a net worth of approximately $27,900. But based on wealth rates previous generations recorded at similar ages, the typical millennial should have been earning a median salary of $65,900 with a net worth around $46,600 in 2016, according to calculations by the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity, based on the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances." Fuuuuuuck.

"Hunter's mother died when he was little, and his father later went to prison, court records show, leaving him in a foster home. In the years that followed, he was owed nearly $700 a month in federal survivor benefits, an amount based on Social Security contributions from his mother's paychecks. He doesn't remember Alaska's Office of Children's Services ever informing him that it was routing this money — his safety net — into state coffers… 'It's really messed up to steal money from kids who grew up in foster care,' said Hunter, now 21, who says he is struggling to afford college, rent and car payments. 'We get out and we don't have anybody or anything. This is exactly what survivor benefits are for.'"

"A missile launched from Syria was fired into southern Israel early Thursday, setting off air raid sirens near the country's top-secret nuclear reactor, the Israeli military said. In response, it said it attacked the missile launcher and air-defense systems in neighboring Syria… The incident, marking some of the most serious violence between Israel and Syria in years, pointed to potential Iranian involvement." Tit for tat.

One of our submarines… "Indonesia has about 72 hours left to rescue 53 crew members of a missing navy submarine before they run out of oxygen, the navy said… The KRI Nanggala-402 vessel is thought to have disappeared about 60 miles (100km) off the coast of Bali early on Wednesday morning."

"Tareq Alaows was hoping to become the first Syrian refugee to win a seat in Germany's parliament when the country goes to the polls in September… Citing death threats and a racist offensive against him and people close to him, Alaows withdrew his candidacy to represent the constituency of Oberhausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia state, in parliament on March 30."

"Russia is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030 if President Vladimir Putin gives the go-ahead, the head of its Roscosmos space agency has said… The project would end more than two decades of close cooperation with the United States aboard the ageing International Space Station (ISS)." Hey my Russian friends, how's that ruble doing?

"This is not the first time (DC) statehood has made it to the House floor. Just last year, House Democrats voted 232-180 in favor of statehood, making it 'the first time in the nation’s history that either house of Congress approved legislation granting full statehood and congressional representation' to the District, Vox’s Ian Millhiser reported at the time."

"A Capitol Police official radioed units outside of the building on the morning of Jan. 6 and told them only to scout for anti-Trump troublemakers — not pro-Trump protesters, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who described what she said were details of an internal investigation conducted in the aftermath of the mob attack."

"A GOP-backed bill introduced in the Ohio House on Monday aims to change the name of Trumbull County state park to honor former President Donald Trump… The bill primarily sponsored by freshman State Rep. Mike Loychik would rename Mosquito Lake State Park to Donald J. Trump State Park." When you have a park called Mosquito Lake, you'd think you'd want to upgrade the name, not make it worse.

"Unlike in previous years, a progressive group has decided to deliver a formal response to President Joe Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress next week."

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