"A nor'easter's heavy rains were causing "life threatening flash flooding" and prompting water rescues in northern New Jersey on Tuesday morning, the National Weather Service said, as the storm threatened more flooding and power outages elsewhere throughout the day."
"A powerful storm that drenched the West Coast with record-breaking rainfall and hurricane-force winds triggered landslides, flooded roads and left two people dead in Washington State… It also resurrected one of California’s most iconic natural features — Yosemite Falls."
"Scientists may have detected signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way, in what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy."
"National plans to cut carbon fall far short of what's needed to avert dangerous climate change, according to the UN Environment Programme… Their Emissions Gap report says country pledges will fail to keep the global temperature under 1.5C this century… The Unep analysis suggests the world is on course to warm around 2.7C with hugely destructive impacts." We're boned.
"Teen vaping of marijuana doubled between 2013 and 2020, indicating that young people may be swapping out joints, pipes or bongs for vape pens, according to a new study." Vaping is the same as smoking, just at a lower temperature, and in more concentrated forms.
"Gender bias is leaving many women with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder undiagnosed, leading psychologists are warning… The prevailing stereotype ADHD affects only 'naughty boys' means at least tens of thousands in the UK, it is estimated, are unaware they have the condition and not receiving the help they need."
"It's a stark contrast to where this emergency department — and thousands others — were at the start of the pandemic. Except for initial hot spots like New York City, in the spring of 2020 many ERs across the country were often eerily empty. Terrified of contracting COVID, people who were sick with other things did their best to stay away from hospitals. Visits to emergency departments dropped to half their normal levels, according to the Epic Health Research Network, and didn't fully rebound until the summer of 2021… But now, they're too full. Even in parts of the country where COVID isn't overwhelming the health system, patients are showing up to the ER sicker than they were before the pandemic, their diseases more advanced and in need of more complicated care."
"She spent six months in the hospital, where she was put in a giant metal tank — a ventilator informally called an iron lung — to help her breathe. To this day, Lillard is one of the last people in the U.S. who still depends on an iron lung to survive."
"A school district in Bergen County said it has suspended a teacher who is accused of telling an Arab American Muslim high school 'we don’t negotiate with terrorists' in response to his question about homework."
"We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And, if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economy-wide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared to what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide."
"A cyberattack crippled gas stations across Iran on Tuesday, leaving angry motorists stranded in long lines… No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which rendered useless the government-issued electronic cards that many Iranians use to buy subsidized fuel at the pump."
"Facebook's rank-and-file employees warned their leaders about the company's effects on society and politics in the U.S. — and its inability to effectively moderate content in other countries magnified those dangers. Those are two of the main takeaways from thousands of internal Facebook documents that NPR and other news outlets have reviewed."
"Facebook and Instagram have removed from their platforms a live broadcast that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro delivered in which he said people in the U.K. who have received two coronavirus vaccine doses are developing AIDS faster than expected." But it took them 3 days to do it.
"By altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s newsfeeds, researchers at (Facebook) realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization… Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. Other changes weren't made until April."
"Tesla hit a $1 trillion market cap on Monday following news that Hertz is ordering 100,000 vehicles to build out its electric vehicle rental fleet by the end of 2022." That's going to leave a mark.
"In states that cut off the $300 check, the workforce — the number of people who either have a job or are looking for one — has risen no more than it has in the states that maintained the payment… An analysis of state-by-state data by The Associated Press found that workforces in the 25 states that maintained the $300 payment actually grew slightly more from May through September, according to data released Friday, than they did in the 25 states that cut off the payment early, most of them in June." Conservative economic talking points are bullshit? You don't say. Again, the point of conservative policy is cruelty.
"Since the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, a (Sudanese) transitional government composed of civilians and military had worked together under the leadership of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to move the country toward elections in 2023… Now, with Hamdok in detention, the military in full control and security forces opening fire on protesters, the Biden administration has suspended $700 million in aid as the U.S. State Department calls on the military to release Hamdok and restore the civilian government."
The state of the art in "AI"… "Machine learning systems are notorious for demonstrating unintended bias. And as is often the case, part of the reason Delphi’s answers can get questionable can likely be linked back to how it was created." No, machine learning systems amplify our human frailties. That's what they learn. The whole concept of "we built this machine, but we don't know how to program what we're looking for correctly, so we fed it all this available data and let it find it's own way" is highly dubious and, IMHO, recklessly irresponsible.
"A North Carolina man who moved to Chicago was one of the victims of John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of killing 33 young men and boys in the 1970s, authorities said Monday… Francis Wayne Alexander would have been 21 or 22 years old when Gacy killed him sometime between early 1976 and early 1977, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said at a news conference in announcing the identification of Alexander's remains."
"Sen. Joe Manchin, who for months has called for a pause in talks over President Joe Biden's social safety net package, on Monday offered his most optimistic assessment yet that a deal could be reached imminently -- as soon as this week… But Manchin, whose vote is essential to passing the Biden agenda, indicated he still has concerns over an expansion of Medicare and new paid leave policies and wants the price tag to stay at $1.5 trillion, far short of what many liberals are demanding." Time to bring out the heavy bat.
"The Democrats’ idea for a new billionaires’ tax to help pay for President Joe Biden’s social services and climate change plan quickly ran into criticism as too cumbersome with some lawmakers preferring the original plan of simply raising the top tax rates on corporations and the wealthy."
"Biden took the showdown, which was triggered by the fallout over the US Capitol insurrection, up another notch on Monday by refusing to assert executive privilege over a second batch of documents that Trump wants to prevent the National Archives from turning over to the House select committing probing the January 6 attack."
"Here are some of the groups providing resources and support to school board protesters around the country. None have endorsed violence, threats or incitement. Nor are they all formally connected. What they do is offer help to parents who have questions or objections about what their children are learning in school or how schools are run. They issue press releases, sell T-shirts and lawn signs, produce flyers and publicize events on social media, supply information and legal advice, offer template letters, scripts for public testimony, and model legislation. They put out webinars and trainings to give practical assistance to those who want to target or disrupt school boards." The companies and PACs inciting the "lone wolves" to act out, all while saying they don't support violence. But they just give all those wolves the tools to commit violence.
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