Linkee-poo somebody going to emergency, somebody's going to jail

"British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on Wednesday of facilitating the abuse of underage girls at the hands of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein… A federal jury deliberated for five full days before finding Maxwell guilty on five of the six counts she faced, including the sex trafficking of a minor. The 60-year-old was acquitted of enticing a minor to travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died in 2019 while in a Manhattan correctional facility."

In exercise… "Everything counts when it comes to movement."

"These are some mighty bold claims for a small industrial plant in a tiny, peripheral country. Climeworks’ facility is capable of pulling down only about 4,000 tons of carbon per year—an eye-dropper’s worth of the 40 billion tons the world emits annually. The plant uses a technique known as direct air capture, in which enormous fans suck in vast amounts of air from our despoiled atmosphere and run it over chemical-laden filters. It’s similar in principle to the tech that factories and refineries use to scrub CO2 from their exhaust streams. But what’s potentially much better about direct air capture is that it can be deployed anywhere, and it removes carbon already in the atmosphere, whether it was belched out 10 years ago by a cement factory in Alabama or last week by a pickup truck in Zanzibar." Except that it's isn't troposphere CO2 that's the problem, it's the older CO2 that has made it's way into the higher levels of our atmosphere. So while this is a Good Thing™ for current emissions, unless you can build these factories in the stratosphere and mesosphere it's not going to do much for our historical output.

"A team of scientists wants Pluto classified as a planet again — along with dozens of similar bodies in the solar system and any found around distant stars." Here we go again.

Ah, something(s) new has been added. "Six new dinosaurs, an Indian beetle named after Larry the cat, and dozens of crustaceans critical to the planet’s carbon cycle were among 552 new species identified by scientists at the Natural History Museum this year… In 2021, researchers described previously unknown species across the tree of life, from a pair of giant carnivorous dinosaurs known as spinosaurs – nicknamed the 'riverbank hunter' and 'hell heron' – to five new snakes that include the Joseph’s racer, which was identified with the help of a 185-year-old painting."

"The omicron variant is spreading rapidly all over the country, but hospitalization and death rates remain relatively low… The seven-day average of COVID-19 cases topped 280,000 this week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University's tracker. It's a record number of new cases in the country; the last time the number of cases hit a peak close to that was January." Jazz hands.

"Rapid Covid home tests are more likely to give a false negative with the heavily-mutated Omicron variant compared to earlier strains, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Tuesday." Ta-da! All SARS-CoV2 tests are weighted to false negatives instead of false positives (which could then be confirmed or disproven by a second test).

"Two new studies of a Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine booster showed promise against the omicron variant at a time when public health officials are urgently recommending booster shots against the fast-spreading variant."

"Initial filings for unemployment insurance dipped last week and remained close to their lowest level in more than 50 years, the Labor Department reported Thursday… Jobless claims for the week ended Dec. 25 totaled 198,000, less than the 205,000 Dow Jones forecast and a dip of 8,000 from the previous period."

"We’re today learning more about what prompted the Foxconn iPhone plant shutdown in southern India – and it makes for truly gruesome reading… We learned yesterday that Apple ordered Foxconn to suspend production at the plant, and placed the company on probation, until it resolved problems with living conditions in the company dormitories. It’s only today, however, that we’re getting the full picture of just how appalling those conditions were…" Waves to Wisconsin.

"Meanwhile, the latest pandemic-muddled holiday has left a lot of Americans seriously bummed. Air travel is a mess. College football bowl games have been scrubbed. The ball drop celebration will go forward in New York's Times Square, but with a much smaller crowd and strict mask rules." Wow, it's almost like people are still dying because the idiots won't stay home, mask up, or get vaccinated. But I'm sure it'll be Biden's fault by Monday.

"The Myanmar military had stormed Done Taw at 11 a.m. on Dec. 7, he told the AP, with about 50 soldiers hunting people on foot. The farmhand and other villagers fled to the forest and fields, but 10 were captured and killed, including five teenagers, with one only 14, he said. A photo taken by his friend shows the charred remains of a victim lying face down, holding his head up, suggesting he was burned alive."

"President Biden is expected to speak by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday — at the Kremlin's request — weeks after the White House said Biden made it clear to Putin that if Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the United States and its European allies stand ready to respond with economic sanctions and military support."

"A 16-year-old girl whom police said was mistaken for an intruder early Wednesday morning was fatally shot by her father… Police said they received a call around 4:30 a.m. saying that someone inside the home had shot at what he believed to be someone breaking in after the house's security system was activated."

"By the time of their final visit last May at Randele’s house in suburban Boston, the cancer in his lungs had taken away his voice. So they all left without knowing that their friend they’d spent countless hours swapping stories with never told them his biggest secret of all… For the past 50 years, he was a fugitive wanted in one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland’s history, living in Boston under a new name he created six months after the heist in the summer of 1969."

"Hunger in the Military has been a problem for decades. Often low-ranking service members have too little food and limited options. Twenty percent of active-duty respondents to a survey this year say they experienced food insecurity and more than 10 percent experienced hunger." And yet we're spending even more on the Pentagon budget this year.

"The state of Michigan paid up to $8.5 billion in fraudulent unemployment assistance claims during the pandemic, a new audit has found… The report prepared by Deloitte & Touche LLP uncovered that Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency paid an estimated $8.4 billion to $8.51 billion in potentially fraudulent claims from March 1, 2020 until Sept. 30, 2021… But the report also found the losses could have been much worse, as the state avoided paying an estimated $43.7 billion in fraudulent claims in that same time period."

"A heavily armed California man was arrested in Iowa after he told law enforcement officers that he would 'do whatever it takes' to kill government leaders on his 'hit list,' including President Joe Biden and his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, authorities said in court papers."