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

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Linkee-poo Sunday March 27

"An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday… The issue isn't the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. It's negligible. But it's more about the where it happened."

"Solar Orbiter’s latest images shows the full Sun in unprecedented detail. They were taken on March 7, 2022, when the spacecraft was crossing directly between the Earth and Sun… One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) is the highest resolution image of the Sun’s full disc and outer atmosphere, the corona, ever taken."

"Officials with the Hubble Space Telescope program have some new science to share on Wednesday (March 30)… A NASA statement promises 'one for the record books' and an 'exciting new observation' from the nearly 32-year-old telescope. It's tricky to guess what that discovery might be, given that the Hubble Space Telescope's work stretches from exoplanets to galaxies to measuring the expansion of the universe. (That last bit garnered the multiobservatory team a Nobel Prize.)"

"NASA officials gave the green light Friday for the first all-commercial astronaut launch to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket as soon as April 3. But the astronaut launch could be delayed a day, or longer, to give priority to a countdown test for NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket on a neighboring launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center."

"The Milky Way's thick disk is 2 billion years older than astronomers previously thought and likely formed barely 800 million years after the Big Bang, a new study based on an unusual type of star found."

"The price of chicken breasts this week averaged $3.63 per pound at U.S. supermarkets — up from $3.01 a week earlier and $2.42 at this time last year, the Agriculture Department says."

"Flu cases are rising across much of the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday, though overall flu levels remain low… Weekly flu cases had been declining through most of January, but began rising nationally the week ending March 5, the CDC said. That increase has continued, albeit slowly." Hmmm, what happened earlier this month? Could that have been the CDC recommendation that we stop wearing masks?

"The rate for the most common kind of mortgage just surged again… The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage shot significantly higher Friday, rising 24 basis points to 4.95%, according to Mortgage News Daily. It is now 164 basis points higher than it was one year ago."

"But a proposal presented by the EU Commission to the EU Parliament and Council in early March sets out to legislate pay transparency and enforcement measures for all types of workers in EU member states for the first time… As well as requiring employers to provide salary ranges on job ads and banning questions about pay history, it will give employees the right to request information on pay levels and force companies that employ more than 250 people to publish their gender pay gap data. It could also enshrine improved justice for victims of pay discrimination, including full compensation of back pay and related bonuses, and sanctions for companies found to be underpaying staff. At the start of December 2019, EU Commission president Ursula von Der Leyen promised to deliver the directive within 100 days, and it took at least four times that time due to the pandemic, but the Parliament and Council could be deciding on an outcome and legislating it in a matter of days."

"The ancient Buddha statues sit in serene meditation in the caves carved into the russet cliffs of rural Afghanistan. Hundreds of meters below lies what is believed to be the world’s largest deposit of copper… Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are pinning their hopes on Beijing to turn that rich vein into revenue to salvage the cash-starved country amid crippling international sanctions."

"President Joe Biden delivered a forceful and highly personal condemnation of Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Saturday, summoning a call for liberal democracy and a durable resolve among Western nations in the face of a brutal autocrat."

"President Joe Biden is expected to propose a new minimum tax that would largely target billionaires when he unveils his 2023 budget, according to a document obtained by CNBC… Called the 'Billionaire Minimum Income Tax,' it would assess a 20% minimum tax rate on U.S. households worth more than $100 million. Over half the revenue could come from those worth more than $1 billion."

Sure it's not about suppressing rights… "An annual Pride Week celebration in Austin schools is breaking state law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said this week, marking the state's latest move to confront LGBTQ rights. Austin's school district said the events will nevertheless continue."

"The study found that in 2021, people of color made up the majority of domestic ticket sales on opening weekend for six of the top 10 films. Also, minority households were overrepresented among streaming audiences for each of the top 10 films last year."

"The Supreme Court is an opaque and difficult to understand institution. Luckily, drawing on the expertise of seasoned SCOTUS reporters, we've put together a handy guide for the discerning news consumer to make sense of the court, its decisions, and its coverage."

"Overall, only 36% of Americans say Biden is doing a good job in response to the war in Ukraine, while 52% say he's not. That disapproval is driven largely by the GOP: 81% of Republicans rated Biden's response as fair or poor. On the other hand, 62% of Democrats described the president's response as good or excellent… And 45% of respondents say President Biden has been too cautious in supporting Ukraine. Only 7% think the U.S. should be doing less in Ukraine, compared with 39% who think it should be doing more."

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