Sorry, way too much happening and my time is being pulled in many directions. I think part of it also has to do with the resurfacing of That Fucking Guy in the news.
Crazy Uncle Pat is gone? Well, Hallelujah. While most deaths are at the very least regrettable, some are occasions for joy. If you think that's harsh, Pat should have emulated God's incarnation on Earth while he was alive. Instead he choose to use the Bible as a cudgel while engaging in every venal sin in an attempt to glorify himself. By his own standards he did wrong, and any minimal grace and compassion he had was vastly overshadowed by his cruelty, hate, and greed for worldly dominion and lucre.
George Winston, and Silvio Berllusconi, and so it goes.
Enter your zip code in this US Noise Level Map to see how much noise stress you live with. (Grokked from Chang)
"All five passengers aboard the missing Titan submersible have died following a 'catastrophic implosion of the vessel,' the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday." And then there's this, "When asked about the likelihood of recovering the bodies, Mauger said he does not have an answer and noted the 'incredibly unforgiving environment' of the sea floor." There are no bodies to recover. This isn't a conspiracy statement, this is physics from a small chamber going from 1 atmosphere to 398 in less than a second. Most likely there won't even be a grease stain on the metal. The people inside the Titan were dead before they could even process that something was wrong. And while there is some debate over when you die do you still have enough brain function to know you're dead, but in this case it's a moot question. It's quite possible the air inside the chamber became plasma because of the compression. Even if it didn't, the pressure at that depth, and the sudden change, would have literally ripped the cells of the passengers apart. Within that second there wouldn't even be a braincell left intact.
"An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast source of the coveted element needed to produce cleaner electric energy and fight global warming. But NASA says the same site — flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere — is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead." Prospectors out in the field, "Wow, this is great, and nobody is using this area or lives around here. Woohoo!" Spacesuited astronaut descends on cable from the sky with a bullhorn, "Stop that!"
"Fortunately, the worst didn’t happen. There are a few reasons why. To reduce demand, many Texans turned up the thermostat by a few degrees to help save power, and ERCOT’s emergency response program paid some large energy customers to scale back usage during peak times. And significantly, solar power, which has been the star of the Texas grid so far during this interminable summer, continued to set records for energy production. If your air conditioner has been steadily running all summer long, you can thank the mighty power of the sun."
"A line of severe storms produced what a meteorologist calls a rare combination of multiple tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and softball-sized hail in west Texas, killing at least four people, injuring nine and causing significant damage around the town of Matador, a meteorologist said Thursday."
"Archeologists have found a pre-Hispanic mummy surrounded by coca leaves on top of a hill in Peru’s capital next to the practice field of a professional soccer club."
"A nationwide Medicare survey released Wednesday found that veterans rated Veterans Affairs hospitals higher than private health care facilities in all 10 categories of patient satisfaction." I think they're taking the wrong lesson from this. It's not that VA care has gotten so much better from when it was rated far below probate care, it's that private care quality has gone in the toilet.
"An Illinois hospital will shutter its doors this week in part because of a devastating cyberattack, which experts say makes it the first hospital to publicly link criminal hackers to its closure." Well, somewhat.
"In late 2021, Isabella Weber, an economist at University of Massachusetts, Amherst published a paper with a new idea. The theory, what she called 'seller's inflation,' sought to address the confounding fact that the economy was seeing rising high prices and skyrocketing corporate profits. The idea quickly moved from the halls of academia to the political arena. And quicker still, it was dismissed—at one point called a 'conspiracy theory.' But now, in 2023, 'greedflation' is popping up across headlines. This week, (On the Media) correspondent Micah Loewinger sits down with Lydia DePillis, a reporter on the business desk at The New York Times, to talk about her 2022 article dissecting the arguments for and against greedflation’s impact on the economy, and everything that's happened since."
"All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall."
"The really remarkable thing isn't just that Microsoft has decided that the future of search isn't links to relevant materials, but instead lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a chatbot who happens to be a habitual liar – even more remarkable is that Google agrees."
"Federal regulators have sued Amazon, alleging the company for years "tricked" people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel."
"South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said Thursday it will investigate 237 more cases of South Korean adoptees who suspect their family origins were manipulated to facilitate their adoptions in Europe and the United States."
"A grainy black-and-white gunsight video Russia released this week to bolster a claim its military blew up some of Ukraine’s most fearsome tanks actually documented the destruction of a tractor, according to a visual analysis by The Associated Press." Glory to the Motherland.
"A deal struck Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group mercenary army that had advanced to the outskirts of Moscow late Saturday, ended what many saw as a coup attempt. Under the terms of the deal, Prigozhin agreed to call off a military assault on the Russian capital, withdraw forces from the captured city of Rostov-on-Don and leave Russia for Belarus." Stay safe, my Russian friends.
"The armed rebellion against the Russian military may have been over in less than 24 hours, but the disarray within the enemy’s ranks was an unexpected gift and timely morale booster for Ukrainian troops."
"Florida Republicans who voted to pass the state's imminent anti-immigration law are trying to curb a potentially disastrous mass exodus of undocumented residents by touting the legislation's many 'loopholes.'"
"Domestic extremists who plot or commit mass killings often share characteristics, like mental health problems and criminal histories. But the most common thread is a record of military service, according to new analysis of three decades of attacks inside the U.S." Funny, that.
"The Battle of Bamber Bridge — which took place 80 years ago this weekend, on June 24-25, 1943 — was a precursor to battles that would unfold on American streets for decades to come, during the Civil Rights era. It horrified the mostly white local villagers, who were unaccustomed to segregation and had befriended their Black guests. But because of wartime censorship, the battle was virtually unknown outside the tiny English village where it happened." The history they don't want you to know.
"A few weeks before last fall’s midterm elections, a paid canvasser in Nevada did what thousands of door-knockers across the country were doing: They went on an app and marked off the homes they had visited that day… There was just one problem. This canvasser never went anywhere near those homes in a neighborhood in south Las Vegas. They were 8 miles away, sitting inside Caesars Palace casino, according to geotracking data obtained by NBC News."
"The court said that in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and one in four voters is black, the Republican-dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice."
"Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to outlaw book bans, after Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday signed legislation that would cut off state funding for any Illinois library that tries to ban books, CBS Chicago reports… The new law comes as predominantly Republican-led states continue to restrict books some consider offensive in schools and libraries across the country."
"The petition filed against Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) and the Ohio Ballot Board alleges that the defendants used 'inaccurate, incomplete ballot language that improperly favor the Amendment in flagrant violation Ohio’s Constitution and laws and this Court’s jurisprudence.' The petitioners also argue that the amendment’s title 'is not impartial and will create prejudice in favor of the Amendment.'" If you live in Ohio, and are registered, don't forget to vote to save our democracy on Aug 8.
"The indictment unsealed early Friday afternoon shows that a grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and making false statements."
"Donald Trump improperly stored in his Florida estate sensitive documents on nuclear capabilities, repeatedly enlisted aides and lawyers to help him hide records demanded by investigators and cavalierly showed off a Pentagon “plan of attack” and classified map, according to a sweeping felony indictment that paints a damning portrait of the former president’s treatment of national security information."
"The House of Representatives has voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his past actions while chair of the House Intelligence Committee in leading investigations into then-President Donald Trump."
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