Linkee-poo for January 11, 2024.

"Tor Publishing Group announced today that Tor.com will become Reactor…"

"A crippling fuel leak forced a U.S. company on Tuesday to give up on landing a spacecraft on the moon."

"Africa’s birds of prey have experienced a widespread population collapse that risks unforeseen consequences for humans, according to a new study."

"Last year was the hottest ever recorded, according to temperature data going back to 1850. And it beat the previous record by a wide margin, according to new data released by the European Union's weather and climate monitoring agency, Copernicus." We're boned.

"The unclaimed dead of Hinds County, Mississippi, are buried along a dirt road on the grounds of a jail work farm, their graves marked with just a metal rod and a number… Every few months, inmates dig new graves and add new bodies to the hundreds already buried in unkempt plots." When the government just doesn't care to do its job.

"Several prominent museums have been unable to display their collections online since a cyberattack hit a prominent technological service provider that helps hundreds of cultural organizations show their works digitally and manage internal documents… The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas were among the institutions confirming that their systems have experienced outages in recent days."

"How did a young man born 2,000 years ago near what is now southern Russia, end up in the English countryside?" Well, the M5 is kinda troublesome…

"Microscopic pieces of plastic are everywhere. Now, they've been found in bottled water in concentrations 10 to 100 times more than previously estimated."

"Dear Struggling in Ohio: 'You're not alone.' Love, the sewer district." Social media for the win.

"Getting and staying focused can be a challenge in the best of times. But with everything going on in the world, concentrating can often feel down-right impossible."

"ProPublica’s Claim File Helper lets you customize a letter requesting the notes and documents your insurer used when deciding to deny you coverage. Get your claim file before submitting an appeal."

"By taking biopsies from long COVID patients before and after exercising, scientists in the Netherlands constructed a startling picture of widespread abnormalities in muscle tissue that may explain this severe reaction to physical activity." COVID 19 is a mitochondrial disease.

"As a physician and infectious disease epidemiologist, I've seen a lot of COVID-19 patients during the course of the pandemic, and there's a question I hear over and over… How is it possible that my partner – or child or sibling or roommate – tested positive for COVID, and even though I slept in the same room or lived in the same house, I didn't come down with the virus?"

"Flannery turned out to be a consortium of Silicon Valley venture capitalist billionaires led by a former trader from Goldman Sachs. When pressed, they announced plans to build a new city from scratch in windswept farmland about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco in Solano County. They called the project 'California Forever' and released colorful renderings of idyllic tree-lined streets and plazas — but no details beyond a pledge to create a 'walkable' community powered by alternative energy." When billionaires don't understand that the law applies to them as well.

"The Department of Justice released new details of a settlement with engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. Wednesday that includes a mandatory recall of 600,000 Ram trucks, and that Cummins remedy environmental damage it caused when it illegally installed emissions control software in several thousand vehicles, skirting emissions testing." Naughty naughty.

"Sales of sugary drinks fell dramatically across five U.S. cities, after they implemented taxes targeting those drinks – and those changes were sustained over time. That's according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum."

"Last week, the National Retail Federation (NRF) removed language from their April report after reporting showed that their major claim about 'organized retail crime' (ORC) was based on faulty data. The language they removed came from the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail (CLEAR) and stated that 'nearly half' of the total inventory loss to retailers in 2021 'was attributable to ORC.' Organized retail crime, or ORC, is a term to describe shoplifting conducted coordinated groups of people stealing items for the purpose of personal enrichment. Organized retail crime has been increasingly targeted by lawmakers aiming to crack down on the crime with stiffer penalties and more jail time. The National Retail Federation’s retraction highlighted that data behind an apparent crisis in retail crime is baseless." Outside NYC, shoplifting is decreasing everywhere. The "ORC" number was started by :: checks notes :: the guy responsible for countering ORC (you know, no conflict of interest there).

"For years, rumors spread on social media that Steven Reece Lewis, the chief executive officer of a now-shuttered cryptocurrency hedge fund called HyperVerse, was a 'fake person' who 'doesn't exist.' After its investigation, The Guardian has confirmed that no organization cited on his resume 'can find any record of him.'"

Why does everyone say the economy is bad, Paul Krugman? "Republican assessments of the economy soared when Donald Trump took office. Even during the pandemic recession, when unemployment rose to almost 15 percent, Republicans had a more favorable view of the economy than they did in the Obama years. And when Joe Biden came in, almost all Republicans declared that the economy was bad — a view that has barely budged in the face of good macroeconomic news… Democrats are not Republicans’ mirror image." Funny that.

"It wasn’t a cakewalk for Chris Rufo… The right-wing thought leader delivered a smooth and articulate call to 'lay siege' to the nation’s system of higher education at UT’s Republican donor-funded Salem Center on Nov.13. But by the end of the Q&A, a trio of university professors had neutered his message." All bluster, no brain.

"Former county clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses in Kentucky to same-sex couples, must pay a total of $260,104 in fees and expenses to attorneys who represented one couple, according to a federal judge’s ruling."

"A ‘faith-based’ leader of Moms for Liberty in Philly turns out to be (subscription required) a registered sex offender. But don’t worry: He says he was framed." Funny how that keeps happening.

"The Republican Party of Florida officially ousted its former chair Christian Ziegler in a closed-door meeting Monday. The party also announced they have elected Leon County Republican Party chair Evan Power as his replacement… Ziegler is currently facing a rape investigation and other charges that he denies. The situation prompted the party to remove him after calls for his ouster from Republican elected officials across the state coupled with Ziegler's suspension last month."

"In the 32 years since Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government."

"The hard-right Republicans on the 11-person county board swept into office last year after defeating more-moderate GOP incumbents in a primary. The old commissioners had for years focused on keeping taxes low and the county’s biggest multinational employers happy. Their replacements reflected an increasingly populist and conspiratorial GOP — remade in the image of Donald Trump… They complained that they couldn’t trust (leader of the health department) Hambley. They accused her of supporting mask mandates and pushing coronavirus vaccines that they believed were unproven and possibly unsafe. They said her employees had encouraged dangerous, sexually perverse behavior by attending a local Pride festival, where they tested attendees for sexually transmitted diseases and administered the mpox vaccine." When religion gets involved with politics, it's never a good outcome.

"Lawmakers in the Maine House rejected an effort on Tuesday to launch impeachment proceedings against Secretary of State Shenna Bellows over her decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot."

"In arguments that extended for more than an hour, three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit pressed Trump's attorney on his sweeping claims of immunity from federal prosecution."

"The No. 2 official at the Pentagon was kept in the dark about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's hospitalization even after she was filling in for him, according to a senior defense official." See, that part is the real problem.

"Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on a framework to avert a shutdown and keep the federal government funded until the end of the fiscal year." And not two days later… "Without support from the most conservative members of his party, Johnson will have to rely heavily on Democratic support to avert a government shutdown. That could threaten Johnson's plan to add conservative policy provisions to the bill, like restrictions on abortion rights."

"The presidential nominating contests kick off in less than two weeks with voting in Iowa on Jan. 15. That's followed by New Hampshire on Jan. 23." Here we go again.

"Christie ended his presidential campaign after his stance on Trump's leadership and role in the Republican Party proved to diverge too far from where the GOP currently stands. Numerous conservatives had additionally been calling on Christie to end his campaign for weeks, so that former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who's been surging in the polls, could have a stronger chance to beat Trump for the GOP nomination."

"Trump posted an article on his Truth Social account from a right wing outlet that claims Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born… While her parents became citizens after her birth, Haley was born in South Carolina. Under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, being born in the United States makes her a natural-born citizen. She is therefore eligible to become president." Can't wait for the calls to see her birth certificate.