In Partibus Infidelium [Archive]

Chip

February 21st, 2022, 11:10 PM

You might think I only target RWWs, but here's a Democratic doozy:

U.S. House Candidate Apologizes for Behavior at Sleepover

By Neil Vigdor
Feb. 21, 2022

A Democratic candidate for Congress in Oklahoma apologized in a television interview on Friday after parents complained that she drank and verbally abused children attending a sleepover at a friend’s home this month.

The House candidate, Abby Broyles, a former television investigative reporter who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2020, said that she had no memory of what happened because she had mixed alcohol and a sleep medicine. About eight girls between the ages of 12 and 13 attended the Feb. 11 sleepover, where they watched the movie “Titanic,” according to NonDoc Media, a journalism nonprofit in Oklahoma.

When first contacted by NonDoc Media for comment, Ms. Broyles seemed to deny that she was at the party. After a TikTok video showed otherwise, she gave an interview to KFOR-TV, an Oklahoma City station where she once worked. She did not immediately return a message from The Times on Monday. In the interview, Ms. Broyles said that she had “blacked out” after drinking wine and taking a sleep medication. She said the medicine was given to her by her friend, whose daughter was having a sleepover when Ms. Broyles came to visit.

“I had an adverse reaction,” Ms. Broyles said. “Instead of helping me sleep, I hallucinated. And I don’t remember anything until I woke up or came to, and I was throwing up in a hamper.”

Ms. Broyles, 32, who is a lawyer, is seeking her party’s nomination in June to run against Representative Stephanie Bice, a Republican in her first term representing Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District. A Democrat has held the seat only once in recent history, and for just two years. The district includes most of Oklahoma City. In 2020, Ms. Broyles unsuccessfully ran to unseat Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma.

Citing information from some parents and children who attended the party, NonDoc Media reported that Ms. Broyles had sworn at one girl, while also mentioning that she was Hispanic, and had referred to another girl’s acne, among other abusive remarks. They said that she had vomited into one of the girls’ shoes, in addition to the laundry hamper.

TSherbs

February 22nd, 2022, 04:20 AM

Reads like something from The Onion.

kazoolaw

February 22nd, 2022, 08:16 AM

You might think I only target RWWs, but here's a Democratic doozy:

U.S. House Candidate Apologizes for Behavior at Sleepover

Knew you could do it.

Chuck Naill

February 22nd, 2022, 09:41 AM

Let's see if you can?

Chip

February 22nd, 2022, 10:39 PM

Whatever happened to conservative humor?

Buckley was a maestro. P. J. O'Rourke was a hoot.

There are some hilarious bits on Fox News, entirely unintended. Tucker Carlson is laughable, in the grand tradition of Josef Goebbels.

Bold2013

February 23rd, 2022, 05:06 AM

Babylon Bee.

https://babylonbee.com/news/man-donates-to-truck-convoy-under-name-hunter-biden-so-washington-post-wont-dox-him

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 05:17 AM

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 09:37 AM

Carlson is often repeated here.

Mostly by you though.

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 10:10 AM

Carlson is often repeated here.

Mostly by you though.

You've posted stuff and I learned later he said it before you.

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 01:04 PM

Carlson is often repeated here.

Mostly by you though.

You've posted stuff and I learned later he said it before you.

Nope. You're the guy who always chimpscreams "YOU WATCH TUCKER". I don't, but how would you know what Tucker does or doesn't say? Why do you invoke him?

You're the only guy who ever talks about Tucker. My links don't come from Fox or Tucker.

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 03:20 PM

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 03:49 PM

Just mentioning Tucker triggers you more than Trump or ivermectin!!! ROFL!!!

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 03:50 PM

Did you intend to post something?

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 03:52 PM

What are you avoiding? LOL!!!

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 03:57 PM

What are you avoiding? LOL!!!

So, you are unaccustomed to what it means to ask a question??? ROTFLMAO.

Did you get out of sixth grade,Dude?LOL!!!!!!!

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 04:22 PM

Still avoiding!!! ROFL!!!

Chuck Naill

February 23rd, 2022, 05:37 PM

Tucky Neal…..how 🥰

dneal

February 23rd, 2022, 06:05 PM

Tucky Neal…..how 🥰

At least you have a public outlet for your Tucker love now.

*kisses*

Chip

February 23rd, 2022, 11:19 PM

When one searches "Tucker Carlson" strange things pop up.

Marjorie Taylor Greene hints that Kevin McCarthy is gay on Tucker Carlson’s show

May 6, 2021

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation program last night and insinuated that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is gay.

The two joked that he is in a relationship with Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Luntz has been critical of former President Donald Trump.

Greene told Carlson the things she learned after coming to Washington, D.C. and seeing the inner workings of Congress with a long list of complaints and exaggerations. Carlson, however, couldn’t resist trying to one-up her when the conversation turned to McCarthy.

“Were you shocked to learn they share a toothbrush or are roommates or whatever?” he asked.

“I was more curious, like, who gets the top bunk and who gets the bottom bunk,” she responded.

In a statement earlier this week, McCarthy’s office said that his living arrangements with Luntz are only temporary.

“Because of the pandemic, McCarthy has rented a room in Washington at a fair market price from Frank,” the statement said.

The living arrangement has drawn criticism because Luntz is a lobbyist.

https://www.gaynewstoday.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-hints-that-kevin-mccarthy-is-gay-on-tucker-carlsons-show-lgbtq-nation/

Chuck Naill

February 24th, 2022, 05:52 AM

I've heard there is a truck convoy headed to the nation's capital. Why does it need to be trucks? Someone should organize a Subaru convoy..LOL!:)

Chip

February 24th, 2022, 01:46 PM

Ironic for bubba wage slaves who sit on their arses all day listening to RWW talk radio to preach about freedom.

What about organizing gridlock at the GOP convention with electric cars and vegan food trucks?

kazoolaw

February 26th, 2022, 08:51 AM

Ironic for bubba wage slaves who sit on their arses all day....

Said the reknowned author condescendingly.

Chuck Naill

February 26th, 2022, 09:18 AM

Ironic for bubba wage slaves who sit on their arses all day....

Said the reknowned author condescendingly.

Do you drive standing up? Please stop, you make this too easy. :)

TSherbs

February 26th, 2022, 09:33 AM

Hey, take it to the other thread

Chuck Naill

February 26th, 2022, 11:26 AM

Or, not.

TSherbs

February 26th, 2022, 11:32 AM

please

Chip

February 26th, 2022, 04:35 PM

CPAC: A Bacchanal of Right-Wing Pageantry, Passion and Grievance
Feb. 24, 2022

This year’s lineup provides the same caliber of thought-provoking offerings that the conference’s fans and foes alike have come to expect. Among the scheduled panel discussions are “The Moron in Chief” and the more baroquely titled “Put Him to Bed, Lock Her Up and Send Her to the Border.” The latter session will feature crack analysis by Jack Posobiec, the conspiracymonger known for scampering down the rabbit holes of crank theories such as Pizzagate.

Asinine titles aside, the presentations offer a glimpse into what is obsessing the G.O.P.’s activist base. Among this year’s hot topics is clearly the threat of wokeness, inspiring multiple offerings, including “Awake Not Woke,” “Woke Inc.” and “Fighting Woke Inc.” A legal chat about “defending the canceled” seems to fit the theme as well.

There are several presentations related to schools, including “School Boards for Dummies,” “Domestic Terrorists Unite: Lessons From Virginia Parents” and a town hall on the fittingly misspelled “Pupil Propoganda.”

https://i.imgur.com/4ZrsnAH.jpg

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/cpac-trump-desantis-biden.html?referringSource=articleShare

Meanwhile, the Fox News superstar, Tucker Carlson, is extending his reach beyond whackjobs in the US. Wonder if Putin will come on as a sponsor?
https://i.imgur.com/cMmViF5.jpg

kazoolaw

February 27th, 2022, 06:10 AM

Hey, take it to the other thread

The law of unintended consequences: the ad hominem topic has encouraged, not isolated, such comments. To be fair, Chuck is irrepressible.

Chuck Naill

February 27th, 2022, 07:05 AM

:amen:

Chip

February 28th, 2022, 08:34 PM

Trump Stormtrooper Goes on Trial

https://i.imgur.com/Uo33rHD.jpg

Guy Wesley Reffitt, who is accused of obstructing the work of Congress on Jan. 6, is set to become the first defendant to stand trial in a case stemming from the Capitol riot. The trial, which opens on Feb. 28, will set the tone for dozens of other cases.

When the first trial stemming from the attack on the Capitol opens on Monday, it will set the stage for prosecutors to do more than merely lay out the details of how the defendant, Guy Wesley Reffitt, sought to storm the building with a pistol at his hip.

For the first time in a courtroom, they will present a broad portrait of the violent chaos that erupted that day and seek to persuade a jury that the pro-Trump mob that Mr. Reffitt is accused of joining struck at the heart of American democracy by disrupting the transition of presidential power.

The trial, which will take place in Federal District Court in Washington and begin on Monday morning with jury selection, may not be the flashiest or most significant of the dozens of Capitol riot cases that are scheduled to go to trial this year.

But because it is the first to reach a courtroom, it will most likely set the tone for those that follow and serve as a kind of proving ground for the charges prosecutors have filed against hundreds of defendants. (More than 200 people have already pleaded guilty in cases related to the Capitol attack.)

At the heart of Mr. Reffitt’s case is the accusation that the defendant, an oil industry worker with purported ties to a Texas militia, obstructed the work of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when a joint session of the House and the Senate met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Prosecutors say he donned body armor and a helmet mounted with a video camera, and placed himself at “the front of the pack” that charged the Capitol.
. . . .
On Thursday, a message purportedly written by Mr. Reffitt was posted on the “J6 Patriot News” channel on Telegram, discussing the “beginning of the 1/6 Political Prisoner Trials.”

“I am prepared to stare down the barrel of tyranny to receive the bullet of freedom,” the message said.

The case is one of several that will feature evidence about the U.S. militia movement. Prosecutors say that Mr. Reffitt was a member of the Texas Three Percenters, one of several state chapters of a larger organization that focuses on gun rights and antigovernment activity. While the Three Percenters may not be as prominent as other far-right groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, several purported members of the movement have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, including at least four from Southern California.

To prove Mr. Reffitt’s militia ties, prosecutors are set to call as a witness a fellow Three Percenter who plans to testify under an immunity deal with the government. They say the witness — known for now only by the initials R.H. — intends to tell the jury about the arrangements he made with Mr. Reffitt to travel to Washington and the firearms and tactical gear, including an assault rifle, that Mr. Reffitt brought on the trip.

Two members of Mr. Reffitt’s family — his son and daughter — are also expected to take the stand against him. Prosecutors say the son, who was 18 at the time of the attack, will tell the jury that he and his sister, then 16, spoke with their father when he returned from Washington after the riot and that Mr. Reffitt threatened to shoot them if they went to the F.B.I. about him. In a previous court hearing, the daughter testified that Mr. Reffitt threatened to put a bullet in her cellphone if she posted about him on social media.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/27/us/politics/jan-6-trial-guy-wesley-reffitt.html?referringSource=articleShare

TSherbs

March 1st, 2022, 04:31 AM

Sounds like one of those "bad hombres" I've heard about.

Chuck Naill

March 1st, 2022, 05:40 AM

He felt his freedom was threatened.

Chip

March 1st, 2022, 02:01 PM

Is that in the Second Amendment?

Freedom to kill his kids?

Chip

March 7th, 2022, 01:29 PM

Poutine not Putin: classic Quebec dish off the menu in France and Canada

https://i.imgur.com/vazmyvc.jpg

Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has prompted demonstrations around the world, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to condemn the war. But anger towards the Russian leader has also ensnared an unlikely casualty: a French-Canadian delicacy of potato fries, cheese curds and gravy.

Poutine, the famous dish, shares its name – in French – with the maligned Russian president. And as Putin becomes the target of protest, so too has one restaurant that sells the dish.

Maison de la Poutine, with restaurants in both Paris and Toulouse, said it has received insults and threats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Our dish was born in Quebec in the 1950s. And the stories to tell its origin are numerous. But one thing is certain: poutine was created by passionate cooks who wanted to bring joy and comfort to their customers,” the company tweeted. “The House of Poutine has worked since its first day to perpetuate these values and today brings its most sincere support to the Ukrainian people who are courageously fighting for their freedom against the tyrannical Russian regime.”

The row follows a decision by a Quebec-based diner to pull the name from the menu. Le Roy Jucep, which claims to be the birthplace of poutine in the 1950s, said it was distancing itself from the name, instead describing itself as “the inventor of the fries-cheese-gravy”.

“Dear clients, Tonight the Jucep team decided to temporarily retire the word P**tine from its trademark in order to express, in its own way, its profound dismay over the situation in Ukraine,” the diner recently wrote on Facebook, before pulling the post.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/poutine-not-putin-classic-quebec-dish-under-fire-in-france?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

March 7th, 2022, 03:33 PM

I've never had the dish, actually. But I like all of the ingredients!

Chip

March 7th, 2022, 04:31 PM

It's a gutbuster. The Canadian equivalent of nachos or hot wings. A favorite in bars when there are sports matches on the telly.

Fresh cheese curds give a little squeak when you bite into them.

TSherbs

March 7th, 2022, 04:58 PM

Fresh cheese curds give a little squeak when you bite into them.

ok that's wierd

Chip

March 7th, 2022, 10:53 PM

I started college in Logan, Utah, where there are lots of dairies and several cheese factories. The curds are formed during the initial fermentation, suspended in whey. The whey is drained and the curds are pressed to yield blocks of cheese.

Cheese curds are the moist pieces of curdled milk either eaten alone as a snack, or used in prepared dishes. These are chiefly found in Quebec, in the dish poutine (made of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy), throughout Ontario,and in the northeastern, midwestern, mountain, and Pacific Northwestern United States, especially in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Curds are sometimes referred to as "squeaky cheese".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_curd

Chip

March 9th, 2022, 03:21 PM

Back to madness, evil, and such.

Trump ‘admired’ Putin’s ability to ‘kill whoever’, says Stephanie Grisham

Maya Yang
Wed 9 Mar 2022

Donald Trump “admired” Vladimir Putin’s ability to kill anyone he wanted, according to his former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

In an interview with The View on Tuesday, Grisham discussed the former US president’s relationship with the Russian president, saying: “I think he was afraid of him. I think that the man intimidated him. Because Putin is a scary man, just frankly, I think he was afraid of him.” She went on to add: “I also think he admired him greatly. I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him. In my experience with him, he loved the dictators, loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in more than 1,300 civilian casualties, including 474 killed and 861 injured, Trump has highly praised Putin for his actions, calling him a “genius”. In an interview last month with a conservative radio show, Trump fawned over Putin, saying: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine independent. Oh that’s wonderful. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border.”

Trump continued, saying: “There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy, I know him very well. Very, very well.”

Trump’s comments were criticized by the two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, who are among the few Republicans who have been critical of the former president. Liz Cheney tweeted that Trump’s statement “aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/09/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-stephanie-grisham?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chuck Naill

March 10th, 2022, 05:37 AM

Putin says the charge that they bombed a maternity hospital is fake news. Sound familiar?

Chip

March 10th, 2022, 12:04 PM

The photos are horrific.

Chip

March 13th, 2022, 08:12 PM

Talking Chaos, or Plotting a Conspiracy? The Debate in the Whitmer Kidnapping Trial.

“The evidence will show it was all parlor tricks,” said Christopher Gibbons, who represents Mr. Fox. “Adam Fox talks big. He draws attention to himself. He’s trying to be cool.”

Underemployed and living in a basement under a trap door at a friend’s vacuum cleaner shop near Grand Rapids, Mr. Fox had to go to the Mexican restaurant next door to brush his teeth, Mr. Gibbons said. He described his own client as a “misfit,” a broke loser incapable of masterminding such a devious plot. The true architects were Dan’s F.B.I. handlers, who kept the investigation going for three months even when there was no evidence of a crime, Mr. Gibbons said.

Joshua Blanchard, who represents Mr. Croft, said some of his client’s recordings were so preposterous that federal agents should have recognized his rhetoric as drug-fueled nonsense. Mr. Croft talked about everything from redirecting river flows to celestial chariots to cutting down trees in order to create a miles-long barrier along the state border, Mr. Blanchard said.

But according to a recording aired in court, Mr. Croft, a leader of the so-called boogaloo movement, also said: “You’ve labeled me a terrorist. I’m going to be what I am.”

Prosecutors played recordings of Mr. Croft’s schooling of other militia members on how to make explosives. The men were finally arrested in the fall of 2020 because “there was a real concern they might obtain real live explosives,” Todd Reineck, a special agent with the F.B.I., testified.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/us/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-trial.html?referringSource=articleShare

Crazy people can do considerable damage. Remember Anthony Quinn Warner, the Nashville bomber?

Specifically, investigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.

In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said. Adherents of the unfounded conspiracy theory believe that politicians and other prominent people, including the Clintons and the comedian Bob Hope, who died in 2003, are actually lizard-like creatures sent to Earth and are responsible for a number of historic tragedies. Justin Bieber and the Obamas have also been named in the conspiracy theory.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/girlfriend-nashville-bomber-warned-police-he-was-building-explosives-2019-n1252536

Chuck Naill

March 14th, 2022, 07:37 AM

Stupid people do stupid things. That doesn't make them innocent.

One thing social media does is make some look like they know what they are talking about. They post videos and such as a way to make their positions known. Some will say they "know" something when it's just wishful thinking.

Chip

March 14th, 2022, 12:48 PM

Fossil of Vampire Squid’s Oldest Ancestor Is Named for Biden

Scientists describe a new species of vampyropod from a 328-million-year-old, 10-armed fossil found in Montana.

Dr. Whalen and colleagues say the fossil represents the oldest known ancestor of vampyropods, a group that includes vampire squids and octopuses, pushing back the earliest evidence of the group by 82 million years. Dr. Whalen and Neil Landman, a curator emeritus at the museum, describe the new species in a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

They named it Syllipsimopodi bideni, as in President Biden, to commemorate the start of his presidency and because they “were encouraged by his plans to address climate change and to fund scientific research,” Dr. Whalen said in an email. Mr. Biden is not the first president to have a species named after him. A wormlike caecilian and a moth with a yellow crown of scales were named after President Donald J. Trump. Nine species were named after President Barack Obama, including several fish and a lichen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/science/vampire-squid-biden.html?referringSource=articleShare

TSherbs

March 14th, 2022, 01:24 PM

:) :)

Chip

March 14th, 2022, 04:22 PM

Couldn't resist:

Blonde-Haired Moth With Small Genitals Named After Donald Trump

Named Neopalpa donaldtrumpi, the new species has a strange blonde thing on its head and small genitals. The golden-haired species has been described this week in the online journal ZooKeys. With a wingspan of just 7-12 millimeters, these moths can be found around the future location of the Great-Wall-Of-Trump, Arizona, California, and Mexico’s Baja California.

Evolutionary biologist Dr Vazrick Nazari discovered the new species and named it in honor of the soon-to-be president. After sifting through a collection of moths from the genus Neopalpa, he noticed that a few specimens didn’t match the criteria for previously known species. For one, the study notes it has “genitalia comparatively smaller” than its closest relative N. neonata. Using DNA barcoding analysis and catalogs from various natural history institutions, Nazari showed that it was indeed a separate unrecognized species.

https://blurredculture.com/blonde-haired-moth-with-small-genitals-named-after-donald-trump/

Chip

March 29th, 2022, 06:39 PM

Just when I think the Republlcans can't get weirder, they do. . .

Republican retracts false claim schools placing litter boxes for ‘furry’ students

Nebraska’s Bruce Bostelman apologises for repeating rumor that schools accommodating children who self-identify as cats

Associated Press
Tue 29 Mar 2022 10.47 EDT

A Nebraska state lawmaker apologized on Monday after he publicly cited a persistent but debunked rumor alleging that schools are placing litter boxes in school bathrooms to accommodate children who self-identify as cats.

https://i.imgur.com/pOVaAbf.jpg

State senator Bruce Bostelman, a conservative Republican, repeated the false claim during a public, televised debate on a bill intended to help school children who have behavioral problems. His comments quickly went viral, with one Twitter video garnering more than 300,000 views as of Monday afternoon, and drew an onslaught of online criticism and ridicule.

Bostelman initially said he was “shocked” when he heard stories that children were dressing as cats and dogs while at school, with claims that schools were accommodating them with litter boxes.

“They meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion,” Bostelman said during legislative debate. “And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?”

How does one dress as a cat?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/29/nebraska-lawmaker-litter-boxes-claim-debunked?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

March 29th, 2022, 06:59 PM

This man actually didn't say this, right? In public? Please tell me that this is a piece from the Onion. Please.

Chip

March 29th, 2022, 07:03 PM

This man actually didn't say this, right? In public? Please tell me that this is a piece from the Onion. Please.
It's not satire, but rather pure, bald, naked fact. Click the link. :crazy_pilot:

TSherbs

March 29th, 2022, 07:20 PM

for fucksake

Chip

March 29th, 2022, 10:32 PM

One state away. Wyoming voted over 70% for Trump.

I'm surrounded. And they have guns.

Chuck Naill

March 30th, 2022, 05:24 AM

Speaking of guns, all autocrats have thuggish gangs. He said when the police/military begin to join these thugs, the end is near. That'll give you pause if you remember January 6 2020.

Hilter had them that became the SS. Mussolini had black shirts, Putin has his gangs, and Trump had them at rallies to expel decenters.

Chip

April 27th, 2022, 01:27 PM

Speaking of thuggish gangs, it seems they drive big trucks these days.

Beat it: trucker convoy driven out after being egged by kids in California

The people’s convoy had gathered outside lawmaker Buffy Wicks’s house to protest her support of an abortion rights bill

Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles
Mon 25 Apr 2022 16.50 EDT

A convoy of trucks that had gathered outside a California lawmaker’s house over the weekend to protest her support of an abortion rights bill was forced to leave the area after crossing paths with a group of young people armed with eggs.

The people’s convoy, inspired by Canadian truckers who shut down roads to protest vaccine mandates, arrived in the Bay Area last week after weeks of demonstrations in Washington DC.

On Friday, about 20 drivers filled the road near the home of Buffy Wicks, a Democratic assembly member, honking, and using bullhorns to demand she leave her home. The group was reportedly protesting legislation Wicks wrote that would end coroner investigations of stillbirths, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and require state businesses to mandate Covid vaccines for their employees.

The convoy, however, drew fierce opposition from neighbors, who told the drivers to leave the residential street, SF Gate reported. Wicks called law enforcement for protection, and the trucks dispersed when police responded to the scene.

When the convoy got stuck in traffic outside an Oakland Safeway, however, a group of residents began throwing eggs at the stalled vehicles, shouting “get the fuck out of here”, according to video of the incident. Passersby partook as well, grabbing eggs and tossing them at trucks scrawled with phrases such as “Let’s go Brandon”, a coded term among Trump supporters to insult Joe Biden, as they drove by. Many of those throwing eggs at the group were kids who cheered each other on and then fled after running out of eggs.

Some jumped out of their vehicles and engaged in heated confrontations with those throwing eggs.

“We’re fighting for your freedoms too,” a protester yelled at the kids, the SF Gate reported.

The group fled back to their base in Sacramento, complaining about their icy reception and dirty vehicles.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/25/california-trucker-protest-egged?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

May 1st, 2022, 01:02 PM

The weekly prize for the weirdest headline goes to (drum roll) THE GUARDIAN.

Three-legged dog with cancer saves baby otter in Minnesota river drama.

https://i.imgur.com/8fmIFEQ.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/30/three-legged-dog-cancer-saves-baby-otter-minnesota-river?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chuck Naill

May 1st, 2022, 03:45 PM

Thanks for the chuckle.....

Chip

May 20th, 2022, 01:22 PM

Another coup from The Guardian:

Stonehenge builders ate undercooked offal, ancient faeces reveals.

Parasite eggs found in 4,500-year-old human faeces suggest the builders of Stonehenge took part in winter feasts that included the internal organs of animals, researchers have revealed. The huge stone circle of Stonehenge is thought to have been built around 2,500BC, with evidence suggesting the builders were housed at a settlement known as Durrington Walls, about 2 miles away. The site was predominantly occupied in the winter months, and appears to have been used for between 10 to 50 years.

Experts say they have discovered intestinal parasites in ancient faeces – or coprolites – recovered from the prehistoric rubbish dumps of Durrington Walls, offering new insights into the lives and diet of those who constructed Stonehenge.
The giant pits were dug into hard chalk forming a ring 2km across. The team says the preserved stools are not only the oldest coprolites in Britain to contain parasites, but the earliest evidence for parasite infection in Britain where the species of the hosts are known.

“It is the earliest where we know the origin of the person who went to the toilet,” said Dr Piers Mitchell, of the University of Cambridge, a co-author of the study.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/20/stonehenge-builders-undercooked-offal-ancient-faeces-parasites?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

May 20th, 2022, 01:27 PM

Arby’s manager accused of urinating in milkshake mix
Associated Press
Mon 16 May 2022 17.01 EDT

A manager at an Arby’s fast-food restaurant in Washington state has been accused of urinating into a milkshake mix that might then have been served to dozens of people.

Police in Vancouver, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, said they uncovered footage of the 29-year-old man peeing into a bag of milkshake mix as they were executing a search warrant on his phone as part of an investigation into child sex abuse images, the Columbian newspaper reported.

The manager made one court appearance last Wednesday on child abuse image allegations and another on Friday, for a new allegation of second-degree assault with sexual motivation, after police said they found the 16-second urination video. According to a probable cause affidavit filed in Clark county superior court, the video’s metadata showed it was recorded on 30 October at an Arby’s in Vancouver’s Mill Plain neighborhood.

The manager acknowledged to investigators that he urinated in the milkshake mix bag at least twice, but said he was “almost sure” he threw the bag out. He said he was working alone in the restaurant that night and that he did it for sexual gratification.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/16/arbys-washington-urinating-milkshake?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

May 21st, 2022, 04:43 PM

George W Bush accidentally admits Iraq war was ‘unjustified and brutal’ in gaffe

Former president makes slip when speaking at his presidential library in Dallas on Wednesday

Julian Borger in Washington
Thu 19 May 2022

Sigmund Freud was unavailable for comment, but George W Bush saying Iraq instead of Ukraine when condemning “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion” certainly suggests he still has a lot on his unconscious mind.

The former president jokingly attributed the slip to his 75 years, but there has always been a faulty connection between his brain and his tongue. There are whole books full of “Bushisms”, like his boast that people “misunderestimated” him, and how much he felt for single mothers “working hard to put food on your family”.

There may have been something Freudian about his 2004 warning that America’s enemies “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we”. And then there was the time he was thanking an army general for his service in 2008, telling him he “really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq”.

Bush has already told us that the fiasco of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction still troubles him.

“No one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons,” he wrote in his memoir, Decision Points.

“I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.”

But Bush sought to justify the 2003 invasion anyway, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a vicious despot “pursuing” weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and therefore the US was safer without him in the world.

The 43rd president was making a similar argument to an audience at his presidential library in Dallas when he made his gaffe on Wednesday.

Bush was making a distinction between a democratically elected Volodymyr Zelenskiy, “the Churchill of the 21st century”, and the rigged elections and despotism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where the absence of checks and balances led to “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq – I mean Ukraine”.

The audience laughed along, but the mistake was a reminder that the world is still living with the consequences of that invasion. It broke Iraq and set off a sectarian civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people died.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-speech?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

May 22nd, 2022, 05:53 AM

I'm not really smiling over this gaffe.

Chip

May 30th, 2022, 02:05 PM

Man arrested after Mona Lisa smeared with cake

Man, 36, placed in psychiatric care after painting’s display case covered in cake in apparent climate protest

Agence France-Presse in Paris
Mon 30 May 2022 08.54 EDT

A 36-year-old man has been arrested and placed in psychiatric care after he smeared a glass screen encasing the Mona Lisa with cake in a purported protest against artists not focusing enough on “the planet”.

Officials at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where the enigmatic portrait holds pride of place, declined to comment on the bizarre incident on Sunday, which was captured on several phones and circulated widely on social media.

The work by Leonardo da Vinci, which has been the target of vandalism attempts in the past, was unharmed thanks to its bulletproof glass case.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/30/mona-lisa-smeared-cake-suspected-climate-protester?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chuck Naill

May 31st, 2022, 06:59 AM

I'm not really smiling over this gaffe.

Me either. The American version of hereditary monarchy is absurd, as Thomas Pained opined. Apparently Patrick is not moving forward. The former president would have done us all a lot better had he stuck to owning his gifted baseball team.

Chip

May 31st, 2022, 04:51 PM

The American version of hereditary monarchy is absurd, as Thomas Pained opined.

Is he related to William Hurt?

Chuck Naill

May 31st, 2022, 05:13 PM

Have no idea.

Chip

May 31st, 2022, 11:28 PM

You are impervious to humor.

Chuck Naill

June 1st, 2022, 08:55 AM

Or just didn’t get your point …lol!

Chip

June 10th, 2022, 11:42 AM

Irish exorcist calls for extra help for people oppressed by evil spirits

Fr Pat Collins says there is urgent need for ‘deliverance ministry’ amid ‘crisis of meaning’ in Ireland

Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent

Thu 9 Jun 2022 11.16 EDT

The appeal for help sounds like it was channelled from the TV show Stranger Things. “Exorcist: trained teams needed in parishes to fight evil spirits.”

It is, however, the splash headline in this week’s Irish Catholic, Ireland’s biggest-selling religious newspaper. Fr Pat Collins, a priest of the Vincentian order and a prominent Dublin-based exorcist, told the weekly there was an urgent need for “deliverance ministry” to help people who feel oppressed by evil spirits.

“As Ireland has secularised, there is a crisis of truth, and a crisis of meaning – people are getting into all kinds of things they wouldn’t have got into before. As a result, people are more open to spiritual forces that can be negative.”

Unlike exorcism, which is conducted by priests given special permission from the Catholic church, deliverance ministry is prayer for people who are distressed and wish to heal emotional wounds, including those purportedly caused by evil spirits.

Collins said Irish bishops recognised the need. “The demand is much greater than the supply.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/09/irish-exorcist-extra-help-people-oppressed-by-evil-spirits?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

June 12th, 2022, 11:32 PM

dneal

June 13th, 2022, 08:19 AM

Geico ordered to pay Missouri woman $5.2 million after she contracted STD in a car

By Jalen Beckford, CNN

June 9, 2022

(CNN)A Missouri woman was awarded $5.2 million in a settlement from insurance company GEICO after contracting a sexually transmitted disease from her partner in his vehicle, which was insured by the company, court documents show. The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld that award this week.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/us/geico-insurance-std-settlement-missouri/index.html

Aside from the absurdity of the circumstances and the claim itself, the thing about this story I thought funny (if I read the opinion correctly) is that the court simply upheld the $5.2M arbitration.

Everything seems to have an arbitration clause (like a car purchase). Presumably this is because the business thinks it's to their advantage. In this case, it wasn't; and the business wanted to take it to court. "Tough shit", said the judge.

Chip

June 13th, 2022, 12:20 PM

Based on that verdict, GEICO is probably changing some of the terms of their auto policies to exclude STDs and pregnancy.

Chip

June 13th, 2022, 12:23 PM

Plenty of strange stuff in the news.

Google Sidelines Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Sentient

Blake Lemoine, the engineer, says that Google’s language model has a soul. The company disagrees.

By Nico Grant and Cade Metz

June 12, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO — Google placed an engineer on paid leave recently after dismissing his claim that its artificial intelligence is sentient, surfacing yet another fracas about the company’s most advanced technology.

Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer in Google’s Responsible A.I. organization, said in an interview that he was put on leave Monday. The company’s human resources department said he had violated Google’s confidentiality policy. The day before his suspension, Mr. Lemoine said, he handed over documents to a U.S. senator’s office, claiming they provided evidence that Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination.

Google said that its systems imitated conversational exchanges and could riff on different topics, but did not have consciousness. “Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our A.I. Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims,” Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesman, said in a statement. “Some in the broader A.I. community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general A.I., but it doesn’t make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing today’s conversational models, which are not sentient.” The Washington Post first reported Mr. Lemoine’s suspension.

For months, Mr. Lemoine had tussled with Google managers, executives and human resources over his surprising claim that the company’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, had consciousness and a soul. Google says hundreds of its researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA, an internal tool, and reached a different conclusion than Mr. Lemoine did. Most A.I. experts believe the industry is a very long way from computing sentience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/technology/google-chatbot-ai-blake-lemoine.html?referringSource=articleShare

Chip

June 16th, 2022, 01:22 PM

Trump Jr urged fans to sign his father’s birthday card (only if they send a donation)

The former president’s fundraising efforts after the 2020 election are under scrutiny by the House January 6 committee

https://i.imgur.com/YE5OntH.jpg

‘I know it would mean so much to him to see YOUR NAME on his OFFICIAL Birthday Card,’ Trump Jr told supporters.

Victoria Bekiempis
Wed 15 Jun 2022

Donald Trump Jr has reportedly invited his father’s backers to sign the ex-president’s online birthday card, so long as they donate money to his fundraising group.

According to Insider, Trump’s eldest son made this pitch in an email to supporters, writing, “My father has done so much for this great Country, and I know it would mean so much to him to see YOUR NAME on his OFFICIAL Birthday Card.” Trump was born on 14 June 1946.

The email contained a link that lets Trump loyalists write a message to him. However, they have to pledge a minimum $1 donation to send their good wishes.

The email comes amid increasing scrutiny of Trump’s fundraising efforts after the 2020 election. The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection said that Trump’s campaign amassed about $250m post-election, while asking for assistance in funding legal challenges to the election results.

Two Trump campaign aides told the committee, however, that the “Official Election Defense Fund”, as it was described in multiple fundraising emails, did not formally exist. “The big lie was also a big rip-off,” committee member congresswoman Zoe Lofgren commented.

“He intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what it said,” Lofgren later told CNN.

Lofgren also said that Donald Trump Jr’s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, received $60,000 for her 2.5-minute speech at a rally shortly before the January 6 riot. Her appearance was allegedly paid for using funds from this “Election Defense Fund”.

Chip

June 18th, 2022, 09:56 PM

Capitol Police Arrest Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

https://i.imgur.com/NL53WlN.jpg

The police at the United States Capitol have arrested members of a production team for the CBS show “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were filming a segment featuring a salty canine puppet voiced by the comedian Robert Smigel.

The Capitol Police said on Friday that they had arrested seven people in a hallway of the Capitol Building on Thursday night, at a time when the building was closed to visitors. The people had been told to leave the building earlier in the day, the police said.

CBS said that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the puppet that Mr. Smigel has voiced for years, had been at the Capitol on Thursday with the production team when they were detained by the police. At the time of the arrest, the team had finished prearranged interviews with members of Congress and were filming “final comedy elements” in the building’s hallways for an upcoming segment on “The Late Show.”

The seven people were later charged with unlawful entry, and an investigation is now underway in consultation with Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the Capitol Police said, adding that more criminal charges may be filed. Mr. Graves’s office could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday night.

The arrests in the Longworth House Office Building occurred at a time when Congress is holding televised hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, in which supporters of President Donald J. Trump violently stormed the Capitol complex.

Word of the arrests was sure to provide weekend fodder for pundits, comedians and politicians. Some social media users said it was ironic that the production team members might be punished more than some of those involved in last year’s attack.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson took a different view, saying on Friday night that Mr. Colbert’s producers had “committed insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol building. “It’s exactly like what happened on Jan 6., so we’ll take a close look at what the punishments are,” he told Fox viewers. :crazy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/us/stephen-colbert-crew-arrested.html?referringSource=articleShare

TSherbs

June 19th, 2022, 05:12 AM

Ah, the ugly beauty of false equivalencies. Carlson's a git on a stick.

Chuck Naill

June 19th, 2022, 08:06 AM

Team Trump is being enabled by evangelicals and looney tune folks.

I heard a mom say she wasn’t listening to the Jan6 hearings because of inflation, which she feels is more important. I was think how much she would be thinking about fuel price if Trump was re-elected and instituted Droit du seigneur.

Chip

June 20th, 2022, 01:40 PM

I heard a mom say she wasn’t listening to the Jan 6 hearings because of inflation, which she feels is more important. I was think how much she would be thinking about fuel price if Trump was re-elected and instituted Droit du seigneur.

Don't get this.

Call me a dunce, but could you please explain?

Chuck Naill

June 21st, 2022, 08:24 AM

dneal

June 21st, 2022, 08:54 AM

Just that some consider whatever problems they have at the moment as more important than the potential loss of our democracy.

Dear god this one is a low hanging curveball.

Chuck Naill

June 21st, 2022, 09:23 AM

Do your best.

Chip

June 21st, 2022, 12:37 PM

I wondered how Droit du seigneur would apply?

I know what it is.

Chuck Naill

June 21st, 2022, 12:47 PM

I wondered how Droit du seigneur would apply?

I know what it is.

If you know what it is, you know how it would apply in an authoritarian state.

Lloyd

June 21st, 2022, 02:26 PM

Didn't Trump try to pass that as an executive order?

😄

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

kazoolaw

June 21st, 2022, 02:38 PM

Chuck Naill

June 21st, 2022, 03:09 PM

I heard a mom say she wasn’t listening to the Jan6 hearings because of inflation, which she feels is more important. I was think how much she would be thinking about fuel price if Trump was re-elected and instituted Droit du seigneur.
https://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post357063

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/dumbest-internet-posts

Chip

June 21st, 2022, 09:36 PM

This one's a peach!

https://i.imgur.com/hhpiVom.jpg

Chip

July 2nd, 2022, 02:48 PM

Fun with Latin. :dirol:

Et tu, Alito? Murder of stare decisis creates legal circus maximus.

By Dana Milbank

July 1, 2022

Now begins the era of stare indecisis.

Respect for precedent — known by the Latin stare decisis, “to stand by things decided” — had been a centuries-old cornerstone of the rule of law, necessary so “the scale of justice” doesn’t “waver with every new judge’s opinion,” as the 18th-century legal philosopher William Blackstone wrote.

But — et tu, Alito? — the Supreme Court’s radical right put the knife in stare decisis in its decision overturning Roe v. Wade and destroying 50 years of precedent upon precedent.

The dissenting justices wrote that “the majority abandons stare decisis,” an act that “threatens to upend bedrock legal doctrines,” “creates profound legal instability” and “calls into question this Court’s commitment to legal principle.”

The majority protested that it didn’t abandon stare decisis — then explained why it did: “Stare decisis is not an inexorable command. … Stare decisis is not a straitjacket.”

The burial of stare decisis leaves us, ipso facto, with a void: Which Latin phrase best describes the legal doctrine of this new era, in which judges rule by whim, not precedent? Well, thank your lucky stares, because my classics consultant, Vanessa (she asked that her surname not be used in order to speak Latin frankly), has many options.

Labels such as “judicial modesty,” “judicial restraint” and “originalism” were trashed along with stare decisis. For this radical majority to claim “restraint” now would be the very definition of stare mendaciis — to stand by lies. Other better labels for the court majority’s new philosophy are stare deviis (to stand by inconsistent things), or perhaps stare fetore (to stand by a foul odor), in honor of the question Justice Sonia Sotomayor posed during oral arguments: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates?”

But maybe most accurate is stare sodalitate — to stand by your political party. To the Romans, this meant either “electioneering gang” or “religious fraternity,” both apt descriptions of this court’s right wing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/01/supreme-court-stare-decisis-precedent-dead/

TSherbs

July 2nd, 2022, 06:06 PM

Chip

July 3rd, 2022, 01:24 PM

Only in America. (Note the fake armament on the truck.)

Man Dies After Truck Propelled by Jet Engines Crashes at Michigan Air Show

By Vimal Patel
July 2, 2022

https://i.imgur.com/6BPOILc.jpg

The driver of a truck that could top 350 miles per hour because it was powered by jet engines died after the vehicle crashed on Saturday while racing two airplanes at an air show in Michigan, officials said. The custom-built race truck, which was equipped with three jet engines and a combined 36,000 horsepower, crashed during the pyrotechnic portion of the Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival in Battle Creek, Mich., about 50 miles southwest of Lansing.

Chris Darnell, the driver of the truck and a member of a family that had been part of the air show business for many years, was killed, said Barbara Haluszka, the executive director of the festival. “Chris had a crash, and the jet truck flipped over, and, unfortunately, he did not live,” she said in an phone interview on Saturday night. “All other details are 100 percent under investigation.”

In a statement, Mr. Darnell’s father, Neal Darnell, said the accident was “a result of mechanical failure on the Jet Truck.”

“Chris so loved the Air Show business,” he said. “He was ‘Living the Dream,’ as he said.”

Videos from bystanders show the truck barreling down a runway at Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field in pursuit of the two airplanes, with flames shooting out its back. An excited announcer declares, “He’s coming fast! He’s coming really fast!”

The airplanes involved were a Zivko Edge 540 piloted by Bill Stein, and a MXS-RH piloted by Rob Holland, said Ryan Traver, a festival board member, who added that the pilots of the civilian aircraft were not injured. It was not immediately clear how fast the planes had been traveling. A thick orange-and-black fireball can be seen in the foreground of the video, and the vehicle, called a Shockwave Jet Truck, disappears behind it and tumbles after emerging on the other side. Gasps can be heard in the crowd as the truck breaks into pieces along the runway. Despite what it looks like in many of the videos, the fireball was pyrotechnics and Mr. Darnell did not drive through the flames, Ms. Haluszka said.

“The pyro is on the grass,” she said. “The jet truck is running on the runway. From the crowd’s side, it looks like he’s driving straight through the pyro. But he’s not.”

A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said that because the accident involved a truck, not an airplane, the agency was not investigating. The Battle Creek Police Department, which is investigating, confirmed on Facebook the death of Mr. Darnell, 40, but said it had no more information about the crash. The department could not immediately be reached for comment.

https://i.imgur.com/ViPCpFQ.jpg

The vehicle was owned by Darnell Racing Enterprises. Phone and email messages left for the company were not immediately returned on Saturday night. The truck was described on a website for it as being able to reach speeds topping 350 m.p.h. and as “the most powerful truck in the world,” with three engines providing 21,000 pounds of thrust.

“This is truly an assault of all your senses with huge flames coming out of the 3 after-burning jet engines, fire shooting out of the smoke stacks, intense heat, deafening noise, and SPEED!” the website said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/02/us/jet-truck-explosion-michigan-air-show.html?referringSource=articleShare

Chip

July 22nd, 2022, 10:39 PM

Seen any good Josh Hawley memes or cartoons?

Here are some:

https://i.imgur.com/0wRLEFX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/dbo4xYJ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/kSCysEF.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/BOBTpik.jpg

Chuck Naill

July 23rd, 2022, 06:20 AM

As they used to say, "don't let your mouth overload your ass".

Chip

July 23rd, 2022, 10:56 AM

A couple soundtracks for the Hawley Sprint. (lower the volume before playing)

https://i.imgur.com/ZtXgZfj.jpg

https://twitter.com/i/status/1550297488220983296

https://i.imgur.com/cdoXZ06.jpg

https://twitter.com/i/status/1550297512506003456

Chip

July 23rd, 2022, 11:17 AM

Colorado Man Pleads Guilty to Casting Missing Wife’s Ballot for Trump

Prosecutors in April dropped a first-degree murder charge against Barry Morphew, whose wife, Suzanne Morphew, disappeared in May 2020.

By Neil Vigdor
July 22, 2022

The husband of a Colorado woman who has been missing for more than two years pleaded guilty on Thursday to casting her mail-in ballot for Donald J. Trump during the 2020 election, telling F.B.I. agents, “I figured all these other guys are cheating.”

The man, Barry Morphew, 54, was given a sentence of one year of supervised probation but avoided jail time after pleading guilty to one count of forgery, a felony, in district court in Chaffee County, according to court records.

The outcome in the voter fraud case marked the latest twist in the mystery of what happened to Suzanne Morphew, who disappeared in May 2020 after going for a bike ride near her home in Salida, Colo.

The missing person’s case has generated national headlines. Prosecutors charged Mr. Morphew with first-degree murder last year, but then, in April, they dropped all charges against him related to her disappearance after a judge imposed sanctions on them for violating discovery rules. Mr. Morphew maintained his innocence as prosecutors accused him of killing his wife after learning that she had been involved in an extramarital affair.

The body of Ms. Morphew, a mother of two who was 49 when she vanished, has not been found.

About five months after she was reported missing, her mail-in ballot for the 2020 election arrived at the clerk’s office in Chaffee County, about 100 miles west of Colorado Springs, according to an arrest warrant.

Election officials contacted the sheriff’s office, which took a photograph of the ballot and seized it as evidence. A space for the voter’s signature was blank, but Mr. Morphew wrote his name on a line for legal witnesses to sign ballots. The ballot was dated Oct. 15, 2020.

When F.B.I. agents asked Mr. Morphew why he had returned his missing wife’s ballot, he told them, as detailed in the warrant, “Just because I wanted Trump to win.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/us/politics/suzanne-morphew-ballot-trump.html?referringSource=articleShare

TSherbs

July 23rd, 2022, 11:29 AM

Yeah, weird case

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chip

July 24th, 2022, 12:21 PM

More on Hawley. Maybe he should hire Jordan Peterson as an advisor.

Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paper

Kansas City Star editorial excoriates Republican as ‘laughingstock’ as memes based on January 6 video proliferate

Martin Pengelly
Sun 24 Jul 2022

Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator shown running from the mob he incited on January 6, is “a laughingstock” who should be afraid of what the Capitol attack committee might disclose next, a leading newspaper in his home state said.

Hawley was widely criticised for raising a fist to protesters outside Congress on 6 January 2021, then after the mob sent by Donald Trump failed to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win, voting to object to results anyway.

The senator cast that vote, American voters now know, after running when rioters broke into Congress.

In an editorial, the Kansas City Star noted that Hawley will soon publish a book entitled Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, but said people watching the hearing “didn’t see much virile bravado as he ran from the mob”.

The Star began: “Josh Hawley is a laughingstock. During Thursday night’s televised hearings of the House committee investigating the January 6 2021 coup attempt … [Democratic] representative Elaine Luria showed video of Missouri’s junior senator that will surely follow him the rest of his life.

“In the clip, Hawley sprints across a hallway as he and his fellow senators are evacuated after insurrectionists had breached the Capitol building. When it played on the screen, the audience in the room with the committee erupted in laughter.” [SIZE=3]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/24/josh-hawley-republican-senator-ran-running-capitol-attack-kansas-city-star?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chuck Naill

July 24th, 2022, 12:51 PM

Duh!!

Chip

July 25th, 2022, 12:01 PM

Chess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent

Jon Henley
Sun 24 Jul 2022

Played by humans, chess is a game of strategic thinking, calm concentration and patient intellectual endeavour. Violence does not usually come into it. The same, it seems, cannot always be said of machines.

Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger during a match at the Moscow Open.

“The robot broke the child’s finger,” Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the TASS news agency after the incident, adding that the machine had played many previous exhibitions without upset. “This is of course bad.”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/24/chess-robot-grabs-and-breaks-finger-of-seven-year-old-opponent-moscow?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

July 25th, 2022, 02:35 PM

That's crazy.

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chip

July 26th, 2022, 04:36 PM

OUCH!!!!

Woman on Florida boat gored by 100 lb sailfish that jumped from water

Martin Pengelly
Mon 25 Jul 2022

A Maryland woman on a fishing trip off the Florida coast was taken to hospital after a 100lb sailfish leaped from the water on to her boat and impaled her with its bill.

Katherine Perkins, 73, was wounded in the groin in the attack, which happened last week. According to a report from the Martin county sheriff’s department which the Guardian obtained on Monday, she said the fish moved so fast she did not have time to react.

The fish which stabbed Perkins was caught on a line about two miles off Stuart, Florida. Two men on the boat with Perkins, Louis Toth and Dominic Bellezza, “stated Louis had a fish on the line and was attempting to bring it aboard”, according to the sheriff’s report.

The fish “was identified as a sailfish and … it began to charge at the boat”, the report added. “Louis and Dominic indicated the sailfish jumped out of the water and stabbed Katherine in the groin area while she was standing next to the center console.”

The two men “immediately put pressure on the wound,” then met responding officers on shore.

Perkins was flown to a hospital.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/25/florida-sailfish-woman-stabbed-boat?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

July 28th, 2022, 11:14 PM

Teen bullied by Matt Gaetz raises over $200,000 for abortion rights funds

Gloria Oladipo
Wed 27 Jul 2022

A Texas teenager has raised more than $200,000 for abortion rights funds, after being bullied online by the Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. Olivia Julianna, 19, said that by Wednesday she had raised $214,000 for abortion funds, a sum she credited to Gaetz bringing attention to her platform via his insults.

“Matt Gaetz decided to body shame me publicly,” the abortion rights activist tweeted on Tuesday. “So I started fundraising for abortion funds and in a little over 24 hours we raised $115K. So let me have one final moment of telling [Gaetz] not to fuck with Texas activist[s], and definitely not to fuck with Gen-Z.”

On Wednesday, Julianna tweeted that the campaign had raised nearly double its Tuesday total. She told the Guardian: “Originally I wanted to raise a few thousand dollars. I had no idea it would blow up as much as it has.”

The US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion last month, stoking protests across the country.

Last Saturday, at a Turning Point USA convention in Florida, Gaetz insulted abortion rights activists, telling a crowd of students pro-choice campaigners were “odious from the inside out” and “disgusting”.

Julianna criticized the comments on Twitter, referencing allegations of sex trafficking a minor for which Gaetz is under investigation. He emphatically denies wrongdoing.

“Its come to my attention that Matt Gaetz … has said that it’s always the ‘odious 5’2 350 pound’ women that ‘nobody wants to impregnate’ who rally for abortion,” Julianna wrote. “I’m actually 5’11. 6’4 in heels. I wear them so the small men like you are reminded of your place.”

Gaetz then tweeted out a picture of Julianna alongside an article covering his comments, an insult retweeted hundreds of times. Of Gaetz’s tweet, Julianna said: “I was shocked. I was truly shocked that he would do something so absolutely stupid.”

In response to the congressman’s comments and the online harassment they stoked, Julianna announced on Monday that she would raise money for abortion funds on behalf of the organization Gen Z for Change. She said she was motivated to begin her fundraiser because “Matt Gaetz is a creep and abortion is healthcare. Simple as that”.

In a thank you note to Gaetz on Twitter, the teen wrote, in part: “Your hateful comments towards me will quite literally help pay for abortion services. Lol. Get rekt.”

Gaetz has not responded publicly to Julianna’s fundraising efforts but he has doubled down on his comments, calling pro-choice activists “ugly and overweight” in an interview with WEAR ABC 3, a Florida news station.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/27/matt-gaetz-texas-teen-abortion-rights-funds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

July 29th, 2022, 03:54 AM

Shining example of civic virtue!

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chip

July 29th, 2022, 01:29 PM

Matt Gaetz attacks someone for being ugly?

https://i.imgur.com/FW3Pk6j.jpg

No wonder he has to pay for sex.

Chuck Naill

July 30th, 2022, 12:27 PM

Because of some, the forum has dissolved into stupid. Two more to ignore. Some talk and some do. I’ll take the latter.

Chip

July 30th, 2022, 01:14 PM

Because of some, the forum has dissolved into stupid. Two more to ignore.

Me and Herbs? No more demented, weird, garbled attacks?

Cheerio and thank you.

:wave:

Chip

July 30th, 2022, 01:21 PM

This Grandma’s Dying Wish Was a Giant Dick on Her Grave

by Nathaniel Janowitz
July 28, 2022

MEXICO CITY — Before her death, 99-year-old Catarina Orduña Pérez had one final wish: a giant statue of a dick on top of her grave.

https://i.imgur.com/PK5uKgO.jpg

Her family unveiled the completed monument — a 5-and-a-half-foot-tall cock and balls weighing nearly 600 pounds — mounted on her tomb at a cemetery in Mexico this past weekend as a “recognition of her love and joy for life.”

“She wanted to break the paradigm of everything Mexican, where things are sometimes hidden because of not having an open mind,” her grandson Álvaro Mota Limón told VICE World News in an interview. “She was always very avant-garde, very forward-thinking about things.”

Doña Cata, as she was lovingly known throughout the small town of Misantla in the eastern state of Veracruz, had a particular affinity for penises, and what she believed they represented.

“She always said, in the Mexican sense, that we were vergas,” said Mota Limón.

There are few words in Mexican slang as dynamic as “verga,” which is perhaps best translated in English as “cock” due to its general use as a profanity. Depending on how it’s phrased, “verga” can be a brutal insult, telling someone to go fuck themselves (vete a la verga) or that they’re not worth shit (vales verga). Or it can be a compliment, a badge of honor, that if something is “verga,” it’s cool or badass.

Doña Cata often used it with that sort of colloquial pride when referring to the members of her family as vergas, according to her grandson; that they were people of moral fortitude, with “integrity, courage, passion, and at the same time, love and joy,” said Mota Limón.

The penis statue on Doña Cata's grave took a team of 12 people nearly a month to build. They had particular difficultly with the testicles.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnnqw/mexico-dick-tombstone?

TSherbs

July 30th, 2022, 05:35 PM

Chuck Naill

July 31st, 2022, 07:27 AM

TSherbs

July 31st, 2022, 11:37 AM

Chuck Naill

July 31st, 2022, 12:01 PM

Chuck Naill

July 31st, 2022, 12:39 PM

Chuck, this thread is subtitled, "News of the Weird," and Chip started it. He's just kept to the point of the thread (weird as it is). Not sure what else you were expecting here....

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

The weird seems to have permeated every thread. it is getting harder for me to take anything as a serious post. I'll leave you and Chip to decide. Have a nice day. ;)

This thread is not serious. It was started as a lark. Hope that helps. :cheer2: :wave:

It does not help when inaccurate or down right mean things are posted. Perhaps how Monkey Pox is being transmitted is something I should post. Then all hell would break loose from the do-nothing fringe.

There are posts that have weight, "William Felton Russell was born on Feb. 12, 1934, in Monroe, La., where his father, Charles, worked in a paper bag factory. He remembered a warm home life but a childhood seared by racism. He recalled that a police officer once threatened to arrest his mother, Katie, because she was wearing a stylish outfit like those favored by white women. A gas-station attendant sought to humble his father, while Bill was with him, by refusing to provide service, an episode that ended with Charles Russell chasing the man while brandishing a tire iron."

Other are shit. Or fuck as you prefer, Ted.

Chip

August 1st, 2022, 04:18 PM

Female journalist told skirt too short when reporting on Alabama execution

One journalist reporting on the lethal injection was told her skirt was too short and another said she had a full-body inspection

Ed Pilkington
Mon 1 Aug 2022

Last Thursday night, the state of Alabama took three hours to find a vein in Joe Nathan James Jr through which officials could pump lethal injection drugs and execute him, a process that the department of corrections insisted was “nothing out of the ordinary”.

Alabama appears to specialize in its extraordinary sense of the ordinary, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. It has now emerged that, during that execution, prison officials subjected female reporters who came as witnesses to the proceeding to a clothing inspection, attempting to bar one woman from the death chamber on grounds that her skirt was too short.

Ivana Hrynkiw, a journalist for Alabama’s pre-eminent news outlet AL.com, recounted how she was pulled aside by a prison official and told that her skirt was too diminutive to meet regulations. “I tried to pull my skirt to my hips to make the skirt longer, but was told it was still not appropriate,” she recounted on Twitter.

The paradox that the state went to such lengths to uphold what it regards as propriety in clothing even as it prepared to kill a man appears to have been lost on the department of corrections. Officials also subjected an Associated Press reporter, Kim Chandler, to a full-body inspection, making her stand to have the length of her clothing checked. Chandler said that such an indignity had never happened to her before in the many times she had covered executions since 2002.

Hrynkiw was eventually allowed to enter the death chamber after she borrowed a pair of waterproof fisher’s waders from a photographer, attaching their suspenders under her shirt to keep them up. That was deemed appropriate attire when watching a judicial killing.

But even then it didn’t stop. The reporter was informed that her open toe heels were a breach of regulation and she was forced to change into tennis shoes retrieved from her car.

“I felt embarrassed to have my body and my clothes questioned in front of a room of people I mostly never met,” Hrynkiw said. “I sat down, tried to stop blushing, and did my work.”

After all that, the reporter did her job, and so did Alabama. After three hours digging around for a vein, it found one, and went ahead with the execution.

James Jr was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the 1994 killing of 26-year-old Faith Hall. James Jr and Hall had briefly dated before she rejected him, authorities have said.

Hall’s daughters wanted James Jr to spend the rest of his life in prison but pleaded for him to not be executed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/01/us-prison-officials-alabama-female-journalists-change-clothes-execution?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

August 1st, 2022, 06:41 PM

How weird

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chuck Naill

August 2nd, 2022, 08:59 AM

I have to ask, who wears a short skirt to an execuition? Who wears flip flops rock climbing or a tank top to a job interview. Come on guys. Wyoming ain't no California. And Maine has its own issues.

TSherbs

August 2nd, 2022, 09:49 AM

Why is that image here, Chuck?

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chuck Naill

August 2nd, 2022, 09:55 AM

Why is that image here, Chuck?

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Just to show that mini skirts are not appropriate for any occasion, Ted.

Chuck Naill

August 2nd, 2022, 09:59 AM

Wyoming is 60 % white.

Chuck Naill

August 2nd, 2022, 10:00 AM

Ted, since you retired, are you practicing law? You sure to seem to be defensive when it comes to Chip.

TSherbs

August 2nd, 2022, 10:22 AM

Why is that image here, Chuck?

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Just to show that mini skirts are not appropriate for any occasion, Ted.That's not what the woman wore.

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

TSherbs

August 2nd, 2022, 10:22 AM

Ted, since you retired, are you practicing law? You sure to seem to be defensive when it comes to Chip.Yeah, that must be it. [emoji849]

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

Chuck Naill

August 2nd, 2022, 10:39 AM

Ted, since you retired, are you practicing law? You sure to seem to be defensive when it comes to Chip.Yeah, that must be it. [emoji849]

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

At least I now know. Thanks.

Chip

August 2nd, 2022, 12:24 PM

What next? Kosher lawn mowers?

Kosher phone dispute grips ultra-Orthodox Tel Aviv suburb

An opaque council controls smartphone access for Israel’s Haredim population, but many are making forays online anyway

Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum in Bnei Brak
Tue 19 Jul 2022

Tel Aviv’s booming science and technology industry, bolstered by graduates of elite state intelligence units, has earned Israel the nickname “start-up nation”.

Yet in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox suburb just a few miles east of Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers, a vicious fight is unfolding over whether smartphones are compatible with traditional Jewish law - and who should have the power to decide on internet access.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, population, has grown to make up 12% of the country; according to one study, one in four Israelis will be ultra-Orthodox by 2050.

Much of the community still shuns television and other mass media, which is viewed as a threat to their way of life. The first wave of mobile phones was dealt with by creating kosher handsets, which could only make and receive calls from other blessed numbers, identifiable by the prefix 05331, and did not have cameras or internet capability.

The rise of the smartphone, however, is making it harder for the community to get by without using the internet. In Israel, as in many high income countries, municipal service provision, filing taxes and accessing bank accounts has mostly moved online.

The Haredim’s solution so far has been to continue with “dumb” phones, or to allow smartphones that come with content blocking filters preinstalled: the only apps on a typical kosher smartphone’s home screen are a clock, calculator, and navigation software.

Only one body – the Rabbinical Committee for Communications – has the power to issue kosher certificates for Israel’s estimated 500,000 kosher mobile phones. It is an opaque and influential operation which can screen numbers, content and the flow of information as it pleases.

“The rabbis used to say: ‘Stay away from Allenby Street in the middle of Tel Aviv, it’s sinful.’ But now anyone can go to Allenby Street on their phone. The idea originally was to keep the community safe from impure culture,” said Israel Cohen, a prominent Haredi political commentator.

“It is rare for the Haredi community to agree on anything but many people think the committee is out of touch.”

Members have alleged that blocked numbers include news and public transport hotlines still widely used by Haredim, and even numbers for medical and domestic violence services. Kosher numbers also cannot be transferred to non-kosher providers, severely limiting competition.

The Guardian made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the committee for comment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/kosher-phone-dispute-grips-ultra-orthodox-tel-aviv-suburb?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

August 3rd, 2022, 12:24 PM

Man trying to burn spider with lighter sparked Utah wildfire, police say

Associated Press
Tue 2 Aug 2022

A Utah man has been arrested on suspicion of starting a wildfire while trying to burn a spider with his lighter.

Cory Martin, 26, told police that he spotted the spider on Monday while he was in a hiking area in the foothills south of Salt Lake City near the city of Springville. He acknowledged starting the fire, but did not explain why he was trying to burn the spider.

Deputies found a jar of marijuana in his belongings, but he did not appear to be high, said Sgt Spencer Cannon of Utah county sheriff’s department. There is no evidence to suggest Martin intentionally started the blaze, said Cannon, but he called it a reckless and puzzling decision. This area and most of Utah are bone dry amid extreme drought conditions. “What led him to stop and notice a spider and decide to try to burn it, we don’t know,” Cannon said. “There may not be a why. He might not even know a why.”

Martin was arrested on suspicion of reckless burn and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, court documents show. He was being held in jail and it was unknown if he had an attorney.

The wildfire quickly spread up the mountain and had burned less than a square mile as of Tuesday, according to fire officials. No homes had been damaged.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/02/utah-wildfire-police-man-burn-spider-lighter?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

August 7th, 2022, 04:18 PM

Pop Quiz:

Which one is Beavis?

https://i.imgur.com/TZmeU8e.jpg

In June, Paramount+ aired “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe,” the animated pair’s first movie feature since 1996, and their first appearance onscreen since 2011. (The plot sees them sucked into a time portal in 1998, and spit out in 2022, washed up on the shores of a very changed America.) And, on Thursday, “Beavis and Butt-Head” returned to TV, where there will be two new seasons, also on Paramount+, featuring the duo in both youth and middle age.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/mike-judges-secret-art-of-satire

Chip

August 8th, 2022, 10:37 PM

Photo of the Week:

https://i.imgur.com/JXEmIz8.jpg

What's a good caption? The Bad, The Worse, and the Unspeakable?

Chip

August 9th, 2022, 12:28 PM

Just when you think it can't get any weirder, it does. :facepalm:

Alex Jones sent nude photo of wife to Roger Stone, Sandy Hook lawyer reveals

Picture was among cache of messages inadvertently handed over by Infowars host’s lawyer to opposition legal team

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Tue 9 Aug 2022

Lawyers for the notorious American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accidentally gave his legal adversaries a nude photo of his wife that he had texted to the conservative political operative Roger Stone, an attorney involved in the matter has acknowledged.

The seemingly farcical – but entirely true – development was the latest bit of fallout since one of the attorneys for a family suing Jones for defamation revealed last week that Jones’s own lawyer had inadvertently handed over numerous text messages belonging to the far-right provocateur and then failed to take steps to keep them out of court.

The lawyer, Mark Bankston, the recipient of the accidental leak, appeared on Monday on the Young Turks progressive news commentary show to confirm that one of the texts in question contained a naked photo of Jones’s wife sent to Stone, once an adviser to former president Donald Trump.

Bankston also expressed concern about whether Jones had obtained permission from his wife, Erika Wulff Jones, to send that photo to Stone or anyone else.

“I don’t know if that was consensual,” said Bankston, who recently won a nearly $50m judgment against Jones for the family of a six-year-old boy killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which for years Jones falsely claimed was a hoax aimed at forcing nationwide gun control reform.

“And if it wasn’t consensual, Mrs Wulff Jones should know about that, and there might be something that needs to be done about that.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/alex-jones-nude-photo-wife-roger-stone?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

August 10th, 2022, 10:17 PM

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. . .

Pro-Trump brand fined for using fake ‘Made in USA’ labels

Utah-based company Lions Not Sheep was first cited by the FTC in May for replacing ‘Made in China’ tags on their clothing
The company and its owner, Sean Whalen, have been ordered to pay $212,335 in fines on 28 July and stop producing apparel with the fake tags.

https://i.imgur.com/S8KlRHz.jpg

Gloria Oladipo
Wed 10 Aug 2022

A pro-Donald Trump brand was fined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for using fake “Made in USA” labels on items that were imported from other countries. The Utah-based apparel company Lions Not Sheep was first cited by the FTC in May for replacing “Made in China” tags on their clothing with bogus “Made in USA” labels.

The company and its owner, Sean Whalen, were ordered to pay $212,335 in fines and stop producing apparel with the fake tags, according to a statement from the FTC. “Stop making bogus Made in USA claims, and come clean about foreign production,” read the FTC’s 28 July statement.

Lions Not Sheep is widely known for producing clothing with conservative messaging, including apparel with slogans like “Let’s Go Brandon” and “Shall Not Be Infringed”, referring to the right to bear arms. A free copy of the US constitution is also shipped with every order, according to the brand’s website. The company sells T-shirts, hats and other clothing through its website and Amazon, reports USA Today.

According to the FTC complaint, in October 2020 Whalen admitted that the brand’s shirts were actually made in China and screen printed in the US, after multiple comments from others asking if the products were made in the US. During the four minute video posted to social media, Whalen stated: “So our shirts are made in America … But those shirts are made in China, just like damn near every single made in America shirt you’re wearing is. This is how it works.”

The following year, the FTC claims, Lions Not Sheep began changing the labels on their clothing to “Made in USA” tags, despite the apparel coming from foreign countries. The FTC said in a statement that the company must stop claiming the products are made in the US “unless they can show that the product’s final assembly or processing – and all significant processing – takes place here and that all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced here”.

Whalen and Lions Not Sheep have not commented on the most recent FTC decision.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/10/pro-trump-brand-fake-made-in-usa-tags?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

August 12th, 2022, 12:48 PM

City tells New Yorkers: don’t panic about ‘splooting’ squirrels

Yes, it’s a real word. Here’s the science (and etymology) behind it

Matthew Cantor
Fri 12 Aug 2022

It’s baking hot in New York, which can only mean one thing for the city’s small mammal population: it’s splooting season.

https://i.imgur.com/jaoKLDg.jpg

This week, with temperatures reaching 95F (35C), the city’s parks department urged residents not to worry about the health of squirrels seen sprawling on the ground, legs extended behind them like a person whose arms gave out halfway through a yoga class. “On hot days, squirrels keep cool by splooting (stretching out) on cool surfaces to reduce body heat,” the department tweeted.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the phenomenon itself was the word the government agency used. Splooting? Is that a real thing?

The science certainly is. Squirrels’ bellies have less fur than other parts of their bodies, so splooting helps them cool down, says Dan Blumstein, a professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. It’s a popular trick among mammals, including the marmots he studies, which “on hot days will lie on rocks as it gets hot, because the boulders are still cooler”, he says.

But until recently, he says, he didn’t know the term “splooting”. “I always called it ‘doing the rug’,” he says.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/11/city-tells-new-yorkers-dont-panic-about-splooting-squirrels?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

August 13th, 2022, 12:51 PM

Hemingway look-alike contest, Key West.

https://i.imgur.com/gH9n0E1.jpg

Chip

August 13th, 2022, 01:07 PM

In the grand tradition of Sarah and the Palin family:

Lauren Boebert’s neighbors’ 911 calls describe threats, husband running over mailbox

“I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns,” one neighbor told 911 dispatchers.

By Conrad Swanson | The Denver Post
August 12, 2022

Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies decided to let neighbors of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert settle a dispute between themselves and the congresswoman’s husband after he reportedly threatened them and destroyed their mailbox.

But 911 calls from the incident, obtained by The Denver Post, show just how upset and nervous the neighbors were over their run-in with Boebert’s husband, Jayson Boebert. The calls also provide additional context into what the neighbors, in Silt, said amounted to excessive speeding, property damage, possible drunken driving and threats made from a man whose family openly and regularly carries their firearms.

“I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns,” one neighbor told a 911 dispatcher. “He just got chest to chest, face to face, looking to fight.”

That additional context from the calls appears to match the limited information available in reports from Garfield County deputies. But still, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Walter Stowe refused to say why deputies didn’t investigate further and would not provide any additional information.

https://www.denverpost.com/2022/08/12/lauren-boebert-neighborhood-disturbance-calls-911/

Chip

August 19th, 2022, 12:39 PM

It's been a bad week for really weird news.

Or perhaps I'm getting jaded.

kazoolaw

August 19th, 2022, 09:38 PM

Photo of the Week:

https://i.imgur.com/JXEmIz8.jpg

What's a good caption?

The Representative, the Reporter, and the Resident in your head?

Chip

August 19th, 2022, 11:37 PM

The Trollop, the Tout, and the Turd.

kazoolaw

August 20th, 2022, 06:37 AM

Clever use of defamation per se
Is that even a thing anymore?

Chip

August 20th, 2022, 12:46 PM

Clever use of defamation per se
Is that even a thing anymore?

Sorry you flunked English. It's called alliteration. Look it up.

How about: the Harlot, the Hustler, and the Hemorrhoid?

The possibilities are endless.

Chip

August 20th, 2022, 04:34 PM

Seal breaks into New Zealand home, traumatises cat and hangs out on couch

Young fur seal slipped into marine biologist’s home through a catflap before spending more than two hours inside

Eva Corlett in Wellington
Thu 18 Aug 2022

https://i.imgur.com/QUdgNdb.jpg

A curious young seal has been returned to the sea after breaking into a New Zealand home, harassing the resident cat, hanging about in the hallway for a couple of hours while the children slept upstairs, and miraculously ruining nothing.

The Ross family of Mt Maunganui were more than a little surprised to find the New Zealand fur seal in their home, which is about 150m from the shore, on Wednesday morning.

Phil Ross, who happens to be a marine biologist, said it was unfortunate he was the only one not home at the time. “The big joke is that this is really the only family emergency where it would be useful to have a marine biologist in the house,” he said. “I really missed my time to shine.”

Ross said his wife, Jenn, rose just before 6am on Wednesday to go to the gym.

“As she got in the car, something barked from underneath and shuffled away. She thought it was someone’s dog … and didn’t really think too much of it.”

She returned around 7am, opening the door to find “a cute little seal”.

“It got a bit of a fright and humped its way down the hallway into the spare room.”

Ross said the seal had managed to make its way through two catflaps to get into the home. He believes it had encountered the family’s territorial cat, Coco, outside, just after Jenn had left the property, and had likely been inside for an hour.

“The cat would have gone to defend its territory and obviously the seal wasn’t as intimidated as some dogs are, so Coco must have bolted around the side of the house, into the catflap, and the seal must have followed her.”

Jenn woke their two children, Noah, 12, and Ari, 10, to come and see “their new pet”.

“They thought it was cool and pretty exciting but were totally oblivious to the fact that … not many of their mates would have seals come to visit them in their houses.”

The seal spent time in the spare room and on the couch before Jenn managed to usher it out the front door and into the garden. A Department of Conservation ranger turned up at 10am to take the seal back to the sea, after a busy morning of seal-related call-outs.

The seal, which the family nicknamed “Oscar” in a long tradition of giving seals that name in the community, proved to be polite company, Ross said, and thankfully had not defecated inside. “I think that would have been pretty terminal for the furniture.”

Meanwhile, Coco the cat had scarpered to the neighbour’s house. On returning to its own home, it refused to go downstairs because it was “clearly pretty traumatised”.

https://i.imgur.com/vKP3lTb.jpg

Ross said it was not unusual to see young seals roaming about in the area at this time of year, because the young ones were beginning to wean and head out on their own.

“I guess, like all teenagers, they don’t necessarily make sensible decisions.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/19/seal-breaks-into-new-zealand-home-traumatises-cat-and-hangs-out-on-couch?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

August 20th, 2022, 05:02 PM

Chip

August 21st, 2022, 09:11 PM

Trump's rent boy.

Chip

August 22nd, 2022, 12:18 PM

About the visiting seal, they were lucky it wasn't a leopard seal, a fearsome predator of the southern ocean, especially around Antarctica. A leopard seal would have devoured the cat and attacked the woman when she came home.

We saw one sleeping on the beach between Napier and Cape Kidnappers and gave it a wide berth. They aren't common in New Zealand, but show up occasionally. Here's a photo of one from Kaikoura, west coast, South Island.

https://i.imgur.com/1cBdmFy.jpg

Chip

August 23rd, 2022, 11:15 PM

‘Queen of Canada’: the rapid rise of a fringe QAnon figure sounds alarm

Romana Didulo claims sovereignty over Canada and is gaining fame online as trust erodes in the country’s civil institutions

Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Tue 23 Aug 2022

She travels Canada in a flag-draped RV with an entourage. She greets supporters in small towns, who eagerly film the encounters on mobile phones. She’s called on her disciples to execute healthcare workers and politicians who support mass vaccination campaigns. To her more than 60,000 followers online, she’s the newly installed Queen of Canada. But to law enforcement and national security officials, she represents the threat that online conspiracy theorists may be all too capable of inflicting real-world harm.

https://i.imgur.com/Wnq3X77.jpg

Romana Didulo, a leader within a fringe Q-Anon-linked movement, has claimed sovereignty over Canada, gaining limited but growing popularity amid an erosion of trust in the country’s democratic and civil institutions. Last week, Didulo made national headlines after her disciples attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest” of police officers in Peterborough, an Ontario city nearly 300km south-west of Ottawa. The stunt prompted warnings from experts that similar events are likely in the future as online groups become more emboldened to act.

Didulo immigrated to Canada from the Philippines when she was 15 after losing both of her parents, her website says. In 2007, she set up an engineering recruiting and consulting firm and a separate healthcare consultancy – both with limited success. More than a decade later, she formed her own nationalist political party, Canada1st, in 2021, with promises to end the “enslavement” of Canadians and withdraw the country from international alliances.

The party and its leader received little notice until last May, when she began tailoring her speeches and videos to the narratives of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory. Notable figures in the movement noticed – and her popularity surged. On her Telegram channel, she claims that Queen Elizabeth II was executed for crimes against humanity last year and that “white hats and the US military, together with the global allied troops and their governments” have helped install Didulo as sovereign of the “Great White North”.

She subscribes to a grab bag of fringe views, including elements of the “sovereign citizens” movement, a baseless belief that high-ranking US politicians are part of a child-trafficking cabal and a claim that aliens visited Earth 300,000 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/23/queen-of-canada-qanon-rise-conspiracy-alarm

Chip

August 24th, 2022, 04:23 PM

Hungary Fires Its Top Weather Officials After an Inaccurate Forecast

The National Meteorological Service predicted a severe storm over the weekend, prompting the government to postpone fireworks planned for a national holiday. The weather ended up being calm.

Jenny Gross
Aug. 23, 2022

Meteorology is sometimes referred to as the only field where the experts can be consistently wrong and still keep their jobs.

But that did not seem to apply in Hungary on Monday, when the country’s top two weather officials were fired after an inaccurate forecast. Their predictions of extreme weather conditions in Budapest had prompted the government to postpone fireworks for its national holiday, St. Stephen’s Day, seven hours before they were scheduled to begin on Saturday.

The night turned out to be calm.

On Sunday, Hungary’s national meteorological service, the Orszagos Meteorologiai Szolgalat, issued an apology, saying that the weather on Saturday had been the least likely scenario based on its models. “Unfortunately, this uncertainty factor is part of our profession, we have tried to communicate this as well,” the agency said on its Facebook page.

By Monday, the head of the weather service and her deputy had been fired by Hungary’s innovation minister, Laszlo Palkovics, a top official under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

On Tuesday, the service issued another statement on Facebook, saying it was a professional institution and not a political one. The agency said it did the best it could to prepare the forecasts, based on the date and time of the planned fireworks, using the available information to its experts.

St. Stephen’s Day celebrates the role of Stephen I, who became king in 1000 A.D., in the founding of the Hungarian state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/world/europe/hungary-weather-forecast-fireworks.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

TSherbs

August 24th, 2022, 05:45 PM

Oops

TSherbs

August 24th, 2022, 05:46 PM

Chip

August 24th, 2022, 10:30 PM

She's a crazy liar.

Not an obstacle these days.

TSherbs

August 25th, 2022, 05:09 AM

She's a crazy liar.

Not an obstacle these days.

Indeed not.

Chip

August 25th, 2022, 01:15 PM

https://i.imgur.com/x9daklO.jpg

Chip

August 29th, 2022, 04:58 PM

Fox News host Sean Hannity shows his technique for kissing Trump's arse.

https://i.imgur.com/mmbgnqz.jpg

Chip

August 31st, 2022, 01:22 PM

https://i.imgur.com/efWBpYe.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/30/tomatoes-highway-chaos-california-truck-crash?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

September 2nd, 2022, 01:42 PM

Check out the crucifix. Guess it was a godly, legitimate rape.

Former Idaho Lawmaker Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Raping Intern

By McKenna Oxenden
Sept. 1, 2022

https://i.imgur.com/TQjvCOC.jpg

A former Idaho state representative continued to claim his innocence in a courtroom on Wednesday but was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison after a jury convicted him of raping a 19-year-old legislative intern after a dinner last year.

Aaron von Ehlinger, 40, who resigned as a state representative last year, will serve eight years before being eligible for parole, Judge Michael Reardon of Ada County District Court said, according to a video of the proceeding from a local TV station, KTVB. Mr. von Ehlinger will also be required to register as a sex offender after being released from prison and is ordered not to have contact with the victim, who is known as Jane Doe, until 2055.

Judge Reardon said that despite 26 letters that praised Mr. von Ehlinger’s character, the judge believed that the former Republican lawmaker “demonstrated a lack of empathy” and “blamed” the victim.

“You see yourself as a victim, and you see yourself as a hero,” Judge Reardon said. “And frankly, I don’t see you as either one of those. You created your own circumstances that put you here today.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/aaron-von-ehlinger-rape-sentencing.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

September 2nd, 2022, 01:46 PM

Short insightful piece.

What’s Behind the Pileup of Sex Abuse Scandals?

Sociologists see a pattern that goes beyond the culture of specific schools, churches and industries: an ingrained resistance to self-policing or defying a community’s hierarchy.

By Amanda Taub
Sept. 1, 2022

Over just the past few months, multiple stories have broken about powerful or prestigious organizations that tolerated or concealed serious abuse for years.

This week, for instance, Herlufsholm, an elite Danish boarding school that was attended by Prince Christian of Denmark until his parents pulled him out a few days ago, has been engulfed in a bullying and abuse scandal. In August, an Associated Press investigation found that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ abuse hotline diverted complaints of child abuse away from law enforcement, leaving some children in dangerous or abusive situations for years. Last May, an independent investigation found that the Southern Baptist Convention had covered up and enabled sexual assaults and other abuse of parishioners.

Go back slightly further in time, and the stack of scandals grows higher: Larry Nassar and U.S.A. Gymnastics. Jerry Sandusky and Penn State. Multiple different abusers within the Catholic Church. Various private schools. The movie industry. The Boy Scouts. University campuses.

Whenever a story like that breaks, the focus tends to be on the specifics: the psychological profile of the abuser, and the culture or ideology of the organization where the abuse occurred. But another way of interpreting those cases consistently gets overlooked: that abuse scandals are just one example of a much broader human resistance to self-police wrongdoing within our own groups and communities.

That tendency can leave abuse victims and other marginalized people in terrible danger — and can also end up harming the very institutions that are trying to protect themselves.

In the fall of 2013, as Penn State University struggled with the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal, the school announced that it would give every incoming freshman a copy of “Beautiful Souls” by Eyal Press, a book about people who stood up against wrongdoing in their workplaces and communities. A banker who reported financial improprieties at the firm she worked for. Soldiers who refused to participate in human rights violations. A police officer who quietly disobeyed rules that kept Jews out of Switzerland during the Holocaust.

“I think it was obvious why they chose the book,” Press told me in an interview this week. “They felt like, you know, ‘God, if only an upstander had come forward and spared the university from this horrific embarrassment and scandal. We would like to inculcate this principled behavior in our students, because we’ve seen what happens at an institution when everybody stays silent and conforms.’”

If that was the plan, however, I have to wonder if those who selected “Beautiful Souls” had actually read it. Because it’s not a book about the importance of that kind of heroism. It’s a book about how much human society consistently hates and rejects it. (The term “beautiful soul” is actually an insult in Israel, where Press first came across it. Its connotations fall somewhere between “bleeding heart” and “treacherous hypocrite.”)

The human impulse to conform is so powerful that it can shape people’s view of reality, morality, and everything in between. Group norms and opinions about what behavior is right or wrong often have more influence on people’s moral attitudes than actual laws do. And in the famous conformity study by the researcher Solomon Asch, a majority of participants chose to select a clearly incorrect answer to a question rather than defy the group by selecting the right one.

And so when someone defies conformity by calling out wrongdoing within a group, including sexual abuse, other members of that community tend to react with disbelief, anger and ostracism.

“The real lesson of the book is that we love to honor these individuals from a distance, and after the fact,” Press told me. “But listening to them — not even honoring them, just listening to them! — in real time, when they are calling out our own behavior or our own institutions, is exceedingly rare.”

The people Press wrote about tended to be ostracized and punished for taking a stand against wrongdoing in their own communities. Some lost their careers, others their reputations. And the wrongdoing they opposed mostly continued anyway.

Viewing abuse scandals against that broad backdrop of human behavior makes them look a little bit different than they do on their own. Because when an abuse victim speaks out against a valued member of their own community — a teacher, professor, pastor, respected athlete, or even a respected peer — that is, in effect, a refusal to conform to the group’s norms of who is to be trusted and valued, and a violation of its hierarchy.

Sometimes the hierarchy is a formal one, as in the case of some religious institutions or the military. But sometimes it’s the result of subtler structures of sexism, race, or class. But whether the norm is overt or implied, challenging it can seem transgressive. And that makes it easy for people in power to dismiss abuse claims as motivated by personal vendettas, greed or delusion.

Abuse scandals tend to follow a pattern, said Nicole Bedera, a sociologist who studies the ways that groups and institutions enable sexual violence.

“We get caught up in the details of individual cases as if each one of them is different, and each organizational response is different, but that’s not true,” she said. “The finer details might change a little bit from case to case, but the organizational response to sexual violence in general tends to be pretty consistent, especially in organizations that are allowed to self-police or to self-govern.”

People who brought abuse claims, she found, were often presumed to be untrustworthy or mistaken. When victims reported abuse, institutions like universities, schools or churches tended to react with doubt and skepticism. That doubt was used to justify inaction, enabling the abuse to continue. “What I’ve found is people won’t say ‘I don’t believe the victim.’ They’ll just say ‘I’m not sure enough,’” Bedera told me.

The pattern was not just one of skepticism against those who raised abuse complaints, however. She also found that institutions tend to act to protect individuals who are perceived as high-value members of their communities — in sexual assault cases, usually high-value men.

Sometimes that value was concrete. At one university she studied in depth, the category included scholars who are seen as having important academic legacies to protect, or successful student athletes. But she also found that men, particularly if they were white, were often seen as automatically carrying their potential future accomplishments with them, and so were treated as high-value individuals even if they were still just teens. The women who raised accusations of assault or abuse, by contrast, were not presumed to have valuable futures worth protecting.

The result was that, over time, abuse victims tended to be disbelieved or dismissed. Perpetrators were given the benefit of the doubt, and took advantage of that freedom to continue their abuses. And that eventually led to harm not just for the victims, but for the institutions that had enabled the harm to continue.

“Institutions end up damaging themselves even more because of this, because it just means that the abuses go on for a longer time,” Press said. “If you think about the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, or Penn State for that matter, eventually the dirty laundry gets aired.”

“And the longer the institution waits, the worse it is for everyone.”

Chip

September 14th, 2022, 12:39 PM

Rep. Lauren Boebert Mocked For Wanton Abuse Of The English Language
The conspiracy theorist lawmaker has an epic mixup.

Ed Mazza
Sep 14, 2022, 05:12 AM EDT

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) recently experienced an odd moment while reading a Bible passage. She seemed to confuse senseless murder with a dumpling.

Boebert, a conspiracy theorist who has embraced QAnon extremism, was reciting a passage from Romans that ― in “The Message” edition she was reading from ― referred to “wanton killing.” Except Boebert pronounced it more like “wonton,” the delicious dumpling often found in soup at Chinese restaurants.

https://i.imgur.com/fAAH5PI.jpg

“I don’t know what a wonton killing is,” she said in the footage posted online by PatriotTakes, which monitors right-wing media. “I’m gonna have to look that one up, but it sounds interesting.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-wanton-wonton_n_6321355fe4b0ed021df75d67?ncid=APPLENEWS00 001

TSherbs

September 14th, 2022, 12:59 PM

hahaha

some spooky ignorance there

Chip

September 14th, 2022, 01:39 PM

"The things that you're liable,
To read in the Bible,
It ain't necessarily so."

—George and Ira Gershwin

Chip

September 19th, 2022, 01:26 PM

Gives fresh meaning to the phrase: Get your rocks off.

Some Monkeys Use Stone Tools for Pleasure, Study Suggests

Self-pleasure, that is.

By Emily Anthes
Aug. 26, 2022

Many monkeys are skilled stone handlers, using rocks to dig up roots, cut plants and crack open an array of delicacies, including fruits and nuts.

But some monkeys also appear to be using stone tools for, erm, something else. In a paper published this month in the journal Ethology, researchers report that some macaques frequently rub or tap stones around their genitals, and that these behaviors are associated with signs of physiological arousal that other stone handling actions do not prompt.

In other words, the monkeys appear to engage in “a form of self-directed, tool-assisted masturbation,” said Camilla Cenni, a doctoral student at the University of Lethbridge in Canada, who conducted the research as part of her dissertation.

Some of the best known examples of tool use by wild animals revolve around the never-ending, life-or-death quest to find enough to eat: chimpanzees use sticks to collect termites, crows use twigs to extract larvae from logs, sea otters use rocks to smash snails.

The macaque study is not the first report of object-assisted masturbation in wild animals, but it provides new evidence that, in some cases at least, animals appear to use tools simply to give themselves pleasure. “It’s arguably not really adaptive or useful,” Ms. Cenni said.

The study is based on observations of a population of free-ranging, long-tailed macaques that live in or near the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud, a Balinese town in Indonesia, where the animals regularly receive food from humans.

Scientists had previously observed that these macaques frequently handle stones, with what appears to be no obvious purpose. The monkeys might clack the stones together in their hands, for instance, or pick them up and drop them over and over again.

“It’s some sort of playful manipulation, in which there doesn’t seem to be an apparent function,” Ms. Cenni said.

The monkeys also sometimes use stones to rub or tap around their genitals and groin, prompting what the researchers called the “sex toy” hypothesis.

To systematically investigate the hypothesis, Ms. Cenni and her colleagues analyzed the stone-handling actions of 173 monkeys. They found that young males engaged in the genital tapping and rubbing more than adult males did, and were especially likely to engage it in during sexually charged situations, such as when they or another macaque nearby was soliciting a mate or showing signs of sexual arousal. Moreover, the behavior tended to precede physical signs of male sexual arousal, and it lasted longer when arousal occurred — patterns that did not hold true for other kinds of stone handling.

“The data are very convincing,” said Elisabetta Visalberghi, an expert on primate cognition at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies at Italy’s National Research Council, who was not involved in the research. “What they found is that, indeed, there was something sexual going on.” (Like any good scientist, she made sure to add the proper caveats. “The pleasure of masturbation is very hard to assess,” she noted.)

Although using a rock as a sex toy might sound unpleasant, Ms. Cenni said that she had never witnessed the monkeys making any sounds to suggest that they were in pain, as they sometimes do when they are bitten in a fight, for example. Still, she noted, the idea that this particular pursuit might cause pain as well as pleasure could not be ruled out without further testing.

The researchers theorize that the monkeys might have stumbled upon the genital tapping and rubbing while engaging in other, seemingly purposeless stone-handling actions. If true, that would fit with a scientific theory that tool use may evolve from the playful manipulation of objects. “There might be a transformational effect from play to tool use,” Ms. Cenni said.

Still, it’s unclear how much can be generalized from a single macaque population, one that is regularly fed by humans and therefore needs to spend less time foraging than other monkey populations might. Maybe it’s a perk of leisure, Dr. Visalberghi said: “When you have free time, and you find a way of using the stones for a given purpose, why not?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/science/monkeys-sex-toys-masturbation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

September 20th, 2022, 12:41 PM

When it comes to lunatic BS, the right wing doesn't have a monopoly. (But do I sense a bit of symbolic import in her burial at the first hole?)

Did Trump really hide classified documents in his former wife’s grave? Or is the left now as bonkers as the right?

Arwa Mahdawi
Tue 20 Sep 2022

Poor Ivana Trump: even in death she hasn’t been able to escape her ex-husband’s drama. After being found dead at the bottom of her stairs in July, Donald Trump’s first wife suffered the ignominy of being laid to rest near the first hole of Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. Burying someone on a golf course is weird – even for a Trump – and theories immediately began to swirl. New Jersey exempts cemetery land from taxes, so was this a creepy form of tax avoidance? (Short answer: possibly, but it doesn’t make much business sense and seems unlikely.)

The Ivana conspiracy theories did not go gentle into that good night. Instead, they grew stranger and stranger, stoked by the feverish imaginations of #ResistanceTwitter: a collection of liberal activists who have built large social media followings by tweeting obsessively about Donald Trump. When the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home to recover classified documents, #ResistanceTwitter went into overdrive trying to find connections between Ivana’s death and Trump’s legal troubles. There is zero evidence that Ivana was cremated, but many high-profile #ResistanceTwitter accounts suddenly decided she definitely had been and, from there, concluded that Ivana’s casket must have been stuffed with classified documents. Jon Cooper, a Joe Biden superfan who has 1.1 million Twitter followers and whom Politico once described as “prone to outlandish statements that rack up retweets”, bears much responsibility for spreading this theory. “Seriously, is else anyone [sic) wondering – just a bit – what other stuff may be buried inside Ivana’s casket …?” Cooper tweeted on 9 August.

Nancy Lee Grahn, an actor with 184,000 Twitter followers, had similar suspicions. “Dear @FBI,” she tweeted on 10 August. “I know u don’t need advice from a soap star, but having been in 10 or 10k implausible storylines in my 37 yrs, may I recommend digging up Ivana. Clearly it didn’t take 10 pall bearers to carry a liposuctioned 73 yr old who methinks was in her weight in classified docs [sic].” Rude, Nancy, rude.

That was more than a month ago. Have the Ivana conspiracy theories now been laid to rest? No, they have not. Some #Resistance accounts are still demanding that the FBI dig up Ivana’s grave to check whether Trump hid documents in her casket. A few of those demands, I should note, may have started off as jokes. The problem with the internet, however, is that a gag can quickly take on a life of its own. In 2017, for example, the Guardian’s Marina Hyde joked on Twitter that Melania Trump had a body double: the impersonator did all the tedious work of being married to Donald while the real Melania flitted around having fun. This theory then got aired on Sky News and Good Morning Britain.

Jokes are more likely to take on lives of their own when they are somewhat plausible. Perhaps the wildest thing about the bonkers theory that a former US president hid classified documents in a coffin supposedly containing his first wife whom he buried on his golf course, is that you can see how people could believe it. Trump, after all, had unorthodox ways of getting rid of documents. According to the New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, he sometimes blocked the White House drains by flushing documents down the toilet. (Photographic evidence of this was recently published). “It was an extension of Trump’s term-long habit of ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act,” Haberman wrote. A commode one day, a coffin the next? You can see how people might believe that is what happened.

Let me be clear, though, that is obviously not what happened. #Casketgate should serve as a reminder that it’s not just the right that is responsible for spreading online misinformation; liberals are also to blame. I am as fond as the next person of speculating about the dysfunctional Trump family, but when you start demanding that graves be dug up, it’s a sign that things may have gone a little too far.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/20/ivana-trump-grave-classified-documents-conspiracy-theories?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

September 20th, 2022, 01:13 PM

Good article. Conspiracy kooks left and right!

Chip

September 21st, 2022, 01:37 PM

Many years ago, I rented a remote cabin with a flying saucer cult as neighbors.

While they tended toward the far right (alien abduction, Armageddon, a race war, Chinese/UN takeover/ Elders of Zion, etc.) they also were keen on nutrition, crystals, auras, and that sort of stuff.

They were always seeing things (hawks were scanner disks, marmots were gnomes, lenticular clouds were camouflaged spaceships) that I didn't see the same.

I went out of my way to be nice to them as people, not get into arguments, dig their cars out of the snow, etc.

Eventually their founder, whom they believed had gone away on a spaceship to plan the apocalypse, was found after several years in his wrecked Cessna in a Utah canyon. At which point they sort of dried up and blew away.

So I guess it was part of my education.

Chip

September 22nd, 2022, 12:53 PM

Taste of kale makes unborn babies grimace, finds research

First study to look at facial responses of foetuses to tastes shows crying expression twice as likely for kale than carrot

Nicola Davis Science correspondent
Thu 22 Sep 2022

If the taste of kale makes you screw up your face, you are not alone: researchers have observed foetuses pull a crying expression when exposed to the greens in the womb. While previous studies have suggested our food preferences may begin before birth and can be influenced by the mother’s diet, the team says the new research is the first to look directly at the response of unborn babies to different flavours.

“[Previously researchers] just looked at what happens after birth in terms of what do [offspring] prefer, but actually seeing facial expressions of the foetus when they are getting hit by the bitter or by the non-bitter taste, that is something which is completely new,” said Prof Nadja Reissland, from Durham University, co-author of the research. Foetuses showed a crying expression around twice as often when the mother consumed a kale capsule compared with carrot.

Writing in the journal Psychological Science, the team noted that aromas from the mother’s diet were present in the amniotic fluid. Taste buds can detect taste-related chemicals from 14 weeks’ gestation, and odour molecules can be sensed from 24 weeks’ gestation. To delve into whether foetuses differentiate specific flavours, the team looked at ultrasound scans from almost 70 pregnant women, aged 18 to 40 from the north-east of England, who were split into two groups. One group was asked to take a capsule of powdered kale 20 minutes before an ultrasound scan, and the other was asked to take a capsule of powdered carrot. Vegetable consumption by the mothers did not differ between the kale and carrot group.

The team also examined scans from 30 women, taken from an archive, who were not given any capsules.

All the women were asked to refrain from eating anything else in the hour before their scans. The team then carried out a frame-by-frame analysis of the frequency of a host of different facial movements of the foetuses, including combinations that resembled laughing or crying. Overall, the researchers examined 180 scans from 99 foetuses, scanned at either 32 weeks, 36 weeks, or at both time points.

Among the results, the team found foetuses showed a crying expression about twice as often when the mother consumed a kale capsule compared with a carrot capsule or no capsule. When the mother consumed a carrot capsule however, the foetuses adopted a laughter-like expression about twice as often as they did when either a kale capsule or no capsule was swallowed by the mother.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/22/taste-of-kale-makes-unborn-babies-grimace-finds-research?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

September 24th, 2022, 01:41 PM

Rescuer of bar-going raccoon arrested for unlawful possession of furbearer

A North Dakota woman who found the animal by the road planned to release him in the wild, but he was seized and euthanized

Adam Gabbatt
Fri 23 Sep 2022

A woman has been charged with three crimes after she took a raccoon called Rocky to a bar in North Dakota.

Erin Christensen faces up to two years in prison and a $7,500 fine after she took the raccoon to Maddock Bar for happy hour on 6 September. A bartender said no one was bitten by Rocky during the visit, but the outing nevertheless prompted a health scare, with North Dakota’s health and human services department issuing a warning about possible rabies exposure.

Christensen, 38, was arrested last week after authorities found her and the raccoon by serving several search warrants in and around Maddock, in the north of the state. She told the Bismarck Tribune that police “brought a battering ram to break down the front door of the house” after they finally located her and Rocky. Christensen described it as “a shock-and-awe campaign”.

She has been charged with providing false information to law enforcement, tampering with physical evidence, and unlawful possession of furbearers.

Christensen said her family found Rocky on the side of a road about three months ago. She said they were nursing the raccoon back to health, and planned to release him back into the wild. Instead, Rocky was euthanized after his capture. He tested negative for rabies.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/raccoon-bar-north-dakota-arrest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

September 29th, 2022, 01:27 PM

This week's weird takes.

https://i.imgur.com/lLqMONx.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/1e516IC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/YXU3tfs.jpg

Chip

October 4th, 2022, 12:45 PM

It's pumpkin season. Look out for bad puns.

Monster 2,554lb pumpkin breaks US record

‘Every time she’s thirsty you gotta go give her a drink’: details of gourd’s diet and battles against ‘animals and critters’ in top bid

https://i.imgur.com/pNac1K8.jpg

Guardian staff and agency
Tue 4 Oct 2022

He set out to squash rivals’ dreams and he succeeded. Retired commercial farmer Scott Andrusz spent sleepless nights tending to a giant gourd in his field and finally came up with a new US record – a plump pumpkin weighing in at 2,554 pounds.

The latest record holder for heaviest pumpkin grown in the US tended his prize pie filling in upstate New York and pureed the previous record holder, a grower in New Hampshire whose 2,528 monster set the national standard in 2018, but in the end wasn’t a patch on Andrusz’s. The 63-year-old in Clarence, near Buffalo, had hoped to grow the heaviest pumpkin in New York state but ended up a national champion.

“Give it all the best stuff you can think of to give it, all the fertilizer, kelp, worm castings, chicken refuse,” Andrusz told Gothamist. “And a ton of water. Every time she’s thirsty you gotta go give her a drink.”

The previous New York state record was 2,517 pounds, a news release said. The winning gourd will be on display at Clarence’s Great Pumpkin Farm fall festival through October 16.

A grower in Italy holds the world record for heaviest pumpkin, with a 2,702-pound squash in 2021, according to Guinness World Records.

Andrusz reportedly had a giant pumpkin ready to compete for a record last fall but it cracked just before the harvest. To get his latest gorgeous gourd to fruition, he stayed up nights protecting it from raccoons and other animals set on nibbling or damaging it.

“All the animals and critters seem to love this pumpkin more than anything in the world. They all want to eat on it. And I have cats come and try to scratch it, they think it’s a big couch,” he told Gothamist.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/04/us-pumpkin-record-new-york?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Meanwhile, in Vermont, the birth of a new species?

https://i.imgur.com/T4wnZnY.jpg

Chip

October 8th, 2022, 01:13 PM

Is that a python in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

Trouser snakes: US man accused of smuggling three reptiles in his pants

New Yorker accused of hiding large Burmese pythons in trousers while crossing from Canada in July could face 20-year sentence

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0c0f7e9bc8c1d416a6b17de1996c7e9c5a7f70a5/0_0_3840_2160/master/3840.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Gloria Oladipo in New York
Fri 7 Oct 2022

A New York City man faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly attempting to smuggle three large snakes across the US-Canada border – in his pants. Queens resident Calvin Bautista, 36, is accused of hiding three Burmese pythons while on a bus crossing into the US at the Champlain port of entry in New York state on 15 July 2018, the Associated Press reported.

Bautista was arraigned this week in court in Albany, the New York state capital. He faces federal smuggling charges, as importing Burmese pythons is regulated by an international treaty and federal law. Bringing the pythons into the US from another country requires permits under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which Bautista did not have, the Fort-Worth Star Telegram reported.

Bautista was released in the lead-up to his trial, the Department of Justice said. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. The case is being investigated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and US Customs and Border Protection.

Burmese pythons are one of the largest species of snakes, growing up to 16ft. While the pythons are not considered at risk of extinction, they are considered a vulnerable species in Asia and an invasive species in Florida.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/07/snake-smuggling-us-canada-border-new-york?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

October 13th, 2022, 04:13 PM

Cat v fox: what made Downing Street’s Larry so brave?

The chief mouser was seen on camera chasing away a larger intruder on his patch. Experts explain his behaviour

https://youtu.be/YAqd_kecrJI

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Thu 13 Oct 2022 09.54 EDT

Larry, the Downing Street cat, stepped up from mouser duties this week to chase an urban fox off his patch. The burly tabby was caught on camera intently stalking the fox before launching into a fully fledged pursuit when the trespasser tried to take cover in a flowerbed.

Larry emerges the victor, but the encounter has led some to wonder what gives cats the brazen confidence to take on larger animals such as foxes or dogs.

Experts say cat behaviour is strongly shaped by instincts that date back to their wild ancestors. Domestic cats are far more similar, genetically and in behaviour, to wild relatives than dogs are to wolves. As solitary hunters, establishing and maintaining control of territory in which to hunt and mate is central to the cat lifestyle. “Cats will confront most other animals if threatened, even dogs,” said Nicky Trevorrow, a behaviour manager at the charity Cats Protection. “This is because they’re naturally territorial – it’s an ingrained instinct – so will often challenge any other animals on their territory.”

Cats typically have favoured areas to sleep and eat and mark out their “home range” by spraying, rubbing their facial scent markers on objects and scratching around the area to warn off other cats. Cats patrol their territory along a network of paths, often on a regular schedule, allowing neighbouring cats to avoid encounters that could result in a standoff. A cat’s sex (unneutered males tend to be more confrontational), life experience and disposition play a role in how it will react to any encroachment on their territory.

“There is a lot of individual variation in how strongly they will react to perceived intruders, and whether they will take on animals, such as foxes, that are larger than themselves,” said Prof James Serpell, an animal welfare expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “If a cat’s first encounter with a fox causes that fox to run away, it will likely embolden the cat in any subsequent encounters with foxes.”

Foxes may be bigger with more powerful jaws, but evidence suggests other cats often prove more formidable adversaries. A 2013 analysis of VetCompass, a clinical database of vet visits, identified five confirmed and nine suspected fox fight injuries for each 10,000 vet visits by cats (there was no data to indicate how foxes fared in these scuffles). This compared with 541 in 10,000 for cats presented with cat bite injuries and 196 in 10,000 cats being presented after a road traffic accident.

“So to put fox attacks into context, other cats (40 times greater risk) and cars (14 times) appear to present much greater dangers to cats than foxes,” concluded Pete Wedderburn, a vet and broadcaster, who carried out the fox risk assessment.

“Cats and foxes usually pose no threat to one another and it’s unusual for any harm to be caused to either of them when in close proximity,” said Trevorrow. There may be some instinctive animosity between cats and foxes, as there is between cats and dogs, due to the species once competing for food. “Ancestrally, foxes competed directly with wildcats for food such as rodents and birds, and adult foxes probably posed a predation threat to young wildcats and kittens,” said Serpell.

Dennis Turner, the director of the Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology near Zurich, said: “Larry obviously feels at home at No 10 and is a large male. Although males, even intact ones, are usually more tolerant of other males – they have other things on their minds – they can still chase intruders away from their core areas of activity. Those include cats unknown to them, dogs and even foxes as in this case. Obviously this fox was one of the urban foxes living in and around London – but I bet it won’t come back for a while after this.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/13/cat-v-fox-what-made-downing-streets-larry-so-brave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

October 18th, 2022, 11:57 AM

Loo rolled: Japan’s oldest toilet damaged as driver backed up

Worker mistakenly accelerated while the car was in reverse, crashing into the building’s roughly 500-year old wooden door

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Tue 18 Oct 2022

Japan’s oldest existing toilet, dating back hundreds of years, has been damaged after it was accidentally rammed by a car driven by an employee of an organisation that preserves cultural relics.

The 30-year-old man, who works for the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association, damaged the communal toilet, located inside Tofukuji temple in Kyoto, after he mistakenly accelerated while the vehicle was in reverse, crashing into the building’s wooden door, according to media reports.

The man, who has not been named, immediately called police after the incident on Monday morning. No one else was inside the Zen Buddhist temple at the time of the accident, and the driver was unhurt.

The “tosu” restroom, an important cultural property, was built during the Muromachi period about 500 years ago for use by trainee monks, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Its 2-metre-tall double door and interior pillars were damaged in the incident, the Sora News 24 website reported. A photo in the Sankei Shimbun newspaper showed the car – a 20-year-old Toyota WiLL Vi – inside the building surrounded by what was left of the wooden doors.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/28f23f371deeb65e438bc5a709f5a0306c4b8fc2/0_162_1200_720/master/1200.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

The temple, which could accommodate up to 100 monks at a time, contains a row of about 20 toilets, according to the Asahi Shimbun. The newspaper said the conveniences were still in use as recently as the start of the Meiji era (1868-1912).

Fortunately for the hapless driver, who had been visiting the ancient capital on business, experts say the damage can be repaired. Toshio Ishikawa, director of the temple’s research institute, said he was “stunned” by the extent of the damage, but relieved that no one had been injured. “We’d like to restore it before the autumn foliage season, but it will probably take until the new year [to repair it],” he told the Kyoto Shimbun.

While the building is usually closed to visitors, the rows of toilets can be viewed through gaps in the building’s exterior. The toilets – little more than circular holes cut into blocks of stone – are a far cry from the modern-day Japanese toilets that continue to fascinate foreign visitors.

While they did not feature bidet or drying functions, the temple’s toilets were at least located in a convenient place for monks who spent many hours trying to achieve Zen enlightenment – right next to the meditation hall.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/japans-oldest-toilet-damaged-as-driver-backed-up?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

October 22nd, 2022, 01:33 PM

Double whammy!

Newsmax bans Lara Logan after QAnon-tinged on-air tirade

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1e2f78d519f50db92fb2f4eda31b13da6597d5b9/0_0_3000_1801/master/3000.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
Lara Logan, who has spread QAnon-style conspiracy theories in appearances on conservative networks including Fox News.

Maya Yang in New York
Fri 21 Oct 2022

The rightwing US TV network Newsmax said it had no plans to interview Lara Logan again, after the award-winning war correspondent turned rightwing pundit launched a QAnon-tinged tirade on air.

Speaking to host Eric Bolling, Logan said “the open border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world” and claimed world leaders drank children’s blood. QAnon is a pro-Trump conspiracy theory which holds that leading liberal figures in US and world politics are, among other things, secretly murderous pedophiles.

Logan told Bolling: “God believes in sovereignty and national identity and the sanctity of family, and all the things that we’ve lived with from the beginning of time. And he knows that the open [southern US] border is Satan’s way of taking control of the world through all of these people who are his stooges and his servants."

“And they may think that they’re going to become gods. That’s what they tell us … You know, the ones who want us eating insects, cockroaches and that while they dine on the blood of children? Those are the people, right? They’re not going to win. They’re not going to win.”

Newsmax said in a statement it “condemns in the strongest terms the reprehensible statements made by Lara Logan” and had “no plans to interview her again”.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/21/newsmax-lara-logan-qanon-conspiracy-theory?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Genius! She can't count as high as three.

Boebert tells Republican dinner guests they’re part of ‘second coming of Jesus’

Colorado representative told Tennessee members ‘there is a calling’ and that ‘it is an honor to serve in this time’

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6042d697e18bc9fc731da9fa6c4019d4fdfbcb58/0_64_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Maya Yang
Thu 20 Oct 2022 17.57 EDT

At a dinner hosted by the Knox county Republican party in Tennessee on Wednesday, Boebert addressed the guests by saying, “I want to start with two words: ‘Let’s go Brandon’”, referring to a vulgar anti-Joe Biden slogan before adding, “In all seriousness, there is a calling on each and every one of you to be involved and to rise up. It is an honor to serve in this time. I believe that many of us in this room believe that we are in the last of the last days and that’s not a time to complain, that’s not a time to grumble, to be dismayed, to be disheartened, but a time to rejoice,” Boebert said.

“You get to be a part of ushering in the second coming of Jesus,” the congresswoman said to applause across the room.

Boebert’s remarks of the Christian belief that Jesus will return again after his ascension to heaven 2,000 years ago has triggered a slew of reactions online.

The Lincoln Project, a Republican political action committee aimed at defeating Trumpism, tweeted: “Christian or not, Lauren Boebert cannot adequately represent any constituent who does not believe in this end times prophecy. Can you really have someone making decisions on your behalf that thinks nothing they do now will matter?”

One user wrote, “If the end of times is coming why is she bothering with an election?”

“I say this in all sincerity as a Knox county constituent and as an actual Christian … what in the HELL was that all about???” another user tweeted.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/20/lauren-boebert-republican-dinner-jesus-second-coming?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

October 22nd, 2022, 05:43 PM

Hard to believe that these are real. What a country.

Chip

October 22nd, 2022, 09:41 PM

Here's a bit of relief from the craziness.

‘Seattle icon’: dog who rode bus solo to the park dies aged 10

Trips began in 2015 when Eclipse’s owner failed to notice the black Labrador climbed onto a city bus by herself and exited the correct stop

Erum Salam
Wed 19 Oct 2022

A beloved Seattle-area dog known for riding the bus around the major US city by herself in order to get to the dog park has died at the the age of 10. Eclipse, a black Labrador, had become a firm Seattle favorite and also famous around the world for her solo trips on public transport.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1e20e2e2d17ac78a7cc1754f37daeb4770c2790f/0_686_1304_782/master/1304.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

The strange phenomenon began in 2015 when her owner, Jeff Young, was finishing a cigarette and failed to notice in time that Eclipse had climbed onto a bus by herself. The bus then drove off but Eclipse exited at the correct stop and was later found by Young happily playing at her usual dog park. She then made regular solo trips to the park, usually two to three times per week.

A friend to all, she became well-known in her community and especially among fellow bus riders who enjoyed petting the pup on their commute.

King Country Metro, Seattle’s public transit authority, welcomed the peculiar passenger on each trip. Eclipse eventually became its brand ambassador. In 2015, Eclipse starred in a promotional music video titled "Bus Doggy Dog" for King County Metro. With a bus pass strapped to her leash, Eclipse could be seen running all over Seattle, dining at dog-friendly restaurants, shopping for treats, and visiting a local movie theater.

On a Facebook page he made for his four-legged friend, called “Eclipse Seattle’s Bus Riding Dog”, Young shared that she passed shortly after being diagnosed with cancerous tumors.

He wrote: “Thank you all for the heartfelt messages about Eclipse Seattle’s Bus Riding Dog she was loved my so many. RIP in Doggie Heaven you’ll never be forgotten sweet girl.”

After her passing, King County Metro wrote on Twitter: “Eclipse was a super sweet, world-famous, bus riding dog and true Seattle icon. You brought joy and happiness to everyone and showed us all that good dogs belong on the bus.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/19/seattle-dog-eclipse-bus-riding-dog-dies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

October 24th, 2022, 08:06 PM

I was in a book store last week and saw this cover. What a dopey cover and title. Wow do I dislike this dude.

https://i.imgur.com/YVg11CIm.jpg

Chip

October 24th, 2022, 10:32 PM

It's a frequent scam. Politician publishes a memoir. Lobbyists, industry groups, and various supporters buy case lots, often at inflated prices.

It's basically a thinly-disguised form of bribery.

A Trump Political Committee Bought $158,000 Worth Of Books Shortly After Jared Kushner Published His Best-Selling Memoir

Zach Everson
Oct 16, 2022

One of Donald Trump’s political committees spent $158,000 on books just weeks after Jared Kushner released his memoir. “Breaking History: A White House Memoir” hit shelves on Aug. 23. Two weeks later, the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, which raises money for two Trump PACs, paid retailer Books-A-Million $131,000 for “collateral:books,” according to a campaign filing made Saturday with the Federal Election Commission.

On Sept. 22, Save America purchased another $27,000 worth of books. Spokespeople for Save America did not immediately respond to questions about whether the book purchases covered Kushner’s memoir. But it seems likely that they did. Save America Joint Fundraising Committee is currently offering signed copies of Kusher’s book in exchange for donations of $75 or more.

It appears Kushner’s book sales benefited from at least one other bulk purchase, too. When “Breaking History” debuted at number one on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, its ranking was accompanied by a dagger, signifying that some book sellers had reported bulk orders. That list included data for the week ending Aug. 27—two weeks before Save America’s big purchase. It’s not clear if another political committee purchased Kushner’s memoir or if there was another bulk buyer.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2022/10/16/a-trump-political-committee-bought-131000-worth-of-books-four-days-later-jared-kushners-hit-the-best-seller-list/?sh=5ffe9b1f7c77

TSherbs

October 25th, 2022, 05:28 AM

Gross.

dneal

October 25th, 2022, 08:04 AM

Bold2013

October 25th, 2022, 09:35 AM

I’m looking forward to the mid term election and all the post election hysteria/rhetoric.

Chuck Naill

October 27th, 2022, 09:59 AM

Yes, when everyone except over paid physicians lose their freedoms. Most don't or aren't taking this election with the seriousness it deserves. I have only to assume they didn't pass or have to take American History in HS.

Chip

October 27th, 2022, 01:29 PM

Python swallows woman at plantation in Indonesia

Body of 54-year-old worker found in stomach of 7-metre snake on island of Sumatra

Rebecca Ratcliffe and Reno Surya
Wed 26 Oct 2022

A woman was found dead in the stomach of a 7-metre python at a rubber plantation where she worked in Indonesia, according to local reports. The woman, identified as Jahrah, 54, went to work on the plantation in Jambi province, on the island of Sumatra, on Sunday morning and her husband reported her missing when she did not return home that evening.

Searching for her on Sunday night, her husband discovered her sandals, headscarf, jacket and the tools she used at work, and called for others to help, police told local media. The following morning, a python was spotted nearby. “When the security team and residents conducted a search around the rubber plantation, then we found a python 7 metres long. It is this snake that is suspected of preying on the victim. After we caught him, we found the victim’s body in the snake’s stomach,” the local police chief, AKP S Harefa, told the Detik news site.

Pythons, which kill through constriction, typically eat smaller animals, swallowing their food whole. Cases of humans being swallowed are rare. In 2018, a woman was found to have been swallowed by a giant python on the island of Muna, off Sulawesi. She had gone missing in her garden, which was at the base of a rocky cliff where snakes were known to live in caves. A year earlier, a farmer was killed and swallowed by a giant python in the village of Salubiro, on Sulawesi island.

Far greater numbers of people are affected by snake bites. Every year there are about 5.4m cases of snake bites, of which between 1.8m and 2.7m lead to poisoning, according to the World Health Organization. Children and agricultural workers in poorer, rural communities are the most at risk.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/python-swallows-woman-at-plantation-in-indonesia?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

November 1st, 2022, 10:34 PM

More on reptiles:

https://i.imgur.com/BAR8h3E.jpg

kazoolaw

November 2nd, 2022, 01:09 PM

I’m looking forward to the mid term election and all the post election hysteria/rhetoric.

Not everyone is waiting until after the election to become hysterical.

Chip

November 2nd, 2022, 05:12 PM

Go back and look at the first post. This isn't a thread for you dimwits to pollute with your ill-informed opinions.

Bugger off!

dneal

November 2nd, 2022, 05:27 PM

Go back and look at the first post. This isn't a thread for you dimwits to pollute with your ill-informed opinions.

Bugger off!

Too delicious.

kazoolaw

November 2nd, 2022, 06:23 PM

TSherbs

November 2nd, 2022, 07:24 PM

HRC on Twitter: "Right wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next Presidential election..." (https://twitter.com/IndivisibleTeam/status/1583496354734538756?s=20&t=fwmPHchjwOHxmlJ_Z1pX-w)

Chip, this clearly qualifies as a conspiracy theory by a troglodyte. See, Post 1.
Carry on.

I don't like HRC much, Kaz, but this isn't a hair-brained conspiracy theory. Throwing the vote to state legislatures has been documented as a strategy by Trump's team and by other Republicans as a way to win in the EC. This has been openly discussed by many people, even debated by lawyers in Constitutional terms. "Stealing" is a bit of hyperbole, but what she says in follow up is well known and documented all over the place. I don't like her "right-wing controlled Supreme Court" comment much, either. But you have to acknowledge that the court has lurched to the right. That is not in dispute by anyone who has followed the decisions. Now university affirmative action, permitted by the SC on multiple occasions, looks to be in jeopardy, which would be another turn to the right. You have to expect some hyperbole in reaction. But "conspiracy theory"? Not so much. Certainly not at the level of QAnon stuff, or the vote machine stealing stuff and Venezuela, or the weird shit that Musk recently amplified, etc.

kazoolaw

November 2nd, 2022, 09:59 PM

Hare-brained or not, it is a conspiracy theory.
Significantly, there has been no official denial of HRC's troglodyte status.

TSherbs

November 3rd, 2022, 05:56 AM

Hare-brained or not, it is a conspiracy theory.
Significantly, there has been no official denial of HRC's troglodyte status.

Some conspiracies do occur, and some of them are crimes.

kazoolaw

November 3rd, 2022, 07:51 AM

Surely, as some are actually hare-brained, and some of them never rise above paranoid theory. This is true regardless of where on the political spectrum one falls.

And on a lighter note-

We can report that at this hour neither HRC nor those associated with her have denied that she is, in fact, a troglodyte. Trogs United, a non-partisan group, issued a press release disclaiming any association with HRC.

Recent polling has detected, however, a massive trend favoring the position that HRC is a serial election denier, a position condemned by President Biden as recently as November 2.

dneal

November 3rd, 2022, 08:34 PM

In (very) local news...

How do I delete a thread that I started, that has devolved to nasty attacks, etc.?

thanks–

73216

dneal

November 9th, 2022, 08:05 PM

From the New England Journal of Medicine: Our results support universal masking as an important strategy for reducing Covid-19 incidence in schools and loss of in-person school days. As such, we believe that universal masking may be especially useful for mitigating effects of structural racism in schools, including potential deepening of educational inequities. (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2211029?query=featured_home)

Stops covid and structural racism. Cool!

dneal

November 10th, 2022, 08:38 AM

73336

dneal

November 11th, 2022, 12:13 PM

73346

dneal

November 13th, 2022, 06:48 PM

73376

dneal

November 15th, 2022, 06:03 AM

73406

dneal

November 15th, 2022, 08:57 AM

73409

dneal

November 16th, 2022, 09:16 AM

73420

Chip

November 17th, 2022, 02:28 PM

Walker's Quest for Self-Improvement

https://i.imgur.com/V65EKYZ.jpg

In a campaign speech on Wednesday, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, told supporters: “I don’t want to be a vampire any more. I want to be a werewolf.”

The remark was the latest controversial or outright bizarre intervention from the former football star who like other candidates endorsed by Donald Trump struggled to overcome his Democratic opponent in the midterm elections.

Choosing to rehash the plot of a film he said he recently watched late at night, whose title he remembered as “Fright Night, Freak Night, or some type of night”, he said in rambling remarks: “I don’t know if you know, but vampires are some cool people, are they not? But let me tell you something that I found out: a werewolf can kill a vampire. Did you know that? I never knew that.

“So, I don’t want to be a vampire any more. I want to be a werewolf.”

http://Herschel Walker says in rambl...| The Guardian

Chip

November 18th, 2022, 12:44 PM

New York Post Takes Aim at Trump, and Hits a Nerve

The paper’s increasingly harsh coverage has gotten the news media and political worlds talking about whether the Murdoch media empire has broken permanently from the former president.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/11/18/business/00nypost/00nypost-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

Katie Robertson
Nov. 18, 2022

Since Election Day last week, The New York Post’s front pages have been merciless to former President Donald J. Trump. First, the paper heralded his political rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, as “DeFUTURE.” A day later, it illustrated Mr. Trump as Humpty Dumpty about to have a great fall.

Then, on Wednesday, the paper relegated Mr. Trump’s announcement about his latest run for president to a small headline at the bottom of the page: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”

All three covers shot around social media, putting the 221-year-old tabloid at the center of the national discussion about Mr. Trump’s future and elevating its print front page from New York City newsstands to Twitter’s global public square.

The covers also had the news media and political worlds talking about whether the recent Trump coverage was another sign that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which includes The Post and Fox News among other news organizations, had broken permanently from the former president after supporting him for years.

Mr. Trump weighed in himself on his Truth Social site, criticizing “the no longer great New York Post.” He added, “Bring back Col!,” a reference to Col Allan, the paper’s former editor in chief.

Many progressives took pleasure in seeing the tabloid turn nasty toward a man it once lavishly praised.

“Just like in Australia and the UK, it’s almost impossible for any conservative politician to survive without the blessing of the billionaire Murdoch empire. Trump is toast …,” Thom Hartmann, the liberal radio talk show host, tweeted.

A Post spokeswoman declined to make Keith Poole, the editor in chief, available for an interview. A spokesman for The Post’s parent company, News Corp, which the Murdochs run, declined to comment.

TSherbs

November 18th, 2022, 01:21 PM

Yeah those covers were brutal.

dneal

November 18th, 2022, 09:08 PM

The World Economic Forum’s dear leader. And people think the Illuminati is a conspiracy…

73502

Chip

November 19th, 2022, 12:26 PM

Klaus Schwab, the Duke of Davos. Cool outfit. Lose the specs and slap some stage makeup and he'd be a good fit for Star Wars.

Anybody know where the bull with a cross on his head comes from?

dneal

November 25th, 2022, 05:44 AM

73597

dneal

November 27th, 2022, 06:10 PM

73622

dneal

November 27th, 2022, 06:17 PM

73623

Chip

December 6th, 2022, 11:15 PM

The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT

A new chatbot from OpenAI is inspiring awe, fear, stunts and attempts to circumvent its guardrails.

Kevin Roose
Dec. 5, 2022

Like most nerds who read science fiction, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how society will greet true artificial intelligence, if and when it arrives. Will we panic? Start sucking up to our new robot overlords? Ignore it and go about our daily lives?

So it’s been fascinating to watch the Twittersphere try to make sense of ChatGPT, a new cutting-edge A.I. chatbot that was opened for testing last week.

ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public. It was built by OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year.

Like those tools, ChatGPT — which stands for “generative pre-trained transformer” — landed with a splash. In five days, more than a million people signed up to test it, according to Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president. Hundreds of screenshots of ChatGPT conversations went viral on Twitter, and many of its early fans speak of it in astonished, grandiose terms, as if it were some mix of software and sorcery.

For most of the past decade, A.I. chatbots have been terrible — impressive only if you cherry-pick the bot’s best responses and throw out the rest. In recent years, a few A.I. tools have gotten good at doing narrow and well-defined tasks, like writing marketing copy, but they still tend to flail when taken outside their comfort zones. (Witness what happened when my colleagues Priya Krishna and Cade Metz used GPT-3 and DALL-E 2 to come up with a menu for Thanksgiving dinner.)

But ChatGPT feels different. Smarter. Weirder. More flexible. It can write jokes (some of which are actually funny), working computer code and college-level essays. It can also guess at medical diagnoses, create text-based Harry Potter games and explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty . . . .Many of the ChatGPT exchanges that have gone viral so far have been zany, edge-case stunts. One Twitter user prompted it to “write a biblical verse in the style of the King James Bible explaining how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR.”

https://i.imgur.com/zOZNCyS.jpg

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/technology/chatgpt-ai-twitter.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

dneal

December 8th, 2022, 08:02 PM

Woke mind virus, the saga continues:

73844

Chip

December 9th, 2022, 12:40 PM

Hard to discourage a bull moose. . .

https://i.imgur.com/aJYGEZT.jpg

Chip

December 30th, 2022, 10:36 PM

Woman mistakes real Tasmanian marsupial for dog toy in Hobart home

Thu 29 Dec 2022 03.35 EST

Hobart woman Kirsten Lynch got the fright of her life on Wednesday night when she went to pick up her golden retriever’s Tasmanian devil plush toy and it ran away.

“I went to reach for it, the devil shot underneath the couch,” she said.

The toy was actually a real Tasmanian devil and Lynch said her yelling woke up the whole house.

https://i.imgur.com/n7tChdc.jpg

While her husband chased the little devil out of the house with a broom, Lynch and her children had to take refuge on top of their kitchen table.

“We were concerned that if she or he was cornered and scared they would bite someone,” Lynch said.

“So at some stage, the family were standing on the dining table, which in itself was classically funny. I got the fright of my life. But to be honest, I think the poor thing was more terrified of us.”

Tasmanian devils rarely enter homes, but this time of year juveniles can be in urban areas looking for food and water as they learn how to survive without their parents.

The young devil did not appear hurt, and Lynch, whose property backs on to bushland, believes it came inside behind their new puppy, Gecko.

“The devil got through the fence behind Gecko and walked in through the door that we leave open for her as she’s still potty training,” she said.

“It was very cute.”

Chip

January 6th, 2023, 04:40 PM

River of melted butter blocks Wisconsin waterway after fire at dairy plant

Firefighters describe struggling through butter ‘three inches thick’ on steps as they battled blaze at factory

Victoria Bekiempis
Thu 5 Jan 2023

A fire that broke out a Wisconsin dairy plant on Monday night sent a river of melted butter flowing across the factory floor and into nearby storm drains, where it clogged a historic water artery. The conflagration erupted at an Associated Milk Producers facility in Portage around 9pm local time, firefighters said on Wednesday. Nobody was injured.

Authorities said it was unclear what caused the blaze, which is under investigation, and will assess the runoff before deciding how best to clean it up.

Firefighters tried to enter the burning building but were deterred “due to the heavy smoke and runoff”. The fire broke out in a butter-storage room, and the butter started to “flow” throughout the facility. “The butter runoff and heavy smoke slowed access to the structure,” officials said. Firefighting crews worked for hours to contain and extinguish the fire.

“When we first tried to go up the stairs to that part that collapsed, this stuff, the butter, was running down like, three inches thick on the steps. So our guys were up to their knees trying to go up the steps to get to the top, and they’re trying to drag the hose line,” local NBC affiliate WMTV quoted the Portage fire chief, Troy Haase, as saying. “The hose line got so full of butter they couldn’t hang on to it any more.”

A local hazardous materials team tried to prevent the slick runoff from pouring into storm sewers and the Portage Canal. This nearly 200-year-old waterway is on the National and State Register of Historic Places, as it once served as an important means of transportation.

While fires at food processing plants are not uncommon, some social media users in spring 2022 supported a false conspiracy theory that they were planned intentionally, in order to cause food shortages. Tom Super of the National Chicken Council told Reuters the speculations were “fake news”.

“I can only speak for chicken, but like any manufacturing plant/industry, there are generally a few fires that occur each year across the country,” Super said. “The majority of them are accidental and are contained rather quickly. And certainly not enough to affect the chicken supply.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/05/butter-wisconsin-dairy-plant-canal-melted?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

January 10th, 2023, 11:03 PM

Please don't taunt the elk. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi9wmYR5XGo&t=1s

Chip

January 13th, 2023, 03:35 PM

How low can they go?

https://i.imgur.com/hblzgCr.jpg

How about The Zombie Housewives of Miami Beach?

Chip

January 18th, 2023, 10:08 PM

https://i.imgur.com/DCyxiQS.jpg

Chip

January 20th, 2023, 12:12 PM

Beyond Meat COO Doug Ramsey arrested for allegedly biting man’s nose after Arkansas college football game

Amelia Lucas

Sep 19 2022

Beyond Meat COO Doug Ramsey was arrested this weekend after allegedly biting a man’s nose in an Arkansas parking garage following a college football game.

Ramsey, 53, was charged with terroristic threatening and third-degree battery and booked in the Washington County, Arkansas, jail on Saturday evening. He was released Sunday, according to the Washington County information page. Ramsey and Beyond Meat did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNBC.

The altercation happened in a parking garage near Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville after a University of Arkansas football game, according to a preliminary police report. Local television station KNWA/Fox24 first reported Ramsey’s arrest.

Ramsey allegedly punched through the back windshield of a Subaru after it made contact with the front tire of Ramsey’s car. The Subaru owner then got out of his car, and Ramsey allegedly started punching him and bit his nose, “ripping the flesh on the tip of the nose,” according to the report. The victim and a witness also alleged that Ramsey told the Subaru owner he would kill him.

Campus police declined to comment to CNBC, citing an ongoing investigation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/19/beyond-meat-coo-doug-ramsey-arrested-for-allegedly-biting-mans-nose.html

Chip

January 28th, 2023, 01:17 PM

https://i.imgur.com/AO1pl6g.jpg

Not to mention your head. . .

Chip

January 28th, 2023, 11:54 PM

https://i.imgur.com/5dWvZBX.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Gk3VeQU.jpg

The inventor was from Texas.

Chip

January 29th, 2023, 12:28 PM

Bear goes selfie-crazy by snapping 400 pictures on Colorado wildlife camera

A motion-activated camera near Boulder contained a surprise for officials monitoring wildlife activity

Guardian staff
Sun 29 Jan 2023

When a curious bear stumbled upon a wildlife motion-activated camera near Boulder, Colorado, she ended up triggering hundreds of “selfies”, officials have said.

Coyotes, beavers, mountain lions, black bears, all kinds of birds and many other creatures inhabit the landscape outside town, and Boulder’s open space and mountain parks department – which states its function as preserving and protecting the natural environment and land resources – set out to monitor them. But they were amazed when they checked one camera out of many they have placed across thousands of acres and found that out of 580 images on it about 400 were of one bear, NBC News reported.

https://i.imgur.com/OL9KKkz.jpg

Most animals don’t notice the cameras, but officials said the bear appeared enthralled by this one.

https://i.imgur.com/1C9dRcq.jpg

“In this instance, a bear took a special interest in one of our wildlife cameras and took the opportunity to capture hundreds of ‘selfies’,” an open space and mountain parks spokesperson, Phillip Yates, told NBC in a statement this week.

“These pictures made us laugh, and we thought others would, too,” Yates added.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/29/bear-selfies-colorado-wildlife-camera?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

February 1st, 2023, 12:29 PM

‘Can’t make this stuff up’: California sinkhole devours cars despite warning signs

California highway patrol: ‘This was 100 percent preventable. There is no excuse. The signs are clear, visible, and unobstructed’

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c2975ae194247e94067e1ea82bfd3a10c95d859e/0_0_2048_1536/master/2048.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
The sinkhole appeared near Tracy, California, after storms wreaked havoc across the state. Photograph: Courtesy of CHP Tracy

Dani Anguiano
Tue 31 Jan 2023

For the second time in two weeks, a sinkhole in a collapsed road in California has swallowed a vehicle after a driver ignored road closure signs, according to law enforcement.

The two-lane road near Tracy, a city in the Central valley, collapsed earlier this month following weeks of destructive storms that wreaked havoc across the state. The damage and signs warning of the road’s closure didn’t stop drivers from attempting to traverse Kasson Road, which commuters use to travel to nearby Stockton, Manteca and Modesto, according to the local California highway patrol (CHP) office.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7dab466304c2a282fd2b87493f21aada926f185a/0_277_756_454/master/756.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Several signs warn cars about the sinkhole; nevertheless, some drivers were not deterred. Photograph: Courtesy of CHP Tracy

“There are concrete rails across the roadway. It takes a little bit of effort to maneuver around it to get past it,” said Jesse Skinner, a CHP public information officer.

Still, the office is aware of at least two vehicles whose drivers got them stuck in the collapsed roadway. Over the weekend a truck fell into the hole, prompting police to issue a citation to the driver for traveling on the closed road.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/51558f1b8870593a3aa66a648ea1aadc9e8ccbc2/0_0_1152_2048/master/1152.jpg?width=140&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

The sinkhole claims a sedan. Photograph: Courtesy of CHP Tracy

Authorities appear to be growing increasingly exasperated over motorists’ disregard for the warnings. “It happened again. We can’t make this stuff up,” the CHP office wrote on Facebook. “This was 100 percent preventable. There is no excuse. The signs are clear, visible, and unobstructed.”

Days before that the driver of a Volkswagen sedan tried to drive down the closed road and also ended up in the hole. “We’re at a loss for words. If only there were signs and/or barriers that could have prevented this,” the office wrote, then pointing out that there were in fact signs.

Shortly after the road first closed but before it split and sunk, a different car had ignored the signs and driven through the closure.

The office has published information about alternate routes, but has continued to respond to calls about drivers who ignored warnings. Recent storms hit the area hard, closing some roads for the first time, including Kasson Road.

“It’s not a closure we’ve had set up in that area before,” Skinner said. “We don’t have an officer that can man the closure the whole time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/31/cant-make-this-stuff-up-california-sinkhole-devours-cars-despite-warning-signs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

February 1st, 2023, 09:41 PM

https://i.imgur.com/pJPyvwF.jpg

Chip

February 3rd, 2023, 10:24 PM

Six-year-old uses father’s phone to order $1,000 worth of food on Grubhub

Michigan boy Mason Stonehouse had jumbo shrimp, shawarma, salads, chicken pita sandwiches and chili cheese fries delivered

Associated Press
Fri 3 Feb 2023

A Michigan man says he was left with a $1,000 bill after his six-year-old son ordered a virtual smorgasbord of food from several restaurants last weekend, leading to a string of unexpected deliveries – and maybe a starring role in an ad campaign. Keith Stonehouse said the food piled up quickly at his Detroit-area home on Saturday night after he let his son, Mason, use his cellphone to play a game before bed. He said the youngster instead used his father’s Grubhub account to order food from one restaurant after another.

“And then he tipped 25% on every single order,” said Mason’s father.

The boy’s mother, Kristin Stonehouse, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Grubhub had reached out to the family and offered them a $1,000 gift card. The company also is considering using the family in an online promotional campaign, she said. Grubhub officials did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment.

Keith Stonehouse said he was alone with his son while his wife was at the movies when Mason ordered jumbo shrimp, salads, shawarma and chicken pita sandwiches, chili cheese fries and other foods that one Grubhub driver after another delivered to their Chesterfield Township home. “This was like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit,” Keith Stonehouse told MLive.com.

He added: “I don’t really find it funny yet, but I can laugh with people a little bit. It’s a lot of money and it kind of came out of nowhere.”

Keith Stonehouse said his son ordered food from so many different places that Chase Bank sent him a fraud alert declining a $439 order from Happy’s Pizza. But Mason’s $183 order of jumbo shrimp from the same restaurant went through and arrived at the family’s house.

Stonehouse said it took the arrival of a few orders of food for him to realize what was going on. By that time, there was nothing he could do to stop the orders from coming.

Kristin Stonehouse told the AP that Mason is extremely intelligent and has been reading since he was two and a half years old. “He’s very smart,” she said. “He’s not your average six-year-old.” She said her husband had just used the Grubhub app on his phone to order dinner before she left and probably just left the app open. She said her son took the phone, hid in the basement and proceeded to order his feast.

She said she and her husband had a talk with Mason on Sunday morning and told him what he did was akin to stealing.

“I don’t think he grasped that concept at first,” she said.

To drive the point home, she and her husband opened up Mason’s piggy bank and pocketed the $115 he had gotten for his birthday in November, telling him the money would go to replenish their accounts. That didn’t seem to faze the boy. “Then he found a penny on the floor and said he could start all over again,” she said.

Keith Stonehouse said most of the food went into the family’s refrigerators. He said he also invited some neighbors over to eat some of it. He said he’d heard of things like this happening to other parents, but not at the level he experienced last weekend. He recommends making sure important apps are not readily available for children to click on when they’re using a parent’s phone. He said he’s changing his password.

“I knew this could happen, but you just don’t think your kid is going to do something like this. He’s definitely smart enough, I just didn’t expect it,” Keith Stonehouse said.

http://https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/03/six-year-old-orders-1000-worth-food-grubhub?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

February 14th, 2023, 08:34 AM

Of course I would post this: an ode to swearing

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/03/an-ode-to-swearing/672784/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Chip

February 14th, 2023, 09:52 PM

Thanks. It paywalled me after a few paragraphs, but what the fuck?

TSherbs

February 15th, 2023, 07:58 AM

Thanks. It paywalled me after a few paragraphs, but what the fuck?

reminds me of the power of vulgarity of this poem:

i sing of Olaf glad and big

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

This is an excerpt for an interview article in The Atlantic from a series on what things/events inspired writers to take up their craft. for this writer, it was the inspiration of the direct vulgarity in objection to torture and bullshit, and the passion of his English teacher who dared to hand it out in class and then read it to them:

Alexander Maksik: I was twelve when I first read e.e. cummings' "i sing of Olaf glad and big." I'm certain that what first drew my interest then were the lines "there is some shit I will not eat" and "i will not kiss your fucking flag." I still remember my teacher, Chris Richard -- black hair, muscular, imposing, and impassioned. I can see him dealing mimeographed copies of the poem onto our desks -- each letter soft and round and blue. He was the teacher who dropped a black bible on the floor, stood on it and said, "A book like any other."

At the time, I cared nothing for school, was always ditching campus to smoke pot beneath the Santa Monica pier. I was a wretched student on academic probation, who would one day fail all of his classes and have to repeat the ninth grade. And yet, here is Chris Richard's voice, deep and frightening: "i sing of Olaf glad and big/whose warmest heart recoiled at war/a conscientious object-or." He is reading to us. Or perhaps he is reciting from memory:

Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

And:

Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

Whatever discussions there may have been about form and history are lost. But what is sharp in my memory are two things powerful enough to have shaken me, however briefly, from my cultivated apathy: cummings' cool descriptions of Olaf's torture and my teacher's evident passion.

He felt deeply and that feeling was inspired by something beyond us and our tidy school. His intensity was an indictment of disengagement, an indictment of people like me, safe in our shrugging scorn, our affected adolescent indifference. The courage was in caring. And it was Chris Richard who began to turn my apathy into contempt for apathy. In that classroom, at twelve years old, I was so angry, so sad on Olaf's behalf, so hypnotized by my pacing teacher. I wanted to do something about it. And if a short poem could make me feel this way, could show me something I'd never seen, well then what I wanted to do was write.

Watching him pace the classroom, I saw someone who was my opposite -- a person outraged, and engaged with the world. He was not slouching against a wall trading in irony and sarcasm, pretending nothing mattered. And now, 28 years later, as a writer, I return to these familiar questions: How do I respond to those things, which so often inspire anger and sadness, hopelessness and fear? And do I have some duty to respond? My instinct says that I do, but I struggle to understand how. Or even what it means exactly to write in response to the ugliness I see outside of my own life.

I believe that the only argument fiction should ever make is one in favor of empathy, that fiction must never be polemical. I do not believe that stories should necessarily be set within countries, or circumstances foreign to their readers, or that writers have any obligation whatsoever to write characters beyond their own immediate experience. A writer's only obligation is to write what she feels most compelled to write. Nonetheless, I can't shake the sense that I have a responsibility to respond, no matter how obliquely, to what I find unjust. I'm terrified of becoming inured to suffering and cruelty. I do not want to travel, or walk through a city, or read a newspaper, and ignore what is before me. To do so is to shirk my responsibility as a writer. And yet I fail constantly. My tendency is to go numb to it all. To stop seeing. To stop feeling. To ignore those things on the street I wish didn't exist. Writing has become for me a kind of antidote to that tendency, a way to avoid closing my eyes. But the questions remain: How do I imbue my fiction with anger, and sadness, and outrage? And what does it mean to write with passion and caring, to write the way that Chris Richard taught?

My answers are unsatisfying. The best I have is this: I hope that I will continue to feel. It is not, in the end, a question of subject, but one of emotion. The enemy in my writing, as in my life, is a willful blindness and a deadened heart. It is the kind of riskless disengagement I cultivated as an adolescent. In "i sing of Olaf glad and big" outrage is as palpable and as potent as lust and wonder are in cummings' other poems, and for that matter in so many of the stories and novels that have made such a difference in my life. I want always to write with great love and empathy. But I also hope that in some way, no matter how obliquely, my writing will always mean, "There is some shit I will not eat."

Long live the Richards of this world.

Chip

February 15th, 2023, 05:31 PM

I was a resister during the Vietnam war. Went through the draft process (physical, OCS test) but wrote a letter refusing to report for induction. Decided I wouldn't kill people who hadn't threatened me or my family for a government I distusted. I had several friends come back in coffins and others return from the war with horrific accounts. One offered to shoot off my toe to get me out of the draft.

Had my hideout cave picked out in a remote and beautiful spot, when they cancelled the draft.

That cummings poem was a keystone for me.

TSherbs

February 15th, 2023, 07:14 PM

You would have needed some good reading or in that cave....

Chip

February 16th, 2023, 01:21 PM

Found the place when I was solo climbing and lost track of the way down. Descended a complex set of chimneys and cracks and came out in a cave with no signs of human presence. There was a nice sleeping ledge and a kitchen spot with a twisty chimney above to diperse the smoke: I set a smoky fire and then went out to check for a plume. There was a balcony alcove from which I could see the entire floor of the canyon and all approaches. The entrance was through a stack of huge talus boulders— invisible from outside. I spent a few nights there, to see how it felt.

It's in Juniper Canyon, in the Redrocks area near Las Vegas, at the base of the high, roundtopped wall at center.

https://i.imgur.com/rxutI1S.jpg

I'd packed a couple cartons of books, writing supplies, and camp gear. I planned to pack in several loads of rice, beans, dried fruit, tinned stuff, etc. Old friends in Vegas agreed to make a supply drop once a month.

Then I got a notice in the mail with a draft card reclassifying me from 1-A to 1-H (for holding).

Chip

February 16th, 2023, 01:27 PM

Thief Steals Nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs in Britain

Unable to resist jokes, the police credited themselves with having “helped save Easter” by solving the “eggs-travagent” crime.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/02/15/multimedia/15xp-cadbury-01-lwgm/15xp-cadbury-01-lwgm-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
Cadbury Creme Eggs on display in a shop in Birmingham, England.
Credit: Lee Sanders/European Pressphoto Agency

Daniel Victor
Feb. 15, 2023

LONDON — A man in Britain admitted to stealing nearly 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs, in what the local police described as an “eggs-travagent” theft.

The caper involved breaking into an industrial unit in Telford, outside Birmingham, on Saturday and making off with about $37,000 worth of the eggs, the police in West Mercia said in a statement on Twitter that was riddled with attempted jokes about Easter.

“West Mercia Police has helped save Easter for Creme Egg fans,” the police said.

The man, Joby Pool, 32, pleaded guilty to charges of criminal damage and theft, and will be sentenced on March 14, the police said.

The episode will not deprive anyone of the ultrasweet treat, a chocolate shell filled with a white-and-yellow fondant, that is available from January to April. Mr. Pool’s lawyer, John McMillan, said in court that the eggs had not been tampered with and could still be sold in stores, according to The Guardian.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/world/europe/cadbury-creme-eggs-theft.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

February 19th, 2023, 12:15 PM

Art Fair Visitor Breaks a Jeff Koons Balloon Dog Sculpture

A woman accidentally knocked over a bright blue dog sculpture at Art Wynwood in Miami, causing the $42,000 artwork to shatter, witnesses said.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/02/18/multimedia/18xp-koons-miami/18xp-koons-miami-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
The Jeff Koons balloon dog sitting intact at Art Wynwood. It would be the last art fair where the sculpture would be displayed in one piece.
Credit...Bel-Air Fine Art - Contemporary

Amanda Holpuch
Feb. 18, 2023

The balloon dog sculptures made famous by Jeff Koons so closely imitate their twisted latex inspiration that some observers might think they would be better set in a circus than an art gallery.

But the fragility of these seemingly buoyant sculptures was made clear on Thursday when visitors at an art fair in Miami saw a bright blue porcelain dog worth $42,000 fall and shatter into pieces.

The sculpture, which was about 16 inches tall and 19 inches long, was perched on a transparent pedestal at Art Wynwood, an art fair in downtown Miami where more than 50 galleries from the United States and abroad are showcasing works through Sunday.

During the art fair’s V.I.P. preview night on Thursday, art collectors and other aficionados were milling around when a woman knocked over the Koons sculpture, causing it to shatter into at least 100 pieces.

“Before I knew it, they were picking up the Jeff Koons pieces in a dustpan with a broom,” said Stephen Gamson, an art collector and artist who said in an interview on Saturday that he saw the sculpture fall.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/02/18/multimedia/18xp-koons-broken-sculpture/18xp-koons-broken-sculpture-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
The scene was “kind of like a car accident on the highway, where people start looking and then there’s traffic and then it becomes this big thing,” a witness said.
Credit...Bel-Air Fine Art - Contemporary Art Galleries

Mr. Gamson said that he was about to point the sculpture out to the group he was with when he saw an unidentified woman tap the sculpture with her finger, knocking it from its pedestal in a booth managed by Bel-Air Fine Art, which has galleries in the United States and Europe.

At first, Mr. Gamson said, he thought that the fall could be part of a staged performance piece, but then he noticed that the woman was blushing and art fair staff members were rushing over.

Suddenly, the shards of porcelain had a bigger audience than the hundreds of intact paintings and sculptures that surrounded them. The Miami Herald reported on the crash on Friday. Wynwood Art could not be immediately reached on Saturday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/arts/jeff-koons-sculpture-broken-miami.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

February 22nd, 2023, 11:36 AM

https://i.imgur.com/3ZCAeh1.jpg

Chip

March 1st, 2023, 12:26 PM

Giant Jurassic-era insect rediscovered outside Walmart in Arkansas

Once-abundant giant lacewing was believed extinct in eastern US but mislabelled specimen hints at surviving populations

Ed Pilkington
Wed 1 Mar 2023

A giant Jurassic-era insect missing from eastern North America for at least half a century has been spotted clinging to the side of a Walmart big box in Arkansas.

The identification of the giant lacewing – Polystoechotes punctata – in an urban area of Fayetteville, Arkansas, sent scientists into raptures. The discovery of a species that was abundant in the age of the dinosaurs but which was thought to have disappeared from large swaths of North America has stoked speculation that there may be entire populations tucked away in remote parts of the Ozark mountains.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bacc363c1a1c23c6c568bbb10e01f9c355490e0d/0_6_560_336/master/560.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

The giant lacewing was found by Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State’s insect identification lab. In a report on the university’s website this week, he explained that he made the discovery in 2012, when he was a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas. “I remember it vividly, because I was walking into Walmart to get milk and I saw this huge insect on the side of the building,” Skvarla said. “I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers. I got home, mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade.”

In a co-authored paper recently published in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, Skvarla said that the specimen was incorrectly labelled in his personal collection as an “antlion”, an insect with similar features.

The correct designation of the lacewing had to wait until late 2020, when Skvarla was teaching a Zoom class on biodiversity during the Covid lockdown. As teacher and students stared down at microscopic images, they realized the specimen had been wrongly labelled.

“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, this incredible new record pops up,” Louis Nastasi, a member of the class, told Adrienne Berard, author of the Penn State report.

The giant lacewing was once abundant across North America but was assumed to have been obliterated from eastern regions by the 1950s. It has been portrayed as resembling a cross between a fly and a moth, with mottled wings which it holds tent-like over its body. The causes of the apparent disappearance of the insect have long been a mystery. Possible explanations include light pollution through urbanization and the introduction of non-native species such as ground beetles that prey on the lacewing or earthworms, which can change the consistency of soil.

Suppression of forest fires in the eastern region may also play a part, as giant lacewings depend on post-fire ecosystems.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/01/giant-lacewing-insect-rediscovered-walmart-arkansas?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

March 3rd, 2023, 12:55 PM

Whiskey Fungus Fed by Jack Daniel’s Encrusts a Tennessee Town

The dark growth, fed by alcohol vapors from barrels of aging Jack Daniel’s whiskey, has coated homes, cars, patio furniture and road signs in a sooty crust, residents said.

By Michael Levenson
March 1, 2023

The ethanol-fueled fungus known as whiskey fungus has thrived for centuries around distilleries and bakeries. It’s been the source of complaints from residents who live near Kentucky bourbon distilleries, Canadian whiskey makers and Caribbean rum manufacturers. Now, it is driving a wedge between some residents of Lincoln County, Tenn., and Jack Daniel’s, the famed distillery founded in 1866 in neighboring Moore County.

For months, some residents have complained that a sooty, dark crust has blanketed homes, cars, road signs, bird feeders, patio furniture and trees as the fungus has spread uncontrollably, fed by alcohol vapors wafting from charred oak barrels of aging Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/03/01/multimedia/01xp-whiskey-fugus-03/01xp-whiskey-fugus-03-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

Jack Daniel’s has built six warehouses, known as barrelhouses, to age whiskey in the rural county, which is home to about 35,000 residents, and is building a seventh on a property that has room to house one more, a company spokesman said. The distillery has asked the county to rezone a second property where it could build six additional barrelhouses. A company representative, Donna Willis, told county officials in November that 14 barrelhouses would generate $1 million in annual property tax revenue for the county, which had approved about $15 million in general fund spending for the 2022 fiscal year.

But not all residents are happy about the expansion. Christi Long, the owner of a local mansion built in 1900, which she operates as a venue for weddings and other events, sued the county in January, contending that barrelhouses near her property lacked the proper permits. The Longs said they used a pressure washer to clean the whiskey fungus every three months, to no avail.

A judge last week ruled that one barrelhouse currently under construction had not been properly approved and that its building permit would have to be rescinded until Jack Daniel’s obtained the necessary permits.

Ms. Long’s lawyer, Jason Holleman, said he planned to ask the judge and the county to stop Jack Daniel’s from using other barrelhouses near Ms. Long’s 4,000-square-foot mansion, known as the Manor at ShaeJo.

Ms. Long and her husband, Patrick Long, said that whiskey fungus had already inundated the property, darkening the copper roof and exterior walls, creeping over the rock garden and metal gate and encrusting the branches of magnolia trees. Nearby, it blackens metal road signs, they said.

The Longs said they use a high-pressure hose to wash the property every three months with Clorox bleach and water, but the fungus always returns. “If you take your fingernail and run your fingernail down our tree branch, it will just coat the tip of your finger,” Mr. Long said. “It’s just disgusting.”

Ms. Long said her corner of Lincoln County “is going to be black as coal” unless Jack Daniel’s installs air filters in the barrelhouses, one of which sits about 250 yards from her property. “This fungus now is on steroids,” she said.

A lawyer who represents Lincoln County declined to comment, citing the continuing litigation.

Melvin Keebler, general manager of the Jack Daniel Distillery, said in a statement that the company “complies with all local, state, and federal regulations regarding the design, construction, and permitting of our barrelhouses.”

“We are committed to protecting the environment and the safety and health of our employees and neighbors,” Mr. Keebler said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/us/whiskey-fungus-jack-daniels-tennessee.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

March 6th, 2023, 01:04 PM

Trump Lawyers Gather to Plot Strategy

https://i.imgur.com/Cg56FLf.jpg

Chip

March 9th, 2023, 02:12 PM

Latvia is sending cars seized from drunken drivers to Ukraine.

The first batch of cars will start making their way on Friday, the head of a charity helping deliver them said, and will go to the military and hospitals.

Emma Bubola

March 9, 2023

Ukrainians have received billions in military aid, including Patriot missile systems from the Americans, training from the British and a pledge of Leopard 2 tanks from the Germans. Now, they are getting cars seized from Latvian drunken drivers, too.

The government of the Baltic former Soviet nation, where staunch support for Ukraine is partly driven by fears of Russian aggression, has already provided significant military and other aid to Ukraine, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles. But the pledge of seized cars, which can be used to deliver supplies or move medical personnel, is a more unconventional step to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion.

“They will be in better hands,” said Reinis Poznaks, who leads a charity that was tasked by the government to deliver the vehicles to Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Latvia’s state revenue service, which keeps records of state property, posted on Facebook a picture of cars loaded on a truck in the country’s snow-covered landscape, noting that they would “no longer be driven on Latvian roads by their former owners — drunk drivers.”

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/03/09/multimedia/09ukraine-briefing-Latvia-01-vmqj/09ukraine-briefing-Latvia-01-vmqj-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

The first batch of cars will start making their way to Ukraine on Friday, Mr. Poznaks said. They will be transferred to Ukrainian Army units, a hospital in the city of Vinnytsia in west-central Ukraine and a medical association in Kupiansk, in the country’s east, the government said in a statement. Fifteen more are set to go next week, Mr. Poznaks said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/world/europe/latvia-cars-drunk-drivers-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

March 16th, 2023, 01:49 PM

From The Guardian:

16 March 2023

A Russian local politician who dangled spaghetti from his ears while listening to a speech by President Vladimir Putin has been fined 150,000 rubles (£1,595) on a charge of discrediting Russia’s armed forces, according to a human rights monitoring group.

Mikhail Abdalkin, a Communist party lawmaker in the southern Russian region of Samara, posted a video of himself remotely watching Putin’s state of the nation address last month.

The phrase “to hang noodles on someone’s ears” is based on a Russian saying that refers to someone who has been strung along or deceived.

The monitoring group OVD-Info quoted Abdalkin as saying it had been an ironic gesture to express his dissatisfaction with “the president’s silence about internal political problems”.

TSherbs

March 16th, 2023, 07:10 PM

I wonder what Russian comedy is like these days.

Chip

March 23rd, 2023, 12:47 PM

Robot lips invented for long-distance kissing

https://youtu.be/BpXC277yCNA

A Chinese startup has invented a long-distance kissing machine that transmits users’ kiss data collected through motion sensors hidden in silicon lips, which simultaneously move when replaying kisses received.

The device, MUA, also captures and replays sound and warms up slightly during kissing, and users can download kissing data submitted via an accompanying app by other users

Online reviews were mixed. One person described it as feeling like 'a warm pacifier', while many complained about its 'lack of tongue'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2023/mar/23/robot-lips-invented-for-long-distance-kissing-video?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

March 23rd, 2023, 04:38 PM

dear lord

Chip

March 24th, 2023, 11:06 PM

Unintended Humor.

Fat white guys with beer guts and untrimmed beards hardly need to declare their disdain for grooming. :dirol:

https://i.imgur.com/4uydUTE.jpg

Chip

March 30th, 2023, 01:06 PM

Wee the people: Republican Boebert presses DC witness on public urination

Congresswoman’s fixation on whether criminal code would have decriminalized public urination made biggest splash at hearing

Martin Pengelly
30 Mar 2023

In bizarre scenes in a US House hearing, the far-right Republican Lauren Boebert asked if a revised Washington DC criminal code was now law – only to be reminded that Congress overturned it earlier this month – then fixated on whether that code would have decriminalised public urination.

The revision was meant to give the District of Columbia a first code update in 120 years, but it became subject to fierce debate over crime as a political issue. Republicans said the code was soft on violent offenses. Angering progressives, Joe Biden said he would not veto a Republican measure to overturn the code.

Charles Allen, a city councilman, chaired the DC judiciary committee which considered the revisions. On Wednesday, Allen was one of four witnesses at the mercy of House Republicans in a hearing entitled “Overdue Oversight of the Capital City”. Allen, DC council chair Phil Mendelson, chief financial officer Glen Lee and Greggory Pemberton of the DC Police Union faced aggressive Republican questioning, mostly regarding policing and crime, including the stabbing last weekend of a staffer to the Republican senator Rand Paul.

But Boebert’s fixation on public urination made the biggest splash. The pro-Trump Coloradan, who has a history of inflammatory behavior, asked: “You led the charge to reform DC’s crime laws. Is that correct?”

Allen said: “I chaired the committee that proposal came from, yes.”

Boebert said: “You led the charge, yes sir. And these changes are now law here in DC. Correct?”

Allen said: “You mean the revised criminal code? No, those are not the law.”

Boebert appeared confused. Mendelson said: “The revised code was rejected by – ” Cutting Mendelson off, Boebert pressed Allen.

“Did you or did you not decriminalise public urination in Washington DC? Did you lead the charge to do so?”

Allen said: “No. The revised criminal code left that as a criminal.”

Boebert repeated: “Did you lead the charge to decriminalise public urination in Washington DC?

Allen said: “No, ma’am.”

Boebert said: “Did you ever vote in favor of decriminalising public urination in Washington DC?”

Allen said: “The revised criminal code that was passed by the council kept it as a criminal offense.”

Boebert said: “Did you ever support this criminal offense status?"

Allen said: “I voted for it, yes.”

Boebert said: “You voted to keep it as a criminal offense?”

Allen said: “That’s correct. The full council did.”

Boebert claimed to “have records” showing Allen favored “allowing public urination”.

Allen said: “No. The –”

Boebert asked: “Is that something you intend to pursue in the future?”

Allen said: “No. The legislation you’re referring to came from the criminal code reform commission that changed public urination from a criminal to a civil offense. The council then changed that, to maintain it as a criminal offense at the request of the mayor.”

Boebert yielded her time.

Addressing the witnesses, Becca Balint, a Democrat from Vermont, lamented: “Rather than addressing a number of serious concerns our constituents have, [Republicans] are choosing to waste our time talking about public urination. Do you have anything additional you want to say about public urination?”

Boebert said: “I do.”

Balint said: “No, not you. It’s not your time. It’s a question to these people.”

In conclusion, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said: “This has been a degraded, tawdry discourse today, with obsessive questioning about public urination.”

“I hope the public doesn’t see this hearing and regard all of it as an episode of public urination in which the people of Washington are the ones getting rained on.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/30/republican-lauren-boebert-house-hearing?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

March 30th, 2023, 04:08 PM

Yeah, I read about that one. <headsmack>

Chip

April 4th, 2023, 12:07 PM

Spilled drink: train derails beside Montana river, tipping out cases of beer

Coors Light and Blue Moon shipments spilled beside the Clark Fork River in Paradise, leaving a difficult mess

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/406e70f16171d4db36f9c1fd8024b838b9e6321e/0_82_2200_1320/master/2200.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

3 Apr 2023

A train derailment beside a scenic western Montana river has spilled powdered clay and huge amounts of beer, leaving crews with a daunting cleanup.

The train derailed on Sunday across the river from Quinn’s Hot Springs Resort in Paradise, spilling cases of Coors Light and Blue Moon beer in cans and bottles, the Missoulian reported. No injuries have been reported.

“It’s a terrible spot to get in and out of,” said Bill Naegeli, manager for Sanders county disaster and emergency services, of the derailment on the Clark Fork River.

Seven cars are believed derailed in the narrow tunnel where it will be hard to extricate them, Naegeli said. A tanker car carrying butane was on its side, but it did not leak, Naegeli said.

A boom was deployed across the river to secure any cans or bottles of beer that enter the water and to monitor for any possible diesel impacts after a small amount of fuel spilled on the dirt from two refrigerator cars that derailed, said Andy Garland, spokesperson for Montana Rail Link, on Monday.

“MRL has been in communication with both local and federal authorities and will conduct any necessary site remediation, including impacted soil removal in coordination with DEQ,” Garland said.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3ce1bd93a7a7c61671f384ce37ebf814cd2a8cd0/0_0_2026_1447/master/2026.jpg?width=800&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Photograph: Ben Allan Smith/AP

Directly across the river, some guest cabins at Quinn’s resort were evacuated as a precaution, the Plains-Paradise rural fire district said in a social media post.

Denise Moreth, the resort’s general manager, told the Missoulian that front desk workers heard a “loud, rumbling crash, and then they heard the train derailment”.

Garland said on Sunday it was unclear how long it would take to remove the derailed cars and repair the tracks and railroad bed, which appeared to have been damaged when the cars slid off the tracks. Crews were working in the area on Monday.

The cause of the derailment is still under investigation, officials said.

Federal regulators and members of Congress are urging railroads to do more to prevent derailments after recent fiery wrecks involving hazardous chemicals in Ohio and Minnesota prompted evacuations.

Rail accidents including derailments have been trending downward in the US as the number of miles traveled by trains decreases. However, the rate of accidents per mile has been increasing, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Railway unions contend rail transportation has become riskier in recent years after widespread job cuts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/03/train-derailment-western-montana-beer-spill?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

April 23rd, 2023, 04:49 PM

A Widow Said Her Husband Was Left in a Drinks Cooler After Dying on a Cruise

Marilyn Jones accused Celebrity Cruises in a lawsuit of storing her husband’s body in a cooler rather than the ship’s morgue and allowing it to become “horrifically decomposed.”

Lauren McCarthy
April 22, 2023

Last August, Marilyn Jones and her husband, Robert, set out from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on an eight-day Caribbean cruise aboard the Celebrity Equinox. The couple, of Bonifay, Fla., were just two days into the trip when Robert Jones, 79, died of a heart attack.

Celebrity Cruises presented Ms. Jones with two options, according to a federal lawsuit that she filed against the cruise line this week: disembark with her husband’s body in San Juan, P.R., or agree to have it stored in the ship’s morgue until it returned to Florida six days later. She opted to remain with the ship. But when a funeral home worker and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy came aboard in Fort Lauderdale to retrieve Mr. Jones’s body, they discovered that it had been moved from the morgue to a cooler on a different floor, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Having been stored at an insufficient temperature, the body had “horrifically decomposed,” the lawsuit said, preventing his family from having an open casket at his wake and funeral.

For her trauma, Ms. Jones, who had been married to her husband for 55 years, and her family are seeking a jury trial and at least $1 million in damages.

In a statement, Celebrity Cruises declined to comment, citing “the sensitivity of the alleged facts and out of respect for the family.”

The lawsuit, which was reported by Miami New Times, said members of the ship’s crew told Ms. Jones that there was a “50/50 shot” if she got off the ship in San Juan that the coroner’s office there would take possession of her husband’s body for an autopsy before releasing it to a funeral home. She was told she would have to stay in Puerto Rico with his body and make arrangements on her own to get it, and herself, back to Florida.

Assured that the Equinox was equipped to safely transport her husband’s body back to Fort Lauderdale, Ms. Jones, who was 78 at the time and suddenly traveling alone, gave the crew permission to store his body in the ship’s morgue and agreed to remain on board for the rest of the cruise, the lawsuit says.

“She was given a very difficult choice,” Thomas Carey, a lawyer representing Ms. Jones, her two daughters and three grandchildren, who are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in an interview on Friday. “She logically selected the ship’s morgue,” he said, after she was assured it had a working facility. “At some unknown point,” he said, “somebody discovered that the refrigeration was not working.”

When the funeral home worker and the sheriff’s deputy found that Mr. Jones’s body was not in the morgue but had been moved to a beverage cooler, the lawsuit said, it was “immediately clear” that it was in the advanced stages of decomposition, the lawsuit said. The body, it said, had expanded with gas and “his skin had turned green.”

The cooler was intended for things like soda, Mr. Carey said, and was not nearly cold enough to store a human body.

Like all cruise ships, the Celebrity Equinox, which is registered in Malta and can carry up to 2,852 people, is required to have a morgue because onboard deaths are not uncommon, said Hendrik Keijer, a marine operations expert who served for 10 years as a captain on Holland America Line cruise ships. “For some people it is their last vacation, unfortunately,” Mr. Keijer said. “That’s why morgues are onboard.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/us/cruise-ship-body-lawsuit.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

April 26th, 2023, 06:08 PM

Statue Is Defaced in England After Children Were Given Crayons

A memorial and a statue of a water nymph that is more than 200 years old were covered in bright blue crayon marks, officials said.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/04/23/multimedia/23xp-statue/23xp-statue-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

Amanda Holpuch
April 24, 2023

Bright blue crayon marks were found on a statue that is more than two centuries old at a conservation site in England after activity packs with crayons were handed out to children at the property, officials said. The statue and a memorial were defaced this month at Croome, a 700-acre property that is home to a mansion and two castles as well as violets, tulips and bluebells.

The National Trust, the conservation society that oversees the sprawling grounds near High Green, England, about 135 miles northwest of London, said it did not know how the marks came to be or if they came from crayons that were handed out at the site. “Like lots of other heritage organizations, we regularly run events for families and we often issue pencils or crayons,” the organization said in a statement.

On April 8, Easter weekend, bright blue marks were scrawled across the face, arms and torso of the Sabrina statue, a depiction of a water nymph by the sculptor John Bacon from either the 1780s or in 1802 (the exact date is disputed).

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/04/24/multimedia/24xp-statue-2/24xp-statue-2-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

The National Trust said it did not know if the marks were from crayons that were handed out to children at the site.

The stone statue is about six feet long, according to the National Trust. The nymph reclines on her side, resting on an urn, which in the past was used to send water into the banks of the lake below. A memorial to the landscape artist Lancelot Brown, known as Capability Brown, was also defaced with long, messy blue, zigzag crayon marks, the BBC reported. The National Trust said on Sunday that the marks had been removed from the Sabrina statue and that the organization was cleaning the Brown memorial.

The National Trust has not identified who is responsible for the defacements. “Disappointing as they are, incidents like this are very rare considering the millions of visitors who enjoy and respect the places in our care,” the National Trust statement said.

Brown was hired in 1751 to redesign the Croome property’s main house and parklands, then owned by the 6th Earl of Coventry, according to the National Trust.

During World War II, the property was used as a station for the Royal Air Force and housed more than 2,000 personnel and scientists, the National Trust said.

From 1979 to 1984, the house became the United Kingdom headquarters for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or the Hare Krishnas. Later owners tried to turn the property into a golf course, apartments and a hotel before the National Trust acquired it in 1996.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/world/europe/statue-vandalized-blue-crayons.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Chip

April 28th, 2023, 12:29 PM

Did Erdogan poop his pants on live TV? The major symptom of "stomach flu" (gastroenteritis) is watery diarrhea. Being a strongman doesn't neccessarily mean having a strong stomach.

Erdoğan’s Turkish election plans disrupted after being taken ill on live TV

President says he will rest at home as vice-president attends campaign events in his place

Ruth Michaelson
27 Apr 2023

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has had to abruptly cancel election campaign events after being taken ill on live television during an interview.

Cameras abruptly cut away from Erdoğan to one of his interviewers, Hasan Öztürk, who looked perturbed and began to rise from his chair before the broadcast cut entirely. In footage distributed by the president’s Justice and Development party (AKP), shot in the same location, Erdoğan explains that he contracted stomach flu following intense work on the campaign trail weeks before the pivotal election.

He later tweeted: “Today I will rest at home upon the advice of my doctors … with God’s permission, we will continue our campaign from tomorrow onwards.” The vice-president, Fuat Oktay, said he would attend campaign events across central Turkey in his place.

Turkey is holding parliamentary and presidential elections on 14 May, when Erdoğan faces a concerted challenge from a six-party opposition striving to unseat him after 20 years in power. Many polls give his main challenger, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a slight lead, amid discontent with an ongoing economic crisis and the government’s response to deadly earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey, and 8,000 in Syria.

Erdoğan cancelled personal appearances at a number of high-profile campaign events due to his sudden illness, including attending the opening ceremony of part of a Russian-funded nuclear power plant in southern Turkey and a nearby rally. The nuclear plant is the latest flagship infrastructure project that Erdoğan and the AKP are hoping will sway voters at the upcoming election, despite concerns about the relationship between government-led construction projects and collapsed infrastructure following the earthquake.

The AKP deputy chair, Erkan Kandemir, said Erdoğan would attend the ceremony at the nuclear power plant via video link. “Our president will attend the Akkuyu nuclear power plant ceremony, which is planned to be held tomorrow, online. Our Mersin rally is planned to be held at a later date,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkish-election-plans-disrupted-after-being-taken-ill-on-live-tv?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Chip

April 28th, 2023, 05:06 PM

Remarkable resemblance. Presently drifting down a bay in Newfoundland. . .

https://i.imgur.com/qNiKKQU.jpg

. . .towards the town of Dildo. (Really!)

https://i.imgur.com/cukX7bc.jpg

Chip

April 30th, 2023, 01:48 PM

Field of fresh cow pats welcomes first dung beetles to be rewilded in France

Sixty of the keystone species released near Bordeaux to feast on waste from wild cattle and help restore a vital habitat on the Atlantic coast

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b8bc3c5980fdfadf763acd6b70aca1280d0245ac/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=940&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Patrick Greenfield
Apr 2023

In a forest clearing filled with cowpats, French history is being made: the country’s first translocation of dung beetles in a nature reserve near Bordeaux.

With the same pomp and ceremony afforded to the release of an Iberian lynx or a European bison, about 60 “ball rolling” insects were brought to the marshy forests of Étang de Cousseau in south-west France on Wednesday to restore a vital ecosystem function on the Atlantic coast.

The dung beetles (scarabaeus laticollis) will feast on the waste produced by dozens of wild cattle that roam the dunes, moors and marshes of the rewilding project, recycling nutrients into the soil. Dung beetle populations have decreased due to intensive farming. Anti-parasite treatments given to cattle leak into the waste the insects eat.

The insects disappeared from the region in the 1960s as the feral cattle population declined. The last herd of free-roaming marine landaise breed was saved from the slaughterhouse by conservationists in the late 1980s. Before the creation of vast pine plantations under Napoléon III, this area of Gascony was famous for its pastoralism, and shepherds would tend to their flocks on 5ft wooden stilts, with dung beetles thriving on the waste. Now, along with the wild cattle, the dung beetles are back, released in a field freshly prepared with cowpats for their arrival.

“The dung beetle population all over the world has suffered a great decrease since the intensification of agriculture. Cattle and other domestic animals have been highly treated by farmers. The anti-worm and anti-parasite treatments leak into the waste and there’s been a huge decrease in dung beetles,” said Christelle Charlaix, an assistant warden at Étang de Cousseau nature reserve.

“Here, we have been working with a local breed of cows to manage the land. We do not treat them with drugs. Even though the cows have parasites, they are part of the cycle of life, they’re part of the biodiversity. Now, with the dung beetle project, the idea is to actually give a chance to this huge family of insects to come back.”

There are more than 5,000 species of dung beetle and they are found on every continent apart from Antarctica. Not all of them are “rollers”, which shape the dung into a ball and roll it to where they want to bury it in the ground. Some dig tunnels in the dung, some steal balls from the rollers, while others dwell on top of the waste. They are considered a keystone species because of their role in decomposition and seed dispersal.

The release of this batch of scarabaeus laticollis, brought from Montpellier in the south of France, was funded by Rewilding Europe’s European wildlife comeback fund, which has also supported projects reintroducing lynx in Poland, Bonelli’s eagles in Sardinia and water voles in Cornwall. Mammals, especially large carnivores, often dominate reintroductions, but conservationists say plants and wildlife must be brought back at every level of the ecosystem for it to be truly restored.

“There is beautiful biodiversity in the cowpats. In a microhabitat like that, it is full of life,” said Sophie Beaujean, an ecology masters student at Bordeaux University, whose job it is to check the piles of waste for beetles for a university project to monitor the success of the reintroduction.

Each dung beetle, released in two phases, is cleaned and a green dot drawn on its back in marker pen for identification. This species lives for a maximum of two years, laying its larvae in balls of dung. A pair was spotted mating almost immediately after being released, the first sign that the dung beetles will reestablish themselves in Étang de Cousseau. “Ah, la classique,” one observer noted of the reproduction technique.

The wider landscape at Étang de Cousseau is filled with birds moving along the East Atlantic Flyway on the parts of the wetlands that remain: spoonbills feed in the marshes on their way to breeding grounds farther north, lapwings can be heard calling, and a chorus of frogs in pools of water is a constant, with the Atlantic waves crashing in the background.

For François Sargos, who has helped manage the nature reserve since 1988, the rewilding project is personal. His own family is split between those that wish to see the pine forest removed in this part of Gascony to restore the wetlands and those involved in the lumber industry. Sargos helped raise money to save the feral cows and has carefully cleared the nature reserve of pine trees, restoring the landscape to how it used to be, and was delighted with the return of the dung beetles. He is inspired by Gascon poet Félix Arnaudin, who was disgusted by the spread of pine plantations in the 19th century and documented the shepherds on stilts.

“He was seen as an eccentric but he was ahead of his time. You might say I am like Félix,” Sargos says, laughing. “He wrote very eloquently: ‘These pines are like the bars of a jail cell blocking the horizon.’ I really align with this.

“In the future, a much larger area would be the ideal for the reserve, where nature can do its own things with as little intervention as possible. A place where nature has been let go to fix man’s mistakes.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/30/france-first-dung-beetle-reintroduction-rewilding-aoe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

April 30th, 2023, 03:36 PM

Each dung beetle, released in two phases, is cleaned and a green dot drawn on its back in marker pen for identification. This species lives for a maximum of two years, laying its larvae in balls of dung. A pair was spotted mating almost immediately after being released, the first sign that the dung beetles will reestablish themselves in Étang de Cousseau. “Ah, la classique,” one observer noted of the reproduction technique.

randy bugger

Chip

April 30th, 2023, 08:15 PM

We've got a pair of hairy woodpeckers playing lovebirds.

They land on opposite sides of a cottonwood tree and circle around, staying on opposite sides and emitting warbles.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP. nE7N5BbPPbSubB9Hjo6DEQHaIU%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=b724e6b5b0c41c28d9f242527bb340f2b4f7cb63e769b2 a96f6cfa79d8fc4ab0&ipo=images

Chip

May 2nd, 2023, 01:25 PM

Will the real Boris Johnson please stand up (or lean against the car?)

Dutch police arrest fake ‘Boris Johnson’ for suspected drink-driving

Ukrainian man’s licence had picture of former UK PM and correct birthdate – but officers did not fall for it

Agence France-Presse in The Hague
1 May 2023

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a9a4aeb1db40dc2516bce4a1e3d066f65fd0f252/0_165_366_220/master/366.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none

Dutch police who arrested a man in connection with a drink-driving incident were surprised to find that the name on his driving licence was Boris Johnson.

The Ukrainian driver’s fake licence, complete with the former British prime minister’s picture and correct birthdate, was purportedly issued in 2019 and valid until the end of the year 3000.

A police spokesperson, Thijs Damstra, said officers investigated an incident shortly after midnight on Sunday when a car crashed into a pole near the Emma Bridge in the northern city of Groningen. The car was abandoned but police were later told that the driver was standing on the bridge.

“The person could not identify himself and refused to undertake a breathalyser test,” Damstra said on Monday. The 35-year-old man, from the small town of Zuidhorn, west of Groningen, was arrested and police searched the car. “Inside, police found a fake driver’s licence belonging to Boris Johnson,” Damstra said.

Groningen police said on their Instagram account: “Unfortunately for this person, we did not fall for his forgery.”

Police could not say where the forged document was made, but Kysia Hekster, a former Russia correspondent for the public broadcaster NOS, said in a tweet published by the NOS that fake driving licences could easily be bought in tourist shops in Ukraine.

Damstra added: “As far as I’m aware, the real Mr Boris Johnson was not in the Netherlands at the time.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/dutch-police-find-fake-boris-johnson-licence-in-car-of-suspected-drunk-driver?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

TSherbs

May 2nd, 2023, 04:11 PM

Ha

I have friends in Groningen. I will send this to them ;)

Chip

May 3rd, 2023, 11:02 AM

Surprise!!!

https://i.imgur.com/puQwFMI.jpg

Chip

May 5th, 2023, 02:06 PM

A New Jersey Mystery: Who Dumped Hundreds of Pounds of Pasta, and Why?

The police and public works employees responded after “15 wheelbarrow loads” of pasta were dumped in mounds along a creek in Old Bridge, N.J.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/05/04/multimedia/04xp-pasta/04xp-pasta-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

By Michael Levenson
May 4, 2023

Ever since she met thousands of her neighbors while running for local office a few years ago, Nina Jochnowitz said, she has been fielding complaints from fellow residents of Old Bridge, N.J., a suburban town about 30 miles northeast of Trenton. Typically, they call her hoping she can persuade the town to crack down on fireworks or ATVs or pick up trash left on their curbs.

But last week, a woman she had met during that unsuccessful campaign called her to report an entirely different problem, Ms. Jochnowitz said: “There’s a pile of pasta dumped on the side of the stream.”

A scientist by training, Ms. Jochnowitz said she jumped in her car to investigate. What she found, about 30 feet off the road and less than a mile from her house, confirmed that this was more than an overturned bowl of bucatini.

Someone had apparently dumped hundreds of pounds of spaghetti, macaroni and alphabet shapes in large piles by the side of a stream in a wooded area where, Ms. Jochnowitz said, people often dump construction materials, bed frames and furniture.

“There was literally 25 feet of pasta that had been dumped,” she said.

The scene resembled something out of “Strega Nona,” the classic children’s book by Tomie dePaola about a kindly “grandma witch” whose magically overflowing pot floods her little town in Italy with pasta.

Ms. Jochnowitz estimated that 300 to 500 pounds of pasta had been left to congeal in the woods. She documented the pasta with the camera on her phone, emailed a town official to report the find and posted the photos on Facebook.

Before long, the town was consumed with theories about who might have dumped the pasta and why, especially in a state known for its love of Italian food. Was it a caterer with a last-minute cancellation for a wedding? A restaurant cooking for a football team that never showed up?

In Old Bridge, “That’s all they’re talking about,” said Denise Bloom, an administrator of a local Facebook group, who called it the “Great Pasta-gate of 2023.” Some residents, she said, have been posting photos of a few noodles on the ground and calling their renditions an “impasta.”

When photos of the discarded pasta were shared on a Reddit discussion about all things New Jersey, it became fertile ground for puns and dad jokes. Someone commented: “We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary.”

Anthony Esposito, the owner of Via Sposito, an Italian restaurant in Old Bridge that serves spaghetti, linguine, penne, tortellini and gnocchi, said that he could only speculate about where the pasta might have come from.

“Nothing from over here,” he said on Thursday. “I guess whoever did that is feeding the forest.”

To Ms. Jochnowitz, the pasta, previously reported by NJ Advance Media, was evidence of the lack of bulk-trash service in Old Bridge, which has about 67,000 residents. “It’s been a point of contention for many years,” she said.

In an email on Thursday with the subject line “Pasta Dumping,” Himanshu Shah, the town business administrator, said that after photos of the pasta circulated on Facebook last week, the Department of Public Works visited the site and found “what appeared to be 15 wheelbarrow loads of illegal dumped pasta along a creek in a residential neighborhood.”

The Police Department dispatched an officer, who took a report. Two Public Works employees then cleaned up the pasta “in under an hour, and properly disposed of it,” Mr. Shah said. It was not clear if a large fork had been used.

Although Ms. Jochnowitz said the pasta had been cooked, Mr. Shah said it was uncooked pasta that had been removed from its packaging and had softened amid several days of rain.

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