KGB Report

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Dr. Oz and his sisters are embroiled in a multi-million-dollar inheritance battle in the US and Turkey.

Fauci has Covid, Yellowstone is flooded, heat wave kills, alligators are mating, it's not really cheese, you know...
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Published Wednesday, June 15, 2022 @ 3:36 PM EDT

Jun 15 2022

Incoming!

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Fauci tests positive for Covid-19. Fauci, 81, has mild symptoms and has been boosted twice

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US report: nearly 400 crashes of automated tech vehicles from last July to May 15. It would be interesting to see how many "human" crashes occurred during the same time period.

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Flooding closes Yellowstone, in a sign of crises to come. Record rainfall and mudslides forced closures just as tourism season ramped up. Virtually none of America’s national parks are untouched by extreme weather and climate change.

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WATCH: Florida woman records giant alligator's mating call in Apopka. Yep, it's Florida.

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Sleeping on your side can literally clean your brain. Personal experience: move the dog first.

Also: Americans take way too much melatonin.

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Four cheese brands to avoid right now, including Kraft Singles, which technically isn't cheese but a "pasteurized prepared cheese product".

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Russia is 'hemorrhaging' millionaires. As Western sanctions make life harder for its elite, Russia is predicted to suffer a net loss of around 15,000 high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) - defined as people with more than $1 million in assets - in 2022, compared to 5,500 in 2019, according to the report. That equates to about 15% of Russia's millionaire population.

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Physicists link two time crystals in seemingly impossible experiment. What could go wrong?

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Extreme heat is bad for everyone's health -- and it's getting worse. Of all the natural disasters, heat is the No. 1 killer, studies show. And as temperatures continue to rise because of the climate crisis, scientists expect it to make even more people ill.

Also: Remember how renewables were blamed for the Texas winter power crisis? Now, wind and solar power are 'bailing out' Texas amid record heat and energy demand.

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'Squid Game' reality series coming to Netflix with biggest cash prize in TV history. The streaming home to the hit survival drama announced 'Squid Game: The Challenge,' with 456 players in real-life competition in a series of games for a record-setting $4.56 million purse.

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So long, Internet Explorer. The browser retires today. And good riddance.

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Plants appear to be breaking biochemistry rules by making 'secret decisions'. "We found that plants control their respiration in a way we did not expect, they control how much of the carbon from photosynthesis they keep to build biomass by using a metabolic channel."

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Miscellany:

Birthdays:

1910 - David Rose, English-American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1990) (Video)
1916 - Herbert A. Simon, American political scientist and economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2001)
1917 - Lash LaRue, American actor and producer (d. 1996)
1921 - Erroll Garner, American pianist and composer (d. 1977) (Video)
1932 - Mario Cuomo, American lawyer and politician, 52nd Governor of New York (d. 2015)
1937 - Waylon Jennings, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2002) (Video)
1941 - Harry Nilsson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1994) (Video)
1949 - Jim Varney, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter (d. 2000) (Video)
1954 - Jim Belushi, American actor (Video)
1963 - Helen Hunt, American actress, director, and producer
1964 - Courteney Cox, American actress and producer
1969 - Ice Cube, American rapper, producer, and actor
1970 - Leah Remini, American actress and producer
1973 - Neil Patrick Harris, American actor and singer (Video)

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On this date in:

1844 - Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1864 - Arlington National Cemetery is established
1878 - Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs; the study becomes the basis of motion pictures.
1916 - United States President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1969 - "Hee Haw" with Roy Clark & Buck Owens premieres on CBS TV. (Video)
1991 - In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, killing over 800 people.

Today is:

Fly a Kite Day, Global Wind Day, Justice for Janitors Day, Magna Carta Day, National Electricity Day, National Kiss a Wookiee Day, National Lobster Day, National Megalodon Day, National Smile Power Day, Native American Citizenship Day, Nature Photography Day, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

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Comments, tweets and observations:

Millions of Seniors move to Florida for the climate, and then stay indoors all day with A/C to avoid the climate.
-John Fugelsang

Republicans who accepted NRA money to keep gun laws from being passed now want taxpayer money to keep Republicans from being shot.
-Middle Age Riot

I also didn't win the 2020 presidential election. $250 million, please!
-Stephen Colbert

Today was President Trump's 76th birthday. Pretty impressive. 76, and he can still get an insurrection.
-Seth Meyers

Categories: AI, Anthony Fauci, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous vehicles, Cheese, Climate change, Covid-19, Heat Wave, Internet Explorer, Mehmet Oz, Melatonin, Microsoft, Physics, Russia, Sleep, Squid Game, Texas, Time crystals, Weather

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Kyle Rittenhouse claims he's going to Texas A&M. The university begs to differ.

California bees are ruled fish, recalls, gas prices, why your whole family has Covid but you test negative
(permalink)

Published Monday, June 06, 2022 @ 3:10 PM EDT

Jun 06 2022

Open carry

California bees can legally be fish and have the same protections, a court has ruled. In a lucky loophole for insects, mollusks, and other spineless creatures falling under the umbrella term "invertebrate," the act itself defines a "fish" as "a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals." Expanding the definition of fish to include invertebrates makes them eligible for greater protection from the Fish and Game Commission, wrote the court.

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Trump-Backed Senate Candidate Blames U.S. gun violence on 'black people' in unhinged interview Conservative GOP candidate Blake Masters-who has pushed the White nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory-shared his thoughts on why there’s a gun violence problem in the United States.

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My family got Covid. So why did we test negative? The key to this household mystery may lie in our vaccination status, experts say. Because the virus doesn't replicate as quickly in vaccinated people, they may be less likely to test positive for Covid-19 after coronavirus exposure, because their immune system "keeps the viral load below the level of detection," said Juliet Morrison, a microbiologist at the University of California, Riverside.(New York Times gift article. You're welcome.)

These supplements can be dangerous, says pharmacist. If you see these at your local drug store, just leave them on the shelf.

Tea recalled because of Mexican strawberries tainted with hepatitis A virus. Urban Remedy Organic Revitalizing Tea Tonic Strawberry Hibiscus Rose sold in California, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Wisconsin, Texas, Wyoming, Missouri, Maine, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Utah between May 17 and May 29.

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This House Republican says 'you can't even lie to Congress' if you are a Republican. Ah, good ol' Louie Gohmert.

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Scientists have figured out why childbirth became so complex and dangerous. A study finds that complex human childbirth and cognitive abilities are a result of walking upright.

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Why US gas prices are at a record, and why they'll stay high for a long time. "Anything goes from June 20 to Labor Day. We could certainly see the national average approach $6."

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The world's biggest four-day work week pilot begins in the UK. The pilot, which will last for six months, involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies, ranging from providers of financial services to a fish-and-chip restaurant.

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Older patients who consume alcohol regularly report better quality of life before and after surgery. Older adults (aged 60 or older) who consume potentially unhealthy amounts of alcohol report significantly better mobility, self-care and fewer problems undertaking daily activities after surgery compared to their peers who abstain from alcohol or drink at very low levels.

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Abbott Nutrition restarts baby formula production in reopened Michigan plant. The company said it will restart the production of EleCare, a formula for children who struggle to digest other products, along with other specialty and metabolic formulas. Abbott aims for an initial EleCare product release around June 20 and is working to meet guidelines to resume production of Similac and other formulas.

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Miscellany:

Birthdays:

1892 - Donald F. Duncan Sr., founder of Duncan Toys Company, who popularized the yo-yo. (d. 1971)
1936 - Levi Stubbs, American soul singer; lead vocalist of the Four Tops (d. 2008) (Video)
1947 - Robert Englund, American actor; best known for Nightmare on Elm Street

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On this date in:

1816 - Snow fell in Albany, New York and Dennysville, Maine, part of a "year without a summer" which followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year.
1844 - The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was formed by Sir George Williams in London
1892 - The Chicago "L" elevated rail system began operation.
1932 - The Revenue Act of 1932 was enacted, creating, among other things, the tax on gasoline in the United States (one cent per US gallon)
1933 - The first drive-in theater opened in Camden, New Jersey.
1934 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
1942 - The United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway.
1944 - D-Day: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, the largest seaborne invasion in history began.
1968 - Robert F. Kennedy died from gunshot wounds inflicted by assassin Sirhan Sirhan 25 hours earlier.
1971 - Final broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS.
1978 - TV news magazine "20/20", premiered on ABC.
1984 - The first playable version of the videogame Tetris was produced.
1991 - NBC announced Jay Leno would succeed Johnny Carson as host of "The Tonight Show".

Today is:

Atheist Pride Day, Drive-in Movie Day, National "Thank God It's Monday" Day, National Applesauce Cake Day, National Churro Day, National Eyewear Day, National Gardening Exercise Day, National Higher Education Day, National Hunger Awareness Day, National Yo-Yo Day (see Donald F. Duncan Sr., above), and Russian Language Day.

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Comments and observations:

It doesn't matter how rich you get or how much stuff you have.. there's only ever one junk drawer per home.
-Elayne Boosler

The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to stop electing other bad guys.
-George Takei

If there's a special place in Hell for women who don't help other women, there's a super special place for Amy Coney Barrett.
-Middle Age Riot

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Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

Categories: Alcohol, Baby formula, Bees, Blake Masters, Childbirth, Conspiracy Theorists, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Gas Prices, Great Replacement, Guns, Kyle Rittenhouse, Louie Gohmert, Racism, Recalls, Supplements

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It's so hard to find workers that employers have essentially stopped firing people.

Florida high school raffles off rifles, handguns... "It's all about the kids."
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Published Thursday, June 02, 2022 @ 11:13 AM EDT

Jun 02 2022

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Florida high school raffles off rifles, handguns. "It's all about the kids."

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"We're playing with fire": US Covid cases may be 30 times higher than reported. About one in five - 22% - of adult New Yorkers likely had Covid between 23 April and 8 May, according to the preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed or published. That would mean 1.5 million adults in the city had Covid in a single two-week period - far higher than official counts during that time.

Also, Vaccines reduce risk of long Covid by just 15 percent, study finds. While existing vaccines are great for preventing serious cases, they aren't as good at preventing long Covid.

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About 200 years ago, the world started getting rich. Why?

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US Senator Margaret Chase Smith's "Declaration of Conscience" was delivered on this date in 1950. Senator Smith stood up against Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin and his supporters, who were running roughshod over American democracy. Too bad there are no Republicans like her today.

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To argue against gun control, Lauren Boebert Notes that "We didn't ban planes" after 9/11.

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Could quantum mechanics be responsible for the Mandela effect? While the conventional explanation is that humans are simply bad at (mis)remembering events, some argue that parallel universes could be at play.

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Scientists have established a key biological difference between psychopaths and normal people. A new study has shown that psychopathic people have a bigger striatum area in their brain.

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America's last Howard Johnson's restaurant has closed Open for most of the past 70 years, the restaurant was located in Lake George, New York, a popular summer vacation spot near the Adirondack Mountains.

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'Nose-bleed virus' spread by ticks kills 18 in Iraq and is spreading Formally known as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, it causes rapid and severe internal and external bleeding, including through the nose. It has been detected in 120 people in Iraq since January and at least 18 people have died so far.

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Miscellany:

Birthdays:

1941 - Stacy Keach, American acto
1948 - Jerry Mathers, American actor ("Leave it to Beaver")
1953 - Cornel West, American philosopher, author, and academic
1955 - Dana Carvey, American comedian and actor
1972 - Wayne Brady, American actor, comedian, game show host, and singer
1977 - Zachary Quinto, American actor and producer
1978 - Justin Long, American actor
1979 - Morena Baccarin, Brazilian-American actress
1982 - Jewel Staite, Canadian actress

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On this date in:

1953 - The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey became the first British coronation and one of the first major international events to be televised. (video)
1962 - Ray Charles' cover of Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You", from his influential crossover album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" hit #1 on Billboard
1990 - The Lower Ohio Valley tornado outbreak spawned 66 confirmed tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, killing 12

Today is:

American Indian Citizenship Day
I Love My Dentist Day
National Bubba Day
National Leave the Office Early Day
National Moonshine Day
National Rocky Road Day
National Rotisserie Chicken Day

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Researchers accidentally discover why male mice are scared of the smell of bananas

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Comments and observations:

The top 396 stupidest quotes from NRA convention-goers after America's latest child massacre

Republicans think it's a good idea to give teachers less money, more students, fewer books, fewer resources, more parents in the classroom, more standardized tests, more scrutiny, more pressure, and a gun.
-Middle Age Riot

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A very powerful video:

Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

Categories: Covid-19, Florida, Guns, History, Howard Johnson's, Lauren Boebert, Mandela Effect, Nose-bleed virus, Parallel Universes, Psychopaths, Quantum mechanics, Second Amendment, Unemployment, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wealth

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Republicans Blast Canada for insanely responding to gun violence by banning guns. (Andy Borowitz)

Second amendment, coffee, autopay, Covid, Smallpox, Monkeypox, DNA, DuPont
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Published Tuesday, May 31, 2022 @ 2:50 PM EDT

May 31 2022

Second Amendment
(Steve Cousineau)

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Canada moves to freeze handgun sales, buy back assault-style weapons. "We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

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We clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America is getting Heller wrong. In the summer of 2008, the Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to gun ownership. Scalia's majority opinion expressly recognized "presumptively lawful" regulations such as "laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," as well as bans on carrying weapons in "sensitive places," like schools, and it noted with approval the "historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.'" Heller also recognized the immense public interest in "prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill." (free New York Times article)

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The good for you/bad for you coin toss for this week involves coffee. Chinese researchers say a seven-year study suggests coffee drinkers are less likely to die of cancer and heart disease. As John Collins observes, "By substituting your morning coffee with green tea, you can reduce up to 88% of what little joy you had left."

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Nine bills you should never put on autopay. TL;DR: You really don't have much of a choice for some of them; part of the customer agreement requires automatic payment.

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You are going to get COVID again... and again... and again. ..."best guess for the future has the virus infiltrating each of us, on average, every three years or so." Also, the air at the gym may be more likely to spread COVID. Honestly, me catching COVID at a gym is something I never worry about. It's about as likely as me catching an STD from (insert name of currently reigning sex goddess).

Also, "That's just part of aging": Long COVID symptoms are often overlooked in seniors. Though it affects them at higher rates, older adults with long COVID have received little attention.

Some good(?) news:

The vaccine used to protect against monkeypox is the same used against smallpox, which was eradicated from the planet (except in government biowarfare labs) in 1980. Will the vaccine I received 60-some years ago protect me? Eh, maybe... Also, Britain urges people with monkeypox to abstain from sex as cases rise.

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Changing our DNA: 'The age of human therapeutic gene editing is here'

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DuPont: The most evil business in the world. Better living through chemistry? Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)) is poisonous. (video) More info on PFOA, which persists indefinitely in the environment. Also, a report by John Oliver.

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Miscellany:

Random automotive trivia:

Only 18% of Americans can drive a stick shift, and just 5% of new cars have manual transmissions
Only 4% of a car's lifetime is spent driving
Whale oil was used in some car transmissions until 1973
A $1 million speeding fine was issued to a Mercedes SLS driver in Switzerland for doing 180 in a 70 zone. (Fines are proportional to the driver's income)
There are 1.446 billion cars on the planet, roughly 1 for every 5.5 people
A modern car contains about 30,000 parts
75% of all Rolls Royces ever made are still on the road
A car is stolen in the U.S. every 45 seconds
The best selling car of all time is the Toyota Corolla. 44 million have been sold, and a new one is sold every 40 seconds
In 1900, 38% of cars were electric, 40% were steam, and 22% were gasoline powered

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Birthdays: Clint Eastwood is 92; Brooke Shields is 57; Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul, and Mary) is 84; Sharon Gless (Cagney & Lacey) is 79; Joe Namath is 79; and Leah Thompson (Back to the Future) is 61.

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On this date in:

1911, the RMS Titanic was launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1971, in accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occured on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.
1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was completed and everything's been hunky dory since then.
1985, 41 tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead. It remains largest and most intense tornado outbreak ever to hit this region, and the worst tornado outbreak in Pennsylvania history in terms of deaths and destruction.
2013, a record breaking 2.6 mile wide tornado with winds of 296 mph (476 km/h) struck El Reno, Oklahoma, causing eight fatalities and over 150 injuries.

Today is:

National Autonomous Vehicle Day, National Macaroon Day, National Meditation Day, National Smile Day, Necrotizing Fasciitis Awareness Day, Save Your Hearing Day, Speak in Complete Sentences Day, What You Think Upon Grows Day, World No Tobacco Day, and World Parrot Day.

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Comments and observations:

"Do you wonder about the people who think COVID vaccines are useless but that single-door schools are effective?"
-Preet Bharara

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Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

Categories: Andy Borowitz, Canada, Coffee, Covid-19, DNA, DuPont, Gene Editing, Justin Trudeau, Monkeypox, SCOTUS, Second Amendment, Smallpox, Supreme Court, Teflon

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Sgt. Pepper; Fails: news, pay, pharmacists, PA House, memory, dinos, burgers, viruses, Abbott, Trump
(permalink)

Published Thursday, May 26, 2022 @ 7:54 PM EDT

May 26 2022

Take us to your lobbyists

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We're off on Monday, Memorial Day. Have a great weekend! See you Tuesday.

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It was 55 years ago today.... (May 26, 1967)

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Baseless anti-trans theory about Uvalde shooting spreads online, touted by U.S. congressman. The photos that social media users are claiming show the shooter are actually of three different transgender women wearing skirts. Somehow related: 329 years later, last Salem 'witch' who wasn't is pardoned.

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CEO pay rose 17% in 2021 as profits soared. How else can they pay for their gasoline? (Average workers gained 4.4%; inflation is 7%.)

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Your pharmacist might be permanently out to lunch. Pharmacists in America are struggling, and many are leaving the profession. Over the next ten years, it is estimated that America will see a nationwide decline of at least two percent of its pharmacists, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

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Pennsylvania House votes against taking up gun bill after Texas killings. "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between."-James Carville

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FDA-approved drug could combat middle-aged memory loss. GoodRx says the current formulation, currently approved for treating HIV, costs a little under $500/mo on average.

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Most dinosaurs were warm-blooded after all. So you can cross that one off your list.

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The photographic evidence presented in a lawsuit over fast-food burger sizes. I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked. If I ever received a burger that actually looked like on in the ads, I'd be suspicious.

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Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back- and behaving in unexpected ways. The pandemic-induced disruption of normal mixing patterns means we have far less recently acquired immunity... we haven't been generating the levels of antibodies that would normally be acquired through regular exposure.

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Trump must answer questions under oath in New York AG probe into business practices, appeals court says. The ruling noted that the Trumps at their depositions could invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions.

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Does the second amendment actually give you the right to own a gun?

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Like many Republicans, Governor Greg Abbott calls Texas school shooting a mental health issue, yet in April he slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs. Texas ranked last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia for overall access to mental health care, according to the 2021 State of Mental Health in America report.

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Why humans get less sleep than other primates. No cable tv. Also, we're measuring captive primates, not wild animals. How well could you sleep in a zoo? Related: Insomnia sufferers in England now have a prescription alternative to pills. Drilling down: An app that promotes sleep hygiene.

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The mystery of why so many lifelong smokers never get lung cancer may be solved. It's all in the genes.

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Tweets, observations, and diversions:

Stevie Nicks is 74 today and Pam Grier is 73.

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Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

Categories: Cancer, Covid-19, Dinosaurs, Donald Trump, FDA, Greg Abbott, Income inequality, McDonald's, Memory Loss, PA House, Pharmacists, Primates, Salem Witch Trials, Second Amendment, Sgt. Pepper, Sleep, Smoking, Uvalde school shooting, Viruses, Wendy's

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Belgium becomes first country to introduce mandatory monkeypox quarantine as global cases rise.

Monkeypox, Covid, bird flu, Southern Baptists, Sleep, Drew Carey, Joan Collins, Monty Python
(permalink)

Published Monday, May 23, 2022 @ 4:18 PM EDT

May 23 2022

White Supremacy

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Jif peanut butter is being recalled for potential salmonella contamination. The FDA noted that the peanut butter has a two-year shelf life so consumers should check any Jif peanut butter already in their home.

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Economist Jeffrey Sachs presents evidence of possible lab origin of Covid-19. An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calls for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of Covid.

Also, As avian influenza spreads in birds, conspiracy theories about the disease infect the internet. ...users are questioning whether the virus is a bioweapon, suggesting it's a ploy by Bill Gates, and claiming a TV interview with a former CDC director offers proof that the disease outbreaks were planned or that the flu news was designed to scare people. None of which is true.

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Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims and resisted reforms over concerns of "potential liability," a third-party report alleges.

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Have we been getting sleep all wrong? Eight hours a day is a myth. Embracing our individual sleeping patterns could be the key to a better night's rest. (Favorite observation about sleep from someone on Facebook: "Sleep is death without the commitment.")

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Drew Carey is 64 today.

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Joan Collins is 89 today.

(Star Trek was filmed at Desilu, as was The Andy Griffith show. This scene was actually shot on the latter show's Mayberry main street. Note Floyd's Barber Shop in the background.)

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There are more Airbnb rentals than available apartments in New York City. The total number of short-term rentals of entire homes in the city's five boroughs- those listed on Airbnb Inc. and Expedia Group Inc.'s Vrbo- is more than 13,000, according to third-party data tracker AirDNA. Meanwhile, rental inventory in Manhattan, Brooklyn and a portion of Queens hovers just over 7,500, according to an April report from broker Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

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Tweets, observations, and diversions:

If you think free speech is defined by your ability to be an asshole without consequence, you don't understand free speech (but you remain an asshole).

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On this day in 1969, the BBC ordered 13 episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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When racists say "I have Black friends," they mean Herschel Walker.
-Middle Age Riot

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My mother insists she's not going to make it through the end of this year, despite the fact she's in better shape than I am and her doctor describes her condition as excellent.

I took her shopping today and she bought some vitamins- a buy one, get one free deal. I pointed out that buying vitamins seemed kind of pointless based on her calculated life expectancy, and getting an extra bottle was really overshooting her self-proclaimed anticipated end date.

She was not amused.

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Gubernatorial comes from the Latin gubernator, which means governor. Gubernator is derived from gubernare, which means to steer or govern.

Given the current state of the country, gubernator sounds more accurate than governor. Only it should be spelled goobernator.

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Friends and patients of the late Lawrence J. Nelson, MD... A memorial will be held Sunday, June 12 at noon at the George Irvin Green Funeral Home, 3511 Main Street, Munhall.

Categories: Airbnb, Bird Flu, Covid-19, Drew Carey, FDA, First Amendment, Free Speech, Jif Peanut Butter, Joan Collins, Monkeypox, Monty Python, Sleep, Southern Baptists

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'Stuck with the bill': How Florida insurance companies going under leaves buyers out to dry.

Past taxes, monkeypox, cat parasites, She-Hulk, meteor storms, Florida, first strikes, egads...
(permalink)

Published Thursday, May 19, 2022 @ 7:09 PM EDT

May 19 2022

No formula, AR-15s

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We're late today for good reason....

So I get a certified letter from my local township claiming that I and my late first wife owe back wage taxes for several years beginning in the year 2000. 2000!? Even an inveterate packrat like myself doesn't have income tax returns from 22 years ago. For that matter, I don't even remember what I had for breakfast. Suffice it to say this could be painful. Interesting fact you should keep in mind: there's no time limit on collecting past-due taxes if you didn't file a tax return for the year(s) in question. So make certain you always file. I don't ever remember not filing, so it looks like I'm spending the weekend in the garage going through cartons of old files. I've scanned everything from about 2005 onward, and I can find just about any document from that time period in a maximum of an hour. I was going to scan the old stuff, but I thought "seven years is enough," as the experts tell us. Ugh.

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Rare monkeypox outbreak in U.K., Europe and U.S.: What is it and should we worry? Good news: Masking not required.

Speaking of icky things, The parasite that controls cat minds may infect billions of people. The clue is in their eyes. Toxoplasma gondii, is probably the most successful parasite in the world today. This microscopic creature is capable of infecting any mammal or bird, and people across all continents are infected. Once infected, a person carries Toxoplasma for life. So far, we don't have a drug that can eradicate the parasite from the body. And there is no vaccine approved for use in humans. Across the world, it's estimated 30-50% of people are infected with Toxoplasma.

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Disney+ releases new trailer for Marvel's 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law'. Disney says, 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law' follows the main character as she "navigates the complicated life of a single, 30-something attorney who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered hulk." And unlike Cartoon Network's 'Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law,' it looks like they're serious, more or less. Disney destroyed Star Wars; looks like their ongoing implosion of Marvel is proceeding on schedule.

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May 31st could be the most powerful meteor storm in generations, or nothing at all. "Welcome to the wonderful world of meteor shower predictions and prognostications."

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Interesting history: George Wallace, the angry White populist who paved the way for Trump.

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Ukrainian medic is captured after documenting war. Harrowing and heartbreaking footage. No one has seen or heard from her since her capture.

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The long-term care dilemma: Who will take care of you? Medicare won't. My 95-year-old mother took out a long-term care policy 30 years ago, only to discover she's to "healthy" to get any benefits from it. I guess the solution is to not get old.

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Russia's Deputy Prime Minister, Yuri Borisov, has said that Russia cannot launch a first nuclear strike. "According to our doctrine, according to our strategy, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation would use a nuclear strike only in retaliation. According to the doctrine, we would not be the first to attack. Now, don't you feel better?

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TOKYO (AP) - The money was supposed to be COVID-19 assistance for low-income households in a small Japanese town, but it was mistakenly wired to a bank account of a resident who refused to return it and spent most of it on online gambling, police said.

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So what else is new? Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to baselessly suggest mail-in ballots were fraudulent in Pennsylvania, where his chosen Senate candidate Dr Mehmet Oz is locked in a tight battle with former hedge fund executive David McCormick.

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Egads.

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Tweets, observations, and diversions:

"The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine."
-Former President George W. Bush

Madison Cawthorn has just written that "the time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end."
-Michael Beschloss

The House has passed a bill to crack down on price gouging at gas stations by a vote of 217-207. Every single republican voted NO.
-Brian Tyler Cohen

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In case you didn't notice, KGB Report is now Monday-Thursday. Have a great weekend. See you on the 24th.

Categories: Aging (Ageing), Covid-19, Disney+, Donald Trump, Doug Mastriano, Florida, Gambling, George Wallace, Insurance, Mehmet Oz, Meteors, Monkeypox, Nuclear weapons, She-Hulk, Taxes, Toxoplasma gondii, Ukraine, Yuri Borisov

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Dolly Parton honors Dan Rather for fighting 'disinformation'.

Columbo, Cable, Covid, UFOs, Cats, Depp, Demented Ideology
(permalink)

Published Tuesday, May 17, 2022 @ 5:03 PM EDT

May 17 2022

Frank
Apparently, Columbo's first name was Frank.

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"Basic cable is so important for so many reasons. Without basic cable, there'd be no 24-hour news, no reality television, and there'd be no Shark Week. Where would we be as a culture?"
-Doug Herzog

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US deaths from COVID hit 1 million, less than 2 1/2 years in. The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It's as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

Also: How often can you be infected with the coronavirus? The spread of the Omicron variant has given scientists an unsettling answer: repeatedly, sometimes within months. A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body's defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year- this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.

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On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools were otherwise equal in quality.

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Verizon wireless plan bills getting more expensive with new 'economic adjustment charge'. The advertised pricing of Verizon's actual plans will stay the same, but it will begin adding a new "economic adjustment charge" to your bill every month. (Why doesn't the FTC go after this as false advertising?)

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From a congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena, watch new videos released by the Department of Defense and highlights from officials' testimony. The truth is out there?

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Did cats really disappear from North America for seven million years? My guess is the little bastards were hiding.

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Three scenarios for how Putin could actually use nukes. Here's how to think about the unthinkable.

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Why we're doomed: America more interested in Depp-Heard trial than abortion. On a per-article basis, the trial has dwarfed all other major topics in the news.

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Craig Ferguson is 60 today.

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The devil they know: Why the Big Four broadcasters are canceling fewer shows. As broadcast nets become starting points in a cross-platform ecosystem, rather than the stand-alone entities they long were, staying with proven (or at least familiar) programming makes sense: Networks can still draw eyeballs to on-air shows that people know so well, and recognizable library titles help bolster affiliated streaming services. Outside of having NFL rights, that's as much of a win-win as the shrinking linear TV world can provide.

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A racist theory may have driven the Buffalo tragedy. The Murdochs thrive on it. The demented ideology flows from many sources. One of them is Fox News.

The Right's embrace of racist replacement theory is both dangerous and dumb:

Tweets, observations, and diversions:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "The greatest choice a woman can make is becoming a mother."
So... it IS a choice.
-Middle Age Riot

The formula shortage is an example of how free market capitalism does exactly what right wing fear-mongers think socialism will do.
-Bess Kalb

Freedom isn't owning 25 rifles, it's going to the grocery store and not having to worry about being killed by one.
-Kevin Sixx

Categories: Cable TV, Cats, Columbo, Covid-19, Dan Rather, Dolly Parton, Fox News, Lawrence O'Donnell, Nuclear weapons, Rachel Maddow, Replacement Theory, Rupert Murdoch, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Supreme Court, Tucker Carlson, TV, UAPs, UFOs, Ukraine, Verizon, Vladimir Putin

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Six fully vaccinated people who attended an outdoor wedding caught the Delta variant, but people with Pfizer and Moderna shots survived, study says.

Black Widow slays, Covid surges, Delta to Lambda, Domino's secrets, don't Mr. Clean your teeth
(permalink)

Published Tuesday, July 13, 2021 @ 12:25 AM EDT

Jul 13 2021

'Black Widow' Stunner: Disney's streaming revenue reveal may be game-changer. It takes something really major to get me into a movie theater these days.

It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu.

FDA adds warning about rare reaction to J&J COVID-19 vaccine.

The 'Lambda' variant is now found in 29 countries. Here's what we know about it. Lambda? What about Epsilon through Kappa?

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From Crazytown:

Fox News hosts smear Covid vaccine, despite outbreaks among unvaccinated.

With Covid surging, GOP members continue to discourage vaccination. (Video)

Don Jr. bombs at CPAC as crowd cheers low vaccination rates: A Closer Look. (Video)

Neighbors see Trump waiting by mailbox for reinstatement notice. "When the mail truck comes, he gets this excited look on his face." (Satire: Andy Borowitz)

Student charged with putting Hitler quote in school yearbook.

Allen Weisselberg removed as officer of Trump Organization subsidiaries.

A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God's authority, and is central to Donald Trump's GOP. They forget about that pesky U.S. Constitution: "...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Article VI, paragraph 3). It's the only place in the entire Constitution where the word "ever" appears, so the founders were pretty clear on their intent, no?

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1832 - The source of the Mississippi River was discovered by American geographer Henry Schoolcraft
1863 - New York City draft riots: In New York City, opponents of conscription began three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.
1865 - Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the "New-York Tribune" reportedly told his readers to "Go west, young man"
1871 - World's first championship cat show was organized by Harrison Weir and held at the Crystal Palace in London.
1917 - A vision of the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to children in Fatima, Portugal
1923 - The Hollywood Sign was officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywoodland" but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.
1955 - The last execution of a woman in Britain, Ruth Ellis, took place at Holloway Prison, London
1960 - Democrats selected John F. Kennedy as their nominee for President.
1973 - Watergate scandal: Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a secret Oval Office taping system to investigators for the Senate Watergate Committee
1977 - An electrical blackout in New York City lasted nearly 24 hours, contributing to widespread fires and looting.
2013 - Black Lives Matter movement created in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Birthdays

1864 - John Jacob Astor IV, American businessman and soldier (richest passenger aboard the Titanic) (d. 1912)
1913 - Dave Garroway, American journalist and television personality (d. 1982) (Video)
1926 - Robert H. Justman, American director, producer, and production manager ("Star Trek")(d. 2008) (Video)
1928 - Bob Crane, American actor (d. 1978) (Video)
1940 - Sir Patrick Stewart, English actor, director, and producer (Video)
1941 - Robert Forster, American actor and producer (d. 2019) (Video)
1942 - Harrison Ford, American actor and producer (Video)
1946 - Cheech Marin, American actor and comedian (Video)
1951 - Didi Conn, American actress and singer (Video)
1957 - Cameron Crowe, American director, producer, and screenwriter (Video)

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Miscellany

Can mankind be unified by an extra-terrestrial threat? The reaction to Covid has shown that the 'unity through crises' model of the global ruling class has backfired. Moot point. Any advanced civilizations monitoring us know to avoid us.

Duh. TikTok trend of whitening teeth with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is not safe, dentists say.

8 secrets Domino's doesn't want you to know.

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Categories: Allen Weisselberg, Black Widow, Christians, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Fox News, Marvel, Republicans, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert

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Infections rise in 42 states; Fauci says it's 'horrifying' to see people cheer lack of vaccinations.

Shark week, rich guys in space, fake news, divinely empowered entities immune from laws
(permalink)

Published Monday, July 12, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jul 12 2021

In case you missed it, a play-by-play of the Virgin Galactic flight hosted by Stephen Colbert.

This pizza chain owner who pays $16 an hour says there's no labor shortage, just a shortage of businesses willing to pay a decent wage. "If you aren't paying your employees enough to cover basic survival costs, what possible incentive could a person have to take that job?"

Last week's fake news: Graphene in vaccines, fake delta variant, kneeling Biden, veteran snub...

How did my phone number end up for sale on a US database? Ah, the wonders of technology. And social media.

Cold weather virus in summer baffles docs, worries parents. RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a common cause of cold-like symptoms but can be serious for infants and the elderly. Cases dropped dramatically last year, with people staying home and social distancing, but began cropping up as pandemic restrictions eased.

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From Crazytown:

Trump on Jan. 6 insurrection: 'These were great people'.

Trump wins 2024 CPAC straw poll With 70 percent. (Video)

A seven point plan to reinstate Donald Trump as president 'in days, not years' was handed out at CPAC. It's insane, but constitutional. Sort of.

A Pennsylvania woman who allegedly stormed the Capitol and told a police officer to "bring Nancy Pelosi out here now... we want to hang that f***ing bitch" has filed court documents claiming to be a divinely empowered entity immune from laws.

"F--k him": Rupert Murdoch reportedly made the call to bury Trump's election night dreams in a shallow grave.

Heineken suffers Twitter boycott from anti-vaxxers over disco-themed pro-vaccination ad.

Trump sues eighty-one million voters for banning him from White House.(Satire: Andy Borowitz)

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

This is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. (Video)

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1804 - Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton died after being shot in a pistol duel by Vice President Aaron Burr
1862 - The Medal of Honor was authorized by the United States Congress.
1906 - Alfred Dreyfus was found innocent in France
1909 - Congress passed The Sixteenth Amendment (Amendment XVI) to the United States Constitution allowing it to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population.
1940 - Frederick McKinley Jones received a patent for an air conditioning unit for trucks carrying perishable goods. He later co-founded Thermo King
1960 - The Etch a Sketch toy was introduced, selling for $2.99
1972 - Democrats nominated George McGovern for US president in Miami, Florida
1973 - A fire destroyed the entire sixth floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States near St. Louis, MO.
1976 - First "Family Feud" game show debuted on ABC hosted by Richard Dawson (Video)
1979 - "Disco Demolition Night" at Comiskey Park: fans riot destroying disco records and causing the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game of a double header to the Detroit Tigers
1984 - Geraldine Ferraro became the first US female major-party vice-presidential candidate, after Walter Mondale selected her as his Democratic Party running mate

Birthdays

100 BC - Julius Caesar, Roman politician and general (d. 44 BC)
1817 - Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet, and philosopher (d. 1862)
1854 - George Eastman, American businessman, founded Eastman Kodak (d. 1933)
1884 - Louis B. Mayer, Russian-born American film producer, co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (d. 1957)
1895 - Buckminster Fuller, American architect and engineer, designed the Montreal Biosphère (d. 1983)
1895 - Oscar Hammerstein II, American director, producer, and songwriter (d. 1960)
1908 - Milton Berle, American comedian and actor (d. 2002)
1909 - Joe DeRita, American actor (Curly-Joe of The Three Stooges) (d. 1993)
1917 - Andrew Wyeth, American artist (d. 2009)
1934 - Van Cliburn, American pianist and composer (d. 2013) (Video)
1937 - Bill Cosby,American actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter
1943 - Christine McVie, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Video)
1948 - Ben Burtt, American director, screenwriter, and sound designer ("Star Wars") (Video)
1948 - Richard Simmons, American fitness trainer and actor (Video)
1951 - Cheryl Ladd, American actress
1978 - Michelle Rodriguez, American actress

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Miscellany

Unopened Legend of Zelda game from 1987 sells for $870,000.

Giant pandas are no longer endangered, thanks to conservation efforts, China says. But they're still "vulnerable."

Colby would be official Wisconsin cheese under bill.

Holding up on that wake-up coffee until the cortisol wears off...

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Categories: Covid-19, Donald Trump, Fact check, Fox News, January 6, Medicine, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Shark Week, Social Media, Stephen Colbert, Unemployment, Virgin Galactic

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"Fleet of 10 UFOs" spotted hovering near International Space Station on NASA live stream.

Shortage of workers, patio furniture; Covid resurgence; UFOs, lightning, and grasshoppers, oh my!
(permalink)

Published Thursday, July 08, 2021 @ 1:16 AM EDT

Jul 08 2021

(KGB Report will return on Monday, July 12.)

Job openings in restaurants and hotels were slightly higher in May while the number of people quitting jobs in those places also inched up, to just over 700,000. Overall, 3.6 million people quit their jobs in May. That's down from a record four million in April but still a high level of turnover.

There's a shortage of patio furniture. Really.

Earth may not be in any danger from asteroids. Chinese researchers to use rockets to deflect them. At China's National Space Science Center, researchers found in simulations that 23 Long March 5 rockets hitting simultaneously could deflect a large asteroid from its original path by a distance 1.4 times the Earth's radius.

17 tips to live comfortably off just a Social Security check. These articles are written by kids in their 20s who don't fully appreciate the potential effects of what they're suggesting. One's perspective is a bit different when you reach the age that classic radio stations start playing "oldies" first released when your kids were in high school.

New UC Berkeley study suggests cell phones sharply increase tumor risk. Researchers took a comprehensive look at statistical findings from 46 different studies around the globe and found that the use of a cell phone for more than 1,000 hours, or about 17 minutes a day over a ten year period, increased the risk of tumors by 60 percent.

Pandemic Potpourri:

Moderna starts human trials of an mRNA-based flu shot. Moderna says it hopes to eventually create combination vaccines that could protect people against flu, COVID-19, and other respiratory infections with one shot.

About 160 Covid-19 infections are linked to a Texas church youth camp- including cases of the Delta variant. Of the roughly 160 people infected, six (about 3.7%) had been vaccinated.

COVID and the brain: researchers zero in on how damage occurs.COVID and the brain: researchers zero in on how damage occurs. Also: Fitbit data points to lingering physical changes for some Covid-19 sufferers. On average, it took 79 days for the elevated resting heart rate of people with covid-19 symptoms to drop back to normal, the study found.

Delta variant slams Missouri as ICUs fill and ventilators run low. This should probably be in the "Crazytown" section. As Alex Haley said, "Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you." (More reality quotes)

Amid uptick in cases, Oklahoma sees high hospital admission rate for COVID-19 patients. Across the state, nearly 28% of people who have had a positive COVID-19 test in the last two weeks were admitted to hospital...

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From Crazytown:

Trump sues Twitter, Facebook, Google and CEOs Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai. The three related lawsuits, filed in federal court in Florida, allege the tech giants have violated plaintiffs' First Amendments rights. Of course, if Trump or his lawyers had actually read the Constitution, he'd know the First Amendment only addresses the government infringing upon speech, not social networks whose user agreements you violated by inciting an insurrection. Anyway, he's using it as another fundraising ploy.

Ivanka Trump is probably next on the chopping block: former federal prosecutor. Experts say the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is likely looking into "consulting fees" paid to Ivanka despite her having been a full-time employee of the Trump Organization.

Book says Trump praised Hitler during same trip that he disparaged U.S. war dead.

Giuliani's law license in Washington suspended.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1776 - Church bells (possibly including the Liberty Bell) were rung after John Nixon delivered the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States
1797 - Senator William Blount of Tennessee was expelled by the Senate and became the first US federal official to face impeachment.
1889 - The first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published.
1889 - John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain in 75 rounds in the last championship bare-knuckle boxing match.
1932 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.
1994 - Kim Jong-il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.
2011 - Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

Birthdays

1838 - Eli Lilly, American soldier, chemist, and businessman, founded Eli Lilly and Company (d. 1898)
1838 - Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and businessman, founded the Zeppelin Airship Company (d. 1917)
1839 - John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company(d. 1937)
1908 - Nelson Rockefeller, American businessman and politician, 41st Vice President of the United States (d. 1979)
1914 - Billy Eckstine, American singer and trumpet player (d. 1993)
1926 - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and author (d. 2004)
1930 - Jerry Vale, American singer (d. 2014)
1934 - Marty Feldman,English actor and screenwriter (d. 1982) (Video)
1935 - Steve Lawrence, American actor and singer
1944 - Jeffrey Tambor, American actor and singer
1947 - Kim Darby, American actress (Video)
1949 - Wolfgang Puck, Austrian-American chef, restaurateur and entrepreneur
1951 - Anjelica Huston, American actress and director
1952 - Jack Lambert, American football player and sportscaster
1958 - Kevin Bacon, American actor and musician (Video)

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Miscellany

Wanna delay aging? Get castrated, scientists say. "It's not an ideal solution." Ya think?

Beating a literally dead horse: 'Night of the Animated Dead' to adapt zombie classic. I maintain George Romero's original 1968 classic is the only zombie movie you need to see. Everything else is egregiously derivative.

Grasshoppers invade western US in largest swarms in 35 years, plaguing farmers and ranchers.

More than 710,000 lightning strikes in Western Canada in 15 hours as unprecedented heatwave and wildfires hit British Columbia and Alberta.

12-foot python escapes inside Louisiana's largest mall.

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Categories: Adolf Hitler, Astronomy, Climate change, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Economics, Health, NASA, Rudy Giuliani, Social Security

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More than 230 people die in shootings over the Fourth of July weekend.

Shootings, sugar, shrinkflation, stop putting garlic up your nose
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, July 07, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jul 07 2021

Up to 1,500 businesses affected by ransomware attack, U.S. firm's CEO says.

Study links early-onset colorectal cancer with sugar-sweetened drinks. (Video)

Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine is less effective at preventing Delta variant infections (64%) than other variants (94.3%), but still protects against severe illness, preliminary Israeli study says.

The U.S. military is testing a pill that could delay aging.

Beware of "shrinkflation,"" inflation's devious cousin. "Consumers tend to be price conscious. But they're not net-weight conscious. They can tell instantly if they're used to paying $2.99 for a carton of orange juice and that goes up to $3.19. But if the orange juice container goes from 64 ounces to 59 ounces, they're probably not going to notice."

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From Crazytown:

Qufos

QAnon followers think secret trials will be held for COVID rule enforcers- 'Nuremberg 2.0'.

QAnon spreads Biden photo online claiming it shows Trump is secretly in the White House.

The Trump kids look likely to turn on their dad... Ivanka will go first. The former president is not in immediate danger of jail, but his problems are piling up fast. Not least the fact that, in his family, loyalty means nothing.

GETTR, the pro-Trump social media platform, gottrd hacked on its launch day.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1456 - A retrial verdict acquitted Joan of Arc of heresy 25 years after her death.
1863 - The United States began its first military draft; exemptions cost $300.
1865 - Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt were executed for their role in the conspiracy to assassinate US President Abraham Lincoln
1907 - Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. staged his first Follies on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.
1928 - Sliced bread was sold for the first time (on the inventor's 48th birthday) by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.
1930 - Construction begins on Boulder (Hoover) Dam
1954 - Elvis Presley made his radio debut when WHBQ Memphis played his first recording for Sun Records, "That's All Right". (Video)
1981 - US President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States.
1992 - The New York Court of Appeals ruled that women have the same right as men to go topless in public.
2035 - Launch date of NASA's Aries 3 mission to Mars in the novel and movie "The Martian"

Birthdays

1860 - Gustav Mahler, Austrian composer and conductor (d. 1911) (Video)
1899 - George Cukor, American director and producer (d. 1983) (Video)
1901 - Sam Katzman, American director and producer (d. 1973)
1906 - Satchel Paige, American baseball player and coach (d. 1982)
1907 - Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer and screenwriter (d. 1988) (Video)
1927 - Doc Severinsen, American trumpet player and conductor (Video)
1933 - David McCullough, American historian and author
1940 - Ringo Starr, English singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor (Video)
1949 - Shelley Duvall, American actress, writer, and producer (Video)
1963 - Vonda Shepard, American singer-songwriter and actress (Video)
1966 - Jim Gaffigan, American comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter

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Miscellany

Remembering Richard Donner: With "Superman" and the "Lethal Weapon" Films, he made the blockbuster era both bigger and smaller. Trivia: Donner directed all the live action segments of the first season of Hanna-Barbera's kid show, "The Banana Splits."

Please stop putting garlic up your nose on TikTok, doctors request.

Man bitten by neighbor's escaped python while sitting on the toilet. Why was the python sitting on the toilet?

Labor Department announces plans to stop counting jobs and just enjoy economy.(satire: The Onion)

Charlotte flight to Bahamas canceled when high schoolers refuse to wear masks.

There is a sunken continent hidden under Iceland and scientists dubbed it Icelandia. Other Iceland news: Four-day work week 'an overwhelming success' in Iceland.

Time to cancel police dogs, experts say. Police K-9s are "grossly, disproportionately" used against people of color, inflict gruesome lifelong injuries, and often attack people who have committed minor crimes. I oppose their use because the dogs are unaware of the danger in which they're often placed. To them, it's just a game.

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Categories: Covid-19, Dogs, Fact check, Health, Inflation, Mass shootings, QAnon, Ransomware, Richard Donner, UFOs

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Bill Cosby was set free because of a deal he made with a DA who went on to represent Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Cosby out, Weisselberg in, Rummy dead, Trump ranks #41, oldest living man
(permalink)

Published Thursday, July 01, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jul 01 2021

Trump Organization and its CFO indicted by Manhattan grand jury, report says. The indictments against the organization and Weisselberg will stay sealed until Thursday afternoon, the report said. The Post also reported, citing sources, that Weisselberg is expected to surrender Thursday morning. Many are expecting Weisselberg to flip on Trump.

Dozens of people have died in Canada amid an unprecedented heat wave that has smashed temperature records. Before Sunday, temperatures in Canada had never passed 45°C (113°F). Canada broke its temperature record for a third straight day on Tuesday - 49.6°C (121.3°F) in Lytton, British Columbia.

California wildfire grows to 13,000 acres, threatens marijuana farms.

Unexpected pandemic effects: 'Great Resignation' gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect. 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs, and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com. So much for the too much government unemployment benefits theory. Detail via NextDraft. "People are forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw." (Turnover is a way of life; the average job tenure for hourly food service workers is less than two months...)

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has died at the age of 88. Guess you could say Rummy's passed on that great known unknown.

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From Crazytown:

Inside gun-surrendering criminal Mark McCloskey's very sad St. Louis rally. "Noted local criminal Mark McCloskey played host to a barbecue/political rally on Sunday afternoon, drawing tens of admirers to the sweltering parking lot of a closed outlet mall in St. Louis County to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the time he pulled a gun on a crowd of people who otherwise would never have noticed or cared he existed. Despite the fact that none of the big names who had been billed to speak at the June 27 event showed up, and despite the fact that ticket sales were so dismal attendance was opened to the public for free at the last minute, St. Louis' most gun-surrendering lawyer plowed right ahead with the First Annual Pink Shirt Guy BBQ and RINO Roast in the St. Louis Mills parking lot. Grievance and untethered delusion topped the menu at the event, with McCloskey and a roster of speakers largely unknown outside the fever swamps of the far right taking turns condemning everything from critical race theory (their newest and most nonsensical bogeyman) to "cultural Marxism" (George Soros' fault of course, but how dare you level accusations of antisemitism) to the "radical left" agenda of (hahahahaha) Joe Biden. The whole gun-and-pony show was in service of McCloskey's deeply stupid run for U.S. Senate, because if there's one thing that qualifies a man for public office in the Republican party in 2021 it's a willingness to point a firearm at those with whom you disagree politically."

Trump debuts at 41st in C-SPAN presidential rankings. This survey marks Trump's first appearance on the list, on which the one-term president placed higher than only three other presidents: Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and the perpetually last-ranked James Buchanan. Barack Obama moved up to the number 10 spot.

The 2024 GOP Presidential campaigns are already staring. And they're insane (video).

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

July is Bank Account Bonus Month, Cell Phone Courtesy Month, Cord Blood Awareness Month, Hitchhiking Month, Horseradish Month, Independent Retailer Month, Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Month, Lasagna Awareness Month, Lost Pet Prevention Month, Minority Tourism Month, National Anti-Boredom Month, National Baked Bean Month, National Bison Month, National Blueberry Month, National Cleft & Craniofacial Awareness & Prevention Month, National Culinary Arts Month, National Doghouse Repairs Month, National Family Reunion Month, National Hemp Month, National HIV Awareness Month, National Hot Dog Month, National Ice Cream Month, National Park and Recreation Month, National Peach Month, National Picnic Month, National Water Gardening Month, Plastic Free July, Sarcoma Awareness Month, Unlucky Month for Weddings, UV Safety Awareness Month, Wild About Wildlife Month, World Watercolor Month, and Worldwide Bereaved Parents Awareness Month.

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1846 - Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone
1836 - Congress accepted the estate from an heir of British scientist James Smithson that was eventually used to create the Smithsonian Institution
1863 - The Battle of Gettysburg began
1867 - The British North America Act took effect as the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia joined into confederation to create the modern nation of Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada. This date is commemorated annually in Canada as Canada Day, a national holiday
1870 - The United States Department of Justice formally came into existence
1881 - The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States
1903 - Start of first Tour de France bicycle race
1908 - SOS was adopted as the international distress signal
1931 - United Airlines began service (as Boeing Air Transport)
1931 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty became the first people to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engined monoplane aircraft
1957 - The International Geophysical Year began
1963 - ZIP codes were introduced for United States mail
1979 - Sony introduced the Walkman. By 2010, when production stopped, Sony had built about 200 million cassette-based Walkmans.
1984 - The PG-13 rating was introduced by the MPAA in response to the gore and violence in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Birthdays

1869 - William Strunk Jr., American author and educator (The Elements of Style) (d. 1946)
1892 - James M. Cain, American author (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity) and journalist (d. 1977)
1899 - Charles Laughton, English-American actor and director (d. 1962) (Video)
1902 - William Wyler, French-American film director (Wuthering Heights, Jezebel, Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur) , producer and screenwriter (d. 1981) (Video)
1906 - Estée Lauder (née Josephine Esther Mentzer), American businesswoman, co-founded the Estée Lauder Companies (d. 2004)
1916 - Olivia de Havilland, British-American actress (d. 2020) (Video)
1920 - Harold Sakata, Japanese-American wrestler and actor (Goldfinger) (d. 1982) (Video)
1931 - Leslie Caron, French actress and dancer (Video)
1934 - Jamie Farr, American actor (M*A*S*H) (Video)
1934 - Sydney Pollack, American actor, director and producer (d. 2008)
1935 - David Prowse, English actor (Darth Vader) (d. 2020)
1939 - Karen Black, American actress (d. 2013) (Video)
1941 - Twyla Tharp, American dancer and choreographer
1942 - Geneviève Bujold, Canadian actress
1945 - Debbie Harry (b. Angela Trimble), American singer-songwriter and actress (Video)
1952 - Dan Aykroyd, Canadian actor, producer and screenwriter (Video)
1960 - Evelyn "Champagne" King, American soul/disco singer (Video)
1961 - Diana, Princess of Wales (b. Diana Frances Spencer) (d. 1997)
1967 - Pamela Anderson, Canadian-American model and actress

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Miscellany

It's so dry in California right now that drinking water is literally tasting like dirt.

112-year-old Puerto Rican dubbed world's oldest living man.

Ocala (Florida) Fire Chief whose ex-wife went on naked rampage at Outback, fired for creating uncomfortable work environment.

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Categories: Allen Weisselberg, Bill Cosby, Climate change, Covid-19, Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Trump, Environment, Florida, Mark McCloskey, Unemployment

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Hotter than the human body can handle: Pakistan city broils in world’s highest temperatures (126°F) (Video)

Collapses, shortages, excess heat, Democratic burritos, hailstone margaritas
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, June 30, 2021 @ 12:17 AM EDT

Jun 30 2021

Condo owners in Surfside building were facing assessments for $15 million worth of repairs. Payments were set to begin a week after the building's deadly fall.

Gas stations are running out of gas ahead of the holiday weekend. It's the shortage of tank truck drivers coupled with rising demand that is causing supply chain bottlenecks and shortages. Experts say a growing number of stations are reporting that they are simply not able to get gas delivered- at any price.

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From Crazytown:

70 percent

Blame Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices. (Video)

Out-of-practice Trump forgets to strand rally crowd in parking lot. (Andy Borowitz)

What underlies the G.O.P. commitment to ignorance? Closed-mindedness and ignorance have become core conservative values, and those who reject these values are the enemy, no matter what they may have done to serve the country.

Trump Organization sues New York City for closing golf course after January 6 riots. That could be a big mistake.

Tucker Carlson says 'Biden administration is spying' on him. The television personality offered no additional evidence to support his claim, which drew scrutiny from several users on social media.

Giuliani son gets no votes from Republican leaders in bid for New York governor. Andrew Giuliani, who has traded off his surname, embarrassed by poll that indicates Lee Zeldin will challenge Andrew Cuomo.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1892 – Actions culminating in the Homestead Strike began
1905 – Albert Einstein sent the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, in which he introduced special relativity, for publication in Annalen der Physik
1908 – The Tunguska Event, the largest impact event on Earth in human recorded history, results in a massive explosion over Eastern Siberia. (Video)
1938 - Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics series issue #1
1953 – The first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. (Video)
1966 – The National Organization for Women, the United States' largest feminist organization, was founded.

Birthdays

1901 - Willie Sutton, American bank robber (d.1980)
1917 – Susan Hayward, American actress (d. 1975)
1917 – Lena Horne, American actress, singer, and activist (d. 2010) (Video)
1930 - Thomas Sowell, American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician and author (d. 1997) (Video)
1942 - Robert Ballard, American professor explorer and discoverer (wrecks of the Titanic, Bismarck, and USS Yorktown)
1943 – Florence Ballard, American pop/soul singer (The Supremes)(d. 1976)
1956 – David Alan Grier, American actor, singer, and comedian
1959 – Vincent D'Onofrio, American actor (Video)
1966 – Mike Tyson, American boxer and actor (Video)
1985 – Michael Phelps, American swimmer

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Miscellany

A record-breaking hailstone fell near San Antonio. A bigger one went into margaritas.

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Categories: Climate change, Covid-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Environment, Fox News, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Shortages, Superman, Surfside collapse, The Big Lie, Tucker Carlson

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Cicadas, reining in the crazy, nun embezzlement, Jesus gets an accountant
(permalink)

Published Thursday, June 10, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jun 10 2021

Reporters traveling to the United Kingdom for President Joe Biden's first overseas trip were delayed seven hours after their chartered plane was overrun by cicadas.

(Video) Rachel Maddow: GOP succeeds in wasting Democrats' time in power. You would think they would have learned something from the Obamacare debacle.

Jobless in PA livid over new unemployment system errors as state declares victory. When's the best time to migrate to a new system using an entirely different platform and paradigm? Probably not during a pandemic with a record number of claimaints. Duh.

Susan Collins sad that Joe Manchin has replaced her as most annoying Senator. "It's only fitting that the baton be passed to an obscure senator from West Virginia," she said. (Andy Borowitz)

Biden disliked Putin before it was cool. For more than 20 years, Joe Biden has questioned Vladimir Putin's true intentions.

US to buy 500 million Covid vaccine doses for world. But let's draw the line at free beer and lottery tickets, ok?

San Francisco may be first major US city to hit herd immunity, experts say. City still recording small number of Covid cases per day but they don't appear to be triggering wider outbreaks.

From Crazytown:

Trump returns as a diminished TV draw. Not having the nuclear codes kind of diminishes the drama, I guess...

QAnon at a crossroads: leaders try to rein in the crazy. With Q silent and Trump out of office, QAnon's heroes are trying to pump the brakes on the right's most popular nutty conspiracy theory.

'5G towers,' other conspiracies flourish at hearing on vaccine bill. "They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick, because now we think there's a metal piece to that. There's been people who have long suspected that there was some sort of an interface, yet to be defined interface, between what's being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers." (Video)

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1692 - Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop was hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries".
1752 - Benjamin Franklin tested the lightning conductor with his kite-flying experiment
1845 - Andrew Jackson's African Grey parrot "Poll" was removed from his funeral for swearing at The Hermitage, Tennessee. Funeral attendee William Menefee Norment recorded: "Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house
1847 - The Chicago Tribune began publishing.
1854 - The United States Naval Academy graduated its first class of students.
1924 - first political convention broadcast on radio (Republicans at Cleveland)
1935 - Dr. Robert Smith (Doctor Bob) took his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio.
1947 - Saab produced its first automobile.
1964 - United States Senate broke a 75-day filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill's passage.
1966 - The Mamas and the Papas win a gold record for "Monday, Monday" (Video)
1974 - "Feel Like Makin' Love" single released by Roberta Flack (Video)

Birthdays

1886 - Sessue Hayakawa, Japanese actor (The Bridge on the River Kwai) and producer (d. 1973) (Video)
1895 - Hattie McDaniel, American actress (Gone with the Wind)(d. 1952) (Video)
1915 - Saul Bellow, Canadian-American novelist, essayist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)
1918 - Barry Morse, English-Canadian actor and director (d. 2008) (The Fugitive, Space: 1999) (Video)
1921 - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (d. 2021)[
1922 - Judy Garland, American singer, actress, and vaudevillian (d. 1969) (Video)
1928 - Maurice Sendak, American author and illustrator (d. 2012) ("Where the Wild Things Are") (Video)
1929 - James McDivitt, American general, pilot, and astronaut (Gemini 4, Apollo 9)
1933 - F. Lee Bailey, American criminal defense attorney (Sam Shepard; Boston Strangler; Patty Hearst; OJ Simpson)(d. 2021)
1949 - Kevin Corcoran, actor (Swiss Family Robinson, Babes in Toyland), born in Santa Monica, California (d. 2015) (Video)
1959 - Eliot Spitzer, American lawyer and politician, 54th Governor of New York (Video- Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer)
1965 - Elizabeth Hurley, English model, actress, and producer
1968 - Bill Burr, American comedian and actor (Video)

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Miscellany

Rio de Janeiro's Christ statue: 'Thou shalt not bribe'. The Rio branch of the international accounting firm KPMG has signed an agreement with the administration of the Sanctuary of Christ the Redeemer to ensure operations are aboveboard.

Retired nun will plead guilty to stealing more than $835K from Catholic school ...to "pay for expenses that the order would not have approved, much less paid for, including large gambling expenses incurred at casinos and certain credit card charges..."

"Not a good day to get tacos..."two Florida men flying to get tacos when their small plane went down in the Everglades."

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Categories: Andy Borowitz, Cicadas, Clergy, Computers, Congress, Covid-19, Democrats, Donald Trump, Florida, Jesus, Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, QAnon, Rachel Maddow, Republicans, Susan Collins, Vladimir Putin

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An anti-vaccine film targeted to black Americans spreads false information

Martian watermelons, rich untaxed, beware the Delta Variant, they broke the Internet
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, June 09, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jun 09 2021

New York Times: Fields of watermelons found on Mars, police say. Authorities say rise of fruit aliens is to blame for glut of outer space watermelons. Oops.

The secret IRS files: trove of never-before-seen records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax. In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world's richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row. The reaction? Biden administration investigates 'illegal' leak of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett's tax information.

Beware the Delta Variant. A new and deadlier variant of Covid-19 may cause another wave this summer among the unvaccinated and those who only received the first shot.

Fastly outage: why it just broke Amazon, Reddit, Twitch and much of the internet. As Corinne Cath-Speth, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute pointed out on Twitter, this means "a technical hiccup in a single company can have huge ramifications." Here's an more detailed and mostly non-technical explanation of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) (Video).

And if that wasn't bad enough, CyberNews reported that an anonymous forum poster uploaded a 100GB text file containing 8.4 billion entries of passwords.

Global crime bust involving U.S., 15 other nations nabs hundreds, drugs, cash. Authorities worldwide have arrested hundreds of suspects connected to organized crime after decrypting messages sent over an FBI-controlled smartphone application popular with the criminal underworld.

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From Dementialand:

Rejecting Biden's win, rising Republicans attack legitimacy of elections. The next generation of aspiring G.O.P. congressional leaders has aggressively pushed Donald Trump’s false fraud claims, raising the prospect that the results of elections will continue to be challenged through 2024.

How America fractured into four parts. People in the United States no longer agree on the nation's purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims. Donald Trump called Joe Biden a "mental retard" during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.

QAnon supporter who chased Capitol police officer says he was deceived by 'pack of lies'. His attorney said he "fell victim to this barrage of internet sourced info" and came to the Capitol at the urging of former President Trump to "demonstrate that he was a 'true patriot.'"

Wisconsin ex-pharmacist gets prison for ruining vaccine. A former pharmacist in Wisconsin who purposefully ruined more than 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday. He is an admitted conspiracy theorist who believes he is a prophet and vaccines are a product of the devil. He also professed a belief that the Earth is flat and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were faked.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

68 - Roman emperor Nero committed suicide, after quoting Vergil's Aeneid, thus ending the Julio-Claudian dynasty and starting the civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors.
1856 - Five hundred Mormons left Iowa City, Iowa for the Mormon Trail.
1934 - first appearance of Donald Duck in the cartoon, "The Wise Little Hen".
1954 - Joseph Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashed out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" (Video)
1958 - "The Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley hit #1 in the U.S. (Video)
1959 - The USS George Washington was launched, the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. (Video)
1973 - Secretariat (March 30, 1970 - October 4, 1989) won the U.S. Triple Crown. He still holds the fastest speed records in all three races.
1980 - Comedian Richard Pryor suffered burns from freebasing cocaine. (NSFW Video)
1989 - "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" premiered in USA. This was the one directed by Shatner. The less said the better.

Birthdays

1672 - Peter the Great, Russian emperor (d. 1725)
1891 - Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (d. 1964) (Video)
1910 - Robert Cummings, American actor, singer, and director (d. 1990) (Video)
1915 - Les Paul, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2009) (Video)
1916 - Robert McNamara, American businessman and politician, eighth United States Secretary of Defense (d. 2009)
1922 - John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Anglo-American pilot and poet (d. 1941); author of the poem "High Flight."
1930 - Marvin Kalb, American educator and newscaster (CBS/NBC, Meet the Press)
1931 - Jackie Mason, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter
1934 - Jackie Wilson, American singer-songwriter (d. 1984) (Video)
1961 - Michael J. Fox, Canadian-American actor, producer, and author
1961 - Aaron Sorkin, American screenwriter, producer, and playwright
1963 - Johnny Depp, American actor
1981 - Natalie Portman, Israeli-American actress

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Miscellany

Hartlepool's monkey statue
(Sky News)

Hartlepool's monkey statue to be given 'explanatory sign' to avoid offending visitors. Unless you're a visitor from France: "Legend states that the animal was the only survivor of a shipwreck off the northeast coast of England and because the villagers had never seen a monkey before, they mistook it for a Frenchman and convicted it of being a spy."

Las Vegas woman crushes three watermelons in 7.5 seconds for world record. Olson used her thighs to smash three watermelons in 7.5 seconds, nearly halving Ukrainian bodybuilder Olga Liashchuk's Guinness World Record of 14.65 seconds.

I really wasn't planning to, but here's another good reason: FDA issues warning not to eat cicadas if you're allergic to seafood. The insects share a family relation to shrimp and lobsters.

South African woman gives birth to decuplets. A South Africa woman who was expecting eight babies is believed to be a new record holder after she gave birth to 10 infants.

Categories: Covid-19, Cybercrime, Donald Trump, Internet, IRS, January 6, QAnon, Republicans, Taxes, The Big Lie

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No shirts, pants or undies needed on bike ride, just a mask.

Manchin madness, McDonald's AI, caffeine danger, lab leak theory
(permalink)

Published Tuesday, June 08, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jun 08 2021

Manchin's opposition clouds future of Dems' elections bill. "Voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen," Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote. But how can you have bipartisan support when one of the parties has dedicated itself to subverting the democratic process?

CO₂ concentration levels hit record high, show no impact from pandemic. Although carbon emissions fell 17 percent globally in spring 2020, they were on the rise again by September, with research from the World Meteorological Organization indicating they fell only a net 6.4 percent last year.

McDonald's is testing Siri-style AI technology at drive-thrus. Reminds me of the joke Jay Leno made when the chain announced it would start using robots in their kitchens: "You just know these were the robots that weren't smart enough to work for NASA."

Five ways to keep your brain sharp as you age. I'm certain one of them should be avoiding cable news.

Fact check: Video falsely presents joke as confession to QAnon blood-harvesting conspiracy theory. I'm no longer wondering - a large portion of our population is insane.

I just want to point out that "Who is the President of the United States?" is a question they ask people to tell if they are sane.
-Paula Poundstone

Warning: high caffeine consumption may increase risk of blinding eye disease. It works out to about three or four cups of coffee per day. Swell.

Frozen in siberian permafrost for 24,000 years, microscopic animal comes back to life. Gee, what could go wrong?

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the fight to uncover Covid-19's origins. State Department investigators say they were repeatedly advised not to open a "Pandora's box."

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1789 - James Madison introduced twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress. Ten were eventually adopted, known as the Bill of Rights.
1887 - Herman Hollerith received a patent for his punch card calculator.
1912 - Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures.
1949 - George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
1964 - Jan and Dean released the single "The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)". (Video)
1966 - the National Football League and American Football League announced a merger effective in 1970.
1968 - Gary Puckett and Union Gap released "Lady Willpower". (Video)
1979 - "The Source," the first computer public information service, went online.
1984 - the film "Ghostbusters" was released. (Video)
1988 - Nippon Airways announced that painting eyeballs on jets cut bird collisions by 20%.

Birthdays

1867 – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, designed the Price Tower and Fallingwater (d. 1959).
1910 – John W. Campbell, American science fiction writer and editor (d. 1971).
1918 – Robert Preston, American captain, actor, and singer. (Video)
1925 – Barbara Bush, American wife of George H.W. Bush, 41st First Lady of the United States (d. 2018)
1927 – Jerry Stiller, American actor, comedian and producer (d. 2020) (Video)
1933 – Joan Rivers, American comedian, actress, and television host (d. 2014). (Video)
1940 – Nancy Sinatra, American singer and actress. (Video)
1951 – Bonnie Tyler, Welsh singer-songwriter. (Video)
1955 – Tim Berners-Lee, English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Miscellany

UK commandos fly over the sea with new jet pack. It's the 21st century. This is way overdue.

Putin says he has no intention of reinstating Trump. "I think if I were planning to put Trump back in power, I would know about it,"" the visibly annoyed Putin said. (Andy Borowitz)

The average home goes through 2,184 pounds of laundry a year — the weight of an adult black rhinoceros. Kids may be a large part of the reason why. The average child goes through three outfits on a typical day.

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Caffeine, Coffee, Covid-19, Environment, Joe Manchin, McDonald's, QAnon, Voting

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"A new inauguration date is set": Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy theory to "reinstate" Trump.

Shortages explained, more QAnon lunacy, the return of Arthur Treacher.
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, June 02, 2021 @ 10:20 AM EDT

Jun 02 2021

Why there are so many shortages. (It's not Covid-19.)

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Flynn says he didn't endorse Myanmar-style coup after he appears to back plan in video exchange. Are these people not aware of the existence of video recording technology?

An Amazonian tribe may have discovered the secret to keeping the brain from aging. Some secret... good diet, exercise. Just once I'd like it to be some indigenous plant that can be synthesized in a home kitchen.

The pandemic is getting worse, even when it seems like it's getting better.

Contrary to earlier research, Vitamin D may not protect against COVID-19.

Remember Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips? It's coming back.

You have a week to opt-out of Amazon Sidewalk. Do it now. "If the idea of sharing part of your network with the neighbors is totally fine with you, please consider the fact that Amazon is a company of liars who cannot be trusted."

After 75,000 Echo arbitration demands, Amazon now lets you sue it. The change apparently was brought about by a surge in arbitration demands over revelations that Amazon's Echo devices were sometimes recording and saving conversations without consent, including those involving children. Those recordings allegedly ran afoul of laws in several states that require consent before recording and data collection.

Humans are causing mass extinction at a rate not seen since the last major extinction event. A new study suggests that we are entering a period of mass extinction comparable to the one 66 million years ago.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is American Indian Citizenship Day, Global Running Day, I Love My Dentist Day, National Bubba Day, National Leave the Office Early Day, National Rocky Road Day, National Rotisserie Chicken Day, National Tailors' Day, and Yell "Fudge" at the Cobras in North America Day.

Birthdays

1740 – Marquis de Sade, French philosopher and politician (d. 1814)
1937 – Sally Kellerman, American actress
1941 – Stacy Keach, American acto
1944 – Marvin Hamlisch, American composer and conductor (d. 2012)
1948 – Jerry Mathers, American actor ("Leave it to Beaver")
1953 – Cornel West, American philosopher, author, and academic
1955 – Dana Carvey, American comedian and actor
1972 – Wayne Brady, American actor, comedian, game show host, and singer
1977 – Zachary Quinto, American actor and produce
1978 – Justin Long, American actor
1979 – Morena Baccarin, Brazilian-American actress
1982 – Jewel Staite, Canadian actress

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(Grandma and Edie, 1972)

My paternal grandmother, Esther Schotting, passed away on this date in 1979. She and my grandfather raised me for the most part; they and the late Earle Wittpenn are mainly responsible for the person I am today. I remember her watching me as I walked home from elementary school in the afternoon, or crossing Eighth Avenue to go to Isaly's or McCrory's. She was always at a window, always looking for me.

In her last years, when I was changing buses to go to my job in Pittsburgh, she was there in the window in the apartment on Ann Street. I probably looked like an idiot, waving in the dark to no one visible. But I knew she was there.

The only time I ever saw my grandmother in a church was when I got married. She claimed she was an "old-time Baptist" and liked listening to Mahalia Jackson records and watching Billy Graham on the tv.

The local Baptist minister graciously agreed to conduct her service. I was holding up pretty well, until he ended his eulogy to a woman he never met with a poem by Margaret Widdemer that precisely described her:

She always leaned to watch for us,
Anxious if we were late,
In winter by the window,
In summer by the gate.

And though we mocked her tenderly,
Who had such foolish care,
The long way home would seem more safe
Because she waited there.

Her thoughts were all so full of us,
She never could forget!
And so I think that where she is
She must be watching yet.

Waiting till we come home to her,
Anxious if we are late,
Watching from Heaven’s window,
Leaning on Heaven’s gate.

Categories: amazon.com, Arthur Treacher, Covid-19, Donald Trump, QAnon

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Samuel E. Wright, voice of Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid, dead at 74. (Video)

Signs of the Apocalypse, QAnon and UFOs, traditional values
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, May 26, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

May 26 2021

Signs of the Apocalypse, #913. Game over, man. It has begun...

(Another link if video is missing.)

Signs of the Apocalypse, #914. Almost as scary- you don't need to be Douglas Trumbull or Jim Cameron to pull this off. Just about anyone can do this with easily obtainable software.

New grand jury seated for next stage of Trump investigation. Nope. Not gonna get excited. Been burned before...

Even worse: Arizona's Secretary of State 'stripped' of duties after criticizing election audit.

Republicans worried blind worship of Trump overriding traditional values like blind worship of Reagan. (The Onion)

Trumpland: QAnon crowd convinced UFOs are a diversion from voter fraud. "They want you talking about aliens because they don’t want you talking about Maricopa," Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson tweeted. You know things are bad when the story about the UFOs is true.

Social media heavyweights wooed for Pfizer smear campaign. Social media influencers in France with hundreds of thousands of followers say a mysterious advertising agency offered to pay them if they agreed to smear Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine with negative fake stories.

Germany gives greenlight to driverless vehicles on public roads. Germany has adopted legislation that will allow driverless vehicles on public roads by 2022, laying out a path for companies to deploy robotaxis and delivery services in the country at scale. While autonomous testing is currently permitted in Germany, this would allow operations of driverless vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel.

Missed opportunity: Tom Hanks, a life-long Star Trek fan, almost played Zefram Cochrane in "Star Trek: First Contact."

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is National Blueberry Cheesecake Day, National Cherry Dessert Day, National Paper Airplane Day, National Senior Health & Fitness Day, Sally Ride Day, World Dracula Day, World Lindy Hop Day, World Product Day, and World Redhead Day.

Events:

1647 - Alse Young was the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies
1805 - Lewis and Clark see the Rocky Mountains for the first time.
1828 - Mysterious feral child Kaspar Hauser is discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg
1868 – The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal by one vote.
1896 – Charles Dow published the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
1897 – Dracula by Bram Stoker was published in London.
1927 – The last Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
1967 – The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in the UK. (Video)
1975 - Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy single was released. (Video)
1978 - first legal gambling casino opened in Atlantic City.

Birthdays

Isadora Duncan (b. Angela Isadora Duncan, May 26, 1877 – September 14, 1927)
Al Jolson (b. Asa Yoelson, c. 1885 – October 23, 1950)
John Wayne (b. Marion Robert Morrison, May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979)
Jay Silverheels (b. Harold Jay Smith, May 26, 1912 – March 5, 1980)
Peter Cushing (May 26, 1913 – August 11, 1994)
Peggy Lee (b. Norma Deloris Egstrom, May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002)
James Arness (b. James King Aurness, May 26, 1923 – June 3, 2011)
Miles Davis (b. Miles Dewey Davis III, May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991)
Dr. Jack Kevorkian (b. Murad Jacob Kevorkian May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011)
Stevie Nicks (b. Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks, May 26, 1948)
Pam Grier (b. Pamela Suzette Grier, May 26, 1949)
Sally Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012)
Bobcat Goldthwait (b. Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait, May 26, 1962
Lenny Kravitz (b. Leonard Albert Kravitz, May 26, 1964)
Helena Bonham Carter (b. May 26, 1966)

Cartoon: National Holiday

Delusional

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We're taking an extended Memorial Day holiday and will resume on Tuesday, June 1.

Categories: Arizona, Cartoons, Covid-19, Deep Fakes, Donald Trump, Jim Carrey, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Signs of the Apocalypse, Star Trek, The Big Lie, Tom Hanks

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John Oliver humiliates local TV stations with 'sexual wellness blanket' sponsored content.

Way too much stuff happened on this date
(permalink)

Published Tuesday, May 25, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

May 25 2021

Wow... lots of things happened on May 25:

1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born;
1878, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera "H.M.S. Pinafore" opened at the Opera Comique in London;
1921, Hal David was born;
1925, John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching human evolution in Tennessee;
1926, Claude Akins was born;
1929, Beverly Sills was born;
1936, Tom T. Hall was born;
1939, Sir Ian McKellen and Dixie Carter were born;
1943, Leslie Uggams was born;
1944, birth of Frank Oz;
1947, Karen Valentine was born;
1955, birth of Connie Selleca;
1960, Amy Klobuchar was born;
1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced, before a special joint session of the US Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. (video);
1962, The Isley Brothers release "Twist and Shout" (video) ;
1963, birth of Mike Myers;
1968, The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri was dedicated;
1969, "Midnight Cowboy" was released and Anne Heche was born;
1970, Octavia Spencer was born;
1977, the original "Star Wars" movie premiered (without the Episode IV-A New Hope subtitle);
1979, "Alien" debuted;
1983, "Return of the Jedi" hit theaters;
1986, The Hands Across America event took place;
1990, Vic Tayback died;
1992, Jay Leno became host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno";
2001, the first Towel Day;
2007, Charles Nelson Reilly died;
2011, the last episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" aired; (video)
2017, "Wonder Woman" was released;
2020, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota during an arrest.

Five years ago today:

"Donald Trump is now ahead of Hillary Clinton in the polls. This was reported today in the Washington Post and 2,000 years ago in the Book of Revelations."
-Conan O'Brien

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The Havana Syndrome first affected spies and diplomats in Cuba. Now it has spread to the White House. US officials suspect Russian spies are aiming microwave radiation devices at targets to collect intelligence from their computers and cell phones. Brain frying is just collateral- not intentional- damage.

re: spies: Jeff Bezos, a real-life Bond villain, may own James Bond very soon. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon's recently rumored plans to acquire MGM have taken a major step forward, in a roughly $9 billion deal that is one of the e-commerce giant's largest acquisitions.

re: wealth: Wikipedia is swimming in money— why is it begging people to donate? The site is way richer than it wants you to know.

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Why is Anthony Fauci hedging on the origins of the coronavirus? Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory. Nah. It was the takeout pangolin nuggets they got from Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

The 2021 vaccination map looks like the 2020 election map. The scary thing is if something that can save a lot of lives has fallen into the usual political traps, then pretty much anything can.

Speaking of scary things: Once nearly extinct, the Florida panther is making a comeback. Not as scary and aggressive as the Florida cougar.

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Republicans claim January 6th rioters were middle schoolers on field trip. (Andy Borowitz satire)

Senate GOP misrepresents Jan. 6 riot panel. (Associated Press; not satire, alas.)

cartoon: What Insurrection?

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Body of missing man found inside dinosaur statue. While police have not confirmed how he got inside, local media reports that the man dropped his phone inside the statue and was trying to retrieve it, BBC News reports. He fell inside, hanging upside down, and was unable to call for help.

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A mysterious rise in methane levels is sparking global warming fears.

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US warns against all travel to Japan as Olympics loom. The State Department's warning, which followed the CDC alert, was more blunt. "Do not travel to Japan due to COVID-19, it said in the announcement, which raised the department's travel alert from Level 3 — Reconsider travel — to Level 4 — Do not travel. The previous alert was issued on April 21.

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"I assume the person who first said 'to coin a phrase' said it twice in a row."
-The Covert Comic

Categories: Andy Borowitz, Anthony Fauci, Covert Comic, Covid-19, Cuba, Florida, Havana Syndrome, James Bond, January 6, Japan, Jeff Bezos, John Oliver, May 25, MGM, Olympics, Republicans

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This guy bought a fake COVID-19 vaccine card on Etsy.

Mr. T, UFOs, volcanoes, hurricanes, brainless sleep
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Published Friday, May 21, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

May 21 2021

"You pity the fool because you don't want to beat up a fool. You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won't have to beat him up. So that's why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don't know no better. That's why I pity them."
-Mr. T (b. Lawrence Tureaud is 69 today.)

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Reality Checks:

YouTube termintated the "Truth About Vaccines" channel. The channel had about 75,000 subscribers but some of its videos had a much broader reach, including one that had over 1.5 million views and featured Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a prominent voice in the anti-vaccine movement.

Vax and scratch... New York offers $5M lottery for newly vaccinated. Why not? It appears to work.

When your company is named Covid, you've heard all the jokes. "You know, we get a lot of customers who always want to come up with our new taglines ... 'Covid, we had it first.' Or 'The only thing that's contagious is our quality.' We get all kinds of jokes from people. And a lot of people call and they talk to us and they just, 'can you believe that?' And you just smile a little bit and say, 'yeah,' and you just tell some of the stories that's happened because of it. But, yeah, it's OK."

Hundreds of PPP loans went to fake farms in absurd places. An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like "Deely Nuts" and "Beefy King."

QAnon believers see Trump's mounting legal troubles as part of 'the plan.' "Do you think they realize how much MOAR powerful Trump will be after being falsely arrested?"

The myth of labor shortages. One of the few ways to have a true labor shortage in a capitalist economy is for workers to be demanding wages so high that businesses cannot stay afloat while paying those wages. But there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the U.S. economy does not suffer from that problem. If anything, wages today are historically low.

They have been growing slowly for decades for every income group other than the affluent. As a share of gross domestic product, worker compensation is lower than at any point in the second half of the 20th century. Two main causes are corporate consolidation and shrinking labor unions, which together have given employers more workplace power and employees less of it.

Former President Obama on UFOs: "What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are, we can't explain how they moved... And The Onion has a summary of what's in the Pentagon report on UFOs, including the revelation that most UFOs were acquired by United Airlines in 1998 as part of a $7 billion merger. Also: How to talk about the Pentagon's UFO report without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

111-year-old Australian recommends eating chicken brains. Of course he does.

Kevin McCarthy proposes removing January 6th from month of January. (Andy Borowitz)

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Nature:

Alaskan volcano may erupt... Due to low-level volcanic ash emissions and the detection of explosion signals, scientists at the USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) have upgraded the color code and alert level at the Semisopochnoi volcano. Semisopochnoi is the easternmost land location in the United States and North America, located just 9.7 miles west of the 180th Meridian in Alaska. (It's eastern because it extends beyond the International Date Line.)

U.S. government forecasts above-normal 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. They predict 3-5 major hurricanes, six to ten moderate hurricanes, and ten to 14 tropical storms. A storm expected to form off Bermuda this week.

Sleep evolved before brains. Sleep affects metabolism pervasively in the body, suggesting that its influence is not exclusively neurological.

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Researchers are restarting a DNA study of the remains of Christopher Columbus to try to settle the question of his nationality. Given his drop in popularity, one has to wonder if this is so the Italians can blame the Portugese.

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Ford's F-150 pickup truck has been the best-selling vehicle in America for decades. A $40K all-electric version may help push the transition away from internal combustion engines. In the meantime, a semiconductor chip shortage has halted production of the F-150, Bronco Sport, and others.

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Federal authorities have seized 68 big cats from an animal park in Oklahoma featured in Netflix's "Tiger King" citing recurring inhumane treatment and improper handling of animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.

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Colonial Pipeline paid hackers $4.4 million to restore its computer systems. In the old days before the Internet, companies who needed to network computers did so by obtaining dedicated leased lines from the telephone company. While expensive, it makes hacking from outside sources far more difficult, since breaking into a system requires actual physical access to the circuit connecting the sites or to a system directly connected to the private network. Also, systems providing essential services should be isolated from the public Internet. (I guess some executives never saw the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Also, cybercrime is now a major industry- with its own trading markets and even CSR.

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Senators expected to announce deal on US Postal Service reform. It would eliminate the absurd law that required the postal service to pre-pay $5 billion a year in mandatory retiree health care benefits, and require future retirees to enroll in Medicare.

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"I hate everybody including you." The art of saying "no."

Categories: Andy Borowitz, Barack Obama, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Mr. T, QAnon, The Big Lie, UFOs, Unemployment, YouTube

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Covid-19 vaccines do not contain magnetic microchips.

Cockroaches and Cher, reality check, Charles Grodin
(permalink)

Published Thursday, May 20, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

May 20 2021

"I've come back so many times. Someone once told me that after World War III, the only things that will still be around are cockroaches and Cher."
-Cher (Cher is 75 today. Born Cherilyn Sarkisian on May 20, 1946)

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On this date in 2015, David Letterman, after 33 years on late night, hosts the "Late Show with David Letterman" for the last time.

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Reality check:

Trump fans claim their ballots were fed to chickens. And then the chickens were incinerated to destroy the evidence.

A state senator in Texas falsely claimed at a hearing that animal tests were "stopped" because the "animals were dying" and that "they didn’t do the human testing."

QAnon revives America's "Satanic Panic."

Arizona's election audit is worse than you think.

This IRS letter isn't a scam, and you should keep it.

A fungus is pushing cicada sex into hyperdrive and leaving them dismembered.

New York's probe into Trump Organization is now a criminal inquiry.

House approves January 6 commission over GOP objections. Lawmakers passed the bill in a 252-175 vote, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support. Of course, unless ten GOP senators go along, it's an exercise in futility.

An amazing photo of a west Texas thunderstorm.

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Pittsburgh's Charles Grodin (April 21, 1935 – May 18, 2021) was valedictorian of his class at Peabody High School and was elected class president all four years. An accomplished actor, I remember him mainly from his many appearances as a talk show guest with an attitude:

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The World Health Organization says overworking is a major killer worldwide. So I'm outta here.

Categories: Arizona, Charles Grodin, Cher, Conspiracy Theorists, Covid-19, Donald Trump, IRS, January 6, Johnny Carson, QAnon, The Big Lie, The Tonight Show, Weather, World Health Organization

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Jimmy Kimmel gently tells MyPillow's Mike Lindell he thinks Lindell's old crack habit made him paranoid.

Rudy raided, Bugs Bunny, Betty White, assorted potential catastrophes...
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Published Friday, April 30, 2021 @ 1:56 AM EDT

Apr 30 2021

Feds raid Giuliani's home, office, escalating criminal probe. Federal agents raided Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan home and office Wednesday, seizing computers and cellphones in a major escalation of the Justice Department's investigationin a major escalation of the Justice Department's investigation into the business dealings of former President Donald Trump's personal lawyer.

America is running low on chicken. Blame covid-19, a sandwich craze and huge appetite for wings.

Turn up the thermostat. living or working in a cool environment for extended periods can lower core body temperature. That decreases metabolic rate – how fast we burn calories – and commonly causes weight gain.

On the other hand... Phoenix could become uninhabitable due to climate change. Also, Declassified satellite images show glaciers are melting faster than ever

The link between 'The West Wing' and Biden's address. Viewers notice remarkable similarity to a plan set out by Martin Sheen's character in long-running political drama.

Flu has disappeared worldwide during the COVID pandemic. The public health measures that slow the spread of the novel coronavirus work really well on influenza.

FDA moves to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars. "Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products," Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement. "With these actions, the FDA will help significantly reduce youth initiation, increase the chances of smoking cessation among current smokers, and address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products."

Phasers on stun? US investigating possible mysterious directed energy attack near White House.

Well, this is disburbing: The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?

Physicists prove that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics really exists! The exclamation point is theirs, not mine. Still, scientists discover imaginary numbers aren't imaginary.

More good news: Omega-3 fish oil supplements linked with heart rhythm disorder. Omega-3 supplements are associated with an increased likelihood of developing atrial fibrillation in people with high blood lipids. That's the finding of a study published today in European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Earth has been knocked off its axis over the last 25 years, changing the locations of the north and south poles.

Andy Borowitz: Explosive video reveals Biden plot to use his power to improve living conditions

I have the sinking suspicion I'm cheugy.

San Francisco sound engineer accidentally dosed with LSD while cleaning 1960s radio equipment.

Man cooking up ramen in a Speedo accidentally shoots himself in the nuts with 20 bottle rockets.

99-year-old Betty White's secret to a long and happy life is junk food. "She eats crap," her former Hot in Cleveland co-star Jane Leeves told UsMagazine.com in 2011. “She eats Red Vines, hot dogs, French fries, and Diet Coke. If that's key, maybe she's preserved because of all the preservatives.”

It's Bugs Bunny Day. On this date in 1938, a preliminary version of Bugs (named Happy) appeared in Porky's Hare Hunt.

Among other things, today is Adopt a Shelter Pet Day, Childcare Professionals Day, Day of the Child, Hairstyle Appreciation Day, International Jazz Day, Lag B'omer, National Animal Advocacy Day, National Arbor Day, National Bubble Tea Day, National Hairball Awareness Day, National Honesty Day, National Military Brats Day, National Mr. Potato Head Day, National Oatmeal Cookie Day, National PrepareAthon! Day, National Raisin Day, National Sarcoidosis Day, and Spank Out Day.

Have a great weekend! See you Monday!

Categories: Andy Borowitz, Astronomy, Betty White, Bugs Bunny, Cheugy, Chicken shortage, Climate change, Covid-19, FDA, Health, Jimmy Kimmel, Joe Biden, Mike Lindell, Phoenix, Porky Pig, Quantum mechanics, Rudy Giuliani, The West Wing

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Going maskless, Arizona madness, birthdays, more memes
(permalink)

Published Wednesday, April 28, 2021 @ 12:56 AM EDT

Apr 28 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its guidelines Tuesday on the wearing of masks outdoors, saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need to cover their faces anymore unless they are in a big crowd of strangers. So we grabbed the dogs and some grandkids and headed to the park to enjoy the 80° temperatures.

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A so-called audit of the 2020 election in Arizona was always going to be crazy. This is something else. The counting has just begun, but already the audit has become almost inextricable from the far-right internet. There, audit-watchers share tips and concerns about security offered by Ron Watkins, a man suspected of helping birth the QAnon craze.

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Thought of the day: "I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another where the best fruit is."
-Terry Pratchett (b. Terence David John Pratchett on April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015) (More Terry Pratchett quotes)

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Among other things, today is Biological Clock Day, Clean Comedy Day, Denim Day, Great Poetry Reading Day, International Guide Dog Day, International Noise Awareness Day, International Pay it Forward Day, National Blueberry Pie Day, National Cubicle Day, National Kiss Your Mate Day, National Superhero Day, Stop Food Waste Day, Workers' Memorial Day, and World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

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Remembering Lee Falk (b. Leon Harrison Gross; April 28, 1911 – March 13, 1999), American writer, theater director and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strips Mandrake the Magician (1934–2013) and The Phantom (1936–present). At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day.

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Remembering Harper Lee (b. Nelle Harper Lee; April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016), novelist best known for her 1960 novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. (Quotes by Harper Lee)

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Remembering Carolyn Jones (b. Carolyn Sue Jones; April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) American actress of television and film. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for "The Bachelor Party" (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising new actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for another 20 years. In 1964, she began playing the role of Morticia Addams in the original black and white television series The Addams Family.

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On this day in 1930, the Independence Producers hosted the first night_game in the history of organized baseball in Independence, Kansas.

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Remembering Madge Sinclair (b. Madge Dorita Walters on April 28, 1938 – December 20, 1995) Jamaican actress best known for her roles in "Cornbread, Earl and Me" (1975), "Convoy" (1978), "Coming to America" (1988), Trapper John, M.D. (1980–1986), and the ABC TV miniseries "Roots" (1977). Sinclair also voiced the character of Sarabi, Mufasa's wife and Simba's mother, in the Disney animated feature film "The Lion King" (1994). A five-time Emmy Award nominee, Sinclair won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series for her role as Empress Josephine in Gabriel's Fire in 1991. Sinclair, in her brief uncredited role as the captain of the USS Saratoga in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", is commonly cited as the first female Starfleet starship captain to appear in Star Trek. Years later, Sinclair played Geordi La Forge's mother, captain of the USS Hera, in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Interface".

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Ann-Margret (b. Ann-Margret Olsson on April 28, 1941) is 80 today.

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On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

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Jay Leno (b. James Douglas Muir Leno on April 28, 1950) is 71 today. (Jay Leno quotes)

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On this date in 1965, CBS aired the special "My Name Is Barbra," Barbra Streisand's first television special. A solo performance, she sang 26 songs during the one hour program. The show was nominated for six Primetime Emmy Awards in 1965, for which it won five. Streisand won the award for "Outstanding Individual Achievements in Entertainment." It also won the Directors Guild of America Award for "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television" in 1966.

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On this date in 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, recorded at Abbey Road Studios reached number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, beginning a record-breaking 971-week chart run. The album is in the top 25 of the list of best-selling albums in the United States. Although it held the number one spot in the US for only a week, it remained in the Billboard album chart from 1973 to 1988. The album re-appeared on the Billboard charts with the introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in May 1991. (Older "catalog albums" had been dropped from the weekly list between May 1999 and December 2009). In the UK, it is the seventh-best-selling album of all time and the highest selling album never to reach number one.

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"Florida hasn't always been the weird state claims the book "The Thing About Florida" which was written by, er, a Florida man. Speaking of Florida, here's a stupendous obituary from the Tampa Bay Times.

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Memes of the day:

Categories: Ann-Margret, Barbra Streisand, Baseball, Carolyn Jones, CDC, Covid-19, Florida, Harper Lee, Jay Leno, Kon-Tiki, Madge Sinclair, Meme of the day, Obituaries, Pink Floyd, QAnon, Republicans, Star Trek, Terry Pratchett, The Big Lie, The Dark Side of the Moon, Thor Heyerdahl

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