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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
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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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Sun erupted with biggest solar flare in four years in early Fourth of July fireworks (video). Also, Independence Day fireball: Amazing videos show bright meteor changing night sky into day in Idaho.

Solar flares, Idaho fireballs, Loser-Palooza overflights, National Fried Chicken Day, The Truth
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Published Tuesday, July 06, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Jul 06 2021

Over 40 percent of the global workforce is considering leaving their jobs this year. Also, Since the pandemic, employees are leaving the workforce or switching jobs in droves. For many, employers have played a big part in why they're walking away.

Not real news: A look at what didn't happen last week.

Amazing New York times documentary of January 6 insurrection. (Video) Funny, they don't look like tourists.

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From Crazytown:

Marjorie Taylor Greene reports sightings of Jewish space lasers across U.S. (on July 4) (satire, Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker).

Pence got ten minutes to talk about 'how hard he was working' during weekly lunches before Trump turned on the TV and began complaining, book says.

Rioters accused of erasing content from social media, phones.

Epic-est of Epic Trolls Fly 'Loser-Palooza' Planes Over Donald Trump Event in Florida. Every Time Trump claims a non-stolen election was stolen from him, a troll gets its wings. In this case, literally.

Trump seemingly acknowledges facts of prosecutors' case against Trump Organization while criticizing charges over 'fringe benefits'. (Video)

Trump: 'One Law for Hungry Pizza Thieves, Another for Me'. Trump endorsed a textbook for his scam Trump University. This is from Trump University Asset Protection 101: Tax and Legal Strategies of the Rich: "When you own your own business, you determine how much income tax you pay." That's not true, but it sure tells you how Trump thinks.

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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:

Among other things, today is

On this date:

1785 - US Congress unanimously resolved the name of US currency to the "dollar" and adopted decimal coinage
1854 - In Jackson, Michigan, the first convention of the United States Republican Party was held.
1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tested his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.
1892 - Three thousand eight hundred striking steelworkers engaged in a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike, leaving ten dead and dozens wounded.
1898 - U.S. Senate adopts the House-passed Newlands Resolution, annexing Hawaii
1919 - The British dirigible R34 landed in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.
1928 - "Lights of New York" the first all-talking full-length feature film, was released by Warner Bros.
1933 - The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played in Chicago's Comiskey Park. The American League defeated the National League 4-2.
1942 - Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the "Secret Annexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
1947 - The AK-47 goes into production in the Soviet Union.
1947 - Alleged and disputed Roswell UFO incident (Video)
1957 - John Lennon and Paul McCartney meet for the first time, as teenagers at Woolton Fete, three years before forming the Beatles.
1964 - The Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night" released in U.K. (Video)
1990 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded.
1994 - "Forrest Gump" released (Video)

Birthdays

1747 - John Paul Jones, Scottish-American captain (d. 1792)
1887 - Marc Chagall, Belarusian-French painter and poet (d. 1985)
1918 - Sebastian Cabot, English-Canadian actor (d. 1977) (Video)
1921 - Nancy Reagan, American actress and activist, 42nd First Lady of the United States (d. 2016)
1922 - William Schallert, American actor; president (1979-81) of the Screen Actors Guild (d. 2016) (Video)
1925 - Merv Griffin, American actor, singer, and producer, created Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! (d. 2007) (Video)
1925 - Bill Haley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1981) (Video)
1927 - Janet Leigh, (b. Jeanette Helen Morrison) American actress and author (d. 2004) (Video)
1931 - Della Reese, (b. Delloreese Patricia Early) American actress and singer (d. 2017) (Video)
1935 - Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
1937 - Ned Beatty, American actor (d. 2021) (Video)
1937 - Gene Chandler, American singer-songwriter and producer ("Duke of Earl") (Video)
1946 - George W. Bush, American businessman and politician, 43rd President of the United States
1946 - Sylvester Stallone, American actor, director, and screenwriter (Video)
1951 - Geoffrey Rush, Australian actor and producer(Video)
1979 - Kevin Hart, American comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter

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Miscellany

How technology destroyed the truth. (Video)

Who decides what is true?

Ukraine criticized for making female cadets parade in heels.

The CIA's plan to spy... with cats.(Video)

Authorities: Guard hid pills in Rice Krispies treats.

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Categories: Donald Trump, Fact check, January 6, Jewish space lasers, July 4, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Pence, The Big Lie, The Sun, The Truth, Unemployment

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25+ best memes about jumping off a cliff

Zero tolerance, zero brains; Bob Dylan; solar storms; spermageddon; canine-spread coronavirus
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Published Monday, May 24, 2021 @ 12:00 AM EDT

May 24 2021

One of the problems associated with being thrown into Facebook jail is ignorance of the alleged offense.

The announcement states that your post has violated Facebook's "Community Standards," a dense, 27-page litany of offenses that will get you kicked off the platform.

I found the section which I believe addresses my post:

"We care deeply about the safety of the people who use our apps. We regularly consult with experts in suicide and self-injury to help inform our policies and enforcement, and work with organizations around the world to provide assistance to people in distress.

"While we do not allow people to intentionally or unintentionally celebrate or promote suicide or self-injury, we do allow people to discuss these topics because we want Facebook to be a space where people can share their experiences, raise awareness about these issues, and seek support from one another."

"We define self-injury as the intentional and direct injuring of the body, including self-mutilation and eating disorders. We remove any content that encourages suicide or self-injury, including fictional content such as memes or illustrations and any self-injury content which is graphic, regardless of context."

Here's the offending cartoon:

I maintain this isn't a cartoon about suicide- it's a cartoon addressing the power of social media to influence otherwise sane people to do insane things. If anything, it's an anti-suicide cartoon.

I've appealed prior suspensions and won, because it was obvious the artificially intelligent bot or stressed human outside contractor didn't grasp the concepts of satire, parody, or irony and made a bad call. Most of the time Facebook admitted it was in error and unhid the post. But I don't think it's going to work in this instance, because self-injury is one of those categories of which Facebook seems to have a zero tolerance policy. There is no way to contact any human at Facebook to offer a defense. And a small potatoes page administrator with a mere 10,134 followers really can't create enough media outrage to get Facebook executives involved.

I suspect Facebook adopted this policy to aggregate a number it can use in its "we're doing our best, but we can't catch everything" defense. They can point to their mountain of context-free suspensions and say, "Look, we suspended n accounts in the last month for violating our policy against self-injury."

Supplementary viewing/reading:

Little evidence supports the claimed effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies.

"The whole principle is wrong (censorship); it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
-Robert A. Heinlein

"The written word will soon disappear and we'll no longer be able to read good prose like we used to could. This prospect does not gentle my thoughts or tranquil me toward the future."
-James Thurber

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"The first way to answer the questions in the song ('Blowin' in the Wind') is by asking them. But lots of people first have to find the wind."
-Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman. He's 80 today.)

Actor Gary Burghoff is 78 today. The video above is the 1984 pilot episode of a M*A*S*H spinoff that wasn't picked up.

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The first text message: On this day in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from a committee room in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

On this day in 1940, Igor Sikorsky performed the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

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NOT REAL NEWS: a look at what didn't happen last week.

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Pentagon's UFO footage- and Obama's curiosity- ratchet up expectations for a big reveal. When Congress passed the $2.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill in December, it included a requirement that the Pentagon and a number of intelligence agencies prepare a report laying out what they know about UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), which is the new military-speak for UFOs. The report is expected to be delivered as early as June 1, and at least part of it will be made available to the public.

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Good news for a Monday morning: "...greater coffee consumption is associated with a decreased risk of all-cause mortality."

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Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. Liz Cheney's GOP primary challenger admits to impregnating 14-year-old when he was 18. The Facebook video he released, called "Senator Bouchard takes on the fake news media," claimed "I was young" and "you've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me, so it's like the Romeo and Juliet story," he said, neglecting several glaring differences like the Shakespearean characters were fictional and neither was running for Congress in the so-called "family values" party.

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Can the news be fixed? The fix is already in. Oh, you mean like repaired.

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The Great Amazon Purge... "About three weeks ago, several major Amazon brands were suddenly kicked out. Most people were unaware of the names of more than 12 disappearing Chinese companies, such as Mpow and Aukey. However, these two sell a number of electronic devices, such as phone chargers and external batteries for smartphones. If you click "Buy" on Amazon's first phone charger or wireless headphones, it could be from one of the sellers currently suspended."

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Alabama will now allow yoga in its public schools (but students can't say 'namaste'). But on the other hand, Alabama becomes latest state to legalize medical marijuana.

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Life as we know it:

Solar storms are back, threatening life as we know it on Earth.

A massive heat dome is about to make the Southeast sweat. "Temperatures starting on Monday will run between 10-15 degrees above normal, and border on record maximum temperatures, both for daily highs and lows."

Spermageddon: Could men be infertile by 2045? One word: parthenogenesis.

New coronavirus discovered- and dogs are spreading it. It could be the eighth coronavirus known to cause illnesses in humans.

Categories: Alabama, amazon.com, Anthony Bouchard, Bob Dylan, Coffee, Covert Comic, Dogs, Drugs, Facebook, Fact check, Gary Burghoff, Helicopters, Igor Sikorsky, James Thurber, January 6, Liz Cheney, M*A*S*H, News Media, Republicans, Robert A. Heinlein, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Morse, Self-injury, Spermageddon, Suicide, Telegraph, The Sun, Weather, William Shakespeare

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