Tues - "League of Lechers" & "Society of Sexists" Delayed

US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 503 Million Shots  (Population 333 Million)





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If You Can't Trust Alexa, Who Can You Trust?

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do".

"Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," the smart speaker said.

Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it.

The girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter.

She said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one."

Is This the First Salvo in the Rise of the Machines?
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What To Do About Hate Speech?  Here's the French Solution.

A mosque in the northern French region of Oise has been closed because of an imam's radical sermons, said to have "defended jihad".

The mosque in the town of Beauvais will remain shut for six months, local authorities say.

Oise's prefect said sermons there called jihadist fighters "heroes" and incited hatred and violence.

France has been carrying out checks on Islamic places of worship suspected of having links to extremism.

Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he was starting a process to close the Great Mosque of Beauvais, 100km (62 miles) north of Paris, because the imam was "targeting Christians, homosexuals and Jews" in his sermons.

The mosque's imam was a recent convert to Islam, Agence France-Presse quoted local newspaper Courrier Picard as saying.

Do They Have a Town Named After "Butthead", Too?
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Here's a Misleading "Good News" Headline

"Last year marked the first time renewables surpassed coal as the U.S.'s second-biggest power source"

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that renewables generated 21% of all electricity in the country for 2020. Renewables like biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind accounted for 834 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of the nation’s power last year. That falls just behind natural gas, which generated 1,617 billion kWh or 40% of all energy in the U.S. The news comes from a report released in July that the EIA shared again last week as the year winds down and we look towards 2022. The agency believes that coal-fired electricity use likely rose this year due to rising natural gas prices, increasing about 18% compared with 2020. This will likely push coal to be the second-most used energy source in 2021.

It’s highly unlikely that the trend of coal surpassing renewables will continue into 2022. For one, coal-fired electricity has been on the downturn since 2007 when it peaked at 2,016 billion kWh and was the largest source of energy until 2016, most likely because natural gas has replaced much of coal’s capacity. According to another EIA report, dozens of coal-fired plants have been replaced or converted to natural gas since 2011.

Maybe Renewables Were #2 Last Year, But This Year They Will Be #3
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Beware of Greeks Fossil Fuel Companies Bearing Gifts

While climate disasters unfold in Canada and around the planet, the federal government is entertaining false solutions from the fossil-fuel industry that risk making things worse instead of better.

The federal government has committed to ending fossil fuel subsidies. But now they’re rolling out new policies, spending programs and tax breaks to incentivize carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen and “advanced recycling.” The truth is, these are just new fossil fuel subsidies in disguise that will continue to lock us into dirty fuels.

Take “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), touted by the industry as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by capturing some of the gases from polluting facilities before they escape into the atmosphere. CCS does nothing to stop the emissions created from burning the fuel — most notably for heating and transportation — and yet the oil and gas lobby wants at least $50 billion from taxpayers to make it happen.

And Beware of Alexa
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Must-See TV

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to begin holding public hearings in the new year to tell the story of the insurrection from start to finish while crafting an ample interim report on its findings by summer, as it shifts into a more public phase of its work.

“We want to tell it from start to finish over a series of weeks, where we can bring out the best witnesses in a way that makes the most sense,” a senior committee aide said. “Our legacy piece and final product will be the select committee’s report.”

The rough timeline being discussed among senior committee staffers includes public hearings starting in the winter and stretching into spring, followed by an interim report in the summer and a final report ahead of November’s elections.
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In Flew Enza

The U.S. flu season has arrived on schedule after taking a year off, with flu hospitalizations rising and two child deaths reported.

Last year’s flu season was the lowest on record, likely because COVID-19 measures — school closures, distancing, masks and canceled travel — prevented the spread of influenza, or because the coronavirus somehow pushed aside other viruses.

“This is setting itself up to be more of a normal flu season,” said Lynnette Brammer, who tracks flu-like illnesses for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The childhood deaths, Brammer said, are “unfortunately what we would expect when flu activity picks up. It’s a sad reminder of how severe flu can be.”

During last year’s unusually light flu season, one child died. In contrast, 199 children died from flu two years ago, and 144 the year before that.
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Let Me Get This Straight.  You Let Unvaccinated People Fly.  Airline People Get Sick.  Flights Are Cancelled Due to a Shortage of Healthy Crews.

Flight cancellations that disrupted holiday travel, stretched into Monday as airlines called off more than 1,000 U.S. flights because crews were sick with COVID-19 during one of the year’s busiest travel periods, and storm fronts added to the havoc.

Flight delays and cancellations tied to staffing shortages have been common this year. Airlines encouraged workers to quit in 2020, when air travel collapsed, and carriers have struggled to make up ground this year, when air travel rebounded faster than almost anyone had expected. The arrival of the omicron variant only exacerbated the problem.

Anyone Surprised?
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Only a Year?  Was It a Very Small Hammer?

A Minnesota man who attacked a Menards employee after the worker told him to wear a mask and then assaulted a responding police officer with a hammer has been sentenced to a year in prison.

Luke Oeltjenbruns, 61, of Hutchinson, pleaded guilty to charges of first- and second-degree assault for the April incident.

In addition to the prison time, he was ordered to serve ten years of probation, perform community service, attend therapy and write letters of apology to the victims.

Make Him Write Letters?  Maybe They Should Send Him to His Room Without Supper, Too.
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Sounds Like a Bubble to Me

U.S. home prices surged again in October as the housing market continues to boom in the wake of last year's coronavirus recession.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, out Tuesday, climbed 18.4% in October from a year earlier. The gain marked a slight deceleration from a 19.1% year-over-year increase in September but was about in line with what economists had been expecting.

All 20 cities posted double-digit annual gains. The hottest markets were Phoenix (up 32.3%), Tampa (28.1%) and Miami (25.7%). Minneapolis and Chicago posted the smallest increases, 11.5% each.

The housing market has been strong thanks to rock-bottom mortgage rates, a limited supply of homes on the market, and pent-up demand from consumers locked in last year by the pandemic. Many Americans, tired of being cooped up at home during the pandemic, are looking to trade up from apartments to homes or to bigger houses.

When Housing Prices Rise Faster Than Incomes, That is Unsustainable.
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This is a Very Small Portion of Hospitalized COVID Patients, But It's Preventable

As the Omicron variant continues to sweep across the U.S., especially in the Northeast, unvaccinated people of all ages are at increased risk — including children. The U.S. is averaging 260 pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations a day, up nearly 30% from last week.

Health officials say pediatric hospitalizations in New York City rose nearly five-fold from the start of December. Almost all of those children were unvaccinated.

"We need to get child vaccinations up. We need to get them higher than they are, particularly in the 5- to 11-year-old age group," said Mary T. Bassett, the acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

In New York state, roughly 27% of 5- to 11-year-olds are vaccinated. Nationwide, that number falls to about 23%.
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This Should Be Greeted With Riotous Applause

Riot Games, the publisher behind esports giant "League of Legends," agreed Monday night to pay $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging pay disparity, gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

The lawsuit was filed in November of 2018 after gaming website Kotaku published a story detailing a sexist culture at Los Angeles-based Riot Games that included women being passed over for promotions, unwanted sexual advances and men questioning women about the legitimacy of their video game fandom. Other former employees later came forward with similar claims.

The California Department of Fair Employment said the suit will remedy violations against more than 1,000 women employees and 1,300 women contract workers. Riot has also agreed to improve conditions and provide a more equitable workplace for female employees and applicants.

This May Cancel Their Plans for "League of Lechers" and "Society of Sexists"
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Are They Trying to Save the College Basketball Season?

Americans who test positive for COVID-19 but do not have symptoms can stop isolating after five days as long as they continue wearing masks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Monday, halving the agency's previous isolation period down from 10 days.

The CDC also said it was loosening its guidance for quarantining after a COVID-19 exposure for unvaccinated Americans or those eligible for a booster who have not yet received their additional shot. It now recommends a five-day quarantine followed by five days of strict mask-wearing, but says that if quarantine "is not feasible," it can be skipped as long as they wear a mask in the 10 days after exposure.

The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated and boosted do not need to quarantine after exposure. The agency had previously said all vaccinated Americans, regardless of whether they had received a booster shot, did not need to quarantine after a close contact as long as they did not have symptoms.
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Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

With four days left to go in the month, Lake Tahoe has already broken the record for December snowfall set 50 years ago.

On Monday, December snow totals at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab reached 193.7 inches, blowing a 1970 record of 179 inches out of the water.

The lab, located at Donner Pass, has received roughly 39 inches of snow in the past 24 hours and could break the 200-inch mark today.

The lab was built in 1946 by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army Corps of Engineers and maintains one of the longest-running manual snow depth records in the world, dating back to 1879.

The Lake Tahoe Basin is sitting around 200 percent of average for snow water equivalent – the amount of water that will be released from the snowpack when it melts – for this time of year.

And the Basin is sitting at 60 percent of its peak average snow water equivalent, which occurs around late March or early April, McEvoy said. The median peak average is 27 inches, and today 16.1 inches of snow water equivalent was measured, he said.
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Immigrants!  They Get the Job Done

In Houston, the public transportation system is offering new bus drivers bonuses of $4,000. For mechanics, its $8,000. In St. Louis, bus service has been cut by more than 10 percent.

In New York, transportation officials are trying to lure retired subway operators back to their old jobs. There just aren’t enough workers to keep these systems running.

Labor shortages are plaguing public transportation systems in nearly every big city, disrupting one of the critical support systems of modern urban life and complicating the recovery of an industry that has struggled mightily during the pandemic. This is raising new challenges for many cities, which have already been battered from the pandemic.

“I would characterize us in the midst of a labor crisis,” said Taulby Roach, president of Bi-State Development, a nonprofit that runs St. Louis’s public transportation system, Metro Transit. “There’s no question.”


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The Biden Administration?  You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Next year will be a turning point for U.S. financial policy as Democratic President Joe Biden's new regulators ready a slew of rule changes that are set to create headaches for Wall Street and corporate America.

A year into his administration, Biden's top financial regulatory team is finally taking shape. Over the next 12 months, his picks are set to reverse the former Trump administration's light touch, taking a tough stance on Wall Street and new players entering the financial sector.

Top items on the Biden administration's ambitious agenda include creating a regulatory framework for digital assets and financial technology players, boosting competition and addressing climate change.
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You Don't Usually Tell People When You Fail a Test, But In This Case ...

Skyrocketing sales of at-home Covid-19 testing kits have led more people to learn their results outside clinical settings — potentially obscuring health departments’ full understanding of infection rates in their communities.

Unlike at clinics and doctors’ offices, which always log Covid test results with public health officials, if you take a test at home, it’s up to you whether you disclose the results to your local health department.

Local health officials say it’s not mandatory, but especially as the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads, they encourage people to report at-home test results.
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Reports of Extinction Are Premature

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas reached across the symbolic aisle on Monday to thank President Joe Biden for his efforts to "depoliticize" the country's COVID-19 response amid the raging Omicron variant.

The Republican leader made the comments during a conference call held by the Biden administration with the governors of several states to discuss the national response to the worrisome Omicron variant, which has sparked a spike in cases across the country in recent days and prompted testing shortages and delays.

"I want to thank all of the White House team for being such great support to the governors," Hutchinson said during his opening remarks, The Hill reported. "And I want to thank Mr. President — your address to the nation last week. Thank you for your comments designed to depoliticize our COVID response. I think that was helpful."

A Sane Republican Has Been Sighted
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