Post by mhbruin on Jan 29, 2022 9:08:27 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 537 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 25)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty terrible. We have 3-4 months to get some significant rain.
There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
You Can't Keep a Bad Musk Down
Six months ago, Elon Musk said he would stop attending investor conference calls unless there was "something important" that he needed to say. He should have stuck with that plan.
After skipping Tesla's third-quarter call, he returned to the call Wednesday to discuss fourth quarter's record earnings and revenue. But his comments on this week's conference call spooked investors despite Tesla's successful financial results. Tesla (TSLA) shares had their worst day in months on Thursday, losing 11.6% and taking the other EV stocks down along with it.
Musk focused his comments on supply chain issues that had hurt Tesla far less than other automakers. Although Musk said Tesla was on path to be "comfortably above 50% growth in 2022," and that the chip shortage is "better than last year," he also noted the supply chain problem is "still an issue that could slow the rollout of new vehicles that had been expected as soon as this year.
He said plans for its Cybertruck, Tesla's first pickup, would be pushed back to at least 2023, along with a new Roadster and a semi truck. He said he hopes Tesla will be "ready to bring those to production hopefully next year. That is most likely."
That wasn't what Tesla investors wanted to hear -- especially as competition heats up: Upstart EV truck maker Rivian is already building and selling its electric pickup, which recently won Motor Trend Truck of the Year honors. Ford (F) is due to start building its F-150 Lightning EV in the spring and plans to produce 80,000 trucks a year to meet strong pre-orders. General Motors (GM) this week announced it would start building an EV version of its Silverado and Sierra pickups in 2024.
Some Wall Street analysts were frustrated by Musk's comments on the call.
"There was no reason that he needed to double down and shout 'supply chain' into a crowded theater," said Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities. "He gave the bears meat on the bones. That's why the stock sold off. I'm convinced if Musk was not on the call, the stock probably would have been up on Thursday."
Is Brookside the Tip of the Iceberg?
Brookside, Alabama, a former mining community of about 1,250 with a median household income less than $40,000, has no traffic lights and only a handful of two-lane roads, yet it raked in so much revenue from traffic fines and forfeitures in 2020, it amounted to almost half of its $1.2 million municipal budget.
The curious case of the financial income of the town, on the outskirts of Birmingham, exploded into a scandal following a local news report on AL.com last week. It resulted in Brookside Police Chief Mike Jones resigning Tuesday on the same day Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth requested a state audit, and amid calls for state and federal investigations.
"This city is a ticking, ticking time bomb waiting to explode," state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who has called for other town officials to resign, told the NBC affiliate WVTM in Birmingham. "It's the wild, Wild West, and they created their own wild, Wild West."
As Brookside's earnings draw further scrutiny, with Givan planning a town hall Tuesday to allow people who say they've been exploited by the police force to come forward, advocacy organizations are emphasizing that it is no outlier and highlights how across the country, traffic fines and related fees are being used to fill municipal coffers at the expense of people who are often financially struggling and from communities of color.
Joe Rogan Could Be Nominated Every Day
Nobody Will Be Kissing His Ass Now
A Virginia Candidate Goes After A Texas Butterfly Sanctuary. We Have Left the Twilight Zone WAY Behind.
A South Texas butterfly conservatory said it will temporarily close after being warned that it could be a target of a nearby rally headlined by conspiracy theorists and allies of former President Donald Trump.
The National Butterfly Center announced Friday that it would shutter until Sunday due to “credible threats” regarding activities planned during the three-day We Stand America rally in the neighboring border town of McAllen. The closure comes one week after a right-wing congressional candidate from Virginia accused the center’s staff of being “OK with children being trafficked and raped.”
The sanctuary’s director, Marianna Treviño-Wright, said she was warned by an acquaintance, former Republican state lawmaker Aaron Peña, that “she should be armed at all times or out of town this weekend” because the rally included a “Trump Train-style caravan to the border” that would likely make a stop at the butterfly center. She said she was advised that both she and the sanctuary were targets.
Maybe We Need a "Worst Person" Hall of Fame. It Would Need to Be a Very Large Building.
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin should be “commended” for dining out in Manhattan this week while infected with contagious COVID-19, insisted onetime GOP presidential contender and avid Donald Trump supporter Michele Bachmann.
Palin is to “be commended because she’s trying to act like a normal human being in the greatest city in America,” the former Minnesota representative said on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Friday.
The Ninjas Want to Just Fade Into the Night
The CEO of the controversial Cyber Ninjas company hired by Arizona’s Republican Senate to carry out an audit of 2020 presidential ballots in Maricopa County has flatly refused to comply with a county court’s order to publicly release the firm’s records, The Arizona Republic reported.
CEO Doug Logan “started off very complacent and happy to answer questions” in a lengthy deposition on Thursday, “but as it went on he became more combative,” said Craig Hoffman, attorney for the Republic, which, along with the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight, sued to compel Logan to answer questions at a deposition and to turn over records of the privately run election audit.
Logan, who had no experience auditing elections until he was hired by the Republican state senators to examine the 2.1 million votes in Maricopa, finally just refused to turn over documents the court had deemed public in response to an open records request. Logan said he would wait for what he called a “clear” ruling that he intended to then appeal to the Supreme Court, the newspaper reported, adding that he likely meant the state Supreme Court.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah early this month found the Ninjas in contempt of a court order for failing to produce the audit records, and he imposed a $50,000-a-day fine until the company complied. Soon after, the Ninjas firm quickly shut down.
Logan is now reportedly “liquidating” assets. His attorney on Thursday described him as the company’s “former” CEO. But he remains president of the Ninjas board, the Republic reported Friday.
Arizona is Today's Worst State in the World
Arizona Republicans have introduced a bill that would impose significant new voting restrictions and allow the state legislature to reject election results.
The measure would require the state legislature to convene after primary and general elections to review the ballot counting process and “shall accept or reject the election results”.
The proposal does not require lawmakers to find evidence of fraud or lay out any factors they would have to consider in order to overturn an election. If the lawmakers were to reject the results, any voter in Arizona would be allowed to petition a local judge to hold a new election.
The same measure would also require Arizona voters to give an excuse if they want to vote by mail, even though mail-in voting has long been used by the vast majority of voters in the state. It also would restrict voting to election day and prevent the use of vote centers, essentially mega voting precincts where anyone in a county can vote, regardless of where they live.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Saved by the Mail
A New Hampshire postal worker is now a local hero after she helped save a woman's life.
Newmarket mail carrier Kayla Berridge realized during her shift on January 27 that mail had been piling up for four days at a resident's home. Newmarket is around 40 miles from Concord.
"I hadn't seen her in a while and I noticed her mail wasn't getting picked up, so I got a little concerned," Berridge told CNN Friday. The woman, who is in her 80s, would sometimes chat with her, Berridge said.
Berridge had a gut feeling that she ought to call for a wellness check on the home, she said.
It was the right decision. Inside, the woman had been trapped on the floor of her bedroom for at least three days, the Newmarket Police Department would later report.
Police Lt. Wayne Stevens told CNN that the first detective to arrive on the scene could faintly hear the woman calling for help as he knocked on the door.
Stevens pulled up to the house with another officer who had visited the woman before and was able to gain entry.
Once inside, the officers found the woman on the floor of her bedroom, under items including artwork and frames. Police believe she tried to grab her bed for support but the items on the bed ended up falling on her.
The woman was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with hypothermia and dehydration. She is still in the hospital as of Friday, but her family told Stevens she is stable and recovering well.
She Can't Dance, But Nobody Puts Lily in a Corner
The social media platform TikTok continues to prove itself to be more than just a platform for viral dance videos and pranks. It now has one of its oldest users sharing the reality of the Holocaust through her story of surviving it. With three children, 10 grandchildren, and 35 great-grandchildren, 98-year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert has taken to TikTok, accompanied and assisted by her great-grandson, Dov Forman, to share details of her experience in an Auschwitz concentration camp.
Forman, 80 years younger than Ebert, gave her the idea to heal her trauma by sharing her stories on the platform and educating others on Holocaust history. The goal of sharing her stories, Ebert said in one of her videos, is to ensure something as horrible as the Holocaust never happens again.
Don't It Always Seem to Go That You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone
Legendary singer Joni Mitchell has announced she is yanking all of her music from Spotify to support Neil Young in his action against right-wing extremist Joe Rogan’s lies on the platform about COVID-19.
“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” Mitchell said in a statement on her website Friday. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue,” she added.
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After We Were All Told It Was a "Bomb Cyclone"
US East Coast blanketed by 'bombogenesis' snowstorm
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COVID Cases Have Peaked in the US, But It Is Still Nasty
Some people with long Covid may have hidden damage to their lungs, a small pilot study in the UK suggests.
Scientists used a novel xenon gas scan method to pick up lung abnormalities not identified by routine scans.
They focused on 11 people who had not required hospital care when they first caught Covid but experienced long-lasting breathlessness after their initial infection.
The work builds on an earlier study that looked at people who had been admitted to hospital with Covid.
Researchers say the findings shed some light on why breathlessness is so common in long Covid.
Here's the Good News
Data from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 early in the pandemic add to growing evidence suggesting that vaccination can help to reduce the risk of long COVID1.
Researchers in Israel report that people who have had both SARS-CoV-2 infection and doses of Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine were much less likely to report any of a range of common long-COVID symptoms than were people who were unvaccinated when infected. In fact, vaccinated people were no more likely to report symptoms than people who’d never caught SARS-CoV-2. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.
“Here is another reason to get vaccinated, if you needed one,” says co-author Michael Edelstein, an epidemiologist at Bar-Ilan University in Safed, Israel.
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Did You Know You Could Switch to Digital Receipts at CVS?
Have you ever stopped by CVS to pick up shampoo, soap or snacks and ended up leaving with a receipt up to your neck?
You're not alone. Miles-long paper CVS receipts have been a topic of consumer fascination and memes on social media for years. They have their own Facebook page and an active Reddit community. People have dressed up as them for Halloween.
CVS receipts are "notorious for being longer than just about anybody's in the industry," said Craig Rosenblum, vice president at Inmar Intelligence, which advises businesses on marketing strategies. "We see printed receipts as another great way to connect in store with shoppers."
Not all of them. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel has crusaded against CVS' long receipts for years, even asking then-President Barack Obama on his show in 2015 if there was anything Obama could do about them.
The following year, Kimmel returned to the issue in a faux vice presidential speech. "My number one issue is this — these insanely long receipts they give you at CVS," Kimmel said. "I want to live in an America in which the receipt you get for buying one roll of toilet paper is shorter than the actual roll."
CVS workers say that while customers often complain about the length of the receipts while they wait at the cash register, they rarely sign up to switch to digital receipts sent to their emails in stores or on their CVS app.
Only about 10% of ExtraCare's around 75 million members have switched to digital receipts. (A CVS spokesperson said the company was "exploring ways" to increase digital receipt growth this year, including giving customers the option to choose which type they'd like each time they check out.)
How to Switch to Digital Receipts
To do so, you’ll have to download the CVS app on your phone and enable digital receipts, which will send all those coupons and transaction records to your email instead. You’ll save a few trees, plus you won’t have to wait 10 extra minutes for all those coupons to print out at the register.
The feature can be difficult to find in the app, so here’s how to do it: Open up the CVS app and tap the Account button in the top right-hand corner. Next, click on the ExtraCare button at the top of your account page. (It features your card number and says “Manage Your Card” in small print.) Then, you can go into the Email Preferences tab, scroll down, and click the button to enable digital receipts. You can opt to receive personalized coupons by email, or just receipts. If you are attached to those long paper receipts, but also want to have a digital copy of your transactions, you can also opt to receive receipts both at the register and over email.
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A Better Use for a Phone Than Social Media
Researchers continue working to make it much easier — and cheaper — to test for Covid-19.
A team led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced Friday that it has designed a system that uses a smartphone’s camera to perform Covid tests, with accuracy that could match lab-based PCR tests.
In a peer-reviewed study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the scientists said the kits could deliver test results in 25 minutes and were devised to be more reliable than many of the at-home tests currently on the market.
“Rapid antigen tests that people buy off the shelves are inexpensive and fast, but they can be inaccurate,” said Michael Mahan, a professor in the department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at UC Santa Barbara. “On the other hand, PCR tests are the gold standard because they’re accurate and very sensitive, but they’re very expensive and they take a lot of time.”
The system uses a smartphone's camera, a custom app and a test kit to measure reactions t
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Just Think, Every State Could Be Vermont, If Only ...
In Super-Vaxxed Vermont, Covid Strikes — But Packs Far Less Punch
But experts are quick to note that Vermont also serves as a window into what’s possible as the U.S. learns to live with covid. Although nearly universal vaccination could not keep the highly mutated omicron variant from sweeping through the state, Vermont’s collective measures do appear to be protecting residents from the worst of the contagion’s damage. Vermont’s covid-related hospitalization rates, while higher than last winter’s peak, still rank last in the nation. And overall death rates also rank comparatively low.
Children in Vermont are testing positive for covid, and pediatric hospitalizations have increased. But an accompanying decrease in other seasonal pediatric illnesses, like influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, and the vaccinated status of the majority of the state’s eligible children has eased the strain on hospitals that many other states are facing.
“I have to remind people that cases don’t mean disease, and I think we’re seeing that in Vermont,” said Dr. Rebecca Bell, a pediatric critical care specialist at the University of Vermont Health Network in Burlington, the only pediatric intensive care hospital in the state. “We have a lot of cases, but we’re not seeing a lot of severe disease and hospitalization.”
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The omicron wave continues to infect people across the United States, but the latest trend data continues to show signs of improvement in the Northeast for both cases and hospitalizations.
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I Think We All Need a Puppy
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"Never Again"? It Keeps Happening
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Don't Forget to Look Up
In the sci-fi satire "Don't Look Up," humanity is wiped out by a huge comet after a highly politicized and comically botched attempt to blow it up before impact.
As it turns out, breaking up a real "planet killer," thus saving humanity from extinction, is within the realm of possibility, at least in theory, using near-current technology, two physicists conclude in a paper appropriately titled "Don't Forget To Look Up."
Philip Lubin and Alexander Cohen of the University of California at Santa Barbara show that a roughly 6-mile-wide asteroid or comet — one comparable to the body that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — could be broken apart and dispersed by nuclear explosives even if it was discovered just six months before impact.
But following the movie scenario, it would require very quick action: launch of heavy-lift rockets like NASA's Space Launch System moonship or SpaceX's Starship within a month of discovery, and delivery of multiple nuclear penetrators a month or so before impact that would have to burrow into the body's crust like bunker-busters before detonating.
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A Bumper Crop of Profits
Donald Trump often espoused his love for America's farmers during his presidency.
But after a year under President Joe Biden, farmers say they're actually feeling the love.
"Well, certainly the difference between 2019 and 2021 is the differences in administrations," Montana Farmers Union President Walter Schweitzer said in an interview. "In 2019, our administration was at war with all of our customers." Under Biden, he said, the nation is "rebuilding our relationships with our customers."
Trump courted support from farmers during his failed re-election campaign in 2020 and touted his administration’s trade relief, saying they were better off with government payments than relying solely on sales.
While the focus of the Biden administration has been on its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and more recently the global standoff with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, the farm sector has fared quite well under the new administration, as farmers ease off of government bailouts and see a boost in commodity prices.
"We had farm income that was up by a pretty fair amount in 2021, almost to the record level of 2013, but not quite," said Patrick Westhoff, director of the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. "Part of that, of course, was continuing government payments, but there was a very strong recovery in both crop and livestock prices last year."
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CDC doesn't do a good job of reporting around holidays.
Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People 2 or More Doses | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Jan 29 | |||||
| Jan 28 | 626,946 | 249,473,925 | 211,343,818 | ||
| Jan 27 | 643,725 | 249,267,851 (I don't know why) | 211,162,083 | 577,748 | 2,300 |
| Jan 26 | 962,958 | 251,518,114 | 210,850,212 | 596,859 | 2,288 |
| Jan 25 | 1,011,603 | 251,289,667 | 210,682,471 | 627,294 | 2,246 |
| Jan 24 | 1,201,186 | 250,964,433 | 210,459,963 | 692,359 | 2,166 |
| Jan 23 | 1,101,405 | 250,763,600 | 210,358,008 | 663,908 | 1,936 |
| Jan 22 | 1,002,322 | 250,568,431 | 210,229,586 | 686,715 | 1,939 |
| Jan 21 | 1,035,111 | 250,262,153 | 210,021,766 | 716,829 | 1,974 |
| Jan 20 | 1,094,988 | 250,028,635 | 209,842,610 | 726,870 | 1,843 |
| Jan 19 | 1,135,453 | 249,702,939 | 209,509,297 | 744,615 | 1,749 |
| Jan 18 | 1,158,537 | 249,393,487 | 209,312,770 | 755,095 | 1,669 |
| Jan 17 | No Data | 736,350 | 1,746 | ||
| Jan 16 | No Data | 771,131 | 1,851 | ||
| Jan 15 | 1,268,202 | 248,707,432 | 208,995,438 | 788,628 | 1,858 |
| Jan 14 | 1,286,773 | 248,338,448 | 208,791,862 | 798,335 | 1,784 |
| Jan 13 | 1,291,013 | 247,987,225 | 208,564,894 | 794,587 | 1,730 |
| Jan 12 | 1,234,672 | 247,695,845 | 208,182,657 | 782,765 | 1,729 |
| Jan 11 | 1,213,113 | 247,321,023 | 207,954,605 | 761,535 | 1,656 |
| Jan 10 | 1,307,445 | 247,051,363 | 207,796,335 | 750,996 | 1,633 |
| Jan 9 | 1,331,635 | 246,812,939 | 207,662,071 | 674,406 | 1,552 |
| Jan 8 | 1,286,783 | 246,447,823 | 207,452,448 | 680,330 | 1,544 |
| Jan 7 | 1,226,151 | 246,050,320 | 207,229,983 | 668,497 | 1,513 |
| Jan 6 | 1,164,127 | 245,653,518 | 207,016,514 | 614,552 | 1,350 |
| Jan 5 | 1,117,999 | 245,278,020 | 206,797,799 | 586,391 | 1,245 |
| Jan 4 | 1,093,005 | 244,947,293 | 206,581,659 | 554,328 | 1,238 |
| Jan 3 | No Data | 491,652 | 1,165 | ||
| Jan 2 | No Data | 438,082 | 1,174 | ||
| Jan 1 | No Data | 411,871 | 1,151 | ||
| Dec 31 | No Data | 391,098 | 1,135 | ||
| Dec 30 | 1,234,917 | 243,527,564 | 205,811,394 | 360,276 | 1,144 |
| Dec 29 | 1,042,911 | 243,182,423 | 205,638,307 | 316,277 | 1,100 |
| Dec 28 | 1,091,279 | 242,813,374 | 205,420,745 | 277,241 | 1,085 |
| Dec 27 | 1,034,442 | 242,433,620 | 205,196,973 | 240,408 | 1,096 |
| Dec 26 | No Data | 206,577 | 1,041 | ||
| Dec 25 | No Data | 196,511 | 1,053 | ||
| Feb 16, 2021 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 75.1% | 64.7% | 41.1% |
| % of Population 5+ | 79.9% | 67.7% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 84.9% | 72.4% | 44.3% |
| % of Population 18+ | 86.8% | 74.0% | 55.7% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.3% | 64.2% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 25)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty terrible. We have 3-4 months to get some significant rain.
There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | 4 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 124% | 134% | 149% | 158% | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 110% | 121% | 138% | 156% | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 101% | 112% | 127% | 145% | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 117% | 128% | 135% | 134% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 114% | 129% | 148% | 148% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 121% | 135% | 160% | 158% |
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
You Can't Keep a Bad Musk Down
Six months ago, Elon Musk said he would stop attending investor conference calls unless there was "something important" that he needed to say. He should have stuck with that plan.
After skipping Tesla's third-quarter call, he returned to the call Wednesday to discuss fourth quarter's record earnings and revenue. But his comments on this week's conference call spooked investors despite Tesla's successful financial results. Tesla (TSLA) shares had their worst day in months on Thursday, losing 11.6% and taking the other EV stocks down along with it.
Musk focused his comments on supply chain issues that had hurt Tesla far less than other automakers. Although Musk said Tesla was on path to be "comfortably above 50% growth in 2022," and that the chip shortage is "better than last year," he also noted the supply chain problem is "still an issue that could slow the rollout of new vehicles that had been expected as soon as this year.
He said plans for its Cybertruck, Tesla's first pickup, would be pushed back to at least 2023, along with a new Roadster and a semi truck. He said he hopes Tesla will be "ready to bring those to production hopefully next year. That is most likely."
That wasn't what Tesla investors wanted to hear -- especially as competition heats up: Upstart EV truck maker Rivian is already building and selling its electric pickup, which recently won Motor Trend Truck of the Year honors. Ford (F) is due to start building its F-150 Lightning EV in the spring and plans to produce 80,000 trucks a year to meet strong pre-orders. General Motors (GM) this week announced it would start building an EV version of its Silverado and Sierra pickups in 2024.
Some Wall Street analysts were frustrated by Musk's comments on the call.
"There was no reason that he needed to double down and shout 'supply chain' into a crowded theater," said Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities. "He gave the bears meat on the bones. That's why the stock sold off. I'm convinced if Musk was not on the call, the stock probably would have been up on Thursday."
Is Brookside the Tip of the Iceberg?
Brookside, Alabama, a former mining community of about 1,250 with a median household income less than $40,000, has no traffic lights and only a handful of two-lane roads, yet it raked in so much revenue from traffic fines and forfeitures in 2020, it amounted to almost half of its $1.2 million municipal budget.
The curious case of the financial income of the town, on the outskirts of Birmingham, exploded into a scandal following a local news report on AL.com last week. It resulted in Brookside Police Chief Mike Jones resigning Tuesday on the same day Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth requested a state audit, and amid calls for state and federal investigations.
"This city is a ticking, ticking time bomb waiting to explode," state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who has called for other town officials to resign, told the NBC affiliate WVTM in Birmingham. "It's the wild, Wild West, and they created their own wild, Wild West."
As Brookside's earnings draw further scrutiny, with Givan planning a town hall Tuesday to allow people who say they've been exploited by the police force to come forward, advocacy organizations are emphasizing that it is no outlier and highlights how across the country, traffic fines and related fees are being used to fill municipal coffers at the expense of people who are often financially struggling and from communities of color.
Joe Rogan Could Be Nominated Every Day
Nobody Will Be Kissing His Ass Now
A Virginia Candidate Goes After A Texas Butterfly Sanctuary. We Have Left the Twilight Zone WAY Behind.
A South Texas butterfly conservatory said it will temporarily close after being warned that it could be a target of a nearby rally headlined by conspiracy theorists and allies of former President Donald Trump.
The National Butterfly Center announced Friday that it would shutter until Sunday due to “credible threats” regarding activities planned during the three-day We Stand America rally in the neighboring border town of McAllen. The closure comes one week after a right-wing congressional candidate from Virginia accused the center’s staff of being “OK with children being trafficked and raped.”
The sanctuary’s director, Marianna Treviño-Wright, said she was warned by an acquaintance, former Republican state lawmaker Aaron Peña, that “she should be armed at all times or out of town this weekend” because the rally included a “Trump Train-style caravan to the border” that would likely make a stop at the butterfly center. She said she was advised that both she and the sanctuary were targets.
Maybe We Need a "Worst Person" Hall of Fame. It Would Need to Be a Very Large Building.
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin should be “commended” for dining out in Manhattan this week while infected with contagious COVID-19, insisted onetime GOP presidential contender and avid Donald Trump supporter Michele Bachmann.
Palin is to “be commended because she’s trying to act like a normal human being in the greatest city in America,” the former Minnesota representative said on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Friday.
The Ninjas Want to Just Fade Into the Night
The CEO of the controversial Cyber Ninjas company hired by Arizona’s Republican Senate to carry out an audit of 2020 presidential ballots in Maricopa County has flatly refused to comply with a county court’s order to publicly release the firm’s records, The Arizona Republic reported.
CEO Doug Logan “started off very complacent and happy to answer questions” in a lengthy deposition on Thursday, “but as it went on he became more combative,” said Craig Hoffman, attorney for the Republic, which, along with the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight, sued to compel Logan to answer questions at a deposition and to turn over records of the privately run election audit.
Logan, who had no experience auditing elections until he was hired by the Republican state senators to examine the 2.1 million votes in Maricopa, finally just refused to turn over documents the court had deemed public in response to an open records request. Logan said he would wait for what he called a “clear” ruling that he intended to then appeal to the Supreme Court, the newspaper reported, adding that he likely meant the state Supreme Court.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah early this month found the Ninjas in contempt of a court order for failing to produce the audit records, and he imposed a $50,000-a-day fine until the company complied. Soon after, the Ninjas firm quickly shut down.
Logan is now reportedly “liquidating” assets. His attorney on Thursday described him as the company’s “former” CEO. But he remains president of the Ninjas board, the Republic reported Friday.
Arizona is Today's Worst State in the World
Arizona Republicans have introduced a bill that would impose significant new voting restrictions and allow the state legislature to reject election results.
The measure would require the state legislature to convene after primary and general elections to review the ballot counting process and “shall accept or reject the election results”.
The proposal does not require lawmakers to find evidence of fraud or lay out any factors they would have to consider in order to overturn an election. If the lawmakers were to reject the results, any voter in Arizona would be allowed to petition a local judge to hold a new election.
The same measure would also require Arizona voters to give an excuse if they want to vote by mail, even though mail-in voting has long been used by the vast majority of voters in the state. It also would restrict voting to election day and prevent the use of vote centers, essentially mega voting precincts where anyone in a county can vote, regardless of where they live.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Saved by the Mail
A New Hampshire postal worker is now a local hero after she helped save a woman's life.
Newmarket mail carrier Kayla Berridge realized during her shift on January 27 that mail had been piling up for four days at a resident's home. Newmarket is around 40 miles from Concord.
"I hadn't seen her in a while and I noticed her mail wasn't getting picked up, so I got a little concerned," Berridge told CNN Friday. The woman, who is in her 80s, would sometimes chat with her, Berridge said.
Berridge had a gut feeling that she ought to call for a wellness check on the home, she said.
It was the right decision. Inside, the woman had been trapped on the floor of her bedroom for at least three days, the Newmarket Police Department would later report.
Police Lt. Wayne Stevens told CNN that the first detective to arrive on the scene could faintly hear the woman calling for help as he knocked on the door.
Stevens pulled up to the house with another officer who had visited the woman before and was able to gain entry.
Once inside, the officers found the woman on the floor of her bedroom, under items including artwork and frames. Police believe she tried to grab her bed for support but the items on the bed ended up falling on her.
The woman was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with hypothermia and dehydration. She is still in the hospital as of Friday, but her family told Stevens she is stable and recovering well.
She Can't Dance, But Nobody Puts Lily in a Corner
The social media platform TikTok continues to prove itself to be more than just a platform for viral dance videos and pranks. It now has one of its oldest users sharing the reality of the Holocaust through her story of surviving it. With three children, 10 grandchildren, and 35 great-grandchildren, 98-year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert has taken to TikTok, accompanied and assisted by her great-grandson, Dov Forman, to share details of her experience in an Auschwitz concentration camp.
Forman, 80 years younger than Ebert, gave her the idea to heal her trauma by sharing her stories on the platform and educating others on Holocaust history. The goal of sharing her stories, Ebert said in one of her videos, is to ensure something as horrible as the Holocaust never happens again.
Don't It Always Seem to Go That You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone
Legendary singer Joni Mitchell has announced she is yanking all of her music from Spotify to support Neil Young in his action against right-wing extremist Joe Rogan’s lies on the platform about COVID-19.
“I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” Mitchell said in a statement on her website Friday. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue,” she added.
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After We Were All Told It Was a "Bomb Cyclone"
US East Coast blanketed by 'bombogenesis' snowstorm
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COVID Cases Have Peaked in the US, But It Is Still Nasty
Some people with long Covid may have hidden damage to their lungs, a small pilot study in the UK suggests.
Scientists used a novel xenon gas scan method to pick up lung abnormalities not identified by routine scans.
They focused on 11 people who had not required hospital care when they first caught Covid but experienced long-lasting breathlessness after their initial infection.
The work builds on an earlier study that looked at people who had been admitted to hospital with Covid.
Researchers say the findings shed some light on why breathlessness is so common in long Covid.
Here's the Good News
Data from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 early in the pandemic add to growing evidence suggesting that vaccination can help to reduce the risk of long COVID1.
Researchers in Israel report that people who have had both SARS-CoV-2 infection and doses of Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine were much less likely to report any of a range of common long-COVID symptoms than were people who were unvaccinated when infected. In fact, vaccinated people were no more likely to report symptoms than people who’d never caught SARS-CoV-2. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.
“Here is another reason to get vaccinated, if you needed one,” says co-author Michael Edelstein, an epidemiologist at Bar-Ilan University in Safed, Israel.
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Did You Know You Could Switch to Digital Receipts at CVS?
Have you ever stopped by CVS to pick up shampoo, soap or snacks and ended up leaving with a receipt up to your neck?
You're not alone. Miles-long paper CVS receipts have been a topic of consumer fascination and memes on social media for years. They have their own Facebook page and an active Reddit community. People have dressed up as them for Halloween.
CVS receipts are "notorious for being longer than just about anybody's in the industry," said Craig Rosenblum, vice president at Inmar Intelligence, which advises businesses on marketing strategies. "We see printed receipts as another great way to connect in store with shoppers."
Not all of them. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel has crusaded against CVS' long receipts for years, even asking then-President Barack Obama on his show in 2015 if there was anything Obama could do about them.
The following year, Kimmel returned to the issue in a faux vice presidential speech. "My number one issue is this — these insanely long receipts they give you at CVS," Kimmel said. "I want to live in an America in which the receipt you get for buying one roll of toilet paper is shorter than the actual roll."
CVS workers say that while customers often complain about the length of the receipts while they wait at the cash register, they rarely sign up to switch to digital receipts sent to their emails in stores or on their CVS app.
Only about 10% of ExtraCare's around 75 million members have switched to digital receipts. (A CVS spokesperson said the company was "exploring ways" to increase digital receipt growth this year, including giving customers the option to choose which type they'd like each time they check out.)
How to Switch to Digital Receipts
To do so, you’ll have to download the CVS app on your phone and enable digital receipts, which will send all those coupons and transaction records to your email instead. You’ll save a few trees, plus you won’t have to wait 10 extra minutes for all those coupons to print out at the register.
The feature can be difficult to find in the app, so here’s how to do it: Open up the CVS app and tap the Account button in the top right-hand corner. Next, click on the ExtraCare button at the top of your account page. (It features your card number and says “Manage Your Card” in small print.) Then, you can go into the Email Preferences tab, scroll down, and click the button to enable digital receipts. You can opt to receive personalized coupons by email, or just receipts. If you are attached to those long paper receipts, but also want to have a digital copy of your transactions, you can also opt to receive receipts both at the register and over email.
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A Better Use for a Phone Than Social Media
Researchers continue working to make it much easier — and cheaper — to test for Covid-19.
A team led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced Friday that it has designed a system that uses a smartphone’s camera to perform Covid tests, with accuracy that could match lab-based PCR tests.
In a peer-reviewed study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, the scientists said the kits could deliver test results in 25 minutes and were devised to be more reliable than many of the at-home tests currently on the market.
“Rapid antigen tests that people buy off the shelves are inexpensive and fast, but they can be inaccurate,” said Michael Mahan, a professor in the department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at UC Santa Barbara. “On the other hand, PCR tests are the gold standard because they’re accurate and very sensitive, but they’re very expensive and they take a lot of time.”
The system uses a smartphone's camera, a custom app and a test kit to measure reactions t
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Just Think, Every State Could Be Vermont, If Only ...
In Super-Vaxxed Vermont, Covid Strikes — But Packs Far Less Punch
But experts are quick to note that Vermont also serves as a window into what’s possible as the U.S. learns to live with covid. Although nearly universal vaccination could not keep the highly mutated omicron variant from sweeping through the state, Vermont’s collective measures do appear to be protecting residents from the worst of the contagion’s damage. Vermont’s covid-related hospitalization rates, while higher than last winter’s peak, still rank last in the nation. And overall death rates also rank comparatively low.
Children in Vermont are testing positive for covid, and pediatric hospitalizations have increased. But an accompanying decrease in other seasonal pediatric illnesses, like influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, and the vaccinated status of the majority of the state’s eligible children has eased the strain on hospitals that many other states are facing.
“I have to remind people that cases don’t mean disease, and I think we’re seeing that in Vermont,” said Dr. Rebecca Bell, a pediatric critical care specialist at the University of Vermont Health Network in Burlington, the only pediatric intensive care hospital in the state. “We have a lot of cases, but we’re not seeing a lot of severe disease and hospitalization.”
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The omicron wave continues to infect people across the United States, but the latest trend data continues to show signs of improvement in the Northeast for both cases and hospitalizations.
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I Think We All Need a Puppy
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"Never Again"? It Keeps Happening
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Don't Forget to Look Up
In the sci-fi satire "Don't Look Up," humanity is wiped out by a huge comet after a highly politicized and comically botched attempt to blow it up before impact.
As it turns out, breaking up a real "planet killer," thus saving humanity from extinction, is within the realm of possibility, at least in theory, using near-current technology, two physicists conclude in a paper appropriately titled "Don't Forget To Look Up."
Philip Lubin and Alexander Cohen of the University of California at Santa Barbara show that a roughly 6-mile-wide asteroid or comet — one comparable to the body that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — could be broken apart and dispersed by nuclear explosives even if it was discovered just six months before impact.
But following the movie scenario, it would require very quick action: launch of heavy-lift rockets like NASA's Space Launch System moonship or SpaceX's Starship within a month of discovery, and delivery of multiple nuclear penetrators a month or so before impact that would have to burrow into the body's crust like bunker-busters before detonating.
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A Bumper Crop of Profits
Donald Trump often espoused his love for America's farmers during his presidency.
But after a year under President Joe Biden, farmers say they're actually feeling the love.
"Well, certainly the difference between 2019 and 2021 is the differences in administrations," Montana Farmers Union President Walter Schweitzer said in an interview. "In 2019, our administration was at war with all of our customers." Under Biden, he said, the nation is "rebuilding our relationships with our customers."
Trump courted support from farmers during his failed re-election campaign in 2020 and touted his administration’s trade relief, saying they were better off with government payments than relying solely on sales.
While the focus of the Biden administration has been on its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and more recently the global standoff with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, the farm sector has fared quite well under the new administration, as farmers ease off of government bailouts and see a boost in commodity prices.
"We had farm income that was up by a pretty fair amount in 2021, almost to the record level of 2013, but not quite," said Patrick Westhoff, director of the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. "Part of that, of course, was continuing government payments, but there was a very strong recovery in both crop and livestock prices last year."
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