Post by mhbruin on Mar 4, 2022 13:22:01 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 555 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
First time we have been below 50,000 cases since July 22nd.
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 1)
There is some rain in the Nor Cal forecast for the next two weeks, but no major storms.
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Here’s when rain and snow will arrive in Northern California this week
Best chances for rain:
Rain chances will increase Friday morning with scattered showers in the Valley and more steady rain for the Foothills.
When to expect snow in the Sierra:
Snow levels will remain high Friday, staying above 7,000 feet until nightfall when colder air arrives. Snow levels will then drop below 6,000 feet.
The coldest air arrives Saturday morning when we may see snow levels below 3,000 feet.
Amounts will be limited but will bring winter driving conditions over the passes and chains controls will most likely go up.
Possible rain and snow totals:
Rain totals for the Valley will range from trace amounts to a tenth of an inch. Foothills will see a tenth to a quarter of an inch of rain.
Snow above 4,000 feet will range four 4 inches to 8 inches. Some mountain peaks could see up to a foot of snow.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
This Will Only Leave Them with $7 Billion in Profit From Mass Murder
The wealthy Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, is set to pay $6bn (£4.5bn) for its role in America's opioid epidemic under a new deal.
The sum is nearly $1.7bn more than a previous settlement.
Purdue, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid thousands of lawsuits, made drugs like OxyContin, and is blamed for fuelling the opioid crisis.
Addiction to both legal and illegal opioid painkillers has been a serious, ongoing problem in the US.
The country saw nearly half a million deaths from overdoses between 1999 and 2019, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mom is as Dumb as a MAGA
Oleksandra and her four rescue dogs have been sheltering in the bathroom of her flat in Kharkiv since the shelling began.
"When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared," she says.
The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.
"I didn't want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying," she says.
"But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it's Ukrainians who're killing their own people."
Here's Why Mom is as Dumb as a MAGA
With his global isolation growing, Putin has tightened his grip domestically.
The country's parliament passed a bill Friday introducing sentences of up to 15 years in prison for intentionally spreading “fake” information about military action.
Putin's security services have intensified a crackdown on dissent and moved to quash any protests as well as coverage of the war that doesn't meet the Kremlin’s strict requirements.
Russia's communications watchdog has restricted access to the BBC Russian service as well as Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other foreign-based media outlets for spreading what it cast as false information about the conflict, the RIA state news agency reported.
The independent radio network Echo of Moscow and the television station TV Rain also said they were halting operations Thursday.
If Radiation Were Release, Based on Prevailing Winds, It Would Have Headed Into Russia
Buildings at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine - the largest in Europe - have been damaged after it was hit by shelling.
Nuclear experts say the attack created a very risky situation.
If a reactor - the device generating energy in a nuclear power plant - and the building housing it are damaged, this could cause the reactor to overheat and a core meltdown.
Radiation could then leak into the surrounding environment.
If people were exposed to this radiation it could cause severe immediate and long term health impacts including cancer.
When a Man You Have Never Met Wants to Buy You a Fireplace, That's a BIG Red Flag
A Pennsylvania man is accused of breaking into a New Hampshire woman's home and hiding out in her attic after they met through her OnlyFans account, according to police.
Mauricio Damian Guerrero, 20, from Bensalem, was arrested and charged with four counts of burglary, according to the Somersworth Police Department.
Authorities said Guerrero allegedly broke into the woman's Somersworth home early in the morning on Feb. 9. The woman and her mother called police after the woman said she woke up and saw someone standing in the hallway, an affidavit states.
Officers searching the home went into the attic and heard heavy footsteps on the roof. Guerrero was located on the roof, brought inside, and detained, police said.
The woman, who has a young child, told police that she had noticed odd things happening around the house in the days leading up to Guerrero's arrest. According to the affidavit, she said that a downstairs window had been left slightly open and a door near the kitchen had been left open.
The woman also said her keys had disappeared from a counter and then re-appeared as she was looking for them. The woman told police that she brushed it off as "she was just busy," the affidavit states.
The woman said she met Guerrero through her OnlyFans account and gave him her address because he said he wanted to buy her a television and fireplace.
Or Maybe OnlyFans is a Bad Idea
OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service based in London. Content creators can earn money from users who subscribe to their content—the "fans". It allows content creators to receive funding directly from their fans on a monthly basis as well as one-time tips and the pay-per-view feature. The website has two million content creators and 130 million users.
The platform is particularly popular with sex workers.
There are also celebrities and influencers on OnlyFans who use their large followings to earn money through exclusive, and often adult, content.
For example, influencer Caroline Calloway set up an OnlyFans page where she dresses up as literary characters and claimed that she had a projected $223,800 annual salary.
Belle Delphine, an e-girl influencer who made headlines when she sold "gamer girl bathwater," is now charging fans $35 a month to access adult content that would be otherwise censored on social media platforms like Instagram.
He Just Wanted a Little Joy-a In His Life
Rep. Van Taylor apologized Wednesday for an affair with an ex-jihadist dubbed the “ISIS bride” by British tabloids and abruptly dropped his bid for a third term, conceding the GOP runoff to rival Keith Self, a former Collin County judge.
“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life,” he said in an email to supporters.
The infidelity surfaced just before Tuesday’s primary with help from a third candidate, Suzanne Harp.
A Plano resident named Tania Joya — widow of the most infamous American to join the Islamic State — contacted Harp last Thursday, hoping she would confront Taylor privately and persuade him to drop out and resign from Congress.
A Fox New Producer Turned Out to Be a Bad Person. Who Would Have Guessed?
A former FOX News producer was "quietly arrested" in London. The DOJ revealed that Jack Hanick had dodged US sanctions against Konstantin Malofeyev. Hanick assisted this Putin oligarch in starting a right-wing television show named Tsargrad TV. Hanick modeled Tsargrad after Fox News. The DOJ wants to extradite Hanick from London to New York City.
Malofeyev is an evil guy and worthy of the sanctions and then some. One of his repulsive acts was when he financed Ukrainian separatists who ultimately shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the separatists shot the plane and it exploded and crashed in Eastern Ukraine in July of 2014.
Just Shut Up Lindsey
This Man is a Pharmacist? I'd Be Frightened to Get an Aspirin From Him.
A Kentucky Republican has apologized for bizarre and false comments he made about Jewish women and the Holocaust on Wednesday during a debate over anti-abortion legislation.
State Rep. Danny Bentley, a pharmacist from Russell, was speaking about legislation to restrict the dispensing of abortion pills when he said: “Did you know that a Jewish woman has less cancer of the cervix than any other race in this country or this world? And why is that? Because the Jewish women only have one sex partner.”
“They don’t have multiple sex partners. To say that the Jewish people approve of this drug now is wrong,” he said, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal.
He also claimed falsely that RU-486, or mifepristone, one of two pills taken to terminate a pregnancy, was developed by a Jewish person during World War II and was called Zyklon B, the gas used to kill Jews in the Holocaust.
“Why would they do it? Because they’re making money on it,” he said.
Mifepristone was developed in the 1980s.
His comments were condemned by multiple Jewish groups.
Are His Pants on Fire, Yet?
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Friday for the “normalization” of relations with other states, saying that Moscow had “absolutely no ill intentions with regard to our neighbors.”
“I think that everyone should think about normalizing relations and cooperating normally,” he said.
He said Russia saw no need to aggravate tensions with other countries, claiming that Moscow’s actions in Ukraine only came “in response to unfriendly actions toward Russia.”
“We have no bad intentions. There is no need to escalate the situation, impose restrictions. We fulfill all obligations,” he said. “If someone does not want to cooperate with us within the framework of single cooperation, and by doing so harms themselves, they will, of course, harm us too.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
It's Not Easy Turning Dad In
The son of a man accused of helping to lead the 6 January 2020 Capitol riot has testified that his father threatened him with injury if he alerted authorities.
Guy Reffitt, 49, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges related to the attack, and is the first accused rioter to stand trial.
His son, Jackson, 19, warned the FBI of his father's plans.
Mr Reffitt told his children alerting authorities would make them "traitors".
"If you turn me in, you're a traitor and traitors get shot," Jackson testified to a Washington DC court on Thursday.
The teenager said that he had felt "nervous" and "weird" searching how to contact the FBI to report his father, he told jurors in Washington DC, but felt compelled to do so after exchanges with Mr Reffitt he found alarming.
"I felt pretty gross and I felt pretty uncomfortable for even thinking about doing something like that, but I knew that it would help immensely," Jackson said. "Better safe than sorry".
They Need Another Hero ... And Another ...
While busloads of Ukrainian refugees streamed across the border Thursday into Poland, small groups of determined-looking men were heading in the opposite direction to fight the Russians.
Most appeared to be Ukrainian émigrés in their 20s and 30s, but some could also be heard speaking other languages. Many of the men had black tactical boots hanging from their duffle bags.
And judging by the license plates of the cars dropping them off at the crossing in this Polish border town, they had come from as far away as Italy and Germany.
Among those heading east into Ukraine was a man with a military bearing from Great Britain who identified himself only as Ian and said he was 62.
“I’m going to fight,” Ian told NBC News correspondent Jay Gray.
How Americans can help people of Ukraine
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Invasions Have Consequences (At Least This One Does)
From a Russian Professor
Many people ask me to comment on the sanctions.
In short, my scientific conclusion as a professor of finance is that Russia is FUCKED.
And double fucked up that the inhabitants of Russia, even the educated, for the most part do not understand what awaits them.
We Are So Connected, It Affects Everyone
Sanctions on Russia are starting to wreak havoc on global trade, with potentially devastating consequences for energy and grain importers while also generating ripple effects across a world still struggling with pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of tankers and bulk carriers have been diverted away from the Black Sea, while dozens more have been stranded at ports and at sea unable to unload their valuable cargoes. Russia is a leading exporter of grains and a major supplier of crude oil, metals, wood and plastics — all used worldwide in a range of products and by a multitude of industries from steelmakers to car manufacturers.
Only a small handful of Russia's 2,000 cargo and tanker ships have been sanctioned by Western powers, but freezing the assets of the country's biggest banks means the business of importing and exporting from Russia will take a major hit. Intensifying the squeeze are companies from Apple and Nike to major shippers like Maersk abandoning the country, whose extensive trade ties with the West have been all but severed.
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A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words
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Anyone Against "Buy American"?
President Joe Biden will announce on Friday that the administration has finalized a new Buy American rule aimed at helping to boost US domestic manufacturing, an increasingly important effort as the country strives to compete with China and create more resilient domestic supply chains, according to two senior administration officials.
In his remarks from the White House on Friday, the President is also expected to tout an upcoming announcement from Siemens USA that it will expand its domestic manufacturing of electrical equipment, like circuit boards for EV chargers, with a new $54 million investment that will also create 300 jobs, according to one senior official.
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Anyone Against Less Sexual Harassment?
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law sweeping workplace reforms designed to free victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault to seek justice in court, flanked by one of the most prominent advocates for the effort and the bipartisan lawmakers who drove the bill through Congress.
Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox anchor who has worked to ban arbitration clauses since she sued Roger Ailes, then the network's CEO, for sexual harassment, attended Thursday's signing ceremony. Carlson was joined by four survivors who testified on Capitol Hill in support of the bill, as well as the four lawmakers who helped shepherd the bill to passage in the House and Senate.
The legislation ends the use of forced arbitration clauses specifically for sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, allowing victims the option of bringing up the dispute in federal, tribal or state court. It will also apply retroactively to previously resolved cases unless the cases are pending.
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Anyone Against More Jobs?
U.S. employers added a robust 678,000 jobs in February, another gain that underscored the economy's solid health as the omicron wave fades and more Americans venture out to spend at restaurants, shops and hotels despite surging inflation.
The Labor Department's report Friday also showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 4% to a pandemic low of 3.8%, extending a sharp decline in joblessness as the economy has rebounded from the pandemic recession.
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The Whiskey Is Flowing Again.
American whiskey exports, battered by tariffs and the pandemic, started rebounding in 2021, but distillers have more ground to make up to fully recover, an industry group said.
Exports of bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey reached $975 million in 2021, up 15 percent from the prior year, according to a report issued by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Last year’s total was still down 18 percent from the record high — about $1.2 billion in 2018.
American whiskey distillers got caught up in a trans-Atlantic trade fight, causing deep drops in exports to the European Union — the industry’s biggest overseas market.
The EU imposed a retaliatory tariff on those spirits in mid-2018 in response to then-President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European steel and aluminum.
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Think You Know All About Bacteria? Think Again...And Again
If there’s one thing we all know about bacteria, it’s that they’re tiny. So tiny they can only be seen under a microscope. Living creatures in rainwater, ten thousand times smaller than a water-flea!
And if there’s one other thing we all know, it’s that “Bacteria, of course, have no nucleus.” Of course they don’t! Only prime-time organisms like us sophisticated human beings can be nucleus-havers!
It’s just been reported in bioRxiv (with a blurb in Science) that a type of bacterium found in Guadeloupe has a maximum single-cell length of at least 2 centimeters, is about as wide as a human hair (so it’s easily visible), and has membrane-bound nuclear structures to hold its DNA. This changes the limits we had put on bacteria, and it suggests they’re capable of much more than we’d thought.
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They Missed it By THIS Much
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It's Easy to Be OK With Rising Costs When You Have Money
There is bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill that punishing Russia for its war on Ukraine would be worth risking more inflation.
Top Republicans and Democrats this week called on the Biden administration to ban Russian oil imports, which have been carved out of economic sanctions in order to protect European and U.S. consumers from higher gas prices.
Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has done more than any lawmaker to force his own party to reckon with current levels of inflation, said higher gas prices would be an “inconvenience” for American consumers — acceptable collateral damage for hurting Russia as much as possible.
“I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon,” Manchin said Thursday at a press conference, where he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced a bill to force the administration to ban Russian oil.
Raise Your Hand If You Are Surprised Manchin Favors Higher Oil Prices. Inflation is Great If It Helps His Donors.
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Sing Along With Bogdan
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First time we have been below 50,000 cases since July 22nd.
New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Mar 3 | 49,888 | 1,413 |
| Mar 2 | 53,016 | 1,558 |
| Mar 1 | 56,253 | 1,674 |
| Feb 28 | 68,480 | 1,832 |
| Feb 27 | 62,556 | 1,686 |
| Feb 26 | 66,053 | 1,719 |
| Feb 25 | 69,203 | 1,751 |
| Feb 24 | 72,111 | 1,720 |
| Feb 23 | 75,208 | 1,674 |
| Feb 22 | 79,539 | 1,602 |
| Feb 21 | 78,306 | 1,872 |
| Feb 20 | 98,012 | 1,872 |
| Feb 19 | 100,129 | 1,890 |
| Feb 18 | 103,462 | 1,920 |
| Feb 17 | 112,653 | 1,998 |
| Feb 16 | 121,664 | 2,020 |
| Feb 15 | 134,468 | 2,100 |
| Feb 14 | 146,921 | 2,208 |
| Feb 13 | 161,197 | 2,196 |
| Feb 12 | 168,881 | 2,197 |
| Feb 11 | 175,395 | 2,241 |
| Feb 10 | 190,401 | 2,305 |
| Feb 9 | 215,418 | 2,313 |
| Feb 8 | 230,602 | 2,303 |
| Feb 7 | 247,319 | 2,404 |
| Feb 6 | 291,471 | 2,294 |
| Feb 5 | 298,890 | 2,331 |
| Feb 4 | 313,117 | 2,404 |
| Feb 3 | 343,563 | 2,371 |
| Feb 2 | 378,015 | 2,403 |
| Feb 1 | 415,552 | 2,369 |
| Jan 31 | 446,355 | 2,287 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 76.5% | 65.1% | 444.0% |
| % of Population 5+ | 81.3% | 69.2% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 86.2% | 73.5% | 45.4% |
| % of Population 18+ | 87.9% | 75.1% | 47.3% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.8% | 66.5% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 1)
There is some rain in the Nor Cal forecast for the next two weeks, but no major storms.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | 9 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 87% (60%) | 93% (60%) | 99% (59%) | 105% (59% of average for full season) | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 76% (51%) | 80% (51%) | 86% (51%) | 92% (51%) | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 70% (48%) | 75% (47%) | 79% (46%) | 84% (46%) | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 59% (53%) | 61% (52%) | 68% (53%) | 80% (58%) | 134% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 58% (66%) | 71% (59%) | 75% (57%) | 80% (57%) | 148% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 54% (63%) | 67% (54%) | 74% (54%) | 81% (57%) | 158% |
Here’s when rain and snow will arrive in Northern California this week
Best chances for rain:
Rain chances will increase Friday morning with scattered showers in the Valley and more steady rain for the Foothills.
When to expect snow in the Sierra:
Snow levels will remain high Friday, staying above 7,000 feet until nightfall when colder air arrives. Snow levels will then drop below 6,000 feet.
The coldest air arrives Saturday morning when we may see snow levels below 3,000 feet.
Amounts will be limited but will bring winter driving conditions over the passes and chains controls will most likely go up.
Possible rain and snow totals:
Rain totals for the Valley will range from trace amounts to a tenth of an inch. Foothills will see a tenth to a quarter of an inch of rain.
Snow above 4,000 feet will range four 4 inches to 8 inches. Some mountain peaks could see up to a foot of snow.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
This Will Only Leave Them with $7 Billion in Profit From Mass Murder
The wealthy Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, is set to pay $6bn (£4.5bn) for its role in America's opioid epidemic under a new deal.
The sum is nearly $1.7bn more than a previous settlement.
Purdue, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid thousands of lawsuits, made drugs like OxyContin, and is blamed for fuelling the opioid crisis.
Addiction to both legal and illegal opioid painkillers has been a serious, ongoing problem in the US.
The country saw nearly half a million deaths from overdoses between 1999 and 2019, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mom is as Dumb as a MAGA
Oleksandra and her four rescue dogs have been sheltering in the bathroom of her flat in Kharkiv since the shelling began.
"When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs from their enclosures outside. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. I was so scared," she says.
The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.
"I didn't want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying," she says.
"But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it's Ukrainians who're killing their own people."
Here's Why Mom is as Dumb as a MAGA
With his global isolation growing, Putin has tightened his grip domestically.
The country's parliament passed a bill Friday introducing sentences of up to 15 years in prison for intentionally spreading “fake” information about military action.
Putin's security services have intensified a crackdown on dissent and moved to quash any protests as well as coverage of the war that doesn't meet the Kremlin’s strict requirements.
Russia's communications watchdog has restricted access to the BBC Russian service as well as Voice of America, Radio Liberty and other foreign-based media outlets for spreading what it cast as false information about the conflict, the RIA state news agency reported.
The independent radio network Echo of Moscow and the television station TV Rain also said they were halting operations Thursday.
If Radiation Were Release, Based on Prevailing Winds, It Would Have Headed Into Russia
Buildings at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine - the largest in Europe - have been damaged after it was hit by shelling.
Nuclear experts say the attack created a very risky situation.
If a reactor - the device generating energy in a nuclear power plant - and the building housing it are damaged, this could cause the reactor to overheat and a core meltdown.
Radiation could then leak into the surrounding environment.
If people were exposed to this radiation it could cause severe immediate and long term health impacts including cancer.
When a Man You Have Never Met Wants to Buy You a Fireplace, That's a BIG Red Flag
A Pennsylvania man is accused of breaking into a New Hampshire woman's home and hiding out in her attic after they met through her OnlyFans account, according to police.
Mauricio Damian Guerrero, 20, from Bensalem, was arrested and charged with four counts of burglary, according to the Somersworth Police Department.
Authorities said Guerrero allegedly broke into the woman's Somersworth home early in the morning on Feb. 9. The woman and her mother called police after the woman said she woke up and saw someone standing in the hallway, an affidavit states.
Officers searching the home went into the attic and heard heavy footsteps on the roof. Guerrero was located on the roof, brought inside, and detained, police said.
The woman, who has a young child, told police that she had noticed odd things happening around the house in the days leading up to Guerrero's arrest. According to the affidavit, she said that a downstairs window had been left slightly open and a door near the kitchen had been left open.
The woman also said her keys had disappeared from a counter and then re-appeared as she was looking for them. The woman told police that she brushed it off as "she was just busy," the affidavit states.
The woman said she met Guerrero through her OnlyFans account and gave him her address because he said he wanted to buy her a television and fireplace.
Or Maybe OnlyFans is a Bad Idea
OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service based in London. Content creators can earn money from users who subscribe to their content—the "fans". It allows content creators to receive funding directly from their fans on a monthly basis as well as one-time tips and the pay-per-view feature. The website has two million content creators and 130 million users.
The platform is particularly popular with sex workers.
There are also celebrities and influencers on OnlyFans who use their large followings to earn money through exclusive, and often adult, content.
For example, influencer Caroline Calloway set up an OnlyFans page where she dresses up as literary characters and claimed that she had a projected $223,800 annual salary.
Belle Delphine, an e-girl influencer who made headlines when she sold "gamer girl bathwater," is now charging fans $35 a month to access adult content that would be otherwise censored on social media platforms like Instagram.
He Just Wanted a Little Joy-a In His Life
Rep. Van Taylor apologized Wednesday for an affair with an ex-jihadist dubbed the “ISIS bride” by British tabloids and abruptly dropped his bid for a third term, conceding the GOP runoff to rival Keith Self, a former Collin County judge.
“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life,” he said in an email to supporters.
The infidelity surfaced just before Tuesday’s primary with help from a third candidate, Suzanne Harp.
A Plano resident named Tania Joya — widow of the most infamous American to join the Islamic State — contacted Harp last Thursday, hoping she would confront Taylor privately and persuade him to drop out and resign from Congress.
A Fox New Producer Turned Out to Be a Bad Person. Who Would Have Guessed?
A former FOX News producer was "quietly arrested" in London. The DOJ revealed that Jack Hanick had dodged US sanctions against Konstantin Malofeyev. Hanick assisted this Putin oligarch in starting a right-wing television show named Tsargrad TV. Hanick modeled Tsargrad after Fox News. The DOJ wants to extradite Hanick from London to New York City.
Malofeyev is an evil guy and worthy of the sanctions and then some. One of his repulsive acts was when he financed Ukrainian separatists who ultimately shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the separatists shot the plane and it exploded and crashed in Eastern Ukraine in July of 2014.
Just Shut Up Lindsey
This Man is a Pharmacist? I'd Be Frightened to Get an Aspirin From Him.
A Kentucky Republican has apologized for bizarre and false comments he made about Jewish women and the Holocaust on Wednesday during a debate over anti-abortion legislation.
State Rep. Danny Bentley, a pharmacist from Russell, was speaking about legislation to restrict the dispensing of abortion pills when he said: “Did you know that a Jewish woman has less cancer of the cervix than any other race in this country or this world? And why is that? Because the Jewish women only have one sex partner.”
“They don’t have multiple sex partners. To say that the Jewish people approve of this drug now is wrong,” he said, according to The Louisville Courier-Journal.
He also claimed falsely that RU-486, or mifepristone, one of two pills taken to terminate a pregnancy, was developed by a Jewish person during World War II and was called Zyklon B, the gas used to kill Jews in the Holocaust.
“Why would they do it? Because they’re making money on it,” he said.
Mifepristone was developed in the 1980s.
His comments were condemned by multiple Jewish groups.
Are His Pants on Fire, Yet?
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Friday for the “normalization” of relations with other states, saying that Moscow had “absolutely no ill intentions with regard to our neighbors.”
“I think that everyone should think about normalizing relations and cooperating normally,” he said.
He said Russia saw no need to aggravate tensions with other countries, claiming that Moscow’s actions in Ukraine only came “in response to unfriendly actions toward Russia.”
“We have no bad intentions. There is no need to escalate the situation, impose restrictions. We fulfill all obligations,” he said. “If someone does not want to cooperate with us within the framework of single cooperation, and by doing so harms themselves, they will, of course, harm us too.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
It's Not Easy Turning Dad In
The son of a man accused of helping to lead the 6 January 2020 Capitol riot has testified that his father threatened him with injury if he alerted authorities.
Guy Reffitt, 49, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges related to the attack, and is the first accused rioter to stand trial.
His son, Jackson, 19, warned the FBI of his father's plans.
Mr Reffitt told his children alerting authorities would make them "traitors".
"If you turn me in, you're a traitor and traitors get shot," Jackson testified to a Washington DC court on Thursday.
The teenager said that he had felt "nervous" and "weird" searching how to contact the FBI to report his father, he told jurors in Washington DC, but felt compelled to do so after exchanges with Mr Reffitt he found alarming.
"I felt pretty gross and I felt pretty uncomfortable for even thinking about doing something like that, but I knew that it would help immensely," Jackson said. "Better safe than sorry".
They Need Another Hero ... And Another ...
While busloads of Ukrainian refugees streamed across the border Thursday into Poland, small groups of determined-looking men were heading in the opposite direction to fight the Russians.
Most appeared to be Ukrainian émigrés in their 20s and 30s, but some could also be heard speaking other languages. Many of the men had black tactical boots hanging from their duffle bags.
And judging by the license plates of the cars dropping them off at the crossing in this Polish border town, they had come from as far away as Italy and Germany.
Among those heading east into Ukraine was a man with a military bearing from Great Britain who identified himself only as Ian and said he was 62.
“I’m going to fight,” Ian told NBC News correspondent Jay Gray.
How Americans can help people of Ukraine
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Invasions Have Consequences (At Least This One Does)
From a Russian Professor
Many people ask me to comment on the sanctions.
In short, my scientific conclusion as a professor of finance is that Russia is FUCKED.
And double fucked up that the inhabitants of Russia, even the educated, for the most part do not understand what awaits them.
We Are So Connected, It Affects Everyone
Sanctions on Russia are starting to wreak havoc on global trade, with potentially devastating consequences for energy and grain importers while also generating ripple effects across a world still struggling with pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of tankers and bulk carriers have been diverted away from the Black Sea, while dozens more have been stranded at ports and at sea unable to unload their valuable cargoes. Russia is a leading exporter of grains and a major supplier of crude oil, metals, wood and plastics — all used worldwide in a range of products and by a multitude of industries from steelmakers to car manufacturers.
Only a small handful of Russia's 2,000 cargo and tanker ships have been sanctioned by Western powers, but freezing the assets of the country's biggest banks means the business of importing and exporting from Russia will take a major hit. Intensifying the squeeze are companies from Apple and Nike to major shippers like Maersk abandoning the country, whose extensive trade ties with the West have been all but severed.
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A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words
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Anyone Against "Buy American"?
President Joe Biden will announce on Friday that the administration has finalized a new Buy American rule aimed at helping to boost US domestic manufacturing, an increasingly important effort as the country strives to compete with China and create more resilient domestic supply chains, according to two senior administration officials.
In his remarks from the White House on Friday, the President is also expected to tout an upcoming announcement from Siemens USA that it will expand its domestic manufacturing of electrical equipment, like circuit boards for EV chargers, with a new $54 million investment that will also create 300 jobs, according to one senior official.
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Anyone Against Less Sexual Harassment?
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law sweeping workplace reforms designed to free victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault to seek justice in court, flanked by one of the most prominent advocates for the effort and the bipartisan lawmakers who drove the bill through Congress.
Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox anchor who has worked to ban arbitration clauses since she sued Roger Ailes, then the network's CEO, for sexual harassment, attended Thursday's signing ceremony. Carlson was joined by four survivors who testified on Capitol Hill in support of the bill, as well as the four lawmakers who helped shepherd the bill to passage in the House and Senate.
The legislation ends the use of forced arbitration clauses specifically for sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, allowing victims the option of bringing up the dispute in federal, tribal or state court. It will also apply retroactively to previously resolved cases unless the cases are pending.
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Anyone Against More Jobs?
U.S. employers added a robust 678,000 jobs in February, another gain that underscored the economy's solid health as the omicron wave fades and more Americans venture out to spend at restaurants, shops and hotels despite surging inflation.
The Labor Department's report Friday also showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 4% to a pandemic low of 3.8%, extending a sharp decline in joblessness as the economy has rebounded from the pandemic recession.
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The Whiskey Is Flowing Again.
American whiskey exports, battered by tariffs and the pandemic, started rebounding in 2021, but distillers have more ground to make up to fully recover, an industry group said.
Exports of bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey reached $975 million in 2021, up 15 percent from the prior year, according to a report issued by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Last year’s total was still down 18 percent from the record high — about $1.2 billion in 2018.
American whiskey distillers got caught up in a trans-Atlantic trade fight, causing deep drops in exports to the European Union — the industry’s biggest overseas market.
The EU imposed a retaliatory tariff on those spirits in mid-2018 in response to then-President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European steel and aluminum.
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Think You Know All About Bacteria? Think Again...And Again
If there’s one thing we all know about bacteria, it’s that they’re tiny. So tiny they can only be seen under a microscope. Living creatures in rainwater, ten thousand times smaller than a water-flea!
And if there’s one other thing we all know, it’s that “Bacteria, of course, have no nucleus.” Of course they don’t! Only prime-time organisms like us sophisticated human beings can be nucleus-havers!
It’s just been reported in bioRxiv (with a blurb in Science) that a type of bacterium found in Guadeloupe has a maximum single-cell length of at least 2 centimeters, is about as wide as a human hair (so it’s easily visible), and has membrane-bound nuclear structures to hold its DNA. This changes the limits we had put on bacteria, and it suggests they’re capable of much more than we’d thought.
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They Missed it By THIS Much
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It's Easy to Be OK With Rising Costs When You Have Money
There is bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill that punishing Russia for its war on Ukraine would be worth risking more inflation.
Top Republicans and Democrats this week called on the Biden administration to ban Russian oil imports, which have been carved out of economic sanctions in order to protect European and U.S. consumers from higher gas prices.
Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has done more than any lawmaker to force his own party to reckon with current levels of inflation, said higher gas prices would be an “inconvenience” for American consumers — acceptable collateral damage for hurting Russia as much as possible.
“I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon,” Manchin said Thursday at a press conference, where he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced a bill to force the administration to ban Russian oil.
Raise Your Hand If You Are Surprised Manchin Favors Higher Oil Prices. Inflation is Great If It Helps His Donors.
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Sing Along With Bogdan
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