Post by mhbruin on Apr 24, 2022 9:38:02 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 572 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 19)
We had some rain up north this week.
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THANK YOU!
I am really happy to see a couple of threads started by other people, with replies. I do this every day to try to keep this forum alive. It nice to see signs of life.
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Wear Glasses to Math Class. It Helps With Division.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Sex, Lies and Video Tape ... Without the Sex and the Tape
Chinese internet authorities are trying to block a popular video highlighting the impact of Shanghai's five-week lockdown on its residents.
The clip features audio of citizens complaining about their conditions, lack of food and poor medical care.
Official attempts to remove it have triggered a backlash on Chinese sites.
Shanghai's 25 million residents have been shut in their homes for weeks while officials try to contain a severe Covid-19 outbreak.
The six-minute montage features audio clips of the local population criticising insufficient food supplies and complaining about poor medical conditions.
"We haven't eaten for days now," one person can be heard pleading.
Who Was in on the Coup Attempt?
The Real QOP
Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.
To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.
But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Shame on Kevin McCarthy.”
Or Is It the Gang of H-8?
Did You Miss the Previous Guy's Rally? Don't Worry. We've Got You Covered.
Can't DeathSentence Get Anything Right?
189.072 Dissolution of an independent special district.—2)a)
In order for the Legislature to dissolve an active independent special district created and operating pursuant to a special act, the special act dissolving the active independent special district must be approved by a majority of the resident electors of the district or, for districts in which a majority of governing body members are elected by landowners, a majority of the landowners voting in the same manner by which the independent special district’s governing body is elected. If a local general-purpose government passes an ordinance or resolution in support of the dissolution, the local general-purpose government must pay any expenses associated with the referendum required under this paragraph.
Can a Piece of Garbage Throw a Piece of Garbage?
New York Yankees fans pelted Cleveland Guardians outfielders with bottles, cans and garbage Saturday as the New York team pulled off a last-minute 5-4 win.
Rather than celebrate the victory, Yankees players rushed to the right-field bleachers in a bid to calm down fans who were raining trash on the Cleveland team.
One piece of garbage even hit an umpire trying to intervene.
Today's Worst Headline in the World. Blaming Workers for Inflation. Thanks, WSJ.
"Workers Are Changing Jobs, Raking In Big Raises---and Keeping Inflation High"
Previous Guy Wanted to Hear "Pretty Please"
Former President Donald Trump made governors flatter him personally for federal aid after natural disasters, a new book says.
The revelations are made in an upcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, according to The Independent.
In the book, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said Trump told governors who wanted aid: "You have to call and ask me nicely."
Hogan claimed that Trump had a policy in which only Texas and Florida, two states with governors Trump considered close allies, would be given federal aid when needed without question.
Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat, recounted a similar experience, The Independent reported.
Lamont said he asked the White House for assistance in obtaining federal disaster aid after a storm in August 2020 left parts of Connecticut without electrical power.
He was surprised when he received a call from then-President Trump himself hours later, who said: "There's something you want me to ask about FEMA?"
When Lamont replied that he wanted to ask about FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) aid, Trump reportedly said: "Well, ask me nicely."
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
A Small Victory in a Massive War
A US Air Force general officer was found guilty of abusive sexual contact in military court in Ohio on Saturday, marking the first-ever court-martial trial and conviction of a general officer in the history of the military branch, the Air Force said in a statement.
Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley was found guilty on one of three specifications of sexual assault connected to a 2018 incident in New Mexico, according to the Air Force release. A senior military judge found he was guilty of "the first specification, 'kissing (the victim) on the lips and tongue, with an intent to gratify his sexual desire,'" the statement said. The judge found Cooley not guilty of the two other specifications.
Cooley had pleaded not guilty.
According to the Air Force statement, the unnamed victim said in court testimony that "Cooley asked for a ride after a backyard day-long social event."
It continued: "During the short ride she said he told her that he fantasized about having sex with her. She alleged he pressed her up against the driver's side window, forcibly kissed and groped her through her clothes."
Elizabeth Warren Speaks Truth
“Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor.
This is outrageous and that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. They say one thing to the American public and something else in private. They understand that it is wrong, what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government. And that the Republicans instead want to continue to try to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is that we go forward in order to build an economy, in order to make this country work better for the people who sent us to Washington.
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Invasions Have Consequences
If You Can't Trust the Russian Media, Who Can You Trust? Why Does the Russian Media Sound Like An Alex Jones "Report"?
After an air strike hit a school in Chernihiv, a video of a bloodied survivor went viral on Ukrainian social media. But soon her story was hijacked by pro-Kremlin accounts, including one promoted by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which falsely accused her of being a fake.
"There was no whistle, rustling or sound of shelling," Tania says. "It just hit the building and suddenly everything went dark. The building collapsed."
Tania was caught up in an air strike in early March. She was helping sort clothes for a humanitarian aid drive in school number 21 in Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, when a missile hit the building.
Local authorities in Chernihiv posted a video of school number 21 on Telegram after the attack
Although authorities did not name the school, the BBC was able to confirm the specific building via images posted on the Telegram social media app.
Local authorities reported at the time that Russian aircraft had hit two schools that day, leaving nine people dead and four injured.
Tania was knocked out by the blast. She says when she regained consciousness, she realised she was alive and could walk. She stood up, looked around and saw people in a state of panic. She also noticed bodies lying on the floor, including that of a woman who had been standing next to her just minutes before the strike.
In a matter of hours, her video went viral in Ukraine. The clip garnered tens of thousands of views on Instagram alone, and was picked up by a number of Ukrainian news websites.
Tania told the BBC that she had acquired thousands of new followers and received dozens of messages on Instagram - some supportive, some threatening.
People from Russia were among those who wrote to her. Some of them apologised for the actions of the Russian authorities. But others did not believe her story and called her "fake".
Soon Tania's friends started sending her screenshots from Russian and Belarusian media outlets, in which her video was described as a fabrication.
These reports described her as a "pupil", claimed that the wound on her face was not real, and alleged the blood on her face did not look natural and that she was behaving too "normally" for a person who had just survived a bombing.
The claims were false. Tania is no "pupil" - she is 29 years old and worked as a waitress before the invasion started.
As for her seemingly calm composure, Tania told the BBC that she was in "deep shock" when she recorded the video.
"I was calm and wasn't scared. Just shocked," she says. "A few hours after that, I was in hysterics. For the next two days, I couldn't eat or sleep, I just cried. It was a nightmare."
Slovakia May Be Slow, But Not Too Late to the Dance
Can You Spot the Massive Offensive? How About Waldo?
Has Max Defected?
Russia Has 3 Fewer Generals in the Field
Two Russian generals were killed near Kherson, the Ukrainian ministry of defence said in a statement. Another is in critical condition. The Ukrainian military on Friday hit the command post of Russia’s 49th army near the occupied regional capital, the ministry said.
Forcing Ukrainians to Fight Ukranians
Is the Battle of Severodonetsk About to Begin?
On Saturday evening in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said they believe Russia is positioning its forces for a strike toward Sievierodonetsk. Located near the western edge of the Luhansk oblast, the city of 101,000, and the neighboring city of Lysychansk (population 95,000) are the lynchpins of Ukraine’s eastern defenses. Located on the east bank of the Seversky Donets River, Sievierodonetsk is threatened by Russian movements that have strengthened the salient running through Izyum and captured villages to the northwest.
The advance along this line is slow. It’s taken Russian forces better than two weeks to move less than ten miles. Even so, the buildup of forces northwest of Rubizhne, and continued heavy shelling from Russian bases to the east, has led to some suggestion that, should Russian forces progress much further south from Izyum, Ukraine might choose to withdraw from both Rubizhne and Sievierodonetsk, falling back across the river and using that natural barrier as the new line of defense.
The idea here is to prevent the possibility of a large number of Ukrainian forces being cut off. However, it’s hard to believe that Ukraine would take this action unless the situation was truly dire. Sievierodonetsk has been one of the cores of Ukrainian resistance since pro-Russian forces occupied parts of Luhansk oblast eight years ago. Ukraine certainly can’t be anxious to surrender any population center after seeing what’s happened in places like Bucha and what is still happening in Mariupol. Sievierodonetsk could expect to be come in for especially harsh treatment considering its role in holding back Russian forces since 2014.
So while a planned withdrawal may be on a “in case of fire” chart somewhere, don’t expect it to happen any time soon. Any idea that Ukrainian forces are about to pick up and run in large numbers is wishful thinking on Russia’s part.
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Don't Believe the Glowing Reviews You May Read About Me.
The UK has proposed new rules making fake reviews of goods illegal. But experts say that's not the only way companies are skewing buyer perception.
Nathaniel Fuentes wanted to warn others away from the printer he purchased for his son's schoolwork last year after finding nearly every paper it spat out was blurry.
But after the 36-year-old from California submitted his comment on the manufacturer's website, he got a swift reply: "Your review has been moderated".
His feedback never appeared. And suddenly, the glowing reviews he had read before buying the printer looked a whole lot more suspicious.
"I never would have bought it," he says. "I won't do business with them anymore."
Surveys show roughly 90% of shoppers use product reviews to inform their purchases. But the information they glean can be unreliable.
The UK recently proposed rules that would make writing and commissioning fake reviews illegal.
But while much of the attention has focused on the problem of fake reviews, experts say sellers are distorting customer perception in other ways as well, using practices like displaying reviews to their advantage, selectively soliciting comments - and in extreme cases, supressing bad feedback altogether.
Potential issues and conflicts of interest related to reviews have expanded as more brands incorporate them on their own sites and take a more active role collecting them to help sales on other platforms.
"Many companies start with an honest agenda, which is to remove fake negative reviews… but when they do it, it becomes a slippery slope," says Prof Bin Gu of Boston University's Questrom School of Business. "It's very hard to know when to stop."
In January, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $4.2m settlement with fast fashion clothier Fashion Nova over charges it had blocked hundreds of thousands of poor customer reviews between 2015 and 2019.
The agency said the firm, known for its partnerships with social media influencers and celebrities such as Cardi B, used software services that allowed four and five star comments to publish automatically, while withholding the remainder for review.
The deal marked the first case to crack down on a firm for hiding bad reviews. Another recent FTC case targeted a contact lens provider, which paid $3.5m to settle charges including that it failed to disclose that it paid people for reviews.
If You Can't Trust People You Don't Know on the Internet, Who Can You Trust?
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French vote as Macron aims to beat far-right Le Pen
Unlike in most other democracies, where those projections are based on exit polls, French pollsters base their estimates on ballots that have actually been counted. Those estimates are updated throughout the evening as the vote count progresses.
“The main difference with an exit poll is that instead of asking people outside the polling station how they voted, we look straight at their ballots,” says Mathieu Doiret of the Ipsos polling institute, FRANCE 24’s partner for the presidential election. “This means we have to wait for the first polling stations to close at 7pm, whereas exit polls can be worked on throughout the day.”
Like other pollsters, Ipsos relies on feedback from hundreds of polling stations scattered across France. The sample is chosen to ensure it is representative of the diversity of French constituencies while also matching the overall result of the last presidential election, which is used as a benchmark.
Don't check this space. The results will be out long before I post anything.
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I'm Definitely No Christian. This is Too Much Forgiveness For Me.
To heal you must love - so believes a woman who not only forgave the man who killed her husband 28 years ago during Rwanda's genocide, but allowed his daughter to marry her son.
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Looking For a U-Haul With Arizona Plates?
There are around 175,000 white and orange U-Haul rental trucks in the United States and Canada for do-it-yourself movers. And they all have something strange in common: Arizona license plates with the word "apportioned" slapped on them.
The reason?
An esoteric agreement between the 48 continental US states, Washington DC and all 10 Canadian provinces determining how big-rigs and other commercial vehicles that travel across state lines divvy up billions of dollars of license plate registration fees.
The issue of U-Haul's license plates took on greater significance last week, after investigators in New York City said they were looking for information about a U-Haul van with Arizona plates in connection with a subway shooting that left more than 20 people injured.
So U-Haul, which has been based in Phoenix since 1967, registers all of its rental trucks in Arizona and the state then distributes those license plate fees to other states where the rental trucks travel.
Say, for example, one U-Haul van drove 20,000 miles in a year. If half of the miles were in Utah and the other half were in Colorado, the fees would be split among those two states.
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Is Your Roof Leaking? You May Need to Live With It While Your Landlords Vote.
Nate Gipson got a notice back in February that one of his rental homes in Memphis, Tennessee, needed a new ceiling fan. As a landlord, he thought the request was reasonable enough.
But before the work could go forward, he had to hash it out with a group of other people who, like him, had purchased a stake in the property through a cryptocurrency website called Lofty AI. And some of them needed convincing.
“There was a large discussion of, ‘Is the property manager scamming us?’” Gipson said. “They said, ‘I can go on Amazon and buy one for $35.’”
Like many decisions on Lofty AI, it came down to a vote of the owners, and the bylaws required a 60 percent supermajority for approval.
Welcome to the next phase of the crypto economy, in which ownership of faraway rental properties is divvied up into digital tokens that are sold around the world, and where the token-holders transform the business of being a landlord into a series of online polls — a system that the tenant may not even know about.
Lofty AI is one of several tech startups aiming to use blockchain technology to create a new form of investment in real estate. They add to a growing movement built around shared ownership and cooperation, often called distributed autonomous organizations, or DAOs.
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The Holy Grail of the Coronavirus World
The drugmakers, as well as outside researchers and government scientists, met to discuss the topic at the World Vaccine Congress meeting in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
All agree that the shots should be updated to ensure they can continue to provide protection against severe illness, but there isn't yet a broad consensus on what the best approach should be moving forward.
The most popular idea floated was developing a so-called pancoronavirus vaccine — a shot that could protect against the entire spectrum of strains of the virus, both known and unknown.
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is part of a family of coronaviruses called betacoronaviruses. The coronaviruses that caused SARS and MERS are also in this family.
But betacoronaviruses are just one branch in the broader coronavirus family tree. There are also alphacoronaviruses, gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses.
A pancoronavirus vaccine would essentially target the trunk of the tree, providing protection against all of the branches.
Still, a pancoronavirus could be years away. A similar vaccine, for influenza, still hasn’t been successfully developed.
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Who Won the Week?
Federal Judge Amy Totenberg, for allowing the case to proceed against Marjorie Taylor-Greene, aiming to boot her off the ballot because she helped the Jan. 6 coup plotters
Twitter, for making it much harder for Elon Musk to buy and Trumpify the social media platform, and Vangard for putting up the money to top Musk as the largest shareholder
President Biden: requires materials for infrastructure-law projects to be US-made; announces (and delivers) more aid to Ukraine; jobless claims now lowest since 1968
Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, for going viral with her speech against the red-hatted cult's new crusade to falsely tar Democrats as what GOPers actually are: soulless sexual deviants
Ukraine's military, for spending another week waging some of the most skilled defensive warfare in modern times (and outing 600+ Russian spies was a nice touch)
The advocacy group Run For Something, for announcing an initiative to find, train and support 5,000 candidates for local elections-related offices…from election board members to county clerks
Wind power advocates, as Trump's most hated green energy source produces more juice than coal and nuclear for the first time in the U.S.
The Connecticut House, for passing a bill ensuring women will always have access to abortion services, while legally shielding women who come from other states to get them
The 2022 Profiles in Courage Award winners, including Ukrainian President Zelensky, MI Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Fulton County, GA Elections Department employee Wandrea Moss
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This is Almost Too Much To Bear?
In a bit of a reverse Goldilocks scenario, a California family discovered that five bears had found their home just right.
The South Lake Tahoe residents had been hearing “some odd rumbling, snoring-like noises” throughout the winter, but had been ignoring the mysterious sounds because they “simply didn’t make sense,” the BEAR League, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people coexist with bears, wrote on Facebook earlier this week. The neighbors even suggested they might be imagining things.
But the sounds were very real, and there was a logical explanation: bears hibernating in the crawl space underneath the house.
“Each winter, about 100 to 150 of our bears attempt to hibernate under homes here at Tahoe,” she said. “The BEAR League is kept very busy moving bears out of these crawl spaces, often several bears each day.”
Tahoe. Tahoe, It's Off to Sleep We Go
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Not to Anti-Vaxers. You Won't Need A Vaccination Card for Your Vacation in This Vaccine-Free Paradise.
As mask mandates and social distancing requirements lift around the world, North Korea remains one of two countries that have not administered any coronavirus vaccines, with no sign of how it can ever begin to reopen despite a brewing humanitarian crisis for its people.
The vaccines that were allocated for North Korea through a United Nations-backed global vaccination effort are no longer available, officials said this month, after Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the initiative’s offers of millions of doses.
North Korea, already one of the most closed societies in the world, remains in a strict pandemic lockdown and has shuttered its borders except to a minimal level of trade with China, with grave implications for the health and food security of its population.
North Korea has yet to begin coronavirus vaccinations as delays hamper U.N.-backed rollout
The pandemic closure has exacerbated the food crisis, said Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on North Korean human rights. In a recent report, Quintana said the country’s “covid restrictions, including border closures, appear to have prevented an outbreak inside the country, though likely at considerable cost to the wider health situation and further exacerbating economic deprivation.”
No one is clear on the exact situation inside the country, however, because North Korea’s retreat inward in the pandemic has restricted remaining channels of information — with diplomats, humanitarian aid groups and tourists no longer able to enter.
North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.
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Potemkin Villages Are a Potemkin Village
Once upon a time, there lived a powerful leader known as Catherine the Great who ruled a vast empire and, over the years, conquered many new lands.
Catherine appointed her boyfriend to oversee one of those conquests — a place now called Ukraine. As time passed, he informed her the citizens were flourishing and happy. But, according to a version of the tale passed on for centuries, it was a lie.
In the legend, Catherine decided to launch an expedition, taking a barge down the Dnieper River so she could observe the thriving, joyful subjects. Her boyfriend, Grigory, was fearful his deceit would be exposed, and eager to please his beloved. So, the story goes, he instructed minions to build fake villages along the riverfront — freshly painted facades.
The expedition, with thousands of soldiers and servants, proceeded for six months. According to popular accounts, after Catherine passed each village, the fake buildings were disassembled, placed on carts, rushed downriver and re-created for another viewing.
Catherine, in the story, was mesmerized by the achievements of her lover, Grigory Potemkin, rewarding him with an appointment as Prince of Tauris (Crimea). And, to this day, people worldwide still refer to fake news and false fronts using his name: “Potemkin villages.”
Over hundreds of years, the insult came to be used for almost any alleged sham, from China's green energy program to former President Obama's gun control efforts or former President Trump's coronavirus response.
More recently, as Ukrainian defenses held off Russia’s military invasion, pundits scoffed that Vladimir Putin was duped by his “Potemkin military,” whose leaders misrepresented the war outlook. When Putin tried to prop up Russia’s economy amid international sanctions, U.S. officials talked of Moscow’s “Potemkin market.” And, after Russia offered to end the war in return for control of southern Ukraine, critics ridiculed the notion of a “Potemkin peace.”
But history and politics are a tangle of lies and intrigue, especially in Russia, so there is a twist to this tale:
There were no fake villages. Potemkin did not scam Catherine II with props. In fact, researchers say his accomplishments in Ukraine were authentic, and popular claims to the contrary are fiction — a smear spewed by Russian rivals at the time and forever seared into belief and vernacular.
“The very concept of ‘Potemkin village’ is a Potemkin village,” said Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of "Catherine the Great & Potemkin: Power Love & Russian Empire." “Totally false, a libel without a shred of truth.”
While the legend may be bogus, Sebag Montefiore and other historians believe the Crimea expedition and Potemkin’s fable remain at the heart of today’s conflict in Ukraine. Put simply, they contend, thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war based on Putin’s misrepresentation of that history.
Marvin Kalb, a Harvard professor emeritus and former journalist who wrote “Imperial Gamble” after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, suggested the bloody conflict is a product of disinformation, much like the lie that has haunted Catherine's expedition for 235 years.
“The relevance of that story today is that Putin is creating a Potemkin village in the way he describes his war,” Kalb said. “And the deception is overwhelming.”
There is no question that Potemkin took Catherine on a tour through towns that were decorated for royal visitors.
But historical consensus is clear that the prince’s dramatic developments were real. Proof rests in Russian archives, diaries and letters penned by those who took part in the 4,000-mile expedition.
The whole story.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 23 | |||
| Apr 22 | 44,308 | 311 | 1,642 |
| Apr 21 | 40,744 | 346 | 1,647 |
| Apr 20 | 42,604 | 375 | 1,609 |
| Apr 19 | 40,985 | 385 | 1,582 |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 380 | 1,564 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 | 1,542 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 | 1,532 |
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 | 1,510 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 | 1,490 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 | 1,477 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 | 1,463 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 | 1.447 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 | 1,443 |
| Apr 9 | 28,339 | 509 | |
| Apr 8 | 28,169 | 516 | |
| Apr 7 | 26,286 | 471 | |
| Apr 6 | 26,595 | 496 | |
| Apr 5 | 26,845 | 533 | |
| Apr 4 | 25,537 | 537 | |
| Apr 3 | 25,074 | 572 | |
| Apr 2 | 25,787 | 576 | |
| Apr 1 | 26,106 | 584 | |
| Mar 31 | 25,980 | 605 | |
| Mar 30 | 25,732 | 626 | |
| Mar 29 | 25,218 | 644 | |
| Mar 28 | 26,190 | 700 | |
| Mar 27 | 26,487 | 690 | |
| Mar 26 | 26,593 | 697 | |
| Mar 25 | 26,874 | 705 | |
| Mar 24 | 27,235 | 732 | |
| Mar 23 | 27,134 | 753 | |
| Mar 22 | 27,545 | 787 | |
| Mar 21 | 28,657 | 861 | |
| Mar 20 | 27,786 | 901 | |
| Mar 19 | 27,747 | 909 | |
| Mar 18 | 28,274 | 972 | |
| Mar 17 | 29,317 | 1,035 | |
| Mar 16 | 30,040 | 1,052 | |
| Mar 15 | 30,934 | 1,107 | |
| Mar 14 | 32,458 | 1,186 | |
| Mar 13 | 34,113 | 1,187 | |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.5% | 66.0% | 45.6% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.3% | 70.2% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 87.1% | 74.5% | 47.4% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.9% | 76.0% | 49.1% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 90.0% | 68.3% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 19)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 79% (70%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 65% (58%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 60% (54%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 29% | 15% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 33% | 27% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 23% | 24% |
THANK YOU!
I am really happy to see a couple of threads started by other people, with replies. I do this every day to try to keep this forum alive. It nice to see signs of life.
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Wear Glasses to Math Class. It Helps With Division.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Sex, Lies and Video Tape ... Without the Sex and the Tape
Chinese internet authorities are trying to block a popular video highlighting the impact of Shanghai's five-week lockdown on its residents.
The clip features audio of citizens complaining about their conditions, lack of food and poor medical care.
Official attempts to remove it have triggered a backlash on Chinese sites.
Shanghai's 25 million residents have been shut in their homes for weeks while officials try to contain a severe Covid-19 outbreak.
The six-minute montage features audio clips of the local population criticising insufficient food supplies and complaining about poor medical conditions.
"We haven't eaten for days now," one person can be heard pleading.
Who Was in on the Coup Attempt?
The Real QOP
Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.
To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.
But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Shame on Kevin McCarthy.”
Or Is It the Gang of H-8?
Did You Miss the Previous Guy's Rally? Don't Worry. We've Got You Covered.
Can't DeathSentence Get Anything Right?
189.072 Dissolution of an independent special district.—2)a)
In order for the Legislature to dissolve an active independent special district created and operating pursuant to a special act, the special act dissolving the active independent special district must be approved by a majority of the resident electors of the district or, for districts in which a majority of governing body members are elected by landowners, a majority of the landowners voting in the same manner by which the independent special district’s governing body is elected. If a local general-purpose government passes an ordinance or resolution in support of the dissolution, the local general-purpose government must pay any expenses associated with the referendum required under this paragraph.
Can a Piece of Garbage Throw a Piece of Garbage?
New York Yankees fans pelted Cleveland Guardians outfielders with bottles, cans and garbage Saturday as the New York team pulled off a last-minute 5-4 win.
Rather than celebrate the victory, Yankees players rushed to the right-field bleachers in a bid to calm down fans who were raining trash on the Cleveland team.
One piece of garbage even hit an umpire trying to intervene.
Today's Worst Headline in the World. Blaming Workers for Inflation. Thanks, WSJ.
"Workers Are Changing Jobs, Raking In Big Raises---and Keeping Inflation High"
Previous Guy Wanted to Hear "Pretty Please"
Former President Donald Trump made governors flatter him personally for federal aid after natural disasters, a new book says.
The revelations are made in an upcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, according to The Independent.
In the book, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said Trump told governors who wanted aid: "You have to call and ask me nicely."
Hogan claimed that Trump had a policy in which only Texas and Florida, two states with governors Trump considered close allies, would be given federal aid when needed without question.
Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat, recounted a similar experience, The Independent reported.
Lamont said he asked the White House for assistance in obtaining federal disaster aid after a storm in August 2020 left parts of Connecticut without electrical power.
He was surprised when he received a call from then-President Trump himself hours later, who said: "There's something you want me to ask about FEMA?"
When Lamont replied that he wanted to ask about FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) aid, Trump reportedly said: "Well, ask me nicely."
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
A Small Victory in a Massive War
A US Air Force general officer was found guilty of abusive sexual contact in military court in Ohio on Saturday, marking the first-ever court-martial trial and conviction of a general officer in the history of the military branch, the Air Force said in a statement.
Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley was found guilty on one of three specifications of sexual assault connected to a 2018 incident in New Mexico, according to the Air Force release. A senior military judge found he was guilty of "the first specification, 'kissing (the victim) on the lips and tongue, with an intent to gratify his sexual desire,'" the statement said. The judge found Cooley not guilty of the two other specifications.
Cooley had pleaded not guilty.
According to the Air Force statement, the unnamed victim said in court testimony that "Cooley asked for a ride after a backyard day-long social event."
It continued: "During the short ride she said he told her that he fantasized about having sex with her. She alleged he pressed her up against the driver's side window, forcibly kissed and groped her through her clothes."
Elizabeth Warren Speaks Truth
“Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor.
This is outrageous and that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now. They say one thing to the American public and something else in private. They understand that it is wrong, what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government. And that the Republicans instead want to continue to try to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is that we go forward in order to build an economy, in order to make this country work better for the people who sent us to Washington.
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Invasions Have Consequences
If You Can't Trust the Russian Media, Who Can You Trust? Why Does the Russian Media Sound Like An Alex Jones "Report"?
After an air strike hit a school in Chernihiv, a video of a bloodied survivor went viral on Ukrainian social media. But soon her story was hijacked by pro-Kremlin accounts, including one promoted by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which falsely accused her of being a fake.
"There was no whistle, rustling or sound of shelling," Tania says. "It just hit the building and suddenly everything went dark. The building collapsed."
Tania was caught up in an air strike in early March. She was helping sort clothes for a humanitarian aid drive in school number 21 in Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, when a missile hit the building.
Local authorities in Chernihiv posted a video of school number 21 on Telegram after the attack
Although authorities did not name the school, the BBC was able to confirm the specific building via images posted on the Telegram social media app.
Local authorities reported at the time that Russian aircraft had hit two schools that day, leaving nine people dead and four injured.
Tania was knocked out by the blast. She says when she regained consciousness, she realised she was alive and could walk. She stood up, looked around and saw people in a state of panic. She also noticed bodies lying on the floor, including that of a woman who had been standing next to her just minutes before the strike.
In a matter of hours, her video went viral in Ukraine. The clip garnered tens of thousands of views on Instagram alone, and was picked up by a number of Ukrainian news websites.
Tania told the BBC that she had acquired thousands of new followers and received dozens of messages on Instagram - some supportive, some threatening.
People from Russia were among those who wrote to her. Some of them apologised for the actions of the Russian authorities. But others did not believe her story and called her "fake".
Soon Tania's friends started sending her screenshots from Russian and Belarusian media outlets, in which her video was described as a fabrication.
These reports described her as a "pupil", claimed that the wound on her face was not real, and alleged the blood on her face did not look natural and that she was behaving too "normally" for a person who had just survived a bombing.
The claims were false. Tania is no "pupil" - she is 29 years old and worked as a waitress before the invasion started.
As for her seemingly calm composure, Tania told the BBC that she was in "deep shock" when she recorded the video.
"I was calm and wasn't scared. Just shocked," she says. "A few hours after that, I was in hysterics. For the next two days, I couldn't eat or sleep, I just cried. It was a nightmare."
Slovakia May Be Slow, But Not Too Late to the Dance
Can You Spot the Massive Offensive? How About Waldo?
Has Max Defected?
Russia Has 3 Fewer Generals in the Field
Two Russian generals were killed near Kherson, the Ukrainian ministry of defence said in a statement. Another is in critical condition. The Ukrainian military on Friday hit the command post of Russia’s 49th army near the occupied regional capital, the ministry said.
Forcing Ukrainians to Fight Ukranians
Is the Battle of Severodonetsk About to Begin?
On Saturday evening in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said they believe Russia is positioning its forces for a strike toward Sievierodonetsk. Located near the western edge of the Luhansk oblast, the city of 101,000, and the neighboring city of Lysychansk (population 95,000) are the lynchpins of Ukraine’s eastern defenses. Located on the east bank of the Seversky Donets River, Sievierodonetsk is threatened by Russian movements that have strengthened the salient running through Izyum and captured villages to the northwest.
The advance along this line is slow. It’s taken Russian forces better than two weeks to move less than ten miles. Even so, the buildup of forces northwest of Rubizhne, and continued heavy shelling from Russian bases to the east, has led to some suggestion that, should Russian forces progress much further south from Izyum, Ukraine might choose to withdraw from both Rubizhne and Sievierodonetsk, falling back across the river and using that natural barrier as the new line of defense.
The idea here is to prevent the possibility of a large number of Ukrainian forces being cut off. However, it’s hard to believe that Ukraine would take this action unless the situation was truly dire. Sievierodonetsk has been one of the cores of Ukrainian resistance since pro-Russian forces occupied parts of Luhansk oblast eight years ago. Ukraine certainly can’t be anxious to surrender any population center after seeing what’s happened in places like Bucha and what is still happening in Mariupol. Sievierodonetsk could expect to be come in for especially harsh treatment considering its role in holding back Russian forces since 2014.
So while a planned withdrawal may be on a “in case of fire” chart somewhere, don’t expect it to happen any time soon. Any idea that Ukrainian forces are about to pick up and run in large numbers is wishful thinking on Russia’s part.
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Don't Believe the Glowing Reviews You May Read About Me.
The UK has proposed new rules making fake reviews of goods illegal. But experts say that's not the only way companies are skewing buyer perception.
Nathaniel Fuentes wanted to warn others away from the printer he purchased for his son's schoolwork last year after finding nearly every paper it spat out was blurry.
But after the 36-year-old from California submitted his comment on the manufacturer's website, he got a swift reply: "Your review has been moderated".
His feedback never appeared. And suddenly, the glowing reviews he had read before buying the printer looked a whole lot more suspicious.
"I never would have bought it," he says. "I won't do business with them anymore."
Surveys show roughly 90% of shoppers use product reviews to inform their purchases. But the information they glean can be unreliable.
The UK recently proposed rules that would make writing and commissioning fake reviews illegal.
But while much of the attention has focused on the problem of fake reviews, experts say sellers are distorting customer perception in other ways as well, using practices like displaying reviews to their advantage, selectively soliciting comments - and in extreme cases, supressing bad feedback altogether.
Potential issues and conflicts of interest related to reviews have expanded as more brands incorporate them on their own sites and take a more active role collecting them to help sales on other platforms.
"Many companies start with an honest agenda, which is to remove fake negative reviews… but when they do it, it becomes a slippery slope," says Prof Bin Gu of Boston University's Questrom School of Business. "It's very hard to know when to stop."
In January, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $4.2m settlement with fast fashion clothier Fashion Nova over charges it had blocked hundreds of thousands of poor customer reviews between 2015 and 2019.
The agency said the firm, known for its partnerships with social media influencers and celebrities such as Cardi B, used software services that allowed four and five star comments to publish automatically, while withholding the remainder for review.
The deal marked the first case to crack down on a firm for hiding bad reviews. Another recent FTC case targeted a contact lens provider, which paid $3.5m to settle charges including that it failed to disclose that it paid people for reviews.
If You Can't Trust People You Don't Know on the Internet, Who Can You Trust?
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French vote as Macron aims to beat far-right Le Pen
Unlike in most other democracies, where those projections are based on exit polls, French pollsters base their estimates on ballots that have actually been counted. Those estimates are updated throughout the evening as the vote count progresses.
“The main difference with an exit poll is that instead of asking people outside the polling station how they voted, we look straight at their ballots,” says Mathieu Doiret of the Ipsos polling institute, FRANCE 24’s partner for the presidential election. “This means we have to wait for the first polling stations to close at 7pm, whereas exit polls can be worked on throughout the day.”
Like other pollsters, Ipsos relies on feedback from hundreds of polling stations scattered across France. The sample is chosen to ensure it is representative of the diversity of French constituencies while also matching the overall result of the last presidential election, which is used as a benchmark.
Don't check this space. The results will be out long before I post anything.
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I'm Definitely No Christian. This is Too Much Forgiveness For Me.
To heal you must love - so believes a woman who not only forgave the man who killed her husband 28 years ago during Rwanda's genocide, but allowed his daughter to marry her son.
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Looking For a U-Haul With Arizona Plates?
There are around 175,000 white and orange U-Haul rental trucks in the United States and Canada for do-it-yourself movers. And they all have something strange in common: Arizona license plates with the word "apportioned" slapped on them.
The reason?
An esoteric agreement between the 48 continental US states, Washington DC and all 10 Canadian provinces determining how big-rigs and other commercial vehicles that travel across state lines divvy up billions of dollars of license plate registration fees.
The issue of U-Haul's license plates took on greater significance last week, after investigators in New York City said they were looking for information about a U-Haul van with Arizona plates in connection with a subway shooting that left more than 20 people injured.
So U-Haul, which has been based in Phoenix since 1967, registers all of its rental trucks in Arizona and the state then distributes those license plate fees to other states where the rental trucks travel.
Say, for example, one U-Haul van drove 20,000 miles in a year. If half of the miles were in Utah and the other half were in Colorado, the fees would be split among those two states.
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Is Your Roof Leaking? You May Need to Live With It While Your Landlords Vote.
Nate Gipson got a notice back in February that one of his rental homes in Memphis, Tennessee, needed a new ceiling fan. As a landlord, he thought the request was reasonable enough.
But before the work could go forward, he had to hash it out with a group of other people who, like him, had purchased a stake in the property through a cryptocurrency website called Lofty AI. And some of them needed convincing.
“There was a large discussion of, ‘Is the property manager scamming us?’” Gipson said. “They said, ‘I can go on Amazon and buy one for $35.’”
Like many decisions on Lofty AI, it came down to a vote of the owners, and the bylaws required a 60 percent supermajority for approval.
Welcome to the next phase of the crypto economy, in which ownership of faraway rental properties is divvied up into digital tokens that are sold around the world, and where the token-holders transform the business of being a landlord into a series of online polls — a system that the tenant may not even know about.
Lofty AI is one of several tech startups aiming to use blockchain technology to create a new form of investment in real estate. They add to a growing movement built around shared ownership and cooperation, often called distributed autonomous organizations, or DAOs.
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The Holy Grail of the Coronavirus World
The drugmakers, as well as outside researchers and government scientists, met to discuss the topic at the World Vaccine Congress meeting in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
All agree that the shots should be updated to ensure they can continue to provide protection against severe illness, but there isn't yet a broad consensus on what the best approach should be moving forward.
The most popular idea floated was developing a so-called pancoronavirus vaccine — a shot that could protect against the entire spectrum of strains of the virus, both known and unknown.
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is part of a family of coronaviruses called betacoronaviruses. The coronaviruses that caused SARS and MERS are also in this family.
But betacoronaviruses are just one branch in the broader coronavirus family tree. There are also alphacoronaviruses, gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses.
A pancoronavirus vaccine would essentially target the trunk of the tree, providing protection against all of the branches.
Still, a pancoronavirus could be years away. A similar vaccine, for influenza, still hasn’t been successfully developed.
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Who Won the Week?
Federal Judge Amy Totenberg, for allowing the case to proceed against Marjorie Taylor-Greene, aiming to boot her off the ballot because she helped the Jan. 6 coup plotters
Twitter, for making it much harder for Elon Musk to buy and Trumpify the social media platform, and Vangard for putting up the money to top Musk as the largest shareholder
President Biden: requires materials for infrastructure-law projects to be US-made; announces (and delivers) more aid to Ukraine; jobless claims now lowest since 1968
Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, for going viral with her speech against the red-hatted cult's new crusade to falsely tar Democrats as what GOPers actually are: soulless sexual deviants
Ukraine's military, for spending another week waging some of the most skilled defensive warfare in modern times (and outing 600+ Russian spies was a nice touch)
The advocacy group Run For Something, for announcing an initiative to find, train and support 5,000 candidates for local elections-related offices…from election board members to county clerks
Wind power advocates, as Trump's most hated green energy source produces more juice than coal and nuclear for the first time in the U.S.
The Connecticut House, for passing a bill ensuring women will always have access to abortion services, while legally shielding women who come from other states to get them
The 2022 Profiles in Courage Award winners, including Ukrainian President Zelensky, MI Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Fulton County, GA Elections Department employee Wandrea Moss
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This is Almost Too Much To Bear?
In a bit of a reverse Goldilocks scenario, a California family discovered that five bears had found their home just right.
The South Lake Tahoe residents had been hearing “some odd rumbling, snoring-like noises” throughout the winter, but had been ignoring the mysterious sounds because they “simply didn’t make sense,” the BEAR League, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people coexist with bears, wrote on Facebook earlier this week. The neighbors even suggested they might be imagining things.
But the sounds were very real, and there was a logical explanation: bears hibernating in the crawl space underneath the house.
“Each winter, about 100 to 150 of our bears attempt to hibernate under homes here at Tahoe,” she said. “The BEAR League is kept very busy moving bears out of these crawl spaces, often several bears each day.”
Tahoe. Tahoe, It's Off to Sleep We Go
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Not to Anti-Vaxers. You Won't Need A Vaccination Card for Your Vacation in This Vaccine-Free Paradise.
As mask mandates and social distancing requirements lift around the world, North Korea remains one of two countries that have not administered any coronavirus vaccines, with no sign of how it can ever begin to reopen despite a brewing humanitarian crisis for its people.
The vaccines that were allocated for North Korea through a United Nations-backed global vaccination effort are no longer available, officials said this month, after Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the initiative’s offers of millions of doses.
North Korea, already one of the most closed societies in the world, remains in a strict pandemic lockdown and has shuttered its borders except to a minimal level of trade with China, with grave implications for the health and food security of its population.
North Korea has yet to begin coronavirus vaccinations as delays hamper U.N.-backed rollout
The pandemic closure has exacerbated the food crisis, said Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on North Korean human rights. In a recent report, Quintana said the country’s “covid restrictions, including border closures, appear to have prevented an outbreak inside the country, though likely at considerable cost to the wider health situation and further exacerbating economic deprivation.”
No one is clear on the exact situation inside the country, however, because North Korea’s retreat inward in the pandemic has restricted remaining channels of information — with diplomats, humanitarian aid groups and tourists no longer able to enter.
North Korea and Eritrea are now the only two countries in the world that have not administered vaccines.
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Potemkin Villages Are a Potemkin Village
Once upon a time, there lived a powerful leader known as Catherine the Great who ruled a vast empire and, over the years, conquered many new lands.
Catherine appointed her boyfriend to oversee one of those conquests — a place now called Ukraine. As time passed, he informed her the citizens were flourishing and happy. But, according to a version of the tale passed on for centuries, it was a lie.
In the legend, Catherine decided to launch an expedition, taking a barge down the Dnieper River so she could observe the thriving, joyful subjects. Her boyfriend, Grigory, was fearful his deceit would be exposed, and eager to please his beloved. So, the story goes, he instructed minions to build fake villages along the riverfront — freshly painted facades.
The expedition, with thousands of soldiers and servants, proceeded for six months. According to popular accounts, after Catherine passed each village, the fake buildings were disassembled, placed on carts, rushed downriver and re-created for another viewing.
Catherine, in the story, was mesmerized by the achievements of her lover, Grigory Potemkin, rewarding him with an appointment as Prince of Tauris (Crimea). And, to this day, people worldwide still refer to fake news and false fronts using his name: “Potemkin villages.”
Over hundreds of years, the insult came to be used for almost any alleged sham, from China's green energy program to former President Obama's gun control efforts or former President Trump's coronavirus response.
More recently, as Ukrainian defenses held off Russia’s military invasion, pundits scoffed that Vladimir Putin was duped by his “Potemkin military,” whose leaders misrepresented the war outlook. When Putin tried to prop up Russia’s economy amid international sanctions, U.S. officials talked of Moscow’s “Potemkin market.” And, after Russia offered to end the war in return for control of southern Ukraine, critics ridiculed the notion of a “Potemkin peace.”
But history and politics are a tangle of lies and intrigue, especially in Russia, so there is a twist to this tale:
There were no fake villages. Potemkin did not scam Catherine II with props. In fact, researchers say his accomplishments in Ukraine were authentic, and popular claims to the contrary are fiction — a smear spewed by Russian rivals at the time and forever seared into belief and vernacular.
“The very concept of ‘Potemkin village’ is a Potemkin village,” said Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of "Catherine the Great & Potemkin: Power Love & Russian Empire." “Totally false, a libel without a shred of truth.”
While the legend may be bogus, Sebag Montefiore and other historians believe the Crimea expedition and Potemkin’s fable remain at the heart of today’s conflict in Ukraine. Put simply, they contend, thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war based on Putin’s misrepresentation of that history.
Marvin Kalb, a Harvard professor emeritus and former journalist who wrote “Imperial Gamble” after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, suggested the bloody conflict is a product of disinformation, much like the lie that has haunted Catherine's expedition for 235 years.
“The relevance of that story today is that Putin is creating a Potemkin village in the way he describes his war,” Kalb said. “And the deception is overwhelming.”
There is no question that Potemkin took Catherine on a tour through towns that were decorated for royal visitors.
But historical consensus is clear that the prince’s dramatic developments were real. Proof rests in Russian archives, diaries and letters penned by those who took part in the 4,000-mile expedition.
The whole story.
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