Post by mhbruin on Jul 24, 2022 8:44:31 GMT -8
New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
Jul 23 | |||
Jul 22 | 6,181 | ||
Jul 21 | 126,128 | 355 | 6,279 |
Jul 20 | 125,827 | 347 | 6,298 |
Jul 19 | 126,018 | 353 | 6,184 |
Jul 18 | 123,639 | 352 | 6,184 |
Jul 17 | 122,639 | 336 | 6,085 |
Jul 16 | 124,348 | 340 | 5,658 |
Jul 15 | 126,515 | 333 | 5,972 |
Jul 14 | 126,023 | 348 | 6.017 |
Jul 13 | 124,048 | 351 | 5,918 |
Jul 12 | 123,365 | 342 | 5,851 |
Jul 11 | 118,026 | 306 | 5,775 |
Jul 10 | 103,907 | 281 | 5,619 |
Jul 9 | 104,052 | 283 | 5,135 |
Jul 8 | 105,644 | 289 | 5,398 |
Jul 7 | 106,021 | 277 | 5,326 |
Jul 6 | 106,549 | 273 | 5,203 |
Jul 5 | 106,178 | 267 | 5,080 |
Jul 4 | 94,345 | 295 | 5,118 |
Jul 3 | 103,466 | 326 | 4,376 |
Jul 2 | 106,663 | 330 | 4,695 |
Jul 1 | 109,922 | 336 | 4,993 |
Jun 30 | 110,206 | 329 | 5,020 |
Jun 29 | 109,930 | 317 | 4,951 |
Jun 28 | 108,505 | 321 | 4,890 |
Jun 27 | 113,100 | 307 | 4,916 |
Jun 26 | 100,674 | 290 | 4,776 |
Jun 25 | 101,378 | 299 | 4,200 |
Jun 24 | 102,250 | 287 | 4,453 |
Jun 23 | 97,548 | 283 | 4,467 |
Jun 22 | 97,430 | 255 | 4,404 |
Jun 21 | 99,365 | 248 | 4,375 |
Jun 20 | 89,102 | 239 | 4,352 |
Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
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Today's Worst Joke in the World
Why do bees stay in their hives during winter?
Swarm.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
The Service Was Worse Than the Food
Video released Friday by attorneys representing two customers suing Taco Bell appears to show a person behind the counter of a Dallas store swinging a bucket of steaming liquid at them.
The pair say they suffered serious burns when a store manager poured the water on them as they complained about an incomplete order, their lawsuit claims.
The security video, which has no audio and was released in an edited compilation of cuts and in an unedited hourlong version, appears to show the worker pour the water as words were being exchanged between the customers and employees.
The War on Birth Control Begins
A pair of shoppers at a Walgreens in Wisconsin said an employee refused to sell condoms to them on religious grounds — something Walgreens said is permitted under its policies.
Nathan Pentz tweeted earlier this month that his partner, Jess, went to buy condoms at a store in Hayward because she forgot her birth control. He said when she went to the checkout, the cashier said he would not ring up the condoms, because of his faith.
Pentz also tweeted the couple's customer service response to Walgreens, which said the employee "embarrass[ed] [her] in front of other customers because of her reproductive choices."
In a statement to NBC News, a Walgreens spokesperson said its employee's actions did not violate company policy.
Big F'ing Deal! Nothing Has Changed on Fox News
Editorial boards at both the New York Post and Wall Street Journal slammed former President Donald Trump in Friday editorials, with the former calling him “unworthy” to hold office again following his “damning” silence surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
“As his followers stormed the Capitol, calling on his vice president to be hanged, President Donald Trump sat in his private dining room, watching TV, doing nothing,” the editorial begins. “For three hours, seven minutes.”
The editorial by the right-wing tabloid, controlled by longtime Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch, follows the Jan. 6 House select committee’s investigation into Trump’s inaction, which on Thursday laid out Trump’s unwillingness to call off the violence.
“Trump only wanted one thing during that infamous afternoon: to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to decertify the election of Joe Biden,” the editorial board said. “He thought the violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote altogether.”
On the same day, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece from their editorial board titled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6.”
The Wall Street Journal is also owned by Murdoch.
“Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused,” the article read.
“In the 18 months since, Mr. Trump has shown not an iota of regret,” the editorial continued. “On Thursday he claimed to be vindicated by a bill to clarify the Electoral Count Act...Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
Gaetz May Need to Request a Pardon Again
Unattractive women who “look like a thumb” shouldn’t complain about losing abortion rights because they’re the “least” likely to get pregnant, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said in a jaw-dropping speech to college students at a conservative conference in Florida on Saturday.
“Have you watched these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies?” Gaetz asked the crowd at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa. “The people are just disgusting. Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?”
Video of the speech has received at least one million views on Twitter.
“Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb. These people are odious from the inside out,” the congressman continued. “They’re like 5′2″, 350 pounds, and they’re like, ‘Give me my abortions or I’ll get up and march and protest.’”
“A few of them need to get up and march — they need to get up and march for like an hour a day. Swing those arms, get the blood pumpin’, maybe mix in a salad.”
Take Your Crypto Mining and Leave!
The Seattle Times published this interesting story about the demise of cryptocurrency mining in Central WA, which once was “ground zero for the U.S. crypto boom”. One crypto-miner (Malachi Salcido) recently decided that another crypto bust was coming (oh, one of the smart guys!) and shut down mining to convert to conventional data processing for other companies, calling it a “less volatile business”.
A lot of other crypto-miners have gone out of business or headed to Texas. Some of this was imposed on them:
Part of that new quietude is forced. To shield local power grids from crypto’s boom-bust dynamic and short-term investment horizons, the utilities adopted new rates and other policies for their hydropower, which typically goes for around 2.5 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to around 15 cents for U.S. average.
Basically the Chelan (WA) PUD charges miners triple what it does residents (and other more modestly drawing businesses?) for electricity. The other part is that they aren’t in a hurry to approve large new requests for power without taking some time to review the effect on their grid. It turns out getting a mining operation up quickly with a lot of computing power right from the start is a crucial part of making money before the cost goes up too much and cuts into profits.
BFFs
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
It Sounds Like the Beginning of a Limerick: There Once Was a Walrus Named Freya.
A hefty and charismatic walrus named Freya is winning ardent fans and her share of haters after taking up residence in Norway harbors and hauling her 1,500-pound self up to lounge on boats.
This has been a problem for boats that are “not walrus-worthy,” as German broadcaster Deutsche Welle put it in a video shot back in June. The video highlighted some of Freya’s finer moments in the town of Kragerø, where she spent some time earlier this summer. Two boat owners told the news outlet that they wanted Freya gone.
Many people, however, have had the exact opposite reaction to Freya’s antics and have flocked to the harbor to see the tusked icon in action. Unfortunately, both forms of attention have been stressful and overwhelming for her. More recently, she’s been hanging around Oslo, where the crowds are just too much.
“She doesn’t get any peace,” walrus expert Rune Aae told Norwegian News Agency NTB.
Aae, a researcher at the University of South-Eastern Norway, said he observed TV news crews getting too close to Freya in their boats, hedging her in so that she couldn’t get away. Additionally, harbor officials have been trailing her and spraying her with a hose to keep her off of boats.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 151
Fighting
Ukraine’s military reported Russian shelling in numerous locations in the north, south and east, and again referred to Russian operations paving the way for an assault on Bakhmut in the Donbas region.
Ukraine’s air force command said it had shot down three Kalibr cruise missiles launched by the Russian forces from the Black Sea and aimed at the western Khmelnytskyi region.
Ukrainian forces are gradually moving into the southern Kherson region, which was taken over by Russia at the start of the war, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Saturday.
Diplomacy
President Zelenskyy said Russian missile strikes on Odesa on Saturday were blatant “barbarism” that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement the grain deal.
The United Nations, European Union, United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy all condemned the strikes.
Russia said on Sunday that its cruise missiles had struck military infrastructure at the Odesa port.
Turkey’s defence minister said on Saturday that Russian officials had told Ankara, which mediated the grain deal along with the US, that Moscow had “nothing to do” with the Odesa strikes.
A senior US Congressional delegation, including Representative Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, met Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Saturday and promised to try to ensure continued support in the war.INTERACTIVE_UKRAINE_RUSSIA_GRAIN_DEAL_HANNA_INTERACTIVE_UKRAINT_RUSSIA_GRAIN_DEAL.jpg
Economy
Ukraine pressed ahead with efforts to restart grain exports from Odesa and other Black Sea ports after the missile attack.
Ukraine could export 60 million tonnes of grain in eight to nine months if its ports were not blockaded, but Russia’s strike on the port of Odesa showed it will definitely not be that easy, an economic adviser to the Ukrainian president said.
The EU is seeking additional gas supplies from Nigeria as the bloc prepares for potential Russian supply cuts, a European Commission energy official said.
A Change is Gonna' Come
The biggest signal of a big change in the conflict continues to be in the west. That’s where Ukraine is demonstrating to a suddenly terrified Russia just who is in control of the situation. Ukrainian forces have isolated what’s reported to be over 1,000 Russian troops in the town of Vysokopillya. Ukraine has planted neat patterns of craters on both the Antonovskyi Bridge outside Kherson and the Kakhova Bridge 50km to the north, both to limit the utility of those bridges and to make it clear to Russia that they can close those bridges whenever they want. And Ukraine has taken down a series of bridges across the Inhulets River, showing that they can isolate Russian forces inside Kherson oblast, making it extremely difficult for Russia to move to points of conflict, or to get supplies to their troops in forward positions.
Russia seems to be responding by attempting to build a series of pontoon bridges to cross the wide Dnipro River near Kherson, a tactic that cannot hope to keep the area adequately supplied, even if they make it work. Pontoon bridges are easy to take out. So are vehicles queuing to get onto a pontoon bridge, something Russia might remember from a place called Bilohorivka.
There are now more reports of abandoned Russian positions, and of positions in the city of Kherson that have been handed on inexperienced troops and Russian sympathizers, as the experienced Russian forces have apparently gone out to powder their nose.
That thread also reports Russian soldiers shedding their uniforms, and Russian troops looting in the high end areas of the city. There are also reports of more explosions on the bridge and just outside the city. In essence, Vysokopillya is just a miniature version of Kherson. Or Kherson is a larger version of Vysokopillya. In both cases, they my not yet be physically surrounded, but the range and precision of Ukrainian weapons mean they are effectively surrounded.
With Weapons Like This, Who Needs Enemies?
In “Video Shows Russian Soldiers Refusing To Fight In Ukraine”, RFE/RL’s Timofei Rozhanskiy reported yesterday of a July 12 video of Russian military engineers refusing to fight in Ukraine. Here’s a bit of dialog from the video, in RFE/RL’s translation:
Colonel: Get in the car and get moving!
Soldier: No one is going anywhere.
Colonel: Then other people will take you away in handcuffs.
Soldier: On what justification?
Colonel: There is justification.
Soldier: What justification? We didn't know where we were going. You are breaking your own laws.
The video was taken on one of the soldiers’ cell phones and was sent to his mother. A later video by another soldier shows the cellar where they were held without food or water. Although the soldiers’ phones were smashed or confiscated, they evidently hid a phone or two successfully for a while. Eventually one of the soldiers’ mothers received texts that were strangely reassuring and were evidently not from the soldier in question, so evidently the phone was confiscated.
We don’t know the soldiers’ fate.
Party in the
Is It True?
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Who Won the Week?
The House, for voting with strong bipartisan support to codify the institution of same-sex and interracial marriage into law before 6 buckle-hatted Puritans on the Supreme Court can burn them at the stake
President Biden: unveils climate-change orders; 1 million Americans enrolled in affordable broadband ACP program; swats away Covid like a fly; gas prices down for 8th week
The great state of Maine, for becoming the 22nd to enact automatic voter registration through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles
The House Jan. 6 Committee: Thursday hearings reveal Trump giddily encouraging the insurrection, cementing status as worst, most treasonous president
Ukraine: smart, targeted warfare with top-notch weaponry continues popping turrets off Putin's tanks like bottle caps as First Lady Olena Zelenska is welcomed to White House
The team behind the James Webb space telescope, as their technological marvel reveals the oldest galaxy ever seen---dating back to just 300M years after the big bang
The Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney's office, for issuing subpoenas to a dozen "fake electors" to appear before grand jury to explain why they shouldn’t be jailed for election fraud
The wheels of justice, as Steve Bannon is found guilty of contempt of Congress
The FCC, for finally ordering phone companies to block traffic related to those scam extended-warranty robocalls we all hate
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The Rise of the Machines Begins
A robot broke a seven-year-old boy's finger during a chess match in Moscow last week, Russian news outlets report.
"The robot broke the child's finger," Sergey Lazarev, Moscow Chess Federation President, told Tass news agency. "This is of course bad."
A video shared on social media shows the robot taking one of the boy's pieces. The boy then makes his own move, and the robot grabs his finger.
Four adults rush to help the boy, who is eventually freed and ushered away.
Mr Lazarev said the machine had played many previous matches without incident.
The boy was able to finish the final days of the tournament in a cast, Tass reports.
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The Less They Know, The More They Think They Know
"Our research suggests that there may be a problem of overconfidence getting in the way of learning, because if people think they know a lot, they have minimal motivation to learn more," Light said. "People with more extreme anti-scientific attitudes might first need to learn about their relative ignorance on the issues before being taught specifics of established scientific knowledge."
The paper examined attitudes about eight issues with scientific consensus on which anti-consensus views persist: climate change, nuclear power, genetically modified foods, the big bang, evolution, vaccination, homeopathic medicine and COVID-19. Light said they found that in general, as people's attitudes on an issue get further from scientific consensus, their assessments of their own knowledge of that issue increases, but their actual knowledge decreases. Take COVID-19 vaccines, for example. The less an individual agrees with the COVID-19 vaccine, the more they believe they know about it, but their factual knowledge is more likely to be lower.
"Essentially, the people who are most extreme in their opposition to the consensus are the most overconfident in their knowledge," Light said. "Our findings suggest that this pattern is fairly general. However, we did not find them for climate change, evolution, or the big bang theory."
The degree to which attitudes on an issue are tied up with political or religious identities could affect whether this pattern exists for that issue, Light added.
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The Price of Ignorance
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