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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:30:25 GMT -8
The problem with political jokes is that they sometimes get elected.
Elon Musk Is Spending Too Much Time Reading Nonesense on His New Twitter
Elon Musk told his 120 million Twitter followers on Sunday that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be criminally prosecuted, echoing talking points from the far-right conspiracy theorists he has increasingly aligned himself with on the platform.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” tweeted the new Twitter owner, whose message also mocked pronoun usage.
The attack came as Fauci, the nation’s top immunologist, prepares to step down from his role overseeing the nation’s COVID-19 response. Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and has served five decades in public health.
Musk provided no explanation for his message, but it followed a prior tweet in which he shared a meme mocking past coronavirus lockdowns. His tweet received support from far-right Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R). Until it was reactivated under Musk, Greene’s personal account had been permanently suspended from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. She has also advocated against transgender acceptance and equality.
Do These Count as "Dislikes"?
Twitter owner Elon Musk discovered Sunday that mass firings, enabling online hate and threatening Dr. Anthony Fauci can get you booed by the thousands. (Watch the videos below)
The tech billionaire got showered with jeers when comedian Dave Chappelle introduced him onstage during his routine at Chase Center in San Francisco.
Chappelle tried to work the Tesla CEO into his set as the boos intensified.
In video shared on Musk’s own platform (where some footage was reportedly deleted at the source), Chappelle told fans: “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world.”
As the jeers became apparent, Chappelle cracked to Musk, “It sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience.” The comedian, who’s courted controversy himself with jokes about transgender people and a recent “Saturday Night Live” monologue about antisemitism, continued to riff on the disapproval flowing from the the crowd.
“All these people that are booing, I’m just pointing out the obvious — they have terrible seats,” Chappelle said.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:35:01 GMT -8
As of Three Days Ago, California Snow Pack Was 158% of Normal For Dec 9. That's Before the Huge Storm Hitting the West Coast.
The "drought" isn't over. I think drier conditions are new normal. However, this is a welcome respite.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:41:04 GMT -8
The Life of a Refusenik
When his son was sent to fight in Ukraine, Sergei begged him not to go.
"You've got relatives there. Just refuse," Sergei recalls telling Stas, who was already an army officer. "But he said he was going. He believed it was right. I told him that he was a zombie. And that, unfortunately, life would prove that."
Sergei and Stas are not the real names of this father and son. We've changed them to protect their identities. Sergei has invited us to his home to tell us their story.
"So off he went to Ukraine. Then I started getting messages from him asking what would happen if he refused to fight."
Stas told his father about one particular battle.
"He said the [Russian] soldiers had been given no cover; there was no intelligence gathering; no preparation. They'd been ordered to advance, but no one knew what lay ahead.
"But refusing to fight was a difficult decision for him to take. I told him: 'Better to take it. This is not our war. It's not a war of liberation.' He said he would put his refusal in writing. He and several others who'd decided to refuse had their guns taken off them and were put under armed guard."
Sergei made several trips to the front line to try to secure his son's release. He bombarded military officials, prosecutors and investigators with appeals for help.
Eventually his efforts paid off. Stas was sent back to Russia. He revealed to his father what had happened to him in detention: how a "different group" of Russian soldiers had tried to force him to fight.
"They beat him and then they took him outside as if they were going to shoot him. They made him lie on the ground and told him to count to ten. He refused. So, they beat him over the head several times with a pistol. He told me his face was covered in blood.
"Then they took him into a room and told him: 'You're coming with us, otherwise we'll kill you.' But then someone said they'd take my son to work in the storeroom."
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:42:31 GMT -8
Who's Afraid of the Wisconsin Supreme Court?
When I tell you that the upcoming election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court is, without any doubt, the most massively important single race of the year, it’s impossible to overstate the case. The stakes are simply gargantuan: If progressives can retake the majority, the court could roll back the GOP’s extreme gerrymanders, restore the right to an abortion, block any attempts by Republican lawmakers to steal the 2024 election for Donald Trump, and even revive the state’s moribund democracy from the pitiable sham Republicans have reduced it to.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:44:47 GMT -8
Fusion Power Has Been 10 Years Away For the Last 60 Years, But ...
The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain — a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion-dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power.
The aim of fusion research is to replicate the nuclear reaction through which energy is created on the sun. It is a “holy grail” of carbon-free power that scientists have been chasing since the 1950s. It is still at least a decade — maybe decades — away from commercial use, but the latest development is likely to be touted by the Biden administration as an affirmation of a massive investment by the government over the years.
Huge amounts of public and private funds have been funneled into the fusion race worldwide, with the aim of ultimately manufacturing fusion machinery that could bring electricity to the grid with no carbon footprint, no radioactive waste and far fewer resources than it takes to harness solar and wind power. Beyond the climate benefits, promoters say it could help bring cheap electricity to impoverished parts of the world.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:46:24 GMT -8
Joe Biden's Approval Remains Unchanged. He Gets All the Blame and None of the Credit.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:47:48 GMT -8
It's a Sinema to Elect Krysten
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:51:16 GMT -8
Some Kreminna For Your Morning Coffee
Kreminna is more and more encircled by Ukrainian forces by the day, and it won’t be long before its Russian occupiers will be forced to retreat.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:53:52 GMT -8
Our Friend the Sun
The world is set to add as much renewable energy in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, as a global energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine accelerates growth in renewables such as wind and solar, the International Energy Agency says.
Led by solar energy, renewables are poised to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation worldwide by early 2025, helping to keep alive the global goal of limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), according to the Paris-based agency’s latest forecasts.
“Energy security concerns caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have motivated countries to increasingly turn to renewables such as solar and wind to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels,” the IEA said in a report on renewable energy published this month.
We looked at 1,200 possibilities for the planet’s future. These are our best hope.
Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts between 2022 and 2027, an amount equivalent to the entire power capacity of China today, according to the IEA report, the latest on the renewables sector.
Global solar capacity is set to almost triple over the next five years, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world, the IEA said.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:55:34 GMT -8
Bayou Justice
The judge told Johnny Traweek he had served his time, seven months, for hitting someone with a saucepan in a drunken fight, then suggested he could be released from the Orleans Parish prison by midnight.
Mr. Traweek began giving away his jailhouse comforts — a blanket, two orange sweatshirts, ramen, soda. Then he waited out the final hours of May 2, 2018, his last legal day behind bars.
Midnight came, midnight went. Around 4 a.m., Mr. Traweek was lying in bed, eyes open, when the staff summoned inmates for predawn breakfast. He would repeat that routine, including the sleepless nights, 19 more days because the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections did not process his paperwork in a timely manner.
“It’s a bad, bad feeling,” said Mr. Traweek, now 70. “Every day, I’m getting up and thinking I’m going to get out. And it doesn’t happen. I knew I wasn’t in there for any charge, and still I have to sit there.”
Mr. Traweek’s case was neither atypical nor the worst of its kind: Roughly 200 inmates are held beyond their legal release dates on any given month in Louisiana, amounting to 2,000 to 2,500 of the 12,000 to 16,000 prisoners freed each year. The average length of additional time was around 44 days in 2019, according to internal state corrections data obtained by lawyers for inmates — and until recently, the department’s public hotline warned families that the wait could be as long as 90 days.
In most other states and cities, prisoners and parolees marked for immediate release are typically processed within hours — not days — although those times can vary, particularly if officials must make arrangements required to release registered sex offenders. But in Louisiana, the problem known as “overdetention” is endemic, often occurring without explanation, apology or compensation — an overlooked crisis in a state that imprisons a higher percentage of its residents than any other in most years.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 9:58:21 GMT -8
I Didn't Like My Beard as First. Then It Grew on Me.
Texas men's basketball coach Chris Beard was arrested, charged with felony assault and now is in jail after police responded to a "hot shot disturbance" call at a residence in Austin, Texas, authorities said Monday.
A spokesman from the Austin Police Department told UPI that officers received a call from the residence at about 12:15 a.m. local time. The department defines a "hot shot" as an incident that is in progress and is an "immediate threat to life and/or public safety." Those calls require immediate dispatch.
Beard was booked into Travis County Jail at 5:18 a.m. Monday. He was charged with assault on family/household member, impede breath circulation," which implies a claim of strangulation, according to Travis County Sheriff's Office records.
The third-degree felony carries potential punishments of two to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine, according to the Texas penal code.
I Didn't Like Chris Beard as First. I Still Don't.
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Post by mhbruin on Dec 12, 2022 10:03:40 GMT -8
We'd Better Hurry With All That Renewable Energy
Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is very broad (70 miles wide) and, in its entirety, is the size of Florida. The glacier is the most feared as it decays rapidly and threatens coastal cities worldwide. The cork in the bottle for the entirety of West Antarctica holds ten feet of sea level rise. The collapse of the marine extension will not add to sea level rise as it already floats. When it collapses, the cork pops, and the land ice is free to slide into the Weddel Sea and the Amundsen Sea, raising sea levels.
All the damage to Thwaites's stability is occurring below the ice. The upwelling of warm ocean water softens and erodes the soft white underbelly of the glacier. The upwelling also lifts the ice, where warmer waters can flow to the ridges and beyond the grounding line, furthering the ice's decay with a faster flow, more shattering and fracturing with the threat of collapse. The water can do that because the ice is no longer anchored on the bedrock.
The ocean at the front of the glacier is still quite cold, approximately 34-36 degrees Fahrenheit. That is above freezing, and if you think of your afternoon cocktail filled with ice, that is similar to the temperature of the ocean water eating away at the glacier. Sipping your cocktail, you observe that the ice is melting, which is precisely what is occurring to the underside of the massive marine extension of Thwaites glacier. The glacier by itself holds two feet of sea level rise.
At some point in the last 200 years, over a duration of less than six months, the front of glacier lost contact with a seabed ridge and retreated at a rate of more than 2.1 kilometers per year (1.3 miles per year) -- twice the rate documented using satellites between 2011 and 2019.
“Our results suggest that pulses of very rapid retreat have occurred at Thwaites Glacier in the last two centuries, and possibly as recently as the mid-20th Century,” said Graham.
“Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future – even from one year to the next – once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed,” said marine geophysicist and study co-author, Robert Larter, from the British Antarctic Survey.
What's Two Feet Mean?
Natural areas are the first to go. After one to two feet of rise, substantial acreage of natural areas in coastal Florida where low-lying land meets the sea will be under water.
At two feet of rise, water will close in on Naples municipal airport and flood Naples Botanical Garden. A few residential areas around Fort Myers and Cape Coral will take on water.
In Pinellas County on the Gulf, barrier islands and low-lying neighborhoods like Shore Acres on Tampa Bay become more than problematic. Bayport Park in Hernando County is awash.
In St. Augustine, the moat at the Castillo de San Marcos fortress will stay permanently full of water by the end of this period.
Fort Lauderdale’s challenges begin to crystallize as some of its priciest canalside real estate is threatened.
The mainland-facing side of urban Miami Beach sees large areas inundated. The sea and higher waters in the former Everglades brings water to western urbanized Miami-Dade County.
Gravity-driven canal and drainage systems will lose performance as seas rise, stacking up rainfall inland. In the early 1980s, nuisance flooding in the Florida Keys happened less than once per
year on average. By 2030, with sea level up 3 to 7 inches, it will happen 20 to 78 times a year — a significant hit for business owners, residents and property.
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