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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:43:15 GMT -8
What's QOP and dead in a closet? The Hide and Seek Champion from 1995.
Moving Them Right Along
An immigration official in the Canadian province of Quebec has said it is "surprising" to learn that New York City is sending migrants to the country's border.
New York City mayor Eric Adams told Fox 5 that his administration was assisting migrants who had been sent to his city but wanted to go elsewhere.
"Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream," Mr Adams said.
The New York Post has reported that migrants in New York City are being given free bus tickets to Plattsburgh, New York state, about 20 miles (32km) south of the Canadian border. From there, they pay taxis and shuttles to take them to Quebec.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:44:57 GMT -8
When Everything Goes Wrong, Keep Dancing
Two of Harry Styles' dancers have said they had to quickly adapt their Grammy Awards routine after the stage started spinning in the wrong direction.
The ex-One Direction star performed his single As It Was at Sunday's ceremony, where he won album of the year.
The British singer and his dancers performed on a giant turntable, and rehearsed with it revolving one way.
But on the night, it started spinning the opposite way, "freaking us all out on live television", one dancer said.
"The moment the curtain opened and it was time to perform, our turntable started spinning in reverse, backward," explained dancer Brandon Mathis.
"There was nothing we could do to stop it. So after a week of rehearsing this piece perfectly going one way, the moment it's time to perform, it starts going the other way, and in real time we have to troubleshoot and do a complete piece in reverse.
"Talk about professionalism," he added in his explanation on his Instagram story, which is no longer available.
His account was echoed by another back-up dancer, Dexter Da Rocha, in a since-deleted TikTok post.
"We rehearsed for 10 days getting down these beautiful formations and sliding off the turntable... and Harry did such a good job integrating into it," Da Rocha explained.
"This whole time we're practicing with the turntable counter-clockwise. We did it loads of times and got it down to the point where we were at dress rehearsal, it was spotless and beautiful."
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:47:55 GMT -8
Powers, keep on lying
While your people keep on dying
World, keep on turning
Russian forces are suffering heavy losses as they press an eastern offensive with at least 1,030 troops killed in a day, Ukraine’s army says.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:49:23 GMT -8
Lithium Batteries Are Good News, Bad News
Lithium-ion batteries have become a ubiquitous feature in new forms of transportation and common household products. But when those batteries fail or overheat, they release flammable, toxic gasses that can spark a fast-spreading fire that is extremely difficult to extinguish.
“The source of the gasses that are creating the flames is confined within a cell battery that will not allow water in,” said Ofodike Ezekoye, a fire scientist and professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “When firefighters are responding to these types of incidents, it takes a lot longer to be able to control the fire because it requires so much more water.”
With the number of fires caused by lithium batteries soaring across the U.S., firefighters and other experts say the training needed to fight them effectively is lagging in many places. Firefighters and city officials are also imploring the manufacturers to redesign the batteries so that, when they fail, the resulting fires can be put down more easily.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:55:37 GMT -8
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bakhmut. Funny If You are Not a Russian Soldier.
A funny thing happened on the way to Russia’s capture of Vuhlendar, Siversk, and even Bakhmut. The thing that happened is that they … didn’t happen. Or at least they certainly haven’t happened yet. What has happened is a jaw-dropping loss of Russian forces that have generated the highest body counts, and equipment counts, since the opening days of the war.
On Monday, Russia made no notable gains at Bakhmut, no notable gains north of Bakhmut, and no notable gains south of Bakhmut. Fifty kilometers to the north, there doesn’t seem to have been any change around the city of Kreminna. That includes Ukrainian forces still reporting to have repelled advances in the area of Kreminna and around Shypylivka to the south. There are also doubts about previous reports of Russia advancing north of Kreminna. That “big push” in Zaporizhzhia turned out to be a complete illusion, and at Vuhledar … we’ll get to that in a minute.
But the question for the morning has to be: Has Russia’s new offensive already fizzled?
From Russia Without Love
Russian forces have lost 25 tanks in the past two days, according to the Ukrainian military.
Writing on Facebook on Tuesday morning, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces attached a video of what appears to be Russian tanks being targeted by Ukrainian weapons systems, with the footage showing smoke and fire. The operational update then said 1,900 Russian soldiers had been killed in the past two days.
In a further update, the General Staff reported Russia's total tank losses since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in 2022 to be 3,245 tanks.
This is an increase of 14 compared with Monday's report by the General Staff. A further Russian 11 tanks had been taken out of action the previous day, the General Staff said in its daily update.
Ukrainian forces have long been capturing Russian weapons and tanks to be used against their original owners in the ongoing war. Back in October, the British defense ministry said that a "large proportion" of Kyiv's military hardware was now made up of captured Russian equipment.
By October 7, Ukraine was believed to have captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks, plus an additional 650 armored vehicles since February 2022.
"Over half of Ukraine's currently fielded tank fleet potentially consists of captured vehicles," the ministry added.
The government department suggested then that the trend of the Russian military losing its heavy weaponry was likely to continue.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 9:57:30 GMT -8
This Ruling Could Be an Abortion.
More than half of abortions in the United States are medication abortions. Republicans are coming for them next. That’s not a hypothetical, it’s a court case that could be decided any day now that would affect not only abortion patients in states with restrictive laws, but across the entire country. The lawsuit seeks to repeal the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of the drug mifepristone as part of a two-drug medication abortion regimen. That wouldn’t fully outlaw medication abortion, which can still be done with just the second drug in the current regimen, misoprostol, but would make it less effective.
The decision is currently in the hands of Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, known as an anti-abortion zealot. From him, it would go to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, known as the most conservative appeals court in the country. And from there, to the Trump-packed Supreme Court, which would be likely to take the chance to restrict abortion rights nationwide.
“It’s hard to really comprehend the full and terrible impact if what the plaintiffs have asked for in that case is actually granted,” Liz Wagner, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, warned Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently. “It would be catastrophic.”
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 10:01:17 GMT -8
Many Older Americans Are About to Get a Little Hungrier
A planned cut to federal food benefits that will affect 16 million households may be more severe for older Americans.
Thanks to the expiration of a boost that Congress created at the outset of the pandemic, many older Americans will see their monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit shrink from $295 to as little as $23, the federal minimum.
Judith Borenin of Port Townsend, Washington, said the extra SNAP benefits she’s received for the past three years helped her buy fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. She bought oranges, grapes and strawberries, though she considered the strawberries a bit of a splurge.
Borenin, 70, got a notice this week from the state’s Department of Social and Health Services that the extra money’s going away. Next month, she’ll receive only $60.
“I’m thinking of stocking up on canned soup, I guess, and crackers,” she said.
Congress decided in December that the “emergency allotments” created in March 2020, which were meant to help SNAP recipients survive the pandemic, would end in March 2023. The average reduction will be about $82 per person, according to the Food Research and Action Center, for a collective spending reduction of nearly $3 billion per month.
Among SNAP recipients, older Americans will see the largest benefit decrease per person, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The impact could be significant: One study estimated that the boosted benefits reduced elderly poverty by nearly 8.6% in the latter half of 2021.
Feeding America is On My Monthly Donation List. With the Cost of Food Rising, They Are Having a Tougher Time, Too.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 10:03:51 GMT -8
Poor MTG
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 10:05:38 GMT -8
I Guess That's Why They Didn't Use a Big Pin.
The suspected Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down over the weekend was 200 feet tall, officials said Monday — or roughly four times the size as the Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters in a briefing that the balloon that slowly made its way across the U.S. before being brought down on Saturday was also carrying a payload that was similar in size to a regional jetliner.
The payload “probably weighs in excess of a couple thousand pounds,” VanHerck said.
The height of the balloon — comparable to a 20-story building or over twice that of the 2022 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree — and the size of the payload were factors in the “decision-making process” to wait to shoot it down until it was over the Atlantic Ocean, he said.
An F-22 Raptor fighter took the balloon down with a Sidewinder missile when it was about six miles off the coast, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon officials said last week they didn't want to shoot the balloon down over the continental U.S. for fear the debris could cause civilian injuries and death and property damage. The balloon had been flying about 60,000 feet — close to 12 miles — high.
VanHerck said that another concern was that the balloon could have been potentially carrying explosives “to detonate and destroy the balloon.”
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 10:07:48 GMT -8
The Whales Are Doing Their Part to Fight Climate Change. Can Human Say the Same Thing?
The ocean is one of the planet’s great carbon sinks, absorbing nearly a third of the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Swimming in its depths are the great whales, a population whose sheer physical mass allows them to exert an outsized influence on the ecosystem around them. While researchers have long suspected that whales are key players in the ocean’s carbon cycle, quantifying exactly how these animals alter the seas — and what we lost with their decimation a century ago — has proved difficult.
Now a group of scientists has taken that challenge on. A team of ecologists, biologists and oceanographers recently published one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to understand just how much carbon the great whales absorb from the ocean, and the value that presents in the fight against climate change.
Whales are “large-bodied animals, they live for a long time, many of them migrate over vast distances,” said study leader Heidi Pearson, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast. “And so they have the potential to have these huge impacts on the ecosystem, including the carbon cycle.”
In their most direct impact, whale bodies hold an enormous amount of carbon that would otherwise be in the ocean or atmosphere.
Twelve great whale species — minkes, Antarctic minkes, sei, Bryde’s, blue, fin, bowhead, gray, humpback and three species of right whale — hold an estimated 2 million metric tons of carbon in their bodies, the authors found. That’s roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon released from burning 225 million gallons of gasoline.
And that’s just the living members of the cetacean family. Another 62,000 metric tons of carbon — the equivalent of 7 million gallons of gas — is trapped every year in the form of whale falls, the bodies of dead whales that sink to the seafloor and support an ecosystem of scavengers.
“Whale falls are a very good way, in terms of efficiency, of taking carbon from the upper ocean and putting it in the deep sea for sequestration,” said Craig Smith, an oceanographer at University of Hawaii at Manoa who worked on the study.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 7, 2023 10:09:14 GMT -8
If You Work for Boeing, You May Be Going
Boeing plans to make staffing cuts in the aerospace company's finance and human resources departments in 2023, with a loss of around 2,000 jobs, the company said.
It's Not An Interesting Story. I Just Liked the Headline.
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