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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:26:04 GMT -8
A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'
Don't Mess With Granny
Tired of receiving scam calls, a woman in Ontario, Canada, was fed up when she got a call from fraudsters pretending to be her grandson in need of money.
Instead of simply hanging up as usual, Bonnie Bednarik went along with the ruse, telling them she would give them the C$9,300 ($6,800; £5,600).
When the alleged scammers came to collect the money, they were shocked to find police waiting for them.
Police say they had defrauded at least two other victims.
Ms Bednarik, 74, was suspicious when the scammers called her the morning of 1 March saying they needed the cash for bail money.
When she asked who was speaking, the suspect acted upset, saying "come on, it's your grandson".
It was the third time a scammer had contacted her, and it made her mad, Ms Bednarik said at a press conference in her home city of Windsor, Ontario.
Thinking on her feet, Ms Bednarik said a name that was not, in fact, her grandson, hoping to catch the scammer in his lie.
Posing as her grandson, the fraudster told Ms Bednarik an elaborate story about how he got into a car accident with a fictitious friend and pills were found in the glove compartment.
To really sell it, the scammer even "had a few tears", Ms Bednarik said. He told her he loved her.
To buy time, she told the man she would call her bank.
Instead she called the police, who were able to coordinate with Ms Bednarik and set up surveillance near her home.
The fraud unit arrested the suspects - Evan Gayowsky, 19, and Noah Kljajic, 22 - when they went to her house to collect the money.
Police collected a "fairly large quantity" of cash that the two had allegedly scammed off other victims.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:28:56 GMT -8
What Happened to the Vultures of Vuhledar?
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:31:39 GMT -8
Gov DeathSentence Continues His Crackdown on Free Speech
Florida continues its march to fascism.
Two developments this week stand out. Christopher Rufo, one of the people Gov. Ron DeSantis made a trustee at the New College of Florida to execute a hostile takeover of the traditionally liberal institution, spelled out the plans for New College just like he spelled out his plans for turning “critical race theory” into a major Republican culture war issue in 2021. The man loves to act like a B movie villain and say what his evil plan is. Around the same time, a Republican state senator proposed a bill to crack down on those nasty bloggers who might write about anyone in the state government.
“We will be shutting down low-performing, ideologically-captured academic departments and hiring new faculty,” Rufo tweeted. “The student body will be recomposed over time: some current students will self-select out, others will graduate; we'll recruit new students who are mission-aligned.”
For “low-performing, ideologically-captured academic departments,” read “departments with professors whose politics we don’t like.” The new faculty hired will be guaranteed to be partisan Republicans—DeSantis’ new higher education bill provides for boards of trustees appointed by the governor to make all hiring decisions. And the current students who will “self-select out” will be the LGBTQ ones, the students of color, anyone who is not fully on board with the DeSantis-Rufo program.
Don’t expect this kind of approach to stop at New College. That’s a test case, and the DeSantis bill, if passed, will make it easier to carry out political takeovers of every public college and university in Florida.
That’s higher education. Then there’s this: State Sen. Jason Brodeur is proposing a bill calling for bloggers, defined as “any person as defined in s. 1.01(3) that submits a blog post to a blog which is subsequently published,” who are compensated to write on blogs, defined as “a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content,” to register with the state “within 5 days after the first post by the blogger which mentions an elected state officer.” After that, these bloggers have to file monthly reports for any month in which they write anything about any elected state officer, and will be fined up to $2,500 if they fail to report. But one blogger could rack up multiple failures to report multiple pieces.
If passed, this would not apply to the websites of newspapers.
This is an attempt to control citizen media just as DeSantis’ goons are gearing up to control public higher education. In both cases, it’s about concentrating the control of the Republicans who dominate the state government and about limiting places where people—be it professors, students, or bloggers—can disagree with and criticize those Republicans. They’re literally trying to ban dissent, one form at a time.
Both the blogger bill and the higher education one still have to pass. But when it comes to Florida these days, it’s hard to bet against even the most repressive measures passing.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:34:07 GMT -8
Isn't CPAC a Machine for Sleep Apnea?
Now, the fate of the Schlapp-era CPAC and Donald Trump himself are tied together.
The annual event, which began yesterday in National Harbor, has been abandoned by most top GOP elected officials. Here’s a breakdown:
Senate GOP leadership: None attending.
House GOP leadership: Only ELISE STEFANIK is attending.
GOP governors: Only Idaho Gov. BRAD LITTLE.
GOP presidential candidates, declared and undeclared: Trump, NIKKI HALEY, MIKE POMPEO and VIVEK RAMASWAMY.
Outside the MAGA bubble, the event has literally become a punchline. JIMMY KIMMEL and JIMMY FALLON both mocked it in their monologues last night.
“CPAC stands for ‘Clowns Periodically Assembling in Convention Centers,’” said Kimmel.
“It’s basically Coachella for people who post on Facebook in all caps,” joked Fallon. “After each speech, there will be a QAnon — I’m sorry, Q&A.”
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:38:31 GMT -8
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:41:48 GMT -8
You Wactch Fox Noise for an Hour and Your IQ Drops by 10 Points
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a physician, dubiously claimed at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday that touching fentanyl on a dollar bill can kill you. (Watch the video below.)
That prompted a diagnosis of “idiocy” on Twitter.
“Every American in our country is at risk for this,” Green told the D.C.-area CPAC gathering in discussing the opioid crisis. “You pick up a dollar that’s got fentanyl on it and you’re dead.”
The claim about casual fatal contact with the synthetic opioid has been making the rounds and has been dismissed as a myth.
“You can’t overdose on fentanyl by touching a doorknob or dollar bill,” said Daniel Colby, co-medical director at UC-Davis Health’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
The notion also got fact-checked by the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact, which concluded: “It’s physically impossible to overdose from touching a dollar bill laced with fentanyl.”
I Thought I would Make Up My Own Fake Fact.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:43:08 GMT -8
“The truth is, the grifters of our age are fucking morons,” he said. “Just absolute dipshits. Soft-brained Neanderthals. And that’s the part that bothers me so much.”
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:45:03 GMT -8
Distill It, Or Don't Squirt It.
A Florida resident has died after becoming infected with a rare brain-eating amoeba, officials say.
Health experts in Charlotte County, in southwest Florida, say the victim was probably infected after rinsing their nasal sinuses with tap water.
Naegleria fowleri infects the brain through the nose. Officials say that drinking it is not dangerous.
Infections are almost always fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Officials warn that to avoid infections people should not rinse out their nasal passages with untreated tap water.
Sterile or distilled water are preferred options. Tap water can also be used if it is boiled for at least one minute and cooled before use.
People are also advised to avoid taking on water in their nose while in swimming pools or bathing or showering.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:46:30 GMT -8
The World Economy is Doing Well. This Good News is Bad News.
The global economy is showing vigor, with business surveys this week pointing to a widespread revival in growth despite rising borrowing costs and elevated energy and food prices, a sign that central banks may need longer than anticipated to bring inflation under control.
Data from the U.S., China and Europe have shown surprising vitality in these regions’ economies since the start of 2023, confounding predictions from the World Bank and other economists that the global economy was set for one of its weakest years in recent decades.
While this is promising for governments, that resilience may persuade central bankers that they need to raise key interest rates further than anticipated to cool prices—effectively pouring more cold water on an economy that is still running a little too hot. This could translate into a slowdown in growth later in the year and into 2024, which had been seen as a recovery year.
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Post by mhbruin on Mar 3, 2023 9:50:06 GMT -8
Dioxins: Did They or Didn't They?After a catastrophic 38-train car derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, some officials are raising concerns about a type of toxic substance that tends to stay in the environment. Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance, the U.S. senators from Ohio, sent a letter to the state’s environmental protection agency expressing concern that dioxins may have been released when some of the chemicals in the damaged railcars were deliberately burned for safety reasons. They joined residents of the small Midwestern town and environmentalists from around the U.S. calling for state and federal environmental agencies to test the soil near where the tanker cars tipped over. On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered rail operator Norfolk Southern to begin testing for dioxins. Testing so far by the EPA for “indicator chemicals” has suggested there’s a low chance that dioxins were released from the derailment, the agency said. A look at dioxins, their potential harms and whether they may have been created by burning the vinyl chloride that was on the Norfolk Southern train: linkDid dioxins spread after the Ohio train derailment?
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