Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison: What do the Happiest Kids in the World Eat for Breakfast? (Blue Zones)
The Dutch are champions of breakfast time and seem to be happier and healthier because of it. But the real point is that they put as much value on the idea of starting the day together around the breakfast table, a calming and bonding experience for all the family.
Josh Marshall: Zero in Obstruction in Under Five Months (TPM)
But The Washington Post is reporting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating President Trump for possible obstruction of justice. That's zero to obstruction in under 5 months, amazing and genuinely impressive in the sense of achievement in corrupt behavior and malicious intent. Donald Trump. He's doing great work. And people are noticing.
Josh Marshall: Guns and Political Killing (TPM)
We are left with the simple reality that high levels of violence are deeply rooted in American society, especially in specific regions. Regardless of how much guns cause that violence they radically magnify its lethality.
Paul Krugman: A Finger Exercise On Hyperglobalization (NY Times Blog)
The days when surging world trade was the big story seem like a long time ago. For one thing, trade has stopped surging, and seems to have plateaued. For another, we have more pressing issues, like the rise of authoritarianism and the attempt to sabotage health care.
Suzanne Moore: Anita Pallenberg paid a high price for being a rock-star girlfriend (The Guardian)
The actress and model was so much more than a style icon or Rolling Stones muse. But she had to live with being constantly compared to her 20-year-old self and found wanting.
Eddie Deezen: The Woman Who Fought in the Revolutionary War (Neatorama)
Tall, broad, strong and not one of delicate feminine features, in 1782, Deborah made her first attempt at trying to pretend to be a man. In early 1782, she donned men's clothes and tried to enlist in an army unit in Middleborough, Massachusetts. Signing up as "Timothy Thayer," and binding her breasts in with a tied linen cloth, she collected a bonus and enlisted.
Old man is having fun under Metallica (YouTube)
Never too old to rock out.
Bodybuilder disguised as old man pumps up the crowd (YouTube)
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THEY ARE WATCHING YOU.
FIGHT THE EVIL AND SAVE THE LAND!
'A DAY WITHOUT WHITE PEOPLE.'
"REEFER MADNESS."
THE BERNIE BROS AND THE TRUMP TRAITORS.
TRUMP IS A TRAITOR!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
A heat wave has begun. Ack.
Bridge School Benefit Canceled
Neil Young
This year's Bridge School Benefit has been canceled, and longtime host Neil Young will no longer be affiliated with the event.
On Wednesday, the Bridge School posted on its website statements from both Neil and his ex-wife Pegi Young about the cancellation. While Pegi told readers to "Stay tuned for updates as we begin to shape what the next steps will be," Neil announced he was walking away from it.
Neil Young added at the end of the letter that he would no longer be hosting the event due to "personal reasons," though he would still be involved in fundraising.
The long-running concert series at Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheater has become, to use Young's words, "part of the Bay Area landscape." The first show in 1996 featured Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and the following lineups continued to be star-studded. Over the years, the concert raised millions for the school, which helps children with severe physical impairments and complex communication needs. Neil Young has two children with cerebral palsy.
Neil Young
Finally Credited For Co-Writing 'Imagine'
Yoko Ono
After 46 years, Yoko Ono is finally receiving the credit she deserves. The iconic multidisciplinary artist was officially credited as a co-writer of the 1971 song "Imagine," currently attributed to Ono's deceased husband, John Lennon.
The news was announced Wednesday at a meeting of the National Music Publishers Association by its CEO, David Israelite. He also bestowed "Imagine" with the Centennial Song award.
"While things may have been different in 1971, today I am glad to say things have changed," Israelite said. "So tonight it is my distinct honor to correct the record some 48 years later and recognize Yoko Ono as a co-writer of the NMPA centennial song 'Imagine,' and to present Yoko Ono with this well-deserved credit."
He then played an archival interview, in which Lennon explains that the song would not exist without Ono. "[Imagine] should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song," he said. "Because a lot of it - the lyric and the concept - came from Yoko. But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution. But it was right out of Grapefruit, her book. There's a whole pile of pieces about 'imagine this' and 'imagine that.'"
Sean Lennon accompanied his mother, Ono, who uses a wheelchair, onstage to accept the Centennial Song award. According to Lennon, the artist welled up with tears upon hearing the announcement. Onstage, Ono said her waning health has heightened her appreciation of the song and imbued her with a magnified esteem for being alive, Variety reported.
Yoko Ono
All 150,966 Deaths
'Game of Thrones'
As one of the more popular shows on TV, Game of Thrones is certainly no stranger to controversy. Even though the show airs on HBO - a channel were ostensibly anything goes - there have been some vocal critics who have lambasted the show for the way it treats women and its depiction of violence that some argue is gratuitous and a tad over the top. Of course, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has been quick to dismiss such criticisms, noting in the past that "drama comes out of conflict" and that "if you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book."
All that said, there's no denying that death is one of the reasons why GOT is so enthralling and compelling. After all, it takes a special skill to create a character so vile (read: King Joffrey) that viewers are actively hoping for his brutal demise. Individual character deaths aside, GOT is also no stranger to depicting death on a massive scale, often in the form of intricately choreographed scenes of large-scale battles.
All in all, the last six seasons have seen no shortage of death. From popular characters to nameless peasants, no one in the Game of Thrones universe is truly ever safe. In light of that, the YouTube channel Leon Andrew Razon Compilations recently put together a video compilation highlighting every single on-screen death the series has seen since its inception. Taking things an interesting step further, the video also advances a tally of all the deaths the show has seen. The resulting figure is pretty astounding: 150,966 deaths to be precise. Note, though, that the tally does include animals.
'Game of Thrones'
Can't Afford It
Summer Vacation?
Forget frequent flier miles, last-minute getaways and even road trips. Nearly half of Americans say they won't be taking a vacation this summer, mostly because they can't afford it, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The new AP-NORC survey, conducted in May, said 43 percent of Americans won't be taking a summer vacation. The top reason for skipping a trip was the cost, cited by 49 percent of non-vacationers. Another 11 percent said they can't take the time off from work, while 3 percent said they don't like to be away from work.
About half of Americans living in households making less than $50,000 a year don't plan to take any summer vacation this year, and they're especially likely to cite costs as a reason.
And if your employer gives you paid vacation days, consider yourself lucky: Forty-one percent of those surveyed who work full or part time said they do not get any paid time off from their employers to use for vacation. Younger and lower-income workers are especially likely to not get any paid time off.
Summer Vacation?
Almost Every State
Russian Hackers
A Russian cyber attack on the US electoral system affected almost 40 states during the 2016 election, sources have revealed.
The cyber attack - which targeted software used by poll workers on election day - hit 39 states, sources familiar with the US investigation into the matter told Bloomberg. That number, if accurate, represents a far larger attack than previously reported.
The Intercept recently published a top-secret National Security Agency document detailing an attempted launch of a Russian spear-phishing campaign on local governments in advance of the US election. The report suggested hackers had accessed at least one US voting software supplier.
According to Bloomberg, however, the hackers accessed dozens of voter databases and at least one campaign finance database.
The attack was so severe that it drove Obama administration officials to complain directly to the Russian government via a "red phone". The administration feared the hackers would delete voter rolls or otherwise tamper with the voting process in order to undermine confidence in the election.
Russian Hackers
Latest Approval Rating Plunges
T-rump
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Donald Trump (R-Crooked) fired off complaining that "they made up a phony collusion with the Russians story" and that he was the subject of the "single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history."
But while Trump might think issues facing the White House have been created by a mysterious "they," Americans don't seem to trust the president's commitment to running the government properly-in fact, many think he is downright undemocratic. Sixty-five percent of respondents in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday said the president either doesn't have much or any respect for the "country's democratic institutions and traditions." Nearly a third of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents said the same.
The Associated Press-NORC survey also found Trump wasn't a particularly popular president. Just 35 percent of Americans approved of the job he's doing as president, the poll found. Sixty-four percent-and one-quarter of Republicans-disapproved of Trump's job performance. In March, the the Associated Press-NORC poll found 42 percent of Americans approved of the job Trump was doing. Just one-in-five Republicans disapproved of the president in March.
In the latest poll, roughly 50 percent of whites without a college degree-one of Trump's strongest demographics in the 2016 presidential election-approved of the job the president was doing. That's down 8 percentage points from Associated Press-NORC poll in March.
Trump's approval rating has trended downward since he took office in January. The weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight pegged his approval rating at just 38.4 percent Thursday and his disapproval at 55.7 percent. The RealClearPolitics average of polls, meanwhile, had Trump's approval at 39.6 percent Thursday morning, while it had his disapproval rating at 54.7 percent.
T-rump
Ruling Surprises Oil Industry
Dakota Access
A judge's ruling that might open the door for at least a temporary shutdown of the disputed Dakota Access pipeline surprised the industry that hailed the project as a "game changer" for North Dakota oil.
But shippers said Thursday that they aren't concerned that there will be any long-term disruption to service on the $3.8 billion pipeline that on June 1 began moving crude from the Bakken oil patch to a distribution point in Illinois, from which it's shipped to the Gulf Coast and potentially high-paying markets abroad.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers "largely complied" with environmental law when approving the pipeline but didn't adequately consider some matters important to the Standing Rock Sioux. The tribe draws its water from Lake Oahe and is opposed to the pipeline crossing beneath the Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota.
Boasberg said the Corps didn't adequately consider how an oil spill under Lake Oahe might affect tribal fishing and hunting rights, or whether it might disproportionately affect the tribal community. He will rule later on whether the pipeline should be shut down while the Corps reconsiders those matters, though he acknowledged such a move "would carry serious consequences that a court should not lightly impose."
Dakota Access
Unusual Weather
Antarctica
An area larger than the state of Texas in West Antarctica melted to an unusual degree last year, with pools of the meltwater remaining on the surface for as long as 15 days. That's trouble, since meltwater can accelerate the thawing already occurring from warming ocean temperatures. West Antarctica alone could contribute 10 feet of sea level rise, according to a 2009 paper published in Science.
This area in the Ross Ice Shelf, the world's largest chunk of floating ice, likely melted at its surface because of a particularly strong 2015-2016 El Niño event, which brought warm and moist sea air to the area, according to the study published today in Nature Communications. El Niños have caused melting atop the Ross Ice Shelf before, but this time it lasted unusually long, according to the paper. It appears it also rained on the ice shelf and other parts of West Antarctica. That could made it easier for the snow surface to melt.
Antarctica is the coldest place on the planet - and though rain sometimes happens on the coasts, where it's warmer, rainfall is a pretty striking event. "The story of melt all over the ice shelf rattled through the science community as it happened," Robin Bell, an Antarctic researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute at Columbia University, who was not involved in the study, told The Washington Post. "Who had heard of rain in Antarctica - it is a desert!"
The presence of meltwater worries scientists because it might make it more likely that the ice shelf will fracture. That could eventually lead to chunks of ice breaking off - bad news for us pitiable humans, since this ice shelf keeps other ground-based ice from flowing into the sea. Without this natural barrier, sea levels could rise several feet, spelling doom for many coastal areas.
Antarctica
'Plankton Explosion' Turns 's Bosphorus Turquoise
Istanbul
A sudden change in the colour of the Bosphorus Strait that divides the continents of Europe and Asia in Turkey's largest city Istanbul has surprised residents, with scientists putting it down to a surge in a species of plankton across the Black Sea.
The sudden transformation of the usually blue waters of the Bosphorus to a milky turquoise since the weekend had alarmed some residents.
But scientists said there was no mystery behind the colour change, which was accompanied by a sharper smell.
Ahmet Cemal Saydam, professor of environmental science at Hacettepe University, told the Dogan news agency that the cause was a surge in numbers of the micro-organism Emiliania huxleyi, also known as Ehux.
"This has nothing to do with pollution," he said, adding it was particularly good for the numbers of anchovies, a popular supper in Istanbul.
Istanbul
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